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Oh dear. : A thread about things that tick you off quite a bit, and might even elicit a frown.

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Our Lady Has Left the Building

05:22 / 15.02.07

Have you tried suggesting to him that if his plan was put into action a large number of people born in the United States whose families have lived there for generations would have to be deported somewhere?

07:06 / 15.02.07

I wouldn't bother putting anything to him, I'd just get depressed. Poor you, Ibis.

07:18 / 15.02.07

Radio 4's Thought For The Day wound me up big time this morning. Some asshole suggesting that a woman dying from a severely painful condition, a woman who wants to have some control over how she exits the world, should linger on because God obviously intended for her to be symbol of how terminally ill people can be strong and endure.

Then goes on to suggest that any kind of legislated euthanasia is going to result in a world where people force their sick relations to choose death rather than being a burden.

The words FUCK OFF spring to mind.

Ex

07:30 / 15.02.07

Evil S - that one sent me into a chattering fury also.

And then it gave me a very bad thought. For which I ask the forgiveness of anyone it may offend in advance. But - did you also feel it was a bit weird how he phrased his justification? We aren't allowed to voluntarily choose to die, because Jesus voluntarily chose to die for all of us...

I do understand the theology (somewhat), but he made it sound as though his whole faith rested on an act of assisted suicide. Maybe it's the format, but Thought for the Day, I think, often mangles the beliefs it's trying to represent.

07:47 / 15.02.07

God working in mysterious ways - it seems that god's messages are lost only on the religious - yeah, I get it, be nice to people, yeah, don't kill right, okya, yeah, I hear it - could you please tell the churches of the world to pass it on to their leaders as it seems they are missing the point.

I mean, the terminally ill are here to send a message to the terminally ill that you can live on bravely is kind of preaching to the choir.

11:48 / 15.02.07

I frown upon the mice and/or rats present in my house at the moment. We get mice every year about this time, and my co-inhabitants have always insisted on murdering them with traps.

This year, I finally got my way and we purchased one of those electronic plug-in repellants which are supposed to keep the rodents away.

A week passed and the critters seemed to have moved on.

Another week passed, and a plate of thawing food was flung to the ground with the plate in smithereens. Two days later, several potatoes were removed from the container we keep them in and gnawed down to their core, like apples. The funny thing about that, is that we keep another box of other vegetables on top of this box, so how they got into the spuds is beyond me.

Then, yesterday morning the rubber draught excluder seal at the bottom of one of our interior doors was gnawed and torn away, and whatever is in our house has started to gnaw away at the brass carpet strip too.

I think instead of getting rid of the normally hardly noticeable mice, we've attracted a breed of some sort of cybernetic rat that has an immunity to electronic pulses or something. Or else it's ghosts. I'd nearly prefer ghosts.

I'm loath to return to using traps, but if it stops them from devouring our house, then I suppose there's little alternative.

Tabitha Tickletooth

11:57 / 15.02.07

Llama - I feel your pain. Similar situation last winter in our house, so we got one of these. Well, not that actual one but one that is very similar (£5 from Robert Dyas). It worked a treat with the added bonus of super-fun mouse freeing in the park (the box says you have to release them a mile from your house so they don't just scarper back in). I'd highly recommend it.

12:04 / 15.02.07

Ooh nifty. We actually used something like that a few times in zoology field trips last year, but I wasn't aware that there was a commercial home-use version available. Hopefully they'll fall for the trap and not just hang it above my bed to mock me further.

Tabitha Tickletooth

12:24 / 15.02.07

If the snacks-as-bait are good enough, I'm sure you won't make them angry...

This story started off very promising and then the horror of the end!!!!

Spoilers

Why did they have to kill the squirrel? If the poor little bugger managed to fly all the way to Hawaii, couldn't they have just put him in a little cage and flown him back? I notice that the 'story highlights' include Stowaway squirrel trapped and removed but not and brutally murdered. Bastards.

12:30 / 15.02.07

I think he finds me entertaining, now knowing I'm A Liberal, like his personal zoo exhibit.

I'm going thru much the same, ibis, so my sympathies to ya. 'Tis rough, to be sure. Give the jerk as little satisfaction as possible, and set and reset the terms of debate as much as you are able if you do get dragged into a discussion. I know I find it hard to stay out of political talk 100% of the time... there's a limit to how much smack-talk one can take, Zod knows. But if you do get drawn in, I'm sure you'll leave him bloodied and crying on the cubical floor. Metaphorically speaking, of course. He'll never see it coming.

12:36 / 15.02.07

Hopefully they'll fall for the trap and not just hang it above my bed to mock me further.

Peanut butter apparently. The little buggers love it.

12:38 / 15.02.07

Well, I'll tell you one thing for sure, dumb talk about working women being bad mothers does not follow from dumb talk about the effects of women on the employment market, except, you know, in that stupid shit does tend to lead to more stupid shit.

Non fucking sequitur, you dumb fuck.

Mon Oncle Ignatius

12:59 / 15.02.07

Peanut butter apparently. The little buggers love it.

Or chocolate - they love that too. I've used those sort of traps quite few times over the years, and they generally seem to work quite well. It's also quite fun releasing the little creatures in a nicer part of town (assuming there are any) - I always used to favour the marshes or a very big park.

13:22 / 15.02.07

Here you go, stinking human dirtbaby Mordant Carnival

Thank you, oh my tallest. I googled "molymolymoly" and got nuffink, how queerly weirdy like greedy beardy Banhart.

I'm a tiny bit annoyed that only today did I find the perfect riposte to johnleespider's outburst in the joke thread, when he laughed incredulously at group criticism;

I'm bookmarking it for next time, and memorising the quote;
"There is no shelter from this storm, it's rain of fists, or the thunderous cackles of bloodlust!"

13:31 / 15.02.07

Two, where in this country has a white American ever been forced to speak Spanish? I would really love to know.

Actually, there are a couple neighborhoods in Miami, and I've ran into Anglophones who had trouble in the airport finding someone who understood them.

But Miami's a little odd.

If it comes up again, you should ask him if we should change Florida's name to something English. Or Arizona. Or Montana. Or Nevada. Etc. Etc.

jentacular dreams

14:40 / 15.02.07

Longworth small mammal traps (as i think they were called back in my ecology days) do kick ass. I'd recommend getting a clear one so you can see if there's a mouse in it though. They can be pretty light and nothing's quite as annoying as walking a mile into the country just to find that the trap was sprung before the mouse could enter.

Also peanut butter is the key to all rodent-based problems. And quite a few others too.

21:53 / 15.02.07

Actually, there are a couple neighborhoods in Miami, and I've ran into Anglophones who had trouble in the airport finding someone who understood them.

Oh yeah, I know there are neighborhoods that are almost exclusively Spanish-speaking... but this whole fear that the US is going to "turn Mexican" (or whatever) just drives me batty.

Today's gem came on the heels of his mentioning the Dateline "To Catch a Predator" shows (of which I'm not a fan, but no matter)... how unfair it is to set up sexual predators online, and - wait for it - why are they always men? Cubemate would LOVE to see one where they go after female sexual predators trolling for boys online, because it would be "so funny" to see an older woman tackled by the police.

Frown.
Frown.
By next week I may be moving on to the untamed hate thread.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

22:11 / 15.02.07

Can't you just... erm... I mean... KILL HIM???

ooh, I've said it now. Oh bugger.

Surely someone'll give you an alibi?

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

22:12 / 15.02.07

Or, y'know, you could give ME an alibi, and I'd kill him for you.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

22:14 / 15.02.07

SHIT.

I've SO got to stop saying this stuff in public.

22:23 / 15.02.07

He sounds like that lunatic congressman that keeps going on about how Iraq keeps us safe from the muslim hordes who will put "In Mohammed we Trust" on the pennies....(sigh)... what the hell is wrong with bilungualism? or multilingualism? it's fun!

00:14 / 16.02.07

OH DEAR: and I've ran into Anglophones

I've "ran"???

MattShepherd: I WEDDED KALI!

19:14 / 21.02.07

I have just spent like twenty minutes trying to explain to a client on the phone how

37% of [HIV-positive injection drug users] are infected with (hepatitis C and hepatitis B)

is not the same as

37% of [injection drug users] are (HIV-positive and infected with hepatitis C and hepatitis B).

I had to fall back on "all crows are black. My cat is black. Therefore, my cat is a crow" to explain grouping to somebody in his forties who is in a position of significant authority. Not somebody at my office, thank goodness.

09:07 / 17.03.07

While I was on the bus, on the way back from work, a woman was busily consuming an enormous bag of tortilla chips, filling the interior of the bus with a slightly sockish, tortilla-ish smell. I found myself rathering she wouldn't, somewhat.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

18:07 / 17.03.07

I love my parents and they are neither homophobic nor particularly stupid and maybe it was my own stupidity that meant I couldn't get them to see that the National Blood Service are homophobic idiots, but for them to then say that they didn't believe one man putting his winkie into another man's bottom couldn't be considered safe sex, even if man one put a condom on said chap, oh dear.

My parent's position is that they believe the NBS isn't homophobic because my parents don't like anal sex.

14:17 / 18.03.07

Hm.

Our Lady, I never know what to say in reply to these things. One part of me wants to throw my arms metaphorically around the exasperated and exclaim: "Darling how perfectly GHASTLY, move out at once and escape your parochial family, we have a lovely sofa, do you like your eggs runny?" but this is almost always insulting. Almost.

Chipping away gently is the way, isn't it? I'm lucky. My parents, whilst not particularly *understanding* of my lot in life as a man who likes the cock, are not at all judgemental of *me*, and actively adore my SO, who is a lovely, cuddly, reassuringly normal, middle-class teddy-bear of a chap. So much so that they phoned the info re: my Dad's soon-to-be retirement do to *him* instead of me.

Sigh. Parents. I wonder sometimes if we are not crueller to them than they are to us...

I've done reasonably well as the years go by with my parents political opinions and was very taken aback by my mother's militancy during the first stages of the Iraq War. She went on the massive march along with me and was threatening to wave a sign bearing the timeless (albeit slightly incongruous) legend: "Upper Middle Classes Against The War", but I persuaded her not to as I suspected this sentiment lacked the appropriate sobriety. I now regret my humourlessness.

Global Warming is the latest family political feud and I'm winning. But that's probably because Mum's retired and Dad's about to and their interest in maintaining the political ideology congruent with their positions in working life is waning.

I ramble. My sympathies, I meant to say... I'm sure your parents are lovely, like my lovely Thatcher-voting parents...

17:11 / 18.03.07

Global Warming is the latest family political feud

Is it that FUCKING DOCUMENTARY'S fault? Is it.

That SHITTING FUCKING ARSEHOLE CRAPFUCK COCK of a documentary?

This is hate and anger stuff, isn't it.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

17:26 / 18.03.07

Thanks Sibelian but I'm actually on very good terms with my parents (admittedly this is probably due to not living with them any more) but it's just sometimes they have the crazy opinions. My Mum still won't by anything French because of the farmers burning our beef way back whenever that was.

19:13 / 18.03.07

Is it that FUCKING DOCUMENTARY'S fault?

Which one? Don't tell me some demonically possessed fool has made a COUNTER-documentary to "An Inconvenient Truth"? You don't MEAN "An Inconvenient Truth", do you?

Anyway, no. They read something somewhere (probably the Telegraph) about windfarms being inefficient in comparison with conventional fuel-burning power stations because of the cost of building and maintaining them. This didn't add up to me and I went and researched it through a pal and he knew the article and pointed out to me, thus, indirectly, to my parents, that the article didn't take into account the conventional stations'...FUEL.... COSTS.... and was therefore able to paint a less than rosy picture.

The twistedness of this was made apparent to M + P. They concurred that it was twisted. But then came back with some even stupider thing about carbon dioxide concentration not being relatable to temperature rise because its greenhouse efficacy was a step function and not a curve related to CO2 concentration, hence increasing CO2 couldn't have any further effect on atmospheric temperature. I think Dad got it from Fred Hoyle.

And, similarly, I snipered that one down. But they clutch at any straw they can, and it's only a matter of time before some new barely sentient anxiety in their adorable 50s mind-set clings for dear life to some fresh-minted nonsense favouring their lifestyle.

I wish I could get to the root of it. I really do.

19:20 / 18.03.07

The root of it is that they are likely frightened and don't want the weight of guilt that we all have to shoulder when we take on board the facts. I imagine they also like their lives as they are. Totally and utterly understandable, but wrong and bad.

And yeah, I was referring to the COUNTER-documentary to "An Inconvenient Truth" on C4 last week.

The number of people that I've spoken to that have decided they can now breath a sigh of relief... fuckeye.

19:34 / 18.03.07

You're entirely correct about what the root *is*, of course. Getting to it is the awkward bit. *I* know what it is and *you* know what it is... and I've a nasty feeling they do too.

Maybe I should just tell them.

Channel FOUR? Has the entire world gone MAD?

Forgive my naivety if this has been a general C4 trend for some time (I know they're responsible for Big Brother, which I have solemnly vowed never to watch) but I didn't realise they'd sunk that far into populism, not being a habitual TV watcher. I loathe television and haven't sat down in front one of those baleful attention disposal units with any serious intent to watch anything for several years. And I avoid information *about* television to boot, if at all possible, so I'm incredibly ignorant about it...

19:45 / 18.03.07

Apparently it was appalling propoganda (I couldn'tbring myselfto watch) that was oh-so-happy to bend the facts to make its case .I hear the Guardian and the Indie ran articles that exposed the lies and data manipulations, but according to C4 it's okay because it was only "an opinion piece".

I would like to begin with torture and finish with murder.

21:39 / 18.03.07

My GOD.

When are these useless oafs going to stop clogging up Humanity's progress and GET OUT OF THE BLOODY WAY?

23:03 / 18.03.07

the COUNTER-documentary to "An Inconvenient Truth" on C4 last week.

The what now?! I'm pleased to say nobody's mentioned it to me, what was it called? A convenient fiction? Perhaps A Comforting Lie? Kinell, I need to lie down.

Mon Oncle Ignatius

08:43 / 19.03.07

Worse than that: The Great Global Warming Swindle. It blends half-plausible counter-arguments with weird propaganda which manages to conflate environmentalists with Thatcher, among other things.

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