Why Is Everyone So Fucking Stupid? #319 “Axl Starts Writing His Sitcom”

Sat 5th Jan 2019

On my way home from work I listened to another Casefile episode. This episode covered the legendary Escape From Alcatraz case. Although Frank Morris and the Anglin Brothers weren’t the most squeaky clean and loveable people they were only ever in Alcatraz for armed robbery and attempting to escape other prisons which I think is why I don’t harbour the same hatred and scorn that I do towards other well known criminals. Plus you can’t help but tip your hat to the fact that they made it out of the prison after one hell of an escape plan. Of all the famous unsolved mysteries this one is up there with the Jack the Ripper murders as the one I would most love to know the answer to. It seems unlikely that we will ever know what happened to Morris and the Anglin brothers (they would all be in their 90s if they were still alive) and the more you hear about the case the more factors come to light that casts doubt on their survival (how would they have gotten through the city while dressed in wet prison clothes and even if they decided to change clothes where the hell would they get them from?). I hope that one day there is a new lead that gives us a new insight into the escapees fates. I was really good with my diet today, having only a bowl of cereal for breakfast and water to drink all day. I was planning on having a light snack when I got home but once I did I weighed myself and discovered that I was down to 13 stone 6 pounds so I decided not to have any more food for the rest of the day. Luckily I’m not feeling as tempted for unhealthy food as I assumed I would be at this point (although ask me again tomorrow unless you bump into me tomorrow and I end up eating you).

Later I read the first few issues of Hush Returns in which Bruce Wayne’s old friend turned enemy Thomas Elliot AKA Hush returns to Gotham. He quickly runs into Joker who has his goons kick the shit out of him and warn him that Gotham is his territory. I’m enjoying the first few editions of this comic but I know that it slips slowly in quality as it goes on. I also learned some more Japanese which is going well but getting much more complicated as it goes along. The Japanese phonetic translation of “I have four children” is “Kodomo Ga Yo Nin Imasu” and the visuals I need to picture in order to remember are the wrestler Koko B Ware (Ko), Homer Simpson and Moe (Domo), Lady Gaga (Ga), yawning (yo nin) and “in my soup” (imasu). Hopefully I won’t need to picture these insane visuals in order to remember the damn words.

Sun 6th Jan 2019

Tuned into last night’s Lakers vs Knicks game. The Knicks maintained a 10 point gap on the Lakers for the first half. A highlight for me was early in the first half where Lance Stephenson and Brandon Ingram teamed up with a brilliant behind the back pass into a slam dunk. Near the end of the second half the Lakers manged to fight back thanks to KCP and Lonzo Ball and made it a 4 point game. Although Brandon Ingram did fuck all in the first half but he did redeem himself by dunking just before the half time buzzer went off but the star players of the game who were consistent throughout. McGee scored a shit load of points in the opening of the third quarter and the Lakers clawed their way back to make it a 2 point difference at 81-83. Near the end of the third quarter they finally surpassed the Nicks and overtook them 85-84 and then followed up with a spectacular play with Ingram scoring a further three pointer as the Knick’s coach David Fizdale to call for a time out. When the scores stood at 97-96 to the Lakers KCP fucked up a three pointer and a subsequent foul lead to a free throw which tied the game back up and the last seven minutes were a real back and forth. Then the shit hit the fan when KCP got shouldered in the chest but the fuckwit ref called it as a defensive foul which was bullshit and unfortunately it was downhill for the Lakers from there. The shitty ref call must has hit a nerve with the Lakers because the Knicks started scoring goals for the remainder of the game and ended up winning. I wouldn’t have minded the Lakers getting their asses kicked if it was against a decent team but the current version of the Knicks are a bunch of jobbers. They’ve lost the last eight matches they’ve played so you’d think this would be an easy win for them. Typical, the year I start following the Lakers they start playing like shit, losing to jobbers and LeBron James suffers a fucking injury!

Late in the afternoon I made the journey to Newcastle to spend an hour in an isolation tank. I’ve heard about the benefits of isolation tanks for a while and according to Joe Rogan (who has one) they sometime produce really trippy hallucinations in people. I got two buses to the place and arrived 45 minutes early so I went to Morrison’s for a light lunch. Mindful of my diet I settled on some turkey slices with some Moroccan humus which was delicious but the fact that I ate it while huddled outside of the building combined with my general scruffy look got me a few sympathetic looks from pedestrians. Finally I went to the spa and was welcomed and briefed on what the process involved. First you have to shower beforehand to get rid of any stray hairs then it’s tank time. The tank is filled with salty water that makes you float while you lie in the dark, in silence alone with only your thoughts. I was hoping that being deprived of my senses for a while would lead to my brain shutting off and possibly some sort of crazy trip being induced. However I constantly thought about how much longer I had to go before the session ran out and also I kept bumping into the sides of the tank and had to gently push myself off. About half way through I did start to see strange shapes and colours emerging from the darkness and towards the very end of the session my brain did start going a mile a minute with hundreds of nonsensical thoughts and random images popping into my mind in quick succession. Just as it was starting to get quite fucking trippy the lights and music came back on signifying the end of the session…fuck! I emerged from the tank covered in salt (feeling like how a fish must feel after it is fished out of the sea) and showered feeling undeniably more weightless and light headed than I was when I was in the tank so the relaxation benefits are certainly real. I’d like to have another go so that I can try and get the full experience of the hallucinations because this time around I only got a quick taster but altogether it was an interesting experience nonetheless

Mon 7th Jan 2019

This morning Tony was tickled by a TripAdvisor review of the cafe which contained the sentence: “I ordered the egg muffin but I was expecting a bit more than just eggs in a muffin”. This retarded review rightly gave me and Tony a good chuckle and gave me a massive sense of relief because normally I’m the idiot who says stupid things and gets laughed at by Tony so it was nice to know that nothing I could say would top this moron’s review. Continuing on with the idea of stupid reviews I pretended to be a dissatisfied customer and said to Tony “I visited this cafe this morning and was outraged to discover that the coalslaw didn’t even have any coal in it”. This gave Tony a big laugh and then he went back to looking at his phone. However 30 minutes later after not saying a word he announced out of nowhere “I ordered a jacket potato but I was expecting a raincoat” So basically this means he’d been sat there for half an hour trying to think of more silly wordplay and that was the best one he could think of. Of all the jobs I’ve had (four) I have definitely laughed the most while working at my current job thanks in no small part to Tony and his unique worldview. Though to be fair I suppose there were some funny things about my previous two jobs if they weren’t happening to me. Aldi’s policy of all the males being clean shaven for instance, the idea that people with no facial hair are more equipped to stack boxes of Pringles on shelves than those with a beard is sort of amusing but when they’re saying this to me straight faced and giving me written warnings when I come in with the tiniest bit of stubble on my face then I fail to see the funny side. Likewise it would sort of be a funny idea if a fictional boss told their fictional employee that they’d had two many sick days despite the fact they’d only had two in the space of nine months and then put them on a written warning. However when that’s actually happening to you and you realise that you have to come into work no matter how ill you are feeling then there’s not really that much humour to be found in that situation.

On the way home I did a bit more studying for my motorcycle test which I’m now really looking forward since I seem to have gotten a good chunk of the book memorized. When I got home Luna was already in full blown scream mode. She has been mostly sleeping all day and staying awake all night but apparently today she just hadn’t given it a rest for almost a full day. I tried making silly noises at her to calm her down which to my surprise actually worked and even got a little smile out of her (which then disappeared as soon as Mam fetched her phone to get a picture of her smiling and she then refused to do it again). Eventually I did manage to get her off to sleep by singing / humming Yellow Submarine to her again meaning Mam and I had half an hour to relax. We watched an episode of Only Connect which has got to be the most fucking difficult quiz ever devised as you basically have to be either a University graduate or a fucking super geek in order to do well at it. One of the questions was a “What comes next” question where the first three panels were a courtroom, The Great British Bake Off and a boxing match, and the object was to guess what came fourth in the sequence. Mam correctly guessed that this was a question about judges as a courtroom trial has one judge, Bake Off has two and a boxing match three so she guessed that the fourth panel would be Strictly Come Dancing which has four. Neither of us got another question right until the Connecting Wall round where there are a board of 16 panels with things written in them and you have to divide them into groups of four and determine what connects them. I correctly deduced that the panels with “Rango”, “Wood”, “Grape” and “Duke” we’re connected as they are all roles played by Johnny Depp. Man however broke the tiebreak and won when she realised that the panels with “Opportunity”, “Handshake”, “Retriever” and “Mile” were all words that could be preceded by “Golden” and since neither of us got another one right for the whole game means that Mam won out of me and her but she totally didn’t because we were just playing for fun and it wasn’t like a competition or anything alright?

I had planned to watch some more Red Dwarf but I got sidetracked first by watching Hollyoaks then by watching some of Wrestle Kingdom 13. Hollyoaks featured the opening statements from Buster’s trial. This was an extremely emotional episode as you would imagine for such a sensitive subject matter. Ollie tearing up as he gave evidence against his former teacher was kind of hard to watch. However the fact that early in the episode Ollie says to one of his friends who comes to check on him that the case against Buster is overwhelming and that he conviction is “basically in the bag” is basically code for “he’s going to get off and this storyline is going to drag on for another year”. If that’s what they decide to do them that’s fine because there are plenty of creative avenues to take this story down I just wish they didn’t make it so blatantly obvious. Finally I decided not to bother watching the Lakers game after I had the result spoiled by Google when I innocently typed the team’s name into my search bar and it threw up the scores!! What the fuck Google?! If I typed “Crying game” into the search bar would it flash up “THE GIRL HAS A DICK!!”? (Sorry if you haven’t seen it).

So instead on the advice of my friend Halilaj I bought the New Japan World app and watched the first part of Wrestle Kingdom 13. After seeing that the show would be FIVE HOURS LONG (and wondered if 4 1/2 hours of the show would be Kenny Omega’s match) I realised o was going to have to watch the show in chunks. The Kota Ibushi vs Will Ospreay match was really good even if it did feature a really scary bump where Ibushi German suplexed Ospreay off the middle rope and he was supposed to flip backwards and land on his feet but he landed right on the top of his fucking head then stood up as if it hadn’t happened. I love New Japan and the wrestlers but I’d be lying if this new rise in popularity of high risk / strong style didn’t have me a little bit worried for the safety of the performers. Moderation is the key to any good art form and while every New Japan match is always entertaining and any match on the card has enough great spots and sequences in it to justify putting it in the main event, that style certainly takes a toll and I wish that the wrestlers would decide to do all of the more risky stuff when it really mattered. Now granted this was the biggest show of the year and had the most people watching so if ever there was an event that really mattered it was this one. So it makes sense that they would break out the big guns for this particular show, but there’s still a little bit of me that watched these matches with a sense of dread because there’s a heightened sense that something may go wrong

Tue 8th Jan 2019

Plowing through the amazing Wrestle Kingdom event and today I found time to watch Zack Sabre Jr vs Tomihiro Ishii at work. Holy shit Ishii got jobbed the fuck out! Generally Ishii is regarded is one of New Japans most sacred cows who is alway sort of protected and is always booked to be a tank who always goes the distance but I think he got maybe five offensive moves in the whole match. My friend Halilaj explained to me that ZSJ has been pushed to the moon since signing with New Japan full time including getting clean wins over Tanahashi and Okada. I’m not quite sure how I feel about ZSJ just yet, he’s easily the best technical wrestler out there and the creative ways he finds to transition from one submission hold into another and yet make it look so natural is so fucking cool. However I don’t think he’s a very good seller and also he has the physique of every Apple genius ever. One thing that can’t be denied is that he has the best named finisher in wrestling, his modified crab is named “Orienteering With Napalm Death” which is a nod to a Stewart Lee routine. This is an excellent instance of using a reference to British comedy in a wrestling move but it’s not THE best. THE best was when me and Halilaj would play wrestling in school and we named our version of the Tazzmission: “Dreamy Sleepy Nighty Snoozy Snooze” which is a brilliant nod to an episode of Father Ted.

Work was FUCKING DEAD today. It finally seems like everyone has finally gotten too exhausted to come out for food either due to a mixture of being wiped out from Christmas or because their little shithead kids have to go back to school now. It was a welcome little change of pace to not he rushing around the kitchen with trails of sweat left by my dripping balls being left on the floor. Before I left I did put in a block of days off for the start of August which is when the Edinburgh Fringe kicks off and this is going to be the year that I go. I got to finish early so that I could head off for my follow up appointment with the muscular skeletal place. I did the first round of exercises that the first therapist gave me up until the date that I was originally supposed to see her again and they had little to no effect on my neck at all so now I was hoping that they’d decide to do something different with me after realising physiotherapy wasn’t working. I got called in and was disappointed to discover that the therapist seeing me today wasn’t the sexy Irish girl I had seen two months ago. I was hoping that if I pretended that everything this new girl did to me hurt then told her it didn’t hurt at all when the Irish lass did it then she would decide to assign her to me for all my future checkups. After some more poking and prodding my neck she gave me some new exercises to do to try and fix my neck and internally I groaned because I know this is not going to work. I’m sure that I have a damaged disc in my spine and no amount of physiotherapy in the fucking thing is going to do anything. I don’t want to have surgery on the thing because fuck that but the fact is this stupid fucking neck of mine is preventing me from going to BJJ classes which is where I want to be. If it weren’t for my neck then I would be half way to getting my blue belt at this stage. I’ll give these exercises a point but I guarantee they emerged wont work or they’ll slightly work at the start and then I’ll feel exactly as shitty as I did before.

Before going home I bought some sushi from Tesco’s because I have two days off starting tomorrow and these bad boys will make great low calorie meals for those days and should go a long way towards my weight loss. My sister told me she wants to start coming for runs with me to prepare for when she goes for her police officer job in a few weeks. This sounds fun but I’m not exactly sure what advice I can possibly give her with regards to running because every time I think I have a system worked out of how best to run, I try this system out one day and it doesn’t work despite the fact that it worked the day before. Also I rarely finish my runs without either having to stop 47 times to catch my breath or work out a cramp and that’s on the nights where I don’t just give up completely after a few minutes. I don’t think my “Run for one minute, catch breath for 12 minutes, run for one minute” strategy will be terribly beneficial to my sister for the kind of job she’s going for.

I read some more of Hush Returns tonight and the middle part of the story involves Poison Ivy hunting down a group of artificially created “Park Orphans”. It’s actually really good but it does sort of reduce Hush to a side character for a good chunk of the story arc which is a shame because he is an awesome character and more than capable of sustaining and entire story arc by himself

Wed 9th Jan 2019

I finally got round to clearing (parts of) my room. I emptied the bins, hoovered the floor and took the dirty dishes downstairs and washed them. Normally with mess I won’t clean it until it starts to stink and when I stay “stink” I mean really stink because if it just stinks a little bit I’ll just spray some deodorant on it and give it another month. The new hoover Mam bought is really God damn powerful, it grips the carpet so much that pushing it feels like trying to use a hockey stick to push a barrel full of beer across the room. It had such a grip on the carpet I was expecting a referee to come in and threaten to disqualify the hoover if it didn’t break the hold after a five count. The strange thing about this hoover is that it comes with headlights so that you cane hoover in the dark. Who exactly is this hoover aimed for would you say? Presumably people who can’t take the light but had mess and germs. So this hoover’s target demographic is albinos with OCD?

After I got the cleaning out of the way I watched the final few three episodes of the most recent series of Red Dwarf which were all very enjoyable and I have now seen every single episode of this amazing show. It took me much longer than expected to get through this entire series (I’m also half way through South Park which I started watching over a year ago), not because it’s a tedious experience but because binge watching any show starts to get grating because you know there are other things you could be doing rather than just one. I have really enjoyed going through each episode and although the last two series of the original run were absolute dog smeg the rest of the series is comedy gold and I’m delighted that the cast have confirmed that the show will be back for more adventures.

After finishing Red Dwarf I decided to go for a long run (half marathon) and was enjoying it very much until I got to the town and it started to piss down. Luckily I had my bus pass on me so I got on and came home to avoid getting wet (completely overlooking the fact that if I had continued with my run then I would have ended up soaking wet even if it hadn’t been raining and I would have been about four pounds lighter). When I got home I looked up hotel prices for Edinburgh and while it looks like hotels will be ridiculously overpriced there are a lot of home owners in the city who are renting out spare rooms in their homes for those visiting. I imagine the only performers who don’t go completely skint during Edinburgh are the ones who actually live in the city, yeah they’d still have to pay for the venue but at least they wouldn’t have to pay extortionate prices for accommodation. If i were performing at the Fringe I would get myself a caravan to live in for the whole month and then I would also do my show from inside the caravan too. The show I would do would be to review 30 episodes of Byker Grove every single day in front of however many people I could fit inside the caravan. All joking aside I would genuinely like to do a podcast where I would interview ex Byker Grove cast members about their time on the show.

Finally today I watched the first episode of the amazing 1970’s children’s TV show Children of the Stones. I first watched this show in 2011 when I was on holiday from the call centre. I got drunk on a bottle of wine from the corner shop, made myself a Philly Cheese Stake and binge watched this show one sunny afternoon…best day of my life! The show concerns a scientist named Adam and his son Matt who arrive in the village of Milbury which is surrounded by an ancient stone circle in order to investigate them. We then get to meet the village’s leader Hendrick who seems to know an awful lot about the Stones and their mystical qualities too. The first thing you notice about the show is just how adult it feels with the sinister movie and the really complex and intelligent plot. So many kids shows are so damn bland that you could literally do something else while you have the show on in the background and still know what’s going on. However this is the first time I have seen a children’s show with a plot so well written that you literally have to watch every second of one episode because if you don’t you may miss something you’ll need to know for episode two to make sense. Although this series is touted as being “the scariest kids show ever made” I have to admit I’ve yet to see anything scary in it (and by my recollection nothing particularly scary happens until the final episode) but I was still gripped by the show and extremely impressed by how well thought out this was for a show aimed at kids.

Thu 10th Jan 2019

Today I finally sat down to begin work on my sitcom. I have loved comedy since an early age and have always wanted to give it a go but a combination of extreme laziness and lack of belief in myself has led me to put it off for years. However New Years is the time of year when I tend to try harder than usual to commit to things so this morning I at last got to work. I started off by doing a podcast to try and generate some ideas. Firstly I talked about my previous day, then went through the newspaper riffing on the stories and finally had a quick flick through random pages on Wikipedia to try and get ideas. To my surprise I did manage to come up with ten or so decide ideas that may fit into a sitcom format really well. The goal is to get 100 ideas on cards before I start writing my first draft and at the moment I have 60 so I’ve still got quite a way to go but if the rest of the ideas process is as enjoyable as today then it shouldn’t be so bad. From now on every day that I have a day off from work I’m going to dedicate to writing and trying to come up with ideas and after work will be for my other hobbies. Later in the day I wrote to Graham Linehan to thank him and tell him that I listened to his masterclass on how to write a sitcom and found it tremendously helpful. I also asked him if he thought that this same creative process he uses to write a sitcom could be used to write stand up and he replied:

“Maybe. It’s all about finding a process that works for you and makes you *want* to do it”

It’s really cool that he responded even though it was just a quick one this guy has made me laugh continuously since I was a schoolboy watching Father Ted and then at college watching The IT Crowd right up to the present so to have had any sort of interaction with the guy is fucking awesome.

Later in the evening I tuned into Hollyoaks to see the conclusion of Buster’s trial. It’s so fucking pathetic how nervous I was watching this, I had to stop myself from crossing my fingers in hope that this fictional paedophile got found guilty. I was assuming that he would end up getting off Scot free so that the programme could string this storyline out for another six months or so but to my relief they found him guilty and the story is now over. As I’ve said before soaps aren’t the most high brow TV but if you watch them for long enough and get to know the characters then they’ll start to feel like friends and family since you’re probably around them more than your actual friends or family and that means that when bad things happen to them it really starts to effect you like this episode did.

I later took part in a Twitter hashtag game and produced the single greatest pun in the history of humankind. The game was #condimentmovies and after rejecting a few obvious ideas I settled on one that really made me laugh: Harry Potter and the Reggae Reggae Saucerer’s Stone. I don’t want to sound arrogant but personally I think Twitter should retire all hashtag games because no-one will ever come up with anything better than that no matter what the game is!

Despite only intending to watch one episode of Children of the Stones per night I ended up binge watching all of remaining six because the show is so fucking good. With each passing episode a new clue is uncovered and the main characters find themselves edging closer and closer to the solution. The end resolution is a little hard to explain so try and keep up (I realise that it will be difficult for you to pay attention since you’re still in hysterics over the Reggae sauce joke above but just try your best). It turns out that the stone circle in the village of Avebury is connected to a black hole in space and the village leader Hendrick uses the circle to shoot all of the negative energy from his fellow villagers (whom he invites to his house one by one) into the black hole as a sacrifice to his God. The villagers all seem unusually upbeat after this process (and for some reason can do algebra really well) and are thus dubbed “happy ones”. The concluding episode involve Adam and Matt going to Hendricks house and they end up throwing his calculations out of sync after setting his clock back by five minutes. This results in a powerful beam of light shining from Hendrick’s house and all the villagers who look at it get turned to stone. Matt and Adam attempt to flee with their friends Margaret and Sandra but they too look at the beam and are also turned into stone in what is a fairly upsetting scene. Adam and Matt take cover in a sanctuary for the night and when they wake up everyone is alive again with no knowledge of Hendrick’s plot (although they do somehow remember who Adam and Matt are). Adam and Matt decide to leave the village once and for all but theorise that the events they have just witnessed are going to repeat themselves again. Sure enough as soon as they leave a man by the name of Joshua, who looks and sounds identical to Hendrick arrives and comments that Milbury will be a lovely place to retire, this is where the series ends. I still don’t think I’ve fully got my head around what happens in the show. I think the gist of it is that there will always be variations of the 53 people (each representing a stone) who will be present in the village forever and there will always be two visitors to the village who arrive there and from that point onwards no-one can leave until the connection between the stone circle and the black hole has been broken like Adam and Matt managed to do. Who the fuck knows and really who the fuck cares? (Well I do, I want to know what the fuck is going on but I probably never will so I may as well get used to it). The important thing is that this is a fucking amazing show. Only seven episodes were ever made but it’s a fantastic story, unsolvable mystery complete with beautiful scenery and wonderful characters. This is one of the best written TV shows aimed at kids I’ve ever seen and was so unlike anything else that was on TV at the time and so much more sophisticated

Fri 11th Jan 2019

After work I went to the bank to put some money into my account which was close to drying up as I’d massively lost count of how much I had spent on Christmas presents. Id like to say that it won’t happen again this Christmas but to be honest with all the gigs and experiences I’m already saving up for coupled with Wrestlemania I don’t think that the pennies I’m saving by not buying energy drinks and not getting taxis to work are going to stop me from going completely skint come Christmas time. 

I remembered that the new “Stan and Ollie” movie was in theatres as of today so I went to the cinema and bought a ticket. The movie was due to start in five minutes time so I decided to pop over to Tesco’s to get some lunch and that way I would hopefully miss all of the trailers (though knowing my luck I’m betting that there was a trailer for a new movies called “Katy Perry’s Naked Maple Syrup Wrestling Movie” and dipshit over here went and missed the fucking thing). I enjoyed Stan and Ollie very much. I didn’t know the story of their final UK tour and it made for a really interesting story. I had no idea that there was ever a dip in the duo’s popularity but as the movie shows by 1953 their popularity was starting to dwindle and so a live tour seemed to be one of their only options since it wasn’t as easy for them to get movies made anymore. In terms of casting I don’t think you could get better than John C Reilly and Steve Coogan. Coogan already has a bit of a resemblance to Stan Laurel and has the voice nailed for this film. The makeup work on John C Reilly is incredibly and likewise he has pinned down Oliver Hardy’s voice and mannerisms to the letter. The one thing I can’t get my head around is how the fuck only Reilly has been nominated for best actor at the Oscars and not Coogan. Coogan is just as good in the film if not better and while I’m glad he’s nominated for Best Oscar at the BAFTA’s he should have gotten an Oscar nod too. 

After the movie I went and cashed off my change at Sainsbury’s and got 50 quid out of it which I’ll put towards a Judas Priest / Ozzy Osborne ticket next month. When I got back I found out that unfortunately Grandad suffered a stroke during the night and is spending the next few days at the hospital for observation. Grandad suffered what’s called a “mini stroke” a while back but according to Mam this was a full blown stroke. Over the last few months Grandad has been noticeably more confused and immobile that usual no doubt due to his Parkinson’s and dementia so this latest ailment is the last thing he needed. Hopefully he’ll be home soon and will make a full recovery. 

Before the game I watched the latest Hollyoaks which dealt with the fallout from Buster’s trial. Despite Buster being behind bars Brody is still having nightmares about the man who abused him and now he is reminded of him whenever he sees Damon. As is often the case with new characters I didn’t like these two when they first turned up but this latest storyline has made them two of my favourites (although naturally I am super jealous of the fucker who plays Damon because he has gotten to neck on with Sophie Porley and Nikki Sanderson the bastard). 

Later on I watched the Lakers game and was delighted to see that they absolutely thrashed the Detroit Pistons. The Lakers have been on a bit of a losing streak lately but tonight they pulled it together mostly due to Kyle Kuzma scoring lots of important field goals but also KCP and Lonzo Ball doing a lot of the heavy lifting too. The Lakers are presently 8th in their league and it’s only the top 8 in each league that progress to the playoffs so I’m hoping that they can kick things up a notch and make it through.

Anywho that was the last week of my life. If you enjoyed this blog you can read it every single week. If you create a WordPress account and follow Why Is Everyone So Fucking Stupid? then a notification will be sent to your e-mail every Saturday to remind you that the latest blog has been published. Oh, and please tell your friends about this blog too

Next week i’ll be telling you about the time I took a hundred nuns to Newcastle. Until then…

Follow your hearts and keep smiling motherfuckers

Axl

🙂

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Why Is Everyone So Fucking Stupid? #318 “2019: Let’s Rock!”

Sat 29th Dec 2018 

Tonight I booked my first crazy adventure of 2018. I’ve been hearing on the Joe Rogan podcast for a while now about the benefits of a sensory deprivation isolation tank and tonight I found out there is a place in Newcastle that offers this experience so I booked myself a place on the 6th of January. However right after booking my place I researched exactly what an isolation tank is and it’s safe to say it was very different in my head. I naturally assumed due to the word “tank” that I would be driving a big military tank around and blowing shit up as a way to relax…turns out it’s just a big bath tub filled with salt water. To elaborate, a floatation tank is basically a sound-proof, light proof pod filled with water that you lie in for a while in order to deprive you of your senses so you can focus entirely on thoughts and relaxation. The effects are said to be similar to those of intense meditation but apparently some people have reported experiencing hallucinations so it will be interesting to see if this adventure calms me and fills me with inner peace or fucks me up beyond repair. My big worry is that it works for me but then that means having to constantly go back which would cost a tonne of money as would buying my own since they retail at £10,000. This means that if I get a taster for the tanks then I will have to build my own or steal Joe Rogan’s one.

This afternoon I resumed binge watching Red Dwarf. I’m up to Season X which was the first full series since 1999 and I have to say I’m astonished by how good it is. The writing is so sharp and the plots are some of the best sci fi writing ever. The best of this first revived series is definitely the final episode “The Beginning” in which a group of human despising stimulants intend to destroy Red Dwarf and Rimmer is tasked with coming up with a battle plan. However his late father’s constant disapproval of him and the pressure he put on Rimmer to become an officer keeps playing on his mind making him unable to think straight. After some surprisingly accurate insight from the Cat, Rimmer finally realises that he can’t go in trying to please his father and try to live up to his expectations and comes up with a whopper of a plan. It’s great to see Rimmer finally taking a stand and showing some pride in himself as up until now we have only ever seen Rimmer as cowardly and incompetent. It’s really remarkable how fucking good this revived series is, especially when you consider just how shorty the last BBC series was (to be honest I think it may one of the best series of the show ever).This has got to be one of the few times a TV show that has been brought back from the dead and has become better than the original. Maybe not having the constant pressure to come up with new ideas has given Doug Naylor more time to think and to edit his ideas which is evidentially a positive thing.

Next up I settled down to watch the LA Lakers play the Clippers. This was the first game I’ve seen of theirs that didn’t involve LeBron James who is out with a groin injury. Unfortunately they lost in a closely fought contest which was really disappointing. The Lakers are now 6th in their league and they need to stay in the top 8 by the end of the season or else they won’t progress to the playoffs and the team now having to play without their captain doesn’t exactly help things (although to be honest James has been a bit off lately anyway).

After discovering that Impact Wrestling this week would be a best of 2018 special I decided to check out MLW’s Xmas show instead. The first contest was a No Disqualification match between Brody King and PCO. Brody King has a fucking awesome look as he is literally covered in tattoos. PCO is Pierre Carl Oulette who has been wrestling for over 30 years and has recently had a career resurgence. This was a decent brawl and at one point Oulette Swanton Bombed off the entrance way onto King through a table. Later King back body dropped PCO onto a guardrail that was propped up in the corner. There was a soil spot where PCO went to the top rope for a moonsault but King held the referee so PCO landed on him instead. The match ended when PCO recovered and chokeslammed King through four tables. This was a good opener and I think Hardcore matches only work when they’re used to fuel a lengthy rivalry, you can’t have the match style as a gimmick every week which I think so many people aren’t fussed about having the hardcore title back.

Next was a A middleweight bout between Ace Austin who does a magician gimmick and fellow high flyer Myron Reed. This was an impressive high flying wrestling match that featured a twisting moonsault to the outside from Austin (reminded me of the pole vault at the Olympics) and an extreme senton over the ring pole by Reed. Reed ended up getting the ring after countering a roll up. Reed is an impressive athlete but the guy is clearly a big Will Ospreay fan as he has stolen his springboard cutter and his suplex counter stunner. This was a decent match between two impressive athletes and though Reed got the win I was more impressed with Austin.

Finally we got MJF vs Puma King in a Flag Match. Puma King has a pretty awesome look but I was confused by the fact that he has puma heads as his shoulder pads. Is he called the Puma King because he’s the best puma poacher in the world? Are those Puma heads actually trophy kills? It would be like a having a Japanese wrestler called Whale Warrior and coming out draped in a trench coat made of blubber. The finish of this match came when Puma raised MJF up in a ballet type position (like in Dirty Dancing “I Had The Time of My Life”) on the middle rope then transitioned into a sitout powerbomb, then grabbed his flag and wins the match.

Really enjoyed this show, every performer knocked it out of the park and you can see why the promotion is quickly becoming one of the fastest growing in the world.

Sun 30th Dec 2018

This morning as I approached the bus stop to wait for my bus to work I noticed this had been stuck underneath my bus timetable:

If I had a blank sticker and a pen I would have wrote underneath:

“If Jesus had to wait for the Number 20 on a Sunday I think he’d sharp learn a thing or two about patience”

This morning the bus was only two minutes late which may be the closest to being early this bus has ever been. Being that I was working the early shift it was still pitch black outside despite it being half 7 in the morning. This meant however that the atmosphere was perfect to listen to the new podcast I downloaded last night, Casefile True Crime podcast. The podcast is one anonymous Australian man reading out the details of a famous crime (mainly murders) from when it was committed to when it was solved. It doesn’t sound like much but the monotone voice of the announcer makes for a very creepy listen as does the fact that these grizzly events actually did happen, as the show’s tagline says “Real life is scarier than fiction”. The first episode I chose to download was the case of the Yorkshire Ripper (I wanted my first episode to be of a British serial killer, I am patriotic after all). It’s really hard to fathom just how fucking terrified the nation must have been during the span of the Ripper crimes, especially the women. The closest we’ve come to experiencing similar horrors since the Ripper spree was the Suffolk Strangler 10 years ago but he commuted his crimes over a six week period and was caught immediately after the last one, the Ripper’s spree lasted five years. That’s half a decade of being afraid to leave the house and wondering if you might be the next victim of Britain’s most notorious killer. I’m really loving this podcast and I really hope to God that I never end up being featured on it.

Today was mental at work again, every time it looked like it was about to die down another group of people came in and ordered more shit. Luckily Tony was in to make me laugh with his filthy mouth as usual. Late into service one of the staff from the other cafe called up to ask if we had any spare batteries. Toby told them that one of the waitresses would go home to get some batteries out of the vibrator she keeps under the bed with “Tony” written on it in felt tip pen. Other than Dexter, Kingy and my old friends Billy and Bannan, I think Tony may have made me laugh more than any non comedian in my entire life.

As soon as I got home I jumped straight into bed, listened to a little more of the Casefile True Crime podcast but quickly fell asleep and stayed asleep until the next morning. Normally I I hate it when I do this because it’s time I could be spent occupied with hobbies but tonight a marathon sleep was most definitely welcome after the week I’ve had. One more day of being rushed off my feet in the kitchen then I’m off for the first two days of 2019.

Mon 31st Dec 2018

Up early for the last time this year to work my final shift of 2018. It was another day getting absolutely rammed as the customers presumably realised that due to a lack of cash next year they probably wouldn’t be able to come in and annoy us as much as they would like to so they were squeezing every last bit of annoyance out of us they could before the new year arrived. Every fucking time me and Tony thought that we had seen the last of them and we made a move to start cleaning another wave of the cunts would show up, like Michael fucking Myers returning to life no matter how big of a whack you give him. Tony and I gave it our all and got through it so hopefully it will be nice and steady from now until when / if the sunny weather comes back out (one major positive about the run up to this Christmas is that the weather hasn’t been that bad and were already at the end of December. Hopefully this means we have a maximum of 2 months of shitty weather to suffer through).

To my surprise I got home without facing any sort of issues with the bus service which was a total shock to me. I was expecting the bus to be called off mid journey due to the new year schedule and having to hitchhike home in the back of a wagon full of dead wombats. Luckily the buses were fairly punctual and so I got home in quick fashion. I discovered that Lacey (my niece) would be spending the night at our home. We played a few games and had a pillow fight before I showed her how to do a gogoplata submission hold and she demonstrated it on me for Mam and I pretended I was knocked out cold (though I won’t deny she has some leg strength in her for a 7 year old). This was the first time Lacey had ever been up to see the New Years celebration on TV since she’s normally in bed long before midnight. She really adored the fireworks and although Big Ben has been decommissioned for four years in order to carry out maintenance work, they allowed the bell to be rung for one night only so that the British could celebrate in style.

So what did I do with my 2018? Well…

I spent a good chunk of my time reading out table numbers at work…and then reading them out again because the noise of the kitchen stopped the staff from hearing it the first time. I spent a good chunk of my time undoing the auto-corrections my phone does when it changes the word “fuck” to “duck” (How many times before it realises that I want to say fuck?!). Unfortunately I only spent a very small amount of time trying to achieve the goals I’d set for myself before I eventually gave up. The biggest blow however cane not due to unwillingness or laziness but due to these god damn neck problems of mine which have prevented me from attending Jiu Jitsu class which is what I want more than anything at this moment, hopefully some improvements will be made in 2019. Luckily there were some incredible highlights this year to make up for the shit. For one I spent a reasonable amount of time at gigs, including:

Barenaked Ladies
Don McLean
Killing Joke
Iron Maiden
The Meteors
Paul McCartney
Pixies
The Rolling Stones
Riot V
U2

And though I had hoped to cut down on the amount of gigs I go to in 2019, a lot of the bands I like selfishly insist on continuing to announce shows and I simply can not resist the urge to buy tickets. I also achieved a lifelong dream of visiting beautiful New York City and the four days I spent there were among the happiest days of my entire life. Finally my beautiful little baby niece Luna June entered the world and making her safe and happy will be my main priority going into the new year. As for resolutions there are several experiences and trips I want to achieve by the time the year is done (mainly I want to go to the Edinburgh Fringe this summer), but there are many other things I’m going to be working on throughout the year. I’m going to get to work writing a sitcom, learn a foreign language, read all my comics and get down to 12 stone. Sounds like a tall order but now that I’ve written these goals in a blog that up to 12 people might see, I’m basically committed to it.

So while I ended up failing at most of the things I set out to do I think I just about compensated for them with the other stuff I did so it probably balances out. Also I’ve realised that my negativity in life may be getting in the way of me accomplishing my goals. So starting in 2019 I’m going to take all my negativity and focus it exclusively on Kevin Craggs (my old colleague at the call centre whom used to clean out my piss flask). Well that was 2018 ya’ll! Thanks for sticking with me for another full calendar year of complaining and rambling that is this blog. Hasn’t been all shot though: I made some new friends, went to New York, saw some amazing live music and made it another year without mentioning the time I pissed myself dressed as the Easter Bunny….oh fuck! Well anyway, all the best for 2019 everybody 🙂

Tue 1st Jan 2019

I made so many ill fated attempts to get into shape last year I lost count. However when you do what I do it’s hard to stick to a diet. Imagine seeing plate after plate of food being sent out of the kitchen you work in every day and not being able to eat any of it. You would binge eat when you got home too. I’m surprised it doesn’t happen in other jobs too, people who work in banks must be so damn tempted to steal that damn money because they handle so much of it every day but never get to spend any of it. Last year it wasn’t so much the weight that I put on that bothered me but more the fact that I binged so unnecessarily on so much food. Sometimes I would eat when I wasn’t particularly hungry but because I knew I was trying to cut down on the sloppy food just made me want it more. So new year new start and I immediately rang up DW Fitness to try and get a personal trainer to help get me into shape but his asking price was too much. I said that in the place of money I would review any episode of Byker Grove or any WWE pay per view he wanted me to for free. He responded that he didn’t watch wrestling or Byker Grove as he was too busy exercising and fucking women. So it looks like I’m going to have to get my fat arse in shape on my own. I’ve decided that my new diet will allow me only breakfast and dinner, strictly no snacks at all. I will also be sticking to only water which should help me shift more weight during exercise. So that I don’t go insane I will be allowed to treat myself to my favourite foods but only once a month. That means one pizza per month, one McDonalds per month and one helping of pasta salad per month. This should also help me save up a bit of money too. As I write this my stomach is literally making growling noises as it knows it hasn’t eaten in over an hour but it’s going to have to make due with two meals a day from now on as I’m determined to get down to 12 stone before the year is over.

This morning Lacey and I took Lucy for a walk in the cemetery and I’m still pleasantly surprised by the fact that she can still run like a wildcat despite her age (we’re not sure how old she is but we estimate she’s at least 10), hopefully this means that she will still be with her for many years to come. After Lucy got her exercise Lacey and I went to Nana Jenny’s so that I could drop off her Christmas gifts that I couldn’t drop off for her until now due to work. It’s been quite a while since I’ve seen Jenny but it was nice to see that she’s still as nutty as ever. Lacey told Jenny to sing the song that she came up with for her dog Daisy and Jenny sang Daisy Bell which I recognised as the sing Hal the computer sings in 2001: A Space Odyssey but Jenny insisted it was her own self written song (she’s lucky that song is in the public domain or she’d get her ass sued). Copyright infringement aside I was impressed that Jenny remembered this quite obscure song all the way though and what’s even more impressive is the fact that she doesn’t have people’s numbers stored in her phone, she remembers them off by heart which is unnecessarily complicated but still fucking impressive nonetheless. Good to see that Jenny is still training her brain and keeping herself active.

Once we got home I watched the Red Dwarf episode Twentica from Series 11. I watched it on UKTV Play which has a feature where if there is an advert playing before one of their shows starts and you go to a different page the advert will pause until you come back and watch the thing until the end. I really hope to fuck that YouTube doesn’t get ahold of this technology whatever it is because if i didn’t have the option to skip adverts on YouTube I think the waiting would drive me insane. The episode sees the Red Dwarf crew shot into an alternate 1920s where science and technology was outlawed instead of beer. There’s a great joke towards the end where androids patrolling the streets break into a hideout where outlaw scientists are conducting experiments but they quickly cover the hideout up to make it look like a bar. A nice little Prohibition gag which fits in well with the plot. After the episode I went for 30 minute run which isn’t part of my new diet plan but I just felt like the initial stages of my new goal to get into shape could do with an extra boost to get it kickstarted so I thought what the hell? I managed to finish it without stopping though I will admit I was sorely tempted but I figured that giving up on something on the first day of the year was the last thing I should be doing as quitting at something this early might get that mentality back in my head for the rest of the year, so I pressed on and managed to finish in one go.

A major goal for myself this year is to pass my motorbike test which was also a goal last year until I gave up like the useless sack of falcon shit that I am. To make sure I knuckle down and study this time I booked my theory test for the 28th of March and now that I know I have a deadline hopefully this will force me to plant my arse down and do some revision which I did today. Another major ambition is to finally write a sitcom, six episodes at least. Graham Linehan, perhaps one of the greatest sitcom writers of all time says that his method of writing is to get cards with funny ideas on them then mix and match until you start to see patters. So this afternoon I went back over all the blogs I’ve written and all the podcasts I’ve recorded to try to find all the funny ideas I could use and after two hours of searching I had…32 cards…which is unbelievably pathetic and depressing when you consider that I’ve been writing this blog for six fucking years and by my own reckoning have only come up with 32 funny things in that time. Linehan says that he needs at least 100 cards before he can start trying to mix and match them so it looks like I have my work cut out for me as I need 68 more ideas before I can start properly.

This evening me, Mam, Grandad and Lacey went to the Brewers Fayre for dinner and to get Grandad out of the house as he’s been cooped up in there for over a week now after his companionship had to be cancelled. I ordered the “Black and Blue burger” with onion rings and when the lass behind the counter asked if I wanted regular fries or curly fries I told her I didn’t want any and she replied “You sort of can’t have the burger without the fries”. Despite the fact that every molecule in my body wanted to scream at her and say “What do you mean I sort of can’t have the burger without the fries? Just sort of cook the burger and sort of don’t cook the fries it’s sort of self explanatory!” But I didn’t want to get into a battle of wits with some dipshit on the first day of the year so I just got the damn fries. The food was really nice and I took Lacey on the soft play for a little while before we headed home.

I did a practice podcast where I wondered if an MMA fighter has ever deliberately pissed and / or shat themselves before the opening bell then tried their best to get their opponent in a gogoplata (this idea will not be going on a card for the sitcom in case you’re wondering). After the podcast I re-read the first book in the Batman Hush series which I enjoyed very much, then finished listening to the concluding part of the Casefile True Crime podcast about the Yorkshire Ripper which went over how he was finally brought to justice. To finish off the day I did the washing up while listening to an interview with Graham Linehan who was discussing his recent controversy with members of the transgender movement. I have to say I am on Linehan’s side in this matter, as he says it’s only a matter of time before bearded men start strolling into female changing rooms and when challenged they will start crying “bigot”. More people need to stand up and start challenging this pseudo scientific movement as if they don’t this world is going to get even more fucking crazy. I know it seems like it can’t get much more crazy than having a reality TV star in the White House but we’re getting to the stage where men are suing people and dragging people through the mud for not referring to them as women. It’s getting to the point where we basically have to pretend as though biology isn’t a thing incase it upsets people who are mentally ill. Linehan is much more eloquent and intelligent than me so if you want a better illustration of this ridiculous movement then check out the full interview with him here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xTXDLT3p1pM

Wed 2nd Jan 2019

Up surprisingly early again today and my legs were killing me after the run I “treated” myself to yesterday. I thought that my legs would still be in running shape since it hasn’t been that long since I last went for a run but were they fuck. Realising that I’d have to spend the day walking around like little Forrest Gump with those stupid braces on, I tried to take my mind off the mild discomfort by watching two episodes of Red Dwarf. The first featured the crew stumbling upon a ship fitted with a faulty karma drive which rewards evil deeds and punishes good behaviour. This episode was very funny, looked amazing and had a great plot but there is a scene with Cat mis-explaining several scientific breakthroughs to Lister, it’s funny but it doesn’t half drag on for a while. The other episode “Give And Take” featured Lister getting his kidneys removed by a psychotic surgical droid and being in desperate need of some new ones. His only hope is the Cat who predictably refuses but Lister and Kryten concoct a hilarious plan to get him to change his mind. This episode was even funnier mainly due to the interactions between Lister and Cat and the fact that they’ve maintained Cat’s level of selfishness throughout the years and stayed true to his central character.

I also read the second volume of Batman Hush which is much better than the first. Batman realises that his murdered friend Thomas Elliot is in fact still alive and has bore a grudge against Bruce ever since his parents saved the life of Elliot’s parents as Elliot was hoping his parents would die so he could inherit their fortune. This comic is if nothing else a fantastic detective story and its awesome to see Batman piece together the jigsaw and the interactions he has with possible suspects who are later eliminated. This comic involves Riddler, Joker, a reformed Harvey Dent, Huntress, Oracle, Ra’s Al Guhl and his daughter Talia plus many more. The one niggle I have with the story is one of The Riddler’s riddles. In a note to Batman, Riddler writes:

“What has four wheels, costs eleven million dollars and flies”

The answer is later revealed to be a solid gold garbage truck but structurally it doesn’t make sense. Saying it “costs eleven million dollars and flies” implies that the garbage truck can be yours if you give the owner eleven million dollars and some flies. The riddle should be “What costs eleven million dollars has four wheels and flies?” because this version indicates that the flies come with the garbage truck (because it is filled with garbage…which flies love). I know that I’ve spent way too much time overthinking this and I’m sure I’ve probably overlooked some crucial piece of wordplay that makes the current version make sense but I just can’t let this one go. The initial Hush story isn’t held in particularly high regard among Batman fans but it’s certainly one of the best mysteries I’ve ever read. The Hush Returns story which I’ll no doubt cover soon…eh, not so much!

I tried to come up with some new ideas for the sitcom but I had an extreme case of writers block this evening, nothing was coming to me at all. Graham Linehan the writer of Father Ted and The IT Crowd says that this is to be expected but the only way to get through it is to park your arse at your desk (I have no desk so the bed or futon will have to do) and force yourself to think with no distractions. This is what I really tried to do but still nothing was digging it’s way out of the caverns of my tiny unfunny mind. In order to try and generate ideas I’m going to resume doing my early morning podcast where I riff on the stories in the newspaper and the notes I write for my blog. Hopefully this will get my brain in gear for coming up with ideas. Hopefully tomorrow will be a much more prosperous day.

Finally today I treated myself to my one and only pizza this month as well as my one and only non-water drink for this month, an alcohol free Koperberg. Whenever I try to cut out the foods I love during a diet it just makes me want them more. This is why I’ve decided to impose a restriction of having only one per month so that I have something to look forward to and fight towards. As long as I stick to one pizza, one McDonalds and one pasta salad per month and the rest of the time just eat healthily and only drink water then  that should get me well on my way to not being a hideous ball of fat.

Thu 3rd Jan 2019

I came up with a few more ideas for the sitcom at work today. It’s weird that when I sit down to try and think of ideas I usually come up empty but during the course of an ordinary day when I’m not trying to come up with anything a bunch of them will come to me out of nowhere. At work today one of the waitresses of Tony would go out with her if he wasn’t married. I can’t remember what Tony said but somehow the response “Well his New Years resolution is to be less picky with women” popped into my head. Obviously I didn’t say it because that would make me a total dick but I was astounded that this insult which would be perfect for a shithead sitcom character had just popped into my head from nowhere. As much as I would like to believe that the best way to write comedy is to not try and write comedy and wait for it to come to you, it’s not a very practical process. There are some comedy writers who can’t afford to sit around and wait for ideas to come to them as they sometimes have deadlines to meet. I want to get this sitcom written by the end of the year and while the process of coming up with idea can sometimes feel soul destroying I nevertheless want to plot through and write at least a six episode series. Even if it’s utter shite it won’t matter because I’ll be happy with myself for completing it and I’ll understand exactly how it feels to create a sitcom from scratch.

On the way home from work I did a bit more studying for my motorbike test. I can’t believe that I’ve been putting off this damn thing for a whole year (well for nearly 15 years really but last year was the one where I promised myself I would knuckle down and study but got sick of it after a few weeks). I’ve got about 20 pages of the handbook memorised now but there’s another 40 to commit to memory and I have just under three months to do it. Hopefully the questions get easier the more you get through. Maybe in the second half of the book is stuff like “Do you like motorbikes?” and “Is it possible to ride a motorbike without a head?”.

As soon as I got home I treated myself to the final three episodes of season 11 of Red Dwarf. The first “Officer Rimmer” features Rimmer being promoted to an officer after a higher ranking officer believes Rimmer has saved his life (in reality the exact opposite was true, Rimmer was trying to blow up the officer’s ship but the blast pushed him free of the the asteroid field he was trapped in). Some of the best moments in the series come when Rimmer glimpses even the smallest shred of power and authority and in this episode he goes full blown egomaniacal. The second “Krysis” is about Kryten teaching the half way point of his 6 million year lifespan and as such goes through a midlife crisis. Luckily at the episode’s conclusion Kryten and crew meet up with the living universe and after inadvertently giving IT a midlife crisis, Kryten convinces the universe (and himself) that he knows for a fact that love exists and if love exists then life has meaning (I don’t know if there actually is a meaning of life but this one spewed out by a fictional cleaning Android is a pretty damn good suggestion). Finally I watched the episode “Can Of Worms” which features the. At being impregnated by a Polymorph and the crew having to hunt down and kill his children. There are some great visual gags in this episode such as seeing the Cat in a birthing pool and some great humour around the fact that Cat is clearly a virgin and knows nothing about sex (he brags to the crew about how the Polymorph, posing as a lady Cat, shot tentacles out of her back and stuck them down his throat, thinking this must be how sex works but after this episode I Googled it and it’s totally not). I’m still astonished at how this new series seems to have recaptured the creativity of the original few series before the downturn in quality. There’s a case to be made that the reason the show is good again is because of the lack of Kristine Kochanski (whom a lot of RD fans claim ruined the original show) but I think the cross of series 7 & 8 was due to more than just the introduction of one new character. Something had to have happened to Doug Naylor that affected his writing at this time to make it slip so much in quality. Whatever it was he’s clearly put it behind him now as the scripts are better than ever in my opinion.

Throughout the entire day I only ate one bowl of cookie crisp cereal and two pesto and tomato sandwiches but fuck me the temptation to stuff my face was ever present. I’m at the stage in my life where I just need to realise that being healthy and looking attractive is simply more important than making myself feel temporarily better after a shit say by ramming a Big Mac and chips down my gullet. Can say I’ve noticed the difference yet but it’ll be beneficial in the long run (and considering that when I stepped on the scales today and discovered that I’m back up to 13 stone 13 1/2 pounds, I think a long run is just what I need).

I tuned into Hollyoaks tonight where Romeo is arrested for assaulting Sami Malik who later drops the charges (The amount of dropped charges and no further action taken in the time I’ve been watching Hollyoaks throws the entire point of the police force into question. Yeah they’ll press charges on characters if there’s a murder or one of them is discovered to be a drug dealer or a paedophile but it seems as though every other crime or act of violence ever on this show just gets swept under the carpet. Maybe Hollyoaks is like the modern day equivalent of the Wild West, in that if you commit a crime and the police don’t see it with their own eyes you go free). Also normally I hate the character of Yasmine as she’s a short arsed waste of space with an annoying voice but she did provide some sort of entertainment in tonight’s episode when she threw an orange smoothie into the face of Alfie which for a brief second made him resemble Professor Frink from The Simpsons:

After checking my phone and discovering that there are talks VAN HALEN REUNION SOON, I settled into bed and watched the first half of a documentary about Billy Connolly: Made In Scotland. The documentary traces his beginnings in the shipyards and slugging it on the folk scene all the way up until deciding to embark on a career as a comedian. It’s really surprising how much credit modern stand up comedy (at least in the UK) owes to Connolly as he essentially introduced a new way of doing it. Up until Connolly came along comedians stood behind a microphone in a suit and tie and told one liner jokes but Connolly told stories and really naughty ones at that. To be that honest and confessional about his life and more specifically the sordid side of his life is a really brave thing to do. Connolly’s philosophy that if something bad or something embarrassing happens to you then it almost makes it feel worth it if you can turn it into something funny is an idea that a lot of modern day comedians have really took to heart as many of the comics you see nowadays don’t seem to give a fuck about their audience the kind of intimate and personal details about their lives that most people would keep bottled up for life. This was a really lovely documentary from perhaps the greatest British comic of all time and I look forward to part two.

Fri 4th Dec 2019 

After work today I went to Waterstones in town to buy a book on learning Japanese. The app I’ve got is fine but I’d prefer to use that for learning the Hiragana (the Japanese version of the alphabet) and an exercise book to learn words and phases. I don’t know why the fuck I have chosen Japanese as my foreign language to learn as it is one of the hardest languages to master. It took me a little while to commit the words and phrases to memory but I managed to through the aids of some visualsation techniques. For instance the Japanese for “Pleased to meet you” translates phonetically as “Dohzo yorishiku” and to memorise this phrase I picture the all you can eat restaurant in Sunderland town centre which is called “Dozo” and for “yorishiku” I imagine a female pigeon “you’re a she coo”. Writing out my process I can see how fucking strange it must seem to a reader but it’s working for me. My process to commit all of the words and phrases to memory is to learn the pronunciation of each word then stick labels to 2p coins with the English words written on them and stick them in a tumblr then pull them out one by one and say aloud the Japanese translations. Again it sounds fucking tragic but it’s certainly working for me. Plus I think just learning the words in the order they appear in the book is a way to learn but I think in this case you are just working in a pattern and aren’t necessarily taking in the information. I think it’s much more challenging and a good way to monitor your progress if I pick out the phrases randomly and force my brain to think of the answer. Although it was clearly difficult once I got into the groove I found I was actually having fun with this little learning game I invented and hopefully it will serve me well in my mission to master the Japanese language.

There’s obviously some sort of major fault with my bathroom scales as yesterday it said that I weighed 13 stone 13 1/2 lbs and yet this evening when I weighed myself after eating only two sandwiches and a bowl of Cookie Crisp cereal all day it read that I now weighed 13 stone 7 1/4 lbs. This shouldn’t be possible even if I’d had nothing to eat and spent the whole fucking day exercising so Christ knows what the fuck has happened to this scale. Unless of course I have some sort of undiagnosed disease that causes your weight to fluctuate overnight. I’m sure there was a movie out a while back where a person switches bodies every night (some days he’s a specky black kid, others he’s a 7 foot ginger woman etc) but I don’t think there’s been a movie where a character wakes up to find themselves a shockingly different weight than they were before and when you consider some of the shit Eddie Murphy has made that sounds really surprising. I think I may use this idea in my sitcom but I’m not sure how it will work: a character or just a one time episode plot.

I fancied an early night so settled into bed for a night of kickass wrestling. First up I watched NXT which was mainly a best of 2018 which was fine with me as last year was a whopper of a year for NXT and it was great reliving some of the years best moments. The main event of the show was a rematch between Matt Riddle  and Kassius Ohno, the two met at the previous Takeover but Riddle KO’d KO in six seconds flat which has been eating up at Ohno ever since. Originally I didn’t know what to make of Matt Riddle but he has managed to pick up the pro wrestling game incredibly well while also making use of his MMA knowhow. I like that they’re pairing him up with Ohno but it seems like such an afterthought of a feud. Why have they continued to job Ohno out to so many of the younger guys when he’s one of the most talented pro wrestlers ever and should be in the main event scene. I’m guessing that his physique (or lack thereof) is stopping the people who matter getting behind him and while I agree he would be a bit of a tough sell as a mainstream superstar given his look but at the same time his matches always deliver and I rarely care what the guy looks like. Hopefully 2018 will be the year that NXT does an “Andrade Alma’s” on Ohno and propels him up pecking order. After NXT I watched the first Impact of 2019 and the final show before the PPV Homecoming on Sunday where they will return to The Asylum, the venue where it all began for them. There was a great 10 man tag team Mach featuring the stables involved in this Sunday’s Ultimate X match for the vacant X division title. A good chunk of the match was dedicated to a bunch of the wrestlers on the outside politely standing around waiting for the wrestler in the ring to do a fancy move over the top rope and onto them. I’m being a bit dismissive there but overall the match was good. There are some really great characters emerging in Impact right now that real really natural and not forced. oVe are great and I like Matt Sydals new tag team with Ethan Page (I think they should be in a stable called “The Third Eye”, plus Willie Mack and Rich Swann are an entertaining tag team and a new trio of younger wrestlers called “The Rascals” are amazing high flyers and could be the next Young Bucks if they play their cards right. There was a cool segment where Eli Drake and Tommy Dreamer got into another brawl and the latter was eventually aided in his beat down of Drake by the returning Raven! Raven is one of my all time favourite wrestlers, although he’s not the best technical wrestler in the world the Raven character is fucking perfect and Scott Levy the man practically lived the character in order to do it justice. I’m talking about his ECW and TNA run (and some of his WCW fun too) because although he was squandered in WWE who stuck him in the hardcore division he did some of his best stuff as the cult leader in ECW and his storyline “Destiny” to win the title in TNA was some of his best stuff ever. It was a little odd to see Raven show up to help Dreamer who had just DDT’d Drake so he didn’t really need any help but it was great to see him anyway. Trevor Lee wrestler his last match in Impact tonight in a squash loss to Killer Kross who (storyline) drove him out of the company by punching a cinderblock into his face (can’t help but feel it would be more damaging to slam the cinderblock into his head rather than punch it). I think this was a great way for Lee to bow out of the company. Usually when a wrestler decides to leave a company they just stop appearing on the show and aren’t mentioned anymore but in the case of Lee I think it was nice that he got to make some sort of final impression and he put over Kross as a beast on his way out. Keira Hogan went up against Allie, or “Dark Allie” as the commentators referred to her (possibly because Batman’s parents were killed inside of her) and after Su Yung joined in the beatdown she was saved by Jordynne Grace so it appears she now has help in this fight against Su Yung’s evil army. Finally in the main event Johnny Impact and Brian Cage were forced to team up ahead of their world title match at Homecoming, to face The Lucha Brothers. Impact and Cage are the two biggest stars in the company right now so it only makes sense that they should main event the first big show of the year. I like the fact that they’ve made Impact a main event we organically i.e by slowly building up fan support through interesting and intense feuds rather than just cramming him down our throats ala Roman Reigns. Cage is fucking phenomenal two, to have the physique of Brock Lesnar but be able to fly around like a cruiserweight is something special. Can’t wait to see these two meet in the ring at Homecoming. Speaking of Homecoming the end of the episode was a montage of all the great moments from the early days of the Asylum. Basically we got to see what this company gave up in order to let Vince Russo create Black Reign and Win A Date With ODB

Anywho that was the last week of my life. If you enjoyed this blog you can read it every single week. If you create a WordPress account and follow Why Is Everyone So Fucking Stupid? then a notification will be sent to your e-mail every Saturday to remind you that the latest blog has been published. Oh, and please tell your friends about this blog too

Next week i’ll be telling you about the time I took a hundred nuns to Newcastle. Until then…

Follow your hearts and keep smiling motherfuckers

Axl

🙂

Why Is Everyone So Fucking Stupid? #317 “Joy Stealing Jerk”

Hey gang! I’ve been looking back over a few of the most recent blogs I’ve written and realised that they’re so long and boring that it’s near fucking impossible to get through them all in one sitting. That’s why I’ve created a new sister site for this blog called “Why Is Everyone So Fucking Stupid (Every God Damn Day)?” Where I recant my activities one day at a time rather than post a week’s worth in one long, tedious blog. If for some reason you prefer this longer version of the blog then by all means continue to visit this site every Saturday as I’ll still be posting the longer version. Alternatively you can visit the new site which is updated every god damn day!

Sat 22nd Dec 2018

This morning I was sat in McDonalds eating my breakfast while I waited for my bus to arrive. There was a group of chavs at the table in front of me and one of them said to his mate “I’m going to smash this burger just like I smashed this lasses burger last night”. If this had been one of my friends who said this I would have responded “What, you’re going to climb on top of it for twenty seconds then start crying?”. Even if I’d have said this directly to them it would have been utterly pointless as it would have gone completely lost in them. I learned a long time ago that trying to insult a chav is a bit like trying to insult a drunk person in that they’re too stupid to realise that they’ve even been insulted and they will likely respond by claiming to have had sex with your mother. 

Impact Wrestling has struck a new deal with a new network called “The Pursuit Channel” and it may be the worst one they’ve negotiated since being thrown off of Spike TV. Apparently this channel is available in less homes in America than their current network, PopTV is. Over the last few years Impact has gone from Spike to Destination America to Pop TV and now to Pursuit TV. This is a bit like going from the Titanic to a lifeboat, to a board of wood to a Happy Meal box. A few weeks ago I read rumours that the company was negotiating with Syfy which is the network that used to host Smackdown and ECW so I was slightly holding out hope that Impact May finally have caught a break. However Pursuit Channel, as the name possibly suggests, is a channel that is dedicated to mainly outdoor recreational activities such as fishing and hunting. The sign that this may be a silly deal is probably in the words “outdoor activities”, because in the twenty plus years I’ve been a wrestling fan I have noticed that wrestling is mainly an INDOOR activity. When WWE’s version of ECW signed with SyFy the channel tried to get Vince McMahon to Male ECW a sci-fi kind of show with monsters, aliens and all that freaky shit. I think it would be hilarious if Pursuit Channel tried to apply the same fitting of the network them to the show. Just imagine if they told Impact the wrestlers would have to have fishermen gimmicks, hunters  gimmicks etc. Whenever they did a jobber squash match they could have all the jobbers dressed up like deer or ducks (I’m going off on a flight of fantasy obviously but the more ridiculous I go the more I kind of want it to happen). What’s worse is that the Impact wrestlers are coming out in support of the move and acting like they’re doing so because they genuinely think this is a good move and not because they have to say they think it’s a good move. In a way you can see why they have to do this because they can’t exactly come out and say “This is a fucking terrible move, what the fuck are management thinking?” but this obvious phoniness always pisses me off because we all know that they know it’s a stupid fucking move. It’s like when a famous actor goes on a talk show and the host always happens to love the movie they’re appearing in. I’ve never seen a talk show host say to an actor that their movie is a piece of shit. You can always tell that the host doesn’t like their movie because they don’t use words like “good” or “brilliant” when talking about the film, they just briefly mention what it’s about and let the audience know when it’s in theatres. I really hope that this move to this obscure network is just a temporary stop gap and that they are still negotiating with proper networks. Impact’s history of lacking common sense (or more specifically Dixie Carter’s lack of common sense) has turned them into a laughing stock that no-one sees as a viable enterprise anymore. This is a shame because as I’ve said many times lately, the company’s new figureheads have really turned it around and made it the best wrestling programme going today. 

Sun 23rd Dec 2018

I thought that I had gotten in all my Christmas shopping but remembered that I still needed cards to put money in for my cousin Melissa and nephew Kieren. Both are nearly 20 so I’m guessing money is their big concern now which is great news for me now because at last I can just palm them off with cash rather than having to spend an entire afternoon shopping for stupid fucking presents for them. I went to Sainsbury’s for the cards which was busy as fuck, even the self service checkouts were rammed. I think it would be funny if you went to a brothel and there was an empty room with some porn magazines and some lube inside and on the door there was a sign that just read “Self Service Checkout”. I also went down the hill to the enterprise park just to see if there were any more little bits and bobs that might catch my eye as potential presents. I still couldn’t bring myself to go into the Aldi store where I used to work knowing what horrors and torment I had to suffer through while I worked there. I have been past there a few times in the last few months and on each occasion I haven’t seen either of the two dickheads who laughingly called themselves managers there, which fills me with hope that the two of them have either been fired or even better: murdered. 

We had Lacey over for the first time tonight and I wish I’d have been told in advance because I would have booked the two of us a place at the newly reopened trampoline park which has now been renamed “Super Tramp”. I tried to convince her that we couldn’t go because we both lived in houses and the park is reserved for the homeless to play on, hence the name Super Tramp and that if she really wanted to go we would have to cover her in old clothes and dirty up her face in order to pass her off as a homeless person. However to my distain now that she is seven she’s gotten better at spotting when I am taking the piss. Oh well at least I have the next few years of lying to baby Luna to look forward to. To compensate for the trampoline park no-go we played Heads Up the game invented by famous American lesbian comedian Ellen the Genderless. I didn’t expect to take the game so seriously but I really got into it by the end. Lacey played the game really tactfully too, realising that you don’t have to go with the obvious mime for the subject you’re given and you can gesticulate it in a different way than the expected one. For instance one of the items she had to act out was “Flossing” and while you would normally expect someone to mine using dental floss in their teeth Lacey decided to do that stupid little dance that has taken the internet by storm where you dance like you’re drying your arse with a towel or whatever it’s supposed to be. I’m really overjoyed that she’s developing this really mischievous and surreal sense of humour as I like to think that I planted this seed in her head with all my lies and stupid games I’ve invented for her over the years. 

After game time was over I jumped into bed and watched the greatest Christmas special ever made (except maybe the Bottom Christmas special): the Christmas episode of Father Ted. This has become must watch Christmas TV in the UK and it contains some of the best comedy from the shows entire run. Mrs Doyle almost falling off the window ledge for a third time only to fall through the window into the front garden is an amazing moment of slapstick straight out of the Buster Keaton pocketbook. There’s also the scene of the chaotic funeral that Dougal causes and the brilliant escape from the lingerie section sequence which includes Father Jack being left in a children’s play area. All of these moments are so hilarious and fondly remembered as being some of the best stuff the show ever did. However the special is not without its flaws

Most notably the fact that the episode’s main plot point (the “Macguffin” if you will) The Golden Cleric Award is alluded to in the opening minute and you can tell that it will be a major driving force of the rest of the episode. While a sitcom, and a surreal one like Father Ted at that, is the kind of TV show where you can suspend your disbelief more than any other, it still seems incredibly unlikely that Ted should be nominated for the award we only just found out existed on the same day that he openly discusses with Douglas what it is.  Also there’s and instance where Ted, as a result of being told he may only be the second best priest in the country by Mrs Doyle, has somewhat of an existential crisis…for about five minutes. He goes down to the beach, skimming stones across the water with a look of despair on his face. Later he comes back to the house and reacts with horror when told that Dougal is handling the aforementioned funeral. The next scene however is Ted back to feeling joy and elation and no further mention is made at the apparent depression he was going through. Normally these would be major issues in a TV show but the fact that they both lead to great comedic moments make me willing to turn a blind eye. Also you can’t exactly say that a sitcom did something wrong if the thing it did wrong gets a big laugh, finding a fault in a joke is irrelevant if it has already illicited laughter from an audience. So the episode isn’t perfect but like most shows it isn’t trying to be perfect, it’s just trying to do the best job possible and in this shows case trying to get as many laughs as possible and get fans in the Christmas spirit which it does brilliantly. I also came up with an incredible “Who Would Win?” style question while watching the episode which I think you’ll agree is top notch: 

Who would win in a fight between the cast of Father Ted, the Mothers of Invention, The Brothers Grimm and the Scissor Sisters? 

Mon 24th Dec 2018

My bus from home into town didn’t bother turning up this morning so I had to get a taxi. One of my resolutions for the new year is going to be to refrain from spending so much money on unnecessary shit like energy drinks, pasta salads and taxis in the morning when all I really need to do is get my fat fucking arse out of bed to the bus stop. I reckon if I cut out taxis and unhealthy foods altogether then I should save a tonne of money next year, more than enough to pay for all the gigs I want to go to, all the experiences I want to have and enough left over in the bank to put towards my Wrestlemania trip in 2020. While I was on the bus my mind began to wander and I came up with the following stupid question: 

Do you think it’s possible that Beyoncé has 25 identical twin sisters named Beyoncb, Beyoncc, Beyoncd, Beyonce, Beyoncf, Beyoncg, Beyonch, Beyonci, Beyoncj, Beyonck, Beyoncl, Beyoncm, Beyoncn, Beyonco, Beyoncp, Beyoncq, Beyoncr, Beyoncs, Beyonct, Beyoncu, Beyoncv, Beyoncw, Beyoncx, Beyoncy and Beyoncz? 

I don’t know what I was thinking about or looking at that triggered my mind to start thinking about Beyonce but sometimes you just stumble upon these beauties. Maybe this is my brain’s early Christmas present to me. Maybe I should pay it back by not poisoning it by lying in bed throughout the year watching YouTube videos. 

I read in the paper this morning that Chris Evans has left his Radio 2 breakfast show which made me very happy because I am very much not a fan of the man. What I hate most about him is how bland and middle of the road he is. More than any other broadcast I have ever seen he is the one who I genuinely believe any ordinary member of the public could do his show. Also whenever he’s on TV because he’s not funny what he does is he waits for someone to say something funny then makes a superfluous comment afterwards to make it look like he played a part in the funny thing being said. There are plenty broadcasters with genuine talent who haven’t been allowed a tenth of the success or the platforms Evans has (though to be fair that’s probably a good thing because if they were given Evan’s platform they’d probably have to dilute their show and make their show as bland as possible, something Evans clearly had no problem doing). I find if baffling that Danny Baker, the greatest, funniest man on the radio is actually a friend of Evans and has written for him many times. It would be like Mozart writing music for Coldplay. I’ve only listened to a few of his Radio 2 shows (mainly when there’s a guest in that I like) and while Radio 2 is for the most part a bland station due to it’s mostly mainstream musical output, inoffensive and idiot friendly content and lack of desire to take any risks Evans is the face of the station and so I see him as the figurehead and the main representative of the bile the station represents. Normally if i don’t like something I do the wise thing and pay no attention to it, focusing my attention on things I do like. However Evans is one of the few people in this world who can annoy and anger me by merely being alive. The fact that he has managed to dupe so many people into thinking he is worthy of their time makes me want to call into his show so that I can scream to all his listeners “YOU FOOLS! WHY ARE YOU LISTENING TO THIS TALENTLESS PRICK? YOU HAVE BEEN BRAINWASHED!!!” So as you can tell, not a fan. That’s why I was filled with happiness when I learned that he no longer has a show on Radio 2. He’s left to go to Virgin Radio and while there’s  every chance he may go on to be a huge success over there, the fact that there is a chance that he might fail pleases me a great deal as I love to see talentless people learn the hard way that they are not talented (his sacking from Top Gear made me happy for a fortnight)

Today was the busiest day of the year without a doubt. The customers came rushing in right from the get go and Tony and I didn’t have a second to do any sort of prep meaning we had to prepare everything from scratch all day. To make things even more unbearable we were getting orders for the Christmas wrap and orders for breakfast at lunch time which caused us to really fall behind with the orders. At three in the afternoon the orders finally stopped and Tony and I looked at the shitbomb of a mess in the kitchen that lay before us that we would have to clean up, or rather that I would have to clean up because he had business to take care of elsewhere (I found out later that the business he was talking about was constructing a stupid little hat out of aluminium foil and acting like an alien to try and make the wait g staff laugh…he’s 47 by the way). I finally managed to get the cleaning done in the kitchen and Tony bid me farewell as he said he was going to midnight mass tonight. I thought he was going to say that he drilled a glory hole in the side of the confession booth but nope it turns out he really was just going to midnight mass. After finally leaving work and wishing all the lasses a happy Christmas I popped into Tesco for some very last minute Christmas shopping in after discovering last night that Mam already has a smaller version of the Mrs Potts and Chip ornaments I bought her so I needed to get her something else. After finally completing my shopping I fucked off to McDonalds to comfort eat after a very long day. I tried to eat my food in peace but there was some pissed up lunatic in there making a right fuss with the staff. Apparently she had tried to take something without paying for it although she was adamant she had paid. The manager, (probably sensing her drunkenness) told her to just take her food and leave the building but she insisted on staying and eating her food there. However every few minutes or so she would get up and continue to assert the fact that she had paid and that the staff owed her an apology. I really hate these kind of people who insist on making a scene even long after they’ve realised they’re in the wrong so that they can feel like they got some sort of victory. There’s nothing that spoils the day that spoils a day more than some shitfaced arsehole trying to make everything about themselves. I think that everywhere other than pubs and nightclubs there should be men with breathalysers on the door (I’m talking McDonalds, buses, museums, football stadiums etc) and if you are found to have too much alcohol in your system then you get told to fuck off. To some that may sound like some sort of Orwellian nightmare scenario but for me it would be paradise because it would practically ensure peace and quiet every time I wanted to leave the house. It would be nice to be able to go somewhere to eat and not be put off by a drunken buffoon making more noise than the WWE Universe does when a wrestler from the 90’s makes their return after a few months off. To my shame I tried to string out the act of eating my food so I could stay there longer and see if this bitch really kicked off but unfortunately for me she eventually settled the fuck down and I just wanted to get home so I set off to wrap up all the shit I’d bought and get it under the tree (under a tree is coincidentally where this drunken fuckwit probably ended up). 

Tue 25th Dec 2018

I was treated to an unusually long and very much appreciated lie in this morning which was just as well since Lauren and her boyfriend had taken Luna to his side of the family to wish them a Happy Christmas so there was no rush to opening presents. Once I woke up I decided to check out Adam Sandlers new Netflix stand up special. I have always heard that Sandlers movie choices aren’t the best representation of his capabilities as a comedian and that he was once a solid stand up comic but up until now I never got to check him out on stage. I was pleasantly surprised by how ducking hilarious this special is. Sandlers in stage schtick is that he tells incredibly obscure and weird stories and makes equally strange observations complete with music and silly voices but he delivers it as if he is saying the most normal and straight forward things as though everyone can relate to it. A perfect example is where he asks the audience: 

You know when you go over to your buddy’s house and he makes you take of your shoes, then your socks then he gives you a bunch of grapes and tells you to step into a little barrel and you’re like “What the fuck are we doing?” and he’s like “MAKING WINE!!! YOU MAKE ME THE WINE!!!!”

It’s as if he’s an extraterrestrial from the only planet in the world where these observations make sense and are relatable. I laughed throughout the special and what impressed me most is the fact that Sandler was able to be this funny despite having not done stand up in a while. Normally comedians need to do stand up all the time in order to keep the brain ticking but it looks like Sandler might be one of those comics who can just turn it on and off when he needs to, lucky bastard. 

I got a lot of nice things this morning and quite a lot of money which I decided to put towards the gigs I want to go to next year to get them out of the way now. I paid for the Suede gig in Newcastle with cash but I used a Ticketmaster voucher to pay for Lynyrd Skynyrd in Manchester in June. I also treated myself to a lot of new music that I’ve been wanting to buy for a long time including full albums from The Polecats. I downloaded nearly all of their output so it would be impossibly tedious to link to all of them so here’s just a few of my favourites: 

Let’s Bop: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aSQNmQlqOEM
Bopping High School Baby: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7aBSpq00bQA
Little Red Book: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=z2W3SrrS2QA

Everyone seemed really happy with the gifts I got for them too which is surprising because I probably left this years Christmas shop the latest. I remember reading that Douglas Adams who wrote the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy books would frequently wait until the deadline for his books to draw near so that he would have to work incredibly hard in order to get them done in time. Maybe it’s a similar thing with me where if I were to do my shopping early then all the gifts would be really uninspired but if I leave them until a few days before like I did this year then my brain will be forced to come up with extra creative gift ideas. By this logic if I leave next years shopping until New Years Eve my family should get the best Christmas ever! 

Later in the day Luna was proving difficult to get to sleep so we all gathered in the living room to try and get her off. Unfortunately the family was watching the Christmas Mrs Browns Boys so I had that shit to deal with as well as a crying baby (I refuse to rule out the possibility that Luna is a born comedy fan and it was this terribly unfunny show that was making her upset). The thing I hate the most about this show is that no-one seems to care that so many of the jokes used in this show are stolen from other jokes or from decade old joke books. There’s one episode where Mrs Brown’s husband is having a checkup from the doctor who tells him he needs samples of his stool, blood and urine to which Mrs Brown quips “Give him your underpants”. I can remember telling this joke in the fucking playground (when I was at school obviously, I don’t just hang around in playgrounds telling shitty jokes to kids). When I just think about all the amazingly talented sitcom writers who really strive to produce unique and original content and then compare them to this prick who has somehow managed to sneak the fact that his sitcom is loaded with stolen material past people who should know better. I think I may start a recurring feature on my Twitter where I investigate each and every individual joke in Mrs Brown’s Boys to see exactly who or where it was stolen from. There was a joke uttered early on where Mrs Brown states that she “can keep a secret. It’s the people I tell them to who can’t”. A quick Google search reveals that this joke was first uttered by none other than….I shit you not…Abraham Lincoln! Let’s be really generous and say that Lincoln uttered this quip during the last year of his life which was 1865. This would mean that this joke is now 153 years old! Perhaps this is O’Carrol’s thinking: that once a joke has been around for a certain number of years then you’re free to use it without fear of copyright infringement or intellectual property damage. This would explain his use of a gag about “Bigamy” which was first uttered in a Marx Brothers movie, or his “borrowing” of a variant of the famous “Don’t call me Shirley” line from Airplaine!. It really drives me crazy wondering how O’Carrol has gotten away with this level of blatant joke theft (although the amount of people on Twitter who called me names for criticising the show may prove that the theft is not so blatant after all). If a musician tried this and just lifted a load of riffs and lyrics from famous songs that could be found out with a quick Google search then they would be mocked and insulted, not celebrated like this comedic abortion is. What’s more is that all of the side characters are fucking lifeless stock character who only serve to provide feedlines for Mrs Brown to deliver the punchlines to. Can you imagine if Only Fools and Horses did the same thing where Del Boy was the only one who ever had any funny lines and Rodney, Grandad etc only spoke in feedlines? Or a version of The Simpson’s where Homer is the only funny one? The greatest sitcoms are the ones that provide platforms for many funny characters not just one. As you can tell I’m not a fan of this dog shit but for all of you genuine fans I do have an early Christmas treat for you. I have in my possession a copy of the script for next year’s Christmas episode and I’m going to let you get an exclusive look at it. Here it is: 

Wed 26th Dec 2018

Work was hectic as fuck as you might expect. As with Christmas Eve we didn’t get many orders for our festive stuff but we were mainly busy because people were ordering lunchtime shit at breakfast time and vice versa and for some reason quite a few people kept coming back to the counter and asking if they could alter their order five minutes after they placed it and we had almost finished making it (if I had even the smallest amount of balls I would have loved to have told the customer that doing so would mean we would have to start from scratch and throw away their original order which would lose us money therefore they’d have to fucking pay for another one!). This wasn’t as busy as Christmas Eve but it was still a bitch to get through and may have been the second busiest day of the year (there were some days during the summer that felt like they would never end). 

On the way home I read that Japan will shortly be lifting it’s ban on whaling which depresses me to no end. It’s always baffled me that a nation as intelligent and forward thinking as the Japanese could have embraced such retarded attitude towards hunting and harpooning whales to death. From what I read hardly anyone in Japan even eats whale meat anymore so there is zero justification for hunting these poor fuckers. Their reasoning is that the whale population has increased since the ban in whaling meaning they are no longer listed as an endangered species so it should be okay to start hunting them again (until they get the numbers back down to “endangered” levels). I could understand it if there was a threat of OVER population, and if all the beaches in the world had to be closed because there were whales fucking everywhere then fair enough you’d need to trim the numbers a bit. However there is no excuse for hunting animals when they are just above the brink of extinction. I think I can see why the few remaining pandas left on Earth are refusing to mate, because if they get past a certain number they know that the humans will start butchering the older ones so it’s in their best interest to stay endangered. I think that the true fact is that we all have certain things that we do that we know are bad but we want to do them anyway because they feel good. For some people it’s smoking, some people take drugs and some people harpoon whales in the head then drag them onto their boats to eviscerate them alive. 

Once I got home I watched a documentary Vic Reeves did a while ago about the Jack the Ripper murders and enjoyed it very much. Reeves consults Ripperologists, hand writing specialists and even psychic detectives to try and discover who was Jack the Ripper. On the subject of Ripperology: all morality aside, you know you were a badass when you committed a crime so bad that a name had to be invented for the field dedicated to studying those crimes. I’m not justifying what this sick cunt whoever he was did but to have an entire field of study named after something you did is pretty fucking cool. I would love to have a field of study named after one of my crimes but I can’t see legions of people banding together to try and solve the mystery of who sold a bag of shit to a special needs kid for £50 after telling him it was chocolate (it was me). I’d really love to do some in-depth research of my own to come to my own conclusion of who committed these terrible crimes. While I was watching the documentary I noticed for the first time that all of the major suspects in the case were men and I wondered whether there were ever any female Ripper suspects. A quick Google search led me to Mary Pearcey, a woman who killed her husbands extra marital lover and their child round about the same time that the Ripper murders took place. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle posited that if a woman had committed the grizzly Ripper murders then  they could have walked through the streets with their victims blood splattered all over them without arousing suspicion if they dressed like a midwife. This is an interesting theory but one I don’t think holds much merit. Before I get a lot of hardcore feminists contacting me to tell me that I’m being sexist for saying that women aren’t as capable of being serial killers as men are, let me explain. The crime Pearcey is known to have committed was very specifically related to some personal inconvenience that happened to her and I don’t see how she would carry this over into killing presumably for sport like the Ripper did. I would really love to see a TV series about the Ripper murder suspects where each episode was spent detailing one suspect’s activities while they were in the Whitechapel area of London at the time of the murders. To my knowledge no such programme has ever been made so I am going to make it myself…with my iPhone camera and my old Power Rangers toys (since I’m pretty sure no toy company has ever released a series of “Ripper Suspect Action Figures”) 

Finally tonight I booked my travel and accommodation to the Republica gig AGAIN! For new readers I booked gig tickets, a hotel and a train to travel to Hull in October to see the band Republica. However a week before the event I received a message telling me that the gig had been pushed back to March and although I was told my ticket would still be good to use for the new date this still meant that I had wasted a shit load of money on a hotel and my travel. I have used social media to try to get an answer from the band, the venue, the organisers as to why the gig was delayed but I am still yet to receive an answer. I’m not expecting them to personally refund me my hotel and train fares since sometimes there are legitimate reasons for cancelling a show but surely they should offer a reason why the show has been cancelled. I don’t think they’ve even considered the amount of shampoo / towels I’m going to have to steal from my re-booked hotel or the amount of toilet paper I’ll have to steal from the toilets of my re-booked train in order to makeup for being inconvenienced. The only way I can really think of that the band can make it up to me without giving me money out of their own pockets is by letting me stay with them in their hotel room since they’ve already booked their accommodation for the night and it’s no skin of their nose to let me spend the night in their room (I’m not saying they should let me have the bed, I’m not that arrogant. I would be happy sleeping on the floor or in the bath). However since I can’t see them agreeing to such a reasonable proposition tonight I booked a new hotel and train tickets for a surprisingly low amount of cash. Hopefully this time they won’t cancel the week before the event or if they do I’ll at least get a fucking reason why this time!  

Thu 27th Dec 2018

This morning I had to go to the doctors for  fucking blood test and I’m not even sure what they’re looking for this time. The amount of blood I’ve had taken out of me in the last few years you could probably use to film the elevator scene from The Shining. While the nurse was taking my blood I told her about my sleep paralysis and she said that this was a symptom of anxiety and stress. She then asked me if I spend a lot of time worrying about things and I said “On an almost minute by minute basis, yes”. If all of the shitty symptoms I’ve been experiencing over the last few years eventually get pinned down to anxiety then I’m probably going to be experiencing them for the remainder of my life. Personally I can’t figure out how there can be any people out there who don’t suffer from anxiety and stress especially when you consider the fact that everything’s fucked and we’re all going to die. 

I realise that this is a newer version of the blog so new readers won’t know my friends or family’s names so I’ll point them out during the following story where necessary. Later in the afternoon while Lauren (my sister) took a nap I got to hold Luna (my baby niece) for a while to try and settle her down. While she was having her nappy changed by Mam (my Mam) nappy, Lucy (our dog) wanted one of her toys which was lying on the other side of the room and so jumped over Luna like Evil Knievel. Everyone found this adorable but when I tried to do the same thing later with my motorbike they called the police ahahahahaha haha. Anywho…

Some bitch on Twitter took offence at me today for having the audacity to call out Mrs Brown’s Boys for shamelessly stealing jokes. On Twitter last night I Tweeted that I was thinking of starting a regular feature where I would look up every joke uttered on the show to find out who the original author was. This one user on Twitter responded:

“Or you could stop being a joy stealing jerk. Up to you I guess”  

First of all your life must be pretty sad if someone can “steal” the joy from you watching a show you like by pointing out that it steals jokes. Also she’s basically admitting that she’d rather live in blissful ignorance believing that the show is full of original material written by the show’s creator (which it isn’t). At first I considered whether this Twitter user was a child and by pointing out the joke stealing tendencies of this show I was somehow taking away some of the magic from her life (kind of like telling a kid that Santa isn’t real or that Jack the Ripper was a woman). Then I checked out her Twitter page and saw that this user has a history of moaning at people for having the audacity to criticise stuff meaning she was definitely an adult since children aren’t quite as petty as she was. Realising she was old enough to know better I wrote back: 

“Love the fact that you happily glanced over the fact that the show steals jokes. So if I saw someone steal your wallet I guess you’d want me to keep quiet about it and not take the joy away from the pickpocket? Up to you I guess” 

Surprisingly questioning her morals and illustrating to her why her position was foolish didn’t make matters better, I’d go as far as to say it made them worse. Obviously even more riled up she wrote back: 

“Oh for gods sake look around. Almost every show/movie could be accused of “stealing” bits. And its nowhere near the same as pickpocketing”

The problem is that her point about every show or movie potentially being accused of stealing is completely unsubstantiated because if they could be accused, they would be. The reason people aren’t constantly accusing well written sitcoms like Man Down or Catastrophe of thievery is because they is full of jokes that they haven’t heard before and can’t link to other shows or movies. And the reason they haven’t heard them before is because the writers have come up with them themselves! Also even if other shows or films did see a gag that they liked and wanted to use in their show they would at least alter it to better fit their show or movie, they wouldn’t just use it verbatim as it appeared in it’s original form by its original author. This conclusion was too long to Tweet so I just posted the following response:

“a) give some examples please b) some shows may have similar premises but they don’t lift exact gags VERBATIM like this clown does and c) yeah, taking something from someone without their knowledge and passing it off as your own, not like pickpocketing at all is it?”

Realising that this argument, like all meaningless scuffles on Twitter, could go on indefinitely I decided to end it here and blocked the silly bitch as I am too old to be getting into an online argument about the writing credentials of a man who dresses up as an old woman. 

Watched Hollyoaks tonight and it was Louis and Leela’s wedding which ended in spectacular fashion when Louis ex Simone revealed that she has been sleeping with him and his secret wife turned up and revealed that she was…his secret wife. Louis being the moron that he is didn’t know that the number one surefire way out of any compromising situation is to fake a heart attack (actually thinking about it the number one way would be to actually have a heart attack. Faking a heart attack would be a close second). At the end of the episode. Breda pushes a metal shelving unit on top of Louis and presumably kills him. I’m really digging the Breda character at the moment. She deeply despises men who she deems to be bad fathers owing to her own father abusing her when she was a kid. She’s already taken the life of Russ Owens and now it looks like she’s killed Louis too. I think it would be cool if they cut to five years from now where old Breda is sat with a 10 year old Max who asks her “Nanny Breda, how come none of the kids in this village have daddies?”. Elsewhere in the village Mercedes starts a liaison with Liam Donovan after he convinces him that “There’s no such thing as real love. The sooner you realize that the happier you’ll become” What I want to know is how do the writers of this show know the message I put in all my Christmas cards? 

Fri 28th Dec 2018

I got to the Wheat Sheaf this morning with plenty of time to spare before my bus was scheduled to arrive but for some reason the fucking thing never turned up. I crossed over the road to wait for my backup bus the number 20 but this one was late by 7 minutes too meaning I was going to be late either way. If there are any fellow Mackems who read this blog can you please answer me; has the number 20 bus to Shields ever been early? I seem to remember it being on time once but I may be confusing this with a dream. I finally got to to work only a few minutes late and it kicked off almost immediately. Customers flooded in from beginning to end today, we got absolutely rammed yet again, we didn’t have a single second to do any sort of prep. On days where we know we are going to get ducking destroyed we ask for no breakfast orders to be taken after 11:30 so that we can use the time between 11:30 and 12 to do some sort of prep. However at 11:40 a breakfast order came through, the people behind this order must have seen it and demanded they be allowed to order breakfast as well meaning that our potential prep time went out the door and we were, to use an insider term: “arse fucked”, for the rest of the day. I eventually got to leave at four but this still meant a shitty journey home. I went into the Sundial for a drink and to my detail the sexy barmaid was serving but unfortunately at the counter were a group of seven or eight very loud and bawdy cunts. They were calling each other names, swearing and making inappropriate remarks to the barmaids face. The barmaid and I shared a glance expressing frustration at this group of tossers. I stood patiently behind this gaggle of fuckwits as one by one they took turns ordering drinks and talking shit to the absolute goddess behind the bar. I waited in silence hoping to speak to her once these mongoloids had fucked off. Sure enough just as the barmaid was just about to finish serving the last troglodyte some arsehole barman came from out of the kitchen went behind the bar, parked himself in front of me and asked for my order. I could have fucking screamed! All that shit I stood there and withstood and just as I’m about to be rewarded some twat comes and steals the joy away from me. Captain Cockblock as I call him must have had the worst fucking timing in history, either that or he saw the group of cunts a moment earlier and decided he wasn’t coming out of the kitchen until they had gone. Either way I really wish I could be there the next time this buzzkill attempted to chat a woman up (or bloke if he’s a sausage smoker) and screw it up for him by angrily pretending I once saw him kill a dog or throw hot coffee on a baby or something. I caught my bus and sadly I had another 45 minutes of shit to swallow as the bus was full of screaming kids, some babies screaming for no reason, some older kids screaming at each other for fun as kids do. In my incredibly annoyed state I remembered the famous Ted DiBiase segment where he paid a lifeguard to get a bunch of shithead kids out of a swimming pool so he could have it to himself for the afternoon. I wondered If I’d have slipped the driver £1000 if he would have thrown the kids (and everyone else) off the bus and driven me home in peace. I’m guessing probably not but it irrelevant either way because I don’t have £1000 and I doubt he’d do it for £45.50.

After finally getting home after the joint shittiest day of the year I had a nice hot bath and sat down for an evening of relaxation. To start off with I finally finished Beat Not The Bones, a Book I started reading quite a while ago. I enjoyed the first half of the book and loved the premise of a woman named Stella travelling to a far off land to investigate the apparent suicide of her husband. Unfortunately as if often the case when I try to read a god damn book my attention span is famously short so I’m sure I missed important details and began to skim read which you should never do because it’s in the small details that a picture of the setting is built up and a World is created in your head. The finale of the book is really good as it turns out, SPOILER ALERT: the woman’s husband did in fact commit suicide but out of guilt after failing to stop the mass poisoning of a village of natives that his business partners concocted so they could steal their gold and other natural resources. The final chapter of the book features Jobe, the businessman whom Stella suspected of killing David all along as he was known to have threatened him before his death due to David shitting down his plans to dig for gold. However David ended up committing suicide out of guilt not fear of Jobe. But in the books final twist it’s revealed that despite having nothing to do with the poisoning of the villagers or the death of David, Jobe has found a letter written by David confessing to everything, which he uses to blackmail the surviving members of the group into giving him the gold. That is an absolutely fantastic twist ending, well worth the wait. Normally it’s a real sting in the tail ending when the bad guy comes out on top but in this case the villain was only involved elliptically, didn’t really have to do anything bad and the treasure just sort of fell into his lap! Beat Not The Bones was the first book to win the Edgar Allan Poe award for best suspense novel in 1952 and while my ambition to read every winning novel may seem utterly impossible due to my limited attention span I’m still going to go for it because pointless missions that I will almost certainly give up on immediately are kind of my trademark at this point. Next up is Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye.  

Anywho that was the last week of my life. If you enjoyed this blog you can read it every single week. If you create a WordPress account and follow Why Is Everyone So Fucking Stupid? then a notification will be sent to your e-mail every Saturday to remind you that the latest blog has been published. Oh, and please tell your friends about this blog too

Next week i’ll be telling you about the time I took a hundred nuns to Newcastle. Until then…

Follow your hearts and keep smiling motherfuckers

Axl

🙂

Why Is Everyone So Fucking Stupid? #316 “Anal Bleaching a Telletubby”

Warning: this blog is probably mostly going to be about wrestling, Hollyoaks and basketball from now on. So thanks for reading for all these years until up until right now. Bye!

Sat 15th Dec 2018

I slept in this morning as I always do whenever I’m staying in a hotel because I’m a lazy piece of shit so I had to sprint to the train station to catch my train from Glasgow to Edinburgh. I arrived with 10 minutes to spare (having not taken any time during my first ever trip to Glasgow to  explore any of it) and went to check the status of my train. The bulletin board said that my train was due to leave at 10:30 from Platform 19 so I went and stood there at 10:25. At 10:26 a train pulled into the station but this train was going to Aberdeen so I figured that my train must be right behind this one. This train was still there at 10:30 so I went back to the bulletin board and it said that my train was now delayed but it didn’t say by how long. Figuring that this other train was behind schedule I went back to Platform 19 to wait for this train to fuck off so that my train could pull in. I waited for this train to leave for five minutes before going back to the bulletin board to see if there were any updates. I got to the board just in time to see that it now read that my train was at Platform 2 before this notice disappeared entirety. Up until this point I thought that the 2 hour half marathon run I did during the summer I completed would be the fastest I would ever run but once I saw my train number disappear from that board I fucking sprinted to Platform 2 to see what the fuck had happened so fast I think I almost broke the sound barrier. I got to Platform 2 to see that the next train due was the 11:00 train to Newcastle. Surely the purpose of the fucking speaker systems in train stations is to let people know when a train has switched platforms so that they don’t have to keep walking back and forth to the bulletin board every two minutes to make sure their train is still going to arrive at the Platform it’s fucking scheduled to arrive at?! That would be like a customer coming to the cafe and ordering a sandwich and me making he sandwich but putting it underneath the bins behind the cafe and then putting up a sign at some random location in the cafe letting the customer know (if they ever find the sign) that their sign is now underneath the bins behind the fucking cafe! I was livid at the thought that I would now have to pay for a brand new ticket knowing how expensive my original ticket was but the guy at the help desk told me that if I explained to the inspectors on the 11:00 train what happened then I should be fine. I wanted more than anything to film this guy telling me this information just in case the inspector on the train turned out to be a jobsworth cunt so I could show him a video of an official telling me it would be okay. I jumped on the train when it arrived and started visualising in my head how this shit would play out and even started imagining what would happen if I just absolutely flipped out. Ever since getting shipped off to that shithole call centre six years ago I have been constantly filled with repressed rage. To a small extent I manage to channel this rage through this blog but this afternoon I started to wonder if it wouldn’t be for the best if just this once I didn’t fly off the handles and stand up for myself in the loudest and most aggressive way possible. I could possibly get thrown of the train or receive a fine but at least I would be able to contrast how things pan out and how I feel after standing up for myself as opposed to stoically letting this bullshit slide by and bottling up my anger. The ticket guy came and I extended my arm to show him my ticket with the story of what happened on the top of my tongue ready to explain to this guy what happened as soon as he gave my ticket a worrying look. However the ticket inspector merely did a quick squiggle with his pen on my ticket and walked off…no problems, no confrontation, no mention of the fact that the top of the ticket I presented to him clearly stated “Valid for specified train journey only”. I had gotten myself so worked up and scared over what kind of trouble I could find myself in that I never even considered the possibility that nothing at all would happen. I’m afraid this is the curse that I’m forced to endure as I only ever visualise the worst possible case scenario and never try to picture the best case scenario which is what I imagine most people do since most people aren’t a nervous gibbering wreck like I am. The journey home flew by fairly quickly and I used the time to write up my notes for the blog.

I had hoped to spend some time with Luna when I got home but she had been on a bit of a marathon sleep lately so I didn’t get to hold her today so instead I sat down to watch last nights episode of IMPACT! After Rich Swann won his match with Dave Crist both he and Sami Callihan prevented their respective teammates from starting a brawl and the commentators speculated that there is some sort of history between Swann and Callihan. I’m guessing it’s going to be revealed that at one point in these two men’s past they owned an orange juice bar and one day one one of them suggested that they start serving mango juice which the other saw as a slight and so burned the bar down….maybe it’s a good thing I’m not a wrestling writer. There was an in ring segment between Taya Valkyrie and Tessa Blanchard who have one of the best rivalries going in wrestling today and they haven’t complicates it by doing overly complicated gimmicks. Plus Taya Valkyrie whole not possessing supermodel looks Is still hot as fuck. I get the feeling she would ride me like a broken rodeo bull that she was trying to fix by gyrating her arse as hard as she could. Newcomer Trey Miguel bested Trevor Lee in what is apparently Lee’s final match with Impact. Lee is undeniably talented but I’ve never really felt as though he’s the right fight for Impact so I don’t think I’ll miss him much. Konnan is still pessimistic about the upcoming tag team title match between LAX and the Lucha Brothers. I’m looking forward to this match but the story of this match is really confusing. Konnan doesn’t want LAX & Lucha Bros to fight because he says that professional jealousy will eventually get the better of them and the two teams of friends will drift apart. He uses an example by saying that Rey Mysterio & Juventud Guerrera were friends who fought & afterwards they became bitter towards each other and never tagged again. But what he neglects to mention is that Rey became one of the biggest stars ever. So his argument is basically “Don’t fight…it could make one of you become a global megastar!”. Regardless of how strange this feud was Fenix and Santana has an incredible match tonight. Each and every week I get more and more surprised and astonished by the things Fenix can do in the ring, his move the “Black Fire Driver” (a Muscle Buster spun into a Michinoku Driver) is one of the best moves going. In the main event Brian Cage and Moose has a great brawl that ended in a no contest when the crazy and deranged Eddie Edwards escaped the mental hospital (with help from Raven) and attacked Moose. Impact have really done a great job reinventing Eddie Edwards and doing a loose canon gimmick well (Dean Ambrose take note). This was a really good show, Impact is definitely my favourite wrestling show at the moment and I’m delighted that they’ve finally found the balance between in ring action and story which is something every other company is struggling with at the moment. 

Sun 16th Dec 2018

Today was one of two days that the annual Brass Band came to play outside the cafe. You wouldn’t think such a quaint little show would draw much of a crowd but fuck me you’d be wrong. Myself and Ashley were rushed off our fucking feet today but weirdly it wasn’t exactly busy it’s just that the few customers we did have In were ordering the most difficult items on the menu to make. We have a Christmas wrap on right now and seemingly everyone was coming in and ordering it. Even though we ordered shitloads of stuff to make sure we were prepared for any sort of rush we couldn’t have prepared for everyone coming in and ordering one item. Today was the most stressful day of my life since…well yesterday really. 

As soon as I got home I watched the newest episode of MLW Fusion which airs for free on YouTube tonight. MLW was an ECW-Esque promotion that first existed back in 2002 but it folded rather quickly. However it has recently been rebooted and while it still has the feel of the original with emphasis on relaxed rules and a lot of the hardcore style the promotion also utilises a lot of Lucha Libre action too. The first thing I noticed about the show is how much louder and passionate the fans are compared to iMPACT!’s crowd (although to be fair MLW history doesn’t have a 15 year history of insulting their fans intelligence). This week’s show featured a 4 man ladder match for the vacant MLW Middleweight title: Teddy Hart vs Desmond Xavier vs El Hijo De LA Park vs Gringo Loco. I can remember seeing Teddy Hart in TNA fifteen years ago and being sort of impressed by what I saw even if he did wrestle while dressed as a based potato. However what I most remember him for is his reputation for being a stuck up bastard who frequently challenged the higher ups in every company he ever worked for. Unfortunately he was never high enough on the card to get away with this kind of resistance which resulted in no one wanting to hire him, until now of course. Desmond Xavier is one of my favourite high flyers in the world at the moment and I really hope that they do more with him in IMPACT! and MLW. El Hijo De LA Park is (as you might expect) the son of famous luchador and WCW star LA Park who I used to watch when I was a kid (it’s getting really scary for me to see that the kids of wrestlers I watched in my youth are now becoming wrestlers themselves) and Gringo Loco to be honest looks like a fucking jobber you might have seen getting the shit kicked out of him by Braun Strowman a few years ago. This ladder match was quite entertaining if a little sloppy with Loco mistiming a lot of his moves. Also there was a really sloppy moment for Park where Xavier was on the top of the ladder trying to unhook the belt and Park, rather than hit him to stop him from grabbing it, grabbed hold of another ladder to prepare for a spot meaning Xavier had to act as if he couldn’t get the belt unhooked before Park finally came over and whacked him. Teddy Hart got the win and the title in a pretty sloppy but fun match. Next up a singles match between Dragon Lee and DJZ which was really good. Both men are great high flyers and I’ve hoped for better things for DJZ for ages since he is a really talented guy but Impact don’t seem to want to do anything with the guy. This is the first time I’ve seen Dragon Lee perform but I was really impressed with what I saw. There was a great moment where Lee hit a double foot stomp (Finn Baylor’s Coup De Grace) on DJZ to the outside. There was another great moment where Lee goes for a Last Ride but Z counters into a Canadian Destroyer from off of Lee’s shoulders! Lee ended up getting the win after two Dragon Drivers in an impressive match. The main event featured Mexican star Rush defeating Rich Swann. Rush is the leader of the original Los Ingobernables stable (which later influenced the stable Los Ingobernables De Japon and you can really see Rush’s influence on Naito). Rush is a really cool heel, showboating throughout most of his matches but backing it up with his vicious brawling style. I want to see much more of Rush I’m not sure if he is in MLW long term or just to plug his upcoming pay per view fight with the original LA Park (who by the way has gotten faaaaat: 

Seriously how is it possible for a skeleton to be morbidly obese?) Throughout the night former UFC fighter “Filthy” Tom Lawlor tried to track down MLW champion Low Ki and ended up brawling with him in the ring at the conclusion of the show adding fuel to the fire for their upcoming title match. This show and the promotion on the whole is a mixed bag. Most of the wrestlers (especially the high flying ones like Rush, Dragon Lee and Desmond Xavier) are a perfect fit for this kind of promotion but some of the wrestlers are really quite sloppy and don’t quite fit in well with the true pros. Either way this particular episode was okay and the promotion puts in free shows every Saturday so I think I’ll keep watching for now. 

Before bed I watched the Lakers vs Washington Wizards game and boy did my team get thrashed. By the final quarter the Lakers were trailing by 20 points. The only two players scoring any three pointers were Kentavious Caldwell-Pope (KCP) and Kyle Kuzma but Kuzma kept on getting fouled so his scoring prowess was pretty much nullified. Another disappointing loss for my Lakers but at the very least I got a good laugh out out the fact that the Lakers’ power forward Mortiz Wagner looks identical to Steven, the kid from the Greatest Freakout Ever videos (the kid who shoved a remote control up his arse).

Mon 17th Dec 2018

This afternoon I looked into other items on my bucket list that I could do next year. As we’ve discussed already 2018 was great for me gigs wise but other than New York I haven’t had that many experiences relating to activities as I would have liked to. Since I have failed miserably over the last few years to complete any New Years resolutions I thought about trying something a bit different next year by making it my resolution will to fail my motorbike test, not save any money and to put on a shitload of weight. However I soon thought there had to be a better strategy than that so I went over my list and tried to pick out a few things that I could work on gradually throughout the year and some things that I could do in one day. Throughout the year I will be working on the following: 

Studying for motorbike test
Writing a sitcom
Learning a foreign language
Recording a podcast every day
Sticking to a diet to try and get down to 12 stone
Reading all my comics 

However there are other items on my list that are experiences rather than tasks or missions and I tried to select which ones seemed easiest to tick off. The one which would probably be the most easily doable would probably be to get a piercing as I could literally just go to a tattoo parlour now and get one done…or two…or four. I’d like to get rings on both my ears but also I’ve always had a weird urge to get my nipples pierced as well (perhaps “always” is the wrong word. I don’t remember wanting it when I was one. That sounds like something Sacha Baron Cohen’s Bruno would do to his baby) so I may see how the ears feel and then if it looks and feels okay I may move down to the nipples but definitely not the penis or scrotum. Next up I’ve wanted to get therapy for a while just to try and get to the bottom of…well, why I’m the way I am (a cunt). There’s a therapist in Sunderland that has very reasonable rates so I may pop along to her to get my brain picked and may even get some tips on how to make myself happier. There is also a place in South Shields that offers Jetski lessons (who for some reason have tried to keep their very existence hidden from humanity because I had to follow about three different links on three different website just to get their fucking contact details) so that should do just fine for the summer plus I want to take some surf lessons properly this time (last summer I did have one lesson and gave up rather quickly). Finally I found a place that does offer wing walking experiences and although it is incredibly pricy (£499 for 30 minutes in the air!) it’s still something I’ve wanted to do for a while. I’ve cobbled together I quick display of how I could work the various experiences and gigs into the first eight months of the year: 

Jan – Piercing
Feb – Therapy and Judas Priest
Mar – Motorbike Theory Test and Republica
Apr – Suede
May – Wing Walking
Jun – Jetski lessons, Eagles & Lynyrd Skynyrd
Jul – Surfing Lessons and KISS
Aug – Edinburgh Fringe festival 

If can do all of these in addition to all of the things I’m going to be working on throughout the year then 2019 could theoretically be my most productive year ever in terms of experiences and personal achievements.

Tue 18th Dec 2018

I didn’t expect this to become a regular thing but I spent the evening doing more ridiculous live Tweeting during Hollyoaks. There are a group of four or five people who read, like, share or retweet the things I tweet about the show every single day which is the closest I will ever come to having any kind of “fan base”. As strange and pathetic as it sounds it’s actually nice being part of a little community who share the same ridiculous interest and your equally ridiculous comments. Today I was discussing the character of Donna Marie who is a former prostitute and the actress playing the role may be the most perfectly cast actress in history because I totally buy her as a street walking whore. She has terrible teeth and the worst skin is have ever seen on a woman. The thing I can’t pin down is if the makeup department have made her up to look so trashy or if she actually looks like that. I can imagine her asking the producers of Hollyoaks what kind of makeup and prosthetics they’re going to use to make her look like a whore and the producers being like “…no you’re fine the way you are”. Donna Marie’s storyline today was trying to get her kids school head teacher to allow her back in the school play after she is thrown out for bad behaviour. I tweeted out: 

“If Donna Marie wants her kid to be in the school play then why doesn’t she just give the principal sexual favours like my Mum did. You may scoff but I was great in that play, I remembered both of my lines”

I also wondered about the character of Sinead (another former prostitute) who got up to all sorts of seedy shit the last time she was in the show but somehow she is now a nurse at Hollyoaks hospital. How did Sinead get to be a nurse after all the awful crap she’s done plus getting caught planting alcohol in a doctors handbag? It’s the weird thing with soaps that things characters do in one episode can just be forgotten about in subsequent episodes in order to take the character where they want to. Also don’t you need many years of training to be a nurse? Was Sinead whoring herself out at night and going to medical school during the day? The end of the episode was Donna Marie revealing to Sinead’s boyfriend Laurie that she used to be a whore and naturally he’s going to forgive her eventually as this is what happens in soaps but I thought it would be funny if during the Christmas episode Sinead opens her Christmas present from Laurie and it’s a chastity belt. Finally ladies and gentlemen during this episode I came up with what is undoubtably the single greatest proper joke since starting this blog:

“Laurie I’m not saying your girlfriend was a massive whore but doctors are thinking about renaming AIDS “SinAIDS”’

You have to admit as a joke it’s absolutely flawless but the problem is that I can never use this joke in any other context unless I decide to become a stand up comedian who exclusively talks about Hollyoaks and nothing else. 

Wed 19th Dec 2018

Since Christmas is looming and I have done fuck all shopping (this May be the latest I have ever left it) I knew I couldn’t put it off any longer and so made a journey to the Metro Centre to get my shopping over with. I fucking hate shopping (for other people) but today I had a shitload of it to do and to make matters worse none of my family members have any specific hobbies or interests that I could capitalise on and use to buy appropriate gifts for. My strategy was to walk around the Metro Centre aimlessly and just pick up any items that I thought would remotely please any members of my family and continue doing so until I could feel my shoulders start to separate from the weight of the shopping bastards. I did manage to get a few good things that my family will hopefully get some use out of but will also think are quite thoughtful too. I went into the perfume shop for some Dolce and Gabana perfume for my Mum and the lass who served me was perhaps the most beautiful and sexy woman I have ever seen in my entire life. However I’ve gotten to the stage in my life where seeing beautiful women just annoys and angers me more than anything else because in the case of this goddess there was literally nothing I could say or do in a million billion years that would ever make her have the slightest bit of interest in me. This kind of woman’s type is the kind of guy who is 6 foot 5, owns at least two cars and has abs that would make Finn Balor want to wrestle in a t-shirt. As I walked through the main hall I the Metro Centre I tried to process how much it had changed and how many people had strolled through it in the thirty years since it opened (and to be honest I marveled at how different it looked now compared to how it looks in the first episode of Byker Grove which I watched last month). Obviously all of the shops are different and sadly the Metroland amusement park is no longer there which is a huge shame. I can’t fully explain why but there is an undeniable sadness and spookiness in seeing how a place looks now while remembering how it used to look too. After an hour and a half I could finally take no more of this bullshit shopping and decided to fuck of home and pick up some other presents whenever I have a day off between now and Christmas. 

Once I got home I stuck on the Lakers vs the Brooklyn Nets games and I was thrilled from beginning to end. Unfortunately this wasn’t the best game for my Lakers as there were some instances of miscommunication where several Lakers members went for passes but their partners weren’t even in close range and the ball went flying into the crowd. Also maybe it’s just because the Nets players are incredibly skilled at three pointer throws but the Lakers seemed absolutely useless at landing them during this game. The Lakers got some luck towards the end of the fourth quarter when they managed to rebound some sloppy dunk attempts by the Nets and managed to claw their way back up. With 17 seconds remaining the score stood Lakers 106 – Nets 108 so it could have been done but unfortunately the Nets kept their distance long enough for the time to run out and won the game. When the scores are this close this is when basketball gets really thrilling to watch and this was without a doubt the most thrilling game I’ve seen so far

Thu 20th Dec 2018

I love writing this blog but it can’t be denied that it can sometimes be a chore to read. I first became inspired to start this blog in 2012 after discovering Richard Herring wrote a blog every single day. However Herring posts fairly long blog entries for each individual day and since my days aren’t anywhere near as exciting and I don’t have the writing abilities that he does I realized I wouldn’t be able to write a lengthy blog entry every day. Instead I decided to publish the blog once a week containing the entries from the previous seven days. Trouble is when I first started out I was doing what I considered the bare minimum amount of writing which was ten lines per day. However nowadays I actually do put a little bit of effort to write until I am satisfied that I have done a good job not just until I feel I’ve done the smallest amount of effort. This means on days where something quite exciting has happened the entry for that day can be quite long and that means that a blog containing seven entries about days that were quite eventful can be a laborious (or as some have said: “fucking unbearable”) read. Even my closest friends have admitted that although they enjoy it they can’t get through a full blog because it’s too much to ask of them to read a persons childish scribbles about why his life isn’t as idyllic as they’d like it to be for that long. My plan was to create a new blog (which I provisionally titled “Silly Bollocks”) and post daily entries on that site but continue to do my weekly blog here. I selected Tumblr to host my new blog and that was a fucking mistake. After I created the site I tried uploading a blog first using my laptop, then using the site on my phone and I even downloaded the Tumblr app but for whatever reason it just did not want to publish. I uploaded the entire blog on a page but the option to “Publish” was blurred out and wouldn’t go through with it no matter how many times I hit it. Then I tried to add a photo to the blog but the fucking thing started another blog entry consisting solely of the photo I wanted to publish and then wouldn’t let me delete the fucking thing. I started to wonder if this was one of the dreams I’ve been having lately where I’m trying to do something simple like send a text or make a sandwich and for whatever reason nothing seems to go right. I could not be fucking bothered to go through the rigmarole or learning Tumblr from scratch to see why the fuck it wasn’t working the way I expected it to. I’m at the point in my life now where I want the option that’s going to give me the outcome I want with the least amount of effort and Tumblr certainly was not it, so fuck you Tumblr! I may just start a new blog on WordPress called “Why Is Everyone So Fucking Stupid (Every Day)?” and in addition to posting the weekly collection I’ll also post individual days separately so I can give people a choice between not reading one entry at a time or not reading the whole thing altogether. 

Fri 21st Dec 2018

The mood was a bit low in the house tonight because baby Luna was feeling a bit poorly. She hasn’t slept for a full day and her bowel movements aren’t as regular as they should be. Not only that but Grandad has been even more confused than he normally is. Tonight me and Mam found him sat on the floor beside his bed saying that he was trying to walk to the toilet. It is really heartbreaking to see this side of his condition, where he can’t seem to understand that he can’t walk and has been unable to for years. Of course to him it must feel like yesterday he was walking and no he’s woken up this morning and suddenly found himself unable to walk. While I was wheeling him towards the toilet he told me that he wants the doctor to refer him to a physiotherapist to help him strengthen his legs. This was a surprisingly self aware thing for Grandad to say mainly because it’s the first time I’ve heard him admit out loud that he knows he can’t walk but that he wants to try and do something about it. Unfortunately I think Grandad has left physiotherapy too late for it to have any kind of impact on him. Mam and his doctors gave him the opportunity years ago to see a physiotherapist when his Parkinson’s was first taking effect but he just didn’t want to (he even refused the small exercises the doctor gave him to strengthen his legs which he could do while sat in his armchair or laying in bed. Maybe they would have helped him at the time or maybe the result would have been this level of disability either way but it was still really sad to hear Grandad in such a confessional manner for the first time. 

Later in the night I tried to watch the LA Lakers game but kept getting interrupted by Julie and Michelle from work who were trying to get me to come on FaceTime and Facebook messenger to chat to them and he rest of the work crew who were on their Christmas night out. I didn’t answer at first because I suspected that I would get a bunch of drunken women shouting incoherent bollocks at me but after SEVEN fucking calls I finally caved in and answered the call and wouldn’t you know it I got a bunch of drunken women screaming incoherent bollocks at me. As expected they called me boring for not wanting to come out but I think it’s for the best if I don’t. I always felt slightly uncomfortable on nights out with large groups of people even when I used to drink. I can never relax and be myself on nights out or perhaps the problem is that I try not to be myself because I know that I’m a wanker, so try my best not to act like a wanker but in doing so end up looking like an even bigger wanker. The truth is that I’d really love to come out and have fun with them because they are all cool as fuck. The problem is ME, I don’t like myself and I don’t want to ruin other people’s good time by being in their company. I’d love to be interesting, funny, charming, I’d love to be able to relate to people and join in with their banter and their discussions in a meaningful and intelligent way…but it’s just not going to happen. I never properly developed social skills as a child and I’ve only ever had a select group of friends to practice my social skills on as an adult. So while I would love to be able to join in with this sort of thing I realized a while ago that it’s just not me. I was always the kid who would rather stay in his bedroom than go out and I probably always will be. 

Anywho that was the last week of my life. If you enjoyed this blog you can read it every single week. If you create a WordPress account and follow Why Is Everyone So Fucking Stupid? then a notification will be sent to your e-mail every Saturday to remind you that the latest blog has been published. Oh, and please tell your friends about this blog too

Next week i’ll be telling you about the time I took a hundred nuns to Newcastle. Until then…

Follow your hearts and keep smiling motherfuckers

Axl

🙂

Why Is Everyone So Fucking Stupid? #315 “Paul McCartney and the L.A Lakers”

Sat 8th Dec 2018

For the last few years I haven’t had much of a regular routine outside of staying in bed eating junk food and watching YouTube videos every day and night. When I was younger my days would be taken up by watching the wrestling but in recent years that option has not become viable due to Raw and Smackdown being absolute dogshit (as of this writing they are drawing their lowest ratings in history). I also used to watch Hollyoaks every single day but in recent years I’ve been drifting in and out of the show, usually letting 10 or 15 episodes build up on my Sky Plus then binge watching them in one day which isn’t the ideal way to watch any show. However I’m developing somewhat of a regular routine nowadays now that I have four wrestling programmes I watch every week (NXT, Impact, MLW & Ring of Honor) plus I’ve gotten back into watching Hollyoaks every day. To my shame I’ve even started live tweeting during the fucking show, mainly making really inappropriate comments about the serious drama that’s going on in the show. For instance there is a character in the show called Prince who is currently preparing to have one of his testicles removed (although he always states “I need to have my testicle removed” rather than “I need to have one of my testicles removed” which makes me question whether he only has the one). There was a scene in last nights episode where Prince was expressing fear over losing one of his testicles which is why I decided to tweet: “Don’t worry Prince, Hitler only had one ball and he turned out alright”). Now when I resolved to make an effort to get out of the rut I’ve been stuck in for the last few years, I’m not sure if live tweeting testicular cancer jokes during a teen oriented soap opera is a step up or step down from YouTube binging but it’s certainly much more fun. Having a regular thing to look forward to really makes you feel as though your life is starting to take shape. To further this line of thinking I decided to get into a sport since I think everyone should follow at least one. Obviously I don’t want to get into soccer or rugby or any of the pussy English sports, if I was going to get into a sport I was going to get into a good one i.e an American one. A year or so the only way to watch the American sports (basketball, baseball, hockey, football) was to either pay a huge amount to get access to every game or to buy a package from Sky which would only grant you access to select games. However now they all offer packages where you can select a team and for £14.99 a month (£4 a week!!!) you can watch every single one of their games which is right up my alley.  I was hoping to get into baseball and American football but the seasons are over for both and don’t start up again until March so for the moment I’m going to focus on basketball. I subscribed to the NBA App and picked the LA Lakers as my team because I have a hat with their logo on and picking them means that I now won’t have to watch every team play a game, choose which one I like best and then buy one of their hats. Having never watched a basketball game in my life (unless you count the one in Space Jam…..which I do) I tuned in tonight to see my team The L.A Lakers face off against the Memphis Grizzlies. While I have no idea what all the fucking stats on the screen during a game mean and am unfamiliar with all the game terms hopefully I’ll pick it up as I go along. In terms of the actual game I was absolutely captivated from beginning to end, it was fucking awesome. A basketball game may not have as much drama or tension as a football game but if the scores are equal during the last few minutes of a basketball game seconds can feel like hours as you hope your team manages to pull through. The Lakers led by Lebron James (I will learn the other players names at some point) are fucking phenomenal, watching how precise and methodical these guys are you’d be forgiven for thinking that this game was staged like a Harlem Globetrotters game is but the fact is that these guys are able to pull off amazing plays so effortlessly is because they are one of the best teams in the world. I also really enjoyed the way they fill time when a quarter is over or when a time out is called. Every time the game stops they either cut to a presenter in the crowd who gives an audience member a chance to win some prizes or a variety act comes in the court to entertain the crowd. On this occasion a group of trampoline performers came onto the court and did some impressive flips and twists for the  crowd (they are basically “land dolphins”).  I’m only one game in but I’m already hooked on basketball and I can’t believe I’ve put off getting into an American sport for this long.

Sun 9th Dec 2018 

At work today Tony was mocking me for my decision to stay in a hostel during my trip to Glasgow to see Paul McCartney next week, stating it would be safer to take a sleeping bag with me and sleep in the woods. I explained to him that I looked into hotels two months ago and the only ones left were asking for £100+ for one fucking night, so if it’s a choice between that and a £12 hostel I’m obviously going to take my chances with the latter. I went to LastMinute to prove to Tony that all the hotels were asking for an extortionate amount of money for one night and to my joy I discovered that some new, cheaper rooms had actually become available. Always keen not to be robbed or stabbed by heroine addicts in the night I decided to go for one of the hotels instead of the hostel and managed to find one that is relatively close to both The Hydro and the train station and was available for just £40 so I snapped it up. Although I was slightly curious to find out what a night in a hostel was like I’m relieved to be staying in a nice place where I will have my own fucking room (Though I may still go to the hostel to see what kind of scum I would have been staying with). 

Mon 10th Dec 2018

Not a lot of people know this but my grandmother was a Titanic victim. Her last words as she lay dying outside the cinema were “I can’t believe I sat through three hours of that shit!”. Anywho…

Despite this year not even being over yet my gig calendar is already filling up. A few of the groups that I have already seen live have announced shows but this time they’re coming up North (Suede, KISS & Dropkick Murphys) plus I have the rescheduled Republica gig to go to in March. However some other groups I like but have never seen live have announced shows too including Judas Priest, Eagles and Lynyrd Skynyrd). I don’t want next year to be all about going to see gigs but I said the same thing last year but my favourite groups and singers just kept announcing shows left right and centre. In fact the only non gig based item on my Bucket List that I’ve managed to cross off this year was New York which was awesome but I definitely feel like I could have done much more. I had intended to pass my motorbike test before the year was out but I quickly lost enthusiasm for studying the test and gave up after only three months (though to make sure this doesn’t happen again I’m going to book a test to coincide with the time I take off for the Republica gig in March meaning I will have no choice but to study for it). I might use my Christmas money straight away to book a hotel and travel to Edinburgh for the festival next year. There are a number of items on the list that I can do for free so I think it would be best to start off with these items. These items are: 

12 stone
Learn a foreign language
Start a Podcast
Write a Sitcom
Write a Screenplay
Read all my comics
Watch every WWE pay per view 

These are the ones I can work on constantly throughout the year at no cost to myself. Most notably the task of finally sitting down to write a six episode sitcom series is calling out to me so I think I’m going to try to get that one done first. Also I really REALLY tried this year to get into shape about 208 times (and got really close during one of those tries) but quickly lost enthusiasm for that too. Constantly going for runs and to the gym seemed to take up too much time in my schedule leaving little time for the other things I wanted to do. To combat this next year I am going to be focusing on diet only, aiming to get rid of the weight before I start worrying about the exercise. I want 2019 to be an absolute belter of a year since it will mark the year I enter my 30s after all so I want to get them off to a good start. 

Tue 11th Dec 2018

Normally it really annoys me when people won’t shut up about how adorable their new kid or niece / nephew is….. but mine actually is adorable so fuck off. Luna had a bit of a shout today but luckily this happened while I was at work so I didn’t have to deal with any of it. I got in just after she’d been fed so I got to hold her when she was mellowed out. I tried singing to her since Lacey liked that when she was a baby but Luna seemed utterly indifferent to it. I guess it’s a good thing that she isn’t frightened of me but the look she was giving me as I was singing “Ocean Man” by Ween, was a look of “What the fuck are you supposed to be?”. In the years to come she will no doubt come to think of me as her “Weird Uncle Axl” so I suppose it’s okay that I let her get used to my unconventional behaviour now.  After spending time with Luna I watched the LA Lakers vs Miami Heat game which was amazing and to by delight the Lakers triumphed after a very close contest. Sadly I knew the result going in since I was watching the game on archive and the NBA app displayed the scores. Luckily there is an option in the settings to hide the scores so from now on I’ll be able to be totally surprised by the results. 

Wed 12th Dec 2018

I was hoping that the idiots in charge would vote out Theresa May and stick her in a care home where she belongs tonight but for some reason they decided to let this fuckwit stay Prime Minister a little while longer so she can continue Brexit negotiations despite not knowing what Brexit is. I was going to go on a huge rant asking how these twats could have let this happen but then I saw that the latest OSW Review so I completely stop caring about this retarded political water balloon fight and instead sat down for the night and watched the lads review King of the Ring 1993. This wrestling review show really is one of the best things in my life at the moment. The guys who make this show are so funny and clever and manage to present an alternative view of the wrestling we remember from our childhood, often acknowledging how crappy a lot of it was in hindsight but also giving credit where credit is due to the good wrestling. I really wish I was ambitious and hard working enough to turn my hobby of wrestling fandom into something creative (I’ve made a start with my wrestling review blog but nowhere near the effort that these lads have put into their show). Speaking of wrestling it was Wednesday night which meant it was time for NXT so I jumped into bed and gave it a watch. I was glad to see Punishment Martinez make his debut on the show but disappointed that they jobbed him out clean to Matt Riddle. Nothing against Matt Riddle as he is a great athlete but a guy like Martinez should come in strong and definitely not lose his first match to another new guy. Could they not have had him destroy some jobbers for the first few weeks he was there, just to get over how damn strong and menacing the guy is? On the subject of his menace I think that this guy has the kind of gimmick that should be enhanced. Martinez’ gimmick is that of a demon but unlike most demonic characters before him like Undertaker, Kane and Bray Wyatt, Martinez displays no supernatural abilities and i stead just comes out looking scary to a slightly dark theme song. I really hope they go deeper into his character because it would accompany his big powerhouse style perfectly. I came up with an idea that he could have two managers, one who tells him to do good and the other who tells him to do evil and whichever of the two gets the upper hand determines how Martinez will behave week to week. Or even better he carries with him a pack of tarot cards which he uses to decide his actions (which I’ll admit is my way of ripping off Two Face from Batman). There was also a great segment in the main event where NXT champion Tommaso Ciampa was confronted by Alistair Black who wanted his rematch for the title but Johnny Gargano came out saying he wasn’t done with Black. Ciampa stick his nose in and manipulated them in to facing each other in a steel cage at Takeover. Gargano further wound Black up by reminding him that he attacked him in the parking lot a few months back and put him on the shelf. Gargano avoided a Black Mass but Black hit one on Ciampa instead. This was so well done, Black really sold the fact that he wanted Ciampa but his pride meant he wouldn’t let Gargano get away with his torment. On paper this seems like really simplistic booking but I think this kind of booking works in NXT (as long as it’s in the main event) and not on the main roster because in general the guys are given more control over their promos than they would be on the main roster and so are more committed and engaged with what they’re saying. Also I’ve seen all of these guys work in the past so when they say they’re going to put on a quality match I believe them. I’m really loving NXT right now, I wish that more of the matches had stakes to them and weren’t just exhibition matches but for the most part the action is always top notch. 

Thu 13th Dec 2018

Tony had me in a fit this afternoon due to his dirty rendition of The Twelve Days Of Christmas. I can’t even remember half of the foul, scatological stuff he included as part of this song (though I do remember it ended with “and a blowjob on my bellend”) but it was more the fact that he was singing this song with great pleasure and was clearly so proud of himself for singing it despite being nearly fifty years old. If we were a pair of 10 year olds and he was singing this sing then I’d no doubt be laughing at the song itself but in this case the laughter came from the fact that it was being sung by someone who you’d normally think would have outgrown this kind of smut decades ago. I have to admit that I used to be really scared of getting old until I started working at the cafe and met Tony. He’s demonstrated to me that it’s perfectly okay to be incredibly immature and puerile even in middle age since he has his own house, car, wife and children despite having the behavioural patterns of a thirteen year old boy. If nothing else I’m really glad that I met Tony because it’s reassured me that you never truly have to grow up. 

I spent the evening live Tweeting really daft comments during Hollyoaks again. In this episode the character of Jesse gets kidnapped by enemies of his brother Liam. To restrain him the kidnappers wrapped him up in Christmas lights which were flashing throughout the episode which I thought was a funny little touch and I Tweeted that it would be better if they’d have tortured him by dunking his head in a bowl of Buck’s fizz. Later in the episode Jesse is rescued but Liam carries him away from his kidnappers while he is still tied up to the chair in the Christmas light. This was Jesse’s last appearance in this episode but I thought it would have been funny if during the end credits we just saw Liam trying to untangle Jesse from the lights. Or even better: at the start of the the next episode Jesse and Liam arrive back at their flat with Jesse still tied up. The two of them vow revenge on the kidnappers and decide to put their plan into action but Jesse reminds Liam that he is still tangled up and the rest of the episode is just two people trying to untangle the lights in real time. If genuinely love to see the show troll the fans just the one time, to see how long they could stand it before tapping out. There’s an episode of The Goon Show which is just 28 minutes of a man knocking on a door and at the end of the show the occupant of the house opens the door and the man asks “Mr Smith?” and the occupant replies “No” and shuts the door. I think this idea for Hollyoaks could be a modern day version of that and if only the crew had the balls to do it I think it would be a TV highlight that would get everyone talking about it….Oh my God, I just justified doing something stupid  on a TV show by reasoning it would briefly get people discussing the product…I have become VINCE RUSSO! 

Fri 14th Dec 2018

Off to Glasgow this morning for the final gig of 2018, and what a gig it is…it’s the one…the only (unless the rumours about him dying and being replaced with a lookalike are true)….PAUL MCCARTNEY. It’s hard to do justice to the effect that this man has had not just in music but on popular culture. Yes there are certain bands that have huge fan bases throughout the world but The Beatles are one of the few musical acts to have received universal acclaim and it’s practically a sin not to like them (only Elvis Presley really equals them in terms of worldwide recognition). When The Beatles came along they brought with them a fresh sound and so many bands in the immediate aftermath of their formation took on their sound and tried to be more like them. I’ve wanted to see Paul live for ages now but have missed several opportunities to do so. The ticket and travel has not been cheap (not to mention the ticket accidentally got sent to Spain) but when an opportunity to see a living fucking legend presents itself you better believe I’ll jump through flaming hoops with ball clamps on in order to get there. I’ve never been to Scotland before but today I made the very long journey to Glasgow for the gig (I also briefly stopped in Edinburgh but hopefully next summer I will finally get to go to the Edinburgh Fringe festival). I didn’t get to see much of the city because it was fucking freezing so I got my hotel up on Googlemaps and made a mad dash to it. The hotel was nothing special but it beats staying in a hostel or in the fucking woods for the night. I still had four hours to kill before the show so I watched last nights Lakers vs Houston Rockets game. The game was pretty much evenly matched in the first half until the Rockets’ shooting guard James Harden came on. Throughout the third quarter Harden kept calling for and was granted fouls to the point where the Lakers clearly started to suspect that he was deliberately trying to get himself fouled (to the extent that LeBron James and Kyle Kuzma started trying to block Harden while keeping their arms behind their backs). In the final quarter Harden gave it both barrels and was scoring three pointers time after time. The Lakers tried to do the same but kept missing. The Lakers played well throughout the first three quarters but if you’d just tuned in during the final quarter you’d be forgiven for thinking that the Rockets were the pro team playing an exhibition game against a bunch of amateurs. This was a really thrilling game and while I would have loved the Lakers to win the Rockets clearly outmatched them tonight. I finally set off the the venue and arrived slightly earlier than planned. The Hydro is a beautiful arena and McCartney and the crew put on a Hell of a pre-show for audience as they filed in. On the screens they projected an image of Paul’s childhood home before tracking upwards revealing that the home was the beginning of a huge skyscraper with each layer representing a different stage of McCartney’s career. After an hour the lights went out and the arena flipped out as the one and only Paul McCartney took to the stage. Immediately Paul launches into Beatles hits beginning with “A Hard Day’s Night” and my heart was instantly warmed as I had at long last heard a Beatles song performed by a Beatle live. Paul commented throughout the show that he and the crew knew which songs the crowd liked because whenever they’d do a Beatles song the arenas would light up due to the crowd getting their phones out and whenever they’d do a song from their new album the crowd would go completely silent. A recurring motif in the Beatles’ music was their dry sense of humour and it’s great to see that Paul has retained this throughout his career. Paul also played “Can’t Buy Me Love” which wasn’t listed in the set list which was a welcome surprise but to my disappointment he didn’t play one of my favourite songs “I’ve Just Seen A Face” despite being listed in the set list! I know you can’t always expect hear your favourites when you go to see live but I was really looking forward to this particular song. At the half way point Paul talked about the signs in the crowd, noting one person holding up a sign reading “I’VE SEEN PAUL 120 TIMES!!!” and commenting “Blimey, you must be loaded!” (I thought it would have been funny if he’d have said “I don’t mean to be rude mate but I had a bit of a messy divorce a few years back, you couldn’t lend me a few quid could you?”). The highlights of the night for me were Paul’s rendition of “Blackbird” which I’ve long considered to be one of the most beautiful songs I’ve ever heard so it felt even more special live. I also enjoyed “Obladi Oblada” which isn’t considered one of the better Beatles songs but I liked it and so did the crowd as Paul led us all in a singalong. Finally Paul finished the set with the amazing “Hey Jude” which got everyone on their feet singing “Naaaaa naa naa NA NA NA NAAAAAAA!!!!” and waving along with this absolute legend. I left the arena with a massive smile on my face and frankly I don’t see how I couldn’t have, this gig was practically guaranteed to be incredible, it fucking Paul McCartney for Christ’s sake. There are only a handful of groups / artists I would ever travel this far and jump through this many hoops in order to see and Paul McCartney sits right at the top of that list. A thousand years from now people will still b listening to the music of The Beatles and revelling in it’s glory. However I am part of one of the last generation of people who will be able to see this legend live so I’d be a fool not to do so. This was an incredible night and I’m so glad I went as I can now say that I’ve now seen one of The Beatles and one of the greatest songwriters in history. 

While I’ve really enjoyed travelling all over the country to see my favourite acts, doing so has meant that I’ve seriously neglected other things that I’ve been wanting to do for ages. I’m hoping that as many as possible of the remaining bands on my bucket list will be doing gigs up north so I won’t have to travel so far and spend so much money going to see them since doing so this year meant that I’m having to miss out on Wrestlemania next year. So I’m hoping that this gig was the last big one for a while 

Anywho that was the last week of my life. If you enjoyed this blog you can read it every single week. If you create a WordPress account and follow Why Is Everyone So Fucking Stupid? then a notification will be sent to your e-mail every Saturday to remind you that the latest blog has been published. Oh, and please tell your friends about this blog too

Next week i’ll be telling you about the time I took a hundred nuns to Newcastle. Until then…

Follow your hearts and keep smiling motherfuckers

Axl

🙂

Why Is Everyone So Fucking Stupid? #314 “Welcome to the World Luna June”

Sat 1st Dec 2018

I received a email from Viagogo, the company I bought my Paul McCartney tickets from this afternoon. The email read: 

“Dear Axl, 

We are contacting you regarding your order for Paul McCartney on 14 December 2018, 18:30

UPS has tried to deliver the ticket to your home address but have not been able to do so. Your ticket has been left at a UPS affiliated collection point and is awaiting your collection. 

You can collect your ticket at 

57 Roselina De Castro 

Vigo

36201”

Now call me crazy but something about that address doesn’t sound very Sunderlandy. I typed the address into Googlemaps and had to use all my self control not to throw my phone across the room when I discovered that the address was in fucking Spain. I deal with fuckups and fuckwits on an almost daily basis so you’d think their stupidity would have mellowed me by now but this may be the undisputed universal heavyweight champion of fuckups. Why in the name of fucking Christ were my tickets in Spain? What went through the mind of this company who decided to take tickets ordered by an Englishman who lives in England to drop them off in Spain. Normally when the delivery people miss you when they’re scheduled to drop off a package they tend to slip a note through the door telling you they’ve left it with a neighbour. But in this case there was no note stuck through the door and the guy delivering the tickets presumably thought “Hmm, they’re not in……better leave this in Spain then”. I didn’t get this email until late in the day and so couldn’t contact them and since tomorrow is Sunday I’ll stand even less of a chance then so I will have to wait until Monday to find out what the fuck has happened. I mean I could go on and on about how fucking moronic this situation is but to be honest I think the facts speak for themselves. My Paul McCartney tickets are in Spain

So after finding out that my Paul McCartney tickets were in Spain I went for a run to try and take my mind off the fact that my Paul McCartney tickets were in Spain. Tonight’s run was actually quite pleasurable and I finished it in record time. Normally I can’t enjoy a run because I’m constantly aware of the fact that I’m running and thinking of how much more running I need to do but tonight my mind wasn’t focused on the running as it was busy wondering how the fuck my Paul McCartney tickets could be in Spain. Earlier in the day I had successfully completed 1000 stomach crunches and 1000 weight lifts which was all I had committed to but for some reason I felt the urge to do a little more and push myself since every little extra bit of exercise works. 2018 didn’t go quite according to plan but I think if I enter 2019 in fairly reasonable shape then that should motivate me to stick to my promises and work harder to achieve my goals this time around. 

Sun 2nd Dec 2018

After the major fuckup that happened yesterday I was a bit nervous opening my emails this morning in case I’d gotten one during the night telling me that my Paul McCartney tickets were now in Baghdad. I finally opened them however and was delighted to see some fucking good news for once. Just A Minute, the awesome Radio 4 show is starting a new series soon and has opened it’s random draw for free tickets. I love Just A Minute and I hope I win one of the tickets (as this would enable me to cross “TV / radio recording” off my bucket list) but I have to say their process of filling up the recording is a bit of a strange one. As is often the case with tv and radio show recordings the ticket recipients are decided by a random drawing instead of selling them like bands or comedians do. However they also stress that they purposely give away more tickets than the venue can house because surprisingly often a lot of ticket winners don’t turn up. First of all I would say that if a lot of people weren’t turning up on a regular basis I’d say that would be the first sign to change my ticket distribution policy and secondly surely if they sold the damn tickets rather than give them away it would pretty much guarantee a full house since people are less likely to no show a gig if they’ve paid to be there. While I really hope I get the tickets there’s still no guarantee I’ll actually get to see the show. The fact that they give away more tickets than the venue can support means that it’s first come first serve and if you don’t get there super early then you get told to fuck off (Not by Nicholas Parsons of course). This is not the first time I’ve applied for tickets to this show and every time before this I have gotten an email saying “unfortunately you have been unsuccessful on this occasion” but hopefully one day very soon I will get an email saying “Hi Axl this is Nikki Sanderson. I’ve read all the dirty things that you’ve written about me on your blog and I have to say I like it you dirty boy. Give me your address so I can come over there and fuck you until your cock falls off”….and also another email telling me that I got the tickets. 

Mon 3rd Dec 2018

This afternoon I called up the cunts who said that my Paul McCartney tickets were in Spain to get it sorted out. I called up UPS and their answerphone message gives you about a dozen options before it arrives at “issues with deliveries” and when you finally get there they ask that you have your tracking number ready but you have to read it outloud so that the answerbot can look it up. The trouble is the tracking number is about 21 digits long and I must have tried it at least thirty times before it finally recognised the damn thing and put me through to the next stage of the gauntlet. I finally got to speak to a human being after twenty minutes but for some reason although I could hear her she couldn’t hear me and so hung up (I used to praise the Lord when this used to happen at the call centre so I could dump a potentially annoying customer but now that I’ve been on the receiving end it just doesn’t seem as funny any more. So I had to start from the beginning, another ten minutes trying to get the answering machine to recognise my tracking number only this time just as I was about to speak to someone I ran out of fucking credit and this started to feel like some sort of practical joke someone was playing on me. When I was a teenager there was a show in MTV called “Boiling Points” where cast members of the show would do their best to piss off of annoy members of the public and if they could last five minutes without flipping out and screaming then they would get some money. Part of me was starting to wonder if the show was being rebooted and I was on it and the way they had tried to get me to flip out was to send my Paul McCartney tickets to a foreign country and then make it impossible to speak to someone about it. I finally got to speak to a human being and I explained the situation to him. He checked his records and said “Oh, well it looks like there’s been some sort of mixup here” and I replied “Yeah the mixup is that your delivery company put my tickets in Spain instead of through my letterbox”. I asked him how this monumental fuckup could have happened and he admitted he didn’t have a clue. I really wanted to scream at this cunt but I managed to stay calm, continuously explaining to myself that this guy is just a drone who works for these idiots and it wasn’t his fault. I asked the guy if I could get another set of tickets or a refund but he assured me that he would make sure that they tickets would be mailed to me immediately at no extra cost. I was happy with this but still pissed off that I hadn’t gotten an answer as to why my tickets got sent so far away in the first place. I guess this is going to join “The Mystery of the Wallet on the Pavement” https://whyiseveryonesofuckingstupid.wordpress.com/2017/07/22/why-is-everyone-so-fucking-stupid-242-operation-pecks-and-abs-2-freddys-revenge/ and “The Mystery Of the Ninjas Who Kidnapped Samoa Joe” https://cultaholic.com/lists/10-wrestling-mysteries-that-still-havent-been-solved/3/ in the list of batshit insane situations I will never know the answer to.

Tue 4th Dec 2018

Because my sister is now a week past her due date she decided that today she was going to the hospital to induce labour. As she was bidding Grandad’s carer goodbye she started to cry, telling them she was afraid but the carer assured her that her daughter was the biggest wimp in the world and she got through labour fine so my sister should have no problem. As my sister came to hug me goodbye I reassured her that everything would be fine and because I’m me I tried to lighten the mood by saying something completely stupid and went with “I’ve never been more excited…because I’ve just ordered a 12 inch pizza with extra cheese and onion rings….and also I’m going to be an uncle again”. She seemed to take it in good stride but to be honest I was trying to keep my own fears and nerves under control because I was scared as fuck. Not just because childbirth can be incredibly painful but also this was the last time I would see my sister without any children and next time I saw her our whole worlds would have changed, obviously changed for the better with a new beautiful baby girl but the prospect of change is always a little scary at first. Mam and my sisters boyfriend took her to the hospital at 4 in the afternoon and she began the child inducement fairly soon afterwards. Mam didn’t get home until late and as soon as she went to bed she got a call from the hospital to tell her that my sister had starting having contractions and the baby was on the way. Mam jumped in a taxi back to the hospital but I had to stay in the house to look after Lucy and Grandad. I did manage to get a little bit of sleep but I was awake most of the night filled with excitement knowing that my baby niece was on the way. 

Wed 5th Dec 2018

I woke up early and immediately got on the phone to Mam for an update on the baby situation. My clearly distraught Mam told me that my sister was still in labour and that things had gone spectacularly wrong. The surgeon delivering the baby cut my sister too wide and she lost a lot of blood. I spent the rest of the morning concerned and hoping my sister and the baby would be okay. Luckily I got another call in the afternoon telling me that everything was fixed up and at 11:02 this morning the world welcomed baby Luna June:

As soon as she sent me the photo of my new little princess I cried for the first time in ages and really who can blame me, she’s fucking perfect. By the way my sister gave her the middle name June after my grandmother who passed away in 1994 which is an extra sweet little added touch which further demonstrate just how loving my sister is. I won’t get to meet Luna until either tomorrow or the day after depending on what time I finish work and if they let my sister out of the hospital but I can’t wait to hold my little world champion in my arms. I got another call from Mam later on letting me know that my sister and the baby were fine but my sis was going to need an extra day or two in the recovery room. I told my grandad that the baby had arrived and showed him the picture and he started to cry too and gave my phone a big kiss (and for the rest of the day kept calling me into his room so that he could look at it and kiss it some more), overjoyed that he is now a great grandfather. Mam came home later in the day and although she was still visibly shaken by what she had witnessed over there she still had a smile from ear to ear over the fact that she was a grandmother. Today was a really stressful and emotional day but it was all worth it. I know that I’m the most selfish piece of shit in the world but that all changes now as I’m going to spend the rest of my life doing what ever it takes to make this little angel happy. Won’t be long now before she gets to meet her stupid uncle Axl. 

Thu 6th Dec 2018

In the early hours my Grandads electric sensor pad that we have on the floor in case he falls out of bed went off for no reason. The pad automatically alerts someone at comfort call and someone there comes on the phone to make sure everything is okay. Well the machine that we have amplifies the caller’s voice so damn much that it felt like she was screaming through a fucking megaphone. Me and Mam didn’t get to the machine in time to tell her everything was okay so she must have assumed no one else was in the house and signalled for someone to come out and investigate and soon afterwards two women from the company arrived at the house. We explained what was going on but the women said they won’t be able to have it fixed until the morning (I was so tired that I let the obvious response “It IS morning” slide by) and that all we could do for now was turn the machine off and just hope that Grandad would remain in his bed for one night since he did still have the pad there and that would ensure he didn’t hurt himself. I think it’s fucking ridiculous that were not allowed to have a railing in the side of Grandad’s bed in case he has a tumble. Apparently it’s because he could climb over it and have an even bigger fall but that’s a bullshit excuse. Grandad can’t even stand up in his own and sometimes it takes him a while even to move a fork full of food towards his mouth and yet the company thinks he’s strong enough to climb over a railing like a fucking pro wrestler trying to escape a steel cage?! 

Anywho the rest of the day wasn’t that much better. I couldn’t really concentrate at work because of all the shit that happened yesterday and my concern for Mam and my sister. I hate when something really shitty happens on a day before I’m due in at work because it means that I’m a grumpy fucker for the entire day and the staff ends up looking at me like I’m a dick (to be fair I am but I was an extra huge dick today). I don’t want to spend the whole of today’s entry talking about more negative shit so instead here’s some new music I’ve downloaded lately: 

First up is a Scottish folk musician called Kris Drever. As I’ve said before folk music typically isn’t my thing but there are some rare exceptions and this guy is one of them. I think it’s the dark nights and the cold that make this sort of music sound more appealing to me at this point in the year. It’s almost as if it’s music expressing the sense of lonesomeness and dread that I feel as the weather gets more chilly and the prospect of another year being over that makes it sound so appropirate. My favourite song of his is a beautiful one called “Wild Hurricane” https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ouJK6eNAkPg

Next up are the rap group Geto Boys who are apparently hugely influential in the world of rap but I hadn’t heard of them until just now. Leaving aside the fact that they have the most generic rap group name in history their songs are really intense and enjoyable. My favourites are: “Scarface” https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mcQYv0M6XTE, “No Sellout” https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ExC2Og1bD5w, “Another Nigger in the Morgue” https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NMk4FhUx9KY, and “Crooked Officer” https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vNEyiuUsgjk.

(If my Mam is reading this I’d just like to stress that I wasn’t being racist when I used the word nigger just then as that is in the title of the song. It’s the Geto Boys who are racist Mam not me it’s them you should shout at and not let THEM have cherry pie after dinner for a month, not me). 

I found an album called “Early Rock N Roll From New Zealand Vol 14” which features some great tunes but most of them are not available online and can only be bought from this album on iTunes. The songs from the album I could find online were “Tony and the Initials” with their song which is called “Tavern Town”  https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kjsfxEDvlvk but if you listen to it you’ll discover that it’s actually just them playing “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes” on the guitar. There’s also Rod Stone with “Skye Boat” https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ufUHcOxH7rg and a group called “The Minors” with their song “Avalanche” https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fxa8V3npVLw 

Next I found an album called “Jazz Cats” which as you may guess is a collection of jazz songs all about cats. I had hoped that this was part of some really niche collection where they find as many songs about a specific animal in a specific genre as possible. But unfortunately I was wrong, there was no “Reggae Flamingos”, no “Trance Pandas” and no “Death Metal Lobsters”, it’s just Jazz Cats. They’re clearly hoping to appeal to people who like jazz and cats but I think the downside the this plan is that people who like cars but hate jazz won’t buy it and vice versa. Anywho here are a few of the hits 

Paul Whiteman and his Orchestra – “Felix the Cat” https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VzP9dsbkOrQ

Cats and the Fiddle – “Hep Cat’s Holiday” https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2imWuSrcZ50

Sam Wooding – “Krazy Kat” https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OhLc444s7Ec

Benny Goodman – “Wholly Cat” https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=N2UKk2E7l2I

Sidney Bechet “Wild Cat Blues” – https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wEWQLSAtOKM

A nice change of pace now with a comedy rapper named MC Hawking who raps using a voice synthesiser to make him sound like Stephen Hawking. It’s a good idea for a song but I think an entire album using this gimmick would get old really fast so I just picked my favourite few songs. Here’s Entropy https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5bueZoYhUlg, UFT For The MC https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=y5HLVuSvhLE and What We Need More Of Is Science https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=u7dLUpyh3AQ. 

Finally we have Janis Martin, a rock n roll gal from the 50’s with “All Right Baby” https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=guEmDNPsTHw, a rock group called Brother Cane with their song “Don’t Turn Your Back On Me” https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qQyspfEp_Ak, and a nice jazz tune by Guido Basso called “Walkin’” https://www.shazam.com/gb/track/60813285/walkin. 

Fri 7th Dec 2018

Although I was feeling much better I completely zoned out at work today because I knew it was just a matter of hours before I would get to meet my beautiful new baby niece for the very first time. I finished at 2 and was so excited about seeing the baby I considered ordering a taxi so I could get home even quicker so I could get showered and changed and head over to the hospital. However I phoned Mam and she said that my sister and the baby had left the hospital and were now at home so there was no rush so I got the bus. After getting off I sprinted home and felt the butterflies building in my stomach as I approached the house. I took a deep breath, opened the front door, went into the living room and there she was, my beautiful little Luna June surrounded by her new family. 

I didn’t speak much for the next few hours as I mainly sat and stared at the baby and thought about all the fun and games were going to share over the years. My sister thanked me for “the whiteboard” and for a moment I didn’t know what she meant but then I remembered that two days ago just after my sister left for the hospital and before I knew about all the horrible stuff that she would encounter at the hospital I wrote this message for her on my whiteboard and placed it on the chest of drawers in the corridor for when she came home: 

I should explain that in the early stages of my sister’s pregnancy before she knew if it was a boy or girl I suggested the name Archimedes if the baby turned out to be a boy. However my sister dismissed this suggestion as “fucking stupid” and I later found out that Archimedes was not who I thought he was. I thought he was the guy who proved that the Earth was round but that was Eratosthenes which is hardly the kind of name you want to give a baby and I didn’t want the name Archimedes now that I knew he was just some Greek cunt. Anywho, within an hour of me posting the first picture of Luna to my Facebook page she got more likes than anything I have ever posted meaning that she is already more popular than I am despite only being two days old. I’ll be honest Luna isn’t all that crazy about me based on our initial meeting as she screamed every time I held her but I reassured her that no-one likes me at first but I grow on them. The only downside to the baby being here is that poor Lucy feels so left out and neglected since everyone wants to hold and feed Luna:

She’ll get used to the baby being here and tomorrow I’ll take her for a nice long walk and scratch her belly for a few hours to make it up to her….if she hasn’t killed herself by then that is. 

Anywho that was the last week of my life. If you enjoyed this blog you can read it every single week. If you create a WordPress account and follow Why Is Everyone So Fucking Stupid? then a notification will be sent to your e-mail every Saturday to remind you that the latest blog has been published. Oh, and please tell your friends about this blog too

Next week i’ll be telling you about the time I took a hundred nuns to Newcastle. Until then…

Follow your hearts and keep smiling motherfuckers

Axl

🙂

Why Is Everyone So Fucking Stupid? #313 “Colder Than A Greggs Sausage Roll”

Sat 24th Nov 2018

Like an idiot I didn’t double check the rota before I went to bed last night because I was sure I was in with Tony (who always has me come in at 10) and of course I was wrong and was scheduled to be there at 8. As soon as I realised I had fucked up I jumped off the bus and ordered a taxi to get me to work quicker but still very late. Luckily it wasn’t that busy but one of the lasses did have to go in the kitchen and do a few orders while I was lying in bed like the dipshit I am. I really need to start pulling my finger out and start making more of an effort. I’ve had four jobs in my life and I haven’t been particularly good at any of them. I tried my absolute best in my first job at the Glass Centre but I still couldn’t quite get it right. From then on when I worked at the call centre and the supermarket I felt no need to try at all because I did not respect the people I worked for and I was content with scraping by with the bare minimum. However I now have a job where I do respect the people I work for and yet I’ve only recently realised that I clearly haven’t met their expectations. I’ve spent the better half of the last decade not giving a flying fuck about work and using it as a means to an end to get money to pay for gigs and hobbies. Well now I’m rapidly approaching thirty and maybe it is time that I start trying to build a career and actually get good at a job so that I can earn more money than I need instead of just about what I need to survive. 

Sun 25th Nov 2018

Today was my sister’s due date so for the whole day at work I was constantly looking at my phone to see if Mam was calling me to tell me that my sister had gone into labour but no such call came through. I can not wait to meet my little baby niece but quite frankly she is taking the piss right now. Speaking as someone who has experience of being born I have to say that it’s not as difficult as she is making it out to be and I think she’s just trying to be fashionably late. Thinking about how close I am to becoming an uncle for the third time gives me butterflies. I didn’t get to spend as much time as I would have liked to with my nephew Kieren when he was a baby but I spent virtually all of Lacey’s baby years with her and they were some of the happiest years of my life. Between the ages of 1 – 4 is when kids are at their most adventurous, everything they see is a potential toy to play with and they are on board with any fun activity you plan for them. I can remember five years ago when I was working at that shithole call centre every day would make me boil with anger but on days where I’d come home and Baby Lacey was there all my anger would just melt away as I devoted the remaining hours of the day to making her happy. I can’t wait to experience that again and hopefully in a few days that new journey will have begun. God I hope she likes me. 

Mon 26th Nov 2018

It was fucking freezing this morning but for some reason on the bus ride to work, five of the six bus windows were open wide letting the cold air in making it feel like I was trapped in a meat freezer on wheels. I just couldn’t get my head around this, who in their right fucking mind would have opened all of these windows on a day as cold as today? There are only two possible explanations: one is that one person got on the bus and decided that -10 degrees was too hot for them, opened all six of the windows before deciding “Brr that’s a bit too cold” and closed one of the windows. The other explanation is that one person got on, felt warm so opened one of the windows, then another person got on, felt warmer than the original cunt felt so opened another window and on and on and on until five of the windows were open and the bus was colder than a Greggs sausage roll. It genuinely does drive me crazy thinking about these moronic situations I find myself in and trying to figure out how they could have possibly gotten so ridiculous.

Tue 27th Nov 2018

Didn’t think I could hate Aldi any more than I did when I worked for them a few years ago and they treated me like shot but now they have gone too far. As you know three years ago I worked for that shower of cunts known as Aldi and was thoroughly pissed off and depressed by their ridiculous and demeaning rules and the jobsworth cocksuckers who issued them. They had a “clean shaven policy”, I never found out why but evidently they must have carried out extensive studies and found that people without facial hair could put boxes of crisps on shelves better than those with beards. They stressed to me that every item in our trolleys has to be put in the shelves in four hours but despite me sprinting to get my trolleys unloaded and sweating buckets by the end of my shifts I could hardly ever do it in less than four hours. I’m not saying it’s impossible but when I asked to be allowed to come in on my day off to observe how it’s done I was declined every time, leading me to believe that they are just a bunch of lying fuckwits. Finally they would pick you up in the tiniest of mistakes you made over the course of a four hour shift. For instance if I marked off 499 items from my trolley, if I missed one then according to them those other 499 items didn’t matter and I didn’t know how to do the job. By that logic if I see someone walking down the street and they stumble that person must not know how to walk properly. So as you can tell I already have enough reasons to hate this flaming cauldron of wankers but this evening an advert came on the TV that made every part of my body angry (even my balls, arsehole and the webs between my fingers). It was an advert where a carrot with a face drives a truck full of Christmas presents or some stupid shit. To be honest I didn’t take note of what happened in the advert after I saw the live carrot because that was all it took to make me snap. Fans of Bottom will remember that Eddie made a batch of exploding carrots with smiley faces in them because he could not get any pumpkins. The cunts at Aldi clearly saw this classic episode of my favourite show and decided to steal it. Want proof? Here’s your fucking proof:

It’s bad enough that these arseholes treated me like dirt when I was there but now they’ve stolen a classic Bottom gag to flog their cheap Christmas tat? NOW THESE CUNTS HAVE GONE TOO FAR!!!

Wed 28th Nov 2018

After putting some money into my bank account this afternoon I tried to arrange a meeting with someone so I could request a loan in order to pay for Wrestlemania next year. Unfortunately the bitch behind the counter types my details into her computer and it turns out my credit score isn’t good enough to qualify for a loan. They explained that it’s because I get a weekly wage and am not making regular payments into my bank there is no was to tell if I was trustworthy enough to pay the money back. It makes sense I suppose but  surely they could give me the loan and then if it turns out I can’t pay it back just send a guy round to smash my kneecaps with a sledgehammer? That’s what I used to do to Dexter when he was late paying me money back. Anywho this was kind of shitty news because it meant that I would have to get really restrictive on my spending if I had any hope of making it to Wrestlemania. I messaged Halilaj but it turns out that he can’t go anyway since he’s being fucked over at work and they’re not paying him as much as they said they were going to. As much as it pains me it looks like my Wrestlemania dream is going to have to wait another year. This was really shitty news and while I could still go myself it makes no sense to do so when I have a friend who loves wrestling more than I do who will be able to go another year. Now that Wrestlemania is off I guess I’m just going to have to try to do some different items on my Bucket List in order to make up for it. 

Thu 29th Nov 2018

A while ago I started trying to every episode of South Park. I took a break from that in order to try to watch and review every episode of Red Dwarf….and now I’ve taken a break from that in order to try and review every episode of Futurama. Translation = this is never going to end. The first thing I notice about Futurama is how well it stands up today, how fresh it seems and how far ahead in terms of laughs that other shows were at the time. As I was hitting down all of the jokes in the first episode “Space Pilot 3000” that made me laugh I saw that there were more funny moments than there were in the first episodes of South Park and Red Dwarf combined. I really love the added details that go into Futurama storylines. For instance in the first episode when Dry falls backwards into the cryogenic chamber we see Nibbler’s shadow in the background, planting the seeds of an episode that wouldn’t take place for another three years. That shows the care and craft that always went into Futurama compared to other shows who you get the feeling we’re just making it up as they went along. The characters in Futurama are some of the best ever created. I especially love Bender who is an utter bastard but undeniably lovable. There’s a joke in this first episode that you don’t even notice the first time around. Fry mistakes a suicide booth for a phone booth so Bender offers to pay for the machine to kill them both and he pays for the procedure with a coin in a string which he pulls out afterwards. This perfectly illustrates what a misanthrope the guy is, that he wants to cheat someone out of his money even though he is about to die. I don’t think Futurama ever quite got the recognition it deserved as it was brilliantly funny and creative right from the get go. I only hope that one day it makes another welcome return to our screens. 

Fri 30th Nov 2018

I checked my news feed this morning and was saddened by the news that Stephen Hillenburg the creator of Spongebob Squarepants has died. Aw shit another really nice fella gone! I love surreal comedy and they don’t get much more surreal than this show. I first got into Spongebob when I was about 10 and was completely blown away by how strange it was. Even back then I questioned the mental state of someone who thought up a talking sponge who worked as a fry cook and lived in a pineapple under the sea. Although the show has gone off the boil a bit in recent years it’s still had some great moments and it’s one of the best shows that both kids and adults (really immature adults I mean) can both enjoy. Anyone nutty enough to come up with something as utterly absurd and hilarious as Spongebob is alright by me. Rest in peace sir 😥

For the first time in a long time I have found myself looking forward to watching wrestling lately. Ever since I started exclusively watching NXT, Impact and Ring of Honor every week I am so excitable on Wednesdays (NXT), Fridays (Impact) and Sunday’s (ROH) and cant wait to get in from work to watch them. NXT and ROH are great for watching some great pure wrestling match but I have to say I think Impact is the best wrestling show on TV at the moment. Ever since they hired Don Callis and Scott D’Amore to run the company and creative the product has become must watch yet again. I’m loving the stuff they’re doing with Pentagon and Fenix, oVe!, LAX vs The OGz, Johnny Impact and Killer Kross, Eddie Edwards and Moose and I’m especially digging Brian Cage’s work at the moment, he might be my favourite wrestler in Impact right now. I fell in love with Impact when it was TNA from 2003 – 2006 because it had great in ring action and well written storylines. Then Russo came along and the great in ring action went away and the bad comedy, weekly swerves, bullshit finished and half based storylines came to stay. The way Impact is right now reminds me of the way it was back in the day before Russo came along and ruined it. I can only hope that this brilliant new look is enough to get them a better TV deal with a network that will allow them to be seen by more than 3 people a week because they do deserve one more chance now that they have finally seen sense and gotten rid of all the dead weight.