Hey! Yep it’s been a while since I’ve added to the blog, I apologise for that, let’s say I’ve been too busy making tees to write about them! Anyway for my next crazy installment - check out the Junk Food T-Shirt.

It was inspired by a recent TV program that dealt with how much food we throw away these days. It made me think, better than eating the junk, but that’s not the point. The point is food must be really awful these days if we will all buy it but not even eat the stuff. Then again consider all the crap many of us choose to eat everyday, I include myself in that category, I’m lucky, I don’t really have any weight problems, maybe a few pounds on and off somtimes at Christmas, but mainly I take after my dad, I am a skinny sod at the best of times. But Christ, doesn’t junk food screw you up? It must be my age, I just can’t process that stuff after a while. There are certain burgers that give me wind and stomach cramps and their buns taste of sugar, their shakes give me a headache, and their fries are so salty I get heart pangs from the sodium build-up.

I was a veggie once, I was even an activist for an animal protection group, but I was only 12 years old, very impressionable, and recently moved to a new school after Mum and Dad’s divorce. The point is I wanted friends, and if they were veggies, then I was, if they were activists, then I was. I spent two or three years living of Beanfeast and Soya, it was so ironic, I’d just spent over a decade detesting vegetables and now here I was trying to be a vegetarian.

At first I went the whole hog, veganism is a very tough regime, no dairy, nothing. I became rather ill and slipped back to vegetarian so I could eat a few cheese sandwiches now and again, it got worse. After a year or two I was one of those awful veggies who ate Tuna. Eventually I became as close to a carnivore as you can get. I’d been so starved of just about every edible treat known to man.

Even now I can’t resist a bit of junk. Sweets mainly. Chocolate. Perhaps I have my brain all wired up wrong, are males suspposed to get a buzz of chocolate? Anyway, I was always getting the munchies in my late teens and Student years, I wasn’t so bang on all the fast food junk as much as crisps (US - chips) and sweets. I know I’m paying for it now. A rather wise friend once pointed out that there is a balance. If you eat healthy food and you hate it you really aren’t receiving all the benefits. Your body won’t process it as efficiently, and you will rather skip meals than face another bowl of lentils and a detox tea.

It’s true, fruit, veg, if it’s healthy I have trouble with it. I’ve learned over the years to trick myself into enjoying a rather more stable diet these days, I hardly touch caffeine in the day. I’ll eat yoghurt crunchies instead of sweets, when I actually find them in the shops. I probably have less than ten takeaway meals a year now which is progress I suppose.

What still gets my goat is the occassional vegan or even worse (I knew a girl who lives on fruit and nuts!), badgering me about the healthy advantages of a meat-free diet. To be honest, they look ill, kinda defeats the whole point I’d say.

Do what you like within moderation seems to be the best advice. Anyway, who the hell wants to live forever these days. People die from jogging, people get run over, people who never smoke or drink, or eat meat or dairy, who exercise everyday die from cancer. I don’t know, I’d say the healthiest thing to do is stay as happy as you can, and make sure you keep up a diet of healthy cynicism too.

Party Pooper

I confess - I am a party pooper. It must be part of the ageing process. I wasn’t exactly Fun Time Bobby, but my catchphrase throughout my late teens was ‘Where’s the party?’. It was a sincere expression, I truly wanted to party every weekend. I know that means screwing in the USA, but I just meant house parties. Now don’t get me wrong, this isn’t like your Fresh Prince kinda house party, all I needed was a house, booze, attractive girls and music. That constituted a house party. I loved it, just when the whole concept went tits up.

I had a house party once, it was awful, my family returned home early, everyone was bored to tears, the music was, shall we say limited to a bunch of miserable records I’d stumbled across in 2nd hand vinylshops, and yes they were all badly scratched. It made me realize that no one who has regular house parties has a home. My place was trashed like everyone else’s. It was just nice for a while to be somewhere more personal than the dingy pubs and clubs around at the time.

These days there’s more atmosphere at a supermarket or an airport than some clubs I could mention. Super clubs are the worst. Vast warehouses, that unless you’re on some kind of mind altering substance, you soon notice just how ugly the whole place is, the girders, the rafters, the pidgeons in the eaves. I’ve worked in a few factories in my time, and to tell the truth, they were friendlier places.

These days it’s almost impossible to find a real good quality party run by amateurs, out of the goodness of their hearts, just for the kicks. Nope. There’s always some agenda, networking usually. I’ve been drawn into conversations on all sorts of crap, but costume jewellery and health products, that really is the pits. You can get Ann Summers parties, now they could be more interesting if they actually invited the blokes along too, but they know that business would be pushed aside and everyone would end up drunk as usual. Shame that.

There are swingers parties (god forbid), I’ve seen a Channel 4 doc on that whole scene, and if you are over fifty, sex mad, sport thongs, and enjoy rolling around in a dark room full of oily bodies, then good luck to you. S&M parties, why on earth anyone can enjoy pain, I don’t know, I was caned at school (corporal punishment incase you are a confused stoner). I didn’t enjoy it. Being punished doesn’t sound like a fun night out to me.

I suppose I must resign myself to the prospect of dinner parties (now they are not parties) and restaurants, theatre, film, art, the usual haunts of the reserved. I miss the party people, but unless you’re off your face you don’t want to bump into them anymore. Most of them are far uglier than I remember, but their hearts are as good as gold, as long as the drugs don’t wear off.

The people who scare me the most say they are ‘High on Life’, that sounds absurd to me, then again I am a miserable git. Who knows - perhaps they have a enjoyably toxic reaction to breathing air, or smiling makes them orgasm, their brains must be wired in a completely different way, an alien way, perhaps they are the future. I am certainly not. You can’t get me excited anymore, I’ve had my share, I’m a party pooper now, if you do invite me I am guaranteed to stand in the corner of your kitchen for ten minutes before making my excuses.

Perv - A t-shirt that speaks for itself! A friend spotted the original municipal sign in Switzerland and Germany. It seems that mixed toilets don’t work after all. If porn is the second most popular activity on the Net (Social Networking being the first - Check out The Mass Debating T-Shirt!) - then mixed toilets must be high up on the ’submitted by amateur’ lists. After all, we’ve heard of Happy Slapping, not such a happy event mind you, I can’t imagine when I’d be happy to be slapped, perhaps grateful under the right circumstances, but never happy.

Anyhoo, toilets, I do seem to keep coming back to toilets, I would like to blame it on Duchamp, who knows, perhaps I wasn’t properly toilet trained. I can’t stand the places, public ones stink, god knows how homosexuals put up with it when they are cottaging (is that a verb now?). To be honest, the gay guys I have met through the years can’t stand dirt, perhaps they could all chip in and just buy one instead. Have a dress code. No dirty boots etc.

In short, Europe must be rife with toileteers for this image to have ever come in to being. I can’t imagine the UK ever standing for mixed loos, or to be more precise ,British women. Let’s just say it isn’t just the perving that would put them off, it’s more of a toilet seat technicality.

Men in the UK are for the main part brought up to keep their head down and their gaze to their own, if a public loo smells don’t breathe, do your ones (and twos if you really have to) and get out sharpish.

Barbie Queue

Another word play tee for the collection. In short, a comment on the whole Size Zero debate and the debacle that ensued. It seems that most of the media can’t come to terms with exactly how ordinary the world is. Sure there are a few soap ads featuring larger sized women, perhaps some other token efforts by savvy marketing gurus have made it through, but I haven’t seen any. Fashion is the worst culprit when it comes to presenting faked realities. If there’s one thing I know, if all women looked had today’s model figure, you can bet they have starved and exercised themselves half to death to achieve it. Women worry about their weight because the women they aspire to are younger, taller and thinner than they ever were..