Get Out Clause

Invite me to an event that’s several months away and, if I can’t get away with deferring my answer, the chances are I’ll say yes, even if it’s something that I really don’t want to do. I will agree to almost anything if it seems far enough away for me not to have to think about it, then, as the time for the event draws nearer, I’ll get into a panic and desperately try to think of excuses not to have to go. Every time I do it I know that later on down the line I’m going to regret saying yes but sometimes it just seems the simplest thing to do, particularly if the person inviting me is a friend. Saying no may well upset them and lead to a confrontation that will interrupt my simple, selfish, hassle free life. The worst example of this are parties; as I’ve mentioned before in this blog, I don’t know how to handle certain social situations and parties really are a nightmare for me, when faced with a group of people that I don’t know I become very quiet and disappear into my own little world. At best I’ll latch on to the one person I know for as long as I possibly can until they inevitably prise them self away to actually do some socialising, at which point I’ll be left sitting in the same spot for the rest of the night, feeling sorry for myself and trying my damnedest to become invisible, all the time getting more and more self conscious about the fact that I’m not interacting, but still not actually being able to bring myself to interact. I’ll break out in a heavy sweat, my entire head burning up and glowing like a horny firefly, at just the thought of having a conversation with a complete stranger. But if I’m invited to a party and I try to honestly explain that I don’t want to go because of the above reasons, I’ll be accused of being silly, and I’ll be told ‘everyone feels like that, once you’re there you’ll be fine. Come on, come to the party, don’t be so boring, blah blah, yadda yadda, etc’ and it won’t stop until I agree to go, whereupon I end up latching on to the one person I know for as long as I possibly can until...

I could just lie and try to make up some plausible excuse as to why I can’t go, but the problem with that is I really am an absolutely rubbish liar, not only do I get an overwhelming feeling of guilt about lying to a friend, but I also seem to be quite incapable of just telling a small believable lie, especially if I have to do it right there on the spot. If I lie, it’s as a story teller, weaving a tale so fantastical and unbelievable that only the most gullible of idiots would fall for it, and if I do come across someone that gullible, and they are out there, that just encourages me to be even more outrageously fantastical to see how far I can go before they finally suspect that maybe I’m taking the piss.

Which brings me neatly to the reason for writing this:

Harold ‘Armageddon’ Camping.

I believe that Harold Camping suffers from the same problem I do, but his solution to it is to declare the END OF DAYS! ‘I’m sorry brother Jim Bob, I can’t come to your party after all. Unfortunately, according to my calculations, that day will be the start of the rapture... Yeah I know, it’s such a shame, but I couldn’t possibly risk missing judgement day.’

So, the 21^st of May came and went without incident, but at least Harold didn’t have to sit, feeling awkward and self conscious, in the middle of a party that he didn’t really want to be at. And it seems that Mr Camping has been invited to yet another party (do his friends never learn?) on Friday 21^st of October. So on that day, while you’re all preparing to party the weekend away, spare a thought for poor old painfully shy Harold ‘Armageddon’ Camping, and maybe raise a glass for him, but whatever you do, PLEASE do not invite him to another damn party.

It’s Oh So Quiet (or Facebook Off Pt 2)

I have a pet hate, actually I have dozens and I’m discovering new ones all the time, but there’s one in particular that rises above all the others. I don’t just hate it, I despise it, I deplore it, I detest it, and any other negative words beginning with ‘de’, and even that is putting it mildly. As I’m sure anyone who knows me (or read my last post) would’ve guessed by now, this deep loathing is aimed towards the abbreviation ‘lol’ and, to a slightly lesser extent, others of its ilk. Its no coincidence that ‘lol’ bares an uncanny resemblance to ‘101’.

I’ve never liked the current use of ‘lol’, mainly because it doesn’t actually mean anything. Of course I know it stands for ‘laugh out loud’ but how many people who use ‘lol’ are actually laughing out loud when they write it?

Absolutely none! That’s how fucking many, because people with a well developed sense of humour don’t need to convince others of this fact, and anyone with a keen wit can generally come up with a far better response. I also know that they aren’t actually ‘laughing out loud’ because otherwise the world would be full of hysterical people guffawing away to themselves every time something not particularly funny happens. If you’re in a public place with a group of strangers, maybe a bus or train, you’ll be lucky to even see anyone smile let alone laugh out loud, but you can bet they’ll be sitting there tapping away on their phones, claiming to be laughing out loud to their friend who has ‘just had toast for breakfast lol’.

I’ve heard the argument that it’s just a polite acknowledgement that someone has written something funny but this argument fails on two fronts: First, the thing that people are ‘lol’ing at is rarely funny, as in the ‘having toast for breakfast’ example. And second, the majority of people who ‘lol’ are doing it in their own sentence. I’ve actually seen ‘lol’ used four times in one very short sentence of ten or so words on facebook, followed by a long stream of comments that all, without fail, contain at least one, but generally more, ‘lol’ in them, and neither the original four ‘lol’ post nor any of the associated comments were in the slightest bit amusing.

Some people use ‘lol’ as a written equivalent of a nervous giggle, not quite sure of how what they’ve written will be taken they’ll add an ‘lol’ or two thinking this will make it better, it doesn’t, it just makes you look nervous, insecure, and humourless. I see ‘lol’ very much as a sign of the terminally humourless. I like a bit of banter, an exchange of wits, it helps keep the mind sharp, but if somebody writes a funny comment somewhere and the wittiest reply you can come up with is ‘lol’ then it’s probably best to keep it to yourself, you’re not adding anything to the joke or conversation, it just kills it dead, or invites other people to take the piss out of your lack of imagination, to which you can only reply ‘lol’ again and prove their point. If you do manage to come up with a remark you think may be witty, but you feel the need to add ‘lol’ to the end just to show that you’re trying to be funny, then that in itself should tell you that the remark isn’t actually as witty as you first thought. You may as well go the whole hog and hire a drummer to follow you around everywhere doing the old ‘BADUM TISH’ every time you say something.

The very worst offenders though are those that use it almost like punctuation, as with the four ‘lol’ facebook post I mentioned earlier, they’ve become so insecure and confused that just forming a sentence seems to become impossible for them, the next step is that they start using ‘lol’ in face to face verbal conversation, and when it gets to that point the only way forward for them is complete and utter social isolation... or repeatedly punching them in the face.

To add a bit of variation into the mix you also have rofl and lmfao, and, an amalgamation of the two, roflmao, I guess the ultimate version would be pmsroflaool. But these just seem to confuse the poor little ‘lol’sters, as finely demonstrated in the following authentic facebook post, copied and pasted, as is, directly from facebook (names and profile pictures have been removed to protect the... well quite frankly, deranged).

Person 1: Happy birthday Grandma hope have good birthday xx

Person 2: Cheeky git!!! Lol thank you

Person 1: Hahahaha u welcome. The message does come with wrinkle cream lmfao lol

Person 2: Is it the same one that you use?? Lol

Person 1: Lol no. I found the fountain of youth hahahahaa rofl

Person 2: That was a dream mate lol

Person 1: Lol don't dream hahahaha. U just jealous cos u old. I got a walking stick for u lol haahahahahaha

Now fair enough ‘person 2’ here is just your standard ‘lol’ster, complete with the overuse of exclamation and question marks (another pet hate, and another facebook staple), but ‘person 1’ seems to be very confused over which abbreviated expression of hilarity to use, so just throws them all in until by the end of the exchange he appears to be channelling Dr Evil on nitrous oxide. Maybe that’s the collective noun for them, a Dr Evil of ‘lol’sters. Could you imagine what kind of state these people would be in if they were in a conversation that was actually funny? They would literally laugh themselves to death, and on their gravestone would be inscribed:

“Here lies Person 2. LTTD RIP lol”

So if you’ve got to the end of this post and find yourself with the overwhelming urge to leave an ironic ‘lol’, ‘rofl’, ‘lmfao’ etc, then congratulations; you’ve kind of proved my point, and you have just become the newest fully paid up member of the League of the Bleeding Obvious.

Facebook Off

I joined facebook several months ago because of two friends who repeatedly told me I should join facebook. Since I joined (or maybe because I joined) those two friends are rarely on it, and to be honest I don’t blame them. I arrived very late at the facebook party, and I didn’t bring a bottle, or a date. And now I’m here I just stand in the corner giving everyone dirty looks and occasionally shouting obscenities.

The problem is facebook annoys me, and although I’ve tried to get into it and participate, I have very little interest in the lives of people that I barely know, or that I knew almost 30 years ago (and by “knew” I mean we went to the same school but were never actually friends), and I find it strange that they would have any interest in mine. This is why I resisted joining for so long. One glance at my short list of “friends” will tell you that I’m not a very good advocate for social networking. Don’t get me wrong, I do actually have friends in real life; people that I’m happy to spend time with, and that I do have an interest in, not many admittedly, and out of that small number of friends there’s an even smaller group of people that I class as close friends, friends that I will always be extremely loyal to, and will do almost anything for (even join facebook). Anyway, I digress, I'll get back to the point.

So facebook annoys me. The trouble is I keep falling foul of some of my pet peeves, and I have many. I warn you now, there’s a very big chance this will get ranty...

The very first thing I noticed on joining up was the habit people have on facebook of referring to themselves in the third person:

Glenn just got up.

Glenn feels sad.

Glenn is going to bed.

Glenn is a bit freaked out by all this fucking illeism. If you were having a real life conversation with someone and they started talking in the third person you’d assume they were completely mental, you’d finish the conversation as soon as you possibly can, and make a mental note to avoid any further conversation with them again. It takes all the willpower you can muster just to refrain from bopping illeists over the head with a very large blunt instrument until they can no longer remember who they are.

Another thing is how mundane most status updates tend to be, millions of people declaring that they’re doing an everyday humdrum activity; they’re getting up, they’re having breakfast, they’re going out, they’ve come back home, they’re having dinner, they’re going to bed, blah blah blah. Is this really what people on facebook are interested in? But the mundane ones are a blessing compared to the “Please give me sympathy and attention” status updates, they seem to be the mainstay of facebook. They’ll often involve an illness or injury of some kind (normally upgraded to be worse than they actually are):

Glenn has got flu!!!!!!!!

Ah, what you’ve got there my “friend” is a fucking cold. But of course nobody has colds now, the common cold has been killed off by the media, now if you’re going to have an illness it has to be one worth boasting about, it has to be flu, and even that’s not enough anymore, now we have to have bird flu, or pig flu, or in my own personal twitter based flu case, Japanese Fighting Fish flu; the toughest, most ferocious flu ever known to man, or Japanese Fighting Fish... I have actually had proper, full grown, authentic flu once or twice, and I’m pretty sure the last thought on my delirious and confused mind is ‘Ooh, I must stare at an oh so bright screen through my too painful to open eyes and tell everyone on facebook that I, heroically and bravely, have flu’. Oh and just a little extra tip; you really don’t need to use that many exclamation marks.

The above is just a mild example of thousands of different types of status updates designed to grab sympathy and attention. The worst are the ones that make a sweeping statement but with no actual details:

Glenn is on the way to hospital!!!!!!!!

It’s doubtful you’ll actually find out why. It’s unlikely that whilst being rushed to hospital in the back of a speeding ambulance, fighting for your life, you’re going to battle with the paramedic to take out your phone and inform a bunch of relative strangers of your plight, but not the reason behind it. The comments will be full of ‘what’s happened?’, ‘hope ur ok’, and ‘wots the matter hun’ but all you’ll get as an explanation for this particular announcement is ‘I don’t really want to go into it’. Really, you don’t? Maybe you shouldn’t have fucking posted it then. Of course these posts don’t have to involve a medical issue, it can be a friend or partner (normally referred to as “somebody”) who has upset the writer in some way, or just a general all encompassing ‘Glenn is pissed off’. They’re all designed to illicit the same kind of concerned ‘U ok hun, wots wrong’ response.

This brings me nicely to grammar. A lot of the posts I see on facebook are practically illegible, with a mixture of terrible spelling, complete lack of punctuation, ill formed nonsensical sentences, and that old bastion of illegibility, text speak. I know text speak came about in the days when mobile phones would limit the amount of characters you could send in a text, but facebook doesn’t have a character limit so what’s the point? Are you really saving yourself that much effort from one or two less keystrokes? Conversely, twitter does have a character limit but I almost never see text speak on there. Go figure! And speaking of spelling mistakes, ‘hon’ is short for ‘honey’ whereas ‘hun’ is either an army of fifth century Mongolian conquerors led by one Mr Attila, or a derogatory term for Germans during WWI, unless of course I missed something and everyone is actually accusing each other of being barbarous and destructive. Whatever the case ‘hun’ is one of the most overused words on facebook, along with my biggest pet hate of all... ‘lol’

The red mist is descending now so it’s possibly time I left this particular subject (for now) with a positive note about facebook... Er... It gave me something to blog about.