Wednesday 17 August 2011

Some (more) casual observations

A couple of years back I wrote something of a guide to modern life in London. You should read it. It's  here and much better than this entry. Go on, I'll wait, it's fine.

Good wasn't it. Anyway as something of a continuation of the theme, a few more things have been bothering me lately, and in order to sort it out I've produced a list. Enjoy!
  1. Airport security. We all know that anyone with half a brain cell considers it little more than a farce to perpetrate an illusion of security, but when I'm being searched for knives, quizzed about if I've ever been a Nazi, and being swiftly relieved of my vicious looking bottle of mineral water, why has nobody ever asked if I'm a Ninja?
  2. Looting. Yes I've done this already, but I dropped into my local hardware shop last weekend and discovered that the shop next door had been looted. That shop was Argos. Who the hell loots a catalogue shop!?! It's not that it's clearly just bloody stupid, it's the fact that it's so stupid that you have to make a conscious effort to be that idiotic. I don't want to make too many assumptions, but if this is the class of criminal we have in the UK, then we need to be giving these kids TVs, as they clearly aren't watching enough episodes of Sesame Street as they're growing up.
  3. Mobile Phone signals on high speed trains. Just to state the bloody obvious, you are (unless you're traveling on South Eastern) moving at speed something faster than stationary. If your phone has no signal, moving it 4 inches closer to the window means nothing when during the time taken to do that you traveled countless times further in another direction. It does however make you look like an idiot.
  4. Product labels that attempt to talk to you. Wine, for the less observant amongst you, is a drink that comes in a bottle. It did not 'grow up' anywhere, it certainly wasn't raised, and I have very little interest in the way it was nurtured. But having a label that tells me all these things, in the first person, isn't so much 'connecting with your audience' as providing fuel for schizophrenics. Stop it. Immediately.
  5. Manly seating during rush hour. Now, I often sit with my legs apart because I'm sodding huge, and there's nowhere near enough room to sit with them straight ahead of me short of digging a hole in the seat in-front. You, I can almost guarantee, are nowhere near my size, so when you're sitting on rush hour transport doing your best John Wayne impression, no one is thinking of hour enormous your manhood must be as you mark your territory, they're thinking about where you got the rash that's making you sit so carefully. And if they weren't, they are now.
Finally, you know I know you didn't click that link at the top don't you. I can see who's been where, and I know you didn't click it. Bastards. Now, go back to the top, click the link, and remind yourself that when things get going this might actually be a good blog to read. Go on now, both of you.

    Tuesday 9 August 2011

    Rioting retards

    Following on from yesterday, here's is a quick collection of the extra special morons who've been involved in the rioting. I'll be adding more to this over the course of the day as I become aware of them. Brilliantly these are all being passed onto Crimewatch as people spot them online, so with a little luck some retribution will be on it's way.

    Along with this, please check out CatchALooter who are doing an excellent job of gathering images together to help identify this filth.

    This idiot works for Currys, and decided that looting her own store was a good idea (apologies for linking to the *spit* Daily Mail *spit*), because she'd never get recognised on the CCTV


    Here are some digital genius' who felt that bragging to everyone online about what he stole might be a good idea;

    At least that guy came close to being able to put together a coherent sentence. "Barbz" here looks like she's struggle to tie her shoe laces in the morning:


    It's a wonderful world out there some times isn't it.

    Update: Looks like this particular split condom has had it pointed out to her enough times that she's a complete moron, and has since deleted her Twitter account. The internet will never be the same again.

    This is a new favourite, stealing crisps from Poundland, how shit does your life have to be for that to be an improvement? Christ, it must be shit being you. (left the original tweeter in as he posted it, not because he had something to do with it. Obviously.)


    When I'm done with a hard days rioting, I like to head home and cook up a nice healthy dinner of Tesco Value rice. I'm guessing anything more complicated than "just add water" would be pushing it. Pot Noodle stockists take note.

    In addition, the Met Police's official flickr feed for suspects can be found here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/metropolitanpolice/

    At the risk of creating a link farm here, there's even more brilliance in this direction http://photoshoplooter.tumblr.com/

    Monday 8 August 2011

    London Riots, a little look in the mirror

    So for the last 2 nights parts of London have been turned into war zones but hundreds of rioters who decided to take the opportunity to show the rest of the country just what passes for society in parts of London these days. But now, while the various councils are digging in the broom cupboard for a broom big enough to sweep up Tottenham and quietly wishing that we'd shot a few more of them, people are starting to go around trying cast arbitrary blame for the past 2 nights.Which, as usual, means looking in every direction possible, while desperately trying to ignore the mirror.

    Unsurprisingly, a lot of people are saying that it's all the Tories fault for cutting services and leaving the country with a disaffected youth with no hope's and no future.

    Bollocks.

    And I don't like the Tories cut's either, but regardless of which party was in power, and whose flavour of cuts we'd be stuck with, that would still have fuck all to do with it.

    Other's have said it's Twitter's fault for 'fanning the flames'. Apparently these people can distinguish between riots being encouraged by seeing a tweet, and riots being encourage by 24/7 news coverage of buildings on fire and running battles in the street, and casual looting. But in fairness, most of those Twitter accusations have come from the Daily Mail, so the chances are everyone who Tweeted on Saturday night has died from Cancer by now anyway.

    Quite simply, what this is, is scum acting like scum, and believing that they're entitled to things for free, and setting fire to peoples homes and businesses to walk off with it. This attitude isn't something that's magically arrived in the past 18 months, it takes years of practice and idiocy to develop the belief that acting like that is a good idea. This genius however, has managed to go even further and make himself the poster boy for chlorinating the gene pool overnight by deciding it's a good idea to post a picture of himself online with all the stuff he managed to steal over the weekend. And while it might be the supidest thing outside of the Darwin awards that you'll see anyone do all year, it's a great example of the mentality that lies behind this.

    This isn't a product of cutting funds to Libraries, or having to trim back the Police force, or anything else for that matter. This is a product of people who spend their entire lives on hand outs, feeling like they don't need to work for a living, kicking off because they want to blame everyone else for the shit state they live in, rather than taking a look at themselves, and trying to do something useful about it. The closest this rocket surgeon will ever get to education will come this morning when he watches a few episodes of Teletubbies on his shiny new 46" TV. What's even more embarassing though, is that he probably doesn't even understand why posting this picture was such a monument to stupidity.

    So do me a favour, if you want to go and loot and steal things, understand one thing. Your life if your own, and the consequences are yours. If your life it shit because you act like scum, then maybe you should try and loot a mirror, then when your taking a photo of yourself in it to post on Twitter you can have something to look at when it slowly starts to dawn on you what you've done with your life, and exactly why it is that the rest of the world wouldn't piss on you if you were on fire.

    Friday 5 August 2011

    Prickley Priorities

    Right now the country is running around panicing about a second credit crunch, nobody being able to afford Christmas presents ever again, and the fact that John Prescot say's the Cabinet has been entirely replaced by a Prime Ministerial Pussy.



    As a direct result of this Londoners are flocking to the internet desperately trying to keep up with what's going on, while people in Stockport are still standing in awe wondering what the big glowy thing is in the sky.

    Except they're not. The Londoners that is. I'd recommend not checking on the people in Stockport, it'll only make you sad. In reality the top 3 stories on the BBC website right now are:


    1. Man get's eaten by Bear
    2. Bird get's eaten by Plant
    3. Mr Bean get's eaten bruised by Car
    This can only mean one thing. The internet has reached the provinces, and the unemployed have woken up.

    Thankfully though, hope for western civilisation can be found in Sweden, where recently a resourceful chap was cruely arrested for attempting to build a Nuclear Reactor in his kitchen. As you do. Science's new hero has now come out as saying that in hindsight trying to create a Nuclear Reactor in his kitchen was probably a bad idea. I'll type that again in case you missed it. Hell, I'm even going to use big bold letters for this to help out; "in hindsight trying to create a Nuclear Reactor in his kitchen was probably a bad idea." Got it? Good. Presumably this means that at some point in Professor Balls Up's planning process he thought that it might be a good idea instead! What the hell were his criteria?!? And what point would he have had to reach before stopping himself and thinking that perhaps continuing with the plan might not be in the best interest of, oh I don't know, say, anyone within a radius of about 100 miles?

    It does however prove one thing. While Al Qaeda are using a network of secret international training camps to teach people how to secretly build a couple of petrol bombs in a cave, hobbyists in Europe are working towards the casual distruction of entire cities by splitting Atoms in their back garden.

    I'm really not sure who's winning here, but I'm very sure that the fact that all of the above is true* means that the stockmarket wobbling and jepordising everyone's imaginary numbers shouldn't really be our top concern about the state of society.

    *Especially the bit about Stockport. I mean seriously, have you been there? Christ on a crutch it's grim!