Stabbie is quite cross tonight. He's avoided the last minute Christmas shopping rush as his hubby doesn't want presents this year and he himself did all the food shopping yesterday and early today. However, as is his wont, Stabbie was quite annoyed this morning and needs to vent.
First up on the list is the checkout guy at Tesco's at the Elephant. You were quite nice, you wished Stabbie a Merry Christmas, and you called him over when your queue was empty. However, you also rang up Stabbie's four sesame bagels (20p apiece) as four very expensive filled doughnuts (70p apiece). Stabbie realises that some doughnuts and some bagels carry a slight resemblance to each other. But, for goodness' sake, Tesco does not need the extra £2 that you have granted them through this mistake. Do they add it to your bonus, asks Stabbie, retroactively? As this is the season of Official Good Cheer, Stabbie finds it difficult to take his weapon out and prevent you from committing any more mistakes of this nature. He presumes that Tesco would go bankrupt without the help of incompetent checkout people and does not want to be solely responsible for Tesco taking a big hit on the bottom line. But do it again after the holidays are just a distant memory, fella, and you may need to run very very fast and very very far.
Second up is every dimwit texting or talking on their mobile phone while walking down the street. Is there some law that specifies that whenever Stabbie is walking (painfully, as Stabbie's foot is still rather poorly) along the pavement some yahoo who has barely mastered how to turn the smartphone on approaches him, head buried in the touchscreen, and does not see him, forcing Stabbie to make a very tortured emergency detour. Due to Stabbie's foot problems, walking in a reasonably straight line is OK but trying to turn on a dime is problematic.
Now I realise that smartphones are the wave of the future, starting a year ago, and that every dimbulb in every city of the world needs one. But, for goodness' sake, is there any way that you could perhaps grow a third eye in the top of your head so that you could swerve and avoid Stabbie as he's hauling his mean sack of comestibles home? If you can't see your way clear to developing that third eye, perhaps Stabbie could help you do it—now where did Stabbie stow his drill?
Third on the Hit Parade, Stabbie has been struggling with his computer for the past couple of years. As is its wont, Windows PCs tend to accumulate crud over the years, and no computer is more assiduous at accumulating crud than Stabbie's. It is time for Stabbie to do the unthinkable and clean off his computer and start again. This may be difficult, as Stabbie only uses a few programs regularly but has lots of them which he uses once in a while but wants to keep around. So Stabbie was very happy to find a utility that promised to fix all of Stabbie's computer woes. He bought it, and ran it, and discovered that what the program really did was roll his computer back to the Dark Ages, require him to reinstall seemingly hundreds of Microsoft Windows Updates, and generally feel miserable about the entire thing. When Stabbie tried to roll back the rollback, he discovered that the company that made the utility had claimed that a complete rollback was possible, but such a claim, sadly, was totally untrue. The rollback was not possible, and since then Stabbie's computer has every so often lost touch with the Intarwebz mothership (DNS servers, Stabbie thinks) and has to reestablish contact, without the genius of Lieutenant Uhura to man the switchboard that would make that possible. (Stabbie has tried changing DNS servers—don't you worry about that! No effect.)
So, if Stabbie ever stumbles across the airheads who sold him this idiotware, he will gladly give them a piece of his mind. In order to emphasize his dissatisfaction with the software, he might actually create an excavation in the area that passes for their brains in order to insert a much more intelligent piece of mind. Then Stabbie will make them buy him a Mac.
Now, finally, Stabbie would dearly love to confront BBC News executives. This morning the BBC Radio4 Today show, without which Stabbie finds it difficult to digest breakfast and drink coffee, ran a 2-3/4 minute Thought for the Day spot contributed by His Holiness the Pope. As some religious figure delivers this spot each day, it was inevitable that someone would get around to asking the Pope to do one. And it was quite as one would expect from the Pope: "Thanks for not stoning me to death during my visit earlier this year; let's put Christ back into Christmas, and I'm praying for you." But why, Stabbie wonders, did the BBC build up to this event for days, have one slot before Thought for the Day where a representative of the National Secular Society took them to task for not confronting His Holiness about child sexual abuse by clergy, and one slot afterwards where the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Birmingham managed to say nothing new or interesting about either the Pope, the BBC, or Christmas. This "story" has run on every news bulletin on BBC Radio4 today. BBC Executives: You are overpaid, and you do not need to make your own news programs part of the news itself. I pay part of your salaries, and I think you need to think again about this kind of "non-event". If you do it again, Stabbie may get even more annoyed and point out to you the error of your ways. Oh, and we'd appreciate it if you would return 2/3rds of your salaries in order to make your remuneration more nearly equal to your abilities and not equal to your inflated opinions of yourselves.
Stabbie wishes all his readers a blessed Christmas season, a happy New Year, and good health. But, don't piss off any anonymous passers-by or casually encountered people you might meet—because, remember, Stabbie might be anywhere!
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