We’ve all had the misfortune of having to endure a bus journey at some point in our miserable existence, unless you’re a Royal, extremely rich or never leave the house, and its this experience that I will be complaining about today…

I could easily have called this entry ‘Public Transport’ but I don’t happen to think that they’re all quite so horrendous. For example, the Metro train service, its quick, fairly reliable and smells faintly of disinfectant, which is infinitely preferably to piss.

It’s not to say that the other services have their own problems but buses seem to have a unique ability to do everything so badly, it makes you wonder if going back to horse and cart would be preferable. Theyre late, they’re polluting, they smell awful, they’re expensive, theyre slow, they are all of the things you don’t want from something that is supposed to make your life easier but still, people are encouraged to use them without ever trying to improve the system.

This is all a little serious, I concede, but given that so many people have to rely on these hulking, pollution-monsters for their daily lives, Id just like them to be a little bit better.

We could start with the cost. When one thing costs ‘x” and the other costs ‘y’ you generally prefer the cheapest option, given the variable of quality. So what happens when the cheapest is also the best quality? We choose that every time. In this case, it’s called the car. So on the basis of cost, the bus loses more supporters than the Liberal Democrats post-coalition.

Then there’s the time a bus takes to do the same journey against any other form of transport. These things are damn slow, slower than Emile Heskey. Kicking out half of China’s CO2 emissions from its huge exhaust, you could be forgiven for thinking Ray Mears was up inside it frantically rubbing two sticks together, showing us how to survive the cold while we wait for the bus to lumber along to its final destination. Maybe its just because it’s a diesel, I like the Ray Mears idea myself.

I recently checked out of interest, a bus journey from Jarrow to Durham, a distance of around 18 miles which takes 30 minutes in a car. If I had the inclination, Id put a multiple choice up here asking you how long the bus takes in comparison but I havent. Instead, I’ll just tell you. Nearly 2 hours with 2 changes. To put it in perspective, I could ride a bike 18 miles in 2 hours which is free and good for me apparently, along with all of that fresh air, something very absent on a bus…

The SAS get special training to survive in hostile environments, harsh and noisy conditions. In times of recession, I have an answer. Put them on the Number 21. I don’t know what makes buses smell so bad either, it could be old people, it could be the diesel fumes seeping into the passenger area, it could be the drivers late night Biryani, I just don’t know but it always smells bad. Well-known busologist, Dr. Aiston, tells us it could even be embalming fluid.

The people on the bus always make it an entertaining journey, that’s for sure. Those kids with their headphones in, iPod cranked up to 11 although most certainly not listening to Spinal Tap, more the latest shite than passes for pop music these days. Where has all the original music gone? Are we destined to be bombarded with cheap, unoriginal tripe every time we switch the radio on? Is this the reason I hate the radio? Am I going wildly off topic?

Whats worse however, the irritating chavs who have the misguided opinion that I want to hear the latest gabba hardcore release being blared incoherently through an ASDA pay-as-you-go mobile phone speaker accompanied by droning, illiterate ‘MC’ing’. Honestly, Id rather engage Big Brother contestants in a serious arable farming discussion than put up with that crap on a daily basis.

I might look into old laws, there are ones where you can shoot a man with a crossbow if you’re wearing a hat in Grimsby, maybe there is a law that states I can smash a chavs face in with an ornamental figurine on the bus while he listens to gabba hardcore if I buy a Buzzfare monthly pass. I’m nothing if not a wishful thinker.

All in all, a bus is not a place you want to be, let alone be reliant on.

I’m going to start boring myself shortly so I’ll wrap it up. Buses need a kick up the arse, make them cheap, we can put up with the crap that goes with them, make them nice and we don’t mind paying the price but the way it is now, I’d rather get on my bike, not on the buses…

Women’s magazines. I’m not talking about Cosmopolitan or Elle here, they do a good job keeping women up to date on all kinds of cool stuff, like hair and vibrators. I’m talking about Chat, Womans Own, Pick Me Up and Take a Break, amongst others.

This one shouldn’t really offend, but it might.

I don’t mean to imply that all of the stories that appear in these magazines that I’m about to ‘discuss’ below, are over exaggerated or even false, though it seems a stretch of the imagination to believe they were conceived by a writer with all of his faculties, rather than one on crystal meth, his editor in another dimension after a cocktail of Ketamin and LSD. I would never suggest that.

But have you ever actually read any of this stuff? L. Ron Hubbard would be kicking himself that he didn’t invent a religion based on some of the bizarre scenarios and ridiculous people who appear in these magazines, it would make far more interesting reading than Scientology fact sheet. In fact, Scientology looks like a viable alternative to reading them.

I don’t know how many of you read this kind of thing. maybe someone can enlighten me as to their purpose in life, answers on a postcard.

I realise that they are not designed to cater for the intellectual, nor are they for the stupid, they just seem to exist, in a section of their own on the magazine rack, in between all of the other more regular publications.

I see it something like having your mad Uncle Hubert over for tea, he sits there on the verge of a mentally unstable outburst while balancing the cat on his elbow and quietly humming Jumpin’ Jack Flash by the Rolling Stones, which, while a great song in itself, doesn’t do anything for Uncle Hubert or the situation he finds himself in.

I guess what I’m trying to say here, in a most roundabout fashion, is that these magazines are just like Uncle Hubert. Everyone else sits around the table making polite conversation, having a laugh and talking about politics and there’s Hubert, having a rave in the fruit bowl.

These magazines just scream at you, photos and headlines that you just wont believe. Sophistication is a word you can’t really justify using.

After a little research I found out that Jeremy Kyle writes an Agony Uncle column in Pick Me Up magazine. “Straight talking, tells them what they need to hear”, they quip. I have my own tagline for his section, it’s a little different from their version.

As I said, sophistication.

Anyway, onto the stories, after all, these are the main event. Mixed in with ‘Rude Jokes Corner’ and a section delightfully named ‘Arent Men Daft!”, the stories to shock and amaze. I’ll give you my reaction to a selection of these headlines and as you’ve probably already guessed, shock and amazement weren’t at the forefront of my emotions.

Firstly, from the hallowed pages of Chat, comes a story that’s potentially disturbing but is ruined at the last moment by a headline straight from the crack pipe of the editor. I don’t doubt that this is a real and harrowing story, I’m not mocking the stories themselves, just the way they are presented to us…

“He Butchered My Babies To Teach Me A Lesson…”

I don’t know about you but if I was going to teach somebody a lesson, I like to think I’d limit it to slapping them or shaming them in some way, dependent on the issue at hand. What I would not do, is butcher babies, it’s just not nice at all.

From the same magazine, we have another headline, equally as nasty but equally as attention grabbing. It’s almost like they looked up ‘subtlety’ in the dictionary and decided against it.

“He Killed Mum…Then Shot My Face Off”

I’m still looking for the subtlety in there, I fear its as lost on me as the concept of the working class is on David Cameron. Aside from that, where could you possibly go with that storyline? Life after my face was shot off? One other point to note, how was the face shot off but the head remained? Moving on…

Pick Me Up provides the next entry for our perusal, a comedy entry this time, I can only assume. Pick Me Up’s slogan is ‘Real life has never been so good!’ Yeah, tell that to the deformed child and the girl who got stabbed in the heart by her Dad.

“Look Mum! I’ve Got Horns!”

Accompanying this headline is a ‘cheeky’ picture of a young chap who does indeed appear to have horns. I’m fairly certain that we used to have something similar to this process a little while ago and even though efforts are made to stamp it out, it continues. Find a person with unusual disfigurements, abilities or skills and charge people money to look at them…thats right, Britain’s Got Talent.

Take A Break magazine seems to be a little more selective with its wild headlines, mingling them with serious topics but being a womans magazine of this type, it would be wrong of me not to include their riveting headline:

“The Body On The Settee…But Dad’s Innocent”

Its comforting to know that Take A Break have confirmed this mans innocence.

I will mention that I havent read any of these stories, I have only seen the headlines but given that it’s the sole way of grabbing attention,  its fair to say, I can base my judgements on that.

I wont even go into my other options, namely “Was My 9 Year Old Turning Into A Paedophile?” and “A Bounty Bar Or A Baby”

Make of those what you will, there’s one thing for sure, there will always be a story to be told, however freaky or bizarre it may be and most worryingly, there’ll always be someone to read them…

Its been a while since the Goat has had anything to write about, some say it’s because he’s going soft in his old age, some say it’s because the world is becoming a better place, these are all just nasty rumours…

Now, where to start…

Lets have a scenario to start this entry off.

Picture the scene, you’re lying in bed, struggling for breath, chest so tight that you had to check you didn’t have Vanessa Feltz still straddling you from last night, a nasty rash, stabbing pains, …ok, you get it, you’ve never Feltz so bad. You think it might be some sort of plague, you’re not sure, but you need to go to the doctors. Now maybe its just me, but the last thing I want to be doing if I feel like this is sit on the phone hammering ‘redial’ in order to make an appointment with my GP or any GP for that matter.

This latest way of dealing with GP appointments is pretty frustrating. I don’t know what its like at your own surgeries but at mine, you need to call up at 8am and take your chances. Now, you can call me cynical, but this doesn’t seem like the fairest system that you could conjure up does it? If you’re ill, you have to sit on the telephone and hope that you can get an appointment for the next two days. If you can’t, then you have to go through the process again the next day and so on. I think it needs looking into…that engaged tone on the 14th time of ringing can shred nerve endings quicker than VX gas.

So, you get your appointment, with a doctor you’ve never heard of, and head down to the surgery. Some are fairly new, some have been open since Moses needed a blood test, but they all share certain characteristics.

After the struggle to get the appointment, comes the Waiting Room.

I don’t know why Doctors surgeries waiting rooms look like this, all the ones I’ve ever been in look the same way, sure, they have different furniture and decoration but there’s just something that make them all so similar. Maybe its the air of illness, the boredom that is almost tangible, maybe, just maybe, it comes down to the reading material…

The reading material in doctors waiting rooms is not for the man who seeks knowledge about the important things in life, it’s not for the hungry minds of the young and old alike, who long to peruse the shiny covers and delve within pages that can hold such wonder…oh no, we get Motorcaravan Motorhome Monthly. I kid you not.

You didn’t believe me did you. These are really in there.

Glance around the tables littered which these publications and you can find some true gems, whats this here?

Today’s Railways UK

I can imagine the most avid of readers struggling to glean anything from this particular magazine. As riveting as any train spotter might tell you it is, you can only get so excited about the prospect of IEP out – high-speed 2 in, if I even knew what that actually meant.

But wait, there’s more, just when you thought that was your name they called out, only to realise it was the guy who came in 20 minutes after you did, your gaze falls upon what I can only describe as a mens specialist publication. For men who specialise in other men perhaps, I wont speculate.

Exercise for Men Only.

Thinly disguised as a gay magazine, I’m sure you’ll agree. Why can’t these exercise fanatics just come out of their closet?

And finally, what doctors waiting room would be complete without the philatelists wet dream, his monthly forage into the murky and dangerous world of stamp collecting. No use to your average patient of course, but there it is.

Gibbon’s Stamp Monthly.

Whoever Stanley Gibbons is, I wish him all the best on his 150th birthday, he’s doing remarkably well. It doesn’t excuse the fact that his magazine is amongst the others I’ve noted and is about as interesting as a Conservative MP. Saying that, Gibbons Stamp Monthly is sure to have more of an idea about what the average British person wants from a government. Ahem, God forbid that the Goat get political.

To be quite honest, all the staff need to do is fill the waiting rooms with magazines that flaunt boobies. The men will be happy and the women will have something to purse their lips over, we all win. Unless you’d rather find out about that latest motorcaravan…

Perhaps its cunning plan shared between doctors. Fill the waiting room with publications so mind-numbing and soul-destroying that on hearing whats actually wrong with you, its will seem positively cheerful.

“I’m sorry to tell you this, Mr Goat, but, er, you have the Black Death.”

“Oh, is that all? I thought for one awful moment that you were going to tell me Id been subscribed to Exercise for Men Only. What a relief!”

So, I wandered slightly, I started with Doctors and ended up on monthly magazines, this is what happens when you have a break away. I’ve become so slack, I almost put in a cheap joke about chocolate bars, but stopped myself just in time. I doubt it would have even raised a snicker.

I hope you will forgive the off-course rambling, I aim to deliver something even better next time…

I’ve opted for the Turbo-Chrome 9000 model shopping trolley for this blog’s picture, complete with optional child ‘seat’ and wheels that have a moderately high chance that they’ll all head in roughly the same direction. You get what you pay for in the trolley world, let me tell you.

Supermarkets are fun-filled places which will usually involve all manner of annoyance. From the very beginning, choosing the trolley…

It’s a fine skill, like wall papering or making fire with sticks. Choosing a trolley that works, hasn’t got something spilled all over it and has a functioning coin deposit mechanism can really seem like an uphill struggle unless you are that man in the anorak who’s spent the last five years of his life researching the Turbo-Chrome 9000 and its counterparts and knows just what to look for.

And the coin systems are half the problem. If you go for your trolley and it turns out to be the Lada Riva of the mobile basket world, what can you do? Do you take it? Or do you hang around for some other unfortunate shopper to take it away leaving you with the next random choice? You could always search around the car park for a decent one I suppose…if you had nothing else to do with your life.

So, you’ve armed yourself with your trolley, you’ve made it past the miserable security guard who really wishes he’d stuck in at school and into the badly organised and constantly shifting myriad of aisles. This aisle shifting malarkey. As soon as you’ve got used to where something is, they move it. Maybe its some kind of weird game all of the managers play, or something to do with inter-dimensional forces. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the Borg were involved somewhere along the line.

Working your way around the supermarket, there are all kinds of characters.

Slow-Trolley Man. I don’t know how this guy drives a car but its a fair bet that if he drives it the same way as he pushes his trolley, he’s got a fine career in hearse driving ahead of him, if that’s not his current profession already. You can have Slow-Trolley Woman too of course, but women generally seem to know what they are doing a little bit more. Mind you, with the Borg in control of the aisles, nobody can be sure.

Entire Family Unit. I can understand taking a full complement of bodies if you’re MS-13 facing off to a rival gang but when you’re in Asda, it’s not really necessary. It’s possible that they think, by adding numbers, they will reduce time taken but alas, this isn’t the case. They just take up entire aisles to themselves and move along them as one, like a school of whales looking for plankton.

Checkout Chatterer. A close relative of the Chatterbox you’ll find in the Post Office, they suffer from a similar problem, the inability to shut up in situations demanding brevity. Youre at the checkout, pay for your shopping and move on, the cashier is not your friend, they don’t care about the weather and really, could think of better things to be doing at that moment in time. These people, they are insistent that we have any interest in their trivial information. My life is far from exciting, petrol dropping 2 pence is enough to get me going, but I don’t feel the need to tell every checkout operative I happen to come across. Pardon the expression.

Greedy Guts. We’ve all seen them, wandering around, munching on some snack or slurping away on a drink. Before they’ve actually made it to the checkout. These are the guys that just can’t hold off their craving for a packet of biscuits, or a sandwich, or a bottle of Cherry Coke. They just have to have it, right then and there, even though conventionally, this isn’t really how its done, their trolleys resembling land-fill with the remains of their in-shop feast. Dump that empty carton down on the conveyor, that chocolate covered wrapper, that packet of crisps. Seriously, eat something before you go shopping, you might find that you don’t have to eat your way through half of the shop before you’ve actually paid for it.

So, we have the characters. We have the complete lack of common sense at the checkouts themselves too. I’m all for trying to combat underage drinking, I think 12 and under shouldnt touch the stuff but the ID check thing is becoming a little ridiculous I’m sure you’ll agree. Check 25 now is it? What next? If you don’t look like you’re drawing your pension, we need to check for ID? Given the number of occasions reported in the news where pensioners have been asked for ID, maybe even that’s not looking old enough…

Other things suggested by fellow grumblers also include:

- The people who wait until they actually get to the checkout before looking for the correct change. Soldiers in WWII didn’t have to contend with that much shrapnel.

- Empty shelves blocked by the very product that’s supposed to be filling them, on giant racks. Worse, shelves full of the stuff but you can’t get to them because of the racks…

- Unintelligible tannoy announcements. The store could be burning, we’d just have to assume that the croissants were on two for one, for all the sense we could make of it.

I’m sure there are more, suggestions welcome.

I give the impression that I really dislike supermarkets but I don’t, I could just do with an empty one to do my shopping in, free of stresses, screaming kids, munching families, tannoys and Dale Winton.

Otherwise known as thieves, leeches or plain old (insert your own suitable four-letter expletive), these vile necessities have been the misery of drivers everywhere since they invented the car, unless you happen to be 103, living in Bognor Regis and driving your classic 1976 Morris Marina up to 37 miles a year, even then, they’ll hammer you for not being able to pay all in one go…still, it has to be better than paydayloans.com with their more than reasonable 2345% APR. No decimals in there, people.

Dear Insurance Companies,

I recently tried to get a quote from you. I was puzzled when you told me it cost so much, considering I have a clean license and full no claims, still, I know you’ll try to blame all of those uninsured drivers but I don’t appreciate having those costs passed on to me.

For instance, why, why, why, does the excess on my policy;

a) cost more than the policy itself

b) even exist in the first place?

I pay you all of that money for a year of ‘cover’ for you to ask for an amount larger than my policy for you to cough up any money?

Yours with the utmost distaste,

Daily Goat

Then we’re onto the subject of them actually paying anything out in the event of something going wrong…these companies have armies of Columbo’s on stand-by, glass eyes at the ready, to deploy in every case, trying to find some minor discrepancy that they can default the policy with, just to compound your misery.

Adverts, we have been there, but it’s just has to come back round, the smarmy, irritating little Churchill dog that you want to neuter and leave bleeding in a gutter for telling you, ohh yes, you can get it cheaper with him. Can I? Cheaper than Sergeant Smith’s M1 Abrams tank touring Afghanistan’s Red Zone maybe, yes.

The stupid little red telephone and mouse from Direct Line, promising that you’ll do better to avoid the middle man and go with them, well, I tried that, I prefer the middle man, at least he gives me some choice of who I want to tear my eyes out with their spindly, money-grabbing fingers instead of flashing up on the screen like a giant ‘fuck you’.

One other royal frustration, which affects my younger friends but it boils me up regardless. How do you ever justify a premium that costs more than the 1.0 Corsa they just bought for their first car? I know you’re greedy but look at it in context, its like buying home and contents insurance for a premium of £125,000 per year.

And possibly the worst thing of all, most of us will never have to use the dubious services of the insurance companies we pay our hard-earned cash to, meaning of course, that its money they’ve taken from you for doing nothing. I’m sure the Mafia provide a similar service for shopkeepers and small businesses… 

I wouldn’t like to work out how much money of mine they’ve kept over the years. The insurance companies that is, not the Mafia.

I was supposed to writing about all things supermarket for the next installment but this one just couldn’t wait…you’d never guess its renewal time.

Valentines Day! You didn’t think the Goat approved of it did you?

All the men reading this are laughing and nodding while the women are thinking up words to describe how many kinds of excrement I’m in for mocking this sacred day…correct me if I’m wrong.

Sympathise with me here for a moment, if your girlfriend or boyfriend brought home presents, flowers and chocolate on any other day, the response would be, most likely, what have you done, who are they or did they actually do that?

So when Valentines Day comes around, there’s the inevitable mad rush for the men who havent bothered to buy anything and find themselves frantically searching for something she’ll not throw back at him and the expectation from the women that this year, maybe, you could be arsed.

The last-minute dash amuses me, you run around buying up the crappiest flowers they had left in the store, most resembling an offcut from a triffid rather than a resplendent rose, the only box of chocolates that were left, in this case, organic fair trade chocolates made from elephant groin, and a card from the 9p range…because she’s worth it.

And why, I ask, why. Is it because you love the person so much, you want to show them how much…oh no, lets face it, if you havent done that in the other 364 days of the year, you might want to rethink your strategy. People do it because of the incessant barrage of advertising and marketing carried out by corporation who have pushed these thoughts and ideas into peoples heads to cash in on everything pink, sickly and heart-shaped. I have no idea what they do with it all after Valentines Day, use it to rehabilitate violent offenders or perhaps to furnish the inside of a hired limousine trawling around the Quayside on a Saturday night. Some might see those two as pretty similar actions…

Either way, I don’t really like being told what I should buy and when I have to buy it, much the same as Christmas. Besides, the flowers will be dead in a week.

I think this one will divide a lot of peoples opinion and I’m not against it in any way, if you do it for your own reasons but I’m an eternal cynic when it comes to these kind of things, don’t hate me for it, its Valentines Day after all…

I can hear Cupid sharpening his arrows, I have a sneaking feeling that the ones he has for me may be poison-tipped…

The Adverts blog was a one of day-to-day irritations, the Winter Driving and Post Office grumbles were occasions that are unavoidable for most of us without butlers, chauffeurs or Iggy Pop to drive us around shouting in our ears. This one is the Ferrero Rocher of grumbles, it has it all, everyday pains in your ass and the frustrations of dealing with people you really don’t want to deal with. Daily Goat, with these grumbles you are really spoiling us!

Mobile phone companies and mobile phones are a necessity, it would seem, these days and this is where the networks have us bent over in a position more commonly seen in a Ron Jeremy movie than a mobile phone contract.

We can’t avoid using mobile phones and we have to deal with the networks when we have no other choice, provided of course, that we could get through to speak with them in the first place.

For me, there are two things here, the networks and the mobile phones themselves. The networks cause all manner of problems but then again, so do the mobile phones, which is worse? You decide…

The Network Operators.

Once upon a time, somebody designed a phone that didn’t need wires and you could carry around with you. Admittedly, back then, you needed a petrol generator, a slave and a golf trolley to consider it portable, but the idea was on the move…

I don’t know what happened after that, I use a mobile phone, I don’t read up the history of mobile communications and the global explosion that followed. I do know, however, what happens at this point in time. Presumably the future ties you up for a lifetime contract based on the terms and conditions of your soul but im not Mystic Meg either, for now though, this is what we have.

2 year contracts. Just say that out loud, 2 years. Thats a lot of time out of your life when you consider it. People used to think that a year was a long contract, as time has gone on, the contract length has increased and what you get for your money has got worse. Honestly, I could take out a new contract on the same day as I wiped out the entire Cash for Gold cast list and be released before I was due an upgrade.

Now, if I said to you, i was going to give you unlimited Ferrero Rocher’s next month, what would you say? You’d be pleased, assuming that you like them. But then, I’d only give you 5, call it fair use policy and blame the Ambassador.

You see where I’m going with this…they sell you something as unlimited when it clearly isn’t? It’s a little bit annoying, if im promised an unlimited amount of something, thats what I want, not ‘fair use’. I’m sure that this is fair in their own heads, in a world where upgrades are like root canal surgery, everyone tells you it doesn’t hurt but afterwards, you never want to think about doing it again.

So..upgrades. It’s nearly as exciting a time of year as Christmas, your birthday and Eurovision. Ok, maybe not Eurovision, the only thing that was remotely exciting in there were the cut scenes where you needed to be on crystal meth to understand what was going on and Terry Wogan’s relentless piss taking, we don’t even have that to look forward to now. Terry, not the crystal meth. Kids, don’t do it.

Anyway, as I was saying, upgrades. It’s quite unbelievable what you have to go through to get a mobile phone that was released sometime this decade and that is jam-packed with all that useless crap you don’t need (I’ll get onto that later…). It’s like a test of iron wills, that moment where the call centre operative is saying one thing, you’re saying the other, it looks a bit like this…

Operative: No sir, we can’t offer you that handset on your current tariff.
Me: Err, but you offer it free to new customers?
Operative: You are not a new customer sir.
Me: Really? Ok, I’ll leave and go with 3, they’ll give me what I want.

Now this is the point where they either put you through to cancellations and you have to hang up quickly because you didn’t actually think you’d have to cancel the damned contract or they cave in and ‘try their best’ to work something out for you. I don’t know what mystical rules this exchange is based on but it appears to be more random than Bruce Forsyth riding a camel backwards. Just keep your fingers crossed.

Mobile Phones

You don’t even get to call them plain old mobile phones anymore, they are smartphones, media calling devices, communication panels. It’s a mobile phone, whatever you think it is.

Some are basic, some are better, most pander to the belief that they must have a camera, to take those all important blurry, out-of-focus picture of your mates leering at you through a drunken haze. Its one for the album.

Whatever you call it, or whatever specifications it has, the mobile has a few nasty little habits, namely…

Signal issues. I pity you if you live in one of those areas where you struggle to get a signal and have had a rig made up that attached to the end of your house that you need to stand on to get a solitary bar…or you have a phone that loses signal for no reason at all, thats so much fun isn’t it.

Crashes. How many times has my phone crashed? I don’t know, more than my Windows 7 PC, that might give you a fair idea. Then again, if you’re a Mac user, you’ll crack a joke that I must never actually have managed to use the phone and if you’re a Windows user you’re probably going to agree with the Mac guy.

It would be hugely unfair if I didn’t mention in this blog, a little bit about the iPhone. I know, you’re all going to hate me and tell me how amazing it all is but I just don’t get it. Mass hysteria over its release and its continued to be popular…because….because…well thats my point.

Maybe its the ‘apps’. The secret weapon. You’ve always needed an app to tell you how to flush the toilet more efficiently. Or perhaps the app that shows you where you live just in the off-chance you forgot, in between the shops and the ride home. I could go on…if anyone has an actual useful app, post it up in the comments, surprise me…

So, the wonderful world of mobile communications as seen by the Goat. Who knows what he will choose for his next grumble, there are so many to write about…still…I bet there’s an app for that.

Despite what the picture might suggest, I don’t think that all adverts lie. Just most of them.

Ok, how should I start off this particular blast at one of my most grumbled about parts of everyday life?

I’m going to start with the frequency of the things. Adverts are everywhere you look these days, they cover television, radio, our faithful internet, magazines, trains, buses and probably Lady Gaga’s alleged ball sack. The problem with this, for me, is I don’t like things rammed down my throat, despite what you might have heard, I had enough of that at Catholic school. Advertisers seem to have a misguided belief that if they bombard you enough with their sensational new product we’re going to lose all control of our faculties and rush out to the nearest store to stock up on hair gel/nappies/pile cream.

Well most of us won’t, either because we don’t need it, we don’t want it or we just find the advert telling us to go and buy it so unbearably tacky, so unashamedly lame or just plain old ridiculous.

So, what are these adverts I hear you cry? I’m going to tell you, and put some in neat little categories, just for you. Only a select few that are currently getting my goat, but I’m fairly sure that you’ll be able to suggest any number of your own…I’ll stick to TV.

Insurance adverts…what do we have here, insurance. This could fill this page on its own if I wasnt supposed to be talking about the silly adverts that go with it…so on we go..go…go compare! I despair! it’s not fair! tearing out my hair! i bet he has a lovely pair…yes, its our favourite opera singer Mr Go Compare. The irritating sounds of his grating tones precedes a barrage of reasons why you should take your insurance out with them in song. I did go and compare after the advert, I compared him to a real opera singer and found that he sounded awful. Then I tried to compare the advert to an equivalent, which doesn’t exist, so what I could really only compare it to was some unreleased version of La Traviata where everybody dies in a nuclear explosion. Verdi would turn in his grave. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUfV97wnlcg

Compare the Market…compare the Meerka…oh, honestly, who gives a shit anymore. You’re not getting a link either.

Iggy Pop was big in his day I’m sure. However big, I’m sure it doesn’t give him the right to inflict himself and what appears to be a more evil version of Chucky onto my screen amidst screaming and shouting about Swift Cover. I’m sure they’re quite swift. To take your premium. I’m not taking bets on what happens when you have to claim. Also, a car insurance quote in 60 seconds? Id set my keyboard on fire if I could type that fast. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhBnEV3ElvY

Cash for Gold adverts…I have no idea how many of these there are out there now, they all look similar, employ the same terrible actors, make the same obscene profit margins on record-price gold…the running theme is always the amount of money they can offer you for your ‘old’ gold. Old gold? Does it have a use by date? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjYftlP2BcI&feature=related

We Buy Any Car do indeed buy any car! For approximately a tenth of its actual worth. But hey, its ok, they can rip your corneas out and come back for the rest because they have such a cheeky advert! If I ever wanted to sell my car for a stupidly low price, just on the off chance Id been living in a cave (with a driveway) and had never heard of Autotrader, or Pistonheads, or even a main dealers, I’d sell it at an auction. At least there you might be genuinely surprised when they take your car away for less money than it’ll cost you to get the bus home. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXiJBp7HK5o

No win, no fee. Im not even doing this one. The sheer number of these adverts, it was overpowering, thankfully they’ve died a death, only to be replaced by cash for gold. If there was some way I could have heated the homes of the UK with these Claims Direct, no win-no fee type adverts, Id put EDF and British Gas out of business. Maybe they should burn all of the people who work for them. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMpdFh_eLqU&feature=PlayList&p=978D451AD7B58EB5&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=21

Citroen. Is it not bad enough that you make cars out of plasticine without giving us the C3 advert set in a dockyard? They drive in, so sneaky, past the inevitable sleeping guard (as a side note, the same guy must interview all of these narcoleptic security guards, they’re everywhere, films, tv, terrible adverts…where does he find them?), and attach hooks to the wheels, before shooting off into the air…yeah, into the air, attached to cables… before hurtling back towards the ground, crashing horribly, and inflicting serious damage to themselves and the car, which alerts the previously sleeping guard. The guard notifies the authorities, who arrest the idiots in the car and send them to hospital. They have both made a full recovery and are awaiting trial. The security guard is still suffering from narcolepsy but continues to find employment in the film industry. Strangely, that’s not the version they showed on TV…http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_y6ZECblJM

Finally, I just want to talk about chewing gum, the very inspiration for this particular blog. Strange you may think, how could a chewing gum advert possibly offend the Goats sensibilities? It’s the new Wrigleys 5 adverts. Ive chewed many a stick of gum over the years and I’m not entirely sure how Id describe the sensation. What it is not, Wrigleys 5 Cobalt, is a feeling of being strapped into a metal ball thats a cross between a Gladiators Atlasphere and the sled from The Running Man. Never in my years have I, or would I, like the bowel-loosening feeling of such an experience when all I really wanted was to have slightly fresher breath. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRCAcNyRNHU&feature=related

I think that covers a small section of irritating adverts, we could have had the Gillette advert with the really shit computer sports stars in there too but I just didn’t have the room.

To indicate or not to indicate, that is the question.

The answer most certainly should be, indicate. I would have thought it was obvious…

One other curious little thing I noticed today, a cyclist, riding straight through a red light and towards the front of my car. They ride on the roads but don’t seem to want to stick to the rules…

If I hadn’t swerved I might have missed him.