World = Scary.

So I went into the Spar to buy some tobacco, as is my habit, and wouldn't you know it but there's an attractive lady at the till. Lovely, she was. Good hair, pretty eyes. Boobs. So, plastering on my nicest smile, I got ready to use my best and most effective opening line ('12.5 grammes of Cutter's Choice, please.' Never fails) when she beat me to it, saying 'Hello. What can I get you?'...

...in the deepest, bassiest voice I've ever heard issue from a female mouth. She sounded like Ray Winstone. Suitably freaked out, I grabbed my baccy and scuttled out into the night.

It's shit like this that makes me want to not leave the house.

Jingle Balls

If you check your calendar you'll see that Christmas is but a week away, with all its attendant horrors and turpitudes. I (surprise surprise) hate the whole bastard festive period, and can usually be relied upon to spout curmudgeonly bullshit at the slightest provocation. This year, however, I'm almost looking forward to it, although God knows why; maybe I'm pregnant. The fact that I've got all my shopping done already might have something to do with it. That's never happened before.

Anyway, it turns out that Santa (or at least one of the legion of under-employed middle aged men who stand in for him in dingy shopping centres) has decided to buck tradition and forgo the fat suit this year. This health conscious St Nick reckons that being trimmer and leaner will set a better example for the kiddies, and the shopping centre concurs.

"It is time for a change and as Santa is a role model for children, then his body shape is where it should start."

Hang on a second. Back up a bit. Santa? A role model? For children? Really? Leaving aside the fact that he's Western culture's most well-liked trespasser, and the fact that his famous red suit is made from inverted, bloodied deer skin, and that Amnesty's report on the working conditions for elves at his North Pole retreat famously made Kofi Annan shit himself... leaving all that aside, can you think of a single child who actually wants to be Father Christmas? In the same way that other kids want to be, say, astronauts, or ballerinas? Is this conversation likely to occur?

Adult: 'And what do you want to be when you're grown, little man?'
Child: 'Please mister, I want to be Santa!'
Adult: 'A fine profession, young sir, and a growth industry at that. Have a florin, you apple-cheeked rapscallion, and be off before I have you horse whipped and summarily fingered.'

No. Personally, if I had a kid and it expressed a desire to be Santa I'd have it on Ritalin before you could say 'secure unit'. Luckily, kids couldn't give two craps about who Santa is or what he looks like; it's the presents that they're after, the cut-throat little mercenaries. As far as they're concerned Santa could be an eight foot tranny circus performer who farts mustard gas and dances the Lambada so long as he makes with the goodies, and that's all fine and healthy. It's the magic of childhood, and any child who looks up to Santa as some kind of aspirational role model is off their fucking rocker.

Movie Review: The Octagon, starring Chuck Norris.

The Octagon is a low budget 1980's martial arts flick featuring Chuck Norris as Mimsy Fandango, transsexual hairdresser and wandering ex-ninja. Glyn, Denyer and I settled down with a couple of beers on a quiet Monday night to see what Chuck had to offer us. Here's the trailer.



OK; If you're looking for a movie that'll make you piss yourself laughing for all the wrong reasons then look no further, my son, for you have struck unintentional comedy gold. Chuck Norris, tired internet meme that he is, plays a fucking blinder in this one. You want chest hair? Inept ninjas? Whispered internal monologues?



Then you're in the right place. Chuck is on the trail of a international cadre of terrorist ninjas, or possibly ninja terrorists, and I'm probably not spoiling the movie for anyone by revealing that their leader is Chuck's old training partner gone bad. Really Chuck shouldn't have too much problem since this lot look like they couldn't ninge their way out of the proverbial wet paper bag.

'Hello, is that Crap Henchmen Ltd? Could you send over some more black-pyjama clad palsy victims? Oh, I dunno... 25? Yes, I'm afraid so. No. No, it was a girl with a sharp stick. No, Chuck's not even here yet. Ok. Bye.'

The general crapness displayed by the terror-ninjas is presumably why Chuck can afford to spend so much time whispering to himself inside his own head and indulging in playful banter with his lovable yet ultimately expendable pal AJ. AJ is just trying to live up to Norris' mighty legacy until he goes and gets his throat cut (but not before escaping from his captors something like twenty times. Crap ninjas!) thus providing further impetus for Chuck 's climactic organ crushing death rampage. But as AJ says: 'Come on, Scott; you saw much worse things during the war.'

The special edition comes with a free copy of another, better, movie.

Yeah Chuck. Remember that time in 'Nam when the Viet Cong made you eat your own bollock? That was way worse than this.

4/5

The rise of the machines.

My place, yesterday.

Yesterday I had to go out and buy a new mobile phone, as my previous phone had met with an unfortunate accident. We won't go into the whys and wherefores, and there's very little point in apportioning blame. In a world as cold and unfeeling as this injustices can and do occur and scapegoating individuals, while it may feel good at the time, provides scant comfort in the long term. These things happen. We need to learn acceptance, be more Zen.

All right, fine; I dropped it in the fish tank. While it was plugged into the charger, no less, so I just count myself lucky that Little Dan wasn't flash-fried into the bargain, poor misfortunate bastard that he is. That would have been unfortunate, although at least the little sod wouldn't be able to ruin another night's sleep with his barking. Barking and predicting the future.

Anyway. I went out and bought a new one, as the old one was irretrievably waterlogged and generally fucked. Here it is:

Satan's own handset.

And here's a review where it gets a handsome slagging at the hands of someone who knows what they're on about ; I, on the other hand, have not the faintest clue what I'm on about when it comes to mobile phones, a fact that I forgot in my lust for digital cameras and very small joysticks. My old phone was the telecommunications equivalent of a yoghurt pot on a bit of string. It was simple to use and easy to understand. It had Snake on it. I liked Snake, so what madness descended to make me choose this fiddly piece of shit?

I can't get it do anything. It's got the internet, but I'm never going to use it. It's got an mp3 player, but I can't find it. I tried sending a text message today and it took me the best part of half an hour. I've spent the last day staring at it like, well, like a chimpanzee that's been given an overly complicated mobile phone, scratching my arse and grunting in puzzled bewilderment. Whilst eating a banana.

It's especially pointless as nobody ever calls me, because I have (wait for it)... no social life! There are Buddhist hermits up Tibetan mountains who have more interesting Friday nights than me. It was the bloke in the shop, that's what it was. I was taken in by his sharp suit and matey patter. I got burned. I want out.

And, as if that wasn't enough, I now have this bastard to deal with:

You will not best me, doctor.

Yes folks, it's Dr Kawashima of Dr Kawashima's Brain Training, the DS phenomenon that can apparently improve your mental agility by a factor of whatever. The idea is that you perform his little mental exercises, jump through his hoops for ten minutes every day, and you will magically become smarter. Glyn came home with it yesterday and now I've been sucked in. When you start the game works out your 'brain age', which is basically a tool for the good doctor to tell you that you're stupid so you'll continue playing, lest your brain turn to mush in your skull. Last night my brain age was 46; today it's 64. If I carry on at this rate I'll have trouble retaining bladder control by Christmas.

So you do the exercises and fare really badly at them, feeling like a complete fucking idiot, and all the while the disembodied bastard offers words of patronising 'encouragement'. He let slip that he doesn't like coriander, and that if you say the word 'coriander' into the DS he'll pull a face. Which he does, so Glyn and I have taken to saying 'coriander' repeatedly and at length in an effort to gain some small measure of revenge as we watch his polygonal face screw up in distaste, over and over again. But it's a tiny victory, especially when you consider that the real Dr Kawashima is in his Japanese mansion, swimming about in his money like Scrooge McFuckingDuck and probably paying people to eat coriander for him. We, meanwhile, are spending our weekends arguing with a disembodied head on a hand-held games console, our brains becoming older and more decrepit with every minute that slips through our fingers. There's a real winner here, and I'm guessing it's not us.

There were these two guys in a lunatic asylum...

Man, I love being a geek. It's great. OK, there are downsides; school wasn't much fun, for example. Neither is writhing under the blank, pitying stare of a girl who has just learned that you're a grown man who enjoys reading stories about be-tighted, superpowered folk.

'Comics? Like Spider-man and stuff? But aren't they for kids?'
'Well, yeah, some of them, but the genre has changed a lot and there are loads of really clever writers out there who...'

At which point you trail off, realising that she's right. You're a fuckhead, a socially inept man-child, a pube clinging to the toilet bowl of life and, moreover, you were a fool to ever think otherwise. So you leg it, escaping to your room to bury yourself in old back issues of The Flash in the forlorn hope that the whole horrible world will just forget you and go away.

But then something wicked happens, like the release of the first official picture of Heath Ledger as the Joker from the upcoming Batman movie, and suddenly it's all worth it. Stuff like this shouldn't be important but, for some reason, it is. And I love it.

Also, check out his socks.

Quote of the Week

I just want to burrow into his beard and build a little cottage in there. Actually, forget I said that.

Alan Moore, from an interview about the upcoming 'League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier'.

'Orwell was exactly wrong in a strange way. He thought the world would end with Big Brother watching us, but it ended with us watching Big Brother.'

Good old Alan; he's a freakin' genius. Unfortunately it looks like those of us outside the US won't get to read 'The Black Dossier' due to some very boring and irksome copyright problems. That, my friends, is a gold-plated, sixty foot high, all-singing all-dancing pisser. Interested parties can get the full story here and here. Thank Glykon for the grey market, eh?

This week Pete's eye has been caught by...

....this story about the Singaporean government banning the Xbox game Mass Effect because it features a lesbian kiss between a woman and an alien. Gameheads all over the globe have been up in arms about censorship, civil rights and so forth but I was more concerned about the implications for...

So... do you come here often?

...Captain Kirk. After all, the good captain spent the better part of the sixties cruising around the galaxy looking for - and enjoying a great deal of success with - alien snatch. I'm guessing that Singapore won't be used as a location on that new Star Trek movie they're making, lest Jim's habit of having his dirty way with absolutely any organism, be it animal, vegetable or mineral, finds him landed in chokey.

He's even making me a little bit moist.

But come on; what's an alien girl to do? Although I should probably point out that a) it was the lesbian thing that was the problem, not the alien thing and b) the ban has since been lifted. But this is the internet; since when did facts matter a damn?

And while we're on the subject of forbidden love, this frankly unbelievable story about a man who was caught having sex with a bicycle has had me scratching my head for a couple of days now. The logistics of it are completely beyond me. How? How??? The only creditable theory I've heard is that he was penetrating himself with one of the handlebars, and if that sort of thing is your bag then surely there are easier ways to go about it? If it's a bit of arse action you're looking for then why go to the trouble of booking yourself and your bicycle into a hotel room when they make dildos and vibrators specifically designed for the purpose? So that can't be it. It's a puzzler and no mistake.

There are some slightly worrying implications here, though; the guy was alone in a locked room and only got discovered when the cleaners used a master key and let themselves in. He's now been charged with sexually aggravated breach of the peace and been placed on the sex offenders register; that's right, it is now possible to commit a breach of the peace on your own from inside a locked hotel room. From a civil liberties point of view that's really not a good thing. Piss funny, though... and what a visionary! He looked at a bike and, where a more boring man would have seen a simple method of sustainable transport, instead saw a potential shag and bed partner. Amazing. Let's face it; the bloke is a sexual astronaut.

Finally, some of you may have seen trailers and adverts for a movie called Shrooms; it's your standard teen horror flick with the extra gimmick that all the characters are ripped to the tits on mushys. It is, by all accounts, toss. I saw a poster for it the other day that, as usual, featured a standard review quote, in this case: 'It's like Blair Witch on acid!'

Many people have pointed out that 'it's like... on acid!' is used by lazy journos as a way of saying that something is surreal,wacky, off the wall or whatever. There doesn't seem to be any way of preventing it. But I can't help feeling that in this case just a little bit of extra thought might have made all the difference. Maybe there's another drug that could have been substituted for acid, something more pertinent to the movie, that would have differentiated this particular review from the thousands upon thousands of indentikit write ups that fill magazine space and contribute absolutely nothing to anyone's understanding of, well, anything? Whatever could it be? Hmmmm. It's on the tip of my tongue... give me a minute....

Nearly there...

Whistle down the wind.

It can happen to the best of us.

You've tried everything. You've rubbed it and tickled it. You've picked it and blown it and wiped it. You've shoved stuff up it and pulled stuff out of it until no blockage can possibly remain, but to no avail. You've got one whistling nostril and apparently there's not a damn thing you can do about it.

And it's such a mournful noise; it's like a tiny, one-note bagpiper has taken up residence in your nasal cavity. Well I say: fuck that tiny bagpiper. Next time it happens I'm just going to spray weedkiller up my nose and have done with it.

He thinks I'm bluffing. But I'm really not.

Prick of the Week: Tingle

Look at him. Fucking paedo.

If you've never played any of Nintendo's 'Legend of Zelda' series this will all be meaningless to you... not that I've ever let a little thing like a complete lack of interest on the part of the reader put me off. If 'I Hate It Here' were a movie it would be the venerable Spielberg flick 'Duel', where a frightened, innocent man (you) is remorselessly pursued by a shadowy, relentless juggernaut (in this case a juggernaut of pointless waffle concerning video-games, annoying customers and stuff about the West Midlands).

I will not be stopped.

Anyway, Tingle is a minor character in LOZ; he's a middle-aged man in a fairy suit who loiters around Hyrule and attempts to coerce the (10 year old) Link into doing his weird bidding - this usually involves bringing him special items in order to gain his favour, the perv. He's a basically a fantasy world paedophile. There, I've said it; Nintendo can sue me if they want. Tingle likes touching little boys. He's the Hyrulian Gary Glitter, and a very annoying one at that. And OK, I'm ripping into a fictional character from a children's videogame, which probably makes me even more tragic than previously suspected. I get that. But he's the asshole, not me. Still, at least he's not real, eh?

Run, children! Run like the wind!

Mighty fuck!

Pic of the Week.

One of my very favourite pieces of Bristol graffiti, kindly provided by Lisa.

It's here! It's here!

I don't mind admitting, right here on the internet: I've got a bit of a stiffy. Call it a semi.

The 'I Hate It Here' Halloween Monster Movie Battle Royale.

Hang on to your hockey masks, people - it's the moment we've all been waiting for. In honour of Halloween I've assembled a bunch of meanest, most terrifying, most skin-eatingest bastards ever to grace the silver screen to fight for our voyeuristic pleasure. So without further ado... round 1!

Leatherface Vs Norman Bates

For this historic first round both fighters are dressed in their finest fightin' gear: Norman Bates looks absolutely ravishing in his mother's floral print dress, carrying a pleasing hint of lavender and old ladies on the breeze, while Thomas 'Leatherface' Hewitt looks equally fetching in his mother's, er... skin. The two combatants circle each other warily... Bates is hoping to maneuver Leatherface into a position that will allow him to use his famous 'push them down the stairs' finishing move... Oh, and Leatherface has killed him! He has literally killed him dead with one swipe of his mighty sledgehammer! Bates didn't even have time to cry for his Mummy before Leatherface came out of nowhere with a skull-splintering death blow. And what's that? Yes, it looks like Leatherface is chainsawing and peeing on Bates' corpse. That's bad news for Bates but great news for sport. I'm coming, Mother!

Jason Voorhees Vs Michael Myers

After the three hour mark the inherent difficulties of a fight to the death between two immortal, homicidal behemoths become clear. Jason impales Myers on his machete; Myers responds by dropping Jason off a cliff. Jason counteracts this clever gambit by electrocuting Myers on some pylons; Myers pushes Jason in front of an oncoming train. This goes on for many hours, to the detriment of the competition's spectacle; again and again the apparent victor walks away until... yes, he's getting up again. So, with public interest waning and our sponsors becoming skittish, a coin is flipped and Myers comes out on top! A popular result, because personally I've always loved Wayne's World. On to the next round!

Pinhead Vs Freddy Krueger

A difficult one to call, this; uber-kinky bondage demon Pinhead takes on barbecued pederast Krueger in one of the most hotly contested battles of this whole entire waste of everyone's precious time. In a fight like this it comes down to who wants it more, and here it looks like Pinhead might have the advantage; Freddy is in it for shits, giggles and maybe a free tube of Savlon whereas Pinhead is in it purely to provide new and interesting sensations for his exquisitely-shaved balls - which, incidentally, also have pins in them. Plus, Freddy is really only effective against opponents who are asleep. And Pinhead's got all those whips and magic chains and whatnot. I'm going with Pinhead.

Brundlefly Vs The Thing

No contest here in our special 'freakish mistake of nature' category. Seth 'Brundlefly' Brundle is a silly scientist man who accidentally gets his DNA discombobulated and mixed with that of a common housefly, while the Thing is a nightmarish beast from beyond the stars with a mouth for an arsehole, an arsehole for a mouth and all manner of tentacles and teeth in odd places. Brundlefly staggers about making pitiful mewling noises, mutely pleading with his girlfriend to just shoot him and get the whole sorry display over with. Meanwhile, the Thing is over the other side of the arena eating huskies and pretending to be the referee. Eventually Brundlefly's missus (Geena Davis) does the decent thing and puts the unfortunate boffin out of his misery. There is an embarrassed silence at Brundlefly's poor effort; even the Thing doesn't know where to put his twelve faces.

Semi Final 1: Leatherface Vs Michael Myers

So, as we head into the semi finals, Leatherface and Myers are busy girding their eerie loins for their titanic battle to the death. It's butcher knife versus chainsaw; who's gonna win? Well Myers is, as previously stated, more or less unkillable but Leatherface is frikken' mental. Plus, he's got a lot of energy for such a big bloke. So Myers starts in with his implacable Angel of Death routine, all boiler suit and William Shatner mask, and Leatherface, not being one of Myer's usual victims (i.e. an androgynous teenage girl), just starts sawing. And he don't stop until Myers has been chopped into wet, red, doggy-bag sized chunks, which Leatherface then takes home for his extended family of inbred, cousin-fucking hillbilly retards. Grow that back, you ghost-faced weirdo. And the crowd goes wild!

Semi final 2: Pinhead Vs The Thing

Now for our second semi. Pinhead, wrongheaded bastard that he is, seems eager to take on a creature that has more orifices than anything the Earth has yet managed to produce; the Thing, on the other hand, seems nonplussed. You might even say that his heart's not in it. Movie buffs will be aware that the Thing's great weakness is fire; it turns out that the Thing also has a vulnerability to being sodomised in its many assholes by sentient chains whilst a pasty goth-looking fella looks on, giggling to himself and tweaking his own nipples. The Thing also has a bit of a blind spot when it comes to acid jazz, a style of music that Pinhead can't get enough of. Weirdly.

Grand Final: Pinhead Vs Leatherface

It's time to breathe a massive sigh of relief as we finally hit the final. Who will emerge victorious? Leatherface? Pinhead? At this point does anyone really give a toss? On paper it's Pinhead all the way; he's a fucking Cenobite, for crying out loud, a Satanic demon from Hell's angry nether regions. Leatherface has gumption, but at the end of the day he's just a half-witted bumpkin with two Y chromosomes and a few power tools. Can the plucky underdog win out? In a straight fight... probably not. Luckily for Leatherface, however, the final will be decided over a round of popular children's game Kerplunk. So here we go: Pinhead draws... then Leatherface... Pinhead again... those balls look shaky (you're telling me! Arf!)... Leatherface once more... surely this can't go on?... Pinhead draws... AND THAT'S IT! THE BALLS HAVE DROPPED! THERE'S BALLS EVERYWHERE! THE WHOLE ARENA IS LITERALLY COVERED IN BALLS! PINHEAD LOSES! LEATHERFACE IS VICTORIOUS! HILLBILLIES RULE! GOTHS SUCK!


So there you have it; Leatherface wins. All that remains is for the proud victor to come and collect his winnings (an all-expenses paid afternoon at Butlins, two Toffee Crisps and a gift voucher good for one complimentary hand job from Pip's sister) from Kathy Staff, better known as the woman who plays Nora Batty on TV's Last of the Summer Wine. A handshake, a peck on the cheek, smile for the cameras and... oh, there we go. Yes, that's right. He's raping her.

Happy Halloween!

Butt ugly public art of the Black Country, part 1.

This week: the Pegasus statue at Holly Hall, Dudley. My problem with this thing is the sheer size of it; it's fucking huge. If I were to stand next to it I'd come about halfway up the plinth it's standing on, as demonstrated by this amazing bit of computer graphics wizardry.

You see? Massive. And, like everything else in the Midlands, it's in the middle of a gigantic traffic roundabout so there's absolutely no missing it. But I suppose a biblically-proportioned statue of a mythical Greek horse/bird monster is very fitting for the Black Country because...er.. because of... oh. Well, apparently it turns out that there's no reason whatsoever for this eyesore, no famous connection linking Dudley with Pegasus at all. Nothing. They reckon that the shiny bits on the wings symbolise our proud glass-making heritage but stuff like that always makes me wonder why they never put up statues to our other great traditions, like wife beating or rickets.

I had a hard time finding pictures of this statue and I wasn't exactly spoilt for choice when I did; this was one of three that I managed to unearth from the web. I could probably have found, in less time and with greater ease, a picture of a man sticking his own hand up his bottom; in fact, I know I could. And that's not a good sign.

Mamma, I Want To Sing!

Liza Minelli, busy pissing me off.

There are a lot of things wrong with local radio but the worst, most annoying, most generally vexing thing is the bloody adverts and their stupid fucking jingles. There's one on Beacon radio for an establishment called Hollybush which is, as far as I can tell, a massive out of town garden centre cum DIY store cum shite pit. Currently they're very keen that the good people of the Midlands choose them for all their Christmas decoration needs; in order to lure us in they've decided to go with an advert of such face-melting annoyingness that if for some unfathomable reason I actually set foot in the place I'll probably be naked, screaming, pissing myself uncontrollably and carrying a live hand grenade. It's that bad. But after I'd heard this ad twenty or thirty times I started to think about the women who were actually singing the jingle.

I mean, it probably wasn't what they wanted, was it? No singing person starts out with big dreams about doing the radio jingle for Hollybush megastore, Great Bridge, Birmingham. They want to win X Factor and appear on Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway. The broken aspirations of another human being aren't really a source of amusement for me - honest - but I make an exception for singers because they really get on my tits. It was the drama students that did it. I once took a minibus ride from Aberystwyth to London. Six hours, with a 7:00AM start. The minibus was packed full of drama students. Who sang show tunes. All the way there. By the end I was sat there, gnawing on my own lips and straining as hard as I could in the vain hope that I might burst something internal and bring on a self-inflicted stroke. An embolism. Anything.

People who are really good at crochet don't feel the need to get their crochet hooks out in public and start whipping up a nice bobble hat for the sheer joy of it. There are people out there who are amazingly gifted at carpentry but they don't get up in everyone's face about how now neatly they can bevel a hole in a plank. But apparently if you sing you're compelled to do it loudly, often and as publicly as possible. Why? Because, as a singer, you crave attention in the same way that a normal person craves chocolate covered hobnobs or oral sex, i.e a lot. And that kind of 'Look at me! Look at me!' attention seeking is just very, very unseemly, and a little bit sad. So when I think of the jingle women, or the endless thousands of talentless gimboids that queue for hours just so that Simon Cowell can tell them to get to fuck, every one convinced that they're, like, totally fabulous and the whole world will love them, I can't help but let out a devious little chuckle. Moo Hoo Ha Ha!

Prick of the Week: The General Public.

All these people are probably dead now. And I'm glad.

Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Once, not so long ago, I was all fired up about the injustices inflicted on innocent consumers by the heartless company I'm currently employed by. Three weeks of actually dealing with the bastards, three weeks of getting my ear chewed off daily by assholes, now has me singing a different song. These days each and every customer can fuck off, die, come back, contract AIDS and die again as far as I'm concerned.

Customer service jobs are always going to involve dealing with obstreperous wankers but the asshole ratio at this particular job is frighteningly high. Most of them have been dicked about quite badly for a very long time indeed, so I can see that they might need to let off some steam but come on, people; I'm only doing my job. There's no need to call me what you just called me, especially since I'm not allowed to say anything back. I have at least three people every day threatening to sick Watchdog on us, which I actually wouldn't mind as I've always wanted to be on the telly and the X Factor thing never really panned out for me. See for yourself.



One of their favourite tactics is to say, in a tone more hurt than angry: 'You just don't care, do you? You've had our money and now you don't care.'

No. No I don't.

Babies: not to be trusted.

I've never been a great fan of kids. They're smelly, they're noisy and they require far more attention than I'm prepared to give out. People who have them witter on about them at great and wearying length, to the exclusion of everything else, and you're not allowed to say that you don't give one flying toss about the drooling, slap-headed little bastard or how close it is to saying its first word. Having children leads to ugly, frenzied competitive parenting, a desire to own a monster truck sized SUV and sore nipples. I daresay I'll change my tune once I've settled down and got married and shit but right now the attraction really is beyond me. But that's the thing; once you've had a kid your brain rewires itself, flips you over into Parent Mode and you are literally not the same person that you were before. That alone is enough to put me off, and I reserve a special dislike for babies. Have a look at this one:
You know who that is? That's right: it's HITLER. Who knew that this harmless little bundle of joy would turn into the twentieth century's most expansively insane genocidal madman, the biggest bastard in a century of bastards? No-one, and that's the problem. You just can't tell. These days when I see a baby all I can think of are the countless nightmarish futures that spin around this little person, the horrors that they could grow up to perpetrate on the world. Fair enough, not every baby is going to grow up to be Hitler but there are a myriad of other ways it could all go tits up. What about that bloke who invented the Crazy Frog? He was a baby once. Now you tell me I don't have at least half a point.

And yes, I do realise that it's just as likely that a baby might grow up and find the cure for cancer, or write the most brilliant symphony ever devised by a human brain, or maybe just become a normal, decent, caring person. But if you're late to the party I should point out that I'm not an optimist and my gaze stays firmly fixed on the inevitable downside. One of these days I'm going to tell you all about how I reckon my own future will pan out and you're going to need a stiff drink after that one; I know I will. But that's another story - for now we'll just say that babies can fuck off because, quite frankly, they're making me nervous.

Serial Killer

Racist Bigot

Criminal Lunatic

Prick of the Week - Special Update.

Get in the van, you workshy cunt.

Nothing against Pat himself - this is general cussing of all the posties in Britain who have felt it necessary to down tools for a whole fuckin' week, thus depriving me of the Deadwood series 3 box set I ordered off Amazon. I've been jiggling from one foot to the other like a child trying to hold in a wee for what seems like forever, such is the terrifying force of the Deadwood craving that has taken me over. And that's just my own personal tale of woe; this special Prick of the Week is for every delayed passport application, every late credit card payment, every vital-but-absent benefit cheque, every office and every business and every birthday that has passed with no cards whatever. Posties and Royal Mail bigwigs, please, on behalf of the people of Britain, I beg of you; work your problems the fuck out. Why can't we all just be friends?

Pic of the Week.

This one's probably not for the faint hearted, so I've put a dummy pic up first to give you chance to back out now.


Ahhhhh. Bless his tiny nose. Now scroll down for this week's real winner.


Man, if I could do that I'd never have to buy my own drinks again. They'd be giving me pints just to get me to go away. Enjoy your Sunday!

Prick of the Week: Philip Solomon

Phil, the seventies called - they want their hair back. Zing!

Most of you won't know who this guy is, so let me enlighten you. His name is Philip Solomon and he's a noted West Midlands psychic; so noted, in fact, that he gets his own column in the Express and Star, the local Black Country rag. It's a pseudo agony uncle bit where needy yet gullible people write in asking whether their dead relatives are enjoying the good afterlife over there on the other side; Phil here claims that he's in touch with these deceased folks and that - yes, you guessed it - they're fine, dandy and having a fine old time themselves up there in the ether. Who'd have thunk it? Here's a sample; I've edited it down for brevity's sake.

Dear Philip, last year I lost my mother-in-law and then my mother a few weeks apart... This year I have been diagnosed with an illness but I would like to think that my mum and mother-in-law are watching over me. Elaine, Netherton.

Hi Elaine, I am inspired to say that your two special ladies are of course watching over you...I feel you often speak to photos and make no mistake, the words you speak are always heard, especially by these two people who have helped you so much. The names of Ann, Sheila, John, David, Peter, Jack, Stan, Lily and Mary or Marianne may be of significance to you. Be assured you will be joyfully reunited with those you love one day. Kind regards, Philip.

Look, I don't know whether there's an afterlife or not. I cannot say for a mortal (hah) certainty that this person's dead relatives aren't watching over them with concern and approval; my gut instinct says no, but I'm happy to be proved wrong. Really. In the video on this page I unearthed Phil claims that Spiritualism is a scientifically proven fact - if that's so then I want to see this proof. That's right Phil, I'm calling you out. Me versus you; let's go.

Claiming to have powers that you don't really have is wrong. Preying on the misery and weakness of other people is wrong. Life is hard enough without lying shysters using your personal trauma to make a quick buck; really I'm pissed off with the paper for giving this fucknut print space, but bullshit psychics in general also get my back up. I'm conscious of the fact that I should be cracking a few jokes at this point but honestly... I just don't feel like it. Phil, and people like him, depress me too much. And that's why he's my Prick of the week.

Video Game Review: Black, PS2

Black is a video game where the player adopts the guise of Mimsy Fandango, ass-kicking transsexual hairdresser and professional counter terrorist, in a tale that bears many similarities to popular children's classic The Neverending Story, except without all the sex.

Taste my salty man juices, terrorist bitches.

The plot, however, is irrelevant. What is relevant, and is in fact the whole selling point of the game, is the Freudian connection between guns and your cock. It is gun porn; nine hours of running around disused foundries spunking bullets into the gaping mouths of pliant Russian terrorists, who presumably all look like Anna Kournikova under those fruity balaclavas they seem to favour. This game brings the fetishisation of weaponry to a pumping, spurting climax, and very enjoyable it is too. You play, you become aroused, musty things happen in your pants and then thirty seconds after the game is completed you fall asleep. Job done.

4/5

Hey Kids!

Are you lonely? Girlfriend left you? Short on mates? Do you spend your Friday nights alone, browsing the interweb for pictures of boobs, the knowledge that this is the closest you'll get to a real pair lying heavy in your gut like cold tripe? Perhaps you're having trouble sleeping. Maybe you're angry all the time. For no reason! If that' s the case then why not try...

Turps!

Turps is a revolutionary new beverage that will make all your pain go away... only to be replaced by a new, more physical pain as your digestive tract slowly rots from the inside! This searing, prolonged agony will go hand in hand with incipient brain damage and eventual death, so even an isolated piece of social wreckage like you will have something else to worry about. Whatever your problem, turps will make it all OK... for about three weeks. Then you go blind and die. So drink turps and wash all the bitterness right out of your life, because hey - it's not like anyone will miss you!

Please note: drinking turps is really bad for you. Don't do it, I was having you on. I Hate It Here takes no responsibility for you or any of your moron ilk, you dumb, dumb fuckwit.

Read your Sale of Goods Act, people. Learn that shit!

I started temping in a new office last week. I'll be keeping the company name secret because I don't want to get sacked, or sued, or sacked then sued then sacked again. They don't sell coffins, but let's just say that they do. So imagine you've bought a coffin from us; it arrives at your house and (bugger!) the varnish is chipped, or the satin lining is torn. Maybe there's a body already in there. Whatever the problem, you're not a happy consumer. You want reparations.

So you call the office and demand your money back, and we do everything within our power to stop you. Firstly, we'll try and convince you to get your coffin repaired, or maybe replaced with a new one. If that doesn't work (and it often doesn't; there are people out there who have had four or five coffins dispatched to them, each one more bickered than the last) we'll grudgingly allow you to swap it for another from our coffin emporium. But maybe that's not enough either. You're sick of our shit, you want a full refund, you are perfectly within your rights to have one and we know it just as well as you do - but the only refund you will receive will come in the form of one extended middle finger. Occasionally someone will call up spitting feathers, quoting chapter and verse from the Sale of Goods Act and invoking the wrath of the Citizen's Advice Bureau. That'll usually do the trick, but they really need to know what they're talking about. There are little old ladies out there who, having shelled out serious fucking cash, are being dicked more thoroughly than a teenage groupie on a Led Zeppelin charter flight.

When the agency was signing me up for this gig they made big noises about how it's 'a small, family owned company', like that somehow ensured that these people were going to be paragons of virtue. Unfortunately, being small and family owned isn't much good when the family is made up of gouging, Bentley-driving shitbirds. Know your right, kids, because no other bugger is going to tell them to you. Personally I can't wait to get back to the warm, comforting bosom of local government, where profit doesn't matter and all you need to worry about is good old fashioned incompetence.

Pic of the Week.

Gather round everyone - I'd like you to meet Svetlana, my new internet bride. I'm plucking her from a life of drudgery on an Estonian pig farm and bringing her to England to be my wife. We're very much in love. Not shown in picture: her wooden leg.

Why I left Stourbridge in the first place, part 1.

Here's a typical night out on the town in Stourbridge. First, drink quickly and heavily in a near-deserted old man-style boozer. Eat your own body weight in pork scratchings whilst playing pool, badly. Do this until around 10:30, when your itchy feet will lead you out in search of some dancing. Pick one of the half dozen or so pubs that have a dance floor and a late licence; any one, doesn't matter which. Queue for a while and then have this conversation:

You: All right, mate?
Bouncer: Not tonight lads. You're too casual.
You: Oh, go on. We'll be no trouble. We only want a drink and a bit of a dance.
Bouncer: No, you're too casual. Now piss off.

Repeat until you've been turned away from everywhere, then go home. I wouldn't mind but it's not like we're talking about classy, urbane, sophisticated nightspots here; we're talking about horrific puke-reeking drinking pits that play shit music to pissed morons in a doomed midlands town. It's not like the sight of me dancing like a harmless twat in a 2000AD t shirt is going to spoil the carefully constructed ambiance. 'Sorry pal, you can't come in. We've heard a rumour that Brad and Angelina might be stopping by and if they see the likes of you in here they'll shit.' Not going to happen, is it? But just because they've pushed some of the chairs to the sides to make a dance floor and employed a sub-standard DJ they act like they're fucking Fabric or something.

So every thick-necked mouth breathing fucktard in town is inside, knocking back Stellas and surreptitiously fingering desperate 30-something divorcees in the beer garden, while nice guys like me and Phil are left out in the cold. Where's the justice?

Bastards!