Shallowe'en

Call me a miserable old cunt, but I really hate Hallowe'en. Seeing all the twats dressed up wandering around pubs in devil horns and black capes thinking they look so cool and 'fun-loving'... bollocks, you look like wankers. Especially those men who use it as an excuse to dress as a schoolgirl. Look, I have no problem with cross-dressing or anything, but just admit who the fuck you are for the rest of the year too. Don't use this one solitary night as an excuse to let your repressed urges out. It's just sad.

And all that "trick or treat" bullshit... what does it actually teach our kids? That it's okay to go around essentially threatening old folks. "Give us some sweets or we'll do something bad to you" - that's what it translates as. And to do it all whilst hidden behind masks? It's Dick Turpin and his ilk all over again - "Stand and deliver, your money or your life"! Fucking bastards...

Cheers m'dears!

Musical Interludes...

Can someone please tell me what the point is of all those television dramas now shoe-horning bands or musicians into their scripts for apparently little or no reason? Because I for one find it at best distracting, other times frankly tedious and nauseating. Okay, I know that comedy shows have a history of this, The Young Ones being a classic example, but that was the kind of bizarre and surreal programme where Dexy's Midnight Runners playing in the bathroom could actually be considered the norm. But The Killers playing the local bar in The O.C.?

Look, before you start, I absolutely do not watch that twattery. I was channel-hopping, okay? The point is, I know that the programme is supposed to be about a load of jumped up little rich shits who could probably hold a 'small party' with music provided by an entire Glastonbury lineup, but having The Killers play a couple of songs whilst the cast look at them dreamily and say nothing to each other just comes across as an exercise in time-wasting. You can't even blame it on the scriptwriters running out of imagination since the small bit of dialogue I did see demonstrated they didn't have any in the first place.

Unfortunately The O.C. and The Killers are not alone in this. The West Wing has once or twice managed to save themselves five minutes or so of actual drama by drafting in a past music legend, although I admit that since the U.S. Prez probably has to attend functions where these things happen the writers do have a degree of legitimacy. But he also takes a leak occasionally and possibly even takes it up the wrong 'un from Condie and her strap-on from time to time, but I don't need to see either of those either. Well, maybe the second one. Just for a laugh.

Add to the list Entourage, who did an entire storyline where one of the guys was desperate for tickets to see U2 and, sure enough, gets hold of them in the last reel. But why did I then have to sit through about 8 minutes (of a programme that only lasts about 25 without ad breaks anyway) of Bono? It's not like I don't appreciate the music but I already have it on CD. And if I wanted to see them live I would buy a fucking ticket myself and soak up the atmosphere. To cap it all Bono does a birthday shout out at the end to the character in question - I wonder how much he got paid for all that, the hoor!

The worst example I ever saw, though, was on that short lived science fiction version of Dawson's Creek (No, I never used to watch that either. Why the fuck are you raising your eyebrows at me?), the Dido-theme-songed Roswell (Okay, I admit to that one. But not religiously or anything!). Future scriptwriters, read on and learn how NOT to wriggle a musical performance into your storyline...

Imagine, if you will... something has gone terribly wrong and our heroes must find some random chick who may have the answers they are looking for. Off they head to some University a couple of hours out of town somewhere on a single-minded mission to locate her. She's not in her dorm? Bugger! Oh well, lets run around the campus frantically, with no real clue to where she may be. But wait, what's that tucked away over there in some random badly-lit corner? Why, it's a stage, with a couple of dozen studenty-folk milling about it looking mildly impressed. And who is that on the stage? Cue one of the heroes piping up... "It's Nelly Furtado!".

I shit you not.

Mission forgotten, for the duration of one song anyway, whilst they stand there dreamily watching old Nel', who (bless her!) is trying her best not to look too stupidly out of place. Of course, right at the end of the song one of the heroes turns and sees in the crowd... the girl they were looking for! Huzzah!

So there you have it. Nelly Furtado is secretly an undercover Alien using her music to assist her brethren here on earth. They don't write 'em like they used to!

Cheers m'dears!

Aholic-gate!

In today's society of addiction and greed we regularly hear about shopaholics, chocaholics, workaholics, sexaholics and any other type of "-aholic" you care to invent. But this randomly adding "-aholic" onto the end of a word has a tiny little flaw. IT MAKES NO FUCKING SENSE!

Okay, this all derives from the term 'alcoholic', as in someone who is addicted to alcohol. So it's alcohol - ic. So why the hell is someone who is addicted to shopping called a shopaholic when the should be called a shoppingic? I mean, an alcoholic isn't someone addicted to alc's, are they? Why create the addiction suffix by culling a large portion of a word that itself has fuck all to do with the addiction? And even if you do, why is it "-aholic" and not "-oholic"? Alcoholism is an addiction to alcohol, not alcahol. They're alcoholics, not alcaholics.

I cannot quite explain why, but this blatant disregard for the way in which words are built annoys the living crap out of me. If I was an alcoholic I would turn around to all those other cunts and give them a piece of my drunken mind... "Oi! You there, fatso! Yes, you with the brown sticky stuff oozing down your fingers. You are not a chocoholic. Leave my addiction-title alone and get your own. From now on you are a chocolatic. Don't argue, bollock-face! Just admit it - it makes much more sense. I am reclaiming the 'hol' to reunite it with it's 'alco', and don't you dare try to stop me!"

And while I'm on the subject, why is every political incident now labelled something-gate? All this butchery of words must be part of a conspiracy by fuckwits to overthrow the English language and replace it with gobbledygook! Let's call it "fuck-wit-gate", that'll be nice and snappy...

... hey! Could the people who insist on putting 'gate' at the end of every singly political story be refferred to as "gateaholics"? Or should we keep it snappy and just continue to use "cunts"?

Cheers m'dears!

Lust for riders...

Okay, I hold my hands up and admit that I am wilfully stealing from a fellow blogger here... but I just found this too fucking funny not to share. A few days back Flying Rodent posted a rider list for Iggy Pop and the Stooges... anyone out there not knowing what a rider is, let me explain -

Riders usually have two parts: the tech rider is all the PA gear the band need (and in some cases drums) and is fairly standard, unless you're only playing Damien Rice covers on a battered Spanish guitar in the Fuckwit and Firkin on a Sunday afternoon. The other half of the rider is all the stuff you can ask for to keep yourself sustained and entertained backstage. This usually starts from 'a couple of bottles of water and maybe some tea-making equipment' if you're a random chancer who has only managed to score a gig in a proper venue by dint of someone else dropping out, but can eventually rise through the inevitable alcohol requests to the likes of 11-course banquets, hookers, coke (not the fizzy), livestock and pretty much anything else a warped mind-blown megalomaniac rock star might want...

...which is kind of the position that Mr Pop and his band occupy.The thing that makes their rider list, however, is not simply the demands (of which, in truth, only one or two might appear over the top) but the way in which it is written. If I hadn't been assured by the faeries at the bottom of my garden that the Stooges and all their road crew were clean-living spiritual souls I might have suspected the influence of some illegal substance...

Below I give you a selection of the very few moments from this 18 page stream-of-consciousness epic that can actually be reproduced in short sentence format, but many of the best bits are longer paragraphs that take you off on random tangents here, there and everywhere. So if you have the time I truly recommend that you read the whole damn thing!

"...AMPLIFIERS that have been tested recently. And when I say "recently", I don't mean "Sometime in the three weeks preceding the occasion when it fell 5 meters off the top shelf in the warehouse"..."

"...TOM-TOM WITH MOUNTING. And if you can't bring the mounting to us, we'll have to send a bloke called Mohammed to the mounting..."

"...By the way our guitar roadie, Chris, assures me that the panda is not of the genus "Bear", but is actually a part of the "Pig" family. Could this possibly be true?..."

"...GUITAR (Clear and bright like the sound of jackboots on wet cobblestones)..."

"...NO TOY ROBOTS, TELEVISION EVANGELISTS, or TELEVISION CAMERAMEN..."

"...We had a lighting designer once, but he went mad so we shot him..."


I tell thee, it's fucking genius... and speaking of fucking geniuses (geni-i? geniuse?) and of stream of consciousness, it's nice to see Brewski making one of his sporadic posts...

Cheers m'dears!

Who is B.U.M. Tosser 2006?

The results of the music quiz are finally in! And, in reverse order, they are as follows...

In joint 3rd place we have Flying Rodent and Monstee, on a very respectable 6 points each.

Just pipping them with 7 points, in 2nd place is Gabs (send me a link and I'll add it in...)

And the winner, on a magnificent 11 points, is FMC (with a little bit of help from the paramour and her sister!). A banner for you to display proudly will be sent to you in due time, so you can let everyone know that you are officially B.U.M. Tosser 2006!

Well done to all, and thanks to everyone who took part - a full list of scores and all the answers (including those that went unsolved) can be found on the original post.


Right, now that's over with... check this out! It makes me laugh! You can't Hassle the Hoff!

And a brief message to Clairwil, who has had a spot of bother recently with some arseholes being cuntish on her site... did wonders for the hit-count, apparently... but remember this, Clairwil - Never argue with an idiot. They will only drag you down to their level and then beat you on experience...!

Cheers m'dears!

Anon - the faceless facist.

[note - last chance to enter the music quiz! Still 12 points up for grabs, winners announced tomorrow!]

I recently had an anonymous visitor who left a comment on a previous entry, regarding the anniversary of race riots in Singapore and the perhaps heavy-handed methods of the Government there to ensure cultural harmony. He/she makes his point, and it is his/hers to make... even if they were too cowardly to identify themselves. But it was a point that I feel deserves a response, and if I simply responded in the comments of the same post the whole argument would be immediately consigned to my archives - whereas, naturally, I would prefer to get input from other readers.

His comment read as follows:

"This is why multi-cultural nations don't exist over the long term - lack of trust. This is why large scale immigration of people who don't like or appreciate the home culture is a bad idea. This is why the left's latest wheeze is to bring in large numbers of people utterly opposed to the west. Bring on the rioting and death, comrades, bring it fucking on."

Okay, aside from the fact that Singapore has been multi-cultural for a long time (longer than it's existence as an independent country) I would like to know what Anon considers to be it's 'home culture'? There are a large number of Chinese, Malays, and Indians here whose families have been here for a long time, as well as some Europeans, Eurasians, Indonesians... the list can go on and on. But even though there are distinct differences between the cultures here there are also differences between the Chinese-Singaporean way of life and the mainland-Chinese... likewise with the other cultures.

Because these races have been here for a long time they have become Singaporean, not simply whichever ethnic backround. Home culture in Singapore is a mix of the three main cultures, with a dash of westernism thrown in, and whilst there are some who naturally gravitate toward their own heritage that is still a part of the Singaporean home culture - that they like and appreciate! If there are other parts they don't like so much...? Well, does every Englisman like Morris Dancing? Every Scotsman do the Highland Fling? It doesn't mean they don't like any of their home culture, they're just selective about which bits they do like!

People from different backgrounds can and do mix with ease. A case in point for me was a recent night out for a meal with my closest friends - I was the only white guy, there were 2 Singaporean-Chinese, one Malaysian-Chinese, one Indian, one Sri-Lankan, one Malay, and one... well, I don't know where he is from, but then it didn't matter anyway. Much later we went clubbing and were joined by a Singaporean-Indian girl and eventually I hooked up with another white guy that I know with his Malay girlfriend who were with his sister and her Chinese boyfriend. My argument in the original post was not that the cultures cannot mix but that by forcing the issue the Government runs the risk of actually creating more resentment as opposed to promoting peaceful co-existence.

But then again, by the tone of the rest of the comment it is clear that Anon was just looking for any excuse to get on his xenophobic high-horse. The left's latest wheeze? If you're going to suggest that kind of thing let's see some evidence to back it up. Most immigrants I have met in the UK are by no means opposed to the west. Rather, they are grateful for the chance to get their lives back on track after going through shit that most of us in the west will never have to face. As for the rioting and death? It is attitudes like yours that bring that kind of shit on, that spur on the "us v them" mentality. You'd actually probably love a bit of violence to 'prove' your point, but I'll tell you this - you can leave me the fuck out of it.

Cheers m'dears!

Six Degrees of Alienation

As Mick Jagger once sang, "Tah-ah-ah-ime is on my side, yes it i-is!" - and, no... that is not an answer to the still-ongoing quiz. No, today I have answered all my e-mails, paid my bills, read all the blogs I link to (and I had a fair bit of catching up, I have to say!) and... well, run out of shit to do. So I decided to try out an idea I had a while back, a numbered blog-crawl. The idea is, you choose any of the links you have on your blog, work out what number link that is, and visit it. You read it (if you haven't already) and then count down the exact same number on that blogs links. And so on, and so forth... the idea hopefully being that you might find some fun new places to visit. After all, I like all the blogs I list, and most of them like me... it should stand to reason that I will like a lot of what they like, etc... shouldn't it?

The one thing I decided was that I wasn't going to count banner links or any self referencing ones (ie, older posts)... just your average 'blogs I like to visit' shit. So, let's start at the very begining, as Julie Andrews once warbled... it's a fucking good place to start. Okay, that wouldn't quite have been her words but they work well for my Numero Uno link...

1) Hotrocks, home of the sporadic Mr Brewski... his first link is to the Curmudgeon, Philip Chalinor, who I also already link to... Mr C then links first to Robert Aickman - an appreciation. All very nice, but it's a dead end with no further links. Great start, McShae! Let's try from link number 2 instead...

2) Dr Maroon's Cape to Rio... link 2 to Anti-Barney, another mutual chum... link 2 to... Google News? WTF? Back to square one, and link number 3...

3) ...which is, again, Anti Barney... his link number 3 is to Kim Ayres (how incestuous is this community!?)... link 3 to The Quiet Storm and a slightly scary yet fascinating post about coping with migraines by tying zip-locked bags of ice to your head. This is more like it! Now I'm getting out and about! Link 3 from here is... "This Page Cannot Be Found". Bollocks.

4) Straight back into the arms of Kim, whose link number 4 takes us this time to Callum and Kieran and a mildly diverting post about a missing crayon that, whilst potentially in the hands of a 2-year old, retains all the panic-power of Iran going nuclear. Nice enough... 4th link from here is I Thought I Was Driving, whose post 'Failure to Blog' looked like it was written by someone totally exhausted, and had the same power on me... There was absolutely nothing wrong with it, it just didn't grab me. But then it's all horses for courses, right?

5) On to Foot Eater's gaff, The Fishwhacker Swindle?, and his number 5, another familiar link... Bogol, by the incomprehensible Arlington Hynes. His number 5? another old sidebar-pal, Dr Evil... and a perhaps unsurprising link to Dangerous Laboratories. Unfortunately from here the trail once more goes cold.

6) El Barbudo is my link number 6, and from there... well, it was always a possibility I suppose. The mutual arse-lick fest reaches a peak when I discover that his link number 6 takes me right back here to Random Drivel. I'm begining to wonder if any of us actually know anyone else outside our own corner of the blog-iverse...

7) Horses Ass Pub, landlady one Ms Andraste (who's real name shall not be revealed... snigger!). She's doing a nice line in educating us heathens in the world of fine art at the moment, but I've already been here today and seen the picture, so time to move on to her link number 7 - Dead Pan Ann. A post about buying CD's , something close to my heart! Never heard of the first band she mentions (must be losing my touch) but I will take her recommendation on the Dylan album. I like him anyway. We're going to have to disagree about The Killers though. I'm a big fan...

But I digress... from there I get to Ramblings of a Redneck Diva, who talks about a school shooting - this is news to me, the first I have heard about it. Have these things become so commonplace in the States now that no-one bothers to report them anywhere else? It does strike me as unusual when on most days, even here in Asia, I can read in the Daily Propoganda whet Dubya had for breakfast. Saying that, her post doesn't dwell on that one incident and is instead a by turns chilling and heart-wrenching look into parents nightmare scenarios. Which made my visit to her link number 7 all the more of a surprise.

Initially I was struck by the title, Scotland of the Soul, wondering just how we Jocks had managed to become so prolific at this end of blog-land. But as soon as the blog opened my eyes were instantly drawn to one thing... the "I Stand With Israel" banner in the top right corner. Screw not counting banners. Screw only clicking the 7th link. I had to check... and I got here. My views on that are a whole other post just waiting to explode... I read the comments on the Jack Lewis site with interest, especially where it notes that Israel's enemies are killing innocent Israelis. Yes, they are. But to stand with Israel when it commits the exact same crime, killing the innocents on the other side of the fence. That's fucking blind, man. Fucking warped.

When you get used to blogging to all your online mates it's often easy to forget that you're only 6 degrees of seperation from shit like this.

Somone make me a fucking banner. I want it to say "I Stand With The Innocent Victims".

...as for the blogging by numbers thing? I lost the taste for it after that...

Cheers m'dears!

Boom! Shake, shake, shake the room / train / lift / etc...

TSsss TSsss TSsss TSsss...

Annoying, isn't it...?

TSsss TSsss TSsss TSsss...

The tinny drumbeat that emanates from the headphones of that inconsiderate bastard next to you on the bus / train / merry-go-round...

TSsss TSsss TSsss TSsss...

Still, at least it drastically reduced the number of arseholes who would parade down the street with a boom-box on their shoulders, blasting out their favoured musical genre to the whole world whether we liked it or not. And for that I choose to be thankful.

Oh, I know how off-putting it can be whilst trying to do your suduko / crossword / join-the-dots, and how even more annoying it can be when you half-recognise the song being played and just can't quite figure it out. Personally, however, I would rather that than having your whole world drowned out by music rendered unlistenable by having been played so loud on a crappy battery-powered player that the speakers have blown and the whole sound is distorted.

But wait... now we have a new menace... the dreaded MP3 'phone! Of course, at first this was no different than your average MP3 or personal CD player in that it came equipped with headphones and all you got was the same tinny beat. But then people realised that if the earpiece on your 'phone is loud enough to for you to speak on 'loudspeaker', then...

No, you motherfuckers! No, No, No, No, NO! Sitting opposite me on the tube, ambling behind me down the street, even walking into my school office (Try that one more time, boy, and you'll be scrubbing the bastard toilets in detention!)... If I wanted to hear the music you are listening to I would have bought the bloody CD or downloaded it onto my computer, where I can listen to it properly. And when I say 'properly' I mean 'being able to actually hear and understand the fucking thing'! Because that crappy little speaker in your 'phone? it is just as distorted and useless for music as the aforementioned overpowered boom-box.

The thing comes with fucking headphones, for Christ's sake! Why make me hear your (often lousy) choice of music when I would be content with just...

TSsss TSsss TSsss TSsss...

Cheers m'dears!

No still means no!

I just received a new response to my post on Male Rape, which (although I did not agree with everything) I found to hold interesting perspectives. I am reproducing it, and my response, below. As always, your feedback is warmly welcomed...


Posted by Clarice on Wednesday, October 04, 2006 10:29:44 PM

"Agree with all of this, but I think it's strange and rather telling that when this stuff happens to women, it is so prevalent as to be almost normative, and no-one hardly turns a hair. When it happens to one single man, suddenly it makes men think. Men don't seem to like it much when even one woman starts behaving as men have done with impunity since the year dot. I am reminded too of Myra Hindley in this respect.
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The fact that the gender of those involved is presented here as the "twist" in the tale, that the readers' expectations are so predictable as to be exploited to this effect makes me feel rather sad. Perhaps I don't get it. What is the "surprise" of the genders in this case supposed to tell us?
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Why should it be different (any more or less upsetting) depending on the gender of those involved?
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Well, I'll say one thing. He was less likely to get a disease, and completely unlikely to have to risk his life or reproductive fitness carrying or aborting a child as a result of the encounter. Also, because of the stereotypes in our culture, he didn't have to feel secretly that he was a slag - he may have felt like people would say he was asking for it, but a man who asks for sex does not carry the same stigma as a woman who does so. So there are similarities, but also differences I feel in the male-female experience.
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If people can realise that sexual stereotypes damage men as well as women, maybe things could change. It's just a depressing shame that the knowledge that they damage women is not a good enough motivator by itself. That by itself kind of tells me that they're here to stay."


Posted by Clarice on Wednesday, October 04, 2006 10:39:39 PM

"On reflection, I think the "twist" in this tale is supposed to tell us that the male concerned felt emasculated as well as everything else. He experienced something that as well as being upsetting and unpleasant, traditionally only happens to females. The extent to which this adds another layer of hurt to the experience kind of depends on his view of females, doesn't it?
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This state of affairs is a double-edged sword. If I am raped, at least that's par for the course of being female, looking at the stats. On the other hand, if I am made to have sex with someone I do not like or respect, or who does not appear to display very much humanity, you could say that's par for the course of being male, looking at the boom in the sex industry these days. These are muddy waters."


Reply by me on Thursday, October 05, 2006 9:32:21 AM

"Wow, Clarice... I never for one second intended it to be read that it is normal for a woman to be raped. It is a beastly, disgusting crime, and I for one turn more than one hair when I hear about it. Of course, you don't hear about it because it does happen so much, in the same way you don't hear about a car crash, but you do if it's a plane...
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As far as Myra Hindley goes... she is just another person in a list of killers, and to me her being a woman makes little difference... she's there alongside Fred West, Dr Shipman... and of course her own partner in crime, Brady.
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I acknowledge I somewhat exploit readers expectations with the 'twist', but only because I wanted people to view this as something wrong. If I started with "This is a tale of a man raped by a woman" there are many who would have refused to take it seriously. By presenting the seriousness (because everyone views the rape of a woman as serious) before the perhaps unusual feature it was intended to raise thought - which it succeeded in doing.
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You say why should it be different depending on gender? That is entirely the point of my post...
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I thoroughly disagree that he was less likely to get a disease - that comment suggests that only men can carry and transmit STD's - and although I agree that he was never going to get pregnant or have to have an abortion what if she had got pregnant? Possibly deliberately? And kept the child?
.
Maybe you're right that he didn't need to feel like a slag, but just because he didn't NEED to doesn't mean he didn't... and the affects of rape are usually deemed to be more traumatic on a personal emotional level, rather than a physical one - who knows exactly how he felt? Remember, this guy had always been a bit of a nerd and had been picked on... who is to say that he didn't fear what others might say or do to him?
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It is depressing that knowledge of the way women are treated is not a motivator in itself, but don't kid yourself into thinking that the story in my post will suddenly change the perception. Saying "it happens to men too" only raises more questions, it doesn't provide any solutions. Mankind (and womankind) has a history of people hurting and abusing others - that isn't going to change any time soon.
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As for your second comment, I thoroughly disagree. I say that because I know the guy well. It's difficult to explain... I don't think he ever felt 'manly' enough to ever then be 'emasculated'. And as all his closest friends, both at school and since, have usually been female I don't think he ever viewed them in a macho bullshit way. But maybe it was that breach of trust that hurt the most?
.
These are indeed muddy waters..."


Thanks, Clarice, for taking the time... and Cheers m'dears!