And Our Survey Said...

Every now and again I receive an email in my inbox from Ciao, asking if I’d like to earn £1.04 by taking part in a new and interesting survey on novelty socks. These surveys are rarely new and almost never interesting, but I persevere with them in the belief that completing enough will one day turn me into a multi-millionaire. I can almost hear the banter at society parties:

“You see him, over there? That’s Matt Cookson, he’s in surveys.”
“Really? What sort?”
“Themed footwear, mostly. But I hear he dabbles in confectionary and bathroom products.”
“Sounds like quite a guy. Fancy snorting some caviar?”

My current balance stands at around the £9.42 mark. This rather meagre performance is due largely to the qualifying questions one has to go through before being allowed to take part. I have learnt by now never to mention my journalistic endeavours (they really hate journalists) and marketing is well out too.

Having traversed these early stumbling blocks, you are then asked a series of demographics to make sure you fit their market. Stuff like ‘how many illegitimate children have you bastardised’ and ‘have you ever had sex with a squirrel’. Having finally made it through these, you’re home and dry. Or so you would have thought. The other day I spent ten minutes clicking on pictures of Polos, during which time the status bar reached the 60% complete mark, when I suddenly received a message saying "Sorry, but you are not suitable for this survey. Goodbye.”

Not fucking suitable? Know too much about Polos do I? Not good enough to suck your mint with a hole, huh? I quickly scribed an email to Ciao demanding my £1.04 and telling them I didn’t like being ripped off. They simply wrote back telling me that 60% of the questions were assessing my suitability to take part in the survey. Further investigation revealed that I would have only been suitable had I been a plate-spinner from Leeds called Nigel. I mean, I know they need to target a specific audience, but this is ridiculous.

Anyway, I’m going to have to let it rest there – a 54p survey on garden gnomes has just dropped into my inbox. High society here I come!

Technorati Tags: survey, ciao, email

I Blame Television

Having recently discovered the usefulness of Technorati tags, I'm surprised to see the number of Bloggers tagging their posts with the word 'Blog'. For me, that shows a real lack of imagination. Given that each of us has a lexicon of around 25,000 words, why use the most non-specific and widely used term available when trying to distinguish your post from others? Oh, never mind.

Technorati Tags: blog

End of the Great British Night Out

I’m going to cover some fairly sensitive ground here, so I just want to make a couple of things very clear.

1. Rape is a despicable crime and while I can’t begin to imagine how horrifying the ordeal is for the victim, I can understand why it’s often so difficult for them to come forward and see the case go to trial.
2. The percentage of rape cases that lead to convictions is staggeringly low and while some of these may be false claims, there are a lot of men getting away with it. Something needs to be done to help the genuine cases reach a satisfactory verdict.

However.

The Government’s proposal yesterday that any woman too drunk to give consent is in fact being raped makes me very worried. Many of my early sexual experiences were drunken fumblings after a heavy night out. More often than not, the young lady and I regretted our actions the following morning, but I can tell you - we were both well into it the night before. Should this law come into place, it is virtually a license for a woman to go to the police and report a rape if she laments her actions of the previous evening. It means that the guys who go to clubs and bars need to give every girl a wide berth if they’ve had so much as a Bacardi Breezer - even if they’re coming on like a steam engine - for fear of criminal action the following day. And what if the guy’s steaming drunk? It works both ways, you know. At university, I was literally dragged out of a club by two Swedish girls (no, I’m not making this up) who wanted to take me off and do depraved things to me. I was smashed, and it took three of my mates to separate me from said vixens and take me back home to bed. I haven’t spoken to the bastards since. But seriously – it’s very dangerous ground. And I know I’m going to make some enemies here – but surely the girl in question has a duty to remain sober enough to be in control of her own actions? I’m not talking about cases with Rohypnol or shit like that, I’m talking about good old-fashioned “let’s get bladdered” nights out with the girls.

I fully appreciate that I’m coming at this from a bloke’s point of view, but we have a problem with alcohol in this country, and suddenly sending all the guys who’ve had a fumble into the slammer is not the way to solve it. Nor is it the way to convict the increasing number of men who are getting away with violent rape. I’m afraid it’s back to the drawing board.

Technorati Tags: rape, alcohol, crime

Manners, Timothy

We, the British, are in general a very polite race. Last week I was running to catch a train and collided with a woman wearing a rucksack, bundling her towards the tracks and an almost certain death featuring lots of electricity (and shit, I expect). As she steadied herself on the station edge, she turned round and cheerfully said “Sorry!” then went about her business as if nothing had happened. There aren’t many places where I could have got away with this. In America, they would have probably ‘sued my ass’. In Iran they would have cut off my arms and legs. In Reading, they actually apologised for the inconvenience of almost ending their life.

This phenomenon isn’t restricted to the well-to-do parts of the UK – you could be living in Bastard Street, Basterton, Basts. and you’ll still find an orderly queue at the bus shelter. The bus shelter will of course be smashed up like Leslie Ash on a Friday night, but no matter how immoral or badly-behaved the British can be, we’re always courteous at the same time. I was mugged recently and the offender told me to ‘take care’ as he ran off with my money. I’ve seen a car on bricks with a note tucked under the wipers recommending a breakdown firm. It’s this kind of thoughtfulness that really takes the edge off a traumatic ordeal.

Go elsewhere in Europe and this kind of consideration quickly evaporates. In Spain, I waited patiently in a queue at a bus stop, only to be elbowed in the ribs by the old lady behind me when it finally arrived. In France, the owner of the hotel I stayed in was so indifferent that I could have been on fire and he wouldn't have raised an eyebrow.

"The shower doesn't work."
He shrugs.
"There's a leopard in the communal toilet."
He farts.
"I've left a dead hooker under the bed."
He shrugs and farts.

This lack of grace obviously rubs off on us Brits when we hit the Continent, as we turn into a rowdy and abrasive bunch, earning us a reputation as the louts of Europe. So poor is the perception of the British, that I generally let Marilisa do all the talking when we're abroad, letting the natives believe that we are, in fact, Italian. This might seem like a bit of a cop out, but when the man next to me is throwing beer cans at the locals and telling them to fuck off, it seems like good compromise. At least I know that when foreigners come to our country, the Brits will have remembered their manners and our visitors will be told to fuck off with a smile and a wave.

Technorati Tags: Britain, British, tourist

Virtual Genius

Porn studio Digital Playground has just announced that it's registered "Virtual Sex" as a trademark. Now why didn't I think of that?

"Sorry Mr Jackson, if you want to stick your penis in a plug socket from now on, you're going to have to buy a license. Trademarked, you see. And if I think I know where you're going to put that joystick, well, that's going to cost you too. Yes, I take Mastercard."

There's money to be made there.

Technorati Tags: virtual sex, Digital Playground, trademark

Fuelling The War

The only 9/11 conspiracist to stand trial, Zacarias Moussaoui, yesterday went against all his defence team's wishes and took the stand. Having already pleaded guilty last year, he is now doing his utmost to antagonise the American court by claiming he let the attacks happen.

Does no one realise why he's doing this? Has no one considered that he actually wants to face the death penalty in order to martyr himself? Remember - this is a man who was willing to fly a plane into the Whitehouse not long ago; were it not for his arrest, he would already be dead. It amazes me that there are still people who think he should face the death penalty - if Moussaoui goes to the gas chamber it will be a victory for him over America and its justice system.

The worst punishment they could bestow upon this freak is life without parole; hopefully they will see this before he becomes another martyr and another example for extremist clerics to use in their war against the West.

(Sorry - I know this is a bit heavy, but come on people! A bit of common sense please...)

Technorati Tags: Moussaoui, 9/11, death penalty

Minding The Gap

A couple of years back I had a filling put in. It must have been a damn good filling; I say this because the tooth in which it was residing has just disintegrated, yet the filling is standing firm. It now looks a bit like one of those odd rock formations you see at the end of cliffs, prompting parents to say things to their kids like “Ooh, isn’t that fascinating Hugo. Why don’t you take a picture so you can take it home and show it to your teacher?” Because he’ll look like a pompous brown-nosed twat and all the other kids will beat him up, that’s why.

The perishing of my tooth means a very bad thing: a visit to the dentist is required. Possibly the most traumatic event of my formative years took place in a dentist’s chair and involved a bad tooth, a pair of pliers and a badly administered anaesthetic. I supposed he thought my screams of anguish were bogus and nothing to do with the fact he had numbed the wrong part of my face. To make matters intensely worse, one of the roots snapped when the tooth came out, meaning a further ten minutes of digging and grappling before he was done.

I’m not in any hurry to relive the most painful thing that’s ever happened to me, but my rock formation needs taking care of somehow. I’m currently brushing around it with all the delicacy of a man attempting to remove a testicle from a hastily fastened zip. Sooner or later I’m going to knock it out and then I’ll just be left with a nerve-ending crying “Fire me up boys! It’s pain-makin’ time!” And then I guess I’ll be left with little choice.

Technorati Tags: tooth, dentist, pain

Interview Technique

In general, I'm a pretty relaxed kinda guy. When gigantic cyborg ants eventually decide to invade earth and declare themselves our new insect masters, I'll be the one saying "Hey, this isn't so bad! Shifting leaves all day keeps us fit! And have you seen the legs on that Queen? Hubba hubba!"

However, there is something about going for an interview that overcomes my inclination to 'chill with the still' and turns me into a blubbering, twitching wreck. I'll be fine on the way there - calm, confident, all those things your mother tells you to be, but the instant I get inside the building I begin to go to pieces. My hands start to clam up and my legs begin to twitch. By the time the interviewer asks me in, I'm so concerned about my appearance that I've forgotten where I am.

"Good Morning, Mr Cookson."
" Ah, good morning. Two sausage rolls and a pound of ham please."
"This isn't a butcher, Mr Cookson."
"Oh, I'm so sorry, how embarrassing! I'll just take this box of luxury chocolates."
"Please put down the telephone, Mr. Cookson."

Things don't get any better once the interview begins. I'll start to answer a question, but half way through, I'll notice a mole on the interviewer's forehead and suddenly I'll be able to think about nothing else. My mouth will become entirely detached from my brain; the words keep coming out but I can no longer hear them - all I can think about is mole. Suddenly I'll snap back into reality, and the interviewer will be looking at me like I've lost the plot.

"Well, Mr Cookson, your views on the extermination of insectivorous ground-dwelling mammals are certainly interesting, if a little extreme. But what does that have to do with customer satisfaction?"

One hour later, and I will have either been removed from the premises or arrested. This obviously isn't an ideal set of circumstances when you're in need of employment. One might have thought I'd get better at this as I got older - in fact, the opposite seems to be the case. I only hope I don't have to go for an interview when I'm in my 60s - I'll have barely got through the door before calling the receptionist a crack whore and telling the security guard his mother's an astronaut. Which I guess makes me pretty well suited for the customer service industry.

Technorati Tags: job, interview, mole

Soul Searching

Somebody Googled the word 'anorexic' yesterday and ended up at my last post. This got me very worried, thinking "What if this person was looking for genuine help? What if they thought, by visiting my site, they would receive some kind of counselling or a cure for their serious yet largely overlooked condition?" But then I thought bollocks to it - not my problem.

You see, the internet is full of all kinds of pitfalls just like this. Not long ago, I searched for some 'beach wallpaper' for Marilisa's desktop and ended up with a woman, nowhere near a beach, doing something that was definitely not wallpapering. Since I first used the internet 10 years ago, things have got a whole lot better, but you've still got a pretty good chance of finding something wholly inappropriate - whatever you search for.

An interesting game to play (if you have no friends or life) is to enter seemingly innocent words into Google Image Search and see what kind of depravity you come up with. Entering the word 'horsey' produced this. I will not be held responsible when you have nightmares.

Technorati Tags: anorexic, google, horse

Let It All Hang Out

During my teens I used to be insecure about my body. This was largely due to my lack of shoulders - my neck just kind of descended directly into my hips. With no discernable shoulder joints to keep them in place, my arms flapped about in the wind like big jelly windmills. Add to this my anorexic appearance and a hair cut that was something of a bouffant/mop hybrid and you had one peculiar looking chap.

I'm happy to say things are different today - I have evolved shoulders and several years of alcohol abuse have given me a healthy layer of podge. The under-lying factor is that I'm no longer bothered about my appearance. That doesn't mean that I don't care (I'm still going to the gym in a vain attempt to develop a washboard stomach), but I'm no longer concerned about other people's opinions.

Teenagers go through so much anxiety over their looks and much of this carries over into their twenties, thanks to women's fashion mags pushing diet programmes and displaying images of malnourished models attempting to traverse catwalks without their legs snapping. Worst of the lot is heat magazine, criticising celebrities if they're too fat, then criticising them if they're too thin. This must play havoc with teenage girls' minds. "So if I look like her, I'm a whale, but if I look like her I'm a broomstick? Fuck this, I'm off to buy some sleeping pills!"

I'd like to tell everyone that their appearance doesn't really matter. If they're a little overweight, it's not really the end of the world. Everyone should just chill out a little, enjoy their food and stop worrying so much about what everyone else thinks. Apart from the woman in that picture - she's as big as a fucking house.

Technorati Tags: fat, diet, gym

Old Timers with Time on their Hands

If you’ve ever been kept waiting in your dressing gown for several hours, while a plumber ums and ahs over a broken washer that should have cost 10 pence to replace, then please spare a thought for the 12 elderly people who have been stuck in their rooms since Christmas Day because they’re waiting for their lift to be fixed. The residents of Clashfarquhar House, in Stonehaven, Aberdeenshire, are awaiting a replacement lift gearbox which is apparently being manufactured in Italy. Personally, I’d be more worried about the residents who haven’t been able to find their way home after a day out, because they can’t pronounce the name. Especially if they have false teeth.

Taxi driver: Where to, madam?

Resident: Clashfarquhar.

Taxi driver: Ok, take the money! But there’s really no need for that language, you foul-mouthed fossil!

Anyway back to the point – the gearbox should be arriving on April 10th, but that’s still over three months for the job to be done. Even in my book, that ranks as pretty tardy. The Italians have a reputation as being a laid-back bunch, but having lived with one for the past two years, I can tell you this isn’t true. Come Boxing Day, she would have been on the phone exclaiming that the “fucking lift” should be “running like Linford Christie with the shits” in her most dulcet of tones. So this begs the question – why is the lift taking so long to fix? I have several theories:

1. With all the oxygen at ground level, the octogenarians become capable of free thought and start to notice that the food is made of stickle bricks, so the staff are keeping them aloft for as long as possible
2. The staff have turned the ground floor into a Robot Wars arena, and have fitted the lift gearbox with some false teeth, therefore creating the robotic bringer of death: Pensionbot
3. The lift shaft has been turned into an indoor bungee arena
4. The lift shaft has been turned into a giant Pez dispenser
5. The relatives of the elderly residents could never be bothered to visit anyway and now they have an excuse.

In any case, being stuck in bed for three months while somebody brings you your food and wipes your arse sounds like my idea of heaven. I might see if I can get a room there (If I can find the place, of course).

Technorati Tags: Clashfarquhar, lift, pensioner

The Call Centre Quandary

If this was a little too cryptic, the news is that Vodafone are outsourcing my department as of the end of April, so I’m soon to be joining the esteemed ranks of the occupationally-challenged. Being a helpdesk, one might have assumed that we would be outsourced to India. This is not the case. It would seem that after years and years of UK companies shipping their call centres out to the Indian sub-continent, the workforce are beginning to get wise and are realising that they’re entitled to things like “annual leave” and “money”. For this reason, Vodafone has decided to outsource us to the least socially accomplished place on the planet – Portsmouth.

While it may seem unlikely, the people of Portsmouth will eventually learn about benefits and entitlements and then large corporates like Vodafone are going to be stuck. Where next? Whispers are that they’re trialling a call centre with one of the head-hunting tribes in New Guinea. Callers to the helpdesk have yet to notice any difference (being greeted with muffled screams and grunts), and the only employee who took a sick day was boiled up in a big pot for dinner. This seems to be working well at the moment – but I’m warning you now, it won’t be long before the workforce are demanding more shrunken heads and a pension way before they’re sacrificed...

Technorati Tags: Vodafone, call centre, India

No Friends Please, We're British

So I've been away for a bit. I picked up last week's Sunday Times today to see what's been going on in the real world, and was delighted to see that our country is yet again trying to piss off the international community by developing a new nuclear weapon. Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty? No, that's just for dangerous terrorists like Iran! We're far more responsible, so we're going to test our new toy in a lab instead of a popular tourist hot spot. This is the part I like:

“We’ve got to build something that we can never test and be absolutely confident that, when we use it, it will work.”

Hang on, did you just say when we use it? What happened to if? There's optimism for you. Guess I'll just go and buy me a radiation suit for when the mushroom cloud comes floating my way.

If that's not bad enough, we've withdrawn all UK personnel from a Palestinian jail, sparking off a new wave of fighting in Jericho. Naturally the blame has fallen squarely at the door of the British. I think I know what's going on here. The UK Government have been taken quite aback by all the hate being directed at the Danish following the publication of the Mohammed cartoons, and they're getting jealous over all the attention.

Actual transcript of a phone conversation between Tony Blair and the Danish PM, Anders Fogh:

TB: Oi Anders, what's all the jazz with these cartoons you bastard?
AF: Tony, it's three o'clock in the morning.
TB: The world is supposed to hate us! US! I'm really going to rattle some cages now!
AF: Goodnight Tony.
TB: You'll never be more hated that me! Nevaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!
AF: *click*

Well, you're going the right way about it Tone. Now, let's do something really useful and think about how we can we piss off the French...

Thai Joyride

Thailand: Land of Smiles. I’ll tell you why they’re all smiling – it’s because they're about to rip you off, the bastards. The man on the street (“Sorry sir, big demonstration today, so Grand Parace crosed. You come buy suit instead”), the taxi drivers (“Sorry sir, big demonstration today, so I take you to station via Peru”), and the restaurant workers (“Sorry sir, big demonstration today, so I add 16 iced teas to your bill”).

Admittedly, when the average person in Thailand earns less in a year than the average westerner does in a month, I don’t blame them for trying. I just wish they would be a bit more honest about it. The taxi driver who took me on a wild goose chase for half an hour only got an extra 50p out of me, but the time I arrived at my destination I was fuming. I would have much preferred it if he’d just said “Rook Guv, you pay me extra 30 baht now or I take you on tour of Thairand.”

When I went to Ibiza a couple of years ago, I knew I was being fleeced (I mean honestly – fifty quid to get into a club? Does the music help you get laid or something? Oh… yeah.). But being short-changed for virtually every transaction in Bangkok just gets really tiring and makes you regard everyone with an element of distrust. If anyone talks to you, it’s likely that they’re after your money and if anyone shakes your hand, well, they probably just lent in bird shit.

Of course, there is the possibility that they saw me coming a mile off – pasty white skin and no concept of pronunciation whatsoever (I actually directed one tuk tuk driver to an island in the south of the country instead of my hotel), so maybe I’d have been better off braiding my hair they rolling around in shit to look like the more experienced travellers.

Thought of the day: how come you never see a fat Thai when they all eat phat thai? Answers on a postcard please.

The Bonfire of the Profanities

I remember the first time I ever heard a swearword. I was in the cloakroom at Ascot Heath Infant School and a fellow pupil called Charles Littleworth said “Dogshit!” for absolutely no reason whatsoever. I had no idea what the word meant, but is sounded brilliant, so I immediately went home and called my sister a ‘shit pig’, which resulted in me being slapped by my mother and sent to bed without any tea.

It must be a dreadful moment for parents when that happens. Your angelic, innocent offspring, in whose mouth butter wouldn’t melt, suddenly comes home one day and calls you a piss-stained shit-chuffing squirrel fister. But what can you do about it? Fuck all. Swearing has become so commonplace these days that it has very little meaning. Words that used to bring gasps of outrage barely raise an eyebrow and for some clans, the f-word acts more like a punctuation mark. Muthafucka. I find this slightly irritating because it’s very difficult to express anger anymore without raising your voice. I long for the days when you could say “I’m a bit bloody annoyed about this!” and all the women within 10 feet would pass out.

I did meet an exception to this the other day. I was at my parents house having a perfectly civilised dinner, when my mother used the word “bollocks”, causing me to inhale a roast potato. I was so shocked that I’ve forgotten the context it was in, but it did make me realise that there is one last taboo in the world of blue language – hearing your parents swear. And as for your grandmother, well, that’s simply unthinkable. I realise this isn’t the case for everyone, but I was brought up in a family where swearing was strictly forbidden, so to hear such a word coming from my mother was quite unexpected. It pleased me that I can still be shocked by bad language, otherwise what's it there for? As Mark Twain said: "in certain circumstances, profanity provides a relief denied even to prayer." Lets try and keep it that way.

Education Secretary in Face Transplant Shocker

I have a sneaky suspicion that Ruth Kelly isn't telling us something.