Words, words, words

After giving myself a self indulgent pat on the back for working in a few rather hard to use words into every day conversation, albeit to the dismay of the recipient, I thought it about time to flex my logophillic side and write down a few of my favourite words at this current time. Thinking back on it, maybe using “excommunicate” at about 1 in the morning was a bit too much, even for me.

Little bit of narcissistic trivia before I jump into the main meat of the post; as the evening wears on and I grow increasingly weary, I seem to become more verbose. It really doesn’t help when you are in the midst of the early hours of the morn and you are trying to communicate with someone who is rather inebriated, I can tell you that much.

Without further ado, here are 10 of my choicest words:

1) Excommunicate –

 - To deprive of the right of church membership by ecclesiastical authority.

 - To exclude by or as if by decree from membership or participation in a group.

2) Zeitgeist –

- The spirit of the time; the taste and outlook characteristic of a period or generation.

3) Platitude –

- A trite or banal remark or statement, especially one expressed as if it were original or significant.

- Lack of originality; triteness.

4) Verbose (As if you hadn’t already noticed) –

- Using or containing a great and usually an excessive number of words; wordy.

5) Dendroid –

- Shaped like a tree.

6) Supercilious –

- Behaving or looking as though one thinks one is superior to others.

7) Perspicuous (Something I sorely lack in my writing)–

- Clearly expressed; easy to understand.

8) Squamous (Favourite word to say aloud; pronounced [skwey-muhs]) –

- Covered with or formed of squamae or scales.

- Scalelike

9) Schadenfreude –

- Satisfaction or pleasure felt at someone else's misfortune.

10) Eloquent (An adjective I aspire to)–

- Having or exercising the power of fluent, forceful, and appropriate speech: an eloquent orator.

Read this on the back of a cereal box, it had to be shared

Q:  What do you call a polar bear caught in the rain?
A:  A drizzly bear.

You just can't please some people

I’m either a glutton for punishment, the biggest moaner alive or just a massive malcontent. It seems that in my search for happiness, I’ve yet again, landed myself in another regrettable situation. You may recall that in an earlier post I was, as usual, bemoaning the lamentable situation that my work life was currently in. You’d think that if I were to somehow become lucky enough to change that annoying limbo I had landed in that I’d finally find a little joy. You’d think.

I’ve recently found myself in the employ of the company I previously mentioned, the oh so wonderful Squidlypib (name changed for "This could get me fired" reasons). I’ll take this chance to rescind my prior accusations as to the nature of said company’s labour record. This is because I have had a chance to read the various literatures they’ve stationed at key strategic locations (Toilet door, above the toilet, on every available counter surface) and totally not because it is stated in my employee hand book that it is against my contract to speak ill of them on the interwebs.

I do have one thing to be thankful for, the hours are pretty damn excellent. Four hour blocks in the middle of the day during the weekends. Sadly this also means that I am forced to work bank holidays which includes BLOODY CHRISTMAS FUCKING DAY but I’m not bitter. The work itself isn’t exactly tasking, that’s probably the problem I have with it. I mostly wander around for the first two hours returning the various ghastly dresses some women supposedly wear. Believe me when I say I have handled more women’s clothing than most women would likely wear throughout their lifetime.  Surprisingly, this can be quite enjoyable, compared to the other tasks I am often set, that is. There’s nothing quite like memorising the exact location of various blouses, dresses and knitwear to get the ol’ neurons a’ firing. The part that makes suicide look like a valid and all together, more appealing option is the dreaded pick up of the sales section.

Imagine, if you will, a 16’ by 16’ square. Now fill this square with the cheapest bits of tat you can think of. Throw in a few tables with denim bits and bobs and you have the basic layout.  You are tasked with picking up the clothes and putting them back onto whichever rail they fell off of. That is all. Now picture a continuous stream of the most idiotic and downright stupid dullards you can. They are thwarting your every effort to keep some semblance of order in a pretty damn chaotic store. Every time you go to the other side of the square, someone will knock off what you just done on the previous side, forcing you to return to it, only for the same thing to happen on the other side you just went to. Now do this for 3 hours. At least Sisyphus got to watch a cool boulder roll down the other side of the hill.

This repetition of shear mind crushing, soul sucking monotony is now my world every Saturday and Sunday from about 11 am to 3 pm. Forgive me for thinking the minimum wage doesn’t quite seem like an adequate recompense. There is only so many times you can play the same song through your mind before you just want to find the nearest implement and scoop each word out from your own brain.

On the bright side, I have a job now.

Applicant joke because I’m too tired to find anything different

Employer to applicant: "In this job we need someone who is responsible."

Applicant: "I'm the one you want. On my last job, every time anything went wrong, they said I was responsible."

The life and trials of a rather inept man

Don’t look at me like that. You knew as well as I that it wouldn’t take me too long to find an excuse to skive off of work. I suppose I should explain myself shouldn’t I? Welp, it is a tale of chills, spills and dizzying thrills, one that I’m nearly 100% sure hasn’t been made up in order to abate the furious anger that my absence has surely roused within you, my dear reader.

First and foremost in this most recent foray into the bad joke that I like to call my life, has been a recent tendency to go to my friend James’ house for a drink. Just a small gathering or two with a lot of alcohol to while away the hours. The result of which has meant that the two Fridays prior to this day have been spent with a rather terrible hangover and as such, I haven’t  been in the mood to fulfil my dutiful role as the bringer of verbosity and inanity in equal measure. Worry not though, a lack of money combined with guilt for not writing for the loyal few who frequent the site, means that I should be resuming your regular dose of insanity inducing tl;dr content.

In continuation of this shameless attempt at seeking redemption from a bunch of people who don’t really care, is the fact that the most recent bout of drinking was, unlike the ridiculously many times before, meaningful in some small way. You see, I recently received the results from my AS levels, for those of you who are unaware, they are the 1^st year of the 2 year A level courses we take here in merry old England before we go off to get drunk at university.  The results, like the rest of my blasted life, were bittersweet. That is, I done relatively well, achieving ABBD is a feat to be proud of. Unfortunately, the D was in chemistry, the one subject I needed to be strong the most. Funny thing about it all was the B I achieved in the dullest of dull subjects that is English Literature and Language. Now, I know that from my apparent grandiloquent manner, I should be the perfect candidate for some silly English degree but in a bout of floccinaucinihilipilification unseen before to most, I have deemed the pursuit of it all as a rather pointless effort.

It is at this point that I must give myself kudos for actually working floccinaucinihilipilification into the post, it was a challenge I set myself midway through. Not quite sure whether I used it right though. Oh well.

Back to what I was saying before I digressed, I’m currently pursuing a career in science, biology to be slightly more specific. Therein lies my problem; I’m terrible at chemistry; it’s the subject I got the D in. It has not deterred me though. I will continue an uphill battle to follow a route into an area I’m not particularly suited to be, rather than go to where my talents would most likely be suited. That’s just the kind of stubborn bastard that I am.

A joke about test results of a sort, the best I could do was not good enough

Doctor: I've got the results of your test; you have gonorrhoea, chlamydia and onomatopoeia.

Me: What's onomatopoeia?

Doctor: It's exactly what it sounds like.

England Riots 2011 - A personal take on the situation

What started off as the suspicious death of Mark Duggan in Tottenham during an arrest operation by the police has snowballed into a bout of rioting, the likes of which haven’t been seen in England since long before my birth. It all started last Thursday when the Mark was shot dead by the police during an operation gone awry in the London borough of Tottenham. The police claim that he was armed and the shot to the head he sustained was an unfortunate injury. They say that his death was not intended in any way. However, due to my locality to the events and contacts, I have heard otherwise. According to those who were there at the time, Mark was shot in cold blood whilst prone; execution style. Now, you know as well as I that such eye witness accounts can be coloured by bias, especially in such circumstances where relations between the police and the local community are as strained as can be seen in Tottenham, however, it is awfully convenient that the only useful CCTV camera seemed to have malfunctioned on that day and that day only, functioning once again during the ensuing riots.

I won’t make claims against the police, I am in no privileged position to do so, I will, however, say that I have sympathy for the initial riots that were sparked after a peaceful protest of the friends and family of the dead man were ignored for many hours. The police didn’t act fast enough; they made the wrong decision, look at it however you will. What’s done is done and in my view, those initial riots for the justice of Mark Duggan have long since ended; what remains is shear anarchy and senseless violence.

For four days now an infectious wave of opportunism has struck the hearts of every mindless thug, idiotic youth and two-bit criminal that we, of this nation, have the misfortune of sharing this island with. When speaking to a friend on the matter, she said that these sorts had the IQ of a ham sandwich but I disagree. To class them so would be to do a disservice to ham sandwiches; to do so would be an insult to every bread-based meat product that has ever graced this green earth. It takes a certain sort of idiocy, a certain lack of forethought, a complete disregard for yourself and your community to ransack your own town’s centre and steal from those who pay your medical care for your own profit. I don’t think ham sandwiches are that stupid.

Starting in Tottenham, the violence quickly spread to various other boroughs across London, one of which was my home town and it didn’t stop here. With reports of violence in Liverpool, Bristol, Birmingham, Nottingham, West Bromwich, Birkenhead, Salford and Gloucester, this excess of human filth has revealed itself as endemic to the entirety of this nation, an infection that we must put right. We cannot rely on the incompetent Tory government in times like these; they will produce a knee-jerk reaction in order to quell the violence and save face, they are still grumpy with the fact that their summer holidays were cut short it seems. We must stand together in the face of this adversity and rise above it, show the scum that their wrongdoings will not go unpunished. They will rue the day they decided to antagonise the good, honest and overwhelmingly decent folk of this great nation.

 An expertly crafted timeline of the events by the BBC

Getting into the spirit of the times, I’ve looted the a bumper pack of jokes from a decent citizen of the net for your entertainment

Police arrest 18 looters at Enfield Argos. All found waiting in foyer for their stuff from the warehouse.

"Would rioter number 562 please go to the checkout...".

If Greenwich is looted expect Black Market to be flooded with ships-in-bottles, lighthouse lamps and rope-framed clocks.

WARNING: Some items looted at weekend will release dyes that stain skin permanently. Tattoo needles mainly.

Only business untouched in Enfield is the Barbeque Supplies Shop. Despite the efforts of twenty men they just couldn't get it to light.

Charity stores looted. Police looking for man who owns VHS, likes puzzles, wearing wedding dress & cardigan, listening to Leo Sayer LP.

Omegle hurts my brain

It would appear that in my infinite wisdom, I have inadvertently taken part in another bloody time wasting exercise. This particular time sink goes by the name of Omegle and it has devoured the majority of my waking hours these past two days. Touting itself as a means through which a person can exchange their inane, idiotic and ultimately pointless ideas with someone else as equally sad on the opposite side of the globe, you would think it the most fitting place for me. To a certain extent you’d be right. Were it not for the fact that it is populated mainly by horny guys jacking of to what they think are girls in the chat, not realising that those girls are in fact, another group of even hornier guys, I would probably frequent it more often.  It does have its redeeming features however; it is occasionally frequented by some of the better examples of our blithering race, the sort who can hold a conversation for more than a few lines without it descending into a trite exchange of emoticons.

I thought I’d share with you some of the more choice conversations I have had, the ones that go some way to re-affirming the slithers of hope I have for our cancerous species. The first of these being a lovely man from America who seemed to be an almost carbon copy of myself in terms of beliefs and eloquence, we spoke philosophy into the early hours of the morning. A major difference between us arose from the fact he gender identified with the opposite one of which he was born with. We discussed the gender inequalities, prejudices and other such problems that faced members of the LGBT group such as himself. Another was a girl who seemed to have a long list of previous countries of residence; she had to move often due to her father’s work. She described to me the events she viewed in her current home country, Egypt, during the recent revolution and how she felt a stranger to all places. The final one was another guy similar in age to me, we spoke about the ever present thirst for knowledge in mankind and the reasons why some choose to remain ignorant, whilst others strive to learn more. It was a truly enlightening talk.

It is people like this that make life worth living. If any of you happen to be reading this, it is belated thanks for the conversation we had. May there be many more just like them.

If you feel like giving it a try yourself, be my guest.

This joke was so bad I just had to put it up

Q) What's the difference between bird flu and swine flu?

A) If you have bird flu, you need tweetment. If you have swine flu, you need oink-ment.

Die, v.: To stop sinning suddenly.

There are only two things in life are certain, death and taxes or so the saying goes. Hey, don’t look at me like that, I spent ages thinking up an almost cheery way to start up a post about death and as with so much of life, I have failed miserably. Can you really blame me though? Death is a topic that most seem to avoid like the plague. Dare to bring it up in a social situation and you will be given pariah status faster than the average teen drops their ability to write coherently before a facebook post. Now, I’m not saying that death should be the go to topic upon meeting the average blithering idiot, unless it is your wish to make that weirdness you are hiding so deep to become apparent to said idiot. All I’m looking for is a state in which we are comfortable discussing the inevitable fate of each and every one of us unlucky sacks of consciousness. Is that too much to ask for?

As with every post, I have had recent experiences with the topic at hand. Thankfully it has all been theoretical discussion rather than actual firsthand experience. I doubt a blog that gets fewer hits than a no-armed cricketer would be the best place to announce it in all honesty.  No, instead my curiosity was piqued by the often odd reactions I would have upon venturing a discourse with another concerning the subject. The reactions have ranged from people quickly changing the subject, to point-blank refusal to continue the discussion, all the way to a very interesting American stranger who discussed it with me in length into the early hours of the morn. It seems that the reactions are polarised to a great degree depending on the person in question, however there is one common theme that can be seen; they all seem to fear it, as some form of imminent spectre.

The great distinction between us and the animal kingdom is that we are afforded the knowledge of our own mortality; no other creature is blessed, or cursed depending on your view, with this time limit. All others are allowed to continue in a state of blissful ignorance, whereas we are forced to come to terms with our inevitable failure at the great game of life. Yet, unlike what many would have you believe, we aren’t more capable than a beaver or a whale at dealing with said information; it terrifies us. Therefore great deals of us are prone to wild theories, in the form of religions and life philosophies, which are supposed to help us cope. It is quite amazing just how imaginative the average shmoe can be in their attempts to rationalise such an immense concept.

I won’t sit here and claim to know what happens after death, I am not as simple minded as to try and baby you in a similar way to a religious leader. Instead I shall tell you my own personal view on the matter, one that is undoubtedly shared by a vast many of others; this is all there is, nothing more. The idea of ceasing to exist may scare some but it doesn’t fear me in the slightest. Why? You ask, it’s simple; even if there is an afterlife, by the time I reach death, I will either have bigger problems to deal with in said afterlife or I will no longer have the capacity to be fearful as I will cease to be. It’s as simple as that.

Without the ever presence of death, you could not contrast the life and beauty of the world around you, therefore it should be embraced. Be thankful that you and your loved ones will someday leave this godforsaken rock in search of pastures new or at the very least, they will be blissfully non-existent.

Death joke because nothing says funny like the death sentence

A murderer, sitting in the electric chair, was about to be executed.

"Have you any last requests? asked the chaplain.

"Yes," replied the murderer. "Will you hold my hand?"