There’s a happy middle ground somewhere in between believing nothing and everything you read.  There’s also the happy ground I inhabit, where I conveniently believe the things I choose to believe if they happen to reinforce my existing beliefs and opinions.

If I read something derogatory or defamatory about someone I don’t like, I’ll probably believe it.  The opposite is equally true of someone I very much like.  For example, did you know that Brian Clough ordered his players to have a drink on the bus journey to Anfield immediately before a crucial European Cup game in 1978? You see, I want to believe that, because it’s a brilliant story about a brilliant man.  And if you say it isn’t true then I’ll stick my fingers in my ears and go LALALALALA I’M NOT LISTENING LALALALALA.

Also, did you know that X Factor’s Katie Waissel is a “ruthlessly ambitious schemer” and a “fame-obsessed sex maniac who’s tried to bed her way to the top”?  Well, so says self-confessed “celebrity” Michael Sophocles.  (You know, he made a real twat of himself on the Apprentice.  Actually I’m not sure that narrows it down.)

Michael Sophocles and an unusually feminine-looking Katie Waissel

I’m not sure whether to laugh in confused exasperation at the irony of Michael Sophocles trying to cash in on Katie Waissel’s five minutes of fame by claiming she tried to cash in on his five minutes of fame before dumping him to try and cash in on James Blunt’s five minutes of fame, or to weep cold, agonising tears at the mention of three of the biggest bell-ends of the twenty-first century in the same sentence.  And no, it isn’t too soon to consider Katie Waissel one of the biggest bell-ends of this century.

It saddens and sickens me to think that anybody anywhere thinks they can (and are prepared to try to) become famous by fucking James Blunt and Michael Sophocles, and it’s just as — if not more — saddening and sickening to think that someone can try to eek out a little more limelight from claiming someone tried to become famous by fucking them and so on and on and on ad infinitum.  It’s just a big fucking mess of annoying fucking nobodies trying to become somebodies by fucking or claiming to have fucked or claiming not to have fucked somebody slightly more famous or apparently more cultural relevant.  Except James Blunt, who would come out of this reasonably well were it not for the fact that he might have fucked Katie Waissel.  (If it weren’t for her big square manly jaw it might make me think he wasn’t gay.)

But I digress.  You see, the thing that really annoys me about Katie Waissel is that she doesn’t want to be a singer; she wants to be a star.  And the X Factor is the vehicle towards her becoming a star.  And the sad thing is that this is the case for most of the sub-karaoke singers on that God-forsaken show that for some inexplicable reason infiltrates my every waking thought.

No-one seems to say they want to be a singer or a performer anymore.  They don’t want to write songs, or be on stage, or even be acknowledged for being talented.  They just want to be famous and rich.  “I just want to be a legend,” Katie Waissel said to the camera during the audition stage.  Let’s break down the semantics of that statement.

I just (adverb (jəst, jĭst; jŭst when stressed): merely, only) want to be a legend (noun (lej′ənd): 1) a story handed down for generations among a people and popularly believed to have a historical basis, although not verifiable, 2) a notable person whose deeds or exploits are much talked about in his or her own time)

She just wants to be a legend.  That’s all!  A LEGEND.  A fucking legend, like Robin Hood or King Arthur or Elvis or Brian Clough.  She just wants to be a legend.

And this, I think is why people hate Katie Waissel.  It’s why I hate almost everyone who’s ever been on X Factor.  They want to click their fingers and be famous.  And for some of them — annoyingly — that’s what will happen.  It might be fleeting (Storm), it might be ironic (Wagner), it might (hopefully) bite them on the arse and make them regret it for the rest  of their days (Katie, please), but some of these cunts will become moderately famous.  And for what?  Being half-decent singers.  Half-decent singers with no creative control whatsoever, who have whored themselves and their talent out to the producers of a TV show in the hope of achieving fame.  If they had any real fucking talent — if they had any real fucking drive or motivation or fucking gumption — they’d have found a way to become famous.  They’d have fucking EARNED it.  No-one on the X Factor deserves to be rich and famous because none of them will fucking earn it.

People think that being famous is some kind of achievement.  Well it isn’t.  Paris Hilton became famous for being “a socialite” (FFS) who made a sex tape with her boyfriend.  Abi Titmuss became famous for doing the same with John Leslie.  Amanda Holden.  Kelly Osbourne.  Jack Tweed.  All of questionable talent, all rode someone else’s coattails to fame.  Fame is not an achievement.  Not anymore.

This isn’t a rant about Katie Waissel, specifically.  Yes, she’s annoying.  Yes, she looks about as feminine as Desperate Dan.  Yes, there’s something very strange and elfish and pointy going on with her right ear, and yes, her face swells up like Mr Potato Head when she strains for that big note, but it’s important to remember that almost everything we’ve seen and heard from Katie Waissel has been edited.  The X Factor producers try to shape our perceptions of all the X Factor characters.  If, for ratings or publicity or through sheer malevolence they want us to hate Katie Waissel, they will (and have, to be fair) make sure we do.  She may have given the producers hours and hours of pleasant footage, where she discusses her tireless charity work and displays her affable, selfless nature, but they choose to show the clip where she says: “I just want to be a legend,” and it gets self-righteous grumpy old farts like me LIVID with rage to the point where they write a blog or comment on facebook twenty or thirty times during the course of an evening, all simply serving to spread the word, letting the X Factor brand permeate through the public conscience a little more.  I don’t hate Katie Waissel.  Well, maybe I do, a bit, but that’s because X Factor made me.  I believed what I saw.

Katie Waissel, looking both less attractive and less feminine than both members of Jedward

In the wake of the government’s spending review and the various controversial spending cuts, will people think twice this weekend before voting for their favourite X Factor character?  I highly doubt it.  I wonder if the people belly-aching about ‘unfair’ government cuts are the ones phoning up ten times to keep Wagner — a man with a similar amount of talent for singing as my talent for unaided flight — in the competition.  And for why?  For an entertainment show that’s as good as rigged.  They show us who to like, they show us who to hate, and above all else they make sure we keeping watching and talking about it.

I’ve always argued X Factor is not a singing contest but an entertainment show.  I don’t even think it’s that anymore — it’s anti-entertainment, it’s reverse-entertainment.  I watch it to get angry.  I don’t think I’ve derived any pleasure from spending three and of half hours of each of my last two weekends watching the X Factor, but it’s got me angry, it’s got me indignant, and it’s got me talking about it.  And I wonder if that’s the point.  Cowell is a salesman of the most despicable kind; he doesn’t care if we like what he’s selling, as long as we keep coming back for more.  It’s not entertainment, it’s untertaiment (a word, incidentally, I will be seeking to copyright).  (Edit — SHIT I’ve just looked online and I’m NOT the first person to use that word.  Bugger.)

Cher Lloyd doing a very passable impression of a blow-up sex doll

So, like me, watch the X Factor.  Get angry, get upset, feel alive.  Maybe that’s the point.  Even the banality of the judges comments make me angry now.  I used to love their barbed remarks and uncalled-for put-downs, but now they’ve all turned nice, like they constantly have to validate the ‘talent contest’ aspect of the show by saying how good everyone is all the time and how they deserve to be in the show.  Where once the judges were the ones dishing out the hateful comments and taking the flak, they’ve stepped back, and they’re letting the press make the hateful comments for them while they sit in righteous indignation saying, “Katie, a lot of the media attention you’ve been getting has been very unfair and you deserve a break…”

No, she deserves what she’ll inevitably get; and that’s being chewed up and spat out and washed away by the X Factor machine in time for next year’s show when another bunch of fame-hungry fame-whores come along for more of the same.

And I’ll be sat on my sofa watching.

You see, the problem with cars is that there are always problems.  If your hobby happens to be tinkering around underneath cars fixing things then owning a car is the greatest thing in the world, as there will always, always be something wrong with it.  There will always be something to fix or tinker with, and if not there will be things to clean, make louder or ‘soup-up.’

If you want something reliable to get you to work and back every day and not cost too much, then you’re screwed, because owning and running a car is a never-ending outflow of cash.  Even if you’re fortunate enough to opt into a company car scheme, you still end up paying income tax on the ‘benefit in kind’ (that is, a non-cash form of remuneration that should be subject to tax as if it had been earned as cash).

And they’re all in on the deal, car people.  Aren’t they?  You spent a shitload of money buying a lovely new car, and you never stop paying for it until the day you get rid of it, at which point you buy a new car and start the whole process again.  If there’s something wrong with it you take it into the garage and — at Ford, at least — they charge you an EIGHTY-FIVE pound “inspection fee.”  EIGHTY-FIVE POUNDS just to LOOK AT THE FUCKING THING.

Then they tell you it needs a pissy little pump, or a filter, or a dust cap, which isn’t that expensive, you’re assured, but it’ll cost two hundred quid in labour because it takes them fifteen seconds to fit the cunting thing.  And then a week later you realise they didn’t fit the cunting thing correctly anyway, as your car splutters and dies on the M6 on your way to the Lake District for a relaxing break.

Then you take it back to Ford and have the temerity to suggest that they may not have done their job properly only to be told it’ll be ANOTHER EIGHTY-FIVE QUID for them to lift the bonnet and check their own shoddy fucking workmanship.  The only saving grace is the barely-apologetic phone call later to say that “the pump hadn’t attached itself” (note the brazen implication that it was the pump’s fault — an inanimate object, I feel obliged to point out — not the fuckwit who charged me six million pounds an hour to fuck it up), and, the man says with a weary, defeated sigh, “there will of course be no charge.”

“I SHOULD THINK FUCKING NOT, YOU INCOMPETENT ROBBING BASTARDS” you want to scream but don’t, instead bumbling an overly-eager “Thanks very much, that’s great, I’ll pick it up later — when’s best for you?”

So, I’m getting rid.  That’s right, I’m selling my car.  It was pride and joy when I bought it brand spanking new six years ago.  I remember the proud but unnerving moment I handed over my £3,000 deposit, and I remember feeling cool choosing ‘Panther Black’ metallic paint, although I still to this day regret thinking £500 was far too much to spend on extravagances like Air Conditioning and a heated front windscreen.

When I think back on all the great times I’ve had in it, all the great albums I listened to for the first time in it, all the cans of Red Bull I’ve drunk in it (one of the favourable by-products of driving long distances and/or late at night is that it’s pretty much the only time I feel justified in drinking Red Bull), all the Ginster’s Peppered Steak Slices I’ve eaten, all the shards of pastry from all the Ginster’s Peppered Steak Slices I’d eaten that I had to sweep from between my legs onto the floor, my bogey collection (front under-side of the seat, if you’re interested), the time I hit that motorcyclist…  All happy times.

But regardless, I’m selling it.  And what’s more, I’m going to try and survive without a car.  For a while at least.  I’m getting the bus to work in the mornings and we’re going to try and be a one-car couple for a few months at least.  Not for any ‘green’ reasons, I must point out — primarily for economical reasons.  And only time will tell if this is a monufuckingmentally disastrous decision.

Pros of ditching my car and getting the bus:

• £cash from selling it
• Works out £1,000 cheaper per year to get the bus to work every day (before considering any inevitable repairs)
• I’ve already read Catch 22 (brilliant!) and am part way through Martin Amis’ Money (okay)
• Bit of exercise walking from the bus stop to work and back every day

Cons of ditching my car:

• I love my car.

*Gulp*

As I think I may have mentioned a few months back, I finally clambered on the bandwagon and got myself one of these iPhone jobbies you may have heard of.  And, in fairness, my period of iPhone ownership to date has been largely enjoyable and trouble-free.  It has not, however, been quite as spectacular as I’d been led to believe.

Tap fish – one of the many pointless time-killing apps I have on my iPhone

See, it’s always been quite slow when not connected to Wi-Fi.  I’d always assumed any of a variety of mitigating factors:

• I was in a near-permanent weak-signal area,
• iPhones just aren’t as good as everyone else says they are (in an Emperor’s New Clothes sort of way),
• being the eternal pessimist I often can be, the resignation that whenever I get something I’ve wanted for ages there’s always something wrong with it that’s too minor to completely ruin the experience and too trifling to actually bother sorting out.

I’d always wondered how one particular friend was able to watch Youtube (or more specifically Porn Hub) videos on his phone while they downloaded.  Youtube just didn’t agree with my phone when I wasn’t connected to Wi-Fi, but I assumed that as his wasn’t an iPhone, it was just maybe a better phone than mine, or he was on a better network.

Then, last weekend, came a watershed moment of sorts, sitting in a pub with someone with the same iPhone as me, on the same network as me, he bored me with Youtube clips while my iPhone flashed up “unable to connect” style messages.  Something didn’t add up, so I turned to the only reliable source of information I could think of: the internet.

A quick search revealed other people with similar slow connection problems posting their concerns on forums for other people who used to have similar problems but have now sorted the problems out themselves, to post replies on how they sorted their problems out.

It may be, an internet poster posted, that you have an old SIM card.  You need a 3G SIM card.

Now, call me retarded, but I just sort of assumed that when I bought my iPhone I’d have the appropriate SIM card.  Assumption, as they say, is the mother of all fuck-ups.  I’ve had SIM card, I reckon, for a good seven or eight years, from the early days of my current relationship when we decided we wanted to be on the same network as each other so we could get free mobile-to-mobile calls in the evenings when we, you know, still wanted to talk to each other all the time.

As it turned out, it was a simple thing to sort out.  I went on o2.co.uk and ‘chatted’ with an on-line advisor called James.  I explained my predicament in marginally more succinct terms that I’ve done here, and he checked, said there was no problem with my network connection and yes, it was probably my SIM card that needed replacing.  So, as easy as that, they sent me a new one.

And oh my word is it better.  Well, I haven’t really done much with it to be honest, but, you know, it’s quicker.  And it got me wondering just how many other people out there are paying £35 a month (minimum) for an iPhone but who are missing out on a hell of a lot because they’ve got an old SIM card.

And it got me wondering whether it’s just me.

The most frustrating thing is that it’s a mistake I make at least once a year, and every time I tell myself not to make the same mistake again.

Fortunately I won’t be making the exact same mistake again, at least not until Channel 4 realise they have nothing to fill the gaping Big Brother-shaped hole in their summer programming schedule and decide to resurrect the show to hysterical fanfare and moronic public acclaim.

But despite my condemnation I again find the programme irritatingly intoxicating.  The ‘civilian’ version no longer holds my interest, but ‘Ultimate Big Brother’ with its eclectic mix of former housemates like John McCririck, Coolio and Ulrika Jonsson, is a wholly different and in my eyes somehow more acceptable guilty pleasure.

Instead of watching nobodies who want to be celebrities but have nothing to offer the world other than a desperate desire to be a celebrity, I’m watching people who used to want to be celebrities that have nothing to offer the world but now actually are celebrities famous for nothing other than a desperate desire to be a celebrity.

I actually fell into the trap the other day of thinking that now Josie (BB11 winner) had left the house there were only actual celebrities left and no-one from the civilian version of the show.  Then I remembered that Nadia, Brian, Nikki, Makosi etc etc etc were all ‘normal’ housemates that have since been catapulted, in my stupid brain at least, to celebrity status.  This saddens me.

What saddens me more is that I’ve started to grow inexplicably fond of Chantelle Houghton, and I’ve started to consider the merest hint of a possibility that Nikki Grahame might not be the most irritating person in the entire history of the world and that my previous belief that I’d very much enjoy throttling her until dead was a massive exaggeration and she’s actually a reasonably nice person with an unfortunate and unhappy-sounding history of eating disorders and psychiatric issues.

Nikki Grahame (isn't that an irritating way of spelling "Nicky Graham"?)

Maybe I’m mellowing in my old age.  Maybe it’s that now that these people have had their fifteen minutes of fame they’re not as irritatingly desperate to be the loudest and most outrageous person and they’re just, at the risk of sounding incredibly naïve, acting quite normally.  A point perhaps validated by Victor Ebuwa, one of the few housemates I haven’t heard a peep from since he left BB the first time around, who’s still a complete and utter look-at-me-I’m-on-Big-Brother dickhead, desperate for any kind of magazine interview, topless Heat Magazine shoot or fast food restaurant employment.

I actually signed up to follow the Big Brother Twitter account today as well.  What a fucking vapid waste of internet that is.  Some highlights:

13:44 Ulrika is singing Endless Love, practising for her task. Victor says she has a nice voice.

12:06 Ulrika, Chantelle and Brian are talking dresses

10:15 Nadia and Makosi are saying how they miss their cars and shopping

06:17 Preston just had a little scratch downstairs.

04:30 Nikki has her hand on her neck.

03:07 Chantelle is sleeping on her back.

All genuine BB tweets.  I contemplated ending with a made up ‘funny’ but decided, as so often in life, that reality is funnier than fiction.

Some people asleep

But anyway, I hope ‘Nasty’ Nick Bateman wins it.  This is despite the fact that he’s clearly not the most interesting housemate, doesn’t actually seem all that nice, and has formed some sort of desperate clique with the aforementioned twat of twats Victor.

The simple fact is that if it weren’t for Nasty Nick, we wouldn’t still be watching BB.  Now, admittedly, this might not be cause for massive celebration (quite the opposite, arguably) but I think there’d be some justice if he won it, even if Brian Dowling is by far the most entertaining housemate and the only one I can think of to have made an honest living outside BB (SMTV Live, anyone?).

I’d wager I’m one of a tiny minority hoping Nick wins, and in fairness my reasons hold little water, but he should get some credit for helping catapult Big Brother to the bloated twat hatchery it’s become.  Or maybe he should be shot into space for propelling the likes of Charley, Alexandra (“‘member I told you!”), Grace, Sezer (evicted from BB7 in the first week with a record 91.6% of votes) and on and on and on ad infinitum.  But then you think of all those genuinely great BB contestants and iconic TV moments like, erm…

In my last blog post I was told I had high blood pressure and advised I should go and see my GP. Firstly, thank you all for your texts, letters, e-mails etc asking about my well-being.

I am of course being sarcastic, you uncaring set of bastards.

But I digress. I went to see my GP — an elongated version of a Middle Eastern Rick Moranis — the following week. He took my blood pressure, shrugged, and said “No problem” with all the concern and compassion of an elongated Middle Eastern Rick Moranis just about to finish a ten hour shift that’s largely consisted of the old, infirm or obese complaining about their minor gripes and petty concerns.

He didn’t even tell me I could do with losing any weight. I liked him.

Rick Moranis

I was, however, a little disappointed. Like anyone, I’d had a look on-line and self-diagnosed myself, deciding I had an under-active thyroid. This was brilliant. My overweightness could, I convinced myself, be directly attributable to a lazy thyroid and not fifteen years of indolence, gluttony and binge drinking.

I could get some pills and slip back to those halcyon teenage days of eating what the hell I wanted and not having to worry about putting weight on and ignoring all those bitter claims that it would all inevitably and painfully catch up with me.

So EMERM’s lack of concern was bad news in one sense, but my “quite normal” blood pressure reading was good news in another, far more realistic, sense.

The thing that shocked me most, however, was a harmless conversation with friends. Blatantly ignoring the first and only rule — Do not mention my blog in front of my girlfriend — the friend, who I won’t name, said:

“I read your blog about your high blood pressure. It’s not surprising, really, is it?”

I was, initially, horrified. Yes, I know I’m a little bit overweight (by the odd five stone or so) but there was no need to draw attention to the point so unequivocally. The friend did, in fairness, redeem themselves somewhat:

“…because you get pretty wound up about things, don’t you? You can tell from reading your blog that you’re a very angry person.”

Now this is and isn’t true. I’m an enigma of sorts, in that I have (or at least think Ihave), in the words of the narrator in Fight Club, “the ability to let that which does not matter truly side.” I consider myself, a lot of the time, quite a chilled-out person. But the more I go through life the more I start to realise that my chilled out-ness should perhaps be more accurately described as “not really giving a shit about anything that doesn’t directly affect or annoy me.”

On the other hand I can feel the rage build inside me over petty things like personalised car registration plates, general highway etiquette (aka ‘shit drivers’), and trolley manners. A soothing voice inside me says “It doesn’t matter… no good comes from getting angry,” but another, louder voice inside screams and swears in self-righteous indignation. Most mornings as I drive to work I do genuinely think that pretty much everyone else in the world is either an idiot or a twat. Or both.

Football also brings the worst out in me. Not long ago I chatted in great depth about my condemnation of all things football, particularly the small-minded people that invariably go to watch, shout abuse and talk bollocks. Then I found myself at a football match and realised I’m just the same, if not worse. Maybe I’m less of an enigma and more of an out-and-out hypocrite.

I’m not quite at the anger management sessions stage yet, but I do worry sometimes that I can get wound up over nothing, and I’m not sure what the solution is. Buy a punchbag? Do more exercise? Drink less coffee?

Actually, I’m not sure I give a shit. I might just let it slide.

A got a reply a while ago and, erm, forgot to mention it.

The cynics among you will say that I’m simply copying the formula used to fantastic effect in Robin Cooper’s The Timewaster’s Letters books, and this brilliant website which, I’ve just noticed, also spawned a book.

But in the words of David Brent, “a good idea is a good idea… forever.”

First I guess I should share with you the reply I got from Tesco:

Thank you for contacting us.

We’re always pleased to receive feedback from our customers as this can help us improve our service.

I’ve passed your comments to our Marketing department and I know they’ll bear these in mind at the next review meeting.

Thanks for taking time to contact us.

Yours sincerely

For and on behalf of Tesco Stores Ltd

Now, my reply.

Dear Tesco

Thank you for your letter dated 16 March 2010 in reply to my letter dated 25^th February (sorry for the delay!).

I am pleased you will/(have) pass/(ed) my comments on to your Marketing department.  Could you please let me know the outcome?

I also feel I need to clear a few things up regarding my original letter, as there were a few factual inaccuracies that it would be remiss of me to pretend to ignore:

1)      I stated that the magazine display was “clearly labelled” (oh, the irony) “WOMEN’S INTERESTS.”  Having checked this, the section is actually clearly labelled WOMEN’S LIFESTYLE.  My point about out-dated sexual stereotypes still stands though I’m sure you’ll agree.

2)      I also stated that the MEN’S INTEREST section contained “car, sport and music magazines,” which again was incorrect.  Sport and motoring each have their own sections, while the MEN’S INTERESTS section includes magazines on computing, photography, music, fitness (aimed specifically at men), and “lads’ mags” (both hetero- and homosexual). 

Apart from the two very different types of lads’ mags and the specifically male-oriented fitness magazines, these subjects could equally interest women as well as men.  I accept that men may be the magazines’ primary market focus, but I still don’t think it’s right.  That said my main bugbear is that you place the cooking magazines under WOMEN’S LIFESTYLE.

Many thanks for your time.  I look forward to hearing from you soon.

I hope I get some money off vouchers this time and not another letter.

You know when you’re queuing up in a supermarket and you put your shopping on the conveyor belt?  You know the little plastic divider things that keep your shopping separated from the person in front’s shopping and the person behind’s shopping?  Can anyone remember how we survived the supermarket experience before these little inventions?

I’ll tell you how.  We used common sense.  Fucking common fucking sense.  You put an obvious gap between your shopping and the person in front, and you made sure that the cashier stopped scanning when they got to your shopping.  Easy.

Why then do people refuse to put their shopping on the conveyor belt without the aid of a foot-long plastic prism to prevent their shopping becoming irreconcilably confused with the shopping in front?  Specifically, why do they shoot you accusing looks and huff and tut and sigh when you don’t put the little divider thing after your shopping?  Use your fucking common sense; like people used to.  I hate those little plastic shopping dividers, because people are so stupid they rely on them and can’t function without them.

And next time you arrive at a pedestrian crossing, perhaps you might like to do something we used to call LOOKING LEFT AND RIGHT before pressing the button, crossing the road anyway, and causing a car a quarter of a mile away to have to stop in thirty second’s time at an empty crossing.

A friend of mine once went to Birmingham.  On her way back to Nottingham she decided to put her Sat Nav in charge.  She followed the Sat Nav’s directions for a while before stopping, thinking something wasn’t quite right.  She’d blindly followed the directions and ended up in North Fucking Wales.  She driven 110 miles in the wrong direction and ended up in another country before she decided to engage her brain. 

You see, this is what really shits me about progress and technology; they cause people to stop using their tiny stupid fucking brains.  The blame is probably equally apportionable between the people and the technology, but seeing as the technology itself is far from stupid I can only come to the conclusion that people are inherently moronic beings.

So it was with a sense of sad inevitability that last week I finally caved in and became an iPhone owner.  I’ve wanted one for a long time; I just never wanted to be one of those people, and I certainly don’t want to end up relying on technology to guide me through my every waking moment.

The tragic news is that after seven days of owning an iPhone I have no idea how I managed to survive twenty-nine and a quarter years without one.  What did I do last time I was lying in bed with a hangover and needed to find out the time of the next train to London?  How did I ever manage to buy a coffee without opening the Starbucks iPhone app and finding directions to the nearest store?  What did I ever do on the loo at work before I had Freecell to play?  Actually, try and forget that last one.

How the fuck did any of us do anything before mobile phones, let alone iPhones?  This is how technology works; it makes you wonder how you ever managed to survive without it, when you actually survived without it just fine.  The completely perverse and counter-intuitive thing is that the more technology we have, the stupider we get.  Technology will inevitably revolt and kill us all.

In the meantime as long as I’m only a click away from finding my nearest Starbucks I’m quite happy.

We live in an age of confusing political correctness where most people are afraid to say anything that might be construed as offensive to anyone else.  It’s a sticky subject, for sure.

Wikipedia defines political correctness as:

“behavior seen as seeking to minimize social offense in gender, racial, cultural, sexual orientation, handicap, and age-related contexts.”

Some things to make clear: 

• My intention is not to bang the drum about white men feeling the brunt of political correctness.  Honestly.
• I’m not going to bang on about “political correctness gone mad.”  (I am not the Daily Mail.)
• I’m only discussing the ideology of political correctness to make this look like a well-reasoned argument, as opposed to going straight into a rant about TV adverts that are clearly sexist against men.

I don’t necessarily think political correctness has gone mad, or too far, or actively discriminates against white men.  I do get annoyed, however, when men are portrayed as stupid, lazy and annoying in adverts, when we’ve spent the past century rightly moving away from adverts that portray women as inferior to men.  Take a look at the following, all genuine adverts and one from as recently as 1970 (from a Daily Mail rant about women or feminism or something or other)

I think we can all agree that these adverts are clearly no longer appropriate.  They should never have been considered appropriate.  They are sexist, promote domestic violence (and even murder!) and portray women as inferior creatures to men.  They may purport to be tongue-in-cheek, but equally they can be inferred as serious.  They are certainly not politically correct.  They would never see the light of day in the twenty-first century.

Let’s take a minute to consider the final picture above, a ketchup adverts from 1953 which proudly boasts that A WOMAN can open the bottle.  Then, tell me how exactly this is different to the advert for Oven Pride oven cleaning bags, with its shit advert and slogan: “So easy, EVEN A MAN can do it.”

In May 2009 the Advertising Standards Agency declared this advert “not sexist,” “light-hearted,” and “tongue-in-cheek.”  What utter, utter BULLSHIT.

Another advert, for a product the name of which escapes me for now, shows a man and a woman sitting on a sofa.  The man fidgets in his seat, to the clear irritation of the woman who pulls a lever on the side of the sofa catapulting the man through an open window and into the distance.  The woman allows herself a self-satisfied grin as the advert ends with a slogan akin to “If only all pains were as easy to get rid of.”  Replay that advert in your head with the roles reversed and it is undoubtedly SEXIST.

While these small-time Charlies might dabble in sexual inequality to sell their products, we should be able to rely on a global giant like Tesco to avoid making such gaffes.  Or can we?  Well, clearly not as I’ve seen fit to mention it AND write the following letter to their Customer Services office in Dundee.  I’ll let you know if I get a reply.

Dear Tesco

Firstly, I would consider myself a regular and dare I say valued Tesco customer, shopping in your magnificent Toton store at least weekly.  Secondly, this is the first time I’ve ever felt compelled to write a letter of complaint to anyone, let alone my preferred choice of supermarket.

Picture the scene: it’s a Saturday afternoon and I am in your Toton (Nottinghamshire) store.  My girlfriend and I have invited friends over for dinner, and I’ve agreed to do the cooking.  Bereft of ideas I decided to buy a cookery magazine; BBC’s Good Food Magazine seemed a good choice.

Imagine my disgust when I located the aforementioned magazine in a section of the magazine display clearly labelled WOMEN’S INTERESTS. 

Why don’t we extrapolate this product categorisation throughout the entire store?  In fact why not just split the whole damn store into MEN’S and WOMEN’S sections?

All of the cleaning products, household items and of course anything to do with cooking should be located in the WOMEN’S STUFF section of the store, while all of the home entertainment, crisps and DIY goods should be in an area of the store clearly defined as MEN’S THINGS.  The alcohol aisle should be split into beer, cider, red wine and whiskies (MALE DRINKS), while white wine, champagne and Bacardi all sit under FEMALE DRINKS.

In this era of political correctness and sexual equality, how can a massive international retailer like Tesco still consider cooking as a solely female interest?  Likewise there are car, sport and music magazines under MEN’S INTERESTS.  Newsflash, Tesco: some women also like sport, music and cars.  Some women I know even DRIVE.  Yes, that’s right!  WOMEN!  DRIVING! 

I’m sorry to destroy your 1930’s view of the world but it’s simply no longer acceptable to label products MEN’S or WOMEN’S (with the fairly obvious exception of sanitary towels and, you know, that type of thing).  If Gordon Ramsey walked into one of your many stores and for some mad reason decided to buy a cookery magazine I’m sure he’d use an f-word or two when he found a magazine about his chosen career in the WOMEN’S INTEREST section.

Please Tesco do something about this clearly outdated method of categorising magazines in your stores.  We all know certain types of products are aimed at different sub-sections of the population, but to have cookery magazines in the WOMEN’S INTERESTS section of your display is clearly not appropriate.  At best this is lazy retailing; at worst it strengthens outdated sexual stereotypes.

I hope you will take my comments on board.

Yours faithfully

Gareth Goodall

I’m most likely to refer to myself as British in a self-deprecating way; perhaps referring to something I’ve done as ‘typically British.’ Two very common examples of such Britishness are:

• An aversion to conflict with strangers. Rather than reprimand someone when wronged, we’d rather let off steam with a quiet disapproving tut, then carry on with our mundane British lives.
• A fondness for queuing. See a queue: join it. Who cares where it leads? If it’s a long queue it must be for something good, so get involved. We British bloody love our queues.

I read an interesting post at crackerwax.com where the angry Scotsman (himself no ‘typical Briton’) describes being told to “Fuck off” after asking a youth to turn down his music on the bus, while the rest of the bus – all conflict-averse Brits – sat staring straight ahead, not wanting to get involved.

Angry Scotsman Crackerwax, in fairly sedate mood

This inspired me. Next time I was in a situation where I knew I SHOULD say something, I decided I WOULD say something. As it would be my first attempt I decided I should CHOOSE MY TARGET VERY CAREFULLY, which is exactly what I did in Sainsbury’s car park last week. No point picking a fight with Mike Tyson without a couple of sparring sessions, is there?

I would have been no use whatsoever in Crackerwax’s Youth On Bus situation. I’m not good in conflict situations. When I get angry I lose my composure and invariably revert to loud swearing where calm reasonable debate would be better suited.

Which brings us to Sainsbury’s car park. It really shits me when people just discard their shopping trolleys in the middle of the car park, especially when there is a clearly defined trolley park nearby. Last week I watched a woman who was parked two cars away from a trolley park, push her trolley across the walkway and just leave it there. It was maybe an extra five yards to the trolley park. So, I decided I would say something. Not just a tut. I geared myself up to say something in a calm and reasonable manner.

Unfortunately what came out was:

“WHY DON’T YOU PUT YOUR TROLLEY OVER THERE WHERE YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO YOU LAZY BOLLOCKS?”

She stared at me, confused but not entirely offended. Shamefully witless banter went back and forth:

“Are you a security guard or something?”

“No, but just put your fucking trolley in the little trolley shed thing instead of just dumping it.”

“I’m not the only person who’s left it there.”

“That’s not the fucking point. Don’t be so fucking lazy.”

“Who are you, the car park gaffer or something?”

Around this point I realised I was a very distant and embarrassing second place in an argument with a retard. I’m ashamed with my sign-off comment, a short and simple:

“You dozy cunt.”

I know, I know, I know; you don’t need to say anything. A man should never call a woman a cunt, unless it’s some sort of dirty-talk sex game, which this most certainly was not. My foray into speaking-up had ended in disaster. Time to quit and consign myself to a life of typical silent British resentment.

Until yesterday and an incident in an entirely different Sainsbury’s. I am in the queue for the self-service check-outs. The queue consists of a weedy probably-homosexual man and me. We are the queue. A youth appears to the side of the queue. He’s not in the queue! He’s started his own queue. This could get messy – it could be carnage. If one of the self-service check-outs on his side becomes available he’ll get in there first, and I know the weedy definitely-homosexual man at the front of the queue isn’t going to do a damn thing about it.

(It’s worth pointing out that I did once challenge someone for a clear case of queue jumping at the self-service tills in Tesco. Quite politely I told him there was a queue that he had just bypassed. He said something akin to “Whatever, I was queuing for this one.” I responded with a loud “Prick.” He called me a gobshite and suggested we “continue this outside.” I hid in the travel centre and ended up buying a week’s holiday for two in Turkey.)

A queue

But back to Sainsbury’s. I decided I’d say something. Something calm. Something reasonable. He was with his mate. If a fight had broken out, the odds would have been against me. I tapped him on the shoulder. “We’re queuing here mate.” I said, gesturing back over my shoulder, tensing up for the inevitable haymaker one of them would throw at me.

“Oh, sorry mate,” he said, and joined the back of the queue.

That’s how you do it. No swearing, just a polite statement of dissatisfaction resulting in nothing more than a very awkward moment in which several frightened British folk stand around wondering what in God’s name that maniac in the brown coat thinks he’s doing. Someone could have been killed.

Try it yourself. Next time someone pushes in front of you, leaves a shopping trolley in the middle of a supermarket car park or mugs a pensioner, just say something in a calm reasonable voice as opposed to tutting quietly to yourself and not getting involved. We’re a whole generation asleep at the wheel. Make a stand. Do something outrageous.

spacemonkeygaz.com lawyers would like to point out that no responsibility can be taken for anyone killed, injured or embarrassed attempting to follow any of the above ‘advice’

The Haiti earthquake was and continues to be a terrible, awful tragedy, and the people of Haiti need our help.  They need our money.  What they (and we, the rest of the world) don’t need is a bunch of self-serving, back-slapping celebrity twats cobbling together a half-arsed karaoke version of Everybody Hurts (one of many songs that should be given *listed* status, preventing anyone from ever, ever recording a cover version, under penalty of death).  It fucking sickens me, it really does.

If you want to donate money to the Haiti cause, go on the official DEC site. 

If this abomination of a single ends up retailing at — let’s say — £1.99, just donate two quid direct to the charity instead.  Or £3.99, which is what a single cost in my day.  Fuck it; donate a fiver, a tenner.  Twenty notes.  Do something but please for Christ’s sake don’t do it because Simon Cowell told you to.

Are you going to let this flabby worm tell you what to do? ARE YOU?

If you donate your cash to the Disasters Emergency Committee it will go to those who need it most.  The aforementioned £1.99 CD/digital download/whatever you kids call them these days won’t appear out of thin air.  I shudder to think what the ‘profit’ on a CD is these days, but I doubt the Haiti appeal will get more than half the price of the CD.

Maybe I’m being overly cynical.  Maybe the distribution, the CD press run, the artwork, the materials etc will all be donated for free.  But I’m sure in the current economic climate and with the music industry — according to that twat Bono — dying on its arse, no-one’s going to be falling over themselves to be involved for nothing but kudos and publicity (apart from the celebrities, who want to enhance their reputations, because reputation = future record sales).

Record Company Knob: “Hello?  Is that Bob’s CD making factory?”

Bob: “It is indeed.”

RCK: “Do you fancy being involved in the new Haiti CD?”

Bob: “Wow, I’d love to!  Anything we can do to help.”

RCK: “Excellent.  We’d like you to run a few copies of the CD for us, only, you know, it’s for charity so we won’t be paying you for the time, manpower and materials.”

Bob: “Hmmm.  Right.  Well, how many CDs do you think you’ll need?”

RCK: “We estimate we’ll sell two million copies in the UK.”

Bbbbrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrpppppppppppppppp

Bob Roberts, Managing Director, Bob's CD Making Factory, shortly before hanging up (that's what the Brrrrrrppppp is meant to signify above)

If this is one massive game of Simon Says, then why doesn’t Simon tell us all to just donate some money directly, instead of telling us to buy a single his record company will be producing?  Maybe because presumably the former option won’t make him look like a fucking saint, and won’t in the long-term make him a shitload of cash.

I really don’t want to seem bitter about this, but these useless cunts are falling over themselves to sing in this song, and they all just want to look good by being a part of it.  I agree that we should be raising awareness and trying to get people to donate, but for fuck’s sake it’s been on the fucking news for over a week now.  Anyone who hasn’t grasped that’s something’s kicked off somewhere in the ocean near America must have been living in a fucking cave.

Maybe I’m wrong.  Maybe the only way for people to give money to charity is by releasing another sacrilegious cover version of a classic song.  Maybe we, the British public, really are that fucking stupid. 

What’s wrong with releasing the original version with all proceeds going to Haiti?  (Say what you like about REM or Michael Stipe, but fuck me Everybody Hurts is a great song, and part of the reason it’s a great song is Stipe’s haunting vocal.)  No glory-seeking celebrities would need to be involved, Simon Cowell wouldn’t get any glory (or a Knighthood, which he’ll now almost certainly get next year, the smug twat) out of it, and there’d be a lot less people making a nice pile of cash out of a global tragedy.

Am I wrong?  Tell me if I’m being a jerk here.

In the mean time I need to go and lie down for a while.

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