“Things that get on my tits”

A female reader has sent in the A to Z below of “things which get on her tits”. I am informed it is in fact a group effort from the bored and grumpy employees of a certain Wellington workplace, which shall remain nameless.

A.

Absolutely. As in, people who say “absolutely” when what they really mean is “yes”. Hey, why use one syllable when you can use four? Are you a moron? Absolutely.

B

Beltway, inside the.

This phrase is all very well in Washington DC, where it refers to the area literally inside the “beltway” of highways that encircles the central district occupied by politicians, state departments, political reporters, etc, but the recent affectation among the news media in applying this term to Wellington and its politicians and bureaucrats is just plain silly. There IS NO BELTWAY in Wellington.

[DPF – what about the town belt?]

C

Company names that squash two words together without a space and stick a capital letter in the middle. This is not clever and original. This is so 10 years ago. “Wow, look, we’re dangerous rebels who pay no heed to the rules of spelling and grammar! How cool is that?” Yeah and I bet you also go around saying naff crap business cliché crap like “we think outside the square” and “moving forward” and actually enjoy work team building exercises and refer to Kevin Roberts as your “guru”. You may also be in advertising. You should just call your company “WankCorp”.

[DPF – KiwiSaver pisses me off – it should be Kiwi Saver or Kiwisaver]

D.

Dreadlocks on white people.

There is a lot of this in Cuba Street. No, you are not a natty dread, you are a pathetic middle-class wanker from Khandallah studying for a useless BA and you smell. Your Che Guevara T-shirt/facial piercing/”Celtic” tattoo is shit as well.

E

Epidemics.

Not REAL epidemics (though, admittedly, real epidemics are not a good thing either). The “epidemics” made up by the news media because they think “P epidemic” sounds more exciting and “newsy” than saying “there is quite a bit of P around, but probably not much more than there was last week, and as a boring middle-aged middle manager from Hamilton you’re quite unlikely to be unwittingly pushed into a sordid underworld of P addiction anytime soon. Nor will your nerdy kids.” Similarly, “texting epidemic” sounds racier than “some teenagers text their mates quite often”. Dictionary definition of epidemic: “Spreading rapidly and extensively by infection and affecting many individuals in an area or population at the same time” (ie NOT “happens quite a lot”).

F

“Funny” emails

You know the sort of “hilarious” junk forwarded to your work email by colleagues/friends. “Peaceful/ wise/thoughts to brighten your day” are even worse. I’m trying to work, not read your lame-arse jokes and schmaltzy shit. Even Nigerian spammers are more entertaining and creative.

G

Good Morning.

Not the cheery words of greeting you may hear before lunch, but the painful and dreary TV show that screens each weekday on TV One – a mind-numbing burble of news-lite, infomercials, cooking tips, advertisements for plastic surgery masquerading as “beauty tips”, horoscopes, “psychic matters” and politics with Barry Soper (the predictions of the last two being some sort of inaccuracy competition). They actually have a woman called Fifi who does “crafts.” Luckily this dross is only inflicted on a total nationwide audience of three housewives and one sickness beneficiary called Dwayne who lives in Dargaville.

[DPF – hey I’m on that politics panel, leave us alone. And Brendan and Sarah are just lovely]

H

Hamburgers, misleading pictures of

Not that I frequent fast food joints very often (I hesitate to call them restaurants) except when I am drunk and/or stoned, but on the rare occasions I do enter these greasepits, even in a drunk/stoned state I can’t help but notice that the photos of hamburgers behind the counter bear absolutely no resemblance to the actual burgers you purchase. Photo burger = huge, plump, overflowing with delicious-looking ingredients – real meat, crispy lettuce, a lightly toasted fresh bun and a tasty-looking sauce. Actual burger = tiny charred scrap of meat by-product and a limp leaf with brown edges in a pale, sodden excuse for a bun, all oozing with fat. How can this blatant dishonesty in advertising be legal? Does someone actually put together a completely different product just to take the photos?

I

IT guys. Is there a law that says everyone in IT must have English as a second language? Or are they doing it on purpose when they pretend they don’t understand perfectly straightforward sentences like “could you just make my fucking computer work please?” and tell you that it is quite simple and you just need to [470853b5ctc784rcjhrfgrgyuu] (Translation – a whole lot of computer jargon which is completely meaningless to anyone who isn’t an IT guy and you have no idea what they are on about). Don’t want to start any fear-mongering or anything, but there is an international conspiracy by IT people to take over the world and the global HQ of this IT Al Qaeda is based at Telecom’s internet “help-desk”. There will be a smaller “cell” of these terrorists based at your workplace. Under no circumstances will they EVER fix your computer. And they are laughing at you.

J

Job titles

Really stupid ones made up by HR people, like “Team Leader” instead of manager, or “Retail Consultant” instead of salesman. Or really long ones like Technical Support Advisor, Specialist Services (ICT)”. Why don’t you just have a title that says what you do? Like “Wanker”.

[DPF – I recall someone being a Business Opportunities Consultant. She sold Amway]

K

Kathmandu sales.

Kathmandu ALWAYS seems to have a sale on. Well, at least once every three weeks they have a sale. And at their sales they have mountains of nasty polar fleece stuff manufactured in Chinese sweat shops (just waiting to pill the first time you put it in the wash) with labels claiming it is “99.999999999% off”. Has anyone EVER bought ANYTHING from Kathmandu at the alleged full price? I seriously doubt it.

L

Lollipops.

If you are fortunate enough to be child-free (note – that’s childFREE, not childLESS) you are probably also lucky enough to have escaped the unspeakable horror that is the Lollipops “Playland and café” franchise. For the uninitiated, Lollipops are ghastly indoor playgrounds in which vast numbers of the most horrible, pissy, snotty, nasty little children called Sheryleen and Tyrone are corralled while their parents consume really bad coffees in the “café” bit. Everything at Lollipops is made of luridly coloured plastic, including the party food (though I believe that may also include some fat, sugar, food colouring and salt and some more fat.) Needless to say the bacteria and noise levels inside Lollipops are off the World Health Organisation scale. According to their website, they put matching wristbands on to each child and the adult who brings them in, for security reasons. Who would actually want to STEAL one of these little beasts if it didn’t actually belong to them? I would think the more likely problem would be that people would take their children to Lollipops and leave them there. I would if they were mine.

M

Matthew Ridge/Marc Ellis

Grow up and/or go away.

N

Nicky Watson

You are a set of fake breasts. And, no, I don’t want to see them getting pierced.

Overtime, disappearance of.

Has anyone noticed that these days employers expect their staff to arrive at work at the crack of dawn and not leave till ooh, at least midnight. Don’t worry about family life, leisure time, sleep, holidays, weekends or meal breaks, just give us your whole fucking life for totally shit pay you slack-arse. Overtime? What’s that? Work-life balance – hahahahahahahahaha! At least in the “olden days” if you had to work horrendous hours now and then, you got paid for those hours. Now it all just part of “expectations” that you will work round the clock and just get the same pay you would get for working 9-5. Your workplace will inevitably have one particularly annoying person who apparently never leaves their desk EVER and gives you an “Oh look, there they go leaving work after only 12 hours AGAIN,” look every time you leave to go home. But do you notice they don’t actually seem to get any more DONE than anyone else?

P

Paul Holmes

I don’t care if your daughter is a P-dealing thief, that some forgettable totty once gave you her underpants in a restaurant, that you crashed a helicopter (or was it a plane? Or both?), had prostate cancer, married some has-been slapper who told Brass she loves girl-on-girl action, own a big house, drive saddo mid-life crisis sports cars, have a face that is looking more and more like a raisin every day, are “passing on the mantle” of your tedious commercial radio show to that bad-haired twat Mike Hosking, spent lots of money on lunch with Bill Ralston, vow undying love for Joe Karam, once made Dennis O’Connor a bit cross on the telly, that you bottle your own “Paul Holmes” brand of olive oil from your Hawkes Bay “estate” and that you can’t sing or dance. I don’t think you are in the slightest bit interesting. So why is all this Paul Holmes trivia in my head and refusing to leave? And now he has taken up the “P” slot in this list, when there are many other things I could have used starting with P that I hate: Peter Dunne, Princess Diana, parsnips, porn star T-shirts for children, petanque, prime parking spaces at the supermarket reserved for people with babies, pink (the colour), Pink (the singer), prams used by parents as battering rams to shove their way through fellow pedestrians …

Q

“Questions” asked to guest speakers by delegates at conferences that aren’t really questions but are actually statements. And not short statements either. No, they go on and on and on along some long-winded, self-obsessed journey through their personal experiences, opinions, childhood and views on the arguments for or against global warming and the existence of God, while the guest speaker tries to remain politely attentive and everyone else starts muttering “oh for fuck’s sake wind it up” and after about half an hour they come to some sort of “conclusion” which may or may not be an actual question (it’s hard to tell because by then everyone is unconscious) so the guest speaker is forced to ask “and what WAS your question exactly? Could you please repeat it?” at which point they start the whole process again and there is no time left for anyone else to ask any actual real questions.

[DPF – my rule is questions should take no more than 30 seconds and answers 120 seconds]

R

Recycled bands.

Who haven’t made any good records for at least 10 years. But have run out of the money they made when they did make good records. So they get back together. Case study: Guns’n’Roses “comeback” in 2007. No one wants to hear their new songs. Axl Rose is fat. He can’t sing any more. Or dance. The guitarist with the stupid hat and big hair over his face is missing. I dispute that GNR were any good in the first place, but they are even WORSE now. Why bother? Same goes for you, Spice Girls and Crowded House.

S

Self esteem, over-supply of

What is it with everyone under 25 that they think they know everything, and can do anything, even in the face of the most overwhelming evidence to the contrary and their total lack of inexperience in the areas in which they are claiming expertise? It is the result of an insidious trend towards too much bolstering of self-esteem in their formative years. “Of course you can head a one-woman NASA mission to Mars, honey, don’t let the fact that you can’t even drive a car, have no qualifications whatsoever in astrophysics and hold the world record for “not achieveds” in NCEA stop you. You can do anything!” No you fucking can’t.

T

Telephonists with long and overly familiar spiels.

“Hi, thanks for calling CrapCo, you’re speaking with Tracee, how can I he-elp!?” Just stop talking so I can tell you who I want to speak to you moron.

[DPF – just be grateful it is not one of those effing voice mail systems which wants you to say what you want, and then tries and guesses who to put you through to]

U

Upper class English accents, fake

A daft toffy accent would be just about tolerable on, say, the Queen, but when put on by people who come from, say, Hawkes Bay, they are just ridiculous. “Oh, Yaaaahhhhhsss, I was just saying to Gwendoline what a truly splendid garden paaaaaaahhhhhhtay Jemima put on the other daaaaaay daaaaahhhhling, and … Just shut the hell up you stupid trout!

V

Valentines Day.

Don’t get me wrong: I have no problem with romance. It is the lack of spontaneity and gross commercial exploitation of romance that Valentines Day epitomises that I have difficulty with. So it is OK for your partner to cheat, lie, be emotionally unavailable, fart, criticise your weight, never take you out for dinner or buy you any presents, fail to do any of the housework, etc, etc, and be utterly unromantic year-round and then on Valentine’s Day whip out some overpriced red roses and “sexy” lingerie in the wrong size and a teddy bear with “I wuv you” written on its stomach and suddenly you’re supposed to think he is just soooooo sweet and his suggestion that you join him in some “saucy role-playing” is actually a goer?

[DPF – I think someone is projecting]

W

Westgate shopping mall, Lower Hutt

Never before have so many bogans been collected together in one place in the collective pursuit of the purchase of total crap from shitty US-styled chain stores in such an atmosphere of plastic non-ambience that rivals even Lollipops (see L) for sheer horribleness. The Westgate shopping “experience” is truly a living death.

[But the Gold Movie Lounge is cool – they even deliver food and drinks to you as you buzz them]

X

X.

Yes, that’s it, just X. The letter. I can’t think of an annoying think that starts with X. Which is really annoying.

Y

Yachting.

Who led us to believe that yachting is a great spectator sport? It isn’t. Two boats go along on the water, one wins, the other doesn’t. You can’t even tell what is happening, and not can that moustached twat Martin Tasker. “Oh, but the amazing graphics!” you say? But they’re not amazing at all. Actually they are quite crap. And it is NOT the sport of the people. How many people do you actually know who have yachts? Oh, yes all us New Zealanders were virtually raised aboard our own sailboats, could trim a sail as soon as we could walk. Umm, no actually that didn’t happen, did it? As much as I hate rugby, at least you don’t need thousands of dollars to buy a rugby ball and anyone who wanted to could quite feasibly get into it. Not like sailing. We lost anyway. So can the government stop giving rich sailors millions of dollars of our money please? (BTW that doesn’t mean they should give millions of dollars to rich rugby players either).

Z

Can’t think of anything for Z (see also X). Just fuck off and leave me alone.

A wonderful rant for a slow day. More contributions like these are welcome.