» God

When the last Pope died
I sent my CV to the Vatican applying for the job. I'm not a Catholic or even Christian but I thought in these days of equal opportunities they can't refuse someone a job on such grounds.

I never heard back from them. Still, they were fucking livid down the Jobcentre when I put in on my "What I've done to find work in the last fortnight" form.
(Wed 25th Mar 2009, 19:12, More)

» I'm going to Hell...

Not quite sure if this is enough to send me to hell...
...but I was probably persona non grata in the Vatican for a while.

I spent a few months on the dole back in 2005. The only distraction from the tedium of filling out endless application forms for shitty admin jobs was the running saga of when Pope John Paul II would go for his meeting with the boss.

"Why not combine the two?" though I.

So, two days before the Pope actually died I sent off a CV and a very polite covering letter to the Vatican applying for the soon to be vacant position. I told them all about my art degree (which would be handy for talking about the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel) and that I once did a night course in carpentry, a bit like that Jesus bloke.

I even told them that I had already chosen my Pope name: Pope Shakin' Stevens I.

Buggers never invited me in for an interview.

I wasn't too popular down the Jobcentre either when I put this down on my list of what I had done to find work in the past fortnight.
(Thu 11th Dec 2008, 22:24, More)

» Pet Peeves

"Don't listen to it"
People who respond to my extended rants against the latest arse-jiggling, over-produced pop/R&B bollocks with "if you don't like it, don't listen to it".

A great idea in theory but when the song is constantly being played on every TV and radio station; in every shop, pub, club, cafe and restaurant; in every doctor's and dentist's waiting room; from every building site; from every chav's car or mobile phone; everytime you're on hold ringing a fucking call-centre; before the adverts in the cinema and from at least one person's open windows on every street in the country as soon as the sun peeks through the drizzle for 10 minutes, it's not that easy.

Nothing would give me greater pleasure than the knowledge that I would never hear 'Shine' by Take That or that fucking 'Umbrella-ella-ella' thing ever again; but short of barricading myself in the airing cupboard and hiding under all the spare pillows and blankets for the rest of my life I don't think that's going to happen.

Then they get all pissy when I put something a bit different on the jukebox.

"I've never ever HEARD of this before".
(Fri 2nd May 2008, 19:00, More)

» Amazing displays of ignorance

Pulled over by the police...
Mr Policeman: "How fast were you just driving sir?"

Me: "Seventy miles per hour officer."

Mr Policeman: "Are you sure? Because we had to do over eighty just to catch up with you."

Me: "....."
(Fri 19th Mar 2010, 11:47, More)

» I don't understand the attraction

Summer
Ok, I know we haven't had a proper one for a few years but I call that a blessing.

The simple fact is it's easier to get warm when you're too cold than it is to cool down when you're sweating like John Prescott walking up four flights of stairs. Jumper, mug of Bovril, open fire, glass of brandy, lovely; but what can you do when it's boiling?

Open a window about 1/10th the thickness of a human hair and you'll have swarms of big fuck off wasps and bluebottles rattling round your house until November. Switch on a fan and you just blow hot air straight into your face. Spend a fortune on fancy air conditioning and you just dry out your eyeballs before realising you won't even need to switch the thing on again for five years and then it'll break and the warranty will have run out two days before Michael Fish starts giving the weather forecast in gas marks.

You have to drag the head of your bed right under the window and have it open all night just to try and get a breath of fresh air with which to go to sleep on, then just as the temperature drops enough to let you drop off the bastard sun comes up...in the middle of the night.

Then you get the daytime which turns into full on sensory GBH. The air is permanently thick with the smell of incinerated pig and every chav in Christendom decides to worship that big, yellow glowy thing in the sky in the traditional manner, the playing of 'Ibiza Anthems vol 42,609' at full volume through open windows all day.

I could continue (and I will)

-Wimbledon fortnight - and the assorted fucknuttery that goes along with it.

-Festivals - Yay, your favourite artist is playing a show. Unfortunately you've got to pay hundreds of pounds for the privilege of seeing them play for 40 minutes from four miles away while surrounded by a bunch of Tarquins and Ruperts, drinking a warm, plastic glass of £6 Carling, with your bowels backed up to the back end of buggery, in the mud and in the fucking rain.

-Ale - Rather than a nice, dark, spicy, chewy winter ale you get that horrible, citrusy, gassy, pale-as-a-witches-tit nonsense that is a summer ale. Worse than that, it sells so well in the summer that they keep it on sale all year. Funny enough I don't really want a bottle of 'Summer Lightning' with my Christmas dinner.

-Cricket - Actually I love cricket, but summer is the time that I tend to spend £10 a day watching Glamorgan play cricket like the Keystone Cops. If there was no summer I wouldn't have to do this. Of course, I could just hope for Glamorgan to have a decent cricket team...but even in these days of global warming I think it's more realistic to wish for the year to switch straight from April into October.

-Grannies in sandals - put them away dear, please. The last time those things were even semi-presentable was when Hitler was still known as 'That nice man from Germany with the funny moustache'.

It's three months of hell every four years.
(Fri 16th Oct 2009, 0:00, More)