The 21st Century: Rants Vital Facts

Whether you like it or not, the end of the year is fast approaching and it will tie-up what has been an eventful first decade to this century.

But I woke up this morning with the odd sense, like Sam Becket in Quantum Leap, realising that perhaps I had been transported in a different age.

I was at the stage just before the "oh boy" realisation moment and that know-it-all turd with the cigar and calculator turned up.

I popped on the telly and saw that a policeman had been shot dead in Northern Ireland, Tim Lovejoy asreing around on a sofa and Jim Rosenthal presenting itv sport.

So I came to the conclusion that if I had been pulled through worm-hole to the mid 90's and I should give you a few nuggets of information to prepare for what the 21st Century has in store.

 

RANTs 21st Century Vital Info  

1) Culottes will make a surprise return and will not be the for Brownies only anymore. Instead, they'll be available for city sluts and skanks. See below.

2) You know how good T2 was - well if you're hoping that they'll be another Terminator film don't fret, it's coming. (Bad news - you'll have to wait about 15 years and it'll be proper shit, then about 5 years later another one will turn up but with a very rude and shouty Englishman-wannabe-yank)
Oh and Arnie will drop the acting and focus on running the world by becoming Governor of L.A. - No shit!

 

3) On a political note, the tories will be back in power with the aid of a spineless turd of a lib-dem leader, (I give it 6 months) 

4) MiniDisk will not be the all-conquering format it promised to be and will die on it's arse, making all those people you payed £200 for a portable MD player wished they had invested their money in something more secure like Lloyds Bank shares or Woolworths vouchers.

5) Oops, Woolworths will be no more, meaning people will now have to travel to their local cinema to purchase over-priced pic'n'mix.

6) People won't pay for Music / Films / Games

7) Instead of payment for the above, your PC will be infected with more viruses than you can shake a stick at.

8) A black man will be in the White House. Surprised? Well wait and see who he replaced, thats a shocker.

9) Depression will back with a bang and will make the Pound so worthless that common commerce will bargain with coloured stones instead.
 

10) A lot of things will be different but one thing will remain the same - Michaela Strachan will still be hot, she'll be pushing 50, but those kaki shorts make the Really Wild Show watchable (Sadly Terry Nutkins will still have that dodgy barnet.)

See you in the future guys.

Watch with Rant: X Factor

Watch with Rant - This is the first of what I hope will be a regular item on this blog, where I will detail the successes, and more importantly, the short-comings on the bright thing in the corner of your living rooms.

Where better to start than a show that divides the nation, the X Factor.

Some see it as the return of family entertainment/variety to prime time TV, harmless fun and a way of discovering the next star. 

Others, myself included, believe it to be the worst sort of entertainment. The X Factor is a cheap, vulgar, and uninspired way of filling close to 4 hours of airtime across the ITV network as well as being a huge cash-cow for a desperate channel looking to sell some prime time advertising slots in the run up to Christmas.

My main gripe with the show is its blatant exploitation of the deluded. For the first 6 weeks of the show we go through the open auditions, which at times remind me of a Victorian tour of Bedlam, with only the very best, and more importantly, the very worst being put up for judgment in front of the four cunts of the a-pop-ocalypse. (you like what I done there?)

Wading through the shit of auditions which including a couple of out of tune bovines who ended their duet with a punch (then an topless appearance in the Daily Sport) and after overly dramatic and drawn out decision process the fine 14 contestants were selected. 

So with a mixture of boredom and indifference (due to the girlfriend having firm control of the remote) I faced the curtain raiser to the series.

Here's my comments about the contestants I made out loud during the show.

Enjoy.

Rebecca 

• a dull voice, wonky eyes, a dodgy outfit and can't walk & sing at the same time. Apart from that a faultless performance

Storm

• WHAT THE  FUCK  IT  THAT? someone give him a mirror. 
• Right, those chaps ARE wearing condoms over their heads right?
• Lets not beat about the bush on this one - storm lee is looking like a proper cunt

Belle Amie

• Belle Amie's father is actually David, the famous nature loving, bearded presenter
• Hey Belle Amie, Holland called, it wants it's flatness back

Cher

• A mix of elizabeth taylor and a crack whore
• Oh fuck she's "freestyling"
• Cher looks how Cheryl would of looked like if they hadn't caught the malaria in time (and had been living with full-blown AIDS for a year) 

Diva Fever

• Glad they're not over camping it up too much
• perhaps the only thing more gay would be, oooo, i don't know.... rimming?

Paije

• Shit, that bloke from Bloc Party has let himself go a bit!

 

Katie

• wow-look at Katie, she's like a futuristic knight! No... go'on fuck off, back to reception and get me a coffee while you're at it
• yeah, you remind me of Cyndi Lauper, no hold on, I meant Cindy: the Leper

Mary 

• clear up on studio 3..... 
• you know they say that black is slimming, well THEY are fucking liars, you can't slim down a whale 
• wow, those earrings really take the focus of her massive bulbus head

Nicolo

• Has someone removed Nicolo roof of his mouth? he can't pronounce any of the words? it's like lester piggott doing karaoke 

One Direction

• One Direction? which direction do you reckon? yes, thats right, Louis ' dressing room.
• One Direction: bad singing, horrible horrible acting and fucking awful lip syncing
• One Direction give Louis wand erection

Wagner 

• Wagner From Sao Paulo to Dudley, wearing crushed velvet smoking jacket and being every married mums fantasy, Yes Wagner, I love you 

Aiden

• oh look at Aiden, look how awkward he is, so uncomfortable he is, if he get any more "different" he'll be presenting T4 tomorrow.. 
• but fuck me, he's actually not that bad at all
• although he may knife on someone

Treyc

• Treyc I hate already, just purely on the way she spell her name, fucking illiterate parents          

If you haven't watched the show yet, I won't spoil it for you but Nicolo and FYD (an act I didn't mention in this post because they were actually quite good) were booted off the show.

Star Spotting: Chillian Miners Recuse

Jimmy Osmond flew in from Utah this morning to encourage the miners upon their release.

"Ahh Crazy Horse couldn't get me away from here"

The wanker.

Snake Hunt: Volunteers Wanted

Reports in the papers recently tell of a reappearance of the 100ft Giant Snake first spotted in Borneo.

Now OK, this may look just a tad photoshopped, especially considering that the snake's meant to be around 100ft, and from the size of the trees beside it here, it looks closer to 1000ft. But I'm still willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. 

 

So, my plan is to put together a crack team to confirm and takeout this creature.

Fingers crossed, I’ll be able to bring together the standard "Giant (insert creature type here) Team." 

 

The Team 

As our leader I've got Samuel L Jackson onboard. He'll be the father figure  who probably has had a run-in with the creature years ago and has a score to settle.

A sexy science girl (doesn't really matter what she specialises in, as long as she owns a lab coat and wears glasses - preferably, half way down her nose). She's been working on an anti-giant-snake vaccine which wants to test in the real world.                                          

 

A weapons specialist, who'll have no regard for nature, doesn't believe that snakes actually exists and is just there for the money, but his redeeming quality will shine through when he falls in love with an Amazonian tribeswomen and decides to live in the trees  

 

Finally, I have a local tracker, to take over from the Weapons Specialist once he's been eaten by the snake or married the tribeswomen.

I have spaces for 5/6 people, but be warned! I doubt you will last that long, as we need to keep the body count respectable - think of the unnamed characters in the old star trek episodes, especially when landing on new planets.

 

Special preference will be given to those with stand-out skills like Snake Charming, explosives experience or close hand magic.

Norman Wisdom: not big, clever or funny

So Norman Wisdom has kicked the bucket, and judging by his previous performances, was probably carrying a ginormous cake, which would surely land on top of, the butt of the majority of his "high" jinx, the poor Mr Grimsdale, as a final act of disrespect on his way to join the great cabaret in the sky. 

Now I have nothing against the old boy of British comedy, apart from him being possibly the most un-funniest man to ever grace film, TV, the stage, fuck it - the earth. But as the news broke rent-a-quote talking heads were falling over themselves to praise him, claiming him to be the second-coming. He wasn't the second coming, he was a very unfunny man whose one joke was that he fell down... a lot. 

We've got to remember that these were hard times for the British nation. Rationing was still in place following World War II, and an average family of four had to survive on as little as 7 jokes or 20 puns at week. This is the same quoter that Wisdom had to use in his films.

Perhaps its down to the fact that I never saw him in the prime. All I really knew of Norman Wisdom was him making an unfunny twat of himself on Pebble Mill or Aspel - looking confused and falling down a lot, which wasn't actually an act at all - that's what happens when old age sets in. So to judge him on the previous work I checked youtube and yep, he's not funny on there either.   

It's true that comedy doesn't always stand the test of time. Steptoe and Son for instance, was a show my Dad loved and one that I was forced to watch growing up. Despite it not tickling my funny bone, I could still see the quality of the performances, the stoylines and, every now and again, the odd joke or two, but Dad even admitted it hadn't aged well.

A comedian who aged like a fine wine and not like an opened bottle of coke is the fanastic Phil Silvers AKA Sgt. Bilko. This guy wrote the book and laid the foundations of character-led sitcoms for years to come. He's like the Shakespeare and Sgt Bilko was his Hamlet. This is who I judge comedians of that era against and Wisdom isn't fit to suck the shit from the tread of Silvers' shoes. 

Wisdom isn't a man to be lorded over as a comedic genius, not even as a jobbing comedian.

He was a man lucky to be born when he was. If he was making his way in the industry today, he wouldn't even get on the panel of Argumental. 

Oh, he was also a tax-dodger of the highest standard.  

Vodafone: you bunch of wankers

That's it you fucker - that'll be the last time i call you. You've hurt me too many times.
You promised you wouldn't do it again, and i forgave you, let you back in, and how do you repay me??? By stamping all over my heart and soul.


This is what I would have put in the feedback survey for Vodafone customer service if it had given me the option rather than, "Out of 5 - how happy are you with the service you received?"

All I want to do is send a video via email. The phone tells me that no server is found - OK, so I call the "helpline" - "OK sir, I'll send you through a PDF with the instructions" - I follow the instructions, which are - check the settings are correct (which they were) and turn the handset off and on again (which any fans of the IT crowd or anyone who has an IT department in your office, is 99 times out of 100 times the advice you're given for any technical problem). So I turn it off and on again, and with a renewed hope I press send again, and those same words appear... NO SERVER IS FOUND. Another call and another PDF down the road I'm enraged and bending the handset within an inch of it snapping in half.

The last time i remember doing something like this out of frustration, was with my NES controller, playing the first Simpsons games (possibly the hardest platform games I ever played)

In the ads its all goes so simply! A click of a button and it's away. NO ITS NOT - YOU F**KING LIAR! NO IT'S NOT Every time I press the send button in the vain hope it's going to do what the sodding thing is meant to, it comes back with the words NO SERVER IS FOUND.
"But I swear it was different this time," I heard my phone say as it stares up at me... urging me to hit send just one more time. And though I detect a slight hint of sarcasm, I hit the button again...    SERVER IS FOUND. - the wankers



I hate you Vodafone - I hate you. And your smiling fuckwits in the ads.

In protest, I'll be uploading stuff the old fashioned way. Cables suit me fine. I'll wait it out for my next contract to come along, and then get a phone that won't make me look like one of those chimps in the PG tips ads.

Welcome to Rants Very Own Blog

Hello Everybody!

Well, when I say everybody, this is probably only going to be seen by my missus and the people I abuse / irritate on twitter, but thank you all the same for popping by. 
 

And if you know me through twitter, then you might of heard me on a podcast I use to do called The Rant and Dick Show.

Well thats collapsed like a Haiti skyscraper, and out of the rubble, and being rocked gently by Sean Penn, this phoenix of a blog rises.

If I had to sum up this blog as a superhero it wouldn't be a slashing, regenerating fanny like Wolverine or moody and menacing anti-hero Batman, but my name sake Ant Man 

 "What’s his skills!??" I hear you ask.... well, unlike that vast majority of superheroes, Ant Man doesn't need conventional superpowers like super strength or being able to fly.
No, what makes him stand apart from the other chaps......? He can shrink himself down in size, with the aid of his Ant Helmet he can control ants and... and... "talk to" insects.

Great! you can imagine all the superheroes meeting up and swapping stories of how they took down a crime syndicate or stopped a chemical attack on a major city. "So Ant Man, what have you been up to?" Ant Man shuffles on the spot and looks at his shoes "Well, me and a posse of moths infiltrated Dr Dooms layer at ruined the several of his jumpers - Back of the net!"