Vandalism of Words

By Derek Haines


Vandalism of Words
Copyright © 2010 by Derek Haines


Table of Contents

What Is This Book About? 7
The Comfort of Humour 8
An Economist's Christmas 9
I Am An Idiot, Not A Fool! 10
Right, Let’s Blow Up The Moon! 12
Grieving. The forgotten emotion in separation. 14
Old Sage 15
Bing, Go, Go, Gone! 16
It’s Love! 17
What is a Spy? 18
Sitting On A Bomb 19
Doctor, Doctor! 21
Grammar Conundrums 22
Human Capital 23
Information Overload 24
Life and Paper 25
Life? Quoi? 26
Lucky, Lucky Me 27
Mac Attack! 28
Remember ICQ? 29
Sexism 30
Why Do Health Freaks Die Too? 31
The Beautiful Adverb 32
My Memories of Doris 33
Missing Information 37
Foot Prints In The Sand 38
Who’s Reading You? 40
The Unsmiling Unemployed 42
Working Holiday 43
I Had a Dream 45
Are We Less Sociable? 46
Marks & Spencer 48
Spell Checker Freedom 49
Childhood Memories 50
Negativity 52
Veneration 53
The Perfect Tense 55
European English 56
Victor, Victoria, Victorious 58
Is That Clear? 60
Today’s Weird Experience 62
The Idiot Chef 64
The Woman I Admire 66
My Mania 67
Body Language 69
What Do Feeds Do? 70
Do I Need A Pet? 71
How I Write. Or Don’t 73
Green Greed Is Good. Come Back G. Gekko 74
Politics, Democracy, Media and Fear. 76
Flower Petal, Or Flower’s Petal? 78
A Writer’s Frustration 79
Benefactorial Dictatorship 80
Your Time Will Come 82
An Author’s Prerogative 84
I Don’t Wanna Die Your Way 86
Christmas Sucks 87
Rough Uncouth Australian Bastard 89
It Started Badly 91
What Decade Was That? 93
Young Love. Aaawww! 94
The Coolest Verb 95
The Ultimate Idiots of All Time 97
Don’t Swim With The Fish 98
Johnny 99
The Power Of The Pen 100
Fly. Be Free! 101
Writer’s Nightmare 103
Those Nasty Red Lines 104
I Got It Out 105
Twitter Confessions 106
That Mystery - Cricket? 108
When Is News, News? 109
The Big English Present 111
Nothin’ But Blue Grammar 112
An Apple Tablet 113
Fantastic Fondue 114
Left Or Right? 115
Food Grows In Plastic 117
No News Day 118
Ahhh Rochat! 119
Socially Speaking 120
Gathering Dust 122
Inglish 123
Nothing’s Funny 124
Pathetic And So Soon Forgotten 125
Free Is Still Alive 126
Young and Old 128
Worth More Dead 129
A Silly Idea 130
I’ll Buy An iPad 130
The Old Subliminal Advertising Trick 131
An Apple a Day 132
Can You Spare Me A Trillion? 132
Photo Albums 133
Why Write? 134
I Fart Too! 135
A Conspiracy Theory 137
Change Of Habit 138
Politically Incorrect 138
The Farmer In The Glen 139
The End of a Book 140
I Try To Stay Away 141
Full Time Idiot 142
There’s My Wallet. In The Freezer! 143
Breaking The Blogging Rules 144
Working Nine to Five. Sucks! 145
Caffeine, Nicotine, Protein 146
I Want To Confess My Fetish 147
Clothes Shrink In Winter 148
My Generous Neighbour - Michael Schumacher 149
Brutal Gentlemen 150
Habit Or True Love 151
Seduction With Compost Cooking 152
Ten Golden Rules Of Successful Writing 153
Sexual Relations And Overdue Dinner Invitations 155
Seductive Mashed Potato Secrets 156
How To Tell If Your Mac Likes You 157
Spring Has Sprung 158
Branding A Child’s Brain 159
Childhood Imagery 159
Ten Easy Ways To Get Rich 160
Puff, Pant, Gasp, Wheeze, Sweat, Pain. 161
The Dietary Dictate By Derek 163
The Sense Of Smell 164
My Tomorrow To Do List 164
K-nowledge 166
I Want To Be Witty 166
A Calendar And Old Age 167
Top 10 Tips for Guys Who Want To Be Cool 168
Dream Logic 170
The Democracy Gravy Train 172
The Imagination Gland 173
Serially Bad Drivers 174
I Really Miss UFOs 176
A Remarkable Change 177
I Do Not Like Wednesday 178
Taboo Topics 179
Good Luck Lives Quite Close 180
So Who Is Derek Haines? 182


What Is This Book About?

Great question. The answer is so splendidly simple. This book is about anything, everything and nothing. It is an ideal companion on a bus or train where regular interruptions are guaranteed as every part of this book is very, very short. Ideal also for parents of young children who get interrupted a lot by screaming, crying and toilet training. Great too for those with a limited attention span.
Another terrific attribute of this book is that it is either cheap or free. This A or B choice is yours depending on where you source the book from. If you had to choose option A it was not my fault. It was the distributer who ripped you off.
While on this subject I should point out that this book is only available in electronic formats. The reasoning is that no trees are destroyed in the process. No chlorine, bleach, potassium or nuclear material is dumped into the environment as a result of paper manufacturing and therefore I have a much clearer conscience. As well as that, this e-book contains the mindless meanderings of an ageing Australian male lost in the alpine paradise of Switzerland which in itself is probably enough pollution.
If you have already scanned the table of contents you will have noticed that there is certainly no rhyme, logic or theme in this book. The reason for this is that each short utterance captures my thoughts on a singular day during the last twelve months.
So get ready for a wild ride, or, ask for a refund now and read no further.The Comfort of Humour

My upbringing was very normal for the nineteen fifties and sixties in Australia. Boys were meant to be tough creatures who showed no signs of pain, suffering, confusion or emotion. One emotion was permitted however. That was, being happy and contented with life’s lot. The standard was set primarily of course by my father, who was a perfect role model, and by my male relatives, friends and peers. Being tough, hard, unemotional and without fear were the attributes of a real man.
I remember stubbing my big toe on a rock when I was about five or six. My toe nail was pointing north, and there was blood gushing in abundance. There was pain in abundance as well. But before my first tears of pain had completed their gravitational journey down my cheeks, my father’s voice reminded me of my obligations. “Boys, don’t cry!” he said as he doused my bleeding foot with cold water from the garden hose. This was accompanied by the sound advice to have our dog lick my toe as it would help stop the bleeding.
On another occasion, I managed to gash my leg on a rusty nail while climbing a picket fence at the back of our house on my way to my friend who lived behind us. Once again, blood was everywhere and the screams of my friends, and myself of course, attracted my mother’s attention. Naturally she came running, saw the gaping wound in my calf, exposing my shin bone and proceeded to belt me vigorously on the backside while saying, “You father told you never to climb the fence!”
I am sure these two examples highlight the social conditioning I was accustomed to as a youngster. So, what was the result? Humour. It was, and still is the best protection I have from crying my eyes out when pain, suffering, sadness, anxiety or grief threaten to overcome me. In memory of my parents I can give you prime examples of how I habitually manage adversity with humour.

I was unfortunate enough to lose both my parents in the same year. They died within a few months of one another. My dad went first in May. Very suddenly. However, the poor bastard only had a measly five months peace and quiet before my mother got fed up with no one around to nag, and decided to up and die, just so she could get things back to what had been normality for fifty-five years. My poor father. He deserved a little longer.
Then, as Christmas approached for the first time without my parents, I suddenly realised the economy of losing them both. It was a much cheaper Christmas with two fewer gifts to buy and post. The silver lining of the black cloud of death. But then my daughter went and ruined it all by replacing my parents with grand kids, so the economy didn’t last very long.
Humour has always been my protection. It saves me from dwelling on negative thoughts for too long so I can get on with drinking beer and telling jokes. It saves me on washing snotty handkerchiefs and finding machine washed tissue pulp in my Levi’s. It saves me from crying.

An Economist's Christmas

It is reassuring to know that this holiday season, that we, the collective consumer ants who colonise this massive ant’s nest called Earth, have the opportunity to save the world from economic meltdown by spending every last cent we have on Chinese toys. Every last dollar we have on iPods, iPhones and iMacs. Every last dime on socks, cheap sexy underwear, Barbie dolls, handkerchiefs and fondue sets. Every last cent of our collective savings, retirement accounts and insurance policies on Christmas tinsel, plastic trees, imitation snow and polyurethane holly.
It is our opportunity to save the world economies after our bankers, governments, insurers, multi-nationals, economists and fast food giants had the incredible misfortune of getting hooked on greed, sub-primes, junk bonds and highly addictive bonuses. We all know how hard our governments have worked this last year in trying to get industry, commerce and financial institutions to kick their junkie bond habits. To go cold turkey. To enter rehab. Counselling. Our governments have set up money clinics. Places where our financial addicts can go when they are desperate and be injected with a few billion tax payer dollars.
So after all this hard slog, and not forgetting the pain of banker’s bonuses being reduced by 000.0001%, the economists now say that this was not enough. It is up to us ants this Christmas to save the world. The baton of responsibility to spend our collective way out of recession and depression has been passed through the hands of our stock markets, industry, commerce and governments to us.
Well I say, “Shove your baton!”
In the last year I have seen my business go flop, my friends lose their jobs, my retirement savings almost wiped out and faces of people I don’t know wracked with fear of losing their houses. I have seen unemployment queues, fire sales, desperation and anxiety. I have seen depression that is a medical affliction, not a financial term. I have now seen the long term effect of Gordon Gekko’s greed. It is not good, it is a crying shame.
This Christmas I will spend every last second of time that I have with my family and friends. Spend every last emotion on them. Spend my time thinking about how bare the tree will be this year. Spend no time at all sympathising with banks and economists.
Bah Humbug!

I Am An Idiot, Not A Fool!

If you have seen my website or book publicity you will have noticed that I use the uniquely identifying title of idiot. Just after generic descriptions of author, songwriter and poet. So, just for those 000.21% to 000.47% of my very few readers who may be curious as to why I use this, I am happy to explain. Really happy in fact.
An idiot is someone who is often dazed and unable to think clearly and lacking intelligence or common sense. So far, so good I think. Clear, concise and reflecting my personal qualities outstandingly. The noun idiot originally referred to layman or a person lacking professional skill. Another precise clue to my CV here. An idiot is also defined as a person so mentally deficient as to be incapable of ordinary reasoning. Well, that one just about nails it in the head.
Idiot as a word is derived from the Greek ἰδιώτης, idiōtēs means a person lacking professional skill or a private citizen or individual. Or In Latin the word idiota means ordinary person or layman.
The related word idiocy dates to 1487 and may have been analogously modelled on the words prophet and prophecy.
Wow, now that is a really cool reason to have my idiot moniker.
So now, let’s have a look at why I don’t like to be called a fool. Not at all. In fact, I can handle being called almost anything except a fool. Why?
A fool is defined as a person who acts unwisely or imprudently or someone easily duped. It also refers to someone ridiculously trivial or frivolous, helpless or defenceless. In addition a fool is the the butt of a joke. None of this refers to me at all. So far off the mark it would be ridiculous to even consider associating me with this word.
A glance at a thesaurus adds to my argument.
I do not consider myself as an ass, blockhead, dunce, dolt, ignoramus, imbecile, cretin, dullard, simpleton, moron, clod; informal nitwit, halfwit, dope, ninny, nincompoop, chump, dimwit, dingbat, dipstick, goober, coot, goon, dumbo, dummy, ditz, dumdum, fathead, numbskull, numbnuts, dunderhead, thickhead, airhead, flake, lamebrain, zombie, nerd, peabrain, birdbrain, jughead, jerk, donkey, twit, goat, dork, twerp, schmuck, bozo, boob, turkey, schlep, chowderhead, dumbhead, goofball, goof, goofus, galoot, lummox, klutz, putz, schlemiel, sap, meatball, dumb cluck.
No. I am an idiot, not a fool. And very proud of my status.
References are from my helpful little Macbook dictionary.app program that uses as its sources:

http://www.oxfordreference.com/pages/Subjects_and_titles__t183
http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/Reference/?view=usa&ci=9780195342840
http://wikipedia.org/


Right, Let’s Blow Up The Moon!

SAVE THE WORLD: BLOW UP THE MOON!
It has been nearly fifty years since JFK set a challenge to mankind. And, it has now been forty years since the challenge was fulfilled by Neil Armstrong. Since then, nothing.
Now I am sure you will think that detonating our moon into tiny dust particles sounds a bit radical, but there are some very sound reasons for putting this on our collective political agendas and working together to implement the plan before the next decade is out.
Firstly, we now know that there is plenty of water on the moon courtesy of the LCROSS mission. So, get the timing right and blow up the moon when it’s trajectory crosses central Australia and the Sahara and boom, instant agriculture. Dumping all those buckets of moon water on our vast desert regions. On the way to feeding our ever growing population.
As well as the water, the moon is rich in minerals. We’ll have dug everything up on Earth soon, so let’s plan for our grand children. Gravity will bring all those mineral rich dust particles down to Earth in no time at all. Our kids and grand kids won’t even have to go down a hole to get the stuff. It will just bee lying around, on everything.
Next. Global warming. Solved in an instant by blowing up the moon. Our thin protective atmosphere will be covered with a heat reflecting dust cloud that will last for thousands, if not millions of years. Just imagine. Our kids could play happily outside without fear of sun burn. In fact they would never see the sun at all.
Did I mention tides? Imagine no tides. That would save a lot of shipping problems. Beaches would stay put for tourists. Mangroves would die ensuring few mosquitoes to carry diseases. No more werewolves. No more lost night’s sleep because of the full moon. No more howling dogs. Stars in the night sky will be much brighter. The list is endless.
NASA could stop wasting money on trying to put a man back on the moon. It’s been done before you silly people! They could set a real challenge for themselves and start designing a real SS Enterprise and start training new Captain Kirks. Get on with finding all those alien life forms out there.
Then there is the side benefit of what to do with all our nuclear weapons. Nobody wants to use them anymore, and there are thousands of nuclear warheads lying around rusting and rotting. So in one economical exercise, we can rid the world of these nukes by putting them to good use. To blow up the moon!
So I put it to you to pressure your leaders. Barack Obama, Dmitry Medvedev, Nicolas Sarkozy, Kim Jong-il, Hu Jintao, Ban Ki-moon, Manmohan Singh, Gordon Brown, Asif Ali Zardari and all other presidents and prime ministers to work together and set the world this breath taking challenge to save our planet for our children.
Permission is granted to forward this article to Al Gore, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, and any other environmental activists.

Grieving. The forgotten emotion in separation.

It took me some time to decide to publish my last book, Nobody’s Fault. In fact I wrote it more than ten years ago, and in essence it was a cathartic exercise during a very difficult time for me. What came from the process was the realisation that men and women suffer from tremendous grief during and after separation, and our society offers very little recognition or help in working though this complex physiological state.
After a death, grief is a natural and well understood state that takes time to manage and heal with compassion and caring. But this same reaction, mixed with the guilt, bitterness, anxiety and anger of separation creates a volatile state of mind and makes for unpredictability in people’s reactions. Very little is done to help people in this state, and often is totally ignored by physicians and counsellors. And certainly by lawyers!
After writing the book, I realised that I had been grieving. But did not know I was because I was a man. Strong, determined, pig headed, rational and not affected by emotion in decision taking. Wrong, wrong wrong. I was an emotional wreck and hiding behind a facade of male strength and stubbornness.
I was asked which character was me in the book. The answer is there is a little of me in all of them. Women included. Except one character that became a problem in writing as she intentionally has no name and is never described, but is central to the story.
The story is brutal, angry and disgustingly irrational in parts. It had to be though as reactions to grief are irrational and extremely unpredictable. Not knowing or trying to hide grief makes for a state of mind that is extremely fragile.


Old Sage

It is normal that we get old. A real bummer yes, but unfortunately unavoidable. With each year that passes, our lives change, people come and go, births, deaths and marriages. (I prefer the expression, hatches, matches and dispatches!) New friends, old friends, lost friends. Our opinions change, beliefs become either more or less flexible, patience decreases. Wrinkles appear and short term memory becomes an increasing challenge. Doctor’s appointments become an intricate part of your calendar.
But then, some things just do not change at all. Levi’s are always cool. Politicians still lie just as eloquently. War continues to be a practical political and financial bonanza. Lego is still popular with kids. Elvis Presley is still the King of Rock & Roll. And university students are still reading Atlas Shrugged.
Then there is my mind. The body maybe suffering from a little wear and tear, and hurtling towards its use by date, but my mind stays exactly the same. More’s the pity some might say.
I read this description of myself this morning. I wrote it more than ten years ago, and it proves me correct. My mind still truly believes this same lie.
“I am an incorrigible epicurean, whining political sceptic and lascivious pervert. If you have formed a differing opinion, I must tell you that you are probably wrong. Not necessarily though, as who am I to tell you what you think. Perhaps I should rephrase this opening paragraph to read that I love to believe that I am an incorrigible epicurean, whining political sceptic and lascivious pervert. It is a selfish indulgence and an attempt to create a positive image of myself. In reality I am just an ordinary boring Australian male who lives in a semi-perpetual state of driven imagination and wild fantasy.”
Some things just never change.

Bing, Go, Go, Gone!

Microsoft still manage to amaze me. Although a dedicated and self confessed and obsessed Apple Mac freak, there is no getting away from the fact that we all (including me) live in a Microsoft world. This was bought back home to me last week with a very sudden thud.
I have, of course, registered my website with Google, Yahoo, DMOZ, directories, other smaller search engines, and then of course, Bing. Microsoft’s new answer to internet search.
All goes well, and my site is listed in varying degrees of fullness by all these sites and directories. In fact, I was initially impressed with Bing, as it indexed around 75% of my pages. Not bad. I was truly very happy. Until!
One morning last week, I log on to Bing, and presto, my site has disappeared from their index except for one page. 90% of the backlinks listed just a few days before had also disappeared. So, naturally I send a friendly email to Bing support asking what had happened.
I received a prompt reply from a guy at Bing. Good so far. Content of the message? Well, try this for a start.
“Bing has a different search algorithm and the Bing Team continuously updates the algorithms we use to ensure we have the highest quality content in our search results. For this reason, you will notice over time that some sites are showing then sometimes it doesn’t.”
Now, if you understand this gobbledegook message, please let me know.
This was of course accompanied by suggestions to visit their Bing forums which I always understand as ‘piss off’ and find out for yourself.
I have heard rumors of Google’s Sandbox, but this sounds like Bing’s Black Hole!
My response to the email was just to say to myself ’sod off Microsoft’ as usual and get on with other things. Until!
Microsoft kindly sent me an email MSN Support Survey to complete just a few days later. May not have helped my site, but I scored their support at zero for everything listed, and when I had a chance to comment instead of tick boxes, I informed them that their support stank! (Or words to that effect.)
My simple point here, is that yes, you can have 1,000 ISO certificates and accreditations for quality customer service standards because you have a systematic two way evaluation process in place. But for me, no matter how sophisticated the processes you have in place, if you treat your customer as if he or she is brain dead, you will last as long as a monopoly as American railroad companies. A long time yes, but in the end, smarter people will bring you down.
I contact many services on the internet, but none one other than Microsoft manages to treat me like a completely brain dead idiot with an appetite for nonsensical horse shit.
Well done Bing! And goodbye! I wish you a pleasant downfall.

It’s Love!

What is it about the iPhone? I have had my little darling for more than a year now, and I am still in love.
I know more words have been written about the iPhone in the last couple of years than almost any other news worthy item. So, I am not going to comment on anything technical or geeky. It is just a fascination for me, as to why I am still in love. Yes, I’m a gadget freak, but no other gadget has held my affection for this long before. So what it about the iPhone?
For me, it is the shopping list. I use this little app more than anything else. Ticking off my items as I toss them in the caddy. Cool! The alarm. So cool. Waking to the sound of soothing harps each morning. And as it is by my bedside, it had received a full charge overnight, so as to be ready for my new day. Then there is the multiple level backgammon that keeps me occupied for hours. Notes? Did I mention that I can make a note of a bright idea in either text or voice?
Oh I forgot to mention maps. Now I never get lost. Email, SMS, MMS, and as a bonus it’s a great bedside lamp when I need a little visit during the night.
Photos of my grand kids. Always ready to show off to my friends. Train schedules. New York Times. Live cricket scores. I love the Zippo lighter. Impresses everyone. The Star Wars light sabre. Oh so cool. Crappy camera, but then I am one who loves one button photography, so it actually suits me fine.
It’s a remote control for my iTunes too! Don’t have to move from the sofa. Great stuff. It’s just so cool my iPhone.
The only part that is a little strange for me is that …… I rarely use it as a telephone. Strange that.
I still jump in fright on the very rare occasions it actually rings!

What is a Spy?

I am sure we all have our mind’s eye image of a spy. I have included a few of my favourites to add a bit of pizzaz to this blog entry. But back to reality.
Writing a historical spy novel is proving to be a monumental challenge for me. The idea was great, but the execution is taken me a very long time, with frequent moments of complete blockage. In fact, I have walked away from it for a week or more on a number of occasions as I try to refresh my thinking.
As it happens, I have not chosen your stereotypical spy character, so it is taking me an age to define the main character and of course, re-define as time passes.
Luckily, I have a very clear mental image. However this needs constant reshaping as the story covers a complete life time in multiple cultural environments. My original character list has grown so much, I seem to be returning to re-write earlier sub-plots continuously to keep the story tight. Of course, as it is historical, I seem to lose days and days to research of the most trivial details trying to keep my story line and historical situations accurate.
My original plan was to complete this novel towards the end of this year. At the rate I am going, I might need to move that deadline forward by a few months, or years!
After this project, whenever that will be, I think I might return to a new satyrical essay to clear my brain. Either that or concentrate an clever Twitter utterings. But that is all some way off.
Back to the grind for now.

Sitting On A Bomb

The European Organisation for Nuclear Research (or CERN), which attained literary fame courtesy of Dan Brown’s Angels & Demons, has repaired its new super toy that broke down a little over a year ago. Later today, all things going well, the button will be pushed to start it up again.

The Large Hadron Collider is twenty-seven kilometres in diameter (approximately seventeen miles) and just happens to be located under me. Or maybe I should say I live on top of it. I live close to Geneva in Switzerland, and this super collider sits one hundred and seventy-five meters below ground on the western edge of France and the eastern edge of Switzerland. I trust you get the idea here. It is big. In fact, very, very big.
Its prime function is to make extremely little things go bang. In particular, to make little atoms go bang. By crashing them together from opposite directions at the speed of light. Now, I don’t want to be a LHC party pooper, but this does not sound such a good idea to me. Visions of mushroom clouds and very loud explosions come to mind rather quickly at the mention of atoms, protons, neutrons and alike exploding. Now I am definitely more a grammarian than a scientist, so these three words, atom, proton and neutron are adjectives that rather predictably go before the noun bomb.
However, everything is under control. I checked the LHC website for this reassurance.
CERN define their goal as:
LHC - the aim of the exercise:
“To smash protons moving at 99.999999% of the speed of light into each other and so recreate conditions a fraction of a second after the big bang. The LHC experiments try and work out what happened.”
Now, I don’t want to be a pessimist here, but I get a weird feeling that making atoms go bang can be just a little bit dangerous. My memories of a toy chemical set I received for my sixth birthday were proof that things can go bang rather easily and do a lot of damage to a Laminex kitchen table.
The other small worry I have is that if CERN wants to, recreate the conditions a fraction of a second after the big bang, it has the potential to be a far bigger explosion that my first attempts at making gun powder in the kitchen. The thought of atoms, colliding and exploding, going bang and creating heat one hundred thousand times hotter than the sun has me ever so slightly conCERNed. The fact that this is going to happen right under my feet takes my conCERN level up just a fraction. Reading about the wonders of the LHC makes one gasp at the sheer size and magnitude of this project. The website is also very reassuring about the safety of the LHC. So I have nothing to worry about. It is perfectly safe. Right?
The one small comfort I do have, is that if anything does go horribly wrong, I won’t know a thing about it. I’ll be transformed into cosmic dust in a millisecond along with anyone who is within a light year of me at that moment. Not that I am conCERNed at all. I am 99.999999% convinced that it is all very safe indeed.

Impressum

Tag der Veröffentlichung: 09.11.2010

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