Who's Your Daddy?

I've never understood the phrase "Who's your Daddy?". It's generally uttered in films to imply sexual prowess - but if you think about it, that's just wrong on every level.

Doing Your Bit

In the wake of England's failure to qualify for the European footie championships next year (don't worry, this isn't a footie rant), I thought I'd put another one of my pet hates to paper.

When the team plays appallingly, the manager has made the wrong selections etc etc, the whole country is, quite rightly, up in arms. We have a dig at the players, coaches, managers - anyone's a target. But what gets me is some bright spark will always say something along the lines of "Well, I'd like to see you do better!", or"It's not as easy as it looks you know".

Hmm - yes, but it's not my job is it? It's not the thing I do every day, and therefore should be pretty damn good at. Me, I work in Internet advertising - and I'm ok at it. I should be, I do it day in day out for 40 odd hours a week. If I wasn't good at it I'd have to ask myself why. I certainly wouldn't turn round to a customer and say "Well, it's all a bit tricky really - I'm doing better than you could in any case".

I remember a rant I had at a taxi driver once through wound-down windows. His driving was truly appalling, and I berated him thoroughly for being so poor at the thing he spends a third of his life doing - driving a car. Sadly he didn't seem to understand what the issue was and got rather angry. So did I. As we crawled along in slow moving motorway traffic, he decided he was going to follow me home. "Where are you going?" he shouted across at me. "Your mum's house!" I shouted back, before realising that the traffic could stop at any time and I'd be toast. Thankfully it didn't and I wasn't.

Back to sports - we see Lewis Hamilton completely fluff his last two F1 races when he had the world championship in his hands. Many people leapt to his defence - "It's incredibly tough keeping your focus, and very demanding physically" etc etc. Well - that's the whole point of F1 isn't it? You become better through years of tedious training to avoid the stupid mistakes that the rest of us monkeys would make.

No matter what you do, no matter how hard it is or how boring it is, you're the person doing it, not me. You'd be crap doing my job, and I'd be crap doing yours. As a customer, spectator, consumer and armchair pundit I have every right to expect others to take responsibility for what they do for a living, and I don't want excuses thank you very much.

The Bank

Ok, just popped out to the cashpoint. I didn't put on a coat - it's freezing out there, but I didn't think I'd be too long, as it's just outside the office door, and there's normally only a couple of people in the queue. But I forgot my worst enemy -the non-believer.

The non-believer has just taken out £20 in cash, but doesn't quite believe it. So she has to get a little receipt out of the cashpoint to prove it. Even then she's astounded at the apparent complexity of what's happened, and stares at the piece of paper for an eternity before moving on. I'm surprised she doesn't ring the bank to confirm it, or ask for signed witness statements from the rest of us in the queue just to prove that she actually did just take out £20 - no more, no less.

So the result of her actions, and my incredible lack of short-term patience, is that I am in the cold for another 30 seconds cursing at her to hurry along.

The process she goes through, of course, stems from a mistrust of technology. But it's the same machine giving you the receipt as the one that just gave you the money! So you don't trust it one minute, and 30 seconds after producing a bit of paper as some sort of evidence it's completely reliable?

My dad suffers the same affliction with technology - although at 70 odd, he's perfectly entitled to. He firmly believes that if 'computers' didn't exist, he could call up British Gas, and some kindly lady would pick up within three rings, walk to the other end of the office and fetch his 'file'. He sent a letter once and actually asked a lady at one of these massive call centres if she had his letter in front of him. Never mind that the call centre was probably in India, and his letter had been preserved electronically and subsequently incinerated.

I try to explain to him that most mistakes - miss-spelling of his name, an incorrect bill - are actually human error, and that 'computers' actually make 99% of our life more efficient and bearable. But of course it falls on deaf ears (that's another story altogether - he's hard of hearing, and can't hear women with Scottish accents on the phone).

Anyway, I digress. We all know that banks are crooked, but it's a relatively safe place for your money. If you don't trust cashpoints, don't use them. Keep your money stuffed under a mattress and see what happens when the mice get in or the place goes up in smoke. That way I won't have to mutter obscenities at you in the queue.

Show Me A Sign

Occasionally I see those cardboard signs on roundabouts advertising the time and location of Psychic Fairs.

I can't help thinking that the attendees should already have this information.

The Challenge

Anyone who knows me will attest to that fact that I like useless bits of information. Most of it's pointless stuff, but it's there in my head nonetheless.

I can remember my parents's car registrations from day one (PKX913R, ALK133Y etc), Iknow that Hong Kong Phooey is actually Penry the mild mannered janitor, not Henry as most people assume (it's short for Penrod Pooch in case you doubt my pedantry). I know that Wellington is the most Southerly capital in the world, that DVD stands for Digital Versatile Disc (not Video of course), and the dog in The Fraggles was called Sprocket

I also notice things that others don't. I notice at work that on one side of the building the voice in the lift is female, and on the other side it is male. I notice that the scene in Terminator on the motorbike has far too many gear changes (most motorbikes have 5, and there seem to be closer to 10). I notice spelling miskates too (that's one right there, and if you didn't spot it then shame on you).

I remember things and I notice things - so what? Well, it's a bit of a curse actually. I love to pipe up in a discussion with a fact or two, or even a string of logic argument as to why something isn't how someone else thinks it is, because I know. Don't we all? The difference is that I actually care about some of these banal discussions, and people spot this as my weakness. Example - if I tell you one of the Wombles was called Bungo, you might look at me quizzically. After all, if you can't remember one called Bungo, then there probably wasn't one. I mean, really, who would remember something like that? So do you challenge it or accept it?

I was told the other day that a wasp isn't an animal - it's an insect. Now, where many people would roll over and say "Oh really, I never knew that", I have to fight to the bitter end to convince them of their utter wrongness. They of course fight back, but I'm always the one who get accused of being stubborn, never admitting I'm wrong, like a dog with a bone etc etc. And that's the part that gets me. Because it's a game of two sides.

It's a game of Challenge. I am a reasonable person, and therefore I won't even begin to engage in a pointless discussion unless I'm absolutely positive that I'm right - and I am at least 90% of the time in these cases. This being the case, people see it as a challenge to try and prove me wrong, outdo me. Anything to have the chance to say "Ha!! Loser!! You're wrong and I proved it!! Hey everybody! He's wrong - I got him real good!". Which, on occasion when it does happen, I think is a little unfair. I don't do this when the shoe is on the other foot, I simply accept my tiny victory with grace and a smug inner smile.

If I'm wrong, I'm wrong - fine, I will honestly hold my hands up and bow down to your greatness and knowledge. Just prove it to me with facts or logic. It's the only way my tiny brain works, and that's how I'm fighting the battle goddammit. Please don't enter into a pointless discussion with me for half an hour, and then say I'm the one who's stubborn, when you're the one who won't let it lie - and usually the one who is wrong. Well, 90% percent of the time anyway.

Phone woes

I have a really flash mobile phone - bit like a Blackberry, but better looking and with more 'stuff' on it. Pretty much like a mini PC. Now, I wouldn't choose a phone like this, but work pay for it and that arrangement suits me fine.

The problem is - it's shit. Because it runs so much software it crashes all the time, and I'm a bit fed up with that. But my face lit up with amusement yesterday when I got the following error message:

"Your phone is currently switched off, would you like to turn it on?"

Now, I ain't fik or nuffink, but surely if my phone is providing me error messages, it must be switched on? What amuses me most is that at some point in the development of this phone, someone actually said "We need to provide an error message for when the phone is switched off and the user wants to switch it on. The phone will need to be ON when we display this message of course, but that shouldn't cause any confusion in the slightest".

Genius.

Sax - on the beach?

I remember when I used to watch Top of The Pops I was younger - say early teens perhaps - that there were certain instruments that were clearly way cooler than others.

The clear loser of these in those days, as it is now, was the keyboard/guitar thing that was so popular amongst many a coiffured pop band. The undoubted winner, and the one we all wanted to play, was the saxophone.

Sax was on loads of records - obvious smash hits as Baker Street and The Heat Is On - but also countless lesser known top 40 hits. There was a smattering of sax everywhere, and to have a sax player on the Pops was the ultimate kudos for a band.

But what now? We don't seem to use sax players any more, so where have all the sax players gone? Ok, so there's still 'horn sections', but it's not the same thing (and many are synthesied anyway).

The solitary sax solo seems to have drifted into pop obscurity, and I'm not here to campaign to bring it back. Good riddance I'd say.

Just my imagination?

How many times have we reminisced about 'the old days', particularly with regards to the declining size of our confectionery?

Only this morning, someone in the office was passing round the Penguins, and the first thing I found myself saying was "Is it just my imagination, or are these smaller than they used to be?" Up until now I have been fairly convinced that seeing as my hands have grown considerably since the age of 12, that all our sweets only look smaller, when they are actually the same size. But today, I have had a sudden, unexplained u-turn and convinced myself otherwise.

So I'm here to tell you that Penguins, Mars Bars, Curly Wurly, Monster Munch and Wagon Wheels are definitely smaller than when we were younger - it's all a big conspiracy.

And what happened to Pacers?

Time Wasting

I saw an ad on the tube yesterday, for some kind of little portable electronic game device thing, something along these lines:

"Did you know that the average person spends THREE YEARS of their life commuting? What a waste! In that time you could be feeding, raising and competing with your own virtual puppy!"

Yes, because that a far more valuable use of three years of my life.

Horse in the City?

Sarah Jessica Parker - man in drag or a horse? I just don't get why everyone raves about how 'beautiful' she is. She's an absolute munter.

And with that kind of money you'd think she could afford to get that Rice Krispie removed from her chin.