Thursday 31 March 2011

Complaints

So...
don't get me wrong i love complaining.
i complain about food, i complain about the weather wether its too hot or too cold and i complain about the bus when it doesn't arrive at EXACTLY the time stated on the sign.
but what does annoy me and will be the subject of todays rant/ complaint is when people come round and complain to you face to face.
thats cheating! you not allowed to actually tell sum-one that sum-thing is wrong your just suppose to complain reservedly about it behind their backs until they either realise the error of their ways and desist or continue blindly for so long that you no longer care about it.
the thing that provoked this was that i received a complaint about the loud music that almost always comes from my room, i wouldn't have minded if it was 3 in the morning or sum-thing like that but it was 8 o'clock in the afternoon and i feel that this is perfectly acceptable in a student halls of residence.
naturally i did what everyone does when told to 'turn it down' , i said "ok mate no problem" made a microscopic adjustment to the volume and carried on as normal.
this is the reason that i don't complain to people, it never works and you get silently judged (and most likely complained about behind your back) for trying.
so that is why i wont be going to 'have a word' about the 'trance' coming through my wall but i am going to write this slightly bitter blog
because that after all is the british way.


Friday 18 March 2011

St Patricks day

So
the friendliest day of the year has once again been and gone, and what a day, night and early hours of the next day it was.
bars rammed, student unions open way past bed time and drunken celebrators as far as the blurry bloodshot eye can see.
not being irish i don't really know what St Patricks day is actually about, i mealy use it as an annual excuse to drink more than my fair share of guinness and generally make a bit of an idiot of myself.
it turns out that St Patrick was most noted for bringing christianity into ireland and St patricks day marks the day of his death.
but no won knows (or cares about) that right? St Patricks day is just basically an excuse to drink until you are unconscious these days, just like easter is an excuse to eat your body weight in chocolate, we don't care why anymore, we just do it, and why the hell not!
I remember thinking to myself as I awaited the night bus that this holiday is one of my favourites and i think the reason is that theres no rules, at christmas you have to get a tree and invite your relatives round for sunday roast etc etc. but paddy day has none of that bullshit. yes you can drink guinness but cider is perfectly acceptable too and if you don't like either then a pint of snakebite with a shot of vodka in it is absolutely fine too, and yes you should ware green but again no won minds if you don't. you can truly embrace St Patricks day any way you see fit, which was outlined perfectly by the rather ill looking man dressed as a tiger waiting at the bus stop with me.

happy paddy's day everyone!

Wednesday 9 March 2011

I hate computers.

So.
what a wonderful invention, the computer! combining work and leisure and anything else you can think of into 1 brilliant little package.
you name it, the computer knows it, its like having your own personal genius in the room, we love computers, thats why pity much everyone has one, their just grea.. oh wait.. whats this? error? wares my work gone? windows is shutting down? FUCK!
and in an instant you are filled with un repenting hatred for the computers and all computers in the world.
sound familiar? of course it does, i cant have been more than 2 days since anyone felt like shouting at a computer (or actually shouted at one)
im not sure what it is about out plastic overlords that just winds us up so much but they certainly do thats for sure, perhaps its their smugness in withholding the information you need or the way they remain completely calm when delivering bad news, at least if it looked a bit flustered and stressed too it might help to ease the blow of loosing an afternoons work for no apparent reason.
this kind of thing will more often than not provoke a statement like this "ah well you should have bought a MAC then" or "this kind of thing would never happen to a PC" usually delivered by a man with thick framed glasses and an unbearably annoying voice but to him i say 'fuck off!' it doesn't matter if its a windows or an apple,at the end of the day their all evil little boxes of wires that enjoy nothing more than causing us puny minded humanoids as much stress and misery as is humanly (or should i say computerly) possible.
this blatant provocativeness it apparent very clearly in the pointless error warnings which will normally consist of a piece of gibberish (if anything at all) and box allowing you to approve it with the word OK, but its not fucking OK! i have coursework to do you evil plastic bastard!
going back to my earlier quote that its like having your own personal genius in the room, i think that is still an accurate analogy, but you have to remember that a lot of genius's are intact very temperamental short tempered and above all stubborn and more often than not die a lot earlier than you would expect.

so lets forget the petty debate between MAC and PC and look at the bigger picture, its them verses us, and its just always going to be that way
'hi im a MAC', 'and im a PC', 'and im a pissed of student that just wants to get some coursework done!' (proceeds to smash them both to pieces with a frying pan.)

Sunday 6 March 2011

Text etiquette.

So.
social etiquette is a phenomena that has amused me in many forms throughout my largely un eventful life, some things are acceptable and some things we 'just don't do.'
for instance, you are obliged to nod or acknowledge a person you know (however vaguely) every time you pass them in the street and if you fail to do so it is immediately assumed that you bare nothing but resentment for this person and deserve steely resentment in return, or when you see sum-one who has fallen off a bicycle and is clearly not 'all-right' you have to walk over and ask the blindingly obvious "are you alright?" to which social etiquette demands the answer to in variably be "yes!" when what you really want to say is "do i fucking look like im all-right?".
of course there are no written rules (asides from the 2 i have just written down) but everyone knows them and everything just plods along smoothly and no-won questions them but what happens when the way we socialise changes? do we have to change the rules?
The problem started with the telephone, social etiquette would never allow the making of loud and annoying noises at any time day or night to attract the attention of another person yet here, the telephone is throwing the rules aside and doing precisely that!
And it doesn't end there, while engaged in a phone call you are faced with a terrible social dilemma, wether to cut short the conversation on the phone in favour of the people that actually made the effort to talk with-ought the use of a plastic box of expensive radio waves or blank them until the person that obnoxiously buzzed in your pocket has spoken their fill.
yes, almost always social etiquette is broken and the real people are blanked, but whats worse is this is seen as acceptable! 'hang on iv just got to take a call' or 'wares jim?' 'oh he's just taking a call he will be with you in a minute'.
the rules of phones are becoming a lot more clear cut as time goes on however there is a relatively new kid on the figurative block, text and social networking.
progress is moves in strange ways, we first had to communicate with cave paintings but that was shit so sum-one invented talking, that was great but difficult over long distances so another clever sod decided that letters were a good idea and sent a load of them to everyone notifying them that this was the future of communication, in return some letters were sent requesting a method by which to talk to sum-one using words over a long distance and as such the telephone was invented and was a smash hit with the grainy black and white folk of the time.
this is plainly progress however after that it all went a bit wrong, we decided that talking was not what we wanted to do after all so we went back to letters and numbers but only this time we needed not just a humble pen and paper but a high tech box of circuitry and lights that communicated with giant floating bin lids in outer space in order to send a simple letter. not only does this giant leap back into the dark ages make very little sense it also played havoc with social etiquette.
There are now things that can and cant be said via text for example 'hi, would you like to meet up in town later?' being an acceptable message and sum-thing like 'will you marry me?' being best left to traditional methods but this is exactly the grey area i am conveniently straying into.
what is acceptable to text? and are some things exclusively for text? well, to quote Mark Corrigan from peep show "if text kisses were real kisses the whole world would be a massive orgy" and he makes a good point (for a fictional character), we do seem to make a lot more physical expressions of affection when physical expressions are not possible, to a point where if you were to actually act like that in real life you would be shunned for breaking the unspoken rules of social etiquette that we stick to so religiously.
so is this just another chapter in the un spoken, un written rule book? well if it is it must just be in pencil at the moment because no-won actually knows the rules.
there are some theory s floating about like '1 kiss is just nothing, 2 kisses is friendly 3 kisses means i want to get in your pants' etc. etc. but this is largely dismissed as bollocks.
as often happens with rants like this i have failed to reach a valid conclusion but insted simply drifted off on a never ending tangent but all i can say is this.
social etiquette is everywhere, and texts are no acceptation but at the moment no-won actually knows what is is.

or on the flip side that could all just be bollocks.

xxx