Judicial Point

I've embossed my increasingly popular bird table with the words "Twitter Feed"

 

Is that wrong?

Commitment

Yeah, yeah. Not fair?

Married people can park where they want. They can just leave one of them in the car as they roll up to any illegal parking spot they like the look of.

One goes off with the Burberry bag and one stays on watch with the keys in the ignition and, frankly, trying not to catch my gaze.

That's why they use double yellows - so everyone knows it's couples only.

 

But try doing that with a young child, and you end up talking to social services.

It's one rule for...

Crime of the Century

The headlines announced today the ultimate downfall of the perpetrators of some of the worst crimes in Europe this century. And who has consistently represented the sort of atrocities that history should never endure.
If only Cheryl Cole could have softened her accent, things might have been different.

 

Doubtless we will get the outcry against Geordie accents but it is nothing to do with that. People like Geordie accents. It is well documented in the telesales industry and beyond. No further convincing is needed.
What they don't like is HER voice.

 

And why is she at fault? Because she makes her living with her voice.
She thinks she makes it with hair extensions.
She has lost sight of her limited abilities.

 

She might have chosen to up her work rate. The Americans instantly realised what any English with sanity knew.
Her searingly childish insight is an insult to every sofa-sitter in the UK, and her monotonous whinging is no way to spend a Saturday evening.

 

If you want a transparent whine, go for a Chablis.

Lipstick on Collar

Poor old Ryan Giggs.
How horrible for a celebrity not to be able to betray and humiliate his wife of 4 years and scar his 2 young children for life without being embarrassed and inconvenienced by it.
Everyone else in life gets their affairs discovered, maybe by a look, a text, an email, a change in after-shave or spring in the step and various other more modern versions of lipstick on collar.
But perhaps his wife would have chosen to look the other way as she has such young kids. She might have ignored her suspicions of a man who is loved by millions if not approaching billions. After all, who would care about her little life? I mean, apart from Max Clifford.

Ryan Giggs hid like a weasel behind his celebrity and threw his money at it because that's the sort of hero he is - one with more money than character.
He can afford to make any problem go away.
Till today.
I know there are two sides to every story. But,for crying out loud, she's the Big Brother girl!

There are three victims here and Ryan Giggs isn't one of them. His wife has had the reality he provided rammed down her throat even harder by his exponential stupidity. He's stuffed her like she's producing Fois Gras and then tried to make the English justice system his fourth victim. Plenty of people have slipped up there. Doesn't he read the papers? Expenses scandal anyone?
He was Hitler invading Russia without the brain power. At least Adolf had one nut that worked.

How Ryan must pity himself for his misfortune but how lovely he will get off so lightly.

Living by the sword involves wielding it rather than cowering behind it.

Either way, Ryan..it's payback time.

That's Annoying

Frustration: definition 

n. driving round a roundabout and having to stop 4 times at red traffic lights on the way round.

New things

Number 7 (missed 7 out)

 

Task: Guested at a local group of (psycho)therapists watching a video and chatting about Ericksonian hypnosis

Method: Shoes + 20 minute walk + 2 hours... + 20 minute walk back (good weather, no-one got hurt)

Verdict: Nice people. Good video. No clue, and they spend 5 years training to doing their stuff; ended up with them asking me (who's done 2 weeks) about techniques - which is a bit odd as I was intending to keep my trap shut.

Conclusion: Maybe my training and experience (=life) counts for someat after all, not that my own profession thinks so.

Mark: Pass (with petit flair).

 

Real Horror Show

Life delivers a lot of functional interactions. These are not the same as having company round or sharing in a real conversation. They merely exist to serve a purpose, deliver a deadline, complete a task.

When you reflect on these gentle dialogues, at least in the workplace they could represent a certain mutual lack of humanity. That's not to say you weren't acting with human qualities. It's just that it was functional and perhaps little more.

There's a deadness to this dialogue which, while it doesn't produce the early chill that it might, hides a danger that, as the months and years tick by, may deliver a late shudder. And like all horror, the scariness comes from just a very slightly different view of what you previously chose as your reality.

The discovery is made.

You have noticed.

You have adjusted.

You hope it's not too late.

I think the challenge - the solution if you like - is to add humanity where you can, to add value. But sadly in this age we inhabit, there is a danger.

Anyone who wants to score a point against you can choose to actively misinterpret or to misreport something you might say. Or might not have said. Get it wrong (or just wrongly right) and it could lose you your job, your husband, your wife.

Generally it's just too big a price to pay. And yet...

I would suggest that the best tool of adding humanity is a playful flexibility with language. You might call it neurolinguistic playfulness.

(You may prefer a dangerous leer or or a saucy wink. I don't recommend it. No one appreciates the Carry On movies more than me but it is 2011. And for the next seven months at least there's very little we can do about that).

That playful flexibility can be your noose. That's the trouble with flexibility. It can contort and twist and eventually fracture like a young willow. And the edge of that willow can be poked into one of your eyes. Or both. Hard like.

You have to be careful with this humanity thing but you use it or you lose it so please.... do it anyway.

Because unless you can think of a better way, that's how you change the world.

New Things

Number 8

task: Become amateur astronomer and observe the night sky

method: Buy scope

result: Detailed moon craters and a big star to the left - a Morning Star I wonder?

discovered: The moon moves through the night sky visibly quickly; as expected no sign of any flags.

assessment: Good pass within limits of equipment; now to unwrap my new planetarium...

Did you hear the one about the...

People think they like a sense of humour, right?
But why?
Whose?
Yours?
How much more likely that they like their own - reflected?
Or are you going to teach a different one?

Are you seriously going to introduce a Russell Howard fan to Daniel Kitson?
Come on. Listen to yourself.
Or perhaps you do not understand the question?
Perhaps you claim to like someone else's humour when you think it's suitable. Or appropriate. Or timely. And not at other times.
Well, wake up soldier.

A sense of humour is a tool that crosses....well... barriers is too small a word. Think more global, universal even. I'll allow you a wormhole (?wyrmhole) here if you are feeling confident.

It's more powerful than a laser because it can go round corners. It's the sort of solution and defence that modern life needs.
And nobody is better equipped to deploy it than the English.

Be proud and play.
You have a flexible joculoscope for investigating life.