Vergnügungspark - Amusement Park

As lacking in amusement as such parks in East Anglia are - Suffolk’s Pleasurewood Hills sounding more like, yet being far less appealing than, a low-grade countryside brothel, and Yarmouth’s Joyland, a place that’d struggle to be more miserable were all the rides replaced with Holocaust imagery and used tampons - for me they could never be as depressing as those seedy, teenager and degenerate-ridden dens calling themselves simply, Amusements. Packed to the doors with flashing fruit machines interspersed with the occasional crane-grabbing game, they’re everywhere and always have that same smell: a mixture of stale smoke, disinfectant and futile desperation. If you go to the seaside, they’re a bit more non-addict friendly, having at least a small section of old style, mechanical penny slots and falls where you can happily spend five quid over an hour. You’ll probably win a big chunk of it back too, and, most importantly, walk away with a Liverpool FC key ring from the 2001/2 season or some Lizzie McGuire stickers. The best thing about it is trading in all those cruddy prizes for something bigger and better, like the classy Tasmanian Devil money box I fill with all my shit-small coinage. But back in city centres, it’s all about being serious. Penny falls replaced by silvery ones, 2p minimum-bet machines replaced by 20p Deal or No Deal confusingly high-tech motherfuckers, and tourists replaced by locals trying desperately to button-bash their way out of debt. Not a crappy little prize in sight either, just an abundance of bright white trainers, tracksuits, gold chains and baseball caps. And all the players are wearing them already, so what’s the point? If you’re a bit down and happen to be passing such a place, step inside for a few seconds to take in the sights, sounds and smells. If that doesn’t make you feel a trillion times better about your own life, well there’s always East Anglia’s leading wood-pleasuring site just off the A12, north of Lowestoft. Whatever turns out to be there, you can bank on riding creaky, battered stuff from the 1950’s in dire need of lubrication.

Vordersitz - Front Seat

The front seat, or rather front row of seats on a plane is the only place you can sit to guarantee the prevention of an all-expenses-paid trip to Crampsville for your legs, or to its even less desirable neighbour, Crushedto-fuckville. It wouldn’t be the case if practically all air passengers in the world weren’t the complete selfish cockstains they are. But no, it’s apparently a basic human right to recline your seat to its extreme the second the seatbelt sign goes off, regardless of how shittily uncomfortable it makes anyone else. Now you may think this tirade is based on one or two recent bad experiences on scummy airlines, and that my seat-based luck-tank is simply running dry. Well firstly, the idea of a storage tank for seat-based luck isn’t a bad one - Theo Paphitis will snap that right up, so get working on that prototype! Secondly, and a bit more importantly, I base this on the close to thirty flights I’ve taken both within and between several different countries over the last three years. Everywhere it’s the same. Eastern and western Europe, north America, Australasia, south-east Asia - about eighty to ninety percent of the time it was the default post-takeoff action to be carried out. It’s a xenophobe’s worst nightmare: every race uniting, sharing a common dream to instinctively spread that dull, aching, leg-related pain to everyone, regardless of skin colour, ancestry or creed. In most cases too, when a polite anti-crippling request was made, it was either outright ignored or resulted in the tiniest adjustment, accompanied by a sneering “You happy now?” remark. The prevailing attitude seems to be Well I paid for my seat, I’ll put it how I damn please! It makes me really pine for the days when guns, knives, hammers and lawnmowers were allowed on planes so these conceited tossers could receive the bloody mid-flight justice they deserve. (YouTube ’Braindead lawnmower scene’ this very second if you’re confused). Actually, even if you’re not confused, look it up anyway because it’s brilliant! Okay, personally, were I to want to encroach on the already meagre space of whoever is sat behind me, I’d turn around and ask first. It’s the most basic of common courtesy, even if they’re absolute wankers. Perhaps it affects me more because of my inbuilt politeness chip that engages during any verbal interaction with strangers. It’s the same chip that forces an automatic apology whenever someone bumps into me or stands on my foot, or calls me a fanny face in the street. Fortunately, it doesn’t apply to my textual output, so I can be as openly horrible to strangers as I like. Except you. If you’re bothering to read my words you’ll get a free pass on most things, or at least get let in for student rate. However, please note that if you recline in front of me on the day I do finally snap, I’ll probably slash your face. Or if the plastic cutlery fails me, take a slash in your face. Just so we‘re clear.

Ein|sperren - To Lock Up

Prison life doesn’t look like much fun. Besides the occasional snooker-ball-in-a-sock beating and showery bum rape, it just looks terribly dull. Unless you’ve done something horrendous, chances are your fellow inmates will mostly be a boring mix of relatively sane petty thugs, that may or may not want to subject you to an intense fist or willy-based pounding. In terms of interesting conversation potential, the psycho killers outdo the smack addicts and burglars any day. I’d much rather hear a chilling account of consuming a Fray Bentos steak and kidney pie with baked beans and a nice Lambrusco, than another humdrum tale of granny-mugging or car theft. Speaking of criminal chit chat, I was on a train to London the other week and felt I‘d lucked out with an almost empty, very quiet carriage. Running a bit late and needing to pee, I’d decided to do it on the train. In the toilet. Seconds before departure, a band of three shady guys, to whom I took an instant prejudicial dislike, decided to take the table directly across the isle from me. “They’re reserved, mate,” one said to the apparent leader, although using the correct there/their/they’re seems a bit inappropriate. So rather “There reserved mate,” to which he responded by pulling out the seat reservation markers and saying something like “Well, they’re (sorry, their) our seats now!” Within minutes they were guzzling special brews, talking about meetings with parole officers, and discussing the best weed connections in East Anglia. Being an hour and forty minutes from Liverpool Street with a bladder full of ex-orange juice and coffee, you can see my dilemma. While I’d hate to show any lack of faith in Her Majesty’s ability to reform, I didn’t quite feel like leaving all my stuff on the seat to visit the bog. The alternative would be to take everything with me, which to my over-analysing brain would light up a massive flashing I DON’T TRUST YOU SCUMBAG CONS sign - not an overly attractive option either. Moving to a different part of the train would generate the same sign, only in lowercase letters, and more a gentle blinking than flashing. I didn’t fancy losing my Ipod, jacket or chocolate bars, nor being subjected to a retaliatory we’ll-teach-you-for-not-trusting-us bashing, so did the only thing possible: risk damaging my bladder by painfully holding it in for nearly two hours. Which was made all the more difficult by some of the hilarious things they were saying. I’ve not got time to share them all, because I need a wee (and have done every fifteen minutes since that journey), but my favourite was, and I‘ve translated this into relatively proper English, “Ha! Made me laugh. This is the first time I’ve been released from prison where they’ve given me condoms. What am I supposed to do with them? I ain’t ever used one in my life. I take my chances.” I laughed out loud and had to jab my finger really obviously into the book I was fake-reading to make the outburst appear unrelated. But then started to feel awful for the hundred or so illegitimate children and fresh infections he’d almost certainly helped create. Forget giving out free condoms on release - try mandatory castration. Or even a crude, rusty scalpel-based sex change. Turn every male ex-con into an ex-man and the re-offending rate would drop off the chart. They’d be laughed out of drug deals and bank robberies with their uneven tits and hairy legs. What’s the worst that could happen? If anything it’d make crime more of a comedic spectator sport and far less scary. Well, the image of hundreds of badly botched-job transsexuals trying to be taken seriously as proper wrong’uns makes laugh anyway.

Fremdenverkehrsamt - Tourist Information Office

Perhaps there’s just something inherently unfunny about tourist information offices. It’s a struggle to generate anything even slightly amusing about a place you waste precious minutes of your holiday leafing through brochures and getting flogged organised tours by commission-hungry staff. Everything you could possibly need to know is available on a million websites from the second you decide to take a given trip, so unless you’re popping in for a sneaky wee, you shouldn’t really have much cause to enter. Note that’s pretty much the extent of my comic prospects for this piece, although sly slash, crafty penny-spend or stealthy pee-pee are all equally mediocre, so could have been used instead. Essentially it’s only going to get worse from here in. Or at least more dull. In truth, I enjoy looking around a city’s tourist office because I‘ve got a habit of collecting leaflets and brochures for things I‘ve no intention of doing. That and tacky place-branded pens, pencils, fridge magnets and armfuls of other useless tat. Aren’t you glad you learned that about me? Told you there was nothing funny going on in this entry, yet you had to read it anyway. Especially you, Steven. That’s on the off chance one of the four regular readers of this blog happens to be called Steven, if not, please just pretend that’s your name for a few seconds. It’ll make me feel far less guilty about using my linguistic ejector seat to escape this vile textual misadventure. With any luck I’ll land near a building full of not-to-commission-hungry people who’ll tell me a bit about the place. Yep, definitely time to bail. Bye!

Hauptbahnhof - Central Station

Getting from Munich’s airport to the city is an incredibly frustrating experience. Especially if you’re an idiot like me. Having got off the plane and collected my bag, I was happy to find an integrated station with a regular, direct train service into the Hauptbahnhof, a mere five-minute walk from the hostel I’d booked. The queue at the manned ticket desk was huge, while the self-service machines were relatively deserted. Naturally I chose to go with the mechanised option, chuckling to myself and murmuring something like chumps walking past the people in the snaking line. Twenty minutes later, after prodding every conceivable combination of buttons, all the while glancing at the other queue to note where I would have been had I joined it in the first place, I was about to admit defeat. Until suddenly, it happened! I actually did just admit defeat. And no, the machine wasn’t all in German, nor did it have an out-of-order sign plastered across its screen. As dense as I know I can be, it wasn’t my fault. Probably. All I remember is being able to select the journey I wanted, FLUGHAFEN to HAUPTBAHNHOF and the exact time (that had to be continually bumped to the next one as each departure time passed), but that there was no ’Buy Now’ or similar option anywhere. I could even print out a detailed list of all the times and prices for the entire day! But no option to physically purchase a ticket. So seething inside with my head hung low, I shuffled over to the old and thick people’s line for a further ten minutes of foot-tapping and anger. If Hitler had to deal with such shit-useless technology every time he flew into the city, then it definitely makes sense that Munich was the birthplace of Nazism. Spending thirty minutes trying to buy a train ticket had transformed me, a reasonably sane and placid person, into an angry and irritable twat, so the effect on a genuine mental is almost guaranteed to result in awful haircuts and genocide. Anyway, to end this on a slightly lame Bavarian tourism plug, the city’s magic beer quickly placated me. It’s a really fascinating place to visit regardless - historically, architecturally and various other assorted ally-ending words, but ignoring all that, their drink is so pure, you can easily double your regular intake and still not get hung-over. As I say, magic beer. It’ll cost you though. With our current piss-poor exchange rate, for two pints you’ll be lucky to see much change from a tenner. Or a baritone for that matter. But lame jokes that don’t even work are officially legal tender in Germany, so stuff your S-Suitcases f-full of ‘em. Unless you don’t have a stutter, in which case just fuck off.

Bordell - Brothel

Objecting to whoredom on moral grounds is undeniably a twattish thing to do. The idea that our bodies are special or sacred in some way, and that letting people stick stuff inside them for cash somehow makes you a lesser human being is plain wrong. Sure, frown on the drugs it pays for in most cases - dealers are scumbag fucks - but not on the act itself. These uptight people aren’t tutting when they’re at the height of orgasm, so how have they got the right to say shit about anyone else‘s carnal jollies? I share the late, great George Carlin’s bemusement on the issue: “Selling is legal, fucking is legal, so why isn’t selling fucking legal?” Of course there is a big issue at the moment with press-ganged prostitutes getting screwed over by absolute bastard pimps, but it seems unfair to let that taint the entire profession. Some clothing manufacturers use sweatshop child labour to make the cheap shit for Primark, but that doesn’t mean they all do. So brothels in which consenting adults fuck for cash shouldn’t be a problem. But they clearly are. Now I’m aware this sounds like the confessions of sexually frustrated, hooker-using filth cretin, but that’s not what it is. While I’ve no issue with people who choose to do it, it’s still a somewhat grimy business. When each of these girls - pretty as they may be - are getting nailed ten times a night by a cliental of mostly misfits, degenerates and leery tossers, they become as attractive a lay as Jeremy Kyle’s condescending fuck-face. No matter how high class some of these escorts are advertised as being, they’ve received the cock of hundreds, if not thousands (but probably not hundreds of thousands) of the ugliest, tiniest and likely rapiest of other men. So I’m not so much judging a book by its cover, more by who’s grubbily fingered through it in the past. Which isn’t much better really. What about all the girls you almost-sort-of-get-to-a-point-where-you-might-get-some-way-close-to-possibly-pulling on a night out? What about all the ugly, tiny rapists they’ve had sex with for free? Well clearly these girls are far cheaper; my good looks, eloquence and dry wit often succeed in getting me nowhere, so a few pints of snakebite and black‘ll do the trick. Maybe. I might know were I ever in a situation where buying a girl a drink didn‘t seem like a horrifically cynical I-just-want-in-your-pants move. Although I am sure that if it did actually work, it’d cost a lot less than a visit to someone on the street turning tricks for crack and smack.

Ich Hab’s Ihm ImVertragen Gesagt - I Told Him In Confidence

Never tell anyone anything in confidence. Ever. No matter how impeccable their secret-keeping record may be, there comes a point where everyone has to blab to someone. The strange thing is we should have learned this from our earliest years at school, when in reception class you told a close friend you really fancied Gemma Lovell and he went and spread it faster than cholera in Zimbabwe. Actually, that‘s stupid. Cholera takes tons longer to get around than even the most tardy gossiper’s payload. Faster than, say, the time it takes to eat a bowl of soup while watching an episode of Rainbow in your lunch break. Or if I was unlucky, Rosie and Jim, which genuinely made me want to sneak aboard canal boats at night, piling up horrifically dismembered puppet effigies in the hope of scaring the freaks off air. I reasoned the presence of a canal-side marionette murderer might make them think twice about taking any further shit-boring boaty-romps down Britain’s dreary waterways. Incidentally, when telling my friends about this desire also in good faith, within days I was explaining myself to a concerned and quite disturbed child psychologist. After which you might think I’d have learned to keep my mouth shut about everything. But we never learn, and stuff always gets out. Don’t tell anyone anything in confidence. Ever. If you’re a chronic over-analyser too, paranoia always dictates that everyone knows everything already, so that every comment, wry smile or unintentional blanking is somehow related to whatever it is that’s been leaked. Anyway, given that I’m now obliged to post all these entries regardless of how shoddily they’ve turned out, as much as it pains me I can’t just hide this away and never speak of it again. Boo-sodding-hoo to me.

Vergrößerung - Enlargement

It’s sad, yet hardly surprising that my first thoughts on this entry are body-related. Enlarged breasts, willies, lips and thumbs (in that order) popped right in, although why anyone bothers with #2 and #3 is beyond me. #4 however is a very simple procedure, taking approximately two seconds to perform. If you’re interested and want to try it for yourself, read beyond this sentence, otherwise start from the beginning again. Okay, now the boring people are stuck in an infinite reading loop, to increase your thumb size by up to one hundred percent (individual results may vary), simply take your index finger and thumb from your other hand, and place either side of your diminutive target digit, scissoring firmly both hands together like a pair of elderly lesbians. I actually have unusually dry hands, so that horrific image is probably less appropriate to everyone who isn‘t me. Anyway, working backwards through the various body augments, I‘ll continue with #3. Pumping your lips full of protein may sound like a lot of fun, but the result often ends up looking peculiar. Given, I’ve not studied a trillion before-and-after shots, but of the several bizarre human-fish hybrids I’ve seen with collagen implants, it just seems they’re paying vast sums of money to have people notice - no matter how freaky they look - that they can afford such vast sums of money. But that can’t be right, because the idea that people having such cosmetic surgery could be vain, boasting show-off-types is a bit far-fetched. Next, penis enlargement is a brilliant concept. It’s one step further than pricks that wear designer underwear in the hope it’ll help them get laid. If you’re in a situation with a lady where you’re already down to your underwear, unless she’s the type of superficial idiot who’d bulk her face out a la #3, it’s unlikely she’s going to give a shit whether Tommy Hilfiger or Calvin Klein has his name plastered across your waistline. So similarly, if you’ve got to a point where you’re already lost the undies, is she really about to cease proceedings and laugh you out of the bedroom/nightclub disabled toilet/stairwell because your manpiece isn’t up to size? If so she’s a shallow twat, which ironically would make her far more suited to a tiny-penised man than her less empty-headed counterparts. Finally, #1: breast enlargements. I understand some women without much there can feel very self-conscious, insubstantial, etc, etc, etc, blah, blah, blah. Being a guy, shockingly I don’t find breasts that unappealing, so I have an inbuilt non-beef, generally speaking. Responsible, proportional tit-jobs, cool, go for it. Even a bit bigger than looks natural, why not? But when you start going from an A to EE or B to JJ - if that size even exists - sexiness rapidly degenerates to funny, to freaky, to ugly, to plain nasty. Give me average boobs and decent conversation over giant knockers and thick-shittedness any day. Although a thumb enlargement can also increase desirability by up to ninety percent (individual results may vary), so it’s definitely worth whipping out every now again.

Wie Ist Das Neue Zimmer? - What’s The New Room Like?

It’s not bad, thanks. After almost eight months in my new place (or rather just place now), I’ve finally started to cover my insipid lilac-coloured walls with actual stuff. The resulting mishmash of movie and music posters, maps, photos and postcards do make it feel like a new room, and certainly a lot more homely. There’s still loads of space to fill though, and working out what to stick there isn’t easy. Putting up naked ladies doesn’t interest me that much - pictures of them that is. Having live ones Blu-taked to the wall on a permanent basis wouldn’t be that much fun either. They’d need feeding, watering, and would end up making far too much noise and mess than their pleasing aesthetics were worth. Cars and football are the other major subjects of posters adorning male bedrooms, both of which interest me about as much as cheese or staplers - footballers in cars even less so than staplers in cheese. Caaaw, check out that exhaust pipe, it’s well sexy. Awww I’d well go gay for that Ronaldo, he’s wicked. No, give me pictures of brie-encased stationary any time. And I don’t even like cheese. I considered framing various types and styles of wallpaper for comic effect, but then thought if that’s the aim, why not just mount several issues of the Beano or Dandy and put them up? But it’s unlikely most people would get the understated non-comedy, and my room would just look like it belonged to an eight year old. What am I saying? The fact I have a single, rented room in a house, rather than my own place with a mortgage makes me less of a grownup than any framed Mini The Minx centrefold ever could. Owning my own home with Thomas the Tank Engine wallpaper in the kitchen, a bed wrecked by constant jumping (of the innocent kind), and having my mum round every day to wipe me after a poo would still make me more of a man than I am right now. But that’s fine with me because I’ve never been that comfortable being called one. Not due to being secretly a woman (although that is a much better excuse), but because I still feel like a kid. A deeply cynical one at that, but certainly not an adult. Being constantly asked for ID helps reinforce the perception, as shop assistants, doormen and barmaids all seem to agree I‘m just a child too. Buying a house would doubtless rid me of my perma-kid complex, but there’s too much of the world left to explore - a planet full of adventure and experiences that take precedent over tying myself to a life-long financial commitment. Call it naïve, tell me I’ll be a pauper when I hit sixty, I don’t care. It’ll be where I’ve been and what I’ve done that’ll make me a wealthy old boy. Well, that and my priceless stash of smutty Beano porn.

Karaoke - Karaoke

A spine-chilling word synonymous with tacky nights out, featuring a cacophonous soundtrack so excruciating it’ll make your ears wish they could commit hari-kari. That’s according to the Oxford English Dictionary, anyway. Were I editor-in-chief. At best, it’s a bit of drunken fun. You and your friends caterwauling the night away, not giving a crap about the actual tune, words, or pitch while concurrently managing to piss off all the stupidly serious idiots surrounding you. At worst - which is most of the time - it’s an unbearably self-indulgent practice of completely unjustified vocal-strutting. Most people who think they can sing really can’t, yet they feel the need to prove to everyone they’re only working that shit job in accounts till they catch their big break. Even though they’re thirty-eight. But rest assured, they’ll still be trying out for X Factor every year, almost certainly secretly wishing terminal illness on a close friend or family member to get that all-important sympathy vote. Not so much tugging at heartstrings as wrenching them out with a pair of comically oversized pliers. X Factor's popularity gives every pea-brained, futureless cretin hope that they too can make oodles of cash for opening their mouths and making noise. I’m sure it’s this dream that’s made karaoke so much more popular over the last few years, to the point it’s now encroaching on what was once the zenith of geekdom - console gaming. Singstar on the Playstation 3 allows you to broadcast video of your auditory GBH across the Internet, turning what was once a format for the shy and nerdy into just another showboating prick-platform. Next it’ll be Games Workshop X Factor x-treme role playing, featuring replica figurines of JLS and Same-(it‘s only illegal if you catch us doing it)-Difference. Roll a 1 or 2 to get insulted to tears by Simon, a 3 to 5 is a suitably average performance, but on a 6 you nail it. You‘re through to the final! You get to sing live in front of dwarves, trolls, ogres and all the other hideous, lens-cracking members of the ITV studio audience! Actually, the idea that the outcome is somehow down to chance is a bit far-fetched. It’s more likely that the character you choose to play determines which loaded dice you get to roll. Nutcase middle-aged twins, take 1-2. Ugly-but-talented waitress from Rotherham, take a 3-5. Stunningly beautiful, highly marketable blonde from London, take a 6! Clearly I’m being far too cynical. Not everyone who takes karaoke seriously is a freak, some just enjoy listening to their own voice over a poorly balanced PA system in a dingy room surrounded by apathetic onlookers, every one of them feigning smiles and offering fake nods of encouragement as they hear the same songs they‘ve heard a million times before, a million times better. Now having never been to a karaoke bar, all this is completely speculative. But they do say speculativeness is next to godliness, and godliness is next to cleanliness, which is in turn next to OCD which is reasonably close to AJW - my initials. So how could I possibly be wrong?

Süchtig - Addicted

Thankfully, I’m not that addicted to anything particularly pricy, harmful or socially frowned upon. Smoking is expensive and doesn’t really do much other than slake, yet simultaneously build a nicotine dependency I can’t be bothered to nurture. But just because I’m a non-smoker doesn’t make me an anti-smoker. Nonchalance is my prevailing feeling on the issue. People can do what they want to their bodies, and as for passive smoking, it’s just another of the trillion things that can lead to a painful and premature death. If not smoke it could just as easily be a speeding bus, collapsed building, a psycho killer (qu'est-ce que c'est?) or giant squid monster from space. Far too many people think living for eternity is not only possible, but a basic human right. The Oldtopians dream of a place where billions of decrepit and frail bodies live, struggling to move for fear of snapping their twig-like limbs, but are, most crucially, completely free of terminal illness! Because that’s all that matters. Well meh to them. We’re not special, and have no more right to survive as all other animals on the planet, including those we regularly mass murder to happily chow down with a spicy barbeque sauce. Anyway, before this entry veers even further off topic, booze next. Being physically addicted to alcohol doesn‘t seem like that much fun, unless of course you‘re a member of one of those little hobo cliques - you know, the cheery beardy guys who hang out in small groups necking white cider and special brew. They laugh, they joke around, they nick the occasional handbag. They’re a Robin Hood-style band of bit-too-merry men, except they steal from all socio-economic groups and give mostly to the off-licence. I do drink a fair amount, but can’t ever see myself needing to get horrendously wasted. Especially on a daily basis. It really can’t be much fun. Finally, hard drugs seem like far too much work to bother with. Hiding a heroin habit from friends and family is probably almost as much effort as nicking and flogging all of their stuff. Funding the relentless quest for dragon-chasing supplies must be even harder during a recession. I’d guess those any-purpose loans aren’t quite so any-purpose nowadays. No more ten-grand loans to buy ’a big bunch of smack’. But before this gets any sillier, I have to go. The lack of Chocolate Fingers and Tesco’s Finest Triple Chocolate Cookies in my system is starting to give me the shakes, making typing and any wittiness increasingly difficult. And before you judge me, let me say I’m skinny and can easily afford them on my wage. It’s a victimless crime. So get off my back.

Auseinander - Apart

Apart from this very use of the word, I’m struggling to write anything for this entry. I suppose love will tear us apart could be a convenient excuse to mention Joy Division and the upcoming thirtieth anniversary of their landmark album Unknown Pleasures, released in June 1979. But I won’t, because I’d only earn your contempt as it inevitably turns into a Curtis bum-lick-fest with less gags than a made-for-ITV sitcom. And nobody wants to witness a textual account of necrophilic anilingus. Well, some people might, but I’m sure there’s plenty of subscribable websites that’ll do a far better job. So, instead I’ll do the second cheapest thing when inspiration is thin on the ground: break it down. In case you’re wondering, the first is to simply write about my inspiration being thin on the ground, followed by me questioning the point of this whole exercise and blah blah blah. It’s been done before and probably will make another tiresome appearance soon. Anyway, on with the breakdown. A part of me really wants to pick apart the Sterophonics for pretty much everything they’ve done in the last ten years. Word Gets Around is a cracking album and Performance and Cocktails has its moments too, but everything since has been so utterly and turdily dull, I’m amazed that during recording and performing they haven’t bored themselves to death. Instead of releasing Decade in the Sun: The Best of Stereophonics last year, they could have saved thousands of trees (blank CDs do grow on trees, right?) by just telling everyone to buy their first two albums again. But I suppose it’s not up to me. Anyway, all this talk of shit has suddenly made another part of me intrigued to find out who is into this whole necrophilic anilingus lark. Not necessarily to make friends or bum, rather more out of a morbid fascination as to what these people look like. Especially with a thirty year old corpse - it’d have to be pickled or mummified in some way for there to be anything left to lovingly tongue. I don’t imagine poo tastes that great inside a live shitbox, let alone one soaked in vinegar for three decades. Can’t say I’m aching to sample either any time soon, so any concerned rectums - dead or alive - can breath a collective sigh of relief. Just keep that Glade Plug-in cranked to the max.