Nixta Sinks

Best news item that I've read recently.

I don't even know where to begin with this one. The headline is retarded enough. Each and every paragraph is a gem - just when you think the whole thing couldn't get any sillier, it does, and wonderly so.

Key phrases: "11 year old", "disqualified", "driving", "very short", "punish you in a different way".

Genius.

Tragic accident at Akrotiri in Santorini. We spent a good hour trying to find this bloody museum after meeting two ageing Italian hippies in Anafi who recommended it. Thankfully, the Greeks seem to be as good at drawing maps or putting up signs as they are at building roofs so we never made it. Perhaps the signs were at knee level and we didn't notice. It seems that they contracted out the map-drawing to Smurfs, so why not the roadsigns too?

Now that's decline and fall. Next please, America.

Roll up! Roll up! Smoke it! Put it out. Now pay attention.

Right, you feeble stoners, give me your advice. This is a democracy, after all. Democtratise.

I'm moving into a new apartment with Dr. R. A lovely top-floor flat with enough space for me to be able to keep a beady eye on the destructive little bastard pretty much wherever he is. When I viewed the place there were no curtains so I insisted that there would have to be and even put it on the terms and conditions of my offer.

Now, apparently there are no curtain fitters who can come along and do it by our move-in date of October 1st, despite my being told a few days ago that the curtain men were going to be there the next day. I accepted this with bad grace. Once that was out of the way I asked if I could move in a day before only to be told that such action would be squatting and illegal, no matter how good my intentions, and their hands were tied. "Right, you fuckers" I thought "I'll show you" and in a masterful move negotiated moving in a day early with no additional rent to pay (it's a hundred bloody quid a day after all) in exchange for them fitting curtains some 4 days later, or so they promise.

I feel like I've just fucked myself in the arse when I should be reaming them. Since it's part of my offer conditions that there are curtains in place when we move in, am I entitled to tell them to forget it (there's a nice apartment just come available with a much larger kitchen and plasma TVs) or should I just lump it for a few days without curtains and stick to the plan? After all, it is a splendid apartment. I think I deserve more for 700 nicker a week.

I know what my decision is, but I want to be swayed.

Tell me, my people. Make your opinions count, or at least be heard, or rather read.

This is what I call a personal ad. Good old Craig's List. First Blumpkin, now this. Saves me some writing at least, which I'm sure you don't deserve.

OK I want emails from pretty girls or I'm going to kill a kitten...... - 35

I'm not bluffing ok, I'm fed up meeting crap boring women with no brains and no sense of humour.Yeah I love the way you women are always complaining about the fellas you meet as if it's any easier for us men.......pah! I grabbed this little fella lastnight just as he was going through my bins,pretty cute aint he? Oh yes you like cute dont you? just like you like your men eh?What about if I kidnapped a fox or maybe a badger?? not quite as fluffy are they,not quite as cute eh? Would you still care? probably not as much I dare say, jesus its all so bloody predictable.Well I'm cute too ok but I cant seem to get a break either so why should the kitten? Yeah I know it may seem unfair but hey tell that to the Foxes. So heres the deal.......if I dont get some emails from lots of nice women desperate to meet me very flippin soon Fluffykins here is gonna be chow mein OK ? I hope thats clear enough....only pretty girls can save the little fella now so its up to you...your his only chance ....dont say you havn't been warned...!

this is in or around Dont care

I'm not a football (soccer) fan. I love the game - it's full of intricacies, but in this country it's also a sickening institution inciting heated yet dull conversation and personal bankruptcy for millions.

There is now apparently a problem with attendance. Could this be directly related to the decline in the Britons' credit-card debt-up-racking? Well I never. Let me see. I could spend 60 quid a week to see a game that we could lose, or I could pay off some debt and take my nan out of the home for a trip to the sea and have change for dinner. Cunts. Fucking bastard moneygrabbing cock-knockers.

Football has been getting serious in the way American sports are - floating on the stock exchange, undergoing mergers and acquisitions, but they've forgotten the key issue: Football is exciting. Football is elegant and skillful. It's a ballet. Do it right, and the fans will come. Murinho (Chelsea's manager, for those who care not) says that his top priority is to win. Wenger (Arsenal's top Frog) says that they must play more exciting football.

Le Piss Off, Monsieur Arsene (for that is indeed his name). You have to win. You've made your bed, along with Man U, Chelsea (lest we forget until a couple of years ago a team of dandy fops on the decline), Liverpool and others. Now you must lay down in it and contemplate the ceiling. All of you. Think hard... Think very hard. The fans haven't deserted you - you've priced them out of the running. But most importantly, play football for the sake of winning and enjoying the game. If too much is at stake for it to be worth coming second, your league's fucked itself up the arse, and playing boring football should be a necessity only at the bottom of the table and at the end of the season.

Now get up off that bed and make the coffee. I need to wake up. And so do your bumchums you've left tucked under that duvet.

I really want to enjoy International Talk Like A Pirate Day. I want to be a part of it. I want to see what everyone else sees. Enjoy it as everyone else does. Say Arrrrr like I really mean it. Find it funny when everyone else does. Enjoy such trite pages as this and this (both via Redbeard himself), but I'm not a memaholic. See? Just writing about it has made me write "memaholic". Oh, now I hate myself even more.

I suspect I'm just being a miserable shit. But haven't we had enough of people saying "Arrrr", "Avast", and "Landlubber" and imagining that to pass as an impersonation? I'll concede that the glamourised pirates we're all impersonating are worth envying. I mean, we're not wearing oil-stained torn off Levis stolen from tourist yachts in the pacific whilst wielding poorly maintained semi-automatics and a plastic-handled machete with bits of flesh and bone still attached, contemplating whether to eat them before they begin to really rot. But I've had enough even of that. Unless you're Johnny Depp impersonating Keith Richards (I can't quite tell if YBNBY accidentally noticed the resemblance or if they're disguising cogniscance of the connection with unintelligible pirate speak), please shut up.

Yes. Fuck ITLAPD. If you're going to do it, you're going to do it properly. I'm getting a hook, some rope, and 20 bottles of rum. I'm going to sail the high streets of Fitzrovia taking your daughters hostage and keeping my powder dry, and don't even try to cross my bows or you'll have my explosive bowels to contend with.

Last year on ITLAPD, I left a non-pirate voiced message for my brother who had kidnapped my friends in Ljubljana and had the car, which my wife and I had planned to use to go visiting fuck knows where. Some cows probably. I'd got a text from Hogue bemoaning my brothers indifference to his attempts to rouse him and decrying everyone else's pleasure in their drunken slumber, so I SMSed the following:

Dani and I need the car.
I know they can get up.
This is crap.
If Tartley is the slow one, put him on a bus.
Barrett for one is pissed off.
This is their last day.

The fuckers had said that they wanted to make sure they came back early the next day, but rather than rally to my defense, the walking turds turned on me and created an eternal joke, in Pirate Voice. Barrett in particular I've never been able to trust with anything again. He just looks at me now and laughs. I'm waiting for the right moment to spit rum in his eyes.

IALAPD or nothing in future you pathetic runts.

Nixta sez

So, having survived the 3 major Ages of Cavemen, Romans, and Pirates, when is the Age of The English going to be superceded, and by what, pray? Canadians? Thickos? Cavemen again?

Bring back compulsory corporal punishment for those 18 and under and over, and make it sting.

Allow me to explain, please. I'm concerned that the issue of binge drinking and the concomitant violence and vomiting in the streets is no longer front-page news. It might not even be in the press at all for all I know. I hope to God that this is only because there are more exciting things to report on, like The Ashes victory, the new Premiership season, tits and how great it is to be British now that we've all forgotten that Henman creep. How I'd hate to think that the young and boistrous death-defying heroes of tomorrow have been subdued by stricter policing and, heaven forbid, a bank manager saying "no". Perhaps those things until recently labelled sobering have actually become so. Or maybe I just don't get out anymore. To be fair, central London does seem to be relatively immune to the syndrome. Actually, maybe I can refine that to Fitzrovia and Bloomsbury where people who drink tend to do so to excess, naked, daubed in caviar, and busily engaging in mutual orifice probing exercises. After all, this is a business and medical part of town where no-one has any reason to know one-another and hookers are available at short notice and reasonable price.

Are people still drinking themselves into oblivion? One can hardly blame them given the alternative really, but then one can hardly alter that alternative while pissed out of one's gourd. Believe me. I know. But try Sobriety. Just try it. I heartily recommend it. The sense of superiority gained by soberly watching your erstwhile comerades-in-the-Gloucester-Arms flailing miserably to remember their names and the pocket they put that fiver in beats any television before 9pm. With practice you can even kick them or move their drinks to their utter bewilderment and your unending amusement. Better still, you can draw them into conspiracies against one-another and have them move one-another's drinks. With practice it takes no more than about 10 minutes to start a fight, empty the bar, and have the place to yourself for a quiet read by the fire (assuming no-one tried to leave by the chimney).

Yes, keep up the binge drinking, the late night violence on the streets, the vomiting on my doorstep and shouting at my window. I love it, you plebs, and each day I relish your wonderful new scars and fresh jaundiced tinge. Pissheads, I salute you. You are the New English. But mainly, if you're too pissed to be organised enough to do anything about it, we can bring back corporal punishment and enjoy you being publicly flogged as well. What could be better?

Na zdravje.

Right. Today I was convinced that the two noises heard at the Oval were bat, then pad. There was no doubt, and the slow-motion imagery showed a very definite deflection off the bat, onto the pad, and up into the air.

However, the commentator was convinced that the first noise was the ball hitting the pad, and the second noise the bat hitting the batsmen's shoe. Quite aside from the synchronisation not working (these old duffers will never understand technology), that denies the obvious deflection of the ball from the bat.

Now, I hate George W. Bush and have done for a long time, but I've long struggled to remain objective in my criticism of him. Today he urges the US to display post 9-11 unity. In my mind's eye he wants to be congratulated and adored for his swift and measured response and is petulantly tired of being criticised. He's the president after all. It's a tough job. Cut him a break. Come on, be nice.

Am I unresonable? Have I decided that Bush is a c*#t and so cannot accept that he might actually be concerned about a possible division developing in the US? What kind? Political? Religious? Humanitarian? I still think he's a whiny little baby and needs to get the hell out. OK, so his speech-makers did manage a good sound-bite today, and must have been biting their nails as he did his best not to muck (sic) it up, but one sound-bite in one speech does not an inspiring president fake (sic).

Disclaimer: I'm not necessarily anti-war. I don't want anyone inferring anything from my rambling other than that I detest President Bush, vast swathes of his administration, and many of their policies and realise that many of them are little to do with Bush. He's just a fool with a child's brain and an infant's motor-control and should not be anywhere near the controls of a car, let alone a country or pretzel.

In other news, because the US cannot handle a natural disaster, oil prices have risen around the world, noisily so in the US' newest state, Blairvania.

Finally, in a not entirely unrelated vein, can someone who rides motorcycles please explain to me the dangerous aspect of diesel (as opposed to something else, like, say, unleaded petrol) being spilt over the road? Does it not evaporate? Does it evaporate but leave an oily slick whereas petrol disappears as cleanly as honey under a warm tap? I appeal to my biker readers to enlighten this bipedal quadricycler before he causes an accident.