The word ‘robust’

Business words come and business words go, but ‘robust’ looks like it’s intent on staying. As one of the most pernicious signs of pale, pasty, nondescript English that you’re likely to see, robust can be found in public statements and marketing bumph everywhere from food to finance.

Bogus buzzwords and phrases like ‘think outside the box’ and ’step change’ ring alarm bells the instant they’re heard. ‘Robust’ has been sneaking past people’s better sensibilities for years, and can now be found almost everywhere – and used to describe almost anything – and it is spreading. It’s a viral killer of meaning, much like it’s distant cousin, ’solutions’.

Tesco now stocks ‘Indian Meal Solutions’ – not curries, but solutions for anyone experiencing a shortage of Indian meals. Unfortunately for Tesco, very few people have a problematic deficiency of Indian Meals, and are assuming they’re referring to microwave chicken balti – which is handy, because they are. The people who decide such things, labels for shelves, have picked a side, the side of bollocks-talk.

Grammar Nazis have been napping on the job when it comes to defending the English language. It’s simple to be a literal fascist of words when it comes to commas, semicolons, colons, capital letters, possessive apostrophes and spelling. They simply treat English like it was mathematics, making sure that all the squiggles and letters line up in a perfectly logical framework, creating a perfectly uniform word-frame only to fill it with literary catshit like ’step change’, ‘thought leaders’ and ‘holistic governance’.

Robust packaging, robust policies, a robust policy framework, a robust flavour, a robust vehicle, robust action on poverty, a robust response to the ‘downturn’. In use, the word might once have served to reassure, but now, thanks to its overuse it’s a signpost for the farting classes that the speaker wants to get across a positive, reassuring message without actually stooping to explain themselves.

When used in political terms it’s a way of particularly nondescript. If a politician had ‘robust’ discussions with a foreign counterpart, it’s just a guarantee that some talking went on. Your politician is probably more concerned that he got his mileage allowance for that particular junket. Where once a meeting could have been described as deadlocked or unproductive, now robust discussions can have taken place. “Yes, we discussed it. No, we didn’t achieve anything.”

Of course you can’t, and shouldn’t, outlaw words. And this article is not in any way an assassination attempt on what is a perfectly acceptable term. The problem with ‘robust’ is it’s ubiquity, and it’s over-adoption by lazy press officers and politicians the universe over.

As a correspondent in the American Journal of Hematology correctly points out, it is possible to make a robust point without using the word ^‘robust:

“Literary standards such as the complete works of Shakespeare (37 plays and 154 sonnets), the King James Bible, and Bulfinch’s mythology do not use the word ‘robust’ even once. Despite plenty of robust structures in the human body, there is only a single ^‘robust’ descriptor buried in the 1396 pages of Henry Gray’s anatomical classic. Bartlett’s Quotations does not contain one aphorism with the word ‘robust,’ proving that witty and clever sayings can exist in a robust-less world.”

According to George Orwell’s Principles of Newspeak, “Newspeak was designed not to extend, but to diminish the range of thought, and this purpose was indirectly assisted by cutting the choice of words down to a minimum.” Robust business words like ‘robust’ are not Newspeak yet, but give them time to bed in fully and replace the plethora of actual adjectives that could have been used and they will be. The people who use them will realise they never have to truly describe things ever again, never have to tell you what’s what. Then you’re fucked.

Ref: http://bloodjournal.hematologylibrary.org/cgi/content/full/103/2/746

British Army recruitment adverts

Right up there with the ’six second abs’ and Bill Clinton’s definition of ’sexual relations with that woman’, the British Army’s recruitment advertisements are a fine addition to the canon of conveniently incomplete statements. In six seconds time you will still be a fat failure who somehow thought there was an easy route to changing your stomach from gloopy gas-factory into a ripped, washboard paradise machine.
In one of the British Army’s videos, we see home video footage of a youth with his mum and life in Britain is exposed as high tedium next to the fun and games of those crazy army boys and their barrack-room shits and giggles. In another, a young chap is seen prominently wielding an Xbox 360 pad while he controls an airborne surveillance camera, keeping an eye on his pals. In a third, a woman is seen tending sick villagers in some backward desert death-hole, when a jeep appears with some ‘bad news’.
In all of these adverts, the video crackles out before the dramatic arc of the stories they seek to tell is fully realised. Perhaps the Xbox-playing lunk didn’t just see his friends receive bullet wounds to the face in a shabby bush-assault by Kalashnikov-wielding jihadists. Perhaps he did. Maybe the surprise for the bleeding-heart humanitarian medic in the African village is, in fact, a delicious cake and a birthday sing-song. Maybe it’s her imminent death, or that of a friend.
All films here need a coda. They need the ending to be completely undramatic. The British Army is selling war to young people as an exciting prospect, and one in which an individual has huge responsibilities. Join the army and the film of YOUR life might crackle – it could be cake, it could be death. It WILL be unpredictable.
If they were more honest, they would flesh out the subtext of these adverts. “You COULD get killed in somebody else’s futile oil-war, possibly even by friendly forces. If you don’t you will almost certainly get to hold a gun a few times and it beats living with your mum for the rest of your life.”
Where do I sign?

http://www.armyjobs.mod.uk 

Katie Melua

Insipid, pasty, watery ear-piddle. Katie Melua has a voice like a lazy 12-year-old pretending to be sick at school so she doesn’t have to do PE that afternoon. Her pathetic tissue-thin voice resonated perfectly in the dense, log-like skull of Radio 2 Yorkshire-thickie Michael Parkinson and such was his love of weak, weak shit, he played her records a lot.
Songs like “I’ve got cramps in my belly miss” and “it’s dead sore at the back of me throat” soon died down for her big hitters like “Closest thing to crazy” and “Ten million bicycles”, which were both unapologetic dewy-eyed horse-cockery.

Harry Potter and the Facebook group

Rubbishlisters, Harry Potter is more than rubbish, he’s a big pile of shit.

Unfortunately due to my suspicion that suggesting JK Rowling to be an unimaginative cash-whoring dipshit might well be libellous, I’ve limited the Harry Potter post to this site’s sister Faceboook group.
The fact is that’s my honestly held opinion and is not malicious, unless wishing horrid bum-diseases on an overstuffed poobrain is malice, I’m sure it’s not. Anyway, suing me would only make me richer, perversely, as bankruptcy would kill my student loan repayments off.

Anyway, if you wish to read the Harry Potter post you can go to the Facebook group ”The following things are rubbish“.
Facebook is also rubbish, for trying to pretend that it’s not just another advertising channel or for having so many optional “applications” as to make veteran pages mind bogglingly confusing to look at.

I’ll see you there.

Red Bull Extreme Sports

Red Bull ‘extreme’ sports such as “Flugtag” are among the more annoying aspects of the potentially sick-inducing fizzy red caffeine-pop.
The drink itself is an overpriced miniature can of what could loosely be described as “Tizer Espresso”. It is bought in pubs by people falling asleep under the weight of their friends conversations as a method to prevent their eyelids from closing . In order to reinforce its “Might just keep you awake” energy-boosting power, Red Bull has associated itself with some of society’s crappiest, most unwanted and unwatched sports.
So Flugtag, which sounds almost nouveau-German chic like Fussball (Table football, directly translates as ‘pinball for wankers‘) is a Red Bull ‘extreme’ sport, and people are invited to create their own flying machines and be launched off a pier into the sea.
It all looks innocent enough but the Red Bull version of Flugtag betrays the sport’s roots. Flugtag is German for their annual “Idiot push”. Idiots would be rounded up and herded off a high pier, tricked into agreement by being told they were about to fly away in a bizarre shed-like contraption for shits and giggles. In fact, they were being erased from existence by a society intent on destroying the subhumans who were still voting on television talent-shows and lacking in German efficiency.
So when this societal medicine sport reached the UK, far from thinking how delightfully jolly the participants looked in their Heath Robinson contraptions, I initially wept with joy that the government had finally begun to tackle our nations growing ‘idiot problems’.
It was not to be, the vastly pointless event is in fact REAL, and plays up to the “Red Bull gives you wiiings!” slogan. I immediately ceased weeping for joy and began weeping in despair.
The event had gone from the joyous – “let’s push these retards into the sea once and for all!” to the hellish realisation that none of the event marshalls were shooting the survivors as they bobbed grinning next to the wreckage of their shed-planes. Oh, shit and fried eggs.
There they were, clambering out of the sea. Like normal cretins, only slightly damper – and still alive.
Red Bull had reinforced itself as the pumped-up can-crushing goon’s beverage of choice and our nation’s idiocy pandemic continued for another day.
The same happened with the damn “Air Race”. Middle-class, middle-aged people in their miniature flying machines poncing around above the Thames doing “death-defying” turns and such between giant coloured flags. Well whoop-de-shit! The sort of people who go to the pub for a ‘real ale’ after a race and talk engines were now being celebrated by a company desperate for wing-related sports to fit their brand. Well they can cock right off, all their sports are rubbish.

The iPhone

Apple’s obsession with world domination continues, but their phone is just a flashy piece of shit for shallow losers. Here’s a link for real people to a page that, in a simplistic American way, makes all the necessary arguments against said piece of Apple crapple.

The iPhone is a piece of shit and so is your face

Sunday Afternoons

Sunday afternoons are intensely boring and usually result in the kind of relentless brain-rotting tedium that drives people to commit violent hate-crimes or start reading the Daily Mail, or both.
Saturdays are OK, Saturday is a “get things done” day in the minds of most people. Saturday is a trip to the shops or a DIY day. Saturday you might go and look at expensive electrical items in an out-of-town retail park or even attend a barbecue at a friend’s house if it wasn’t raining enough to drown birds in flight.
Sunday of course is an unusual beast. In an old storybook the main character “God” decided to partition Sunday’s off as a day of rest. Historically, with the majority of the nation using it as a day to recover from Saturday’s excesses and the emotionless wheels of industry using the day as a statutory rest-period for their worker drones, Sundays tend to be quiet.
Depressingly so. The afternoon is the time most of the country has reserved for pointless activites – like paintballing, mowing the lawn or washing the car. All of the activities that people associate with performing on a Sunday afternoon are those which are at the bottom of the all-time “things to do list”. Hence toenails get clipped, cakes baked, microwave-clocks set and houses cleaned.
Sunday afternoon is merely a gaping expanse of time demanding to be filled; anutterly utterly poor part of the week.

Dinner for one

Many traps are set in the modern age to dishearten even the most steadfast and diligent member of society. Carbon Footprints remind you you’re an overconsuming planet-wrecking luxury-whore, DFS adverts are designed to make you guilty you don’t own more sofas and history reminds you that everyone who’s ever existed before you has had a much, much worse time of it than you ever possibly could.
Another bad thing about history though is that it succesfully places your worries at the bottom of the all-time worry tree. Chief amongst modern worries is the “I’m far too single” worry.
Dinner for one is a debilitating, torrid modern phenomenon. It’s ok to grab a sandwich (rubbish food) on your own of a lunchtime, it’s even ok to decide you’re not that hungry and have just a bowl of cereal for tea. All of that is fine and not THAT rubbish. No, the real emotional suffering comes about from either purchasing or creating a generous, rich single portion dinner for your self again and again, night after night for weeks on end.
The ultimate super-bad is cooking a Marks and Spencer single portion of steamed chicken with a bagged salad, a steak and ale pie or quiche for one from a box. You’ll have been enticed into buying it by the sultry tones of Dervla Kirwan doing her disgusting food-porn adverts. You know the ones, everything in Marks’ range is shown either having gravy/raspberry sauce poured on it very slowly or being dug into with a ridiculously shiny silver fork.
Essentially the whorish description of the food along with the masturbatory images have lulled you into associating it with sexy. In reality it’s twice as good as anyone else’s food because it’s exactly twice as expensive and thus, you get what you pay for. It still doesn’t stop it being soul-destroying to eat good food on your own.
Dinner for one on a regular basis is rubbish, it’s a sign you’re dead inside and out.This is particularly true if it is accompanied by sustained television watching You’re treating yourself to something you don’t deserve because for whatever reason you’ve shunned society or they’ve exiled you to your own home. It can be solved though if people just adopt this simple rule; after seven nights you HAVE to be accompanied. Even if it involves chiding old friends, making new ones or treating some homeless panhandler to a full meal. You have to. Society benefits from being more cohesive and you benefit from not being a certified cave-dweller. Either way, the rubbishness of dinner for one just grows exponentially as your sole-dining streak grows. Let’s end it now.

Jonathan Ross

Jonathan “Wossie” Ross evidently wasn’t sufficiently bullied at school. Moderately effective at his film reviews, it’s his painfully self-indulgent chat show that’s the real reason for his unforgivable rubbishness. On Friday nights on BBC One, Ross invites celebrity guests into the studio and subjects them to a series of excruciating knob jokes whilst tossing his “Richard Madeley-esque” mid-life crisis fringe back and chortling away with the odd question about said person’s latest project.
Ross’ arrogance results in an interview where you’re more likely to find out where he’s just been on holiday or what his son’s hamster is called than why said person has deigned to turn up.
His interview style is almost the complete opposite of fellow rubbish interviewer Michael Parkinson, who trades on his slow-witted Yorkshireness and rarely makes comment.Each female guest will be offered sexual intercourse several times throughout the interview, each male guest will be accused of sexual deviancy or animal husbandry an equal number of times. This is because actual stony-faced factual content can’t hold the attention of Joe Public anymore, his brain indefinitely clogged with waste chemicals from his food.
There’s no getting around the fact that somehow Britain has allowed a fat lispy tosser to become a ridiculously high-paid primetime chat-show host. And millions of people watch it, millions, because idiotic knob-jokes are still king. Jesus wept.

The common cold

A completely pointless illness, the common cold is surely the most rubbish malady of all time. In the top five weak illnesses it’s up there with athlete’s foot, pink-eye, excessive sweating and Delhi belly.
In many humans an instance of the common cold is marked by a production of a great deal of pus and mucus, which is in turn expelled through the nose, mouth or something. They ache more and blow their nose alot. In a recent bout of the common cold, I found myself producing enough phlegm to fill a bathtub and blowing my nose around 500 times. When a cold attempts to take hold of me, my body’s reaction is to become incredibly red and drippy and so unpleasant the cold just loses interest and walks out. After producing and removing from my system around three litres of effluent, I wondered whether or not my body’s reaction i.e. producing this junk, was the most appropriate way of dealing with the cold or whether it could just get on with it quietly in the background without making too much of a fuss – the British way.
Instead of doing that, my body put me through a grand opera of discomfort and awkward, mistimed fluid production. Leaking from every facial orifice I put myself in self-imposed exile Quasimodo-style until the bastard thing had been killed off and shat right out of my system, which it now has.
It was naive of the common cold to think that it could set itself up in my body and live there happily ever after, but…what if my immune system hadn’t been up to the job? Perhaps it would have taken control of me like the Invasion of the Bodysnatchers and used me to spread more cold until the virus had everyone on earth under its control. I doubt it. The most it managed was hurting my feelings when someone said it was only ”man-flu”.
Maybe all it wanted was few days in me so it could spread to someone else again and repeat the process again and again, maybe that’s the tawdry life-cycle of the cold virus. The sorry existence of the most rubbish illness there is.