OH MY GOD! I’m LIKE totally sick of LIKE people who keep LIKE saying LIKE between every other word, and who LIKE keep starting and ending every statement by saying they were LIKE, “OH MY GOD,” LIKE.
I’m fairly I’m not the only one either…
Archive for the 'People Be Fools' Category
I know that sunshine is a rare thing in the West of Scotland, but is it really so rare that it causes half of the population to develop a Deadly Brain Cloud? Take yesterday for example: It was sunny, warm and generally fairly present. There was a strong breeze from the south-west that kept the air moving, enough to stop the air becoming stifling, but not strong enough to ruin the good weather.
A fairly perfect spring day in other words.
I was enjoying my ride home on the bike, same as most days, when I became concious that a lot of strange things seemed to be happening.Glasgow suddenly seemed to become infested with stunt drivers, addle-brained pedestrians and crazed dogs.
It started up on Bilsland Drive in Ruchill. I tend to head along it towards the west end so that I can avoid the bus laden nightmare of the city centre. Bilsland Drive is a big wide street with only a few houses on the one side and the tumbledown remains of the old Ruchill Hospital on the other. There’s more than enough room for two lanes of traffic on either side provided there’s no parked cars. It’s one of those streets in Glasgow that makes it great to cycle along because you know that with all that room nobody is going to try to squeeze past the end of your handlebar at 30mph.
Or so I thought.
I had just passed the gates of the old hospital. Pedalling along, minding my own business, when out of the blue a Toyota Yaris passed me within inches, in spite of there being plenty of room. Then, to my open mouthed amazement, the damn thing pulled in to the kerb right in front of me.
BRAKES = ON.
I scowled at the occupant, but gave her the benefit of the doubt: Maybe she hadn’t judged the distance properly and it was an honest mistake. I made to go round her car, and my front wheel was just about level with the back of the car when she threw the driver’s door open and leapt out.
“Fucking hell,” I said and swerved to avoid suffering head on collision with the Hambeast.
She looked at me, clearly registered I was there, and then turned to commence digging stuff out of her car. Why do people who do this exact thing never seem to get hit by passing trucks?
She was bad enough, but I also got chased along part of Queen Margaret Drive by a demented dog who’s owner just watched as it ran down the road behind me and in front of a taxi. I nearly ran over a woman who, despite clearly seeing me approaching along the road, decided to step out in front of me at the last possible moment causing me to swerve violently to avoid her.
After that I was more cautious. I indicated with hand signals in plenty of time, and kept a wary eye on pedestrians and wildlife. That still didn’t help me avoid a group of students wandering down the middle of the road on a blind bend, or the old man in the car who did a U-Turn right in front of me, or the bus that crawled along behind me even though there was enough space to pass.
Now I’ve given due consideration to the possibility that I had wandered into the twilight zone, or that I just suffered a run of bad luck, but thinking back I’m almost certain that this kind of madness always occurs when it’s warm. I guarantee that it’ll be better today if the weather stays colder.
Meanwhile if the residents of Glasgow could try to keep themselves hydrated, wear sunscreen and keep a wee bit of common sense and situational awareness it would be greatly appreciated.
If only so I don’t have to pick bits off you off my tires.
There are many immutable laws in the universe, but today I heard a story that serves as a prime example of two.
Rule #1 – When you work in a call centre the customer is invariably an idiot.
Rule #2 – People will be offended by anything if they’re crazy enough.
I went for a visit today to see the IT department of one of the contractors that The Work uses. They’ve been having some issues accessing one of our systems and I went along to see if it was something that I could help them with. It went fine and everything was running smoothly with just an hour of tinkering at their connection settings.
Now I should explain that they’re a medium sized firm of about five or six hundred people. Their IT department consists of two front line guys with headsets that deal with all the day to day stuff like lost passwords, corrupted files and such-like. There’s a couple of sys-admin/second line technician guys who sit behind them, kind of like the bridge of the USS Enterprise, who do the actual infrastructure support etc. Over in the corner behind them sits their “Director IT” who is a jolly man who looks like Santa Claus after he went ten rounds with a pie and ale special.
Seemingly he’s also the fire warden and does some surveying part time as well.
While I was there helping out the two second line tech guys a phone call came in to the operators and the guy was talking away to the person on the other end. I wasn’t paying much attention at that point, but he seemed to be having some difficulty getting the person on the other end to understand his instructions. Suddenly the operator guy tore off his headset and shouted over to teh IT Director, “Here you want to speak to this guy?”
THe IT Director shook his head and asked,”How?”
“He wants to speak to my manager,” The Operator said.
The IT Director shrugged a bit and asked the obvious question, “About whit? This isn’t fucking Debenhams. Can you no sort it?”
“He’s being a prick, a stupid prick,” said the Operator.
The IT Director sighed, got up and went over to the operator. He picked up the headset, introduced himself and asked what the problem was. I could see a bewildered look cross his face and then he rolled his eyes dramatically before saying a line that wouldn’t be out of place in an episode of Still Game, “Listen pal F T P stands for File Transfer Protocol. It does not, has not, and will never stand for Fuck The Pope or any other sectarian slogan you might think it does. OK?”
The guy at the other end obviously embarrassed at the rammy he had caused rung off almost instantly leaving the poor IT Director standing there unsure if he should laugh or cry.
I’m beginning to wonder what goes through people’s heads when major events are scheduled to be hosted within their jurisdiction. I’m not thinking about things like Auld Firm matches, or even the Tour De France, but about giant monster events like the Commonwealth Games, Olympic Games and the World Cup.
It seems like everything that’s important to ordinary people goes out the window. Here in Glasgow we’re scheduled to host the Commonwealth games in 2014 and the preperations are already playing merry hell with the socio-political landscape of the city. It’s already been partially implicated in the resignation of Steven Purcell the leader of the city council. Well that and other reasons that I won’t go into. All around the East End great swathes of waste ground, that’s lain abandoned for decades, have suddenly burst into life. A velodrome, an athlete’s village and a dozen other projects are all hammering away at untold cost to the residents of Glasgow and the wider tax paying public. It’s marvellous that Glasgow Council can find the money, time and effort to do all this work. It’s equally marvellous that while they’re throwing up all these impressive facilities their having to lay off a large amount of their staff to make ends meet.
Hell I wonder how much money they paid to the marketing firm that made the logo for the commonwealth games. If you squint a bit it looks like someone copied the OCP logo from Robocop and coloured it in.
OCP
2014
Meanwhile down in London they’ve decided to go completely off the rails. That’s even without me mentioning that fact that the UK government is more or less burning tax money in an effort to outdo every other city that has even, or will ever, hold the games. Sadly the headcases that are runnign the games seem to have completely forgotten that the main focus should be on, you know, THE GAMES! Instead they’ve gone running off spending taxpayer’s hard won cash on such amazing things as a logo that looks like colour blind five year old’s crayon rendering of a smashed plate.
Today they’ve unveiled a “monument” to mark the games: The ArcelorMittal Orbit.
Designed by Turner Prize-winning artist Anish Kapoor it’s going to be taller than the Statue of Liberty, cost nearly TWENTY MILLION QUID, and it looks like an aborted roller-coaster that I made once when I got cramp in my arm while playing Roller-Coaster Tycoon 3. There’s nothing about this girder mashup that makes me think it has anything to do with athletics, London or anything else for that matter. The only thing it does make me think of, other than the aftermath of the roller-coaster disaster I mentioned, is the Duga-2 array in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone AKA the BRAIN SCORCHER from S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
Not a fan. Why don’t they use the twenty million to build a hospital, or maybe some affordable housing for those of us that can’t claim garden furniture and hookers on our expenses. At least they won’t fall into vandalised, jakey haunted ruins once the games are over…
So Earth Hour came and went, and I turned off my house lights and non-essential electrical appliances just like the hippies wanted. It’s no skin off my nose. I was playing Assassin’s Creed 2 on my PC at the time and didn’t need the lights on anyway. Hey don’t look at me like that: to me a PC is an essential appliance.
I can’t say I’m all that amused by Earth Hour. Sure some hip young things across the globe might think it’s a good idea to turn off their electric for an hour or so, and maybe for every one of them that turned their lights out, another five people were busy watching CSI on Channel Five. The street lights still blazed on across the world, the wheels of industry still turned and when the lights went back on the world was still the same.
Critics say the effect of earth hour is negligible. That the net effect across the entire world is virtually the equivalent of putting half a dozen cars of f the road for one year. Give me a sledgehammer and immunity from prosecution and I’m sure I could do twice that in an hour.
The organisers say that the net effect isn’t the point. They say the point is to raise awareness off climate change and to point out that everyone can make a difference. The trouble is that the people behind this are assuming that people naturally want to help save the world. That they are as idealistic, and perhaps optimistic, as they are. They believe that a grand demonstration, such as Earth Hour, will be enough to get people seriously thinking about how they can impact on climate change.
I believe they’re deluded.
They’re deluded because they’ve made an assumption that human beings are proactive and altruistic, but if we’re approaching this realistically, and honestly, we must first admit that humans are selfish, self serving bastards of the highest order. I don’t blame humans for that though. It’s what dragged us from the swirling soup of single celled organisms to the lofty heights of space travel, quantum mechanics, representational democracy and the X-Factor.
Our very nature, and the nature of all life, is to reproduce, multiply and expand for as long as there are resources to sustain us. We didn’t make it to the top of the food chain by helping out strangers, avoiding using resources or acting in moderation. We slaughtered, burned and fought tooth and nail for our place in the world, and that struggle for survival is still deeply ingrained in us. We won’t turn out the lights because we expect that others will do it. We, each individually, need our light to be on, because we need that light no matter what effect having it on may have on future generations.
How many times have you gotten in the car and thought about how every trip, long or short, could be poisoning the air, the ground and the seas for future generations. I bet you didn’t give it a minutes thought as you turned the ignition. The only thing on your mind was where you were headed, and what you were going to do when you got there.
This is why I believe that Earth Hour will never have the effect that they imagine. The vast majority of people don’t see it as a serious attempt at education. They see it as a novelty, a grand spectacle. They turn off their lights for an hour, and the world looks funny on the pictures from space, but they haven’t learned anything. When the hour is up their light goes back on, and life goes on, as though nothing has changed.
Because it hasn’t.
At times it causes me actual physical pain to realise that the world seems to revolve around the lowest common denominator. Every piece of so called news in the papers and on TV seems to be either over dramatised to sell papers or revolves around some halfwit celebrity that’s got their kit off, rocks off or mouthed off while in the public eye. Personally I don’t care how many people Tiger Woods has allegedly pumped, ditto for Ashley Cole and any other one trick pony. In my humble opinion they’re simply not worth the column inches that’s devoted to them. If you ask me their infidelities belong somewhere near the middle of the paper next to the reader’s offers section that sells electric back scratchers and three slice toasters.
I’m giving serious consideration to starting an e-petition at The Prime Ministers Office website to demand a change in the law that will force all tabloid newspapers to replace their name with ARSE FODDER in giant letters. I figure if papers like The Sun are going to print a load of half baked shite they should at least be forced to say so up front.
I’ve even made a mock up to show what it would look like:
I think I might start doing more weird MS Paint drawings…
I’ve discovered that a picture is worth a thousand words when dealing with some of my less than gifted colleagues at The Work. It amuses me when I end up drawing a diagram like this:
To explain to one of them why a chain email of “cats doing funny stuff LOL” didn’t reach anyone when he sent it. It seemed easier to just blame a giant black hole in the IT department than to continue fruitlessly trying to explain attachment size limitations, firewalls and how crap it is to get these emails when I can just look at the damn things on http://www.icanhascheezburger.com/. I was polite enough to avoid telling him that the two planets could just as easily be replaced with his ears…
The Work seems to be suffering from a case of internet flakey-shakey-connection-itis lately, which wouldn’t be a problem if it wasn’t for the fact that much of my job revolves around two web apps. Honestly though that’s not a problem either as it’s left me plenty of time to float about reading Armageddon by Max Hastings while getting paid for it. The Work’s front line IT has been outsourced to a call centre in Portugal which tends to remote desktop first and asks questions later. The end result is that the majority of people in the office can’t get onto the internet. The retards across the hall are in a serious flap because they can’t get on the Hello Magazine site, or check up the latest shoe prices on Ebay.
All in all this would be a fine winter’s day if it wasn’t for one, single solitary fly in the ointment, and that fly is the phrase “the internet is down”.
No, you cretins, the internet is not down. The internet does not go down. The express, designed purpose of the internet is NOT TO GO DOWN. The internet was designed to maintain interconnectivity in the face of a nuclear war it doesn’t choke because you’ve looked up too many pairs of Prada shoes.
Though I might.
Once again I find myself sitting here with an incredulous look on my face and shaking my head in disdainful wonder at the so called “Great British Public”.
The BBC news has an article today that details a list of fifty unsung British heroes that the National Lottery has assembled as part of its 15th anniversary celebrations. You can see the full list here, but I’ll try to limit myself to a short rant on the contents of the top ten:
1: Michael Faraday, physicist
2: JM Barrie, author
3: Edward Jenner, smallpox vaccine pioneer
4: John Peel, broadcaster
5: Alan Turing, mathematician
6: Baldrick, Blackadder character
7: Midge Ure, singer
8: Percy Shaw, cat’s eyes inventor
9: Tim Berners-Lee, worldwide web inventor
10: Fred Scott, BBC cameraman
Admittedly some of the people in the top ten are underappreciated for their contributions to science, arts and society in general. Others though I would say are very well known, and some, well some shouldn’t even be on a list of people who are supposedly “heroes”.
Apologies to people of a nervous disposition, but I have to get something out of my system before I continue.
BALDRICK is a fictional character you FUCKING CRETINS!
Sorry about that.
The rest of the list is a strange mixture. As I’ve said I agree that many of the people mentioned on the list are deeply underappreciated by the public. The news was recently filled with the demand that the British Government apologise for basically hounding Alan Turing to suicide after the Second World War. His contribution to the fledgling art of computing and cryptanalysis during the war cannot be overstated and I believe he rightly belongs near the top of the list.
Midge Ure however is a world famous musician and responsible for a good chunk of the organisation of Band Aid, and the Band Aid Trust charity. I don’t see why was he chosen over the heads of other worthies such as Sting, Fish or even, dare I say it, Bob Geldof who was the more visible partner in Band Aid. I suppose at least Midge managed to do more than spend his life riding along on a one hit wonder band and thumping tables at charity gigs.
Another odd entry is Fred Scott the BBC cameraman at number ten. He’s the award winning cameraman who was filming when John Simpson and his Iraqi translator Kamaran Abdurrazaq Muhamed were caught in a friendly fire incident during the Iraq war. Kamaran was unfortunately killed when a US warplane bombed the convoy of Kurdish vehicles they were travelling in. Simpson was left deaf in one ear as a result. It was an important moment in the media coverage of warfare. I wouldn’t go as far as to rank Fred as high as 10 on this list, but I wouldn’t do him the dishonour of ranking him lower than FUCKING BALDRICK.
The more I read this list the more I begin to wonder if the people who voted for it were even aware of whom many of these people were. To me it reads like a list of people that young, trendy eighteen to twenty-four year olds have vaguely heard about from various sources and they picked them out of the hat. The inclusion of people like Stephen Merchant who co-wrote The Office seems like it was thrown in by some insane fan and the inclusion of the FICTIONAL CHARACTER of Jeeves the butler from the Jeeves and Wooster short stories strains credibility. Why not replace Jeeves with P.G Wodehouse himself? He’s not exactly well known now as he was when he started publishing stories.
I’m going to lie down in a dark room before I decide to go all Dr. Evil and try to put end to this farce we call society once and for all.
The sun is finally up and it’s now officially the 6th of November 2009. All the pensioners, animals and those of a nervous disposition can safely emerge from their bunkers into the cold light of day and be thankful that the annual barrage of fireworks that marks Guy Fawkes Night is more or less over for another year.
I’ve written a bit before about Guy Fawkes Night, or as we called it when I was young Bonfire Night, but I thought I’d wax lyrical about it again after reading the news this morning.
Firstly let me be completely clear here: I love fireworks. I love the huge organised displays that they have at events, and I love the little intimate local ones when they’re done properly. I say this in full knowledge that Scotland Gas Networks have a huge excavation on the road outside exposing a major gas main to the sky, and to raining fireworks…
What I don’t agree with, and can’t understand is why, with all the mounting cases of animal cruelty, violence and horrific injury, we still allow fireworks to be sold over the counter to almost anyone. Sure there’s laws in place regulating their sale to people over 18, and I’m sure that every corner shop and fly by night fireworks store owner rigorously follows that rule, but if they do why are so many youths mentioned as being the perpetrators in the firework stories in the news this morning.
So far this I’ve read about:
A firework shooting in an open window of the high flats in Whiteinch and the occupant then had to be treated for smoke insulation. Seemingly a kid fired the rocket from ground level outside. I’m inclined to believe this was a freak event, but you never know.
A group of firemen trying to put out a fire in a house in Bridge of Weir being attacked by a gang of weans launching fireworks.
At the weekend a badly injured cat was found in Crosshill, near Maybole, with wounds consistent with a firework having being strapped to her back and set off. The innocent animal had to be put down after having suffered for perhaps as much as a week after being hurt.
Last year we had a couple of classics up in North Lanarkshire:
A dog dying of a heart attack after being struck by a firework when a gang of youths attacked a kennel in Bellshill with a dozen fireworks over a three hour period.
A ten month old girl being burned on the neck after a pair of youths threw a lit firework into her pram as she sat outside a shop in New Stevenson. Thankfully she was only slightly injured as her clothes had taken the brunt of it.
These are only the stories that made the front page of papers. I’m sure that there were a hundred more incidents that went unreported, or unacknowledged by victims too scared to report the youths that terrorised them.
I understand that as a kid the desire to throw fireworks at other people is strong, but in days gone by it were mainly small firecrackers that people threw around. Sure they were still small explosive devices, but they weren’t very powerful at all. They could cause some bruises and maybe a small burn, but they weren’t going to blow anyone’s face off. Not that throwing fireworks at anyone should be encouraged, but in the distance past where it wasn’t particularly frowned upon the fireworks were nowhere near as powerful as the ones available today.
If find it ironic and amusing that at any other time of the year if a bunch of teenage junkies, or even a fairly respectable looking businessman, went into a shop looking to buy a dozen rockets packed with gunpowder the cop from monopoly would appear out of nowhere and sort them right out.
I think it might be a lark to threaten to charge the neds under the anti-terrorism laws that the government are so proud of. After all one of the definitions of terrorism is.
After typing that last paragraph I had a look into the definition of terrorism and it seems that legally, in the UK at least, terrorism is more closely defined. According to the 2006 Terrorism Act a terrorist under UK law is defined as a group or persons who meet the following criteria:
(b) The use or threat is designed to influence the government or to intimidate the public or a section of the public.
(c) The use or threat is made for the purpose of advancing a political, religious or ideological cause.
Maybe a few hours of water boarding and a kicking from some double hard bastards from the SAS would make them think twice about the fireworks next year.
I enjoy fireworks and bonfires as much as the next man, but for the love of god I think we desperately need to do something to get them out of the hands of neds. Be that better education on the dangers, tighter regulation on their sale and use or even to go as far as to ban this archaic and deeply English celebration altogether I leave that up to the nation to decide.