Andy's Glasses

That is the headline in Today’s Times magazine. Are men the new women? And what the fuck is that supposed to mean? That we lactate? Forget how to park the car? Say ‘no more naan bread for me, six is more than enough, and I’ll pass on another beer too’?? But they don’t exactly explain where the question comes from. Although the magazine edition is filled with how men can, dress ‘stylishly’, how they can diet like a motherfucker and how to ‘detox’, get fit, grow a six-pack and paint their sodding toe-nails. Its an instruction manual in metrosexuality. Otherwise known as ‘what to do if you haven’t come out of the closet yet’. They even have the great Zinedine Zidane modelling clothes. The man whose last act of note was head-butting Marco Materrazzi. He’s obviously not thick enough to become a football pundit. Or speaks too clearly.

Coincidentally, and just to stress how nothing is ever new, last night’s BBC4, Mel’s asleep on the sofa, offering was The New Romantics. And it was brilliant. Not the music, that was pretty much total shite, all synthesisers and drum machines with a couple of nobs wearing plumage and too much make-up lolling around mumbling in the background. But the concept. New Romantic. Wow. Though in fact it was more New Androgyny. Take a man, some yob, like Boy George perhaps, dress him as a woman, give him high heels, a stupid hairstyle, a bucketful of eye-liner and call him a ‘New Romantic’. Rather than ‘a tosser’ which you’d rather call him other than his boxing prowess. And it all started at Blitz in Covent Garden. The place where you could go and act like a transvestite.

Men like ‘Marylin’ and Steve Strange (in name, nature and dress), and George, ran the place and it was odd. A fancy dress party every night. For people who didn’t change back into regular clothes in the daytime. Spandau Ballet started there, Tears for Fears and a whole host of electro-synth rubbish un-musicians who craved stardom like an addict craves heroin or like I crave Cadburys. Even Midge Ure came all the way from Scotland, a rare bit of talent in a sea of preening, posing tone-deaf imbeciles.

So men acting as women is nothing new. Dressing as women. Been around years. But becoming the new women? Not for ‘this’ man. As I have to go and change my stockings due to a snag.

Happy gender confused Saturday

A xxxx

We’re having an election. In my country. To find a new government. In May. And we shall replace this current coalition with a proper government. Fit to rule over England. And possibly some of Scotland (for the time being), a bit of Wales and small pieces of Ireland. And as the general consensus is that all politicians are pants and that the only way to engage the massive number of young voters who really don’t give a shit about elections because they don’t happen on Facebook, is to hold a ‘televised debate’, in the hope that some people might watch it and become fascinated by our charismatic and powerful party leaders, (who????) that’s what we shall do.

Its an American concept. Its show-biz. Razzmatazz. You put a Republican candidate against a Democrat and you let them rip each other apart on live tv. Its good viewing, its gladiatorial and it works. Over there. In America.

Here we are ‘blessed’ with a more proper and pure form of democracy. Rather than the choice of two, coin-toss style of US politics. In the UK you don’t need to be a member of a mainstream political party to become prime minister. You can be represent the ‘Preserve the Hedgehogs’ party and if it has enough candidates in enough seats, in theory you can become prime minister and run the nation. We have Socialist Worker parties, clutching their little red Mao Tse Tung books. We have the BNP who can’t read but are great at making symbols that aren’t swastikas but kind’a look like they could be. We have the Monster Raving Loony party, who field hundreds of candidates every election. We have Wind Farm Alliance parties, we have Save the Whales parties, all kinds of poor, misguided nutters. We even have a Scottish Nationalist Party.

And thus David Cameron, so outspoken last election about how Gordon Brown ‘must’ engage in a televised pre-election debate, how it would be cowardly otherwise, what is Gordon afraid of, etc, etc, now this time seems to be wimping out. He doesn’t want a ‘main party leader debate’ like they had last time. Its arguable that the Lib-Dems are no longer a ‘main party’ despite being in co-government. So Dave’s solution is that rather than him and Milliband shouting it out limply before the entire nation, the debate should be ‘seven-cornered’, and have leaders from the Green Party and Plaid Cymru and all manner of everyone… except the Ulster Democrats. The Scots, the Welsh, even frikkin UKIP are in but the Northern Irish are out. And not on the most logical reason that no-one can understand a fucking word any of them say.

Because so many people live in a world in which nothing really exists unless its on tv, which is tragic but so true, televised debate would seem to be the way to go. Cameron reckons ‘there’s no time’. But actually, Dave, there’s plenty of time. Man up. Go on the telly with Ed. Show us what’cher made of.

Happy Friday

A xxxx

10 games to go.

Just 10. Or 11 if you’re Spurs. Chelsea too have 11 to play. As do Leicester. But if Leicester were given another 15 as well, they’d still end up bottom.

And now we have ‘predictions’. Ok, we’ve been having them all season. Chelsea ‘won the league’ back in November really. Then got hammered by Spurs on New Year’s Day but otherwise they’re pretty unstoppable. Yes, they could ‘slump’, they could ‘have a bad streak’, much like Jihadi John might become a nurse for a Christian charity. Unlikely.

In one prediction yesterday, based on loads of (meaningless) statistics, Chelsea indeed will end top, with Manchester City 2nd, Arsenal 3rd. And…

Liverpool 4th.

Its all about that hallowed ‘top 4 place’, entry to the Champions League, the path to glory, to riches, to Nirvana.

Aussie Johnno knows fuck all about football, but loads about statistics. So he produced a ‘prediction’ based not on feelings and emotions (as my predictions are) but on pure numbers, patterns, likelihoods. Because he’s like a Rain Man for the digital age. And he predicted the same top 3 but…

Manchester United 4th.

I made a prediction on what would be predicted. And that was wrong too. Because its all about assuming some kind of regularity, consistency, normality, and football just ain’t like that. Its very rare for results to run pretty much true to form, as happened last night. There were no surprises in 7 matches. All went with the odds. A good night for the bookies. And for the predictors.

I even predicted that Johnny Evans and Pappas Cisse would gob in each other’s faces. The grossest thing to happen in football since Suarez took his teeth to Spain.

So here is my very own prediction for the league. Based on many tests and methods of analysing variance, loaded for the sheer volume of unpredictability inherent in the nature of the game, taking into account possible injuries, people fainting on the pitch, attacks of diarrhoea and suspensions for under-age sex.

1. Spurs… 97 points (some may say impossible, I say: never limit your aspirations)
2. Liverpool… 84 points
3. Manchester City… 82 points
4. Southampton… just enough points to squeeze in
.
.
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18. Arsenal… 14 points (after deductions following a child abuse scandal in April)
19. Chelsea… 12 points (if only)
20. QPR… (sadly, nothing can save them)

(West Ham are banished to League 2 because of financial improprieties, never to return)

Happy Thursday

A xxxx

They showed this photo on the news last night. And I thought; ‘wow! a bird giving a… a something a lift; brilliant! Nature is so symbiotic and wonderful; ain’t life (other than cup finals) fabulous’. That’s what I thought. And it all happened in Essex. Which really should have at least made me question the ‘loveliness’ of it.

An amateur photographer happened to be in a park in Hornchurch (near Romford, the car theft centre of the world) and all it took was 1/250th of a second for him to achieve ever-lasting fame and the eyes of the world.

The bird, a green woodpecker, just like wot I get in my garden on my bird-feeder, for which I charge the birds a fee, has what turns out to be a weasel riding pillion. And weasels, like many in Essex, turn out to be not very nice. They are the smallest and most voracious carnivores on the planet. They eat their own body-weight in meat every 3 hours (I made that up), just like I did in Argentina. But they kill their meat themselves. Rather viciously. So this ‘friendly’ woodpecker is actually scared shitless which, according to the News, you can see if you look at its face. Yeah, right. The weasel had jumped on its back to kill it. Bastard weasels!!! And in a fit of reflex/panic/good thinking (??) the woodpecker just took off, with rodent still attached as sort of ‘carry-on luggage’.

Unlike the scorpion in the famous tale of stinging the turtle taking him across the river because ‘its his nature’, the hugging weasel here realised that killing the bird might give him some landing problems so he stopped the murdering process for the duration of the flight. Apparently the bird actually got away in the end and lived. Ahhhhhhhh.

Unlike Dave Mackay, who died on Monday.

The great Scotsman, and there are few who can carry that title, was one of Spurs most wonderful superstars. Not for him the glory of the strikers, though he scored plenty. Not for him the silky skills of a Hoddle or Ardiles, though skill he indeed had. Dave was a Hard Man. Perhaps the Hardest of them all. And an inspirational and fearless Captain who drove his teams on from the front, by example, by his fierce determination and presence. And a gentleman to the end.

Rest in Peace, Dave Mackay, who gave Spurs fans so much to be thankful for. When ‘we only won in black-and-white’, it was Dave who made it so.

Happy respectful Wednesday

A xxxx

We call them ‘the Elgin Marbles’, the Greeks, who don’t really count any more because they’re bankrupt, call them the Parthenon Sculptures. And they live in the British Museum where all worthwhile antiquities should live. The Queen’s moving there soon. But unlike the Queen, or even Tutankhamun, who was merely ‘on loan’, we (the people of England) actually own the Elgin Marbles.

And that’s where the problem lies. The Greeks want them back. They’ve always wanted them back.

The Marbles are a series of wonderful sculptures created by some Greek geezer in about 400BC. When Lord Elgin held the almost unbelievable title of: Ambassador Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of His Britannic Majesty to the Sublime Porte of Selim III, Sultan of Ottoman Empire; in 1800 he basically stole the statues from the Parthenon and the Acropolis and shipped them over to Britain. At a personal cost of about £70,000. Because the government of the day refused to fund it. In today’s money that’s about 19.7 squillion quid. Its a fortune and more. So we can assume that Elgin was not a poor man. Though to his credit, he sold them to the British Museum for the cost of excavation and transportation, turning down offers of far greater monies from other interested parties.

Elgin always maintained that he had licenses and contracts to remove the sculptures, the Greeks have always denied this to be the case.

So 200 years later they call in Mrs Clooney to sort the mess out. So we’re led to believe. In actual fact Amal Clooney is but ‘the junior’ on the case, as she’s working with 2 top QCs. Who barely get a mention because neither gets to shag Gorgeous George. That we know of. No, its HER case.

Which would be fine if the Greeks only had to pay for her services. But they don’t. They have the fees and costs of employing a top legal team, flying them over to Greece a few times and having them compile a 300 page legal report. I hate to imagine what that costs. Lawyers are expensive. They make hookers look cheap by comparison. Even though both are engaged in screwing people.

So now the Greek government are refusing to pay the costs. Nothing new there. The Greeks are big on debt refusal at the moment. Thus some cultural benefactor who still has a few drachma in his bank account has offered to pay them.

I’ve lived within 10 miles of the Elgin Marbles my whole life and have managed to avoid them. I think maybe its time to check them out, see what all the fuss is about, before they get repossessed. Though Ikea do some pretty good PVC statuettes for the garden, I’m told.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx

Now look… listen here… sit down and concentrate… try to follow… pay attention…

I want to talk about the nature of sport. The very essence of sportsmanship, of the fundamentals of games, the very basics of what constitutes right and wrong in the modern world. Because sport is a global phenomenon, like McDonalds; its a worldwide event, like dandruff. So it needs to be treated with care and consideration, lest it should give the wrong message to ‘the young’, to the ‘vulnerable’ or to ‘total bastards’.

The purpose of sport is to excel, to win, to claim victory, to vanquish the opponent, to reach the glory, to climb the…

Yeah, winning. But winning isn’t everything, as they say, though losing isn’t anything.

Yesterday afternoon a match was played between the forces of good and the powers of evil. The dark and the light. The good guys, dressed in white, befittingly, under-performed, squandered their chances, they basically failed. They failed themselves, their fans, their God. Or perhaps, just perhaps, it was all part of His will; His masterplan. Perhaps. Only eternity will tell. Or maybe it’ll just feel like eternity. The bad guys had the upper hand and exploited it with precision, with defiant purpose. The devil lives in the details. And he did yesterday.

The Irish won. 19-9. Poor England. Even should they win the 6 Nations there’ll be no grand slam for them in this Rugby World Cup year.

There was very little divine intervention at the Cricket World Cup yesterday either as England lost heavily to Sri-bloody-Lanka.

And in the final evidence that ‘God doesn’t interfere’ with life on Earth, He allowed His very own team to lose the League Cup final at Wembley to Satan’s warriors. Because suffering is what He does best. Jesus Christ suffered, we all have to fucking suffer. To be holy. And Spurs are thus very very holy.

All round a pretty bad day for Goodness and Light. A great day for Jihadi John Terry and Satan.

Let’s hope today is happier,

A xxxx

Spok’s dead.

He will live long and prosper no more. Leonard Nimoy the actor died yesterday and I am greatly saddened. Old actors die all the time, but this one actually ‘hurts’. The great thing is that dead actors live on forever in their work. And live on as young people too. No-one remembers what Barbara Stanwick looked like the year before she died, but they remember the smouldering blond in Double Indemnity, even though it was made in about 1955. Bogart was Bogart, always the same age. Its actually a mistake to act too late in life, then people remember you as ancient (Peter Fonda, Jane Fonda, Kim Kardashian) or remember all the ‘work’ you had done. Act young, become a director, die in old age forever remembered as 29. Brilliant.

Though Spok did make a cameo in the last Star Trek movie and we loved him all the more for it.

The original Star Treks were made in the 60s and I loved them. I wasn’t an official ‘trekky’ because I never bought stick-on ears or a Captain Kirk yellow sweater with integrated fat belly. I just lusted after Ohuru’s legs.

But it was always Spok’s show. He had the best lines, the biggest impact, the best knowledge, was the most nerdy, the most cool, the most dangerous (you don’t fuck with the Vulcan Death Grip!!!!) and the most complicated, trying to reconcile his cool logical, detached Vulcan half with his emotional, soppy, illogical Human side.

May his soul rest in peace. A lovely man. For all I know.

As opposed to George Galloway. Not a lovely man at all. Neither half of him. One half Scottish bastard, one half neo-jihadi scumbag.

A journalist tweeted that George is antisemitic. So George, rather than ignoring this slur which no-one would have ever heard about, is suing the journalist and everyone who re-tweeted the message. £5000 each. His retirement fund. If only the git would retire, I’d pay him myself.

George has always claimed that he is anti-Israel but not anti-semitic. A questionable stance even from those who don’t fraternise with radical Islamists. But George supports Hamas. Who are sworn to Israel’s destruction. And Israel is the only jewish state in the world. And George is not a great fan of the Jewish people generally. So I won’t say that George Galloway is anti-semitic, because he’ll sue me. So how about the far less contentious, George Galloway is a total C**T.

Is that acceptable, George??

Happy Saturday

A xxxx

So we left Arsene Wenger in a hole. Stuck in the middle of a story in the depressing bit, desperately searching for his happy ending. And we feel that unless he chooses to visit one of the fine ‘Oriental Massage’ establishments, of which there are many in the back streets around Tottenham, run by fat, moustachioed Turkish women, that happy ending he otherwise seeks will be unfound.

The statistics would not be very uplifting reading for Arsenal. The percentage of teams to get through a 2-leg match after losing the first at home 3-1 is a mere 2.5%. However, its not zero. It can be done. Be a fucking miracle, statistically speaking (statisticians always swear a lot) but there is a glimmer.

Those same (bastard) statisticians claim that if you draw the first leg 1-1 (conceding that ‘vital away goal’), your chance of progress is 24.7%. As Spurs showed last night. Never a team to buck a trend, they decided to concede easily to conserve energy for the Cup Final on Sunday. A good plan.

And the loss in Florence frees the very busy schedule up a bit, so we can concentrate on important matters. Now we’ll have more time, more energy, more rest, so we can hopefully finish 5th and get into the Europa League. There’s no irony that our only hope of getting into that tournament next year is to get out of it this year. No irony, perhaps, but a great degree of circularity.

Liverpool went out of the Europa too, as did, so they keep mentioning, as if we care or consider them kindred souls, Celtic. If a mere 37 extra Scotsmen had dragged themselves out of the pub to vote ‘Yes’ last year, Glasgow would no longer be part of ‘Britain’ and we wouldn’t have to watch their football results. Scotland would be an independent sovereign state with Kenny Dalgleish as King, Alex Salmond as Oliver Cromwell and Gordon Strachan as Princess Eugenie.

So Everton remain the sole English survivor in the Europa.

And fancy putting Spurs on at 6 o’clock. Stupid bloody time. Didn’t they know I had to go and see my pension guy? So he could tell me that I should be able to retire (in abject fucking poverty) when I’m 107. So we booked a cruise for 2063. Though they’re not sure there’ll be any water left in the world by then.

Happy Ending

A xxxx

I’m a reader. Never used to be. Then I read Leon Uris’ ‘Exodus’ when I was bored shitless in my first ever proper job aged about 23 and ‘my life changed forever’. I became bookish. Nerdy. I gave up drink, drugs, fast cars, loose women, football and cannibalism and dedicated myself to the words of others. And I still love books, some 35 years later. I read on the tube every day, I read in bed every night, because there are so many books out there and so little time.

I mainly read novels, because they’re wonderful escapism, but will also, at times, read non-fiction. The odd sporting autobiography, The Wolf of Wall Street, science type books. Chaos Theory. Relativity made very very simple. Fermat’s Last Theorem. Evolutionary biology. History of Science. I like it. But mainly its novels.

But now I’m going to give up reading. Because, apparently, there’s only 6 stories in the world and on the assumption that I’ve read about 10,000 books, I must have covered those 6 many times over so I don’t need to keep repeating myself.

A professor at Stanford, no less, has analysed 40,000 books using a computer (saved a bit of time, I reckon, cheating like that) and the results show just 6 storylines. Which is pretty much what Kurt Vonnegut, the author and lecturer had said to inspire the research.

He identified very few story types. In fact mainly two.

The computer plotted emotional content against time. And found two main options.

Graphs that looked like a valley. Emotionally happy at first, then a plummet (sudden poverty, lost love, someone dies, Chelsea win) and then up at the end to leave the reader on a high note filled with messages of positivity and luuuuurve. Niiiiiice. These he termed ‘man in a hole’.

The other main type was where the graph was the opposite. Raised in the middle and low at the edges- ‘man on a hill’. These start miserable, then get bright, breezy, rich, in love and happy in the middle only for everyone to contract ebola at the end or Manchester City win the league. Ahhhhhhhhh. Shame.

I wonder if Arsene Wenger is a man in a hole?

Happy whatever day this finally gets finished.

A xxxx

There’s trouble in Ulster. Nothing new there then. But this isn’t a new wave of ‘knee-capping’ or sectarian violence, not even marching Orange-men. This is all about a subject much closer to my own heart (in oh so many ways, Doctor); cake.

A bakery in the Province was commissioned to make a wedding cake for a gay marriage. The bakers, being Christians, refused. This lot don’t approve of those who turn the other cheek. “We’re a Christian bakery” they said in that Gerry Adams way of pronunciation: ‘beyerkerry’; we don’t believe in gay marriage. Fine.

Or not fine. If someone wanted a Christmas cake with Santa Claus on it, would they refuse because they don’t believe in Father Christmas?

But Santa is not divisive. Nor is he protected by anti-discrimination laws. So the bakery is being fined and refuses to pay, obviously, and is now being backed by the church in their fight against the sodomites. As they probably see it.

Legal marriage in Northern Ireland, according to their laws, states that ‘it is between a man and a woman’. Therefore anything else is NOT legal marriage, therefore they don’t have to bake a sodding cake praising it.

But the last time I looked Northern Ireland is still part of Great Britain. That the whole point of it being there and occupying space on the news. Southern Ireland is Ireland, the Republic thereof, and has nothing to do with us. The Northern bit unfortunately belongs to us and therefore, slightly devolved government aside, must be subject to our rules. Britannia rules the waves and the cake shops.

I don’t care about the cake, I’ll have mine and eat it too. But I do have a problem with homophobia because its only practised by really horrible people. Like Russia. Saudi Arabia. ISIS. Nasty fascist regimes. Not in Britain where we are tolerant and nice. Except Chelsea fans. And West Ham fans. Who are neither.

On Saturday evening Manchester City looked like they were the best football team in the entire world. Last night they were humiliated by Barcelona. Again. Good. Much as I like to see English teams fare well in Europe, that only really applies to Tottenham. Lionel Messi, caught at a casino just 2 nights before the match at a very late hour, seemed unaffected by his excesses. Other than missing a penalty. If that’s Messi ‘a little worse for wear’ I’ll have him any day. He’d love to come to Spurs.

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx