Andy's Glasses

If you google ‘google’, it comes up with ‘tax evading bastard billionaire world dominating monopolist scum with no social conscience or sense of civic responsibility’.

Well it should do. If it was honest. But Google’s not honest. And that’s the problem. What we should do in light of ‘tax-gate’ in which the tech-giant has condescended to pay £9.32 a week in tax on income of £785 zillion, is abandon Google. ‘Talk with our feet’. Stop using it.

But how can we? Its just impossible. Google is software heroin. Once you’ve used it you can never ever go back, never stop being a ‘user’, never revert to Yahoo or… another ‘search engine’. That’s what we used to call them; search engines. Now we don’t. We just say ‘google’. They have become the noun, the verb, the everything to do with any kind of required knowledge or information.If I need to know if I’m hungry, I google it. Taking a piss is different; I use satnav. Or sat-lav.

Meanwhile, there has emerged an issue so old, so anachronistic, so ‘done that been there’ that I didn’t even realise it was still an issue. They’re thinking of stopping teaching evolutionary theory in schools. Not because evolution has stopped. Well, maybe it has, we’ll know in another 50 thousand years. But because it might offend religious sensitivities. Whooooaaaaahhhhhh; we’ve done all that. Nineteen twenty-something, the famous (ish) Scopes trial in Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee; one of those southern states with too many repeated vowels (always a bad sign). The teacher, Mr Scopes, Science 101, was ‘on trial’ for teaching evolution in the bible belt so they had a show trial to try and establish whether the terrible crime of sacrilege had occurred. He was represented by Clarence Darrow, the greatest of all American trial lawyers, with the best hat. The wonderful stage play ‘Inherit the Wind’ tells the story.

Basically, Scopes tried to introduce Evolutionary Theory into science. As approved by all right-thinking, open-minded, tolerant, good people interested in giving children an ‘education’ worthy of the word. But the forces of evil, the religious zealots, the bible-bashers, the dogmatists, the biblical literalists, the KKK, probably the NRA, Donald Trump’s grandpa, the paedophiles and a host of others from the cast of the Dukes of Hazzard, resented science for daring to challenge the literal word of ‘God’.

“YOU CAN’T TEACH THAT SHIT!” they shouted. “GOD CREATED THE WORLD IN 6 DAYS AND PLACED IN IT EVERY SINGLE CREATURE WE SEE TODAY, AS THEY ARE RIGHT NOW!!! THE WORLD IS 1004 YEARS OLD, NOT A DAY MORE!!!”

“What about all them dinosaur bones then? Whass’at all abart?”
“Ahh, God put those there too”.
“Why?”
“Because he can do whatever he wants. He’s God, for God’s sake”
“How could you form a mountain range in 1000 years?”
“Don’t question the bible!! Motherfucker!!!!”

And now we’re there again. Maybe we shouldn’t teach the Theory of Gravity in case it offends the Floatationists. Or integral calculus, because it upsets everybody.

Here we go again.

Happy Friday

A xxxx

Well, not so much ‘life on hold’ as ‘blog on hold’. I’ve just run out of things to say. There’s nothing interesting happening in the world. No-one’s died for 4 days now. Syria’s at peace. The refugee crisis is over. The feminists are happy now. The anti-feminists have been told by the feminists that they’re happy too. Gender labeling has now been prohibited altogether. There hasn’t been a new planet discovered for over a week. Statistical analysis has been banned. No-one’s making films any more. And football is suspended until further notice. So what’s left for a whinger to whinge about?

Actually, you’ll be relieved to hear, the world is in fact still as full of shit as it was 3 days ago. But my time has suddenly become more precious. Maybe not ‘precious’ as such but in demand.

Because my colleague at work has pissed off and gone to Australia for a month. A fucking month. What an unbelievably kind boss he must have. An uber-mensch. Now I know what you’re thinking; that this isn’t Australia at all, but in fact a photo taken in Hong Kong. Maybe he got lost. Easy to do. You’re at Heathrow sipping coffee and see a queue of people getting on a plane and just assume its yours. Next thing instead of a week in Grand Canaria, you’re in North Korea and under arrest. We’ve all done it.

So whilst Robin’s away, I have to take up the ‘early shift’ slack. And that means that rather than enjoying my leisurely breakfast banana with the newspaper that always riles me up in some way shape or form, inspiring a flow of wordage to spew forth on my keyboard; now the banana gets eaten ‘elephant style’, just swallowed in one go as I rush out to the tube station. And fuck da newspaper.

And then, at work, we’re not just a ‘man down’ but we’re a ‘gay man down’. And that creates yet more issues. I’m a straight man; how can be everything to all people? Its impossible. How can I be ogling some killer babe’s legs whilst flirting shamelessly with the guy in the tutu? Its too difficult. Too many hats to wear at the same time. Some black felt and gangsterish, some more pink and fluffy ‘fascinatorish’.

I can’t. So something’s gotta give. Thus the blogging may be a touch erratic over the next weeks. Be patient. Or just piss off and read Caitlin Jenner’s. Or Jeremy Corbyn’s, John Terry’s or Kim Jong Un’s.

Happy something-day

A xxxx

I was just wondering whether there was, at Emirates Stadium yesterday, a more unpopular man anywhere in the world than Cesc Fabregas? Arsenal fans hate him because he left them. Chelsea fans hate him because they think him at least partly responsible for the Morinho fiasco earlier in the term.

So I make that 60,072 people all hating Cesc. And one (the ref) being ‘neutral’. One hopes.

And yet within 25 minutes of the kick-off, Cesc had a challenger for the ‘most hated one’ slot. In Arsene Wenger.

As football matches go, it was pretty fucking dreary. Yet it had one moment of spectacular silliness. In which Per Mertersacker, the ‘last man’ before the goalie, hacked down the wonderfully acrobatic Diego Costa to earn himself the inevitable and unquestionable red card. The game’s 18 minutes old and the Arse are down to 10 men.

So Arsene is faced with a problem. If a midfielder gets sent off you can maybe leave the remainder of the team as they are. But if a central defender goes off he simply has to be replaced. So someone’s gotta go off. But who? Personally I’d have taken off Ozil. But that’s because I don’t like Arsenal and he’s their best player. Wenger took off Olivier Giroud. The striker. The only striker, other than captain-for-the-day Theo Walcott. Who looks like a winger; plays like a winger, but is apparently ‘a striker’.

Giroud is big. He’s an ‘aerial threat’, a bit like a drone near the airport. He’s quite strong. For a Frenchman. So he can hold up play when necessary. And muscle his way round the box when required. Though not necessarily against the likes of John Terry or any other properly qualified thug.

Whereas Theo is… well, he’s faster than the Roadrunner. And he’s taller than… the Roadrunner. Just. And stronger than… (I don’t know how strong the Roadrunner is, so…) stronger than someone much weaker. A child. Someone with a muscle-wasting illness, that kind of thing. And that’s who’s left to lead the line. Though Spain won a World Cup, often without playing a ‘proper’ striker, so there is precedent. It just didn’t work yesterday. Even though Chelsea still don’t really play like Chelsea. And long may that last.

So the Arsenal fans turned on Wenger for removing Giroud. On twitter. In his face. Everywhere.

Man City struggling. Arsenal dropping. It looks like its between Spurs and Leicester for the league. Its 1961 all over again. If only.

Happy monday

A xxxx

Sometimes we overthink stuff. In fact, when it comes to football, we always overthink, overanalyse, over everything.

Manchester United haven’t scored a first half goal in their last 11 home games. And that hasn’t happened since… ever. Or, since before they started counting every kick, every tackle, every stumble, every everything. We know how many metres every player runs in every game. We know how many goals per game, per player, per km run, per 100 tackles, per-fectly irrelevant.

They haven’t scored a first half goal (at home) for 11 games. So what? They may have scored 27 second half goals in those games. Then no-one would complain, would moan, or boo, or even care. In fact it wouldn’t be mentioned. They’d be too worried about how many goals conceded per kg of pasta consumed by the team before each game.

Unfortunately for Manchester United though, they haven’t scored 27 second half goals in their home matches. They’ve only scored 28 all season, in 23 matches, and that’s not just shit; its depressing shit for their fans. And I couldn’t be happier about that if I was a Liverpool fan. There’s no law that states Manchester United have to win the league at least one year in every three. Nor one preventing them from playing really crappy, boring, useless, uncreative football. The only incredible thing is that they are currently 5th in the league.

Though fortunately, Spurs are 4th. And underneath us; there’s a GAP. I love a gap, even if its only 5 points but I like it. Like it a lot and wish it to grow. Because we all know the ‘mind the gap’ thing at Spurs, we know it all too well. But its comforting. For the time being.

And its there in part because of Dele Alli and his ‘goal of the season’ yesterday at Palace. What a goal, what a game, what a result. The world is at peace this morning and the sun is even shining. All because of Spurs.

Liverpool tried as hard as they could to avoid winning at Norwich yesterday but Norwich outdid them and managed to throw the game in the dying seconds. Don’t know what’s happening in that part of Scouserland, and as long as they’re below ‘the gap’, I don’t really care.

Chelsea at Arsenal today. Arsenal should win. But maybe they won’t. Maybe they’ll lose. Maybe they’re done for this season. Peaked too soon. Shot their load. And then, if Leicester slump too, and Manchester City get a few more injuries…

Perhaps too early to really ‘believe’ now, but its coming. Its really coming.

Come on Chelsea (3 words I’ve never written before and probably won’t ever again, so I may just repeat them:) come on Chelsea.

A xxxx

I like to think I cover the entire political spectrum in my personal life. I’m a socialist. Always have been, always will be. So I vote conservative. My values are truly, always, only liberal (small ‘l’) but could never ever vote Liberal (big ‘L’) because they’re hapless tossers and useless anti-semites. I’m a dictator at home, but only when my wife tells me to be so. And I’m a fascist on the roads. Sadly, without the military support I need to enforce my will and remove every speed camera in the land and dump them in the garden of the bastard who invented them. And I worked, many years ago, on a kibbutz, the only viable demonstration of actually working communism on a micro-scale. Where you’re valued only by the work you do and how you do it.

So I think that takes us from the ultra-violet to the infra-red of the political world.

And I still can’t understand Jeremy fucking Corbyn and his acolytes. Because they are hard left socialists/almost communists. And yet their ideal political models are the systems used in Russia and Iran. Mainly because Corbyn is an anti-democrat.

Never mind the deep involvement with the IRA, that in itself is bizarre. In a ‘why would any political party support terrorism and the inevitable resultant deaths of innocent people?’ kind of way. And their constant defence of ISIS and any kind of Islamic fundamentalism murderous insanity on the grounds that you reap what you sew and England and America did it when they invaded the middle east.

Which is further reasoning (in a ‘fucked up’ kind of way) for the New Left to hate America and, yes, England too. ‘IMPERIALISTS!!!’ they shout. Yeah, you wouldn’t want that when you can instead be like Russia, China or North Korea. That’s the aspiration. The dream. Ahhhhh, to be free of democracy, to be free of… errr… of human rights, of free speech, of normality.

Instead you gain the freedom to lock people up forever and if necessary, just kill them, the freedom to control the press, the courts (if you decide to keep them) and the freedom to instate secret police to ensure that everyone agrees with you or just ‘disappears’ (see ‘lock up and kill’ above).

You also get even more corruption than we have now. We get mps over-claiming on their Uber bill. Over there you get national sell-offs creating billionaires, oligarchs and exceptionally rich party leaders. Communist party leaders.

So please tell me how extending socialism to the left creates the worst kind of totalitarianism. And how that’s a good thing.

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

Have you ever bought any Polonium-210? Do they have it in Sainsburys? Will Ocado deliver it? Amazon, maybe?? No. Generally radioactive substances are not in common circulation. For fairly obvious reasons. And, like all radioactive stuff, they don’t exactly grow on trees. They have to be made. Created in labs. Polonium can in fact be processed, but the largest quantity ever made by this produced 9mg of the stuff from 37 tons of radium residues. What could be called ‘a poor yield’. And not really something you could do in a hotel room. Well, maybe if the room was on the ground floor near the car park. “I’m expecting a delivery today, will you have it sent to my room please”.

So we’ll establish that Polonium-210 is not readily available. You need to have it. And who is more likely to have some, ready prepared and pre-dissolved in acid (the only way to transport it)? A vicar? A traffic warden? A waiter on the staff of a west end hotel? A chambermaid (with or without requisite uniform)? Or a former (ish) KGB agent? Answers on a postcard…

Furthermore, Comrade Lugavoy, the KGB man, had flown in from Moscow that very morning. And it must be understood that Lugavoy, though doubtless deadly with a kalashnikov, a garrote-wire, ice-pick or blade, is something of a klutz. Because his hotel room was covered in radioactive residue. Not available in the mini-bar. So whilst preparing his poison of choice, Andrei splashed it all over the fucking place. Mel hates it when I splash shower gel all over the sink, can you imagine how she’d be with radioactive isotopes??

The trail then moves to the Milennium Hotel. And its an easy trail. By the very nature of radioactivity; its active. In the case of Polonium-210, it has a half-life of 138 days. Which means in that period, it loses half its potency. In the next 138 days it halves again, becoming a quarter the potency of the original. You following this? You should know it from year 9 physics, ya dipstick.

The teapot used for the victim’s tea set the geiger counter into a frenzy. As did the cup. And, later, Litvinenko’s body. And then, as would be expected by any murderer, thug, hit-man, traitor, no-goodnik or any other vile and evil creature; they went to the Emirates to watch Arsenal. Where the trail of radioactivity continued. And oddly, this trail ended only when Lugavoy left the country the following day. What a coincidence.

As a ‘whodunnit’ its not a very good one. As a ‘why-dunnit’, Litvinenko was basically a traitor to Russia and hated by them all. The only interesting bit is the ‘who-sanctioned-it’? And when it comes to such things, in fact to everything, there’s only one man for whom the buck stops. Vladimir Putin.

We should… we should… hit men on British soil!!!!… we should… British subjects (he’d acquired his citizenship just days before the event) murdered in broad daylight!!!… we should…

I don’t know. What should we do?

Happy Friday

A xxxx

Tina Fey had the easiest job in the world. Satirising Sarah Palin. Because Sarah Palin says the most ridiculous things, all Tina has to do to get loads of laughs is just repeat them. Sarah did all the work, back when she was running to be vice-president to John McCain in 2008, creating the easiest path for Barak Obama to win his first election.

“If God had not intended us to eat animals, how come he made ’em out of meat?” she stated. And its a good point. One with which I heartily agree.

“The only thing that stops a bad guy with a nuke is a good guy with a nuke”. Another statement that, whilst lacking subtlety (Sarah NEVER does subtle) is something that appeals not only to the gung-ho predominant spirit of middle American, but has a certain home truthism appeal to everyone except Jeremy Corbyn and Emily Thornbury (his new shadow defence secretary).

Sarah knew nothing about the economy. Not much about policy. Agreed with waterboarding. Loves guns. Shoots animals. For fun. And is more prone to malapropisms than was George W Bush (and that’s a very high bar).

Yet masses of Americans loved her. For her normality. For her hockey mumminess. For her ability to make a point they could immediately relate to and agree with, even if it was brutally unencumbered by any concession to political correctness or even common decency. She spoke her mind. What there is of it.

And like Nigel Farage and most of the far right, making outspoken soundbytes is an easy way to score points on a ‘gut reaction’ level’. That’s the success of the Daily Mail. To say things that most think but won’t say out loud. Things that don’t bear much scrutiny, aren’t in any way practical, but just ‘feel good’ on a very superficial level.

Sarah is now 120% behind Donald Trump. They are kindred spirits. Mind speakers. Joint believers that everything America ever does is right and good because America has done it. No other reason is required. A good nation can only do good. They’re not into objective validation. Not at all.

“People have a constitutional right to burn a Koran if they want to, but doing so is insensitive and an unnecessary provocation. Like building a mosque at Ground Zero”. Sometimes even Sarah gets it right.

Oddly, though I generally detest all hard-right people, I really like Sarah Palin. Probably just because she’s funny, but I kind of admire not only that some of what she says is indeed what we all think, but also because she makes no claims to be anything she isn’t.

But I just hate Donald Trump. He’s like the unfunny version with a stupid comb-over. All the spite and venom, none of the wit and humour. You can relate to her; not to him.

Happy Thursday, after a magical win for Spurs last night. Shame we didn’t get 3 points for it, but that’s the magic of the FA Cup.

A xxxx

What do you do in your spare time? Do you have any spare time?

Because there’s a lovely picture in the paper of Arsenal player, Jack Wilshere, doing visits at Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital. Ahhhh. But Jack has lots of spare time. Nothing but spare time. He’s almost retired from football now, having not played since… well, long time. And I don’t know what the going rate is, pay-wise, for a chain-smoking, tattooed, night-club loving, permanently-injured midfielder, currently, but I reckon its gotta be 50 to 80 grand a week. So well done Jack.

Whereas West Ham star striker Diafra Sakho prefers going out in his spare time, driving round in his £200,000 Lamborghini Hurrican, and visiting fans. Rather unconventionally maybe, but the wall he smashed through in his supercar (apparently writing it off) belonged to a family of West Ham fans, who were (almost) thrilled that of all the garden walls, and cars in driveways (that got rather damaged too) in the country, Sakho chose to destroy theirs. What an honour.

Who said ‘there’s too much money in football’? Come on. Own up, who said it???

The second music star to die in 7 days. The third serious ‘celeb’ to engage in bucket kickage occurred when Glen Frey died yesterday. The man (co-)wrote ‘Hotel California’. You can’t be more brilliant than that. And he invented The Eagles himself. Created them, kept them together through the drink, drugs and women years, brought them back again after the inevitable ego/power/artistic difference/royalty wrangle break ups and was, by all accounts (that’d be Don Henley then) was the driving force behind the band. Great singer, wonderful guitarist, brilliant songwriter, what a fucking loss that is. And only 67. He didn’t even wait the extra 2 years to be the third in the ’69 Club’ with Bowie and Alan Rickman.

There again; he was always his own man.

Gambling corruption in tennis? Whatever next? Cricket??? Oh, done that already. Football? Been there. Athletics? Rife with it. Snooker? Pretty much every tournament.

I’ll come clean. In 2003 I played a tennis match against me mate Gersh and I threw the first set. Just like that. Threw it. A far eastern syndicate (Mr Chan from the take-away down the road) had bet a fiver with his mum on me to lose it and he gave me £1.24 to do so. Well, an extra portion of special fried rice. Which was never really that special anyway. Such is the constant pressure on us sports stars.

RIP Don Henley. You can check out any time you like; but you can never leave.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx

Every time I go on holiday I return with a suntan, peeling skin on my legs, a bottle of some ‘local’ variety of rum/vodka/whisky, a sombrero (not after the Scotland trip, granted, bought a sporran, kept falling off me head) fifteen boxes of the locally grown tea/coffee/herbal shit/whatever that will never be consumed in the UK and will be summarily dumped, unopened 15 months later… and a beard.

I don’t understand it either. I do nothing and it just grows. As if by magic.

Maybe it has something to do with not shaving. You do da maff.

But shaving is a chore. Therefore, in holiday mode, I try and avoid the normal, certainly the mundane, the trivial, the unnecessary. So I don’t shave. Neither does Mel. Who never notices that I’ve grown a beard. Today’s ‘shadow’ is tomorrow’s stubble is the week hence’s beard. It sneaks up on her. Or maybe, familiarity just does breed contempt. And if nothing else, I have always been worthy of contempt.

Then back home, the first visit from the daughters, or ‘the beard police’ as they’re collectively known, brings a hail of ‘eeeuuwww, get rid of that beard. Its horrible. Its yeuchy. Makes you look old!!!’ They know precisely which buttons to push, my gels, bless ’em.

So I thought, oh well, I’ll shave it off. Then I opened the paper today. And realised that my beard could save my life!!!

Ok, overstating a touch, as ya do, but really it was there in black, white and wishful thinking. An article by a doctor, no less. And apparently they were examining beards in a lab, pretty much so they could slag them off as ‘dirty, unhygienic things’ like the guy in Roald Dahl’s ‘The Twits’. Full of rubbish, old food, snot, pollution, coke cans, old car tyres, broken fridges, all the usual. But what they found was that in among the multitude of bacteria contained in the beard (same as on an unbearded face, so don’t get smug, Ladies) there were indeed other, more beardy bacteria too. But they were good. They were healthy. They were even natural anti-biotics. Could fight infection. Save my life.

So the beard is staying. Even though its more ‘old rabbi’ than young hipster, I don’t care. If God had intended man to shave, he wouldn’t have set the price of razor blades so ridiculously high.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

There are very few teams that Arsenal can’t beat on their day. But one of them is Stoke. On pretty much any day. So for that reason alone, I like Stoke. Not the place; I’ve been there, its horrible. But the football team. Mark Hughes’ boys. Stoke City FC.

They’ve always been seen as a sluggish team of thugs, louts and overly physical leg-breakers. And quite often this view has been pretty much spot on. Its what they were. Particularly under Pulis. When, one sunny afternoon, Ryan Shawcross did in fact break Aaron Ramsey’s leg. It was a fair tackle. For Stoke. Anywhere else it was common assault.

The defining Stoke players, for me, other than Shawcross, were (both have left now) Robert Huth and Charlie Adam. Both good, solid players, both born without the filter that helps with certain decisions of a physical nature. Both prepared to do anything to get to the ball first, or ensure that if they don’t, the person who does ain’t goin’ nowhere with it. Both great exponents of the backarm smash. Like the old forearm smash in wrestling, but done with the leading arm going backwards; away from the referee. Into the head, chest, groin of the man they’re marking.

And Arsenal, who always favour fast, light, agile players, could never answer Stoke’s brutal physicality. So instead they moaned (well; Wenger moaned) that ‘this is not football; its more like rugby’ on one instance.

But Under Sparky Stoke have not so much changed as evolved. A little. Though still closer to Neanderthals than Homo Sapiens on many levels, the manager has introduced players who are actually footballers rather than cage fighters. Just a few. A scattering.

But its enough. They now play football. And they play it well. With Bojan, the ex-Barcelona player running midfield and the threatening Arnautovich up front, Stoke now play a faster game, more of a passing game, more of… an Arsenal game.

So yesterday’s meeting of the two was not the usual man versus beast struggle, the pretty little Luke Skywalkers against the might of the Stormtroopers; no this was two teams with converging styles. With Stoke inevitably a bit stronger, a bit slower, a bit more violent. And for a nil-nil draw, it was good to watch. Best of all was the feeling that Arsenal remained throughout the entire match, rather uncomfortable.

Shame Man United beat Liverpool and closed the gap on Spurs, but that’s life.

Happy Monday

A xxxx