Clichéd Christmas Carping: Part 32(b)

I've heard it stated that Christmas is a cruel joke perpetrated upon the broke, the lonely, and the depressed. A plausible, but maudlin and slightly pretentious statement. Granted, it's a right old pain in the crotch, but since it's 'but once a year', it's one I can live with. Anyway, top things about Christmas: Christmas market in Argyll Street with it's neat little wooden stalls and amusing tat. (obviously stolen from Lapland New Forest...) German sausage sellers. Without them, I'd have died of hunger on many of my abortive Christmas shopping trips. The lights on the trees in Sauchiehall Street. Lovely! In fact, the plethora of Christmas lighting strung up over various bits of greenery at St Georges Cross and Cowcaddens. Beats the cack in George Square. Not that you'd know it was fucking christmas in my current place of work. Half-day on Christmas eve? Ha! Don't be so fucking silly! No, if you want to leave early, you need to make up the time apparently. How about I turn up at 4pm tomorrow and take 45 minute lunches for the next two months? If we're going to play silly buggers, I want to be the king of the castle! Buncha Crotch Pheasants! On top of this indignity, the cretins decide to pay us on the 23rd. Every other fucker on the planet seems to get their Christmas wage a good week before the 25th, you know, so that they can go and do their Christmas shopping........... Not the employees of the company I work for! Instead I have to fight the clock as well as the crowds in an insane after work dash, two days before the day we all celebrate the birth of the little babby Jimmy Christ, usually by getting wasted and buying each other the finest consumer durables China has to offer. Stereotypical Christmas bitches in no particular order: Endless queues? Check! Doddering fools? Check! Pile upon pile of worthless tat? Check! Pissy weather? Check! Shakin Bastard Stevens and Paul Fucking McCartney on the PA? Check! (x100000) Do my shopping earlier? Fuck off! I have neither the time nor the inclination to think about the annual orgy until I need to, it's just that a three mile trolley dash in the dark is about as much fun as listening to the Catholic church whingeing about a childrens party song. Next year, I do it all on-line................ All malignance aside, have yourselves a safe, sane and gently innebriated Christmas.

Low- Just Like Christmas

Attack Of The Killer Light Entertainers

'Tis the season to get our panties in a bunch about contaminated food products it would seem. First of all, Country Life butter was recalled from branches of Iceland because people had been finding traces of rubber in the cartons. As a purchaser of 'spreadable' butter and various substitute spreads for most of my life, I can honestly state that I don't see what the problem is. I mean, those little chewy bits are the best part, right?..............

Do you think John Lydon might have anything to do with all this? I know he's an irrelevant old pantomime dame who no longer poses any threat to anyone other than himself and the odd personal assistant, but it's all a little too coincidental for my liking. They didn't let Him or Steve Jones do a tour of the Country Life factory perchance?

Then we have Irish pork. Or rather we don't. What an absolute bag of old bollocks!

The risk from dioxins in this situation is deemed to be very low. You'd probably need to eat nothing but Irish pork products for the next two years to become ill, but that hasn't stopped vast amounts of only slightly iffy food being binned to fend off the prospect of Daily Mail fueled mass hysteria. Fuck me! Does anyone realise how much filth and poison we consume on a daily basis? If you ate a supermarket apple, a Big Mac and drank a can of Coke today, then let's just say that a few dodgy Irish bangers aren't going to make a whole heap of difference to your general health. Look, I'm not advocating a laissez faire attitude towards food safety ("yes you are!" - blog readers), but can we all just accept that you might as well withdraw ready salted crisps because they carry a threat of scurvy if you ate twenty bags a day.

There, that made no sense at all.

Mind you, nor did seeing Bernie Clifton* on TV recently. (Caution ladies!, site contains semi naked Keith Harris/Bernie Clifton photos)

I quite like Paul O'Grady, I also like some of his show, but the moment Bernie 'fucking' Clifton appears with his blessed ostrich, well, I'm off to do something a little more entertaining, like rub salt in my eyeballs, or count my nostril hairs. I thought that guy was dead, but hell, I suppose those old lags never die, they just disappear into the anonymity of pantomime and local radio.

Or maybe, if they're particularly poor, they get gigs as opening night turn at slums like Lapland New Forest.

My first thought when I read of the Dorset hell hole was "Pah! What did you expect?". Having seen this article on the Kent Lapland experience, I can now honestly say that the notion that people would be mugs to think such a theme park could ever be anything other than a dismal rip-off, is a little bit inaccurate and unfair. The £75 per head entry fee is horrific, but there is something of a 'Christmas Experience' involved, with customers booked in small-ish groups, rather than the messy, disorganised, turn up on the day approach of the New Forest site.

Having seen Youtube clips of the the approach to the infamous park, I can tell you that it's the sort of place that had I been taken there as a nipper by my folks, they would have turned tail before they got to the pay gate. Therein lies the problem. Some folk most probably did smell a rat, but a promised day out in santa land for the kids is not easily weasled out of. It's very hard to explain the concept of cheap, shoddy crap to a six year old, and the attitude of 'best just pay the cash and keep them quiet' seems to prevail.

This sort of shit is everywhere, and even the sharpest folk get suckered in occassionally

The Nazz - Open My Eyes Taken from Lenny Kaye's Nuggets comp *Not Bernie Winters, of Schnorbitz & Glasgow Empire infamy

Every Ruddy Year...............

...........at around this time, I get the same shit-miserable cold. Last year it was New Year in Amsterdam, this year it was Christmas at home...........Without fail it comes round and belts me one just when I want to be eating, drinking and being merry. Bugger!

It's also why I haven't been blogging. Every cloud has a silver lining I suppose.................

I'll be back to rage at cyclists soon. The fuckers!

Christmas Elsewhere

I'm always fascinated as to how they do things in other countries. Christmas is no exception. I suppose it's that 'same but different' thing that I like. This is Christmas in Hungary

Cheers to Szelsofa for a wonderful post.

Thanks!

Christmas Means..................

.....................Four ageing Teddy Boy brickies in sequins, doing an Elvis pastiche. Still the only Christmas song I can listen towithout puking through my eyelids.

Cheers! Mines a glass of sherry and a mince pie mother!

Happy Christmas to all of you!

Welcome To My Grotto

In a moment of delusional madness, I have dubbed myself the Santa Claus of Blogland, dispensing joy and happiness to all.

Leave your requests below please.

Requests for Hard-Core Porn will be considered.

Requests for World Peace will be passed on to someone who deals with that sort of thing................

I must go now, I'm off to beat up some fucking elves.

All I Want For Christmas............pt1

Actually, all I want is peace and quiet.

Ok, maybe one of those joystick thingies with old video games on that you plug into the telly. Lovelyjubbly!

You can fuck off with yer 'Nintendo Wee's' as well, ludicrous shiteboxes that they are. You can tell that every wanker in the universe will be getting one and then boring you tearless about it in the New Year, to the extent that you'll be forced to cram sharpened pencils into your ears and staple your eyelids shut, just to escape from the horror.

I know people who think video games are real. People who would marry their X-Boxes if they could.

It's got me thinking though. I've been trying to remember all the Christmas presents I got when I was a kid. Some were life altering, like my first bike or first computer. Some simply provided hours of fun like the Subbeuteo set, the Scalextric and the train set. A few were utterly ridiculous though, like the BMX add-ons I got one year to make my poxy single gear mountain bike look good. This would have been about 1984 or so and my father, for reasons best known to himself, managed to source a bike with a gear so low, that it was only any fucking use for climbing near vertical gradients. All very well if you're into that sort of thing, but I was eight years old and just wanted to race my mates along the pavement and knock little old ladies over as they came out their front door. This became impossible, mainly because my legs couldn't pedal fast enough to go at even half the speed of some guy riding a Raleigh Bloody Grifter. My pensioner skittling days were at an end, mainly because I wasn't going fast enough to be a danger to anyone (I think I'm beginning to understand.......). I also looked ridiculous, my legs flailing impotently in thin air, which meant most people got a good laugh at me to boot.................

Somehow or other, I must have thought a number plate and foam pads for the crossbar and handlebars would make things better. They didn't.

From one deluded Santa request to another. As a nipper, I had a bit of a thing for Astronomy. I'd read books, memorise the planets and pester my dad to go up the hill at the back of the house with some binoculars to look at the moon. It stood to reason that I'd want a telescope eventually. Thing is, instead of getting it out at every opportunity (Easy!), it lay virtually dis-used on top of a cupboard for years until it finally made it's way to the charity shop. Quite sad really, wonder who's got it now..................

Strange things Christmas presents. Massively over-priced gifts given to undeserving brats on one special day every year, sure, but they also sort of demarcate the process of growing up. They give annual insights into the strange thought processes and odd whims that kids harbour, just before the world turns ugly and Christmas becomes a tedious and empty ritual involving banal rubbish like money, gift vouchers, cheap perfume, Hai Karate toiletry packs and disappointing packages containing socks and comedy ties.

Still, at least theres the food......................