I’m not pro any particular party, but there is one thing of which I am certain: I hate, with a passion, the Conservative Party.

On May the 6th, do the right thing: Vote for anyone but the Tories…

]]> http://fatcontrollerldn.wordpress.com/2010/04/29/election-2010/feed/ 0 Big Lee http://fatcontrollerldn.wordpress.com/2010/04/13/dont-shoot-till-you-see-the-whites-of-their-eyes/ http://fatcontrollerldn.wordpress.com/2010/04/13/dont-shoot-till-you-see-the-whites-of-their-eyes/#comments Tue, 13 Apr 2010 01:28:10 +0000 Lee http://fatcontrollerldn.wordpress.com/?p=237 ]]> I have finally had enough.

I have quit Facebook.

For some reason, some of my friends have found this an unusual thing to do, so here are my reasons:

1. The Games & Applications

For some bizarre reason there has been a ridiculously sharp rise in the number of near identical crap games and applications on Facebook recently.

Every time I log in I am inundated with requests asking me to “help my friend” or “join the fun”.  I have an Xbox, I don’t need these fucking games.

Add to this the application/games ability to post shit to your news feed and you are left having to filter through all this crap just to see if there is anything at all worth reading left. I know you can “hide” them, but it seems there are so many of them that for every farming game you block another six take its place.  It’s like fucking Zulu…

2. “Friends”

I don’t mean the real ones, and I only add people I know in real life, but the sheer number of updates on people that, to be honest I really don’t give a shit about is bewildering.

At some point in its growth, Facebook became incapable of dealing with the incredible volume of incoming info. The problem is the signal-to-noise ratio, which is the difference between things you want to know about (like pictures of your new nephew) and things you don’t (pictures of passed-out high school friends).

Coupled with the fact that some of my “friends” have the written English skills of a 7 year old(One of them actually spells does as duse), this has become one of the most annoying things in my day.

3. The Groups

I’ve had a rant about Facebook groups before, but they just seem to be getting worse.  Some that appear to be various 14 year olds competing to see who can have the biggest group, some are just the latest incarnation of the chain letter and then there are others that quite frankly I think may be a new form of data mining.

Facebook, when it was good it was great.  You put me back in contact with old friends and you even found a long-lost cousin or two.  It seems you have lost your way, trying to compete with Google as the centre of the internet.  It could have worked out if you hadn’t changed…

Goodbye Facebook!

Those who actually read this blog will remember my feelings toward religious celebrations and anthropomorphic personifications, especially when the two become intertwined.

Easter has very little meaning to me.  Due to my job I don’t even get the benefits of a long weekend.

This year I realised something though.  I actually can’t remember what Easter ia about…

The complete and utter commercialisation of Easter means that all I now know about it is a) It’s something to do with Jesus and b) You get chocolate eggs on Sunday.

According to Wikipedia, it is actually far more complicated than I remember.

Some claim that this commercialisation is “cutural dissemination” and that we need to get back to our roots.

Personally, I embrace anything that removes organised religion from society, so in that spirit:

Happy Chocolate Egg Festival Everyone!

This is a little unusual for me as this pizza has no meat.  I tend to avoid veggie food like the plague.

To me, vegetarians fall into the same group as religious people and the clinically insane: I’m sure they have very good arguements as to why they do what they do, but I’m never going to understand them and I’d appreciate it if they keep their crazy ideas to themselves.

Surely if we all stopped eating animals it wouldn’t be long before they outnumbered us?  Then who’s gonna win in a tussle for a carrot, you or a herd of Yorkshire pigs?

We need to eat animals to keep their numbers down.  The last thing we need is to end up being over-run by cows, those fuckers are evil.

The pizza was delicious.  One of the best pizza’s I’ve ever had in my life.

Could have done with some char-grilled chicken on it though…

For those of you who are unaware, Big Brother is a reality television series broadcast in the United Kingdom and Ireland on Channel 4 and E4, and on S4C in Wales. It is part of the Big Brother franchise first developed in The Netherlands, and is currently the second longest running series in the franchise.

On 26 August 2009 it was announced by Channel 4 that a final series of Celebrity Big Brother (Series 7) will be broadcast in January 2010 and that Big Brother 2010 (Series 11), highly likely to start in June 2010, will be the last to be aired on Channel 4.

Ten years too late.

The housemates in Celebrity Big Brother this year include:

Alex Reid

A cross-dressing amateur cage fighter, with a record of 18 fights (8 wins, 8 losses, 1 draw, 1 abandoned).

Prior to becoming the latest notch on Katie “I have loads of underwear, but only wear the bras because I never wear knickers” Price, his only claim to fame was being layed out by the father of a 19 year old rookie cage fighter for standing on his defeated opponents head while he was receiving medical attention, and posing for photos, flexing both biceps.

Ekaterina “Katia” Ivanova

Kazakhstan born model known only for being the ex-girlfriend of Ronnie Wood.

Wow, the celebrity factor with these two is incredible, in fact the only person in the house who could claim to be a celebrity is Vinnie Jones.

For a decade this shit has been ruining British television.  It has lead the charge of “Reality TV” which has led to tripe like I’m A Celebrity: Get Me Out Of Here, Shipwrecked, X Factor, Britain’s Got Talent and The Apprentice (To name but a few).

This show was never interesting or entertaining, it is cheaply produced drivel to entertain mindless retards on council estates in Feltham.

Good riddance to poor television, I just hope Channel 4 see sense and replace it with some decent programming.  Something that the UK has seen very little of in the last 10 years.

The value of a social network is defined not only by who’s on it, but by who’s excluded – Paul Saffo

I’ve been a Facebooker for quite sometime now, and have noticed that this year there has been a steep rise in the number of invites I receive to groups.
And more and more of these groups are utterly ridiculous.

For Example:

I Secretly Want To Punch Slow Walking People In The Back Of The Head

We’ve all been in this situation.

It’s lunch break.  You only have 45 minutes left once you’ve actually gotten out of the office, and you need to:

• Go to the Post Office (which for some absurd reason is now inside of WH Smiths?) and visit Boots to pick up a prescription.
• Queue in the bank for 25 minutes to pay in a cheque and visit Vodafone to pay your phone bill.
• Trade in a couple of Xbox games at CEX and then use remaining 20 minutes of your lunch to munch a Greggs and chain smoke 5 fags.

On your way out the door you get caught behind a series of infuriatingly slow people.

First it’s a couple of chavs window shopping in Argos for things that they will only ever buy if their mate Dave comes round at 2am selling them for a tenner.

GET OUT THE WAY YOU THIEVING PIKEY!!!

You manage to skirt round them straight into a “Stay-at-home Mum” with her double pram and two toddlers.

IF YOU’RE A “STAY-AT-HOME MUM” THEN WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING OUT OF THE HOUSE???

Then, having accidentally-on-purpose backhanded one of her children round the ear as you overtake, you are confronted by a gaggle of pubescent school children who are still at that age where it is socially necessary to believe that the entire world actually does pivot around your centre of gravity, talking about (if it’s girls) who said what about who to who and when or (if it’s boys) football and which of the girls are most likely to let you finger them on the swings.

ARGGGHHHHHHHH!!!

As if it can’t get any worse, you run straight into the back of some doddery old woman with (if you’re lucky) two walking sticks or (if you aren’t) a zimmerframe.

IF YOU CAN’T WALK UNAIDED THEN FUCKING DON’T!!!

Finally, when you think you’ve overcome every hurdle that a lunchtime high street can throw at you, you hit the most annoying of all.  The perfectly normal looking person.  They look a bit like you, wearing a similar sort of “business dress”.  But they aren’t in a rush. They aren’t sprinting toward the Post Office/bank/CEX, occasionally vaulting the odd double buggy or pensioner…  They are chatting on their mobile… Telling their friend how they “can’t make up their mind what to have for lunch”…

MAYBE STANDING ASIDE AND THINKING IT THROUGH FOR A FEW MINUTES WILL HELP, YOU UTTER CUNT!!!

Get out of my way! Can’t you see that I am a modern person, too busy to stop and enjoy anything?

Unfortunately this group doesn’t make as convincing an argument as me, so although I whole-heartedly agree with the principle on this one, I feel there must be something fundamentally wrong with a human being who joins a group where the general sentiment is:

I like the idea about snipers posted by *********. ********* might be joking, I’m not sure. But I’m fucking serious!! Stupidity and ignorance slows down the growth of humanity.

Some other (equally) pointless groups:

I wonder how fast I can find 1,000,000 people who hate Tom Brady

Admit It…Helen Keller’s Disabilities Crack You Up!

Honestly, I write “lol” and I’m not Even Laughing

I don’t care how comfortable your crocs are you look like a dumbass

Rock Stars against Boy Scouts, Gnomes, and other Nerds

Why is the only thing to do in Pittsburgh is to develop a drinking problem?

New Phone…Need Numbers OR there’s also the group Needin y’all Numbaz (the latter is written entirely in what Americans affectionally call Yinzer)

Hey, Facebook, breastfeeding is not obscene!

Bananas in Pajamas dominated my childhood

After watching Life With Ryan I JUST WANT TO DROOL OVER THE TELEVISION

I Play Piano Therefore I Am Legally More Talented Than You

I Want To Have Sex On A Grand Piano

I Picked a Major I Like, and One Day I Will Probably Be Living In a Box

Dora the Explorer is soo an Illegal Immigrant…

Those Who Enjoy + Partake In the Distribution and Acquisition of High Fives

The Ultimate Facebook Project

The Largest Group on Facebook

And my personal favourite:

Stop Inviting Me To Silly Groups Group

Oh look, yet another Christmas TV special!  How touching to have the meaning of Christmas brought to us by cola, fast food, and beer…. Who’d have ever guessed that product consumption, popular entertainment, and spirituality would mix so harmoniously?  ~Bill Watterson

So it’s nearing that time of year.

I’ve seen the Coke advert on the telly today, and heard Fairytale of New York on Radio 1 a few weeks ago.

Looks like I’ll actually have to start preparing for Christmas, possibly my least favourite of all pseudo-religious festivals.

I’m not big on anything that has its grounding in a religious celebration, or anything that can be summed up by an anthropomorphic personification, so Christmas is already on to a loser with me.  Throw in the crass commercialisation (in Christmas’s defence it is not alone in this), and you’ve definitely lost me.

Don’t get me wrong, my middle name isn’t Ebenezer: I’ll buy presents for my loved (and not-so-loved) ones, and I’ll eat turkey with stuffing and drink Courvoisier/Baileys/Eggnog  till I’m shitting snowflakes and reindeer.  However, I do have some major issues with Christmas, three in fact.

Firstly, I can’t stand the commercialisation of it.  I understand Christians celebrating, but hardly anyone I know can really call themselves a Christian.  Midnight on Christmas Eve is the only time they go near a Church without it involving a bride or a corpse.

Secondly it’s Father Christmas.  Who the fuck came up with this idea? It’s as ridiculous as the tooth fairy, Mickey Mouse, the easter bunny, the soul cake duck or any other holiday mascot (although it is the only one that has an international military organisation join in with the bullshit each year).  But the thing that really irks me with Saint Nick is the way people seem to think that anyone who questions the jolly fat man is a humbug and deserves public humiliation.  So what if I don’t want to believe that if I’ve been nice, a foreign bloke who can defy physics (both in flight and while sliding down my non-existant chimney), will break into my house, and leave presents for me.

Last, but by no means least, it’s the way everyone in the world seems to think that as of mid-November they can suddenly start acting like a pretentious little child with the excuse being “…but, it’s Christmas”

Mind you, as I was reminded recently by The Hogfather;

Humans need fantasy to be human. To be the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape.

As practice, we have to start out learning to believe the little lies. Like the Tooth Fairy, and Santa Claus, so that we can believe the big ones: Justice, mercy, duty. That sort of thing.

We need to believe in things that aren’t true. How else can they become?

Television:  A medium – so called because it is neither rare nor well done.  ~Ernie Kovacs

Today I had a visit from a “TV Licensing Enforcement Officer”.

It went something like this:

ACT ONE

FADE IN:

INT.  SMALL STUDIO APARTMENT – DAY

The curtains are drawn, the sound of snoring fills the air.

Cut to LEE (26), an overweight fleet manager, sound asleep and evidently the cause of the snoring.

Suddenly there is a loud, continuous hammering at the door.

LEE  wakes suddenly, with a snort.  Wipes the drool from his face and staggers to the door.

Opening the door he is confronted by the smirking face of TELLY NAZI (30s), a middle aged asian man who looks a lot like a UPS delivery guy, but is in fact a TV Licensing Enforcement Officer.

LEE: (sarcasm) Can I help?

TELLY NAZI flips open and closed what appears to be an ID CARD, in the style of a detective in an 80s American cop show

TELLY NAZI: (smirking) Our records show that this address does not currently have a television licence.

LEE: And?

TELLY NAZI: You need to have one

LEE: Why?

TELLY NAZI: Because it’s the law

LEE: No it isn’t

TELLY NAZI: Do you have a TV?

LEE: Yes

TELLY NAZI: Then you need a TV licence

LEE: No I don’t

TELLY NAZI: (extreme sarcasm) And why not?

LEE: Because I don’t USE a TV

TELLY NAZI: You still need a licence

LEE: No I don’t. Now seeing as you woke me up I’m going to make this brief.

I DO own a TV

I DO NOT need a TV license as I DO NOT USE said TV

TELLY NAZI: (completely baffled) Why not?

LEE: Well, firstly, I work nights, so generally I’m asleep in the day. Secondly, I don’t have an aerial as I’m waiting for my landlord to fix it.

TELLY NAZI: You should still have a TV licence

LEE: (quietly) Fuck off

Lee closes the door and returns to bed.

END OF ACT ONE

Why is it that TV Licensing can’t seem to accept that some people just don’t watch TV?

This has got me thinking.

As soon as an address is seen to be unregistered in respect of a TV licence, the occupant is subjected to an unending stream of letters, the constant message being that you are guilty of harbouring an unregistered TV.

In the early stages, the letters are just accusatory but rapidly become bullying, insulting and finally intimidating and highly offensive.

What other government organisation, business or even court of law would send out a letter in an envelope adorned in large print with the message ‘Notice of impending prosecution’ or ‘Your next appearance could be in court’?

All this, when no evidence whatsoever of  “illegal TV possession” exists.”. . .

The Television Licensing Authority (TVLA) seems to treat TV’s like the Borders Agency treats immigration…

I wonder how much of the (more than) £4.26 billion collected by the TVLA is wasted on these letters and idiot door to door visits?

A regular customer phones up distraught from miles away having just broken up with her boyfriend and orders a cab home.

Thanks to our computer system I dispatched the job while still on the phone.

She then proceeds to pour out her heart to me, including her entire life story. (This isn’t the first time this has happened)

She told me things that were so personal you should only really tell someone you really know about them, and it made me realise something quite bizarre.

People trust their cab company.  Implicitly.

Cab companies know your name, phone number, home address, work address, local pub and doctor.  Sometimes we know your spouse, children, best friends and bits on the side.

We pick you up from strip clubs, brothels, dealers and church.

And no one ever questions it.

In a world where people are so paranoid about “information security”, we regularly divulge masses of information to our cab firms.

We pick your boyfriend up from your house while simultaneously picking your husband up from a brothel.

So next time you call for a cab, think about how much the man or woman answering the phone may well know about your deepest darkest secrets, and has never breathed a word about it…  And probably never will.

Controllers and their telephonists are like the clergy used to be.

The stop button on the bus now has the braille for “stop” on it.

Why?

Presumably it is for the benefit of blind (or visually impaired) people…

OK, so I presume that they know what stop they are coming to because the iBus tells them, then they reach for the button, feel it says “stop”  and press it.

If they don’t know what the button is for then why the hell are they feeling around for it?

It’s as ridiculous as the may contain nuts warning on Tesco peanuts…

May contain nuts? May? At £2 a fucking bag it better contain nuts!  If it doesn’t I’m gonna be mightily pissed off!