On Cutlery

I've mentioned before that I'm quite OCD. This means that little things in every day life really, really annoy me and I have to put them right whilst cursing the person who has done it wrong.

One of the things that drives me up the wall in my day to day life is Cutlery, or more specifically, the way cutlery is placed in a drainer.

After you wash cutlery, you put it in a drainer so it can dry before you put it away. Now, the correct way to do this is business end up, as in the eating end pointing upwards.
This is important for two reasons: First of all, unless you wash your drainer a lot, the bottom of it probably isn't the cleanest place in the world. Secondly, and more importantly, if you put the cutlery in eating end down then the water is all running down towards it, rather than away from it, and this often means it can't drain properly and you end up with water marks and soapy residue all over the bit you're gonna be using to put your food in your mouth. It's like washing a glass and putting it on the drainer the right way up so all the soapy water collects in the bottom. It's fucking stupid!

I would think that all this is pretty basic common sense, and I know it is common practice in the trade from some really shitty catering jobs I did once when I worked for an agency (which is another story altogether).

So why is it that so many people seem to be totally oblivious to this very basic premise? Why do people put the cutlery in handle up? Why?

In the kitchen at my work the cutlery is constantly the wrong way up in the drainer which means that, every time I go in the kitchen, I have to turn it all the right way up. Seriously, I cannot walk past a drainer with the cutlery the wrong way up without fixing it. This may seem like a small and stupid thing but when you're kinda OCD and it happens all the fucking time, it becomes pretty damn tiresome.

So I have made this handy chart (starring the drainer at work) for people to refer to if they forget which way up the cutlery goes.

On Call Of Duty

Of all the FPS games out there, Call Of Duty is by far my favourite. Not that's I'm all that great at it but I enjoy trying to be.

I came into COD later than most; the first one I played a lot was World At War, which is widely considered to be one of the worst by most hardcore COD players. Regardless of your opinion of WAW, it got me hooked and I played the shit out of Modern Warfare II and, more recently, I've played a lot of Black Ops.

What I really want to talk about is one of the new features they brought in with Black Ops.
As well as the usual games, like HQ and Ground War, they have also brought in a whole new set of games where you bet Credits and the top 3 players get a pay-out.

There's a few of these new Wager Matches but I generally play Gun Game.

In Gun Game, you start with a Python Revolver and advance to the next gun with each kill. The guns get progressively better and then progressively harder to use. You start with the Python, then double pistols, then you move through a couple of shotguns, a few machine guns and eventually a couple of different sniper rifles and onto rocket launchers. The last two weapons are a crossbow with explosive arrows and then, finally, a ballistics knife, which is a knife you fire out of the handle at opponents. The winner is the first person to get a kill with all 20 weapons or the one on the highest weapon when the time runs out.

In Gun Game, it is also possible to demote people to their previous weapon by humiliating them. Humiliation is when you stab them with your combat knife but it's not really beneficial for the stabber as you don't advance in level unless you kill with your gun.

Yet you get some dickless wonders that just run around stabbing people! They're gaining nothing except the hatred of the other players. I just cannot fathom why people do it! If you aren't going to play properly then why not just fuck off and play something else? I know it's just a game but it is really fucking annoying when you've finally managed to get past the bloody Sniper Rifles, which are a nightmare as the levels are kept small, due to only having six players per game, and then some fucking ass clown stabs you and demotes you back down again.
Invariably, you then can't seem to get a kill and end up stuck on a shitty gun and loosing the game.


So this is a message for all those utter wankers who run around in Gun Game stabbing people:

How about you go die in a fire? kthnxbye.

On Dating Websites

Recently the number of adverts I'm seeing for Dating Websites is getting higher and higher.

For the most part, the adverts are the usual crap: Various couples, usually ethnically diverse, partaking in some light sailing or a piggy-back ride through a wood, whilst a female Voice Over gives us dubious statistics about the success of the company or some kind of unlikely situation in which two people spontaneously play a song in a music shop or tie their shoes together and dance.

The companies also tend to work in the same way. Men and Women sign up and are then matched to others, based on whatever lies and embellishments they have put in their profiles.

However, there is one dating website I have seen advertised that defies logic.

It's called Matchmaking4men.

The clue to why it makes no sense is right there in the name. Matchmakin4men.

If it's a matchmaking service just for men, then where do the women come from?
And before you jump to conclusions, this is not a site for gay men and I have never seen an advert for a possible partner site (no pun intended) called Matchmaking4Women.

I can only assume that either the people who run the site walk the streets recruiting/kidnapping women to pimp out to lonely men over the internet or it's all mail order brides from Eastern Europe.

Source.

On Lowering My Standards

Hi All and a Merry 2011!

So, FWF has been on hiatus whilst I tried to get through my writers block and some other stuff.

One of the main problems I've been having is that I feel the need to write long pieces and if I can't write at least a couple thousand words on a subject, I don't feel like the piece is worthwhile.

However, my wonderful and loving Fiancée, who, for reasons unknown, is always there for me, no matter how stupid my problem, has assured me that I don't always need to write huge posts.

The main reason I started this blog is because, in my every day life, I rant a lot and people tend to find my rants quite funny so I thought I'd try my hand at internet comedy. At first, I got a little hung up on list-based humour, being a big fan of Cracked.com, but I couldn't make that work for me as I often get angry at things that don't lend themselves to numbered lists. I also did a couple of "Nature/Computers wants to kill you" articles, but that too was not sustainable (although I may still do more in the future).

Eventually, I started to find my stride and posted some good content, but I was still getting hung up on length. And we all know that it's not the length that matters but what you do with it. Or maybe it was Girth that matters... I don't think this metaphor is working.

Anyway, one day I was having a little rant to my Missus and she said, "You should write stuff like this more."
I explained about being hung up on word counts and how I didn't feel I was putting the effort in if an article was short.
She told me that was stupid and didn't matter; that a short but funny rant could be just as good as a long article and that I shouldn't worry so much.

I have mulled over her words a lot since and I think she is probably right, as usual.

I was discussing my writers block with a friend who reads my blog, explaining how I tend to be a lot funnier during spur of the moment rants when something has annoyed me and he asked if I've ever thought of using a Dictaphone to record my rants so I can transcribe them later.

Although it's a very good idea, in theory, I don't think it's something I could do. First of all, my rants tend to be off the cuff and mid-conversation. Secondly, they're spontaneous. I'll be having a conversation with someone and something will set me off. I can't exactly pause and say, "give me a sec to get my tape recorder."

It wouldn't be natural.

I'm not going to start promising lots of posts and I am not going to stick to any sort of schedule but I am going to try and be less hung up on word counts and just post what I want.
After all, it is my blog!

I'm currently editing a post, so that will be up soon.

Thanks for bearing with me. I will be back.