MarkW

To This. I'm sometimes a bit envious of the religious. I think it must be wonderful to genuinely believe that you've helped someone by praying for them, when actually you've done f*ck all. Yup - via cats, dogs, reptiles, taxidermy, amateur hairdressing, haemorrhoids and anal probes. Mustn't leave them out!

I'm sometimes a bit envious of the religious. I think it must be wonderful to genuinely believe that you've helped someone by praying for them, when actually you've done f*ck all.

People who interact with their pet as though it was human and claim that it understands them better than a person could are not only socially maladjusted but also deluded. It's no different to people who claim to have a meaningful relationship with God when all they are doing is talking to themselves.

I have haemorrhoids. I couldve guessed it would be something anal

I have haemorrhoids.

Have you been on the pipe or something?

I think he should be tagged in every post on this thread from now on as punishment I was wondering if there way a way to automate this.....

Management speak is the refuge of those who lack either the wit or the wisdom to do their job properly, and who try to disguise the fact by hiding behind bogus bullshit. The good news is that you can have endless fun with these people. Years ago, I was the General Manager of the UK branch of a multinational company and had to endure hours of tedious meetings with the other country managers and heads of marketing. Every meeting was a complete shit-shower of meaningless management speak that left you wanting to induce a bottom-up paradigm shift by giving them a swift kick in the low-hanging fruit. The only way I could cope with it was to feed some of these bozos meaningless phrases at the smaller local meetings and then sit there sniggering when they regurgitated them at the international gatherings. Some of the better ones were: We need to get this hamster back on the wheel. We really need to burst the lemming. This problem looks like a bit of an octopus: let's each grab a tentacle. We're so close to the elephant all we can see is grey. I also have to admit that in one especially tedious meeting with the head of marketing (who wasn't a particularly good English speaker) I amused myself by proposing 'Fist' and 'Twat' as the names for two new products. He wrote them down enthusiastically and I thought no more about it, imagining that someone at Head Office would kill it off. They actually got as far as having the draft labels mocked up by their designer before I had to step in.

'Moving forwards' or the equally inane 'going forward'. I must have seen it a dozen times in the meeting minutes I'm reading. 'Moving forwards, it was decided that we will...'. Not only is it extremely irritating, but since time only moves in one direction is is also entirely redundant.

How about a bad cat taxidermy thread?

Years ago, when I showed no interest whatsoever in other peoples kids they'd say "It'll be different when you have your own". But it isn't: I'm interested in my kids, have zero interest in anyone else's, and do them the courtesy of assuming they are similarly well-adjusted and so don't show them mine. Drum kits, on the other hand... wanna see my Premier Genista that used to belong to Jack Bruce's session drummer?

Too true. I came back from France late one night and every route north from Folkestone had night closures. In the end I had to go round the M25 the 'wrong' way, to Birmingham via the M40, to Manchester on the A34 and then on to Preston and cross-country to Harrogate. Absolute bloody nightmare.

There's nothing wrong with those cats - it's their owners that need neutering.

A friend of mine was once plagued by work colleagues showing him photos of their kids, and asked me what he could say to stop them doing it. I said "Nom nom nom" ought to do the trick.

I know - it drives you doolally, particularly because if you fail to make the right appreciative noises they skulk off with a dismissive "You clearly don't understand". Well cat-lover, the fault here is actually yours, not mine: I love my kids more than anything and think they're both utterly adorable, but I have the social sophistication to realise that nobody else gives a toss, and consequently I don't bore the shite out of them by showing them endless sodding photos.

It's not that I hate people, it's just that I'm usually happier when they're not around. The problem with the more demented animal lovers is that they require a surrogate for the human interaction and believe that their pets provide it. And have you seen some of them? They look like the pictures on those news stories that end with the words "...before turning the gun on himself." Nobody deserves to die for pissing me off - not even that unflushable turd Nigel Farage - but a thread listing the people who get on my nerves would almost certainly break the internet. Lots of people tell me that, and I have no idea what they mean. I'm in danger of developing a complex, from where it'll only be a small step to flopping on the sofa when I get home and asking the cat what kind of day it's had. Hmm... definitely worth considering for dealing with the pestilence of proselytizing loonies the church sends round. Mind you, I seem to have been black-listed after I provided an elderly woman from the church at the end of the road with my own interpretation of what Jesus meant when he said "Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth."

I used to go out there quite a bit with work, and every time I did I swore I'd never complain about British roads again.

Me too: the 4 hours between Harrogate and Folkestone are by far the worst of every European trip I do.

Yup: My first comment was just light-hearted (hence the laughing face), but then Mr Happy turned up with his f*cking laughometer and Vulcan grasp of humour and I found myself having to justify something that clearly wasn't supposed to be taken seriously. I imagine he'll be along again in a minute to pronounce on my haughty contempt for Trump supporters in the 'Over-used words' thread...

Ah, but 'bugs' is only incorrect when applied to insects in general: it is the correct common name for the order Hemiptera, which includes aphids, leafhoppers and shield bugs. All (true) bugs are bugs, but not all bugs are (true) bugs. Try explaining that to someone in a MAGA hat...

I don't know how he summons up the enthusiasm to get out of bed every morning to write the retarded drivel they print. He's a really bright guy and was inspired to become a journalist by All The Presidents Men, and then went on to work for a newspaper that in journalistic terms is on a par with The Beano. The crime reporting is hilariously bad - "Pals say "We always knew he was a wrong 'un"" - that's pretty much the level of it.

That's just called poor socialisation training. Dallas is trained so she won't charge into you as soon as the door opens and jumping up is a huge no-no . All things taught from day one of her being with me. One of the worst offenders for the behaviour I described above was from the huge Dogue de Bordeaux belonging to one of my friends. To be fair though, as he's a journalist for the Daily Star it was just as likely to be him doing it as the dog...

Oh I completely understand why people love their pets; my issue is with people who can't understand why I don't love them. If I greeted visitors to my house by leaping on them stark naked, clawing at their clothes whilst slobbering and rubbing my dick all over them they'd probably have something to say about it. But fail to show unbridled joy when their dog does it to you and you're instantly a pariah. Then there's the overwhelming urge to vomit into the aspidistra as you watch them kiss their dog on the nose or let it lick their face. And God help you if you've got young kids and ever move to intercept one of the bloody things as it comes barrelling towards you. I recently saw a toddler and his parents absolutely terrified in our local park as a huge dog came hurtling at them. The father instinctively stuck his foot out to try to fend it off, at which point the owner (who was under the common delusion that "It's OK - he's friendly" makes it all alright) went completely mental, accusing him of animal cruelty despite the fact that his dog clearly ran into the guy's foot rather than it having been kicked. He turned to me for support, and got none whatsoever. Plus around here there's also the twice-daily delight of the turd-strewn walk to school with the kids, the relentless yapping or barking at anything and everything all hours of the day and night, the pissing up the side of my car... And then there are cat lovers. Not the normal people who just happen to have a cat (in my case because I think it's good for kids to learn how to look after a pet) but the socially maladjusted who talk to the bloody things as though they can understand (hint: they can't - it just makes you look deranged) or who bore the shite out of you with interminably tedious stories about their antics, or show you endless photographs of the sodding things the same way new parents show pictures of their babies. And then there's that special moment when you discover that the person whose house you've been eating at for years lets the cat sit on the kitchen work surface, which is fine apparently, because Mr f*cking Snuggles or whatever the bloody thing is called is 'one of the family'. Pets can obviously be good company for the elderly, but for anyone who is not elderly and who thinks that the relationship they have with their pet is a suitable and sufficient surrogate for human interaction, I'm sorry, but the problem is with you, not with the rest of us. And as for horses... Jesus! One of our senior managers has a riding stables, and regularly regales me with anecdotes about how intelligent they are. They're not. Horses are f*cking stupid. They've produced nothing in the way of literature, and such art as they have produced (when encouraged so to do by their demented owners) would be considered simplistic and excremental even by Cy Twombly's low standards. On the other hand, having eaten them a few times I can attest to their being quite tasty.

Back when I was on Facebook I had a childless vegetarian 'friend' who referred to her rabbits as her children. When one of the festering things died she went on and on about how heartbroken she was, and posted a long emotional post asking for advice on coping with her loss. I posted a recipe for rabbit stew, which precipitated an immediate 'unfriending'.