Returns, developments and books

Yes it has been a while since the last update but me and Tom are two people who like coming up with ideas and then doing nothing about them. In other words we are lazy. If I wasn't near-certain that it was just me and him who were going to read this I would probably launch into a rant about how great our sitcom / journal / bookshop-come-illegal unpasteurised cheese shop ('Raw Books' if you were wondering) / space program was going to be. As it is I will leave that for another day and simply ask you to be grateful that we ever got this half baked project off the ground.

Anyway since graduating we have both failed to do anything useful and the plus side of this is a massive backlog of things to hate and rant about. Starting out, I'm sorely tempted to launch into a tirade against my most hated and despised topic du jour, i.e. my life. However I'm pretty sure nobody wants to hear the self indulgent wallowings of man with no real problems except having a degree and not really knowing what to do with it. As such I'm going to hold off and propose a novel direction to this blog. Yes I'm still going to rant about the man who attempted to make me inhale second hand heroin smoke whilst I was asleep on a rail replacement bus in Streatham. Seriously heroin addicted tramp, the bus was 150m away from where it was terminating. However I'm also going to suggest that not all of the rants have to be about stuff we hate anymore. So here goes:

First up is a brilliant rant from Charlie Brooker about the whole Brand-Ross saga. Check it out HERE. The topic of my first positive rant, is someone else's rant about something they hate, I acknowledge that, but let's view this as a gentle breaking in period. I'm not usually a great fan of Charlie Brooker but I think he pretty much hits the nail on the head here as far as I'm concerned.

Second is a book that I'm reading at the moment called 'The Last Mughal' by William Dalrymple. It's a history of the last Mughal Emperor of India and the Indian uprising of 1857 and it is brilliant. This reviewer may have a point that the book does devote a lot of it's pages to telling the British side of the story and concentrates on events in Dheli almost exclusively. That said it's probably one of the best history books I've ever read. It gives a hugely detailed account of a plethora of peoples experiences of the uprising without ever getting stuck in boring minutiae. Pre-uprising you get a fascinating insight into the Mughal's luxurious but impotent lifestyle which seems mainly to have revolved around writing poetry and being cared for by his many wives. The book really takes off with the uprising though. There's stories of brutal violence, high-jinx escapes and reprehensible murders on both sides. Dalrymple doesn't shy away from the horrific atrocities committed by both sides, giving detailed insights into how both the British and Indians justified them.

Not unexpectedly it's the ludicrous stiff upper lip attitude and ridiculous sensibilities of the British officers that provide some moments of comedy. Firstly there is General Nicholson a violent man who hated India and was unbelievably curt. A typical letter of his to his superiors reads:

'Sir,
I have the honour to inform you that I have just shot a man who came to kill me.
Your Obedient Servant,
John Nicholson'

The man seems to have been an actual lunatic. On his death bed, apparently barely able to breath or talk: "He was, however, still well enough to fire a shot from his pistol through the side of the tent to shut up his irregular cavalry, who had gathered in vigil outside his tent." Strangely enough he actually inspired a religious cult while he was alive whose adherents thought he was a descendant of Vishnu. "Nicholson tolerated his devotees as long as they kept quiet; but if 'they prostrated themselves or began chanting they were taken away and whipped."

Another example of insane British manners comes from the letter a young officer wrote to his mother the night before the British were due to storm Delhi. Musing about the effects that this near suicidal, full frontal attack on the city might have on him he wrote: "I hope it won't make me swear, though that is almost allowable for you are mad with excitement, and know not what you are saying. but I will strive against it with all my might."

It all reminded me of the attitudes on display in Nick Foulkes' 'Dancing into Battle' about the Battle of Waterloo. In a manner echoed by Nicholson's brevity of and nonchalance, Lord Uxbridge, the commander of the cavalry wrote this letter to his wife:

"Dearest Cha,

Be bold, prepare for misfortune, I have lost my right leg. A miracle might have saved it but for the sake of you and my dearest children I have taken the better chance of preserving my life.

God Bless You all."

Anyway what I'm basically saying is that it is a great book. I picked it up in Fopp for £3. I love that shop.

Giles Coren gets mad, but not even.

Hullo!
It's been rather a while since any of this was updated, but necessity has overtaken motivation as a cause so here we are. Easing back in, I thought it might be a good idea to put the various letters, and replies, that the ever delightful restaurant critic / columnist / Kentish Town resident Giles Coren has shot off to journalists and sub editors in one of his many apparent periods of red-mist syndrome. Doubtless many have already seen them, but for posteritys sake, and if you don't read the Guardian:


1. Letter to Feargus O'Sullivan.

From: Coren, Giles
Sent: 09 July 2008 23:06

feargus,

I'm emailing to say that your review of osteria emilia, in most ways perfectly fine and good and spot on, pissed me off. i booked, as ever, under a pseudonym, that over made up italian bird did not have a fucking clue who i was (or even who baddiel was, who i ate with because he lives, like me, round the corner). Nor were there any kitchen staff peeking out of any porthole. i appreciate that you have to keep your column as lively as possible - and name dropping david i guess might be exciting for your readers (i'll certainly be doing it in my column) - but in your froth to show how folksy and incognito you are, you did your readers and the restaurant an immense disservice: you suggested that i got some special dispensation in eating a la carte. But if you'd spent a bit more time looking at your lunch menu, and a bit less gawping at me, you'd have noticed that it said, "dishes from the evening a la carte menu are available at lunchtime, with some exceptions".

You said "i didn't have the brass neck to demand anything off the unavailable a la carte". it makes you sound like an utter tit. you are not only a chippy fuck but a lazy journalist. 'brass neck'. learn to write, and take your head out of your arse, you fucking twat.

all the best
giles coren

Bear in mind, O'Sullivan also writes for the Times (though I believe this refers to a review he wrote for the London Paper?), so he is actually a colleague of Coren's.


More famously:

2. Letter to Times sub-editors.

Chaps,

I am mightily pissed off. I have addressed this to Owen, Amanda and Ben because I don't know who i am supposed to be pissed off with (i'm assuming owen, but i filed to amanda and ben so it's only fair), and also to Tony, who wasn't here - if he had been I'm guessing it wouldn't have happened.

I don't really like people tinkering with my copy for the sake of tinkering. I do not enjoy the suggestion that you have a better ear or eye for how I want my words to read than I do. Owen, we discussed your turning three of my long sentences into six short ones in a single piece, and how that wasn't going to happen anymore, so I'm really hoping it wasn't you that fucked up my review on saturday.

It was the final sentence. Final sentences are very, very important. A piece builds to them, they are the little jingle that the reader takes with him into the weekend.

I wrote: "I can't think of a nicer place to sit this spring over a glass of rosé and watch the boys and girls in the street outside smiling gaily to each other, and wondering where to go for a nosh."

It appeared as: "I can't think of a nicer place to sit this spring over a glass of rosé and watch the boys and girls in the street outside smiling gaily to each other, and wondering where to go for nosh."

There is no length issue. This is someone thinking "I'll just remove this indefinite article because Coren is an illiterate cunt and i know best".

Well, you fucking don't.
This was shit, shit sub-editing for three reasons.
1) 'Nosh', as I'm sure you fluent Yiddish speakers know, is a noun formed from a bastardisation of the German 'naschen'. It is a verb, and can be construed into two distinct nouns. One, 'nosh', means simply 'food'. You have decided that this is what i meant and removed the 'a'. I am insulted enough that you think you have a better ear for English than me. But a better ear for Yiddish? I doubt it. Because the other noun, 'nosh' means "a session of eating" - in this sense you might think of its dual valency as being similar to that of 'scoff'. you can go for a scoff. or you can buy some scoff. the sentence you left me with is shit, and is not what i meant. Why would you change a sentnece aso that it meant something i didn't mean? I don't know, but you risk doing it every time you change something. And the way you avoid this kind of fuck up is by not changing a word of my copy without asking me, okay? it's easy. Not. A. Word. Ever.

2) I will now explain why your error is even more shit than it looks. You see, i was making a joke. I do that sometimes. I have set up the street as "sexually-charged". I have described the shenanigans across the road at G.A.Y.. I have used the word 'gaily' as a gentle nudge. And "looking for a nosh" has a secondary meaning of looking for a blowjob. Not specifically gay, for this is soho, and there are plenty of girls there who take money for noshing boys. "looking for nosh" does not have that ambiguity. the joke is gone. I only wrote that sodding paragraph to make that joke. And you've fucking stripped it out like a pissed Irish plasterer restoring a renaissance fresco and thinking jesus looks shit with a bear so plastering over it. You might as well have removed the whole paragraph. I mean, fucking christ, don't you read the copy?

3) And worst of all. Dumbest, deafest, shittest of all, you have removed the unstressed 'a' so that the stress that should have fallen on "nosh" is lost, and my piece ends on an unstressed syllable. When you're winding up a piece of prose, metre is crucial. Can't you hear? Can't you hear that it is wrong? It's not fucking rocket science. It's fucking pre-GCSE scansion. I have written 350 restaurant reviews for The Times and i have never ended on an unstressed syllable. Fuck. fuck, fuck, fuck.

I am sorry if this looks petty (last time i mailed a Times sub about the change of a single word i got in all sorts of trouble) but i care deeply about my work and i hate to have it fucked up by shit subbing. I have been away, you've been subbing joe and hugo and maybe they just file and fuck off and think "hey ho, it's tomorrow's fish and chips" - well, not me. I woke up at three in the morning on sunday and fucking lay there, furious, for two hours. weird, maybe. but that's how it is.

It strips me of all confidence in writing for the magazine. No exaggeration. i've got a review to write this morning and i really don't feel like doing it, for fear that some nuance is going to be removed from the final line, the pay-off, and i'm going to have another weekend ruined for me.

I've been writing for The Times for 15 years and i have never asked this before - i have never asked it of anyone i have written for - but I must insist, from now on, that i am sent a proof of every review i do, in pdf format, so i can check it for fuck-ups. and i must be sent it in good time in case changes are needed. It is the only way i can carry on in the job.

And, just out of interest, I'd like whoever made that change to email me and tell me why. Tell me the exact reasoning which led you to remove that word from my copy.

Right,
Sorry to go on. Anger, real steaming fucking anger can make a man verbose.
All the best
Giles

Oh dear. The section reading "you've fucking stripped it out like a pissed Irish plasterer restoring a renaissance fresco and thinking jesus looks shit with a bear so plastering over it" is perhaps the finest example of Coren's fine way with a completely overwrought analogy. Has anyone ever seen Jesus with a bear? Is that his point? Maybe he is a genius after all. His so called 'jingle' line is appalling, though.

3. Reply from Times sub-editors.

Dear Giles,

Sub-editing is a noble profession. It is also a thankless one - particularly when your writers call you a "useless cunt".

There was a sharp intake of breath when your e-mail hit the inbox of subs throughout the industry this week - that was after we'd stopped laughing. Not that we didn't think you had a point. Yes, tinkering with copy just for the sake of it and without consultation is wrong. It is disrespectful and arrogant. And we can see why you'd be furious at the loss even of an indefinite article.

There is nothing more irritating than a sub-editor who thinks they know better than a writer, particularly one who cares deeply about his work. But did you really have to be so rude?

Laura Barton stated in Friday's Guardian that there's "something of a long-standing tension between writers and sub-editors". Do you wonder why? Contrary to your belief, we don't "believe we know best when we know fuck all".

If you could only see the state of some of the raw copy we have to knock into shape. It's badly structured, poorly spelt, appallingly punctuated, lazily researched. We're not saying your writing falls into that category - on the contrary, your journalism is highly accomplished. Never having worked on your copy, we can only take your word for it that it is beyond improvement in its pre-published state. Strange as it may seem, many writers do not possess your grasp of language; indeed it is sometimes difficult to believe that English is their mother tongue, and they don't give a damn about what they produce because they know that a good, often highly educated sub-editor will correct it, check it and turn it into readable prose.

None of this, however, can excuse your nasty, bullying, "know your place, you insignificant little fuckwit" e-mail. Yes, it's funny, in a way that pieces that use "fuck", "shit" and "cunt" so liberally often can be, but, please - someone made a mistake. They surely had no intention of sabotaging your deathless prose. So you don't like what happened to your piece - have a word with your editor. The hapless sub will no doubt already have been soundly thrashed and had their dictionary privileges removed.

Some years ago, a colleague of ours had a T-shirt printed up with the legend "xxxxxxxxx xxxxxxx is a cunt" on the front, which he wore every week when having to deal with the writer to whom it referred, because he, like you, became so disproportionately abusive when his use of language was questioned. We'd hate that to happen to you, because you can actually write, and having "Giles Coren is a sanctimonious little twat who needs to get over himself" could be quite costly in T-shirt lettering. Subs are no more infallible than writers. So, let's all try a little mutual respect, shall we?

All the best,

Mia Aimaro Ogden
Joanna Duckworth
Senior sub-editors, The Sunday Times

Hooray!

Televised Football

Once upon a time, in a land that has come to be referred to as ‘the 1960s’, one could sit down on a Saturday evening, and enjoy the simple pleasure of watching football highlights. It was basic, decent, honest, but most importantly, it was not a struggle. Millions of people up and down the land would simply sit and let the delights of a mud-soaked Brighton & Hove Albion drawing 0-0 with Aston Villa wash over them. The commentator would have no need for hyperbole, would not refer to a pass as an ‘offload’, or to a clean-sheet as a ‘shut-out’, and they most certainly would not talk about ‘the Makélélé role’. A simple voice, 22 men running their heart out for their local club, and a field that can only be described as a poor man’s Somme – lovely stuff. Post-match analysis was also reassuringly clean-cut; it would consist of a well-spoken man, whom had a strong vocabulary, simply grinning after the Brighton/Villa clash and saying “well played both teams, great stuff there, up next… Plymouth Argyle versus Queens Park Rangers”.
Unfortunately, somewhere down the line (let’s say… after Thatcher? She is a villain of the necessary cartoon proportions), the BBC and BSKYB decided that this kick-ass formula needed a revamp. It needed to be sexed up, flashy, big business – coincidentally all the characteristics of people who benefited under Thatcher (cow). At first however, I must admit, it was ok. The BBC launched the dynamic duo of Alan Hansen and Mark Lawrenson, and BSKYB gave us Andy Gray and his insights into managerial tactics. Former players, with a good grasp of their native language, and a straightforward manner of communicating to the general public what managers expected of a flat-back four.
But with TV executives being what they are, they couldn’t settle on what was an acceptable update. SKY started running war-metaphor advertisements, in which managers and players are hyped as gladiators. I have seen Frank Sinclair play against Cardiff City, and I can assure you my dominant thought was not “bloody hell, Ridley Scott missed a trick here”.
The BBC executives on the other hand, seemed to develop a voracious appetite for employing former players to do the Hansen/Lawrenson role, an appetite we can thank for giving publicly funded punditry careers to such stars as Lee Dixon, Gavin Peacock, and (I shit you not) Iain Dowie. For those of you not familiar with Iain Dowie’s football skills here are some stats; in 3 years for QPR, Dowie scored 2 goals………… Iain Dowie was a centre-forward.
Indeed, it seems that the BBC has forgotten the key prerequisite for being a television pundit; good presentation and oratory skills. What we now have however, are poor former players grasping at the use of metaphor and simile, in the manner of a child grasping desperately at an allusive shiny balloon. An example will illustrate this best. Here is how Iain Dowie recently described Wayne Rooney’s immaculate ball control skills:

“It’s like he has got velvet gloves on his feet”

What? I mean seriously, what are you saying? Shall we find out together fellow ranters? So Dowie’s claim is that Rooney’s ball control makes it seem as though velvet gloves cover his feet. Firstly, the foot equivalent of a glove is a sock, and Rooney was wearing two socks when he controlled the pass – Dowie’s simile is inherently stupid. Secondly, since when did velvet gloves become the finest material for increasing grip on gloves? I recently asked a construction site worker if he would like to come with me and give velvet a try, and I woke up on a drip. The suggestion seemed offensive to him. “Lay off Dowie!” I hear you cry, “Give that gimp Peacock what-for!” you demand.
Firstly, Gavin Peacock likes to say “I’m just going to run the analysis”. What he means is he will run the video, and analyse it. I know this seems picky, but you can’t be too careful when dealing with a mega-brain like Gavin Peacock. Most importantly however, he seems to be unaware that he is on a television programme, or more accurately, what television actually does. The beauty of television is that it affords the viewer the opportunity to visually appreciate what is going on ‘at the other end’, and enjoy the beauty of moving pictures. Peacock however will continually pause footage in order to draw circles around the number of players ‘behind the ball’, then count the circles, and then forever conclude that ‘Bolton came today to disrupt Arsenal’.
Or he will stop footage, and then draw arrows showing where players will next move, in order to illustrate ‘pressure on the forwards’. Thanks Gav, but without the pause and the arrows I would have figured it out myself by watching it happen anyway. He is rendering moving pictures and one of the 20th century’s great inventions obsolete.
Maybe he and Lee Dixon are secret agents, bringing TV down from the inside, revolutionaries on a quest to see radio and the spoken word brought back to the fore of British culture. Or maybe they have been placed on MOTD as a tester for the BBC’s new primetime show How Not to Orate, or What Not to Say, I which two women with an overt sexual chemistry tell people that they ‘speak stupid’, and that this is the reason nobody wants to sleep with them.
I realise that maybe I have ranted too much, but I leave special mention for the superstar ITV pundit – Andy Townsend. However bad the BBC gets, you can be sure that ITV will plunge deeper. During the coverage of the FIFA World Cup 2006, or ‘Blatterfest’, Dutch football legend Ruud Gullit offered the opinion that Spain’s football failures were a consequence of apathy on the part of the many regional allegiances that its players have, and that players from political rivals Barcelona and Madrid did not want to mix. This was too much for Townsend to accept, who interjected with this nugget of diplomacy;

“What?! That’s ridiculous; the coach ought to sort that out!”

Idiot. It is no surprise that in previous years ITV deployed the ‘tactics truck’, which was a van directly outside the stadium in which Townsend would watch the game, and from which he would give his half time analysis. I should imagine Townsend did not see the inequality of the situation, despite the fact he was in a Ford transit in an empty NCP, whilst the rest of the gang would be inside the 80,000 strong San Siro. Then again I don’t think he actually knew what a tactics truck was, seeing as tactics and vehicles are two concepts that go way above his head.
So please TV executives up and down the land, stop this madness and give back the decency to football. Please shorten MOTD, so that 50 something’s of Britain can wait less time to join their partner in bed and not have sex. PUNDITRY HAS GONE TOO FAR.

ROAR Covers

A dangerously obvious one here, but a topic i feel must be brought explicitely to light.
Now, Kings doesn't have the greatest track record of instigating and maintaining a student-led fourth estate structure. Even those rotten stinkers at UCL have done better, having as they do a student radio station which is going fm this week. The good man Drummond's alleged attempts at the setting up of something similar here only descended into murky threats of speech only podcasts.
Now, you may cry, surely Kings has Roar! But then you would have to sit quietly and consider the stupidity of your ejaculations. Everyone knows Roar is terrible. From its trite, underwhelming attempts to take on a glossy magazine format instead of a respectable, London Student esque newspaper guise, to its endless, boring articles on Rag week, cringing pieces on sex and dating, and ill advised attempts at humour, the paper is even more of an embaressment to the college than the badly dressed engineering students streaming in and out of the campus doors every morning. But of course, everybody knows this.

The icing on the proverbial cack here is the fact that, before even sifting through the cretinous garbage inside (except of course for the music section, as Vinny and I have written for it, saving grace and whatnot), one must first face down the cover. Offensive as the basic templated set out and tabloid fonts are, what most brings a tear to the eye and an upsurge to the gullet, is the godawful images of too many drunk medics in school uniform quoffing snakebite (does anyone outside of the first year even drink this?) and generally looking rowdy, obviously either at Phase (eurgh) or Walkabout (euuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuurgh), which always seem to grace the cover. Must this be the face of our college tome? Whose fucking ridiculous idea is it to put this on the front of it? Who is this appealing to, aside from other drunk medics, who still consider a school disco night (replete with thos appalling dots on the cheek which all the most loathsome pencil on) a legitimate form of entertainment? It's a disgrace. (Ammendment) As anecdotal evidence of the preposterousness of the whole thing, when i returned to the heady nightlife of a Southampton University student 2 years after i left, i was reminded why i initiated my departure. Standing on a table at one particular dive of an establishment (Jesters, obviously), i saw an overweight, badly dressed student chugging from a jug of snakebite, simultaneously keeping one hand shoved firmly down his pants. I dont mean to make too scathing a comparison, but the individuals on the cover of Roar are, i fear, only one uncropped picture away from this kind of behaviour. But i digress.

The humanities department has some of the finest looking young people in London in its ranks. This should be made use of. Likewise the fact that the outside of the Maughan fucking owns now that the scaffolding is off. How can the good students of the Strand maintain a straight face and an ounce of dignity when this is how they are being represented at a base aestetic level? Im sick of it.

Breadless Sandwiches

The other day I was unfortunate enough to have to make a trip to Pret a Manger, a place I hate so much that to write a specific rant about it would probably kill me. Writing down everything I hate about it would be like painting the Forth bridge except it would actually be an endless task; no innovations in painting techniques could bring an end to it prematurely. The only way to avoid dying while on the internet, typing out an interminable list of grievances would be to go on a kamikaze mission to build a working time machine in order warn myself not to begin writing the list. That would literally be the best case scenario and if I know anything about time travel even that would involve me dealing with the romantic advances of my own mother. So with that cleared up we can move on to today's real issue: breadless sandwiches.

While waiting for my companion to buy some food (strangely enough I wasn't purchasing anything myself) I was browsing the shelves getting progressively angrier at the outrageous prices and the eat-in additional charge rip off when I chanced upon a 'chicken advocado breadless sandwich'. The name alone might actually suffice to express the sheer ridiculousness of this culinary debacle. Now I know that some people, who are willing to walk around with breath that smells like rotting meat and who failed to to note that their dieting life guru himself died of a heart attack, follow the Atkins diet. Equally I am aware that some people are wheat intolerant. Pret a Manger obviously needs to cater to these people. That said, how on earth can you label something that contains no bread a sandwich?

The whole point of naming the food item after the Fourth Earl of Sandwich, who ate slices of cold meat between bread during marathon gambling sessions rather than get up for a proper meal, was to specifically describe his bread encased food. Had he merely been eating slabs of meat, not only would the whole card game he was playing have been ruined, with everyone and everything gradually becoming smeared in greasy animal fat, resulting in his inevitable life ban from any upper class social events for fear that he would smear another respectable lady with salami but people would probably have remarked that he was eating meat or a salad. Note to Pret a Manger: there is already a word for the ensemble of chicken, advocado and lettuce and it is generally called a salad. Not a breadless sandwich. I'm sick of it.

The Toilet Decorum Of Kings College London Students

Hullo!
Though it has always been a particularly foetid issue, this afternoons study session in the Maughan has brought to a head the disgust i have been forced to hold for certain anonymous KCL contemporaries, specifically in the lavatorial sphere. The fact is, the personal facilities of the Maughan and the Strand campus of the university appear to have become over run by individuals complacant with uriniating, defecating, and be-tissuing all over them. I don't know if its some sort of unlisted college society, or perhaps im just missing out on some low brow/rent fun which others have cottened onto, but i just dont understand how presumeably very academic young men at one of the better universities in the country can be so nonchalent in letting their toilet activities get the better of them to a point of a serious dearth in personal hygiene, and the very real possibility of a college health scare eminating from the bowls, and subsequently walls and cubicles, they have defiled.
I, like any other student, can appreciate the fact that a hard day reading up on the political spheres of medieval europe, or the narrative focalisations of Victorian literature, would sometimes make a boy want to have a relaxing break to reward oneself. A chapter of Three Men On The Bummel, or a cup of camomile tea for instance. What i fail to understand is why some people's downtime is nonchalantly filled with pooing all over a library toilet, with attempts at a clean up operation simply being weeing a bit, covering it all with a layer of tissue and the leaving it, as if it will be spirited away like the mince pies left for Father Christmas. Unfortunately, there's no nonimaginary parent figure in the Maughan to come and eat your mess, and thus magically instil in you the fantasy that it will vanish into the ether of the U.

Anouncements on the tube about the East London Line

I don't really like tube announcements at the best of times. Being told to mind the gap, stand behind the yellow line, mind the stairs because it has been raining and they might be slippery and generally being told to do things that anyone with the capability to reason that being hit by a train would be a bad thing would do automatically, just generally pisses me off. In order to cater to the retarded nought point five percent of the population who have not been able to deduce that putting your foot in the gap between the train and the platform could result in something bad happening, the people who run the tube have decided to bombard me with a constant stream of noise and it frankly makes me want to purposefully jump in front of a train or at the very least pull a Van Gough.

Thankfully (or maybe unfortunately to my many nemeses) I have so far been able to resist these urges. This time though they are really pushing me to my limits. Fair enough the East London Line is closed: until 2010. I understand that. Maybe they should initially put some announcements out. And put up some posters. That is fine. What I don't really think is necessary, in fact what I am coming to believe is a soul crushing plan engineered by an arch rival, is the need to include this information in every single fucking service update, every ten or fifteen minutes, every day for two fucking years. Seriously. Two Years. Why? Who the hell doesn't already know that the line is closed. Do they really think that there are a plethora of commuters every day who have forgotten that the tube line they take home every day is closed that are saved by a timely announcement? This announcement is going out so often that I decided to calculate how often it would be made before the line re-opened. This is what I found:

Average announcements per hour (4) x Amount of tube stations (275) x average open hours per day (16) x days in a year (365) x years before opening (2) = 12, 848, 000

Twelve million eight hundred and fourty eight times those bastard words wil be uttered. Assuming that this takes 4 seconds per announcement that means over one and a half years of public service messages about it. ONE AND A HALF YEARS OF TALKING ABOUT SOMETHING THAT IS ONLY GOING TO TAKE TWO YEARS TO HAPPEN. Yeah so maybe I have too much time on my hands figuring this out but Tfl you can go fuck yourselves because you are spending one and a half years telling people about a tube line that only ever had 10 stations and is being extended to Croydon. Presumably so that more people can go to the Walkabout and experience the intoxicating mix of angry chavs, cheap booze, cheesy music, bad shirts and too much Brylcream that exists in there. (it's better than it sounds)

Personally I will probably hear it four thousand, three hundred and eighty times. FOUR THOUSAND THREE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY TIMES. I GOT THE MESSAGE AFTER THE FIRST ONE.

Some people have told me that it is helpful for tourists. Excuse me but how many tourists are getting the East London Line? It goes from Shoreditch to New Cross for fucks sake. It has got to be the least friendly line to tourists on the whole tube. Show me the tourist that is going to visit picturesque Wapping followed by a a luxurious meal in the Hobgoblin in New Cross and I will show you an idiot. Equally there are signs about it on any tube map you care to look at. Might I suggest that someone who cannot read English is also likely not to be able to understand English and therefore just be confused and probably angered by the unintelligible drone of noise that plagues them whenever they get a train in London. Much like I am. Please God, or maybe just Tfl, end this madness, it might just stop me crying every time I pay twenty four pounds twenty for a travelcard.

Bands DJ-ing at clubs

Specifically, when you get flyers and things for clubnights that say the band on them, but then that its a DJ set, implying that this is somehow a good thing and worth my money. I dont understand why anyone would think i would i want to go and see people from a band i like with an almost 100% certainty that i wont hear any of their songs. I really dont care what some two bit indie scenester has on his ipod. Its not like you've even got any assurance that they can dj well! I dont know if it's just me but i'd rather stay at home with a nice cup of tea and some Jerome K Jerome than pay to see the bassist (its never someone worthwhile is it?) pretend they can mix. If they were just going to play hot anthems that you'd expect at a club anyway then why would a promoter pay them to do what a faceless man in tight jeans does every night? Everyone knows that venues or promoters only get bands to dj because its a way of getting idiot scenesters in at a fraction of the cost. Waste of money.
To be fair, i can see the point if you are a tiny, tiny niche clubnight like New Noise or something, when booking someone from a suitably large band might be charming (if it is still cheap to get in), but for the amount of dj sets that go on at, say a twice yearly Adventures In The Beetroot Field night at Fabric or Turnmills or somewhere, then for gods sake, cut some of this mindless drivel off the bill and use the money to get British Sea Power or No Age or Dan Deacon or someone i want to watch. Please. Then maybe i could get home before six in the morning (getting home later than 4 am is a rant in its own right), what with the utter inexplicableness of early morning night bus timings in central london!

The Fratellis.

This one is obvious, but ever so important.
I hate The Fratellis more than almost anything else i can imagine. Or, as this is an update of sorts I hated The Fratellis more than anything i could imagine. The past tense brought into play here due to the fact that they shot themselves in the feet with a terrible sophomore release to sit snugly with their appalling first album. Clearly, the handsome record buying public of Great Britain realised that 'hey, maybe it's not such a great idea to listen to monotonous rowdy swill which brings to mind drunk builders shouting profanities at football matches'.
The mind completely boggles at how such a band of miscreant, slovenly, hideously faced perpetrators of Butlins-core pigswill ever retained even a semblance of popularity. Until of course you realise that the kind of people who bought their records, for that short summer but three years ago, were also those that regularly attend V Festival and wear bucket hats while doing so. Which is a rant of its own anyway. The singer resembles/resembled (I have no proof to show that he is still alive) an elderly alcoholic who sits at the back of Weatherspoon's pubs, the bassist is highly ginger and resembles Chris Moyles far to much to avoid attention, and the drummer is called 'Mince'. And wore a bucket hat. Not great is it? Seeing them lead a bunch of reprobates in infant-complex oik chants on T4 is not what i pay my license fee for). Obviously, behaviour like that bore parrallels with other dorkus malorkuses like the Pidgeon Detectives and The Enemy still doing similar things (both of which are still clasping onto their careers, equally as incomprehensibly). But none of these are quite, with the exception of Tom from The Enemy, as wince inducingly pot ugly. Honestly, if they were on the radio i'd still find them hideous.
And yes, their songs are godawful. 'Chelsea Dagger', as a friend put it, 'sounds like it was written just to be on Match Of The Day'. As much as one may like the sport, football songs are a crime unto themselves, especially those either explicitly or seemingly written to serve the purpose of being equated with it. I recall that their album, which i listened to, pained, once and no more, had a song to which the lyrics included a line referring to 'city boys and cuntry girls' or very similar. Not only, are you old, ugly and tone deaf, you're also incredibly vulgar! Which is something you're too old for. Preposterous.

Hot Rant: an introduction

Ahoy there!
Hot Rant is a blog cum periodical journal (hopefully) set up by Fred and Tom in order to expose and deride things we hate. Not things that everyone despises, like that program Loose Women (eurgh) or racists (likewise), but things that especially make just us, as the individual, want to shank the bastard perpetrators of what ever cultural grievance one may be suffering. It is pretty much an open forum, so if anyone wants to contribute, email an article (length doesnt matter, as long as there's some level of detail to it) to hotrant@gmail.com, and itll go up. Hooray Hooray Hooray
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