Further Grudges Held by Me

A clock made by Thomas Tompion.
Tompion clocks always
show Greenwich Mean Time

Pacific Standard Time

Pacific Standard Time I loathe as a symbol of all the irritations involved in using the internet.

When I was struggling among the UNBELIEVABLE hoops they make you go through to set up a thing like this blog it would NOT allow me to be on Greenwich Mean Time as any sane Englishman would wish to be. It insisted on using Pacific Standard Time and no two ways about it. Never mind that I have never been in such a time zone, or that if I ever did go into it I would still work on GMT like any sane Englishman.  I told it repeatedly that I was in Greenwich (a lie actually) but it steadfastly kept to Pacific Standard Time. Eventually my son came home from kindergarten and dealt with it for me and it now permits the use of proper time. But why do they have to make it so difficult that only a child can operate it?

The fact that it is my own incompetence that causes the trouble in NO WAY diminishes my fury.

Slapstick "Humour"

Slapstick humour is not funny; neither is it big, nor clever. It simply does not register to the Smith sense of humour, which is on an altogether more cerebral plane. As my brother says, to hear the phrase Slapstick Humour, is immediately to feel bilious.

The only emotion elicited by displays of slapstick humour is the unedifying and spiteful one of Schadenfreude. We therefore disdain it, and consider it quite worthless.

Jingle Bells

Jingle Bells: This piece of so-called music has inflicted considerable suffering on the western world - and probably beyond - since it was written, which dastardly act was perpetrated by James Lord Pierpont who must rank as one of the most irresponsible people in the known universe. It was published in 1857 which means that this is the 256th Christmas that has been ruined by it. 

Everyone knows the noisome song and everyone has it forced on them every time they venture out in public from October onwards. The inane tune and the soppy words combine to make a sickening phenomenon which all shopkeepers seize on and play incessantly, though heaven knows why. One would have thought that the authorities would have addressed the problem as a matter of urgency many years ago.

 

So - why can we not be protected from this aural plague?

The terrible truth is that now that it has been written it cannot be unwritten.

James Lord Pierpont, what have you DONE?

Here is a page from Beethoven's Kreutzer Sonata for Violin and Piano.
Look on this, J L Pierpont, and weep.