Great idea. Why don't I steal it? (Part IXd)/Mrs McGinty's Cinder Toffee

La dernière partie:

Great idea. Why don't I steal it? (Part IXc)

No acid house, sadly, though I hope that this (or this) might make up for the lack of said musical style.

Great idea. Why don't I steal it? (Part IXb)

Part two, dear reader, in which I go deeper. Deeper than ever before!

Would you like to join Minge?

Click on the play button! Go on, you know you want to!

Great idea. Why don't I steal it? (Part IXa)

Today, dear reader, is National Coming Out Day. A good day, then, to come out with answers to questions recently put to me. The video below contains part one and lasts just over seven minutes. I'll upload part two shortly.

By the way, forget the Euro. I've seen the future and it's the quid.

Great idea. Why don't I steal it? (Part IX)

Guten morgen, dear reader.

Nuns can be violent!

To celebrate the third anniversary of his blog, David recently invited his readers to submit questions which he then answered in a videocast. I plan on doing the same, recording the video in perhaps seven or so days time.

Until that time, please leave your questions for me here in the comments section or email them to me with questions in the subject line.

Ask what you like. Go on, you know you want to.

Everybody loves a sequel, even if it's plagiarism.

Anger

I never get angry. Well, that's actually a lie. I do, but hardly ever. I can count the number of times I've raised my voice on one hand and recall all incidents.

Anger is a massive problem. Modern life, as well as being rubbish, is full of frustration and losing ones temper is, however uncomfortable we might be with the notion, quite normal.

"Really?" I hear you cry, dear reader.

Yes. There are very obvious links between behaviour and emotion. A negative surprise provokes anger in us: "I can't believe you just did that!"

Strange, that in a world so full of supposed order and expected events, we continue to be surprised. So why the surprise? Because we are, by and large, optimists. We don't arm ourselves with negative expectation, but positive.

Anger is not irrational. Reacting to a surprise is quite reasonable. But with a prepared mind, prepared for every nasty surprise we can imagine, the element of surprise is gone. The rational product of surprise is extreme emotion. A person walking into a surprise birthday party will scream. A person walking into a room full of butchered bodies will scream. Take surprise out of the equation and events are simply accepted as they happen.

We are too optimistic, too hopeful. We imagine everyone behind the wheel of a car will drive well. When they don't, we toot our horns, wave a fist or shout, "Wanker!" We imagine all writers understand the basics of spelling, punctuation, sentence construction and grammar. When they don't, we write vicious letters to The Times. We imagine all chefs know how to season food. When eating a poke of fish and chips and the fryer's been mean with the salt, we sigh, tut and go back to the chippy to demand more salt. We are optimists. A pessimist would expect to get carved up on the roads, to see sentences such as There going to get they're money if thier lucky. A pessimist would expect their fish supper to come without salt and vinegar - and thereby have nothing to get angry about. A pessimist isn't going to expect Superman to come and rescue the kitten stuck in a tree, isn't going to expect the trains will run on time, isn't going to expect the cheque's in the post.

When we get angry, there's an element of surprise, self-pity and injustice. Spelling mistakes, under-salted food and bad driving are neither unfair nor surprising. They are quite predictable. One who gets angry over such things simply has false expectations of the world.

Be more pessimistic!

Accept that we can very often do nothing about the things that do make us angry. Letting go of our inner control freak will do us no end of good. Meg learned this. Mary did not. Meg never pulls on the lead. She simply walks beside me. Mary, however, does pull. She cannot make the world conform to her wishes. In order to maximise happiness, Meg walks beside me, the lead is slack. She knows that in order to be happy, she has to follow a direction she doesn't want to take rather than going her own way and strangling herself on the lead. And of course, we humans are also kept on a lead, metaphorically speaking. Long enough to have some freedom but not long enough to allow us to do whatever we want. Pull against it and we, too, will end up strangled and still going where we don't want to go.

Of course, dogs don't have the power of reasoning. We do. We might not be able to change events, but we can change our attitude to them.

We might imagine we're free, but we're not. As a pessimist, I accept that. I don't get upset over it and don't get angry. And that's what makes me happy.

Do the right thing, my little maid. Expect your emails to go unanswered, expect to get food poisoning today and expect your employer to demote you. Don't get angry. Become a pessimist and be happy.

Predict

It's prediction time, dear reader, and the prediction is death. How more morbid could Minge get?

At the end of your life, hen, I predict that your heart will stop beating.

Six

I saw two shooting stars last night. I wished on them but they were only satellites. And artificial ones, to boot.

I feel I should be on a quest, either to find a new England or a new Minge. A trip to the lakes is in order. It should help me make up my mind.

I've decided, dear reader, insanity aside, that I'm a bit weird. You'll imagine my delight, then, when I read this. I wanted to join in, and here we have it. Six things other people might find a little odd about me:

I pick at my eyebrows. The left one is quite sparse at the moment. I started doing it, I think, when I was about six years old. Mum took me to the GP. He told her that some children cry, some hide under their beds, some pinch other children, some bite themselves, some have tantrums, some vomit. I pick at my eyebrows. Weird, because I also used to cry a lot as well. But it took a lot to make me cry. I used to see children crying at the slightest thing and think they were idiots. It took a flying punch from my Father or to see my Mum knocked out on the lounge floor to make me cry.

So, that's number one. Number two...?

I often photograph my stools in the toilet. Sometimes I send them to people. The photographs, not the stools. I love it. It's great that we're able to flout convention with such aplomb these days.

Three: I sometimes talk to the dogs like they're human beings, furthermore, like they can understand me (for, indeed, dear reader, some humans cannot). I wonder what my dear daughters might say to me if they could speak. I think their most common response would be, "Never mind."

My refusal to answer the telephone is number four. You might catch me, dear reader, if you call me at a time when I'm expecting a call I'd normally take. I don't like surprises and I don't like coping with situations I can't get out of like engaging in conversations on the telephone that make me uncomfortable. Usually, the conversations are with people I like and we cover topics I generally approve of. So I don't really know what I'm worried about, but worry I do and answer the telephone, I don't.

I find the topic of masturbation quite upsetting. Sometimes I have inappropriate thoughts. When I'm stood talking with someone, I'll suddenly think you've been masturbating and I'll admit that sometimes these thoughts are pictorial. I shan't be watching wank week. Five.

My sixth and final odd fact: I used to encourage my niece, when six years old, to tell stories of murder and witchcraft and to draw pictures of beheadings. I thought it might make her arty. She's turned out a lesbian. Do you think the two are related, dear reader?

Take it easy, take a sisi.