spiffingwheeze

Clearing out my phone.
I find the list of stuff in my dad’s flat once he had gone… A life’s work…

walker
2 dab radios
1 single bed
1 wardrobe
1 chest of drawers
1 laundry basket
1 clothes horse
1 towel rack
1 under sink storage
Clothes & shoes
Towels& bedding
1 vacuum cleaner
1 African paddle spear
1 sofa, 2 seat
1 armchair
1 nest of tables
1 dining table, 2 chairs
1 microwave
1 toaster
1 telephone
TV, Stand, VCR and DVD player
2 walking sticks
1 bookshelf, assorted books
Assorted DVDs and video tapes.
Various ornaments
Several pictures in frames
Photos
Various cleaning products
Paperwork

Missing from this list:
3 children. 3 grandchildren.
Every experience he ever had.

There’s more shit in my social media feeds than actual updates.
So and so’s real age was guessed by some random data harvesting app to be… ha! Younger than their real age! Ooh! Publish so all your window licking FB friends can fall into the same trap. What type of blah are you? Why not take our quiz? Hmm. OK but first, can I curl one out on your living room carpet? Fair swap?
Or just make your own up, and paste them back to pollute everyone’s newsfeed.
Hmm what Star Wars character am I you asked…?

Now get out...

As Milton Keynes, amongst other cities,  begins trials of driverless cars, you can only wonder where this one is going next.

Take a seat...he's driving

Apparently in these trials,  some of these ‘cars’ will actually be running on the pavement. Good eh?
Why not try the same thing yourself. Drive down the pavement steering with your knees, whilst reading a newspaper.  Passers by will hardly believe the vision of the shining future that you portray. Well, those that don’t get mowed down anyway.
You see, I’m not sure this isn’t just unnecessary technology solving problems the wrong way.
If people want to get somewhere without driving,  then how about investing in loads more trains, buses, and even subsidised taxis. That don’t cost a fucking fortune to use. It would do the same thing.  Now. Without supercomputers, and laser guidance,  and myriad hilarious accidents in the name of progress.
Will these driverless cars fix the broken roads?  No.
So you can sit in the comfort of a driverless pod… on a shafted road, being slowly repaired by surly men, in a traffic jam. Maybe to help transition, the pods could moan on endlessly in a speak n spell / Stephen Hawkings voice about the traffic. Oh… my…fucking…God…that…cunt…just…cut…me…up…When…will…this…fucking…roundabout…be…finished…

200 boxes of unsealed “absolutely fuck all”

We have 200 pieces of “absolutely fuck all” that have been unsealed and so unfortunately cannot be sold.

If you like and share this posting you will receive “absolutely fuck all”.

Hurry! These 200 pieces of “absolutely fuck all” are only available to the first 10 000 or so people stupid enough to like and share. Or at least until we’ve collected enough likes and shares to sell on to someone else.

Free hammer! If you already have a hammer, such as the one pictured below, then this is now yours, absolutely free!*

Smashy smashy breaky hurty

With the free hammer you can:

Smash up your computer / phone / tablet because you’re obviously too dangerously stupid to use it. How do you even cross the road unaided?

*You must have already paid for this hammer yourself, or have previously borrowed / stolen / inherited  it. Or maybe you magicked it out of thin air in whatever la la land you live in. You get nothing. That is the point after all.

From the people that brought you:

• Fictional supermarket giftcard.
• Fictional branded sunglasses at unrealistic low price.
• Fictional unsealed games console.

Coming soon: Once in a lifetime Nigerian bank transfer out of the blue.

Erm. Not these Frozen eggs…

Good news for human females who want to spend their younger years on attempting to climb the greasy corporate pole (ooer missus) rather than being inconvenienced by biology.
Some of the more out-there forward thinking companies are now offering their female employees the perk of freezing their eggs. Then they can continue working all hours towards their burn-out nervous breakdown. At which point they can then drop straight out, past HR, and collect their frozen eggs, find someone
wants to hook up with them, get preggers, and have children by way of rest and recuperation? Really?

It would probably be easier, cheaper, and more honest for companies to just do what they normally do: Wait for women in the workplace to get pregnant, then try to buck them out of the company in a legalish way as quickly as possible whilst still appearing to do everything they can to be good. Flexible working? Sure. Just fill out this form telling us why the fuck we should do that. (Oh yes they do… some places. I’m sure some of you have seen it.) Why not just offer corporate surrogate mothers, and nannies to raise the little darlings until school-leaving age? That way, you could have children without having to leave work at all!
Back on topic, this just seems sad, freakish, and kinda chilling really. Pun not intended. Whatever…

Still missing the old fool…

Some random depressing thoughts I wrote a couple of months back when my dad was struggling to stay planet side. Unpublished. Unwanted. Unresolved.

There is an order to things that goes a bit like this:

You’re born, you live, you die.
The first bit you can do very little about.
The middle bit you can fill with doing things, working, and buying lots of stuff, most of which you don’t need. Maybe read some books, watch some films, learn a musical instrument, meet someone, have some kids. Go on holiday eh?
The end bit’s the difficult part.
Watching someone who brought you up fade away in a hospital bed is, on occasion, enough to drive you quite insane.
It’s not even like this is the first time I’ve sat and watched it.
Seems like an unwelcome opportunity to be absolutely helpless.
And once they get beyond being responsive, you can couple that with an opportunity to sit in a hospital effectively talking to yourself, not knowing whether it’s really heard, or whether they’d rather you probably shut up.
Then there’s the accompanying chance, whether you really want to or not, of revisiting your own life with this soon to be gone person. And to contemplate whether you’ve hedged your bets right in the afterlife stakes, or whether it’s lights out, as you fear, and that’s all folks.
Seriously. What is it all about eh?
My dad wasn’t a famous artist, sculptor, painter, murderer. He’s not going to be remembered down the ages. No Wikipedia entry he.
Just another one of the great they, in the scheme of things.
I had next to no real understanding of my own grandparents, other than names, and maybe what they did at some stage for a living, and roughly where they’re from. One generation on and you’re a point at the end of a line on someone’s genealogy chart. Name. Time spent idling on the planet. Maybe occupation. Move along.

Is this really just a trip through the scenery on a conveyor belt? And at the end of the ride is a skip, I fear.
Best be taking in some of the scenery I guess. Oh, and I just bought a new watch for myself that I wanted for some time. Because. Well. Why the fuck not.