13. Time will of course tell. And as a final note I’ll record here and now that if I turned out to be wrong, I’d have no problem with this and just admit it. Real scientists know and accept they can often be wrong. That’s just part of science and how it progresses.
It’s a bit more difficult, however, to take this philosophical attitude for the politicians and scientists who have backed a 1.6 trillion dollar a second cause in support of “farms” where you don’t grow any food or have anything waddling around that shits a lot.
14. I feel a bit sorry for the yanks. They went for years ignoring all the man-made CO2 nonsense. Then just as the tide was beginning to turn in the argument, the “Yes we Can” idiot with big ears became a fully signed up member of the let’s flush loads of dollars down the drain mob.
28 - Doctors and Men
So, us poor blokes are continually being reprimanded for not taking up excessive amounts of time with our GP. Sorry, how does that work again? We get a bollocking for saving the NHS money by them NOT needing as many GPs. And by us dying earlier. Rather than plodding on and on into our 90’s and beyond like the female half of humanity. And our politicians seem to be a bit baffled as to why we ignore their advice to push up NHS spending and visit our GP even when there is nothing wrong with us for a sort of ‘MOT’. Even though probably ¾’s of politicians are male, or at least sort of male. Well, here, I let our dearly beloveds into the secret as to why us blokes do not, under any circumstances, go anywhere near a doctor’s surgery.
So, us blokes are apparently, not being very good. Not being very compliant. You see, whilst the girlies, like to have a standard 3 times a week scheduled visit to the doctors, to have their bits and pieces checked out. And their blood pressure checked. And their BMI measured (nope, I’ve no idea what it stands for either). And to be interrogated about whether they sneak the odd ciggy or have one or two glasses of Rose at the weekend.
Us blokes don’t. We don’t go for any check-ups under any circumstances. Never.
There are of course, very good reasons for this. Very good reasons, that any bloke understands; fully. Clearly any bloke, except the 500 or so suspicious chaps who happen to waddle into Westminster, every now and again. If they feel like it or are in need of a cheap pint.
In fact, the don’t bother going anywhere near a doctor under any but the most extreme circumstances is programmed into us non girl-types from about the age of 3. For extreme circumstances in the previous sentence, please read:
- Head missing.
- More than one limb severed.
- Entire blood content of body now on road; or
- Suspiciously dead.
Anything else, in BLOKE LAND does NOT, under any circumstances, constitute extreme circumstances.
So, at the age of 3 or so, a boy will have probably started riding some sort of bike. And he will fall off. Oh I don’t know, he might trap his leg in the chain resulting in a graze. Okay, a cut. Okay, a gash. Possibly about 17 feet long.
Now, mums, especially the new modern mums (yes, I know you shouldn’t be reading this, but just in case you have slipped through the net), please take note. When you are NOT there, waddling behind little Jonny with the box of cotton wool, sterri-strips, germolene, and your mobile phone programmed with the number of every A&E department within a thousand miles, and Jonny falls off, gashes his leg and starts bleeding to death, do you know what happens?
Well, firstly, his mates will just ride on and he’ll lie in the gutter and have a short sob. Then, when he realises that there is a 0.015 % chance that he might NOT bleed to death and his mates are ignoring him, he’ll jump back on his bike and ride off after them; because he is having fun. (An odd concept I know, to most very serious modern mums who take the health and well-being of their little Jonnies very seriously indeed. No room for fun. Fun means Risk).
Then, when Jonny realises he hasn’t bled to death and eventually decides to come home (probably at about 11:35 pm because he can’t see where he is going any more), mummy will probably see a dried up mess on his leg about 17 feet long, and go ever so slightly apoplectic. Then 175,000 baby wipes and three tubes of antiseptic cream later, when he is tucked up in bed, little Jonny will have realised something (that both kids and parents in the 60’s and 70’s just knew inherently, but no modern mother in the developed world now has the faintest comprehension of):
That you do not need to go to the doctors every time you get a cut or graze (even if it is 17 foot long and will scar you for life (I’m rather fond of my scar, and not much of my leg was left embedded in the bike’s chain); or sneeze, or cough, or turn a bit green and puke. Or for anything else, other than one of the most extreme circumstances.
And that is the way the initial seed is sown in a trainee blokes head. At the age of 3.
And then the original seed gets reinforced a bit further. Say little Jonny doesn’t feel well and his thoroughly modern mother takes him to the doctors. Mother and Jonny will initially sit in the waiting room for about 17.65 hours. Then Mummy and Jonny will finally get in to see the doctor who will check little Jonny over for 1.67 seconds and promptly declare:
“It’s a virus. There is one going around at the moment. Take him home and put him to bed (incidentally, where he was, before mummy dug him out to drag him to the doctors). Sorry I can’t do anything, but he’ll be fine in a couple of days.”
And funnily enough, he is.
Then, another time, the re-inforced seed gets even further re-inforced. Poor little Jonny is upset. You see his Granddad isn’t very well. This is very unusual, because Jonny’s Granddad is virtually never ill. In fact, the last time he went to a doctors was 65 years and 2 months ago (see - a proper bloke). However, in extreme pain, he gives in and goes. And, after waiting in the waiting room (good name I always think - appropriate) for 15 months and 3 days, the nice doctor explains, kindly and considerately with compassion and real feeling:
“I’m very sorry, you’ve got 48 hours left and then you might be ever so slightly dead”.
And then he is.
And poor little Jonny is seriously upset and pissed off; but nevertheless the message has been even further re-inforced.
And that, in a nutshell, is the reason why blokes don’t ever go to the doctors. We understand that either it’s a virus, and he can contribute diddlysquat. Or that you are about to become an ex-organism; and he can do diddlysquat. Apart that is, from measure you up and let you choose a nice light oak number from his catalogue.
Now once again, dear 500 slightly suspicious chaps who happen to waddle into Westminster, we can make this a win-win. You, once again sod off and stop lecturing me and other blokes about going and clogging all the doctors surgeries up (the ones, incidentally, that you haven’t got anyway since the previous set of completely off the crapness scale lot went in to negotiate some new GP arrangements and contracts (candy off a baby again springs to mind)). Then, when the time comes, we’ll go and die nice and quietly in a corner. It will stop pissing poor blokes off AND save the NHS a fortune.
35 - The Madness of Pets
What is the obsession people have in this country for pets? Is it the pleasant ‘aroma’ they make in every room of the house? The way they cover everything in hairs? The way they make their poor owners poor? The way they drag the poor sods outside in the freezing cold, rain and snow when they need a shit? Just exactly what is the attraction?
I’ve just read an article in one of the large circulation newspapers about pets and how people are spending huge sums of money on them and on weirder and weirder stuff. Like Cashmere hoody things for dogs. And taking pets out to restaurants. And buying gym style exercise equipment for them.
Well good that’s what I say. It’s helping with the growth in GDP and raising some taxes that the lunatics in Westminster don’t have to come knocking on my door for.
But don’t for one second think because I’ve said good to the above, that I remotely like pets. Because I don’t. My wife and I are like ch
alk and cheese and that’s the main reason we have put up with one another for so long, but on one thing we categorically agree. We both hate pets. Maybe hate is a bit of a too strong a word. Is detest less or more strong than hate?
Anyway, for sure, we both agree, we don’t have anything in the house that doesn’t walk through the front door on two legs, isn’t predominantly hairless and doesn’t know to only piss and shit in the white thing in the smallest room in the house; and flush the string that isn’t a string afterwards. And this is despite (or because) of the fact that as children, both our families had pets and the fact that both our own kids would have liked them.
Every time we see some poor sod out in the pissing down rain when it’s minus 23.7 oC (okay - snow then), exercising their dog, normally at about 06:30 in the morning or 10:30 at night, we both look at one another and think exactly the same thing:
“Thank Christ we don’t have pets”.
Or when we go to somebody’s house and get out of the car at the end of their 2 ½ mile gravel drive and the aroma coming from their open kitchen door tells us: “Oh, they’ve got dogs”. And this is confirmed when we get to the lounge and choking for breath, sit down on what was once a nice cream leather settee but is now dark shitty brown in colour and has more hair on it than an entire flock of welsh sheep in deep mid-winter.
Of course, some people go a different route. Don’t want to walk a dog? Get a cat - they walk themselves. I suppose this is sort of true. They still deposit a film of hair 8 inches thick over every internal surface of the house though. And have a delightful habit of nipping out in the dead of night to snack on water voles, rats and birds. And then coming back inside to honk it all back up for you at the end of your bed.
“Oh there you are Casper, how yummy; blue tit and squirrel tonight, thank you for thinking of us”.
The modern cat has also evolved. When I was a kid, cats were neat and tidy. If they needed to do their business, they’d slope off to a quiet discrete corner somewhere, dig a little neat but deep’ish hole, deposit their stomach, and then neatly fill the hole back in again with soil. Purrrrfect. You wouldn’t even know little Casper had been. And he’d added some extra carbon, nitrogen and other nutrients to your herbaceous border.
Not now though. Not the 2014 fully evolved cat:
“Why bother walking all the way over to a quiet discrete corner, burning all those extra calories? How many extra birds would I need to mutilate and murder to get them back? And why all this digging bloody holes and then filling them back in again? What’s the point of all that nonsense? No, I’ll just crouch down here in the middle of his lawn and dump a load about twice as high as the pyramids. Yep, that looks just fine”.
And so, just as long as they can make it taste like chicken, I’m with the Chinese restaurants and Kebab houses. It keeps the price of takeaways down during the recession and keeps our parks and my lawn largely turd free.
Glossary (What Stuff Means)
AD: Anno Domini. Designates years after the JC bloke was born. The one who wasn’t as economical with ingredients as my mother.
A&E: Accident and Emergency (department of a hospital). Place where yummy mummies (who shouldn’t be reading this) take little Jonny if he falls over. Blokes – don’t worry, you don’t go here under any circumstances, not even extreme ones.
A4: Paper size. Any Politician needs at least 127,689 sheets to put together an act to specify that axe murderers possibly need some minor degree of punishment (unless there are acceptable mitigating circumstances).
ALGOL: Can’t remember what it stands for. It was a computer language early in the development of computers in the 1650’s.
ASOARS: Automated Speed of Arse Reduction System.
A new natty little device some politicians invented for racing cars following the Nationalisation of Formula Fast. Followed shortly afterwards by the most lucrative international sporting business entering receivership. Another success story for the WODs in SW1.
BASIC: Beginner's All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code.
Another computer language that came in after the 1650’s. I actually used and programmed in this rather than just copying lines of ALGOL code that some other geezer had originally sorted out.
BBQ: Barbecue. Still none the wiser? It’s for burning shit that used to be food on a fire. Don’t worry though. There’s lots of Fosters and red wine at all our events.
BC: Before Christ – see JC.
bhp: Brake Horse Power.
A measure of how many horse’s arses it would take to stop my car. The answer is lots and lots and lots.
BMI: Body Mass Index. A measure of how fat a woman’s arse is.
BSF5: Bull Shit Factor (5). Usually applies when a politician comes up with any sort of budget. You know the budget will be low by at least the bull shit factor. All BSFs are a minimum of 5 with no maximum. The average historically has been 1007.
BSP: British Standard Pipe. Don’t worry about it, everybody hates plumbing.
oC: Degrees Centigrade. A unit of temperature. Certain deluded scientists and incompetent politicians think that the world temperature is going to increase by about 10,000 of these units partly because your dog farts too much. The solution: BBQ and eat him.
CO2: Carbon dioxide. A gaseous chemical that certain deluded scientists and incompetent politicians think might be causing the degrees centigrade of your back yard to increase. It’s a different gas. Your dog doesn’t fart this one. But, you still have to stop him breathing - so BBQ and eat him anyway.
Commodore 64: The second best computer in the whole known universe. It relied on not having the biggest bunch of complete arseholes to programme the operating system software that ran it.
CPS: Crown Prosecution Service. Shortly to be rebranded as: ‘The Crown let them all do what they bleeding well like and get away with it service’. I think it’s catchy.
DIY: Do-it-Yourself. Or, screw it up big time so your house will never be habitable again.
DNA: Deoxyribonucleic acid. A big chemical that is important in all organisms. Goes a bit wrong in WODs.
EC or EU: Bunch of WODs in Brussels or Strasbourg, or Luxembourg or somewhere. Nobody knows the details of what or where or why. The only bit you need to understand in 27 languages and counting is WODs in the plural.
E = MC2: Energy equals Mass x the speed of light squared. A frizzy grey haired German yank thought it up.
Enron: A company that might, allegedly, have not been able to add up and liked conning grannies.
Excel: A big hall in London where people can fight and exhibit stuff.
Or, a pile of crap software for doing calculations on a computer.
Fat face: Facebook. Still none the wiser? Either the greatest thing since sliced bread or the latest Year 2000 or internet bubble about to go tits up.
FIFA: Fédération Internationale de Football Association. They know bugger all about football and even less about organising a piss up in a brewery.
FOC: Free of Charge. The polite version my wife lets me use. See FOFC.
FOFC: Free of Flipping (or alternative) Charge. Special present from me, to one or more WODs.
Foxtrot Oscar: Go away, probably rapidly.
HS2: High Speed 2. Some sort of two hundred year old crappy technology that the WODs think is going to be “state of the art” in 3063 years’ time when they eventually get their arses into gear and decide to do something. Thankfully, they won’t. Ever.
IKEA: Ingvar Kamprad Elmtaryd Agunnaryd. Don’t worry about trying to work out what the bloody hell this means. You don’t need to go there. Putting anything together that they might sell to you will be at least a thousand times harder than working out what the f**k their name means.
IOC: International Olympic Committee. They know bugger all about running round in circles and chucking stuff and even less about organising a piss up in a brewery.
4G: Fourth Generation. It’s somet
hing to do with mobile phones. By now I expect there’ll be 5G. All you need to know is that 5G will be crapper than 4G, which was crapper than 3G which was crapper than 2G which was a lot crapper than the original G. Buy 0G and NEVER upgrade it. Whatever the bastards tell you.
GDP: Gross Domestic Product. Something to do with how many £’s we chuck about in Great Britain each year. The only thing you need to know is that after the thieving bastards in SW1 have done their stuff, it will always be less next year than this year.
GP: General Practitioner. A jack of all trades who pretends to be a doctor. Knows nothing and can do nothing. Apart from measuring you up for a nice light oak number from their catalogue. Unless, you are none male. In which case they can flush out all your bits up to six times a day.
HGV: Heavy Good’s Vehicle. A special machine for re-adjusting OCC’s crappy bollards and chicanes.
HMRC: Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. They collect dosh from citizens. They also get run ragged continually trying to keep up with ever changing rules brought in by Westminster WODs.
JC: Bloke with long hair and a beard who died and then un-died a couple of thousand years ago.
Not as good as my mother at feeding lots of people very cheaply.
JCB: A big digger thing for taking apart stuff.
JFDI: Just Flipping Do It. Politicians don’t have any concept.
lb ft: Pound foot (of torque). Lots and lots is the only answer. It means the box with your arse in can go a lot quicker.
La Mer: The Sea. But only in Frog Land.
LPG: Liquid Petroleum Gas. A fuel that’s not as good as proper petrol.
MAISTUC: Monitor Activities and Immediately Screw Tony Up Completely. “Look, I am NOT bloody paranoid”.
M20, M25 etc.: Motorway twenty, twenty five etc.
For motorway please read car park. As in box with four wheels stationary, going nowhere.
However, following the 2020 UK elections with the new strategic plan for UK plc in place (minus the crappy little patch of waste land just north of an old historic wall), the car parks will once again become motorways. With all numbers between M1 and M333,786 fully allocated and operational by the 1st January 2021.
MOT: Ministry of Transport. A government organisation that tries to make sure crappy cars get blown up.
Used as a generic term for testing stuff - either cars or bodies.
MP: Member of Parliament. See OMFG and WOD. Best BBQ’d.
NASA: National Aeronautics and Space Administration. An American organisation that understands the concept of priorities. So, of course it’s essential to dish out 1.7 trillion dollars a second so that a few thousand scientists can fart around looking at white dots in the night sky.
Africa? “Oh, to hell with that lot - they need to keep starving to keep CO2 emissions down and save the planet.”
NHS: National Health Service. Some nice doctors and nurses trying to do some stuff to do with mending bodies.
And 8.37 million WODs making absolutely sure they can’t.
NOBPUKS: Number of Bums per Unit Kilometre Squared.
A highly technical measure that allows you to calculate how many arses want to use the M1 to M333,786 in the new UK; the WODs in Westminster haven’t got the faintest idea.
NOKIA: A mobile phone manufacturer that used to be good.
OCC: Oxfordshire Complete Cock-ups. Oh, go on then, Oxfordshire County Council. A bit like WODs at Westminster, but there’s a lot, lot more of them.
Some have a strange fetish for chicanes, mini-roundabouts and red tarmac.
O2 : Oxygen; or a phone company that shafted some WODs to get a big tent on the cheap. Not difficult.
OMFG: Oh My Flipping God. Statement – needs to be made regularly when you don’t know what to do: fall about laughing; slash your wrists; or potentially make deceased vast numbers of WODs. There is an alternative to flipping but my wife won’t let me use it in a public manuscript; and my mum might read it as well.
Oz: Australia. A big nice warm country with a posh opera house and lots of people that can unfortunately play cricket.
PAGM: Private Annual General Meeting. A big fight in private.
PC: Parish Council. I simply can’t remember; please read chapter 21.
PC : Personal Computer. Electronic box with some keys and a screen that is meant to make your life easier but doesn’t.
Perudo: A game. The only one I play. Ever.
plc: Public Limited Company. A company that is managed by a committee that then let’s about ten zillion people say what it should do and how it should do it. All plc companies are guaranteed to go tits up eventually.
PPI: Payment Protection Insurance. A complete con that lots of people fell for.
Psi: Pounds per square inch. A measurement of pressure. Often blood pressure. Normally extremely high after a WOD has opened their gob and allowed sound waves to emanate.
PTFE: Poly Tetra Fluoro Ethylene. Don’t worry about it, everybody hates plumbing.
PVC: Poly Vinyl Chloride. Don’t worry about it, everybody hates plumbing. Also see www.eezisit.com.
3 R’s: Reading, writing and arithmetic. ‘Jane goes into the park’ and ‘1 + 7 = 8’.
RON: Research Octane Number. It’s to do with petrol. The higher the number the faster your car goes. Just buy the biggest number there is.
Rozzer: Policeman. Used to go and catch robbers and murderers but these days can’t be arsed because the CPS is a WOD.
Rpm: Revolutions per minute. Engine speed. Make sure you only buy cars that can go to 10,500 rpm or higher.
TPBSG: The Poor Bastard Scape Goat. An essential member on any committee, especially one involving political or other official WODs, for when the shit hits the fan.
Having been given free tea and biscuits for accepting the role of TPBSG, when the shit hits the fan the TPBSG will never work again and be dragged off to some dark woods to be persuaded to become deceased.
All other members of the committee will change the name of the committee and receive 10,000% salary rises.
SDS: A drill. Not one that the nice dentist uses, one for demolishing your house and electrocuting yourself when drilling into walls.
SIM: Subscriber Identification Module. A little piece of electronic crap that allows you to access and use a slightly bigger piece of electronic crap.
T-Mobile: A mobile phone company that makes precisely 10.7 pence per decade out of my mobile phone contract that isn’t a contract.
Twithead: Twitter. A completely useless pile of shit software for your computer.
TV: Television. A visual box that used to have loads of interesting stuff on it that doesn’t any more.
UK: United Kingdom. Where our arses reside unless we are on holiday.
UN: Bunch of WODs in a part of New York that’s not part of New York.
V8: A proper engine for moving a proper bit of machinery for transporting arses very quickly and effectively.
VAT: Value Added Tax.
The first two words are complete bollocks. It has no Value (to you) and nothing gets Added (to you) only taken away by the thieving incompetent bastards in the big posh building with a clock in London.
The third word is correct. It’s a tax.
Vodafone: A mobile phone company that about a thousand years ago used to get my 10.7 pence per decade until I decided it was complete crap.
WOD: Waste of DNA. Basically a person who might not be very good at their job.
WTF: What the Flipping-heck.
X-ray: A small squiggly wave thing that can look in your bag without opening it.
ZX-81: The world’s greatest personal computer ever.
ZZY / ZZZ: Locations at the Channel Tunnel where people get arrested and don’t go on holiday.
Join the Madness:
https://twitter.com/PLANET_Me_Rant
https://www.facebook.com/planetMErants
ISB
N: 978-0-9928150-2-8
Thank you for reading books on BookFrom.Net Share this book with friends