sport

not sure when it happened but i fell out of love with sport a ways back.
sure i am still interested in (some) sports.
sure there are some athletes who i take joy in seeing them win, though there are probably more that i find more pleasure in seeing them lose.

most sports stars are over paid prima donnas who seem to have no understanding of just how lucky they are. 'oh woe is me i have to play three games a week', is a bit hard to take seriously when you are working a 40 plus hour week.
or the old favourite it is not about the money it is about the winning - but none of them take a pay cut to play.
or their total self importance - the team has to match my ambition, yet they never put their money on the line, or no stake in the team. or, the even worse, we deserve to be supported in our personal dream because we made sacrifices.
then there are the clubs who just want to buy success with little or no attempts to develope their own players - so much easier to buy them in.
then there are the fans who just want success - but don't want change. they want money pumped into the clubs but they can't accept that money comes with strings.

but what can you expect when sport organisations such as fifa or the ioc appear to be no more than profit making organisations rife with corruption?

then there are the constant calls that these performers to be role models. yes i don't want them to cheat, yes i don't want to see them use drugs - but beyond that i don't expect them to be any different from the rest of us. why should putting on a kit suddenly make you a paragon of virtue?

the problem is we have invested too much importance in sport and its stars, and along with celebrity culture, it harks back to a bread and circus mentality.

we would be better off celebrating the extraordinary, but hidden, scientists, architects, inventors, academics, teachers, explorers  (oh and hairy bloggers) who populate our culture. but we won't.

will i ever fall in love with sport again?
probably not - but i will always have the world wrestling entertainment, at least there is humour and honesty in its pretence.

hope

the thing about elections is the hope.
the hope that your party will win.
the hope that your views and values will carry the day and for the next few years the country will be run more or less in line with your desires and expectations.

come the day you tick that box that aligns closest to your views.
at that moment you believe you have the power to change the world. change it for the best.
hope fills you.

come the end of the day that hope can be battered out of you.

as it stands the news implies that we are heading for a hung parliament.
the worst of all worlds.

hope deflated.

again

been awhile.
not quite an oatesian 'i may be some time' but still far too long.

there has been a practical reason for the break - couldn't remember my password to get on (new laptop and tablet), thus proving that passwords are the bane of modern life

there is also an existential reason - for the last year or so i really just haven't cared or given a toss. have barely paid attention to the election, not really worked up about trump, even worse i have no idea who is the wwe any more.

(but regardless of my ennui for the political sphere - don't forget to go vote and don't forget to vote labour - you know it makes sense, well more sense than voting for the conservatives.)

about the only thing that excites me these days is the madness of the truth movement and the alternative news media - and trying to weave some sense in what they say (it is a fruitless task as their villains keep shifting and they don't really have a solution beyond slogans and harking back to a time that only existed in the fairy tales of their grand parents).

but with the possible, faint chance i admit, shock of a labour win and the fact that i have suddenly realised that we are in june already and the sum total of my achievements of this year can be summed up in managing to get some eye drops actually into my eye and not everywhere else on my face in an act of medical bukkake. while i may give a whoop and holler at such success in the great scheme of things it really is small beer.

so time to rouse myself and see if i can get this thing back on the road again. 

pants

times are hard.

bad times bad choices.

needs must.

do what you have to do to get by.

i get that. i really do.

quite a lot of us are suffering. prices soaring. wages, if you have them, are static. work, if you have it, is no longer as secure as it used to be.

quite a few of us feel powerless in this brave new world of populist austerity. politics no longer makes sense. machines are coming to take our jobs, while we are being told that work is what we need to keep us going. every day is another warning about what to do or eat if we don’t want to die a premature, and probably lonely painful, death. every day a new miracle fad of what to do or eat to keep us healthy and active for longer. celebrities moaning about the state of the world while living in the lap of luxury that the rest of us can only dream about. commentators changing their minds almost as frequently as economic forecasters change their predictions.

it is a strange and harsh world.

i get all of that.

i understand that every now and then we faced with a tough choice. or we just want to stick it to the man in a small, hope filled, gesture of defiance. sometimes this leads to petty theft.

i don’t condone it, but i understand the rationale behind it.

except sometimes i don’t.

this is one of those times.

there are times when all that will do is a bit of late night shopping, and there is only one place for that 24-hour asda, big box retail. now i have no axe to grind with asda (well i do have one – what has happened to your nice cheap 4xl t-shirts? why have you stopped them? why? and no i don’t mean the skinny fit 4xl – as i just don’t understand who needs a skinny fit 4xl – you wear cheap 4xl tees because you are like me a fat bastard – and you really don’t want to show that off. so, there is my one gripe at asda).

however, there are some of their customers i wish biblical plagues on.

one of the things i like to buy from asda is a cheap pack of pants: 5 for a fiver. nice simple pants. they do want i want them to do: cover my bits. sometimes you get 3 white pairs, sometimes you get 3 black pairs – but who really cares? when you are going for cheap and cheerful you are not too worried about the next time you might be lucky and have to drop your trews for a bit of hanky panky.

but. and there is always a but.

but mostly when i rock up at asda to get pants i am faced with the fact that some oik has come along and stolen a pair from a pack. and then stolen another pair from another pack, and lo the little tea leaf has taken yet another pair from yet another pack. in fact, if one pair has been stolen i can guarantee that every pack in my size has one missing. yes, dear reader i could make up a 5 pack – but that is the sort of sensible thing that as you are doing security comes along and you spend hours explaining and arguing.

i go back to my earlier statement of understanding that times are tough, but could you at least just steal from one pack? but no! even worse i have noticed that the theft can be colour coordinated – all the ones taken are of a colour. i can understand the hardship angle, but if you are going to be fashion conscious about it then you deserve to suffer. true it might be about fashion. perhaps you are all klanned up and you don’t want darkie colours near your crown jewels and you don’t want your nearest and dearest getting any ideas about trying a bit of black – just in case it is true: once tried you never go back. or maybe you are all black lives matter and you have decided that white is the way to go so you are sitting on the man, striking a political statement with your skidders in the face of tighty whitey establishment.

i really don’t know.

so asda pant thieves a plea – please just steal your pants from the same pack, allow those of us who are paying for our skimpies the thrill of finding a full pack. If you have to remain a wanker who steals a pair from each pack then you deserve to be struck down by constant vicious boils on your ball sacs and the tip of your ocock needs to seep pus every time you get the idea you want a little fun.

simple effective justice.

stairs

used to be a time when people knew how to use the stairs.
walk up one side, walk down the other.
ah happy times.

now people just charge up and down stairs higgledy piggledy wit no regards for others.happy to walk into you expecting you to move out of their way. the stairs becoming a mini version of death race.

at least those people are moving.
even worse are the ones who haven't quiet realised (or more likely just don't care) that the stairs are busy and so what better place to stop to check their phone or consult their maps. or linger while they wait for someone. oblivious of all the people having to shuffle around them. after all why worry about others.
i know it is busy and lots of people are trying to go up and down so why not sit down. i ask you who is that going to inconvenience? ignore the dirty looks i mean what is their problem?

oh why not just stop at the top or the bottom of the stairs, it is a good place to have a conversation, or check your pockets or just to have a look around.

ah for the gold old days when people just went up and down stairs.

brexit

for me there was always a sensible and practical reason why the country should have voted to stay in europe. a simple reason really, one that was above ideological, political and nationalistic concerns. a reason that has previous and current evidence to back it up – not the lies of the leavers or the scare tactics of the remainers. 

now i must declare that i was a remainer. i also must admit that i wasn’t for remain out of love of the european project, no sir i had long since lost patience with johnny foreigner. while i am a believer in big government there is a point at which you move the seat of power too far from those that are governed and it loses all sense of accountability. (one wonders if those who voted for nigel farage as an mep really think they got their money’s worth from him, or didn’t they realise that he was a money grabbing sponger on the public purse?) 

as a small digression when it comes to the tory plan to shrink parliament to save costs (and not at all to guarantee that they stay in power – that is just happenstance, lucky for them…) i am against that – in fact create more mps, that way we are all a little closer to our elected representative. with fewer constituents to count on they would have to work harder.

anyway, back to the meat and potatoes of this little piece. mrs. may is preparing to invoke article 50 and thus start the process of leaving the european union. loads of people are saying that this can’t happen – even though the result of the referendum was pretty cut – close but clear cut.

now i know that if the result had been the other way around we would have had that nice mr. farage bleating that it was too close and there should be a second referendum (and he would be calling for a third, a fourth until the result went his way – we’ll call it the scots technique. sadly, though nigel got his way and to show what a good leader he was promptly admitted lying and decided to bugger off leaving real politicians to pick up the mess he had created.

so yes, i was a remainer. yes, i want people to be aware of the lies that iain duncan smith and co spouted at the time. but i am not a remoaner. people spoke now it is the duty of parliament to follow through and do the democratic thing.

if only it were that simple. now some mps are telling us that they know better than the people – and perhaps they do (on this me and richard dawkins agree: we should never have been asked the question in the first place).  now it is too late to claim it was an advisory or that it didn’t really count. anything else is a dismissal of democracy as we know it – and frankly undermines the legitimacy of parliament – as from now on there is always a possibility that we can ask for it to be rerun until we get the result we want. 

but pat you said you were for staying. i was. now i am for doing what was voted for.

this brings me to my main reason for initially being against leaving europe. judging by past experience and how adroitly governments have avoided making decisions on projects such as heathrow – surely a must decide type deal that is about the national interest rather than party seats and yet every year it get kicked into the long grass because it might cause a bit of a ruction for the party in power. same sort of thing for hs2. let’s not even mention constant hot topics such as housing and the national health service. if as a government you are unable to deal with these issues and problems i don’t think you have much chance of negotiating a sensible, efficient and effective departure from europe. 

however, i was on the losing side. now i hope that mrs. may and co prove me wrong.

portent

and as if to show the fragile nature of recovery.
the knife edge of choice and outcome.
blogger and my computer conspired to make me go 'shit' as the previous post almost didn't load and hours (well not quite that long but there was some thought involved) of work lost.

all servicing as a useful reminder to write this shit up in a word processing package first. save it and then post it. secondly never trust your computer - it is there to fuck with your head and while it might do what you want 99.9% of the time that 0.1% is always the most important 0.1%

lesson learnt (for now). 

stuff

it would be fair to say that recently i have had a run of very bad luck - true much of it avoidable if i had been a bit more of a grown up rather than a fuckwit.
but hey ho.
hindsight is always 20/20.
bed made. lying in it. (or in my case: sprawled out on the floor - and no it is not because life is so desperate i am dossing on the floor. i just find sleeping on the floor more comfortable than beds, i know so spartan - so monkish).

unlike the song i have several more than a few regrets - but at least one of them is not being one of those arseholes who voted for brexit as a protest vote. oh look at us we'll give those posh tories a bit of a kicking in the polls. it's safe to do because who in their right mind is going to believe anything that iain duncan smith says?
who is going to believe nigel farage?
who is going to believer michael gove?
turns out just enough to make the world a stranger place.

then lo and behold the usa go and do the same. true their election was a choice between worse and worser - but to still choose the worst of the worst is pretty amazing.

still i thought 2017 is a new dawn, fresh start, clean page. a time to get my ducks in row, my bishops lined up and my artichokes in order.
a time to plan.
and plan i did.

unlike trump who has come out of the gate faster than usain bolt can lose a sprint relay medal, i have dillied and dallied, i dallied and i dillied.
while trump is changing the face of the world by a pen stroke or two the best i can manage is to make it into work, and even then in a very half hearted fashion.

strangely while i have a lot to rail against (and let's be honest what the world needs now is another barely coherent voice in the wilderness mumbling about how trump and may are cunts and the world is a mean place) i just can't work up the enthusiasm to moan, bitch and snipe about it. there is a horrid fatalistic acceptance. it is not just that the targets of anger are so far away (trump, farage et al) even the ones closer to home, the ones where i could possibly make a difference, where another voice, another argument may just be the tipping point that makes the breakthrough - even then i am all meh.

it is not quite giving up.
it is not quite acceptance.
it is sort of next door but one to those.
there used to be a time when i would think of witty one liners and crushing logical arguments to lay before readers of this blog (i never used them - i just thought of them), now it is all i can do to think about the blog itself to write in it is an effort too far.

what has spurred me back to this?
trust me when you have a semi sexual dream that involves donald trump and his award for the world's greatest cock gag then you know your sub conscious is trying to tell you something, and it doesn't matter that you may not fully understand the message just that you do something to change, something to reinvigorate, something to shake up the personal status quo.
scruff of the neck.
dust off.
socks up.
onwards and upwards.

so for better or worse i am trying to get back to here - if only to vent when i feel it is all getting too much, but hopefully there will be some considered pieces when i have strung a thought or two together.

fingers crossed that this is not another false dawn.