Things That Really !&$%2 You Off

People doing Christmas wrong. I went to my girlfriends house again for Christmas this year (I know, what a nutter) and I was baffled by how they were celebrating Christmas. The day consisted of: Presents at the start, followed by a bit of chat and then food (fine). Then after that they decided to watch Mad Max: Fury Road, not exactly a Christmassy thing, plus I'd already seen it in the cinema and that film doesn't need watching twice. The rest of the day was literally spent watching TV, not even good TV, fucking Emmerdale and Coronation Street. I don't get how anyone can watch that at the best of times, let alone on Christmas bloody Day.

Am I just being a grumpy bastard? Is this the norm for everyone else? I've grown up with Christmasses full of playing games, having actual fun, not sitting in the corner on my 3DS ignoring the crap that everyone is mindlessly staring at on the TV.

I think that is actually a pretty common thing to do at Christmas. That doesn't mean it's a good or sensible thing to do though. Christmas should be about interacting with family, not ignoring them.

That's common Andy, it was different when I was a kid as I would have new games or console that I would go play that or we would play monopoly but now nope none of that.

Maybe next year if NX or PSVR is holiday 2016, I may want games for that. That I go play it out of the way of everyone else. #

Fury Road is excellent Andy, certainly worth a second watch.

Yeah, I'm with you there Balla, I was desperate for someone to crack open a pack of Uno or something. I'm not someone who can sit and watch TV at the best of times so it was pretty rough for me

Back at home we'd never even turn the TV on on Christmas day so sneaking off to play videogames was never a thing, maybe an hour before Church or just after, but the rest of the day was full on family time. Ah well, I'm off home tomorrow so will hopefully get a good fix of belated Christmas fun there.

Mad Max is good, but it is just cars exploding for 2 hours, once you've seen it in the cinema with proper sound and a big screen, you really don't need to see it sat in a bright room with someone constantly playing with the sound because the action bits are "too loud"

Yeah, usually the only time the TV goes on is near the end of the night when we're all getting a bit sleepy. It's board games and mucking about with our pressies before then.

The tv went on a bit on Christmas day; we watched avatar and doctor who. But we were playing board games as well, and chatting and generally interacting.

To be fair, my family watched some telly too (and played a good amount of Mario Kart); but we talked about it all the time. Makes it a bit more of an active activity.

Yeah at my place the TV is usually on with the Xmas tradition of watching Die Hard.

So yeah I broke my glasses which couldn't have happened at the worst time as I'm now into full saving mode for when I go to Japan in May, so now I'm going to have to spend how ever much it costs these days to go and get a new pair of glasses

Gently reversed the car into a moving vehicle on Tesco car park today. So annoyed with myself. The bloke has taken some cash in lieu of getting insurance companies involved, which is fine by me, but my confidence has taken a knock. Look where you're going at all times, lads!

I reversed into a mini right outside my flat a short while ago. In my defence, my rear view mirror had fallen off...

Poorly padded shoes. My feet have been torn to shreds, honestly.

People who don't clean up after themselves in toilets, especially office ones. Sorry for your digestion's health, but the toilet brush is there for a reason. I'll give you a hint: it's not a backscratcher.

Balladeer wrote:

it's not a backscratcher.

What.

Foreigners. Fat people. Thin people. Women with ideas above their station. The working class. The disabled. The diversity of the human race and the infinite expressiveness of the human spirit.

Shoo, Hopkins, shoo!

Have I mentioned what I'm about to mention before? Well whatever, I just woke up and need to vent.

I'm really sick and tired of the way the media treats terrorism. The terrorists want to spread terror (it's in their name for a reason), you'd think the people at the news outlets would have enough of an IQ given their university qualifications to understand that, perhaps the smart thing to do, isn't to make it headline news, cover every little detail about it you can, and show footage of the bloody bastards setting their bombs off.

It just pisses me off, and I'm always extra grumpy when I just wake up as it is. Seeing the media, as per usual, be their hypocritical incompetent "anything for a easy big news story even if it means spreading the message of terror" selves just has me seeing red at this time of day.

Cyclists. Nearly ploughed in to one on a roundabout this morning as he wasn't in a hi-vis, nor did he have lights on. About 3 seconds later another car nearly went through him too. And he had the nerve to wear one of those cameras on his helmet.

One of the things I really hate is those groups of people in the street or some public place like a restaurant or public place that laugh obnoxiously loud, in a fake way. On the whole in my experience, it seems to be middle aged ladies.

I'm pretty sure the thing they're laughing about isn't anywhere near as funny as they're making it out to be. It really gets on my nerves, to a point where if I am with a friend or on the phone i'll pretend to laugh even louder and more obnoxious as them as I pass.

Ugh...just thinking about this gets me worked up. JUST STOP IT

Athrun, that's a very good one. Its the same for American school shooters and the like; every expert in the book says the way to stop them is to stop the media showing the killers' faces, leading with the kill count, giving 24-hour coverage, but that's what they do every time. It is no exaggeration to say they are complicit in every death, knowingly, because they're more concerned with sales and viewing figures.*

Darren, I hate fake laughter at any volume. I'm very serious about comedy.

*who "they" are, I leave to you, but presumably these decisions are made quite high up the chain.

I'd like to mention Flight of the Conchords, which is chuffing hilarious without ever needing a laugh track.

Big Bang Theory is awful for its laugh track. It makes me actively hate the show, which isn't awful in its own right but christ, that laugh track.

I much prefer this version. (WARNING REALLY REALLY REALLY LOUD SERIOUSLY LOUD TURN THE VOLUME WAY DOWN)

The Establishment, man, the fucking System

I was on my break at work and I finished watching the Awards Ceremony for the Fishing Tournament on AC:NL and I still had ten minutes before I had to go down, I hadn't bothered to get my book out of my locker, I'd already read the sports pages so I made the mistake of reading the copy of the Sun.

I was already annoyed with this particular brand of toilet paper because they had a front page picture story about the fact a woman's nipples were visible through her shirt, but the story I turned to inside was just such a textbook example of everything I hate. I don't care what your political viewpoint, but when a politician proposed a policy to ensure people like me are paid the living wage before companies pay their shareholders, a really fucking reasonable idea, even if you are an insipid propaganda tool of a billionaire ruling class, your reporting should be slightly less biased than leading with the fact that a paid lobbyist group of financial groups has called it "loony".

Obviously you don't need me to tell you that the motivation behind these comments is probably to keep rich people rich at the expense of the working man, but let's humour them for a minute. Let's pretend they really are concerned that forcing companies to pay a living wage before they're allowed to pay shareholder dividends. So fucking what? People withdrawing from these massive pension funds are not the poorest and most vulnerable; they're well off, they have homes, their families have moved out. People working outrageous hours in low-income jobs and still not making ends meet are the ones who need support.

The British press are so in bed with our government, they must all be decapitated pigs' heads.

This whole fucking society is built around a calculated movement back to a feudal system. The top percentile can afford to buy homes and land, and they rent it out to the rest of us. I'll never have a house, but just so long as I keep working every second of every day until I keel over and die, I might just be able to keep a roof over my head. Meanwhile, my landlord is sitting on a beach earning 20%.

Just a daily reminder: This is all bullshit and we should not be putting up with it willingly. Viva la Revolution.

I know, man. I know. I sometimes find the Guardian a bit over-the-top with its "hey guys, look what the government are doing" message, but the one thing they do really well is to make clear the difference between Fact and Opinion.
The worrying thing in America: the people that distrust the press are the Trump supporters. If you're in a situation where you believe in an ever more extreme version of world than the attention-grabbing media, you've got problems...

The whole Trump thing is terrifying.

Freedom Song Remix for all