Tyrants Arn't Usually This Dissapointing

So which one of you rambling cum-sodden freaks HASN’T thought of what it would be like to rule the world? None of you? Good. Because even if you had said you hadn’t, I can’t hear you, thusly making you a moron for not understanding the concept of rhetorical questions and distance. I know I’ve certainly thought about ruling the world on the odd occasion, and then got scared, confused, and mildly homicidal. As one often does. While it comforts some ego-tastic people who enjoy the good delusional power-trip, I’d rather gouge out my eyes with a fucking ladle than control the whole world. That is, unless, tyranny was an available option.

Assuming we go the typical Futurama way and say that if I ruled the world, it wouldn’t be me playing god and making everything into chocolate, but rather me being the sole heir to everything (on Futurama the world simply has one president, who, luckily, gets reduced to dust by aliens in one episode. There, you’ve finally learnt something from reading this shit. Now fuck off). But if I WAS the president, and thusly meaning a government will have been formed, I would have to please the people. And by ‘the people’ I mean every last walking shit-sack on earth. Frankly, I couldn’t care less if they exploded in a hellish firestorm, which is bound to happen sooner or later. Caring to their needs would be the last thing on my agenda, but still, mankind is capable of looking after itself (kind of), which is exactly why I need tyranny to ensure it becomes disabled…in the face. So this is how I would make it work.

My communist society, where everyone is equal other than myself, will be set in one small, incredibly cramped city. London will do well; fitting 6 billion people in there has got to be uncomfortable, if not making blisters an official pandemic. But everyone will be equally uncomfortable at least. The rest of the world will be turned into one colossal farm entirely ‘manned’ by machinery and robots with straw hats. In fact, so will the police force (minus the straw hats), the fire department, hospitals, and pretty much every community based job that isn’t behind a desk. Every human, once born, will be chained to a desk and forced to do impossible and mind-numbing tasks until they’re 80, then they’re freed and allowed to walk around society as they please (it’s a simple social experiment. By my guess they’ll either stay at the desk, go outside then realize its shit and come back, or merely explode. Basically, they’ll become me). Seeing as everyone’s tied to desks for their whole lives, the law is simple. No toilet breaks, and no talking. Social interaction and shitting are a no-go for a healthy society. Now you may be wondering what I do in this society. Well it’s pretty obvious, I’ll be doing the same as everyone else. Having turned everyone into computer-staring, desk-sitting-at, anti-social people, I’ve merely made a society of…well…me. A whole 6 billion people that do exactly what I do. For the rest of our desk-bound lives. Hoo-fucking-ra.

If I ever go into election for prime minister, don’t vote for me. You know it’s going to end badly.

HAHAHA MAN GO BOOM.

Some bastard stole my soul. Just like that. One day I’m incredibly excited about finally being able to play Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising, the next I’m sitting on my sofa, in an almost pitch black room at 4 pm, staring at my Xbox with an odd mixture of regret, fury, and emptiness. Now obviously there could be a million reasons for this, but this time it’s NOT real life, it’s gaming’s insane attempt at real life. For those who don’t know, Flashpoint is a tactical shooter, a game in which you control your squad, go around a ridiculously huge map, solving objectives. And also if you take one bullet you die. And your squad members belong in a special home. And the enemy soldiers have more health than you, BECAUSE IN REAL LIFE, ENEMY SOLDIERS ALL HAVE MORE HEALTH. Now I’d hate to turn this into a game review and all, so I’m basically going to point out how I spent ALL of today playing the same part of the same mission, over and over again. Also not only was I on the easiest difficulty, but I also was only on mission 3…out of 11.

It was like as if someone had punished me for all my game-related sins and forced me to play it. If hell does exist, I can imagine it’s being restricted to sitting on a sofa made of really itchy fabric, and having little demons laugh and jeer at you as you desperately try to complete that one level, and if you get even vaguely close, the controller blows up, so they hand you a new one, which you have to control using your feet, considering your recent lack of hands. But seeing as I’m wrong (a usual thing), I would genuinely rather be in hell then play that bit of the level again. It was bad enough for me to actually contemplate suicide, and when it comes to thinking of suicide, I usually have much bigger fish to fry than a video game (It’s a metaphor, there aren’t actually fish called Video Game). Main problem with this is, for me to kill myself, I’d have to actually have balls, or be incredibly stupid. So I’d need someone else to kill me. Of course no one would agree, while the majority of people hate me, people usually aren’t too keen on the whole prison thing, so I’d just get beaten up a lot, which is the last thing on my agenda, next to playing Modern Warfare 2. Therefore, I’d need for it to be ‘an accident’. Getting someone to accidentally kill you is easy really, jump in a road, wear camouflage and lay down in somebody’s garden while they mow the lawn, or simply slip on a wet floor down concrete stairs (caretakers are used to taking the blame). But to be honest, I wouldn’t really want to go out like any of the above. I would want to go out taking one the nation’s worst ‘holiday days’ with them. I’m talking, of course, about Bonfire night.

Now fireworks, they’re a mere contraption entirely to amaze retards, strain your neck, and make you stand in the cold for torture’s sake, (I’ll probably end up writing something about bonfire night someday, so I won’t go too far into it),but they also happen to be a deathtrap in the disguise of a colourful geometric broccoli. The perfect tool for accidental euthanasia. I would do it simply like this; while the crowd of easily amused people gathers around to indulge in their pyromania, I sneak past them like the subtle man I am, and make my way to the fireworks. Once there, I blutak the biggest firework available to my back, and lay in the grass (stealthily, of course). After a short while, my unsuspecting victim will light the firework, and lean back in horror as I start screaming because I forgot that the fuse went on fire before the firework took off. Then, it shoots off, and to my dismay it goes without me. I curse at the sky about blutak’s incompetence, and sheepishly walk off back home to play Operation Flashpoint. The same level. Again. And again. And again.

Water... Falling From The Sky? Surely This Is The End...

We Brits take the weather damn seriously. We complain about it, finally get SOME good weather, then complain it's not good enough, then we complain again when it's gone. If the grass is always greener on the other side, there are at least 80,000 other sides.

So what do we enjoy? Two things. One: sun. And we want loads of it. The moment a ray peeks out between the clouds we instantly strip down to near-nothing, put on sunglasses and lie down in the garden, only to return with hanging head in two minutes realising that just because the sun is out doesn't mean it's not 10 degrees (it's BRITAIN for goodness' sake). When we get a  decent amount of exposure to that big old star, our pale, living room-bleached skin gets roasted when finally seeing the sun after years of being a plump potato, eating custard creams and watching the X Factor. Two: snow. Yes, we rejoice in the entire country's infrastructure gets completely buggered, cars' engines freeze up and break, and people crash and die in road accidents. OH, ISN'T IT A JOLLY TIME FOR ALL. We also go out dressed in enough layers to give a polar bear a heat rash. Do you want to experience winter or not?

The ironic thing about this weather we rarely get yet adore, is that both of them actually kill us faster than the feared concept of... dare we mention it, RAIN. Sun is basically cancer smiling beautifully down at us from the sky and we benignly lap it up as if to say 'yes, PLEASE DESTROY MY SKIN CELLS.' Snow gives us frostbite and messes up our beloved gas-guzzlers, but what is it about rain that scares us so much? 

The human race as a whole lives off water, people in Africa are dying from a lack of the stuff and as soon as it falls out the sky we hide away under our little umbrellas and complain that the sun isn't out, which we'd be unsatisfied with anyway. You might as well have two pound coins falling from the clouds, and we'd be complaining about the bruises on our heads while our currency becomes worthless and our economy dies. We drink, swim in, wash in and piss the stuff, but Cowell help us if our clothes get a bit of it on them.

So maybe in a way the human race, as another of its stupid attributes, hates what it lives off, though as with all hateful trends, it's mainly the people of Britannia. Britannia rules the waves, however much she bloody hates them when they spray on her mighty clothing.

The Less You See It, The More Horrifyingly Dangerous It Is

Forget terrorists, bad drivers and ‘THE MAN’, its official (according to me), germs are now the biggest homicidal maniacs EVER. Just one germ, as far as the media is concerned, has the ability to wipe out whole cities, by merely existing. So now just imagine it, the billions, trillions, maybe even KAGILLIONS of germs that float around us day by day, each one begging to kill you without remorse. To put it simply, imagine walking down the street, and seeing literally MILLIONS of homicidal maniacs walking around, crowding the streets. They’re buying discount carrots at Tesco, they’re pushing prams with other little homicidal darlings in, and the rest of them are flying. YES, FLYING. Just like germs, the microscopic bastards.

The whole nation, and possibly other ones, live day-in, day-out, in a state of constant subconscious horror from the possibility of the menace known as germs. No I will not take a bite out of that sandwich that you’ve already bit into. No I won’t sit on that toilet seat in case of getting bum germs. No I won’t plunge my face into that rotting cesspit of shit, heroin needles and Call Of Duty fans, etc, etc. While I really wouldn’t mind doing those things, with a possible exception for the latter, it seems everyone has a problem with EVERYTHING, SO LONG AS GERMS ARE INVOLVED.

I recently saw an advert on a train on my way to college saying ‘If you could see germs, you would be able to see how quickly flu spread’, accompanied by a picture of a woman sneezing, with a cone of green jutting from her mouth. Now I don’t mean to be pedantic (although I really do), but if you could see germs, you wouldn’t be able to see your own hands, even if you shoved them IN your eyes. Germs are about as common as atoms (though if you can see individual atoms, we have a serious problem). Even if we perform the unholy rite known as NOT WASHING OUR HANS AFTER GOING TO THE TOILET, we will immediately inflict plague, disease, and imminent death upon anyone and everyone by simply staring at them from a distance, and while I so wish I could do that, It’s the thing that will essentially doom this era. This age won’t be known as ‘The Awesome Post-Industrial Age’ or ‘The Age Of Slightly Better Technology’, but will be known as ‘The Age That Was Horrified By Mild Disease’ (after ‘The Age Of Brain-Dead TV Huggers').

But yeah, maybe I’m being a bit ignorant. This really only applies to England here. After all, the deadliest disease we can catch over here is TV (Televerculosis). In Brazil, you so much as touch another person; you get Ebola and constipation, so end up trying to shit your organs for 2 days. Really, it sounds far too much like a typical weekend…

The Most Boring Apocalypse Ever

*I would firstly like to point out, this is NOT about Amesoeurs, it's simply the first picture that came into my head when I thought of wastelands. So shutup. Also, if this fails to be funny in the slightest, I apologize, I wrote the whole thing while listening to Requiem For A Tower*

I’ve completed Borderlands twice now, and am getting ever increasingly aware of gaming’s new obsession with post-apocalyptic wastelands, despite them all looking the same (you’ll be aware of this if you’ve played both Fallout 3 and Borderlands, the latter simply having more rocks and less city). So I’ve decided that tonight, I shall make my own wasteland. Prepare, for the underwhelming power of my…IMAGINATION.

In the late 2010’s, every single television set in the world, explodes. Not nuclear bomb explosion of course, just plain old grenade-sized ones. Roughly 750 million people were killed from this event, leaving another 500 million severely (hopefully) injured. A few days pass, and mankind are suffering extreme withdrawal symptoms. The streets are bare, excluding the occasional man or woman scratching illegible signs into shop windows, brick walls, lamp posts, etc. Every now and again a buck-naked man jumps off a building while masturbating, yelling ‘WHY DO YOU CURSE THEE, O SWEET SIMON COWELL’ as his body becomes nothing more than broken fragments on the unforgiving concrete pavement below. Inside their homes, mankind remain in the corners, rocking gently in the fetal position, both sobbing and crying at the same time, determined to recall the last edition of Big Brother they saw, their memories of it falling away through the sieve they claim to be a mind. ‘Did that adorable cunt Marcus win? I don’t know…I hope he did…I don’t remember…I DON’T REMEMBER, I DON’T REMEMBER’, the chorus is heard throughout the homes of the last of humankind. Gun-shot wounds and slit wrists are all that plague their minds as they helplessly claw at the memory of Marcus’ sideburns, which slowly become less and less manly by the day. There’s not a human left on earth that isn’t riddled with psychosis and delirium. Each day the body count doubles, triples, kagillioniples, until there are roughly 5 million ‘people’ left on the earth.

At this point, cities have been leveled; all forms of civilization have been lost, from social hierarchy to public decency. Towns have become the new base of operations for human decision making, and within weeks form a corrupt monarchy. Several tribes are formed around the UK, many of them performing self-cannibalistic rituals, while hop-scotching. Gravity suddenly reverses itself and the sky becomes painted by the blood/semen of a billion fallen/horny men, before it goes back to normal at which point it does, indeed, rain blood…and sperm. Years of torture, pain and chaos ensue, and TV is, eventually, forgotten. Although many religions are now formed on old TV show hosts as being their gods (with Jeremy Kyle being the devil in the majority of them), to which tribesmen or townsmen weekly offer sacrifices (mostly children). After a great war is waged between the townsmen and tribesmen, which was caused by a clash of beliefs/they got bored, a golden age occurs (basically all children are now dead).

And then global warming happens. The End.

The Only Definite Good In The Business... So Far

 

About time we got something music-related here. I'll try to make this interesting.

This is a question I've been grappling with for years, and I guess a lot of others have. What the hell is 'good music'? More so, what is 'real music'? Endlessly we get morons shoving their music down your throat, telling you to go listen to 'reel m00sic innit', but when you give them a perfectly legit reason why you'd rather live off the pork pie remains in Infinity Ward's rubbish bins, they shout back at you 'WELL THAT'S ONLY YOUR OPINION... INNIT'. Fuck you! Since when were you given the divine right to see musical ingenuity, and the right to be such a hypocritical bellend?  

And through the years I've gone through ignorance (mine is just better) to talent being the answer (the band with the most technical skill is best) to plain relativist (it's just opinion) to complete apathy. I pretty much give up. Whatever happens, everyone's gonna end up listening to what appeals to them personally.

The whole apathy thing is because I've gone back on what I used to say, in that not only do I now also listen to things that aren't particularly skillful, but also because 'metal' isn't just what I like. I used to say it and lie, but now I genuinely mean it; I listen to a bit of everything. So now I just want to find out what 'good' is, though I'm almost completely sure I'll never find it. You can get the feeling of badass and power at the end of Lamb of God's 'Sacrament' album, enlightened at the end of Iron Maiden's 'A Matter of Life and Death' or be weeping hopelessly at the beauty of some things at the end of Emancipator's incredible fusion/progressive/easy listening album 'Soon It Will Be Cold Enough To Build Fires'. Whatever happens, you've got a personal response from the music, and so far this is good. But it doesn't apply to everyone, so is it really GOOD? I know loads of people who'd want to amputate their ears at the end of ONE Lamb of God song.

Whenever I say music is 'shit', I 99% of the time don't mean it. I'm just saying I don't like it, but in a pointlessly harsh way, and I hate myself a little more whenever I do. Music is only 'bad', I believe, when it is done as a complete joke. Fallout Boy, for example, are actually a good band. Their music is aimed at young teenagers (WE ALL KNOW IT'S GIRLS IT'S AIMED AT), and guess what? Teenage (girls) like Fallout Boy. They enjoy listening to their music. I can't knock that, I can't say my knowledge of perfection of sound waves is more advanced than Fallout Boy's listeners, even if they are younger than me. Dizzee Rascal has no singing talent, but people like listening to his music and he expresses his feelings through his tunes, so what's the problem? There are far too many genres for one 'good' to cover it all. 

Talent, much to my dismay, doesn't really push any music above other music. It has the ability to impress, and indeed I respect anyone with talent, because they can express themselves through it, and they can master their instrument in a way other's can't.  But while an aptness with a guitar could make the music appeal to a wider range of people, it still won't make everyone like it. In contrast, listen to the band Behold the Arctopus. Those two guys could play Canon Rock, left handed, asleep, whilst swallowing a goat, but if you listen to their songs, most would agree it sounds somewhat similar to what tectonic plate movement would sound like if the plates were made of rusty iron. 

But as much as I can enjoy different types of music because I appreciate it in different ways, there is one exception I have found. One thing musically which I have found different to all music, and doubt I will see in any other genre. Metal. Live. Feeling truly alive isn't something we all experience a lot, and if we do I don't doubt that we experience it in different ways. But having seen Iron Maiden twice and Lamb of God three times (amongst many other bands) I cannot describe the feeling. The rush, the constant rush, of blood, adrenaline and purified awesome running in your veins, the feeling of complete control and surprisingly peace amongst the battering of human flesh around you is like nothing else. The band gives you everything and you give it back, and the room has its own rapture. 

Other bands may have great shows. Muse have incredible stage acts, and even Lady Gaga has a huge range of effects and choreography which won't be forgotten in a hurry. Yet I feel that it still can't match it, and it focuses too much on the visual, not quite on the same level as metal. I dread to say it, but metal seems to have something more... spiritual.

So yeah, that's my two cents. I have reached no conclusion, as expected, apart from good music doesn't REALLY exist and that I like metal shows. But I hope if anything this opens a few people's minds. Sorry for the length.

At Least It Saves Chimney Sweeps One Hell Of A Job

So if you haven’t noticed, Christmas is now being celebrated earlier and earlier as the years go on. I’m pretty sure I saw Tesco advertising it in August this year. But what I’d like to know is, WHY. Why do people insist on celebrated this infernal holiday? I can understand why Christians celebrate it, what with it being big J’s birthday (sort of), but as atheists decided to make it their own, they also made it lose all purpose, as they often do. You can claim it to be a holiday of ‘giving’ all you want, but let’s face it, it’s more a holiday of ‘forcefully giving to other’s so they don’t feel bad, and hope you receive a much bigger thing from them’. The whole feel of Christmas is enough to make me want to play Call Of Duty 4 (yes, Christmas is THAT bad). Fake, pretentious joy everywhere you go and constant unnecessary lights, often in the shape of a fat gluttonous pervert who climbs down chimneys for fun, and manages to go down every last chimney in the world in the space of one night, even into the houses that don’t have chimneys. On a magical fucking sledge. With flying fucking reindeer. One of them has a fucking light bulb for a nose.

Everyone you go past feels a sense of euphoria while they say ‘wow everything’s so amazing, because I’m such a good person, and I’m totally enjoying the whole fakeness of Christmas right now’. While really what the person is thinking is ‘PRESENTS, PRESENTS, PRESENTS, PRESENTS, PRESENTS’. In fact the whole nation is so ridiculously over excited about a holiday they shouldn’t even be celebrating, that they actually buy themselves, or others, calendars leading up to Christmas day. Oh and did I mention they were filled with tiny, impossibly disappointing chocolates that taste a bit like plastic cheese? (The calendars I mean, not the people who buy them).

Personally I feel with every present I receive my soul dies a little, if them being highly disappointing wasn’t bad enough, you have to smile and pretend you ABSOLUTLY ADORE THIS PILE OF SHIT THROWN AT YOU. If one of my 2 friends came up to me and punched me in the face on Christmas and declared it to be my present, I would officially, according to the big book of Christmas rules, have to pat them on the back and thank them any way I can while in an extreme state of contained rage. And I don’t know about you, but I am NOT good at displaying gratitude.

Of course, the night before Christmas is never a fun one either. As a child it would take me hours before I could sleep on Christmas eve, and somehow, SOMEHOW, this still plagues me. Before it was some impossible sense of excitement that a strange obese man would walk into our house eat our mince pies (especially with mince pies being the best thing about Christmas), then deliver strange presents underneath a tree…an indoor tree. But now, it’s some sort of blind rage and dread that keeps me awake at that night, staring at my ceiling, wishing all my god forsaken presents were next to me, and the whole thing would never have to happen.

Fuck you Father Christmas, I hope you rot in hell for plaguing me with this abysmal holiday. If you touch my mince pies one more time, I will go round you’re Lapland-esque house and slit your throat.

Well…next stop, Easter. This world just keeps getting worse and worse.