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Tuesday, March 21, 2006

Names Of Phones

Time was, it was just a phone. Now it’s got to be a ZX128, only not that, because that’s a computer from the Eighties. It’s got to be some seemingly random combination of letters and digits anyway.

Has everybody got some sort of operating system installed in place of a brain nowadays? How do they remember the different names? I sometimes get caught near conversations which seem to contain no nouns.

“I’m getting the FD350.”
“No. You don’t want that. You want the DF530. It’s got ‘dinobot’ functionality enabled.”
“The DF530? Are you having a laugh? You’re living in the past.”

The stupid thing is, despite appearing to weigh up technical pros and cons, what the two people in this conversation are actually saying is as follows.

“I’m getting a silver phone.”
“No. Silver looks shit. You should get a black phone.”
“I think black looks shit. I’m getting the silver one.”

I still don’t know how they remember which combination of letters refers to which phone though. I’m going to start talking in binary code to see how they like that.

People who recycle jokes

There are certain joke standards. I don’t mean that there is a certain level of quality in the world of comedy, I mean that there is a canon of supposedly ‘humorous’ comments known by all. These are jokes that everyone has heard – and quite possibly said – a thousand times over. Nobody finds them funny because they’re so familiar, but still they survive.

Have you ever said: “Who’s strangling a cat?’, or some similar phrase? Have you? HAVE YOU? I bet you have. Well don’t say it again.

For some people this ready-made joke is such a reflex that they find themselves making it even when it isn’t applicable. The point is that someone sounds so bad that they sound like a distressed feline, but for some people any singing at all is an excuse to play the funny man. I’m not a singer and I don’t particularly enjoy my colleagues joining in with the radio, but not everyone sings badly all of the time. You don’t have to make the cat-strangling joke. Just bite your lip. Is everyone going to literally die of laughter? Is anyone going to be even the slightest bit impressed at your witticism?

And if you don’t have sugar in your tea, but someone asks you if you do, for the love of God, don’t say: ‘I’m sweet enough, thanks’. You’re not agreeable enough. Shall I put something in your tea to rectify that? Like arsenic?

You could say that these hackneyed one-liners are a means of social linkage; a way of maintaining communication with those around you and identifying with them. You could say that the underlying meaning is of a shared culture. But that would be to overlook the fact that the clearer message – the message that’s being forced into your ears in the form of tainted air from a halfwit’s lungs – is that this person talks bollocks.

People who drink lager, but don’t like lager

Are there such people? Yes. This is how you can tell: They like the most tasteless lager available on the market and they like it as cold as is possible without it turning solid.

When something’s that cold, you can’t taste it. It doesn’t taste nicer. It tastes less. When you discard the last of your drink because it’s warm, it’s not because of the temperature – it’s because you don’t like it.

They also say 'give us a head on it' when lager's not supposed to have a head. They complain that their beer's flat if it doesn't have a head.

Of course they can’t drink anything else because the adverts on TV tell them they’ve got the best there is.

Eastenders

It’s unremittingly miserable and it’s on just about every day as well. Every single character is physically repellent and bad-tempered and nothing nice ever happens to anybody.

Just catching a glimpse of it ruins my entire week. Essentially, everybody in it is trying to make everybody else unhappy in some way. They do this in a variety of ways, sometimes it’s straightforward and obvious, sometimes it’s subtle and devious. Occasionally two or more characters unite in a bid to somehow ruin someone’s life. Their cooperation is usually short-lived as any unified team quickly turns in on itself and tears itself apart from within.

What this programme says to me is that life is miserable now and it is only ever going to get worse and worse and worse. Everyone in the world is untrustworthy and dedicated to the pursuit of sending others into despair.

Sometimes they produce a ‘special’. This is even more awful than an ordinary episode and you will most likely die of a frozen heart by even entertaining the idea of watching it. But watch it some people do, which is just incomprehensible. What could anybody possibly get out of watching increasingly miserable made-up people?

Hard Butter – Soft Bread

That’s pretty self-explanatory really. Just what do you do? Sometimes I chance my arm. The butter’s kind of softish – it might be okay… No. The bread’s in pieces. I’m losing my temper. I’m stabbing the bread. That doesn’t help. Now there are just lots of small knife-shaped holes in the bread on top of the butter-clogged tear.

Tuesday, March 14, 2006

People Who Like Chris Moyles

Not Chris Moyles himself, I’m sort of ambivalent about him these days. He’s like some sort of mystery skin blemish that you’ve got. One that serves no purpose and isn’t particularly pleasant, but you aren’t going to be able to maintain any sort of displeasure towards it, because it’s just not worth it.

What I do hate are people who really like Chris Moyles or ‘Moylesy’ as they usually call him. How do they get so worked up about him? He’s rarely funny, he’s frequently unpleasant. What’s the appeal? Why object to radio station A which plays bland music with a bland DJ, yet actively cajole colleagues to ‘put Moylesy on’?

I think it’s just that people like to go along with everyone else and being as he has a big listenership they worry that they might miss something. They won’t. There’s nothing to miss. Maybe if I smother them with Chris Moyles’ gargantuan, bloated belly they’ll feel satisfied.