Archive for August, 2010

Pandering to the masses

August 6th, 2010

Did you ever have a switch–off day?

That’s one of those days where you have a nice lie in, and wake up really refreshed and so relaxed that you couldn’t be arsed to do anything?

Today was one of those days.

I had a few things to write about, but then I thought to myself – why bother?  It’s my life, and my switch-off day, so I am going to just stare into space and think happy thoughts.

And then I get a complaint.

“You know it’s one of the clock in the afternoon here, so it has to be 6 pm where you are.  We can’t all wait around on you all day and night you know. Get your fat lazy arse out of bed at the crack of noon if not at the crack of day and get posting. ”

Do you know what?

You can fuck off.

I don’t get paid for this.  I can do what I fucking well like.  If I don’t feel like writing, then I’m not going to write.

Today, I don’t feel like writing.

So go away and do something constructive. Go and read a book.  Take a walk in the fresh air.  Do the housework that you have been meaning to do for the last six months.  Return that library book you borrowed three years ago [and never read].

Me?

I’m going back to my happy thoughts.

Under the spotlight

August 5th, 2010

I confess I am a little nervous.

Some time ago, I received a very polite email.  It was someone from some university or something.  She wanted to know if she could ask some questions.

I am a very accommodating bloke so I told her to fire away.  I thought it would be the usual guff about why I started writing this site and when the fuck was I ever going to end.  It wasn’t like that though.  She started asking me all about my personal life.  She wanted details of what I did every day and when I did it and why.  She even went so far as to send me fucking forms to fill in where I had to fill in the actual times I started to do something, what I did, why I did it and when I finished.  I asked her why the fuck she wanted to know all this shit and she explained that she was an anthropologist, and wanted to study my behaviour.

I had to think about this one.  What in the name of Jayzus did an anthropologist want to study me for?  What sets me apart from the rest of the human race that I need to be studied?  Could it be that as pipe smokers are an Endangered Species that she was putting on record one of the last known specimens?  Could it be that I am one of the first members of a super new species that is evolving out of the current splodge of Homo Sapiens?  Am I the first Homo Grandad?

There have been developments since the first email.  She has started turning up in the garden.

I sometimes think she is taking the piss, because she wears a white coat and has a clipboard.  How fucking clichéd can you get?  She keep appearing at the window and peering at me and then taking notes, which is why I’m getting a little nervous.

However, I know how to play the game.  One trick I have developed for her benefit is to run out into the garden and collapse panting after a few seconds.  She usually throws a few bananas at me at this stage to see how I react [I throw ‘em straight back.  I prefer apples].  I then light up the pipe and do fifteen laps of the estate without pausing for a single pant.  I can just see the headlines – “Research has shown that pipe smoking is very good for stamina!”  Heh!

Some people brag about how they have their own personal solicitor.  Others talk about their own psychiatrist or keep fit trainer.

But how many can brag that they have their own personal anthropologist?

Stick that in your fucking pipe and smoke it.

A dogs’s dinner

August 4th, 2010

I don’t know where the hell I got this from.

I found it cluttering up my disk, so I have pushed it onto MyTube or whatever the fuck it’s called.

Head Ramblegate

August 4th, 2010

I was musing over my site figures for yesterday when a though occurred to me.

First_graph

Wouldn’t it be nice if I could predict how many people will be reading Head Rambles in say a year’s time?

Now, who would be the best people to advise me on future trends, given an existing set of figures.  In a moment of sheer genius, I had the answer.

I phoned the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia and asked for their help.

At first they were a little reticent, so I muttered the magic password – Freedom of Information.  It surely is a magic password, because immediately they couldn’t do enough for me.

I sent them my figures, which apparently they call ‘raw data’.  Almost at once, they had a few excellent suggestions.  They didn’t like the first figure, for a start.  They said it was much too high, as nobody browses the Interweb at one in the morning, and that obviously it was in error.  I deleted it.  They also weren’t too happy with the zig-zag bit and told me to smooth it out.  They apparently call that ‘adjusted data’.  I smoothed it.  They then gave me the formula [or model, as they called it] and I put that in.

The result was quite staggering.

By extrapolating my figures, every single person IN THE WORLD is going to be reading my site by the end of the year. Isn’t that amazing?  By the end of next year, every single human will have to read my site 1.496 billion times a day, just to keep up.

You have to hand it to the C.R.U.

They really know their figures.

And they are a university.

They couldn’t possibly be wrong?

How to shoot your foot off

August 3rd, 2010

There is a little conundrum that has been puzzling me for some time.

As the tide of anti-smoking Nazism sweeps the world, you would imagine that smoking levels would drop, or at the very least would remain the same.  This is, after all, supposed to be the object of the exercise?  Yet I have heard from various sources now that in virtually every country, once a ban is introduced, smoking levels rise. I know that in Ireland, levels were on the decline for a long time, up to the point where The Ban was introduced, and suddenly levels increase by two to three percent.

Why?

I can think of a few possible reasons.

One is that it’s a sense of rebellion, but I don’t think that washes well.  More people may stubbornly refuse to quit, but I can’t see non-smokers taking up the pleasure just to show solidarity with their mates?

Another is the number of people who join their friends outside the pub or office or wherever, because the craic is better, and they start smoking to be with the friendly lot.  That isn’t really a runner though?  I know a lot of people have taken up smoking for that reason, but I can’t see it accounting for an increase of two to three percent?

I can only think of one logical reason why smoking is on the increase.  Smokers used to enjoy their pastime in the privacy of their pub or their office.  Naturally, you wouldn’t see them unless you entered their premises.  Now however, they have all been forced out onto the street.  Where once you could walk the length of a town without seeing a single smoker, now there are clusters of them outside every second door.  There are smokers everywhere.  What better example for the young?

The Nazis are very worried about example and visual stimulus.  Why else would they ban advertising or the display of cigarettes?  Yet, by their own actions they have made smoking into a high profile sport.  They have created their own equivalent of advertising hoardings by making people smoke in the most public of places.  No advertising executive could dream up a better scheme.

Personally, I don’t give a flying fuck whether people smoke or not.  It’s nothing to do with me. 

I do love to see the Nazis shooting themselves in the foot though.

Heh!

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