Goodbye

Goodbye Shopping City

Goodbye ducks

Goodbye Hospital

Goodbye Base 2a

So the torture is over. For now at least. I am officially on a year's secondment, taking up a post that means that I will no longer have to go to Base 2a. For the past couple and a bit years, I have shared the mental torture inflicted on me as a result of being at Base 2a. No longer will I have to listen to people complaining that it's too hot as soon as the temperature reaches 20°C.

No more shouting from Cynthia:

" insists on saying “So you haven’t got access to his electronic?”, meaning “Has such and such given you rights to his Outlook diary?”. I guess there’s nothing wrong with saying “his electronic”, it’s just that when you hear it 40 times each day at very loud volume, it becomes rather tiresome. Also, it’s indicative of how backward some people’s working practices are: I didn’t realise people used anything other than electronic diaries at work these days, especially when lots of people need to know where the head honcho is.

She’s now talking about her latest holiday:she has about 5 foreign holidays each year, it’s amazing. Then again, she washes her clothes by soaking them in the bath and claims lieu time for simply hanging around work till 6pm, so she has the time and resources to do this.

Did I tell you about the swan? There’s a little pond near here and, last spring, it was home to a pair of mating swans, as well as the usual ducks. Some charming individual killed one of the swans and it caused a fair bit of outrage, quite rightly too. However, Carmelita’s suggestion to prevent such an unfortunate event happening again was to “move all the birds to the canal, drain the pond, fill it with concrete and use it for car parking!” Yes, because the people who killed the swan wouldn’t be able to find their way to the canal, would they? Honestly. I won’t go into the episode of litter on the expressway because my arteries can’t take the surge in blood pressure at the moment. "

No more banal conversation about bargains at Aldi.

No more messy coffee-making habits.

Other posts where I complain about this place can be found: here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here There are loads more, but I can't go on.

Ahhh, the relief.


Smoke signals
Of course one thing that the people at Base 2a were obsessed with was making laminated signs and posters. As I said my goodbyes in the library, there was a pile of laminated "It is illegal to smoke in this building" signs. Not the ones that you bye, but some that had been printed off, cut to size with scissors and laminated by the work experience lad. They had jagged edges; somebody should have told him about the guillotine.

It is illegal to smoke in this building. Fair enough, but I pointed out that it had been the organisation's policy that smoking wasn't allowed in buildings for some time. Many workplaces, shops, cafes, restaurants, etc, have this policy and they didn't need legislation to enforce it - people see a no smoking sign, or lack of an ashtray and they don't light up.

In fact, there are loads of things that we're not allowed to by law, but we don't have signs up all over the place. Could you imagine having signs up telling us all the things that are illegal?

It is illegal to murder people on these premises
It is illegal to operate a hand-held mobile phone in this vehicle
It is illegal to drive this vehicle above the speed limit

Fucking numpties.


Smoke-free England
England goes smoke free from 1st July. I've just been to the smoke free England website to find the no smoking sign. The information booklets are available in the following languages (this is England, remember):

• Gurjurati
• Urdu
• Traditional Chinese
• Polish
• Punjabi
• Arabic
• Turkish
• Bengali

A leaflet is also available in the following languages (feel free to download them):

Albanian (PDF, 647KB)	Latvian (PDF, 671KB)
Arabic (PDF, 711KB)	Pashto (PDF, 1,5MB)
Belarusian (PDF, 673KB)	Polish (PDF, 669KB)
Chinese (Cantonese) (PDF, 939KB)	Portuguese (PDF, 663KB)
Chinese (Mandarin) (PDF, 906KB)	Romanian (PDF, 667KB)
Czech (PDF, 670KB)	Russian (PDF, 671KB)
Estonian (PDF, 666KB)	Slovakian (PDF, 668KB)
Farsi (PDF, 1,6MB)	Somali (PDF, 663KB)
French (PDF, 671KB)	Spanish (PDF, 663KB)
Greek (PDF, 673KB)	Turkish (PDF, 666KB)
Kurdish (Kurmanji) (PDF, 1,3MB)	Ukranian (PDF, 678KB)
Kurdish (Sorani) (PDF, 1,8MB)	Vietnamese (PDF, 664KB)

I see they don't bother with an Italian translation, perhaps I should complain that they're being discriminatory.

The rest of the United Kingdom introduced smoking legislation earlier than England, they probably had all these leaflets in all these different languages too, but now England have had to pay for their own. Not so much United Kingdom as United Nations.

The hostel of Trinidad

One of the most intriguing programmes on telly these past few weeks has been Channel 4's Sex Change Hospital. It features the hospital in Trinidad, Colorado that is the sex change capital of the world.

Marci Bowers, herself a transexual, is the chief surgeon and a woman who I like. The episodes show her meeting her patients, discussing their operations, and then getting right down to the graphic details as people go through genital reassignment surgery.

It is fucking gruesome, but compelling viewing all the same. Marci is a superstar who injects more than a touch of humour as she does away with her patients' bits and doings.

There was one trans man who never seemed happy with whatever procedure he had done; plunging himself and his partner into more and more debt, just so he could have the body he wanted.

His main complaint was that his penis wasn't large enough and that he had trouble reaching orgasm. He was about ten stone overweight. In theatre, Marci had a look at him, eaked his manhood out from beneath the fatty folds and, post op, recommended that he try to clean the cheese from his nob.

Boys will be boys eh?


The Hostel
I watched The Hostel on div at the weekend. Such a gory film, such a worrisome prospect - worrisome by the fact that you could actually imagine societies that kidnap folk so that rich people can pay to torture and kill them.

Trump had to watch Shrek to get over it.

I don't think we'll be going on holiday to Slovakia in a hurry.

The Hostel and Sex Change Hospital have many similarities. It's just that Marci Bowers cuts out the middleman kidnappers and charges her own victims for their slashings and cuttings, but lets them go at the end of it.

Fucking Tesco arsing Express COCKS!

I HATE Tesco Express; LOATHE it!

I cannot believe the contrast between these sorry sack of shite excuses for shops and the proper parent Tesco supermarkets, which I love.

The only thing worse than Tesco Express is Tesco Metro, which I'll come to in a minute.

Today's insult from the retail giant's corner shop came when I visited the store close to where I work. I wanted to pick up something for lunch - I fancied sushi - and some salami and salad and stuff for tea. I was horrified to see that 95% of the store's refrigerated cabinets - and there are lots of them - were taken up by fizzy drinks and crates of beer. No food, no sushi, just beer and pop. What the fuck?

Half the vegetable shelving was occupied with crates of Coke too. Brilliant.

I bought a packet of crisps and asked why all the fridge space was taken up with beer and pop and why there wasn't any food.

"It's because the students have mainly gone home", was the response.

So people who work at the university and hospital don't need to eat then? They just want to come here for crates of booze to sup on at their desks?

Cunts.

I have a killer headache now because I didn't have a proper lunch.

CUNTS!

Tesco Metro is another of Tesco's evil dopplegangers. Jeez, these stores are torture. Millions of people, all from different parts of the globe, all with different ideas about manners, queuing, speaking in uncomfortably loud voices. We were in there the other day; a child in front of us in the queue for tills couldn't help themselves touching every single packet of whatever (sweets, chocolates) on the shelves that lined the queue. STOP TOUCHING THINGS!

For fuck's sake! Why do these little retards have to do this? Can't they keep their shitty little hands to themselves? Can't their accompanying adults make them stop??


Death stare
I was talking with my colleagues about what super power I'd like if I had the choice. In addition to the obvious - the power of flight - I'd love to have a death stare. Imagine being able to make somebody burst into tears and run away from you just by looking at them. Yeah, yeah, I do that anyway. Imagine being able to make somebody burst into flames just by giving them the dead eye? Fantastic.


Strangers in the night
The Strangers in the night ice cream van is doing its rounds again. It'll be here any second. I might go and see if it actually sells ice cream.

"Can I have a Flake 99 and... errrrm... how much for a speed ball?"

Fuckers.

Fuckers.

Fuckers.

Today is brought to you by the Number of the Beast and the word KNOCKERS!

Oh my poor head.

Day off

I've got the day off today. I'm still in bed. If we had proper summer weather in this country, I'd be out and about, enjoying the warm sunshine, skipping through flower-filled meadows, stopping to make daisy chains.

Ahhh.

As it is, we've had apocalyptic weather for the past eight weeks and I think today the UK is being hit by a fucking hurricane. Awful wind and rain and cold.

It's so bad that my body is being tricked into going into hibernation.

I'm going to book a holiday, get away from this place, get a bit of sunshine.

Where should I go?


Out on a school night
So why did I choose to take such an awful day off work? Well, I went out last night and, anticipating this and subsequent tiredness, I planned ahead and booked a day's leave. But where would Sniffy go on a school night?

Yes, I went to see the FABULOUS Marc Almond.

He was wonderful. What a voice! What a performer! Not bad for somebody who nearly died a couple of years ago.

Trump kept her ticket: "I'm keeping this, he might be dead soon", she said as we entered the Ritz in Manchester.

So that was good.

The audience was so weird. I don't know why, but whenever I'm at a standing only venue, I always get to stand behind the tallest blokes with the biggest spiky hair. They wore lots of eye makeup and their female companions were equally odd-looking.

Between me and that giants, stood a bloke in a dogtooth check jacket - he was arm's length from the woman he was with. They didn't speak. He shuffled his position and scratched his greasy head at just the right times to ensure that he, in combination with They might be goth giants, blocked my view of the star of the show. He and his woman left after half an hour. They didn't speak or make contact with each other, simply turned and left. Weirdos.

Fuck, why am I complaining about weirdos at a Marc Almond concert?


Thank you for the invitation
I was supposed to be going out for a curry with my colleagues tonight. But the only colleagues that I'd care to spend time out of (and in) work with aren't going. Now, politically, I should go because it's a leaving do for somebody who's been acting head of department for a year or so, plus, some new "team" members have been invited before they take up their posts so it'd be good to show my face. But I can't be arsed. If I'm just going to show my face, then this tells me that I shouldn't really be going. Especially if it's not free.

Work's dos are generally torturous affairs, thought up to keep employees on their toes. I'm sure they should be covered by employment laws so that workers across the world are protected from this out of office scrutiny. "We want to thank you for your efforts throughout the year. This is your opportunity to let your hair down. Enjoy yourselves. But not too much, obviously, because we're still watching and we will remember every single faux pas."

Why don't I just put my blog address on my e-mail signature?

Tina,

I really hate it when people send me an e-mail that starts simply:

Tina,

No "Dear Tina" or "Hi Tina" or "Ahoy there Tina", just "Tina". The message content is usually a single sentence, or question, which is closed off by the sender's name in the absence of a "Best wishes", "Thanks", "Regards", "Yours ignorantly", etc.

Rude bastards. How difficult is it to add an extra three words to a message? You can even include the "Best wishes" bit as part of your e-mail signature, for fuck's sake.


Brothers and Sisters
This is a new programme that started on Channel 4 this evening. I'm watching it at the moment, but I haven't got a fucking clue what's going on. I hope it gets better, I've been looking forward to this and I'd hate for it to be totally shite.

Hrrm, there's a KT Tunstall song playing, I don't know whether that's a good or bad sign.


Jalapeno flavoured jelly beans
These things are the business. I'm sure you could end up in hospital if you ate enough of them, but it'd be worth it to see the colour of your poo when they came out.


Hot tamales
Can somebody in North America please post me a bag of Hot Tamales? I really like them.

Asda vice

I went to Asda earlier, Trump persuaded me: "It's on our way home". I'd picked her up from work, you see; the kind soul that I am.

"It's a lot cheaper than Tesco", she tried to justify the torture.

"That's because there's nothing worth buying here!"

Hardly any veg, minuscule tubs of Coffeemate, shit bread. It's OK if you're after a 20kg bag of chapati flour, but bugger me, it's a shit hole. And it's no cheaper than Tesco, I swear.

I swear a lot when I'm in Asda.

And how could I forget the child that was honking on a display toy... for the duration of our visit?

Fuck.



Tell me. Do you have any... tattoos?
I don't, but I know somebody who does. Trump got one done at the weekend, she's very brave. I might get one, but I can't think of what I'd like done, or where, since I don't really like revealing any of my skin. My hesitancy has nothing to with wanting to avoid a severe beating from my mother or anything.


Are you in the mafia?
I was asked this last week, not in a nasty way, but the question came about when a soon to be new colleague asked the origins of my surname.

Yeah, Don Sniff is such a successful mafia boss that his youngest daughter can enjoy an unsuccessful career as a scientist and semi-professional. Fuck, if my dad was anything like a decent mafia boss, I'd have had a taser by now, wouldn't I?

Some people are so dim.

The woman who asked the question? She is dead to me.



Bursting point
I was in Coyote's in Manchester one night the other week. This is a bar in the Village that's frequented mainly by lesbians. I thought I recognised one of the women there and it came to me that she might be joining our team at work in the next few months.

Do you realise how difficult it is to control the urge to run into the office and scream "I think I saw that new woman who's starting soon, she was in Coyote's in the Village, I wonder if she's Family!"

I wonder if she is.

It probably wasn't even her.



Tainted love
Off to see Marc Almond on Sunday. Fabulous.

iPood

Steve Jobbies of Apple has given a hint that the corporation are branching out into Mummy Mafia market by introducing a range of nappies called "iPood" (of course).

The nappies will contain a number of innovative electronic devices that enable mums to measure not only things like volume of wee and weight of poo, but the in-built GPS device will track the little tykes as they wriggle about in their cots. Each iPood comes at a cost of £300, and despite entering an already saturated market, Apple are confident that iPoods will sell well amongst their target group. Market research carried out in the Chorlton area of Manchester, specifically amongst parents carrying copies of the Guardian, seems to suggest that certain people will indeed be happy to pay for the iPood, so long as it's fully biodegradable and some of the profits go towards the Make Poverty History campaign.

What does the "i" in Apple things stand for anyway? I'm going for "incomplete" because their stuff always has stuff missing, like logic and intuitiveness.


No such thing as a free lunch
But I'm getting a free tea tomorrow! Yay, my department at the Moonlighting Drugs Testing Company (who I haven't done any work for in ages) is paying for dinner for all its staff members, and I'm invited! Yummeeee.


Facebook
What's Facebook all about then? I was invited to start a Facebook profile back in January, and now more and more people are getting them. I'm not sure what it's supposed to be - eNetworking apparently.


Blimey!
This photo was featured on the BBC news website's "your pictures" section today. Vicious little bastard. You see how its violent tendencies have been passed to its offspring? Little shit is attacking its own sibling.

Snatch Snatch
I don't like using my laptop unless I have my knickers on. Imagine getting a pube caught in a vent.

Oh brother!

After years of indifference, resistance even, I've found myself watching the latest series of Big Brother.

It's so boring. The contestants are boring. The show is boring. They even had to rev up a racist scandal from nothing to raise its profile. And it's still boring.

But quite compelling all the same. I find myself watching the antics of a sample of the most repellent characters in the country and I somehow can't resist; even the "live show", where nothing happens and you can't hear anything because the sounds are blanked out.

Pathetic.

Ideally, instead of evictions, the house should have a new tenant each week, until all the equally vacuous members of our society are locked up away from the rest of us.

With ten "women" and just one bloke, I'm really hoping that the girls just get into a big cat fight and kill each other. With hair straighteners.



Culture
No, I'm not referring the stuff that grows between my toes and in my belly button, I'm getting some culture at the theatre later on. Patricia Routledge in an Alan Bennett. Well, it just had to be, I suppose.


A goose on a moped
I was stirred from slumber in the early hours by a couple having a barny in a nearby street. It sounded like a fucking riot. Bastards. I really don't understand what's wrong with people round here, but there's a total lack of consideration for people in the neighbourhood as people just go around shouting, banging doors, revving engines, playing car stereos really loud, etc, etc, at all times of the night. Morons.

Anyway, as I came to realise that there wasn't a riot making its way towards us, the panic in my head settled and I heard one of my favourite noises: a honking goose... that sounded like it was riding a moped. The two (the goose and the moped) travelled in the same direction and speed at the same time; one ground level, the other up in the air. A wonderful coincidence that cheered me.



Boredom
Trapped in the Big Brother house for 14 weeks, what would Sniffy find herself doing? Obviously, fidelity isn't an issue, so I wouldn't have any problems declining the kind advances of fellow housemates.

I think I'd just want to sleep and eat, and probably smoke too. Get into a few arguments.

Would I be allowed a taser?

Uh oh, Trump's home! Better give her some attention.

Ginge

There was an alarming story in the news last week about a family who were forced to move house after being the subject of intolerable abuse. All the family members have red hair, well there's no disguising the fact, they're proper gingers.

At first, you could laugh this off, but apparently, now that the fuckwits amongst the population are no longer allowed to hurl abuse at people because of their skin colour or sexuality, they're picking on people with red hair.

Is gingerism the new racism? I guess so. It's picking on people because of the way they are.

The reason I'm mentioning this is because of a slight faux pas of mine last week, a couple of days the news story of the ginger bullying victims broke. In a teaching session, I questioned whether it was wise or fair to measure the height of children as they start school since extraordinarily short or children would perhaps feel singled out. I added "Poor things, all they'd need is to be ginger too and their confidence could be destroyed for life!"

Of course, there was a lass with ginger hair amongst the students and I found myself ankle-deep in a hole that I had to climb out of. Since my comment was made in order to point out that people - children - pick on folk for any reason possible and that anything that makes you stand out from a crowd, especially when you're young, automatically makes you a target. Plus, I was was pretty ginger as a kid. I've been there. I felt the ginger pain. It was OK.

One of the other students, exclaimed, "Well, you can always dye your hair!"

YARRRR!

I don't know why, but I can't stop saying "yes" in the style of a pirate. I did it before in Tesco: "Have you got a Clubcard?"

"Yarr!"

I'm such a tit at times.


Meaning
Back home after a fortnight wirelessless. My life has meaning again. I am whole.


Hankering
As I get older, I find myself hankering after my childhood days when it was easy and nice. It didn't matter that you had no dress sense and that your hair was shockingly bad. It didn't to me.

You got told when you were doing OK at school, you did exams that confirmed whether you were doing OK. If you weren't doing OK, your parents could go in and defend you and tell the teacher why you weren't getting on as well as you could.

In the real world, at work, you just plod on. Nobody tells you whether the work you do is good, OK, rubbish. You just carry on. And they wonder why you lack motivation, but they never bother to ask why, they just think you don't give a crap.

If only we could have parents' evenings for the workplace. Get my mum to go into work and tell the bosses off. It'd shake the public sector up good and proper.

Just wait till I'm in charge.


London 2012
I'm hoping for the Third World War to kick off so we don't have to endure this pile of shite. I think the cost of another world war will probably a lot less than the cost of the London Olympics - you note LONDON Olympics, that the rest of the country is paying for, but won't get any benefit from. Nobody wanted these games to come to the UK - apart from Seb Coe and Ken Livingston, that is. Billions of pounds down the drain for the purpose of massaging two already over inflated egos.

Tossers.

Anyway, there's much excitement today as the new logo for the London Olympics has been unveiled.

I didn't actually realise what it was supposed to represent until I read what it was.

Here's my effort... about as much effort as is warranted.

Act on CO2
Just seen a public service ad from the Department for Transport on the telly about reducing CO2 emissions by reducing car engine revs and by driving smoothly. We'd love to drive smoothly, but they keep putting fucking road humps, traffic lights and 20mph limits all over the frigging roads.

Fucktards.

Yarr!


Tahoma
Don't know why, but everything's gone Tahoma on the front page of my blog. Weird.