“We don’t allow faster than light neutrinos in here” says the bartender.
A neutrino walks into a bar.
The Facebook of Common Prayer
A Christian charity has been dropped by AdviceUK for offering to pray for people in debt. Just how behind the times are these Christian people? You don’t pray for causes anymore, you just ask everyone to post a status update on Facebook. It’s so much more public, and with none of that embarrassing religious connotation. LIC is the future!
Speaking of which, I saw my very first “I am 6 weeks and craving Twizzlers” status today. Sigh.
Oh no. It gets worse.
The ‘raising awareness by posting a stupid Facebook status’ monster rears its ugly head again, and by an interesting (if predictable) gravity-fed compensating mechanism this is causing my heart to sink.
I just came across this scintillating piece of literature:
Following our last Facebook trend alert “why are women putting inches in their status?” [explanation: you needed to write your shoe size – just the number- followed by the word ‘inches’ and how long it takes to do your hair… har har], we’re bringing you another one. With October aka Breast Cancer Awareness Month right around the corner the ladies of Facebook have decided on a new game to play with male minds. The newest Facebook trend is weeks and cravings.
You may see women posting something like, “I’m 4 weeks and craving skittles” or “I’m 13 weeks and craving gummy worms”. Why are women posting weeks in their Facebook status? And why are women posting something that sounds like they’re pregnant on Facebook? Here’s the email I received about the game:
Ok pretty ladies, it’s that time of year again, in support of breast cancer awareness!! So we all remember last years game of writing your bra color as your status?…..or the way we like to have our handbag handy? Remember last year so many people took part that it made national news and, the constant updating of status reminded everyone why we’re doing this and helped raise awareness!! Do NOT tell any males what the status’ mean, keep them guessing!! And please copy and paste (in a message )this to all your female friends to see if we can make a bigger fuss this year than last year!!! I did my part… now YOUR turn ! Go on ladies…and let’s have all the males guessing! .. It’s time to confuse the men again (not that its really that hard to do 🙂 ) Everyone knows it makes their brains work wonders on what we’re talking about!!
The idea is to choose the month you were born and the day you were born. Pass this on to the girls only and lets see how far it reaches around. The last one about the bra went round all over the world. So you’ll write… I’m (your birth month) weeks and I’m craving (your birth date)!!! as your status. Example: Feb 14th is: I’m 2 weeks and craving Chocolate mints!!
Months
January – 1 week
Febuary – 2 weeks
March – 3 weeks
April – 4 weeks
May – 6 weeks
June – 8 weeks
July – 10 weeks
August – 12 weeks
September – 13 weeks
October – 14 weeks
November – 16 weeks
December – 18 weeks
Days of the month:
1 – Skittles
2 – Starburst
3 – Kit-Kat
4 – M&M’s
5 – Galaxy
6 – Crunchie
7 – Dairy Milk
8 – Lollipop
9 – Peanut Butter Cups
10 – Meat Balls
11 – Twizzlers
12 – Bubble Gum
13 – Hershey’s Kisses
14 – Chocolate Mints
15 – Twix
16 – Resse’s Fastbreak
17 – Fudge
18 – Cherry Jello
19 – Milkyway
20 – Pickels
21 – Creme Eggs
22 – Skittles
23 – Gummy Bears
24 – Gummy Worms
25 – Strawberry Pop Tarts
26 – Starburst
27 – Mini Eggs
28 – Kit – Kat Chunkie
29 – Double Chocolate Chip Chrunchy Cookies
30 – Smarties
31 – Chocolate Cake
So this is an unfunny private joke having nothing whatsoever to do with breast cancer in the first place and which is shared only by those who received the email, who are then banned from telling men what the ‘joke’ is actually about.
Where exactly does the ‘raising awareness’ bit fit in again? And what’s with the random misandry? Men can and do get breast cancer too, you clueless, immature bints! Not to mention the sheer devastation of seeing your partner suffer from it (or worse). But no, let’s pretend we’re twelve and just exclude the boys from our little games because it makes us feel so cool.
Internet cliques and playground behaviour in adults who should know better. Yuk.
Dear Mr Cameron
No sense of urgency
Last night I watched Panorama, which was once again dedicated to the national British pastime – drinking in excess – and the unnecessary pressure it is putting on the NHS. For good measure, they filmed inside an A&E department so we could appreciate the full unpleasantness of what doctors and nurses have to deal with on a daily basis. What did the footage show us? All sorts of drunk idiots with various, mostly self-inflicted, cuts and bruises (not to mention the missing brain cells, although this last condition may be congenital) being looked after by very patient medical staff.
Meanwhile, everyone else is being actively discouraged from using the service (presumably to make room for more drunk idiots). There’s a poster in the waiting room of my local surgery, educating patients on what ailment deserves a trip to A&E. It’s similar to this one:
Underneath the picture of five unwell-looking people, you can read this:
Cut finger -> go to walk-in centre
Bad earache -> see your GP
Flu -> stay at home
Chest pains -> go to A&E
Minor sports injury -> call NHS Direct
Basically the message is “If you’re not dying, don’t waste A&E’s time”. Here’s some more advice for the general public (click pic to read):
Take a closer look at the red bit:
“A&E or 999: Only for those who are in need of immediate, life-saving care“.
Needless to say, the drunks featured on Panorama were emphatically not at death’s door (one guy was having a cut to his chin treated after trying to run around a lamp-post as a game). So why the double standard? And why are none of those “don’t waste NHS resources” campaigns aimed at the biggest NHS-resource-wasters in the country? I suppose NHS bosses don’t want to throw good money after bad…
An A&E nurse said
“At peak times, 70% of A&E presentations are alcohol-related in some way, whether it’s indirectly or directly”.
This statistic sounds rather scary at first but is in fact a totally meaningless figure. If people with non alcohol-related problems do as they’re told and refrain from going to A&E for treatment (some people have actually received letters from their GP scolding them for daring to do so!) then it’s perfectly obvious that the majority of users will be a) the dying ones and b) the only non-dying ones who are still welcomed with open arms:
I recently declined the offer of an ambulance during an excruciatingly painful attack of sciatica in the middle of the night because I just didn’t fancy spending a minimum of eight hours in A&E, watching dozens of intoxicated morons with a bleeding face get stitched up whilst I waited in the queue, trying not to scream in agony. Call me fussy.
Stop LICing my arse
LIC: Lazy Internet Caring. I just made it up as a response to those stupid things people post on Facebook to ‘raise awareness’ (argh) of various issues without actually doing anything to help:
“All of us have a thousand wishes. To be thinner, have more money, a new phone…..A cancer patient only has one wish, to kick cancer’s ass. I know that 97% of you won’t post this as your status, but my friends will be the 3% that do. In honor of someone who died, or is FIGHTING cancer, post this for at least one hour. ♥”
“Your car is Japanese. Your Vodka is Russian. Your pizza is Italian. Your kebab is Turkish. Your democracy is Greek. Your coffee is Brazilian. Your movies are American. Your tea is Tamil. Your shirt is Indian. Your oil is Saudi Arabian. Your electronics are Chinese. Your numbers Arabic, your letters Latin. And you complain that your neighbour is an immigrant? Pull yourself together! Copy if you’re against racism.”
“MAY I ASK MY FACEBOOK FRIENDS, WHEREVER YOU MAY BE , TO KINDLY, COPY, PASTE & SHARE THIS STATUS FOR 1 H0UR TO SUPPORT ALL THOSE WHO HAVE HEALTH PROBLEMS, WHO ARE STRUGGLING , AND JUST NEED TO KNOW THAT SOMEONE CARES. Do it for all of us , unfortunately no one is immune. I hope to see this on the wall of all my friends ! JUST FOR MORAL SUPPORT!!! I KNOW SOME WILL . THANK YOU”
What. Is. The. Point.
There’s not even a link, or an appeal to donate/volunteer, or (in my dreams) a mention of what campaigns the poster actually joined before they decided to lecture all their friends. How is posting some stupid text for an hour going to help people who are struggling with health problems or racism? It’s moronic.
It reminds me of what happens when something bad happens to you in public (falling down an escalator, being knocked off your bike by a pedestrian who didn’t look before crossing the road, etc). Everyone usually stands and stares, nobody comes anywhere near you but one brave soul might ask from a distance “Are you OK?” in a simpering voice. No, I’m not, you twat and merely asking isn’t suddenly going to turn you into Florence Nightingale either. Keep your fake concern to yourself, you’re only making it worse by raising my blood pressure.
I want one
If this is wrong I don’t want to be right
Dammit, I fell for it again! I just had to leave a comment under an article that was written especially to infuriate pet owners. Ah well, they probably won’t validate it so here it is:
What a rude article. Alexander McQueen left this money to his dogs to make sure they would be well looked after for the rest of their lives. I would do exactly the same thing; nothing to do with treating animals like people, it’s about acting responsibly towards helpless creatures that depend entirely on you. So it’s a large sum by the average person’s standards, big deal. He was a multi-millionaire, it’s peanuts to him! You even mention he left the bulk of his huge fortune to charity, the BULK, but it’s still not good enough, is it? You just can’t please some people. As for the famine in Somalia, when is there not a famine/drought/civil war/genocide somewhere in Africa? The continent is a bottomless pit that has already absorbed billions in aid, and still they’re dying! It is ridiculous to blame pet owners for this, and beyond insulting to call them inhuman. What about parents who buy their kids tons of overpriced plastic every Christmas? Are they human?
I am appalled
Severus, who did this to you?!
Islands in the stream, that is what we are…
School colour-codes pupils by ability – Guardian worries about segregation
First of all, I am amused at the picture: it just so happens that the boy in the purple tie (which tells us he’s in the ‘gifted and talented’ stream) is black, whereas the other two (average and thicko streams) are white. I don’t believe for one second that this state of affairs was engineered by the Guardian photographer for subliminal propaganda reasons. Nope, I don’t. Nuh-huh.
Second, can I take this opportunity to point out how much I HATE the American-invented label giftedandtalented.
HATE.
“But Murphy says that without setting, the school wouldn’t have survived. He says that he has heard of other schools using different colour uniforms to mark different “houses”
Duh, everyone has! It’s a well-known fact that Gryffindors wear red, Slytherins…
Ahem.
“Courtney cites famous research conducted by American teacher Jane Elliott in the 60s, in which blue-eyed children did better and began bullying brown-eyed children after being told that they were superior.”
What’s that got to do with streaming in schools? I didn’t realise having blue eyes depended on academic results. Just how stupid are these people? As for the bullying issue, maybe that’s why children in different streams are kept separate from each other, genius.
Anyway, ‘scientists’ in the Sixties and Seventies breastfed chimpanzees and believed introducing children to sex was pedagogic. Who gives a shit about their experiments.
I personally have no problem with streaming in schools (even though this particular example sounds a bit more extreme than most); quite frankly I would have loved to have experienced it. It doesn’t exist in France (it’s elitist! It’s against equality! Horror of horrors!) so for my entire school career I had every single lesson with my whole class (on average 30 people).
It certainly didn’t make for the best learning environment. I was very good at languages and was therefore bored out of my mind as the teachers repeated the same old information a million times. I was abysmally crap at maths and physics and was therefore bored out of my mind as I rarely understood what was going on – even after having the same old information repeated a million times. Talk about a lose-lose situation.
But what’s more important here? Politics and ideologies or allowing pupils to reach their full potential? Do I really want to know the answer? Hmmm.
And then I read the first sentence of the first comment, and now I want to kill.
“Nice to see apartheid is alive and well in the UK education system.”
Nice to see Guardian readers are easily as stupid and blinkered as the Daily Mail readers they despise so much.
And since I’m on a (maki) roll, here’s another Guardian article for your enjoyment:
That’s right, I managed to find something to rant about in a article on sushi. You’ll see.
You might have noticed that China is quite trendy at the moment. Everyone is talking about it, inspired by it and going there on holiday. Well, not so long ago, it was Japan that was the red-hot destination and source of all things cultural, from manga to food. Hence the unstoppable rise of sushi. But poor old Japan has since suffered a few setbacks and been replaced in the hearts of the western world by its ancient enemy. That must have hurt.
It cannot be a coincidence that the remake of The Karate Kid is now set in China, with the kid in question learning kung fu from Mr Han. Mr Miyagi and his boring old karate are so 20 years ago…
We still love sushi of course but it seems to have become acceptable to sneer at all things Japanese, in the Guardian at least:
“Japanese sushi restaurants are sexist to an extent that would appal most westerners.”
Actually, most of us already know that Japan is, generally speaking, an extremely patriarchal society. Don’t go all bandwagon-jumping feminist on us now.
“The traditional ones discourage single women from dining in them altogether.”
Oops, too late. Anyway, single Japanese women are discouraged from getting too independent in all sorts of ways. I think sushi restaurants are the least of their worries. Things are slowly changing however.
“And an idiotic belief persists that women have warmer hands than men and thus might somehow the spoil fish by handling it.”
The Japanese do have many weird beliefs but then so do we. Isn’t the word “idiotic” a bit strong and, let’s say the word, judgmental for the Guardian? Huh?
“But so much [sushi-eating] etiquette, as with codes of wine drinking and matching, is based on an inferiority complex and designed to exclude. It’s best skimmed, selected from and mostly discarded.”
WTF Guardian? Is this how you respect other cultures and traditions? Bet you wouldn’t say that about an African custom you didn’t understand! Bet you wouldn’t say that about the burqa. Go on, I dare you.
“So began the infamous annihilation of this fish [tuna] and the shameful reluctance of the Japanese to stem its destruction.”
Yup, because we in the West don’t overfish at all, ever. I suggest you have a word with Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. He writes for the Guardian too, you know.