People Who Think They're on Diets

They spend half of their time going on about how good they’ve been and how they’ve only had two-and-a-half points over the whole weekend. They spend the other half of their time eating Caramel Aeros and Double Deckers, saying: “I was good all weekend and only had two-and-a-half points, so I can treat myself”.

You should treat yourself to a walk once in a while, more like. Just when did you last get up from your desk? To go and get some crisps at lunchtime? No – Karen brought you those. You just sat there.

They say: “Fruit, eh? Are you on a diet?” No. I’m not on a diet. I’m just eating fruit. You can do that you know. Just because you think that three bags of crisps and a Mars Bar is a normal meal, doesn’t mean I do. Sorry, I know that you eat lots of fruit over the weekend, even though I’ve never once seen you eat anything other than crisps, chocolate or occasionally, to treat yourself, chips or a bacon butty.

If you want to eat complete shite all the time, feel free. Have the exact same two meals every day of your life – that’s fine. Just don’t go on about how you’ve got fat. When? When you were three? Don’t claim to be on a diet when you clearly aren’t capable or don’t even know how – Coke is not a drink for the weight-conscious. And don’t celebrate when you’ve lost a pound, or at least do it in private if you do. A pound isn’t a lot –especially for you. It’s pure chance that you managed it. You probably ran out of deep-fried suet pastry over the weekend.

Patrick Kielty

What is he? Where did he come from?

As I remember it, he was a stand-up ‘comedian’ in the nineties, I could be wrong, but that’s hardly the point. The next thing you know, he’s got his own chat show on BBC1 on Saturday nights. It took Jonathon Ross years to get into that position and here’s the thing – Jonathon Ross is quite funny.

Kielty? He makes me want to tip him into a coffin-sized tank filled with box jellyfish and then bury it. They say that if a tentacle of a box jellyfish lightly brushes your skin, it’s like having a cigarette held there for maybe thirty seconds or more. Imagine an entire tank full of them and now imagine Kielty writhing around amongst them. He’d still be smug, though. I’ve never known anyone look so self-satisfied. Maybe it comes from hoodwinking a nation, but that doesn’t come close to justifying it. Tony Blair doesn’t look anywhere near as smug and prior to Kielty, he was the epitome of smugness.

You can laugh all you like at reality TV contestants’ doomed fantasies of becoming presenters. It’s perfectly reasonable. If Kielty can rule the airwaves then why not them; or one of the doctors from Casualty; or one of the patients from Casualty who’s unconscious for the entire episode? Why not my neighbour’s cat who fell asleep standing up the other day? Why not one of that cat’s craps?

People In Grey Cars

If I’ve just gone round a roundabout or set off from some traffic lights and you’re directly behind me, then there’s a chance that I might not be driving slowly, but in fact, accelerating slowly. So instead of feeling around with your front bumper to see if my car’s equipped with a tow-bar, back off just a touch and stop rolling your eyes and leaning on the inside of your car door whilst rubbing your forehead.

Problem is, I don’t drive a Mercedes Bigprick, or whatever you’re in. It takes me a while to get up to the speed limit. You can’t buffet me along with on a cushion of air in front of your car. I can only accelerate so quickly. Normally this isn’t a problem as if you’re driving at any speed there are ordinarily a couple of lanes. Occasionally though, I too need to get past some traffic.

If I’ve been trapped in what you no doubt call the ‘slow lane’ by a fleet of grey cars – and they are always grey, why don’t you guys ever buy blue cars or red cars? Are you worried that all your besuited mates will be all, ‘here he comes in his blue car’ and laugh themselves to even earlier graves? If you think that you’re not offending anyone with a grey car, you are – me.

Anyway, if I’ve been trapped in the ‘slow lane’ as you guys all whistle past, I’m inevitably behind something slow moving, like a tractor or a milk float or your brain. I need to pull out into the ‘fast lane’ in order to overtake. So I wait for a space and then indicate (flashing orange light on the side…doesn’t matter) before changing lanes. Now here’s the problem. I’m only travelling at 40mph and the speed limit’s 60mph. I can either drop down a gear to third – yes, third – and let my engine leap out of the bonnet, or I can floor it in fourth and overtake the tractor over a period of hours. Actually it’s seconds, but you guys don’t seem to have the same appreciation of time as the rest of us.

Here’s where it gets annoying. I’m alongside the tractor now. It’s been approximately two seconds since I left the safe haven of the ‘slow lane’ and the speck on the horizon behind me, is now a vast grey car, driven by a wide-eyed nutcase. He’s probably flashing his lights. It’s going to be another fifteen seconds or so until I reach 60mph, but those fifteen seconds feel like a lifetime. Finally, I’m past. I return to ‘my’ lane and he overtakes, narrowly missing me in his impatience.

The only event that tops this is when I have found myself in the ‘fast lane’ on a dual carriageway with a central reservation and we approach a speed camera. Grey Car Man One, who is in front of me slams on his breaks and passes the speed camera at 60mph or even 50mph. I’ll only say this once – being as I silently scream it whilst imagining stoving someone’s head in with a BMW drivers’ manual on a daily basis – but a dual carriageway with a central reservation is a 70mph limit. Do you know how long it takes me to attain the speed of 70mph? Well you’re going to if you’re Grey Car Man Two.

Grey Car Man One breaks. I break. We crawl through the speed camera as traffic in the other lane undertakes us. Then he roars off leaving me stranded. There’s solid traffic inside me, and Grey Car Man Two is right up behind me and he’s about to use his horn and his lights. Well, he’ll just have to wait.

Britney Spears

She has one eye on the side of her head; one eye in the middle of her forehead and she's fucking stupid.

People Who Have Strong Opinions About Everything

You may think it hypocritical for someone with a Page of Rage to criticise people who have strong opinions about everything, but that is not so. I only hold strong opinions about things that make me apoplectic. There are any number of things in my everyday life which peeve me, but I let pass. There are any number of things which I like, but I don’t tell you you’re wrong and force-feed you statistics to back up my spurious claims.

If someone at work offers me a drink, but gets my request wrong, I utter not a word. The way I look at it, I would have nothing but for that person, so I should be grateful. If I trip over a raised paving slab, I don’t berate the gods – everyone trips at some point. But there are some people – some people who seem to feel the need to shout out about absolutely everything. All they are saying is, ‘look at me, listen to me – I’ve got such interesting opinions on everything’. But they haven’t. They haven’t at all.

You know these people. If they can’t find something of theirs for five minutes, they stop everyone, call in the police and practically break down in tears. If somebody does something slightly incorrectly, like leaving a door ajar, they shout (to themselves) about ‘how hard is it to shut a door’ and make a weird angry, disapproving sigh sound. A kind of forceful exhalation that lets everyone know that they’re all incompetent door-openers and that this person should have their arse kissed my God.

I know someone annoying. There is always a radio on when I’m with this person. Occasionally on this radio, they report the news. I dread the news. Every item is an open-armed invitation to this person to say something moronic and needless. One headline concerned the kidnap and rape of a child. There is nothing more despicable than that and there’s the thing – everybody knows that. Who on God’s green earth feels it necessary to open their mouth and say: “That’s disgusting”, in a sneering tone of voice. “I can’t stand things like that”. Of course you can’t. What are you trying to tell us?

What they’re actually trying to tell you is not that child-rape is disgusting, that’s just the way they paint it. What they’re trying to tell you is that they are an amazingly moral person, inhabiting a moral plain far above us mere mortals – a plain where child abuse is frowned upon.

If you don’t have anything to say, don’t open your mouth. Are you telling us that child abuse is bad? If so, we know that. There are going to be news items like that on a regular basis. It’s a sad fact, but it’s true. Please don’t comment on them.

The person with opinions about everything doesn’t stop at commenting on head-stabbingly obvious events though. Oh no no. They have strong opinions about things of which they don’t have the faintest grasp and they’re just daring you to haul them up on it, so they can unleash more of their deranged and ill-thought-out wisdom in an argument. They love arguments. Don’t let them trap you. They don’t deserve the vindication or the attention.

Another sample case: The news item concerned a suicide bomb on a police station in Baghdad.
“They complain about us, but they’re bombing themselves.”
Sometimes I try and deduce whether there’s any aspect of that that doesn’t annoy, but all the blood runs straight to my rage-vein in the side of my head and prevents me from thinking clearly and non-aggressively.

What do you mean? Just, what… do you mean? Are you trying to say that all Iraqi people ­­­– that is, every last one – has some collective Borg-like conscience whereby they only have one opinion about things between them, be they Sunni, Shi’a or otherwise? And on top of that, that they have some communal urge for self-harm? Are they enjoying bombing themselves? Who would bomb themselves, you retard? Finally, since when has complaining about British and American troops meant that you can’t engage in any violent practices? I have a couple of questions that I would like answering about the Abu Ghraib facility. Does this mean that I can’t hole-punch your eyelids whenever the news comes on?

It’s enough to make you seek out their house, break in and put shit in their shoes before they get dressed in the morning.