Chivalry Is Dead. Blame The Women.

This past weekend one of my close friends said to me, "Chivalry's certainly dead these days isn't it? It's the bloody women that killed it too,". I did a doubletake, my eyes bulged and steam literally cascaded from my ears.

I was shocked. I was outraged. I was mortified. Most of all though, I felt robbed - not robbed emotionally by this grotesquely un-PC comment - but robbed because I'd been saying this for years.

The reason for this, is that only the other day I was walking down the street (with aforementioned friend) late at night when a woman in her mid-30's came stumbling out of the local flophouse and doddered into the middle of the path of oncoming traffic.

Being the noble and pure of heart cavalier that I am, I went to offer her assistance only to be met with an endless string of horrible profanities and a barrage of fists worthy of Bruce Lee.

Apparently these days if you lend a helpful hand to any female unlucky enough to stray across your path you're a sex pest.

Now, when it comes to sweeping generalisations (as I'm sure you're by now aware) I tend to be the Mack-Daddy. All Germans are humourless, anyone who listens to the Village People is a homosexual and if you wear a shell suit you're more likely than not to rob me.

My writing is however a mixture of observation and slight cynicism all gelled together with a pinch - or perhaps more a bucket - of salt. I am of course completely aware that the majority of generalisations are all tosh.

For instance, I know an incredibly funny German, I listen to Village People and have largely retained my heterosexuality, and nobody round these parts in trackies will rob you. Just call your mother names and stuff fireworks up your cat's bum.

It's exactly these generalisations that have led to the death of chivalry and the subsequent labeling of all men as sexual deviants by women, who have become so obsessed with casting off the chains of practical domestic slavery in days-gone-by that their spouses are now treated as walking, talking, money-earning sex toys.

To an extent though, we all need generalisations, because if we didn't have them life would tick by very slowly - points would never be made, anecdotes would take two years and comedy would inevitably die. "How many blondes does it take to screw in a lightbulb? According to recent survey it takes on average 1.2547 blonde females to screw in a lightbulb!". Ba-dum tish indeed.

Stupidity Is Not A Crime... Just Damn Annoying

It’s a well known fact that the world is mad. Grass is green, sky is blue, all English men are dentally challenged Hugh Grants and yellow snow is not to be eaten – all of these are simple but proven truths.

It seems to me though, that as time drags on we’re all getting more and more stupid. Case in point, in these days conversation in the pub is very dull. “What have you done this past week?”
“Nothing much, tried to look down my secretary’s top for a while, went out and got drunk, pissed myself and then cried myself to sleep”.

Now imagine that same conversation 6000 or so years ago. “Today, I killed a mammoth with my bare hands and invented the wheel, what about you?”
“ Same old really, designed the concept of time and came up with the idea of cooking with fire.”

Fast-forward to the present day and you can hardly breathe for some moronic person doing some moronic thing for some moronic reason or another. Stupid people with stupid clothes, stupid people making stupid sentences, stupid people on stupid phones, stupid people in stupid cars – which leads me to another point; how much safer would the roads not be if a shotgun was mounted in the steering column rather than an airbag?

Just last week I spied on eBay some idiot selling a ticket to see my beloved Lady Gaga at the princely sum of £210 for a single standing ticket, and standing in the queue in an off-licence last month I overhead the following conversation between the person at the till and some air-headed blonde:
“What’s your date of birth?”, “July 15th” “What year?” ,“...Like, every year, duhhh”. I mean really?

The numpties in my hometown are also apparently going into spray-can hyperdrive with the rise of East-LA style graffiti marring pretty much every smooth concrete surface they can get their needle-scarred mitts on. Catch a grip, this country’s about as “gansta” as Ronnie bloody Corbett.

The media these days is awash with tin-foil hat wearing Star Wars nerds who warn us that humankind will one day be destroyed by technology and super-robots (with or without Germanic accents). I, however, am not so sure about this – because with the current state of human intelligence, ingenuity and manufacturing skills it’s pretty much guaranteed that aforementioned killer robot will have broken long before you can say “Hasta la Vista, baby”.

Sex, Lies And Chocolate Cake

Only a few weeks ago the world was enraptured in the season to be jolly (LaLaLaLaLaa!) but it seems that the tabloids have enjoyed a year-long jolly season. Not so long ago people made the headlines for being either genuinely famous, for sleeping with and/or killing somebody genuinely famous or for being blown to pieces in some far-off war.

Apparently though, this has changed and the only way to enter the public eye is to have your arse ripped out by The Sun. The sheer amount of public scandals that have happened in the past 12 months is enough to make even Bill Clinton hot under the collar. Banks burst at the seams with the sheer volume of snakes running them, Christian Bale got angry, world leaders were punched, Christian Bale got angry some more and Jude Law changed lovers more than Col. Gaddafi changes psychoanalysts.

I've noticed a certain trend between a good amount of these, which is the recurring theme of Nazism. From Max Mosley's less-than-healthy obsession with all things German, Prince Harry's stint as a Gestapo officer way back when in 2005, to Nick Griffin and the daftest bunch of Nazis this side of 'Allo 'Allo. Perhaps the conspiracy theories are true, and Mr Hitler truely is hiding in a bunker in the Antarctic, pulling strings and orchestrating his grand return through the medium of British idiocy?

Rarely these days do politicians get away with anything, especially the current stock of lifeless, braindead chimps in suits that run our country. Noone in their right mind would give a monkey a gun and for that reason whoever decided it would be a good idea to give a monkey taxpayers money surely deserves to be slowly fed a bag of iron filings?

This only adds to my list of reasons for not wanting to become a politician for fear I'd marry a woman who looks like a sack of mouldy pears, spend public money on porn because I'm married to aforementioned pear sack, and turn my constituency into a giant moat for ducks.

Sportsmen have also come under scrutiny, Max Mosley and Lewis Hamilton both doing their very best to make Formula One even more rubbish than it already was, Thierry Henry incited the wrath of the whole of Ireland for his controversial handling of balls. Tiger Woods of course did something completely different with his balls, managing to sink many holes in one with his 9 wood, something which inexplicably has sent his sponsors abandoning ship like rats....

There's absolutely no way that I could leave this post without a tip of the hat to Northern Ireland's very own femme fatale. So here's to you Mrs Robinson, Jesus loves you more than you could know. And now so does Dominic Mohan.

New Year, New Decade, New Beginnings

So Christmas has passed, 2009 is gone and in its place now stands not just a new year, but a new decade as well. With the sound of exploding fireworks, enough alcohol to kill the world’s entire population of bull elephants and more cooked birds than Bill Oddie can shake a stick at, the Noughties (God how I loathe that name) have gone out with a raucous and drunken bang.

So let’s take a look back at the past 10 years before we throw ourselves headlong into the next. The 2000’s was a period of great advancement but also, I feel, great regression. For every step forwards we’ve taken, we also seem to have taken a larger step backwards. For instance, we further developed the internet and while this is great, it means nobody anywhere can trip on a banana skin without the entire world knowing about it within minutes.

You can hardly sneeze anywhere in the Middle East anymore without your country being invaded, pretty much every animal on earth now carries a deadly form of flu, your 13 year old daughter is pregnant again, stress-related illness has become the new must-have, Ugg boots were developed, education systems failed to be educational, men ceased to be men anymore and politicians seemingly ceased to be human at all.

Oh yeah, and a little event known as the Recession hasn’t made the past year any the more enjoyable either. However, the horrors and mistakes of the past 10 years will with any luck incite the necessity for true change and revolution over the years to come.

The decadence of the 2000’s has proven itself to be a mirage, and crumbled accordingly. As human beings we will all learn and live on and for that reason I have high hopes for 2010, and with the recent snowfall turning the country whiter than the BNP cricket team, the new decade couldn’t have gotten off to a more idyllic start. Happy New Year!

I'm Dreaming Of A Sh*te Christmas...

Irish weather, I swear to God, will be the death of me. It doesn't snow for around 40 years and when it finally comes it can't stop itself. Like a row of dominoes, a drunk man somewhere in a village in Lancaster or the British economy, once it starts it just falls. And falls. And falls...

And yet, for me at least it still doesn't feel anything like Christmas. Perhaps my body clock has developed a concussion after one too many nights out, but if you told me it was some time in the middle of September I would fully believe you. Despite the fact that the TV has been screaming at me since July about Christmas this and Christmas that, it just doesn't feel Christmassy at all.

Perhaps, it's in this that the crux of the matter lies; it's not the Grinch that's stolen Christmas, it's Capitalism. Much in the same way it stamped all over a little place called the USSR and turned the humble banker into the Devil Incarnate it's also responsible for the final nail in the festive coffin.

Don't get me wrong however, I'm no weirdy-beardy Marxist. I love me some capitalism, it's just that I also love Christmas. Or did anyway... In a way it's quite poetic in that snow can be tied so well into this; snow looks lovely in postcards and Al Gore videos but as soon as it arrives you become sick of it.

It's exactly the same with Christmas in that as soon as the adverts and Christmas tree shops open (circa mid-summer) you can't help but think "Awwwwwh. Christmas. How lovely!". It isn't soon however before that sentimental cooing becomes screams of hatred and fury at the constant bombardment of Yuletide propaganda.

It is therefore that I can say quite confidently that there is no longer such a thing as festive spirit or Christmas cheer. I'm not being cynical, I'm simply stating the apparent fact that human beings seemingly can't leave anything alone without destroying it. We killed the Dodo, we killed the environment and as if that wasn't enough now we've knocked off old Chris Cringle as well.

It's scary that at such a young and tender age I already appreciate how bone-crackingly annoying Christmas really is. It isn't that long ago however that I remember Christmas being fun. And I'm not talking 40 years ago when it was exciting to find a shiny new shilling in your stocking and the most controversial material on the TV was The Brady Bunch. Only 10 years ago I have memories filled with Santa Claus and Reindeer and mince pies (and of course presents!). Oh yeah, and that guy Jesus. Whoever he is.

And so therefore if you're reading this Mr Capitalist I would implore you to leave Christmas alone. Just this once? Feel free to suck people out of pocket and home any other day of the year but is it really worth spoiling the one time of year that all of Christendom is supposed to be united as one, just to keep yourself in caviar and 24 carat gilded toilet roll?

Life On Mars - Northern Ireland Style

My name is Ryan. I was on my way to school last week when I had an accident.
I woke up in Ballymena … in 1973.
Am I in a coma, was my drink spiked or am I a time traveller?


Cue Bowie …

In 1973 I was not but a grotty flicker in my father's eye. The world was a different place for the teenager,computers were vast walls of flickering lights which Mr. Spock poked at on Star Trek, mobile phones were non-existant and as for a TV it was a case of 'warming up' the black and white with a crank shaft and a well-placed clout.

And that's if the power was on, cos those were the days when candle sales were at a premium and every self-respecting family kept a primus stove handy in readiness for the next political strike in strife torn Ulster.

However, there was an upside to the technological wasteland in which 1970's Ulster lived. Most kids were fit to run the marathon by the age of 10, they could amuse themselves for more than five minutes in an open field with only a ball, a piece of string and an acorn.

The nearest thing to FIFA 2010 was a cruddy football game which consisted of pushing some misshapen plastic figure's head, enabling him to (allegedly) kick the ball. Literature consisted of totally un-PC periodicals where foreign nationals had their butts kicked by tough talking Brits such as Captain Hurricane, or were plastered with bombs by 'Braddock of Bomber Command'.

"I say," said Braddock, dropping another four tons of high explosive on some nasty Nazis, "that'll teach the Gerries to bomb London!"
"Aaaargh," squealed the Gerries/Japs etc etc. "Englander Pig Dog, Achtung, Donner und Blitzen, Himmel!". Or words to that effect.

Penny chews were actually a penny,pizza was something foreign and therefore 'orrible and fast food was still dominated by the good old fish supper on a Friday night while burgers were just making an appearance and considered the height of sophistication and young love could be found everywhere from the chippy to the schoolground.

Imagine that nowadays - nobody in their right mind would go on a first date to McDonalds (unless perhaps their name happens to be Gary Glitter). This perhaps reflects the fact that nowadays the world is a very different place, and definatley not an altogether better one - a world dominated by celebrity, technology, goverened by a new breed of imbecile with their non-stop rules and regulations.

In the words of DCI Gene Hunt, "It doesn't take a degree in Applied Bollocks to know what's going on". Perhaps though, in this day and age, it does.

Villainy, Licentiousness, Abomination, Infernity - That's Me Set For Life!

There’s some amount of speculation that the newspaper industry these days is collapsing, crushed by the omnipresent digital leviathan that is the internet. Journalists argue that newspapers simply can’t compete with the amount of free news available on the net and that soon the media industry will be lost to the power of e-news.

As a journalist-in-training this certainly presents me with a dilemma over whether I’ll be able to actually secure a job in the newspaper industry when I get out of university (provided I even get in...). I, however, have a simple and brilliant solution that will guarantee me work indefinatley for the rest of my life.

The plan is simple, I’m going to move to Coronation Street. Never in the history of TV soaps, or perhaps in existence with the exception of Nottingham, has there been a place with such treachery, murder, double dealing, trauma and terror. If I can’t get a front-page lead out of that, no one can.