With apologies to Julie Andrews
Big hoopy earrings and slag tags on mothers
Corsas with alloys and lily-assed brovvaz
annoying ring tones, played on the train
These are the things that I treat with disdain.

Tracksuits of velvet and estuary diction,
Low slung jean beltlines and Dan Brown's crap fiction
six inches of bare flesh, twixt thong top and arse,
These are a few of the things that lack class.

Girls in white Kappa and benefit culture,
Jeremy Kyle, the sensationalist vulture,
Closeups of z-listers thigh flab in Zoo,
Oh what is this world now coming to?

Owning a loud gob,
Having a boob-job,
Paid for by your Dad,
I simply cannot bear these commonest things,
I can't be the only one so mad?
(Bicycle Repairman "you're also a bit of a wanker", Thu 16 Oct 2008, 21:59, 24 replies)

Refusing to breastfeed
because of a fear of boob saggage and 'being too tied to the baby'. Argh. I am in no way referring to the people who cannot breastfeed for practical or medical reasons. I am referring only to the vain and ignorant girls who choose not to breastfeed because they worry it will make their tits turn into womble noses.

Yes, just deny your baby the chance of the best start in life; deny them the health benefits such as increased protection against infections, obesity and asthma; deny them the best food for early brain development. All because you're too bloody vain and selfish to allow your boobelahs to be used in the way nature intended.

And worst of all, deny your man the opportunity to witness your astounding skills in manual breast milk expression as you squirt him from 6 feet away, making machine gun noises as you do so. His nob can't eject his population porridge like that and it's the closest you'll ever come to spluffing on his face. Why deny yourself that joy?
( gypsy turnips, Fri 17 Oct 2008, 11:21, 20 replies)

I distinctly remember the time when I realized that I was
how shall I put this, a cut above some of my school friends.

It was the week after the inter tutor football competition where I had unwittingly picked Nicola Tipbank to play in goal.

Well, following her letting me finger her while she sucked of Jonny Deacon, me and Nicola became quite close. She used to pass me little notes in science lessons telling me she wasn't wearing any pants and that I should meet her behind the bike sheds at lunchtime.

So down I would go, excitement in my eyes and throbbing in my pants and there she would be, sitting on that low bit of brick wall, legs spread, those come to bed eyes looking straight at me while Matt Billings or Richard Hawkes' pasty white arses bounced back and forth as they gave her a good seeing too.

After a month or so she let me squeeze her tits while she got some and I knew this was real, this was going somewhere, this could be the one.

Then finally, three months and two days to the moment I mistakenly called out her name, it finally happened.

It was Thursday, the sky was grey and threatened rain when I received my usual note in the middle of double physics. Mrs Turner, our teacher who hailed from Sheffield, was wearing a black vest top which showed off her wrinkled cleavage and bingo wings to full effect. It was all I could do to stop myself lifting the desk as I looked from her to Nicola, who winked at me with a lustful stare.

As the bell rang, I stood up carefully, hunching over and holding my bag over my crotch. Jody Mulfinge caught me eye and turned and whispered to Ellen Shrimpton, they both looked back at me and giggled. I ignored them and walked out of class, my left hand frantically bobbing up and down in my pocket.

I got the bike shed and was surprised when I couldn't hear the frantic gruntings of Matt or Richard. I got a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. Had she decided to end it? Was this some sort of joke?

Nervously I turned the corner. She was there. One foot on the floor, the other on the wall beside her, her long fingers tracing lines across the thin light brown fuzz that covered that most elusive of secret places. I could feel all moisture draining from my mouth as she beckoned me over to her. I stood in front of her and she reached out and unzipped my fly.

My juvenile todger sprung out like an angry chopstick. She grasped it in one hand and before I knew what was happening it was in her mouth. I'm not proud to admit that I barely had time to inhale before shooting a thick stream of jizz right to the back of her throat.

She swallowed, wiped her mouth with her sleeve, looked up at me, winked and giggled as she straightened her skirt and walked off, leaving me and my rapidly detumescing member hanging in the cold breeze.

It was just then it hit me that this was never going to work. This glorious forever I had planned in my fertile imagination would never transfer into reality.

She wiped her mouth on her sleeve. Did the girl even own a handkerchief?
(Bazongaloid, Tue 21 Oct 2008, 9:03, 14 replies)

Common as Muck……
This QOTW reminds me of a family I know. Bunch of complete inbreds who claim hundreds of thousands in state benefit each year, including housing benefit for about six properties, some of which they don’t even occupy. Not one of them has got a real job, nor do any of them actively seek work.

The grandmother, who masterminds the benefit fraud operation, has no discipline over the antisocial behaviour of her offspring, but what hope does she have when her husband is a psychopathic bigot given to racist outbursts at the drop of a hat.

Her children all have broken marriages behind them, except for the one whose token marriage is only a cover-up for his being a shirt-lifter. One of her boys hooked up with a slapper who was sleeping her way round every third bloke in the country, until she copped it while out joyriding with a pissed-up mate and one of her “johns”, but he didn’t mind, as he’d been slipping one to some old bint who used to be his baby-sitter all the while anyway. Another of her lads was shafting some cheapo porn actress, but ended up with a chavette-to-end-all-chavettes, and he’s regularly been pulled up for taking and driving away (not just cars, but bloody jets, FFS). The daughter ran off with a squaddie, but ended up back on the money-for-nothing scam.

The grandchildren are generally piss-heads, potheads, and closet Nazis.

Whoever would want to live in Windsor??
(b3ta_demeter, Sat 18 Oct 2008, 12:26, 7 replies)

What Lies Below
I was living out in the bush in the far north of Australia many years ago. You have seen movies set in this sort of place I am sure. Crocodile Dundee type stuff but toned down to reflect reality (I hope you have made the effort to track down the wonderful film Ten Canoes btw).

Anyway, one night I was drinking in a pub in a small town in the back end of nowhere. The majority of patrons were farmers and bushies and there were also a significant number of aborigines who had come in from their bush camps to get alcohol. In addition tourism was establishing itself as a local industry at the time and there were a few visitors from an American run tour group in attendance. There was one woman in this group of well-to-do tourists who was in her 50s, flashy smile, well structured, a bit sexy, some innate dignity. She was probably a lovely person in her natural habitat but she was over dressed for an outback pub and out of place. She had the designer khaki, the Timberland boots, the earrings and flashy pearl necklace, the expensive bush hat draped behind her; all together more posed than functional. But bless her – she was trying at least.

She might have been trying a bit too hard though. She wandered over to a high mileage, wizened, gap-toothed aboriginal elder who happened to be wearing around her neck a string of crocodile teeth laced with a leather thong. The visitor wasn’t trying to cause offence I am sure but she managed it anyway by saying ‘Oh, how lovely. Your people must value crocodile teeth as much as my people value pearls’. The aboriginal woman considered her for a moment then slowly shook her head and turned away saying scornfully ‘Any cunt can open an oyster’.
( enoughblueskyforsailorstrousers, Sat 18 Oct 2008, 6:27, 4 replies)

People who insist on licking the bowl...

...why can't they just flush it like everyone else?
(emadex thinks the world will end on, Sun 19 Oct 2008, 1:56, 5 replies)

A small discourse on "being common".
I have given this a lot of thought, and realized what it is that has been bothering me about this QOTW. Please bear with me, as I may ramble a bit here.

We’re discussing being “common” here, a touchy subject to say the least. At least one person has been enraged by what she perceives as elitism in the posts and has refused to join in. I have been accused of being racist myself in here- which I firmly deny- for getting annoyed by, as I put it, white kids pretending to be black.

The real issue here is not race or class, but pretense.

Let’s start with the thing that was causing cries of elitism. An example- one poster wrote of a woman who made a big deal of champagne and ended up with Asti Spumante. Why is this funny? Because the woman was pretending to be upper class, when she clearly didn’t know what she was doing. In other words, she was pretending to be part of a group she clearly didn’t belong to.

Another example: I wrote of skinny white teenage boys pretending to be black. I also wrote of white kids in dreads pretending to be Jamaican, and was criticized sharply for saying that races have given behaviors.

Both cases have the same root: people pretending to be part of a culture that they clearly are not from.

Let’s take the woman with the Asti Spumante. Had she really learned something of champagnes, she would probably have ordered something else, and would not have made such a big issue over what she was drinking. As it is, she was emulating the appearances of affluence and doing it badly. In other words, she was a poser, and was immediately seen as such. (I think the English term for this is “bounder”.)

In the case of the kids pretending to be black, it gets a lot more touchy because race is involved. I knew as I was posting that something wasn’t translating properly, but it took me a while to put my finger on it. I was using a form of shorthand to communicate an idea about behavior among groups, and it didn’t quite work, as I suspect that things go a bit differently over in England than they do here. Let’s see if I can expand on this a bit.

On the one hand we have inner city black kids. I don’t know exactly how things go over there, but here the inner city kids of all races tend to share certain behaviors, which you can most easily see in hiphop videos and the like. Most of our inner city kids are black- hence the stereotype of the black kid in the hoodie and baggy pants and brand-new sneakers.

On the other side are the kids from the suburbs. They’re mostly white, have pretty much always had a meal on the table and a roof over their heads, haven’t had to deal much with the crime that plagues the poor areas of the inner city, and have generally had pretty easy lives. There’s not a lot of deprivation out in the suburbs- the kids often own their cars and usually live in houses with central heating and plumbing, their refrigerators are usually not empty, and they can afford new clothing as needed.

So what’s so irritating and asinine to me is seeing these white affluent kids pretending to be inner city impoverished thugs, when clearly they aren’t. Again, they’re emulating appearances and taking on trappings of a culture that they have never been a part of. The same thing applies to the white kids pretending to be Rastas, when they’ve obviously come from somewhere in suburban America. They’re adopting the trappings of another culture.

Imagine, for a moment, if I were to start wearing tweed suits and a bowler and carrying an umbrella and trying to put on an English accent. I’m a white middle-class guy in his 40s from America- wouldn’t this strike you as being ridiculous? It’s not cold and wet over here, so the tweed and umbrella are not needed as they are there, and I’m from New York State so the accent would be utterly false, even if I could pull it off. So why would I start acting like I was from another culture?

For that matter, let’s take it a step further- what if I were to start wearing a turban and a beard and acting like a Sikh? Let’s face it, I have blond hair and grey eyes and don’t look even remotely Indian. Wouldn’t that be deserving of ridicule?

The thing that makes me rather angry when I see this is that these people are taking the trappings of another culture as their own, and in the process creating almost a parody of that culture. Were I a member of the culture I saw them imitating I would find it to be highly insulting. It’s like putting on the robes of a Buddhist monk or a Catholic priest when you’ve never been anywhere near a temple or a seminary.

So this is what makes “being common” so irritating. It’s not a matter of being superior to someone else, it’s a matter of not behaving as a member of your own culture. I was born in America and have lived here for 45 years now, and was born into a middle class suburban family. That’s who I am, and that’s how I behave. I don’t pretend to be anything else, as it would be silly and rather insulting. I don’t pretend to be affluent, nor do I pretend to be from Da Hood. I’m quite proud to be what I am. I have no issues with people from other cultures, and am perfectly content to have them around me- but I’m not going to pretend that I’m one of them, because I’m not. I wouldn’t disrespect them in that way.

And there’s this morning’s rant. Go right ahead and flame me if you must, but this is where I stand.
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Fri 17 Oct 2008, 13:49, 33 replies)

Common, you say?
Let me tell you a story.

The sweary one and I have had some fairly extensive renovation work done on our flat. Finding a builder was a bit of a hassle, but we managed. They turned up at the start of the summer holidays and the work lasted most of the 6 weeks, during which time we lived in a bomb site and had no kitchen for three weeks. Cue lots of takeaways and 'living room picnics'.

Anyhoo, the lads doing the work were mostly a canny bunch. Their gaffer was a bit of sheister and kept 'nipping off to collect some materials', usually entailing a three hour disappearing act and returning miraculously just as the kettle had boiled or the bacon butties had been suggested. I'm reliably informed that these disappearing acts did have some relevance to building work as he'd just got back with his ex and actually kept nipping away to check that his tool was still in prime working order. I think filling holes was on the agenda as well.

That said, we got on well with the other two lads, to the point where one of them invited us to a barbecue at his place. Yeah, we thought, why not? He's a decent bloke, we get on and have a laugh. The fact that he actually had done most of the graft endeared him to us as well. And so off we went one rainy Friday night. When we arrived, our host was hard at work over a hot stove, so to speak. The gaffer was there for a short while but buggered off early; as was the other (an apprentice) and his missus. Clearly getting very drunk on cheap vodka and Irn Bru.

We were introduced to apprentice's wife, and she made a point of telling us, in no small detail, what a screwed up fuckwit she had been when younger, but how her beloved apprentice had made her whole again and able to love. This whilst still swigging pints of vodka and Irn Bru and systematically trying her hardest to stop her jeans from displaying any more than 8 inches of arse crack or getting her bra to keep her tits in just above her nipples.

So, I'm not drinking as I'm driving, and watching all these people getting progressivly more drunk. Our nice, friendly builder has his eldest daughter there - a bonny lass of 17, absolutely tiny and looking more like she was 13. She's obviously met the apprentice and his missus before, and as the evening draws on, apprentice is getting to the alcohol-fuelled "I love everyone here, you's is all me mates" stage. Which involves lots of hugging of people in the garden.

Including our host's eldest daughter, just as his missus is returning from the kitchen with a freshly refilled pint of vodka and Irn Bru. On spotting her beloved hubby cuddling the girl, she flew into an apopleptic rage and hurled the pint over him - which also happened to land of most of the other people standing in the garden. Then she shoved her 'beloved saviour' to the ground and started raining blow upon blow upon him, before proceeding to stamp on his head. And his bollocks.

It wasn't a pretty sight.

In between raining blows upon her husband, she turned her attention to our host's daughter - remember I said she was tiny - and shoved her, hard, onto the steps leading up to the kitchen, wherupon the poor kid slipped backwards off the steps, under the railing and against the table that had been set up for the food, before she turned her attention back to her husband who was by now lying inert on the ground, covered in mud and vodka.

This probably all happened in the space of a few seconds before people managed to drag her off and into the house, her jeans still hanging around her acne-riddled arse and her tits still miraculously inside her bra.

It's fair to say that all hell was breaking loose by this point. The worst of it was that there were young kids present, including Sweary Junior. Our host was profusely apologetic about the whole thing - which was hardly his fault.

It was a night to remember for all the wrong reasons. So yeah, you can tell that someone is common when they pick a full on battle with their spouse in someone else's house and assault their host's daughter.

It was grim. Really fucking grim.
( Davros' Granddad a voice of calm reason in a world of spastics., Thu 16 Oct 2008, 18:54, 7 replies)

I know, I know…I’m turning into Benny Hill…

For last week’s QotW, I subjected you all to a bash at poetry. Some of you gluttons for punishment lovely B3tans were kind enough to say you enjoyed my efforts and asked for more…

Be careful what you wish for in future!...

Chavesty

Half scouser, Half cockney, Half brummie
Just a 16 year old ‘yummy mummy’
She was ‘one of the lads’
With 3 kids from 9 dads
And 6 more on their way in her tummy

With her love bites (or slag rash) on show
Her fake bling and her fake tan aglow
Her whole life is a farce
But the 'tatt' on her arse
Shows the local boys which way to go

Overweight, overdosed, oversexed
Only speaks in the language of text
With a wink of an eye
She will blow you till dry
& For a Big Mac she’ll whip off her kex.

Thinks she knows ‘everyfink’ about style
From a permanent state of denial
Her ambition and goal
Is to sign on the dole
And a guest spot on Jeremy Kyle

As she waddles she turns the air stale
She’s a slag on a biblical scale
She's got ‘no time’ to wash
She makes muck look quite posh
And she's shaped like a small humpback whale

Things like ‘Innit’, and ‘Wotcha’ are slurred
She treats ‘LOL’ like it’s really a word
Her vocab is obscene
'Like...Ya Know wot I mean?’
And she smells like a freshly dropped turd

But no more for her council flat den,
And the tracksuits, and armies of men
Cos this common young bitch
Is soon going to be rich
She’ll be starring in Big Brother 10!

.
( Pooflake braces for an onslaught..., Fri 17 Oct 2008, 11:29, 12 replies)

My wife…
The other day, I asked her: "Tell me something that will make me happy and sad at the same time"

She replied: "You have the biggest cock out of all your mates "
( Pooflake braces for an onslaught..., Fri 17 Oct 2008, 8:44, 4 replies)

Compared to when I was a student,
nowadays I'm a bit snobbish. I was pretty rough back then.

My mates and I would go out drinking, and then have farting competitions. Marks were awarded for duration, resonance of tone and of course pungency.

We also had burping competitions, which ran on standardised fuel, this being one fish supper and one can of Irn Bru. Marks were awarded similarly.

One day, we decided on a little experiment. We'd trap our farts in empty jam jars, screw the lids on then open and then sniff them next morning. This is a particularly vile thing to do, as the odour is inhaled when one is fragile from the night before, and makes one feel a tad unwell.

Anyway, the games progressed, and we then discovered absinthe. Not the cheap nasty stuff you usually find, but the proper syrupy green fluid with loads of wormwood. We did the usual setting fire to it and so on, but soon discovered that a few hours after drinking it, it tainted our flatulence with a characteristic odour. So out came the jam jars....

Next morning, we came to open the jars to do the usual check, and to our collective amazement, in each jar was a tiny model motorcycle. A perfect replica of the full size Honda NTV650 in every way. We wondered who had accessed the jars during the night, and why they would do such a bizarre thing, so we asked around during the day, but no-one would admit to it.

On returning to our flat that evening, we noticed that the models had increased in size during the day. And that is the point at which we discovered....

Absinthe makes the fart grow Honda.

Sorry
( K2k6 has a proper job these days, Fri 17 Oct 2008, 8:33, 7 replies)

I'm going to get slaughtered for this one...
When someone dies in a car accident and the family hang flowers and football shirts where it happened.

(Ducks for cover.)
(Tugnut Ex of this parish, Thu 16 Oct 2008, 16:22, 37 replies)

I think there has been some sort of mix-up
Due to some server issues on Fleet Street, a load of internet traffic has been accidentally routed through to B3TA over the last few days. People who think they are one the wrong site, should re-direct themselves immediately to the correct forums here.

www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/index.html
(Bam Bam McPenis will change all this when he is fuhrer., Sun 19 Oct 2008, 20:22, 8 replies)

Appearances can be deceptive

Only yesterday I said "I don’t think I’m common" to Wayne* as we were sat in my modified Saxo**, with the stereo blasting***, on my way to the tattoo parlour**** before we went to Mcdonalds*****


*Hemingway, the fashion designer. Terrible name dropping but he’s quite well-to-do and his work is considered rather progressive.

**It has been modified to be more environmentally friendly and run on bio-fuel

***forgive the indulgence, but my passion for Rochmaninov Concertos does sometimes get the better of me…besides, I’m partially deaf and so require the volume level to be quite high

***As part of a family tradition I’m having a small inscription underneath my family coat of arms that states: “Ex Silentium, simplex lepor ortus ingravesco ubiquitous décor” which roughly means:

“From Obscurity, The simplest wit can rise to become ubiquitous beauty”

*****The Estate Agent Chain. I have a property portfolio that I am currently selling



Sometimes 'common' is just a misjudged perspective.

Sometimes not.
(Mr Twisty Cheeky The worst kept secret in B3ta..., Fri 17 Oct 2008, 15:48, 9 replies)

I used to work in an opticians in Essex.
I think the most common thing I ever was the woman who, when booking her children in for eye tests, checked her tattoos for their dates of birth.
( Mrs Entity is in hiding., Thu 16 Oct 2008, 18:08, 3 replies)

Common
I had to go to the doctors the other day because I couldn't stop singing Tom Jones songs.

He looked at me wearily and said it was fairly common.

Oh.


Hang on.
(Pickettywitchfinder General, Wed 22 Oct 2008, 10:43, 4 replies)

Pretending
to be black.

Kid, you're not fooling anyone. You can wear a hoodie, you can blast your gangsta rap, you can wear pants so baggy that you have to have one hand holding them at all times to keep them from falling off- but you're not black.

You're just a twat.
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Thu 16 Oct 2008, 17:03, 21 replies)

ASDA
I don't know what it is, but I always feel a bit dirty when I come out of an ASDA.

But then again, I get the same feeling when I have a wank in the entrance hall of any of the supermarkets.
(Bazongaloid, Thu 16 Oct 2008, 16:19, 2 replies)

Caravan holidays
I'm not sure if they still do this, but in the 90's The Sun newspaper used to have an offer where you'd collect a certain amount of tokens and pay about £8 per person for a weeks stay in a caravan park off season.
My family and I did this for about seven years in a row in the October half term.

Myself, my two brothers, my Mum, my Mum's best friend, her three children and my Nan used to all pile into my parents VW van and spend what used to feel like an eternity driving to a seaside resort somewhere in Britain. Once we even visited the exotic land of leeks and sheep, the very wet but very lovely Wales.
There would be a packet of chocolate éclairs to nibble on and a chorus of "are we there yet?" We'd probably get lost at some point and someone was always car sick due to over excitement and sweets.

Our days would be spent walking through woods in our wellies, visiting outdoor adventure parks and a few times we went to farms and got pumpkins for carving. If there was a beach near by we'd always go for a walk there. I actually can't remember being on a beach in the summer until I was a teenager. They're not places I associate with sunshine!
One of my favourite memories is of me being wrapped in a big winter coat, the salt air chilling my nose as I hunted for fossils in Lyme Regis.

The evening entertainment would consist of some form of variety act. I'm sure you know the kind of thing I mean. A minor celebrity, a shit magician and singing girls wearing red coats and far too much make up. Luckily for me this wasn't my family's idea of a good night. So, instead we'd play bingo with my Nan or we'd be given a shiny pound coin to spend in the run down arcades.

There seems to have been a lot of hatred of people who can't afford the better things in life on this QOTW so what I'm trying to say is yes, caravan parks seem to be the holiday choice of the lower classes, some of the places we stayed in had definitely seen better days and a whole family wearing shell suits wasn't an uncommon site.
But, those cheap holidays gave me a chance to run around outside and actually be a child. I got to see some beautiful parts of Britain, I got to spend time with my family and I consider my self very lucky that I have some extremely happy memories of innocent fun.

If going on cheap caravan holidays makes me common, then I have no problem with that at all.
( wanderlust, Tue 21 Oct 2008, 17:45, 9 replies)

Plumbers...
In recent months I haven’t had any stories that fit with the qotw and I was going to post this in off topic last week but think it may just fit for this weeks question…huzzah.

A few years ago a mate of mine dropped out of his nine-to-five drudgery sacked off the North East and set about reinforcing Northern stereotypes in London in his new life as a plumber. Not an easy decision for him to make – but he’s to be commended for having the balls to start afresh.

Al – for that be his name – was called out to a flat in St John’s Wood – home to some of the most expensive properties in the world, apparently it’s a rather splendid place. The flat in question had a concierge service and when Al asked for lady of the flat the concierge quipped “best of luck mate”. Al thinks this is odd but he and his boss get their tools and head upstairs.

They are greeted at the door by an immaculately turned out lady, early 50s and clearly worth a few quid –she’s pleasant enough and shows the two lads to the kitchen where the problem seems to reside and they get to work. Please note: this isn’t supposed to sound like the start to a piss poor porno. Starting in the cupboards under the kitchen sink Al’s boss is trying to reach through toward the room next door where his Al is. At this point they can actually see each other – peering through a wall cavity – both are lying on their fronts trying to fix whatever the problem is.

Suddenly Al’s boss starts pulling faces and mouthing what are clearly expletives – the sort that just aren’t heard round these parts on a regular basis. Al is confused and asks his boss what’s going on but gets no response just more mouthing and a bit of shuffling and writhing. Thinking he’s either stuck or just taking the piss Al goes back to the kitchen to see what the fuck is going on. In the kitchen he’s greeted by an odd sight – the lady of the house is standing on his boss’ back doing the dishes. When asked “what the fuck are you doing?” she calmly responds “nearly finished” and with that hops off the plumber as if absolutely nothing unusual has happened. Both lads are simply stunned that someone could be so rude or just so far up themselves as to be physically above other people. Extraordinarily, they decide its probably better to just finish the job so they don’t have to come back – although Al is nearly sick with laughter for the rest of the day.

So that’s it really. Plumbers - so common you can stand on them to make them work.
(i anglepoise, Fri 17 Oct 2008, 11:23, 3 replies)

I think this counts...
When I worked in Martin's The Newsagent in Laindon Town Centre I served a lady who was buying five copies of 'Fiesta' magazine...

...that she was the cover star of.
( scarpe We Stole Bikes, Tue 21 Oct 2008, 11:22, 8 replies)

A list of things that aren't common enough:
Common courtesy
Common knowledge
Common sense
the usage of the word "tomfoolery"
(The Oscillating Gibbon is eating curried squid, Fri 17 Oct 2008, 15:19, 15 replies)

Cockney Lynn
Well, I've ranted, I've stuck a reasonable 2p's worth in here and there and now it's time for an anecdote, though you better get ready for some length. Oh, I'm back alright :)

Cockney Lynn was singularly my brother's poorest choice of girlfriend ever, which considering some of the ones he shacked up during the more-than-a-decade that he had one of modern life's more unwise habits is saying something. I've mentioned her briefly in another post (in my best-of at the time of writing this ... EDIT: holy crap, now this one is too lol) and her clueless part in nearly getting my brother pasted by a very nasty man named Johnny.

So, Cockney Lynn, so named on account of her and hers being the only cockneys on a council estate in the northwest, was relocated to the estate by local authorities closer to (her) home along with her tattooist-with-no-artistic-talent brother, Bob and revolting little 8yo shitcake of a son Rob on account of bad men taking umbrage at some unspecified action on their part and making their intention clear to stove all three of their heads in.

Lynn and Bob were of course major smackheads themselves and being such, were out for all they could get. From anyone. As for their physical description, apply the pallid and emaciated demeanour of your average hard drug addict but add poor tattoos to every inch of Bob's body including his face (unemployable? you are now, titwad) with a general tinker-ish dress sense and the charming aroma that goes with it.

Lynn was not so much tinker-ish in appearance as cut-price-whoreish, always favouring market-bargain-quality vest tops and too-fucking-short skirts on her scrawny torso which unwisely displayed tattoos on her arms, neck, ankles and inner thighs. Judging by the artistic and technical quality of these efforts, it's more than likely that her brother put them there but inner thighs?. Let me count the ick. Bob also did a line in doubtlessly disease-ridden piercing that the pair of them had taken more advantage of than they should.

The son, Rob, well, if he'd had a better start in life then he may have turned out differently but he hadn't and as it was he was a thoroughly unbearable little twat, thieving anything he could wherever he was, shockingly rude to everyone regardless of their intentions toward him and always the first to whine when his many liberties were even minorly infringed, as all misguidedly self-respecting chavs do. Whilst the boy didn't know any better, neither of the adults in this troupe of shit ever showed any regret at their situation, always blaming others and never holding a shred of remorse for the frankly baseline-low shit they pulled on people in order to get by.

All in all, a trio that was the very definition of the phrase 'waste of flesh'.

Through an unfortunate and unremarkable series of events, my brother became associated with this small collection of walking crap and even in the full effect of a hard drug addiction, my brother still seemed to do well with the ladies - well, other hard-drug addicted and in some cases psychologically damaged ones at least. It was this that led to his partaking of her rancid charms on a regular basis. He was with her for the best part of six months until they earned the displeasure of nasty men up here too and had to be packed off to somewhere else. During this time her lack of any morals, respect, propriety or courtesy as well as her pure fucking bare-faced cheek truly took our breath away. Examples include:

* Inviting psycho Johnny into the house she shared with my brother and her own for the hard liquor that he carried into the place. An episode that nearly got my brother quite badly fucked-up (see the aforementioned best-of post) if it weren't for my mum diffusing the situation.

* Bringing her appalling spawn to meet my mum whilst hanging off my brother's arm during one time he visited and saying to him 'go and ask your Nan for 50p for some sweets', right in front of my mum and me. That was one of many steps too far and I piped up with 'Just so you both know, my mum is not his Nan and never will be so let's kick that into touch straight away, shall we?'. Rob wailed and Lynn glowered but fuck them both. Besides, his mayfly-esque attention span and her next fix erased any memory they had of it, it seemed.

* Put her child benefit book in hock with my mum in return for a loan and then sent the Police around for it when the appointed time came to cash it and she of course hadn't paid my mum back. Lynn and her pack weren't allowed on the doorstep after that.

* Regularly palmed the boy off onto my brother, his mates or literally anyone who offered to keep an eye on him for however long they could stand the little shit. If he hasn't been molested at some point in his life by now, no-one would be more surprised than me.

* Chucked my brother out every couple of weeks and then sent notes to him via my mum (and getting the spawn to deliver them at that) that would have looked more at-home written in crayon declaring her 'pashunit luv' (I shit you not) for him and how badly she wanted him back. These little essays sometimes got very graphic and I say again, she sent them TO MY MUM to give to him. Not even in an envelope.

* Was observed by a number of my brother's mates on a number of occasions in the house treating my brother like shit and telling him to 'fack off around to your fackin mother's and get me some fackin money'.

* Of course, fucked anything that moved and/or didn’t resist whether my brother was around or not. She even tried it on with me once - fuck's sake, I was 14. Suffice to say I told her to get the fuck off me. Ugh. Still makes me shudder now.

As stated, this pack of pondlife didn't take very long to piss off far less forbearing people than me and my mum and were carted off to torment some other group of unfortunates somewhere else, apparently setting fire to the house before they left. With hindsight though, that could have been a move by the townsfolk to make sure those fuckers went rather than deciding to squat or something.

Most of those familiar with my posts know I have no regard at all for chavs and their ilk but I still just about recognise them as human. These three however were the lowest, most despicable creatures I had or have since ever encountered. Now I think of it, common doesn't come close to covering it - they had no courtesy, no respect, no humility, no dignity, no anything that I could call a positive human quality. They were vermin.
(thatblokeoverthere not quite as much an arsehole as I thought, Tue 21 Oct 2008, 16:39, 12 replies)

Wow, there's nothing like chav-bashing to bring the posts out of b3tans...
But what is "common" these days?

Most of those who castigate others for being "common" aren't the aristocracy, or self-made millionaires, they're bitchy middle-class social climbers who are desperate to make themselves feel better and less "common" by seeking out petty things, such as what names you use to describe various things, or how you hang the fucking bogroll for fuck's sake (note to these people: it's just as good at getting the shit off your bottom whether it's backwards, forwards, sitting on the top of the cistern or held by your own personal slave).

A good 2/3 of the activities described here don't describe "common" (i.e. working class) behaviour, but middle class behaviour which may be 1% less classy than the complainer considers themselves.

Do you think the genuinely rich or classy care whether they use myspace of facebook, whether they shop at Waitrose or Tesco (or Tesco's), whether they drink Carling or Staropramen? Of course they fucking don't. They use whatever is best for them and whatever they personally prefer. They don't care what other people think because they are secure and contented within themselves. In their view, the most common thing of all is worrying about whether or not a certain brand, activity or word is "common" in the first place.

If you really want to be "above" the "common" people, the irony is that you have to first realise that all this stuff really doesn't fucking matter in the first place.
(Axeman Jim, Sun 19 Oct 2008, 16:08, 8 replies)

Join the cue
I don't really mean to be too harsh on Essex, I'm actually quite protective of it in reality.

But sometimes you just have to shake your head and accept it for what it is, good bad and ugly.

There used to be a 'country club' down at Pipps Hill, on the outskirts of Basildon (it's been built over now with a leisure park, nick named, I kid you now, Bas-Vegas).

And next to the club there was a pub called 'The Golfers Arms'.

I worked there for a bit between leaving uni and getting a 'proper' job.

There are no two ways about it, the pub was a dive of the highest order. We'd get all of societies flotsam & jetsam parading through.

But, taking the biscuit for the most common act I ever saw anyone perform was the denim miniskirted stilletoed peroxide blond mutton dressed as lamb who flashed her gash at all and sundry while playing pool one Sunday afternoon.

I stood and watched in horror as her and her knuckle dragging boyfriend went out the back door in the dark by the lake and came back 10 minutes later looking extremely flustered.

Now, in all honesty, I can understand that some people get turned on by exhibitionism, I can understand that some people get turned on by outdoor sex, and I can understand that some people get horny and want sex right there, right then, wherever there and then may be.

But what I can't understand, what I refuse to think about in any degree of depth.

Is why the hell they had to take the pool cue with them.
( scarpe We Stole Bikes, Fri 17 Oct 2008, 14:48, 7 replies)

The overt sexualisation of kids has become too common.
As Dad to a little girl, I've learned to despise child size mini-skirts, boob tubes and lurid message tee-shirts, those awful "Bratz" dolls, girl/teen bands, the parents of pageant kids, and the common message they represent.

The worst I've personally encountered was at a popular concentration, sorry, "holiday" camp. Gigging at some popular chains, used to provide regular seasonal money. The work routine was to arrive early in the day, to set up equipment and stage, soundcheck . At the smaller venues the room and bar would sometimes remain open, in which case you'd be setting up with an audience, and kids running around.

One such occasion, three generations of a family, were sat near the stage, the ladies dressed in gaudy matching miniskirt and boob tube. The youngest of them couldn't have been long out of nappies. Mum and Nan then goaded the child into running to the front of the stage, with delighted cackles of "Go on, sing the Spice Girls!". They were then overjoyed as the child innocently bumbled through the song, loudly singing out the bit she really remembered....

"Need some love like I never needed love before, wanna make love to ya babyyyyyyy!"

Unfortunately, grooming your own child for paedophiles is common practice parenting these days. :(((((((
( masakatsu best of all the burger meats, Tue 21 Oct 2008, 15:21, 18 replies)

Fun with urinals…

So you’re at work and have sneaked off to enjoy a crafty yet exquisite piss…when you glance downwards and notice that (due to your height / overzealous bladder force / inadequate urinal design), you have spent the last 30 seconds systematically spraying an unstoppable stream of wee wee all down the crotch of your suit trousers…

So you instinctively lean forward to ‘assess the damage’, and proceed to dip your tie into said urinal and then promptly piss all over it…

Then, the resultant (and equally instinctive) neck-jerk recoil leads to you slipping backwards and falling arse-over-tit onto the cold hard tiles below…whacking your foot on the fiendish slash-bin and flapping the (now piss soaked) tie all over your shirt…and face.

…& when you’re lying there, rolling about and swearing like the utter damp tramp you are, in the ever-growing effluent puddle containing the dripped contributions from the rigorous cock-shakes of over a thousand different colleagues…your boss walks in…and tells you that you have a meeting in five minutes…

Now...is that common?

...?

…cos…erm….it’s never happened to me…

Nosirreebob.


...



By the way…on a completely unrelated topic…Does anybody have a towel / hair dryer / new suit I could borrow?

fucksocks

( Pooflake braces for an onslaught..., Mon 20 Oct 2008, 12:59, 6 replies)

Apparently, we're common
Many, many years ago my family were enjoying a nice quiet Sunday at home when we became aware of a commotion across the street.

A fire engine turned up and firemen started running into a house over the road. My dad went out to see what was going on.

Outside he met our next door neighbour, a woman who made Hyacinth Bucket look like dole-scrounging chav scum.

"I wonder what's going on", said the neighbour.
"I don't know", replied my dad, "perhaps it's a chip pan fire".

The lady turned to my dad and looked straight down her nose at him.

"Chips?", she said, "on a Sunday?"
(MrC. Having the most boring username on b3ta since 2004, Sun 19 Oct 2008, 11:04, 1 reply)

Now now, B3ta, not everyone is awful.
I feel I need to defend people a bit.

It seems us B3tans think that everyone and everything younger than us is common, so let me tell you a heartwarming story that broke through even my cynicism about the youth of today.

One of my old jobs in my chequered employment history was on a factory assembly line.

Now I’m sure that any of you that have been to school in Britain will remember being dragged round on a factory visit to see how industry works or whatever the point of those trips is.

As a kid, I actually quite enjoyed it, but as a worker those days were among the most dreaded of our working lives.

I shared the commonly held in B3taland view of these unbearably out of control little brats with no manners and no appreciation for other people.

Almost without exception they were a bunch of common little shits.

One day was different though, there was a small group that came round, and, lo and behold, you could just tell they were from very well to do families.

There was a girl who was extremely discerning in her tastes in food, a young lad with an encyclopaedic knowledge of film and TV that put mine to shame. There was one boy who was admittedly a tad overweight, but I just put that down to the fact that he obviously had money for a luxury diet and, finally, the cream of the crop, one delightful young lady who you could just tell was from a privileged background, she just had breeding, she knew what she wanted from life and was going to do her utmost to get it.

All in all, it was an eye opening experience, and just goes to show that you shouldn’t lump everyone in together.

The only thing I couldn’t figure out was why they were hanging round with a pikey bugger called Charlie
( scarpe We Stole Bikes, Wed 22 Oct 2008, 11:35, 12 replies)

Well....
I am never called common even though I wear a shitload of gold jewellery, use cut down variations of words from the English language and spend most of my time hanging around with my mates in my souped up van.

Then again I am Mr T.
(mon bison powered by magnets, Tue 21 Oct 2008, 13:05, 1 reply)