Thursday, April 20, 2006
6 Days of Hell
I fear it is my destiny to have my life run by women.
In addition to the PMB I also have to consider the wishes of the boss, the VP of Ops. Affectionately referred to as a vile matriarch, she has always been a charming person to work for. She is knowledgeable, respectful, mindful of her charges’ well-being and in general a thoroughly good egg. Until she gets fried, if you’ll pardon the pun.
Burn out is a common thing these days, but more often than not people don’t summarily go over the edge one day – they just teeter on the brink occasionally before being pulled back into reality by the stuff they still enjoy about their job. In recent months the boss seems to be teetering very precariously indeed.
I have noticed a pattern to this behaviour. For 22 days out of every 28 she’s very nice. Then the other 6 days she’ll question everything. For those 6 days she will contradict everyone, regardless of her total lack of knowledge in their of expertise. For those 6 days she will micro-manage to the point of insanity. For those 6 days she will create so much tension that the entire team are at each other’s throats.
Strangely, those 6 days out of every 28 she eats McDonalds every day. Apparently Big Macs turn you into a complete bitch.
Monday, April 10, 2006
Aaron Neville's Secret Ninjas
“I can be your muse !”, squealed the PMB with delight.
We’d been discussing the blog as I’d finally owned up to posting the stuff I’ve been noodling away writing for the last few weeks. This was mostly due to the fact that I’d got a referring link from inside a Google mail, so someone must have thought the tosh I scribble down here worthy enough to pass onto someone else. That or he/she was an English teacher demonstrating how not to write. Either way, in some strange sad way this excited me and we got talking about it.
“You see”, she said, “people obviously want to read about the PMB ! I can give you ideas”. Tragically she missed the notion that after 6 years of marriage I already have enough material for two screenplays and a small novel.
Now I love humour that’s a little abstract and surreal, but that’s what happens when you grow up on Monty Python, The Goodies and other such stuff. For example, I think that the following is one of the funniest things in the world. Ever. Ever volume 2.
“Whilst pondering his excessive flatulence Mr Grimsby was delighted to find his new girlfriend had no sense of smell.”
No idea why I like it so much. I like the “flowery” language, I like the rhythm, I like the concept of it and, of course, farts are funny. But still, added together it’s more than the sum of it’s parts somehow and it makes me chuckle. The PMB though is just light years beyond this.
PMB : “I can give you my ideas when I come out of the bathroom, that’s where I always get my good ideas !”
Pete : “Keep talking dear, it’s just writing itself right. In fact, just talk into a tape recorder now so I can transcribe it later”
PMB : “What was I talking about at work last week ? Oh yes, in a fight between Mr Miyagi and Aaron Neville, who would kick the other’s arse ?”
Pete : “Mr Miyagi, obviously.”
PMB : “But what if Aaron Neville has secret ninjas living inside his mole ?!”
At this point a number of my brain cells lost the will to live and jumped head first into the path of a passing synapse. Disoriented and bewildered, I decided it was time to retire.
Monday, February 20, 2006
New Beginnings
The Present Mrs B and I have decided to have children. It was a momentous occasion. After 3 years of being utterly terrified by the prospect I finally figured that I was ready for it and perhaps I’d quite like it too. Since then it’s been a wild roller coaster ride of what you normally do when you decide to have a baby. In the meantime the PMB has been book shopping.
First of all I would like to congratulate every author that has ever had a book published on how to get pregnant. I could sum it up in 4 words; the first one starts with “f” and the remaining three are simply “quite a lot”. However, apparently women who are in the mood for a bit of baby making will buy any old tat that tells them more about it, and some clever buggers have managed to stretch those 4 words into 200 pages, pretty graphs included. Kudos to you, I’m off to sell snow to Eskimos, or Indigenous Alaskan Americans or whatever we call them today.
She was kind enough to also purchase a book for me, “Pregnancy Sucks – For Men”. In this tome a fine gentleman has been thoughtful enough to explain in excruciating detail just how crappy the nine months will be for me. Words like vomit, seepage and ooze crop up quite a lot as do phrases which amount to “you will be considered the scum of the Earth and will pay for your crimes – crimes like daring to breath in her presence”.
The strangest thing about this decision though is it all seems so easy.
“Let’s make a baby”.
“Ok then”.
I haven’t paid anything for it. Nobody’s done a credit check. I haven’t had to consult Consumer Guide or read the reviews at Amazon.com (“Nice item but be prepared for costly maintenance, plus it turned up two weeks late and I kept having to take time off work to accept the delivery”).
I haven’t even signed a form.
Sunday, February 12, 2006
We All Scream For...
“Oi, shithead !”
I toyed with the idea of saying “that’s Mr Shithead to you”, but as she obviously wasn’t entirely pleased about something or other it occurred to me that I may have been pushing my luck. She picked up the recently purchased ice cream.
“This isn’t Chubby Hubby, where’s my bloody Chubby Hubby ?”
Again, I toyed with the idea of a witty retort along the lines of “well, right now he’s standing behind his chubby wife’s chubby arse” but I’m terribly attached to my genitalia and I’d like for my genitalia to continue to be attached to me.
The PMB is very picky when it comes to ice cream ; she suffers from that most American of afflictions – the love of chocolate mixed with peanut butter which, to an Englishman like myself, is a bit like taking a beautiful piece of Danish bacon and smothering it with dog poo.
This isn’t the first time there have been marital ructions over dessert. I like bread pudding, she likes ice cream. I like a bit of cake, she likes ice cream. I like apple pie with raisins and a drop of evaporated milk, she likes ice cream. In fact, she just likes ice cream an awful lot.
I’ve tried very hard to get her to sample the finest English cuisine but it just hasn’t worked. Toad in the hole ? “Shit.” Marmite on toast ? “Shit.” Beans on toast ? “What the hell would you want to do that for ?” I haven’t bought up black pudding. I have no doubt that she would bring it up in an altogether different fashion.
As luck would have it, whilst wandering round the local “World Market” instant-rip-off-international-food-super-hyper-uberstore ($4.99 for a tiny pack of choccy Hob Nobs thank you very much, have a nice day) we stumbled upon Heinz Treacle Pud, and the essential pud topper, Ambrosia Custard.
She likes it. I know she’s the one for me.
Wednesday, February 08, 2006
Do You Think She Means "A Charmed Life" ?
Contrary to what some people might say (wife included), I’m really very fond of my wife. She’s the meaning in my life, she’s my inspiration. She’s the wind beneath my wings. She builds me up so I can do something or other to do with mountains. Pick any other pleasant song you like to describe the situation.
However the Present Mrs B does come up with some strange things at times. Conversation in the car today…
PMB : “It’s the celebrities I don’t get.”
Pete : “Err… righty ho then. What ?”
PMB : “Well they could be doing the same thing as us right now.”
Pete : “Talking bollocks, you mean ?”
PMB (ignoring previous comment completely) : “I mean they don’t seem real, celebrities, do you know what I mean ?”
Pete (now resigned to the fact that in 2 seconds I will literally feel my IQ start to drop) : “Absolutely dear”.
PMB : “Like Paris Hilton, she doesn’t seem real but she could be doing something completely ordinary right now. Like getting out of bed. Or taking a poo.”
Pete : “Hope she got out of bed first.”
PMB : “Or like Robbie Williams. While we’re riding around in the car he could be doing his shopping. Like, right now.”
Lets hope it’s not the same Sainbury’s that Gary Barlow frequents. Standing in the queue for the checkout might become really awkward.
I sigh deeply, and shudder as I think about what we may end up adding to the gene pool.
Monday, February 06, 2006
Mr M Mouse, Smoking Nazi
It’s a bit weird being a smoker these days. Every single one of us will tell you that they don’t want to smoke anymore. Even the ones who used to smoke on planes way back when you still could don’t have any problem with spending a few hours without a ciggy on their way to Marbella or wherever. I once spent 10 and a half hours on one of them there Jumbo jets flying from London to Seattle and the thought of a ciggy didn’t enter my mind once.
Of course that may have been because I was preoccupied at the time. My mind was filled with much more important things like “Hey, we’re really flying low… or are those icebergs just really big” and “please God don’t let the plane crash, please God don’t let the plane crash, please God don’t let the plane crash”. I am a bad flyer.
Any road, bad flights aside (and it wasn’t even a bad flight), none of us really want to smoke. If someone we didn’t know asked us if we smoked we’d probably feel a little embarrassed admitting to it, and God forbid we should be asked by a Doctor of any sort. Admitting to a Dr that you smoke is a bit like telling the Queen you were quite a fan of her daughters-in-law.
I always said I would quit by the time I was thirty, but thirty came and went in a blur. Then last year I said that I wouldn’t make it a New Year’s resolution because that way I was guaranteed to fail, but I would quite by the time the family came over from Blighty to stay in May. Next thing you know May was here and smoking areas in theme parks are hard to come by these days. Apparently Mickey Mouse is a smoking nazi.
Aside : I can’t wait to see a Google search linking here courtesy of the name “Mickey Mouse” and the word “nazi”.
Of course the biggest problem with quitting isn’t the “hey, gimme more nicotine” thing. At least it hasn’t been for me the couple of times I’ve tried. It’s the habit cigs – one in the morning with a cup of coffee, one in the car leaving work, the last one at night when I let the crazy pooch out to take a Jimmy. Those are the ciggys I actually enjoy, and those are the ones I fear giving up the most.
So here I am sitting on the lanai (fancy Florida term for a back porch with a fly net on it, in case you didn’t know), ciggy in hand, tapping away on the laptop. I actually find it very relaxing you know, sitting out here, mindlessly jotting down random musings in electronic format. I’ve noticed that a lot lately, it’s quite nice, very relaxing in fact, sitting here with a cup of tea, ciggy and…
Oh bugger. I’ve only been doing this for the last 10 days and I’ve given myself another reason not to quit.
Friday, February 03, 2006
I Love My Doggie
Babies. You know, the little pinks things with scrunchy faces. More on this later.
My wife, she doesn’t do too well with gross stuff. Once upon a time we went out to buy a lawnmower and bought home a puppy instead. Long story. But she absolutely had to have this puppy. She was going to take care of it real good. Feed it, love it, take it for walks, look after it and make sure he was adored. As I handed over the plastic to pay for the little bugger I thought “This’ll buy me at least another 18 months without kids.”
Of course, where there’s puppies there’s puke, poo and pee. Apparently the PMB is a wee bit squeamish where such things are concerned and doesn’t react too well. She is, in fact, the inventor of the sympathy hurl. Not many people know that.
Incidentally, I strongly recommend not buying a piece of land, going through the permitting process, spending six months and $150,000 of your hard earned dollars having a house built with lovely new carpet and all new furniture and then buying what is, basically, some kind of gastro-intestinal Tardis with a tail. It doesn’t matter how much you feed a puppy, whatever goes in seems to quadruple before coming out the other end.
So, poor old me got to clean up all the messes. “Oh I just can’t”, she says, “the smell, I’ll puke”. Smashing.
So what about the babies ? My wife is now officially gagging for sprogs and I have I nasty feeling I won’t be able to put it off much longer. But what about the green baby poo ? Well, apparently I have nothing to worry about. Apparently when we have a baby, she tells me, she’s going to take care of it real good. Feed it, love it, take it for walks…
Wednesday, February 01, 2006
How Not To Do A Job Interview
I interviewed someone today.
I’m not a big fan of interviewing. I’m a decent judge of character so I can get a fairly good idea if someone’s going to fit in or not, but it’s the technical side of things that bothers me. Short of sitting them down and making them take a test it’s really difficult to gauge the depth of someone’s skillset.
Fortunately this guy made it easy. The resumé was a train wreck and had I had the time to read it properly and not just scan his experience and qualifications he wouldn’t even have made it to an interview.
The first thing that gave it away was the way he managed to spell his address wrong. The next was the way that on every bullet-pointed line the first (at least) two words were capitalized. Then there was the vast array of malapropisms… it was just a disaster area.
As for the actual interview, make sure your verbal description of your previous jobs matches the written one. Also, try not to contradict yourself twice within the space of a minute. People pick up on that kind of stuff, you know. Please note that describing how you walked out on a job generally is something I would attempt to avoid.
A word about embellishing your resumé. We all do it, but the trick it to embellish it a teensy, weensy bit. Whilst it’s plentiful in supply, in terms of demand bullshit is generally not way up there on people’s wanted lists and also has a very high detection rate. When you claim to be an expert in your chosen field but can’t answer rudimentary questions it does give the game away somewhat.
Finally, I find dressing for the occasion does tend to infer that you actually give two hoots. That doesn’t mean ladies without panty hose would be sent packing but surely, for the gentlemen, is a suit too much to ask ?
Oh, and if you know you’ve been rumbled and the game’s up, don’t be so persistent about getting a second interview. It only makes saying goodbye more painful, and we don’t like long goodbyes.
Saturday, January 28, 2006
The Walking In The Sleep
‘Twas the night after the wedding
And nothing stirred, not even a mouse. Unless that mouse happened to be a person, and that person was the Present Mrs B.
My wife, lovely and charming as she is, has never been able to gauge her own alcohol tolerance. And it seems to be a funny tolerance. She goes from a perfectly stable “I’m fine dear, really, I’m having a lovely time” to “pfffffffffffffft, har har har har har”-thud in an excruciatingly short space of time. She never sets out to get drunk, it just sort of happens somewhere in the space of half a Long Island Iced Tea and from there onwards it’s all a bit of a mess.
And she’s quite an annoying drunk. Not raucous or even badly behaved, just… well… annoying. She’ll tell you she’s a cute drunk. At least that what she just told me. What usually happens is that we jump in the car to go home and I, stoicly, refusing to have had any beerage at all, then have to put up with the following…
“Honey, did you have a nice time ?”
“Yes dear”.
“I’m so glad you had a nice time”.
She then lapses into a near comatose state for approximately ten seconds, forgets the previous 30 seconds entirely, and then repeats the conversation over and over until she finally mumbles something about gagging for a Big Mac and subsequently pebbledashes the side of the car.
Of course at every wedding there’s a drunk bridesmaid. Unfortunately at my sister-in-law’s wedding, the drunk bridesmaid was my wife. Just like every other occasion it all started out very innocently and to all intents and purposes appeared to stay that way. There was no falling over on the dance floor, no whoops-here-comes-dinner type incidents, and I even thought for a while that I’d got away with it. Apparently not.
The first clue I had was when the fresh air hit and she pointed her head towards the starry, starry night and started swaying, arms outstretched in the breeze. Then she started the “I really miss you guys” bit with her aunt and uncle who live halfway across the country from us. Very shortly afterwards she was completely in a world of her own, probably inhabited by pixies and a purple elephant called Bruce, and there was no rescuing her.
Now this in itself wasn’t really a remarkable experience. That started when we got back to the house. My brother-in-law’s a builder and he built his own house. At the time it wasn’t quite finished so the wardrobe in the room we were staying in didn’t have any doors on it and the shelves hadn’t been put up yet : they were just lying up against the wall.
So I’m in bed all toasty and I hear a knocking from inside the door-less wardrobe, followed by a stern “A little help here please”. I turn on the light to find my wife, starkers, inside the wardrobe wrestling with the shelves. As I’m half asleep, the strangeness of the situation doesn’t register and I free the bit of shelf she’s trying to maneuver away from the rest of them, tell her to get back into bed and turn the light off.
Next thing you know, clothes on and she’s off. A quick visit to the bathroom and 2 minutes later she’s got every light in the house on and I can see her through the cracked door standing motionless in the kitchen with a huge grin on her face, holding an imaginary baking tray. Enter the mother-in-law :
MIL : “What the hell are you doing ?”
PMB : “Can you believe that my sister doesn’t believe this baking tray’s real ?!”
MIL : “For God’s sake, just go back to bed.”
PMB : Grumble, huff, etc.
She stomps back into bed, plops her head down, and that’s it, she’s off in the land of nod again.
I’ve never actually seen anyone sleepwalk before. It’s quite an experience.
Thursday, January 26, 2006
Dodgy Lou
Lou was a diamond geezer, as some folks say. Some would call him by a different name but that was down to his 2 or 3 aliases courtesy of a bit of bother with the nice poll tax people. Nevertheless, despite the fact that he would quite literally respond to at least 3 names and thus had people all around him going “Lou ? Shit, I’ve been calling him Simon for the last three years”, he always bought a round and was well liked.
Lou joined a band as a singer. When they came up with a new song he was a bit stuck for lyrics so the rest of the band advised to to write about what he knew best. He was a motorbike courier. Title of the song ?
“Sign here please, can I use your phone ?”
Monday, January 23, 2006
My Beautiful Language, Buggery Of
This blogging lark is all a bit new to me, so I reserve the right to have the odd literary train wreck now and then.
Incidentally, I am a bit of a grammar nazi in real life however it seems wrong to do that in a blog. I’m drawn to the blogs which read as you expect them to sound in the writer’s head and it’s that style that interests me more than anything else so, whilst the urge to fight too much punctuation strikes me constantly, commas are meant more for a pause than to represent a clause. Therefore, Microsoft Word’s grammar checker can kiss my arse, along with that sodding paper clip. Anyway, when I’m stuck at work plodding through another proposal, why should a paper clip be so bloody happy ?
Anyway, it all irks me a little, this grammar-spelling stuff. When I was a kid I got one third of my 3 R’s either from newspapers, magazines or books. Now you could always count on those publications to be correctly edited and all the spelling mistakes would have been weeded out. Not so on that there interweb. In fact it seems that a substantial percentage of the English-speaking world’s population are barely literate.
We’ve all seen it… websight, “to” when there should be a “too”, and my favourite of all, the extremely-long-sentence-with-no-punctuation-whatsoever-and-good-Lord-not-a-capital-letter-in-sight-either. Is it a paragraph or is it a sentence ? Could I speak the entire thing without a pause or would I pass out ? Nobody has the right to butcher my beautiful language in such a fashion.
So what’s going to happen with all the kids that are now about 11 or 12 and are surfing the internet ? Will the dictionary change to officially recognize (bloody American spellchecker, that word has a ‘s’ in it !) websights, or will every CV I read in the future be such a mishmash of hacked up spellings that job candidates won’t even get through to an interview ?
Incidentally, to combat the rise of Singlish, a pidgin mix of a Chinese dialect and English, the Singapore Government have created the “Speak Good English” campaign. Nice one.
Sunday, January 22, 2006
Flursday Evening
Tonight I am confused.
I've turned on the TV but am not seeing quite what I expected to see. I have also consulted the handy-dandy interactive TV guide, and I am still quite non-plussed.
There's no Law and Order on.
Apparently someone has invented an 8th day of the week and neglected to inform NBC.
Monday, January 16, 2006
It's a Funny Old (New) World
I have long been aware I don't fit here. Probably something to do with my dogged insistence not to drink the fizzy, yellow water they call beer (it's lager, and not even decent stuff at that), or else maybe my utter distain at the lack of ordinary sausages at the grocery. Italian sausage, sir ? Chorizo ? Bratwurst, knockwurst, cheesewurst with a cherry on top ? I shall pass.
In my late twenties I used to get some amusement out of it as the checkout girls at the local supermarket went gooey over my accent (it must have been my accent, it certainly wasn't any other part of me), however lately it's all become a bit of a drag. The hand-over-mouth-giggles at the local Sainsbury equivalent are no more, and as I fight the urge to become completely americanised (see, I spelled it without a ‘z’, not there yet) I find myself kind of lost, without a country.
Whilst ensconced here I have finally found possibly the final, most despicable of all American traits : the attempt at a British accent. They’ve ranged from the obscure - “I’m in a play, we’re doing the Christmas Carol"; recites line an awful high pitched quasi-anglicised squawk - to the faintly post-colonial, and potentially offensive in the wrong hands, “Flying from Seattle at 2 this afternoon ? Guess you won’t be home in time for high tea then”. All of them however have made Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins sound like a regular in East Enders.
I do of course realise that it’s a semi-term of endearment – a way to reach out to a stranger and find some common ground on which to appeal to each other. In general I think the Americans like the English, even if a large portion of the US populace do tend to treat us with the faintly condescending attention shown to a small puppy. Slightly retarded are we, dear ? It’s ok, I’m sure a nice cup of tea will make it all better.
The PMB has long since stopped attempting it. Once upon a time it used to be a party piece (“narridge” spoken by an American sounds exactly like the real Norfolk-accent pronunciation of “Norwich”), and BBC America showed a particular trailer for The Royal Family so often that she could elocute “He’s gonna need changin’, in’t ‘ee?” parrot fashion in perfect Scouse, but the talent seems to have left her shores since and she’s more interested in nurturing a talent for being clucky. I must say she’s becoming very good at it.
There are the exceptions, course. Gwynneth Paltrow does a cracker of an English accent, and Squinty Zellweger has a fairly good stab at it. Once upon a time John Lithgow came pretty close and, to be fair, for many years I though all of Spinal Tap were genuinely British. But overall it’s a fairly miserable experience.
On the whole I think Americans should drop the whole English accent thing and stick to something they’re good at. Invading small countries seems to be a cracker of an idea these days.
Why, oh why, oh why must the BBC...
Why blog ? No idea. Perhaps it’s an outlet for the “NO NO NO GOD NO I’M ALREADY IN MY EARLY THIRTIES” which is filling the void which in my twenties used to be occupied by Playstation.
Maybe it’s to meander aimlessly through pointless rants about the various things which tick me off.
Maybe it’s some narcissistic, electronic field trip for the random nonsense that wanders through my mind.
Perhaps it’s because I’m an ex-pat Brit living in America and I still miss my home and all the people that went with it.
Maybe it’s to tell some funny jokes about the Present Mrs B.
Can you tell I’m having difficulties starting ?
