Love animals?

If so, and I think most who come here do, please go and read this, then click through and sign the petition.

Killing animals in the name of art is not big or clever, and any cunt who would do such a thing should be imprisoned rather than held up as a national treasure.

Guess who's my nomination for Cunt of the Week. And this was a close call; but I figured I could give the nod to Alistair Darling any time.

And the winner is...

This week's Cunt Of The Week (© The Ranting Dullard, wherever he may be) is undoubtedly Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner.

Not content with having been in charge of an operation in which an innocent man, 27-year-old Jean Charles de Menezes, was killed on a Tube train -- shot seven times in the head with hollow-point bullets, not content with being part of an inquest in which the victim's name was besmirched with talk of illegal residency and cocaine found in his system and news that his image had been modified to make him look a bit more like a suicide bomber, Blair says in his team's defence that a week later they caught the 21/7 would-be bombers.

He added: "In the past 12 months, we have responded to nearly 10,000 calls potentially involving firearms. Police have fired their weapons on three occasions."

Y'see, to me, that's no defence. You shot and killed -- nay, gangland-executed -- an innocent working man, and yet when faced with real criminals, proper terrorists, genuine threats to our country, hardly a single bullet is fired.

You, o knight of the realm, are a Class A Cunt. I hope you rot in hell, you fucking arsehole.

“Someday a real rain will come...”

"... and wash all this scum off the streets."

Five-year ASBO (anti-social behaviour order)? Why not just do a Marv on him, and cut off his arms and legs and let his dogs come and feast on his bloody body while he's still alive? Cunt.

Lock up your T-shirts and CDs

The way they were: Manic Street Preachers, c.1990

Since 1996, every couple of years or so, for a period of about a year, I have to be careful which T-shirt I grab from my drawer and also have to sacrifice a small part of my CD collection.

Why must I do this?

Because every couple of years since 1996, Manic Street Preachers release another terrible album, and I have to ensure I am not seen wearing or listening to anything that might associate me with them.

I first heard of the Manics in July or August 1990. They had just released their third(?) single, "Motown Junk", and had featured on a TV show (Rapido, was it?). Two of their number wore make-up and tight white jeans and home-made T-shirts with various pseudo-political slogans. Those two looked spooky cool, like twins or camp gay lovers. The other two looked a bit lame, with no make-up and bad haircuts.

I was in a band at the time. I figured we were way better than the Manics. The history books, though, seem to dispute this.

Eventually, a few months later, I succumbed to the charms of the group. I bought their first album as soon as it was released. I bought the singles, the T-shirts. I went to see them several times throughout 1992, once even being on the guest list to interview them for a fanzine, though the interview fell through.

I still have the unused ticket from that gig. I'd bought it before knowing I'd get on the guest list. I figured I could sell it at the venue, but there was no one there to sell it to! The place was almost completely empty.

The band went from strength to strength, via a somewhat unconvincing second album, up to and including the powerhouse masterwork The Holy Bible. I mean, how can anyone not love an album that opens with the words "For sale. Dumb cunts, same dumb questions"?

Then the inevitable happened. Their lyrical genius, chief architect, and self-harming anorexic Richey Edwards disappeared in early 1995. No one has seen or heard from him since, and if he is dead his body has never been found.

If that was inevitable, so too was the downhill slide of the Manics' music. From the top of the world, musically speaking, to another unconvincing album, followed by a fifth, sixth, and now seventh studio album. I stopped buying their records (singles and albums) after that fifth album. For me it was unlistenable, and not in the good way that people said The Holy Bible was unlistenable, or PJ Harvey's Rid of Me, or Nirvana's In Utero.

The Manic Street Preachers had become unlistenable in that they had become old, tired, and boring, writing lyrics about household chores and, in interviews, praising the virtues of Dyson vacuum cleaners.

This morning -- a bit behind the times, I know -- I heard their latest single for the first time. I am so mortally embarrassed. I thought they could sink no lower than they already had, but I was wrong.

I know I should make sure not to listen to any Manics records for a good few months. But I also feel I have to wash my brain now, clear my eardrums. Perhaps the only way to do that is to listen again to the band at their peak.

I feel like someone has taken a hugely important part of my past and razed it to the ground, only to build a fucking McDonald's on top of it. Manic Street Preachers have become a bunch of cunts. And not in a good way.

No more will they write the sort of lyric that must be every parent's nightmare:

4st 7lb
Days since I last pissed
Cheeks sunken and despaired
So gorgeous, sunk to six stone
Lose my only remaining home

See my third rib appear
A week later all my flesh disappears
Stretching taut, cling-film on bone
I'm getting better

Karen says I've reached my target weight
Kate and Emma and Kristin know it's fake
Problem is diet's not a big enough word
I wanna be so skinny that I rot from view

I want to walk in the snow
And not leave a footprint
I want to walk in the snow
And not soil its purity

Stomach collapsed at five
Lift up my skirt my sex is gone
Naked and lovely at 5 stone 2
May I bud and never flower

My vision's getting blurred
But I can see my ribs and I feel fine
My hands are trembling stalks
And I can feel my breasts are sinking

Mother tries to choke me with roast beef
And sits savouring her sole Ryvita
That's the way you're built my father said
But I can change, my cocoon shedding

I want to walk in the snow
And not leave a footprint
I want to walk in the snow
And not soil its purity

Kate and Kristin and Kit Kat
All things I like looking at
Too weak to fuss, too weak to die
Choice is skeletal in everybody's life

I choose my choice, I starve to frenzy
Hunger soon passes and sickness soon tires
Legs bend, stockinged I am Twiggy
And I don't mind the horror that surrounds me

Self-worth scatters, self-esteem's a bore
I long since moved to a higher plateau
This discipline's so rare so please applaud
Just look at the fat scum who pamper me so

Yeah 4 stone 7, an epilogue of youth
Such beautiful dignity in self-abuse
I've finally come to understand life
Through staring blankly at my navel.

Seville and elections and Asda, oh my!

Just when we thought Seville couldn't get any better, they go and build this solar power station. Excellent! If you follow the link, there's a little film in the sidebar of that page where you can see how truly cool this is.

Meanwhile, it is polling day in my small town today. While the Spanish are removing troops from Iraq, permitting gay marriage, and building massive solar power generators, we are focusing here on whether or not the public toilets should remain open. This is a "town" with barely any shops worth coming for. Who the fuck do they think needs the public toilets? Certainly they didn't need the public library that used to be here.

And that cunt who currently runs our country has decided not to launch a full independent enquiry into the 7/7 London bombings because it will undermine faith in the security services. Um, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the fact that we have no faith in the UK's security services the reason we want an enquiry? Arsehole.

And on the subject of arseholes, Bush of course vetoed the plans for withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. I will hold up my hands here and say that I sort of know where he's coming from as regards not wanting to inform "the enemy" of his troops' withdrawal dates. The problem is, though, that I truly don't see Bush ever pulling out of Iraq. He is in this to win it; and if he can't win it, he'll just stay there pretending he's winning it. Prick.

And on the subject of Bush, I shopped at Asda today. The traffic going towards Sainsbury's was just not worth joining, so we headed the other way for our groceries. Asda has started stocking a whole lot of better stuff than they used to. A couple of years back when I was looking for free-range chicken, I was told that they "had some once, by mistake. Someone had ordered the wrong thing." (That is absolutely true!) Now, though, they actually do stock it! Of course, it's all money in Bush's pocket via his Wal-Mart connection.

Man, it's impossible to know what to do for the best sometimes. I'm pretty sure Sainsbury's gives money to Blair's lot anyway. Maybe I need to find a Spanish supermarket... Anyone know of one in the southeast of England?

Elvis said it best

In the film G.I. Blues, Elvis sang a song called "Didja Ever?" In it, he asked:

Didja ever have one of those days, boys?
Didja ever have one of those days
When nothing goes right
From morning to night?
Didja ever have one of those days?

Well, it looks like I'm having one of those days right now, Elv, ol' mate.

So far, essentially, today has cost me £531 (that's US$1,064 or Can$1,193 or €779 or Aus$1,276). Now that, my friends, is a whole hunk o' cheese.

First, I turned on my e-mail to see that Paypal, cunts that they are, in their infinite fucking wisdom, have decided to reimburse one of the people I sold some tattoo magazines to on eBay. Why? I don't know... I sent the mags to a confirmed address SIX WEEKS AGO, and she left me positive feedback, so I know the mags got to her. And now she's requested -- and been given -- a full refund. So I'm out of pocket to the tune of £19, and I no longer have the goods either. What the fuck?

Second, I get my Visa bill. Yes, the one I had paid in advance yesterday. And I see I've been charged £12 for missing a payment. A discussion with my Visa card provider ended in me discovering I will not get the £12 reimbursed, despite the fact the bill never came to me last month. It also ended with me advising the girl that, therefore, I would like to cancel my account, asking her why her company treated its customers like cunts (freezing my credit card because I missed a payment of £5 despite the fact that I pay it off in full every month), and telling her to fuck off when she gave me her shitty standard excuses.

Third, a job that I have lined up, which is proving to be a complete ball-ache: I've negotiated them taking a part of it back, but of course that means my fee gets reduced by £500.

Okay, so the last one is fair enough, I suppose...

... But if the proverbial fool and his money are easily parted, I guess I must be the prize fucking sucker right now.

Who moved my cheese? No, I mean, Who changed my coffee?

My e-mail to Cafédirect:

Hello.

I'd like to ask whether any changes have been made to the Cafédirect blend when you rebranded it from 5065 to Classic. To my palate it does not taste as good any more. Indeed, I am unable to finish a cup, it's that unappealing. And not only that, it is not as attractive in the cup anymore, looking like a cheap greasy-spoon-cafe type of coffee, leaving a nasty film around the cup's rim.

I have been drinking Cafédirect since way back before it was rebranded as 5065, so I think I have a good grasp on the way it should look and taste. On that note, why rebrand it anyway? The new look is very bland and generic and caused much confusion to both myself and the supermarket staff when I was trying to buy my usual jar.

I look forward to hearing from you on the points raised here.

Yours disappointedly on several counts.

Their reply:

Dear _____,

Thank you for your email. We greatly value consumer feedback. As part of our continuing improvement programme we have improved the flavour of the freeze dried coffee to make it more similar to ground and 5065 has been replaced by Classic Blend. The residue you have found around your cup is a sign of the coffee's quality. We will not be reintroducing 5065.

You may like to try our new Intense or Special Selection freeze dried coffees. I am sorry you do not like Classic Blend and I will pass your comments on to my Brand manager.

Thank you for supporting us from our beginnings; I hope you will continue to and that one of our new coffees is to your liking.

Kind Regards.

Conclusion:

Despite having been told by Sainsbury's that these two coffees are one and the same, patently this is not the case. The coffee I have enjoyed for the best part of 10 years is no more. I rue this day. What cunt made this decision? And why the fuck was I not consulted? The swines.

The modern man

Urban Dictionary has several definitions for the term metrosexual, just as it does for most words. If I were to define myself with one of these, it would probably be number 3: "Men with taste & style who know about fashion, art, and culture".

It is with this understanding in mind that I might ask my wife before I go out, "Does this shirt look okay, not too creased?" or "Do these shoes go okay with this pullover?" And occasionally I might even be seen carrying a man bag. So what, right?

In this day and age, I think more and more men are conscious of their appearance, and rightly so.

So if we are to assume that men care what people think, why does the following conversation never seem to take place?

Him: "Dear wife, do I look okay to go out in public with this tiny mobile phone affixed to my ear?"

Her: "No, sweet husband of mine. You look like a total cunt."

Post #600, wherein I will undoubtedly navel-gaze a little and blather on about stuff I’m ill equipped to discuss on any meaningful level

It's the first day of spring. Happy spring to you all! (Thanks to Red for the lovely photo.)

And so it came to pass, my 600th post. It's taken a little longer than I had hoped, but you just can't rush these things. Well, you can, obviously. I've rushed many of the previous 599 posts at this blog. In fact, about 591 of them have been rushed. I did take my time over those three posts on cinema, though, and those few building up to my 500th.

Not only have I rushed almost 600 posts here, I've also rushed many of my posts on my other blogs. What a guy! So, there you have it: you can rush these things. Super!

So, 375 days and 600 posts. And not only that, but I've also watched more than 100 movies in that time, 99 of which I have reviewed; they can be found over at my movie-review site Such As They Are.

Anyway, I have a tendency to anticipate these "landmark" posts far too long in advance, and they become like an albatross. This is especially true when I haven't actually prepared anything in advance.

And it's not that I'm talking about having to "entertain my readers" or anything quite so "delusions of grandeur"-ish as that. It's all to do with my borderline OCD, a-place-for-everything-and-everything-in-its-place mentality.

We have lightswitches in our house, you see. Much like you do, I suspect. The room in which I am typing this is upstairs. From my desk, without leaving my seat, I can turn on the lights in the room. But I don't like to do it once I'm up here. Why? Because it means the switch for the same lights at the foot of the stairs looks as though it's in the off position, when in my mind it should look as though it's in the on position.

Likewise, at the top and bottom of our other flight of stairs we have double switches: one for the light at the top and one for the light at the bottom. I like it when both are in sync with one another. I don't like when they are in alternate positions. Do you catch my drift, get what I'm saying, see where I'm coming from?

Yes, I alphabetize my CDs and DVDs, too. Who doesn't?

So, getting back to what I was saying. This symmetry, if you like, this "commemoration" of "event" posts is more to do with me wanting the 500th, 600th, 750th posts to be something that I'll consider worthwhile of my time.

But...

By overthinking them I will often end up with an outpouring of nonsense fit for consumption by neither man nor beast.

Furthermore, I actually don't have much to write about today. Well, that's not strictly true. There are several things that have got my goat over the past 24 hours and upon which I would gladly wax unlyrical, but these subjects are all downers, and I don't want my 600th post to be a downer. Subjects like:

1. British schools can now ban students from wearing full-face veils. (Small print: if the veil is inhibiting learning or a threat to personal safety.) I mean, what the fuck does that mean?! The headline says one thing, but then the option is removed entirely by perfectly impossible clauses.

2. Number of fatal stabbings in the UK higher this year already than in the whole of last year.

3. German animal activist wants to kill polar bear. (Or, as I would call this story: "Knut und kunt".) Have you heard this? What a fucking tosser!

I mean, the world's going down the fucking pan.

So, no, I don't want to post on any of that stuff. I want to be upbeat, at least for today.

But the powers that be are conspiring against me at all sides.

4. Gordon Brown and his fucking Budget. You know it can't be good for anyone and it's going to be full of bullshit. But let's not dwell, shall we?

Instead, I'll get this post rounded off with something almost witty or pithy or amusing, then get back to my work and hopefully manage to pop in and read a good number of the blogs on my blogroll.

But I can't think of anything witty, pithy, or amusing. Bugger!

And to top things off, I was going to post a video clip from YouTube, but the fucking thing's been removed because of copyright infringement. As a creative type, I understand the need for copyright (oh, God, I've done this rant before), but so much stuff just languishes in copyright owners' vaults at TV centres around the globe... Share the fucking love, you cunts!

So, turns out I did navel-gaze a bit in this post, but I did less blathering about things I know nothing about than I had expected. That'll teach me not to put the title in before writing the post in future, won't it?

Birthday dinner

No pictures of my birthday dinner, I'm afraid. It's funny: when we are on holiday abroad, the missus and I almost never feel any shame in whipping out the camera and photographing every course in detail, but here in the UK it just seems so wrong! So we didn't even take the camera out of the house with us. And I'm kind of glad of it, to be honest, because we would have been rather conspicuous.

I knew in advance that the restaurant I/we had chosen was a bit posh. But I thought it was going to be just that: a bit posh. I mean, it's only 7 miles from our house, so how posh could it be, right?

Wrong!

It turns out it was only the second restaurant I've been to in my life where you have to ring a doorbell to gain admission. (The first one, incidentally, was also for my birthday dinner, two years ago, in Rome. Seems I am something of a high-class motherfucker after all, choosing all this fancy shit for my "special day".)

So the door is opened, and we are greeted and allowed in (phew!). Our coats are taken and we're shown to the lounge/bar area and asked what we want to drink. It being a celebration, we chose the Champagne. (To be fair, being Italian-ish, we asked for Prosecco, which is kind of Italian Champagne, but they didn't have it; they informed us that the house Champagne was Pol Roger.) So we has a glass each, and they soon brought us the menus and a little plate of appetizers: olives (yuk), two teeny-weeny cheese on toasts, and a couple of anchovy breadstick things. The cheese on toast was deeelish!

We ordered from the menus next. Red opted for a first course of pumpkin risotto, followed by the steak with (I think) dauphinoise potatoes and parsnips. I chose the first course of Parma ham with caramelized pears, rocket, and Parmesan shavings, followed by the veal escalope with capers and a fried egg on top. (This latter dish should also have anchovies, but I didn't fancy that so had them left off; I also left all the capers.) Side orders of vegetables accompanied the main courses: spinach, roast potatoes, and baby carrots.

But before the first course came, we had another freebie dish, this time a celeriac soup with croutons. The soup was in a teacup, and the croutons were set on a teaspoon on the edge of the saucer! It was really yummy, as was all of the food.

For dessert (cos I just gotta!) I had the clementine cheesecake with a lemon posset (whatever the fuck that is; even the waiter didn't know!) and a citrus sorbet. So kind of like three desserts in one. The cheesecake was DIVINE... the best cheesecake I have ever tasted. So damn light and smooth. Unbelievable!

Man, but this was a posh fucking joint, I tell you. The table of four next to us, which was full of nouveau riche cunts, just kept the Champagne flowing all night. We counted three bottles that they ordered, and at least one of the women didn't seem to be drinking. They were those loud-but-stupid types, y'know. They love for everyone to hear what they're saying, but they don't know what the fuck they are on about.

The one woman had a voice that made you want to strangle her: a real common Kentish accent with a squeaky stupidity added in for good measure. Her partner was a builder from what I could make out. But not like a good, honest, grafting builder; more like one of those builders that owns the business and can sit on his arse all day getting other people to do the manual labour. He sounded more Londony than Kentish, but he was vile, too. He was talking about being at some bloke's house and said, "But, y'know, I don't think he was a poof" at the top of his voice. I'm no prude and that, but I think it's unacceptable to be quite so brazen with your bigoted terminology in a refined environment.

Anyway, that is all by the bye, I suppose, with the exception of Red saying that they kind of spoiled the evening for her. Still, at least we had a good laugh at their expense. And blogged about how fucking vile they were. Ha! Take that, suckers!

It turned out to be the most expensive meal we've ever eaten, and yet we only had three glasses of Champagne between us, in terms of alcoholic beverages. Put it this way, there wasn't much change from £150 between the two of us once the tip was added in. (And we don't do crazy 75 per cent tips, or whatever the new norm is for you guys in the States.)

All in all, though, a very pleasant evening. And it led perfectly into today, which is International Woman's Day. So to all you international women out there (including my very own international woman), have a great eighth of March!

Thought for the day

The British National Lottery has been running for -- what? -- 10 years now. Do you think some cunt could invent a vending machine for these tickets so I don't have to waste seven minutes of my life queuing behind a gaggle of no-hopers at the Co-op, all clamouring for their pointless tickets and scratchcards, when all I want to buy is a couple of breadsticks and a fucking banana?

An open letter to Ultimate Burger

Dear Ultimate Burger,

The thing is, if you're going to name your company/restaurant/chain Ultimate Burger, you better fucking well be serving people the ultimate in burgers, you dig? Because when I walk into somewhere called Ultimate Burger, I'm expecting the ultimate burger.

And in my opinion, you know what the ultimate burger has in it? NOT FUCKING RAISINS, THAT'S FOR FUCKING SURE! What kind of cunt are you, putting fucking raisins in a fucking hamburger? Where the fuck did you grow up, eating that shit?

It would be all well and good if your burger bar was called Raisin Burger or some other shit like that, but it's not, is it? You, my friend, have set yourself up for a fall with your restaurant name.

You see, when I go into Hamburger Union, which I have before and I will again, I am expecting only to have a union with a hamburger. And that's what I get, and I'm very happy. But Ultimate Burger? You fucking muppet! Don't bullshit me with your bullshit name. Take those fucking raisins out of your burgers.

Not that it really matters now, you dozy cunt, cos I won't be coming back. I'm committing my future custom to Hamburger Union. Because when I get the urge to spend £6 on a burger, I don't expect a mouthful of cunting raisins.

Yours faithfully,

* (asterisk)

Time for a cuppa?

Okay, luvs. Go on now -- go and put the kettle on. Don't wait while it boils, though; you know what they say about a watched kettle.

Then, when it's boiled, take the kettleful of boiling water and pour it over the hands of a young child. Let's say a three-year-old. Better still if it's one of your own kids. And way better if the kid's got some horrible disease, too.

And you know what's even better? Take that kid, then, and lock her in the bathroom without any food. When she gets hungry, perhaps you can force her to eat her own shit.

Are we having fun yet?

I don't know about you, but I can't think of many people who I'd wish to have scalding water poured over them. I've had friends who have been scarred for life after having accidents with pans of boiling water as children, so I've seen first-hand how these injuries look years later, even after years of cosmetic surgery.

Don't have a clue what all the above is about? Lucky you. It's about a pair of cunts in north London who were sentenced to a total of 22 years between them on Thursday for torturing their cerebral palsy-stricken daughter in just the way I described above.

I take it back about not being able to think of anyone I'd like to pour boiling water over. If anyone deserves it, it's surely these two, preferably somewhere very sensitive. The genitals sounds like a good idea.

Update on being banned

So, I thought I'd have another go at getting Such As They Are accepted by BlogExplosion yesterday afternoon. I entered all the details again and hit Submit, or whatever.

Then, when I turned on my mail this morning, I find that it's been accepted. Nothing about objectionable content, even though I hadn't changed anything.

Clearly there are several people responsible for accepting/declining applicants, each applying the letter of the law in different ways.

For example, their ground rules state that excessive profanity is not acceptable, although occasional use is okay. I'm sure I fall into the "excessive profanity" camp. And that's fine by me and most of my readers, I think. Context is everything. Take the words "fuck" and "cunt", say. I use both of these liberally, but I hope in a non-offensive and sometimes humorous way. I mostly don't actually intend to offend, believe it or not.

I use those words as a little bit of colour in my posts. Nine times out of ten, I could remove them with no detrimental effect on my message, but I like them. They are words that were suitable for great English authors through the centuries, so why not a piss-poor blog addict like yours truly?

These words are part of my heritage, and I'll be damned if I'll let some blog-hits-exchange site tell me how many cunts I can use. The swines.

Open letter to Tony Blair

You know that bit about separation of Church and State? Suck it up, you washed-up, Bush-bitch, pussy-footing, barefaced-lying, election-promise-breaking, compromise-seeking cunt.

You can't renege on gay rights to adopt just because the Church doesn't want to give babies to what they clearly see as inferior, subversive members of the population. The Church is wrong and is acting in a divisive manner, not in the unifying way that we should be seeking in Britain and the rest of the world at large. Do you not get it, you stupid, hypocritical prick?

When the fuck will you just fuck off and leave us all in peace?

Kind regards,

* (asterisk)
with a tip of the hat to Lee for the letter thing.

A rack’s a dam and all that stuff

We all knew it was going to happen, of course, but the execution of Saddam Hussein has finally come to pass.

President Bush, we are told, was woken from his sleep (he went to bed at 9pm West Texas time) to hear the news. Wouldn't you think that as leader of the free world he might have stayed up a couple more hours for this momentous occasion? An occasion that has come around due to Bush Jr's illegal war-mongering, invading a country on false pretenses, solely to take revenge on the man who wanted to assassinate the first President Bush.

It's no secret that I think Bush is a cunt. Ditto Blair. A prize pair of cunts, the two of them. And it should go without saying that I have no love for Saddam. He was not a nice man. Did he deserve this fate? Well, maybe yes, maybe no.

Say what you like, though, he went to his death like a fucking hero. And that's how he'll be remembered. Those last few minutes of his life that we've all seen on the news today will live forever. We can only hope that we meet our own deaths with such courage.

And speaking of being remembered... Former Labour party minister Tony Benn said on the 2pm news here today that Blair will be remembered only for doing whatever Bush said. In other words, he will be remembered for being Bush's bitch. What a legacy.

We are the West. We bring freedom and liberty to oppressed nations.

If I may borrow from a film I recently watched: "Stuff it up your arse for nothing, and fuck off while you're doing it."

Oh yeah, I see the England squad’s back on form

Back down to being ever shit. There's talk today that the fans want Beckham back. I'd like to see him back in the squad, sure. He's a good player. But if he is approached, I hope he tells 'em to fuck right off.

Rooney. Pig-faced cunt, more like. Never liked him, never will. Useless waste of space, just like Neville.

Hello everyone. I hope you're all having a nice day...

What can this guy possibly come up with as an excuse that will make us all go, “Ah, well, fair enough then”?

A 32-year-old man armed to the teeth walks into a local one-room Amish school, binds up ten girls aged between six and 13, lines them up against the blackboard, and shoots them at point-blank range. [BBC News story here]

We are told that it was a revenge killing for something that happened to him when he was 12. Something concerning girls, which is why he set free all the boys at the school before his kill rampage began.

At the current count, five girls are dead and five are in a "serious" condition. If first reports are to be believed, the girls were all shot execution-style in the head, so I suspect we will see an end toll of ten for ten.

While we all try to work out exactly what this "loving husband" suffered 20 years ago, our minds might run amok, but in truth, what can this guy possibly come up with as an excuse that will make us all go, “Ah, well, fair enough then”?

Even if he was tied down and butt raped with a baseball bat, that's still no fucking excuse to take it out on (a) girls who weren't involved and (b) a community that wasn't involved. How about going after the people who did you the harm, fuckwit?

Ah, of course, you can't do that now, because like so many of these worthless pieces of shit who go round killing innocent kids you decided to kill yourself too, thereby denying anyone else their own revenge on you. Cunt.

“What do you take me for, a cunt?”

The British movie Gangster No.1 is based on a stage play. The main reason I have been so slow in watching this film is because I saw the play, on its debut run, 11 years ago, back in September 1995 at the Almeida Theatre in Islington, north London. Here's me holding up my copy of the programme. Despite being a one-time acting student and having directed a couple of short plays and a short film, I've never been a massive fan of the theatre. I was always more of a film guy. Gangster No.1, the play, changed that for me, opening a whole new door. It was fucking phenomenal. It was essentially a one-man play starring Peter Bowles (of "I'm H-A-P-P-Y" fame), who gave the sort of performance that can make careers for younger men. The fact that Bowles's performance was so good is why I approached the film with trepidation. I like Malcolm McDowell, but he can be a bit hammy, y'know?

Synopsis: An aging gangster looks back over his violent past when he hears his former boss is being released after 25 years in prison.

The review: As I said above, I'm not McDowell's biggest fan, and he is a touch too muggy in this, for my liking, but he has far less screen time than Paul Bettany, who plays him as a young man. Bettany is a standout in his breakthrough role. The only negative comment I would make is this: It seemed odd to have Bettany be the only actor who doesn't play the same character later in life. All his contemporaries are played by the same actors in both their 1960s and 1990s incarnations. The look and feel of the film is spot on. I'd say this is up there with the best British gangster film, Get Carter, and dare I say it's even better than The Long Good Friday, although it's been a while since I last saw it. It also scores very highly on what I shall henceforth call the "cunt count"; it may have already knocked The Football Factory off the top spot. A comparison with Sexy Beast, by the same authors originally, would be interesting.

The numbers: This film impressed me much more than I had expected. It is on my to-buy list right now. I award it 82 points.

“Someday a real rain will come...”

Last night I watched a documentary called The Boys Who Killed Stephen Lawrence. If you don't know who Stephen Lawrence was, please do click here.

I'd seen a news story the previous day about some of the new revelations that were to come to light in this documentary, and so I felt compelled to watch it. In fact, I probably would have anyway, because, like many people in the UK, I am astonished at how this case has gone unsolved for 13 years. Of course, I should rephrase that: not unsolved, because it surely is solved; rather, that the guilty have gone unpunished.

I haven't studied the case closely. I probably know no more about it than the average citizen. Arguably I may even know less, since I don't read newspapers. But hell, you know me: that won't stop me from having an opinion...

One of the things that struck me most was how these "boys" -- in reality, violent, dangerous thugs -- had got away with several non-fatal stabbings in the months and years prior to the attack on Stephen. Not only that, but that many people in the area knew full well that these idiots regularly carried knives of up to 2ft (60cm) in length out in the street. What I didn't know was that they had attacked white youths as well as black, which surely is going to make a "racist killing" verdict so much harder, should the case ever return to a courtroom. (This return is, though, at least a possibility now that we've scrapped the Double Jeopardy laws.) Of course, we all know they are racists: witness the conversations they had while under police supervision:

Suspect David Norris: "If I was going to kill myself ... I'd go and kill every black cunt in the country, every Paki, every copper ... I'd go down Catford and places like that with two sub-machine guns and I'd take every one of them, skin the black cunt alive, mate, torture him, set him alight. I'd blow their two legs and arms off and say go on, you can swim home now."
Suspect Neil Acourt: "I reckon that every nigger should be chopped up, mate, and they should be left with nothing but fucking stumps." (from Guardian Unlimited)

We, in Britain, all know that within days of news of the attack on Stephen, the police were inundated with calls from local people, almost all of them naming this same gang as the most likely culprits. Turns out now, though, that one of the senior policemen in the investigation was taking bribes from the father of one of the suspects. Ah, so now things all start falling into place...

I don't know...

We've entered a new and wholly unsavoury era in the UK. FourDinners's post of a couple of days ago highlights this too. Everyone (and I mean that in a general way) hates everyone. The blacks hate the whites; the whites hate the blacks; the Jews hate the Muslims; hell, the whites hate the Muslims; the Muslims hate the whites and the Jews; the police hate the Brazilians, seemingly, or at least can't tell them apart from the Asians; we all hate the people we work for; the people we work for all hate us. This is one miserable fucking country we've got going on here...

But after watching this documentary last night, I turned to Wife and said: "Y'know, there's some people that I really don't like. Sometimes I know I'll turn to you and say, 'I hate so-and-so for this reason or someone else for that reason', but I can't imagine going out and stabbing them. Really getting right up in their face and sinking a huge fucking blade into them. And yet there are people out there that do this just for fun or just as a random attack, not even knowing the victim, and the victim never having done anything to them."

I went and took a shower then, to wash away "the scum, the cunts, [...] the filth, the shit".

Stephen Lawrence, 1974-1993, RIP