More of the same

Cocks....

Yup there is another big one around here.

Behind my home, just past the annoying revving bike is a nursery school.

Now it seems to me that if you send your children to most nurseries they will be looked after and educated by young female slightly overweight chavs. Nothing unusual there, though it may not be ideal in the posher bits of the world. There's a fair sprinkling of these chavs in the nursery behind me but they don't annoy me any more than any other average chav.

No

There's one special one. The one who teaches them sports. This is one annoying shouty man chav. And he's S T U P I D too.

Now he comes dressed as the worst kind of chav. A haircut with bits trimmed from it to look like partings, but being as he doesn't have afro hair he can have a normal parting, just by parting his hair. A polo shirt "wiv a coller so it looks smart innit?". 3/4 length trousers, adidas ones, capri pants for male chavs, though worn with a certain panache, this guy actually takes the bits of string at the bottom of the legs that can be used to gather them around the calf and uses them to gather the fabric about his calf (no one has done this since the design team at adidas tried to justify their jobs by adding these useless bits of twine (look Hans ve can gazzer zer vabric, ist gut ja?)). Worse still he gathers the fabric just below the knee, it makes his chav wear look like what I'm told are called Harem pants, but what I think of as the kind of thing worn by female belly dancers, genies and the like, only with stripes down the side. Oh and shoes, well you know those really thin trainers that chavs all wear these days? The ones made of leather that seem to have zero padding? Yeah? Well imagine them made of even thinner leather, and then divide the thickness of the leather by two. It looks like he's painted his feet white, in fact, the only way to tell the difference is to look very closely for the stitching, though I'm reasonably sure that he'd draw the stitching on his feet if he could. If he could work out which end of the pen is the one that writes.

Clothing over.

Stupidity time.

Imagine holding a conversation with a bunch of three year olds. Now imagine having to talk up to them intelligence wise.

When this fully grown man asks them to show him their balls it's not checking that they understand, it's not a pedophile in paradise, it's a man who has genuinely forgotten what balls look like. There's a look on his face for a moment like "ah yes, I remember!" shortly followed by blank incomprehension, then the question again, then the look........

Here is a man who has so little understanding of how the world works that he tells the children to "drop their balls downwards (said daaahhhhnwads), towards the floor," . He's genuinely worried that if the children let go of the spherical objects they hold (what are they again, oh yes, balls!) that they could float off in any direction. He is unaware of gravity, Isaac Newton is a mythical character who invented feet, and science does not exist. He also feels the need to remind himself (not the children) that downwards is, in fact, towards the ground, just in case he forgot. He is DUMB!

No worse still is the fact that he does all this at a volume roughly equivalent to a 747 at take off. His annoying chavvy voice reverberates off the nearby buildings causing all who hear it to shudder.

Except for the chav girls who work at the nursery. To them he's hot.

It's time to talk about dicks...

There are some big dicks in my life. Being as one is attached to me, and is therefore great, I'm going to talk about the others.

Dick number one is the reason I shall never need an alarm clock as long as I live here. To be clear, I live above a shop, and said dick works in said shop. Said dick owns a motorbike. Every morning this phallic appendage travels to work on his bike, he probably has a zippy, nippy, journey untroubled by traffic, his gleaming leathers unsullied by dirt. He arrives at exactly five to nine each day and parks his bike below my window. My bedroom window. The window behind which I am asleep.

Now bikers can be, and often are, very cool guys. You can spot the cool ones. They'll be wearing the battered leathers and be riding bikes that sound manly and deep throated. The cock downstairs is not one of these. His leathers a bright shiny and new. I am sure that he makes the attempt daily to iron creases into the legs of his leathers, so as to look smarter. He follows ironing blogs looking out for the invention of the biker leather iron, and already has the funds saved in his high interest instant access ISA savings account to purchase one. In fact he's probably funding a development program as we speak...

Now a biker in new leathers is often the possessor of a crap bike. I don't know what bike this chap has, he makes sure it's covered up with a little silver blanket to keep it nice. It looks like it's just run the London marathon. I do know it sounds shit. It sounds like a hair dryer being amplified through a megaphone with a cracked horn. Only worse. And louder. I know this because every day he jars me from sleep by revving his motor three times to the redline before turning it off. Vriiiiiiiiiiiiiiimmmmmmmm Vriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiimmmmmmmm VRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIMMMMMMMMMMM! (not vroom, that sounds too much like a proper bike....).

What purpose does it serve? Does it make it go faster when he leaves of an evening? Or is it just to say "Hey people I'm HERE! Look at ME! Aren't I just the COOLEST because I have a MOTORBIKE?". Well its obviously the latter.... what he doesn't realize is that people are saying "Oh fuck HE'S here. Again. What a FUCKING COCK! Go buy a REAL BIKE!".

The guy's a massive dick.

Since the recession has begun I have noticed a new breed of customers appearing in the store where I work. This new species shall be the subject of tonight’s rant.

These people seem to have the idea that we owe them something, simply because they have come to us to buy something, that we should acquiesce to whatever stupid request they make simply because they have some money that they would like to spend. These people are stupid. Very stupid. Very stupid indeed.

Think about it...

Every single one of them comes in and chooses a product that is a) very expensive and (NOT or) b) very heavily discounted. They will then ask for more money off. We are not talking £5 or £10, a sensible amount, a figure that, should the day have been quiet, I may consider. What they will ask for is £100 off a £600 product.

They will be told that this is not possible.

They will then demand that we give them something of greater value than the original discount requested for free.

They will again be told that this is not possible.

At this point a strange cross between anger and utter incredulity will cross their face.

“Don’t you know that there is a recession?” they will sputter. “Don’t you realize that you should be grateful I’m even here? Do you not think that if it were not for me, just me, you would be out of a job by the end of the week and the company would go the way of Woolworths? Don’t you care that I will walk out of here and spend my money elsewhere?”

My answer is no. A firm and unequivocal no.

Yes I know there’s a recession, I am glad that we have customers, but really if the business relied on you and your overactive self importance gland for our income we would have been fucked long ago, and should I lose my job because I failed to sell you this for a ridiculously low price, well I’m probably well shot of it, and no I don’t care if you take your money elsewhere because I know that if some fool does give you the price you are looking for then their business IS going bust, pretty damn soon and they, not I, will be out of a job.

Look at it mathematically. An item costs my employer £550 to buy, it normally sells for £800. A profit of £250. Because there is a recession, and because we need to keep trade the item is reduced to £600, it does not cost any less. £50 profit left.

Now a ‘customer’ comes in and demands £100 discount. How much profit is left? Fuck all. In fact I’m virtually paying them £50 to take it away. Where, pray tell, is the sense in that? How is it a good idea, recession or no recession, to sell something for less than it costs to buy? Why, for goodness sake, do these so called saviours of business during the recession not grasp that it’s not going to get us anywhere if we don’t make a little profit on what we sell?

I get that they are just out for a good deal, much as I am when I shop, but there are good deals and there are stupid deals. Ask for the stupid deal if you will but for fuck’s sake don’t get all pious and offended when you’re rejected. If you do, well then you’re an arsehole and, therefore, I hate you.

Lost...

I like answers. They kind of give a solution to the problem of not knowing what the hell is going on.

I  like Lost. It's a well made and intriguing TV show that has actually managed to keep my interest for the four seasons I've watched (unlike 24 which kind of bored me after 2.4 hours).

The problem I have is that the two things are mutually incompatible. 

Series 5 has just started. I was told I was going to get answers.

Bollocks I was!

The English...

...or at least the ones who are proud of it to the extent of xenophobia.

I am fed up, quite frankly, with a certain type of English person. Not the Englander as perceived by the rest of the world, the reserved, polite, well spoken individual. They're OK. It just seems that they aren't the English any more.

No.

We have people who believe that Sportswear is the ultimate in cool. That an England football top is the height of fashion (for men OR women) and is something to be worn at every opportunity. That a St George's Cross hung from a window is a viable form of exterior decoration for a home. That St George's day should be a national holiday, despite the fact that the bloke was a Turk and never visited the country, oh, and the fact that were no dragons, ever, he didn't kill one, save a princess or do anything he may be associated with in the minds of the people in question. That being pure bred English is possible. That we have a had a proud history of independence. (The Romans, the Vikings, the Saxons, and the Normans? Anyone? English? Or Roman, Norwegian French crossbreed?) That football is the defining reason for living. That the Sun is a newspaper. 

I live in a deluded nation. Surrounded by people that have a word picture formed by reading the Sun from back to front (that way comes in the order of importance, sport (just football) adverts for porno phone lines, problem page, womens shit, more football (if you're lucky) celebrity gossip, page three boobies, major story (so long as it's about football celebrities or sex)). People who are tattooed with bulldogs, phrases of absurd patriotism (Im forever english (captalised and punctuated as on the arm of the subject). It's disappointing. I could be proud of our nation, but I'm embarrassed by it. Visitors arrive expecting Hugh Grant and get Chavs. They get yobs. They get one of the most fucked up nations on the face of the planet.

This isn't inspired by my Scots heritage. 

The Scots are a pretty fucked nation too. Governed by the sassenachs as my brother would say. but really, it's the same problem. Chav or Schemie... the difference is in the name the scum are given.

If only the country was the way the outside world believed it was...

If

If is such a hateful, shitty little word. Not all the time of course. Sometimes it's useful.

It's NEVER a word I ever want to hear again when it comes to hindsight, to things that can never be changed, to things that, frankly, have gone. It does not matter at all, in the slightest, not even microscopically what would have happened should another path have been chosen at some precise point in the past. It can't matter. It is not important. The reason? You're actually stuck with the consequences of the path that was taken. Imagine that. No time machine to take you back and change your mind. No way of stopping the events that forced a path to be chosen. Who'd've thunk it? You're actually stuck with your past. Now there's a concept!

I could do without hearing "Well, if he hadn't...." or "it would be better if you'd never...." or anything of the sort. Pointless speculation on the past is just exactly that. Pointless. As in something with a total lack of a point. An absence of narrowing protuberances. NO POINT. 

Speculate for all you're worth on WHY something happened, on HOW it happened. These can be worthwhile endeavors. They can teach you how to avoid mistakes in the future, they can show you how to do it better next time. If, after the fact is worth nothing.

So what peeved me today? 

An article in The Sun (Bleah, I read the Guardian, no-one reads The Sun, they look at the pictures and try to cobble together a meaning) about Prince Harry's "Racist Abuse". (Why the inverted commas? Who knows if it's racism, really? It's probably the stupidity of the inbred. Add to that the fact that it DOES NOT MATTER. It will not stop the recession or global warming if Harry called him anything else, and frankly that's what really matters on a global scale right now, isn't it?). This article speculated on the fact that Harry would have been a more pleasant chap IF his mummy, the not all that attractive and media manipulating Princess Di would have lived. SO FUCKING WHAT? She's not alive. She is dead. There is no Diana (despite constant press coverage in the Daily Mail and the Express, papers who give her far more importance in death than in life). It does not matter what the world would be if she was still here because, incase you haven't noticed, she isn't. Harry is the product of his past, of a system so institutionalized and inbred that it would be surprising if he were a rounded individual, rather than a fag smoking self important toff who thinks he's above reproach.

If, as a concept sucks.

So, it's been a while since I actually seemed to hate anything. At least to you. Life's been getting in the way, in a way that quite frankly has kept me so apoplectic with suppressed rage that... well... I could have exploded.

In any case I'd like to rant about coughing. Coughing is something that currently I am intimately familiar with. Hack! Grunt! Hurrrrggghhhh! Splutter! I've been at it for about a month, and I'm not the only one, my wife and daughter are at it too. My life has been one hack after another since before Christmas. 

I'm starting to get just a little teensy bit fed up with it. It is starting to spoil everything. It wrecked Christmas for a start. I had the flu, so did my daughter and it turns out my wife had the measles. I helped cook some of the Christmas dinner (which could have been a disaster) my wife spent half the day in bed and the other half curled up shivering on the sofa, and if it hadn't been for the fact we had guests we would have put off the entire day. Since then we've all started to feel better but the coughing hasn't stopped. 

It's like having a constant accompaniment from the least enjoyable percussion section in the universe, and it's  a percussion section that have chosen big clubs to hit their instruments with, forgotten their instruments and then chosen you as a replacement. It's like getting beaten up on inside. All. The. Time. It has gotten so bad that I seem to have hurt my hamstrings. Thats right. I have hurt my legs, with coughing. My chest has hurt the tendons in my legs. A cough has given me an injury common in footballers and sprinters. It's gone beyond the point of normal. It's gone beyond normal and out the other side into impossible. I'm a deeply unfit creature (I should work on that) with a sports injury, all thanks to a virus. 

Bugger it.

Bugger it all to heck!