"The train will be held at the station whilst we try and get a trespasser off the track in Croydon" says the announcer. The train heaves a collective sigh. Oh those vital minutes of having to sit here, instead of somewhere else whilst you play with your phone and ignore people.
The couple opposite me are sharing the Mail on Sunday. Even off their phones there isnt much warmth between them - it sort of feels like they're together just to take it turns carrying the bags and to split the price of the Mail. They even have their own grapes. Their grapes are privatised. Who doesn't share grapes? Anyway, their occasional conversation is about Thatcher. Mainly they exchange rhetorical contempt for anyone criticising her in the wake of her death.
"These disgusting death parties - speak no ill of the dead!" broods the ruddy hubby.
"Completely compassionless loony left" comes an indignant reply, "and selfish!"
It is interupted by the announcer again. "It looks like we may be delayed a little longer than expected, the trespasser has sadly been struck by a train and killed."
With no time for reflection, and a sudden u-turn on of-dead-ill-speaking, ruddy hubby huffs "some people are just selfish idiots."
Yes. Yes they are.
Sunday 14 April 2013
Thursday 11 April 2013
A proposal for massage recipients
A PROPOSAL
If you've ever given a massage, you've probably been told at some point that you're good at them. Massages usually feel quite good, even at the most amateur level. For some people, however, this praise can lead to over confidence. People can come to believe that 'I'm the sort of person that is good at massage', even in the face of powerful evidence to the contrary.
"Ouch don't do that. You're hurting my neck"
"No Im not. Im the sort of person that is good at massage"
They will even try and prove that it is your neck nerves that are wrong, not their skilled fingers...
(Strained) "Please stop"
"Listen, if your neck is hurting, you're not letting me do it right"
Their belief in their massage skills is fundamental, and like a zealot, they are pretty hard to argue with when it comes to core beliefs.
Eventually you will make your escape, but you may lose your friend and probably the use of half your face. To protect against this I propose that all massage praise is in future realistically calibrated.
"That was a good massage in a way that many people would be capable of. I nevertheless appreciate your attention"
For example.
Incidentally, the best massage I ever got was off a 6' 5" Polish scaffolder called Joe. It was like he was rubbing my soul. He was not in the least bit noisy about his skills, but people who he had touched were positively, off the radar, 'best massage ever!' evangelical. It would seem that recipient testimony is a far better indicator than the boasts of a potential incapacitator.
Remember. Be accurate with your massage praise.
Massage zealots may already be lost, but lets hope that some shoulder muscles may still be saved.
If you've ever given a massage, you've probably been told at some point that you're good at them. Massages usually feel quite good, even at the most amateur level. For some people, however, this praise can lead to over confidence. People can come to believe that 'I'm the sort of person that is good at massage', even in the face of powerful evidence to the contrary.
"Ouch don't do that. You're hurting my neck"
"No Im not. Im the sort of person that is good at massage"
They will even try and prove that it is your neck nerves that are wrong, not their skilled fingers...
(Strained) "Please stop"
"Listen, if your neck is hurting, you're not letting me do it right"
Their belief in their massage skills is fundamental, and like a zealot, they are pretty hard to argue with when it comes to core beliefs.
Eventually you will make your escape, but you may lose your friend and probably the use of half your face. To protect against this I propose that all massage praise is in future realistically calibrated.
"That was a good massage in a way that many people would be capable of. I nevertheless appreciate your attention"
For example.
Incidentally, the best massage I ever got was off a 6' 5" Polish scaffolder called Joe. It was like he was rubbing my soul. He was not in the least bit noisy about his skills, but people who he had touched were positively, off the radar, 'best massage ever!' evangelical. It would seem that recipient testimony is a far better indicator than the boasts of a potential incapacitator.
Remember. Be accurate with your massage praise.
Massage zealots may already be lost, but lets hope that some shoulder muscles may still be saved.
Some thoughts on the atheists
“What about the dinosaurs?!?” cried the atheist stand-up, as if creation stories are the only question religion attempts to answer.
Whilst I do not deny the unhelpful impact religious institutions have on some aspects of society, from distrusting pork, prawns and homosexuals, to harbouring institutionalised paedophilia, there is also only so much you can learn about the human heart by dissecting a frog.
Jesus’ ‘sermon on the mount’, a live track from his excellent first album ‘the new testament’, is a pretty right on message of love, forgiveness and social harmony. However, just as Malcolm McClaren and Vivienne Westwood (any many more in their wake) seized upon the revolutionary punk movement to sell records and clothes (albeit excellently cut – damn that girl knows a woman’s body!), so too was Jesus’ anti-establishment message appropriated by the mainstream. Punk was dead by the Nicene Creed 325AD.
But if this stuff has been being said for so long, why is it so frequently missed? Other than the fact that most people work too much to ever have any time to think about this stuff, we often find it hard to separate the fine wheat from ubiquitous chaf.
Athiests might throw out a ‘Jesus’ baby*, with the ‘I’m the son of god’ bathwater. David Icke talks a lot about stopping brutality in the world, famine and saving the economy, but he also says the Queen is a lizard… as well as straying frequently into anti-Semitism. John Lennon wrote ‘Imagine’. He also worked with Paul McCartney.
Sometimes I hesitate to say I’m an atheist, because other atheists are so annoying. Maybe this is how those people feel when they won’t say they’re feminist because they don’t like dungarees. Of course those people are very foolish. To not say you’re feminist, you might as well say that you are pro-bigotry. But back to ‘some atheists’ - an enthusiastic defence of rationalism overlooks the fact that we are not totally rational. If my girlfriend is seeing her ex for coffee, my rational response is ‘I’m sure he is a great guy, he certainly has a great taste in women’, but my gut’s response, and the one I feel altogether more vividly, is a desire to grind his face into an abrasive surface, be sick and hope he fails in everything he ever does again. I do what my head says, but still feel what my gut says, and maybe religion can answer my guts questions. Besides, atheists who criticise dogma, just do it so dogmatically!
Preech over. Testify.
*Jesus baby NOT Baby Jesus
Whilst I do not deny the unhelpful impact religious institutions have on some aspects of society, from distrusting pork, prawns and homosexuals, to harbouring institutionalised paedophilia, there is also only so much you can learn about the human heart by dissecting a frog.
Jesus’ ‘sermon on the mount’, a live track from his excellent first album ‘the new testament’, is a pretty right on message of love, forgiveness and social harmony. However, just as Malcolm McClaren and Vivienne Westwood (any many more in their wake) seized upon the revolutionary punk movement to sell records and clothes (albeit excellently cut – damn that girl knows a woman’s body!), so too was Jesus’ anti-establishment message appropriated by the mainstream. Punk was dead by the Nicene Creed 325AD.
But if this stuff has been being said for so long, why is it so frequently missed? Other than the fact that most people work too much to ever have any time to think about this stuff, we often find it hard to separate the fine wheat from ubiquitous chaf.
Athiests might throw out a ‘Jesus’ baby*, with the ‘I’m the son of god’ bathwater. David Icke talks a lot about stopping brutality in the world, famine and saving the economy, but he also says the Queen is a lizard… as well as straying frequently into anti-Semitism. John Lennon wrote ‘Imagine’. He also worked with Paul McCartney.
Sometimes I hesitate to say I’m an atheist, because other atheists are so annoying. Maybe this is how those people feel when they won’t say they’re feminist because they don’t like dungarees. Of course those people are very foolish. To not say you’re feminist, you might as well say that you are pro-bigotry. But back to ‘some atheists’ - an enthusiastic defence of rationalism overlooks the fact that we are not totally rational. If my girlfriend is seeing her ex for coffee, my rational response is ‘I’m sure he is a great guy, he certainly has a great taste in women’, but my gut’s response, and the one I feel altogether more vividly, is a desire to grind his face into an abrasive surface, be sick and hope he fails in everything he ever does again. I do what my head says, but still feel what my gut says, and maybe religion can answer my guts questions. Besides, atheists who criticise dogma, just do it so dogmatically!
Preech over. Testify.
*Jesus baby NOT Baby Jesus
A discussion on honesty
People put up a lot of fronting, don’t they? A lot of facades… but there’s other stuff on Grand Designs too.
People pick on hip hop or chav culture for fronting, and they have a real hatred for it, but its no different really to middle class fronting, things like letters about Grace’s Grade 7 flute and how everything is fine.
Everything isn’t fine. Your husband’s never home and your eldest is a drug abuser.
Of course, drug abuse is a funny phrase. Usually if you’re abusing something, the thing is the subject of abuse.
(mimes punching a shrub) “Take that cocaine!!” said the man punching a bush.
Does Cocaine grow on bushes? I don’t know where cocaine comes from. Probably shouldn’t put stuff in your body if you don’t know where it comes from… like 98% of the food we eat.
It should be called drug ‘misuse’ because that would imply that drugs can also sometimes be just used too. Except cocaine. I think if you’re taking cocaine, you’re probably misusing cocaine. No-one has ever been enlightened by cocaine, unless it was by the sun shining out of their arse.
Not to bang on about cocaine (Charlie, have you had some cocaine?), but top quality cocaine smells a bit of petrol because petrol is used to get it out of the leaves. With shitty smelling cocaine that doesn’t smell of petrol, whilst its good to know you’re not snorting petrol, you’re probably also not snorting cocaine either.
People pick on hip hop or chav culture for fronting, and they have a real hatred for it, but its no different really to middle class fronting, things like letters about Grace’s Grade 7 flute and how everything is fine.
Everything isn’t fine. Your husband’s never home and your eldest is a drug abuser.
Of course, drug abuse is a funny phrase. Usually if you’re abusing something, the thing is the subject of abuse.
(mimes punching a shrub) “Take that cocaine!!” said the man punching a bush.
Does Cocaine grow on bushes? I don’t know where cocaine comes from. Probably shouldn’t put stuff in your body if you don’t know where it comes from… like 98% of the food we eat.
It should be called drug ‘misuse’ because that would imply that drugs can also sometimes be just used too. Except cocaine. I think if you’re taking cocaine, you’re probably misusing cocaine. No-one has ever been enlightened by cocaine, unless it was by the sun shining out of their arse.
Not to bang on about cocaine (Charlie, have you had some cocaine?), but top quality cocaine smells a bit of petrol because petrol is used to get it out of the leaves. With shitty smelling cocaine that doesn’t smell of petrol, whilst its good to know you’re not snorting petrol, you’re probably also not snorting cocaine either.
An argument to re-establish the Danelaw
I am tired of suffering at the hands of English imperialism - You might not be able to tell by my accent, so brutal has been the eroding of my culture, but I am in fact a native of the Danelaw and have had enough of the imperialism of Wessex!
Our once proud land has been robbed of its heritage, coal and gravy and enslaved by a 1000 year enslaught of corrupt governments, false religions and The National Lottery.
I have not come to your capital to fight though, but as a merchant of peace. I fear for you and see not the honesty in your trades of ‘brand manangement’ (Ccbrandchch Managechment in my native dane – literally ‘font whisperer’) and think you may be humbled by our noble trades of sheepherdessing, hill climbing and bingo calling.
During an economic climate of massive unemployment in my homeland, I have marvelled at your ability to create committees-full of jobs to promote hair-dryers and digital television (Cchdgdchhd in my native dane – literally ‘soufflé’) amongst Wessexian counterparts.
I’m calling for a ban on Wessexism in the work place, and a devolved parliament for the Danelaw.
cCchhcGgdgdgdghgdhdh (Dane for ‘Who’s with me’?)
Our once proud land has been robbed of its heritage, coal and gravy and enslaved by a 1000 year enslaught of corrupt governments, false religions and The National Lottery.
I have not come to your capital to fight though, but as a merchant of peace. I fear for you and see not the honesty in your trades of ‘brand manangement’ (Ccbrandchch Managechment in my native dane – literally ‘font whisperer’) and think you may be humbled by our noble trades of sheepherdessing, hill climbing and bingo calling.
During an economic climate of massive unemployment in my homeland, I have marvelled at your ability to create committees-full of jobs to promote hair-dryers and digital television (Cchdgdchhd in my native dane – literally ‘soufflé’) amongst Wessexian counterparts.
I’m calling for a ban on Wessexism in the work place, and a devolved parliament for the Danelaw.
cCchhcGgdgdgdghgdhdh (Dane for ‘Who’s with me’?)
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