407 – A little story about an idiot
I suspect this matter isn’t finished, but I thought I’d share this for those of you who aren’t dull enough to return to my posts and read the comments. An un-named reader wrote this today, about yesterday’s blog post:
Honest?……
You are truly fucked up man, you harbour all of these negative feelings but I bet inside you’re a ‘yes man’ that doesn’t say fuck all to anyone. Just sits there silently watching and judging. You need to seriously think about what you say or write in a public areana dude. You just burble and bumble along from one offensive topic to another, slagging off peoples weddings that you get paid well for, blurting out shit (politics and unions). Nobody in their right mind says the shit that you say. I would be seriously SERIOUSLY worried for my mental state if I were you. By your own admission you say you teach, you are a band member, you have your own business and you keep writing shit like this? Are you trying to cut your own throat? I don’t think you like yourself or what you do or the people you have to lick arse to. Talk about handing a machine gun to a monkey.
And if you’re wondering why I keep returning it’s because I like watching a car crash in motion
Bit harsh isn’t it? Not really, not when you read my reply: Read more 
405 – Airport Security Lunacy
The picture you see here is of two plastic bags. The rather dishevelled one on the left is a bag I use when I’m going on a plane to put my toiletries in. I decided to use the same one and leave a few bits in it to save me a modicum of hassle when getting ready for a trip away. I’ve not used it loads. Perhaps yesterday was the fifth time I’ve used it.
The bag on the right… Well, let me explain.
377 – Heavy Rain Expected
Yeah. Twats.
Our recent shitty weather has reminded me of something I saw on a motorway matrix sign recently. Of course I have history with motorway matrix signs, so perhaps you ought to read these posts before you carry on:
http://everyonesanidiot.co.uk//?s=motorway+matrix
In fact, I’ve just sought out a picture for the top of this, only to see I’ve used it before. Splendid. Those posts say approximately what I’m about to say, I suspect, but let’s go for it anyway.
So anyway, I was driving innocently around the northwest of England, on an averagely bland, grey morning and was confronted with a sign which said ‘HEAVY RAIN EXPECTED’. Fine, thanks for that, should I start driving at 50mph now? Should I be keeping an eye on the sky in case the heavy rain starts and I’m not quite ready for it? Or is this just some kind of weird parallel world where what the matrix signs are actually for is general information and weather forecasting.
I can’t help but feel that driving on a motorway is a tricky business and anything which can be done to keep our focus on the road and away from the distractions of modern life is a good thing and yet more and more there seem to be things, pointless things, being forced into our eyeballs whether we like it or not, and whether we need it or not.
We don’t need it. I don’t need a weather forecast on my motorway matrix signs. It can’t possibly have any positive impact on the way I’m driving. If it starts raining I’ll assess the situation and change my driving accordingly (except I won’t, because, not being an idiot, I’ll already be driving in a way suitable for rain). If it starts raining heavily, which the matrix sign suggests it will, I’ll deal with that. I’d love to meet the person who insisted that this phrase was put into the signs and talk to that person about why it was put there.
The other day I saw something about a concert which had been cancelled about fifty miles from here. That seemed OK. It seemed a logical place to display that information, but to be fair the concert was outside, on the coast, and there had been persistent torrential rain all day. At the time I saw the sign, I could barely see the road for the spray and the heavy rain and it made me think that perhaps the sort of people who want to go to an evening outdoor event during torrential rain and storm-like winds after a whole day of torrential rain and storm-like winds, is the sort of person who probably wouldn’t notice the sign anyway. I noticed the sign, but would rather have been looking at the road, because conditions were treacherous.
Of course there’s all the other idiotic things they write, such as ‘Fog’, which I’ve never understood because long before I can’t see the sign because of the fog, I’ve already noticed that there’s fog and have begun to drive accordingly. Blimey, that was a tricky sentence.
Look, let’s leave it there. Read the other posts for more waffle on this topic. Suffice to say that ‘HEAVY RAIN EXPECTED’ has been a particular low point in my life on the motorways of this wonderful country.
The idiots…
376 – How to Hand Wash – step by step images
Arseholes.
I’m sure I’ve written about this kind of thing before… In fact, here’s the link:
http://everyonesanidiot.co.uk/2010/06/26/now-wash-your-hands/
I think I was quite angry that day, but that’s nothing compared to this. Have a look at that post, then read this. You’ll see two images there, two offensive, ridiculous images. I’m convinced that if you’ve reached a point where you’re in a workplace (where no children go) and you don’t yet know how to wash your hands, then not only should you not be working there, but you almost certainly won’t change your hand washing habits because of a poster, especially one with a twelve step guide on how to wash your hands.
There’s so much to see in this image, I don’t know where to begin and to be honest, I don’t think I’ve even read to the end because it makes me so utterly and viciously angry. (Caveat: I’m not angry at all, I couldn’t care less, but the character ‘Pete Faint’, who I play in this blog is, I assure you, fucking livid). One thing which I can’t help but notice is the bit at the bottom which says. “Adapted from the World Health Organisation”. Adapted from. That means there’s a different version for ‘the world’, which NHS Scotland feels isn’t appropriate to our Scotch friends.* It’s worth mentioning that I happened to be in a very nice theatre when I took this picture, and I can’t help but feel that showbusiness types are relatively clean, even in Scotchland. Anyway, I can’t help but feel that I want to see what the WHO version of this is and what is or isn’t on the Scotch version and why they felt the need to change it. I also wonder whether NHS Scotland have just put their label on this, or whether NHS England, NHS Wales and NHS Northern Ireland have their own versions. I wonder how Scotch people wash their hands differently to us English and why they feel the need to make us do it differently. It also makes me wonder whether I, being half Scotch, instinctively wash my hands one way or the other and why that might be. Read more
364 – [heavily edited
Well, here’s something I never expected to happen. For reasons I can’t quite describe, this post has been deleted. Nobody told me to delete it, I chose to.
If you’re really desperate to know what it was about, email me and I might tell you. In the meantime, just get off the internet and go and do something interesting.
363 – Don’t worry, I’ve not died…
Brilliant. If you type “I am not a scab” into The Googles, this comes up. It’s my bacon sandwich and my mug. I love The Googles…..
Well, that return to form didn’t last long did it? Precisely one post in a month does not constitute any kind of acceptable blogging, I’m aware of that.
The response has been overwhelming. By that I actually mean I don’t think it’s been mentioned in real life or on the t’interweblogosphere by one single person in all that time, including me. Which is quite funny really.
The reason I write is because yesterday I finished a sizeable chunk of work and I’m not prepared to work on the next sizeable chunk of work for at least a few days, especially considering what else I have to do for the next ten days or so. Conversely that leaves me with some time to think about this nonsense. I literally haven’t had anything like the time to deal with it.
Of course, what’s really happening is a strike and regular readers know how exciting it is on here when I start crowing on about a strike. The strike is tomorrow and, of course, I’m not striking, mostly because I’m not in the striking union, I don’t have a pension and I’ve got a show to do.
This will all become clear tomorrow when I write about said strike. And probably the next day. In the meantime, we ought to revisit the previous action when there was a strike. To do that, first you need to read my initial post:
http://everyonesanidiot.co.uk/2011/11/30/post-249-i-am-not-on-strike/
then the follow up:
http://everyonesanidiot.co.uk/2011/12/02/post-251-i-am-not-a-scab/
then what was suppose to be the final word:
http://everyonesanidiot.co.uk/2011/12/03/post-253-the-final-word/
then a couple of other related posts, which also appear to involve me having a cold:
http://everyonesanidiot.co.uk/2011/12/20/post-270-scabs-and-colds/
http://everyonesanidiot.co.uk/2011/12/21/post-271-scabs-colds-and-friends/
To be honest, the best bits of this aren’t my posts, they’re the comments and the pingbacks and related posts by other people, especially the crazy ones.
Go on, have a read of them and we’ll reconvene tomorrow (hangover dependant) to discuss why this time, specifically, I won’t be striking and why my colleague (who struck* last time) won’t be either. I suspect all the nut jobs will come crawling out of the militant woodwork in time for a scathing comment.
Remember folks, I am not a scab.
* I know the word isn’t “struck”, I’m just messing about, right?
361 – Why I don’t care
Ain't that the truth...
I appreciate the paradoxical nature of what I’m writing, but as I’ve said many times, it’s my blog so I’ll write whatever the damn well heck I like. Many of my recent posts have postulated on the relevance or otherwise of what we call social media, specifically for me and for most people, either Twitter, or Facebook, or both. Both sites (and other less fashionable sites which cling on for dear life) have changed the world to some extent and certainly within the media it would appear that the very fabric of society has changed as a consequence, especially Twitter, with it’s immediacy and it’s ‘public forum’ type of construction.
I remember when I first got into Twitter and was trying to explain it to my Luddite friends. I had to concede even then that it was pointless and potentially time consuming but some three and a half thousand tweets later, I’m beginning to really tire of it all. It, and Facebook, seem to me to be nothing more than a banal trawl through peoples banal goings on. Most of those people I don’t care about. It’s interesting that when I meet up with people I like, there’s less and less talk of these things, and certainly very little talk of the things which have been mutually posted, which lends one to suggest that the things which are being posted as statuses or whatever are so banal that they don’t even warrant discussion after weeks or months of not seeing that person.
What I certainly don’t care for is what someone I know a little bit has been watching on YouTube this week. I’ve watched masses of stuff on YouTube in the last twenty four hours, but I’m not going to tell you about any of it. There’s no point. It doesn’t matter. It won’t interest you anyway. I don’t want to tell you how many points I scored in Scrabble, how many miles I’ve run today (it’s none, by the way) or what I’ve been listening to on Spotify or reading in an app which I don’t want to have to install. Not only do I not want to tell you those things about me, but I don’t really want to know those things about you either. I think I’d rather meet up with you and chat about stuff (which won’t include those things) and if I don’t want to meet up with you (or vice versa) then perhaps I shouldn’t be wasting my time reading about it. Read more
