This story from a week or so ago managed to grab the fragile, dangling nutsack of the press’s attention and give it a good squeeze; Google, to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Pac-Man, put up a playable version of the game on their homepage as its “doodle” and left it there for a day or so. So far, so not very interesting; all I really learned from Google’s stunt was a) that yes, my childhood is over 30 years ago, thanks for reminding me as if the mirror didn’t do that often enough already, and b) that for all the undoubted growth in my wisdom, experience, waistline and general stature as a human being, I’m still as fucking shit at Pac-Man as when the machines on Felixstowe pleasure beach used to swallow my pocket money in five desperately disappointing and malcoordinated minutes back in the early 1980s.

Then a company called “Rescue Time” reported that the Google Pac-Man had led to a staggering 4.82 million work hours being wasted - the equivalent of hundreds of millions of dollars, or enough money to employ all of Google’s staff (including its directors) for six weeks. It’s an interesting assertion based on very creative use of what you might call imaginitive statistics, and one which raises a whole new set of questions; chief amongst which is how many valuable work hours have subsequently been lost reading Rescue Time’s spurious-in-fact-let’s-not-beat-about-the-bush-utter-bollocks assertions and commenting on them as I’m doing now? (Time spent by me writing this post thus far - 27 minutes. My entirely self-fabricated and meaningless consultancy fee? £100 per hour. Entertainment / information value of said post? Well, let’s be honest, nil. You do the “math”.)

But then I realised how much free publicity Rescue Time had gained from all this, and, bearing in mind the well-known fact that 78.327% of statistics are made up on the spot, I thought I’d give it a try myself…. so here goes.

You know those stupid fucking St George flags which everyone seems to be hanging out of their cars to celebrate England’s impending loss in the World Cup (on penalties in the quarters to France on July 2nd - you heard it here first)? I’ve calculated* that, if you take cost of the diesel required to transport them over from China and then back again in a month or so when they head to the landfill site a couple of miles away from the factory where they were first made, then add on the cost of increased fuel / journey time man-hours caused by the reduction in the aerodynamic performance due to drag on every car which displays them, and finally factor in the man-hours required for every purchaser to go down to Netto to buy a new pair every time they fall off the back of Ford Mondeos and hit my fucking windscreen this morning nearly making me veer into a lorry because you were too thick to have secured them properly, you dull-witted moron - then the monetary equivalent would be enough to pay Sarah Ferguson to go away somewhere - anywhere - and to not come back for AT LEAST six weeks. Now THAT’S a statistic worth thinking about.

(* - From a huge list of big numbers in my imagination. Sorry, I didn’t keep the working-out.)

Being a green, wishy-washy namby-pamby immigrant-loving peacenik socialist Marxist Nazi liberal and all, I’m predictably keen on Freecycle. For those who aren’t familiar, Freecycle is a website on which people can offer items to / request items from other members of their local community (usually broken, cumbersome white goods or dog-piss-stained sofas in the former category, and unused iPhones or free money in the latter).

There are only two drawbacks with the site; firstly, as I’ve just mentioned, stuff offered tends to be too crappy even for landfill, and secondly, crappiness notwithstanding, there are semi-professional hawks waiting to snap up pretty much everything which is offered within minutes of it being posted on the site (seriously; I had five offers for a broken £40 printer within 10 minutes the other week.) However, many “offerers” are now getting wise to the hawks; this, in turn, has led to a preposterous rigmarole in which any wannabe taker of an item has to convince the offerer that it’s wanted for personal use and not for profit in any way, shape or form. Hence, when offering an item, despite just wanting rid of the fecking thing as soon as possible, you get messages along the lines of “PLEASE consider me for your broken £40 printer; my disabled terminally ill daughter has always wanted one like this, but we’ve never been able to afford it because my husband was killed in Afghanistan and I lost my job when my legs were amputated after a terrible car accident. I won’t sell it on eBay, honest.”

So in effect, I have very little interest in Freecycle other than to get rid of things (for which it remains useful). However, I still peruse the Folkestone daily digests in the vain hopes of free vinyl / CDs, and in doing so today, came across this announcement. It was posted under “Offered: SOME GOOD ADVICE”, and is well worth sharing….

“WHEN OFFERED AN ITEM FROM FRECYCLE BY ANOTHER PERSON, MEMBERS SHOULD REMEMBER TO CALL AT A REASONABL TIME OF THE DAY, I HAVE FOR THE SECOND TIME THIS WEEK HAD TO ANWSER THE PHONE BEFORE 8AM T AN OVER ZEALOUS PERSONAT THE OTHER END WHOM TAKES OFFENCE WHEN I IT IS POINTED OUT THAT  WAS ASLEEP UNTILL THEY RANG AND THAT IT IS NOT POLITE TO CALL AT THE CRACK OF DAWN, MEMBERS SHOULD NOT HAVBE TO DISCLOSE THEIR WORKING TIMES OR DETAILS OF THEIR LIVES IN ORDER TO ENSURE THAT THE FREECYCLER DOSE NOT RING AT STUPID O’CLOCK,

ALSO WHEN OFFERD AN ITEM YOU SHOULD NOT TAKE THE MICHEAL, LIKE THE
MEMBER WHOM LAGHTED RUDLY AT ME WHEN I HAD OFFERED HER A DOG CRATE WORTH OVER 200 POUNDS BECAUSE SHE DID NOT KNOW THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A PET CARRIER AND A CRATE, IT IS RUDE TO MOCK A PERSON WHOM IS OFFERING AN ITEM TO YOU GRATITUDE AND SERVILITY GO A LONG WAY,

QUICK GUIDE RINGING BEFORE 8.30 AM OR EVEN 9AM FOR THOSE WITH CHILDREN IS RUDE OR EVEN SIMPLY DAMMED INNCONVIETANT, ALSO FR THOSE PEOPLE WOM WORK SHIFTS IT DISRESPECTFUL RINGING AFTR 9.30PM IS ALSO THE HEIGHT OF RUDENESS IN FACT RINGING BEFORE A REASONABLE TIME OR AFTER GETS PEOPLE WORRIED THAT SOMTHING TERRIBLE MAY HAVE HAPPENED MAYBE I AM OLD FASHIONED AN MAYBE MY MOTHER ENSURED THAT I KNEW THE RESPECTFUL WAY TO BEHAVE OR SHE
SIMPLE GAVE ME SOME MORALS AN VAALUES SO MY OFFER TO FREECYCLERS IS THIS OOK AT THE CLOCK BEFORE RINGING A PERSON TO ENSURE IT IS ATA DECENT TIME REMEMBER TO THANK YOUR EMPOYER AND CHRISTMAS FOR THE YARS EMPLOYMENT RESPECT YOUR ELDERLY NEIGHBOURS WITH OUT THEM WE WOULD ALL BE GERMANS BY NOW OR THE WORLD WOUL CERTANILY BE A HORIBBL PLACE, ACTUALLY TRY TO RECYCLE EVERYTHING A ND NOT JUST JOIN FOR SOME THING THAT IS FREE, SAY PLEASE AND THANK YOU AND IF YOU BUGGER UP SORRY IS THE APROPREATE WORD NOT WELL SHOVE IT THEN”

A tribute lookey-likey to our glorious departed leader, and a clarion call to his probable replacement. Poor old Gordo - like an obsessive oral foot fetishist, all he ever seemed to do was taste defeat. Still, at least when Peter Mandelson pushed his secret “smile” button, he could manage a passable impersonation of Phil Daniels (you’ll have to Phil in the missing person in the lookey-likey, as I can’t find a photo of him, erm, looking like Gordon Brown - but trust me, when El Gordo pretends to be vaguely contented, there’s a striking similarity. No, honestly. Damon Allbran knows what I’m talking about.)

As for the next Labour leader - I’m sure he’s hoping that he can make it beyond the politico-metaphorical semi-finals…

(If only Ed Milliband looked like Pete Sampras, he’d be a shoo-in to kick David’s arse.)

You’ve probably* remarked on the fact that I’ve written nothing whatsoever on the glorious triumph of democracy and suffrage that has been our General Election - that’s largely because I couldn’t possibly hope to compete with the armies of “bloggers” wanking on endlessly about it already. Actually, the most prominent political “blogs” are really nothing of the sort; instead, they’re very slick semi-professional operations in constant contact with both shadowy figures within party machines, and like-minded commentators in the press and media. Before anything ever gets “blogged”, there’s a big discussion between the three corners on which bit of the party line they’re going to articulate. Once they’ve all agreed what to say and complimented themselves on how clever it is, the topic gets posted, and they then use the comments sections to further agree with each other and compliment themselves a bit more on how clever they’re being, making sure that they lend legitimacy to themselves by linking to each other’s stories which are saying exactly the same thing. Finally, they invent portentously-named political blog awards (which they vote on themselves, obviously) in order to once again ram home the fact that they agree with each other and compliment themselves on how clever they’ve all been. Basically, political blogging is little more than a huge, constantly-throbbing bum-licky circle-jerk emanating from two tiny cadres of arseholes; snot-nosed Eton’n'Magdalen brats in the secret employ of Rupert Murdoch on one side, and cocaine-socialist London-bubble labourites on the other. Shower of self-serving, crap-peddling toss-pots, the lot of them.

… where was I? Oh yes, the election last night; bit of a bummer all round, apart from the Green victory in Brighton. It could be argued that ALL THREE of the main parties have ultimately been rejected in some way - which is quite a feat on the part of the electorate, especially given the fairly high turnout. It might not be all bad if we get some sort of electoral reform; I wouldn’t even mind too much if Cleggy got into bed with old halibut-in-condom-features Cameron if PR is on the agenda as a result, even if it’s only a referendum. Dunno, really. It’s all a load of old bollocks anyway.

Sorry, I ran out of steam a bit there, didn’t I? I suppose in future, I’d better leave political blogging to my superiors….

(* - actually, you probably haven’t.)