American Bile

whew

2005-10-30T12:02:00.000-08:00

I escaped. It took about thirty years, but I gradually chipped out a hole in the wall that led to a vast underground tunnel and ultimately, freedom. To avoid any prison guards spotting the hole, I simply hung a big poster of the dead Diana, formerly Princess of Wales in front of it. It wasn't fun looking at that for three decades, I can tell you, but I think the prison guards have too much respect for royalty to feel tempted to pull it down in one of their fits of pique about their unpopularity among the condemned.

After getting out, I noticed that despite thirty years having passed, everything was the same. Science still hasn't come up with fast exciting space-travel, or a cure for the common cold, or a way of getting drugs to Africa, politics still exists and there are still too many blondes in America. I am not sure whether I have been through a time-warp or whether the thirty years I just spent waiting to be electrocuted were really only a few days that seemed like thirty years. I would have blogged more, but honestly it was really, really boring in there. If I had known they don't even give you beer, I never would have bothered.

good news and bad news

2005-10-27T10:13:00.000-07:00

The good news is I put that word thingy on to stop robots infecting the blog. The bad news is I may not be blogging much longer anyway because I might be dead. Apparently they do actually kill innocent people here on death row. Personally I do not agree with killing people at all, but things are worse than I thought. I definitely recommend to anyone coming to America not to turn yourself in for murder even when you are innocent, as it could easily backfire. There is obviously a reason why they call it death row, and it is not to do with the fact that people sometimes stay here alive for years on end. Hopefully I will come up with a cunning breakout plan before actually meeting my demise.

death row blogging

2005-10-26T16:34:00.000-07:00

It is quite boring here on death row, the routine is always the same and we don't get to do much gardening, also the food is inedible so I am becoming quite thin. I now think it was probably a mistake to come here just to write a more interesting blog, the bed is uncomfortable and the prison guards are rude, if anyone else is thinking of writing a death row blog I would advise them not to bother unless they are already on death row anyway for some reason, it is not what you would call a creatively inspiring environment and the clothes are terrible. I will be starting my campaign to get released quite soon, hopefully all will be fine as I am actually innocent.

total confusion

2005-10-25T08:00:00.000-07:00

Alright, now I really am confused. It seems I should write about what is on my mind and my schooldays experiences with themes from death row, I like ha ha ha's idea about making up the death row part as there is some risk of death with actually being on death row, also it occurred to me they may not allow very much high speed internet access there, from what I have seen in Susan Sarandon movies the living conditions are not that great, I don't think they even had their own TVs or phones in fact. Apparently celebrity blogs are popular these days especially ones where you are rude about their clothes, so I am thinking maybe just blogging whatever is on my mind about celebrity outfits while pretending to be on death row would be good. But then again I read somewhere that you need to invent a name nobody else has heard of to impress the search engines, I don't know what search engines are really, I know you can put a word into google and it will find you six hundred things completely irrelevant to whatever you wanted to find out about, but what is the point in that? It would be better called a loss engine in my opinion. But anyway you are supposed to call yourself squodge or trooolooo (lots of os are good, apparently) for this spurious incomprehensible reason.

So putting all that together, should I have a new mission statement called "Whatever occurs to me from death row about celebrity splooodle fashion plus themed anecdotes from my childhood?"

The celebrity outfits is a really bad idea though, I don't know why people are interested in that, they all look the same anyway. I saw this blog where the woman says things like, "This skirt looks like an ocean liner, and this jacket is reminiscent of a bag of oranges" and it was not funny, it did not even make any sense at all, the outfits clearly did not resemble the things she was making up. There is no accounting for popular taste, which is another reason why I am a misanthrope.

brainstorming in a teacup

2005-10-23T15:05:00.000-07:00

I am considering starting a new blog, but one about things I like instead of one that complains about everything. I am sure it is true that there is always something new to moan about, but I am not sure that it is a good idea for one's general sanity to be looking for bad things all the time to blog about, although there is nothing wrong with having a negative approach if that is the way you enjoy life.

My mother used to sing the praises of pessimism, she always used to say to me, "Annie, the best way to approach life is to expect constant disasters, because then if there is a disaster you will not suffer added shock, and if something good happens then it will be a treat!" Here as in so many other things my mother was completely wrong, which is no doubt why she ended up in the secure asylum in the end, although they are nice to her there and give out extra bananas on a Wednesday. Anyway, I am not saying that if I carry on this blog I will end up like my mother, for one thing I only drink to an average degree and for another I can cook, but all in all what I am doing is thinking of changing blogs to a different subject.

Here are some choices. Tell me what you think.

1. A blog about my life in Columbia travelling about the place to Communist festivals and on drug criminal cocaine raids with the local police force (this would be difficult as it would involve emigrating and learning Columbian).
2. A blog where I list everything on the internet that day, all the events of the world, everything bloggers think about them and instigate campaigns against government wastage (this would just be difficult. Incredibly difficult.)
3. A blog where I choose a political position and insult everyone who doesn't agree with it. (But imagine what kind of people you would meet putting comments on a blog like that!! Not good.)
4. A blog where I tell everyone all about the latest developments in internet technology, nanopods, cellpodcasting, podsearches, etc etc (the obvious disadvantage is obviously that I have no idea about any of those.)
5. A blog where I write about some disastrous aspect of my personal life in grievous embarrassing detail. To do this I would have to probably catch cancer or try to have infertility treatment or kill somebody, but a death-row blog would probably interest many readers.

As none of these ideas are especially brilliant I shall continue to think about it and let you know what is going on, as far as blogging is concerned I mean.

computer games

2005-10-19T17:30:00.000-07:00

Personally I am not into computer games, I can play one of those shooting the monsters ones and it is alright until you reach your natural limit (of interestedness I mean, not skills, anyone can pick up more skills if they have a lot of interest in something, just ask a gorilla) but then if I keep going while no longer interested I get brain haeomorrages of course if that is how you spell it, which anyone would under the circumstances.

However, I do not have a problem with anybody else playing computer games. If they want to spend their life wiggling sticks that is up to them, and you cannot argue that they are not learning anything because to someone like me who basically can't do it, it is obvious they have highly developed skills of coordinating little sticks incredibly fast, even if those skills happen to be useless. Perhaps they will become useful one day, or already are, who knows.

So this is what I hate, people who go around saying that computer games are bad for people. This is total rubbish. What is bad for people is nosey idiots poking their boots into other people's business and bossing them around when they have no psychic skills at all and cannot possibly tell whether the angry computer game player is having their brain destroyed by some kind of 1960s psychedelic spy show type of computer-game-subliminal-communist-ray-gun-emitter, or whether in fact they are merely sick to death with being told they are doing something bad when it is perfectly harmless and happens to be their favourite hobby. And as you cannot tell for sure, you have to go for the most likely, and it is not the first one as even idiots can tell if they try. But these people do not try, they just like having excuses for why it is that everyone around them gets angry and violent whenever they come near which avoid the obvious common denominator. Although they also get their personal satisfaction from stopping other people having any fun, because they are so bitterly miserable. They would be better off becoming alcoholics, if all the bitter people just drank themselves silly and went around falling over they would cause less harm, which proves that evolution is basically stupid. I will come back to evolutiuon later.

could the current diagnostic trend lead to government-sanctioned crack cocaine treatments next? I am just wondering

2005-10-11T14:04:00.000-07:00

I can see that the words "deficit disorder attention" are really stupid because basically they just mean "bored" and the head shrinkers have publicised these fancy extended terms to make it sound like they invented something new and impressive. I can see that, but I still go around using those 3 words anyway because I like to annoy people who think they are a medical illness, like smallpox or something, and I like the sound of them because they are so pretentious, and it is fun to watch people's faces when you say you have disorder attention deficit, while they try and figure out if you really mean it or are just joking them, and if you do mean it whether or not you are out of your eyeballs with medical amphetamine usage.

Now I do think there is a difference between being bored and attention disorder deficit, because you can't have everyone going around claiming to be DDA when it is just that they are lazy and have made no effort to find anything to do, which is unfair on the people who go around seeking out interesting new activities all the time and just find that none of them last long enough. Obviously by the time you are grown up there is not much excuse for the second one either, except maybe if you live in Estonia or somewhere, I would think it must be terrible to be an easily bored person there, although of course the thing to do would be put a lot of effort into working out how to escape. (Actually I have never been to Estonia, I am just guessing that it is most likely dull. Maybe Finland is a better example, I am fairly sure they only have the one city, and one city is definitely going to get dull quite fast.)

So anyway, the main thing I am complaining about today is fake DDA people, who watch TV, walk really slowly, eat a lot of mashed potatoes and then get bored and like to moan about it boringly, because those people are not really bored they just can't be bothered to do anything and they actually enjoy saying they are bored all day and find it sufficiently interesting as an activity in itself. To be a truly easily bored person with specialist psycho initials, you must actually be trying very hard to occupy yourself and failing despite the enormous effort. DDA is what they used to call craziness, or being nuts, laziness is what they used to call lazy and it still is. And the other thing I am complaining about is myself, because I said there is no excuse once you are grown up, but I think that was a little harsh on me as perhaps I was the victim of a traumatic lifetime which has left me without the amazingly fascinating career that would stop me being bored, who can tell?

There is a lot of craziness about anyway, and some of the crazy people are bored, and hopefully they will get it together and find some better activities without having to become crack addicts first.

I admit it

2005-10-05T09:42:00.000-07:00

I am running out of things to complain about here. Or maybe I am just becoming a serene and karmic person who floats around in a haze of drug-like purity, marvelling at blades of grass and generally being oblivious to evil. I hope not but if that is the case, do not try to save me by rushing up and shouting about how I have abandoned my responsibilities to the world to notice and get annoyed about what is wrong with it, because I will just stare at you and hand you a joss stick or something. Others will no doubt continue that mission and anyway it's not like I ever got paid for this.

I have found that it is fun to do this thing called blogging though, so my thinking cap is on my head and my brain is storming for something else to write about instead. Briefly scanning the internet as I know it, which is not very far to be honest, it seems like the other popular thing apart from complaining is telling people what to do. The two are quite closely related so perhaps I will do that. It seems preferable to becoming a contemplative monk anyway.

the internet: friend or foe?

2005-10-02T15:21:00.000-07:00

The internet is wonderful, without the internet I would not be talking to you here now, we must all be glad about the internet. I hate the internet. It is too big, too scary and I have no idea what is going on there. It is like landing on another planet where everybody is silent, invisible and non-existent until you press exactly the right button on your special space remote control and suddenly they are right in front of you. It is like all the people in the world disappeared and got replaced by little TV sets. It is like walking through a pitch black dark and dangerous jungle with a machete when everyone else in the jungle has night-vision goggles and special laser cutters and specialist high-tech fabric clothing and other Batman like equipmentry and gadgets.

Perhaps I am being paranoid but that is how it seems right now. What if there is a giant invisible crocodile about to leap out of an invisible river and eat us all up? I am just saying.

Everyone says oh the internet it is wonderful. But we still have to get up in the morning, go to work, use the bathroom and come home and find something more edible than a frozen pizza to eat every day. You can't marry an internet or live inside it, tasty snacks do not materialise from its screen. If they had thought of the internet when they wrote Star Trek there would have been no Star Trek, just a bunch of people sitting looking at screens, there is no story in that. I think the world is going bonkers. I would give up internetting myself only I am even more scared of that than I am scared of the internet. If I stop now it might be impossible ever to start again if I change my mind in the future, and then when the internet people gain total world domination I will be consigned to the secondary sub-human species of people who are forced to live in huts weaving rugs and conversing only in grunts all day. Things are not looking very good, all in all. But luckily, we still have beer.

a learned post about the history of telephones

2005-09-29T11:41:00.000-07:00

Complaining about telemarketers is a bit like complaining about terminal cancer or nuclear bombs, everyone knows they are bad already and should not exist but we have got to the stage of learning to live with things as they are while donating to research charities and hoping for a cure before it actually hits us personally. But there is a flaw in that argument, which is that telemarketing is a real danger right now, and it is hitting us nearly all the time. Answering machines only work if you are careful never to pick up the phone and it is easy to forget not to pick up the phone, especially first thing in the morning because it woke you up, when you are not exactly fully compost mentus, and this is probably why the same idiot telemarketer has been waking me up for three days in a row now.

I read something the other day which said telemarketing never sells stuff, and companies may as well just phone up and say "We are crap at selling, and also we hate you," and it would have exactly the same effect. I think this is not strong enough. If they phoned and said "Ha ha ha, made you pick up the phone, you moron!" that would actually sell their products better than now, and if they phoned and said, "I am an evil stalker watching you from outside the house lying in wait to murder you any minute now!" that would sell their products even better. In fact if they set up devil-worshipping centres, sacrificed innocent virgins and plotted to overthrow the governments of the world, they would definitely gain great popularity and have people marching on the streets in support of their cable services, I am certain.

Does anyone remember when it was still only about 50 years since phones had been invented and teenagers used to make hilarious joke phone calls to strangers because they did not yet have murderous video games or mobiles on which to phone their friends and tell them their exact location and distance from each other's locations and then exchange the latest gibberish dialects? In the past, teenagers had nothing to do, and were bored. These days they have far too much to do, the trouble is it is nearly all pointless, from college courses in daytime TV studies to watching daytime tv itself, which is slightly less useless but still not exactly a great boon to society as a whole.

Anyway, in those days, the teachers used to stress how illegal it was to make joke phone calls and how we would get arrested. Whereas now companies do it freely and do not get arrested at all. And they aren't even funny to themselves either. It is sad. My obssessive telemarketer probably has a wife and children too, imagine having to live with someone as dumb as him! In this way society passes evil onto the next generation till the end of time. However there is no point in getting depressed, although that argument rarely works on someone who already is.

toilet roll holders- yes or no?

2005-09-28T12:12:00.000-07:00

I cannot decide if these things are a good idea or not. I don't mean for restaurants etc, you need them there because people cannot be trusted otherwise, I mean in your own home. They are always in the wrong place so you bend your back awkwardly trying to reach them, and then you slip a disc and get trapped in the worst place to be trapped with your trousers down, and you are always having to replace the rolls so it takes twice as long to get out of the bathroom, and when you take out the bit in the middle that twiddles round so as to get the rolls on it can catapult across the room and smash the mirror above the sink causing 7 years bad luck, or just land in the bath at the other end of the room so you can't reach it. Whereas if you just pick up a toilet roll from a small table, you can always take what you need and then put it back down again, no special dispenser machine needed.

Americans call it "bathroom tissue" of course but I think I have gone into all those euphemisms before. So what is the solution to this dilemma?

blogging- not god himself, but quite demanding really in my view

2005-09-26T14:55:00.000-07:00

I don't know about this blogging, it is quite fun but doesn't anyone else find it quite exhausting? It is not the having to come up with ideas, because you don't have to come up with ideas, blogging is not compulsory even though you would think so from what some of the worst people say, "blogging, it is the new newspapers", "blogging, it is the new universe", "blogging, it is the new omnipotent creator" and so on, which is rubbish, blogging is the new talking to yourself in the mirror + talking to your mates down the pub + not having to go out, that is all it is, unless you are the Manolo who apparently makes hundreds of thousands of dollars from his blog?!!! How does he do that?!!! He must be a genius, it is the only explanation I can think of. I bet he works hard though, because I find it exhausting enough writing this place. I think that is the missing part of the equation I wrote up there, it should actually read:

talking to yourself in the mirror +
talking to your mates down the pub +
not having to go out +
extra work = blogging

Something like that. Having thought about it now, I suppose the extra work comes from typing your thoughts instead of just opening your mouth and letting them pop out of your head. For instance, when I want to say "for instance", I have to hit (doing a quick sum now, more work, do you see?) ELEVEN different keys, and they all have to be the correct ones. Now I am quite used to typing so it's not like I am one of those moaning 1970s journalist types who used to type really really slowly with two fingers and be really impressed by secretaries because they had gone on courses teaching them methods that made them able to write a whole four words per hour, I can type quite fast. But, it is still not as fast as talking, plus it is a skill, and we do not get rewarded for it like secretaries used to get paid, but we are still doing the typing. I am not trying to make a big deal, it's like if you imagine in the future people will probably all get good themselves at things we pay people to do now these days, same thing, those people will still be doing the work of diagnosing and prescribing medicines for patients, like doctors do now, or the work of making fluff pastry like chefs in Paris- cooking is a good example, people have got much better at cooking since 30 years ago. Not all, just some.

Well I think I may have wandered off the plot now and become overcomplicated so I will just leave it all there.

trees update again

2005-09-25T13:24:00.000-07:00

In my continuing campaign against trees I have noticed a previously hitherto unnoticed irrefutable argument. (That is a lot of long words for one sentence, so I will not repeat the attempt again).

Trees. They kill people. They kill people, and destroy homes and property. In hurricanes and storms, is it really wise to have tall wooden structures standing randomly about the place all ready to land right on your head? Of course not. Yet because of tree-worshipping, people dot them about all over the place, for no apparent purpose, and then when a few fall into their roofs and block their roads off, they act all surprised and upset. I calculate that if trees were abolished, hurricane damage could be reduced to a mere percentage of what it is at the moment.

Is it really worth the extra deaths, just for a few extra pigeon-homes? I have said it before, but if oxygen is the point then there are useful, attractive and even edible green things available everywhere that do not kill at all. Cacti, ferns, spider plants and even lettuce. Chop down your trees and grow some basil instead. Basil is very nice especially with pasta.

enough hurricanes now, thank you

2005-09-22T13:25:00.000-07:00

I think this thing has got beyond a joke now. First we had the thing with the Japanese name nobody knew before then everybody had to pretend they had been using for years, the tsu-darned-nami, I count that as a hurricane too because frankly I don't care what they are called, they are all just Extreme Weather. But anyway, there have been so many Extreme Weathers in America now, what with all the Florida ones and then Louisiana and now Texas, if there is a point then it has either been noted already or it never will be. Whoever is in charge of the weather, Mr Bush or God depending on what you believe, they should just stop it now, in my opinion, because the novelty has worn off completely, and denying that is deluded and silly.

Everyone hates America, even God if there was one. We know. Another thirty six hurricanes will not make any difference. I do not think everyone should hate America because I like being in America, but that is the way it is, and trying to change it would be like trying to convert the Pope to being Jewish or trying to make Michael Jackson go back to being black, it is not going to happen so we should just accept reality. The hurricanes are really irrelevant to that fact, therefore it is time for the end of the hurricanes.

Of course some people say they are just accidental natural disasters, and I tend to think they could be right, in which case they will stop soon due to the laws of probability. In which case, problem solved.

extra thought: I read about this family who left Louisiana and went to live in Texas and found a home and even got new jobs, and now they have had to leave there as well. The people in the town they're going to right now should look out, because they will be next. Unless this hurricane nonsense stops soon, there are going to be whole communities of people who are permanently nomadic, moving from one place to another every three weeks to stay ahead of the next Extreme Weather. We could be seeing a new American return to the lifestyle of the traditional Aborigine. And that would be too weird.

potato peeling nightmare

2005-09-21T18:11:00.000-07:00

I just made some food, it is still cooking now so I am taking a break to tell you all what is wrong with modern cookery, which is that they have made all the wrong gadgets. Why is there no clever handy machine for peeling potatoes? I have seen one for peeling garlic, you just slide the garlic in a plastic sleeve and roll it, and it comes out peeled. Peeling potatoes is far more dull than peeling garlic, plus potatoes are bigger. As I was peeling the potatoes I stood there thinking, I wonder when this will be over, it is so dull, and it was definitely the worst experience of my day so far, and I cannot believe that modern technology is going around inventing nanocubes and taking no account of the potato peeling problem. It is typical of what is wrong with science today.

Then I chopped the potatoes, but that was definitely 100% more interesting than peeling them. Chopping is alright, peeling is not.

Do not tell me just buy potato wedges, because I hate those things, I hate all the ready-made chip products, they are uniformly not worth eating and the cause of most obesity today. When you buy potatoes there are about six different kinds, this is good and then you can cook them a hundred different ways and none of them are "eggo toaster waffles", which is an extremely good thing. And if there is already a potato peeler, do not tell me about it if it is incredibly expensive, if it leaves bits of skin on the potato in which case it is a fake peeler, if it involves washing up seventeen different parts of complex cogs and wheels after use, or if it is a slave. I do not want to know those things.

Modern science. It is just not good enough. This is the twenty-first century, the time that was supposed to be of cheap space travel and 60s velour jumpsuits, we should all be aiming higher.

Also, who was the American president who could not spell "potato", he put an "e" on the end? Because I know Mr Bush is supposed to be stupid but I do not think he was the first one with this disease by any means.

why not just film a street corner, it has probably already been done

2005-09-21T09:23:00.000-07:00

One of my least favourite things is sitting quite happily in a coffee shop with my cappuccino that I have put cocoa powder all over without having to worry about the counter-top because it is already covered in cocoa powder, either that or the people behind the bar did it for me, so they are the ones surrounded by stray ground bean powders, and I am sitting there and suddenly I am forced to listen to loud people having an obnoxious conversation. I have complained about this before but sometimes you just need to say things twice, for some reason it is always women, perhaps because loud men tend to go to beer-type bars instead, and they usually have tattoos and one of them is either overweight or doing her best to look it by wearing low-slung jeans that cut into her belly and make it hang down over the top like she is a 1970s wrestling champion.

Anyway, you know about that already, but today I am distressed because I recently came across no less than two movies in which the entertainment consisted of obnoxious people sitting in coffee shops having dull conversations! And I paid money to watch them! What is going on with movie makers, that they think we want to watch the same thing as real life only even duller? It seems like there are two kinds of movie these days, the unrealistic ones where people with superpowers fight invasions from outer space etc, and the realistic ones where people just sit there talking rubbish for no reason. I do not know why things have come to this but perhaps it reflects the extreme boringness of life that people are now noticing. On the other hand, I was going to visit a friend at the seaside this weekend but instead she is evacuating because of another hurricane on the way. But will they make movies about heroic hurricane rescues like they used to make about world war two? I am not sure. Even if they do, there won't be any comedy nazis in them.

what is the difference between a celebrity and a car-accident? not much

2005-09-20T14:22:00.000-07:00

Why do people all have to stand and gape at gory disasters and/or famous people? It is disgusting either way. A famous person may be a little like a car-crash victim, what with their plastic surgery and designer clothing mistakes, but car-crashes are not worth looking at either so that is no excuse. If I was famous I would be like J.D. Salinger and hide away anonymously in the woods, which is a very good reason for not being famous because what if you need to get some shopping from the grocery store? You could pay someone to get it for you, but life in the woods would become boring after a while, plus you would almost certainly go crazy and end up like that other one, Howard Hughes, I do not even want to think about what happened to him because it is probably so disgusting.

Now we have the internet I cannot see why anyone would want to be famous as themself anymore, internet fame would allow you to buy as many groceries as you wanted and not have anyone rushing up to make sure you were you, or ask you to sign their underpants, or generally hang around staring in an embarrassing fashion. I suppose it would be difficult for actors and people like that as we would know their faces from their movies, although a disguise and change of hair-colour goes a long way, but plenty of people such as politicians could avoid showing their faces, in fact it would be a positive vote-winner I should think as most people hate looking at politicians already.

Anyway, people are always going on about why celeb magazines are bad because they make the youth of today try to be like britney or eminem, but I think this is false. The only reason people read celeb magazines is to gaze aghast at the horror of it all and be grateful it is not them. Working in a burger bar has to be preferable to the life of one of the olsen twins, what with the anorexia, drugs, awful clothes, being so short etc in my opinion. Celebrity magazines are rubbish because celebrityism is rubbish, but we should count our blessings quickly as we load our frozen food onto the checkout counter and then move on, rather than standing their with our jaws dangling on the floor.

and do not suggest sending cappuccinos to the ethiopeans, it would be cold by the time it arrived

2005-09-15T09:54:00.000-07:00

I like to shake cocoa powder over my coffee and I have one of those metal shaker things like you get in coffee shops to do this. The trouble is, I cannot get cocoa on top of the fluffy milk only. It always goes all over the counter top as well. It is a small problem but annoying because every morning I try again to get it right and every morning I fail yet again. This is a demoralising way to begin each day. Luckily the top has not yet fallen off the shaker thing causing the entire pile of cocoa to land on top of my coffee, but being grateful about that is like when you were a kid and your parents told you to eat all the disgusting cabbage because there are children starving in ethiopia, in other words completely irrelevant and insulting. Why did they not send the cabbage to the starving children instead, in that case? Just because someone else has a bigger problem than you does not automatically mean you should do everything someone else demands. I have gone off the point now, but does anyone have a solution to the cocoa problem?

a word I hate to hear

2005-09-13T15:47:00.000-07:00

If there is one word in the whole world I never want to hear again (apart from all the horrible ones obviously) it has to be "Iraq". I am sick to death of this word, nobody ever mentions it in a cheerful kind of context, the next word after it is always either "quagmire" or "liberation" or some other depressing or Stalinist kind of a word, when you hear the word "Iraq" you just know to get depressed immediately and not bother listening to the rest and cut out the middleman, or middlewords, the result is the same because it induces a pavlovian reaction in everybody these days. Just say "Iraq" and watch people's faces fall, except for the ones who turn into rabid slavering dogs. Those are the ones who actually like misery and revel in it and try to spread it around whenever they get a chance.

"Iraq". It sounds like a one-legged one-eyed pelican. It sounds like Latin or ancient Greek for "negative". It sounds like the involuntary gasp that means "Punch me in the face right now so I can be rendered unconscious in a painful way". It sounds like someone suddenly throwing up a mussel they ate with the shell still on.

If they had just left it being called "Persia", which sounds like a mysterious godlike cat lounging on a beautiful magical carpet, everything would have been different, I am sure.

mission statement nightmare

2005-09-13T14:30:00.000-07:00

I do not know what to put on the mission statement, the old one stopped making sense when I found out that Noreen is not the only person with a complaining blog on the internet after all, but I have not thought of anything new yet. You cannot really call something a nightmare when you are just in denial about it hoping it will go away, but if I did start thinking about the absent mission statement then it would definitely become a nightmare, so that is almost the same thing. However, there is a time for denial, and that time is when you have a problem about something and cannot be bothered to deal with it, so I will now forget the whole thing and concentrate on something else more important, namely trying to come up with something more important to concentrate on. Suggestions welcome.

lethal footwear, perhaps a new evolutionary way of destroying the stupid

2005-09-12T11:01:00.000-07:00

I cannot believe the shoes people are wearing these days. It is incredible, in a very bad way. Everywhere you go there is terrible footwear, I am surprised this is not a nation of cripples yet. The very favourite occupation of most women especially seems to be to go out and wander about the place in a drunken stupor while wearing high heels that are attached to the foot by only a small strip of plastic sitting over the front of a couple of toes. Then you have to not only balance on the pointy heels, you also have to claw your toes to stop the shoes flying off and shooting through the nearest shop window with every step. I am surprised you do not see more people in matching neck-braces with fake jewels encrusted on them to match the shoes.

The whole point of these shoes is you are not supposed to walk in them at all. They are for celebrities, who get driven around by chauffeurs and then carried into the Ocsars on sedan chairs. But people are too stupid to realise this. By people I mean women, men have never been dumb enough to risk their spinal health for the sake of awkwardness and pain, except for drag queens, but that is different and anyway I bet they put their trainers on to walk home afterwards.

I passed a woman on the street the other night who had fallen off her own shoes drunk, and there were all these men around sympathising and one of them actually offered her his shoes to wear instead. He kept saying they were Guccis and showing off. So maybe this is why the women do it, to get free shoes to sell on ebay afterwards. I assume the man was trying to impress his girlfriend, what with all the lesbianism these days men must be getting desperate for new ways to get girls to go to bed with them. But personally I would rather go into a nunnery than learn all these weird and horrible mating rituals, luckily I do not have to because I already have a husband and he is far too hot to let go of, but if I did not then I would definitely rather live with nuns than figure out all this stupid shoe stuff. I do have some high shoes in my wardrobe, but they are the sort that fit right and stay on your feet, because in my view a woman should always be able to kick an attacker in the crucial place and then run away fast at any time, just in case. It is shameful that all these years of feminism have not taught women one simple fact: being a pathetic arse is pathetic and arsey, not alluringly attractive.

helping people is good, but getting off on helping people is quite sick

2005-09-08T19:02:00.000-07:00

There are lots of evacuees from New Orleans in my town. You can tell they are evacuees because they are black. Not that many black people live here the rest of the time, and I would apologise for this except it is nothing to do with me and not my fault. Yes it is quite dull living in a place without many black people, but there are lots of chinese people for some reason I do not understand so it is not as if everyone is a nazi or something, most of them are not even republican. Our town is a haven of progressive activism if you must know. Well, there is a vegetarian cafe anyway.

Anyway, what is pissing me off is the way the white people are so excited about helping the evacuees, just because they are black. I know it is just because they are black, because there is a list of things the helpers are circulating for people to donate for them, and it goes like this:

1. "books that are relevant for people of color"
2. "special hair products for people with hair of color, not your normal pantene stuff"
3. "multicoloured barettes for children's hair"
4. "the sort of food black people like, with kidney beans in"
5. "rap records"
6. "clothes that tone with dark skins"

Alright I am exaggerating a bit, but if there is one more picture in the local paper of our stupid mayor entertaining a circle of small poor needy black children at the refugee place by pulling a funny face and holding out a candy bar, I will throw up.

This is what I would put on the donations list:

1. playstations
2. jobs
3. places to live

Also, no more stories about poor stupid black old disabled people who keep wandering off in a daze because the big city is just too civilised and confusing for them. The place they came from was a big city! This is only a smallish town. For goodness sake! They have lost their homes and belongings and jobs already, they do not now need to be patronised by idiot white people as well. This modern form of racism makes me more annoyed than the old-fashioned murdering genocidal kind in many ways, at least that was honest.

telesales emergency on the horizon

2005-09-08T18:46:00.000-07:00

No telesales people have phoned my home for several days. Usually they call constantly, and yell, "It's Steve! Pick up the phone!" and then when I do not, start explaining that they know I have a choice of family entertainment options, and I have won several brand new cars etc, and I must call them back immediately or I will lose my holiday in the Bahamas. This is very useful as it gives me a great excuse never to answer the phone to anyone else either, I can just say, "I never answer the phone in case it is a telephone sales person, they call constantly."

But if the telesales people have finally realised their methods are a failure, I will lose my excuse and people will go back to objecting about not being answered. What I need is some new test excuses to try out before telesales people go the way of the squeegee people and stop existing, because that is sure to happen before very long.

things to remember

2005-09-07T14:58:00.000-07:00

It is quite true that money does not bring happiness once you are over the zone of having everything you need. For instance, I never buy lottery tickets because I have enough money already and another seventy million dollars would be too much responsibility. I would probably worry myself half to death about what charity to give to, then choose one of those bad ones run by criminals, then end up penniless, and then get murdered for the money I haven't got any more. Whereas now, the chances of being murdered are only as low as the average, I have always believed in flying under the radar (ie, failure), it has worked for me so far and this would not continue if I suddenly became rich, you only have to look at people like Michael Jackson to see how wealth makes people go bonkers.

However, it is also true that being miserable in comfort is a good idea. If you are going to be miserable, do not be miserable in hardship if possible, comfort makes misery a lot more enjoyable. It is a shame the people who just had their homes pulverized are not all rich, because if they were they could stay in posh hotels and read OK magazine and eat chocolate while waiting for the water to get cleared away. Instead many are going right out and getting new jobs, which is heroic even if it is the only way they can avoid starving, and I hope they get good jobs too so they can buy themselves nice things to cheer up with.

The most important thing about when you are miserable is avoiding horrible people however, and this costs no money at all. It is extremely important when you are having a bad day not to give into the urge to allow horrible people to enter your life, because obviously that is only going to make things worse. There is a widespread evil lie that if you are on your own you will be miserable and if you just get around other humans you will feel better, when on the whole the exact opposite is nearly always true. If you are on your own, then you can do what you want, such as reading OK magazine and eating chocolate, which is comfort and will make you feel better. If you have horrible people around on a miserable day, and most people are horrible, you will very probably end up committing murder. Committing murder leads to prison or execution and is therefore only slightly less useless than being murdered.

What all this proves is:
1. do not buy lottery tickets
2. if you are having a bad day, avoid people

Remember these rules, as they are very important.

tree update

2005-09-06T14:10:00.000-07:00

It will soon be autumn, when the trees start moulting. Americans call autumn "fall" for this reason which I suppose makes sense, although they could also have chosen other simple descriptive words like "reddish brown" or "chillier" or "darkening" perhaps. The trees drop leaves everywhere, blocking up all the drains and gutters, and covering the sidewalk so you can't see what you are treading in. It is very antisocial, like snow, but as we are a society of tree-worshippers, nobody seems to notice. Finally the trees are bare and then they just stand there looking naked and anorexic all winter, so you feel cold just looking at them, and the birds have no home or nourishment. By the time it is winter it is darker too, and the trees start auditioning for extra roles in horror movies, swaying their long droopy arms all around and making strange whines and howls with their internal hollows. Then it is Christmas, which is the birthday of the trees. They are worshipped for weeks, people decorate trees and make cakes in the shape of trees and even sing admiring songs about trees, it is obscene.

The usual pro-tree argument is of course oxygen, but winter completely destroys this argument. In the winter, trees are bare so they do not even provide oxygen! Certainly a few hollybushes and some large cacti would be enough, not to mention grass, which grows fine in the winter. I suppose their winter redundancy is what makes the trees step things up intimidation-wise over the winter, but it is time we saw through this charade by now. Chop them all down, and use them for firewood and improvised rafts. These days we all need a stock of both those things, unfortunately.

anti- Austro-Hungarian Empire holidaying prejudice

2005-09-05T12:38:00.000-07:00

Lemuel is going to Prague, and he mentioned how he has been to different countries but only inside the old Austro-Hungarian Empire. This brought to my attention something else about what is wrong with Americans: they do not appreciate the Austro-Hungarian Empire enough. When Americans go to Europe, they visit all those places like Italy and France and England and so on, but they never think of going to Krakow or Szentendre or anywhere like that. Well those places are in Europe too, and personally I don't think you can say you have been to Europe until you have paid twenty times too much for a beer in the old town part of Prague and sat there drinking it while watching some stag party of drunken idiot Englishmen dancing loudly on the tables.

Actually, forget that, it is no fun at all. The point of these parts of Europe is that they are just different from the other ones. They have totally incomprehensible languages you cannot even read out with the wrong pronunciations, never mind pretend to be able to do "basic traveller" in. You just have to use sign language because if you even attempt to say fogadjisten or legnagyobb or árnyékától you could be hospitalised for weeks. They have strange food that is overwhelmingly boiled, with a lot of dumplings and a certain amount of salami. If you order a coffee you never know exactly what it is going to be like, sometimes it is from a vat of coffee stew that has been sitting on the stove for weeks and other times it is better than Italian coffee and much cheaper.

I was reading about some Hollywood people who shot a movie in Hungary, the one about the fairtytale-writing brothers, and the actress said she did not like filming there because the fod was bad in Prague. Prague is posh and incredibly wealthy compared to other places they could have been! The trouble with Americans is they are unadventurous and their standards are too high. I can understand this, it is nice being somewhere with every available comfort (until your town is destroyed by bad weather, in which case expect to get shot, apparently) but suffering is good for the soul. If Americans made more effort to tour Poland in the winter months, they would suffer more, and have better souls. Of course the same is true for everyone else as well, but I don't live anywhere else so I am less of an expert about those.

instead of complaining, they should do something useful, like mowing the lawn or washing dishes

2005-09-02T16:20:00.000-07:00

I thought there couldn't be many things worse than people going on and on about hurricanes etc, but it has not been that long yet, so I am not complaining about that, anyway this hurricane is so bad I am prepared to give it a three month extension on the moaning anyway.

But I have had absolutely enough of the people blaming everyone and everything except the actual weather. It is the army's fault, it is this or that local politician's fault, what did they expect, have they ever met any local politicians? most of them are either lawyers or do-gooders that used to be assistants in dogs' homes (no offense to Izzy, who is an unusually intelligent dog in any case) if they want politicians who can do more in an emergency than run around in circles and get interviewed then they need one of those old army people from Gulf War I the Prequel who knows how to deal with such things. It is the politicians' fault, or it is George Bush's fault, well obviously everything is George Bush's fault as he is the leader of the world, people blame him if their local store has run out of milk, and I suppose it is not surprising, also they blame him for not being legitimately elected as world president by the rest of the countries, but I am going off the point now.

It is the weather people's fault, the bus drivers, the looters, the desperate starving people just trying to get some Nikes to eat, or food even, the builders of the giant dome thing (what is it with domes these days? I wonder if that dome inventor reader is still here) the doctors, the police, I am getting repetitive strain injury now from typing this list so I must stop.

It was actually THE HURRICANE. Also, the hurricane has a name. It is called Katrina. So people should call her that, although I do not know if it is Mrs or Miss or Ms Katrina, but if they want to complain the address is:

Mrs/ Miss/ Ms Katrina
Louisiana

Simple.

art- it can be clever and amusing sometimes

2005-09-01T16:45:00.000-07:00

Noreen has been writing about art today, I like art too but it has always confused me the way some artists manage to get rich and famous because so much of it is total junk. I can understand it if their ideas are clever and entertaining, a lot of the stuff most people especially that terrible nightmare fellow called Brian Sewer, he is shocking, although on the other hand he would make a quite good artwork, anyway those people and I think they include most people, they hate this new art because it does not look like a carefully painted picture of anything, so they feel tricked. But this is really because they are a bit stupid, the new art is only supposed to be clever and perhaps amusing, it is not supposed to be a carefully painted picture of anything and they should not have expect it to, that was them being silly, not a trick.

Now, the big pile of bricks, I do not think that is clever or amusing at all. I think it is really dull. But on the other hand, there were some pretend African carvings of Macdonalds burgers, well I do not understand the joke but it is unexpected enough that I can see there must be a joke in there somewhere, so fair enough. Then there are gruesome arts, about serial killers and nazis, well I do not like those subjects therefore I am not going to go and see the art, so it doesn't bother me and I have no idea if it is clever or not.

But then there is the truly awful stuff, there are big huge ugly arts, there are irritating arts that make your eyes go funny, there are tedious boring arts such as poorly-made videos with no sound where hardly anything moves for hours, all of that is rubbish. And surely anyone can make boring ugly rubbish. So those are the artists who I do not understand how they got to be rich and famous. I have two ideas but maybe you have better explanations. My first idea is that they are in league with the devil, and my second idea is that some people are so deranged they actually like ugliness and tedium and these artists are exploiting those people on purpose, but I think that is a disgusting thing to do because it encourages them, and then the rest of us have to put up with even more of it, especially at dinner parties, not that I go to dinner parties anymore but I used to and they are full of people trying to find new ways to show off.

My second idea sounds more likely, except if it is true then there would be even more people doing it and one of them would have admitted they were lying all along, or perhaps that has actually happened and I missed it? I would not be surprised.

a post about blogging, it is definitely time to go hiking up some mountains now

2005-08-31T14:50:00.000-07:00

I have been looking round the internet a bit for things to read, and discovered that Emerald Bile is not the only place with obscenity-laden whining after all, therefore I will have to change my mission statement. Also I found a blog that is quite good. It is all about shoes. That is it, just shoes. I know that doesn't sound so great, but think about it. The first good thing is, there is no politics. We all hate politics, why we don't just admit that and give up on the whole thing is a mystery to me because it is quite obvious they are a bunch of idiots, who would want to do that job when they could be relaxing behind a supermarket checkout instead? I do not understand it, I would rather eat paving stones than be a politician.

The second thing about this blog of shoes is, it is written in pretend Italian-style English, which I think is quite amusing. Not side-splitting, but originality is thin on the ground these days, and I think that is a fairly good idea. If you are going to write a blog, do not be just like everyone else, write in Chinese graphology or concentrate on nothing but Dundee cakes, internet space may be free but that doesn't make it alright to waste your life being dull. I suppose this blog I am writing on now could be more unique, but perhaps I will come up with something, as I only thought of all this whole subject just a minute ago.

The third thing about the blog about shoes is, it also has amusing photos with captions. Anyway, I will be putting it on my sidebar later, just as soon as I find it again. And if you know any other good blogs please feel free to tell me what they are. Although we must all be careful not to get sucked in and start thinking the internet is real, there is a whole other world outside of computers, and we must remind ourselves of that.

at last I am back, but for how long? not that you would be able to tell from where you are

2005-08-30T16:22:00.000-07:00

Fortunately my bra feels normal today, however I am annoyed about something else and that is internet access. In the olden days, when cars broke down you could wind them up with a big handle. Even today, if you are writing on paper and your pen starts leaking, you can always find a piece of chalk or a feather and some blood. If you lose your voice you can use sign language, or even better just stop talking to people. If your car breaks down and doesn't hand a wind-up handle, you can call a taxi or tell work you are sorry but you can't get there today.

But if your internet stops, you are completely stumped. You just have to cross your fingers that it will return some day, or give up on the whole computer universe, which I am tempted to do, and I would do it too, except that then I would be ranting at the walls instead of you, which would be a sign of madness, and these days if you tell a doctor you are mad all they do is laugh at you and possibly give you drugs, you have to be either dying or killing other people before the medical profession will do anything about madness these days, no wonder society is deteriorating as a result. I do not like drugs, they just annoy me even more, alcohol is alright but if you drink too early in the day it makes you go to sleep early then wake up at 4am when there is nothing to do.

And even when your internet access comes back, you are still annoyed because of the energy you were not able to redirect towards handle-turning or making a quill out of a piece of electrical tubing or whatever, in fact the energy has only festered and got worse, which is very unhealthy and bad for your blood pressure. I think there will be a lot more people dying from internet-related illnesses quite soon.

So at least it is not just me, which does help a bit actually.

how do you know the world is round, did you test it?

2005-08-29T15:46:00.000-07:00

My bra is really uncomfortable today and it is annoying me. Do not get excited and say oooh-err, Annie mentioned underwear! because you already know that I am female and adult females wear bras, it is perfectly obvious. No I am not telling you what it looks like. It has two containers and some straps, that should be obvious too.

Anyway there is no reason why my bra would suddenly start feeling like a pre-tracheotomy tourniquet designed to cut off all blood and oxygen supply from my upper half, both it and me are still exactly the same size as we were yesterday, I did not eat a hundred burgers in the night or anything. So I blame the laws of physics, because they don't make any sense, but they say they do, thus causing innocent victims like myself to assume that the material world can be expected to maintain some kind of rational consistency, which is clearly nowhere near the case.

There is plenty of evidence for my anti-science argument, just look around you. Why do cockroaches exist? How can you be sure what day it is really? What happened to that last krispy kreme in the fridge that you are sure was there? I hate science, not just because scientists are too serious with no social skills, mostly because they are too boring. Instead of making different kinds of aspirin and cancer cures, they should invent steaming potions to make people invisible, or work out how to sew together bits of old corpses and bring them back to life. Science has not always been dull, in the olden days it was much more interesting, it is a real shame how things have now declined.

(Obviously Dr E. Scientist is a notable exception).

let us raise our bowls of gumbo in a toast

2005-08-29T07:08:00.000-07:00

I am annoyed about this hurricane actually, I was planning to go to New Orleans sometime but now there won't be any.

Farewell, old French-style place with your traditional jazz music, old black men in hats, people in rocking chairs on wooden porches and yearly carnival of excessiveness. I may not have visited ever, but I can tell it would have been interesting from your occasional cameo appearances in James Bond movies etc.

I think it is fine to come over all poetic when a place is being flattened, it is not my best but like I said, I have never been there. I just hope they don't rebuild it in the style of Coventry or Birmingham, that is all.

a nice cup of cocoa and an early night from now on, I think

2005-08-28T18:01:00.000-07:00

This weekend I decided to be exciting for a change so I went to the part of town where there are lots of bars with loud music and people walking around looking completely ridiculous in hardly any clothes and "hen parties" which are about the most unpleasant thing imaginable, if anyone ever asked me to a hen party, which thank goodness they never would because I am fortunately very unpopular, but if they did then I would of course say no thank you, I am not a hen thank you very much, and what other wildfowl events do you have organised for the rest of the month. But as I said, they would not. Which is good.

Anyway, I discovered that this part of town on a Saturday night is not actually exciting at all. First of all when you are walking along you get accosted by beggars every eight seconds. I do not like that, I think the government should round them up and give them homes and jobs. Then you have to walk past bars wondering which one to enter, which is difficult as there are too many and they are all identical. Then you have to go in one and buy a drink over the decibels.

So I went in this bar and got a drink while the band was setting up. It consisted of three old men with long hair in leather caps, two fat and one skinny. They were like the people in those TV shows who make customised motorbikes that look like the statue of liberty, only less interesting. First there was a fight between the drummer and the bass player, apparently this is traditional. Then they drank some beers. Eventually they started playing very loud rock and roll music copied from records, the sort of songs that have two inaudible singing verses for ever sixteen guitar solo verses. Just as the guitar solo is ending, it starts all over again, I am sure you know the sort of thing I mean.

So after one and a half songs and only one beer I left, and could not get inspired to try any more bars. On the way home there was a hurricane, not the big one that is about to kill hundreds of people just a small one, the sort where suddenly loads of trash bags and dust clouds and balls of dried-up plants that do not exist the rest of the time just appear out of nowhere. I interpreted this as a general sign that the evening had not been a success, and I think that I was right.

or maybe a whole new identity would be more effective

2005-08-26T12:13:00.000-07:00

It will be my birthday in a few months and I am already dreading it because there will be several cards from relatives I hate pretending they like me but really trying to make me feel guilty for not sending cards to them when it was their birthday for the past twenty seven years or since I left home and my parents could no longer fake my signature, whichever was earliest. I am considering sending them all a postcard in advance saying please give the money to your local dog charity instead, but they would probably interpret this a sign of contact, which I do not want to encourage.

As well as the cards there will probably be at least one useless present, most likely a non-absorbent tea-cloth. It will have a picture of some pot plants on it with descriptions in Latin. I have a relative who collects these things, she probably has the same tea-cloths as I have had from the same relative. She hangs them on the wall, which is all they are good for, except they aren't actually because they look completely vile. Most of them are calendars in a totally useless sense, the only way you would know the day would be ruining the tea-cloth with an indelible marker pen.

On the whole I do not encourage people to complain if they get gifts they dislike, it is the other person's wasted resources and one should be polite, gifts are not entitlements. But some people are just manipulative selfish vampires, and their gifts are actually secret threatening messages reminding you that you are being watched and hated for your non-conformity to whatever the dumb family rituals may happen to be, and can never ever escape.

I am planning to get over all this, yes, quite soon, with the use of a big samurai sword and a spot of intensive martial arts training.

cheese sandwich disappointment

2005-08-25T13:04:00.000-07:00

I just made an Italian fried cheese sandwich. In the cook book picture it looked really good, but in reality it was like sinking your teeth into deep-fried whale blubber. I did change some of the ingredients but I really think the picture was misleading and the idea of getting a cheese sandwich and then coating it in milk and flour and egg and then frying it in butter is probably flawed. It just seems too much like getting a lard sandwich then coating it in lard then frying it in lard.

So, cookery book pictures should not be misleading. Or they should have warnings on, like with cigarettes, "This sandwich may look appetising but it does not necessarily taste great, especially if the basic concept is already flawed and then you change most of the ingredients". Something like that.

little things mean nothing at all

2005-08-23T13:08:00.000-07:00

Those people who say, "it is the little things that matter," they do not know what they are talking about. It is the big things that matter, for instance nuclear war, earthquakes etc, those matter, whereas if you have a slight headache, that does not matter at all, just drink a large vodka. The truth is, if you take care of the pounds the pennies will take care of themselves, but if you save a whole beer-making jar full of pennies you sill won't be able to afford a house, plus you will need a fork-lift truck to get them to the bank to change into notes, and the gasoline this uses will still cost ten times more than the pennies anyway, thus resulting in a noticeable loss.

The idea that people care more about each other because they share the same toenail clippers, or they know how many sugars to put in each other's coffee, or they have had six hundred fights about who sits on what side of the car, this is complete rubbish. We all know if you are forced to see too much of someone then you are going to learn many unpleasant details about them. This does not mean you want to know those details, still less that you actually care, it means you do not have enough smuggled-in cigarettes to bribe the prison guards into getting you a private room. "Now that I know what kind of underpants so-and-so wears, and how many times a day he goes to the bathroom (or bucket in the corner), this means we are intimate lifelong friends," no this is not true at all.

It is the same with families. Feeding your child chicken nuggets and driving them to trampolining every day does not mean you give a toss and they will worship you forever, those things are just part of the job description, if you are going to have kids and then not even feed them you can expect the government to sack you from the job eventually. I hate it when people say, "you mean so much to me because you were there when I was ill," well if they live in the same house, where else are they supposed to go? Are they supposed to spend the night on a park bench, or perhaps go on holiday in the Carribbean until you recover, because in many places it is too cold to sleep outdoors at night, and not all of us can afford to go to Jamaica whenever a family member sneezes.

Of course the little things do not matter, I can barely remember my own birthday never mind anybody else's, the important point is whether they are a nice person or an arse, not how much you know about their nose-picking habits. It is simple.

first they came for the nouns, then they came for the adjectives, then everyone yelled at them to shut up with the whining, I am hoping

2005-08-22T17:33:00.000-07:00

For some reason there is this whole bunch of people these days complaining about "labels", this is about the stupidest complaint I have ever heard in my life, if there were no labels then how would you know what was in the tin? You would end up cooking dog food pizza which is exactly what people that dumb deserve to do, and they should eat it too because if they refuse then they are labelling the dog food pizza by saying it is "disgusting" or something and that is another label and actually what they meant in the first place, because they think "label" means "applying nouns to the things they are supposed to signify". Have they ever actually tried a noun-free life? Did they go in the convenience store and say, "I would like some long rolled-up leafy smoking (blanks) please", of course not, the idea of going round using only adjectives and the other categories is completely ridiculous. They do not know what they are trying to make everybody do, by complaining about this label nonsense because they have not tried it anyway.

Their real problem is not called "labels" it is called "denial". Just because you refuse to mention something, that does not make it go away. Here are some labels for these people: stupid, ridiculous, bovine, deluded, half-witted morons. These labels are very important, they help the rest of us identify them and then stay out of the way. Imagine what their children would grow up like, if they had never known the use of nouns! Blank staring dozy empty-headed spongiforms with no idea what their own name is or where they live or what day it is or even how to make a "sandwich", which cannot be called a sandwich anymore, just a bunch of adjectives.

But next they will be trying to ban verbs, adjectives, prepositions and pronouns. I would like to point a gun at them and tell them not to call it a gun because it is offensive to label personal objects using labels that might have offensive overtones to some, which means it is evil to do anything I don't want them to do, which is what their argument seems to be, blame the use of words! What a total waste of time. Words are just words, everybody knows to ignore words, that is why we have not yet killed all the politicians, I do not mind at all what labels anybody wants to call me, it is useful information enabling me to identify which people I want to shoot and which people I merely want to avoid.

what could be more disgusting

2005-08-22T10:16:00.000-07:00

Diet cherry lemon vanilla supervitamin extra caffeine 7-up plus. What is that all about? I made sangria the other night by putting together an inferior bottle of wine with some old bits of fruit and some frozen orange juice. It was quite horrible so I think I added something else random, maybe some ice-cream or a crumbled up old cookie or something. Then it was still horrible but I gave up and drank it anyway. Is this the general effect the soda companies are aiming for or have they gone mad? I think it is a sign of troubled desperation. If they all go bust tomorrow I will not be surprised.

the moon: what is its purpose?

2005-08-22T10:03:00.000-07:00

The moon might look pretty and I know it is bright enough to see with sometimes, but I do not think these things compensate for its failures. First of all, the moon is too confusing. It changes size, it changes shape, it cannot decide when to be up and when to be down, it comes up in the daytime at the same time as the sun, and it messes up the tides which makes life harder for the fishermen. Secondly, human beings are 98% water, and when a lot of this water is on their brains the tide changes cause them to go crazy, although I do not think this is noticeable compared to the usual level of craziness anyway, but we do not need any more psycho killers than we have already.

The moon is not reliable as a nocturnal light source, and it does not do anything useful. We have been there already and not found any gold mines. Just because the earth is allowed to remain does not mean we need to keep the moon as well. I think the possibility of clearing it away to make some extra space could well be worth considering.

yes I know there are lots of puns to be made about noses

2005-08-21T14:20:00.000-07:00

I spent most of the day doing laundry. I hate laundry. Who invented laundry? Why can we not simply go around in stinking unwashed clothes like they used to do in the olden days? They could not wash their clothes at all because if they were poor it was too expensive, and if they were rich and their clothes were made of fancy stuff it would just fall apart in the spin-dry cycle. They just got new clothes every year or so, but these days clothes are so cheap we could wear everything once, or twice for less sweaty people, and buy new things probably cheaper than it costs in the laundrette anyway.

I would not like to throw my clothes away though so I suppose that is not such a good idea, but how about stay-clean clothes, why has nobody invented those yet? Perhaps a drug that particularly malodorous people could take daily to stop them adding to the greenhouse problem, that might help. It is not as if inventing laundry has cleared the airways anyhow though, in fact these days people cover themselves with even worse smells on purpose because they think they are supposed to like them so they wear them to fit in, all those perfumes that are like a mixture of sulphuric acid, household cleaning fluid, yachting varnish and a pile of rotting pot-pourri mixed together. Men's perfumes are a bit better, they are like the inside of an old London pub mixed with a falling apart old suitcase and some WD40 whatever that is. But men smell like those things after two days of not washing anyway, they do not need to spend money on it.

All in all, washing clothes is a big pain, the only other idea I have is to return to having household servants, perhaps children could be trained to do that instead of lazing around doing pointless things like watching the cartoon network and completing ridiculous homework assignments on Lithuanian birth-control. And I am not convinced by the new trend in smells anyway. Maybe our noses have been trained to reject everything that does not smell like it kills all known germs DEAD since the invention of ammonia in the 1970s. Maybe olden days noses actually worked better, like with Napoleon who said to his girlfriend, "I will be back from the war in a couple of months, Josephine, make sure you cover yourself in cow dung for a couple of weeks first." I know it is a repulsive idea but it is worth sparing a thought, you do not need to go ahead and try it, or if you do please stay away from me.

just call me a management consultant, then again on second thoughts do not

2005-08-19T08:40:00.000-07:00

There is quite a nice cafe around the corner from where I live, but it has two very major and severe problems. The first one, as usual, is the kind of people who go to the cafe. Most of them just sit there in silence with their computers, which completely destroys the whole atmosphere of the cafe because what is the point in going out and paying twenty five times as much as normal for your coffee if you are going to be in the same cybernet world you are in all the time at home anyway? It is both depressing to witness and excruciating to be around.

The other kind of person in this cafe who I hate is the opposite, she is the loud young female who is quite unattractive and does not care because she is not gender biased and can always be a lesbian if she wants and has not found out yet that actually nobody would be interested of either sex because all she ever does is SHOUT AT EVERYBODY ABOUT TOTALLY BORING STUFF CONSISTING OF HERSELF. I will not tell you what she says because it would bore you to death but her mother still has not accepted that she is an adult, and she is the most unusual unique person in the world and nobody seems to notice. I am not talking about one unique person here, I am talking about a whole breed of identical unique people, you can only tell them apart if you study their tattoo variations.

The second severe problem is the cafe food. I only want coffee when I go to a cafe usually, but this one also has food, except it has hardly any food, just a few scraps wrapped up there sweating in cling-film, the last piece of a pie from the week before last and a dried up old bagel and a couple of scones that belong in a rock-garden. The food is so ugly and off-putting it actually puts you off your coffee, which is not even food.

I would like to march into this cafe one day with a machine gun and take the place over, and run it properly. There would be plentiful and delicious food, a room for computer people which is shut off from the rest of civilisation with a soundproof door, and loud music everywhere else to cover up the sound of the unique individual women nobody understands BECAUSE THERE IS NOTHING IN THEIR HEADS WORTH UNDERSTANDING. When it is a nice place to be again, normal humans could start coming and take the place over, if there are any of those left. One can only hope.

politics- yes or no? and why? or why not?

2005-08-19T08:14:00.000-07:00

I thought it would be nice to share our views in an uncomfortable environment and solve all the world's problems. There are many things wrong with the world today, which is why I asked previously should earth remain but for some reason there were not many takers on that one. Perhaps as humans we are biased. Not only has the moon not been populated yet but even if it was we all know from watching the movies that it would mean living underneath a giant dome and nobody likes giant domes. They can get holes in them and everyone is swept away, and they are unnatural. Humans are supposed to be able to get outside from time to time, that is why their worst punishments are offices and prisons. We are not pot-plants.

So I suppose earth will have to remain for the time being, but in the meantime there are plenty of problems to be solved, for instance politics. It is the most unbelievably boring thing on the planet and it must end. But not everyone agrees with me, although it is possible that very few people care either way, which they should because until politics ends nearly everyone you meet is going to be 180% more boring than they would otherwise have been within thirty minutes or under. Anyway I think I will announce one debate every week because if it distracts the attention of a single person from politics for twenty seconds then at least that is doing something good for the world however small, not that I am coming over all Mother Theresa, I said small and I meant it.

The floor is open, so let's have a heated debate. Personally I think the world would be better run by daytime TV. The most popular hosts could decide things and the viewers could phone in with their ideas. But this model is not tried and tested so could have flaws. Anyway you don't have to have a better idea yet to say no to politics, it is only a debate.

the bells, the bells

2005-08-18T07:48:00.000-07:00

It is about time someone did something about wind chimes. You do not need wind chimes to tell you what the weather is like, it is perfectly obvious from either going outside or, still easier, simply looking out of a normal household window. What are you going to do if the wind chimes start chiming, or tinkling, or if they are those great huge ones like organ pipes then booming and gonging, do a wind dance? Phone your friends to tell them it is winding? Write a poem about the windiness? No, you are going to say I hope no animals or small children not go near those organ pipes or they will get brained. Or you are going to answer the door and there will be nobody there so you will say, must be those kids again, but it is not kids it is the wind chimes.

The trouble with wind chimes is you cannot get rid of them. There is no market in second-hand wind chimes, or pre-used wind chimes as they would be called, and if you throw them away you are risking the wrath of some aborigine dream-ghost of the elements. All in all, wind chimes are quite sinister and best avoided, but this is difficult as they are in every shop right next to the evil scented candles, they are even in grocery stores. And there is no point in going back to nature and avoiding all commercialism as people who do that have even more wind chimes than usual. The only thing I can think of is perhaps you could make your wind chimes into something else instead, such as very large earrings or Balinese nose-flutes. I don't know, be creative.

Ask Annie

2005-08-17T11:29:00.000-07:00

I have decided to have a permanent advice service which people can get to from the sidebar. Here it is. Post your problem in the comments section below and I will then answer it. It is up to you to change names, identifying characteristics etc to avoid libel cases and embarrassment. Obviously the usual proviso about psychopaths applies.

several different things

2005-08-17T08:07:00.000-07:00

I have installed a tracking device, which is good because it means I can check up on you readers and find out where you come from and things like that, not that I am a psychopath, it does not tell me your credit card number or home address or provide incriminating evidence, but anyway it did not cost any money so I thought I would get one.

Also I have put some new links on the sidebar of people who have commented here and they are actually quite amusing to read as well so I thought I should point that out and say well done gold stars all round, thank goodness the internet is not just about people threatening to shoot each other anymore, these days we can all have sensible conversations about all sorts of strange and bizarre things too numerous to mention but anyway, I would never have thought of any of them.

Thirdly, I went shopping for a new mug because the old one broke, and the store was selling bags of stones. This is unbelievable. Next they will be selling bags of water and boxes of air. It must be great being a shopkeeper these days, people will buy absolutely anything, I am thinking of doing it myself, perhaps I will have a big Stone Super Centre or maybe a Vintage Cardboard Emporium. I am surprised there is no Waterbed Warehouse but I expect there will be soon.

just get a giant inflatable banana, stick it on the bath-tap and sleep on that, why don't you

2005-08-16T18:49:00.000-07:00

Look, I know nothing about waterbeds at all, I have never slept on one, seen one, or even been in the same building as one as far as I can tell, all I know about waterbeds is that in 1970s sit-coms there is always a young couple who go to a bad hotel where there is a waterbed and they get all excited about it and when they lie down they roll around all over the place and start vomiting and stop feeling amorous. All 1970s sitcoms are about about people who occasionally feel amorous and then something happens which puts a stop to it, and waterbeds are one of the devices commonly used for this purpose.

So, why is craigslist full of waterbeds? Who is buying these things, are they serious? Personally, I would not feel very reassured about going to sleep on top of a big plastic container with a small ocean inside, it might be useful if a fire starts under the floorboards but that is it, other than that all you need is for someone to walk a drawing-pin into your bedroom and you are going to be waking up like Robinson Crusoe, and what with being disoriented from your dreams probably spending the rest of the night searching for a wreck with a chest of gunpowder on it and then smashing up your furniture (the furniture made from sensible materials such as wood, that is, I hope you do not have an entire bedroom set of inflatables filled with liquids, that would be pathetic), and trying to build fire-beacons and little encampments to protect you from the cannibal savages, who knows where it could end, I do not even want to think about it anymore.

Waterbeds. Completely ridiculous. Futons are bad enough, everyone hates futons, they only buy them because they think futons can be used as sofas as well which is not true unless you have a behind the size of Arkansas that can act as a natural cushion because futons are actually harder than rocks, which is the whole point of them, they are for people who enjoy suffering. Futons do cure backache because they attack the rest of your body too so you can't remember where the original pain actually was. So they have a purpose at least, but if you want to sleep on water, doze off in the bath is my advice.

ask annie again

2005-08-16T13:31:00.000-07:00

Richard S said:

Yesterday when crossing the street I tripped and hit my foot on the curb. I was wearing sandles at the time and my toes still hurts. I just wanted to share that. Also, whenever someone says something self-deprecating I can't stop myself from finishing their sentence with the words "I agree". eg;
She; "No, I'm really haven't got the figure for modeling"
Me; "I agree"
Is this a problem?

annie says:

It all depends whether you want to impress those people or not. If so, then being rude to them may be counterproductive. If not, then it doesn't matter at all.

Richard S. said:

ok, i admit i have a problem. can you help?

annie says:

Yes definitely, even though you do not tell me what the problem is there are a number of measures that can always help with any problem, at the very least distracting you a small amount from the moment of impact. For instance whistling a merry tune or composing a heroic speech in iambic pentameter or, if you are not religious, trying to think up what exactly you will say for yourself if you end up knocking on the Holy Gates anytime soon.

Anonymous said:

My problems are dealt with courtesy of the world's major pharmaceutical companies.

annie says:

I would be wary of that, what if the world's major pharmaceutical companies go bust leaving their shareholders in ruins and their patients suffering from nasty withdrawl symptoms, death for instance? You would be totally unprepared to manufacture your own drugs. The thought of having to brew home-made herbal preparations, poultices etc out of nettles and elderflower berries may not be as enticing in reality as it seems in theory. I would definitely suggest some kind of backup problem-solving plan, possibly firearms-based, just in case.

ask annie

2005-08-16T09:02:00.000-07:00

(I am going to take this seriously as it could end up being my new career, so if it is too boring that is why)

freak said:

I bite my toenails. Not that that would be a problem per se, it's just that I've become so obsessed with it that now I just can't control myself anymore, I've found myself doing it at work, in restaurants and in my yoga class!Can you help?

annie replies:

On the whole, I think it is better for people to go with their addictions. They are like recurring dreams, trying to tell us something. If you repress them then they get angry and terrible things can happen. If biting your nails in public is a problem, I suggest staying at home. Give up work, yoga and restaurants, it is more important to be true to yourself. Yes it is difficult for a person to survive without money food or human contact but if you put those things before your destiny then there will be no point in surviving anyway.

On the other hand, you could simply listen to the message of your toenails and then they will stop calling to you all the time. This would solve the problem without making you lonely and destitute which is in some ways better. The message of your toenails is that if work restaurants and yoga are so boring you would rather be chewing off bits of your feet than paying attention then you need a major lifestyle change in all directions. I would say podiatry, which means chiropody in American, but that seems too obvious and I think the point here is wanting to consume your own feet, not polishing other people's feet. I do not really know what you should do with the rest of your life, it is a big question and you do not say very much about your skills, hobbies etc so it is hard to tell. But once you stop either nail-chewing or everything else in your life, whichever is easiest, you will have more time to think about it anyway.

first idea

2005-08-15T12:10:00.000-07:00

Maybe I could be an agony aunt. Does anyone have any problems? If you do not say any I will know you are lying. Everybody has problems, loads and loads of them. It is better to just own up and admit it than to live a life of falsehood.

world fame

2005-08-15T12:08:00.000-07:00

I am thinking of making a bid for world fame. What do you think, and do you have any tips?

No I have not decided what to "do" yet, I do not think it is relevant at this stage.

buses are best

2005-08-15T11:41:00.000-07:00

Last week, I went out in the evening looking for a drink and/or snack. There was a sort of mini lakeside restaurant mall by the lake, lots of people there, and you had to drive up a hill to get to the great big car parks that went with the restaurants.

To get up and down this hill there was a sort of golf-buggy with pullalong seat carriages behind that you could ride. At first I thought being driven from a carpark to a restaurant was the stupidest thing I had ever heard of, and I said loudly my legs still work so I will walk thank you, but then the golf buggy stopped right next to me so of course I got on. The driver was singing and waving his arms and being jolly, so I assumed he must enjoy his job and take a positive attitude.

The bar turned out to be pretend Hawaiian with umbrellas made of haystacks and kitsch plastic flowery tablecoverings everywhere. Which was horrible. Also I had forgotten my cigarettes and being evil they did not sell any. So I had to go back up the hill in the golf buggy again, try and avoid conversation with the hyperactive driver, and then ride back down all over again. Which I did, but it was not worth it. The atmosphere in the bar was terrible, all the people thought they were posh and looked like what zombies would look like if they bought all their clothes in banana republic. There were loads of children, always a bad sign, and they were even more like zombies. It was quite horrific. I cannot tell you how much I hate Americans who think they are posh. It is just beyond words terrible. To think that they choose those clothes on purpose to all look the same, it is disgusting, they make lemmings look like avant garde conceptual artists.

Obviously I was desperate to get out so drank my drink quickly and got back on the golf buggy. By now it was dawning on me that the hyperactive man was not happy, he had merely been driven insane by the utter boringness of his job. He seemed to be chatting to the customers but actually he was talking and singing to himself and not hearing anything they said back. Up the hill and down the hill all day long, it is enough to knock anyone off their trolley eventually.

Then I needed to detox before going home so as to avoid taking back the destructive evil vibrations I had picked up from the Hawaiin zombies, so I went off to another bar in inside the town. This one was fine. There were no posh people, no children, plus they had mist-making machines to keep you cool. They also do nice food, but I forgot to eat any due to concentrating on the beer drinking. Also they sold cigarettes. There was no parking though.

So, you can either park and ride golf buggies and go somewhere terrible beyond belief, or you can take the bus. This is why I like buses.

so many things to complain about, so little time

2005-08-14T17:59:00.000-07:00

I am having a very angry day today. There are so many things to moan about I hardly know where to begin. As there is a need to pick just one I will pick only seven:

1. people who whine because something went wrong in their house because they totally neglected it anyway,
2. people who have fleas and nits, eugh,
3. people who say they are "stressed" due to some perfectly normal everyday task, such as the washing up or driving their kids to school,
4. people who are just plain ugly,
5. people who have no friends then pretend it is because they are too good and superior and the rest of the human race can't keep up with them,
6. people who say they love their wonderful kids when their kids are annoying antisocial spoilt brats with the social skills of the average plague-rat.
7. people who write blogs that nobody reads just because they like the sound of their own keyboard.

You will notice that all these complaints prominently feature the word "people". There is a good reason for this, otherwise I would have changed them. It is that people are more annoying than any other kind of thing available, for instance, whales. Whales are not very annoying at all, for a start they live in the sea, which is miles away and very deep so there is plenty of room for them to not be near. Secondly, even if they do come near, it is not to show off about how they once read Einstein, or any of the 7 things listed above. Anyway, animals are easily conquered so of course they are going to be far less annoying than humans. It is obvious.

So, working down the list:

1. If you have a toaster you never clean and it gets so full of crumbs you can no longer insert the bread and then it catches fire, do not moan, "Oh no, my toaster went wrong!" because your toaster is innocent, you are the guilty one. The bread will not go in because it is telling you "Do not toast me until you have cleaned your toaster," and the fire is burning down your house because it is telling you, "You are an idiot who deserves to die." Listen to these divine and holy messages.

2. I do not know whether it is true that nits and fleas only attack unusually hygienic people, but I suspect this is not the case, otherwise why do they pick on wild mongrel dogs and small children? In my view, these creatures and their hosts are very unpleasant indeed, and should be burned. See above.

3. OK, if you don't like driving your kids to school or doing the washing up, don't bother. I will not care in the least if your children are kidnapped by Social Security or your kitchen sink gets infested with cockroaches, if you can't be bothered to even take your kids somewhere that someone else will teach them to read because you can't be bothered to do it yourself then you don't deserve to be a parent, and if your home is full of insects then chances are your toaster is full of crumbs and will catch fire and burn your house down soon anyway, so, whatever.

4. I realise people do not choose to be ugly. But this does not mean they have a right to make it worse. Nine out of ten ugly people exacerbate their own ugliness by one means or another, and if this were not the case then I would let the whole lot of them off, but they are bringing the side down and that is simply against the laws of evolution. It is not right to doom an entire species just because they don't look nice. A smile will make anyone look nice, and I am not talking about the kind of fixed grimace an evil alien does when they are pretending to be human. If you don't know what I am talking about, check out your family photo album, there will be plenty of examples there.

5. This is taking too long. Anyway, I have friends. That is all you need to know.

6. They are either lying, which is pathetic, or kidding themselves, which is even worse.

7. As soon as it comes to my attention that this is the case, I will stop. Anyway, I intensely dislike the sound of my own keyboard. It is like a million cockroaches square-dancing without any music. Quite disturbing, and I am not even on drugs.

I just called to say I am halfway through buying a pizza

2005-08-11T10:25:00.000-07:00

I saw a man walking around with a little pointy metal thing in his ear, it was a cellphone that can stay there all the time even when you are not talking to anyone. This is the stupidest thing I ever heard of, all phones are terrible enough already and portable ones are even worse, but having a phone permanently welded to your earlobes is completely unnecessary and ridiculous not to mention evil. The only people who need permanent hands off communicator machines that look like metal arrow-tips are space travellers of the future, everyone knows if you are investigating the distress call of people from another planet you need to be able to contact your mothership at all times, in case they have locked a tractor beam on the aliens or discovered it is a trick, or if you need emergency transportation because there is a big blue grizzly bear about to attack you. None of those situations apply if you are in the checkout line at Wal-Mart or sitting in the tax office waiting room, or even if you are wondering why your pizza is being delivered late, never mind because you are just bored and want to chat to your friends about it. So going around with a dilithium communicator attached to the side of your head only exposes that you are in denial about reality and trying to live in a fantasy world.

Life is boring. Sharing the boringness with other bored people is not the answer, it only increases the boringness exponentially, and wearing unnecessary space travel equipment certainly does not make your life more exciting, it only makes you look a complete idiot. If you need something to do in quiet moments, why not read a book. I recommend Proust, nobody has ever actually read Proust so the first person who manages to stagger through a couple of pages has done something unique, which is worth showing off about, unlike those who think it is clever to pretend they are Captain Jean-Luc Picard when he was under the infuence of the Borgs.

should it really?

2005-08-10T12:46:00.000-07:00

Following on from the blog below, should earth remain? I am not sure. Does anyone have the answer?

am I a dumb animal too? not sure, maybe

2005-08-10T12:29:00.000-07:00

As you can see I have not done those sidebar links yet. This is because it is work, and I am very lazy. For instance, today I am sitting here eating chocolate chip cookies and wondering when to smoke again and writing this, which is about as lazy as a person can possibly be. In a way, laziness is a good thing, if evil people were more lazy there would be a lot less trouble. "Shall we go and bomb that bus today, Ahmed?" "No, there might be something good on the lifestyle channel, and we've still got half a pizza from last night." And if those hyperactive nutcases who stand in the doorways of shops wearing uniforms and yelling at you "HELLO HOW ARE YOU TODAY?" and "THANK YOU FOR YOUR CUSTOM!" whether or not you bought anything were more lazy, that would also be good, I would not mind them if they were sitting down just outside having a cigarette and gazing at the car park instead, it would be much better.

On the other hand, I hate lazy people who try to make other people do their jobs for them, especially those ones who do everything as slowly as possible and get nothing done ever because they were "too busy". And also those ones who hate having to turn their brain on, so everything is your fault instead, "I was only reacting to what you did first," what patent rubbish is that, even dumb animals, who are not supposed to think, don't then go around whining about the consequences of their own dumbness. Mostly because they are already dead by then. Sometimes I think the law of the jungle would actually be better than our useless civilisation which is so full of people far far worse than dumb animals, but we all know that is a bad way to think from watching sci-fi shows where cold-hearted rational aliens are contantly trying to wipe out earth for its terrible wrongs. Obviously, earth should remain. I think.

links

2005-08-07T06:51:00.000-07:00

I found four more blogs to put on the sidebar. They are bogol, Expat Travels, the japing ape and Where's the Ka-Boom. They all belong to people who have commented here at some point, which is a far better recommendation than I found them by mistake or they were mentioned in yet another article about blogging in the Guardian. If anyone else who comments has a blog I will add that too, the exception is if they are a psychopath. It is not easy to tell who is a psychopath on the internet as body language is normally your best clue, but there are ways, however in a way if the psychopath is writing a blog that is a good thing as it tells you more about them, enabling you to study their mental movements and know your emeny before the combat. So I may even link those too.

and what about those playgrounds that are just like army assault courses?

2005-08-05T12:45:00.000-07:00

While we are on the subject of children being evil, which I was if you read down, why do not people notice that when ungrown human beings make sounds of distress they are nearly always faking it? The more civilised the society, the more howling kids you get everywhere, because if you stop send kids up chimneys and down coal mines they have nothing else to do at the weekend than harrass people. All this pony club and homework and the latest Barbie is not fooling them, they don't want to play pick-up-sticks they want to live in a war-zone and find out what life is really like, it is their natural instinct so if they aren't living in one already they just try and simulate it. Why else would they like guns so much, normal adults aren't interested in guns because unless you are actually planning to commit mass-murder there's not a lot of point really, but children are obssessed with guns. Also they like camping, and everyone knows that soldiers on the front-line have to camp a lot. They do not like carrying heavy backpacks full of stones, but then a wartime general would get his inferiors to do that, just like how children get their parents to carry everything. Children even like dehydrated food, the same as soldiers have to eat, things like macaroni and cheese and cheetos and kool aid.

I have a theory and it goes like this. On the one hand, children are faking all this distress to get people to give them stuff like candy, new toys, out of whatever mall they are being dragged round, whatever. But on the other hand it is all really just an unconscious instinct to create distress around them and increase the likelihood of violent hostilities. I know that whenever I hear a child make that grinding sound, the one like a giant dentists' drill from a hostile alien planet being driven into my brain, the idea of committing murder becomes instantly more attractive than normal. It would be quite easy for four or five kids in the same shopping mall to start a mini-riot among the other shoppers. Multiply this, and you have worldwide civil disorder and looting and eventually violent uprisings that lead to international instability and possibility even world war three. It is far more worrying than terrorism, and nothing is being done about it.

Those people in chitty chitty bang bang were right after all I'm afraid.

and I haven't told anyone this a thousand times, either

2005-08-05T08:27:00.000-07:00

I am sick of people talking about "the cult of celebrity". There is no cult of celebrity. We do not have a Celebrity Temple where people go and sacrifice their pets to decorators from "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy". Nobody is having Celebrity worshipping gatherings where they stand in a circle and speak gibberish till one of them passes out on the floor. There are no Celebrity Cult farmhouses surrounded by barbed wire in the country where you have to live on 400 calories a day and spend hours listening to lectures about the insights of Michael Jackson and recite passages from his old songs until you don't know what they mean anymore until eventually your well-meaning relatives come and grab you and take you away tied up in a van.

It is part of how everybody exaggerates all the time these days, like this calling everyone who disagrees with you Hitler. "That will be five dollars ma'am." "You Hitler!" etc etc. There is no "cult of celebrity", Hitler died sixty years ago, plastic does not give you cancer, the world is not ending, Europe is not a communist state, America is not a fascist state, you will not drop dead if you do less than three hours jogging a week, terrorists are not "annoyed human rights protestors" and smoking cigarettes does not give you cancer. Also reality TV is not voyeurism, voyeurism is wearing a raincoat and spying on your attractive next-door neighbour with a periscope. Also there is no new black or orange or anything else, everything is old and recycled unless it is part of a computer and even then it is still just a small piece of metal that our ancestors probably used as part of an axe.

Life is normal and mostly really boring, the liveliest thing you will probably do all day is have a better than average cup of coffee. Exaggerating everything does not solve this problem, only when we have space travel to different planets are things likely to improve. In case you are thinking that space travel is new, it is not, they landed on the moon 36 years ago and we are still waiting for affordable inter-galactic travel even now. I am not saying you should face reality, that is always a debatable point. I am just saying exaggeration is not working anymore as a way of spicing things up, so people should stop it.

in deep confusion

2005-08-04T18:51:00.000-07:00

Apparently I need something called a "blogroll" naming and linking to other people's blogs, in order to make friends and influence people, which will encourage more readers to come here.

Making friends and influencing people is definitely my least greatest skill. I have no idea what kind of blogs to name and link other than the home of the great Noreen who is my role model. On getting more readers I admit to being torn. On the one hand it is a bit creepy, thinking of what weirdos could be reading this very post and forming bizarre serial-murdering plans as a result. If there is a Jack the Jogger Killer soon, for instance, I will worry that he might get arrested and cite my anti-jogger posts as inspiration for his wicked slaughterings. Who knows what terrible things could come from encouraging totally unrestricted people with computers, which we all know is the very scariest type of a person in existence, to freely read and possibly even quote my ideas out of context to support their every evil crime?

On the other hand, it is possibly slightly paranoid to dwell on such things when they are very unlikely compared to, say, a tree falling on your head. One doesn't hear much about serial killers these days, I suppose terrorism has taken away their limelight really.

All in all I have no idea what I want to do. Any advice will be gratefully received before I ignore it and do something else completely different. But more urgently: those little whisks for frothing up milk so you can pretend your coffee is just like a real cappuccino. They must go.

so hahaha, pretentious idiots

2005-08-03T18:19:00.000-07:00

So I started wondering what on earth dream-catchers are actually supposed to do, other than make the person who owns them look like a half-wit who does playschool crafts for a hobby, you see one in their home and then unconsciously start looking around for the paper-plate masks, and the egg-box daffodils, and the magic roundabout dougals made out of toilet rolls with wool wound round them and then sliced along the bottom with a big DANGEROUS pair of scissors, and big friezes of hand-prints in red and brown supposed to resemble autumn leaves, and they say, "Why are your eyes darting around all over the place?" and you say, "Sorry, I saw the DREAMCATCHER and involuntarily started seeking out the other home-made junk before it caught me unawares and made me scream," and they say, "That is not junk, it is from a real Native-American store in San Francisco, and it cost fifty dollars!" and you say, "But it says made in China on the bottom," and they explode.

Well, the whole idea of trying to catch your dreams in a woollen spider's web confused me. Do they get caught after you sleep, so you can remember them better to tell the men in white coats when they start interrogating you on the padded couch? Is it to catch them on their way to your brain, so you have some dreams, because the brain needs to dream in order to exercise itself so as to feign sanity when you wake? The fact that neither of these are going to happen is by the way, we all know that knitting materials, unconscious states and mental health are completely unconnected, there is a link between excess knitting and being a unique kind of modern arse, but that's a different issue.

So I decided to look it up on the internet, and next time I find someone who has a dream-catcher I will tell them that actually they were made up by the Ojibway tribe as a method of getting their kids to sleep, by pretending to protect them from bad dreams. I once heard of someone who used to spray her kid's room with anti-monster-spray (air-freshener) before he went to bed. So having a dream-catcher is like going a few years into the future and finding that everyone is hanging up cans of lysol in their windows and admiring them as ancient spell-making equipment. Anyway, dreamcatchers, they are for kids and idiots, it is a shame the Ojibway tribe did not patent them, they could be laughing all the way to the bank at the dumb white people then.

babies: not exactly evil, but good is pushing it a bit

2005-08-01T08:28:00.000-07:00

So I was in the supermarket the other day, and there was this baby being pushed along in a trolley in front of me, and it suddenly started looking at me in a very hilarious way and I immediately got the point of the joke, so I was smiling back most amused, and we walked along like that in mutual understanding of how ridiculous the whole world is and it doesn't really matter because it is really quite funny, all without the baby's mother who was pushing the trolley noticing. I don't think she would have got the joke, most people don't get that joke at all, because they are too stupid. However the baby did not care, he had forgotten all about the woman who carried him in her own body for nine months then gave birth to him in vicious pain, having lost interest in her mid-conversation when he spotted the mad lady behind her (me).

Anyway, I am very glad I do not have a baby and I definitely do not ever want a baby again, because they are traitors. They would dump their own mothers for anyone who showed them a good time, at the drop of one of those little pointy hats with a knot tied in the top. People think they care about their parents, well they do not, actually they just care about exploiting the world as much as they possibly can and parents just happen to be the ones who nearly always put up with that the most. I could have picked that baby up and stolen it, and although the mother would have screamed and I would have been arrested, the baby would have totally loved the whole thing. Maybe not if it was breastfed, which explains why it is so popular these days to nurse babies until school age, women subconsciously know that is about the only thing nobody else can compete with to stop their kids finding someone else better than you and wandering off.

By the time kids are about five, they have usually noticed it is illegal to leave your own parents and squat in someone else's home just because they are more interesting or have a better sense of humour, and given up the game to some extent. Also their brain has expanded to where they prefer material things to people anyway. That is the age where they start shoplifting, unless you have created a reliable sense of fear in their minds to keep them in check, which is quite hard these days as the police rarely prosecute at that age anyway. The alternative is to buy them everything they want, but you should not do that because then they have won.

What does make me laugh though is those bitter and twisted middle-aged ladies who think they are just great with babies and all kids love them, and they don't realise this is only because their own grandchildren happen to be extraordinarily dumb, having inherited their genes, and therefore barely capable of reacting to anything at all, and then these ladies go around talking loudly to other people's babies and making grotesque faces at them, and then the babies all quite rightly start howling at the horror of it all. I would howl too if it was me. It's not just that the ladies are bigger than the babies and look like scary monsters, it's finding out that the world is capable of such bad-taste and blind pomposity, by having it literally shoved in your face. Quite a shock after the womb, I am sure.

random things I dislike

2005-08-01T08:11:00.000-07:00

1. anything to do with marketing
2. slidey drawers that shoot out too fast
3. mad people talking to themselves in thrift stores
4. imabic pentameter
5. Little Miss Grandma Debbie's Squishy Shaving-Foam-Filled Cake-Products
6. emerald green, creepy
7. anything by Georges Braque
8. Coldplay, ugh
9. tiled floors, if you fall over on them you crack your head open
10. dream-catchers. Dream-catchers. I ask you.

people expressing themselves, there are few things more off-putting

2005-07-27T11:27:00.000-07:00

Have you ever bought anything from small ads? You should, it is cheaper, but not if you have a heart condition as it means trawling through the whole quaggy mire that is human nature which is another kind of expense some cannot spare. There is an internet thing called "craigslist", you can go there to find some poor loser to have sex with if you do not have any standards about who gets to grope your body, but you can also go there to buy secondhand beds etc.

Here is one kind of adverts you will see on craigslist, it is the yelling psychopath type:

MUST BE SOLD IMMEDIATELY! COME AND BUY THIS OR I WILL HOLD YOUR FAMILY HOSTAGE AND BLACKMAIL YOUR AGED GRANDMOTHER! I CANNOT KEEP THIS COUCH ANOTHER DAY, IF YOU DON'T BUY IT NOW, YOUR WHOLE NEIGHBOURHOOD WILL SUFFER!

Then there are the stupid people who actually try to stop you buying their stuff, I think it is unintentional:

For sale, old chair, it is very chewed and the seat is broken, I have had it for ages, but it could be mended if you are a specialist carpenter, or maybe smashed up and turned into an art project.

The sad people:

For sale, really cool blokeish-type thing, I really like it still and will cry when you pick it up but my girlfriend said if I don't get rid of it to prove my love she will leave me, and I don't fancy my chances getting another one, girlfriend that is, the cool thing is completely irreplaceable, I used to be alright at picking up girls but then I put on a few pounds and lost my confidence, or maybe it is the way she is always yelling at me for no reason like that time I was two minutes late for the show after she smashed my watch that morning for asking her the time...

The disgustingly rich but also greedy people:

Entire lavish luxury deluxe-elite-clubclass Nathan Hawke living-room set, includes sofa, chair, coffee table and two side-cushions, beautiful "nondescript" colour hand-dyed linen picked by poor Chinese children, barely touched, we gave up smoking and killed out pets to keep it uncontaminated, cost $35,000, will sell for $34,975, tremendous bargain for you poor people who cannot afford stuff as nice as ours!

The desperate people, most of these are artists but some are selling marginally useful items:

ART! Huge great canvas the size of aircraft-hangar, decorated with three large stripes and one small one, took me all afternoon! $950

Ludicrous collection of cushions and old rags you do not want, all horrible colours, I got them wholesale and did a bit of needlework and in my opinion they are twice as good as what you get in "Bed, Bath and Beyond" so I am charging $250 for the collection!

Small table, one leg falling off, quite crap really, but my friend Dave the artist painted this really cool picture of a topless woman in a Viking helmet on the top, $25

And then the show-offs:

MOVING TO MANHATTAN! We cannot keep our precious IKEA bookcase anymore! The apartment is tiny, that's what it's like in New York, tiny apartments, but we are still better than you, are you not jealous, do you not wish that you too were MOVING TO MANHATTAN?

No thanks. I've seen Seinfeld. Who would want to live like that, in a completely grey broom-cupboard with your bicycle hanging on the wall and freakish hangers-on instead of friends? It even makes blood-relatives seem friendly and sane by comparison.

mmm, that sounds appetising, not

2005-07-24T17:18:00.000-07:00

Would you like to eat some runts? How about a few duds? Maybe the odd nerd or six?

No you would not, because they are all horrible radioactive candy sweet things, and they all have very unappealing names too.

Here are my suggestions for American candy factories to call their next range of products: dorks, bums, twits, fiascos, downers, tossers, blunders, morons, idiots, disasters, failures, car crashes, tsunamis (it is time the word tsunami was used more often, I have hardly heard it at all for at least the last week and a half).

Did Frank Spencer himself organise this "bombing"?

2005-07-21T11:53:00.000-07:00

It is beyond making into a funny rant, this last London effort. Four bombs, none of which they can actually get to go off? Chucking rucksacks into train carriages then running away and being filmed on a hundred CCTV cameras while the rucksack does a slight "pop"?? A suspect being searched for who has holes in his shirt with wires hanging out of them??? Witnesses saying things like, "the rucksack made a bang noise, rather like a packet of crisps being suddenly sat on, and it exploded just enough to blast open the zip????

I didn't even make those things up. If this is what is called "terrorism" these days, they may as well just hire one of those planes to pull a banner across the sky that says WE GIVE UP.

What next? Will they be scrumping apples out of the orchard? Writing rude messages on the walls of public toilets? Followed by walking into a police station and giving themselves up? It is beyond unbelievable, it is so embarrassing I think it is the end of terrorism. I will be surprised if any self-respecting terrorist can leave his home without wearing a paper bag over his head now, after this shameful debacle. And that would make it pretty obvious who to arrest.

You need a very stiff upper lip indeed not to fall about laughing at this one.

people- they are not all bad, but it is a good idea to stay away in general

2005-07-20T11:42:00.000-07:00

Noreen has posted the most shocking thing I have ever read in my life, if you are of a delicate disposition you should not read it but everyone else should because someone needs to start a campaign against this sort of thing, it is pure, pure, unabridged evil and must not be allowed to continue. I have not checked with Noreen whether she wants anyone to start a campaign though, so it would be polite just to ask before recruiting for your march or anything. I am too busy myself, and nobody round here acts the way Noreen describes, they are just slightly too short on average.

Noreen also mentions the issue of the language problem between Americans and people who speak normal English. I can attest that it is quite severe, the main problem is that Americans use the same words but for wrong things. If they were just French, at least you would know that the words were different from yours and someone needed to learn the other's language, but in American you just get confused without realising why. For instance, you go in a shop and ask for a vest, and spend half an hour being shown waistcoats instead, wondering if the assistant is mad. Or you say yes to a pie, and get a pizza, and think the waiter was terribly rude and not listening, and you storm out hungry. Or someone says do you want "half and half" when you order coffee, and then when it comes there is only a fraction of milk product and a vast majority of coffee in it, which is not what you were expecting. It goes on and on and on.

However, I will not write more on the subject yet, because I need to spend the rest of the day alienating people to reduce the risk of being invited to an evil black-tie satanic recruitment gathering. I cannot really explain how this is done, as it basically comes to me instinctively, but if you are looking for tips one of these might possibly help:

1. stop answering the phone or the doorbell,
2. ignore all birthdays and calendar festivals,
3. become an astronaut, then you can at least get a long way away if all else fails.

At all costs avoid doing anything stupid, annoying, pointless, irritating or aggressive. That is a fatal error, because people love all those things, as soon as you start they will just flock around you like flies around road kill on a hot day, and join in as loudly as they can. The next thing they will be declaring their allegiance to you and demanding at gunpoint that you tattoo their name on your forehead using their blood. Which I do not think would work very well, it would probably just look like a bruise and go away in a few days, but that is not the point, it is still a terrible idea and not something you want to get involved with. In the olden days you could pretend to go crazy and get locked up to escape from society, but these days the only purpose of madness is to get free drugs. Drugs may seem to help you cope with the awfulness of others, but they are actually only extending the problem and not solving it. Until you work out how to get away from people, your addiction to the drugs that enable your people-habit will only increase, until it becomes life-threatening in itself and your kidneys explode within your body. A large price to pay just for picking up the telephone.

another movie to avoid

2005-07-19T14:15:00.000-07:00

I can see why people liked "Team America", it does make fun of all sides, and it is full of the American version of toilet humour, which means sex, violence and vomiting humour, and people like that kind of thing, although it is not exactly very grown up, torturing puppets is a normal game for kids, everyone knows they love nothing more than a good session of "Barbie torture chamber" or "GI Joe gets captured in Vietnam", probably these days it is more like "The characters from Toy Story become suicide bombers", however you know how much I hate politics so back to the point: "Team America". It is not very good.

However, the reason it is not very good is nothing to do with the above. It is because "Team America" is obviously a parody of "Thunderbirds" and not only is "Thunderbirds" vastly better to start with, it is also a parody of itself at the same time as being itself, already. There is nothing clever about parodying "Thunderbirds". It requires as much cleverness to parody "Thunderbirds" as it does to kick a bunny rabbit. Especially if you take all the old Gerry Anderson shows, including "Stingray", "Captain Scarlet" and the one with the spinning boy at the beginning, it is far funnier than "Team America" and with better special effects. For instance, the old man in charge of the Thunderbird family, he is always telling them to go and risk their lives for no apparent reason just because it is necessary. They are not gung ho like the America team, they do not know why they are risking their lives at all, it is not even to stop terrorism or be patriotic, it is because their dad is a nutcase who set up a big island full of flash machines that fly and he wants to use them, and they do not have the courage to just say no. They do not ask, "Why do not the governments of the world save people instead of just our family?" or "Why do you not advertise these jobs and pay people to do them properly, instead of making your kids do everything dangerous while you sit at home watching?" If you have seen "Thunderbirds", the America team actually seem really intelligent by comparison, which is surely not the desired effect. At least they were asked if they wanted their own jobs.

Then in "Stingray" there is a song at the end, where the singing man sings "Maria, why don't you whisper the words I've been longing to hear?" which is funny, because the Marina character in the show cannot whisper any words of love to the Stingray hero she is in love with, because she is half-fish and cannot speak. She is dumb. She can only play the piano. Then there is Lady Penelope and Parker, they are extremely funny as Parker is a criminal alcoholic but you have to look out for that. So basically, it is not clever or funny of the writers of "Team America" to show us that puppets cannot have sex as they do not have genitals, merely obvious.

Do not bother with "Team America", just watch "Thunderbirds", it is a far more hilarious examination of ludicrously over-the-top misguided American do-goodery plus they have proper gadgets instead of just a computer. The fact that "Thunderbirds" failed to predict computers is one of the best things about it, and a parody that fails even to notice this is not worth its salt. Copious amounts of puppet-vomiting does not cover up the mistake.

short men, they are suspicious

2005-07-17T17:14:00.000-07:00

I am sorry if any of you reading this are short men, although frankly it doesn't seem like anybody is reading this, so that means there is only a small chance because if the total number of adults in the world is divided by tall men, tall women, medium men, medium women, short men and short women, that means the number of short men is only one sixth, or probably quite a bit less, as mediums usually dominate the market. I would say ten per cent or less, so if there are less than ten readers probably none of you apply.

Anyway, short men, they are suspicious. Think of Tom Cruise, Danny Devito and Columbo. I know Columbo had a wheelchair, but it has the same effect, you are lower down than average while sitting in a wheelchair. Where I live there are an abnormally high number of short men, I asked someone why and they said it was because they are Hispanic. I do not know if this is true, or why Hispanic men would be shorter, but it is not just Hispanics anyway, it is men in general. However, the good news is that in an area with a high concentration of shortness they do not need to suffer from the main usual short problem, which is feeling inadequate and then having to make up for it by expanding horizontally, shouting loudly, or both.

But the bad news is, these approaches are well-known and therefore less threatening than the alternatives. One of these alternatives is becoming malignant, like the bad goblin in the film about all the elves, elephants, dwarves etc that everyone went nuts about last year. Such men pretend to be friendly munchkins while plotting your death when you're not looking. The other alternative is just to look malignant, which is why I said short men are suspicious. Obviously the main problem behind the whole thing is that short men cannot get girlfriends, because tall men get the short women and medium-to-tall women shun small men even if it means staying single forever, unless they are really rich or famous like David Bailey the photographer and a great example of a totally malignant short man. My best advice is that short men focus on ugly women, because, well, I do not know what else they can do really except get rich or famous. Getting rich or famous is a good idea though, if I were you I would focus on that.

holidays: pathetic

2005-07-16T06:03:00.000-07:00

There is no point in holidays. I am not talking about "travelling", which is also pointless, just holidays. Two weeks "in the sun" (I wish they did go to the sun, that would solve the problem quite quickly) or in a theme park or ten days in a hut by a large piece of water or a week learning to ski/ surf/ paint/ cook tomatoes in the Italian hills/ pick grapes. I do not know why it is supposed to be so hard picking grapes, surfing etc, but apparently people charge you money to go and do it, people who live in places with a bit of Nature and nice weather in the summer definitely know how to exploit those facts, is all that I can say.

Anyway, if you like your life already, why would you want to spend all year fantasising about your tiny little holiday in the middle of it? And if you would rather be in Spain, well move there, you only live once and if you do not move now, you will either regret it on your death bed or spend the next few years making up pathetic excuses and then finally giving up and becoming a zombie, both of which are terrible things to do. Of course, then there are all those people who do move to Spain etc, and they are mostly dreadful too, as you can tell from the TV shows called "Horrible people move to Spain" etc, they get there thinking they can have a nice lifestyle just funded by their egg-farm and then find out Spain has plenty of eggs already and egg-farming is a lot lot harder work than they expected, just because a place is sunny does not mean all you have to do is laze around all day drinking sangria and the eggs will just lay themselves then jump into egg-boxes and take themselves off to the market and sell themselves for twenty thousand euros apiece.

Then there are those people on the TV shows called "horrible people buy even more houses abroad", where the people are rich so they can buy two houses but then they can only go there for two weeks still because obviously if they lost their jobs they would no longer be rich. So they have to buy houses that can be rented, which means they end up making more money and still not being able to enjoy it by just moving to Spain like they think they want. This is because they do not really want to go there at all really, they just want to look like the kind of people who appreciate nice weather and can tell the difference between a home-grown lemon and one from a supermarket. Which is ridiculous, because there is no difference.

I seem to have got off the point of moaning about America in particular lately, but these people are everywhere. You think you can escape them, but you cannot. Americans like to go on holiday to a hut by a lake where they waterski and spend the evenings in a big fat restaurant eating giant-sized plates of french fries just as usual, but they do not seem to have many holidays, because the travelling distances are so great and saying you have to work is a good excuse for not going. Everyone else would probably do the same if they had to spend a week and a half in the car to get anywhere, because basically most people loathe holidays, they come back afterwards feeling desperate and exhausted because all it did was remind them how completely dreadful their normal life is, the only reason they went was because they were kidding themselves. Then they get back into their normal routine and it is easier than having to pass all that spare time they had on holiday, so they become grateful, and then they say "it's good to go away, but the best thing is coming home again!" They should just admit they hate holidays and stop going.

So, cancel your holiday, just move house instead. Egg-farming is not that much fun but at least it will make a change, and if you don't like that there is always running a bed and breakfast, in both cases you will be fighting off the film-crews but at least they will leave as soon as the weather gets really muddy in the autumn. They still have winter in nearly all hot places, and it is still cold and wet, and I don't know what people do then with their disillusionment when they discover this as it is not shown on TV, only the complaining about hard work in the hot part of the year when the film-crew is having a nice time watching them and spending the evenings drinking sangria. Which is fair enough, as "dull miserable winters of people abroad" would not make a very good TV show anyway.

showers give you cancer

2005-07-15T16:58:00.000-07:00

I read this only today, and I believe it. Well, maybe it wasn't cancer, I cannot remember, but some kind of deathly condition, apparently because all the little pieces of water are going through the air all the chemicals in them fly off and right up your nose, it is like snorting pure magnesium, which I think was the one that turns blue when you burn it, or some other colour, anyway of course it will kill you to inhale all that metal. If people were designed to inhale metal, then tobacco plants would have been made of aluminium and cast iron, which they are not. Or it could have been magnesium. I am not a scientist, you can read about it yourself, that is what the internet is for, just google in "deadly shower disease", it will tell you all the facts.

Anyway, I am not surprised that showers are lethal, because personally I have always found baths much better and more relaxing. How can standing up be preferable to reclining in any situation where both works just as well for the main purpose (in this case, washing)? Also, you cannot slip on the soap, fall over and break your neck if you are already sitting or lying down. Also, shower heads always have some of their molecules blocked up by chalk deposits, and did you know that chalk is made of the crushed bone remnants of animals? That's right, they all died in one pile, got flattened down together by, I don't know, maybe a big rock out of the sky or something, and gradually turned into chalk. Similar to how people press flowers, only more disgusting. No wonder they block up the shower sprayer so that splutters of water always go the wrong way, usually right in your eye, and for some reason always freezing cold whatever the temperature of the rest of the water happens to be. The cumulative effect of all this stress is that your blood pressure goes up, your cholesterol level sky-rockets and you collapse from shock, slip on a bar of soap, break your neck and die. One way or another, it is just not worth it.

Have a nice bath instead. It will calm your nerves and make you easier for others to live with. But do not surround yourself with scented candles in the bath, it is morbid and makes you look like Ophelia, I am sure as soon as she was found floating in that swamp the evil scented-candle peddlars rushed up and started decorating the picturesque scene rather than trying emergency ressuccitation or anything. I hate the scented candle industry, it is definitely trying to take over the world, and scented candles are so utterly, totally useless that I am convinced they contain an evil mind-altering aroma that will bring about the end of civilisation, otherwise how can they possibly be explained? There are few shops left to go to now that do not have scented candles, I think you are safe in Blockbuster Video, but I cannot be absolutely sure. Perhaps someone could produce a wallet-sized checklist of candle-free zones for ordinary consumers to take with them as they shop. Scented candle is far more offensive than smoking, if shops just put big signs up with pictures of candles and a red line through them, they would definitely attract more customers.

Anyway, like I said, have a bath.

animals that should not exist

2005-07-14T07:49:00.000-07:00

I am not the world's biggest fan of Nature, although, in my latest years, I have come to appreciate it somewhat, because at least when Nature causes trouble it doesn't mean to, because it has no real brains to speak of, whereas Humans can be real bastards, and I am not talking about politics and world peace here, I hate politics and world peace, they are for people whose personal lives are so dull they have to pretend to care about people they do not know instead. I am talking about ordinary evil people such as next-door neighbours, aged relatives etc, those are the really dangerous ones because one minute they are lending you a cup of sugar and the next they are standing over you with a giant burning pitchfork trying to extract your soul through one of your ears. Compared to humans, Nature is not as bad, which is why I generally prefer sitting in the garden rather than making small talk with idiots down the pub, despite the trees.

Now, in Nature there are savage deadly creatures that you should not go too near to, but which I have no problem with existing. For instance, there are lions, you don't want to meet one in a dark alley, but if the zookeepers are doing their job this will not happen (although I think we could do without lions in zoos, children can barely tell the difference between a goat and an elephant anyway so why not just stick a few domesticated animals in the zoo and leave the big grand ones in the wild, instead of always saying "we treat them humanely these days, and give them lots of space to run around" which is clearly false otherwise they would have to be running around the whole place all over the customers and most likely killing them, because the whole zoo compared to a Great African Plain is about the size of a telephone box, to them).

But anyway, these animals have a purpose. Lions exist to remind us how pathetic and unstylish we are compared to them, if you tried putting one of those tartan dog-jackets on a lion it would tear you apart. Elephants exist to remind us we are tiny mean little creatures who don't bring our young up properly, elephant babies have elephant godmothers who actually help out with babysitting every day so the mother elephant can do things like make a cup of tea and go to the toilet. I am not sure if elephants have special toilet areas outside the camp, but I would not be surprised. Even snakes exist to expose how meagre our digestive systems are, snakes can swallow an entire goat in one piece, their middle then goes all goat-shaped. Then they take it easy for a few weeks while digesting the goat. Humans on the other hand cannot digest raw bones and sinew at all, which is why we should stop eating Macdonalds burgers.

So those were some examples of useful animals. But then there are the totally pointless ones, which anyone seeking evidence that God does not exist is missing their best argument here. Although they will still lose anyway because the whole point of God is being cleverer than humans, so any time you come up with an inexplicable, God would just say, "Exactly, you are dumber than me, I told you that already." Cockroaches, ants that bite, moths, pigeons. Those are the main four.

1. Cockroaches. The only possible purpose is to remind us not to nuke ourselves because we all know that if we do the cockroaches will take over the world, and given what nasty nasty creatures they are, this is likely to motivate us to make sure it never happens, because it's bad enough losing your entire civilisation but having those little meanies take over afterwards is just the icing on the cake, considering how hard we work to get rid of them. But I do not think this is enough justification, anyone who actually wants to reduce our planet to a fuming wasteland probably likes cockroaches already and has them for pets.

2. Ants that bite. These are totally unnecessary, as there are plenty of kinds of ant that do not bite which would be perfectly good enough to cover any inexplicable "ant" requirement. It helps the shoe industry to have tiny evil creatures that deter you from going barefoot, but that is just a coincidence.

3. Moths. Again, we have perfectly good butterflies that do not eat our clothes, so why the moths, which are brown and ugly and make holes in your sweaters? It helps the synthetic fibre industry because moths do not eat plastic, but that is another coincidence.

4. Pigeons. All these achieve is to help mad old ladies cause trouble by feeding them illegally, but that is not good enough compared to the trouble they cause. Pigeons eat all the smaller, more attractive and hygienic birds, they produce poisonous waste, they are disgusting and ugly, and they have no sense of social propriety and dont think twice about swooping low to steal your sandwich. They should be helping the gun industry, because governments should be encouraging us to shoot them, but this does not seem to be happening anyway.

I am sure there are more, but that is all for now.

children, they are the opposite of trees, thankfully

2005-07-13T11:02:00.000-07:00

Children are human beings. They are smaller in height than the average human being, and they are a bit ignorant on some stuff, such as marketing consultancy, Middle Eastern politics and the fact that if you live on just ice-cream it will eventually kill you, but on the other hand, most adults one meets are way, way more stupid than most children, because they have years of total idiocy stacked up in their brains, it's a great big forest of old rubbish in there and they still haven't given up looking for dumb ideas and ridiculous excuses, so by the time they reach retirement they have more or less cancelled out even any potential value in their own existence because it would take more years to clear out the mess and get them back to babyhood-level insight than they can ever hope to live for.

So, children usually know more sensible stuff than adults, even though they know less stuff. But then, knowing lots of stuff is far more likely to be the hallmark of a totally stupid person than a person whose existence is worth it for the landfills of the planet, anyway. So the only important difference between children and adults is basically their height.

However, despite this not insignificant difference, children are still actually human beings. They are not:

1. small dogs, such as those horrible rat-like ones with the pink feather boa carrying-cases,
2. little cherub angels who should be worshipped and prayed to by all other humans but especially their parents, the head priest and priestess (adjust as necessary for families with two dads, one dad and a member of parliament, etc),
3. machines for supporting the evil practices of fast-food outlets by consuming everything crap they produce thus enabling them to make more of those cardboard burgers out of rain-forest-tree-pulp,
4. computers you can program from pre-birth by playing them tapes of IQ-enhancing music and the songs of extinct whales (which reminds me, when will people realise that IQ measurements are actually inverse to actual intelligence? do you want your foetus to grow up stupid? no, so stop trying to increase its IQ, it needs the time for basic meditation and observational study),
5. sacred symbols of world peace (since when was a small fat being covered in tinned spaghetti sauce and habitually accustomed to bashing other small fat things on the head with plastic hammers a symbol of world peace?)
6. toys, for dressing up like Barbie and Action Man then parading round the market square, you total utter idiots, what impression does this give of your parenting ability, that you are not merely still arranging fantasy clothing on the nearest diminutive figure available, but that you can't even tell the difference between a dolly and an alive homo sapiens?
7. point-scoring systems for competitions with your sister, next-door neighbour and all the other parents at the school gate, if your child got a hundred per cent in their maths test that is despite what you've been teaching it, not all down to you as if you were there in the room filling out the answers yourself, which in any case would be a pathetic "achievement" because you are an adult and you should have known what long-division is for about thirty years already,
8. retirement funds. If you think your long-suffering children or your spoilt nasty brats are going to give up work and look after you when you are dying of arthritis in your old age, then go and buy a great big cuckoo clock right now and move into it. They will have better things to do, such as, live their lives and bring up their own children according to their sworn vows never to do anything the way you did it because it was all completely wrong,
9. entertainment systems, designed to act charming and do little amusing dances (small-sized), or visit your house and sit there helping you whine about the weather (fully-grown size) and the new gutters and all the other boring rubbish you like diverting yourself with because your mind is so full of refuse there is no room for anything interesting up there anymore,
10. living dedicated tributes to you, the great creator who brought life to the world, and whose every action you therefore possess for evermore, and whose every failure is a personal affront to your in your benificent mightiness. You are confusing your role with that of Beelzebub. Your children did not ask to be born and definitely did not sell you their soul in return for agreeing to push them out of your uterus.

The way to treat children is the same way you would treat anybody else. Make them work for their money, do not give them a free ride, have a good laugh when they act ridiculous and leave them to their own devices as much of the time as possible. You would not tolerate an adult coming in your home, living in your spare bedroom for free, vandalising your walls with crayon and demanding french fries at all hours of the day and night, so do not tolerate it from any children either. If any children do visit your home, simply provide them with something to do that amuses them and produces hilarious results for everyone else, such as, making them bake "bread" or paint fifteenth-century style Flemish portraits of each other. Or dress them up as superheroes, only, do not buy special costumes for this purpose, just use some old sheets, j-cloths, sellotape etc, they will not be able to tell the difference and the results will be much more amusing for you.

Then parade them round the market square and whenever anyone stares in shock, stare right back at them and say, "What are you looking at? She made it herself, and she suffers from a severe learning disability! I will call the anti-discrimination police onto you!" Most children "suffer" from "learning disabilities" these days, so you will most likely be telling the truth even if you don't know it at the time. I am waiting for them to invent "crap parents disorder", or CPD, although that will snowball, with the parents being certified with their own CPD and drugged to the eyeballs next, right back up the family line, no old granny in a nursing home will be safe. Then again, these people are so full of nonsense already, it doesn't really make much difference.

Trees

2005-07-12T19:27:00.000-07:00

I have been meaning to blog for ages about how sinister and scary trees are, but, well, not done it.

Trees. They are sinister and scary. Standing there with their great arm-like branches, like enormous people staring over us only immovable and solid and made of wood, yet still somehow living. It is unnatural.

Chop them all down and make burgers out of them, I say. Why do we need trees for oxygen when we have grass, spider plants, rose bushes and all those other green things, lettuce for instance?

And to think that people actually hug them. Ugh.

people who think they are going to be famous

2005-07-10T06:39:00.000-07:00

It is a soft target really, but if I come across another one of those disgusting people who "plays music"/ "acts"/ "writes"/ "does" "belly" "dancing" ie hangs around all day doing absolutely bugger all while moaning, and who is "right in the middle of a great creative period now" because "everything is coming together" and "the factors are all in place" (which anyway is what that old prime minister everyone has now forgotten used to say, the speccy one, and therefore nerdy not arty-farty) and who has met someone who is "friends with" someone who "knows" (yes in the Biblical sense, I am sure) someone you have never heard of but it seems like they are expecting you to pretend you have anyway, because obviously they are meant to be Famous and therefore must they (a) have Magical Powers, and (b) be responsible for using those Powers to bring everyone else who has ever met them into the Fame Circle, but nobody utters the F word in such circumstances, it is the most impolite thing you can say, because fame-seeking is the antithesis of (ie entire and whole point of) these people's artistic vocations, so they like to pretend they have barely any conception that the word even exists.

Anyway if I ever meet another person like that, I will kill them. Then I will write a film about it, get Quentin Tarantino to direct, and call it "Kill Art".

travelling up its own arse-holey war, more like

2005-07-08T08:38:00.000-07:00

I agree with Noreen, the terrorists are useless ungifted losers. Since 9/11 it has been downhill all the way for the international terrorist movement, with these latest attacks representing an all-time low. Let's look at some more evidence:

1. They timed the bombs to coincide with the G8 summit. What is that supposed to mean? G8 and Live8 and everything else ending in 8 have nothing to do with Israel or Iraq or any kind of armed conflict whatsoever. Clearly the terrorists were just miffed about being ignored, and trying to get in on everything. They were annoyed that G8 was in the news and they were not, so they pretended to agree with Sir Lord Geldof only in a more carnage-motivated way. Well nobody is going to be fooled by that, it is obvious that murderous terrorists do not care about Africa at all, if they did then finding a cure for AIDS would be more useful than killing innocent people. So now they look like hypocrites as well as mass-murderers.

2. They stopped all London transport for a whole day. Do they not know (well, obviously they don't know, but still the utterly brain-boggling nature of their quantum mind-warpage forces me, a mere normal human, to ask the question, otherwise I could accidentally create a black hole right here in my own living-room), do they not know (see parentheses above) that stopping the whole of London transport for a day is exactly the kind of thing Londoners enjoy, in their heroic blitz-spirit kind of way, which they have been practising since forever, every time there is a train disaster or an hours-long wait in a tunnel or somesuch incident they practise it, they get all confident and calm and start chatting with each other, and the whole thing becomes a great big victory and makes them feel great inside, and has the exact opposite effect of scaring the hell out of them? This is a terrorist balls-up on a gargantuan scale. They got the whole of London sitting down with pints of beer in brave defiance. This is slightly the diametrical opposite of making them bow down to jihad.

3. They attacked their own side, by choosing areas with lots of Muslims to bomb in. How dumb is this! Now every British Muslim leader and his granny is saying they disagree with Al Qaeda (whatever that is, I think it is the worst club in the world by definition that anyone calling themselves a member gets to be one, which is just plain sad, they should work a little harder and then perhaps gain acceptance by the Rotarians instead, great plonkers) and if anyone in their mosque knows anything to tell the police. This is not exactly a result. Muslims are more scared of non-Muslims being rude to them in the street after these bombings than they are of the balloon-brains who did them.

Here is the terrorists' board-meeting when they were planning it all. Someone up front with a great flip-chart: "Right then everyone, the idea is, we make sure all the friends and neighbours see the carnage too, and then instead of sitting around outside cafes on the Edgware Road smoking great big hookahs all day, they will be really really impressed and maybe start a jihad army and then we can all storm parliament!" Or maybe, "The plan is, we let those- erm, us- Muslims know who is really in charge, which is of course ourselves in the Secret Islamic People's Front, and then they will give us smoke hookahs for free and maybe even free espresso coffees too! Well, those of us who aren't planning to get blown up too of course, sorry about that Ahmed, we will think of you as we tuck into our complimentary kebabs though, nice one, mate, respect!" Hasan pipes up from the back, "Can we make sure my mother is back from visiting her sister in Jordan to see it, because this could help with my campaign to get her to buy me a new car for my birthday?"

I ask you, how are normal Muslims supposed to figure out this is what they want? And if it's not this, then what exactly is it? Every normal Muslim in Britain is now walking around completely baffled. Even the ones who want to cow to terrorism don't know how to cow in this case. What a waste of time.

4. They made Ken Livingstone angry. Mr Ken has, rightly or wrongly, been doing everything he can to help the cause of everyone who hates the capitalist West ever since he got in charge of London. Even if most of it did apparently involve dance festivals rather than armed conflict.

Now, I am slightly worried about Mr Ken, because he seems to be taking the whole thing very personally, and I do not blame him either, what with him being the Mayor and everything, and calling him a Zionist is completely unfair, he has taken great pains to ensure that nobody mistakes him for a Zionist. He is so angry now, he even used the expression "mass-murderers" which as far as I recall he has never said before about anyone except President W. So that represents a big and possibly traumatic shift in his political thinking, he was almost in tears when he reminded us all that London is the greatest city in the world, as had been confirmed by the International Olympic Committee only the day before the mass murders. I do not know what Mr Ken will do in retaliation, whether he will step up the dance festivals or not, but I am quite sure he is not friends anymore with the people who ruined his great big Olympic party in Trafalgar Square, and I do not see how this can do them any good.

There is undoubtedly even more evidence that the bombers are utter total failures, but going through it all is like counting the grains of sand on a beach, it is depressing that anyone should feel they have to do it in the first place. So that's enough for now.

another jogging update, please may this be the last one, I am heartily sick of the whole issue

2005-07-07T17:52:00.000-07:00

There is a big storm here. It is so big that we cancelled going to the pub because of all the lumps of tree flying around the car, and decided to go home instead and make sure it hadn't been dismantled into a home-build kit, because the last thing I want right now is to be on one of those awful shows called "Pompous build-yourself idiots" with the posh bloke who goes around dismissively saying how everything is going to cost millions more and take forever, and the following Christmas there they are still living in a caravan while the entire site is awash with mud, like Glastonbury festival without the bands, and Glastonbury festival is bad enough with the bands. I was going to go once, then I heard there is a food stall that sells nothing but toast. Toast. Warmed-up bread slices with butter on. For money. Still, I suppose it is alright to exploit people if they insist on being that stupid.

So, there is a big storm. We are driving home, watching cardboard boxes flying past the windows and rivers rushing down the streets, and what should I see ambling along the sidewalk as if everything was completely normal and not at all exciting or fun at all? Waterfalls running off their heads and down their shirts, feet kicking up giant flowing streams, tree-branches whirling around in their faces, and they didn't notice a thing, just kept going.

That's right. Joggers. In their shorts and t-shirts, all sporty-looking, jogging along as per normal. I am beginning to think they are actually the Living Dead, like in Buffy (well it is quite like Buffy round here, it is an American town) only disguised as humans.

Mind you, this evening's pointy-walkers, who I spotted on the way out before the storm, were transformed by the weather entirely on the way back. They had become joggers instead. So at least I have now discovered the way to turn pointy-walkers into joggers, which is to point a great big hosepipe at them and make them run away, even though the downside is the other discovery, that joggers are actually zombies upon whom no amount of physical distress has any visible effect.

Now I have to find out how to defend myself against zombies in case they become threatening. Can't remember if stakes through the heart work or not.

jogging update

2005-07-06T13:00:00.000-07:00

I have noticed that as well as the joggers there are people who wear special sports outfits in order to walk down the road in an attention-seeking way, pointing their elbows and knees more than usually necessary for walking. And no they are not exercising, they go about half the speed of a normal person's walk, you could lap them ten times in a day just by popping out to the convenience store and back a few times for extra beers, they would still only be halfway down the street by the time you collapsed into bed in a drunken stupor. I do not know how they get home, perhaps they sleep over at a friend's house before attempting the return pointy-walk the next day.

there are even special fridges for your own personal beer keg, oh yes

2005-07-06T07:34:00.000-07:00

Americans have some of the worst drinking laws ever, and they drink more than any other nation I know with the possible exception of Poland. You cannot get anywhere on the tube, there are no tubes (and where there are tubes nobody has ever heard of them, apparently there is one in LA, which nobody knew, I don't know if it was recently excavated or is only used by the illegal immigrant underclass all the Hollywood people have for scrubbing the marble floors of their fancy homes) , so anyway because there is no public transport or even if there is nobody wants to sit next to someone from Chile, everyone drives cars, which means basically they drink and drive all the time, from morning till night, from the age of sixteen until they either crash or keel over from a burger overdose, whichever happens soonest.

You are not supposed to drink until you are aged about thirty-seven, so that just means as soon as they are legal everyone spends the rest of their lives making up for all the lost drinking years. On the other hand, plenty of young people drink illegally, but then that presents the problem of finding a hiding place, which means driving off in the car somewhere, well if you are already illegal what difference does it make to add a few extra crimes on top of that, such as murder while under the influence of a crazed authoritarian legal system. Admittedly I have not seen many drunk driving deaths around the place, all the extra space on the roads probably helps somewhat, but there was a deceased armadillo by the side of the road today, no doubt the victim of some crazed nineteen-year-old pondering so deeply on the bizarre contradictoriness of American law that he forgot to swerve into a ditch and save the wildlife.

Then there are all those appalling "jock" people, which means male college students who drink too much so they can go around being violent, stupid and annoying, and wearing tartan shorts. They do this until they reach middle age, because American college degrees take literally decades to complete, and usually people like to acquire three or four before finally getting to grips with real life and paying back some of the money, whereupon they usually either run for government office, or open a pizza shop.

Do not imagine I am only talking about redneck places with lots of "liquor" shops, New York and California are the hardest drinking places of all, they just don't want you to know that. Everyone in California is at an all-day-long film discussion meeting in some flash restaurant, or celebrating the fact they escaped from that kind of meeting, so they drink like fish. And in New York, the women especially are great big powerful kick-boxing types who can down fifteen vodkas on the trot without a burp. Then they go outside and chain-smoke five cigarettes in the snow. Then they spend the rest of the night trying to get a taxi home because there's nowhere to park and they don't want to go on the subway and risk sitting next to a Chilean.

the end of the world would be too good for them

2005-07-05T11:17:00.000-07:00

I am sick to death of lots of things today but most of them are people you don't know so going on about it would be boring, anyway it is boring for me too, that is the worst thing about horrible people they just go on and on and on, and however you try and get away from them never seems to work for long, they have the tenacity of cockroaches. Even after a nuclear holocaust (and sometimes I am tempted to try one of those, just in case it works, but there is no point because) you would be climbing out of your bunker when the poisonous fallout has settled, wondering if there is anyone else left alive, and already walking around outside with a big shopping basket full of freshly-looted radioactive food there would be the most annoying person you know, probably one of your worst relatives, grinning at you, and they would carry on being as mean and nasty as ever as if the world had not just come to a great big end.

"Oh! I wasn't expecting to see you here!" they would say, "I didn't think you could afford a leakproof enough bunker on your salary, ours is all decorated with the latest wallpaper you know," and then they would run over and stab you and steal whatever cup-a-soups you had left underground and move on to the next survivor.

Horrible people, I hate them, they never stop until they have ground your brain into dust, I am tempted to become a born-again Christian just so the Lord can wreak His terrible Vengeance upon Mine Enemies, because quite honestly that is the level of help one would require, trying to do it on your own is just too big of a job. (I am not talking about hell, this world is where we need justice, people can't cause any more trouble once they are dead anyway). Still, I probably have a few decades left, maybe I will come up with something.

another movie to avoid

2005-07-04T19:43:00.000-07:00

I have had just about enough of people who think violence is bad. Have they never watched a simple cowboy movie? Of course violence is bad when it is used by bad guys against good guys, but also as employed by Clint against all those people with the dodgy moustaches it is obviously completely good, and what is more, great fun and not at all regrettable.

I was just watching "Braveheart" starring Mel Gibson, and after his new wife is bashed, nearly raped, dragged across the mud then tied to a post and has her throat cut in the public square, when Mel finally turns up for revenge he kills the evil English fellow with a distinct look of regret upon his face! This is sheer utter pathetic gayishness. The man abused and murdered his new wife! She may not have been that pretty, but she had a better Scottish accent than most of the cast! And she knew how to jump on a horse fast! Mel should have been absolutely relishing the opportunity to polish off the bad guy in this case!!! He might at least have punched him in the face, but no, it has to be all about how he regrets this terrible descent into violence, but he was forced into it, it was his inheritance, and rhubarbrhubarbrhubarb.

If you have seen this movie, you may not have noticed all that from this particular single look in Mel's eye yourself, but take my word for it, the entire attitude to violence of that film is just typical of the modern regretful pansy-like way people regard bloody death these days, and it is not normal.

Anyway I have not seen the rest of the movie yet because I thought I was going to throw up after all that, but I hope when I do Mel becomes more violent, because of course it was evil for a bunch of foreigners to pillage and oppress the innocent little sack-wearing peoples of Middle Earth with the confused-sounding voices, they were just going about their business eating mud and dancing jigs, and they are entitled to a gruesome and gleeful revenge. Not that any of it is necessarily connected with actual history.

maybe the war of independence should have been a rap competition

2005-07-04T06:54:00.000-07:00

It is the fourth of July, and I am very glad that the people who won that war against the British were old-fashioned warmongers because I do not think the same outcome would have occurred if Emerson, Jefferson, Lake and Palmer or whatever they were called had just gathered together to record a half-hearted whiney rap song entitled "Where is the US constitution?" instead of killing the Limeys with great big canonballs. Nor would it have done much good if they had organised a big square-dance party in the Grand Canyon or Yellowstone Park, and called it "LiveHoweverManyStatesWeWant", and then sent a bunch of telegrams to George the third saying, "Remove your fookin troops forthwith or we will fookin improvise a version of fookin Bohemian Rhapsody that you will never forget for the rest of your mad life". Although to be fair, I am sure Bob Geldof has probably given up saying fookin on live TV now that he is Lord Sir Bob Geldof, Knight of the British Empire (which I find quite disgusting).

I will be celebrating by staying indoors drinking beer, there is no point in going to see fireworks displays, when you have seen one firework you have seen them all. It is excruciating the way people go "Oooh!" and "Ahhh!" as if they were in ancient China and fireworks had only just been invented, who are they think they are kidding? They have all seen fireworks before hundreds of times, and anyway nobody would be impressed it was their first time, even if it was. Which it is not. Now, if they shot clapped-out old popstars into the sky on top of the fireworks, that would be worth watching.

no, I would rather turn it down, or possibly off altogether

2005-07-03T12:43:00.000-07:00

Some days I just go around thinking bloody fantastic, this place is amazing, I am so glad to have escaped the festering hell hole of the old country and landed somewhere as tidy as Germany, as crime-free as Switzerland, as cheap as Hungary, as spacious as Scotland, as friendly and polite as Sweden, and almost as far away from France as it is possible to get, but still with all their cheese.

However, none of this alters the fact that the TV here is abominable. As soon as you switch it on, it is like someone broke into your home and started bashing you over the head with a crate of beer bottles while wearing a polyester jumper and a pair of slacks from Sears Roebuck. And that is just the cookery channel. There is this cookery show with this man called Ameril or Amoxycillin or some other name that sounds like a medicine, and he shouts at the audience constantly about "pump it up!" or "turn it up!" or something and every time he does this they all scream. And all he means really is that he is about to add a little seasoning to the chicken marinade, or he is pouring cream into the pudding sauce, or even sometimes that he is using the food-blender. There is no need for all this overexcited nonsense, it is just recipes.

I like nice food, but this man is enough to put you off cooking ever again. You could be happily assembling some nice fish pie or whatever in your kitchen and then involuntarily think the words "switch it up!" and then end up using far too much salt and pepper. I think Mr Clarityn is involved in a secret plan to brainwash everyone into ruining all their own cooking so they spend more money in fast-food restaurants. There must be some reason why Macdonalds is still making money, it certainly is not because their food is edible in any way.

no I didn't plan this, it is all made up on the spur of the moment

2005-07-02T13:58:00.000-07:00

Planning is hard work and a total waste of time. Anyone who plans a blog is an idiot, way below even serial blog reader addicts on the virtual evolutionary scale, if I had nothing better to do than plan blogging then:
1. my brain would be so empty I would never have anything to blog in the first place, and
2. I would not have just spent the last several minutes publishing about seventeen different versions of the mission statement and description of my personality at the top and sides of this dumb blog until finally realising it is time to take a break before I become one of the terrible sad living-dead-type people I hate.

swearing is neither clever nor not clever, it is just everyday anglo-saxon

2005-07-02T13:07:00.000-07:00

I have no problem with swearing, it is fine, otherwise why would I read the magnificent Emerald Bile and then shamelessly steal their format (that is a dumb word, "format", only the one I would prefer to use has not been invented yet, it would mean "general idea" but not sound as vague and abstract as if you were wearing professorial spectacles and waving your hands around slightly gayishly), if you want to swear then that is a matter of total indifference to me, go ahead, and save a few of your most forceful expressions for people who try to tell you that you are only semi-literate because swearing reveals that you can't think of good enough words that are not obscene, because they are talking out of their arses, as you know, and I agree with you wholeheartedly on that.

However I do have a very big problem with people who try and persuade me I should do more swearing, or who assume I must hate all swearing just because I cannot be bothered to do it myself. I also cannot be bothered to build roads or run sewage plants, but I am perfectly happy for other people to do those things. In fact I just lost interest in swearing, and anyway there are plenty of other far more effective ways to alienate everyone you know and I am expert at all of those, fortunately, because I do not like human beings very much and generally prefer it if they ignore me unless they are my immediate family or shopkeeper.

Also, I would rather do most of the swear words than refer to them constantly. That's the other thing about swearing, why are words referring to everyday human life considered obscene anyway (as you probably do not know, "obscene" means "behind the scenes" and comes from ancient Greek drama, where anything disgusting would occur offstage, whereas nowadays we actually have to see the face of Tom Cruise), these words are not obscene, in fact calling someone an obscene name is probably giving them an unwitting compliment most of the time.

Even talking about swearing is boring though, so end of subject.

go ahead, stick your head down the lavatory then, if that's really how you like to rinse off conditioner

2005-07-02T11:02:00.000-07:00

No, "restrooms" are not rest rooms. People do not get halfway through grocery shopping and then think, "I would just like a little rest now, all this having to choose between eighty different kinds of junk rubbish is giving me a headache, I could just do with a little lie-down and perhaps forty winks." It would be nice if "restrooms" did actually have comfortable chaise-longues and maybe daybeds too, except I don't think I would want to lie down where hundreds of Americans had placed their bodies beforehand actually, so scrub that.

When you are sitting on a lavatory, you are not "resting". We all know what you are actually doing, there is no need for me to spell it out, and it is not resting.

Nor are you having a bath or a wash. A "bathroom" is a room with a bath in it. A "washroom" is for washing. When you are sitting on a lavatory, you are not washing. Would you like to stick your hands in a urinal and give them a good rinse? Well actually if you are a routine user of blogs, maybe you are the sort of person who would, I do not know, but I was not talking about you I was talking about average Americans, and average Americans are terrified of toilets and would certainly not mistake a toilet for a bath, which is why they obsess about spraying their toilets with enough disgusting chemicals to kill a whole Vietnamese village just to make sure nobody can tell anyone did anything in them, as if the chemicals don't smell worse than faeces anyway.

Nor is it, or has it ever been, gramatically possible, in any universe, for a household child or dog to "go to the bathroom on the living room floor". I should not have to explain this to anyone with more English than the average illegal Hispanic immigrant. There are basic laws of physics, and they include the impossibility of a room being in two places at once, and if Americans cannot understand that then there really is no hope for them at all.

Unfortunately, even the words "lavatory" and "toilet" actually mean "washing room" and "washing", so I cannot claim that Americans started all this eupehmistic nonsense, but they are certainly taking it to the usual ludicrous extremes. What next, "I am just going to the bedroom for a wee in the closet?" "Excuse me sir, where is the sacred ritual bath area, that quadruple burger meal I just had is causing my guts to brew alarmingly fast?" It is disturbing to contemplate what effect all this will have on people's ability to grasp simple factual concepts in the future. The whole language could entirely collapse, leaving us barking and grunting at each other like neanderthals. I suppose it is politically incorrect now to be implicitly rude about neanderthals. I will probably be arrested for a hate-crime. If you think Europeans have a monopoly on that sort of thing, think again, America is the home of everything modern and bad. That's one of the things I actually like about it here.

no I don't want your comments, thank you very much, go away and lick a wall

2005-07-02T10:38:00.000-07:00

Although comments are now open to anonymous people too frightened to admit to their real-life friends and employers that they have nothing better to do than trawl through the internet all day, this does not mean you are welcome to post your inferior unfunny ideas underneath my insightful cultural analyses. There are only two reasons why anonymous comments are now physically possible here, and these are:

1. so you can make idiots of yourselves which could occasionally amuse me, and
2. because I don't believe in restricting comments on blogs. It only turns people into serial killers trying to track you down via your ESP identity number and then camping outside your front door going through your rubbish trying to find something incriminating against you so they can get you sacked from your job. Well, I don't have a job, so there, I am landed gentry, stick that in your cripplingly expensive European filter-tipped cigarette and then you won't be able to smoke it anyway because it will have crumbled to dust in the process.

IKEA successfully brainwashes America

2005-07-02T10:02:00.000-07:00

IKEA, the famous furniture and candlestick outlet that runs its store the same way as a communist country, is now taking over America. This is not surprising because the standard of American furniture is abominable, but it is very funny that Americans, who are used to doing exactly what they want all the time, now have to act European in order to buy BILLY bookshelves and KRAP triangular coffee-tables you scrape your knees on every time you walk past (if there is anything left of your knees, see post below).

Even in the cheapest supermarkets here, there is an old or mentally disabled person packing your shopping for you in case you waste any of those precious coca-cola-and-large-fries-please calories actually picking up your own bag of potato chips and putting them into a plastic bag. But at IKEA you have to wrap up all your own candlestick holders and rattan fruit-bowls in giant pieces of paper then put them in bags yourself such that they will not all crash together on the long drive home and become destroyed even sooner than IKEA purchases destroy themselves already.

Not only that, but you probably have to drive home about seven hundred miles, because this place is so big, which makes crossing London to Brent Cross in only two hours look quite ninnyish by comparison. And of course, the Americans must subject themselves to the IKEA shopping maze to buy their TURD footstools and BOLLUKS children's wardrobes shaped like giant toadstools in the first place, which is also against their national character, not being allowed to know where the EXIT or the RESTROOM (toilet, yes I will complain about American toilet names in a future post) is, IKEA even makes Americans buy duvets and proper espresso makers, which is extroardinary because their bed-making knowledge is stuck in the last century and to get a decent coffee you normally have to go to Starbucks which I refuse because their coffee is too cold, and I don't know which I hate the most, cold coffee or coffee that comes in a cup that says WARNING! THE DECLICIOUS BEVERAGE OF WHICH YOU ARE ABOUT TO IMBIBE IS RATHER HOT AND COULD BE DANGEROUS AND IF YOU TRY TO SUE US ABOUT THAT WE (PROBABLY) WILL WIN BECAUSE WE ARE BIGGER THAN YOU! BUT JUST TO MAKE SURE.

On having to construct your own furniture however, there is no problem, because Americans are terminally bored and have huge garages with thousands of power-tools and are desperate for something else to do with them than installing a new hot tub because they did that last week already.

Otherwise though, IKEA is all set to change their national character because not only are Americans falling for all the being herded around like proles and told what to do and made to do it themselves IKEA authoritarianism, they are lapping it up with new stores opening all the time.

Monday is the 4th of July which is their biggest holiday. Could this be the first year Americans spend Independence Day shuffling round a Swedish chipboard furniture company sale, pausing only for Scandinavian meatballs and pickled herring, instead of in the garden barbecuing whole cows and shooting off illegal fireworks as usual? I would say yes. They are slowly catching up with the rest of the world, which is reassuring, anyway.

Joggers

2005-07-01T19:27:00.000-07:00

I am sorry but enough is enough. Jogging went out of fashion after Jane Fonda sank into obscurity thirty years ago (she is now trying to look exactly like Mrs President Bush of course, with the airbrushed-upwards hair and in a boxy taffeta evening-gown suit, and also saying how she only found herself now she is seventy six and all her previous nineteen husbands only made her miserable, anyway it is obvious she has been a fruitcake her entire life, and has discredited the cause of fitness more or less permanently now, particularly jogging because jogging and aerobics were the only two forms of exercise at that time so they are fused together in people's minds forever now).

Anyway, jogging crushes your kneecaps together and makes them crack and splinter, and as everyone already needs false hips when they get old, requiring false knees also seems to be pushing it further than necessary, especially in a country with no free healthcare except for people so poor they may as well be dead already anyhow. I suppose the joggers are all lawyers or trainee lawyers, as those people have so much money they can throw it away on healthcare just for a laugh. "Oh, I felt a slight twinge in my left nostril yesterday, so I went to see my personal nasologist in the specialist nasology headquarters." I am sure the doctors can't wait for them to leave so they can just shake their heads at the stupidity of mankind especially lawyers, then count their money gleefully.

However. There are still people jogging in America. One can see them every day, tottering along the street, sweaty grimaces on their faces, no doubt signifying barely-concealed anguish at what utter and total fools they look, and I do not think anybody really knows the reason why.

It is not because they need to lose weight. They are all young thin people already. Surely today's modern youth cannot be so desperately bored that bouncing along in a public place wilfully destroying your own kneecaps by bashing them on the concrete sidewalks is now the most exciting activity available?

Anyway, they offend me. So here is my solution.

Americans have guns. Why do they not simply threaten to shoot the joggers? That would probably stop them without the need for any actual carnage. Not to mention that a minor bullet wound could well prove less damaging long-term post-surgery than the effects of repeated and sustained jogging on the person's skeletal frame. I think you will agree this is a good point. But I do not wish to know either way. If it was not a good point, then why would I have bothered making it?

More things you can do that are better than reading blogs

2005-07-01T19:23:00.000-07:00

1. watching paint dry
2. drying paint with a home-made paper fan
3. licking the paint back off the walls again
4. chewing your own toenails off
5. painting your toenails with those ridiculous elaborate patterns so small only fairies and people with magnifying glasses can actually see them
6. reading books, and that is serious because books are horrible
7. that is enough, now go and do one of them, I have had enough of this.

Go away

2005-07-01T18:44:00.000-07:00

Groucho Marx once said to John Lennin, "I would not wish to be a part of any club that would have me as a member." And he was right. Similarly, I would not want anyone who has nothing better to do with their time than read blogs, reading this blog. Go away and pull the wings off spiders or something instead.