Tootling their pipes and banging their wee drums.

Scotland. Ah Bonny Scotland. With it's haggis throwing competitions, it's incomprehensible dialects, it's warm and welcoming people. Idyllic. That's the word for it. Idyllic. We all toddle around, working in tweed factories, looking forward to the weekend when we can gather in the local tavern to sing songs about people called Aggie and compare kilts.

Actually, it's not like that. It's just another branch of the British isles, really. Like everywhere, tradition and custom don't have much impact on daily life, and were you to walk around Glasgow, Dundee or Edinburgh with ear muffs on to hide the accents, it would be indistinguishable from London, Manchester, Dublin or Cardiff. Just a lot of people from all walks of life, getting on with it.

But up here in Scotland, there's a plague. A dark undercurrent that spreads it's tendrils throughout the land into the brains of those people, from the very affluent to the lowest jakey scum. A disease so malevolent that while it's spoken of on telly and radio almost daily, it has to be hidden from in general life and only spoken of in the quietest of tones.

Sectarianism.

What is sectarianism, you may ask. Well, you could always google it, but it won't give you any concrete idea of what it means in Scottish society, because it doesn't really make much sense. Is it about religion? Is it about nationality? Is it about football? Well, if you were to cock an ear towards and pub on an "old firm" day, you'd come away with the idea that it's a mish-mash of all these things. Half understood ideologies, a smattering of historical inaccuracy, lifelong football allegiance and a good deal of racism thrown into the pot for good measure. Ancient, outmoded rivalries that have no bearing on today's world, which are clung on to and revered as though they are somehow important. And if you don't think the same way as the majority do in whatever backwater you happen to find yourself growing up in, you better keep quiet about it.

Where I live, it's the "protestant" (or "proddissent") side of the coin that's prevalent, rather than the "catholic" (or "kafflick") side, but regardless of what "side" of the "argument" (whatever it is) you come down on, the diatribe seems to be the same. Us good, them bad. The differences between the two sides are completely intangible, stemming from ancient arguments brought about by Jacobite rebellions and famines that happened hundreds of years ago and have absolutely no bearing at all on any part of life at all. And, if I'm going to be completely honest with you dear, imaginary reader, I'm absolutely sick to the stomach of it.

You see, I might have mentioned this before, if there's one thing in the world I cannot stand, it's stupidity. I don't mean the "unable to do sums" kind, I mean the jeering, belligerent kind, the kind that imposes itself on other people. Like a teenager throwing popcorn at a cinema screen, that kind of stupidity. And sectarianism smacks of stupidity in it's highest form..... taking a lot of half understood ideas and inconsequential arguments, mixed with a religious belief that is neither understood or followed to any extent, and mixing them all up into a method for banding into a group and hating other people, who in this case tend to be supporters of a different football team. People like to factionise themselves, it comes from when we were cavemen. But so did shitting down our own legs and clonking women on the head with clubs, and those things have fallen, largely, by the wayside.

The problem is, though, that the very nature of sectarianism means that it isn't open to any sort of debate. It's largely based on intolerance, but will not stand for any intolerance of itself. In other words, it relies on freedom of speech and rights given to it by a democratic society to allow it to intimidate and oppress people in an entirely undemocratic way, but as soon as their right to do so is questioned, they cry "no fair" (and generally batter whoever questioned them). Yes. The behaviour of indignant children. Or "cunts" as they are known in the adult world.

I was brought up in one of the most sectarian regions of Scotland. I grew up in the same school as the locals, I supported the same football team, I followed the orange walks around and whistled the tunes. But it was at around the age of ten that I started to question what was going on..... who were these "fenians" and why did we hate them so much? It didn't take much thought from a ten year old's brain to pull the whole thing to pieces. I stopped watching football, as it was tainted with the stupidity. And I couldn't for the life of me, understand why others couldn't see how wrong they all were.

It was around then that I discovered that my family, on my mother's side, had a catholic background. My dad told me (at the same time making me swear not to tell anyone else, such is the fear of being different in this place) that my mum had come from a catholic family. Once, before I was born, an orange walk comprised of locals, "friends" of my dad, had stopped outside our door and stared in the window in an attempt to intimidate my mum. All 5 feet of her. These boozed up, half-brained thugs were attempting to make a 5 foot, respectable young woman feel unsafe in her own home. If any one of my friends ever read this, I hope you will understand how hard it is for me to keep quiet when you bang on about the fenians with the knowledge of that incident in my mind. I keep quiet because I respect your right to your own opinions where I know you would not respect mine.

As a side not on that incident, here are some facts which make those ignorant scumbags seem even more pathetic. My mother was better than every one of those uneducated cunts outside our house and anyone who follows the same ideals, simply because what mattered to her was not some stupid notion of religious belief, but what people were like. She never harmed a fly and was decent to anyone who was decent to her. What's more, my mother was not a "catholic". My mum never believed in God or an afterlife, let alone followed the doctrines of any religious organisation. And she would absolutely batter me for using the "c" word, because she was able to bring a child up well and with a decent, open mind. And just in case, for the tiny remnant of animosity that could be aimed at her for coming over here in the potato famine and stealing decent rangers supporters jobs, my Papa came from Newfoundland to fight for this country during the war. He was wounded fighting in france to defend this country from a REAL threat, the nazis, not going over on his ankle while blowing into a flute to scare away an imaginary one like the big, bad pope is made out to be, and afterwards settled here to become a well respected member of the community.

So there you are. I'm half catholic. Except I'm not. Only round these parts could anyone be described as being half a religion. A religious belief is just that..... a belief. It's something you choose for yourself, not something you are born into. Were I to choose to become muslim, jewish, hindu or worship the flying spaghetti monster, it would be my choice, but around these parts in the dimly lit corners of the mush people use for brains, I will forever be half catholic, tainted with that gene that makes people support celtic.

So I'm not a catholic. Neither am I a protestant. But then, neither are most of the people who subscribe to these daft beliefs. Every weekend they shout and sing but never once set foot in a church. They stand proud in defence of beliefs they neither understand nor follow. And every so often, some poor kid gets stabbed on their way home by one of these imbeciles simply because they wear the uniform of the opposing side..... a rangers or celtic top.

So I'll sit with my mouth closed and never let on what I really think. Half because some of you people are my friends, and despite what I think to be a horrible lack of sense on your part I regard you as good people despite it all and don't wish to offend you like you offend me. But also out of fear, because I know what happens when someone is "different" around these parts, even if that difference is only an ability to question the norm. But would you do me a favour? Next time you shout "fuck the pope!" or "up the ra!", just think about why you're saying it. Is it because that's really what you think? Or is it because you want everyone else to think that it is?

The world, the universe and Lady sodding Gaga.

There's this theory in astrophysics about how the universe will end called "the big crunch". Basically, it states that gravity will eventually (in about 30 billion years, so best start getting organized) pull all the galaxies. stars and planets into one super-super dense point in space. The thought that my atoms might one day be smushed up aganst those of Alex Reid makes my blood run cold, I can tell you. Now, they think these days that this probably won't happen (dark matter and all that stuff, I go down a storm with the kids, me) but I have discovered an alarming trend which proves that it IS happening, and not in 30 bazillion years either! Right now! In your own living room! I know this because if you look at "new" stuff these days with anything more than the usual amount of notice your average ugg-wearer is capable of, you'll see that everything in the known universe is slowly merging into the same bland thing.

I first hit upon my earth shattering theory the other day, when listening to some generic shit on the radio. It dawned on me after listening to half the song that it wasn't, in fact, the song I thought I had been listening to, but a "new" one. I heard another one today.... that new pink one and that "price tag" shite..... practically identical. Then it hit me! I heard something else which startled me while wandering around in a shopping precinct at the weekend. Cro-magnon shitfest Oasis's droning "stop crying your heart out" was being belted out at a steadily increasing scream by generic warbler Leona Lewis. Now, I'm no Oasis fan (you only have to listen to how shit the lyrics are to "she's electric" to realise how easily they made their money) but there really was no need for them to go that far to make their songs even worse. I was always a blur man myself, but shit as I thought Oasis were, they still reside several miles farther up in my estimations than the pre-packaged shit that does "cover versions" of songs to fill Simon Cowell's pockets. The explanation is this.... there is such a gaping hole in the entertainment market and so many greedy, money grabbing record producers crying about not being able to afford another gold ferrari because of people downloading music, that any real talent or innovation is swamped into insignificance by money-spinning shit like Leona Lewis or Rihanna. I even heard a radio DJ describing Madonna as "the Lady Gaga of her day" as if she was some stoory old painting from the 16th century. But he was right! Lady Gaga is just a copy, and a shit one at that. (Incidentally, how come it's ok for her to strip to practically nothing and waggle her naked bits at kids through a television, but it a beer-stained old guy does it in a public park that's wrong? At least madonna wasn't verging on the obscene in videos that anyone old enough to work a remote control can see. You can't have it both ways, humanity. Yes you did pick up what I was meaning right, I'm saying Lady Gaga is fucking disgusting and kids shouldn't be allowed to see her. And I mean it, too. But back to the fun.) Anything decent that somehow manages to slip through the net and actually make it into the limelight is then mercilessly remade again and again and again to spread it's success to as many people as possible. They're "re-imagining" songs that have barely been out for a year these days. Why? Money. Again. All the songs are getting sucked into a black hole of mediocrity and sameness, and even the singers themselves are losing any sort of uniquness. I can't tell them apart, they're all so similar. Justin Bieber's taken it one further still, being neither fully male nor female. It's madness.

Yep. another thing money has ruined.

But it's not just music. If it was, who gives a shit, right? Let the idiots have their dross. It's everything, though. When was the last time you went to the pictures and saw a genuinely interesting and fresh film? If it isn't a remake these days it's set along the same basic formula of 50 films before it to ensure as many henley wearing retards go to throw popcorn at the screen as possible. More on these dicks in another blog, for now I'll stick to the point. Even take the humble remake to prove my point further. When was the last time you saw a film that didn't have a "love interest" to broaden the audience and make more money? Or a wise-cracking sidekick? Even if the original film was a decent movie, they'll shoe-horn in as much generic shit as possible to ensure there's "something for everyone". Just look at "The hitcher" for an example. The original was a proper tension fest. The remake was generic teenage slasher drivel, like 100 other films released that year. I'm waiting for a re-release of "The Usual Suspects" starring Ashton fucking Kutcher as a sensitive reimagining of Kaiser Soze, and some bint out of hollyoaks as his romantic love interest. That'll draw the crowds!

I mean, just look at a tiny section of film, shall we? Lets say..... ooooh, I dunno, stick to what I know..... horror. Right. Back when things were good, horror was interesting. You had a massive variety of denizens of the dark to scare the shit out of you. Zombies. Ghosts. Werewolves. Vampires. Mutant swamp monsters. Aliens. Each with their own unique traits, dangers, strengths and weaknesses, each of them evil and out to eat your face. Then some boffin behind the scenes thought "Hey.... what if they weren't evil, but were good instead!" Hurrah! An interesting twist! But wait. Now they're ALL just ordinary sexy teenage hunks and sexpots, having relationships and arguments while learning to cope with their unusual lives. Innovative? Interesting? No it fucking isn't, it's fucking well hollyoaks with sharp teeth, and it's another step on the ladder to a generic, corporate blandness where we all look the same, like the same and think the same.

It's spreading out now from what we watch and listen to to every aspect of our lives. Yesterday, in a 10 minute period, I counted 25 pairs of ugg boots walking past me. 25! I use ugg wearers to denote what I think of the drones of society, the generic workers that don't think much about stuff and tend to dress alike and like the same things..... the male equivalent are henleys. To everyone else, it seems, they look the business, but to me (and I know I shouldn't think like this but I can't help it) they look thick. They would, I'm sure, argue that what they wear doesn't denote their true personality, and they would be right, were it not for the fact that they are DRESSING UP LIKE THEIR FRIENDS LIKE CHILDREN DO. Thick as the proverbial shit. Uggs and Henleys. I've used those words for years now, but even I didn't realise it was as bad. 25 seperate people in 10 minutes, all wearing the same, slightly stupid looking footwear. Why? Because they've been TOLD to. By adverts and peer pressure, footwear that looks stupid and costs a fortune.

This is what happens when you let teenagers decide things. It started in the 90s, the gradual rise of the importance of teenage angst. Suddenly they weren't confused, gangly idiots learning their way in the world, they were tortured souls with a message to spread, a cruelly ignored voice. In actual fact they were a marketing opportunity and they were thick, as they have always and will always be..... teenagers will buy anything if you can convince them it's cool. And that's what it's all about. Making everything appear cool to as many teenagers as possible. Seen the story 100000 times before? Heard that lyric in 50000 other songs? Fuck it, the teenagers haven't, they'll lap it up.

The second splitting kids into distinct groups becomes less profitable than having them all the same, we'll see the first Marilyn Manson/Olly Murs cross over, believe me.

Money grabbing is ruining everyting. Music, films, even shit like sport. Mark my words. We're headed for a black hole.

This is what happens when you leave humans in charge.

*straightens soap box*

The good thing about this blog is that no-one ever reads it. One day, years in the future when my bones are bleached in the sun after my mysterious base-jumping accident, someone surfing the internet (probably from mars or somewhere, the earth will be a radioactive ball of dust by then) will stumble across my humble little blog and the world will realise that I, alone, probably, knew how to sort all that shite out that was wrong with the world before the nukes fell and the survivors ate each other.

Today - Money.

So. Society, as it is, is made up of millions of people. Seriously, there are loads of them. Each of these people has a few basic needs. These don't include PS3's, Ugg Boots, Nandos or broadband (Although broadband is a "human right" in Finland. Jesus. In that case, Sky violates my human rights by being shit.) But, there are bazillions of us, and many of us, myself included, are far too lazy and squeamish to gut a chicken before each meal, so in order to grow, society had to come up with several solutions to basic problems. One of these solutions was money. Payment for services and goods provided by other people, which can then be used by them for other services and goods. A way of quantifying people's skills. Brilliant. So now we have money. What will we do with it?

Banks were a great idea. No, really. They have allowed civilised society to grow and flourish. Before banks, people were clonking each other over the head for corn and shiny beads, while kings had to hoard big massive roomfulls of treasure and employ dragons to sit on it to stop hobbits from making off with it. Then banks came along and said "Hey! Give us all your money. We'll keep it safe, and we'll even add to it. A little." They started using the combined wealth of communities to help those communities grow, and all was well in he land. Sort of. Glossing over a few massive gaps there, as humans are basically grasping, selfish sexual organs on legs, but you get the basic jist.

Fast forward a few hundred years to modern society. While the country groans under increasing petrol prices (that's for another blog) bankers are handing themselves huge bonuses. And why not, you may ask? Look at all that "lifting society from the gutter" shite I was just harping on about, surely they deserve it? Well, no. Just a wee while ago, banks had to be handed a massive payout to stop them from collapsing, because if they collapse, western society collapses. I was overdrawn by about a tenner for a few days a while back and got charged over £200 because a company kept trying to withdraw a direct debit. Have the banks paid back the handout they got from us yet?

That's not the point, though. When you start thinking of greedy bankers, you automatically start thinking about how else that money could be spent. Back to those basic needs. We've got police forces, fire services, ambulance services. Nurses, Doctors. Soldiers. The list goes on and on. Difficult, often dangerous jobs. Jobs that take guts (I wouldn't do them, I didn't say I was any better than the rest of us), and jobs that are definitely necessary to all our well-being, because people are shit and need protecting from each other. Jobs that are constantly being cut because the country can't "afford" them. How many bankers can the country "afford"? Without revenue from banks, though, we couldn't afford any of that, you say? So watching back-slapping potato-brained city boys live the high life is a necessary evil? Surely not.

Surely one of the goals of any society should be to advance. In the beginning, the person with the biggest stick wins. Then, it became the person wih the biggest group of people with the biggest sticks. Then, the people who could pay the people with the biggest sticks. Nowadays, the big stick has become the big wallet. *at this point, I deleted a massive, whiny bit where I went on in very serious tones about how people are starving while bankers quaff champagne. It was all very moody and serious and not very nice at all. So then. On to my solution!*

Money is at the root of all of this stuff. Folk bluster and argue about the cost of sorting out the economy. The cost of ending world hunger. The cost of curing disease. Here's a thought..... years ago, a pound was worth loads more than it is today. What if we said, for a laugh, that we're changing how much a pound is worth. It's now, from this second on, worth the equivalent of a thousand pounds. If you had a thousand pounds, congratulations! You now have the equivalent wealth of a millionaire! You're not a millionaire, of course..... you only have a thousand pounds. Millionaires on the other hand.... wow! You can practically afford to buy the whole world, now!

It's a bonkers idea, isn't it. It would never work. Why, though..... have a wee think just a bit farther in. What is this mystical "money" stuff? I know what you just said to yourself. I do! "Bits of paper that relate to gold in the bank". Nope. Quite apart from the gold in the bank being nothing more than shiny metal anyway, that bit of paper isn't based on how much gold there is. Banks have been allowed to print money that isn't actually based on anything for a long, long time. And "The Credit Crunch"..... did the money run out? Did the mystical well where the money is harvested suddenly go dry? Of course not. Money's just paper. Gold's just shiny metal. The numbers in the accounting machines didn't add up. And society trembled at it's core.

Thinking about how much we could have achieved if we weren't bound by paper and shiny metal makes you feel sick. All the things that humanity hasn't got to yet because we can't "afford" it. There are children starving out there. Starving. To death. While mountains of grain sit unused. Because the grain has to be "paid" for by bits of paper and shiny metal. Planting it and harvesting it has to be paid for. And transporting it has to be paid for. And distributing it has to be paid for. With shiny metal. And paper. If we did decide, as a planet, to increase the value of each bit of paper by a thousand fold, surely all of these problems would instantly be solved? And if the value of money could be changed so drastically, then what would be the necessity of having it at all? Just give the starving people the food that they need? Give the cancer patient the drugs they couldn't afford to develop because of costs.

But who will pay for it all? And with what? How much paper and shiny metal is each of us worth, I wonder. And all of those poor bankers and millionaires.... if paper and shiny metal lost it's "value", then how would they be any better than anyone else? Well that won't do at all, will it? And as it's people who have loads of shiny metal and paper who make the rules to this big old game, they aren't gonna change them any time soon. There's the root of it.

Money and banks are partly responsible for lifting human society out of subsistence living and putting us on a path to greater things. But if society now, with all it's great thinkers, can't come up with something better than shiny metal and paper to strive towards, then we're no farther along than battering each other over the heads with sticks.

I know. It's mental. The thought of a society able to better itself without financial gain. Mental. Imagine it, though.

Japanese society had an economy based on rice. Now that makes sense. You can eat rice. Gold? Ptchah.

In which I uncover the dire deeds of the Illuminati!

Boredom is a funny thing. I was supposed to be at uni today, but decided the time would be better spent working from home. this went well until the boredom set in, and, predictably, I fired up google for something to pique my interest.

Nothing interests me more than things that make me angry, and there are few things that leap up and down on my annoyance button than slack jawed, hooting fucking stupidity. But what is there on the internet that could possibly be stupid enough to annoy me out of this boredom funk I was in?

It didn't take long before I started reading, through screwed up eyes and with gritted teeth and clenched fists, 9/11 conspiracy theories.

Have you ever seen these things? Jesus Christ, it beggars belief! All the tinfoil-hatted lunatics urging us to "wake up, sheeple" and pointing at other, equally demented lunatics' wild allegations as infallible evidence that George Bush personally pressed the big cartoon plunger that blew up the world trade centre. It was annoyance gold! Content with my klondike, I settled in for a good read, and was soon fuming with rage at the sheer boss-eyed mongolity of some of the world's inhabitants.

There are a lot of conspiracies, each constructed around the premise of the attacks being perpetrated to achieve one of a small number of agendas, from legitimising a war for oil to population control (yes, population control. I know. I KNOW! Ha!) Some of them are quite sophisticated, with "professionals" quoting a lot of confusing jargon to prove that the towers were blown up or that no plane hit the pentagon. Of course, as soon as any bona-fide research or experimentation provides proof that the claims are exactly what they seem to be (shite) then that's all part of the cover up! WAKE UP SHEEPLE!

Some of them are classic. Here are some of the more hilarious ones.

There were no taxis in the area around the WTC before the attacks, as mostly all taxi drivers in america (as everyone knows) is an Arab and they had been warned about it. Yep. And they all still know about it.... that's right! Every taxi driver in New York is in on the "cover-up", making it so vast and widely known that it's not a cover up at all. This largely springs from the fact that dumb-as-shit twats trying to flee the scene were unable to hail a taxi, as there weren't any (probably because a vast terrorist attack had just taken place and normal work-day hours had been suspended or some bizarre thing like that) and their brains couldn't grasp the fact that there were no taxis so THERE MUST BE A REASON! Quite why the large volume of Muslim victims of the attacks both on the planes and in or around the towers were not warned to stay away isn't explained. Maybe they were all martyrs, eh? Stayed there on purpose? Yeah that must be it. They're all mental aren't they? Yeah. Jesus Christ.

The planes that hit the world trade centre were not the ones reported as hijacked. They were, in fact, replicas. The actual planes were diverted to secret runways and the passengers are being held in secret prisons. This one is genius. Quite why this is supposed to have happened escapes me...... why save the lives of the passengers and not the people in the towers? And for what? So they can live forever in prison so they can't reveal the secret? For fuck's sake. And why fly replicas in? Why not just fly the original ones in? Why? WHY? NNNGGGGG!

Another brilliant version of this is that no planes hit the WTC at all. They were actually missiles! Variants of this one swing between the missiles being hidden in plane shaped containers, the planes being photoshopped into footage later (and somehow, amazingly, into the memories of the eyewitnesses too as proponents of this theory have no explanation as to why people there saw the planes with their own eyes apart from "They're in on it". Maybe it's mind control. Yeah. Mind control. I used to love the X-files.) and, hilariously, that the missiles projected a hologram in the shape of a plane in a sort of star trek like cloaking field. It's absolutely hysterical! What happened to the actual planes and people on them is a mystery, probably the same as in the one I mentioned before. Why they went to all this trouble to disguise missiles as planes rather than, say, just use planes, is a mystery only the luna..... "theorists" know.

No plane hit the pentagon, because on the footage there's no wreckage and the hole's too small. Another magically disappearing plane involved in this one as it has no explanation as to what happened to the plane that is reported to have hit it (probably stored in a big x-files type hangar somewhere in area 51). Yep, again it was a missile. They fired a missile then constructed this huge, easily uncovered conspiracy to cover it up. Well..... it WOULD be easily uncovered if it had happened, so easy, in fact, that it would be far simpler to simply hijack a plane and crash it into the pentagon, creating (if the theorists are to be believed) far more damage. Then no-one would poke their noses in and find out we'd told a fib. OH! I said we! I must be in on it too! I'm in the illuminati! I'm a lizard person! We eat babies in ice cream while watching streaming videos of you in your house! Sheeple!

The controlled demolition theory is probably the biggest and most widely known one. This one basically states that the two towers of the world trade centre and the other one that fell down "mysteriously" (because it contained "secret information" and not because two huge buildings had just collapsed virtually on top of it) were blown up on purpose. Yes, secretly (that's the pertinent bit there, remember this is all done without anyone noticing) three large buildings, including two of the tallest buildings in the world, were laced from head to toe with demolition explosives which were then set off to bring them crashing to the ground, then everybody who knew about it, from the demolitions teams to the building security managers kept shtum about it. Now. I'm not an engineer. Or a demolitions expert. But explosions make flashes. And Bangs. I've seen enough Bruce Willis movies to know that. There weren't any. If you were one of these nut-cobs, sitting there reading this, your face glowing with rage as me, an ill-informed drone picks at your elaborately constructed reality, you would no doubt already have begun furiously typing in a reply stating all sorts of expert testimonies from engineers who watched the towers fall on the telly like the rest of us, interspersed with lots of threats, suppositions about the size of my penis and questioning my parentage and moral background. You would, if you were one of them, be constantly stating that there is no explanation as to why the towers fell because, with a limited grasp of all the things involved and a vast array of internet "research", you are now an expert on structural stress. I'm not an expert either..... though I would say if you fly a jumbo jet into a building, it's not really an earth-shattering surprise if it then falls down. Like I said, I'm not an expert, here. I've watched documentary material and read enough stuff about the towers falling which completely debunks all the claims made, they've done a good enough job without me weighing in. What I would say, however, is why would they do this? Why? WHY? "They" (the illuminati? Israel? Corporations? You name them, they're implicated) have just flown two passenger planes into two densely packed buildings. Isn't that enough? Why blow it up too? That will be more that needs to be covered up. Surely we should just use the planes? Isn't that enough?

See that's the whole thing. "Why." That's the thing that's missing from the whole conspiracy equation. The froth-mouthed crackpots claim it was for many reasons, but mostly unanimously it all boils down to "justifying the war". Well, first off, I can just about see where that comes from. If, on an episode of 24, Jack Bauer had to stop a terrorist attack orchestrated by the american government to sway public opinion towards a vastly lucrative yet extremely destructive war, I'd think it was one of the less imaginative plots. But for fuck's sake, stop there! Right, I can get my head round the planes flying into the towers on George Bush's behest, but why add all this stuff about the towers being detonated and missiles hitting the pentagon? It makes it, frankly, unbelievable, because there's no fucking reason for any of it. The planes would have been enough! They really would! The theorists claim it gives credence to their claims about the attacks being orchestrated from within the U.S., but actually what it does is expose them for the idiotic lunatics they are, willing to believe any old shite that even accidentally backs up their drivel.

Having said that, the whole crux of the thing that there is a belief that the american string-pullers co-ordinated the attacks themselves to promote the war is really top-class bollocks as well. First...... massive success there. Second...... what? Why? If they wanted a war, they could fucking well have one. See, the WMD thing..... that was cooked up to promote the war. Limited intelligence was passed off as unequivocal fact that Iraq had nukes or dirty bombs or sharpened sticks with shit on the end of them or whatever. That's about as sophisticated as "cover ups" get..... using the limited knowledge of the public to sway opinion towards one thing or another. It's called spin, these days, and the toffs use it all the time. The idea that such a huge terrorist attack could be organised in secret and then that everyone who knows about it (for they would number in their thousands) would keep quiet is just ludicrous, the stuff of multi-seasoned drama series. That they had to do all this to persuade people to support the war? They're the government, they can do what they like, and if they need public opinion they'll garner it through either fact or, unfortunately, misinformation, not vast, paper-thin conspiracies that every nutjob in internetland can start ripping into thin strips before the blood has congealed. Third..... call me naive, but I like to hope that the upper echelon of society isn't populated solely by unfeeling, ice-hearted maniacs who would willingly machine gun children into paste to avoid paying inheritance tax. I realise fully that there are grasping, power mad people in the world who will do anything for wealth and position, but I'd like to hope that there's at least enough human decency among the many who would HAVE to know about the cover-up, were it to exist, that someone would at least have the conscience to speak out about it if not try to stop it, considering it's vast scale.

In short, 9/11 conspiracy theorists are fucking idiots. The attacks were perpetrated by delusional religious fanatics striking out at innocent civilians in retaliation to injustices they perceived had been laid upon them by western powers. Were they right to do what they did? Nope, of course not. But the world is full of lunatics and equally full of policy-makers who rile them up. It's a great big shite sandwich and we're the crusty wheatgerm bread. You don't need to invent some cock-and-bull conspiracy theory to make the world seem like a bad place.... it's bad enough as it is.

Oh, and just as a final aside..... grasping at every ill-informed fact that will back up your over constructed reality no matter how unlikely or stupendous it has become does NOT make you an open minded champion of free thinking. It makes you a moron who cannot accept anything but your own version of event. Moron.

Next week - kittens in bobble hats.

Staring into the abyss.

So for about the last month or two, I've been suffering from every major disease you can think of.

Ever since I started feeling a weird wee pain in my guts, the feeling of dread has been growing. I finally worked up the courage to go to the doctors a few weeks back, and was sent for an ultrasound of my gall bladder and liver. Convinced I had exploding guts syndrome, as opposed to the exploding head syndrome I had last year, I hunkered down and waited for my appointment.

See, I've always liked a drink. We all go mental when we're younger, and I was no different really. I used to stagger about with the best of them, but nothing over the top and only ever on the weekends. Then I got divorced. I held it together ok, mostly thanks to my mates, but, well..... 2 bottles of vodka a weekend for a guy my size is quite bad. I cut it down a lot after a while, but I still like a good drink. Thinking back, I've shifted a lot of drink in my life, and it gets you thinking...... to put it flatly, have I fucked my insides up?

So I'm worried. I'm a hypochondriac. I was worried about that too til I found out it wasn't terminal. I mean, though, I have a weird little dull ache that comes and goes right where my liver is...... surely that's not good :o I'd stop drinking altogether but my brain keeps saying "Go for it, you're fucking dead anyway." Which is nice. The doctor told me it could be gallstones, which reassured me, then said "Hopefully we won't have to remove your gall bladder" which pressed the big red button with "do not push" on it in my brain once again.

So today was the day. Here is how it went.

The alarm went off. I switched it off. Then it started going off again. I spent a good minute switching the radio alarm by my bed on and off til I realised it was the one on my phone. I switched it off and got ready to get up. Then I started rebuilding that run down old house in the woods I had found with all the other survivors of the nuclear holocaust, and my brain shouted "WAKE UP YOU'VE FELL ASLEEP AGAIN!" It was now 35 minutes before my appointment and I was well and truly late.

Somehow, I got there in time despite being trapped behind the slowest lorry in the universe. I pick my way to the radiology dept. and wait my turn. For a while. I eventually get taken to the barium room..... and now I reckon I'm getting a barium meal. I ask. The woman says yes, I'm to get a barium. I shit my pants. It turns out I'm not getting a barium, I'm getting an ultrasound as previously thought. So I wait.

For some reason, I dunno maybe God decided to have a last poke at me before the bad news comes, it would appear that I was to be given an ultrasound examination by the winner of Miss World 2010. Jane. Aaaah Jane. If it turns out I'm on the way out, I'm coming back to that radiology dept. with a ring and proposing. Absolutely lovely. I felt like a slug being massaged by an angel :P So I pops the old gut out and lie back, trying to look as cool as possible with my pants hiked a clear 4 inches above the waistband of my jeans and my one-pack glistening in the harsh hospital lights. She approaches, a tube of jelly in her hands. I push that thought out of my mind. And that one. It's hard not to think sexy thoughts in Jane's company. Then I remember the difficulty I had combing my hair into a reasonable style and realise how fucking awful I look after taking a whole 3 minutes getting ready this morning. Then I think how it wouldn't really have mattered if I'd had 3 days and Gok fucking Wan to help me, Jane is so far out of my league I'm lucky I can still see her. Suddenly, I'm not thinking sexy thoughts any more.

*Cold jelly on the ribs!*

She presses the wee doofer into my guts. The machine pings. She says "Big breath in for me please" and as I do so, some bloody alarm goes off in the hall outside. For a fraction of a second, I think I might have set off some sort of emergency "We need to get this guy to the ICU STAT!" type alarm, and try my hardest not to shit my pants. No men in environment suits descend on the room, however, so I relax. We continue with the deep breaths. "And hold it there................"

Four. Five. Six. Seven.

"....................."

Going a bit blue now.

"........................................"

Has she forgot to tell me to breathe out?

"..................................................."

She must have. Maybe it's like a test. Maybe they want to see if I'll just go ahead and breathe on my own?

".........................................."

Fuck this, I'm going to bre...

"and breathe normally now."

Christ. Never mind if I'm ill, am I going to survive this ultrasound? I hear a noise like a rumbling tummy. I guess Jane aint had her breakfast this morning. Bollocks, nope, it was me, my guts are rumbling like a maniac. Not a flicker on her face though, such a professional. I think I might be in love. Jesus she's firm with that doofer. In fact, that's actually quite sore. Ayah.

"Big deep breath"

AAAaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

This goes on for about 15 minutes, with me in various poses. My left hand side is also checked, which sets off the brain into action again "Why is she doing that? She must have found something!" She then goes and gets the Doctor to check her images.

The doctor didn't know how to work the machine. This is slightly disconcerting. However, Jane (who I have now already fathered two imaginary future children with and who's name doesn't really suit having my surname after it, I have determined) steps in and shows her the ropes. "What's he in for?" says the doc. "Query gallstones" "Oh yep, he has one".

I'm fucking SURE! SURE AS I SIT HERE TYPING! She said "Oh yep, he has one." They had a look through, then the doc had a go at me with the doofer herself. Apparently, they couldn't find my pancreas. Great. Wonder where that little fucker has got to now. Anyway, they didn't bite their hands or look unduly shocked, but after Jane (aaaah Jane. Jane Jane Jane :) ) told me to go to my GP in 10 days for the results, the doc added "Everything looks normal, though. Now, I know Doctors. When my Mum was ill they skirted round the houses for days rather than say "there's nothing we can do", but usually they don't say things look OK unless they are. There's a difference between not unduly worrying the patient and outright lying, in other words, so I feel a bit more reassured, and as I'm BLOODY POSITIVE AS SURE AS EGGS IS EGGS the Doc said "oh yep he has one", I reckon it's a gallstone. I just always thought a gallstone would be sorer than this. Ach, I must just be a double hard bastard. As I suspected.

So there we are. It was too late for any meaningful time at college, especially as I had to take my dads car because I slept in and had to bring it home first, so I got myself a subway, a nice new fineliner pen for sketching, put on a hairdresser's appointment and a dentists a appointment and came home to tell the internet about my adventure.

I know it's premature, but after months of thinking I'm probably dead, I think there might be a 1% chance I'll see Christmas! The down side is I won't marry Jane, she won't want me unless she'll be inheriting my millions quickly, but it's all swings and roundabouts.

My liver, if it is normal as the doc said, is a fucking tank.

Voting.

Alas, the once proud bebo is on the way out, like a little floating jobby caught in the swirling water after you've pulled the plug. To be honest, I'll only faintly miss it as I migrated my drunken midnight ramblings to facebook long ago. The chat thing is better and I'm addicted to Farmville. Yes, I know. I'm shit.

The only problem with this, though, is Facebook lacks any kind of Blogging facility. Can you imagine? Staggering home early on Sunday morning with nothing but status updates to vent your overflowing brain with? It's horrific, especially for the people on my friends list who awake on a Sunday to find their updates page filled with me swearing (creatively, I might add, but swearing none-the-less). I often find myself scared to go back on the internet ever again when I wake up.

Ah. Aaaaaah I hear you say. You have a blog, but! You do! You're writing in it right now, you'll probably be saying, you sharp little tack you. Yes, I would reply, trying not to sound too patronizing (that's when people treat you like you're stupid....... pfffffft I love that joke) but I have a grand total of zero followers on blogger. Yep, that's right! None! I don't come here enough to have amassed any. So whoever it was who said that about me having a blog, I must have imagined you. Still, needs must, because something has been on my mind. I hear there is to be a general election. And for the first time in recorded history, I could not give a dog's fart who wins it.

My reasons, dear imaginary reader, are many. And, uncharacteristically for a quiet soul like myself, I shall let you in on some of them.

Here we are.

Firstly, the idea that my vote counts as much (or little) as someone who likes N-Dubz is just wholly unacceptable. I mean, I'm all for equality when it comes to almost anything, sex, race, religion, I don't care! We should all play nice and share our toys, but I cannot be doing with twats. For fuck's sake, one of them looks like someone has put a bobble-hat on Pob from Pob's Playtime. It beggars belief that someone could make their way home from HMV (presumably after stabbing the bus driver) and put up a massive poster of them on their wall, then nip out and decide who runs the country for the next four years. In short, you should have your IQ (and possibly musical tastes) vetted before being allowed to vote. I realise not all N-Dubz fans are twats (God that tasted bitter) or stupid, but I'm merely using the most twattish band I know for illustrational purposes.

Second. I went to put petrol in my car the other day. I am now looking to consolidate my debts into one easily affordable monthly payment. The tax on booze has just increased. Meanwhile, we pay for all the MP's petrol, booze, orgies, fondue parties, mistress's houses and whatever else they can get their greedy, fat little claws on. Whoever we vote in, it won't change. I genuinely believe that, now. Anyone calling me apathetic is...... well, right, but can I be blamed?

Also, on the subject of petrol prices. We're running out of oil (apparently) so the price goes up. The world is sweltering in a haze of greenhouse gasses thicker than a guiness fart at 4 in the morning. Now, and I swear this is true, I saw last year, on one of my late nights, a TV programme from 2004-5 about gadgets (maybe it was the gadget show). They had a fully working hydrogen fuel powered car. Fully working, went over 100mph, no emissions, had it's own home-station for creating hydrogen fuel from water. This was 5 years ago at least, and they confidently predicted we'd all be driving them in 5-10 years time. What have we now? Hybrids. That need petrol. Apparently water powered cars are in development, but the fuel costs so much to make it will cost just as much as petrol. BULLSHIT. I saw it on the bloody telly! They had one, and there was a wee baldy guy with big ears driving it! But if we all had water powered cars, who would lose out? Mmm hmm. Another wee nail in the coffin of my giving a fuck about anything there. We could save the planet and take one step closer to a star-trek like utopia, but what stops us? Greedy little rich cunts clinging on to their monopolies. Sorry for sounding like a conspiracy nut, but I swear to God I saw it with my own eyes (well, on the telly, like). (Don't get me started on the shits that petition against wind farms because "it spoils the view, whinge fucking whinge, how would a 300 feet thick curtain of fire in the atmosphere brighten your day you short-sighted jism-stain? I might have embellished global warming a bit there, but poetic license.)

I haven't blogged for ages, I'm getting into it again :D

Thirdly, if none of the big parties are going to make it legal to stab someone who refuses to shut up/stop texting in the cinema then I'm going home and I'm taking my ball with me.

Fourthly, I'm far too busy playing Final Fantasy XIII to move out of my room on polling day. At least I have a chance of seeing that through to a successful conclusion.

Fifth....erm.... ly, the war. I've put a lot of thought into "the war" over the past nine or so years. The way I view the world really is this. There are bad people and there are good people. Most people are neither fully one way or the other, but basically, if you're a dick then it's your own fault if no-one likes you, even if you do occasionally crack a funny joke between bouts of arseholishness. (coincidentally, there are very few people who I genuinely don't like, if you can believe that. There are some though.) Translated to global sized policy, if you look at "the war on terror" that ITN keeps banging on about, it seemed like a good idea for us (the goodies) to bomb the shite out of them (the baddies). Having scratched the surface though, and realising that "us" might in fact include quite a lot of the baddies, and "them" probably includes a fair old whack of innocent goodies, who now think we're ALL baddies and want us to die in a big fire, and things become less black and white. What to do though? Pull out our troops, leave the countries in a shambles for the proper hardcore baddy-types to come in and take over? Or keep spitting brave young troops and money into the fire. Well, both seem like a bad idea to me, but theres no third option is there? Nukes? No. I didn't say that, shh, moving on. Confused? I fucking am! I used to care about this stuff, but it's such a royal clusterfuck that now I don't even care, we're going to be buggered right up the chuff either way. I'll play Killzone 2, I know who the fucking baddies are in that.

Lastly, for now, whether it's true or not, I cannot be arsed listening to how seemingly important political arguments are reduced to pathetic childish whingeing every single day on the news. We shouldn't dumb stuff down for stupid people...... stupid people don't care! They're all off playing their x-boxes or burning out cars. What next? I'll tell you what's next. Wayne Rooney for bloody Prime Minister, that's what's next. Christ on a bike.

In short (well, after the long version) the whole thing is just a pointless waste of effort I could better employ setting a fire in a field or shooting a cat with an air gun, both of which would probably have more effect on the country than my vote will.

I'm going to draw my own box and vote for Stephen Fry. I really, really am. Probably.

A trip into the bowels of hell.

There is nothing finer in life.

You're out. You're pissed. You're caught short.

Full of trepidation, you approach the cludgy. Will someone have shat on the seat? Will someone have exploded in a cloud of shitty particles all over the place? Will you be unable to breathe because someone has released what appears to be zyklon B from their bum-pipe? Will there be a drunk man in the toilet who wants desperately to speak to you? He's going to get angry...... you know in your heart he's going to get angry.

But no! The toilets are pristine! They smell faintly of lemon and there's not a soul in there. You notice a faint residue of fat in the trough...... somene really REALLY unhealthy has been here recently, so unhealthy that they are actually pissing fat. Yes, fat. Bits of yellow, horrible fat are coming out their bob-end. But this matters not! You are, for the next few minutes, lord of the bogs!

No stage fright for you tonight, matey! No accidentally catching sight of the guy next to you and realising he's some sort of genetic monster...... but at least you only need to wash your hands when you leave and not your helmet . No, not tonight...... tonight, you are the sultan of spray, the emperor of excretion, the ultimate urinator! So long as you remember not to draw in the steam on the windows, nothing can go wrong..... that steam is the steam of death. That is the steam of a thousand bladders.

You're pissing in the urinals tonight, chief! No shameful hidden relief in the sanctuary of the cubicles..... tonight you shall befoul the water table in the openness of the urinals.

It's like the most amazing firework display you've ever seen. You're looping and swirling, pirouetting and swooshing. At one point, you manage to cross the streams all on your own. The satisfying rumble in the trough convinces you that you must have a mighty member. Like a thousand wildebeeste bearing down on the toilets it carries throughout the empty room, and yet you are unafraid.

You're even managing to scrape some of the ingrained fat off the urinal with your mighty stream. This is genius. Perhaps just draw a small cock and balls in the steam? No! No..... the steam is not for human fingers.

And then you see it.

You look down to admire the dying embers of your mighty confluence when you noitice you are standing in a river of missed tinkle. Someone has been in here and just went on the floor. All at once in your minds eye you see the soles of your shoes touching the carpets in your own house, and the boke attempts to escape. You feel queasy. You do up two of your three buttons on the way to the sink, but you stumble and accidentally open the cubicle door a touch. And there it is. Your eye is drawn to it like a moth to the flame. There, in the toilet, lays the beast.

Like a mighty saltwater crocodile rearing to the neck of a passing thirsty antelope, someone's jobby sticks halfway out the water. It seems to mock the heavens, reaching upwards like some kind of hellish tree trunk. Whoever left this here must have been taken home in an ambulance. The man must have a weekend job as the clyde tunnel.

And the smell. The smell.

Suddenly the sink isn't only a place to wash your hands. Most of your dinner is digested enough to fit down the plug though, so that's something. At least that's something.

It's ok. It's ok. It didn't get you. You stayed far enough away from the cubicle that it couldnt rear out and drag you in. Make sure you're ok....... yes. You may be a bit red from all the boaking, but you don't know, because no man's toilet in existence has a mirror in it. We know this, it's just the way it is. Right...... back out to the bar. Back to the sanctuary and security of the bar. WAIT! Have you pissed on your legs?

50% of the time, you have.

I know why women go to the toilet in groups.