Rare! Vintage! A load of rotten tat!

As an eBay user I encounter poorly listed items, things which have been put up for sale even though the seller doesn't know precisely what they are. This is fine of course, one should not be required to have an encyclopaedic knowledge of boot-sale junk in order to flog it, but there are those who decide that they will try and bluff.

I am a toy collector with, sadly enough, a grasp of trivia sufficient to tell at a glance what most things are worth, so I cannot help but get irritated when I see the words "rare" or "vintage" on an item which is:

A: Broken
B: less than five years old or
C: Both.

If you're going to have the dishonesty to pretend knowledge of something, at least have the foresight to do some sodding research first. An under-exposed, out of focus, wonky picture of a mangled action figure lying amidst the wreckage of your kid's playroom floor is not going to convince anyone of your standing as a scholar of '80s retro toys' any more than me shouting the word "Hot!" will convince anyone that I am in fact the sun.

Pretentious crisp (potato chip) flavours

Once upon a time the humble packet of crisps was content to be the 'average Joe' of the snack world. Even with the introduction of new flavours, shapes and textures, the red, green and blue trinity of ready salted, cheese and onion and salt and vinegar remained intact as the foundation of a fine (if greasily unhealthy) potato-based institution.

I'm yet to figure out how exactly I am supposed to know or care in the least whether the salt is indeed Anglesey sea salt, will it present ID and speak Welsh when I open the bag? I find it incomprehensibly inane that the fact that the pepper is specifically cracked black pepper is a feature; were they intending originally just to lob in a handfull of whole peppercorns before they decided to go that extra mile? Why would anyone give two shits which county the cheesy flavouring powder apparently hails from?

I love food and I am perfectly aware of the distinction between, say, malt vinegar and balsamic, but the fact that somebody, somewhere decided that it was necessary to shore up my ego with descriptive words so I can justify my eating of a bag of fucking crisps is faintly creepy. I half expect a small note in the bottom of the bag saying "There, there. Don't feel guilty" and a voucher for a free pat on the head.

While I have a soft spot for Kettle Chips, when presented with the choice to pay a bit extra for the increased word-count on the bag or buy five packs of Frazzles I'll probably be the one stuffing my face with those bacon flavoured miniature lilos.

Failed attempts at making a product name into a verb

Google has long since made the transition from something one uses to something one does and is one of the more recent examples of the advertising 'holy grail' of product name transcendence. The road is indeed long and the way is treacherous; many a product name lies shamefully mangled in the gutter with the parent company's dream of being the next 'Hoover' trampled underfoot by the likes of 'Skype'.

These are the ones that irritate me; not the successful ones, but the losers. When an advert tries to tell me I should "Argos it" the department of my cranial bureaucracy that concerns itself with such matters has to question exactly how much of a prat (to two decimal places) would I feel saying that I was going to Argos a new lawnmower, it sounds like an obscure Greek sexual fetish.

Another similarly miserable dud would be the assertion that one should "Walk Clarks" meaning "Walk (while wearing) Clarks (brand shoes)" which is such a desperately misguided attempt to hit the popularity target that it probably landed in a civilian area and caused widespread and horrific collateral damage.

Lack of useful context

Take a look at the following statement:

"I prefer the WG0C MS from GW:EW to any of the UC MS designs, in terms of Gunpla, I favour the PG and MG classes"

Unless you already know what I am talking about then that comment will just be a useless string of jargon, but in the minds of some it is perfectly acceptable to talk like this all the time. This isn't just about jargon, but anything which needs some sort of explanation in order to understand it, rather than a blind assumption that someone knows (and indeed cares) what you're on about.

The use of "Have you heard/read/ingested/been exposed to..." is a simple tool to defend against phrases such as "What the bald arse of Lord Admiral Nelson are you talking about?"

Nonsensical phraseology

Have you ever swallowed a lie hook, line and zinger? Do you consider this to be a doggy-dog world? Am I correct in my assumptions for all intensive purposes? Then you are an utter idiot and should be forced to obtain a language permit after passing scrupulous tests and an excruciatingly painful examination by a large man named Sven.

Nobody is perfect and I admit that my grasp on the English language does lapse on occasion, but I cannot and will not abide the use of well-worn phrases when they are incorrectly stated. Whenever I encounter an instance of "and walla!" or "Nip it in the butt" it makes me wonder whether the person who typed them understand what it is that they are trying to articulate. It also makes me wonder where to bury the bodies.

Push chairs (strollers)

I am walking through town minding my own business and then in front of me is an armada, a fleet of flimsy plastic and it's closing fast. In order to save my shins and to avoid the wrath of the psychotic drivers of these terrifying child-based battering rams I have to step aside and do so as politely as I can, to the utter indifference of Panzer Kommandant Parent.

I hate bloody push-chairs, but not as much as I despise their application. Whether it's idly blocking entire aisles or doorways, being nosed into traffic to get cars to stop for them, or as a people-plough they are always in the way! I'm not even sure why anyone would want their kid to be at exhaust fume and steel-toecap height anyway, perhaps they're sick of looking at them?

The worst thing is the newer breed of these contraptions which are designed with mountain bike wheels and exciting, utterly useless curves and even fucking disc brakes presumably in case you need to take a rapid off-road detour to get to the yoghurt section and not lose control on a patch of gravel while your navigator yells directions in your ear; "easy right, left, left! LEFT!"

I see one couple around town who always have their kid in a sling around their neck and shoulder. I've not once heard that child be upset or unhappy, he seems perfectly chilled out and if given the choice between a hammock and a shopping trolley to sit in, I think it's an easy decision.

Movie 'Reboots'

So you need to make a movie, but you're fresh out of ideas, what do you do? One thing would be to head-hunt new and interesting writers, or to keep your eye open for the next visionary director, but those things don't pay the bills, what you really want is more of the same; reliable income, a known quantity.

Then it hits you. Spiderman was made in 2002, that's like a million years by today's attention spans, right? Fuck it, it made good money, let's just make the fucker again! Doesn't matter how good the casting or director was, it's all old news now, we can just do the damned thing again and people will roll up just like last time. We'll call it a 'reboot' because that sounds computery and high-tech, right?

Hollywood must be pretty damned bankrupt in the ideas department right now to be so blatant. Sure, it's not like blockbuster movies carry a stamp of originality and yes, there are some exceptions such as Inception, but the warning signs have been there for a while. Remakes and sequels, adaptations of foreign films on the assumption that the audience won't like something if they have to do some reading, too. 

The Reboot is not just lazy, it's insulting and those responsible should have their lives 'rebooted' with an incontinent mule replacing them in the lead role.

The "Man" prefix.

In today's fast-paced society, your average male has to face many and varied decisions; does he go to his favourite place to buy a manwich? Perhaps he'll get a mankini wax for a day on the beach? Maybe it's all just a big load of utter manshit.

Are we really so insecure that anything that could be considered even slightly less than cigar-chomping, hard-drinking, gung-ho masculine has to be rubber stamped with the word "Man" to ensure that we're not all sissy lady-boys or worse, maybe (Shock!) gay? Manbag, Mankini, Mangina? These portmanteaus have got to die! They are as ludicrous and etymologically unsound as the oft misapplied "Fem" prefix that came before and are only superseded by the "Bro" prefix following in the wake.

Of course the defence is that "Oh, it's just a bit of fun!" but I disagree. It's buzzwordy hipster crap, a security blanket for idiots who want to define themselves by the narrowest terms possible and as far as I am concerned they can be crammed down, or maybe up the nearest manhole.