Tuesday, 19 April 2016

STOP MY 30's, I JUST WANT TO GET OFF ...

So, then, here I am, in just a shade over 24 hours from now I will have turned 35. I am no longer just a 30-something, but a person in their MID-30's ... not long to go now before my age finally catches up with my waist size, and from then the two can happily start going up together concurrently until I end up in a coffin with a hump in the lid. That is unless posthumous liposuction is approved by the government.

Thirty-five trips around the sun since yours truly emerged into this universe, and the universe in kind cracked it's knuckles, snicked it's jaw, wricked it's neck and said; "Right then, sunshine, here's where it gets complicated …".

There was a change in media culture starting in the 80s, when I emerged dribbling, crying, naked, screaming and covered in all sorts of bodily fluids I hope never to encounter again. The Internet and video games emerged at the same time kids weren't out playing with other kids, what they were doing was sitting around in front of a Nintendo all day. Add to that the fact that as soon as they grew up and moved away from home in their 20s, there was free and abundant Internet porn to satisfy them with.

The only thing the world has in abundance is people looking to exploit these ills. Especially in the ever-over-complicating, horrendous, ultra-competitive sport of relationships. Dating sites are ready and willing to lift money from lonely people, then there's the booming self-help industry that teaches people with no dating prospects what they're doing wrong, despite the fact that they still walk away without any prospects after buying the books and therapists and whatever else.

Now, I’m pretty unremarkable in most respects – neither fantastically attractive (if only), nor absolutely hideous. I’ve got plenty of friends, male and female. They always express confusion and disbelief that I’ve been unable to get a girlfriend in the 20 years or so I’ve been interested in the idea. Apart from this, I’ve lived a full and active life, but somehow this particular aspect has, through more quirks of a fate than a superhero film directed by someone having just ingested a bucket of heroin, passed me by.

My parents met and married through work. They have been married for 40 years. And it hurts me to the core to be 35 and unmarried. Alone. Without a loving wife or a long-term girlfriend. I feel the pain from it every single day like I'm wiping my ass with a cheese grater. Or maybe it's because a random advert for Justin Beiber's new album spoiled my enjoyment of the Nostalgia Critic's review of "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice".

It’s a cliché, but it really did seem seem like one day all my friends were suddenly shacked up with a partner and squeezing out kids right, left and centre expect me. Arriving at 35 as a single man happens via one of three routes. The first is because there were series of relationships that never panned out. Or, there was one epic fail of a marriage that lead to a series of relationships that never panned out. The wake of this type of failure leaves a trail of broken hearts and disillusioned souls.

The third, mine, is because simply no-one has bothered to give me a bloody half decent chance because someone else arrived, with an agenda, therefore automatically gaining the upper hand before I had the chance to even offer the prospect of pistols at dawn at thirty paces.

Distrust of each other turns relationships into transactions. There is literally a universe of information consolidated into constellations of blogs on the topics of sex, love and relationships. As a society we keep talking about it, and by talking about it we make it important. Products, lyrics and lives coalesce around it.

Love is both form and substance yet, if you find yourself single at age 35, love isn’t nearly as important as feeling legit and being desired. And desire will continue to kick your sorry, pink, hairy ass until you find that you can notice it without having to turn your head. It doesn’t matter what bracket you are in. There will always be another rung of the latter to climb, someone to be jealous of and past failures to reconcile.

And I think the greatest lesson I’ve learned being 35 and single is that ultimately nothing matters in reference to the big picture. Emotions drag us into the fray and spur storylines that can both catalyse and interrupt the flow of creation. It's how I managed to drag it out into three "Ghostbusters" scripts and a mountain of "Doctor Who" fanfiction.

When I first set off to write this blog there was a very particular angst welling up in me that wanted to provide a narrative to the joys of being 35 and single. But, I had to stop myself because, honestly, it kinda sucks too. Four generations of rampant new wave feminism have not exactly produced a plethora of well-balanced traditional men who are equipped to head a heteronormative family and deal with non-feminist women, in fact, most young men are feminists or equalitarians who have been brainwashed into despising our civilisation.

In other words, they are just as unhinged and difficult as the young women that feminism produced - this is what you reap when you sow anti-authoritarianism and tolerate gendermainstreaming. Slowly but surely younger generations are realising what is wrong, but given the power of the Internet and mainstream media it won't be undone in a generation.

There are 60 years of terrible mistakes to undo.

Sadly, I means bypassing those such as yours truly, who have long since given up the ghost.

Happy Birthday to me ...

Sunday, 10 April 2016

A-Z OF EVERYTHING IMPORTANT

A is for: Antubis
Antubis was the Egyptian god of something or other, you know, the one with a head like a jackal. For some reason his symbol was a penis. He must have been at the back of the line when they were handing out hieroglyphs. I'll bet all the other gods giggled at him behind his back.

B is for: Butterscotch
A type of confectionery it is illegal to purchase if you are under 65 years of age. Werther's Original is a prime example of this slightly unpleasant treat.

C is for: Choirboys
The best way to get your son to hate you - make him join a church choir. It mixes all the fun of strange robes, religion and high-pitched singing. Does anyone actually like listening to it? Doubtful, although a young Aled Jones managed to get the brain-piercing "We're walking in the air" into the charts. The best thing about Aled Jones is that his career evaporated when his voice broke. Ha!

D is for: Duck City
One of those post-Simpsons adult oriented cartoons shown late at night on BBC2 in the late 1990's. I have never seen an episode and, seemingly, neither has anyone else. So in theory, it might be quite good and nobody would know.

E is for: Evangelists
Those smarmy, suit-wearing sods who knock on your door and try to convince you that you have to believe exactly the same things they do or you're evil. America has now produced a new breed of tele-evangelists, who have the power to annoy more people and accept credit cards. Perhaps not coincidentally, 'evangelists' is an anagram of "evil's agents".

F is for: Fetish
I once read that the most common fetish is for women's feet. This is clearly an unhealthy and twisted practice that I will NOT tolerate, even if posting a related picture would increase traffic to my profile. Boobs are better anyway.

G is for: Greensleeves
A piece of music supposedly composed by King Henry VIII between bouts of spousal decapitation. It goes, "Da da, da da, da da doo doo, doo doo da da-da-da-daa doo doo". No, wait, hang on a moment - that's the theme tune to 'Airwolf'.

H is for: Halitosis
A medical condition which causes people to forget how relatively cheap Polo mints actually are.

I is for: Interactive Movie
A horrendous (and now almost defunct) genre of computer games which appeared when consoles became capable of playing full motion video. Such games consist of watching bad actors talk crap whilst you occasionally click on something with the mouse. More tedious than watching somebody else watch paint dry. Worryingly coming back into favour.

J is for: Junk Mail
THE scourge of modern society. Sending off for anything by post will now result in your letterbox being endlessly bombarded by credit card offers and AOL internet CD's. Perhaps one day companies will accept that if we want something, we will go and get it. Until then they will repeatedly claim on the telephone that we have been selected for a prize before trying to sell us double-glazing.

K is for: Klingon
Those aliens from Star Trek that look like they've got cornish pasties stuck to their foreheads. Come to think of it, most aliens in Star Trek are just people with funny foreheads or noses. The USS Enterprise must explore some very cheap galaxies. It is now possible to learn the Klingon language, as for some reason it has been invented in full. Great - millions of people are starving all over the world and what do people do? Invent fake languages for fun, or write stupid blogs …

L is for: Vatican
Hang on, no it isn't !!

L is for: Lion
That's better !!

M is for: Marge Simpson
The least used member of the Simpson family, Marge deserves a mention if only for her fantastic haircut. Episodes based around Marge tend to be less funny, which is probably why there are relatively few of them. Her purry voice is unique amongst cartoon characters. All together now - "Hrrrrmmmmmmm..."

N is for: Nightmare
A nightmare is a bad dream. I have a recurring nightmare involving a bucket of pens. You may have that one yourself.

O is for: Organisation
Possibly the most difficult task in modern society - organising any sort of social event. Even the most carefully planned outing will be met with a barrage of people who don't pay on time, people who drop out at the last minute or change their mind, and people who just don't turn up. Scientists believe that this behaviour is caused by a faulty gene and are developing tests for it. Offenders can then be diagnosed at birth and humanely destroyed. With a blunt axe.

P is for: Penguins
Funny little birds that swim rather than fly. Which is obviously why their name was used for a brand of chocolate biscuit.

Q is for: Quetzlcoatl
Some sort of Incan snake-god thing. It appears in a film called "Q - The Winged Serpent" (which I breifly mentioned in my post "A-Z of Everything I Hate About The Movies"), which is partly about a failed bank robbery and partly about a giant flying snake terrorising people. Strangely, Quentin Tarantino was genuinely influenced by that film when he wrote Reservoir Dogs. It's true. Ask him.

R is for: Resident Evil
Abysmal adventure game for Sony's PlayStation 2 that enjoys huge success despite having identical gameplay to a crappy Spectrum game I bought new for £2.99 back in 1993. It's all there - picking up objects and using them in unlikely places, not being able to carry enough things and having to drop them off in linked storage boxes, and of course a combat system which involves holding down one button whilst pressing another. Other highlights include ludicrous dialogue ("Jill, the master of unlocking!") and frog-like enemies that can cause game over with a single hit. I paid £40 for that! Grrrr. But never mind - it had pretty graphics and lots of blood, right kids?

S is for: Suggestively-Shaped Vegetables
Always funny.

T is for: Tie & Die
Method of producing t-shirts that look like they've been washed by your Dad.

U is for: Unexpected
Surprise endings are great, aren't they? But so rarely seen these days. It's all too obvious in most films, TV shows and even books that the hero or heroine will beat all the naughty people and live happily ever after. Until the sequel, which will end the same. "Tales of the Unexpected" was an old TV show, written mainly by Roald Dahl, that offered only stories with a twist at the end. But due to the title of the programme, viewers were expecting a twist, so it wasn't really unexpected. Oh well.

V is for: Vikings
Nordic hardcases who invaded everywhere they could find, raping, pillaging and drinking as they went. Most people remember them for singing a song about spam in a Monty Python sketch.

W is for: Waiters/Waitresses
People who serve you food in a restaurant. On television there seem to be only two types - arrogant French waiters for French restaurants, or jovial Italian waiters for Italian restaurants. Whereas all other eating establishments employ young, jaded American actresses.

X is for: Xylophone
When I was at school X was BLOODY ALWAYS for xylophone. But in modern children's books, it seems to be represented by a fox. Or a foX, indeed. This is probably better for teaching kids, but it seems like cheating to me.

Y is for: YouTube
Of course it is nowadays.

Z is for: Zygote
A zygote is a sex cell - but also the last word in the dictionary. So if anyone ever says to you, "You always have to have the last word!" just shout "Zygote!" back at them. Then run away as fast a possible before they smash your face open.