#010 - Geordie Whore

Fuck off. Fuck fucking off. Get the fuck out of my life you disgusting reflection of society. I despise you; the makers of the show, the “stars” of the show, and the people who allowed it to be aired. This is revolting television.

The advert for Geordie Shore makes me feel ill. That repulsive woman who’s in love with herself and her own tits, dressed-up and made-up like an underachieving Barbie Doll, absolutely obsessed with receiving attention from men who are guided by their cocks and possess all the intellect of their cocks. Which I suppose is quite convenient for them, if the only women who are chasing them are walking cabbages who are guided by their insolent vaginas.

I don’t know what annoys me more about shows like this (The Only Way Is Essex being the other shining example); the arrogance of the people who feature in it (I refrain from calling them “stars”), or the fact that their worthless, unfulfilling lives have suddenly became aspirational television. These vain, shallow, worthless people wander about life being arrogant pricks and it’s a selling point. I suppose this proves my not-so-groundbreaking discovery of a few years ago that in today‘s standards, arrogance can literally make up for any bad personality trait you possess, and arrogance stopped being a bad personality trait a long, long time ago. Why? I have no idea. It’s harmful and infuriating.

I’m not going to plead with the citizens of Britain to open their eyes. That’s the last thing they want to do, the fucking morons. But when society collapses in a few short years, your impending downfall will be made all the more sweeter when you realise you haven’t embraced any of life’s truly rewarding qualities; you’ve never loved, you’ve never achieved, all you’ve ever done is got your tits out and pretending to be in love with yourself in a desperate attempt to get laid. But you’re just an insecure little human inside aren’t you, begging for acceptance and attention within society. Aww, bless you. You fucking idiot.

#009 - Getting Deleted Off Facebook

Facebook has many downfalls. It can be petty, it can be bitchy, and it can be a get-out clause to dealing with people in person, but in essence, all Facebook does is allow you to keep track of all the people in your life simultaneously and much more easily, albeit in a more informal way. And if anything of the digital age is claiming to aid us (iPad’s and Ping are definitely not aids to our existence as Apple are so desperate to convince us), at least Facebook can be seen as fairly commendable, at least to an extent in my eyes.

And so when you view Facebook in its purest form (an informal way of keeping track of the people in your life simultaneously), it makes it feel all the more splendid when someone deletes you off their Facebook. This is happening to me pretty frequently now; I keep getting deleted by people for no fucking reason, or at least for no apparent reason at least. And these aren’t just random people I don’t know, these are people I’ve knew for years, always gotten along with and never fallen out with (besides, I never add people on Facebook that I don’t know, unless we’ve got a decent amount of mutual friends).

For me, if someone deletes me off Facebook, particularly someone I’ve knew for a long time, this strongly implies that they just don’t want anything to do with me anymore. It means they don’t want to keep track of me anymore, and essentially want me out of their life. Of course, I’m obviously not likening Facebook to life. But Facebook has a purpose, as mentioned, and practically being kicked out of people’s lives at the click of a button isn’t something that I can let go over my head.

Years ago, people would ignore the calls of whoever they least desired, just completely blank them, or maybe they'd have to tell them straight (imagine that). Nowadays, in this horrible, callous digital age, you just click the “unfriend” button and they’re gone. And they can discover that you’ve done this when they go on your profile just to see how you’re doing and it says “add as a friend” at the top of the page. Oh right, I’ve got to reacquire this person because maybe I’m not living up to their standards, or maybe because I’ve reached a point in my life where I’m starting to feel more comfortable with who I am and feel like I can express myself more freely and it looks like it comes with a price. That feels really nice inside.

#008 - Romance In Films Is Romance In Films

At best, sex is fumbled and tiring. It can be romantic occasionally, but only if you’re either in love, falling in love, or in a decent relationship. And even then, the majority of your brain is occupied thinking about how to make that awkward, challenging female feel some amount of pleasure, lest you get insecure about that masculinity burden of yours and start crying.

Fortunately in films, people don’t think. Somehow, they seem to enter an altered state of consciousness, and have the most animalistic, picture-perfect and naturally-talented sex you can imagine. I don’t remember a scene in The Notebook where the guy got cramp in his foot and had to pause for a minute, massaging himself in pain. Although that would have made it a more enjoyable film, just to get rid of that fucking smirk off his face.

And naturally, humans have made the logical assumption that they can achieve this kind of sex, despite it not being real. Guys and girls alike seem to forget that eventually the guys arms will probably be on fire and he’ll have to get off you soon, or the guy might fail to live up to that convenient mutual climax that film characters always manage to achieve, or maybe he’ll end up taking so long that the girl’s legs start to shake and she has to, erm, “hurry him along” shall we say. Or maybe he’ll just have to wank himself off.

I do believe sex has lost a lot of any implied romanticism within it (at least by today‘s standards), and it’s a real shame. Sex can definitely have some really nice moments, and a lot of people don’t seem to care about embracing that anymore. But at the same time, let’s not forget sex as being the equivalent of playing chess with someone who’s never played chess before; you know that you’re enjoying it, but you’re constantly in thought throughout, wondering what your next move will be, wondering if that last move was a good idea, and wondering if the other person is actually enjoying it.

Was losing your virginity the romantic rite-of-passage you were led to believe it would be? Of course not, you lost in a bush when you were fifteen to an unemployed and intimidating nineteen-year-old.

#007 - Ego Will Destroy Us

I’ve believed for a while now that the most successful, or perhaps the most widely-spread sub-cultures are the ones that provide egos to people that wouldn’t otherwise have an ego. Indeed, if you took, say, a scene kid from 2007 (when “scene” was cool; it stopped being cool a long time ago) and put him amongst a group of chavs, his ego would shrink instantly. But amongst his useless peers, he’s the equivalent of a young Jeremy Clarkson.

Being a metalhead is an absolutely beautiful example of this. Kids who like heavy music as young adolescents get mocked by the majority, particularly chavs, and if they stayed within this environment and never got out of it, it would destroy them. But thankfully, metal’s enormous sub-culture lets you be the most arrogant, pedantic, self-aggrandizing wanker that you can possibly be, and you get celebrated for it, patted on the back by fellow metalheads and you lie safe in the knowledge that you fit in there. I should know, I was that arrogant, pedantic, self-aggrandizing metalhead wanker who felt alienated in the outside world when I was in my teenage years.

And this can apply to the majority of sub-cultures that the world has to offer. A sub-culture only becomes popular with people because it gives them a sense of worth; in the broad scheme of things, people who follow these more “alternative” sub-cultures are the ones who get bullied for who they are and they gain an inferiority complex within “normal“ society, but the sub-culture they follow gives them back that sense of worth and allows them to be arrogant, bullying, essentially all the things that they were getting picked on for not being.

Now I don‘t know about you, but I hate this alpha-beta-omega bullshit and always have done. The reason I became alienated from metal was because of how self-involved and narrow-minded the sub-culture was, and I’ve noticed how many things work in the same way. Very few sub-cultures actually offer an alternative way of life, and THAT is what I’ve been seeking; a real escape from society. The vast majority of sub-cultures operate in exactly the same hierarchical way that society does, just with people wearing different clothes and having different haircuts. They don’t offer anything new other than a recycled sense of acceptance.

All you are doing is living the same horrible lifestyle that you would be living if you’d became a chav, just under a different guise. Just more alpha-male, self-aggrandizing bullshit. Nothing liberating. You can be who you are, but only to an extent. You can listen to the music you want to listen to without feeling under judgment, you can wear the clothes you want to wear without feeling like a freak, and that’s really great, honestly I‘ve been there. But you can’t be the instinctive human being that you are; you can’t just live your life and “do what thou wilt” and all that. Your sub-culture still has the same codes and practises as anything else, and it’s far from liberating.

#006 - Can We Destroy Arrogance, Please?

Self-esteem is bullshit. Self-esteem is blind adoration for yourself. Essentially, self-esteem is arrogance. I read in one of my favourite books ever, The Age of Absurdity by Michael Foley, that self-respect should be favoured over self-esteem. The bad points of your personality should be worked on and dealt with appropriately to the point where you respect how you operate, not paraded around in their undiluted form just because you’ve apparently got “self-esteem.” Yes, because apparently, being confident about yourself gives you the right to be a dick.

Of course, what I’m saying isn’t that your bad points should be destroyed and you should aim to be a perfect person, because firstly no one will ever be perfect, and secondly it’s obviously nowhere near as simple as that. But there’s certainly a way to go about living your life in a better manner. If you’re a selfish person, that’s bad. You should aim to be less selfish because it negatively affects those around you, which will in-turn negatively affect you (think about it in a selfish manner then, if you really wanna put yourself in a paradox).

It’s clearly never going to be that easy, but the least you could do is try to be a better person, rather than being a total arsehole and try to justify that with self-confidence. And that’s not even being self-confident, that’s just being an arrogant prick, which isn’t good. The line between confidence and arrogance has been indefinitely blurred over the years.

But obviously, being an arrogant piece of shit takes far less “effort” than trying to be a good person. And “effort” is just the worst thing in the world, right?

#005 - Wife Swap, Go Back to Early Mornings

Television really is the hate source that just keeps on giving. If I’m sitting in my living room on my laptop with the TV switched off, I feel fine. Then one of my housemates will say “can I switch the TV on?” And I’ll be like “yeah, sound,” under the impression that it will be a good idea. Then as soon as it’s turned on and some fucking iPad advert is on or something (how thin does that piece of shit need to be, really?), I’m back to screaming “WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE WORLD?!” at my non-understanding television. It’s actually far from understanding, it thrives off my misery.

And seeing as I’m unemployable to every corporation in the UK and therefore in the house most afternoons, I’m bestowed the masked privilege of watching Wife Swap, but mainly Wife Swap USA. Our British version is just as annoying (mainly the celebrity ones; just shoving celebrities on a program to heighten ratings and to make John McCririck looking even more of a fat, useless, sexist bastard), but as usual, American versions of British shows take it to a whole new level.

I was watching an episode yesterday where one family were all disturbingly-paranoid about the outside world, and the kids weren’t aloud to go outside (and didn’t even want to go outside) because the family was convinced that stepping into the road in their quiet suburban neighbourhood would get them killed. And the other family were barbaric psychopaths, where the kids leapt around the house like monkeys, farted and burped at dinner while receiving congratulations from their dad (who sounded and looked so much like Charlie Sheen it was unreal), and the dad’s entire existence centred around chasing tornados and firing rockets into them.

Now, forgive my cynicism, but I think that Wife Swap has fuck all to do with parenting advice (which a slight hint of may be given during each episode). Doesn’t anyone else see how clear their boring selling point is? Essentially, if you swap the wives of a constantly-paranoid survivalist family and a psychotic, barbaric, tornado-chasing family, chances are they won’t get along. Then each wife subsequently argues constantly with their new husband and tells her new family how stupid their lives are, while conveniently forgetting how stupid her own family is. How deep and meaningful.

I vaguely remember a time when Wife Swap was allocated to a really late-night slot on E4 (I think it used to be anyway). So please, E4, stop playing it at half-eleven in the morning and push it back about ten hours or so if you really feel the need to keep airing it. Thank you.

#004 - Topman Is Watching You

I’ll admit it now, I am a Topman hypocrite. I constantly deride the place, but a considerable portion of my wardrobe is populated with Topman clothes. Why must their clothes be lasting and reliable and oh so comfy? I want to stand against them, damn it.

But my justification is that I only buy the shit clothes that no one likes. The stuff they tried to make trendy but no one agreed, so they just shoved them on the sales rack a few months down the line for a much more reasonable price. That way, I save money, and no one realises I’ve brought my clothes from Topman unless they ask. To which I give an honest answer, unfortunately.

But honestly, walking into Topman is like stepping into a different dimension. I’ve never been in an Abercrombie & Fitch store (I doubt they’ll expand much in the UK outside London; nowhere else in the country seems so full of eye-scrapingly trendy folk obsessed with globalisation), but from what I’ve heard of it, I’m guessing it’s safe to say that Topman could be classed as its British counterpart; essentially a less glossy and oppressive version like every other British counterpart to something American.

No one on earth can be trendier than the guys who work in Topman. NO ONE. And I feel judged by every one of these meterosexual consumerism spin-doctors every time I go in the fucking place. And if the employees aren’t trying to make you feel insecure, then the mannequins in the store are doing their bit too, suited up to the nines in clothes that are so trendy that you don’t feel part of the real world anymore, just a Topman-headed regime forcing you to wear cricket-jumper-like cardigans and chinos for a few months until they think of something else to sell you.

My red shirt, shiny-grey suit jacket and every pair of jeans I’ve bought from Topman were all solid investments. But their gleaming modern stores of fashion perfection are something that are normally only seen in George Orwell’s nightmares.

SH.

#003 - Osama bin Laden, Your Death is Selling

Topical things don’t usually interest me. People tend to jump on a popular culture bandwagon for a day or two then completely forget about it, just to assure their place in society, and it annoys me (the Royal Wedding being one recent example). But with Osama bin Laden’s death, I’ll be honest, I’ve joined in a bit. I’ve posted joke statuses on Facebook and not been incredibly tasteful, but I think it’s acceptable with it being Osama bin Laden and all. He wasn’t exactly the warmest of folk, let’s face it

But I certainly haven’t “joined in” in this barbaric, medieval way of “yeah, bin Laden’s dead, fuck yeah!” that seems to be flowing round the world. There’s something really disturbing about that, the fact that people still celebrate death. Don’t get me wrong, I think bin Laden fully deserved it (don‘t get uber-liberal and say that no one deserves death; things aren‘t that simple), but people should be approaching this in a more 21st century way, not parading round the streets like psychotics. If that’s how we’re going to approach it, why not start accusing people of being witches and holding public executions again.

Someone I follow on Tumblr raised a good point: “if it was an American leader who had been killed, and people in the Middle East were dancing on the streets in celebration, it would be a completely different story.” If Barrack Obama had been assassinated and the people of the Middle East were holding psychotic death parades, there’s no doubt that the people of the Western world would be calling them barbaric and disgusting.

Just think about what you’re doing for one second. It’s not good.

SH.

#002 - Indicator Ignorance

I think I was informed on what an indicator in a car was when I was around five or six years old. I remember my mom’s friend’s son used to imitate the noise when he was young. And I’m sure that a lot of other people discovered what an indicator was at an early age. So maybe there’s an unrecorded psychological condition where certain people completely forget or ignore the existence of their indicators when they reach a certain age.

It’s not “effort” to flick your indicator on. Nor is it hard to remember. If you’re turning into a street, or pulling over, you put your indicator on in the appropriate direction. This way, people behind you, and also pedestrians, know where you’re going and can take appropriate action. I’m explaining this in very simple terms, because you people who don’t use your indicators are fucking idiots, and I’m going to treat you that way.

The worst example is when I was out walking once, and I had to cross a street by its junction to a main road, and had to look behind me to see if any cars were turning into the street (as a survival instinct, naturally). I looked, and there was a short nearby queue of cars, none of which were indicating, and none of which were slowing down or far away from the junction. I think you’d agree that it was a fair judgement to cross the road. But of course not, because some wanker in a 4x4 turned into the street I was crossing, and not only did he do this, but he had the audacity to pap his fucking horn at me.

I made a well-informed decision you fucking prick. I checked, you were nearby, you were driving fast and you weren’t indicating. Accept responsibility in future and let other people know when the fuck you are going to turn and slow down. Because it affects their drive too, you know. You’re not the world’s only driver. So quite simply, general public, USE YOUR FUCKING INDICATORS.

SH.

#001 - Sex, Sex, Sex, Sex

I am perfectly qualified to work in advertising. I have had sex with people and I know people that have had sex. Thus, I have logically deduced that myself and these people only care about sex. We don’t talk about anything else, or pursue anything else, because nothing else is interesting. Our existences consist of talking about sex whilst dribbling uncontrollably and wanking ourselves into insanity when we’re alone.

I can’t really see that people who work in advertising have much shame. It can’t be a huge necessity when your job is to trick people into buying more and more plastic shit, and it helps if they view human beings as nothing more than cock-brained imbeciles who instantly throw money at something that gives them an erection or moistens their vagina.

If Huggies launched a new range of nappies with hand prints on the arse and the words “little slut” printed above, I wouldn’t be too surprised. But I would definitely emigrate to a part of the world where companies don’t view babies as exploitable sex-objects and potential buyers as paedophiles.

Maybe I belong to a rare breed of people who want sex to remain special and able to provide an element of romance, rather than just being used as a mindless advertising tool and something to re-blog on Tumblr. Who knows.

SH.