Jimmy Page’s Trousers

I am no longer anonymous. Apparently, some of my mates are aware of my secret identity. They know I blog. I didn’t think that anyone knew except Mrs. Jimmy Page’s Trousers (and she’s never looked as she’s not really sure how to work the Internet). The jig is up and now I feel all self-conscious and exposed (like in those dreams where you go to school in your underwear).

It seems that one of them has, Neo-like, hacked the net or something and tracked me down. He obviously then shared this information with the others. And they’re here. Maybe even now. It feels weird. I don’t think I like it.

So, Doug, Jeff, Pete… fuck off you snooping cunts.

If you haven’t already read the start of this story, you can take a look just two posts down.

Have UPS Courier Service improved and made right their cock-ups of the last few days? Have they fuck.

A driver called today at about lunchtime. He had a package. I was excited until I took it from him. Pretty light. Ah, that’ll be the bag that I ordered with the MacBook. That’s grand. I signed for that and asked him where the other package was. He stared blankly.

“I’ve only got the one for you,” he said.

I opened the package while he was there and showed him the bag. “There’s supposed to be a computer that goes in here,” I said.

He shrugged. In fairness, he wasn’t even a UPS person and was just some bloke that had been subcontracted out. I couldn’t blame him for this latest fuck-up. Nope, the blame for this fuck-up, and all of the other fuck-ups in a long line of fuck-ups, lies squarely with UPS Courier Service who continue to astound with the high levels of incompetence and low levels of customer service. I’ve spoken with more people there, going as high up the management chain as I can get and while I’m being assured of frantic levels of activity to get this sorted, I’m not all that confident.

UPS Courier Service are very, very bad. UPS Courier Services are awful bastards.

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UPDATE:

Well, after a lot of hassling and a lot of phone calls I finally managed to get this sorted.  I was still hassling people in their warehouse until after 7PM.  It paid off though and I succeeded in annoying and shaming them sufficiently that they had some poor guy who happened to live in my area drop the package off on his way home that night (as the couriers had all buggered off for the day).  So, just after nine, some guy who works in their accounts department or something called and dropped it off.  Very nice of him too, although he did stand about after he delivered it as if he was waiting for a tip.  Sorry mate, not after the day I had.

On my desk at home, I have a small battery. Specifically, it’s a CR2430 battery and it’s there to remind me that I need to order one to replace it as it’s worn-out. It’s a shiny, metal disc of just under an inch in diameter.

Every time I see it, I really, really want to eat it. I don’t know why. Something to do with the shape and size - circular, slightly rounded on one face, flat on the other. I’ve never felt any inclination to eat other batteries of any kind. Nor have I ever, even in my youth, felt any urge to eat coins or small change.

But something about this… Every time. Every single time. I can even feel what it would be like going down my throat and plopping, coldly into my stomach. I can feel my throat tighten slightly at the alien difference of it.

What’s the story? Am I weird?

The winner of today’s Awful Bastard Award is UPS courier services.

A while ago, I stopped the pretence of requiring a justification for it and bought an Apple MacBook. The only real justification I can muster is that it’s a thing of beauty which, speaking as someone who works with a lot of computers, is something that can be said of them very infrequently. Anyway, as I wanted to change the standard specification a little, I reasoned that buying online was the way to go. I’d recently bought an iPod for Mrs. Jimmy Page’s Trousers (the small one - I’m not made of money) via the online store and it all seemed trouble-free and easy. Indeed, the ordering part of this process was trouble-free and easy.

Then UPS got their hands on it.

According to the tracking thing on their website, it was supposed to be delivered on Thursday last. It wasn’t and there was no update on their tracking thing as to why. Early Friday morning, their site listed it as IN TRANSIT. Yippee. I spent most of the day looking out the door and window to see if the big brown UPS van was outside. As it got towards five in the evening, I was beginning to worry. I had one weak thread to cling to though… Maybe the UPS man lives in my area and is saving my delivery for his last one on the way home. I realise how pathetic this seems but I’m ok with it.

That last thread broke however, when I refreshed the tracking website and read “THE RECEIVER IS NOT LISTED ON THE BUILDING DIRECTORY. UPS IS ATTEMPTING TO OBTAIN THE INFORMATION AND COMPLETE DELIVERY.” Now, I live in a house. It doesn’t have a building directory. Mrs. Jimmy Page’s Trousers and I don’t really see the need, given that there’s just us and Baby Trousers in residence. Also, UPS’s attempts to obtain ‘the information’ didn’t stretch to ringing me. I was quite angry but, after battering my way through their phone menu system, which tries to keep you from humans, I found that they’d all buggered off for the day.

Incidentally, I have discovered the way to speak to a human on the UPS phone menu is to angrily hit the ‘#’ key repeatedly while shouting “CUNTS!” at the top of your voice. You will be diverted.

So, angry but still in some control, I reasoned that they’ll just deliver on Monday instead, as any courier company would do if they failed to deliver on the previous business day. On Saturday evening however, I just happened to refresh the tracking page. It had a new listing stating, once again, “THE RECEIVER IS NOT LISTED ON THE BUILDING DIRECTORY. UPS IS ATTEMPTING TO OBTAIN THE INFORMATION AND COMPLETE DELIVERY.” This time however, it listed a revised delivery date of 21st December. Next Friday. This time I shouted “CUNTS!” at the top of my voice as I punched the wall (not quite so productive as my phone discovery I’ll grant you).

So, on Sunday, I went about grumbling with dirty, thunderous clouds hovering over my head. This morning, first thing, I rang UPS and tried my ’speak to a human’ trick - it still works. I’m waiting to hear back from them but I’m going to go ahead and award them the Awful Bastard Award for their work so far. If they somehow manage to sort this out quickly, I may upgrade them to just Bastard Award status, but I’m not holding out much hope.

For now however, UPS are awful bastards.

UPDATE: Well, they’ve retained the title. As may have been expected, they didn’t get back to me. Three phone calls later, I spoke to someone who told me that it seemed that the driver, on Friday, couldn’t find my address.

“He didn’t ring for directions,” I said.

“No. You see, the drivers don’t actually have UPS company mobiles and most of them won’t use their own mobiles to ring customers,” said the UPS girl.

“So, if they can’t find the delivery address and they won’t ring for directions, how does the package get delivered?” I enquired.

“Oh, usually, if a customer doesn’t get their delivery, they phone us when it hasn’t arrived and we’ll get directions from them,” she said.

Really. Honestly. I’m not making this up. According to the girl I spoke with, that’s UPS’s failed delivery policy. Wait until the customer gets so pissed off that they call UPS and go insane trying to navigate their automated phone thing. Then, finally be told that the driver couldn’t find the address that is on every map of Dublin for at least the last seven years, is certainly available on all of the major GPS maps and that the only communication method open to said driver was to use his own mobile phone to call the customer, which he (rightly) wasn’t willing to do.

What a complete shambles UPS must be.  That’s just astonishingly poor.  UPS are, indeed, awful bastards.

After a bit of arguing and hassle, they are apparently going to deliver tomorrow.  The girl even took directions from me although, as I don’t know where the driver will be coming from, they are not the most useful.   After dictating direction for the girl to type, I asked her to note that, if the driver is still unable to find me, he should phone and I’ll happily reimburse him the fifty cent for the call.  Apparently, she didn’t have enough room to fit that in.

Helpful.

I’m surprised it took me over a year to start having a go at religion on here.  Oh well.

I felt that a short note was in order to explain any apparent dichotomy between my slagging off religion and my frequent use of phrases like ‘For Christ’s sake” or “Jesus wept” and so on.   My use of these phrases should not be taken as an endorsement of the teachings of Jesus or of those institutions set up in his name.  Rather, it is the result of having grown up in a Catholic country whose people like to swear profusely.

I too like to swear profusely and exposure to swearing invoking the names of Christian deities in order to get a really good swearing out is ingrained in me more indelibly than the actual ramblings of the Catholic church.  Which is funny really.

So, therefore, any mentions of Jesus and god should be read as expletives and blasphemies.

Many of you will probably have heard of the case, before the High Court, of the Jehovah Witness who has taken action against the Coombe hospital for transfusing her, against her wishes, after she haemorrhaged dangerously during childbirth. Apparently, she lost 80% of her blood and the doctors told her that a transfusion was the only way to save her life. As she felt that to receive a transfusion would be some sort of affront to god, the doctors went ahead and did what they’re supposed to do and saved her life by transfusing her anyway.

Damn right too. I’m so completely pissed off with this pussy-footing around religion. If she’s dying and her life can be easily saved, it’s a no-brainer. The fact that her religion has cherry-picked its particular set of forbidden taboos and has decided that life-saving medical procedures are not allowed because the random page on which they opened their bible expressly mentions it shouldn’t enter into the matter.

Over at Fat Mammy Cat, she makes the argument that if it’s a reasoned, adult decision that it should be respected and likens it to a situation where, hypothetically, she herself may be told she has breast cancer and a mastectomy would be required to save her life. Is her refusal of this operation the same as the Jehovah Witness lady’s refusal of a transfusion. I say no. I don’t think that the term reasoned can be used by anyone refusing treatment for religious reasons.

Fucking religion. It just fucks up people’s lives. This woman is beside herself with guilt simply because her life was saved in a manner of which her religion disapproves. How incredibly ridiculous is that? I’m not trying to pick on what Jehovah Witnesses believe in particular - I think that all religions are ridiculous and nowhere more so than when they try to convince you that it’s better to die or fuck up your body than to disobey some divine tenet. If you want to carry the argument of religious interference with people’s heath beyond those who Witness, we could look at the practice of female circumcision and infibulation across a lot of Muslim Africa (or, many would argue, myself included, the circumcision of male infants for Judaic belief). Or the condemnation of the Catholic church in particular, and of some Islamic authorities of condom usage across AIDS-ridden countries around the world. Or Nigerian mullahs issuing a fatwa declaring polio vaccinations a plot by the US to sterilise good, god-fearing Muslims. And that’s not to mention pretty much all of the major religions telling us that masturbating would make us blind (still 20-20 despite substantial effort, by the way).

Everyone’s so worried about offending someone’s religion. Nobody wants to just tell them all (and I do mean all of them - I’m not singling out any particular religion here) to just fuck off. You’ve fucked up the lives of our species for long enough. The less daft of us have had enough. Your days are numbered but unfortunately, the number isn’t small enough for me. Do us all a favour and fuck right off.

Another post with a political bent (well, slagging off a politician anyway). I’m not courting the attention of IrishElection.com with this (unless there’s some money in it of course - under the table, mind. We’ll consider it a dig-out and why not? I’m poverty stricken compared to other bloggers with their yachts and houses and all their free tea).

Anyway, if the media is to be believed, and I can’t think why would they lie or exaggerate, there is (cue scary music and maybe some thunder) a COCAINE EPIDEMIC sweeping this, otherwise temperate and abstinent, country of ours. Yes, we live in a ‘drug culture’. This insidious drug is everywhere. Oh lordy, won’t someone please think of the children?

Now, it seems clear that there are those among the public that get swept up in what they read in the papers on the way to the footie results or whatever and this means that it is necessary for responsible, god-fearing, dealer-fearing politicians to make some show of placating them. True to form, it seems that Bertox has the answer to the (dahnn dahnn daaaahhhhnnnn) COCAINE EPIDEMIC.

It is… have the police raid ‘house parties’.

For Christ’s sake. That’s what he’s come up with? I know that his attention is probably diverted thinking of lies to cover up the lies he told earlier but, house parties? He says, “The question I have asked more than once in the past week is why don’t gardai go into house parties where people are using cocaine.” What? I mean, what?

Now, I’m not saying that people round here don’t do coke. There are probably people coked off their faces as I write this. I’m also not saying that people don’t do coke at house parties because they do but a ‘house party’ does not a drugs den make. Having his political knee-jerk kick in the doors of people having a few beers in their homes isn’t going to solve the problem. Bock, as always, has some reasoned thoughts about that and he’ll express them better that I. I’m really happier when I’m slagging people off than when I’m finding solutions.

You great moron, Bertie.

I’ve noticed over the last few week or so, Blogger has modified their (never pleasant) comment system to disallow any non-Blogger users from leaving their website address when they post a comment. This means that I can’t comment on someone’s blog and leave a link to my blog. The options are to post anonymously, to use a ‘nickname’ (which with no web link is only a small step up from anonymous) or to use a Blogger ID.

I don’t want to use a Blogger ID. I have a perfectly fine, non-Blogger blog and I want to be able to tell people about that when I comment on something. Blogger, and their owners, Google, have most likely pissed off a pretty massive portion of the blogging public. Well, they’ve pissed off me. And the Gurrier. And, from doing an ironic Google search, lots more people.

I hate this proprietary shite.  Sort it out Blogger. It’s not on.

What can you do?

If you’re a Blogger user and it annoys you that commenters aren’t free to include a link to their sites or if you’re a commenter and it annoys you that Blogger won’t let you include a link, do this:

Go to their Feedback Page and paste the following into the ‘Suggest New Feature’ field at the bottom:

Please restore the ability to include my (non-Blogger) URL when I post a comment on a Blogger site.

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Let’s go comrades…. Blindependent bloggers blast bloated Blogger blunder. I think I got away with that one.

It’s always a bad idea to allow your three year-old daughter to get into the bed with you.

Three year-old daughters are exactly the right height such that, when their heads are on the pillow, their feet are at precisely the level of your groin.

If three year-old daughters slide down the bed slightly, they will use your scrotum as a foothold to get back up.

Having three year-old daughters use your scrotum as a foothold is not conducive to a peaceful sleep.

That is all.