Saturday 31 October 2009

Your Dog Doesn't Know It's Christmas

Greetings Card companies are always looking for smart new ways to get more money out of us by inventing new reasons to send cards. After all - the greetings card was designed in days gone by when you wouldn't see so many people at Christmas or on their birthday or wedding anniversary and so you would send your greetings in a card, via the miracle of the fledging Royal Mail.

Nowadays with the wonders of cars, trains, planes, bikes and rollerblades we see each other more frequently and more easily and have text messages, email, phone calls, facebook, twitter and Jesus H Gates knows what else.

So why do we still send cards? More perversely - I have found myself handing greetings cards to people. "Happy Christmas! :-) Here's your card" ......which says "Happy Christmas" in it and then, ludicrously, is signed to demonstrate that it is indeed me that is wishing you that.

Valentines cards were always there to send an anonymous message of love or admiration to the one you longed for - secretly and subtly. Now we are supposed to send them to our partners, spouses and girlfriends. "Be My Valentine?" - "Erm, well, I already agreed to be your wife - do you remember - that day in 1999 when you said "I Do" in the church and then got horribly drunk and danced like a giddy toddler to A-ha in the hotel bar - so I think I have already 'agreed' to something a little more binding so perhaps the idea of being your valentine is a little redundant?".

Oh, you're so unromantic, folk will say.

Bollocks I say. My other half gets flowers, gifts, surprises and affection - but do you know what - it happens spontaneously and more than once a year and not just because Clintons remind me it's February 14th so I'd better buy her some chocs and a vile glittery card to tell her I love her in the most insincere way possible (ie with someone else's words in a twee verse inside the card rather than my own words, spoken to her directly).

Well, they have successfully turned that into a money spinner and now they have Fathers' Day. Never used to exist. Mothering Sunday did (never involved cards either) and they turned that into a money spinner too. Well done Hallmark, Andrew Brownsword et al.

Nothing wrong with these particular days being celebrated (I think Hallmark have invented Grandparents Day too) but can't you just get these people a nice gift and tell them you love them and how much they mean to you face to face or over the phone - from the heart.

Well......with all these avenues successfully explored how else do the card companies increase their market? Well....it seems the solution is to increase the pool of people to whom you send cards. And by people I mean pets.

Yes, you can now get Christmas Cards that say "To The Dog" or "To The Cat" on the front. They have them in WH Smiths and Clintons (other card shops are available), but why would you?!?

With all the other nonsense I have listed above we are wasting several million trees each year - but now they urge you to 'send' or 'give' a card to your dog!?! You may as well show him the local delivery pizza menu that dropped through your letterbox whilst patting him on the head and giving him a bit of turkey for all the difference it will make to his understanding that you are wishing him a Merry Christmas.

Finally, I must add that, not content with this travesty, Smiths also have "Merry Christmas From The Dog". Yes, you read that correctly.

A card for you to buy your insipid spouse or stupid children and sign it, no doubt, with a crudely drawn felt-tip doggy paw-print as a signature and the whole family can pretend that Bullseye sent a card to wish you all Seasons Greetings.

If you are in that last category may I strongly recommend you re-assess your life choices.

Merry Christmas.

DANCEOPHILIA 2008

Yeah....it's the event of the year - back to the heady days of the 90's crazy dancefests. This is DANCEOPHILIA 2008:

Hosted by
DJ REPREHENSIBLE
MC ARTHUR BAVINGTON

FEATURING:

RIGHTEOUS W
THE BRIGHT BROWN COLLECTIVE
MISSY MISANTHROPE
DOCTOR NO-I-DON’T-THINK-SO-REALLY
LUNAR NEATNESS
HOLLYOAKS FIST FANTASY
UTTERLY SLABBS
DEGREES OF ORANGEING
HEY BOLLOCK FURTIVE
….AND MANY OTHER TOP TRUMPERS THAT’LL BOFF YOUR CHEESEBOX

The State Of Our Press

The Headlines following Max Mosley proving in court that yet another newspaper story is based on lies and bullshit and they just hope he's too embarrassed to challenge it in court:

Daily Mail: What Price Morality?

The Sun: Freedom Gets A Spanking!

Daily Telegraph: Mosley Ruling Means Adultery Can Be Kept Secret

Perfect. They couldn't be more predictable. The Mail pretends it's about sexual morals, The Sun pretends it's about freedom (erm, yeah - after all the headlines about supporting 42 day detention without trial you're clearly very pro-freedom) and The Torygraph goes for the poor wife angle.

The lowlifes that fill our daily rags with sensationalist nonsense and non-stories about non-celebs are smarting from the kicking and just can't have the good grace to admit they went too far and try to pull back a little with their invasion of people's privacy.

The judge said "Anyone indulging in sexual activity is entitled to a degree of privacy - especially if it is on private property between consenting adults". Isn't it sad that a judge actually has to spell that out and it's not already a basically understood principle by all.

If I want to indulge in some cakefarting in the privacy of my own shed, that's no-ones business but mine.

Rant over.

Are Women Too Sensitive

For reasons I won't bore you with three of us at work move between offices so a temporary profile had to be set up for us on the computers in our city office so we'd need a different logon and password to the ones we use on our other computers. The new logon was set by the IT guy who has to put the new password in - we don't get to choose. He is a nice bloke and has a decent sense of humour.

So - the other two staff are female and he decided to pick something random but cute and drew inspiration from a nearby wildlife calendar. He chose "penguin" and "panda".

He spoke to me today and told me that the girl who he picked 'penguin' for immediately got offended and asked if it was a dig about the size of her nose? He was bemused and apologised and said it was nothing like that and she hasn't even got a big nose - it was just a random word.

The girl who he picked 'panda' for also got offended as soon as she found out and asked if he was saying she wore too much eye make up (I'm not kidding). Again he was baffled as to why she would take offence and explained the thought hadn't occurred to him and indeed she didn't wear much make-up at all.

Having unwittingly offended these two women he then told me my password.

He then pointed out that he was amused by the contrast that when I was told my password, which he'd set up for a laugh, I just went "Fair enough. Cheers!" and made no complaint at all.

My password was "c-nt".

Shed Boat Shed

Well, I clearly missed out on this one didn't I?!

Not that I normally make a point at looking out for which heap of tosh has won the Turner art prize, but I have recently seen Simon Starling on TV and became aware of his "work".

Shed boat shed. I can barely begin to describe it, I'm that angry. It makes my urine boil.

He got a shed, turned it upside down and rowed it down a river and then put it in a gallery as a shed again.

And that's art! What a cock.

Well, for my next piece (and I hope to win the £25,000 prize) I intend to present Turd Breakfast Turd. You see, first I get a turd and put it on a plate, then.......

Radio One

I have just come across a group of people moaning about Jo Whiley, Chris Moyles, "Comedy" Dave etc and debating which one is worse and complaining about how terrible they are. What do you expect?

Complaining about the poor quality of what you hear when you choose to listen to Radio 1 is like complaining you don't like the taste when you choose to eat a small cup of cold sick.

Haven't you people got cd players?

Valentines Card

So I find myself in some godawful card shop being forced by misrepresented convention to waste money on more ex-trees that have been pulped, turned into card, folded and have some hideously un-romantic pap written on them (Valentines Cards were designed for sending a secret message to someone you long for, not to make blokes pretend to be romantic by doing something as predictably cheesey and stupid as buy their other half some roses and then carry on being thoughtless and unromantic the rest of the year).

I see a card with a 'cute' little monster on the front with wobbly eyes and a verse inside (because god forbid we ever actually bother to write our own words and bother to express our love for another - much easier to let a stranger who works for Hallmark do it for us) along the lines of "Your eyes are really sexy....your body's really hot...." and then on the back it said - I kid you not - "Contains small parts. Not suitable for children under 3 years old".

Well thanks for that. Presumably you do a different range of Valentines Cards with sexually provocative verses inside but without small parts on that I can give to a three year old!?

More Stuff From My Original Blog

2007 saw the bullshit factory that is my brain continuing production at a steady rate with consistent levels of juvenility and impotent rage.

In 2008 more stuff fell out of my mind onto a keyboard and got soaked up by the internet

Here it is......