Category: Blogs

January 28, 2013

Jealousy….

I was having a conversation with a friend of mine the other day about the rather thorny subject of jealously.
She’s not jealous, her bloke is.

I’ve heard many opinions (mainly from women, since I have more female friends than blokes) on this subject.

Girlfriends in the past have taken my lack of jealousy to mean that I don’t care about them. They’ve reasoned that a little jealousy is a good thing, right?

I beg to differ.

Me being jealous implies that I don’t trust you.
I have far better things to do than ringing you up constantly to find out where you are, who you’re with.

The problem is, some women, due to previous relationships, consider this as normal behaviour. They expect it, means their man still wants them.

Consider this, ladies….

When you first started going out with your man, he was relaxed, he wasn’t in any way possessive or jealous.
You could get dressed up to go out with your girl friends, he was cool with that.

But with the passing or years (and maybe with the addition of a ring) he began to change.
Suddenly you had to be back by a certain time, you didn’t get glammed up any more because you know he’d disapprove, and often he’d insist on always going out with you (even if you were simply meeting friends).

The reason for all this madness?
To keep you from finding anyone else attractive.

His biggest fear is if he lets you go out without him, you may find some other guy who is better than he is.
He cannot allow that to happen.

He may even tell you repeatedly that you won’t find anyone else like him, or that no one else will put up with you.
He tells you this so often, you end up believing it.

Your confidence plummets, but you cling on to the fact that he loves you, despite his behaviour.

If any women out there read this and disagree, feel free to say so. Mine is not the final word…

January 28, 2013

The Youth Of Today…

Over the last few years, there’s been a spate of shootings in London involving young teenagers (not to mention the tragic case a while ago of Cho Seung-Hui, who killed 32 students & teachers in Virginia, USA).

Why is this? When I was a kid, the only thoughts I had were whether I had enough pocket money to buy a Curley Wurley.

Summer holidays were spent reading books, playing football in the park, and generally hanging out with mates.

I certainly wasn’t thinking about acquiring a gun & blowing someone away.
Disputes were settled with discussion, or as a last result, you had a fight – which never lasted that long.
Nowadays, we have students in the Uk bringing knives to school, and settling their beefs by stabbing someone.

Can’t quite get my head around this mentality.
I’m not even that old, but in conversation with various friends, we marvel at the amount of kids still hanging around on the street at 11 at night – where are your parents?

I shake my head at some of the young girls nowadays strutting around in skirts so short, you no longer need to use your imagination – and your parents let you leave the house like that?

Top of my shake my head moments are kids who cuss out their parents.
I’ve never sworn at my mum, let alone shouted at her.
When I was a youngster, if you were taken to a relatives house, you behaved yourself, and were polite.

All this in some cases seems to have gone out of the window. Some kids now tell their parents how it’s going to be, what time they are coming back.

They have no qualms about telling their parents to fuck off, or even inflicting violence upon them. The mind boggles…

January 28, 2013

Young, Attractive & Still Single…

I have female friends who people would consider attractive.
Some of them have difficulties attracting the right type of bloke, despite this.
Why is this?

Well, in my humble opinion, being pretty is not enough.
You could go out with a woman who is a stunner – but that’s it. If you are pretty but can’t hold a conversation, most blokes will run a mile. (Obviously, there are blokes who like airheads, granted.)

Alternatively, if you’re in a nightclub wondering why very few blokes try to chat you up, it’s because either blokes assume you’re with someone, or that you’re out of their league.

Some of the women I’ve gone out with have been extremely pretty, but there’s always something they’re not happy with: bum too big, thighs too fat, breasts too small (or too big) – the list goes on.

If I adopted a narrow-minded bloke’s perspective, I would say that if you are an attractive female, you should be happy with that.

But life is far more complicated than that.
I’ve met countless stunners who are convinced they are ugly.
Now I’m not saying they have to be pretty and big-headed, but just be happy in yourself, the rest will follow…

January 28, 2013

The Stranger Syndrome

Wherever I go, complete strangers feel the need to talk complete and utter bullshit to me.
Doesn’t matter where I am, or indeed what I’m doing.
Clearly, I like talking to people, but there is a requirement that those people have to be sane.

I was waiting for a friend of mine the other day.

So there I was, sitting in the pub – I had my MP3 player on, newspaper in hand, and this old bloke plonks himself at my table.

As I looked up from the sports pages, I saw his lips move, so with great reluctance I put my paper down, turned off the music.

He said, “You’re not from round here, are you?”

He interrupted me reading the paper to ask that?

Nevertheless, being the polite individual that I am, I told him no, even though I’ve lived in this area for over 10 years, I was originally from Tottenham.

He asked me how I was finding it.
I considered telling him that no one had put a burning cross on my lawn, but refrained.

Fine, was my reply. I’d actually put my earphones back in, when he asked where my parents were from.
Jamaica, I told him.
Wishing he’d fuck off to another table.

Now don’t get me wrong, antisocial I am not, but this tedious conversation went on for about 15 minutes, only ending when my mate turned up, enquiring who my new “friend” was.

I’ve been told I have that kind of face, and yeah, I’ll concede that I don’t walk around frowning, but I wish that random crazy people would just stop talking to me.
There is a danger of me becoming a hermit…

January 28, 2013

Do you think I’ve put on weight?

At some point in every man’s life comes the inevitable question from his woman: Do you think I’ve put on weight?

(Reminds me of that old joke: Does this dress make me look fat? No, your fat makes you look fat)

The answer to this has to be carefully considered.

A comparable question would be: you and your woman are strolling through town. Your woman glances at a passing young (not unattractive) woman and asks you extremely casually,
“Do you think she’s pretty?”

A “Yes” will usually result in a very frosty, tense and silent walk home.

Say “No” and your woman will automatically assume you’re lying. The clued up blokes out there will aim for a response somewhere in the middle.

Why do women do this to us? I’ve never asked my woman if she thinks that passing guy is good-looking. I don’t really care if she thinks he’s hot, that’s a conversation she’ll have with her girlfriends, not with me.

Anyway, I digress.
On the weight issue:

What women fail to realize is, unless you’ve put on so much weight that you need help to get out of the bath, we DONT CARE!

Women spend far too long obsessing about this issue, but I suspect they’re not doing it for our benefit.

After all, we’ve seen you first thing in the morning, make up streaked down your face from a heavy session with the girls the night before, a line of drool on the pillow.
We still love you.
And we’ve held your hair back when you’ve been sick after too many JD’s & Cokes.

I suspect they’re more concerned how they measure up to other women.
Is she taller, slimmer, more shapely than me? Bitch!

Men are far simpler creatures……

January 28, 2013

The Vegetarian Debate

I am a vegetarian, been one since the age of 14.

What I find quite amusing is when I meet new people and volunteer this fact, they for some reason feel the need to justify their own consumption of meat.

They often don’t consider the possibility that I actually don’t care what they eat. It’s their body, after all.

A typical conversation is this:

Them: “You’re a vegetarian? I don’t eat a lot of meat – in fact, I rarely eat red meat, mainly chicken.”

Me: “Hmmm.” I’ve had this conversation over the years so many times, I’m losing the will to live.

Them: “I would give up meat entirely but don’t think I could cope. I had a friend who gave up meat and she became anaemic.
I mean – you have to get your iron and protein from meat, right? I’ve got a friend who’s a vegetarian – he doesn’t eat any meat at all – only fish.”

This one doesn’t even deserve a response.

I weigh 16 stone. I haven’t collapsed due to an iron deficiency, not suffering through lack of calcium, and don’t spend every meal picking through lettuce.

So I nod, smile, and will the conversation to end. On to the next.

January 28, 2013

Men & Sex

I’m quite fortunate to have a few female friends (how else do blokes REALLY learn about women?), and if you’re a woman, there are a few things you have to take into account:

Your man is looking at PORN.
If not now, he’s done it quite happily in the past.

If you’re the kind of woman who doesn’t mind, he’ll be quite open about it. If you do mind, he’ll lie.

He’ll tell you that porn does nothing for him, it’s degrading for all the actors & actresses involved.

The biggest lie of all is that he’s got YOU – why would he need to look at porn?

These lies should be taken with the pinch of salt they deserve.
That’s like assuming your bloke will no longer masturbate because he’s going out with you.

He will. He has. Often.

Men will often look at other women.
It’s nothing personal. You could be the fittest woman on the planet, it’ll still happen. We may get caught doing it occasionally, and we’ll deny it. But we are doing it. Women do it too – they just pretend they don’t – like farting…..

Jealously:

If I had a pound for every woman I’ve ever heard say these words:
“But he’s TOO nice. I wish he was a little jealous, at least I’d know he cares….”

So your partner doesn’t tell you what to wear, who to hang out with, or talk to.
You find his lack of jealousy worrying, and begin to wonder if he really cares about you. After all – a little bit of controlling behaviour from him would indicate that a passionate heart beats within his chest, right?

Wrong.

The flip side of this argument is that you end up with a man who rings you repeatedly to see where you are, who you’re with, vets your dresses before you’re allowed out, checks your phone with alarming regularity….. Hmmm.

January 28, 2013

To be an MP…..

I am definitely in the wrong line of work…
Even though the expenses “scandal” has previously been all over the news, you would think that this is a new problem.
Fact is, our greedy “representatives” have been doing this for years.

The government’s own parliamentary website states:
……”MPs can claim allowances to cover, for example, staff costs, travel expenses and the cost of running an office.”

Hmmm.
How did they go from this (admittedly vague) statement to claiming against utility bills, council tax, mortgage repayments, home improvements, home cinema systems?

The basic salary of an MP (as of April 2009) is £64,766. I am earning nowhere near that, and when the bills inevitably arrive, I have to pay them out of my salary, just like the vast majority of the population.

So why are MP’s any different? They get paid more than most of the population, so why can’t they pay for their bills/council tax/home improvements/widescreen television sets like everybody else?

They bleat that it’s “within the rules.”
Yeah, rules that they made up (presumably while laughing at the taxpayer). If I made up a rule that I wasn’t going to pay any tax – EVER – I doubt this argument would work.

Money grubbing, self-serving low lives with their noses firmly in the trough.
Interesting to note that the previous Prime Minister Gordon Brown (in an effort to fool the people) said there will be a reform of the expenses system.

Which means that they’ll still be claiming for a whole host of items, just not as much as before.

I feel much better now.

MP’s should only be allowed to claim for car mileage, running their office, and that’s it.
Until this happens MP’s will always be taking the mickey.

January 28, 2013

The state of the news in the UK

A newspaper story in the Mirror caught my eye the other day.

Basically the police had rounded up a young Muslim man (after having him under intensive surveillance) and held him under draconian terrorism laws.

I read the story twice. Not because I am particularly slow, but because I’ve developed a habit of reading these stories twice, because the way these stories are written are designed to twist our way of thinking, and form our opinion.
In short, we are constantly being manipulated.

Here is a typical example of this kind of reporting:

FANATICAL TERROR SUSPECT ARRESTED.

Police today stormed the residence of Ali Hamza in the early hours of this morning.

Fanatical Hamza, 25, had been under surveillance by police for some time, and has been detained under anti terrorism laws.

Hamza has been known to have visited Pakistan several times in the last year, and a police source confirmed that Hamza was suspected to have links with a terrorist organisation.

A neighbour (who did not want to be named) said “He always kept himself to himself, didn’t really speak to anyone. He was always going abroad, and I’m not sure where he was getting the money from.”

A police source said that a search of his residence had proved to be quite fruitful, and they were committed to ridding Britain of anyone who wanted to interfere in our way of life.

Hmmm.
On second reading, stories like these read like fabrications:
Fanatical? On whose opinion? No explanation on why he has been branded fanatical.

Police “stormed” the residence? For all we know, they could have simply knocked. “Known to have visited Pakistan several times this year…” So? If I did that, no one would bat an eyelid. Maybe he has family over there.

As for the “Suspected to have links with a terrorist organisation”

Very easy to tar anyone with this brush. Suspected by who? The police? The reporter writing the story? His granny?

As for the neighbour…. My neighbours could say the same about me – I mean, we nod, say hi to each other when we pass in the street, but I don’t think I’m going to be invited over for coffee.
What I know about my neighbours, I could write on a postage stamp – and I’m hardly a loner…

In closing, next time you read a “story” like this, read it again.

Dissect it, and work out how much is fact, and how much of the story is written to get the desired response from you:

we are overrun with terrorists, they want to destroy our way of life (yeah, work until you drop, whilst being taxed through the nose, while our politicians trouser as much of our money as possible…), and the only way we can solve this problem is to invade & occupy other people’s countries, tell the population how scared they should be, and bring in a raft of new draconian laws designed to keep us “safe.”

January 28, 2013

Stereotypes, and Damn stereotypes

I was in Ibiza quite a few years ago, and had the good fortune to be present at a hypnotist’s show.

I say “good fortune” because I am admittedly quite cynical about stage hypnosis.

So there I was, in the audience, getting to see up close and personal how this worked.

The hypnotist selected 10 people to sit in chairs in two rows of five up on the stage, discarding any who were clearly drunk (apparently trying to hypnotize a drunk person doesn’t go too well).

Anyway, this guy told his victims he was going to count backwards from ten, then they would fall into a trance.

At this point, I was thinking: I’m watching this – if it was that simple, wouldn’t I too be in a trance once he’d finished counting backwards?

He duly counted backwards, heads flopped forward, and he told his audience they were all driving a bus, with lots of fluffy cute rabbits on the road.

Cue lots of steering wheel movements and gasps as some bunnies were unavoidably run over.
One girl started crying.

I was unmoved.

Then the hypnotist clicked his fingers and told the group that everyone in the room was naked.

A girl at the front of the stage turned, looked directly at me, and gasped.

She was asked what she was looking at.
She pointed at me, and said “He’s huge.”

Still wasn’t convinced by this demonstration of the hypnotist’s power.

This girl was perpetrating a BIG stereotype attributed to black guys in particular.

I tried to look disgusted, but only succeeded in sitting there with a smug look on my face.
That’s right ladies. It’s all me.

I’m pretty sure that every black guy on the planet is not walking around like Lexington Steele (I have NO idea who that is, just a name plucked at random…) – for all she knew, I could have been hung like a gerbil.

Oh well. Some stereotypes I’ll have to learn to live with.

Until I’m rumbled….