A Trip to Work

Beside me: a woman, asleep, mouth open, huge teeth, copy of Lonely Planet Morocco on her lap. Same woman that was on the train home last night, sitting beside me, asleep, mouth open, same book.

Opposite me: young bloke, gangsta, legs as wide as he can get them, backpack on, hand crassly down his grey sweatpants, won't budge an inch for the person that tries to sit down next to him.

On the platform: a guy in a grey and pink scarf huffing because someone's trying to get down the stairs into the crowd. He had trainers that exactly matched his scarf.

There's no hope for anyone.

Mailbag of Hate

A reader writes:

Hello. I'm new to this whole Department of Hate thing, but I thought I'd chip in and share some things I hate. Not share as in let you have a piece of, no, that would be impossible although quite useful as then I'd have less of the things I hate in my life and you'd have more, which would be fine by me. Ha ha, no, that was a joke. Here is the real anecdote, trust me its very good and very full of hate.

So I am at work and I am doing my best to mind my own business, keep my head down, get on with the job etc but this guy keeps bothering me. He really annoys me, this guy. All day he's been bothering me. I mean, initially, he was ok. In fact, initially he gave me some money, which was nice, but then he just kept hanging around afterwards looking at me expectantly. It was a really awkward situation, what with the hanging around and the expectant looking and everything. So I avoided his eyes as best I could. After about half an hour or so of me avoiding his eyes as best I could, which I discovered was easiest done by shutting mine and singing in like a low voice and stuff? Well, after about half an hour of that he started coming right up to the counter and banging on it and saying that I owe him a hamburger and generally causing a ruckus. Having to deal with weirdos like this at work, this is what I hate.

'Listen,' I told him eventually, after he had gone on banging on the counter for an hour or so and my head was getting sore and the hamburgers behind me were rattling in their chutes. 'There are people here, mentioning no names, who are trying to keep their heads down and get on with their lives and so on and what you are doing is interrupting and spoiling it for everyone, i.e. me' . Unfortunately the guy had like a total lack of sympathy, or ability to empathise with the plight of others such as myself because at this point he started screaming and beating the counter with his fist some more and kept on with this whole crazy me owing him a hamburger thing.

As I am myself not lacking in the sympathy and/or empathy departments I felt sorry for him in a way, and not just because his face was slowly going a horrible red colour, possibly because he was tearing at his skin and rolling his eyes and making these low, weird moaning sounds as he pointed at the hamburgers behind me. I remember thinking, as I munched on my own hamburger, that this guy really needed to sort out his expectations in life. All this unreasonable hamburger-wanting was bound to cause unhappiness and anger and/or distress. You need to reassess some of your goals and priorities viz hamburger ownership, I told him. You need to move 'hamburger' from the box marked 'want' to the box marked 'can't have'. Then you'll be a lot happier. Sadly, he was too busy punching the large plastic clown that stands in the corner of the entrance of my work and crying to even bother paying attention to the important advice I had to say. I suppose this just goes to show some people are just too selfishly wrapped up in their own misery to accept help no matter how hard you try.

I remain yours etc.

Name and address supplied

Do YOU have a hateful experience to report? Email the Department of Hate at deptofhatemail AT gmail DOT com!

UPDATE! In comments, drooling sextagenarian troll Dave "Abe Simpson" Duff attempts unbelievably lame and predictable slight against the Department, appears to soil self in the process. File under colostomy bag mishaps.

In Memoriam: Jack Palance

NON-SEQUITURS OF THE COMING DOOM

Sunday morning - there's a show on channel 5 about Sophie, the vicar's daughter. At dinner they stand on their chairs and sing "thank you god for this food, thank you god for this food, thank you gooooooo......oooood. Thankyougodforthisfood, dun dun du-dun". Sophie says when singing in the choir, make sure your voice doesn't drown out everyone else's. When the sermon gets too long you just "fiddle with your fingers". Her voice is that of a young Thatcher. She gets bullied because her dad's a vicar and wears a a dog collar. She prays for the bullies at church and tries to tell them that jesus loves them anyway. She has a guinea pig. She is only allowed eat sweets on Sunday at a particular time of the day as a special treat. She is only allowed watch half an hour tv a day and only on BBC programmes vetted by her parents. She only likes spiritual music. She knows "god's true" because "she has proved herself". The theme tune of the show is a strange drum and bass thing. The show was supposed to be about "Rosie, who has autism".

Nicholas Cage's face became odd and his hair became a wire wool wisp after he started calling himself Nicholas rather than Nick. Laurence Fishburne got fat and his face became more pock-marked when he stopped calling himself Larry. And Charlie Sheen's jaw got smaller when he tried calling himself Charles.

I don't trust people whose arms don't swing when they walk.

There are more mad people in Brockwell Park than Clissold Park. I saw a dude in Brockwell Park hiding in the bushes and hissing. He was holding a shower rail. A woman was talking to herself. I allowed myself a moment's hope that she was talking on a hands free kit. She had a bandage dangling from her leg. That was yesterday

Abandoned petrol stations should be a thing of joy, but they are not.

Recently I found myself being genuinely appalled when a newspaper article informed me that DfES was considering allowing kids to write english exam papers in text speak so long as it was clear they understood the material.

Snakes shed their eyelids.

There is a warning on the packaging of Mothercare "fun dough". It says "Remember, babies and young children have no idea what is dangerous or potentially harmful"

Condoleeza Rice. Paula Radcliffe.

Chris Cornell sings the new bond theme song.

Celebrity scissorhands. Sunday Grandstand's theme tune. The Nativity Story hits cinemas on December 9th. "Now... experience the first christmas". Your chopping board harbours 50 times more bacteria than your toilet seat. Peter Andre and Jordan have a single out. It's a cover of "A Whole New World" from Disney's Aladdin. A stylist knows that before something hot touches hair, it must be protected. A diver scared rigid by sharks undergoes shark therapy tonight at 6.30 on Channel 5.

Inside today's Mail on Sunday... a Madness CD called "The Edge of the Universe and Beyond"... Part 1.

Christopher Hitchens. Marmite. Allo Allo.

My brother once put pickle juice on his chips thinking it was vinegar. There's an undertakers in Streatham that looks like a burnt pub.

Someone, somewhere, right now, is giving someone a brazilian wax. That is their job.

Quiz Time: How Rotten Is Rumsfeld?

I hear that Donald Rumsfeld is having trouble sleeping. Time for a quick game of "fill in the blanks", I think.

FALLON NAVAL AIR STATION, Nev. (AP) -- Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said yesterday that he is deeply troubled by ________________.

"That's the thing that keeps me up at night," he said during a question-and-answer session with about 200 naval aviators and other U.S. Navy personnel at this flight training base for Navy and Marine pilots.

Any guesses? Here's a few of his greatest hits to get you started:

Answer here.

Good Idea. How 'Bout Some Sort of Armband?

For the love of fuck:

A new Gallup poll finds that many Americans -- what it calls "substantial minorities" -- harbor "negative feelings or prejudices against people of the Muslim faith" in this country.

...

Almost four in ten, 39%, advocate that Muslims here should carry special I.D.

Hey ho. Welcome to fascism, meatheads!

Of course, there are many out there that would snort with laughter at the idea that our sophisticated industrialized societies (not unlike a certain "advanced political community with a highly trained, tightly disciplined police and civil service bureaucracy" discussed here) could possibly be responsible for such mass hatred. Luckily, these will be the same hysterical fucking halfwits that believe that "The West" is under any serious existential threat from a couple of dozen teenagers armed with some funky shampoo and no fucking passports, so their arguments can be safely disregarded like the racist ballhair they are.

Roy Edroso has some more 39-percenters for you in case you’re not depressed enough yet.

Thoughts on Animal Welfare

A Proposal

So I was sitting on the can earlier thinking about the terrible plight of animals worldwide and it occurred to me that, while humans may continue to make improvements in the way we treat animals, the problem mainly stems from the way that we view animals vis-à-vis ourselves. And that will not change unless we stop crapping in little cubicles.

Since the second world war, during which, studies later estimated, only 15-20% of soldiers actually fired their weapons at the enemy, American military planners have recognised that in order to get your soldiers to kill you must encourage them to view the opposing force as less than human. The opposite is true for the relationship between homosapiens and the rest of the animal kingdom, but the principal is the same: in order to justify our cruelty we must de-animalise ourselves.

Clearly, for real change to occur it is necessary for this state of affairs to be tackled directly. This is why I am proposing, to Peta or the WWF or whoever, the following two-pronged campaign strategy for 2007:

1. We will lobby for the cubicles in all public buildings must be dismantled. No more shall we deny our essential identities as members of the animal kingdom, and no longer shall we be allowed to hide our basic bodily functions in shame. This will force us to confront the disgraceful dichotomy between the respect that we afford our own species and the lack of same that our brethren in the "non-cubicled" animal kingdom have suffered under for so long.

2. We will campaign, by way of petition, for a new UN resolution which will officially recognise human beings as pissing, shitting animals.

Alternatively, we could run a "Cubicles for Cattle" campaign, maybe, or at least get the other animals some trousers. Whatever, I haven’t worked out all the details yet, but in any case I am proud to be able to count myself as the first to add my name to this campaign.

Will you join me?

Just, Uh, Y'know - Be Careful

Israel wants hastened shipment of US rockets

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Israel has asked the Bush administration to hasten delivery of short-range anti-personnel rockets armed with cluster munitions, which it could use to strike Hizbollah missile sites in Lebanon, The New York Times reported on Friday.

Sourcing its report to two American officials, the newspaper said the request for M-26 artillery rockets, which are fired in barrages and carry hundreds of grenade-like bomblets that scatter and explode over a broad area, is likely to be approved shortly.

But the newspaper said some State Department officials want to delay approval because the rockets, while likely effective against hidden missile launchers, would also likely cause civilian casualties if used against targets in populated areas.

...

The shipment might be approved along with a directive to Israel that it must be especially careful about firing the rockets into populated areas, a senior official told the paper.

No News Today

lenin:

…the first allegation of a threat of a potential attack in Britain at some unspecified point in the future, and suddenly we are encouraged to luxuriate in the fantasy prospect of annihilation ... The Blitzkrieg is upon Beirut, but we are supposed to imagine that little Nazis are flying over our heads

Channel 4 news last night was basically 50 minutes of Krishnan Guru Murphy standing in front of Heathrow pulling shit out of his arse, repeating over and over the scant details that we think we know, and going live to the C4 reporter waiting anxiously outside Scotland Yard every now and then in the hope that he might have even half a story yet, and what struck me about the whole affair was what a disgustingly privileged bunch of cunts we really are. "Luxuriate", says lenin, above, and that's exactly what's going on. We are positively wallowing in this shit. Isn't it all so fucking exciting?

Of course I realise that all of this sound and fury bullshit is intended to frighten me and my quaking bowels into crap-panted acquiescence, but honestly? I've never felt so fucking safe in my life. An entire programme dedicated to something that DID NOT EVEN ACTUALLY OCCUR is a fucking luxury indeed, available only to those who don’t have to wake up every day and deal with the rubble and ruined bodies of their friends and relatives. The two or so minutes of air-time they managed to find for images of smouldering Lebanon – no thrilling potential threats and close-shaves there, just actual daily death and destruction - only served to underline that fact.

Even terrorism of the unhyped variety isn’t a threat to us if we’re already good as dead.

Duty

Marthambles:

An unspecified illness, "known as the marthambles at sea and griping of the guts by land" [NC]. Patrick O?Brian is said to have seen the word on a pamphlet of the era by the quack doctor, Dr Tufts. It appears to be contagious and deadly to Pacific islanders.

Drunken Blogging (Remix)

While waiting with great excitement for JOEL F KINNEY to deal most severely with my quivering ass, I decided to fill the ridiculous clown void by paying another visit to Drunken Blogging, home of chubby idiot j0nz and indispensable one-stop shop for those of us who like to know what's going on inside the tiny minds of all the slope-browed bigots that shuffle amongst us.

Unsurprisingly, there ain't much going on at all, if j0nz's latest is anything to go by.

Here, in attempting to deal with the complexities of the conflict in the Middle East, he reveals his method in admirably stark and honest terms: "I've been searching the net for hours for a good comment piece that reflects my feelings (I am woefully inarticulate and lack a public school education!)".

Translated from the arsehole-ese, this means: "Because I am basically a total raging moron, I have been hitting Google up for thoughts and opinions that I can cut and paste on to my blog as if they were my own". (And no, I've no idea why he thinks that articulacy is dependent on a public school education, either.)

The part about seeking an article that "reflects [his] feelings" is merely a neat update on the old playground ruse that goes "Wow! I was just about to say that myself", and the "feelings" that he's referring to are essentially just his prejudices and bigoted beliefs, although he would no doubt prefer us to believe that he is referring to his carefully considered philosophical musings. Just have another look at his fucking face again, and you should be disabused of that notion pretty goddamn sharpish.

Once he has found a suitable article (in this case, one that attempts to pre-emptively justify further civilian deaths not only in Lebanon, but also in Syria and Iran, through the "attacking targets of strategic value to Hezbollah which are located in non-Hezbollah areas") he then lifts it wholesale, without comment or criticism, and drops it like a hot turd right on the front of his blog. His only contribution is, quite unbelievably, to FUCKING COLOUR IT IN. If he could, he'd probably fill in the enclosed parts of the letters with a chewed up pencil, too, while desperately trying to conceal a spontaneous erection underneath the desk.

It also comes as no surprise that j0nz is so fucking stupid that he even needs his racism explained to him in pictorial form. He points to the following "diagram" in an effort to explain the staggering difference between Israeli and Lebanese casualties:

I'm not going to sit here and explain why this picture fucking sucks a bunch of cocks, but it's probably worth pointing out that it's not much use hiding behind a pram if your opponent is just going to bomb the shit out of everything in site anyway. Indeed, I might humbly suggest that the huge discrepancy in casualties maybe has a little bit more to do with, y'know, massive aerial bombardment by Israel of civilian areas in Lebanon than it has to do with any sneaky cartoon baby buggy hiding techniques. But what the fuck I do I know? Maybe I'll look for some guy on the internet who says something about this and borrow his shit, then you'll be sorry.

It's not all bad news, though. Maybe j0nz isn't such a lost cause after all - I'm thinking that the more altruistic among us might use his obvious preference for pretty pictures to try and communicate with him a little. By way of getting the ball-rolling, I thought I'd remix the right hand side of his picture to more accurately reflect the reality of the current situation.

See, it's all about talking to them on their level. And hey, j0nz? If this approach doesn't work I have a picture of my about-to-be-sued ass that you can print out and kiss.