Tuesday, February 21, 2006

New ‘Green Strategy’ Enforced

They’ve just been re-surfacing the road down my way – gets rid of the potholes so can’t complain about that. They’ve also made the paths wider. Sounds good too – but no, I’m pissed off (again!) They’ve done this by wiping out the grass verges. Another tiny piece of green is gone. The snails that used to like to cross from the hedges to the verge and back again will now just die and be crunched underfoot by the children of idiot parents who think that killing things is OK.

Just a few snails; save a bit of money on grass cutting; just a tiny thing – but that’s how it goes. The Council has a green ‘strategy’; where I work had a green ‘policy’; everyone has f*ckin’ good intentions and tells the kids to take the bottles to the bank in the 4x4. In the real world it’s OK to park on the verges, to churn them up with delivery lorries delivering hardwood kitchens and sweatshop DVD players for £30. It’s OK to dig ‘em up and replace them with tarmac, it makes sense to replace hedges with fences and the cars can park halfway on the pavement and it’s OK - and if I object I’m just a strange idiot person who’s badly adjusted (so if I walk down the middle of the road it’s OK – actually not for some reason) the snails and grass verges can f*ck off. ‘Green’ and ‘biodiversity’ is something for the nasty Brazilian loggers to worry about eh?

A few months back bunch of private tree destroyers with a bad attitude chopped down a row of mature poplars (that’s the proper ones, not the spindly ones – check a book if you need, I haven’t got one, I just know how brilliant they were) at the bottom of our road. Interfered with television reception or something - ‘people’ had complained. Well they didn’t ask me. The Council had power to get someone to chop the trees down but not to plant any new ones because it isn’t their land – because they don’t understand ‘green’ the big ignorant fatheads.

If I win the lottery I’m going to hire a bunch of meatheads with big lorries to block off both ends of the street. Then I’m going to get another bunch of meatheads to dig up the road and throw the bits of tarmac through the windows of those that wanted rid of the trees. Then I’m going to grass over the road and guard it with guns until the grass is a foot high. At each end of the road there’ll be 2 cars for sharing and the severed head of the boss of Firstbus will be displayed on a plate (with an inflatable facsimile at the other end – I have thought this through you know). In his mouth will be a piece of reused (hey, not recycled, reused – don’t get me started on that one) card. This will say ‘I’m sorry I robbed you by putting up fares by a thousand per cent in 2 years because now I’ve been tortured by meatheads (from a private contractor with a bad attitude) and I’m dead and I regret my actions’. Then I’ll start on the next road and the next and the next and I won't stop until they build the tram, enforce car sharing schemes, take pedestrians seriously and cure all the kids of asthma. All the local councillors and MPs will have something very green stuck up their arses by private meathead contractors with a bad attitude.

Monday, February 20, 2006

Sympathy for the Devil - Almost

I found the David Irving story depressing – he’s just been sentenced to three years for Holocaust denial in Austria. I read a book about him recently. He’s a ‘historian’, he’s been around for years. He’s sympathetic to Hitler and apparently anti-Semitic. Despite that he’s not unintelligent and faced with facts tends to backtrack and even change his mind – and then change it back again when addressing some bunch of right-wing loonies. He thoroughly researches - and then distorts the facts to serve an unpleasant right-wing agenda. I oppose everything he stands for. I should just hate him – and yet I see a man who appears trapped by his own prejudices and can’t resist the lure of fame even if it comes from being the darling of the brain-dead right - and at the price of denying his own intelligence.

So, he needs to be challenged by proper historians and by anyone who knows anything about history, by you and me and anyone who knows the status of truth among Nazis (i.e. it doesn’t matter to them). He should be despised and vilified. But is the right way to deal with someone who distorts the truth to send them to jail for something they said 20 years ago? Answers on a postcard...

On a slightly different note, when I was at college, Irving was invited to speak by the Union of Conservative Students (or whatever they were called). I think I joined the 'no platform for Fascists' people (I really loathe Nazis by the way) and he never got to speak (not because of me you understand but because of everyone). Interesting to note though that the lovely YCs raised funds by selling badges among other merchandise.

A good one was the ‘Hang Nelson Mandela’ badge. He was a ‘terrorist’ after all – careful not to glorify him or the British government will put you away for it. That same generation of Conservatives are the new smiley new Labour new liberal types in charge of the party – just thought I'd let you know! More depression.

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

The Family Shoplifter

Have you ever witnessed a member of your family shoplifting? No, me neither, obviously.

New Fangled Soups

Not only does publically consumed soup (in common with coffee, but let’s not even go there) cost a fortune but it’s full of stuff I’ve never heard of – cheese? Well, of course I have heard of cheese – but in soup? Butternut Squash? Fennell? Pepper soup! Pepper soup? Rocket? In soup? On anything but a launch pad?

I say bring back traditional flavours such as Oxtail, Mulligatawny and Mock Turtle.

In the Locker-room – the Secret Life of a Man with Peripheral vision

The only exercise I ever get is about half an hour’s worth of swimming a week. Obviously I go in the men’s changing room (note Americanism in the title, sorry chaps – not folks note – but chappesses can’t be right). Anyway, I can’t work out the conventions of these places and why I’m mildly disturbed by the various ‘behaviours’ that go on there. Leaving aside aggressive scrotal towelling, tell me why this lot seem just wrong somehow....

A naked man standing at the urinal holding a swimming hat in his right hand and a pair of goggles in his left. Why do I feel he should have saved a hand to point or ‘guide’ as it were? Why does having a wee completely naked also seem wrong?

A fully clothed man at the same urinal. No offences of the hand to start with. However this man is overdressed for urination. Now if he was outside then maybe. But no, he’s inside - stood at the urinal in a big puffa jacket with big puffa sleeves nearly covering his big puffa hands. Should I insist he takes his coat off to wee? Mind you, he didn’t wash his hands so its smeggy doorknobs all the way home then?

A man standing weeing in the shower. It goes down the same hole so why don’t I like it? Has anyone written the Etiquette of Weeing? or is there a gap in the market? Can men go to Swiss finishing schools to learn how to walk with books on their head and how to get into a Mini without gusset glimpsing embarrassment? – and how to wee in a manful but respectable way? I suspect not, unfortunately we live in a fallen world. Do women still get to go?

This is an ‘incidentally’ but provides secret information for women and advice for some men: Obviously men really shouldn’t wear shorts, but if one does and one uses one of those big flat stainless steel urinals (as opposed to the individual pot sorts) one gets ones legs sprayed with (primarily) ones own urine. This means that when you don’t wear shorts you’re spraying your trousers! Yewch!

This is of course only a small glimpse into the world of weeing. If only I had more time....I'm wasted here.

Tuesday, February 07, 2006

High Strangeness - The Wart of Elvis

Here are a couple (or 3 or 4) facts that I find strange.

  1. The JP album is now orderable from Amazon - OK, not that strange I guess but somehow it seems strange and exotic to me.
  2. 1% of the hits (or visits, they're different somehow, just shut up and listen for a minute) to the JP webiste are from Argentina. Perhaps that explains the Amazon connection? - See, I don't just make this stuff up you know.
  3. OK, this is the strange one - Jon McGill (Chris's brother in law, you must have heard of him) reckons he once visited the Queens Hall in Leeds (which no longer exists) to see 1. the Cadillac Hank Williams died in and 2. Elvis's wart. I mentioned this at work. They'd heard of Elvis's wart. How can I have remained in ignorance for so long? Is Elvis's wart still touring?
  4. Maybe this isn't that strange either but I have to link thoughts together somehow or they'd just run off into the road and get knocked over....I really can't help being a fan of the Moody Blues stuff from the 70s. Despite flutes, pomposity and some unforgivable lyrical dreadfulness they're are so, so good. Loads going on, great tunes and the best advert for the Mellotron and the Gainsborough (early synthy thingies, Strawberry Fields uses the Mellotron - and I may have spelt Gainsborough wrong) you're ever likely to hear - 'and he took to himself an orange and tasted it - and it was good' - see told you! They're playing in Manchester in the autumn - see you there?