I promised to write a 700-word opinion piece on any shit you care to suggest. The only rule is that I can’t research a single thing. The first suggestion came in from Adam…

“What about that hot button topic for 2008 - the US Presidential election?”

No sooner said than done, Adam! And to celebrate this inaugural opinion, I have included an animated gif of Hillary Clinton trying on a few new hands. That crazy cow just can’t settle on “the hand for her”. You should see some of the ones that didn’t even make it onto her snap-on attachment hole, though! They would have shaken your very root. Right up to the vinegars.

This Was Supposed To Be Fun
Why have you stopped my election from being excellent

Facts are great, but after a while they stop being fun. Say, you’re enjoying a game of Swingball with your best friend, who is a vet. Suddenly, someone rises from a nearby deckchair, and informs you that over the course of his career, he has negligently caused the death of over two hundred Springer Spaniels. An unwelcome distraction, for sure - but then, if you’re easily distracted you have no place playing Swingball. Far worse, would be the sense the you’re playing a kind of rotary tennis against a man who doesn’t know his way around a Spaniel. A stupid, irrelevant fact has just ruined the game.

The less basic and rudimentary a fact, the less fun it is. Take my imaginary friend, the vet. That simple fact is lovely – he has probably seen a cow’s fanny, and I can draw pictures of him squinting at a giraffe and saying “I’m Sorry, It Has Got Very High Mumps”. The more information I find out about his job – that his assistant is called Maureen, that he is unlikely to ever diagnose a giraffe, and that he’s fatally shit at Spaniels – every fact I learn takes me into a world that’s more complicated that I care to learn about. The fact that it’s important to him just makes it annoying.

With this in mind, here are the facts that I know about the American Election, in ascending order of whatever, get over it, Jesus.

1. A black man and a woman are going to have a fight, and as far as everyone can tell, it looks like they mean it.

Hillary Clinton is a woman! That means she has cables running to her big, tanned nipples that are capable of firing out milk. If you don’t think the idea of someone running the world with lasers of milk pissing from their chest isn’t awesome, then I honestly don’t know what to say to you. Legislation brought in for approval would be dabbled with an approving squirt, and evil budgets would be obliterated by a machine gun burst of white staccato squits.

This is all old and stupid hats to us Brits though, we had Maggie Thatcher. We remember when she took the free milk from those poor schoolkids, and poured it into a mechanised tit that she used to rush through the anti-union legislation of the eighties. But even in her most unpopular moments, we - the British People - would never have asked her to fight a black man. Who can imagine the special powers that each candidate could draw from their respective stereotypes during the final rounds? It’s an excellent and probably racist scene to imagine. It’d probably climax with Barack channelling the powers of the Omegahedron through his Burundi Wand, while Hillary straddles his neck and tries to strangle him with her fallopians.

At this level of understanding, anything is possible, and the American Election is possibly the second most exciting thing in the world, after walking into a zero-gravity chamber full of St Bernard puppies, all rotating on a different axis.

2. Another man says he wants to fight the winner.

This is the first fact you’ll encounter in the American Election that is boring. His name is so unremarkable that you might as well simply let your mouth hang open instead of saying it. I can’t think what he looks like, I don’t know anything he’s said, and if you want me to feel something about him then you’re barking up the wrong tree. Everything’s already 40% less fantastic.

3. Super-delegates are being used to reinstate the smoky back rooms and hidden decision-making processes that gave the Democratic party a bad name in the past.

That clattering sound was the pan lid of my interest. First, it made me think “Typical! Politicians!” which is the single least thrilling thing a person can think. Secondly, they’re called super-delegates, but their only superpower appears to be the ability to vote for who they like, and even we’ve got that. Finally, though, it’s rubbish because it ruins the first, excellent point. If you’re going to fix the fight, do it in a cartoon fashion. Put horseshoes in boxing gloves, use suits of armour and massive magnets. Not in some pervasive, creeping and utterly reliable way that would make the public feel a bit shocked if they didn’t already assume that everything was already fundamentally broken.

4. The winner gets to rule the world.

Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realise I was watching Highlander. If you’re going to take the piss, I won’t bother.

In Synthetic Opinion #2, I shall be answering a question on which I have even less knowledge than American Politics:

Log, do you think the Large Hadron Collider MUST BE STOPPED in case a tiny black hole swallows the Earth? (Remember the set of things on the Earth includes Robert Mugabe and cancer, so it is not as simple a question as it first looks.)

To finish off, here is a decade of UK political opinion distilled into one moderately compressed image.

A few weeks ago, I wrote 700 words for the Guardian. It was a glorious exercise in public self-castration, in which I exposed myself as the ill-informed prickwit that I quite frankly am. Since then, I’ve written a piece about how much I love progress bars, which I hope cemented my reputation as the Comment & Debate section’s moronic fluff correspondant. I’m currently awaiting response from my third piece about “Embarrassment”, which I’ll put up here if it gets rejected.

What’s become obvious, is that I need serious practice at pulling authoritative opinions from my arse. So, if anyone is still reading this blog after my crazy days of neglect, this is my challenge and my promise; I will write a 700-word opinion piece on any subject raised in the comments. And boy-frigging-howdy, I will be plumbing wells of passion you never knew I had. I will be searing. I will be sensational. I will be bereft of useful information. To make it in this game, I reckon I’ve got to churn it out like a cocksure fraud - so I won’t research a fucking thing.

Look at this shit, I wrote this back in 2005. If I can write 1,000 words about putting on a sock, I reckon 700 words about the Palestinian conflict should be piss-play. So go on, you glorious titmice - get commenting and commission me into orbit.

(This blog post was this man’s idea.)

Here’s how to enjoy St David’s Day - first go out with a Welshman, then go to the pub.

http://www.disappointment.com/welsh

There’s a 12-page booklet in there. It’s a pdf, if you fucking please. Also some photos, which you won’t be interested in unless you’re a mate. Which, I admit, is probably all of you.

Whenever I have an opinion, I tend to find it pretty embarrassing. Being wrong’s humiliating enough, but when you’re wrong about something you were dumb enough to frankly care about, it’s like pressing a heart-shaped cookie-cutter against your chest and making a noisy display of ripping yourself slightly open.

I’ve done it a couple of times on this blog, with religion. Can’t stand the thing, but I’d never tell my mum to stop believing her dad isn’t in Heaven, so there’s weak. I also seem to remember Twiggy got me frothy once by saying there’s no excuse to be fat. How can you say that, Twiggy? Have you not tasted how delicious food is? What are you supposed to do, just lick it?

Both times I was left slightly mortified by having a real thing that represented something I believed out there. If I were to imagine myself as a boss battle - and I do - then you’d have to plough your way through a six minutes Parodius level of self-deprecation and whimsy before reaching a glowing red chicken nugget of sincerity that you destroy with the whiff of disagreement.

So, when I was asked to write something for The Guardian’s comment section, I was kind of paralysed by my own unwillingness to be contradicted, so this is what I came out with.

Read it, and comment on it - make me look popular, please. Yeah, even you, freaky comments stalker who’s forced me to ban three IP addresses. And call that fourth-commenting cunt a retard who completely missed the point, yeah? As if the world needs more pricks gobbing off about what they reckon.

When someone decides to tell you their dreams, it’s usually a sign that you’ve got a minute of listening to someone trying to offer you massive clumsy insights into their precious, hidden psyche.

“I dreamed I was falling down a pit, do you think that means I am not keen on being a gigantic failure for the rest of my life?”

Because the people who tell you about their dreams are often quite dull, they’re the kind of people you ignore. But this opens you up to a new situation. The situation where you are listening to someone telling you about their dream, but you didn’t catch the bit where they told you it was a dream.

You, the sudden listener, feel like they’re opening up their true, interesting self - and your aghast reactions are giving this person exactly what they want; a reassurance that their subconscious is the most shockingly imaginative cloud factory to which you’ve ever been exposed.

Of course, the fact that this person’s most noteworthy and recountable dream is something that just about constitutes “quite an interesting story if it had actually happened” is the depressing opposite, but you can hardly say that to their face. It’s a kind of symbiosis, I swear it fucking is, but it is short-lived. For when the mistake comes to light, you must part - an abused host and a parasite bloated with self-regard.

TWO MINUTES INTO A TYPICAL DREAM CONVERSATION

LIFESPONGE: Meeeeh. Snib zha zha zha. And I said to him shakkatakka. Hnggg. Hnggg. Told him to fuck off.
YOU: What?
LIFESPONGE: Bold as you like, I just said “fuck off”.
YOU: Then what happened?
LIFESPONGE: Well, he didn’t know what to say. Shut him right up.
YOU: Good for you, that’s excellent.
LIFESPONGE: Then I flew away. And I was reading a book about that, it means I’m up for a promotion.
YOU: You made me care for you, Denise. You made me believe there was something substantial inside you from which I could hang my emotions. This is nothing less than a betrayal.

It’s something I’m completely guilty of myself, but at least I waited until I’d had ten really shit dreams before I got past the embarrassment of sharing them.

Yeah, well that’s all very well, but I JUST HAD THE BEST DREAM and I’m going to tell you about it so FUCK YOU.

MYSTERYU DREAM THEATRE
THE CANDLE AND THE HOOF

Alright, so I had to light a candle. This is basic stuff - lighting a candle is one of the primary ways of unlocking a door / causing a chest to appear. I had even been presented with a griddle - a source of fire, perfect for my quandary. My problem was that the griddle - which had a fucking great big horse on it - was twenty yards away from the candle, and the candle was fixed to the ground.

It wasn’t urgent, and I didn’t mind. I was outside an American High School, and there were people sitting under a tree that I liked the look of. I’m like that in my dreams, I’m devil-may-care. I wouldn’t be surprised if I was wearing a denim jacket, I’m that laissez-faire with goings-on.

Then this guy showed up, and offered me the solution; use the horse’s hoof to transfer heat from the griddle to the wick of my candle. The horse, he explained, is incapable of catching fire - it simply stores the heat energy in its hooves. It’s like when dogs pant, he explained, and I nodded in a sage way that must have screamed “Do go on”. He dragged the leg of the horse over to the candle, tapped the wick, then put it back on the griddle to refuel.

Nothing happened, but my friend explained that the wick was still cooking, “because it was microwaves”. I was about to deliver a brutally sceptical chinny when the candle burst into flame. I was so impressed that I tried to convince a nearby reporter to cover the story on the TV. She was reluctant, but I was pumped; I launched into a song to convince her. To the tune of Sweets For My Sweet (Sugar For My Honey);

Motherfucking hoof
Lit the fucking candle
Come on and see it, everyone.
That motherfucking hoof
It lit that fucking candle
Now I’m gonna use it to mourn my mum

“This is for kids,” she warned - possibly in relation to the language and adult themes of grief. I asked if that would be a problem. “No, they’ll love it,” she replied. I said good, because the solemnity of the final line was important for the point I was making, and would lend emotional gravitas to a situation that was in danger of becoming whimsical and unscientific.

AND THEN I WOKE UP

Having made this blog post, I am officially the dullest cunt on the internet.

I just found out that Bette Davis and Joan Crawford didn’t like each other very much. Although this is sad, I suppose there’re a number of good reasons for the two to have their differences. For starters, Bette Davis had big wet eyes, and Joan Crawford had a fat top lip. These are both laudable traits when taken individually, but put yourself in Bette’s shoes; if you’re going around with huge soggy eyes, the last thing you want is a massive lip bouncing around the set.

At best, the canoe-like slug of a lip would distract movie-goers from the pints of liquid coating Bette’s slowly rotating, wide-open eyeballs. At worst, Joan’s tongue might have curled, unseen, from the vast shadow of her upper lip and drank from Miss Davis’s basketball-sized tear ducts during a moving monologue. In the combative atmosphere of 1930s Hollywood, this would have been unforgiveable.

That’s just my speculation, though. There are many more official rumours about Bette and Joan’s mutual hatred. Some say that they were great friends until Greta Garbo pinched Joan’s bottom in a bus queue and blamed it on Miss Davis. Others insist that Bette went bass fishing with Jayne Mansfield, and during a more theatrical cast, her hook got snagged in Joan’s bra-strap, severely twanging it.

Fighting your way throught these rumours, it’s a relief to find out what really happened, in my visual dramatization of the book “Bette & Joan: This Hollwood Feud Is On, Starting From… NOW“.

(Click for more legible)

Couple years ago… I’m sorry, I’ll start again.

A couple of years ago, I farted seven times in two minutes in a toilet cubicle, and had to spend many more minutes trying to meditate myself out of a frankly childish giggle fit. I’ve never done anything like that since. It’s not for lack of trying. For a good while after that, I took my dictaphone with me everywhere, convinced that it could only be hours or days until my next musical bumphony.

Two years later, no such lyrical toot has been delivered to me. Tomorrow is the year’s shortest day, and that’s something of a metaphor for this penury, this dearth, this void. This Dearth Voiders’ Penus. Incidentally, if Darth Vader had a penis, and that penis could talk, and if that penis was granted an audience on Michael Parkinson’s final show, I’m fairly certain it would secrete a tactile brown putty that would provide a second metaphor for my emptiness by rolling onto the floor and being ignored for the whole show.

It wasn’t always like this. Let me tell you a story I forgot to mention when it happened, because I was too busy stealing picnic hampers and having my photo taken playing Swingball for Athena.

I listen occasionally to a podcast called Distorted View. A large percentage of the show’s content is the audio from porn clips; either bloopers, anal fisting, incest or screaming Asian girls falling off a table whilst getting DVDA. Farts are definitely a staple. Here’s a tiny clip of a messy-sounding plop attack. It’s not safe for work, but it’s a sound clip, so what the fuck are you worrying about.

[audio:http://www.disappointment.com/wordpress/audio/yourassholeisbroken.mp3]

And here’s a yipping chick giving flatulent and fruity birth. This isn’t safe for work because it’s just fucking annoying. However, it does show exactly what a relief a good fart can be, especially when coupled with the removal of an aubergine from the anus.

[audio:http://www.disappointment.com/wordpress/audio/Eggplant.mp3]

So, the scene is set. I’m on the train, and I’m listening to Distorted View.

STEP ONE: QUEEF CAN HAVE LOTS OF FUN

That day’s show centred around Queefing. I capitalise Queef because I refuse to believe it isn’t a contraction of Queen Latifah, who done the first fanny trump on the Eiffel Tower. It’s a long section, about two minutes of vaginal farts interspersed with Tim Henson laughing and saying things like “Madam, get your cunt laced shut”.

STEP TWO: IT’S JUST ME AND YOU (THE ENTIRE CARRIAGE)

Because I’m on the train, and I’m tediously polite, I take my earphones out to see if they’re too loud. I am horrified and overjoyed when I hold them in front of me, and hear a waspish, but unmistakably loud series of farts coming out of my hands. This is brilliant. It’s like I’m nursing a little trump with a broken wing back to health, in my loving hands. Needless to say, I laugh out loud.

STEP THREE: HEE HEE WHEE

Having laughed out loud, I try to disappear. Being a massive prick who won’t stop eating, this calls for special measures. So, I lean forwards and look down a bit, giving myself a chance to replace my earphones and turn the volume down a bit. It doesn’t stop me laughing, because there are still fanny farts going off in my ears and I can’t stop knowing that everyone around me knows I’m listening to trumps on my iPod.

I’ve got a friend who has filled her iPod with birdsong. She’s a birder. She’s also beautiful, funny, and if any TV company is thinking about pulling birding back from the hairy ex-Goodie demographic, she’s your girl. But for now, the fact she exists is a curse, because I can’t stop thinking about myself walking around, studiously listening to trumps as part of some… hobby.

I am shuddering.

STEP FOUR: I AM SPIRITUALLY POOR

Having regained my composure, the train pulls into Great Portland Street. The train has been getting busier, and the newcomers are forced to fill the gap between the chairs. I’m hiding, but sensing something close, I look up. Just in time to be eclipsed by a massive woman’s midriff. The profile of one buttock switches into a staggering full arse as she turns away from me. Because I’m leaning forward as part of my stealth costume, this new arrival is alarmingly close to my face. Bearing in mind that I’m already primed for puerility, a big bum is absolutely the last thing I need to see. I make a little whimpering sound, and bite my lip.

Sadly, that cunt on Distorted View chooses this moment to play the largest queef of the segment. A ripsnorting slurper, that sounds like hot Plasticene being sluiced through a didgeridoo. There’s no point hiding it anymore. The laugh that comes out is a yelp, the snigger that follows is stifled into a mucus-producing rasp, and when I get out at Baker Street I look like a man who’s won the lottery and been punched in the nuts.

Two things come from this story; a renewed tolerance of people who look like retarded cunts on trains, and an opportunity to recommend Distorted View. If you, you know, like that sort of thing.

There’s nothing more satisfying than forming a relationship with a salesman. It’s like rubbing yourself off against a human transaction. Because I’ve done most things that are thrilling and sexually enticing, I spend nine days in advertising, during which I came up with most of the slogans you’ll have heard in your life, such as “Kiss the Tandy” and “NOT PANDA PLOPS, PANDA POPS”. Here’s just a few of my incredible slogans that have made shareholders across the world instant billionaires.

MY TOP 6 ADVERTISING SLOGANS THAT CHANGED THE WORLD

WALNUT WHIP : “It’s got a nut on - and so will you, after you finger this fucker into your mush”

GANESH : “I know you don’t be steppin’ on this bad mother’s trunk, stone cold”

HOUSES : “No there isn’t a scullery, what are you, Edwardian or something”

THE POPULAR NINTENDO WII MACHINE : “Mine organs have beheld the wyrd illusion factorie ycleped thee Nintendo Wii, and my mum loves the Tennis like billy-o”

COFFEE : “Buy six coffees, and we’ll pamper a spastic”

BRITISH GAS : “British Gas puts the Gas Board into Smorgasboard.”

It was only a matter of time before the advertising department in the company I work for saw my incredible talent and <del>stole</del> incorporated one of my slogans into an item of hooded clotheswear. Check this out, fuckbuddies!

Behold, my addition to the world of PC gaming merchandise - “In The Absence Of Sexier Hobbies Or Bands I Like, I Wear PC Games Clothing”.

I am the advertiser. I just sold you.

Hi there. I’m a film star now, after sporting my ultra-modern beard in this internet video. I didn’t have that much to do with it, apart from reading stuff out and that, but anyway, it’s me, and I’m blogging it.

VideoJug: How To Survive A Zombie Apocalypse

Nyah, He-Man, you broke my staff again.

After a completely fabricated report from The People that Ian Huntley was on Facebook, the human race reacted with the revulsion you’d expect. Luckily, Facebook provides all of its users with immensely powerful tools for changing the world to exactly how it should be, without any noticeable delay.

Here’s ten posts from the GET HUNTLEY OFF FACEBOOK discussion group, which is one of the most successful groups around, because Huntley isn’t on Facebook. Can you tell which six posts are rabidly sincere, and the four which were posted by post-modern, meta-lolling internet wags?

1. personally i think people like this sick shit should have there hands and cocks cut off for everyone to see what they are plus they could never do it again! his prison life is fantatstic

2. Ian shouldnt be allowed to Sing!! all there should be in his cell is a bed, an alarm for if he starts Singing, and a machine to cut off his cock. He shoudlkt be allowed to sing

3. What needs to be done is;
* Prisons need to be Prisons not Hotels!
* Inmates All need Castrating!
* Sentences need to be Long and Brutal!
It worked before the 60’s after All the Fucking Hippies made the Country Sex Mad and now look at the State of the Nation well it’s getting as bad if not worse than the Lower of the Species in Africa!

4. If you cut his hands off, he’d just spear young girls to death with his stumps. Because I am anti-death penalty, I think the only solution is to remove both of this demon seed’s arms and legs, and replace them with bags full of smoke. I’d like to see this bastard kill people with bags of smoke for arms.

5. It seems that our twisted little fuck Huntley has signed to play for Margate FC (Ryman Premier Division) this season without the club or the community knowing about the danger he poses to the children, the town and oposing players. I think we should boycott Margate FC! until they sack the sick outside half. I for one will not be buying the club’s away jersey as planned. make yourself known to the sicko’s who signed this bastard and tell them what you think!

6. We here on the south coast of England wish the maggot filled fly infested vomit soaked urine drinking puss bucket of scum Ian Huntley all the very worst. We truly hope that Ian Huntley sufferers eternal headaches , toothaches , backaches , neck aches ,angina , gangrene ,and a very very very slow death in agony from every known cancer of every organ in his pathetic, weedy, wimpy, vile demonic corpse. Here are the sounds of athiest communist miners in hell. THESE ARE REAL.

7. I would like to see Ian’s hands cut off. At least Sutcliffe killed guilty whores.

8. Because of the human right acts saying all human beings should be treated they way they are being treated…. thus letting nonces prowl over the internet on the innocence, criminals living the life of luxery in prison and terrorist and extrimist to destroy our home kill our loved ones and reign terror on the good people of this country.

9. Prison seems to be like a luxury hotel! They should be locked up in tiny cells, with several people!

10. ian huntley should die is when he alive and being covered in petrol and burned alive and so should maxine carr

Answers to this year’s Real Or Hardly will be posted in the comments. In the meantime, here’s two screengrabs which I like, one of which is also a clue! The first topic is called

ian huntley and others alike him should have there hands and cocks cut off!

That was a lot of fun. But not as much fun as this topic, which is called, simply

“huntlel”

SERIOUSLY HOW ARE WE GOING TO GET IAN HUNTLEL OFF FACEBOOK IF NOBODY TAKES THE FACT HE IS ON FACEBOOK SERIOUSLY? I don’t CARE that he isn’t on Facebook. I WANT HIM OFF FACEBOOK. I don’t care about the fact that I’m generally against everything Muslims do - I WANT HIS CHILD-TOUCHING HANDS CHOPPED OFF. I want all the children he is talking to be warned in assembly that when he gets out of prison his is going to TOUCH THEIR PENSIONERS’ BOSOMS