Saturday 19 December 2009

GBL

Well the government has today announced they will definitely ban this "Dance Drug" due to increasing pressure after a person died from using it. A person. Singular.

One.

Any death is a tragedy but more people die from allergic reactions to aspirin for feck's sake. Why do we have to ban everything just because some fool kills themselves with it. What is GBL? It's not a 'dance drug'.

It's paint stripper. It is designed for cleaning alloy wheels, removing superglue and thinning paint. That's what most sane people use it for.

So, some bright spark dilutes it and markets it as a drug and some poor medical student dies from drinking it. One wonders how smart someone is if they are either (a) knowingly drinking paint stripper or (b) drinking some unkown chemical someone has given them without knowing what it is.

Either way - what is the point in banning it? Are we going to ban every solvent and chemical on the shelves in B&Q in case some tool drinks it and dies? Are we going to ban every single thing known to humanity that, if misused, can prove fatal? Why not ban cars and matches and hammers whilst we're at it?

I know the argument is "because it's legal people think it's safe" - and therefore making it illegal will stop people from thinking that, but that simply doesn't hold water. It is down to the ignorance of people who decide to take a "drug" not knowing what it is or the potential consequences that causes deaths. A little publicity as to the risks is sensible but banning it is pointless. All it means is that governement legislative time and money is used up when it could be better spent on passing useful laws (bearing in mind the limited amount of bills that can be passed in any parliamentsary session).

Still we believe making it illegal is the answer. After all ecstasy, heroin and cocaine were all made illegal many many years ago and nobody has taken any of those drugs ever since have they?

I Was Completely In The Daaaaark.......

(title sung in Bob Mortimer voice a la 'Man With The Stick')

So they installed a smart new 'bathroom' at work. No bath, obviously, just toilets. I used the gents and all seems fine and dandy and rather pristine. As you walk in there is total darkness due to the energy saving automatic light sensors. The fluorescent bulb flickers into life a split second after you enter and one can then empty the bladder illuminated in the bright white glow.

However, I used one of the stalls for the first time today. It soon became apparent that the sensors for the lights

(a) switch the lights off after approximately 3 minutes if no movement is detected; and
(b) they are located near the urinals but there are none with any detection range over the stalls

Trust me - I moved as much as I could in the circumstances. I was flapping my arms and waving a loo roll streamer in the air, all to no avail.

Without wishing to be graphic, I couldn't feasibly emerge from the stall at that point, but couldn't really proceed with the task in hand in pitch darkness either.

Solution: after a little pondering I rolled up a ball of loo roll and tossed it over the door towards the wall.

Fail

I thought maybe it was too small or light so chucked my wallet over instead (pondered chucking my phone as was running out of ideas - wallet seemed less likely to damage on impact).

Success.

Later contacted the contractors who confirmed the sensor cannot be set to cover the stalls, but the timer can be changed to shut off after 3, 5, 7 or 11 minutes. So perhaps need to do a straw poll amongst male colleagues tomorrow. I will suggest 7 mins should be fine.

I mean - who needs any longer than that to have a wank anyway?

More Nonsense

In 2009 I posted less shite but was still yelling my strange notions into the cavernous void that is the worldwide web - here be some of it...