February 5th- Fuck-haired Cocks and the Idiot Box

I'm back for a fourth time to inflame you my friends, like a herpes sore with a face and a voice. Well, actually thats Simon Cowell again but never mind. Once more I am struggling to find myself a relatively quiet haven amidst the growing number of idiots who are quickly populating this pub and spewing a load of unwelcome shite. It's like if the Norovirus had legs and a hive mind. I know it's supposed to be a sign of getting old when you start ranting about "the youth of today" but to be honest I've always felt like that, even as a youth, a consistently bitter youth. I'll give you an example, a few minutes ago a bunch of studenty types were sitting on the table adjacent to me "ironically" playing Goldeneye on the Nintendo 64 due to the games "whoah thats so retro!" nostalgic feel, (you know, it came out waaay back in 1997 at a point when the human race  had only just developed hands). Unfortunately, as I walked past them to the bar I accidentally caught the eye of one of the hapless flesh-shapes and the caremelised twiglet spoke to me;

"Hey mate! Check it out! Isn't it great? It's Goldeneye! Can you remember when games looked like this? It's soooo mad isn't it?"

As I stared back at the organ-filled, luminescent manniquin, I looked directly into those make-up caked eyes, housed in a face replaced by a Ronsealed, hammered saddle and said the following:

"No."

"What do you mean?" It replied

"I mean it's not mad, it's the predictable progression of software technology. If you want to talk about "retro" I was 15 when this game came out, I had a Sega Master System and a Super Nintendo at the same time your parents were frantically searching in vain for that morning after pill."

"What?"

"Exactly."

Fuck me! Christ knows what would happen if she ever saw Pac Man or Space Invaders if thats all it took to mind-spazz her perception of reality. Now, that little conversational exchange might've made me appear a little on the harsh side to some of you but allow me to defend myself. As I continued to explain the history of video games to her, the girl looked equally dumbfounded and fascinated. Imagine, if you will, the equivalent of travelling back through time thousands of years and showing a cro magnon tribe a George Foreman grill that lets you check your Twitter account. To be fair it's not just the "yoof" of today that gets on my tits with their hedge-raped hair cuts, their 'distressed' t-shirts and their constant spouting of offensively stupid pseudo-sociological idioms, other generations are guilty too.

As far as I've observed in my relatively short, gripe-filled existence, human beings have devoted more and more time and energy to belonging and contributing to 'popular culture'. I see modern society largely stuck to a giant Mobius Strip, like a huge loop of fly paper for vapid, imaginationless toss-drones. Allow me to elaborate. Living on the outside of the strip are all the "cool" people. This type wear the hideously overpriced t-shirts, pay £90 for a ridiculous haircut which looks like you requested it by claiming you pissed on the barber's newborn and are often found trying to look deep by reading a Jack Kerouac or Hunter S. Thompson novel in the middle of a "hip" coffee shop that resembles an Ikea showroom in a wretched attempt to subtly attract the attentions of the opposite sex so they can dribble their faux-intellectual bullshit at them. The twat-yang to the aforementioned prick-yin, living on the inside are the droney, cock-sods who try so hard not to be cool they make a concerted effort to dislike anything that has gained popularity whether it has genuine merit or not. These hypocritical dullards are driven by the need to be completely different for the sake of it, generating in their minds a kind of "anti-cool". Ironically, this outlook eventually gains popularity and becomes liked by the "cool" crowd, forcing the "anti-cools" to start all over and so the perpetual cycle flows around the shit-ribbon of earth.

 I would like to believe that there is a third faction, a faction I'd like to think I belong to. This group despises the previous two and longs for a genetically-engineered smart virus or swarms of nanite ninja quails to be created that could invade the thickstream of these morons, get into their nuclei and sub-atomically bugger them out of existence. I'll let you know if there are any developments to this end in New Scientist when I get a chance to check.

Well so far, so self-righteous but what if I'm wrong? I mean what if i'm just a cantankerous old curmudgeon who is failing to keep up with the times? To be fair, not all things to do with popular culture are terrible, some tv shows are pretty good, 'The Wire', for example is one of the best written/directed/acted television series I have ever seen in my entire life. That show was a rare example of a product actually living up to the hype. Cop shows have been consistently popular for decades now so in an attempt to reach out to all you "cool" and "uncool" types alike here's the synopsis for a gritty, law-type show pilot I've been working on just for you. I hope it's "edgy" enough for you:


From the Case Files of Hidalgo T Rapewafer

Mild-mannered ice cream salesman by day, undercover Mi6 agent by night. Using his miniature laboratory in the back of his Mr Whippy van, unorthodox interrogation expert Agent Rapewafer concocts his own blend of rohypnol or "truth juice" in which he soaks "special" batches of ice cream cones. A hallucinogenic Flake 99, six stitches to a henchman's colon and an ice bath later and Hidalgo has all the information he needs.

 Episode #1. Whilst following up on a potential lead Rapewafer finds himself trapped in Strangeways Prison amidst a full scale riot armed with nothing but his wits and a psychotropic choc ice.

January 14th - Frank's Fun Oven.

Hello again my disillusioned friends, yes I'm back to harangue you on more inconsequential subject matter. As I write this I feel a little dirty as I have joined the ranks of the self-important techno twat twenty-somethings by sitting in a corner, sipping a latte with my laptop in a wi-fi enabled public house. I know. I know. It could be worse though, I could be writing a screenplay based on some post-modern concept or a comic vignette hilariously satirising society's obsession with reality tv or some shit like that. My personal appearance is especially unattractive today, my clothing is scruffy, my hair a mess and by the looks of my complexion you could easily be forgiven for thinking that all I've had to eat for the last couple of days is a can of monster and a methadone sandwich.

I'd like to bond with you kids by lying and saying that my current physical state is a result of me staying up all night as part of some hedonistic, booze-filled, self-abuseathon but the truth is I was baking. Yes baking. Now, those of you who know me are likely to exclaim at this point, "Baking Frank? But you are such a shining beacon of raw masculinity in the muddied contemporary waters of metrosexuality, straightened hair and skinny jeans!" Its ok my children, I'll explain. You see, I rather like baking and if I do say so myself I'm pretty good at it. The problem comes with me being so incredibly perfectionist and pretentious with the aforementioned activity that it siphons all joy from the process. By the time I had finished my flourless dark chocolate truffle cake I was so mentally and physically drained I felt like one of the scientists working on the Manhattan Project.

*Disclaimer: I had nothing to do with the development of the atom bomb. However, considering the amount of butter, double cream and chocolate in the cake, side effects may include type 1 diabetes and cardiac-based turbo death.

I'm drinking Earl Grey now. Ponce.

Anyway, after I solved the equation of cake I proceeded to do what any self-respecting man does after he has achieved something of minuscule significance and that was to spent the rest of the night bloody harping on about it and declaring myself the messiah of puddings.

Half a pint of Wainwright.

Whilst we are on the subject of things of a culinary nature I came up with an idea for a new food-based tv show. Now I know that telly is already swamped with cookery toss but hear me out. I would host a deliberately ambiguously-titled programme called something wanky like 'Food.....Yeah!' to appease all those stickle-pricks in the marketing department. The format for most of the show would be fairly generic, I'd have to adopt some faux enthusiastic, fuck-puppeted twat persona and chat shit about why food is important and great and essential and blah, (you know, like we haven't worked out in the last few hundred millennia of our species' existence.) The twist would come at the end, when each week I would have a celebrity chef on the show as a special guest. So far, so who gives a cock, right? Well picture this if you will. Whilst I'm enduring banal smalltalk with perma-pious frigbiscuit Jamie Oliver I would be simultaneously whittling asparagus tips into mini organic prison shivs with which I would choose an opportune moment to hurl myself towards him and repeatedly stab him until I pierced the vital organ(s) responsible for his insufferable, dirigible-lipped smugness. No? How about getting Worrall-Thompson on then? He could test out the skin-flaying properties of my revolving 'Rack O'Pineapples' (tm) using fruit he had stolen himself. Oh the cruel irony! Then, as we saw the life extinguished from his bloated, gnome-like body I could edit in a laughter track and cue credits. It's just an idea. Incidentally, does anyone have Living TV's number?

January 9th - The Dirge Begins

It was late last night whilst trying to urinate in the dark with my phones itorch app as my only light source that I had an epiphany. I may not possess any particularly useful life skills. Don't get me wrong, this conclusion came at least a minute after I had accidentally switched the aforementioned app to 'strobe' mode and turned what should have been a relatively simple task into some kind of nightmarish, Irvine Welsh-inspired disco piss. It came mere seconds after I genuinely felt a degree of pride at not making a mess of the bathroom and believed that such an achievement was at least the real life equivalent of 25 xbox gamerscore points. It was at that moment, the moment I saw the imaginary icons and brightly coloured health and power bars above my head like I was in a low rent approximation of Scott fucking Pilgrim that I realised that laser-guided, piss-shepherd I may be, real life human achiever I am not.

As I stood there, gorping at both the literal and metaphorical mirror with my eyes half closed and my hair stuck on end, closely resembling a deranged guinea fowl trying to beat itself in a knife fight I pondered what it was that a 29 year old of moderate intelligence was supposed to be aiming for in life. At present, like many of this planets populace I whittle away my life hours at a minimum wage institution for the terminally sorrowed, which provides all the intellectual stimulation of a feature length episode of the Jeremy Kyle show complete with directors commentary by a grey painted man composed of BNP pamphlets and carpet samples. In fact my particular place of work operates like the equivalent of a scaled down collapsed star only instead of it acting as a gravity well it consumes the following: humour, sensitivity, intelligent conversation, dreams, ambition, love, tolerance, equality and hope. I am sure many of you reading these words feel similarly about your own jobs, so in preparation of that,(and to maintain the flimsy spatial anomaly metaphor) I propose a quantum experiment based on the incredibly flawed and limited knowledge of physics I possess.

Perhaps if enough of us gather together in one place at the same time then we could maybe pool our collective anti-matter. This would be harvested from the black hole that resides in each of us, (you know, that place where you used to store your aspirations and self respect) With enough gathered we could potentially unmake localised reality and live in a constant state of immaterial flux and dark uncertainty. Wait a minute....... that's pretty much where we exist right now isn't it? On second thoughts, I might just concentrate on urinating straight with substandard illumination first and work my way up.