Help me I`m helpless

Charlie Chaplin entered a Charlie Chaplin look-a-like competition in Monte Carlo during the 20s….he finished third.

This was quoted to me in the context of being yourself. Crap huh?
Good story but as an analogy doesn't really work except for showing how stupid the French can be and like we really needed help figuring that one out.

Self help books are shit. Self indulgent, anti-climatic and a waste of time. I am old enough to have no shame in admitting I have, on occasion, dabbled in the solitary pursuit of happiness through an airport paperback over the years.

Double your income in a month!!!!
Who wouldn't be tempted, its only £7.99 and its an Airport Exclusive?

I know it's a slight diversion but I don't understand the term “Airport Exclusive”. Does that actually mean its only sold at airports? Why on earth would a publisher want to do that? The only logical reason is that the book is crap. So crap only a knackered, half drunk, business person staggering around an antiseptic, wipe clean environment bored out of their skulls would be even slightly attracted to its title.

Double your income in a month!!!
Yes please and before you know it you are £7.99 poorer. Slightly poorer yes, but very soon, a month to be precise, you will be much richer. You have the secret in your hand, the secret only airport people know about. It doesn't work for bus people, apparently.

The book is secreted away, hidden next to your porn mags and hemorrhoid cream as your late night flight is called. Somewhere between drinks being served and the 10min call is ping`d you quietly pull the book from your bag, carefully, so as not to attract your fellow passengers attention. It has a cheap printed feel, not quite the quality it appeared to have on the shelf but that doesn't matter given the inherent value contained within.

And here is the rub - what it contains. Precisely nothing, without even knowing if such a book exists I am sure it would contain nuggets along the lines of:

-Don't focus on money ­- focus on self happiness.
-There is power in positive thinking
-Get a job which pays twice your current salary in the next 30 days.

Great.

I guess the Secrets of finding the perfect man offers something along the lines of – look up Brad Pitt and make him fall in love with you. Perfect thank you.

I have a great idea which will make me trillions overnight. Start selling cars which fly, all I need to do is work out how to make a car fly and I am there, simple.

They are selling a lie, pure and simple - the Emperor has no clothes.

Its funny though, the act of purchasing the book is therapeutic in itself. I am going to take charge of my roadcrash life and turn it around thanks to this purchase – reading it and adopting the intrusive steps is never going to happen - it's the intent behind the purchase. Same as buying a gym membership.

I am going to make a million overnight. No need for a book to help me with this, no need for clever metaphors, analogies or tenuously linked anecdotes.

I am going to start printing laminated cards (Posi-cards ©) with good positive statements of intent on them and sell them at airports, bus stations, divorce courts, outside fancy gyms or at weight watcher meetings.

Every time you start feeling down, just quietly take your card out, read it, agree with it and you will instantly feel better.

You will still be fat, poor, ugly, have a small penis, shit car or be a crap lover but you now plan to do something about it.

All this happiness and only for the exclusive, bargain price of £4.99.

Brass Eye

So Geert Wilders will arrive in the UK tomorrow.

I look forward to hearing the condemnation coming from every major political party. Each will line up in order of their electability to distance themselves from his views. Each will denounce him and throw as much mud as it takes to ensure none of his "offensive" utterings land anywhere near them.

Good Lord it is after all an election year remember.

He should be banned from the UK.

He should not be given any right to speak in this country.

He should be burned at the stake!

He should get a haircut.

Should he?

Yes on the haircut front definitely, only Boris Johnson is more in need of a makeover but like Boris his soundbites are certainly worth a listen.

He has publically compared the Koran to Mein Kampf.

He has said that Islam is the Trojan horse of Europe.

He has commissioned and published a film, “Fitna” which suggests that the Koran motivates its followers to among other things - acts of terrorism, antisemitism, violence against women, violence and subjegation of infidels and against homosexuals and Islamic universalism.

Ok so most of us would agree his politics are questionable to say the lease and he probably has some form of deathwish but it doesent disguise the fact he is an elected member of parliament from a bona-fide card carrying European union member.

Freedom of speech is the freedom to speak without censorship and/or limitation so why wouldn't this apply to Geert?

Could it be because of his views on Islam?

Have a read of his speech against the PVDA the Dutch Labour party and then tell me you don't start warming to this man.

http://www.geertwilders.nl/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1661&Itemid=1

If I didnt know any better I would believe he was a character from Brass Eye but he is not, he is actually real

Now why couldnt our own version, Nick Griffin, be more like Geert?

Great Expectations

John McEnroe made good television.

The man we loved to hate, an American spoiled brat with a stupid perm and eye wateringly tight shorts.

Nowadays John would not exist, in the modern game of tennis that is - he does of course still exist.

The John of old would simply challenge and the marvelous Hawkeye would confirm or deny his crybaby outbursts. As much as we loved Johns whining the invention of Hawkeye must go down as one of the best sporting inventions since woman’s beach volleyball. Players have three challenges, use them wisely, and that's that, stop dripping about it and get on and play – perfect if you love tennis.

Some years ago I watched a regional news bulletin and there was a piece about inventers of Hawkeye, who were at the time a bunch of spotty students. They were putting the finishing touches to their invention before approaching the various sporting bodies. I clearly remember remarking at the time that it was a great idea and am sure those spotty students are now being well rewarded for their innovation.

Googling “top 10 great inventions” brings up 1.5million results.
There are a lot of top 10 invention lists out there but they generally contain at least the Telephone, TV, Penicillin, Steam engine and the wheel, which is un-credited, along with fire I would imagine.

All of these are good but if you are looking for that eureka, make a million overnight, moment you probably need to look elsewhere for inspiration. Running down the list they all required a lot of hard work, a sprinkling of luck, a couple of bucket loads of intelligence and more importantly a lifetime of determination.

Google isn’t anywhere to be seen, in fact the most recent addition to the top ten was first invented in 1936.

Alternatively try Googling “how to make a million fast” and you will find 52 million answers. Without even looking I can bet you that none will say develop software which will assist an umpire in disputed calls.

Having browsed the results I can safely tell you they are all shit, or shite depending which side of the border you are reading this from. Granted I only looked at 5 but am assuming the other 51,999,995 were similar. Either way I am no richer having spent 5 mins browsing through the answers. 52 million seems did seem high so as a control I tried Googling “Sex” - clearly Sir Tim Berners-Lee didn't really think his invention through before gifting it to humanity.

516million if you are interested.

None of this has helped me in my invent something and make money from it search.

Generally speaking I have my best ideas as I drift off to sleep or when I am drunk.

The major problem with the first fleeting creative period is it is normally followed by 8 hours of more creativity, during which I save the world, become James Bond and get chased by a strange orange ball, all conspiring to overshadow the real brilliant innovation.
On the odd occasion I have actually woken up to write down my brilliance it somehow changes from a Hawkeye idea into a invent an alternative fuel source idea by the morning and I am back to square one.

The drunken ideas come to me and then normally disappear into a memory black hole As a side note I can attest that there is not much money to be made from being a singer sporting the latest line in Police cones on your head.

Apart from these instances I thankfully haven’t had a Jerry McGuire moment and decided to act upon my epiphany there and then as I tend to find the sober cold light of day is rather good at giving perspective. Unfortunately this same cold light of day hasn't let me act on any of my world changing ideas so far.

I guess as I fast approach 40 I should either decide to split the atom, invent a new fuel, take on Google or, as a fall back solution, knuckle down and try to earn a living in Finance.

A backup career as my father would put it, one to revert to if the worst comes to the worst and my glittering professional footballing career doesn't work out.

Greed is good

I have just finished watching a documentary about the internet.

Very good - I particularly liked the piece which delved into its humble beginnings. Like a lot of inventions it's the story of a world changing event which at the time is little more than a solution to an annoying problem in the office.

I have lots of annoying problems in my office, mostly related to the expectation that I actually do something whilst I am there. I am currently working on some simple solutions to that particular issue, mostly focusing on persuading someone else to do it but given the terms empowerment and delegation have already been invented I need to be more creative if I am to benefit from it financially.

What’s not to like about Sir Tim Berners-Lee though? He excels in good old fashioned British understatement, has a radio 4 voice and basically gave the internet to the world for free.

Yes - for free! For the good of mankind apparently.

Not sure I would have done that, but you have to doff your hat to someone who would.

Bill Gates is the same.
I spent most of the 90s cursing him on a daily basis. He was the fucking specky twat who invented the piece of shit which kept crashing whenever I wanted to save the hours work I had just completed. To rub salt into my seeping MS inflicted wounds he is also pot ugly, richer than anyone on the planet and could do pretty much anything he liked.

Very easy to dislike and then he goes and spoils it all by announcing he was going to give all his money away. Not only does he announce it – he does it.

Saying something and actually doing what you say are two totally different things - suddenly it becomes difficult to keep hurling abuse at him as he single handedly starts to cure Africa.

Who else? ………David Beckham - Twat, stupid voice, emaciated wife but still its very difficult to find fault. Yes he is a celebrity, yes his choice of spouse is extremely ill advised and yes he talks like a girl. However his work ethic, his determination and his down to earth attitude makes it, again, very difficult to actually dislike the man.

I don't want to like everyone - where’s the fun in that?

I, like a lot of people, have an inherent distrust of success but when that success is combined with what appears to be a decent person I start to get confused.

It’s not possible to be nice and successful – is it?

Tim Berners-Lee earned a knighthood for his idealism. Bill Gates is already on the road to canonization. David Beckham will most likely become prime minister. Gordon Gekko the CFO of Oxfam.

Who are we left with?

Answers on a postcard please.

Thick or what?

I have a reading problem.

It only becomes apparent when reading certain things, a good example comes from the BBC website today:

“Dr Glenzer said that experiments using slightly larger hohlraums with fusion-ready fuel pellets - including a mix of the hydrogen isotopes deuterium as well as tritium - should begin before May, slowly ramping up to the 1.2 megajoule mark”

The reason this is troubling, is not because I have any aversion to megajoules or have a allergic reaction every time I am in the company of a hohlraums. No this is troubling because no matter how many times I read this I still cannot fathom what on earth it is telling me.

It could be something extremely important, something dramatic. The mix of deuterium and hydrogen could offer me everlasting life or alternatively kill me instantly. It could also be something, somewhere in between.

The point is I simply don't know.

I read the paragraph and it hurts my eyes as my brain sees a word, it doesn't register in my, albeit limited, data bank, it tries again, moves on, goes back, tries again and then gives up. Every incomprehensible word is blanked out leaving me with another, shorter, unintelligible paragraph.

Dimensions are another problem for me.

The first 3 are ok, I get them:

Move up one to the 4th dimension – time – and I am still ok. It's a struggle but I sort of get it.

Move up one more and my brain starts seeking out the easy words.

“In physics, the fifth dimension is a hypothetical extra dimension beyond the usual three spatial dimensions and one time dimension of Relativity. The Kaluza-Klein theory used the fifth dimension to unify gravity with the electromagnetic force.”

So that's the 5th dimension – something which unifies gravity with the electromagnetic force – simple.

And it goes on, apparently all the way up to 11 and I challenge anyone out there, anyone, with the exception of someone with a name like Kaluza, to explain them to me in a way which I will understand.

Personally I think its crap, made up crap at that. I bet there is no one called Kaluza and even if there is how can they say – “up to 11” surely they either know how many there are or not, up to 11 is a bit too vague. Why don't they just say there is up to 375, it would make no difference, at least to me.

My February resolution is to not try and understand, like I avoid thinking about infinity, space and why are we here. I will leave that to the theoretical physicists and hippies.

Actually thinking about it, being a theoretical physicist must be very easy. Just think of something, say space worm holes. Explain using a piece of paper that you just fold space like this and hey presto they “might” exist. No need to prove it exactly how someone might achieve the simple act of folding space. Theoretically it just might exist or be possible. Instant travel to Australia is possible all we need to do is squash the earth so thin that we can burrow our way there instantly.

All we need to do is solve the small problem of squashing the earth.

I have just changed my February resolution.

I am going to become a theoretical CFO of a FTSE100 company, a theoretical premier league football player or a theoretical super cool guy.

Stephen Hawking - pah, he`s just a day dreaming fraud.

Cold Showers and Bromide

Sex addiction?

What exactly is that? It sounds like a disease, something which one suffers from, something which is out of your own control where sufferers are victims.

Apparently Tiger Woods is being treated for sex addiction, poor soul. I guess we non-sufferers should have some sympathy for a man who’s fall from grace has been nothing short of spectacular. His income generating ability is a fraction of what it was 6 months ago as sponsors won’t touch him with a shitty stick and his wife is battering him with one.

All this because of a disease.

Of course its bollocks, we all know that. Here is a man who could have everything and anything and at some stage he must have thought the cloak of invincibility had been draped over his shoulders and decided that everything actually meant everything.

Do happily married, monogamous people catch sex addiction? Probably not.

But more importantly – I want to know how its treated.

There are one or two websites devoted to the act of sex and having spent many, many, hours researching them all I find myself not much wiser but a certainly more short-sighted. I am also an expert on clearing temporary internet files.

Seriously I have no idea.

I would imagine, they will check in to the clinic somewhere in Beverly Hills, wave goodbye to their, soon to be estranged, wives and have a couple of weeks of bromide and cold showers.

Or, more realistically, check in, wave goodbye and then agree the story to tell the wives with the owners, pay a huge fee for this and spend a week or so doing whatever the hell they like.

Either way – I couldn't give two hoots what Tiger gets up to. I don't shave with Gillette, employ any Accenture consultants or use AT&T to make calls and this isn’t going to change depending on who the Tiger is fucking or not. I do think that dropping him so quickly is perhaps a little knee jerk, he is generating more news now than he has ever done.

I`m not sure but I don't think any man would be buying their razors based on the fidelity of the man on the screen, I would go as far as to suggest that these recent events might have a positive impact on razor blade sales.

Without condoning his public infidelity and apart from the obvious schadenfreude opportunity I am secretly happy the Tiger has fallen.

I don't want my world populated by saints - I like the George Best`s, Ollie Reed`s and Kim Jong Il`s of this world. It makes it more interesting but then again I don't live in North Korea.

Ultimately Tiger has been caught with his pants down and as everyone knows to err is human.

The question is: are his wife, his sponsors or the razor blade buying public divine?

2010

For the Swiss Family Shanks it arrived without much fanfare, a 3month old baby tends to subdue your appetite for a party.

10 years ago though we drank, we sang and waited with baited breath for the toasters to attack and planes to fall out of the sky. With retrospect it might sound melodramatic but back then I would rather have faced an angry Somalian wielding a machete, with a hangover having just heard a rumour that I had buggered his wife than be sat on a plane as the clocks moved over into the new millennium.

We took the millennium bug seriously, very seriously indeed.

The noughties have passed in a blink of an eye.
Granted it was a very long blink but for me the fact that a whole ten years have passed since I stood there staring blurry eyed at the rainy Glasgow sky spotted with fireworks is simply incredible. If I list everything that has passed through my life it sort of adds up, the life changes which have occurred to me, the career achievements and failures, the children, the travel, the friends found and lost - I found my soul mate in the Noughties.

Still it’s gone fast.

I do hate the name the “Noughties” though, sounds like a kids’ TV show, why not the "Two thousands, or the “Twentyhundrends”? What did the people call the years 1900 – 1909? Probably nothing. I believe it is a relatively modern phenomena to give a decade a label, I am guessing this annoying trend stems from the sixties and the baby boomer`s desire to give that special decade a label and a cute habit was formed. We do like to label things now though. A good example of this is the flurry of “new” diseases which have magically appeared in the noughties which simply did not exist before - even in the 1990s. Bipolar disorder, MRSA, Swine Flu, Bird Flu to name just four of these "so called diseases".

I can’t remember anyone calling in sick during the 90s with Swine Flu can you? No of course not. Back then we simply had a cup of tea, or took an E and got on with whatever we were getting on with. I accept if it was the E then it probably wasn't very productive, but we definitely had a smile on our face and there was no complaining.

Does this mean we have become softer in the last ten or so years?

Judging by the way the UK is bravely coping with the current inclement weather, probably. This is the country which gave the world Churchill, Nelson, Elizabeth I, Shakespeare, John Lennon, The Raj, America, William Wallace, football, tennis and cricket. We conquered, we defeated, we led, we stole, we built ships, we invented cities, the telephone, TV and penicillin.

We have become an anaesthetized shadow of our former selves, closer resembling our Gallic neighbours than the generation of our grandparents.

The solution?

Drag ourselves up out of our sickly bedshed beds, stop trying to capture nostalgia, drive to the pub regardless of the weather and do what we do best: have a drink or six and start a fight with someone.