The Indifferent

credit: Trevor Dennis

EDINBURGH. When faced with a bewildering wine list and an incomprehensible sommelier, ordering the second cheapest bottle of wine on the menu is a “pretty reliable” way to choose a bottle of wine, a local man revealed today.

David Walsh, 26, made the statement while he and a group of old friends were struggling to decipher an inexplicably confusing wine list at a restaurant in the city last Sunday. “The second cheapest is usually the way to go”, Walsh explained. “It’s pretty reliable, and will usually get you something solid, albeit not spectacular. I mean, it just stands to reason: etiquette says you can’t order the absolute cheapest wine in a restaurant, but since you don’t understand anything about wine you don’t want to order anything too expensive. So just go for the second cheapest.”
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credit: splorp

LINCOLN. A local man today insisted to friends that popular music is in terminal decline, adding that most current popular music could be described as “just noise, really”. Craig Shearer, 47, from Horncastle, near Lincoln, made the somewhat predictable declaration over drinks with work colleagues in a local pub.

“Back in our day we had proper songwriting and people played real instruments”, Mr Shearer explained. “Nowadays computers are writing songs”.

When it was put to him by a junior colleague that basically every generation since the beginning of time has claimed the same thing, Shearer was unrepentant. “Our music was great”, Shearer responded. “Our parents just didn’t understand it.”. Shearer also refuted the allegation that had basically become a bit like his parents, and wasn’t in touch with young people today. “I really am in touch with the kids”, he explained. “I watch X-Factor and everything.”

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photo credit: La Tête Krançien

WESTMINSTER. Government budgets are too big to understand; the best fiscal policy is pure luck; large budgets are more easily understood when converted into an equivalent number of expensive bottles of champagne. Those were among the surprises revealed today by the Chancellor, who, in a rare unguarded – and possibly inebriated – press conference at the Treasury, revealed perhaps more than he intended about the genesis of the government’s fiscal policy.

“I mean, let’s be honest, pretty much nobody understand numbers once they get above a billion”, the Chancellor said, responding to a journalist who had asked if the Chancellor fully understood the scale of the cuts being proposed in the forthcoming budget.. “If somebody says to me, what’s the difference between £200 and £300, I’d say, easy – a nice lunch in Mayfair with a glass of champagne. But if someone says what’s the different between £20 billion and £30 billion, I think it’s fair to say that no one really knows. Read the rest of this entry »

photo credit: legalnonresident

BIRMINGHAM. People making commitments to change their behaviour in the New Year should aim for trivially easy targets to increase their chance of success, a local taxi driver told relations today.

Peter Oldham, 48, was helping himself to an additional portion of parsnips during his families traditional New Year’s Day roast when he offered the unsolicited advice to a gathering of seven or eight relatives.

“These people want to bring about serious change in their lives, for example losing lots of weight, smoking less or giving up some kind of vice”, Mr Oldham explained. “Those kind of resolutions actually require a bit of effort and that’s why people fail. They should aim for things they might actually be able to pull off, like giving up some food they don’t like.” Read the rest of this entry »