Poor Little Mouse

My mother has been using a video player for over twenty years and still has problems handling the technological requirements. She can put a video in the slot but refuses to take it back out in case she "ends up pushing it in further". She is equally inept with computers - her fingers hover over the keys like she is choosing a chocolate. When I told her to move the mouse to the left, she picked it up and put it on the screen. She thought it acted like a magnet. But it's no surprise; technology moves on so quickly. When I was at school, the computer mouse was a real mouse and we had to move him around by dragging a piece of cheese under his nose. But the mouse was a pretty clever animal and, when he taught himself to scroll over, this was seized upon by Microsoft and a middle wheel became standard. Mr Gates may well have given billions to his charity but he has never compensated the poor mouse for stealing his idea, and the poor mouse now works in a laboratory trying on cosmetics and cancers. The modern world is cruel.

Middle Eastern Politics

It's all kicking off again in the Middle East. My money is on the Lebanese. They make better falafel and they do lots of exercise. All Moslems are incredibly fit - anyone who takes out a mat and does pilates five times a day must be in pretty good shape.
And they probably have some kind of god on their side; there's always a story of someone cutting open a falafel ball and it seeing the word Allah or E. coli.
But reading skills may not be the strong point of the Jihadists. Decreasing standards of literacy in the Arab world perhaps led to the rise in suicide bombers. The instructions on the bomb read 'Pull the pin. Step back. Run.' The poor readers only managed the first instruction and then the bomb went off. Just a thought.

It's all Me Me Me

Last week, a friend returning from Germany, showed me a video clip from his phone that he had taken during one of the World Cup matches. “This is the bit where they scored the goal,” he explained. The video showed the backs of people’s heads bouncing up and down. I asked him whether the actual goal was any good, and he told me he hadn’t seen it – he was too busy videoing.
I’ve realised that people are less concerned about enjoying life, but more concerned about telling people how much they are enjoying life. Internet dating subscribers are the biggest criminals – anyone who claims to have a ‘very active social life’ would surely not need to meet people online. We all reside in an image-obsessed world where a condition of living is the putting on a show to convince others that we are having a great time. Websites such as mine are testament to this. On checking out my site it may appear that I am successful comedian with a bright future. Little does the world know that I am actually Employee AV22 working a 167 hour week in a sweatshop in Bangladesh, updating my blog in my free hour with the amusing stories that I have borrowed from Ravi, the cleaner.