Yes, the one in this pic was a woman. She arrived this morning as I had just managed to get around her bloody car, so she got a mouthful this morning. Her "I ran out of petrol" excuse didn't cut any ice, as I pointed out the myriad of other parking spaces, including on the street:
"But I might get a ticket"
Me: "So? Is you getting a ticket more important than blocking my car in for 36 hours? No, it isn't, and there are a hundred other spaces within 300 yards you could have used. At the very least you could have left a note or a phone number so I could have got you to move it when I needed to get out. There is no excuse for being so utterly inconsiderate"
I had to leave it in the end. I was spitting fire, late for work, and if she'd protested any more I'd have probably have lost my temper. She already knew I was fuming and I suspect I would have made her cry if I'd have carried on. The fact that I was so obviously struggling to stay calm (while clearly being monster pissed off at her) was unsettling her.
Stupid bitch.
And to top it all off, some other silly cow was parked there today when I got home from work. Just in front of my space, but not actually in it. So I just sat behind it for about 5 minutes with my hand on the horn. I didn't have it on constantly (having learnt from Tin Corner blowing his Saab horn to pieces by using it to vent his temper for about 45 seconds, once), but pretty much kept up a little concerto until some woman with a baby came out to move it -
"My friend that I was visiting said to just park anywhere"
Me: "Well your friend is bloody rude then".
She was profusely apologetic, and I didn't feel it was fair to hit her with both barrels borne of the frustration of the last two nights, so I just told her to shift it and got in the car. It would have upset the baby, too. I reckon she borrowed it so I wouldn't twat her, or something...
(That was a joke, by the way. There was a baby seat in the car, I checked. No note with a phone number or flat number, but there you go. That's inconsiderate tossers for you).
I woke up this morning to find some stupid twat parked randomly behind my car. This evening, it was still there.
It was a reasonable ball ache to get past it this morning, a good couple of shuffles were required. This was not aided by the angle of the slope I park on putting the car completely in the blind spot behind the boot - handy). The positioning and size of my space means I have to park right up close to the wall to make sure that my door doesn't clash with the girl's next to me (Oh alright. It's so she doesn't twat my car getting her fat arse in and out. Ok? I fessed up!)
Either way, if my next-parked neighbour had been in, I'd have been totally screwed. No way would I have been able to get the swing on the front of the car to get out of the space. Not a hope in crap, especially without being able to see the car I was trying not to hit (only because it would damage mine, I don't care about their's).
So I have now asked in all the flats whose car it is, and I am none the wiser. No-one seems to know. Consequently, I have left a reasonably polite but non-ambiguous note on the car about moving the damn thing, but am now stuck. Being as I can see it out of the window all the time, it is starting to wind me the fuck up, to say the least. I'm pretty sure it will be there in the morning- I can just feel it- and if my next door neighbour hasn't gone to work, neither will I be. I will then be an unhappy bunny, because it will be costing me money, being paid by the hour. But because I am stubborn, I am fucked if I am not parking in my own space so I can guarantee getting out in the morning. Either way, it's irrelevant, cos my neighbour is back so I am there to stay now.
I have decided that that will be the time that I take it into my own hands. If I still had my Granada or my Senator it would be simple, as I'd probably just give it a bootfull and drive into it and shunt it out of the way. And no, for those that don't know me, I am very much not joking. Done it before, would happily do it again. It transpires that the car has been there since last night, and there is no note on/in it with a phone number to get it moved if there is an issue. No consideration by them = no consideration for them. That's the way I've always looked at things. This is one of the times I regret upgrading to a shiny car that I care about. Pieces of crap just made life so much easier in these situations. I could also have then thrown a rope around it and dragged it out into the road and left it there. I very nearly did that tonight anyway, but being as I daren't risk damaging my car and the front wheels on the other are slightly on lock, I reckon it would just twat into the bins and block the entrance even more. I'm not sure even my car could drag it against the handbrake and sideways out of a car park.
Although I did have a chat with my neighbour, and he has a fernerking great BMW X5 (big 4wd) so I may collar him and get him to help. He is plenty pissed off with people parking in his spaces, so I may be able to transfer some of that annoyance to my own advantage.
The simplest solution is to pop the lock, let the handbrake off, and move the bins to jam it right up against the fence so I can get around it. This is the most likely occurence tomorrow morning. This would be wholely unsatisfying, though, as I would dearly love to smash the fucking thing up or something. Inconsiderate twat.
Fuck, I am so annoyed. And the fact that the car is a Citreon (ie french) is not helping one.....little.....bit. Not one.
I mean. What the hell is this all about? This is not an iTunes rant, this is an "All software written with language options, particularly the american ones" rant. Why do american software designers feel the need to add the country of origin in situations like this?
"English (United States)"
What? I mean, I can understand if there was proper English on there too - it allows people like me to avoid having to tolerate stupid fucking spelling and words with half the fucking letters missed out ('favorite' and 'color' spring to mind), but when it is the only option? Surely it's just 'English'. Or are people from the united states so stupid that unless you tell them what country they are from, they don't know what their language is called?
But that is a minor niggle compared to what I find really mind-fucking-bendingly pointless:
French (France) German (Germany) Italian (Italy)
Why the fuck does 'French' need the clarification "France" after it? What the fuck? For a start, if someone who speaks french is looking for a language option to allow them to use the software properly, then call it "Francais". After all, that's its fucking name! Every french person looking at that list would need to know what their language is in English to know which one was their language! And surely "German" wouldn't need to be clarified by adding "Germany" after it if it was displayed as "Deutsch", would it? No! Because it would then make sense to them. What with being written in Deutsch and all that. Fucking retards.
Is it just me, or is that astronomically fucking dumb? Just use the proper bloody names!
Why does the language list have to be written in English? Why do English people need to understand what the other languages are to be on that list? Why? Why isn't the list of the languages in their own form? i.e., Deutsch/Francais/Italiano etc.. If you don't understand that much, then chances are it ain't the bloody language for you, is it?
What possible explanation is there for this ridiculous habit? It is everywhere, and it drives me mad. I find it irritating enough that we have our own language names for perfectly pronounceable places - Why the french call London "Londres" is beyond me, but we're no better because we don't use "Roma" (Rome) or "Firenza" (Florence) even though they fit perfectly well with our own language and pronunciation. I can understand doing it in Welsh, Chinese, Russian and the other more obscurely spelt languages or those with different alphabets, but to change the name of the language itself is just utterly pointless.
Just had a call from Julio. He is really the most random and disorganized person I know (he makes Salpark look like Aston, for those for whom that means something, but they are of an ilk). Imagine someone who is instantly and constantly distracted by things and who lives on their own (and so has no calming voice of reason or focus). He oscillates between being momentarily tidy and then large periods of utterly not tidy. The first time we were at his flat in Newcastle, he warned us that it was "a bit messy".
I have honestly never seen anything like it in my life. It wasn't that it was just messy, it was far further than that. It was actually inconveniently messy. How can someone live like that? 12 inches inside the door was a chandelier style light fitting that had fallen off the ceiling a month before that he had been stepping around ever since - "Oh, I've been meaning to move that". Next to that there was a pile of overnight style bags (about 4 of them) where he had been away for weekends, dropping them just inside the door to sort out later. He obviously never had time, so he just got a different bag next time he needed to go away... Amazing. The rest of the flat was strewn with various clothes, boxes, equipment and other detritus. You couldn't even tell if his office was carpeted, never mind ascertain its colour, there was so much paper on it. He also, and I do not on any way exaggerate here, had the most perfect 'messy kitchen'. Every single cupboard was empty, because the contents was all piled up on the side needing washing. He just washed the nearest pot to the sink when he needed to use them, and just cleared a space to cook in.
Minging. He cleaned the bits he needed to use and all that - with a nod at hygiene - but afterwards just left it all stacked until there was hardly a gap between the plates and the underside of the cupboard. Awesome. In the wrong way, but awesome nonetheless.
He clearly hasn't got much better, although he is trying. Here is a snippet of the phone conversation:
Me: So is your house still a shit-pit since you moved in all those months ago.
Julio: No! I actually did a load of tidying up the other day. I spent six hours washing up all the plates and stuff off the floor in the lounge...
(I crack up laughing at this point)
"What's so funny about that? I was cleaning up, for fucks sake!"
It's just that not only did you have enough dirty shit lying around to need six hours to clean it all up, but it's that this was just the stuff in the lounge!
"Hmmm. When you put it like that it does sound a bit bad. The entire of the floor between the sofa and the TV was full of plates and cups and that. It had even started to spread along the hall toward the kitchen...
(laughing) How do you live like that? It'd piss me off something chronic. Towards the kitchen? It's two yards, you lazy twat!
"I know. It is a bit embarrassing should anyone come round. I'd hate for anyone I know to see it like that, that's why I cleaned it up. I even try and shut the door behind me when delivery blokes come to the door. They give me funny looks if they see it
But it's all clear now?
"Yeah. It's nice being able to do some work sat on the sofa and spread my paperwork out on the floor.
..without getting mouldy food all over it...
(laughing)"...yeah, with yoghurt smears sticking the pages together and furry bits on the corners of the pages.
This may turn out to be something entertaining.
Or it may fall flat on it's arse like a duck on an ice rink. It could become a window into my soul, I suppose. Although I don't really subscribe to all that hippy crap, so I doubt it.
Born 200 years ago after a freak pairing between a wasp and a particularly bad cold, the ethereal embryo that became Brock wandered through people’s consciences gradually becoming more cynical and unhinged until his current physical form was discovered behind a bin at the back of McDonald’s a year and a half ago.
His computer experience was gained whilst being repeatedly hit around the head with a Sinclair ZX81 at the age of 13, and from standing outside PC World waiting for a bus for an hour.
