To The Manner Born

“The hardest job for kids today is having good manners without seeing any”.
Fred Astaire

Is it just me, or are we totally losing the plot with how we agree, or allow ourselves, to be treated these days? What’s happening to us? Why are we constantly being abused or mistreated, and seemingly at every turn.
When we encounter poor behaviour towards us generally, it is bad enough, yet how about if we are paying for something and don’t get the expected service we should? I believe I am a reasonably affable fellow, yet notice that I am becoming increasingly intolerant and wound up by the treatment I am receiving from others, often perfect strangers, for apparently no reason whatsoever… and often I am effectively paying for this mistreatment.
It wasn’t that long ago when manners were ‘indoctrinated’ into you at a young age. It seemed that children in my generation had special places on their body where manners were physically implanted by an able and willing parent. Manners seem to be conceptual, but I learned fairly quickly that they entered and left my body through the back and top of my head. This must be true, because every time I forgot them, my parents would smack the back of my head in an effort to put them back where they had escaped from.
Manners in today’s day and age are being allowed to slip and because children can’t be physically reminded of their wrong doings by parents any more, manners have escaped from children, and thus physically can’t be replaced though the bodily part from where they broke free.


In my forties now, and with hereditary pattern baldness lurking at the top and rear of my head, it would seem that in my family at least, manners made a break for it from there. Perhaps all that constant replacement therapy administered from my parents put the manners back and simultaneously gave me hereditary hair loss to emerge in my later years. In hindsight, I would have preferred not to lose my hair because my manners were trying to escape. Little buggers. Why couldn’t they have made a break for it from my backside or from the back of my legs, like they did with other kids?
It seems that whenever we venture out into the world these days, we are experiencing the aftermath of manners having successfully made a break for it. There’s so much going on in our worlds these days, we can’t be expected to know everything, yet the extension of a little courtesy and good manners takes little time and costs nothing. Yet these seemingly minor behavioural patterns, values perhaps, maybe even ‘ways of working’ seem all but lost on the majority, which I feel is rather sad and society as a whole is losing out.
A simple task like shopping can be full of trials and tribulations. Were we to receive just a little consideration as consumers, and be plied with good manners, how different an experience might it become?
First of all, we have to find a place to park the car. Why is it that this simple process is made so difficult for us? If we are going shopping, we usually visit a mall or complex of some time. How aptly these are named. By the time you actually find a bloody parking space you feel like you have been mauled and the process of simply being able to park your car is decidedly complex for sure! Of course, we usually could have been able to park earlier than we eventually manage to, were it not for some completely selfish bastards who believe the best way of protecting their cars from impact from other people’s car doors is to occupy two spaces.


You know the type, don’t you?
The kind of person who can’t possible manoeuvre his car between two lines and has to use the middle line from two spaces to line up with the centre of his bonnet. And even then half the time the car is parked angularly. Thanks for the consideration pal.
I want to know where you can buy those little adjustable spring firing guns that chiropractors use. The ones where they fire a rubber ended knuckle-like device into your back in order to manipulate your vertebrae. That would be great to put dents in these people’s cars and with extreme accuracy. See if they continue to take up two spaces when dents have been put in their car doors in a pattern that says “I know I have two parking spaces, but I can’t help being a selfish prick”.
Anyway, you end up driving round and around the car park looking for spaces, and trying to find someone who is actually leaving their space.
You can’t do that near to the mall entrance though, because in every aisle there are cars with hazard lights flashing, awaiting some shopper in that parking aisle to leave. If you drive anywhere near these people you can see their windscreen instantly start to fog over from their heavy breathing.
If you dare to stop anywhere near them, or really slow down even, then their windows go down in a microsecond in order to allow for a barrage of verbal abuse. “I was here first mate”, except they tend to use somewhat more colourful expressions to get their point across.
What is wrong with these people?
You’d think it was bloody Dunkirk ‘this is my aisle and I will protect it at all costs’.



Then when you finally manage to park your car, which is in a convenient place around 700 metres away from the nearest mall entrance, you need to find a Pay and Display vending machine so you can put some pox ridden sticker inside your car, alerting any would be thief to the fact that your car will be unattended for at least the period of time on the ticket. Plus, conveniently, to get back to your car with heavy shopping, you’re probably going to have to take a bus at best or maybe even take a train.
Brilliant!
Upon parking, your car is effectively a bright neon sign saying “come and smash my windows and thoroughly pillage my car, anytime during the next 90 minutes or how ever long has been prepaid for… I won’t be back until then; honestly… that’s why I prepaid for 90 minutes”.
Who invents a parking system that actually tells thieves what their window of opportunity is? What are you supposed to do to combat this and convince would be thieves that your car isn’t unattended? Put internal lights within the car on a timer switch? Put lace curtains inside your car and hire Macaulay Culkin to dance around inside whilst strategically wielding cardboard passenger cut outs?
Then, of course, there’s the fact that the nearest Pay and Display vending machine is slightly closer than the south of France, but unfortunately that machine, after you have finally reached it, and had your shoes re-heeled twice en route, is out of order. The next nearest machine is probably in the south of France.
By the time you get back to your car resplendent with a prepaid parking ticket, two cases of wine, three bottles of champagne 1000 duty free cigarettes, and a French accent, it could be on bricks and every mortal piece of engineering could have been removed, inserted into another car, and THAT car could have already qualified for, and successfully passed, a statutory MOT test.


Why can’t mall owners accurately work out how many parking places they will actually need?
And why can’t they work out that most people don’t want to walk hundreds of metres just to get into the mall. If they did, they wouldn’t have driven there in the first place, would they?
Surely they have some idea how successful they plan to be and what the traffic / parking requirements might be at peak times?
The malls are full of people undertaking market research as to how often you make love, how many lovers you have, how often you buy replacement batteries for your love toys, are your pets actively involved, etc. etc. Surely someone can work out the most popular times that people go shopping and how many people arrive via their own, or alternative methods of transport? How hard is this to research?
Knowing whether shoppers make love regularly or not, and whether animals are involved, may well tell mall owners if it’s worthwhile rerunning Deliverance at the cinema, but at the end of the day no one will watch the movie if they can’t get into the mall. And arriving at the mall three hours before the movie would start anyway, to cater for the walk from your car, isn’t that appealing, is it? It’s enough to make you squeal like a pig
(♫ Banjo : deee de ling ting ling ting ling ting ding♫ ).
Why are consumers, who effectively pay the salaries of these mall owners, treated so badly? It’s just plain bad manners if you ask me.
Industrial engineering is deployed extensively inside the shopping mall itself, because that is revenue producing. But providing for people who actually have processes to battle first, in order to be getting inside and be able to give these bastards money? Forget it. Anyone would think that shopping is designed to be an outright chore – you wouldn’t want to make it a pleasurable experience, would you?


Especially if you effectively think…
‘Shoppers are the dumbest people alive anyway, so let’s spend all our time and effort creating ways for these jerks to part with their money when they are stupid enough to finally find their way in”…
“by the time they get inside they’ll be so stressed out they’ll load up their credit cards with retail therapy – lovely jubbly… they’ll be gagging for it”.
When you finally do get to the entrance door to the mall, then perhaps you might think that the stress level will lessen and you can begin to relax a little. Yeah right.
What happened to that previously subscribed to custom, involving doors? You know what I mean, the one where if you go through a door, and someone is directly behind you, then it is polite to hold the door for them until such times that they can keep it open for themselves, or hold it until they are through the door completely should they be female, elderly or have both hands loaded down with shopping.
Where did this practice go? Its simply decent manners, isn’t it? Why do people not do this anymore?
These days you are more likely to find the door swinging back into your face, and that’s such great fun to have to deal with, isn’t it. Even age old road safety advertisements stressed that if a moving body is going in one direction, and hits another moving body in the opposite direction, then effectively you end up hitting a stationery object at least with the sum of the two speeds. This isn’t a new concept.
Mall doors are no different. You are walking briskly and are hit by a fully sprung, heavy, and potentially maiming door. Another reason to go to the chiropractors for help, I guess.



Anyway, you pick yourself off the floor, brush yourself down, and check you haven’t lost any teeth or broken any ribs. And do the people who let the door close apologise?
When you utter your dissatisfaction towards them, don’t they always appear in a state of complete shock? They look flummoxed at best, and more often than not wear a totally gormless expression. They often genuinely cannot comprehend what you are complaining about, because that element of their manners successfully made a break for it, long ago most probably (and they perhaps don’t have pattern baldness from manners replacement either).
I think you owe it to them to help them understand what has happened, and thereafter to help their manners re-enter their system. It would be rude not to, when you think about it, and you would simply be behaving responsibly for the good of society as a whole. I conclude that it would be prudent to smack them around the back of the head and reprogram their manners – it worked for me. For better effect, assume they only respond to rote learning technology… so smack them over and over again.
Once you enter the mall, different challenges become evident, as soon as other people are further encountered.
I remember well in school that we were always taught to walk on one side of a corridor. That way, people can pass easily and you don’t end up getting bumped into every 5 metres. This isn’t difficult to do, and you end up avoiding hitting, hurting or disturbing other people; this avoidance is plainly good manners.
Again manners in this context have gone AWOL it seems. Walking through shopping malls or arcades these days takes me back to the Monty Python sketch “Upper Class Twits of the Year”, whereby a group of morons undertook a hilarious race, ‘the one hundred metre dash for people with no sense of direction’.


Unfortunately, this reflection is less amusing these days, because you ill-fatedly find yourself involved in this race for real, the contestants are oblivious to the race itself and any associated rules, and John Cleese & Co aren’t around to make merry.
Why do people find it so damned difficult to walk purposefully in a straight line? Isn’t it just plain good manners to prevent oneself from knocking into other people or completely blocking their way? It doesn’t matter what country you live in, it’s a truism that traffic is supposed to be limited to one side of the road. Why can’t people just bear that in mind when walking through malls? Or anywhere else for that matter? It isn’t hard is it?
Not only do we have people with no apparent sense of direction inhabiting malls, but we also have the self afflicted variety too. They are the Typically Walking Adjacent To Sight people, or as I fondly now term them,
‘T.W.A.T.S’.
You have all seen these people. They are affected by a malaise whereby their chins seem to have been affixed at birth to their left or right shoulder, and so they walk purposefully in one direction, whilst their head, and thus line of vision, is 90 degrees off from this… usually in the direction of shop windows.
Have you ever watched pro basketball from the US, the NBA games?
If you have, you will have noticed a new ‘high 5’ type gesture that players uses to congratulate each other. It involves jumping towards each other, with your back arched, so that your barrelled chests strike each other, whilst both celebrators are in mid air. This behaviour, to me at least, used to look completely ridiculous and perhaps a wee bit too perverse from some perspectives.



However, this act of gratitude and congratulation, however odd it may seem, now can be effectively used in UK shopping malls to great effect.
Simply congratulate the TWATS walking towards you in this NBA method… because incredibly, this gesture serves many purposes all at once.
Firstly it restores lucidity to the TWATS, as almost immediately they are awakened from cognitive slumber.
Secondly it seems to restore the TWATS’ head to its natural position, without surgery.
And thirdly, maybe the manners are being reinstalled, if you congratulate them hard enough, of course.
Typically the TWATS can walk properly after this gesture, at least for a while, and manners have been repatriated.
I haven’t tried the NBA tactic yet, but I have had people walk towards me whilst looking elsewhere, on an all too regular basis. The first time someone does that whilst I am out shopping, I typically let it go by the by and utter a suitable comment. But if I repeatedly experience this, I soon tire of people’s lack of consideration. Usually I just stand still, and brace myself for impact. They bang into you, are totally dazed, and then have the temerity to tell ME to watch where I am going. I typically don’t argue further, as I am a pretty big guy and they usually utter their dissatisfaction from a seated position in any event.
My partner is Singaporean, much slighter than me, though through a lot of gym activity is very solidly built. She has no more patience for these TWATS than I do. She doesn’t have the ability to just let people bounce off her, so she chooses to accelerate into them instead. She has mastered the manoeuvre that police use in high speed chases to just clip the person, yet totally spin them around.


I often wonder if much of this rudeness, and lack of manners, is owing to people nowadays just ignoring the fact that anyone else even exits. It appears so, at least to me.
When we actually enter stores in the malls, we are faced with challenges anew. Most stores have an array of items for sale, and the various items are largely categorised to make shopper’s lives easier, in theory.
Different generic categories of items are usually found together, departmentalised, hence the term ‘department store’. As a result, if you want to buy audio visual equipment for example, you can just look for the AV department. This is pretty simple, huh? Logical? If only it was.
When you reach the AV department, a virtual swarm of employees can be found. Their behaviour can be predicted with incredible accuracy, in the main.
Firstly you are pounced upon by the first species in our shopping experience, the ‘Coiled Spring’ salesperson.
This person will bear down on you, mid stride, as soon as you enter the department he is attached to, with the speed and enthusiasm of a cheetah that’s just finished detoxing and has realised you may be ‘out for lunch’
“good a.m. sir – how can I help you today?”
This always seems like the most pointless question because it’s so generic, and I actually was walking towards the equipment I am interested in, (I can see them, after all), before he stopped me to ask me what I already know explicitly.
If I needed help, wouldn’t I ask for it? And you ask me this to make sure the sale is placed through your commission account? How nice. How considerate.




Don’t you think this is kind of rude? Where did the manners go? Where’s the foreplay? I prefer to get kissed before I get screwed… give me a chance to draw breath for Christ’s sake.
“Why thank you for your offer of assistance. Actually, I don’t need much help to be honest. Can you get me the winning lottery numbers for the next drawing and for amusement in the interim, a female voluptuous, gorgeous, 20 something beauty pageant winner who just happens to be a nymphomaniac, totally sexually adventurous and superlatively skilled, being one of a batch of quadruplets, all of whom are like minded, like skilled, like attractiveness, yet prepared to pay me handsomely for stud fees, and who always do absolutely everything as a foursome.”
Whilst the ‘Coiled Spring’ salesperson is reeling from your verbal salvo, (and possibly trying to fathom if he can get hold of winning numbers and hot blooded quads, to guarantee his commission), you inevitably meet the second species of salesperson in the department, who is attached to the specific product lines you are interested in.
This individual has singularly managed to lose his American version of that famed board game where Professor Plum did it, in the library, with the candlestick.
This is the ‘Clue less’ species of salesperson.
You can ask any question regarding the piece of equipment you are interested in, and the response is singularly predictable – ‘let me get the brochure’. Whether you are actively experiencing the equipment doesn’t matter either.
I find I just have to ask them ridiculous questions to see them totally bewildered…
“So how do you actually spell Matsushita Electric Company?” “Err… I’ll just check that”



“Can you get these new LCD lamp projection TV’s with different coloured screens to match your decoration when it’s switched off?
“Err… I’ll just check that”
“Does the remote control come in an array of colours and floral patterns?”
“Err… I’ll just check that”
“I have a fish tank… is this TV guaranteed waterproof?”
“Err… I’ll just check that”
“Your display TV is actually mounted onto the wall… is the wall included in the sales price?”
“Err… I’ll just check that”
Doesn’t this ‘Clue less’ attitude just drive you nuts? Why not reduce the sales price by saving on the sales person’s salary? Skip the guy and place pallet loads of brochures in the store instead.
Same result methinks.
I find that this approach is totally aggravating and pretty rude in most cases, because the person who has been hired to provide assistance to me has the cognition of a microbe and the charisma of a potted plant… and the implication is that I will appreciate help from someone like this, that they are capable of adding value. What does that make me then?
Why is it not possible to have store personnel know the details about the products they are selling? Isn’t it their job to ask consumers pertinent questions, as part of a structured needs evolution process, and then make appropriate recommendations, with references to upsides and downsides of various items or pieces of equipment, that effectively provides for a weighted and informed consumer choice to be made?


‘Sales person Clue less’’ and his clones are everywhere and whenever I encounter them, again I feel as if I am being treated like a subspecies that has a shade between my ears other than grey.
Effectively I am being abused, being treated rudely, and again this is a case of pure bad manners.
Not all sales people have this innate need to run for a brochure though. The third species of salesperson is equally present in stores worldwide.
This is the species of sales person that I call the ‘A.R.S.E’.
The ‘A.R.S.E’ sales person has this incredible ability to create an unbelievably sophisticated labyrinth of nonsense that to the ill informed consumer might just become credible.
Why ‘A.R.S.E.’ I hear you ask?
Well, these sales people are so full of shit, hence Anally Retentive Spiel Expected. We have all encountered these sales people, they shoot from the hip and have imaginations the depth and breadth of which might suit them well if they chose to embrace fictional writing.
They do, however, have this belief system that consumers are basically the most cognitively challenged section of the human race, and can be convinced of virtually anything as consumers have either been lobotomised during infancy or their parents legally signed away all potential for critical thinking and analysis at birth.
“AH, the xyz TV sir. I saw you eyeing that baby, and what a wise choice that is sir. It kind of draws you to it, doesn’t it sir?”
“Hmm… are these TV’s totally cable ready?”
“Why Sir, this TV is the flagship TV of the millennium. This TV is more receptive than the Swiss at a peace convention Sir…


… It is HD, has its screen images produced by LCD, it’s so clear that if you watch a little porn Sir, you might catch an STD. Compatible with VCD DVD and the guy who delivers it has got an HGV. It can handle wide screen, full screen, half screen, split screen, and all you need is the ice cream.”
“But does it come in a larger screen than 21 inches?”
OOPS!
Whenever I encounter the ‘A.R.S.E’ salesperson, I tend to mimic being in the presence of the most malodorous concoction known to man, once the spiel has been delivered in its full splendour. I start sniffing uncontrollably
“what is that smell? It’s familiar, but I just can’t place it”
“I am sure I don’t know sir, even this TV isn’t aroma ready”
“Hmm.. is it pork?” Sniff, Sniff. “It’s not chicken is it?” Sniff, Sniff. “It’s not sheep.. AH – I have it, I know what it is!”
“Sir?”
“It’s bullshit, plain and simple”.
I find there’s nothing more bad mannered than having a consummate idiot assuming I am also an idiot… at the very least, please give me the credit for being a complete idiot… at times I have mastery in this regard that has been subtly crafted and honed over my lifetime.
The fourth type of salesperson is probably someone in the wrong place at the wrong time. In fact pretty much any place in the store is the wrong place, and any time would seem to be the wrong time. From my perspective it strikes me that department stores may well be reasonably big, but they aren’t that big are they? How is it that assistants behave singularly rudely in the way they respond to the simple question “can you tell me where I can find XYZ in this store, please?”


Invariably the look you then have cast your way is total and complete befuddlement at best and expressive opaqueness at worst. The kind of person who, if they called you on the telephone, you would be convinced you could hear the sea on the other end upon answering. Here enter the fourth species of sales person, the ‘Sex Pistol’.
Why ‘Sex Pistol’ you may ask? Well, their attitude is sufficiently rude through disinterest to incite “Anarchy in the UK” as far as I am concerned, and their demeanour can only be translated as “Pretty Vacant”.
I mean, they work in the bloody shop, don’t they? How big can one department store be?
How can you not know where other departments are? There are even small clues as to where departments are, provided by bloody signs. It isn’t reasonable to expect consumers to know where these signs or directories are, and all I know is that you can never find one when I need one… they seem to be hidden.
It’s as if the store planners sent people out with limited instructions to come back with GPS references to determine where these directories should be, purely at random… a great approach for Easter Egg Hunts, though less appropriate when mapping suitable locations for store directories. Ordinarily, the only way you come across them is by pure chance when you don’t need them, because you are browsing fairly aimlessly.
In fact, in many department stores, their interest in making consumers lives easier is so misguided that I am surprised they don’t hand out mapped directories, to help you find the store directories.
Try approaching a typical ‘Sex Pistol’ sales person and ask the question
“excuse me, can you tell me where XYZ in the store is please”.


This question is invariably answered with total predictability…
“sorry I am new here” ( at this point I find it best to try and dismiss the manager title on the lapel badge), or
“It’s not my department”.
I enjoy taking the Mickey out of people who behave this way, and on occasion have taken the opportunity to go visit the ‘Sex Pistol’ again…
“good morning. Sorry to trouble you, but I thought I should tell you that a 6 foot 5 inch middle eastern guy attached to a portable dialysis machine and wearing an ‘Al Qaeda Rocks’ T shirt just abandoned a crate that is stencilled with the words ‘weapon of mass destruction’ in the toy section”
“Oh, ok then, but it’s not my department” or
“good afternoon, I don’t know if it’s ok, but there is a couple on a bed in the furniture section, totally naked, with the Karma Sutra open beside them, and writhing with incredible dexterity and speed. They are making booming guttural sounds that appear to be frightening young children in that department. Worse still, the man’s backside is awfully spotty. Is this some sort of yoga exhibition that goes on most Wednesday afternoons?”
“I don’t know… I am new here”.
Why can’t these people say what’s really on their mind? Why not admit that they hate this job and at work have lost the will to function beyond basic life support levels? Better still; maybe hire people that genuinely like helping people?
When you experience this abject disinterest, it is purely bad manners again.
I live in Asia these days, and have done for some time. The retail experience here isn’t any better, that’s for sure.



When I first moved to the Philippines, I recognised fairly quickly that the road quality was less than great. In fact, I pondered long and hard for the first few days why people would actually dig up a highway and plant potatoes in it… it certainly seemed as if someone had.
Anyway, it seemed to be obvious that an ordinary saloon car wasn’t cut out for these roads and that an off road four wheel drive number might be more appropriate. In one car showroom I was looking at a behemoth of a vehicle and a salesperson approached fairly quickly.
I wasn’t sure if this was a ‘coiled spring’, a ‘clue less’, an ‘A.R.S.E’ or a ‘Sex Pistol’ at first.
I started to ask questions and for some inexplicable reason this salesperson appeared to have spent way too much time watching Yes Minister. Every question I asked was answered with a question of his own, and that question of his own was singularly oriented to the fact that the model now had a promotional giveaway… a DVD player and TV screens inbuilt within the car.
Predictably I got tired of his evasiveness and being directionalised so amateurishly so I had to do something – at the very least I needed to know if he was one of my usual four categories of annoying salesperson, or had I found a fifth?..
“This DVD entertainment system really looks fantastic. Are you sure this is included…At no extra charge?”
“None Sir”
“Wow – the kids will totally love this – what a fabulous deal”
“Yes Sir”
“Tell me, can you get cable on this in-car system?’
“Err – I’ll just go and check sir”



AHA, the ‘Clue less’ salesperson, after all… that would have to be a hell of a lot of cable, after all… and who would wind it back up again when you get home? It was probably best to go and check.
I recall very well seeing one of the most amusing handcrafted signs whilst in Hong Kong in the early 90’s. At that time, there was, and still is, I believe, a reasonably well known clothing brand name called Hang Ten. I entered one of many Japanese department stores at that time and noticed that clothes were on sale, so I thought I would take a look. When I got off the escalator, I was greeted by a huge stencilled sign, with no logos, that read
“Hang Ten Kids – Less 30%”.
I pretty much wet myself as I had visions of crazed mid sale shoppers kidnapping kids and lynching them at checkouts to avail of an additional 30% discount.
“How are you doing?”
“Oh, I only have managed nine so far… see you in a minute – keep my place in the queue”.
Cut to images of private school principals launching themselves off tall buildings in lieu of school closures through lack of attendance. I mean, how can you not notice the implications? Hilarious.
But talking about queues - where did manners go to when the concept of queuing is concerned? It seems to me that when it comes to queuing, manners haven’t just escaped, they have firmly migrated on an inter-planetary scale. It’s bad enough in the UK, but here in Asia, and the Philippines for sure, the very understanding of the queuing concept is lost.
The only queue you will find that’s respected here happens to belong to Effren Reyes or Francisco Bustamante – two of the best pool players in the world.


And even pool here is called billiards, which it isn’t of course, as billiards is a totally different game, so CUE the dictionary, I guess… if they get the names of one of the nation’s favourite pastimes wrong, what chance have they got getting a word like queue right?
Compared to the average Asian, a six foot three 200lb Caucasian can hardly be seen as inconspicuous. Yet here I regularly am, queuing for this and that, and people just walk right in front of me as if I just wasn’t there.
This isn’t just an Asian phenomenon either – it happens commonly in the UK too.
This is shockingly bad manners and it effectively is a statement that someone else’s time is more valuable than yours, in its essence.
I get extremely angry by someone jumping the queue on me and retort the same way every time…
“excuse me, do you speak English?”
Bewildered looks. “Yes”
“Ah, good… then it’s reasonable to assume you studied the alphabet at school I guess?”
More bewilderment. “yes”
“Excellent. So you are aware that the last letter of the alphabet isn’t ‘P’ and the ‘P’ is followed by ‘Q’. It’s spelt q-u-e-u-e for your information and the back of it is in that direction. I was here before you – so goodbye, and get lost”.
I have never yet had this little retort not work and I find its best delivered at a loud volume.
Adults are losing the plot when it comes to manners. This isn’t good in itself, but the future generations are already being very poorly educated in elements of manners and etiquette.



The way parents are seemingly abdicating responsibility for their children’s manners these days causes me to regularly become perplexed. Far more frequently, modern families are eating out in restaurants of all kinds.
Why can’t parents teach kids that there isn’t any difference, on any level, between a home dining room and a restaurant? Why can’t parents teach their kids that there is a difference between a restaurant and a playground?
Moreover, why should different rules apply to how one behaves at home or in a restaurant? Aren’t they both places where, in the company of others, food is consumed? Shouldn’t etiquette apply whether you are dining at home or outside? Manners aren’t to be applied dependent upon location, are they? Yet it appears that there is no discipline whatsoever being installed with regards to dining habits.
I watch how kids behave in situations like this and cringe. Half the time it seems that modern children cannot sit facing the table, their food, and those with whom they are dining. This should seem like a relatively normal approach to eating, but in real terms, is it really normal nowadays?
I see kids sitting at bizarre angles relative to the table with their food on it. The reason for this I can only estimate as where, in their house, the TV is located relative to their dining table.
This is learned behaviour, rehearsed on a daily basis, and thus kids grow up practicing that their torso has to be at an angle to the dinner table, they make all reasonable attempts to eat with only one piece of cutlery (how American), and put food in only one side of your mouth without moving their head and gaze… all this to allow for uninterrupted viewing at home. Kids don’t rationalise that they actually aren’t at home and there isn’t a TV in the same place as usual, except in restaurants where there is a TV… then they change the angle they sit at accordingly.


I also notice that for many kids, you know what they have ordered just by looking at them.
If you can’t tell by looking at their shirts to review spillages, then a glance towards them whilst they are chewing tells all. I don’t recall being a kid and depositing a good proportion of a meal down my shirt. Maybe because I was facing my food and sitting properly when I ate and, just maybe, because consequences would have been brought to bear by my father that I would have preferred to avoid. Had I chewed in a restaurant with my mouth open, I think my dad would have half killed me.
In addition, when kids have finished eating, then it seems to me that parents believe their kids’ digestion system is either weak, or malfunctioning. My parents always made sure I waited ‘for my food to go down’ before any form of activity was allowed. If I left my seat in a restaurant, other than to go to the loo, my dad would provide a response which most likely would cause me to move… probably in the direction of his hand after I had been hit with it.
Many modern parents oppositely believe that peristalsis doesn’t work automatically for their kids, and so it needs help to get going and send the consumed food to the stomach.
This must be true; otherwise why else would you allow your kids to finish eating and then run amok all over the place?
For the life of me I cannot comprehend this. At home kids get bored so easily, yet in a restaurant with nothing to amuse them whatsoever, they run riot. Is this atmospheric? Perhaps it’s a gustatory response of some kind?
Etiquette seems to be lacking when kids today are being educated, and there are so many instances.
Take conversation for example. My parents were extremely clear about how I should behave ‘when the grown ups are talking’.


My dad was very explicit… interrupt me when I am talking to an adult, and the ensuing events will result in premature death.
I was absolutely clear about this. If my dad was talking to some adult or other, our house could have been ablaze behind him and I wouldn’t have dared to even have commented.
Kids nowadays just feel they can interject during adult conversation at any time, and without even as much as an ‘excuse me’ at all. Additionally, modern kids assume that adults will yield to their interruption in an instant – as if we will be glad that a boring conversation is being made more interesting by their inevitable subject change.
My father’s favourite comment in this area was
“Children do not speak until they are spoken to”.
I found this hard to deal with and understand, as apart from school, it seemed I had almost no right to speak to anyone. On the other hand he spoke to everyone, which confused matters further. He’d be in the most innocuous of places and situations, and he would break his neck to start a conversation with most anyone.
I’d be at his side wondering why only adults were allowed to have conversations. As an infant school attendee I figured I’d be able to speak to adults when I reached 18 or so.
This is a bit extreme to say the least, but children should know when to keep quiet and when they can participate in conversation. You never know, it might just save your house from burning down.

Guests, Quests and Reality TV Sleaze Fests

“Don’t you wish there was a knob on the TV to turn up the intelligence?
There’s one marked brightness, but it doesn’t work”
Leo Gallagher

I seem to turn on the TV these days, and am totally gob smacked by the programming that people not only have available to them, but are actually watching, and subscribing to as well. Check out the audience participation of American Idol!

I thought the UK was bad enough with all this Big Brother nonsense. A group of people living in a house. Talentless people. And millions of people in the UK are tuning in to watch the bickering and all. What are shows of this kind designed to do? Can someone please enlighten me as to how a show with content like this can be classified as entertainment on any level?
The amount of media hype and coverage the show gets is understood, as is the income that can be generated by text messaging, franchising and all. That much is clear. But at the end of the day, the program is about a group of people existing in a house. How can this be interesting? Entertaining?
I mean, most of the people who watch this crap also live in a house… and I can assure you that what goes on in the viewers’ houses is probably way more entertaining… and realistic to boot. Plus, in your own house, you can actually vent anger and frustration when people are driving you around the bend.
Are people watching this to give them the impression that maybe their life isn’t so bad?
That’s kind of like a line I once heard in the Simpsons, where Marge states they are the worst family in the neighbourhood, and Homer’s solution is to move to a bigger neighbourhood and improve their position statistically.

People who watch much of this nonsense must think along similar lines, mustn’t they?
What’s next? Fish Brother? A reality TV show set in a fish tank, whereby a group of fish exist and the public get to watch fish take a crap, and fight amongst themselves for the food that’s delivered? The general public can bet on which fish dies first, I suppose. Text if you think Jerry, the goldfish with the black markings, will kick it first. And if that’s not bad enough, look at some of the other shows.
Take Jerry Springer, for example. Where do these guests come from? How come people like this aren’t regularly (if ever) seen anywhere? And if that’s because I don’t get out enough, I think I’ll just stay in from now on. Hollywood portrays the lives of people from pretty much all walks of life, yet I can’t recall one Hollywood movie reflecting people who show up as subject material on the Jerry Springer show. Even the red neck hillbilly’s in Deliverance haven’t a patch on half the people who show up on Jerry Springer. Massively obese, out of work, toothless, unkempt, congenitally challenged, deranged ‘guests’ by the look of most of them. Then they discuss their issues and challenges, which are so absurd it is not even worthy of rationalising. The subject matter for these shows are bewildering, to say the least.
“My sister used to be a guy and now she wants to sleep with me, my wife, my pets, and all my in-laws”
“I was visited by aliens and they have convinced me that the Ku Klux Klan is the way forward, providing I procreate with farmyard animals”.
Then the audience members show off their boobs in an effort to get a worthless string of beads.
What is that about?

If you want to show your naked body off, I would have thought the following might be worthy of consideration…

• if you are going to do it, consider that viewers might be eating… if it isn’t pretty, don’t do it
• if it is pretty, don’t be shy… take everything off
• if you are hell bent on doing this, do it in a strip club and get paid for it at least

If you are the show producers and allow people to show off like this, remove the pixels in the network output at the very least. Inevitably these “guests” have this ‘all too common’ bizarre set of issues and they “don’t know what to do Jerry”, other than tell the insane or deformed creature they are in a relationship with that they have a problem. Quite naturally, this communiqué needs to be delivered on national TV, as discussing in the privacy of their own home doesn’t work… they live in an area where atmospheric influences prevent the discussion of such things.
Yeah right. I mean, the entire content of the show couldn’t possibly be engineered, could it? What? Some of these “guests” might be paid to appear? Really? Do you think that’s possible?
Other shows are equally bewildering. One of my favourites has to be “Who wants to marry my Dad?” I must admit that I do watch this occasionally, as it is amusing because it is a fabulous example of skilled carpentry. It has to be, doesn’t it, given the wooden performances of all and sundry.
Here’s some reportedly rich guy, who chooses to have a group of women found for him to fall in love with, and all in that well known romantic environment, on camera, in the presence of 15000 TV production people… that well known catalyst to spontaneous mate finding.

I don’t know about you, but most every date I went on, the first thing I would organise would be the film crew… it’s just naturally the thing to do, mandatory procedure as it were.
Meanwhile, his three daughters are onlookers and judges as to who he should marry.
What is going on with these people? The guy is getting ‘romantically involved’ with these women, some of the women are being eliminated, all amongst tears as contestants leave and daughters hearts go out to these hapless women. Yeah right! What an absolute crock of bull!
I think the elimination should be the guy and his stupid bloody daughters – on a very, very, permanent basis. Let’s clean up the gene pool and make the human race better – order the genocide of all people who have featured in this reality TV show – that would give them something to cry about.

Alternatively lets get some real reasons to tune in attentively and totally re-theme the program …

“Who wants to shag my dad?”

This time the performers or ‘candidates’ could get actively involved, couldn’t they? I guarantee you the viewing statistics would go through the roof and in America alone there would be 100 million males vying for the lead role. And the list just keeps going on and on with all that reality stuff.

Survivor? Put a group of ‘people’ in a location they aren’t used to, and ask them to survive? How are these people having to survive? They’re only trying not to get voted off, it isn’t life or death. So basically the ‘survival’ mechanism is about a group of morons who use politics to remain in the show. This isn’t a new concept, is it?

Why not just tune in to ‘Parliament Live’ … same outcome if you ask me. It’s still a bunch of unattractive idiots, mainly trying to segregate themselves into camps, squawking at each other, and using politics to get upper hands in debates. The only difference is the location, how much clothing is worn, and the fact that the voting off process only occurs every couple of years. Same nonsense – different arena – another key differentiator is that the people in Parliament actually have the ability to change people’s lives whereas Survivor contestants are people who are trying to change their own… which isn’t the same thing is it? Better still, try and get hold of “Today in Parliament” , the Taiwanese version. This is excellent as it combines our UK live parliamentary show with Rocky V as all the politicians try and beat the living crap out of each other… live! Now That’s Entertainment!

Why are members of the general public interested in who is voted off or not in these shows? How does any of this affect the lives of the viewers? Why should we care? Why do people care? Another example of this reality TV nonsense is American Idol or Pop Idol as it is called in the UK. I have to admit at the early stages of this show, the auditions stage, it is funny. The panel in the American version consists of Randy Jackson, Paula Abdul and Simon Cowell, if you haven’t seen it, and their job is to critique a group of individuals who perform songs each week. The viewing audience text or call votes to decide who is the better or worst of the group until the show eventually has only one artist remaining. The auditions stage is very funny because the degree of sheer delusion that some of these pop star wannabes are under, is frankly mind-boggling. The performances are so bad they are really funny, especially the look of surprise on many of their faces when they learn they aren’t quite up to it.

Plus of course, Simon Cowell has his sledgehammer critiques to throw in, so it can be a laugh at the early stages. But when the closing parts of the series are in full swing, people are spending millions to vote for someone to stay in the show…
Why? They don’t know the ‘performers’ personally, do they? I think the last time I caught the show, there were six contestants remaining and over 40 million Americans actually paid money to text and call so that they could influence who gets voted off the show and who doesn’t??? Over 40 million votes? These people who are singing are strangers… why would you spend money texting anyone about people who have no bearing on your life whatsoever?
This is total madness, surely?

Having read a plethora of responses and commentary on websites dedicated to American Idol, including Vote For The Worst, I cannot believe how naïve much of the commentary actually is. American Idol is contrived? Surely not? No! Please! Say it isn’t so!

I am sorry to tell you this folks, but this is reality TV. This is a partial misnomer, given that there’s little reality yet the show does air on TV. Wake up! How can one possibly believe that this isn’t contrived to the max? What makes me laugh is that millions of people are sufficiently cognitively challenged that they actually PAY THEIR MONEY to vote for stage monkeys. How does that work, exactly? You are investing time and money in unknown people who, in the overall scheme of things, have about as much positive bearing on life as Nick Leeson had on Baring’s... it isnt exactly positive.

As for Sanjaya, or whatever his name is? My goodness. How can people vote for this talentless and, perhaps, hapless person in any other forum other than the Darwin Awards? Unreal!

But wait… maybe I have this wrong, and just MAYBE reality TV isn’t totally fake? Then again… hehehe.

Why not just rename the show American Idle and only have performances from people who are never going to make it in the music business… then everyone can vote for the worst performer and the people who get voted off are cast away because they are too talented. This may at least be comedic.

I guess we could turn reality TV towards world issues if someone gets creative enough…

“Who wants to eradicate Al Qaeda?”

This would be a great one. It would be like a lifestyle travel program, a cross between Michael Palin’s Pole to Pole, and the latest Steven Seagal movie. Basically the main character travels from country to country taking in the sights and culture, with minimal luggage and a shitload of automatic weapons. There would be plenty of targets to aim at and interesting places to visit, search and destroy. At the end of each show, the main character could use the terrorist playing card deck and through a process of audience participation and elimination, identify the next target to be killed.

On that subject, why chose a playing card deck to reflect the Al Qaeda members? Has someone the belief that there are only 52 members in Al Qaeda? Maybe not… perhaps this pack only has one joker, eh George W?

How about The Apprentice? Donald Trump always shows up, in a trumped up way, and tells people “you’re fired”. Brilliant. If I was him, the person I would fire first would be his hairstylist. I kind of feel sorry for people who are claiming bankruptcy protection and have a meagre multimillion dollar monthly expense allowance… this is really kind of tough.
Maybe the playing cards were Donald’s idea? He always seems to come up Trumps, doesn’t he?

The programming that people are watching on TV these days I find unfathomable. So much time and effort is being put into the production of all this syndicated nonsense, and much of it is effectively a more progressive (?) version of Scooby Doo cartoons. Surely you remember how the plot was always the same, and the end tagline was pretty much
“and we would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn’t for those damned kids?”
But hasn’t much of the programming been like this, and for a long time? Staid, cartoonesque, and entirely predictable?
Please don’t tell me that Baywatch had always lost the plot and it was just a slightly covered up animated version of The Sun’s page 3, watched by millions of solitary men the world over that undertook preparation for watching the show excluded coffee, tea or snacks and includes tissues and baby oil .

Please don’t tell me that MacGyver wasn’t responsible for building the Apollo 11 first lunar module from the contents of an in-flight toiletries bag, the make up kit of a flight attendant called Jessica, the contents of an airline business class food tray, and using only a Swiss Army Knife. Please don’t ruin my delusions, HuHuHu.

I always thought that the soap operas were bad enough, with Eastenders, Crossroads, Emmerdale and all. I never could figure out why so many people got so entrenched with these type of programs in the UK, or with the transatlantic junk we were spoon fed, such as Dynasty, Dallas, The Bold and the Beautiful, et al. Same rubbish, just sunnier and with actors and scriptwriters who cant speak English properly. Having said that, neither can the actors and scriptwriters in UK soaps, either, mostly at least.

If people are spending so much time watching this garbage, is it any wonder that so many kids are being raised as dysfunctional? Look at the stuff parents are exposing them to. It does have an effect on kids. I remember as a kid watching, with much enthusiasm, Batman. THE ORIGINAL TV Batman, with Adam West and Burt Ward as the dynamic duo and such wonderful villains as Cesar Romero playing the Joker, Frank Gorshin as the Riddler, Burgess Meredith as the Penguin, Julie Newmar/Eartha Kitt as Catwoman. I still enjoy this series now – it is such a scream… a brilliant hammed up comedy that everyone knew for what it was and what it tried to be. However, I also recall several kids killing themselves by trying to emulate the various activities of our ‘vertical wall walking’ crime fighting super heroes. Today, our kids are being exposed to reality TV… I can only hope that they do not form the view that any of this stuff is real.

My two boys went through a phase where they would try and act out scenes from WWE Wrestling. I think this used to be called WWF? I guess that conflicted with the World Wildlife Fund maybe, and at the end of the day anyone in this cast of insane loons purportedly ‘wrestling’ shouldn’t be protected, I would have thought. Quite the opposite, if anything.
TV is becoming absurd… I guess prime time viewing will soon consist of Family Misfortunes, Only Fools and Divorces, Yes Sinister, and Priestbenders.
Haven’t we just about had enough?
Nah… that’s perhaps just too much reality for most TV viewers today I suppose.

Lunching, munching and averted (?) punching

Lunching, munching and averted (?) punching

‘As a child my family’s menu consisted of two choices – take it, or leave it’
Buddy Hackett

Something I don’t understand just lately is why, as customers, we are being treated so poorly when we part with our hard earned money.

The concept of ‘The Customer is King’ is all but dead, and it seems as consumers we are not voting with our feet, but simply are noting defeat. We are being directionalised all too often, and seemingly without noticing, or complaining. I like the idea of the customer being king, but not Stephen King. However, I seem to slip into re-enactments of Stephen King’s less normal characters on a seemingly all too often basis… Even the simplest of things that you try and attain as a consumer seems to be all but impossible. I get the impression that I am being ‘boxed’, categorised, effectively told what I want and as an extension of that, I am told what I can have. Isn’t this just a little arrogant, to say the least?

Usually the persons responsible for my categorisation are unknown to me, and I am singularly unknown to them. This is folly. I recall all too well having my parents tell me what I could have and couldn’t have, from birth to way past adolescence. I vividly recall taking exception to this, still do, so why is it that it is thought I am prepared to have perfect strangers tell me what I can, and cannot, have, or do?

Fast food joints are prime examples of this. The main chains of fast food joints these days don’t even have a menu. They do have a plethora of meals and combinations that ‘research’ tells them consumers want. This approach angers me and it treats their customers in the way they see them… like sheep. Everyone isn’t the same. People have differences and differing preferences. But if your preference doesn’t match the masses, you are shit out of luck. This was especially true in the Philippines, but now seems virtually ‘de rigeur’ most anywhere.

Take the good ole Colonel’s chicken for example. You could buy two piece meals with rice or bread, one piece meals with rice or bread, or a bucket of chicken with six pieces, and all manner of other meal ‘packages’. But I didn’t want rice. I didn’t want bread either. And I did want three pieces of chicken with fries and a small soft drink. Could I get that? NO. Could you take the cost of six pieces and halve it? NO. Is there anyway to get this choice of food? Why of course there is.

All I had to do was buy a two piece chicken meal, a one piece chicken meal, and additional fries. Then give away two servings of rice, two servings of coleslaw or gravy and one small soft drink that I have had to buy, but didn’t want. Then I was left with three pieces of chicken, fries and a small coke. Perfect. All this cost more than half a six piece bucket, fries and small coke… way more, in fact.

As the consumer I am forced to develop a strategy for getting the meal I actually want, and thereafter how to deploy the mechanics to become a satisfied (?) customer. Hmm. Isn’t satisfying me someone else’s job? However, the deployment aspect is always pure entertainment, because invariably a human interaction is necessary. A standardised series of boxed meal offerings is simple enough, because permutations are decidedly limited. This means that employees can function cognitively at automaton levels, until someone like me wants something different… then all hell breaks loose. The person serving you becomes totally unhinged the minute any meal option isn’t selected, resulting in the search for managerial prowess.

Enter the managerial prowess, and it is clear that this person was once at the level of the person to whom you were originally speaking, in creative terms. And by once, I mean still is.
Inevitably the manager takes great pride and effort to explain why all meals are presented in the way they are, because the consumer wants it that way, (according to their research). It would appear that because I didn’t take part in their research, which undoubtedly was my fault, naturally, I thus am representative of nothing. The manager will then take equal time to inform you that your request “just isn’t possible”… apparently, it isn’t possible to sell me three pieces of chicken.

Nowadays I just ask for stupid things whenever I order from fast food joints, even if they do have what I want. I enjoy asking for a regular sized coke in an upsized cup, or just a little ice, or extra salt for fries, or whatever. Anything basically to just retain some sense of actual choice where a permutation hasn’t been pre-selected for me.

I often wonder if customers of fast food joints are intellectually challenged and whether they typically struggle with a menu list. Perhaps choosing a meal item, a carbohydrate accompaniment and a drink is a bit of a stretch, given the plethora of choice. When you think about it, the number of permutations possible in ordering a fast food meal is pretty staggering – I know I often find myself pondering for hours over the sheer choice of offerings and the culinary anticipation that ensues. Regularly I arrive at a decision only to find that my lunch choice is now, in fact, dinner, and to boot my shirt now needs to be changed from the veritable monsoon of gustatory stimulated saliva that has escaped my lips in anticipation, during the process.

The concept of a fast food joint is relatively simple in standard operating procedural terms. There are rigid processes for everything to attain consistency. These procedures are followed to the letter by all employees who have been subjected to the fast food chain’s rote and little-explained learning. This is an ISO 900(n) certifiers dream environment. Unfortunately, I am not in the business of certifying businesses for ISO accreditation. I just want a bloody meal, a meal with three pieces of chicken, and whether these outlets are certified or not, I feel the way these food joints operate is certifiable. Why do service companies operate on the basis that customers have to fit their needs? Isn’t it supposed to be the other way around?

Another thing that makes me smile in all these fast food places is the availability of ‘diet’ drinks. Why on earth would you provide diet drinks (and more lately, nutritionally balanced healthy meals) in a fast food joint? Surely people aren’t choosing ‘diet’ drinks because it tastes better, are they? Of all the places you could buy food for the health conscious, would this group of people choose a fast food joint? Isn’t this a tad odd?

I have to smile when I see a single someone order fast food fit for more than one person, yet then order low calorie drinks. This beats the hell out of me. You know the kind of person I am talking about… typically a large person, nay massively obese person, (usually a one man traffic jam), of proportions that confuse time tested ratios between human height and breadth. The kind of person who is always worried that the floor loading restrictions under their feet may be compromised by their very singular presence at any moment.
“I’d like a large size 17 kilo stuffed pizza with extra carbs and cholesterol please, thick crust, garlic bread, and a diet coke.”
Am I missing something here? What’s with the diet drinks?

If you join Fitness First, I don’t believe their inducement campaigns offer you a deep fat fryer upon membership. Athletic wear on promotion in malls don’t offer “buy this and get a free tub of lard”. The latest and greatest sports shoes may well have sensors to monitor heart rate and all, yet so far they haven’t offered a packet of Marlboro as a point of sale inducement, anymore than a Lamborghini Diablo comes with a years supply of motion sickness pills and cabin interior matched child seats... So what’s with the diet drink? It surely is equally nonsensical.

Elsewhere, fast food takes on totally befuddling proportions…

Pizza joints in Hong Kong are a misnomer, or at the very least a surreptitious operation. They aren’t pizza joints at all if they have a salad bar… they can’t be. I believe that most any pizza joint with a salad bar, in Hong Kong, is actually not in the business of selling food at all. It is a training ground for civil engineers and architects.

The scenario in many of these pizza joints is that you can buy a side salad, visit the salad cart once for your purchase price, with one bowl, and fill that bowl with whatever salad you choose. The bowl is an ordinary bowl – not a basin, (the type of bowl I use to eat cereal [pigeon droppings] with dried fruit and half a litre of milk).

However, Hong Kong residents bring feats of engineering prowess to the filling of this bowl that make the construction of any building seen at skyscrapercity.com look decidedly unadventurous and vapid. Just sit and watch someone at the salad bar in a pizza joint in Hong Kong, and you become abundantly aware of just how creativity and tenacity is alive and well there, if not flourishing.

Each type of salad item is systematically chosen and placed to provide for structural support… structural support for the rest of the salad to be accommodated in this one bowl. The bowl is but a mere three inches high and with a six inch diameter. However, this is purely if you limit your thinking and perception to the bowl itself. The civil salad engineers have freed themselves of such limitations, and are committed to accommodating salad items within this bowl that requires mechanical assistance to lift and can easily feed a grown up family of 6 with all their relatives in tow… this gives new meaning to the management terminology “inverted pyramid” structures.

The sheer tenacity in managing to remove so much food, in such a small bowl, to feed so many people, is magnificent. However, when one has created the vegetative structural equivalent of Singapore’s entire Integrated Resort project, (including much spillage at the salad bar and the surrounding area, with ensuing requisite reclamation), it baffles me how one could actually enjoy a salad like this. How do you eat it?

A mere disturbance of the air is sufficient to invoke Richter scale food redistribution from the engineering feat, and notwithstanding this, the elements of the superstructure have been strategically placed to provide support for each layer. How do you get to choose what you actually want to eat? It isn’t possible to do this without bring down the whole salad superstructure.

A further major gripe of mine is when accompaniments are not in tow… (We are talking in the culinary sense here, as opposed to mere accessorising, or partners).

You know the story. It’s around the time when that feeling stimulates a thought that is more than plain hunger. One begins to have gustatory flights of fancy and from the depths of memory a certain type of food seemingly just appears in your consciousness and this is thereafter the ‘faire of choice’. Usually this food type appears unwittingly, and oft with recollections of past experiences, people, places where it was once enjoyed… the desire builds and the need for this particular food has unstoppable momentum now that it has been fully emotionalised in multi-sensory terms.

This is no longer a whim, a take it or leave it munch or passing snack. This is the Food of the Gods to all intents and purposes and could be anything from a packet of Walker’s salt ‘n’ vinegar crisps, to fish and chips, to gravlax, sushi, or a fillet mignon. Whichever it is, it’s a must seek, must find food and essentially you are Elwood Blues on a ‘mission from God’ to find it.

Usually, when making choices of this nature, it is common that the choice requires an accompaniment of some kind to complete the culinary feast. If it’s fish and chips, then as a true Brit salt and vinegar has to be available. It doesn’t matter if the fish and chips are to die for… without salt and vinegar, it doubtless becomes papier-mâchè and fries. Lamb is inedible without mint sauce / jelly, and a decent piece of beef just becomes indecent without mustard (and that’s English Mustard, Dijon at the worst, and NOT American hotdog mustard), plus of course, horseradish sauce.

These are well known accompaniments, yet how often do we arrive at an eatery, order the very thing that our sensory system is thoroughly captivated with, only then to find upon arrival of the food that the accompaniment isn’t available. This seems to happen to me quite regularly, and is thoroughly disappointing. To make matters worse, the accompaniment-less server offers totally unsuitable alternatives, unless the eatery is a purveyor of fine faire. Fish and chips requires malt vinegar… not balsamic / white / cane / red wine / white wine / apple cider et al vinegar, but MALT. End of discussion.

Why is this so hard to get right? People in the restaurant are abundantly aware of what customers typically ask for as accompaniments, so if they run out of these staples, then why is the main item still on the menu? At the very least it should be pointed out that whilst a menu item remains, certain potential accompaniments are not available.

I regularly send food back if the accompaniment I want isn’t available, and proceed to then choose something I probably don’t want, given that my sensory needs remain unsatisfied. Yet the act of sending the food back is greeted with dismay, as opposed to regret. Your culinary flight of fancy becomes a plight that’s a tad chancy… especially when you find the original item still on the bill. I find this weird. Why do restaurants assume that the accompaniments are not an integral part of the meal? Of course they are.

Half of the employees in most restaurants these days are of alien extraction, of that much I am sure. They seem to be able to purposefully function in time space planes known only to non human species. Their ability to display total detachment, lack of forethought, and complete obliviousness to their immediate place of operation is comparable in human terms only to the time when George W Bush actually waved back at Stevie Wonder at a benefit gig. The lights are on, but no one’s home, and the intellect brought to bear in their chosen working environment is indicative of a person who has not enough coupons for the percolator and matching set of cups.

Recently my good lady and I decided to partake in a fried food extravaganza, at a typical American joint resplendent with a fried menu and faux stained glass lampshades. Upon entry we asked for something that upon reflection was pretty damned unreasonable, to be honest. We requested a table with some space. By this we meant a table that could accommodate a svelte Singaporean lady, and a Caucasian whose frame whilst swimming in the sea attracts Japanese with telephoto lenses expecting to have a whale of a time. By space we meant room… we were not expecting a table with zero gravity.

We were shown to a table that was up against a wall and would have challenged a dwarf with anorexia issues. I literally could not use my left hand to eat as my elbow had been rendered paralysed by the seating arrangement. This was the smallest eating surface in the whole restaurant, and the largest guy was placed there, having requested a little more space. Hmm.

The manager was summoned and she offered to be extremely accommodating. We could vacate our seats, and then take our place at the back of the queue outside the restaurant, where we had already queued once, and then be seated again. How nice. How accommodating. Am I missing something here? At times like this I revert to childhood memories. This isn’t because I become petulant, but is linked to ornithology. My voice when angry becomes a fabulous tonal re-enactment of a mating bittern, with matched intensity, and a melee usually ensues for my personal satisfaction and the amusement of nearby bystanders within a 12km radius.

We eventually chose to eat elsewhere, after our rational argumentation had initially failed, and after I then had subtly reminded the manager that colonoscopies are best done by medical practitioners, so to have her head up her own backside is largely a pointless exercise.

Isn’t this all kind of baffling, and spectacularly unnecessary in the main? After all, apart from paying the salaries and delivering profits to these establishments, as the customer, who the hell am I anyway?

Nonetheless, I suppose it is certainly food for thought.

Pins, Balls and Pinball Sex?

Pins, Balls and Pinball Sex?

"There are a number of mechanical devices that increase sexual arousal for both sexes. In women,

chief amongst these is the Mercedes Benz 380l convertible"

PJ O'Rourke

Why in god’s name would you want to have your navel pierced? What is the point? If PJ O’Rourke’s quote has validity, then perhaps navel piercing can be explained? After all, how many people can get into a Mercedes convertible anyway? Perhaps the friends of the owner can be pulled behind the car on skateboards and the navel ring is a bejewelled tow bar? A la Michael J Fox, perhaps, in “Back to the Future”? I can’t see that working too well though. It would most probably become “Back to the Suture”, wouldn’t it?”

And if you think the navel piercing is ridiculous enough… what about the other nonsense people are doing, all this pricking and sticking, mainly to enhance licking, flicking and dicking.
Turn on the TV most any time of day, and a quick flick through the channels will reveal just how prevalent breast enhancement has become. The good ole’ Boob Job is seemingly so popular it is virtually unbelievable how often women are having this procedure undertaken. But for the life of me, I really cannot understand why anyone would consider it… its all a bit baffling.

Sexual appendages have long been a cause of exasperation for men and women. Most people are well aware of the procedures that women are doing, especially breast augmentation. But what about guys? Guys are reportedly often worried about the size of their manhood – is it too long (?), is it too short, is it wide enough? I really can’t understand why men get so hung up on how well they are hung. What’s the point? Either you are compatible with your partner sexually or you are not, and if you are not, go find someone else. We come in all shapes and sizes don’t we? There are no rights or wrongs in this area as far as I can tell, and when rights or wrongs are espoused, aren’t they pretty much personal preferences anyway?

But, apparently, men are now undertaking a procedure called phalloplasty… cosmetic penis lengthening or broadening. It seems, according to a leading North American cosmetic surgeon’s website at least, that this procedure was first undertaken in the early 1980’s. A man who, as a boy, had unfortunately had a dog bite off much of his penis, reached the point where he wanted to marry, and thus had the need for a full sized piece of equipment. If this story is true, then it must have been a nightmare for the kid, and even the dog must have had therapy.
I’d love to know how one gets oneself into a position where a dog can actually do that to you? I mean, what must he have been doing? Watching TV Perhaps? A rerun of Lassie and the kid’s dog got so pissed off seeing the exploitation of pets that he decided to bite off the kid’s dick? Maybe not… perhaps that’s just the tale wagging the dog, I guess.

Anyway, it seems that now you can achieve lengthening of up to two inches (cool – I could amass four inches after this), by effectively having your penis severed from its suspensionary ligaments and then local tissue is used to close the gap. And all this is under local anaesthetic, to boot. Apparently a post operative erection often causes the penis to be erect at a different angle. NO shit, Sherlock!

I can’t imagine having the will to having this procedure done to be honest. I can’t imagine having my dog be in a position to cause me to need to do this either, not under any circumstances… I can imagine kicking the living daylights out of the dog though. Surely this is madness to ordinarily undertake such augmentation?

But women? Well, it seems they are getting into breast augmentation in a big way. It is apparently a relatively common procedure these days, and I guess it’s to satisfy the self esteem of protagonists and improve their desirability to the opposite (or same) sex.

I imagine I am like most men, in as much as I love breasts, or whatever you want to call them. But to me at least, the size doesn’t really matter all that much. There are preferences, sure, for size, firmness, et al. But is the size, shape and all a deal breaker in a relationship? Not a chance. I am more interested in the person they belong to and I would imagine many men feel the same way. Sure it may be an enhanced experience if things were a little different, perhaps. But then again, if your aunt was a man she’d be your uncle wouldn’t she? So what?
Why then, do so many women have this breast augmentation performed? I think that perhaps there is a communication problem here.

We regularly hear guys utter derogatory (?) comments about women’s breasts
“Wow – look at the headlights on that!”

But girls, no woman’s breasts actually look like headlights… not even the old fashioned perfectly round headlights with the part in the middle that might appear to look like a nipple. Breasts are not round to such a degree of perfection. You know this is true, so why do you get boobjobs that are perfectly round? It doesn’t look natural anyway, does it?

Whenever you see a girl with a boobjob lying topless, it is singularly artificial looking. It stands out a mile if you ask me. If you are lying down topless, girls, breasts are not supposed to look like perfectly rounded and mounded half melons. Of course these are silicon and saline implants, but I wonder as well as looking unnatural much of the time, how they respond during day to day occurrences or activities.

For example, you are a tad the worse for alcohol, on holiday in a warmer clime, you meet some really nice guy and he suggests that you both go skinny dipping. What happens to the implants? If you swim naked, do they move? Worse still do they travel? I can picture a super hot babe coming out of the sea with, literally, her hands full. Is there any need to mitigate this? What do you do… swim part of the time freestyle and then part of the time backstroke in order to relocate your implants?

What if you can’t do backstroke? Do you end up breastless and with really bad hernias?
What about if you cant swim freestyle, and favour backstroke? That would give you more than a lump in the throat, wouldn’t it? And you can forget butterfly – you’d knock your own teeth out.
What happens if you are topless and you reach over? What is supporting the implants, particularly if they are really large? Do they take on the motion of a bungee? Do you have to hold them? Is the skin stretched over time if you keep bending? Do you have to avoid any jobs where a lot of bending is required, or use sports bras to support you? The challenges must be considerable. In fact, the challenges must be considerable for a naturally larger breasted woman, I would imagine. Naturally there are circumstances where women may benefit from this procedure… mastectomy patients would be one, for sure. But out of sheer vanity?

Government websites in the US provide much information regarding breast enhancement procedures… and the information isn’t entirely positive. It’s not uncommon for these implants to start leaking – often from day one. And if women have the procedure performed through the navel, then the propensity for leaking increases exponentially. Even if the implants are inserted beautifully, their shelf life is pretty much 10 years. That’s all. This whole concept baffles me. Guys don’t understand the biology or physical make up inside a woman’s breasts. They have no clue whether the bulk is musculature or not. But I am sure they will appreciate women’s musculature to some extent – especially when it is the muscle between the ears.
And if that’s not bad enough, other insertions appear to be much more ridiculous if you ask me.

I guess we have to start with the tongue…

We have all heard the stories about how piercing the tongue is a way of enhancing oral sex, with most commonly a stud akin to a ball bearing reportedly providing enhanced stimulation. But humans have inbuilt response mechanisms, learned experientially, as to how we should deal with foreign objects in the mouth, don’t we? Where did spitting come from I wonder? What do you do if you eat a fillet of fish and locate a bone whilst chewing the fish? You eject those foreign objects, right? Yet here we are, with a foreign object in your mouth that must feel slightly smaller than a basketball at first I imagine. And people are choosing this?

It is often said by tongue pierced devotees that the reason for this piercing is decorative, and the sexual stimulation aspect is decidedly secondary. I guess this might be true. In the same way that having copious amounts of KY Jelly in your house is a contingency for running out of WD40, the chains in the closet are memories of past pets and the six pairs of handcuffs stem from a time when you dated a lot of people who were members of the local constabulary.
How can this tongue piercing be decorative? People in developed countries have been spending millions to have their previous amalgam fillings converted to tooth coloured replacements. Gold teeth have been replaced by tooth coloured caps and the like. We have moved away from having chunks of visible metal in the mouth for a variety of reasons, and yet now people are having them put back in with no dental benefit or purpose to speak of.
Metal in your mouth isn’t that attractive, is it? Apparently owners of tongue piercings can now buy ‘daytime substitute piercings’ to maintain the piercing during work time, yet in a colour that’s transparent or ‘tongue coloured’ so that it is less conspicuous and less offensive to others. Frankly I am not surprised by the introduction of such products.

I have never heard anyone make the statement, after teeth shaping scaffolding has been applied, not honestly at least…
“Wow – you look so much more attractive in your new braces”.

As far as I know, the only person who looked cool in braces was Michael Douglas’s Gordon Gecko in the movie Wall Street... and that emulation fad was short lived, albeit enhanced at the time by wannabes declaring that ‘lunch is for wimps’. I have never heard anyone look at the actor Richard Kiel when he was playing the role of Jaws in what ever Bond movie it was, ‘The Spy who Loved Me’, I believe, and say
“Wow, what a fabulous smile”, or “wow, that was horny”.
Yes, he was trying to bite the neck of a Bond girl, but maybe he had ulterior motives?

As for sexual stimulation?.. Well, I don’t know about you, but as a normal male I have to say that the act of fellatio, performed by a willing and able partner, is already stimulating enough and a most enjoyable sexual experience. I have never heard of a man who doesn’t really enjoy it thoroughly when it is performed with skill and by a human that matches his sexual preferences for gender (wow, how safe a statement was that?).
That being largely a given, what in God’s name do you want to speed up that process for? Are men mad to even THINK of speeding it up? And speeded up with, effectively, ball bearings? It’s to be savoured, surely, isn’t it? It isn’t a race, not even a ball bearing race. And in any event, are ball bearings that pleasurable? Who ever heard of any guy masturbating with a fist full of ball bearings for Christ’s sake?
‘A Fistful of Ball Bearings?’
Cue Ennio Morricone
♫ na na na na naaaaaaaaaah, na na na ♫

Sounds like a present day Clint Eastwood movie where the man with no name is today a car mechanic.

On top of that, assuming your tongue pierced partner is a life partner as well, what impact does a tongue piercing have on other parts of the relationship, I wonder? I find, having personally experienced the effects of braces, dentistry, and a broken jaw, that just about any changes to the oral area in general, and particularly any additions, no matter how well they are matched to the part they are replacing or enhancing, have an effect on the ability to speak for the affected person… you get the keys to Lisp City or break out into involuntary Sylvester Stallone impressions.

Surely you remember what a gobstopper or aniseed ball did to you as a kid? Could you speak properly with it in your mouth? Sure – If you relocated it into the cheeks. It was a bit harder to speak when it was rolling around your mouth or on your tongue. Yet here we are effectively having metal aniseed balls secured to your tongue?

Tongue pierced enthusiasts need to speak all day long, and probably engage in fellatio far less often (only on birthdays according to many men). Some men tell me they have been hypnotised to believe they have birthdays that are always coming up tomorrow… though tomorrow never comes (and neither do they, through fellatio, at least).

I can only imagine that tongue piercing causes tremendously enhanced sexual stimulation at the expense of being able to pronounce words accurately. Perhaps a renowned President of the US has had his tongue pierced? Maybe the benefits of tongue piercing are, Dubya(s)? (That’s dubious George, not multiple Dubai’s, in case you haven’t learned from your past malapropisms). Maybe this lack of ability for pronunciation, post tongue piercing, has some bearing on the origin of the word ‘diction’? Who knows? How the world is changing, huh?

And what about kissing?.. Imagine a ‘frencher’ with someone who is tongue pierced? I haven’t experienced this, but would be somewhat apprehensive for sure.

Firstly there’s the obvious ‘is that ball bearing sanitary?’ question. How is that piercing kept clean? How do you do that? Take it out at night and put it in a glass next to the bed, resplendent with Steradent? (A somewhat regression to the days of false teeth, terribly alluring I don’t think). Do you sterilise it like a baby bottle? Boil the hell out of it? Take it out in the jewellers for ultrasound cleaning? Use home based jewellery cleaning solutions, ‘for that extra sparkle’? Perhaps gargle vigorously with TCP or similar? Get it shot blasted? The possibilities are seemingly endless.

During a well executed French kiss, it’s a very passionate act, isn’t it? Who in their right mind wants to engage in this activity with the same inevitable dental risks as walking into a strange pub and politely telling the largest guy in there that his woman is from a failed Quatermass experiment, that you believe he has the libido of a eunuch, is suffering from erectile dysfunction, and physically couldn’t satisfy a chicken who hadn’t had it in months. I mean, come on. Who wants to have their front teeth assailed by a freaking pissed off huge guy, or, for that matter, a ball bearing?

I don’t want to French kiss some hot babe, only to jump up rapidly mid kiss with blood issuing forth from my mouth, only to see her smile and satisfying utter the word “strike”. Maybe when the bleeding has stopped, you can go for another few frames – perhaps try and get a turkey? That’s probably pointless though – she’s French kissing you with a wrecking ball, and you are engaged in this activity. Maybe she already has a turkey?

It seems people are going to all sorts of lengths to allow for enhanced sexual stimulation, through myriad additions and modifications, piercings, et al. I am sure many of us I have heard of the term, a “Prince Albert”. A Prince Albert (PA) is basically a piercing through the penis, and various types of jewellery may be used to give the desired “effect”.

You can call me traditional, but the idea of having a piece of metal inserted through the head of my penis isn’t too high on my list of ‘things to do’. And whether the metal is precious or not doesn’t really influence my thinking in this regard. Since Lord of the Rings has been further popularised on screen, I do not want the term ‘precious’ associated with my phallus under any circumstances. Here’s a tip for guys…
If you are suffering from an erection when you don’t want one, or approaching ejaculation when you don’t want to yet, just picture Gollum from Lord of the Rings in your mind and imagine your dick is fondly being referred to by him as ‘My Precious’… problem solved.

But back to having a PA being not too high on my ‘to do’ list…

You know what I mean, don’t you… Perhaps you have just witnessed your favourite soccer team get totally trounced, and on the way home from the match your mobile rings and you are told you have just lost your job, your house will be imminently repossessed, and your dog has emigrated to Korea in search of a better life. You arrive home to find your wife being pleasured in bed by an elephant man look-alike, with an erect penis that’s a dead ringer for someone with sexual inadequacy issues. She’s smiling from ear to ear and moaning as if the world’s most successful vibrator had not only been administered with incredible skill, but powered by a 1000kW generator, and all the pictures have fallen off the wall through vibration from her moaning. Basically things could be way better and most likely you generally would have lost the will to live in those circumstances. Even then, would you think to yourself…

“Ah stuff it – things will only get better - I’ll get a Prince Albert”.

What kind of mindset do you have to get into that makes you want to have this procedure done?

Out of sheer curiosity I took a look at websites that both introduced people to the PA procedure, and made judgments as to the pain level this procedure involved. The pain MUST be in a new dimension, mustn’t it? It ranked as between 4 – 6 on a scale of 1-10, with 1 being extremely slight discomfort and 10 being equivalent to ‘excruciation in the nation’, (or a three week all expenses paid trip for you and your family on the surface of the sun, in layman’s terms). If this procedure is 4-6 in pain terms, what would a perfect 10 procedure be, in piercing terms, I wonder? Pierced eyeballs using a Black and Decker drill? Pierced testicles using no anaesthetic and knitting needles, perhaps?

Despite the claims of enhanced sexual stimulation made by PA protagonists, I have a problem with the concept of a bolt through my member. Apparently, depending on how well and in what position the PA is administered, men have to sit down to pee because the urine flow is a little different than before this procedure. Like freaking DUH!

Obviously these men that have this PA may never again go out to pubs, clubs or any places where a public toilet would need to be used. They can’t, can they? Think about it, do you really want to have to sit down at a men’s public loo just to have a pee? How many of these loos are sanitary? You need galoshes just to enter most of them, and chest waders in some. I wouldn’t sit down in most of them, that’s for sure, but to think that urinals are a no go area for fear of covering yourself, (and anyone else in a 3 metre radius), with a deluge of urine, somewhat baffles me. Maybe this is how this Golden Shower urination fetish got started? Men forgetting to sit down after having a PA, and by some strange quirk, their fellow toilet goers inadvertently getting some perverse pleasure bestowed upon them from being showered in hot urine when it is minus 20 below outside.
‘Ooh – they seemed to enjoy that – I’ll try it on the wife’.
Doubtful, huh? You’re right… I was definitely taking the piss.

Having an uncontrollable free flowing omni directional sprinkler system for a penis, further to a PA, just doesn’t seem worthwhile, does it? Maybe there are many men out there that have had this procedure done, yet have kept it reasonably well hidden from fellow males? This would explain why so many men don’t want to urinate in the presence of others and hang around the bathroom wash basins until everyone else has left. It would perhaps also explain why, despite years practicing the aiming of urine at a bowl or a urinal, men can’t seem to develop any degree of accuracy whatsoever, with veritable pools of urine splashes on the floor in most public toilets. It’s the bloody PA that’s to blame. The cubicles were either fully occupied or visually/ malodorously so disgusting to put them beyond approach for the PA wearers, who’s only choice is to venture forth and let loose the newly acquired inbuilt sprinkler system.

We regularly see men fiddling down there, scratching, moving bits around and the like. Perhaps these guys have the PA and it keeps getting caught up in trouser seams, and/or zips, perhaps?

As for the sexual stimulation part, I am a tad confused. Vibrators have been around for ages and it seems their popularity is reasonably strong with women the world over… you see them for sale in High Streets all over the place. However, how come we don’t see any for sale with a detachable bolt through them. I mean, come on, if the effect is that good for the ladies… Mary Shelley came up with the idea for a bolt through the neck eons ago, didn’t she, with the monster of Dr Frankenstein? But we haven’t had Frankendick coined as a PA aficionado phrase yet, have we, despite the concept of a bolt and also the neck?
“Good morning Sir, what can I do for you today… tattooing? Piercing?”
“I’d like a Frankendick please.”
“Certainly sir.”
“Harry – turn on the generator and bring the power tools, ok?”
How does someone give you one of these PA jobs? Is it under general anaesthetic? In a doctor’s clinic or surgery? At a tattooists / piercers’ joint? Where? Do you have to be erect? Limp?

If it’s limp, I guess the initial swelling will have to provide clues as to the right size of bolt, in order to cater for both a flaccid and erect penis. But how can it? The end of your penis is going to become the size of a cricket ball, isn’t it? When the swelling reduces, (by which time you’re pensionable and probably impotent anyway), the bolt will have to be changed for something much, much smaller I suppose. And that has to be so good and self image building for the ‘sexually inadequate even before I did this’ camp, hasn’t it?

But what if you have to be erect for this procedure to be done? You are just about to have a hole put through your old fellow, and an erection might be needed? Surely not? If so, I imagine you can put 25 porno videos on TV’s all over the place, whilst a similarly numbered naked nubile goddess’s play with your rounder sexual bits and you’ll probably start to get a tad aroused. But seeing your Willie on a Black and Decker workbench, and some crazed madman with a power tool or crazed instruments in his hand? Yeah right. Well this had better be a ‘limp’ procedure. In fact the piercer would need the Hubble telescope to find my Willie in this situation, that’s for sure. Instant bodily retraction and shrinkage. Instant Sumo capability, in essence.

Then of course, assuming you actually go and have this bizarre PA procedure done, what happens when you are fed up with it, and you want to permanently take out the bolt, shackle, or whatever pieced of insane engineering you put in there? There will be holes all over the place. Peeing will be even more challenging, won’t it? Assuming that these holes don’t grow over, I suppose that peeing will need extreme dexterity of the fingers to avoid the inbuilt sprinkler system kicking in. Perhaps to allow for this inevitable situation, piercers might want to increase their prices and throw in free recorder lessons, to get pierced customer’s dexterity levels up to scratch.

And when, WHEN, you get into old age and don’t have that dexterity of the fingers anymore, thanks to chronic rheumatism and arthritis, what will you do then? You’ll be rendered incontinent and will wish you were on a different continent, most probably. You won’t feel like a millionaire, and if even if you wanted to be a millionaire, I promise you that the chances of you getting soaked in urine are better than 50/50 and it will be pointless to try and call a friend or ask the audience, whoever they may be.

Of course, women get in on the act too… It wasn’t too far in the distant past when men thought the clitoris may not even exist, let alone be a ‘must attend to’ cornerstone of female sexual arousal. Stand up comics had a field day with men’s inability to find the clitoris, making much comedic extrapolation and juxtapositions about wearing wet suits, snorkels and miners hats / lamps just to go in search of it.

Today, however, most men are a tad more educated about the sensuality and sexuality of women – a tad. Women are at least equally, and probably way more self and sexually aware. When men needed clues as to where the clitoral location was, we were given little or no assistance whatsoever. I know this, as I have worn out many a perfectly good torch and was always running out of KY and surgical gloves.

Now that we DO know where it is, women are having clitoral hood piercings and also full clitoral piercing (pretty much a female Prince Albert, though on a smaller scale). What is that all about? We finally know where the bloody thing is, women were always moaning that we couldn’t find the bloody thing, and only NOW you provide directions that a blind man could follow??? When we know where it is? Why didn’t you have tattoos down there before? An arrow would have sufficed to point it out, we were ok to leave the lights on, we could have found it if you had helped! All we needed was a clue, or a non too subtle hint. We would have responded, honestly!
It wasn’t our fault we thought a Climax was a forklift made in Coventry!
It is kind of spectacularly bad timing if you ask me. Again sexual stimulation is supposed to be enhanced substantially, though there are still countless women who apparently struggle to reach orgasm at all.

I wonder what these women will do with these piercings, if they get them. And if they do get them, how will they know it’s being put in the right place? Let their boyfriend go mad with a stapler beforehand as a research experiment? Perhaps they’ll rely on the piercer to accurately hit the spot? Hope that the directional guidance this device gives will thereafter enable women who are struggling to climax to find the right place to stimulate and thus orgasm? This is all a little perplexing to me.

Any guy who has a reasonable understanding of the female anatomy can find it these days… we know how it works…we can make it erect… we don’t need it to be hyper sensitised… for many women YOU don’t need it to be hyper sensitised either. But getting clitoral piercing? We don’t need this for directions anymore, now do we? And any guy who has ever driven anywhere with a woman holding a map of any sort just knows that all hell is waiting to break loose… and that isn’t ‘earth shattering’ in the way you both would want, now is it?

Lord only knows what’s next… hooking the piercing up to a 12v car battery perhaps. That might well stimulate the desired area girls and get your engine firing on all cylinders. You may well have an electrifying sexual experience, or alternatively it may be so shocking that you won’t know if you are coming or going. Who knows?

Now of course, we have moved away from the clitoris and are in search of the G spot. I think not even piercing or tattoos are going to help us in this regard. Some women have found it, other women have hired Leonard Nimoy to go “In Search Of” the G spot, whilst others believe it is only present in women born within the triangular region that stretches between Florida, Puerto Rico, and Bermuda. Some sort of homing piercing may be in order?

If this all sounds a tad bizarre, then in some places around the world, these acts are decidedly lame, almost passé by comparison. In Asia, Indonesia and the Philippines in particular, it appears that some sections of society have people in search of sexual pleasure, (through attachments and embellishment), that are perhaps a smidgeon more, how can I say this? Liberal perhaps?

There are countless references to the very real practice of more elaborate penile insertions to, again, enhance sexual stimulation. Having horse’s hair sewn into the foreskin for example? How on earth does that work or help? I have heard the sexual parts of a man’s and woman’s anatomy called all manner of things, but never the art of lovemaking called the Grand National…
“And he’s under starters orders, and he’s off. He’s stretching nicely, three and a half, four, straightening out the bend, five and a half inches, head and neck in front, almost home now…”
Maybe there is something I am missing here. Perhaps this is something to do with why girls want ponies and the Asian’s have worked it out? Hmm… maybe not. These days, horse hair is mainly used to make brushes and in the bows of musical instruments, or so I thought.

I guess the frictional aspect of horse’s hair in your foreskin may well be responsible for some sort of enhanced stimulation, but it seems just a tad extreme if you ask me. I am curious to know how this procedure gets done.
‘Be back in a minute love… just popping down to the barbers to have my love strands fixed”?
How many strands are there and do the hairs discolour over time, in an effort to become a sexual Greek god? Is this where Grecian 2000 got its recognition from? This gives hair restoration completely new themes, doesn’t it? Some type of penile hairdresser perhaps is used? How is this hair maintained and ‘groomed’? Who performs this kind of procedure, and how?

I mean, most boys at some stage get involved in all manner of horseplay, but this is ridiculous. Maybe this is what you have to do to reach the accolade of “You’re the mane man”? And then of course, one has to question what effect this insertion has on not just traditional sex… but particularly fellatio? Where does the hair go? How long is it? How much of it is there? What’s next? Fellatio flossing? Sounds like a recipe for throat infections if you ask me, and if you are not spectacularly careful, it may be enough to make you virtually hoarse.

Additionally, some Asian men apparently also have a procedure performed where ball bearings are inserted either in the shaft of the penis or under the foreskin. This has some implications for oral sex again… So with a tongue pierced felatio performer and a penile ball bearing protagonist, does that mean you get to play marbles, or has everyone lost their marbles?
Again, who performs such a procedure, and where? What happens if there is a need to have these metal balls removed? What do you say to your lover?
“ Honey, we have been lovemaking for several minutes and it isn’t quite as pleasurable as before, what’s wrong?”
“I’m sorry love. I went to the doctor’s love, and I have Leeson’s Syndrome … sorry”.
“Is it serious? what’s that love?”
“Unfortunately, I have lost my bearings”
As for the effect of having ball bearings in play during fellatio, well no wonder so many people in the hinterlands are toothless and have false teeth in this region… at a very young age too. I can’t imagine anyone’s teeth standing up to rhythmic pinball either.

TILT.