LAZY GIT

This week blogs have slowed down a bit for a while - fence panels are on their way, so it's a mad fucking scramble to do shit before we finally board ourselves in for good, I am also on with some drawing, so don't take offence or nothing but fuck off I'm busy. come back next Tuesday. (I might even try to flog these ones...) I haven't managed to capture the image of the pretzel for critical appraisal yet, nor have I even found out any info on what the fuck it might be, so more on that possibly on Tues...

laters,

I-B

Patriotism

BEERS

Yesterday was St. George's Day - The day to bask in the despicable glory that was our "great" colonial past, kid yourselves that you are English and therefore worthwhile whilst masturbating vigorously to the sound of morris dancing (Paedophiles dressing up as cunts with bells on their ankles dancing around banging sticks together), before shaving your head and beating up non-Aryans. Or not. But lo! Is this not the sort of thinking that has left us 1 party day short a year? Why should we let morris dancers destroy our national credibility? And why should the Irish get all the fun? Do you not want a piece of that action?

DELUSIONAL

I want to reclaim St. George's Day as a celebration for reasonable people who don't dress up as twats and don't go round levering ethnic minorities. Why not, we  do still have a fuck of a lot to be proud of as a nation (interesting ways to eat offal, inventing cricket and then being generous enough to let everyone else win) yet not many of us even remember what day St. Georges day is on. I like the fact that St. George is clearly a figment of somebody's imagination, a really cool myth that is obviously a myth. He sets us apart from all the other countries with their boring martyrs who died for their beliefs. Celebrating delusional cunts just seems silly to me. So have a bevvy on St. George this weekend, just celebrate a non dubious bit of Englishness whilst you do. 

HALF ARSED

All of this ties in nicely with the latest bit of shite public art to get the Bane treatment... Yes, it's that (world famous) bit of "Peace Fencing" in West Belfast that is being used to advertise loyalist pride in their identity, with pictures of Lord Carson, The original UVF and plenty of Orangemen (surely just a continuation of the morris dancer theme).

NASTY

Basically, now that the Northern Irish seem to be managing to keep hatred down to the bare maximum, to celebrate we have some murals that are stuck to a really nasty looking peace wall, designed to try to refocus Unionist pride in a non violent way. Despite these efforts, I think the best thing on that wall is graffiti: "Fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity". But at least it brightens the wall up, if not promoting a bit of unity. I'm still not sure why the Irish hate each other, when it's all the fault of Henry II... 

Anyway... My version would look like this.

Tunes coming later...

I-B

SACK JENNIE BOND

...from the Great British Menu. Get Clarkson in.

It's Monday - TIME TO GET BACK TO WORK

...Because the wife looks to be entering the fray with her slave driver hat on determined to sort these last few fence posts out. This has been a lot harder than you would have thought, mainly because of the proximity to the great big fuck off sycamore tree with roots thicker than my head. The Mrs looked up how to destroy roots whilst saving the tree last night, claiming it was important and that we must create a clean cut, leave no messy damaged bits etc. Make sure that we don't damage more than a fifth of the root mass (btw whoever's website she was looking at - how can you tell? Its fucking buried). Anyway true to form, the Bane has been attacking the fucker with a large spike, getting the large spike firmly lodged in the tree root, then having to spend an entire day trying to get the spike out again.

DOGS

At one stage we had me, the wife, several passers by and their dogs gathered on the pavement gesticulating wildly and discussing the best way to proceed, whilst my (extremely resourceful but knackered out after a rugby tour) neighbour got all of his power tools out and just got on with it. Eventually, after many hours of precision tree surgery (not) the spike came out. We are left with a total mess of a root, an unhappy wife and possibly a dead tree (not really tree huggers - I will fix it, just don't lynch me).

SHITTEST

Being outside a lot over the school holidays has meant having to endure endless groups of preteen kids walking past. This would not be a problem except for the fact that without fail they are always playing the shittest of shit music (also not a problem - I disagree with their music, but that is entirely up to them...) from their mobile phones.

DETENTION CENTRE

An entire generation of kids growing up decimating music and totally missing out on the point by not listening to half of the track??? I think we need to round up these oiks and place them in a specialist detention centre where their heads are tied to bass bins blaring out some intense dubstep until they get the message. Ask any kid about bass these days and they think you are some sad old grandad. It really does make me feel depressed about the future of the world.

Laters,

The I-B

Happy Weekend, Web Tourists

The Ashes poll has been a raging success, and has given me an insight into how many millions of people come and visit the blog every week. So, in light of my findings (and without further ado) I'd like to thank you both for your time and patience.

The weekend so far has been an orgy of exciting happenings... mostly fence post related, I managed to crack a rib, which is the shittest injury ever because (basically my wife thinks I'm a fucking loser) ie essentially I'm fine but moaning a lot and can still do most jobs. Yesterday I made the mistake of staying at home to dig holes whilst the wife and kids went off to Dalby Forest to climb stuff and get dizzy on the spinny thing. The spinny thing is possibly the greatest feat of engineering ever, by the way, it spins you round really quickly until you fall off, break your skull and throw up simultaneously. And this is fine, because we live in Yorkshire, where folk are hard and Health & Safety laws don't apply...

 

WANKER

The Great British Menu competition is hotting up good and proper now. The Geordie boys this week were possibly the best yet, with Ian (a gargantuan pie eating meat head with a highly unexpected and immense culinary knowledge) narrowly losing out to Kenny, the short ginger one. We loved them both. Meanwhile the mentorship of "it's not Sat Baines it's the gay one" has been replaced by Marcus Wareing, "it's the wanker who knows his shit". In fairness to Marcus, he was entering into the spirit of things and he is obviously in a different gastronomic league.

TWAT

Meanwhile the media are still going crazy over police brutality and shit like that. I am always up for giving the police a hard time if they step out of line, and I don't think that stuff like this should go unchecked but bloody hell, if you can't twat a hippy from time to time then what is the point in living, frankly. You really do need to make sure that it is actually a hippy you are twatting though. It sickens me to the core when the cops kill an innocent and the book should be thrown in those situations. 

PRETZEL

Next week you all can look forward to a frenzy of content. I will be sharing the Bane guide to erecting fence posts, as well as a critical appraisal of the A170 pretzel. And any other stuff I can think of. Meanwhile, here are this weekend's tunes:

1. Sigma - All Blue

2. Spor - Silver Spaceman

3. Massive Attack - I against I

4. Logistics - Toy Town

5. Dead Prez - Hip Hop

6. Fleetwood Mac - The Chain (because it's still good)

Damn Protestors

FAULT

The latest video of a woman being slapped and beaten by the cops is bloody vexing. For starters, everybody knows about the police and what is likely to happen when you wind them up. It's a sad fact of life, but there will always be a certain percentage of wanker cops. Secondly, street protests are totally ineffective and nobody takes them seriously because of occasions like this where the people taking part are indoctrinated with someone else's bile and are just angry for the sake of it. There are far more effective, clever and useful ways to protest than gathering and shouting. Lets be fair, it's just annoying for everyone else, and means that if reasonable people want to protest in a reasonable manner, they can't because the law now has a preconceived idea that people are just looking to get them in trouble. 

If it wasn't for the protesters, the newspaper vendor wouldn't have been caught up in the midst of it, unbothered and would have just been able to walk home. What the police did seemed to be wholly unreasonable and quite frankly wrong and that is where you have to pin the blame, but the protesters also need to acknowledge their part in the death of an innocent man.  

DOCILE

As for the woman, whilst violence is never appropriate, and especially not from a copper in that situation, if you shout in a persons face there is a good chance that the person will retaliate in some way. She is very lucky to have managed to pick a total psycho to wind up and get sacked, which was what she was quite clearly looking to do, but people do have to take responsibility for their own actions and until we do that - ALL of us, especially the G20 weasels, then the world will continue on a downward trajectory.

WIDE

I think that people should keep as wide a berth of the police as possible, and anyone not doing that has to accept what might happen.

CHEERFUL

On a more cheery note, it has been brought to my attention that the Henry Moore Institute are going to run an exhibition of public art that never made it. I am looking forward to this...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2009/apr/14/public-art-serpentine-henry-moore-institute

have fun... and stay away from those rozzers...

the I-B

No. 1 - Whitby

Whitby - Tourist trap, pretty, steep, bloody cold classic Yorkshire seaside town. I am not saying that Whitby's public art is shite, but if the best they can do is a bit of falling down church and Capn. Cook then something needs to be done. Time to send in BANE.

TURN

What would turn the fortunes of this town? what is Whitby? Whitby looks to the sea, but also provides refuge from the very same. Never mind the moronic goth numpties and their Dracula fixations, for they have NO place in Bane's Whitby. No, what Whitby needs is...

PROTRUSION

...Is a Sea Prod. A Sea Prod would emphasize Whitby's relationship with the sea, embracing, caressing, sometimes just poking, keeping at arms length, often violent and sometimes loving. It would put Whitby squarely on the map with post-Gormleyist situational abstract conceptualists such as myself, and reinforce the hard core credibility of Whitby as a viable-and-not-shite  place to be. Here is a very quick concept sketch: 

I think this is a goer. I will send it in to the council and see what comes back. Meanwhile, time to dig more holes in my garden and try to explain what the fuck I am doing to elderly and incontinent passers by...

laters, 

The I-B

Grand Official Launch!!!

Momentous. Incredible. Here goes...

PUBLIC ART IS SHITE

How many pieces of public art do you see around? not many (unless you are in Central London, which is one big, fucked up bit of performance art created for the amusement of Northerners). Of those not many, how many are actually any good? 

Well?

Answer: In my humble opinion, fuck all. Maybe I am being harsh, for example I used to love the Angel of the North, but then I read an article sometime in March expressing Gormless Gormley's VERY fucking full of himself view in the Independent that most public art is shite except his which I take exception to because it was my idea first. So now I am not going to include his work in the acceptable list. HA! shot himself in the foot there, eh?

SO WHAT AM I GOING TO DO ABOUT IT?

Well I shall try to name and shame the worst offenders and then try to secure the contracts to replace them. Why not? It's got to be worth a try. I'm going to start local to me and then see where this takes me. Please let me know your favorite bits of shit public art, how they make you feel etc. and I will try to get as many on here as possible and as regularly as possible. Keep checking back to see how we are getting on...

REST OF MY BLOG

Of course it ain't a blog without some pointless and rather embarrassingly self-indulgant ramblings. So here are my last movements.

Celebrated Easter round at my parents house yesterday. Which was nice. On the way there we passed the usual mammoth bank holiday tailbacks of dirty Wezzers* (West Riding folk) trying to get to Scarborough via our totally inadequate road system. Why the fuck would anyone volunteer to spend 2 hours of Easter Sunday stranded on the A64 looking at some dilapidated farm machinery, a squashed rabbit and some discarded plastic bottles full of piss whilst getting smoked out by other peoples exhaust fumes? It just seems silly to me.

*P.S. Although originally from the West Riding, I am a believer in free immigration and don't think that my past should be allowed to haunt me. I am a full on North Yorkshire inbred bumpkin now, and proud.

MINDLESS

I have just discovered the worlds best game. Its about a cube that you have to do stuff to and it grows. there seems to be absolutely no logic to what is going on and it is highly addictive and extremely annoying. play it here: http://www.gamefudge.com/Grow-Cube

Its Friday no. 2: thats almost 2 weeks of blogging.

Happy good friday. A celebration of the mother of all shite days - so chin up people, it really can't be that bad. 

WEAK

A quality article in the Guardian today pointing the finger for the failings of our darling fuzz squarely at westminster, glad to see that my favorite politician takes a not insubstantial hit.

It seems to me that in between pissing skywards whilst lying flat and shooting themselves in the foot with a scud missile nobody has actually realised that the whole policing set up is never going to work for the simple reason that the majority of coppers are only ever going to be in it for the cash and the tit shaped helmet. And as for the IPCC. haa! how convenient that hardly any complaints about the po-lice end up going through the CPS. Its about as on the level as a fucking slope.

JENNIE BOND

Managed to get thoroughly addicted to the Great British Menu on iplayer. Late night food is always a winner, and some of the stuff that has been created has been fairly amazing. The one drawback to the entire program is the useless drivel that classes as commentary from Jennie Bond. For starters she can't even pronounce most of the things she is trying to say. 

Maybe I am being a bit harsh because some of the things she says are pure comedy genius, and she has also managed to create a bona fide legend out of the chef and central region mentor Sat Baines by building him up to be the ultimate chef and always calling him "Sat Baines with his Punjabi roots". Sat Baines was on last week, but boy do we miss him - whilst this weeks Scottish chefs are all lovely guys, we are just lacking the expert advice and mentorship of the Sat. Therefore me and the Mrs now refer to the show simply as "Sat Baines, even though it isn't Sat Baines anymore, it's the gay one".

"WE LOVE YOU SAT!"

Friday's Weekend Tunage

1. Logistics - "Monkey Claw"

2. Chase and Status - "Saxon"

3. Bent - "Always"

4. Buena Vista Social Club - "A Buena Vista"

5. The Centurions - "Bullwinkle pt 2"

Grand Official Launch Date Set!!

I have been doing a lot of thinking recently. Unfortunately not much about the world of blogging, but thinking none the less. I have managed to come up with a format for having a quick blog every now and then that hopefully will provoke some thought, maybe a bit of mirth even. 

As of EASTER MONDAY I will endeavor to provide THE definitive guide to life. I will post a blog on Mondays, Wednesdays and one weekend focused blog on either Friday or Saturday. I will try to provide something new that isn't just inane ramblings. I am going to start with a competition to find the most socially unacceptable flavour for a packet of crisps. My opening gambit is foie gras of Panda. Answers via the comment box please.

laters, 

The I-B

 

The Problem with Trees

Hello people. Or person. 

TREES

I have been in the garden all day erecting things (fence posts) and digging big old holes to stick my erections into. This was fine, until I encountered a tree, with all of its roots. I can dig through concrete, gravel, clay all with just a bit of brute force but when it comes to tree roots, the only thing you can do is bow down to the fuckers and go around. Everybody goes on about how we need to plant more trees and save the rain forest and shit like that, but if the planet was covered with trees then it would be impossible to build civilization or roller-coasters or even bus stations, so you couldn't be all green and use public transport or electric cars, you would have to fly everywhere. What is more, you couldn't land, so you would just be burning up fuel for the sake of it waiting for the catastrophic crash that ends your sorry existence.

Therefore I have concluded that trees are evil bastards, and they and humans are mutually exclusive and for the good of humanity and the planet I say we chop them all down. They don't make any difference to the CO2 situation anyway, its the plankton that sort that shit out.

CROOKED

Looked on the BBC news site just now, it has a headline about that con artist Jaqui Smith.

I hate Jaqui Smith like old people hate Thatcher. Despicable hypocritical blaggard of a sponging idealess pointless tool. No difference to any other politician then, I hear you cry. No, but her face particularly offends me.

see you all later.

It's Friday, yes it's Friday

Day Off

Thursdays are my day off, which is why I didn't write anything yesterday. Thursdays are the least creative day of the week because that is the day that the tranquility and productivity focused feng shui of my carefully organized "workstation" is cruelly smashed by a team of ape like dustmen shouting unnecessarily loudly to each other about some hideously trivial sporting events involving some largely irrelevant and highly unethical teams that play in red from the wrong side of the Pennines. Except that's probably a bit harsh, because they are only here for about 20 seconds, so basically what we are dealing with here is a properly lame excuse.

AGENDA BENDER

On the agenda today is getting my garden shed MOT'd (my garden shed is an old Nissan 4x4), digging holes for fence posts, going to the fun and fabulous and wholly excellent "Easter service" at my daughter's primary school and having to deal with my mother, who is being employed as a taxi service in the absence of a vehicle. Despite this however it's Friday, so there is hope of an outside chance that beer may be involved later on. I am still working on a structure for this blog and what sort of content to add so hopefully next week I will have some stuff to show yez, innit.

WAG-TASTIC

I see from the news today that Barack Obama and Gordon "Golden" Brown are swiftly turning into WAGs. Always in the papers for swanning about doing fuck all, experts at spending other peoples money, always hanging around with a bunch of talentless numpties and getting their norks out on page three. Well maybe not that last one.  Still, nice work if you can get it.

FRIDAY'S TOP 5 WEEKEND TUNES

I love being a bossy git, so every friday I am going to tell you what you should be listening to over the coming weekend, a top 5 mix of eclectic  stuff that you really should have. Check em out!

1. The Coasters- Down in Mexico

2. Mikey Dread- Saturday Night Style

3. Dawn Penn- You Don't Love Me

4. Leftfield- Storm 3000

5. Jackin Box- Party Hype

Outrage

Yesterday evening I left the house to procure fish and chips to feed my ravenous family, and set out armed with nothing more than a bank card. I needed to visit the hole in the wall to obtain enough cash to pay for the delicious and healthy treat, which should have been a straight forward and hassle free event, but what actually occurred chilled me to the core

Having selected the amount I wanted to withdraw, I was outraged to discover that on the screen in front of me was a new and rather upsetting message from the bank asking me if I wanted to know more about the savings accounts that this particular bank had to offer. Would I like them to send me information through the post? Yes or No. 

This made me angry, not just because a quick check of my balance would have shown the incompetent metal dent that I have an overdraft of extraordinary magnitude, but also because the No button refused to work, leaving me with no option but to sell my ass to the thing and take its crusty, cheese peppered and diseased package of hard spam in order to get money to feed my kids. 

I feel thoroughly violated and if this is a sign of thing to come, I might have to opt out of this hideous society where commercial opportunism has all but replaced culture, up sticks and set up a nudist commune where fish and chips are free of charge.