The Grumpy Old Blog

 "𝗜 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗸" and "𝗜 𝗵𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁". Perhaps the most caustic sentence fragments in the English language. Especially when uttered by either conspiracy theorists or the congenitally stupid. Firstly, they never think, as it is not within their general cognitive abilities to be able to do so - their thinking is usually limited to "I saw it on TikTok", "time to eat", "time to sleep", "time to crap". And that's about it. One particular neighbour of mine, with a PhD in Benefit Claiming, has a remarkable ability - for one so unbelievably dense - to make up stuff at a rate that might suggest all the "stuff" in the world is severely endangered.  For example, he always announces when a white car (do take into account there are currently some 4.4million white cars in the UK) passes at the end of the street, "Oh look, I think (there's that magical fragment, "𝗜 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗸") that was 'our Mart...

I think the Green Party needs to stop nagging the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs that "eating five greens a day" might be encouraging cannibalism, and get down to the real nitty-gritty green agenda. The Green Party needs to tell its members about Chat GPT. They will, of course, have to use words such as "mindful", "mindfulness" "demure" and "super" as an adjective/adverb that the ThickTack lump of lard, Jools Lebron, (described an an "internet sensation" and "internet celebrity" - what on earth is that crap all about?) has virally popularised for all the sheep to grab their attention. This is to stress that she is fantastic and deserves being labelled a celebrity sensation so she can avoid actually working for a living. Life on benefits is so much more grim in the USA. Maybe chuck in the odd "ringfenced" and "blue sky thought", and the Green's membership goldfish-like atten...

  I appreciate that with age comes the almost inalienable right to become a grumpy old git who flies off the handle when normality from his childhood transforms into an unnecessary modern-day evil. With last night's 1% Club having run on my second screen while I was graphicising, I am astounded at the number of contestants who "were out" when it came to very simple questions about English and wording. People seem clueless. If this is how they are with questions designed allegedly to "show how their brain works", the future's neither bright nor orange! It's bleak. I cannot understand the term "pre-order", which to me means "ordering before you order", which is total horseshit. Will the soshul influenzas be telling us soon that breaking wind is a "pre-sh*t"? All "pre-order" is, is an effort to disguise the fact that brands want to grab your money into their bank accounts as far ahead of you receiving the goods as the...