11 Predictions for 2010

Holy freaking meatballs, it's another year. I swear it only turned 2009 a few weeks back. Where did that year go? Where did any year go? Oh my god my birthday is in a few weeks and I'll be...

Anyway, hello. Welcome back. Did you have a good Christmas? Get lots of nice presents? Hope you didn't get a crappy jumper. That would suck. Hey, you know what would be fun? Seeing as how this is a new year and everything, let's have some predictions.

I hereby present my Top 11 Predictions For 2010

1. Somehow Labour will find a way to remain in power. Those guys are literally like vampires. They just will not die while sucking everything you have in the meantime. I think the only way to remove Gordon Brown and is coven from this earth is to go at him with a garlic laced spike.
2. Apple will help Sony in their battle against Microsoft. Lets face it, the video games and general recreational electronics market at the moment is massive. Apple can focus all they want on iPods and iPhones and iDontcares, but you know they want to overtake Microsoft as the number one computer company out there. Along the same lines, Sony will want their PlayStaion brand to beat out the Xbox one. What with a common enemy, those two have to have some middle ground.
3. Terry Wogan and Bruce Forsyth will fight to the death for the title of 'Britain's Grandad'. In one corner you have the softly spoken tubby fellow who will give you a Worther's Original, while in the other you have the cheeky wiry one who will tell you what your young mind conceives are a rude joke. Who will come out on top?
4. Formula One will allow drivers to listen to BBC Radio 2 while racing to give Schumacher a middle aged pastime.
5. Brett Favre will retire, un-retire, retire and then sign to pitch for the NY Yankees because his career just isn't complete without a World Series ring.
6. On another NFL theme, Peyton Manning will continue his transition into the role of 'comedic straight man.' Honestly, that guy can say the most serious sentence in the world and it's funny. Although that might just be his nose. Related – Owen Wilson will sue Peyton Manning over copyright infringement on comedic noses.
7. England will scrape through the group stages of the World Cup, win in the second round and then just as we as a country get some self belief, get knocked out on penalties in the quarter finals.
8. I'll get turned down for a US Green Card for the third straight year. All I want is to be able to stay in the States for more than 6 months at a time. Is that so much to ask?
9. Wayne Rooney, in the process of trying to teach his baby son new words, will have his vocabulary increase exponentially.
10. I will finally give in and fly all the way to Canada just to see a Colin Mochrie stand up gig. Related - Colin Mochrie will take out a restraining order against me.
11. Finally, I'm willing to bet nothing changes. Taxes will be too high, pay too low, we will all be scared about the nasty man in the shadows who wants to kill us to death and we will hide away from all this in a nice, warm cosy materialistic home pouring controlled poison down our necks. Because that is human nature.

It is still bloody snowing...

It is still bloody snowing.

It won't go away. For a brief period yesterday, it looked as if the torment would finally end. It looked as if the good old British weather would break, the rain would once again fall and it would wash all the sodding white slippy stuff away.

Oh. Hell. No.

Instead, all that happened was the temperature plunged and the rain turned to snow, which then settled on the newly frozen ground. Fan-fucking-tastic. I was almost looking forward to being able to drive places again. At least all this snow has done wonders for my petrol consumption, which is currently zero for the week. Seeing as how I usually get through half a tank a week, I've technically saved £12,000.

Oh, and this second snap of snow has come just before I need to go places to do visiting Christmas related stuff. Excellent. I was already dreading the motorway drives alongside idiot folk who believe you can still get into the fast lane with a Ford Focus laden with 5 people, 500 presents and two suitcases. Now I have to deal with both those people as well as the sorts who, because of a single solitary flake of snow on the hard shoulder, think that the maximum speed limit on a motorway should be 9mph. Fantastic.

However, despite all of these calamities which have befouled my existence this week, there have been two shining lights.

The first, and if I must admit most douchebagy, was I spent about 3 hours on Facebook yesterday commenting about how awesome it is working from home on everyone who updated their status from their phones stuck in snow bound traffic. It was amazing. Sure, I got a lot of abuse and will no doubt be given a number of savage beatings but it was totally worth it. Although I think that is just people being sore about stuff. I mean, if you have been stuck in a multi story car park for 4 hours trying to get out into a town centre, it is all in good fun if someone comments that they “can't hear you over the sound of being warm and comfortable.”

The second shining light to brighten up my week is a tad more emo. Christmas is finally here.

Last night, I threw some decorations up, wrapped up all the presents I'd bought folk that had been slowly been developing into a decent sized fort in my room and watched The Muppets Christmas Carol three times. Today I've done the grand sum of sweet sod all and tomorrow the visiting of relatives begins.

Christmas is here. Each year I think “oh, it isn't all that festive this year” and grumble a bit then the festive season hits about now and all becomes well in the world. No work, no worries, no nothing except food, friends, family, presents and a hearty old drink-a-thon.

That, my dear followers, is what Christmas is all about.

Merry fucking Christmas and I will see you on the 5th of January. If I've sobered up from NYE by then.

Lots of love,
Ben

Snow!

Credit for this awesome photo goes here

Well this snow is fucking ridiculous. I mean who in the blue balled cauldron of Croydon thought it would be a great idea to make it snow just before Christmas? I mean, on Christmas snowing is more than acceptable. If anything it should be encouraged. After Christmas and around NYE too is fantastic. But in the week building up to Christmas, when people still have to get to work, go shopping, drive half way around the country to see other bits of family and do stuff which generally needs the roads to be clear and trains to run, having Ol' Jack Frost shit his white stuff all over the country is not helpful in the slightest.

I've nearly smashed my car up twice already attempting to get to places I need to be and have nearly fallen flat on my arse a few times after my dipshit neighbours decided to clear their drive ways with water. This is not a lie. I've caught a few of them running their hose down their drive to clear the snow off it. The concept of gritting and salting is foreign to these people. How they can eat their breakfast without losing all their teeth chewing on a rock baffles me.

Anyway, aside from the general disruption to the simple things in life like buying milk that snow brings, it has another down side. It makes you ill. I'm not shitting you, as an adult snow makes you ill. And you want to know why? It's all your parents fault.

When it snowed when you were a kid, your parents wrapped you up warm, sent you out with a coat and gloves and scarf and hat and thermals and spear and everything you may need for a right rip roaring old Arctic adventure. Then, when the playing was done and you got back in, they made sure that you changed out of your wet, cold clothes and put on some nice warm stuff. They may have even made you something nice and warming to eat. Oh, what a glorious time it was. Nowadays, in adult life it seems you just come in out of the cold, go to the pub and get ill. The two times it has snowed this year, I've gotten ill. The first time was back in February when we had the Superbowl party up at the O2. When we all turfed out the whole place was covered in snow, so 1,000 drunk NFL fans had a big old snowball fight. As you do. The next day I felt like shit.

Last night I was out celebrating a friend's birthday. There was already still a pretty solid amount of snow still left frosting the locality, but hey ho that good old douchebag Jack Frost decided to throw some more down. This meant that we had to play in it. It isn't like you have a choice in these things. Put a bunch of beered up early 20-somethings in the snow and we will play. Deal with it. So, we threw snowballs, did some bundles, tackled each other, tried to de-trou people and what not. It was a tremendous lark. And then we all went inside and drank some more, singing songs of the joys of Christmas.

Today, I've woken up with a thick head and a sore throat. I'm ill, and it must be the snow's fault. That fucker got me sick, and not a week before Christmas proper and all. I'm going to punch Jack Frost in the face.

Anyway, you want to know the end result of my experimentations with snow? I'm telling you, no matter how old you are you need your parents around when it snows or else you will die. End of story.

By the way, assuming I survive the night and make it to Tuesday, expect that to be the last post of the year. Christmas for me starts on the 23rd and I aim to sober up again sometime around the 5th of January.

The Internet and How It Saved Christmas

I love the internet. Not only does it allow me the possibilities to go and troll lots of uppity people, blather on and on about my simply ridiculous points of view and moan about a whole manner of things, it also lets me not have to talk to anyone face to face.

I don't like people. I don't like the general public. I like my friends, sure, and I like my family. When jobs have forced me in the past to interact with people I have obliged, but in general my rule of thumb is people should be avoided at all cost. It's nothing personal, I'm sure you are a great laugh, a nice person and a gentle yet thorough lover. I just don't care.

That isn't to say I'm a total recluse. Of course I go out. Sometimes I'm not entirely happy about the places I get dragged to, but I go. As much as I dislike dealing with the general public, the thing I'd hate more is to sit inside hating on strangers. That would just be odd.

Anyway, I digress. Christmas Shopping. Where as meeting random people for a laugh in a nightclub is one thing, wandering around town with fistfuls of bags of presents is quite another. That is not exactly my idea of fun.

This is where the internet stepped in. For the first time, I did every single last bit of my Christmas shopping (all right, I bought ONE thing in a shop) online. And from only two websites – IWOOT and Amazon. It was brilliant. It was a revaluation. Frankly, it was damned near erotic.

But do you know what the absolute bestest thing in the whole wide world is? It now means that either over the weekend or next week when I go into London to look at all the pretty lights, shop displays down Regent Street and have a mulled wine in Covent Garden, I can do it without the burden of shopping bags. And that, my dear friends, is what it is all about.