Archive for October, 2010

Coronation Street

October 19th, 2010

Does anyone watch Coronation Street these days?

Herself started watching it years ago, and seeing as I tend to share the room, I watch it also.

I will be honest and say that I quite enjoy it. Its main purpose in my life is to help me remember what day of the week it is. For example, I vaguely remember watching it last night, therefore today has to be Tuesday, Friday or Saturday. It can’t be Sunday, Monday, Wednesday or Thursday, as none of those days follow a night where the programme has been on. Also I can eliminate Friday as the programme is on that night and I’m fairly sure it isn’t on tonight. In fact, I am fairly sure, using my excellent logic that today is Tuesday, and this is born out by the little yoke on the corner of my computer screen that says Tue, 19 Oct.

One of the things I like about Coronation Street is that all the characters are so fucking obnoxious. We are supposed to care because someone has been raped, mugged or murdered. Quite honestly I usually cheer on the perpetrator of any crime.

And talking of crime, I tried to do a head count of the Street’s residents who had been [or who still are] in prison. I gave up in the end and just counted the ones who hadn’t. It was easier.

An aspect of the programme I find very strange is that I can never remember any of the character’s names. I tend to have my own names for them , such as The Chinless Wonder who only has two emotions – simpering adoration of her ghastly two sons or righteous indignation. Then there is Twang-Neck who spends her time pissing off her husband [the boring one] or chatting to The Tart who runs the pub. I call her Twang Neck because whenever she gets annoyed [which is fairly often] all the tendons in her neck stand out and I get an urge to twang them. Then there is Helium Boy who runs the butchers. You get my drift.

For a tiny street, there is one hell of a lot going on too. In the past few years I have lost count of the murders, suicides, attempted murders and fires. Britain but be a very uncomfortable place to live in if that street is anything to go by,

Jayzus but even writing about them is boring the arse off me now.

I had better stop.

Treason

October 18th, 2010

It is unusual, I know, but I am at a loss for words.

Captain Peacock [of commenter fame] sent a couple of links over the weekend. He included them in a comment, but I thought they needed a wee spot of highlighting.

They are both to the highly regarded site of Guido Fawkes.

Now normally, Guido has his cross-hairs aimed firmly at the Houses of Parliament in the UK, but during the week, he turned his attention to Anglo Irish Bank.

Now we all know that Anglo is the bank that has destroyed this country, with a little help from our government. It was a bank run by crooks with no regard for anything except greed and profit. As Guido points out, they were ripping off their customers long before they went bust.

There has been a lot of talk as to why we are bailing out this utterly corrupt institution. It is costing us, our children and our grandchildren. It has brought Ireland to the brink of bankruptcy. Why the fanatical determination of the part of our government to put the country in hock for generations?

Guido’s second article gives us a clear insight as to the probable reasons. It explains why Europe is so happy with the bailout, despite causing us financial ruin. It explains why Cowen refuses to listen to reason. This is the reason we will be in debt for many years to come.

As I say, I am at a loss for words.

If it is true, and it is too plausible not to be true, then Cowen is guilty of nothing less than treason.

Put a sock in it

October 16th, 2010

What the fuck is it with socks?

In the course of a year I must buy about fifty pairs.

Every time I pass a shop that sells socks, i nip in a buy a bundle of the fucking things.

Whenever I buy them, I always go for the same socks. The same colour and the same material. Black. Cotton. Every sock I have bought in he last few years has been indistinguishable from the last. That way I can avoid that damned odd-sock. syndrome.

Will someone please explain to me why, when I open the airing cupboard to get a fresh pair of socks I am buried under a cascade of odd socks? There will be bright ones and dark ones. Socks with garish patterns on them. Socks that have shrunk so they wouldn’t fit a two year old. But do you think there will be a singe black cotton sock? Not a fucking chance.

Where the hell do they all go to? Somewhere in this house there are fifty pairs of black cotton socks, and I damned if I can find them.

And people wonder why I wander around with one bright pink sock and one bright yellow one.

I’m not eccentric.

I’m just the victim of a fucking conspiracy.

Blog Action Day

October 15th, 2010

Today is supposed to be Blog Action Day.

I still don’t get the drift of this. Apparently I am supposed to write on a particular subject and that, somehow is supposed to change things?

How?

I had to do a search to find out what this year’s ‘action’ is about. Water, apparently.

Just suppose Action Day was about some kid somewhere who desperately needed a heart transplant and needed funds, then I could understand that. A spot of advertising is fine in a case like that.

But water? For fuck’s sake, everyone knows that there are vast swathes of the world that don’t have enough water. There are also vast swathes that have too much. So what exactly does a Blog Action Day achieve? It’s telling us something we all know. It’s hardly going to suddenly provide a huge network of piping throughout Sub-Sahara Africa? Governments don’t give a shit about blogs. No philanthropist is going to read my site and decide to donate his wealth to water? So what exactly is supposed to happen?

They [that fucking 'they' again] say that the Action Day is to ‘raise awareness’. OK, it has raised my awareness. What has that achieved? Nothing. It’s just made me think about water, which is a fat lot of fucking use to some family in the middle of a desert.

Pardon my cynicism, but the whole thing smacks of a gigantic hand wash. People feel they are doing something really useful by sticking little twisted ribbon stickers on the backs of their cars or writing about something. It makes people feel self satisfied without their having to actually do something.

If people want to do something constructive, then why the fuck don’t they do something constructive? Writing on a topic that everyone knows about really achieves precisely nothing.

I just did a search to see what people are writing about. The very first site I came across is not talking about water at all – it’s talking about climate change! They neatly twisted things using the ‘logic’ that climate change is removing glaciers which will ultimately affect water supplies. So? What am I supposed to do about that? Can I alter the Earth’s climate? No, and nor can anyone else. So piss off and stop annoying me with sanctimonious crap.

Only one good thing has come out of Blog Action Day.

It’s given me yet one more thing to get annoyed about.

Where is the beef?

October 14th, 2010

A very simple question.

What is the difference between these two pictures?

A Happy Meal, my arse

The difference is six months!

That is a burger and chips that has been left on a shelf for 171 days.

Is there not something strange about that? Where is the mould? If I leave a loaf of bread lying around for a couple of days, it soon grows a grand crop of penicillin. After a couple of weeks, I would imagine the loaf would rival the Botanic Gardens.

I came across this at some stage in my Interweb meanderings. Apparently an artist decided to do a stop action series of photographs to show a meal decaying. The only problem was that the fucking thing didn’t!

I have never liked McDonalds. They are noisy uncomfortable places and their "food" is crap. How anyone can consider a trip to McDonalds as a "treat" beats me. It’s my idea of hell. Their blatantly artificial cheery happy atmosphere makes me want to puke. Their produce doesn’t do much for my stomach either.

They advertise their shit as being "healthy".

Those photographs would tend to argue otherwise?

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