The Value of Nothing

Some people are hard work and do you know why? They only speak in money. They cannot speak in life or people or relationships or fun in any other medium than money.

With me? No… Let me explain, and I bet you all know at least one person like I’m talking about, (they are usually small businessmen or sons of small businessmen who only know daddies wing and live under it until he hands them a company he can sink into the ground with the obvious incompetence that a 2:2 in Geography can offer.)

They cannot talk about LIFE because they have no understanding of it. Sure they can talk about the walk they took up a hill but not from a point of view of “I’M ALIVE!” It’s usually from the point of view of, “IT’S COST ME £25 IN PETROL TO GET HERE AND £8 IN SANDWICHES AT THE SUMMIT SHOP. So soulful, you’ll fucking agree.

They cannot talk about PEOPLE because they hate everyone, you, me, their friends, families, loved ones. They are selfish. But not normal selfish like we are when we’re tucking into a plate of cake, they are selfish because they are angry at there dad for spending their “inheritance” on a holiday to New Orleans or Florida. Yes folks I’ve recently learned this new and depraved level of the spoiled, selfish, twattish person that some people exude. I heard a son of small business owner (a guy who’s worked hard for what he has only for his son to say…) “Dad, can you die and stop spending the millions you’ve earned so I can have millions too?” Sickening, inhuman, twisted, Satanic. But not unexpected or shocking.

They cannot talk about RELATIONSHIPS because every relationship they have is built around lies and deceit and gain. Sure they love people but not for themselves, there value to them is the cash they are holding or leaving them. It’s true! Parents and kids and sisters and brothers, mothers and fathers are just commodities to these people. I feel sick even thinking about them.

They cannot talk about FUN, because they’ve never had any, ever. Everything has a cost or a price, everyone is a prick or at least lesser than they are…

Yes I’m talking about small businessmen. They might have money but they don’t know how to save it or spend it or begin to enjoy it. They throw it around haphazardly and look to people with none to give them credibility with smiles and applause and sycophantic gush.

Good luck to them, they’re rich, but they are certainly not happy. They know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

I know when I think of family or friends I think of people, when I think of lost loved ones I miss them and I sometimes cry, no shame in that, I loved them.

But small businessmen… they are just the worst example of humans on the planet. They know the price of everything and the value of nothing. Nothing.

Mick McCarthy – Thanks For The Memories.

I have to be honest and say that in the days before we lost so heavily to West Brom and then sacked Mick I had started to turn on him and moan that we were “Stuck With Mick” it appears I was wrong, we aren’t stuck with him any more and I now feel sad that he’s gone. The club I love and support felt like it had started to go into meltdown after Steve Morgan in his infinite Scouse wisdom had gone into the dressing room after the Liverpool game and started ranting at players in front of Mick, thus undermining him. I think the win at QPR is incidental as they had ten men and let’s face it, are very, very poor at the moment. Things weren’t right at Camp Molineux, maybe something more juicy and meaty had happened behind closed doors that we know nowt about.

But let’s ask ourselves, as Wolves fans, ‘why are we angry about being bottom three?’ Is it because the Premiership position we feel we so richly deserve was being taken from us by a man who’s abilities had turned a championship club with no players or direction or hope into a Premier league team who’ve managed to struggle but compete in said Premiership for two full seasons? Cus that’s what’s happened! We’ve sacked the architect of our success.

‘Success?’ Yes success. Mick McCarthy saved the club at least three more years of playing Championship football and gave us some great memories which I shall get on to shortly. In his first season (06-07) he managed to make a team made of begged, stolen and borrowed players along with some youth team members and the 14 or so pro’s we had left reach the play offs. We finished fifth with 76 pts in a league where we had previously (with full squads of players) struggled to reach a top 6 finish. He was truly Mick the fucking Merlin! I still don’t know how he did it and I’m pretty sure that Derren Brown and that guy who lived in a box for ten weeks or what ever don’t know the secret to that trick either. Of course we all know we missed out on the play offs to Watford the year after on goal difference but hey! 5^th, 7^th. Not bad for a manager with a transfer budget as big as your average kids lunch money!

And now for the great memories.

A lot of the footballing memories we have are single games, and this blog will be no different, but the 2008-09 season is a year long, season long memory that we all cherish. It was like the olden days (which for me where the 1987-1989 years when we won two league titles and the Sherpa Van trophy) and we had Sylvain E-scores loads on fire. It truly was party time for all footie fans in Wolverhampton and Mick will never know the joy he gave the city. It was truly, fucking, magnificent.

Our first top flight season will live in the memory of us all as our best league finish for a few decades. Fifteenth might be terrible for many people but for us it was our first top flight survival since the very early 80’s and we notched a nice double over Tottenham Hotspur too (and we aint seen the like of it since!)

The second season will become the season of legend, mostly because we are now on the edge of a very steep cliff and about to fall off it and we need something to hold on to. But it was again another fine season of struggling and heartbreak but some ‘god damn it’ great results. Taking points off the teams around you in a relegation battle is a must, but taking them off the top teams is unlikely, we managed to turn this philosophy on its head and we lost to shite teams but ate up so called great teams for lunch. Invincible Man Utd came to Wolves and they lost for the first time that season. We even gave them a goal head start. We beat Man City earlier in the season too 2-1 and also grabbed great results against Chelsea at home (1-0) Liverpool away (1-0) Villa away (1-0) and dunked Albion at home (3-1). But most importantly we stayed up and these results went a long way to us achieving that. (18 of our 40 pts came in these 6 games alone.) This season also gave us our first full England international since Steve Bull in 1990. Matty Jarvis came on as a replacement for Jack Wilshere with 23 minutes left to go against Ghana at Wembley in March 2011. It’s nice to see your own playing for your country and I know every Wolves fan enjoyed it.

And so I’m now talking about this season, with 13 games left to play I know we’ll talk about it for one reason and one reason alone and that is the sacking of Mick. The man who made all of the other stuff I just talked about happen. Will we stay up or won’t we? At this stage we just don’t know, but I’m hopeful… the groundwork has been done, by Mick McCarthy. We’re in a troublesome but not impossible situation; let’s not forget that this season we have managed to take points away from home against Arsenal and Spurs, teams who we’d expect to lose against. Mick left us those two points right there. If we stay up by the odd one or two points we can raise a glass to Mick and say, thanks for those.

Jez Moxey said in his statement today after he had sacked Mick, “The thought process is when you look back over the last 22 matches, where we’ve only picked up 14 points, we honestly looked ourselves in the mirror and thought that unless we made a change there was a sense of inevitably about our plight.” OK, that’s 0.64 points per game. Make sure we average more than that per game for the rest of the season Jez cus if we don’t questions will be asked of you and Steve Morgan too. Relegation is a possibility but not a certainty… right now. We could fly upwards or downwards quickly after your decision to sack Mick. You’ve rolled the dice Jez.

But what is a certainty is Mick McCarthy’s legend status at Molineux whatever has happened today. Build on his foundations and build well, or he’ll be the guy who gave us those years of football no one can replicate. It’s up to the club now, the players the board and whoever we take on in Mick’s place.

As a fan I know managers come and go, as do boards and owners, but we’re the guys who are around forever. You can’t sack us the fans just because you don’t like what we are doing or saying. We’re here to stay. We moan and whinge, we celebrate and shout and sing, we’re always doing something to keep you on your toes. Jez and Steve I hope you know where you are steering the Good Ship Molineux.

UP THE WOLVES and thanks Mick, thanks for the memories. Good luck to you in what ever you do next. You were a great manager and a great character and you always seemed like a bloody good bloke. As a Wolves fan I wish you all the best and plenty of success in whatever you choose to do next. Take it easy dude.

Peace!

A win at last, now bring on the Albion.

To see Wolves come back from behind to get the spoils on Saturday against QPR was superb, not just because we were losing and we came back, but after the week the club had had prior to it following the 3-0 home defeat to Liverpool and then the much publicised Steve Morgan rant at the players in front of McCarthy in the dressing room.

The win has taken us back out of the relegation zone and hopefully we won’t have to drop back in there any time soon (at least this season anyway). It’s a win that should offer a lot of confidence to the players and the fans. I know it doesn’t solve the issues that fans are feeling at the moment but to see the players show some resolve and to see Doyle finally notch a goal this season will surely help everyone (players and fans) start to realise that we are good enough to stay up and Mick is still the man to do that job (without any input from Morgan, thanks very much!)

We’ve certainly shown a few flashes of brilliance this season with points away at Arsenal and Spurs when no one thought we had a chance in hell of taking anything. We saw a brilliant display from the team in the first half against Villa to come back from 1-0 down to being 2-1 up at half time (the second half we now need to conveniently forget) and the same against Liverpool, despite looking a little jittery on occasions the first half against Liverpool was a decent performance and we went in at half time 0-0 with at least some hope of taking something from the game. Let’s not forget that Wolves have now taken more points after coming from behind than any other team in this seasons Premiership, a stat that proves the players never give up, and a stat Mick needs to reiterate to them.

So far this campaign Wolves have played vital home games that should have been winnable against QPR, Swansea, Stoke and Aston Villa and they’ve lost, drawn, lost and lost respectively, we should have won them all. That’s 11 points dropped lads. This coming weekend we take on the Albion and we can start to put that dismal home record right… that and we owe them! We owe them for there win at the Hawthorns earlier this season and despite all the doom and gloom around the Wolves at the moment there is not a lot between us and the Albion at the moment.

Look at Albion’s last five games (in all competitions): They lost at home to Swansea, drew away at Fulham, lost at home to Norwich in the cup, won away at Stoke and lost again at home to Norwich this time in the league. In there last 7 Premiership games they have picked up 1 win and only five points.

Now look at the Wolves last five games (in all competitions): We beat QPR away, lost at home to Liverpool and Aston Villa, lost to Blues in the FA Cup at home in a replay and then gained an awesome point away at Spurs having lead during the match. In our last 7 Premiership games we’ve picked up 1 win and six points.

Add to this the fact that it’s a derby day and we’re at home I feel we’ll give them a great game and come out on top. I know the fans have been on the managers and the players backs for a while now, but this is different, it’s Albion at Molineux. The entire home crowd will be behind the Wolves and they’ll be the 12^th man that roars you all to victory. I really do fancy us to win by two or three clear goals, and a clean sheet would be nice too!

Come on Wolves, give Mick a birthday treat (Feb 7^th he’s 53) and stuff the Baggies, do it for him, do it for us, but most of all do it for 3 more lovely points on the board!

COME ON WOLVES!

Penalty, sending off, carried off, Aston villa’s snatch and grab. (Wolves 2-3 Aston Villa)

Today against Aston Villa we have seen the best and worst of Wolves. The first half and the second half were contrasts like chalk and cheese, the first half was superb, the second was like hell on Earth.

Darren Bents cheating to gain a penalty and then conversion of it to put the Vile 1-0 up was against the run of play early doors. Up until then it was relatively balanced with neither side looking like breaking the deadlock. Our boys came back strong and a lovely bit of individual skill by Frimpong released Kightly who cut back inside to level the score at 1-1, it was a superb goal and gave Molineux and the team a massive lift, Wolves had the edge then, it felt like we were going to go on and score 4 or 5.

Then an odd incident happened. A corner was given to Wolves (because they were attacking again and again and again and getting corner after corner after corner) and Michael Kightly was physically blocked from taking it by the linesman, something I have never seen before, usually they let you play on and the ref blows to take it again if he wasn’t ready. But in ironic style when Kightly was allowed to take the corner he floated it on to the head of Johnsson who knocked it down for Edwards to tap it over the line with his Swede, 2-1. We raped the Villa defence time and time again for the next 10 or 15 minutes until half time but never added to that, which cost us dear. At half time Skybet had Villa at 8-1 to win, did anyone stick a monkey on that?

As the second half was about to start we heard that Agbonlahor had been replaced with Warnock and we cheered, what a shit decision by McLeish. We were pissing ourselves laughing. The second half was dire stuff. We looked like we had already won, no effort, no passion, no desire from pretty well everyone on the park. Keano buried the equaliser early on in the second half after a terrible clearance by Matt Jarvis. Matt! Knock it out for a throw in and get back and defend it, for fuck sake! It’s like you don’t want to play for England ever again. You’re good enough man sort it out! But then that can be said to all of our players based on the second half performance, I’d hate to pick on Jarvis, he wasn’t so bad over the 90 minutes.

Frimpong was carried off after getting kicked in the face by Petrov although early indications suggest that Petrov’s leg might have fallen off with the shock of hitting the titanium cheekbone of Frimpong (he’s ‘badder assier’ than Chuck fucking Norris). That was it our midfield engine was stuttering, Milijas is no Frimpong but at least we still had Milijas and Henry trying to run the show in midfield at least for a while. The game then turned into a hit and hope hoof fest right up until Henry decided to stamp on Albrighton like he was breaking a glass at a Jewish wedding. Straight red. The sad thing is a 3 game ban means he won’t be eligible to play away at QPR early in February so we will have to miss watching Henry stamp on the face of Joey ‘The Cunt’ Barton.

Now it looked like a draw was on the cards until Keano popped up again with a roaster of a winner for the Vile. What you gonna do? It was a bit of a shame to hear Robbie Keane getting booed when he was subbed at the end, very poor form Wolves fans. 8 minutes of stoppage time for the Frimpong injury and stretcher off wasn’t enough for Wolves as they played the ball backwards and sideways with no haste or composure.

The first half is what we need more of Wolves, watch it Monday morning with a cuppa tea and ask yourselves, what happened? Cus every Wolves fan is now asking that very question – wtf happened?

Peace!

I really, really, really want a…. disabled parking permit.

You know what I want, a wheelchair. I don’t need one and I hope I never need one and I don’t want to offend anyone who has to use one but I want one. Why? Why not! I mean it’s OK now to pretend to be something you’re not. Physical disadvantages are cool!

I’m out of order of course, but I’m referring to this odd teenage thing of wearing glasses that you don’t need. It’s offensive. I wear glasses and I wish I didn’t have too and I’m too skint and scared to get my eyeballs lasered so I can get rid of these glasses.

Why pretend to need glasses? If you’re a teenager and you’re not happy with your 20-20 vision go up Bilston market and buy some of that knock-off, moonshine Jack Daniels and Glens vodka and go and drink it over Hickman park. Pretty soon your vision will cloud and blur and you can get those lovely glasses you seek so dearly to make you look like…. Austin Powers. Cus not only do these teenage idiots choose to pretend to have a physical disadvantage but they choose to do it in the most ugly, thick rimmed, coke bottle way possible.

Why?

I don’t have a walking stick, cus I don’t need one. I don’t have a white cane, cus I don’t need one and I don’t have a wheelchair, cus I don’t need one… and I hope I never need any of those things.

But mostly I hope I never CHOOSE to wear a nappy or inject myself with water twice a day cus I want people to think I’m diabetic. That would be crazy, wearing glasses you don’t need is fucking crazy.

I’m sure every generation that has reached their mid thirties has looked back on the teenagers behind them and thought, “Fucking hell, these pricks will be looking after me in my old age” but I really feel that now we have the first generation of genuinely 100% selfish, self interested, arrogant, lazy & stupid bastards that just might let us all suffer and die (probably for their sport as they race around in rocket propelled stair lifts) in our old age.

I hope I die young enough to not need care or disability aids but old enough to say I’ve had a life. Cus I don’t want some Alan Carr glasses wearing mother-fucker- of-a-carer looking at me through plain glass telling me I need to hand over the cash or they’ll tie me to the toilet again by my OAP dungaree straps.

Teenagers are fucking nuts!

Peace (and good health!)

Nothing doing.

Ever run out of inspiration? I have. Inspiration seems to hit me in waves, sometimes I can’t write enough or blog enough and other times I’m empty of inspiration and wonder if I’ll ever be able to write anything ever again.

At the moment I’m sat doing the latter, sitting here in front of my keyboard wondering if it’ll ever come back. It will I’m sure. I’m sat thinking about all of the promises I made to myself to complete my NaNoWriMo from November. Yeah I hit the 50k word limit for the month but the story was never finished. It’s oh so close to being finished but I just cannot bring myself to cross the line with it. I’m not at work today I could easily finish it in an hour or so but instead I’m sat here looking at a blank screen, eyes weary and head pounding from the 5am finish to last nights proceedings, yes I sat up late to watch the Golden Globes.

I dunno if it was worth it. Ricky Gervais, although funny as always, had clearly toned things down a little and of course as everyone knew what to expect the element of surprise was lost. It was a nice awards show, it’s good to see so much British talent actually presenting and receiving awards. We might not manufacture much and export a lot these days but we certainly have some great stars of stage and screen that do us proud around the world.

I’d had a few ideas to moan about, internet addiction (which I’m sure I have in a small way), the weekends’ football and my plans for the garden but I just cannot be arsed.

I think I need to go and get my head down for an hour and have another go later.

Peace.

Save Panda’s – start eating them!

Wanna save the panda from extinction? Easy. Start eating them. Start killing them so we can eat their sweet, sweet flesh. It’s a delicious alternative to extinction and do you wanna know why? I’m sure you do.

Animals we eat don’t become extinct because we don’t let them. According to wikipedia the global population of cattle is 1.3 billion. That on a planet where most of the 7 billion humans have no cattle cus they barely have food or water and how’s this for a stat – the population of Brazil is around 190m people and they have 187m cows, would it be that high if we didn’t eat them? I doubt it; if humans in Brazil were all vegetarian they’d shoot the cows so they could keep the hay and grass for themselves, but silliness aside they wouldn’t have cows, they’d simply die out.

The key thing is this, if you eat meat you have to make sure you have animals to eat as well as enough to live and breed and you can’t have that if you don’t farm them intensively. Intensive farming actually creates life, lots of it! It doesn’t destroy it or make things extinct. The real issue that vegetarians and vegans have is to do with welfare and conditions that the animals are kept in whilst alive. I agree with them, we have to look after them and if we are going to create life to eat it, we should make sure they’re given the best possible life. We have to make sure that cows and sheep and chickens and pigs have the food, exercise, fresh air, room to move about and eat and skip around and reproduce comfortably. They are key issues, if an animal has all of that it’s fine in my opinion that they exist only for us to eat.

Also vegetarians have an issue with eating meat because a life form dies for us to be sustained. OK I get that, but the life they are talking about (in regards to a cow) wouldn’t exist without our need to eat it. The real issue is the welfare of the animal whilst it’s alive. That and the methods of putting it down. Killing an animal to eat it has to be quick and effective and cannot use chemicals or drugs (for obvious reasons) and cannot create stress as the adrenaline produced by the animal as it gets scared makes the meat taste terrible.

When animals are killed for human consumption, in many cases, it is done as quickly as possible. I know vegetarians and vegans like to argue that it’s stressful and cruel but is it any crueler than nature itself? Do you think a zebra or a wildebeest being chased down by a pack of leopards or lionesses isn’t stressful and painful and an awful way for a creature to die? Yes of course it is! And I know that vegetarians will argue that lions and zebras aren’t self aware beings that make choices like we do and that is a great position to argue from but we need to understand that a lion won’t nurture zebras, help them breed and become a successful, larger populous life form than they otherwise would be before quickly and efficiently killing it for lunch.

Ultimately people are omnivores. We like eating meat and we like eating vegetables and although a few have strong views on animal welfare they cannot change the fact that most of us love a good burger or sausage sandwich. Meat brings people together. In the summer I enjoy barbecues with family and friends because there is meat there. If someone invited me to there house because they had a few peppers roasting on an open fire and a buffet of lettuce and tomatoes, I’d stay at home and I think most meat eaters feel the same. Show us the meat!

So if we want to save the panda all we have to do is grab the charcoal and clean the barbecue and quickly and efficiently dispense of one.

Peace (and meat!)

Getting the 2012 ball rolling…

Oh how long it has been since I sat here in my study…. well my spare bedroom… and wrote anything for my dear old blog. Christmas and the New year allowed me ten days off work and also allowed me to get into that mode we all instantly get into when we know we aint gotta get up for work for a few days, you know – lazy-fat-fucker-where’s-the-cheese-and-beer-and-the-DVD-remote-control-I-aint-moving-off-this-sofa mode. Oh how sweet it was but I think the sofa has an arse cheek shaped dent permanently in the middle of it now and some damp patches that might be white wine but also might be drool. (Even my dog looked disgusted at those stains)!

Well out of my three new years resolutions I set myself (less drinking beer more tea, no smoking, no Facebook) I’ve managed to break one completely and make a mockery of another. The tea is flowing but so is the beer and my account deactivation of Facebook lasted 6 days and then I realised how much I loved to snoop around the site like I was a MI5 agent in St Petersburg in 1981. But I still aint had a smoke, that is a resolution I can hold on to for ages but I know I’ll break it eventually cus I always do. In fact just talking about smoking is making me want to spark up a Hamlet right now. But thankfully I aint got any in the house and cus I’m half drunk too I cant drive to a shop and get any (yes I’m one of those lazy fuckers who drives to fetch beer and cigars before getting a nice healthy Chinese delivered).

Nothing has really crossed my mind or annoyed me or wound me up or inspired me enough to write anything and I dunno why. I think its cus I’m slowly going through a period of not upsetting people. I know I’ve wound a few people up and upset a few people with my activity on Facebook and I don’t want to upset people. That’s why I now limit Facebook to really boring and obvious updates… yes, I’m plagiarising everyone I know on Facebook for my own Facebook ends. It’ll make me look dull and self obsessed and uninterested in anything that is slightly high brow but at least I won’t upset anyone.

So I’m left with just twitter and youtube and wordpress to spout bile and anger and bitterness and observations made by me and my badly focusing eyes and slightly sludge like grey matter, so if the content on here gets ranty and shouty and a bit weird don’t blame me, blame my loved ones who no longer want to see ranty, shouty, weird stuff in their Facebook news feed from me.

I have nothing else to say at the moment. I’m off now to have myself a final drink, get ready for bed and contemplate my existence, the existence of the universe and why vegetarians want us to stop eating cows, because if we all did they as a species would die out quicker than a Fundamentalist Muslim Lemming on a plane full of semtex with a narcoleptic pilot.

Goodbye and peace!

Quit Facebook… get a teapot.

New Year is finally here. Thank fuck for that. I always find the build up to Christmas stressful and then end up eating and drinking far too much, to the point that it’s no longer any fun between Xmas and New Years Eve but a kinda ‘Man Vs Food’ marathon that I’m starring in. I can finally draw a line underneath all of that stuff and get on with life. Yes I am a grinch, it has to be said. I can’t wait to take the tree and the decorations down and give the house a good old vacuuming and cleaning, don’t you find the place never seems that clean with all of the crap of Crimbo everywhere? Maybe it’s just me?

Well with a New Year comes resolutions and a lot of people think they are stupid, and I can understand that. If I had wanted to give up smoking and drinking I would have simply done it rather than hang on for extra weeks and months until the New Year to try. But I make them anyway. Usually I go for really silly ones like write a book and make millions of pounds but this year I’m keeping them simple.

The first thing I’m doing is taking down my Facebook page for good, why? You might well ask. Well I find that my main enjoyment of the internet is ranting and waffling on about things that please or annoy me, and I find when I don’t have enough bile to sit and write about on wordpress I leave little sore-mangina opinionated updates on Facebook and would you believe it, it turns out that many of my family and friends and acquaintances aren’t interested and even take offence? I can understand that! They have to see these posts in their feeds and as it’s a friendly place mostly, a place for friends and family, it’s odd to keep seeing mentally ill rants and downright crazy talk from me. So it’s gotta go. Which is a shame. I’ll lose touch with a few people I have only recently re-made contact with on the site, I’ll also lose touch with several writers and creative souls I’ve also had the pleasure to engage with in recent months, and of course I’ll lose out on getting tagged in a photo where I appear way back in the distance and you can barely make out a figure (Oh I shall miss that!) But if it repairs relationships with people who I know and who openly shun me for having strong opinions then it’ll be worth it. At the end of the day if they seek out my stand alone wordpress blog which is written under an assumed name and then read it and then get offended that is up to them. I’m no longer infecting their Facebook feeds and their Facebook experience. They can go back to updating the world hourly about what they are eating/drinking/what road they are stuck in traffic on. Riveting!

Also I’m doing the perennial resolutions this New Year. Stopping smoking, which should be relatively easy as I’ve quit hundreds of times before, and I’m raining in my alcohol intake, which will also be made easier by the best Xmas present I had this year, no not Modern Warfare 3, but a teapot! Yes the humble teapot makes it easy for me to go back two or three times and fill up my cup when I’m thirsty. Usually I’d make it with a bag in a cup but I find one cup never quenches the thirst, and as I’m lazy and would rather just lean into the fridge and grab a can, this tea pot solution will cure my evening thirst needs. Gotta get back into the old routine:- Fridays and Saturdays are for alcohol, every other evening is a school night!

Wish me luck in my new Facebook and Tobacco free, tea filled 2012.

Happy New Year everyone.

And Peace!

It’s Christmas! Time to reminisce about 2011.

What a year it has been. Especially for dictatorships! After the Tunisian government fell the Middle East came alive with freedom and social networks got the credit, is there nothing Facebook cannot do? After liberating Egypt from Hosni Mubarak, twitter and iPhone then liberated Libya and made sure that Col. Gaddafi was dead. Wow, the power of the internet!

Although two thorns in the West’s side have also gone the way of the dodo with no help from Tumblr or Friendster. Osama bin Laden had his bedroom redecorated a lovely shade of grey and red by some Navy Seals and North Korean short arse Kim Jong-il died suddenly only this morning, perhaps the international news from 2011 managed to leak into the Stalinist state about all of these totalitarian, terrorist dictators falling worldwide and he shat himself to death, I hope so! I’d hate to be Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran right now he must be wetting himself with fear, as for President Assad of Syria… I’d give him six months tops before we see his corpse being dragged behind a Toyota pickup.

So most major global news stories this year have been about the fall of tyrants and more recently the full withdrawal of American troops from Iraq. All pretty amazing and positive for the future (hopefully). I guess it’s only a matter of time before the Israelis and Palestinians put aside their difference… no actually that is a step to far isn’t it?

In May my beloved Wolverhampton Wanderers managed to stay up on the last day by giving half of the fans a massive heart attack caused by the in-the-bottom-three, out-of-the-bottom-three movements on the last day with Wigan and Wolves both escaping dramatically and Birmingham City sinking like a stone with West Ham and Blackpool. Sadly this season is Groundhog Day and Wolves haven’t grown or moved forward. With Christmas and New Year approaching we are fourth bottom and losing games we should win, like Stoke at home last Saturday. Sort it out Mick!

2011 was ‘The year of the Blog’ for me. I’ve really enjoyed writing regularly and posting blogs here on WordPress. One of the most exciting things to occur from my blog was a mention by Ricky Gervais on his blog about my answers to his questions about art. His mention drove a lot of extra traffic to me (in the short term) and improved my posts positions in Google searches and gained me several new regular followers. Also this I’ve year made a few good blog buddies such as Vicki Flavell and Docdenbow. Go check them out.

I started my blog in December 2010, just after I had gotten the writing bug following my failure that year to complete the 50,000 word challenge that is NaNoWriMo. Well this November just gone I had another go at NaNoWriMo and this time managed to secure the 50,000 words in 29 days. Not bad going even if I do say so myself. It was a great challenge and it taught me a lot about the craft of writing. Well it mostly taught me that you have to sit down and write rather than procrastinate all of the time about it. Simple lesson on the face of it, but so many people who want to write neglect to write regularly. Take my advice wannabe writers… you gotta keep hacking away every week, every day, whenever you can!

I haven’t been very active on Youtube this year, apart from my NaNoWriMo video diaries on my second channel, but I’ve continued to follow and support most of the people I’m subscribed to. This year I’ve enjoyed such viral videos as Ted Williams, the homeless guy with the voice of a DJ, the awful (but she is just a kid) Friday music video by Rebecca Black (who now has a proper music career and friends like Katy Perry so boo to you haters) and the more recent Fenton the dog chases deer and gets chased by his owner screaming “Fenton, Jesus Christ!” It’s funny to watch old men get stressed, but I don’t know why.

Also, in November the Youtube community lost a great guy. Musician, writer, gay rights campaigner and all round nice guy William Cardno passed away after taking his own life. What a tragic waste he was a promising talent. His passing raises the issue of mental health and depression and highlights how serious the effects are when things are unspoken, untreated or ignored. William was a great Youtuber, a funny, interesting, articulate and talented bloke who’ll be sadly missed.

Well as it’s almost Christmas thoughts turn towards festivities. Food, alcohol, friends, family, presents, hours sat stuffing ourselves with Quality Street and Mince pies, watching god awful rubbish on TV or repeats of Willy Wonka that we’ve already seen a hundred times before. Yes I’m introducing this years Youtube Christmas Collab video by Gibbo1988, and here it is.

Thank you all for supporting me and reading my blog throughout 2011. It is very much appreciated. Can I wish you and your families and friends a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. I’ll see you all again in 2012 but for now this is Bilstonjay signing off.

Take care each!