I Think I Can See Where You're Going Wrong Read online

  Wouldn’t a more Guardian idea be to go back even further in time and be nice to him as a child?

  Genuine question: How does a Catholic vegan square eating the flesh of Jesus with their dietary requirements?

  I have just about the most politically incorrect hobby it is possible to have. I collect antique and historic weapons and lecture on the subject.

  Ha, you lose. I have a complete collection of Robertson’s Golly badges,* although I don’t lecture on them (or, it has to be said, wear them in public).†

  Actually, I’ve got a couple somewhere from my childhood. At least you don’t get called a ‘baby killer’ for owning a jam badge.

  Re: Is it possible to have Tory ideals and be a good Christian?

  Of course it is – Tony Blair manages it very well.

  The worst lie a parent can tell their child: any fact said with absolute certainty.

  Re: Train etiquette

  What’s to respect in someone who tries to sit in a reserved seat?

  Eco-Living

  There’s plenty of other planets out there for us to ruin after this one. The technology to take us there will be ready in around 40 years. I’m trying to use up as many of the earth’s resources as possible before then.

  Cotton bags can last a lifetime and be passed on to your children and possibly even your grandchildren.

  We have just decided to change our 40th-anniversary present from an exotic trip to a new but much needed, locally made kitchen.

  You can’t recycle a polar bear.‡§

  Humans should improve the quality of their faecal matter by forgoing all drugs, especially hormones, antibiotics and chemotherapy and eat organic foods only, so their stools will make better fertiliser.¶

  As long as you have a house, mains power and a vehicle you cannot be living ethically; ‘slightly less destructively’ is the best you can hope for unless you start living in a tent and foraging.

  Eco-Dying

  I have donated my body to teacher-training universities. Cremation is only adding to global warming.

  Hopefully the Port of Southampton will approve my planned Viking funeral. The ship will be made from recycled wood of course.

  Wouldn’t it be great if our dead bodies were all burned to help heat hospitals or pensioners in their homes?

  If we were to compost humans instead of normal burial or cremation, it would help mitigate the drains on fossil sources of fuel and fertilisers.

  Shopping

  Where can you get decent vegan sandals?

  I say remove Easter eggs and all unnecessary consumer items in a time of ecological crisis.

  Re: Valentine’s Day ethics – how green is your red rose?

  I’m sure the wife will be as pleased as punch with a pair of locally sourced, fully vaccinated goats.

  Re: Ethical shopping app

  What I want to know is: what’s the carbon cost of the development and distribution of this ‘ethical’ app, taking into account the manufacture and distribution of the iPhone?

  I’m unemployed right now but even I can still swing the extra few bob for organic, Fairtrade tea.

  Re: Ethical Easter

  Go to a fine chocolate shop and buy gourmet eggs in a paper box. Fill out the sweetness quota with dried mangoes, pears and apricots. Add a little carrot halwa. Candy some rose petals or violets. Hard-boil eggs and dye them with cabbage. Whatever you make at home, don’t let it be a failed imitation of sickly sweet plasticky stuff. Make it solid, real, genuine. Enjoy the celebration of spring’s arrival.

  Some of us still get milk in reusable glass milk bottles from a milkman – so no waste there.

  What about ethical shoplifting, how’s that doing? Just because I’m too skint to afford food doesn’t mean I don’t have ethics you know.

  Re: Ethical eggs

  I’m chickening out of this debate.

  Eggsactly.

  I’ve had just about an oeuf of these puns …

  But I was only yolking!

  Let’s lay this one to bed right now please.

  No, I want them to capon coming.

  A capon pun? You cock.

  A cock? He needs to find a chick then he’ll have no need to pullet.

  Equality

  I close my eyes when I come to page 3 while reading the Sun … am I helping the cause?

  How would any child understand ‘sexism’ in toys, unless they also understood Freud’s work on gender?

  Re: Gender-specific colours

  Instead of worrying about pink and blue we could start by getting rid of the misandrist|| and sexist lyrics found in nursery rhymes.

  Animal Rights

  If cod really is headed for extinction, I’d be bloody stupid not to eat it while I still can.

  Re: Squirrels

  It is racist to compare reds and greys? Also, any person who advocates trapping and eating squirrels should be dragged behind a bus.

  Feeding 5000 people with two fish and five loaves isn’t really that impressive. Whale sharks can weigh over 20 tonnes, and so getting thousands of decent-sized portions out of them is straightforward. The loaves presumably went into some kind of breadcrumb batter.

  The European eel has been hunted to extinction by the Cockney. Never mind global warming – who will look after the humble eel and its magical life journey, so our children’s children may marvel at its magical magnetic feat? Fyi I can put an eel into a trance. Shame of it is, I can’t find one.

  I sometimes wonder: why will people struggle to preserve orang-utans, but will not struggle to get democracy?

  Re: Ethical animal feed

  As a hobbyist pig finisher,** I used to go around the neighbours seeking out ‘waste’ fruit and veg. Problem was you couldn’t guarantee there was no meat involved, which made it difficult.

  Re: Morrissey’s†† campaign to stop seal-killing in Canada

  People behaving like predators is quite normal and easy to understand. People being a Morrissey fan: now there is something truly beyond comprehension or justification.

  I’m Dreaming of a Right Christmas

  Re: What happens to your Christmas tree once Christmas is over?

  Mine becomes a log pile behind the trampoline and mulch underneath it.

  Re: Recycling Christmas trees

  Quoting from the article, ‘But real trees still appear to be a greener choice than artificial ones’ – glances over at artificial tree, *panics* – ‘which would need to be kept for 10 years to be lower carbon.’ Glances over at 10+-year artificial tree that’s still holding its own, *relaxes again*. Nothing like the roller-coaster ride of being a Guardian reader, eh?

  Christmas trees are a stupid ‘tradition’ and a waste of resources. We’d do better to use the land to grow proper woodlands so we could give biodiversity a chance, while producing a sustainable fuel, construction materials, etc., and have more places for recreation so people could get exercise and fresh air, and reduce their risk of developing heart disease or diabetes.

  Gardening and the Good Life

  Where can we get white eggs nowadays?

  Dulux.

  To save money I set a lettuce on fire till it becomes chard.

  I can’t afford cabbage at the moment. I’m absolutely brassica.

  But does it salsify your appetite?

  With jokes leek this, you are really boiling us.

  Where are these jokes sprouting from?

  Can we all just stop digging?

  Re: Chelsea Flower Show

  I’d give the prize to the garden which had a proper washing line, a swing, and space for kids to run around in. Too many designer gardens look like centrepieces for cemeteries.

  Modern Etiquette

  One day when I was on the London underground the lady next to me started making friendly conversation. This was so unusual and surprising I almost fell off my seat.

  Re: Self-checkouts

  The human cashiers shift your shopping faster than the robots, and presumably they are
getting paid.

  Unexpected Luddite in the bagging area.

  Re: Shopping

  The best tills for speed and efficiency are Aldi’s tills. They have a person who knows the price of everything.

  They may know the price of everything, but I bet they know the value of nothing.

  Re: Self-checkout

  They are a godsend for buying tampons though. The computer doesn’t look disgusted with you as often.

  The only thing worse than checking your phone at the dinner table, save for ethnic cleansing and genocide, is pausing live football to have a smoke.

  If someone is being rude to you – just imagine them naked. It won’t stop them but in many cases it will lighten your mood.

  * Inexplicably racist logo featuring a ‘golliwog’ doll on olden-days jars of marmalades and jams. The past was a strange place.

  † We’re relatively sure the commenter isn’t suggesting he wears them in private either. But you never know.

  ‡ My polar-bear skin rug suggests otherwise.

  § It’s actually panda.

  ¶ This commenter doesn’t half talk some crap.

  || Misandry: sexism against men. If we’re honest, not really all that common.

  ** Arguably the single best opening gambit to a sentence in the history of the written word.

  †† Morrissey- former singer with The Smiths, sporter of quiffs, quips and a bit of an old misery.

  4

  Welcome Robot Overlords: Technology and Its Uses

  New moderators are always surprised by how partisan the Tech section can be. The most obsessive football supporter or the most committed religious zealot has got nothing on your average Apple or Google fan, who thinks his or her particular shiny white bit of bleepy plastic is a substantial improvement on their neighbour’s shiny white bit of bleepy plastic, despite them being fundamentally identical in their shiny white bleepy plasticity, and if you don’t believe them they’ll bloody well tell you why. They rarely come to physical blows, but they have been known to 3D-print* some nastily graphic dioramas.

  Video Games

  I have been known to play Battlefield 4 wearing a tweed flat cap. It does little to improve my performance, but it does make me look rather dashing, like a gentleman soldier.

  I punched a cow in Grand Theft Auto V to see what happened. Games are getting so realistic now I actually felt bad about it when it mooed and rolled over. I’ve never done it since. Poor little cow.

  Re: Airlines relaxing rules about tech use

  Not too comforting to know that the pilot is busy playing Angry Birds.

  Pacman has seen MILLIONS of ghosts devoured for nothing more than some glacé cherries. It’s the crime that everyone knows and NO ONE is doing a thing about!

  Insisting that ‘art games’ aren’t games is pretty much like saying Koyaanisqatsi isn’t a film because it doesn’t have explosions in it.

  Lone gaming is for people who aren’t good enough for Counterstrike.

  I think it’s a little sad to play football on the Wii when there is open space outside on which to play football.

  #socialmedia

  Re: UKIP member suspended over sending racist tweets while drunk

  Never go on Twitter when you are drunk.

  Or racist.

  I’m shortly going to be launching an Anti-Social Media app which will, across any platform, tell everybody else to eff off and mind their own business.

  I think that’s just Twitter, isn’t it?

  Despite having fewer than 10 followers, my father thinks his Twitter account is some sort of international message board. He uses it to advertise second-hand cars. It’s not a lucrative business.

  Re: Do your parents embarrass you on Facebook?

  It’s actually a weight off when they join Facebook and stop emailing you video attachments.

  I have not yet embarrassed my teenage daughter but I reserve the right to do so, with the many ‘cute’ childhood photos I have of her, if she doesn’t tidy her room.

  My children embarrass me on Facebook with their spelling.

  I correct my kids’ spelling on Facebook.

  No one I respect has a Facebook page.

  I’d like to state the incomprehension and fury I feel at seeing hashtags on Facebook. Why?!

  Twitter is just a condensed version of everything awful in popular culture.

  Inspect-a-Gadget

  Re: Using Google Glass†

  Will all the glancing upwards give me a wrinkly forehead?

  Re: Searching for recipes on Google Glass

  Wow! What a milestone in the technological revolution – glasses that will tell you how to make peanut-butter cookies.

  You got a problem with cookies?

  I have, but I’ve set my browser to block them.

  Selecting the best wearable tech is like trying to pick the best communicable STD.

  Re: ‘Smart’ watches

  I’m only getting one when I can use it to speak with my car to discuss how to catch criminals.‡

  Re: ‘Smart’ watches

  I would not pay out three hundred quid for a watch with a plastic strap.

  Re: Apps and gadgets keeping you up to date with news, etc.

  It feels a bit like we are connected to everything except other people.

  Re: Rapper Dr Dre’s§ ‘Beats’ headphones

  As a middle-class man who owns many cardigans, I can’t really get away with wearing the same headphones as Dr Dre.

  I don’t have a phone and I never use the internet.

  So how did you read the Guardian online and post this comment?

  Don’t tell him, Pike!¶

  Re: The price of smartphones

  A cheaper Apple, please?

  You can get them for about 40p in Lidl.

  Re: New machine that allows your computer to make scented bubbles||

  I’ve invented a machine that’ll wash all that annoying soap off your computer before it does any damage. I’m calling it the ‘What Idiot Thought This Was a Great Idea?’ cloth.

  I presume the ultimate goal is to have an iWatch on each wrist, Google Glasses on your head with an iPad strapped to your chest, screen outwards. You can then say ‘I am a ro-bot’ in a silly voice.

  Re: Siri and voice-activated phones

  Before it was possible it seemed amazing. Now it’s possible it’s banal and unremarkable, used for trivial functions of consumption.

  Why pay for headphones when you can play bass-driven music through the speakers on your mobile phone? Preferably on public transport with your feet on seats, with badly fitting clothes from Foot Locker.

  Re: Teachers’ leader advises parents to ‘take iPads off children at bedtime’

  One would hope that a ‘teachers’ leader’ would have actually said, ‘Take iPads from children at bedtime.’ If not, it certainly explains the poor standards of English seen by universities and businesses.

  I got my mum an iPad Mini when she’d broken her foot and couldn’t get upstairs to the office. I don’t think she’s used anything else since! Mind you, her computer needs are essentially ‘check email’ and ‘order Waitrose’.

  How To Be Annoying on the Net

  Sending emoticons to your mum is fine because she’s impressed the internet can do a smiley face. Sending one to a client, regardless of the informal nature of the email, is a crime.

  People sending emails with read receipts should have their computers forcibly removed. If I want to ignore an email that I’ve opened, I will.