The Freak Box

“There has been too much violence, too much pain. None here are without sin. But I have an honorable compromise. Just walk away. Give me the pump, the oil, the gasoline, and the whole compound, and I’ll spare your lives. Just walk away; I will give you safe passage in the wasteland. Just walk away and there will be an end to the horror.”

Lord Humongous, Post Apocalyptic Scavenger Warlord, Mad Max 2.

Wise Words… we’ll return to this in due course…

A funny old year. Shit obviously. They are all thick with crud these days with mere flashes of good stuff, I suppose that comes with age…. the end of weddings and the start of funerals (as you can see we are off to a flyer).

2018 has been the year of the Stupid.

Now before all the Brexiteers get the hump I’m not talking about that. I’ll come on to that later. No, I’m taking proper stupid, real down in the gutter shit-ya-pants stupid. This stupid has cropped up everywhere and I’ve found it very depressing.

Now I’m no geni-arse. My education (or lack of) puts me firmly in the stupid camp…on paper. It would be fair to say I’m no rocket scientist but from what I’ve observed this year most people are fuckin’ thick because it’s easier to be stupid. When you are stupid you get away with it. You can say and do what you like because now you have a mouth due to social media and the stupid seem more likely to inflict their opinion on you whether you like it or not (I’m aware of the irony here so calm down).

This stupidity is a global disease. We all know that King Stupid controls America and he has mobilised an army of dim which get involved in everything.

I was on Twitter the other day when a tweet from my local police force brought the news of a stabbing about four miles from my house. I scrolled through the replies to this tweet to see if anyone had any other info only to find the following tweeted from an individual from California:

‘By a Muslim’

This Jub purported to be an ex soldier in the US army whose bio stated ‘Grandpa, Conservative, no longer trust FBI, DOJ or courts’. Clearly this idiot follows my local police news feed simply to spread hate. At no point in the police press release did it mention the gender, race or colour of anyone involved in the incident. Why would you be bothered enough to even comment on this stuff from another country if you didn’t want to cause hate and division?

Of course this is a small pinpoint example of the Stupid. If you want national look at our leadership (Tory or Labour) and Global, well that is a whole other story.

Trump hangs on for now…. or at least we think he hangs on. If Mueller doesn’t have something on him that will end it this could be the biggest waste of time in history. My own view is that he has him by the short and curlies but really wants to drive it home and get it right. An investigation like that should take this long as a minimum and you rarely nick the big cheese in the first instance. You nick the foot soldiers to cause disruption and distrust in the crime gang, as the net tightens you are only left with the Boss… that’s what Mueller has done. Textbook if he’s successful, a waste of time if it fails. I think it will cause so much grief that they will be forced to remove him from office but don’t expect an arrest or prison time… expect a resignation and national embarrassment.

Look at that… I’m getting involved in another country’s political problems… but unlike Californian Jub I’m merely talking to you my three readers rather than a global audience of thousands… I’m all about the controlled approach.

Late this year I decided to focus my hate laser on Trump rather than our own problems because our issues are so profoundly stupid that I lost the will to take the piss as every day I was confronted with something more ridiculous than before.

Not all the stupid in this country is Brexit related but a lot of it is just by the sheer fact that there appears to be no other relevant news other than stabbings in London.

The Brexiteer is a very sensitive soul, which is surprising given the complete belief that this is all easy and beneficial to us all so I should clarify that I’m not saying all of them are stupid. Some are stupid like some remainers are but that is really a food chain kinda thing.

I sit next to a Brexiteer who likes to call me a ‘Remoaner’. We had a frank robust conversation after this and I pointed out that I don’t call her a ‘Stupid Brexiteer’ so she should stop with the insults and simply engage in a rational debate about the subject. A rational debate was impossible as she admitted that she didn’t really understand it and due to boredom had stopped following it in the news but just wanted the government to (wait for it)… ‘Get on with it’.

Ahhh yes… ‘Get on with it’, the motto for our generation because we will all be lumped in as Brexiteers if it goes through and there’s nothing we can do with it. No one will believe you when you say they didn’t vote for this shit, we will all be regarded a big lump of Stupid globally with no personal out. It’s just a massive balls up whatever way you look at it which has convinced me and most people doing a job involving the public that they can’t really be trusted with decisions revolving around sanity, their own interest or logic.

‘Get on with it’, ‘for a change’ and ‘it’s something different’ appear to be the three most used phrases regarding this car crash because very few people have been bold enough to go down the ‘foreigners out’ route at least in my presence. To be fair this is mostly due to where I live rather than fear of me as an individual. I wonder how much Welsh farmers and Grimsby fishermen will like ‘the change’ this time next year? Bit of a laugh innit?

The reason I don’t wish to bracket all Brexiteers ‘stupid’ is because I know a few and they aren’t all stupid people. I’ll go with ‘misinformed’, ‘manipulated’ and potentially ‘lazy’ when dealing with a need for knowledge and facts. Of course not all people voting leave did it for a laugh, some genuinely believe it will work. I work with another bloke who really thinks it’s a good idea but ‘just in case’ he’s got his kids Irish Passports to ‘give them a chance’. Brilliant. In essence he doesn’t trust it to work and has shat on not only his nationality but that of an EU country. The fabled ‘have your cake and eat it’ is strong in this one.

If there was a cogent argument for Brexit other than soundbites above I could have been swayed but there isn’t.

For some reason the majority of the public (and don’t give me all that ‘those who didn’t vote would have swung it’ bollocks… they didn’t so they don’t count and if they couldn’t be arsed then they are responsible) seemed to choose a group of multi-millionaires mostly disliked by society in general. The wealth controlled by leading Brexiteers makes them immune to any scenario but for some reason the common fuckery of this country seemed to go with it in some kind of ‘Remains of the Day’ throwback to respecting the elite:

Here are the heroes of the common fuckery:

• Aaron Banks (£250m net worth),
• Rees-Jub (£55m)
• Boris (£2m)
• James Dyson (£7.8bn)
• Farage (£2.5m)
• Roger Daltrey (£80m)
• Michael Caine (£60m)
• Tim Martin (£448m)
• Gove (£2m)
• Yaxley-Lennon (£1m)
• Fox (£1m)

..and of course the architect of this whole shit show Cameron whose family has an estimated £30m fortune.

It should be noted the relatively low net worth of most politicians is countered by ongoing salary and expenses… basically none of the strokers mentioned above will struggle ever as an MP gets £74k a year with a further £65k as a cabinet member.

This shower of Tory shit was believed in favour of logic and fact and they even went as far as to announce that you couldn’t trust experts. If you asked the average punter at any other time if they believed any one of these fuckers the answer would have been a resounding ‘no’ but when it came to an unachievable utopia they went for it. Well done Charlie Farley…well done..

Of course in any normal time the opposition would oppose such upper class frippery but we got nothing from the shabby millionaire across the floor because essentially he agreed with them.

Comrade Corbyn has proved to be as much as one trick pony as any Tory spouting ‘the will of the people’ and ignoring the majority of his support because they hadn’t paid for a membership card. This is akin to a football club ignoring a global fanbase in favour of the 55,000 turning up in the ground…. it makes no sense but it keeps you in the £134,000 a year seat while you do nothing but watch the country go down the tubes. Corbyn spouts utter cobblers along the lines of giving him the reigns and he can sort it out in three months when the fucker couldn’t organise two kippers on a plate.

Where will it end? Who fucking knows? Can’t possibly end with no deal as that would be catastrophic no matter what the Millionaire Ghoul Rees-Jub tells you. It takes decades to sort out trade agreements even if they are described as ‘easy’ by failed professional politicians and businessmen who build their shit in South East Asian sweatshops. Leaving with nothing is never better than staying with something…let’s face it when you leave the Looney girlfriend you’d take the Van Halen bootlegs and the cocktail shaker over fuck all if nothing else but to fuck her off.

My only job now is to assist my tribe as I can’t rely on anyone or anything else to help me or them.

On a personal note I’ve had worse years obviously but this one has been right up there for nothing special…. an eyebrow raiser and an eye opener on a number of fronts.

For years now my greatest assets have been my Achilles heel.

Reliability, Organisation, Humility

(Ignore the last one).

I’m a boringly reliable person. If I say I’m doing something or am going to be somewhere you can bet your life I will either have done it or will be there before you are. To me reliability is the key asset in friendship. If you can’t rely on someone to even get to a pub on time then what else can’t you trust them with. I’m all in and expect the same… it’s why I go all ‘Guinnessapocalypse’ in December as I’m committed to seeing those I value before the end of the year… that and I absolutely love Christmas and laughing so if you put them together I’ll be your Huckleberry…

Problem is that this year it wasn’t reciprocal with a large amount of my relatively small love arc not bothering.

We all have busy lives, even me, but if you don’t make an effort then the cracks appear….and they have appeared. This time though my trowel will remain dry and my love putty will remain arrid in its pouch. The days of me doing the running are gone, let’s see what happens now… this clown has chucked his last empty bucket until our man in Hong Kong sweeps back into Blighty triumphant…. then I’ll come out of retirement.

Strangely I had more social nights out with our man in Hong Kong and the Queen of Gin from the Emerald Isle than I did with some mates living in a 6 mile radius of my house. A particularly great hour of my year was spent with the Gin Queen in a North London boozer where I laughed almost continuously and smiled long after she left. Another great moment was meeting an antipodean princess in a coffee shop in central London…. total shock event making my day. It’s the small stuff that matters and to do that shit the effort needs to be made.

Clearly I’ve got grouchy in my piss ridden beige panted dotage but if you can’t sound off in your own blog when can you?

Friends are all to me as I have very little family so I’m sensitive to the collapse of it…bear with me, I could snap out of it at any second. Anyway you’d be disappointed if I kept my mouth shut right?….it is what it is…

What else?

The Arsenal finally managed to bin the Frenchman after what seemed like eons of mind numbing whinging from large sections of the online fanbase. In the ground there was little complaint as was proved a few years ago when you were directed to raise an A4 ‘Wenger out’ banner at some random pre agreed minute during a game. As expected about 200 bits of flappy paper were raised in an embarrassing act of defiance and we waited another 3 years for the willowy ponce to clear out his desk.

Up stepped boss eyed part time Spanish concierge Unai Emerey with his pidgin English and jet black Vampire hair. This was all fantastically refreshing and reignited my love of the game and the day out with the ever faithful philosopher. It started badly but got a lot better and now it is sputtering a bit but it’s enjoyable and expectations are low. The best thing about it is that it has fuelled the Boy’s interest as a 70 year old Frenchman weren’t cutting it. A big year ahead for the club but let’s keep it real eh?

In the summer we holidayed in England and specifically Cornwall. You probably know this as I blogged it and you might have read it (or simply pretended to in an attempt to boost my fragile ego). We had an absolutely fantastic time and I miss it desperately. I crave the solace, the slower pace, the greenery…. the lack of…. people.

Cornwall has made me realise that I can’t end my days in London as it’s a young person’s place and I want something else. Fear not dear reader, I’d imagine I’ll be here for another decade and a half but I’d like to do proper fuck all surrounded by trees rather than flats and stabbings.

So it’s Christmas and I sit with a white Rioja in my new glass watching the World Darts championship after a lovely afternoon of laughing with my neice and my ex sister in law… The cheese board has just entered the room so I might go Austrian Smoked with a water biscuit.

It’s been a great Christmas and as ever it started on the 1st of the month. I’ve put the work in and have had a good time but there is always room for improvement.

As usual Jen could not give me a clue as to what she wanted. Every year I’m given tasks to find things like a ‘phone which is also a coffee machine’ or a ‘bag which carries a laptop that isn’t a rucksack but looks like one and is a purse’. It’s almost impossible and so she ends up with trinkets rather than epics. I need fuck all. If I haven’t bought already it then I probably don’t need it. Jen sees this as a challenge and always proves me wrong by finding something I had no idea I needed which is now essential to my survival. She’s a genius.

A great but different Christmas though as the kids have now broken completely free from the shackles of Kris Kringle. Heart breaking but a new vibe fills the house, not quite the same but different…. not better. Those kid moments are fucking unreal, almost surreal and I’m glad I recorded them all. However Santa-free or not the traditions continue and will forever… my drum, my rules…

A ‘meh’ year then consisting of 5 pints of blood lost, 3 gigs attended (QOTSA, Arctics and ‘Tragedy’ the world’s #1 metal Bee Gees covers band), 18 audiobooks consumed at 15,000 plus minutes, multiple Arsenal games, gallons of Guinness sunk, 10 Facebook ‘friends’ binned (various reasons all unreasonable), 4 funerals (couldn’t do the 5th…too sad), 1 threat of legal action from my father, 3 blogs, 148km run, thousands of Facebook entries and a crack in my friend base…. and as I always say over Christmas if you didn’t see me it was your fault and not mine… I’m out there in the Guinness trenches for you…’The Others’..

As with all yearly reviews we need to look ahead to next year. What do we want? I simply want to laugh more…..and a new pair of Shure SE215 sound isolation headphones but I have low personal goals… that’s not for you…I get that. Think bigger…..

All tales of woe these days end on Brexit and this one is no different.

In three months we hit the big goodbye square on unless something with brains bursts free from the incubus of Stupid pulsing in Westminster.

I’m ready.

If I’m not eating my words as the pound notes are posted through my letter box and float down the chimney I’ll be drowning in Schadenfruede of 17.4 million as it collapses around our arseholes.

That is my moment.

I will at that point ascend the stairs to my loft lair, shave my swead, strip down and don the Lord Humongous bondage, fur pants and hockey mask (glasses on the outside) to appear to the assembled neighbours outside there burnt out ruins in an apocalyptic landscape from the flat roof above the den of my house to calm the terrified, awe struck horde below:

“Citizens of Barnetonia, today is a new day…a new dawn.

I am Lord Humongous, Warlord of the Coppetts Ward killing fields!!!

Bring me your beans and tins of Del Monte Fruit cocktail and no one will be sacrificed to the God of World Trade Organisation Rules today…

Houses 15, 17, 29, 32, and 39 are now devoid of mixedbloods… they are gone and their homes can be plundered for Vittols and pens…they loved pens, especially blue ones…

All food associated with any land outside of the extensive fishing fields of this island with impenetrable borders must be destroyed by me…. in private. Bring these items to me.

At 1802 hours the Gladiators of the Wastelands ( Pete from number 2 and Rolf from 37) will compete to the death for 7 paracetamol and a stale doughnut….bring forth the champions!!!!

BOW DOWN BEFORE ME FOR I AM YOUR GOD!!!

Oh yeah…at 1850 there will be a puppet show in the scout hut….”

2018…. over and out… rubbish….