In Which I Set the Scene for Tomorrow

For those of you who don't yet think I'm a sad mentalist, let me point you to what happened to me the other day. I was around D's, and I was beating him at Pro Evo 8 again, despite me being Deaf, Dumb and Blind XI and him being the Every Superhero Who Has Been In The Justice League Ever, which was doubly unfair as instead of the regulation 11 players, he had 84 (plus another five for substitutions, natch). Anyway, I still managed to fight the good fight until D suggested that "We never ever play that fucking shit game again." I suggested that we watch a film, but he said "I don't have the mental capacity to pay attention to something over an hour." I suggested that he pick an episode of a series for us to watch. "I don't have the mental capacity to pick a series." So I suggested we watch an old Crystal Maze episode. For those of you who don't know what the Crystal Maze is, up yours, because it involves a longwinded explanation, which follows here. In fact, I'm going to have to furnish you with the rest of this article tomorrow because thinking about it, the concept is somewhat complex. Below is a simplified and shortened explanation.

The Crystal Maze is a- what the buggery would you call it? A defunct game show, but game show doesn't do it justice.  For a start, four out of the six serieseses are presented by Riff-Raff from the Rocky Horror Picture Show, who is delightfully mad, and the others are presented by a man who is less delightfully mad and so has faded into obscurity.

Each episode there is one team comprising of three males and females. They are plonked into a labyrinthine setting in which there are four zones- the Industrial, Aztec, Futuristic and Medieval with Oceanic replacing Industrial in later serieseses. These sets were pretty nice, by the way, they all interlinked in an area the size of a couple of football pitches. I even noticed some live parrots scattered about the Aztec zone in the episode we watched- you know, just for shits and giggles. Here's a clip I managed to find of a team being fucking terrible whilst merely moving from one zone to another, which is an achievement in itself- the host quite rightly mocks them for it.

Anyway, in these four zones are a total of fourteen challenges, each one against a set time that could be anything from one and a half minutes to three minutes. The categories of challenge are mental, physical, skill or mystery. Each challenge has to be attempted by one person, and for each challenge they compete in they gain a crystal. A crystal? In a maze? Hmmmmmm. We will come to the significance of the crystals in a second.  One excellent thing about the show- if a player doesn't make it out of a challenge, they get locked in the room. It's quite easy for someone to get obsessed with the task to try and get the crystal and /or be too far from the exit to leave the room, to a chorus of "Run, you truculent fanny! Oh, you're locked in now... You fat-handed twat" from their adoring teammates. Those locked in can only exit the room when bought out with a crystal, but the teams are reluctant to do that (I'll get to why in a second). And some of the rooms are automatic lock ins- that is to say, if you fail to get the crystal, or breach the rules specific to that challenge then you have no chance to exit. Anyway, each crystal represents five seconds for the team members to be inside the Crystal Dome, which is slap bang in the middle of all the zones. In the Crystal Dome, there  is an industrial fan blowing gold and silver tickets all over the place, and the team have to throw the gold ones down chutes, BUT NOT THE SILVER ONES. One silver ticket down the chute means minus one gold ticket. The team have to get 100 gold tickets, which means they have to get 100 more gold tickets than silver ones. Couple this with the fact that the contestants quite often had brains made of custard and that the challenges were fiendishly difficult so they never got enough crystals and so they would never get enough time to get this stupidly large target and that it was very hard to grab the relevant tickets in hurricane force winds and that it was very hard to tell the gold and silver tickets apart anyway because the gold ones were silver ones with gold paint on and the paint had a habit of being blown off and it was a bit hard to beat the Maze. This is what normally happened when they got to the Crystal Dome:

Of the 83 teams who took part in The Crystal Maze, only 17 won, and plenty of those didn't count because they were the Christmas specials with a team of six kids who were told that whilst they inevitably didn't achieve the target needed for the grand prize, it's Christmas so we've let you win. I suspect that Channel 4 made it so hard to win because they'd pumped in £250,000 in 1990 (which in today's money is about £170,000,000) on constructing the maze alone, and could probably not afford to give out prizes. The Crystal Maze is the tempting stall at the carnival that's rigged so you can't win. I am not exaggerating when I say I remember an episode where the team trying to beat the Maze ended up with something like -54 tickets. The Crystal Maze may as well have been called the "Fuck you, you're not going to win anything Maze."

Today's Tune

In Which I Do Much the Same as Yesterday

Here's a thing you might not know- the SAS had Bin Laden cornered and ready to ambush him and CAPTURE him in the Tora Bora mountains in 2001. The American high command ostensibly were worried about U.S casualties as there were some of Delta Force present (who Google tell me are a U.K based paintball game company), but the high command were really a bit antsy about the idea of the British getting the credit, probably due to a Navy Seals commander saying "Please let us do it, I'll be your best friend and you can come to my birthday party" or "If you don't let me, I'll tell your mum on you and get you done". The American high command refused to let the SAS off their leash, and consequentally Beardy McHaterson slipped away, but it's alright as the Navy Seals managed to kill him. Now I'm sure they have a better idea of covert and military operations and intelligence gathering than this writer. I do think though that it's just a bit odd that they shot the head off the man who would be the most knowledgeable in the world regarding Al-Qaeda. Wouldn't you want to ask him a few questions (and I'm not talking about "What the fuck have you been doing all this shit for" and "How d'you like the taste of prison ass")? Nevertheless, it's fine that the Americans didn't let the SAS capture Bin Laden in 2001 as they managed to kill him a mere 10 years later. Hurrah!

 

To be fair to the U.S, we've all been there.

Just to give you an idea of what a stupid idea it was not to let the SAS in Tora Bora do their thing, two of them were going to be given the Victoria Cross, Britain's highest medal for combat, for operations conducted around that time and in that area. However, they were denied it by a technicality, because we do like our silly rules like passing the port to the left and making sure that war heroes aren't recognised. Here's what you have to do to win a VC. The warrant for the VC makes only two immutable stipulations: that the recipient shows "conspicuous bravery or devotion to the country in the presence of the enemy"; and that there should be "conclusive proofs". Also, it has become accepted wisdom that the recipient must have faced a 90 per cent risk of death and materially affected the outcome of the battle. No superior officer saw the action that these men were in that got them recommended for the VC. They saw the piles of bodies around these two men, and I reckon the superior officer had a strong idea of how they came to be corpses. Nevertheless, they couldn't be awarded a VC, despite having done enough in everyone else's eyes to deserve it. Here's a fact- America's highest medal for combat is the Medal of Honor- they doled out 135 of them in the Korean war alone. Seriously, they toss them about like peanuts. There have only been 9 Victoria Crosses awarded to British Armed forces since 1945. For both of these guys to be so brave and competent at fighting to almost get them, despite not having a superior officer to sit there and validate how fucking awesome they were, indicates that they were very hard. I think that goes to show that if they were allowed, they'd have caught Bin Laden in five minutes and then whipped out the primus and brewed up a cup of tea- maybe even had a game of cricket. And that's why the SAS are the best special forces in the world. The Navy Seals don't even play cricket on the battlefield, let alone have a spin bowler. Rubbish effort.

Not quite Today's Tune 

Today's Tune 

In Which I Marvel at Proper Hard Special Forces

A very short article today due to apathy/time constraints.

*EDIT I liked what I was writing about, so I lost track of length- often a problem*

In fact, this article might owe a teensy debt to Wikipedia (other unreliable publicly edited encyclopaedic sources are available). So. The Norwegian special forces, or the Beredskapstroppen, Marinejegerkommandoen, Forsvarets Spesialkommando, Minedykkerkommandoen and the Hærens Jegerkommando, as you know of course know they're called.  They are proper hard- they train the SAS in Arctic warfare and are generally considered the best soldiers where it's a bit on the nippy side. They also venture south of the Arctic Circle to blow stuff up occasionally, despite the fact they're almost exclusively vampires and as such do not react well to the sun.  If you see some soldiers in Afghanistan or Iraq who are inexplicably wearing skis and putting on the factor fifty, that'll be the Norwegians.

...going up hills is a bit of a bugger.

As I've said, they are proper hard. Granted, they were on their own turf, but in an international Special Force exercise in 2007, a single Norwegian Special Force unit destroyed the SAS, the Navy Seals and a French unit. One night they infiltrated the Navy Seal camp. The Navy Seals are the U.S's special forces, and they are whiny bitches. There shall be an example of this in tomorrow's blog. Now I should add some background here- to a Norwegian, a backpack is an icon. In fact it's a kind of portable shrine to the God of Useful Things, Stor Funksjonalitet-Ryggsekk. An Englishman's home is his castle, and a Norwegian's backpack is his spiritual portal to Valhalla or Fólkvangr. 

ANYWAY. These proper hard Norwegian special forces tippytoed into this Navy Seals camp and they did the equivalent of an Arab throwing their shoe at someone- they defiled the U.S rucksacks, and by defiled I mean put bricks in them so that the next day these Americans were exhausted and had broken backs. I love the idea of stealthing around just to dick with people. I suppose if I was in the SAS and wasn't allowed to capture Bin Laden, I'd have approached unnoticed at night and drawn a cock on his chin while he was asleep.  Also, when the Navy Seals were supposed to be guarding an American warship in another exercise, Norwegian frogmen swam under it and wrote "Greetings from Norway." The Americans were left with what was estimated to be a four egged omelette on their face. These Norwegians are ICE NINJAS.

 

Google image search says Hærens Jegerkommando= this

Did I mention that they're proper hard? One of the reasons that one of these units was set up is because Norway owns most of the North Sea oil and as such were mindful that oil rigs and platforms might be targets if Norway actually managed to annoy anyone in the international community. Actually, I seem to remember that there was a jihad declared on Norway, which they were most confused about. It may have been something to do with Denmark publishing that image of the Prophet Mohammed. In the Middle East, there were more than a few instances of muslims burning Norwegian flags by mistake, but hey, that's understandable. I'm sure if flag burning was one of my fetishes I could burn Yemen's flag when I meant to burn Syria's. Though I WOULD make sure that if I were to declare a holy war, it would be declared on the right country. Imagine the paperwork in trying to get that annulled.

Right. Got distracted. So. Norwegian Special Forces. Proper hard. One of their jobs is to be a rapid response unit in case of trouble on North Sea oil platforms. Now presumably one of the commandos tasked to do this thought he wasn't able paid enough Norsk Kroner to buy enough lutefisk (cod or ling soaked for days in a jus of kerosene) or designer rucksacks- this would explain why he broke ranks and testified in court that some of the training that they did was an ickle bit dangerous. Their training had previously included parachuting onto helicopter pads platforms at sea. Now here's a thing. Where these platforms are is not exactly windless, so the parachuting will be tricky. It's not exactly cloudless, so they'd often have to jump from a low height. And if they landed in the water, well, that's all she wrote. There is a reason that the SAS considered this a suicide mission. I've saved my favourite until last, and I'll just give you the direct quote from Wiki:

In the past, the training has included "sitting duck" exercises, where a soldier had to sit still while live rounds were fired, missing the soldier's head by only a few centimeters.[19][17] The stated purpose of the exercise, if any, is lacking from records.

Comments made about the exercise include "There probably is a reason why one does not conduct this exercise today."

Today's Tune

In Which I Am Not the Queen

Sure enough, Tim Key was amazing. I envy him his memory, his improvisational skills and his bath. He looked directly into my eyes at one point, then a few minutes later ran over to the guy one seat forward and to the left and frisked him. What a fucking tease. So.

It's a good thing that I'm not the Queen. For one thing, it would mean I'd have to have a sex change. But that woman... I mean, for a start, she's in cahoots with God, as He decided to pick her to be the leader of the one true faith, the Church of England. I would be a force to be reckoned with if I had God and church bake sale funds on my side... It's not just what she is, though, it's what she can do, and if I were her, I'd do so much. 

*EDIT At this point I started wondering what I would do with her power, and it turns out I have quite an imagination so this might drag on a bit*
  
Where to start? I could get rid of the Civil Service... But I wouldn't want to do that, as I also have the power to bestow honours on everyone, and they would need a LOT of paperwork for that- I would make everyone in the country a peer or peeress. Apart from Hugh Dallas. And I've never really cared for Brighton, so... I suppose I would give a pardon to all the prisoners in the country and send them on a train there and build a bloody big fence around East Sussex and let God sort it out. West Sussex can stay unmolested, because Hove has a few good charity shops where I acquired a few vinyl LP's... And how would I fund this venture, I hear you ask? The Royal Family doesn't have THAT much cash to be able to build such a massive wall and move 90,000 people at short notice. Good point, but I've got it all sorted out. You see, I OWN all the prisons, and if we work under the assumption that all the new criminals will be sent over the wall into the Mad Max wasteland that Brighton will become, then we won't need them any more. I could rent them out to be paintball arenas or for some deranged sex festivals or perhaps even as prisons for foreign countries (I don't know, they commit crimes somewhere else and then come over here so we make money out of them, what's the country coming to?). I'd keep some of the money, natch, but I'd let the Government and the populace have some, because I'm nice like that. After all, people need some readies to be able to buy accouterments that befit a peerage. But seriously, I love the idea of "Brighton" being a deterrent for crime. It would be like in Judge Dredd when someone gets exiled from the Megacity into a crimey wilderness. I'm telling you- crime would go right down.



 

Can't break the law, apparently

I'd also own the courts and the police and this would mean I could be utterly corrupt. I could go over to Hugh Dallas's house and take every property of his and have the entire constabulary of Lanarkshire pop over to protect me as I did it. Again, this is reminiscent of Judge Dredd: "I cannot break the law, I AM the law!" And I couldn't be sued. I wouldn't murder Hugh Dallas though I could get away with it, I don't believe in killing unlike him murdering Norway vs Slovenia in 2000. I would go around saying lots of litigious things. Actually, they would technically be slander because I couldn't be sued! So if I was the Queen I would... D'you remember that media furore over those people who had superinjunctions? We found out that Ryan Giggs, Jeremy Clarkson, and Andrew Marr were three of them and then we sort of lost interest. If I was the Queen, I'd slander Hugh Bonneville and say he paid £195 to a prostitute to use a sex toy on him. You know, because he wouldn't be able to sue IF it wasn't true. Which it isn't. There is literally no reason why I've been so specific about the £195. In fact, let's make it more specific, again for no reason. Let's call the hypothetical prostitute Helen Wood.


 

Ooh. The research for this article seems to indicate that I can send letters for free because they'd be sent with the Royal Cypher- presumably all mail sorting offices around the country have a Royal Enigma machine. A shit history joke for you there... Hmm.

Now we move onto the meaty stuff. I'd have control of the armed forces, which have been made a teensy bit smaller over the years (see picture below right). That's a little unfortunate seeing as we're asking (telling) them to participate in more conflicts than ever. So I'd beef them up with all the new revenue streams coming in and then I'd invade the bit of the Antarctic that the Argentinians declare sovereignty over.

This is a trend that will be reversed when I am monarch.

I'm sure the irony would warm the cockles of the army and navy's hearts as their extremities dropped off from frostbite. But hey, I'd just buy them new ones. I'd also invade San Marino. I wouldn't kill anyone, because, you know, benevolent monarch and all that, but it'd be nice to have a war that we can win quite easily. Britain actually holds the world record for war won most quickly, which is probably because Zanzibar are the holders of war lost most quickly. For some reason we gave them an ultimatum about them not having the right puppet governance and they were all like "Fuck off, you can't boss us about with your gunboat diplomacy. Oh, you're actually shelling us to buggery with your gunboats. Despite my words not being particularly palatable, I shall have to eat them." If you don't want to know the result, look away now... Thirty eight minutes later, Zanzibar had 500+ dead and Britain? Well, Britain had one Petty Officer who made a full recovery. If this war were a compilation album, it would be called Now That's What I Call a Drubbing. But it's alright to trivialise all of this nastiness because it didn't happen in living memory, true story. ANYWAY. I would invade San Marino as revenge for them scoring the fastest goal against England. 8.3 seconds? That's embarrassing, considering it's the fastest goal EVER in World Cup competition, and this from a country who have a population smaller than that of Colchester. Also, it would be nice to win a war without there being any unpleasantness afterwards, and with the good old-fashioned motive of just wanting more land, rather than this new-fangled oil contract business. I know I've seen something about the fact that their national orchestra is bigger than their armed forces, but there's nothing on the interwebs about it so I shall have to offer you this titbit instead- THEIR ARMY'S EQUIVALENT OF A TANK IS A FIAT PUNTO. We would steamroller the bastards. Though it might hurt our chances in the Eurovision song contest... 


 

You and what army?

Ah. Serious point now. I would sell off/dismantle our nuclear deterrent because we can't physically fire them off without American say so, and they've already got enough missiles to blow up the world several hundred times, so they can do all that. It would be nice if the Soviet Union or whoever "the enemy" is nowadays noticed that we weren't a threat and didn't nuke us. I could do all that scrapping because I own the military and they swear an oath to me. Also, the cost of the fucking things! If we scrapped them, by 2065 we'd have saved £83,000,000,000, and I could spend that all on my crack habit reinvest it in the country. Yes.

And the national anthem? Yeah, it's a bit dreary, it's not cheerful like the Italian one. It's short too- when we win things and the national anthem is played for our victorious sportspeople, it's over too fast. I reckon I'd buy the rights to the back catalogue of Foreigner and have a lottery machine (complete with independent adjudicator, OFC) that dispenses balls for Cold as Ice, Urgent, Hot Blooded, I Want to Know What Love Is, and Waiting for A Girl Like You. Whichever ball comes out will be our national anthem for the week. This might actually be the best idea I've ever had, and I've thought to combine Chili con Carne and Shepherd's Pie- I call it chili beef mash goodness (you come up with a better name, then). Seriously, if you take anything away from this article, let it be random national anthem cheesy 80's songs idea.

Yes. So that's what I'd do if I were the Queen, which is why I probably shouldn't be. So when it comes to the Queen elections, don't vote for me, or however it's done nowadays. Actually, do vote for me, because I've just thought of the alternative. At some point that big eared idiot is going to be King, and his stupid face will be on our money and on our stamps and everyone will leave the Commonwealth and everyone will rip it out of us and quite rightly. Nightmare. Mm. So yeah. Vote me, because Charles is a useless shower of shite. God save the Queen!

Today's Tune

In Which I Advertise a Performance Poet

With a hey nonny no and a ho nonny Knights of Ni, I'm off to see performance poet Tim Key. With R, but I couldn't put that in the previous sentence or it wouldn't have rhymed, and as all eight year olds know, if it doesn't rhyme it's not a poem. No, don't go, this isn't a blog about poetry, and Tim Key's actually bloody hilarious.

This is an unrelated hilarious comic who you also haven't heard of.

This does mean that today's blog will essentially be an advert for Tim Key. He was one of a foursome in obscure-didn't-make it-anywhere Radio 4 (then BBC 3) sketch show Cowards, and watching and then listening to Cowards was what inspired me to start on the-project-that-dare-not-speak-its-name... But no-one ever has seen Cowards. 

*EDIT The following would be embedded in this blog but it hates finding the right videos even if you cut and paste the titles, the stupid bastard non intuitive rassafrassin' grrrrr* 

I'm not even sure if Key's seen or listened to Cowards. So here's a Cowards radio sketch of his...
 
And here's a Cowards television sketch of his...
 
He was also on obscure-might-get-a-third-series-unlike-any-other-whimsical-quiz-show We Need Answers, which you can see an example of here

And the people involved in that gameshow invented a game to be played amongst friends called "No More Women", of which you can see here and be furnished with a better explanation of the rules than I can give.

And finally, here he is doing some of the sort of poetry stand up he will do for us tonight.
 
R and I have seen him once already, and R was very willing to come along then. He'd actually seen We Need Answers independently of me, which is very impressive because, as you may have understood by now, there's very little fanfare for Tim Key. When we last saw him, the evening ended with him climbing over a crowd of people (another word for them would be the audience) standing on their shoulders and extremities, and for why? Because he was pretending the floor was hot lava, when an audience member bade him stop. "Oh?" he enquired. Muttermuttermutter. "It turns out," he explained to the audience, "that this woman's friend is very heavily pregnant, so I shall have to modify my route to the stage somewhat significantly." Muttermuttermutter. "But it turns out her friend doesn't want to be any trouble and she's up for it!... Which is why she's pregnant in the first place, I suppose."  

So. Tim Key has done lots of good things. He basically wrote this article, and I love him for that, and many other things. Now you can too.

In Which I Recall a Spot of History

Right. A true story today, because to quote the great Withnail, "I feel like a pig shat in my head". This is not at all self inflicted, and as such you should all club together and form a collection that will aid my convalescence. This story is from memory, mind, but there is no embellishment here.

*EDIT This article seemed to make me keep writing, so it's a long one. You might want to make camp and check you have suitable provisions*

So. Back in the days when everything was black and white and the Nazis and their allies had taken over Belgium and the Netherlands and Luxembourg and Poland and France and Austria and Denmark and Norway and Greece and Morocco and Algeria and Tunisia and Sicily and Crete and the Balkans and Hungary and a massive chunk of the U.S.S.R (I know I've missed somewhere out), trouble was a-brewing. I have to say whilst Nazism was, no, IS, abhorrent, they were bloody good at war- until they invaded the U.S.S.R, of course. As Eddie Izzard so rightly pointed out, when playing the board game Risk, you get reinforced by seven soldiers when you manage to hold Asia, but it's bloody impossible. I have played a fair bit of Risk in my time, and I have managed to hold Asia for ONE turn in a Risk game only once. I say only (big breath now)- it was like winning five games of Risk simultaneously whilst making love to Paloma Faith's face whilst blowing up the mothership by uploading a virus to its mainframe whilst riding a Harley Davidson and drop kicking Hugh Dallas- very tricky to do, but extremely gratifying. I suppose in my way I'm a better military leader than Hitler. But I have completely and utterly distracted you and I from the point. Trouble WAS a-brewing.

Originally a French game called Hisser le Drapeau Blanc (chortle)

Hitler was getting an awful lot of raw materials and manual labour from these occupied territories, but the country that the Allies were arguably most concerned with was Norway. You see, in the early 20th century, the Norwegians had built a hydroelectric powerplant whose main purpose was to power a neighbouring factory converting nitrogen into fertiliser. However, the factory also gained the ability in the mid 30's to create deuterium oxide, also known as heavy water. Now bear with me, because a nuclear physicist I am not, but heavy water is an ingredient necessary for a hydrogen bomb. Ingredients necessary for a hydrogen bomb? Hitler researching into the A-4 rocket (later designated the V-2), and making headway into an intercontinental ballistic missile programme? You can see why the Allies were a bit worried that London could get quite a bit melty if the Nazis got enough heavy water. And as I remember, this Norwegian plant was the only place they had a chance of getting it from.

They parachuted  over some specially trained Norwegian commandos familiar with that area of the country to scout out the target, and when they were in place sent over some British sappers in gliders towed by bombers. This was an utter balls up because of bad weather and there were crashes and crash landings- the sappers who survived were tortured and killed due to Hitler developing cataracts whenever reading the Geneva Convention. The main effect of this enterprise was that the Germans worked out the British were targeting the hydro plant and stepped up security. Still, the Allies had to press on and parachuted in more Norwegian commandos who linked up with the first lot, and they duly went on with the mission. To get to the place, they descended one side of a ravine and climbed up the other side that was considered impassable. Now I seem to remember that the second lot of commandos were just before on the piss in London and swapped something of theirs for a bolt cutter which helped them in the actual raid on the target. They popped over to the bit that made the heavy water where they encountered a Norwegian caretaker eager to help. This next bit I love- they were about to detonate the explosives but the caretaker realised that he'd misplaced his glasses and as new glasses were like hen's teeth during the war, the commandos felt honour bound to help him look for them. Imagine, you're pissing yourself because you're in a heavily fortified installation and could be discovered at any time and you have to help some old dodderer find his spectacles. Well, they found them, set the timers and retired to a safe distance, and the heavy water and heavy water facilities were destroyed. Nevertheless, in a documentary one of the Norwegians said "Then the explosion happened- it was like two or three cars crashing- quite disappointing, really." The handful of  commandos escaped, despite thousands of Germans being specifically assigned to find them.

Here's something I read today that I don't think I'll be able to shoehorn in anywhere else.  The first bloke to swim the English Channel was called Captain Matthew Webb- I'm sure you already knew that, dear reader, but crack on and you'll probably learn something nice. The French, who have a quaint habit of mispronouncing and spelling the English Channel as Le Vagin de la Mer, said it was impossible. Une folie anglaise, they said. Now we all know that Webb showed the defeatist Frenchies what was what, but he was really taking the piss out of them. This is a man who said "Actually, other swimming strokes aren't as gentlemanly, so let's do this with the most impractical swimming one- the breaststroke." This is the equivalent of a sailing ship having tracing paper for sails. But he managed it in style, and when I say style, I mean style. He actually stopped in the water for a pint and later on a snifter of brandy. Brilliant. Utterly brilliant. The equivalent of smoking a blunt before running a marathon. Let's really show the French by making things stupidly difficult. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that he did it in a tweed suit. But do it he most certainly did. When asked by the journalists in France how he felt, he said, and I am quoting DIRECTLY, "...a peculiar sensation in my limbs, somewhat similar to that which is often felt after the first day of the cricket season." Amazing.

I'm not sure what I'm trying to get across with this article because it was ages ago when I started the bugger. I suspect it was something along the lines there being so many important things that have shaped the world today massively that we have no idea about. Perhaps it was that I enjoy understatement. Maybe both. Hmm. To be honest, I really do enjoy understatement. And that's an understatement...

Today's Tune (Because it's an understated version of the final product)

In Which I Tour Colchester General's Switchboard

Well, those of you with inbuilt calendars will remember that it's been over a month since I had my EEG and my MRI that the consultant neurologist recommended. I can't remember if I've mentioned it, but the neurologist I saw at the time who diagnosed me just from the clothes I was wearing that day said that I'd get the results three weeks after the tests. A phone call to the surgery confirmed my GP had received nowt, and they suggested I bitch at the Neurology and Neurophysiology departments in Colchester General. So that's what I've done- or tried to do. As I've alluded to before, the individual departments of the NHS are grand, but they aren't really good at having anything to do with each other. A case of the left hand not knowing that the right arm has been doused in napalm, that sort of thing. So I rang Neurology and they suggested that my results were about and I should arrange a follow up appointment with a consultant neurologist, and gave me a number for the neurology secretary. I was a bit puzzled about this because I had definitely been told I'd have a letter through either to me or my GP. I decided to ring the Neurophysiology department to confirm all this, and was met with an answerphone that said something along these lines "If you're not ringing to confirm an appointment time, then get the fuck out of my robot life." So I did, and phoned up the neurology secretary who told me that what Neurology had told me about making an appointment was utter balls. "It doesn't work like that, you get a letter from us that gives you a follow up appointment." She also let slip that my results were sitting around somewhere in an ever growing pile because one of the two consultant neurologists who deal with this kind of thing had "left". It turns out that it was the man who diagnosed me- I should probably have asked why he buggered off. Was it for a golfing holiday, malpractice or solely to leave me in the lurch? Regardless, it means that I might have to wait another three weeks for them- they couldn't give me a timeframe as this was new territory for them- doctors aren't really meant to disappear like that. She also said that it might be more complicated and take longer for me because my notes might still be in the bowels of Gastroscopy, so to speak. It's comforting that they have records of where my records are I suppose. But this stuff happens, and I refuse to be melodramatic about it.

Today's Tune

In Which I Vow Never to Do That Again

Good Christ almighty, it was just brought to my attention by L how many mistakes I made in that last blog, most of which have now been mercilessly eradicated. If there's a moral there, it's that I shouldn't rush these bastards in an effort to write one every day- quality, not quantity, etcetera. This sounds like some sort of terrible excuse to start being lazy and never write them again, but I was genuinely shocked by how much I've bollocksed it up. No more daily blogging or at least no more rule that I have to write something every day, because eventually I will start dribbling turds out of my fingers and onto the screen. Perhaps I've already started, which would be a shame- there's enough of that shit on the internet already.

Right, so. P, J, R, J and I went to see a band somewhere. I say see, I am not sure if I could see at that point. R has a Romanian associate who distills his own moonshine out of something- potatoes, berries, benzine, who knows? Anyway, the first measure of this stuff actually caused me to scream like a little bitch. I did go back for seconds, thirds and fourths, mind, which not everyone did and SOMEONE wandered off to vomit. It did actually taste nice, mind. The moonshine, not the vomit. We'd seen this band once before- just after England had lucked their way to beat Sweden in June in the Euros, and we were in the roughest pub in Colchester. Due to idiocy, I was dressed as England legend and defaecator of pop music Chris Waddle. I say dressed as, all I'd have to do is bung on a 1990 football top and some shorts, and that's a little too lazy for my tastes. I decided to have P, who seems to be very good in the field of hairdressing for reasons I have yet to ascertain, give me an actual proper mullet. This was all in the name of shits and giggles, and all the vicious bastards at this dive seemed to realise that because I had a mullet, I was already in the worst state I could be and that punching me might improve me somehow.

It couldn't get any worse than this.

I only had that haircut for 18 hours. Still, that was then. I still looked like an idiot on Friday because of that bet I had with R. I cannot remember why I made the bet that I'd have a Rickman beard, especially seeing as R had no such forfeit imposed upon him. But a drunken bet is a drunken bet, and my memory remembers those better than it does what Alan Rickman's topiary arrangements in 1991 blockbusters were. I should probably cut my brain out with a spoon. As it is, I possess what citizens of the U.S might call a douchebag beard. I think it looks a bit French, so it almost undoubtedly IS a douchebag beard. Despite all that, I did manage to get some positive female attention from girls that weren't hideous, which is always a plus. One of them even went as far as to tell me I had beautiful eyes. Several times. I have a sneaking suspicion that the moonshine may have been causing the aurora borealis to occur in them.

I am a little shady as to what happened after that. I know that more drinking was involved, and I know that P and I walked back arm in arm to J's with P telling me what a stand up guy I am, and I was enthusiastically agreeing with him. I suspect there was some singing of Beatles' songs after that, and I seem to have accumulated a plectrum despite not playing the guitar. The next morning R, P and I wandered around a park having a nice chat. I probably would normally have felt angry at past me for inflicting a hangover on present me and curled up in a ball to try and sleep more, but yesterday was an exception. It was probably the last nice day of the year one could walk around with only a t-shirt on and not convulse from the cold in the manner of a taser victim. Moreover, it might be the last time I spend with R for a year- he's off to Canada to speak in an accent he doesn't possess to have lots of sex with girls who don't know any better, and also to get a spot of snowboarding instructing or something in. I don't know, I wasn't really listening. Anyway, I hope he fails and is forced to return early for I shall miss him dearly.

Today's Tune

In Which I Phone it in Again

I'm around J's tonight. He promised me it would be a light one, but he's promised me many things before, like he wouldn't take the piss out of my ginger beard, and that he wouldn't form a political party with Anton Drexler. Due to a drunken promise to R, who will be there, I have shaved my bushy beard into an Alan Rickman Sheriff of Nottingham type thing (or so I thought I had, I remembered the beard wrong. Now I just have a douchebag beard). The result of this is that I have no spare time to blog, so here's something I prepared earlier...

21/1/11


Burlesque only? No, huge amounts of corruption too.

These articles are meant to comprise of events that are unfolding, or have unfolded recently, but I could write about the 74th richest man in the world (according to Forbes) at any time, because he’s always in the news. This man holds amongst his possessions the football club A.C Milan. He is a politician, and all the palaver that went on in Britain with MPs claiming expenses for duck houses and love seats simply pales in comparison with what this man is alleged to have done. Ladies and gentleman, I present to you the Prime Minister of Italy and Archduke of Demons, Silvio Berlusconi.
 
It’s difficult to know where to start with the man- the word limit on this article means it’s utterly impossible to cover every “indiscretion” he has been involved in, or has been alleged to be party to. We’ll start with the press. He owns it. That is to say, he owns 3 of 7 channels nationally broadcast on terrestrial television, and let’s say that the Leader of the Italian Opposition doesn’t get much chance to appear in party political broadcasts on them. Coupled with the power he has as Prime Minister, being able to “strongly suggest” the choice of the management bodies of the other channels, he effectively has control of 90% of all national television. He also owns the largest publishers in Italy, which gives him the option to print sycophantic magazines and the like, and his brother Paulo owns a newspaper. This is not right. Imagine the uproar if Rupert Murdoch became an M.P and used his affluence and influence to weasel his way to becoming the Prime Minister. Berlusconi of course disagrees, explaining that if he is looking out for everyone's interests as well as his own that there can't be a conflict of interests.
    
Berlusconi has an uncanny ability to be called to court, but he has hit upon a rather handy way to make his legal problems go away. He has passed much self-serving legislation, most key of which is shortening the amount of time that crimes can be prosecuted for. He employs a cabal of lawyers to make damn well sure that by the time the dust has settled and everyone has stopped squabbling that by the time any of his cases come to trial, the infringement was so long ago he is immune to prosecution- by his own admission he has paid around 200,000,000 euros. However, he said that he had spent this money over the years on consultants and judges, before correcting himself to say consultants and lawyers. An easy mistake-a to make-a, I'm sure.
We'll gloss over his mafia involvement and his hiding behind political immunity and move straight onto what I like to call “Things Berlusconi has said which make Prince Philip seem like a diplomat.” On the father of fascism, Mussolini, he said "Mussolini never killed anyone. Mussolini used to send people on vacation in internal exile.” This is the equivalent of Angela Merkel saying that the invasion of Poland was actually a goodwill visit. He offered to act as a broker in ushering in better relations with the U.S and the new Russian President, commenting “I don't see problems for Medvedev to establish good relations with Obama because he is young, handsome and even tanned.” Perhaps best known is his bucking up of the population of the Abruzo region that he toured after a devastating earthquake that killed over 300 and made around 65,000 homeless. He asked those communities who had lost their homes to think of it as a camping trip, and asked a local councillor if he could fondle her. I wonder if even he would think that's crass in retrospect.
 
So what is it that people are actually starting to believe could topple the man with the impossibly low political centre of gravity? It's too depressing and detailed to fully chronicle here, but essentially it involves lying to the police, abusing his position of power by having sex with an underage prostitute. No doubt Signor Berlusconi will say that this is just another example of the left trying  to besmirch his good name as they so often have before. One last quote from the great man himself:
 
"I am without doubt the person who's been the most persecuted in the entire history of the world and the history of man."
 
To Silvio’s many characteristics we must also add dyslexia. He obviously was trying to say prosecuted.

Today's Tune

In Which I Am Hazy on What Goes On in McDonald's

Here's a somewhat disjointed one, as somewhat disjointed is how I am feeling. One of the things I forgot to mention the other day was that whilst I was outside D's  waiting for him to evacuate his bowels, a kid came up to me, gave me the once over and asked me if I was waiting for somebody. "Yeah" I replied. "I thought you were" he replied. A pause. "D'you know anything about antiques?" This kid wasn't even taking the piss, it was a genuine question. "Erm, other than they're old, no." Hmm. I had a think about why the sprog would ask this. I mean, I was off to a driving range, which is probably quite an antique-y pursuit, but the urchin had no way of knowing that. The only possible explanation is that he is familiar with BBC evening programmes from the mid 80's and that I now dress like Lovejoy:

We are both, essentially, sex on a stick.

Another thing is that for some reason, my mind was drawn back to being taught French at secondary school. I remember being taught that the French called McDonald's McDo (I assume its counterpart is "Burger de la Republique"- I dunno, we were never taught about Burger King). That they abbreviate it to McDo is a bit rich, because even Americans aren't that lazy. Perhaps it's the French trying to be cool again. They often do that, but they try a little too hard. For example:

The French sit in the corners of McDonald's under a thick pall of Gauloises cigarette fog and ask each other existential questions, such as:

"Henri, if a Frenchman is in a forest and no-one is around to hear him, does he still make an arrogant noise?"

This is, of course, set to a miserable discordant French jazz soundtrack, something like this.

The English sit in the corners of McDonald's under a thick pall of Old Shag pipe fog and ask each other existential questions, such as:

"Henry, if the Duckworth-Lewis method is in a forest and no-one is around to not understand it, does it still make no sense?"

This is, of course, set to a happy plinky-plonky English jazz soundtrack, something like this.

I should probably state that it's been quite some time since I've been into a McDonald's and even longer since I've been in a McDo's, so the ravages of age may have caused me to be a bit blurry on some of the specifics. Still, that's about the flavour of it. My point, which I have so skillfully distracted myself from, was not that other people do things differently than us (pass the smelling salts, Marjorie!). It was rather that the GCSE syllabus deemed it necessary to teach us what a corporation's slightly different name is in another country. I mean, if you asked a Frenchman "Où est le McDonald's? Avec le jaune M?", they'd know what you were on about. I mean, they wouldn't tell you, because they're French, but they'd understand. There was no need to teach us this. What's next? Britain's youth being taught how to buy an X-Box in Germany? Or how to buy a Tizer in Spain? I don't like product placement at the best of times, but in a school it's utterly sickening. Physical Education- Just Do It. Drama and Theatre studies, the choice of a new generation. People who put adverts where there should be none are despicable, soulless cretins.

On an unrelated note, aren't Ginsters delicious?

Today's Tune

In Which I Get a Nosebleed from a Great Social Height

Some days ago, I let slip that I would be destroying my liver for a couple of days with C, by means of making use of every happy hour possible in all of Soho's cocktail bars. Having just about managed to roughly plan one of the days, I started weeping blood and decided it was perhaps best if I lay off the logistics for a bit. Yesterday I received a letter from one of these places that I had quite forgotten about. Somewhere in the period where all-the-distances-to-get-from-bar-to-bar-and-in-which-order-bearing-in-mind-happy-hours began to blur together into a world of whizzing numbers (not dissimilar to The Matrix), I may have clicked on something on a website. As a result, I am now a card carrying member of BitterSweet Cocktail Bar and Member's Club, which will most likely be a port of call during the crawl. However, I might well have to revise the plan of dressing up like an idiot from the 80's as this particular establishment might look down on that sort of thing. I've come across this problem before, in the form of Lord's Cricket Ground,where fancy dress is strictly forbidden.  

Unfortunately, someone forgot to tell the players about the ban.

I shall have to wait for BitterSweet to open and the website to go online for proper to see if the terms and conditions cover such matters. Incidentally, that's the reason they accepted my membership application- they open in five days, and they'll let anyone who can spell join beforehand in an effort to drum up business in a competitive market. I know that I've felt that these Elitist Places that you can't get into because they're so snobby and you don't have a credit card sized permission slip are the height of vulgarity, but it's different now I can get in one of them.  I plan to waltz into BitterSweet with C, who I've told to get membership (I would find it hilarious if she was rejected) and then live in there, boasting to whoever would listen that I am high up on the social ladder. Or I might just quaff the free Champagne they've offered me and never go there again.

Today's Tune

In Which I Considered Screaming

Being under sedation is not as sedate as you might think. Yesterday, the evil NHS told me that I couldn't eat ever again, or was it that I wasn't allowed to eat less than six hours before the surgery? I should probably look into that. Anyway, they clearly heard that my stomach had a case of the rumblies so they sat me down next to the tuck shop, full of all manner of sweeties and crisps and ginger beer and such. Clearly, food was on my mind a little bit, so I asked the attending what the hospital which sweetmeats and cheesy comestibles they were to lavish upon us- I say us as I was in a group of six and we'd individually be led off to the surgeon's room (in which I considered screaming, to freak out the other patients). Nursey told me that they would provide me with toast and tea- standard, fair enough. But I was in the hospital to look for nasties and to confirm that I had coeliac's disease. Toast make coeliac sufferer go bad. I pointed this out to them, and said I'd nip off to the tuck shop and get some of the bad stuff for later and promise not to run off crying with hospital gown and all. However, not only had the NHS made a point of shoving me next to all the beautiful sweets they knew I couldn't have, they decided to close it as soon as I needed it- this would have been around 15:30 on a weekday, the bastards. ANYROAD, it seems that they had literally never encountered a person having an endoscopy to see if they're allergic to gluten, as the only food they offered would be the sort that launched a world of hurt upon "picky eaters" like myself.  Let's say for argument's sake that they do 10 endoscopies a day (It's plenty more than that). Considering that one in 100 people in the U.K are thought to be gluten intolerant, that means that the hospital would only have started doing these procedures for around the last two weeks. If you can come up for a better explanation for why the nurse was given the runaround with five different departments, please furnish me with it. It's the infrastructure that's the issue, not the staff. All the staff were luvverly, even the surgeon until he jammed what felt like a Scalextric set down my gullet.

Endoscopies- we can go all night long, baby

They'd done all the business of putting one of those valve needle jobbies into my hand in which to inject the sedative later on. I'd specifically asked for the sedative rather than the throat spray anaesthesia because I'd heard horror stories about that, and did from the other five who were there with me. Having the sedative is a wee bit more risky, but I was confident I'd made the right choice. It's meant to send you into a sort of stupor, so that you're still vaguely aware of what's going on around you- I was painfully aware. Apparently shoving things down your throat makes you gag. A lot. In that moment, I managed to get past the not inconsiderable pain and be grateful for the nil by mouth regime they'd stuck me on. The alternative would be drowning in my own sick (which at the age of 27 would give me something in common with Jimi Hendrix et al). As I made reference to before, the sedative didn't really seem to take hold. Apparently most people are incapable of walking unaided afterwards, whereas I seemed to be leaking bon mots. I have come to the idea that it was in fact a stimulant. It would explain why my throat seemed to be battered to shreds, and it would explain why I sashayed out of the hospital like a more manic Maria from The Sound of Music. It would also explain why I forgot to take my hospital gown off and looked like an escaped mental patient. But no matter. Yesterday was the first time since spring that I tried to win a bottle of Cava off of D by scoring a Frank Lampard freekick on Pro Evo 2008. Yesterday was the second time I won a bottle of Cava off of D by scoring a Frank Lampard freekick on Pro Evo 2008. I might even trade both in for one bottle of actual Champagne. My reaction was a little different from D when he hit that immense golf shot- as you should remember, he squealed with delight. I cried with laughter instead. D just cried. He thinks the hospital injected me with a stimulant as well, and has now stipulated if he ever lets me round his again that there will be random drugs tests in various sessions of playing Pro Evo. Finally, a boney fido reason for him making me wee into a cup around his. If he ever lets me round again.

Today's Tune

In Which I Really Really Love Sean Bean

My love for you knows no bounds, so I pre-wrote this because I'm going to be incapable of thought later.

I decided to call this blog Sean Bean's Wet Dream as Sean Bean's Steamy Creamy Wet Dream Supreme was a bit too much of a mouthful... oo-er! Anyway, it's about time I gave him a mention. So. Sean Bean. It doesn't matter if he's in a film where he's being shot dead by arrows or drowned or blown up or shot dead with bullets or freezing to death or having his throat cut or having a Soviet signalling dish fall on him, it doesn't matter what he's doing, he's always bloody brilliant.

Here, in fact, is a video of him dying a lot. Don't watch if you don't want to feel sad or aren't good with gore.

Due to being some sort of cretin, I have only just got round to watching Sean Bean in the first episode of Jimmy McGovern's drama Accused (but you can forget the other two episodes as they've no bearing on this one, and as such don't have Sean Bean in). Dying is one of the many things he has down to a fine art, so it's a surprise to see him survive in such a gritty setting- you get the feeling that if he was in an episode of Rainbow, he'd get disembowelled at the least.  Saying he doesn't die isn't a spoiler by the way- the episode is told as a series of flashbacks when Sean Bean is in the dock testifying, so if you can't work out from that that he survives you've forgotten how to think. Another one of the surprising things about this particular drama is that Sean Bean plays a shy English teacher who finds identity and excitement as his transvestite alter ego Tracy. Then he meets a curious married man played by Stephen Graham and it's on and shit goes down, etcetera. It's pleasant to know that Sean has more in his acting range that he can surprise me with. One day he might even perfect the English accent... Accused was as bloody brilliant as S.B is, and an honourable mention goes to Stephen Graham because he was every bit as good as Sean was, but that'll probably be forgotten as he wasn't dressed as a woman. In conclusion, bloody brilliant but bloody bleak. It's like watching "It's a Wonderful Life" only you leave before Clarence turns up- a feel bad feature.

Here's a video I just found of Sean Bean's reaction to hearing that there's a popular video of a montage of his screen deaths.

I bloody LOVE Sean Bean.

Today's Tune

In Which I Celebrate my Birthday a Month Early and Do a Golf

Well, it was fun at D's. Fun if you enjoy listening to your friend cry about putting their fingers down their throat to get them to vom. I should probably say that this was to purge his guts of alcoholic poison, rather than to bulimiacise himself into a lower dress size (although he could lose a few pounds). This was essentially my birthday trip up to Norwich to see D (though a month early as I have a couple of trips to London ahead of me), which I do every year, and every year ends up with me taking pictures of D voiding his guts into a bowl that previously housed some witches' brew of cocktail in it. D seemed fine when we were walking towards the city centre, and then two hundred yards later was retching and wretched and thinking about passing out and generally being useless.  I had drunk the same as him but because I had to look after him I instantly sobered up, and gave him the sound advice that he should make himself sick and he'd feel better. Unfortunately D isn't a particularly forward thinking person, and doesn't realise the "ickyness" (his word, not mine) of sticking his fingers down his throat is better than taking three hours to walk 500 yards back to his to watch him be sick a little and then for him to wake me up at eight the next day so I could listen to him tell me how rough he felt  and watch him throwing up at various intervals up until 3 in the afternoon, whilst still refusing to stick his fingers down his gullet. Happy birthday to me.

Actual picture of me nursemaiding D

Today, back in Essex I went down to the driving range with D (a different D who knows when to put his fingers down his throat). Surprisingly, I was quite good. The last time I'd tried this I was what the kind amongst you might have called unforgivably crap. Today, however, the planets were in alignment and I was fairly consistently twatting the balls into the distance, and straight down the middle. For someone who only swings two thirds of the way owing to a lack of technique, I was pretty chuffed to be able to spank it beyond 150 yards. D managed to hit the ball the furthest, but I reckon my average was a little better than his.

A bit of background for the next bit. D and I had an ongoing competition for Pro Evo 2008 as to who could score the first free kick with Frank Lampard as it's almost impossible, and several years of trying later the loser had to get the winner, which wasn't D, a bottle of Cava. A bottle of Cava that has yet to appear, actually. Anyroad, halfway through the D- can-hit-them-harder-but-I-can-hit-them-more-consistently game, we changed from super mega hitty golf sticks to look like more of a dink it in the air golf sticks, and D proposed we had hit it as close as possible to the sign on the 50 yard bit. I chipped a pretty nice shot in that was maybe four yards off, properly using height, wind and gradient of the range. I offered D a bottle of Cava if he managed to hit the sign, and he used a slightly different technique. With a lusty shout of "ALLAHU AKBAR", he swung at the ball as hard as possible and managed to hit the sign square in the middle, eliciting a curiously clean ping- cue jumping around and screaming like little girls. We embraced and agreed that we'd each have to present the other with a bottle of Cava, mine being for that far more impressive Frank Lampard free kick. And yes it WAS far more impressive than a golf shot, we spent years trying to do that whereas D managed to hit that tiny target 50 yards away on a breezy day first time. Anyway, we had two rounds of putting after that, which we both won one of. D's a gambler though, so we played one final round which I bested him at- and this was for the not inconsiderable title of Champion of the Universe as well. I stood for the national anthem, which didn't play for some reason, and I didn't see a trophy. I am still waiting on that (I mean, come on, they'd have to send it Special Delivery), and I may have to contact Royal Mail for losing it in the post. Hey ho.

This is D. He is jammy.

 

I go in for surgery today, and yes it IS surgery- the robot woman asking me to confirm my appointment termed it so. Consequently I'm on nil by mouth at the moment, which includes fluids. I'm really starting to feel it- sometimes I think that I'd die without food and water.

Today's Tune

In Which I Am Disdainful of Fanboys

What's your favourite film? Actually, I don't give a shit. I'm not in right now. Trying to engage in dialogue with me is pointless and you're an idiot for attempting it. It's like trying to leave a message on an answering machine that's made of cake. And isn't there.  ANYWAY. There's a website called IMDB (Internet Movie DataBase) and I use it on occasion to settle bets ("I'm telling you that's bollocks. "No it isn't, Sean Bean WAS in an episode of The Bill, of course he fucking was. EVERYONE'S been in the fucking Bill!"). IMDB, as you may have gathered, is a website that lists films and serieseses and directors and etc, etc and who directed who and who produced what. One of the other features of the site is that it lists the 250 greatest films as voted for by the viewers of IMDB. If I was looking at the charming James Stewart film "Harvey", for instance, I could see that it has a rating of 8 out of 10 and as such is placed as the 222nd film of all time. However, there's a problem with the internet and ranking films, and that is this- idiots. Idiots are a great problem wherever they pop up. You see, idiots have a short attention span and shorter memories. Why else would The Dark Knight be voted as the 8th best film of all time? Are you telling me it's a better film than Vertigo? Than American History X? I suppose it is if what you're looking for is goatse-ing plot holes (if you're going to search for what that is, for God's sake have safesearch ON) or awards for actors because they've forgotten how to medicate. I've seen The Dark Knight. Yes, it was enjoyable if you switched your brain off. Yes, Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker might well be the definitive one, which is a shame what with him having a case of the not breathies. But is it the 8th best film ever? Ich don't think so. My main gripe with it being so unreasonably high is that fourteen year old fanboys (or at least, those with the minds of fourteen year old fanboys) have gone and seen it and without much of a background knowledge of films have decided that it is the best thing ever. I'm not expecting people who vote for these things to have watched every Ingmar Bergman film or to get a Battleship Potemkin reference when they see one. I am expecting, though, that people giving a film 10 out of 10 realise they're saying that it's perfect. I don't think there's a film out there that's perfect (although there's one that runs it pretty damn close). But the fanboy thing. The blind adulation for a franchise they love that's so cool and it's just so amazing and cool and it's badass and did I mention it's cool? I'd better vote for this film and give it the best possible score and then loads of people will do that and everyone will be able to see how good a film it is because it'll be so high on the top films list, won't that be cool? Hate it. Hate it, hate it, hate it. Another problem is, that people tend to vote for recent films and not older ones.  All the fans of Bridge on the River Kwai aren't going to start voting highly for it, let alone giving it 10/10, which is why it's 9 places below fucking Avengers Assemble?!? There is another website called rottentomatoes that amalgamates all the reviews of a film into one all encompassing rating, so it's immune to fanboys. I do not use rottentomatoes. I should.

Today's Tune

In Which My Love for the NHS is Unrequited

Right, let's start off with caveats. I'm probably not going to give you any new blogs wot my brain wrote because from today until Monday I will be drinking with D, drinking with D, being hungover and having an endoscopy, because I have a suspected gluten intolerance/ coeliac's disease. I certainly hope it's that, because otherwise it's something potentially more killy. Having said that, it is a bit of a setback. It means that as a rule I can't eat pasta or bread or cake or battered cod or samosas or biscuits or pies or soy sauce or cereals or most sauces or oats or french fries (I just found this one out. Not such a biggy, they're just Liberace chips). I also cannot drink beer. I rationalise this and consider what I can have, which is meat and fish, fruit and veg, rice and eggies. I can also have Free From products, a token area of such limited space that it makes this particular coeliac disease sufferer miserable. Still, I should look on the bright side. It's probably for the best that they don't have much food, because what they have tends to be bloody awful. That, or they're offering free from products like baked beans at extortionate sums when you could buy Heinz baked beans for much cheaper and they don't have gluten or flour in anyway. But it's not that bad. However, if I was unable to have even one of the holy trinity of spuds, rice or meat I would have to go and kill someone. Probably Hugh Dallas. Anyway, I say I can't have these products, but I can. It'll just mean I'll feel rather nauseous and tired because of my inability to process all food properties and that the lining of my oesophagus will be irreparably eaten away by excess stomach acid. Still, I should be grateful. In some people the symptoms include a tendency to shit oneself.

It's actually a quasi interesting story as to how I found out that I (probably) have coeliac's. I'd got blood tests done because I wasn't feeling right and then rung up my GP for the results and he said they were all clear. Then when I popped off to Colchester to the neurologist, he told me that the symptoms of smelling burnt toast and having "auras" was nothing to do with my coeliac's disease. 

"My what, sorry?" 

"Your gluten intolerance, that's irrelevant to this." 

"Hold the fucking phone a second, Mr Brain Doctor, I want to clear something up here. I'm allergic to gluten?" 

"Er, that's what your bloodwork indicates, yes." 

"Well that's a bit of a shitter isn't it? They told me the tests were negative. I am slightly vexed because someone, as you say in the medical business, has fucked up royally." 

"You should feel lucky, there are thousands of people out there who don't know they have coeliac's." 

"Those people are vomiting and shitting themselves constantly and haven't the intelligence required to call the doctor to tell them that they think something's wrong because they are vomiting and shitting themselves constantly. So you're saying I should feel lucky because there are a bunch of other people suffering from this but they're not diagnosed because they're FUCKHEADS?!?" 

"I'm not sure I like your tone, sir. I certainly don't like the way you've picked up that lancet and taken that nurse hostage." 

"What's the worst I could do with it, give her a paper cut? It's a fucking magazine!" 

"That's a clever bit of wordplay sir, I bet if you ever came to write about this it would be a bit self indulgent to include it. Not enough people would get it without having to look it up." 

"Regardless of how much my future writing is a masturbatory aid, the point remains that I'm a little peeved you're telling me I should be grateful that I'm diseased when the NHS SPECIFICALLY told me I wasn't."

So anyway, won't be writing on Monday because I will be sedated up to the tits whilst having a camera inserted down my gullet into my duodenum, where they will cut bits out of me for analysis. I hope it's down my gullet, anyway. I don't think there'd be enough sedatives in the world if they went via a different route...

*EDIT After someone researched it for me, I found out that Coeliac's can actually cause the symptoms I've been having and that it's not uncommon for the effects to be neurological. The epilepsy medication may have had no effect because I may not have epilepsy, and I may have been getting better because I've cut gluten out of my diet at exactly the same time as I started pill popping Lamotrigine. But it can't be that it's a gluten intolerance that caused all of this. After all, a specialist told me it wasn't JUST BY LOOKING AT ME.

Today's Tune