Wednesday 28 September 2011

It's fun to fail at the Daily Mail

I love the Daily Mail, without it I have almost nothing to write about. It also makes me look rational, which is pleasing, if you happen to be one of my parents. It also, apparently, both causes and prevents Cancer in equal measure, so I figure it's good for my general Ying/Yang balance as well.

Warning Any links in this post will go to the Daily Mail, they're there to provide source material, I strongly suggest you don't click on them.

Anyway, a few recent tweets reminded me of the Daily Fail's Mail's campaign of the year, to strike fear into the hub of middle England by exposing the 'Gay Agenda'. Which, apparently, is ruining the country in much the same way as it did, well, okay, it didn't really did it. It didn't ruin anything that wasn't established by people expressly devoted to being ruined by such things, and we all know that secretly they were kind of pleased about it. But that's not the point. Apparently things have been ruined, and it's all the fault of the 'Gay Agenda'. Feeling terrified? No? Good, that just means you're not a complete tool. But carry on reading.

Anyway, how depressing must it be to be a Daily Mail approved Gay man and have to go through all your relationships in life with an agenda? Now, I don't know, well, anything much about Gay relationships really, not being inclined myself, but of those I've met that do know about such things, I've never once seen any of them wondering around with a clipboard, spreadsheet, and a strategic map of the British Isles. What the hell does the Mail think is going on in their bedrooms?

"Morning Steve" said Alan as the morning sun gently kissed his face through the gap in the curtains.
"Morning Alan" smiled Steve lovingly.
"Fancy a quickie before we get up?" pondered Alan, pouting suggestively.
"No time  I'm afraid schnukums*, I've got to be out of here by 8, I've got a busy day filing spurious law suits against previously wholesome family institutions in an effort to promote a culture of guilt amongst people who follow biological urges that differ slightly from our own. I might be able to squeeze one in around lunch time though?"
"Gah! I can't make it then, I have to undermine the justice system then, followed by some casual liberalisation of the national curriculum for the under 5s." (Argh panic! )
"Man, this sucks!" Sulked a disenchanted Steve.
"Well, actually Steve, it doesn't. But still, we can't let our biological urges undermine the efforts of the rest of the team. At this rate, according to my calculations....we'll be in Berlin by Christmas!"
"Excellent." Said both Alan and Steve in ominous unison.

Seriously, this is what the Daily Mail readers believe? Here's an idea, why don't we all focus on just not hating everyone for 5 minutes**, and try and focus on something a little more useful, like figuring out this global warming and food / air issues instead.

But, despite all this, do you know what the best thing is about the Daily Mail? I didn't even read an article before I wrote this. Honestly. I just came up with a few jokes, wrote most of this post, and Googled for a source later to fill in the the [FIND A LINK] gaps I'd left behind. So thank you to the Daily Mail, and Melanie Philips (I'm still assuming that she was involved as I write it now by the way), for being utterly, utterly appalling.

* I know nothing about pet names used by Gay people either
** Not me, obviously, then I'd have nothing to write about.

Tuesday 27 September 2011

Plugged in, switched off, and out of jail

According to the BBC (here), the iPod might be responsible for making people antisocial. What with us all getting about locked in our own personal bubbles and switching off from the rest of the world. This is, quite naturally, complete drivel.

While it's true that you can't get on the tube these days without a cacophony of sound coming from cheap shitty Apple earphones being used by the fashion statement, rather than music fan, crowd. None of them have been made antisocial by it. What's made them antisocial is the realisation that those little white ear phones are essentially keeping them out of jail.

Have you even tried to take public transport? Between the number of people who think the entire carriage need to hear their phone conversation, kids too poor for headphones playing music no one asked for, women so perplexed by alarm clocks that they feel they're entitled to use a bus as their surrogate bathroom to make up for lost time, (I've even seen one woman clipping her nails and throwing the bits she hacked off her own body onto the floor) why the hell wouldn't anyone want to switch off from this filth?

If I sat down next to you at work and emptied the contents of my razor into your lap, you'd quite rightly punch me in the face. But apparently, do something similar on public transport, and it's just peachy.

If that's not enough of a reason, then think about the beggars and soap dodgers lying to you about needing money for a hostel, Chuggers trying to get you to sponsor their existence under the guise of saving a distraught unicorn, tourists who don't know how a map works, and, finally, street preachers who think their particular brand of cloud fairy has compelled them to piss off as many people as humanly possible under the firm believe that being insanely irritating is the key to the kind of mass conversations that would have made David Koresh feel impotent.

Quite frankly leaving the house in the morning is a bloody nightmare. Putting some earphones in and legitimately being able to ignore this never ending stream of window lickers is pretty much the only reason that London isn't synonymous with the kind of mass public executions that it so sorely needs.

So, if you're sitting there thinking someone listening to music means you feel you can't ask them for directions, then remember; if they weren't listening to them, and you asked them, you'd probably get shot.

Thursday 22 September 2011

Dating site morons

A friend of mine has started cataloging the terror that comes from being a female in the world of online dating.

You can follow her adventures right here at Dating Site Morons



As for the rest of us? Well, we can sit here quietly content that no matter what else happens in our lives, we're doing a lot better than her "contributors" will.

Wednesday 21 September 2011

Angry Birds has become a disease

Up until recently I was a massive fan of Angry Birds. As in the game, or, to simplify somewhat, I was a fan of what Angry Birds actually is. A game. It's fun, simple, clever, and a good time filler when you're trying to blank out the indistinguishable shit being pumped out of tiny cheap phone speakers on the bus by people too poor to afford headphones.

I even branched out.... (yup, that was deliberate. I'll leave this sentence for a bit now so you can finish groaning.)

Done? Cool. Carrying on then....

I even branched out and got one of the plush toys as a gift a while back as well. Not for me obviously. I'm a bloke, I need plush toys about as much as I need sodding cushions. But to those though, I kinda thought fair enough really. No, nobody anywhere needs them, but they're kinda funny, and not exactly going to push me into poverty and a life of Pot Noodle consumption. But it's gone past the point of some cute merchandise, and been flung headlong (yup, again) into lunacy.

We now have film tie in's, based solely on the presence of anything with feathers.

Seasonal games, which, curiously, currently includes 7 different seasons. Presumably the Dev team are committing their code from sodding Narnia for that to make sense.

There's even an Angry Birds theme park in China. Seriously, what the hell kind of rides does that have? Unless it's just a gate that opens to a giant catapult launching morons into buildings then what the hell is it for? It's not even officially licensed, so we can't blame Rovio for it either.

And finally, we have a nebula. Yes, that's not a mistake, we now have an Angry Birds nebula. You can read about it here. But for the lazier amongst you who only really use the internet to look at various forms of pictures just scroll down.

There was a very good quote that I can't remember the source for a while back that went along the lines of. "In the 60's Nasa sent men to the Moon with less technology than is currently in your mobile phone. Today we use that technology to fire Birds into Pigs." It's all gone hideously, hideously wrong.