Neil Smith

1 year ago · 3 min. reading time · ~100 ·

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That wanker down the pub

That wanker down the pub

I would be amongst the first to point out that I am no expert in the geopolitical arena. Or at least, I would be if my friends weren’t kind enough to point it out first. 

Repeatedly.

However, while much of the fine detail of the Russian invasion of Ukraine may be difficult for a layman like me to follow due to the technical nature of strategy, weaponry and logistics, there is one aspect of this affair that I feel well capable of understanding and that is Vladimir Putin himself. This serial originator of military shithousery is an open book to me and many others simply because we encounter so many like him in our daily lives and online.

I refer, obviously, to the human character known as ‘That Wanker’.

There are of course, different flavours of wanker but the basics are there to see in every specimen and when assessing unfamiliar societies and cultures, it is always useful to ask how well that country protects the rational, everyday community from the actions of wankers. In the case of Russia it’s not looking good right now as the nation’s biggest wanker also happens to be in charge of the gaff which makes being a normal human being way more difficult than it ever should be.

Vlad is just like all those guys sitting alone in bars around the world and opining loudly about everything whilst chasing their afternoon drinks down with a few evening drinks and a bag of peanuts and whether you met one in the 1960s or just last week the basic premise is the same. 

“Everything was better before”

That’s their entire philosophy. It all used to be good but it’s all shit now. 

Reasons for why everything is worse vary but these guys usually only pick from a very few of the most popular grievances on the menu of human bitterness. Some of the most popular are: ‘My boss is an asshole and the place would fall apart without me’ or the ‘Politicians are all trying to kill off the local man and bring in foreigners’ or the evergreen classic ‘My wife is a bitch who ran off and left me’.

I see Vlad as being in the third category except it’s not just his wife who flipped him the bird, it’s an entire empire who looked around and decided that they would rather not stay hitched to the murderous wanker next door and so they all set off to try to make a space for themselves in the free world.

And that’s it. Vlad has basically spent the last thirty odd years in a metaphorical bar railing against that slut Poland and the bitch Romania and all the rest of them because they didn’t fancy him and would rather take their chances in political and economic alliances with presidents that were less likely to poison them with Polonium or reduce their cities to rubble. He’s still got the old faithful Belarus but she’s a bit long in the tooth now and Chechnya is hardly much of a looker after their last argument when she slapped him and he smacked her around with a baseball bat.

He complains louder and louder about how he has been betrayed and the locals in the bar know that he’s going to kick-off again. It’s a well-worn story and none of the regulars even try to tell him that it’s not a good look to still be going on about your ex after more than three decades. They all know that Vlad never listens to anyone anyway. The drinkers around him edged away when he started raving about the size of his rockets and the bouncers would have thrown him out only, they left it a bit late and he was already tipping up the table and waving a bottle around.

And that’s the problem with wankers. They cause havoc, start fights, make a big fuss, spoil everyone else’s night and then they go home without experiencing the grief they’ve caused everyone else. They don’t care. The mess they make has to be cleaned up and they don’t care about that either. They don’t really enjoy their nights in the pub in any case, they are just there for the numbing effect of the booze and the small moment of power they feel in their empty wanky lives. Getting into trouble doesn’t make their crappy life any worse. Nothing could. All the problems are experienced by the people around them. The wanker couldn’t care less.

When this sort of behaviour occurs, people often over-complicate the situation and describe it using Pop-psychology terms like ‘Narcissistic personality’, ‘psychoses’ and ‘histrionic displays’ but really this is giving way too much credit to any given wanker. If we feel that we absolutely must have more precise terms for different aspects of the one universal wankerism then I would suggest such medical definitions as ‘Selfish wanker’, ‘murderous wanker’, ‘whiney wanker’, ‘pathetic wanker’ or any combination of these terms. Any more than this is just obscuring the essential nature of the standard-issue wanker and building it up into something grander than the pitiful, wanky reality deserves.

Wankers ultimately have to be stopped or they just screw things up forever and fortunately, in Ukraine, this process looks to be well in hand right now. Vlad, in his wisdom and bitterness, picked a fight with the little guy in the corner only to find that the little guy has a bit of a right hook on him and the rammy isn’t going quite how he expected and that is often the way with wankers. Eventually, if unchecked they overreach themselves and end up getting enough of a kicking that they stay home and don’t bother anyone ever again or at least for a good, long while.

I look forward to the day that’s coming when Vlad spits his teeth out and pisses off home so we don’t have to listen to this whiny, malevolent wanker anymore.

Cheers, and Slava Ukraini.

Comments

Alan Culler

1 year ago #12

Pascal Derrien

1 year ago #11

Neil Smith

1 year ago #10

Pascal Derrien

1 year ago #9

Slava Ukraini.as you know we have a few bizarre specimen too in Ireland :-)

Neil Smith

1 year ago #8

Ken Boddie

1 year ago #7

Neil Smith

1 year ago #6

Neil Smith

1 year ago #5

Ken Boddie

1 year ago #4

Alan Culler

1 year ago #3

Yeah - I've been in pubs where a wanker ruined the evening maybe was the wanker in one or two in my youth.

I hope you're right about the little guy in the corner kicking Vlad's arse, but it may be time for the entire bar to say Enough, Wanker!🤪

Neil Smith

1 year ago #2

Ken Boddie

1 year ago #1

Remind me to stay clear of the pubs you drink in, Neil. 

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