Teknofobe

That's the name of my new trance dance outfit.

In da house!

Ahem, actually, a rather serious point must be made. As well as the things I can't cope with, such as tying my shoelaces, climbing ladders, folding paper in half, etc it surprises me that there are certain technologies that have me baffled, or even worse, terrified.

I am terrified of house alarms, or burglar alarms in general. Not because I go house breaking and these things alert people to my unwanted presence. No, I hate the noise they make when you set them and then again when you enter the house while the alarm's activated. It's that sort of count-down to world destruction, panicky, rapid extremely loud beeping.

First off, you get the "alam activated" code. This is particularly bad if you set the alarm for while you're in bed at night:

"Right, you've activated me, beep, beep, beep. Better get upstairs quick, beep, beep, beep. What, you've forgotten something and need to go back into the kitchen? BEEP, BEEP, BEEP! What about that living room light? BEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEEEEEEEEEP!"

You finally make it upstairs with your heart in your mouth and drenched in a cold sweat; you run into your bedroom and fall onto the bed. Deep breaths, it's OK, you did it, the beep's stopped now. You're safe from harm....

Did you enter the right code? Does the alarm know that you're in the house, in this bedroom? What happens when I go out onto the landing? Will the sensor know I'm supposed to be here and just wink at me, or will it set off an electrical chain reaction in a fraction of a second; setting sirens and bells, strobe lights. Complete sensory overload.

Safer to stay in bed and pray for a power cut before you shit yourself or die of starvation. At least a power cut will set off all your neighbours' house alarms too, then you won't feel such a spaz when you trip yours by going to the bathroom in the night.

Perhaps you did programme it correctly?....

Of course the other way the alarm gets you is when you return home and open the door:
"ENTER THE CODE, ENTER THE CODE NOW!!!!!! DO IT, DON'T FUCK UP, DON'T FUCK UP!!!!!"

They send me into such a panic.


My other hate is microwave ovens. I don't see much point in these things anyway, but when it comes to using one, I'm completely clueless. I could just about cope with the old ones with the analogue dials for power and time, but these modern ones with all these buttons and settings? Forget it.


I was going to spend a bit of time and effort and add some photos to this post, but my eye is fucking killing me and I need to try and see what's going on. It feels like there's something under the eyelid. Bastard!

A sorta fairytale

For all you Tori Amos fans (me included, this appears to be about 2 of you). I shall use this short post to tell you how excited I am about seeing her in concert this coming Sunday.... VERY!

I've loved her music since she brought out Little Earthquakes and I think I've got just about all her stuff.

Connie, you're right about Scarlett's Walk, it's a truly fantastic piece of work and I adore A sorta fairytale and I can't see New York - amongst others of course. When my sister first heard the former, she actually shut up for a minute and said "What's this? This is lovely!" - it takes something special to achieve that. I still think my favourite track of hers is Cornflake girl - if only for the piano in it.

So yes, I'm feeling a little like Goldielocks in my own fairytale this week: housesitting for friends up in deepest Lancashire. It's nice to get some peace and quiet, although I have a suspicion that the in-laws may drop round and they don't know that my friends are away for half term. I shall have to get my best lying gear together.

As you can gather, I've managed to get access to the internet, so I'll be trying to get those juices flowing (in a friend's bed??) and tell you all about Lancashire Life.

This is a rather lame incursion into Tuesday's Cakesniffer, but I've just got to jet wash my car and it should give me the opportunity to think about how I'm going to put microwaves and house alarms to rights!

Ask me a question

Go on then, I've shamelessly stolen this from Herge and from Karen, but I guess there's no reason why others can't use the same idea for their own blogs.

On a day when I'm answering all sorts of questions about my job for this Agenda for fucking Change shite, I might as well answer some more interesting questions while I'm at it.

If anybody's interested enough, feel free to ask me a question. Anything you like. Go ahead, I'll either be honest or suitably evasive, but I'll aim for the former.

Q1. How much of a twat will I look if nobody comments on this?
A No more of one than usual, most probably.

Top tip

Visually impaired people with astigmatisms who can't wear normal daily disposables and who have to wear monthly toric lenses at £10 a pair: keep your contact lenses in tip-top condition by not falling asleep in the fucking things!

I had a 3 hour snooze on Saturday afternoon during which my friend actually thought I'd died. When I woke, I couldn't see a thing and so I took my lenses out. They looked like a baby's tongue, i.e. covered in milky goo. I thought that a good soak would sort them out, but alas, they're well and truly mangled.

That's ANOTHER new pair of lenses I've had to bin - third in a row. Stupid tit.

I'm going to get my eyes lasered.


Agenda for change
There's currently an exercise in the NHS whereby just about everybody is having their job reviewed so we can all go onto the same, nationally-agreed, 8-band payscale. Some people have their jobs matched nationally, others don't have equivalents and so have to go through a process called "job evaluation". This involves filling out a 35-page questionnaire that covers all aspects of your role. Guess which category I fit in to? Yep, I'm being evaluated and assimilated (yes, assimilated). I've got to fill out the fucking questionnaire by tomorrow - yep, in my own time.

Will any of us actually get what we deserve? No.

Is this just an exercise in reducing costs? Absolutely.

Bastards.

Of course!

I was on a course at work Thursday and Friday of last week: "Train the trainer", it was actually very useful.

Of course (of course!), what I love about in-house training is the fact that you get to meet some right oddballs that work in the same organisation, but who you would never have dreamt existed. Amongst other people, I had great pleasure in meeting a "family therapist".

Now, those who have come to know a little bit about me from my contribution to this blog will know that somebody with the job title "family therapist" should be very careful about mixing with this particular cakesniffer.

Family therapist indeed.

I tried to get an understanding of exactly what family therapy is, it was like pulling teeth. "We treat the family as a whole, not as individuals."

"But what's wrong with them?"

"There's nothing wrong with them, they just don't function properly."

"How do you define that? If it was up to people like you, 90% of families would be undergoing "treatment". What do you mean by "not functioning properly"?"

"They have problems..."

Oh fuck...

"Why don't they just take the kids into care and sterilise the parents?"

I still haven't got a clue what family therapy is, but I've figured out that family therapists are probably a waste of time, doing a job that has no evidence base. They're very sensitive souls and I think the particular family therapist that I met might well be off work on the sick with stress after meeting me. "Some people are just pigs, they don't understand what we're trying to do." You're dead right we don't understand what the fuck it is you're trying to do because we can't get a fucking straight answer out of you, you daft twat!

Not like our Connie who works tirelessly in a respirator mask and boiler suit to keep aeroplanes in the air. Or Herge who does, errrm, publishes imaginative stories, gives truthful accounts of current affairs and massages dogs' hindquarters. Or even myself, who is an expert sniffer of bakery products.

Family therapist. Honestly, whatever will they think of next? Oh, I've found a website, this ought to be fun! http://www.aft.org.uk/

Dirty weekend

A dirty weekend with Trillion? I wish! But a dirty weekend nonetheless.

I've been doing things with a 14 day old baby - the type of things that you can only do with a 14 day old baby: changing nappies, cleaning bottoms, having my nose suckled (I got a bit to close when she was hungry and she went for me).

Babies are pretty crap at that age; they only notice you if you're lactating, otherwise they just sleep, poo and scream.

Poo
Baby poo is weird stuff. It smells like it comes from the fiery pits of hell, but looks like something that's been reconstituted with boiling water with a name that is prefixed with "Pot". Oh, and it's bright yellow.

Like the baby's nappies, I'd had my fill of that shit by the time I came home.

If anybody's interested, there's a site dedicated to baby poo. As much as babies are squishy and nice, I can't imagine kissing one of their arses knowing what comes out of them. All too often this weekend I had to dodge flying piccalilly poo when I'd removed the baby's nappy and was trying clean her little bum. You think you're safe and then BANG! a little bit of projectile poo comes flying out at you.

So no, I won't be getting my lips anywhere near one of those things.


Maternal instincts
No


Smells
I've been meaning to write something about smells for some time now. It should really go into a post in its own right, but I'm not sure how it'll go so it'll do here for now.

Smells are the most likely things to evoke a memory. There are certain smells that will send shivers down my spine because they trigger some dim and distant memory that I'd thought long banished into the depths of my mind (and washed away with several hundred litres of booze over the years too). The memories can be good or bad, or a bit confused because I can't place them, but the response is always the same: a kind of tingliness in the back of my neck and butterflies in my stomach. I think the strongest memories are quite personal ones. Here are a few of them:

• Libraries - no sniggers please - Libraries always have a weird smell.
• My auntie's kitchen, and the roadside pine trees in Italy.
• Exam papers: no matter whether they were at school or university, they always had the same smell and there was always a background tinge of Polo mints from my supply on the desk.
• Perfumes: this is a big one, but one particular one is Estee Lauder's Youth Dew, which my late auntie always used to wear.
• Certain houses: when some friends moved into a place a few years ago, it had the same smell as somewhere I'd lived as a student. It freaked me out and brought back memories of the sniffer owl that I thought was after some gange that was in my room.
• Christmas morning: waking up to the smell of the roasting turkey - fantastic, there's nothing like it.

You get the message. What about you lot, have you got any particular smells that knock you a bit whatsit?

Unbelievable

Yes Andy, as I was preparing this post, your comment came through.

Now, after my one and only other football post, I did promise never to mention footie again unless Liverpool actually won the European Cup. Well...

Liverpool 3-3 AC Milan 3 (Liverpool win 3-2 on penalties)

The result was even more amazing because Liverpool were 3-0 down at half time. Sorry, this won't mean anything if you don't know about football, but I don't really give a crap.

Liverpool captain, Steven Gerrard gets a second-half goal to make it 1-3

The usually oh-so-crap Vladimir Smicer drives in a scorcher to make it

2-3 a couple of minutes later

Finally, Xabi Alonso follows up his saved penalty kick to equalise

This was Liverpool's 5th European Cup win, but their previous one was 21 years ago.

I'm so happy; I feel like running naked through the streets of Manchester, draped in my Liverpool scarf. I can't believe I've got to get up at 5.30. How am I supposed to sleep?

As they say, You'll Never Walk Alone.

Bruised

There's a problem in my house, sorry, the house where I live with my parents and the cats. The problem is that there is TOO MUCH SHIT in here!

Every available space is filled with something, nothing is ever allowed to be thrown away, things that are brought here as a joke are kept and crammed on a shelf or in a case with everything else - as are things my dad finds on his wanders around the streets. Having filled every available cubic millimetre of space in cupboards, drawers and on shelves, things are hung from the backs of doors, the outside of wardrobes.

It's a bit like living in Stig of the Dump's house.

This presents a problem: none of the doors open fully because there's always something behind them that blocks their swing. Unfortunately, the things hanging from the back of the doors tend to be springy, so you often find a door that you've opened bounce straight back at you and clatter you on the elbow.

I'm covered in bruises. If was a child, I'd have been taken into care by now. Unfortunatley, have I'd probably ended up with my shithead neighbours. You'd have thought that I'd perhaps have learnt to be a bit more careful by now.

Summer bees, make me feel...

FINE! So this is how it's going to be until November, is it? Now that the weather has finally got above freezing, and even gets above 10°C most days, I have my bedroom window open for a bit of fresh air - besides, the thermostat's bust and we can't turn the central heating off, so it's baking hot.

Anyway, not having enough space to buzz around in in the Earth's vast biosphere, the bloody bees and wasps always insist on finding the smallest opening in my window and getting themselves trapped in my bedroom. This stupid fucker was there when I got home from work this afternoon:

"Bzzzzzzzzz, bzzzzz, bzzzzzzz... It certainly looks right, I recognise the green things..."

"Bzzzzzzzzz, bzzzzzz.... Bit bored now, and my head don't half hurt - I think somebody keeps bashing me..."

"Bzzzzzzzzz, bzzzzzz..... Perhaps if I stay on this little road I'll come across a shop where I can stop and ask for directions."

Anyway, after watching him for half an hour and taking lots of photos, I decided to open the big window to let him out since finding the now widened opening of the smaller window was proving too much for it. Stupid fucker. So, I opened the big window that he'd been continually bashing his brains out against for about 40 minutes and he STILL couldn't figure out how to escape.

I had to shoo him away with a Mma Ramotswe (Kalahari typing school for men), and off he buzzed, lolling about on the breeze.

He was really big though, a good 2cm in length!

No doubt more of the stupid things will be back by the end of summer. I just don't get it; all that free air and they have to find an open window.

Stupid, just stupid.

If you want to read more about wasps, I suggest you check out Angry Chimp's take on them.

My day out 2: Apocalypse NOW

Well, the old folk of sleepy Lancashire seaside town, Lytham St Anne's, must've thought their world had come to an end yesterday. "Why?", I hear the public cry. Well, there's a nice little boating lake that's home to a host of waterfowl at Lytham and me and my friends took with us a loaf of bread each to feed the geese and duck and swan. We were merrily feeding away, being attacked and nipped by the hungry birds, and I wondered why a nearby pair of old ladies was looking at me with such disgust when I was being so friendly to the animals:

"Watch who you're scowling at, lady! I've got a whole loaf of plastic bread and I'm not afraid to use it!"

Well, readers of Andy's blog, Walls come tumbling, will have seen that an uproar has been caused by a shopping centre wanting to ban gangs of youths who trudge around, wearing baseball caps with hooded tops and generally looking/acting thuggish and threatening. So these poor old dears must've been watching me feeding these birds, but, because of my "gangsta" attire, they were too scared to point out the sign that requested people not to feed the birds.

For goodness sake, the way they were looking at me, you'd have thought I was going through the flock and systematically breaking each of their stupid necks and then using them for sexual fulfilment! I was only trying to be friendly, the poor little bastards must've been starving if nobody was feeding them.

More "My day out 2" photos are available on My Webshots gallery.

A buzzing from my bedroom

Members of my family and my next door neighbours (as if I give a shit) might have been alarmed to hear buzzing from behind my bedroom door last night. Now, I'll hold my hands up and will, in the words of those Bananarama girls, plead "Guilty to love in the first degree*" if accused of gaining pleasure from the use of battery-powered bedroom companions - if only on a very rare occasion. However, last night I was innocent of all charges, Your Honour!

I'd gone up to bed to find that I had this little feller on my pillow for company...

This was where he finally noticed the close-up flash photography and decided to go for me.

He spent the night in my room and was still buzzing around this morning. He? Well, it took so many attempts for him to find the open window that it just had to be a "he". I had to chuck him out eventually.

Of course, the problem with Flickr is that people can sometimes see what's coming before you get the chance to finish composing your post.

*I'd originally put "Love in the third degree", but I realised that I was getting murder mixed up with full thickness burns. I'm a simple soul.

Musical melodrama should signal a "NO FUCKING WAY" to Europe

If anybody needed a reason for the UK to pull out of Europe, a perfect example was on display for all to see across Eurovisionland TV on Saturday evening. A bunch of shitty little countries all ganging up against the UK, German, Spain and France to look after themselves and win the accolade of Eurovision Song Contest victor 2005.

Basically, loads of countries in Europe (plus Israel for some reason) enter a song to the Eurovision Song Contest, which is hosted by the winnng nation from the previous year. The songs are performed, then each of the countries (plus a load more not even in the contest) conducts a phone vote of their public (allegedly) to decide how points are allocated amongst the deserving songs. A maximum of 12 point is on offer in each round of voting, so a song can get 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10 or 12 points. After all the countries report their votes, they're totted up and the winner is proclaimed.

Just look at how the scores went from the final table for the 2005 contest (clicky).

You'll see that all the Balkan nations vote for each other, then all the Baltic nations vote for their own neighbours (plus Russia), all the old Eastern Bloc countries vote for their mates. Cyprus always votes for Greece, Turkey always votes for Greece, Greece generally votes for Cyprus or Greece. No fucker votes for the UK because everybody hates Tony Blair. Nobody votes for Germany because they still haven't got over the war. Nobody likes France because they're a bunch of pigs.

Why don't they just ditch the fucking dreadful songs and get all these countries to have a vote on who they like and who they don't like. Then the big guns in Europe can get together and nuke the little shits that don't vote for them. Virtually nuke them at least, by withrawing all their subsidies.

Bloody Europe, fuck's sake.

Bastards.

Sick of....

Here are the news headlines from my local free paper, the Salford Advertiser, this week (click on the links to see the whole report). I felt sick as I looked through this paper when it arrived this morning.

Cop's top ten SALFORD’s 10 most notorious families will be given their marching orders in a new get tough policy designed to take terror off the streets.
This comes after a man was beaten half to death by a gang of 14-15 years olds who he'd tried to stop throwing stones at his car.

Helpless deer is mutilated by gang of sick youths
EXCLUSIVE A GANG of youngsters pelted a wild deer with stones as the animal desperately searched for an escape route from a school playground in Pendleton.
This made me sick, absolutely sick.

Police reveal bat used in Croft killing DETECTIVES investigating the killing of dad-to-be Paul Croft have released a picture of a baseball bat used in the vicious killing.
A young dad-to-be was set upon by a gang of 20 or so youths (14-17 year olds) and beaten to death.

Firearm teacher to fight job loss A SPECIAL needs teacher who opened fire on teenagers using an air pistol has lost her job.
This teacher went to jail and lost her job after tackling a bunch of youths who'd been terrorising her and vandalising her property.

Pub vows to fight on after losing appeal for its licence BOSSES at the troubled Swinton pub where father-of-two Frank Buckley was so savagely beaten he later died, are refusing to admit defeat after losing an appeal for a new drinks licence.
Yes, a man who'd been out for a meal with his family was beaten to death outside this place - the perpetrators stamped and jumped on his head. They were each sentenced to about 5 years in prison, and are due for release within a couple of months (after serving about a year).

There's no mention on the website issue of the the DIY cat trap that somebody had used to mutiliate local moggies.


Salford MP's delight at re-election

"Hello, I'm Hazel Blears and I'm as useless as the rest of the Labour bastards, but thick fuckers still re-elected us!"

In the same issue, Salford MP and junior Home Office minister, Hazel Blears thanked voters for putting her back in parliament. Great. The useless bitch and her equally fucking useless colleagues want to pull their fingers out and do something about the total scum that we are surrounded with. All they do is take our money and waste it, they talk about the causes of crime, but offer no real solutions.

I'll give you a solution, two solutions: 1) Give the police and courts real powers to find and punish these bastards, and 2) do something to prevent useless fuckers having kids that they have no interest in bringing up properly. There are no disincentives to people who are incapable of even looking after themselves having child after child in this country. These people have no respect for themselves, no idea of responsibility, no idea of contributing to society. Yet they are allowed to breed and produce generation after generation of parasitic, lawless scum.

If you go to Hazel's website, you can tell her exactly what it is that makes you proud to live in New Labour's New Britain.

I want to emigrate. Will one of the Canadians nominate me please?

Talcsniffers beware!

BBC NEWS World Asia-Pacific Powder mix-up fools sniffer dogs

This is great. Sniffer dogs in Australia somewhere are useless because they've only been trained to smell talcum powder and wouldn't know what cocaine was if somebody came up to them and offered them a kilo of charlie. Apparently, the bag they were sniffing was supposed to be cocaine, but it somehow got switched for talc.

I of course have great affinity for any being with "Sniffer" in its name; these poor beasts are now a laughing stock, but they're soooooooooooo cute. I could get one and train it to attack my parents every time they try to use talc! Although they'll probably just whine a bit and sit next to them (the dogs, not the parents, although my parents do whine and sit down a lot too).

Talcum powder is horrible it's one of things from your childhood that you assume has become extinct once you grow up. But no, it's still there and people still use it. I don't quite know what talcum powder is for - apart from making a mess all over the bathroom and making your skin feel all weird. In fact the feeling of talcum powder hands really goes through me; much in the same way as somebody scraping their fingernails down a blackboard does.

My parents still use it, but I honestly wouldn't know where to start. And wouldn't want to if push came to shove.

I need to fill up on caffeine before my brain wakes up properly. I don't even think I've managed to swear anywhere in this post. Tsk.

Talcum powder indeed!

An inspector calls...

Personality tests are weird things, they attempt to categorise people according to their answers to a few confusing questions.

After a number of friendly accusations that I have Asperger's Syndrome, I decided to take a personality test to see where my foibles would make me fit in. I'm not sure whether it was a Myers-Briggs, but that's what I Googled for and I took the test at this place: http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes2.asp.

Apparently, these are my attributes:

• Introverted 33%
• Sensing 12%
• Thinking 50%
• Judging 22%

And this makes me an ISTJ type person, sometimes known as an Inspector Guardian. This is type of personality has the following characteristics:

ISTJs are often called inspectors. They have a keen sense of right and wrong, especially in their area of interest and/or responsibility. They are noted for devotion to duty. Punctuality is a watchword of the ISTJ. The secretary, clerk, or business(wo)man by whom others set their clocks is likely to be an ISTJ.

As do other Introverted Thinkers, ISTJs often give the initial impression of being aloof and perhaps somewhat cold. Effusive expression of emotional warmth is not something that ISTJs do without considerable energy loss.

ISTJs are most at home with "just the facts, Ma'am." They seem to perform at highest efficiency when employing a step-by-step approach. Once a new procedure has proven itself (i.e., has been shown "to work,") the ISTJ can be depended upon to carry it through, even at the expense of their own health.

ISTJs are easily frustrated by the inconsistencies of others, especially when the second parties don't keep their commitments. But they usually keep their feelings to themselves unless they are asked. And when asked, they don't mince words. Truth wins out over tact. The grim determination of the ISTJ vindicates itself in officiation of sports events, judiciary functions, or an other situation which requires making tough calls and sticking to them.

His SJ orientation draws the ISTJ into the service of established institutions. Home, social clubs, government, schools, the military, churches -- these are the bastions of the SJ. "We've always done it this way" is often reason enough for many ISTJs. Threats to time-honoured traditions or established organisations (e.g., a "run" on the bank) are the undoing of SJs, and are to be fought at all costs.

Hrrm, not sure what's meant by "SJ" in that last paragraph. Apparently though, my personality traits liken me to Eeyore, George Bush Snr, and Thomas, Disciple of Christ.

As if they'd fucking know, for fuck's sake. Load of bollocks. If anybody cares to take the test - and I hope they do - they'll see how bloody stupid the questions are. They ask about things that I've never even bothered thinking about and there's no "don't give a flying fuck" answer option.

I'm just left resenting these things, I can't see how they can be useful. Can you imagine it in a job interview? "So Tina, would you like to describe yourself to us?"

"Sure, it'd be a fucking pleasure! I'm an ISTJ type, which means you can set your clock by me."

"Great! You've got the job"

Other types:

[ENFP] [INFP] [ENFJ] [INFJ] [ESTJ] [ISTJ] [ESFJ] [ISFJ][ENTP] [INTP] [ENTJ] [INTJ] [ESTP] [ISTP] [ESFP] [ISFP] [CUNT]

Bah!

Even Google Adsense is having a laugh with this Asperger's Syndrome business. Bloody hell.

Oh yeah, and just to show that it does work, this image was uploaded using Hello from Picasa. It's OK for certain things, but Flickr does tend to have the advantage.

God I'm bored. I'm at work and I want to go home, but I've got to prepare for a tutorial that I'm giving to medical students this afternoon. Bollocks.

Sticky moments

Just to fulfil my being as an connoisseur of the aroma of bakery, I think I'm going to play this game slightly differently. I'm going to try to think of an answer for each of the categories.

Here goes:

• If I could be a musician... I would be Tori Amos
• If I could be a doctor... I'd be THE Doctor and fight all the baddies in the Universe
• If I could be a painter... I'd be a painter of homes, as in painter and decorator
• If I could be a gardener... I'd be Capability Brown
• If I could be a missionary... I'd be Mother Theresa of Calcutta
• If I could be a chef... I'd be Nigella Lawson (although I know she isn't really a chef)
• If I could be an architect... I'd be lost
• If I could be a linguist... I'd be the amazing Michel Thomas - amazing life story and now loaded from his language courses
• If I could be a psychologist... I'd be Michael Rutter, who did a lot of work in developmental psychology that was very interesting
• If I could be a librarian... I'd be 3rd Assistant Librarian Lyrael from the Abhorsen books by Garth Nix
• If I could be an athlete... I'd be Jesse Owens; anybody who could do that to Hitler is a legend
• If I could be a lawyer... I'd kill myself first
• If I could be an innkeeper... I'd be the one in Bethlehem, you know the one
• If I could be a professor... I'd be Professor Jackie Oldham of the University of Manchester - lovely woman, very well respected
• If I could be a writer... I'd be Philip Pullman: I'd kill to have the ability to produce the Dark Materials stuff
• If I could be a llama-rider... I'd be a much happier person, I'm sure of it
• If I could be a bonnie pirate... I'd be Pete the Ninja Pirate from Weebl & Jolt fame - Avast ye, scurvy dogs!
• If I could be a service member... I'd be in the bunch of people that first liberated the Nazi death camps. Not pleasant, I know, but to be there to witness the horror and hope must've been awesome
• If I could be a business owner... I'd be Mr or Miss Pret a Manger, even though I think they're owned by McDonald's now
• If I could be an actor... I'd be Doris Day
• If I could be an agent... I'd be Agent Orange. No I wouldn't, that's horrible. I'd be Zoe from Spooks.
• If I could be video game designer... I'd be the person that designed Tetris
• If I could be a comic book artist... I'd be either Goschiny or Uderzo of Asterix the Gaul fame. Failing that, Bill Waterson for his wonderful Calvin and Hobbes and the way in which he refused to cash in on commercialising his work through merchandising.
• If I could be a hooker... I'd be Keiron Cunnigham, who plays for St Helens RLFC (boom, boom!)
• If I could be a crack addict.... I'd be very sick
• If I could be a porn star.... I'd be very sore and rather embarrassed
• If I could be a mime.... I'd be the invisible box
• If I could be a domestic engineer... I'd be my mum
• If I could be a chimney sweep.... I'd be the Dick van Dyke character in Mary Poppins, but do the accent properly
• If I could be a masseuse... I'd have very sore hands
• If I could be a taxi driver.... Robert De Niro's character in Taxi driver "You talkin' to me?"
• If I could be a priest... I'd be my friend the Hamster, who I admire and respect immensely
• If I could be a fighter pilot... I'd be the one that finally shot down that bastard Maverick in Top Gun
• If I could be a homeless person... I'd be Cane from Kung fu
• If I could be a biker... I'd be dead by now
• If I could be a mortician... I'd be the Kenneth Williams character in Carry on screaming
• If I could be a horror film killer... Hannibal Lecter
• If I could be a movie writer... Steven Spielberg
• If I could be a muppet... Miss Piggy
• If I could be a fast food product... Proper English chips from a proper chippy
• If I could be a piece of office equipment... Trillion's desk chair or her Emotiboard
• If I could be a head of state... I'd be the Queen, God bless her!
• If I could be a member of a boy band... Little Mark Owen from Take That - it didn't matter that he was crap, everybody still loved him
• If I could be a Wednesday... I'd be today; there's no day like this one
• If I could be a list... I'd be my first Christmas list, when I didn't really know what was going on, but I put things down (like a crappy tambourine) and I got everything.
• If I could be a figment of someone's imagination... That person would surely be very psychologically disturbed

I'd really like to pass this on to Ryan J and his mate Will, I think it'd be very funny. OK, I'd like to pass this on to... there's nobody left! How's about we got some sort of response from our mate Dave, Dalek or Borg?

I would like to add the following though and see if any of you lot have any ideas.

• Singer
• Famous inventor
• Comedian

My answers to these are

• Singer - Natalie Imbruglia; she's gorgeous and very natural. Failing that, Divine, who's (was) anything but
• Famous inventor - Mr Electricity
• Comedian - Victoria Wood

It's only human nature after all...

...or is it??? Only human nature that is.

I have been alerted to the following reference guides vis a vis 'homosexuality noes not occur in nature' by the fabulous Trillion. These are stolen from her flickr gallery.



Check out the reviews at Amazon.

Synopsis: In this innovative celebration of diversity and affirmation of individuality in animals and humans, Joan Roughgarden challenges accepted wisdom about gender identity and sexual orientation. A distinguished evolutionary biologist, Roughgarden takes on the medical establishment, the Bible, social science - and even Darwin himself. She leads the reader through a discussion of diversity in gender and sexuality among fish, reptiles, amphibians, birds and mammals, including primates. The book explains how this diversity develops from the action of genes and hormones and how people come to differ from each other in all aspects of body and behaviour. Roughgarden reconstructs primary science in light of feminist, gay and transgender criticism and redefines our understanding of sex, gender and sexuality. The book may revolutionize our understanding of sexuality. Roughgarden argues that principal elements of Darwinian sexual selection theory are false and suggests a new theory that emphasises social inclusion and control of access to resources and mating opportunity. She disputes a range of scientific and medical concepts, including Wilson's genetic determinism of behaviour, evolutionary psychology, the existence of a gay gene, the role of parenting in determining gender identity and Dawkins's "selfish gene" as the driver of natural selection. She dares social science to respect the agency and rationality of diverse people; shows that many cultures across the world and throughout history accommodate people we label today as lesbian, gay and transgendered; and calls on the Christian religion to acknowledge the Bible's many passages endorsing diversity in gender and sexuality. "Evolution's Rainbow" concludes with bold recommendations for improving education in biology, psychology and medicine; for democratizing genetic engineering and medical practice; and for building a public monument to affirm diversity as one of our nation's defining principles.

Yes folks, get your Gay Test right here at Cakesniffers! Now, this is JUST FOR A LAUGH, and I certainly won't be taking any notice of the results, but why don't you check out Channel 4's Gay Test and see how you get on. It'd be interesting to see the results of others, but obviously, folk can be quite sensitive about this sort of thing and probably won't want to divulge.

Here's how I "came out":

"CAKESNIFFER IS 50% GAY! Congratulations, you've scored right in the middle and are a happy and well-adjusted lesbian babe!"

I've no idea how it came to that conclusion. Happy and well-adjusted my arse! Babe??

There are all sorts of more scientific tests for things such as racism, homophobia, sexism and other shit like that. But who gives a crap about real facts when you can get sensationalist rot from elsewhere?

A reprise

I'm a bit miffed that some of my best posts may have been missed because of the 4th Crusade of Sir Ryan de Belloc! Just to make sure you didn't miss anything during the "queers are cunts/catholics are cunts" debate, I'll recap on the best bits.

Firstly, there was my unwarranted, yet highly deserved attack on Sir Cliff Richard which was followed by another crushing defeat for Tim Henman in which he "showed his anger". I guess we need to see a bit more of TiGRRRRRRRRR Timmy.

I spouted off about an American colleague who's been giving me grief and was very creative in my totally crap post. It was here that some kind-hearted person suggested that I might have Asperger's Syndrome. If I have, then so be it, it's not going to kill me. And sorry to Wiggy if any of what I've said seems to be having a go at you, I appreciate your comment and your support. It's just that a colleague has also recently suggested that I'm slightly autistic and I'm rather sensitive about it.

You may also have missed news of my day out at the park. It was in the comments to this post that i told you of my Webshots photo gallery.

One of my finest moments came with the invention of the EMOTIBOARD, but you fucking luddites wouldn't know a good idea if it smacked you round the head.

A big welcome to:

Trillion has finally pulled her finger out (thanks very much, it's been rather uncomfortable, but also quite pleasant) and got herself a blog. You can catch her in her world at http://trillobites.blogspot.com.

I'm looking forward to this because, from her comments over the past couple of months, she's clearly more intelligent and entertaining than I am.


The Royal Mail
If/when they decide to turn up to collect the post these days. I ran up the post box, hoping to catcht the 5.30 post, only to find that the next collection will be "Wednesday". No idea when on Wednesday, but there you go. It seems that we only get one collection per day around here now. I'm assuming it's one per day and not one per week or anything.

Thanks very much, Postman Pat!

Still, first class post is excellent value for money if you think about it.


A big UNwelcome to:

The bendy-bus convoy
After posting about these fucking menaces a couple of weeks ago, I'm alarmed to note that First Manchester are actually operating convoys of the fuckers on the Number 8 route from Bolton to Manchester. Why?

Fuck's sake, stupid fucking wastes of space.

Don't be horrible to them, it's a SYNDROME

Well, there are a few poorly people knocking about this world; they have terrible disorders or syndromes. Some things come to mind, such as:

• Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder
• Asperger's Syndrome
• Dyslexia
• Prader-Willi Syndrome
• Asthma

Let's examine each one in closer (Cakesniffer) detail, shall we?


Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder
When I was a kid, there were children in my class at school who were naughty; they wouldn't do what the teacher said, they were crap in class, always pissed about. They were punished, appropriately and fairly, and they soon turned it around.

These days, there's no such thing as "naughty kids", no, they now have to officially have something wrong (ADHD) with them so as not to apportion blame on their rubbish parents. Fuck off! They're your kids: get off your arse, spend some time with YOUR children and teach them some discipline and respect.

Fucking idiot people being allowed to have even stupider bloody offspring. Take the kids off them and sterilise the parents.


Asperger's Syndrome
Just because a person doesn't like talking to idiots and likes to spend time on their own, and is clever, but is crap at some things, it doesn't mean they've got a fucking syndrome! It's just the way they are.

Bloody hell. Why do people always need to believe there's a problem with somebody just because the don't fit certain patterns? If it's not affecting their functioning, what difference does it make? Why does it help to have a name for combinations of personality traits?

I think much of it has to do with using people as fashion accessories, or perhaps the general population can't deal with genius, so they have to say that "geniuses" have something wrong with them.

Nobheads. Concentrate a bit more at school, look around you a bit more and you'll soon learn that it's much more interesting to watch and take in the world going by than it is listening to fucktards talking about last night's telly.

Soon, there'll be new syndromes for all sorts of people. I will officially have "Tina" syndrome, because it was first described in 30-odd year old woman called Tina with the same personality traits as me.


Dyslexia
How many people who claim to have dyslexia are just too lazy to learn to read, write and spell properly?


Prader-Willi Syndrome
The following is a bit of background from the UK Prader-Willi Organisation's website...

"Prader-Willi Syndrome (PWS) is a chromosomal disorder, which can affect people of both sexes and of any race or country. Three Swiss doctors -Prader, Labhart and Willi - first described it in 1956.

"Some time between the age of one and four, children with PWS develop an increased interest in food, which may become an insatiable obsession. Unless their diet is carefully controlled weight gain can be very rapid, leading to obesity, disease and even an early death. The syndrome has many other characteristics, which result in a complex mixture of strengths and weaknesses. Not everyone with the syndrome is the same, some appearing less severely affected in some areas than others. "

Now, does everybody see the bold bits? The bold bits (with the exception of the first one) are all attributes that can be associated with morbid obesity and indeed, people with PW can become morbidly obese. However, by far the main reason for people becoming big fat bloaters isn't their genes, or their glands, or some stress, or depression. No, the main reason for people becoming lard-arses is because they eat too much and don't get any exercise!

Simple really. You eat tubs of butter for breakfast and fill your face with pasties, chips, pizza and curry - and drink loads of booze too - you're going to get fat.


Asthma
This is one of my favourites: people who are really overweight and who smoke loads who claim to have asthma. I wonder if there'd be a miraculously recovery if they stopped smoking and lost weight?


Now, unless you're completely fucking stupid, you'll realise that I'm using these examples of disorders/syndromes/illnesses as examples of excuses some people use for being crap. People prefer to have a syndrome than admitting to being weak and pathetic, or to acknowledging their own responsibilities. In the UK, these people claim billions in benefits and free housing - because you get free housing and more benefits for being ill than you do if you're just a lazy, useless turd.

Eye-to-eye CONTACT!

Now, readers who joined the Cakesniffing sisterhood a while back will know that I'm a contact lens wearer. I have to get the monthly toric type because of my spazzy eyes. I was down to my last pair and had intended to go to Costco this evening to order some more. So I went to take the lenses out so as I could wear my specs for the evening. I took the right one out and it kind of stuck to my finger and then got pinged across the bathroom.

I stood very still, looking for the missing lens with my left eye. I checked my person, check the walls, bent down as low as I could go without moving my feet so I could check the floor. Nothing. Otto came to see what I was doing. He was very helpful and started rolling on the floor. I gave up, removed the left lens and put my specs on.

Out of curiosity - I simply HAD to know - I check behind the radiator. And there it was, all shrivelled up, looking at me. There was no heading towards the light for this little lost soul. No coming back.

FUCK!

So this means that I'm going to have to wear some very worn-out old pairs of lenses to see me through until my new order arrives.

Still, I guess I should expect these things, being dyspraxic and having Asperger's Syndrome and everything. I'm surprised I can even put my glasses on the right way round. Or dress myself (shut it, Willis!). Not that I'm offended or anything.


Baby Gap
I bought some gifts for the newborn from Baby Gap. The assistant who served me asked, "Are they a gift?" and I just had to reply "Well, I don't really think they'll suit me".

I bet she gets that all the time, all thefucking time, some know-it-all, think they're funny wit, will come out with that shit. One day, she's going to jump over the counter and strangle somebody. And who could blame her?


An edit for Herge
Herge, you are my number one as long as you want to be. It's a great honour that you think so highly of me.

Sorry for not posting much today, but I've been at work, and they don't let me - it's just as well or my emotiboard would've broken when replying to Ryan's last post. Did tyou see the one where he said "Thanks for the much needed backup, Will! Bravo! Perhaps, tina, you don't know what love is. And no, it is not a feeling". Ooh, it wound me up good and proper! "Yes, Bwavo Wiw! You're suthch a good sthport for sthupporting me." Who the fuck says "bravo"? Fuck's sake.

And I was busy this evening too, so this is all you're getting today I'm afraid. I'll think of something very special (in my eyes) and try to do something tomorrow. I could do something about the "Sisterhood of Librarians" that's emerging at work. It's a bit like the "Brotherhood of the Illuminati", only with vibrators.

For fuck's sake, let it lie!

They won't let it lie, those Catholic boys from the states. Not content with spouting off his ludicrous views on homosexuality, Ryan has got his mate Will to come over and comment too. (see blogging bigotry if you must)

Is anybody interested in what these young, deluded fools have got to say? No.

"It's not natural, it's not natural. Exterminate, EXTERMINATE!"

I particularly like Will for his profile picture, which is a photo of something like a Ford Probe. Could it be that Will actually loves this car? Is that natural?

Oh, and here's a joke for our Catholic friends:

How do you get a nun pregnant? Dress her up as an altar boy!

You see the whole Catholic relationship with sex is just so warped that they don't know what to make of it. There's such guilt associated with heterosexual sex that they simply cannot cope with any other types of relationships. Fuck 'em.

Anger

Anger is one my best emotions. It's the one that I do most frequently. It's the one that makes me creative.

My favourite emotion is happiness, but in some perverted way, anger makes me happy because it makes me creative. But happiness borne out of contentment is by far my favourite.

I hate sadness.

Back to anger.

Wouldn't it be fantastic if somebody would invent a keyboard and some software that responded to your state of mind. I've just been over at April's blog, where there's a discussion about singing. I pointed out that I hate the sound of children singing, it makes me feel most uncomfortable, to the point where I grind my teeth and my blood pressure rises. I found myself getting angry just typing the comment and, as I did so, I was hitting the keys harder and harder, faster and faster.

So, if you had an emotiboard, what sort of things would it show? I reckon anger would automatically set the type face to red, bold, with CAPS. The SIZE of the font would also increase.

Love letters would be in some flowery font like, ah, I dunno one of the script ones and it'd be in pretty pastel shades of pinks and lilacs.

Humorous texts would of course be in comic script. Humorous stuff would be in brown because it's always toilet and poo humour with me.

Spaced

Right Cakesniffers. I created an MSN Spaces personal space thing just to see what it looked like and to see whether I liked it more than blogger (which I don't - it's too gimicky and there's no element of control). I also wanted a decoy blog for people who know that I've got a blog, but who I don't want to know about Cakesniffers. God, that sounds up my own arse. It's just that people I know think I'm odd enough as it is without them reading posts about my toilet habits. Besides, they'd be pretty shocked if knew the sort of language I used on the interweb.

My day out

"My day out" posts might become a frequent feature of this blog throughout the summer (should we have one this year).

I went to the "largest municipal park in Europe" this afternoon. That would be Heaton Park in North Manchester. There's a little farm thing there and that's where I met this goat. I think it's a she goat who's about to give birth to lots of little goats.

At the farm, there was a calf called Dexter and thick Manchester people were feeding Dexter bread. Bread, I ask you!

The park would've been lovely if there weren't so many people there: too many people making too much noise - particularly in the children's play area that was my idea of Hell.

There was a delightful gang of 13-15 year olds: the Lambrini-guzzling girls were scantily-clad to resemble whores, while the boys were all wearing, yes you guessed it, track pants tucked into their socks, baseball caps and hooded tops. Still at least it's nice that they can express their individuality by all dressing the same.

I wanted to find the more secluded parts where strangers meet for sex, but my sister wouldn't let me. She wanted an ice cream instead, and said that there probably wasn't an ice cream van near where people were dogging. I thought that would be an ideal spot for an ice cream van - couples could refresh themselves with a Flake 99 or a jubbly before moving on to the next shag. There's no such thing as enterprise anymore.

Things I'm totally crap at

There are a few things that I'm totally useless at. In fact there are probably LOADS of things that I can't do, but some simple, everyday tasks cause me so much frustration that, at times, I really feel like ending it all.

What do the following things have in common?

Yes, that's right, all these are simple sorts of tasks that I can't do. I'll elaborate:

• I can't screw the tops onto jars. I have particular difficulty with those plastic lids that you get on jars of coffee.
• I've never been able to fold a piece of paper in half. I remember trying for the first time in primary school and I still can't do it today - the unfolded edges never line up straight for me.
• I've never been able to climb trees, and ladders cause me terrible anxiety. Ladders and trees in combination are out of the question.
• People laugh at me when I tie my shoelaces - it's something to do with the index finger of the left hand. Yes that is my trainer, yes those are my hands.
• I can't ice skate or rollerskate - not many can - but I can't walk on slippery surfaces to save my life. I can't cope with anything that makes me unsteady on my feet.
• I can't say the word "thief", it always comes out as fieth. And when I mean "that old chestnut", it always comes out as "that old nutmeg".
• I can't take a landscape photograph with a straight horizon.
• I have difficulty forming close relationships and I can't maintain eye contact when I speak to people.

There are loads of others, but I'm not in the mood for berating myself too much today, so I'll leave it here.