I am livid

Today’s post comes from occasional commentor, Phil. Phil tends to leave about eight comments all at once, much like the deranged stream of consciousness you would expect of a man only allowed access to the Internet once a week.  I am not suggesting he is in an institution of some kind of course, but this time he emailed me rather than leaving a five hundred word entry in the comment of an old post. It made me smile, and I agree with him, so I am sharing it with you all. Take it away Phil…

Being at a loose end I thought I’d make a baked potato using the oven for a change. Wondering how to do it, and being appallingly lazy, I looked on ‘tinternet and found “How to bake a potato”, subtitled “How to bake a potato, step by step, with pictures”.  You can see the website here.

Take a look and you’ll see it really is a marvellous little website.

Encouragingly, it said oven-baked potatoes are more nutritious and you get crispy skin. The pictures of the result looked delicious. I was going to make one big baked potato but it said use several smaller ones because then you get more yummy skin. Excellent. So I did as it said, and everything was going swimmingly, until it said “preheat the oven to
350 degrees F.”

I looked at my oven. There was no F. It went up to 250 degrees C. What
is 350 degrees Fahrenheit in Centigrade?

I thought, “I’m not going to give in to technology.” I looked in my diary for the conversion factor, but it wasn’t there. It had conversions for length, volume, velocity, etc., but not temperature.

With a sense of shame I returned to the computer for the conversion. First I found a page that said “subtract 40, multiply by 5, divide by 9″. I tried to do that, but wasn’t sure of the result, so I looked yet again and found some Javascript page that performed the calculation.

How much electricity did the great whirling machine of the Internet use because I didn’t bother to look in a cooking book? More than my oven did? Why on earth are Americans still using this baffling and illogical Fahrenheit scale? I’d like to convert every mention of degrees Fahrenheit to Celsius and see how they get on.

As I mentioned a few days ago, I am off to Ireland tomorrow morning for a long weekend and a wedding. I will not be back until Wednesday, so I might not be able to post anything till then.

Whilst I am away I will be scouring the back streets of Dublin searching for Ron’s Pub, as I’m sure that Twenty and his friends would welcome with open arms an Englishman who trades off the fact that he is half-Irish. Honestly, they love that sort of thing over there.

In the meantime I am going to hand over the reigns to you. Yes you. Yes, I really do mean you. (No, not you Fat Jim).

I have spent the last 18 months or so writing about things that have annoyed me from time to time. Now it is your turn. Consider the next few days open season at I am livid. Either write about something that annoys you in the comments, or leave a link to something back at your own site. Anything goes.

I won’t be able to check the comments, so if your comment doesn’t appear it might have been eaten as spam, so try again with less links or mentions of Viagra.

So, over to you, and I will see you on Wednesday or Thursday next week.

Ok, OK, I have delayed it long enough, today’s post comes from my least favourite friend, and wannabe Internet superstar, Fat Jim.

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Firstly, the name is James, and I am much better looking than Angry [No he is not - Ed]. This is a story from a few months ago, but Angry has been refusing to use it. He can be mean like that.

I lay in my bed after a standard lad’s night out of excessive binge drinking followed by a dodgy/dog curry, my clammy body stuck to the bed sheets [because he is fat - Ed] and my headache felt like someone was trying to ventilate my skull with a Kango hammer. As I suffered in my own personal hell I was unaware that a text message was winging its way through the ether, and that it was about to change the course of the morning.

Beep Beep!!

It read, “Hi babe, can you make sure you pick up some toilet roll at Tesco’s”

A seemingly unimportant text I flung my phone on the floor as another wave of nausea gripped me and I slipped back into unconsciousness, until 0930 hrs precisely that is, I am very regular that way. I sat bolt upright remembering the text. The dog curry had served its time imprisoned in my guts and was lobbying for an early release date. I did the math(s). I had to get dressed, drive to Tesco, buy toilet roll, drive home, get on the potty.

I could do this by 1000 hrs, easily.

I contemplated some alternative botty cleaning methods. My Granddad had told me that during the war he used a single corner of cardboard in a type of scooping action. He also told me he brushed his teeth with coal and smuggled meat out of a butchers by stuffing it in his gas mask (not all at the same time - and I do hope he washed his hands first).

I was now in Tesco, it was busy, and it was nearly Christmas. I like to think I am pretty competent at finding my way round this store layout. I would make luminous gay-icon Dale Winton proud with my product location knowledge. I was now in the sweating phase off the poo-cycle and was ready to unload. I darted and dodged through the crowds with the skill of Jonny Wilkinson without an injury, straight to Aisle 3.

FUCK.

I stood there bemused for a second or two. “Fucking Tesco bastards have moved the bog roll”, I muttered under my breath. There were several other bewildered male customers staring at the tins of Roses chocolates that stood in where previously the super-soft bum wipes had been. They were probably thinking the same as me, and wondering if they could use the wrapper from a country fudge in the same way my Granddad had used his cardboard.

Panic set in and my vision blurred, the dog curry bubbled inside me like Kracatoa on the edge of a big one. I glanced at the signs hanging in the aisles “Home” “Kitchenware”. FUCK FUCK FUCK, where is it, aisle 4? No, five? No. Six? No.

I was sure that there was nothing much further than that, it’s mainly Crisps Nutts and booze. Why would you move toilet roll at Christmas?! People shit more at Christmas anyway. It’s basic biology, the more you put in, the more that comes out. I couldn’t bear to ask where it was now, and what would the staff think? They would wonder how I ever used to wipe my arse if I didn’t know where to buy it. God damn this would be embarrassing. As I stood there shaking, poisoned by the night before, tensing my rectoral muscles I looked like I was in cold turkey (Aisle 5 btw).

“………..Aisle 12 Sir, next to the Monster Munch”

“Sorry” I replied, “too far. Can you point me to the toilet?”

As I sprinted off I ripped a piece of card from her clip board, just in case.

Todays guest is an occasional commenter, occasional golf/drinking buddy of mine, and a constant seller of Horse-bases sexual favours, he is, the Equine Pimp.

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Madness has descended on Angry and he is allowing me to rant on his site for the day. Obviously by that I mean that he has clearly gone insane and not that Suggs and crew have just landed on him after falling from a passing plane.

My complaint is a simple one.

Lesley Judd, Janet Ellis, Diane Louise-Jordan, Anthea Turner, Sarah Greene and Valerie Singleton.

These are the women of Blue Peter ‘past’ that I grew up with. In fairness, for a good proportion of that time I had more interest in football than the fairer sex and, even looking back, no one in that list would change my mind.

In a moment of weakness last Wednesday evening I channel surfed onto ‘Comic Relief Does Fame Academy’ (OK, I admit it, it is car crash TV and I couldn’t resist)

“Next up is Blue Peter presenter Zoe Salmon” announced Patrick Kielty, while trying (and failing) not to look smug.

My quick glance at the TV was instantly followed my jaw hitting the floor moment and a exclamation of “When the fuck did kids TV presenters start looking like that??”

I grew up with sensible, fairly frumpy presenters, yet todays kids get a super-hot blonde in short skirts. How the bloody hell is that fair? It’s not surprising that the teenage pregnancy rate is so high, if horny teenage boys are subjected to so called ’safe’ children’s programs containing such objects of desire. She should be on proper adult TV. Trust me, I know this because I’m now sky+’ing it, for research purposes. I’m sure Blue Peter is high on the favourites list of many young men across the country, I can almost imagine the conversations.

“Mum, I want a TV for my room”

“And some kleenex wouldn’t go amiss either”

Is this the only case of this? Am I failing to remember the hot presenters from when I grew up? From a womens point of view, has John Noakes been replaced by a Brad Pitt look-alike?

Kids today? Lucky lucky bastards.