Shift work? Whose idea was that? Some corporate bastard I'll wager. Who breng money, I ask you? I'd much rather live like an animal, foraging for spaghetti and protecting myself from man's natural predators (jackalope, Nestlé, any character played by Alan Rickman in a film) than work in an office. The interesting thing about working is that all anyone thinks or talks about is the time you're not working. I'm beginning to think that viciously oppressive communism is the way forward. We could all live on £35 a week if we could make do, rather than act like greedy bastards all the time, stomping all over one another's heads like Super Mario to get up the corporate ladder so they can afford a new bra or whatever. And then we wouldn't have to pay Greece to run a society so casually that you got a bonus just for being on time.
Here's what's up:
1. Every show ever made is better than The Wire. I finally got around to watching it, and it's a good piece of television. I bet you didn't expect to see that sentence, especially after that heading. Well shut up, grandma. You see The Wire is good. Sure. But is it really the moan-its-name-during-orgasm good as every critic proclaimed it to be?
NNNNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It's good, but really, two things struck me overwhelmingly, both negative: 1. the mood of the series is beyond misanthropic and by the end knowingly and wilfully mean-spirited; 2. Stringer Bell.
Its tone is really unmissable, the series chooses 5 areas of any city (police, working class, politics, schools and the media) and wags its finger in each of their faces while making fart noises. Each is corrupt and stilted by a pack hierarchy. Wow, I wouldn't have assumed that. You really taught me something. And you taught me this one time? No, five fucking times. I like how nobody thought of saying anything smart or new about these institutions, but you'd hardly expect that from a show that secretly toes the line by giving positive outcomes to all the good-natured people and killing everyone else. That's original. And Stringer Bell, are you kidding me? How can anyone enjoy this character? Idris Elba plays him with a single permanent expression; nonchalant perplexion, like he has no idea what's going on but couldn't be bothered doing anything about it. He is a joke. Other than its frankly rubbish third season and that ridiculous school-principal holier-than-thou tone of the series it's a decent police procedural with good characters, but don't worry about not seeing it.
That said, there's so many odd things being said about it that one could feel obligated to not only consume it but vouch for its untouchability. Smeg that cheese. Do you need a degree in Baltimore street parlance? No, unless you are legally a robot. Do you need to pay absolute, religious attention? No, it's actually not that complex, compared to something like Breaking Bad (what?) or Six Feet Under (when?). It's odd to re-read reviews after the fact. I like reading sports preview after the game is over to see the total disparity between prognostication and proceedings. It's a wonder a lot of those guys have jobs when you consider that predicting Liverpool would win the league, or say Munster could beat a national team before they got smacked about the face by Leinster in 2009 as Hugh Farrelly did, would surely get you fired if you had performance evaluation. It's similar for The Wire. I suppose that I'm not a TV reviewer, so I don't have to sit through a load of shit each week. If I did maybe I'd appreciate a big meaty show like The Wire. But the thing is that I do watch a lot of shows, many of which I think are better than it, largely out of one thing that it's pretty patchy in the The Wire and is absent from all the reviews I read: entertainment. The Wire is good, but whole episodes go by with nothing important happening, and only brief moments of levity. It's hard for me to envisage the person who actually enjoys The Wire. It's interesting, and can be entertaining, but is it the most entertaining thing on TV? Oh God no. Not in the top 100. Breaking Bad, Breaking Bad, Breaking Bad, Br-
2. Ow my ears: In work we get paid 15 cent for every refund we issue. The result of this is that bona-fide twits are doing huge numbers of refunds incorrectly just so they can achieve high totals. At first I tried to go flat out and did 200 in a day, so I bemoaned the fact that people who got 300+ must be doing them wrong. You just couldn't pay attention to everything and do that many. So the next day when I did 330 I felt a bit self-conscious. The number is subject to series of variables. One of the factors is who sits beside you, because if someone starts talking to you about Ronan Keating you lose your concentration and suddenly the simple task of pushing F7 F4 F9 F6 over and over becomes impossible. So the solution is the iPod. My mum washed mine in the washing machine especial, so it's shiny and new, and somehow works better than before. But when you've got quite small ears like I do, the original headphones hurt like a motherbitch. Everything about me is small, apart from my dingaling, which I can assure you all is breathtakingly average. Those earphones are huge though but. Who designed them? Charlotte Church?
3. When I was growing up, one of my favourite shows was The Adventures of Pete and Pete which was about a 10 year old lumberjack and his baseball loving elder brother, both ginger Americans. It was a typical kids show, apart from the fact that it wasn't. It was also a treasure trove of cameos from musicians from bands you've almost heard. Of. Pete's best friend and confidant was a man named Artie, The Strongest Man... In the World, who was played by Toby Huss who went on to play the amazing Felix 'Stumpy' Dreifuss in the subplots>mainplot Carnivale, a fact that, when I discovered it, caused my head to explode. The head I now have is totally the same. If you think he doesn't look that strong, well guess what? He can move a house with his pinky. And yes that is a large bulge in his pants.
Anyway, amongst the oddballs in Pete and Pete's town was their mum, who had a metal plate in her head that received and occasionally broadcast radio signals and ruined the air traffic control radar system at Ryanair between April 1994 and April 1994, an evil nemesis named Papercut, who made paper knives that could cut the peak off of a baseball cap, a possible alien who had a hearing aid that could be turned up in order to... space, something to do with space, and their arch-nemesis, Pitstain. Pitstain was a Sweaty Betty who had permanent greasy hair and yellow stains under his pits. This made him volatile, and presumably, stinky.
The thing is, when I walk home this weather, particularly in the weather we're having this weather, I stumble in the door with enormous sweat-stains on my back and a t-shirt that is stuck to me. It's a good hour walk, and I always bring my coat because when I get up at yesterday o'clock it's nearly always raining and cold. As soon as I get the door shut I strip bollock naked, and (after having a little cry, why not) I have a second shower. Where am I?
Anyway, you see I kind of forgot I had "Pat Rafter Syndrome". Pat Rafter is an Australian former tennis player who used to sweat like a stewing onion when he played. It isn't a real syndrome, or at least wasn't before. You see the reason for it is it being a big hairy bastard, something that Pat and I both are. Which is unfortunate, but it could be worse. There is a real affliction known as "weather-related African-American supracranial vaporous emission", which luckily I'm exempt from.
4. Work is boring. Really, why does anyone bother? My "job" such as it is, is a ridiculous exercise in utterly fatal fire-sale mismanagement. So what better way to endure it than by learning a bunch of fascinating air industry technical jargon?
Here's what's up:
1. Every show ever made is better than The Wire. I finally got around to watching it, and it's a good piece of television. I bet you didn't expect to see that sentence, especially after that heading. Well shut up, grandma. You see The Wire is good. Sure. But is it really the moan-its-name-during-orgasm good as every critic proclaimed it to be?
NNNNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It's good, but really, two things struck me overwhelmingly, both negative: 1. the mood of the series is beyond misanthropic and by the end knowingly and wilfully mean-spirited; 2. Stringer Bell.
Its tone is really unmissable, the series chooses 5 areas of any city (police, working class, politics, schools and the media) and wags its finger in each of their faces while making fart noises. Each is corrupt and stilted by a pack hierarchy. Wow, I wouldn't have assumed that. You really taught me something. And you taught me this one time? No, five fucking times. I like how nobody thought of saying anything smart or new about these institutions, but you'd hardly expect that from a show that secretly toes the line by giving positive outcomes to all the good-natured people and killing everyone else. That's original. And Stringer Bell, are you kidding me? How can anyone enjoy this character? Idris Elba plays him with a single permanent expression; nonchalant perplexion, like he has no idea what's going on but couldn't be bothered doing anything about it. He is a joke. Other than its frankly rubbish third season and that ridiculous school-principal holier-than-thou tone of the series it's a decent police procedural with good characters, but don't worry about not seeing it.
That said, there's so many odd things being said about it that one could feel obligated to not only consume it but vouch for its untouchability. Smeg that cheese. Do you need a degree in Baltimore street parlance? No, unless you are legally a robot. Do you need to pay absolute, religious attention? No, it's actually not that complex, compared to something like Breaking Bad (what?) or Six Feet Under (when?). It's odd to re-read reviews after the fact. I like reading sports preview after the game is over to see the total disparity between prognostication and proceedings. It's a wonder a lot of those guys have jobs when you consider that predicting Liverpool would win the league, or say Munster could beat a national team before they got smacked about the face by Leinster in 2009 as Hugh Farrelly did, would surely get you fired if you had performance evaluation. It's similar for The Wire. I suppose that I'm not a TV reviewer, so I don't have to sit through a load of shit each week. If I did maybe I'd appreciate a big meaty show like The Wire. But the thing is that I do watch a lot of shows, many of which I think are better than it, largely out of one thing that it's pretty patchy in the The Wire and is absent from all the reviews I read: entertainment. The Wire is good, but whole episodes go by with nothing important happening, and only brief moments of levity. It's hard for me to envisage the person who actually enjoys The Wire. It's interesting, and can be entertaining, but is it the most entertaining thing on TV? Oh God no. Not in the top 100. Breaking Bad, Breaking Bad, Breaking Bad, Br-
2. Ow my ears: In work we get paid 15 cent for every refund we issue. The result of this is that bona-fide twits are doing huge numbers of refunds incorrectly just so they can achieve high totals. At first I tried to go flat out and did 200 in a day, so I bemoaned the fact that people who got 300+ must be doing them wrong. You just couldn't pay attention to everything and do that many. So the next day when I did 330 I felt a bit self-conscious. The number is subject to series of variables. One of the factors is who sits beside you, because if someone starts talking to you about Ronan Keating you lose your concentration and suddenly the simple task of pushing F7 F4 F9 F6 over and over becomes impossible. So the solution is the iPod. My mum washed mine in the washing machine especial, so it's shiny and new, and somehow works better than before. But when you've got quite small ears like I do, the original headphones hurt like a motherbitch. Everything about me is small, apart from my dingaling, which I can assure you all is breathtakingly average. Those earphones are huge though but. Who designed them? Charlotte Church?
3. When I was growing up, one of my favourite shows was The Adventures of Pete and Pete which was about a 10 year old lumberjack and his baseball loving elder brother, both ginger Americans. It was a typical kids show, apart from the fact that it wasn't. It was also a treasure trove of cameos from musicians from bands you've almost heard. Of. Pete's best friend and confidant was a man named Artie, The Strongest Man... In the World, who was played by Toby Huss who went on to play the amazing Felix 'Stumpy' Dreifuss in the subplots>mainplot Carnivale, a fact that, when I discovered it, caused my head to explode. The head I now have is totally the same. If you think he doesn't look that strong, well guess what? He can move a house with his pinky. And yes that is a large bulge in his pants.
Anyway, amongst the oddballs in Pete and Pete's town was their mum, who had a metal plate in her head that received and occasionally broadcast radio signals and ruined the air traffic control radar system at Ryanair between April 1994 and April 1994, an evil nemesis named Papercut, who made paper knives that could cut the peak off of a baseball cap, a possible alien who had a hearing aid that could be turned up in order to... space, something to do with space, and their arch-nemesis, Pitstain. Pitstain was a Sweaty Betty who had permanent greasy hair and yellow stains under his pits. This made him volatile, and presumably, stinky.
The thing is, when I walk home this weather, particularly in the weather we're having this weather, I stumble in the door with enormous sweat-stains on my back and a t-shirt that is stuck to me. It's a good hour walk, and I always bring my coat because when I get up at yesterday o'clock it's nearly always raining and cold. As soon as I get the door shut I strip bollock naked, and (after having a little cry, why not) I have a second shower. Where am I?
Anyway, you see I kind of forgot I had "Pat Rafter Syndrome". Pat Rafter is an Australian former tennis player who used to sweat like a stewing onion when he played. It isn't a real syndrome, or at least wasn't before. You see the reason for it is it being a big hairy bastard, something that Pat and I both are. Which is unfortunate, but it could be worse. There is a real affliction known as "weather-related African-American supracranial vaporous emission", which luckily I'm exempt from.
4. Work is boring. Really, why does anyone bother? My "job" such as it is, is a ridiculous exercise in utterly fatal fire-sale mismanagement. So what better way to endure it than by learning a bunch of fascinating air industry technical jargon?
- Three letter currency codes are used to denote... currency. Some more obscure ones are PNL: Polish Lira, MAD: Madrid Dollars, HUF: Helsinki Ufhs, and TRA: Tranny Points
- Similar to military-style operations, the international radiotelephony spelling alphabet (or ICAO, as it's really abbreviated to) is used to transfer reservation codes. This makes it feel more exciting than it is, especially if you've always wanted to play a Sargent on the Bill. Which I haven't. But it has been modified slightly. G is denoted by "Guinness", Y by "jazz flute" and K by "what's K again?".
- Three letter codes are also used to denote airports, as any traveller will know, boss. But some of them make no sense. Why is Birmingham BHX? I thought that it was Brussels, because of the H tucked away in there. Did you know that Butler Airport is denoted by BUM? And Derim is denoted by DER? You work it out.
You may now resume your normal lives.
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1 comments:
Two things that we sometimes talk about in one blog!!1!!!11!!!
On The Wire, you might be glad to hear that Brian Boyd from the Irish Times doesn't care for it either. He says they should've explored Herc and Carver's buddy cop interactions much more. I'm not sure I agree because Carver was such a sssssap. But it is a new take and not just a "The Wire is shite" opinion that some lazier journalists might put forward. Here's the file!! http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/features/2010/0527/1224271214633.html
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My personal favourite route on the whole network in terms of three-letter codes is Poitiers-Stansted. PISSTN. lol
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They haven't taught you the proper phonetic alphabet if you're using Q-for-Cucumber instead of Q-for-Queerbah and Y-for-Jazz Flute instead of Y-am-I-working-here.
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