Whine whine whine....

Truculent children, between the ages of, say, two and six, will whine. Generally when they don't get what they want, when they're tired, when they're hungry and when they're bored. There is little more annoying in the world of sound than that noise, the constant high pitched moan at exactly the right frequency to cut through all other noise and plant itself at the centre of the annoyance lobe of my cranium. This isn't what I hate though...

Oh no. It's far worse when a supposed adult does exactly the same thing. Adults shouldn't whine, they should have found out that it doesn't work a very long time ago, however due to poor parenting or utter stupidity the message doesn't sink in. There is nothing less likely to persuade me to do what you want than to whine out the word please repeatedly. In fact rather than persuade me it's likely to make me turn around and tell you to shot the fuck up and piss off. I f you do this then you have earned my everlasting hate. 

Worse still is when you choose to use your pathetic whining as your only tool of persuasion. When you ask for something and are rejected, try reasoning, try bargaining, try persuasion, but please, for the sake of all that is good and holy in this world don't go straight from asking to whining, in fact, don't go to whining at all, but if you must, at least try something else first. Leaping from from asking to whining marks you as the worst kind of perpetual child, stuck not in the pleasure of games and fun, but rather in the worst moments of adult annoying patheticism. Children do this because their minds are not developed to a stage where they can use the tools available to the adult world, the coercion, bargaining and persuasion that move the world along.

Even worse is when you choose to sulk when you don't get your way. There are truly no words to describe what a pathetic creature you have chosen to make yourself. In fact I'll leave some space here just so I can seethe...

If the person that inspired this blog ever reads it, and realises that they inspired it, I hope they may well go off and have a lovely sulk, all by themselves. Whining is bad, so a sulk can only be what they deserve.... the bloody annoying creature that they are. 

The latest idiot to be chucked out of Big Brother...

...has just garuanteed my everlasting contempt. 

Thanks to the BBC website I have just discovered that this year's gay stereotype shares my surname. He's also the kind of nasty piece of work who spits in the face of a fellow human (though I may be elevating Dennis to the level of humanity incorrectly). People who act this way are scum, and he's tarring my name with his brush. Of course, it doesn't help that he chose to be holier than thou in the aftermath, claiming he had his dignity in-tact. I'm sorry, but you left most of your dignity at the door when you auditioned for big brother, and it went the same way as your integrity when you chose to behave in such a disgusting manner. 

Environmentalists who don't get it...

Now please don't get me wrong, if the world is getting warmer, and not in a good way, we are in the shit, and I'm all for doing everything I can to stop it. I'll recycle, I'll use public transport (however uncomfortable it is) and generally I'll behave in a way that is better for the world. 

Environmentalists will preach to you about this and that and often what they say is all well and good, but there is an unfortunate subspecies. These environmentalists (emphasis on the mental) are preachier and more holier than thou than the average, and yet, for all their good intentions, they screw it up. The most minor of these inflections is in the buying of a Toyota Prius. These things shout about their owners environmental credentials. They say, "I am better than you, my car uses less fuel". Problem is that those cars have a carbon footprint larger than that of the average car purely from their manufacture, how green is that? Well using complimentary colour theory, well I think it's red. What's more, if Top Gear is to be believed, if you drive it in a less than entirely gently way it's less economical fuel wise than an M3 driven at the same speed, I don't care how unscientific the experiment was, it still says something...

There is another breed, even more mental, as seen on a recent episode of Grand Designs. These people built an entirely environmentally friendly house, so environmentally friendly that they sunk it into a cliff chopping out a chunk of the natural environment in the process. They lit great chunks of this house using natural sunlight, problem being, this is Britain, where it isn't particularly sunny for a lot of the time, meaning that the house was largely bathed in a dim gloom, wholly and entirely unpleasant to live in, but these people in their oblivious piety would not make any concessions to make their lives more livable, or even admit, to a mildly bewildered Kevin, that it could possibly be less than nice experience. Finally these people chose to drive around in an ancient and particularly smoking 2CV, and while one of these is better than a Prius for the environment, it's still toddling around in an excessive cloud of it's own greenhouse gasses that wouldn't be there if they bought a car that was made since the last ice age.

As I said, its up to all of us to do what we can to keep our planet from disaster, wether or not global warming is fact (I have friends who would very convincingly dispute it's reality, who just happen to be rocket scientists). It's also good to do what you can to make others do what they can. It's not good to become an evangelist, however, if all you're going to do is screw it up with your own idiotic choices, because quite frankly I'm less than likely to do anything you suggest. 

Modern British Films...

It seems these days that just about every British film that gets a release in general cinemas marks the resurgence of the British film industry, they will all be massive hits, all over the world, and will mean a lot to our economy. Problem is, just about every one of them is crap, and most especially the comedies. Oh there have been exceptions, Lock Stock and Snatch were great as was Borat, and the films of Nick Frost and Simon Pegg are peerless but can the same be said of the rest of them?

Lets go back to when this phenomenon began, around the time of Four Weddings and a Funeral. That was an OK film, definitely worth a watch, though probably not two. It was huge commercial success too, and may well be responsible for the British film industry's survival as a commercial entity. But what did it spawn? Far too many films featuring one dimensional characters. Far too many films with poor scripting. Far too many films that are no good at all. Let us take Billy Elliott, a boy who would be a dancer, a film I didn't want to go near and far too northern for it's own good. Let us take that crap film where half the cast of Auf Wheidersehen Pet become strippers rather than go on the dole, it's name escapes me, thank fuck, but I don't get why anyone went to see it, it's supposed to be emotional and funny, but I have no sympathy for the characters, so much so that I didn't make it through the film. Let us take every film in which Hugh Grant has played the hapless upper class toff with floppy hair and a self depreciating demeanor, Hugh can do so much more with Rom Com, but for a while there, did we know? 

I suppose these films aren't as awful as some of the dross foisted upon us by Hollywood. Nope, but they are nothing like as good as the average Hollywood film, and not a single one of them matches the best stuff from California. Hollywood does every single genre so much better. Action, Sci Fi, Romance and Drama. I would rather watch Spiderman 3 (which sucked) than Love Actually. I would rather watch Showgirls (with or without Elizabeth Berkley's boobs which were the films sole redeeming feature) than Calendar Girls. Hollywood maybe churning out film after film, many with very little real merit, but so many of them beat our pitiful output into a bruised and bloody mess, and more to the point the American film industry is just that, an industry, it makes a profit, more than can be said for Britain's.

What makes me sadder is that we have so much talent over here, the best effects guys, the best actors, the best of so much, but it's all being used by the Americans, because we have neither the gumption or insight to use this talent for ourselves. British films could be great, but they aren't. 

I said it was coming....

Yup, I said I would rant about the stupid little red LED display on bus stops, and now it's here.

As a convenience TFL put a little display on many bus stops in London, mainly on the ones where they are less likely to be vandalised. These displays have two purposes. Firstly they are intended to inform you of the expected wait time for he arrival of your bus. Secondly, they are designed with the purposes of pissing me off. 

It is, of course, by doing the former, that they achieve the latter. The display lights up with a list of busses and the time until they arrive. Fair enough you say to yourself, I have to wait 3 minutes for the 33 to arrive I'll wait. Where it gets frustrating is when you realise that whoever determines the time display has an entirely different concept of time to the rest of the world. Three minutes could be 15, or it could mean that the bus has already left. It will tell you that the bus is due for five minutes when before it was due it was going to arrive in two. It in fact tells you nothing, it purports to oh yes, it shows information that has nothing to do with reality, and that is just no good.

It's almost better when it has failed entirely, and just says countdown and nothing else. At least that way it's not telling you anything wrong, it won't be telling you fibs. I hate it, mainly because every time I see the figures on there I believe them, I use it to decide if I'll wait for the bus, and when I do, it's invariably the wrong decision.

Jehovas Witnesses...

Don't get me wrong, I'm as religious as the next man (so long as he's on the borders between agnosticism and atheism too), but there's something wrong with the way these people think. 

Yes, before you get too surprised I was stopped on my way to work by one of the folks sent out to brainwash the unwary, hence the rant, I don't do these things randomly you know.

Anyway, I have several problems with them. First of which is that you cant tell them apart from your average slightly geeky person. With full on budists, krishna devotees, jews or any other religious group turn up at your door, or stop you on the street you can spot them. Either sartorially or in the way they wear their hair they have chosen to mark themselves as different from the common herd. It allows you to make a choice in weather you speak to them or spurn their advances. This is a good thing. The only distinguishing mark of a Jehovas Witness is the fact that they  have smeared across their waxy face a smile not too dissimilar to that on the Mona-Lisa, entirely disconnected from the world around them, from the rest of their face and from the look of them they are soon to be  assimilated back to the mother ship. 

The next issue is with the fact that they think I need saving. Let me tell you, I need saving when I'm drowning, when my heart stops or if nuclear war begins, and rather than a Jehovas Witness I'd rather see a life guard, cardiac surgeon/paramedic or open nuclear bunker respectively. I don't see what they are going to do for me.

Thirdly, and this is the bit that gets me most is that they believe that everything in the bible is the literal truth, and that the proof of this is that it says it in the bible. The bible is just a book, a hugely important book, a guide to many around the globe, basis of many philosophies, cause of many wars and publishing phenomenon. If you had chosen a different text as you religious manuscript where would you be? The very hungry caterpillar? Steven King's It? The Beano? Just because someone wrote it down, it doesn't make it true. Otherwise  we'd believe that all caterpillars ate a numerically increasing amount of food unsuitable to their regular diet each day before they became a butterfly, we'd shun drainage and sewers incase we encountered a mean clown that gave us balloons and ate our children and that Dennis the Menace (UK version) lived down the street from a man who always wore army fatigues and kept a mini tank in his living room, or for that matter that there was a family with the surname Menace who gave their son the middle name the. They deny the existence of dinosaurs. How the fuck they explain the skeletons they dig up in Montana, I'll never know. Where is the proof of god's authorship of the old testament? They'll say the bible says it and therefore it's true. In that case I have a million pounds in the bank, it's been written so it's true, or maybe not. Writing it down doesn't make it fact. It makes it text. 

It's all so frustrating dealing with these people, they counter everything you ask or question them with by hiding behind the bible (not literally) and saying that god wrote it down so it's fact. I'll believe god wrote it when they can provide me with his dictation machine, cos he sure didn't type it out or write it freehand. In any case I have learned how to deal with them. I shall ignore them as soon as I see the pamphlet they will so eagerly thrust towards my hand on the street, and should they be stupid enough to knock on my door... well, I'll play some Black Sabbath and invite them in to learn more about the devil.

Working on a Sunday...

Or rather not so much working on a Sunday, but working on a Sunday when the formula 1 is on.

Sometimes I don't think I'm a normal man. Sport is generally somewhere below being given an enema with vinegar and lemon juice after my intestines have been sand-papered. I do however adore motorsport, most especially the normally bi-weekly spectacle of the grand prix. I also work in retail, and these days, thanks to advancement in the ignoring of religious conventions in the face of blind capitalism on the part of already rich folks who don't have to work, we open on a Sunday. Occasionally I have to work on these formally sacred days of rest and food. Today was one of those days. Today was also the day of the French GP. Seemingly, with no consideration to my plight, they choose to run the race in the middle of the day, whilst I am at work. To counter this inconsiderate scheduling I have the wonder that is Sky+. I get to record the race and watch it as if it were live, with the side benefit of zapping away at 30 times normal speed during the ad breaks that ITV inflict on us. 

Now this is all well and good, but I work in a shop that sells TV's, and it is guaranteed that some unhelpful sod will switch one over to ITV and try to watch the race. This is not good. Not at all. If the race is to be even slightly enjoyable I need to know nothing about what has happened. I want the suprise and excitement just the same as the asshole who has decided to watch it in my shop. The person who decides to watch formula one in my shop is akin to a zit on your sphincter. Do it and I will make sure you get a bad deal. In perpetuity. I may find it difficult to resist taking a crap on your lawn. 

Work is not where it ends either, oh no. When I come home I have to put myself in isolation until such time as I can turn on the recording and watch the race. No internet, no email, no phone, no TV, no nothing that has even the slightest chance of revealing the tiniest bit of information. Today I almost failed. It was the fault of Newsround, a children's programme. Yup kids TV almost ruined my day. It wouldn't have happened if John Craven was still presenting it, he had normal hair, a jumper and knew what news needed to be revealed. He didn't have stupid hair and a polo shirt, and sure didn't tell me who won the formula one. He made a pleasant interlude between Johnny Morris and Blue Peter. Thank god my fingers in the ears and la-ing worked. 

Sometimes life is so hard! 

Ricky Gervais...

Oh boy, is this a matter of some consideration. Do I or don't I? Should I or shouldn't I? Well I have decided that I am and to hell with it.

I hate Ricky Gervais. A big statement I know. I hate international comedy superstar Ricky Gervais. It's not so much the man, or his work, but rather, what they make me do.

I have an iPod (yeah, so does everyone), and I listen to it on the way to work. Sometimes I listen to podcasts. Sometimes I listen to Ricky's. My normal reaction to Ricky's merciless piss taking of the hapless Karl Pilkington is to convulse with laughter. When I listen to this podcast on the way to work I do this in public. It's embarrassing. People stare. People look at me as if I am mental. I try to control myself, I really do, but of course every now and then an involuntary snort of laughter escapes, of course, because I have been holding it in the laugh is much louder than a normal one (just like when you hold in a fart). 

I am being made a fool of, and I don't like it, no matter how much I enjoy the experience. It's Ricky's fault too, if he wasn't so good at making me laugh, I wouldn't look such a dick as I make my journey to work. If you read this Ricky, I expect an apology!

Inappropriate Lipstick...

I get that some women are not satisfied with the lot they have been given, looks wise. That is, of course, why god invented cosmetic surgery. I also get that some women can't afford gods gift to ugly people (and the terminally stupid), or for some reason choose to live on in their hideousness.

Ah, but I exaggerate, I'm not really an advocate for plastic surgery, but there are a number of people who really should have some rather than perpetrating the visual crime they inflict on their faces. I'm talking about the women who aren't satisfied with the size of their lips, so dissatisfied that they decide to use their lipstick as a crayon and draw on some extra bits at the edge. For some reason they feel it's better to look like a cross between the joker (the batman one, not the playing card) and Zippo the clown. Don't they realise that we can see the edges? Don't they realise that it's possible to spot the fact they have done this from about 10 miles away because no-one's lips actually join up with the bit of your nose that turns one nostril into a more pleasing two.

I am, of course, ranting this rant  because I saw one of these women this morning, and once I had got over swallowing the bit of vomit that involuntarily appeared in my mouth at the site of her/it I noticed that there was something even more odd. It appeared that this creature had chosen to forgo lipstick, and gone instead with a freshly laid turd as her lip enhancer of choice. It was truly and entirely horrific. Urk.

The London bus seating situation...

Let me start by saying I'm fairly tall, over six foot, and this exacerbates the problem...but it's not just me who suffers from the idiocy of the designers who have perpetrated this mess.

Let's take the bus experience, as thats where I really have the issue. Firstly you arrive at the bus-stop. This being London there could be quite a wait for the bus, 15 minutes would not be too surprising, neither would the best part of an hour. I'll rant about the little lit signs that tell you how long the wait will be soon...thats another whole rant entirely. So as you're waiting you decide to take a perch on the convenient seat in the convenient shelter that TfL have so thoughtfully provided. Sorry. I should have said attempt to take a seat on the red thing that a parrot would recognize as a perch. Yes, when I was young bus stops had benches four slats of wooden lovliness that cradled you buttocks in a comfortable manner, so long as you didn't sit on the rivets, being wood they were not to cold in winter and being slatted they let circulate to your over heated bum in the summer. Now what do we get? A four inch wide strip of unyielding plastic  finished in an exciting, and bus matching red hue, it's top surface rakishly angled to about 30 degrees off the horizontal. So what does that do for us, well four inches is not enough to take the whole of my butt (pun intended, double intendre fans!) let alone anyone else who has a bum bigger than say... oh... Nicole Ritchie, the plastic surface is like mounting an iceberg in winter, and in summer, well there's no airflow and if the sun's been on it it's like sitting on lava, that's if you can sit on it. What is the purpose of that rakish camber? Well as far as I can tell it's to ensure you slide off towards the floor, risking embarrassment and injury, and providing amusement for any employees of the shelter manufacturers who may be passing.

Does it get any better when you get on the bus? Nope. Hopefully the bus is not so full as to prevent you from finding a seat, in fact hopefully it's totally empty, because if that's the case you have a chance of finding a seat into which you have a chance of folding your legs without resembling a pretzel that has been squashed in the oven, then folded to make it fit on the shelf, placed at the bottom of a full shopping bag and then put into a seat on the bus. You may get the gist that I'm implying that the space provided for you to sit on the bus is small. You're wrong. I'm implying that it's miniscule. You know those spy satellites that you read about? The ones that can read the newspaper in your hand just as you read it, so far below on the surface of our planet? They'd have trouble spotting something the size of the average london bus seat. There are in fact, on the average number 33, six seats which give me enough leg room. Thing is though, they are the ones that are helpfully labeled with the DON'T SIT HERE UNLESS YOUR OLD, INFIRM, PREGNANT OR A BASTARD notices that will invariably make a "normal" person such as my self feel guilty about seating myself there. Thing is, they may have the legroom in those seats, but they sure don't have the width, none of the seats do, it's not so much the bum width, there is just about the exact amount of space that my bum takes up. The problem is, that like most humans my shoulders go out further on the sides than my arse. If I do get a seat on the bus I find myself with my knees somewhere alongside my ears and leaning at an obtuse angle so that both mine and my seatmates shoulders fit.

It's a disheartening experience, taking a bus,  I'm not a sardine, you can tell that by the fact that I'm not dead and slathered in olive oil before I'm crammed into a space somewhat smaller than the actual volume of my body inside a tin can, oh and the fact that I'm not a particularly good source of Omega-3.  

Signs that prevent me from falling...

Into the massive hole in the road that I would have to be blind or totally stupid to fall in. You know the ones, they stand mid pavement with a big white arrow pointing in the direction of the, always too narrow path they have left for pedestrians, and they say PEDESTRIANS, just in case you've forgotten your place in the road hierarchy.

Now to fall into a hole as deep as this you would have to, as I said before, be blind, in which case a sign that says where to go is no use unless you have someone to read it to you, in which case they'd see the hole anyway and tell you how not to fall in, or stupid, and to be that stupid would mean that no-one would care if you fell in. 

Why do I hate these health and safety inspired "conveniences"? Well there have been far too many of them around here of late. Thames water have decided that pumping liquid into the subsoil of Richmond is a waste of he money we pay them (yup, it has been for years, and that didn't stop you) and are replacing the water mains. But what really annoyed me was a supremely placed one. They dug up the pavement so that one side of the road was completely blocked, fair enough, there's no way around a sign offering alternative routes would be, at worst,  annoying but useful. Problem was that the blocked are was set back between a high garden wall on the right and a fence separating you from the traffic of the south circular road on the other. The sign that could save you some hassle by redirecting you was against the fence of the roadworks, 30 yards back between the wall and the fence, and when you see the sign it's arrow points in both directions, so what am I to do, leap the fence and get run over? Scale an 8 foot wall and commit trespass? Or walk back the 30 yards or more 'til I can find a safe place to cross? Well it's the last one obviously, but if they'd warn me a load of hassle would have been saved, they do it for cars, it's obvious that me and my two little feet don't matter.

Oh and big up Alex, thanks for reminding me of something else to rant about.

Remerchandising, or rather, how it feels afterwards...

My employers, who shall be known hereafter as the twits at head office, have decided to re-arrange the TV department. Fair enough. But it was planned to such a high level that they ignored several fixtures and fittings that have been there for years, and in themselves have been merchandised on the request of said twits at head office within the last two weeks.

That is not what I'm ranting about. No. It's the fact that today I hurt. I hurt like I imagine it hurts when you've been down the gym for 40 hours longer than your normal workout. I haven't ever been to a gym,  so I don't know, but I can imagine, it's so good having a brain, that works, occasionally.

All I did was move about 40 TV's, and it's not like they weigh the same as they did five years ago when they had a tube... oh and 25 shelves or so, and hang some brackets on the wall, [sarcasm]not too much work at all, nope[/sarcasm] (ooh I made a html joke). 

And it's not fucking over either! More today! Hooray!

People say they're creative...

Take the advert for the new Ford Kuga. It says that it would be nice for us all to start with a blank canvas, and shows us a world wrapped in canvas/paper as the public stare in wonderment at what has gone on in the night. Children draw on walls with crayons (isn't that graffiti? Hoodie culture gets everywhere), and into the scene drives the new car.

So what is this marvelous new vehicle? A solar powered sports roadster? An amphibious supercar (with periscope)? An MPV powered by hamster dung? No! They would actually be inventive, and I wouldn't hate the designers/advertising agency would I? No we get a small 4x4 of the sort an American would call an SUV. It's entirely normal, it will not surprise me should I actually notice one amidst the other small SUV's on the street. If the designers started with a blank canvas I think they had a bright light and a photograph of a freelander behind it. Oh, and they aren't very good at tracing. Not only this, even the name isn't original, it is interestingly mis-spelt, I'll give them that, but only so that it doesn't infringe on the copyright of the Mercury Cougar, or didn't they think anyone would notice.

Blank canvas my arse!

Eurosport...

OK, so normally the channel is crap. It's filled with the sports that mainstream TV and the very rich premium channels don't want. Still that can be a good thing. If you like beach soccer or the world street dance championships (he just did the robot...10 points!) who else is going to cover it? You probably love them, so I don't hate them for not going with the mainstream. In fact I like the fact that they cover the non F1/motoGP types of motorsport, and thats why I'm hating them...

I am currently watching the Le Mans 24 Hour race. I love the way it's on on fathers day, so no-one can really tell me off for watching it to excess. What gets my goat is the fact that every hour, on the hour I have to change channels to watch it. Fair enough, if you don't want it on your premium (cough!) Eurosport 1 channel all the time put it on Eurosport 2 and  leave it there. I'm not enjoying the effort of pressing the channel up/down button on the remote. Not at all.

Saturday nights...

Sticking with a TV theme, what the heck happened to saturday night TV? When I was younger there was a real choice between going out  and staying in to watch some rather good TV, and now, now I'm a parent and can't so easily go out on a Saturday, there really is bollock all on. There used to be things like the A Team, Airwolf and at least one good movie. Now the only thing half worth watching is Dr Who and really it's not all that good, and certainly not a patch on the good old days with Tom Baker, and even the crummy series with Sylvester McCoy and Bonnie Langford is better than this one (though I will say, that for the first time, this episode has given me the mild creeps). Is no-one making decent family series, with the almost exception of Dr Who? So much of todays TV sucks, but a special kind of suckage has been reserved for the end of the week. The time of the week when families can sit down and join together watching some good TV and we get cack. There could be wonderment, and I do get to wonder. I wonder why my youth was so much better, in the days of 4 channels. Why could they  make good compelling family TV when there was so little made when you compared it to today. In these days of thousands of channels, all on 24 hours a day surely there could be something worth watching that I haven't seen before? But no, other than the Doctor what I want  to watch is all the stuff I watched 20 years ago.

While I'm thinking about it...

I would like to thank endemol for providing me with some of the best entertainment of the week.

The food task was perfect, what better than to see the people you hate going through electric shock torture (all health and safety approved too!)? Oh what pleasure it was to see them writhe and scream in pain, in real life, not just in my head! Making it better still was the fact that for a while one of the hated thought it would be fun to deliberately shock the rest of the hated, just as I would do, then got depressed about his meanness and spent an hour sobbing. I have no sympathy, only joy!

Oh and before anyone tells me that I don't know what it's like, well, you're wrong. When my wife was giving birth she had a TENS machine. I thought it was a good idea to put it on my arm and whack it up all the way before pressing the button. Surprising amounts of arm spasms and hilarity followed, with only mild pain. I do know what it's like and they were being pathetic. So ner.

I still hate them too, my sympathy gland is currently faulty.

So, I work in retail...

...I don't hate retail, but sometimes...

Customers can get on your tits. Why is it that some of them believe that they can threaten and control you? Do they really think that threatening to sue me because they must have their TV assessed for faults before I can do anything? Do they really think that their consumer rights allow them to get an exchange or refund because they don't like something they've used for six weeks, and if they shout the words 'Trading standards' in the shop it will magically change both the law and my mind? Do they think that I can't spot that they have broken their camera/hoover/TV/iPod, and that if I do spot it that I should send it off because Olympus/Philips/Sony/Apple could never realise that: their cameras don't have cracked screens with a thumbprint at the centre of the crack/their hoovers don't have a catch that snaps of when you look at it/their TV's don't suddenly develop a hole through the screen after 7 months/their MP3 players don't naturally come bent into a curve with their screens permenantly black?

The customers who labour under these miss-apprehensions are blessed with a holier than though attitude. This, I'm afraid is an invariable fact. They believe that they are right and preach their version of the truth like a southern pastor ministering to his flock. They also automatically come in already angry and ready for a fight, for some reason this makes me slightly less than willing to sort out their problem, oh I'll do exactly what I must, but not a step further, nope, you come in and shout at me and it will get you precisely nowhere. Often the problem is that what I must do is tell them that they are going to get nothing, nada, zilch. Now what do you think that does for someone already built up to fight their "righteous" (in their own mind) fight. That's right, it makes them rather angry, and angry deluded self righteousness makes me hate people. Hate them good and proper.

So some advice, if you have busted your device, don't bother bringing it back unless you have insurance or want to pay, we will find out that it's your fault, and we will do fuck all for you. If your device goes wrong, no matter what you do/shout/claim/say I can't change what I can do for you, if I must send it for repair, I will, if I can exchange it, I will, shouting will not change this, and really, don't you think that it would be easier for me to exchange everything anyone ever said was faulty? It would, really, but do you think we'd make a profit if we did? And no,  before you make any claims, you wouldn't get it exchanged if you went to our competitors, they aren't dumb either, they can see you broke it just like I can. 

If it weren't for customers retail would be easier/more boring/not exist/not provide me with anyone to hate. I'd miss it...a good hate does you good!

I'm also hating the Apprentice, or rather the class of idiots who go in for it, who run it, produce it and are the folks behind the desk.

Let us begin, Sir Alan Sugar, creator of Amstrad, purveyor of all things shitty and likely to break down if you look at them (litigious folks this is my opinion, not a statement of fact, though two sky boxes, a hi-fi and a CPC464 computer might argue with that...but I digress...) gets drafted in to be, as it were the Donald Trump of the UK, only without the comedy hair, or range of expression, or wealth... still he's amusing. He has a good line in put downs, but then how could you not put down the idiots in front of him successfully? 

Sir Alan is flanked by Margaret, the white haired voice of reason, and her male counterpart (who's name escapes me, but he's just like Margaret, with a dick, and glasses). These two have worked for years, first with Alan and then Sir Alan and were, I believe, hired because they have all the facial expressions he doesn't, but strangely they have both got the same affliction. What is this affliction? The inability to speak when someone in front of them is doing something completely heinous or stupid. For example someone is buying a supposedly kosher chicken in a halal butcher. They want to speak, you can see them trying, their cheeks sucking and blowing as they try to force out the words we're all screaming at the television. You know: "What the fuck are you up to you complete idiot dumb arse knob end!!!!!!" But they remain silent. Odd.

Then we come to the people it's oh so easy to hate, the contestants, or as the conceit of the programme would have it, the interviewees. Never have I heard such appalling nonsensical middle management speak (other than in a staff meeting at my employer) they are all mathematically disfunctional (I'll give you 110% Sir Alan), they think themselves out of more boxes than amstrad ever packaged goods in, they scale walls, leap tall buildings and are generally verbal superheroes in the art of saying sweet FA using words that sound like they could actually mean something. They also call each other friend as they stab each other in the back at any opportunity, they snipe and pout and truly reveal themselves to be an odious bunch. Of course, all they want is a job, until they get fired, at which point they feel that maybe they have a career in presenting there fore the taking. It's like big brother without the nakedness. Not that I want to see them naked, nor as I've said previously, the folks in big brother.

They're all awful. Thank god the series is over! 

This week I'm hating...

Big Brother. 

I have a number of reasons for this. I hate the fact that I watch it. Not constantly, thank fuck, but enough to keep up with what's going on. I hate the fact that it still exists, series one got pretty old fast, let alone series 2, 3, 4 ad-pretty much-infinitum. Series nine is here, and it all seems very much the same as it always has, people who crave naught but fame displaying themselves for the boring shallow folks that they are as they live their boring vanity driven lives 24 hours a day on live TV (and incidentally, if you watch the live feed, you will soon find out how to make 24 hours seem like at least 27). It is of course the people I really hate.......

Stereotypes are bad, and perpetuating them is even worse. Channel 4/Endemol are choosing the people that are on the show, yes, not everyone goes up for an audition, but from those that do it should be possible to find...

A gay man who is not entirely camp, plucked eyebrows, fake tan and able to make Jack from Will and Grace (which I also hate) seem reserved.

Young black women who do not have a superiority complex, bad attitude and a persecution complex...Yes, two competing and mutually perpetuating complexes. Yes dear we are all out to get you because you're better than everyone else.

Young white men who do not have to be silent all the time other than when they are denegrating others or elevating themselves. Also they could possibly have fashion sense that extended a little way beyond yoof, baggy trousers and hoodies are not all that exists.

Young women who don't compare themselves to the already famous for no reason. I'm just like that footballers wife I am the ones who get picked say. Well you're not I say, she's famous (weather she deserves to be or not), she'll stay famous for as long as her husband is and she wont be fronting the adult channel within six months.

Young women who don't believe that showing their naked bodies will make people like them. It is possible that people will like you for your personality, not the sight of your naked body, don't get me wrong I like looking at boobies, it's one of my favorite pass-times, but it's unnecessary to show me yours dear, they aren't (normally) all that nice.

A nutter who is not a nutter by choice. Yes we have had a guy with tourettes syndrome, a genuine crazy person, but he's negated by the fact that the producers chose him because of the fact that his illness would shock, plus he chose to be a nutter by dating that stupid whiny fucking woman. I shouldn't hate this years male nutter, he has a disability, but I do, he wanted to be on big brother.

A non comedy foreigner, serious people from other countries do exist... nobody could say that, say, Vladimir Putin is a comedy stereotype, you can find them, so why cant the producers? This year they're looking to cash in on the Little Britain phenomenon by giving us Ting Tong. Pity the phenomenon is over, isn't it.

I really cannot stand the people who get on this show, I know I'm not perfect, but really I find all these people truly hateful. I still hate myself for watching it though, though I do feel that you can't beat a good hate.....

It makes you feel alive!