Andy's Glasses

I’m sleeping badly. Wake up with that NNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOO… thought in my head, which is aching. I’m listless, a bit shaky, disorientated, flustered, nervous, irritable. The world is a little off-axis. And there’s no cure.

Well, not until Saturday.

It always happens when there’s no ‘proper’ football. No Premiership football. Just poxy internationals. They’re not the same. They’re emphatically different. Even when I can bathe in the reflected glory of Andros Townsend’s new role as ‘national hero’, its just not right. Its lacking.

Oh, you say, that’s really childish and superficial and immature, to be so obsessed with a stupid game whilst the world is in crisis.

Well you can just fuck off. It may be a stupid game but its my stupid game and it needs to be played so I can enjoy or endure, so I can reach the highs of victory, the lows of defeat, the energy, the passion, the rivalry, the glory, and all the sweets I get to eat during games.

Internationals don’t do it for me. They used to. Then they let John Terry play for England when really he should have been the captain of Scumland, and it all went away.

I can get snippets of pleasure. A great goal, a fab performance by a Spurs player (for any country) or a nasty, horrid comment by Wojciech Szczesny, the Arsenal goalie who, when he represents (the absolute worst of) Poland and makes horrible anti-English comments, I’m actually allowed, on a national scale, to hate publicly.

Last weekend was hell.

I watched some amazing rugby, but it left me hollow. I turned on the NFL, in sheer desperation of needing to watch team sports involving balls, even weird shaped ones, I played tennis (right shaped balls, wrong size, insufficient player numbers). I even listened at one point to the Formula 1 on the radio. But its really not a great radio event. Sounds like this: VRRROOOOOOOMMMM… NEEEEYYYAAAAAAAAAHHHHH… really exciting. “AND VETTEL’S GONE ROUND THAT BEND… AND SO HAS HAMILTON…” They have to shout over all the vrooms.

So I read my book instead. Not so easy when you’re driving to the shops, I grant you, but on straight roads…

And the new Stephen King book eased my pain a little. Took me to another place temporarily. Ok, its a place with ghosts and ghouls and torture and horror, which in fact reminds me of Polish goalkeepers. And I think Spurs fans relate well to horror, because that’s generally what we get down The Lane. Horror. Well, we did last time we played there.

Much like Arsenal fans do well with terrorists and other types of evil people. Like Litvinenko’s murderer, who’d visited the Emirates and left traces of his radioactive isotopes for the other fans to enjoy. Osama bin Laden was a Gooner.

Whereas Chelsea fans eat babies. Commonly known fact.

So now we just have a few more days to wait. Just a few.

England play tonight and I wish I could get excited but it just won’t come. I’m internationally impotent. So I shall, instead of watching the game, go to Tai Chi and hit some people really hard with big sticks.

One takes pleasure where one can.

Happy tuesday

A xxxx

Twerking, in case you were wondering, is a form of artistic expression. Female artistic expression generally but I don’t think its one of those gender exclusive things like throwing a ball or parking a car or ironing a shirt or having a greater than 1 in 250 chance of chairing a Footsie 100 company. But as it involves the jiggling, gyrating, rotating, thrusting and wiggling of buttocks its generally not something most men are properly equipped for. Though we often have a family twerk after dinner on friday nights, in the kitchen. Just the family, maybe a couple of friends, and my dad comes over too so he’ll have a go too. Even though he’s 88 and retwired years ago. A twerkers collective.

Anyone can do it. Not just Miley fucking Cirus. Nor Rhianna.

And we don’t mind twerking. The Goddess Beyonce has been doing it for years and other than dribbling over the tv, its caused very little social unrest or civil wars. Its dancing. What’s the problem? Why all the fuss??

Because Annie Lennox, frosty Scottish tart with a voice like an angel, (playing with my heart; di do di do di do di dooooo diiiii dooo…) has criticised Miley for being a poor role model for her (Annie’s) children. She’s worried her 7 year old will start twerking up against little Billy Bashful’s groin in Quiet Time and have to sit in the Naughty Corner. Or the Twerky Corner, as its now referred.

But that’s because Annie was probably raised in that fiercely protestant Scottish Presbyterian manner which inhibited things like twerking. And smiling. And decent goalkeeping. Whereas now children aren’t raised by the church, they’re raised by tv. Worse in America than here. And the Disney channel has much to answer for.

Its called Britney Syndrome. In which a teeny star renowned for being cutesy and sacchariney and bunchy-haired and killer-smiley by aaaallllllll of America, reaches 16 and turns into a drug-crazed whore. Overnight. There is no cure. Even shaving their head can’t help the afflicted. One day its the Mickey Mouse Club the next its Hit me Baby one more Ti-ime. And the Toxic video in which she simulates shagging everyone on a flight. Great video. Sorry, disgraceful video.

From sweet starlet to sleazy harlot. The metamorphosis is complete.

Miley was Hannah Montana. A really sweet (sickening) little girl, feisty (precocious) and ‘smart’ (gobby). People loved her. Others wanted to wipe that perpetual grin off…

Anyway. Hannah was sweet, they’re all fucking sweet, and sang songs with her daddy and it was yet another American dream. Then she reached 18 and decided it was time to start sticking her ass out at every opportunity. Who can blame her? Its something all of us have wanted to do, Miley was just being honest with herself. Her twerky self. Oh, and taking her clothes off all the time as well.

Some call it pornography (that’d be Annie Lennox) others call it ‘empowerment’ and ‘control of their own bodies’ (that’d be the record companies desperate to sell more vinyl/downloads/cds, to which end any publicity is good publicity.)

To re-write an old joke just for Annie; (MUST be read in a scottish accent): what’s the difference between MTV and Walt Disney? MTV make pornographic videos and Walt Disney.

Happy twerking day

A xxxx

My body’s a temple. And by all rights should actually look like one. Squat, solid, hefty, round and bulbous. But it doesn’t. I look like a god. Or a dog. Or any anagram of those three letters. By virtue of fortuitous genes, a high metabolism or both. Or that the medical profession are a lying bunch of delusional scare-mongering pseudo-nutritionist tossers intent on depriving humanity of one of its very few true pleasures: food. Or, more precisely (of this week’s special health-scare offer): sugar.

Some Aussie (how fucking typical is that, then?) has written a book saying that sugar will kill ya. Yeah, if you hit someone over the head with a bag of it, sure. But he’s saying it’ll kill you by eating it. And if not exactly kill you outright, will ruin your life, adversely affect your children’s health, wellbeing, education, blah, blah, blah, and leave everyone fat slow and lethargic. As if that’s a bad thing. What better state for a generation intent on never looking any farther than the nearest screen (usually held in the hand for easy access and viewing) than to be rendered immobile. Keeps them focussed. Stops them wriggling round.

My first thought, when hearing of this heresy, and being a spiritual and G-d-fearing type, was ‘well, He wouldn’t have created sugar if it was bad for us, would He???’

Then I learned that He in fact didn’t. It was created in the 1970s by some farmers in Iowa or Kentucky or somewhere flat, cornish and so deadly boring that they have to invent stuff all the time just to keep from falling asleep. So they invented fructose syrup, from maize. God did the other one, glucose. But we love fructose because they put it in everything and we’re all addicted to it.

But the Aussie (bastard)’s point is not that we heap sugar in our tea (“yeah, 5 sugars in mine, ta very much”) or eat sugar in known things, like… er… sugar and cakes and sweets, but that this evil substance is in everything in vast quantities. Breakfast cereals are loaded with it, ketchup is full of it, salad dressings, bagels (of all things), and lots of stuff we regularly eat unaware that its massively laden with fructose.

And fructose is bad. Aussie Boy said so. Did lots of study and probably used lots of statistics to ‘prove’ that sugar is everywhere and very bad. Except in his house where there is absolutely none. So don’t bother going round there for tea.

You can prove anything with statistics. Well, you can 93% of the time. I’ve dabbled in the dark art of mathematical manipulation myself on occasion. The Andy Formula.

Football team supported x birthweight in kg x number of siblings called Mary/ proximity to Arsenal Football ground + (alchohol units consumed per week)squared = The bastard factor.

Anyway. We can’t eat fats any more. Well, poly-saturated unsaturated ones are ok, unsaturated-poly-saturated ones will kill you dead. So best be safe. And if they take away sugar as well then McDonalds will have nothing left to sell but salt.

You should do what I do and follow the Cadbury’s diet. It works. All the chocolate you can cram into your face every day and you’ll lead a healthy, happy life.

They’ll be telling us soon that exercise is bad for us. Or smoking, cocaine, crystal meth. Trust me, they know nothing but just make it up as they go along.

Slap a doctor today,

happy very very wet Sunday

A xxxx

“and now here is the weather, sponsored by Anne Summers…”

How can you sponsor the weather? What; do you arrange raindrops to land with ‘E-on’ logos on them, or shaped like Kellogs products? Wind that smells of Cadbury’s chocolate (ahhhh, if only), sunshine by RayBan.

Oh, they mean the weather ‘report’ that’s sponsored, oh, that’s different.

Though untrustworthy.

Because outside interests are at hand. The weather reporting is thus less reliable because those sponsors want their payback. Which is why bastard energy providers like E-on sponsor it. “There will be strong winds in Beckenham with temperatures dropping to…” The residents are already up, out the room and hiking the thermostat to ‘greenhouse, suffocation’ levels, like Mel does. Spewing extra heat out through the rafters to destroy the local trees and wildlife whilst condemning the ozone layer to more depletion as the power houses throw an extra lump of coal in the furnace and their accountants start looking through the new Jaguar brochures.

The BBC don’t have sponsored weather. They have real, old-fashioned, proper weather. Pre-war weather. Pea-soupers and ‘a bit icy for Mr Milkman in the morrow’ kind of weather. And I like it. I trust it. Independent weather. None of this ‘dildo-shaped’ sleet from Auntie Beeb. Just weather, like it is, like it will be. Which is why I always watch the news and weather on BBC.

Except last night. Due to unforeseen circumstances (a football match; Andros Townsend is the new God; all previous England number 7s to be wiped from memory as historical irrelevances) I watched the news on ITV. And the weather. Which said about Saturday morning: shit, wet, rain, total rubbish, no fucking tennis, black cloud, storms, rain and more rain.

Oh no, I thought, bummer.

Then I checked on the BBC website and its said: rain stopping by 7, brighter, bit cloudy.

This morning was wonderful. Sunny, bright and perfect for tennis.

So bollocks to the sponsors.

Meanwhile, great news for all men. Its here, what we’ve been waiting for all our lives. Man make-up. Brilliant. Surely we’ve had that before? Zero to total bankruptcy in 22 days. Rubbish idea.

Ahhh, but this is special, this is different, this is…

by Tom Ford!!!!

Wow.

Its not just the actual make up we don’t need, its more another process we can do without. Make up takes time. Trust me on that. Application of all that shit, slapping it on with a trowel, painting it all orange, it takes fucking ages. Ahhhh but this is different. This is Tom Ford. Its subtle. A discrete ‘cover-up’, moisturising lip balm, delicate eye shadow.

They’ve basically decided that although men need make up like women need more knuckle-dusters, its an untapped market. Which, if it can be created, will be worth trillions. So wheel in Tommy F, the straight-man’s gay man, and make it sound not only ‘must have’ but a bit butch.

I’m sorry, unless its in green and brown and used for the invasion of middle-east countries, make up on men is strictly for drag queens and new Romantics (if there’s a difference).

Happy cynical Caturday

A xxxx

Stephen King changed my life.

Though not necessarily in a good way. Depends what you mean by ‘good’ I suppose. If you mean scared of the dark, frightened of shadows, alarmed by noises at the windows, wetting the bed and freaking out when you hear the words ‘Here’s Johnny!!’, then its good. Otherwise, ‘paranoid neurotic’ may be a better expression to choose.

And yet… and yet… I am his biggest fan. Not like the woman in Misery was that character’s biggest fan. No. Not in a psychotic, murderous way, just in more of a, kind of, ‘I like his books’ sort of way. In a more Shawshank kind of a way, less of a Carrie.

Me mate Dom threw a book at me a  hundred years ago when I had nought to read. It was Firestarter by The King. And it rocked. And rolled. It made a shit film (in common with many big screen adaptations of his work) but was in fact quite brilliant. So I read more. And on, and on. And now, 30-some years later, he’s still writing ’em and I’m still readin’ ’em.

There’s very few authors that I’ll download onto my Kindle ‘in hardback’. The Kindle’s back is always hard. Until you drop it in the bath. That softened it for Mel. Or onto the platform at Farringdon station; wasn’t so hard then either. But downloading ‘hardbacks’ is folly. Its stupid. Its the same words, the same everything as when you download it once the paperback version arrives, but twice the price. Though much earlier, and for Stephen King, I don’t wait. Damn the expense. The extra £4.27p is worth it. I’ll eat less for a month.

After his early horror books, they changed. They kept their slightly psychic edge, their sometime supernaturally, paranormally unusualness but they lost the horror. When I read ‘Salem’s’ Lot’ I was a fucking wreck. But ‘vampires scratching their fingernails across a balconyless window 60 feet above’ ground will do that to a man. When Mel read Pet Semetery she spent three weeks in morbid fear of resurrected bunny rabbits. And although The Shining is widely accepted as a great movie, it was a way better book. The great man himself hated that movie because the characters lost all their warmth going from the page to the screen via Stanley Kubrick’s mind. Though most of the characters were ghosts, ghouls and undead anyway so ‘warm’ may be a slightly inappropriate adjective.

So when people hear ‘Stephen King’ they think horror and death, zombies and rabid dogs. Even though the aforementioned Shawshank and the wonderful Stand by Me (written as ‘The Body’) were not in that genre at all and are universally loved and highly rated, but mainly due to their movies.

Now the man has written a sequel to The Shining. Called Doctor Sleep. And its not only fantastic but its a return to the real chilly stuff. The stuff of nightmare stuff. And I’m reading it and its a little whoooooo and a touch wheeeey and is filled with such evil that a trip to Stamford Bridge would currently feel like a pleasant afternoon at a football match. But only in comparison to being eaten alive by monsters.

So have a good friday,

and DON’T TURN THE LIGHTS OUT!!!!

A xxxx

yeah, but will it win any football matches?

I suppose it depends what you consider as ‘English’.

Jack Wilshire, little English Bulldog, terrier-type Arsenal (so we should check for rabies) philosopher, summed it up rather succinctly when he stated that ‘only English people is English and to play for England ya gorra be English. Innit.’ Or words to that effect.

And he implied that only those born within this sceptered isle should be available for selection to the England football team.

Which is never really what this country is all about. We are multi-cultural, we have immigrants from everywhere, we have a rich and varied cultural blend and thus a team full of Johnny Cockneys would not really adequately represent this nation.

Personally, I don’t care where players were born, in terms of availability for England selection but more where they live now. Is someone from Yorkshire really English? From Chester? Norwich??? From Berkshire?? Is that even IN England?

So Adnan Januzaj (who no-one had ever heard of before he played on Saturday and scored 2 goals for Manchester United) is apparently eligible to play for my country. He was born in Kosovo, has Turkish-Albanian parents and the only two words he can speak in English are ‘Range’ and ‘Rover’.

But let’s look at it from a different perspective. If you need an extension building on your house, who do you call? Billy Bricklayer from Dagenham who’ll turn up three weeks late, then go off on his holidays, take 14 tea breaks a day and leave you with a pile of rubble after the works have all collapsed? Or Petr the Pole who is industrious, hard-working and does a top quality job for half the price?

If players are good we should not burden ourselves unnecessarily on minor details and technicalities. In case no-one had noticed, the England football team ain’t that bloody good.

The rugby team worked this out years ago. Which is why half the British Lions tour team which was so successful in Australia are from South Africa, Samoa and Fiji. Not that anyone would doubt the Englishness of Manu Tuilagi. Not to his face, anyway.

Our cricket team, so brilliant in the Ashes tests, is also prepared to stretch borders to increase the potential player pool. So why not football?

We should consult Tommy Robinson. The ex-head of the English Defence League. Not the one who sang ‘glad to be gay’. Or maybe its the same one? Who knows?? Anyway, Tommy has resigned his ‘prestigious’ post as top nazi in the land because of his former organisation’s ‘tendency towards right wing violence’. Like, Doh. A bit like Hitler resigning as German chancellor because it was a bit too Aryan. But Tommy had views about who is English and who is not and, now he’s left that group of vile thugs, should be consulted.

Lionel Messi should be kept prisoner here for 5 years. Then he could play for us.

You have to think outside the box. Rather than diving into it like a dying fucking swan.

Happy thursday

A xxxx

Now here’s an interesting thing.

If you go to http://andysglasses.com/ and scroll down to the bottom there’s a ‘subscribe’ thingy. And if you put your email address in there you get a notification when new blogs are posted. So you, er, won’t miss anything, errr, like, errr, really important.

Its so easy. A child of 5 could do it.

Don’t have a child of 5?

Go to vicar@catholic.org and he’ll probably have a spare.

Happy wednesday night. Even though there’s no football

A xxxx

That’s it, finished, over, done and dusted, the end of the line, been and gone, no more tomorrows.

Because this is the last of my daily emails you’re ever going to receive. I’m done, I’m over it, I’m moving on.

But don’t fret, don’t panic, stop your sobbing, put the razor down, life WILL still be worth living, I promise you. (Unless you’re a Sunderland fan, in which case, go for it.)

I’m going national.

No, international.

Viral.

Supersonic.

I have a blog site. An official site just so I can rant at the world. As I do. So rather than your daily post, instead you’ll go to http://andysglasses.com/ and there it will be. Just like before but with pretty pictures. Ok, pictures of me, so not so pretty but pretty damned gorgeous anyway.

And the first 50 people to log on get…

absolutely fuck all. As do the next 50 and the 250 after them.

The 351st will probably get a virus that’ll eat away their hard drive or their testicles.

But by doing it this way I can get rich. Really really really rich. Through advertising. Its easy. Once I have 28 million followers they’ll be lining up to post their ads. I’ve already been asked about the potential demographic of my readers.

‘Losers’, was the answer I gave. Whereas we really want ABC 1s, what I can offer is XYZ 23s. So I’m hoping for a lot of interest from companies making anti-depressants and viagra, self-help agencies, personality improvement therapists, personality acquisition therapists, gender reassignment companies, debt management, weightwatchers, Scientologists, incontinence pants, ugly pills, breath fresheners, The Moonies, tv-dinners and athlete’s foot powder. For Arsenal fans, sadly, there is no cure.

And you can help. In fact you must help. This is what you do. Tell a friend to visit my site. Oh, surely you must have ONE? Ok, then tell someone on the bus to work, tell the woman in the soup kitchen, tell the clerk in the bank, tell your cosmetic surgeon, tell the telesales person from Bombay that he must log on, RRRIIIIIIIIGHGHTT?

Send the link to your pals, your football team, your auntie in Bolivia, cousin in Luton, anyone who you think might appreciate a morning’s worth of abuse, insult and insanity.

Don’t over-sell it. Just tell them you can offer a portal that will change their lives FOREVER!!!

I can’t make the world a happier place all by myself, I need the population of China to help me. So we’re working a translation facility. Though spelling ‘muthafucka’ in Chinese is causing minor problems. And there’s no word in Xosa for ‘holding midfielder’, but we’ll get by.

And don’t just go and read and piss off again, as if you have anything better to do. Leave comments, send tweets, facebook your, er, faces, do everything possible to make my life better than might otherwise be.

So farewell to ‘the old way’ and bring on the new. Tomorrow is the first day of the rest of your life.

Happy wednesday

http://andysglasses.com/

xxxx

You know the phrase ‘an accident waiting to happen’ (which Mel often uses in what is quite frankly a cruel reference to my at times slightly clumsy side, though admittedly she is often the recipient of such klutzy events and bears many a scar), anyway, Lauren Booth was a ‘Muslim waiting to happen’.

Lauren is the sister of Cherie, who is the wife of Tony Blair. Ohhhh, Lauren Booth.

She was divorced from her old hubby and wanted a new one. A muslim one. I have no idea why either, but I’m not a religious person. And if I was I’d probably use my own rather than go looking for someone else’s. But that’s just me.

She in fact advertised for the ‘role’ and in time found her man. Ok, he was married with 3 kids at the time but heh, this is about religious fervour, this is the ‘will of God’, and will not be denied. Not for mere decency or morality.

She immediately took to wearing a headscarf, which, if you’ll forgive me, always looks rather odd on Caucasians, but there ya go.

And now her daughters from her first marriage wear the hijab too. And its all about comfort.

Her girls were ‘uncomfortable’ with 10 year-old schoolgirl talk of boys and pop idols and relationships and dildos and group sex with animals and the usual pre-teeny stuff, so now attend a muslim school, wear a scarf and are thus protected from such discomfort. The scarf presumably works like some kind of holy filter on conversations. The question as to whether it might be acceptable for little girls to ‘lurve’ Ryan Gosling and Harry Styles and David Cassidy and me is not relevant. So stick on a headscarf and achieve instant comfort.

Brilliant.

But what about the Muslim clerics (18 of them thus far) who agreed to marry 14 year old girls to much older men even in what can only be described as ‘forced marriages’? How ‘bout them? Does Lauren reckon that might make those children more comfortable too?

Or how about the great new law just passed in Iran which now allows children to marry their step-fathers. How’s that on the comfort scale??

It is argued that rather than a sign of oppression, the scarves and veils are actually about freedom, about feminism.

Feminism my nob!

But who needs all that shit. When you can go to Wales.

What a fantastic place Wales is. See the pic. Wales is all like that. Just brilliant. So now I no longer have to ask the question ‘what is Wales for?’ because I know. Its not just a place to provide singers and rugby players and third rate football teams, nor just a place where man and sheep can live in harmony, nor just for the production of coal as Maggie shut the pits decades ago. Wales is a thing of extreme beauty. And the Welsh, for a bunch of foreigners, are really friendly people who live in proper houses and everything. Like real people. I would recommend it but then it’d be full of scuzzy seasiders next time we go instead of quiet and peaceful and wonderful.

Happy tuesday

A xxxx