Frankly Disturbing

I've been alarmed by the recent advent of a new type of squeezy container - used by Marmite and also honey. Sounds a great idea - squeeze it, doesn't drip everywhere etc

What this picture doesn't reveal is that the honey container in particular has an anus-like sphincter, which when you squeeze the honey, bulges slightly before letting go - as it were. It's among the most disturbing things I've seen in a very long time and quite puts me off.

I bet you're glad I shared that.

Will you mend my computer please? NO

Anyone who is even remotely competent with a computer must be familiar with the role of computer help/hardware technician/first line support. Unfortunately I have played this role so many times I'm bored bored bored by it - I was going to register the domain name computerfairy.com until Andy pointed out this might sound like I enjoyed mucking around with people's machines in my spare time (i.e. the 45 minutes a week I get to myself).

So I took a moratorium and started saying no to all my friends or giving them details of a guy who makes his living that way - £30 an hour - at least it made the friends place a value on my efforts. I have one friend who does buy me a lunch or a present and another friend where we barter - she does my garden in return for her computer maintenance. So that's kind of fair enough. But there's another breed who expects me to just love it and these are the ones who I have shaken off, as dust from my feet.

After all how much fun can you have removing trojans from someone's hard disk - especially when you've told them not to use file sharing - or setting up a wireless broadband network for someone who has thrown away the login details and the setup instructions because she didn't think they would be needed? You're right - not much fun at all. Especially when you spend all your hours at work trying to coax the computers into a state of co-operation - they're like a bunch of spoiled children, there's always one feeling sick or got earache.

I suppose I have a problem like lots of people in saying NO - although it's a problem I'm working on. Another friend has the concept of a full diary - she automatically says 'I think my diary is full for that week' whenever she is asked to do anything, even it's full of her eating cream buns and lying on a sofa. I can manage to say that for work commitments but not for friends - not a good enough liar.

So what's a girl to do? I guess become incompetent with computers would be a start. Or have no friends. Let's hope the march of technology overtakes me.

Dogging

I've just discovered a new tv programme - probably everyone else has known about it for ages but I'm actually quite astonished. Dog the Bounty Hunter is an American (see left) - married five times, an ex-offender himself but now a Born Again Christian, this guy is apparently legally allowed to go after people who have skipped bail and rearrest them. He and his tattoed family attire themselves in body armour - including a massive badge type thing in the shape of a star - clamber into their enormous pickups and hunt the offenders down.

Now then. When you watch this programme it makes you realise how incredibly shallow people can be. He waffles on about the dignity of the captured person after he's woken them up by pointing a pistol at their mouth, cuffing them and together with his lads, marched them into the wagon - their dignity is somehow restored by him giving them a fag and telling them about how he was naughty once and then following on by quoting the Bible at them.

The captured person then cries a bit (Dog has been crying like a baby for ages by this time) and agrees it's a fair cop and they then chuck him in at the nearest cop shop and pocket the money. Dog's missus meanwhile is hugging the woman-left-behind and telling her how her man done wrong but all he gotta do is serve a 5,000 year sentence and then he'll be all straightened out and sorted and back agin.

And this is legal in America - between 30,000 and 40,000 people every year are caught by bounty hunters. Except it's not legal in Mexico and good ol' Dog has now been arrested in Mexico for bounty hunting and bunged in the slammer himself and there's a petition going to get him let out.

Words fail me - the country that allows this pantomime is the one that we take our lead from. Soon we'll see Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne trawling sink estates and rounding up chavs with breached ASBOs.

Good grief. Oh and by the way - he's called Dog cos it's God spelled backwards. Yes really.

Solutions, solutions, solutions!

I've been accused this very day of always coming up with solutions to things and I'm forced to agree it's a lamentable trait. Let's face it - we don't always want solutions - sometimes we just want to moan or complain with the luxury of being heard and not having someone like me pipe up with ideas of how you could fix things or make them better.

The trouble is its a compulsion and I must struggle hard to overcome it.

Therefore I am signing the solution pledge right here, right now. At least for some of the time.

New things

I've always had a fascination with new things. I even feel a slight thrill opening a new bottle of shampoo or a new bar of soap. I think we always had plenty of old things when I was small so a new anything was a slight novelty. My mum and dad used to make things for us - clothes for us from mum and toys and things from dad, which of course we didn't appreciate as we should have done.

Anyway on to the really mad stuff. I find some new things really difficult - e.g. I have a bit of a phobia about writing in new blank books. People buy them for me but I have to sort of sneak up on them and quickly write something because I'm scared of spoiling all that newness. Of course I have bound some beautiful new blank books myself and never been able to use them.

And another thing - new towels. Getting and using a clean dry towel after I've had a bath - I've struggled with that one for years. I've dried myself on the general damp towel too many times to remember - buit WHY? some sort of vaguely stupid notion of saving towels? On the other hand, when I stay in a hotel I make sure I use ALL the towels and have clean ones every day. Makes no sense.

I think - going a bit philosophical - that I was quite old (like 40 ish) before I realised that I did actually like new THINGS happening in my life - prevously I had thought that I didn't. What a silly person I am. The new things happen anyway so I might as well enjoy them. :-). And clearing out some old leaves space for some new.

See - I told you it would be philosophical.