Professional point-missing.

Last day of the janitor job tomorrow. Although I am still considering doing Saturday and Sunday. Not until September though, and it’s not pure altruism. Sure, it would help them if they could offer young applicants the weekend off (except when I’m on a rare holiday) but from my point of view, it would still net me a small income with all the work-time concentrated into two days. The two days least useful to me too – I despise town centres on Saturdays and there isn’t much to interest me on a Sunday either.

Yes, there will be pressure to add on more days but it has occurred to me that if it does get too much, I can just walk away. I don’t really need a reference from this job, in fact it doesn’t have to appear on my CV at all. I have still been self-employed the whole time and always will be until the day I die. Because of the books. I can never be not-self-employed unless I withdraw all the books from sale. Not happening. I plan to add more, not take them down!

I worked my notice because I signed a contract. That matters to me. Too much push though, and I can forget my principles in the interest of not dying of overwork.

One of the reasons I had for dumping the job was the randomness of the shifts. It started out stable but over the last few months it has gone all over the place. I had no idea what my work time was from week to week, sometimes from day to day. Tomorrow – my last shift – has now changed from a 1:30 pm start to 12:30. Talk about ‘not getting it’!

Oh well, it’s the last one. A condition of my possible return will be absolutely fixed times as well as weekend only.

Point-missing is endemic these days. The Mail are experts at it. They have never experienced the sharpness of a point in all the time I have perused that hack-rag. I’m really glad I’ve never paid for a copy.

It’s probably a modern risk-aversion thing. “What do you mean, get the point? Points are sharp. They are dangerous and must be banned”.

So it’s no surprise that the latest ‘exploding Electrofag’ story is, once again, nothing of the kind. It’s yet another exploding battery that was linked to the wrong charger. There used to be regular stories about mobile phones doing this. Exactly the same thing, wrong charger or overcharged or shorted battery and bang. Now it’s ‘exploding Electrofags’ even though none have ever exploded in use. Only when charged with the wrong charger.

Electrofags are supplied with chargers. Most companies will sell you spare ones in case you lose yours. If you have a computer (if you don’t have one, just ignore this blog entirely) you can use a USB charger that is only running at five volts. No need for mains voltage. No need to use cheapo eBay chargers made in China by people who are thousands of miles away when they blow up. The chargers are not that expensive. Get the right one.

If, like me, you have several Electrofags, label the chargers. They aren’t usually labelled and they all look the same, but subtle differences in screw thread and contact placement can lead to the wrong charger shorting out the battery and that can be spectacular – also painful and expensive.

That would have been the real point of the Mail article, if the Mail employed anyone with even the neural capacity of the average mollusc. Instead they evidently employ coral and sea-squirts since those things have an innate fear of anything as sharp as a point.

The Mail also has a long diatribe against diesel engines, which includes this…

While diesel produces lower emissions of three greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide), the report said, it produces larger emissions of ‘nitrogen oxides’ and ‘most importantly, far larger emissions of particulate matter and black smoke’.

These, it transpires, are the ingredients now causing such concern about diesel cars. Nitrogen oxides have been linked to bronchitis and heart disease, the black smoke can exacerbate asthma, while the ultra-fine particles can penetrate deep into the lungs and bloodstream.

In 2012, the World Health Organisation classified diesel fume particulates as a carcinogen, while other research suggests that they can cause brain damage and autism.

All of these things have been blamed on smokers. As Junican has often said, the rise in lung cancers does not correlate with smoking prevalence but with the proliferation of the diesel engine. This does not appear in the article. It is not in the comments. Neither is there any mention of the oil industry funding Doll and Hill received to prove that smoking was the cause of lung cancer. Four hundred years of smoking, a massive rise in lung cancer after the diesel became common, and the conclusion is that smoking causes lung cancer. Even though the original diesel engine had nothing to do with the oil industry. They took control later.

Meanwhile lung cancer increases, it is more prevalent in town than country, smoking is in decline and the Brown Gorgon suckered as many as possible into buying diesel engined vehicles. Yet the conclusion is still that smoking is the main (and in many minds, only) cause of lung cancer.

There was one the other day blaming bladder cancer on smoking. Look, if you are getting bladder problems of any kind as a result of smoking, you are sticking your fags in the wrong hole.

More and more, I find that there are an ever-increasing number of people that you cannot talk sense to. I have given up trying. If they want to believe nonsense then I will give them nonsense to believe.

If it scares them to death, then so be it. They won’t have to worry any more.