Another thing that amuses me, asides from random collective nouns, is obscure phobias.
If you ever get a dull day at work, or the rain is pouring down outside checkout http://www.phobialist.com/#A- which has a list of every phobia you can think of, and a few you'd rather not.
I mean - the person who suffers from Arachibutyrophobia (Fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of the mouth.) has a relatively easy life - just don't eat Peanut Butter, as does the sufferer of Coulrophobia (Fear of clowns), but how does the person who suffers from Barophobia (Fear of gravity.) cope, short of spending 10 years training as an astronaut?
More importantly - how does one discover that one has a fear of otters (Lutraphobia) - i mean, one doesn't exactly see them walking down the street on a daily basis.
Also - what is there, precisely, to fear about chopsticks (Consecotaleophobia)? When was the last time you, or any of your friends, was attacked by a rampaging mob of chopsticks. Finally - how can the person with Amnesiphobia (Fear of amnesia) be sure they haven't already got amnesia
That one must keep them awake at nights!
OK, so it's neither right or fair to laugh at these poor sods - but it makes you realise what a strange world we live in
Wednesday, 19 March 2008
Tuesday, 18 March 2008
What a waste
I'm slightly unnerved to learn that, purely by having a shower and flushing the loo this morning i've used up over a third of the water that an average etheopian has to survive on daily
20 litres a day is the recommended minimum water a human can survive on, yet i wasted 7 just by using the toilet.
I offset this slightly, however, by cycling the 7 miles to work - thus meaning that fewer trees in the rainforest will be cut down on my behalf. But i'm luckier than most because my work place has on site showers and safe parking for my bike. However, if i want to avoid dairy products, thus being kind to animals, then the rainforests will be cut down anyway to make way for soya plants. Hmmm...
The thing is - like most people i care about the world in a slightly bemused way. Every report tells you something different, and who do you believe? I don't own a car, because i can't afford one - but would happily add to congestion if i could because the alternative - public transport systems - aren't a realistic alternative.
Let's put it this way: It takes me 35 minutes to cycle to work, between 20-30 minutes to drive when i have a car, 1 hour 30 minutes to walk the distance and between 1 hour and 2 hours depending on connections to catch the bus. When a bus does arrive it's late, over-crowded and dirty. Given these statistics who, in our increasingly frantic get-it-done-yesterday world, is going to leave their car at home?
Our governments promise us answers, but only based on how if affects their business interests. We talk about widening the roads as if this is the solution, but history shows that human junk expands to fill the space provided.
Maybe it's time to let the ants take over!
20 litres a day is the recommended minimum water a human can survive on, yet i wasted 7 just by using the toilet.
I offset this slightly, however, by cycling the 7 miles to work - thus meaning that fewer trees in the rainforest will be cut down on my behalf. But i'm luckier than most because my work place has on site showers and safe parking for my bike. However, if i want to avoid dairy products, thus being kind to animals, then the rainforests will be cut down anyway to make way for soya plants. Hmmm...
The thing is - like most people i care about the world in a slightly bemused way. Every report tells you something different, and who do you believe? I don't own a car, because i can't afford one - but would happily add to congestion if i could because the alternative - public transport systems - aren't a realistic alternative.
Let's put it this way: It takes me 35 minutes to cycle to work, between 20-30 minutes to drive when i have a car, 1 hour 30 minutes to walk the distance and between 1 hour and 2 hours depending on connections to catch the bus. When a bus does arrive it's late, over-crowded and dirty. Given these statistics who, in our increasingly frantic get-it-done-yesterday world, is going to leave their car at home?
Our governments promise us answers, but only based on how if affects their business interests. We talk about widening the roads as if this is the solution, but history shows that human junk expands to fill the space provided.
Maybe it's time to let the ants take over!
Friday, 14 March 2008
Bench Tapping Man
This is a true story that actually happened to me. I currently work in the middle of nowhere, but used to work in a town centre and get an hours lunch. This may sound great, but trust me - after a while you get bored of standing in WH Smiths wondering why you're looking at "What Car" magazine for the fifth time that week. Eventually I got bored of trawling round the shops every day with no cash to spend and would sit on the bench in the shopping centre reading a book.
There were four benches upstairs in this shopping centre and two downstairs - all had backs on in those days, but these have been removed since to force people into the shops to spend money.
One day I was sitting on a particular seat when this bloke sat down to my right, extending his arm across the back so it was almost touching me - pretty unnerving as it was. He started tapping the bench. Repeatedly. For a whole hour. It was really, really irritating and eventually i got up and left because i couldn't read my book.
A few days later he was back again - same bench, same position - same tapping. I christened him Bench Tapping Man.
Over the next couple of weeks i noticed that he was always hanging about the centre near to that one bench. If there was no space available he would sit on the next bench up, anxiously watching his preferred bench until it was free and he could return to tap away. It got to the point where i didn't want to go in to the centre incase i ended up sat next to him. Instead I started sitting across the hallway on the other set of benches where he never went.
It was then that i noticed Umbrella Tapping Man.
True - this chap would walk in every lunch time and sit diagonally opposite Bench Tapping Man - tapping the floor with his umbrella and whistling "What a friend we have in Jesus"
I became convinced that there was some secret espionage going on between the two. Possibly they were selling state secrets in morse code??
I will never know - as, sadly, about a week or two after Umbrella Tapping Man appeared on the scene Bench Tapping Man vanished and was never seen again. Possibly U.T.M. had won their secret war - but we will never know.
Truth is stranger than fiction.
There were four benches upstairs in this shopping centre and two downstairs - all had backs on in those days, but these have been removed since to force people into the shops to spend money.
One day I was sitting on a particular seat when this bloke sat down to my right, extending his arm across the back so it was almost touching me - pretty unnerving as it was. He started tapping the bench. Repeatedly. For a whole hour. It was really, really irritating and eventually i got up and left because i couldn't read my book.
A few days later he was back again - same bench, same position - same tapping. I christened him Bench Tapping Man.
Over the next couple of weeks i noticed that he was always hanging about the centre near to that one bench. If there was no space available he would sit on the next bench up, anxiously watching his preferred bench until it was free and he could return to tap away. It got to the point where i didn't want to go in to the centre incase i ended up sat next to him. Instead I started sitting across the hallway on the other set of benches where he never went.
It was then that i noticed Umbrella Tapping Man.
True - this chap would walk in every lunch time and sit diagonally opposite Bench Tapping Man - tapping the floor with his umbrella and whistling "What a friend we have in Jesus"
I became convinced that there was some secret espionage going on between the two. Possibly they were selling state secrets in morse code??
I will never know - as, sadly, about a week or two after Umbrella Tapping Man appeared on the scene Bench Tapping Man vanished and was never seen again. Possibly U.T.M. had won their secret war - but we will never know.
Truth is stranger than fiction.
Wednesday, 12 March 2008
Can we talk about it?
Meetings - the practical alternative to work.
The higher up the food chain you get in business, the less actual time you spend doing anything as opposed to talking about doing things.
If meetings had been about when the wheel was invented we'd still be at the design stage now, wondering what colour it should be, what demographic it would attract, how to market it, whose department would have to pay for it and generally living in subservience to the Ants.
If you are invited to a particularly boring and pointless meeting there are games you can play to pass the time.
1) Pass the buck - see if you can get through the whole process looking like you've been highly pro-active, but without actually getting any work put in your direction. Doing a hard-day's work only annoys other people and is best avoided. It's always the slackers and the loudmouths who get the attention and the promotion. Lean forward purposfully whilst someone is in full-flow, point out how wrong their proposition is and sit back as they spend the next 6 months fuming in an attempt to put it right. You'll get all the glory - they'll get all the work
2) Most likely to - you can set your own categories for this one. Most Likely...to be fired before the next meeting, Most Likely...to get an undeserved payrise etc.
3) Effective doodling - take in a big book, make every appearance of making intensive notes - but in actuality spend your whole time playing hangman with the attractive man/woman sitting next to you. The main thing is to look busy, without actually being so.
At the end of most meetings you will notice a recurring pattern - you and your colleagues will feel that you have made progress without actually having decided a thing. The world will keep on turning, your job will still be rubbish - only now you have an extra spreadsheet to complete everyday that no one ever reads.
The higher up the food chain you get in business, the less actual time you spend doing anything as opposed to talking about doing things.
If meetings had been about when the wheel was invented we'd still be at the design stage now, wondering what colour it should be, what demographic it would attract, how to market it, whose department would have to pay for it and generally living in subservience to the Ants.
If you are invited to a particularly boring and pointless meeting there are games you can play to pass the time.
1) Pass the buck - see if you can get through the whole process looking like you've been highly pro-active, but without actually getting any work put in your direction. Doing a hard-day's work only annoys other people and is best avoided. It's always the slackers and the loudmouths who get the attention and the promotion. Lean forward purposfully whilst someone is in full-flow, point out how wrong their proposition is and sit back as they spend the next 6 months fuming in an attempt to put it right. You'll get all the glory - they'll get all the work
2) Most likely to - you can set your own categories for this one. Most Likely...to be fired before the next meeting, Most Likely...to get an undeserved payrise etc.
3) Effective doodling - take in a big book, make every appearance of making intensive notes - but in actuality spend your whole time playing hangman with the attractive man/woman sitting next to you. The main thing is to look busy, without actually being so.
At the end of most meetings you will notice a recurring pattern - you and your colleagues will feel that you have made progress without actually having decided a thing. The world will keep on turning, your job will still be rubbish - only now you have an extra spreadsheet to complete everyday that no one ever reads.
Tuesday, 4 March 2008
An observance
There is something fundamentally wrong with a universe that can provide a collective noun for hermits.
That most solitary of people, who abandon their homes and hearths to live alone in a cave, surrounded only by sheep and the wilderness - yet we have a collective noun for them. Why??
Do they secretly get together when no one's there and compare loincloths? Do they hold a Hermit Convention where they have a Who's Wattle Is It Anyway competition?
Possibly.
When exactly is this collective noun used? When was the last time you saw some hermits walking down the road together and felt the urge to say, 'Oh look, an observance of hermits?'
We have two choices - Option One - this weekend we should all go out into the forrest, look under the berries and mushrooms and gather the hermits together so we can get use of the term or Option Two - get on with our lives as per usual and just accept there is no sense in anything.
Although Option One sounds attractive we feel that, like climbing every mountain and fording every stream, whilst it may look a good idea on paper the National Rivers Authority would probably have something to say against it. As such we suggest watching Ben Fogle on Countryfile instead.
That most solitary of people, who abandon their homes and hearths to live alone in a cave, surrounded only by sheep and the wilderness - yet we have a collective noun for them. Why??
Do they secretly get together when no one's there and compare loincloths? Do they hold a Hermit Convention where they have a Who's Wattle Is It Anyway competition?
Possibly.
When exactly is this collective noun used? When was the last time you saw some hermits walking down the road together and felt the urge to say, 'Oh look, an observance of hermits?'
We have two choices - Option One - this weekend we should all go out into the forrest, look under the berries and mushrooms and gather the hermits together so we can get use of the term or Option Two - get on with our lives as per usual and just accept there is no sense in anything.
Although Option One sounds attractive we feel that, like climbing every mountain and fording every stream, whilst it may look a good idea on paper the National Rivers Authority would probably have something to say against it. As such we suggest watching Ben Fogle on Countryfile instead.
Thursday, 28 February 2008
Out Of Your Depth?
The problem with public swimming baths is that they are available to the public.
Just recently, in a desperate bid to regain some levels of fitness after 6 long, dark months on public transport (don't get me started...) I started going swimming one day a week after work.
The only problem with going after work is that the pool is quite busy and divided into "lanes" with long ropes where you are supposed to follow the arrows as to which side you swim on. However, it is a fact of Physics that no swimming pool can exist without at least one of the following people(s):
Three Girls Nattering - actually anywhere from 2-5 girls, but always sufficient to make it impossible to reach the side. Having paid £4 each for the priveledge they sit in the shallow end against the wall chatting for the whole time you are there, making a perfunctory length at some point to show they have excercised.
Backstroke/Windmill Arms Swimmer - someone who, despite the crowding of the pool, insists on doing the backstroke without looking where they are going. If they can possibly take up the whole of the pool and hit you on the head by splaying their arms and legs in all directions into the bargain then they will do. Usually a bloke
Kids Jumping In - despite the fact that it is lane swimming and there is a leisure pool next door there is always a small group of boys (always boys) jumping repeatedly in, splashing each other vigourously and pulling one-another's shorts down. Kids are chemically unable to talk in anything less than ear-shattering decibels - so they spend the entire time shouting at one another from a distance of mere millimetres.
Bored Lifeguard - you could drown right in front of him/her and they wouldn't raise an eyebrow. Some public pools have a policy of employing nothing but bored lifeguards with specially raging acne ready for that all important kiss of life.
No Sense Of Direction Person - we can all see the signs showing which side to stay to, yet this person just swims where they want to - forcing you to change your stroke to avoid broken wrists/legs.
And - worst of all: Energetic Swimmer - the person who pauses right next to you when you have just reached the point where your arms and legs are about to fall off and say something to the effect of "Come on, you can do it - I've only another 40 to go myself!"
Note to the public - if anyone is interested in purchasing me an "endless pool" please let me know!
Just recently, in a desperate bid to regain some levels of fitness after 6 long, dark months on public transport (don't get me started...) I started going swimming one day a week after work.
The only problem with going after work is that the pool is quite busy and divided into "lanes" with long ropes where you are supposed to follow the arrows as to which side you swim on. However, it is a fact of Physics that no swimming pool can exist without at least one of the following people(s):
Three Girls Nattering - actually anywhere from 2-5 girls, but always sufficient to make it impossible to reach the side. Having paid £4 each for the priveledge they sit in the shallow end against the wall chatting for the whole time you are there, making a perfunctory length at some point to show they have excercised.
Backstroke/Windmill Arms Swimmer - someone who, despite the crowding of the pool, insists on doing the backstroke without looking where they are going. If they can possibly take up the whole of the pool and hit you on the head by splaying their arms and legs in all directions into the bargain then they will do. Usually a bloke
Kids Jumping In - despite the fact that it is lane swimming and there is a leisure pool next door there is always a small group of boys (always boys) jumping repeatedly in, splashing each other vigourously and pulling one-another's shorts down. Kids are chemically unable to talk in anything less than ear-shattering decibels - so they spend the entire time shouting at one another from a distance of mere millimetres.
Bored Lifeguard - you could drown right in front of him/her and they wouldn't raise an eyebrow. Some public pools have a policy of employing nothing but bored lifeguards with specially raging acne ready for that all important kiss of life.
No Sense Of Direction Person - we can all see the signs showing which side to stay to, yet this person just swims where they want to - forcing you to change your stroke to avoid broken wrists/legs.
And - worst of all: Energetic Swimmer - the person who pauses right next to you when you have just reached the point where your arms and legs are about to fall off and say something to the effect of "Come on, you can do it - I've only another 40 to go myself!"
Note to the public - if anyone is interested in purchasing me an "endless pool" please let me know!
Monday, 4 February 2008
Abandon Hope...
Today i was looking through the menus of my new mobile phone - quite a nice pre camera-phone revolution, no annoying tunes-on-the-bus piece of phone shaped plastic - when i discovered something that i think spells the final end for all humanity.
Amongst all the menus i found several templates for standard replies. Let's face it there are always times when a bit of standard text comes in useful in a hectic life - if you need to text your boss to say that you are running late then the template "I am running late" could well be a life saver. I have no objection to this - we all do it in letters to clients etc - the standard bit that says "if you don't keep up with payments we'll send someone round to break your kneecaps" in extremely small typeface has become an accepted part of modern day life.
However, depressingly, amongst the standard texts was "I love you too".
To tell someone that you love them is to leave yourself open to rejection, to expose your soul in the trust that your love will be returned and the idea that someone, somewhere thinks it is acceptable to have a standard response saved on a phone is just wrong.
If that is really what the world has come to then it's time to take those talking chimps out of the freezer, chuck Charlton Heston into the far distant future and just collapse on a beach somewhere yelling "Damn you all to hell".
I prefer to think that love is still important - more so than ever. Perhaps i am wrong??
Amongst all the menus i found several templates for standard replies. Let's face it there are always times when a bit of standard text comes in useful in a hectic life - if you need to text your boss to say that you are running late then the template "I am running late" could well be a life saver. I have no objection to this - we all do it in letters to clients etc - the standard bit that says "if you don't keep up with payments we'll send someone round to break your kneecaps" in extremely small typeface has become an accepted part of modern day life.
However, depressingly, amongst the standard texts was "I love you too".
To tell someone that you love them is to leave yourself open to rejection, to expose your soul in the trust that your love will be returned and the idea that someone, somewhere thinks it is acceptable to have a standard response saved on a phone is just wrong.
If that is really what the world has come to then it's time to take those talking chimps out of the freezer, chuck Charlton Heston into the far distant future and just collapse on a beach somewhere yelling "Damn you all to hell".
I prefer to think that love is still important - more so than ever. Perhaps i am wrong??
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