10 Reasons I'm a Complete Arse

1. I am very quick to judge complete strangers - I often watch people out and about, on the bus/train, on escalators, all over the place and make up my mind about them instantly. I often find myself looking at a total stranger and thinking to myself "well you are clearly a scumbag, if I was in charge I would have you sterilised."

2. I am overly competitive - whether it be running for a bus, walking down the road or anything, I just have to do it first/best. There is a guy who gets off the bus for school at the same stop as me and I HAVE to get into school before him so I walk at full pace just to get to the door before him. This has been noticed by my friends who have now coined the phrase "Joe always wins."

3. I correct people's grammar, but only some times - If I am in a good mood I will let it slide but if anything bad or minorly annoying has happened I will take it out on people by correcting their grammar (or spelling if over the internet). I do it without thinking, it is not good, especially since I HATE it when people do it to me.

4. I can dish out abuse that I very clearly don't believe in a sincere way that cuts deep - A friend of mine kicked the back of my foot in an attempt to trip me up and I delivered him a little speech on what a twat he is and how I would dance on his grave. He was shocked and apparently it made him think hard that night before finding out I had done it purely in jest. (He also writes a blog that is quite frankly excellent: http://mylifeisdaverage.blogspot.com but I had a blog first so I win.)

5. The opposite - I can deliver hurtful abuse but in a way that makes it seem I am joking. That's right, insult people and get away with it because they are stupid enough to believe that I'm not being serious.

6. Believe something different to me? Ha, well you're clearly wrong! - everyone is entitled to an opinion and I try everything at least once to get a complete picture. Only once have I had my mind radically changed by trying something and that was going to church, atheist to Christian in less than three weeks. Other things have failed to sway me.

7. Extreme dislike of talented children - If I am ever watching any kind of music-related talent show I always hate the younger ones. Anyone younger than about 15 singing just annoys me. I passionately hate George Samson, there are more talented people in my school. The kids with the sob stories about being bullied at school, I can always see exactly why they are bullied and whatever characteristic they give off to the bullies annoys me just as much. Tom Daley too, he gives off a definite element of dickhead.

8. I am a massive hypocrite - I hate people who are over-competitive, stubborn about their (wrong) beliefs, correct my grammar. Previous to today I hated people who took their shirts off at parties, they are the epitome of twattish behaviour. What did I do yesterday? You guessed it, took my shirt off at a party.

9. Every now and then I am in a ridiculously jovial mood and it makes me do ridiculously annoying things - this week I had it, I put paper discs from a hole punch in my mate's bag, hid another mate's bag, filled a mate's locker with ripped up paper and tapped on people's shoulders before moving to the other side. All very irritating things.

10. I know I do all these things and wouldn't have it any other way.

Advertising

When used appropriately advertisement is a wonderful thing. One company gets its name out in the open, another company makes money and I am gently informed of an item or service I may want or need. Fine, everybody wins, but this is not how adverts work now. I can stand adverts for films or television programs, tourism adverts, all the adverts that put their best stuff on show so I may be interested and then make a decision based on how much I need/want the thing, how I will fare without it and if I can afford it. What is not alright are the adverts that carry the message "THE ONLY WAY YOU CAN POSSIBLY SURVIVE A DAY LONGER IS WITH THIS PRODUCT!!!!" The main culprit here is adverts for detergents and disinfectants.

In the least sexist way possible these adverts are aimed at stupid housewives. A recent disinfectant advert claimed that a kitchen chopping board has more bacteria living on it than a toilet seat. Shock horror, women everywhere were just about to take that evening's ingredients for dinner to the bathroom to resume chopping it up on the toilet seat. BUT WAIT, this new disinfectant can kill 99.9% of the bacteria on your chopping board making it safe for you to use it again. PHEW. Hang on, if this little fact is true then why have I not died as a result of a horrific disease caught from the bacteria on the chopping board?

As a fairly amateur biologist I can explain everything that is wrong with this advert. Firstly if there are more bacteria on the chopping board than the toilet seat then this has been the case for many many years and is clearly the way it is meant to be, there is more bacteria on the human skin than there is on the toilet seat and the chopping board put together, quickly, disinfect you skin now to the extent it burns off horribly, but at least those bacteria are dead! Secondly, not all bacteria are bad, quite the opposite, a tiny fraction (less than 1%) of bacteria are harmful in anyway at all, obviously certain places contain a higher proportion of the bad bacteria. The toilet seat obviously has a higher proportion of bad bacteria than a chopping board or the human skin, chopping board bacteria are completely harmless. Thirdly, the only thing preventing the bad bacteria from taking 100% of the chopping board is all the space already taken up by the good bacteria. So here's an idea, spray it with a disinfectant that kills 99.9% of all bacteria. Guess what, that 0.1% is almost certainly the hardiest, roughest, toughest bad bacteria going, and now it has the whole chopping board to itself "brilliant," it must think, "that daft old tart just killed off all the competition, this chopping board belongs to me!"

My next quibble is with automatic soap dispensers. I have no problem with soap, I would be pretty unpopular if I did. This soap may be in the form of a bar or in a squirt bottle, again, no problems so far. Advertisement, here is where the problem begins. A company has developed a new bottle that dispenses liquid soap automatically when its motion detector detects that something has been put beneath it. How did they market this? "Did you know that your soap pump harbours bacteria and may have more bacteria on it than a toilet bowl? This transfers on to your hands when you press the soap pump." Right, let me break this down again. Firstly, so what? Am I not about to wash my hand with the soap that you claim kills this bacteria on my hands? Getting a little bit of extra bacteria on my hands BEFORE I wash them is going to make no difference at all. Secondly, what about the tap? Surely this has the same amount of bacteria too, and I have to touch that to turn it off and that will be after I wash my hands. Oh damn, a conundrum, I could compulsively scrub my hands repeatedly, buy a motion-sensitive tap or GET ON WITH MY LIFE BECAUSE IT DOES NOT MATTER?! It just preys upon the germophopic and the uneducated.

My final grievance is with an advert for an oven cleaner. The product's slogan was "So easy a man could do it" I'm up for a bit of casual sexism but we live in a politically correct world and how would this be treated if it was in the reverse? Can you imagine the controversy of an advert with the slogan "This car is so easy to drive a woman could do it" or "This computer is so easy to use a woman could do it"? There would be absolute uproar so why is the oven cleaner one acceptable? This got me so worked up that I..I..I..considered writing a strongly worded letter. I didn't though.

Gah, adverts!