Motor Racing and how it Ruined The Western World

Lets face it, motor sport probably has the most elitist fans in the world. I don't mean that in a bad way, its just that each set of fans will stand up for their own particular discipline of motor sport with the sort of passionate fanboy-dom that is usually reserved for video game consoles and professional wrestling.

Moto GP and Superbike fans will mock those who take to four wheels, drag racers will argue their place atop of the hill due to their lightening quick reactions and rally drivers will consider themselves gods among men for their all terrain racing, despite the fact they never have to overtake anyone. Elsewhere, Formula One will continue to consider itself at the top of the world with a sense of elite pomp while touring car fans will argue that their rough and tumble variety of circuit racing is tops.

If you like this, chances are you also like prawn sandwiches

One thing, though, is true of pretty much all motor sport fans – they all dump on oval racing. Well, that is unless you are an oval fan to begin with, in which case you obviously think your discipline is tops.

I must admit, I used to be a part of the badwagon that jumped up and down at NASCAR and IndyCar saying that it isn't real racing as you don't turn right. “Oh no, he forgot to turn left!” I used to shout when they crashed, and I used to write oval racing off as boring. I was a true F1 and Touring Car fanboy, I was. Especially the not racing in the rain thing, that annoyed the hell out of me as the best F1 races are often in the wet.

Then, like most sports I'm not a huge fan of, I gave it a go. And I tell you what, it is awesome.

The Colleseum circa 2010

The racing and tempo is obviously a lot different to that of, say an F1 race. In Formula One, the lead may only change one or two times in a race and if you're lucky you might get one or two cars spin off innocently into a gravel trap. In NASCAR, however, you will see the lead change one or two times every ten minutes and seven or eight huge smashes are considered the bare minimum.

The main problem I think that a lot of trad circuit racing fans and oval fans have when trying to cross over to each others style of motor sport is that the philosophies are different. In F1, the aim of the race is to stay in complete control of your vehicle through a whole circuit, holding on to your own position while trying to catch the car in front. The emphasis is just as much on putting together a qualifying lap and nailing strategy as it is on getting your breaking and acceleration points right. Also, there is a huge emphasis on the car as a whole.

In NASCAR, it is proper mayhem, though. You get respites of yellow flag periods, where the race goes under safety car after a crash until the circuit is clear, but the rest of the time it is about running as close to the edge as you can get. You get packs of 40 plus cars all travelling around the 200mph mark, something that is impossible in any other discipline of racing, and then you see it all come to a pause when they crash into each other. Even the pit stops are so much cooler in NASCAR, to the point where the mechanics are often recruited out of college as athletes.

The long and short of this is just this – give other kinds of motor sport a chance. And if you like crashes, and frankly that is the only reason anyone ever watches motor sport, watch NASCAR and feel like a proper Roman.

If you don't know, the Daytona 500 is on Sunday. Check back here after the race for my thoughts. I'll be logging them.

From Cage Fighter to Ladyboy Lover in one fould swoop

Oh, you bastard computer, you tried to hide what I wrote on Sunday  but I found it! Hazar!

I love Red Top news papers. I love their 'tits and football' approach, I love the fact that according to them anyone who earns more than £25,000 a year is some sort of over paid bigot and I also love the fact and I love the fact that they over react to anything. I especially love the problem pages where people write in asking which of four people they slept with is their baby's father, as if Miriam or Deirdre are psychic. I don't care who you are, reading a Red Top paper is great fun.

At the moment, I'm loving the fun they are having with Katie 'Jordan' Price and Alex Reid. Now, for any of you who don't know who they are, then give them a quick Google. You'll soon find out. The long and short of it, though, is Jordan is a fame hungry glamour girl and Alex Reid is an unspectacular cage fighter she is dragging along for the ride.

Honestly, just read through The Mirror and The Sun's take on those two and you will get the picture of what I'm on about on the whole, but what I find absolutely hilarious is the way that Alex Reid has been described over the 7 odd months he has been in the tabloids.

To begin with, he was just a 'cage fighter', a nice fearsome manly description. Rawr. Then, however, as the press began to snoop around his past and dig up every last little bit of dirt on him, it started to get ridiculous.

First some paper found out from an ex girlfriend that was probably bribed with a page three shoot that he enjoyed cross dressing. Hey, it isn't my cup of tea but if you wish to indulge then fair play. Either way, he then became 'Cross Dressing Cage Figher Alex Reid'. And, oh, how we laughed.

Then came the real coup de grace, so to speak. Some alleged buddy of Reid's sold his story to the paper of how, on a training trip to Thailand to pick up some new kick ass martial arts skills, Reid got off with some ladyboy. Well, the floodgates truly opened then.

The point of this is simple – if you want to go from being a “Cage Fighter” and revered as the sort of man who wanted to be viewed by the general public as the kind of guy who fought bears to “Tranny Loving Cross Dresser” in one foul swoop, date a glamour girl. 

I hate you, you stupid bloody computer!

Oh, you think you're real smart, huh? Freezing just as I'm trying to save a blog update? You think you will make me write it all out again, do ya? Well no deal, buster. I'm just going to wing it.

Usually, whenever I update here, I'll write it in Open Office then just copy and paste it across. I'm weird like that, as despite the fact that Blogger gives me lots of nice tools to play with here, I'll entrust my computer with the data first. Today, that turned out to be one big royal fucking mistake.

I admit it, maybe I should have saved it more often. Maybe I shouldn't have written a page and a half before hitting Ctrl + S. Maybe I should have saved it as soon as I opened it. After all, as my old music tech teacher used to preach to us, 'Jesus Saves'. Oh well, it doesn't really matter. You've been toying with me all week, you dumb computer, running like mud. Then when I try to de-frag you, you tell me nothing is wrong and everything is hunky dory. You tell me that you haven't got a care in the world and everything is just a-okay.

I don't care. I will take you a fucking part if you test me again, you hear me? I know you can hear me, Mr Computer, and I know you are reading everything I'm typing! Mark my words, buddy, I know where you sleep and I will put you in the bath tub if you do that again!

TL:DR - My computer is a bastard.

P.S. SUPER BOWL SUPER BOWL SUPER BOWL SUPER BOWL SUPER BOWL

Man Math and How It Made My Bank Manager Cry

Sorry about going AWOL. I promise it is nothing personal. Just I very rarely have the chance to throw myself into projects with very few distractions. I'm afraid that even this for that period was deemed one. However, I'm now back and I think the up coming plans could be quite exciting.

Oh, and before we start, if you want to see my breakdown of the Super Bowl and what you should be betting on, click here.

Anyway, to business?

To quote perhaps the greatest human being to ever live, Stan Smith from American Dad, I've been doing a lot of man math recently. All of us red blooded, hairy chested and slack jawed men love doing man math. We all know what it is. But for any womenfolk out there, let me explain the principals of man math.

 

The inventor of Man Math, also a man who should be captioned with the world 'derp'

Man math is where you use absolutely ridiculous justifications to talk yourself into buying shit you do not need and maybe only marginally want. You see a shirt you sort of want on a whim but can't quite afford? Man math says buy it and tell yourself that you wont get blind stinking drunk on Friday. Say you browse through the DVD box set bin at some high street store and see a few series of some show you've caught once or twice and sort of found interesting? You tell yourself you will save money at the weekend staying in to watch it and so buy it. You sort of see where I'm going with this – rather than save up and buy stuff, you use justifications you will never see through to just buy it as you're there.

I did some excellent man math today. I really want a PS3 because I am probably the only person I know not to have played MGS4 and desperately want Heavy Rain when it comes out at the end of this month. So, off to town I went. That was probably my first mistake.

Well, technically I suppose I went to two towns. The first I went to I thought had both a GameStation and a Game, plus is easier to park up and the like. Except when I meandered through the shopping centre, the GameStation is closed. Awesome, where the hell was I meant to get a pre-owned PS3 now? Anyway, I pushed it into the back as my mind as I left the house telling myself over and over and over and over once more that I was just checking out prices, not purchasing. Because of that it didn't matter if I couldn't scope out prices. So I just picked up Mass Effect 2 for the Xbox 360 and went to head home defeated.

That lasted for about seven seconds. I of course headed straight to another shopping centre.

Anyway, you can see where this is going. My quick “lets pop out and maybe get an Xbox 360 game, scope out places to get a decent cheap second hand PS3” quickly turned into “lets spend £245 on some rainy Tuesday afternoon.”

The man math behind it? Well, I have a few more invoices coming in over the next few days and I'll be staying in this weekend to play with my new toy. I will keep telling myself this over and over and over until I believe it, then be found drunk as a skunk at some bar on Friday. Good times!

Whoops!

Can you claim being too busy being creative as an excuse to  not be creative? Anyway, that's what I'm doing. You see, for the first time in a long while I have the house to myself. Seeing as how I'm self employed and all, that also means I have the office to myself and get some serious work done.

I'm working on a couple of new book ideas and I get a little odd when I start them out. I sort of work for 20 hours at a time, sleep the whole next day then do the whole thing over and over. I have sort of fallen out of sync with a few things. Sunday was a good example of that.

So, to make sure I can concentrate on other stuff, there shall be no updates until a week today. Sorry about that. But I'll make it up to you with cake!

My Car Mechanic Is Evil and Wants To Cause Me Harm

My car mechanic is trying to sabotage my life.

Yeah, I know. That sounds absolutely insane. It's up there on a par of saying things like 'My television is listening to my thoughts' or 'My cat is sexually abusing me'. It is possibly a comment that is not quite of the same standard of batshit craziness as something like 'I killed these puppies to show you just how much I love you' but it's close.

Anyway, my car had to have a service this week. Not entirely sure why, I mean apart from the fact it sounds like a lawnmower and you need to turn right to make it go in a straight line it is in perfect working order. But in it had to go. Well, that was the first step that mechanic took to trying to ruin my life. The roads out round my way are still covered in sheet ice from the latest unseasonable snow storm that has decided to throw itself my way. Getting it into the garage was an ordeal enough.

But it was when I got it back that the real issues began.

At first it was little things. Instead of having to turn the car right to go in a straight line, it has now been a bit overcompensated so I have to steer left a bit. That is hugely confusing. When I sort of stop paying attention driving, as we all do, it means I veer to the right as my arm goes back to the good old position I'm used to – angled right. That I can cope with. I can also cope with the fact that my car is now much, much quieter, meaning that I have to listen out to see if I'm having some quite high revs. The old cliché of the mechanic moving your seat just as you got it where you wanted it doesn't even apply here, as the guy who does my car is the same height as me.

No, the thing that really annoys me is that they changed my car clock. They didn't correct it, either. They completely fucked it. I used to know how the time according to my car clock – add on two hours and six minutes. Now, though, it is thoroughly confusing. I think I now have to take off 7 hours and thirty four minutes. I think.

Why in the hell would they change my clock like that? It confused the sweet Jesus out of me when I first realised. I nearly crashed my car trying to turn left to go in a straight line and check my watch. Each and every time I've driven since I have had a mild apoplexy looking at the time before realising its seven hours and thirty four minutes fast.

What is more confusing is the buttons that change the time from my dashboard are broken. How in the hell did they change it? What the fuck did they do to my car to change it? The questions keep coming, and frankly they are giving me a headache.

Ergo, my car mechanic is trying to sabotage my life.

The terrifying prospect – it has to go back in 4 months for an MOT. I'm thinking that I may get a cow back in return at this rate.

Secret Smokers In Snow Thaw Terror

Frosty the Snowman is not happy with your lung bashing ways

As Britain was once again awash with the White Powder of Certain Death, secret smokers awoke from their nicotine deprived sleep with a sense of imminent terror as they realised that simply covering a fag butt in snow is not a viable long term solution to hiding their habit.

The realisation came in the wake of an announcement from the Met Office that despite the fact that it appears all living memory had been replaced by a white, cold, traffic filled plateau of hell, within a week green would once more emerge into sight and people would once more remember how to laugh.

A jittery cold secret smoking man, who gave his name only as 'I have a whittled down icicle with your name on it if you say a word to my wife', told of the moment he realised that one day soon the great thaw would come and expose his dirty little secret.

“I was lying in bed, you see, having a gander at whatever posh speaking page 3 girl Sky Sports News had on that night, when all of a sudden she started nattering on about the football being re-scheduled for when the weather cleared up. It hadn't occurred to me that one day all this fake cocaine would disappear.”

“All I've been doing is dropping the butt on the floor and just swooshing some snow over it,” he continued, dropping his fag butt on the floor and just swooshing some snow over it, “but if the godforsaken day ever comes when the grounds once more return to the state where they can bear life my crimes will be exposed. I don't know what to do.”

“Do you know any variants on rain bringing voodoo spells?”

Meanwhile, Gordon Brown said that the latest round of snowy weather had brought the issue to the forefront of his next campaign manifesto.

“Along with halving the national debt by 2012 and never, ever raising taxes, we plan to introduce legislation that will make any snowflake caught on British soil subject to an £80 on the spot fine. Unless they left the clouds due to persecution, then they can go to the top of the homing list.”