Pedants, grammar bullies and people who can't write but know how to use commas

Grammar bullies annoy me when it's unnecessary. For example, take the case of a missing hyphen. “Fourth largest management company in the world”, was how it was written. “Fourth-largest management company in the world” was the amendment. I think this is unnecessary pedantry.

In context, how much difference could adding a hyphen make? Fourth largest management company means that the company is the fourth in the world according to size. Fourth-largest management company means… oh… that the company is the fourth in the world according to size. I agree, when it makes sense to do so, insert all kinds of grammatical devices. But don't get hung up on it or criticise people on Facebook all the time for it!

GRRRRRRRRRRR.

Here’s some punctuation for all you grammar bullies out there: “F*!? >:;!”
(Sorry, you can’t publish like that, you never put a colon directly after a demi-semi triangulation bracket thing).

S-----------!

S----s!!!!!!!


There are way too many of them. I did a google search, yes, I know, narcissistic. But anyway there are loads! In Spain and Portugal, S----s are male. In England, there are many young S-----named people. I think I am the oldest S----imoney in England. Anyway. I set up a blog for people called S----. So if you are called S----, or know any (it must be spelled exactly so, no variants or deviants allowed). Here is my myspace account. It's very empty so please join as my friends so I can pretend that S-----s are popular.

And while I am on the subject,

What does the government think it is doing with all these ID cards? What a wonderful waste of public money it is - given that we're not going to have our pictures on it!

What is the point of that? In every European country, all they need is a picture ID. In the UK, no, we must have retina photographs and nose hair holograms and fingerprint proof that we are not osama bin laden in drag. Get frigging real!

How will the government conduct Iris or Retina pictures on people with sight problems? We already know that airlines have no compunction about discriminating against the millions of people with disabilities, so under these new "give us all your details" regulations they are proposing for ID cards, are partially-sighted people going to have to endure some embarrassing and humilating experience? I've already read about a wheelchair user who was forced off a flight because the airline were a bunch of total arse-wipes. Shit Airlines run by monkeys

Will the government ban partially sighted people from travelling because they don't have what the government thinks is a proper "identity" based on their retina or iris scan? I am so cheesed off.

On yet another note, I am upset they are sending Harry to war in some blatant press-hungry justification for this ridiculous and illegal war. I am upset because:

a) He's cute
b) I think he should be the next king. Charles is a muppet and William's nice but too soft. Harry would be a brilliant breath of fresh air.
c) At least don't waste our resources by giving him an SAS bodyguard while many of our soldiers dont even have protective helmets, bullet-proof vests or live ammunition.

But I do suspect maybe the "dark forces of which we have no knowledge" that the Queen once reportedly claimed is behind this one - if Harry aint Charlie's boy, are they going to bump him off like they did to Diana? Is this some David and Uriah-like way of getting rid of what could be an upset to the Royal Family? Are we going to read about a heroic death for our ginger-haired prince? Will Al Fayed start murmuring about the "duke of Fuggin' Edinburgh" and the disappearance of our Spare Heir?

Or is this a catholic conspiracy? The last time we had a ginger haired King and Queen was Henry VIII and his daughter Elizabeth I - both staunch protestants who hated the French. Is the Pope behind a consipiracy with the French to kill Harry in retribution for Calais?

What is the point?

By this, I don't mean an existentialist outlook on life, or that I have unanswerable questions for the crystals to answer through positive energy.

I simply mean, why bother? Why go anywhere? Why use transport? Why not walk, or take a horse? Or just stop buying necessities so you can spend the rest on cash fares. Come to think of it, stop buying things with credit cards. Screw the internet. Damn Amazon (for the lawyers, I don't mean Damn Amazon). Cock a snook at eBay (note to Lawyers: this is just a joke). No it isn't. (lawyers - it is a joke). There is no point in travelling, buying online, or going to shops.

WHY AM I SAYING THIS?

A friend of mine came out for Charlie's leaving drinks last Thurs and on the way home, she said she refused to get an Oyster travel card "because then the government will know where you have been."

Another friend of mine refuses to use credit cards online because of fraud, which is fair enough, but he also dislikes using his credit card in shops, in case the government can track what he buys.

Now I know this is technically true, but logically it's a pile of misspelt fish (carp). Ok. Suppose there is an anti-war protest at Westminster. You go to Westminster with your Oyster. The government can't prove that you took part in the demonstration. It can only place you at the station. And whether or not demonstrating becomes an offence under this Big Brother state we're enduring (who the hell voted this government back in for a third time? What were you thinking?), how can the government prove you took part? By CCTV? In which case, it doesn't need your Oyster card.

Point 1 - unless you have a reflective face that does not show up on CCTV photographs/you are a vampire, the government does not need your Oyster card to prove you were anywhere. It can just look at your face. Therefore, buy an Oyster and get cheap fares. If the government wants to arrest you, it does not need an oyster.

My male friend's point about the government tracking what he buys is fair enough, should we be subjected to an anti-religion government, for example, buying a Bible or Koran using your credit card could lead to an arrest. But until then, I couldn't give a flying fart whether the government knows that I get through an inordinate amount of toilet roll, or am addicted to Heinz tomato soup.

Point 2: Friend, stop buying donkey porn and you might not need to worry about being arrested.


Point 3: If you are going to spend the rest of your life caught up in a conspiracy theory, too scared to enjoy the moment and don't mind wasting money on cash fares, then what is the point of being young and alive and living in London? Go join an Amish community or something.

Sorry Dad! You know I'm a Bluenose at heart!

"Canada is like an old cow. The West feeds it. Ontario and Quebec milk it. And you can
well imagine what it’s doing in the Maritimes."

Geoff Ho.

Geoff is - Geoff. And he wants a shout out on my blog. Everyone say hello to Geoff and make him feel happy.

Ehhh... What's up, Doc?

A woman in the office just sent round the following message to everyone: Subject: Carrot in the kettle.

"I just found a carrot floating in the kettle. Does anyone know why it is in there?"

Cue general hilarity in the office.

It was then that I realised I (of course I) had put the carrot in the kettle.

It was frozen, you see, and the hot water did not work from the tap.

I needed to defrost my carrot.

Is there anything wrong with showing initiative?

Of course, I forgot there was a microwave.

And I forgot the carrot was in there.

There were no witnesses; however for some reason everyone was accusing ME of doing it. I am mortified. This will go down in work history. Even more so than the fart I did in my first week (see my second ever blog entry)

HOORAH FOR BLOOMBERG (never thought I'd say that!)


A famous series of jokes attempts to define political systems. In communism, for example, you have two cows, your commune seizes them and charges you for milk. In a
democracy, you have two cows, the cows outvote you 2-1 to ban all meat and dairy products, and you go bankrupt and starve to death. Similar thinking can be applied to financial markets. Here, then, is the world of money recast in bovine terms.

Leveraged Buyouts
You have two cows. You come home from the fields one day to find Henry Kravis chatting to your spouse at the dining-room table. Two days later, you have no spouse, no farm, and no table. Two guys the size of sumo wrestlers have saddled up the cows and are riding them around the farmyard.

Currency Market
You have two cows. China has 1 trillion cows. Guess who sets the price of milk?

Bond Market
You have two cows. One is Brazilian, one is Australian. They yield 25 quarts of milk per day. That's half as much as three years ago, when you traded your less lactiferous German and U.S. cows for them. You are thinking of swapping for a pair of Namibian cows. They only have three legs but, hey, they produce 26 quarts per day.

Derivatives
You have two cows. You repackage five of them into a Collateralized Lactating Obligation, pay for a AAA credit rating, slice the CLO into 10 pieces and sell it to investors, skimming the cream from the milk for yourself. Three of the cows fall ill,
and the credit rating plummets. You get to keep the cream.

Hedge Funds
You have two cows. A guy in an open-necked shirt drives up in his Bentley and offers to take care of them for you in return for a year's supply of steak and 50 percent of their milk. They won't be allowed to leave his compound for two years. Six months later, you have half a cow, producing sour milk. You have to be willing to lose rump today to get rib-eye tomorrow, the hedge-fund guy mumbles through a mouthful of
sirloin and champagne.

Economics
Assume two cows.
Carbon-Emissions Trading You have two cows. They produce 1.2 tons of methane gas per
day. After a hefty donation to the re-election campaign of your local representative, the government gives you enough emission permits for six cows. You sell three permits, buy another cow, and apply for a European Commission grant to build a methane-gas power station.

Microsoft Corp.
You have one old, tired cow. A recent heart transplant may have come too late to save the beast.

Google Inc.
You have no cows. You slap advertisements on everyone else's cows. The milk floods in. You use the proceeds to reinvent the cow.

Apple Inc.
Nobody wants your cows. You design the cutest little milk bottle. Now, everybody wants your cows.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc.
You have 26,467 cows. They are strapped into the milking machines 24/7. Some of them have more hay than they could ever hope to eat. Others aspire to one day having more hay than they could ever hope to eat. The cows with the most hay end up with
big government jobs.

Pension-Fund Management
You have two cows. How boring is that? You pay a month's supply of milk to a consultant, who advises you to sell one cow and buy two aardvarks instead. The aardvarks die. The consultant charges you four months of your (now reduced) milk supply and advises you to sell half of your remaining cow and buy a wombat.
The wombat dies. The consultant charges eight months of milk for a copy of his new report, Two-Cow Strategies for Alleviating the Impending Pensions Crisis.

Russian Energy
You have two cows. Comrade, those cows are an environmental hazard. We suggest you hand one of them over to us.

Credit-Default Swaps
You have two cows. You buy insurance against them dying, and tuck the contracts into the middle of that tottering pile of documentation on your desk. One dark night, Henry Kravis sneaks off with your cows. By the time you track down the paperwork, your now worthless contracts have expired.

Interest-Rate Swaps
You have two cows. You pledge one of them to me as collateral in a swap for some of my pigs. I pledge the cow to my neighbor as collateral in a swap for some of his sheep. He pledges the cow to his cousin as collateral in a swap for some of his cousin's goats. Better pray the livestock market doesn't crash and we have to try and round up that cow.

Commodities
You have lots of stocks and bonds, but no cows. Are you crazy? Cows are the hot new market. Here, buy this exchange- traded cow futures contract. It can't lose. It gained 40 percent in the past six months.

Gold
You have two cows. You wear a cap you made out of tin foil so that the tiny black helicopters can't read your thoughts. You spend your days blogging about how the government's decision to abandon the cattle standard in 1933 was part of a global
conspiracy by the world's central banks to destroy the value of your herd.

(Mark Gilbert is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.)

Been trying to flog my Valentine's Day cards. So far today I've made just £7 - still that may mean people here are more romantic and have already planned ahead. Plus in my last job, hardly anyone got the chance to go out for so much as a bite to eat, let alone buy a card. Still, I'll keep Old Faithful (my tin of "emergency" cards in the office... so far I've already contributed to two leaving dos and an engagement card, plus a birthday present necklace.
Christmas was to raise £ for Leukaemia Research Foundation, whereas these sales are just to help my own business to grow - one day, I want to have a permanent stall and website! At the moment, any money I raise is going into my (paltry) savings account... I've not saved enough to invest with my own business in mind :(

I can't decide



1) Whether these are really artistic pictures of the snow on a bush outside my window, or a piece of gak?




2) Whether I should eat a third Kelloggs' special K bar (only 90 cals) or go out and buy a decent bar of chocolate that will actually fill me up... I'm too lazy to go outside and buy chocolate. Is that oxymoronic? I am too lazy to take a walk, but I'd only take a walk to buy chocolate. Have I cancelled the calories out? Am I a vacuum? Does nature abhor me?


3) Whether the Moon landings were really filmed in a Hollywood studio or not. I'd like to believe that it's the best hoax in the world. Sadly logic dictates otherwise.

Monty is... possessed!

He is fine, really totally well-behaved ALL DAY. He has never done a naughty.
but at 3am to 4 am he turns into something..... WEIRD.

He dances sideways with his fur on end.
He attacks walls.
He jumps on my face.
He collects my socks and leaves them in a pile under my bed. WHO IS HE SACRIFICING TO? The great SOCK god?
He suddenly howls, accompanied by intermittent biting of my ears or eyes or nose or smacking me in the mouth.
He runs up curtains.
Then he curls up and starts purring and looking cute...

but if you don't believe me, here is visual evidence to prove his rather.. um... demonic behaviour....