The joys of Myface

Living in Telford, I'm well aware of the number of braindead, vacant, soulless chavtastic idiots that there are in this country. Everytime I watch the Jeremy Kyle show, I find myself sighing and wondering what our fine country is coming to, at a time when unprotected sex is cool, intelligence isn't, and having a baby is the new fashion accessory, no matter how old you are.

A common ground for these pillocks are social networking sites, such as Myspace or the more fashionable Facebook. I'm about to show you some pictures (these are not my Facebook friends btw, I've nicked these pics from a forum), and whilst you look at these pictures, just take a moment to think about our country. Take a moment to wonder what happened to spelling. To grammar. To our fine and beautiful language. To intelligence. Take a moment to consider life, in 2009, in Great Britain.

That's just a brief selection, there's literally hundreds more. Ladies and Gentleman, boys and girls - Great Britain in 2009. As I said to my friend the other day - at the first available moment, I am out of here, and you won't see me for dust.

Seriously?!

I've just seen this picture on a football forum. Now, I honestly don't know whether it's genuine or not, so if it's one big hoax a) I apologise and b) I've been right royally merked.

In case you didn't know, in a few days time there's a by-election in Norwich. How do you think New Labour would try and attract your vote, if you lived in this area? What important issue do you think their literature would focus on? Had a guess? Good.

And if you said 'fox-hunting', you are fibbing. What a spectacular shambles they are at the moment. I presumed that their pasting in Crewe would have woken them up a bit, but clearly not. This is how desperate New Labour have got, folks, and it's a shameful state of affairs. To most people in Norwich, that probably just looks like a bizarre threat to murder a cute fox if they don't win the seat. Pathetic.

http://conservativehome.blogs.com/centreright/2009/07/labour-wants-the-people-of-norwich-north-to-vote-for-the-fox.html More on this story here, so it might not be fake. I only hope for them that it is.

Forgive me Father...

This post is half going to be an honest, trite confession, and half a shameless advertisement. That's how I roll, bitches.

One night, whilst chatting to Merciless Public, we had a conversation that went a bit like this:

MP - "You remember that culture thing that Voley was talking about setting up? He seems to have forgotten about it, doesn't he?"

EW - "Mmmhmm"

MP - "Well, why don't we...

EW - "No."

MP - "Seriously, why not? Fuck the whole culture thing, just do films. Like, an online film review thing - we can advertise on Facebook, get people signed up, get it going, maybe then get Vole and his intelligencia to join up, it would be great! We both love films, and talking about them, let's do it! We both share a love for pipedreams, after all."

I couldn't resist that, and an hour later we were the joint-owners of a film reviewing blog, named after a quirky little scene in a film we both love. It wasnt the most professional thing you've ever seen, but we didn't care. It was ours, and we were confident we could get it up and running, get a good debate going, our own little sanctuary away from the humdrum of our normal blogs.

Twenty-four hours later we were still planning the best course of action when my "Tweetdeck" buzzed at me - '1 All Friends'. It was Cynical Ben, and he was advertising something called "The Culture Cheese and Pineapple". My blood ran cold as I clicked on the link. Oh...My....no, surely not. Oh My God, it was. Vole and Ben had not forgotten "the culture thing", they had in fact been secretly been working on it. A bit later, Ben announced just as much on his blog. Their unveiling night, if you will.

Ever been kicked in the balls, or punched in the stomach? The Culture Cheese had come along, in all of it's good-looking, professional, cultured and stylish glory, and had pretty much squashed our effort before it had even got off the ground.

I won't lie to you, dear reader, we were both deflated. It's hard enough for Merciless Public as it is, living in West Bromwich. I closed my door. Closed my curtains. Put some Dido on. Sniffed some marker pens. Watched some Japanese pornography. Depression had set in. My friend Tim emailed me, enthusing about the site and ready to go. "It's off, Timmeh. Sorry." I tearfully wrote back. Even the legendary BOD fell into a depression after hearing the news, and could only reflect his sorrow to the outside world by updating his Facebook status every five fucking minutes.

Weeks passed. "Are you going to join Culture Cheese dude?" Merciless asked me, many times. "Fuck them" I thought. "Fuck them right off". But time is the ultimate healer, and I began to loosen my stance. I opened my bedroom door. I smiled and embraced the sun. I put on The Beach Boys. I kept on watching Japanese pornography. And then we found a new pipedream.

Merciless Public and I have set up a Fantasy Football league. It's hosted on premierleague.com, and it's free entry. We still have a few places left for our private league, so if you are interested in joining up, give either of us a bell (we're easily contactable). At the moment we have 6 teams, and Vole + Cynical Ben have said that they are both interested in signing up when they get a free moment.

That's very kind of them, and after hours of discussion with Merciless, we realised we had been a bit silly, rejecting The Culture Cheese. Put simply, it's a fantastic idea, the site looks fantastic, and we have both signed up. If you have an interest in things, which I'm sure you do, and you are prepared to write and share your opinion about them, go and sign up. I think Vole will agree - the more the merrier, and hopefully we'll get many different opinions on things. It should be interesting, and I for one am excited for it's August launch.

I already have my first suggestion lined up for The Culture Cheese. It's a challenging, thought provoking, intense and magnificent film, but I suppose we'll just have to wait and see what everyone else makes of "Japanese horny schoolgirls Volume 3 XXXXX Rated!"

Bye Bye Carlos Tevez

Just let it be known that I loved you.

Statticus-Pornicus

On Sunday morning I settled down with some toast and switched onto BBC 2 and the programme "Something for the Weekend". I'm a fan - some of the banter is a bit forced, and some of the features are a bit naff, but in my mind it's a perfect show for a lazy Sunday morning.

At one point there was a brief conversation about Katie Price, considering that the mong-fest between her and Piers Moron had been on TV the night before. The presenter, a certain Mr Tim Lovejoy, criticised it, and wondered whether he should go on prime-time TV and talk about his ex-wife. At which point I smiled and thought "Oh God, here we go".

I wasn't wrong. Looking at my stat-porn last night, I had about 13 different people finding this blog having googled about Tim Lovejoy's private life. "Tim Lovejoy girlfriend", "Tim Lovejoy ex-wife", "Jade Lovejoy", "Tim and Jade Lovejoy" and so on.

If you're reading this blog having googled about Tim Lovejoy, and his private life - first of all, you won't find anything here. The title of my blog was just something I shamefully nicked from one of my friends. Sorry about that. But, seriously, what are you doing? Why are you so interested in a strangers life? And why aren't you looking on wiki? If you have found this blog this way, I'd love you to leave me a comment and explain yourself - I'm genuinely interested.

And if it keeps on happening, I'm re-naming/re-branding myself to "The Rise and Rise of Bob Mills" instead.

Just one final stat-porn note, someone found my blog today having googled "gary pratt ponting fucking cheat". I couldn't agree more!

And so to Turnberry!

I know what you're thinking. No, really, I do. Right now, you are thinking this:

"Wowzers, how hot did Rachel Riley look on Countdown today?!"

You can't fool me, I'm afraid. And you are right, she is gorgeous. But I'm actually thinking about The Open which is starting on Thursday, from the magnificent and challenging Turnberry. Regular readers will know just how awesome my sporting predictions are, so no doubt you are all waiting with baited breath to see who I'm tipping. Well, wait no longer!

I'm going to tip a few people, because I'm cheeky like that. Ian Poulter must surely win his first Major soon, and 28/1 is a nice price for him. Lee Westwood is in a decent run of form, and William Hill has him 3rd favourite at 25/1. And I must back young Rory McIlroy, because I love the wee bastard so much, although he's also 25/1, pretty poor odds to be honest. That price seems ridiculously short for an inexperienced young lad, bearing in mind that the Tiger is in the field also.

Finally, if you want an outsider, the South African Richard Sterne is 250/1, which is a crazy price considering what a solid player he is and how well he played at the weekend. Might have a sneaky quid on that one myself. May the best man win, providing it's not Adam Scott!

A boring long holiday post #3

Thought I'd forgotten about this, hadn't you? Nope, just other stuff got in the way.

So, New York state itself. It's easy to think of the Big Apple when you think of New York, but the state itself is an interesting one, with lots of beautiful countryside and winding roads parallel to the Hudson River, which is strangely beautiful when you look at it with the NYC skyline in the background. After walking around in the city for 2 days, Ivan and I were ready to get in the car and go exploring for a day.

Armed with an excellent guide that highlighted cool stuff to explore, we navigated down some fast, tricky, winding roads, which handily had viewing points located every few miles or so.

That's one of the viewing points we stopped at - see the helicopters? About 5 massive black choppers flew past us and I tried my best to capture them. God knows where they were going. We stopped off at a few mildly interesting places, but the highlight was West Point, and their fascinating museum which was free entry. I wasn't allowed to take my bottle of Fanta in, but I could live with that. I hid it behind a bin, in case you were wondering.

For some weird reason, I didn't take any photos at West Point, I really can't think why not. Anyway, here's some photos that I've nicked from the internet.

That's quite enough of other people's pictures. And yes, that brown bin there is indeed "the bin". The museum, considering it was free, was flipping brilliant, and I recommend it to all, although I fancy blokes might enjoy it a bit more than the ladies.

As we drove back towards our hotel at the end of the day, we passed through this quaint little village: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleepy_Hollow,_New_York I regret to inform we saw no headless horsemen, but you can see why it's called "Sleepy" and it was a bit creepy. We didn't linger for long there!

I feel like I should be telling you more about New York, but if I did these entries would go on forever. So, I'll just wrap up for now by talking about our hotel, which was in New Jersey. We deliberately selected the hotel, as not only was it a billion times cheaper than hotels in the city, but it also had a fantastic little tourist bus service which you hopped on outside the hotel, and then it took you into the city for a few dollars, and then the other way round at the end of the day. That was fantastic, and the hotel was fine, however, New Jersey.....

In his excellent series about America, Stephen Fry described parts of NJ as "hell on earth", as well as their casinos as "vulgar, tasteless and desperately sad". I can't talk about any casino, but the area of New Jersey we were in scared me. Actually, scrap that, it fucking terrified me. The only time we strayed out of the hotel was when we walked about a mile down to the McDonalds to pick up some dinner, and both times we walked quickly there, quickly got our food, and quickly walked back, our heads down, not saying anything to each other.

I swear I'm not joking when I tell you that I watched each car intently, because it was the kind of place where a drive-by shooting would have been met with a shrug and casual acceptance. The delicious irony being that 10 minutes away (by bus) from this poverty stricken, wasteland of an area, was downtown NYC, with Wall Street, Tiffany's, Trump Tower etc. It was something I came to notice most about the New York area - we would drive past areas of abject deprivation, and then literally 2 minutes later you're driving along and you see the Statue of Liberty and the glamour of the Big Apple. It's a queer old place, in that respect.

Thankfully, we weren't shot/stabbed to death in New Jersey, and on our final night there we opened our hotel room door and marvelled in the best thunderstorm you could imagine. Enjoy a good bit of lightning? Try looking out at a night's sky where there's about 15 different lightning bolts crashing around, amongst the most impressive downpour of rain I've ever seen in my life. New York doesn't do things by half, in any respect.

Time to leave this place. Next time, Connecticut!