Dead seeds don’t grow

March 27th, 2012 § 0 comments § permalink

I’ve just come from Little Miss -O’s school easter play. It was all very nice and jolly and everything you’d expect from a school production.

Being a Catholic school and with it being easter, I think, the play was a  parable about a sunflower. The story of the Sunflower mirrored Jesus’s crucifiction and resurrection. The new seeds falling from the sunflower being the resurrection and the bringing of new life.

Everything being hunky dory until the following song…

Life is in the seed,
Life is in the seed,
But first the seed
Must fall and die
for new life to proceed.

Now, I know it’s a catholic school and I’ve got to accept some jumpsuit about miracles and zombies being fed to my lass. It’s nothing that can’t be detoxified, and to be honest she’s doing a good job of that herself.

Seriously though, dead seeds growing? Fortunately, Little Miss -O isn’t falling for that one.

“Give us your fucking money”

March 21st, 2012 § 0 comments § permalink

Oh yes, that famous phrase Bob Geldof, may or may not have, shouted at all of us in the rich western world during Live Aid. The original one, not the shitty (shittier?) sequel.

Anyway, whether St Bob said those actual words or not, that is what he’s wanted us to do ever since. Now, though, he’s shouting at the very people he was wanting to give all that money to 30-odd years ago.

XRRF

[Geldof] is now the chairman of an Africa-focused private equity fund which said earlier this month it had raised $200 million from investors, close to half its targeted size of $450 million.

Dubbed 8 Miles, the fund plans to invest in companies that can develop into “African champions” in sectors such as agribusiness, telecoms and consumer goods.

“We put together our little thing – a goldilocks thing, not too small, not too big, just right. And we will make a lot of money, a lot. For me I want to leave behind me firms, farms, factories. Fuck the money, that’s me,” Geldof said.

Geldof’s fund is promising a rate of return of 25% – or, in other words, is promising to take a large chunk of any wealth created straight back out of the continent into the developed world.

But remember, Geldof’s not really bothered about the money:

Geldof referenced the big payday of some of private equity’s titans, including Henry Kravis and George Roberts, who got $94 million each in 2011 from buyout firm KKR & Co LP , in also making a wider case for philanthropy.

“You have got the four houses, the three jets, the 10 cars, the 65th fucking Picasso. What’s the point? So its stuff, and right now it’s the stuff that will get us out of that mess,” Geldof said.

So, Geldof’s big idea is that you encourage people to invest in Africa, to rake enormous profits out the natural resources and endeavours of those who live there, on the sort-of-off-chance that the people who’ve made all that money will decide they don’t really need it and give some of it back?

Righto, Bob.

And for someone so keen on distributing wealth, Geldof is not so keen on paying taxes. I’ve pinched enough of XRRF’s post, so click through to see that bit.

Banksy on Advertising

March 8th, 2012 § 0 comments § permalink

I saw the words originally on David Allen Greens’ old Jack of Kent blog (don’t forget to check David’s new blog) and now, via to Tim, here is the video.

I whole heatedly agree…

Update 14/3/12:
Oh dear, Banksy

Chances are pretty good you’ve recently seen the “Banksy on Advertising” quote that begins, “People are taking the piss out of you everyday.” The passage is from Banksy’s 2004 book Cut It Out, and it presents the idea that if advertisers are going to fill your world with ads, you have every right to “take, re-arrange and re-use” those images without permission. The quote has been posted widely on Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter, which is where I found it.

Here’s the interesting part:

Most of it is swiped directly from an essay I wrote in 1999, in the “Death, Phones, Scissors” issue of my zine Crap Hound. The first paragraph is more or less original, but the rest is mine, right down to the same words and phrases.

It’s hard to know how to feel about this. My first thought was, “Hey, Banksy reads Crap Hound!” Then, “What the fuck is going on?” Then, “Am I a real person? Am I actually happening?” And finally, “Am I a beautiful flower angel sent from heaven to inspire Banksy?”

As problems go, it’s a pretty nice one to have. I like Banksy’s art and ideas. I’m flattered he liked my writing and my sentiments, and I’m happy others liked the quote enough to post and forward. I’ve seen forums where people are debating the passage, including rebuttals from ad-agency twats. It’s on wikiquotes and a hundred blogs. My essay never would have had that impact on its own.

The downside is that Banksy’s name is always on it. Seeing my writing credited to someone else makes it a little less magical. Same with knowing that one day (maybe soon, since the issue in question is being reprinted), I’ll get to hear how I ripped off Banksy.

Read it all.

h/t @stebax

On dog owners

March 8th, 2012 § 0 comments § permalink

Three occassions recently have brought me to the conclusion that dog owners are increasingly becoming arseholes.

There’s three events that are bringing me to this conclusion.

The first. Picture the scene. It’s a bright warm Autumn afternoon and my family and our neighbours are mooching about in our front gardens, the adults chatting, front doors open as we pop in and out, the kids playing with their bikes/skateboards/football when a chap walks past with his dog, a little Staffy not on a lead. There’s no fences on the boundary of the gardens just like many other gardens, and the dog thinking this looks like a fun place, wanders in to the gardens, has a run around in a little circle for a couple of minutes, freaking out a couple of the kids (who are all under 8 years of age) and then goes straight to my neighbours front door and in it goes.

One of my neighbours is in the house at the time and chases it out. The dog owner making a not very spirited effort at calling the dog back to him.

My neighbour, quite rightly, gives the chap a fucking earful. An unknown dog just chased our kids and then went in to her house. She has a right to be pissed off. The owner gives a half-hearted protestation that his dog is just playing and wouldn’t hurt anyone is irrelevant, and ends up walking away not with an apology but a “fuck you”.

The second occassion, The kids and I are out on our bikes geocaching. We stop to find a cache down a footpath and as we’re opening the box and deciding what we’re going to leave in it two women walk past with four or five little dogs, about the size off Scotties or a big Yorkshire terrier, non of them on a lead. As they walk past our laid down bikes one of dogs has a sniff of my lads’ bikes’ seat and then cocks a leg at it. Only after I raise my voice to one of the women shuffle the dog along with her foot. I loudly grumble something along the lines of ‘for fucks sake’ she gives me something similar back. And on they go.

The third occassion was this morning. I’m just clearing the frost from the windows of my car when a chap walks past with a lovely looking alsation type of dog. Beautiful, it was. Again, the dog wanders up the garden and picks up a tennis ball sitting on the ground under a window a takes it to it’s master. As the bloke throws the ball back where it came from, telling his dog to leave it in a voice you’d use when amusing a six month old baby, I ask him politley to keep his dog under more control. Y’know, stop running and fetching anything it likes. He looks at me and then wanders off without a word.

Now, this is starting to piss me off. Not the behaviour of the dogs, per se. The reaction of the owners. I accept that a dog is like a child. The reactions we got were unacceptable. Not one apology. At best we was ignored and at worst got abuse thrown at us.

They might like their dog, but I don’t want a fucking dog I don’t know going into my house, or pissing and fucking dribbling on stuff my kids fucking play with. How would these cunts like it if I let my kids just wander into thier house? What would they do if my lad took a slash up their front door? They might not mind picking up it’s shit, but I don’t want to clean fucking dog piss off my stuff.

I’m not talking about ‘dangerous’ dogs and their owners. The couple of those types of dogs round here are owned by the stereotypical onwer, but the dogs are really well behaved and obedient (from what I’ve seen) and their owners are quite apologetic when their dogs come up to us and they see that my lass is absolutely petrified of them.

It’s these other ignorant cunts that I have the problem with. The fucking labrador might be bouncing with joy at a new person in the street to sniff, but when my lass is shaking with fear while a dog nearly as big as her comes bounding towards her, ‘Don’t worry, he won’t hurt her. He’s friendly’ doesn’t really cut it.

You are not in a position to fucking gloat yet, you wankers

March 2nd, 2012 § 0 comments § permalink

This tweet has really fucking riled me…


source

It’s the fucking gloating, just oozing from those fucking words: Ooh, look. The Guardian got it wrong. Ha! look at the precious Guardian, having to apologise yet again.

No, the fucking Sun has never got anything wrong has it? Just which newspaper has just had a slack handful of it’s employees arrested and are under investigation for corruption?

At least the Guardian has a corrections and clarifications column. And it’s easy to find…

Where the fuck is yours, you cunts (click to enlarge)?

And that correction referred to in the Sun’s tweet was made on the 29th February and the original article was published on 23 February. Six days. If I could find some fucking corrections in the Sun, I would eat my fucking socks if any were done in 6 days or less.

Micheal Curran gave a better response than I did to the Sun’s tweet, so I’ll leave the last word to him…

1234

March 2nd, 2012 § 0 comments § permalink

Last night during BBCs’ Question Time, a tweet appeared from Boris Johnsons’ @MayorOfLondon account…

I love David Starkey. Wish he was my uncle. Few things better than #qt, wineand a good out shout at the TV.

source

…and subsequently, quickly deleted. Probably because Starkey was being rather batshit, boarish, rude and generally being a cunt. The BBC got what they were after from the cunt-chair that evening, then.

This morning a Boris backer tells me it wasn’t Boris/whoever does the MayorOfLondon tweets. He’d been probably been hacked.

Fair enough, although the speed with which it was deleted and no mention of it afterwards, and there being just the one ‘out of character’ tweet suggests someone suddenly thinking it wasn’t the best of tweets from the Mayor rather than someone nefariously gaining access to the account to cause mischief.

Gay Marriage.

March 1st, 2012 § 0 comments § permalink

One of the hot topics recently is gay marriage. Seriously, what’s the problem?

What’s the worst that could happen?

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