Film Review: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

As I've just been to see the Hobbit, and seeing as everyone is going on about it as though it's single handedly going to save us all from the decline of Capitalism, such is the vastness of it's money making bosom, I suppose it merits a review.

So, here it is. Put quite simply, the whole thing could have been done in a third of the time if Gandalf stopped asking bloody short people to do the job of proper fully grown men! Look at it this way; at a guess I take one step to the average Hobbit's three, ergo rudimentary logic dictates that my pace is 3 times faster than that of stumpy. Probably more so when you consider that a flight of stairs is a negligible obstacle for the likes of you and me, where as half-pint and friends have to whip up a rope ladder to get anywhere near the top, and still need to allow for a 30 minute break on route. It was at roughly the half way point in The Hobbit that I realised that the whole thing is a little like one of those Channel 4 documentaries produced to raise awareness of the plight of people with an unusual genetic condition. Too small enough to be classified as a Dwarf? 35 years old and haven't graduated from the Children's clothing department? Don't worry, here's the Hobbit to let you know that little people can lead exciting (if barely noticeable) lives too!

Don't believe me? Fine, well here some more proof...

Here on the left we have Bilbo and some Dwarfs, getting ready to head out complete with loads of bags and some sticks. The latter presumably just incase they have to wade through a puddle without drowning or something. While on the right we have me, carrying EXACTLY the same amount of stuff (less stick, as I don't need to fear puddles), and a razor apparently, on my own!

Seriously, the whole quest could have been done by Gandalf and a couple of regular sized humans, and it would have taken significantly less time. Just make sure the party's made up of tree hugging hippy types so the Dwarf's gold doesn't get nicked at the other end, and it's job done.

It's the time though that makes one of the key parts of the movie. Or rather 3 movies. This short story has already been widely criticised (by the people that include it's own cast!) for being split over 3 films, and from what I saw, rightly so. The first hour of the Hobbit is basically unused footage from The Fellowship of the Ring (resulting in it getting so bogged down in it's efforts to point out that it's actually a prequel to LOTR that Peter Jackson might as well be sat next to you dishing out lessons is basic chronology), some dinner, and casual singing. As a result it goes pretty much nowhere in the process. Once we finally leave the Shire it's just a collection of loosely strung together battle scenes, culminating in a colossal plot hole that points out that they could have just been flown to their destination and saved everyone a whole lot of trouble. Christ, in the 'end' they actually get dropped off by some Eagles, look out over a valley, and go "oh look, that's where we're going, over there in the distance," and NOBODY has the nerve to point out that they could have just been fucking flown there on the back of the birds who just carried them across miles of forest mere minutes earlier! The only way I can see that they can pad it out enough to cover 3 films is going to be to spend the entire time constantly pointing out how hard it must be to be tiny. And believe me, 15 minutes after leaving the Shire, we fucking get it. Seriously, the whole thing plays out like some kind of 'social awareness' advert promoting equally opportunities for people who stopped growing after their 10th birthday.

So what can we learn from the Hobbit? Well, if you need someone to get at those hard to reach places under the shelves of supermarkets, get yourself a Hobbit. Need to go foraging around cracks in a cave? Hobbit. Want to move around barely noticeable to the rest of the world because you forgot to put a flashing light on your head when you left the house? Hobbit. For anything else, and anything useful, get someone tall enough to see over a hedge and the whole exercise will be complete in half the time.

Oh, and one last thing....

Exercising some deamons

According to the BBC (here) some people in this country have taken to dismissing the notion of going to the Doctor when ill, and decided that what they really need is an exorcist. As you do.

So apparently thousands of years of medical advancement, and countless proven treatments for multitudes of conditions, hasn't managed to break through the notion that waving some incense about, and muttering phrases from long dead languages probably isn't going to cut the proverbial mustard.

Except of course that it has. Completely. In-fact the notion of exorcism requires such a fundamentally flawed belief system that you would have to have made a conscious decision not to be educated, not to learn things, and to never, under any circumstances, attempt to figure out the terrifying voodoo behind the concept of cause and effect, for it to make sense.

At this point, you're probably expecting me to pen some quip about fools and money being parted, or sit there tearing into the business practices of a bunch of charlatans who have managed to convince people that they know special magic words that will make it all better.

I'm not going to though. Not even a little bit. Partly because it's too easy, and party because if you're reading this, and, well, you have enough education to be able to read this, I don't think I need to. After all, it doesn't take a lot of time at school to realise that there's a very clear difference between knowing things because we can asses and measure them, and "knowing" things because someone, somewhere, might have once said something, that might not have been mistranslated numerous times over thousands of years, that might be true despite a total absence of evidence, and assuming that it still remains valid in a world where we know about, well, stuff.

Because that's what the point is. If you've forgone education and rationality enough to ignore all evidence, science, teaching, and common sense, to come to the conclusion that what's wrong with you isn't a recognisable medical condition, but the fact that you're possessed by the ghost of grandma's dog from the 70s, then I'm genuinely VERY happy for you to visit an exorcist.

After all, why waste everyone else's money? £60 of your cash an hour to keep you out of the NHS, out of Doctors surgeries, and, on a long enough time scale, ultimately away from anyone else who can breathe, is a good thing. It's the cycling of the intellectual world. To do otherwise is just an exercise in standing in the way of natural selection. We don't need you. You're holding back the species, and the rest of us have better thing to do.

Idiots die out because they bring it on themselves, nonsense belief systems die out because over time the weight of evidence to point out that they're nonsense becomes over powering, and there are only so many ways in which you can 'modernise' them before you start to realise that the only similarity of what you believe in now compared to what you used to believe in is the spelling.

Incidentally, this is pretty much how I feel about homeopathy as well. The chief difference being that, for reasons I don't even want to contemplate, we apparently consider that particular variant of making shit up to be good enough to merit public funding. Which is even more worrying, as if we can use the excuse of patient choice as an excuse to fund something that's backed up by precisely nothing, then we're really not far off funding exorcisms either.

Let's talk about Tax baby...

Let's talk about us and them, let's talk about all the good things, and the bad things that may be, let's talk about tax.

Shall we? We might as well. I mean everyone and their dog in this country is currently devoting an exceptional amount of time to extracting their toys from their prams on this one. So come along, let's talk about tax.

Fucking Starbucks! How much money do you make? Seriously? I didn't even know numbers went that high! And how little of it are you taxed on? And you Apple, I don't care how shiny you've managed to make your product, or how much I'm over come with lust of a horny Sex Panther just to set eyes on your latest shiny shiny thing, pay some damn tax! As for you Jimmy Carr, oh how dare you not pay much tax via an entirely lawful system. You utter utter bastard.

That sounds about right doesn't it? All of these people screwing over us poor worker bees who have to pay our taxes like good little boys and girls. Look how hard done by we are. Look at our worried little angry heads. LOOK AT US!

Except for the fact that that's complete crap. Because literally none of us are paying any attention to the reality of what we're doing.

No, we don't all earn Jimmy Carr's salary, or make Hyper Global Mega Corp levels of profit. But every, single, one, of us, is at it in the best way we know how.

Lets see shall we?

Do you have an ISA? Interesting. So, how guilty do you feel about that £5640 a year in tax free savings?

Were you a Student? Did you have a part time job? A part time job where you're taxed NOTHING at all on your salary?

Did you buy a house over the past couple of years? Your first house? That's interesting. Did you take advantage of the Stamp Duty holiday? Interesting. I know I did. That's approximately £3500.00 I didn't pay in tax. At all. And I don't even have to in the future either. And you can't have it. Ever. I like to think it's come straight out of the big pot of cash that was ear marked for providing puppies that would cuddle up to poor children keeping them warm at night.

How about the army of contractors out there? I know bloody tonnes of them! These are the people who have no option but to set themselves up as their own businesses as part of the process of getting work. You all know that they can claim the tax back on their travel to work every day right? That's an average of between £1250 - £2000 a year in London, and there's that £1300 per year food allowance, that, yup, they can claim tax back on too! And I'm not even mentioning anyone else who's self employed writing various things off as business costs. Or maybe they just have separate PCs, Cars etc that they use for non-business reasons, so that's probably fine.

Pensions, we all need them right? And if you work for, well, most businesses really, you can pay into yours via a salary sacrifice system. What's that then? Well, it takes the money out of your PRE-tax pay, to maximise your input, while reducing the amount of tax paid on the rest of your pay.

But I'm sure none of you have any of these things do you.

Because then you'd have to think about how committed to this premise you really are.

Then you'd have to ask yourselves are you actually angry that some people have gotten lucrative tax systems, or are you angry that yours isn't as lucrative? You made your decisions in life, you decided on your career path, you decided on the effort you made, you decided on if you wanted to sacrifice A for B. So don't you dare sit there and complain about it when people more successful than you have more money than you.

Tax, is doesn't have to be taxing.

Update - 08-11

So, apparently nobody gets the point here at all, and thinks that this is entirely literal in it's comparison between Joe Average and Starbucks. Apparently you think, that I think that a company making billions is actually being measured against someone making thousands. So, in an effort to spell this out just a little bit more allow me to explain.


What I'm getting at is very simple. Every single person is avoiding paying tax as much as is humanly possible for them. Christ, even on our death beds we're being creative with our estates to ensure that we avoid paying as much inheritance tax as is possible. In short this is a national past time that we are all doing to the best of our ability. We might not be as good at is as the Greeks are, but believe me, we're damn well trying.

The simple fact of the matter is what everyone is actually annoyed about is that other people are avoiding paying more tax than they themselves are avoiding, and given half a chance they'd all be doing it too. Because, quite clearly, we all think tax avoidance is fine, just so long as we can only do as much as your knowledge of the system allows. Heaven forbid we should pay someone with more knowledge to do a better job of it. Just imagine what the world would be like if people were paid to do work based on their ability? Fucking mental!

So, finally, why, when we've collectively engineered a society that tries to avoid paying tax in anyway possible, are we surprised when that's EXACTLY what happens?

EU Prison Posturing

The EU want us to give prisoners the right to vote. Because, and this is truly something magical as far as logic goes, we, as a nation, are infringing on the rights of people who broke the law, and were locked up for it, and what we should do, is sit them down and ask them how they think the country should be run.

Yeah, that'll go well. I can't think of a more qualified group of people to help set out the way the country should be run.

I tell you what, lets take the notion, and crack on with applying it, and move onto reforming the rest of the legal system:

Break into someone's home and steal their stuff, don't worry about prison, we'll just give you some money so that you have the right to buy nice things too.

Committing casual fraud? Don't worry, we'll just change the nature of reality so the world will bend itself around how you think it should work.

Do you see how this logic works?

I'll make this very simple, if people take from society, just like with people in the real world, you don't, ever, give them something in return.

It comes from this whole crazy concept of mutual respect. Pull up a chair, I'll run this one by you, lets see if it makes sense. You, as a functioning respectable member of society get a right to say how it is run, as does everyone else. You helped build it, you help make decisions for it. With me so far? Good. If you do something to, oh I don't know, break the laws of said society, you get something that's called "punished". Now being "punished", isn't nice. Which, largely, is the point. While being "punished" you lose many of these rights you had as a decent respectable member of society. Why? I hear you cry. Simple. Because of the one over riding rule across all existence. If you act like a cunt, you're gonna get fucked. It's what you deserve.

On the photogenic properties of a sandwich

Are you a food photographer?

As in one of the professional ones, the ones who perform the miracle of making a Big Mac look like something more than a tumour trapped in some soggy bread, or who manages to find a way to make lettuce curiously sexual?

No? I suspected not. That's fine, frankly the majority of people aren't, so it's not a big shock.

At least it wasn't, until world + dog took it upon themselves to hide the day to day tedium of their existence behind a ceaseless chain of images of their bloody lunch!

Now, and I do want to ruin this for you so please, read on.

Nobody, since humans invented fire and 5 minutes later the BBQ, has ever cared about what you're eating. And this counts double for what you're eating if they're not there at the time. Sure, if you've just ordered something a little different and your friend is sat next to you, that might be interesting, to them, for about 3 seconds, but otherwise, nothing. Ever. To be frank they don't even care that you are eating! Unless they did really badly at school I can promise you that your friends should be pretty damn certain that you're eating. After all, if you decided to kick that particular habit then it wouldn't be too long before you moved on to fertilising the cow's lunch, rather than chewing on it's rump.

So why, of all the things in the world, has the internet suddenly taken it upon itself to photograph and share it's every meal with a near limitless supply of total strangers? Is this the legacy we want to leave from the early years of the digital age? I can just see historians in years to come complaining about how much more advanced society would be if only the people of the early 21st century, who should have been absorbing more knowledge in a week than everyone in the rest of human history had access to in a life time, weren't using that power to show each other pictures of Cabbage!

And why that particular part of the process? Why not the cow in the field? Why no close ups of your mouths and stomachs, or  a quick shot down the pan once the whole thing's really over and done with? Isn't that what you're really telling us is going on anyway? "Look everyone I'm alive! I eat food! I turn food into poo! ADMIRE ME FOR IT!"

And for crying out loud, there are a thousand ways to take and share beautiful, and incredible images on the internet, but I can promise you, you won't get notoriety from a sandwich!

Lib Dems Bash Boobs

News just in, Boobs encourage violence. Which, is among various things, interesting. At least it is if you're Lib Dem MP Lynne Featherstone, who seems to have become convinced that the existence of page 3 encourages abuse against women.

Now, I don't want to alarm anyone, least of all the random family members I have who are likely to pass by these digital diatribes, but over the years I've seen a few boobs. 5 of them to be precise. In amongst those long faded memories of fumbling with buttons, getting flicked in the eye by an errant strap, and the inevitable nervous minutes spent in the Psychologists waiting room afterwards, one resounding memory survives; not once did any of these 4 women find themselves on the wrong end of a beating as a result.

I guess I must be odd.

Maybe I didn't spend enough time sneaking a look at page 3 when I was a teenager. Or rummaging around in the woods looking for the legendary porn stash that, for some inexplicable reason, always gets left there. Maybe my mind wasn't warped at a young age to believe that anyone with a slightly different arrangement of chromosomes to myself was fair game for a spot of in-house boxing. Maybe I am an exception to all the evidence that Lynne Featherstone has amassed to validate her opinion. Or maybe, just maybe, it's a little simpler than that, and I'm just not a complete Cock? I mean, it's got to be possible right?

So, let's look at this from the other side. How about Ms Featherstone spend a couple of minutes thinking about at what point it became her business to dictate what someone can choose to do with their own body in front of a camera? And how about she should spend a little more of her career as an MP looking at ways in which society can actually address the issue of domestic abuse, rather than wasting everyone's money with a crock of headline grabbing drivel.

Who works for who here?

Cabinet merry go rounds

So, yesterday was cabinet reshuffle time! Or, as those of us who aren't complete morons like to look at it, it's time to rotate the retards. Now, don't get me wrong, this isn't an arbitrary Tory hating post, were it anyone else in the top job we'd just have a different colour of retard. But they'd still be retards.

But this isn't just pointing out that they tend to be utter bastards, this is more about the fact that what we're getting is a collection of people who are woefully unqualified for their jobs, and being given terrifying levels of power to make decisions that they lack even the basic level of intellect to make. Lets run through the numbers shall we.

Jeremy Hunt, society's favorite display of rhyming slang, has been moved to the auspicious role of Health Secretary. So, that'll be someone who knows something about, well, health then right? Well, no. He's someone who believes homeopathy is a valid form of treatment, and something we should spend the NHS budget on. He's someone who therefore willfully ignores the overwhelming evidence that homeopathy is Bat shit mental, and he's managed to convince David Cameron that he's the best man to look after the countries health. Seriously, is this any more than replacing hospitals with kissing it better centers? But hey, let's not let's not let facts and evidence get in the way of incompetence here. Or indeed anywhere in the reshuffle....

Which brings me on to David Laws. No less than a homosexual! Crikey. But, naturally, that doesn't make a blind bit of difference to his ability to do anything. Unless of course you think like David Laws, and believe that the best way of proving that point is through gratuitous lying about it and hiding it from everyone. Grow a backbone David. Some people are Gay. Get over it. Although in fairness, I can kind of understand his problem, as he's also the cabinets resident God botherer, a group who are renowned for their support for the Gay community. But it begs one legitimate question about his new job as education minister. Given his belief in cloud faeries will he be teaching us that scientific research proves nothing, that we should all just assume stuff based on thousands of years of mistranslations and casual editing, and take it on 'faith' that things are magically true? Then we can start to eliminate the notion of critical thinking from our day to day lives completely! Hallelujah! That's the guy we want to lead the country forwards on education! But then I suppose it's always been the case that some people are stupid, and I should probably get over it.

But at least his religion will give him a strong moral compass right? Sure, so long as you don't mind him committing casual fraud and stealing from public funds at any given opportunity. What a guy!

So, who else then? Well there's the perpetually lovely Maria Miller, our new equality minister, who, well, isn't really that into this whole equality thing. Well, not for gay people anyway. Or women, oddly. Or pretty much anyone who isn't white, because let's face it, at the end of the day racism is just a form of freedom of speech. Obviously. I'm pretty sure this wasn't what my Mum had in mind when she was telling me about the type of woman I should consider to be 'something of a catch' as a kid.

So, everyone of these people is now sitting there happily in charge of areas at which they are terrifying unqualified for. It's literally staggering that it's even allowed to happen. Can you imagine any other area where a recruitment process like this would be allowed? If one of these people even got as close as having their CV put forward to me they'd be out the door in a matter of minutes, and the recruitment consultant would be getting a bollocking for their efforts.

So what's the solution. Well, fortunately I'm not 14, so I'm not about to promote the overthrow of the government, or suggest we start putting gun powder under central London buildings. I'm also not one of those middle aged types angry that their dreams have died because the world refused to jump through hoops for them when they fucked up their choices in life. What I want is simple. I want jobs to be done by people who are fucking qualified to do them! I want fairy tales to be resigned to peoples private lives, and not used as a basis of making decisions on a national scale irrespective of evidence, logic, or other beliefs. And I want some damn accountability when those in charge turn out to be little more than well dressed thieves with intellects comparable to that of a Cat flap. And I genuinely don't care which party they come from either, because lets face it, until we can manage these simple requirements, voting in anyone else is just pissing in the wind.

*Edit* 

A quick update since I started writing here. According to the Telegraph here Hunt actually supports homeopathy on the basis of patient choice. So maybe he's just doing his bit to promote natural selection? In fairness, I'm all for that. Just not at the expense of spending money on idiots that could be used to help someone who doesn't believe in magic pixie dust!

Finally, here's an excellent blog by Ben Goldacre on the nonsense of homeopathy.

Paralympic conundrums

The Paralympics are a bloody nightmare that are destroying the very definition of what is and isn't acceptable in this country. That, ladies and gentlemen, is what's commonly considered to be a highly unpopular sentence. And with good cause. It is however, awkwardly, true.

Now, put your pitch forks down, and stop burning my effigy. Again. It's making a horrible mess, and you're making yourselves look like fundamentalist window lickers.

Allow me instead, to explain.

The Paralympics are brilliant. Never before have I genuinely been so staggered and impressed by the strength of character, talent, and sheer will power and determination displayed by such a remarkable group of people. They are literally making me feel like a weaker person, chained down by my own various inhibitions (fucking Wasps!), that mean less than nothing compared to what each of them has achieved. Sure, I've lived through other Paralympics, but given that they've been a) nowhere near as popular over here, and b) in other countries (which largely explains 'a' to the British public, but we all seem to have forgotten that in a wave of national pride), I've never really paid much attention. Which, incidentally, is exactly the same stick we're embarrassingly attempting to beat the Americans with in some kinda of surreal exercise in guilt tripping a nation thousands of miles away into agreeing with us on everything.

Pot, meet kettle, now comment on each others colour.

None of this though cuts to the heart of the matter as to why the Paralympics is screwing with us as a nation. But when you're sitting there cheering on ParalympicsGB, just like me (remember that, pitchfork lovers), while quietly hoping our athlete's nearest competitor falls over to secure us a medal, remember, what you're actually doing is secretly hoping that someone with some life changing injury/illness, who has over come massive amounts of adversity, fails miserably in their quest to prove that nothing can stand in their way.

Now how do you feel?

It used to be so easy, you'd get up in the morning, get on with your life, and try not to be a total arse. Not any more. Two weeks of national pride from the Olympics, and we've all raced headlong into Paralympic excitement, and discovered that when it boils down to it, we're really complete and utter gits.

And don't even think about saying something like 'well, in the end they're all winners' as that'll just make you a patronizing bastard.

Mirror mirror on the wall......

One thing I've learnt over the years, and through various different companies, is that somedays the best way of getting things done is to simply walk into the office and slap anyone I consider to be an idiot. The shock alone keeps them quiet long enough to improve the productivity of the rest of the team 10 fold. 

Today however, productivity across the nation was ruined by what can only be described as one of the most delusional narcissistic displays of idiocy that anyone has ever penned in the entirety of human history. I'm talking of course of Samantha Brick's detailed description of the hassle of her daily life as a self deified goddess.*

Sultry Samantha, once she was able to prise herself away from her own reflection this morning, took it upon herself to detail the precise pains she's had to indure as Britain's formost self appointed beauty queen. And I do mean great detail, not one to skimp on the information Scintillating Sam penned a post was so long and image laden that I had to nip to the gents twice for a combination of vomiting an onanism just to get through the whole thing!

Starting off with a genital baiting image of her wearing what can only be described as 'something mauve', she goes on to detail the hassle of the constant gifts she receives from total strangers, passers by feeling compelled to buy her train tickets, and people rushing across the street to pay her cab fare. In fact by the time she's finished with this part of the tale you're left with the feeling that Christmas in the Brick household must be seen as little more than a disappointing day off from the constant gifts she's receiving the rest of the time. To be honest it's a minor miracle she was able to see past all the bunches of flowers to her computer screen to even type the article.

It's not all constant gifts and praise though. Poor old Samantha finds herself a victim of her own beauty. Apparently her bosses generally don't like her because she's just so damn beautiful that distracts the men around her, and other women get all bitchy and say horrible things about her. Horrible things such as "there she goes, that daft bint with a delusional sense of her own self worth", and "where does she get off acting like she's better than everyone else?" It's like living in a waking nightmare. Apparently. Because in Sexy Sammy's world, anyone with an XX chromosome is literally seething with beauty based envy, and they're making her live a misery.

Then of course you dig a little deeper, and find that when Samantha's not being held back by being just so fucking gorgeous that nobody else can concentrate, she spending her time writing other articles, articles with titles like "I use my sex appeal to get ahead at work.... and so does ANY woman with any sense". Which is so spectacular on it's own that I'm not even going to pass comment on that.

So, because of you Samantha the entire nation wasted the majority of the day on one colossal 'you must be fucking kidding me' outburst. .

That, quite simply, was one of the most spectacular display's I think I'm ever likely to see.

*I'm not linking to the Daily Mail, every time someone does that they have to sponsor a child in some third world country to keep the Ying Yang in balance, and quite frankly it's getting ridiculous.

Update

Sam apparently really doesn't get the point, as it seems that today she's decided that the entire internets unanimous declaration of "what the actual fuck?!?" that she witnessed yesterday was, unbeknown to literally ANYONE else, proving her point.

I'm genuinely impressed at this point, it takes a really special level of dedication to achieve this level of delusion. But then, when you write for a paper famed for being convinced that getting up in the morning gives you cancer, I'm not really sure that we should have expected anything less.

Petrol hoarding peasants

A woman in somewhere called Yorkshire, has just been admitted to hospital suffering burns. Which is unfortunate. Well, it would be unfortunate until you start to take into account the rest of the story.  At which point you're left with a very different feeling.

So, how did this Kentucky Fried turn of events come to pass? Was there a gas leak that went bang after the electrics were switched on? Nope. Was there some other malfunction causing things to catch fire that she frantically tried to put out before any more damage could be done? Nope. Was there some kind of chip pan fire? Nope. Had the kids gotten to some matches that they shouldn't have and caused a disaster? Nope.

Any of those things, quite frankly, would have been entirely reasonable, and highly unfortunate. Tragically for the species however, none of there are remotely close to what actually happened.

So what did happen?

Well, on Wednesday it was announced that someone, somewhere, might, at some point, decide not to go to work for a few days. As such the Government, in what can only be described as diversionary tactics to stop everyone crying into their newly over priced pasties, decided that the only reasonable course of actions to remedy these entirely hypothetical events was to suggest that everyone rush out and buy as much fuel as humanly possible, just in case something imaginary were to take place before bed time.

So, as a result our northern rocket surgeon decided, after looking at these facts, that her best course of action was, much as herself, simple:

1. Rush out to the nearest petrol emporium and panic buy fuel she didn't need
2. Store as much of it as possible it in various things that weren't fuel tanks 
3. Empty them out it in her kitchen
4. Ensuring while doing this that the fucking cooker is switched on, and right next to her.

I'm guessing she doesn't list 'Science' among her GCSEs. In fact I'm guessing that by the time she got as far as 'G' in the alphabet she had to stop for a sit down that's lasted the best part of 20 years and counting.

Basically this is the intellectual equivalent of sticking your head in a lion's mouth and giving it a good hard slap on the bollocks just to see what happens. As for the rest of us; this is exactly what happens to society when we allow political correctness to stand in the way of natural selection. We have far, FAR, too many people in this country, thinning out the ranks of the morons can only ever be a good thing. If we keep treating them and pandering to these displays of rampant intellect we all know what will happen. Cyclists will continue to consider themselves special, South Eastern rail will continue to find employees, and the phrase 'may contain nuts' will still be considered an entirely reasonable use of packaging space that could otherwise have been filled with cute pictures of kittens.

So stop it, all of you! For the good of society, think twice before you help someone. Do this for just a year, and maybe, just maybe, we can resolve this whole lack of food and water thing, and start achieving something better than bureaucracy as a race.

Politicaly correct job centres to end civilisation.

I was just pointed in the direction of this display of abject stupidity. In summary it argues that by discounting applications from people with lower qualifications than you asked for, an employer is breaching someone's human rights.

Yup, someone actually, in all seriousness thought that through, wrote about it, and then when to themselves, 'yes, this, this is something I wish to put my name to'.

Allow me to clarify. Or, alternatively, just get annoyed now and leave me comments about me being a Sexist Nazi Paedo who's trying to ruin everyone's lives. You know, proper internet level debating logic, that kind of thing.

Right, now that we've cleared out the bleeding heart crowd, lets move on.

Assuming that ability and intelligence is only a measure of the letters someone has attached to their name, is, painfully bloody obviously, stupid. I know this, and hopefully, so do you. For example I interviewed a guy last week who, on paper, had all the relevant qualifications and experience, and in person came across as though nature fucked up when it allowed him to graduate from his fathers crusty gym sock. And yes, that process works very much in both ways.


But, claiming that it's discriminatory to state qualification grades is flawed on such a basic level I'm amazed I even have to point this out. But, just for fun, let's walk through this scenario to it's logical conclusion shall we. Discriminating against Graduates based on degree grade is wrong, okay, well, we can't have one rule for them and one for everyone else, after all, that's discriminatory (as in actually discriminatory, and not just bat shit mental hippy crap). So, we have to apply this everywhere. A-levels, GNVQs, GCSEs, none of these amount to shit anymore, because to be concerned about them is discriminatory. Instead, just change your CV to provide a vague description of stuff you think you're brilliant at, but ultimately cannot be measured on any sensible or relational scale and start applying for jobs.

Now, instead of having 20 applicants for every vacancy in this recession, we now have thousands of them. It's impossible for any manager anywhere to ever  asses every applicants CV, so every applicant now has an open door to sue for discrimination as they can argue they were more than qualified for the position. They, of course, will all win. This because it's impossible to provide a decent defense under the circumstances because it was impossible to vet all the CVs in the first place. As a result companies can't afford to pay the fines, everyone goes out of business, and nobody anywhere has a job. That in turn devalues the currency to the point of it being worthless, meaning nothing can be paid for, but as nobody has a job, there's nobody to do anything about that either, so that's also pointless. So, there's no money, and no jobs, and no employers, and nobody doing anything about it as we're all too spoon-fed into thinking everything is everyone else's fault. Soon the infrastructure collapses and there's fuck all of anything else left either. And within 3 weeks everyone's resorted to chewing on the bones of anyone smaller than them for sustenance and the whole country has turned into a scene from a Saturday night in Glasgow.

So here's a better idea. If you're the type of person who wants to remove the educational level requirements, how about we just re-asses the entire application process, and instead arrange to lower a contract into a field of unemployed people, and give the job to which ever person either a) survives the brawl for the contract, or b) is smart enough to stand to the side watching the rest of these under qualified retards fight it out amongst themselves.

Freshen up for the ladies!

There is literally nothing more confusing to me than the sight, and sound, of other men being given advice on their sex appeal by the 'freshen up for the ladies' guy in the gents loo. Literally nothing.

Think about it for a second. These guys are sitting in a damp room, surrounded by exposed men, watching them piss, and hearing them shit, and this, THIS, is the guy who's supposed to inspire us to shell out an extra few quid for some cologne and a lolly. The only other people on the planet with the same working conditions as these guys are tramps, but at least they have the good grace to just write a note and shut up about it.

Anyway, as we know, any sales job requires a pitch, which brings me to the rest of this post abomination. This is what we, as a species, actually allowed to happen in one night, in the same bar, a couple of weeks back.

The horror began literally as soon as I walked into the gents, luckily it wasn't empty, otherwise this could have ended up in a much colder, darker place, but still. Two seconds in, and while I'm quickly assessing the situation so as not to screw up urinal etiquette, I hear a sudden chant of "No Dolce Gabbana, then she no suck your banana!" Which, I must admit, had me somewhat distracted. But yes, I actually heard that. And he kept a straight face. And it worked. People actually gave him money for that.

What the hell is the thought process of these guys who get drawn in by this?

"Yes, you are a man whose opinion I should value when it comes to making myself appealing to women. All this education I keep hearing about to further myself, develop an ability to form interesting intellectual arguments or conduct mental gymnastics, all these clever witticisms I sometimes try in an effort to get a smile are useless! Where have you been all my life you terrifying, slightly damp, strange smelling, piss soaked genius! Quick have some cash! Plaster me in cologne! Ply me with sweets! What's that? Those Lolly's have been sitting in the toilets for hours, being grabbed at by anyone and everyone who thought they could sneak out without so much as rinsing their hands? I care not! Quick, give me Lollys, the sheer sight of a man with a 3 year old's treat in his mouth will have women literally flinging themselves at me!"

But that wasn't it. Oh no, there are other rules. Different scents for different goals I guess. So, it's Dolce Gabbana for a blow job, but what other pearls of wisdom did he generously choose to impart?

Well, luckily there were a few. Eventually. Before that he devoted a good minute or two to simply chanting "Punanai punanai" over and over again. But once that was done, he revealed the secret wisdom of what I now refer to as the scale of cologne. Behold!

No Dolce Gabbana, she no suck your banana.
Get some CK One and she'll open up her bum. (again, yes, that was actually allowed to happen)
No spray no lay, no spray no lay! (Sung to the tune of 'Ole, Ole, Ole, Ole, feeling hot hot hot)
Giorgio Armani, get you some Punani!
Freshen up from you slash, get you some gash!

It was at that point that I left in confused state of horror and pity for the people left to experience what was going to evolve in that bar over the rest of the night, and firmly questioning how the hell we ever got this far as a species.

So ladies, next time you meet a guy in a bar, and you're thinking 'ohh, he smells nice, it's good to meet a guy who made an effort'. Well, he didn't, he spent about £2 on it because a tramp managed to convince him that it had worked for him before. And if he offers you one, you might want to pass on the sweets. You now know where they've been.

Wiki-me

Yesterday, in the absence of Wikipedia (quite rightly) in protest to some American's writing laws for things they don't understand, I decided to take one for the team, and offer my services to answer all your whimsical questions in place of, well, everyone else I guess.

Anyway, here's the collected works. Don't check these on Wikipedia just yet, I've not had enough time to go through and correct all their erroneous articles.

************
Q: Wenn ist das Nunstück git und Slotermeyer?

A: To answer that would kill whomever read it.

************
Q: How long is a piece of string?

A: Twice the distance from the middle to either end

************
Q: Tell me about badgers


A: Badgers, like Eskimos, are widely believed in creatures yet actually nothing more than an urban legend. The origins of the myth dates back to the birth of road markings when a lazy council worker accidentally painted a stripe intended for the road onto a Labrador.


************
Q: What is the melting point of granite? I actually tried to ask Wikipedia this once, but it crashed so I still don't know.


A: There is no point in melting granite. That's why Wikipedia crashed on you in the first instance


************
Q: What is the meaning of life?


A: Think like a genius, dress like a rock star, fuck like a porn star.


************
Q: When are you going to stop playing on facebook and DO SOME WORK!?!?


A: As a female (as the questioner is), you should be more than familiar with multitasking. As a male with a girl's haircut, I'm doing a great job of multitasking, but ultimately just doing everything badly. You shouldn't have needed Wiki-Me for that answer


************
Q: What's the origin of Cheese?


A: Cheese was created by the French in 14th century, as would become their national trait it was created by accident after being too damn lazy to finish the job after milking a cow.


************
Q: Why do fridge companies provide you with egg holders when you're not supposed to keep eggs in the fridge?


A: To give the chickens that you are supposed to keep in the fridge something to aim at. Which also works with other egg laying animals. NB. Do not attempt this with an Ostrich


************
Q: Is it cheaper to boil a mug of water in the microwave or boil the kettle?


A:  Kettles are made of various materials, and as such would have various boiling points dependent on the specific component at the time. Personally I'd use the kettle to boil things, and not the other way round.


************
Q: In the absence of a verifiable god, what living thing might be idolised and sacrificed to instead?


A: As modern monotheistic religions generally depict their particular brand of cloud fairy's to be somewhere above us, logic dictates that the higher something, or someone is, the closer to God it must be. As such, and for want of any better alternatives, I'd recommend myself for your idol-worshiping and virgin sacrificing needs


************
Q: Why does a U always follow a Q?


A: Because if you weren't following in a queue you wouldn't be in a queue


************ 
Q: Is there any occasion when it is socially acceptable to fart in public?


A: Only in the event that someone else just has, and you want to make them feel better about it.

************
Q: Would it be better to be attacked one horse sized duck or ten duck sized horses?


A: An assault from 10 duck sized horses would likely result in little more than an amusing game of equine punting, which while comical in the extreme, would probably annoy renowned delusionists Peta. Where-as being attacked by a Horse sized Duck would be acceptable as your actions would be considered self defence. So, in the long term, the former is better, in the short term the latter. So it basically depends on how old (and thus close to death) you are.

************
Q: Shark v crocodile?


A: That depends on the level of training both animals has had, and the environment in which the combat takes place. In general though, Crocodile, as they've got millions of years worth of experience.

************ 
Q: Why do all people who drive white vans drive badly?


A: A white van that is well driven is generally considered to be stolen. As such, the rightful owners have to drive badly to avoid getting pulled over by the police


************
Q: Why do old people always choose to go to the post-office at lunch time or travel at rush hour when they have all day to do it?


A: The population of the UK is essentially a government cover up, there are only 25 of us. The rest are Greek contractors who, as they don't have any money any more, are now employed through the EU's care in the community programme to take up space in the UK to give us all something to complain about. Complaints being the natural fuel of any self respecting Brit. As such, they are only visible during peak times.

************
Q: Are there pigeons in Papau New Guinea?

A: Pigeons, or Sky-rats as they're known, used to live in Papau New Guinea, but moved to the UK as they found it more fun to shit on rich tourists in London