Why Songs About Relationships Could Hurt More Than Your Pride...

Credit to the man ...at last a use for Celine Dion...

"The Canadian superstar's bombastic cover of Eric Carmen's 1970s hit about loneliness is the audio equivalent of the fire-bombing of Dresden. Celine's vocal histrionics surpass the blood-soaked psychic fury which slaughters the prom-goers in the movie Carrie. Had Ms Dion been around during D-Day, the Allies could have dropped her off at Omaha Beach with a PA system and have her sing All By Myself until the German infantry bayoneted themselves."

by DirectHex

Is Change Good For THEONION.COM?

Ahhhhhhhh! No one can here you scream in your own bedroom. Specially when everyone is out.

The Onion - veritably good sarco-news source - a trooper of many years against the po-faced inequities of World News has changed into TheOnion 2056. Its been futurized!

Hmmmmmm .. I don't know ..will this do for The Onion what the futurizing did to Seaquest DSV ( yeah I know it was crap ..but it managed to get crapper ..and yes i know I'm a saddack for watching it) ...

This is the old version http://theonion.com/index.php?issue=4124.

The new version is linked above...judge for yourself..

Just as I was about to ask DirectHex to update it on my links bar too....

Sex shuts down the brain

So Science has given the FB a clue to why the otherwise inexplicable phenomenon of NGPB takes place. It’s one of the mysteries of human behavior that intrigues the FB , mainly because the FB has been on the receiving end of this through his many years on this planet – I’m not telling you if I’ve been on any others or not.

NGPB or Nice Girl Prick Boyfriend is something that I am sure many of you have come across.

It’s a pretty serious disease. It usually involves a really nice girl. Guys, you know the kind that we are talking about. Smart, funny, attractive, able to hold a wondrous conversation at level that make you think your oxygen intake was just sucked up by a passing fleet of school mums in their SUVs.

The kind of girl, that you spent most of you adolescent life writing lists about in the back of the tatty exercise book , alongside weird drawings of spaceships and the plan for world domination – alright not world domination , just not getting beaten up by the riotously funny rugby lads. Of course world domination is easier.

The usual pattern is that after you get to know this person, and after several hours of stunned reverential silence, you find out she’s got a man. Then you discover a few days later that so called man is actually proof positive that Darwin was wrong about Human evolution. This guy is obviously a rogue species that peeled off the accepted timescale somewhere near Australopithecus.

I find that this is a universal phenomenon that crosses cultures and boundaries. I once knew a lady from north Africa who could speak Seven different languages – that’s 7 more than I can manage on my best days (why do you think I type ). She collected academic qualifications with the same ease I pick up spam, or her boyfriend picked up other women.

“ Ah but you see , in the 21^st Century we cannot be constrained by the paradigm of the uniform one partner relationship…”, I’d quote more but I think by the time she threw in her fifth Nietszhe reference my brain was yelling “mind the gap”.

Credit to her about one thing though , Mr Knuckles got his nether regions rearranged by her elegant Gucci slippers one day after she saw him shifting her flat mate's paradigms.

A two for one demonstration of the NGPB phenomenon.

What’s worse is that poor old schlubs like the FB can spot the Prick Boyfriend at 20 miles but any protestations from us get treated like the Trojan dude who said “hang on a minute don’t you think it’s a bit early for the Greeks to be giving us lavish twenty foot carved statues?”

Of course when we see the biker/hip-hop wannabe/ Indian movie star/ ragamuffin / fake label wearing blonde highlighted creature ( I’ll stop there before I go green) from the nexus of the underworld making his slow slimey way through the atmosphere toward us with said hot lady on arm - things look bad.

It’s like the moment when the serial killer gets loose and those teenagers decide to take a holiday in the abandoned house with the tool shed full of power tools. It’s just going to head downhill from there on.

You see at that point we wonder if these wonderful women had their brains switched off at some point – now we know.

Want good loving ? Ask the father

Or musings on Arranged Marriages Part 1 : The Meet

The Preparation

As the Freebeard as been single for a while now, by now we mean since the dawn of the Jurassic period, the FB’s mum has taken it upon herself to introduce me to the joys of the arranged marriage scene.

So on about one hour’s notice the Mum marches into where ever I happened to be stationed – usually my bedroom – with an address and the command “get ready to go, now.” It’s the sort of command that involves brushing up nicely and generally having the goatie in precise geometric trim.

If mum would have her way of course the goatie would be history and she would have her cute little boy back – failing to realize in her utterly motherly way that the last time the FB looked like that was when he was eight and the cake was on the table. The cake is still on the table – though most of it is recycled onto my belly, but we digress.

The Ritual

What usually happens is you turn up to meet the family and then:

You sit and chat with the father / brother / uncle about subjects that would make the entire contents of a Styrofoam warehouse look like cutting edge comedy. You drink tea. You eat snacks – while trying to look dignified. This utterly fails when faced with the stickiest and largest Jellabi on the planet which is designed to deposit about 50ml of syrup on your trousers just below the groin.

There will be no picture of the prospective woman that you have to spend the rest of your life with hereafter referred to as the Subject. The will be no hint of who she is or what she is doing. That discussion is going on in the women’s section. So your mum is doing the intelligence gathering.

You probably will not see the subject. If they are Punjabi the subject will be out of town.

If you are lucky enough to have a glimpse. DO NOT LOOK. (unless you want to scupper it – see below).

It is preferable that before you embark on this that you undertake courses in body language – especially ones that decipher the subtleties of tea tray placement. This is the only way you will be able to determine whether or not the individual in question is interested or not.

Basically in the four hours that you a bored rigged you have to work out whether you want to have rampant baby making sex with the Subject – by talking to her dad.

In the conversation you have to fit in as much nonsense about how wonderful you are as it is possible.

The Get Away
TAKE NOTE. This is the point where you can subtlety scupper any chances. For example:

a)If the father of the Subject is busy going on about property – you could introduce a bit of pseudo-marxism and anarchism by questioning the notion of property in the first place. He’ll probably ignore you, but when “the debrief” happens after the meeting – he’ll think you’re a dangerous modern creature that will not take advantage of his daughter. Result.

b)If the brother of the subject starts enquiring into your single life when you were at university you could slip in some detail about the nightlife –subtle of course – you don’t want to come across as a turbo-nutter-hardcore-ibiza-loving-club bunny (only as a last resort). WARNING : this could backfire as the brother might think you going to be cool to have around and convince the dubious father.

c)Upon seeing that the family might actually be decent people and there is a danger that you might like them, then the only other option is to resort to Islamist rhetoric. THIS IS THE LAST RESORT AND COULD BACK FIRE. They could really like you and start ringing up the local mullah

d) Stare like a lascivious squady at the subject – guaranteed to send you packing.

Coming Out or Not - The Awakening of the Beard

FB Discovers Himself

It was the summer of 1998. The FB was attending a conference of the New Labour Youth Commando Units held in the tropical paradise and den of inequity that is Blackpool. Well it is for us who hail from the North of England – like most of the population of Mirpur, Kashmir.

Unknown to myself this was going to a moment of pivotal awakening for the FB. I had just been elected to Student Union officership by the esteemed multitude of the three stoners and one Bhuddist who bothered to vote. As a result the Labour Party invited me to Blackpool for indoctrination, alchoholism and shagging. Bit of a three for one deal I thought, in the days before I had any sort of beard growth what so ever, so off I went.

Of course for the FB this ended up being a non-for-non deal. The indoctrination didn’t work because to some extent my deep disenchantment with Tony Blair was deep at that point and there was a no alchohol because it was one of those vices that sounded better done by some one else.

It was at that point I made a startling discovery. It was something that seemed to make sense of my life and some of the uncomfortable experiences that I had had as a child. I realized that I was different from everyone else and would have to spend my life as an outcast amongst those people I had spent all of three months with.

This all started back at school. I was a public school boy and went to prestigious institution that had a long history of distinguished men. It was a single sex school and was fully steeped in the traditional English past times of playing rugby and having pointless functions for rich parents.

It was with the first stirrings of testosterone in my bloodstream that I began to sense something within me was different. You see there were certain things I just couldn’t do any longer in the presence of my colleagues.

There were passions that were painfully hidden and couldn’t be controlled no matter how hard I tried. I looked for some sort of advice but as we were at a highly exclusive public school the cultural reinforcement was so strong that one could not get away.

By the time I had left school and gone to my liberal university I had thought I had covered it all up but that summer in 1998, while members of the future Labour NEC sat in drunken stupors on the concrete of Blackpool pier – it finally came to me.

I am hetrosexual.

You see from an early age I knew I liked girls. I was attracted to the opposite sex but in 10 years of public school I couldn’t bring myself to admit it.

I was the brown boy – the darling of all my white friends. They were jealous of my minority status. I would get invited round to tell tales of how culturally different I was and would get special dispensation on Muslim festival days. Everybody would come up to me to tell me how they respected my culture and were proud to have me as their friend.

Then there was the sexual tension of it all. Being a public school we always participated in jolly japes in the changing rooms such as slapping each other with wet towels. The problem was that I just wasn’t attracted to any of it.

I had to pretend to enjoy having some red faced berk whack his wet towel on my backside. I mean it was impossible to pretend that I didn’t enjoy sharing the room with other naked men pointing at each others lower beard growth and laughing.

Artistically it was hell too. I was forced to join in the public school past time of wearing Women’s clothing on stage and squeaking my lines for the sake of entertainment. As editor of the poetry magazine I had to make sure any entries weren’t overtly in praise of women. I almost let slip in an English lesson when I failed to spot the homo-erotic allusions in the last scene of Othello – I had to hastily cover it up with some blather about the blade.

When I got to University of course, I thought things would get better. I was sorely mistaken. I was a left wing public school boy and couldn’t last long with any sort of respect within my fellow left-wing university students if I let them know. So I sublimated it into the metrosexual milieu of the Fresher life.

So, in Blackpool, the camel was waiting for the straw.

It arrived in the shape of the President of the Nation Union of Labour Lovers. He slipped up to me in the middle of a really interesting rendition of Hit Me Baby One More Time and planted a hand firmly on my inner thigh.

It must have the years of suppressed rage and the decades of self denial that left him with a pint of Orange juice (with Ice) on his face and looks of disbelief in the faces of those around.

Tell you what though. Since that time. I have felt whole. Released from the pressure of lying to myself and free to be truly who I want to be.

Sure, I got stares from the odd person at the Fabian society, and I could no longer officially call myself a left wing liberal with any great authority, and any invitations for dinner and dancing at Downing Street were cancelled.

It was freedom; the freedom to destroy all the Elton John CDs in my collection – what joy; no more need for the fake homosexual experience story; no need to look all interested and understanding when being told about various uses for a cucumber; freedom to talk about Spartacus without mentioning the Oysters scene; freedom to curse Graham Norton for the no-talent bottle blonde git he really is; and ultimately freedom to follow the path of the FreeBeard

Now that was an interesting road …..