What is it with these people? I don't have a TV that can receive their shite. I don't want to pay them £12 a month for that shite, that I don't receive.
"Dear Mr Olley
Thank you for contacting us.
Our records show that the name on the TV Licence you have enquired about is not yours. I am unable to inform a third party of the details concerning a particular person or address, as this would be in breach of the Data Protection Act.
Under the circumstances please ask the licence holder to contact us.
Yours sincerely
Sally
TV Licensing"
"Dear Sally
You're happy to take my fucking money, yet aren't willing to talk to me about it. You parasites are examples of what's wrong with this shithole of a country.
I woudn't mind, but I consciously do not spend any of my free time watching the mindless, worthless shite that is 'tv' because being patronised by left wing fucking idiots is not my preferred pastime.
For your information, I will use part of what is my one day off, to visit my bank and let them know to cut off my funding contribution to your nasty little nazi-on-a-stick empire, seeming you shower of cunts are unable to execute (good choice of word, considering the analogy- you wouldn't have got it had I not pointed it out) a simple but important request.
On a personal level, I'm sure you'll enjoy forwarding this message around the office in a sort of "let's laugh at this guy" kind of way. Let's at this point bear in mind you're the one who's the email jockey having to send out mindless, automated replies to people in response to the seemingly endless fuckwittery that is the tv licencing system.
I hope you feel a valued employee.
Have a nice day.
Dan"
Fuckers.
Monday, 14 February 2011
Sunday, 13 February 2011
Hangover
When you're 18, the concept of the hangover is much less exciting than the concept of being drunk.
By the time I hit my 30s and, having experienced one or two of both (this is obviously like the rev counter on a car, you have to multiply to get the true figure), the concept of the hangover is looming large against the joy of being so drunk you're willing to have a conversation about 18th Century French Artists with your trousers.
If hangovers weren't bad enough, life, playing with it's bigbiology chemistry science set, then makes the cure for a hangover, more drink. It's not orange juice, coffee, gallons of water, enough paracetemol to euthanase Paris or a fried breakfast. It's plain old beer. Or spirits if you're feeling particularly racey. Hindsight, is never so strong as the morning after, when you question the value in your choice and quantity of drink from the night before. Was it really a good idea to drink 8 pints and 7 large Vodkas and that bottle of wine and the emergency aftershave you keep in the fridge? There's nobody as wise with drinking decisions of the past than the terminally hungover.
And those morning states can vary wildly, from a headache designed to kill rather than disable, to still being a bit drunk, dancing wildy around the living room to some stupidly loud music as if the night before is still in progress. Well, I suppose at that point, it is. Nothing better than a quick pause before resumption of festivities. Remember, you're not an alcoholic as long as you're enjoying yourself. Or something. Hic.
Is it worth it? Is the effort of depriving your bank account of funds to fill the urinal with funds of your own, really worth it? Sensible people will say 'no'. Sensible people will also be able to tell you the cast list of Coronation Street and know more about home improvements than is really ideal. So, mostly, it's a resounding 'yes'. The people you meet, the conversations you have, are all mechanicals functioned by the oil that is alcohol, in one way or another. It gets shit done.
Multi million pound business deals. Are they really done around the boardroom table? More likely, they're forged in the Lounge Bar, trying to play Whiskey top trumps 'till the wee hours, talking about that time they got caught by wife number 3 with their PA's legs wrapped around their neck and the resultant divorce. Atilla the Hun wasn't really a genocidal maniac intent on dominating the world. He was just pissed, most of the time. Waking up to find you've slaughtered hundreds of thousands of people and paracetamol hasn't ben invented yet must be a real hangover bitch from hell.
So the hangover is just a byproduct of a necessary evil that gets shit done, makes the world go around and costs the NHS millions of pounds in treatments every single year. What's not to like?
By the time I hit my 30s and, having experienced one or two of both (this is obviously like the rev counter on a car, you have to multiply to get the true figure), the concept of the hangover is looming large against the joy of being so drunk you're willing to have a conversation about 18th Century French Artists with your trousers.
If hangovers weren't bad enough, life, playing with it's big
And those morning states can vary wildly, from a headache designed to kill rather than disable, to still being a bit drunk, dancing wildy around the living room to some stupidly loud music as if the night before is still in progress. Well, I suppose at that point, it is. Nothing better than a quick pause before resumption of festivities. Remember, you're not an alcoholic as long as you're enjoying yourself. Or something. Hic.
Is it worth it? Is the effort of depriving your bank account of funds to fill the urinal with funds of your own, really worth it? Sensible people will say 'no'. Sensible people will also be able to tell you the cast list of Coronation Street and know more about home improvements than is really ideal. So, mostly, it's a resounding 'yes'. The people you meet, the conversations you have, are all mechanicals functioned by the oil that is alcohol, in one way or another. It gets shit done.
Multi million pound business deals. Are they really done around the boardroom table? More likely, they're forged in the Lounge Bar, trying to play Whiskey top trumps 'till the wee hours, talking about that time they got caught by wife number 3 with their PA's legs wrapped around their neck and the resultant divorce. Atilla the Hun wasn't really a genocidal maniac intent on dominating the world. He was just pissed, most of the time. Waking up to find you've slaughtered hundreds of thousands of people and paracetamol hasn't ben invented yet must be a real hangover bitch from hell.
So the hangover is just a byproduct of a necessary evil that gets shit done, makes the world go around and costs the NHS millions of pounds in treatments every single year. What's not to like?
Friday, 11 February 2011
Friends
No, not the TV program. You stupid fucker.
Real friends. People who will put their own shit a little further back on the conveyor belt of life, to scan and process yours. I never used to value the value of friends, until that day I really needed to use them as my mental zimmer frame.
And the great thing is, you find there are people out there who will listen, deal with and make sense of all your excrement, for free and, they mean it. It doesn't just speak volumes without talking, it means the whole world. Suddenly there's a realisation that there are people out there, that you would never consider having sex with, who can still mean the earth. Unloading enough of your shit to bury a small town, these friends absorb, listen, talk and advise. They might be as mad as a box of epileptic badgers, but the fact they're willing to listen and care means you'll put up with the paw prints.
What follows next? Enlightenment. That someone will do something so selfless for you, you then know how to do it for someone else. The slab of granite you've been leaning on, you want to be that slab for someone else, someone who needs it more than you. It's not about your own validation anymore, it's about making sure that friend is OK, that you're helping, that they won't let their crap envelope them like a duvet of depression. Most of people's shee-ite is short term, and they just need some binoculors to spot the wood from the trees. Provide that viewing aid, and you're doing the right thing.
Perspective is sometimes a skill, sometimes a gift, sometimes a curse. When it's a skill, use it. When it's a gift, give it. When it's a curse, use your friends.
I can only dedicate this one to my rock, they know who they are, and, thank you.
Real friends. People who will put their own shit a little further back on the conveyor belt of life, to scan and process yours. I never used to value the value of friends, until that day I really needed to use them as my mental zimmer frame.
And the great thing is, you find there are people out there who will listen, deal with and make sense of all your excrement, for free and, they mean it. It doesn't just speak volumes without talking, it means the whole world. Suddenly there's a realisation that there are people out there, that you would never consider having sex with, who can still mean the earth. Unloading enough of your shit to bury a small town, these friends absorb, listen, talk and advise. They might be as mad as a box of epileptic badgers, but the fact they're willing to listen and care means you'll put up with the paw prints.
What follows next? Enlightenment. That someone will do something so selfless for you, you then know how to do it for someone else. The slab of granite you've been leaning on, you want to be that slab for someone else, someone who needs it more than you. It's not about your own validation anymore, it's about making sure that friend is OK, that you're helping, that they won't let their crap envelope them like a duvet of depression. Most of people's shee-ite is short term, and they just need some binoculors to spot the wood from the trees. Provide that viewing aid, and you're doing the right thing.
Perspective is sometimes a skill, sometimes a gift, sometimes a curse. When it's a skill, use it. When it's a gift, give it. When it's a curse, use your friends.
I can only dedicate this one to my rock, they know who they are, and, thank you.
Friday, 4 February 2011
Gossip
We've all been talked about some time or another. Some of that talk is genuine; looking out for you, expressing concern, hoping you're all OK. Some of it, though, it's malicious. It's trying to create a show, a piece of entertainment for the benefit of anyone but you.
Then you have the accuracy. If you work for the BBC, you're at least grounded in some semblence of portraying reality. Small town gossip doesn't have this editorial constraint. If you're that way inclined, if your Coronation Street fix is not enough of an adrenaline rush, you can fuck about with the 'reality' around you until you create one. I swear, there are people who would really believe there was a giant pixie living up a tramps bum by the river, if the rumour was strong enough.
So you then get the validity. Validity arrives, delivered at lightning speed, by people with strong ears and weak minds, listening to every tittly tattly suggestion about that women across the road being a witch. Just because she wears black, goes to work on a broomstick and her next door neighbour suddenly turned into a frog, does not make her a witch. It makes her a person of questionable judgment with regards to choice of transport and neighbourhood, but not necessarily a witch. Surviving the trials by ordeals makes her a witch, but the gossips are too darned afraid to try that one. Or even ask someone to their face about whether something is true or not.
Why worry about the truth when the supposition suits?
At this point I should do the decent thing. Separate two types of gossip. Yes, there are at least two types:
1) Repeaters
Self explanatory. Often unable to think without the benefit of being told to do so, probably by some self appointed God figure associated with Bargain Hunt or any other daytime TV, whose only connection to friendship is sharing the air we breath with other humans. Likely to survive on a diet of self loathing and an attraction to doing absolutely fuck all worthwhile in life.
2) Originators
Now these cookies, they're special. Not content with 24/7 news channels, Facebook-speed addiction to the mundane goings on of a populace in obvious transitional depression, these fuckers want more. If someone's humped their pet pig, this slice of population needs them to have done it up the bum. Just life, isn't enough. These are the people who see you sneeze, and send you a leaflet on surviving AIDS, just before embarking on a World Tour of telling everyone about it.
Anyway, where was I?
Oh yes. Gossip. We know there are these people thinking it up, and these other people, spreading it around like a thin layer of snot across a hankerchief of ever decreasing virgin patches.
The thing to have in your pocket, apart from your wallet, keys and other obvious stuff you really shouldn't forget, is your weapons against gossip. Depending on the type of gossip we're talking about; the really insane stuff where you're related to Gary Glitter and shared South East Asian toddlers, or the mundane stuff where you're accused of eating too many blue Smarties, affects what those weapons should be.
The first one is easy. Your swinging cricket bat against the Originators, the fantasists who'd rather live in a dream world where the jam sandwich is food of choice, is to forget all about it and don't give it credibility. They say, that they'll get bored of it, if you ignore it. That's not true, they won't get bored. Made up stories, to them, are the equivalent of the bored zoo animal, checking out the cage's perimeter for the 50th time that day. They live, eat and breath that shit. No, you have to have the self confidence and belief to hit the gossip for six. The people who know you, who really know you, will know the truth or at least understand your explanation. The ones who don't, they don't matter. They can sit at home all day, rocking, humming, waiting for the result of the Jeremy Kyle DNA test. Most of all, fuck 'em.
The second one is harder. The one where something you're ashamed of is the subject. Something you'd rather wasn't bouncing acoustically off the walls like a fart-shit-fart in a desperation led assault on a motorway services' poo cubical. Those ones you shouldn't try and destroy with your self confidence, lies or, indeed, cricket bats. Sometimes, the defeat of defeat, is to admit defeat. Gossips hate, and I mean hate, more than having their self esteem torn to shreads by a person who isn't sadder than a weekend in Silloth, being told, straight faced, by the subject, the truth. Bite the bullet, show some grit and character. It's hard to make things up about someone prepared to admit their shit might just stink, afterall. You'll feel better for doing it, you'll be the better person for doing it and you might just have found a way of winning that battle.
Whatever you do, don't let yourself become consumed by the opinion of others. Less than half the people know anything about you, less than any of the people know everything about you. Keep it that way.
This one is dedicated to everyone, even if there's a pixie living up your bum (so someone told me).
Then you have the accuracy. If you work for the BBC, you're at least grounded in some semblence of portraying reality. Small town gossip doesn't have this editorial constraint. If you're that way inclined, if your Coronation Street fix is not enough of an adrenaline rush, you can fuck about with the 'reality' around you until you create one. I swear, there are people who would really believe there was a giant pixie living up a tramps bum by the river, if the rumour was strong enough.
So you then get the validity. Validity arrives, delivered at lightning speed, by people with strong ears and weak minds, listening to every tittly tattly suggestion about that women across the road being a witch. Just because she wears black, goes to work on a broomstick and her next door neighbour suddenly turned into a frog, does not make her a witch. It makes her a person of questionable judgment with regards to choice of transport and neighbourhood, but not necessarily a witch. Surviving the trials by ordeals makes her a witch, but the gossips are too darned afraid to try that one. Or even ask someone to their face about whether something is true or not.
Why worry about the truth when the supposition suits?
At this point I should do the decent thing. Separate two types of gossip. Yes, there are at least two types:
1) Repeaters
Self explanatory. Often unable to think without the benefit of being told to do so, probably by some self appointed God figure associated with Bargain Hunt or any other daytime TV, whose only connection to friendship is sharing the air we breath with other humans. Likely to survive on a diet of self loathing and an attraction to doing absolutely fuck all worthwhile in life.
2) Originators
Now these cookies, they're special. Not content with 24/7 news channels, Facebook-speed addiction to the mundane goings on of a populace in obvious transitional depression, these fuckers want more. If someone's humped their pet pig, this slice of population needs them to have done it up the bum. Just life, isn't enough. These are the people who see you sneeze, and send you a leaflet on surviving AIDS, just before embarking on a World Tour of telling everyone about it.
Anyway, where was I?
Oh yes. Gossip. We know there are these people thinking it up, and these other people, spreading it around like a thin layer of snot across a hankerchief of ever decreasing virgin patches.
The thing to have in your pocket, apart from your wallet, keys and other obvious stuff you really shouldn't forget, is your weapons against gossip. Depending on the type of gossip we're talking about; the really insane stuff where you're related to Gary Glitter and shared South East Asian toddlers, or the mundane stuff where you're accused of eating too many blue Smarties, affects what those weapons should be.
The first one is easy. Your swinging cricket bat against the Originators, the fantasists who'd rather live in a dream world where the jam sandwich is food of choice, is to forget all about it and don't give it credibility. They say, that they'll get bored of it, if you ignore it. That's not true, they won't get bored. Made up stories, to them, are the equivalent of the bored zoo animal, checking out the cage's perimeter for the 50th time that day. They live, eat and breath that shit. No, you have to have the self confidence and belief to hit the gossip for six. The people who know you, who really know you, will know the truth or at least understand your explanation. The ones who don't, they don't matter. They can sit at home all day, rocking, humming, waiting for the result of the Jeremy Kyle DNA test. Most of all, fuck 'em.
The second one is harder. The one where something you're ashamed of is the subject. Something you'd rather wasn't bouncing acoustically off the walls like a fart-shit-fart in a desperation led assault on a motorway services' poo cubical. Those ones you shouldn't try and destroy with your self confidence, lies or, indeed, cricket bats. Sometimes, the defeat of defeat, is to admit defeat. Gossips hate, and I mean hate, more than having their self esteem torn to shreads by a person who isn't sadder than a weekend in Silloth, being told, straight faced, by the subject, the truth. Bite the bullet, show some grit and character. It's hard to make things up about someone prepared to admit their shit might just stink, afterall. You'll feel better for doing it, you'll be the better person for doing it and you might just have found a way of winning that battle.
Whatever you do, don't let yourself become consumed by the opinion of others. Less than half the people know anything about you, less than any of the people know everything about you. Keep it that way.
This one is dedicated to everyone, even if there's a pixie living up your bum (so someone told me).
Wednesday, 2 February 2011
Something short about music
I can arrive home, pissed off, pissed about, pissed, and not really know how to deal with myself. Enough things can happen during an average day (and especially a below average one) to make you question everything. From whether you should really be eating junk food for lunch to whether your place on this earth is justified.
Nothing should be off topic, nothing should be left on a shelf for another day, like that can of strange veg you really don't have a dish to put it into.
And that's when music kicks in.
You can party to the samba beats of a Brazilian partyathon or feel like the Sultan of Dire Straits' Swing or twang the Adagio For Strings; it can make you feel where you need to feel. If you can't use music to direct your position in life, at whatever time or occasion it needs to, you are missing out. Seriously.
Sitting, cross legged, listening to an Irish folk singer, telling a story about missing his recently passed Dad, the emotion in that passage of musically backed poetry in how it's sung. It's more than enough to bring out tears, and that's not a bad thing. I sit there, seriously resisting the urge to wipe the tears running down my cheeks, dropping saltily onto whatever is below. Society tells you to ignore emotion, to hide your weaknesses. They're not weaknesses. The weakness is in not believing or allowing that you have that emotion. You do.
To go from emotionally numb to so emotionally heightened that a Bluebottle smacking your bonnet could make you turn to religion obviously, helps. The trick is allowing it to have some freedom. Nelson Mandella your emotions (maybe without the early life terrorism, though). Guildford Four your emotions. Let yourself accept, cope and enjoy the sadness that might be in your life, in the same way you absorb the happiness.
If you don't appreciate those -5 winter mornings, you don't tend to apppreciate the 30 degree summer ones quite as much. Both have their place.
What's really amazing, though, is billions of people having passed through this small dot in the Universe, before us, telling their stories with music. For every situation, from the maniac who's been dumped by his duped lover, who happens to be a Labrador, to the insanely grief stricken lover about to take enough pills to kill a small horse as his love has died, in amazingly poignant circumstances, someone has been through, and described with great hilarity, angst orunexpected indiference, the situation you're going through, right now. It's like your favourite pick and mix with speakers and an amp.
Whatever you do, hide away; hide your fears, hide your anger, hide your porn under the bed but, whatever you do, don't hide your emotions. Let them out, let music be the conduit. Enjoy your fear, hopes and dreams equally.
This one is dedicated to the people who want to beat me up because they don't understand very much.
Nothing should be off topic, nothing should be left on a shelf for another day, like that can of strange veg you really don't have a dish to put it into.
And that's when music kicks in.
You can party to the samba beats of a Brazilian partyathon or feel like the Sultan of Dire Straits' Swing or twang the Adagio For Strings; it can make you feel where you need to feel. If you can't use music to direct your position in life, at whatever time or occasion it needs to, you are missing out. Seriously.
Sitting, cross legged, listening to an Irish folk singer, telling a story about missing his recently passed Dad, the emotion in that passage of musically backed poetry in how it's sung. It's more than enough to bring out tears, and that's not a bad thing. I sit there, seriously resisting the urge to wipe the tears running down my cheeks, dropping saltily onto whatever is below. Society tells you to ignore emotion, to hide your weaknesses. They're not weaknesses. The weakness is in not believing or allowing that you have that emotion. You do.
To go from emotionally numb to so emotionally heightened that a Bluebottle smacking your bonnet could make you turn to religion obviously, helps. The trick is allowing it to have some freedom. Nelson Mandella your emotions (maybe without the early life terrorism, though). Guildford Four your emotions. Let yourself accept, cope and enjoy the sadness that might be in your life, in the same way you absorb the happiness.
If you don't appreciate those -5 winter mornings, you don't tend to apppreciate the 30 degree summer ones quite as much. Both have their place.
What's really amazing, though, is billions of people having passed through this small dot in the Universe, before us, telling their stories with music. For every situation, from the maniac who's been dumped by his duped lover, who happens to be a Labrador, to the insanely grief stricken lover about to take enough pills to kill a small horse as his love has died, in amazingly poignant circumstances, someone has been through, and described with great hilarity, angst orunexpected indiference, the situation you're going through, right now. It's like your favourite pick and mix with speakers and an amp.
Whatever you do, hide away; hide your fears, hide your anger, hide your porn under the bed but, whatever you do, don't hide your emotions. Let them out, let music be the conduit. Enjoy your fear, hopes and dreams equally.
This one is dedicated to the people who want to beat me up because they don't understand very much.
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