What the?

Planes

What is it about the bastard blinds having to be up during take off and landing? Will having them down on either be causing a pilots blind spot? And the cabin lights have to be dimmed? Again how will this impair the pilots’ ability to fly without crashing into a large mountain? How? But I always enjoy the safety demonstration before take off because as if any of it’s ever going to save our bacon. When flying across the guts of a nation without any ocean or large bodies of water whatsoever...why bother talking about life vests with whistle and light? Will it inflate enough to bounce us right up off of the ground and onto a softer landing? There is no water unless you happen to crash into a large lake, which I guess is possible, and survive, which I guess is possible and then it’s daylight so the light option is fucked and everyone else is dead around you so there goes the whistle...except for boredom while waiting for emergency services and then its entertainment much as a prisoner uses a harmonica. What the? The brace position seems quite frivolous. Who cares about whiplash at the end of the day when your plane is heading south in a downward spiral at 1 million miles an hour? I get the seat-belt thing because turbulence can be a bitch. 

Work Jargon

How many have us have sat in work meetings needing a work jargon dictionary? We all know it, have heard it and have used it I guess too. ‘Buzzwords’. The work dialect that is distinct to particular types of employment that reminds me of being in a huge wank fest frankly.

·        My pet hate is, “Talk to it”. It sounds ridiculous. “Who can talk to the policy in front of us?” What’s wrong with “Who can outline, discuss or summarise the policy in front of us?” or “Who’s familiar with it for fucks sake?”  

·        Following a close second is, let’s “unpack” this information. It usually involves a white board or power point display or maybe just verbal bullshit to describe an issue...but no let’s unpack the mother fucker...

·        “Cascading down” is a level by level phrase referring to the passing of or dissemination of information, top down approach to people working at the coal face or front line staff...whoops that might have been one ;-)....possibly better to say, actually works to deliver products and interact with clients. . It’s all about the pictures in our heads of a waterfall flowing down to the bottom I guess. “How about, pass this shit on will ya?”

·        “Push the envelope” is apparently aviation jargon. What the? I have no idea how it crept into the minds of some government employees. Its meaning is about the known limits of performing safely. I don’t think we have any real danger of being unsafe in our employ as such. We are not crossing into a different atmosphere or in control of a scram jet.

·        “Thinking outside the box”. Beautiful. Why can’t we just say let’s think differently or unconventionally? What’s the box? Are we in it? I’m getting out.

·        “Wheels in motion”. How about, “Let’s move this fucker and stop chatting and having senseless time consuming meetings about it”. Yes, better already!

All this does not make you a better manager. It doesn't make you more intelligent. Use real words motherfucker! It simply inflates plain sounding rhetoric. Simply put, in my opinion (because that’s all this ever is) it’s padding language with unnecessary and often meaningless words and phrases. Stop it.

Real Est-haters

Can I just say…real estate agents are phenomenally determined. It must do their heads in. It’s doing my head in. They’re like spies. They know when you’ve looked at a house photo on a webpage, they know when you’re thinking about selling or looking, even the most fleeting thought, and when parked across the street of a house for sale…there they are, rapping on your tinted window and scaring the bejesus out of you.

A really stupid thing to do is post a photo of your house for sale on Gumtree, just to see what happens. You know what happens? Every seedy little real estate bastard crawls out of every orifice in the world and is banging down your door, posting in your letter box and ringing on your phone. It’s madness. It’s an Edvard Munch iconic portrait. It's that little kid on "Home alone". It's Jaws. They all of course are doing ‘me’ a favour. It’s not about them, at all. I guess they have nothing better to do.