Revolutionary Zeal

Think about it.

Because when they don’t get their way, they do shit like this:

Saggy manboobs are a powerful political tool indeed.

Aaaaaaaarrrrgh. They’re so huge that they flop under his armpits, for fuck’s sake.

And here comes the second bit of this multi-part RZ special! Unfortunately, somewhere in between not sleeping and deciding to eat a large amount of caffeine pills, my body has worked itself into a state where it can’t decide whether it wants to poop or puke. Or maybe do both. Well, maybe we’ll find out which it chooses whilst we look over the party election broadcasts of the minor parties. Stay tuned.



4) The Green Party

Okay, I’m going to be honest here: I’m supporting the Greens in this election, so you might want to skim over this one. I don’t give a shit about the environment, but goddamn it: they’re the only left wing party with any influence we have, and what’s more, for some peculiar reason they’ve always been rather popular in my old home town of Norwich.

So let’s sit back, relax and enjoy the show.

We open with a cluttered office and a bearded dude surrounded by environmental campaign paraphernalia and insipid acoustic guitar music. Uh-oh! Oh wait, they’re actually poking fun at themselves! Oh, that’s as clever as the Conservatives’ decision to have Magical Dave (he’s such a nice chap) answer a question with an honest ‘no’. Too bad the guitar music continues, though. They use this as a springboard to expand upon their beliefs and political positions, seeking to dispel the myth that they’re a single-issue environmental group. They then go on to list their achievements in government (which are suspiciously more or less all to do with environmentalism…)

The more you watch the Greens’ presentation, the more pathetic the Lib Dem one looks. The Lib Dems were working with a fraction of the funds the Tories had to make their ad, but the Greens are most likely working with a fraction of the funds the Lib Dems had to make theirs. Which is amazing, since the production values are… really good. They even have a good narrator as opposed to the refrigerator hum of Nick Clegg’s voice. I must say I am disturbed by how the guy’s facial hair changes every time we see him, though. Especially during the Mario-esque moustache phase.

Like the Tories, they use their airtime as a means to promote a positive message whilst at the same time summarising their policies and successes in as concise a way as possible. Moreover, they don’t mention the other parties at all until well over the 2 minute mark. When they do mention the other parties, it’s more a brief criticism of the homogeneity of the big three rather than attacks on specific policy areas.

Oh, this is boring! Poking fun at this is as difficult as making non-racist Obama jokes. Which I guess means this is the best ad so far.



5) UKIP

UKIP is kind of like the BNP for those in denial about being racist. The group is notoriously Eurosceptic (like the name and logo weren’t a complete fucking give-away…), so hopefully we’ll see an inarticulate, frothy-mouthed Daily Express-style polemic. Let’s do this shit.

So, what do you think the first thing the ad talks about is? You got it: immigration! This is going to be a fun one. And what does it talk about for the remainder of the ad? Immigration! Whereas the Green Party tried to present itself as more than a single-issue party, UKIP apparently has opted to do the opposite and focus on a single issue. That issue being how much they hate Eastern Europeans and freedom of movement.

It’s not long before phrases like ‘UNLIMITED MIGRANTS’ and ‘SOFT TOUCH BRITAIN’ start turning up. Hurrah! But seriously, how can there be ‘unlimited migrants’? Presumably they’d eventually, like, run out of people in Poland or something. Of course, the funny thing about that is since the economy here’s gone to shit, many have actually gone back to the land of delicious vodka and insane drivers.

Following a segment featuring a very Indian-subcontinent-looking fellow to prove that UKIP are totally not xenophobic, we’re treated to some simply fantastic graphics that look like they were put together in Microsoft Publisher 97 or something.

Nice.

Okay, I’m starting to zone out now. Are these people really so myopic that all they can think about is immigration and Polish bogeymen?

Oh wow, this line is fantastic: “If you want British jobs for British workers, you need British laws for British people”. We get it– you love this shitty rock. What’s better is while this is being said, we are treated to a 3D animation of their party logo that looks like it was generated by the same software that made Family Fortunes’ opening sequence.

Things get more interesting in the next scene, during which one of their politicians explicitly states that they’re against freedom of movement. Since their only concern is national self-determination, you’d think they wouldn’t be so horribly afraid of personal self-determination. Oh well, that’s rightards for you.

They then go on to use a favourite Eurosceptic weapon in their crusade against the EU: statistics. DID YOU KNOW 75% OF ALL LAWS ARE MADE IN BRUSSELS!?!?!?!? Of course, the funny thing here is UKIP are also the same ones to cause a stink over ‘frivolous legislation’ the EU comes up with, so I’m going to assume that the majority of these laws were about the shape of bananas and what is and isn’t yoghurt. If that’s the case, then what’s there to worry about?

The anti-immigrant diatribe continues for a little longer, before moving onto the topic of EU accession. The screen fades ominously to the crescent moon under which 70 million strange brown folk by the name of Turks live. DO YOU WANT YOUR CITY TO BE OVERRUN BY RUG SALESMEN AND KEBAB HOUSES? The video then reaches its conclusion, followed with a quick disclaimer that they are in fact a ‘non racist political party’. Which I guess is true: if you’re a foreigner, they’ll hate you regardless of your skin colour!

Oh man, that’s enough of this shit. This trumps even Labour’s efforts to stir a little fear.



6) British National Party

Ahaaa-haaaa. Here we go.

Now first and foremost, I couldn’t find the BNP’s broadcast on iPlayer (I believe theirs aired a fair deal earlier than everybody else’s), so I had to hunt this down myself. Long story short, the BNP’s website raped my browser by featuring a giant wall of text and I had to force quit, losing about half of what I’d written about UKIP. Fucking fascists.

I understand that the video is available on Youtube, but if you wanted to watch it via the BNP’s website, you have to follow a link to some guy’s account on a Youtube clone. Very professional right there. Not only this, but the videos are listed as ‘mature content’ and require you input your date of birth (read: open the ‘year’ dropdown box and select the earliest date possible. Coincidentally, I expect my letter from the Queen in precisely one month from now.) But whatever. Let’s get to business.

First of all, if UKIP was using Publisher 97, then the BNP is using MS Paint. The opening graphics are terrible, especially the awful font selection. By Mothra, look at that. I can barely even read what it says:

It’s followed by a picture of a pretty meadow though, so perhaps it’s not all bad.

“Do you remember when our country was a wonderful place?” No.

Man, these people seriously need to take off their rose-tinted specs for a few moments. According to them, British society in decades gone by was ‘decent, fair and happy’. What fucked up bizarro-world version of British society were they living in? Probably one without the race riots, poverty and gross elitism everybody else’s version experienced. But hey, whatever. Let’s just roll with it for now.

Aaaand now they’re talking about the World Wars. I wondered how long it would take before they got onto this. Trench-storming, Winston Churchill, Spitfires (fun fact: a recent BNP anti-immigration poster featured a picture of a Spitfire that in fact belonged to a Polish unit) and “traditional Christian values”. My favourite bit by far, however, is the CUNNINGLY SUBTLE statement that WW2 was about stopping an ‘evil Nazi plan to create a totalitarian European superstate’. OH I WONDER WHAT THIS IS IN REFERENCE TO.

In case you were too slow to get what they were hinting at (in which case, you’d make a perfect member of the BNP!), they then produce this wonderful graphic to clarify their position:

Ahahahahaha, oh my. Seriously, couldn’t they find anyone who could make graphics that didn’t look like utter shit? I have no morals and basic understanding of Photoshop, so… you know. If you’re reading this and just so happen to be a BNP big-wig (preferably with a fat wallet), drop me a line.

The WW2 comparison continues when they declare that ‘immigration has become an invasion’. Apparently the only way to stop the Nazis (or immigrants. Whatever, dude) from winning is to… vote for Nazis. Uh-huh. They then take a moment to highlight the ways in which Islamic extremism, which is caused entirely by immigration and not by Anglo-American jingoism, damages society. These examples include attacks on members of the Jewish faith (AHAHAHAHAHAHA, ARE YOU FUCKING SERIOUS?) and, for some reason, a ‘heroin epidemic’. Well, I guess heroin’s technically halal…

We then rejoin Nick Griffin, who insists that the BNP doesn’t blame immigrants, but instead greedy politicians, before taking a jab at their rivals on the wacko right, UKIP, by declaring that ‘when [the BNP says] British jobs for British workers’ they ‘mean it’. Actually, the BNP’s site has an entire section devoted to detailing how UKIP are fake fascists and how the BNP are the authentic Adolfs. Again, their site killed my browser the same way a phenol injection to the heart kills Jews.

Having got that out of the way, more war footage rolls, with a reminder that in both World Wars, “overwhelmingly, it was our people who did the fighting”. Never mind the French or the Russians or the Americans or the massive numbers of Indians we recruited in the Raj to fight on all fronts. Loving the patriotic music, by the way.

The ad then begins to wind up, and we hear that wonderful phrase: “not racism, just natural common sense.” Which roughly translates to “we’re racist”. Finally, we end on an intellectual high note and are left with a picture of two pigs in business suits pocketing cash.

Yeah, well at least it’s better than the other graphics.

You know, it’s difficult to decide which is the more fear-mongering: UKIP or the BNP’s election message. The BNP’s is certainly the more hilariously paranoid, but the marginally higher production values and slightly less insane message delivered by UKIP might give it more a greater illusion of authority.



Well, that’s it for three of the minor parties. If I can still stomach more party election broadcasts without vomiting blood and lung tissue, I might do the parties running in the vassal states next. Or maybe not.

By the way, the answer was poop.

The elections for the EU parliament and English councils are but a day away, and as always, we’re treated to another fantastic round of party election broadcasts. But if presentation was all that counted (actually, this isn’t far from the truth…), who would come out tops? Well, I took the time to go over all the major parties’ few minutes of begging and mudslinging SO YOU DON’T HAVE TO. Be thankful.

So without further ado, here are the three main parties.



1) Labour

Ooooh, a desaturated opening scene. How dramatic! We hear ominous footsteps as a dude in a suit approaches a punching bag and proceeds to lay into it for some reason. I’m struggling to think what the metaphor is here; I assume that the dude represents the Tories and the punching bag represents the public…? The only real punching bag in politics for the past few years has, of course, been Labour’s credibility… but let’s watch on!

Ah, a cut to a fat dude. Wonderful. Apparently, ‘previously long term unemployed’ Jamie is here to tell us how those evil Tories will fuck up your employment opportunities, entirely unlike how Labour’s fucking up of the economy might. But no, I totally don’t smell any hypocrisy here. No sir. None whatsoever. Anyhow, apparently the Tories won’t abide by Labour’s guarantee on jobs and training for under-25s who have been out of work for a year, and of course, we all know that Labour always follows through on its guarantees. Remember the way we all had to drag ourselves out to vote in that referendum on the EU constitution a few years back? Oh, wait.

We then cut back to the dude laying into the punching bag again, before being treated to a wonderful close-up of Jamie’s sprouting neckbeard (a common tactic to hide a double chin). And then some more punching. This dude in the suit must really have some anger management issues. Perhaps he’s part of Labour’s election strategy team– a job like that would most likely drive anybody to violence.

We’re done with Jamie now, and after watching suit-dude’s workout routine some more, we meet our second speaker: a woman hanging on to her two crotch droppings. Hardly a step up, but beggars can’t be choosers, I guess. Then there’s some more punchy suit-dude action… Man, these rapid cuts are pissing me off. It’s like watching a show on MTV.

Like previously long term unemployed Jamie, Mother is here to tell us of the evils of the Tory party and how David Cameron will force you to perform analingus on him, instead of what Labour can do for us. Possibly because they have no good policies, but whatever. She goes on to tell us how mean ol’ Dave would sever help dished out to families suffering because of the recession. The recession caused by Labour’s economic poli… oh, forget it.

To stop us thinking too hard about the thinly-veiled hypocrisy, we’re treated to another series of rapid-fire scene changes. We focus for a microsecond on a couple of coffin dodgers—our next speakers—and then rejoin suit-dude’s exercise regime. Again.

So what do these wise, sagelike and most likely thoroughly incontinent golden (hurr) agers have to tell us? Why, that David Cameron is evil, of course! That the Tories would abolish Labour’s £60 cash boost, free TV licenses and bus passes for the soon-to-be-dead among us. Labour under Attlee might have created the NHS and all that jazz, but that’s nothing compared to the £60, unlimited access to shitty BBC sitcoms and free rides to the city in piss-scented chariots that 12 years of New Labour have given our dementia-tormented elders.

And then there’s some more punching. You know, I think I understand these scenes now. Earlier I tried looking for metaphor, but now I see that it’s just a way of hiding the fact that this ad is basically just working its way through a list of major demographic groups. We had Jamie the useless young person as the useless young person, Mother as the… mother, and Wise Old Coffin Dodgers as the self-righteous parasites of those in employment who, thanks to the ‘miracles’ of modern medicine, might be riding our asses for another 30 miserable years. All we need now is a token ethnic!

A poor showing from Labour on this front, however. ‘Tina’ isn’t a very foreign-sounding name at all! One thing’s for sure, though: this bitch can’t act. It’s like listening to an 8 year old read a book– all grammar vanishes, instead replaced with an uninterrupted barrage of words. Man, this is terrible… thank Godzilla it cuts to some more punching.

After suit-dude finally finishes his daily workout, we’re treated to Eddie Izzard, who’s here to tell us how the Tories are evil. How refreshing. Look, this guy can’t even be arsed to button his shirt so I don’t see why I should be arsed to hear what he has to say.

One interesting thing to note is that, whilst the other parties heavily feature their leaders, Brown is nowhere to be seen in this 3 minute video, and neither are any members of his rapidly contracting circle of toadies. I wonder why.

Overall, a lousy showing from Labour. Things can only get better, right?



2) Conservatives

The conclusion reached by the Labour party election broadcast was not only that the Conservatives will murder your relatives, but also that they’ll force you to watch them have sex with the horrendously mutilated bodies. However, let’s see how the story’s being told on the other side of the fence…

And we open with upbeat music! Well, that’s the first major contrast with Labour’s fear-mongering workout video. And here comes Magical Dave! Hurrah! And he’s in Milton Keynes for ‘Cameron Direct’! It’s a shame they didn’t aim for a play on words à la WebCameron. They could have called it ‘Cameron over and have a Chat’. Okay, that was terrible, but I bet I could think of something better if I was on the Conservative Party’s payroll.

It seems the primary way the video tries to convince you to vote for the boys in blue is by reminding you just how nice a chap Dave is, a sentiment that pushed home by featuring as many ‘normal people’ as possible talking about how nice a chap Dave is. Including members of the public is always a risky move, since many are terrifying, including this hambeast:

It hungers.

And– holy shit, did he just give an honest answer to a question on tuition fees and how he wouldn’t abolish them? Very clever. Well played, Tories. It’s also worth noting it takes a whole 2 minutes before they start laying into Labour and when they finally do, they come up with a much more convincing argument as to why Labour are a bunch of cock-sucking faggots than Labour did them. They don’t use that exact terminology, but it’d be cool if they did.

By the way, they’re really not holding back on this inspiration music. It’s moved from upbeat furniture-store-ad-style rock to full blown Stannah-stairlift-reclaim-your-dignity piano music by this point.

The basic premise of the Tory ad—beyond presenting David Cameron as so gracious that he makes Jesus look like an angry drunk beating on his wife in comparison—is to provide a sort of condensed Q&A about where they stand on the major issues via what are ostensibly spontaneous questions from these whimsical Cameron Direct meetings.

It finally ends with a message: “VOTE FOR CHANGE”.

… Wait, aren’t conservatives supposed to be against that?



3) Liberal Democrats

So now we’ve got the two main parties out of the way, let’s get to perpetual fence-sitters, the Liberal Democrats. If this video turns out to be more exciting than a lukewarm cup of weak tea and a rich tea biscuit, I’ll shit myself.

Oooh boy, Nick Clegg standing in front of a grey backdrop and delivering a monologue. It’s times like this that the economic disparity between the two main parties and the Liberal Democrats becomes clear. Since the entire broadcast consists solely of this and since Clegg hardly has bags of charisma (nor even sachets), I can see myself struggling to pay attention to this one after a few seconds. Blame the internet.

Of course, given the bland (or refreshingly simple, depending on your perspective) delivery of the Lib Dem message, there isn’t an awful lot to pay attention to.

Clegg focuses most of his time speaking about the lack of trust caused by the expenses scandal(s). This is the natural route for the Lib Dems to take, since they always do well thanks to the protest and tactical voting this sort of shit causes, especially since their most outrageous claim in this expenses row—a trouser press—doesn’t really stand up to the mock-Tudor beams, moats and duck islands enjoyed by MPs of the Labour and Conservative parties.

In another by-the-books move, the message shifts to the perennial Liberal Democrat topic of electoral reform near the end of the ad. Of course, we all know that if the system ever started to look like it was working again for the Liberals that this policy would disappear faster than a box of jelly doughnuts in previously long term unemployed Jamie’s flat.

Beyond that, there’s not much to say. I mean, it’s just a boring bloke standing in front of a boring backdrop delivering a boring three minute speech. With that little going on, I managed to get majorly distracted by the fact that his lovely purple tie is slightly off-centre. So I didn’t shit myself after all.



Well, that covers the three main parties. So far, the Tories are out ahead, but we’ve yet to see what the minor parties have to offer. Hopefully something hilarious.

Unbelievably, this place still exists! This calls for some celebratory graphs.

As if that wasn’t enough, I’ve also set up a stats page that will keep track of this stuff on a monthly basis.

Beyond that, you will have already noticed the new banner. The photo used in the background was one of the ones I took whilst I was in Crete last August. The original plan was to make, like, five and quickly write a script that cycles them randomly, but that would take effort. Man, fuck that.

So here’s to another year. Thanks for reading!

Well never fear! Here’s a summary of the BBC News website’s major stories today to help you along:

And here’s a link to the Wikipedia article for hangman’s knot in case you need it. Good luck and nice knowin’ ya! Baa.

If you’ve read any of my other shitty articles, you may notice the recurring theme that is my general contempt of and complete inability to understand other people. But even given my complete lack of faith in the mental capacity of the average person, there are some things that entertain and entrance these glorified gibbons that I’m still at a loss to explain. Let’s get this shit on the road.

I just can’t grasp what the appeal of beer could possibly ever be. My efforts generally result in me dismissing it purely as some bizarre ‘macho’ thing, but even that age-old ‘most-men-being-knuckle-dragging-chest-thumping-morons’ explanation seems strangely inadequate in explaining the bizarre popularity of a beverage that has both the taste and alcoholic content of cat piss, but for some reason is ‘enjoyed’ by so many.

Really. What the fuck is there to enjoy? First of all, let’s examine the taste. I’m immediately suspicious of anyone who says they drink alcoholic drinks for ‘the taste’, since that’s the biggest lot of bullshit since the time someone fed a prize-winning bull a diet of bran muffins, coffee and Ex-Lax. This is especially the case of anybody who says that they drink beer ‘for the taste’, given that the taste of beer ranges from liquified brown bread at the top end of the market and like drinking warm tramp piss at the bottom.

So that leaves the alcoholic content, because let’s be honest: if you’re not drinking to get drunk, you shouldn’t be drinking at all. (Drink. Drink, drink, drinky drink. Man, I need a thesaurus.) Again, beer is a shite choice, certainly compared to whiskey and my personal favourite, vodka. The amount of beer you need to drink to feel even the slightest buzz leaves you pissing like an ostrich (even seen an ostrich pee before? They piss a lot) and feeling as bloated as a corpse after it’s been left in the sun for a few days. Where the fuck’s the fun in that?

It’s just twenty-two overpaid cunts booting a ball about for an hour and a half, innit? Yet somehow, football is more than just a national sport– it’s a national obsession. It’s no wonder I hate this fucking god-forsaken rock so much.

Of course, the thing here is it’s not so much the sport itself that gets to me; instead it is the endless coverage of it. It’s a never-ending, inescapable barrage of fixtures and results, points, playoffs, transfers, substitutions, bookings, bickering, squabbles and on and on and on and on and on.

But it’s not just that it’s such a boring sport played primarily by people who, aside from their admittedly admirable physical coordination skills, border on brain death. It’s that it’s so flagrantly and callously controlled by big business interests who will milk their beloved fans at any opportunity for more cash. I mean, just look at merchandise: £50+ for a shitty replica jersey that’s plastered with corporate logos? Seriously? Seriously?

I’m still ostensibly a gamer, so I figured I should at least include something about videogames in here. And seriously, who the fuck are buying these things? A gimmicky control scheme that only vaguely works, graphical capabilities years behind the competition and (most importantly) an unbelievably mediocre roster of games. This is seriously a machine that 50 million suckers have bought into?

Nintendo’s efforts as far as games development for this machine can be at best described as ‘token’, but perhaps more truthfully, ‘lazy’. For a system that’s promoted by people who can’t afford a better console as ‘innovative’, the 1st party offerings basically add fuck-all to what in some cases are already rather creaky and tired franchises. Nonetheless, formulaic doesn’t necessarily mean bad; you have to rely on the truly hilarious 3rd party efforts for that!

Third party offerings generally consist of the following: casual games for people who are legitimately entertained by Windows Solitaire, last-gen ports that haven’t been milked totally dry yet, and some of the most unremarkable shooters ever. The Wii is obviously seen by developers as a magical device into which turns shit into gold, and I guess this is not an inaccurate view!

But even despite it being designed as a ‘pretty neat’ toy brought out to bugger about with by middle-aged people who have poured too much wine down their throats, it still falls short as a means of entertainment even when used at parties. For example, the little games where you play horrifyingly deformed virtual versions of yourself are so easy—the bowling one especially—that it’s more a matter of seeing who doesn’t bowl the perfect game than who does. Beyond that, there’s Super Smash Bros Brawl, which is basically just Super Smash Bros Melee with odd physics and new characters and levels that add no real value, and maybe a Mario Party title or something… but then who hasn’t already got one of those? In summary, and based off my own experience, you’re much better off just playing Mario Kart 64. Now there’s an amazing game to play drunk with mates.

You know what’s fun? Dancing like a twat whilst drinking £4 bottles of alcopops until 4am, apparently. I don’t know, maybe I just don’t get clubs. Although I’m not sure what there is to get. At what point does that aforementioned combination of asshattery and expense become a positive thing, for example?

Then there’s the music. I’ve been to my fair share of clubs, and for some reason, it seems as though they all share the same iTunes playlist or something. More or less everywhere you go, you’ll be aurally raped by the same shitty assortment of recent hits, 80s (and I say this very dubiously) ‘classics’ and maybe the odd alternative tune (read: really old Radiohead song) if you’re lucky. Really lucky.

Perhaps it’s just because I’m a boring person, or because I’m a cheapskate. Perhaps it’s because it’s impossible to hold a conversation in a club, or that there’s never anybody worth having a conversation with. Perhaps it’s because the toilets invariably end up overflowing and covered with puke. Whatever the case, fuck nightclubs, man.

Recently, I learnt that, in light of the Simpsons going HD (like high definition would really make any fucking difference with a cartoon) the famous title sequence was changed. This came as something of a shock to me: people still watch the Simpsons? Damn.

It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly what makes the Simpsons shitty, but there are certainly a few possible explanations. First of all, there’s the fact that the major television channels have been repeating the same episodes over and over since the fucking 90s. Second of all, there’s the fact that the early episodes are awfully animated and have plotlines so dull that they’re only just in front of Family Circus comics, whereas the more recent ones do very little to hide the fact that almost 20 years on air, the writers have simply run out of ideas.

More to the point, however, is that it’s simply been eclipsed by other shows. Up-to-date topical humour is handled far better by South Park, and Family Guy completely surpasses the Simpsons if zany humour and non-sequitur is your thing. But most importantly, with these newer shows you’re never having to worry if the episode you’re watching will turn out to be a ‘Lisa’ episode. I hate that preachy bitch.

If there’s one thing we all need, it’s another arena for histrionics. Well, you can thank the social networking sites—MySpace, Facebook and the whole bloody rest—for delivering this to us.

Now, along with being reachable via phone, SMS, instant message and—heaven forbid—actually in the flesh, it’s almost an obligation to maintain some shitty vanity page on some shitty site on which you apparently post the entire contents of your shitty, pointless life like anybody really gives a fuck. At least there’s not a lot to write about, though.

‘But it’s a great way to keep in contact with all my friends,’ I hear you bleat. So none of the other methods I mentioned earlier are? Is your life so jam-packed with adventure and excitement that you really can’t find a couple of minutes to say ‘hi’ to someone, even over the phone? No. Oh, and you know what I especially love? When people insist on checking their shitty little MySpace/Facebook pages at parties to inform their friends that they’re at a party. The majority of which are in the same fucking house!

On the plus side, the fact that the businesses operating these sites insist on extracting such a diverse set of information from their users (which I hazard a guess is promptly sold on to god-knows-who) makes stalking people online a cinch, especially since so many of these dolts really take the whole ‘post every fucking minute detail of your life’ stuff to heart. There have even been news stories detailing how people’s conduct on these sites—given the ease at which you can find a user’s profile—are affecting people’s employability. Serves you right, you goddamn morons.

Since they share the same diet, I wonder if vegans shit little pellets like rabbits do.

Fuck salad.

Batman, Superman, Spiderman, Ironman, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Superhero movies have experienced something of an unfortunately sharp surge in popularity in recent years, which leads to two more unfortunate revelations: 1) there are going to be lots more, and 2) people are actually enjoying these shitfests.

But why? Superhero films fit into one of two groups: brain-numbingly predictable, with cardboard cut-out characters and a story you’ve already sussed out by the end of the opening credits, or brain-breakingly muddled, with scenes beginning and ending and characters arriving and vanishing arbitrarily. Either way, you’re going to end up short of a few IQ points if you can make it through to the end.

The recent Batman remakes are the ones are perhaps the most popular and most critically acclaimed in the genre so far, and even then the plot could best be described as ‘loose’ and the characters as ‘transient’ and ‘peripheral’, which is why ‘the guy with the sack on his head that makes people go crazy’ shall remain known as ‘the guy with the sack on his head that makes people go crazy’.

A guy with a sack on his head that makes people go crazy. Goddamn, I hate superhero movies.

Then there’s the guy who actually plays Batman, whose performance contains enough ham to rival a pig, or at the very least William Shatner. I appreciate that it’s a difficult task to not ham up such a ridiculous character as your average pulp magazine-born superhero, but was putting on a voice that sounds like an angry outboard motor really necessary? It gets to the point where it can be quite difficult picking up every word he rasps and spittles out in dull angst.

Admittedly, I’m basing my opinion of the rebooted Batman franchise on the first iteration alone, but given that the general consensus with the second film is that the best actor is a guy who can’t even take medicine correctly without fucking up and killing himself (and thus forcing us to endure almost a full year of ‘OH HEATH LEDGER IS SUCH A GOOD ACTOR’ and ‘HEATH WAS JUST BORN TO PLAY THE JOKER’, although that last one might be true, and might explain why he so promptly offed himself after apparently having fulfilled his life purpose), I’m not getting my hopes up.

Man, fuck superhero movies.

I understand this is (at least) the third time I’ve brought this up and I’m not saying that there are no flaws with the idea of slashing the throats of a couple of Met officers and dragging their naked corpses through the streets to make a statement, but, well… it’s a start.

Talk about saving the worst for last. Seriously, who the fuck can stomach this poison day after day, with a bumper dosage on Sundays? Apparently, over two million people– a figure which is almost as high as the number of libellous and factually skewed statements one might find in the Mail on an average day!

From the Zinoviev letter and communist uprisings to the Eurotunnel and immigrants hoofing it under the Channel, the Daily Mail has a long and rich history of telling the socially regressive and intellectually challenged just who to devote their daily Two Minutes Hate to. But seeing as that 1984 reference has already plunged my analysis of its political stance deep into cliché, I’m going to skim over its grim, scaremongering politics and look at some of its other, equally shitty aspects.

And one of those equally shitty aspects I hate most is the façade of respectability it tries to put on. I like to think of it like The Sun, but wearing a dress shirt and trousers and driving an entry-level BMW instead of a beat-up Mondeo. Despite the pretense of sophistication, you still know that the Beamer’s going to be paying a visit to the Maccy D drive-through on the way home. Perhaps that was a bit of a bizarre metaphor, but the fact of the matter is the Daily Mail is pretentious. It inarticulately discusses things it has no real understanding of, in the same way its readership does, all the while painting everything with a thick coat of its wretched ideology. It’s like a print version of Fox News.

And the columnists. Oh, the columnists! They’re quite unbearable. With breathless outrage, their sole interest is discussing the hardships of middle-class suburban life, like how society is to blame for their children being little shits or how global economics are interfering with their mindless acquisition of shit they don’t need. It’s enough to make you smash a custom-numberplated Range Rover with a sledgehammer.

Naturally, since the Mail tries so hard to maintain its pathetically thin veneer of respectability, it loses the only possible thing tabloids ever had going for them in the first place: the cheekiness and irreverence. And what good is Prolefeed without the valuable contributions of Pornosec?

I could probably go on forever listing things I despise, but frankly just 10 is enough to make me want to kill myself. But that would be a lot of effort, so instead I think I’ll just mope for a while.

The person who thought that creating a pastel-pink fridge with the word ‘SMEG’ scrawled prominently across the front was a great idea was either an unparalleled genius or a tremendous idiot. So far, I’m drifting towards the latter.

As you may be aware of, I found myself in the middle of a protest march against the shiznitz in Gaza. Although I generally disagree with the notion that peaceful protests are effective in any way whatsoever, there is something I wholeheartedly agreed with the protesters about: Starbucks is fucking awful.

Sure, they may have just been yelling ‘STARBUCKS STARBUCKS, SHAME ON YOU’ because it was in bed with those despicable Jews or whatever they think, but there are many reasons to hate Starbucks even if you don’t give a rat’s ass about who’s exterminating who in the Holy Land. Namely, their coffee tastes like liquified cat shit mixed with the ejaculate of HIV positive rapists; their mochas and other fancy-bullshit-coffees have as many calories as a cheeseburger with none of the deliciousness; coffee shops attract the absolute scum of the Earth in faggy emo kids, gadget-laden midlife crisis men and Sex and the City-esque long-past-it troutwomen… and it costs a bomb to have the pleasure of enduring the aforementioned three. Seriously, the mix of taste (shit) and patrons (assholes) make it feel like you’re a hooker performing analingus, but then you’re the one who has to pay at the end.

I cannot get over how much disdain I hold towards Starbucks and their Satan spawn coffee. In fact, this is true of pretty much every coffee shop I’ve visited: the actual coffee tastes like ass. How shitty must people be at making coffee if any of these places actually managed to get off the ground in the first place? If they actually—and they must have done for their business not to completely and utterly fall flat on its face—represented somebody’s definition of ‘good coffee’? Jesus Christ. You know what Starbucks coffee taste like? It tastes like when you have some complimentary coffee at somewhere shitty like a hotel or a car showroom or something like that, except it costs you at least £1.50. Goddamn, I hate the coffee at coffee shops.

Thinking about it, what even is the point of a cup of coffee if you’re a) not working, b) it’s not 4am or c) you’re not drinking it to stay warm? None! That’s what. You’re just there because you think drinking coffee at some shitty chain of cafés somehow makes you more cultured or sophisticated or whatever-the-fuck-else bullshit excuses you can come up with. You’re playing totally into their hands, you stupid me-too motherfucker! When I drink coffee, it’s for one reason only: because I’ll fall asleep and drool all over myself if I don’t. If you don’t drink coffee to the point of being twitchier than a humming bird on amphetamines, then frankly you shouldn’t be drinking coffee in the first place. Instead, YOU SHOULD BE PUBLICLY FLOGGED FOR PISSING ME OFF.

Yeah.