Archive for the 'Annoying' Category

Things that annoy me: No.3: Sardined

Published
by
Electric Pig
on May 23, 2008
in Annoying
. 0 Comments

It started innocently enough. A father, sitting opposite me with his son. I'd noticed the man before on my commute - he was one of the regulars, transported to work in the bowels of the city every morning. Since April though, his young son, now of elementary school age, has joined him as far as Iidabashi station, about a third of the way through my commute. I found it quite touching to see a man in public take such pleasure in being with his son - you don't often see it in the mornings in Japan. He reads the paper to him, and explains things like baseball and the share market, and thoughtfully skims past the naked women and racially sensitive outbursts. When the boy got off the train at first, his father accompanied him, holding his hand. Now, as the train pulls out of the station, he cranes his neck to watch the boy and his little friends as they wander off together, in their little sailor suits, through the station ticket machines. It takes a few stops for the smile to fade as we commute on.

The problem is, that this angelic little urchin has started to make friends. Too many friends. Who all seem to live in Mitaka, the station before mine, first on the train route. The seating on the 6.52 to Myoden was always a delicate balance - I always got a seat, but it was usually one of the last two or three. Now, these little scavengers have disturbed the whole ecosystem. Now, I've started to find myself standing in the mornings on the way to work. The only good thing about my morning journey used to be that it was obscenely early enough for me to be able to get a seat. Now, that one small consolation has been taken away.

I normally decide to stand in front of the boy and his friends, certain that, at the least, I will be assured of a seat by the time to train gets to Iidabashi. Inevitably though, about 4 stops before, a whole other crowd of kids get on and suddenly I am surrounded by these little creatures, being kicked and elbowed and bumped and having my reading disturbed by endless games of Jan Ken Pon. I've found myself unconsciously tutting and sucking my teeth at them, like the mad old women who used to hit random kids with her umbrella for cycling on the pavement back home. And on top of everything, it wasn't helped by being stabbed this morning by one of the regulation crucifixes hanging from their bags and the realisation that they were both regularly annoying and Christians.

Not only do I have to pander to little bastards like this all day long at work, but now I have to do it on my way to work too. Something is going to snap soon.

Things that annoy me: No.2: Facebook Status Updates

Published
by
Electric Pig
on April 16, 2008
in Annoying
. 2 Comments

I like Facebook. Despite the neoconservative Big Brother aspirations of its pube-faced creator, it's about the only way I get any communication out of certain people back home. It's also a useful way of perving on girls you once knew spending valuable time at work when bored. The status updates part of facebook is one of its best features, and I’ve had numerous actually-pleasant occasions when checking the internet and finding out about a friend’s engagement or marriage or death or whatever. The perfect example of the correct use of the status update can be seen in this (real) example I saw from one friend:

**** is wondering how to tell everyone that **** is pregnant.

Wonderful, and made me incredibly annoyed to know that I would never be able to come up with such a cool way of announcing a pregnancy or indeed anything else.

However, recently, it seems like whenever I have turned to Facebook, I have been greeted with numerous updates from one (in particular) of my contacts that always go something like this (and these are actual examples):

****is on a tiny island 50 miles of the coast of Fiji. Hammock outside, my own beach...this is the life!!!!

Or like this frequently repeated gem:

****is getting back on that jet plane...

So, number one. Firstly, and most obviously, the fact that I was not on an island in the Pacific when I read this, but was sitting, damp, in a freezing cold school, hands bleeding from trying to stop rabid children from biting each other, yet strangely bored to the point of repeating poking myself in the eyes for something to do, after rushing through typhoon rains to get the chance to do all this on time, made me moderately furious. Secondly, (and possibly, no, certainly more annoyingly), if I was on a tiny island 50 miles off the coast of Fiji with hammock and my own beach, the last thing on my mind would be to pick up my mobile phone (which I certainly would never have brought to a tiny island in the first place), and tell fucking Facebook all about it.

After taking out my annoyance on some innocents for an hour or two, I calmed down and realised I should feel a little sorry for the person involved. If the best thing he can come up with to entertain himself on a Pacific island is to connect to Facebook and mobblog about it, then he deserves all the breaks he (annoyingly) seems to be getting. That, or he needs to be humanely put-down for failing to come up with anything better to do.

Maybe it’s only me, but I just find the language in the second example plain offensive. I have actually been finding it hard not to write out my own Facebook message response along the lines of:

Olly hopes that jet plane falls out of the fucking sky as wonderfully apt punishment for calling it that jet plane.

I mean, who actually says that? I'm getting back on that jet plane. He probably snorts an ovine grunt of pleasure after saying it too, like a over confident swaggering prick that’s never been told to shut the fuck up. He might as well just tattoo C.*.*.T on his forehead and be done with it. I think that when writing this, he probably sees himself as a cross between Rick at the end of Casablanca, and the slightly-disturbing-in-an-incest-sort-of-way Star Wars poster with Leia clinging to Luke's leg; he's got to get back on that jet plane. Perhaps I am taking it a little too seriously, but the whole nature of Facebook status updates is to announce personal news to people, (possibly why mine normally involve buying video games or being annoyed), and if possible, things that people would want to hear, so to use phrases like “that jet plane” and “I got smashed”, (and various other updates all about a job that involves rugby of all things – a sport that for some reason my mind inextricably links to a: Pedophilia, b: French-revolution era bourgeoisie and c: lager) really goes against the whole idea of the status message and leaves no option but for “friendship” deletion. That, or the realization that maybe I don’t like facebook so much after all...

Nb. Actually, while writing this, I thought I better check my own facebook status update history to make sure that I was living up to my usual levels of hypocrisy, and of the 16 updates that are still stored, about 3 could be accused of this same crime – as long as you consider “Olly is in Beijing” to be as bad as “****is on a tiny island blah blah blah”, which I don’t - But my apologies to anyone I have made as annoyed as I have been – please feel free to unfriendify me. Also I have no idea of the intentions of the person who wrote these status updates...they could have been done in an "ironic" style...but I doubt it.
 

Presumption

Published
by
Electric Pig
on April 8, 2008
in Annoying and School
. 1 Comment

It's blowing a gale today. Rain, loud enough to wake me up at about 3 has let up a little, but is still whipping across the playground outside. The win is enough to break an umbrella...with ease. There's no school lunch yet this term, as the first years are yet to start school (that joyous occasion will come tomorrow), so the teachers were going to order in a bento (lunchbox) lunch. I was working on my computer at the time, making stickers for another teacher and listened to the conversation in my section of the staffroom as the horribly sanctimonious head of year took all the teacher's orders. There was a break and I was yet to be asked for mine. Then I heard the head of year ask one of the Japanese English teachers:

"Does Olly want a Bento today?"

To which the teacher replied:

"No, he always goes to the 7-11 to get sandwiches".

Now, as annoying it is for this teacher to decide for me, it is way more annoying for this prick of a year-head to ask someone else what I want to do for lunch. I sit 3 chairs away from him for Christ sake, and he managed to ask teachers a lot further away than that. It's not even as if it is especially difficult Japanese to answer that "I would like a chicken nugget set" or "No thank you, I will go to 7-11". I know, I should have piped up and said:

"Whoah, hold the fuck up you sanctimonious nonse - despite being foreign and therefore not really human an'all, I still don't particularly want to trek 10 minutes in this end-of-the-world-storm and get soaked to the skin to go to 7-11 and get some of their rancid sandwiches. Hows about asking me whether I want a bento, and not asking someone else who has no idea what I might or might not want to eat. And, while I'm at it Mr English Teacher, even though I am a non-Yamato dirty foreigner, don't presume to make my culinary decisions for me, you cheeky gobshite."

But I didn't.

Instead, I trekked 10 minutes in this end-of-the-world-storm and got soaked to the skin to go to 7-11 and get some of their rancid sandwiches, and then sat at my desk dripping ostentatiously and eating my sandwiches with slightly too much tutting and shooting vicious looks at all the other teachers eating their piping hot bentos and paying no attention to me whatsoever.

A devastating response I feel.

Things that annoy me: No.1: Sunshine

Published
by
Electric Pig
on March 17, 2008
in Annoying
. 3 Comments

While bored at work I was reading some of the top ten lists on the Guardian's web page. Their top ten sci-fi films are, in order, 1: Blade Runner (obviously), 2: 2001 (again, obviously), 3: Star Wars / The Empire Strikes Back (amusing that they left out Jedi), 4: Alien (I never really thought of it as a sci-fi film (although it is), but as a horror), 5: Solaris (brilliant, as was the more recent remake, although it was slated), 6: Terminator/Terminator 2 (I definitely don't see this as sci-fi, despite its pretensions, but as a action film), 7: The Day the Earth Stood Still (wonderful, much better than Terminator), 8: The War of the Worlds (the great original as opposed to the mediocre remake), 9: The Matrix (wtf?!), 10: Close Encounters of the Third Kind (amazing and insulting that anyone should rate it lower than The Matrix). Sunshine is not, nor should it be on the list. But, had they not royally arsed it up, it conceivably could have been.

In theory, it has a lot of the elements that a great sci-fi film should have. It has an interesting plot and a good cast, most of whom can actually act. It has a director of a pretty high calibre. It has good special effects, art direction, cinematography and a great soundtrack. Unforunately though, it has a plot twist at the end, of such mind-boggling-inbred-alabaman idiocy as to rate all the good points of the film null and void. I remember being really excited to see an good space-film again when I started the movie. There haven't been many decent sci-fi/space films recently. There were interesting themes being discussed. It seemed to be heading towards a satisfyingly pretentious conclusion, possibly involving cod-theology. But no. They had to go and reduce the whole experience by turning it into a stupid slasher film. I remember getting genuinely angry when watching it, as if the whole film had been a designed as a personal insult to me alone. I wanted to find the filmmakers and shout at then for ruining something that could have been alright...or even good.

But I consoled myself that even if the film had been a tragic waste of time, money and effort, at least the soundtrack could be enjoyed by itself. Nothing at either the Apple Store, nor Amazon. I went to the illegal-torrent-sites-that-I-honestly-never-use-to-download-anything-from-ever-honestly. Not a sniff. I went to the film's official website. After being annoyed all over again by the legions of idiots who were saying Sunshine is the best film ever, I found a thread saying that because of legal problems between Underworld and John Murphy (who shared the composing duties), the soundtrack was delayed. Indefinitely. Well, that's just great then. Cheeky bastards. Underworld, a band whose entire wealth and mainstream (at least) popularity came off the back of a film soundtrack, now fear that some decent music they have made recently might ruin their current reputation for immature nonsense. Instead I have to make do with one track from the film (To Heal), being released on their otherwise embarrassingly average album To Oblivion, and a badly mastered illegal bootleg of the film score ripped straight from a dvd. Movie companies wonder why people download illegal copies of things like this. Well, if they got off their arses and released the real score, we wouldn't have to.

I'm getting annoyed just thinking about the movie again. It didn't have to be awful, and that just makes it worse.