What made Brian angry today?

Whilst in Washington of late I noticed some things, it was hot and it was spacious. The spaciousness was filled with many things, monuments, government buildings and, joy of joys, countless charity folk.

I had pleasant encounters with the ACLU trying to gain support for marriage equality who quite understood that I would rather donate to things here and wished me a nice flight.

There was a moron from the Conservative Voters Association (or something) whose opening gambit was so stupidly leading it invited disdain.

“Do you support green energy?”
“No”
“…”

There was Greenpeace man:

“Hello have you thought about the environment”
“Well yes but there is no point talking to you really, I don’t live here”
“It’s ok, I work for Greenpeace and we operate all over the country”
“No I mean, as you can tell from my preposterous accent, I’m not from this country”
“Oh that’s ok Greenpeace is a global operation”
“Yes I know that, I’m not stupid, I know who Greenpeace are but I’m still not contributing here, it would be financially imprudent due to tax reasons for one thing.”
“They do very good work”
“I don’t care, I’m not giving you any money”

He warbles on a bit whilst I scan the area for a suitable place to sell me some turps and a sandwich then I leave perplexed as to why he was still talking.

These encounters ranged from simply time consuming to pretty annoying but nothing compared to what was to come.

I was strolling around downtown when I spied a stall with some gents, looks like they are some pals of Obama for I see a large poster of Herr Obama. As I get closer something seems amiss, I don’t recall him having a moustache.  Wait that’s not just any moustache, that’s a Hitler moustache. Wait wait, that’s another poster with a nice composite of Obama and Hitler surveying some nice SS troops or something. What the blazes?

I try to take a picture of said poster, so incredulous am I that it’s real, but this involved getting closer, what a mistake. One of the chaps manning the stall sees me close by and tried to speak with me before I can get a shot.

“Do you have a few moments?”
“No not really, that’s just too offensive”
“You’re right Obama’s financial plans are offensive!”

Whilst this might be a witty retort, it still does not really make me wish to continue to converse.

“Err no, likening any politician, in a roughly democratic country, to Hitler is offensive and mostly undermines anything you have to say really”

I walk off uninterested with what he has to say next. As I stroll away some kindly chaps sitting in a nearby cafe suggest I might like to punch him in the face, that’s quite tempting I reply but alas a fist fight does not ensue, for shame.

Whilst wending my way to and fro my work place sporting my spiffy yet unpleasantly bright 2 years old Chelsea away kit that’s been discussed previously I often receive what can best be described as blindingly idiotic comments.

Swooshing past Loftus road stadium on match day will probably result in at least one “Wooyyyeeeee!! QPR!!!”. Meandering along the Uxbridge road you might hear a brief rendition of  “Come on the Hammers”. Once in a whole you will get an “Come on the Chels!!”. On Tuesday I even got a “I like your t-shirt” from someone who I can only assume was joking or colour blind. Why people feel the need to do this I don’t know, but they do and it’s all quite harmless and best ignored.

However some weeks ago something slightly stranger was screeched in my direction as I peddled sedately up a hill. Some blistering moran going in the other direction probably thought it would be fun to ask me politely at the top of his voice to “Take that fucking shirt off”. Tragically I was going one way, he the other so our meeting was too brief for a witty riposte, or indeed to get a look at him for identification purposes so I just assumed he was a crazy old man and decided to forget about it rather than turn around and chase him down to discover the meaning of this comment.

I thought nothing more of it until yesterday when our paths were fated to cross again, luckily in a much more congenial setting for confrontation, for he was stuck at a set of traffic lights. He spies me again and once more is compelled to yell in my direction:

“I told you to take that fucking shirt off”

Already in a bad mood thanks to Bob ‘Strike Strike Strike’ Crow filling the roads up with idiots I think this is a bit much, I’m not having this, I will not take demands for public indecency from this oik. I come to a halt and enquire.

“Pardon?”
“I told you before to take that fucking shirt off”
“Sorry, do you have some kind of problem?”
“What”

It seems as well as being rude and stupid he’s also deaf, I whirl around and come closer to his hideous visage so he’s more able to hear.

“I said, Do you have some kind of fucking problem”

At this point his tiny mind seems a bit confused, he ceases to be quite as brash and looks a little nervous, I’m guessing he didn’t think I would actually stop.

“Err It’s Chelsea ain’t it”
“Yes, but I asked if you have a fucking problem of some kind?”
“ha, err no, It’s just a joke…”

A joke? A joke is “two men walk into a bar, they both say oww” that’s a joke, albeit it a terrible one. Calling for a random stranger drenched in sweat to expose themselves in public is not a joke, that’s just a weird fetish. I briefly contemplate beating him to within an inch of his life with my bike lock but in the end I decide that the moral high ground has been seized and if I continue I’m in danger of looking like the freak to the now somewhat bemused onlookers. I politely inform him to keep his fucking opinion to himself in future, spin around and cycle off quietly enraged within.

As I wend my way home from another day at the grind stone I tire as the wind works against me. I dodge and weave the morons who seem determined to hurl themselves under me wheels but finally make it to my road unscathed. I swing into the little lane that leads to my first front door. As usual of late it’s full of crap: a skip, sacks of building rubble, bricks and so on.

Wait! What’s this, there something new! There appears to be an old man standing there looking suspicious. He’s looking suspicious because he’s having a flaming piss.

He spots me and stops what he’s doing and looks guilty and blurts out:

“I’m sorry, I couldn’t wait. It’s because I’m old…”
“Umm… Yeah ok, whatever”
“I’m old, I could not hold it”

He claims whilst gesticulating wildly.

It’s swiftly apparent, however, that it’s not really his age that’s the problem, it seems more likely that it has something to do with being hammered drunk at 6:07 on a Tuesday evening.

Sadly for him, his slight, drunken, embarrassment was about to increase as a neighbor also appears behind me. He spots her and realises that hanging about making further excuses is probably not the correct course of action.

“I better leave”
“Yes I think you should”

He then staggers past us and the skip to be joined in the street by someone who seems to be an acquaintance. The wander off shouting talking loudly to each other

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m sure I’ve used a dark ally late at night before to relieve ones self, but 6:07 on a bright sunny evening! No and no old man!

The only saving grace was he was using the fence and not the front door.

I had call to buy a suit the other weekend, I perused the available options, visited several outlets, weighted up the cost to quality ratio and in the end plumbed for a natty little number in fetching bright red, with a built in hood no less. It came with a nice belt, and according to the bumph, in the packaging, a beard.

Yes it’s a Santa suit, but don’t fear rage fans, I’ve not got into the seasonal spirit, on no. It’s intended use was for Santacon, an all day boozefest in central London for a sizeable gaggle of freaks dressed as Santas. My main plan was to try and get so drunk that any children spotting me will realise that Santa is all wrong and will thus grow up loathing Christmas as much as I do.

Anyway I digress, for tragically, there is a fatal flaw in the plan, you see the the suit that I paid ten, yes ten, of my finest British pounds, the suit that was clearly advertised as containing a beard, did not, in fact, contain a beard at all. Now, if I am not careful, the children that spot me swilling from a bottle of meths will see the lack of a beard and realise that I am indeed a faux Santa and thus my plan will be thwarted, this won’t do, it won’t do at all.

So now I have to either trudge all the way back to the frankly horrible shop and enter into an argument about the presence, or lack there of, of a piece of tat that surely costs no more then 5p or try and buy another one somewhere else.

Knowing full well that attempting to argue about a beard would send me into a rage I opted for the other option, buying a beard (that sounds like it should be a euphemism, I do hope it’s not). So I spend my own good time trawling the swankiest pound shops West Ealing has to offer, does this quickly yield what I want, does it bollocks. You see whilst they are happy to sell tons of hats and other Santa crap it seems beards is not something that’s easy to get hold of.

In the end I had the indignity of buying another Santa suit as the only way to get a beard, luckily it was only a £1. A whole suit for a pound, surely a bargain.. Well no, it was a suit, and thus a beard intended for a 5 year old. Although it must have been a MASSIVE faced child as it was pretty much adult sized.

Anyway a suit was formed, £11 was wasted, the trousers lasted about 3 hours before succumbing to the perils of alighting a dodgems car too speedily, what a waste of cash. The colossal hang over I awoke with the next day with vague memories of being accosted by a family of holidaying Peruvians for photos on the journey home did not really help the sense of loss I felt on spying the ripped ruins of my former trousers.

I got a Christmas card at the weekend, a full 39 days before the true horror of Christmas should really begin. I find this a little early to be honest, that said I would find any card that gets here before the 24th early and thus thoroughly unwanted, unlike cards that come on the 24th that are just plain unwanted.

If this were from some slightly amnesiac friend who somehow forgot that I loathe Christmas, I might just pop it straight in the bin and think no more about it. However it was not from such a friend, no, it was from someone far, far worse. It was a piece of marketing bumph! Marketing bumph that I clearly don’t need and don’t want.

What’s it selling you might wonder, what would warrant such an invasion of my letter box, a cure for smallpox maybe, the secrets of the lottery, tickets for a luxury cruise around scenic Bhutan, well no, in fact it’s not really selling anything at all. You see the bloody thing was from the Royal Mail informing me that I should get my post in early to ensure that the cards I won’t be sending get there intended recipients on time.

Now this is fairly annoying, I find unsolicited post enraging at the best of times, however this had taken a special place in my rage filled heart. The reason you see is simple, on the back of this vile seasonal missive was a small little sign, a sign that was informing me that I should “recycle now”. Adding that, “when you have finished with this letter please recycle it”.

Now call me odd but is it not a little rude to tell me what I should be doing with the crap that you send me, crap that I did not ask for. If I wish to burn it for no reason at all, I will, if I want to turn it into priceless art, I will, well I would if I had talent in such areas, but I digress, if I want to compost it and use it to fertilise a crop of heroine to sell to children, I will.

If you cared so much about saving the planet and thus wanted me to recycle the thing, maybe, just maybe you should just not print the fucking thing in the first place. I imagine that would be infinitely more friendly to the planet and it would definitely be more friendly to Christmas loathing individuals such as myself.

Somewhat luckily there is an address to return this junk to if it’s undelivered, so I’ll be posting it straight back. That’ll learn them!

Whilst idly drifting towards Waitrose this after noon enjoying the winter sun I was narrowly pipped to the trolley rank by some bumbling old buffoon who grabbed the first trolley. They then proceeded to just stand there faffing about with some tat left by the previous shopper rather than getting the hell out of my way so I could get a trolley and proceed to stocking up on tasty fare. Luckily for them I managed to contain the anger just long enough and did not just barge them out the way and kick them to the ground as a salutary lesson in moving on expediently.

I moved forward to the perusing the isles and getting this and that, pushed some morons out the way, grabbed some bargains, wandered to the paper section to maybe stock up on some financial doom and gloom based literature. What caught my eye? For some reason it’s the Daily Mail, a “paper” that I normally manage to block out to prevent regular bouts of apoplexy. Alas today something went wrong and I tragically read the headline - “The worst week ever”.

I’m not sure what the article was about as I was unable to read further without risking ended my life with heart failure, but for the purpose of ranting I’ll assume it was dealing with the impending financial collapse of the free market economy.

Now, it’s been a pretty bad week for financial people I admit, hell my favorite country seems to have gone bankrupt (I kind of wished it was the shopping chain that was bust, just to get Kerry bloody Katona off my TV screen), but the worst week EVER? That’s a bold claim, I can think of at least 16 weeks that were worse than that just of the top of my head, 7th July 1991 to 1st November 1991.

Then there were some war things that happened a while ago, I’m pretty sure they were not all that much fun, it’s annoying enough just hearing old folks moan on about it on buses let alone actually being shot in the face by an angry enemy conscript in some god forsaken part of Europe (Belgium).

The plague, did not sound much like a picnic for Europe either if I’m honest.

But no, all this death, destruction, suffering and Bryan Adam’s crooning PALES into comparison compared to some lost money!!!

Bunch of fascist wankers.

I’m also bitter that my local pub cruelly duped me yesterday, sat outside there was some slightly oddly interchanging happy hardcore/country and westen tunage, nothing too offensive even if it was a little strange. Anyway, glasses were emptied and tragically it was my shout so off I popped inside to get a round of sauce in, open the door, OH DEAR GOD, “Never Gonna Give You Up, Never gonna let you down” - fuck me I’ve just been Rick Rolled by a boozer. Curses!

Firstly when going to work I like to be able to leave my house, I say like, I mean have to in order to get paid. Trouble is some obnoxious Toyota hilux (huge wanky pickup truck thing) owning oik keeps parking in my little side road making it almost impossible to get past. This problem is only exacerbated by a) me having a bike b) it being bin day meaning sacks of crap are heaped up on what path is left. What do I get when I struggle past, lip from said oik from the top of his building project to mind out. MIND OUT, if you have not parked your fucking car here I would not need to mind out. Heaven forbid if I had a pram with me.

It’s not even like this is a one off, living, as I do by a taxi office the roads and pavements are always clogged up with people sleeping, washing cars, annoying the fuck out of me by trying to engage in a conversation whilst waiting for the next fair to stagger into the office. Each and every time you try and get past they glare at you for daring to touch their precious heap of crap they call a taxi. Tell you what champ, I’ll stop touching your car when you stop using it to block the fucking pavement. Till then you can fuck right off, I’ll key the thing if I so desire (not really, I’m not risking damaging my key on that tat).

Also what I don’t want it some cyclist stopping dead in the road right in front of me almost causing me to crash, for seemingly no reason at all. Although that was tinged with happiness as she then proceeded to plummet sideways to the ground in a heap.

It’s your duty to start voting now! There are some very important issues at stake. You see, we NEED to know the answer to many, many, questions. Which is better, Canada or the USoA*, Sweden or Norway**, My feckless ex school co-atendees or the feckless ingrates that went to the other local plebeian educational establishment***.

The big question of course is how to decide the answer to such important things, how indeed?

We could get together a bunch of academics to do some in-depth analysis into the two groups and define some qualitative measures between the two to determine which would give the bet results in some given situations and thus see which would be better. I mean, it’s always going to be a judgement call, but you can make some broad sweeping statements maybe.

However, that’s all in the past now, for a, new, bold method has been created, yes the kind people of Facebook have inadvertently solved all future arguments, for ever. All you do, is crate two groups, invite people to join either of the groups and there you have it. PROOF that one thing is better than the other.

Either that, or you end up with a bunch of feckless wankers banding together for no good reason other than by virtue of where they grew up indulging in some kind of tedious text based egotistical masturbatory self aggrandisement group.

If I wanted to extol the virtues of my former school over another, I probably would not rely on how many moronic past attendees I could dupe into clicking a button on a stupid website.

*Canada
**Sweden
***The other one, results clearly show this, get over it.

I am sure everyone knows the story about the little train going about it’s daily business. It goes something like - “A little black train goes down the track. clickety clack, clickety clack.” (alas Amazon “look inside” prevents me from stealing more of this copyrighted material)

What a pleasing tale it is too, a nice little train making a nice little noise as it zooms about it’s track. I’ve been on trains and almost drifted off to sleep, mesmerised by the rhythmic noise that the wheels on track make. Hell, I’ve probably thought I was listening to my iPod on more than one occasion thinking “man these are some awesome minimal tech tunes” only to find myself headphone less and deluded by the “tunes”.

However, this pleasantness is in NO WAY matched by some twunt on the tube clicking a bloody pen on and off, on and off, for half the length of the flaming central line. Click click click click. He was not even deep in thought doing a crossword, click, or heavens forbid sudoku, mainly, click, I imagine, click, cause he lacked the brain required to-do thought. Click click click.

Every station that passes the rage increases, click click click, but it’s one of the situations in life that present a problem. Click.

I could have yelled across the train to stop doing that, click, I could have wrestled the pen from his puny grasp and rammed it into his eye, click, I could have just beaten him to death with a London Lite, click click. However all of these actions would have lead to me being the annoying rage inducing freak on the train which just won’t do, click. Hamstrung by social acceptance all that’s left in the arsenal of the average commuter is the stern glare. Click click.

This was not enough however, oh no. Click.

Locks, as we know have been around for at least 6000 odd years, that’s 6000 years in which knowledge of their usefulness and operation could filter down in to the mental consciousness of all but the simplest morons. Knowing this fact its quite a surprise that my upstairs neighbour seems totally unable to use the fucking things. Every single day I used to come home to find the front (1) door wide open to the world, I would proceed to front (2) door to find, yes you guessed it WIDE BLOODY OPEN. Now I confess that both had odd locks, one was a pain to shut and one you had to get out your key and explicitly lock it (no Yale lock here, oh no).

Fast forward some months and the landlords had obviously noted that someone living in the block was a dim-witted goon and so they attached self closing door spring things, mended front (1) door so it shut easily and added an extra lock self closing lock on the front (2) door. Did this help? Did it my posterior, She still manages to conspire to leave the door open, she must actually be putting effort in now I’m convinced. Even when it is shut she still can’t be arsed to lock the one lock that might stand a chance as retarding a burglar progress whilst breaking in by more than 5 seconds.

I’ve half a mind to break into her flat in the middle of the night and savagely beat to within an inch of her life then steal all her belongings to ensure she understands that locked doors are on the whole a good thing.