Sunday Rant Round-Up

I'm afraid I've been too tied up with writing a new story, working on a new set of page templates for The Sleaze (they'll look pretty much the same, but with better coding, to make them more suitable for a possible switch from static to dynamic pages), fretting over wild traffic fluctuations and trying to lay more laminate floors, to post here for a few days. Having temporarily abandoned the latter (the blade on my jigsaw snapped, I didn't have a spare and it was Sunday and everywhere had closed, so I decided to knock it on the head for a few days), I'm back. Being a Sunday, I thought I'd make like the Sunday papers and have a quick round up of things which have pissed me off over the past few days.

OK, let's start with the head of the Army whingeing on about how soldiers coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan aren't getting the respect from the public they think they should have. Apparently it is demoralising them. He thinks we should have parades in their honour. Jesus Christ! We aren't living in some kind of Nazi/Communist banana republic where the Army keeps the government in power yet, for God's sake! The bottom line is that they aren't fighting in Iraq or Afghanistan at my behest. Why should I fete and honour them? Why should the public legitimise the idea that the key to world peace lies in kicking the shit out of third world countries, destroying their infrastructure and bombing their populations back into the dark ages in the name of freedom?

Right, I'm foaming at the mouth now! What next? Oh yes, there was this local TV report about some bunch of self-appointed 'do gooders' who drive around the countryside looking for 'unnecessary' signs which 'blight' the appearance of villages and rural lanes. My blood started to boil when he was pictured in a local village bemoaning one of those chevron signs used to alert drivers to tight bends which had been placed in front of a war memorial (which was situated on a bend). He also got upset about the fact that there was a bus stop sign there (presumably to alert people to the bus stop situated there). He was later shown describing one of those speed limit signs with a fluorescent background as 'ugly' and 'unnecessary'. Actually, with drivers increasingly flaunting speed limits, I assume that the fluorescent background is there to draw their attention to the fact that there is a speed limit on most roads. This guy and his friends are clearly a bunch of middle class tossers. They want to create some kind of middle class rural idyll and to hell with public safety. Obviously, only 'outsiders' need all those signs in the country, 'locals' (by which they mean people like themselves, affluent blow-ins from urban areas who have helped push property prices in the country so high that real locals can't afford to live there any more), know the dangers. And that's their real agenda - trying to discourage those nasty working class types from venturing out into the country. Twats.

Right, I'm cooking on gas now. Something else I saw on TV that riled me - some wildlife 'expert' trying to tell us that domestic cats are evil and are destroying Britain's wildlife. Again, what a twat. Catching birds and mice is what cats do - they can't help it. They are predatory animals. As for the sweet little birds they kill - good! The more of the little bastards they kill, the better. I'm sick of birds shitting all over my car. In fact, that's all they seem to be - winged shitting machines. Cats don't crap on my car. Birds do. Cats kill birds. Cats are therefore superior. Then there are the mice. Again, the more the cats catch the happier I am. Far from being cute little things, mice are disease-ridden vermin who sneak into your house and piss and crap everywhere. Kill them all!

It's no good, I'm going to explode if I do any more of these! I'm going to wrap it up here and start preparing for next week's high quality posts (and some more laminate floor laying).