Arriving Home Sudden Bladder Relaxtion Syndrome

I think my writings may be getting me typecast as a miserable old bastard. Only the other day, a good friend gave me a book entitled "Is it just me or is everything shit?".

It's not easy keeping up this (amusing?) commentary on modern stupidity, primarily because most things that happen are so stupid, you couldn't make them up; this makes exaggerating them for comic potential somewhat tricky. For example, John Prescott: he has two homes, whose maintainence is paid for by the tax payer, and claims a salary of £133k for doing..... erm. Well, fuck all actually. Before the recent cabinet reshuffle, he was deputy prime minister and held the Office of Deputy Prime Minister(?); what this means in real terms is that he did nothing but sit round, scratch his ass, and fuck secretaries. If you don't believe me, note this; he was the first deputy PM not to combine the role with being head of another department, just to give the person in this pointless position something to do. Following the reshuffle, he remains as deputy prime minister, with full "perks" of course, but has been stripped of all his duties. So he literally does nothing at our phenomenal expense.

Or how about this. The Immigration and Nationality Directorate (IND) at that most shoddy of goverment departments, the Home Office. You'd think their title was fairly self-explanatory; you deal with immigration, you process the applications of people coming to the country, you reject or accept as appriopraite, and you remove illegal immigrants. Seems fairly simple to me. And yet the IND has just spent £21 million of taxpayers money for management consultants to come in to "identify their role". WHAT THE FUCK?!?!!?! This involved (according to the Sunday Times: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2190152,00.html: btw, that article is hysterical, I strongly recommend it) getting employees to draw cartoons or write little slogans about what they thought their role was, and how they feel about it. The Times put the results well:

"The resulting report begins with a cartoon of a man holding a telescope to his eye. It continues through drawings of a man lost in a maze (Roberts? [IND director of enforcement and removals]); a heart with cogwheels inside it (no explanation given); some trapeze artists (meaning trust in each other) and a key sporting a mouth (illustrating the importance of communication)."

You just couldn't make this stuff up!!! And this is why my blogging/ranting/talking bullshit is so difficult. The only way I can keep it going is to resort to discourses such as the following.

Health drives: Argh! There's so many of these bloody things! Take 10000 steps a day, 5 pieces of fruit and veg a day, 8 glasses of water a day. There's always something we're supposed to be doing! But they've never focussed on an important one: shitting. Think about it, they're really healthy; they get rid of waste and toxins, keep the system healthy and moving along, and can make you feel better (as a friend described it: the post-massive-dump euphoria). As such, I propose a health drive to promote 2 dumps-per-day. Have one dump first thing in the morning and another early evening, every day.

But wait! I hear you cry. I can't dump twice a day! Once is pushing it (pun intended). Well, never fear (you big girls), I have a solution! It's a kind of weight-watchers dumping program. Each kind of dump is assigned a points value and you have to make up your points total (in agreement with your personal shit consultant) over a longer period of time, maybe a week. A ruddy great log that fills the bowl: 10 points; a little pathetic wet one that takes 2 seconds to come out, and 2 days to wipe away: 2 points; large amounts of relatively free-flowing manure: 8 points; a deceptive gas pocket unaccompained by any material whatsoever: -3 points. Doesn't this sound fun!

Whilst we're on toilets, who else is familiar with the problem of Arriving Home Sudden Bladder Relaxtion Syndrome? No-one? Oh well, that's probably just because I've made it up, but I'll bet you know the symptoms. It's when, whilst walking home, commonly from the pub but can be anywhere, the urge to pee hits you. You're faced with a choice, speeding up or nipping behind a telephone junction box. Being the responsible citizen you are, you hurry home, ultimately making it with some time to spare, or so you think. You walk through the door, and think "ah, made it". But then disaster; your bladder decides "right, matey, that's my job done" and relaxes all the tension that's been holding the pints in, giving you mere seconds to get upstairs, into the bathroom, and getting to the loo. It can be a close run thing.

And another thing, why is it, when you really need to pee, you always get to the loo/urinal/piss-at only to find that your trousers and boxers have twisted relative to each other, such that the two flies no longer line up. This can be really annoying when you're in a hurry, or when the bloke next to you starts wondering what all the twisting and cursing is all about.

Right, that's it for another post. Got to go and do some scanning electron microscopy. Lucky me :-(

Necrophilia, nuclear power, and French people stealing our water.

There are lots of lists around detailing the worst things to say on dates. They tend to state the bleeding obvious; for example:

• My ex and I used to come here all the time.
• I only split with my girlfriend last week.
• I've had 10 lovers, how many have you had?

and such like. But I think these are far from the worst; granted if you said them, it looks bad, but it's recoverable, not the end of the world. However, it doesn't take a great imagination to come up with some that would spell the end of the date (and possibly your social/outside of prison life) if you let them slip:

• Hm, you're breathing; oh well, no-one's perfect I guess.
• Could you moo for me, please?
• My tripod has broken, could you come back to my place and take some photos of me fallating 6-year olds for my website?

Tell me these are not worse. I suppose they are less likely to come out in polite conversation by mistake, but as someone who can lodge foot well and truly in mouth at any opportunity, I think you should all take care; it could happen to you!

So having started on that subtle discourse, what next? It's been a while since my last textual splurging and there's so much:

• Nuclear power: Apparently we in Britain are (almost) certain to be building new nuclear reactors in the next few years to reduce dependence on imported gas. Of course this has brought all the green-meanies and left-wing loonies out of the woodwork, eager to spill their unimformed bile all over the rest of us. "Why should we have nuclear when Iran can't?": easy answer, because we want it to light the kitchen and heat the house whilst Iran wants it to wipe out Israel (they have more oil and solar capacity than they could ever need; why invest massive capital in nuclear? Think about it). "The waste is really nasty and will linger for thousands of years": true, but you can just stick it in a barrel and bury it and it'll be fine (if done properly). "The waste can be used in nuclear weapons.": for fucks sake! Plutonium is easy to make, a kid in the States did it in his shed, the difficult step is weapons grade Uranium and that has sod-all to do with nuclear power; get your facts right! Brings me onto...
• Uninformed morons: I was reading a review on the internet movie database the other day of a film called Metropolis, a sci-fi from 1927 being given away free with the Times to see if I wanted it. The review (by an American! Wait for it!) complained about the film on the grounds there wasn't any dialogue. Hm, thinks I; 1927 is a long time ago, were there even talkies back then? So I checked: first talking film, The Jazz Singer released in 1927. It then took several years to catch on and spread to most new films. So this muppet was slating the film more than slightly unfairly. For God's sake, this is like blaming Napolean for not using planes at Waterloo to ensure victory. Why can't people who don't know just shut up!
• The wettest drought in history: It's raining, just for a change. And the country is slowly succumbing to drought orders. Now call me old fashioned but I thought a drought was when it didn't rain and there wasn't any water. Apparently there'll be standpipes in the streets, and no water to the home; yet we'll still pay water rates. Seriously, what the fuck! You know why it is, don't you? It's because half the water companies are French-owned! They'll be stealing it, or pissing in it or something. Or laying spawn in it.

Ok, enough for now, tis time to work. But there are some annoying adverts on tv at the moment; I feel more may soon be forthcoming

Who the fuck are the British Skin Foundation?

I hate marketing. Specifically marketing done by people who have studied marketing. Marketing produced by people who have studied marketing is invariably shit. Guinness produces (and has always produced) the best adverts in history. Why? Because they don't use marketing graduates (so says the history section of the Guinness brewery museum in Dublin), they use a group of Guinness lovers sat in a room, drinking Guinness.

Now I don't know that the companies who produce the worst adverts (we'll be getting to that later) use marketing graduates, but the 1000's of graduates coming off marketing courses must be going somewhere. And their adverts are at best crap, worse patronizing, and at worst hideously offensive.

Take the adverts for a new lottery thingy, can't remember what it's called, Play Monday or some such (can you tell how effective their marketing has been?). They consist of some guy in a white biology clean room outfit wandering round talking patronizingly to people in a voice that makes him sound like he was born 30 weeks prematurely with no brain and then proceeded to be dropped on his head, repeatedly. You have to see it to understand quite how awful it is. Who on Earth could possibly have thought that such offensive, patronizing, banal sputum would sell? And who the fuck commissioned it?!?

What else? Oh yes, those auto-puffing air fresheners that squirt weird smelling chemicals into your living room every few minutes. There's an advert for one of those where some daft child sits there counting the bloody puffs and gets to some stupid number during the course of the ad whilst his mum looks on smiling. Just makes me want to scream FOR FUCKS SAKE, WOMAN! YOUR CHILD IS RETARDED!! (or, in political correct speak: autistic).

Then there's bloody washing powders, dishwasher tablets, household cleaners, and all other sorts of cleaning products. Every time they bring out something new, there's a "real" demonstration of it getting some object spotlessly clean next to a comparison object with a competitor's product that's really dirty. But then, a few months later, they bring out a better version, and to convince us that it's better, they have to compare it next to the original, which is now mysteriously not getting the same objects clean. Case for the Advertising Standards Agency if ever there was one.

And how about the male hair colouring stuff: Just For Men, the product that not only disguises your grey hair, but changes your facial features completely into those of someone else.

And Organics shampoo. The shampoo that makes you cum. Yeah right; if that really existed it would always be sold out.

Lastly (although not finally, I'm just getting really bored), there's all the anti-wrinkle stuff. Some fucking 20-year-old comes on and tries to prove it was the wonderful skin cream that has made her not wrinkly. Of course, luv; and I suppose the fact that you didn't have any fucking wrinkles to start with has nothing to do with it. These products are all full of fancily-named compounds that you've never heard of, because they don't exist and the names have been invented to make the product sound 'sciency'. It's all just bollocks (out of interest, has anyone tried applying wrinkle-cream to bollocks; they're fairly wrinkly.); if you really are pretty, it'll show through the wrinkles, if not, well you're just going to look fake; Botoxbenzamethylisopentatholafen-Q will do sod all. Laboratwat Garnier are amongst the worst offenders here, claiming their research is "supported by the British Skin Foundation". Who the fuck are the British Skin Foundation? Are they real people? Have they any relevant qualifications? Do they do anything but endorse Garnier stuff?

Hm, it has just occurred that maybe their marketing has worked. I've noticed their adverts enough to get really pissed off with them. Argh! I've been outsmarted by marketing graduates! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!! Bastards!

Right, in that case, better move on. Chantelle. For those that don't know who she is: lucky-fucking-you. But seriously, she's the dumb-blonde (never was the phrase better applied) who, despite not being a 'celebrity', won 'celebrity' Big Brother a while back. She's all fake. Peroxide hair, fake tan, running round screaming "Oh my God!!!" at the top of her voice all the fucking time, and thick as pig shit that's been reduced over a high heat for several hours (cooking joke all you microwave dinner people out there). I hate people who are fake. Anyone who greets you for the first time with "Oh my GOD!!! HEEELLLLLOOOOOO!!!" falls into this category. No-one is ever this happy to meet someone they don't know. It's all acting up for attention; twats.

Ah, and a new study has revealed that some apes are capable of forward planning:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4996942.stm
This is great. It finally proves what I've been saying all along: that the guys building the extension to my office block could be replaced with monkeys. Honestly, they keep building temporary wheelchair access ramps to my office, then having to tear them down as they've put them somewhere something subsequently has to be built. We must be on number 4 in 2 months by now, at least. Think ahead, please!!!!

Ok, that's enough for now. A great weekend of telly beckons. We've got Eurovision and the new Big Brother and I've no intention of watching either. I'd best get home so I can ignore them from the comfort of my sofa!