Hello. My name is Billy The Fish and this is my website, where I moan loudly and constantly about loads of different things, from the state of our country to the Wolves back four. It's nothing special; just the usual 'blog-type drivel - ineffectual rantings of a bitter forty-something professional trapped in London by necessity (I like the money.) and idleness (I can't be arsed to look for another job.) Ho hum.

Sadly, there are no witty flash animations or audio clips, but I'm not going to pay for any more bandwidth to entertain you monkeys when you can't even be bothered to drop me a line on the Guestbook anymore, you ungrateful swine.

Anyway, If you've never been here before, this all about me venting my spleen. (I have a particulary enormous spleen and it requires regular venting.) Back in 2003 when I set it up this site, there was no wanky 'blogging, and 'Facebook' was merely a twinkle in some arsehole's eyes. The only way one could let off steam was to shell out for one's own website, hence this place. The reason behind it was that I'd reached that stage in my life (mid Thirties, pissed off with life in general and utterly sick of London in particular) and my only outlet was to go for a few ales after work. Obviously, this used to be hell on both the liver and the wallet and it wasn't doing the sick leave record much good either. These days, if anything gets on my tits, I just write about it here and ping it out into cyberspace, which is both cheaper and immensely cathartic.

Billythefish.com has been up and running for six years now and has had over 40,000 hits. Not exactly iTunes figures, but hey, I'm not complaining. Occasionally, some nice, interesting new person will leave a message on the Guestbook for me. Not like the regulars. Bunch of miserable bleeders...

   So thanks for dropping by and cheers for the hit. Have a wander round and lose yourselves in the pointless musings of a low-watt luminary. You can leave a message for me too, if that sort of thing floats your boat. I'm reachable via billy@billythefish.com should you feel the urge, though remember that this address is in the public domain, so you may want to type your name in CAPITALS or something that'll make you stand out from all the offers for cheap software and penis enlargers that I usually get.

   Or, like I said, there's always the Guestbook. Go on, you know you want to...

   If anything in my humble domain amuses you and puts a smile on your undoubtedly gorgeous face, please feel free to spread the word. Frankly, I could do with the hits. Shitbag 'researchers' at certain tabloids (which shall remain nameless) - please don't nick anything you read here again without asking. If you want to use my words, drop me a line at the address above. I'm nothing if not cheap.

   Finally, if any Londoners out there have read through this intro and suddenly realised that you too feel the same and could do with some guidance, please click on my picture above - I think I can help give your lives some direction...

  Billy x

Allow me to introduce you to my new hero, Old Holborn; a man who has opened my eyes in the short time since I discovered his 'blog. Who is he? No idea. What is he? Imagine what I'd be like if I didn't play this site for shits and giggles and decided to say what I actually thought in greater detail and with much more venom. Sadly, given who I work for and how long my job would last, I don't have that luxury, but OH does. No, he's not a Far Right fruitcake nor is he a Communist. As far as I can tell, he hates all politicians equally, advocating, as he does, the concept of 'Libertarianism'. Not sure what I make of this yet, but I shall read and digest every morsel of information that Old Holborn imparts from now on, especially when he delivers it in such a vicious and amusing manner. Whatever your political persuasion, find a spare hour, make a cup of tea, get comfortable and click on the link opposite. Awesome.

Here is a picture of Kevin Doyle scoring. I'm putting it on the front page of my website to fucking remind me what that looks like. We are well over halfway through the season and look doomed to a scrappy relegation fight all the way in, and it's all down to our strikers being utterly fucking abysmal. It wouldn't be so bad if we'd bought crap, but our boys can and have done the biz before, it's just that this season, they couldn't hit a cow's arse with a banjo. Very frustrating. Anyway, regular readers will have noticed that the pictures of Sylvan Ebanks-Blake and Chris Iwelumo have been removed. Frankly, if I feel the urge to see a couple of prize tits in a Wolves shirt, I'll put the Lucy Pinder photo back...

Look, it's really very simple. If you download your music from iTunes, you're being ripped off. They're charging you 79p for a crappy 128kbps download, which is sheer extortion. Click on the pic opposite for much cheaper downloads at much better quality - 192kbps mostly, and many as high as 320kbps! Or, you can simply stay in love with the Apple brand and carry on wasting your cash. Mug.

Consistently one of the funniest sites on the whole interweb thingy is the mighty 'B3ta' (pronounced 'beta'), which is home to some of the most amusing pictures, stories and spoofs you'll ever come across. Visit this site while you're at work and that's it - you won't get anything done. Check out the Photoshop caption competitions and look out for some of the flash games, too. The legendary 'Buffy's Swearing Keyboard' is a scream!

Name a decent magazine dedicated to Heavy Metal. You're thinking Kerrang!, aren't you? Wrong. Back in the Eighties, maybe, but the last time I looked, they had the The Killers on the cover, which is frankly embarrassing. For a taste of the sort of stuff I listen to, pop over to the boys opposite. Cutting edge stuff from the real world of Metal. Industrial, Hardcore, Doom, Grind - it's all here. Fill your boots.

Those of you who were around in the very early days of the site may remember this one. Yes, it's the long-awaited return of the awesome 'Walking Home Drunk' game! Click on the image and move your mouse from side to side in the opposite direction from the one our little rat-arsed friend is leaning to and see how long you can keep him upright and awake. I've got him to one hundred and seventeen metres so far, which, incidentally, is about as far as I myself can make it before the kebab fairy starts whispering in my ear...

And while I'm dragging up amusing old Flash games from the past, here's another chance to get stuck into the infamous 'Cat-a-pult', which ground our servers to a halt at work back in 2001 before our miserable IT department blocked it. Give it a go. There's hours of fun to be had launching the furry little bastards into the air, dashing them against the brickwork and impaling them on spikes. Click on the cute wickle kitty to begin the carnage.

You know how it is, you have some great mates when you're younger, then you settle down (or they do) or you move on (or they do) and, though you swear to stay in touch, somehow it never quite happens. So here's where I try and track down some faces from years gone by. If anyone knows where to find Kevin 'Boog' Barnes (last seen in Bristol), Steve 'Eugene' Atherton (from Barnsley) or Anthony Whittaker (who ran off to Brighton with a girl called Nell), be a hero and direct them to this site, willya? Thanx!

Social networking sites are all the rage these days. If you're a kid there's BeBo. If you're a Tweener, all your homeys are, like, so-o-o on FaceBook and if you're a complete fucking bell-end, chances are you'll have a Twitter account. The rest of us are on MySpace. There are lots of great people there and tons of top bands to check out. Sign up and give it a go! And if you're already a MySpace bod, you can find me here. Add me to your Friends and I'll return the favour. I'm not proud, I'll associate myself with anyone, I'm such a slut...

Trolling is easily my new favourite pastime! If you've never checked out the movie gossip site, 'AICN', then it's about time you did. Lots of inside info from all the upcoming Hollywood fare. Best of all, if you sign up, you get to post your own thoughts and opinions. Or, like me, be a git and tune up the fanboys. Give it a go, and if you see any posts by 'BiggusDickus'...well, he's a hero, isn't he?

Next time you're in London, why not pop into the 'new' Intrepid Fox and have an ale or two whilst being serenaded by some choice Rock n' Metal? Ok, so it ain't got the charm of the old gaff on Wardour Street, but it's bigger and more friendly and there's loads of room to mingle over the two large floors. Simply head for Tottenham Court Road tube station, come out and walk towards Centre Point. The Fox is almost directly below it. See you there!

London is not the only city with a rock scene, Birmingham has it's moments too. Check out the spiffing two-floor brilliance of 'Scruffy's' if you're ever in town. Top floor for contemporary and nu-metal, downstairs for old skool rock and ska-punk. The beer's a bit shabby, but the tunes are spot-on. Get in!

Well, it's here! As threatened for so long, the new album from the divine 'Antiproduct' is finally amongst us - and what an album it is! Ten stonking slices of musical mayhem and madness produced by the legendary Sylvia Massy. It's easily Alex and Co's finest work and includes the killer songs 'Best Day Of Your Life' and their awesome take on the mighty Beach Boys classic 'Good Vibrations'. Head on over to their MySpace page and order your copy now. It'll give your ears something to do now that bloody 'X-Factor' is back...

There were a couple of things I initially noticed about Veronica Freeman (fnarr, fnarr!) The first thing was that she was the lead singer of a female-fronted 'rock' band that actually played rock and the second thing was that, oh my God, can she sing! There are no girly Evanescence-type Disney-metal vocals here. 'V' (as she likes to be called) sounds like a butch version of Bruce Dickinson from Iron Maiden. Her band have only released two albums so far, but both are crammed with pounding tunes and killer riffs. They're called Benedictum and if you click on her picture, you can check out just how amazing V's voice is. (Oh, and she's got great tits, too.)

Those of you who work for a living and are forced to rely on public transport may well be familiar with the delightful young lady opposite. Meet Nemi, the star of the daily free 'Metro' newspaper. You know, the one that everyone picks up as they go through the turnstyles on the underground when they've been to cheap to buy a real paper. Anyway, for those of you unfamiliar with her, Nemi is a Goth chick who spends her life drinking, shirking and having weird, surreal and sometimes downright evil thoughts. She's written and illustrated by a Norwegian artist named Lise Mhyre, who's the spitting image of her creation. Click the link opposite and have a read of some of the Metro's old strips. I think I'm in lurve!

And finally a blatant plug. Here's a link to my mate Rob's page at the Saatchi Gallery. Rob's a damn good photographer and a Photoshop guru who likes playing around with images of dark and twisted landscapes. A lot of his stuff ought to be on album covers in my opinion, but amazingly, he hasn't been approached to do one yet. So if you're a Goth or Metal band looking for a really sexy image for your next CD, give the man a buzz!

Another plug! Check out Homer's band, The Picture. This is what happens when a few schoolfriends in the '70's got together and formed a band, then lost contact with each other for thirty years before finally meeting up again to jam regularly in a Black Country studio with the aid of copious amounts of Bathams Bitter. Clicking on the piccy takes you to their MySpace page, where you can listen to their stonking tunes! Just sit quietly, close your eyes and magically relive the era of Raleigh Choppers and Olde English Spangles. Marvellous!

Apparently, my new widescreen LCD monitor is also a digital television with built in 'Freeview'. I had no idea until I pressed the wrong button on the remote control this evening and suddenly found Janet Street-Porter mooing at me in HD. Frightening.

Although I'm a die-hard PC gamer, I just have to say to all you Xbox and PS3 boys and girls; if you haven't got 'Batman: Arkham Asylum' yet, you are missing out on one of the finest gaming experiences ever created. 10/10.

Right now, I'm at the fag-end of my current job. In a little while, I will be leaving the unit I've worked in for twenty years and moving to another one. While this is, admittedly, a little sad (being forced out of a unit I helped build simply because I didn't want to apply for my own job), it is also a cause for some small celebration. Moving to a new unit means I no longer have to demonstrate any allegiance to the old one and will be freely able to use this site to let off steam about all the petty arseholes and idiot decisions that have pissed me off for the last couple of years. Don't worry, I'm not stupid - I won't be mentioning any names, places or specific details, but I do know one or two of my workmates pop in here on occasion. Let's see how good my skills as a writer really are, shall we? I wonder if any of my colleagues will be able to spot the people I'll be referring to in the forthcoming Rants? Just to whet your appetite, my first topic is going to be a full and frank discourse on over-promoted Freemasons. I think I'm going to enjoy this...