Hogwash

No, not another post about all the fake science out there. This is far more important. It’s about whisky.

I have a new one. It’s called Hogwash, it’s from Aldi and at a penny under £15 it’s a cheap malt. Not a single malt, it’s a vatted malt (a blend of malt whiskies). It weighs in at 40% abv, the bottle contains 28 units so it’s easy to reach and even exceed the daily targets set by the NHS. They’ll be delighted to hear I exceed their targets as a matter of routine. I’m dead healthy, so I am.

I’ve been a fan of Monkey Shoulder, another vatted malt, for a long time but that weighs in at nearly £30 a bottle. So it’s a rare treat. Highland Park is an even rarer treat, I usually only get into that level of malts when a supermarket has a special offer on. Tesco had this one going (relatively) cheap.

Hogwash is half the price of Monkey Shoulder but is it only half as good?

No, it’s a very nice whisky. Every bit as good as Monkey Shoulder to me at least. Not as smooth as, say, The Singleton – which has been declared ‘awfy easy drunk’ at many a Smoky-Drinky evening because it’s so smooth you’re plastered before you realise it. Then again, The Singleton is a single malt and a damn fine one at that.

Hogwash is pretty smooth and the colour is on the light side of general whisky colour. I find that a good sign, the darker malt whiskies are more likely to leave me with a head full of sand in the morning. We shall see how that works out tomorrow.

Not that tomorrow matters that much, the weather is set to be cold and wet and struggling to get into double figures (in degrees Celsius, not the old style Fahrenheit still used by primitive cultures). There will be no gardening tomorrow. The weeds will have the freedom to mess up the parts I’ve already cleared and the nettles will need a damn scythe soon. I really should get one.

No publishing work either. I’m taking a few days off between books to catch up on some DVDs and maybe some painting. I have a whole house to decorate!

I hope to soon hear from CreateSpace that the proof copy of ‘Blackjack’ is ready. I proofread online, it’s much faster than waiting for a print proof. Once that’s done it should appear on Amazon in print.

And then, on to the next book in line…

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UPDATE: No hangover, so the depth of colour theory is holding up so far. Then again I only got about a third of the way down the bottle so it wasn’t a serious binge.

Today I have the email from CreateSpace saying Blackjack is ready for final checks. Once I hit ‘approve’ (in about an hour or so) the print version is on the way to Amazon!

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UPDATE2: Sigh. It was never going to be that easy. The online proofing tool shows every page as it is going to look in print. All perfect except one. One. Page 43 wants to print with the entire body of text offset to the right and upwards. Only that page is affected, it’s in the middle of a story and there is nothing at all to suggested why it’s doing that.

So I have reloaded the text with a different file format. Trying again.

I suspect CreateSpace are about to find out just how bloody-mindedly determined I can be…

Rule by thuggery and threat

The Dreadful Arnott and her minions don’t like dissent. Not even a hint of it. Question the Righteous Ones at your peril!

It’s really not too surprising that the Politically Correct and Lifestyle Controllers never have a bad word to say about terrorists. They work in much the same way. Say the wrong thing and they turn on you. They’ll insult you, abuse you, even physically attack you. Try to defend yourself and they’ll claim you’re bullying them.

Oh they haven’t blown up smokers yet, but they’d like to. They did once come up with a computer game where you were a sniper on a rooftop, picking off smokers in the street. They have also encouraged children to snatch cigarettes from people smoking in the street. Really. All officially sanctioned.

Should any smoker dare to respond to these attacks, we are ‘being unreasonable’. They are ‘only trying to help’.

No they aren’t. They are being themselves. Their natural selves. Vicious, spiteful thugs.

They will say ‘smokers want the ‘right’ to smoke anywhere!’

No we don’t. We would quite like the right to smoke in our homes and cars – you know, our own property – but the antismokers don’t want to allow that. We smokers only want to be left alone. We don’t demand every establishment allows us to smoke. We never have. You can have nonsmoking pubs and restaurants, as many as you like. We won’t smoke in them.

Nut we can’t have even one smoking establishment. Not one. We are to be banned from smoking in the grounds of hospitals, in our own cars, and there are moves to ban it in private homes.

So who is being unreasonable? The smokers, who just want to be left alone, or the antismokers who want total control over everyone’s lives at all times?

I know, there are antismokers nudging each other and saying ‘Another bleating smoker’ but it’s not just the smokers.

Vapers are getting the same treatment. Booze is to be restricted and plain-packaged – warning labels will be first. As with smoking. Any non-approved foods (it’s not what you approve of that matters, it’s what your Masters approve for you) are going to be hiked in price soon, and what you can have will be so bland that you won’t feel like eating it.

That, of course, will solve the imaginary ‘obesity epidemic’.

It’s never going to stop. The control freaks will enlist your help to beat up a group they don;t like. They’ll tell you you can get bacterial infections from the residue of something that’s been burned, that you can get cancer from second hand steam, that one daily glass of sherry will make your liver die a slow and agonising death… it’s all lies.

People believe lies. They believe them no matter how ridiculously absurd you make them.

Every lie controls your life just that little bit more. Whether you smoke or not, whether you drink or not,. whether you live on burgers and chips or tofu and hand-knitted yoghourt.

These people do not want to control one group. They want to control everyone. Everyone.

Bit by bit, they’re getting there. Don’t think it can happen? It’s happened before, more than once.

Pass out the overalls, we’re about to become old style communist China. Or North Korea.

It can happen.

It’s happening right now. It’s so blatant that if you can’t see it, there’s only one reason.

You don’t want to.

 

Coffee, yet another New Smoking

I was a bit surprised to see some familiar faces at the funeral today. I thought I’d already been to theirs. Must have dreamt it. Next time I’ll make sure. I’ll take a hammer.

I don’t know if I should keep going to people’s funerals. I bet none of them will come to mine.

The sofa bed arrived. The ad said ‘some assembly required’ so I thought okay, if they get it into the house I can take it to its room bit by bit and assemble it there. Turns out ‘assembly’ means fitting the legs. It arrived in one bit. One big, very heavy bit.

Fortunately CStM was on hand to guide them through the house by the most difficult route possible. I was so proud. They could have taken it round to the greenhouse end and carried it a quarter of the distance with no awkward corners but they’ll never know.

I have the stuff to make an Irish coffee but I’ll make it tomorrow.  With a blend, not a malt. Tonight it’s just plain whisky. Coffee and whisky and a smoke. Everything that’s evil in the world and still my funeral seems far away.

Which is good. I can’t decide whether to be stuffed with popcorn and tobacco and cremated (the popcorn is for the sound effects, and to make sure I get a bigger urn than Cyril Smith) or to be buried with a recording, speaker and proximity sensor that says ‘Fuck off!’ every time someone tries to dance on my grave. Decisions, decisions…

What’s that? Coffee isn’t evil? Oh yes it is and the idiots who wrote it missed a trick. They also seem to have skipped research, editing and proofreading but then they don’t bother with facts so why trouble themselves with any of the minor details?

(Tipped by Smoking Scot via email, incidentally)

The headline is ‘The evils of caffeine‘. Yes, really. The Righteous religion has declared it evil, along with anything else you might enjoy. Not just bad for you, unhealthy, or ‘ooo, no, you shouldn’t do that’. Actually evil.

Satan drinks a lot of caffeine. That’s how he gets so much evil done. Santa gets round the whole world in one night so he must have it as a horse-syringe injection on Christmas Eve. No wonder he has to catch up on sleep for a year.

I suppose that must be the logic, if there is any, behind all this. Good story ideas in there.

The trick they missed:

They also say that caffeine contains components such as Niacin, Magnesium and Potassium, which play a vital role for our health:

It contains niacin? Really? Oh coffeephobes, you missed a good one there. You could have linked it directly to smoking if you knew any actual science. The drones will fall for it – you can trust me on that one, I road tested niacin/vitamin B3 years ago. Probably cost the NHS some money treating vitamin deficiency but what the hell, I’ve paid in for years and haven’t used much. Might as well get my money’s worth.

Aaaand… if the reporter knew at least elementary school science, none of those words are capitalised. But hey, I’ve been doing some editing lately. I’m in picky mode.

Note also the mention that coffee contains magnesium, then the doublethink that says –

Muscle stiffness – caffeine increases the loss of calcium and magnesium, which has a negative impact on muscle tissues, impeding their relaxation mechanism.

Hm. Unless I have espresso or a can of chemical fizz (cheapo versions of Red Bull) I have milk in coffee. That gives me calcium. My habit of gnawing the bones of the dead helps with that too. Oh come on, sucking the marrow out is still the best part of a good chop.

A few paragraphs ago, we were told that coffee contains magnesium and that is one of its benefits. Now it causes magnesium depletion, and all within a few seconds of reading time. That’s faster than the Daily Mail! They would at least wait until the next day before claiming the opposite of what they claimed in the previous article.

Caffeine is an addictive drug, which alters our brain’s natural state and stimulates it in a manner similar to mechanisms employed by cocaine and heroin:

Does this sound at all familiar? Antismokers, in particular. Does the wording sound like something you’ve heard and repeated like an ADHD parrot for many years?

Antismokers who made Starbucks and Costa and every coffee shop smoke-free so you could have them to yourselves. Well folks, you’re banned too. Hear my sympathetic hysterical laugh.

Oh wait, I can’t pass up this one –

Heartburn – caffeine is alkaline, which spurs the stomach to react by dumping more hydrochloric acid as a neuralizer

I think a neuralizer is a Star Trek weapon, something like a tazer. They might have meant neutralizer (neutraliser in proper English) and it’s bollocks anyway. You can’t drink enough to promote that much acid and if you did, neutralising it will not cause heartburn. It will cause nothing. Heartburn is stomach acid leaking up into the oesophagus and that has more to do with a dodgy valve than what you put in there.

Their recommendations do not include putting whisky in your coffee so I will ignore them. They recommend drinking orange juice instead. Oh dear. The Sugar Righteous have banned that too.

Change your diet. Drink orange Juice, or eat fresh fruits in order to nourish your body with vitamin C.

Why does this exclude coffee? Or anything else? You can have more than one thing in your life. You are not a robot. Or… are you?

Coffee is a habit. Replace it with a small glass of fresh pressed orange juice. Have a grain or oats based breakfast (with a low glycemic index). It will keep your brain nourished all morning.

My brain works just fine. CStM has gone to bed and I am in post-dead-friend drinking mood. He is a massive loss to science, to our small group of independent rogue scientists and also a personal loss. If I last as long and get through half of what he got through I’ll call this game a win.

I have had several coffees and am making a big dent in a bottle of whisky. Do these Righteous seriously want my brain to work so much better? Oh that might not turn out as they expect.

But then, what do they expect? They say smoking is bad but then they ban vaping. I like vaping, it’s a great new thing but for me, it won’t stop me lighting up yet. Others have switched to it and some are now antismokers and if you’re reading, well, nobody likes a quitter. You are a failure. You couldn’t handle the real thing.

Vapers who recognise we’re on the same side, welcome. Join the resistance.

If you also like a coffee with your vape then don’t smirk at the smokers.

You’re in there with the antismokers and antivapers.

Now you have to give up coffee too.

Your life… is it worth living?

The Science of the Obvious

Or maybe the ‘oblivious’. It’s New Science. Never let the facts get in the way of a profitable conclusion.

Scientists (and I use the term in the loosest possible sense) have discovered that people like to socialise in pubs. What a pity then, that ‘science’ also declares that drinking is evil and there is ‘no safe level of alcohol’.

The article states its reasons for the decline of pubs…

In recent years, the lure of cheap booze from supermarkets and tougher drink-drive laws have resulted in many becoming restaurants or even closing.

No mention of the smoking ban? No recognition that booze has always been cheaper in supermarkets and even before them, in off-licences? No mention that the tougher drink-drive laws only happened in Scotland? The two reasons they give for the closure of so many pubs are not reasons at all. The one they miss out is the primary reason. Oh, and they don’t allow vaping either, because it ‘looks like smoking’.

Yet Science, that new version of it that doesn’t bother with any actual science, declares we must all go to pubs and be sociable and friendly – but no smoking, no drinking and soon no talking.

The commenters include a few utterly moronic drones who declare that pubs only serve to put out drunks into the community at closing time. Really, they believe that’s all pubs do (or rather did, before they shut down). They must have watched too many zombie apocalypse films and the limited space in their brains has caused a crossover between Dawn of the Dead and Last Orders.

There are, however, an increasing number of comments pointing out the real reason regular pub visitors like me suddenly became non-pub-visitors. The smoking ban. There is some intelligence out there still. Just not in any politician’s head.

I doubt anyone in government will ever manage to make the connection.

Highland Earl

Most supermarket own brand whiskies are dreadful. That’s being kind. Some are so bad you wouldn’t want to use them as toilet cleaner.

Highland Earl is Aldi’s own low-price blend and it’s actually not bad. I’d put it in there with other low price blends like Whyte and MacKay and Famous Grouse (the latter is one they also sell).

Oh it’s not fantastic. It’s not in the same league as their single malts or even the blended malts but it’s drinkable with no additives. No need for ice or lemonade or anything else. It’s perfectly okay as it is.

Lidl’s equivalent is Queen Margot. Don’t touch the three year old one, it’s rough. The eight year old is much better.

Aldi’s Highland Earl is only a three year old but the blend isn’t too harsh. At the price, definitely worth a try.

 

 

This has been a public service announcement (who remembers that, eh?) 🙂

 

More smoke tax

As if there isn’t enough already…

Cancer Research UK (CRUK)  today demanded that the government ‘make the tobacco industry pay for the damage it causes and help reduce the number of people killed by its deadly product’ by slapping a levy of 20 pence on a standard pack of cigarettes.

A deadly product. An entire industry of killing people. Do they want it made illegal? Of course not.

As this fine rant points out (tipped by our visiting librarian), CRUK and their gangster pals don’t ever want tobacco banned. They don’t ever want the number of smokers to reduce to zero. How will they explain cancer and every other illness then? Who will pay for the smoking cessation industry when nobody smokes? They’ll all be out of a job, and their decades of lies will be exposed when nobody smokes and people still die anyway.

Cigarettes are already taxed at 400% of their basic price. And you can’t smoke them anywhere. Yet they are not illegal and nobody is asking for them to be made illegal. They just want tighter and tighter controls. They just want more and more tax, more and more control, and it will never stop because our leaders are gullible, compliant idiots who just do as the bullies direct.

CRUK, ASH and all the rest are shitting themselves over Electrofag. Not because it’s dangerous – it quite obviously isn’t – but because smokers are moving over to it and ignoring the stupid patches, gum and suicide pills that never worked anyway. I have several Electrofags. They are fun gadgets.

I haven’t moved over completely to vaping because I like the real ones. I don’t take Electrofag to work because I’d still have to go outside to use it and if I have to go outside anyway, I’m having a real one.

Sure, the risks are bound to be less with steam than with smoke but the risks of smoke were always way overhyped anyway. The human race grew up in fire and smoke. In caves, in smoky huts and cottages, and until very recently indeed in houses with coal fires. Smoke didn’t kill us off. It was always part of our lives.

In fact it could well be the sudden lack of it that’s causing our recent health problems, but no scientist would dare investigate that. Most can’t even bring themselves to consider the possibility.

So, we now have a whole lobby trying to kill off Electrofag. No surprise. It ‘looks like smoking’ and involves people enjoying themselves which is not allowed. The tobacco industry don’t want this competitor. The antismokers don’t want to let their favourite whipping boys escape. The huge smoking cessation industry could be put out of work! They all want to get rid of Electrofag.

None of them want to get rid of smokers. They all depend on our continued existence.

Really, vapers, you are going to get it a lot worse than smokers ever did. They just like to beat us up once in a while. They want you lot exterminated. We did try to warn you…

We also said right from the start that the tobacco template would be applied to other disapproved-of things. Booze, naturally. It’s a standard Puritan target every time. Food too. You can’t have the good stuff. Eat only a bowl of grain mashed in water once a day and you too will enter Heaven. Probably quite soon.

The Cameroid is now seriously considering a sugar tax. Naturally the tea supply in the House of Commons will have tax-free sugar and MPs will be able to claim the cost of their home sugar on expenses. It’s not for them. It’s for us. As always.

Yet more tax on tobacco. More on booze soon, as sure as night follows day. Tax on sugar and salt. Unless you’re an MP, in which case the taxes everyone else pays will subsidise your rampant excesses. And they wonder why fewer and fewer people bother to vote now.

It’s all built on a house of cards. Fake science, spin, denial of facts and replacement with made-up rubbish that only an MP could be stupid enough to believe. Nobody checks. Nobody calls the bilious morons to account. They just accept the pronouncements that have been made up on the spot to suit a farcical agenda.

I hope I’m still around when this lot falls apart. It always does, every time. This is a very big house of cards and when it comes down it’s going to be worth watching.

It only takes a nudge on the bottom layer.

 

No country for old smokers

The Aberdeen Press and Journal does have a website but they don’t give much for free. A link would be futile.

There is something called the Movember Foundation which relies, for its existence, on ‘male isolation’ being a problem that they must pretend to solve. Like all the other do-nothing do-gooders, actually solving the ‘problem’ would put them all out of a cushy and lucrative job so they aren’t going to solve it. They are going to change it around a lot and in the process, make it worse. Just like all the other problem solvers out there.

Apparently this is a particular issue for men. Some of us can go for a month without speaking to anyone. It’s true. Sometimes we just don’t have anything to talk about. Sometimes we’re just wrapped up in a project and don’t notice the time. Things like, say, militarizing a cockroach army or putting the final touches to that machine that bores into the earth’s crust to create a volcano wherever you want one… things like that require concentration. And let’s be honest, they are not things you generally bring up in idle conversation.

But then, hardly anyone does those kind of things.

There is also the Campaign to End Loneliness who declare that being alone is as bad as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. What about those of us who live alone and also smoke more than 15 cigarettes a day? Oh we must be already dead so there’s no point worrying about us.

I should apparently have high blood pressure. I don’t. I should have depression. I don’t. I should have dementia… okay, we’ll come back to that one.

I should have lung cancer and emphysema and dandruff and leprosy and all the other things smoking causes. I don’t. I don’t cost the NHS money (that’s what all this really hinges on) and I definitely do not want neighbours poking in to say hello just to make sure I haven’t jumped out of the window or tried to gas myself in the electric oven or spontaneously combusted. I have no plans to do those things.

If I did, I’d hardly tell the neighbours. In fact, after three and a half months in this town, I know two people. I knew them before I, or even they, moved here. I have no idea who lives in the other flats in this block and no interest in finding out.

Linking being alone to smoking is interesting. They have, however, missed the real link entirely. The elephant in the ashtray.

It’s true that a lot of old men are now isolated and most of them don’t like it as much as I do. They would much rather have a social group to be with. Not too long ago they would have had no problem with that. This little town had three pubs. It now has none.

None. All the pubs are closed. Sure, it’s a short bus ride to a nearby town with pubs but the buses don’t run very late. If you are in a group and one person is driving, that driver can’t have one pint of beer or they can’t drive back. Few are willing to take that role.

So it’s taxis on the way back. On a State pension? It isn’t likely to happen often, if at all.

Pub closures have hit their limit in this little town. They are all gone. Yes, there is a link between smoking and isolation in older men and it’s because the older men were in a routine where they’d visit the pub a couple of times a week, have a beer or two, a chat with their mates… and a smoke. The Righteous put a stop to that.

Scotland’s winter weather is not pleasant to be out in, most of the time. This winter is quite mild so far but even so, it gets damn chilly out there. It’s much nastier the older you get. The old smokers can’t stand out there smoking so in winter they don’t bother with the pub. Their nonsmoking pals then have nobody to talk to, the pub isn’t interesting so they don’t go either.

It doesn’t take too many winters before the pub isn’t making enough money to stay open.

There is now nowhere for those old men to go. Their gathering places have been killed by the antismokers, the same type of people who now wail in simulated anguish at ‘the problem’ of old men who have nowhere to go. The ones who know best. The Righteous. They caused the problem they are now sapping taxpayer money to ‘solve’.

The pubs won’t reopen. You’d have to be insane to try running a pub in a small town now. The smokers won’t come. Out of town people won’t come because they can’t have one drink and drive home. The young have been indoctrinated into thinking that a sniff of alcohol will make their livers into Swiss cheese so they aren’t a reliable customer base either. The pubs are gone for good.

Even if the smoking ban is repealed, the ‘tax on account’ system for small business means that you will pay double tax on your first year’s income. That is enough to stop pretty much any startup business in its tracks. No, those pubs aren’t coming back.

The old men will have to stick to being alone… in their pub sheds with their mates. At smoky-drinky evenings.

Oh yes. That’s what the Righteous are really scared of. Socialising happening without State oversight. They don’t even know where it’s happening, much less who is talking to who, or about what.

When the Government or any of its agencies is ‘thinking of you’, what they are thinking about is how they can keep you under control.

They don’t think about anything else.

Physician, nag thyself

I had occasion to interact with the NHS again recently. A small cut had turned septic. Normally a case of ‘slap Germolene on it and forget it’ but this one had started burrowing in.

I ignored one of these before, 42 years ago, and still remember it very clearly. It ulcerated, I had weeks of visiting the school nurse to get the dressing changed and I still have quite a deep scar. The stuff I had that time was a topical powder antibiotic called ‘Cicatrin’. It worked really well but apparently they don’t get that any more.

This time I thought I should maybe catch it early before going through all that again. So I phoned the medical mobsters and told them what was up. I told them the cut happened about a week earlier, didn’t hurt, just looked nasty so if they had an appointment for sometime later in the week it would be fine.

However, I used the magic word ‘septic’ and had an appointment within hours. They seemed to think I was going to spontaneously combust or something.

Well, okay, I had time so off I went. The local medical centre is just across the road. I didn’t even have to wait long, which made me a trifle concerned. They don’t see you this fast unless you’re nearly dead and they want you to sign the organ donor forms.

In I went and sat in a chair for The Questioning. ‘When did you cut yourself?’ to which the answer has always been and will always be ‘Which time?’ There are more recent ones than the septic one.

Before taking a look, The Questioning has to pass through its Inquisition phase. Even before the Inquisition, there was an evil look and ‘Oh, you haven’t had the flu jab’.

‘No, I haven’t, and I’m not going to.’

‘Oh go on.’ It was turning into an episode of Father Ted.

Anyway, we got past the flu jab nonsense and I was recorded as a refusal. I would have preferred to have been recorded as a ‘feck off’ but they probably don’t have that option on screen. I should have asked. Being recorded as ‘He shouted ‘feck off’ and threw a cup at me’ would have been wonderful.

The septic cut festered merrily away while all this was happening and yet the urgency of that seemed to have faded somewhat. It was now far more important to determine whether I live the approved lifestyle.

I don’t. Never have and never will.

The doc didn’t get as far as diet. I suspect he was concerned for his blood pressure. The smoking question was badly phrased this time.

‘Do you mind if I ask you if you smoke?’

I replied ‘Yes’ and fell impassive and silent.

There were a few moments of eye blinking and then ‘Er… does that mean you smoke or you mind me asking?’

My cigarette case and lighter were in my shirt pocket. Doctors used to be observant in the old days, but this one required clarification.

‘I like a smoke,’ I said, ‘and I don’t care who knows it’.

I might have gone into full sepsis by this time but The Questioning continued.

‘How many do you smoke a day?’

‘I have no idea.’

‘Well, are we talking one pack, two packs?’

‘I smoke tubed tobacco and rollups. I make them when I want one and never bother counting’.

‘So… an estimate?’ The poor bugger had to put something so I said ‘about 15’ which was the second number to come into my head. I wanted to say 13 just to see the confusion at my sudden precision but felt sorry for the computer slave. Also I wanted this damn septic cut sorted out. I seem to be smoking less now the tension in my life has eased and also because I’m model building and writing again, but actual numbers… no idea. Don’t care.

Then the drinking part of The Questioning. ‘How much?’

‘Oh much less than I used to. I used to have one whisky a day.’

‘Glass?’

‘Bottle‘.

This time the eyes closed tight and there was a fist at the mouth. ‘How much now?’

‘Oh I can go a week with no whisky at all. Just beer.’

A big sigh. ‘How many beers?’

‘Two or three’.

‘A day?’

‘A week’.

There was a shaking of the head and the eyes went wobbly. ‘That’s not possible’.

I couldn’t help grinning. ‘I do it anyway’.

I suspect this is why we didn’t get to diet. Chocolate pop tarts for breakfast would have had me calling an ambulance. And haggis pakora would have had me telling them to hurry up.

Finally we go to the septic cut. That part took minutes. I have some strange gel and huge plasters and it seems to be healing fine now. I shouldn’t have to go back to the doctor about this.

I think the doctor might be even more pleased about that than I am.

The bog wine miscreant is apprehended

A good and bad week. I am on 10-4 shift. I thought that would be okay but it’s terrible. I am too tired in the evening to load eBay, I have to package delicate things I’ve already sold, I can’t arrange couriers for big items because they won’t guarantee to pick up before 9:30 or after 4:30 and I can’t get to their office and back in time for work.

Next week I am back on my normal 3-9 pm shift, thankfully. There is the back end of sod all to do on the day shift. It’s not so bad for Boss, she has all her paperwork. I took a notebook in to write a bit of storyline but nobody believes I’m doing work paperwork.

Not that that matters. Boss isn’t going to fire me unless I hang, draw and quarter a customer (which I won’t rule out entirely). Everything that needs to be done is always done and I’ve done a few things that weren’t really my job but I was bored.

The post office continues to be an eternal irritant in my life. On Tuesday I took the Queen of the Wolves trailer to be posted. All packaged with bubble wrap and foam blocks, a challenge for the parcel-smashing arm of  the postal service. They measured the box. 63 cm long.

Oh no! The limit is 61 cm! As it’s going to a non-EU place they wanted to charge £33 to send it by ParcelFarce. That’s more than I got for it. My only recourse was to carry the damn thing to work and shorten the box by 2 cm. I hope this didn’t affect the integrity of the package but there was no other option. Suitably shortened it went for £5.99 postage.

There is a guy in that post office with the most incredible skill. No matter how happy you are on the way in, he can fill your mind with abject misery just by talking to you. He just exudes gloom. It’s not what he says, it’s just his presence. I try to time it so I get one of the cheery women cashiers instead. They seem to be immune to him.

Tonight I’m packing two more trailers and paying attention to that 61 cm madness this time.

The potential new home is showing signs of progress. If I can get the paperwork sorted I might be moving in a week. There is a lot of paperwork these days. If this one fails I know of two more.

Tomorrow is another early start. Another long and tedious day shift. The weekend sees me back on the evening shift where there is stuff to do.

Today was a day of high drama. The Bog Wine Miscreant has finally been caught. For a long time now, we have been finding empty wine bottles in the toilet bins. Ranging from those little children’s portion ones to full-size litre bottles. Always empty.

Now, the one-glass sized ones I can understand. Someone could swig one down and nobody would know. The litre ones though – if someone drank a litre of wine in a matter of minutes, surely they’d never find their way out of the shop? We’d have CCTV of them bouncing off the shelves.

One of the managers explained it to me. They take the bottle of wine and a litre bottle of, say, apple juice. They pour the apple juice down the toilet, decant the wine into the apple juice bottle, dump the bottle and then go and pay for the ‘apple juice’. Quite a scam.

It’s been going on for a long time so we’ve been checking the bins hourly and if we find a bottle, the store guys go back over the last hour of CCTV to see who picked up wine and then went to the toilets. Someone was repeatedly identified and watched out for at their regular wine-stealing time.

Today the bog wine miscreant was finally caught. In the act. Properly arrested too.

I doubt it will be the end of it. I still suspect kids are involved in the occasional empty small bottles, the cans of gin and tonic and other small stuff. They can’t buy it so they just drink it in the toilets. It might not all be kids – could be anyone. The small fry might be harder to catch since they might be occasional swipers and there could be quite a few of them.

Still, one of the local Master Criminals has now been put out of action. I know, pinching wine one bottle at a time isn’t exactly the crime of the century but it’s pretty much as exciting as it gets in these parts.

The Bog Wine Miscreant is about as close as we’ll ever get to having our own Lex Luthor. I kind of like it that way.

 

Doctoring your mind

I haven’t looked at the Daily Mail much for a while. That’s done me no end of good. Still, too much good can be bad for a man of my age and so I ventured into the Pages of Madness for a browse. It wasn’t long before my new-found hippie calm was shattered into the sharp fragments of the rage of earlier times. I had to re-don the hat for this one.

Dr. Max the Mind Doctor isn’t a psychiatrist. He’s a GP whose remit now includes mind control.

He doesn’t call it that. It’s ‘advice’ or ‘health promotion’ or some such doublespeak nonsense that actually means ‘mind control’. Do as he tells you, believe what he says, live your life as directed. Be compliant, as the subliminal messages around you say…

…and which hardly anyone notices.

I have a very large chunk of that article to play with here. I could rip apart every word but why? Most of the readers of this blog already know it’s all bollocks and those who can’t see that will never see anything beyond the propaganda they soak up like desiccated sponges on a water binge night.

According to a study published yesterday, those who are wealthier, better educated and have children who’ve left home are more likely to drink at harmful levels than any other group. The researchers warned that affluent baby-boomers are ‘sleepwalking’ into ill-health.

So? If they have the money to buy the booze, the kids are all grown up and need no looking after and they are smart enough to know what they are doing, where is the problem?

According to a study published yesterday. As in, a study that has is full of the sort of made-up crap that gets grants re-issued. There is no science any more. There are no scientists left, certainly not in the health field. Only paid propagandists.

I know this only too well. For many years I worked in drugs and alcohol services and I’ve seen countless men and women who appear to have it all: a good job, financial security, a nice car.

If those are all the things they wanted then they do indeed have it all. Again, where is the problem? These people are capable of looking after themselves, they’ve proved it,  and they are paying a hell of a lot of tax for the privilege. Why not take a look at Benefits McChavvybastard and his mates drinking Red Stripe on a park bench all day, every day? Oh, right, that bank clerk isn’t quite so likely to headbutt you into hamburger for asking a dickhead question.

Scientists used to poke dangerous things to see what happened. Now it seems all they do is poke jelly and mushrooms and invent what might have happened. A sad and tragic end to a once noble career option.

Yet, each night, they essentially drug themselves up with booze. It is not uncommon to see middle-class professionals consuming well over 100 units a week — the equivalent of ten bottles of wine — when guidelines say men should drink no more than 21 and women 14.

This is pure prohibitionist talk. I am a lot more sober these days – I now have a reason not to drink myself to death as regular readers will know – but ten bottles of wine a week? Get stuffed. I was putting away seven or eight bottles of whisky a week for years and did not consider myself an alcoholic. And I proved that recently by going nine days with no more alcohol than two half pints of beer while a full whisky bottle sat on the kitchen table for a week. I didn’t even crack the seal.

I’d go a day or two at a time without any booze before that just to check I wasn’t dependent but if my bank manager had known of my whisky expenditure back then he’d have had a contract out on me.

CynaraeStMary spotted the link in Roobeedoo’s post. to an old post of my own. I didn’t spot it myself, it’s under the first GIF image. Not that long ago but I have no memory of writing it. At that time I was on a bottle of whisky a night, sometimes tipping over into a second if I had one available.

And I didn’t die. I didn’t even get sick. I am possibly the only one my age on no medication of any kind at all. Then again, I did write things and then forget…

They sit there convincing themselves that some mean-spirited jobsworth has dreamed up alcohol limits deliberately to spoil their fun. ‘What do they know?’ is their refrain.
Well, what anyone with a brain knows is that alcohol is a poison. And while some people manage to dodge its effects, many, many don’t.

The alcohol limits were entirely made up. That has been openly admitted by the ones who made them up. It’s not even a secret. Yet Dr. Mind Control here insists that those who deny the limits are based on any kind of science at all must be delusional.

Truth is delusion in Dr. Mind Control’s world. Only fabrication offers real truth.

Alcohol is a poison now. There is no safe level. A hint of my whisky breath this time last year would have killed thousands. If only I had known. Still, one glass of a peaty one might be enough to make a drone need nappies next morning. Booze and smoke, together? We are talking Armageddon here!

I see some fun times ahead…