Tag Archives: drugs

Trumpspotting

Blame life. Blame racism. Blame misogyny. Blame the Director of the FBI. Blame sex, lies and videotapes. Blame social media. Blame the great unwashed. Blame not only their hygiene but their appalling lack of education. Blame the 54% of white women who voted for a guy that jokes about dating his daughter and brags about casually groping complete strangers. Blame nationalism. Blame media bias. Blame the tilt of the world’s axis. Blame the callous, cunting disaster that 2016 has shown itself to be. Blame life. Just don’t blame Hillary Clinton…

…but why the fuck shouldn’t we blame Hillary?

Continue reading Trumpspotting

Flint

Hate is a nasty, base emotion, but perfectly natural when you’re confronted by the worst of humankind. Years ago I used to play a version of what’s now called Football Manager on the computer, and whatever team I managed I’d buy Teddy Sheringham, put him in the reserves and fine him a week’s wages every single week. No football for Teddy, no money for Teddy, and never-ending meetings of hilarious moaning from an imaginary version of the man who I hated more than any other at the time.

We move on from childish things, though Sheringham’s still a bastard (I saw him in person a couple of years ago going into a bar in Chingford, dressed all in white like a stoat-faced Elvis). New targets of hate are lined up and knocked down, either in real life or in glorious dreams of fury and revenge for whatever crimes these fiends have committed. And nowadays I have one target who I hate far more than any other, for whom most of my rage is saved.

I keep my hate for this person contained quite well and it generally manifests itself only in shouting obscenities at the TV. Not for me the type of grim trolling becoming all too common in the 21st century, whereby rape threats are issued to anyone who speaks out against rape, and it does always seem to be rape. Who’d have thought internet trolls would learn to enjoy a heady mix of sexual brutality and anonymity? The majority of people online are such outgoing, bubbly people; none of us saw that one coming.

I debated writing this piece, as vitriolic abuse of an individual is not something I tend to go in for, but wrongs must be righted and exceptions must be made. This person has committed an offence of the type that affects me more and more as each day goes by, and a growing pain inside me can be directly attributed to her.

Yes, at this point I admit that the target of my hate is a woman, but that’s quite irrelevant. This is not some disgraceful misogynistic attack on a woman in the public eye for something related to her being a woman; this is about something anyone, male or female, could have done.

It’s a politician, but it’s not a Tory as you might assume. She belongs to the party the realistic part of me hopes wins the next election.

Her name is Caroline Flint.

Just typing the letters enrages me. I see her smug mug leering at me out of the TV and I want to throw tea cups, CDs, my laptop, this little dumbbell I have here to tire out my pigeon-like arms, anything I can find, at the screen to stop her talking, because if we let her talk she’ll wreck all our lives.

Ask Ed Miliband. In the last couple of weeks there have been stories about his dodgy leadership and there she is on the news, giving him the type of lukewarm support that will allow her to say she’d always backed him but now he’s gone she’s contemplating throwing her clown hat into the ring. I was in Cyprus for a week, rarely watched the TV, but somehow she managed to find me there to shriek something along the lines of “Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahahahahahahaha you’re all fucked and I love it!”

You may by now be wondering what exactly this ghastly harridan has done to make me this furious. I give you this, from her Wikipedia page:

During her tenure at the Home Office, Flint embarked upon a campaign to prohibit all sales of magic mushrooms in the UK and reclassify them as a Class A drug. Flint pushed through the bill despite a lack of calls for reclassification on the part of the public, challenges to the scientific material used to justify tighter regulation and objections from Peers and MPs such as Dr Brian Iddon, plus disputed use of a scientific study by Swiss academic Dr Felix Hasler.

To some people it may seem odd that just a decade ago you could get magic mushrooms sent to you in the post, eat them and get high as a monkey, all within the well-marked boundaries of glorious United Kingdom law. I started doing just that in around 2002. My first experience changed me, broadened my view of life and relaxed me more than anything else had ever done. The after-effects lasted for weeks, and there were absolutely no down sides other than a realisation that ambition is a waste of time. I found a batch every few months to be just the tonic for an increasingly inquisitive mind, and given how often and how foolhardily I drink, it provided me with a form of extraordinary equilibrium.

And then came Caroline Flint.

I mentioned ambition, and this fucker had it in spades. Finding herself in the Home Office, faced with overly strict drug laws which allowed little scope for the type of Draconian whip-cracking she needed to make a name for herself, the Wicked Witch of Westminster’s gaze came to rest on the humble magic mushroom. A handy story emerged of a man high on shrooms jumping out of a hotel room in Manchester and, ignoring how many drunk idiots break their necks falling down stairs every week, she declared mushrooms were the new Satan, and banned them.

Drug laws are insane, any brain in a jar knows that. How things that grow naturally in a forest can be illegal is unfathomable, but when one of those things is causing no harm and a hateful politician with eyes on the prize decides to ban it for the headlines, well, the people who enjoy it can be forgiven for directing hate towards that politician, and praying for vengeance.

Hate is a terrible emotion and needs to be boxed up, stored safely for when no other emotions remain. To find that Wikipedia paragraph I had to put her name into Google, which presented me too suddenly with images of the woman and now I need a new monitor.

My poor, aching brain is getting to the point where life’s complications, its futility and finality, are weighing me down like an anvil dangling from the testicles of a man who will do anything to get on TV. As my mind deteriorates I can point to one single piece of government legislation as the only thing stopping me reversing the slide.

Dreams of what might have been. If only we could find a way to ban Caroline Flint, it would be flowers and rainbows for everyone.

Cats and dogs dressed up like cakes

There’s so much shit going on in the world it can be hard to stay on top of it all. I am concerned about the shit stuff, like the wars and famines and so on, but I can’t spend all day every day reading about it. I have to find something more light-hearted to drag me through the endless minutes of what can feel like an interminable day at work.

This regularly leads me to stories about animals. I can spend hours looking at pictures of cats and dogs dressed up like cakes, or other animals, or in people-uniforms. I know the animal isn’t complicit in the decision to wear fancy dress, so I do know on some level it’s a bit cruel. It’s a moral conflict I regularly choose to ignore, going in favour of kittens in cardies and dogs in clown outfits over finding out any more about the Islamic State and whether or not Cameron and Obama are going to get all up in their faces or not.

When the animal pictures run out, more often than I care to admit I find myself immersed in stories about the moderately well-known as I traverse the countless pages of crap that are slowly unpicking the very fabric of society: the celebrity gossip pages. I know this is wrong on just about every level. People are being blown up for no good reason, children are dying of hunger, innocent people are suffering day in, day out. The world is going to shit and, instead of reading about it so I can at least make that last sentence sound in some way informed, I’m reading about Paul Ross.

It’s been quite a turnaround for one of daytime TV’s faves; he’s been having a bit of the other behind his wife’s back and getting off his tits on Meow Meow the whole time.

I’m not a drug user. Not in a smug “my body is a temple” way, because I can and do imbibe my weekly allowance of alcohol units several times over, several times a week. I’ve had the occasional flirtation with some chemicals but it has never appealed to me enough to make it a regular thing. It’s expensive and the days of suicidal thoughts that followed my rare indulgences have proven enough of a deterrent to keep me on a straight and narrow, albeit slightly wobbly, binge-drinking path.

Although my experience with drugs is limited, I’m fairly certain of one thing, and this is where I think Paul has got more than a little bit confused; drugs don’t turn you gay.

If I wanted some Meow Meow I would have no idea where to get it from. I would have no idea how to take it (snort it? smoke it? eat it? shove it up my arse?) and I would have no idea what to expect, side-effects wise. However, if street drugs came with labels, I very much doubt they would come with something like this: “Warning: may cause episodes of sodomy and long-term homosexual relationships”.

You cheated on your wife, Paul. And of all the fucking unpleasant things you can do to someone that doesn’t involve causing them actual physical harm, that’s pretty high on the list. The fact you cheated on her with a man really is neither here nor there, so trying to blame the homosexual nature of your infidelity on the drugs is just pointless.

It’s the shaky, pointy finger of blame that comes out every time. I’ve used it myself. Alcohol has been cited as the reason for most of my misdemeanours. Most recently at a wedding when a classic 80s Madonna song came on and a friend and I apparently launched into the kind of synchronised dancing that looked like we’d been practising a routine for weeks. The quantities of white wine we had knocked back had imbued us with such appalling confidence and our uninhibited minds became as one. It was because we were drunk, Paul. Never in a sober moment have we managed or even attempted to recreate a pop video.

But it was done and dusted in a night, Paul. Sure, we’re both embarrassed and wish it hadn’t happened. We don’t want people thinking that as women in our thirties we’re going home and choreographing moves to pop songs and then Skyping each other to practice. But in the end no-one got really hurt.

The clear difference is this: none of my drunken mishaps have lasted for 14 months. Because if you’re doing something for 14 months, there is at least a hint of autonomy going on, whether you’re prepared to admit it or not.

I don’t doubt it would take an enormous amount of bravery to come out. Daytime TV doesn’t strike me as the kind of place to nurture and coddle an individual wrestling with some heavy-duty emotions. The viewing public want their presenters straight and married, and the world remains a homophobic place. I don’t envy you, Paul, but for fuck’s sake take responsibility for what you’ve done.

Being gay isn’t a crime. Well, it is in some repulsively narrow-minded countries, but it’s not here, thank Christ. Be gay or be straight; be whoever you are, which can sometimes be the hardest thing. Just don’t be a cunt to someone who trusts you and then blame it on some party drug.

If only I was as concerned with world affairs as I am with Paul Ross. Ah screw it. I’ll stick with the cats in costumes from now on.