Spare Space
Posted: Thu 16 February, 2023 Filed under: Domestic, Getting Organised, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »One of the reasons for my move last year was to have a bigger house, with space to have a home-office and so on, rather than Tiny House and also renting an office in Milton Keynes.
It is lovely to have a larger house, to have space for bookcases (and to have all my books out of boxes for the first time in Far Too Long) and to have that home office and so on.
However… I find that most of the time I’m still in “Tiny House” mode mentally, in that I don’t actually use that home office. It’s there, and I know it’s there, it’s just that I forget when it comes to actually working, so a lot of that is still done down in the living room instead. Additionally, I don’t yet really sit in the other part (that was the ‘dining room’, and is now ‘book room’) as a matter of course. I’ve used it a couple of times – and suspect I’ll use it more in spring/summer with some natural light coming through.
Both rooms are fine, and fit for their intended purposes. I just… don’t use them properly. Yet.
Maybe I’m expecting too much of myself. It’s not even six months that I’ve been in this place yet, and I was in Tiny House for over a decade, so in some ways it’s not surprising that I haven’t really made the mental switch yet.
I will do. I’ll get back into the mindset, I’m sure, and I’ll make use of the rooms the way I meant to. It’s just taking me longer than I thought it would.
A Lack of Life
Posted: Wed 4 January, 2023 Filed under: Domestic, Weirdness 2 Comments »When I moved here, there were two horrible globes of fake-box hanging outside the front window. (Just…. don’t ask. I don’t know.)
I replaced them with two bird feeders, because… well, it’s nice/good to feed birds.
Only it turns out that this area is weird – there seem to be absolutely no small birds in the vicinity at all. Yes, we’ve got pigeons, crows, and magpies. Occasionally starlings. But nothing else, no robins, sparrows, blackbirds, tits (ho ho) or anything. It’s very strange.
I’m leaving the feeders out for the moment, but now I’m aware of this weirdness I notice it even more, and I’ve been looking out more to see if I see anything.
As yet, nope.
I’ve no idea why this might be – the area isn’t chock-full of cats or anything. It just… doesn’t seem to have any birds.
Making More Work
Posted: Fri 12 August, 2022 Filed under: Customer Services, Domestic, Getting Organised, I Don't Understand, People, Thoughts, Weirdness 2 Comments »As part of my preparation for moving (about which another post sometime soon) this week I ordered some decent moving boxes from SafeStore. Yes, I’m sure there are other sources for them, and so on, but I was happy with the stuff on offer, and they’d deliver it, so *shrug*, it’ll do.
For cost-effectiveness (within the provisos of “I’m sure I could get it better somewhere else, but CBA to hunt”) I got one of their “kits” – 4 each of small, medium and large box sizes for considerably less than individual prices – and also added in some bubblewrap, tissue paper, and a mattress cover. All well and good.
It got delivered this morning, as expected and on-time. Two boxes – one the ‘kit’ box, and one for the bubblewrap roll etc. Except… there’s no mattress cover, no tissue paper. So I called them up to let them know, and the lady went off to check with the despatchers. And that was where it got weird.
“Have you checked in the Kit box? They say they might’ve put the extra things in there, to keep it all together“.
And it turned out that was exactly what had happened. But that boggles my mind.
Now, I assume (and I’m aware it’s an assumption and thus could be utterly flawed) that the kit boxes are exactly that – they come as a sealed box with the kit contents in. That makes sense to me. (Otherwise they’d be assembling the kit from box stocks for every order, which seems… odd)
So, if that’s the case, the despatchers opened a kit box, put the extra bits in, sealed it up, and then put it with the other box that already had bubblewrap etc. in it. Why go to that effort when there’s an unsealed box (with space in it) right there? Why make even more work for oneself?
I despair.
[Note : I actually did better than expected out of this deal – because they didn’t send me the kit box I’d ordered, and instead sent one that’s larger, and should’ve cost about £10 more!]
100 To Go
Posted: Tue 22 September, 2020 Filed under: Covid, Cynicism, Domestic, Lockdown, Weirdness Leave a comment »Today is day 266 of 2020. There’s only another 100 to go.
I’m not going to tempt fate (or give it ideas) by saying things couldn’t get worse. They could. Knowing the way this year’s gone so far, they probably will.
In the meantime, I’m going to be slightly altering the restaurant plans and bookings I’d already made for the rest of this year, following on from today’s (frankly bizarre) “everywhere’s got to close by 10pm” dictat.
I’m not sure what makes things safer by closing pubs, restaurants and food places by 10pm – as other restaurateurs have said, they’ve worked hard on making sure entry/exit times were staggered, whereas now it’s going to be a big exodus at one time.
It’s all just weird.
Memory Failings
Posted: Fri 28 August, 2020 Filed under: 1BEM, I Don't Understand, People, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »Do you suffer from long-term memory loss?
I don’t remember, I don’t remember(Chumbawumba’s “Amnesia”)
Within my office block, I’m regularly gobsmacked by how people seem incapable of seemingly simple tasks, like remembering to turn things off that they’ve just turned on. For example, walking in to the toilets, turning on the lights, and failing to turn them off again when leaving. (And sometimes also somehow forgetting to turn off taps that they’ve just used)
I honestly don’t understand this – and I’m potentially being charitable by attributing it to forgetfulness, rather than just being unthinking asshats – but it does seem to be ever more prevalent. Maybe it’s related to the office rentals being all-inclusive, meaning people give less of a sod about utilities and so on.
But even then, I wonder, is that also how they are at home? Do they keep leaving things on there as well? Do their partners/parents just keep on tidying up after them, turning things off again?
(And just because I’m not perfect – I’ve been meaning to write this post for the last two weeks, and I’ve kept on forgetting to do so)
One Speed Fits All
Posted: Fri 17 July, 2020 Filed under: 1BEM, Commuting, Domestic, Driving, People, Weirdness Leave a comment »Recently I’ve noticed something odd on my journeys to/from the office that really annoys me. And it’s to do with speeding (as the title may have suggested)
Particularly on my way home, the drive contains a variety of country roads and towns/villages, so we fairly regularly swap between speed limits of 60 and 30mph, with one small stretch at 20mph. Which is easy, so long as you’ve got a brain, and some awareness. (And you’d pretty much hope that a driver has both)
But no. On a regular basis, I see drivers who decide to drive at about 40mph the whole way, regardless of what the limit actually is. It means they’re either going ridiculously slowly, or stupidly fast.
It’s not really a problem as such – it’s just annoying, and I truly don’t understand the thinking that leads to this behaviour. It’s all just bizarre, really.
Lockdown – Space
Posted: Mon 1 June, 2020 Filed under: Domestic, Lockdown, People, Thoughts, Weirdness 2 Comments »One of the weirdest things I’ve found about the Lockdown (I can’t really call it the current lockdown any more, the speed with which it’s being rescinded) is that outside my house, there have been many more parking spaces than usual.
I can’t explain it – all logic says that with fewer people travelling, the spaces would’ve been filled at the start of the lockdown and then vehicles wouldn’t have moved. However, that’s not been the case – there are fewer vehicles, and the spaces seem to vary all the time, but there are always spaces.
All I can assume is that where I live has a fair percentage of people who have second homes here (for commuting during the week or whatever- we’re only an hour from London, so it kind of makes sense) and who haven’t been here while things have been different.
I’m not complaining – it’s just always seemed odd to be able to park outside my own house, rather than having to find spaces further away.
Lockdown – Missed
Posted: Tue 19 May, 2020 Filed under: Change, Domestic, Lockdown, Thoughts, Weirdness 2 Comments »In a similar vein to the previous post about things that might survive, I’ve thought a lot about the things I’ve actively missed in this time, as opposed to the things I just haven’t done.
The list of things actually missed – the things I’ll look forward to being able to do again – is really quite short.
- Seeing films at the cinema
- Meals at my favourite places – with Mere being the key one I’ll be at as soon as they re-open
(There are a couple of other places I want to go back to, but Mere is the only one I’ve actively missed) - Walking in London
And that’s it, really.
Of course there are other things I want to be able to go back to doing and so on, and I’ll enjoy life slowing going back to normal. It’ll be interesting to see how it all works out
Losing My Traditions
Posted: Thu 9 April, 2020 Filed under: Domestic, Food, Weirdness 1 Comment »Over the last few years, I’ve always bought myself an Easter egg from Hotel Chocolat – I really like the thickness of their eggs and so on, but also the fact that each half is individually wrapped. That’s important for me, because (as I’ve said before) I can’t leave a half-pack of something – if I’ve opened it, I’ll finish it. So with the Hotel Choc egg, it becomes four things – the two individual halves, and the two bags of chocolates inside.
The eggs also keep well – which is a good thing, because it takes me ages to get round to eating the damn thing. I don’t mind small doses of chocolate, but I have to be in the mood for a larger dose like a half-egg.
Anyway, this year I’ve decided that I’m not going to get an egg at all, which must be the first time in at least a decade.
I had the final half of last years egg about a fortnight ago, and if I’m honest, I didn’t even enjoy it. I wanted to, but it was just blah. And I’ve looked this year, and there’s nothing that makes me want to buy it. So, I’m not.
It feels a bit odd, really, and a bit sad. But not sad enough to make me change my mind. Maybe next year will be different, I don’t know.
Levels of Stupid
Posted: Tue 25 February, 2020 Filed under: Advertising, Cynicism, I Don't Understand, People, Stupidity, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »At the moment, I get a *lot* of spam about property investment – probably an average of five to ten a day. I don’t know why it’s suddenly this subject, but it’s definitely noticeable.
Student flats in Hull, Hotel rooms in Leicester, Apartments in Liverpool and Manchester, and even some overseas stuff. I don’t pay attention to it, but it does make me think.
Basically, what kind of idiot (or lunatic) is going to decide to invest in a property, based on receiving a spam/junk email? It’s a huge amount of money, however you look at it.
I mean, obviously people do fall for this crap – the spammers/scammers wouldn’t bother sending it out if they didn’t – but I can’t deny, I figure that the people who do so pretty much deserve everything they get.
Multicrunch
Posted: Sun 29 December, 2019 Filed under: Domestic, Driving, Milton Keynes, People, Weirdness 1 Comment »In the town where I live, one of the major roads in has a roundabout at the end of it. It’s busy, but that’s generally fine.
Anyway, the weird thing is that in the last week, two cars have come off that roundabout into the verges/ditches. Going in different directions (they’re on opposite sides of the roundabout) but both somehow off the road.
It’s weird because I’ve not seen any other accidents on that roundabout in the seven-plus years I’ve lived here.
The road’s safe – I’ve been over that roundabout at least twice a day every day, and I’ve been using it during the time of these accidents without any problems. It’s just it’s had two accidents in seven days, for some reason.
Reinsuring
Posted: Wed 25 September, 2019 Filed under: Advertising, Brands, Change, Customer Services, Cynicism, Domestic, Driving, Finances, I Don't Understand, Insurance, People, Weirdness Leave a comment »The world of Car Insurance is very, very strange. I truly don’t understand how it all works.
My car insurance is due for renewal in October, so I recently received the renewal gubbins from my current insurer. They’ve put my insurance up by £60 for the year. Bear in mind, I’ve not even spoken to them all year, let alone made a claim, and I’ve now got another year’s no claims discount as well. And yet it’s gone up.
So I shopped around, doing the usual comparison website thing (Meerkats rather than opera singers) and got one that’s actually £120 cheaper than what I was being offered by the current insurer – and with slightly better cover.
Brilliant, I’ll sign up and do that. Job done. And this is where it all gets weird(er)
My new insurer is actually one I used a couple of years ago. So when I log in to their ‘self-service portal’ to see my new policy, all I can see is the details of the old one. Fuck sake. (It looks like the policy is actually tied to a combination of my username and password – so I can change password, and now view the new details instead – but I didn’t know that at the time)
So first things first, I call my current insurer to tell them I won’t be renewing with them. It’s the usual automatic phone gubbins, and gives the name of the insurance provider – let’s call them ABC Insurers, for the sake of argument. I give the correct information, go through, tell them I won’t be renewing, explain why, and it’s as easy as that.
Then I call the new insurers. Who are also using ABC Insurers. So I go through the correct information for the new insurance, get things sorted, get the documents emailed to me, and it’s as easy as that.
But it’s weird – I’ve used two different companies (well, two different front-ends) and given them the same information (obviously) but one faction is offering me a significantly better deal than both the one I’m on, and the renewal quote from the one I’m on. But they’re both the same company underneath!
How the fuck does that make sense? Offering the same person two completely different prices (and slightly different packages/benefits) Why not allow my current insurer to offer the same price as my new one? It’s all just a bit bizarre.
Scheduled
Posted: Wed 5 June, 2019 Filed under: Advertising, Bad Ads, D4D™, Domestic, Food, I Don't Understand, People, Solo Dining, Television, Thoughts, Weirdness 1 Comment »At the moment, there’s an advert on TV for Just Eat, and it freaks me out a little bit.
There’s one part of it where they talk about people “ordering their usual”, and doing so at a specific time – implying that it’s the same thing every week. And that just weirds me out, that there are people out there who do the same thing every week, who eat the same meals with little to no variety.
At the same time though, it’s odd in other ways. I’m just as bad at being uninspired when it comes to meals and so on – but that’s when I’m just cooking for myself. If I’m paying for it (i.e. a takeaway, a restaurant meal or whatever) then I’m going to go for random stuff that I fancy eating.
So I think it’s the combination – that there are people who are paying for their meal and still only having the same thing at the same time – rather than *just* that it’s the same thing every time.
Anyway, it weirds me out – even though in some ways I’m also a massive hypocrite about it, as I’m semi-guilty of the same thing, but only in the privacy of my own home…
Incompetents (Part Two)
Posted: Wed 27 March, 2019 Filed under: Cynicism, Domestic, Driving, Thoughts, Travel, Weirdness 5 Comments »Following on from the other post about people (or at least politicians) not thinking things through, the other one is/was about the EU’s new plan for all new cars to be fitted with speed limiters from 2022.
Speed limiters are – in some circumstances – a really good idea. If the limiting was in place for areas with lower speed limits – the areas with speed limits of 20,30, 40, and perhaps even 50mph – then that would be good. I see so many people speeding in those areas. I still think it’d have its problems, but this would at least help. (I’ve said before that I have my reservations on this in the 50mph average speed limit areas currently in place on a lot of motorway work areas)
If, however, it’s something that is brought in universally, for all roads at all limits, then it’s idiotic – and again, shows a lack of understanding when it comes to people, business, cars, driving, and umpteen other things.
The first thing that occurred to me when I heard this was that a goodly portion of police (or council) funding is generated or paid for via speeding fines and the like. If speeding is hugely reduced by automation and limiters, where will that money and funding be coming from?
For another thing, if everything is limited to the national speed limit, it’ll reduce people’s desire/drive to pay more for larger/faster vehicles. If you can get a basic [car model] that’ll do everything and can go up to the speed limit where it’s limited, why would you pay two or three times the price for a performance version of the same [car model] that can’t do anything extra, that can’t go faster or perform better? (Personally I don’t see much point in these super-performance models anyway, but that’s not the point here)
Again, I like the idea of auto-limiting speeds/cars in slower and busier areas. But making it a universal solution seems to have missed a fair number of knock-on issues, with no clues or hints about how to actually fix them.
Subconscious
Posted: Fri 18 January, 2019 Filed under: Car Repairs, Domestic, Dreaming, Driving, Getting Organised, Stupidity, Weirdness Leave a comment »Recently, I came across a really odd thing.
For the last few months, I’ve been experiencing problems with my car at night, with the lights suddenly failing and me driving in absolute darkness.
One night this week I had a drive home where it felt like the same thing had happened again – cars pulling out right in front of me as if they hadn’t seen me, that kind of thing. It happened on enough occasions in a short time that I ended up checking whether my lights were working, thinking “Fuck sake, not again”
And that’s when I realised.
I haven’t been experiencing actual problems with the car. I’ve had dreams that I’ve been experiencing problems – because there’s no way on Earth that I would have not got a problem like that sorted immediately. If I’d had an electrical/lighting failure like that, I’d have taken it to the garage the following morning. But I haven’t – I’ve never even called the garage to make an appointment.
So while my conscious brain has been thinking that there’ve been problems with the car and that I really should get things checked/sorted, my subconscious has been sticking its oar in and stopping that from happening. Somewhere along the line it’s known that these problems have been dreams, and has prevented my conscious from actually calling the garage and getting those things sorted.
All the way through I’d have sworn blind that these problems were happening. And it’s only been when I consciously worried that the same problem had occurred again that I realised the previous occurrences hadn’t actually happened.
And that, with no shadow of a doubt, is really bloody weird.
Weirdly Consistent
Posted: Fri 14 December, 2018 Filed under: Cinema, Customer Services, Domestic, Films, Geeky, Single Life, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »When I moved here six-and-a-half years ago (and yes, that does still freak me out) I got a Cineworld Unlimited card, so I could see as many films as I wanted to. It’s a decent deal, less than £20 a month, so as long as you see more than one film per month, it’s paid for itself.
Because I’m a geek, I also started listing what I’d seen, with a separate sheet per year.
And it seems like I’m really quite consistent in how many films I see each year – not through any plan or schedule, it’s just the way it’s worked out.
The totals are
- 2012 – 26 films (although that’s in under six months, as I didn’t get the card ’til July/August)
- 2013 – 61 films
- 2014 – 64 films
- 2015 – 64 films
- 2016 – 54 films
- 2017 – 66 films
And so far this year I’m on… 62, with a couple of weeks to go.
Each year I think I’ll up my quality control a bit and see fewer films (when you’re not paying anything to see them, it’s remarkably easy to just say “Yeah, fuck it, I’ll give that a go”) And yet it all ends up being much of a muchness.
It’s odd, but I’m not going to complain. At least I know I’m getting value for money out of my Unlimited card. (It’s an outlay per year of £215 all told – so each film is costing me an average of £3.30, which is one fuck of a lot cheaper than the £10-ish for a single ticket!)
Ambivalent
Posted: Wed 12 December, 2018 Filed under: 1BEM, Cynicism, Domestic, Festering Season, People, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »
This year is currently a weird one for me with regards to the Festering Season.
Usually by now I’m totally done with it, had enough, and generally pretty fucked off with the entire thing.
This year, though, I’m just ambivalent about it. And I don’t actually know why.
We’re still being faced with the same inanity and vapid bullshit on TV adverts and the like. We’ve had Christmas Shit™ (cards, confectionary, blah blah) in the shops since September. Now we’re in December they’re playing sodding christmas carols and tunes in the shops and on the radio, and various fuckwits are already blithering about “It’s christmas”. (No it’s fucking not, it’s just December)
And on the face of that paragraph, you’d think I am hating it. But I’m not. I still feel the same, that it is all crap and bollocks, but it’s not enraging me this year the same way it has in the past.
It annoys me that I don’t know why it’s not annoying me as much as usual. But I’m also not going to complain – in some ways it’s quite nice to be a wee bit more tolerant of the whole farce than usual.
I don’t like (let alone love) the season and what it does to people – and I honestly doubt I ever will. But at least this year I also don’t hate it the same way I usually do.
Dickhead
Posted: Fri 7 December, 2018 Filed under: Domestic, Geeky, Music, Stupidity, Thoughts, Toronto, Travel, Weirdness 1 Comment »There are times where (as many people already know) I’m an absolute dickhead. This is the (fairly short) tale of one of those times.
One of the reasons I wanted to visit Toronto (which I finally did earlier this year) was because I’ve been a fan of a band called the Cowboy Junkies (who I’ve written about several times, and saw twice in November) for a very long time – since the first time I heard their “Trinity Sessions” album, in fact. The Trinity Sessions was an album that was all recorded at the Holy Trinity church in Toronto, with only one ambisonic microphone to pick up all the voices and instruments. It’s one of my all-time favourite albums. However, I’d never seen a picture of the church. (This is relevant)
Then, on the anniversary of the recording of Trinity Sessions, they put a photo on their Facebook page of the church
And I thought “I recognise that church“. It turns out we’d gone in and visited it while we were in Toronto, and I hadn’t even realised it was the same place. Indeed, we only went in because it looked interesting (and was hidden away down a little side-street, so we’d only glimpsed the place and its architecture) and it turned out to be a great little find, because it’s beautiful inside, as well as having an absolutely massive organ. (Fnarr) And I knew it was called the Holy Trinity church. I just hadn’t connected the two.
So it took me another six months to realise that I’d actually been in the place, despite all the clues that were there.
And that, in this case, is why I’m a dickhead.
Laziness and Safety
Posted: Wed 24 October, 2018 Filed under: Cynicism, Driving, I Don't Understand, Laziness, Parking, People, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »I regularly drive through Woburn, and at least a couple of times a week I’m amazed at how lazy people are, even when it comes to their own safety.
In the case of Woburn, there are two zebra crossings within a very short stretch of road. There are good reasons for this – the road is usually busy, and fairly fast. But people still cross away from the crossings, where it’s apparently “more convenient” rather than walking a tiny way to the crossing where cars *have* to stop for pedestrians…
The first one looks like this…
This is where most people cross – and you can see the markings for the zebra crossing at the top of the photo (the zig-zags, for non-UK readers) Note also that this is just after a busy crossroads, so has any number of vehicles coming round corners and paying far more attention to other vehicles than to pedestrians. I measured it on Google Maps – it’s 30 metres from here to the crossing. Not even a minute’s walk. (I’ll also note that all the people avoiding the crossing are able-bodied, so it’s not like they can’t walk that distance.)
The second one (slightly further up the road from here, after a tight choke-point and just round the corner so out of view from this one) looks like this
This one is a bit harder to see – it’s a bit further, at 45m from where people actually cross – but it’s still there, with markings visible across the road. Here, people cross from the pub to the hotel and back – and again, with parked cars on the right, an extremely tight road with drivers focusing on squeezing through rather than on pedestrians, people trying to park (or turn into the various lanes and archways along this bit) rather than walking that 45m to be able to do so safely.
I know people in general are lazy bastards and so on, but really, it utterly amazes me just how many (and even more so at school times, as there’s a school just back from where this shot is taken) are prepared to ‘save’ time waiting for a space in traffic and then risk their all to cross the road, rather than walking that tiny distance to do so safely (and actually usually more quickly than waiting for that gap!)
I don’t know if they don’t see the crossing, that they’re blinkered to just going straight across the road instead, or if they’re all just fuckwit examples of Darwinism waiting to happen. Either way, it is (to me) a gobsmacking way to live.
An Unholy Clusterfuck
Posted: Fri 31 August, 2018 Filed under: Central Bedfordshire Council, Commuting, Cynicism, Domestic, Driving, M1, Thoughts, Travel, Weirdness Leave a comment »It seems at the moment like there’s a massive conspiracy going on that makes access from my area to Milton Keynes into an absolute nightmare.
Last month, the Highways Agency started work on the M1 from J13 to 16, installing “smart motorways” stuff, and shoving in a dirty long 50mph speed limit, enforced by average speed cameras. (And there’ll be a post on those some other time) That work is going on ’til March 2022.
Next month, Bedfordshire and Milton Keynes councils are starting the second phase of their joint project to make the A421 dual-carriageway between J13 of the M1 and Milton Keynes. That’s going to have a 40mph limit on it, and will be in place ’til the end of 2020.
So for the next 18 months minimum, the two primary routes into Milton Keynes will be speed-limited and being worked on at the same time.
And then just to top things off, one half of the other primary route (on the other side of Milton Keynes) is undergoing resurfacing work for the next couple of months – which means that my only other primary route is going to be handling all the traffic that should be on that one.
Like I said, it’s all just seeming like either a sinister plot, or a massive organisational clusterfuck. Both of which have the same results, when all’s said and done.
Satisfaction
Posted: Wed 8 August, 2018 Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Domestic, Getting Organised, Health, Thoughts, Weirdness 5 Comments »Yesterday, I had a (non-urgent, outpatients) appointment at my local hospital. All went well, and I’ll be returning occasionally over the next few months. Which is all as expected.
What was less expected was a text message today from the hospital, containing a “Patient Satisfaction” survey.
The first question? “Would you recommend this hospital to your friends and family?“, and a set of five options for the likelihood of doing such a thing.
Now, I don’t know about you, but I really don’t recommend that my friends or family visit a hospital. Certainly when none of them are even in that hospital’s catchment area.
What kind of cretin comes up with this shit? Even more relevantly, what kind of cretin approves this shit?
And if I’d been – for example – visiting the Oncology department (I wasn’t) for treatment, I wonder if I would have received the same survey?
The Thermal Properties of Coke
Posted: Fri 6 July, 2018 Filed under: Cynicism, D4D™, Domestic, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »In the UK, we’re in the middle of a heatwave. Other countries would absolutely laugh at how crap we are at dealing with heat (and in their eyes, it’s “only” 30° C, after all) but for the UK it’s more than enough. As with snow, we’re a nation of mid-range and changeable weather, so we’ve never had any need to invest in infrastructure to deal with more ‘extreme’ (and again, that’s in the context of our weather, not other places in the world!) temperatures. We generally don’t have air-conditioning in houses and offices by default, nor the stuff for dealing with snow, winds, rain or anything.
Anyway, for us, it’s hot. And every time it’s hot like this, I’m reminded that Cola (whether diet or full-fat) is a strange, strange beast.
Obviously Cola is best drunk cold – as cold as possible. But it’s crap at staying cold. Leave it for ten to fifteen minutes and it’ll be warm.
On the other end of the scale, leave it in a car to get hot, and it’ll stay hot for hours. The full-fat sugary one is the worst for it, but even the diet ones do this, so I don’t think it’s a facet of the sugar content.
There’s no real point to this – I just find it interesting that it’s a liquid/substance whose thermal properties are different according to whether it’s hot or cold.
Yes, I need to get out more.
Friendship Gap
Posted: Wed 31 January, 2018 Filed under: Cynicism, Domestic, Getting Old(er), Single Life, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »Something odd occurred to me the other day, and it’s been bouncing round my skull a bit since.
Basically, it’s pretty simple – I realised that I don’t have any real friends or connections still in my life from the time I was with Herself, or her successor. Nothing. It’s like there’s this eight year hiatus, from 2004 through to 2012.
Plenty from before 2004, plenty from after 2012. Just a complete blind-spot over those years. In some ways it’s like they simply never happened.
I find I feel like that with a lot of the stuff that went on – a lot happened, a lot changed, and by the end of it, there were very few positive memories at all.
Of course, hindsight has shown that period proved to have some massive mistakes in it – but at the same time, it looks now like I sort of knew that even while they were going on, even while they were good (or at least OK) I wasn’t leaving any anchors or connections to it all.
What annoys me most is that I don’t quite know why or how that happened.
Illumination
Posted: Mon 23 October, 2017 Filed under: Commuting, Domestic, Driving, Finances, I Don't Understand, People, Weirdness Leave a comment »On Friday morning, while it was still dark, I started the car to go to the client office – and one of the headlight bulbs blew.
Bollocks.
I’m not a fan of driving with one bulb out, but in this case it was going to have to happen, so off I went, a bit more carefully than usual, as a bigger swathe of the road than usual was in darkness.
On the way home though, I dropped in to one of the local(ish) Halfords, and got a new bulb sorted and fitted. Yeah, in theory I could fit it myself – but seeing the struggle the lad had with getting to it (the space was extremely tight/narrow) I’d have had issues, so it makes sense to get them to do it. (Also, when he opened the packaging for the first bulb and dropped the bulb through the engine block, he just went to get a replacement – that wouldn’t have happened if it’d been me doing it!)
From start to finish, it took less than half an hour – even with the difficulties the lad had. And all for less than £20.
I really don’t get why so many people seem to have problems with getting bulbs replaced. Some people I see in the village have had the same bulb out for weeks, if not months. I understand that sometimes you just get used to the problem existing, rather than fixing it – but at the same time, working headlights are a pretty basic requirement, I’d have said.
And besides, if it’s only £20 all-in to fix it, really, I don’t get the point of not bothering. but maybe I’m missing something. Wouldn’t be the first time, after all.
Technical Dipshittery
Posted: Fri 20 October, 2017 Filed under: Business, Customer Services, Domestic, Geeky, Stupidity, Technology, Weirdness Leave a comment »Yesterday, I got a text message from O2, telling me that they were going to be closing their TuGo app (an app that allows phone calls to be made/received through my wifi connection, when the mobile phone signal is bobbins) at the end of November. It gave some options for enabling better alternatives, including their ‘4G & WiFi Calling’ through a range of phones, so it will no longer need a separate app.
That’s all well and good – and TuGo has always been a bag of shite anyway. So I started to go through the process, as ‘detailed’ by O2 of how to get it all set up on my phone.
Except that once I’d enabled it on my phone (or tried to) it told me I needed to do it via the O2 website, to activate it on my account. Bit of a pain in the arse, but OK, let’s get it done.
Oh.
The page detailed in the message doesn’t actually contain the information necessary. I can see a link explaining how great the 4G and Wifi Calling is, but nothing to activate it.
So, I start up a LiveChat with one of their Tech Gurus, who tell me that it’s still showing I’ve got Tu connected to my account, and that needs to be removed before I can do anything. No worries though, they’ll sort it out. Give it about half an hour, reboot the phone, it’ll be done.
Except it wasn’t.
So I got back in touch with O2, this time by phone instead of LiveChat. Oh dear, oh dear.
I (eventually) got through to another of their Tech Gurus, who again says that Tu is still connected to my account, and that I have to uninstall the TuGo app on my phone in order to get rid of the connection. No idea why the previous tech person said they could do it, that’s not possible, it can only be done from your phone, sir.
So I uninstall the app, in the usual way. Oh no, sir, you haven’t uninstalled it. You’ll need to go back to the app store, reinstall the app so you can uninstall it. (Eh? What?) Yes, you’ll need to reinstall the app – you didn’t uninstall it, “you just deleted the little picture on your phone”. That’s a direct quote. From a Tech “Guru”. Who doesn’t appear to even know the word “icon”.
So. Let’s see how this goes. Phone call goes to speakerphone, so I can go through the process while the “Guru” is still on the call, and telling me what I need to do. I reinstall the app – and in order to get in to it, I have to rebuild the connection and association with my number – because uninstalling the app has got rid of all that information . Which is exactly as it should be.
I rebuild the connection, then go into the app’s Settings and Delete the Account. The Guru says “Oh there we go, I can see you’ve now uninstalled the app”. No, I haven’t, I’ve deleted the account. The app is still installed, I can see it. “No, it’s uninstalled”
All the way through the call, that “Guru” couldn’t tell the difference between “Delete the Account/Connection” and “Uninstall the App”.
It’s resulted in two further interactions with layers of O2 management, telling them the problems, fixing the issues, and generally getting it more sorted.
And all the way through this, all it would have taken was for that “My Device” webpage saying “You’ve still got an active connection to TuGo – you need to remove that before we can progress. Here’s how.” That would’ve fixed everything, and I wouldn’t have needed to speak to O2 at all, let alone a total of four times.
Sometimes I just despair of people, and companies.
Repeatedly Breaking – an Update
Posted: Mon 16 October, 2017 Filed under: Domestic, Food, Health, Single Life, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »Following on from Friday’s post about the pain I was getting in my ankle and leg, it all sorted itself out over the weekend.
From the speed of the recovery – going from walking with serious pain and limping at 9am to being able to walk fine, with just residual soreness by 2pm – I suspect that it was some kind of reaction to something I’d eaten, rather than a ‘proper’ muscle or tendon strain.
I’ve had gout attacks before – although I haven’t written about them here (or at least, not using the word ‘gout’!) – affecting the big toe on my left foot. They’re usually related to a food reaction, that I’ve either eaten or drunk something to levels that aggravate things. Some of those things are ‘standard’ – too much beef and ham, for example – and some are downright weird – such as swapping my usual Diet Coke for something like Sprite Zero. That’s what triggered my first attack, back while I was still in Norfolk.
Last week’s one, though, was different. Similar levels of pain – but on a slightly greater scale, as it was my ankle joint rather than a toe, and thus there was a lot more that hurt. I don’t honestly know whether it was gout but in an ankle, or whether it was something gout-esque. Regardless, it bloody hurt. It felt more like it was muscle/ligament-based than joint-based, but I simply don’t know enough.
I’m pretty sure of what triggered it this time, so I might research it a bit more, and try things out a bit. But doing so would, by definition, result in more pain, so that’s currently not striking me as a great idea. Frankly, I’ve had enough of hurting for the moment, so I’m firstly hoping for just a few weeks where I don’t get any more shit to deal with.
It won’t happen, but hey, a boy can dream.
A Week Off Kilter
Posted: Thu 14 September, 2017 Filed under: Domestic, Weirdness Leave a comment »For some reason, all of this week I’ve had the wrong days in my head.
I didn’t write anything here yesterday, because in my head it was Thursday, so I didn’t need to.
This morning I was waiting online to buy some tickets that go on sale at 9am on Friday, and was getting annoyed that they weren’t yet available. Which is, of course, because today’s Thursday. (And I’m an idiot)
I don’t know what’s knocked things out of alignment. I haven’t had any nights of particular bad (or even particularly good) sleep that might explain it. I’ve not done anything particularly differenly to usual, but my week is a day ahead of itself. It’s all very odd.
Changed Volume
Posted: Mon 21 August, 2017 Filed under: Domestic, Driving, Weirdness Leave a comment »Ten days (or so) ago, I got some work done on the car. It had been getting noisy – which I knew was the wheel-bearing starting to play up – but it turned out to also need new bushes, as the existing ones had split. (I’ve no idea – well, I kinda know, but whatever)
I got the work done, and since then the car has been a *lot* quieter. Surprisingly so, in fact. Like many things, it’s obviously been ongoing (and getting louder) for a while, but because it’s just been gradual, I hadn’t really noticed. (The wheel-bearing happened quite quickly and had more of an effect/impact)
But as a result, it’s also meant I’m driving faster, while my brain recalibrates a bit.
You see, a lot of the time I drive by the noise of the engine, rather than necessarily looking at the speedo all the time. I know what each speed “sounds like”, along with whether it’s level road, or up or down hill. I should point out that this isn’t something I’ve learned specifically, or been like ‘ah, so that’s what [x] up/down-hill sounds like’, but it is something I’ve noticed I do. (I also drive faster if I turn up the volume on the radio. It’s not a conscious thing, but it does happen)
So yes, this last week has been spent recalibrating my speed and volume settings. Which is kinda fun, and kinda geeky.
PIDU – Ill-prepared
Posted: Mon 10 July, 2017 Filed under: Domestic, Getting Organised, I Don't Understand, London, People, Thoughts, Travel, Weirdness Leave a comment »As I’ve said before, I tend to be ridiculously early for things, primarily so I know it’s all sorted well in advance.
However, I find it utterly amazing how many people appear to be so chronically ill-prepared for just about anything and everything in their lives.
My primary office is near(ish) to the local test centre for the theory part of the UK driving test. By “nearish” I mean “it’s walking distance, in a straight line, but over a significant road, so maybe five minutes walk”. On a regular basis I get stopped outside my office, and asked where the test centre is, by people obviously already running late, and get this “Oh shit” look when I tell them it’s still five minutes away. These tests are renownedly run punctually, and they don’t have much tolerance for lateness – but from memory, it makes all that very clear on the paperwork that tells you where the test is to be taken.
So because they haven’t checked where they’re supposed to be, they’re now running the risk of not even being allowed to take the test – and you don’t get a refund on it for being late and/or disorganised. I’ve never seen it as all that difficult to do, to be in the right place at the right time, but it’s obviously an issue for some people.
Similarly, a couple of weeks back I was with friends in London, and their son was meeting other friends of his so they could go to a concert/festival thing in Hyde Park. We’d got other plans once he was in the venue, but they were somewhat dependent on the friends actually having IQ points of their own. They’re similarly pathologically early to me, which helps – but the son’s friends…. weren’t.
Despite the concert tickets telling them where they needed to be, which entrance to use and so on, they decided to turn up to the wrong Underground station, at the wrong time, and at the wrong entrance. There’d been no preparation, no thought, not even an understanding of how best to get around, yet still left it all to the last minute, as if expecting some fairy godmother to wave a wand and everything would be All Right.
And it kind-of was. They got there, and we got to where we were going, but a couple of minutes late. (Anyone else, it would’ve been late by twenty minutes or more, but we can all shift our arses when necessary) So it did work out OK, but only because we knew more about where they were than they did, and walked the extra to find the fucking idiots.
All told, it’s just an attitude I don’t understand. I know I’m at the opposite end of the scale, but still, it never seems that difficult to me, to be prepared, to know what you’re doing, and get wherever on time. But obviously it’s more of a challenge for others…
Updates
Posted: Mon 19 June, 2017 Filed under: 1BEM, Domestic, Geeky, Stupidity, Weirdness Leave a comment »Yesterday, I was a bit stumped about what to write for today – but luckily, AVG came to my rescue.
It put up a notice yesterday on my screen telling me that six of my installed programs were out of date – which is kind of a surprise, as I’m normally pretty good at that kind of thing.
Then I read the message properly…
You’ll need to click on it to embiggenify and make it properly readable – but basically, all six programs it was telling me were out of date were actually *more* up to date than the ones it wanted me to install.
So no, I don’t think I will ‘update’ them to keep my machine safe. For fuck’s sake.
#1 Dad
Posted: Wed 14 June, 2017 Filed under: 1BEM, Advertising, Creativity, Cynicism, Design, Domestic, Geeky, Marketing, People, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »Sometimes, you see something, and your brain just goes “What?!?” (or words to that effect, but with more swearing) Currently, there seems to be a theme connecting that with both Father’s Day and Star Wars.
Last year, we had the card with Kylo Ren…
[Spoiler from two years ago – Kylo Ren kills his father]
This year, I’ve seen this in Sainsbury’s…
I’m pretty damn sure they haven’t seen the same Star Wars films I have…
One Minute
Posted: Fri 26 May, 2017 Filed under: 1BEM, Advertising, Cynicism, Domestic, I Don't Understand, People, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »Yesterday, a lot of people held a one-minute silence for the victims of Monday’s bombing in Manchester. Personally, I don’t really understand why this appears to have become one of the “done things” to do for any tragic event.
Yes, the bombing is awful, and should never have happened. The people who did it are unutterable motherfuckers, and deserve to be damned to whatever eternity their religion believes in. The victims shouldn’t have been victims, because this shit shouldn’t have happened.
But it did, and so we go on.
But what do these silences actually do? They re-focus attention on the event (but of course we’re not going to give terrorists the air of publicity that they crave, except when we then have every news broadcast for the next 72 hours focused pretty-much-purely on that event) and make people think about it even more. But we’re not going to let terrorists change our lives, are we? Except when we do, when there are now more armed police on the streets, and even more security on the streets, in airports and elsewhere – all of which changes our lives, and makes us think about terrorism even more.
I know the silences started off from the two-minutes-silence on Armistice Day – and I’m fine with that. But when did they become the done thing, the marker for every event?
I feel the same about the huge numbers of bouquets at the sites of deaths and tragedies. I get that people want to voice their sympathies, but when did a bouquet and gifts become the way to do it? It’s almost enough to make you wonder whether it’s not the florist industry behind it all, in a similar way to Valentine’s Day, just to improve their own profits – but this time out of the grimness and death of others. And the sodding cards that go with it – the ones that get read out in news broadcasts, that all seem to be suspiciously “on-message” for whatever’s been being reported.
The real start for the floral stuff seemed (to me) to be the death of Princess Diana, when flowers appeared everywhere, in true Damien Day style. Since then, they’ve accompanied every bloody event known to man.
Fine, people want to show their concerns, voice their sympathies and so on. But surely it’s better to do so with donations to a particular cause, with speaking up about (in the case of Manchester) terrorism and the like, to actually do something, rather than pay lipservice through a wallet and a minute’s silence?
Attention Span
Posted: Thu 5 January, 2017 Filed under: Charm School, Cinema, Cynicism, Domestic, Films, People, Seeing Films, Technology, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »Yesterday, there was a bundle of news coverage about Apple’s supposedly-upcoming “Cinema Mode” for iPhones and iPads as part of the next iOS release.
This will (again, supposedly) allow people in cinemas – and other darkened environments, one assumes – to check their phones without disturbing those around them, mainly through use of a ‘dark’ colour-scheme, so the display doesn’t glow like a lighthouse.
In fairness, this annoys me on a regular basis at the cinema – there’s always some fuckknuckle who wants to check stuff while ‘watching’ a film, leaving their phone’s volume up, or some other piece of vacuous self-centred idiocy. But really, a phone mode to cater for that?
It irritates me that so many people now seem to be utterly incapable of sitting for a couple of hours and watching a film. There’ve been a couple of films I’ve seen recently where it seemed like everyone else was eating popcorn (or sweets, or both) from rustling paper bags throughout the film, and/or then sodding off out to the toilet and whatever else.
As has been noted before, I really don’t understand people. I don’t get why someone would pay to see a film, spend even more on food and drink, then either not be able to sit through the film without breaks, or without checking their phones. If you’re going to do all that, why not wait til it comes out on disc/download/TV and watch at home, where you can pause, rewind etc., and not worry about missing bits while you go to drain your microscopic bladder?
Mind you, I also don’t understand why cinemas insist on putting all their food/refreshments in noisy paper bags. Surely there must be another option by now? A fabric version or similar? Or larger bags/tubs that allow hands in and out without touching the sides?
Sporting Chronoclasm
Posted: Sun 10 July, 2016 Filed under: 1BEM, Cynicism, Sport, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »Every year it boggles my mind that this weekend seems to be All The Sport – due to some epic scheduling, we always end up having the finals of Wimbledon on the same day as the British Grand Prix.
This year, we’ve also got the finals of Euro 2016, just in case we didn’t have enough bloody sport to contend with already.
Not that I care (in case you hadn’t guessed) as I won’t be watching any of it.
But seriously, how much organisation and planning does it take, to get three major sporting events to all climax/happen on the same damn day?
Mysterious Delivery
Posted: Thu 7 April, 2016 Filed under: Domestic, Weirdness Leave a comment »On Monday, I came home to a mysterious delivery from Amazon.
It turned out to be a DVD box set for a British TV series I’ve never heard of (from the year before I was born) – but only the episodes that still remain, so all of Series 1, and about half of Series 2 and 3.
There was no note, no delivery, nothing.
So I’ve no idea who ordered it and got it sent to me, or why. I’ve mentioned it on Twitter and Facebook, with no responses, and so it’s all just a bit weird.
Possessive
Posted: Tue 8 March, 2016 Filed under: Domestic, People, Weirdness Leave a comment »Round where I live, we have a block of six houses and another set of houses behind it, all of which are served by the same access road.
It sounds a bit mad, but most of the time it’s fine.
Our block all use a set of communal bins, as no one house has the space for their own set of bins. Which is fine. I’m usually the one to put those bins out for collection, and someone else usually brings them in. The houses behind all have their own bins, and put them out individually, but they’re all in the same area for collection.
Over the last two weeks, there’s been a spare bin floating around. The communal bin area has its full complement, so it’s obviously one from one of the other houses – or it should be. However, the bin has a number on it, which isn’t the number relating to one of the houses.
So, weirdly, there’s been one house at the back that hasn’t had a recycling bin for the last two weeks – I assume because it wasn’t “theirs”, as it had a different house number on. This is particularly barking – as was the fact that they kept on then moving the bin into the (very tight) alleyway to the communal bins, and just leaving it there, like ‘out of sight, out of mind’. (Which is OK, except that alleyway is also our escape route in case of problems etc.)
All I can assume is that whoever brought the communal bins in (and they’re all just green plastic, remember) took in one from the houses behind, and left out one of ‘our’ bins as it wouldn’t fit. And then some fuckknuckle wouldn’t take in the ‘wrong’ bin, but didn’t want it cluttering up either, so kept on ‘hiding’ it in our alleyway.
I truly don’t get the whole thing of being possessive about one’s bins. They’re bins, for fuck’s sake. We’re not paying for the bins themselves, they’re not ‘owned’ (regardless of house numbers being painted on etc.) I certainly don’t get why you’d deprive yourself of a bin because of that reasoning…
Suitable Vehicles
Posted: Sat 13 February, 2016 Filed under: Commuting, Driving, Milton Keynes, People, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »At the moment, while my general commute is pretty short, I still see a lot of drivers, cars and idiots. As regular readers know, driving makes me think, so here’s the latest one…
Why do so many people buy unsuitable cars?
For example, what’s the point of buying high-end ‘performance’ cars, if you’re then going to drive them like an arthritic granny? It’s something I see every day, people with high-end hot-hatch and performance cars, lumped in the outside lane, and not even driving at the speed limit, let alone over it. Last night’s was a huge BMW X5 Mpower, pootling along, not making progress and generally just getting in the way.
The same applies with vehicles that are too big for the driver, or that the driver simply can’t handle/drive. When I’m at home and the school run kicks in, there’s any number of chelsea tractors that can’t fit down the road to the school itself – and if they can get down, it becomes an incredible palaver to turn the sodding things round, or park them up.
I just don’t get the point of having vehicles like that – but maybe I’m missing something.
Too Much Thinking
Posted: Thu 31 December, 2015 Filed under: Cynicism, Domestic, Films, Thoughts, Weirdness, Writing Leave a comment »Over the Festering Season, I watched (yet again) Die Hard. I still like it as a film, even though it is barmy.
But something occurred to me this time that hadn’t before. And that’s this…
Hans Gruber’s plan is absolutely reliant on the FBI turning off the power for the Nakatomi Plaza, in order to get through the final lock.
The FBI are there only because John McClane has called the police, and everything has escalated from that point.
So…
What would the plan have been, if the entire takedown of the Nakatomi Building had worked perfectly? No word out, no hostage situation, nothing – so the police and FBI would’ve known nothing at all.
How would that’ve worked, without that reliance on their plan being messed up, and a rogue operative like John McClane being able to call the police and inform them of the situation?
And yes, I know, I think about this kind of thing way too much. I can’t help myself.
Cinema Seating
Posted: Sun 27 December, 2015 Filed under: Cynicism, Domestic, Films, People, Seeing Films, Stupidity, Weirdness 2 Comments »This year, my local cinema has started a process where people book specified seats, rather than just “first come, first served seated” I don’t mind it at all, it makes sense and should make life easier for everyone.
Except, well, people.
Every film I’ve gone to see, there’s been a noticeable percentage of the people who either don’t sit in their booked seats (for whatever reason) or just seem to be confused by the whole concept of how the seats are organised into rows.
It’s a simple process – or is to me, anyway. If you stand at the front, with your back to the screen, the seats go from row A at the front to row Z (or whatever) at the back, and from 1 on the left to 100 on the right. It’s simple, but it confuses so many people, it’s really quite scary.
Really, is this concept so difficult to comprehend?
Ghost Town
Posted: Fri 18 December, 2015 Filed under: 1BEM, Cynicism, Domestic, Driving, Festering Season, Travel, Weirdness, Work-related 2 Comments »According to the BBC, today is the peak day for travelling around the Festering Season. Schools break up, companies close down, and people piss off on holiday – so there’s travellers alongside the commuters and so on. Supposedly, there’ll be more than 13 million journeys of at least 20 miles, which makes it even less of a joy than usual. (Which seems about right for the Festering Season, but then, I’m a cynic)
That figure’s an odd one though – journeys of at least 20 miles? Does that even qualify as a journey these days? In my head (which we all know is a strange place at the best of times) 20 miles is barely a trip, let alone a journey.
Round here, it’s been weirdly quiet all week – regardless of whether it’s on the roads, in town, or in the office, a lot of people seem to have already stuffed off. Which makes it all very peaceful. I suppose it’s easy for small companies (2 or 3 people at most) to take longer breaks and so on.
As it is, I’m working right through ’til the 24th (as usual) and so are the companies I’m working for at the moment. I don’t mind – but then, I’m not travelling, or doing much over the Festering Season.
Premier League
Posted: Tue 15 December, 2015 Filed under: London, Sport, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »As regular readers know, I couldn’t give a monkey’s chuff about football in general. It’s not something I follow, or am really interested in at all, and I’d rather shit in my hands and clap than go to a game.
However, I still listen to the news etc., and I have to ask – what the hell is going on with the Premier League this year?
At the time of writing, Leicester are top of the Premier League, Bournemouth beat Manchester United over the weekend, and Chelsea are hanging just above relegation. What the fuck?
I know it’s only a game, and thus hostage to the vagaries of luck and chance, but that’s still a pretty radical year, all things considered.
Ill-Prepared
Posted: Tue 8 December, 2015 Filed under: Cynicism, Domestic, Milton Keynes, People, Thoughts, Weather, Weirdness Leave a comment »Currently, we’re in the middle of one of our mildest/warmest ‘winters’ in a very long time. November was potentially the warmest on record (the figures haven’t yet been confirmed, so far as I can see) and while December has certainly been bloody wet/windy so far, it’s definitely nowhere near cold.
Yet every day, I see people who are wrapped up in coats, scarves and hats. I’m wandering around – and warm – in shirtsleeves (although admittedly I do also carry a far amount of insulation) and they’re layered up like we’re about to enter the next Ice Age.
All of which just makes me wonder, what are these people going to do when it actually gets cold?
A Bag For Life
Posted: Wed 2 December, 2015 Filed under: Business, Customer Services, Cynicism, Domestic, People, Shopping, Shopping, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »Over the weekend, while I was out shopping, the person in front of me’s “bag for life” split open.
What really surprised me though, was the attitude of the person on the till, and (by inference) that of the store.
You see, the ‘bag for life’ was from a different store – so the till person (quoting store/company rules) wouldn’t change it for one from that store.
“Oh, you can only change that at those shops, we won’t take them”
Which begs the question – why? If it were me in charge of doing that, then I’d be happy to take a competitor’s bag and give my customer a branded bag advertising my own store/company instead. But no, it seems that each supermarket/store brand will only exchange bags of their own brand, rather than taking those from other stores.
Seems bizarre to me.
Decaffeinating
Posted: Mon 9 November, 2015 Filed under: 2015/16, Diet Coke, Domestic, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Food, Health, Sleep - or lack thereof, Thoughts, Weirdness 1 Comment »As people should have gathered, I’m currently doing a bundle of plans for the coming year, as well as continuing to make changes to my general life, health, fitness and so on.
One of those changes is – yet again – cutting down a lot on my caffeine intake, and seeing how things go.
My caffeine intake is highly cyclic, I cut it down (and sometimes out) for a while, and then it slowly goes back up again. And lo, another cycle continues.
Anyway, this time round I’m working on it again, and so far it’s fairly successful. I’m drinking a lot more water, and the Diet Coke intake is commensurately much, much lower.
What’s annoying, though, is that even with a massively reduced intake, it hasn’t affected my insomnia at all. It’s annoying because just about every person who has ever pointed out I drink too much Diet Coke (or caffeine in any other format) has said it explains my insomnia.
But nope, even when I’m just drinking water – and have been for a couple of weeks – my sleep is still atrocious. Indeed, sometimes even worse than usual.
It really is bloody annoying.
Picked Up By The Fuzz
Posted: Fri 9 October, 2015 Filed under: Charm School, Domestic, Driving, Food, Milton Keynes, People, Weirdness 2 Comments »Last night, while driving home from a meal, I got stopped by the police. The conversation was kind-of entertaining…
“Hello sir. Do you know why we’ve stopped you?”
“Well, it’s half nine on a Thursday and there’s been football and rugby on, so I’m guessing that you think I’ve been drinking, because I’ve taken two roundabouts absolutely correctly, which is something that no other sod in Milton Keynes ever does”
“Yes, sir. You’re driving carefully and trying to not attract attention, so we think you might be over the limit. When did you last have a drink?”
“Ummmmm. June?” (I’ve since realised I had one in September, but hey ho)
“OK, can you blow into this device please”
“Yeah, no worries. I should warn you though, I’ve just eaten a brutally spicy curry, so it might melt the little plastic tube”
I blew an absolute zero – same as I have on the other two occasions I’ve been breathalysed. And the tube didn’t quite melt, but it was close. I’ve also now recommended the curry place to the local police, which has to be a good thing.
However, I can’t deny that it does gall me slightly that I’ve now been pulled over twice in my driving history – and on both times, it’s been for driving properly and to the limits/conditions, rather than anything that’s actually wrong to attract attention.
Into August
Posted: Wed 5 August, 2015 Filed under: Bankruptcy, Change, D4D™, Domestic, Driving, Finances, Getting Organised, Health, Introspective, Looking Back, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »Somehow, we’re into August already. The year’s racing by (as usual) and here we are. August.
August is a funny (as in ‘odd’, not as in ‘ho ho’) month for me – for some reason it’s always been rather more eventful than others. It seems to be generally a month of change for me, in ways both negative and positive.
It’s definitely the month I get twitchy about, more than any other. I’m sure that’s because my parents first pointed out what a consistently change-laden month it was (which may have also gone some way to making it a bit more self-fulfilling) but I try to not focus on it. By that, I mean that I don’t consciously go “oh, I’ll do that in August”. August just seems to happen.
As examples…
- D4D™ got started in August. Not intentionally (well obviously it got started intentionally) in August – that was just when everything came together for it to happen
- My bankruptcy was in August. Again, that’s just when it came about.
- I finally passed my driving test in August.
- I’ve had *lots* of job changes in August, contracts ending and so on.
This time round, it looks (so far) like things will be a lot calmer.
I was a bit twitchy, as my current work contract had an end date next week – and even though I was 99% sure it would extend again, there’s always that “But it’s August, and thus could bite me on the bum” nagging doubt. However, it’s been confirmed this week that it’ll extend again, through to October (which will mean I’ve been doing this one for a year) so that’s all good.
To the best of my knowledge I’ll be staying in the current house for at least another year. That’s the plan (and renewal isn’t ’til November, so not a concern) and I see no current reason to change it.
There’s currently nothing else of major import and change looking like it’ll happen. I’ve got stuff planned for the month, but nothing change-laden. All the same, during August I’ll be…
- Doing a 10Km sponsored walk for Marie Curie
- Seeing Benedict Cumberbatch in Hamlet (a happy surprise instance, brought about by a friend of a friend not being able to go)
- Possibly another London visit, or alternative Day Trip
- Sorting out (renewing) car insurance again
And there’s a bundle of other stuff as well, alongside the weekly working normality.
So with any luck, this August won’t be too eventful and change-laden. We’ll see.
No Security
Posted: Fri 17 July, 2015 Filed under: Domestic, Laziness, People, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »As I’ve said before, I’m working on going to the gym more often, more regularly. I’m getting there twice a week, and so far it’s going well.
The gym’s a more local one, in Milton Keynes, and near a lot of offices (unsurprisingly)
My routine tends to mean I get into MK early, and go to the gym before I start work – which is also what a fair number of other people seem to do. And that’s fine – it makes sense to me, and to all involved.
What does surprise me, though, is that most of the guys who are in the gym at the same time as me seem to leave most of their work stuff in the changing room, on the racks, rather than making use of the lockers. Not just the shirts, but full suits, as well as shoes and so on.
I don’t know if it’s just people being lazy, or doing that so that work stuff isn’t creased – although some of the lockers definitely have hanging sections within them, but they are further away than the standard ones. I suspect it’s a combination of both.
But all told it just makes me wonder about how people can be so unconscious of security – if they’re happy to leave stuff accessible to anyone with nefarious intentions (and I have no way of knowing if they’re leaving stuff in the suit pockets or not) instead of walking twenty paces extra, then I kind of despair of things.
Staying Still
Posted: Wed 24 June, 2015 Filed under: Day Trips, Domestic, Driving, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Introspective, Single Life, Travel, Weirdness 1 Comment »This coming weekend is my first one fully ‘at home’ in about three months. As such, I’m looking forward to it for downtime and some peace and quiet.
However, I feel almost guilty about staying home, and doing Not Much.
My brain keeps on saying “Oh, but you could do a day-trip to [x], [y] or [z]“. And it’s right, I could. But I don’t really want to – except my brain doesn’t believe it.
It’s odd. One part of me wants to just have a down-weekend, a time of not doing a lot, and most emphatically not driving any significant distances. But the other part obviously does want me to do all of those things.
It’s a bit schizoid, so I guess I’ll have to wait and see which side wins out in the end. All very strange.
Sleeping Places
Posted: Mon 22 June, 2015 Filed under: Change, Domestic, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Getting Old(er), Getting Organised, Insomnia, Thoughts, Weirdness 4 Comments »Following on from the insomnia attacks of late, I’ve also been thinking a lot about the things that do work for me when it comes to sleep.
Because I’ve also been doing a lot of travelling and visiting, it’s given me a wide range of reference points, which always makes things more interesting.
One oddity I have noticed is that I seem to sleep better on sofas than I do in bed. It’s strange, but true. I’ve also had a few occasions of coming home in the afternoon and getting a nap on my own sofa, but that’s more for catch-ups when they’re absolutely needed, rather than becoming a routine.
It’s been true for a long time though – certainly right back to the Norfolk house, where I’d sleep on the sofa-bed when we had bad weather and I had to take Hound in to the smaller bedroom to stop her being an arse. When I think about it, it’s also applied a lot of times over the years, when going to see friends and so on, and preferring to crash on sofas rather than spare beds.
As a result, I’m doing a lot of thinking about whether I change my bedroom and bed, investing instead in a decent sofa-bed. It’s food for thought at the moment, but not going to be a change I make quickly. After all, if I make the change and don’t sleep any better, then it’s been a loss/waste of a bed and so on.
It may be that I leave it until I move house again – which is something that’s on the agenda, but not any time imminently. That’ll definitely be to a bigger place – hell, it’d be a challenge to find anywhere smaller – so I can look at it seriously at that point.
I’ll think about it more – there’s other factors in that kind of decision- but we’ll see where things go, I think.
Average Speed
Posted: Tue 2 June, 2015 Filed under: 1BEM, Charm School, Domestic, Driving, People, Thoughts, Weirdness 2 Comments »[No, for once this isn’t about the fuckwits who can’t drive properly with average speed limits/cameras on the M1]
A couple of times in the last week, I’ve witnessed something a bit different when following other drivers on the more rural roads around me. It’s people who seem to stick to a speed, regardless of what’s going on around them.
There’s a few winding roads near me on key routes – A-roads to get me to see the parents, for example. They’re decent roads, but with absolutely no way to safely overtake when you’re following a fuckwit, crane, HGV etc. – which can make those roads… somewhat wearing.
In this case, I was behind a silly bastard who was sticking to 45mph like shit to a blanket. The road is national-speed-limit, and perfectly doable and safe at 60mph, but no, 45 it was. Then we get to a village on the road, the speed limit goes down to 30 (for good reason – it’s good a big-ass set of bends in the middle, as well as everything else) including the flashing warning signs if you exceed that. But no, silly bastard still sticks to 45. So we’ve gone from too-slow to too-fast, without him moving a muscle. That takes some skill, I suppose.
I’ve seen a couple of other drivers since with the same mind-set, and it’s no less frustrating or weird when you see more than one person doing it.
What I can’t work out is whether it’s pig-headedness (“I’ll get where I need to go at 45, it’s a fine speed”), ignorance (“I don’t care about anyone else, I’m going at my speed”) or just a complete lack of awareness of their surroundings, so they don’t even see the signs, or the line of cars in the mirror.
I just don’t know. They’re bloody scary to follow though…
Self-Inflicted Damage
Posted: Wed 13 May, 2015 Filed under: 1BEM, Charm School, Cynicism, News, People, Sport, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »[Note : As always, I don’t actually give a shit about sport/cricket – I’m more interested in the mindset beneath it in this case]
Over the last couple of days, the news has been full of bloody Kevin Pietersen throwing a strop about not being allowed – yet – back into playing cricket for England.
Apparently a while back it was…
suggest[ed he] could add to his 104 England caps if he joined a county and scored enough runs to merit a recall.
(Quote from the BBC story)
Pietersen did this, and fair play to him. Earlier this week, he scored a personal best innings, something like 350 not out. So he’s assumed that on that one showing, he should be allowed back into the England team.
He met Andrew Strauss – the new ‘director of cricket’, apparently – who said there was no chance this summer, and that some people didn’t trust Pietersen. Which is also fair – Pietersen’s always been an asshat.
But now he’s thrown his toys out the pram about it, and has written about how he feels ‘deceived’ and so on in his column in the Telegraph.
Really, all it seems like is a whining brat. Yes, he’s done what was asked, and had one excellent innings. But that doesn’t make a team player, and doesn’t mean he has to be immediately accepted as part of the England team.
Indeed, if anything is now going to make sure he doesn’t get back in, I’d say it’s his own behaviour in this. (Of course, he won’t see it like that, because he’s perfect and no-one else is. Rah rah rah. Standard asshat behaviour) I would’ve said he might have a chance if he continues to excel at county level – the same criteria as could be applied to any other up-and-coming player.
But really, how can you trust anyone who throws their toys out like this at any opportunity? When they decide to destroy their own chances and credibility, in a fit that looks more like the act of a stropping toddler kicking their feet and screaming in a supermarket than one of someone wanting to play for – and thus represent – a country’s cricket team?
A Very Good Deal
Posted: Sun 3 May, 2015 Filed under: 1BEM, Customer Services, Domestic, Finances, Getting Organised, Shopping, Weirdness Leave a comment »Over the weekend, my toaster finally died. (You can tell this one’s going to be interesting, can’t you?) It’s done fairly well, daily service for three years, if not more. Over Easter it had started playing up, but then on Saturday it gave up completely.
So – off to the retail superstore of gloom. (It’s closest, I couldn’t be arsed with faffing about too much, and I had some vouchers to use up)
I had a look, and decided on this one, mainly because it’s purple – I’m shallow like that – and because it was £10 off the marked price, so £40 instead of £50. Fair enough.
But when I got to the tills, it scanned at … hang on … £19? OK, I’ll check it with the customer services, but that’ll do.
As it was, I also had a number of vouchers (all in “You would’ve saved £x at a different store, so here’s the difference” price-match vouchers) that came to £25. So I effectively ended up with Tesco paying me £6 for my new toaster…
I don’t know quite how it all worked out like that, but I’m not going to complain.
[Additional] : When I went to customer services to check, in case a) the price was wrong or b) their system was wrong, I waited ages to be seen and then the person involved said “Oh, for electrical enquiries you’ve got to go back upstairs and ask them“. To which my thought response was “Fuck that, if you can’t be arsed to check it, I can’t be arsed to report it any further“.
So – a nice new toaster for the princely sum of minus six pounds. I can live with that.
Creatively Becalmed
Posted: Fri 1 May, 2015 Filed under: Creativity, Day Trips, Domestic, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Getting Organised, Introspective, NCFE Course, Photography, Thoughts, Travel, Weirdness Leave a comment »This year so far – and probably for a bit longer than that, if I’m honest – I’ve not been getting all that much done on a creative front, and I don’t really know why. It’s more a feeling of being bogged down, uninspired, and just not in the mood.
Writing is going better than anything else – lots of ideas, but nothing is particularly gelling at the moment. I’ve got a couple of things started, but it’s still bogging down, and not flowing.
Photography-wise, I haven’t even taken my camera out in ages. Really it’s been since I did the NCFE course, which is a bloody long time now. I don’t know why that seemed to flick the ‘can’t be arsed’ switch, but it has. I’ve tried a few things and ideas, but it’s just all a bit “meh”, with no real desire to take the photos.
In some ways, the day-trips over the last few months have helped on that – I’ve taken photos, even if ‘only’ with the phone (although that’s a surprise, considering how good they’ve come out) but still can’t really bring myself to take the actual camera out for a day. A lot of that is also because I can’t be arsed with lugging it around and faffing about, but mainly it’s just the faff of it all at the moment.
I’m sure things will change again – I certainly hope so – and that the changes will be positive for once. The rest of this year to date has been positive, so I’m hoping that once I have some headspace and time, I’ll be more prompted.
(And I’m sure I’ve written about this a couple of times this year already, so forgive the repetition. It’s just something that’s bugging me at the moment)
Make Up Your Damn Mind 2
Posted: Thu 30 April, 2015 Filed under: Advertising, Cynicism, Food, Stupidity, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »It seems like a developing theme (although I don’t intend it to be so) but I’ve been noticing dodgy signage/labelling this week.
This one is at a local restaurant…
So – not all day every day then
If you’re advertising a menu as “All day every day”, you can’t then qualify it as “up to 6pm on Friday and Saturday”, can you?
*sigh*
Make Up Your Damn Mind
Posted: Wed 29 April, 2015 Filed under: 1BEM, Advertising, Cynicism, Domestic, Food, Health, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »While shopping this morning, I looked at “Glaceau Vitamin Water“. Not for any intention of buying, just out of interest (I got a promo thingy for it, so thought I’d look).
The labelling is….. interesting.
Zero or not?
So… “Zero Calories”, but 100ml contains 1.5 calories, and 500ml contains 8calories.
All told, that makes it a pretty interesting interpretation of “zero”…
Overtaking – On the decline
Posted: Thu 16 April, 2015 Filed under: Charm School, Commuting, Cynicism, Driving, People, Thoughts, Travel, Weirdness 2 Comments »Over the last few weeks of driving, I’ve been noticing more and more that other drivers seem to be quite averse to overtaking, even with miles of clear and visible road ahead. I don’t quite know why it is – maybe it’s about how generally risk-averse we’re becoming – but it’s bloody annoying.
I do overtake – so long as it’s safe, and the road is clear. (That should go without saying, but still) But I now seem to be in the minority.
Of course, the irony is that when you’re then on a multi-carriageway road, every single one of those motherfuckers is sitting in the outside two lanes, overtaking fuck-all. But I digress.
The thing is, if you’re behind five or six – hell, even two or three – vehicles who aren’t overtaking whatever’s holding everyone up/back, then my own overtaking manoeuvre becomes difficult, if not impossible. So you just end up sitting there, because no-one else is prepared to do anything.
It’s an odd state of affairs – and sometimes bloody annoying. But there’s not a lot that you can do, except accept that it’s just going to be one of those days…
Missing Limb
Posted: Mon 30 March, 2015 Filed under: 1BEM, Domestic, Getting Organised, Stupidity, Technology, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »This morning I somehow managed to leave my phone at home. (Well, I hope it’s at home – otherwise I’ve done something really stupid with it)
It’s quite an odd feeling really – you only realise how much you use the damn thing when it’s not there. The ubiquity of a smartphone for simple things is suddenly noticeable.
Already today I’ve had several thoughts of “Oh, I’ll just get the phone and…”, followed by the realisation that I can’t.
Calling it a “missing limb” is a bit hyperbolic, but it’s definitely a feeling of something missing, something you’re used to having around that’s not there any more.
I’ll be fine – it’s not like I’m surgically attached or anything – but every so often something will jar, and I’ll think “Bollocks” again.
Let’s just hope the damn thing is at home. I’m sure it is, but there’s that nagging ‘what if you did something dumb?‘ mental voice going on…
Changing Temperatures
Posted: Sun 29 March, 2015 Filed under: Domestic, Health, Weirdness Leave a comment »One of my family traits is that we all run warm – I’m rarely cold, my dad was infamous for having gone into a new office, turned off the heating on his first day and not re-activating it for five years ’til he left. I don’t know why we’re like it, but we are.
At night I’d sleep outside the quilt for the most part, because I was too warm otherwise.
This last year though, I’ve noticed a change.
I bought a quilt with a slightly lesser tog – 10.5 instead of 13 – but now I tend to sleep under the quilt rather than around it, or outside it completely.
It’s not anything that’s got a point – just something odd, that I’ve noticed changing.
Sick Day
Posted: Thu 26 February, 2015 Filed under: Customer Services, Domestic, Driving, Getting Organised, Health, People, Weirdness Leave a comment »Following on from yesterday’s post, last night was vile. I won’t go into details – safe just to say it was bad.
Anyway, as a result of that, I took the decision that I’d take today as a sick day, as I wanted to visit the GP (among other things) and generally Not Do Much. Which was a mistake.
The GP – as usual – was fucking useless. Having waited 90 minutes to see the incompetent git, I was in the room for less than five minutes. I explained that I’d spent most of the night with an insanely sore throat – to the degree that I thought it might end up being tonsilitis – , and coughing up big green lumps. He checked my throat and decided that it wasn’t tonsilitis. Fair enough – I know fuck-all, so I bow to their supposed knowledge. But at the same time, despite being told I’d coughed up a ton of crap, he still didn’t bother to check my chest at all – something you’d think would be pretty elementary.
And the final verdict? “Nothing I can do, take some paracetamol, and maybe Neurofen if you feel the need”. That was it. Useless shyster bastards. (And yes, there’s another complaint in with the practice manager)
After that, I went back home, still feeling like shit – only also feeling annoyed. Never a good stage in the day.
Within half an hour, there was a crunch of noise outside, the sound of plastic and so on getting splattered down the road. It didn’t sound promising – and I had a nagging feeling…
Yep, a driver had managed to smash off the door mirror of my car – which was all parked up, in the same place it usually is. Oh fuck.
In fairness, she’d stopped, and was seeing what had happened. I know any number of people wouldn’t have even slowed down, let alone made an effort. So you know, fair play on that score. She was a very new driver, had misjudged the width of her car while another one was coming the other way, and smack. It could’ve been so much worse – so, so much worse – and she was properly upset.
I spoke to my Saab garage, and got a price for the replacement mirror, and we exchanged details. I showed them where I lived, and all was well. A bit later, her dad came round – in a good way! – and we discussed it, that she was a new driver, and if we did this through insurance, it’d hit her very hard, for something that really wasn’t worth that much money. I’m fine with that – I’m not going to penalise the poor girl for something, when she didn’t even have to stop – and I think it’ll all work out by people dealing with it as adults.
And so I’ve ended up, on my day at home and feeling crap, going over to the Saab garage, getting things sorted – and as it turned out, actually getting a replacement mirror far, far cheaper than I expected. Basically, they’d got a silver car that they were stripping for parts, and I got the mirror. The colour isn’t a precise match, but I don’t give a shit about that.
The full replacement should’ve cost £300, with labour etc. on top of that. The swapped part has cost me £100 including labour, and took less than an hour from start to finish. I can’t deny, I’m pleased with that, and well chuffed with the garage – they’ve always been good with me, as has been shown by what they’ve done today.
It’s all worked out OK – but for a day doing nothing, it really hasn’t been all that successful…
Energy Madness
Posted: Sat 14 February, 2015 Filed under: 1BEM, Customer Services, Domestic, Finances, nPower, Stupidity, Thoughts, Utilities, Weirdness 2 Comments »Since moving to the new (current) place, I’ve had an ongoing (and too depressing for words) set of issues and disputes with nPower. These have included, but not limited to
- Not having the correct name on the account for eighteen months, despite repeated requests to change it
- Losing documentary proof (including my tenancy agreement) of my address. Originals were insisted upon, sent recorded delivery, signed for, and then lost. Hard to place blame anywhere except nPower
- Billing issues – my bills went up, down, sideways, and every way except correctly
- Misrepresentation – sending a meter reader into my house under the guise of being someone to do ‘legal gas meter checks’. (This was also while the bill/account was in the wrong name, so there was also some issues legally around that)
- A meter reading done by a representative of nPower, who then managed to register that reading to a completely different address, and denied ever having done one for this house. (Despite his having done readings/visits recorded to every other house in my block at the same time)
So it’s fair to say that I regard nPower as incompetent useless dickwhistles at the best of times.
Today, though, has taken it to a whole new level.
Things have settled down somewhat, and on Tuesday I gave them a meter reading directly through the website. At that point, my account was £1.62 in credit. Happy day, all well and good.
Today I logged in for a quick check. £595.82 in credit. Um, what? So I look, and it’s got four cancelled bills, adding up to the amount in credit. Four bills I’ve received, and paid. Now cancelled. File under “Fuck, What The”
So I gave them a call. The first incompetent managed to put the phone down on me. So I called back, and finally got through to one of the (few) efficient and competent individuals who work at nPower. (I’m quite sure she won’t last long, having been actually pleasant and competent)
It turns out that – once in receipt of a valid meter reading – nPower cancel out all the estimated bills back to the previous correct reading. They then recalculate all those bills with the correct figures (although technically they must still be estimates of what was used, averaging out the figures over the number of bills) to bring everything back up to date. So for however far back, the bills get cancelled – despite having been printed, posted and paid – and then recreated. Then I’ll know what I need to pay to be up to date.
Except of course that they’ve also got to send out all those new bills. So next week I’m going to get five bills from nPower – the four reconstructed ones – as well as the one to bring me up to date.
Now, I realise that this is something that’s required by the energy regulator – but does it strike anyone else as a completely fucking barking way to run a business?
Ghost Town
Posted: Wed 11 February, 2015 Filed under: Domestic, Weirdness Leave a comment »I don’t know why, but my village this week is utterly quiet in the evenings. It looks like I’m the only person in my block of houses – the parking spaces outside are all empty, and there’s no lights on anywhere in the block.
Walking round the village, I’m lucky if I see two people. Even the pub is closing early.
All told, it’s just a bit odd. It’s not half-term or anything, but it feels like a ghost-town of an evening…
Jammed
Posted: Thu 29 January, 2015 Filed under: BMW Drivers, Commuting, Domestic, Driving, M1, People, Thoughts, Weirdness 1 Comment »At the moment, I’m doing regular drives on the Northbound M1, which is currently subject to no less than 15 miles (Fifteen Miles! For fuck’s sake!) of roadworks in one stretch replacing the central barrier, and another stretch installing ‘smart motorways’, in a similar way to how the Southbound M1 was screwed over a couple of years back.
Through both of these stretches, we’ve got the 50mph speed limit and ‘average speed cameras’, which seem to also contain some kind of mind-control that turns the majority of drivers into zombies who can’t see an empty lane, but can see a speed camera and slow down for it. (The phrase ‘average speed’ is utterly beyond them, of course)
It amazes me how bad the driving standards are in these roadworks zones – it’s as though people stick to the lane they were in when they entered the roadworks, and aren’t able to move from it. They don’t move in (or even pull out to overtake) despite any available space, or someone else driving even slower ahead.
I don’t know what can be done to change it – it’s just a human nature thing, I guess – but dear God, it’s bloody annoying to be surrounded by that many dickwhistles.
Shotgun Mop
Posted: Sat 29 November, 2014 Filed under: Advertising, Bad Ads, Domestic, Television, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »With working from home, I’ve recently seen more adverts on TV than usual. Every so often, I get to one that just makes me wonder what the hell the advertising agency were thinking of – and what persuaded the client company to think it was a good idea too.
Today’s case is this one for a new type of mop by Spontex.
So what’s the message meant to be here?
Is it supposed to be funny?
Surely it can’t be intended to say “Using our new mop could put you at risk of getting shot by the police”?
And what the chuff is the motive for the hedgehog walking across the floor at the end?
I wonder if it will get pulled as and when the police accidentally shoot someone innocent…
Changing Places
Posted: Thu 9 October, 2014 Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Weirdness Leave a comment »When I moved here, I got a fairly large ‘activity centre’ for the cats, so they’d got their own places. I’d hoped it was going to stop them from sleeping on the other bits of furniture etc. It’s got a range of places for them to sleep etc. – and of course, being cats, they hardly use the sodding thing.
In fairness, every so often they do use it. The Mau used to make use of the sleeping places. FatCat never has, and the Bengal tends to avoid it.
And now the Bengal has changed her mind, and is sleeping in the little cubbyhole/box, for some unknown reason.
The Bengal is definitely weird. I can’t believe I’ve had her nearly four years now – sometimes it amazes me that she’s survived this long, because she can be an absolute cowbag. She’s deeply change-averse – one would almost say autistic – when situations alter. Yet she changes things herself every few weeks – the sleeping place is a case in point. Sometimes she goes back to places, other times it’s all new. The cubbybox is definitely new – I’ve never seen any of them sleep in there ’til this week.
There’s no real point to this post, it’s just one of those odd things that makes me think.
Twinned Outfits
Posted: Fri 15 August, 2014 Filed under: Domestic, People, Thoughts, Weirdness 3 Comments »As regular readers know, I’m really not great at relationships. The whole concept of being with one person for decades leaves me cold – let alone the way some people seem to become almost symbiotic – perhaps even parasitic – beings, who can’t be separated, can’t be apart at all.
The ones that disturb me the most are the ones who also wear the same type of outfits, or at least the clothing colourschemes. I’ve seen quite a few over the recent weeks, some in my village and some around where I work.
I don’t know why it creeps me out as much as it does – although it also does so when parents make their children (and particularly twins) wear the same outfits. But I do, it does, whatever.
I suspect it’s to do with what I see as the giving up of identity, the willingness to give up things I see as most valuable.
All very weird, but such is life, I suppose. Horses for courses, and all the piss.
Squish (Follow On)
Posted: Thu 10 July, 2014 Filed under: A428, Animals, Commuting, Driving, M1, M25, People, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »This year, I’ve seen a lot of roadkill – as I’ve commented before – which is at least somewhat related to going back to doing a fair amount of driving on fast roads, dual carriageways, motorways and the like.
I don’t mind that too much – although I think it’s quite sad to see it – but there’s something that bugs me about it, which is this.
No matter where the bodies are on the road – including right over by the edge and (particularly on motorways) right in the middle, near the central reservation and safety barrier, right out of the traffic lanes. Yet within a couple of days, the bodies are flattened, all bones crushed and so on.
It’s not decomposition – OK, it could be, but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t happen that fast.
All I can assume is that there’s a certain breed of driver who feel it’s acceptable (or perhaps even amusing, I don’t know) to run over the bodies, even if it means curving out of the lane, towards the crash barrier in order to do so.
And really that just boggles my little mind…
Brain Lock
Posted: Tue 6 May, 2014 Filed under: D4D™, Domestic, Weirdness Leave a comment »Sometimes I really worry about my own brain.
Today I’ve woken up with the word “Sesquepedalian” embedded in there, and it just won’t sod off.
No idea where it’s come from, or why – there’s no context. It’s just a word that my brain has fixed on.
Annoying.
Parking Mad
Posted: Thu 24 April, 2014 Filed under: 1BEM, Commuting, Customer Services, Cynicism, Driving, Parking, People, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »At the moment, the BBC has a documentary series on about Traffic Wardens (Parking Agents, Collection Agents, whatever else you want to call them) called “Parking Mad” and it’s been pretty interesting.
What I find most interesting is the people who don’t pay their parking fines, then get all snotty and sweary about it when the costs for it go up and up.
No matter how paranoid you are, I think the great majority of parking wardens just give tickets to people who’ve overstayed their tickets, not bothered, or are parking like cunts in the first place. I’ve spoken to a fair few over the years (I’m a twat for talking to just about anyone) and haven’t ever really come across a bad one. I’m sure they exist, don’t get me wrong – I just don’t believe every one is a bastard, or hates every other driver.
So if you’ve got a ticket- and again I emphasise that this is In My Experience Only – the odds are that you’ve fucked up and done something wrong. The ticket is going to cost you £30 to pay in the next 28 days, or £60 after that (and with extra costs the more they have to do to recover it) – so just sodding pay it. It’s a fee for fucking up.
I think I’ve now had four parking tickets. Two in Cambridge (where I’d be the first to admit that I pushed my luck anyway, and/or forgot to renew the ticket at the end of its duration) and two in London when I was commuting, and had a brain-fart about paying the ticket. The London ones were a pain, because you couldn’t buy the ticket before 9am- not from the machine, not online. I *know* it was a plan to get more people to forget to pay it, and thus do the tickets. But in six months, I forgot a grand total of twice.
I just don’t get the point of not paying a ticket – you know you’re going to lose anyway, so you might as well get it paid while it’s cheap. Even if I were going to protest it, I’d pay while lodging the appeal. (Unless it’s better to not do so – I don’t know, never had to do it)
The programme seems to specialise in these ball-bags who park like twats, make a mistake, and then blame everyone but themselves. Of course, they don’t pay, and then bitch even more when the bailiffs come round (or stop them in the road) and charge £500 for what could’ve been dealt with for £30.
I’ve said many times that there’s whole heaps of stuff about people that I simply don’t get. Parking tickets are just one more facet of that lack of knowledge/understanding.
The Imposter
Posted: Mon 7 April, 2014 Filed under: Films, People, Reviews(ish), Seeing Films, Weirdness Leave a comment »Over the weekend, I finally watched The Imposter, a documentary about a man who impersonated Nicholas Barclay, an American teen who had disappeared four years previously.
It’s a fascinating – and very creepy – film, which would be dismissed as unrealistic and impossible if it were a fiction story/film.
The Imposter himself, Frédéric Bourdin is a very strange character, and (in my unprofessional opinion) probably about as much of a pure-bred psychopath as it’s possible to be. The family of Nicholas Barclay are also extremely strange – and yes, I know, editing etc. – and make you wonder just why a family would accept in a stranger that could not possibly be their child/relative.
I don’t know the full story – I doubt anyone ever will – but the documentary makes you think of alternatives, of options, and of coincidence. Maybe it was Bordin’s bad luck to pick Barclay as a person to impersonate – it certainly leads to a much bigger story, and a whole different set of possibilities.
Totally recommended, even if documentaries ‘aren’t normally your thing’
Pheasant Terrorism
Posted: Wed 26 March, 2014 Filed under: 1BEM, Charm School, News, People, Stupidity, Weirdness Leave a comment »Some days I pretty much despair of the human race. (OK, OK, most days. Nearly every day.)
Yesterday’s example was caused by this story in the BBC about a pheasant ‘terrorising’ people at a farm in Cambridgeshire.
From the story…
A delivery driver was trapped for 20 minutes after the bird blocked his way, flew at the bonnet then chased his van.
“One young girl was having her first driving lesson on our land and could not move the car because the pheasant would not leave it alone.”
“I don’t think we’ll see our delivery driver for a while either,” Mrs Hamilton added.
I’m sorry, but if you’re in a vehicle, and being ‘terrorised’ by a pheasant then
- You’re a pathetic wanker of the first order
- YOU’RE IN A CAR. Run over the sodding thing. Job done.
Lit
Posted: Thu 13 March, 2014 Filed under: 1BEM, A428, BMW Drivers, Commuting, Driving, Fog, People, Travel, Weather, Weirdness Leave a comment »This morning’s drive in to work was foggy – foggy enough that you could see maybe three or four car-lengths ahead, and not much more.
So it left me quite gobsmacked to see how many drivers today weren’t bothering with their foglights – and in some cases without any lights on at all.
Considering how every pisswit fuck-knuckle in Christendom seems to put their fog lights on when it’s misty – and then leave them on for three damn days afterwards – it’s pretty amazing when you come across cars today (and particularly bloody silver ones) with no lights on at all.
What on earth are these drivers thinking? (And yes, I know, they’re not thinking) After all, it’s not like they can see any better than I could – I just don’t get the mindset of “Oh well, other people will be able to see me, even if I can’t see them”
I don’t mind people being stupid, inconsiderate, and fuck-witted. If they want to die on the road, that’s fine with me. What I do mind is the other people affected by those decisions. And that’s just cuntish.
Flickering
Posted: Tue 4 March, 2014 Filed under: Commuting, Cyclists, Driving, Health, People, Stupidity, Technology, Weirdness Leave a comment »As I’m now working in Cambridge, I’m seeing a lot more cyclists. And a question occurred to me…
If a cyclist has one of those flashing/strobing LED cycle-lamps at a high-flash-rate, and they ride towards a driver prone to epilepsy through strobing (which isn’t something one would normally/usually expect to encounter while driving) who is responsible for any damages etc. should that driver suffer a fit at the wheel?
I’ve seen four or five cyclists already with these super-bright LED lamps set to a *very* high strobe rate, and it just made me wonder…
Balconies
Posted: Wed 29 January, 2014 Filed under: 1BEM, Domestic, Housing, London, People, Thoughts, Weirdness 3 Comments »Where I’m working in London this week, I’m in an office opposite an apartment block. (Which used to be known as a ‘block of flats’, but that’s not cool or trendy enough for people now) Personally I’d hate it, but that’s OK, I don’t live there.
What I don’t get about the building though is that certain windows have bars outside – I assume to look like they’ve got balconies. But all they are is the bars, there’s no outside space to them, they’re just a ‘feature’. But why? I don’t get the reasoning behind it. OK, you’ve a door you can open (into the flat/apartment) so I suppose it’s for ‘safety’ in case someone walked out of that door and fell to the street. But why have the door? It’s not even a sliding one, just a normal hinged doorway to fuck-all.
You might as well have done away with the ‘balcony’ and door completely, and just replaced it with a decent window. Same amount of ventilation, low-to-no risk of falling out (depending on the window style/opening) and no faffing about with the door protruding into the living space, and not having to look through a semi-barred window.
City-living is bloody strange on occasion.
The Writing On The Wall
Posted: Tue 21 January, 2014 Filed under: Charm School, People, Travel, Weirdness 2 Comments »Every so often I have to use a public toilet – and every time, my mind boggles at people.
Primarily, I really can’t understand the entire thing of writing numbers on the walls of the cubicles. I know the history of it, and the reasons, but times have changed – so does anyone ever actually call those numbers or make contact that way? I find it pretty unbelievable, to be honest. And even less so when it comes to those ones that say “Meet me here at 7pm on a Tuesday” – really? I just don’t believe it.
The other thing that boggles me is the state some people leave the bogs themselves in. I don’t know if they leave every shitter in the same way, or just leave public ones like it because there’s someone else who’ll clean it all up. But either way, it’s vile when you walk in to be greeted by piss on the walls/floor/seat, and even worse when the bowl is covered in a haze of shitty lumps. And of course there’s also the fuckers who leave a turd in the bowl unflushed , as if to say “Look on my mighty works, mortals, and despair!”
Finally, there’s the ones who cover the cubicle in bog-roll, although that is somewhat less offensive. (At least assuming it’s not used bog-roll, of course) Mind you, even then you can also end up with the dickweeds having also blocked the entire thing with bog-roll too, which just leads to overflowage and sharing the vileness.
It’s not everyone, of course. But there do seem to be a percentage of people who feel that all of this stuff is acceptable, because every time I go to a public toilet, there’s some remnant from some other dirty bugger.
I despair of people, I really do.
Bladder Control
Posted: Thu 9 January, 2014 Filed under: 1BEM, Cinema, People, Seeing Films, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »Last night I was at the cinema – of which more tomorrow – but I was reminded of something else that I’ve been meaning to write about for a while. And that’s this – why are so many people incapable of controlling themselves and sitting still for a couple of hours?
OK, in this case it was a viewing specifically for Unlimited Card holders at the local Cineworld. This meant that the viewing was free, and so perhaps there’s not that same “perception of value”. I don’t know. Mind you, this is something that’s been bugging me for a while, and not just at Cineworlds, so I assume that it also happens even when everyone’s paid to see the damn film.
I wasn’t actually counting, but in that two-and-a-quarter hour film, there must’ve been a good thirty people who went out and then came back in. I assume a fair number of those were toilet breaks – potentially a couple got calls, or had messages they needed to reply to, I suppose. (I’m in a semi-charitable mood today) And I’m also open to believe that a couple might’ve had medical conditions that meant they had less control over their bladders.
But really – how has this become a thing? If you can’t sit and watch a film without taking a break, or needing a piss, then surely there’s something wrong? Even if you’ve consumed that whole bucket of Coke you purchased, surely you can still contain yourself for a couple of hours?
Lethal Injection
Posted: Sun 17 November, 2013 Filed under: Creativity, Cynicism, Legal, News, Politics, Thoughts, Weirdness 2 Comments »Apparently, a lot of American states are having serious problems with their methods when it comes to the death penalty. Lethal Injection in particular (used by the majority of the states that have a sentence of death) is facing problems, because the manufacturers of the drugs that are used are trying to block their use.
As a result, several of those states are using what are known as “compounding pharmacies” – effectively, places that can make small quantities of required drugs on-demand, a sort of grey-market DIY area instead of buying the necessary drugs/items from the manufacturers. This process is being done in secret, so no-one really knows what’s being used.
It amused me (I’m in that kind of mood) to see this quote though :
“There is no way to verify that what comes from a compounding pharmacy is what it purports to be, and that it is safe and effective.”
Sorry, but these drugs are being used to kill people. While I get that ‘effective’ is important, I’m less certain that ‘safe’ should be a concern.
Mind you, what I don’t understand is why they don’t just use significant quantities of seized illegal drugs. After all, a massive overdose of heroin (for example) or crystal meth is going to be just as effective when it comes to killing people…
End Credits
Posted: Fri 8 November, 2013 Filed under: 1BEM, Domestic, People, Seeing Films, Weirdness Leave a comment »Last night I went to see Thor2 with a friend.
It’s crap, but watchable crap – I’ve never been a massive Thor fan (well, not the comic-book version anyway) but it’s OK.
However.
It’s a Marvel film, and (to my recall) all Marvel films are known to have at least one ‘during-the-credits’ extra scene, which is usually worth hanging around for. Thor2 actually has two – one mid-credits, and one right at the end. Which is fine – it’s (I thought) a known thing, or at least should be to regular cinema-goers, and fans of Marvel films. I know a lot of people on Twitter have mentioned them, so I figured they were well-known.
But it amazed me how many people started leaving as soon as the credits started. I reckon a good 60% of the audience had gone by the time the first ‘during-the-credits’ scene appeared, and probably 95% had gone by the time of the final one. OK, the scenes aren’t essential to the main film or anything like that, but they’re fun additions – I’m just surprised by how many people apparently still don’t know that these things happen.
Premature Celebration
Posted: Sat 26 October, 2013 Filed under: Domestic, People, Weirdness 2 Comments »I don’t know why, but as a nation we seem to be making a real habit of celebrating things earlier than their assigned dates – and not just the Festering Season.
Tonight – October 26th – I’ve had about four sets of people knocking on the door for Hallowe’en / “Trick or Treat” shenanigans, and I know lots of places are doing Hallowe’en parties. Don’t forget, Hallowe’en isn’t even until Thursday – so we’re not even on the nearest weekend to the poxy thing.
And then we’ve also had the village fireworks display – and that’s still two weeks away!
Widow
Posted: Thu 24 October, 2013 Filed under: 1BEM, Cynicism, Daily Mail, Health, Media, News, People, Stupidity, Weirdness Leave a comment »This year’s symptom of the media Silly Season appears to be the “False Widow” spider, which is the UK’s most venomous spider, but is also nowhere near as poisonous/bad/evil as it’s been portrayed, along with the resultant hysteria.
For whatever reason though, it’s been all over the news, with hysterical coverage about people who’ve been bitten “and nearly died“. Of course, it’s hard to gauge how near-to-death anyone was when they actually survived – I could say I “nearly died” anytime I cough, sneeze, or have a particularly strenuous dump.
The latest ridiculously hysterical reaction was the closure of a school in the Forest of Dean because of ‘an infestation’ of false widows (for fuck’s sake)
Now yes, I’m quite sure the bite hurts – and that there are a tiny minority of people who react badly to said bites, in the same way that there’s a small selection of people who react badly to wasp stings, peanuts etc. But it’s a tiny minority who get bitten at all (most just introduce spider to literature anyway) and an even tinier minority therein who react in such a way. But if you read the media, they’re everywhere, and everyone’s being bitten.
I know, I know, it’s always been thus with the media – compare any hysterical theme story with people you actually know, and you’ll find that most of them are stories that only happen to a tiny minority. Supposedly it’s that fact that makes the stories “news”, but that hype then blows it all out of proportion/sanity, leaving idiots people with the impression it’s happening everywhere.
Sometimes I wish the media would just shut the fuck up about stupid hype-ridden hyperbolic stories, and (in an ideal world) allow people to get on with their lives without this hysterical bullshit constantly going on.
Non-scents
Posted: Mon 21 October, 2013 Filed under: Domestic, Thoughts, Weirdness 12 Comments »Over the last few months, I’ve noticed a growing dislike (and reaction to) a variety of the current range of room-scenting thingies.I don’t know why there seems to have been such a resurgence of them over the last year or two – or maybe I’m just noticing them more – but it’s really bloody annoying.
In some ways I’ve always been sensitive to these aerosolised scents – lemon scent as an aerosol always used to make my nose bleed, although that’s eased off somewhat. I assume they’ve changed the chemical composition, or something.
But now there’s these automated squirts of aerosol scents from machines by Airwick and Glade, and they always seem to spray directly at me. Why they’re aimed like that, I don’t know – but it always seems to happen. And when it does, cue a nose-bleed, more often than not. Again, I don’t know why it happens, but it does.
The last couple of workplaces have had them in place, particularly in the bathrooms, so there’s no way I can even safely turn the poxy things off.
Even better, in a fit of dire irony, I don’t actually have a great sense of smell. It’s a hereditary thing – my paternal grandmother has no sense of smell (or professed not to, I’ve no idea of the truth of it) and my dad’s sense of smell is pretty dire, so it runs on that side of the family. So it’s pretty ironic that aerosol scents affect me so badly when most of the time I can’t even smell the bastards. (Although on the occasions when I can smell them, I’m more prone to thinking it’s a benefit to not be able to most of the time) As such, it must be some reaction to the chemicals in the scents, rather than the scents themselves.
Either way, it’s a pain in the arse. (Well, a pain in the nose, to be accurate)
Crashtastic
Posted: Mon 14 October, 2013 Filed under: Commuting, Domestic, Driving, Travel, Weirdness Leave a comment »I don’t know why, but today already seems to be populated by car accidents
- In the village, a van has gone straight over/through one of the traffic-calming pieces of road furniture, ripping it apart and also tearing off the front axle. (I’d love to see the insurance claim on that one!)
- On the way to work, two roundabouts had vehicles pulled over into inside lanes, with people exchanging details
- A slide of my own on another roundabout while being followed by a police car – fortunately small and controllable, but enough to think “Oh shit!”. (I know I was going slightly too fast, but trying to get out the way of aforementioned police car while I had nowhere to go due to fuck-knuckle bastards not moving in the other lane)
- I did manage to destroy a low-flying slow-moving pigeon with my windscreen. Hell of a thump, no damage, and no way to avoid it, due to a Mercedes very close behind me.
So far I’m fine, and it’s just been stuff around me, but it’s still weird.
[Updated : with regard to #3 above, another colleague comes the same way and also saw someone slide slightly at the same place, so I’m now thinking more that there was something on the road at that point than that I was being a dick]
A few years back this little set would’ve convinced me that the world was out to kill me today. I’m a bit less paranoid about that kind of thing now, and more believe in “shit happens”, but all the same, I think I’m going to be driving quite carefully on the way home…
Identity
Posted: Sun 29 September, 2013 Filed under: Introspective, Thoughts, Weirdness, Writing 1 Comment »At the moment I’m thinking a lot about identity – it’s primarily related to an idea I’ve got for a writing project, but it’s just a process that keeps bouncing round my head. Are we really who we think we are? And if not, which is the true identity? The one we live, the one we think we live, or the one we dream of being?
As an example, I’m pretty sure of who I am, but other people see a different person to the one I see. They see personality traits – good and bad – in me that I don’t see in myself. So which is true? Or are both true?
There’s probably more to be written on this, I’m just bouncing things round in my head, seeing what shakes out in the long run.
Up For Sale
Posted: Sun 22 September, 2013 Filed under: Domestic, House Purchase, Norfolk, People, Weirdness Leave a comment »Having just done a random search, I’ve found out that the house in Norfolk I had with Herself is back up for sale.
It’s kind of weird, seeing the changes that have been put in by the new owners – some make sense, and are things we’d talked about doing. However, others are – somewhat mental.
As a prime example of the latter, the new owners have brutally trimmed the cherry tree in the front garden, and completely removed the huge weeping willow that was in the back garden. (and was one of the factors that made me like the place) I can see why they would have got rid of it – it was a pain in the tits to mow around, and dropped crap on the grass all year round – but it was such a fantastic tree, I’m actually kind of sad to know that it’s gone.
Interestingly, despite the work the new owners have obviously done, the price isn’t actually any different than we paid for it six years ago.
Progress, eh?
Changing Homes
Posted: Fri 13 September, 2013 Filed under: Domestic, People, Thoughts, Weirdness 2 Comments »No, it’s not me that’s changing homes, for once – I’m staying firmly put for a while longer, I think.
In this case, one of the houses along the road from me went up for sale nearly a year ago, sold in February of this year, and last weekend they were finally able to move out. (I don’t know the people, I’ve just seen how long they’ve stayed there after the ‘sold’ sign went up!) The front garden of the house was filled with plants, including a spectacular lilac, and was really quite decent. Not my thing, but decent all the same.
Anyway, within a week of moving in, the new owners have completely ripped out everything in the front garden. I don’t know what they’ve done with it all (one assumes the tip’s been busy) but I came home the other day and noticed the change straight away.
I understand the whole thing of buying something/somewhere to do your own thing to it, and all that Sarah Beeny crap. I get making it your own, making it more attractive, more sellable, blah blah. I just don’t necessarily get the reasoning of buying something, only to rip out one of its more appealing features. I just think it’s a bit of a shame really. (And yes, I know it’s nothing to do with me.)
Driving Through
Posted: Wed 7 August, 2013 Filed under: 1BEM, Driving, People, Thoughts, Weirdness 2 Comments »My local supermarket is on a small(ish) retail estate, and there’s also a McDonalds in the area, with a full “drivethrough” (sorry, “drivethru” *spitting noise*) option. Every time I go past it, there’s something that boggles my brain.
I don’t understand the drive-through option. Well, that’s not true – there’s one particular aspect of drivethrough behaviour that I really don’t understand. I get the whole “grab food while driving, and continue going” concept, that’s fine. For now we’ll gloss over the whole road-safety aspect – after all, if it’s dangerous to use a mobile phone while driving, surely it’s equally dangerous to be eating a messy burger – but I get the concept.
What I don’t get though, are the people who use the drive-through, and then park up to eat their ‘food’. What’s the reasoning? If you’re going to do that, surely it’s just as easy to take a proper break, go inside, sit at a table, eat, and then leave to go back on the road.
What’s the logical process for getting food, and then sitting right outside the premises (I refuse to call it a restaurant, sorry) to eat them?
Yet every time I drive past, there they are – people doing exactly that. They’ve bought at a drive-through, and now they’re sat in the car park to eat it. It truly makes my brain bleed.
Transport
Posted: Mon 29 July, 2013 Filed under: Driving, Media, Public Transport, Travel, Weirdness 1 Comment »What on earth is going on with public transport in Europe this week?
In the last week we’ve had…
- Two trains colliding head-on at Granges-pres-Marnand in Switzerland, injuring at least 40.
- A coach plunging off the road in Avellino in Italy, killing 38 people.
- and of course the train derailment in Spain at Santiago de Compostela, killing 78 people.
There’ve been other things too – the bus in Manchester ripping it’s roof off going under a bridge, for example – but it just seems like public transport is having a really bad time of it at the moment.
Equipment Failure
Posted: Sun 2 June, 2013 Filed under: Bankruptcy, Change, Domestic, Finances, Geeky, Getting Old(er), Getting Organised, iPhone, Shopping, Technology, Thoughts, Weirdness 1 Comment »Don’t worry, this isn’t another post about the joys and pitfalls of getting older…
No, instead it’s about technology, and why the bastard stuff all ends up failing at the same time.
First of all, this post is being written on a new laptop – which I really could’ve done without having to get, but needs must when the devil drives (and/or you’re a web techie and wannabe-writer). The old Dell laptop – which it turns out I bought back in September 2009, so I shouldn’t whine so much, I guess – had been getting flakier over the last six months, but I’ve been eking out the life of it since then, suffering the occasional (and then more regular) hard-drive crash, and the ropy keyboard with some keys that only worked intermittently.
This week though it’s been crashing every time it was in use, and was obviously getting to the point where I needed to a) pull all the relevant data off it like NOW, and b) replace it with something else. And with a trip up to Manchester this week where I’m *really* going to need a reliable laptop, this was the weekend for it.
So I’ve bitten the bullet somewhat, and the new one is a (dirt-cheap) Asus thing, running the already-much-disliked Windows 8. To be fair to Windows 8, the old laptop was on the much-loathed Vista, which I never really found all that annoying. Eight annoys me more so far, but I’ll get used to it.
The other two equipment failures are both iPhone related, allbeit power-related rather than device-related. (Although I did think one of them might’ve been the phone being fucked, which was a real worry) First the Mophie battery case has failed. Again. (More accurately, the cable/charger for it, which will no longer charge) I love the Mophie cases, but they do seem to be somewhat crap, and only last about a year. And then the normal iPhone charge/sync cable also went kerfut and wouldn’t charge the phone. So I’ve had to get a new cable for that as well – considerably less expensive than the laptop purchase, but still, why all at the same time?
Oh yeah, and the fridge in the house also played up this week, with one day where it didn’t appear to be working all that well. Fortunately it’s now back up and running.
But why the hell would four things, two fairly major, all decide to kiff out within the same week? Weird things, I tell thee, weird things.
Naming Conventions
Posted: Mon 20 May, 2013 Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Introspective, Weirdness 1 Comment »This weekend I realised something really odd, which is this…
Even though all three cats have names , I never call them by those names – and I don’t know why. Even when talking about them to others, I usually identify them by breed rather than name.
I really can’t explain why I do it, it’s certainly not been a conscious decision.
All very odd. But it’s going to be a nightmare if I ever do lose one of them, because there’s little to no chance they’ll respond to their name…
Paying Attention
Posted: Sun 5 May, 2013 Filed under: Domestic, Driving, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »A few months back when I got the Saab, I thought they weren’t all that common. I’ve always liked them through the years, so I usually noticed them when they were around. (This might also have something to do with the absolutely vile colour-schemes a lot of them tend to possess) All the same, I didn’t see them that often – and I was doing a lot of miles at the time. Of course, I’m still doing a fair amount of mileage, but no more than I was doing before.
Anyway, now I own the Saab, I can’t take a damn journey without seeing at least a couple. Not necessarily the same 95 model as mine (although even that’s not uncommon) but definitely the 93 in its various guises.
I know the whole theory of familiarity, that you notice things more because you’re also doing them – hence seeing the same type of car as your own, or how everyone’s having kids if you are, etc. etc. – and I’m sure that’s what’s happening, but all the same, it feels very odd indeed.
Sweary Hypocrisy
Posted: Sun 14 April, 2013 Filed under: 1BEM, Charm School, Cinema, Cynicism, Hypocrisy, Offensive Repetition, People, Reviews(ish), Seeing Films, Sweary, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »I’ve found a new source of amusement – the “Parental Guides” for films on IMDB.
A perfect example is here, for the new Tom Cruise film “Oblivion”
Why is it so amusing? For wondrous things like this…
bitch used 2 times bastard 1 time ass 4 times shit 6 times 1 use of fuck. Son-of-a-b***h is used once.
It’s the hypocrisy of it all – coupled with the tweeness. In the example above, it’s OK to write bitch, bastard and fuck, but son-of-a-bitch gets asterisked out? Fuck me.
Stalker TV Ad
Posted: Sun 17 March, 2013 Filed under: Advertising, Cynicism, Marketing, People, Television, Thoughts, Weirdness 1 Comment »At the moment, Santander have a set of adverts ‘starring’ Jensen Button, Jessica Ennis and Rory McIlroy. Suffice it to say, they’re pretty creepy…
Seriously, what crack-headed advertising exec ever thought this would be a good idea? To have sporting ‘celebrities’ effectively invading the homes and lives of everyday people, and stalking them? I can’t even understand how it’s going to portray bankers and banking in a positive light.
Indeed for me all it does is serve to make me actively not want to use Santander for anything. Ever.
(Although, on a more cynical note, it does amuse me that Santander are also paying to have the logos for Nike and Adidas all over their ad)
Weird Marketing
Posted: Fri 1 February, 2013 Filed under: Advertising, Cynicism, Marketing, People, Valentine's Day, Weirdness 2 Comments »The other day, I got the strangest marketing email in a long while.
It’s from Apple, which probably explains a lot, but still, you’ve got to wonder when it comes to a subject/tag-line like this…
iPad or iPad mini. The perfect choice for Valentine’s Day.
I just can’t compute how that even works .
The additional image didn’t help explain, either.
What. The. Fuck?
Cheese, the Tunnel Blocker
Posted: Wed 23 January, 2013 Filed under: News, Weirdness Leave a comment »Among the more surreal stories yesterday, there’s this one from Norway…
Yes, a truckload of burning goat’s cheese has blocked and seriously damaged a road tunnel. That’s pretty impressive by anyone’s levels.
Holiday Results
Posted: Tue 22 January, 2013 Filed under: 1BEM, Advertising, Cynicism, Weirdness Leave a comment »Sometimes I swear my brain works differently to everyone elses. (Or at least differently to the people who work in advertising agencies) I’ve just seen an advert saying
“Book your holiday with [company] before January 31st, and your first child comes free!”
And my first thought was “Well, I suppose if it’s conceived there…”
Acid Attacks
Posted: Sat 19 January, 2013 Filed under: 1BEM, Charm School, People, Television, Thoughts, Weirdness 1 Comment »Yesterday I watched the Channel 4 documentary “Saving Face” about Dr Mohammad Jawad, a renowned plastic surgeon who provides pro bono work rebuilding the faces of Indian women who have been the victims of acid attacks by their husbands.
Yeah, attacks with acid – usually sulphuric – being thrown in their faces. Seriously, what the absolute fuck?
I know women in India aren’t treated with the same accord as in the UK and other countries – but seriously, what kind of mindset is there that makes it OK, indeed ‘the done thing’, to disfigure your partner ? What the shit?
It’s just totally beyond me, I simply don’t understand the process that makes this kind of thing OK.
(And yes, I do know – but don’t understand – the philosophy that one’s woman/partner is just a possession, an object you can choose to keep, throw away, or burn to fuck with acid. I know the philosophy, but still, it’s just wrong. )
Weird Dreaming – again
Posted: Tue 18 December, 2012 Filed under: Domestic, Dreaming, Weirdness 3 Comments »While there’s no decent answer with regard to whether the cat puked or I dreamt it, last night’s one was pretty strange too.
So – for all you dream analysts out there – what does it mean when you dream that you’re in Homebase, have been overcharged, and you’re getting ignored by all the staff? (I know, that’s just about par for the course with Homebase, but still – this was even more so than usual) Even weirder, I got really annoyed by this in the dream (which is understandable) but then woke up and was equally furious.
Took me ages to go back to sleep, too.
I suspect this may be my brain saying “Hurry up Thursday, I want to be done for the year“.
Greying
Posted: Tue 11 December, 2012 Filed under: D4D™, Domestic, Getting Old(er), Thoughts, Weirdness 2 Comments »One (of many) questions about aging that keeps occurring to me :
What the hell is it with hairs growing on ears? It never used to happen – why has it started to as I get older?
Seeking Proofreaders
Posted: Thu 22 November, 2012 Filed under: Charm School, Cynicism, Education, People, Thoughts, Weirdness 2 Comments »One of my favourite stories today is that of the Suffolk school that’s now hiring proofreaders to check for mistakes in teachers reports. Yes, really.
From the story…
Northgate High School said the role would include correcting “spelling mistakes, poor or missing punctuation, incorrect capitalisation” and improving “poor grammar”.
The role at the local authority school pays £14 an hour.
Headteacher David Hutton said the work indicates the “high level of professionalism” at the school.
Surely a better mark of the ‘high level of professionalism’ at the school would be to hire teachers who – you know – are capable of spelling correctly and using grammar properly in the first place? After all, if they’re making mistakes on the reports, I’d be pretty damn sure they were making the same mistakes in lessons…
Waiting / Wasting Time
Posted: Wed 21 November, 2012 Filed under: Domestic, Shopping, Shopping, Thoughts, Weirdness 2 Comments »One of my regular activities (and of course everyone else’s regular activities) is the domestic shop – it’s not something I enjoy too much, but it’s got to be done. And at the same time I find it fascinating in some ways.
Mainly I love observing people, looking at their motivations, habits, and mindsets. I don’t always understand those mindsets and actions – as with the Reverse Parking thing I commented on a while back.
There’s going to be more of these posts, I think – it’s all making me think a lot about people, their psychology, the mindset for shopping and so on. It’s all just in my head a bit.
Anyway – back to the point of this one. Still in the supermarket carpark, I’m afraid.
So here’s the thing – why do people feel the need to park as close as humanly possible to the actual store? Even to the extent of driving round the nearest loop three or four times, rather than finding a space somewhere else? And particularly to the extent of sitting waiting for someone to load their shopping into the car, return the trolley, and then (eventually) drive off, leaving a queue of people behind, and generally screwing up the entire circuit ?
Me, I park further out, dump straight into a parking slot, and get on with the job. Last weekend I managed to do that, go in, shop, and come back out while at least one twat was still waiting for a parking spot on his circuit.
In short, I really don’t get the concept of ‘saving time’ by parking close to the store, if you have to circle repeatedly and wait for a spot.
Hallowe’en
Posted: Wed 31 October, 2012 Filed under: 1BEM, Charm School, Cynicism, Domestic, Festering Season, Hypocrisy, People, Thoughts, Weirdness 1 Comment »Yes, once again it’s that time of year.
The one where, after telling children all year that they shouldn’t talk to strangers, let along accept sweets etc. from strangers, it’s now acceptable – but only for one night (and the following weekend, of course) – to go knocking on doors and – um – accept sweets from strangers.
What could possibly go wrong?
I feel the same about Santa in the Festering Season – again, don’t talk to strangers, but oh, it’s ok this time because you’re talking to Santa and accepting presents. Hey, good move.
In short, ’tis the season to introduce your children to hypocrisy and double-standards. Enjoy.
Vivid Dreaming
Posted: Thu 11 October, 2012 Filed under: Domestic, Insomnia, Sleep - or lack thereof, Weirdness Leave a comment »One thing I’ve realised more and more over the last few months is that I dream very vividly – to the point that I can’t easily tell dreams from reality. It’s only when I think back and actually analyse things that I work out sometimes whether it’s been dream or real. That’s not helped by the fact that most of my dreams appear to be quite reality-based anyway. I’ve never dreamed about flying naked, or whatever.
Don’t get me wrong, they get very weird – but it’s extrapolations from reality, rather than just starting weird and getting worse.
Recently, I’ve also been vivid-dreaming that I’m awake. Or I think I have – it’s a possibility, anyway.
Either way, I’m either awake and not sleeping, or I’m asleep, dreaming I’m wide awake, and thus – um – dreaming about insomnia.
I honestly don’t know which it is. There are bits where I know I’ve been awake ’til ungodly hours – and have physically moved to pick up the clock and look at the time, for instance. Others, I’m less sure – I’ve felt like I’ve had no sleep, but then I also recall things that were definitely (with analysis) dreams.
It’s all very confusing, and not at all helpful.
Not really getting it
Posted: Sat 29 September, 2012 Filed under: 1BEM, Advertising, Public Transport, Travel, Weirdness Leave a comment »While looking today at train ticket prices, I came across this…
Now I might be missing something, but if the train will take me 35 minutes, and cost £13(ish), why would I be interested in going by National Express, which would cost me more to travel for three times as long ?
I think someone might’ve missed the point…
Savings
Posted: Mon 28 May, 2012 Filed under: 1BEM, Advertising, Business, Customer Services, Cynicism, Thoughts, Weirdness 5 Comments »Over the weekend, I was in Sainsbury’s, and saw a fine example of weird savings…
I’m sure I’ve waffed on about this before, but I can’t be chuffed to double-check. (Turns out, July 2009) Anyway, it’s hardly news.
In this case, a 4-pack of 2L Diet Coke bottles is retailing at £6.50. (And let’s not get onto the price-increase side of things – It’s not long ago that that 4-pack was £5) As a 2L bottle on its own is around the £2 mark – I think it was £1.98, but who’s counting? – then £6.50 for four isn’t a bad deal.
Except – except! – that if you pay a bit more attention, they’re also doing “3 for the price of two” on the individual 2L bottles.
So you can get six bottles for £8 ( or £1.33 a bottle) , instead of four for £6.50 ( £1.62 per bottle )
Supermarkets are very strange places when it comes to saving money…
Irresponsible ?
Posted: Sun 20 May, 2012 Filed under: Cynicism, News, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »Last week, David Oakes was sentenced to life imprisonment. He’d taken a shotgun to his ex-partner and their two-year-old daughter, supposedly because he was ‘afraid’ of losing them. He then (allegedly) tried to kill himself with the same shotgun, and failed.
In today’s news, Oakes’ ex-wife has come forward, saying that Oakes had also been abusive towards her while they were married.
His ex-wife said the “total control freak” was regularly violent and on one occasion pulled a gun on her.
“He pushed me to the sofa, pulled a gun out of his pocket, put one bullet in the barrel and spun the barrel,” she said. He kept clicking it to my head, he held the gun straight to my head. It didn’t go off, so he went off and calmed down and came back later as if nothing had happened.”
Now maybe I’m missing something, but surely that’s attempted murder ?
I do understand that an abused partner doesn’t always go to the police – but it could be done anonymously via Crimestoppers etc. And if she had reported his instability to the police, I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t have been allowed to have a registered shotgun…
Signage
Posted: Tue 2 November, 2010 Filed under: Advertising, Cynicism, Domestic, Weirdness 1 Comment »I noticed this on the new DVD player today…
The full box
So yep, new cheap-ass DVD player. But what’s that security sign on the right ?
Security Tag - Do Not Microwave
Yep – a sticker telling me to not microwave the sticker / box.
Is that something I’m supposed to do to a DVD player, then? Stick it in the microwave to make it work?
Note : Yes, I do know it’s just a generic sticker, and doesn’t matter whether it’s on a microwave or any other device. It just made me smile
Visibility
Posted: Fri 24 September, 2010 Filed under: Advertising, People, Weirdness 1 Comment »One of the more bizarre sights at AdTech this year was this…
Yellow Camouflage, Yellow Shirt, Yellow DM Boots
Very, very yellow – and very odd.
But what is the point of camouflage trousers in bright yellow? The mind boggles – I want to be concealed, fit in with the forest, but also bright yellow. Maybe it’s for hiding in fields of oil-seed rape.
Taxing
Posted: Sat 4 September, 2010 Filed under: 1BEM, Cynicism, Domestic, Politics, Stupidity, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »According to the BBC, Tax through PAYE has been (in some cases) utterly stuffed for the last couple of years.
In the story, about £2bn has been underpaid – but about £1.8bn has been overpaid. Now to me, that’s a case of “Oh sod it, it kind of balances”. But no, in a fit of efficiency (or at least Inland Revenue’s version of efficiency – which isn’t efficient at all) they’re going to send out six million letters telling people that they’ve over- or under-paid, and the differences will be refunded or paid back in the new tax code.
So. Six million letters. Even in second-class post, that’s a minimum of 32p per letter. Which makes a cost of £1,920,000. Doing the letters first class would be a cost of £2,460,000.
Let’s look at this sensibly.
We’ve underpaid £2bn in tax.
We’ve overpaid £1.8bn.
Which leaves £0.2bn to pay.
And Inland Revenue are going to spend £2 million to get back that £0.2 billion.
Is it just me that sees the idiocy in this? Talk about throwing good money after bad.
And actually, why the flying fuck should the people who have underpaid – through no fault of their own – be penalised by having to pay extra this year for a mistake made by Inland Revenue itself ?!?
Pigs Arse
Posted: Fri 3 September, 2010 Filed under: Art, Driving, Norfolk, Weirdness, Work-related Leave a comment »Yesterday while driving home I had one of the more surreal driving experiences of late.
Pulling out in front of me was a truck with a load of topiary pigs. Yes, topiary pigs.
So half my journey home last night was spent looking at the arses of three green pigs.
Three Pigs Backsides
It’s not the best of photos – taken while waiting for traffic to sort itself out – but you get the idea.
Festive Doom
Posted: Wed 18 August, 2010 Filed under: Domestic, Festering Season, Weirdness Leave a comment »
I’ve just realised that last night there was a sign of the upcoming Apocalypse, and I missed it. Arses.
The sign was this : It’s August, and I had a dream about the Festering Season.
Not, thank the Deities, a good dream. Instead it was a dream about Festering Tat being in the stores way too early (again) and me going rather ballistic at the shop-owners/managers who had allowed it to happen.
Very very fucking weird, and I’ve no idea what on earth it’s meant to be about, or what it says about my subconscious.
That is all.
Rural Weekend
Posted: Sat 14 August, 2010 Filed under: Norfolk, People, Weirdness Leave a comment »This weekend the village down the road has their annual “vintage working weekend” event. It’s a bizarre thing – not quite a steam rally, not quite anything particular – but means that our road is pretty much constantly thronged by tractors running up and down.
Right now though there’s a parade of tractors going past the front of the house, some with passengers on trailers, most just being driven along as part of the parade. Completely mad.
So far there’s been about forty of the damn things…
Driving (Again)
Posted: Wed 7 July, 2010 Filed under: Business, Customer Services, Driving, Travel, Weirdness 1 Comment »Last night was the day I took Herself and Others down to London. I’d already worked all day (as usual) so it was always going to be a late one.
As it turned out, I got everyone down to central London (Kings Cross / St Pancras) in two hours flat, dropping them off at 9:50.
By that time I hadn’t eaten anything since lunch, but wasn’t massively hungry, so just headed back up, thinking that if I got hungry I could stop at the services near Stanstead airport. (Birchanger Green, not that it means much) It was 10:45 by the time I got there, and by that point I was hungry enough that I could’ve eaten a scabby donkey between two pieces of bread. (Which is, of course, why I was even considering something from Motorway Services)
Only it turns out that Birchanger Green pretty much shuts at 10:30.
- Burger King – closed, cleaned up, and one lowly person wiping the surfaces.
- KFC – closed, deserted
- Waitrose – closed, deserted, barriers in front of the doors
- “Eat In” – open, a poxy range of crap (and overpriced) sandwiches, with a queue of people that outnumbered the sandwiches available.
- Shop – closed, barriered off.
And that was it. Nothing else. I assume it stays open for people in dire need of a piss, and that’s about it.
Bear in mind, Birchanger Green is the only services on the entire M11. And it shuts at half-ten.
Call me naïve, but I always thought services were supposed to be open super-long hours – if not 24-hours. That impression appears to have been wrong.
But I wonder how much business Birchanger Green loses by closing at half-ten ? The car-park was at least a third full when I got there. You’d think that being open ’til half eleven or midnight would make sense – particularly when they’re the only one in god knows how many miles.
Very strange.
Weird Sleeper
Posted: Thu 17 June, 2010 Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Weirdness 1 Comment »As I’ve said before, Psycho Cat seems to prefer to sleep in some very strange places and positions. Even more bizarrely, he seems to prefer to sleep in the most uncomfortable scrunched up places possible.
Bear in mind that he’s got pretty much full run of the house, and could be sleeping on the spare bed, in the basket that he’s got, or in the living room on the sofa, chair or footstool thingy.
But no, he chooses to sleep (at the moment) on the dining room table, which also doubles on occasion as a desk, or a resting place for all kinds of tat. Last night, Herself had left a backpack thing on there. And this morning, guess what he was sleeping on/in…
Sleeping with the strap right round him
And obviously pretty comfortable / happy to do so.
Snugged *right* in. Weird little fucker
Weird beast.
Football
Posted: Mon 7 June, 2010 Filed under: Advertising, Travel, Weirdness 1 Comment »Every so often while driving I hear a promotion on Radio One for the football coverage on Radio Five Live.
It’s of no interest to me whatsoever, but always grabs my attention because of the first line of the promotion. It actually says “Football on Five Live”, but I keep on hearing it as “Fook All on Five Live”.
Road to Nowhere
Posted: Thu 27 May, 2010 Filed under: 1BEM, Charm School, Driving, Norfolk, Weirdness Leave a comment »Only in Norfolk.
Over in Attleborough, there’s a new road been put in which currently goes nowhere. It got used straight away as a place for a bunch of travellers. (and I believe there’s rumour of it being used as such on a longer-term basis) They got cleared out a few weeks back though.
Over the weekend I went past it, and there’s some road signs been put up.
30mph on a dead-end road with no houses or buildings on it
Flowering Rhubarb
Posted: Sat 8 May, 2010 Filed under: Domestic, Green Garden, Weirdness 1 Comment »One of the stranger sights in our garden this week…
Rhubarb Flower - click to embiggenify
I’ve never seen this before, but our main rhubarb plant has created what appears to be a flower. It’s kind of broccoli-like, but with (as you can see) red bits and pale green bits.
In short, very strange, and very alien-looking.
Bunnies
Posted: Wed 7 April, 2010 Filed under: Creativity, People, Script Frenzy, Weirdness, Writing 1 Comment »Sometimes it’s really quite scary seeing just how disturbing some bunnysuits are.
Bizarrely, I was doing some research on a writing idea to get me to that site. That’s quite worrying in itself…
Ouch
Posted: Wed 31 March, 2010 Filed under: 1BEM, People, Weirdness Leave a comment »Ouch. The mind boggles as to why you’d do this to yourself…
Just why?
The Long Way Home
Posted: Fri 5 March, 2010 Filed under: 1BEM, Travel, Weirdness, Work-related 1 Comment »I really worry about one of my colleagues. He’s mentioned on several occasions about his lack of navigational ability, but last night took the biscuit.
On leaving Bury after the company bowling trip last night (i.e. not the normal “departure location”) he took the wrong turn. His route should’ve been from Point A on the map below to Point B. A nice easy run. However, the route taken was slightly different…
One hell of a diversion...
Yep – a wrong turning meant that he went from Bury to Norwich, back down to Newmarket – past the place he lives! – to come back to Mildenhall.
I despair…
Centre Console
Posted: Fri 15 January, 2010 Filed under: Driving, Thoughts, Weirdness 5 Comments »One of the things that’s very odd (in my experience) with the Chevrolet Matiz I’m currently driving – but only ’til Monday, praise the Lord! – is the layout of the dashboard. The speedo, rev counter and fuel gauge aren’t in the normal place, but are instead slap-bang in the middle of the dash.
You get used to it quickly enough, but it’s still very odd initially to not have the dials in the normal place. In some ways it’s like when one of your mirrors is unavailable (whether it’s fallen off, been smashed off, or just that the car is so full of [whatever] that you can’t see out of the back window) in that you suddenly realise again how often you do check them. Until you get used to it, every time you look for the dial, it’s a little jolt ’til you remember where it actually is.
I’m not a great fan of having the dials in the centre of the dash. It’s not much different – not like you suddenly have to look somewhere completely different, or move your head/neck in order to see them or anything. But it doesn’t feel “right”. After however many years of having the dials in line with the steering wheel, having them in a different location just feels strange, and somehow “wrong”.
Not An Emergency
Posted: Wed 30 December, 2009 Filed under: 1BEM, Cynicism, News, People, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »As always, I despair of people’s idiocy when it comes to calling 999. (And regular posts and Twitters from Reynolds reinforce this too)
In this case, a woman calling 999 because her cat has been playing with string for two hours. I have no idea whatsoever what makes this an emergency in anyone’s mind (or what passes for a mind in this case) but I do think that anyone who thinks it’s an emergency deserve a punishment served up by a stun-gun.
Crossing to Nowhere
Posted: Mon 14 December, 2009 Filed under: 1BEM, Driving, Norfolk, Stupidity, Weirdness Leave a comment »While out shopping for some bits yesterday, we came across this crossing in a carpark in Norwich…
Crossing to Nowhere
Yep, that zebra-crossing actually ends up in a hedge. No pathway, no throughfare, nothing. Just cross the road, walk into a hedge.
Bizarre
Designer Pissoir
Posted: Sat 5 December, 2009 Filed under: 1BEM, Art, People, Weirdness Leave a comment »Lucky swine that I am, I came across these yesterday. They’re wrong in just so many ways…
Yep, urinals designed as flowers to piss in
Hard to believe someone’s designed something like this, isn’t it?
Unbelievable
Posted: Fri 4 December, 2009 Filed under: 1BEM, Charm School, Cynicism, Weirdness Leave a comment »I saw a trail for this TV programme (on BBC Three, no less) earlier this week, and assumed it was just a massive piss-take where I’d missed either a) the run-up or b) the punchline.
But no, apparently it’s real. A programme called “Move like Michael Jackson“.
And if your instant thought (like mine) was “Well that’s not going to be difficult, is it?” then you’re going to Hell too.
See you there.
Evil Santa
Posted: Sun 15 November, 2009 Filed under: 1BEM, Festering Season, People, Weirdness Leave a comment »Now this is my kind of way to scare kids in a Christmas Parade…
Santa cart with deer heads instead of reindeer...
From There, I fixed it
Always With You
Posted: Fri 13 November, 2009 Filed under: 1BEM, Art, People, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »Via a range of weird and wonderful links (just don’t ask, OK?) I came across a site called “Pictures of Jesus 4 U” which really has to be seen to be (dis)believed.
For me, the worst/creepiest ones are done by a guy called Larry van Pelt, (Pelt also has his own site here) which raise bad art to a new level. Go on, go and have a look.
What’s even scarier is that (I assume) some people actually pay for these images. There’s just no accounting for taste, I suppose…
Obsessive Behaviour
Posted: Wed 11 November, 2009 Filed under: D4D™, Domestic, Health, People, Thoughts, Weight Loss, Weirdness 1 Comment »Over the last few months, as I’ve written about before, we’ve been attending one of the local Slimming World groups in an effort to lose a bit of weight. Obviously I’ve got more to lose than Herself, but we’re both working on it.
So far it’s been fairly successful – we’ve both lost a stone over that time. We could, in all honesty, have lost more, and/or in less time if we followed all the rules and weighed everything obsessively.
But that’s the key word – in my opinion, there’s an awful lot of this weight-loss stuff that is actually about doing stuff obsessively. We’ve seen three (I think) “group leaders” now, all of whom have lost significant amounts of weight – and absolutely fair play to them for doing so, they’ve done fantastically well – but all of whom are (to be polite about it) just a little bit crackers. There’s a number of examples of this, although right now I can’t be arsed to list them.
The one that keeps on coming back to me, though, was the one who was still utterly obsessed by food – all she’d done was replace high-calorie foods with low-calorie ones. But there was still that slightly crackers gleam in the eye when she was talking about being able to eat “whole bowls of no-Syn trifle to yourself” and so on.
And I find I just don’t have that obsessive part to me – and to some degree it actually leaves me feeling quite uncomfortable. I’m not obsessed with food, nor do I collect anything obsessively, or really anything else. It’s simply not part of me.
I don’t know where I’m going with this, to be honest. It’s just something I’ve noticed and wanted to write about it. And maybe that’s it, maybe writing is my obsessive behaviour, whether it be D4D™ or other writing projects. In some ways I’d actually be quite happy if that were the case. I just don’t know if it is.
Ugly
Posted: Sat 7 November, 2009 Filed under: 1BEM, People, Stupidity, Weirdness Leave a comment »Every so often, you’ll see someone and just think “Why?”. Other people create websites dedicated to that moment…
First there’s Ugly Tattoos, which does exactly what the name says. Some seriously weird and ugly tattoos where you’ve got to wonder a) why they were done in the first place , b) what the people were thinking in the first place and in some cases c) how come the tattooist didn’t get sued.
Then there’s Wedinator, with wedding events/photos that are certainly strange andsometimes just plain wrong.
Any time I wonder whether I’ve been too cynical in my estimations of people, let these sites stand as witness to the fact I can never be that cynical.
Little and Large
Posted: Wed 4 November, 2009 Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Weirdness Leave a comment »As it’s coming up to two years since we got them, the chickens have started doing some strange things.
They haven’t been quite as productive this year as they were in their first year – which is to be expected – as they finally got round to all moulting in the last four months, and Gladys in particular has been a broody old cow this year.
All the same, the egg I found last night was notable…
Todays egg, on the right
That’s a normal-sized egg on the left, and the tiny example left yesterday. Very strange. I haven’t yet opened it up to see if it’s perfectly formed inside, though.
The Hallowe’en Paradox
Posted: Sat 31 October, 2009 Filed under: Charm School, Cynicism, Domestic, Weirdness Leave a comment »In some ways I feel the same about Hallowe’en as I do about The Festering Season. Mainly it’s the paradoxes that annoy me.
In the case of Hallowe’en, we’ll float past the crap about grown people dressing up like kids and so on.
But what gets me is this :
For most of the year (excluding the run-up to the Festering Season and Hallowe’en) children get told to not talk to strangers, not accept sweets from strangers, not accept anything, so forth, so fifth. But come the Festering Season, they’re told to talk to strangers about what they want, accept presents and all that shit. And come Hallowe’en, all of a sudden it’s fine for kids to dress up, go round the neighbourhood and knock on the doors of people they don’t know and have never met, and get sweets.
Which is – to me, anyway – just really fucking weird.
Body Scanning
Posted: Mon 19 October, 2009 Filed under: 1BEM, Media, Thoughts, Travel, Weirdness 2 Comments »In another breakthrough for idiocy, I see that the ‘see through’ scanner being tested at Manchester Airport has raised a problem that no-one appears to have thought of before now.
This scanner goes through clothes, and shows what has been termed (incorrectly) an ‘X-ray image’, which is more of an MRI body-scan, as I understand it. What it does is show (in black/white ‘ghost’ form) an image of the naked body.
And lo, they’ve suddenly thought “Oh shit, what happens when young people go through the scanner? It means we can see underage bodies…” so they’ve now stopped doing the scans on all under-18s.
Absolute brilliance – in all the hype, not one person in the media (or in the project itself) has said “Hang on, what about this scenario?”.
Fading Out
Posted: Fri 2 October, 2009 Filed under: D4D™, Weirdness Leave a comment »Here on D4D™ the single most popular post has been one I made back in January 2005 about the government’s plan to stop the painkiller co-proxamol from being prescribed. At the time of writing, it’s got 744 comments, and became almost like a forum for people ordering c0-proxamol overseas etc.
Strangely though, it seems that everyone has stopped using that post over the last month or so.
There’s possibly a few reasons for this…
- The regular commenters have all gone somewhere else
- The issue has disappeared entirely underground now
- They can’t find the page since I stuffed about with the URLs a while back.
I don’t know what the answer is. I don’t really mind one way or the other. It’s just odd to have gone from at least a couple of comments per day to nothing for a month.
Ah well.
Weirdness and Taxidermy
Posted: Wed 23 September, 2009 Filed under: Art, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »Sometimes you see a site and realise that some people on t’internet are very, very, very strange.
Just Why?
Posted: Thu 17 September, 2009 Filed under: 1BEM, Driving, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »The Aston Martin Vantage is a beautiful, beautiful car. It’s one of the very few that I’d love to own – I know it’s an utterly unrealistic prospect for a number of reasons (Not least being that it costs somewhere north of £85,000) but there we go. It’s still a thing of beauty, and when one goes past, I’ll always appreciate it.
However.
On my current walk in to work, I get passed two or three times every week by a Vantage. And while I love the shape and design of the car, I really can’t believe that anyone sane would get one painted in what I can only describe as powder blue. (According to Aston Martin, so far as I can tell it’s called ‘Glacial Blue 2’, but it’s nowhere near as dark as in their car-configuration thingy)
The car’s still beautiful. The colour is – frankly – fucking horrific. With so many colours to choose from, why the hell would someone choose powder blue, for chuff’s sake?
Dying on the Same Day
Posted: Tue 15 September, 2009 Filed under: News, Thoughts, Weirdness 2 Comments »Today it’s been announced that both Patrick Swayze and Keith Floyd have died. Not together, just on the same day.
In Floyd’s case, it’s ironic that the news comes the day after Channel 4 transmitted “When Keith met Keith” – about Keith Allen meeting Floyd in one of Floyd’s last ever interviews. Almost like he was hanging on for the programme…
Anyway, as Alan Cumming said,
“My greatest fear is dying on the same day as someone more famous than me”
Intruder Alert
Posted: Sat 15 August, 2009 Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Weirdness Leave a comment »The other day, at about 5.30am, Hound started growling and barking. This is her ‘normal’ (in as much as anything Hound does ever being seen as normal) alarm behaviour, when something’s going on that she thinks we need to know about. It’s reserved for strange Bad Things happening.
In this case, all her attention was being paid to the front door, so I went and had a look.
It turned out to be daylight, coming through a tiny gap at the edge of the curtains that cover the front-door area at night. Hound’s Alarm Bark was because of sunlight.
As soon as I moved the curtain, she looked at it in a bemused “Where’s the invader gone?” expression. And then went and laid down in her basket again, to go back to sleep.
Poxy fucking creature.
Delivery Weirdness
Posted: Tue 28 July, 2009 Filed under: Customer Services, Domestic, Getting Organised, Weirdness Leave a comment »One of the more major changes (well, the major non-structural changes) when we re-did the kitchen this year was to get a new a gas cooker installed to replace the old electric piece of shit that came with the house. It was a significant change because we’re not on mains gas here, so it also involves using gas cylinders.
Our first cylinder has finally run out, which means it’s time to get a replacement from Calor. There’s no urgency, due to having two cylinders, but equally it’s better to have the replacement sorted well before we actually need the sodding thing.
As a result, yesterday I called Calor’s local depot in Norwich (from which the cylinders were obtained by the people who installed the cooker) to order the replacement one. Except, based on our postcode, it turns out we don’t deal with the Norwich supplier/depot, but instead we deal with the – um – Bury St Edmunds depot.
According to the people at Calor Direct, getting our gas delivered from Bury St Edmunds is “more efficient”. But having checked on my faithful Route Planner, from the Norwich depot to this house is 19 miles. From the Bury St Edmunds depot, it’s 36 miles – nearly double the distance.
So how is that more efficient?
Savings?
Posted: Mon 27 July, 2009 Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Thoughts, Weirdness 2 Comments »In the shops today, I came across something that I still can’t quite get my head around. It’s one of those things where you’re just not sure if you’ve missed something relevant, or if it really is that weird.
Let me explain.
At the moment, both Sainsburys and Tescos have a promotion where you can buy 2 two-litre bottles of Coke (or Diet Coke) for £2. That’s fine.
However, right next to the individual bottles, they have a “Big Value” pack of 4 two-litre bottles. For £5.18 .
So the “Big Value” pack costs £1.18 more than 2 lots of the 2×2-litre deal.
What’ve I missed?
Blue or Green
Posted: Wed 1 July, 2009 Filed under: Thoughts, Weirdness 1 Comment »I love optical illusions, and seeing the way the brain works (and in some cases doesn’t) on these things
But this particular one still makes my head hurt…
Nigerian Gas/Oil
Posted: Thu 25 June, 2009 Filed under: Cynicism, News, Weirdness Leave a comment »Will someone please tell me that the new company name in this story is a joke? That the story was perhaps meant to be released on April 1st?
I find it hard to believe that anyone would seriously come up with the business name Nigaz for a Nigerian Gas/Oil company…
Norfolk Safety
Posted: Thu 18 June, 2009 Filed under: Creativity, Photography, Weirdness 1 Comment »I saw this a while ago, and completely forgot I’d taken a photo of it until I went through the photos on my phone today.
Yes, use a forklift as one support for a ladder
Well, it’s one way to do it, I suppose…
Yuck 2
Posted: Fri 12 June, 2009 Filed under: Charm School, Domestic, Geeky, Weirdness Leave a comment »In other news, Panasonic have released a very strange (and really quite creepy) prototype for a new remote control unit.
This conceptual gel remote from Panasonic lays limp when not in use, pulsating with a soft light. But when its sensors detect a hand coming, it stiffens, ready for action!
Thankfully, it’s a prototype and not released yet – otherwise I’d have thought twice about buying the new Panasonic DVD-Player/Speakers I’ve just got…
Yuck
Posted: Fri 12 June, 2009 Filed under: 1BEM, Advertising, Weirdness Leave a comment »(via Scalzi)
I’d never even heard of this before, and thankfully it’s not around any more.
But just the concept of Raspberry-flavoured Coke makes me shudder…
UKIP Voters Can’t Unfold Paper
Posted: Thu 4 June, 2009 Filed under: 1BEM, Cynicism, Weirdness 3 Comments »You just couldn’t make it up…
According to this post, a number of people wanting to vote for UKIP haven’t been able to because they haven’t fully unfolded their ballot papers.
So ridiculous it’s unreal.
Shallow Buyers
Posted: Tue 2 June, 2009 Filed under: 1BEM, Cynicism, Thoughts, Weirdness 4 Comments »Recently, I’ve been doing a fair amount of working from home, which also means I get to see some daytime TV – particularly the BBC morning stuff, as I’m still nowhere near chavvy enough to want to watch Jeremy Sodding Shitbag Kyle (to give him his full name) which seems to still have an unhealthy preoccupation with property.
One of these programmes, “The Unsellables” focusses on (as you may have already guessed) properties that aren’t selling. None of what they do is overly surprising – clean/tidy up, get rid of clutter, tart the place up, blah blah blah. And I understand all those things – up to a point.
But the points they make in this programme (and I’m sure in many others) are that people won’t buy a place if they don’t like the wall colour, or clutter, or – god help us – the furniture. Now I’ve repeated been accused over the years of being too harsh on people etc., but are people really that dumb/unimaginative that they can’t picture their own stuff in a house, or see that it won’t take much to change a place from scruff-tip to decent place?
I don’t know – maybe it’s to the advantage of others. I know that when we looked at the house we’re now in, it hadn’t been popular because it was so seventies, and there were a number of things that really needed doing to it. And maybe it was also because we were prepared to do that work, even though we knew it’d take time. (Admittedly, we didn’t expect it to take the 2+ years it’s taken, but there we go) But that work has left us with a place we actually like, and that has added significant value to the place – plus (I hope) making it far more sellable as and when we do decide to move on. Not that we’re planning to, you understand – but it’s still something to think about.
So for us it was worth looking past the seventies tat, the horrific ornaments, the vile carpets, the monolithic fireplace and the awkward bits of layout – and I suspect that now if we were to look at buying this place in the state it’s now in, we’d be looking at spending a significant amount more than we’ve actually put in to the place.
All of which brings me back to wondering what the hell these buyers on “The Unsellables” et al are really thinking (or not, as the case may be) when they see these properties and not liking them. After all, if the sellers are so desperate to sell, why not put in an offer that’s well under the asking price? Do some work – hell, even just some basic painting, cleaning, and moving stuff about, and the place would be back up to scratch for selling at the full price.
I must be missing something on this, but I really don’t know what…
Persistent
Posted: Sat 23 May, 2009 Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Thoughts, Weirdness 4 Comments »And now, a question :
The scenario : You’re dropping off something (letter, bill, leaflet, whatever) at a house, and your child insists on putting it through the letter box. From inside the house, you can hear a dog going completely nutty, barking and barking at the people the other side of the door. (i.e. barking at you and your child) But your child is – for whatever reason – having real issues with getting the envelope through the letterbox.
So – the question…
Bearing in mind that the dog is going mental, and sounds really aggressive, would you keep on letting your child try to post the envelope, or would you take over, get the job done, and bugger off so that a) the dog could calm down and b) your child didn’t get their fingers nipped if they put them through the letterbox?
Shark vs. Octopus
Posted: Wed 13 May, 2009 Filed under: Advertising, Thoughts, Weirdness 1 Comment »(via Chris)
An early contender for “Shittest Film of 2009” (No, not Wolverine) – “MegaShark vs. Giant Octopus”
The trailer, mind you, does have to be seen to be (dis)believed…
Meerkat / Dog
Posted: Thu 7 May, 2009 Filed under: Animals, News, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »Is it just me, or does the image of the world’s oldest dog on the BBC look very like Alexander, the meerkat from CompareTheMeerkat.com ?
Geeky Tattoos
Posted: Wed 6 May, 2009 Filed under: 1BEM, Cynicism, Geeky, Weirdness 3 Comments »Really, you’ve just got to worry about some of the people shown on the Geeky Tattoos site.
I mean OK, I can understand (kind of) getting a tattoo of your favourite game characters or whatever – but the text of a 90s geeky meme that wasn’t funny at the time? Not the smartest of moves for later life, I’d suggest.
And as for a tattoo of Wolverine riding My Little Pony – let’s just leave it at “Oh. My. God.”, shall we?
Debatable
Posted: Thu 9 April, 2009 Filed under: Driving, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »I’m still unsure whether the driver I followed to work this morning was
- Stupid
- Drunk
- Confused
Or - Insane
Throughout the journey, he would slow down to 30-40mph on the bits of road that were National Speed Limit, then speed up to 50-60mph through villages/towns where a speed limit was actually set.
But what can you do in that situation? The answer (so far as I can see) is “Not a lot”.
Yes, you could (assuming you’ve a hands-free phone) call the police and report the pillock. But (again, as I understand it) they need to see it themselves, rather than relying on witness reports. So they’d have to come along and somehow pull in behind the driver and watch him being a pillock. And there’s no guarantee he’d still be driving by the time they’d got their finger out and sent someone along the road to check anyway.
I don’t know, just a weird start to the day, really.
What’s That Book?
Posted: Mon 6 April, 2009 Filed under: D4D™, Geeky, Memory, Weirdness Leave a comment »Recently, my brain has been slightly locked with a question – one even the mighty AQA couldn’t come up with an answer to.
So I’m hoping that posting it on D4D™ might just find someone who knows what the hell it is I’m whittling on about.
Anyway – I read a book a while back, and I’m now trying to remember what the hell the book was. The scene I clearly recall involved one protagonist meeting the other for the first time in a school playground, where they were playing marbles. (At least, I think it was marbles – could’ve been tiddlywinks, or something)
Anyway, Person One knocks one of Person Two’s marbles out of play, and out of school grounds. As a result, Person Two throws one of Person One’s marbles out of the school grounds, and it degenerates into each one throwing the marbles out of the playground.
It’s a stupid scene, but I can’t remember where the hell it came from.
So help me, Interwebs, please…
Misguided Motivations
Posted: Tue 31 March, 2009 Filed under: 1BEM, Charm School, Thoughts, Weirdness 2 Comments »As I may have mentioned before, sometimes a phrase or quote from someone just leaves me bemused, and wondering what the hell they were thinking at the time.
This happened to me again yesterday, reading the story about how a communications officer for British Transport Police lied about a significant fact, which then caused a delay in finding the body of a missing woman.
He wrongly claimed to Essex Police that trains were fitted with sensors that would detect any collision on the line. This affected the police’s “perception of the likelihood of Natasha being on the railway lines”, the report said.
“The communications officer admitted he lied to an Essex police officer, initially telling IPCC officers that he did so to end the call which would allow him to get on with his job, and that he actually had no knowledge of train sensors,” the report said.
Now really, you’ve just got to wonder about the motivation there, haven’t you?
I guess it could be paraphrased as “I told a lie so I could get rid of the call, and go back to doing something else. Sure, the call was about a missing 17-year-old girl, but that wasn’t my problem or my job.”
I just think the entire thing’s weird, let alone the motivation for using that as an explanation of why he made that mistake…
Priorities
Posted: Thu 12 March, 2009 Filed under: Cynicism, News, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »Yesterday, wasn’t it interesting how the shooting of ten people in Alabama in the USA suddenly stopped being mentioned once the news of the shooting of fifteen people in Winnenden, Germany started to break?
It was as though the media decided that people wouldn’t want to know about both shootings, so the nearest and/or most recent one took precedence, and the other one could just kind of fall off the news cycle.
Hub Caps
Posted: Fri 27 February, 2009 Filed under: Driving, Travel, Weirdness 2 Comments »In the last month, I’ve somehow managed to lose all four hubcaps from my car. I know one went when I had the blowout, and another one disappeared soon after.
But I’ve lost the other two in the last three days. I haven’t hit anything, gone into any significant pot-holes, haven’t heard or noticed anything of them coming off. There’s no sign of them along my route to work. They’ve just disappeared.
Fortunately, when I had the blowout I’d ordered a couple of replacements from QuickHubs, and ended up getting a set of four as that cost me the same as two individual hubcaps. So in this case it’s fortuitous, as I now need all four – I’d have been mightily narked if I’d paid for two, and now needed two more, as that would have doubled what I’d paid.
At least now all four will match.
And I’ll be attaching them with plastic cable-ties as well, so they should stay put this time round…
Safe Sex Advert
Posted: Thu 5 February, 2009 Filed under: 1BEM, News, Thoughts, Weirdness 1 Comment »This story really should be used as an advert for safe sex.
Just something like “Going on a One night stand? This could be the result”
As I’ve said before, there’s no horror movie around that can outdo what people do to each other anyway.
Barmy driving
Posted: Tue 3 February, 2009 Filed under: Driving, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »Yesterday’s snow (which has all disappeared here now, thanks to a dollop of rain last night) brought out a bundle of bizarre driving habits along with it.
Fortunately none were as dodgy as this bell-end who took his 1300cc bike up to (at least) 122mph with his son riding pillion and said “But it had started to rain and I pulled back the throttle”. Yes, it had started raining, so he sped up to twice the speed limit. Way to go, dickweed.
Yesterday I got to see several idiots though – particularly (as I said at the time) drivers of four-wheel-drive vehicles with still no idea how to handle the weather at all. There were also (as always) several people driving with foglights on (yes, it’s one of my particular bug-bears, I know) during both snow and the evening rain. Now first of all the visibility wasn’t that bad at any point yesterday that it needed foglights on – but also foglights aren’t (as these drivers seemed to think) a Magic Talisman Of Road Protection™®, so I don’t understand the mental equation that says “I think the visibility is so bad that I need to put my foglights on, but I won’t slow down and I’ll still whack along this dual-carriageway at 80+ mph“.
All told, a very strange day on the roads.
But one good thing was that because of all the media rubbish about bad weather etc., there was virtually no traffic on the way home from work – I think I made the best time yet…
Norfolk Place Names
Posted: Sat 24 January, 2009 Filed under: Domestic, Travel, Weirdness 2 Comments »One of the things that’s pretty much guaranteed to drive you crackers when moving to Norfolk (and I’m sure the same is true of many other counties – it’s just that with being here, I notice the Norfolk ones more) is the sheer randomness of the pronunciation of some of the town names.
For example, how would you pronounce Wymondham ? I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t be Windham. (win-dom)
Other examples I’ve recently fallen foul of include :
- Happisburgh – hays-bur
- Tacolneston – tackle-ston
- Stiffkey – stookey
- Garboldisham – garble-sham
There’s plenty of others too, and locals invariably look at you like you’re some kind of weirdo when you pronounce the places like they’re spelt.
Mountains out of Molehills
Posted: Fri 23 January, 2009 Filed under: News, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »It’s weird, but in the last couple of days there’ve been two stories I’ve noticed in the media where a small argument or action has exploded into a murder.
First there was the row that started over the name of a kitten, and ended up with one person stabbing the other.
Then there was the man who murdered his estranged wife because she changed her Facebook status to ‘single’.
Now, I know – and freely admit – that sometimes I let stupid little things build up until I get pissed off, but then it all goes out and job done. I can’t see that those things would ever build up to me killing someone. Maybe that’s why these stories are (to me) so very, very strange.
Racist Terms
Posted: Sun 11 January, 2009 Filed under: Cynicism, Offensive Repetition, Weirdness 9 Comments »Of all the things that annoy me about the story of Prince Harry using a racially insulting term (no less than three years ago) is that the media then seems to use it as an excuse for repeating and publicising the same term ad infinitum.
The BBC story linked to above uses it, and the ITV News story I saw a few minutes ago on it used the same term no less than three times within the story.
So how does the media explain how they can get away with it when they’re reporting how offensive it is for someone else to use the term?
Badly Written
Posted: Mon 29 December, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, Geeky, News, Weirdness 1 Comment »I guess someone at the BBC is trying to see what they can get past people on a slow week.
In this story about new British stamps for 2009, there’s the following paragraph…
Later sets will feature mythical creatures such as mermaids, post boxes, eminent Britons, Royal Naval uniforms and the fire service.
Hmmm, eminent Britons are mythical creatures?
Chilling a Beach
Posted: Wed 24 December, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, Thoughts, Weirdness 1 Comment »And just when you thought things couldn’t get any sillier – along comes this.
A plan to cool down the sand on the beach at a luxury hotel in Dubai.
“We will suck the heat out of the sand to keep it cool enough to lie on,” said Soheil Abedian, founder and president of Palazzo Versace.
“This is the kind of luxury that top people want.”
Meanwhile, back in the real world…
Bizarre
Posted: Tue 9 December, 2008 Filed under: News, Thoughts, Weirdness 3 Comments »I defy you to read this story without shaking your head and thinking “What the fuck was he doing/thinking?”
One of the more truly bizarre stories of the year – and not helped by the fact that his actions resulted in the deaths of two people…
Misconceptions
Posted: Fri 5 December, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, Weirdness 3 Comments »In the last couple of weeks, two common misconceptions have been thrust into my brain. They both drive me potty, but I’m also interested in finding out from whence they came.
First is a spelling one – for some fuckforsaken reason, some people seem to think that Edinburgh is actually spelled Endinburgh . No idea why. But it comes up with a fair number of results in Google. (That’s changed since last time this one came up – at that point there were a lot of students in “Endinburgh University” as well, which is pretty scary)
Second is a really common one – people thinking that the USA consists of fifty-two states. I’d love to know where this one emanates from, as the US has had 50 states since 1959, and none have been added in the intervening 49 years…
Oh, for fuck’s sake
Posted: Fri 28 November, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, Weirdness 1 Comment »Following on from the bollock-waving idiocy of the Brand/Ross farce last month, programmes on the BBC will be using less swearing next year.
I hope this doesn’t herald a return to the days of the “Muddy Funster” over-dubs of the eighties/nineties. (I did a quick Google search on this, but can’t find a decent date for when it happened)
Mind you, the story itself does seem to be in place just so they can write lots of sweary words…
Moving in Mysterious Ways
Posted: Thu 13 November, 2008 Filed under: Weirdness Leave a comment »Now this has to be one of the more bizarre stories for any given week/month/year.
Basically, as the story’s headline says, “Woman killed by husband’s coffin”.
You just couldn’t make it up.
Parking Policies
Posted: Thu 30 October, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, Thoughts, Weirdness 2 Comments »I swear, I’m never going to understand some people.
In the new job, there’s a large staff car park – which is fine, there’s a lot of staff. There’s no space reservations, or team/department delineations on who parks where – it’s just “find a space and use it”. However, most mornings I’ll see people either:
- ‘Having’ to park in ‘their’ space (and/or getting annoyed because some inconsiderate soul has parked in ‘their’ space)
or - Driving round the car-park (sometimes twice) in order to find the “best” parking spot – despite driving past any number of empty spaces in order to find one closest to the office.
Me, I just use the first space I see. It’s simple. I’m capable of remembering where my car is in the car park, and going back to it when I leave the office.
So I just don’t really understand these little obsessions with having one’s own parking space, or with trying to find the absolute closest available space to minimise walking (one assumes) when you’ve already driven past umpteen empty spaces.
Just bizarre, in my (oh so) humble opinion.
Camera Defaults
Posted: Wed 22 October, 2008 Filed under: Geeky, Photography, Thoughts, Weirdness 3 Comments »One of the things that has surprised me on my photography course is the number of the people on it who haven’t really played with their cameras at all.
For instance, the great majority still even have the default (and highly irritating) beeps, clicks and whistles that accompany every keypress or option change. During the course, as the tutor describes certain options, you can hear them beeping through the menus, trying to find the things he’s talking about.
Now I have to say that as well as being bloody annoying, I do find that this is quite inconsiderate – both to the tutor, and to the other people in the class. For me, those sodding beeps are really distracting – and I’m sure I’m not the only one on the course who finds them so. But while they’re going through the menus, they’re also not really listening to what the tutor is saying next, which means he’s either got to repeat it, or they’ve missed it completely.
I think sooner or later I’m going to go and silence the cameras in question – but we’ll see.
I suppose that I just find it strange that people seem to be happy to buy a new device/gadget/whatever, and not fiddle with it and try all the options. And yes, I know, I’m a techie geek, and thus fiddling with new things is always going to happen with me, but all the same – wouldn’t you want to try out most of the options on a new camera as soon as you got it? And/or figure out what these arcane settings like Av, Tv, ISO etc. actually do?
Electoral Prejudice
Posted: Fri 17 October, 2008 Filed under: Charm School, Cynicism, Weirdness Leave a comment »I’ve been fairly good about not mentioning the US Presidential Election campaign, but Holy Jesus Fuck, sometimes Americans scare me.
Some of the sentiments in this report are just bizarre – you have to wonder how people get to be so bigoted and prejudiced. Very, very scary viewing.
High Finance
Posted: Thu 9 October, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »The more that the ‘credit crunch’ continues, the more I realise just how much I don’t understand about finance, and the way it supposedly works. (Although “works” is a pretty loose term for it, in this context)
For example, I simply don’t understand how a country can continue to operate when it has a National Debt of over 10 trillion dollars. I can’t see any world where that makes sense. But maybe it’s just me being simple.
And I don’t understand how local councils can complain on the one hand about their ever-shrinking budgets, and how they’re going to have to make cutbacks to services every year, yet they can also afford to invest millions in an Icelandic bank. (For example, our local council has £12 million there, yet keeps on bitching that it hasn’t got any money, and that services have to be reduced)
I must be simple. I just don’t get how this can be seen as a working system…
Overtaking
Posted: Tue 23 September, 2008 Filed under: Driving, Thoughts, Weirdness 3 Comments »Why is it that whenever you’re overtaken on a motorway or dual-carriageway, it’s never by a sports car, or anything that looks like it should be overtaking everything? Instead it’s always the Minis, or Ford Mondeos.
Just, why?
Yes, it could be a bug…
Posted: Fri 12 September, 2008 Filed under: Geeky, Weirdness Leave a comment »(via The Daily WTF)
4/7/2008 13:22 GMT;BENJAMIN;
Checked power connections and power to outlet. Monitor is on but not
computer. Checked power button on computer's power supply, user states
there is not one. Re-seated power connections, computer turned on for
about 3 seconds and turned off. Details:
Machine Name - DHO00MXL643843
User ID - 99321
Display Name - Burleson, Stephannie
OS Name - Microsoft Windows XP
Service Pack - Service Pack 2
Serial Number - MXL644493
Admin Access - Y OUSite - MN999-EAGAN-ETC
Assigning out per SW, setting pri3.
4/7/2008 14:09 GMT;MAURICE A;
User called for a status because her supervisor wants her to head to
the office if it will be more than an hour ; user will bring the
computer in with her if she has to go into the office
4/7/2008 15:11 GMT;ROBERT J;
contaced Stephanie and she had just finished carrying her pc downstairs
and loaded it into her car.since it is already loaded shi will go ahead
and take it into the Plano Parkway office and I will contact her when
she gets there. I am also contacting Jorge Alvarez, 2nd hat , to alert
him to expect her
4/7/2008 16:22 GMT;ROBERT J;
Jorge is picking up her pc and will connect it for testing
4/7/2008 18:21 GMT;ROBERT J;Jorge in Plano reported that this pc is
packed full of roaches so bad that they took the pc outside, did not even
want it in the building, and took the hard drive out. He will copy the users
data over to a share and i will copy the data to the hot swap pc which they
want to give the user as her new pc. They are going to bag and seal the
other pc and scrap it, as they do not want it in the building.
4/7/2008 19:14 GMT;JORGE H;
cleaned pc. Yikes! connected HD to our pointsec pc, assisted in transferring
data. Had cust test pc.
4/7/2008 20:34 GMT;JORGE H;
I would like to publicly thank Terry for helping me clean out and exterminate
all (I hope) the roaches from this computer, which has been quarantined in an
air-tied bag. NOTE: I hope never to see anything like this ever again,
however from now on I will be more careful when opening computers!
Just Yuck.
More Money Than Sense
Posted: Thu 4 September, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, Thoughts, Weirdness 2 Comments »This story, to me, illustrates what can happen when you’ve got more money than you know what to do with.
A Russian millionaire buys a £5m house in Sandbanks, Dorset. However, he doesn’t like the house itself, just the land it’s on. So he plans to pull down this house he’s spent £5 million on, and then build another one (allbeit with a new extra bedroom, with its own sun terrace) for another £2.5m.
Now maybe it’s just me, but I don’t see the point of buying a house, only to knock it down and replace it.
But then, I don’t have £7.5 million to chuck down the drain, either.
Blocked Roads and SatNav
Posted: Mon 1 September, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, Travel, Weirdness 6 Comments »Another day, another pig of a drive in to the office.
Today, two trucks had collided, with one spewing its load of 10T of steel all over the road. Luckily (in some perspectives) I knew about this one before leaving home, so I’d also brought the SatNav with me.
By the time I got to the A11/A14 junction, the police had completely closed off the A14, and were sending people down to the M11 to come back up the A505 – both of which were by now also completely rigid with traffic.
I set TomTom to know that there’d been a roadblock on the A14, and at first thought I’d let it take me where it wanted. Until it kept insisting I turn round and go back to the A14. Stupid piece-of-shit satnav. So in the end, I used my knowledge instead, and got through the middle of Cambridge instead, with TomTom repeatedly insisting “No, you need to go back to the A14, you need to go back.” and then eventually “Oh, hang on, yeah, you’re right, you can go this way, and you know what? It’ll take you right to the office.” The undertone of “I’m great, aren’t I? How would you have managed without TomTom” is probably just me disliking the poxy thing.
Actually, I’d have done pretty well even without TomTom. I was 90% sure of where I was going, and where I needed to be. I might have made one mistake, but that would’ve been it.
Also, I want to check this on the way home, but I’m sure it’s pointing right to go West on the compass setting. Any time I noticed it today, it was doing so. All told, that’s a bit of a worry…
Intent
Posted: Tue 19 August, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, Thoughts, Weirdness Leave a comment »I still really don’t understand how someone can be found guilty of posessing documents that promote terrorism. It’s almost as dodgy (in my opinion) as being found guilty of “planning a terrorist attack”. (i.e. it was talked about/thought about, but nothing actually happened)
In this case, the person was “found to have a book on how to make napalm” in his posession. I can think of two or three books just off the top of my head that explain how to make napalm – or at least the basic concepts.
To me, this is the same as saying “Well, you’ve got lots of murder-mystery books, so you must be planning to kill someone”. Hell, I’ve got at least two books that go through the intimate details of shooting heroin. So that must mean I’m planning to take it myself, right?
Stopping Cycles
Posted: Tue 22 July, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, Weirdness Leave a comment »What’s wrong with this picture?
Yep, a barrier to stop people cycling – right next to a wide-open space, with nothing to stop people just cycling onto that instead.
Genius.
Extreme Kayaking
Posted: Thu 3 July, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, Weirdness 1 Comment »Taking a kayak down a 120ft waterfall?
I’ll pass, thanks.
Neat(ish) New Spam
Posted: Wed 2 July, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, Thoughts, Weirdness 1 Comment »Now that my email server is back in the land of the living, I’ve received a bundle of delayed emails, which included two copies of a neat new “phishing” spam email. Not a banking one for once, but instead they’re doing some social engineering stuff, and it looks like this…
Tax Refund: You are eligible to receive a tax refund of È252.80
After the last annual calculations of your fiscal activity we have determined that you are eligible to receive a tax refund of È252.80.
Please submit the tax refund request and allow us 15-30 days in order to process it.ATENTION: Insufficient or incorrect information may lenghten the whole process. Usually does not take more than one week from the date you have provided us with your details. In some cases (especially submitted by those without permanent National Insurance Number) this may take considerably longer.
You have 48 hours to complete your tax refund claim. To access the secure form for your tax refund, please click here [link deleted, for obvious reasons]
The link address is to some ropy domain callled mail.betreuungsverein-aachen.de which kind of gives the game away (if the J instead of a £ character, and mis-spelling of ‘ATTENTION’ hadn’t flagged it up already) but I can imagine that a fair number of idiots will click on the link for the prize of £250ish. Idiot Tax ahoy!
Bad Timing
Posted: Tue 24 June, 2008 Filed under: Domestic, Health, Travel, Weirdness 3 Comments »I’ve decided that I hate my body clock. Or my body clock hates me – I’m not quite sure which, yet.
Last night, at about 7pm I was exhausted, and had totally hit the barrier. I was speaking to Herself, and must’ve sounded like a stunned monkey, really not with it at all. At that time, I was all set for an earlyish night, as it’d been a fairly hectic day.
That’s not what my body clock wanted though. Come ten pm, my brain went *ping!* and I was wide awake again. No caffeine, no sugar, nothing to stimulate it at all, but just *ping!*.
It didn’t slow down again ’til gone 1am. And I was awake again at about half six.
Bastard.
In On Time
Posted: Mon 23 June, 2008 Filed under: Driving, Travel, Weirdness 6 Comments »I forgot to post (due to spending time sorting out and cleaning up the PC I’ve been given for this assignment, so it now runs slightly quicker than the average tortoise) but I got in to the new contract on-time.
Not, however, for want of trying on the part of other road users. It just seems to have been one of those days where simple tasks like merging or changing lanes became a bit of a challenge for people, which led to one part of the journey taking nearly half an hour longer than it should have done.
The prime example of this was the section of the A11 that goes from dual-carriageway to single just after a roundabout. For some reason this morning it was block-full of bell-ends who couldn’t merge lanes. The queue went for a mile, then round the roundabout (exceptionally dodgy) and into the lane merge section. Once you’d got through that, it was plain sailing the rest of the way through the single-carriageway section, and the delay was just caused by fuckwit bastards who couldn’t cope with merging lanes. Unsurprisingly, the word “cunt” sprang forth from my lips on a couple of occasions.
The A14 and M11 were no better – on both, the outside lane came to emergency stops a couple of times for no good reason except people being incapable of the necessary multi-tasking required for a) indicating and b) changing lane.
But all told, I’d timed it so that the journey got me in to the office for 9:02am. Which wasn’t bad, considering the state of the driving that was going on around me…
Joan Rivers in Sweary “Shocker”
Posted: Thu 19 June, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, Weirdness 2 Comments »Quite why anyone would put Joan Rivers on a live show is beyond me, with her reputation for swearing and so on. But ITV’s “Loose Women” did so – not even a delay in which to put a bleep in – although Rivers thought there was a bleep system in place.
And Lo, she swears, and then gets her section cut short.
All told, though – very funny.
Spammer
Posted: Fri 23 May, 2008 Filed under: Charm School, D4D™, Weirdness Leave a comment »I don’t normally bother to write much about spam – partly because I get a fair amount of it (although D4D™ doesn’t seem to be getting anywhere near as much as it used to – anyone else noticed their blogs not getting so many spam comments?) and mainly because well, it’s just rubbish.
But one arrived this morning which just made me chuckle. No good reason except for a very childish sense of humour.
From: Morgan Wang.
Subject : Natural Impotence Supplement
Yes, impotence supplements coming from a Wang. I’m saying no more.
Taking my Name in Vain
Posted: Thu 22 May, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, D4D™, Weirdness 3 Comments »I promise, no matter how much it sounds like me, this piece on ‘The Daily WTF’ is not me.
Honest.
I never did care about team-building, or winning a game of Laser-Tag…
Strange Wedding
Posted: Sun 18 May, 2008 Filed under: Domestic, Weirdness Leave a comment »Over the weekend, I had to go to the wedding of my cousin – it was a family thing, and with our side being rather short of numbers at the best of the times, there was definitely an air of “Thou Must Attend”. Herself had to work, so off I went.
It was very strange. Not in a happy-clappy “out in the world” way, or anything like that- in the context of ceremony it was pretty much a standard register-office thing. Well, except that the register office was no longer where the council’s website said it was, and nor was it where we’d been told it was (with postcode etc.) which resulted in a last-minute flurry of mobile-phone calls finding out just where the feck everyone was supposed to actually be.
Eventually found the place though, so all went OK. I’m also glad I didn’t take my main camera, as the “wedding photographer” would’ve been a bit miffed. He was using a Fuji “bridge” camera – fair enough, if it turns out the results, and I’ve had one similar which was excellent – but hadn’t yet managed to figure out (for example) how to turn off the little beeps and ‘shutter clicks’ that it made. Which made things a little bit more amusing during the ceremony, I suppose (for me, anyway) but it just all seemed a little uninspiring. Oh, and he later ran out of battery power just before they cut the cake, so there were no photos of the cake, or anything for any events after that (first dance, etc. etc.) – again, hardly inspiring stuff for a so-called wedding photographer.
Various people had also decided to just get pissed , and were making twats of themselves even before the wedding meal had finished. Still *shrug* not my problem – I don’t have to meet the pillocks ever again, so I don’t really care.
But all told, it just came filed under a very strange wedding, and my parents and brother agreed with that verdict. Ah well, at least I kept the peace by having gone to it.