I’m not sure what’s wrong with people when they go to the shops; it’s as if they lose all common sense and awareness of their surroundings, thus becoming the most irritating, punch-deserving fucktards that ever walked the earth.

Or perhaps it’s just me that comes across such utter mongoloids on my (increasingly) rare trips out amongst fellow “humans”. I wish life could be more like cat world, where they just about tolerate each other at best, but generally have a good old scrap with ones that piss them off. No need for false niceties, or holding things in, just go for it and slap the fuckers that wind you up. Quick slap: they know they’ve pissed you off and go away to consider how to alter their behaviour; you can move on and forget about it.

Ahem…

Having returned to that beacon of retail wonder, Costco, to conduct a successful transaction for contact lenses, I’d had a wander round and picked up some stuff to buy (if you’re interested: new winter coat; dried prunes; pizza for tomorrow night’s tea; plums – can’t go wrong with shopping lists). I’d also had some more fun trying on specs – still not sure, hum-hah. Anyway (choir of heavenly angels sings out: “Ahhhahahahhh, fay-vour-ite woooo-oooo-ooorrrd”), me and Mother (awwww) made our way to the till….

All the tills were fairly bustling and ours had 2 sets of shoppers in front of us. The first set loaded the conveyor with their stuff and the second pair of people stood there, in front of us, oblivious to the fact that there was a space the size of, oh at least a huge pizza, on the conveyor for them to place their soul purchase of a bottle of screen wash. And they waited, and waited, not paying attention. Worse still, they were stood a good metre from the end of the till and it was so tempting to jump in front of them with our very heavy items.

Why don’t people pay attention to what’s going on? I’m not advocating that people push up against each other and rush other shoppers, but fair’s fair, get a fucking move on, for fuck’s sake.

It reminds me of a time….. the sound of a harp as the scene fades, we’re cast back to January and a novice Cakesniffer had just returned from Tesco…


Supermarket etiquette

I love Tesco! However, there are certain things about supermarkets that I cannot stand. I went to my local store this evening and the thing that always hits me there is the laziness of the customers: this is evident in the car park, with trollies strewn all over the place, taking up parking bays – all because people are such lazy bastards that they can’t walk the 30 or so yard to the trolley park. Stupid twats. I think it’s quite a well-to-do area (in comparison to where I live) and some of the customers must find that sort of thing beneath them. Either that or they’re just inconsiderate and lazy. Second annoyance is changing stocks: you’ll go there for ages, get used to a certain product and then you’ll find it’s been discontinued. I always find this with hair styling products and it really pisses me off – why do they do it? My family also became rather partial to Tesco’s own brand chilli peanuts over Christmas and they too have been discontinued. There were a few confused and forlorn-looking punters scouring the salty snack aisle while I was there. A popular snack – gone! Yet there’s a whole bloody aisle given over to Easter (25th March) and bastard Valentine’s Day (14th February – I’m not bitter). I’m not just knocking Tesco for this premature assault of goods on its customers because all the supermarkets do it, but I wish they wouldn’t. The year passes quickly enough as it is without bringing things forward months in advance. It won’t be long before they start selling Christmas things again.

So I negotiated the shop (and they only had organic papardelle) and got to the till where the woman in front of me waited till she’d paid and my own goods were being scanned before she decided to think about packing her three items very slowly. I told the lad on the till to hang on a minute because our stuff was getting mixed up and she gave me such a glare. She was so slow and fucking retarded, but looked bright enough to know better, I could’ve killed her. All my stuff had been scanned by the time she picked up her bloody stuff and pissed off. I think she was one of these hippy types who refuses to be rushed by the pressures of the 21st century, but she was coming close to getting a slap – that’d have brought her into 2005! Stupid bitch. Then I got charged for three cans of borlotti beans and not two as I’d bought. Still, I should get them for free because of it.

I think I’m going to e-mail Tesco and tell them to start stocking their chilli peanuts again – they’re DELISH!

You see, ten months on and I bet Tesco have started stocking those chilli peanuts again in readiness for Christmas. I shall investigate.

Oh, another film theme? No, I’m about to put folk out of theirs by revealing my answers to the true or false statements.

Here goes, ahem…

1. I refused to meet one Health Secretary and was abusive to another. True. While working in my lab, I received a phonecall from another part of the hospital to say that a research poster of mine had won an award and I was to be presented with a certificate by then Secretary of State of Health (top health minister in UK), Frank Dobson. I refused to go, but was told in no uncertain terms that I had to and was essentially dragged along to receive the award. It was horrible. A couple of years ago, I encounted Dr John Reid (another recent Health Secretary). He and his entourage wanted to use the room in which I was holding a training session and I told him that the room wouldn’t be free until the time which had been agreed beforehand. I was accused of being abusive.
2. I have engaged in sexual activities in the workplace. True again, but I’m not elaborating.
3. When I was a student, I had a regular summer job in an abattoir. False. (You don’t know what an abattoir is April? It’s where they kill animals for meat). When I was a student, I had a summer job as a chemist in the QA labs at a factory that makes huge batteries and things. It was good fun. You wouldn’t get me anywhere near an abattoir.
4. I was once run over by a horse. True. I was backstop at rounders and had to retrieve the ball from a nearby horses’ field. While in there, I was knocked over when a horse got a bit excited. Another horse jumped over me and clipped my knee with its hoof. It really hurt.
5. I have broken into a house to retrieve my cat. True. Max is a complete dick and keeps getting himself locked in houses when the council have workmen in doing rennovations on unoccupied properties. I had to break into the same house on two separate occasion to get the little shit back. The workmen always left the doors open for him to escape, but he hid under floorboards and things because he was scared of them. So he always ended up getting locked up again when they went home at the end of the day. As it was weekend (on both occasions), I didn’t want him stuck in there for over two days so I went in to get him – once through an open window and the second time by using the key that they thought they’d hidden under a stone.
6. I have lied under oath to protect a friend. False. No, I’ve never been called on to do this. But I have told the truth to protect a friend and that was possibly more difficult.
7. I used to play bass guitar in the school band. False. Although I was in a guitar group with a load of my teachers, we all played accoustic (badly).
8. I don’t always brush my teeth before going to bed. Guilty as charged. I always intend to brush my teeth, but if I take a can of pop to bed to finish off, I won’t brush them until I’ve finished it and sometimes fall asleep before I do either. Tut, tut, tut.
9. Driving at 30mph pisses me off and I only slow down if I know there’s a speed camera. FALSE. I’m actually a stickler for the rules of the road and I always try really hard to drive at the speed limit in urban areas (although I get really annoyed with drivers who drive under the speed limit). Motorways and dual carriageways don’t count though.
10. I am an alcoholic. True, believe it or not. I have always had a very rocky relationship with booze and used to drink a fair bit every evening. I gave up 6 years ago and am now teetotal.
11. I once offered to be a surrogate mother for my sister. Hell no!
12. I have never eaten cottage cheese. Truth! Why would anybody eat this shit? It looks like puke, for fuck’s sake.
13. I have met the Pope. False. Although I have stood at the foot of tomb of PJP2 – and all the other dead Popes for that matter.
14. Drunk at a Christmas party, I called my boss Jacob Marley and told him to fuck off. True. My boss had actually left us, but returned to have regular updates, one of which was on the day of our Christmas do. Unfortunately, he’d really pissed me off at the meeting and, tongue loosened by a couple of litres of house red, I told him what I thought of him (or so I’ve been told). Despite the fact that he’d left, he kept coming back for one leaving do after another and this is where the Jacob Marley thing comes from. I said, “You’re just like Jacob Marley you…” And when asked why, I said, “…because you keep coming back!”. Not an episode that I’m particularly proud of and I couldn’t apologise enough. In spite of everything, I had and still have a lot of respect for the man and it was a rather childish, if highly amusing, thing to do.
15. While at university, I considered taking holy orders and joining a convent. Get outta here!
16. When I was a student, I stole garden furniture from the halls of residence that neighboured our flats. Absolutely true (and there are photos somewhere too). Not only did I get a garden umbrella and chair, I also got a police “no waiting” cone in which to prop the garden umbrella. During my time at University, I also acquired: a beer keg; a shower curtain from the Union; an 8 ball.
17. I was evacuated from Marks and Spencer in Manchester city centre the day when the IRA blew it up in 1996. False. I was supposed to be going into Manchester that morning, but I got up late and I was in the bath at the time when I heard the bang (6 miles out).
18. I have been engaged to be married. Have I bollocks!
19. I was arrested during the Poll Tax AND student loans demonstrations. Nope, I took part in none of these demos. I’m not the demonstrating kind and I didn’t really have an argument against either the Poll Tax or student loans.
20. I graduated top of my class. True indeed. I have a first class honours degree in biochemistry and I won the prize for being the top swot. This pissed off all the girls who’d spent 3 years in the library while I’d been making time to enjoy myself as well as study.

So there you have it.

I haven’t really, but it’s an appropriate title for a post about the wonderful Whatever happened to Baby Jane? The Joan Crawford/Bette Davis classic about sibling rivalry taken that touch too far.

It’s ages since I’ve seen the film, but something brought it to mind the other night: pissing about with a phone camera, I took this shot of me and my lovely sister

Nothing remarkable about this. We’re both mingers, so it’s no great surprise that a photo would turn out this way. However, at a second glance, one thing sprung to mind:

Hammer Horror
I love Hammer Horrors and was thrilled at this shot in which Anna bears a remarkable resemblance to Vincent Price…. priceless!

And look what chasing me through the streets of central Manchester this morning!

True or False
There’s time to give your answers to the True or False statements until tomorrow I think. Some folk have been very close, while I’m quite shocked and appalled at what some people think of me.

Well, good old Coldcoldearth had a fantastic post in which he made 20 outrageous statements about himself – 10 of which were true. I’ve now been invited to do the same thing here. Deep joy.

Can blogworld be bothered to strip fact from fiction? Remember, 10 are true, 10 are false. What do you think?

1. I refused to meet one Health Secretary and was abusive to another
2. I have engaged in sexual activities in the workplace
3. When I was a student, I had a regular summer job in an abattoir
4. I was once run over by a horse
5. I have broken into a house to retrieve my cat
6. I have lied under oath to protect a friend
7. I used to play bass guitar in the school band
8. I don’t always brush my teeth before going to bed
9. Driving at 30mph pisses me off and I only slow down if I know there’s a speed camera
10. I am an alcoholic
11. I once offered to be a surrogate mother for my sister
12. I have never eaten cottage cheese
13. I have met the Pope
14. Drunk at a Christmas party, I called my boss Jacob Marley and told him to fuck off
15. While at university, I considered taking holy orders and joining a convent
16. When I was a student, I stole garden furniture from the halls of residence that neighboured our flats
17. I was evacuated from Marks and Spencer in Manchester city centre the day when the IRA blew it up in 1996
18. I have been engaged to be married
19. I was arrested during the Poll Tax AND student loans demonstrations
20. I graduated top of my class

Blimey, that was hard work. Doing things like that makes you realise how dull your life really is.

Bluetooth redemption
I’ve acquired a USB bluetooth adapter for my PC. It’s such fun and it makes it really easy to transfer stuff between my phone and PC (photos, music, etc). It’s a phone, for fuck’s sake, why does being able to transfer photos and music to and from it matter? I’ve no idea, it just does.

Flattery will get you everywhere
In case readers here haven’t noticed, Piggy and Tazzy have been running a Cakesniffer special over at the Chocolate Starfish. Their efforts are well worth a look.

Life certainly does get in your way!

You need your sleep to recouperate from a hectic day of scowling at siblings, being put out by their requests for technical support, eating fucking delish curry…

As part of the Sniffy Experimentals programme of fully validated and peer reviewed scientific work, I conducted a sleep experiment last night. Interested in knowing how much I move about while sleeping, in order to make an informed decision on easy-care or Egyptian percale bed linen, I thought I’d employ the full technical capability of my camera to find out.

My camera is no slouch and it is has an “intervalometer” setting, whereby it will automatically take a picture at a set interval for up to 100 shots. You can use it for taking photos of flower buds opening and that kind of shit.

Anyway (!) I put it to the test last night. I set the camera on its little tripod on my bedside table and set the shutter to fire every 5 minutes. The green AF assist beam and shutter noise (must remember to turn off that sound effect) were only disturbing for the first two hours and I fell into a deep slumber. Unfortunately, I forgot to set the shutter speed appropriately, so there are about 80 frames of complete blackness until dawn started to break. My last hour of sleep was caught thusly:

How earily still is that? I missed the last one off where my eyes were half open, which gave me the appearance of a victim of a strangulation.

So that was fun.

Me and Anna did a hill this afternoon. The plan had been for her to come round this morning, we’d then do some shopping, then go up a hill. She arrived at 2.30, ate two lunches, was on the phone for an hour and we left at about 4pm. Still, this is us atop Holcombe Moor near Ramsbottom.

That’s Winter Hill in the background and those are the masts that bring the North West of England its television. Blow the fucking things up and get the thick fuckers to learn to read is what I say, but I’m not in charge.

Holcombe Moor is home to Peel Tower, which was constructed in honour of local celebrity Sir Robert Peel, the former black pudding salesman who brought us or Boys in Blue (overweight, useless Nazis in stab-proof vests who never leave the safety of their vans unless they can get on the telly when it’s a murder). You can see right into North Wales from up there. Well you could if the visibility wasn’t always hampered by the shit weather we get here.

This is me in front of the tower. Yes, my trousers are tucked into my socks, I apologise; it’s been raining a lot and, it being moorland, is very good at retaining water and being muddy.

There’s also an MOD firing range near there. If we’d gone early enough, I was going to get Anna to try and find it.

Tell you what’s good VFM? Flickr Pro: you pay £15 a year and you don’t need to worry about reducing the size of photos before uploading them.

Oh! Feel free to add yourselves to my Frapper map thing over there>>>>>> (under my e-mail address). It’d be nice to build up a map of where everyone comes from. Does anybody get any Aussie visitors?

With November rapidly approaching, the relentless fall of leaves from trees, dipping temperatures and short days, there’s no escaping the fact that it is well and truly autumn and that winter will soon be upon us.

Ah well, there’s no point giving in to depression. I might as well embrace the changing seasons (groan) and make the most of it. Winter has its positives: there’s Christmas; and the run up to it; and the food; buying lovely pressies for lovely people…. and wrapping up warm.

There’s something nice about wearing your big quilted winter coat, pulling your gloves and hat on. It’s kind of like being cuddled. Even more so if you’ve got a nice scarf to wear. Oooh, wrap it round your neck to keep the chill out – a nice long one will even add extra warmth to your chest.

Fantastic.

Why then, do I hate THIS:

For some reason seeing a scarf worn in this particular way really winds me up and I don’t know why. I think it’s because I work near the universities in a large city that has the largest student population in Europe. Each day, I’ll see these nubile young things hopping off buses, laughing, thin, optimistic, attractive, fashionable, popular. There are LOADS of them, all wearing scarfs tied in this way – but they never wear an overcoat!

This is called the “European casual” or “European loop-through” method of tying a scarf:

Bluetooth shite reconstruction:

• Blondie (from: Picture this; Hanging on the telephone; Union City blue; Dreaming)
• B52s (from: Summer of love; Ain’t it a shame; Song for a future generation; Queen of Las Vegas; 52 Girls; Give me back my man; Dirty back road)
• Tori Amos (from: Cornflake girl; A sorta fairytale; Precious things; Yes, Anastasia)
• Kate Bush (from: The big sky; The man with the child in his eyes; James and the cold gun; Houdini; Rocket’s tail; Never be mine; L’amour looks something like you)
• Madonna (from: Into the groove (original); Ray of light; Revenge; Like a prayer; Beautiful stranger)
• George Michael/Wham (from: Cowboys and angels; Freedom 90; Too funky; You have been loved; Club Tropicana)
• Kylie (from: Hand on your heart; Better the devil you know; Shocked; What do I have to do?)
• S’Express – Superfly guy
• Lemon Jelly – The Saunton lick

Of course, these are just the ones from my favourite artistes. There’s also a huge selection of one offs that I could make a top million out of.

I’ll work on it, I’ve noticed there’s no Abba in there. It needs work and lots of careful consideration.

Eeeh, I’m happy. Just downloaded the new Kate Bush single. Even if it was totally shit, I’d love it. But it’s not shit, it’s fuckin’ ace.

My music acquisitions this week have been:

Downloads
Madonna’s Hung up
Rachel Stevens’s So good
Kate Bush’s King of the mountain

Real music
Lemon Jelly’s ’64-’95

About 10-15 years ago, I was really into my music and there was rarely a moment when I wasn’t listening to something. It’s weird how habits change, but with all this stuff on my PC here, and the fact that I’m ALWAYS on my PC, I should really listen to more; I think it’s quite good for me.

Aahhh, Kate Bush eh? Fantastic.

Playing with Google maps, it’s dawned on me that you can essentially click and drag yourself around the entire world, with a satellite view of the land below. It’s sort of a weird hot air balloon experience I suppose.

This one shows where I live (blue) and the places I travel to for my job. The furthest orange blob is over 30 miles from the blue blob.

Looking at the close up satellite image of my locality,

The proportions have been stretched a bit oddly in this one, but I can see my front lawns that are a pain to mow, but not the back garden because it’s completely obscured by a sycamore canopy. There’s my fucking shitforbrains neighbour’s minibus that, after over 6 years, he STILL can’t manoeuvre off his drive without the world knowing about his huffing and puffing. I can see the store over the road, path I take to go for walks down the local woods, the motorway slip road, the wagons at the transport dept over the road from me…

The wagons that, despite having loads of room to park in the transport depot, repeatedly block my drive when the dickhead drivers park on the road. The wagons that provide a constant wave, after wave of noise as they set off, seemingly in convoy from about 4am. The wagons whose drivers stand on the roadside and have conversations with each other (about the considerations of parking in a residential area no doubt) in the early hours of the morning – it obviously gives them something to do while they’re waiting for their cabs to warm up with the heat of the massive engines that they leave running for ages before setting off on their journeys.

Utter cocks.

Yay! Utter cocks
I’ve had a comment from the Finnish Yay! Cakesniffers who have called me a bully for picking on people who can’t look after themselves.

“You are a very mean person. You are a bully. You pick on people who are not capable of looking after themselves. Shame on you.Why?“

Gosh, who have I upset? A religious group, people with disabilities, black people, Chinese people, greedy lazy dolescum?

No, I’ve “picked on” some Finnish kids. Apparently I’m an aggressive blogger who’s been leaving nasty comments on their blog (in my sleep obviously), so they’ve changed something or other.

Yay!

No idea what they’re on about, but never mind. I don’t feel the need to defend myself, however, I’d like to reiterate that I’m not in the business of leaving comments on people’s blogs unless I’m being complimentary, if I’ve got a valid point to make or something to add in keeping with the ongoing discussions. There’s no way I’m giving comment kudos to utter shit. On the other hand I have been known to make observations about other people’s efforts here and there and in some other places, but this is every blogger’s right.

I’m sure if I did a search for comments about me or this blog, there’d be quite a few that were not particularly complimentary, but so what? It’s everybody’s right to have their say about stuff, so let them get on with it.

Grow up.

An edit: Shitting trickster! (See comments)

Eaten too much.