Summer Etiquette

It’s March and summer is here already. Thanks Global Warming, you’re alright. But whilst we can all agree that the melting polar ice caps and gaping holes in the ozone layer have turned out to be hugely beneficial to mankind, there are still some things about summer that totally suck. For the benefit of everyone in the world, please abide by the following rules this summer.

Shirts on, fellas. Ok the sun is out but please for the fucking love of Lydia, keep your fucking shirt on. There seems to have been a grotesque cultural shift over the last few years that has made it acceptable to not wear a shirt in public as soon as the smallest possible ray of sunlight hits your body. THIS IS NOT OK. AT ALL. No-one in town wants to see your pasty white chest, spotty back and tribal sleeve. NO-ONE. Don't get me wrong, there are times when it’s ok not to wear a shirt. If you’re on the beach, it’s ok. If you’re in your own home, it’s ok. But if you and your teenage girlfriend are pushing ‘Tarquin’ around town, smoking fags and drinking booze, It’s not ok. Not at all. Put your fucking shirt back on you fucking disgusting drain on society. Fuck you.

Don’t join in. Sunshine seems to bring out the loudest, cuntiest side of people and makes them want to do loud, cunty things and join other loud cunts in doing loud and cunty things. I’m a Smith and I am proud to say that I take after my Father in almost every way. I’m going bald, I waste my money on records, I drink too much, I smile too little and I DON’T join in. FUCK. JOINING. IN.

‘Let’s all go to the clock tower at 12 dressed as pandas and dance to Glee songs!!’

‘I’ve started a Facebook group to get everyone to dress up as a zombie and meet outside the library at 3 for a giant water fight!’

‘Let’s all go and have a Frisbee tournament on the beach!’

What?! How about no? How about you DON’T do these retarded things?! Life is not like High School the Musical where you make friends with strangers by getting up to high-jinx with them in the sunshine. Don’t live each day like it’s your last, don’t ‘dance like no-one’s watching’ and don't join in you fucking mouth breather. Fuck you.

Shun Hippies. Unfortunately summer is the main breeding time for hippies and society needs to act as one if we are finally to be rid of these abhorrent, hemp smelling cunts. Picture the scene, you’re on the beach reading a book with a cold bottle of Brooklyn by your side. Heaven right? But… what’s that noise? That’s weird… sort of sounds like someone’s playing bongos…? That’s really strange… It’s not the 60’s and you’re not in San Francisco…. That’s so weird… Anyway, I’ll just get on with my book… Wait, what’s that now?? Sort of sounds like someone is playing Bob Dylan covers on a guitar but... who would bring a guitar to the beach?! Eurgh. Hippies. Your quiet day in the sun is ruined. You try to move further down the beach but everywhere you go you run into more of them. Longboarding, juggling, playing with Poi and Diablos, Hula-hoops and Frisbees, smoking weed and giggling like cretins and BBQ-ing their Linda McCartney sausages whilst drinking cider made from nettles. Hippies are a grotesque half breed of people. Too lazy to be human, too human to be plankton. They are foul and they need to be stopped. If you are not a hippie; be sure not to make friends with one. If you ARE a hippy; fuck you. Kill yourself.

Don’t Litter. It’s 2012, who the fuck still litters for fucks sake? We all love a BBQ and some beers on the beach, it’s one of the best bits about the summer. But when you go home at the end of the day, TAKE YOUR FUCKING RUBBISH WITH YOU. I don’t care that birds or fish could get trapped in tins or bags and die (trust me, I could not give less of a shit about the plight of British wildlife) It’s about having respect for the town you live in. Yeah, you’re done for the day but tomorrow someone else is going to want to sit in the same place as you and they shouldn’t have to wade through empty tins of Strongbow because you and your cunt friends are too fucking lazy to walk to a bin. Fuck you.

That’s it. Easy. Follow the rules and we’ll all ‘get along just fine, man’

Deal or No Deal

Deal or No Deal first appeared on our screens in 2005 fronted by 90's Crinkly Bottom throwback Noel Edmonds, and since its inception it shows no sign of dying. The premise of the show is simple, there are 22 boxes containing prizes ranging from 1p to £250,000 and the contestant is responsible for eliminating the boxes one at a time in order to end up with a cash sum of money to take home. Depending on the outcome of the game, "The Banker" , an unseen man on the end of a phone will interject with offers to buy out the contestant, which will spark the question "Deal or no deal?". Whilst the concept sounds simple enough, the show has somehow evolved into a pseudo spiritual quest for everybody involved, so much so that Edmonds has branded the gormless audience as the "pilgrims". These are my top reasons for hating this culture of insanity and their narcissistic box Messiah...

• Noel Edmonds- Noel Edmonds is the man responsible for injecting the show with its ridiculous element of spirituality, constantly professing that there are higher powers at work. He acts as the ringleader of his cult of "pilgrims", coining terms such as "the dream factory" and "the walk of wealth" and casually employing them into conversations like they're valid terms. I can't help but speculate on Noel Edmonds sanity when watching his erratic, often lunatic like approach to presenting. I cringe watching him desperately try to think of something original to say, as it seems that all of his sub par material was expunged years ago in the land of Crinkly Bottom and Mr Blobby.

• The contestants- Deal or No Deal features 22 hapless cretins, all desperately trying to stamp their utterly forgettable personalities onto this hour long circle jerk with "witty" one liners and cringe worthy banter with Noel Edmonds. The contestants act like they're pumped full of laughing gas or have mainlined valium before the show started, nonsensically laughing and relieving themselves at every word uttered from Edmonds beardy mouth regardless of its meaning or relevance. Each contestant accepts responsibility for the box that they stand behind, apologising for unravelling a bad number or celebrating in the fact they just got rid of a good number like they have power over what just happened. This is usually accompanied by a "You're a good man X, it's going to be a blue". Their sense of camaraderie is embarrassingly superficial as they over zealously applaud every single action of the player, whether it be a win or a loss. This mismatched group of fuckwits constantly try and create an air of positivity by chanting "Blue, Blue Blue", as if doing so will magically enhance a players luck, when in reality they end up looking like an insane cult.

• "It's not a game show, it's a real life drama"- Noel Edmonds makes what is in essence an incredibly dull concept a "real life drama" (his words) by encouraging the participants to share their sob stories before their game begins, then exploits this in a rag newspaper fashion throughout the show, siphoning emotion from the participants through the highs and lows of their game. This always climaxes in en masse crying and despair marathon, which makes for some very disturbing viewing.

• It's a game of probability- Deal or No Deal is nothing more than a game of chance, and anybody that believes otherwise is frankly a fucking moron! There is a 1/22 chance of winning the jackpot, yet the show is dressed up like there's more to it than that, an underlying supernatural aura that somehow conducts the outcome of the game. Players will pick numbers that are loosely significant to them, as if this is a legitimate tactic that will have some bearing on the result. For example"My nan died when I was 13, I'm going to pick 13" or "I'm going for number 5, I have 5 fingers on my hand". The contestants and their odd belief that the collective will of everybody in attendance is going to somehow invoke the desired numbers into a box is absolute madness, and is testament to the level of idiocy present in the studio. There is no strategy or skill involved, this game is literally a guessing game in which idiots are undeservedly awarded money for nothing.

Noel's signature sign off at the end of every hour long emotional battering is "You know you'll be watching next time". No Noel, sadly I won't. I'm just waiting for the day that he takes his insane cult to the fiery depths of hell that this show spawned from by doing a Jonestown.

Buskers

Question: how do you make a cunt even more annoying?
Answer: give him an acoustic guitar.
Seriously, fuck buskers.

It seems that I can’t walk up and down the street these days without hearing some smacked up prick in fingerless gloves playing a Nirvana cover on a beat up (and out of tune) sticker covered, acoustic guitar. Without walking past a man dressed as a fawn playing the bagpipes. Without seeing some dreadlocked hippie playing ‘No Woman, No Cry’ on an insanely expensive, vintage guitar that his Tory MP Dad brought him. Without being winked at by some mockney fuckhead in a pork pie hat and v-neck t-shirt singing that Kaiser Chiefs song that everyone knows. All of them judging me because I walk past and don’t drop a few pence into their fucking upturned hats. Fuck them.

My problem with buskers is twofold. Firstly (most importantly), the noise.

I have a dream, a way I would like the world to be, and in that dream there is silence. Everyone wakes up in their one bed flat, puts on a grey suit, walks to work in single file, does their job, walks home in single file, reads a book and goes to bed. There is no talking, there is no music and there is absolutely minimal interaction between people. If I was in charge of the world it would be a silent place where everyone lives in perfect silent harmony.

Unfortunately my dream will never come true. There are people out there who insist on talking, on making small talk, on asking me about how my day or my disgusting life is going. The world is full of garishly bright colours, of people dressing and acting like complete fucking cunts. Cyber goths, goths, steam punks, punks, crusties, all of them walking up and down St. James screaming their disgusting faces off. But the worst offender against my perfect utopian society, the first people to be put up against the wall if I’m ever in charge, is the fucking buskers.

We all get annoyed when we sit on a bus and some chav mouth breather starts playing music through his shitty little phone. We ALL get annoyed about that. But for some reason no-one gets annoyed about buskers and I don’t understand the difference. ‘Busker’ is just a posh name for an attention seeking cunt. Invading your private life with his or her shrill and atrocious noise.

What the fuck are these people actually thinking? ‘You liked that Green Day song, right? Time of Your Life? Well how about instead of minding your own business while you’re walking along, you just listen to me play some bars of it? Yeah? You love that, right? Look at the feeling I’m putting into it, you can tell I’m an artist can’t you? I went to Brit school for a term, now give me some money’

If this were a one-time thing (one hippy asshole per town centre – what a blissful idea) I would man up and get on with it. But as soon as you pass one cunt with a guitar, you hit another and then another and then another. Eurgh. The whole ‘singer songwriter’ thing reached saturation about ten fucking years ago. Fucking grow up. Just because you can play a couple of chords and warble over the top, it doesn’t mean I should have to listen to you whenever I leave my fucking house. FUCK YOU.

My second problem with buskers, is that they do it for profit. I don’t have an issue with people wanting to make money out of music, I’m not a ‘punk’ and frankly the idea of a ‘DIY ethic’ makes me want to break my hands open with a fucking hammer. There is no issue there. My problem with it is that these fucking idiots don’t just want money, they want MY money… Fuck. You. You think just because you’re playing an acoustic cover of a Lady Gaga song on the street I should put some of MY money in your guitar case? Do one.

Dear buskers, literally ANYONE could do what you do. It’s 2012, EVERYONE plays guitar and EVERYONE knows the words to ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ The only difference between you and the majority of other people is that they have some fucking pride and aren’t arrogant enough to think that because they have the smallest bit of ‘talent’ they have to share it with the fucking world. Get the fuck off of the streets and get out of my fucking ears you fucking hippy cunts.