The halal non story

Enough with the Daily Mail bashing, I hear you cry. Fine.

I can bash The Sun instead.

I see three headlines, a hat trick of offensiveness!

So The Sun is mad that there's a bunch of halal chicken being served in Pizza Express right now that nobody bothered to announce. And by a bunch, I mean all of the chicken is halal chicken. And by nobody bothered to announce, I mean it's all over their website, just not their menus and for some reason this is important.

Admittedly, I know the reason. But we'll get back to it.

So I paid attention to this story for about thirty seconds, long enough for every other newspaper to run a mini-story on it. My attention briefly flicked over if the chickens were stunned first, and thus humane, and they were, and I just stopped caring. Look, I don't care what you say over a dying chicken, unless your whispering at it how you're going to fuck it's new holes, it which case, damn, that is creepy. As most (like, 90% more most) of the meat is pre-stunned, and thus like every other piece of meat served to me, this means the only difference a halal chicken and a non-hahal chicken is the that little prayer the halal stuff gets. I'm an atheist. Praying to the Flying Spaghetti Monsters is equally valid to me, in that prayer is utterly invalid to me. Praying to the dead chicken makes no difference, it's like talking to plants - only that plants benefit from the carbon dioxide in your breath. If anything, praying is a sort of selfish action. It makes you feel better, but muggins over here stuck in hospital thinks you're just wasting your own time and mine.

Besides, if you're religious but not a Muslim, surely that prayer is as equally invalid? As every religion claims they're the only right one? ...yes, I don't know jack shit about religions, I kinda gave up of them a while ago.

As long as the animal was killed humanly with as minimized suffering as possible, I'm down with that. Look, abattoirs are gross. And you know what? If you're not cool with that, don't eat meat. I know plenty of people who've decided that, and good for them.

So the story went on to look at the multiple places that sold halal meat and whether they announced it, and you know what - they probably should. A lot of meat nowadays seems to be halal to hedge the bets that everyone is cool to eat it. But that's really where the story should of stopped. But it kept on.

So why then? I mean, it's all stunned humanly, and no one's talking about the animal welfare beyond the death - not one mention about mistreatment - so why's this going on? Well, I'll tell you.

It's because The Sun is fucking racist.

What? I said it. I know plenty of well meaning people who are obsessed that there is a secret Muslim conspiracy to overtake Britain and that my friends, is lunacy. Lunacy! We're a country run by rich white men, and we'll always be run by rich white men. Our pastimes are bacon butties and beer. It ain't happening.

Yet we get the hysteria about sharia law: they're running their own courts! Of course they are. Just like Jewish courts, or Sikh courts, we actively encourage people to set up their own courts to deal with financial bullshit because if someone wants to go through a court and be legally bound by that court whilst not going through our courts, thus not costing us any money, we're normally all for it. Because, you know, it's not costing us anything. And then we're got Muslims taking over our schools! So we lose our fucking minds and send in a counter terrorism expert - way to proportionally respond... to a likely hoax. Now they're sneaking in their halal food! Only that is wasn't snunk in, we invited it, and AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRGH.

As this adds up to a nasty piece of xenophobic hate mongering. Whenever I see those bloody Facebook shares of someone crying about animal welfare... look at the group promoting them. One of those nasty, cruel, nationalist right winger groups, right? Because that's the first thing they do to try for legitimacy; they attempt to claim they're kind. They loves them some fluffy animals! Yeah. No, you don't care. You're just bashing, and your types always do this.

Enough.

Any Irish here? I need you to do me a personal favor.

I need you to be our terrorists again.

Look, it can't be the Jews, they're still getting shit. It can't be anyone remotely brown lookin' to the average Dulex paint range racist as they've already been lumped into the Muslim camp. It can't be the Welsh, as we don't belive they care at all about anything beyonf their borders. And we built a wall around the Scots, thus keeping us safe from them forever.

FOREVER.

Just phone up a couple of prank bomb calls, and let us make horrible potato based racist slurs for a bit until we all calm down. That's as far as we'll go - you're in the EU now, you're safe from us unless we... uh... leave. Hmm. Yeah.

Scratch that.

It'll have to be the Welsh. Sorry.

How not to get your hair cut

I wouldn't count myself as a socially anxious person. Public speaking doesn't really deter me, I'm all right in crowds, and I normally greet my work superiors by jokingly ordering them around, in a habit that now occurs to me is potentially going to get me fired one day. I'm a well adjusted person, according to my court mandated counsellor.

Until I have to get my hair cut.

Look, they're waving sharp pointy things near my face and neck, okay? Whatever that person wants, goes. Besides, they take my glasses away, and then I'm kinda blind with sharp pointy things near my face and neck. Tragically, that deference to the person with the scissors coupled with my British desire to not make a scene has seen me get some god awful haircuts in the past.

Some of that blame is on me. I'm male. I have no idea what's a good look for me. What I've wanted for years is a psychic barber who knows automatically what looks good on me, and does it, and they turn out to be in high demand and rare supply. What I get are hairdressers who have nothing to work with as I mumble 'whatever you want, really' whilst they battle with the notion that a bloke wandered in here who doesn't want it all shaved off - and I'm not doing that again. I got out my shower once after shaving my head and thought a escaped naked axe murderer (the worst kind) had snuck into the bathroom by my glanced unfamiliar reflection in the mirror. Yeah. You've never considered yourself feeling vulnerable until you think an escaped naked axe murderer has snuck into you bathroom and is waiting for you patiently to get out of the shower, so you're nice and slippery. Never again.

And then smartphones came along.

God bless smartphones. They prevent me from getting lost with gps, carry a camera that I always forget to bring with me, wake me up extra early so I can get my daily weeping out the way before work happens, carry a secret backup stash of porn, track my position for the NSA's convenience, keep me entertained whilst I poop and distract me from boring people. Also, in this instance, they help immeasurably with my hair. I once heard that hairdressers do better if they have a frame of reference, and so I spent an afternoon on the internet looking at random people online, found a bloke with a decent haircut, saved it to the phone and voilà! Hello, honoured hairdresser, please make my hair look like this photo that I have on my cellular telephone, and I will pay you a shiny thrupence!

This photo, in fact. I specifically avoid the term,  "I want to look like him" on account of the
disparaging remarks about my physique. And attractiveness. And successfulness. Etc.

Follow the photo, and boom! That's not hard. And that's the way it went for a few years. For a few years, my hair looking gooooood. Yes, good, with six 'o's. That's pretty damn good, I have you know.

Tragically, the ability to follow the photo seems to be a skill which is getting rarer recently.

I mean, the warning signs were on the wall. The first sign was that my barber changed management, and became a hairdresser (there's a difference, I hear.) The staff changed. And yet I kept going, presumably because I must of believed that it was the building that contained the magic hair cutting skill, not the people.

So I went to get a haircut, as it was that or buy a truck with truck nuts and I'd have nowhere to park it. Midway through my hair being shaved off one of two employees started complaining about the monumental fuck up they had made with the previous clients hair. Which they had been cooing over before they left. So they lied. Yay. That was the second warning sign. The third warning sign was when I said to take a lot of the top off, she measured up a gnat's anus length worth and nodded to me. I asked for perhaps, maybe slightly more off, and she got out the clippers. Yes, because that's an agreeable escalation. The clippers incidentally that I was sure have never been used for this type of haircut, but yes, it's my head, but she's the hairdresser, she knows what she's doing, right?

Okay, fine, we're one sign number three, that's usually the strike out limit, but I was stuck in the chair. I was committed. Committed to stare at my blurry reflection hating everything about myself forever. It turns out the mirror was slightly warped (god I hoped it was slightly warped) so I spent over and hour looking at blurry me, who looked like an utter fat fuck with eyes that looked in two different directions. I spent over an hour staring at twisted, unrecognisable version of myself wondering if that's what I actually looked like: a manically disturbed obese frog. Do you now how unsettling it is to look at a reflection that's clearly yours but a) Looks's nothing like what you mentally picture yourself, and b) looks like a hideously ugly version of yourself? Let's just say staring at that mirror wasn't doing wonders for my self-esteem.

Also I may of spent a few hours at home obsessively looking in over mirrors to reassure myself I did not actually look like that. I'll have you know in real life I only look like a disturbed frog. It's so different.

The forth sign that I should of got up and ran away was as they were finishing up, they remembered the style was a side parting that splits over one side of my head, not what they were currently doing, which was plastering all my hair in one direction, like I'd been standing in a gale force winds blowing right to left. That's not my look. I think that's a boy band look. I'm not in a boy band, if only because I wasn't willing to do what Lious Walsh wanted me to do. Well, wasn't willing to do what he wanted with the suitable degree of eagerness he called for, at least.

You lied to me! You  said you'd make me a star!

The fifth sign took longer to hit. We were in disaster limitation mode, trying to recover what was left of my shorn locks into the parting I wanted. From the photo. That was right there. Which hadn't been looked at since we started. Anyway. It wasn't utterly awful yet. Sure, it was waaaaaay shorter than what I asked for, but one side sort of looked alright, so there's that, just gotta clean up the second side, cut it into shape.... cut it into shape... cut it into Jesus Christ she's still cutting. She's been cutting for ages. Like, cutting for so long I fear my partner may start posting a missing person report. Like, really cutting. Still cutting. I should say something. Say something. Stop smiling. Stop smiling. For fuck's sake stop smiling she think's you're approving of this god damn it stop smiling you've been smiling the whole time express your reservations you dolt.

No! That is what the photo is for!

It's not working stop smiling say something stop smiling.

It's still fixable!

No, you're worried about possibly going prematurely bald and this woman that your are paying is actually actively doing just that on one side of your head.

It's okay!

It wasn't okay. It's really not okay.

Like, 'maybe I can convince my colleagues I always wore baseball caps' not okay. Like 'Oh god, this looks so bad, I may have to enact scorched ground policy and shave it all off' not okay.

We still have warning sign number seven. Yes, I needed seven god damn signs and I still didn't leave. We have established hairdressers are my kryptonite, okay? Number seven was her burning my scalp with a hair-dryer powered by the fires of Mount Doom. As I frantically tried to leap off my chair, lest my flesh slough off, she admitted that she always did that, and turned it down to Mount Etna levels of fire. By that time the third degree burns that destroyed the pain receptors so it's wasn't a big deal any more.

Artist's rendition on how I felt after the hair cut

At this point, I took one last look of dread at my mangled hair, resigned myself to a month of enforced isolation in case my hideous form emotionally scar small children, thanked her, paid her, and left.

But I didn't tip.

Oh yeah! Feel the burn of that, bitch! Who's the big man now? I just put upon you the greatest insult my Britishness will allow!

Time advancing is like film reboots - sometimes, not entirely awful

I've always been a proponent that you should forever by wary that you were, very recently, a colossal bleedin' idiot. Think about yourself five, ten years ago. What did you like? What hobbies, fashion, hairstyle, music, politics? Dear god they were stupid shit, right? You looked like an idiot, and your music was garbage to. And think how naive you were!

Case in point - they were once very popular, and fashionable.

The second part of this philosophy of self-reflection is to realise that this happens all the time, so five years from now, you'll think the you of today is stupid.

I've been pondering this today because whilst I was doing my swimming I was struck by the idea if I got up earlier, I could go running in the morning before work. In doing so, I would pick up a little more exercise, and if I did it regularly, I may just lose the last stubborn bit around my waist and get abs. Honest to god abs. I have never had abs. I've never come close to having abs during my life, until recently. I eat well, I even regularly eschew meat and have those healthy vegetarian option... though admittedly that is also motivated by poverty. Meat is expensive.

But this thought came in knowing that I despise getting up early, let alone volunteering to get up even earlier, and I'm not massively a fan of running. It's difficult, and early in the morning is the realm of cold and misery. And it's an idea I really want to do, and what the hell has happened to me.

I am completely different to the person I was ten years ago, which, yes, duh, but it's still a weird sensation. Ten years ago I was practically a carnivore, who believed that there was a conspiracy to claim vegetables as food. I lived in an utter mess, because it wasn't a mess, it was a floor-based filing system, exercise was something completely irrelevant because I was young and had a metabolism that kept me permanently gangly.

Also I believed that the Liberal Democrats were totally legit, and that my degree I would earn at university would lead to a high paying job.

Ah, I made a joke!

Some of these things changed because of reality. Over things, well, you can't live with someone whilst wrecking the place. Words get exchanged. And considering my sizeable battle-ready weapon collection being evenly distributed around the apartment gives a definite motivation to talk things out nice and early, before the screaming happens, and hands get itchy. Tragically, even with the sizeable weapon it appears somewhere down the line I may have become an adult, who knows what escrow is, among various little titbits of boring adult things like ISAs, pension plans, despising modern news media, and wondering where the hell Dr Bashir ended up.

Ah, there you are. Jesus, DS9 came out in the 90s. That is a long time ago!

I'll think that I'll roll with this new me, on account of having slightly more disposal income, a driving license, all seven series of DS9 on my shelf, and a mostly functional nose. Hey, I didn't sleep properly for four years. That sucked. Also worth sliding in is that I live with the person I love, so that's an improvement.

You know, I probably should have mentioned that first, before the money. Hmm. Maybe I'll move the weapon collection out of grabbing reach for tonight.

I sort of wonder what I'll be like in ten years, although I'd be approaching forty so my brain simply screams trying to think about it. I do reckon though I'll be thinking that the way I combed my hair to hide the creeping edges of my forehead was bloody idiotic.

Incidentally on a non problematic subject have I mentioned how proud I am of my country right now? When the Mail on Sunday slandered and defrauded that food back, it turns out that the country that the Mail on Sunday and Daily Mail think's they represent is nothing but a twisted fantasy. When exposed to that horrific story, many outraged citizens went out... and donated the fuck out to that charity. They had a few hundred pounds donated before the story... now they have over sixty thousand pounds.

Sixty thousand pounds sterling was raised as a passive-aggressive 'fuck you' to those utter deplorable pricks. That's some good passive aggression. We're also bashing the fuck outta UKIP's blatant racism, which is hilarious that they're playing the 'everyone is bullying me, waaah!' defence. Not quite, UKIP. It's just that you're utter idiots and inclined towards saying racist / sexist / badthingsist things, and any journalist worth their salt knows that following UKIP around is an easy way to fill column inches as they can't keep their own mouths shut.

Who knows, maybe ten years from now I'll be thinking how stupid I was to be worried about Scotland up and leaving, UKIP's growing influence and us leaving the EU.

I already used the Picard grin gif didn't I? Arse.