I've been a bit hard on the Scotch over the years.
Alright, so as an Englishman my overriding dread is that the better half of the island will be overrun by claymore-wielding, blue-arsed maniacs ... but that's no reason to be constantly at the throats of those bearded monsters north of the border. I think it's about time I paid tribute to those penny-pinching, godless devils, instead of always going on about what a rabble of ill-mannered, bone-munching, red-haired cannibals they all are.
So, in an attempt at opening up friendly relations with that set of toothless barbarians up there eating babies in caves, here's my tribute to Scotchland ...
Despite being no better than a pack of baboons, the Scotch have given the world TV, microwave ovens, Peter Pan, the US Navy, and golf (to name but a few).
That's right. It's thanks to the tireless work of a barely-human hoard of alcoholic psychopaths that we are blessed with Big Brother and Keeping Up Appearances, a method of cooking food in a way that makes it less palatable, an aid to Michael Jackson in his quest to bed small boys, a means of delivering US troops and vehicles to invasion points across the globe, and a way of destroying vast swathes of our countryside. That's not bad, considering they can barely read.
So there you go. I think I've gone some way to building bridges there ...
An Apology To The Scotch
Good Riddance To Bad Rubbish
Hmmmm. Lovely, ain't they? These blocks of concrete (that are in danger of toppling onto the M1 Motorway) have divided public opinion in my neck of the woods for ages. Feckless hippy dickwits with no talent want to turn them into an 'ArtSpace', or 'aRtspACE', or '@rtSp@ce' or something. Structural engineers, E-On (the company that owns them), and most people who don't care about two derelict water towers in the middle of nowhere want to see them demolished. The debate's raged (or R@aged!, perhaps) on and on and on.
Thankfully, common sense has prevailed, and the whole lot's being torn down. This is a victory for me, just about everyone else in Sheffield, and faceless corporate bastards everywhere, and one in the eye for tie-dyed, mung-bean guzzling, workshop-holding, dogs-on-strings walking, flea-infested, pot-smoking, eco-friendly, lefty, talentless 'artists' with stinking dreadlocks, an aversion to washing, and a bad attitude towards the State (except the bit of it that hands them free money once a fortnight). As a man who would willingly participate in a police baton-charge against one of those piss-taking 'Reclaim The Streets' demos, I'm pleased as Punch at this decision.
I've had it up to here with community 'art spaces', workshops, drumming classes, crystal healing courses, chakra realignments, alternative therapies, etc. They're almost always heavily funded out of the public purse (because no private organisation or individual interested in art would want to fund them), and almost always dreadful because the people who run them are talentless, unemployable shitwits. Hats off to E-On for ignoring the bleats of a bunch of dope-smoking layabouts who believe any derelict structure should belong to them so they can display their tatty and uninspired 'art' in it. The dirty fuckers.
Idiocracy
I came across this on the BBC's ever-reliant news website. According to the general public, the worst ideas ever in the whole history of mankind are:
The Atom Bomb
Reality Television
Capital Punishment
Plastic Bags
Credit Cards
Putting aside the fact that Japan would have undoubtedly fought on until every last man, woman and child had been slaughtered on their home turf (as well as thousands of Allied soldiers) had the Americans not shook them into surrender by dropping enormous bombs on them, and ignoring the fact that fuckers such as Adolf Eichmann, Julius Streicher and Wilhelm Frick deserved to get strung up for their part in the atrocities committed by the Third Reich, how can people possibly think that fripperies such as reality TV and carrier bags are the very worst ideas we've ever come up with? Are people that thick?
What about the bright sparks who came up with the idea of torture as a way of extracting confession? Does having one's fingernails prised off with red hot knives strike you as a slightly worse idea than a credit card? It does me.
How's about human sacrifice? Or attacking the Soviet Union without first securing the British Isles? Hanging, drawing and quartering, anyone? Sending in the Light Brigade, perhaps? Expelling the Jews from England? The Battle of the Somme? The Rape of Nanking? The Bay of Pigs? The Spanish Inquisition? The Slave Trade?
All awful ideas that caused suffering on a grand scale ... but do they hold a candle to that World Evil, the plastic bag? According to the bum-headed dumbasses that voted in this poll, they don't.
Or is it that people are now so badly educated they think a television show where sixteen imbeciles sit in a house for two months is a worse idea than The Holocaust?
We're doomed, frankly.
A Letter To An Old Nazi (Allegedly)
I came across the pope's e-mail address after typing 'contact the pope' into Google. It fetched up this address, so I thought I'd drop him a line.
Dear Your Holiness
I don't play by the rules - I never have, and I never will. I'm a maverick, a loose cannon. I plough my own furrow through this life, and don't you damn-well forget it. I'm not a team player. I walk my own line. I'm footloose, fancy-free, I strike out where I want to go. I pitch my own tent, play my own game, find my own way. I'm a go-getter ... and I get what I fucking well want when I fucking well want it. Do we understand each other?
Yes?
Good.
Yours,
Dr. Rowan Williams
Archbishop of Canterbury
England
Readers' Medical Queries
Each month, ITTODBTBIA'S resident sawbones, Dr. Rodney T. Balaclava (disbarred from practicing medicine since 1973), answers readers' medical conundrums. This month, the good doctor concentrates on the concerns of readers who think they may have caught the worst disease in the history of mankind since The Shits ...
Dear Dr. Rodney
I was clobbering our five year old for pissing on the carpet last night, when a thought struck me - can you get The AIDS off of your own kids? I only ask because there's been an awful lot of Polish kids enrolled at her primary school over the last month, and I don't think the teachers wipe down the lavatories every time one of 'em goes to the toilet. Please God, don't tell me I've gotten The AIDS, I was only battering my kids - a father's right.
Alan Vagina, Ripon
Dear Alan
A tricky one this. Under normal circumstances I'd recommend you thrash those children of yours until they're insensible ... but having come into contact with Polish kids? There's definitely a possibility they're contaminated with The AIDS, in which case you might well have caught it from beating your daughter. In the future I'd err on the side of caution and hit your children with an iron bar whilst wearing a gas mask and wellington boots. That way, if you have got The AIDS, you won't make it worse. Believe me, nobody wants Type II The AIDS! For a start, your arse falls out!
Dr. Rodney
Dear Dr. Rodney
I found out from a drunk man in my local pub that my wife, Felicity, is having an affair with Big Roy Elland - Blackburn's 'Carpet King'. Full to the brim with Bateman's XXXB, I went home in a rage and beat a confession from the woman. Now I'm worried I've contracted The AIDS because I remembered reading in the local paper that Big Roy Elland has recently returned from Morocco, after securing a seven figure carpet contract. They've all got The AIDS out there, haven't they?
Ted Poops, Blackburn
Dear Ted
Don't be silly! Since 2004 Morocco has been a The AIDS-free country, thanks to a government crackdown on toilet seats, gays and gays who sleep with monkeys. The worst thing Big Roy Elland could have given your wife is a touch of gonorrhea, syphilis, genital herpes, or pubic lice - none of which can be transmitted by face to fist intercourse. As a doctor, I prescribe you carry on slapping your wife about to your heart's content - there's no way the adulterous whore can give you The AIDS.
Dr. Rodney
Dear Dr. Rodney
I've just murthered my husband with a frying pan for his life insurance money. As I was filling in his accidental death forms, I was suddenly brought up short by a terrifying thought - he used to work in a monkey sanctuary when he was twenty three, and undoubtedly caught The AIDS there from sleeping with all monkeys. I'm really worried I've got The AIDS now, and that I'll wither away before I've spent his insurance money on shoes, clothes, make-up, hair cuts and Friends and Sex & The City box sets. Oh, and fanny hammers. Has he given me Monkey The AIDS?
Sally Jazzy Jeff, Rochdale
Dear Sally
Don't you worry your pretty little head about it, sweetheart. Yes, your dead husband has undoubtedly passed on The AIDS to you but, as women are only carriers of the disease, not sufferers, you're perfectly safe. The disease will lay dormant inside you until, like a spider, you pounce on an unsuspecting man and riddle him with The AIDS. The only way a woman can be directly effected by The AIDS is if the man who she's given it to finds out it was her that passed it on, and beats her to death. My advice to avoid this would be to turn your back on men forever. Instead, invest in a cat, a bottle of wine, a copy of Dirty Dancing and an enormous box of tissues to mop up the tears you shed over your empty, The AIDS-raddled life.
Dr. Rodney
DISCLAIMER: ITTODBTBIA does not endorse the views expressed by Dr. Balaclava regarding spousal abuse, the precautionary measures advised in the prevention and exacerbation of The AIDS, the causes of The AIDS, or the immunity of women to The AIDS. It does, however, agree that children should be thrashed on a daily, if not hourly, basis.
Risky Business
Beige Rock colossus Coldplay has generously donated a piano to a Gloucestershire primary school. Is this rock's most underwhelming charitable act? And how dangerous is this to those kids? Are they going to grow up listening to, and God forbid, liking Coldplay music? Thanks to that damned piano?
Were there secret clauses involved in this gift? Yes, the kids can have the piano, but they also have to take the sheet music to X&Y and the monstrous Parachutes? And worse still, learn how to play the turds contained within these hideous albums?
Apart from abuse in all its myriad forms, I can't think of anything more likely to smite a childhood than a strict diet of Coldplay. A similar gift by Simply Red wouldn't be as damaging, because even kids can see how preposterous Mick Hucknall is; Elton John's back catalogue plus a piano would at least have the saving grace of containing his 70s music, which goes some way to making up for the atrocities he's subjected the world to in the 80s, 90s and 00s.
Indeed, the only thing that comes close to so insidious a gift would be a similar donation by Billy Joel - a man who has not shown the slightest inclination towards making a decent record since his blight began spreading across the globe in 1973.
The only way to aid these children is for proper bands to chip in and give this school instruments and music that counterbalance the potential Coldplay virus: A lead guitar plus Led Zeppelin IV from Jimmy Page, Revolver and a drum kit generously donated by Ringo and the increasingly ridiculous Macca, Wolfmother's cracking first album plus a Rickenbacker 4003 bass guitar - that sort o' thing.
It's the only way we'll stop these children growing up and starting bands that sound exactly like Coldplay - a dreadful future for all mankind.
