Simplify, man, it’s complicated enough

*

This probably won’t gel with some people who think they are going to have an afterlife.

Afterlife or no afterlife, THIS is what we’re supposed to do in THIS life, or you leave.

© The Naked Listener’s Weblog, 2021. Image via c4c.

Franglais chez Ikea

“My other son, he’s going to this [school in Hong Kong] and it’s really expensive. But they have all these Indian teachers teach English. Now, my other son, not the oldest one and not the young one yet, he speaks English with an Indian accent and it’s so funny.”

(French ex-avocat/lawyer with her 5-year-old son, both with
great blonde hair, at the Ikea bistro, 11.30am today)

Aside: While we adults were chatting, her son sat on the floor, making himself supremely comfortable resting his back on my leg and arm wrapped around my knee, sipping his gigantic orange soda. Yours truly stood stock-still for fear of stepping on the kid’s fingers. Diners and bistro staff giggled at the sight of us three.

Trivia: Her son wonked out the elasticated queue barriers near the cashier’s while his mum and I were chatting. Boy, did the mum looked embarrassed. Sharp tug at the webbing and thing was right again.

Rider: To that bistro staff personage, stop giving the mum and kid the stink-eye. Five year olds do that sort of thing. And the boy DID apologise (albeit in French). C’mon! Will a local 5 year old apologise? There’s your answer.

Trivia: The avocat had fantastic air-force blue eyes and great-looking cleavage even after having had three kids. Ladies, eat French and stay good-lookin’. Told you so.

Lifehack: The enchanting avocat relocated to Hong Kong recently, and got in touch with the local French cultural mission to ease her family into life here. That’s the way to do it. Have your own kind (French-speaking or anything else) show you the ropes when in a strange, foreign land. That way, you have others knowing who you are, what you are, how you be. It’s safer to start off like that till you can go it alone. Learn to have ‘family’ when making home away from home.

Home away from home (via Wikipedia)

© The Naked Listener’s Weblog, 2011. Image powered by Zemanta/WordPress.

Crosspost: Value of a college degree

Just a crosspost from our ‘sister’ blog:

Value of your degree in today’s world | Learn English or Starve
http://learnenglishorstarve.wordpress.com/2011/11/03/degreevalue/

Scroll down to the bottom of that post for some seriously brain-damaged excerpts of comments.

© The Naked Listener’s Weblog, 2011.

You are retarded if…

Updated 17/10: I’ve reformatted the text so that it doesn’t read like one unending stream of piss…
Update 04 Nov 2011: More reformatting for easier readability. Amen to that.

You are retarded if you believe in any of these things…

1. Buy one get one free (“bogof”)
2. I promise not to cum in your mouth
3. Just the tip…
4. An honest politician
5. A 12-year-old virgin

6. Liberalism, Conservatism, Socialism, Communism, any -ism
7. That socialism of any kind, in any amount that will actually work
8. Socialism — nope, capitalism — nope, communism — nope — how about we try autism next?
9. That government of any kind is actually for the people’s benefit
10. Women … that she will blow you for the rest of your [miserable] life

11. Gender studies
12. Women’s rights
13. History lessons
14. That humanity is actually worth the dirt it walks on
15. Anonymous

16. Poker is free — it IS, if you poke her in the eye
17. Racial superiority
18. The existence of your soul
19. Democracy as it is
20. Other women on chatboards besides lily84

21. Trolling is an art
22. Holocaust denials and Holocaust acknowledgments
23. Rupert Murdoch answers to the phone-hacking enquiry
24. U.S. Federal Reserve banksters
25. The USA is the ‘center’ of the world. (LOL, obviously that’s what your government wants you to think, since they’re only showing you pictures of Earth with USA in the middle. The Earth’s a ball — spin it around and something else will be in the middle — I’ll bet you they’re using other pictures of Earth in China.)

26. Obama’s certificate of live birth
27. Obama is an America
28. Obama is a foreigner
29. The majority knows what’s best
30. Noblesse oblige

31. Republicans (when your country operates different political parties)
32. Democrats (ditto)
33. The world is a gentle place with lots of friendly people
34. Every f@#king time aliens land on Earth, where do they go? That’s right! USA!
35. Friendly fire.

36. Human blood is blue until it encounters oxygen (morons actually believe this)
37.  Reality
38. ”I like to teach the world to sing / In perfect harmony…”
39. Small is beautiful
40. Go big — or go home

41. When a girl invites you for ‘hot coffee’ that you’re gonna get Starbucks or something
42. Cure for faggotry
43. The government helps people
44. 9/11 wasn’t an inside job
45. 9/11 was an inside job

46. The cops are there to serve and protect.
47. NATO
48. IQ
49. “Core values”
50. Corporate whores in the U.S. Congress (or any legislature in the world)

51. Conservative economic theories
52. Economic theories in general
53. Sociological theories of any kind
54. Linguistics theories
55. Academics and even academicians

56. The Internet
57. Corporate-industrial complex, taxes, bailouts, ‘homeland security’
58. The debt limit
59. Forgive thy enemy
60. Being sober

61. I can count to cucumber
62. Paper debt is money
63. Rule of law (only a Tinkerbell Effect)
64. Civil society (only a Tinkerbell Effect)
65. The value of gold (another Tinkerbell Effect) 

66. Social values (one more Tinkerbell Effect)
67. Collective memory (That’s enough Tinkerbell Effects. You’re fired. — Editor)
68. Judicial independence
69. ”No, of course I don’t think you look fat.”
70. “Friend zone”

71. Compassionate conservativism
72. Compassionate socialism
73. Compassionate any-bloody-isms
74. Mankind, humankind, womankind, kinda-kind
75. “You’re my first guy”

76. “You’re my last guy”
77. Fox News, CNN, BBC World Service, your local TV news
78. Mr. Perspective’s opinion
79. Cultural Marxism
80. Feminism (No more -isms, please. You’re re-fired. — Editor)

81. Your mum doesn’t suck cock … and doesn’t swallow
82. Your dad does … and swallows
83. Americans are smart … and getting smarter every day … and swallows
84. Indie music
85. Mainstream entertainment

86. Atheism
87. Religion
88. Evolution vs. creationism (either or both or together or separately)
89. No sex until you are 18 or married
90. No alcohol until you are 18 (or 21, wherever) or possess a driver’s licence

91. Free lunch
92. Ooops, the ‘hate’ was an accident…
93. Ai-yai-yai, the ‘Like’ was an accident…
94. Fap, and you’ll go blind
95. Blind, you can can still fap

96. Corporate media
97. Public relations
98. Public accountability of government
99. Political accountability
100. Political accountability

101. Any kind of ‘accountability’ (disaccountability?)
102. Corporate governance
103. Corporate Social Responsibility
104. Occupy Wall Street or whevever the bloody hell you are
105. Occupy Walled Street makes a difference to the “99%”

106. Occupy Wall-E Street doesn’t make a difference to the “100% Minus 1%”
107. The Moon landings (go to the Moon and prove it…)
108. Beauty comes from the inside
109. Beauty is only skin deep
110. “I will become a better man” (Dave W.)

111. “I am actually much nicer than what you see”
112. People who feel the need to label themselves
113. Change for the better (Surprise! It’s getting better! Derp.)
114. Education
115. Public education, private education, continuing education

116. Native language fluency (especially for the hard-of-learning)
117. Grammatical rules
118. Freeform semantics
119. Basic research vs. applied research
120. That analysis is equated to knowing or understanding

121. “The facts speak for themselves”

And finally…

122. That you are not retarded.

* * *

And all that came from a whole week of looking and seeing, listening and chinwagging, mulling and thinking, and ignoring and remembering.

© The Naked Listener’s Weblog, 2011. Images via c4c.

How to bottle things up inside (part 2)

YESTERDAY had been one almighty bad-hair day for me. I wear a ponytail, so you can imagine. Don’t argue — it really was bad.

* * *

Pushin’ n’ shovin’ n’ sweatin’ n’ yellin’
n’ payin’ through ya’nose

I get one life, and one life is all I get in this world. It’s not the life I paid for, but it’s a little late now to do anything about it, short of a drastic Subscription Termination to Life. I’m crazy, but not that crazy.

Ever tried walking through a sea of people in a 33-degree heatwave? With car exhaust thick as overnight leftover vomit hitting you in the face? And noises assaulting your ears 360°? You’d want to beat the living daylights out of anyone who daringly suggests there MIGHT be no global warming. You’d seriously — very seriously — be tempted to stick that ice lolly straight into someone’s eye socket and watch the victim die very slowly and painfully so that victim may understand that not wearing your favourite colour today was a sin.

Hannibal Lector or Michael Meyers or Jason Vorhees doesn’t even come close to the mild psychopathic tendencies I was having yesterday.

And if you had to pay $56 (US$7.18) for 200 grammes (7 ounces) of shite-rate German brawn (that’s jellied meats), or $14 (US$1.79) for a 750cc bottle of warm fizzy mineral water, you can forgive me for wanting to bring out my pair of blackwood nunchakus and beat the guts out of nicely behaved little children while their analogously badly behaved parents look on (if they’re paying any goddam attention in the first place). In broad daylight. Whilst wearing a fluorescent yellow sports jersey and mottled, off-white, summerweight cowboy boots, lovingly made in Texas.

* * *

Taking it out on innocent parties

There being no other business on the agenda, I move to proceed to the rant and unjustified fingerpointing.

* * *

Lee: he's tidy, he was

Any Texans out there reading this? Yes, yes, I know, your average temperature statewide is 92°F today and you’ve got muggy humidity and all that. But y’all don’t have as many pee’pl as we do — and if you had that many, your state is ginormous so they ain’t packed like sardines beans in burritos like we do here. So you fine folks can shut yer gob ovah thar. My Neville Chamberlainesque reply: you’ve never had it so good.

Get out the coldbeer (that’s correct Texan English) and bring out your concealeds (that’s short for ‘concealed weapons’ for you gormless, gun-controlled countries) and pick off a couple of closet vegans or closet teetotallers.

I wear genuine Texas- and Tennessee-made cowboy boots since the age of 12, but mostly I have the greatest respect for your General Robert E. Lee (plus getting hit with Robert E. Lee jokes for most of my life), so ahm ent-tye-tuhl’d to single out Texans for MY bad behaviour today. Shoot me. Bring out your concealed — see if I care, mister.

* * *

United Kingdom! You can shut your gob over there too! Your riots were bad — we saw them on TV — we feel for you — but it’s your own damn fault. Quit whining and whinging. We’re still furious with you for ditching us back in 1997.

Wimpy in Huddersfield, one of few still remaining in the UK

You let in fundamentally brain-damaged religionfags into your country instead of taking in fundamentally greedy Hongkongers who can help you corner the whole EU economy. You forgot how to build empires. Your loss. Nuff said.

You’ve still got your UB40′s (unemployment relief) and your NHS (free healthcare) and your basically unarmed (but unbrained) constabularies (police).

But your entire education system runs on the criminally overpriced tuition fees that you forcibly extract from international students whilst not even paying the common courtesy of furnishing them (or your own selves) with mind-numbing Latin and classical Greek lessons or your perverse (and perverted) English History lessons about how Richard III was more evil than Lord Darth Vader.

Your maths still suck. Worse, your French suck despite being only 30 miles away from France itself and your kings and queens have more French blood in them than most Frenchmen have.

You, too, United Kaaalingdom, have never had it so good, but you totalled your country for no good reason:

• allowed Wimpy (the burger joint with ‘table service’) to practically go out of business by the 1980s
• ‘corporatised’ all your pirate radio stations
• denatured or otherwise castrated all your Teddy Boys and flower-power hippies
• hair-transplanted your skinheads
• blinged-up your Mods
• besuited your punks
• disco-ised your New Wavers
• desensitised your emos and goths
• gentrified your Cockney and East End Londoners by turning their turf into Canary Wharf and other assorted banker fiefdoms
• educated your nice English country girls and scene girls to become Sex and the City bitch-sluts instead of the endearingly traditional English ‘scrubba’ whore-sluts much loved by all anglophiles
• make everybody want to be bleeding New Yorkers
• have no Britrock anymore — they’re all bleeding indies who all sing off-key
• defringed (or mainstreamised) your NF into the BNP
• americanised your centuries-old infantry regiments
• allowed straight people into the Royal Navy
• trained the RAF in American style so it now only knows how to bomb friendlies
• allowed non-hooligans into the Royal Marines and the Parachute Regiment, so bovver boys now run amok in the streets, setting fire to old ladies and create riots in several cities
• let Swann & Edgar (the department store in Piccadilly Circus) liquidate in 1975 and turn into HMV (or something) and that’s seriously unforgivable
• let Bourne & Hollingsworth in Oxford Street turn into a cheapo shopping mall
• let Dickins & Jones in Regent Street to fail into oblivion
• turned Café Royale into a bling-bling contest venue
• broke up your wonderfully late and obtuse British Rail into dozens of wonderfully late and obtuse independent rail services so no one knows where to get tickets anymore
• done ‘f.a.’ for Sheffield, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Tyne and Wear
• incorporated the former county of Westmorland into Cumbria without asking our say-so
• your feudal-sounding quarter sessions and assizes are no more, but your Crown Court couldn’t even hold a dim light to the TV series of the same name
• shambolised your education system by ditching GCE O- and A-levels and replacing them with crap GCSEs, NVQs or whatever the shite you have there now
• you’ve dissed your polytechnics by turning them into universities
• you still haven’t cleaned your Tube!
• your Oystercard is hopelessly out of date before it even came out
• you’ve practically sacked all your bus conductors of Indian and Pakistani extraction so we can’t make fun of them anymore, and bus conductors nowadays don’t know how to answer back viciously (like the Indian/Pakistani conductors could) without causing a riot in the process
• you binned all our favourite London buses (the ones with the open back ends) and replaced them with petrol-pissing new models with mediaeval-looking automatic doors that are shite and dangerous for little old ladies and rowdy drunken hooligans
• screwed up the House of Lords so badly that your aristocrats all want to be CIA operatives based in New York City or L.A.
• you’ve binned us in 1997 whilst leaving 3½ million of us still holding British-of-a-kind passports

I’m from a little place called Great Britain,
But I don’t know if I love or hate Britain,
These words upon my page written
Are things that make and break Britain.

(Chorus, “Great Britain,” by Dan Le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip)

Ye Olde Hong Kong Flag

I know so — I grew up in your flaming country too. I’m more English than your Englishmen and more Scottish than your Scotsmen.

I’ve no beef with Irishmen (because green is one of my favourite ink colours).

I’m head over heels with the Welsh mainly because they’ve given me wonderful phrases like “that’s tidy, that” and “I accidentally the whole bottle” with its oh-so-subtle missing verb that’s literally decades before those phrases became popular on the Internet. So bloody there.

Quit mucking around and fix your bleeding country for five minutes at least. If you can’t do that, dig Chamberlain, Churchill, Teddy Heath and Harold Wilson out of their graves — they can’t do any worse than this Cameron-Clegg personage. You’ve had John Major, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown having done more damage back-to-back than the Luftwaffe had ever hoped to do, and you’ve got brain-damaged politicos ‘doing in’ the remaining bits. Srsly, this is serious business.

And your BBC World Service makes Disneyland look like a serious source of news.

Oh, the riots? Sayonara to the Olympics, baby!

* * *

You’d better run for cover too

Australia: You can thank your lucky stars I’m letting you off, solely and exclusively on the strength of your country having people like D.G. Mattichak Jr, who is one of my favourite bloggers/commenters.

Communist/socialist countries: Take notes from Bear Grylls. Learn to drink your own orificial fluids. The Free World is in a deep fix right now, they’re already drinking their own, thank you very much, so they can’t spare any for you yourselves for a few more years. Cope on your own, please.

Middle East: Stop squabbling, children! You’re running out of food and water. Put your energy instead into finding a food-and-water solution. Or go back to eating dust. Your choice. Choose wisely. Derp.

Rest of the world: GO BIG, OR GO HOME! Have more bearing before you come back. Stop sucking up to these bankers. It’s your money! If they want YOUR money, YOU call the shots! What are you, chopped liver???

© The Naked Listener’s Weblog, 2011.

Images: General Robert E. Lee via The Latin Library ♦ Wimpy Restaurant in Huddersfield via Wikipedia ♦ Flag of Hong Kong 1959 via Wikipedia.

Amended 22 Aug 2011 (fixes to typos, etc).
Updated 15 Oct 2011 (link fixes).