Sunday, March 28, 2010

Swines!

Not long ago my ex boss was talking about using our meeting room at work as a temporary mortuary! Yes, she was joking but at the time all the people we worked with who worked for the NHS were being taken off their normal jobs to work on the major threat that was swine flu.

We had piles of leaflets, national publicity, '2 people taken ill in Leicester after holiday abroad' headlines and all that stuff. At our work we were going to be asked to volunteer to deliver food to old people when the infrastructure collapsed and all that. And when the 'first wave' turned out to be fuck all they told us that the second wave was going to lay millions low. Millions of doses of vaccine that shortened the symptoms by 24 hours in return for making you really ill were ordered and...oh well, you might remember the rest. All panic, all bollocks, all expensive, all paranoid, all nonsense.

So where the fuck is our apology? Who's been sacked, who's had to pay back the money they wasted?

Trouble is that if there ever is a real emergency I for one will die due to not believing a word of it - but the best indicator of future behaviour is past behaviour!

Sunday, March 14, 2010

MSN top info on inventions

Referring to Nikoli Tesla the MSN homepage today says 'he invented electricity yet died broke'. Further illumination is provided by following the link to more information. Here it says he 'contributed to the birth of electricity'.

Gosh! I wish I'd have invented electricity - or soil, or animals perhaps. But maybe I'd have been happy just to have contributed to the birth in some small way -boiling towels or something. Mind you, would have to have used gas to heat the water I suppose. I wonder who invented gas? Bet he didn't die broke...

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

I just don't understand! Aaarghhh!

These are quotes from real work email from real people who would be upset and appalled if they knew I was blogging them off. So, no names, no organisations but a couple of direct quotes:

“I hope you will be able to use the review as an important driver and lever to help to make the case for a community and workplace champion approach in your locality”

Eh?

Someone else was explaining what they are ‘passionate’ about – Football? Food? Injustice? Nope, they announced via email that they’re passionate about...

“community based learning and the dissemination of health and well-being messages to improve local health aspirations and increase positive well-being outcomes”

Go them!

Decent human beings, nice people, good at their jobs - no doubt.

Unfortunately though, thoughtful intelligent people are training themselves to speak like this, or at least write like this. After my current job comes to an end I expect to be able to 'concentrate on my music career' because I just can't play this game.

Hang on...that might be a good thing. Trouble is you can get paid for talking like this.

Oh dear...

Summer of the Monkeys

Summer of the Monkeys’ is a DVD for kids – labelled as approved for family viewing by some American evangelical organisation. It has a picture of chimps on the front (i.e. not monkeys – not a good start). However, I digress...

Now we all know that this, like Christian Rock will be awful. Thing is though that I keep giving this sort of stuff the benefit of the doubt. For example, someone at a previous job had some CDs plugging (‘teaching about’ I suppose they’d call it) the Muslim religion. The weird thing was its massive similarity to similar Christian stuff. Half an ounce of logic makes one react with ‘erm, hang on...’ after almost every sentence. The overall impression is that it’s purely for people of a religious bent who may be looking for an alternative to the irrational mediaeval belief system to the one they currently follow. I’ve also given time to tapes and books all purporting to put the case for religion – they all just spectacularly (and worryingly) defy all logic and end up saying ‘it must be true, it’s in the Bible’ or the equivalent.

The thing about ‘Summer of the Monkeys’, potential creationist claptrap aside, is that it went to the cheriddy shop still in its wrapper. I actually have got to the stage that I have had so much experience of this sort of stuff that I for the first time have not taken the trouble to even let it annoy me by watching it – just its existence and my experience is now sufficient. I know many others have sensibly reached this conclusion much quicker. Actually I think with me it was lack of time. In 5 years I’ll be searching the internet desperate for a copy of ‘Summer of the Monkeys’ so I can watch it and hate it properly.

I suppose the positive is that as soon as you stop listening because you just 'know' your mind is closed. So there. it's because I'm open minded see...

If I could be bothered I'd make the prose above a bit neater by the way. I'm not a natural writer('you don't say' says everyone!, it's kind of speech written down - which isn't always good reading.

Tuesday, March 09, 2010

More on the enfolding drama that is cup-a-soup

I just bought some cup a soup – you got a problem with that? Well, actually, fair play if you have, pretty crappy stuff – but that’s not the point.

I was in a little Tescos and the only cheap type they had was some very weird flavour. So I went for the Batchelors – it’s ‘slim a soup’ too which isn’t a good start obviously. Losing weight via the consumption of salty floury gunk doesn't sound ideal to me. Anwyay, the strange thing is that it had the phrase “My boyfriend’s just found my granny-pants-a-soup” printed on the packet. There it was, on the front of the packet in big curly letters like it was all done on purpose and everything. Surealism in action - corporate sales surrealism showing that these people really are out of control. WTF!? Etc.

Further research (i.e. turning the packet round) reveals an invitation to tell them ‘what makes you reach for a cup-a-soup’ and they’ll print the best reasons on the packet (or ‘pack’ as they call it). So there you go, a full explanation. Why it didn't say 'I wanted summat to go with me sandwich, I know they're crap but it's a change once in a while' they didn't explain.

So, someone bought a cup a soup and it seems their boyfriend has found their ‘granny-pants-a-soup’ I'm not even going to start going into what this can possibly be about. Stealing elderly relatives underwear is just not on frankly - and making soup from such items is even worse. And as for talking about it on soup packets...
Presumably the marketing people didn’t feel they needed to add anything to this.

Actually, to be fair, the sheer madness of advertising (sorry, ‘marketing’) has always been a wonder to behold.

But there's more. I had a trawl around the interweb and found the following:

"Cup-a-Soup…rebrand

Batchelors, the Premier Foods-owned soup brand, has handed its roster agency Miles Calcraft Briginshaw Duffy a brief to rename and rebrand its entire Cup-a-Soup range.
The agency, which works on Premier Foods brands including Hovis and Oxo as well as on ad projects for Cup-a-Soup, has renamed the 42 instant soup products to fit with the demographic that each is targeting.

New names developed by MCBD for the range include one for the brand's 99 per cent fat-free minestrone soup, which is aimed at calorie-conscious young women. The soup will now be called: "My boyfriend's just found my granny-pants-a-Soup."
Cup-a-Soup's chicken and mushroom variety will now be called "His new girlfriend is fatter than me-a-Soup" and others include "Still no signs of bingo wings-a-Soup" and "I thought he winked at me but it was a twitch-a-Soup".

So there you go – and you thought your job was a bit pointless eh?

I think it's too late for suggestions but I'm sending in
I thought they wanked at me but it was twats a soup

What can you say though really?

Would you like pointlessness with that?

We all know that thing – you say ‘just a burger please’ in the burger shop and you get asked ‘would you like fries with that and you say “Hey what?! You do fries?! – Yes of course I’ll have fries. I mean, if you’re sure you do them, wow, I never fail to be impressed by the choice you have available and your tip top customer service, in fact I’d like to ‘go large’ too please”.

Mm, well, maybe not. But today I bought a cup of coffee from Greggs. This is the first time I’ve done so and it’s one of the maybe half dozen occasions in the past 10 years that I’ve bought take away coffee. Anyway, I asked for a coffee and they responded by saying ‘would you like breakfast with that?’

If this happens to you I suggest the following possible replies:

Breakfast? Never heard of it, what kind of thing is that?

Damn it, I knew I’d forgotten something; that’s brilliant, thanks for reminding me – breakfast, breakfast, breakfast! YEEESSSS!

Excuse me, but what kind of person decides to buy breakfast on a whim? Surely of all the things you can buy a meal is one of the things that you know in advance that you want, what the toss is wrong with you Mrs Greggs? If this is training you must fight it! I will try to give you the strength - you must join me on a sacred quest.

Or you could just look slightly confused, wonder what on earth they asked that for and say ‘no thank you’.

You can guess which one I did…

Domestics?

It was International Women’s Day earlier this week – I wonder if they have a Domestic Women’s Day where we all get made a nice cup of tea? ‘spect not…