Light in Tone

I recently had a few short monologues (3) accepted by a publisher for a comedy book. Obviously I not a professional comedian of legendary repute so I had several rejected as well, apparently because they were not "light enough in tone."

It seems bad manners to publish the accepted ones, but I shall happily reprint the rejects here.

Personally, I figure they were not too obscene, merely not very funny, but I shall let the very small group of people that bother to read the shite that I write make your own minds up. 

Here is the first and shortest one I wrote, entitled: 

Don't Visit Japan Son, Bomb it.

When I was a kid a friend of mine was threw off the school team just because he had a beer despite the fact he was nearly 17 years old.

Lets face it, if a teenager can get drafted and shipped off to Iraq or Syria or wherever else we happen to be bombing the shit out of that week, its a bit fucking harsh denying the lad a pint if he makes it home with both of his bollocks still attached.

Modern parents and governmental organizations alike seem to think that young guys in their late teens shouldn't have any leeway at all to drink or smoke, despite the fact both practices are legal and young people have done such things for centuries. Fucking hell, they used to make children work in coal mines and fight in wars, I doubt they would deny anyone a beer who was shoveling fucking coal 18 hours a day either.

Parents are short-sighted too, they love talking about "the good old days" when their dad would scrub himself in ice cold water in a rusty tin bath after a 12 hour shift in a corned beef factory, and anyone listening is well aware that the good old days sound pretty fucking awful. Usually parents can't type more than ten words a minute either, but they like going on Facebook to spy on their offspring and "like" all of those shit MEMEs that poke fun at the younger generation. They always say things like "In my day we used to drink from the hose and we turned out fine" or "I shared my drink with 8 kids and a stray dog and nobody died" and it's total fucking nonsense. Are we sure Osama Bin Laden never drank from a garden hose? My granddad used to do the same, he would endlessly complain that kids were visiting Japan or learning German in school, as if flying over Japan to drop an atom bomb on it was a more productive way to spend your time than going on a fucking field trip.

I don’t for a second believe all of the conservatives who complain about anything and everything the millennial generation enjoys buy any of their own nonsense either. In Victorian Britain they were all a bunch of perverts and junkies behind closed doors, but everything was all prim and proper in the streets. I think it's probably the same in America today. If some pastor or preacher constantly whines about sex, drugs, and rock and roll, it stands to reason he spends his evenings snorting coke off a prostitutes tits while listening to Slayer.

It is pure hypocrisy, kids have always been the same, and some old crusty who complains about teenagers being "soft" because they dont want to share a bottle of Pepsi with six friends probably turned his nose up exactly the same. And if they didn't, well they probably didnt live long enough to sire children because they caught hepatitis.

Maybe they like to complain about the small things because it stops us talking about the big things. Like if your grandpa says "Oh yeah I was a rebel when I was your age, I never used to bother wearing a helmet when I was out on my bike" then he doesn't have to say "Oh yeah I was a rebel when I was your age, I pushed a disabled lesbian down four flights of stairs."

UPS (Unnecessary Parcel Slaughter)

I was motivated to update my often ignored blog today after a hilarious (infuriating) experience with those cheery chaps at UPS. And by cheery chaps, I do of course mean, the fucking mafia in brown shorts. 

I sent a few boxes of junk over from England a month back, and it cost me $500 to do so. Fairly steep, but it very slightly cheaper than FED-Ex, and It was "Express" shipping, so I thought why not. 

 When UPS say, and charge you for, express shipping, what they really mean is "Unlikely to beat you home, even if you go on the piss in Manchester and Copenhagen for a week, then use a fucking kayak to cross the Atlantic Ocean"

The shipment was not here when I arrived in California ten days later, which puzzled me, so I gave them a call. After several lengthy delays, I was told that I had to "provide more information" so they would release my stuff. I asked them what this was, and they said "paperwork confirming the contents of the boxes"

 I then explained that I had handed it all to a bespectacled and very confused looking young driver when I shipped everything. When I told them I handed said paperwork over to the UPS driver upon shipping my stuff and he stopped to called his boss right in front of me because he was (in his own words) "new and didn't really know what was going on" they said "I am sure it is fine then, I will let them know and have your things sent out" 

 Ten days later, so a good three weeks late, my things arrived, and the previously immaculate boxes looked like this. 

Yes that's right, the brand-new three walled box looked like it had been thrown out of the plane at 30,000 feet, landed in a swamp, and then been savaged by tigers. UPS obviously rescued it at some point, then attached a tow-rope and dragged it across 800 miles of tarmac to my house. 

 Needless to say, everything inside was beyond fucked, but the fun wasn't over yet. 

 A week later, I received a bill for $184.42 for warehouse charges. 

 Which is peculiar, because judging by the boxes, they didn't go anywhere near a fucking warehouse, at best they were kept underneath a tree in particularly damp part of the United States, and at worst they tipped all of my belongings out, filled it with sheep entrails, and let a pack of wolves try and tear their way into lunch.

 I attempted to call and argue the point, and after explaining why I was somewhat perturbed by the fee, was put on hold for a very lengthy period of time. Finally I spoke to another woman, who gave me two other numbers to call, one to dispute the charge, and one to complain about lateness, damage, and tigers/wolves.

Attempting to call 6 times over a period of about 5 days, all I ever got was an answering machine. Numerous messages were left, nobody called back. Finally, concerned about the "late payment fees" I thought "Fuck it, I'll pay them or the fee will increase/Fat Tony will come round and nail my hands to the kitchen fucking table."

When I called the same number as before, but hit the key for "payments" rather than "complaints" instead of a 30 minute hold/answering machine, I was instantly greeted by a chirpy young lady, and after merely giving her the invoice number, I had paid the bill in full in less than a minute. 

 After being fucked around so incessantly for weeks, I was stunned into total subordination. I even thanked her for taking all of my money, and said "wasn't she nice dear?" as I hung up the phone.

Only later did it dawn on me that she was basically fisting me. 

Clearly the technique is a good one. Hold your packages for several weeks for no discernible reason (I did not need to fill in any extra paperwork) so you are so relieved when they finally arrive (you thought your belongings were lost at sea) you do not bother to complain about the fact it looks as if your belongings were subjected to a prison rape. 

Then, a week later, send you a bill, saying that because your stuff was "warehoused" you owe them $200. 

 Its genius. And frankly, why $200!? I do not believe they were in a warehouse, everything was wet and fucked, but even if they were, inanimate objects do not require fucking feeding. Did they get breakfast? Did they use the electricity? Why the fuck does it cost 200 bucks to leave some boxes inside a building?

So there we have it. Staggering incompetence, casual destruction of fragile items, 3 weeks late, and extra charges to boot. The only time that UPS did show some competence, was when they were taking more money off me, and to be fair, then they were polite, diligent, and ultra quick to answer the phone. They could only have been more helpful if a guy had shown up to help me count the money in person seconds after I made the call, then mowed the fucking lawn on his way back down the driveway.



  

The bizarrely popular erotic fiction novel Fifty Shades of Grey is due for release on Valentine's Day 2014. Announced via the medium of a trailer that depicts a woman infinitely less plain than the book suggested being whipped and shagged senseless by a bloke in a suit.

 The movie, and indeed the book, has polarized opinion and caused plenty of heated debate, primarily between women. Ladies that professed a love for the book and announced they were looking forward to seeing the movie, suddenly found themselves under attack on Facebook and Twitter feeds across the country, and judging by their comments, many of these women seem to have always thought of themselves as feminists too. So what is going on? Can a woman be a feminist and still take pleasure from a somewhat dark erotic fiction novel like Fifty Shades? With nothing else to do this morning and a moderate interest in modern feminism, I decided that I would spend an hour to try and explain why I believe that a woman can enjoy Fifty Shades of Grey, and still feel strongly about true equality between the sexes.

Before I begin I must point out that I read some of the first Fifty Shades novel out of morbid curiosity, and as a result I would rather spend 90 minutes trapped in a lift with a decomposing skunk than watching the film, but that doesn’t mean I can't understand the appeal. In a nutshell, I believe that many educated women can indeed take some pleasure from a book that romanticizes the relationship between an arrogant sociopathic sex-pest who sexually dominates an impressionable young woman, and it is very easy to explain why. Anyone that read the fascinating piece about Victoria Pendleton's sessions with psychologist Dr Steve Peters can probably understand it too.

Basically, Peters told Victoria that she needed to "let the chimp out" if she wanted success. She admitted to him at this point that she had been feeling down, and she really wanted to get her hair done. So she had her hair done, and promptly won her next race. This story helps to elegantly explain my point.

Feminism has taught modern women that they matter. I, and any man with a brain (or a mother) should always agree on this point. It has taught them that they should never submit to a man, unless they really really want to. And during sex women sometimes want to. Not because they hate themselves, not because they do not value their gender, and not because they feel they have to. And they want to, because of good old fashioned science (evolutionary biology if you are stickler for details.) Our species spent a long time evolving. Sex and desire are as natural to human beings as eating and drinking. Modern feminism has (quite rightly) taught women from a very young age that they matter. Unfortunately, the inner chimp often has a real problem with being attracted to a man that is a total pansy.

And therein lies the problem.

The modern, trained part of any educated woman's brain says "I want a man that is gentle, kind, sensitive, warm, generous, and giving" while the inner chimp says "Look at Brad Pitts abs and biceps in Fight Club, PHWOAR! Why am I looking at this pasty skinny guy with terrible taste in underwear?" This is perfectly natural, no shame is required. And modern men have spent years being told that women hate chauvinistic and masculine men, because they are likely to be oppressive and arrogant. In everyday life, of course a woman wants a man that is sensitive and kind, but during sex, the natural differences between the sexes are much more important, because it is a primal activity that has been going on since our ancestors first crawled from the oceans. Put simply, if apes never screwed, our species would be screwed. So in the bedroom, opposites really do attract. And when the differences between both of our sexes are not as obvious, arousal is much more difficult for a regular heterosexual chimp. I mean.. woman.

This is also why the best serial philanders, (just read any of those annoying pick-up artist blogs) fake it. They are arrogant, and masculine, and confident, and attractive, but they pretend they are also sensitive, and kind, and giving, and they are, right up to the point they roll off you in bed and say "sod this, I'm off to the pub."

The feminization of men is a good thing generally. Any man with a daughter, or sister can see the logic of that. Women now live in a culture where they can take care of themselves, they can study whatever they want, they can become a metalworker if they want, they can join the army, be a mother, become a logger. They matter, and that is a great thing. But the feminization of men is a bad thing in the bedroom because the chimp often likes those masculine traits, and we are all slaves to the chimp. Just like a genuinely good man who has never cheated on his wife but occasionally spends a second glaring at an attractive woman's ass when she bends over to tie her shoe in the street, so too can a modern, sensible, feminist woman, want to lose herself in an hour of good old fashioned primal shagging.

Well, unless they are married to me. Let's call it twenty minutes.

So when modern women start to think their sex life with their giving, sensitive, kind partner is a little dull, of course they are going to have a moment when they get excited about the thought of being dominated by a powerful, confident, and attractive male figure. Many aspects of FSOG are alarming, and indeed, very sexist. And most men know it, because if it was a factual biography alongside the likes of The Wolf of Wall Street, none of us would read it and go "I would like Mr. Grey to meet my mother" or "My sister has just recently divorced, I shall invite Mr. Grey round tomorrow night so he can bang her up against the refrigerator." But it does not mean that a sensible woman cannot simply enjoy it for what it is, some fictional entertainment. Our culture has taught women that they must never bow down to a man, but the inner chimp often has a yearning for a little bowing down. Just because some part of a woman's psyche desires some masculine behavior in the sack, it does not mean that they want women to retreat from politics and stay in the kitchen, and any sensible woman with a brain will concede the point, not knee me in the testicles and mace me.

Anyway, I believe that walking the line between the chimp and modern sophistication is difficult for men too, but I believe I am getting close to becoming the perfect man via the medium of lifting weights, being sexually aggressive, and tenderly stroking my wife's face while sobbing and listening to Lady Gaga.

It's not about the Football.... Honest. 

The internet has been awash with football of late, or soccer as they like to say over here and, well... nowhere else.

Speaking to the few Americans I have met that are very keen on football I have noticed a trend. They are usually bleary-eyed, stinking of drink, and regaling me about their excellent evening watching a game the night before.

If not that, they are avidly speaking about the game sat across from me in a pub or a bar. 

It made me realize something that I have never before considered. Despite having an awful tattoo of my local football team emblazoned on one arm, and having a season ticket for several years before I joined the military, it has never been about the football.

Its a social event.

And I guarantee that all of the fans that treat it as such come to love the beautiful game. Even if like me, they don't actually spend that much time watching the football, and even if they do, often remember little of it the morning after anyway.

Every match I ever saw with my Dad, or my Grandfather, or my friends, has absolutely always involved drinking in several pubs for a few hours beforehand, and then drinking in several pubs for many hours afterwards. 

Essentially, its an excuse for a social event. Its an excuse to ditch the kids at your mothers house, forget about that coursework for a day, leave the newspaper closed, leave the office early. You then meet a group of friends and spend a good few hours drinking socially, interspersed with a little topical football.

If you are an American and you are reading this, you might be thinking "Yes that is all well and good but I think soccer sucks" If that is the case, try going along with your friends anyway the next time you get an invite. You can even sit with your back to the screen, because doubtless there will be plenty of other people doing the exact same thing, and you can spot them easily if you are all facing in the same direction and perhaps make some new friends as well.

Humans are social animals, and absolutely any excuse for a get-together in these stressful modern times should be treated as a good one. 

Football works so well because it can be your excuse, and nobody has to die. You don't need to wait until your Aunt gets hit by a train to get together with your relatives and have a drink in a big room, you can do it at the pub under the pretense of watching a game.

Its probably why it is a very male thing to do, because we are famously bad at staying in touch. My wife and her mother talk all the time, her mother calls her sisters all of the time too. 

I get on well with my brother, father, uncle, and male cousins, but the only time we speak is when I need to borrow a power tool, when attending a funeral, or possibly when someone has been diagnosed with a terminal illness, and only very briefly then. 

So you might not think you like football, but I am asking you to try it anyway, let a game be the excuse you need. Drink, talk, sing, be merry, enjoy yourself.

It isn't about football, its about having some fun, and we shouldn't need an excuse to do that but the older we get, the more it seems like we really do need one.

  

The True Cost of Monarchy

Today I felt moved enough by this video to talk about the monarchy. 

Despite not being a sentimental chap, or a pensioner, I'm actually something of a monarchist. Not the sort to go and peruse a website with pictures of the Royal baby, or even one to watch the Queen's Speech on Christmas day because frankly, there are much better ways to spend the day (drinking heavily and watching James Bond for example) but a certain kind of disinterested monarchist nonetheless. 

And I can very easily explain why. 

Politics is a nasty business. Such a nasty business that you can guarantee that anybody who excels at it is a capable liar. Not only that, but also a ruthless individual who is not afraid to do exactly what is required to come out at the top of a large heap of equally ruthless and pitiless individuals. Such is the way of the game, Indeed, it has long been known that if you want to succeed in politics you need to be willing to do what it takes to ensure you defeat your rivals. It is precisely why sleaze and lies inevitably follow politicians and bureaucrats around like a bad smell. 

Naked ambition is the root cause, and if you want to climb that slippery slope to power you need to be willing to do what it takes.

Barrack Obama is probably not the most dishonest American President ever, in fact, he's probably done a half decent job. I always preferred Hilary personally, but he has at least done a capable job of not being as incompetent as his predecessor. Regardless, even if you are an avid fan of Mr Obama and think he is more honest than many former presidents, he has also been caught lying numerous times. 

Barack Obama categorically stated that "Nobody is listening to your phone-calls" only days after Edward Snowden was arrested. It really is part of the job. Tony Blair was caught lying so often I would be unlikely to believe him if he told me he was feeling a bit warm seconds after being engulfed in flames following a gas explosion. Such behaviour comes with the turf, and there are many times when lying must be necessary when navigating the murky waters of international politics, so it obviously becomes a habit. As such, there is a good reason why most kids are told not to listen to the words of politicians or lawyers by their cynical grandparents, and it is because they know from experience. 

The most obvious reason to like a monarch, is precisely because of the way the job is imposed on the monarch in question using the hereditary system. Ambition is removed from the table. Queen Elizabeth II was told from a young age that she would be the Queen one day, so why bother with ambition? To bestow hereditary rule onto any individual ensures that they have no need to stab those that surround them in the back, they are getting the job whether they want it or not. It also ensures that the individual in question is schooled in the role from a very young age, they are told to do a duty, and few could argue, save for the most militant republican, that the current British Queen has at least done her duty. Can self serving politicians, Prime Ministers and Presidents really say the same? 

Most of the Queen's offspring serve the nation by enlisting in the military, can Prime Ministers and Presidents say the same? Where was Tony Blair's spoiled son Euan when Prince Harry was an pounding the sand as infantry officer on the ground in Afghanistan? 

He was at Yale.

After graduating with an immensely unspectacular 2:1 in Ancient History in 2005, he spent two months working as an intern at a French radio station owned by France’s richest man. A year later he landed another internship working for Republican politicians in Washington DC. He then left to study for an MA at Yale, and of course, he was awarded a scholarship of $75,000 into the bargain... I'm sure his poor pauper of a father would struggle to afford to pay for his tuition. 

Such obvious nepotism is commonplace among the politicians of the world, and only serves to drive me into the arms of the Queen and her kin, a very nice old lady who seems to work pretty hard considering her advanced age. Not that I care much for Royalty in the strictest sense, but there is no shortage of politicians serving the nation.....and themselves, obviously. 

But there are only a few Royals. Would the UK really gain anything from firing them, and adding a few more politicians and a president to the roster? I'm of the opinion that the 30,000 politicians we already employ are more than up to the job, and the 500 million pounds a year they cost seems a tad high, especially when it transpires they are all fiddling their expenses and charging the taxpayer for pornography, Christmas decorations, and picnics. What do politicians think their salaries are for?! 

Indeed, at 31 million pounds a year, I conclude that Lizzie and her ilk seem almost a snip. 

The Benefits of Sitting on the Fence 

I've spent most of this week reading about GM food and immunization. The two topics are often in the news these days, and I've recently started reading more about them because my brain aches every time I log onto Facebook and read the endless inanity that haunts the worlds most intellectually vapid social networking site. Merely sticking the words "like" and "share" underneath a badly edited photograph seem to magically imbue an image with validity, and then lo and behold, something obviously wrong and factually ridiculous to all but the most slowed high-school student is plastered all over my wall by some enthusiastic sharer, and I am forced to gnash my teeth and berate people that alas, I once called friend. 

They teach you how to process this nonsense at a very young age In high-schools back in England. My teachers expertly displayed the power of propaganda to me at a very young age in fact, by showing my class an anti-abortion video in one lesson of Personal and Social Education, a mandatory hour long life lesson that we were forced to sit through each week because presumably many parents don't have the brains to teach their kids not to be idiots. After only ten minutes watching said video, I was indeed anti-abortion, because I was convinced that an 8 week old fetus was capable of defeating me in a game of Connect 4. Indeed, according to the video I had just seen, the unborn children of the UK were patiently sat inside the wombs of the nation reading novels and tapping their feet to the music on Mom's Ipod. 

Totally True Fetus at 6 weeks

Well, it was more of a battery devouring cassette player with headphones that weighed two kilos back in 1990, but you get the idea. 

A week later, the class was made to watch a different video, one that was aggressively pro-choice. I recall finding it somewhat amusing, because if you watched that video on its lonesome you could perhaps be forgiven for thinking that heading for an abortion was a pleasurable experience, and children are so devoid of life that any parent with a particularly moody teenager should be allowed to perform a retroactive abortion by legally drowning their kids in the bathtub before their eighteenth birthday. 

I'm not sure if they teach PSE these days, but it appears that the lesson has been entirely lost on today's youth. The message was an obvious one, and its painfully simple to put it into practice. 

If you see a picture of something on the internet, check the source. If there is no source, Google the "fact" and see for yourself. If you have never heard of the source, check that out as well. There are numerous well known groups and factions that are politically active today, and countless thousands of not well known ones. Obviously nobody can be expected to know them all, but here is a hint, if the groups title infers an obvious choice, then you should treat their message as suspect and take the time to check things out for yourself.

If you are capable of using a computer, you are capable of thinking for yourself. If a group is called something clearly inflammatory like "Gays Cause Hurricanes" or "Blacks and Jews Wreck Your Week" it should set some alarm bells ringing. The BBC is a pretty good source for news, but its still got a slant, so does the much maligned Daily Mail. Here's the rub though, Greenpeace don't sit on the fence either, neither does The Guardian, or groups called "If you don't recycle, you are practically a baby raper"  

Every publication is written by a fallible human being with a word processor, few of them will be as fallible as the writer of this particular blog, but the message is clear to anyone with even a basic understanding of how information works. Check the left, check the right, and then somewhere around the middle you will probably arrive at something like an answer, because everybody is desperate to sway you to their cause.

If you spend half an hour reading about either of the aforementioned topics, its painfully obvious that there is a sensible answer to both, so long as you are even remotely impartial about things. Choosing whether or not to have a termination is a painful decision, often a heartbreaking one, and always a difficult one, but there are a plethora of experts and scientists that have decided that a fetus is incapable of feeling or knowing anything at all before 20 weeks. Smarter people than you or I have decided such a thing, and funny thing, I like to ask an expert. Just because you have an opinion, it doesn't make it a valid one. 

I often point this out when I am being lectured about science by a scientific illiterate. Would you ask your dentist for psychiatric advice? If the flush isn't working in your bathroom, do you toss the plumbers number away and demand that the gardener take a look at it? How about asking the guy in Starbucks how to fix the gear box on your 1975 Austin Allegro? 

If in every single aspect of your life you are more than happy to follow the advice of those in the know, why would you allow your emotions to cloud your judgement and cause you to make absurd decisions on really important decisions, such as the health of your kids or your own personal well-being? This principal can be applied to almost all of the big issues of the day. 

Why not ask a geologist about fracking? Why not ask a General what he thinks of the war in Afghanistan? Why not ask a seismologist when he thinks "the big one" is going to hit California? 

The Facebook generation seems to think that all of the above is bad advice, and they should take all of their advice on myriad complex and confusing topics from people that are charismatic but entirely ignorant of the subject in question. I saw a guy talking about how 9/11 was an inside job which was actually carried out by Freemason affiliated Muslim Ninja's who secretly love George W. Bush even though he gave billions of dollars to Israel. He wasn't a world renowned scholar with long experience in economics and geopolitics though, he was a hippy with a loud shirt and a matted beard, and I'm pretty sure he was giving the interview in his mothers basement. 

To sum up, please don't listen to me, I may well have been typing in jest, but that is the pivotal point. Don't listen to anybody. Read several different sources from across the political spectrum and then sit down in solitude and make your own mind up. If you think you may be leaning unfairly in one direction, perhaps take a moment to ask yourself why. Nothing is black and white in reality, and almost everything is more complicated than it first appears if you take the time to learn about it. And remember, sitting on the fence can be boring and thankless, but it beats jumping down and putting your foot in dog-shit.

Oh and for the record, I eat GM food because I ate it for two decades before all this fuss started and It didn't seem to do me any harm, I will Immunize my kids, and I will always allow my missus to make her own decisions when it comes to her ovaries regardless of my feelings on the matter.

They are her ovaries after all...  

UK military cuts mean 'no US partnership', warns Robert Gates

One of the standout headlines on the BBC website today was a piece airing the views of Robert Gates, a former secretary of defence for the United States. Mr Gates says that because he "laments" American defence cuts, he also has concern for the cuts currently being directed towards the British armed forces. It may be a somewhat controversial thing to say in a nation that is so obsessed with having an overt military presence, but I find it difficult to be concerned about such a trifling issue.

Why is it a trifling issue? Well, lets look at the facts and figures. Currently the United Kingdom has the fourth largest military budget in the world, despite having the eighth largest economy. Britain spends more on the military than almost every nation on earth, and most amusingly, far more than all of the nations named as part of "the axis of evil" by George W Bush. Indeed, the combined military spending of the most belligerent states in the world today is still less than what the British spend on the armed forces, and I, along with many others, believe this sum is more than ample. 

Do the Dutch worry about their military spending? Do the happier, slimmer, fitter, more relaxed people of Austria, Switzerland, Denmark or New Zealand sit around worrying themselves silly about the fact that they can't muster a terrifying war host to barnstorm across the globe bringing flaming death to their perceived foes? 

Of course they don't. And according to the Mercer Quality of Living Survey from 2012, not one of the best cities to reside in on planet earth sits inside the borders of the militarily powerful nations of the earth.

And on a personal level, sit and think about it for a while, do you really care about how powerful the military of the nation who happen to inhabit is, as long as you are happy? Surely things like access to good jobs, health care, and schools, are far more important. As long as you and your children are prosperous, happy, healthy, and well educated, what does it matter if you can't drop napalm onto the heads of illiterate goat herding peasants halfway across the world? 

We don't live in the colonial era anymore, gone are the days of slavery and outright theft. Trade is the way of the modern world, and the easily available technology of the modern world is the ultimate force multiplier. As such, It has taken the world's only military hyperpower and her allies 13 years to fight the Taliban to a standstill, so where is all of this expenditure getting us? 

As long as your nation has enough military bite to police its own borders, and act as a deterrent to wantonly aggressive foreign powers, then the military of your nation is completely fit for purpose. As such, I believe that the United States could happily shave 20% from its military spending, scale back its operations accordingly, and still be fit for purpose, allowing American citizens to sleep safe in the knowledge that their nations military expenditure still more than trebles the spending of all of the nations combined which could be deemed to be even remotely hostile. 

So should the British Government carry on with military cuts despite the warnings of the esteemed Mr Gates? 

Of course it should.

Release those endorphins! ..... and those bowels. 

I had an amusing day at the gym recently when a random but very fit looking young man who appeared to be harbouring a secret desire to pummel an unsuspecting and slightly overweight member of the public into submission handed me an impromptu challenge.

 I had never seen the guy before in my life, but he stepped onto the treadmill next to mine in 24 Hour Fitness and wordlessly threw down the gauntlet. The whole affair started innocently enough as I stepped onto a free machine and began an easy loping run to warm up. Two minutes after stepping onto it however, a much taller, leaner, and frankly far more energetic looking young chap about 10 years my junior got onto the treadmill next to mine. Nothing strange about that, but he then proceeded to ape my movements speed identically, and when I sped things up a few minutes later copied the exact same speed and elevation of my machine. At this point I gave the dominant male to my left a quick questioning glance, and he inclined his head slightly towards me in a movement which seemed to wordlessly state "Now we must battle for ownership of the virile females in this building." 

Ten minutes later I had ramped things up and added another kilometre an hour to the speed, and my unnamed challenger proceeded to do the exact same ten seconds later, clearly the gloves were off. My would-be destroyer had ceased any pretence of coincidence, and this sudden and unexpected attack went on for another 30 minutes of soul crushing effort. Regardless of the settings I was choosing on what was supposed to be a relaxing run, my leaner, obviously fitter tormentor would match me on both speed and elevation. And so began an unspoken battle of wills, where neither man spoke, but both silently acknowledged they were savagely butting heads in a battle that first began when mankind's ancestors first crawled from the primordial ooze eons ago.

At the 40 minute mark I was running up a treadmill that was so savagely inclined it was like a rubber version of the steep side of K2, and I was smashing my feet so hard into the treadmill that my teeth were threatening to vibrate out of my skull, but still he pursued me. My shirt was so wet it looked like I had been blasted off my feet with a riot hose before entering the gym, and my already bushy eyebrows were proving inefficient at keeping the sweat from my painfully itchy eyeballs. At this point, heart hammering against my ribcage but unwilling to do the smart thing and concede, I attempted to send my mind to a better place, took my eyes off the timer, and grit my teeth against the pain. Approximately 4 and a half minutes later, with a strange tingling up my spine and an odd buzzing sound reverberating around my skull, my foe finally gave his head a slight shake, and then knocked 5 or 6 kilometres an hour off his own machine. I carried on as best I could, desperate to try and show that I was above such a childish display of machismo. Surely because he instigated the whole thing I could plead ignorance? I could simply pretend that I regularly went for a leisurely jog and proceeded to run at such a pace that my shins were blasted to bits and I thought I was going to defecate in my shorts?

It was no good however, and I was forced to knock the speed down to a brisk walk only 30 seconds after him as I had started to see stars blinking across my vision and feared losing consciousness at great speed. This would be less of an issue if we were running outside, because such an act here would see my vomit and blood soaked body thrown across the gym and into the free weights area forty feet away. When I slowed my machine down, the sadist to my left gave me a grin, shook his head slightly, and then stopped his machine. He grabbed his towel and his keys, leapt from the machine in a sprightly fashion, and made his way towards the exact with a fair sheen of sweat but looking none the worse for wear. 

 The same could not be said for me however, and things went from bad to worse as soon as I stopped the treadmill a few minutes later. Despite feeling merely light headed and a little bit sick as I got off the machine, I suddenly felt extremely ill when I stood upon still earth once more. I somehow began staggering while simultaneously looking like I was clutching a pencil between my arse cheeks, and made my way to the changing room. Not wanting to faint or vomit in-front of any of the other men present, I made for the bathroom as swiftly as my recently liquified kneecaps would allow. Mercifully it was empty, and on shaking legs I locked myself into a cubicle and proceeded to collapse next to the porcelain and spewed acid and bile into the pan. I then started shaking uncontrollably, and bizarrely, found myself immensely drowsy. I drifted in and out of consciousness for about ten minutes before I finally had the strength to operate the flimsy handle on the door.

As I passed the large mirrors on the way to the exit on unsteady legs, I caught a glimpse of my pallid, green tinged reflection, and found myself wondering two things. First of all, if I was the victor of this impromptu battle, why did I feel so demoralized and dejected? And secondly, if exercising is apparently so good for the health, why did I look like a recently reanimated corpse? 

I never look that rough when I'm sat in the pub.....