Raging Insomnia

There is an idiom that seems to have become very popular over the last year or two and, like many things do, it drives me absolutely nuts. Every time I hear it, or see it written down, a rage builds within me and I am compelled to internally rant to myself. Mentally pacing up and down, gesticulating wildly, while I sternly lecture an imagined gathering of offenders on the error of their ways. I am referring to the colloquialism “sleeps until...” I’m not even sure why I hate it so much. It’s probably that it sounds quite childish. I'll be the first to admit that I can be somewhat immature in my humour, but I'm an adult and I talk like one. This is more like baby talk, and I’ve never been a fan of that. I’m not talking about the baby talk that adults do to babies; the “googoo gaga” kind of gobbledygook, although even that winds me up a little bit. No I’m talking about the kind that adults do to other adults. That supposedly flirtatious baby talk someone might do in an effort to manipulate another person, normally of the opposite sex, to do a favour for them. “Would oo do me a ickle favour pwease?” I know that quite a few people, particularly men, tend to be suckers for that kind of shit, and I’ve seen guys go all googly eyed and jelly kneed when it’s used on them. I guess it’s meant to produce an instinct to protect and nurture, but it just makes me want to punch them in the face. I haven’t as yet punched anyone in the face for it; normally I’ll just agree to do the favour on the condition that they never speak to me like that again.

To me the puerile phrase "sleeps until..." also represents the apparent dumbing down of society as a whole. It’s something that parents say to very young children who maybe don’t quite understand the passage of time yet; a child may not fully comprehend minutes, hours, days, and weeks, but it sure as hell knows what sleep is. Eat, shit, and sleep are an instinctive part of every animal on the planet. So I can understand telling an excited child they’ve got six more sleeps until they go to Disneyland to be scared shitless by an eight foot tall mouse with a penchant for nipple high red shorts. It’s something we’re meant to grow out of though. Our language is supposed to become more complex as our cognitive development advances. Surely as adults we can find ways to express our excitement for an upcoming event without resorting to such childish measures.

There are even apps for smart phones, dozens of them that will tell you how many “sleeps” there are to any event you care to programme in. There are more than ten of them dedicated purely to telling you the amount of “sleeps” you have until Christmas. Most of these apps are free, but a couple actually cost money. One of these, simply titled "Sleeps to Christmas" (Obviously you don't want to be too esoteric for your core customer base), has a description on its info page that starts as follows:

"Excited about Christmas?

We are! We love to keep track of exactly how long it is until Christmas day.

That’s why we created Sleeps To Christmas!”

This particular app has over five hundred reviews, meaning that more than five hundred people have handed over 69p to own an app that tells them “exactly” when Christmas is. What kind of people would need this app? If today is the 18^th November I can tell, using my quite average powers of deduction, that Christmas day is “exactly” 37 days away, regardless of how many sleeps I have. The key to achieving this unremarkable feat is to remember that Christmas day is, and has been for just over sixteen centuries, always on the 25^th of December. And if, as is quite often the case, I don't know what day I'm actually in, I can take a quick look at a calendar. The things have been around in one form or another, letting people know just how many “sleeps until”, for several millennia.

There’s also the issue of what actually constitutes a "sleep". I'm partial, if unrestricted by work or other responsibilities, to a bit of a nap late of an afternoon. When I'm on holiday particularly, having got up reasonably early so as to make the most of any breakfast included in the price of a hotel, I'll spend the best part of the day doing my thing; exploring, sightseeing, or interacting with the locals to see what interesting situations I can get myself into. Then I’ll go back to the hotel for a two or three hour sleep before heading out to find somewhere to have dinner. And I do mean sleep. This is no half hearted nap or snooze. I’m not just noncommittally resting my eyes. I’m talking about a full blown, deep and comfortable sleep. Telling people I’ll be on holiday for twenty-eight sleeps may sound impressive but it’s still only fourteen days. And it’s not just me; many people take a nap during the day, from young children to OAPs. Does Christmas come quicker for these people due to their increased sleep schedule? Do insomniacs have to celebrate events long after everyone else once they’ve caught up on the specified amount of sleeps? It seems a bit cruel really, and telling someone who suffers from insomnia that there are only three sleeps until Festival of Sleep Day would quite frankly just be rubbing their noses in it. (Festival of Sleep Day is an actual holiday, taking place every year on the 3^rd of January. Look it up).

As a method of time measurement “sleeps” is wildly inaccurate. Okay, I know it’s not meant to be taken literally and is just a replacement for “days”, but then why not just say days? Other words are get pointlessly shortened like "lol" "OMG" or "amaze", so why decide to use a longer word in place of days? Just to get sidetracked slightly, what the fuck is "amaze"? Where did that come from? When did we start lobbing off the end of words? What exactly are we meant to get from missing out a syllable or two? Whenever I hear someone say "amaze" I just want to scream at them “No, that's not amaze. A complex series of pathways with dead end branches designed to disorientated and confuse, THAT'S a maze. The word I think you are looking for is amazING!” while banging their head against a wall on every syllable. While I’m on the subject: “totes”, “deets”, "delish" and “redic” can all fuck the fuck off too.

I need to lie down. I’m off for a sleep.

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.

I Swear It’s Just A Word.

Cold caller: “When does your current mobile contract end?”

Me: “I ain’t got a fucking clue mate.”

Cold caller: “There’s no need to swear sir.”

Me: “There’s no need to be a cunt either, but you’re giving it a good go...”

Cold caller hangs up, apparently no longer anxious to get me on the 3 network.

The above conversation actually happened, and what’s more I’ve had hundreds of similar conversations over the years, either on the phone, over t’internet, or face to offended face. Admittedly the above example is a bit extreme, and is a level of offensiveness that I normally, but by no means exclusively, reserve for the likes of cold callers and religion pushers.  As you have probably already surmised, I’m a swearer. I have no problem with swear words at all; in fact I quite like them. I like their expressive quality, I like the way that, as someone who often talks complete bollocks, they give me an extra bit of time to come up with something else to say, or try and remember a word that has chosen at that time to temporarily slip my mind. I particularly like the fact that some people get offended by swear words, and I have to admit that I take a perverse pleasure in offending those people, upping my swear quota whenever I’m around them. Yes I know this is rather malevolent, but I believe if someone is going to be offended by what is essentially just a sound then the fucking idiots are practically begging to be offended.

Language itself is an abstract creation, it’s completely made up, and words have no real meaning at all; only the meaning, or meanings that we attach to them, which will be different depending on your geographical location: in the US a fanny fart has no sexual context, and Australians would find it odd to wedge a thong between their arse cheeks. And it’s the same with swear words. I once worked with an Australian for whom everyone was a cunt. “That cunt’s my best friend.” “Are you cunts coming for a drink after work?” “He’s the funniest cunt I know”. For him the word cunt just meant “guy”, there was no malice or offence meant, and yes there were one or two people that didn’t like his use of the word and had a very uncomfortable time around him, but most just accepted it and got on with their lives, and I have to say, I quite liked the cunt.

Before anyone can take offence at a word they have to be taught that it’s offensive:

“So Olaf, today we are going to learn the word ‘shit’.”

“Shit? What does it mean sir?”

“In its strictest sense it means defecate, or to evacuate one’s bowels Olaf.”

“Okay sir I think I’ve got it; I shit in the toilet?”

“That’s it Olaf. But you can’t actually use the word ‘shit’ because it’s offensive and people will get upset. You can use the word ‘poo’ which means exactly the same thing but people don’t find it offensive.”

“But why is ‘shit’ offensive and not ‘poo’ if they mean exactly the same sir?”

“Er... Lesson over Olaf... Now fuck off.”

I’ve lived with the English language all 37 years of my life, and even I’m confused as to why some words are considered offensive when another word, which has exactly the same meaning, is perfectly acceptable; you can say ‘poo’ on the radio but you can’t say ‘shit’. I find myself getting increasingly frustrated when having a conversation with people who substitute or reverse swear words; “That’s bullcrap man and you know it, I don’t know what the kuff you’re trying to achieve but it’s all a pile of shizzle!”. And then there are the whisperers, the people who will use a swear word, but only very, very quietly. They’ll be happily talking away at a normal, audible volume, and then suddenly go into a whisper for one little syllable before returning to the previous volume to carry on the sentence as if nothing had happened; “...and it was at this point that I realised the shit was really going to hit the fan, so I left the fuckers to it.”

It gets even weirder when it comes to the written word. I know people who will happily say the word ‘fuck’ but when it comes to writing it the best they can manage is ‘f*ck’. What the fuck does f*ck mean? It’s unpronounceable, but my phone is full of text messages with such as f*ck, sh*t, c*nt, and w*nk in them. Worse still, there are people who don’t just stop at one asterisk; they just keep piling them on until the original word they were trying to convey is completely lost behind a wall of little non twinkling stars. There’s probably a mathematical formula which shows the amount of letters in a swear word substituted with asterisks being equal to the writer’s level of being a complete fucking twat.

Then there are people who claim that they just don’t like the sound of a word, and that’s the only reason they take offence, ‘cunt’ being the main victim of this kind of sound prejudice. I have to admit that this is a subject I’ve heard the comedian Richard Herring comment on, and he has a very valid point: These people who harbour a dislike for the word ‘cunt’ because of its sound never seem to carry that dislike over into other words that contain the ‘cunt’ sound, such as country or constable. And I never tire of getting such people flustered if, in the course of an innocent conversation, they happen to say “you can’t”, I will always reply with “What did you call me?” Their indignation of being accused of saying a swear word is, to me at least, of great amusement.

Language, in all its guises, is a wonderful invention, without it the human race would never have achieved the intellectual and technical level we are so proud of. So I suggest the next time you feel yourself getting offended or embarrassed about a swear word, just accept the sound as it is and make it mean something else in your head. That’s the beauty of abstract ideas.

In the end it turns out that swearing may not be big, but it most certainly is clever.