LUV & HAT

LUV - Hello readers. I love to suck on the butts of fags. If you came to my house, I’d even let you bum one of my fags. I love smoking cigarettes. And not just because I can make vaguely homophobic jokes about it. There’s loads of other reasons too. And here are some of them:

There are over 4000 chemicals in every cigarette sold in this country. A packet of 20 of cigarettes cost about £7 - that works out at about 35p per snout. This means you’re getting more than 4000 chemicals for only 35p. At just 0.008p per chemical, that represents excellent value for money. One of those 4000 chemicals is formaldehyde which is commonly used to preserve bodies. Yeah - ‘preserve’. You’re preserving your respiratory system more and more with every drag of delicious smoke that you greedily inhale down your blackened, swollen throat.

Sure, so called ‘doctors’ and ‘medical experts’ will tell you that smoking’s bad. But doctors are evil. Just look at Dr. Harold Shipman, Dr. Joseph Mengele and Dr. Oetker. There are drawbacks to the odd puff of course, but let’s accentuate the positives, shall we?

Impotence - this cuts back on sexually transmitted infections and unwanted pregnancies. It also gives you a bona (not boner) fide reason not to have full penetrative sex with people.

Birth defects - do you really want your kid to look the same as everyone else? A boring little mini adult with ten fingers and ten toes? Give the little rugrat some individuality ferchrissakes! Give them a unique look!

Death - with the increasing working age and severe pension cuts, who really wants to live that long anyway? You’ve seen what old people are like - they’re rubbish. Is that what you want to be like in fifty years? Doddering about on your space scooter with a face like a bollock in a bath, not understanding how to download your dinner directly into your belly like your grandson taught you three hundred times already and whinging that music isn’t as good as it used to be.

Nicotine suppresses your appetite and with the latest statistics suggesting that 260% of all people everywhere at all times in the world now at the moment in Britain in 2011 are obese, cigarettes can be a useful tool in winning the Battle of The Bulge. I know how pathetic the concentration spans of some of you internet people can be - in fact I’d be surprised if half of you even make it down this far - most of you have probably already buggered off to Google Image ‘bums’ or something - so here’s some pictures to back this shit up:

SMOKERS:

• Cool
• Louche
• Iconic

NON-SMOKERS:

• ‘Mummy says I’m not a-s’posed to smoke ciggy-rettes…’
• ‘I zink cigarettes are dizguzting. Zey make you all smelly. Urgh…!’
• ‘I’ve had this cigarette in my anus for an hour now and I must say, it’s doing nothing for me.’

Do you want to be like Adolf Hitler up there and ban smoking? Is that what you want? Do you want to be a Nazi? Oh yeah, today you’re banning cigarettes, tomorrow it’s cigars and then BAM! You’ve gassed six million Jews. Well done.

Goodbye readers.
- Steve Charnock

HAT - I don’t smoke anymore. I don’t need to. I live in London and work in marketing, so I figure I’m enough of a cunt without throwing foul breath and smelling like the charred remains of a wet dog into the mix.

But I used to smoke. I used to smoke like a fox and when I stopped - in-between eating too much cake and experiencing actual bereavement - I vowed to myself that I’d never be the sort of ex-smoker who evangelically forces Allen Carrisms on you or coughs pointedly when you light up.

Because I’m not an ex-smoker. I am a retired cigarette enthusiast, which brings with it the following woes:

• Getting up from my desk at the end of the day and all my joints cracking at once because cigarette breaks are the only breaks I know
• Dreaming that I had a cigarette, and waking up all a-panic
• A sudden passion for biscuits
• Having to ransack the house for a lighter when I want to light a candle
• Unquenchable Haribo Tangfastic addiction
• The three seconds between me telling a smoker I don’t smoke anymore, and them inevitably telling me about all the times they’ve tried to give up
• Those awkward silences at the pub that you can’t break by just fucking off outside for a cigarette
• The fact that my risk of emphysema and various cancers is only slightly reduced. Slightly reduced? Are you kidding me? I have a pot belly now
• Social acceptance from smug, evangelical ex-smokers.

And these are the things I don’t miss about smoking:

• Yellow fingers
• Furtively leaving my desk six times a day to stand in a windy alleyway between a Gregg’s and a Job Centre with four other people who I never speak to, giving the floor a thousand-yard stare while the wind smokes my cigarette for me anyway
• Lighting a cigarette exactly thirty seconds before a bus arrives
• Experiencing withdrawal during long-haul flights
• Experiencing withdrawal during long-haul flights and watching a movie to take my mind off it and EVERYONE SMOKING IN THE MOVIE
• Having to abandon my pint, friends and conversation to stand in a puddle outside the pub and be hassled by horny married businessmen and aggressive homeless people
• Cigarette butt-based litter-and-landfill guilt, twenty times a day
• Getting on a crowded train on a rainy day knowing that I smell terrible
• Chest infections with every cold
• Having to smoke
• Lining up with the skanks, dirty raincoats and tight-ponytailed coin machine botherers at Sainsbury’s on a Saturday to buy a bumper pack of cigarettes in a poor stab at wallet mitigation
• Constantly being ID’d by shopkeepers
• Intense 2am cancer certainty

So, while it pains me to say it – and although I will support your right to smoke with my last untainted, easily-accessed breath – on balance, HAT.
- Robyn Wilder

LUV - I bloody love birthdays, me. I do. I really do. Now some of you more cynical readers of the internet may well be thinking, ‘Oh, he’s just saying that. It’s a contrived opinion. I know how this site works - two people play devil’s advocate and argue about a subject they’ve probably never even thought about before.’ Well, to those people, I say:

FUCK YOU! WHO THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? YOU THINK YOU KNOW ME, DO YOU? YOU DON’T KNOW ME. YOU DON’T KNOW HOW I WORK. HOW I THINK. I’M A GUEST CONTRIBUTOR ON THIS SITE, DON’T TAR ME WITH THE SAME BRUSH AS THE REST OF THESE PEOPLE. I’M NOT THE SAME AS THEM. I DON’T EVEN LIVE IN LONDON. I DIDN’T GET ASKED TO WRITE THIS, OKAY? I HAD TO BEG. I LITERALLY HAD TO BEG THEM TO LET ME WRITE SOMETHING. WHY? BECAUSE I’M NOT AS SUCCESSFUL IN MY CAREER AS THESE OTHER WRITERS ARE, ALRIGHT? YOU WON’T READ ME IN THE BLOODY GUARDIAN. SO DON’T PRESUME TO GROUP ME IN WITH THEM, OKAY? I DON’T WRITE CLEVER, FUNNY THINGS FOR A LIVING. I WRITE FROM THE FUCKING HEART. I LUV PACKAGE HOLIDAYS OR ALAN YENTOB OR STRING OR WHATEVER THE FUCK THIS ONE’S ABOUT TODAY.

ALRIGHT?

Anyway, I love birthdays. Love ‘em. And for these reasons:

If it wasn’t for your 0th birthday, you lot reading this wouldn’t be alive and the Google Analytics for this site would be bloody embarrassing.

Birthdays are a handy way of helping you work out how old you are. Simply count the number of birthdays you’ve had, then deduct that number from the current year. The number of years difference between that year and the current year is your ‘age’.

Without your ‘age’, The Man would have no way of being able to determine the legality of your sexual partners, leaving him no choice but to put you back on the Sex Offender’s Register.

If everybody’s birthdays were struck off the calendar, it would make using Microsoft Outlook very difficult for planning your diary at work.

Christmas is Jesus’ birthday. Without that, we wouldn’t have those Vicar of Dibley Christmas specials to watch in late December. And what would we watch instead? A regular episode of The Vicar of Dibley? Is that what you’d watch, is it?

Sales of tiny diagonally striped blue and white candles would plummet.

The song, ‘Happy Birthday’ is in The Guinness Book of Records for being the most frequently sung song in the world. Without birthdays, this song would cease to exist and ‘Someone Like You’ by Adele would be the most frequently sung song in the world. Is that also what you want, is it? You want Adele’s ‘Someone Like You’ to be the most frequently sung song in the world? Do you? Oh yeah, you’d love that, wouldn’t you? Let’s all just sit around watching a tinsel-free Vicar of Dibley and singing dreary bloody pop songs.

If birthdays didn’t exist, you have no idea what they were and all these words here on the screen you’re currently looking at would be incomprehensible. Even more incomprehensible than they already are.

That’s it. I’m finished now. I didn’t do a particularly good job here, I know that. And I accept it. I’m sure whoever it is who wrote about how much they hate birthdays has done a much better, more convincing job. Good luck to them. Honestly. You go ahead and agree with them. It’s fine. Hate birthdays if that’s what you want to do. If that’s what will make you happy. I done my best and that’s all anyone could ever ask. I’m not ashamed of myself.
- Steve Charnock

HAT - Oh, so you want to talk about birthdays? Well, gather round and let me tell you a little tale… 

Once upon a time, about 23 years ago if you want to be precise - you there, reading this now, with your BlackBerry (for business) in one hand and your iPhone (for the ladeez, and Angry Birds, LOL pun) in the other, I imagine precision with timings is the number one priority in your busy/sexy life, so there you go, it was exactly 23 years and four days ago - there was a little girl. Chubby of cheek and angelic of demeanor, she exuded a sweet little cherub vibe which charmed those types who liked that sort of thing; nans, friendly shopkeepers, creepy neighbours who called her “Lady” and gave her sweets which were always instantly confiscated by her mother and incinerated. All outwardly very pleasant.

But that little girl had a secret. She was desperately, desperately lonely. She didn’t have any siblings, or any friends on her anonymous London side-street, or any animal companions. She knew her mummy and daddy loved her, but her daddy was mostly away shining lights on rock stars, and her mummy had a magic book called a Filofax that cast a spell on her and made her run around busily with really big and pointy shoulders. The little girl got used to filling the oppressive silence of an empty house with both sides of a heated teddy bear debate, but she never enjoyed it.

And this little girl’s birthday was always just as the school holidays started, and her well-off chums would all be on planes to Tuscany and Bordeaux, and every year the little girl would resign herself to another birthday alone, trying to get Big Ted and Froggy to agree to disagree on the whole bedtime kiss hierarchy issue, dreaming of anything with a heartbeat to share her world.

But on the little girl’s 8th birthday, she could tell something was different. There was activity in the house. It was alive. There were people, and there were new smells, and there was a strange scritching coming from a box in the corner. And there was her daddy AND her mummy! And they were saying things like “make sure you clean him out” and “very careful with him” and “think of names” and then there he was: the most adorable bundle of fluff and snuffly nose she’d ever seen. A beautiful little hamster, which she christened Hammy, because she was a bit of a dumb kid, frankly.

The next few hours passed in a blur of insane happiness. She played with Hammy, she talked to Hammy, she fed Hammy pumpkin seeds until his cheeks puffed up to the size of golfballs, she laughed at his cheeks, she watched him running round his little wheel, and her heart swelled with so many unfamiliar feelings - companionship, warmth, love - that she thought it would pop right out of her chest.

And Hammy was scooting happily around the room, and scampering up chairs and down curtains and round people’s shoulders and then it was time for cake, and there was singing, and scampering, and candles, and fire, and more scampering, and sitting down heavily to blow out the candles, and a muffled squeak…

That little girl knew, right then and there, as a tiny life was extinguished underneath her, that she would forever associate birthdays with that plunging feeling: her heart hardening to a spiky pebble, all joy draining from her life in an instant.

Who did that little girl grow up to be?

Someone who HATs birthdays, that’s who.

Now. That story is not true. But the following is: Birthdays are the one day where you can actually see Death grinning at you and tapping on his watch ominously. The one day where the world says “Hey, congratulations! Another year has passed where you have failed to achieve any of your dreams AND you’re another year too old to be in Hollyoaks’ target demographic. Have a bloody cupcake.” You like birthdays? You’re shitting on the memory of my dead hamster. Shame on you.
- Julia Blyth

LUV - Driving is amazing, isn’t it? Navigating a ton of beautifully crafted metal to anywhere in the world, maybe with the top down, the wind blowing through your hair, a beautiful woman (or man) in the passenger’s seat. Whizzing down the highway at 70, 100, maybe even 300 miles per hour… You’re in charge of your own destiny, you can go anywhere you like and do anything you want! And no one can stop you! Not even the police!

Now I may sound like a driving expert, but if I’m honest, I’ve never driven a car in my life. So you might not want to take my word for it. I don’t need your approval anyway. You’re not my dad. Unless you are, in which case - Hello Dad. I’m sorry I’ve let you down so much and that I couldn’t be the kind of son that you wanted me to be. I love you. Please get back in touch. Those fishnets, stilettos and dildos weren’t even mine anyway.  I was looking after them for a friend, or if you don’t believe that - I was planning on going to see Rocky Horror (you have to pay for tickets with dildoes nowadays).

What was I saying? Something about driving… Oh yeah - ‘don’t take my word for it’, that was it. I don’t mean literally of course, in fact I don’t mean it at all; I was merely using that sentiment as a linking device into this next section (where I try and back up my argument by citing song lyrics).

This section here -> DON’T TAKE MY WORD FOR IT… Take the word of some of the world’s greatest song writers:

Roy Orbison: “I drove all night, to get to you. I’m sorry I’m late, there was a roadblock on the A42…”

Tracey Chapman: “Living in a fast car, dibby-da-der-doo-der-da-doo-dibby…”

Iggy Pop: “I am the passenger. I ride and I ride. I ride through the city at night. I see the city’s red backside. Singing na-na-na-na-nana-na-na…”

Madness: “I like driving in my car, it’s not quite a jag-u-ar. If you put petrol in a jag-u-ar, you’re likely to face charges of extreme animal cru-el-ty. Ding-dong-ding-dong-ding-dong-doo…”

Blue: “Drive by in the doo-da, got the city in a headlock, top down with your tits out.”

Now I may sound like a music expert, but if I’m honest, I’ve never listened to a song about driving in my life. But I’m sure whatever it is these people were getting at, it was something to do with how great driving is. My Dad would know. He loves music. Especially Blue. God, I miss him so much.

They probably should’ve got someone else to do this.
- Steve Charnock*

HAT - The day I passed my driving test - and I believe I’m supposed to crow here about how I did so first time - was one of the best of my young life. Such a sense of achievement, maturity and hard-won impending freedom.

Then I drove to the local supermarket on my own for the first time, and was faced with a roundabout whose multitude of interconnecting, seemingly aribitrary lanes gave it the scarred appearance of the surface of Jupiter’s ice moon, Europa. I hadn’t thought about facing this beast on my own; I think I’d assumed my driving instructor was mine for life, and would help me negotiate situations which the Highway Code had seemingly overlooked.

Fortunately the local supermarket allowed me to stock up on new underwear as well as the broccoli I’d gone in for, which was gratifyingly fresh but not quite worth the effort (the broccoli, not the underwear) (actually, no; both).

People tend to say: “If man was meant to fly, God would have given him wings and a beak and a licence to shit from the sky” (I’m paraphrasing). Too rarely do they say: “If man was meant to speed along the floor at sixty miles an hour God would have equipped him with four wheels, an internal combustion engine and a gear box attached to his penis”.

Because however natural it feels for you to drive your massive shiny metal thing down the avenue, it’s not. And it’s also not natural to arrive at your destination, stand in a circle with a bunch of other men, play with the coins in your pockets, rock back and forth on your heels and chunter on at each other about how you found the place.

Or is it natural? Some men seem genuinely, perpetually interested in what B road you took. Why do people care how you got to a place? I’m here, aren’t I? Let’s just leave it at that. And take your hands out of your pockets, you look like you’re having a vigorous, two-handed janglewank.

I hardly need touch on the rage people get while on the road (is there a name for that yet?). I become furious enough when someone stops in the street with no warning while I’m walking behind them. I’m not sure what warning I want them to give - perhaps they could place their hands in the air, as if they just don’t care - but at least if I fail to stop, and then knock them down and proceed to walk along their buttocks, back and and head like some extreme vigilante masseur, I’m unlikely to kill them (the key is to avoid the neck).

Not the case in a car - at least not until each vehicle is fitted with a little ramp at the back so that instead of crashing into someone, you fly over them, weeee, and land… on another… car’s… roof? I’ll work on that.

Anyway, what I’m saying is that cars are the devil’s work, the people who drive them are egregious public masturbators, roundabouts belong on frozen interstellar wastelands and human beings need indicators fitted to their arses.
- Stuart Waterman

*This was a special guest LUV from Steve ‘Steve Charnock’ Charnock, a freelance entertainment writer who’ll write literally ANYTHING if you pay him and literally SOME things if you don’t. Follow him (and then unfollow him later that day) on Twitter.