Earlier today, I attempted to call my phone company in order to sort out an upgrade, and, when I was inevitably put on hold, I found that, in lieu of the typical polyphonic elevator music, I was to be subjected to what I can only describe as a bizarre clacking reminiscent of the old Internet dial up tone. As I was too lazy to endure the simply arduous torture of holding my phone up to the side of my face, I decided to plug it into my earphones, meaning that I could hear nothing but the robotic white noise reverberating through my skull.
Religion has been a primary catalyst of war, genocide, murder, rape, destruction, oppression, segregation, and a million other overlapping offences during its reign over the human race; however, all of these I can forgive of religion, for one simple reason: It’s human nature, we’d do it anyway. The four horsemen of the apocalypse aren’t fictitious, they’re simply the personification of four common atrocities that have ravaged humanity since its inception two hundred thousands years ago. No, I can forgive religion of all these monstrous offences, because it’s just the convenient excuse. If we didn’t have religion, we’d inevitably think of some other scapegoat in our efforts to maim and kill and conquer one another.
However, there is one thing that I can never and will never forgive religion for (and note that I’m talking about the entirety of fundamentalist religion as a whole here; I’m not criticising any particular pious individual), and that is the promotion of an under-appreciation of the world around us; because to try and deny, forbid and oppress an understanding of the process of natural selection and evolution is throwing a tarp over the greatest masterpiece ever conceived. Continue reading
Poor little apostrophe. He knows his place, and more importantly, he knows when he’s not in it. Some, or all, will say that it isn’t really too important, and that as long as you get the gist of what is meant, then the grammatical semantics of the written word can probably fall by the wayside. However, if the boat of proper grammar truly is sinking, then I would rather let the weight of a million neglected semi-colons and brackets pull me down to the dreary depths of the abyss, than abandon ship and take refuge upon the misplaced and miserable apostrophe that hangs lifeless between the O and the S in the word: photo’s, or cling to safety upon the second f in the word of.
Share this with other humans
Who wants to see Felix’s funderful photos?
Continue reading
Share this with other humans
This is a question I was asked recently, and I’ve decided to post the answer that I gave.
Continue reading
Share this with other humans
In an unusually pedantic mood, I decided to…
Actually, let me start again.
In a usually pedantic mood, I decided to wander around my bar today and point out all of the things that contained grammatical and/or spelling errors; which, as it turns out, was just about everything. It started to annoy me to think about how little people care. This is a place of customer-orientated business, and yet there is no concern towards the writing when sending out confirmation emails with typos, displaying menus with grammatical mistakes, or writing up specials with misspelled words. It’s a direct representation of the company itself, and while nine out of ten people around here don’t seem to notice or care, what’s the harm in ensuring that you please ten out of ten people?
After about half an hour of me grumbling about this, a couple of my co-workers asked me why I wasn’t an English teacher, which at first I didn’t read into too much, simply quipping that with them around, I basically was an english teacher; however, something moderately annoying then occurred to me.
Continue reading
Share this with other humans
There’s a little charity competition thing going at work at the moment, where customers can pay £1 to ‘name the bear‘, and the best name entry gets to keep it. Anyway, I was having a peer through all the entries today, and some absolute ass hat has entered the name Serendipity. For a teddy bear. […]
“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to breath free.”
This is an extract from the poem that lies at the proud feet of America’s Statue of Liberty that, when first built, served as a beacon to travellers and immigrants as they neared their soon-to-be home. It served as a symbolic gateway to a new life; a free life, where a person was able to pursue his or her dreams, with honesty and integrity, and above all, without fear of persecution or undue judgement.
In this new era however, a unseen country has arisen in the wake of the digital age; a new domain for men and women, children and adults, to express themselves, to open themselves, to find themselves; and like Narnia or Hogwarts or countless other realms of fantasy and imagination, this parallel universe is accessed via a magical portal.
Well, I still think iPads and android phones are pretty magical, anyway.
Share this with other humans
For too long have I borne sad witness to the folly of a coffee maker brewing a cup of tea. This isn’t some slap-dash, hasty, get it done fast kind of job; this is an art form. It takes time, precision, and patience. So don’t screw it up.
Start off with a decent brand. My favourite is Twinning’s. Loose leaf is good if you have the time and the inclination, but a bag can be equally delightful. I’m awfully partial to a spot of Lapsang Souchong, but for this example, I’ll give the instructions applicable to a bag of simple, traditional, breakfast tea. Continue reading
Share this with other humans
While at work today, I saw a group of men watching the BBC news, which at the time was featuring the story of Julian Assange and his stay at the Ecuadorian embassy. The ‘alpha‘ of the group started running his inebriated mouth of about how terrible it was that Assange was still able to stay at the embassy, and how he ought to have been assassinated. I’ll take a wild stab in the dark and say that this man probably had no idea of the circumstances that led to Assange’s current diplomatic turmoil, but he was loudly voicing his opinion either way. Now Assange’s innocence or guilt in regards to the sexual assault charges in Sweden are of no concern to me, and as such, I have no opinion of the matter; however, hearing the utter ignorance in this man’s voice was really winding me up, and after a good ten minutes of listening to himself speak, he blurted out a sentence that I may never forget.
Continue reading
--- Grumpy Comments --- 