» Secret Santa

Bully
A gentleman whom I manage has accused me of bullying and threatening him over the course of the last year. So bad is my alleged bullying that he "feels so depressed and suicidal at the thought of coming into work".

That being the case, buying him 2000 paracetamol for his Secret Santa seems quite reasonable to me.
(Fri 15th Dec 2006, 11:41, More)

» Teenage Parties

"....and then his mum walked in"
More post party than an actual party itself...

It was the summer of 93. We were carefree teenagers, blissfully unaware of whatever drudgery the future held for us. For now, all that mattered to us was the sun on our faces and the cider in Dan's mum's kitchen.

As is the wont of horny teenagers who are desperate to see the flesh of the opposite sex but are too emotionally retarded to figure out how to get a peek, we started suggesting that we swap clothes; girls wear the boys stuff and vice versa.

And, due to the mixture of cider, vodka, and the end of exams, all concerned agreed. And there it should have ended, in a haze of cheap alcohol and cheaper thrills.

However, for Rich, the story goes on. Towards midnight, and somewhat the worse for wear. He headed home. He arrived to find an empty house; his parents had taken his two youngers sisters out to see some relatives. Just as well, being as he walked through the front door wearing a short, skintight dress that barely covered the little modesty he has.

Anyway, he decided to do what any teenaged boy would do when left alone in a house and drunk; stick on an art video and crack one out in relative peace and quiet. If only he'd factored in the male tendency for slumber after a satisfying expulsion of manfat...

So there he was; lying, passed out, in the middle of the living room floor. With a dress hitched up to his chest, and his pants round his ankles, deflated manhood still in hand and with a 3 inch long crusty mark on his thigh.

And then his family arrived home and...well, see the title. Personally, I would have committed hari-kari the very same night.
(Tue 18th Apr 2006, 14:38, More)

» The nicest thing someone's ever done for me

Ruth
When I was but a 4 year old beam of Light, I stood almost a foot taller than my classmates. I've always been a rangy, gangling streak of piss blessed with the kind of co-ordination one would expect to see from a Ballerina with shattered kneecaps.

And kids, of course, can be cruel. Lets be perfectly honest here; they are. So whilst looking down on my peers like some sort of snot-bubbling giant meant that I spent my schoolyears refreshingly free of bullying in the physical sense, aforementioned lack of co-ordination meant that the little fuckers could tease me no end and then run like fuck. Frankly, I was more likely to trip over my own feet than to catch them and what's more, everyone knew it.

So, naturally, I started to keep my own company as much as possible because I started to associate "Other people" with "Humiliation".

That I'm not a complete and utter social retard at this stage in my life is, I like to think, mainly due to a girl called Ruth who was in the year below me.

~wibbly wobbly timey wimey effect~

I was 6 and was in a corner of the playground doing my utmost not to cry. Our teacher had, in the previous lesson, asked us to fold our arms and wait for the books to be handed out. I was *that* lacking in grace that I couldn't actually fold my arms. Instead I sort of looked like I was hugging myself. And, as per usual, some of my wittier classmates were taking the proverbial, opining that my inability to fold my arms almost certainly meant I smelled of poo. And possibly wee.

The teacher...gave a little laugh, a look at me that said "For God's sake you great buffoon, just fold your arms properly", and began the lesson. She wasn't going to come to my rescue, and I was too busy thinking about how I'd like to start hitting my tormentors to concentrate on copying some classmates in that ancient art of arm folding.

So, having failed in that most rudimentary of tasks, I boiled and fumed my way through the lesson. When the playtime bell went, out I went and found a little corner of the playground to sit and have a good cry (what? I was 6 ffs...).

It was then that Ruth approached. Now I'm sure you all remember primary school; contact between year groups basically never happened. To a kids mind, the year below were always little babies and the year above were to be looked at with a mixture of fear and awe. More than a year either way, and the kids may have well been aliens. So Ruth, being in the year below, was doing something rather daring. Particularly as, by then, I'd also acquired a reputation as a dumb, clumsy oaf who would lash out at anyone near him for seemingly no reason.

"Hello. You're Light aren't you? Why are you crying?"

'Go away.'

"Why? I'm not doing anything wrong. So why are you crying? Has someone been nasty to you?"

This was new territory for me; someone I didn't know was speaking to me and something was different about the tone of voice. There wasn't any fear but neither was there any malice.

I dealt with my resultant confusion in the standard way of the 6 year old; I cried even harder and tried to turn my face away so that this little baby wouldn't see me wailing.

"Aw, don't cry."

'...cn fld m'arms...'

"You can't fold your arms? Is that what you're crying about?"

'..'s....'

"tch, don't be so silly. Here; stand up."

So up I stood.

"Right, now give me your arms, and..."

And she taught me to fold my arms, smiling the whole time and seemingly enjoying the teaching as much as I appreciated being taught.

"There you are. So will they stop teasing you now? Oh, there's the bell. Bye!"

Still a little bit stunned, I made my way to the line of my classmates to be led back into class. Come the next lesson, we were once again asked to fold our arms and wait for books to be handed out. This time, the little shits didn't even wait before teasing.

I genuinely think that few moments in my life since then have compared with the smug satisfaction of folding my arms properly and their teasing not just petering out, but actually being turned back on them (hey, kids will take the piss out of anyone who makes themselves a target). Had I known the phrase "In your fucking FACE cocktards!!" then it would doubtless have made an appearence then.

As is, I learned how to fold my arms. I also learned that people aren't solely there to make you feel miserable. Gradually I learned the difference between saying teasing things out of malice, and saying them out of affection (or even fear; I'd spent my first school year kicking the shit out of whomever was slow enough for me to catch). Basically, I think Ruth socialised me.

She went to a different middle school, so I never saw her from age 9. And writing this has made me well up like a girl watching Sex in the City, so I think it's safe to say that a very simple act of kindness has had a permanent positive effect on me.

So if your name is Ruth and you were in Amberley First School in the 80s, from the very bottom of my heart; thank you.





(Length? I apologise for nothing!)
(Fri 3rd Oct 2008, 12:36, More)

» Call Centres

Angry letter #1
I worked as a customer service manager at a call centre for a while. One of the few things that made the job bearable was getting the foamers transferred to me when they screechingly DEMANDED to speak to a manager.

The standard procedure is to make the appropriate soothing and mollycoddling noises whilst trying to reach a compromise that keeps both company and customer happy. A letter is then sent confirming whatever has been agreed. 9 times out of 10 this works a treat. But those other times...

Sometimes I'd find myself talking to people so balls-out mental and/or apocalyptically unpleasant that I find myself white with fury by the time I've finished talking to them. I probably shouldn't have taken their impotent mewling personally. But I did. So to try and help me deal with this, I used to write two letters for these customers after a call. The second was of the type I mentioned earlier. The first was for me. How so? Well, I'd write down what I actually wanted to say to these self important buckets of fuck-phlegm. I can only find two, but I think you'll get the idea...

Dear Sir,
I had the misfortune of speaking to you today, and listening to your tales of whining and woe. Upon hearing it, I immediately retold it to my Jewish Uncle, a survivor of the holocaust. He fell to his knees in horror, and blanched as he told me that nothing he had experienced, no indignity that he suffered at the hands of the nazi regime as he watched his friends and family butchered, none of this compared to how awful it must have been for you to receive a slightly damaged cd.

Okay, sure; you were able to download what you needed the same day, and were pointed to that download site by a member of our staff whose patience is, it must be said, akin to that of a saint. But…but that damaged cd; dear sweet LORD it must have been traumatic!

So anyway, aside from speaking to you, I also spoke to that cockspawn employee of yours. Tell me the truth; is he an employee? Is he really? Or is he a cackwizard comprised of tramps syphilis and paupers tears, placed on this earth for the sole purpose of making me want to drive my own thumbs into my eyesockets rather than talk to him for more than 5 seconds?

Having spoken to you, I must confess that I found myself wondering; what has driven you to become such a shitty-tonsilled rapeblanket? Is it your looks? Do you have a face like a fat muppet’s cunt? Or is it the desperate, aching lonliness that permeates every single aspect of your loathsome, slithering existence?

Regardless of what it is, I can tell you that we can make the following offer to you by way of compenstation; we will have you killed, buried, dug up, fucked hard, buried again, dug up again, chopped into pieces, eaten, shat out and finally, buried again. I trust that meets with your requirements?

Should you have any further queries, please don’t hesitate to lock yourself in a festival toilet and plunge headfirst into the swamp of effluent and tampons.

Yours etc
(Mon 7th Sep 2009, 18:18, More)

» Join us... come join the cult

Does Catholicism count as a Cult
It fucking should do...(note; the following rant isn't that funny, but by the sweet zombie Moses, it's accurate and pertinent...)




Something rather surprising happened a couple of weeks ago. A friend of mine announced that she had found God. After the obligatory comments of '...lost him down the back of the sofa did you?' my friend began to gush about her newfound sense of serenity and happiness that Jesus had afforded her. Approximately 20 minutes later she was absolutely horrified at the seemingly never-ending stream of bile that had I had spewed concerning the sheer evil that is organised religion. Anybody who has ever heard me talk about the subject will not exact be taken aback by that, but I rather think that my friend was wrong footed by the amount of venom that I hold for the Church. We agreed to disagree on the subject, though she made the observation "Have you had a bad experience or something...not trying to pry & its really none of my business but you seem so angry...” This got me to thinking about just why I hold the Church (and I used 'Church' as a catch-all term for absolutely every organised religion or religious cult, from Anglicans to Zarostranists (sic)) in such contempt.

I've never personally had a bad experience with the Church. I even managed to be in a church choir for a few months when I was 10 and I remained resolutely unbuggered by a single priest (although in fairness I still hold the diocese record for "Longest Maintaining of Anal Virginity in a Church Choir (under 11's section)" for this feat...). Nor have I been denounced as a heretic by any particular religious group (though under the strict definition of a heretic as 'One who questions' I hold up my hand and admit to falling into this category). I've corresponded with the Bishop of Newcastle and he has never been anything less than polite. So what is it that gets my back up? After all I'm not the only vehemently anti-church person that I know. Amongst my friends those who are religious fall into a distinct minority. So why is this?

Firstly I should make clear that I do not bear any grudges against a single individual that I have met who has any involvement in the Church, or at least if I do dislike them it has nothing to do with their religion. I realise that I'm just about to launch into a lengthy tirade about why the Church is an awful thing, but I am a believer in personal freedom within the boundaries of having consideration for how you actions can affect others. If somebody wishes to believe in a 2000 year old fairy tale (well...about 16-1700 years old as the bible was compiled centuries after the death of Christ), or the slickly packaged musings of a former Coventry City goalkeeper who used to wear turquoise shellsuits, or whatever, then that is their prerogative and it's not for me to tell them to stop. I'm going to tell them exactly what I think of it, but I'm not going to ask them to stop.

No, my grudge isn't against individuals but against the organisational aspect of the Church. Simply put, I think that Religion is Totalitarianism for beginners. Both are methods of imposing the will of the few onto the many. Both give absolute control of almost every aspect of a person's life as their stated aim. Both say that they do this for your own good. Both are rife with hypocrisy. Both ensure that those in the upper echelons of the organisation have the opportunity (not always taken) to grow fat, rich, and corrupt.

For example, the Catholic Church states that their priesthood must remain celibate and that it's followers must not use contraception and have sex only to reproduce. Communist rule in Romania dictated that the birth rate must increase and so sex became a patriotic duty. The Party in Orwell's 1984 sought to completely control reproduction via the encouragement of artificial insemination. One's sex life is a pretty damn personal thing yet all of these three bodies want to control it. The only difference that I can see between the 3 is the figurehead that is used. The Church relies on a mythical father figure who is kind and benevolent. The Church is merely an extension of his will. To question the will of the Church is to question the will of God. To question the will of God is to be disobedient, and so the miscreant needs to be gently disciplined as a father would discipline his son when he goes astray. As God is not a tangible being, this discipline is done by the Church on His behalf. Of course, I personally have gone astray from my Father's values on many occasions and he has yet to order me burnt at the stake, pressed by rocks until dead, excommunicated and thus condemned to hell, or even just shunned by himself and his friends.

The Nazi's had Adolf Hitler as their figurehead, which immediately gives them one advantage over the Church; they have a physical, tangible human being as their father figure. Of course, he was elevated to semi mythical status and imbued with all sorts of characteristics that gave would make him superhuman were they all true (this is a trick repeated by cults everywhere; indeed it's possibly the only thing that distinguishes the likes of Icke and L Ron Hubbard's cash-cow sects from mainstream religion). All things done in Nazi Germany were done in the name of Hitler whether he had ordered them (or even heard of them) or not. Whilst I do not doubt that he was a paragon of evil in himself or that he would have approved of 99% of what was done, all sorts of vile acts were done without his consent and in his name. To question any of this was to question the will of Hitler who in turn spoke for the Volk of Germany. As Hitler was unquestionably doing what was right for Germany, to question his will was anti-German and so these people had to be 'corrected' in protective custody. Nazi Germany was a long way advanced of the medieval church and so they could draw on the modern equivalents of burning at the stake etc.

The Party of 1984 had a fusion of the two; Big Brother was a Hitler like figure who was represented as a real person to the masses though the book is ambiguous at best as to whether he really does exist. Senior party members used Big Brother as a mixture of father figure and avenging angel to justify their use and abuse of power. The common thread that runs through all of these is that power is exercised by a few men and women. They justify themselves using a distant figure to whom no right of appeal can be reasonably expected. Therefore all of the decisions that affect the running of the Church/Party are made by those same few. In other words, one of the reasons I hold such hatred for the Church is that it places immense power in the hands of a few people, and as history has shown time and time again, power corrupts. There are few or no checks or balances in place to ensure that power is exercised in a fair way because they are exercising the will of an infallible being so why would they need them?

Which leads us into the heart of just why I have such a problem with the Church; they allow people to believe that by becoming a member of the church they are receiving guidance from God/Alpha Waves/Good Aligned Martian Lizards. They are doing absolutely no such thing whatsoever. They are receiving guidance from men. From human beings. There is nothing divine about the people whom they are handing over control of their lives to. They are just flesh and blood like everybody else. And like everybody else they have their own reasons for doing what they do. I'm not doubting that some do genuinely belief in the unfathomable mystery of the divine, in the rapture, or in whatever piece of mumbo jumbo of variable age and questionable origin that their particular Church espouses. However, as they are all people like any other then they will have the same sense of ambition, the same vulnerabilities, the same irrational likes and dislikes, the same flaws as any one of us. And their all-too-human traits will affect their actions toward their followers. So no one ever receives the undiluted wisdom of the spiritual world. They receive somebody else's interpretation of it. This is the reason for my less than charitable prejudice against the more devout followers of the Church; they don't have the courage to try and come to their own conclusions so they let somebody else do it for them.

Naturally the Church would dispute this. They would point to the Bible, or the Koran, or to a series of Sumerian and Aztec/Inca pictograms, or whatever book contains the teachings and dogma of that Church. They would say that it is the truth and the leaders of the Church simply teach the followers about it and encourage them to live their lives according to it's precepts. If that is so, how on earth is there still war and murder (because after all, Thou Shalt Not Kill) that receives the support of the Church? Why isn't the Church encouraging us to shun menstruating women (as we are told to do in Deuteronomy)? Why are we told to love our fellow man whilst simultaneously encouraged to denounce them if they don't follow the same religious teachings as you?

It's because those books of timeless wisdom are all mired in a particular place both historically and geographically. The Bible is a good textbook on how to live your life in 3rd-6th century Europe. The Koran does the same job for the Middle East of the 6th-7th century. They did not foresee a world that would change quite as radically as it has since then. So these books (that were written by men) are now interpreted by men and women as to how they relate to today's world. Fallible man and women. They may like to kid themselves that they are being entirely objective in their interpretations but this is a self-delusion. No one is completely free of bias, and so the teachings of the Church have been influenced by Byzantine politics, personal grievances, jealousies and petty hatreds.

As a humanist it does seem a little strange to me that the reason I criticise the Church is because it is mortal and not divine. But I hate it because it pretends to be something it is not. It claims higher motivations for seeking base power and it is absolutely no different to any method of controlling or subjugating a populace that has ever been created. People should by all means seek answers for to the divine and to the spiritual (I know I do) but I wish that they would do so without abdicating responsibility for doing so to someone else. Your own personal beliefs are just as valid and far more important than anything that you are encouraged to accept or have imposed on you as the truth. I truly believe that the world would be a better place if more people remembered that.






You can take the piss out of my humourless earnestness now. I know I would.
(Mon 30th Jan 2006, 16:49, More)