The Angry Man Speaks
Tuesday, 19. August 2008, 10:43:27
Post is a bit sweary today. Just felt the need to blow off some steam.
When are the Olympics finished? I used to watch a spot of TV in the mornings to find out what was happening in the world. Now all I get are grinning newscasters banging on about people fitter than me doing extraordinarily boring sporty things in a country that sadistically and systematically oppresses its own people.
"Oh, but lets not spoil the Olympics with all that talk of human suffering - let's focus on the PEACE and the COMING TOGETHER!"
"Fuck you" is my witty retort. You want to quietly shuffle those ugly, unpleasant atrocities/abuses/neglects behind large shiny blue mind-walls, go ahead: you're a complete shit-head for doing so, but that's your choice. But kindly don't expect ME to swallow your simpering, brainless 'let's be friends/the Olympics are the only hope for a divided planet' bullshit at the same time. The Olympics are, and have always been, about the host country waving its gigantic willy for the world to see while making a few bob off the money given by the commission for the enormous redevelopments needed to host it. The sport is incidental, let alone any stupid fucking happy-clappy propoganda we're supposed to be buying into.
And if you're going to screen the Olympics, BBC, why is it at the expense of everything else you are supposed to be doing?! You may give us the weather - along with a jaunty, quirky look at what it's going to be like in Beijing, as if we in the UK tramping to work in the pissing rain really give a shit - but there's precious little else in the way of concrete news. I had to read about South Ossettia Vs Russia ON THE INTERNET, and out of sheer spite it wasn't on your pages. Public charter MY ARSE. If you really took that charter to heart you wouldn't have gone running to Microsoft with big bags of money for your rubbishy iPlayer which users of Linux can't use.
And while I'm on the subject of the iPlayer - it should be stamped out of existence solely for its pathetically desperate Apple-wannabee name. This trend of naming anything with a small 'i' just to appear cool and trendy should be made to die a horrible death, NOW.
Oh, and ITV? Your pathetic attempts to claim the mantle of "Best for the Olympics" this morning is so untrue it's possibly the most absurd comment I've ever heard. The Beeb shows much more of it than you do on a daily basis because you're too busy running phone-in competitions and selling holidays, you fucking corporate puppets. Remember when that nice Irish presenter, Eamon Holmes, quit because you stopped doing proper news stories and started pandering to the celebrity-addicted Murdoch tabloid generation? Because he used to interview people like Nelson Madela and the like, and you were making him discuss who was wearing the best dress at that nice film premiere in that glam LA? That was your wake up call right there.
C4? I gave up on you long ago, right about the time Big Brother started and you decided to serve up your unending test-tube army of quirky 'Yoof' presenters. If it weren't for the above-average news at 7pm and the occasional Simpsons ep that I haven't seen (although it's funny how I keep fucking seeing the ones SKY TV did to death when they first screened them back in the early 90's...) I'd have scrubbed you from my TV's tuner settings right about the turn of the millenium.
WIDGETIZE
kirsten # 19. August 2008, 10:52
Maybe you should just sell your tv and save yourself from letting them get to you and transform you into Angry Man? It will all be over soon enough....although i'm not sure when either...anything sport related usually feels like it's never going to end!
Everything will become even more olympic-obsessed when it's in London (in 2012?)...there will be nothing else on tv then at all I imagine!
GrantTLC # 19. August 2008, 11:24
Originally posted by Kirstycat:
Hmm, you're right. Time to make plans to deal with that, I reckon...
kirsten # 19. August 2008, 11:31
There's no escape from olympic mania i'm afraid
GrantTLC # 19. August 2008, 12:52
(Heh, I know it's a jerk thing to do, picking on spelling errors, but sometimes I can't resist. Sorry!)
But more seriously, I WILL escape Olympic Mania 2012, if I have to kill every human alive in the British Isles to do so. Hang on, didn't the Mayans prophesy an apocalypse round about that time...?
Am I The Chosen One? The harbinger?
kirsten # 19. August 2008, 13:14
I thought that was just the growly hairy kind.
harbinger? what's that?
Vacancy # 19. August 2008, 15:36
GrantTLC # 19. August 2008, 17:24
I can't give you a better definition of harbinger than this wonderful page here can - it even has an option to listen to someone pronouncing it for you!
jdt: It would terrify you to know how long it took me to get that little witticism of yours...
kirsten # 20. August 2008, 08:24
hehe
Miss Kimbers # 20. August 2008, 11:16
Ugh the Olympics! It was cool when it was in Sydney but ever since, it's been bad! Afterall, we did have the best Olympics EVER
I hate it how there's always some 'famous' athlete. In Australia, the famous one is Stephanie Rice. I'm sick of her and the paper making annoying titles for their artiles 'RICE IN CHINA' LAME!! And then they keep calling her the 'beauty of the games' blah blah blah when she's not even good looking!! EVIDENCE: http://www.theage.com.au/ffximage/2008/03/29/StephenieRice470.jpg http://images.b105.com.au/2008/04/09/8750/400x248-LCS-StephRice.jpg
I can't stand beach volleyball. The girls are all 6ft tall and have perfect bodies! It makes me feel short and fat and pale.
The best Olympic athlete ever was the swimmer Peter Van Hoogelvan or whatever his name was from The Netherlands because he has a cool name.
Don't the Olympics also make you feel like an underachiever? Well, the only reason I don't have a medal and not in the olympics is because my parents didn't force me to train everyday with a gun beside my head!
I also don't like the gymnastics. What's with all the girls pulling back their hair SOOO tight that it makes them look like aliens and if they pulled their hair back a bit more their eyes would pop out of their heads and there would be a big mess to clean up! They also wear too many clips in their hair. I only like the gymnastics when they fall off the bars
Well, there you go. That's my olympic wrap up.
Did you ever watch 'Teachers'? I think it was on channel 4, which might be c4/.
GrantTLC # 20. August 2008, 11:39
Originally posted by kim:
Stephanie Rice isn't that attractive, no. She has a big nose and smiles like Gromit from 'Wallace and' fame.
...
Newspapers and assorted Televised media all SUCK. They do exactly the same thing over here, pic a name (from a hat, I imagine) and then talk about that person incessantly, hoping you'll get excited about them too BY SHEER FORCE OF REPETITION. This time around we've got to put up with our athletes collectively being called 'Team GB' which is just vomit-inducing. It makes me think they all punch the air in a big ring, going "Yeaaaaaah! We're GREAT! We're BRITISH! We're...TEAM GB!!!!".
What the hell happened to Dignity, that's what I want to know.
No, the Olympics don't make me feel like an underachiever. They make me feel smug for developing my big beautiful brain instead of repetitively, painstakingly working my body into being able to run along a track a bit quicker than most people can do it normally. Oooh, here, have a shiny bit of medal on a colourful ribbon for your trouble!
I didn't watch Teachers. I judged it to be one of those horrible shows for 'thirty-somethings', you know, the ones that try and make 30-somethings feel better about themselves by suggesting their lives aren't quite over yet (or dominated by the 3 M's - Money, Marriage and Mortgages) and yes they can still muck about with women and party like they did as a teen. Did you watch it? Was it actually good? If so I may not be so averse to it if it ever returns.
Vacancy # 20. August 2008, 12:31
That said, you guys have it easy. Any guesses as to who our local hero is? No?
Michael (half fish DNA) Phelps.
aaaaaarrrrrrrggggggggghhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!
GrantTLC # 20. August 2008, 12:39
Nowhere that's where. Because TV always always always defaults to rigid, lowest-common denominator thinking, too busy telling you what it thinks you want to hear, spinning yarns with more drama and 'personal engagement', than simply reporting what's there. This is partly why I've mostly given up on TV - how can you respect a medium that treats individuality and intelligent thought as something that happens to other (possibly suspicious) people?
kirsten # 20. August 2008, 16:21
Leave Stephanie Rice alone! (whoever she is!) There's nothing wrong with her nose! She looks fine to me! I certainly wouldn't mind having a body like hers!
This has nothing to do with what you were talking about, but I have stopped buying magazines now, because they talk about nothing but superficial appearances...clothes, make up, hair, dieting...none of which really matters and is only temporary anyway.
Maybe i'm just getting old
I am happy just to admire these people with their super-human, super-fit bodies, and just accept that mine is never going to be like that! As long as everything works then that's all that matters
Miss Kimbers # 21. August 2008, 10:32
Kirsten is correct. Teachers is really funny. There was one episode where they did a whole lot of marking and then threw it over a bridge into a river.
Kirtsen- I love recipe magazines! They're so great. I watched a segment on a show about hmm what was it called? Well, about the people who prepare the food for when they take photos of it for books and magazines. It's a really cool job. When they're taking pics of icecream, it's really an icing sugar mixture, because it doesn't melt. To make glasses look frosty and cold, they spray some chemical onto them. When they take photos of soup, there are marbles in the bottom, which makes the shunky bits in the soup come to the top.
Well, the main news in Australia now is how we're not good at sport anymore because TEAM GB has mroe GOLDS! Oh dear....
Odessa # 21. August 2008, 11:43
Hi Galadriel
After the 1976 Olympics where Australia finsihed 32 in the medal table with 0 Gold 1 Silver and 4 Bronze (5 in total) your country made huge radical changes which resulted in huge success in further years, I think Team GB is just boucning back from decades of underperforming and now finishing second, third or forth is just not good enough!
GrantTLC # 21. August 2008, 11:47
Goldbug: Who's Gabriel? You falling for angels now?
Kimbers: I'm sure your nose is very pretty, and isn't anywhere near big enough to replace the one that fell off the sphinx.
Odessa # 21. August 2008, 14:02
Odessa # 21. August 2008, 16:41