Tag Archives: fury

DDDDFI

I suppose it’s a bit like that thing, ‘suck-teeth’ l believe they cry it, and, according to an urban slang blog l just looked at, I’m triggered to do my version of it for the very same reasons, mostly. These shared reasons are to express “disgust, defiance, disapproval, disappointment, frustration”, or (and here’s the one l can really identify with), “impatience”.

From now on we shall call these collective pissing-off triggers DDDDFI. 

Suck-teeth, you will no doubt know if you have ever half skimmed the same urban slang blogs that l have, is the “gesture of drawing air through the teeth and into the mouth to produce a loud sucking sound”.

My version of suck-teeth is different.

More…musical.

Continue reading DDDDFI

Squeezing out a cannonball

I started writing nonsense on here to get things off my chest. 

I knew there were angry words inside that needed out, and getting drunk and yelling about the meaning of life outside schools just wasn’t cutting it any more. So I started venting on here, while trying to make my dear audience chuckle once or twice through insult, prospective injury and pathos.

What this house of cards relies on is a steady stream of things that wind me up. Previously I could expect one or two incidents a day to provoke simmering fury, from some brainless bastard dropping a crisp packet to the simple sight of a man wearing a hat indoors. I never thought they’d invent a way to stop me seeing other people and thus deprive me of the rage on which I’ve been powered since around 1997, but wait, here comes ‘Tier 2’.

Even in lockdown or whatever this is now, you might think that 2020 would be the ideal time to be a purveyor of grump – railing at Boris Mainwaring’s handling of the virus, the Farage Garage, the bewildering levels of increasingly bare-faced corruption. Our top-hatted masters are manufacturing so many ways to make us angry, writing a thousand words about it should be as straight-forward as a bowel movement at first light for anyone not a man over 40.

Truth is, there’s so much of it about I’ve forgotten how to give a fuck.

Continue reading Squeezing out a cannonball

The afterwank

When I was young, back when this was all fields, I vowed that I would never be one of those people who stopped caring about things.

Old people would tell us we really couldn’t change a damn thing, but we knew our generation was different. We walked down streets wearing wristbands that said ‘Make Poverty History’ and just knew we’d save the world. All we needed was a few people richer than us to give up their money first, then we’d maybe start chipping in too, once the student loans were paid off and we’d had a nice holiday and a couple of kids, and obviously they’ll need money for a house and to be honest these people should probably be helping themselves before they come to us for handouts but the point is we cared.

Old people just gave up, but we’d never do that. And I can honestly say I have the same politics as I did in 2005. I don’t squint warily at brown people and my investment portfolio stretches no further than the two cans of Guinness I left unswallowed in the fridge last night. I want more than anything to leave, but the last thing I want is to Leave.

And yet, with the tragic inevitability of the toast landing jam-side-down, the old people were right.

Continue reading The afterwank

Mooing in defiance

Trump got elected. It’s not hugely surprising. Poor people responded to their unhappy situation by voting in a man who plans to cut taxes for the rich. Uneducated people voted for a guy who will make it far, far harder for the average child to get decent schooling without parents who rob banks. It turns out people are stupid. Shocker.

A couple of years ago I probably would have been spitting feathers about it all. But there’s no rage for politics left in me. All that’s left now is to laugh.

This truly is the crowning glory of human achievement – the setting up of a system so confusing to the layman that they willingly truss their own hooves and leap onto the cart to the abattoir, mooing in defiance at the man with the bolt gun. If you can’t laugh at that you must be a Mrs Brown’s Boys fan.

Continue reading Mooing in defiance

The pride of Tom Daley

Recently I endured the painful experience of being forcibly pinned down by my best friend.

He isn’t usually given to violence, or sexual deviance with older women but, in his defence, he had discovered me throwing the contents of my handbag at the television. On reflection this was probably quite a disturbing sight for him. He had recorded several episodes of his favourite programmes on the Sky box and was in imminent danger of not having a screen to watch them on – again.

He didn’t seem particularly surprised to find me in such a rage. This was probably because he’d presumed that I had been watching the Chelsea match and was suffering from a serious bout of indignant rage following Diego Costa’s late winner against West Ham. I wouldn’t normally give a shit about West Ham’s result but I had placed a small wager on them winning the league this season (lunacy I know) and anyway, I fucking hate Diego Costa.

Continue reading The pride of Tom Daley

Shot, beheaded or barbecued

I have to admit I don’t generally keep up with the news. It’s not that it’s too depressing – the truth is, I’m too depressing, and the news just can’t keep up with me. It just constantly reminds me how much better everyone else in the world’s life is.

Unless, that is, you’re unlucky enough to be getting shot, beheaded or barbecued by ISIS. This is a terrorist outfit that simply must win PR firm of the year, or it’s all a big fix, since it’s got every media outlet in the west doing its recruiting for it. There now surely can’t be a single person in the west that isn’t aware that despite sounding like a trustworthy car hire firm, these are the last people whose car you want to get into.

What I have understood about ISIS is that they want to establish a caliphate, or Islamic state, where their particular version of what God, who may or may not be Santa Claus, may or may not have said to someone 1,500 years ago, will reign supreme. The obvious first step to achieving this goal is to wipe out the group of people whose beliefs most closely align to theirs, but who differ on certain technicalities, such as whether to throw overarm or underarm when stoning people to death. After that, they can take on the really big job, which is killing everybody else in the world. Okay, sounds perfectly reasonable – where do I get my membership card?

Politicians are desperately try to stem the evil tide. I heard David Cameron on TV calling it a ‘death cult’. Sorry, Dave – a ‘cult’ is a phenomenon or movement with strictly minority appeal – like the Conservative Party for example. Current estimates have ISIS membership at around 200,000 (though not all of them filled in their census forms on time), while the Conservative Party is reckoned to have around 150,000 members these days. That means that significantly more people would rather die in the desert than join the Conservative Party. What an endorsement. Has anyone seen George Osborne lately?

Well, who can blame them really? It is, of course, all about a search for meaning. And the meaning is: killing people is really fun. Nobody who’s played Call of Duty would argue with that assessment. Who wouldn’t want to have a go on an M79 rocket launcher, when the alternative is standing in a queue in the Jobcentre Plus with your P45 job launcher, to be asked by an even bigger failure than you exactly how many call centre positions you’ve applied for this week?

Well, I’m just keeping my head down, on, together, whatever – I’m basically staying as far away from those mad bastards as possible, and if I have to claim asylum in China eventually to escape the screaming hordes of global retribution, then so be it. Anything is better than Tory Britain.

A weird, dehydrated sort of grey

A man sneezes into a woman’s face and, instead of apologising, buries his head back in his book, ignoring her murderous stare. A bawling child cries for more chocolate at a decibel level that makes my kidneys plait a noose out of my intestines and prepare to step off a chair. And a selfish boy sits on the floor taking the space of five people with his splayed out legs and fucking book bag. Bet none of the books in that fucking book bag are about common decency. Bet there aren’t any shittwatting books in it at all.

Where am I? No, not an enchanted forest or a fairy tale land where dreams really do come true but on the 7.40am South West train to London Waterloo, where talking squirrels get slowly suffocated to death by the crowd and dreams go a weird, dehydrated sort of grey.

I hate this place more than any other place in the world and I’m throwing Jimmy Savile’s house and abattoirs into the mix for comparison here. Because not only do I basically have to crowbar my nose out of someone’s armpit twice a day, every day for the foreseeable future, but I’m having to pay escalating ticket prices to do it. Prices that mop up a quarter of my wages after tax. It’s not like we can just hop on another train line and chuckle at the idiots using the other system, their faces pressed against the train window in an effort to siphon the last bit of air that might exist between the molecules of the glass. No, our train system has been monopolised, and us as train commuters are on our knees, looking tearfully up at the shareholders while they unzip their fly and whisper ominously, “While you’re down there…”

Because, according to BBC News, that’s where 90% of the operating profits are actually going – straight into the pockets of overfed shareholders. You would have thought that after a series of hikes totalling over 30% in the last three years they’d have enough for even the priciest bottle of orphan’s tears or whatever it is they drink, but is enough ever really enough? Look around, this gaping void between rich and poor is growing wider and soon it’ll swallow all us oiks up, burping out a couple of our astonished hats for good measure.

Signal failures on a daily basis, overcrowding, general delays and poor carriage maintenance are one thing (or rather four things) but our continuing tolerance of it is quite another. Why are we putting up with this? Brazil didn’t. Hundreds of people took to the streets last year after a 9% rise in bus ticket prices, from 2.75 reais to 3 reais. That’s the equivalent of a rise from 70p to 80p in the UK. Thanks to the uproar created by the people, the government reversed the increase.

Yesterday, after a series of delays that left me late for work despite leaving the house half an hour earlier than normal, being crammed into yet another armpit and losing my iPod during the journey, I arrived at the office semi-combusted from an internal and wholly impotent sense of fury. I was incensed and expressed my disapproval in a very British manner by pursing my lips and inaudibly muttering “shitfuck” at regular intervals. I searched for protests and demonstrations about the shoddy, overpriced travel systems in London and couldn’t find a thing.

In fact, my online Google search for justice unearthed a snowstorm of shitty comments from people who have the luxury of not having to use the trains for work. Comments such as ‘Those who use the trains should pay for it not the general taxpayer who can not even afford to use it’. Oh, right, yes that’s fine because I don’t currently pay tax. As a rail user, I’m completely exempt from all forms of payment into the system. In fact, when I go into a shop I only need to pull out my monthly railcard for all the shop attendants to come running at me from every corner and start piling the finest silks and myrrh into my smug, over-laden shopping basket.

What planet do you live on? It’s the same god-forsaken rock we’re all currently clinging to, right? Because sometimes, I’m just not sure.

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.

The best way to dispose of a body

Everybody knows the best way to dispose of a body is to feed it to pigs. Or so I wrongly thought as I mused on the latest topic of fucking idiocy my office pod sisters embarked on.

For once they’d bounced onto a subject I could contribute to. Stupidly I‘d jumped in without thinking. You see they hadn’t thought about it at all. Their tiny bubble heads had never contemplated the horrors of life, or what exactly you would do if you one day flipped and smashed one of their empty heads through a glass door, severing an important artery.

I am not a violent person. I may exude the aura of violence, but you have to; it protects you if you’re prone to a less than sugary outlook on life. I frequently sit and watch crime drama or real life documentaries, on a constant search to work out what makes a person do that, or try to solve a mystery. It is pure coincidence that as a result I know many ways to kill a person. Everyone should know the basics.

Not if you stick your head in the ground and shout “Kim Kardashian’s exercise tips” apparently. Sigh. Oh you pretty things.

There are things every person should know. If you cut people up, don’t flush it. Acid won’t destroy it all. Burying things in a basement will cause a stench. If you meet a guy on Craigslist who sounds too perfect, he’s almost definitely a psychopath. Never wall up a cat unless you want to go mad and kill your family. Avoid hotels in isolated areas. For God’s sake, rub the lotion on your skin. Oh, and never take a knife to a gun fight.

You cannot help but be surrounded by murder, it’s a preoccupation. Could you be pushed to it? What would you do if attacked? Does that man shadow you as you walk down a dark street? Is that cabbie licensed? If you laugh at Man Utd’s entertaining decline one time too often, could it lead to spousal homicide? Be aware people, it could be you.

It astounds me that there are large portions of the community that really do not consider the wider world, those fringes where humans are pushed into moments of madness, right through to the more committed predatory beasts. The extremes teach us more about ourselves than all Piers Morgan’s Real Life Story bollocks. It is interesting, shocking, depraved, eerily logical and stupid.

Yet showing such interest or knowing about these things leads to sneers and fear. “You are such a Goth.” (I may wear black, but I am not a true Goth.) “You are a witch.” (Don’t believe in magic, sorry.) “You’re just weird.” (True, but for things you have no idea about.) “I bet you’ve killed people.” (Only in my mind, and right now you are being shovelled in the face.) The difference between me and them is that it may well take a lot more for me flip into actual violence as I know the many consequences and mistakes that will get you caught. If you know what murder actually looks like, well, you wouldn’t. It is a lot less picturesque than films would have you believe.

Oh yeah, and if I do flip, you’d better run. I always plan in advance.

This beautiful dance of retail mundanity

I fucking hate people.

That’s a lie. What I actually fucking hate is the response people give me when I ask them this deep, complicated, thought-provoking question: “Would you like a carrier bag?”

As an innocent shopper, you may feel bemused, confused and probably emotional at the fact this irks me so, which explains a lot. Because never in my life, before I started working in a shop, did I realise that this was such a complex fucking question. And after day after day after day of the same shitty, retarded responses from every type of shopper under the sun, I have had e-fucking-nough, to the point where steam literally pours from my ears and my areolae harden in rage before I’ve even asked the fucking question.

You walk around the shop, we exchange pleasantries, you ask a mundane question, I give you a mundane answer and we continue this beautiful dance of retail mundanity until BOOM, it’s time to ask the question. And you say:

“NO!”

In an offended, crumpled up, saggy faced angry kind of way. Why the fuck is my question so worthy of your fucking rage? Did I kick your child in the face? Did I tweak your nipples? Did I unknowingly think I’d asked you if you wanted a carrier bag when really I said “Do you finger small mammals?” No, none of the above. I asked you a simple question that I have to ask you and you’re so fucking offended your bumhole is tensed so tight the shit’s gone back up.

Or, it’s this:

“Hahaha erm yeah?”

In a ‘you’re a thick bitch of course I do are you blind?’ way.

Why the fuck would I assume you want a carrier bag? Especially as you’re only buying one finger-sized chocolate bar. Did you notice me ask you with a smirk on my face, like it was obvious you didn’t want a fucking bag? Let me turn this on you – why the fuck do you want a bag? You’ve not got anything to put in it!

Alternatively:

(embarrassed laugh) “Yes please…”

Why are you embarrassed? Have you realised your stinking carrier bag addiction is something to be ashamed of? Have you realised the environment is vomiting on your dirty, filthy carrier bag habit? Or have you never been asked this question before and you don’t know how to respond? Did I actually just ask you if you wanted a cheeky peek at my labia? Fuck me, get a grip!

Perhaps I’ll hear:

“No thanks, save the environment and all that.”

SAVE THE ENVIRONMENT AND ALL THAT. What the fuck is wrong with you? ‘And all that’? There are fucking massive whales being washed up on shores, looking all sad and whaley and that, with their stomachs full to fuck with carrier bags. It’s not a fucking joke! The environment isn’t an ‘all that’ you cunt. If you’re going to give a shit, do it with conviction! Don’t be so fucking blasé about the world your children will be living in!

Or there’s this:

“No, erm, yes, erm…”

An overly long period of time considering this difficult question. I asked you if you wanted a bag, not if you wanted a sex change/had an STD/if you would rather lose an arm or a leg. Man up.

And what about when we don’t have any bags to give you? Now that’s a fucking controversy. You have never seen such outrage and despair as in a person who does not have a fucking carrier bag to put their one chocolate bar in. The worst are the old bastards with their fucking souped-up trolleys who don’t even need a bag, they just like to ‘keep everything separate’. Fuck me, if you can’t tell the difference between your shopping items you should get to the opticians before you choke on an ornamental pebble thinking it’s a Werthers.

Have you ever been in Asda when they’ve ran out of bags? My god the abuse they get is horrific. You can see them with their thousand mile stare, gazing past the sani pad isle, shaking in their middle aged sag, waiting for the next barrage of abuse. Honestly, you’ve never seen such emotion from people over something so pathetic. I have been told ‘it’s just not good enough’, I have been told ‘your shop will close you know, you can’t run without bags for people, it’s ridiculous’. That’s right, RIDICULOUS.

So I suppose, in a way, I do fucking hate people. At least people who feel it’s right to throw tantrums over their right to the noble carrier bag.

So next time you’re shopping and you’re about to approach the checkout or the desk or whatever, consider your bag situation. Is it too much to ask that you’re polite? Could you possibly even consider doing something really controversial like, bringing your own bag?

Get yourself together and fucking get your priorities right. Do it for the checkout assistant, do it for the whales, do it for the planet. For fuck’s sake, do it for yourselves.