Diary of a Grammatical Misfit

Clickety clack clickety clack…pause…sigh.

Clickety clack clickety clack clack…pause…sigh.

Clickety clack click clack…pause…sigh.

I just couldn’t remember my password.

I held my head in my hands and thought, hard. I checked back again at the email folder of memberships and accounts information, looking for the relevant name, but it wasn’t there. I hadn’t seen fit to save a reminder for this one which must mean (at least in theory!) that it was one of my simple ones.

But I was sure I’d tried them all by now.

Clickety clack clickety clickety clack…pause thinking it’s not even vaguely likely to be this one…sigh.

I hover the cursor over the ’send me a reminder’ button but hesitate. It’s become a challenge now and I don’t want to concede defeat. I sip my coffee and click, instead, on the email received button.

“Blah blah blah de blah. Blah de blah blah blah.” it says.

I hit reply and type “dEAR aMY,”

Oh.

Click.

Clackety clack clickety clack…pause…smack myself on head.

Take this item on my newsfeed:

Friend-you-barely-know added the what does your birth date mean? application.

It means the date you were born.

That’s all.

This post is a bit of a cheat but I don’t have time or inspiration for a proper one today. Too full of Mondayitis.

This is an email exchange I had on Friday afternoon with a friend known as redhead.

Me:   

There’s something I wanted to ask you about. When would be a good time to call you this weekend?

Redhead: 

Can’t you ask me now? Might sweeten my mood (seem to be in a foul mood today, although god only knows why!)

Me:   

It’s just some photo stuff I was gonna ask you about, decidedly non-urgent and non-mood sweetening. Sorry.

I will see if I can send some happy thoughts instead…
 
Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens…
 
No, actually, they’re the happy thoughts of a demented nun. Not particularly happy inducing for me, and probably not for you either!
 
Hmmm
 
Quality chocolate and cocktails in Soho,
Dancing like crazy when nobody’s looking,
Chats with my friends that go on for hours,
These are a few of my favourite things
 
Bright sunny evenings and fires in winter,
Johnny Depp films and a glass of rioja,
Fabulous holidays, long shopping sprees,
These are a few of my favourite things
 
When the storms come, I don’t give a damn
Coz I like storms toooooooooo
But just for the hell of it, think of nice things
That sweeten the mood of yoooooooooouuuuu

Redhead:

Thank you! Loved the song. Sent it to my colleagues, who have given me a quick rendition.

Me: 

Darn it! If I’d known I was composing for a choir, I’d have at least made it rhyme! 

“Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it”

And it seems that those who ignore the mistakes of reality are doomed to repeat them in virtual reality. Second Life has now banned gambling and welcomed religion according to this article.

American anti-gambling legislation (which is responsible for the change in policy) is one of the great triumphs of the religious-right (right as in wing, emphatically NOT the opposite of wrong although they may like to claim so). And now this moralistic, hypocritical (just check out the state lotteries!) legislation has seeped into the most popular of the virtual worlds and outlawed its casinos.

Ironic really, considering that one of the biggest attractions of having a second life is to escape the restrictions and repercussions of your first one.

Meanwhile the reality-escapees who have been wallowing in their virtual hotbeds of sin, have caught the attention of the Catholic church. 

“The digital world can be considered, in its way, mission territory” says Father Antonio Spadaro who hopes to lead others towards becoming virtual missionaries, preaching the word to the poor lost souls. Let’s hope the Second Life savages follow the traditions of history and eat them. 

What’s next - a call for recruits for the second life crusades?

I hate getting angry in the mornings. I mean, it’s not like anger is the best emotion at any time of the day but a little but of rage to get you going in the afternoon can be quite handy. And if something winds me up later in the day then I just have to get home, sit down (perhaps with a cold g&t) and meditate until the storm passes.

But in the morning it makes my stomach churn and my neck tense and my fists clench. The sensation doesn’t pass for several hours and it puts me off my work.

It’s something quite silly that’s wound me up. An email in fact, from friends reunited. It’s the second one of these they’ve sent me but I can’t find anything on their site to tell them not to send me one again or I will go absolutely nuts.

The message starts chirpily ”we’ve found your old friends from Primary School”.

And then gets arrogant. After a list of primary schools in a crystal ball which they’ve oh-so-cleverly chosen by virtue of them being closest to my secondary school, they say “We think we’ve guessed which primary school you went to” and then suggests I sign on to one of them.

Why has this really pissed me off?

Well firstly, the arrogance. They haven’t bloody guesed which primary school I went to. Not their fault I suppose - it was 20 odd miles from my secondary school and to list schools within a twenty mile radius would have made for a much bigger crystal ball. But there’s a reason I went to a school twenty miles away and a reason I haven’t actually added a primary school to my profile. And it’s not that I just haven’t got around to it in the three years or whatever since I joined this completely useless service.

I didn’t have any friends at primary school. I had bruises, humiliation and despair and the only reason I’d want to check out people listed on it is in the hope that some of them had suffered cruel and painful deaths sometime in the last fifteen years.

Actually I’m not that mean. But I don’t want to know that they’re happy with jobs and husbands and kids. I don’t want to be reminded of that time of my life at all.

So fuck off friends reunited. You’ve just seriously ruined my day.

Read recently that McDonalds want the Oxford English Dictionary to change their listing of a ‘McJob’, currently defined as “an unstimulating low-paid job with few prospects”.

At the time I thought it was a bizarre move since the phrase has gone out of fashion and I barely remembered that it have ever been used. Why bother stirring it up? OED drop unused words in the end anyway.

But McDs have gone one step further now and launched a petition, claiming that 69% of the population agreed it needs updating. This 69% don’t seem to read the BBC website though…In their article on this they include a vote - and of over 11,000 votes so far cast - 80% say it doesn’t need changing.

McDonalds doesn’t generally follow the “any publicity is good publicity” mantra (how could they?!!) so methinks this whole campaign is a McFuckUp.

I HATE the subject box on emails.

It taunts me.

It hangs there. A long white oblong. Inviting wit or wisdom or awesome perfunctoriness. Requiring an ability to sum up a whole subject or collection of subjects with a few beautifully chosen, carefully analysed, perfectly designed words.

And I always let it down.

Our relationship is doomed.

I really really hope that Amazon is trying to persuade everyone to buy Dr Seuss’s 50th birthday edition of Cat in the Hat because if not, then I feel they have judged my profile reading age a little harshly…

You’ve gone one step closer to living life at the lastminute.com.

Good for you. You’re not messing around at the Retail Park, doing DIY or clearing out the loft.You’ve grabbed hold of the moment, given it a vigorous shake and now you’ll wake up tomorrow excited.

I bought two tickets to a west end show from the idiots because they happened to offer a cheap deal on a show I wanted to see. I didn’t buy a one-way ticket to South America for goodness sake! This was not a life altering moment and I really don’t need to be given an encouraging pat on the back for it.

Since one of my favourite mottos is don’t cut off you nose to spite your face I guess I will probably buy from them again. But right now I really really don’t want to.

Grrrrrrr.

I have just read an article on the NY Times which gives a handy list of questions for couples to ask themselves before they get married. (Academic interest only obviously!)

There are 15 questions, 14 of which seem really sensible - suggesting that couples discuss issues like finance, children, family, friends and expectations of marriage and consider how open and comfortable they are with each other. All well and good.

But then there’s this one:

7) Will there be a television in the bedroom?

which confuses me. I’ve never heard of a relationship breaking down as the result of the presence or absence of a TV in the bedroom. I must ask around and find out how big a problem this is in the world of coupledom.