Hair today, hair tomor.. wait, I think I used that before

I’m at a point with my hair now that I haven’t been at for a fair few years now. It curls up at the bottom on the back, which is weird and annoying because sometimes it brushes against my neck and tickles me and… wait… no… I mean… umm… I was powerlifting houses while fighting Nazi bears the other day. Yes. Manly.

Anyway, as those who see me on a regular basis in real life might have heard me saying – repeatedly – my hair is too long. It’s not tenable. The sudden heat has made me realise this bouffant mop needs to be hacked down, lest it continue its growth, spiral out of control and take out Western civilisation as we know it.

But what to do? Yes folks, it’s that blog I’ve done two, maybe three whole times before: the Ian haircut blog.

Choice one would be the simplest and best for a quick fix, especially as I could probably do it to myself at home: the all-off. This would make me look like this:

Except not really. But I can have that thought in my head and that makes me happy. PROS: Cheap, easy. CONS: People think you’re about to immediately fight them.

Choice two would be a visit to some kind of ‘hair stylist’ or whatever they’re called, so they could take the blank canvas that is my thick, beautiful mane and sculpt it into something the beautiful people would deign acceptable to their ranks. PROS: I would be sexy and immediately find a rich wife. CONS: I don’t have a rich wife right now and my normal haircut price of £8 seems a bit steep, so paying more than that makes me want to laugh. Then vomit.

Choice three would be a traditional visit to a traditional barber for a traditional short back and sides with a traditional bit of forced yarning with the traditional haircuttist before paying a traditional low amount of money for your now traditional hair-look. PROS: traditional, affordable, no fear of everything going wrong. CONS: boring, too much pressure to yarn with traditional barber, feel a bit twatty going in there with hair this long in the first place as will have to put up with barbed comments (from barber) about having ‘girly’ hair.

Choice four would be to leave it alone and let it grow even longer, to the point I have silly long hair and look like 2005 all over again. We call it the 2005 Standard. PROS: I have better hair than most girls. CONS: I look like an absolute twat and I want my hair lopped off.

Choice five would be to kill myself. PROS: eliminates all problems with hair growth/cutting. CONS: Mum might be a bit sad for a week or two.

Rogue choice six is to get someone to cut it for me, which I used to do quite a lot back in the day. This resulted in a free haircut with, let us say ‘mixed’ results. I would err on the side of ‘mainly amateurish’ rather than going for a full-on ‘wanky shitballs’, but that’s because I’m kind. Needless to say, it never looked amazing afterwards. PROS: free, makes Mike’s dad think we’re gay. CONS: usually ends up looking… off, not everyone is willing to drop everything to come around and cut my hair for me you selfish bastards.

The choice will be a difficult one.

Beer me; I offer services

It seems as of yesterday afternoon it officially became summer around here.

See, Bournemouth has this crafty way of making you forget it’s actually really nice in the middle of the year. It’s often sunny – a lot more so than in my previous homes of the north, annoyingly – and parts that aren’t Boscombe or most of the centre are actually (whisper it) nice.

But that matters for little, because it’s sunny. And what does sunny mean? It means I want to drink delicious chilled beers. But I am poor, as I may have pointed out to one or two of you four billion times and you have my apologies if the fact I can’t live a normal life thanks to a lack of monetary support somehow annoys you but FUCK OFF. Ahem.

Anyway, to counter this I have decided to offer some services in exchange for different amounts of beer. Feel free to take me up on them.

For one (1) bottle of beer (of my choice), I will write a nice letter to you telling you how great you and how everyone thinks you’re super-rad, even if it’s all a massive lie (which it will be).

For two (2) bottles of beer (of my choice), I will send you a code for guest access to Diablo 3, allowing you to play the game up to the point you take on the Skeleton King. Also, as a bonus, the code has already been used.

For six (6) bottles of beer (of my choice), I will read over your CV for you and laugh at all the stupid mistakes and idiotic shit you’ve put in it.

For one (1) crate of beer (of my choice), I will send you a flirty message to your OKCupid account, which will make you feel better about yourself and less like you’re a pathetic ball of snot that nobody in their right mind would ever even consider going near, nevermind actually want to go out with you horrible, terrible piece of shit why don’t you just die. Yeah, it’ll make you not feel like that.

For two (2) crates of beer (of my choice), I will do you a really good drawing of a bear. And by ‘good’ I mean ‘good by my standards’ and if you judge said standards to be poor then you are a wrong idiot.

I am open to other suggestions, too. My choices of beer will likely be of the BrewDog variety, Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, Sam Adams Boston Lager and maybe some others I can’t think of right now. Not Carling.

An open application for the Liverpool job

I think I’m going to apply for the Liverpool job. The board seems to be approaching pretty much anybody in the world to take over, yet nobody wants to step up just now. As such it is my duty – my calling as a human being – to take the reigns and bring questionable (racist) glory back to the team lovingly referred to as “not liked”.

As such, here is my application letter – available publicly and aimed squarely at Fenway Sports Group. I do so hope I get it!

Dear Fenwar (Group Sports),

I would like to apply for the job what you got at Livingpool United.

I think I would be well good at it because I have been to Liverpool before and didn’t go to Anfield – BUT I also didn’t go to Goodison Park so haha take that. I also know what football is.

I am experienced in football, because I play it sometimes and I’m quite bad at it. But that doesn’t stop me because I’m tenacious! Except when I can’t be bothered, or when I’m too tired from running around. I usually get tired within minutes, because I’m really unfit.

But we can turn that into a positive because it means I will be unlikely to ever leave the office, as that would mean standing up. Bonus! Plus, I am lazy so I would be more or less guaranteed to always be on the premises, available at your beck and call to manage the team into oblivion.

The good kind of oblivion, I mean. Does that exist? WELL IT DOES NOW.

See that? Rogue re-writing of facts? I’d fit right in at Liverpool, clearly.

I also play Football Manager a lot. Now I know you get lots of applications mentioning this hilariously, but it’s serious business and I’m really good at it. I mean, I’ve got like 74% of the achievements on Steam or something, so I must be radicool at it. Plus I only rarely cheat, and seeing as you can only rarely cheat in real life I think it shows I’d be great at… wait, what am I writing?

Also I am racist. Massively, hugely racist.

Thanks for the job,

Ian “Definitely (Defiantly) Racist” Dransfield

THIS IS THE NEWWWWWS

I was going to do something about something in the something (“news”), as I don’t appear to have done any current affairs commentary in quite a while. And I know you all love my Rory Bremners-style sa-tee-ray.

But then I looked through the headlines on my Sole Source Of News (Grauniad) and realised I have too much to say on all of these things. As such, I will do what the internet has become brilliant at doing and condense all of my reactions down to bite-size levels. That way you can take home a plethora of opinions to then call your own, rather than just the one. Aren’t I kind?*

Convicted Lockerbie bomber Megrahi dies
Let’s celebrate the death of a man who has just been a pathetic face on a worn-out body for the last decade or more! Yaaaay!

Merkel stands firm on Greece at G8
Probably because she needed a poo but couldn’t go right then.

Lampard: ‘everything we wanted’
A giant silver trophy? Really? Not happiness or world peace or less shit tattoos for Fernando Torres? That’s everything? Hmm.

Nuclear chief to visit Iran for talks
Good to see the Native American superhero is popular in the Middle East.

Phone-hacking inquiry head to retire
This amused me as I’m in a dystopian sci-fi realm in my head right now, and an ‘inquiry head’ I am taking to mean a hovering head that inquires about things in some kind of horrible, stinky, police state future. Which it sort of is, if you ignore all logic, reason and facts.

Twitter blocked in Pakistan
And I am sure that will mean they will never be able to use it again over there because we all know blocking things and censorship always works out okay in the end and the people doing the blocking and censorship are never looked on as idiotic twats oh no siree not in this world.

Mark Zuckerberg’s status: married
Hey! This would be the perfect opportunity to make a joke about his relationship statu… oh.

*The answer is “yes”. Now give me money for being kind.

The Raid review (7/10) The Raidview The Revaid The Reviaid

Imagine a film that just doesn’t bother too much with story. One that sets up its entire premise by having a bloke stroke his wife’s pregnancy bump, promise to ‘bring him back’ to his dad then cuts to heavily-armed police folk in a van where their boss man describes to them what they’re doing and why.

Then that’s about it, bar a bit of talking here and there for the next hour-and-a-half.

You might think that’s a load of shit. Which is fair. But then, when you add the rest of The Raid into it you realise just why it absolutely is not shit at all. In fact, it’s one of the best action films I’ve seen in quite a while, and it’s figuratively smacked my face off just like Ong Bak did all those years ago. Also literally.

It’s just utterly brutal. It feels real. I have no idea about martial arts. I am not a lover, nor a fighter, so I don’t know. But this feels like it could actually happen. I was jerking with every punch, block, kick, jump, snap, stab, slice, HORRIBLE BROKEN BACK and every other smashbangwallop yeeeeah I don’t know what I’m saying anymore.

The fact it was all made on $1.1 million, while making perfect sense (Indonesian production, not exactly massive on locations, special effects or whatever else), is still astonishing. And it means that even though barely anyone will watch it at the cinema (Indonesian production, not exactly massive on locations, special effects or whatever else), it’s already made at least four times its budget back. Which makes me happy.

I still have a place for Tony Jaa and his brand of set piece-driven ridicu-action. Mainly because it’s brilliant and if you don’t like it you’re dead inside and an idiot. But this is something different, and it’s feels totally fresh as a result – even if it isn’t (I’m not saying it is or isn’t – I genuinely don’t know). More please.

Now we await the terri-shit American remake, currently being planned, or whatever it is they do to make films.

This was almost a straight up review, sorry about that.

7/10

Not the fly spray

There’s little that can be said right now. I am using what meagre funds I have to bankroll a trip to the cinema. I would not normally do this, as I can go without large rooms full of hooting morons ruining things I want to watch, but… this is different.

This is The Raid.

And I cannot wait.

That is all.

Un ee yun

I don’t think we’ve ever really discussed before just how vile and disgusting onions are. I mean, not to make a bold opening statement here, but they are single-handed proof that there is no good. No omnipotent being of ultimate benevolence could make an alleged ‘food’ that is actually worse than having to go through five public cavity searches on a particularly sweaty Tuesday.

They are scum. Raw? Get focked. Not only are they disgusting, but they’re all wrong-feeling and when that taste hits you just know the vomit isn’t far behind. As a great scholar once said: “physically sick”. I’ve spat out entire mouthfuls of burger – burger, for fook’s sake! – because of a rogue onion making its presence felt.

“OH BUT IAN YOU IDIOT WHAT ABOUT WHEN THEY’RE IN SAUCES AND ARE COOKED INTO THINGS AND OTHER ASININE STATEMENTS I WANT TO MAKE TO TRY AND PROVE SOMETHING THAT WAS PROBABLY INVENTED BY PREHISTORIC NAZIS IS ACTUALLY EATEN BY YOU”, you might squawk, forgetting to add an upwards inflection to the end of your sentence thus nullifying it as a question.

But I am a generous man – a man of ultimate benevolence and omnipotence when it comes to matters of the onion. I am your onion god.

The simple answer is thus: think of anything you hate. Think of a food. Think of Dave Benson Phillips. Think of a loudmouth racist. Then mush them up and dilute them out so much that they don’t taste/get their own back/be heard being racist at all. Do you still have a problem with them?

I thought not.

It’s a watertight argument, no doubt.

Fuck onions and everything they stand for. Scumbags.