Do you think if you got talking to Osama bin Laden in a pub, you’d actually think he was an alright bloke?
I only ask because the one person I even remotely liked at my current job left last week. And he was a cunt.
It’s really not up for discussion. Empirically he was a cunt.
The man used to talk about the BNP having ‘the right idea’ and how he may have ‘accidentally’ hit his ex-girlfriend a couple of times.
See? Cunt.
But when he wasn’t saying these things, I really got on with the guy. He was one of the smartest people I’ve met since leaving university, and he had a very similar sense of humour to my own. You would not believe how difficult it is to find someone in my office who finds a blind kid running into a wall funny! The ill-advised Youtube clip I emailed around on my second day proved that.
And yet, as already stated, he was a cunt. Genuinely not a very nice person. So does this mean I’m not a very nice person? Is familiarity with wankers a symptom of one’s own wankishness? Essentially, do you have to be ‘nice’ to be agreeable?
I've been thinking about this a lot of late. Partly because I find it interesting, but mainly because it beats working. And I've decided that, with regards to my own specific predicament, this may have been an association born out of a lack of alternatives.
The people I work with are, for want of a better word, muppets. In fact that's the perfect word. They do share several characteristics with the actual Muppets: they’re infuriatingly wacky, they have limited appeal, and they’re heads are full of foam. Mayhaps a quick run down of the people I spend the majority of my working days with...
Like the indolent clock that hangs on the far wall, I’ll start at 12 o’clock; directly in front of me is essentially what you’d get if you took every Daily Mail reader in the country, decanted them into a baboon wearing a blonde wig and then kicked it through the cosmetics department at Debenham’s.
She is, to put it bluntly, the worst sort of person in the world; a moron who thinks they’re a genius.
People that are stupid are, generally speaking, aware of this fact and so, by and large, keep themselves to themselves. However with this particular specimen, there isn’t a single issue she doesn’t seem to relish weighing in on with her own particular brand of ignorant gob shite. It’s like listening to a fascist taxi-driver with Asperger’s. Statements like ‘I don’t believe in addiction to sex, it’s all in the head’ and ‘They shouldn’t be allowed to strike, they get paid enough already’ spew out of her mouth on a daily basis and grate the inside of my head like barbwire earbuds.
I think what really gave the game away with her, was when she told me with such sincere expression, totally devoid of irony, that she was currently writing a book of ‘philosophical musings’…
I truly hope she gets published. I could do with the laugh.
Then next to her, at 2 o’clock, is the walking cliché that is the ditsy pretty girl. As is so often the case, the combination of well proportioned features, slim figure and nice tits has created what is still fundamentally a super-evolved monkey, but one that has never needed to say anything either remotely intelligent or slightly interesting.
Instead, due to the aforementioned physical appearance of said homosapien, she manages to go through life squeaking things like ‘Oh my god! I had an entire pizza last night!’ and ‘Is £750 too much to spend on shoes?!’ and still be considered a functioning, worthwhile addition to the human race.
Alone, these two are enough to make you want to shove two pencils up your nose and head butt the desk. But together, the resulting exchange can only be described as an abomination to sense. When Barbie and Descartes start conducting their squeaky ill-informed discussions, extraordinary rendition suddenly seems like a happy alternative. Impossible to ignore, high-frequency conversations about calories and handbags perpetually fill the dull silence of the office, and make me consider hole-punching my eyelids in an effort to focus my concentration elsewhere.
It’s like sitting opposite two retards auditioning for Loose Women. Though in no way fun.
Next along, at sort of ten past two-ish, is my manager, who’s not actually that bad. He’s a smart guy and he doesn’t take things too seriously. Nevertheless, due to his direct proximity to the Venus de Thicko, he does turn into a bit of muppet when she speaks to him. In fact, not just a bit of a muppet. King of the muppets. Kermit the Frog himself.
This is understandable. This happens to men when a pretty girl talks to them. It’s genetics. Or something. However, about a month ago, the shell de jour split up with her boyfriend, and since then ‘the boss’ has upped his game to a truly vomit-inducing level. ‘What’s the matter? Did you lose your stapler? Ahhh…would you like a hug? There, there. It’ll be okay. Tell you what, I’ll go up to the stationary cupboard and get you another one. How about that? Is there a particular colour you’d like? I don’t think they do white, but I could always cover a black one in Tippex. No, no. Don’t mention it. Tell you what, just buy me a drink on Friday. Then I can have an excuse to buy you ten…’
So no help there, I’m afraid.
Then, opposite him (at about 15.00 hours) is the token office-weirdo. He’s in his fifties. He’s single. He has a pet tortoise called Penelope. And he holds his pint glass like a spastic. I could write a thousand words alone about this guy, but I’ll leave it at this: he looks like a disgraced geography teacher and very rarely provides evidence to suggest the contrary.
Next along, directly adjacent to me, still at 15.00 hours (but a closer one), is a Muslim woman who, presumably due to her cultural upbringing, does not speak unless spoken to. Un-funnily enough though, the times she does talk, she makes far more sense than the others. It’s a real shame she doesn’t speak more. And that she only works two days a week. And that she believes an illiterate, mass-murdering bigamist was a divine prophet. Still, can’t have everything.
Then on my left is the empty seat of my erstwhile colleague. You know, the cunt. His desk still cluttered with Nazi memorabilia and domestic abuse summonses, I occasionally glance over at it and remember the good times…
Finally, at about half ten in the evening, sitting next to 'the most annoying woman in the world', is 'the most boring man in the world'. What are the odds? I say he’s the most boring man in the world, I actually don’t know what he’s saying half the time because his voice seems incapable of reaching a volume above that of a vole tap-dancing in its socks. On a sponge. But then there’s the other half of the time…
A man much wiser than I once said: ‘A bore is a man who, when you ask him how he is, tells you’. This inference has never been more applicable than with this chap.
The first time I asked him how his weekend was, I was rewarded with a 20 minute spiel about how he had tried to organise a football match, but only 27 people turned up, and so he had to find another person so that they could play 14-a-side, and he phoned loads of people, but he couldn’t get anyone to play, and in the end someone else couldn’t make it, so they had an even number of players, so in the end it was all fine.
Once I’d poured my brain back through my ears, I asked him whether he’d won; ‘Oh, I didn’t play.’
Un-fucking-believable.
The people I work with are not bad people. Far from it. They are good, productive members of society. They’re just painfully, painfully average. Each of them content to live out their lives in the same way as the vast majority of people in this world; candidly, and with the minimum of impact. So pre-occupied with seeming 'nice', they are destined to continue this existence until the day they pop their insignificant clogs. They are boring and so, it's safe to say, not my kind of people.
Oscar Wilde said that 'every saint has a past and every sinner has a future’. And so it follows that the only person that remotely stood out in my office was an absolute arsehole, who now no longer works here.
So, does this make me an arsehole? God, I hope so!
And now my last day is almost here. Come 5pm Friday, it will be time for me to move on. Free to disassociate myself from bores and borderline paedophiles, I shall never again have to endure seven hours of mind-numbing small talk. That is, until I get another job.
No doubt, at the end of the week, I’ll be required at the pub for a couple of farewell drinks with my colleagues. All I can say is, I hope Osama's there.
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Friday, July 31, 2009
offcom!
Public dissatisfaction with the broadcasting watchdog Ofcom came to a head yesterday when over a million members of the British populace phoned the authority’s complaints-line to complain about it.
Numerous controversies ranging from the regulator’s funding structure to the ‘com’ part of its name sounding a bit rude, led to the UK’s largest bitch since records began, with 1.4 million consumers contacting the authority in what the tabloid media have dubbed ‘Moronic Blind Outrage-gate’.
Mother of nine, Mona Lot, was shocked to hear from her neighbour’s boyfriend’s cat that, in the previous financial year, Ofcom cost the individual British tax-payer over £35,000.
‘Well it’s outrageous, ‘aint it?’ she grumbled. ‘And what’s worse is I only pay £8,000 a year in tax! I had to give ‘em a piece of my mind, didn’t I?’
‘Luckily I’ve got their number on speed dial.’
Ivor Nolyfe, an unemployed cement-mixer from Deptford, lodged his complaint to the watchdog after seeing a documentary on Channel 5 that purportedly claimed that Ofcom employees spent their lunch breaks burning postage stamps and defecating over photos of Baby P.
‘Well it’s outrageous, ‘aint it?’ he grumbled. ‘There weren’t any footage of them doing it or nuffin’ but the reporter bloke said they’d done it and he looked like a really clever bloke.’
‘He was wearing a tie and that.’
In keeping with other public outcries, the vast majority of the yesterday's complainants were over 65 years-old and didn’t actually know what Ofcom was.
One such old-timer, when asked by the complaints-line operator what it was he was complaining about, screamed ‘the Blacks!’, before snoring loudly down the phone for the next twenty minutes and then informing the operator that he'd soiled himself.
In response to the various indictments, Ofcom CEO Jimmy Luffman this morning issued this statement: ‘We’re not entirely sure where these allegations have come from. Our best guess so far is that they are the result of escalating negative press about the authority, possibly stemming from last Wednesday, when my secretary told the person using the self-service check out in front of her if she wouldn’t mind hurrying it along a bit.’
However, the public outcry to ban the regulator has presented Mr. Luffman with an unprecedented dilemma. ‘Do we follow our mandate and act on the British consumers’ request and take away our authority? Because if we do that, we won’t have the authority to take away our authority. What a head fuck!’
‘It’s like that bit in the Back to the Future when all his relatives start disappearing from that photo! Sort of.’
Numerous controversies ranging from the regulator’s funding structure to the ‘com’ part of its name sounding a bit rude, led to the UK’s largest bitch since records began, with 1.4 million consumers contacting the authority in what the tabloid media have dubbed ‘Moronic Blind Outrage-gate’.
Mother of nine, Mona Lot, was shocked to hear from her neighbour’s boyfriend’s cat that, in the previous financial year, Ofcom cost the individual British tax-payer over £35,000.
‘Well it’s outrageous, ‘aint it?’ she grumbled. ‘And what’s worse is I only pay £8,000 a year in tax! I had to give ‘em a piece of my mind, didn’t I?’
‘Luckily I’ve got their number on speed dial.’
Ivor Nolyfe, an unemployed cement-mixer from Deptford, lodged his complaint to the watchdog after seeing a documentary on Channel 5 that purportedly claimed that Ofcom employees spent their lunch breaks burning postage stamps and defecating over photos of Baby P.
‘Well it’s outrageous, ‘aint it?’ he grumbled. ‘There weren’t any footage of them doing it or nuffin’ but the reporter bloke said they’d done it and he looked like a really clever bloke.’
‘He was wearing a tie and that.’
In keeping with other public outcries, the vast majority of the yesterday's complainants were over 65 years-old and didn’t actually know what Ofcom was.
One such old-timer, when asked by the complaints-line operator what it was he was complaining about, screamed ‘the Blacks!’, before snoring loudly down the phone for the next twenty minutes and then informing the operator that he'd soiled himself.
In response to the various indictments, Ofcom CEO Jimmy Luffman this morning issued this statement: ‘We’re not entirely sure where these allegations have come from. Our best guess so far is that they are the result of escalating negative press about the authority, possibly stemming from last Wednesday, when my secretary told the person using the self-service check out in front of her if she wouldn’t mind hurrying it along a bit.’
However, the public outcry to ban the regulator has presented Mr. Luffman with an unprecedented dilemma. ‘Do we follow our mandate and act on the British consumers’ request and take away our authority? Because if we do that, we won’t have the authority to take away our authority. What a head fuck!’
‘It’s like that bit in the Back to the Future when all his relatives start disappearing from that photo! Sort of.’
Thursday, July 9, 2009
extraordinary attrition
What with the intelligence agencies coming under fire again this week for employing ‘questionable’ tactics in eliciting information from suspected terrorists, I thought I might contribute to the debate by suggesting a few alternative interrogation techniques that do not contravene basic human rights laws.
- Put the suspect in a relaxed and friendly atmosphere with a bunch of intelligence agency employees, and ensure that every time he tells a joke or amusing anecdote, one of the agents loudly informs everyone else in the group that he nicked it from a stand-up act. [This will damage his ego far more than any form of sexual humiliation currently employed by the CIA.]
- Invite the suspect to attend a dinner party, then sit him between a teetotal, vegan sap, whose only frames of reference involve her job at Amnesty International and the shop where she buys her organic jumpers, and a pretentious, over-bearing fuckwit, who has decided prior to the party that he only wants to talk about how awful he found the last Bond movie. [This one is based on personal experience. Trust me; it’ll have him screaming the bomb location in no time.]
- In the, albeit unlikely, event that the prisoner is Muslim, get Ellen DeGeneres to lecture him on the rise of Israel and how much she hates Cat Stevens, whilst drunkenly attempting to draw a picture of Mohammed eating a hotdog. [Should sufficiently piss him off enough to reveal the codes in return for permission to chop her hands off.]
- And if he’s Christian, bring in a chimpanzee to demonstrate the use of its opposable thumbs by juggling fossils, whilst a stem cell scientist and an abortion clinic doctor take it in turns to recite all the passages from the Bible that make absolutely no sense. [Again, would almost certainly nark him off to such an extent that he would gladly offer up information in exchange for the opportunity to practice some of that famous Christian tolerance.]
- Strap the prisoner to a chair in front of a television screen and put on The Usual Suspects, Se7en and Planet of the Apes, turning all of them off before the last five minutes.
- Similarly, after this ordeal, put on Scream, Saving Private Ryan and Swordfish, without playing the first five minutes.
- Then just make him watch Battlefield Earth, The Postman and Revolver. Over and over and over again. [WARNING: if all three of these are employed, a bucket will be required to hold the subject's brain in, after it leaks out of his ears.]
- Force the prisoner to co-present a radio show with Zane Lowe. 24 hours a day. 7 days a week. Continue this until he a) talks, or b) kills himself (more likely).
- Place the potential terrorist in a silent, eye-gaugingly boring office environment with absolutely no work to do, so that he is forced to bear witness to the inevitably hopeless attempts of a sleazy, 50 year-old loser trying to pull a pert 20-something admin temp on an almost hourly basis. [Again, based on personal experience. It is the true definition of the word torture.]
Friday, June 12, 2009
why?
Jane Mandelson took the What perfume are you? quiz and the result is: Joop! Femme.
You’re an over-priced combination of alcohol and water that the manufacturer claims has ‘a spicy fragrance which bursts forth with lemon and has a lasting impression of patchouli oakmoss and vetiver’. Well done!
Flo Rider took the What car battery are you? quiz and the result is: Type 063 Varta Dynamic 12V 44Ah.
You’re a specific type of rechargeable device that supplies electricity to an automobile. You have a four year guarantee and are about the size of a large shoe box. Awesome!
Fred Rimmer took the What STD are you? quiz and the result is: Gonorrhea.
More often that not, you cause a yellowish discharge from the penis, resulting in frequent and painful uirination. If untreated you spread throughout the body, affecting joints and heart valves. Right on!
Alison Redbeard took the What BNP voter are you? quiz and the result is: Embittered Thicko.
You’re not very bright and have just lost your job to a beautiful Eastern-European girl who agreed to work for less money than you. You’re almost certainly poor, ugly and from the North. And, seeing as you don’t have a job anymore, you made it down to the polling booths the other day. You go girl!
Rupert Smeg-Badger took the What year of Josef Fritzl’s daughter’s captivity are you? quiz and the result is The 17th.
After the previous sixteen years of physical assault and sexual abuse at the hands of your father, you have no sense of humanity left and have given up on life in general. This year will also see you give birth to your son Stefan, who’s also your brother. Crazy! Hold on, just seven more years to go!
Jedediah Kane took the What made-up word are you? quiz and the result is Flumpretch.
You’re a real wristyjip, who knows how to have a good furkelsplat. Some people might find you a bit planetorb, but that’s just ‘spunkgrut. Bartelsplonk!
Sarah Engass took the What inconvenient time to need a shit are you? quiz and the result is: In the middle of seeing a movie at the cinema.
You’re REALLY inconvenient, because you don’t want to squeeze past all the other people in the aisle AND you don’t want to miss any of the film. Nightmare!
Timothy Simian took the What 20th century famine are you? quiz and the result is: The Great Chinese Famine.
You managed to take the lives of 20 million people during the rapid industrialisation of 1959-61. But you also increased iron production by 45%, so swings and roundabouts. Good times!
Jimmy Luffman took the What type of yellow are you? quiz and the result is: The kind of muddy one they use on the Veuve Clicquot label.
You’re not quite Academy Award gold, and you’re not quite daffodil yellow. You’re kind of in between. Fucking kick ass!
Joe Public took the What else should I be doing with my time? quiz and the result is Anything else!
You’re an over-priced combination of alcohol and water that the manufacturer claims has ‘a spicy fragrance which bursts forth with lemon and has a lasting impression of patchouli oakmoss and vetiver’. Well done!
Flo Rider took the What car battery are you? quiz and the result is: Type 063 Varta Dynamic 12V 44Ah.
You’re a specific type of rechargeable device that supplies electricity to an automobile. You have a four year guarantee and are about the size of a large shoe box. Awesome!
Fred Rimmer took the What STD are you? quiz and the result is: Gonorrhea.
More often that not, you cause a yellowish discharge from the penis, resulting in frequent and painful uirination. If untreated you spread throughout the body, affecting joints and heart valves. Right on!
Alison Redbeard took the What BNP voter are you? quiz and the result is: Embittered Thicko.
You’re not very bright and have just lost your job to a beautiful Eastern-European girl who agreed to work for less money than you. You’re almost certainly poor, ugly and from the North. And, seeing as you don’t have a job anymore, you made it down to the polling booths the other day. You go girl!
Rupert Smeg-Badger took the What year of Josef Fritzl’s daughter’s captivity are you? quiz and the result is The 17th.
After the previous sixteen years of physical assault and sexual abuse at the hands of your father, you have no sense of humanity left and have given up on life in general. This year will also see you give birth to your son Stefan, who’s also your brother. Crazy! Hold on, just seven more years to go!
Jedediah Kane took the What made-up word are you? quiz and the result is Flumpretch.
You’re a real wristyjip, who knows how to have a good furkelsplat. Some people might find you a bit planetorb, but that’s just ‘spunkgrut. Bartelsplonk!
Sarah Engass took the What inconvenient time to need a shit are you? quiz and the result is: In the middle of seeing a movie at the cinema.
You’re REALLY inconvenient, because you don’t want to squeeze past all the other people in the aisle AND you don’t want to miss any of the film. Nightmare!
Timothy Simian took the What 20th century famine are you? quiz and the result is: The Great Chinese Famine.
You managed to take the lives of 20 million people during the rapid industrialisation of 1959-61. But you also increased iron production by 45%, so swings and roundabouts. Good times!
Jimmy Luffman took the What type of yellow are you? quiz and the result is: The kind of muddy one they use on the Veuve Clicquot label.
You’re not quite Academy Award gold, and you’re not quite daffodil yellow. You’re kind of in between. Fucking kick ass!
Joe Public took the What else should I be doing with my time? quiz and the result is Anything else!
Friday, June 5, 2009
"step right up!"
9 pm. Channel 4. Time for the year’s biggest freak-show to begin. Here we go.
First in, it’s the 'poshy'. He’s called Freddie. He lives in a stately home. He’s an entrepreneur. And he’s a bell-end.
Well, so far so good. That certainly ticks all the stereotype boxes. And, surprise surprise, he’s being booed by the crowd. Hardly a shock really when you take into account the fact that most of them live in the estate down the road.
Next in, it’s the working-class bull dike. Brilliant.
This is a perfect simulacrum of the show: put people with absolutely nothing in common together in close proximity for an extended period of time.
Shake. Mock. And repeat.
This would indeed be an admirable pursuit if it were done with the aim of intergrating people from different social stratums.
But it’s not. It’s done with the ambition of seeing the limit of human tolerance. Or, to be more specific, intolerance.
And if they induce a housemate to have a nervous breakdown, then all the better for the ratings.
Needless to say, Freddie and 'Punky von Deep-Pockets' are struggling to make conversation, so in goes another staple of any Big Brother: 'Blondy McHuge-Tits'.
She’s a model (i.e. she gets snapped with her top off), and she’s got the kind of figure/personality ratio that ensures her future career after the show: Nuts, Loaded, FHM, sex video, obscurity, I'm A Celebrity...
You almost feel sorry for her.
Almost.
Well, the unpopular (and surely only) 'posh bloke' thinks he’s in there with the totty, so let’s put the dampers on him again by following her entrance with her male equivalent.
Kris spells his name with a K. Obviously.
Why not with C? Who knows? Plenty of good words begin with C etc.
Anyway, despite the fact that he fancies himself, he actually seems the most normal one in there so far, so can't have too much of a go. Plus, in the introduction video they played, he did do a David Brent impersonation, and that’s…
'Man-totty' is followed in by 'Slightly-racial totty'. She’s sort-of Irish and apparently a bit of a bible-basher. Although her first word upon entering the house is ‘fuck’. Which is interesting.
She’s incredibly pretty and doesn’t come off too bad in the video, but as soon as she steps out of the car she’s greeted with a tidal-wave of boos from the crowd.
Now, I know the sort of people who are going to queue for hours to hold up signs such as ‘Wiggly Butt’ and ‘RAF Deptford’ outside a reality-television studio aren’t particularly representative of Britain as a whole (or at least I hope not), but what clearer demonstration do you need for the rise of the far right in this country? Presumably an increase in people voting for them in local/European elections...
Then it’s time for the first of, what I assume will be, a number of people calling themselves ‘students’ but actually don’t look like they could not even spell ‘book’, let alone open one.
This spindly gobshite tells us that his name is Cairon, and he is apparently British, regardless of the fact that he sounds like an extra in Pearl Harbour.
Unfortunately, it’s this sort of watery twat that instils the public opinion of students as time-wasting, MTV-watching, free-loading gits, due to the fact that they look like they've spent their entire student loan on trainers and trendy slang.
It’s at this point in the broadcast that I realised that a posh person, when surrounded by a bunch of ‘normal people’, just comes across as gay.
Freddie sidles up to Cairon and informs him that he’s not to worry because ‘he’s rubbish at remembering names as well’. Perfectly amicable and socially-conscious phrase, you might say. But Freddie, in this setting, sounds like Mr. Humphries with a bad cold, coming on to a underage bellboy. Bizarre.
Speaking of bizarre, the next contestant is bordering on being institutionalised. We are told that she’s called Angel. She’s Russian. She’s a professional boxer. And is 35 years-old.
Okay, so born in 1974, and the wall came down in 1989, so…15 years old? That’s old enough to have secured some Soviet-sponsored steroid injections, surely?
She’s certainly looks deranged enough during her intro video. And this initial insanity is further substantiated when she exits her car looking like a cross between Liza Minnelli in Cabaret and a breeze block.
She, too, is treated ill by the crowd. Although it's predominantly harmless, as she doesn’t understand the cries of ‘Get off!’ generated by the mob, because she’s foreign. Bless.
Still, at least the dyke’s got come company.
Then it’s Scottish totty, who the Channel 4 producers are desperately trying to portray as a ‘bitch’ , so as to distance herself from the other two identical birds in there so far, even though she’s EXACTLY the same but has bigger tits than the Christian and smaller than the future porn star. Which I suppose is how it should be really.
Some bloke who has chubby sideburns is up next, who we are led to believe, again thanks to the classic editing skills of Zeppotron, thinks he looks like Wolverine. He likes comic-books and, judging by his appearance, burgers. I like him.
He is quickly proceeded by the show's token Muslim for this series, who claims to want to be on Big Brother in order to ‘dispel the view of Muslims in Britain today’.
However, within thirty seconds of being in the house, the Essex-girl trio unanimously decide that 'Benazir’ is too complicated to say, so they're going to call her ‘Benny’.
Looks like she’s got a long way to go.
Next, it’s a midget…well…yes…quite…see previous blog for comments on that one.
Then a Hispanic bi-sexual who, like most people who claim to be bi-sexual, is just a big gay.
Then a massive gay.
[Note to producers: space the gays out please. If I wanted to be inundated with campness on primetime television, I’d watch the news.]
Then it’s supposedly another ‘bitch’, who actually just seems to be a relatively intelligent woman that prefers to cut through all the bullshit.
Why she’s entered herself in this competiton, fuck knows!
But she’s a single mum, twice divorced and relatively safe, so we can’t be too hard on her, can we?...Oh, apparently we can. Well, at least it’s not just the ethnic contestants getting a pasting from the crowd.
Then it's another fuckwit student.
He's a bit geeky and will, presumably, turn out to lose his virginity on the show.
And last, but not least…(please be an amputee, please be an amputee)…it’s...an Iranian Russell Brand.
Well I wasn’t expecting that.
Although the boo’s he’s getting, I was.
So, that’s it.
Another load of freaks have been delivered onto our tellies to entertain us through the those shallow summer days.
And what have we learned?
Britain is:
a) full of freaks
b) disproportionately racist
c) ultimately doomed
Right, I’m off to bed.
First in, it’s the 'poshy'. He’s called Freddie. He lives in a stately home. He’s an entrepreneur. And he’s a bell-end.
Well, so far so good. That certainly ticks all the stereotype boxes. And, surprise surprise, he’s being booed by the crowd. Hardly a shock really when you take into account the fact that most of them live in the estate down the road.
Next in, it’s the working-class bull dike. Brilliant.
This is a perfect simulacrum of the show: put people with absolutely nothing in common together in close proximity for an extended period of time.
Shake. Mock. And repeat.
This would indeed be an admirable pursuit if it were done with the aim of intergrating people from different social stratums.
But it’s not. It’s done with the ambition of seeing the limit of human tolerance. Or, to be more specific, intolerance.
And if they induce a housemate to have a nervous breakdown, then all the better for the ratings.
Needless to say, Freddie and 'Punky von Deep-Pockets' are struggling to make conversation, so in goes another staple of any Big Brother: 'Blondy McHuge-Tits'.
She’s a model (i.e. she gets snapped with her top off), and she’s got the kind of figure/personality ratio that ensures her future career after the show: Nuts, Loaded, FHM, sex video, obscurity, I'm A Celebrity...
You almost feel sorry for her.
Almost.
Well, the unpopular (and surely only) 'posh bloke' thinks he’s in there with the totty, so let’s put the dampers on him again by following her entrance with her male equivalent.
Kris spells his name with a K. Obviously.
Why not with C? Who knows? Plenty of good words begin with C etc.
Anyway, despite the fact that he fancies himself, he actually seems the most normal one in there so far, so can't have too much of a go. Plus, in the introduction video they played, he did do a David Brent impersonation, and that’s…
'Man-totty' is followed in by 'Slightly-racial totty'. She’s sort-of Irish and apparently a bit of a bible-basher. Although her first word upon entering the house is ‘fuck’. Which is interesting.
She’s incredibly pretty and doesn’t come off too bad in the video, but as soon as she steps out of the car she’s greeted with a tidal-wave of boos from the crowd.
Now, I know the sort of people who are going to queue for hours to hold up signs such as ‘Wiggly Butt’ and ‘RAF Deptford’ outside a reality-television studio aren’t particularly representative of Britain as a whole (or at least I hope not), but what clearer demonstration do you need for the rise of the far right in this country? Presumably an increase in people voting for them in local/European elections...
Then it’s time for the first of, what I assume will be, a number of people calling themselves ‘students’ but actually don’t look like they could not even spell ‘book’, let alone open one.
This spindly gobshite tells us that his name is Cairon, and he is apparently British, regardless of the fact that he sounds like an extra in Pearl Harbour.
Unfortunately, it’s this sort of watery twat that instils the public opinion of students as time-wasting, MTV-watching, free-loading gits, due to the fact that they look like they've spent their entire student loan on trainers and trendy slang.
It’s at this point in the broadcast that I realised that a posh person, when surrounded by a bunch of ‘normal people’, just comes across as gay.
Freddie sidles up to Cairon and informs him that he’s not to worry because ‘he’s rubbish at remembering names as well’. Perfectly amicable and socially-conscious phrase, you might say. But Freddie, in this setting, sounds like Mr. Humphries with a bad cold, coming on to a underage bellboy. Bizarre.
Speaking of bizarre, the next contestant is bordering on being institutionalised. We are told that she’s called Angel. She’s Russian. She’s a professional boxer. And is 35 years-old.
Okay, so born in 1974, and the wall came down in 1989, so…15 years old? That’s old enough to have secured some Soviet-sponsored steroid injections, surely?
She’s certainly looks deranged enough during her intro video. And this initial insanity is further substantiated when she exits her car looking like a cross between Liza Minnelli in Cabaret and a breeze block.
She, too, is treated ill by the crowd. Although it's predominantly harmless, as she doesn’t understand the cries of ‘Get off!’ generated by the mob, because she’s foreign. Bless.
Still, at least the dyke’s got come company.
Then it’s Scottish totty, who the Channel 4 producers are desperately trying to portray as a ‘bitch’ , so as to distance herself from the other two identical birds in there so far, even though she’s EXACTLY the same but has bigger tits than the Christian and smaller than the future porn star. Which I suppose is how it should be really.
Some bloke who has chubby sideburns is up next, who we are led to believe, again thanks to the classic editing skills of Zeppotron, thinks he looks like Wolverine. He likes comic-books and, judging by his appearance, burgers. I like him.
He is quickly proceeded by the show's token Muslim for this series, who claims to want to be on Big Brother in order to ‘dispel the view of Muslims in Britain today’.
However, within thirty seconds of being in the house, the Essex-girl trio unanimously decide that 'Benazir’ is too complicated to say, so they're going to call her ‘Benny’.
Looks like she’s got a long way to go.
Next, it’s a midget…well…yes…quite…see previous blog for comments on that one.
Then a Hispanic bi-sexual who, like most people who claim to be bi-sexual, is just a big gay.
Then a massive gay.
[Note to producers: space the gays out please. If I wanted to be inundated with campness on primetime television, I’d watch the news.]
Then it’s supposedly another ‘bitch’, who actually just seems to be a relatively intelligent woman that prefers to cut through all the bullshit.
Why she’s entered herself in this competiton, fuck knows!
But she’s a single mum, twice divorced and relatively safe, so we can’t be too hard on her, can we?...Oh, apparently we can. Well, at least it’s not just the ethnic contestants getting a pasting from the crowd.
Then it's another fuckwit student.
He's a bit geeky and will, presumably, turn out to lose his virginity on the show.
And last, but not least…(please be an amputee, please be an amputee)…it’s...an Iranian Russell Brand.
Well I wasn’t expecting that.
Although the boo’s he’s getting, I was.
So, that’s it.
Another load of freaks have been delivered onto our tellies to entertain us through the those shallow summer days.
And what have we learned?
Britain is:
a) full of freaks
b) disproportionately racist
c) ultimately doomed
Right, I’m off to bed.
Thursday, June 4, 2009
"roll up! roll up!"
Well, it’s that time of year again. The streets are filling up with first-time parents out of school for summer break, the weather’s beginning to make you sweat like a paedophile at Disneyland, and, to place a great big turd-coloured cherry on the cake, Big Brother is getting ready to grace our screens once more.
Channel 4 producers have promised that this series will prove the ‘most diverse and cosmopolitan ever’ and will include contestants from ‘the four corners of the world’. So, a bunch of freaks then. Brilliant.
Still, The Apprentice is coming to an end and I do need something to laugh at. So I feel that this season I shall succumb to the secretly inherent compulsion we all have to gawp at people lower on the social-scale than ourselves. And in light of this, I’d like to put forward my suggestions for members of the Big Brother house this year:
Billy Felch: a cheeky chirpy chappy, he always wears zany hats, continually says what’s on his mind no matter how outrageous it is, and has no arms.
Lefreak C’estchic: utterly 'mad' and outrageously gay, Lefreak loves gaymen, being gay and everything about gay culture. He makes no secret of his own particular proclivities and hopes to be responsible for the first ever Cleveland steamer delivered live on Channel 4.
Twig: Twig doesn’t believe in surnames. Nor does he believe in western imperialism, neo-conservative capitalism or washing his balls.
Susan Boyle: not THE Susan Boyle, but a woman so obsessed with Susan Boyle that she's legally changed her name to emulate her idol. The twenty six year-old now also wears frumpy dresses, eats battered kebabs and swears like a sailor.
George Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall de Mellier: ‘posh boy’ George comes from a very distinguished family, who have owned most of Derbyshire since the time of the Restoration. He is characterised by his dry wit, clipped accent and tendency to say that the Holocaust is a global Jewish conspiracy and never happened.
Achmed Smith: 'crazy old Achmed' is always getting himself into scrapes. Whether it be locking himself outside the house without any clothes on or being arrested for plotting to blow up a tube train, Achmed is sure to be the centre of some sort of shenanigans.
Sheryl Pinstripe: gorgeous poll-dancer Sheryl has a fun bubbly personality, a body to die for, all topped off with the world’s most perfect smile. She also has a cock.
Robert Éclair: a born-again Christian and father of twelve, Robert is the embodiment of religious morality, tradition and goodwill. He plays the church organ every Sunday, coaches the church football team and regularly shags his pet goat, Gertrude. He also fucks cows.
Sarah Tall: a midget, but she's called Sarah Tall. Big Brother viewers will NEVER get tired of this. She will definitely win.
Jeffrey Higgins: a sales manager from East Sussex, Jeffrey enjoys discussing current events with his friends, plays rugby for his local village team, and spends his weekends with his wife and two young children. Ladbrokes have given him a 2:1 chance of walking out of the house on the second day.
Channel 4 producers have promised that this series will prove the ‘most diverse and cosmopolitan ever’ and will include contestants from ‘the four corners of the world’. So, a bunch of freaks then. Brilliant.
Still, The Apprentice is coming to an end and I do need something to laugh at. So I feel that this season I shall succumb to the secretly inherent compulsion we all have to gawp at people lower on the social-scale than ourselves. And in light of this, I’d like to put forward my suggestions for members of the Big Brother house this year:
Billy Felch: a cheeky chirpy chappy, he always wears zany hats, continually says what’s on his mind no matter how outrageous it is, and has no arms.
Lefreak C’estchic: utterly 'mad' and outrageously gay, Lefreak loves gaymen, being gay and everything about gay culture. He makes no secret of his own particular proclivities and hopes to be responsible for the first ever Cleveland steamer delivered live on Channel 4.
Twig: Twig doesn’t believe in surnames. Nor does he believe in western imperialism, neo-conservative capitalism or washing his balls.
Susan Boyle: not THE Susan Boyle, but a woman so obsessed with Susan Boyle that she's legally changed her name to emulate her idol. The twenty six year-old now also wears frumpy dresses, eats battered kebabs and swears like a sailor.
George Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall de Mellier: ‘posh boy’ George comes from a very distinguished family, who have owned most of Derbyshire since the time of the Restoration. He is characterised by his dry wit, clipped accent and tendency to say that the Holocaust is a global Jewish conspiracy and never happened.
Achmed Smith: 'crazy old Achmed' is always getting himself into scrapes. Whether it be locking himself outside the house without any clothes on or being arrested for plotting to blow up a tube train, Achmed is sure to be the centre of some sort of shenanigans.
Sheryl Pinstripe: gorgeous poll-dancer Sheryl has a fun bubbly personality, a body to die for, all topped off with the world’s most perfect smile. She also has a cock.
Robert Éclair: a born-again Christian and father of twelve, Robert is the embodiment of religious morality, tradition and goodwill. He plays the church organ every Sunday, coaches the church football team and regularly shags his pet goat, Gertrude. He also fucks cows.
Sarah Tall: a midget, but she's called Sarah Tall. Big Brother viewers will NEVER get tired of this. She will definitely win.
Jeffrey Higgins: a sales manager from East Sussex, Jeffrey enjoys discussing current events with his friends, plays rugby for his local village team, and spends his weekends with his wife and two young children. Ladbrokes have given him a 2:1 chance of walking out of the house on the second day.
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
denied and prejudice
American shock jock Michael Savage has today confirmed that he is to continue with legal proceedings against Jackie Smith, after he was included on a list of undesirables banned from entering the UK that she published last month before the Telegraph expenses-shitstorm, when everything was dandy.
Savage has labelled the government decision as ‘crazy’, claiming that the list, which was designed to prevent people who ‘stir up hatred and promote extreme views’ from entering Britain, was ‘probably compiled by a bunch of immigrant benders’ and that he ‘clearly shouldn’t be on it’.
‘How in the world can she allege that my words are zealous and offensive?’ he asked during an interview on BBC Radio 5 Live this morning.
‘Anyway, I understand she’s now out of a job. Dumb bitch was asking for it. God punishes the wicked. Not the Islamic God, you understand. He doesn't exist. And even if he did, he'd probably be committing benefit fraud'.
Savage, who hosts right-wing radio show The Savage Nation, has vehemently defended the views he has expressed during his fifteen years on air. ‘For example’, he said. ‘When I said that homosexuality made me want to puke, I wasn’t referring
to the act itself, but merely the word. I simply can’t stand the letter H. Makes my stomach turn just thinking about it’.
‘And don’t get me stared on M’.
When questioned over his assertion that transsexuals were ‘not normal’, Savage claimed that he was misquoted, and actually said ‘not formal’. ‘They rarely dress in Black Tie, that’s all I was saying’.
‘Similarly, when I said that Muslims could take their religion and shove it up their behinds, I was actually being sarcastic. Duhhhh!’
Savage is confident of his success in the impending defamation proceedings, arguing that ‘any rational-minded individual can tell I should not be denied entry to the UK’.
‘Unless the judge is a fag or a wog. In that case, I’m screwed’.
Savage has labelled the government decision as ‘crazy’, claiming that the list, which was designed to prevent people who ‘stir up hatred and promote extreme views’ from entering Britain, was ‘probably compiled by a bunch of immigrant benders’ and that he ‘clearly shouldn’t be on it’.
‘How in the world can she allege that my words are zealous and offensive?’ he asked during an interview on BBC Radio 5 Live this morning.
‘Anyway, I understand she’s now out of a job. Dumb bitch was asking for it. God punishes the wicked. Not the Islamic God, you understand. He doesn't exist. And even if he did, he'd probably be committing benefit fraud'.
Savage, who hosts right-wing radio show The Savage Nation, has vehemently defended the views he has expressed during his fifteen years on air. ‘For example’, he said. ‘When I said that homosexuality made me want to puke, I wasn’t referring
to the act itself, but merely the word. I simply can’t stand the letter H. Makes my stomach turn just thinking about it’.‘And don’t get me stared on M’.
When questioned over his assertion that transsexuals were ‘not normal’, Savage claimed that he was misquoted, and actually said ‘not formal’. ‘They rarely dress in Black Tie, that’s all I was saying’.
‘Similarly, when I said that Muslims could take their religion and shove it up their behinds, I was actually being sarcastic. Duhhhh!’
Savage is confident of his success in the impending defamation proceedings, arguing that ‘any rational-minded individual can tell I should not be denied entry to the UK’.
‘Unless the judge is a fag or a wog. In that case, I’m screwed’.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
"unexpected moron in bagging area"
Today the government announced that it would be producing a series of public service broadcasts designed to tutor people who have yet to work out the intricacies of using a supermarket self-service checkout.A recent study from Coswick Polytechnic has shown that over 90% of UK consumers still have problems with the complex process of scanning their product’s barcode over the infrared beam before placing the items into the adjacent carrier bag.
Head of Moronic Studies at the poly, Prof. Fred de Mer, said that, whilst they were aware of the existence of people sufficiently stupid enough to have difficulties working this simplest of devices, they were ‘shocked to discover the true number of complete and utter fuckwits in this country today’.
‘Our survey utilised twenty members of the public to accurately represent a cross-section of British society. These included nine chavs, four teenage mothers, five bent MPs and a couple of racists. And only two of the chavs managed to scan the eight items in properly and in under twenty minutes'.
‘Mind you, when it came to paying for the items, they both legged it out the door’.
In a statement issued by Downing Street, it was revealed that the public service broadcasts are to be made by the same production company that make the popular CBeebies show Nina and the Neurons, in order to effectively appeal to their target audience's mental capacity.
The broadcasts are also scheduled to be screened during the ad-breaks of shows such as Britain’s Got Talent, I’m a Celebrity… and Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps.
Experts say that the broadcasts should reduce both queue lengths and the blood-pressure of people who can use the machines, who are forever stuck behind those that can’t.
One such competent individual was quoted as saying ‘For fuck’s sake! Hurry the fuck up, you cunt! How fucking difficult is it to scan something and put it in a bag! My fucking nine year-old could do this faster! What the fuck have you got in your head, shit-for-brains!’
Monday, June 1, 2009
what a #1 hit-single would be like if it were written by someone with the maturity of a 6 year-old and not a multi award-winning alternative rock band
[to be sung to the tune of 'Sex on Fire' by Kings of Leon]
Yesterday drinking,
drinking all day.
Skulling the lager,
sweet nectar.
Then out for a curry,
I did it again.
Ordered a Balti,
a hot one.
Owwwww, my ring is on fire!
Initial rumble,
run to the loo.
It's touching the cloth,
just made it.
Sting of the first one,
eyes start to sweat.
Feels like I'm dying,
I'm dying.
Owwwww, my ring is on fire!
Making me perspire!
Hot as a fever,
rumbling guts.
Hoop like an oven,
a Hotpoint.
It's nearly over,
thank fuck for that.
Oh no, there's more,
it's coming, it's coming.
Owwwww, my ring is on fire!
Oww Owwwww, my ring is on fire!
Feels like barbed wire!
Oww Owwwww, my ring is on fire!
It's truly dire!
Yesterday drinking,
drinking all day.
Skulling the lager,
sweet nectar.
Then out for a curry,
I did it again.
Ordered a Balti,
a hot one.
Owwwww, my ring is on fire!
Initial rumble,
run to the loo.
It's touching the cloth,
just made it.
Sting of the first one,
eyes start to sweat.
Feels like I'm dying,
I'm dying.
Owwwww, my ring is on fire!
Making me perspire!
Hot as a fever,
rumbling guts.
Hoop like an oven,
a Hotpoint.
It's nearly over,
thank fuck for that.
Oh no, there's more,
it's coming, it's coming.
Owwwww, my ring is on fire!
Oww Owwwww, my ring is on fire!
Feels like barbed wire!
Oww Owwwww, my ring is on fire!
It's truly dire!
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
conversatioNs
N: You know Hitler, right?
T: Not personally, but…
N: What?
T: Doesn’t matter. Yeah. Hitler.
N: Well, apparently he’s not dead.
T: …
N: Yeah, I was watching this thing on the Discovery Channel, and they found a body, right, but they’re not sure that it’s his, because it was all burnt and that.
T: Sure. It could’ve been the keyboard player from ‘Sparks’.
N: Sparks?
T: Yeah.
N: …
T: They were a band in the eighties, and the keyboard player had a funny little Hitler-moustache.
N: …
T: It was a joke.
N: But was he even alive back then?
T: Almost certainly not.
N: Well then how could it be him?
T: Sure. It was a joke based in absurdity. Apologies. So, you were saying that Hitler is still alive…
N: What star sign are you?
T: Leo.
N: Oh, that makes sense. You’re quite temperamental.
T: Do you really believe in all that nonsense?
N: Yeah.
T: …
N: It’s true! I have a friend who’s a Leo, and one day she’ll be happy and the next day she’s all sad and depressed.
T: Well maybe she’s bipolar.
N: Which one’s that?
T: What?
N: Is that the scales?
[This time, with N’s friend J]:
N: Do you play anything?
T: You two saps.
J: What?
T: The ‘Utusaps’. They're like Amazonian panpipes. I picked some up when I was in South America.
N: Oh really?
T: Yeah, I play them every opportunity I get.
N: What do they sound like?
T: What do you two saps sound like?
N: Yeah.
T: You two saps sound like a couple of drowned cats.
J: Really!?
T: Yeah. Quite embarrassing really. But they're really easy to play.
N: Oh.
T: Do you two play anything?
N+J: No.
T: Not personally, but…
N: What?
T: Doesn’t matter. Yeah. Hitler.
N: Well, apparently he’s not dead.
T: …
N: Yeah, I was watching this thing on the Discovery Channel, and they found a body, right, but they’re not sure that it’s his, because it was all burnt and that.
T: Sure. It could’ve been the keyboard player from ‘Sparks’.
N: Sparks?
T: Yeah.
N: …
T: They were a band in the eighties, and the keyboard player had a funny little Hitler-moustache.
N: …
T: It was a joke.
N: But was he even alive back then?
T: Almost certainly not.
N: Well then how could it be him?
T: Sure. It was a joke based in absurdity. Apologies. So, you were saying that Hitler is still alive…
N: What star sign are you?
T: Leo.
N: Oh, that makes sense. You’re quite temperamental.
T: Do you really believe in all that nonsense?
N: Yeah.
T: …
N: It’s true! I have a friend who’s a Leo, and one day she’ll be happy and the next day she’s all sad and depressed.
T: Well maybe she’s bipolar.
N: Which one’s that?
T: What?
N: Is that the scales?
[This time, with N’s friend J]:
N: Do you play anything?
T: You two saps.
J: What?
T: The ‘Utusaps’. They're like Amazonian panpipes. I picked some up when I was in South America.
N: Oh really?
T: Yeah, I play them every opportunity I get.
N: What do they sound like?
T: What do you two saps sound like?
N: Yeah.
T: You two saps sound like a couple of drowned cats.
J: Really!?
T: Yeah. Quite embarrassing really. But they're really easy to play.
N: Oh.
T: Do you two play anything?
N+J: No.
Monday, May 18, 2009
thought for tomorrow
Yesterday I had two thoughts.
I didn’t. I had more than two thoughts. Obviously. I had loads of thoughts. At least twelve.
But I had two thoughts that could easily be drawn together and utilised in an introduction to a blog. And it’s these two that I’d like to dwell on.
My first thought was: ‘I need to write a new blog’.
It’s approaching two months since I last came into work, opened up Word, minimised the window, moved it down to the very bottom-right corner of the screen, changed the font size to 8, looked over both shoulders to check that no one was watching, and then totally undermined all my attempts at surreptition by tapping away at the keyboard like a jacked-up coke fiend with hammers for hands. And ADHD.
‘Right’ I thought. ‘I’m going to write something topical’ I thought.
However, after spending the last two days scanning through the various information websites, I have come to the conclusion that there is nothing of any particular substance in the news at the moment. Absolutely sod all worth commenting on to any considerable degree. Allow me to demonstrate:
MP’s expenses: They’ve been doing it for years. Now they’ve been caught. A few of them will lose their jobs. They’ll stop doing it for a while. The public will forget. They’ll start doing it again. Nothing changes.
Sri Lankan ceasefire: The Sri Lankan government kicked the shit out of the Tamils. The government declared a ceasefire. The Tamil’s didn’t. The Tamils will form numerous splinter groups and continue to promote violence until the marginalisation of their people has ended. Nothing changes.
Swine Flu: 14 new cases in the UK. A total of 8,400 worldwide. With 72 deaths. A truly terrifying 0.008% fatality rate. The World Health Organisation will continue to over-play any threat of a pandemic, no matter how minor, in order to justify their expenses. And utter tools will continue to wear face masks on the tube. Nothing changes.
‘So’ I thought. ‘No help from the news’ I thought.
Then I had loads of thoughts (told you so!): ‘What do I think is a sufficiently valid topic?’ ‘What do I feel passionate enough to write about?’ Essentially, ‘what gets on my nerves to such an extent that I would feel compelled to do my Hammer Hands impression?’
And this led to my second thought: ‘the BNP should just be given their own island somewhere’.
Let me explain.
Last night, I was in the bathroom, brushing my teeth and thinking about Nazis.
‘They really are absolute shits!’ I thought as I gave my molars a good scrubbing. Directing the toothbrush towards my lateral incisor, I shook my head as I thought ‘judging people by their race is completely insane!’ I rinsed my mouth out. ‘Tomorrow’ I thought. ‘I’ll write a blog about how the BNP should just be given their own island somewhere’ I thought.
So I came into work today, all ready and eager to write my blog. And what happens?
Charlie Brooker steals my idea!
Don't believe me? Here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/may/18/charlie-brooker-bnp-racism
Un-fucking-believeable!
Why couldn't he write about MP's expenses!? The Sri Lankan ceasefire is surely a more worthy topic! Or Swine Flu!? There's loads of material in that!
Still, it's true what they say about 'Great Minds'...they don't vote BNP.
I didn’t. I had more than two thoughts. Obviously. I had loads of thoughts. At least twelve.
But I had two thoughts that could easily be drawn together and utilised in an introduction to a blog. And it’s these two that I’d like to dwell on.
My first thought was: ‘I need to write a new blog’.
It’s approaching two months since I last came into work, opened up Word, minimised the window, moved it down to the very bottom-right corner of the screen, changed the font size to 8, looked over both shoulders to check that no one was watching, and then totally undermined all my attempts at surreptition by tapping away at the keyboard like a jacked-up coke fiend with hammers for hands. And ADHD.
‘Right’ I thought. ‘I’m going to write something topical’ I thought.
However, after spending the last two days scanning through the various information websites, I have come to the conclusion that there is nothing of any particular substance in the news at the moment. Absolutely sod all worth commenting on to any considerable degree. Allow me to demonstrate:
MP’s expenses: They’ve been doing it for years. Now they’ve been caught. A few of them will lose their jobs. They’ll stop doing it for a while. The public will forget. They’ll start doing it again. Nothing changes.
Sri Lankan ceasefire: The Sri Lankan government kicked the shit out of the Tamils. The government declared a ceasefire. The Tamil’s didn’t. The Tamils will form numerous splinter groups and continue to promote violence until the marginalisation of their people has ended. Nothing changes.
Swine Flu: 14 new cases in the UK. A total of 8,400 worldwide. With 72 deaths. A truly terrifying 0.008% fatality rate. The World Health Organisation will continue to over-play any threat of a pandemic, no matter how minor, in order to justify their expenses. And utter tools will continue to wear face masks on the tube. Nothing changes.
‘So’ I thought. ‘No help from the news’ I thought.
Then I had loads of thoughts (told you so!): ‘What do I think is a sufficiently valid topic?’ ‘What do I feel passionate enough to write about?’ Essentially, ‘what gets on my nerves to such an extent that I would feel compelled to do my Hammer Hands impression?’
And this led to my second thought: ‘the BNP should just be given their own island somewhere’.
Let me explain.
Last night, I was in the bathroom, brushing my teeth and thinking about Nazis.
‘They really are absolute shits!’ I thought as I gave my molars a good scrubbing. Directing the toothbrush towards my lateral incisor, I shook my head as I thought ‘judging people by their race is completely insane!’ I rinsed my mouth out. ‘Tomorrow’ I thought. ‘I’ll write a blog about how the BNP should just be given their own island somewhere’ I thought.
So I came into work today, all ready and eager to write my blog. And what happens?
Charlie Brooker steals my idea!
Don't believe me? Here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/may/18/charlie-brooker-bnp-racism
Un-fucking-believeable!
Why couldn't he write about MP's expenses!? The Sri Lankan ceasefire is surely a more worthy topic! Or Swine Flu!? There's loads of material in that!
Still, it's true what they say about 'Great Minds'...they don't vote BNP.
Monday, March 23, 2009
work quirks 2: armed and fabulous
So, after spending the majority of the morning on facebook whilst pretending to work, it’s then time for lunch (apologies for it being a two week lunch break by the way – I had some serious drinking to do).
I personally look forward to lunchtime with almost the same anticipation as hometime; a chance to finally get out the office. However, some people resign themselves to the total mundanity of their job by having lunch at their desks. Before writing this blog, I typed ‘office ettiquete’ into google and was asked if i meant 'office etiquette'. I did. Eventually I was presented with numerous articles, all offering different rules and regulations on how to conduct oneself in the work place. One tip that popped up on all of them was: if you planned on eating at your desk, keep it simple. Anything more extravagant than a cheese sandwich was roundly considered a bad idea, due to the distracting effect such food can have on your colleagues. This rule, however, is not only rejected by the people working in my office, but flouted to the point of absurdity. Everyday the people I work with tuck in to a medley of ridiculously flamboyant nosh; seafood paella, Goan fish curry, broccoli and stilton chowder served in an old running shoe. It has almost reached the level of competition for the two girls that sit opposite me; ‘I’ll see you’re tofu casserole and raise you some Korean fermented cabbage.’ It’s not that I’m one of those people whose stomach turns upon getting a whiff of this kind of pungent pabulum. It’s just distracting. And it makes you simultaneously hungry for sustenance yourself, and depressed that all you have to look forward to is a crummy old cheese sandwich...? Fuck it! Tomorrow I’m coming in with my fondue set.
Say you are, unlike myself, the sort of person that is prone to telling people what is on their mind. How would you go about telling the person sitting opposite you that perhaps their choice of a lunch time meal wasn’t particularly appropriate for the close proximity conditions of the work place? In the real world, you’d feel at ease in amicably spouting ‘Christ Tony! That stuff stinks! Take it outside will ya!’ But this sort of language doesn’t fly in the office environment. No, in the office it’s formality all the way. From the method of your actions to the clothes you wear, every element of office life is conducted with an air of unending officialdom. Everyone presents themselves appropriately. Everyone treats each other graciously and with respect. People open doors for others and apologise for their interruptions. It’s one of the last true bastions of etiquette left in the country today. And it’s bloody awful!
Idiots that read the Daily Mail are continuously exposed to endless articles about 'Broken Britain' and how what this country needs is a return to the 'traditional' values of constraint and propriety. But a world in which everyone acts like their in one big office may be a world in which verbal profanity would be down, but shotgun-toting mad men would definitely be up. It’s just not natural to treat other humans in this way. We are godless, marauding, killing, shagging, defecating mammals, and being forced to act like we’re in an Enid Blyton novel would create mass despondency and, ultimately, complete and utter population breakdown. Trust me, it’d be Mad Max 2 after a fortnight.
One thing, it seems, that is permissible within the office I work in, is the use of needlessly loud and irritating mobile ring tones. Let’s face it, your ring tone is only amusing to you; no one else cares, and everyone else doesn’t get it. It must be said, the majority of the office (including myself) put their phones on vibrate during work hours. However there are a couple of crazy cats that spurn these attempts at consideration and keep their phones turned up to eleven. They’re wacky, and they want you to know it.
Tubular bells guy: this chap works in the forever-busy legal department and consequently we are treated to the eery tune from The Exorcist at least five times a day. Needless to say, it never gets old.
Nokia salsa guy: some bloke that sits directly behind me has opted for the salsa tune that comes standard with all Nokia phones. Of the almost infinite number of sounds that he can program his phone to make, he has decided that this little ditty sums his character up perfectly. I, for one, have to agree. He is generic, dull and f*cking irritating.
Yoda text message guy: this absolute wanker jumped on the band wagon a couple of years ago (along with just about every other Nuts reader in the country) and downloaded the hilarious text message tone of Yoda saying ‘mmm, message from the dark side you have.’ This joke was funny for about 2 seconds (coincidentally, the same length of time as the tone itself). But this c*nt has kept this gag long past it’s sell buy date, seeming to believe that being post-modern about Star Wars demonstrates some sort of profound intellect. I mean it has only been a couple of decades since people have started doing it; maybe people haven’t cottoned on yet? Tosser!
There is a person in my office that laughs every time that Yoda text message thing goes off, and I really wish that he wouldn’t. He is the sort of bloke that laughs at just about any comment that skims, however slightly, the surface of humour. These people are great sometimes; when you’re feeling kind of down and want a moron that’ll giggle at everything you say, eventually proclaiming that you are 'one funny fucker', thus confirming what you already knew. But the problem with these people is that everyone thinks they’re a comedian around them, and consequently they perpetuate possibly the worst aspect of office life: the unfunny ‘funny guy’.
I’m certain every office has one (the two I’ve worked in so far have). They’re instantly recognisable by their daft grin, zany tie and ability to look like a stupid cock before even opening their mouth. They usually have a gang of cronies that swarm around their desk at periodic intervals in order to get a top up of comedy gold. Occasionally one of the pack will attempt to be ‘funny’ too, but will immediately be beaten down by the group’s leader. They're like hyenas in that way. Though they're not as funny as the ones from The Lion King.
Anyway, this is the guy that, when he gets an idea for a funny email, cc’s everyone in the department in on it so we can all relish his divine wit. You hear a courteous chuckle here, a half-hearted titter there. You yourself force out a single solitary ‘Ha’, just to be polite. Then inevitably 'Mr. Better Laugh So That People Will Like Me' pipes in with his speciality: ‘You’re hilarious mate. You’re wasted here. You should be on the stage!’ Yeah, you should be on the stage. Preferably you'd be sharing it with a guillotine, but definitely on the stage. ‘That bit where his head fell in the basket! Priceless!’ But it’s too late. This guy now thinks he’s the funniest thing since sliced bread and because of the aforementioned formalities of office etiquette he will continue to think this until he lands himself in hospital after trying out that one from chav-gags.com at his local Wetherspoons. ‘What’s the most confusing day of the year for a Chav?...Father’s Day!...I said Fa…’
So these are some of the fun obstacles that one has to deal with during the average afternoon at work. By four o’clock everyone seems to have given up even attempting to look like they’re doing any work (a bit like Friday) and you spend the final hour playing Tetris in the corner of your screen. Towards the end of the week, the unfunny ‘funny guy’ sends an email around saying that he’s going to go to the office local after work to ‘drink a hundred pints of beer’ (or something equally as wacky) and wants an audience. So you fob him off with another excuse. My last one was that I had just received an emergency text and had to head home immediately. It was half true; my housemate had just been promoted and was back in the living room with two bottles of gin.
That was a lot of fun. Or at least it was until the alarm went off the following morning.
I personally look forward to lunchtime with almost the same anticipation as hometime; a chance to finally get out the office. However, some people resign themselves to the total mundanity of their job by having lunch at their desks. Before writing this blog, I typed ‘office ettiquete’ into google and was asked if i meant 'office etiquette'. I did. Eventually I was presented with numerous articles, all offering different rules and regulations on how to conduct oneself in the work place. One tip that popped up on all of them was: if you planned on eating at your desk, keep it simple. Anything more extravagant than a cheese sandwich was roundly considered a bad idea, due to the distracting effect such food can have on your colleagues. This rule, however, is not only rejected by the people working in my office, but flouted to the point of absurdity. Everyday the people I work with tuck in to a medley of ridiculously flamboyant nosh; seafood paella, Goan fish curry, broccoli and stilton chowder served in an old running shoe. It has almost reached the level of competition for the two girls that sit opposite me; ‘I’ll see you’re tofu casserole and raise you some Korean fermented cabbage.’ It’s not that I’m one of those people whose stomach turns upon getting a whiff of this kind of pungent pabulum. It’s just distracting. And it makes you simultaneously hungry for sustenance yourself, and depressed that all you have to look forward to is a crummy old cheese sandwich...? Fuck it! Tomorrow I’m coming in with my fondue set.
Say you are, unlike myself, the sort of person that is prone to telling people what is on their mind. How would you go about telling the person sitting opposite you that perhaps their choice of a lunch time meal wasn’t particularly appropriate for the close proximity conditions of the work place? In the real world, you’d feel at ease in amicably spouting ‘Christ Tony! That stuff stinks! Take it outside will ya!’ But this sort of language doesn’t fly in the office environment. No, in the office it’s formality all the way. From the method of your actions to the clothes you wear, every element of office life is conducted with an air of unending officialdom. Everyone presents themselves appropriately. Everyone treats each other graciously and with respect. People open doors for others and apologise for their interruptions. It’s one of the last true bastions of etiquette left in the country today. And it’s bloody awful!
Idiots that read the Daily Mail are continuously exposed to endless articles about 'Broken Britain' and how what this country needs is a return to the 'traditional' values of constraint and propriety. But a world in which everyone acts like their in one big office may be a world in which verbal profanity would be down, but shotgun-toting mad men would definitely be up. It’s just not natural to treat other humans in this way. We are godless, marauding, killing, shagging, defecating mammals, and being forced to act like we’re in an Enid Blyton novel would create mass despondency and, ultimately, complete and utter population breakdown. Trust me, it’d be Mad Max 2 after a fortnight.
One thing, it seems, that is permissible within the office I work in, is the use of needlessly loud and irritating mobile ring tones. Let’s face it, your ring tone is only amusing to you; no one else cares, and everyone else doesn’t get it. It must be said, the majority of the office (including myself) put their phones on vibrate during work hours. However there are a couple of crazy cats that spurn these attempts at consideration and keep their phones turned up to eleven. They’re wacky, and they want you to know it.
Tubular bells guy: this chap works in the forever-busy legal department and consequently we are treated to the eery tune from The Exorcist at least five times a day. Needless to say, it never gets old.
Nokia salsa guy: some bloke that sits directly behind me has opted for the salsa tune that comes standard with all Nokia phones. Of the almost infinite number of sounds that he can program his phone to make, he has decided that this little ditty sums his character up perfectly. I, for one, have to agree. He is generic, dull and f*cking irritating.
Yoda text message guy: this absolute wanker jumped on the band wagon a couple of years ago (along with just about every other Nuts reader in the country) and downloaded the hilarious text message tone of Yoda saying ‘mmm, message from the dark side you have.’ This joke was funny for about 2 seconds (coincidentally, the same length of time as the tone itself). But this c*nt has kept this gag long past it’s sell buy date, seeming to believe that being post-modern about Star Wars demonstrates some sort of profound intellect. I mean it has only been a couple of decades since people have started doing it; maybe people haven’t cottoned on yet? Tosser!
There is a person in my office that laughs every time that Yoda text message thing goes off, and I really wish that he wouldn’t. He is the sort of bloke that laughs at just about any comment that skims, however slightly, the surface of humour. These people are great sometimes; when you’re feeling kind of down and want a moron that’ll giggle at everything you say, eventually proclaiming that you are 'one funny fucker', thus confirming what you already knew. But the problem with these people is that everyone thinks they’re a comedian around them, and consequently they perpetuate possibly the worst aspect of office life: the unfunny ‘funny guy’.
I’m certain every office has one (the two I’ve worked in so far have). They’re instantly recognisable by their daft grin, zany tie and ability to look like a stupid cock before even opening their mouth. They usually have a gang of cronies that swarm around their desk at periodic intervals in order to get a top up of comedy gold. Occasionally one of the pack will attempt to be ‘funny’ too, but will immediately be beaten down by the group’s leader. They're like hyenas in that way. Though they're not as funny as the ones from The Lion King.
Anyway, this is the guy that, when he gets an idea for a funny email, cc’s everyone in the department in on it so we can all relish his divine wit. You hear a courteous chuckle here, a half-hearted titter there. You yourself force out a single solitary ‘Ha’, just to be polite. Then inevitably 'Mr. Better Laugh So That People Will Like Me' pipes in with his speciality: ‘You’re hilarious mate. You’re wasted here. You should be on the stage!’ Yeah, you should be on the stage. Preferably you'd be sharing it with a guillotine, but definitely on the stage. ‘That bit where his head fell in the basket! Priceless!’ But it’s too late. This guy now thinks he’s the funniest thing since sliced bread and because of the aforementioned formalities of office etiquette he will continue to think this until he lands himself in hospital after trying out that one from chav-gags.com at his local Wetherspoons. ‘What’s the most confusing day of the year for a Chav?...Father’s Day!...I said Fa…’
So these are some of the fun obstacles that one has to deal with during the average afternoon at work. By four o’clock everyone seems to have given up even attempting to look like they’re doing any work (a bit like Friday) and you spend the final hour playing Tetris in the corner of your screen. Towards the end of the week, the unfunny ‘funny guy’ sends an email around saying that he’s going to go to the office local after work to ‘drink a hundred pints of beer’ (or something equally as wacky) and wants an audience. So you fob him off with another excuse. My last one was that I had just received an emergency text and had to head home immediately. It was half true; my housemate had just been promoted and was back in the living room with two bottles of gin.
That was a lot of fun. Or at least it was until the alarm went off the following morning.
Monday, March 9, 2009
work quirks
Let us, to quote that bloke Lewis Caroll, begin at the beginning. The alarm goes off. You drag yourself out of your glowing cocoon of a bed and brave the freezing, gloomy world outside. You shower, pump yourself full of caffeine and head off to the tube, where you spend the entire journey crushed into an elongated metal coffin, packed to the rafters with other equally miserable human beings. Then you get to work and are met with the prospect of spending the proceeding eight hours of your life staring into the empty void of a computer screen like a 21st century Narcissus.
Now, maybe I’m way off on this one, but the last thing I want to do when I arrive at this carpeted prison is confirm the dire circumstances of my situation by greeting everyone in the place with a cheery address. Yet everyone feels the need to wish a ‘Good Morning’ to everyone else upon beginning their daily incarceration. It is a need almost based in compulsion, as you seem to run the risk of spending the remainder of the day totally devoid of all human contact if you fail to utter this initial greeting. Regardless of the fact that you’ve probably only spent a maximum of fifteen hours apart from your beloved colleagues, office etiquette dictates that you have to go through this same rigmarole each and every morning before you can re-establish communications with them. I’m not saying that the process of wishing people a ‘Good Morning’ every day is particularly taxing, but surely it’s come to something when people refuse to acknowledge your existence without it. I’ll give you an example.
The other day, I arrived at work in my usual fashion (i.e. pissed-off and hung-over) and plonked myself down at my desk. There are six people who work in my immediate area, but at ridiculous o’clock only the girl that sits diagonally opposite to me was present. A pleasant girl, we usually exchange some form of verbal exchange at the start of the day. However, this particular morning, she had her head down studying a text with what seemed to be a relative intensity. My mental process was as follows: she looks like she’s busy, plus I feel like my head’s been raped by Zinedine Zidane, ergo I’ll forego the morning pleasantries. I must have sat there for the better part of half an hour before I was startled from my delirious haze to discover that she was looking over at me, her eyebrows raised in expectation of an answer. ‘I’m sorry?’ I grumbled. ‘Good morning’ she said…Good. Fucking. Morning. Seriously? Is there really any need to say that after I’d been there for thirty minutes? For god’s sake woman, I sit less than 2 metres from you! Unless you have the depth perception of Gordon Brown, there’s no way you missed me being there all this time! But this, it seems, is one of the many ridiculously pointless things you have to do in an office.
So, then it’s off to make the first cup of what inevitably turns out to be an unhealthy amount of coffee. I happen to sit quite close to the kitchen area of my office and thus, determined to avoid the unbelievably awkward small-talk that occurs in such areas, I usually wait until the coffee making area is totally devoid of human activity before I make my move for the caffeine. Nevertheless sometimes, whether because I’m still drunk to the point where my perception isn’t functioning, or because of some sodding colleague that generates the noise levels of a tit mouse, I get stuck in the kitchen area with a fellow human being. And then it’s too late. You can’t turn around and walk out. They’ve seen you. You are trapped.
So you return the awkward smile and try to go about preparing your coffee without making a fuss. You’ve retrieved your favourite mug from the cupboard (the one with Garfield lying in a hammock. Brilliant.) and you’re deliberately spooning in the coffee granules at a snail’s pace because the other person is standing right in front of the kettle, and…'How’s it going?’ Damn! So close. You almost made it out of there with some level of decorum, but now you’re going to have to exit the kitchen doing that awkward crouching side-step walk, like a crab wearing a too many hats. The reason? Because there is no naturalistic way to end one of these kitchen conversations. More often than not it’s someone you don’t know particularly well, because the people you work with are sitting at their desks, waiting for you to bring them their coffee like some cotton field-owning taskmaster (discussed below). No, it’s usually some random guy from Accounts who’s been hanging around there all morning so he can tell everyone that walks in that he’s off to Cuba next week. The conversation always follows the same pattern: You reply with the usual ‘Fine thanks. Yourself?’ Then the person that instigated the conversation says their fine and then launches into the topic that they wanted to talk about in the first place; the whole reason for their simulated interest in your wellbeing.
Everyone does it. Every single person thinks about themselves more than anything else in the world. But no one wants to admit that they do. So they disguise it. More often than not, it doesn’t vary much from the usual set up of a seemingly innocuous question designed to be reciprocated in order that the designated topic comes up. We’ve all done it. We’ve got something seriously cool planned to do on Saturday so it’s ‘Got anything planned for the weekend?’ They tell you that they might just chill out, go to the pub with some mates etc. And all the while you’re bursting with anticipation. Simultaneously excited by the prospect and anxious that you might blow your prepared explanation. The one that you’ve designed to drip in casualness, like a denim dressing-gown. The one which you’ve been practicing in your head ever since you found out about Saturday. Sometimes the gap between their answer and the polite reciprocation is unbearably long. A chasm of shattered hopes. You begin to crumble in the shadow of this potential ennui. But then it happens: ‘What about you?’ Finally. ‘Oh, I’m just going sky diving with Daniel Craig’.
Anyway, back to the kitchen. ‘Cuba eh? Wow. Sounds awesome. Really? 32 degrees? Huh. No. No, I’ve never been. Always wanted to though. Yeah. Yeah. Yeeeaaaahhhh. Right. Well, have a good time. See you when you get back. We’ll still be here. Haw haw haw.’ Then it’s time for the crab walk; You don’t know if they’ve finished boring you with their crap chat. You’ve tried to tie the conversation up nicely with that little accessible gag. All you want to do is get the hell out of there with your coffee, but you can’t look like all you want to do is get the hell out of there with your coffee. So you do the crab walk. It starts off slow; a kind of half-turn shuffle, all the while grinning inanely, just to demonstrate how much you enjoyed your conversation. Eventually this transforms into a forced canter about as natural as sarin nerve gas, which you retain all the way back to your desk. Sometimes they haven’t finished telling you about Cuba, and you have to stop half way through your turn and look like you weren’t about to go. Now that’s awkward.
Another perceived rule regarding coffee production is never EVER make one without asking everyone else in the building whether they’d like one first. This one took me a fair old time to get a grip of. For the first few days at my current job, every time I came back to my desk with a fresh cup of coffee, I was welcomed with some decidedly frosty glares from my colleagues. The sort of look you might give someone if they’d just told you that they laughed their head off all the way through Shindler’s List. Disapprovingly, I suppose. I don’t actually have too much of a problem with this one. It’s simple common courtesy. However, there are some people that never offer to go to the kitchen. They tend to be in the more senior positions and consequently feel it beneath them to do something for you. They worked hard so they don’t have to make the coffee any more. Those days are behind them. I’m not sure I agree with this mentality, and personally deem it to be in the same league as drinking your way through everybody else’s round at the pub, before farting loudly and walking out the door.
Right, that’s lunch.
Now, maybe I’m way off on this one, but the last thing I want to do when I arrive at this carpeted prison is confirm the dire circumstances of my situation by greeting everyone in the place with a cheery address. Yet everyone feels the need to wish a ‘Good Morning’ to everyone else upon beginning their daily incarceration. It is a need almost based in compulsion, as you seem to run the risk of spending the remainder of the day totally devoid of all human contact if you fail to utter this initial greeting. Regardless of the fact that you’ve probably only spent a maximum of fifteen hours apart from your beloved colleagues, office etiquette dictates that you have to go through this same rigmarole each and every morning before you can re-establish communications with them. I’m not saying that the process of wishing people a ‘Good Morning’ every day is particularly taxing, but surely it’s come to something when people refuse to acknowledge your existence without it. I’ll give you an example.
The other day, I arrived at work in my usual fashion (i.e. pissed-off and hung-over) and plonked myself down at my desk. There are six people who work in my immediate area, but at ridiculous o’clock only the girl that sits diagonally opposite to me was present. A pleasant girl, we usually exchange some form of verbal exchange at the start of the day. However, this particular morning, she had her head down studying a text with what seemed to be a relative intensity. My mental process was as follows: she looks like she’s busy, plus I feel like my head’s been raped by Zinedine Zidane, ergo I’ll forego the morning pleasantries. I must have sat there for the better part of half an hour before I was startled from my delirious haze to discover that she was looking over at me, her eyebrows raised in expectation of an answer. ‘I’m sorry?’ I grumbled. ‘Good morning’ she said…Good. Fucking. Morning. Seriously? Is there really any need to say that after I’d been there for thirty minutes? For god’s sake woman, I sit less than 2 metres from you! Unless you have the depth perception of Gordon Brown, there’s no way you missed me being there all this time! But this, it seems, is one of the many ridiculously pointless things you have to do in an office.
So, then it’s off to make the first cup of what inevitably turns out to be an unhealthy amount of coffee. I happen to sit quite close to the kitchen area of my office and thus, determined to avoid the unbelievably awkward small-talk that occurs in such areas, I usually wait until the coffee making area is totally devoid of human activity before I make my move for the caffeine. Nevertheless sometimes, whether because I’m still drunk to the point where my perception isn’t functioning, or because of some sodding colleague that generates the noise levels of a tit mouse, I get stuck in the kitchen area with a fellow human being. And then it’s too late. You can’t turn around and walk out. They’ve seen you. You are trapped.
So you return the awkward smile and try to go about preparing your coffee without making a fuss. You’ve retrieved your favourite mug from the cupboard (the one with Garfield lying in a hammock. Brilliant.) and you’re deliberately spooning in the coffee granules at a snail’s pace because the other person is standing right in front of the kettle, and…'How’s it going?’ Damn! So close. You almost made it out of there with some level of decorum, but now you’re going to have to exit the kitchen doing that awkward crouching side-step walk, like a crab wearing a too many hats. The reason? Because there is no naturalistic way to end one of these kitchen conversations. More often than not it’s someone you don’t know particularly well, because the people you work with are sitting at their desks, waiting for you to bring them their coffee like some cotton field-owning taskmaster (discussed below). No, it’s usually some random guy from Accounts who’s been hanging around there all morning so he can tell everyone that walks in that he’s off to Cuba next week. The conversation always follows the same pattern: You reply with the usual ‘Fine thanks. Yourself?’ Then the person that instigated the conversation says their fine and then launches into the topic that they wanted to talk about in the first place; the whole reason for their simulated interest in your wellbeing.
Everyone does it. Every single person thinks about themselves more than anything else in the world. But no one wants to admit that they do. So they disguise it. More often than not, it doesn’t vary much from the usual set up of a seemingly innocuous question designed to be reciprocated in order that the designated topic comes up. We’ve all done it. We’ve got something seriously cool planned to do on Saturday so it’s ‘Got anything planned for the weekend?’ They tell you that they might just chill out, go to the pub with some mates etc. And all the while you’re bursting with anticipation. Simultaneously excited by the prospect and anxious that you might blow your prepared explanation. The one that you’ve designed to drip in casualness, like a denim dressing-gown. The one which you’ve been practicing in your head ever since you found out about Saturday. Sometimes the gap between their answer and the polite reciprocation is unbearably long. A chasm of shattered hopes. You begin to crumble in the shadow of this potential ennui. But then it happens: ‘What about you?’ Finally. ‘Oh, I’m just going sky diving with Daniel Craig’.
Anyway, back to the kitchen. ‘Cuba eh? Wow. Sounds awesome. Really? 32 degrees? Huh. No. No, I’ve never been. Always wanted to though. Yeah. Yeah. Yeeeaaaahhhh. Right. Well, have a good time. See you when you get back. We’ll still be here. Haw haw haw.’ Then it’s time for the crab walk; You don’t know if they’ve finished boring you with their crap chat. You’ve tried to tie the conversation up nicely with that little accessible gag. All you want to do is get the hell out of there with your coffee, but you can’t look like all you want to do is get the hell out of there with your coffee. So you do the crab walk. It starts off slow; a kind of half-turn shuffle, all the while grinning inanely, just to demonstrate how much you enjoyed your conversation. Eventually this transforms into a forced canter about as natural as sarin nerve gas, which you retain all the way back to your desk. Sometimes they haven’t finished telling you about Cuba, and you have to stop half way through your turn and look like you weren’t about to go. Now that’s awkward.
Another perceived rule regarding coffee production is never EVER make one without asking everyone else in the building whether they’d like one first. This one took me a fair old time to get a grip of. For the first few days at my current job, every time I came back to my desk with a fresh cup of coffee, I was welcomed with some decidedly frosty glares from my colleagues. The sort of look you might give someone if they’d just told you that they laughed their head off all the way through Shindler’s List. Disapprovingly, I suppose. I don’t actually have too much of a problem with this one. It’s simple common courtesy. However, there are some people that never offer to go to the kitchen. They tend to be in the more senior positions and consequently feel it beneath them to do something for you. They worked hard so they don’t have to make the coffee any more. Those days are behind them. I’m not sure I agree with this mentality, and personally deem it to be in the same league as drinking your way through everybody else’s round at the pub, before farting loudly and walking out the door.
Right, that’s lunch.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
twitter twatter
You know who are idiots? Those idiots that post comments on YouTube. What a bunch of idiots.
Every single video on the site comes equipped with nauseatingly moronic commentary, courtesy of the world’s spotty little twat-faced populace. The infuriatingly-opinionated imbeciles that reel off these generic comments, presumably in between broadband-speed internet porn binges, continuously feel the need to validate their own existences by informing us that the new Fleet Foxes video is ‘so post modern’, or that they love the bit when Stewie shoots Brian in the kneecaps. ‘“Where’s my money, man!” Ha ha ha!’
So they lol and ;-) their way through a couple of lines, hit the ‘Post Comment’ button, and immediately feel as if they’ve made an impact on the world. What a bunch of idiots.
I’ve been aware of this issue for numerous years now but, like most things in this world, I simply put it down to the majority of people in it being thick. However the other evening, whilst re-watching an episode of one of the funniest shows ever to have graced the BBC, Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe, I came across this comment posted 3 weeks ago:
‘screenwipe is for those more "intelligent people" who see tv as wat it is and love listening to charlie vent their frustrations for them :) like me’
This thoughtful assertion was made by a person calling themselves 'oasisaquiesce'. Sign one.
Sign two; regardless, of whether this statement is accurate, and technically the bit about 'Screenwipe' is, what sort of cunt writes that?! Aside from the fact that he used the incredibly naff way of spelling perpetuated by proles more attached to their mobile phones than they are to reality, he actually felt the need to write that! He sat there on his computer and thought it’d be worth his while to hit the necessary keys in the necessary order to create that ‘sentence’! To tell the world that he, despite almost total evidence to the contrary, is intelligent! W@ a 2L! I h8 ppl lk dat!
Incidentally, whilst researching for this blog, I came across this website:
http://www.lingo2word.com/translatetxt.php?searcher1=word&tosearch1=Create+Cool+Messages+,+Just+Type+Your+Message+in+the+left+box
This is essentially a utility for those who are wondering how best to convey information to people who have the language skills of a 90 year-old Asperger sufferer (i.e. those that talk ‘street’). Simply type in what you would like to say to said retard and click da button and you are rewarded with the best way to put it to them in a text. So, 'Hello there. How are you?' becomes ‘Hi der. Sup?’, and ‘What do you think about the economic problems facing the West today?’ becomes ‘Wadya tnk bout d econmc probs facing d west 2day?’ Admittedly if you do communicate in this daft style, you can fit more into a text, but you do run the substantial risk of blowing it completely with a girl when you ask her whether she would ‘fanC a \_/ aftr wrk?’
But back to these gobshites on YouTube. Do they really think that people care about their bland opinions?
[Note: I should just state at this juncture that I am perfectly aware of the irony of someone who is venting his frustrations on the internet moaning about people that are ostensibly doing the very same thing. However, there’s a couple of differences; 1) I don’t care what people think about my opinions, and 2) I’m not writing about how hilarious a collage of Bush quotes that someone’s looped over the top of American Idiot is. Plus, technically I’m getting paid for my opinions, as I write this blog at work. I have far more important stuff to do in my spare time. Like go on YouTube.]
As already alluded to, the majority of these pointless comments are posted by square-eyed no-hopers with the consequential significance of a jam sandwich. They watch the video of some guy getting hit in the nuts. They laugh. And then they feel the need to relay their pleasure onto the next viewer. The simple reason they do this is because they feel like they matter.
Most reasonably discerning individuals are aware that we exist as a completely irrelevant collection of matter in an ever-expanding universe, which itself logically means that we are getting more irrelevant every second (a fact ironically proven by the comments posted on YouTube). But no, not these chuckleheads. They want you to know that they ‘saw this in hd. wow awesome quality!!!!!!!!!!’
This obsession with informing others about what we are thinking and doing has recently reached an absurd zenith with the sudden rise in popularity of the twitter website. Essentially a social networking site, twitter seems to cater to people who feel the status function on facebook is not nearly self-indulgent enough. Now with a simple click of a button, you can inform friends, family and anyone who happens to have an account, exactly what you’re doing as you do it. Oh yeah, it’s not like Facebook where you have to confirm fellow users’ access to your profile; any random sociopath can hunt you down and ‘follow' you (surely an uncomfortable term). One of my ‘followers’ for example is some nut job calling him or herself 'AngelaKarnes' from Nashville TN. Let’s face it, it’s a him.
Aside from the usual gobbledygook (a natural consequence of giving simpletons access to a keyboard), there are status updates that list literally the most mundane activities in day-to-day life. For instance, 'austinhg' felt it appropriate to let people know that he was ‘in the doctors office, finally getting my chest examined’. Really? Not the head? 'BigLizzie' was ‘waiting for her pie to cool’. Good to hear you’re throwing caution to the wind there, Liz. And someone calling themselves ‘Stechski’ at half past midnight on 18th February said that he was ‘Chillin at home’.
Now, this is such a boring thing to state that there is only one explanation for it; this man killed a person that evening and thought he’d utilise the wonders of the world wide web to provide himself with an alibi.
‘Me’lad, the records on twitter clearly state that my client was at his place of residence at the time of the murder. Therefore I move for mistrial.’
‘Agreed. Case dismissed.’
Stechski just beat the rap. 12.58pm on the web.
Etc.
And why do people feel the need to continuously detail every aspect of their lives? If you said ‘insecurity of the highest order’, then you’d be right. Well done.
Yes, I’m afraid even if you’re Stephen Fry or Jonathan Ross, you still crave attention on a minute-by-minute basis. Or should that be especially if you’re Stephen Fry or Jonathan Ross. Whether this attention is real (as with said celebrities) or imaginary (as with everybody else), it is this necessity to validate our own worth that causes people to involve themselves in this world of constant updates and meaningless prattle.
Or at least that’s how I see it. Is it a bad thing? Probably not. Does it annoy me? Yeah, why not.
Occasionally, when attempting to refresh the ‘Everyone’ streaming function on twitter, one is confronted by a blank page sporting a single message:
Twitter is over capacity.
Too many tweets!
Well, they nearly got it right.
Every single video on the site comes equipped with nauseatingly moronic commentary, courtesy of the world’s spotty little twat-faced populace. The infuriatingly-opinionated imbeciles that reel off these generic comments, presumably in between broadband-speed internet porn binges, continuously feel the need to validate their own existences by informing us that the new Fleet Foxes video is ‘so post modern’, or that they love the bit when Stewie shoots Brian in the kneecaps. ‘“Where’s my money, man!” Ha ha ha!’
So they lol and ;-) their way through a couple of lines, hit the ‘Post Comment’ button, and immediately feel as if they’ve made an impact on the world. What a bunch of idiots.
I’ve been aware of this issue for numerous years now but, like most things in this world, I simply put it down to the majority of people in it being thick. However the other evening, whilst re-watching an episode of one of the funniest shows ever to have graced the BBC, Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe, I came across this comment posted 3 weeks ago:
‘screenwipe is for those more "intelligent people" who see tv as wat it is and love listening to charlie vent their frustrations for them :) like me’
This thoughtful assertion was made by a person calling themselves 'oasisaquiesce'. Sign one.
Sign two; regardless, of whether this statement is accurate, and technically the bit about 'Screenwipe' is, what sort of cunt writes that?! Aside from the fact that he used the incredibly naff way of spelling perpetuated by proles more attached to their mobile phones than they are to reality, he actually felt the need to write that! He sat there on his computer and thought it’d be worth his while to hit the necessary keys in the necessary order to create that ‘sentence’! To tell the world that he, despite almost total evidence to the contrary, is intelligent! W@ a 2L! I h8 ppl lk dat!
Incidentally, whilst researching for this blog, I came across this website:
http://www.lingo2word.com/translatetxt.php?searcher1=word&tosearch1=Create+Cool+Messages+,+Just+Type+Your+Message+in+the+left+box
This is essentially a utility for those who are wondering how best to convey information to people who have the language skills of a 90 year-old Asperger sufferer (i.e. those that talk ‘street’). Simply type in what you would like to say to said retard and click da button and you are rewarded with the best way to put it to them in a text. So, 'Hello there. How are you?' becomes ‘Hi der. Sup?’, and ‘What do you think about the economic problems facing the West today?’ becomes ‘Wadya tnk bout d econmc probs facing d west 2day?’ Admittedly if you do communicate in this daft style, you can fit more into a text, but you do run the substantial risk of blowing it completely with a girl when you ask her whether she would ‘fanC a \_/ aftr wrk?’
But back to these gobshites on YouTube. Do they really think that people care about their bland opinions?
[Note: I should just state at this juncture that I am perfectly aware of the irony of someone who is venting his frustrations on the internet moaning about people that are ostensibly doing the very same thing. However, there’s a couple of differences; 1) I don’t care what people think about my opinions, and 2) I’m not writing about how hilarious a collage of Bush quotes that someone’s looped over the top of American Idiot is. Plus, technically I’m getting paid for my opinions, as I write this blog at work. I have far more important stuff to do in my spare time. Like go on YouTube.]
As already alluded to, the majority of these pointless comments are posted by square-eyed no-hopers with the consequential significance of a jam sandwich. They watch the video of some guy getting hit in the nuts. They laugh. And then they feel the need to relay their pleasure onto the next viewer. The simple reason they do this is because they feel like they matter.
Most reasonably discerning individuals are aware that we exist as a completely irrelevant collection of matter in an ever-expanding universe, which itself logically means that we are getting more irrelevant every second (a fact ironically proven by the comments posted on YouTube). But no, not these chuckleheads. They want you to know that they ‘saw this in hd. wow awesome quality!!!!!!!!!!’
This obsession with informing others about what we are thinking and doing has recently reached an absurd zenith with the sudden rise in popularity of the twitter website. Essentially a social networking site, twitter seems to cater to people who feel the status function on facebook is not nearly self-indulgent enough. Now with a simple click of a button, you can inform friends, family and anyone who happens to have an account, exactly what you’re doing as you do it. Oh yeah, it’s not like Facebook where you have to confirm fellow users’ access to your profile; any random sociopath can hunt you down and ‘follow' you (surely an uncomfortable term). One of my ‘followers’ for example is some nut job calling him or herself 'AngelaKarnes' from Nashville TN. Let’s face it, it’s a him.
Aside from the usual gobbledygook (a natural consequence of giving simpletons access to a keyboard), there are status updates that list literally the most mundane activities in day-to-day life. For instance, 'austinhg' felt it appropriate to let people know that he was ‘in the doctors office, finally getting my chest examined’. Really? Not the head? 'BigLizzie' was ‘waiting for her pie to cool’. Good to hear you’re throwing caution to the wind there, Liz. And someone calling themselves ‘Stechski’ at half past midnight on 18th February said that he was ‘Chillin at home’.
Now, this is such a boring thing to state that there is only one explanation for it; this man killed a person that evening and thought he’d utilise the wonders of the world wide web to provide himself with an alibi.
‘Me’lad, the records on twitter clearly state that my client was at his place of residence at the time of the murder. Therefore I move for mistrial.’
‘Agreed. Case dismissed.’
Stechski just beat the rap. 12.58pm on the web.
Etc.
And why do people feel the need to continuously detail every aspect of their lives? If you said ‘insecurity of the highest order’, then you’d be right. Well done.
Yes, I’m afraid even if you’re Stephen Fry or Jonathan Ross, you still crave attention on a minute-by-minute basis. Or should that be especially if you’re Stephen Fry or Jonathan Ross. Whether this attention is real (as with said celebrities) or imaginary (as with everybody else), it is this necessity to validate our own worth that causes people to involve themselves in this world of constant updates and meaningless prattle.
Or at least that’s how I see it. Is it a bad thing? Probably not. Does it annoy me? Yeah, why not.
Occasionally, when attempting to refresh the ‘Everyone’ streaming function on twitter, one is confronted by a blank page sporting a single message:
Twitter is over capacity.
Too many tweets!
Well, they nearly got it right.
Friday, February 27, 2009
Jerusalem
And do I blog re. modern times
A way that I might vent some spleen
And do I write about these clods
Because it’s so fun to be mean
And did the bank your loan decline
Even though you can’t pay your bills
And stupid stars must we revere
You realise they have no skills
Our TV's bad it's getting old
Jeremy Kyle is truly dire
This fat chav a sight to behold
Was not just poor but a liar
I will not cease my blogging plight
Nor shall my rhymes be very grand
‘Til I have tried offending all
In England’s green and pleasant land
‘Til I have tried offending all
In England’s green and pleasant land
A way that I might vent some spleen
And do I write about these clods
Because it’s so fun to be mean
And did the bank your loan decline
Even though you can’t pay your bills
And stupid stars must we revere
You realise they have no skills
Our TV's bad it's getting old
Jeremy Kyle is truly dire
This fat chav a sight to behold
Was not just poor but a liar
I will not cease my blogging plight
Nor shall my rhymes be very grand
‘Til I have tried offending all
In England’s green and pleasant land
‘Til I have tried offending all
In England’s green and pleasant land
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
one last eviction
‘It looks like she ruined a very lucrative career.’ These are the words of celebrity publicist and all-round manipulative sleezeball, Max Clifford, following Jade Goody’s eviction from the Celebrity Big Brother house in January 2007. True enough, after receiving 82% of the public vote, it seemed that Jade’s status as lifestyle guru, perfume magnate and critically acclaimed autobiographer had come to an abrupt end. And perhaps rightly so. After all, there was the whole matter of her obscenely inappropriate and deeply ignorant conduct in calling a fellow housemate of Indian extraction a ‘Poppadom’. But not to fear, she’s got cancer. And if there’s one thing that eclipses all previous sin in the eyes of the public, it’s a terminal disease. Well played, Jade!
I am not denying that it is tremendously sad for a young wife and mother to lose her life. Indeed, only an obscenely inappropriate and deeply ignorant person would do that (ring any bells?) But what I am also not denying is this woman’s past. ‘The past is the past!’ I hear you yell. Well yes…but…fuck off! I want to rant.
First things first, what is it that she is actually famous for? I, like most of the country, had completely forgotten how the Goody-phenomena began. However a quick search on Wikipedia reminded me that she was initially brought to the public’s attention for being incredibly thick.
Now I’m no snob. I realise that not everyone knows that Cambridge is not in London, or that East Anglia is not a separate country. Or that Saddam Hussein was not a boxer. He does sound like a boxer. But you have to be pretty special in the head when you come up with the line: ‘I had my first birthday when I was one’. Seriously?! There are home-schooled four year-olds with webbed toes in the deepest recesses of South Carolina that would be able to point out the pointlessness of that sentence.
Clearly we are not averse to granting celebrity status on the unintelligent in this country, but Jade Goody is in an entirely different league to your
average moronic pop singer or drooling, stripper-beating footballer. As she herself states: ‘I am intelligent, but I let myself down because I can't speak properly or spell’. Brilliant.
Following her original appearance on Big Brother, she utilised her status as a symbol of the chav-culture that was (and unfortunately still is) spreading across Britain like an ever-increasing spew of Burberry vomit, by writing in such quality publications as Heat and OK! as well as launching her own fragrance, Shh…Jade Goody. If only.
However, the tawdry call of reality TV was not far away, and in 2007, she was once again shoved in front of the public eye, like so many images of downtown Basra, only less attractive. This time around she was accompanied by two other polished turds; her mother Jackiey Budden and her boyfriend, Jack Tweed, both of whom only served to explain how a specimen like Goody could have blended into society prior to her primary public appearance. And it was here that she demonstrated the thoroughly unfunny side to being poorly cultured and dangerously thick. Who would've thought?
I’m not going to go into detail about her conduct on Celebrity Big Brother; we all know about the racism scandal and the subsequent shit-storm it caused. But it is this moment of Goody’s life, or at least her public life, that most clearly exemplifies my point. She is, to put it plainly, a nasty piece of work. The sort of person that anyone within the civilised world would look upon with nothing but utter disdain. Therefore why should we immediately feel sorry for her now that she has cancer? Would we feel sorry for Joseph Goebbels if he was diagnosed with a terminal disease? After all, he had children (a lot). He had access to a public medium (several). And he perpetuated prejudice and the supposed differences dictated by people’s race. ‘Ahh, poor old Joey G. That’s such a tragedy. Imagine what he could have done if he had another twenty years. Let’s give him a million quid.’
Admittedly, comparing Jade Goody to Joseph Goebbels is a slight stretch (although their initials are the same; coincidence? Almost certainly). Nevertheless the point remains just as valid. She displayed a belief that a person could be labelled by her racial creed and utilised this to refer to her derogatorily. It is people as ignorant and insecure as her that justify the existence of parties such as the ever-tolerant England First Party. And we all know how lovely they are.
Ironically enough it was The Sun, the paper that now uses its pages to canonise the woman, that best summed up this episode in the celebrity’s life: ‘Jade Goody went into the Big Brother house appearing to be simply a fun-loving working-class girl canny enough to have made millions from her 15 minutes of fame. It was all a meticulously manufactured lie. She has left the house with her true personality laid bare - a vile, pig-ignorant, racist bully consumed by envy of a woman of superior intelligence, beauty and class.’
And now she’s dying. And everyone’s really sad. Yep, it is truly tragic that we will never again marvel at her divine beauty on our screens. Or that we’re unlikely to ever sample her new fragrance, which was genuinely to be called Controversial (presumably making light of her ‘cheeky’ racial slurring). Or that there’ll never be a follow up to Jade: My Autobiography (though I wouldn’t put it past her). Oh, wait. I’ve just read that she did release another one in October last year: Jade: Catch a Falling Star. Jesus Christ.
As already stated, I’m not saying that it’s fair that Jade Goody should be taken from this earth at the age of 27. What I am trying to convey is that the British public’s reaction to the news is perhaps a tad over the top, especially when taking into account her previous actions. However they've disproved Clifford; her bigoted bullying would not appear to have ended her money-making one bit. Well thank Vishnu for that!
Maybe it's time to turn the cameras off? Maybe, just maybe, they should never have been turned on?
I’ll leave you with this final thought: 80% of the population of India are Hindu. Karma’s a bitch.
I am not denying that it is tremendously sad for a young wife and mother to lose her life. Indeed, only an obscenely inappropriate and deeply ignorant person would do that (ring any bells?) But what I am also not denying is this woman’s past. ‘The past is the past!’ I hear you yell. Well yes…but…fuck off! I want to rant.
First things first, what is it that she is actually famous for? I, like most of the country, had completely forgotten how the Goody-phenomena began. However a quick search on Wikipedia reminded me that she was initially brought to the public’s attention for being incredibly thick.
Now I’m no snob. I realise that not everyone knows that Cambridge is not in London, or that East Anglia is not a separate country. Or that Saddam Hussein was not a boxer. He does sound like a boxer. But you have to be pretty special in the head when you come up with the line: ‘I had my first birthday when I was one’. Seriously?! There are home-schooled four year-olds with webbed toes in the deepest recesses of South Carolina that would be able to point out the pointlessness of that sentence.
Clearly we are not averse to granting celebrity status on the unintelligent in this country, but Jade Goody is in an entirely different league to your
average moronic pop singer or drooling, stripper-beating footballer. As she herself states: ‘I am intelligent, but I let myself down because I can't speak properly or spell’. Brilliant.Following her original appearance on Big Brother, she utilised her status as a symbol of the chav-culture that was (and unfortunately still is) spreading across Britain like an ever-increasing spew of Burberry vomit, by writing in such quality publications as Heat and OK! as well as launching her own fragrance, Shh…Jade Goody. If only.
However, the tawdry call of reality TV was not far away, and in 2007, she was once again shoved in front of the public eye, like so many images of downtown Basra, only less attractive. This time around she was accompanied by two other polished turds; her mother Jackiey Budden and her boyfriend, Jack Tweed, both of whom only served to explain how a specimen like Goody could have blended into society prior to her primary public appearance. And it was here that she demonstrated the thoroughly unfunny side to being poorly cultured and dangerously thick. Who would've thought?
I’m not going to go into detail about her conduct on Celebrity Big Brother; we all know about the racism scandal and the subsequent shit-storm it caused. But it is this moment of Goody’s life, or at least her public life, that most clearly exemplifies my point. She is, to put it plainly, a nasty piece of work. The sort of person that anyone within the civilised world would look upon with nothing but utter disdain. Therefore why should we immediately feel sorry for her now that she has cancer? Would we feel sorry for Joseph Goebbels if he was diagnosed with a terminal disease? After all, he had children (a lot). He had access to a public medium (several). And he perpetuated prejudice and the supposed differences dictated by people’s race. ‘Ahh, poor old Joey G. That’s such a tragedy. Imagine what he could have done if he had another twenty years. Let’s give him a million quid.’
Admittedly, comparing Jade Goody to Joseph Goebbels is a slight stretch (although their initials are the same; coincidence? Almost certainly). Nevertheless the point remains just as valid. She displayed a belief that a person could be labelled by her racial creed and utilised this to refer to her derogatorily. It is people as ignorant and insecure as her that justify the existence of parties such as the ever-tolerant England First Party. And we all know how lovely they are.
Ironically enough it was The Sun, the paper that now uses its pages to canonise the woman, that best summed up this episode in the celebrity’s life: ‘Jade Goody went into the Big Brother house appearing to be simply a fun-loving working-class girl canny enough to have made millions from her 15 minutes of fame. It was all a meticulously manufactured lie. She has left the house with her true personality laid bare - a vile, pig-ignorant, racist bully consumed by envy of a woman of superior intelligence, beauty and class.’
And now she’s dying. And everyone’s really sad. Yep, it is truly tragic that we will never again marvel at her divine beauty on our screens. Or that we’re unlikely to ever sample her new fragrance, which was genuinely to be called Controversial (presumably making light of her ‘cheeky’ racial slurring). Or that there’ll never be a follow up to Jade: My Autobiography (though I wouldn’t put it past her). Oh, wait. I’ve just read that she did release another one in October last year: Jade: Catch a Falling Star. Jesus Christ.
As already stated, I’m not saying that it’s fair that Jade Goody should be taken from this earth at the age of 27. What I am trying to convey is that the British public’s reaction to the news is perhaps a tad over the top, especially when taking into account her previous actions. However they've disproved Clifford; her bigoted bullying would not appear to have ended her money-making one bit. Well thank Vishnu for that!
Maybe it's time to turn the cameras off? Maybe, just maybe, they should never have been turned on?
I’ll leave you with this final thought: 80% of the population of India are Hindu. Karma’s a bitch.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
barking bulldogs
Whilst relatively pleased with my previous blog entry (that is ‘relatively’ in comparison with my only other blog entry), I was concerned that it might be construed as a fascistic tirade about Britain’s journey to the dogs, as one might find between the pages of moron-rags such as the Mail and Express. Although I was clearly implying societal decline within my rant, I want to make it absolutely clear that it should in no way be read with any nationalistic sentiments in mind. In fact, if you are reading this and would consider yourself to be strongly right wing, I would like you to stop reading this, log off your computer and re-evaluate your life and the damage you are doing.
I, personally, couldn’t be less right wing. I am nothing if not a liberal. And a liberal in the true sense (verging on libertarian); people should just do what they want as long as it doesn’t harm other people. It’s as simple as that. Admittedly the http address listed above would suggest otherwise, but trust me; I’m not a Nazi. I just like to moan.
Whether you believe me or not, I would still like to utilise this entry to demonstrate my political centrality and absolute abhorrence of anything nationalistic. ‘How best to do this?’ I hear myself ask. Well, ‘luckily’ enough, I work for a department of the UK Parliament, which, in addition to allowing me to rant randomly on the internet instead of working, meant that this morning I was thrown into contact with some colourful chaps known as the England First Party. Whilst the context of my dealings with them was firmly within the wearisome realm of their financial accounts, I couldn’t help but read up on the party, in order to find out what it was that these accounts were in aid of. Naturally, I was prepared to read that they were a political faction perhaps more inclined towards shaven heads and Holocaust denial than the average balanced individual. However I was nowhere near ready for their ill-founded beliefs, policies that can, at best, be described as ‘deranged’, and overall unpleasantness.
At the top of the homepage of the England First Party is the ‘definition’ of racism. Set out as if lifted directly from the OCD, we are told that the word ‘racism’ actually means ‘The mechanism by which white society is to be stripped of its capacity to defend itself against the genocide of multi-racialism’. Uh-huh. Do, go on. 'When a civilization no longer has the stomach to fight for its existence, and views its own self defence as unwarranted aggression, it has signed its own death warrant'. I see…
Simply put, this party is mad. What’s more, these lunatics have pre-empted most people’s concern that they might be a racist party by completely redefining the word; ‘No, we’re not racist. It’s the blacks who are racist’. Quite.
Nevertheless, it is their 12-point manifesto that really raises the loony stakes. The first two policies of repatriation of all immigrants and the death penalty for murder would not look out of place in the manifestos of most extremist parties or, indeed, the private ramblings of some Tory back-benchers. But rule number 3 of restoring ‘the gibbet, stocks and whipping post for serious violent offenders, paedophiles, sex pests and drug dealers’, surely raises some alarm bells. Treating crimes with inhumane violence? I could be wrong, but didn’t they decide that was a bollocks idea over a century ago? Plus, I don’t know what a ‘sex pest’ is exactly, but I’m guessing some of them are going to prefer a whipping.
With regards to education, these dangerously-fanatical tosspots would like to teach the ‘Aryan histories of Western Europe’ along with ‘sexual abstinence’ to the youth of England; a combination that surely would produce the most ill-informed and dull race of people on the planet. Good luck trying to explain the increase in blond-haired, blue-eyed children twelve hundred years ago without contradicting one of those!
Game: guess what links these three?
(Hint: it's not that they're all ugly)
Point 6 of ending ‘all forms of animal cruelty’, initially sounds like a good policy; almost cutely fascist. Like Mussolini in bunny slippers. However, read on and you find that this includes the ‘barbaric’ methods of killing animals employed by the Muslim and Jewish faiths. Indeed, the England First Party wishes to abolish the Islamic faith altogether. And, if that wasn’t enough, they wish to demolish all mosques! Presumably so the people that remain in this ‘New England’ don’t get turned on by their giant boob-shaped domes and there aren’t enough stocks to put them in.
The remainder of the manifesto lists such really sane policies as compulsory hard labor for the unemployed, the ‘bringing to justice of all politicians guilty of treason against the people of England’ (not cashing-in on the current political climate, you understand) and, I’m not making this up, the encouragement of ‘our women folk…to concentrate their time and energies on caring for their home and families.’ See what I mean? Bonkers.
Aside from perpetuating this bigoted twaddle, the website also provides a merchandise section which offers badges depicting certain English emblems, posters of various Aryan art and books written by individuals who were not an uncommon appearance in 1940s Nuremberg.
It truly boggles the mind to think that there are people living in Britain today that have such antiquated and harmful convictions. That some humans existing at this very moment have more ignorant views than those of thousands of years ago. Ironically enough, it is usually these misguided and angry individuals that commit the violent crimes that they would so severely punish. One piece of prejudicial memorabilia the England First Party offers is a bumper sticker depicting a bull dog and the maxim: ‘Too fast to live! Too young to die!’ I wonder if that’ll be their excuse when they are lead to the gallows?
In conclusion, I’m not a nationalist. Nor am I mad. Although the two, I think, are often linked.
I, personally, couldn’t be less right wing. I am nothing if not a liberal. And a liberal in the true sense (verging on libertarian); people should just do what they want as long as it doesn’t harm other people. It’s as simple as that. Admittedly the http address listed above would suggest otherwise, but trust me; I’m not a Nazi. I just like to moan.
Whether you believe me or not, I would still like to utilise this entry to demonstrate my political centrality and absolute abhorrence of anything nationalistic. ‘How best to do this?’ I hear myself ask. Well, ‘luckily’ enough, I work for a department of the UK Parliament, which, in addition to allowing me to rant randomly on the internet instead of working, meant that this morning I was thrown into contact with some colourful chaps known as the England First Party. Whilst the context of my dealings with them was firmly within the wearisome realm of their financial accounts, I couldn’t help but read up on the party, in order to find out what it was that these accounts were in aid of. Naturally, I was prepared to read that they were a political faction perhaps more inclined towards shaven heads and Holocaust denial than the average balanced individual. However I was nowhere near ready for their ill-founded beliefs, policies that can, at best, be described as ‘deranged’, and overall unpleasantness.
At the top of the homepage of the England First Party is the ‘definition’ of racism. Set out as if lifted directly from the OCD, we are told that the word ‘racism’ actually means ‘The mechanism by which white society is to be stripped of its capacity to defend itself against the genocide of multi-racialism’. Uh-huh. Do, go on. 'When a civilization no longer has the stomach to fight for its existence, and views its own self defence as unwarranted aggression, it has signed its own death warrant'. I see…
Simply put, this party is mad. What’s more, these lunatics have pre-empted most people’s concern that they might be a racist party by completely redefining the word; ‘No, we’re not racist. It’s the blacks who are racist’. Quite.
Nevertheless, it is their 12-point manifesto that really raises the loony stakes. The first two policies of repatriation of all immigrants and the death penalty for murder would not look out of place in the manifestos of most extremist parties or, indeed, the private ramblings of some Tory back-benchers. But rule number 3 of restoring ‘the gibbet, stocks and whipping post for serious violent offenders, paedophiles, sex pests and drug dealers’, surely raises some alarm bells. Treating crimes with inhumane violence? I could be wrong, but didn’t they decide that was a bollocks idea over a century ago? Plus, I don’t know what a ‘sex pest’ is exactly, but I’m guessing some of them are going to prefer a whipping.
With regards to education, these dangerously-fanatical tosspots would like to teach the ‘Aryan histories of Western Europe’ along with ‘sexual abstinence’ to the youth of England; a combination that surely would produce the most ill-informed and dull race of people on the planet. Good luck trying to explain the increase in blond-haired, blue-eyed children twelve hundred years ago without contradicting one of those!
Game: guess what links these three?
(Hint: it's not that they're all ugly)
Point 6 of ending ‘all forms of animal cruelty’, initially sounds like a good policy; almost cutely fascist. Like Mussolini in bunny slippers. However, read on and you find that this includes the ‘barbaric’ methods of killing animals employed by the Muslim and Jewish faiths. Indeed, the England First Party wishes to abolish the Islamic faith altogether. And, if that wasn’t enough, they wish to demolish all mosques! Presumably so the people that remain in this ‘New England’ don’t get turned on by their giant boob-shaped domes and there aren’t enough stocks to put them in.
The remainder of the manifesto lists such really sane policies as compulsory hard labor for the unemployed, the ‘bringing to justice of all politicians guilty of treason against the people of England’ (not cashing-in on the current political climate, you understand) and, I’m not making this up, the encouragement of ‘our women folk…to concentrate their time and energies on caring for their home and families.’ See what I mean? Bonkers.
Aside from perpetuating this bigoted twaddle, the website also provides a merchandise section which offers badges depicting certain English emblems, posters of various Aryan art and books written by individuals who were not an uncommon appearance in 1940s Nuremberg.
It truly boggles the mind to think that there are people living in Britain today that have such antiquated and harmful convictions. That some humans existing at this very moment have more ignorant views than those of thousands of years ago. Ironically enough, it is usually these misguided and angry individuals that commit the violent crimes that they would so severely punish. One piece of prejudicial memorabilia the England First Party offers is a bumper sticker depicting a bull dog and the maxim: ‘Too fast to live! Too young to die!’ I wonder if that’ll be their excuse when they are lead to the gallows?
In conclusion, I’m not a nationalist. Nor am I mad. Although the two, I think, are often linked.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
what's it all about?
This, the tagline to the 1966 cult movie (as well as the 2004 cock-up remake) Alfie, begged the audience at its conclusion to consider the overarching themes behind the meaning of existence. What is it we're doing here?This week, a different Alfie has prompted members of the British public to examine some of the deeper ethical aspects of the world. Namely, what the hell is it all coming to when a child becomes a father at the age of 13?!
The redtops published the story of young Alfie Patten, the UK’s latest evidence for the accuracy of Revelations, last Friday, stating that the ‘baby-faced boy’ became the father of ‘7lb 3oz Masie Roxanne’ after he and his 15 year old girlfriend, Chantelle, ‘decided against an abortion after discovering she was pregnant’. Whilst my initial reaction to reading this story was to empty the contents of my stomach all over St. James’ Park tube, I was slightly relieved to hear that they had at least thought about the decision first. ‘Decided against an abortion’! This boy, who’s barely old enough to sit in the front passenger seat, sat down with his orang-utan girlfriend and discussed the pros and cons of embryo termination, did he? I’d find that easier to believe if I thought that either of these two could spell ‘abortion’.
Naturally, this raised the standard irate disgust and calls for decency that are usually perpetuated by such stories, with the ever publicly-savvy David Cameron latching on to the indignation, claiming that it raised ‘worrying’ questions about modern society. How perceptive.
The story was allowed to fester over the weekend, only to have it explode back all over the press this morning, when it was revealed that several other ‘young men’ have claimed paternity of the baby. In fact, according to the Daily Mail, there is said to be six other contenders for the crown of Britain’s Biggest Fuck-up. One of them, the 16 year old trainee-chef Richard Goodsell, who looks like a cross between rugby ball and a bulldog’s arse, has said that everyone thinks that he is the father, even his mother, who, incidentally, provided the bulldog facets to her son’s unique aesthetic.
The other front runner for Daddy Drool is 14 year old Tyler Barker, who is said to be ‘really worried’ that he might be the father. I’m not surprised. Apart from the fact that he would be forced to raise a child that, thanks to her morally devoid relatives and the tabloid press, has absolutely no chance of being normal, he would also have to spend more time with the baby’s mother. Judging by the less than flattering photographs that have accompanied the plethora of articles in recent days, that single night of passion with Chantelle the Wonder-Slut would have been enough for any man, whether he shaves or not.
Meanwhile, what does this mean for our young hero, Alfie? The Telegraph reported that the schoolboy was ‘distraught’ by the possibility that the baby was not his. Interesting thought when you consider young Tyler’s response to the situation. Presumably Alfie is enjoying those rather tasty tabloid cheques that have been arriving in the post since last week. Ten grand before you’ve even opened the Frosties in the morning is not bad going. Besides, he needn’t worry; Chantelle herself denies all possibility that her baby does not carry the much-coveted Patten genes, stating that they ‘decided to start a physical relationship because [they] love each other’ and that ‘there has been no one else’. Given the already-discussed appearance of said maiden, one might be forgiven for believing her. However, taking into account her ability to hide her lapsed virginity from her parents for so long, it is entirely possible that she is, again, bending the truth slightly.
So, again, I return to the question: what’s it all about? Does this story demonstrate the rapid decline of British society? Well, undoubtedly. But it’s something far worse that troubles me. Don’t get me wrong. I’m certainly not implying as one Sun columnist claimed that these actions ‘will break the existing cracks in society so wide open that there’ll be no hope of repair’. I remain optimistic that the majority of British people are rational creatures that have at least some aspect of decency to them. Indeed, the British tabloids push a story like this so virulently because of its rarity and ability to shock. What I am concerned about is the fact that we as an audience crave such stories to such an extent that the characters of these unfortunate events are rewarded with more money than those that live a quote-unquote normal life. One might argue that these people are being compensated for their emotional distress; a sort of mental breakdown rebate. But what does it say about our society when these two minors will be rewarded with, according to one publicist, ‘hundreds of thousands’ for copping off when they should have been doing their homework? What sort of message is that for Britain’s increasingly dim witted school children? And we, the ‘adults’, are to blame. We are the ones that buy the newspapers so that we might be entertained with tales of people with lives more hopeless than our own. Have our lives become so mundane, our finances so dire, our situation so depressing, that we find solace in ruined youth and the generally messed-up? Surely that is what soap operas are for.
Personally, I remain optimistic that this story is a soap opera. These news articles are all part of an elaborate hoax; a cleverly orchestrated piece of marketing, designed to promote a new show. Tyler? Chantelle? Masie Roxanne? These are not people from the real world, surely. Yes, we can all have a good laugh when Channel 4 airs the first episode of Kiddy Fiddlers next week. Though maybe not.
So, what is it we're doing here? What’s it all about?
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