There are some queer people out there.

And then there are some who pretend not to be queer when they are, and some who like the idea of being queer, but are straight.

Dawn Porter, “investigative” journalist extraordinaire, is basically a bit of a slapper; she loves men and claims to be a very sexual person. She claims also to be very straight, but she questions whether she might be a touch lesbian because she once had a threesome with a straight couple. Wanting to explore her sexuality fully, she decided to spend a month living with three gay women in their flat to see if any of their queerness would rub off on her… quite literally.

She was taken to the hottest lesbian bars by her new friends but came out stunned that none of the lesbians were remotely interested in her. I’m surprised that none of her temporary flatmates pointed out the fact that she was obviously straight, and quite unattractive – her long, painted fingernails an instant turn off with any gay woman. But what amazed me was her attitude that she could attract the interest of a lesbian because surely, all lesbians want the challenge of turning a straight girl?

Well no, there’s nothing worse than “straight girls” who want to fuck around and try a bit of gay sex behind their boyfriends’ backs, so anybody with half a brain would steer well clear.

But anyway, that was her for you. Surprisingly, she didn’t pull, and basically, she was only curious about sex with women because she seems to be a bit of a slag who’s exhausted the male population of London.

Apparently there’s a crisis in our curry houses: the price of rice has increased by 60% since last year and new immigration rules mean that the curry houses can’t employ kitchen staff from places like Bangladesh and Pakistan.

Now, there’s not much you can do about the global price of basmati, but why should blocks on immigration stop restaurants recruiting kitchen staff? Why can’t they employ people from the UK?

Could you imagine if there was an Italian restaurant here that refused to employ English people? Or anywhere that refused to employ Asian folk? There’d be all sorts of legal eagles suing people here and there because, well, it’s illegal. So why are curry houses allowed to be so discriminatory? Most people in the UK like Indian food, they can appreciate how it’s supposed to taste, and any eager young thing would quickly pick up the ropes in the kitchen, so why this exclusion of non-Asian staff?

I don’t know. If I had the answers, I’d share them, but hey, there you go.

Panic on the streets of Bridgend
Seventeen youngsters in and around Bridgend, South Wales, have killed themselves in little over a year – three have died in the past week, another body was found today.

What the fuck is all that about?

Some speculate that they’re part of a pact, or that they must all link together through some weird social networking site. Chances are there’s no link and the poor buggers are just depressed about having a really horrible accent. I should know, my accent is terrible and I’ve suffered from depression for years.

Shouldn’t joke about suicide, and I’m not really, but it’s a bit odd and you look for common denominators, it’s only natural.

I wonder if there’s a high rate of depression in the far north of Scotland…

Bottled it
Some twat, I think Labour MP Phil Woolas, has come out with some crap saying that bottled water is unethical.

Oh fuck off!

I’m sick of having ethical, organic, local, honest, fair trade bloody everything shoved in my face wherever I go.

In some cases (not round here) bottled water is the only palatable option, and let’s face it fizzy water doesn’t come out of the tap – well it does in London, but that’s not intentional or particularly safe.

But it comes down to freedom of choice, and I’m so fed up of these idiots abusing their positions of public office by imposing their own pathetic views on the masses. We’ve all got opinions about things, but we don’t get them publicised by the BBC in some crappy section on their website, so why should we have to be exposed to this nonsense by some nobhead politician who’s known in his constituency for nobbing some rough as fuck council estate bint?

Anyway, bottled water, it might not be “ethical”, it might not be cheap, but if people want to buy it and drink it, let them.

But we’re a funny bunch aren’t we? We’re quite justified in complaining about the price of petrol at over £1 a litre, yet many folk are happy to pay this amount for water, which they get from the tap. I suppose they’d be forced to think more about if they were forced buy 50L of the stuff at a time.

Excruciating
I think somebody has been sticking pins in a voodoo doll of me today; I’ve been experiencing waves of excruciating abdominal pains – so bad that they make my eyes water. They are best described as really bad poo pains, but without the poo. Terrible.

I think the ratatouille that I had for tea will either kill or cure me.

“Suck my dick, fuck face”
Imagine getting your restaurant bill and finding that as a one of the items on it? Somebody at Joe Delucci’s in Stoke did. I’m shocked and appalled of course, but also gutted that I don’t have the opportunity to do that sort of thing if people piss me off at work. Well, I have plenty of opportunity, but plenty of restraint… and I don’t have a dick.

Gillian Gibbons, the teacher arrested and jailed in Sudan for committing the unforgivable sin of allowing her class to call a teddybear Mohammed (you all remember?) has now got a job teaching in China.

Is she fucking stupid? Is she deliberately doing a tour of all the places on the planet with the worst human rights records? Daft cow. I understand that if she makes it through her stint in the Far East unscathed, she has a job lined up in Stornoway where she’ll be teaching the local kids how to spell, use capital letters and punctuation properly. Failure will lead to her being burned alive in a giant wicker teddybear on the beach.

She looks like the sort of person who should be on the cheese counter at Asda. I certainly wouldn’t trust her with anything that requires more responsibility than wrapping stuff in plastic and sticking a barcode label on it.

Some people eh?

At the mall on a diet pill
Sniffy is excited!

My favourite band, The B52s, have a new single out. Funplex, the album of the same name is out in March and I can’t wait. They’ve not recorded an album since 1992, so this is long awaited.

The band members have always looked a bit dodgy, but they’re looking almost embalmed these days. In fact, their heads look stuck on in that photo. Still, the new single is great, so I have high hopes that album will be worth the wait too.

Fucking Sainsbury’s, that hotbed of criminal activity and vice has introduced state of the art technology to counteract the elements of the underworld who might prey on their unsuspecting customers. Yes, as I was leaving the store in Salford yesterday, the electronic noticeboard at the car park exit flashed up my car’s registration number. What the fuck?

Why are Sainsbury’s tracking its customers this way? I suppose the fact that it’s the Salford store on the edge of Ordsall might say something, but come on, why do they spy on us? Do they link the data to other databases? Can they find out the customer’s name and match up their visit times to shopping patterns, gleaned from the Nectar or debit card? Why oh why oh WHY?

Did I turn back to pick up the in-store leaflet “Making our car park safer” that I’d seen, that would’ve been too easy. I e-mailed them to ask what was to do. I’ve not had a response yet. I guess their customer services department have been too busy laughing at me for most of the day. Good for them.

And Royal Mail are a bunch of arseholes too. I’ve been expecting a parcel from France (should’ve known better) that should’ve been delivered around the 20th of January. No sign. I contacted the sender and they checked the tracking thing and they were told that the package was awaiting signature for collection, presumably not too far from here. So I copied the sender’s message and other details into an e-mail to Royal Mail to see if they could track it down. Their response?

“I would like to explain that under the Universal Postal Agreement, any
enquiries regarding your item have to be initiated in the country of
origin. May I therefore suggest that you contact the senders and ask them
to provide their postal administration with the posting details. This will
enable an investigation to be made from the point of posting.”

It’s no wonder the fucktards at the post office can’t deliver stuff when they can’t even read. They’re probably from Stornoway.

Brrrrrrr
It’s actually a bit nippy; I suppose this is a consequence of it a) being February and b) being delightfully sunny during the day. It’s actually quite warm during the day, but nippy at night. And I could go on describing the weather and when it gets warm at night after a nice sunny day (usually from about May, but only if you’ve had a few days of temperatures in the mid twenties), but I’m rambling because I’ve lost my thread….

Right, that’s it. In a meeting the other day, somebody remarked that it was the middle of February already. It was at this point that I realised that more and more, I count where I am in the year by how many hours of daylight there are – anything less than 8 and I might as well be in bed.

And now it’s getting lighter and brighter, Sniffy is waking from her winter depression; I’ve had this one since last July. Joy.

But the other day, having driven to work in glorious chilly sunshine, I overheard a woman in the car park saying “This weather’s lovely, but I don’t really like it any warmer than this”. It was about 2°C. Stupid witch. Why don’t these people who whinge about warm weather just fuck off and die somewhere, like Stornoway? Idiots.

Back in August, when it was pissing down all the time, I wrote this post about Stornoway, which is somewhere in the Hebrides – inner, outer, shake it all about er… Anyway, I thought nothing of it until I got this rather charming comment on it at the end of January.

Anonymous said…

listen u sad fuck i live in stornoway and i had the misfortune to cum across your stupid pointless website and i wish i had not. y would u tell people to fone this number and ask for a kebeb when its a bloody chinese u dope! get ur facts rite in future and the pubs are open on a sunday all of them and i pay my tv license so i am entitled to see the weather where i live. and unlike english people we all dont eat fat foods ie kebebs all the time!

27 January, 2008 14:52

Gosh, some people get so upset about things that they forget how to read and write properly! So I left a response, expressing my concern that an innocent post on my humble little blog would cause such upset in one of the town’s residents. I left it at that.

Now, saddo that I am, and I am, really – I claim to be nothing else – I check my web stats and I see this:

And when I look at the referring urls, I see this:

Now it’s not that obvious, but there are a lot of people linking to the Stornoway post from the Bebo member. Fuck knows what Bebo is, but the member is somebody who goes by the name (and I know I shouldn’t do it) “Reenie Reenster”. I have no idea who Reenie is, where he/she is, but I’d LOVE to know who they are and why so many people are visiting my blog from his/her Bebo page.

But NO! I refuse to get involved with another social networking site.

I wonder if they’re saying nice things about me….

I wonder if they communicate in txt spk.

Weird eh? But there are more and more visits being referred from this profile as I type.

I may have to get Piggy and Garfer to intervene on my behalf, I’m sure they can communicate with Livid of Lewis. I’m sure they can’t be as bad as the Alabama bible bashers who come to get me every now and again.

Edit: I knew it was coming!

Anonymous said…

You are fucking shithead, there isnt anything wrong with Stornoway ACTUALLY! and to thikersoid, the “sing songy” accent you maybe heard when you phoned up the chinese takeaway was a chinese accent, you fucking retard. AND whats wrong with all the good weather we get? I dont get how some people are so retarded. And sniffy, fuck off will you! You are the sad one for writing blogs about things like this when really you could get up off your arse and do something productive and worthwhile. GRRRR im annoyed at you and your stupid opinions, keep them to yourself if its gonna be shite that comes out.

13 February, 2008 19:50

Does this tit really think that Tickersoid actually goes back to read the comments on a post from August last year? Tosser.

Can we go on a day trip to Stornoway to meet its oh-so-eloquent inhabitants? Piggy, rev up the Scenic!

Spasmodic
Why is it that I can’t make a cup of coffee without my hand having a spaz attack as I’m trying to spoon coffee into the mug? The number of times I inexplicably throw the stuff all over the worktop. So annoying.

Gonna set my soul on fire!

Oh yes, it’s Viva Las Vegas for Sniffy and Trump as we have finally bitten the bullet and booked a holiday for later on in the year. The excitement! We’re travelling there in September with Trump’s family: a joint celebration of Marge-in-law’s 60th and Blister-in-law’s wedding anniversary.

We’re just going for the holiday… I’m not sure gay marriage is permitted in Nevada, in fact, I think they’ve actively banned it; which is bizarre for a state that’s home to one of the campest places on the planet. We could have a Blue Hawaii commitment ceremony at the Gay Chapel in Las Vegas. How very solemn that sounds. I’m going to hang out outside an Elvis chapel to see if somebody wants to use me as a witness for their wedding, or failing that, witness to a murder or road accident.

So, the planning begins. We’ll be staying at the classy “New York New York” Hotel and Casino – hopefully not in rooms adjoining our travelling companions. But that’s just the beginning; what on earth can you find to do for a week in the party capital of the world? Errrm, well there are the slot machines and the Grand Canyon 300 miles away, so that’ll keep me occupied for a bit. Then there are the shows! Bette Midler, Cher and Sir Elton Furnish play alternate nights at Caesar’s Palace, with Barry Manilow playing somewhere else. I’ll need a bit of luck on the slots to be able to afford those gigs I’m afraid.

Essentially, I’m just going to absorb the majesty and grandeur of the landscape… and look at women with long legs and feather head-dresses. In fact, I’m planning on having such an outfit for travelling in. Imagine the descent from the aeroplane, my elegant legs kicking, diamond-encrusted high-heels at the end of them…

You get the picture? Only I think the showgirls in the photo are actually blokes. Oh the flashbacks to Paddy’s Goose…

But yeah, so anybody with experience of Vegas, with some “must dos” for when we’re there, let me know.

Baftas
Just tried to watch the Bafta film awards on the telly, but there’s something wrong with the sound system and I’m getting Jonathan Wross with echo. This bloke is bad enough without the repetition so I’ve switched to the classy “Monster in law”. Blimey, J-Lo is so convincing as your average all American girl from the block next door. Such a nice lass. I wonder how many Baftas this film was nominated for…

Trump tried to make me watch London to Brighton last night. Well, she didn’t try to make me watch it, it was one of the rental films that Rocky hadn’t eaten and she just put it on. Let’s just say that she knows my feelings about “gritty British films”. I fucking hate them; they’re so bloody depressing and usually poorly acted and usually dominated with Cockneys, Scousers or Jocks. I endured about 15 minutes of Trainspotting once. Rubbish.

You’d have thought that, what with having to compete on the global market, the British film makers would be forced to be right at the top of their game. But instead they just churn out the same old shite over and over again. Essentially, you only get enjoyment out of British films if you enjoy lots of violence, terrible accents and being really depressed and stressed by the experience.

Watched Juno last night, it was really good.

Apparently, some Government think tank or whatever thinks that it’ll be a good idea to produce a welcome pack to give to new immigrants to the UK. The pack would contain handy tips like, don’t touch people without their permission, don’t spit, don’t bother learning to speak English, that sort of thing. I suppose it’s a good idea in some respects, although you’d have thought that people would’ve done a bit of work to find out about the customs and ways of life here before applying to come here?

Anyway, the good old BBC, voice of the NuLabour, have done their usual job of identifying a sample of “hard working” immigrants and asked them how they found it when they first came here (see this link).

One comment in this article really made me lol to myself: Polish labourer Christopher Kozolkowski, 34, is waiting to be picked up for work. “You can’t be in any way racist if you want to live here,” he says. “In London you have black and white, Arab and Jew, living right next to each other. You have to leave your prejudices at home because we’re all the same underneath.”

So it’s OK to be a racist in Poland, but not here. It’s so nice to have our doors thrown open to people from countries with such retarded attitudes to equality. I suppose there are as many bigots here, the only difference between here and places like Poland is that you’re not allowed to be a bigot in public.

Shepherds pie
I made shepherds pie for tea tonight, only it was cottage pie, not shepherds (beef, not lamb). I always call it shepherds pie though because cottage pie sounds rather unsavoury, like something Tazzy and Piggy might get up to. Anyway, not feeling too good on Saturday (I thought I was just depressed, but it turned out I was getting ill with TB too), I sent Trump to the shop on her own. I don’t know why she does it, youthful defiance I suppose, but she always goes against my wishes and shops at Asda – shithole. I put it down to lack of patience on her part and lack of edible stock at Asda, but the mince she bought, although advertised as “minced beef” was clearly minced cow; bits of beef bulked out with fat and god knows what. How they have the cheek to sell that stuff. Dirty bastards.

I’ve just noticed that the lovely “Vancouver” 2008 calendar that April brought me was purchased at Walmart. Jesus, I’m surrounded by them. I thought she was surprisingly content in the hell-hole that is Asda Eastlands when I took her there last week. Then again, it was late afternoon and not 10pm, when most of the local Asian families think it’s an appropriate time to take their young children from their beds to go shopping, allowing them to scream for the duration.

Sick
Another Monday and another sick day – that’s about the fourth in the last year. Fucking disgrace. I don’t know why I always feel like shit on Mondays, well, I do today; it’s that dirty bitch April, spreading her germs while she was here, but the last few times I’ve been off sick have been on Mondays. Weird. I think it’s that lack of sleep on a Sunday night, in combination with depression, inducing crippling migraines (meegraines), but it looks very bad.

I spent the day snoozing in bed, being woken constantly by the screaming baby next door. Whinging little shit never lets up. It’s no doubt practising for when it’s old enough to be taken to Asda with its older sister at 11pm.

Stuff to watch
I have managed to get hold of the first five episodes of Season 5 of The L Word (currently showing in the States, not due for UK screens until autumn) – fabulous. I’m also looking forward to watching “Life”, which stars Damian Lewis and the lovely Sarah Shahi (Carmen de la Pica Morales of the L Word) – not sure when or if this is due to be screened in the UK.

Oh the wonders of modern technology.

Stay away from me!

Too late though, I am infected with North American germs brought to me by Typhoid pissoff; the type that make your airways burn, where you’re afraid to cough because of the pain. I ache too.

I don’t do coughs and colds very well. I have them very rarely these days – that last time I had a chesty cough was Christmas 1999 – so when I do get slightly ill, I am supremely pathetic. I really do think I’m dying.

I’ll be taking to my bed for the rest of the day, or the sofa with a blankie and Paramount Comedy.

Farewell my friends.

Stuck for inspiration at lunchtime, I’ve just cobbled together an Italian favourite: tonno e fagioli (tuna and beans). It tasted of nothing other than onions. Why?

Tesco cannelini beans in water (you can’t buy normal ones there anymore), tuna in brine = zero flavour

Bought some bread and cheese from Asda (should’ve known better); the bread was bland, the cheese (Lancashire) tasted of nothing. Why? No salt, again.

Pot Noodles, ruined.

Breakfast cereal, ruined.

I’m sick to death of food being ruined because the fucking government are pressuring producers to save us from the evils of food that actually tastes of something.

Fucking rubbish.

So fed up with it all.

Hip-hop feet
I bought new trainers yesterday; they’re quite trendy. I’m probably about 20 years too old to wear them. They were expensive, but it’s a good job I bought them because I returned to find that a certain pooch had eaten the portion of my £65 Nikes that the lace threads through. He’d also destroyed a pair of sunglasses.

Life is beautiful.

Well, there they went; whisked away on a Virgin train – how apt.

April and Misha left us today after an all too brief visit. Still, it was a blast seeing that foul-mouthed squaw again and I feel very honoured that she took time from her flying visit to come to see us here in fucking freezing, wind-blasted Manchesterford.

When I picked them up from the Norwich red-eye, I thought that Misha (who I’d never seen) was the 60 year old, limping dwarf woman who appeared to be pushing April’s luggage on a trolley, ten paces behind her. It turned out that Misha was actually a 7 foot tall blonde Amazonian. Bloody Canadians are so tall, bastards.

Anyway, after dropping stuff of chez Trumpsniffers, we went into Manchester for a full English Cafe North (I had their black pudding) followed by a trip on the Manchester Wheel. The Manchester Wheel is a bit weird since it’s actually one of the most interesting things on the Manchester skyline, and a bit too close to the city centre to see anything other than roof tops.

This was followed by a wander round the city in the freezing cold. They were pretty tired, but perked up when they went into Primark. Oh, the fucking shame of it. Highlight: older woman saying to toddler, “Yes darling, we’ll get you a sausage roll right now”.

Anyway, photos:

Velvet Revolter
For a different and fuller account of what happened that evening, visit Taz and Pig’s place. The evening was pretty good. April was particularly thrilled when Taz got his willy out.

And again when Piggy showed her his party trick with a little furry animal…

She kept asking Piggy about Tazzy’s willy for the rest of the evening. I know it was a strange shape and colour, but you’d have thought she’d have seen it all, given her life experiences and encounters with donkeys.

I don’t know why, but Paddy’s Goose has a strange pull on me and we ended up in there after the meal. It’s one of those places that looks like a normal pub as you walk in, until you turn round from the bar with your drink and notice that you’re surrounded by the 70 year old transvestites who gather there. So that’s where we stayed until I left to give somebody a lift home.

They all came back here and the fellers stayed too. It was a very late night, followed by an early awakening courtesy of gale force winds, thunder, lightning and hail stones.

Four hours sleep for all meant that we were all totally monged to be bothered battling the winds at Salford Quays. Too cold, too windy, too tired, we came home and vegged out until it was time to go for curry.

And then it was over as soon as it had begun. They’re now in London, with lots of proper sights to enjoy – fuck, what did they expect coming to Manchester in January? We only have two weeks of decent weather over the year and they usually occur sometime between May and September.

It was lovely to see April again and to meet Misha. I just love those North Americans and their excessively long legs!