A Good Night’s Sleep? Pah, In Your Dreams, Mate.

Insomnia strikes us all from time to time. Not nightmares, oh no. When insomnia is in town I dream of having nightmares. No, it’s worse than a few dreams. I am kept awake by thoughts. My over-active brain becomes deluged with all manner of thoughts, all jostling for space and keeping the sandman from the door more efficiently than a hungry Doberman. But what kind of thoughts? Concern about weighty political matters? No. A genius idea for a debut novel? I should be so lucky. A get-rich-quick business plan? Bollocks. No, what stops me from getting a decent night’s sleep is nothing other than a rain of ill-governed nonsense and shite.

A week ago, for example, I was jostling irritably under the covers when into my head popped the Doctor Who theme tune. Almost immediately my mind added lyrics. To start with it was as you’d expect: “Doctor Who, Doc-tor Whooo! Doctor Who, Doctor Who…” I’d imagine we’ve all done that, it fits the tune perfectly. Then it changed, with the word “Who” replaced by the word “Jew”. I then pictured the show’s title in a cod-Hebrew script, heard the theme song as sung by a cantor and I was through the looking glass. The Daleks took on sinister anti-Semitic overtones and the Doctor became a brave rabbi, fighting the rise of neo-Nazism at every turn. At a later date I mentally cast Eugene Levy in the title role (of course I had to IMDB him to find out his actual name – when speaking to Mrs Whisky-Cigarettes I always call him “the Dad from American Pie”.)

This is a recurring theme for me recently. I have also mind-commissioned High School Jew-sical, the Hebraic shark-based thriller Jews quadrilogy (”Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the Dead Sea”) and a current affairs quiz with a difference – Have I Got Jews For You.  Some of the greatest artists in history had their most ground-breaking ideas in the wee small hours.  Me?  I have ideas for rubbish puns that make me look a bit anti-Semitic.

Of course, it’s not all embarrassing poor man’s Woody Allen-isms around here.  There’s some diversity to my brain’s supply of fevered pish.  This year, TV previews told us, Big Brother was going to “get evil”.  But while Winston Smith got a rat-filled box strapped to his face, the worst this year’s housemates seem to have endured is a limited supply of hot water (unless you count being under the same roof as a blind man with the most annoying personality of any living being – thus making you second-guess everything you say about him in case you appear prejudiced).

While lying awake, my ideas factory has put forward the idea of a klaxon in the bedroom which goes off randomly at deafening volume.  Three weeks of this, then cudgels are left lying around for the sleep-deprived housemates while the CCTV system plays an endless loop of nomination footage selectively edited to look racist and threatening.  Ratings gold, in my opinion, but Endemol have stopped taking my calls.

I’ve always had these kind of thoughts.  Approximately twenty years ago my mind devised a watch filled with doses of valium and caffeine, which would soothe you off to sleep when you needed it to and then jerk you awake with a second injection in time to head off to work.  I was nine.  I should have been thinking of ways to make my BMX sound more like a motorbike.  This is part of the reason I’ve never tried hard drugs – the shit that I think about while waiting to nod off is quite unhinged enough.  Chemical assistance is not required.

If only my ideas for blog posts were as creative…

Italy’s underperformance at Euro 2008 explained.

Coyne

Donadoni

Though he has proved his worth to the world of happy psychedelic rock and is a consummate live performer, Wayne Coyne’s knowledge of international-level football is, it has to be said, at best rudimentary. Get your money on the French to win Tuesday night’s grudge match.

My favourite wall

Hi readers!

What’s your favourite wall? Many people would immediately jump to the obvious and say “The Berlin Wall!”, forgetting that the Berlin Wall was a symbol of oppression and heartbreak for many. The Great Wall of China scores highly on the “being seen from space” front, but cannot be seen from Leicester, and thus loses points in my estimation. The Wailing Wall doesn’t actually wail, and therefore is banned on the grounds of false advertising.

No, THIS is my favourite wall.

Sex and the Shitty

It will come as a colossal shock to anyone who happens to read this blog, but I make no apology for dropping the bombshell – I hate Sex and the City. I will not be heading to the cinema, even now the queues have shortened, to take in the movie, nor will I be buying the DVD when it comes out. And, mark you, this is not simply because I have a penis. I quite enjoyed the Bridget Jones films (in a “it’s shit, but not hateful shit” kind of way), and I sat through all of Love Actually, only partly because I wanted to have sex with Keira Knightley (she didn’t turn up, bitch – and I’d bought an extra-large popcorn too). I know Sex and the City is aimed at the female section of the population, but even my feminine side loathes it with a passion bordering on the twisted.

The main reason for my loathing is the central character, Carrie Bradshaw. I mean, how can anyone watch either the show or the film without wanting to push her off a fucking bridge? Her vocal inflections make my face turn inside out through sheer anger. Her dress sense is ludicrous. Her face offends me. If Sarah-Jessica Parker was going to appear in a feature-length adaptation of any TV show, Mr. Ed would surely have been more suitable.

But these are the purely shallow facets of my dislike. As a character, I cannot understand where one might find the sympathetic elements of her personality. She’s needy, attention-seeking, self-obsessed, a love cheat and a shit friend. Some role model. In one episode we see her pursing her lips judgementally after walking in on a friend sucking off a delivery boy. Well, fine. But hang on Caz, aren’t you the one who cheated on her boyfriend with her recently-married ex? Who’s the cunt here? As I remember it (and yes, I watched enough episodes to work all this out) you were most put out when the boyfriend didn’t want to talk to you after he found out – yeah, he’s the unreasonable one, isn’t he?

Of course, to sling mud at Carrie Bradshaw is to occasionally risk being told that “you just don’t like confident, powerful, liberated female characters” – which is a hell of an accusation to disprove without resorting to the “some of my best friends” defence. All I can say against it is that, quite apart from being a fictional character, Carrie isn’t particularly confident, powerful or liberated. When she isn’t in a relationship she frets about the situation, she constantly demands affirmation from her friends (an absolute monument to the phrase “enough about you, let’s talk about me for a while”) and her disapproval towards the more sexually active Samantha borders on the sneering at times.

It’s not just CB that draws my ire, though. Her friends can be equally irksome, and this is particularly true of Charlotte, who is so hinked on subservience that whenever she appears onscreen it is natural to check that the channel hasn’t automatically switched to a Victorian costume drama while you were looking away to avoid Carrie-clothes-induced hysterical blindness. There is of course such a thing as too much cynicism, but I find myself hoping Charlotte will be molested by a vagrant just to induce a bit of reality into her world. Samantha is so promiscuous that she goes beyond parody, while Miranda, the most down-to-earth of the quartet, is portrayed as so hard-edged and unsympathetic that the logical conclusion is that Carri… I mean Candace Bushnell is actually the one who doesn’t like independent, powerful women.

Okay, so I may not be the target audience, but Christ, it’s just a very unpleasant show.

Back, after a fashion

I think the safest way to update after my long absence is to enumerate things:

1) The long wait has been entirely the fault of British Telecom. Too long and boring a story to relate here in full, suffice it to say that they activated my phoneline and then they deactivated it, then they made a colossal Miles Hunt of activating my broadband and among their many excuses as to why this was taking so long accused me of never having ordered it. Promises and lies in their millions issued from the lips of call centre drones, I lost the will to live, but I’m back now.

2) Darcy went missing on Friday:

Darcy, seen here lobbying for us to put Saw 3 on the DVD player, decided that she would test our emotions to the absolute limit by disappearing for a day and leaving us convinced that she would never be seen again. Then she popped in through the same open window through which she’d nipped out 20 hours prior and looked around her as though nothing had happened, thusly saving me the cost of a bottle of gin and 50 paracetemol.

3) Celtic won the league, after a hilarious bout of choking from Rangers FC and the arch-traitor Walter Smith.

4) Munster are European champions again.

5) Boris Johnson is Mayor of London. For fuck’s sake. Boris fucking Johnson. What the yellow rubbery fuck do you London-living, Yo!-Sushi-eating, iPhone-wanting arses think you’re playing at? Jesus…

Anyway, this post was a breaking of the seal. Better, more detailed efforts will follow in time.

Swans are shit

I’ll shortly be going silent for a few weeks, as I’m moving again, into a nicer flat, as of tomorrow.  I have a vague impression that I’ll pop on to check e-mail and stuff in an internet cafe, but yeah, there you go.

It’d be nice if you’d miss me or something.  Christ.  People, I dunno.

All things considered, it could have gone better

The weekend could really have been kinder.  On Saturday I was awake before the cockerel rang, and nipped out to the shops to get some bread.  There followed maybe the best omelette I’ve ever cooked.  Light, fluffy, filled with cheese, on a couple of slices of buttery toast.  I actively considered regurgitating it so I could eat it a second time.  True story.

Then, because the Old Firm game was a mere four hours away, I didn’t go back to bed, and that was my first mistake.  I instead sat up posting increasingly provocative comments on various fora (nice pluralising!), intimating my suspicions that Rangers fans were less than slavish in their pursuit of personal hygiene and that they bore some of the characteristics of female genitalia, and furthermore declaiming that Celtic would take them to task and emerge triumphant.

It has to be said, that’s not how it turned out.  What actually happened was more along the lines of Celtic actually proceeding to lose the game, and doing so while playing like eleven men who have met maybe once before, at a beer festival in Dunstable nine years ago.  By the final whistle, the omelette I had enjoyed so much seemed a lot longer than six hours in the past.  It would appear that the league trophy is already on its way to the fiery depths of Ibrox, although I am trying to follow the advice of 80’s rocker-philosophers Journey.  Don’t Stop Believin’, indeed.

Having singularly failed to witness a victory for my football team, I sat to watch Leicester Tigers take on Wasps.  With the opposition shorn of their captain and most hated cunt, Lawrence Dallaglio, hopes were high.  I won’t go into detail on what came to pass, suffice it to say the following:  piss, fuck, shit, bastard.

Sunday was Sunday.  It always fucking is.

We have started packing for our move, which will see us leave one part of Leicester for another, and gain an extra room into the bargain.  The living room has a kitchen attached, which will mean I can whip up food without missing anything important on the telly.  No more tricky timing to ensure that the roast attains the right level of golden-y-brown-ness with seconds to spare before The Apprentice, which has returned not a moment too soon, and has delivered a right shower of bell-ends who I fully expect to be issuing with fatwae (not sure about that one) before too long.

A particular highlight in Week One was the guy who claimed to be the victim of scapegoating over the incorrect pricing of a load of lobsters.  This line of defence was stymied only by the fact that he had priced a load of lobsters incorrectly.  Speaking as someone who was recently overjoyed to pick up a pair of monkfish tails for a tenner, I can only hope said bell-end moves to Leicester to work in our excellent fish market.  Especially as Sir Alan Sugar graciously delivered him a welter of free time by firing his stupid, semi-bearded, double-barrelled, biscuit-game-playing face into oblivion.

Finger breakin’ good

So, I finally set up a proper personal blog, and get Oval Office off the blocks, and Impotent Fury was going pretty well too. Great. Big advances being made. Where next? Well, I break my finger, that’s where. In a kitchen-based accident of quite chilling stupidity, I drop a wet saucepan and instead of just letting it fall, picking it up and leaving it down to experience, I decide to go all Artur Boruc on its ass, except I failed to catch it and instead I smash my hand against the open grill door. The vast quantity of wine I had imbibed by this point worked as an anaesthetic, and I thought no more of it.

Days go by and my finger continues to hurt. My good lady wife insists that I get it looked at by a doctor, but I tell her that I have unbreakable bones, having kept my skeleton intact (the occasional and rare dislocation aside) for a run of nearly 30 years. But typing hurts like a bastard and after a few rugby posts I am decommissioned. Last Saturday, then, I decide that maybe a professional should have a look. Three X-ray photos later, the news comes back – I have a fractured metacarpal. The little finger on my right hand has an extra bend and one knuckle fewer. As though I didn’t already hate washing-up enough.

I am now typing again, under the influence of Co-codamol. It’s not quite the same as Byron writing while under the influence of opium, but it’s a start.

Embuggerance

This is my personal blog where I will be writing about stuff to do with me. I couldn’t think of a more interesting tag-line than that. Sorry.

I’ve already written quite a bit over on my current affairs blog, Impotent Fury. But I’m not always looking to rant, and even when I am sometimes the subject matter isn’t appropriate for IF, so that stuff will find a home here. Also available here: personal stuff that I feel is worth sharing with a wider audience.

Why Whisky and Cigarettes? Well, “My Blog” doesn’t really set the pulse racing. As a confirmed fan of the eponymous products, I felt that this title would encapsulate my worldview as well as any other. I tend not to write while under the influence of booze – some people feel it aids the creative process, but I disagree. It certainly doesn’t make me any more creative, it just tends to result in more typos and the occasional libellous/pleading/suicidal dirge.

Also, it makes me sound dead hard.

Why are you bothering us with this shit? I like writing. Sometimes I have ideas that I like to explore, and sometimes people are interested in hearing what I say. Honest. They told me. Plus I’m a total egomaniac and I think my opinions and beliefs are more important than they really are. Finally, other people do it and I wanted a slice. Anyway, who are you to ask me stupid questions? Fuck you, you don’t have to read it.

Are you always such a miserable, moaning bastard? Usually. Of course, occasionally I am enthusiastic and positive about things. Charlie Brooker, for example. Also the work of Terry Pratchett, James Ellroy, Rhodri Marsden among others. I love to read something that makes me think “Shit, I wish I’d thought of that first.” We’ve been given a language that contains so many fantastic words and expressions, that can be bent to our will, that can evoke every emotion known to man. It seems a shame to only ever use it to say “no, no onions thanks”.

Of course if you’ve had some kind of episode and that’s all you can actually say then that’s another matter. But I think you’ll find that this blog caters particularly well for you.

Can I go now? Yeah, fuck off.