How the Grench Stole Christmas: A Modern Retelling of an Old Classic

I've Been to the Year 2000

Tonight, as the clock struck midnight, I was watching a movie. In this movie, young Mark Ruffalo returns to his home town to borrow money from Laura Linney, hang out with his nephew, and generally just f*ck sh*t up. Now, anyone who has seen Mark Ruffalo's Instagram lately knows that he is looking pretty old. So I came to wonder, how is it that he looks so young in this movie; it was only made in 2000 after all.

But then I realised. 2000 was 16 years ago.

16 years ago. That's almost my entire life (kind of).

16 years ago I was 7 years old, the London Eye opened, and the PlayStation 2 was released for sale in Japan. 16 years ago Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire was published and Tiger Woods became the youngest golfer to win a Grand Slam. 

It was a different world.

Someone told me ages ago, that the reason the years go by faster as we get older, is because each year is a smaller fraction of the life you've already lived. I can't imagine what it must be like to be 80; the years must pass by like seconds. 

I don't remember much about being 7. But I do think the years passed more slowly back then. Probably because I had no concept of time and nothing much changes from year to year when your schoolwork is colouring and learning to tell the time. I do remember this weird play I was in called Millennium Bugs though. 

I remember feeling so old when I was a child, thinking that I'd already squandered away my youth. But really I squandered away my youth thinking that I squandered away my youth. I'm squandering away my youth right now eating nectarines in my underwear at 3am looking at pictures of Marty McFly on Google Images. There is a lesson to be learned here, probably. 

I feel like when I'm 100 years old, and on my deathbed with only moments of life left, I will think back to all those little moments in my life; moments when I was bored, or miserable, or wasting time doing absolutely nothing of value - and be filled with regret at the fact that I spent them bored, or unhappy, or wasted them away. I will regret thinking that I was old when I was young. I will regret thinking that my life was hard when it was easy. I will regret that I wished moments of my life away when I'm old and want nothing more than the wasted time back. 

I'm just so afraid of one day looking into the mirror and seeing an old face staring back at me, and wondering how this old guy got into my house, and which retirement village he escaped from, and having to call the cops. 

You either die young or you grow old. It's a tragedy. Mark Ruffalo. Julie Andrews. Me. All subject to the mercilessness of time. I wish I could go back to when I was 7. One day I'll probably wish I could go back to right now, and stop writing this blog and do something more important like save the whales or adopt an orphan. Or maybe I'll just hope that when I'm 100 I have Dementia so that I don't have to remember this abject, wasted life.

Everybody Hates Vegans

Apart from the stingray that killed Steve Irwin, animals are pretty much innocent.

Let's look at the facts; animals didn't murder JonBenét Ramsey, or David Bain's entire family. They didn't cause 9/11, or vote in John Key. What have animals ever done to you? (I know some people have been, like, bitten on the face by a dog or kicked by a horse, but bear with me while we look at the bigger picture).

Act II:

The Rain Forest. Planet eaRTH. Mother N A T U R E.

What do these things have in common?
The consumption of animal products of any kind is ultimately leading to their total destruction.

I've watched about an hour of Cowspiracy so am obviously an expert. And what did Cowspiracy show me (other than a guy who, with no apparent job other than looking at the Greenpeace website and secretly filming people, somehow affords a really nice house)?

• Raising livestock produces more greenhouses gases than the emissions of the entire transportation sector
• Agriculture (such as cattle grazing and the production of food crops) is the leading cause of deforestation - an acre of rain forest is cleared every second!
• Raising animals for food is responsible for 30% of global water consumption, occupies 45% of the earth's land, and is the leading cause of; environment degradation, resource consumption, habitat destruction, ocean dead-zones, and species extinction

Don't get me wrong. I have done no additional research, nor have I considered anyone else's opinion other than Cowspiracy guy's. But when I learned these things I was pretty saddened. But what made me most saddened was the fact that I, along with many other people, were supporting the agricultural industry by consuming animals products and thereby creating the need for these things to keep happening. 

The true heroes? Vegans.

Vegans are literally the unsung superheroes of the present day (and I can say this because I'm not a vegan).

Yet people mock vegans relentlessly.

But why?

WHY??

They are trying to SAVE US.

Making fun of someone for being vegan is like making fun of someone for cleaning up oil spills on beaches or nursing sick old people back to health.

While the rest of the population is taking a literal axe to planet earth's literal back, vegans are tending to the wounds. But there are too many axes and not enough vegans.

And check out this comprehensive list of things we wouldn't have if it weren't for planet earth:

• An inhabitable place to live
• Existence of any kind
• Julie Andrews

If the entire human population were vegan, there would be no more global warming, and the planet would last 1,000,000,000 light years longer, we would live forever, and all the bees would come back. I'm pretty sure I heard a scientist say that, no need to fact check.

The point of my writing this is not to convince everyone to become vegan (I have no where near enough faith in humanity for that - humans are b*tches), but to remind everyone that while you are enjoying your salami and your yoghurt, vegans are doing something to try to slow the world's eventual demise - maybe just long enough for another Adele album. 

Bad Friday: The True Meaning of Easter

Do you have a moment to talk about JESUS ?

Everyone's heard of Easter. Everyone's heard of bunnies. But how many people have actually heard of tHE BIBLE???? 

Studies show that only 100% of the people surveyed had ever even heard of Christianity. So, for all of you ignoramuses out there, here is an excerpt from the holy book itself, to give you a little crash course in the origins of Easter.

__________

Ages ago, like 40 years ago, there was a guy called Jesus. Instead of getting a job like a normal 33 year old, Jesus spent most of his time spitting in the eyes of blind people and hanging out with his 12 friends. That's why Jesus had to live at home with his mum, Mary, and his dad, Morgan Freeman. 

Jesus hated fig trees so much. And his best friend was Judas Iscariot. They would do everything together; praying at the temple, washing the feet of prostitutes, and some freaky cult sh*t like drinking each other's blood. 

But one day their friendship took a rocky turn when Jesus tried to steal Judas' girlfriend, Mary Mandarin. Judas was so mad!!! He had Jesus crucified so that he would never do it again. 

Jesus was on the cross for 40 days and 40 nights. Then he was buried in a cave. Everyone thought Jesus was dead, but he was faking it!!!!!!!! !!!!! He was alive!!!!!! He came out of his cave after 3 days and went to find Mary Mandarin to profess his undying love. 

But when he saw Judas and Mary Mandarin together, and how happy they were, he knew that he could never be with her. And he died for real this time - of a broken heart. 

The End

___________

But so many people seem to forget this. In their minds, Good Friday and Easter Sunday are not the days that Jesus fake died and real died, respectively, but instead a day of eating chocolate and spending time with their loved ones.

IMHO it's pretty f*cked up that Jesus lovers worldwide celebrate his heartbreak and subsequent death by doing the very thing Jesus was never able to do; eat chocolate eggs. 

And I don't wanna get into Christmas but usually on someone's birthday THEY are the one who gets presents????? Not literally everyone else. 

If Jesus were alive today, I'm pretty sure he would be livid at the state of modern society. On top of which, when was the last time anyone actually gathered together to pray for and remember Jesus? 

I'm no expert. I only know everything about The Bible. And I know Jesus would not be cool with the fact that his birth and death now mark the dates for some of the biggest consumerist holidays.  

Jesus was cremated when he died, and the place his ashes were scattered is now the site of Disneyland Paris.

How to Disappear off the Face of the Earth and Why You Should Try it This Season

Everyone loves a good mystery. That's why Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed grossed $400 in the Box Office. But although we see mystery portrayed in film time and time again, when was the last time you actually encountered a mystery in real life?

To properly construe my point, I have designed a short quiz to determine how much mystery is currently in your life.

Have you, or has anyone you know, ever:

a) been selected to track down an escaped mental patient, only to find that the missing patient was yourself? 

b) spent years battling amnesia and trying to track down the man who killed your wife with insulin, only to find that that man was yourself?

c) gone on a quest to find Mary Magdalene's tomb and discovered that it's under that triangle thing outside the Louvre, and that Mary Magdalene was yourself?

d) had anything remotely similar to the plot of Gone Girl happen to you?

If you answered 'no' to any of the above questions, then it sounds like it is a good time to enigma-up your life. There's no better time to start than right now immediately!!

Why Scooby and Velma never got together is the greatest mystery of all

The reason there are so many movies about mysteries, is that we, as an internation, have forgotten what it is to encounter a mystery for reals. And no wonder. We live in a world where it is near-impossible to be MIA, or AWOL, or DDR. We're all on the grid, like a giant game of Battleships. 

Thanks to Edward Norton leaking the contents of Obama's diary back in 2013, we know that we are being watched 24/7 by the NHS. Our every move is constantly monitored; when we are sleeping, or hanging out with our friends, even while using the internet to search for child porn.

To make matters worse, everyone uses social media these days, even (unfortunately) old people. Social media is just another means for 'Big Brother' to infiltrate our lives. Once you put something on the internet it's there forever, like herpes.  

Between us putting the information out there, and the government right clicking, and saving it to desktop, privacy is a thing of the past. It's like in the Lord of the Rings, how when Frodo puts on the ring the huge creepy eye of Sauron can see him, even though he's miles away in the forest hiding under his cloak that makes him look like a rock. And if I learned anything from Lord of the Rings, it's that you definitely don't want to be a Frodo. You want to be a Gandalf, or an Aragorn, or at the very least Elrond. You don't want to be Gollum either, but for different reasons. 

So how do you seize back your privacy and be the mystery you always dreamed of becoming? I have compiled a list of excellent tips to help you become a modern day Madeleine McCann. 

1. Start by deleting all of your social media accounts. This won't be easy, but it will be worth it. It takes 6 weeks to delete a Skype account, so start today!

2. Throw your phone into the river. Then throw your whole house into the river if you can.

3. Get one of those SIA wigs that obscure your face and wear it always.

4. Go to mountainous China and live out your days alone in a cave. You will need a fake passport for this so that there is no record of you leaving the country. When you get to China, set fire to the passport and scatter the ashes along the entire length of the Great Wall.

Bonus points if you: a) have extensive facial reconstructive surgery so that you are no longer recognisable, or b) successfully fake your own death. 

Godspeed, friends, on your journey to total privacy. I hope to never hear from you again.