On holidays, Halifax and having been watching

Despite what my last post may have implied (and it implies it to me too – I swear that whole experience was like getting a second job) I’m actually on holiday at the moment, being in the second week of a two week Summer Holiday Fungasm which I have spent in the way that suits me best – i.e. inside, on the Internet, arguing with a bank. It’s great, although there’s some pretty worrying ill-effects – for example, discovering that Sainsbury’s sell their own brand strawberry Cornetto-alikes in boxes of 6 for £1.25 has done absolutely nothing for my already planetary waist. One more of those fuckers and I swear I’ll end up looking like a cross between Dom Joly and Dr. Robotnik – an apt comparison, considering I’ve spent most of the last week bellowing down a phone and cursing the name of a small furry animal. It’s also not helping that I have the willpower of a depressed cokehead who’s found the magical golden ticket to Willy Wonka’s Freebasetacular Drug Plant in his last bag of cunt dust. I’ve got plenty of food in the house – pasta sauces, soups, pies, Smash, chicken curries, chicken kievs, fresh vegetables (them alone being an alarming development) but thanks to the evil wizardry of online pizza ordering, I’ve still got all of those because I’ve been eating Dominos Pizza’s “Everything But The Cloppers On Their Little Piggy Legs, Oh Fuck Those Went In As Well”-topped Extra Extra Cheese Crust Supreme Conducator Saucesplosions instead. The Robotnik dream gets closer by the day.

I think a lot of it is comfort eating. Halifax pissed me off on some innate level, to the point where I put in a complaint letter asking to be compensated for my time and effort – and I don’t, as a rule, write letters of complaint. Especially not ones asking for money. But they pissed me off, they lost my/my friend’s money, five seperate people gave me two different answers to the same question (60% of them giving the wrong answer, as it happens), they made me go down to their sodding money-circus to get little titbits of information rather than telling me over the phone like every other sane organisation IN THE FUCKING WORLD… so £20 to pay for all the stress and phone calls? I think I deserve that much.

There is an argument that goes “well, if they’re paying you a fiver a month, surely you know something has to be wrong somewhere along the line? You can’t expect First Direct levels of service when they must run at an appalling loss, can you?” I don’t subscribe to that argument, and furthermore think anyone using it is a cunt. I have two reasons why.

First of all, First Direct offer First Direct levels of service while paying out more money than Halifax – they currently give you £100 if you join and switch to them, and another £100 if you leave in the space of six months. £200 in six months, whereas Halifax give out £30 for the same thing. By this argument, First Direct must be at least 6.666 recurring times worse than Halifax, which is a) not true – the couple of times I’ve had to speak to them recently have been a breath of fresh air – and b) quite impossible unless they came round and bit your cock off and made you eat it or something just to make a Faster Payment. There’s also the small matter of trying to multiply something that isn’t a number by a number that infinitely recurses, but that’s outside the scope of this rant.

Secondly, just because something is cheap (or in this case pays good interest) does not mean that it must be actually substandard. It can be lower quality, sure, just not substandard. Say you went and bought some Sainsbury’s Basics chicken stir fry. It’s £2.39 a pack and it’s chicken. It doesn’t claim to be free range or cornfed or, well, anything really, just chicken, and it’s cheap. Simple. I don’t expect it to be as good as the free range corn-fed Freedom Food bollocks (although I’ve never had an issue with it) but I do expect it to be chicken and to be edible. If I got the chicken home and it was rotten, mouldy and not actually chicken, and furthermore somehow punched me in the face, the first person to say that I shouldn’t expect it to be edible because it cost so little would wind up wearing it, mould and all. The same applies here, and also to Alliance and Leicester (whose abysmal customer service is legendary, albeit in much the same as Hitler or Stalin are “legendary”.)

There is, also, the small matter of Halifax being a bank. Exceedingly dull “hurr durr fred da shred herpaderp derp” jokes aside (and trust me, they are dull, I’ve been hearing them for the past 12 months or so on-and-off, and I can only pity the poor bastards who work at Lloyds or RBS/NatWest for the probably neverending stream of horseshit coming their way each day) banks are supposed to keep peoples’ money safe, not accept it and magic it away into a suspense account to be located to a payments clearing team. Which is what happened in the end, mind; they found the money, but not after three phone calls (1 – “payments clearing are closed”; 2 – “payments clearing are busy”; 3 – “oh look they found the money”) and the advisor confirming to me than a full 60% of the people I’d asked a specific question to gave me the wrong answer.

As a super special magic bonus, they’ve only just managed to start dealing with the complaint letter, a full three days after it arrived with them. I’ve called them (again) and am now waiting for a callback, a callback which will most likely never come judging by all the other times I’ve waited for someone to ring me from that bastard place and had them not do so. “We aim to resolve all complaints within 24 hours” my backside.

Aside from that horror, Mr Charlie Brooker has returned to our screens with some kind of panel show type thing You Have Been Watching, officially now only the second programme I’ve bothered my arse to tune into on purpose that wasn’t some kind of lottery draw. And it’s… well. The panel show bits are great, with the unscripted funnies being, well, funny – and they seem mercifully disinclined to bleep f-words and such, which is if nothing else a decent victory for common sense against Channel 4’s compliance department (have you read Channel 4’s compliance guidelines? For every single use of the words cunt, fuck or motherfucker you have to refer up to a commissioning editor. Zeppotron’s staff must have spent a good four hours just listing and then referring up every single naughty word. The mind boggles.)

However, and it truly pains me to say this, Charlie Brooker should not be reading from an autocue. Angus Deayton could get away with reading from an autocue on Have I Got News For You because it wasn’t all that obvious. Brooker can’t. The opening jokes have any funny they once might have contained (and they would be funny under other circumstances) boiled away rapidly by them sounding like news headlines being read by a drunk Peter Sissons. Then, just when you’re settled into the “fuck this is hilarious” ad-lib bits, the autocue comes back with a vengeance and spoils it all. Please, Charlie mate; you don’t need a bloody autocue and you’d probably be better off without it. Sort it out.

UPDATE, FOUR HOURS LATER: Nope, no callback. In fact, no notes on the account about a callback either. Bless. It’s like they want to piss me off.

Always giving you PTSD

The following post may seem a little bit disjointed. It’s disjointed because I have lost my mind, and I feel that it’ll take one more little annoyance before I finally crack, randomly smashing people, animals and objects with hammers and speaking in tongues. The reason being that I have opened an account with Halifax.

I was drunk, alright? Drunk and tempted by having an extra fiver a month for doing fuck all. Actually, no, I wasn’t even drunk, just greedy. And “fuck all” isn’t anywhere close to what you have to do for a fiver a month. I’ve had to jump through more hoops than a circus seal. I get the feeling that once I’ve finished writing this, I’ll receive a phone call from a friendly northern chap asking if I can come into the branch to balance a colourful ball on the end of my nose and make a balloon animal version of Howard. Suffice to say, “Who gives you extra?” is sounding less like a cheerful marketing come-on and more like a deranged bumrapist’s stilted and aggressive attempt at pillow talk.

So I applied online for the Reward account, their new spangly thing that pays you a fiver if you pay a grand in each month. Some people are opening over 9000 of these in order to circulate the same £1000 through all of them and make over 9000 x £5 each month. I’m not one of those people. I don’t have £1000, or the time or inclination to circulate it through millions of accounts. In this respect, I appear to be the only person in Great Britain who is actually just intending to use the Reward account as a current account, with the fiver being a nice side bonus. I don’t really recommend doing the little trick with all the accounts anyway – Halifax may be middlingly competent at best but they aren’t stupid, and will probably start getting a bit more heavy handed once they realise what’s going on.

But anyway, I applied, and was (seemingly) accepted for the account – given a sort code and account number and everything, and told it had been opened. Awesome. Now to wait for the card and everything to come through, and all will be well. Great. So I waited. And waited. And waited.

After three days without hearing a peep, I mosey on down to the branch to ask what the pissing fuck is going on, mainly because telephone banking won’t do anything about anything – apparently the heathen magic of “security questions”, as used by everyone else in the world, won’t do, and a sort code and account number is absolutely necessary. The same sort code and account number I, like an idiot, failed to take down, but was displayed to me – making it even more perplexing when the branch inform me that my application was declined.

See, Halifax like to do everything different from everyone else, in ways that are supposedly good but end up being awful. For instance, displaying account numbers immediately after the  application – great idea, somewhat let down by that not meaning anything and the application subsequently being declined. Or not letting you talk about an account you don’t have the numbers for over the phone.

Pissed off by this, and not one to turn down free fivers (even when I’ve been turned down for them) I hop on the phone to Customer Relations, who give me an address for the underwriting department and tell me to include my roll number (which they give me, for reasons which make no sense at all in light of the security mentioned above), some statements and the reasons why I think I should be accepted.

I wrote them a little letter. I opened up Pages and set a lovely little letter out. I wrote it in my best formal style, the sort of style people use when they tell you not to come back to a place ever again in a letter. The reasons I gave were quite simple: I’m going to use it as my main account, I’ve never missed a payment or anything on anything, never exceeded limits, have a consistent income and don’t want an overdraft. There were a few other reasons I wanted to include but didn’t, as they might be counterproductive, e.g. I’m the only person NOT abusing your generosity, it’s only a bank account for fuck’s sake, your mother got shagged and paid a fiver and the least I ask is the same favour in return etc etc

Letter posted, blah. Sleep, try to not think about northerners, zzzz.

Wait until the evening and call Halifax. They use the same hold music as NTL. This is probably part of why I’m so annoyed. Every time I hear that fucking muzak, horrible memories float through my head – memories of hours on hold waiting for someone with some form of horrific mental disorder to diagnose yet another fault with their sodding broadband service using a methodical, scientific approach which started with “turn it off and on again” and then ended with “fuck knows”. That music instils rage in me. I’d prefer if they played Girls Aloud, because even though Girls Aloud put me into a similar psychotic rage they typically fuck off after three or four minutes, whereas NTL kept going forever and ever and ever. I will find the person who wrote it and kick them in the testicles.

Erm, anyway. Call Halifax, go through security (they’re a bit more willing now I have the roll number, the roll number that they gave me) and ask if the underwriters have done anything. After a minute of lovely lovely NTL hold music (dadadadadada, de de deeeeee doooooooo) I get informed that “they’ve done something to the account, but I can’t tell you what”. Ooh Halifax, you tease, you. You couldn’t just tell me? No. Again, I understand data protection (I live it on a daily basis) but I have the account number, I’ve answered about 12 different questions by this point, a simple “Yes, they’ve done….” is not going to make the world end. They tell me to go into the branch.

Next day, traipse down to the branch again. Halifax branches are colourful. Like circuses. The circus analogy shines through again. I’m beginning to wonder if they want me to supply my own modelling balloons. They tell me that yes, the decision has been reversed, would I like to activate the account by putting £100 into it?

I don’t have £100. I have about £30’s worth of RBS’ money available to me. Another fun Halifax difference: they won’t send out a debit card until you’ve deposited £100 into the account and left it overnight. Sorry, fellas, you’re giving out free fivers – it makes no sense to be coy about debit cards for christ’s sake. I’ll have to borrow some money. The cashier writes down my account number and sort code. I find someone to lend me the money, they transfer it to my HSBC account and I transfer it to Scallyfax. (Yes, I’m so pissed off with this whole situation I’m using stupid names for things now. For balance, from now on RBS are to be called Rapetacular Bum Splitters. Whatever that means.) Call them up (because they haven’t activated my online banking either, the douchebags) and they confirm that my balance comfortably includes the £100. Yay.

I sleep well that night, no longer haunted by the hold music. Soon, I shall have my debit card, and all will be well.

Wake up this morning. Wishing to make sure (and repay the £100) I call up Halifax AGAIN and ask if my debit card has been sent out. The advisor informs me that the account is only showing as “offered” and not actually open. Weird. She also informs me that a transfer isn’t good enough to “activate” the account and get a card sent out – it has to be cash or cheque, despite my specifically enquiring earlier as to whether a transfer is OK and getting the reply “yes”. She won’t do anything else and tells me to go to my branch.

In branch again, waiting patiently in a queue before being served, circus music going round my head. Get to the front and am informed that the balance of the account is nil. No £100. No little £1 test transactions that I’ve transferred there. Nothing. No money. Sod, fucking, all. It hasn’t been returned to the HSBC account, it’s with Halifax somewhere. Cashier writes an email to someone at the call centre asking why I was informed that the £100 was there. That it might well have been does not cross anyone’s mind at this point.

Wanting a quick answer rather than waiting for an email, I call up again when I get home, to be informed that there’s no trace of the £100, there never was and that anyway their payments division is closed for the day. I now have to wait until Monday to see what’s going on, by which point I may well actually strangle someone. Various forum posts suggest that the £100 will magically appear on Monday or Tuesday, posts which I am inclined to believe more than another call centre rep.

The branch staff have been great. Friendly and efficient. Call centre, less so. Friendly, sure, but I’ve had so much conflicting information it’s insane, and again while I understand the need for security over the telephone to deny someone information when they can easily be IDed beyond a reasonable doubt is mental. Added to that, Underwriting must be psychotic considering that all it really took to change their minds regarding my application was a bank statement and a pithy letter. Not that I can really complain about that, but still seems a little disjointed. Left hand, right hand anyone?

One thing is for sure. If, after depositing that £100, I don’t get my card (which is all I really wanted in the first place, the reason for half of this bloody rigamarole) I am going to go completely insane. I have reached breaking point. I’m trying to GIVE THEM MY FUCKING MONEY AND THEY WON’T TAKE IT, and now they’ve actually gone and taken it they’ve lost it into the ether (hopefully temporarily as aforementioned forumers suggest). One more bullshit story, one more setback, and the last anyone will see of me will be the police coming across me in the park, running around naked in a little circle, making Woody Woodpecker noises and kicking pigeons across the place like feathery footballs.

So yeah, I guess my message is, if you can comfortably live without a fiver, go to HSBC or first direct. Or RBS. Really. Or even Lloyds. All of the above managed to more competently set up an account – fuck, even Alliance and Leicester managed to set up my accounts with them quicker and more efficiently, and when you’ve been bested by Alliance and Leicester that should be, if nothing else, a sobering wakeup call.

Who gives you extra? Extra what? Piss in my mouth?

Easy Tiger

Many moons ago, before I spunked my first bonus from Waitrose on a shiny (then) new iMac Core 2 Duo, I had a PC. Unlike most converts/nerds/idiots, I don’t mind Windows and I didn’t then either, notwithstanding the fairly alarming Linux zealot phase I went through when I was at school – a phase which went all out to absolutely prove that being a 14 year old Linux zealot, with a stupid t-shirt purchased from ThinkGeek.com no less, makes you an absolute roaring cuntbag. While bleating twats on Slashdot may consider Windows to be the tool of the devil and Microsoft to be basically the Combine with a better marketing department, I’m more pragmatic, believing that while they and Windows aren’t perfect, they’re alright, and their products do well for most people. Unlike, say, Linux, which I now know (after years of pretending otherwise) sucks as a desktop OS. Sucks shit through a straw, and will do until the people involved with making and promoting it learn that perhaps most desktop users don’t care about the UNIX principles or Free Software or other such abstract bollocks and just want to watch YouTube videos of cats doing amusing things. I gave up on my Linux fanboyism after realising that I would much rather do that than tweak KDE to be somewhere near usable or Gnome to be somewhere near configurable and ALSA to do anything at all.

But I digress.

Windows is OK. Not wonderful, not awful, but good for most peoples’ purposes. Nor do I think Vista is a steaming pile as many people seem to. Again, it’s usable, and after service packs and updates a good OS. Of course public opinion is against it – there was bleating about it from the moment it was announced, bleating which the bleaters circularly pointed to as evidence that their original bleating was justified and correct after all. It’s the same problem the EU has – anyone who’s listened to vocally slags it off, meaning any positive aspects aren’t played up. Hence why UKIP have such a strong showing and Microsoft are working overtime to get Windows 7 out the door.

But I digress. Again.

Onto my main point. I was reminded of my lovely Windows using days, back when my PC made a noise like a vacuum cleaner and made lots of heat and had a case I could poke around in, when I decided after all that Mac OS X Leopard can suck my fucking dick, rather than just plain sucking. Leopard runs like shit compared to Tiger, the OS this thing came with, and I’m not in the slightest bit interested in whether Snow Leopard fixes that or exacerbates it, because I’m sticking with Tiger forever and ever and ever. Tiger is delightfully quick and keeps out of my face, whereas Leopard is slower than a sloth wading through treacle and deems it necessary to put all kinds of flashy shite in my face all the time. The new features it brings are absolutely worthless to me, being as the only apps I ever use are Adium, Safari, iWork and Cuppa, and contrary to what Apple may think, as far as I’m concerned it isn’t entirely necessary for my Dock icons to be balanced on a mirror and my Finder to have Cover Flow. In fact, I’d prefer it if my Finder didn’t have Cover Flow.

(Incidentally, Safari 4 has been released, and it has Cover Flow in it itself. Whereas iTunes’ Cover Flow has a reasonable purpose, and Finder’s has at least one use – that is, porn – I should probably make it clear to any passing Apple developers that SAFARI DOES NOT NEED COVER FLOW BECAUSE IT IS DEDICATED TO VIEWING DOCUMENTS AND SO PUTTING SOMETHING TO VIEW DOCUMENTS IN MY DOCUMENT VIEWER (DAWG) MAKES NO CONTEXTUAL SENSE YOU TURTLENECKED LATTE-QUAFFING FUCKING WANKERS.)

This all reminds me of the Winders days simply because back in the Bad Old Days I used to love Windows 2000. XP was, like Leopard, slow and altogether too flashy. Win2k just started and sat there waiting for you to ask it to do something, and then did it – the operating system equivalent of an obedient dog. While I am, again, not one of the Lintards that believes that the primary role of a computer is to be my bitch, I would wholly rather it just got the fuck out of my face and let me choose what to do with it than try and wow me with shinies and suggest things I might like to do. My install of XP in Boot Camp, such that it is, still does this – it suggests now, every time I start it, that I “cleanup my desktop icons”. My desktop icons do not need cleaning up, Windows – they’re all links to games, which is the only reason I have Boot Camp anyway. If I wanted to delete them I’d do so. Win2k, for its part, doesn’t care how cluttered your desktop is, and long may it stay that way.

That said, the question arises as to why I bought a Mac if I like Windows and don’t like flashy shit. Simple – because (Leopard excepted) Apple’s flashy shit is either useful or actually unobtrusive. Windows’ isn’t. Also because I’m easily led, and think Macs are pretty. That as well.

Various things

As nobody will have noticed, this blog was taken down for a bit. It is now back up, with all of the same whinging, bitching and general bellyaching that my “huge” “fanbase” has come to know and love. Yay.

Ashes to Ashes trundled to a halt (for now) a few days ago, to the sound of me shouting “WHAT THE FUCK” at my television and scratching my head bloody raw. The state of play now (and lest this not be immediately obvious, this next paragraph will contain spoilers) is that Alex Drake has supposedly woken up in 2009, but instead is awake in 2009 in a coma in 1982 in a coma in 2009. Pardon me for not wishing to think too hard about this, after all, this is Ashes to Ashes not Donnie fucking Darko, but really, an ending like that belies a startling lack of imagination.

Also, some of the things that annoyed me over the course of the first series have come back with a vengeance like an improperly cooked curry. Chiefly, Alex Drake herself. While Life On Mars’ Sam Tyler was a bit odd to the people around him, and often appeared a bit strange, Alex appears out and out mental, often approaching random and otherwise anonymous people and belllowing insane theories about what is going in in their faces. Writers – this is not normal behaviour. It is hard to sympathise with a protagonist when they keep doing things that make a reasonable viewer (i.e. me)  think they are not just oddball or kooky, but actually schizophrenic. I wouldn’t even mind so much if this bollocks had consequences, for instance someone running up to her, grabbing her by the throat and asking her quite pointedly what the fuck she’s doing.

Talking of consequences, I know Gene Hunt is supposed to be a maverick, but one episode saw him break into an office, steal a car and then physically assault someone (almost crushing them to death in a car crusher for christ’s sake), all in such a way that he’s both immediately visible, obviously involved and expressly identifiable. This then led to absolutely nothing at all happening to him. Not even an “Oh dear Gene, you really shouldn’t threaten to murder people.” It’s just forgotten about, despite the fact that he’s broken several laws and, if nothing else, certainly been a bit of a dick. The beating up of suspects still features prominently too, which again goes miraculously unnoticed. While I’m not all too familiar with early 1980s policing, one would suspect that a DCI punching a suspect in the face would merit at the very least a light talking to. 

Christ knows exactly what they’re going to do for the next series. Apparently Gene’s now wanted for attempted murder – here’s betting that gets conveniently left by the wayside too. What does the man have to do to get attention? Rob a bank? Blow up a bus? Shoot everyone in the office in cold blood and fuck the corpses? Bonus points if any of those feature in the next series, by the way.

RBS tales

Actually, that post yesterday was written before some funtimes. Just in case you thought I was being overly positive about RBS.

I wanted to pay in some cash. Fine. But my nearest RBS is in the town I work in. My town has a NatWest. In case you don’t know, RBS == NatWest. Same company. So I call RBS.

“Hello, just a quick query, can I pay cash in at a NatWest branch?”
“Yes you can sir.”
“Great, just take my card down yeah?”
“Yes sir.”
“OK, thanks!”

So I trundle down to NatWest, head held high and card (and cheque book) in pocket. NatWest, unlike HSBC have deemed my town as being good enough for a bank to open on Saturday. As have Lloyds TSB, but Lloyds TSB are cunts. This therefore suits me down to the ground.

“Hi, can I pay cash into my RBS account here?”
“No, you need a pre-printed paying-in slip.”
“OK, I’ve got one, will it go in straight away?”
“No, it’ll go in on the third working day.”

Lying bastard jocks.

Upheaval

Yeah, I’m updating this again. With luck, it won’t become too much of a habit. But no, I’m bored, and filled with Starbucks’ Dark Berry Mocha Frappublahblahblah bollocks, which feels wrong for some reason. For two reasons – 1) I gave up caffeine for a while a couple of weeks back, and this is the first time I’ve had Starbucks since (for good reason, because usually Caffe Nero or Costa are better than them by a country mile) and 2) It cost £3, a third of the cost of an entire week’s shopping. This, for some reason, feels like sacrilege now.

See, I used to be a die-hard Waitrose person, probably due to some innate Hyacinth Bucket tendency within myself. Then, spurred on by Martin Lewis’ MoneySavingExpert interthingywotsit, I went on a comparison site and saw how much my shopping would cost if I went over the road to Sainsbury’s and bought their Basics stuff.

It’s probably immensely sad that I was actually laughing out loud with how cheap this was; either that or laughing out loud with how much money I’d been pissing away at Waitrose when there was perfectly good stuff available for about a third of the price over the road. I had antipathy towards Sainos, partly because of the Bucketness, partly because, well, I worked for ‘trose and so had a sort of professional rivalry. The fact that I’m skint and couldn’t give a fuck any more, however, easily beat these two concerns. So now I’m a Sainsbury’s customer, after three or four years of refusing to go into the bloody place. I have Basics everything – my cupboard looks like its been Tango’d there’s so much orange in there. And I’ll be saving about £240 a year. Yes, I’m sad. Yes, I know that everyone else has been doing this for fucking yonks and I sound like the sort of prick that writes in the Independent Saturday supplement about how they were going to Butlins this year for a holiday and it was all so frightfully downmarket and they were worried about how little Joshua would get corrupted by the other more disadvantaged children but it was all good fun really so those proles have it OK really, but I DON’T CARE. Well done, MySupermarket.com. You’ve broken me.

Anyway – for my next post, more swearing and bitching about my lack of a sex life.

Uhhh

Fuck me. How long has this blog gone without an update? And now I’m going to update it. Because I can. Ha ha, ha ha ha. In reality, it’s because I’d like to urge anyone who didn’t actually like the first series of Ashes to Ashes, yet liked Life on Mars, to watch the second series. Because despite it being essentially Eastenders crossed with The Bill crossed with The Secret World of Alex Mack, it’s actually excellent.

When the first series ended, and I was still with my ex, all she said about it was that it was shit and that LoM was better. This was a common theme on the Internet, where mindless criticism of new things is something of a spectator sport (see: every previous post on this blog ever) and also in newspaper TV review columns, where people who are employed by newspapers to write in newspapers slag off a medium that essentially exists in competition with newspapers. And I’m not even sure what I’m implying there.

The point is, AtA S1 (as I’d call it if I was a cunt) was mostly slagged off because it wasn’t a reprise of LoM, and because it was kitsch, as if something about a time traveller going back to the 80s could ever not be kitsch. After thinking about this for a good few minutes, I’ve worked out that the only way Ashes to Ashes could not be kitsch is if instead of becoming a police officer in the 80s, Keeley Hawes actually did something in the miner’s strike riots, far away from all popular culture. In fact, you can imagine her as a horse trampling a miner to death, can’t you? Just picture that for a second. Really though, it’s the 80s for fuck’s sake, aside from synthpop, unemployment and Thatcher (who, by the by, finally pops up on-screen in Ashes to Ashes, just to spoil the fun) what is there?

Consequently, the producers of Ashes to Ashes have gone back the other way, taking a sort-of-sequel to Life on Mars and making it Life On Mars Where Sam Tyler Has Tits And Is A Smartarse And They’re In London. It couldn’t be more blatant if they tried – the references to “Tyler” in the second episode for a start, right down to using the same bloody incidental music – they’ve started playing the Annie/Sam “tender moment” music whenever Gene and Alex are in the same room together now, clearly foreshadowing that they want this programme to be an early contender for the 2009 “Most Obviously Shoehorned Love Interest Bollocks That Everyone Can See Coming From Fucking Miles Away” award. If such a thing happened, considering that it makes no sense whatsoever in the context of the setting or the plot, I think I’ll probably puke blood.

The kitsch, however, is still present. They were playing ABC’s “The Look of Love” in the background of some strippers in the first episode, and once you’ve had ABC it’s pretty much all uphill from there in terms of sheer tackiness. And there’s something about Princess Diana’s head on collision with a pillar mentioned briefly as well, which from early impressions looks like it could lead to a fun subplot based around Mohammed al-Fayed’s lunatic conspiracy theories. Oh, and Richard Littlejohn-lite Lewis Prothero from V For Vendetta is here as well as a corrupt superintendent Mason, seemingly resigned to his fate now as the typecast go-to guy for “sinister fucker”.

It sounds like I’m taking the piss. And I am. But regardless, it’s good. Actually, now as good as its predecessor, probably by virtue of the fact they’re bloody well trying to be it.

Bollocks to it all

20 days since my last post on here. 20 days where the universe was a little less dull and whingy, and I’m not sure what it was in aid of. None of the “changes” mentioned in my last post, all those things I was going to do to make my life better, didn’t actually, er… fucking happen. The junk food carried on apace (this time less sustainably for reasons I’ll make clear shortly), trying to stop myself being self-deprecating is like trying to stop the Daily Mail from printing racist articles based around lies and the drinking, although actually virtually gone for the last three weeks, came back with a vengeance last night, when my tipple of choice, after I’d thought quite long and hard and then decided that I’d actually had quite e-fucking-nough of pretty much everything and everyone, was a mixture of Jack Daniels, gin, vodka and white wine. In a pint glass. Topped up with Irn Bru.

So, nope, no change. It’s not so much good intentions leading me astray or any such rubbish, more that it may not have been advisable to try a new, positive demeanour on a Monday morning after  a week long holiday – especially after coming back to work and finding out that my employer had decided that I’d underpaid on my tax 3 months ago, and that it was perfectly OK and fair for them to take the whole lot back in one fell swoop as a result, pushing me back into my overdraft just after I’d sorted out a consolidation loan to clear my credit cards off and leaving me with no fucking money. Oh and the Valentine’s funtrocity was neither fun nor all that much of an atrocity, consisting solely of Facebook. There wasn’t even drinking. Just Facebook. Add to this the usual mix of loneliness, depression and generally being a prick, and… well, the positive demeanour can fuck off, really.

Oh, and then I woke up at 5am this morning. After going to sleep at 1. Lovely. Pass the noose.

Ch-ch-ch-changes

Decided. No more shitty junk food, no more whinging because I’m single/bored/lonely, no more self-deprecation all the fucking time, no more drinking half a bottle of JD and verbally abusing the cat, no more of this shit. I’m gonna sort my shit out. Seriously.

Chirpy chirpy cheep cheep

It’s official. I love Twitter. I love Facebook statuses, each of mine being a jubilant sunbeam into the lives of those who read them (being as they are fucking depressive, each and every one), and Twitter is like those multiplied by a trillion. AND they come with the inestimable, world-crushing awesome of rubbing shoulder-to-shoulder with the most likeable man in the universe (scientifically proven), SIR STEPHEN OF MUTHAFUCKING FRY BITCHES. And Charlie Brooker, whose dry mutterings would be hilarious if Twitteriffic showed them.

Anyways, I like it. Which is probably why this blog hasn’t received much of an update for a while. Also because I thought the “boo hoo” stuff was getting a little repetitive. Like I say, all on the twitter tho.