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I Will Always Hate You

I'm often caught in a maelstrom of indecision when I attempt to conclude what the most irritating thing in the world is.  Is it:

• People who touch type and won't look at the keyboard no matter how many mistakes they are making and achieving 4 words per minute?

or

• Atheists, because they tend to shove their smug, self-satisfied, tedious-beyond-belief opinions down your throat more than Adolf Hitler and Tomas de Torquemada combined?

or

• People who insist they can sing and insist on singing 'I will always love you'.  A song written by the delightful Dolly Parton and butchered by wailing alleged-smackhead Whitney Houston?

Thanks to brilliant little Taiwanese kid, Lin Yu Chun, I have been able to erase the 3rd item from my list.

Unfortunately for the poor little blighter, and for some reason I don't understand, he is being called 'The Taiwanese Susan Boyle'

Why is that?

Susan 'are you fucking kidding me?' Boyle is the product of a cynical money-machine who managed to score on the 'we don't care how ugly she is' ripple of 'we love the underdog' meme riding the waves of popularity at the moment.

Chun is just some sweet oriental kid with a goofy haircut.

I'm a bit disappointed that he's ruined my IWALY hatred though.  

Err, no thanks

You know it's gonna be great when you see some cretinous oik get up on to the X and announce that they're going to do 'I will always love you' by Whitney Houston cos they're gonna be bigger than her one day.

You know who I mean, the slightly overweight ones, with lop-sided acne covered faces and thick glasses, who bring their entire family, who are absolutely CONVINCED that their little sunshine will make it to the top of the charts after having practised their hearts out for at least three weeks before the tryouts.

The ones who think they are awesome at karaoke and believe that drunk guy they've just met who's told them they've got a kick-ass voice and they should be on American Idol now how bout we go back to my place.

Returning to my original topic, I've decided I'm going to replace the Shitney Pooston (I'm so awesomely grown-up) irritant with:

• People who don't understand irony and somehow think that my blog posts are news stories or serious editorialising.  

Go Back to Russia, Without Love

A Russian orphan was adopted by a woman from the USA and now she's sent him back.

That's the top and bottom of it, and of course there's more meat to the bones, but this is the story to which Russia, reportedly, has "reacted with horror".

Nonsense.

In my experience, Russians are pretty fucking hardy.  Were I to hear a story like 'Canadian woman sends back English boy' I wouldn't react with horror, and I don't know anyone who would.  It would be mild surprise, well for me it would be utter indifference, and maybe a mention of 'tsk, those fucking Canadians, can't make up their minds' .  Russians would certainly not be horrified at all by this absolutely not-horrific story.

These Russians were too busy cooking a dog to give a shit

Oh yes, and there's "Fury" says Will Stewart.  Will, just shut the fuck up would you?  Do you even know what fury is?  That's like major anger, like punching a hole in a door anger.  Not a little bit of dismay, followed possibly by minor disgust which reaction this news actually has provoked.

Nurse Torry-Ann Hanson, who has a made-up first name, stuck little Artem, which also sounds suspiciously made-up but I can't tell, on a plane to Russia, with a note saying in broad terms that he's a violent psychopath so have him back.

Russian officials have reacted with uncontrollable violent rage and said that his only disability is that he is flat-footed.  That's a disability now?  No wonder all the handicapped parking spots are always taken at the supermarket.  If I had a disability like not-working legs, I would be seething with a homicidal hatred towards Artem at this fact. Were my story being reported by Will Stewart that is.

This is quite bad behaviour from Totty-Ann or whatever her name is, and she's missed out on one absolutely vital benefit of having a son from Russia with the surname Saveliev.  With the new ruleset in, he would be awesome at Scrabble.

What's sinister about the reporting of this story, is that everywhere I've seen it there's been mention of other Russian children being killed after being adopted to America.  I know that reporters are stupid and everything, but are they seriously trying to imply some sort of conspiracy here?

I went out with a Russian woman once who didn't know who David Hasslehoff was.  Obviously after I found this out the relationship didn't go anywhere.  

I know.  You're like, no way man, everyone knows The Hoff.

I came back from the bar and said 'Hey, there's a giant poster of The Hoff behind the bar'

"Who?

The Hoff, David Hasslehoff!

Not really sure who is this The Hoff.

What the fuck man?  Knightrider, Baywatch, he's awesome and he's got big hair.

No, I'm sorry, would you like some borscht?"

She wasn't to know that offering beetroot soup to me, is like sending back an orphan to a Russian official.

Offski.

Yeah, That's Great.

Sometimes it's hard being awesome.  This is why.

You don't pay attention to what's happening around you.

This is one of my worst habits.  It's as though things only occur if I am paying attention to them.

A few years ago I went into the office and there were staff there who had been working all night.  This wasn't usual, there was some sort of system migration happening and committed people had pulled out all the stops to be there for 16 hours at a time, sleeping in sleeping bags on the office floor.

I was haughtily breezing past them when one of them stopped me.  She was the sort of girl you would rate 5 out of 10.  She didn't look hideous if coated with enough make-up and in a mini-dress, although the legs were a bit chunky.  She was however, incredibly dense.  I remember vaguely that she mumbled something at me, but I paid no attention.

Nearly having reached my desk, I was again waylaid, this time by Ricky Singh and some of his crew.  These were good guys who worked hard, but fucked about a lot of the time.  Our business was selling, and those sorts of people often do well, and people like me look the other way. Rick offered me £20 if I could tell him what 5 out of 10 girl had said to me.  I had to decline to take him up on the offer.  He told me that I had stopped, not looked at her once, and in the middle of her story, which she was telling me with great animation, said 'Yeah, that's great' and walked off.  Oh, how I laughed.

While this behaviour is funny for me.  It's a nightmare for the people around me.  Apparently.  For all I know they could be taking advantage of my poor memory.

This is the 'me' of the polar bear world

It's like I'm sleepwalking.  People speak to me, I answer with credible answers that make sense, but I have no recollection of them.  My girlfriend arranges things, asks me about them, and when it's time to close on the deal I don't know what the hell she's talking about.

I've often wondered why people think I'm arrogant when they don't know me, I guess I've figured it out.  They don't think I'm paying attention to them. And I'm not.

One Lump or Two?

Following my previous post about the freak show that is Embarrassing Bodies, I have been forced to watch another two episodes.  It was pure torture.  Now I know what a fistula is and I wish I didn't.

This show takes itself so seriously it doesn't appreciate the sheer ridiculousness of some of its segments.

Tonight I saw a breast clinic invaded by a spotty nerd who said that he'd read that men also can get breast cancer.  Dr Pixie (I kid you not, that is her name) masked her feelings of disgust and went on to give him a lesson in how to check for lumps.

Dr Christian held a breast clinic and asked 40 women questions about their breasts. 

• So, how many of you have given your breasts a good old feel recently, not to check for lumps, just so that you know how they feel?

3 women raised their hands.

Now, if that was 40 men and Dr C asked, how many of you have given your balls a jolly good feel in the past 30 seconds it would be unanimous.

The next time I'm at work and someone gives me a funny look for heedlessly re-arranging my junk in front of like 50 people, I'll look super serious and say, 'checking for lumps'.

Scrabble Rousing

In an article that made me want to push grannies off cliffs, the Guardian announced that the rules of Scrabble are changing.  Proper nouns will now be allowed.

As an attempt to sex up Scrabble this is pathetic.  People have been playing variations on the rules for years.  For example,  Scrabble in which you are only allowed to use rude words, like 'felch' or 'spank'. Or Scrabble with French words allowed.

Until the advent of Facebook I thought that Scrabble had died a death anyway.  It always seemed to be the domain of people who have just recently learned to spell or those who thought they were awesome at the English language. 

Now that you can play online against people you don't like instead of having them pollute your living space every semi-literate baboon wants to have a go.  Except, it's not quite the same with instant access to dictionary.com.  You can be whatever you want on the internet.  You can get 84 points with the word 'quercine' but you still don't know the difference between 'there' 'they're' and 'their'.

Let's see what else gets dumbed down for mass appeal:

• Music - We used to have Yes - Close to the Edge, now we have Justin Bieber - Close to puberty 
• Cricket - I don't see the problem with 5 days to play a game where nobody wins.  It's meant to be complicated to keep women away.  They have their hands full making the sandwiches in the pavilion anyway. 
• Literature - Bronte, Dickens, Cookson, we'll never see their ilk again.  Hundreds of pages of complex emotions and character building, and nothing actually happening. 
• TV - Rockford files vs Everybody Loves Raymond.  We used to have theme tunes.  Magnum PI, the A-team, brilliant.  The only theme tune I remember now is the Big Bang Theory.  Maybe it's because I just Tivo everything and fast forward through intro's, but I don't care.  This is no place for reason, it's the internet!

Come to think of it, this whole thing is the internet's fault.  You don't even have to go anywhere to live a fulfilling social life.  Make friends on Facebook, chat all day on Twitter and score chicks on Match.com.

Have you ever played squash with someone who is world-class?  It's a waste of time, it's like he's not even moving very much and every shot is perfect meaning you'll never get a point and it's not fun anyway.

Scrabble's like that.  I would class my vocabulary in the top 5% of all English speakers, actually I'd class myself much much higher than that but I'm trying to sound modest.  But you just can't win when you play a Scrabble expert.  They know all the little tricks, the words that make no sense, like  'xis' and 'qat' and 'mut', but actually are words.  They don't give a shit that they're going against the spirit of Scrabble, which is to make impressive looking words and be ever so clever.  All they care about is victory.

When you realise you're playing someone like that, there's only one thing to do.  


Spell out 'dick'.  It's only 11 points, but it sure is satisfying.

Trust me

I know what I'm doing

There's so little trust in the world.

Do you trust your spouse/partner to answer your cell phone for you?

Would you read their emails or their diary if you thought they would never know?

The problem is that when you read something that wasn't directed towards you, the original intention of the communication is lost and it can be easy to misconstrue.

A few years ago I dated a woman who had suspected that her ex-boyfriend had been unfaithful due to lots of calls on his phone from a particular woman.  She consequently discovered that this woman was his sister.  When she told me this I questioned whether she could be trusted to not poke her nose into my phone and she swore on her son's life that she would never do this.

I caught her about 6 weeks later looking through my phone and zeroing in on absolutely innocent conversations between me and a female colleague, trying to deflect blame for her dirty snooping by accusing me of being a cheating bastard.

Not actually her

When I pointed out that she had sworn on the life of her son that she wouldn't ever do such a thing she merely snorted in derision.  The conversation in question was about this colleague of mine being caught at the Christmas party performing oral sex on a junior member of staff.  I could obliquely see why she may have thought this suspect so didn't immediately dump her.  Which you should ALWAYS do if someone looks at your mobile phone uninvited.

The dumping came later when she tried to scratch my eyes out while dressed as a witch for Halloween.

I still leave my phone lying about trusting people not to do anything silly and have been burned only once since, when my friend's girlfriend updated my Facebook status with 'loves the cock'.

It's easy to lose faith in humanity when the world at large is all about style over substance.  Everything's marketing and advertising.  Scammers all over the internet, where men are men, women are men and 10 year old girls are FBI agents.  Push-up bras and Myspace angles and men wearing make-up.

The more we have, the more illusory it all becomes.

The restoration of my faith came from an unlikely source when I read about this.

Dennis and Flora Milner chose to peacefully end their lives at the end of 2009.  Both were in their 80's and were suffering from ill health and made a decision to have a positive death.  Their children supported this decision.

The absolute trust these lovely people must have had in each other touched me deeply.  The only thing that tarnished what would, in a less ludicrous world, have been a remarkable love story, is that people have criticised their actions.

Assisted suicide is illegal in the UK and carries a potential jail sentence of 14 years.  Most retarded law.  Ever.

"To force the issue beyond this point would mean for us a living death; we have therefore chosen to peacefully end our lives."

How unlikely that two octogenarians I'd never met would remind me that not everybody in the world is a selfish shitbag.

I still don't trust men who wear mascara though.