What grinds my gears...

[Foxdiamond]

19 minutes ago, Footballwipe said:

Think Bear below is right that sometimes it's not necessarily the eating, it's the sheer volume of stuff some have and constant noise. You can probably handle the popcorn, but if there's a bag of sweets, slurpy drink, another bag of sweets, crisps and any other manner of noisy crap it can get unbearable.

 

I do heed what you say though. I hate the cinema. I hate that I have people who might narrate every line, who might have a chat, have their phone out with a lit up screen within my eyeshot, rustle, eat loudly. I have to worry whether I can have X number of drinks before so I don't need to need the loo during the film, potentially missing a key bit. I just download the film as soon as a proper version is available and watch that way.

 

Basically, there's still a desire for the cinema, and those that go crack on. I'm sure many enjoy it and have a great time with friends, it just ain't for me.

Some people just can not sit still or stop stuffing their faces. Too much to ask to watch the film for 2 hours or so without fidgeting. No proper attention span.

[FoxyPV]

Nadine Dorries.......

[tom27111]

People doubting Marc Albrighton 

[Unabomber]

Joe Wicks. Man looks like he’s never lifted a weight in his life yet is our fitness saviour? Absolute blagger. 

[HighPeakFox]

Slow drivers who take offence (and let you know it) when you legitimately overtake them.

[LCFCCHRIS]

On the subject of cinema.. anyone else hate the arkward silence / period at the end of a film? The 5 seconds when you know a film is finishing, the gap between that and the credits. My whole life I've felt uncomfortable in that part

[Unabomber]

Cristiano Ronaldo, I would say one of the most dislikable players ever. 

[thursday_next]

Flies are stupid. They waste a lot of time buzzing contemptuously near your face and making themselves more annoying than that woman who wrote 'Fifty Shades Of Grey'. However, there's only going to be one winner if you finally get a piece of rolled-up newspaper and pursue them. They can go 'Ole' and make the international willy puller sign when you're trying to swipe them with 2mm clearance rate between them and death. They appear to enjoy that, and the presence of someone with a rolled-up newspaper is a challenge to them. That is completely wrong. Why can't they accept that someone with a rolled-up newspaper means death for certain. Total death. No way back from that. They can go 'Ole' as many times as they like, but the person with a rolled-up newspaper, who by now is getting pissed off and bad tempered has only got to hit them once to stun them and then deliver the coup de grâce which involves getting a large amount of buggered-up pieces of fly on your newsprint.

 

Why can't they see that? Why can't they develop some kind of evolutionary mechanism which involves them being a bit more savvy in not trying to wind up people with rolled-up newspapers and flying away to some other part of the sky in which people with rolled-up newspapers are not actively trying to pursue them? This would involve 99.9999% of the whole sky. I literally don't see what the problem is with that. I can see what the problem is with alligators and polar bears, bit more complicated and people should exercise caution with them. However, people and flies ought to live together in peace, without a problem. Is there no way of establishing contact with them to let them know this?  

[SemperEadem]

Posts asking for an ‘away pub’ in London. It aint Scunthorpe lads, it is a drinking paradise. Explore, live a little you will find no end of cracking pubs in London.

[Free Falling Foxes]

12 hours ago, thursday_next said:

Flies are stupid. They waste a lot of time buzzing contemptuously near your face and making themselves more annoying than that woman who wrote 'Fifty Shades Of Grey'. However, there's only going to be one winner if you finally get a piece of rolled-up newspaper and pursue them. They can go 'Ole' and make the international willy puller sign when you're trying to swipe them with 2mm clearance rate between them and death. They appear to enjoy that, and the presence of someone with a rolled-up newspaper is a challenge to them. That is completely wrong. Why can't they accept that someone with a rolled-up newspaper means death for certain. Total death. No way back from that. They can go 'Ole' as many times as they like, but the person with a rolled-up newspaper, who by now is getting pissed off and bad tempered has only got to hit them once to stun them and then deliver the coup de grâce which involves getting a large amount of buggered-up pieces of fly on your newsprint.

 

Why can't they see that? Why can't they develop some kind of evolutionary mechanism which involves them being a bit more savvy in not trying to wind up people with rolled-up newspapers and flying away to some other part of the sky in which people with rolled-up newspapers are not actively trying to pursue them? This would involve 99.9999% of the whole sky. I literally don't see what the problem is with that. I can see what the problem is with alligators and polar bears, bit more complicated and people should exercise caution with them. However, people and flies ought to live together in peace, without a problem. Is there no way of establishing contact with them to let them know this?  

I trapped one in our microwave once. I zapped it for 30 seconds.

Result: Absolutely nothing! It just kept flying around inside and then out, when I opened the door.

I've seen too many 50s sc-fi films though and worried it might mutate into a giant fly overnight and gobble me up.

So I reverted to a rolled-up newspaper to dispatch it - just in case.

Edited 13 March 2022 by Free Falling Foxes

[The Bear]

29 minutes ago, Free Falling Foxes said:

I trapped one in our microwave once. I zapped it for 30 seconds.

Result: Absolutely nothing! It just kept flying around inside and then out, when I opened the door.

That's because there are lots of cool spots in a microwave due to the waves cancelling out in a certain pattern based on the wavelength of microwaves, which is around every 10cm. A fly could easily avoid the really hot bits when it's life depends on it. 

Edited 13 March 2022 by The Bear

[LiberalFox]

5 minutes ago, The Bear said:

That's because there are lots of cool spots in a microwave due to the waves cancelling out in a certain pattern based on the wavelength of microwaves, which is around every 10cm. A fly could easily avoid the really hot bits when it's life depends on it. 

Wow flies are smart

[Daggers]

Humans.

[Leicester_Loyal]

Waiting over an hour and 40 minutes in a queue on the phone to the local doctors, to be told to send an email in, 24 hours after being told an email isn't enough and you need to ring up...

 

Idiots.

[Daggers]

My guide to parenting in one jpeg:

[thursday_next]

Malt bread. It sounds like a good idea - 'malt' and 'bread' are positive words giving you an insight into a world of squidgy goodness. The down side is when you use a knife to cut it it takes five minutes to clean the knife, which ought to give you a warning about what to expect when you put it in your mouth. It's fabulous, but it laughs at gastric acid and keeps it's shape until halfway down your colon when it comes to a dead halt and throws up a barricade and says 'You try getting some more food down here'.

 

The other day when I was stoned and a bit hungry I made the mistake of tearing off a bit too much and trying to ingest it - 300 chews later and very little has passed down my throat, at which point I began choking and giggling (which is not easy to do at once - you're laughing at the situation you've found yourself in and at the same time you're warning yourself that it looks like a medical emergency - 'Kent man found with mouth stuffed with malt bread. A gangland killing is suspected'). Eventually I had got half of it down my esophagus and the rest more or less everywhere, which made me giggle some more and resign myself to ten minutes clearing up, which is not easy with malt bread. I've had it with malt bread, and I would urge all right-thinking people to follow my example.

[HighPeakFox]

This is a bit of another all-in-one whinge, combined, I realise, with a shameless humblebrag or two.

 

I am due to play a cello concerto by Shostakovich in September - and as you might guess if you don't already know, he was Russian. He was also famously subversively critical of the Communist regime he lived under, and like Prokofiev (Peter & the Wolf etc), had to somehow get his music approved by the relevant ministry as sufficiently 'not anti-Russian' that he could publish it. For some notion of the ridiculousness and futility of this, akin to trying to get artistic approval from one of the utter philistines currently in power in this country, but probably even worse, and almost certainly even more dangerous.

 

This performance has already been delayed 2 years by Covid. I got a text yesterday, explaining that the committee of the organisation that booked me has voted unanimously to boycott Russian music, and i was asked my thoughts on this. 

 

So the first gear this ground was the utter pointlessness of such a decision - what on earth will this achieve? Who in Russia will be affected adversely because some local orchestra in England effectively makes great historical art a matter of shame, purely because of an accident of birth? The decision is actually not only reactionary (I mean, how could anyone be offended by great art?) but pig ignorant, knee-jerk, reactionary, vaguely do-goodish, virtue signalling. 

 

Secondly, why ask me my opinion and try to push the decision whether to go ahead on to me? Have the balls to make the decision and then I can plan my summer - the upside being I would have a rather less stressful August if it is delayed again. Don't leave me dangling - of course, this individual is very good at having dialogue that involves only saying what he wants to say, and not responding when you yourself attempt to communicate and require said response.

 

Thirdly, where does humanity go in such a choice? Do we now refuse to speak to Russians we know because that's where they were born? As Sting famously sang "and what might save us, me and you, is that the Russians love their children too." JFK said "We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's futures. And we are all mortal". And just as relevantly, when challenged about why he'd chosen to marry an Indian woman, Michael Caine said 'I didn't - I married a woman that happened to be Indian'.

 

I play my own concert in 3 weeks' time - I will play some Russian music and I will speak up about this issue. By all means, refuse to engage artists who speak in favour of Putin, but don't cancel historical art in the misguided notion that it somehow does something effective. The only people harmed by this type of decision is ourselves.

[SpacedX]

9 minutes ago, HighPeakFox said:

This is a bit of another all-in-one whinge, combined, I realise, with a shameless humblebrag or two.

 

I am due to play a cello concerto by Shostakovich in September - and as you might guess if you don't already know, he was Russian. He was also famously subversively critical of the Communist regime he lived under, and like Prokofiev (Peter & the Wolf etc), had to somehow get his music approved by the relevant ministry as sufficiently 'not anti-Russian' that he could publish it. For some notion of the ridiculousness and futility of this, akin to trying to get artistic approval from one of the utter philistines currently in power in this country, but probably even worse, and almost certainly even more dangerous.

 

This performance has already been delayed 2 years by Covid. I got a text yesterday, explaining that the committee of the organisation that booked me has voted unanimously to boycott Russian music, and i was asked my thoughts on this. 

 

So the first gear this ground was the utter pointlessness of such a decision - what on earth will this achieve? Who in Russia will be affected adversely because some local orchestra in England effectively makes great historical art a matter of shame, purely because of an accident of birth? The decision is actually not only reactionary (I mean, how could anyone be offended by great art?) but pig ignorant, knee-jerk, reactionary, vaguely do-goodish, virtue signalling. 

 

Secondly, why ask me my opinion and try to push the decision whether to go ahead on to me? Have the balls to make the decision and then I can plan my summer - the upside being I would have a rather less stressful August if it is delayed again. Don't leave me dangling - of course, this individual is very good at having dialogue that involves only saying what he wants to say, and not responding when you yourself attempt to communicate and require said response.

 

Thirdly, where does humanity go in such a choice? Do we now refuse to speak to Russians we know because that's where they were born? As Sting famously sang "and what might save us, me and you, is that the Russians love their children too." JFK said "We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's futures. And we are all mortal". And just as relevantly, when challenged about why he'd chosen to marry an Indian woman, Michael Caine said 'I didn't - I married a woman that happened to be Indian'.

 

I play my own concert in 3 weeks' time - I will play some Russian music and I will speak up about this issue. By all means, refuse to engage artists who speak in favour of Putin, but don't cancel historical art in the misguided notion that it somehow does something effective. The only people harmed by this type of decision is ourselves.

The large 'Z' crudely daubed on your cello case in thick white paint probably isn't helping. 

 

Shostakovich - forever a composer in the eye of the storm. I marvel that the bulk of Symphony No. 7 was composed under the siege of Leningrad. One of my abiding childhood recollections was my Father sitting down with his broadsheet after putting on Piano Concerto #2 in C Minor, Op. 18 seemingly every bloody Sunday afternoon after he'd had his roast. (Sadly, he has no memory of this nor the music having been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease last year.) Although like Prokofiev and Khachaturian, Shostakovich was persecuted and publicly denounced by Stalin on two occasions he has been seen by some as the dictator's foil having been warned by his pro-Stalin critics that 'it is a game of clever ingenuity that may end very badly'.  Also, wasn't his first symphony written about the October Revolution? - and he was also honoured and decorated by the Soviet Union - yet he was nearly silenced for good by Stalin within an era and regime in which art could be a fine line between death or glory. Despite this, he resisted multiple opportunities to defect to the west. What was Churchill's observation about Russia? - "a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma," which from what I have read, if any artistic icon from the Soviet era personified this, it was Dimitri Shostakovich. 

 

Sounds like you are the victim of some petty slacktivist sentiment there. Your obvious talent will travel - take it elsewhere. 

 

The removal of artists (such as Netrebko and Gregiev) who have espoused pro-Kremlin views, or who receive funding from the Russian state, is understandable, and reminiscent of similar measures taken over apartheid era South Africa. The issue then and now, however is that a blanket boycotts can also silence anti-regime artists whilst those based on nationality cast a very dark and ominous pall over the world. 

 

In terms of cultural restrictions, I was reading about a Polish opera house that recently scrapped its production of Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov, and the Zagreb Philharmonic reportedly cut two Tchaikovsky compositions from a performance. Last week, the University of Milan tried to defer a course about Dostoevsky who let's not forget, spent four years in a ****ing Siberian labour camp after reading banned books in Tsarist Russia for God's sake. 

 

Art music and literature has united nations and brought together people across the planet. Such reactionary measures create precisely the same divisions and outrage as those that are currently threatening to destabilise world order and global peace. 

[HighPeakFox]

32 minutes ago, Line-X said:

The large 'Z' crudely daubed on your cello case in thick white paint probably isn't helping. 

 

Shostakovich - forever a composer in the eye of the storm. I marvel that the bulk of Symphony No. 7 was composed under the siege of Leningrad. One of my abiding childhood recollections was my Father sitting down with his broadsheet after putting on Piano Concerto #2 in C Minor, Op. 18 seemingly every bloody Sunday afternoon after he'd had his roast. (Sadly, he has no memory of this nor the music having been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease last year.) Although like Prokofiev and Khachaturian, Shostakovich was persecuted and publicly denounced by Stalin on two occasions he has been seen by some as the dictator's foil having been warned by his pro-Stalin critics that 'it is a game of clever ingenuity that may end very badly'.  Also, wasn't his first symphony written about the October Revolution? - and he was also honoured and decorated by the Soviet Union - yet he was nearly silenced for good by Stalin within an era and regime in which art could be a fine line between death or glory. Despite this, he resisted multiple opportunities to defect to the west. What was Churchill's observation about Russia? - "a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma," which from what I have read, if any artistic icon from the Soviet era personified this, it was Dimitri Shostakovich. 

 

Sounds like you are the victim of some petty slacktivist sentiment there. Your obvious talent will travel - take it elsewhere. 

 

The removal of artists (such as Netrebko and Gregiev) who have espoused pro-Kremlin views, or who receive funding from the Russian state, is understandable, and reminiscent of similar measures taken over apartheid era South Africa. The issue then and now, however is that a blanket boycotts can also silence anti-regime artists whilst those based on nationality cast a very dark and ominous pall over the world. 

 

In terms of cultural restrictions, I was reading about a Polish opera house that recently scrapped its production of Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov, and the Zagreb Philharmonic reportedly cut two Tchaikovsky compositions from a performance. Last week, the University of Milan tried to defer a course about Dostoevsky who let's not forget, spent four years in a ****ing Siberian labour camp after reading banned books in Tsarist Russia for God's sake. 

 

Art music and literature has united nations and brought together people across the planet. Such reactionary measures create precisely the same divisions and outrage as those that are currently threatening to destabilise world order and global peace. 

Quite so. On the point of Shostakovich not leaving his country... Well, I truly hate how we're governed and the corruption and hypocrisy which is rife here, but this is where I'm from and although one could argue that I don't really have a viable option to leave (and I don't right now) I don't want to have to leave the land I was born in. 

 

Thank you for your kind words. Losing the gig is just one of those things - one door shuts etc, and I'm increasingly busy (today is Bach St John Passion in Doncaster, with continuo and solo duties without a conductor), so I'm not whining about lost work, but more about how worryingly people can fail to really think. 

 

As others have already said, you're an absolute treasure to read. Long may that continue. 

[Dunge]

Can we just take a moment to admire a thread that can transition to:

“There’s a moral dilemma about my forthcoming cello concerto”

and

“Any deferring of a Dostoevsky course given current geopolitics would be foolhardy”

from:

“I almost choked on my malt loaf through giggling while stoned”

and

“I’ll volley your f***ing PlayStation out the window”.

[thursday_next]

 

To both HPF and Line-X I would recommend reading 'Europe Central' by William T Vollmann (it's a novel, but a good one) which includes Shostakovich's stubborn resistance to joining the Communist Party. The whole thing led inexorably to Opus 110 which is a bit hard to listen to but it gets it's point across. I find it hard now to believe that Russian musical experts criticised him for using formalism instead of music designed to supporting the state in optimism and which would reflect the lives of the proleteriat as they sat on their work-benches or their tractors.

 

Part of the NY Times review:

 

'Stories about Shostakovich and his intimates or rivals -- his lover Elena Konstantinovskaya; her husband, Roman Karmen; the poet Anna Akhmatova -- recur often enough to make the collection a suspenseful near novel about the composer and his times. Shostakovich is so fascinating -- in his musical ideas, his often failed defenses against Stalinist demands, his nearly suicidal wit and his bumbling speech -- that you may be tempted to skip the intervening stories to see how his treacherous life turns out. Vollmann's pell-mell telling of Shostakovich's last years -- 1943 to 1975 -- in the almost 110-page story called "Opus 110" is a tour de force. As the composer jams the horrible sounds of his life into his summary opus, Vollmann compacts the themes and motifs of his book into its emotional climax'.

 

Part of the novel:

 

'Best listened to in a windowless room, better still an airless room - correctly speaking, a bunker sealed forever and unwrapped in tree-roots - the Eighth String Quartet of Shostakovich (Opus 110) is the living corpse of music, perfect in its horror. Call it the simultaneous asphyxiation and bleeding of melody. The soul strips itself of life in a dusty room' 

 

It's probably out of print now, like so many good novels, but I daresay you can find it on e-bay, if you happen to be interested.

 

And Dunge, what's wrong with 'I almost choked on my malt loaf through giggling while stoned'. That's not a novel, it really happened to me, and I posted it as a object lesson to other members of the forum who might be thinking of doing the same thing  

 

Edited 19 March 2022 by thursday_next

[Silebyfox_89]

Alison Hammond annoying as f***!

[whoareyaaa]

that how do they do it program, 9 times out of ten its a machine and computer, proper mind numbing tv that.

[Wymsey]

TikTok consists of people showing off their so-called 'skills', but appearing like silly people.

 

Needless to say..:

https://www.leicestermercury.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/boy-12-beaten-up-kids-6842833

[Free Falling Foxes]

ISP's. Do all of them treat existing customers so badly?

After a great deal of hassle, I thought I had resolved things with Virgin regarding over charging on current bill - I even have an email from them confirming this and the agreed changes to my package following their price hike.

But no, the overcharge is being taken from my account.

I said I had had enough and will end my services. They reply with, 'You are in contract and will be charged for the remaining period' Err no. You increased the charges so I am at liberty to end my services within 30 days.

I know what will happen. I'll end services, cancel the DD with my bank and then get weeks/months of hassle from Virgin.

Barstewards