Category Archives: Bad
Light Up, As If You Have A Choice
When I get the insatiable urge to draw nicotine into my bloodstream, as I do quite a few times a day, no other urge can come close; be it hunger, thirst or whatever. And I definitely do not give a damn which brand is emblazoned on the packet which provides the relief.
But now the anti-smoking lobby is convinced that taking branding away from cigarettes will somehow stop people smoking. They say that selling cigarettes in plain white packets will remove the urge for people to associate themselves with a particular brand.
I don’t think so!
Maybe I’m disillusioned; I mean, I’m never going to be cool. In fact I’m the anti-cool. I wear brands precisely because they AREN’T cool, so branding wouldn’t affect me, would it?
But it got me thinking. We smokers have gone from cool dudes to scum-of-the-earth all in the matter of a few years. It’s as anti-social to light up in company as it is to call said company’s mum a lady of the night.
And the evil Government has decided that this is the best way to appear to care about people’s health, while still raking in the profits.
If this highly addictive drug which ruins our health becomes illegal, then there’d be no problem. Everyone would have to quit. And it’d be for our own good.
But money gleaned in taxes from cigs far outweighs the money spent on treating smokers by the NHS, so it’s never going to happen. But if it did, then all those moaning squeaky-clean knowitall non-smokers who say that smokers shouldn’t be treated on the NHS would be silenced, because there wouldn’t be an NHS as we know it.
So I’ll just keep on smoking whatever comes my way. Rollups (they’re so cheap), Marlborough Lights, Benson and Hedges, even Sovereign; whatever’s on offer.
Just not menthols. Only losers smoke menthols.
A Pants Idea That Won’t Change The World
What a load of crap left-handed people have had to put up with in the past.
They had it beaten out of them at school back in the day, forced to use their semi-redundant right hands to write. They’ve struggled for years to master right-handed appliances, from scissors to pencil sharpeners, and ploughed on stoically beneath the stigma of this terrible affliction.
The Devil, yes the DEVIL, that well-known creature who exists only in the imagination along with the bogey man, Santa Claus and world peace, has for thousands of years been associated with the left hand.
What a bummer for all those afflicted/blessed with left-handedness (delete as appropriate as to whether you believe a book written thousands of years ago by no-one-really-knows-who is a valid script to live your life by).
But all of this is now well and truly in the past with the launch of underwear for left handed men, which is being stocked by Debenhams.
I wasn’t even aware there was a problem in this department being A. female and B. right-handed, but apparently, left-handed men, the poor things, have to reach far further into their pants than their right-handed counterparts, and perform a z-shaped manoeuvre through two 180 degree angles before achieving the desired results.
Sounds complex. But apparently, these new pants by Hom will save left handed guys up to three ‘often vital’ seconds when they have a waz, according to Debenhams.
In what possible situation could those three extra seconds saved in the lavatory be VITAL?
Ok, say the average guy has to pee six times a day, and saves three seconds each time thanks to said pants, do these pants offer the opportunity for lefties to utilise accumulated time previously lost to pant manoeuvring? Thanks to these pants, could lefties rule the world?
Oh, they do already. Clinton, Bush and Obama have all managed it on a 126-seconds-a-week deficit. But will they all buy these pants anyway?
Whichever way you look at it, it’s a pants idea (sorry).
Trouser trouble: a fine specimen of a southpaw
Facebook Lites Fuse Under Twitter
The original ‘How can I show off to my friends?’ website – Facebook – has developed a new, lighter version of itself – in the form of Facebook Lite. Many commentators are saying this has come about as direct competition to Twitter.
The beauty, many say, of Twitter is its simplicity – a polar opposite to the experience of logging on to Facebook and finding that you’ve been poked 12 times, been asked to join the ‘I like Stepping On Dried Leaves’ group and reading a comment by someone you said three words to at school saying that he has bought a brand spanking new Land Rover.
This bombardment of pointless drivel has been reduced to a moderate drip with Lite. The Facebook people say the new version has been created for people with slow internet connections – especially in developing countries. It might be surprising to learn that 70 percent of Facebook users are from outside the USA – where most people obviously have high speed connections.
The obligatory comments, as well as photos and videos will form the main focus of the new site. It seems that a large number of people see this new version as a way of giving Twitter fans something of a similar ilk – with a little more garnishing.
It seems we’ve passed the point on the internet whereby ‘we can, so we should’. Instead, a simpler set of interfaces seem to be de rigour; at the same time as websites seem to be sporting larger text and simpler, bolder curved-box layouts. Of course, Google knew this years ago with their mega-simple active-white-space search engine design.
Why has it taken us so long to catch up?
Tedious Story From Oz
I found a really boring story about Russell Crowe challenging an Australian journalist to a bike ride. It was so tedious that I just stared at the BBC story for a few minutes, wondering if I would drift into a coma. Luckily for Your Life readers, I didn’t – and now I can spell out just how boring this story was:- “J.U.S.T. H.O.W. B.O.R.I.N.G T.H.I.S. S.T.O.R.Y. W.A.S.”
See?
Apparently Crowe was spotted eating a unbelievably dull taco on a break from his fitness regime in Australia somewhere. A journalist wrote a headline exactly like this: “smokes and fatty foods the fitness regime for Rusty”. Russell, who tends to get really angry about stuff like this, challenged the journalist (or ‘journo’ as an Aussie would probably say) to a bike ride. Wow.
According to the BBC, the woman involved fell off her bike or something and Crowe was vindicated. Poor old Crowe managed to beat off that evil little Australian Telegraph reporter with only his bear wit and a fitness regime to assist.
I should probably point out, for those who lap up unfeasibly tedious rubbish, that the film star also has a fag and a soft drink on this thrilling fitness regime break style situation.
If you want to find out more about the story (which almost impossible as I’ve squeezed as much as I can out of it) then you might want to look for it somewhere else. If you just have a general interest in tacos, I’m pretty sure you can find pictures of them on the net that you can download for free.
Wasps: Methods of Disposal
Now, I’m a vegetarian, so I shouldn’t be writing this thing I’m about to write about killing wasps. Yeah, they’re really small, but what if I swallowed one and then subsequently my head swelled up to the size of an enraged puffer fish on steroids? Eh? In light of this danger I have drawn up a short list of wasp disposal methods.
1. Newspaper. So obvious, so effective, so fun, so why haven’t I tried it? Because, as one of my most recent victims discovered, I tried something else. The wasp was smugly slurping at a congealed patch of apple juice on my apple juice carton – thinking (I don’t doubt) that because I was not wielding a newspaper – and besides this was clearly a withered veggie – I posed no significant threat. How wrong can you be? In wasp terms?
This wasp got too involved in the old licky-licky, and didn’t notice that I had crooked my middle finger and held it in place with my thumb – before increasing the pressure and then letting it go. Off the little bugger went. Sad – but effective.
2. The edge of a Bulmer’s bottle. Where many bottles fall down when used in connection with wasp disposal, the Bulmer’s holds its wasp-bashing own. The cavity you often find in the base of some bottles means you think you’ve obliterated the wasp – only to find the broadly grinning wasp looking up at you, with its (frankly) evil looking eyeballs. The Bulmers bottle is nice and flat on the base. The broad grin on the wasp’s face is suddenly much broader than he might have supposed it could be.
3. Get a pyromaniac to modify your cigarette lighter so that a 7 inch flame lunges out when sparked. At first this method seems like a big old fun-party, doesn’t it? It’s all chuckles and hilarity until you realise how difficult it is bring the flame and over-confident wasp together in a mish-mash of heat and melted wasp ass. It’s only when you’ve burnt your sofa, set fire to your own hair, and torched your house together with all your worldly possessions – that it dawns on you: you’ve taken your disdain for wasps a little too far.
French Come Last In Holiday Survey
A recent survey carried out by Expedia suggests that the French are the ‘the worst’ holidaymakers, while the Japanese are the best. The survey asked 4,500 hoteliers across Europe what they thought of the behaviour of different nationalities whilst on vacation.
There were lots of different categories, and all the information I can find is unclear on various factors. The headlines on British websites and news sources tend to take the negative line as usual, leading with what the British are worst at. The BBC states that the British are “the worst holidaymakers in Europe”, but later in the same report say that the French were the “worst holiday makers overall.”
There were several categories where the Brits did well, but it seems no one wants to know about that. Even the BBC do this Daily Mail wind-up style thing; admittedly it was a piece on the NewsBeat website – the Beeb’s very own news service for 8 years olds. Oh no, sorry, I’m thinking of NewsRound.
Purely as a chance to have a snipe at the French, I’ve run with the headline above. Which is true. The Brits were 2nd most stylish – and came second overall.
Yes, SECOND OVERALL. But the Beeb runs with British ‘worst behaved’ in Europe.
What’s going on there? Email your MP NOW.
Fire Causing Super Ant Found In Britain
Our little black garden ant has nothing on these little monsters. The Lasius Neglectus or Asian super ant has descended on Hidcote Manor in Chipping Camden, Gloucestershire, where it poses a significant fire risk.
The strange little insects are naturally drawn to electricity currents, and as such have been known to start fires in junction boxes and other electrical equipment. According to experts, the ants find electricity even more attractive than food or water.
The ant is highly dependent on aphid honeydew, and is thought to be able to live in a wide variety of trees. This is the first time the ant has been found in the United Kingdom – although it has been spotted on the European mainland before.
The species was officially bagged and tagged in Budapest, over 20 years ago.
English Heritage and the National Trust have been carrying out tests on the species, and have confirmed they are indeed the super ant, having sent samples to a university in Spain. The Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona has been studying the effect of the species in Spanish homes.
While the ant is very similar in size to native British ants, it is far more prolific, with colonies tending to be 10 to a 100 times larger than local ones. The ant is causing problems for Hidcote Manor’s owners, as the little buggers are resistant to traditional extermination methods.
Torch ‘em, I say.
Swine Flu Death Toll Reaches 30… The End Is Neigh!!
The swine flu death toll hit 30. Oh yea Lord above have mercy on our collective ass during this period of vengeful pestilence. Only the penitent man will pass – we have been forsaken and should now crack each other’s heads open and feast off the goo we find within. In case you couldn’t tell – I was being sarcastic.
Just before we start ramming steaks into each other’s hearts and looting churches for large crucifixes perhaps we should look at the real viral pandemic; the scare mongering media and their carcinogenic manipulations.
Yesterday a girl of 15 died of swine flu. What do people read? Not the parenthesis in the middle of the sentence that states categorically that she had major underlying health concerns, but that people are dying of swine flu. How can that death possibly be accredited to swine flu?
If a man is walking down the street just after being diagnosed with swine flu and a large anvil drops from the sky and kills him, does that count toward the swine flu death toll? Or someone is shot 16 times but then after the blood work comes back from the autopsy – “I thought so, cause of death swine flu”.
It is high times for murders, as all they need to do is kill people with swine flu and they cannot possibly be prosecuted. “Another swine flu victim, standard MO, stabbed in the bladder and set fire to, god damn swine flu, if only, if only it was a virus with mild, standard flu-like symptoms!”
Oh hang on… it actually is.
15 year old girl dies, it is tragic. People die all the time. 600,000 people every year equating to 1645 people every day, some of those people are young. Why use this tragedy to perpetuate this media franchise of Armageddon? Because reporting on the thousands of people who have recovered is not sensationalist enough.
When the H1N1 virus first kicked off in Mexico the media were all over it. Surely there must have been some point when they were waiting on their Reuters news feeds just thinking, “This is thin, really thin. Oh another 72 year-old Mexican unicyclist died yesterday, sounds like swine flu to me!”
Depp and Mann Fued Created Public Enemies Mess
As the title might suggest, thinks have got pretty bad for director Michael Mann and lead actor Johnny Depp over their clanger of a blockbuster Public Enemies. During production the two key figures on set were only communicating through a studio exec, as Depp seethed at Mann’s ‘chaotic’ film making style.
After viewing the final product, although I was not on set, I would have to take Depp’s side. The final product was quite frankly shocking. From a director who had put togther some entertaining and stylish flicks such as Last of Mohicans, Heat, Ali and Collatoral, this was a real mess. None of his films are masterpieces, but he has shown that he can work with big names and get the job done.
With Mohicans, Mann proved that he could put together a period piece with some complex battle scenes. I don’t know whether he got bored with standard cinematic deep focus period techniques or if he wanted to try something new, but he picked the wrong film to do it with. Mann is staring down the barrel as Public Enemies drags itself over the 70mill mark bearing the wieght of a 100mill price tag.
The problem is that it really didn’t look like a 100mill flick. The shadow happy lighting and shallow focus from the tight end gave us little hints we were in the 1930s. The film was effectively a biop of John Dillinger and if Mann was trying to represent the gritty realism by adopting a Cassavettes style, actor leading camera blend of performance enhancing depth of field with reaction shot focus pulls, it did not work.
The autopsy of this freakish alien of visual style has to begin with the script… it was terrible. They managed to make Depp boring. Mann took co-credit for this abomination with Ronan Bennett, who has mainly written for TV although penned Face in ’97 which was passable and the Stephen Fry adaptation Lucky Break. It was a series of cliches and paradoxes which left Depp slightly confused as to why he was on screen.
Depp under Burton would have been searching within these terrible lines for a reason. He would have deduced that with the entire country trying to capture Dillinger he would be paranoid in the extreme, he would be reliant on cliches to get him through conversations, he would have had an edge. The poor script would have been turned inside out to create something interesting.
Lucky Number Windows 7: Evolution, Not Revolution
Microsoft’s professional developers conference in Los Angeles saw the unveiling of the eagerly awaited Windows 7 operating system. With a lot of people displaying utter disdain for the previous OS – Vista – it is hoped that Windows 7 will address some of these issues. However, with Microsoft claiming that the system is an ‘evolution’ as opposed to a ‘revolution’, many people are likely to claim that the system will not fix these gripes.
Like Apple’s iphone, the new Windows contains a multi-touch facility, whereby people can use two fingers to zoom into an image. Bill Gates will be hoping that users don’t use their two fingers for more symbolic usage if the system crashes.
Lucky number 7 perhaps, for this new system. Unfortunately for the kings of operating systems, the only people who could possibly mount a challenge to them – Google – is indeed doing so next year. The Google Chrome OS promises to be a web-centred operating system, as people spend most of their digital lives on the net – according to Google.
Only time will tell who’ll win the OS War – perhaps we’ll be left with two comparably powerful systems that promote competition and drive usability forward as far as possible. Most people would agree that competition does indeed make things better – so let’s hope it does.
Loosening Microsoft’s stranglehold on the world of home computers has surely got to be a good thing – as long as we’re not left with yet another global corporation that controls everything – and let’s not forget, Google run the most powerful information portal known to man as well!
