Tuesday 31 August 2010

Watched

Hello once more and welcome to a post bank holiday Tuesday flavoured Aldershot Woe, god I’ve lost count of where we are but I think this is the 39th Woe and so far I am very proud to have kept a consistent level of ignorance, bias, spite, poor grammar and semi aborted thoughts to each previous Woe, I hope this one doesn’t disappoint… Aldershot Woe episode 39: Watched.


The other day I was walking back from town, it was a hot day, I was coming down a steep incline on a long boring road pushing a heavy double pushchair when I was struck by a feeling, one that could cause great embarrassment if I were in a busy street or a crowded shop, a feeling I am sure we have all experienced at some time or another and have all had to suffer as a result, I speak about that feeling whose mere mention has you shuffling impatiently and franticly in your seats, I had… an itchy arse. Its never going to be your most dignified moment, but it happens to us all, doesn’t it? And usually in somewhere completely inappropriate, which leaves us awkwardly shifting about in our own skin trying to alleviate the problem via some sort of telekinetic bum-scratch, or worse has us backing up against a wall so we can take a stealth claw to the problem… it’s embarrassing and its horrible and it is unfortunately part of life’s rich tapestry of humbling moment s of idiocy and grossness. But when you’re in the middle of nowhere, walking down a long boring road on hot day, and no ones about, go on, whose going to know, get in and sort the problem, give it a good scratch… which is exactly what I did, the relief was ecstatic, and for a few steps I marched forward with a renewed vigour. Then a car drove past from behind me and I noticed the people were sniggering… at me. For a second I thought, oh who cares, I’ll never see them again anyway. But then I was struck with a sense of absolute fear as I was hit with the realisation that, that is not true anymore, what if they had an iphone, what if they were techno savvy youngsters, it would take them about 4 seconds to publish my embarrassing bum-scratch on you tube and about 8 seconds for it to be emailed across the world as I become the latest “viral” sensation and feature in a series of witty cleverly edited bum-scratch parodies and there’s bum-scratch.com and bum-scratch t-shirts and mouse matt’s and all other spin off merchandise featuring me scratching my chad like a complete berk…

Then slowly the paranoia drifted away, but my little panic attack had opened my eyes. In the UK we are the most watched people in the world, CCTV is everywhere, and if “the man” aint watching our every movement some bell-end with a camera phone is. Last week the nation was in furore over middle aged spinster and cat basher Mary Bale, as her little prank was caught on CCTV and a subsequent witch hunt began on line for her. And with the advent of YouTube and the ever increasing number of cameras watching us, filming our every moment, the chances of YOU ending up being caught on camera acting like a knob and it being put on line for pimply chuckle monkeys to comment on and send to there mates is increasing all the time. We always had “you’ve been framed” and such shows reeling off films of us acting like chumps getting footballs kicked our faces or falling into swimming pools or being savaged by rabid squirrels, or what ever, but they were always reserved for people actually twatty enough to let themselves be filmed, now though we don’t have a choice, now our private moments of embarrassment are pinged around office inboxes and shared with the world. Gone are the days where you could fall over land face first in dog sh!t and simply hate your own guts for a minute, giggle it off, and move on with life… now you run the risk of being “Dog-Sh!t Face” for the rest of your life.

Now I suppose in the case of old Mary “puss-in-bins” Bale it’s a good thing, and let me just say as a cat owner, I thought it was hilarious, but what about all the innocent bozos who gets caught on camera having a bird plop on their heads or scratching their itchy arse on a hot day or any of the other moments of unavoidable embarrassment we’d all be better off forgetting about, what about those poor bastards?
Now as we go about our lives with a thousand tiny robotic eyes fixed on our every movement recording every thing we do, we carry the burden that when we let down our usually cool veneers and act like the ridiculous mugs we really are, even for a second, it could be recorded and we could each live in infamy of our own bone-headedness forever… or at least till an even bigger buffoon is found and filmed. (Mary Bale must be praising the stars about that girl throwing puppies in a river!)



Woe.

Thursday 26 August 2010

The Alder-toff Woes

Salutations my loyal and treasured readers, may I once more permit you welcome to the sanctuary of ignorance known by many as the Aldershot Woes, a twice to thrice weekly memorandum on the comedic reverberations of life. This week’s relation: The Alder-toff Woes.

Class, we all have an axe to grind about it, I am working class my dad is working class his dad was a layabout, but his dad was working class. I grew up being fairly poor, above breadline but by no means affluent. And for the first 5 years of my life I only saw my dad every other weekend, not because he didn’t live with us, but cos he left for work at 6 and got back from work at 9, and worked every other weekend. He struggled for us to be meagre, and that will always live with me, it’s shaped my perceptions of society it’s given me a good work ethic and an appreciation of the simpler things in life, but above all is given me an intense inbuilt and inherent dislike of middle and upper class people. The floppy haired, Land Rover driving, Barber Jacket wearing, Ski holiday taking, double barrel named, chortling, yah-ing shitbiscuits… every one of them.

However like most inbuilt social level hatreds this exists purely in my head, it airs itself when I am watching television, or if I see some rich twat in a car park or in a shopping centre, when I read the newspaper or anything what-so-ever to do with politicians, then its there, in the back of my head bellowing fourth “posh w@nkers” and other hate slogans aimed solely at my affluent brethren. But in real life, when I meet middle or upper class types I am always open minded, non judgmental and have no more prejudice than when I meet any other human being (which to be fair is still a large amount of prejudice). In fact some of my closest friends are painfully Middle Class, they grew up in large detached houses, went to grammar schools, drive expensive cars and holiday abroad at least twice a year. I can honestly say some of the most welcoming, charming, witty and brilliant people I have met have been from the upper echelons of society, a friend of mine I consider to be more of a brother was a junior Ski Champion for gods sake, that’s surely as posh as it gets. Don’t get me wrong I do rip it out of him for it, but he in turn rips me for being a do-as-you-likey, so it’s all even. But regardless of what we actually practice in our lives, in the back of our minds lying dormant, but ready to pounce the second a floppy haired toff does anything a little bit annoying lives our classist rage. Personally I think it’s a good thing, gives us all a sense of identity and a very useful chip on our shoulders to back us up in times of difficulty. I live in a sh!tty council estate, plagued by junkies and morons and as ridiculous as it seems the thin veil of “being true to my roots” does act as a minor comfort to me and helps me handle life. So classism as far as I can see is just a tribalistic defence mechanism we all trigger to make us feel a little better about our selves, groovy…

But why did I start this meandering blog-guff in the first place? I’ll tell you why as I just read an article that got my working class hackles up about how “Country Life Magazine” or “Fox Killer” or “What Cravat?” or some other posho-toff-mag have lambasted the BBC (the BB effing C of all organisations) as being Oxbridge prejudice, as on some shows they use the terms “Oxbridge” or “Old Etonian” in a detrimental manner… what? That’s like calling McDonalds fattist as it sells salad. Ridiculous…

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1306237/BBC-turns-Oxbridge-term-abuse--Shows-accused-bigotry.html

Us working class people have had to spend our lives watching former footlights make fun of us and we laugh like drains and lap it up like hungry cats… Sasha Baron Cohen does Ali G, and we make him an Icon, Harry Enfield does Wayne Slob and he’s a genius, that awful ginger woman does that “bovvered” thing and we can’t get enough. Up and down the nation people are uttering ironic “innits” and you know what, its funny. Its much better to laugh at peoples differences than ignore then all together and pretend they aren’t there or worse of all “tolerate” them… you tolerate a head ache you shouldn’t tolerate a human being you should like them or not… We’re all different so lets take the p!ss out of each other about it, beats the hell out of fighting. So my advice to those posho’s horrified by the Beebs ribbing of your privileged background and expensive education is to say to yourself “At least I’m not a stinking chav” then burn some money and guffaw like the inbred madman you probably are…




Woe (innit)

Tuesday 24 August 2010

Mosque Pit

Hello, well it’s been a while since my last affront to grammar so I figured I’d blow the dust off the old keyboard and type out whatever gibberish is currently floating around my old brain box at THIS exact second… The Aldershot Woes Episode 37: Mosque Pit:

I am an atheist and I have had a hugely unreligious upbringing, I was baptised but only for the reason most people get their kids baptised… it was a good excuse for my folks to have a party. I do not believe like some atheists that religion is the root of all evil, I think greed is a far more suitable culprit for that, and on some levels I am even envious of those with faith, as it must be a big comfort knowing your soul will live on forever on cloud or whatever, I mean it sure beats the hell out of the eternal oblivion waiting for me once I pop-my-clogs. But, there is no doubt that tooooo many people use good old religion for their own ends, and give it a bad name. In fact it’s difficult to think of the religion that doesn’t do this on some level… The most notorious religion at the moment, well since 9/11 is Islam. Yep, thanks to a couple of nut-bars the old Muslims get a pretty hard time these days and unfairly so. I mean old Hitler did his bidding in the name of God, but it didn’t lead to global condemnation of Christianity did it? Nope. So the stigma now attached to being Islamic is unfair and I should think massively insulting… So that’s that, let me be clear I think Muslims are as good as any other religious group, they’re OK in my book… the only religious group you should be wary of are Scientologists, but we’ll save that for another blog… But with all that being said having read about the furore over the proposed Mosque being built at Ground Zero, I have to say… don’t do it.

I am all for religious freedom, as far as I am concerned practice what ever you want, if you want to dress up like an Apache war chief and worship chocolate hobnobs, go for it. If you want to live naked in a tree preying to Ewok deities, well that’s all Kool and the gang with me… what ever floats your boat you should be allowed to do it with out the fear of anyone p!ssing on your parade… But that said, if what you are doing is an affront to a whole group of people or is a threat to society at large then it ought to be curbed right in… Not banned, but controlled to avoid conflict, seems fair enough to me. And as far as I can see building a Mosque on the site of an attack by crazy fundamentalist Muslim zealots, even though regular Muslims are as far detached from that sort of idiocy as your average Nan is from people like Timothy McVeigh it still aint cool. Of course they have a right to build it, that should not be in any doubt, and of course Muslims shouldn’t be punished for the act of a few brainwashed mugs, but the fact remains that a whole bunch of people are gonna be really really p!ssed off about it. And with fairness in mind, Americans aren’t famed for their open mindedness or intelligence are they, just yesterday a black guy in a skull cap was almost hanged as they thought he was a Muslim, he wasn’t he was just a black guy in a skull cap in crowd full of angry opinionated fools. All this Mosque will do is fuel the fire of ignorance by inciting an unneeded hatred from both sides. Idiot Christians will become bigger idiot Christians, and idiot Muslims will become bigger idiot Muslims, and you know what will happen, more Bin Laden douchebags will fight which will breed more reactionary Bu(ll)sh(it) imbeciles to fight back and we all end up hating each other and the world a little bit more.

My advice is build the Mosque down the road, and try to spread a little bit of that religious love around and maybe one day we’ll see people fighting over proper things like football or Tetris high scores or Pie fillings rather than religion, which is you know, all pretty far fetched any way.



Woe

Wednesday 18 August 2010

The Cakeprentice Factor

Greetings and welcome to the midweek misery of the Wednesday Woe, and a particularly miserable Wednesday it is too, so let’s attempt to usher is some sunshine with episode 36 of the Aldershot Woes: The Cakeprentice Factor.

I watched a show last night called “The Great British Bake Off”, essentially it was The Apprentice but with baking, and it all happens in a tent. They had 10 cake makers, each with background stories and cake related ambitions, each week they have to perform bakery tasks and sub-sequentially 2 of these wannabe pastry mongers get booted out of the tent… they are judged by an old lady who invented cake or something and some fella who makes buns for the queen, oh and he’s a hard arse, like a sugar-coated Gordon Ramsey… literally. Its bizarre television it really is but it was also engrossing (or I may have been hungry?) the highlight for me was when old duffer Mark (who was sh!t to be fair) cried because they didn’t like his cakes… but Schadenfreude aside it was mostly bizarre. Has television really got to the stage where a programme about something as innocent as Cakes has to be formatted in to a last man standing apprentice type show, are we now so deluded by television that everything has to be an “event” it has to have winners and losers and background stories and we can not enjoy anything unless at some point we have to see a middle age fat man cry because a bastard TV judge was mean about his cakes. What a world?

And here’s what gets me, when its group of pricks vying for a top salary job with old scrote-face at Amstrad we want to know the ins the outs the backgrounds and foregrounds of the characters involved, if they are arrogant boobs we want to boo them, if they are down –trodden underdogs we want to cheer. If it’s a group of delusional brain-dead entertainers in a talent show, again we want all the details about them, we want to know what they went through when their nan’s dog Ralphy died in 1987. And we’re at a point now where kind faced tubby bakers are at the mercy of tabloid background checks and being edited in to be complete arse-biscuits by some wang-brained producer. And not only do we have to know the contestants but we also have to listen to “experts” deride them, now granted Alan Sugars mum and dad on The Apprentice do appear to know their stuff, but what about the talent shows… We put stock in the words of people who have famous sisters, or were on Blue Peter. But for 3 months at a time we lap it up, we get stuck in and we love it. And we take it all in to consideration before we pick our favourites.

But when it comes to things and people that matter, when we should care about who our favourites are, when we should listen to the experts opinion, when we should no the ins, the outs the backgrounds and foregrounds of someone… we couldn’t care less. I talk of course about politicians, as we approach the 100 day mark of the coalition and the honeymoon period ends the nation is waking up and rolling over to see that its not only banged a minger, but put a ring on her finger as well. I know nothing about who my MP is, I know they are Tory, but I couldn’t tell you a name or anything about his/her background with out researching. And why? Because I didn’t care, although the elections coverage was on overkill on the news, it was handled entirely wrong for our generation, I mean who watches the news?… Squares and Geography teachers that’s who! So in order to cover the next election properly, and make the most of democracy, here’s what we need to do.

1. Only cover the election on one channel on Saturday nights, too many channels dilutes the emphasis, though it is an acceptable news item on other channels.
2. Have weekly background stories on the contestants, show their human side and highlight the honest backgrounds they have, an interview with “call me Dave”s child hood butler could have changed the election massively.
3. Live Studio Audience, not partisan duffers who clap at any old sh!t they spout, an audience of 12,000 chavs booing and cheering like mindless fools, give the populous a voice.
4. Judges who know f*ck all, yeah Andrew Marr might know the history of modern Britain and Nick Robinson (love your blog) might have the political insight to ask the proper questions, but a Cheeky Girl has sucked off Limpet Opalplex, that’s qualification enough the new format.
5. An ITV2/E4/BBC3 after show. No justification it is simply a staple of the format. (They even did it with the apprentice???)


Follow them rules and were sorted, maybe it wont deliver the best Government but it will at least give us one we have a clue about. And if that fails, BRING ON THE WALL!




Woe.

Monday 16 August 2010

LameHeroes

Hello, and welcome once more to the internet equivalent of an angry child scribbling messages of hate on their parents bedroom wall, that’s right its everybody’s favourite blog called the Aldershot Woes… it’s the Aldershot Woes Episode 35: Lame Heroes.

I just a read a story that has me worried as a parent, and the main reason it worries me is because I think the polar opposite to it. The story was about a report US scientist Sharon Lamb has just published in which she states that today’s boys are at risk from too many “macho” heroes and that essentially today’s cartoon/comicbook/TV/movie heroes are to violent and not human enough, and this is effecting the modern boys progression in to adulthood, unlike the heroes of yesteryear… Well surely that’s a steaming pile of doody-logs? I am more concerned about the opposite, that today’s yoots have no “hard” roll models to follow and that my son will grow up cheering for softy emotional types and will look at me like a caveman who has just clubbed a puppy to death for entertainment when I try to introduce him to the Predator or an early Chan movie…

Today’s roll models are a bloody shambles and they have been for a while now and I think this is the key reason that so many kids these days get to 16 and start knifing the sh!t out of each other. For the last 8-10 years who has been the biggest “hero” for young kids… Harry Potter. When I was at school if you had a bowl-cut and glasses and your best mate was ginger, you were in for a bloody hard time. But no, a generation of kids have grown up thinking that the nicey-nice Hogwarts world of cuddly funny-spelled wonder is the pinnacle of entertainment. And low and behold they get to 15 the hormones kick in, they watch a bit of Commando one night on Bravo get over excited and stab someone in the face the next day in the playground… because they are not taught from a young age that violence is really cool in films and stuff but is really sh!t in real life. As they have never been introduced to it and desensitised to it they can not process it properly, they go from broomsticks to breadknives… What is scarier is that now the kids getting to the stabby age were raised on Tellytubbies as toddlers, then they went on to Harry Potter and now they are cuing up outside cinemas to watch vampires being done all wrong in the eyebrow-centric Twilight saga… Its no wonder kids are all flipping mental.

When I was a boy though my heroes were brave fighters, who used violence to resolve their problems rather than words, but by doing this by the time I was 15 I knew that jamming a screwdriver in to someone’s gums was a bad idea, as I had a glorified comic book notion of violence to fall back on which separated clearly reality and fantasy. Kids now though are nanny state handled to the point they can’t play Conkers with out goggles or Marbles with out 13 inch thick nuke-proof suits on… No wonder the second they get some freedom they have some excess fury to work off, usually in the form of a big old knife to some poor unsuspecting mush’s chops.

We have lost the real-life roll models for boys, footballers, as they are all now fancy Dan, high life tarts who dive over like drunk ballerinas the second they are tackled, so all that is left to encourage a bit of toughness in to your sons developing years and a bit of saneness in to their early adult years is fictional tough guys… So if you are a parent and you care at all about your boys development, sit him down and make him watch the entire 80s Arnie collection, at least 5 Steven Seagal films and anything else with good old fashioned mindless high-gore violence in. When he is getting laid at 15 instead of shedding blood he’ll thank you…

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-10957590

So there you go for more parenting lessons send a £45 cheque and an SAE to Aldershot Woes, The Internet, Aldershot, and I’ll send you the guide to teaching your kids the importance of not being to gullible…


Woe.

Wednesday 11 August 2010

Let It Go

Easy now, welcome to the 34th edition of what the Greeks called the “Chaviscum Tragicus” or to what is know to me and the other 5 or 6 people who read it as The Aldershot Woes. An indigestible capsule of festering ignorance and spazza grade literacy… today’s Woe: Let it go!

Like everybody my age I was born in the 80s, and like a lot of other people of varying ages, I remember them well(ish). 2 things which were part of my life in the 80s carried on way past them and in to the early 90s and beyond, one was an irritating cube of frustration which has bested me at every attempt since I first picked it up and the other was well, more of an oblong of frustration that bested me at every chance, I talk of the Rubik’s Cube and the NES.

In around 1987 we acquired a Rubik’s Cube from somewhere, probably a jumble sale and from then on it appeared to haunt my toy box, appearing at random intervals of my childhood to tease and frustrate me, at one point my brother did the trick of moving the stickers and making it seem as if he had completed it, but alas with in minutes it had been fiddled with and was back to being a conundrum block of misery again. I think finally one afternoon during a loft clean out or room tidy we finally destroyed the fiddly bastard which presented a moment of extreme joy but also one of complete sadness as I now knew that I would never complete the blasted thing, cest la vie… One far less annoying and far more brilliant piece of my childhood was the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), my neighbour had one before me but a huge part of my life was spent playing Super Mario Brothers, Excitabike, Duck Hunt and the extremely awesome Donkey Kong. To this day I would argue till my last breath that the NES is the best console of them all, mainly because it has led to a generation of people who when faced with any technological problem simply take the offending article, blow it, and try again… if your heart surgeon is in his early thirties, beware!

But why am I boring the tits off of people prattling on about things I liked when I was kid, isn’t this all hideously self indulgent? Well yes it is but I am getting to my vague point. This week I have read 2 stories, one was how a group of mathematicians have crunched numbers to breaking point and found what they call “gods number” the number of moves in which you can complete a Rubik’s cube. They are sure that any Rubik’s cube, with it’s 20 billion-billion combinations can be completed in less than 20 moves… Bullsh!t I say… I know I’ve tried over 20 billion-billion combinations and never got more than a couple of sides done! But alas a group of grown men have spent 20 years compiling the data and they have found that 20 moves or less is all you need to do a Rubik’s Cube… we’re no closer to a cure for cancer but at least the fun has been taken out of the Rubik’s Cube. Yay science.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-10929159

The other story which tickled my fancy was about a chap called Billy Mitchell from Hickville, America, although he looks like a hybrid of Joe Dirt and Napoleon Dynamite this guy has dedicated his life to Donkey Kong and achieving the world’s highest score (about 70 zillion) he has had an ongoing feuds with a couple of other arcade junkies, but he has overcome the odds and the repetitive strain injuries to earn the crown of “best at Donkey Kong”… the thing is this battle of his has been raging since the game came out in 1982.. Jesus, that’s nearly 30 years, back then I was but a squint in my father eye, 30 years is lifetime it really is and all for Donkey Kong… I just hope no one gets this guy a PS3 and Grand Theft Auto…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Mitchell_(gamer)

These uber dedicated fools and their 30 year crusades to dominate 80s pastimes has led me to think what other hapless mugs are we going to see crawling out the woodwork over the next few years? Are we going to hear about Li Fung Ching, the Chinaman who spent the last 13 years doing the longest Budweiser “Wasssssup” in history? Will we be regaling our office colleagues with the story of Tempest Bedfudge, the New Orleans grandmother with her 45 year old Tamagotchi. Will there be people coming out of the shadows for getting to level 17 billion of Worms on the Amiga 500? Will Nintendo be issuing long service medals and Arthritis medicine to anyone who can take Tetris to level 40,000? How long till we hear about groups of Magic-Eye enthusiasts all going blind, and how long till Suduko fans are all locked up as numbers have taken over their brains? Will we be hearing in 25 years tales of people who have NEVER left Facebook? People right now, that you know, could be embarking on 30 year Guitar Hero Battles that will end only in death (which lets hope comes swiftly)…

The most tragic thing is, this will happen, there are enough Fads and more than enough simpletons and obsessive compulsive savant autistics to make sure of it. So if you find your self unable to walk away from Call of Duty, if you still dig our you old Nokia and have a bash at Snake occasionally and if when you lay in bed at night and all you can think about is your top score on Wii Sports Bowling, please for the love of god, just let it go.


Woe.

Monday 9 August 2010

BabyRobots

Hello once more, and welcome to another week of Aldershot flavoured comedy Woes. I have received literally no comments about the newer condensed Woe form which leads me to believe it’s a good thing or at the least a thing people don’t care about. Anyway, on with this the 32nd Aldershot Woe which is cleverly titled Episode 32 of the Aldershot Woes: Baby Robots.

When I was little I watched Transformers and played with the toys and basically thought it was the ess-haych-eye-tea! Then as I became a teenager I fell in love with nerdy Japanese cartoons about big robots with enormous guns. And now I am a parent and a grown up with responsibilities and all that jazz, but still the thought of anything robotic awakens the immature youth in me and I start day dreaming about mech-suits and photon blasters like an 8 year old… The trouble is I can’t let go, and the reason I have these robo-nostalgic attachment issues is I have been lied to.

Tomorrow’s world, now simply a clip-show guide to how flipping stupid we were 15 years ago, but when I was 8 that was the future and it constantly promised robots and jet packs and hover boards and ray-guns and space cruisers and it hasn’t delivered on anything! (I’ll admit perhaps I am making up a large percentage of what Tomorrows world did “promise” but so what, its my inner child that is being let down so I’ll allow myself to be petulant this once). Nope, here we are in the future, and rather than ultra cool alien fighting warriors with robotic best friends, the people on the cusp of technology are the boffs that paid attention at school. And to think I thought that by drawing robots instead of making notes I was genuinely preparing for the future… pish! Anyway, today I still have a fascination with anything robotic, and when I see a story that has anything to do with the emergence and progress of robots I read it in the hope that rather than an interview with some white-coated crack pot prattling on about firmware codes, its about a rogue android going skitzo and blowing up its lab and escaping to crush its human creators… but alas it is usually the former. Anyhoo, today I read a story about a new robot that has the emotions of a 1 year old human, this captured my interest as it is a) about robots and I love them and b) I have a one year old daughter so I know just how absolutely mental they are.

Now I am sure that there is no intention behind toddler-bots and this is just a step in the progress of robo-emotions but the more I think about this the more potential to be hideously dangerous it becomes. As well as being absolutely hilarious and painfully cute, my daughter (16 months) is on an emotional rollercoaster 24 hours a day, when you are that age you do not stop absorbing information and as such emotional responses are usually extreme, which is fine for a human child. Obviously they get upset when they are told off for putting things in the toilet, but this teaches boundaries, respect and rules, and a human toddlers resulting tantrum is handled easily by a cuddle a little chat and if need be some chocolate buttons. But now imagine the hissy-fit a terminator would have when it was time to leave the park? Bloodshed… And when it comes to bedtime and you have to leave Ed-209 (Robocop for anyone not as hugely geekish as me) in his cot screaming like a banshee, well get ready to be sprayed with machine gun fire. And whoever it is that volunteers to change Megtron’s sh!tty arse, is a hero in my book!

Yep when we get to the future and its Matrix style robo-dominance and a life of oppression and Keanu reeves is mans salvation, chances are rather than some suave ultra evil rogue programme or ghost in the shell downloaded corrupted psyche file leading our robotic oppressors, it will be a robotic toddler that we told off for playing in the cat litter tray.

Robotic toddlers, bad idea!
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1301512/Meet-Nao-The-robot-able-develop-emotions-form-bond-humans.html




WOE

Thursday 5 August 2010

Breath and Count to Ten

Hello, another day another Aldershot Woe, and fingers crossed I don’t waffle on to much and can keep it in its new condensed form, I like to think of these new smaller Aldershot Woes like little tiny owl pellets of misery, bad taste and ignorance. Anyway Aldershot Woe 32: Breath and Count to Ten.


There’s no doubt about it, we're getting angrier, we're more stressed, we're over worked, we're underpaid, and the entire world is at its tethers end. This wasn’t always a big problem for us, we’ve always been angry but previously we just got in to Basil Fawlty-esque comedy rages, hitting Mini’s with trees or screaming at inanimate objects, even kicking furniture breaking our toes and jumping up and down like characters from a Tom and Jerry cartoon… yeah for a long time rage was A-OK, a bit of harmless fun which helped channel anger in a comedic and therapeutic way, but things seem different now.

Rather than flying in to momentary rages to help us deal with life’s problems more and more people are letting it build up till the venomous rage spews around their body, filling their souls with compressed bile and hatred, contorting their view of life until pretty much everything is an unbearable misery, constantly seeing life through shit-tinted glasses. Until one day, over something mediocre and trivial the rage is unleashed and descends upon them like a cloud of fury and the nearest person to them falls foul of their built up anger and gets stabbed in the face with kitchen knife. And the shit thing is this is happening more and more every day, for as long as I can remember, every week there is a story about a debt ridden misery guts, or a spurned lover flipping their lids and murdering or battering completely innocent people… It’s tragic, see today’s news for proof of that but its also mind-breakingly absurd and hugely avoidable.

I think a large part of the problem is that now-a-days society is incredibly image conscious, people believe that how they look is what defines them. This has resulted in 2 sets of people emerging, on one hand we have cool people, not people who are cool, but people who actually want to be. The desperation of wanting to be “cool” means putting up a huge front, and a considerable part of that front is not looking like a prick. The other set of people are the ones who are constantly aware of how un-cool they are, they feel the burden heaped upon them by society unnecessarily and do there best to not stand out, to just exist in the shadows of “cool” people and a considerable part of being unnoticed is not looking like a prick. (I should note here that for cool, think wanker).

It’s these socially repressed people who end up exploding like a shaken can of anger-pop and spraying there fizzy rage all over innocent dolts, usually in the form of a blood bath. So here is the crux of today’s Woe, if you want to NOT one day come home, see your wife has ruined your favourite work shirt in the wash and then consequentially hack her to pieces with a bread knife before caving your own brain in with an ornamental statuette… don’t be afraid to look like an ignorant, mad, raging Neanderthalic, narrow minded, angry prick once in while. You will feel better and no one gets a screwdriver through their throat for being a tiny bit annoying, or just for being in the wrong place at the wrong rage.

So today, if your kids annoy you, bellow at them like a cartoon madman, if the cat is sick on the carpet, boot it up the arse, if your bank unfairly charges you for being overdrawn, ring them up and tear who ever you speak to a new one (big flipping whoops if it aint their fault, they work for the bank so its fair game!). Please stop the madness, and be a prick.



Woe.

Tuesday 3 August 2010

Clone

Well, welcome to the new generation of slimmed down woes, what I am hoping to do is cram the same amount of uneducated, ignorant, rant in to a far smaller and hopefully more insulting blog. Although this is only the first paragraph and already I am waffling like a drunken uncle. Any way, Aldershot Woe 31: Cloning.


For some reason, far beyond my comprehension cloning scares the bejebers out of most people. But not for a sensible reason like the fear of the human race being taken over by an evil army of hick clones knocked up in a lab by US military scientists which cover the earth like a mulleted plague, stomping out humanity and listening to Lynyrd Skynyrd. And no one is worried about getting cloned and not knowing about it only to come home one day and see a doppelganger playing with your wife and kids, but before you can confront the maniacal clone your bundled in to a sack by government agents and shipped off to an island never knowing why or what the clone you is doing with your family!!!

Both of these situations scare the elbows off of me, but when you try to have a debate about cloning, these aren’t the issues being discussed. Apparently the worst thing about cloning is that it can be used to produce food… dear god no! Just this week there is an uproar as it has been reported in the New York times that a British dairy farmer is selling Cloned Cows Milk on the British market… This led me to ask a very serious question: am I the only one not remotely bothered by this? At the moment we cram moo-cows in to tiny sheds, attach automated nipple-sucks and drain the creatures of their milk as well as their dignity. We treat these creatures with no respect, they are merely tasty commodities to be traded bred, slaughtered and gobbled down. I am sure a couple of vegans or even worse “organics” may come on and say that there are better ways and you can get milk that has been wilfully offered by a cow who lives in field and has a really nice shed with an X-box and trendy artwork. (a picture of a barn with a swastika stencilled by Banksy or something?) Well bollocks to that, as I do not want to spend £20,000 on a pint of milk, I’m a realist and a carnivore, give me animal products and as cheap as you can sir… If any vegans do want to leave a message of complaint you are welcome to, but did you know that your Keyboard is made out of animal fats and mouse bones? You murderous bastard!

Anyway, as I like tasty meat and milk and cheese and anything else you can scrape off a dead animal and shove down your gullet, the idea of cloning to me is bloody good one. If you can tinkle about with some cow DNA and make a boneless ball of steak the size of a car then get on with it I say. Some people say that cloning for food production is unethical, usually the same people who say it is an affront to god, I think the exact opposite. Put your self in gods shoes for a moment, if you had created all life on earth and you treasure all of your creations equally, who would you prefer gets locked in a shed, executed and sliced up to feed chubby round-faced men folk? Would it be the ones you made and love, or the ones that were knocked up in a lab by a man with wearing sandles with cornflakes in his beard, and had absolutely nothing to do with you? If it were me I know who I’d pick.

The raucous that cloned and “GM” foods creates has me bewildered, I think this technology along with stem-cell research and any other DNA jiggery pokery should be embraced with open arms, lets be honest its this “playing god” that will feed the starved, cure the terminally ill and create an England team of genetic super freaks who can get passed the last 16 of a flipping world cup.

We’re already playing god, almost everything we do is an affront to nature, but so what, it makes life better, its not natural that we can have images beamed in to our living rooms, or have high speed broadband or Nintendo Wii but you don’t see a bunch of hippies and god botherers getting in a tizz about them… so why get in a big huff over cloned foods? It’s no more or less ethical than our current system of concentration camp intensive farming, and I don’t see that free range and organic is any better, if anything that’s worse, let the animals run around and think life’s all dandy and sweet, then one day fry its brain with a cow-prod and chop him up for some mushes burger meat…

If it were up to me I’d have huge labs growing steaks and fried chicken plants, we’d all have loads of food and the whole world would be a happier place. So please if you are going to be scared about clones please make it a for a good, sci-fi-esque world domination reason, because honestly what’s worse a yummy cloned meat burger washed down with a cool glass of clone milk or the fear that one day someone could clone an army of Gary Nevilles…


Woe.