I only do it for the money!

A particularly lazy friend of mine last week boasted in front of a few of us that he'd managed to do a single day's work and was now quite tired. At that point, another friend, one very over-worked and lifeless friend, replied "what do you want, a f***ing medal or something?" Judging by the state of our current society, he probably did. Nowadays it seems as though everyone believes they're owed much more praise than they're given for something they do that hardly deserves any praise at all.

For my first example, I refer, as is often the case in arguments like this, to the world of sport. Fifty years ago, in not a single sport, aside from the Olympics (where the medal system is flawless but the events themselves need to be reconsidered, I believe), was there a constant barrage of praise rained down upon the athletes competing in them. Nobody was ever idolised and worshipped. A star player never suffered from colonic-tongue syndrome thanks to the media. I don't even think star players existed, because back in those days it was results that were celebrated, not individuals.

In these modern times, however, it seems that if someone does something right in their particular sport they are known up and down the nation as a "hero". That's a word that's loosely thrown about a bit, these days. An arthritic old man jumping into a lion cage to save a class of children is a hero. A woman who cuts a pouch into her body to protect her baby from a fire is a hero. Jade Goody's cervical cancer is a hero. But a footballer? No, I don't think so.

Before you decide to refer to whoever scored a goal this weekend for your team as a hero, remember this; while you spend ten hours a day sat behind a desk doing paperwork that will never be read, not receiving the slightest bit of praise for it and being paid a mediocre salary, the person you're about to call a hero is receiving national acclaim for doing something he is paid £100,000-a-week to do, yet barely manages to do it once a month. Therefore he's not a hero: he's a second-rate employee.

In 500 years, when England next wins the Ashes, I hope that instead of calling them heroes, the people of England just say "well, you took bloody long enough, didn't you?" I certainly hope English people in the future have a better long-term memory than English folk today. When England won the Ashes, our citizens were dancing in the streets and organising victory parades and showering general priase upon the 'heroic cricketers' (there's a term that doesn't make sense) and completely forgetting that for the previous 25 years the team had failed in every attempt to win that trophy. Epically failed. It's not even a decent trophy, it's some tiny bit of ornate balsa wood. And it's cricket, which officially "doesn't matter".

Of course, it isn't just sport where praise is unjustifiably requested, it's everywhere. Kids expect an awards ceremony every time they draw an appalling picture of some haggard, string-haired, hunchbacked stickman, so long as it reads "To the best _____ in the world" underneath it. Instead of just patting a dog's head or saying "good boy/girl" when teaching it a trick, now you have to entice it with dog treats, so when the dog finally learns how to do a backflip, it's too fat to perform. Even computers are at it; whenever you turn a modern PC or laptop on, it makes a "ta daa!" noise, as though it's performed some kind of magic trick. No, you've just turned on, we've barely scratched the surface of what you're supposed to do, let alone what you can magically do.

The problem is we're now a nation of over-achievers. With the right funding and facilities, both of which are readily and widely available nowadays, we could be just about anything. Therefore instead of a select few 'elite' citizens standing above the rest and saying "I'm special. I can do something you can't. Idolise me", we're all at a level height, all demanding the praise that's so prematurely thrown around.

In this day and age, it's rather quite difficult to stand out as an individual, but I'm trying my very best. And do you know what? I think I deserve a f***ing medal!

Until next time, my first-rate readers... ciao!

Over-tired and underwhelmed

So, now that it’s all over, I feel safe going out into the streets without hearing all about the bloody Olympics. For just two weeks every four years, people who don’t care about sports suddenly seem to turn on each other. Americans and Britons, who were best of friends one day, are instantly at each others’ throat, quarrelling about which country is best, while antagonising maths bods decide to whittle up “medals by population” graphs to incense these arguments further. Meanwhile, all the decent television (little as there is nowadays) is being shunned to one side so we can flick between different events on different channels. Never before has it been so easy to cycle between such thrilling competitions as ‘The Men’s Underwear-Only Pogo-Stick 100m Hurdles’ and ‘Bizarrely-Named Deviation of, what is essentially still, Rowing’.

All the while, I’m sat in the middle of these debates, pacing the room waiting for these events to be over so I can watch ‘Mock The Week’, wondering who in the world cares about who’s best at jumping over a horizontal stick using a bendy one? Who would find a country impressive if they said “We’re the best at spinning around and throwing things”? Surely whatever country it was said to would reply “So what? We have a rapidly expanding economy, spurred on by our increased trading activity, meaning we have a lot more money to spend on reforming critical areas such as healthcare and education. But good job on being able to throw stuff, that’s, er… really important in… erm...”

The only highlight of the Olympics was the closing ceremony, and I don’t mean that ironically; seeing Boris Johnson look more uncomfortable than I have ever seen any person before was a treat, and I was overjoyed when Jimmy Page came out and, using the power of music, shouted to Leona Lewis, “STFU bitch, guitar solo!” Of course, it was nice to see Britain’s contribution to the hand-over celebrations. For those of you who didn’t see it, here’s a brief summary -

Shit dancers with umbrellas cavorting around a bus.
Bus turns into a hedge (seriously) shaped like London.
Leona Lewis comes out wearing, what looks like, a giant green windsock.
Jimmy Page appears, bearing a striking resemblence to Father Jack Hackett.
Page and Lewis play a (rather disappointing) version of ‘Whole Lotta Love’.
David Beckham lives up to his title of ‘Most Pointless Man in the World’ by appearing from the bus, picking up a football and kicking it into the crowd, hitting a Chinese flag-bearer in the face.
End of ceremony.

I actually quite enjoyed our country making a right tit of itself. It conveyed a simple message to the whole world, comforting them and raising their morale, because the message was clear - we’re all idiots now, there’s no chance of re-building the empire, you’re safe! The only bit that ticked me off was Beckham’s needless appearance. I wonder exactly how many millions of pounds he was paid to appear in the ceremony for, realistically, around 17 seconds. Makes you proud, doesn’t it?

Until next time, my bronze medals… adios!

Looks like gorillas are back in fashion...

Has anyone seen Skins? I was watching it the other day, I can’t get anough of it. Series 3 should be coming out soon, so no doubt I’m gonna be sat by my computer downloading each episode when it comes out...sorry, I mean I’ll be sat at my TV watching every week and then will buy the DVD like a good boy…

My only problem with it is that everyone looks down on the stuff that happens in it. The kids in it do all sorts of crazy stuff and the message is clear. “Don’t do all this stuff, look how fucked up you’ll get!” But in the very last episode, someone gets an abortion, and I think if the mindset of the viewers is that everything else these kids do is bad, then abortions must be as well.

I’m not trying to be some anti-Catholic preacher, nor am I trying to convince everyone to have an abortion, that’s up to you to decide. But it kind of upset me in the fact that the girl who had one on Skins seemed pretty capable of raising a child, even if she were quite young. Why is it the sensible ones take the sensible option, and the idiots go around doing things willy-nilly?

I saw one woman on the train yesterday, she must’ve been around 21-22, and she already had two daughters. These little girls were adorable, don’t get me wrong, but the mother had no idea what she was doing. She couldn’t control them at all; one of the daughters kept picking sweets up off the floor and eating them, and all he mother could do was threaten to smack her. Another daughter kept squealing, and instead of trying any peaceful methods of discipline, the mother just shouted at the daughter to keep quiet (much louder than the squealing daughter, might I add) and threatened to smack her. Seriously, she obviously hasn’t heard of staying calm nor peaceful resistance. Every two minutes she kept shoutng “stop that or I’ll smack you” or “if you don’t quit it I’ll batter you” etc etc. I’m no parent myself, but I could see she was perhaps going about parenting the wrong way. I mean, sure, she looked like she’d taken a few knocks lately herself (nobody can be that ugly naturally, surely?), but teaching children violence is the solution to problems isn’t really going to work. I can imagine when her kids are older, if one of them is caught wielding a knife on the streets, she’d probably say “if I catch you on the streets with a knife again, I’ll stab you” or something equally as moronic.

Yet the funniest thing I saw about all this was that she was telling her daughters that making noise was bad manners when right in front of her she had her phone out playing some three-noted pilled-up dance track on loudspeaker.

Which is where I get my inspiration for today’s moan (even though I’ve moaned enough already). Why is it that it’s always the people with a really bad taste in music that haven’t heard of headphones? Whenever I see someone on the train or in the street with headphones in, they’re always listening to rock or metal or indie, real music played with real instruments, rather than melodies stolen from other songs and played using a computer by some lanky sewer rat with his over-sized headphones round his neck and his under-sized hands beating the air.

No, this type of music is reserved for the cretins that bypass the easier option of putting headphones in and letting your hands fall limp at your sides, instead opting to hold their phone up to their ears for hours at a time. while they shove past people in the street. The same people who wear tracksuits all year long. The same people who tuck their pants into their socks without realising it makes them look like Gipetto. The same people who’s imagination of things to do with their friends stretches to standing on a street corner all night every night, shouting abuse at minicabs.

Do they not realise something’s amiss when they reach their destination, turn off their music and wonder why their arm is tired? Do they not notice when the radio’s on that the songs they like sound better when played through proper speakers? Or do they just wonder why the radio edit has removed the crackling, fuzzy part of the song that’s in their version?

And on another note, don’t all phones now come with free headphones? Perhaps if phone companies disabled the ability to play music through the loudspeaker, or pointed out in very clear letters what the headphones are for, more people would begin to see how stupid they look, less people would be gritting their teeth on trains, trying to avoid screaming at whoever is playing their phone to shut up, and I wouldn’t be trying to go back in time and convince a whole generation of people to have abortions. Just a thought.

Until next time, my little nose-miners x