Is It Really? I Had No Idea..........

Alternative Solutions: 'I Know Where You Hide Your Porn', 'Heterosexuality Ruins Marriage' or 'I Like Poor People!, They Make My Trainers' **

Oh God! How long do you think it took them to come up with that particular observation? I mean, they have that great big ruddy wall to work with and that's the best they can come up with? Bad World For Poor People? It's a bad world for a hell of a lot of people if you give them the time of day to tell you. I'm sure the author meant it to provoke thought or maybe get a message over to the many thousands who pass through Charing Cross each day. Instead people see it and think "Yeah, it is a bad world for poor people. That's why I'm not poor. What can you do? Not my fault..... Now, what's on Talk Radio......"

The wall gets painted red about twice a year by the council to cover the graffiti that seems to accumulate on it, and obviously someone has chosen their moment to impart something 'meaningful' to us all. It's the dribbling simpleton element of the left in full flow. People who think the above message is anything other than a statement of the blindingly obvious, and more to the point, don't recognise it as a colossal waste of fucking paint and wallspace. I preferred the old graffiti tags that were on there before, they had a certain rough charm if nothing else.

Anyway, here dear reader(s) is your challenge. Taking into consideration the size of the wall, it's elevation and visibility (certainly in winter), I want you to come up with an alternative message for the people of Glasgow. It can be as crude, surreal, clever or banal as you want. In fact, if you can come up with something that is even more ridiculous than "Bad World For Poor People" you will win an extra special (non) prize!

Anyway, I think I have a bout of what may well be Sciatica coming on. I've lost count of the amount of times I've refilled my hot water bottle tonight. Spent most of today at work walking about like a stop-motion Max Wall. Not fucking funny! The yelps of agony when I sneezed or shifted the wrong way in my seat were to be heard in the street I believe...........

Tomorrow: When they steal the kettle and condemn you to drinking hot piss from an electronic box.

**I realise that in this day and age, the last suggestion could and probably would be taken at face value by many people.

The Wit And Wisdom Of Janet Street-Porter

Is there any purpose to Janet Street Porter? Is she anything beyond a massive ego and a one woman advert for the proliferation of RP? Generally I don't hear a great deal from the woman, but for some bizarre reason, she seems to come to my attention only when she takes needless, unoriginal pot-shots at bloggers. Last time it was Oye Billy that brought her dribblings to my attention. This time it's the excellent Matt Wardman, via Clairwil's blog roundup ,who's picked up on old bollock-chops and her wild swings at something, anything, approaching a coherent article.

Attacking bloggers and blogging is, let's face it, the very definition of shooting fish in a barrel. It's right there in the 'Hack Columnist Handbook' under "Will This Do?: What to do when you've forgotten to write your piece for the Sunday Supplement". Yes, there's loads and loads of blogs that are awe-inspiringly awful. People with little to say and no means of saying it with any wit or panache. And that's just 'Dave' Cameron taken care of..........

The fact remains, and I've said it somewhere else today, that most of the forty-odd blogs in my side-bar are as well written and interesting/amusing as anything that JSP could ever muster. Beyond that, there are blogs in there that are so superior to her paid dribblings it's embarrassing. When the quality of broadsheet column writing is as indifferent as hers (and a lot of it is), it becomes a curious game to see who'll be next to jump on the bandwagon and wax self-righteous about the terrible trauma of having to put up with people who have the nerve to write and publish for little or no monetary gain, for the sheer hell of it.

In other news................Someone at work isn't talking to me. I can't think why to be honest, but apparently he's told another work colleague that I said something nasty to him and he didn't like it.

He wasn't meant to. Fuck me! I won't go into it, but it involved him making a crass comment about a recently deceased footballer, and my assertion that it was the kind of thing one would expect of an asinine prick. Frankly, I couldn't care less what he says and to whom, but it's the fact he's taken the hump with me that makes me laugh. He likes to make out he's 'a bit edgy', the sayer of the un-sayable as it were. Fine, so he shouldn't mind if I say what I think of him when he opens his gob and spouts shite, it should come with the territory surely, no?

If you can't take the flak, then get out of the war-zone, baby!

On Todays Menu.........

Fuck!! My feet are killing me. Athletes foot in overdrive.............The itch that never dies. I've got powder for them, but I can never seem to stick to a programme of application and so the foot grinding continues.

Want a sniff.............?

Myspace has given me food for thought over the past week or so. First of all I got 'Phished', which means, for those of you who don't know and don't care, my password got nicked and my account was 'piggybacked' for the purposes of nefarious ringtone hawkery. Honestly, if they were advertising scud or sex aids I wouldn't mind, but ringtones???

Then I get a threatening message from some dick called 'Joe'. It runs as follows.........

"yo mumma sucks urs cock
u suck so much balls that ur mom gets jealos
hey four eyes saw u in town the other day
I KNOW WHERE U LIVE!!!"

Awww! I think he likes me! What scares me most is that 'Joe', bless his soul, has set up a myspace account, seemingly for the sole purpose of sending people abusive messages. It did cross my mind that it might be my brother, but he's funnier than that. Besides, he knows I'll set fire to his baws if he tries that pish on...............(puffs chest out, tries to look hard..........)

I can laugh about it now, but at the time it was terrible...............

The house is on it's way! I move in on 14th of September. Huzzah! Went to meet the lawyer on Wednesday and whilst waiting on him, got to see how a telephone switchboard ought to be operated. One woman, a million incoming calls and not the slightest slip or trace of stress. I did a bit of phone cover in my last job and to be honest, it had me pissing adrenaline...........I thought I was hard pressed if two people called at once. Six at once seemed to be no problem to this dame. Funny thing was, it all came back to me like a Vietnam Vet having a flashback and I started getting a bit jumpy and nervous for no real reason. It was hardly as if she was going to ask me to mind the switchboard while she went for a cuppa....................I was glad when the lawyer stuck his head round the door and saved me from the freakish countryside mags and the eternally ringing phone..............

I was going to end this post in the style of an eighties American sitcom, with a glib moral or lesson that can be learned from my experiences in the past week, but frankly I'm at a loss.............Any suggestions? Best one gets entered :HERE:

A Pox On Both Your Houses

As anyone who knows me might attest, I couldn't give two figs for the fortunes of any other football team but Partick Thistle. Or maybe Maryhill......

Anyway, the talk of the shithole was todays UEFA Cup Final being held at Hampden Park tonight between Espanol and Seville. I blanked all the banal crap quite successfully I think, all the regurgitated newspaper bilge about what side of the Old Firm (Rangers, Celtic) would support what team(Espanol or Seville) in the final............ Jesus! Can these facile morons not give it up for five minutes? Does everything have to revolve around them? I'm quite sure that if tomorrow morning, a flying saucer from the Andromeda Galaxy were to land on Glasgow Green proclaiming a new dawn of world peace and human mental evolution, the first question posed to the inhabitants of said craft would be...........

"So pal, whit team dae ye support? the gers or sellic?"

At which point they'd take off again and nuke the place from fucking orbit........

Anyway, everyone knows Andromedans are Third Lanark fans and aren't to be trifled with.

Ok, to return to the original point of the post......Tonights Uefa Cup Final was another Hampden Thriller. 2-2 after extra time, some very flowing and enjoyable football, loads of drama and just maybe, the better team winning on penalty kicks (Seville) Hampden looked the part too. Also nice to see the cup awarded in the main stand like it bloody should be, instead of the crappy 'podium-on-the-pitch' approach that seems to have been adopted of late. What can I say? I'm a traditionalist.....

Anyway, after all that nonsense...............

Some of you may have noticed comments on this blog and Seven Days by a certain anonymous commenter signing off as 'Diane'. Diane is a wonderful woman who stopped me in the street one night with an imaginary microphone, and made me laugh like a loon. We've since become very close, so I'd like y'all to make her feel welcome here when she does post...... Cheers!

Bye!