Daddy Issues

At some point in your life, you will go from being the child to being the adult in your relationship with your father.  In the past his wisdom, strength and fortitude would provide comfort and confidence, but now only provides confusion and anger.

 

Learning how to deal with this changing relationship and behaviour is one of the most important relationships a modern man must manage.  Gone are the days when you had to do everything your father told you to as his word was gospel.  Now they are replaced by a series of confusing, angry and desperate pleas for understanding and acceptance in a world that they do not understand.

You will find as you grow older that your father’s insane rants no longer inspire feelings of awe and reverence, more so they now inspire feelings of unease, helplessness and suspect armchair racism.

Simple modern methods and tasks that a four year old could master in a matter of seconds are now sadly beyond the understanding of your father, as he stubbornly clings onto the old way of thinking.

Try as you might to impart your current world wisdom and knowledge, it will be thrown back in your face with accusations of deliberately making things more confusing than they should be, or withholding facts a common occurrences.

There will come a point when much like an lion, head of his pride for so long, now having to fight off younger and stronger challenges, so too your father will attempt to secure his future by going toe to toe with someone many decades younger than him.  This leaves you in the position of having to combat a man who is used to dominating you. 

Your options are either beat up a man pushing retirement age or let him win the argument and accept your position as the beta member of the pack.  Either way you’re not going to be in for much fun as trying to explain to the Police why you beat up a man in his 60’s isn’t going to win you many fans.

Simple arguments and incidents can now turn into a full on war between the generations.  As the following true life example shows...

It was just another normal evening as I relaxed and watched some TV.

Then my father came into the room and spotted something was wrong... So very wrong.

It was at this moment that his sanity snapped.

Picking up the offending cushion he charged me like a demented hippo on acid.

Not sure if what I saw was real or some form of waking nightmare,  I sat motionless in intense confusion.

Not having the same issues, my father continued his charge.

Shit just got real.

Oh my god!  This is real!  He's actually attacking me with a cushion!

But this makes no sense?

Surely this is some sort of joke?

Chances are you will now spend the next 30 minutes just sitting there, not able to move as you try to process the events that have just transpired.   Yes, you were just attacked by an old man doing his best Christian Bale Batman voice impression.

Stupid and Obese Animals that Deserve to Die

If you need any further proof that there is no God and that evolution and natural selection are the only true answers in the universe, then you need look no further than the list of pathetically stupid animals below.  Animals so stupid, sad or dickish that they have allowed themselves to be tamed, modified or surpassed on the evolutionary ladder by a house plant.  These animals prove once and for all that there is no God, as any omnipotent being would never create creatures that served little purpose other than to be used as toilet paper by the rest of the planet.

1. Chickens

I hate chickens.  Sure, they taste really good and are one of the most useful and important animals for humans, but I ask you, what kind of stupid arse bird can’t fly?

A chicken isn’t like other flightless birds such as the ostrich or penguin, both of whom have evolved into animals more akin to a large marsupial or fish, perfect for their environment and a necessity given their harsh conditions.  

But stupid chickens remind me of that morbidly obese fat man that you see waddling about town occasionally.  The lump of lard has allowed himself to get so out of shape and so fat that he can barely walk a few paces without having to stop and gasp for breath.  

Pictured: The Human Chicken.

So too the chicken has allowed its wings to wither away until it can only manage a few feet of flight before crumpling to the floor like a delicious ball of meat and blame everyone else for allowing it to get in this position. 

I mean a flightless bird??  How stupid is that?  That’s like a fish that can’t swim! 

Chickens deserve to be eaten and ridiculed for the simple fact that they suck and I have no respect for them.

 

2. Moths

Moths are to flying insects as to being stabbed in the face is to shaving.  Totally over the top, completely unnecessary and not very nice.

A fury ball of evil that has plagued mankind since we lit our first camp fire, the common moth manages to combine everything we hate about insects.  It has the look of a diseased, dead butterfly corpse that has been zombiefied, come back from the dead and wants to eat your brains.  

Braaaaaaaains...  And lightbulbs.  Mainly lightbulbs.

Again, much like the chicken, the moth ranks high on my list due to its innate stupidity and lack of evolutionary intelligence.  Here’s a tip for you dumb-ass, if you see a light and think that maybe the moon suddenly has a twin, is attached to a car, has now moved from the sky to the road and is travelling towards you at 60mph, there’s a good chance that it’s not the moon and is in fact the headlights of a Honda Accord.

You think at some point one of the moths would go off and tell his friends that all the lights they’ve been attracted too over the last couple of thousand years are not the moon, so we should probably ignore them.

3. Slugs

I mean just look at them!  WHY!!!!!  WHY universe, why??

 

They look like something that some hack writer came up with when trying to write a crappy sci-fi story.  They’re just a small black bag of puss that slithers around the place being disgusting and stupid.

At least the snail is a home owner.  He has done something with his life, he has contributed to society.  But the slug is the homeless, poor, crack addicted cousin of the snail.  The member of the family that everyone hates but is forced to tolerate.  He will lie to you, steal from you and make a horrible mess on your carpets if you make the mistake of inviting him into your home.

The slug is never going to change.  No matter how many good intentions or help you offer him, he will throw it back in your face and slither away to carry on being a dick.

All these animals need to be wiped out for the sake of humanity.

Before….

Mothinug!  An new breed of EVIL!

Times I Should Have Died. Part 1

Looking back on my youth, it has often occurred to me that I was incredibly fortunate to reach adulthood.  I can list countless times where I have been close to death and only survived through sheer dumb luck and a very flexible skeletal structure.

Being a typical young lad growing up in the mountain and fields of South Wales, it provides you with an almost limitless playground on which to grow, learn and cut your head open in a million different ways. 

All of the situations that follow are merely a taste of my dance with death down the years.  This is the first part in a 27 part series that shall look at the reapers failed attempts to claim my soul.

We open up on a young me, just 5 years old.  I am standing with my father on the side of a busy road on a sunny Saturday afternoon as we wait for my mother to return from the store on the other side of the road with the shopping.

 

My mother appears from the store and waits for the traffic to clear so she can cross and join us.  At this point neither my mother or father have any idea what they are about to witness.

From across the road I see a familiar figure….

She sees me and waves hello.  Unknowingly unleashing the first in a long line of horrific attempts on my life by the universe. 

I mistake her waves of greating as waves of beckoning.  A mistake that i'm sure we have all made at some point. Freeing myself for the shackles of my father I run at full speed into the oncoming traffic.  My mother had called me and I didn't intend to let her down.

 

I then played the most serious and final game of Frogger ever undertaken by man and ran through the quickly moving traffic with nary a log in sight.  My epic froggering ability is still talked about during family gathering, which is ironic considering that I was only ever given a Space Invaders console as a child.

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Being a helpful and respectful child, I was often happy to do the vacuuming for my parents.  Partly because I liked a clean house, but also because I could make racing car noises with the vacuum cleaner engine.

Back in the 80s we used an old Hoover that had been patched together and fixed up more times than I care to remember.  This particular Hoover was held together by lots sticky tape and no small amount of “hope”. 

 

Racing around the living room, pretending that my Hoover was taking a hair-pin bend at Le-Mans, I may have slightly over exerted the machines capabilities.  It is slightly difficult for a child of 8 to figure out that a racing car and vacuum cleaner do not really behave in the same manner, so when the engine cut out with just 3 laps to go, I trundled into the pits to try and figure out what went wrong.

Playing the part of “Bert” the old, but wise mechanic, I was able to ascertain that a tear in the Hoover’s power line had stopped me winning the race.  Or to put it in layman’s terms, the sticky tape holding the electric cable together had pulled apart.

Eager to get back into the race as soon as possible I picked up the live, sheared wire and peered down into the sparkling wattage of death!  How exactly could I reattach this back to the Hoover and continue my race?  Thankfully my amateur repairs were halted when my mother walked into the living room and saw that I was about to put a thousands volts through my body and turned it off at the mains.  

Two things died that day, my love of cleaning anything and ol' Bert (he had AIDS).  However I still maintain that I was cheated out of my epic race victory.  So close! 

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During one of my many trips out with my childhood chums, we cycled to the charming town of Llanwonno via Blaenllechau.  This doesn’t really have any baring on the story, but I just like the idea of non Welsh people trying to pronounce those names. 

Upon arriving we set-up camp on top of a hill, next to the river.  Relaxing and taking in the mountain air, to our delight we found that someone had attached a rope swing to a tree on top of the hill. 

Yes, there was quite a big drop on the other side of the hill, but providing you were not some kind of crazy idiot, the dangers were quite minimal.  However a series of events conspired during my turn on the swing that I have yet to fully explain to this day.

I started my swing outwards.  It was a thing of beauty.  I had taken quite a run up in order to achieve maximum height and speed on my swing.  My technique and form were flawless.  I was an angel in flight, swinging outwards with all the skill and finese of a child abandoned in the jungle and raised by monkeys.   

This is where things get a little hazy.  So thrilled and amazed by my own swinging ability I did something that still refuses to make sense even today.  I let go of the rope….

I felt such freedom and exhilaration that my young mind was unable to properly process all of the emotions that I felt for that split seconds.  I honestly believe that at that point I had become convinced that I had either entered into a perfect state of Zen or had somehow gained access to some hidden mutant super power that had unlocked my ability for human flight.  I stood motionless in mid-air.  All around me the world stopped beating, my mind raced with questions.  What would my superhero name be? (It was “The Scarlet Dragon” by the way) Would scientists hunt me in order to gain the secrets of my superhuman ability for flight?  Do I have any other powers?

I looked down on the earth below and laughed.  Gravity would no longer have dominion over me.  For I was The Scarlet Dragon and I was a GOD!

Then something unexpected happened.  I started to fall…

And fall I did.  I crashed down some 20 feet onto jagged rocks and earth head first.  Perhaps I did gain access to a superpower that day.  The superpower of realising that people can't fly!

The Scarlet Dragon died that day, but sometimes when I’m walking down the stairs or jumping off something, I can still feel within me the power to defy gravity and soar with the birds!  But the thought of being in a wheel chair for the rest of my life sadly prevents me from testing this theory again…