Anti-American sentiment

The occasional visitor to my blog might be forgiven for thinking that my odd rantettes about American language mean that I’m in some way anti-American. I would like to emphatically state that I am most certainly not!  

For the record:

• I work for an American owned company
• I have nothing against American people
• I’m not against American culture – I listen to American music. I watch American films and sometimes American television programmes. I like an amount of American art.

What I don’t like is American imperialism both political and cultural. It’s their arrogance in thinking that their language, culture and beliefs are über alles. That infuriates me. It’s an arrogance born out of insularity. Unfortunately the impact that American cultural imperialism has over here is amplified by stupid British people, who use Americanisms because they don’t know any better, or worse still because they think that it is somehow fashionable or clever. And, it’s a situation made even worse by what was and still should be the bastion of British culture and language, Auntie Beeb. Sadly the BBC seems to love Americanisms. As a consequence we are doomed!

Stewart Lee to guest edit R4's Today tomorrow

Just a reminder that the clever, astute and very funny comedian Stewart Lee is to guest edit the Today Programme on New Year’s Eve.

The selfish festival

I was amazed to see this link, entitled “How to sell unwanted presents” on Yahoo finance. The article epitomises one of the aspects that has encouraged me to hate Christmas. “Christmas comes but once a year, and when it comes it frequently brings with it a load of tat that you wouldn't be seen dead with. Here's how to off-load it.” That statement sums up the sheer pointless stupidity of it all. Christmas is fuelled by ignorance, greed and ungratefulness. It is not magical it is just a facade. Christmas is a lie!

Mustard or tomato sauce?

In need of a breath of fresh air I wandered out on Boxing Day afternoon. We live close-ish to the Riverside shopping area in Norwich and all was quiet as I walked across Morrison’s empty car park, but I was surprised to see much activity as a bunch of shops on the far side hove into view. I hadn’t realised just how many shops open on Boxing Day. It would seem that even though many people had overspent at Christmas they were still keen to part with hard earned dosh or dosh yet to be earned. There was hustle and bustle in the clothes, electrical, household and hobby shops. People even had need for things at a pound. I was truly amazed. What is wrong with people?

I have only ever seen shopping as a banal chore. How anyone can derive pleasure from it is beyond me. I do have this feeling that the sort of people that see shopping as recreation also watch soaps and reality programmes on the telly, will see celebrities and the monarchy as something to be interested in and be hoodwinked by every fad and fashion that the media dictates; sheep!

I suppose one can dismiss such behaviour as shiny bead syndrome; people are hypnotised by what is put in front of them and fed to them. Whilst not really understanding it by interpreting it like that I can sort of accept it and leave it at that. As I walked by the open shops I noticed that there was a hotdog stand on the footpath, and not only that there were between six and eight people queuing for hotdogs. That perplexed me totally. No doubt after the excesses of the previous day why on earth would anyone what a hotdog whilst out shopping, and why would anyone queue for such a pointless comestible?

Stewart Lee chats to Oliver Cromwell

Stewart Lee chats to Oliver Cromwell about Christmas:

The man who temporarily freed us from the tyranny of monarchy would have been horrified at what Christmas has become. He would no doubt also have been horrified at our stupidity in retaining a monarchy.

"Comedian Stewart Lee, who will be guest editing the Today programme on New Year's Eve, brought puritan Oliver Cromwell back to life to find out whether he is as disproving of modern Christmas shopping as he was when he was Lord Protector."

Keep taking the tablets

On the first of January this year I purchase a Samsung Galaxy Tab, which is I guess a tablet PC. It is much more versatile, in my humble opinion, than the over-hyped bling that is the iPad. It is packed with so many great features, and one in particular that I love is its ability to display eBooks in a number of different formats, thus allowing me to buy books from a number of different sources. I’ve purchased a read quite a few books in this format now, plus I still read yer actual physical books as well. I read the Jon Richardson book that I reviewed here on it. The only criticism that I have of reading books electronically is that I had no real concept of where I was in the book and as a consequence the end can come unexpectedly sometimes. I suspect that you can set it to show your progress but I haven’t bothered to work that one out. To be fair a little bar does appear when the book appears on the screen but this soon fades and if you become engrossed in the reading it is easy to forget. The advantage it has over a Kindle is that it is back-lit so you can read it in whatever lighting conditions.

But enough of the e-reader apps the Galaxy Tab can do a whole host of things. It is very much an over-sized phone so you get a camera, you can text and make phone calls on it, surf the web and much, much more. I do much of the shopping on it. But more than anything else I use it to tweet on. Since owning this piece of kit I have developed a mild addition to Twitter. The operating system is Android which means that there are thousands of apps and you are not tied in to buying stuff via Apple.

I now use the Galaxy Tab as my mobile phone. I don’t actually make or receive many phone calls as such on any phone. I’m sure it’ll come as no surprise when I tell you that I don’t like talking on the phone. Give me text every time! Clearly I would look an even bigger twerp than I already am if I was to hold the Tab to my shell-like so I have invested in a Bluetooth earpiece which it has to be said works really well. Again not wishing to look the part I don’t wear the earpiece all of the time. This approach creates another problem; what to do with the slightly fragile earpiece. The solution was provided by a local ‘head’ shop as below:

Soup rules okay

Etiquette and manners are all very fine but there is only one rule that matters when it comes to soup, and that’s to do with an accompaniment, bread. Bread and soup go together so well. And the bread you choose will vary depending on the type of soup. But there is one crime so heinous that it should never ever be contemplated. That crime is to put butter or margarine on the bread. It is fine to dip your bread in soup, or to mop up the last soup dregs lurking in the bowl with some bread, but you should never ever put any spread on your bread!