Author Archives: Tom

Men: Stereotypes that cannot be denied

Men by Tom NashMen. Despite what some people may say, we’re not a complex breed.

Keep us fed, watered and supplied with things we enjoy, be it football on the telly, the poetry of William Blake or tits (we can be quite diverse in our tastes) and we’re quite happy. Plonk a lady (or another bloke- we don’t discriminate here at TWTN) in front of us and add a vague possibility of having sex with said lady (or man) and we may even produce beautiful music, paintings, architecture and literature.

That being so, it can get a little grating when advertisers portray us as moronic adult-sized babies that without female supervision fuck up tasks the average eleven-year-old can manage to pull off with ease…

*I would quickly like to acknowledge that being British, male and white, I realise that claiming misrepresentation by the media is a bit like Bill Gates crying about losing a tenner, but I needed to pad out this introduction a bit. It’s done now, let’s all be grown up about it and move on.*

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Writing: Moronic statements the profession provokes

Writing for a living by Tom NashOver 60 posts done now and not one of them is about my chosen craft. Time to change that.

Before I decided that dead-end jobs in the writing industry were preferable to dead-end jobs in further education, I lived in South London and mixed with proper blokey-blokes who if they even bothered to work for a living either fixed, built or knocked shit down. If it was revealed that you worked in an office while you were somewhere like a pub you would automatically be labelled as a ‘poof or sumfink’ by knuckle-dragging fucksticks that pride themselves on their ignorance and lack of education but always know more about any subject than anyone else nearby, or so their super loud voice would lead you to believe.

These are the sort of people that if you let them know that you are a writer, respond in the following ways:

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Drugs: Arguments against the end of prohibition that miss the point entirely

Drink & Drugs by Tom NashDrugs. Apart from ‘Big Fat Gypsy Weddings’ and whether Lady Gaga is bangable or not, nothing divides opinion more. Unfortunately, no subject seems to bypass rationality and common sense quite like the whole narcotic prohibition debate either.

Of course it makes good copy when some bell-end who can’t handle their shit takes something and dies but that doesn’t account for the millions of people who take some form of drug every weekend and have what can only be described as ‘a really fucking good time’. I’ll let Bill Hicks get the point across better.

Anyway, here’s some of things people who still deny the fact that drug prohibition has failed screech irrationally whenever the subject comes up:

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Parents: Things your folks do that you’ll probably end up doing too

Falling in slow motion by Tom NashI’ve reached an age where a lot of people I know are settling down and starting families or trying desperately to fend off their girlfriends’ maternal instincts by getting a puppy…

While I’m not quite ready to unleash my spawn on society just yet, knowing an increasing number of parents- and having a set of my own- has shown me that some interesting things happen to people when they have a miniature human to keep alive.

This seems like a good excuse to reproduce Philip Larkin’s famous poem; This Be The Verse (yes, a poem (Don’t worry it’s not very long or particularly ‘gay’- it even features swears!): Continue reading →

People: More things that will be banned when the revolution happens

Annoying People by Tom NashDid you really think I would just write a single post about this?

To be honest, I could stop writing about everything else and still come up with a new post every week, but anyone who knows me knows that I’m not bitter and twisted enough to do something like that… Shut up.

First draft of this read like a manifesto, albeit a disturbingly violent one. So all references to ‘pimp-slaps’ and eye-stabbings performed with shitty sticks have been removed, in keeping with the usual light-hearted banter you’ve come to expect from this blog.

Anyways, time to point the finger at more behaviour I and many other like-minded folk believe warrants calling whoever does it a twat:

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Relationship advice: Terrifying things women are told by magazines

Relationships by Tom NashFrom what I’ve noticed, a mainstay of magazines that target a female audience is relationship advice. Whether it is a section devoted to answering readers’ questions about how to hold on to their man (because it’s SO tricky to keep a heterosexual man happy, right?) or tips to help readers work out if their fella is cheating, hiding something or doing something else that we invariably do.

Take Cosmopolitan for example. More than three million copies of this rag are sold each month. Does your missus read it? Is she flaky enough to take advice from a bitter hack? If so, here’s why you need to check out the man-hating, sheer fucking horror story of a relationship advice section it contains.

So according to Cosmo…

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People: Things that will be banned when the revolution happens

Annoying People by Tom NashNobody is perfect. We all have little personality quirks and tics that make us who we are and that’s great. Diversity is the spice of life after all… Unless you’re horribly xenophobic and racist. If that’s the case, diversity is the source of fear and confusion, but that’s a different post entirely. However, there are a few traits that some people exhibit that are so obnoxious and irritating for anyone around them that the only logical solution is to punch them in their stupid faces… But of course you can’t do that, because you’d end up looking like the arsehole if you did. So instead we suffer in silence, waiting till they are not around so we can talk shit about them behind their back… Damn you, society!

Here’s a smattering of things people do that if you have any sense at all will piss you off too:

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Christmas: Reasons it’s rubbish

Christmas by Tom NashRight. We’ve covered the positive side of things, now it’s time we looked at why a lot of people cannot stand this festive time of year.

Where the fuck to begin?


Pretentious adverts
Whether it’s M&S whoring themselves out to the X-Factor crowd (which stinks of desperation), the diabetes-inducing BBC sing-along, that aardvark looking creature in the Iceland ads trying to flog you suspiciously cheap ‘meat’, the idealised little gobshite in the fucking John Lewis advert (so Morrissey is tolerable if you get someone else to sing his songs, eh? Who knew!), or the Littlewoods horror story that uses small children in a lazy attempt to mask its message of shameless consumerism, this time of the year advertisers crank the levels of saccharin up to eleven and morons fall for it. Every time.

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Ageing: The ups and downs of looking young

Ageing by Tom NashAnyone who knows me knows that I look a lot younger than I am. Because I’m not sad enough to spend my life at the gym getting hench as fuck to compensate, I’ve had to come to terms with it.

There are upsides to looking like a young rapscallion, but there’s a lot of things that us baby-faced grown-ups have to suffer through as well.

You will find a selection of both the good and the bad below. Starting with the bad, of course.

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