Ah the passion of new love. You are irresistible to each other. You can’t look at the object of your desire without finding them desirable, without wanting to jump on them and get downright dirty with them. WOOF! They’re gorgeous, and you’re the luckiest person alive.

Seven months into a relationship and it’s still the same as day one, moreso in fact as each time you’re with them, you notice something else about them that you find absolutely adorable.

It’s great.

What’s even better is that you can get away with anything and still be attractive. It’s been a bit chilly since we entered November and on Friday night, I couldn’t cope with bedtime in the buff. I started off with pyjamas, but my feet were freezing and my dear Trump donated some bedsocks. Still no joy – or warmth – and as I shivered me timbers right to my core, I took her dressing gown and draped it on top of the duvet. Our hands were too cold for consolatory cuddles – the shock would’ve killed us – and the shivering continued. As a last resort, I took my hooded top from the chair, put it on and zipped it up. Warmth finally enveloped me, I fell into a deep slumber.

You wake at 6am to kisses and cuddles. You are boiling hot.

It’s amazing that, even at your least attractive, somebody can still love you.

Anyway, that was Friday night; it’s been a lot warmer since. So much so that, back at Casa Sniffy, it was so fucking hot when had to shut our windows to block out the noise and smoke that resulted from a six hour barrage of fireworks during last night’s Guy Fawkes Night celebrations. It was nice to see that the fuckwits next door had left a load of whites washing pegged out for the duration. Thick cunts.

Remember, remember, the 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th of November… oh, and don’t forget Diwali, Eid and New Year too.

Fucking fireworks. They are wonderful spectacular things. Bonfire Night (Guy Fawkes Night) used to be really special when it was just one night: we’d get some crappy Standard fireworks and stand with a sparkler while Dad tried to get a Catherine Wheel to work. They fizzed and putted and crackled; they weren’t the best, but they were fun. These days, the fucking things are so loud that it sounds like you’re under mortar attack in Basra. And, because of our multicultural society, or so we’re told, they’re available from September onwards and not just the week up to 5th of November.

Should the sale of fireworks be banned? I don’t think so, but it should be restricted to people who have to work, who appreciate that having the frigging things going off at 3am isn’t much fun when you have to be up in the morning.

What a life
I’m sure it’s time for one of Connie’s What a life gems. I imagine. She’s currently acting as mediator for her two nieces whose mum is very seriously ill. I wouldn’t mind her telling us about these family traumas, but it’s the fact that she always draws comparison between me and Bomb that really pisses me off. Bomb is mental and under the influence of hormones, so anything I say to her is justified.

Bomb has decided to go down the washable nappy route for her little one. Mental. Get yourself some fucking pampers, nutcase; your life is going to be difficult enough as it is without washing baby poo down the lav and soaking shitty nappies for hours.

She had her 20wk scan last week and I can confirm that she is definitely carrying a belly full of arms and legs. The misery guts didn’t want to find out its sex though, so I’ll have to wait till it’s out before I can start calling it Cosmo or Allegra (my names, not hers). Why not find out if you can?

Peppery

Now that it’s officially winter, I am officially enjoying official wintery foods. Tonight’s tea will be copious amounts of black peas, a Lancashire delicacy that I was introduced to for the first time only last week. Trump is such a dear, she’s had the things soaking in water overnight so all we have to do is boil them up once she gets in from work.

They’re just about the weirdest peas I’ve ever had though; you cook them with bicarb so they go all mushy – a bit like mushy peas, only they taste a little like refried beans. Anyway, they have to be enjoyed with lashings of vinegar and lots of white pepper (and salt if you’re me, or not if you have any of your taste buds left).

I’ve just had a cup of hot Bovril with lots of pepper. Yes Bovril, the beef extract. I was stunned when I heard that the manufacturers were going to stop using beef products altogether. That’s just not right, what would they call it then, Vovril? Anyway, it seems that good sense has prevailed and the proper stuff is available again. My nose is dripping from the pepper, but the hot Bovril drink is something that is slightly addictive. I’d get another cup if it was a bigger jar. I think Trump only bought the smaller size to test it out.

I’m at her house now, eagerly awaiting her return from work. She knows I’m here, I’m not like a weird stalker or anything.

Car share

We’re being encouraged to car share at work. Apparently, if you car share, you get preferential parking spaces on the level of the multi-storey car park that’s immediately below that which the rest of us environmental vandals have to use. A whole level lower! It doesn’t really make that much difference when the car park is on the corner of the site that’s the furthest possible from where most people work. So you still have a ten minute walk to your office, you just have to go down fewer stairs.

Dicks.

The scheme is being advertised with colourful posters that say things like “be kind to hedgehogs, car share!” I still don’t follow the logic behind that link, especially since we’re in the centre of a big fuck off city and the nearest hedgehogs are about eight miles away.

Dicks.

I tried car sharing for a while and it’s a complete pain in the arse.

• You agree a time that you’re going to pick somebody up.
• You rush around your house like a mad thing to ensure that you don’t leave late.
• Half way to picking up your passenger, you realise you’ve forgotten something important (like tampons), but you can’t be late, so you keep going.
• You need a poo, but didn’t have time to have one so you have to trump in the car. You have to open the windows despite the gale force winds and torrential rain.
• You arrive at your passenger’s house on time.
• You expect them to be waiting on the doorstep for you. They’re not, so you have to get out of the car and knock on the door.
• They let you in the house where you wait while they finish doing their hair, packing their bag, smoking their cigarette.
• You leave ten minutes later, but not before they’ve gone back into the house to check that they shut the bathroom window.
• You hit bad traffic – traffic that wouldn’t have been there had you not made the diversion to pick up a passenger twenty minutes earlier.
• They make conversation about the bad traffic and how much better it would be if more people shared their journeys to work.
• You bite your tongue.

I don’t really like having passengers in my car, not strangers at least. I like to be able to listen to my music, sing along if I like. How can I shout and swear at other drivers if I’m trying to be polite? I need my fart space.

So, be kind to hedgehogs, stay off work with a bad back!

Talking of which…. An edit and dedication to Her Majesty the Queen

Her Majesty has had to cancel a number of public engagements over the past week due to a bad back. She has my sympathy. But I can’t believe it’s taken her so many decades to discover that you can get out of your job by claiming to have a bad back.

Well done, Ma’am.

For all the years since I first heard Michael Jackson’s “Got to be starting something”, I’ve never known what the hell it was on about and was convinced that the closing reprise went something like:

“You’re a vegetable, you’re a vegetable
And I hate you, you’re a vegetable”

Could these really be in the lyrics of a pop song? Well, and I’m not sure whether these are correct or not, but this is what he’s supposed to be saying:

You’re Stuck In The Middle (Yeah, Yeah
And The Pain Is Thunder (Yeah, Yeah)
You’re A Vegetable, You’re A Vegetable
Still They Hate You, You’re A Vegetable
You’re Just A Buffet, You’re A Vegetable
They Eat Off Of You, You’re A Vegetable


So there you have it, it wasn’t my ears playing tricks on me, the lyrics are truly bizarre!

There are other instances of odd song lyrics, but plenty where we just get it wrong. One of my favourites was Womack and Womacks Teardrops, from about 1988:

Footsteps on the dancefloor, remind me baby of you
Teardrops… in my eyes, next time I’ll be true

Not difficult, but I used to think she was singing about “teardrops in my high heels”.

It’s good to know that it’s not just me. A friend of mine once thought that Bonnie Tyler was Lost in drag, while I know of another person I know thought that Kirsty McColl was telling us There’s a guy works down the chip shop swears his ‘ead off.

Trick or treat
Following the great tradition that was brought her from North America, the UK’s children are terrorising their neighbourhoods by taking part in “Trick or treat” activities. There have been arrests in Liverpool, apparently, where the little shits have been vandalising the homes of those who don’t give them enough cash – sweets are not enough.

We’ve had three ghostly visitations so far, from “youths” who have gone to all the trouble of dusting off last year’s Scream mask and wearing it under their hoodies.

“Trick or treat”

“Sing us a Hallowe’en song or tell us a joke. You’re not getting anything until you do.”

“Don’t know any”

“Well, you’re not getting anything then. Tell us a joke!”

“Where does Bin Laden keep his CDs?…. In a rack (in Iraq)”

“Good, have a couple of Heroes, but leave the time outs! They’re OK if you’re allergic to nuts…. I think. That’ll be a treat for us if your face swells up and you can’t get your mask off!”

Little bastards will be exploding fireworks through people’s letterboxes for the next month or so.

I could never write songs, or be a singer for that matter.

This has nothing to do with the fact that I have no talent for either writing or singing. No, you see, I’d never be able to incorporate the necessary “oooooooooos”, “aaaaaaaaaahhhhhs”, “boooooeeeeeeeeps” and other such non-verbal accompaniments that are a prerequisite for a hit song.

For some examples (and there are loads), check out the following:

Every little thing she does is magic – The Police
Use it up, wear it out – Odyssey
The house that Jack built/Respect/Seesaw/Dr Feel Good, etc, etc, etc – Aretha Franklin
Give me the night – George Benson
Anything soul/RNB

These are probably extreme examples, but just about every pop song has some degree of this. I reckon the “Oooooh Factor” is very important in popular music, it sort of provides a link in the song and it’d be interesting to see what songs would be like without it. I suppose you’d end up with something like Coldplay or Keane or some other such shite that we could all live without.

Why has Windows Media Player attributed Tori Amos’s From the choirgirl hotel to Natasha Bedingfield? I’d love to know how that one came about.

Zipping up my boots
I’m heading back to my roots. Or not, if you’re somebody like the Appletons (from All Saints), James Martin (Yorkshire TV chef), Mel Gibson (total American/Aussie/American cunt).

What is it with these people that they change their accents so easily? I remember when Mel Gibson was an Aussie (in films like Tim, Galipoli, Mad Max) and then he turned into an American in the mid-eighties. He also tried being Scottish (Braveheart) and English (Bounty/Hamlet). He was just annoying in all roles. Tit.

People do change their accents depending on where they live and the people who they associate with, it’s only natural; I have a strange Manchester/Yorkshire accent from my time at university all those years ago. However, what really grates on me is when people from the North of England (who have the flattest vowels on earth) start to change to “Southern-speak”. A classic example is TV Chef James Martin, a bloke from Yorkshire, who still speaks like a bloke from Yorkshire apart from a recently-acquired tendency to change his vowel-sounds to make them more palatable for TV. No longer do we get “butter” or “honey”, oh no, young James now favours the “batter” and “hanny” sound. Tosser. I’m sure even the most retarded Mockneys can understand what is meant by “butter”, fuckwit.

Laying about in bed all day, stinking of shit
I’m in bed. I should be parking my car at work right now, but I’ve been suffering with a bad back for the past couple of days and even the slightest movements in the wrong direction, and even those in the right direction, were causing me a lot of pain when I tried to get going this morning.

But now I’m sat in bed, propped up on three pillows, laptop at the ready. These things don’t half kick out some heat. Really hot now.

The problem with bad backs is that they can lure you into a false sense of security: you get moving and it eases up a bit so you make your way into work and then find that you can’t get down the stairs in the car park or walk to your office. Can you imagine what that’d look like? I’m sorry, I couldn’t face that humiliation, or the concern of all the healthcare professionals who would obviously flock to my aid. So to save being laughed at by people, I decided to stay off today.

Already from my sick bed, I’ve heard screams of “YOU BASTARD!!!!” from one of the neighbour’s houses. This was around 6am and was quite disturbing. And my prolonged stay in this room has made me aware of a strange smell in here. I think it’s the holdall that I took to Canada; the one that got drenched in red wine that’s sat on top of a wardrobe.

I’ll be taking Voltarol, a lovely drug that has no side effects that I can gather. Although I did have a strange dream in which I was preparing for stint in a stand up comedy show and I ended up deciding to talkabout stealing prescription drugs off old people. I woke up before the audience started dying of laughter, obviously.

Finally succumbed to a You Tube vid clip

Firefox 2
I’ve installed the latest versions of web browsers from Mozilla (Firefox) and Microsoft (Internet Explorer) and they’re both OK, although I do prefer Firefox these days.

Boring techno crap. … Anyway, I’m using Firefox to type this and I’ve noticed that it underlines any text that’s not in the English (British) dictionary in a similar fashion to the way MS Office applications do. How good is that? Well it’s OK I suppose.

Ah, the great British public. Please save me from them/it.

I was having a chat with a woman who has the job of promoting public transport initiatives for people working in Universities/big hospital area just south of the city centre in Manchester. She asked where I came to work from and acknowledged that it’s pretty poorly-serviced in terms of a direct bus route – in fact, it’s not serviced at all. “But the number 8 is a great service to Shudehill”. I agreed with her -it is – but added that I wouldn’t like to do it any more frequently than once or twice a year because it gets full of scumbags from Salford.

The problem with public transport is that it means you’re confined in a small space with members of the public, and this is something that can cause me great distress. If they could ensure that you didn’t have to share your journey with the dregs of society who take pleasure in intimidating fellow passengers without fear or reproach, then this would be a step in the right direction in making bus travel more attractive.

So back to the man on the street. My particular encounter with man on the street today took place near the pond that’s on my route to the shops. I tried not to stare at the bloke as he walked in my direction; something wasn’t right with his face. I made the mistake of making eye contact with him and he stopped to talk to me:

“You see all these here?” Close-to, I could see that his nose was plastered across his face from what looked like a pretty old injury. He was swaying. He was VERY Scouse. “You see all these here?”

“What, the ducks?”

“Yeah”, he swayed, “they’re all fuckin’ quackers!”

Oh how my sides split!

“Yeah”, I agreed, “they’re pretty mad, it’s freezing today. You should see them in winter when the pond’s half frozen over, they still sit in that water all day. Sometimes I think they get frozen in.”

“Oh right, like, yeah, I went to visit my mate in the fuckin’ [mental health unit] and one of the fuckin’ ducks had got in there and laid all its eggs inside the fuckin’ yard. Fuckin’ mental.”

“Yeah, they’re great. They lay eggs in the hospital courtyard too and, when the chicks hatch, they put a paddling pool out for them so they can learn to swim.”

“No fuckin’ way!”

“They certainly do!”

“Well, that’s just fuckin’ great. Hey, you’re a nice person.”

I’m a nice person.

I stopped for a 2 minute conversation with stranger who looked as rough as hell, who swore even more than I do, but who wanted nothing more than to have a chat about the ducks and that makes me a nice person. It makes me a bit ashamed of how I allow myself to form opinions about people. I don’t think I am a particularly nice person; I’m opinionated, short tempered, irreverent and impatient, but there you go. There are scummy people out there, utter shitbags. But there are a lot of people who don’t really have much to offer, and in all honesty possibly can’t help themselves much, but who are happy to stop a stranger and talk about ducks. There can’t be too much wrong with that.

Another man on the street
Aki got in trouble for stopping young people and asking to feel and measure their muscles and asking them to do squats so he could see their muscles. He’s now been banned from doing this. Perhaps he should investigate ducks as a means of breaking the ice when meeting strangers.

ANOTHER man on the street
There are plenty of bigots out there, religious or otherwise. It’s odd that we don’t kick up too much of a stink about so-called Christian fundamentalists spouting their filth while having dangerous amounts of influence in US politics, yet everytime a “radical muslim cleric” comes out with something outrageous, there’s open-season on Islam.

Still, after a couple of weeks where the wearing of veils by a tiny minority of muslim women in the UK has been in the spotlight, the whole debate on muslim dress and that is still in the news. No surprise then that a bit of a stink has been kicked up by Sheikh al-Hilali’s comments about the way women dress attracting unwanted attention from men and that women who don’t wear the Hijab (headscarf) are like raw meat attracting flies or cats or something. You see, when people use daft metaphors, they’re always open to misinterpretation. If he’d just said “women who don’t cover up are asking for it because men are animals who can’t keep it in their pants, then it wouldn’t have been nearly as insulting as likening women to bits of meat and men to alley cats or flies or summat!

But who’d have thought that something as simple as wearing a headscarf would protect a woman from rapists? Genius! I can see this being the basis of a new super heroine. And if, as implied, the problem is that men can’t control themselves, why aren’t they made to wear blindfolds or kept locked up?

Then again, the Catholic church won’t allow the ordination of gay priests “because of its rampant problem with paedophiles”. Of course, all gay men are paedophiles, aren’t they?

And then there’s the delightful “God hates fags” group that protests outside military hospitals in the states and shouts abuse at injured service personnel. They blame injuries to US troops, and I think Hurricaine Katrina, on America’s liberal attitude to gays.

Fucking hell, they’re all mad!

I’ll get off my anti-religion soap box now. Things like this wind so many folk up and make it difficult to remember how many millions of good people enjoy their faiths without causing one bit of trouble, and how many people without faith are complete and utter wankers.

Essentially, people are split into a number of categories, irrespective of sex, colour, race, religion, social class, whether they drive a people carrier:

• Lovelable
• Likeable
• OK
• Tolerable
• Annoying
• Insufferable
• Total cunt

The other stuff just allows them to associate with loveable, OK, tolerable, annoying, insufferable cunts of the same sex, ethnicity, religion or Renault owners club membership status.

Why is it that you have loads of poos some days? Is it something to do with how much food you scoff? Gillian McWitch would say so. Stupid cow.

Apparently, there’s a bloke somewhere in the South of England who has caused over £60,000 worth of damage to the trains down there by pooing in the carriages and smearing it all over. Dirty bastard. He’s probably protesting about the quality of the sausage rolls or something.

Can you imagine? Blimey, there are some proper odd people about.

Little Otto went back to the vet for the first time since he was given a near fatal overdose of ketamine this time last year. He’s a calm little soul and apparently has never had much of an issue with travelling in the car… until today, when he peed all over my dad. He’d clearly not forgotten what happened to him last time he had to go in a car. He was OK once he got to the vet’s and was back to his floppy self while being examined. The vet reckons he’s a bit constipated so has given him some Katalax, which he seems to enjoy a little too much for comfort. No doubt there’ll be a major shit monster episode in the early hours and we’ll wake up to a house peppered with pellets of kitty poo.

At the dentist
I had my dental check-up today. It took less than a minute for the dentist to examine me and confirm that all is well in the Sniffy gob. It cost me £15.50. That’s £15.50 for one minute’s work. Do the maths. Still, for the same fee, I could’ve had an x-ray and a scale and polish included. But no thanks, they’re such vicious bastards when they polish your teeth and you end up spitting blood for days.

I was having a look at my teeth last night because I’d been convinced that I’ve got a small cavity in one of them. I was shocked and appalled when I counted FIVE fillings. I mustn’t have started brushing my teeth until I was twenty! Skanky mare. Anyway, he had a close look at where I’d been feeling a bit of sensitivity and found nothing. I think I may have an undiagnosed siamese twin in my jaw or something. You’ll hear it here first.

Glad tidings
I’ve been holding back on letting rip with some exciting news in the Sniffy household. My sister, Bombarella, is about 18 weeks pregnant. Pregnant out of wedlock and no sign of the father I might add. Dirty bitch.

The pregnancy isn’t without complications (my sister is the mother for a start!) and I’m not getting too excited until the little one is safely with us, but all being well, it’s going to be great. I’m so very pleased for her and I can’t wait to be an auntie. Can’t wait to have a little one to influence and corrupt. Hee, hee, hee.

I’ve already started pulling faces in the general direction of the Bumparino, just so it doesn’t get too shocked when it first meets me.

Hope Trump doesn’t spoil my fun. She’s so sensible at times.

There’s nothing lovelier than being woken by the person who you’re mad about, giving you a gentle kiss and a cuddle. At 6.15 on Saturday morning I was woken by my dearest Trump (not trumps), she was saying something to me, but I was listening to the sound of torrential rain.

“Sniff, are you awake?”
“No”
“Did you put the shower on?”
“Eh? No!”

She got out of bed and wandered into the hallway of her parents’ house, where we’d been staying for a couple of weeks while they were on holiday. An exclamation of despair and horror preceded her re-emergence in the bedroom.

“Tina, I need you to wake up and put your glasses on NOW!”

Wondering whether they’d give me superhero powers, I put my glasses on and staggered bed-footed, into the hallway…

It was very steamy out there; moisture had condensed on all the walls, it was dripping from the ceilings, pictures and mirrors in the hallway were steamed up. It was a right fucking mess.

We ran it over in our heads: Trump had come to bed at 2.30am after playing Grand Theft Auto; she was delightfully tipsy after a few glasses of wine; we both fell asleep around 3am; the shower was not on at this point.

“Have you ever sleepwalked?”, she enquired
“No, never”
“And you’re sure the shower wasn’t on when I got to bed?”
“Positive”
“But you didn’t hear me get up?”
“No, nothing”
“What time did I come to bed, 2.30am? The shower could’ve been on for about 3 hours! The boiler could be fucked. Imagine the fucking gas bill!”

Worried, amongst other things, that the wallpaper might start to fall off, we opened windows, doors. We started patting down the sodden walls. Our heads and the steam cleared, we explored worst-case scenarios:

• All the wallpaper comes off walls and ceilings
• All the wallpaper comes off walls but not ceilings or vice versa
• 1 or 2 plus the boiler is fucked

Action = claim on house insurance

• The Trump parents find out that Trump was a little tipsy

Action = claim on house insurance and cash in Trump’s pension

• The walls and/or ceilings become stained

Action = find matching colour and spend the weekend repainting

• Everything goes back to normal

Action = thank fuck and swear never to do anything like that again

• The gas bill arrives

Action = claim it was unseasonably cold one night during the warmest October on record

It was an odd situation and, looking back, it was something reminiscent of the opening scene of a horror film. Young, attractive couple are woken by the sound of the shower running during the night. One gets up to investigate and is moidered by a deranged murderer who has escaped from the local secure hospital for the criminally insane. The other, helpless in her slippers, soon becomes the second victim in what police later describe as a frenzied attack. And that’s one reason why I prefer to wear my shoes while I’m inside the house – just in case somebody breaks in and tries to axe me to death: I’d hate to be barefoot if that ever happened.

I could write stories and shit like that. It doesn’t take a genius.

Genius
It doesn’t take a genius to work out how to transfer music from vinyl to your PC if you have the right bit of wire and some software. I am victorious!

Shoelace conspiracy
Why do shoelaces always get twisted? It’s so annoying. Like the cords on telephones: you forget how annoying this is because you tend to only use mobile or cordless phones, but your work phone is always corded and some dim fuck always manages to twist your cord despite the fact that you’re always REALLY careful to leave it untangled. How difficult is it to put a telephone receiver down so that the cord doesn’t tangle?

Oh brother!
My brother is a bit strange. I won’t add to that because there’s so much I could go into and I’d just get be very depressed.

Anyway, he has a PC and he doesn’t really know how to use it. As a result, he keeps breaking it and then wonders why it doesn’t work quite as well as it should. He keeps asking if I can go round and “sort it out” and I don’t really know what this means since he claims to have already reformatted it. He phoned again earlier and asked when I might be able to go round. Mum has just asked “are you going to Alan’s then?”. Eh????

I can’t really be arsed…. so tired. It’s like a garage mechanic being asked to sort out somebody’s car because it’s not driving as they’d like and then finding out that they’re driving with the handbrake on.

Better do my sisterly duty I suppose.

Bumholes.

Headline news today is that our former British Steel is in a buy out deal with a huge Indian-based company, Tata. It’s pronounced “tater”, as in potater… that’s potato to anybody who still hasn’t got what I’m on about…

Ah stuff it, I was out till after midnight last night and my body is still in shock. I really can’t cope with doing social things; I’m out tonight and tomorrow night too. I don’t understand how people can be bothered going out, especially people on normal salaraies – it’s so expensive.

Ha ha ha
Last night’s event was some stand-up comedy thing. The tickets were £14, drinks came to £5.70 a round (I insisted on my sister having soda water instead of fizzy mineral water – same bloody stuff) and parking was £6. SIX POUNDS STERLING for parking, thieving bastards. But yes, it was a stand-up comedy thing at it was quite good fun. It amazes me how people can put a routine together, or at least have enough material floating about their head to enable them to stand up and talk coherently and in an entertaining way. Some people are very good at it, very natural.

My sister said she “wouldn’t get on that stage for a 20 minute routine even if they paid me half a million!”. I retorted that “I bloody would”. And then it was pointed out to me that I’d have to make people laugh too.

This “make ’em laugh” attribute is obviously an art and the best comics are those who don’t rely on current affairs or niche cultures like TV too much. So comics have to generalise to find common ground with the punters and Britain, we just take the piss out of each other. There’s a kind of irreverence amongst British people that means that everybody is fair game when it comes to being the topic of a comic’s routine. We’re not allowed to take the piss out of the Irish anymore, but since the Welsh don’t seem to like anybody, we target them. People from different social classes and backgrounds are easy fodder. Car drivers, caravaners, Scousers, people from different regions, people with ginger hair – humour is (should be) used to illustrate how different we all are while all being the same. By pointing out our differences we bring ourselves together. We can become suspicious of those who we feel we can’t take the piss out of or those who take themselves too seriously – Chorlton-dwelling lesbians, for example. But it’s useful that we can all be stereotyped in some comic parody, and most people appreciate that this is lighthearted and using certain jokes that play on stereotypes can be used to break down tricky social barriers when meeting folk from different backgrounds.

When I meet a teacher for example, I always remember to ask them if they’re worn out from all that 9 to 3.30 working and all the holidays they have to take. And of course, they appreciate the fact that I’m using humour, or sarcasm to be precise, to illustrate that I think they’re a bunch of lazy, whinging bastards.

Spam almighty!
I hate spammers. I don’t understand why they do it. People talk about the threat of global terrorism in terms of being blown up, but much more disruption is caused by people hacking into IT infrastructure and slowing things down by bombarding us with spam.

Just checked my Yahoo e-mail account, it said there was a new message somewhere, but it wasn’t showing amongst recent messages. Scrolling down, I found it with a date sometime in August.

Some people need to get a life.

Nose pain
Nose hairs are a curse. Do you ever get those really sticky bogeys that glue them together so that when you pick them out, it really hurts. I’ve also got an idiopathic sore at the margin of outer and inner nostril; it’s killing me.

I’m doing terrible eggy plappers too. I’m feeling a little under the weather I suppose. I should think about getting my flu jab over the next month or so, but look at this…

It’s hard to spot, but some poor woman had written in to BBC News online’s Have Your Say to tell us that the flu jab gave her palpitations. Others accuse the flu jab of giving them more serious things, such as actual flu itself, bird flu, cancer, chronic wind, bad teeth and unmanageable debt. It’s all a government conspiracy and the flu jab actually contains a microscopic tracking device so the Myesterious They can keep tabs on us.

Think on!

I love e-mail exchanges. Just see how something innocent can give me an excuse to descend into a ranting maniac.

I now have a new direct dial number 123 4567, which was more complicated to organise that anything I have yet encountered! Prof’s is still supporting me and is on 6789, which is where I will direct my phone when not in the office.

Thanks

And then it began…

And I thought you meant something exciting like a new mobile phone. Gadget freaks like me have no interest in landlines or any so-called “technology” that means you actually have to speak to people!

No, I am hoping to get a new phone when my friend recycles hers. I have her old old one now and will recycle that to [my girlfriend] who is still using the original nokia brick. You would weep.

Horrified. Can’t get an upgrdade on mine until April and I’m itching for a new one.

Don’t your friends laugh at you for having rubbish mobile phones? It would be a useful incentive to make you upgrade regularly.

Upgrading phones is very very bad for the environment, so to be avoided. Think of all that battery acid leaching into the earth, not to mention the resources needed to manufacture it. Shame on you.

I’m sorry? This is TECHNOLOGY we’re talking about – stuff the environment! Mine always get recycled to luddite friends and mothers too. Or end up in a drawer somewhere.

Not upgrading because of the environment? That’s like saying you shouldn’t change your highly-polluting, inefficient old motor because of the manufacturing costs of new cars. Well, not quite, but having nice material things always takes priority over namby pamby rubbish like the “environment”.

Tsk.

You’ve been living in Chorlton too long. You need to get out in the real world. And Chorlton needs to be turned into a landfill site for old mobile phones and bits of freezers and cars. That’d learn all those Guardian-reading, Camper-wearing, three-wheel pram-pushing dreamers!

Fascist

I love my Chorlton utopia.

I say again, shame on you and you polluting ways.

Chorlton is not the real world! It is a cocoon for people with misguided socialist ideals; people who think their taxes are well spent on the poor and needy. It is a poor man’s Didsbury. Now there’s an insult!

Besides, you live in Old Trafford.

I suppose we could all discard the trappings of civilisation and go and live in mud-huts, but the Mysterious They would still find excuses to tax us on mud-usage and blame us for all the world’s ills.

The world will survive whatever humans throw at it. Humans might not, but that’s probably a good thing if you think about it.

I bet you recycle

Saucer of milk!

My dad does.

Recycling is different – it helps to ensure that I can have my pop in cans instead of plastic bottles and that my car can be turned into another car when it dies.

I turn off lights and don’t leave things on standby (like my PC monitor!). I use my car as little as possible (but this is more to do with my £160 a month petrol bill) and I send out as much documentation as possible in electronic format.

I turn the tap off when I brush my teeth and take showers instead of baths.

I try not to waste things.

I will not, however, start calculating my carbon balance or be made to feel guilty doing things that make my life just that little bit more bearable, enjoyable even. If this means getting a new gadget every now and again or, heaven forbid, going on holiday abroad a few times after not leaving the country for 11 years, then tough.

I went even further and started laying into working mothers whose heads are full of mush and who only ever talk about poo and the next holiday they’re having in the school break and then everything sort of went blank and I came round slurping on a Cup a Soup.

Halal pizza??
Me and Trump were discussing if we should get takeaway pizza the other night. Considering the size of my arse, the answer should’ve been a resounding NO! However, I was all for it until she said that the only place locally was the curry/burger/kebab place. Now, they do great kebabs, I’ve had them, but this place is run by Muslim folk and, as such, they only use halal meat, which I’m not mad keen on the idea of at the best of times, but needs must. Worst still, there ain’t no such thing as halal peperoni so their pizza toppings simply wouldn’t be satisfactory. No peperoni? No ham? I’m sorry, but that’s just not on! Kindly desist from advertising that you make so-called pizzas when you can’t provide a full range of toppings!

Bloody fly-by-nights!

The Bears recently found a new friend. Unlike most of their friends, Twinkle, is a touch on the effeminate side and he likes to dress up all girlie-like, never shying away from a bit of mascara. On a recent night out in town however, the boys were set upon in an evil homophobic attack. This queer-bashing was caught on camera by intrepid roving-reporter, Sniffy:

No! Please don’t smudge my mascara!

Witnesses looked on in horror as the the evil Trexi – a leading member of the British National Party – tried to bite poor Twinkle’s head off. He was only deterred by the brave actions of RCMP Bear Chadwick, who fought him off valiantly while his Italian mate, Francesco, screamed like a girl and ran for it.

Bloody poofs.

Bear two
Talking of poofs, a couple of my favourite queers – Piggy and Tazzy – are shifting their internet efforts to a new venture. Check out those disgusting pervs’ new site at www.abitpoofy.com. Bugger only knows what it’s going to be like, but it can’t be any worse than the shite they churn out at Tazzyandpiggydotcom.

Fuckers.

Bear three
I have recently regressed to seeking literary fulfilment from reading material that goes under the “graphic novels” genre, or “comics” to you and me. My particular favourite is Slave Labor Graphics’ Bear, written by Jamie Smart.

Our hero Bear and his friend Karl spend their time trying to avoid being killed by Karl’s psychotic cat, Looshkin.

Fucking brilliant, that’s what it is. Unfortunately, I can’t get hold of issue 2 anywhere, so if anybody has a copy they’d think of parting with, get in touch and we’ll see about doing a swap… perhaps for a couple of proper books or something…

I’ve come to realise that words are too difficult and it’s so much easier to follow pictures with just a bit of text, rather than wading through page upon page of descriptive text. I recently read a book called If we do not speak of remarkable things and I hated it – way too much description and it took me a couple of hundred pages and wasted a few weeks of my reading time just to say nothing much at all. It was one of the most irritating books I’ve ever read: the speech wasn’t distinguished from normal text – no quotation marks or anything; the “story” jumped back and forth. Boring, boring drivel.

One book with real words that I did enjoy was Extremely loud and incredibly close, by Jonathan Safran Foer. It’s about a young boy who finds a key in his dad’s closet shortly after his death in the World Trade Center attacks of 11th September, 2001. He embarks on a journey across New York to find out about the key. It has some weird moments and the end is a bit of an anticlimax, but I reckon it’s still worth a read despite this.

Bearly believable
I managed to hold off for nearly two whole weeks before I succumbed to buying a wireless router, but I gave in this weekend. It’s great this wireless networking business: I can now surf the internet on my laptop from any location in range of the signal without need for wires and that. But still I find myself sat at my desk, laptop in front of me, ethernet cable within easy reach. How very ironic.

I guess now all we need is some way of transmitting electric power without cables since there are never enough power points in a room and the ones we have are always hidden behind immovable furniture. And yes, I have heard of batteries, but they never stay charged for long.

Why do electricians do that? Why do they always put power points at positions in a room where people are most likely to have really heavy furniture? Why do some DIYers put electric sockets in skirting boards? What’s the fucking point of that? Have they not seen how plugs are designed (in the UK)? The cables don’t bend at floor level and you can’t plug stuff in – especially those huge bloody transformers that come on most power adapters these days.

Fucktards, the lot of them.

So there you go, queer-bashing, literature and DIY in one post. Plus a little bit of culture from LS Lowry too.