Soft Boiled

I’ve never watched Britain’s Got Talent – partly because a show like that tends to prove that Britain absolutely doesn’t and mainly because it just seems to be another star vehicle / cash cow for Simon Cowell. So it was with interest that I read that one of the participants had thrown some eggs at the judges live on last Saturday’s show.

To be honest my first reaction at reading that a woman had thrown her eggs at Simon Cowell was to think “blimey, that’s someone really desperate to have a baby but the alimony would be worth the 3 minutes of discomfort” (that’s the conception not the giving birth). And then all glibness aside I actually felt a pang of regret that I’d missed the glorious spectacle of Simon wiping egg smegma from his forehead onto the waistband of his trousers. It seems the young lady in question (I can’t be arsed to publicise her name) wanted to protest at the “dreadful influence” Simon has had on the music industry.

And much as I’d enjoy jumping onto the “let’s give Cowell a drubbing” bandwagon I have to say “hold your horses” at this point. The influence he’s had on the music industry? I daresay he’s had some. Once. Occasionally. But let’s not build his part any bigger than it has to be. He’s not that powerful. He doesn’t hold the entire music industry in the flat of his hairy palm. Anyone who’s at all serious about music views Cowell and his annual Cowell Bots as a bit of an irritating joke, surely? They rarely have any credibility and rarely last longer than the chocolate your Auntie Doreen bought you for Christmas. His influence is truly negligible. It’s just that, such as it is, it is well publicised. That is the result of 2013 celebrity sick Britain not the result of Simon being a god-like impresario.

And to be honest, if Miss Egg wanted to strike back at those who have ruined the music industry she’d have to take out half the population of the UK, i.e. all those daft buggers that bought the ruddy music in the first place and made Cowell’s crapola so popular.

That’s going to take a lot of eggs, believe me.

On the bright side, someone throwing eggs at Cowell sure beats millions of tasteless teenagers throwing their money at him… And I’m sure somewhere there’s a joke to be made about battery farming and Simon’s cheap celebrity production line that churns out so many rotten eggs each year… I just can’t be bothered to make it.

I just ain’t got the talent, see?

Held To Ransom

I’m feeling a bit emotionally hijacked this morning.

I feel like an old friend has stabbed me in the back. Or worse, slashed the buttons off my best coat with a flash of his blade like the Scarlet Pimpernel putting down some damn Frenchie.

In the bigger scheme of things this is no big deal but it has got my goat: Blogger has changed the layout and functionality of its Dashboard.

Some of you will be shrugging. Some of you may not have noticed any difference. Some of you may like the changes.

I don’t like the changes.

Worse, I can’t click on anything without Blogger informing me that my browser is incompatible with the new Dashboard, some functions will no longer work and I might like to try installing Google Chrome instead.

I don’t want to install Google Chrome.

I’m sure Google Chrome is a lovely browser. I’m sure it would make love to my computer and make it come all night long. But I use Internet Explorer, like Internet Explorer and am familiar with Internet Explorer. And further, I don’t like having unnecessary bits of software installed on my computer chogging up the registry and increasing the potential for foul-ups. Having two browsers installed goes against the grain.

I feel like Blogger – owned by Google, of course – is trying to bully me into using its own software. This is not on.

Persuade me (if you can) by all means. Sell it to me. Bribe me. Make me come all night long.

But don’t bully me. Don’t mug me. Don’t hold me to ransom.

Because that makes me dig my heels in even harder. That makes me flex and exercise my rather muscular stubborn gene.

At the end of the day this whole thing is a cynical exercise in overly ferocious marketing. What annoys me most is that if you check your blogging stats via the Dashboard (if you can get yours to work now, that is) you will see that Internet Explorer is still the most popular browser that the majority of people use when logging into and using Blogger.

And yet Blogger / Google has seen fit to deliberately disregard the lion’s share of its own user demographic and create an interface that doesn’t work properly in Internet Explorer.

If that isn’t a slap in the face I don’t know what is.

So what do I do?

Go against my principals and install Google Chrome? Dump Blogger and switch to Wordpress? *shudder*

Stop Blogging altogether?

(I’m going to ignore all of you who are currently screaming, “yes!”)

No.

I’m going to moan about it on my Blog via Internet Explorer.

Screw you Blogger. You’re not the only one who can rip off coat buttons with a flick of a dandy’s foil.


Addendum:

I couldn't even publish this post via Internet Explorer. The compose and edit functions don't work. So I have had no choice but to install Google Chrome. I now feel like, not only have I had the buttons slashed off my coat, but I have also had my balls cut off and shoved into my mouth.

Fuck you, Blogger.


P.S. My thanks to you that have pointed out that you can revert to the old Dashboard by clicking on the cog icon on the top of the Dashboard. Alas, this icon does not even appear when viewed in Internet Explorer... therefore one has to install Google Chrome just to revert to the old Dashboard and then carry on using Internet Explorer.

Damned sneaky. Damned underhand.

Fuckwits

The anti spending cuts march in London on Saturday has left me feeling rather ambivalent though, I admit, I am leaning more towards the sour.

My own Union was well represented although I myself did not attend the march due to personal reasons. Ironically I joked to a colleague last week that I wasn’t going as, if I wanted to have my ribs smashed by a policeman’s truncheon, I could easily do that in my own hometown on a Saturday night merely by pissing on the windscreen of the police surveillance van (though the chances are they wouldn’t see me).

The legitimate portion of the march – the largest portion – was, I think, a success. A success in that it was well organized, peaceful and had something (if news reports can be believed) of a “carnival atmosphere”. (What? Bearded ladies? Fire eating dwarves?)

Not a success in what it achieved though. Some Government mouthpiece has dismissed the march and has said that no government would change its policies on the strength of a protest march – even one that keenly displays the vastness of public dissent. Really? This from the same Government that crowed with delight when Mubarak stepped down as Egyptian president due to public demand and who have gone to war (let’s call a spade a spade) in Libya to “defend the lives” of those protesting against their current government. Seems, we, the UK people, do not have the same rights or regard in the eyes of our own UK politicians. Our voices in the UK do not count.

Sadly, the side of the story that has claimed the most column inches is the disproportionately small element among the protestors who broke away from the main march to initiate their own agenda on the streets of London. Namely attacking buildings, smashing shop windows, letting loose industrial sized fireworks in crowds containing small children and grinding their stupid little crotches above the porticoes of high profile edifices when they knew the news teams were filming.

Twats. The lot of them.

One overriding image I have in my mind is watching some beleaguered news reporter trying to deliver his piece to camera while some cock in a hoodie danced in the background and waved his V’s in the air whilst shouting some guff about “revolution”.

Oh please. Not that old lame warhorse? I’m all for ideals and the hopeful aspirations of the young but really? Class war? Anarchy? Smash the system? Have people really not moved on from the 80’s, the 70’s, the 60’s ad infinitum? Plainly not. Because yet again here are the same half baked ideas being spouted and held up as justification for a good ruck with the coppers by the same dirty looking dickheads that have plagued every generation since the invention of the dick. The same flimsy political understanding being used as motivation to go on the rampage like giant 2 year olds and smash up some windows and lob a few bricks. British Bulldog anyone?

My first thought wasn’t, ooh that guy is protesting for my rights; he’s standing up for my freedoms. It was: great, there’s a stupid looking cock on my TV, wasting my license money, spouting the same hackneyed political garbage that used to infect the common room at my 6th form and only inspired the crusty looking dope-head in the corner who had joined the Socialist Worker party the year before and thought he was destined to be the next Karl Marx.

Twat. Twat. Twat.

These idiots have merely overturned all the good the legitimate march might have achieved. They’ve undercut the whole thing. Carnival atmosphere? A public grotesquery more like. A bestiary.

What also annoys me most is how blind these fools were in their targets. Some of the banking corporations they hit did not deserve the slander of these oafs. Some of them had actually been prudent and honourable throughout the current economic crisis and looked after their customer’s money. But no. These dunderheads were so high on the sound of their own primitivistic protest they didn’t care. They just wanted to smash and kick and destroy. And oh yes let’s lob a few humungous fireworks at the shoppers passing by and see if we can blind some of the children. Look, Mr Cameron! Look what you have made us do! Hulk smash!

You know what? I grew out of “anarchy” and “class war” about 3 hours after I first heard about it. I may not have been the brightest of teenagers but I could still tell a big steaming pile of shit by its smell.

And I can still tell a fuckwit by the faces he pulls in front of a BBC news camera crew.

And that includes you as well, Cameron.