SOAPBOX: OLD MAN’s RANT 29 – JUNE 2017
Despite Khrushchev, we flower-power, braless, ‘free-love era’ accidents of the 60 – 70s had the best life could offer, with Juicy Lucy to Pink Floyd rock, original filthy jokes, head hair indistinguishable from pubic, Blue Nun, wondering if Harold Wilson was really a commie or did Lyndon B Johnson do it. White women started going with black men, but not much the other way around, until primitive social media convinced us ‘we’d never go back’.
Now we have fake watches, fake caller IDs, fake emails, fake friends and ‘Fake News’. Endless, inane and repetitive ‘Fakebook’ posts which is worse than fake orgasms. Yes! You pretend agreement to your friends by giving them ‘Likes’, answering yawning post which ask if you can answer or match 5 out of 10 questions or scenarios, so now you are asking yourself how many of the above you’ve experienced. Oh really? Was it Oscar worthy?
The never-never land ‘millennial’ phantasm brats of today are optimistically blind believing we are heading for better things. It is hip to be radical and destructive but blame everyone else. They would rather cull wise foxes or club seals than useless human proliferation which now swamps us. Back in the 60s hippies had ‘love ins’, ‘together ins’ and even ‘wad ins’ whatever that was. One favourite old joke was the guy walks into a library and asks for a list of standard novels which were not available, so a little exasperated snapped at the hippy librarian; ‘What about Dicken’? to which she replied; ‘I don’t know, I’ve never been to one’.
You feel empowered by posting pro Jeremy Corbin like ideology and anything anti Trump all over Facebook because you think you are influential. You believe you are abstractly more intelligent than selfish reality, which you abhor as amoral capitalism? Your attitude is your God given right to impose ‘your’ dogma and indeed sexual appetite on the rest of the world and have a posse of kids who you will condition and whose welfare you fully believe everyone else should support. Fair enough! Maybe you should write a monthly column for a magazine then.
Once you radicals are potty trained into ‘reality’ perhaps you will actually question this constant, perverted media brainwashing, get off your fake moral arses and contribute by parting with your own hard earned dosh to feed this demented ‘I deserve – you owe me’ ‘churn ‘em out’ ideology of equality. What you support contributes nothing back and will eventually drain all resources until we physically eat each other.
Radical ‘ANYTHING’ is a cerebral-cortex sickness more prevalent than Ebola. Just look at the state of some countries today steeped in ideology gone viral. Victims of hunger are fawned over pinning blame on the buoyant. In our first world, victims of heinous crime have no say, no rights, yet perpetrators are heroes and mollycoddled. It is all so ‘Twin Peaks’ like – where he says; ‘The urge to be bad is so overwhelming’.
‘It really is a sin to be white now’. This perverted ideology, bloated and obsessive Political Correctness tries so hard to kill off humour, forcing us into oblivious delusion. It’s like the ‘free world’ is now emulating the Third World for control with apologists and appeasers taking us back. We can no longer make simple puns without fear of media wrath and parrots regurgitating a lynching or receiving heavy fines or jail just for being funny.
Even the dearly loved ‘double entendre’ has been relegated to the; ‘That’s so offensive’ filthy cesspit of unacceptable dalliances, yet TV and films propagate more filth, violence and despicable language. Homosexuality is taught in schools at age 5. Nobody is ‘allowed’ to argue. Thankfully in Bahrain we are still in the 60s PC wise and by default, religion is wholly partisan and indeed racist in so many ways, yet cosmopolitan personified at the same time. Sure, most language puns will go high over the abiya or ghutra, but don’t underestimate the humour! Can you imagine, somewhere in Europe, a Bahraini accidently walking into a multi-racial Lesbian bar called ‘Quality Street’. There in glorious colour is a poster proclaiming ‘Clitoris Allsorts’ and curiosity becomes an urge. A butch Martina Navratidykeski bars him at the door exclaiming; ‘We are lesbians’! In broken English, he’d retort; ‘I am from Bahrain, which part of Lesbainia are you from’?
If you think that bad or risqué, 14th century ideology would have got you headless just for suggesting the world was round, despite Facebook telling us that it could not be flat or cats would push everything off it. Bawdy saucy Chaucer with his ‘Canterbury Tales’certainly pushed buttons and more with his classic double entendre ‘Queynte’ being used throughout. Utterly lost on 21st century society, but then it meant women’s work as well as slang for their genitalia. Who’d have thought? If you say it fast, you see where today’s word comes from.
Oh yes, Charlie Dicken’s would have no doubt parodied his own name had Dicken’s Cider been invented during his time. As it was, who on earth would now dream of calling a character ‘Master Bates’ in a TV series or novel, as he did in Oliver Twist?
OLD MAN’S RANT – BAHRAIN THIS MONTH – JUNE 2016
It was fixed! It was fixed! As everything about Europe is. Soppy, blatantly political, sentimental appeasing agenda, It’s a good job Vlad was busy with his own ego and dumbbells, cruisin’ on his Shetland pony Harley while the ‘Eurovision Song Contest’ (never heard of it) was on or he might have accidently on purpose leaned on the button.
What has the Eurovision Song Contest (never heard of it) got to do with life on earth anyway? God was cruel for what a dank bunch of contestants they were at that. Backstage barking was even heard. Someone tweeted that all the songs sounded like they were written by Cold Play but never mind, cop the ludicrous costumes. The only thing missing for most was a herd of lamas.
Pathetically voting Ukraine the best song when it was anything but, there is a huge petition to have the result annulled. Get a life! Well call it diversity if you want and equality for the less privileged/underdog/afflicted but Reality TV has obviously gone too far as have the oblivious Fabian Reich, Nazi Liberal Europe in general. Constantly kowtowing, appeasing and descending to the lowest common denominator to equalize (except them).
It is official; Australia is now in Europe, not that the song presented by Dami IM (Never heard of her) stood a chance. Only pervs and fur trade votes floated her way due to several tasteless up-skirt shots desperately displayed… um… ostensibly designed to show off the tailoring draped around this Korean singer. Yes, a European Korean from European Australia. We can’t wait for Bangladesh’s entry next year.
More banal than a country and western song where; ‘she ran off with a cowboy and blinded by tears he ran over the kids and the puppy’, the pish Ukraine song might as well have been about the Malaysian 777 that was shot down by Russian separatists – allegedly. Oh – it was? Obama with the Nobel Peace Prize just for breathing and now the Ukraine entry glorified. What a desperate arrogant bunch who rule us.
You never thought it possible but it was worse than Bahrain TV. Whoever directed this Euro garbage needs to learn the art. It ranks Amateur Ville Horror (as does the TV ads for Brussels Air). It was more amateur than CNN’s ludicrous zooms and ridiculous face turns to the camera as they incessantly promote their egomaniac under-par journalism. Not one single zoom-in shot of these ham artists was complementary yet the crowds cheered on and on…. and on. It proves the fodder of this world are firmly in control and now working in media. Martin Österdahl (never heard of him) was the Executive Producer and one can only assume by his name and umlauts that he is not Korean.
Minus the Windsor-knot, but perhaps sporting a jock strap, supposed comedienne (that’s a laugh for a start) and main host Swede Petra Mede Måns Zelmerlöw (never heard of her), oh wait – that’s two people, came out towering over her mousy little friend. Draped in coruscating (never heard of it) painter’s overalls, obviously covering lumpy Kevlar, she looked positively monstrous against her, by comparison wimpy looking co-host. Zelmerlöw apparently won the 2015 epic (never heard of it) with an equally naff attempt to rouse the Y fronts and mummy knickers off us – called ‘Heroes’. “We are the heroes of our time – dancing with demons in our minds”. Roget’s Rhyming dictionary has a lot to answer for.
Mede’s unfunny scripted, cornball, nonsensical, drily lines were read staccato from a crib card she so openly held. Rave revues and the moronic crowd cheered every single syllable and cried along with the Ukrainian winner as she took the stand for the biggest con in television this year.
What a bunch they were; Zaa Sanja Vucic from Serbia actually came on as a Korean dressed as Bat Woman. Bulgaria showed some pleasing looks draped in what appeared to be engine parts from a space ship as she whacked her legs in and out like a good cello player. A jiggy little song too, albeit wholly Turkish – who are NOT in Europe yet!
Jesus from Poland resurrected as Michat Szpak (never heard of him either and don’t try saying his name) literally displayed his tonsils. Choreographed by the Filipino band in the local hotel, he didn’t stand a chance with all that deep and meaningless hand motion obviously learned from the European Highway Code as did most of the other singers, especially ‘Bare’ from Spain. She would have passed her test first time. Mary had a little lamb, she also had a bear, we often saw her lamb, but never saw her bear.
Cyprus’s entry ‘Alter Ego’ by ‘Minus One’ (or was it the other way around) rocked along very nicely, but it was like watching the Muppets mimicking Def Leppard with less hair.
Then Hovi Star of Israel displayed his obsession and leanings as he pointlessly appeared in replica to Adam Lambert. Remember the brilliant Lambert made second place in the 2009 ‘American Idol’ but should have come first. Middle America would not have approved his pillow biting exploits in colour if he had (worse than Paris Hilton), all disclosed a week or two before the final. Fixed – of course! Now if Star had done the same, ‘let’s make everyone gay’ Europe must surely have voted him No.1. What a dilemma for the politics that would have been, so they might just as well ‘stayed home.
OLD MAN’S RANT – BAHRAIN THIS MONTH – MARCH 2016
‘My Facebook password was cracked, now I have to change my birthday’. Duh! Don’t worry, the NSA, GCHQ, the Illuminati and no doubt Daésh will have already stored all your exploits, and rated your ‘intelligence cachet’ which is PC for dumbness. Yahoo is gasping its last breath and as big as it is, Facebook addiction will wane as does all other fads the moment something interestingly new and positively inane comes along. Quite what that might be is anyone’s guess but it won’t be a re-born ‘MySpace’ which actually required individual creativity.
With data bandwidths and speeds begging to get better, perhaps some web-based form of self-made tedious ‘Reality TV’ upload might struggle to emerge; that is if our friendly politicians don’t continue to try and ban everything; which questions the very soul and purpose of a smart-phone in the first place. Maybe those will be banned too and Bahrain will have its own unique identity like Cuba, where cars from the 1950s are the only vehicles and we will be toddling around with an old 1994 Nokia 232 refurbished forever. At risk of thoroughly offending our deluded great friends, nice people and dear colleagues in the broadcast media; let’s face it, in Bahrain we really have such nonexistent broadcast platforms drowned by blind incompetence so what else can we do? Then again, in utter despair there’s nonsensical talk of un-clarified laws being introduced, if not already in place, “Banning the upload of video and audio”. So what, we can still log on to Facebook, Instagram or whatever, but only as voyeurs?
Google + is out as that is the great failure which we are all forced to join but so few ever use. Facebook has overtaken entire lives, but at least you and only you are responsible for exposing yourself on it, whereas Google + exposes your entire life to the world if you don’t disable the automatic upload and share buttons which you had no idea about and which are set to ‘on’ by default. It eats your bandwidth as saucy ‘selfies’, tasteless ‘Whatsapp’ exchanges, kinks and classifieds are Androided to the cloud with you utterly oblivious. Data harvesting in full swing, your profile has been established and depending what pix were posted on Google +, ‘targeted advertising’ pushes you a message offering you an Anne Summers enlargement kit or worse.
‘Behind every successful person there’s a deactivated Facebook account’. Endless regurgitation of the same videos and banners and you get possessive and post; ‘I already posted that last year’, as if you were the intellectual and originator! Inane comments and pictures of your breakfast gets 250 likes, but post a riveting, well-crafted missive about psychopaths in our midst and only your sister gives you a single like. Low self-esteem, depression, even suicide could prevail. ‘Death by Facebook’ will be written into law within the next ten years for sure. Besides, before Social Media, did we ever photograph what we were about to eat, then run around and get the film developed making 2,000 copies and sending the picture off to all your friends? Umm…..no!
Then on a roll with your wit or compassion, like a berk you respond to a friend’s post without reading the previous comments. Sadly 40 other friends just posted exactly the same thing before you. Not to offend, each receives a ‘like’ of course.
‘What kills you makes you stronger’. Ugh? Even amoeba has a voice because some illogical collection of words perceived to be cognitive were posted elsewhere so it must be right, so share it! ‘Wow, all my friends had birthdays this year’. Really, what about next year? Then there’s the deluded brave heart; ‘oo really fancies this geezer’ so posts; ‘I love sniffing ‘iz colon when ‘ee comes in the room, I fink its Brut’ Thankfully millions of animal lover videos make up for the dirge and wealth of bad grammar, spelling and otiose Facebook content which we are all addicted to. To remove yourself from this inanity sees cold turkey-virtual isolation set in. Your assumed importance to life soon nags – so log-on you must. But, as the smarter among us disable our Facebook accounts this targeted advertising will still be pushing new caravan accessories to the trailer park brigade or special offers for Walmart intellectuals and Zuckerberg will still be a godzillionaire .
The ‘who’s been looking at you’ feature has yet to be implemented on Facebook deliberately (Linkedin do it for a fee), otherwise all the virtual perving of your pix would stop. Yes, Facebook can be cruel and lonely too if you have so few friends and Facebook keeps reminding you. Then, when no amount of make-up is going to cut the mustard, as in this wall post from someone called Sharron.
Darren Smith: ‘You look sexy…’
Sharron: ‘Thank you Dad’.
SOAP BOX FOR THE OLD NO. 7 – AUGUST 2015
[As featured in Bahrain This Month August 2015]
Bless buxomly Politically Correct good old U.S. of A which still celebrates experience and allows the very old to keep their jobs until they drop. Veteran radio broadcasters are propped up daily; TV announcers might get cosmetic surgery allowance, unlike the BBC who keep the ancient on for other reasons Jimmy; ask Rolf. Fly any American airline and you’ll be forgiven for thinking (the late) Cayetana Fitz is pushing the trolley. Flying to Kuwait recently, there was a party atmosphere on board as the youngest member of the crew celebrated her 70th birthday. Passengers are taught CPR in case they need to resuscitate the crew and all died happily ever after. Working relics maybe, but it makes us proud!
This column has previously covered the notion that some upstarts in today’s political arena across Britain and Europe wish to intangibly exterminate old people. It is not some organized secret plot to gas us all or anything like (allegedly), but a desire to put us out to pasture in that great abstract concentration camp in the void by removing our vote and critique. ‘The Village of the Damned’ is not a patch on the reality and the older among us are shocked at the controlled, adverse, fascist liberalism which has subliminally besieged nations in the last few decades with none now allowed to question or dare say mock it humorously or otherwise.
Let’s consider all things deemed ‘offensive’ nowadays – cultural stabs unacceptable, Irish jokes no longer kosher; gay jokes criminal. This generation of weirdo Fabians now curtailing society’s freedoms and gagging every utterance have not as yet condemned Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, claiming it offensive to infertile women or impotent men who have no kids, but it is coming. Old folk are still good for a hit, but there really are only two main-stream avenues of humour, one is sexual or crude, the other considered racist. Grandma has no idea what you are talking about when you tell a dirty joke, if you even dare, while Granddad’s still trying to lip read. Young people have a burning question for senior citizens and that is; ‘Do you still do it’? Well go ahead and ask any old couple if they have sexual relations and the most likely response would be; ‘I think we do, but we haven’t heard from them in years, they are probably dead’; like the gist of the question. Feigned pseudo offense is now endemic for the smallest slight. Gladly, Bahrainis couldn’t give a rat’s nipple and tell some crackers. With culture and language entwined, oddly, some large nations appear to be near humourless. Nonetheless, appeasement will win the day and humour will be removed from society. With its rapidly changing façade, one suspects Canada will be the first without realising it, dismissing the notion that Germany has already acquired such sophistication.
These days the ancient among us are confused when pre-emptive apologies spew forth before someone tells a joke. Racist jibe is endemic across cultures but Fabians choose denial. Societies can still legally tell jokes about themselves, but many refute jibes from others because that is considered ‘racist’ never mind the only difference being the post code. Some jibes are hilarious but old codgers over 70 don’t understand. Ask your granddad why he should be very nervous of a white man in prison; he’d just look dumfounded at you. ‘So why’? ‘Well you know for sure he did it! Such sarcasm is still legal but not if the other way around. But then, it wouldn’t be funny would it?
More than half the world is not so liberal and as much as the BBC and their clones have pushed it down our throats so to speak, still older folk don’t refer to homosexuals as being ‘gay’; this hijacked word used in this context is double Dutch to them, so old Joe inadvertently and ‘innocently’ breaks the law by casually introducing his gay friend as being ‘batty’ or a ‘jobby jabber’. Likewise, with so many ‘fashionably outted’ lesbians in parliaments across Europe and Britain and indeed now heading up big industry, sporting a Windsor knot , heaven forbid a Green Party member peddling her way to work and being referred to as a ‘dyke on a bike’. That would surely mean prison, albeit it being said in blissful ignorance.
Still, reminiscing the old now banned Alf Garnett days or ‘It ‘Aint Half Hot Mum’, is all one has really when age cripples, because nothing is ever going to get physically better and utopia pure fantasy – as with sexual prowess. But joke about old age is still legal? A wife asking her husband to be romantic again and to give her those old love bites of ownership she once protested were unsightly; so hubby agrees and goes to the bathroom to get his teeth.
iPhone5 TIMES AND YOUR PHONE IS SWITCHED OFF – REVISITED!
Don’t tell me there is no ‘Illuminati’ (no need to buy the book) and Apple don’t attend those decadent parties of extreme deviance. Wondering about the ‘apple’ symbol, I am now very suspicious of the significance within the society.
Nobody fixed the iPhone5 ‘no network’ issue. The loss of passwords when coming in and out of known wifi haunts. The low battery retention or the heat and the sudden demise altogether after just a month or so. Apple lost their credibility for many over this, but they will get away with it. After all, some iPhone5 models were working ok-ish, depending on the batch. Nobody cared and no main stream media picked up the story of Apple’s woes with it and their silence over the issue. Sending back as many as 8 million faulty devices to Taiwan in May 2013, is a major Toyota size recall, but NO! Not a blink from anywhere. ‘Wait for the IOS7 they say, all will be fixed. Not only 7 but a revamped iPhone5 S. Never mind that most of us forked out over 500 quid for a heap of trash. Let us see what the 64 bit S brings, Or should that be; ‘Let us pray that it is improved’.
I love the iPhone, but maybe Apple or the Chinese tried to be a little too clever. As a comms engineer in my past life, I have a gut feeling that the iPhone5 woes are hardware rather than software. Not that I could open a mobile phone these days and figure out what is going on inside, but the principles have to be the same. GPRS, EDGE, 3G, 4G and so on, all accommodated on the one device. All different waves lengths and many different algorithms to deal with from an antenna reception point of view. Yes it could well have been software, whereby in the switching of wavelength requirements, something was not right. However, and logically, that does not explain why some iPhone5 releases were ok, or seemed to be ok. (People are so fickle. If you call some of those OK phones, you might still get the ‘This phone is switched off’ response and everyone just blames the network).
I got so fed up with my iPhone 5 and my provider Zain, doing nothing about it, simply because they could not, it was out of their hands. Within 6 weeks of owning the phone, it died. It would not charge and the existing charged withered away like a rotting corps. What could Zain do? No replacement other than change your iPhone for another smart phone of a different type. This is exactly what I did. I was advised by my buddies in Zain to go for the Samsung Galaxy S4, which I did. I have had the stunning Dell Streak for a couple of years now, so I know the Android operating system enough to find my way around a bit. I also have an earlier Samsung Galaxy of the small type. Slowly I was getting used to the S4, but more importantly, I NEVER lost a single call with this phone, so please please please all you Zain doubters out there, stop blaming the network for this particular issue – it is the iPhone 5. Not that the network itself is by any means perfect, as we all know it aint for all mobile providers. Viva Bahrain have exactly the same iPhone 5 problems as no doubt do hundreds of other providers around the world. All of which preferred to keep their mouths shut. The marketing departments absolutely shit scared to mention any issues if the other carrier didn’t. Very sad, very sad indeed.
So where was I? Oh yes; I say that I ‘was’ getting used to my S4, when my UK provider EE/T Mobile, decided to give me the new Sony Experia T. There is something about ‘love at first fight’ with it. Fight I did, until I got it working on net, sending data. It required a few reboots to hold the settings, but now all seems tickety-boo and some rather sensible ergonomic advantages over the Samsung S4. Let’s see how I get on with it.
Meantime, I did try to buy an iPhone5 S while in the UK this week (Sept 2013) but that proved difficult and the price was well out of order. All readers of this blog would dearly love to know if the iPhone5 S has been fixed. Post please.
FINALLY FOR THE GEEKS – SEASON 2
As I have said before; calling granny on your phone is very different these days to the good old times of waiting for little mechanical or digital relays to physically connect your calls on hard lines. Nowadays, what the geeks call 4G is not only different-to-air radio frequencies, but a virtual matrix and done by mirrors in the ether and we are nothing but little IP addresses (INTERNET PROTOCOL); which is why you can move a thousand miles away from your roots and still take your old loved and cherished telephone number with you – or indeed change providers/operators – or if they would let you and we had suitable phones, send text messages to a land-line handset or box (which nobody does yet as greedy telecos don’t think there is any money in it).
For sure, scamming has been going on for years and long before the Americans starting getting twitchy with huge telecom switch providers like the Chinese Heuwai , Geggyboy was not waxing so lyrical about it or indeed the caliber of those installing it. Just ask any of the Batelco technical boys on on the platform. They are sick to death of me bleating about this or that. I get shouted down loudly by many in the biz, dispelling my theory that any IP based system can be easily hacked at customer level, but they respond by saying that it is ‘unlikely’ and that I am a bit of donkey not knowing what I am talking about. It is sort of like the default reaction when you hear the name ‘Geg Hopkins’ or you are unfortunate enough to meet me for the first time and have to endure my gesticulating.
All well and good, but my theory is that it is a doddle for the initiated to quickly hack a network. For sure the FBI
33 IS SEXY
The original article has been removed – now updated (Draft 5 – 30th June 2010 )
With number portability about to be unleashed upon the nation of Bahrain, I am busy doing a multi piece on Telecommunications Companies in all their glory – so WAIT!!
Talking about putting the cat among the pigeons, being able to strap your favourite, long time held, number to any of the providers is going to really set off a typhoon of incentives one hopes. Imagine, you have a great ‘3333xxxx’ number, which you don’t want to lose but you don’t happen to like the provider; then simply port your existing number to a competitive carrier. Of course, there has to be a catch coming for sure, nothing in telecoms is done without it being a potential honey trap; like if you want a ’33’ number for example but you are not a Viva subscriber, then we might have to pay big bucks to get one from the original provider – or – will all providers be able to issue any string. Hmmmmm! Deep and meaningless written like that, so read on.
As for the ’33’ thing; this post was all about ‘start-up privilege which as of June 2010, still exists, but if number portability hits Read more