Too Much Paperwork

The beach house we stayed in last week had this great booth-style table with a window that looked out over a couple of neighboring gardens towards the sea and it was a good place to sit. You could watch surfers arriving in their Subaru/VW minivan (delete as appropriate). You could watch little clouds moving lazily across a deep blue sky. You could watch hummingbirds circling some apparently irresistible plant outside. And you could watch the labrador next door wander out onto the grass and evacuate its bowels.

What a great accompaniment to any meal. What a delight to observe this furry beast sniff around, assume the position and coil down some gigantic brown turd. And it's not like they wipe afterwards is it? I mean, once the last chunk falls the dog just stands up and walks back into the house, presumably ready to sit on the carpet, or bed. How come dogs can get away without wiping? I can't, and hairy as my arse might be it's certainly not furry like a dog's.

I'm not saying there's never been a time where I could have got away with missing out the wipe, but you don't know until you get started do you? And sometimes you get a really fudgy one and you just have to keep going - it's like you're wiping the head of the next one. Having said that, I could be on full fudge drill for a week and I'd still never consume half the bog roll that a woman does. I'll sit down one day to a full roll. I'll pull off maybe fifteen sheets, but the next day there'll be next to nothing left. What happens to it all?

My theory is that it comes down to safety margin. I've said before that my primary requirement in a toilet roll is that it's strong enough that my finger doesn't go through. It's not much to ask, is it? But Mrs Bison doesn't understand this. "I don't know what you do", she says "my finger never goes through. You must not be using enough paper." Well, excuse me, but if I wind half the roll around my wrist before taking aim then, sure, I'll be safe from accidental digital penetration and inadvertent anus exploration as well. But you'd better budget for about three extra rolls a week, because that's clearly what it takes to have "maximum protection" the female way.

Just think about it - if every woman was prepared to risk just the occasional paper failure (or, heaven forbid, the fucking bog roll manufacturers stopped spending millions on fucking cartoon bears and instead made their fucking product capable of withstanding some shit and a finger, and maintaining a barrier between the two) the reduction in solid waste in our sewer system would have to be in the millions of tons per year.

Mrs Bison just received a toilet roll sample in the mail - a couple of multi-roll packets from some market research company wanting our input to help in evaluating a new product. Of course my first question was "Is it strong?" Nothing else really matters does it? Turns out this stuff is actually pretty good. Great news for me, but of no practical value to the female portion of the house, for whom ripping off eighty sheets at a time and balling them up is clearly standard operating procedure.

None of this would be a problem if we were dogs, though. We could just shit, get up and go about our business. There was this book I saw years ago called something like "How To Shit In The Woods", which explained, believe it or not, how to shit in the woods. Apparently the positioning is very important if you want to minimize wiping, which would be a good plan if you found yourself in pine woods, unless using a pine cone or a handful of needles appeals. It can't just be as simple as that though, can it? If you shit like a dog would your wife let you come back in the house without wiping and sit on the clean white sheets? I think not.

Which reminds me of the story about the bear and the rabbit taking a shit in the woods. The bear turns to the rabbit and asks "Do you find that shit sticks to your fur?" The rabbit replies "Why yes, I do." Whereupon the bear picks up the rabbit and uses it to wipe his arse. Which is one solution, I suppose...


Copyright © 2008 Edward Bison

We All Have Our Cross To Bear

While I was on vacation I had to take time out for an investor teleconference, so my assistant helpfully booked me a room with a speakerphone at a nearby La Quinta hotel (since the beach house had no phone at all and my cell coverage could best be described as somewhere between "spotty" and "non-fucking-existent"). So I rolled up there Monday morning in my little silver rental car and got set up in the room. Everything went fine, except that the room at my end smelled like the scene of a crime involving sex with fish, and the room at the other end apparently couldn't hear much of what I was saying. I therefore was able subsequently to claim that it was all brilliant. So after an hour, my job done, I filled my pockets with free hotel candy (it was in the dish and I wanted my money's worth), paid the bill and headed out to my car.

I had checked out the hotel the night before, since it was close to the gym I had found, and nothing spells "fuck up" quite so much as finding out five minutes before you're due to speak to a crowd of assembled investors that the directions you received and trusted don't in fact take you to the hotel at all, but to a strip bar or Mexican restaurant. This is what they sometimes describe as a "career limiting move". Anyway, that's not the point. What is, is that when I got to the hotel there was a bloke wheeling his luggage into the foyer on one of those gigantic hotel luggage things which have a four foot square wheeled base and metal bars on two sides reaching up about six or seven feet. And this plonker had it completely full, to the point that he was almost incapable of manoeuvring it through the door.

When I arrived at the hotel the following day, for my teleconference, I watched another family pushing one of these things to check out, and it too was full with bags, cases and board games. And when I left there was yet another bloke emptying what seemed like the entire contents of a minivan into the same wheeled luggage carrier, stacked so high that bags were falling off six feet to the ground.

Whatever happened to traveling light? I know we had it easy because there was a washing machine in our place but we packed for the week in two wheeled carry-on bags, for three people. And this included my gratuitous Mr Bison t-shirt. (One day someone is going to stop me in an airport, I just know it.) People who cannot pack a reasonable quantity of shit for a trip should be separated from the line at airports and humanely destroyed, before they can attempt to cram some blatantly oversized holdall into the overhead bin, get it stuck, remove it, remove nineteen pairs of underpants, zip it up, push it back into the bin, remove it again, etc etc, until the flight attendant pulls her head out of her arse and puts a stop to the whole ridiculous charade. But that's just my opinion...

We did encounter one bloke in Oregon who clearly knew how to pack light. He was walking up the side of the highway with a cross. And nothing else. It was a large wooden cross and he was dragging it, presumably in some fervent display of Christian fortitude. He had however exhibited foresight apparently lacking in our savior, in that he had attached a wheel to the bottom so that he didn't have to "drag" it so much as "put it on his shoulder and wheel it". The answer to the question "What Would Jesus Do?" appears therefore to be "Remember To Put A Wheel On The Sodding Cross". Although this example was a pretty big cross it wouldn't meet what I would assume would be "building code" for a cross expected to hold a fully grown man in his death throes. (They were very capable engineers, those Romans.) It was more of an Ikea cross - good value but not built to last and probably prone to split if you attempted to actually nail anyone to it. Does this count? Shouldn't it have to be a "standard issue" full-scale Roman crucifixion device?

Anyway, my principal concern was not for the quality or durability of the cross. (He didn't seem to make much progress in any case - we saw the thing two days later about a mile up the road and the bloke was nowhere in sight.) I was fully expecting, however, that come time to fly back to St.Louis I would find the twat in question vainly attempting to stuff his wheeled cross into the overhead bin on my plane. That's the kind of people I meet...


Copyright © 2008 Edward Bison

Remember The Alamo Lot

I've been on vacation in Oregon for the last week, in a small beach house with no phone or internet, which explains the lack of any new literary output, the delay in publishing comments and my general recent absence from the human race. It was great, especially the "getting away from the human race" part. There's nothing quite like geting herded back through airport security at the end of your vacation, surrounded by the slack-jawed, flat-footed, swollen-bellied, thick detritus of society to remind you how much you enjoy not being around them. And let's face it, these are the ones who can afford to fly and who presumably can command some sort of income.

Of course not all the stupid people in the world are traveling through airports; many of them work there too. I was reminded of this fact when I arrived in Portland and went to pick up my Alamo rental car. I've used Alamo before and never had a problem, but last time I was in Portland I used Avis because they were slightly cheaper. I was reminded of this when we finally got out of the airport building and approached the car rental garage where every major rental car company except Alamo seemed to be located. Alamo, by contrast, was at a remote lot, a bus ride away. No matter, I was saving over $100 on my eight day rental by using Alamo this time so it was worth the ride, right? Well, sort of.

We soon pulled up at a dismal remote lot which seemed to be clean and very uncluttered, especially by cars. I waited at the Alamo desk while the dipshit behind the counter sorted out a moron customer, only to be directed by aforesaid dipshit to the adjoining National desk, so he could go off and do something else, possibly involving self-abuse. (And why have two names if you're really only one company?) A woman with a borderline mental incapacity disorder, but wearing a National uniform, approched me to ask if there was anything she could do to help, except that she couldn't do much, but she'd have a look if I liked. I didn't quite know how to answer this but fortunately the bloke at the counter became available. He sorted out my online reservation and said I could select my midsize car from spaces C4, C5 or C6. I walked outside to find C4 empty and the Chevy Malibu in C6 being driven away. This left a very sorry looking Nissan Sentra in C5. It had 33,000 miles on it, was peppered with dents and scratches, needed fuel and had enough legroom in the back for two passengers, provided that you were planning to entertain Boxing Helena and her mate. I went back inside, noticing as I did that there were a couple of pissed-off looking customers outside already.

I told happy boy at the desk that the car was shit and not "Midsize" but he said they didn't have any others. I pointed out that I had a reservation and he started whining that they didn't know what time people would bring cars back, blah, blah, blah. Tempting as it was to give this head-graspingly unintelligent and useless specimen a lesson on the basics of demand management, forecasting and inventory control I quickly realized that it would be about as much use as talking loudly up a pig's arse. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a harried-looking man in a nice white shirt with a name tag walking out of the back of the building. I followed him:

"You've got a nicer shirt than the others so I'm guessing you're the manager, right? I need a car." Diplomacy was ever my strong suit.

Turns out he was the best shot I had at making something happen. There was a Pontiac Vibe coming out of the car wash and he said I could have it. It didn't seem very midsize either but it looked clean; plus I had a three hour drive still to go, and I didn't like the look of the sweltering rental car lot, already partly filled with more disaffected customers than there were decent cars. It seemed to me that vultures were circling overhead, although that may have been my imagination. Another rental car employee was about to give it away to a young couple but smart-shirt man pulled rank and we drove off in the Vibe. Midsize or not (technically it seems to be a compact sport wagon, whatever the fuck that means) it was brand new, with less than 1500 miles on it, and quite fun to drive. It had no trouble cruising at 70-80mph whenever the twats that infest the roads in Oregon could be persuaded to move out of the left lane into one of the huge spaces to their right.

The only thing I didn't understand was why there were no Subarus at the rental lot. It appears to be some sort of State car in Oregon. I believe the State animal is the beaver, but on the strength of my experience at the Alamo I'm prepared to suggest that it should in fact be the gibbon, since that's clearly the intellectual level required to work with the public over there. Nice mountains though...


Copyright © 2008 Edward Bison

Take A Seat

It must be a slow news day again because the Associated Press today reported that an Anaheim man just set a Guinness World Record for "Most Seats Sat in 48 Hours" by sitting in 39,250 seats. He did this by showing up at a stadium and, well, just sitting in one seat after another. He's continuing with the effort, mind you, with the goal of sitting in each of the stadium's 92,542 seats by the end of the week.

Who the fuck cares? It's not as though this twat achieved anything that any other person couldn't have done, had they been inclined to show up at an empty stadium and sit down a lot. I suppose I can understand the desire of some people to keep track of athletic records, such as fastest 100 meters, or sports records, like the number of home runs in a season (now discredited by steroid abusing cheats) or touchdown passes in a game. Then there's all those records that fall into the category of "I know not everyone could do that but I'm not sure why anyone would want to". How about "Most Ferrero Rocher chocolates eaten in a minute"? Yes, seriously. Are there categories for every major confectionery product? Then there's "Most cockroaches eaten" (36 in a minute, apparently) and "Faetest run 100 meters, barefoot on ice".

This is all bollocks, isn't it? It's not so much a collection of meaningful records as a freak show of weird and mentally diseased people, and all the bizarre things they choose to do, presumably to gain attention, although possibly in some cases as a symptom of some deep psychological disorder.

Bear in mind that there must have to be some Guinness Records represenative on hand for these events. How does that work then? Do you just pick up an economy pack of live cockroaches and call them up to make an appointment? Imagine what a shit job that must be.

"We've got a great assignment for you this week, Smith. We want you to go to Pasadena and spend 48 hours watching some dumbass sitting in lots and lots of identical seats. Oh, and you have to count how many times he does it. Why? Who the fuck knows why, Smith. It's your goddam job. We're in the records business and this dumb son of a bitch is going to set a record, so get your bony ass down to Pasadena and count some goddam plastic seats. Jesus, you'll be telling me next you don't want to count how many cockroaches a guy can eat."

Let's face it, the guy who can shear fifty sheep in eight hours probably earned a bit of respect in the sheep-shearing community. (Is there a record for the number of sheep fucked in eight hours?) But for a lot of these "records" the perpetrators are clearly mentally ill. Take the Italian bloke who typed sixty four books backwards. Why? What the fuck possesses someone to type even one book backwards? Isn't this is documented in some psychologists' handbook somewhere as a classic obsessive/compulsive disorder?

"Hi, honey, I'm home. What did you do today?"
"I typed forty pages of War and Peace backwards."
"Oh terrific. You must be very proud. Would you like some more medication now? Or a lie down?"

Which brings us back to seat-sitting man. He apparently got the itch for this sort of thing twenty years ago after sitting in all 107,501 seats at the University of Michigan's football stadium. I imagine he's spent the intervening two decades persuading some institution somewhere that it was safe to let him out again, a decision that they'll no doubt be rethinking today. The kind of uncontrollable desire that would drive a person to want to sit in all of 107,501 seats can only be textbook severe OCD. Don't give him a world record, give him some drugs. And a securely padded room.

The appeal of the Guinness Book Of Records is clearly that it is something anyone can aspire to join. No special talent is required; this is smart from a business perspective. It's the same reason those funny video shows always give the prizes to really shit, unfunny videos - they want the plebs to know that they can win too, so they'll send their own crappy videos in, No-one would bother if the prize always went to a hilarious but rare shot of someone getting butted in the groin by a gigantic goat which then pisses on his prostrate body.

Anyway, feel free to get your name in the book. Shove a lot of cocktail sticks up your arse, or something. Just bear in mind that you're putting your name down in a list of certified "weird, mentally ill or worryingly disordered" people, which can hardly be regarded as a recommendation, so best leave that entry off your resume...


Copyright © 2008 Edward Bison

Five Go To Hell In A Handbasket - Part 1

Apologies to all the American readers, to whom none of what follows will make any sense at all. When I was a kid, amongst all the various examples of "nice" childhood fiction (Narnia, Swallows and Amazons and all that), possiby the "nicest" were Enid Blyton's Famous Five stories. Bison Daughter has now been the recipient of some of these stories, sent by relatives back in the UK, and they definitely bring back memories. It seems a shame, however, that there aren't any new stories (on account, one assumes, of Ms Blyton's death) so I thought I'd have a crack at a new one, in the style of the originals. Look, it's Sunday in St.Louis and I wasn't going to spend all day watching fucking tennis so I had to pass the time somehow...

George was excited! Her three cousins, Julian, Dick and Anne were coming to stay for the holidays and she couldn’t wait for all their adventures to start. She hopped from one foot to the other as she strained to see down the lane, looking for any sign of the carriage bringing them from the station.

“George” said her mother, “looking won’t get them here any quicker. You’re supposed to be helping me and learning how to make donuts.”

George, whose real name was Georgina, really wanted to be a boy, and her mother was constantly struggling to make her do girly things, like making cakes.

“I know mother.” said George “The first batch should be ready to come out of the pan now shouldn’t they?”

She piled the hot donuts on a plate and was just showering them in sugar when there was a knock at the door. Timmy the dog barked joyfully and within minutes there was chaos in the kitchen as her three cousins dragged their luggage in.

“Hello Aunt Fanny” said Julian “It really is most kind of you to accommodate us for the holidays again.”

“It’s always a pleasure, Julian” replied his aunt.

George hugged her cousins in turn. “Oh Julian, haven’t you got tall! And Anne, you’ve grown too. And here’s Dick. It wouldn’t be a holiday without Dick, would it? Here, help yourselves to donuts – I made them myself!”

Julian took one and munched it hungrily. “I say George, you did do well. These donuts taste just like Fanny’s.”

“Why aren’t you having one Dick?”

“Dick’s not really hungry” said Julian “We were playing the biscuit game with some prefects in our carriage on the train from boarding school and I’m afraid he’s had rather a lot to eat already.” Dick did in fact look rather pasty.

“Well, it just goes to show that you shouldn’t eat too many biscuits!” said Aunt Fanny, who really had no idea how the biscuit game was played. “Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer an iced bun?”

Dick turned green and ran from the room. “He really needs to work on his technique before next term” said Julian “Why don’t you take him in hand George?”

“Okay” replied George. She desperately wanted a penis of her own, but practicing with someone else’s was the next best thing.

“Why don’t you all have some ginger beer?” said Aunt Fanny, pouring out glasses for all the children. Dick re-entered the kitchen, looking pale. “It’ll be a couple of hours until tea. What are your plans for the rest of the afternoon?”

“Why don’t we go for a walk to the harbor?” suggested George. “We can look at the boats, and there might even be some seamen.”

Dick gagged and ran out again.

“What’s up with Dick?” asked Aunt Fanny.

“I don’t know” said Julian, winking at George, “I think he just gets excited at the thought of seeing seamen again!”

To Be Continued, If I Can Be Arsed...


Copyright © 2008 Edward Bison

Independent Drinking

Yesterday was the 4th of July here (it was the 4th of July everywhere, I suppose) so like true Brits we got together with some fellow expats to celebrate. It's not that we have a big desire to remember the Americans' lucky defeat of the English (with help from the tossbag French, who still can't stop sucking off the Germans, even though we've had to bail them out in two world wars already) but it's an excuse for a day off, and besides, if America was run by the the same twats who run the UK the whole place would be considerably more fucked up than it is today.

So we wandered down the road for a barbecue and some beer. Obviously I took some beer with me and, since our hosts were English, it was important that said beer was not of the "weak, tasteless urine" variety so loved by some of my American friends. The local supermarket doesn't have a lot to offer outside the "urine" category but it does have Boddingtons, in bright yellow one-pint cans, with the widget, so you get that "draught poured" effect. Now that is a beer you can show up with and not be viewed as an instant cunt.

There was other beer in a cooler, which I ended up drinking as well (since it would definitely be a cunty thing to have drunk all the Boddingtons myself) and it was of the "more flavorful" US type, such as Schlaflys. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't Boddies either, which got me wondering why the locals have such a love for weak yellow tasteless piss rather than appreciating real beer. It's not as though there's any doubt here - Boddingtons is a fine beer but also very easy to drink. I could understand my American brethren having a hard time with something more exotic, like Theakstons OP, or a piss-head lager such as Special Brew, but a pint of Boddies is so dramatically superior to ANY product from Anheuser-Busch that it's a wonder that company is still in business.

We served it as nature intended, i.e. cooled to "cellar temperature" but not iced down so that it became tasteless. The reason that beer is served in iced glasses over here is very clear: when you're imbibing urine the less you can taste it the better, but serving a good pint that way would be like pouring a fine Islay malt over ice. Now that would make you a cunt.

There's a lot of whining going on in St.Louis about the potential sale of locally-headquartered Anheuser-Busch to InBev but it's hard to see the problem, unless it's that much-needed efficiencies would lead to a loss of local jobs. Budweiser in all its manifestations is tasteless piss. I've heard it said (by local friends who probably realize it's piss but are trying to find a redeeming feature) that at least it's good to drink cold, after physical activity, but that seems to result purely from it being a cold liquid with little flavor that can be drunk when you're thirsty. The same could be said of Gatorade, for fucks sake. And anyway, with all the gas in it, it's the last thing I'd choose to drink if I was thirsty. That first pint of Boddingtons last night slipped down so quickly it amazed me, but there was no gas in it, and no need to ritually belch the alphabet in order to make room for the next one. (Not that I would discourage anyone from doing this on a purely recreational basis, you understand.)

If InBev gets hold of Anheuser-Busch, little will change. The company will still produce pissy beer because that's what its customers want. It's what they're used to, and nothing can beat the Midwestern United States for sheer conservatism and resistance to change. Trying to point out that their beer has no taste is like telling them the Emperor has no clothes on. They're busy debating the relative merits of Bud and Miller without realising that it's like comparing two varieties of donkey urine - it doesn't matter which is "better".

Just to put the icing on the cake, imported Boddingtons sells here for $6.45 for four pints, compared with $6.99 for six small bottles of some of the better "craft brewed" beers in the supermarket. It's cheap, especially if you convert it into UK pounds (about 80p a pint), so there's no excuse for picking up something that doesn't taste as good is there? The only shame is that there are at least fifty other decent British pub beers that I'd be happy to see gracing my supermarket shelves, such as Marstons Pedigree, Brains Red Dragon, Whitbread Best Bitter, Bass, Abbot Ale and John Smiths. (Insert your favorite here.)

Ironically, although I'm happy to join in the celebration of American independence, I have to use imported British beer to do it because the local stuff is so fucking awful. It appears that the famous Declaration must have had some small print about "liberation from standards of taste in beer". Pity really...


Copyright © 2008 Edward Bison

Sit, Roewe, Sit

I had nothing better to do on Sunday night in Shanghai so I took a taxi to Xintiandi to meet a mate for dinner. He wanted to try this restaurant that always had a line outside, on the basis that it had to be good if that many people were prepared to wait for it. As it turned out the food was good, but not so great that I wouldn't in future just go to the Crystal Jade about fifty yards away and get seated right away. Anyway, when we arrived at this place they gave us a number, and since we had some time to kill before getting in we wandered back outside where there was a small stage with a red car on it. There was a silver version of the same car on the ground next to the stage, and a handful of what we assumed were models waiting for what we similarly assumed would be a show.

Being curious we took a closer look at the car. It was what we in the US would call "compact" and didn't resemble anything I recognized. I looked at the nameplate - it wasn't one of the homegrown Chinese makes, like Geely or Chery (you know, those ones on the YouTube videos that self-destruct during crash testing). It was a Rover, or should I say Roewe. Yes, the once proud British automotive marque, bought by the Chinese firm SAIC in a final act of humiliation for the union-ridden and inefficient ex-British Leyland / Austin Rover Triumph, erstwhile purveyor of Allegros, Marinas and Maxis, has now been phonetically neutered to make it more pronounceable by its new owners. The new car in question was a Roewe 550, a small, anonymous and inoffensive little beast and a far cry from the old SD1 or the 800 series.

We wanted to stay and watch the show; a large green laser was projecting "550" onto a nearby building, presumably preventing any unfortunate occupants in the target zone from appreciating the local TV (were such a thing indeed to be possible), but it was soon time to eat. By the time we emerged the models were gone, but the cars remained. A PA system played a Beatles song four times in a row, and then it became apparent that a band was about to play. The band in question wasn't actually on the stage but on the pavement nearby, so we took up residence outside a Haagen-Dazs ice cream shop to listen.

I didn't recognize the first song, but the first few notes of the second make it clear that the band of Chinese locals was about to launch into a rendition of Radiohead's "Creep" that would have made Thom Yorke cry. And not in a good way. I don't know where the singer came from, but I as the song progressed in this open air pedestrian zone, surrounded by nice Chinese and expat families, I wanted to know how he would handle the line that include the words "...you're so fucking special".

Well there was no need to worry. Maybe the singer didn't actually know the words and was just singing a phonetic approximation, or maybe he was just shit, but when he got to that line it came out like "...sa fickan spesha", like a cross between Father Ted and a drunk Glasegian. Just when I thought it couldn't get any better, the song reached the bit with the high notes. The suspense was awful - could he hit them? Could he carry it off? Well, ladies and gentlemen, I'm here to tell you that he couldn't. He screamed at the top of his voice into the microphone, causing two teenage girls next to us to actually put their fingers in their ears, and failed to hit within spitting distance of any of the actual notes in the song. It was a truly awful performance, something that would have embarrassed a clueless pisshead in a karaoke bar, and more closely resembled the vocal emissions of a dog fox, locked in its mate's fox-box post-coitus and screaming in pain as its dick was contracted.

As they say in the world of investigative reporting "we made our excuses and left". On the face of it the Roewe looked like a nice car, but if the Chinese Thom Yorke's version of "Creep" is anything to go by it's a long way from a real Rover. Rest in peace, British car industry. General Motors will be along to join you shortly.


Copyright © 2008 Edward Bison