I am livid

Everyone likes a good yarn. I know I do. This wonderful world of ours has some great tales of true-life bravery to be told. The Iraq War (both). That Jewish Girl who hid in the loft. The Lord of the Rings Trilogy. All are strories which we have heard through the medium of Hollywood movies.

Where would we be without the holywood movie? Relying on history teachers, that’s where. And lets be honest, the teachers of today aren’t a patch on a decent DVD.

Which brings me to my next point. Movies based on true stories. I can understand a bit of artistic licence when it comes to things like Sparticus and Robin Hood. They can’t hire an advisor to give them accurate facts on how the actual events unfolded. And most movies aren’t fortunate to have written evidence like the diary like that Jewish girl kept, or the book that Bilbo Baggins wrote, to confirm all the accurate details of how events unfolded. Unfortunately, the Hollywood machine has taken a new approach when it comes to ‘filling in the gaps’.

It’s known as the phrase, “based on a true story”.

What this actually means is this; something happened, we’ve used the peoples real names, and we decided to see where it went with the scriptwriters.

This is something I’ve only just learned, as previously I’d assumed that “based on a true story” meant, “we’ve changed some of the dialogue to make it cinema friendly, but the core story is 100% true”.

I watched a film at the weekend which took this to a new level, so I’ve done a bit of research to see just how many of these “true” stories are actually a complete load of bollocks. Below is my summary. Read the rest of this entry »

Offices are dull boring places most of the time, well, mine is. So anything you can do to brighten up your day should be applauded. At least that’s the way I feel. Unless you wear a hilarious comedy cartoon tie of course, in which case a slow period of strangulation is too good for you. Why do people who wear comedy ties consistently wear a perpetual grin? I’m assuming a bad case of retardation is the cause, but I’m not sure. Anyway I digress.

Fat Jim has been away for a few days and brought me back a mug, he gave it to me as part of a marathon “I’ve been away and you haven’t” bragging session, the miserable twat. I’m not in the least bit grateful, but the mug itself is quite good. Firstly, it’s quite big so I can get a lot of caffeine in it. Secondly, and most importantly, it has a picture of several attractive women in bikini’s on an exotic beach. In short, it is a work of art.

This is not the best bit however. Oh no. When you add a hot drink to the mug, the bikini’s disappear. What wonderful magic this is! So, when it comes to brightening up the office, you can see why I like this item.

But not everyone feels the same as me. Oh no.

I received an email today from HR, it read thus.

“Hi Angry,

Would you mind taking your new mug home, I’m afraid a couple of people are a little offended by it.

Thanks!

HR Nazi”

OK, they didn’t sign it HR Nazi, but the rest is accurate. I went to see the Nazi to discuss this matter, and my email response could’ve got me in more trouble than it’s worth. Read the rest of this entry »

Adverts on TV today are shit.

There was a time when the odd amusing one would appear and raise a smile, even the odd titter. Strangely I used to find the old Rowan Atkinson Barclaycard ones quite funny. Unfortunately the recent dumbing down of advertising has left me worried for the state of the nation as we must assume these adverts are actually working.

Surely we’re not all sheep?

Are we?

Personally I think it began with Budweiser and the “Wasssup” campaign. I still know people that answer their phones like this. Complete twats the lot of them.

Also, I pay good money to watch my TV, about £40 a month, so I don’t want to be inundated with advertising Mr Sky TV. Especially not between the low-brow dumbed-down retardvision you seem to be showing by the bucket-load at the moment.

The BBC isn’t much better though. OK, I may not have to listen to that old bat from Terry & June witter on about paying for funerals and stairlifts and stuff, but I pay a licence fee for programming, not for you to tell me how fucking great you are. Apparently it’s called ‘positive reinforcement’. I’m paying over £100 a year to be told how good a channel, that I had no choice in purchasing, actually is. What a load of fucking arse. Read the rest of this entry »

Sunday morning saw “The greatest and most popular Marathon on earth” take place on the streets of our fair capital. I find the term “greatest and most popular marathon on earth” a bit misleading though. Firstly, it implies that it’s great. When in actual fact, it isn’t. Far from it. It’s a truly dire spectator sport, right up there with bowls and croquet, and a fucking dreadful misery to complete yourself. In fact, it’s a bit like calling Guantanamo Bay “The most popular alleged-terrorist holding facility on earth”. Perhaps factually correct, but misleading nonetheless.

I watched it for a little while during the morning. Not so that I could warm the cockles of my heart as the self-promoting do-gooders raised countless pennies for charidee, but in the vain hope that I’d see some C-list celebrity break down crying or have some sort of coronary episode. I would’ve even settled for a Paula Radcliffe style I-absolutely-positively-must-have-a-shit-right-now moment.

Unfortunately I got to see none of this during my hour in front the TV. Instead, I had to settle for commentators trying to get a quote from the running C-Listers. Read the rest of this entry »

I was commuting into London yesterday, something that I have to with reasonably frequency for the day job (I apologize for shattering the mystique that surrounds me, yes I’m normal too).

As I normally do, I bought a coffee and a paper at the station, something of a ritual, and then took my seat on the train to catch up on events around the world. That’s when the fat guy decided to sit next to me, and when I say fat, he makes Fat Jim look like that running bird who shat herself in the London Marathon . Now I don’t mind fat people generally, unless they start doing ‘fat’ things, like sweating and wheezing, or in this case, taking up more than their fair share of space.

And that’s when it began.

First it was just furtive glances at the headlines. I clocked him straight away, but decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. Then, despite the fact that we already closer than an Italian election result, he began to manoeuvre himself even closer to me in order to get a good look at the articles. It was at that point it happened. He made a move to stop me turning a page. He obviously caught himself in the act, as he didn’t actually make contact with the paper, but I know he wanted to. Our eyes met, and he could see he’d made a mistake of quite epic proportions, and so the conversation began.

“That’ll be 10p”, I demand. Read the rest of this entry »

At the recent wedding I went to in Portugal one of the guests brought along her dog as her ‘plus 1′. This in itself is fucking ludicrous. But it gets worse.

The dog had it’s own bag. Think handbag, but with a couple of vents for ‘windows’. Think tiny fucking rat-like dog sticking it’s head out like a mere cat. It was possibly the most ridiculous sight I’ve ever seen at a wedding.

Worse still, the dog and it’s bag had it’s own place setting. Meaning that the bride and groom had paid for the dog to attend the wedding. I shit you not.

Dogs have legs. Please let them use them. Don’t pick them up and put them in a Prada lookalike mini-mobile kennel.

I thought it was only dumb rich fuckers like Paris Hilton that put dogs in bags, alas no. This dog bag owner was just a normal person. Well, I say normal. She was as normal as anyone who talks to their dog like a real person can be. At one point she asked the dog what it thought of the food. She’d have shit herself if it had replied ‘overcooked’ like that dog on That’s Life. So I guess that with hindsight she was actually a fucking loon.

Anyway, any of you dog owners ever thought of carrying Fido round in a bag of his very own?

Tom Cruise, the dwarf Scientologist and ‘Maverick’ in Top Gun has decided he’s going to eat the placenta from his girlfriend, Katie Holmes - the fit one from Dawson’s Creek, no, not the blonde one who died, the other one - after the recent birth of their daughter.

They had a baby called Suri on Tuesday, and because it’s apparently full of vitamins (the placenta, not his baby) the not-really-gay-now-I’ve-had-my-own-baby-with-a-proper-girl midget wants to eat the thing which has spent the last nine months providing nutrition for his, until now, unborn child. Essentially, a human organ will be dispensed from Katie’s front bum and Tom will then chow down like in Chinatown.

This is sick. Read the rest of this entry »

If any of you work in London then you’ll be more than familiar with the necessary evil that is the Tube network. Don’t get me wrong, I’d prefer to use an underground train than be sat next a piss-drenched OAP making the most of their free-pass on the bus, but it’s still a less than salubrious method of getting round the city.

In an ideal world it’d be limo’s all the way, but until someone tries to build on my recently acquired plot of land on the moon, or that fucking Nigerian priest sends the cheque he promised me, I can’t afford that.

Being British there are certain elements of basic etiquette that are generally followed on the Tube, things like apologising profusely if someone barges into you and avoiding eye contact at all times, but due to the increasing number of tourists and chavs it has become necessary to audibly articulate this etiquette to the mases at every opportunity. Hence the “Please allow people off the train before boarding” announcements.

So listen, and get the fuck out of the way when I try and get off the tube. OK? It is particularly bad during rush hour as the vultures in suits descend on a slowing train and try to align themselves with an opening door much like hungry chicks around a regurgitating albatross. If they don’t get out of the way I find a loud scream or Tarzan-like call creates a gap for me, particularly if the women in the carriage join in with the screaming.

Unfortunately getting on and off the Tube isn’t the end of the fun and games, oh no. Read the rest of this entry »

Rush-hour traffic is bad - we know this. There is nothing new in saying, “isn’t rush hour traffic a complete bastard”. If you’re unlucky enough to be on a main road in any major conurbation and get to 40 mph at any point in your rush-hour journey to work then you’ve been very lucky indeed. We’ve come to expect slow traffic, and generally we ignore it like we do party political broadcasts and requests from friends to borrow money. It’s a fact of life.

However, sometimes it can get really slow, this can be due to any number of factors. A car crash ahead, a flat tyre, or simply Karma noticing that I’m in a particular hurry that morning. Karma really can be a shit sometimes.

Thursdays journey to work was exceptionally slow, this is surprising as during half-term week there are no 4×4 off-road vehicles taking the kids to school so things tend to move a bit quicker. Even though it was slow I noticed no accident, no flat tyres in need of changing, and I was not in a particular hurry so Karma was unable to screw me over.

So what caused all the delays? Read the rest of this entry »

It’s a Bank Holiday, and I’m off to get pissed, so I’ll be brief today…

It appears the plans to ban ’sham’ marriages has been blocked by the High Court on the basis that it’s discriminatory against immigrants. This is because if you were from outside the EU with less than 6 months permission to be in the UK then you need Home office permission to get married. Unless you’re Church of England. And of course there’s loads upon loads of Church of England-er’s outside the EU.

Anyway, the idea of this law was that it would close the loophole that allowed any Tom Dick or Hamza to stay in the country if they paid someone enough to marry them. Read the rest of this entry »

I can understand this being the first thing you say when you answer your phone at home. I can even understand it if it’s the first thing you say when you answer your phone at work.

What I abso-fucking-lutely cannot excuse is you saying it when answering your mobile. It has a graphical display right there on the front, and caller ID allows that display to tell you, in plain English, who is calling. So why feign suprise when you learn it’s me? I know you. You know me. There is no need to waste time on pleasantries when a simple glance at the phone will tell you who it is. Plus, in todays mobile phone market of per-second billing your fucking laziness is costing me money. This will simply not do. Read the rest of this entry »

Three little words that can mean so much, to so many.

Not words I use very often to be honest, at least not until the local off-licence started a delivery service. However, it’s unfortunately becoming popular to say these words when you’re talking to someone you barely know. This is due to one man, and one man alone. Radio 1’s very own Scott Mills. What a complete fucking arsewipe.

Each on-air caller he gets on his show receives a “Love you” from Mills at the end of the brief conversation, purely in the hope that the caller will say it back. Well don’t. Tell the fucking gay-boy to fuck right off. If a complete stranger says ‘I love you’, do you respond in kind? Do you fuck. Unless you’re desperate for a shag of course.

If a man I’d been talking to for 30 seconds told me he loved me, then I’d rip off his arms, see how far I could get my thumbs into his eyes and then strap head phones to his ears with “Back to Bedlam” playing on constant repeat. A punishment I’d planned to reserve solely for kiddy fiddlers. I’d hate him that much. Read the rest of this entry »

Or friends-that-you-spited, as perhaps it would be better known. How many of you have used this website? Most of you have had a look I’d imagine. I know I have. But how many of you have paid to subscribe? I certainly haven’t.

I do however have an entry from 5 years ago, not under Mr Angry, as I was merely Master Mildly Irritated back in the day. Part of the fun of subscribing was trying to find a clever way of getting your email address in the description without the automatic filter taking it out again, hence saving you £7.50 a year in case anyone ever does get in touch.

“…you can email me at mister, followed by a dot, angry, then a funny at sign, with i am livid - all as one word - add another dot, followed by a com”

Easy. And £7.50 better off to boot.

My main use of the site has been to see what my old school colleagues - I’m loathe to use the term Friends - are doing now. On the off-chance they’re more successful than me. Or to see if they’re bald and fat. I have also looked up some of the boys I went to school with.

I’ve been browsing again recently after getting several emails informing me that “New friends from your school have signed up!”. Interesting I thought. Even worth a quick look perhaps. Until you realise the person they’re referring to did their ‘O’ Levels before you were born and are currently thinking about taking early retirement.  The lying bastards. Read the rest of this entry »

I missed the sandwich van on its daily trip to our offices. This is not good. If I am to avoid starvation this means a quick trip into town, so that’s what I did. My plan was to park in the multistory car park, pop to the sandwich shop, and get back to the office for my 2 O’Clock meeting. Easy.

It takes no more than 10 minutes to get to the car park, I get my ticket at the barrier and proceed into the honeycombed layers of stacked vehicles.

Now, can someone explain to me why there are people who don’t realise there is more than one level? Surely the clue is in the name? I followed one such driver into the car park at lunchtime today. On level G we dawdle round, overtaken at one point by a young mother pushing a pram. Everyone knows the ground level is filled with office workers who are there for the day. You are not going to spot an unused space. Everyone knows you are as likely to see Osama Bin Laden in your local McDonalds as someone returning to their car on the ground level.

At level 1 they slow down again, well below walking pace now. Until the car stops. I can now see her looking all around the current floor. She looks left, then right, very slowly and ever so methodically much like that long necked giant lizard in ‘Walking with Dinosaurs’. Then she looks behind. At me. And what do I do? I smile. Just because she’s pretty. Read the rest of this entry »