Fat, funny and British

If you ask an English person what the best thing about being English is, chances are they'll say the sense of humour.

Ask a fat chick the same question and you'll get the same answer.

Don't whistle on the elevator Brit.

Speaking with English people, I often find myself thinking of Willy Loman.
A man who used to have it, and is now desperately aware that he doesnt.

I read in the London Paper today, that the key difference between Americans and Britons is that while Americans are refreshingly upbeat, The English are reassuringly self deprecating.

Is this really true? Deprecating yes, but of themselves?
I think not.

Great British pride is a very fragile thing. Shake the spindly twigs that constitue the pillars of their national ego and they descend like a nest of wasps. They may tell you they're a humble lot, they may share some surface level character flaw, they may even talk about some minor, well established failling of British institutions.

But it is a facade.
Underneath this humblesness, British people yearn for Halcyon days, the glory of yesteryear, and have become increasingly bitter at the realisation that these times are over.

It manifests itself in the brittle brave face they put on when discussing their country with outsiders.

If you're English, you can hate the Tube, but woe betide any tourist bold enough to agree. The fact that it's expensive yet maintains a level of efficiency not seen since pre-soviet Russia, that it’s dirty with soot, that many of the tunnels feature exposed electrical cables so numerous they resemble the exploding scene from an episode of 1970’s Dr Who can only be uttered by a local. Agree with them, and you're only asking for a lecture on the manifold unseen appreciations of British Rail Staff, the triumphs of British innovation and a few, probably made up travel stories, just to show what you're missing out on. (I would like to go on record as saying The British Rail staff are without peer).

If you're British, you can talk about how terrible the weather is. But if you're a tourist and you agree, prepare yourself for the scorpian's tail of wounded national pride.

"It does get a bit dark in the winter yeah. ’Course you've got hurricanes like what they had in New Orleans, so it's not all bad".
"I'm from New York"
"Yeah, well, even worse. Black gangs"
"Like Hackney?"
"Hackney's not that bad"

And there are countless other no-go subjects for tourists. The Class System, getting bailed out of World Wars 1 and 2, their international reputation as average lovers. I think the English like to think of themselves as self deprecating. But the truth is, it's just something they like to say.

They won the War.
They won the World Cup.
This is the greatest nation on earth.

But deep down, I think they know the truth. That the glory days are over. That the empire is in decline. And that for all their public posturing, for all of the cosy reassurance that Britain is still great, the truth is, this isn't a very nice place at all.

I don't believe the key to our transatlantic differences lies in our abundance or lack of optimism, nor do I think it's in our default national attitude.

I think what seperates England from America is the sobre realisation that America's glass is half full. That our people are happy, our future bright and our place in the world secured. Conversly, England's cup is running dry, their nation has become a pale shade of what it used to be and the people have grown bitter swallowing the dregs of a former Empire now crumbling to dust.

God Bless America.

The Cockney Fuck You.

Earlier in this blog, I mentioned the Cockney Fuck You. It's a phrase that describes the English habit of stringing the words "Sorry" and "but" in quick succession, in order to get away with saying what amounts to "Fuck you".

e.g "Sorry luv, but that's not my problem, is it"

It's a curiously British trat to be rude and yet servile at the same time. Many cultures noted for their rudeness (The French, Native New Yorkers), at least have the saving grace of direct rudeness. If you upset them off, they tell you in a straight language.

The English don't do this.
They apologise first.
They want to tell you off, but they want to do it with impunity.
They want to do it without getting into trouble. A more cynical writer might suggest cowardice.

Perhaps.

Part of what makes up the British disposition is a peculiar bent towards unarticulated emotion. They try to swallow a lot of what they think, The British, what they feel and when they get upset. They try to push it down and pretend it isn't there, that nothing you can do or say can bother them. There are a multitude of reasons here; class, social norms, cultural identidy et al.

But the effect, in day to day Britain, is rather curdling. English people take offense fairly easily, but without a socially acceptable means for dealing with this, they tend to stew over things that don't warrant the intensity. A louder than normal iPod for instance or a . As a result, and in the plainest, most direct terms I can muster, English people walk around with a lot of shit in their heads.

The British stiff upper lip, (which helps compensate for the limp skeletal structure) is an outdated social mask, a disguise designed to camouflage offense. From outward appearance, an English Gentleman is unflappable, but in truth, you can upset an Englishman to the point of madness just by standing on the wrong side of the escalator.

And it's a dangerous practise. Without a socialy acceptable means for dealing with conflict, inevitable in this modern world, minor offences and irritations can quickly grow out of control.
The current state of violent youth related crime might well be a symptom of this. Though I'd hate to get stabbed for suggesting it.

The English won't ask you to turn your iPod down, nor will they hold the door open for you. It's two sides of the same coin. Rather than deal with conflict as it arrives, the English stew, plot, seethe and eventually enact their awful revenge by making it difficult for you to push past them on the escalator. Or serving your butter ice cold and then watching you struggle. You can say it's a petty system, but you cannot have systems without people to hold them up.

So they'll huff and puff and go red in the face, they'll rustle their newspapers into a frenzy, they'll tsk and roll their eyes and push past you when they get off trains.

And if their really, really pissed.
They'll apologise.

Strange creatures indeed.

Sorry, but...

"Sorry I’m late, but it’s done me no favours either. I’ve been 30 minutes in traffic when I should have been making money, I can only put £4 on the clock for a call out, see."

This is what cab drivers in London say when they turn up a half hour late. It's verbal gymnastics of the highest calibre. A quick Cockney-fuck-you with the "I'm sorry, but" then straight into the complaint, a backfilp, now the blame's on you, a perfect dismount and suddenly you're the one that feels bad.

This fucking place man. I'm sorry, but...

A diamond is just like a real cubic zirconia, Honey

International Stick Insect and Thunderbird Puppet, Victoria Beckham is having a fake diamond ring made after fears that her real one, (weighing in at £1 million) might be stolen.

Bravo Britain, you've got crazy rich celebrities, just like the rest of the world. Now if you could just get some that didn't have the finger-down-the-throat look, you could be on your way to being a proper nation.

Not just fat but lazy too.

Britons are the worst energy wasters in Europe with bad habits which could cost £11bn by 2010, a survey of Europe's five most populous nations suggests.

Figures in the Habits of a Lifetime report, commissioned to mark the start of Energy Saving Week, said if the levels of wastage continue, an extra 43m tonnes of carbon dioxide will be pumped into the atmosphere by then, the Energy Saving Trust said.

I don't really care that much about energy wastage, but hey, you score points where you get 'em. At least they save money at night. Judging by the statistics on obesity and the levels of ugliness on the tube, I'm guessing they turn the lights off when they have sex.

Great, Big, Fat Britain

HEADLINE: UK women are now officially the fattest in Europe.


New figures from the EU Office of Statistics show that Britain is the fattest country in Europe with 25.1% of women and 23.1% of men at least two stone above their ideal weight.

It turns out that despite having the worst food on Earth, Britons have somehow managed to stuff themselves into the record books. A full quarter of the population of British women are at least two stone over their ideal weight.

That's one in four! No wonder the trains are so crowded. And the men were just barely pipped at the post for The Fattest F--ks in Europe. One in five British men are obese. That's not just fat. That's fat plus a crate of twinkies.

So we come to the pertinent question. How on earth can you get fat eating British food. And here's the part I love best.

You don't. You get fat eating American food. Even though Fat Britain will tell you to their last weezing breath that they hate Americans, clearly, you love us.

You love our burgers.
You love our pizzas.
You love our fried chicken.
You love Cokes and Pepsis.
You love our candy and our cookies.
You love our sugarry shit and our fatty crap and all the other shit we pump into fast food and you love it all so much, you're making yourselves fatter than Texas.

I tell you people, it's one thing to be ugly, but to be fat too.

Keep your shirt on Britain. Please.

Oh isn't it amusing. When London has a heatwave. Aren't they funny they way they over react to the temperature and start sweltering. Isn't it cute.

For a nation of stinkers, any increase in perspiration is as unwelcome as a ginger haired step child. Worse than that, the mercury only has to hint at going up and these freaks start taking their shirts off. If I never see another mole on someone's skin again, I will consider it a life salvaged.

God. Hyde park on a slightly sunny day. It's like walking in on an uncle undressing. Acre after acre of untanned, untoned and really unterrific skin, glistening like a wet foreskin.

The women are bad enough fully clothed, but when it starts coming off... I saw one woman who had a halter top so tight she must've been vaselined into it, and the bottom of the shirt made a feature of her ample gut, which scrunched her lard together like the wrinkly underside of an old man's balls.

And the men. Holy shit. London is the only place in the world where a man with breasts will take off his shirt and talk to women. They actually dangle. The man-tits. I'm told it's the level of female hormones they pump into the chicken over here that give all the men that "Giblets in a bag" look. And if you think these things look bad drooping standing still, you should see what they do during a game of soccer. Whatever the score, we all lose when British men run with their shirts off.

And the papers go mad. London swelters under heat wave. At 78 degrees! (26 degrees celsius) You've got to be kidding. The only heat wave going on in London was the sun waving goodbye for another eleven months.

There should be no reason on earth that a man with globules of chest fat large enough to feed infants should be allowed to expose himself to tourists like myself. It's a form of rape and you know it.

English chef wanted: No experience req.

The English eat food the way they make love.
With their hand.

The most popular food in Britain is the kebab.
After that, it's the burger.
After that, it's battered fish.
After that, it's chips.
When do you suppose they break out the knife and fork?
At home. Over fish fingers and potatoe smileys with ketchup?

How can a country so close to Culinary Empires such as France and Italy sustain itself with a national cuisine of such misery? Even if we pretend traditional Engilsh fare is eaten by anyone aside from tourists, we still have little more than steak and kidney pie, bangers and mash and toad-in-the-ole. Imagine taking a first date out to an english restaurant and trying to get lucky on a menu of sausage meat and boiled potato.

"Ooh fancy. They deep fried it an everyfink"

And it's not just the food in pubs that's just plain wrong. I checked the meat content on a bag of Marks & Spencer basic pork sausages this morning and found it's meat content was just below 47% pork.

That's not really a basic pork sausage is it.
Less than half pork.
That's like me claiming I'm a basic 12 foot man.

"How tall are you?"
"Bascially, I'm 12 foot tall. Some of it is me, 'bout 47%, and the rest is something else"

And it get's worse. Marks & Spencer are the fancy supermarket over here. I went to Sainsbury's and found the pork content of their Basic Pork Sausages was 32%. Less than a third!!
LESS.

At what point do we say, this is not meat.
1%?
Half a percent?
At what point does the label go from "Pork Sausage" to "Not really pork sausage" "Pork Sausage. (Just kidding, it's mostly sawdust")

So what is in an English sausage if it isn't meat? Giblets? Guts? If only.
It's sausage substitute. It's called Rusk.
Part wheat, part gluten, and a sprinking of Amonium Carbonate for that taste of your childhood.

Consider that for a moment.
The English sausage, (itself a substitute for meat) is mostly filled with a substitute for sausage.

And here's the kicker. The sausage is Englands pride. It's the banger in the mash. It's what makes a full english, full. And they can't even get that right.
You pathetic bastards.
I mean I've eaten some bad hot dogs in my time, but I can tell you, more than one in three bites had meat in it.

England, your food makes me sad.

Limey Bumsniffers

"When I was at Eton, homosexuality was not only common, it was a general rule" - Lionel Fielden, The Natural Bent, (1960), pages 28-29.

For those of you who don't know or care, Eton is the finest school in Britain. It's where they find their Dick Cheney's and their Colon Powells. So to speak.

England is all the rage

There was this guy. A.A.Gill - I like his name. It doubles as a support group for alcoholics - he was a restaurant critic but he also found time to observe the British. He once wrote that contrary to popular opinion, the default setting for English people is anger.

There's a misconseption out there that Brits are congenial, polite. A little stuffy even. There is an imagined undercurrent of self loathing and self deprecation that makes us think them funny at their own expense. But the truth is, it's false advertising.

England is a nation of Post Menstrual Tension. A nameless, faceless, directionless pissed offness, perpetual and uneneding in all directions simultaneously.

They're just bubbling away all the time. I stood on the tube this morning and the man next to me opened his paper right onto me. He wasn't being rude, he was angry at something and I just happened to be there, standing too close for his "rules of standing near people". As I'm writing this now, the lady next to me is sighing up a monsoon of huffing, presumably because I'm typing too loudly.

This is a nation of horn honkers and fist shakers. Of no-merging lanes. A nation of obscene finger gestures and muttered asides. Of eye rolling and tsk-tsking. This is a country of cranky shopkeepers and on-the-edge bus drivers. Of hostile doctors and furious pedestrians. An asylum for the criminally peeved. A nation of baby pram rammers and supermarket trolley colliders. Of pusher-pasters and "do you mind-ers". Of raised voices and wide eyes. Of snarls and snides and gripes and grumbles. Of newspapers angrily folded. A middleaged nation of old farts. A place built on a vesuvius of uncontrollable rage boiling under the surface, ready to splat like overboiled milk onto the face of anyone, anywhere, anytime.

To control this, English people use the word "sorry" alot. It makes it worse. It removes the backbone. It says a lot about a country when the most commonly used word is an apology. It should greet visitors at Heathrow.

Welcome to London. Sorry.

The Truth

From the New England Journal of Medicine.

Jan 6,1988 Genetic discovery of Britishism in Infants; A Brit is made when a portion of sperm, while traveling out of the end of a penile tube, is contaminated with a streak of urine found dangling at the end of it.

This contamination, at the very core of the genetic material, affects every stage forward, from the impregnation of the egg, through into the womb and on into the birth. It is the single reason why British people can’t tan, why the women’s thighs are filled with wet newspapers and why the men suffer so large a percentage of microorchidism.

There you have it.
Science never lies.

Oh, here's a link to the micro orchid thing... http://www.medterms.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=11662

Whoah now, English women.

At a certain age, English women become men. They just sort of give up. They seem to look in the mirror and think, “To hell with it, I’ll let the moustache grow”. They start wearing pants and parka-vests to camouflage any microscopic remains of femininity. And, from what I have observed, they start filing away at the gaps between their teeth, so as to highlight the frightening curve each one has. Honest to god, I’ve seen smiles in Britain that look like they based on Stonehenge.

English women don’t have the kind of sturdy, rugged genetic code that lends itself to the Au Natural look like say, Russians or Swedes do. So the result is god awful. I'm not saying they don't put make up on. They do. But it's that awful, powdery stuff the rest of the world use as vaginal talc. As if they weren't already white enough. It’s like putting lipstick on a flange. It kind of looks right but you’d not want to kiss it.

Of the men, you can say they’re ugly, but men everywhere are pretty bad. What the British male brings is more of the, “I don’t really need girls” flare. It’s that look that seems to imply that getting a girl is really rather a bit of a bother. Instead, they drink a lot of beer and hang out with similarly ugly friends eating things like pork scratchings and yelling at television screens. A National competition seems to be underway to see how close a man can come to looking like The Elephant Man without actually being The Elephant man; the result - Very.

There is a saying in Greece. Monster in Face, Monster in Soul and The English are baring this out. I'm not suggesting that your social ills all stem from your lack of good looks, but when the first thing you see in the morning is your haggard, ball bag of a face staring back in the mirror, it can't put you in a good mood.

.

UGLY in the UK

There are too many ugly people in England. Seriously man, this shit has got to stop. You have filled your quota. No more ugly people needed. Pull down the Ugly Wanted posters. The positions have been filled.

I saw a woman today who had so many chins it looked like she'd swallowed something too fast, and sucked herself midway into her neck. She sort of peered over her chin at me when I returned a library book too late.

“This should’ve been brung back Sat’dee” Brung. From a librarian. An English Librarian.

Outside the tube station I saw man whose face was grotesquely pinched and small, but whose head was big and round. And if that wasn't bad enough, he'd grown a moustache.

People in England are casually ugly. The typical ugly person in America is kind of too fat or too thin. And that’s it. They might have a weird bald patch, but generally speaking, their kind of okay. In London, you’ll see people in the street who not only look like they belong in a circus, but who make you wish you ran a circus so you could discuss a lucrative contract with them overseas. I’ve sat next to people on buses and made sure no exposed skin touched theirs for fear I might somehow contract warts from them.

It’s frightening. In America, we only allow really beautiful people on TV. Unless they're really funny, and even then, we have limits. In England, you can have your own TV show even if you have an extra set of teeth above the regular set. And that's TV.

On the street it's limitless. Just standing at a bus stop you'll see people who look like the wrong end of a conjoined twin, reanimated corpses, partially melted wax sculptures, faces that look one part human flesh / one part cake batter. I saw a woman with an eyebrow so thick it looked proud. Sometimes I wonder if people are aware of this.

So England, as part of Europe, you should be just as hot as Germany and France. But you are most certainly not. You might beat them in a soccer games, but at night they go home and are consoled by hot porn star wives and you celebrate with a genetic grab bag of inbred mongoloids.

Pick up your game.And I ain't talking about fooooot-ball.