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.