Friday, May 06, 2005

No Cuss Words Were Harmed In The Following Post

I apologise for my sweary ranting last night. I get like that sometimes.
I blame many factors. Not me though. No, I definitely don't have a personality prone to swearing and fits of anger. That’s not the Glenn I know and feel slightly ambivalent about.
I'd been drinking Cornish cider - or 'zider' as I so hilariously called it all last weekend. Booze, and high alcoholic percentage cider especially, keeps the logic parts of the brain busy with a tough word puzzle, whilst it teases the emotion-puppy with a rubber squeaky telephone that it won't let it have. So there is barking. Bad-word barking.
Hmm…
I think the sight of impossibly smug Conservative politicians was too much to take. I voted labour with a heavy heart, and as I mentioned last night it was mostly because I thought I was betraying my 'roots'. Why I'd take that into account when the labour party long ago jettisoned any of its links to these roots I'll never know. I guess the logic part of my brain was doing a tough wordsearch. It let misty-eyed thoughts of socialism, the welfare state and a fair society have their way, when they should have been kept in their box.
I stayed up way too late to devour the statistics being presented to me. It was quite a predictable and staid election. The exit poll was pretty much spot on so there were little surprises. Everyone had their professional faces on; nobody let the mask slip to reveal the often odious person underneath, like Mellor did in 97. Nobody got giddy about anything, and really nothing much has changed. Spectacle was at a low.
No really big names lost their seats, nobody kicked a BNP candidate in the face, and I'm fairly sure that no winning candidate did a squirty poo whilst the returning officer was reading out the results. It seems the Paula Radcliffe thing hasn't really taken off.
All the politicians trotted out the same bland speeches, and ignored any references to things they didn't want to talk about. It seems to be a bit of a solecism to display a personality nowadays if you're a politician; you get tarred with being a maverick.
I suppose the only excitement came from one of the remaining mavericks, where George Galloway beat labour Blair-robot Oona King on an anti-war vote. I disagree with the war completely, yet feel uneasy about siding with a man whose had Saddam's genocidal helmet in his mouth, pumping Kurd killing chowder down his repugnant gullet.
Then again, who am I to talk? I work in a defence company and readily consume the crumbs of comfort that I don't work on an attack project. Well, bully for me.

Anyway, I should stop becoming angered upon sight of posh people. I'm sure that there are at least 8 nice poshos.

Herman Dune were great the other night. In fact I'd call them exquisite.

Score!

I can go to bed now as I've found out that Cleveleys doesn't have to be destroyed.

Thursday, May 05, 2005

Bottle

I lost my bottle. I went along intending to vote Liberal Democrat. I disagree with so much of what this government stands for. I wanted to lodge my complaint about the war in Iraq, the introduction of tuition fees, and numerous other reasons which I feel as a betrayal of the roots of the labour party.
Roots.
They were a big part of why I lost my bottle.
I stared at the ballot paper blankly. The council election was a no-brainer. I've lived in Wyre council. They were useless fucks. Preston council is a breath of fresh-air compared to them. So I voted labour.
I then stared at the paper for ages. Fucking hell, i'm from a die-hard left-wing working class family. I put the fucking X next to the labour candidate. It felt wrong. It still does in a way.
The Grauniad didn't help as well, tugging at the huge sentimentiality that resides in me. They played on my desire for a liberal country. It told me that we could have one if we voted sensibly.
I'm watching it now. The results are coming in and it doesn't look good for the wishy-washy liberal country of my dreams.

I'll tell you this. If Joan Humble loses the Blackpool North & Fleetwood seat then I'm going to suicide bomb Cleveleys. The fucking old right-wing bigotted snotty cunts. I'm sure the number one google search that contains the word 'Cleveleys' also contains the word 'cunt'. I want them to see this threat. They won't use google anyway, they'll use some fucking www.keepbritainwhite.com search engine.
Tory voters! I hate you, you self-serving cunts.
Fuck you all!

Wednesday, May 04, 2005

This Is The News!

Here are two news stories, which tickled me today…
Free Snake
Cock Locked & Ready To Rock

And now a commercial break…
I've mentioned before that I like 'things'. They are smashing. I have quite a few 'things' but probably my favourite is the Cannon Powershot A80. I bought one about a year ago, had a quick skim through the manual and considered myself an expert on using it. It's a standard procedure adopted by blokes throughout the centuries.
Anyway, we were in Cornwall last weekend and I experimented with most of the features on the camera that I haven't used before. Fucking hell, it's reet fucking bazzin!
I sort of knew that you could use it as a camcorder but I'd never used it as one as I'd sort of dismissed it as being a waste of the memory card. I also assumed it would probably be awful quality. But no, you can store about an hour of good quality video on it. With sound!
It also does this rather nifty thing which allows you to take one picture and them merge it with a second one, third one, fourth one, etc, etc. This means that you can do a 360 degree panoramic shot of a wide scene. Maybe I'm a novice in the digital photography world but I can't remember ever being as impressed with a piece of technological wizardry as I have been by this.
Oh yeah, it takes great pictures as well if you just want to use it for standard camera things.

I'll get to the Cornwall visit later on but I need to mention last night first.
I was at Anfield last night to see the Champions League semi-final against Chelsea. I've been at Anfield and witnessed some great atmospheres and tense games in the past but nothing matched what happened yesterday.
We needed to beat Chelsea to progress to our sixth final in this competition, and our first in twenty years. We only went and fucking did it! Little Luis Garcia scored in the fourth minute, and that was followed by approximately ninety minutes of hellish tension. I think I almost nibbled through my fingers with nerves.
The atmosphere was exhilarating. Nobody sat down, chants rang around the ground for the entire match and the relief and joy at the end was a sight to behold. I was lucky to be able to witness a game and spectacle like that. Yay!
The final is three weeks today. I don't know where I'll be watching it yet, but I think I may burst with joy if we win the whole thing.
Oh yeah, I thought I should also mention that I think I *heart* Jamie Carragher. He is a star; a footballer harking back to a long gone era. I salute him with both hands.

Right, Cornwall then.
Julia had somehow got a cheap deal for a 4-person chalet near St. Ives in Cornwall. So on Friday we travelled from Wolverhampton for the exceedingly lengthy journey to the south-west. All four of us had made a compilation CD for the journey there and it passed the time listening to what people had come up with. It only took us about 5 hours in the end and that included toilet and snack breaks. In fact, I seemed to spend most of the weekend going from one snack to the next.
The chalet was on a cheapo holiday park, fairly basic but agreeable enough. Sadly, a school of welsh kids were in lots of the other chalets and acted like dickhead teenagers often do. Still, bar one of them attempting to climb in through the chalet window and it being a bit rowdy at night, they were relatively easy to ignore.
On Friday we had a brief wander around the misty St.Ives and then retired for some rather nice Mexican food.
On Saturday we went to the Eden project which was really good and quite a sight, both inside and out. Though maybe not quite as fantastic as Kew Gardens in London, it is worth a visit if you ever find yourself in one of the remotest parts of England and like looking at non-indigenous plant life.
Like everywhere else in the south-west, the Eden project sold two things in its café; pasties and cider. I sampled the cider here and also had a pastie in St.Ives. I've managed to bring some scrumpy home as well, which I think I'll consume tomorrow. Hmm, appley goodness.
Sunday was quite a busy day. We had a longer look at St.Ives (now free of fog). We visited their Tate Gallery, which was poor for the admission price, and I watched Julia and Paul attempt to fly a kite.
We then went to St.Michaels On the Mount which is a small island just off the Cornish coast with a castle on it. Access was via a causeway (though you need to use a ferry when the tide is in). I then climbed to the top where you get an impressive view of the surrounding coast and Atlantic Ocean. This was where the Spanish Armada was first sighted approaching England and where the first warning beacon was lit.
We then made a trip to Land's End, the supposed 'end' of the British mainland (though Lizard Point is actually further south). Heh, it was so windy. We all posed for a group shot and Paul and I have ludicrous windswept barnets. If a picture of me is ever required for the news then I hope that one is used. You can find it in the photobucket, which I will link to. I will. Again. Promise.
We had to go home on the Monday, but still found time to visit Tintagel, the mythical location of the mythical Camelot, the residence of the mythical King "the myth" Arthur. It was a fascinating ruined castle built on another cliff edge. Again, the wind was ludicrous. Still, the views were triffid.
I most enjoyed my first visit to Cornwall. It's a pretty place.

Oh yeah, we saw the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy on Thursday night. It wasn't hilariously funny (as the TV/radio series wasn't), yet was warm-hearted and quite a sweet little film. It wasn't the worst way to spend an evening in Wolverhampton.

Tonight I shall be seeing the exquisite Herman Dune in Manchester. Annoyingly this will mean that I'll miss The Arcade Fire who are also playing in Mancland, but I'm sure HD will be fantastic. Because that is what they are. Indeed.