Married
Today – that today being Halloween of 2008 and not any other today which may be considerably later depending on when you read this or considerably earlier depending on when my Time Machine comes out of private beta – I shall be departing the world of singletons and landing upon the fair shores of married life. That is to say, I’m getting married today. This will be followed – after a rest period of a couple of days – with one of those there honeymoon things. Marriage brings with it changes. As far as you’re concerned the major change will be that I won’t be updating the site for a few weeks, I won’t be dropping by Entrecard users’ sites for a few weeks, I won’t be advertising on Entrecard sites or accepting adverts from Entrecard users, and anybody who leaves a comment that goes into moderation won’t get it approved until I get back. I won’t be visiting your sites or reading your latest updates through my RSS reader. I’ll miss you at first but I’ll get over it quite quickly because I’m an adaptable sort of chap. The wedding will be a small affair and you’re not invited. It won’t be religious because I think we all know my views on that whole crock of crap. It will be short; perfunctory. We are not getting married out of love (we know how we feel about one another and some ceremony doesn’t make a jot of difference) or for tax reasons (because the bastards in government removed those particular benefits many moons ago) but because we’d like to justify the cost of the engagement ring to our relatives and have a bloody good holiday for the first time in over twelve years of living together. There will be no reception but there will be a meal for family. Again, that’s not you so you’ll have to make your own arrangements. On Monday we go abroad together for the first time since a day trip to France about a decade ago. We are nervously excited about this honeymoon; the wedding … not so much. Gushingly emotional, we ain’t. We shall be visiting Beijing, Shanghai, Okinawa, Taipei, Hong Kong, Nha Trang, Ho Chi Minh City, Singapore, and Bangkok. We shall be travelling by cruiseship – the enticingly gay-sounding Diamond Princess – and not submarine as I suspect you assumed. Sadly, I was unable to procure a cyan tuxedo with ruffled shirt and shall be wearing a conventional black ensemble for the formal evenings. It will be our first cruise and we hope it won’t be our last. That’s because we...
Complaint To British Gas
The following is a complaint sent to British Gas via their "speedy complaint response system" about a week ago as it stands. No reply, no acknowledgement as of time of posting but this will be updated when anything is forthcoming. Some background information here with the added recent annoyance of continuing meter reads because we’re not using enough to satisfy their greedy mitts and a suggestion from someone who works for British Gas that we should make a complaint. So we have. Fat lot of good it’ll probably do. Last night we were interrupted to have our gas reading taken. This happens – it seems – every other month. Apparently we’re on a "must read the meter in person because we think they’re up to no good" list. Let me explain something: our house has two adults in it and no children; adults who work during the day. Adults who shower using an electric shower, who cook with an electric oven. Adults who may well have a higher tolerance for low temperatures than average and thus don’t have the central heating on every hour of the day. This – coupled with the fact that everyone has just been through something called "Summer" – means that we use very little gas; the odd washing up bowl filled with water here and there for the most part. Now, when someone uses very little gas the meter that measures how much gas is used doesn’t move very much. It’s one of those bizarre cause-and-effect situations. We don’t use much gas. We have low gas usage. Not much gas is used in our house. What I’m trying to say here is that our gas usage is quite low. We would like to be taken off your "must read the meter in person so we can catch them in the act of turning back the dial" list because we consider it borderline harassment. Your recent attempts to increase our monthly payments despite our massive credit balance have not endeared us to you, and your incompetence in your repeated failures in addressing that problem (that problem being to put the monthly payment back down) have exacerbated our negative image of your company. Entering our home every other month – I’m sure you can agree – is taking our bad impression and making it worse. "The Customer Is Always Our Last Concern" is not a motto I’d employ if I were running a business, but that’s just me. According to uSwitch we’re best off with you financially for now. Of course, uSwitch doesn’t included weighting for aggravation. We’d rather not have to change supplier – we...
Complaints About Ross And Brand
It was revealed today by Ofcom that over sixty million British people have not complained about the comments made by usually totally uncontroversial presenters Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand during a BBC Radio 2 show on the 18th October. Conservative party media spokesman Jeremy Hunt told this site: "It is inconceivable in a time like this that British taxpayers would not be phoning up and complaining about material that a handful of taxpaying, British people found offensive by two possibly taxpaying gentlemen who we – as British taxpayers paying British tax – are ultimately employing by paying tax. Inconceivable." Brand and Ross made comments regarding Brand’s sexual relationship with the granddaughter of actor Andrew Sachs, Georgina Baillie, and left these on the actor’s answerphone. Ms Bailie said she felt embarrassed that the relationship had been revealed to her grandfather but has so far refused to rule out exclusive newspaper deals detailing all the intricate sordidness of her time with the comedian, all of which she’ll probably be perfectly fine with. Both Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross have issued a joint apology of sorts. In it, Brand – best known for and employed because of his family-friendly, non-offensive style of funny, family-time, clean humour – stated that he shouldn’t have left the message. Jonathan Ross, widely regarded as the BBC’s boyishly attractive, primetime show-hosting, child-friendly joking, light-talking face of the early weekday evening, agreed with his co-presenter that the action was regrettable while laughing because he found it funny and it turns out that humour is subjective. The BBC is now under pressure after calls from the incredibly tiny minority of people who didn’t not complain to Ofcom to sack the presenters but has so far refused to act as impulsively and vociferously as those with an axe to grind against the organisation or a desire to promote themselves but not the guts to come out and admit...
That NFL Wembley Experience
On Sunday I took a trip to Wembley to watch the NFL game between the San Diego Chargers and the New Orleans Saints. I made some observations about the experience. Travelling and London The train has something called a "Shhh … Quiet Zone", a carriage for those who dislike loud noises – I know because we sat in it. Admittedly accidentally. This zone of peace instructs people to not use their headphones (which they do anyway) and to not use their mobile phones (which they do anyway). It doesn’t instruct people to keep their dreadful Boring Bicycling Twats Club Of Great Britain (group name extrapolated based on incessant drivel) conversation to a minimum (i.e. the silent minimum): "Have you met Melvin?" "Hello Melvin! Where’s Tom?" "Oh Tom’s texted to say he’s missed the train!" "Oh no! Tom’s missed the train!" "That’s right, he’s missed the train." "So should we wait for Tom or cycle to Greenwich to meet Sally and Tristan?" "I think we should wait and then make Tom buy lunch." "Oh spiffy! Fancy Tom missing the train." "The train." "The train." "Tom." "So where’s your bike?" "Back there where you put the bikes." "Mine too!" "Tom’s bike’s not there." And the zone has no instruction for making parents of screaming children dangle them out of the window to deaden the noise either. Not that anyone would pay any attention even if they did. Once you’re in London you travel by Tube if you want to get anywhere, stay dry, and don’t mind giving oxygen a miss for half an hour or so. If you’re after a recession-proof business then the London tissue industry or the inventors of an anti-tar, one-piece suit might be worth investing the last of your life’s savings in. A day in London travelling on the Tube coats the insides of your nostrils with a black, sticky crud and must be blown out and examined at first hand to truly appreciate its vileness. One can only conclude that most Londoners are, themselves, lined with this substance. This may make Londoners more flammable than normal people or, conversely, it may be impossible to burn one at all. Tests should be carried out. Now. The NFL Tailgate Party I’d never been to a tailgate party before but now I know … a tailgate party is a giant circle of queues, snaking around and devouring one another’s tail. People queue to buy merchandise and reward themselves for tolerating that hour by queueing to buy a drink that they drink while in the queue for food which they consume in the static line for the toilet which gives...
Religious Perfume
I recently read about The Pope’s Cologne, a fragrance for men who wish to smell just like a man in a dress in times of plague. And who wouldn’t? As many people will know, I’m a collector of vintage magazines and I’m particularly fond of adverts in particular as they demonstrate a fascinating snapshot into the banality of life in decades past, so it is probably no surprise to learn that men’s and women’s fragrances based on religious themes is hardly new at all. Holy Spirit (1973) When Rochas tapped into the religious market looking to smell religiousy with Holy Spirit it took the bold step of edging away from traditional floral bases in the scent and instead picked upon some specific elements from the Bible in order to more strongly appeal to fundamentalist Christian women, a key demographic at the time. The piquancy of the warm bread undertone mixed with the musky palm notes was generally agreed upon to be both innovative and very pleasant but the decision to blend in two distinct fish aromas was the most likely cause of the perfume’s catastrophic market failure. Even after Holy Spirit was removed from shelves and ceased production Rochas refused to confirm the exact fish species used although it is widely accepted that the religious fragrance lacked sole. Seventy-2 (1969) Seventy-2 was directed at the young, white, suburban, fanatical, Islamic, would-be suicide bombers prevalent in middle America towards the end of the 1960s. The moral claims of the producers of Seventy-2 – that it "might help prevent unnecessary bloodshed and tragedy, and simultaneously help to make America smell wonderful again" – were overshadowed by some of the sales tactics used to sell the range of men’s toiletries (free dynamite, Death To America workshops, etc.) and the company was forced to close down and disappear quietly with the help of the FBI in, ironically, February of ’72. Rapture (1925) Ludwig Scherk was not only a manufacturer of cosmetic products during the 1920s but also a self-proclaimed prophet, and his release of a range of women’s fragrances entitled Rapture was – he claimed – because he could see the end coming very soon and wanted the good Christian housewives of America to be the first to travel the clouds while the Earth was destroyed. History shows us that Scherk was partly correct; his business did come to an abrupt and fiery (literally) end during the Great Depression that began a few years later. However, the return of Jesus was fortunately cancelled and those women who purchased and doused themselves in Rapture never got to impress anyone other than Ludwig’s bank manager...
Getting To Know Me
Oh, sure, you visit; you pop by; you drop on in. If you’re a member of Entrecard then you probably drop on down, then drop on out too. That place is full of droppers and I should know; I visit, pop by, and drop in, on, around, down, and out too. But I don’t really know anything about you and I suspect – well, actually, I’m pretty certain – that you don’t know anything about me. And there is much to know about me. The web’s social or so they say but it isn’t much like a society with which I’m familiar unless you know of a society that thrives solely on self-promotion, lies, and egotism. Let’s ignore the obvious response to that and press on with some self-promotion, lying, and ego-stroking by talking in depth about me. I’m a man, for starters. I’ve got all the manly parts associated with being a man. Stubble? Yeah, that’s there. If I don’t shave for four days then I can blend in with any terrorist cell in the world. It’s not just my stubble that grows at a phenomenal rate – no, not what you’re thinking you filthy pervert, although that’s true enough – but also the hair on my scalp too. If there’s a Hair Bear Bunch Human Impersonator Emergency then I could well be the answer to that emergency’s prayers. I don’t have hair on my back, chest, or tongue, however. If I had hair on my back then I’d not be engaged, that’s for certain; the other half frowns upon back hair. But we’re not talking about her. This is me, me, me time. My hair’s neither receding nor balding and was once so brown it was nearly black. But it wasn’t quite black. And now it’s not quite so brown it’s nearly black either; the albino hairs have emerged and begun to infiltrate the forest of brown-black. In time they will subsume the dark but I do not fear their approach. It’s not just my head-based hair that marks me out as a man; I have a sense of direction that is second-to-none and, certainly, far superior to any woman’s to which I’ve been introduced. I’d like to believe that I can tune into the Earth’s magnetic flux patterns and align myself towards any direction without thinking. I’d like to believe in a lot of things, but that’s simply preposterous. Unless the box of iron filings I swallowed as a child didn’t pass through me as the knowledgeable-sounding doctor assured my parents it would. Could they have dispersed through my body, carried by the flow of blood...
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