Saturday, March 15, 2008

Rude Fruit

Following on from my ranking of fruit by order of rudeness I’d like to make a brief addition.

Please take the utmost caution in using the word 'kumquat'.

I predict a controversy very like that one about using the word 'niggardly' (where, as I remember it, someone was hounded out of their job for other people's ignorance). Shout 'kumquat' at people in the street and see what happens. It'd be political correctness gone mad you know.

Just like yer Grammar used to make

I'd just like to apologise for the level of grammar in this blog. I can't get the flow right. I have a spastic semi-colon or something. I've realised this as I've recently applied for a job where grammar is one of the 'essential criteria'. I'm better than a lot of people but I was never taught it so far as I can remember.

However, I am one of the last people in England to know the difference between stationary (not moving) and stationery (envelopes and pens). So there.

I Like Americans

I like Americans generally. I really do, and this is not sarcasm. American bands generally have something that British bands don't too (there's a PHD topic). However, I'm sick of 'semesters' and 'malls', 'muffins', 'movies' and all the other language that we've started to use - and the attitude that patriotism and aggressive Christianity are OK, oh, and 10 gallon buckets of popcorn and...well, there's a list. So much is imported from the USA along with exaggerated respect for entrepreneurs and really shit telly.

When I were a lad America was big and fabulous - full of cactus and hookers and big trucks and Kojak and Easyrider and people making films about the Vietnam war. Meanwhile we had drizzle and working men's clubs. Thing is though, why are we still importing America now its not so much more exciting than here? America looks kind of 'small-town' - full of religion, support for 'our boys' and the death sentence.

I remember the moon landings (just). Real or not, it seemed to me that the planet stood still to applaud. America was doing something on behalf of the whole world (leaving aside all the cold war stuff) and we were amazed and impressed. The future was happening, the mission to Mars was scheduled for 1985 according to my Brooke Bond tea card album and this showed that we could 'fix things'. Now they're just being arsey about who enters the country, torturing people in boiler suits and making up imaginery money.

I guess America was always invading somewhere or propping up some mad dictator (it being our turn previous to them) but I still want to know what happened.

Kidneys to Britishness

Darn. World Kidney Day was on 13th March and I missed it. I can only speculate as to what fantastic events were running. Maybe they drank punch, (kidney punch yer see...) raffled off a dialysis machine and finished the evening with a mixed grill.

I'm off to set up World Angry Pedestrian Day and the World Day of Days. Maybe the day after the proposed 'celebrate being British' day. They seem to have missed the point that the essence of being British is to not give a toss about being British.

Thursday, March 13, 2008

My New Mellow Traffic Self

I went in to my job today on my day off. This is because I work for a rubbish organisation which seems to believe that if you think about things hard enough and are ‘pro-active in moving things forward’ that they magically happen. Some idiot like me who has carefully already carefully explained the inpingements of the real world has to pull them out of the shit before people in the real world get f*cked about too much and it makes me angry. You wonder if they do this on purpose. I will take my time back though…Incidentally, this same organisation has what I can only describe as a 'collective ego' which thinks its great and routinely takes the credit for any work that anyone connected with it does as if it had done it itself.

Anyway, on the way in I was congratulating myself on my new attitude to traffic. This is that instead of blaming the morons who regularly endanger people’s lives by ignoring the red lights and such like we could perhaps work with the people who design junctions and traffic lights and the like to make it psychologically more difficult to drive like a moron. I believe this because it’s usually at the same junctions where the various moron incidents happen. This makes me think that its at least partly to do with design.

Then I get to the junction of Roundhay Road with Harehills Lane. Within 20 seconds one van did an illegal u-turn in front of me and I was half way across the crossing (having waited for the green mad I might add) when some prize twat in a big silver Vauxhall made an illegal right turn straight across the pedestrian crossing at about 20 miles an hour (and this is a 90 degree turn, one of the reasons for the ‘no right turn’ signs and the sign warning pedestrians about motorists making illegal turns’) missing me by less than a foot.

So…mellowness gone. Annoyingly I was too taken by surprise to take physical action against the car. I managed a ‘what the fuck do you think you’re doing you moron’ at the top of my voice though, followed by what was kind of half way between a one and a two fingered salute. However, a nice door dent caused by work DMs would have been much more appropriate. Once again, car driver careering through a pedestrian crossing deserves at least a grands worth of damage (which anyone who owns a car will know ain't much).

So, be mellow, mind how you go and knock a big dent in the moron's car. If you can get the number and make it public by any means you can. Hope they object and you can get it in the papers...