top 5 shit.

by billy bearham & the billy bearham team. we collectively love you.

top five albums of the year 

1. pisshaus - piss in the house of the lord.

   kind of like the misfits meets the strokes but like fifty times more fun than that sounds. just non stop pummelling fun which is how it should be.

2. dan dong & the ding dongs - sings the songs from when youse were youngs.

   i really, actually this is embarrassing, but really don’t listen to much music made before the year 2000. i know! there’s just so much great shit happening right now! but this album is just covers of obscure songs from like the 1930s to the 1940s and it rips. who knew a song about a petticoat could also house one of the sickest riffs i’ve ever heard.

3. iron maidens iron bedpans - s/t.

   super lo-fi spooky egg punk shit, like just imagine you locked four ghouls in a room and then u came back and there was a fifth ghoul & while you’re all, hey where’d this new ghoul come from, all the ghouls start attacking you. that’s what this sounds like. 

4. butt boy - fucking howdy.

   everyones going country this year! & like for the most part i’m like eh, but this shit is good as hell, butt boy usually does like late era husker du shit so this is like completely diff. like most of the songs mention rhinestones and that is fun & he is adorable & you should all go listen.

5. morris man massacre - it’s come home.

   the far right is growing everywhere & that’s fucking terrifying. fuck nazis. everything’s fucking terrifying but this is the world we have given ourselves & we have to be the ones to change it. but this is like the kind of political punk i feel like i need right now here in the uk, just like we have to be vigilant & we have to look after each other & call shit out & this is what this band stands for & that’s rad. also the fact the lead singer recorded most of this from a cellphone is fucking insane to me. 

top five books and the very good reasons i didn’t actually finish them

1. sally rooney - intermezzo.

   so i got this on a kindle and i figured i’d go get a coffee and just sit on a park bench while the weather was nice and read some of it, treat myself y’know. so i sit down and start and i gotta say the opening line “gotta get this pasta intermezzo fast cause i am zooooo hungy!” was a really clever way of working in the title & had me hooked. but then a falcon swooped in out of nowhere and took my kindle out of my hands. 

2. helen phillips - hum.

   the falcon thing kind of threw me off a bit but y’know, it happens. so i took my back-up kindle out of my waistband & started in on hum when the falcon swooped back down again and grabbed that one as well. i was starting to get prettttttttty suspicious that something was up at this point, but for the life of me i couldn’t figure out what.

3. kaveh akbar - martyr!

   one word in and the falcon took it. that’s when it hit me. the falcon hit me, he took out a bunch of my hair. but also the realisation of what was happening, the falcon was trying to tell me that i was being wasteful. i know you can put more than one book on a kindle but i carry them in my bag and i get really scared that the words in each book are gonna get all jumbled up with each other when i walk if they’re on the same kindle, like the two books will get mushed up & i’ll get really confused & when i get confused i get angry, and you wouldn’t like me when i’m angry. like the hulk, haha. so i buy a separate kindle for each book then just discus it into the distance when i’m done with it, sometimes hitting a falcon. but the falcon was trying to tell me not to do that, that i was polluting the planet and also giving £50,000 a year to a really terrible company. i thanked the falcon and promised that from now on i’d either use a single kindle & just pray the words don’t get all mixed up or buy the physical books.

4. hanif abdurraqib - there’s always this year.

   spontaneously combusted two pages in.

5. rachel kushner - creation lake.

   accidentally started the book upside down and didn’t want to look stupid by turning it the right way up so i just stared at it for a while pretending to concentrate, one dude yelled “hey, that dudes reading a book upside down, he must have really good comprehension skills. he should be mensa.” then the falcon grabbed it out of my hands & the dude laughed at me and yelled “you see that nerd get punked by that falcon, what a dweeb.”

top five tv shows that i DEFINITELY watched, i am DEFINITELY not just winging it because i’m gonna get fired from my job of reviewing tv shows for the guardian if i admit that i don’t actually watch tv cause i get distracted by my phone and the constant stream of birds flying into my window. this list is NOT based on vague memories from my peripheral vision & the posters i saw on the tube.

1. the penguin.

   this show was so bad! i don’t know why i put it at number one! it was so bad i guess you could say that “the penguin lays an egg.” hahaha. please hold your applause. no this show was really good! i liked the way it was entirely in black and white and at the end he did actually lay an egg and then a tinier him came out and they both went “wahhhhh” at each other and then it said “the penguin is the enemy of the batman.” cause i didn’t actually get that from the complete lack of batman in this batman movie show. 

2. ted.

   if you ask me no one man has their pulse on the corpse of comedy quite like good old seth mcfarlane. i have in no way been spitting up blood every single day since i found out he’s doing a naked gun reboot. haha. so yeah. this show was really funny! i like the way it’s super broad and the way it actively kills the remaining braincells that tik tok hasn’t gotten to yet. my favourite part was when ted got a fucking boner and then slipped and fell into a fucking build a bear or whatever & was all “woz that gud four you darlin’” or whatever the fuck he said. it didn’t make me think of a tweet i read years back that said “#nanowrimoopeners “seth, you’re going to miss your flight.” she said.” or something like that, i can’t find it, i definitely didn’t think about that tweet for the first time in years while i was watching the first episode.  

3. agatha all along.

   oh man! marvel are back from what i can tell! i found this magician called lilfrogwizardchump on youtube & he’s a wizard just like i think the people on agatha show are maybe? so like i’ve watched 600 of his videos & most of them are like pretty much the same. like 99.9% of them are like this frog in a lil wizard hat and cape with some recorder music in the background & then there’s like a loud clap and some really bad editing and then there’s a dude where the frog was wearing a hat and cape and then he smirks at the camera and says “lilfrogwizardchump just freaked your mind bean.” & like they’re pretty good, i watched like 300 of them mindlessly before i was like that’s probably enough. but then i watched one more and during this one it starts off normal, but the frog opens it’s mouth and there’s like this tiny screaming emanating from the mouth and like a tiny naked man slid out. he like laid there panting for a second before standing up and just flexing his entire body, he started like slowly growing until he was six foot & then he put the hand on the frog and the frog like absorbed into the dudes skin. then he winked & said “lilfrogwizardchump just freaked your mind bean.” & then it went to black and just said subscribe for 5 minutes. so i watched the rest of his videos hoping to get like ANY info on what the hell had happened, but all of the rest were just the bad editing. i tried talking about it in the comments but i think he’s got a shadowban about talking about it cause none of them ever show up. honestly i’ve never seen any shit like it & i’ve never been outside before. really freaks my mind bean. marvel are back babbbyyyyyy.

4. nobody wants this.

   uh, they should have called this EVERYBODY wants this, and by this i mean the francis & the lights song that based on what i’ve seen about this is the entire premise of this show. i mean i did watch it. i forgot i had to say that. def saw it.

5. rivals.

   i really think they shoulda just said fuck it, let’s take the law suit and called this “everybody wants some!” cause it’s way more fitting.

top five times i saw a bug and the bug looked kind of embarassed/ashamed

1. i saw this fly eating a slug and i shook my head at it and i know reasonably it can’t feel shame but i swear it bowed it’s head before flying off

2. a beetle flew into my face and scared me, then it dropped to the ground and like stayed there for a minute just like staring at me in apology before scuttling off

3. like all the ladybugs that woke up from hibernation in my house and would just fall on me, but like they’d just woken up and i also fall on people a lot when i first wake up so it was fine, they were sweet about it

4. the slug who was climbing the door when i opened it and fell off & then just kind of laid there but then when i went back out like an hour later he was back on the door & i said sorry & he just kind of played it off like it wasn’t a big deal but i could see his lil slug cheeks blushin’.

5. there’s not a five i don’t think but five is a good number

top five best cds/dvds/playstation games i have found on the ground

1. resident evil (film) in a bush in the park (working)

2. how i met your mother season 2 disc 1 (tv) on a train (working)

3. red dead 2 installation disc (game) on walk to the station by a bush (idk if it’s working or not)

4. starsky & hutch (film) by a bin (working)

5. crash bandicoot (game) by a bin (not working, very broken)

top five times i’ve seen an orangutang in the wilds of central london and looked at it and then myself and thought “truly who is the real animal here”

1. i looked out of my office window while my boss was yelling at me and there was this orangutang just like swinging from the buildings and he looked so free while i was the one caged by my lil grey suit and terrible job.

2. sitting at home making my standard dinner of astronaut brand dehydrated protein carbonara by spitting in the cup (because in space they don’t have hot but they do have spit) and looked out my window and there was this orangutang eating like a home made gourmet hot dog with artisanal bread & i couldn’t help but think, maybe it is i that am the animal. then i had my chocolate pellets and sucked on my water feeder.

3. i was at the gym running on the giant hamster wheel when there was this giant crash outside, i ran to the window and there was an orangutang outside benching my car & i just thought, damn, maybe i’m the true animal i guess.

4. went for a coffee and had to use the toilet but i clogged it and it wouldn’t flush so i picked up the poop with my bare hands and then put it in my beanie then put my beanie on so i could secretly get rid of it. then i leave and turn a corner and there’s an orangutang just like wildly throwing his own poop. i took a second after that as the poop leaked out of my beanie and down my head to think that perhaps it is man that is the animal and that it the orangutang that is man or whatever.

5. took my kids to the zoo and my kid was yelling and screaming and hitting me with his wooden mace & we got to the orangutang and he was just sitting there blowing himself as my youngest, quince, threw up in my face. then the orangutang stopped blowing himself, looked me dead in the eyes and said, who is the real animal here. then went back to blowing himself, and it made me think….. who is the true animal here. 

top five pigeon moments from this year that made me sad

1. early this year i was waiting for a bus and it was raining and there were loads of pigeons huddled under a bench and i was staring at them because why not, and then i turned to look for the bus and then turned back & in the time it took for me to turn and turn back one of them had just like died. just dropped dead. i think about that daily.

2. the pigeon in my garden that i love getting beat up by a dove

3. the pigeon in my garden getting trapped in my greenhouse

4. dead pigeon hanging on a bridge while other pigeons sat next to it

5. dead pigeon just in the gutter

top five pigeon moments from this year that made me happy

1. someone dropping a loaf of bread on the dlr track and watching like ten pigeons play the most dangerous game of swooping in and out around the trains to get it

2. the pigeons in my garden learning to share with the doves in my garden after getting beat up by them & now they are all happy and good

3. one time in the final throes of sex i looked out the window and made eye contact with a pigeon, he opened his mouth as if he was really shocked then flew off (this didn’t happen, i have never had sex)

4. the pigeon army in lewisham just existing

5. one time when i was feeling really down at a train station a pigeon looked me dead in the eyes and said “oooo” and then flew straight into a samaritans poster.

top five songs that have made me fucking taz out, like i just hear them and i just start fucking spinning wildly, sometimes my clothes like hulk & i start crying from anger and or fear and or happiness (probably not actually released this year)

1. dartz - toyota corolla

2. liquidz - bat outta hell

3. mclusky - mi-o-mai

4. liquid mike - blc

5. los campesinos - 0898 heartache

top five songs that have made me cry on public transport this year and then this dude in a suit called greg like leans over and is all “are you okay?” & i’m like “no greg, i’m fucked, it’s all fucked, but thank you for asking.” & then he nods and pats me on the shoulder & the train keeps rolling on through the night and probably off a cliff. (probably not actually released this year)

1. shannen moser - ben

2. why bonnie - i took the shot

3. mustafa - leaving toronto

4. tyler childers - universal sound

5. taylor swift - anti hero

top five times i stared at the moon thinking about how good it would be to have a tab right now

1. tonight

2. yesterday

3. like every fucking day i exist

4. i miss tabs so much

5. ugh

top five the eras tour ratings

1. 2000s

2. 1500s cause it was metal as fuck

3. 1400s metal as fuck

4. 2100s if we make it, maybe, who am i kidding we’re not making it

5. 1700s 

top five best things i accidentally (honestly saying any of these were an accident is pushing the meaning of the word. like at this point i’m pretty sure it’s somewhere between on purpose and a coquettish oops.) swallowed this year

1. three fake teeth (down from five last year)

2. five small rocks, pebble sized

3. one rock, medium sized

4. (almost) plastic vampire teeth i found on the ground

5. five cloves of garlic unpeeled

top five things i learned / am trying to take on board this year

1. my new years resolution of learning how to rap guns & ships really didn’t require me to book out the entire year, it took like two weeks if that & the rest of the year has been a write off of just sitting here & not a single person has asked me to rap guns & ships either.

2. i started making worms out of clay cause i could & it turns out that is a hobby & having a hobby is good for you? who knew. hobbies are great, doing stuff for no particular reason is really great.

3. there are way more fun questions to ask people when meeting them than what their job is. like what they love & what they find funny & what they’re passionate about, if someone loves something you don’t know about ask them about it.

4. writing is fun! it’s really fun! we live in fucked times & there are so many good people writing the serious things. but this shit i do brings me joy & it turns out i’m good at being dumb, i don’t wanna be serious, i just wanna do this and that fucking rules. you don’t have to make shit that matters for it to matter y’know.

5. loving stuff is great, try your best to treat open hearted shit with joy.

top five things i unlearned this year

1. i dont…….. i don’t know?

top five haircuts i gave myself this year.

1. all short one long

2. too short side too short top fucked at back

3. mohawk but very very small, comically small. really just a single line of hair on my head.

4. carving two eyebrows into where my hairline is then sticking some googly eyes under them and wearing a turtleneck sweater really high up

5. all of it tucked behind my ears

top five best candles i smelled in a tj maxx

1. light me daddy

2. chris hard wick

3. chris soft wick

4. jeff rose’n’socks

5. universal health care should be a given 

top five sayings we should retire next year and what we should say instead

1. saying “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself daddy.” instead we should say “everything is fear & i am scared all of the time.” 

2. saying “you’re going to have to wine and dine me if you wanna get in these pants ladies.” instead try saying “you gotta rizz me up mommy.” 

3. saying “do one thing every day that scares you everyday daddy.” instead maybe try “do one thing that scares you everyday daddy, like my twisted mind, do my twisted mind daddy. it’s so dark and warped. i’m like the joker.”

4. saying “don’t wear white after labor day.” say “white trousers are cool but i feel like if i wear them i’m just taunting god into making me shit myself.” 

5. saying “never let the fear of striking out keep you from playing the game daddy.” try saying “tired of striking out bro? come take my online pick up artist course. you get access not just to 500 videos of me striking out with random women in the street, but you also get access to the zoom call that is constantly running that contains 500 screaming angry men at any given moment. not enough men? upgrade to gold and we’ll send you a second laptop so it’ll seem like there are 1000 angry men screaming around you. have any of our other applicants had success using our course? uh, i mean one of them died. got struck by lightning. so, uh. yeah.”

    

top five parody songs i started writing for the weird al post but didn’t really get anywhere on (bonus if you figure out what the song is)

1. dink tony club (i just really liked the title & the mental image of like 500 like kind of nitwit men named tony in their own club.)

2. mambo number five but just listing how many teeth i have in my mouth and the top row being like fifty and the bottom row being one. actually really like this and might go back to it.

3. i’m friends with a monster and he’s eating my hair.

4. cut my hot dog into pieces! can’t use a knife and fork! i’m a baby! scream while sleeping! sleep on my front and i’m not gonna have any breathing.

5. watertok, booktok, who the fuck is fall out boy.

top five substackers i think i could take in a fight if substack boxing becomes a thing (i’m actually really polite & love you, the idea of like a substack boxing match just really made me laugh tho, i will never attack you. unless you make me angry! like the hulk, haha.)

1. justsomemustard.

   listen. if you think i can’t yeet that pot of mustard into a wall so hard it explodes then you obviously haven’t seen my youtube channel where i just throw condiments really hard at a wall, i have five million subscribers & we call ourselves the condimens, some people call us the condom men and ooooh, that makes me so mad. ooooh i’m so mad just thinking about it. you can’t tell but i’m hopping mad over here! ahhhhh!

2. seth werkheiser.

   talks a lot about leaving social media, let’s see how he likes his spirit leaving his body after i punch him real hard.

3. like anyone who writes think pieces.

   oh, you like to think? think about my fist in ya why don’t ya. 

4. my friend holly.

   she doesn’t technically use substack but she’s subscribed & one time she had to apologise during a self defense seminar cause she couldn’t stop smiling while the instructor was fake strangling her. i just wanted to put that in here. i think when she told me that might be the hardest i have ever laughed.

5. olivia rafferty.

   listen, full disclosure i know her in real life. that’s why she’s so low on this list. not because she’s tougher than the others but because my knowing her & legit liking her would make me pause for at least five seconds before knocking her out.

top five facts i made up but also i’m not sure if i did make them up or not

1. the second biggest cause of death for fire fighters is choking to death on a whole lime cause they legally have to put several limes in their chilli cause they were all getting scurvy

2. if you tip a police a fiver they have to do a lil jig for you

3. if you lowkey suck on a grape for long enough it’ll be a raisin

4. in ww2 they had carrier monkeys for when the carrier pigeons were tired

5. in 2024 the number one reason people went to hospitals in the uk is men who were on e scooters and had to brake suddenly and went ball first into the metal rod holding the handlebars up (what’s that called scooter bros, i know nothing about scooters.)

top five energy drink flavours i saw on the shelf and was like wait, whatttttttt

1. light poison

2. milk

3. we don’t know what flavour this is but it’ll make you piss like a bullet, just like one loud grunt and all the piss in your body just shoots out, it’ll crack anything less than military grade porcelain though, but pretty neat.

4. e girl foot juice

5. mango passion (passionately fucking a mango flavour)

top five eminem lines from 2024

1. i’m eminem yes i’m eminem and yes i know that backwards my name looks like meanie men

2. no i didn’t write the lion king, i wish that i had written the lion king, but if i said i did i’d be a lying king you dingaling 

3. i’m slim shady i cum my pants daily

4. i always thought that the balls contain the pee, but my doctor tells me that balls do not contain the pee? so tell me mr doctor with your fancy science degree, if the balls don’t contain the pee then what contain the pee? my eyeballs? nope. no pee there! my heart? lemme check. no no pee there. my mouth. okay some pee there. but not enough pee to crack the porcelain yet again, so listen up mr science degree answer me or i guarantee you’ll be eating more pee than me you lil flea.

5. i can rap really fast but you should see how fast i type *just like ten minutes of the sounds of a dude typing not particularly fast* haha, i did it, mic drop.

top five eminem lyrics from 1424

1. yes i’m the real shady don’t burn at the stake me

2. i saw a pig eat a corpse and it fucked me up good, i wish all my underwear weren’t made out of wood

3. i’m starting to think the feudal system ain’t sustainable, we should rise up and get the means of production while it’s still attainable

4. i live in a shack and i’ll die in the shack, try to take me out the shack and i’ll cry cause i am scared of everything that’s not my shack

5. saw a squiggly line out the corner of my eye so according to science god that means i’m gonna die

top five words that have just appeared tattooed on my body

1. ominous

2. words

3. is

4. for 

5. nerds

THIS IS NOW THE PART WHERE I SUCK MYSELF OFF FIGURATIVELY CAUSE I CAN. PLUS ONE DAY ALL OF THIS SITE WILL BLOW OFF THE INTERNET LIKE A TUMBLEWEED, SO I’M GONNA CELEBRATE WHAT I DID WHEN I DID IT CAUSE I’M NOT GOOD AT DOING THAT.

top five notes i did that i actually liked.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

top five things i wrote i actually laughed at, like out loud, this is only five tho, i’ve laughed way too much at a bunch of my own stuff for my own good.

1. FROM OWL CITY THE MUSICAL ACT 3.

   A. YOUNG: NO! IT CAN’T BE! without subway sandwiches what will we all eat when we get off the train home from work and it’s too late to cook and you’re trying to be healthy so you go into subway and you ask the sandwich artist if instead of putting it on bread they could just dump all of it into a plastic bag and then you take the plastic bag and eat it with your hands while sitting on a bus station bench that’s opposite the bookies and then you see your dad getting kicked out of the bookies and you haven’t seen him since you were 12 and you’re like d-dad? and he yells son! and then he runs over the road but gets hit by a car and you try to do chest compressions but your hands are too greasy from the bag of subway ham and mayo you were eating so you kick him to the sexual health clinic in the bus station but they say there’s nothing they can do unless you want them to give him an sti check so you’re like alright then give him the sti check and then he dies in the waiting room and you get his test results back and its just an A4 piece of paper that says EVERYTHING on it and then you realise you left your bag of subway slop outside so you go back and eat it and then just go home and watch some coronation street and fall asleep.

2. FROM I’M NOT PUNK & I’M TELLING EVERYONE

   apparently they found my writing and said “this is really bad for your image. writing is not for you. it is for classic hollywood hunks and you look like a dopey spoiled victorian child dying from sugared plum disease.”

3. FROM I AM MY OWN LORE & I HATE YOU B.B. DIARY 6.

   then barks pulled out an airhorn + blared it, mr bones panicked + pulled out his emotional support gun + started firing his emotional support guns emotional support bullets into barks. 

   luckily barks is like almost entirely muppet so he just took the gun + put it in his mouth + said it lives in his mouth until class is over. 

   then barks hits the airhorn again + was like “pranks are wrong. but i am also guilty my beautiful children. i have deceived you. you see i told you there was a mcdonalds, but there is in fact not. i did this to try and show you how wrong what you did is. but in the process i have bloodied my hands. i am sorry for the evil. i have told myself it was necessary, but it weighs on me just the same.” 

   then he walked round the room + kissed us all on the forehead one after the other. 

   mr bones made an angry grunting sound when he got kissed which i think means he nutted. 

   then barks wheeled out a tv and made us watch all the jackass films.

   every now and again he would pause the film and say “this is a prank.” then nod to himself before starting it again. 

   after that we all sat in silence for a bit to try and come to terms with the harsh reality of what we’d just seen. 

4. FROM HOW TO MAKE A PUPPET.

   honestly the entire thing, but every time i see this particular picture i lose my shit

   

5. FROM WEIRD AL IS A GATEKEEPING COWARD & WE MUST STOP HIM PART 1.*

   *olivia rafferty