What's this 'we' shit, kemosabe?

Whenever I decide to do something, I will say to the wife 'I am going to the pub/game/bike shop/newsagents/betting shop/off license/my mate's house', normally followed by a long pause and then 'You can come if you want'.

Conversely, if she decides to do something she will say 'We are going to the shops/park/the coast/my aunty Majorie's'.

I'm beginning to suspect that the only time women do anything without their husbands or boyfriends is when they meet up with other women to moan that their husband or boyfriend never wants to do anything with them.

This is an oversimplification, but not that much of one.

It's the little things

Anyone that has read more than one post on this site will know that I like to have a moan. I don't think I am a such grumpy chap, it's just that I tend to observe the world and it's inhabitants from a slightly skewed angle. That's my excuse and hot dang, I'm sticking to it. Anyway, on with the moan...

On my travels in this morning I noticed something that has always annoyed me. There was a grubby carpet shop in Bagshot with a sign outside 'Est 1962'. So effin what? To me that reads 'Been systematically ripping you off for 45 years and counting'. I fail to see how this is a selling point.

I've also noticed signs outside many restaurants* that read 'Fully air-conditioned'. I mean, is this really a clincher when you are deciding where to eat? I'm starving, there are two restaurants next door to each other, one is overly expensive, bad service, shit food, but lookey here, it's fully air-conditioned, it's got my business. Or it's a hot day, I need to cool off. I won't park off in the shade and have a can of Lilt, I'll find an eatery that has air conditioning. Kerazee stuff.

*37 years old and I still misspell restaurants every time

The English language

Have people forgotten how to speak English?* Now I must confess that I'm hardly a cunning linguist, but I'm sure Shakespeare is spinning in his grave these days (a clever trick if you can do it).

My biggest bugbare is the misuse of 'sat'. He was sat on a bench is not correct English, he was sitting on a bench is. Likewise I was sat next to him and Where are you sat are both wrong. If you want to use the word, then have the good grace to use it as it was intended, I sat, they sat, we sat etc. Now write it out a hundred times and promise not to do it again.

And what's with the overuse of 'proper' all of a sudden? (I know I shouldn't start a sentence with 'And' before you scald me.) That was proper good, That band were proper and even abbreviated to just Proper with a nod of the head.

Then there's 'like' as in He was like 'Yeah', so I was like 'So what', then he's like 'You want make something of it' and I was like 'Anytime dude'. 'Like' is a close relation to 'turned around'. The previous sentence is often spoken as He turned around and said 'Yeah', so I turned around and said 'So what' etc. No one turned around, if they did it would make an unusual conversation.

No posts in 2 weeks and this is the best I can come up with.

*Rhetorical question

More sport

Coventry go marching on, England lost to Wales (sigh) and the English cricket team are flattering to deceive in the World Cup. At least they got to the Super 8's.

The WC is really not very enjoyable now after the murder of Bob Woolmer, I still can't believe what has happened. I'm a big Warwickshire fan and will never forget how well he got us playing after taking over as coach. It's an old cliche, but he'll be missed. I just hope the police can find the bastard that did it soon.

Sport sport and sport

Been a while since I posted anything so thought I would just add in the most recent highs and lows of Snowy's sporting teams.

Coventry keep the upward trend going, drew 0-0 away at Colchester and beat Wolves 2-1 in the week. That's 5 games for Mr Dowie, 3 wins and 2 draws. The American Investment is as good as signed now as well. Joy.

England cricket lost to Australia in a warm up game for the WC, but the first game proper is today v New Zealand. Thankfully the commentary is on t'web so that should keep me going for the rest of the afternoon.

England rugby managed to pull themselves together after the Irish debacle and beat France 26-18 last Saturday. They played pretty well and actually have a (n unlikely) chance of winning the 6 Nations when they play Wales tomorrow.

That's it.

Linkedin

Linkedin = a website that people you hoped you would never think of again use to track you down.

Cricket World Cup

In a warm up match yesterday, England stumbled along to post a decent enough total of 286/8 against Bermuda but then went onto bowl them out for 45(!). Only one of their players got double figures. If only it was always this easy. A bit of a bigger test on Friday when we play Australia.

I forgot to mention that Coventry beat Hull 2-0 on the weekend, that's two wins and a draw since Dowie took over. Rumours of a take over bid as well, so happy times at the Ricoh for now.

Frank Tovey

I'm a bit bored at work so I did some wikipedia'ing, and have have just discovered that Frank Tovey, the guy who was Fad Gadget - a band I am very fond of, died of a heart attack in 2002 aged 45. Blimey.

Bloody computers

I'm trying to sort out a passport for Junior at the moment. Can you believe that you need a passport for a baby, photo and everything? The most ludicrous thing is that it's valid for 5 years - like his photo is going to resemble him in 2 months, let alone 5 years! Anyway, after following the instructions on the form, getting all the documents together, countersigned by an upstanding member of the community, extracting samples of DNA etc, I headed off the Post Office to get the forms processed. They ran them through a machine and said that they couldn't send the forms off because there was an anomaly. I originally filled the forms in at work, but left the space reserved for my passport number blank as I didn't have it to hand. So when I got home that night, I filled in the missing info. It seems in my haste, I filled it in with blue ink, which is a real no no. So the computer rejects the form. I asked if I could just go over the blue ink with black, but apparently the computer 'knows' if you do that and rejects it. So now I have to get more forms, fill them out (with black ink) and get my Fuzz mate to countersign section 10 and mail it back to me. All because of a blue pen. We can send a man to the moon (and get him back), we can perform face transplants, we have computers that can perform millions of calculations in a fraction of a second, but we can't have a scanner that reads blue ink. Bloody computers.

Swearey guy

There's a junction on Oxford Street that I have to cross every night on the way home. It's a bit of a nightmare this one as when the lights turn green, there are always a bunch of sheep that are in the middle of the road with their Harrods and Hamleys bags that don't seem to understand that the little red fella means don't walk. Nearly every night I have a near miss at this set of lights, with some dumb fanny walking out in front of me. I've adopted a strong arm tactic now and just go for these people and try and frighten the solids out of them. Last night was no different, lights turned green, I hammered the throttle and some bottom feeder walked out in front of me, so I had to slam on brakes. He got a real fright, twitched violently and ran across the road. As he got to the safe side of the road I realised that it was actually Pete the swearey guy from Big Brother. All the way home I was thinking that I should have actually tried to mow him over, I might have made the papers.

Folk me*

My mate Dean sent me an album of a band called Gogol Bordello t'other day. They are described as 'Gyspy Punk', a genre I've never heard of before. Anyway, they are pretty darn good, 'The Clash and The Pogues having a fight in Eastern Europe’. Now I am happy to give anything a listen and love hearing unusual stuff. My staple music is of the guitar based rock variety, but having a think about it, maybe I'm on the turn. Topping my pile of bands I listen to are Half Man Half Biscuit, The Decemberists and the Fiery Furnaces. All these have been described as Folk bands. Add Gogol Bordello to that... I've always been a bit partial to stuff like 10,000 Maniacs, Strawbs and Fairport Convention as well. Am I really a folk music fan? God help me, I'll be a Morris Dancer within a year.

*Clever headline that don't you think? I should work for The Sun.

2 codes

I was flicking through the channels t'other night desperately trying to find something decent to watch, when I came across a rugby match between Oxford and Cambridge Universities. 'This'll do' I thought and settled down to watch it. The score was 4-0, one of the teams had just scored a try, and were in the process of missing the conversion. 4-0? Where did they get that scoring from? As we all know, it's 5 points for a try in rugby. At the restart, instead of the fly half drop kicking the ball, he kicked it from the ground. Also weird. I then thought that maybe they are playing old rules as these University types are always into upholding traditions and stuff aren't they. How quaint. My hunch was confirmed when one of the opposition players caught the ball, got tackled and went to ground. Instead of playing the ball back, he held onto it and the tacklers let him go, then he played the ball back. It was only after seeing this done 3 or 4 times that I realised I was actually watching a rugby league match.

The world's gone mad

Just read this on the BBC site. Now they are banning words, whatever next.

Another why?

Why is it that every IT department, no matter how small, has a man who wears black and has a pony tail?