Random Mini-Rant: New Year's Resolutions

"New Year, New Me!"
Fuck off.
You're still gonna be the same pretentious prick you always have been, except for the fact that you'll weigh slightly less for the first week of January. In fact, you won't, because in that single week where you stick to your "New Year, New Me" diet, all you'll be doing is burning off some of the calories you gained while gorging yourself stupid at Christmas.
Another common New Year's resolution is to "Drink Less Alcohol". And that is what January's Dryathalon is for. And only January. February the first, or should I say "thirst", you go for a drink to celebrate that you accomplished Dryathalon and get royally pissed, shattering your resolution.
Why do we make resolutions we can't stick to? Maybe we should just choose "My New Year's Resolution is to not live in 2014 anymore", at least that's achievable until H.G.Wells brings his time machine into our lives, piloting it through time and space, trying to escape that dystopian future with the weird crab things.
Maybe instead of making Resolutions, we should make some other strange and unnecessary tradition, but perhaps one that we can accomplish. Perhaps, instead of the Resolution,  which will always lead to depression and failure, we should do something more attainable such as an en mass sex-change every year.
While I'm not quite at home with losing my penis every other year, I would be pleased with the fact that I wouldn't have to change my abbreviated name, Chris. But, this gender swapping would also be somewhat more beneficial than the Resolutions, as you would have to stick with it, and it would certainly open you to new possibilities.
Then you could certainly say "New Year, New Me" without people thinking you're a cunt. 
(Topic suggested by Courtney Anne)

Random Mini-Rant: Shopping Trolleys

I have an issue with Shopping Trolleys.
 "An" issue.

Yes, this really is just a singular thing, but it is essential to the working of the trolley. No, it is not the fact that I am forced to delve into what Tesco presumes is a bottomless pit of one- pound coins just to use one of the damn things, meaning that that packet of crisps remains beyond reach for another week. And no, this is not about the three different sizes of trolley I am forced to choose from, each seeming to be simultaneously more useful and less useful than the last.
No, this is a much bigger issue, and it all relates to walking.
I like to walk about. Walking, you build up speed until you reach a maximum velocity...and you slow again, until you reach a nice steady pace.
Not with a shopping trolley, oh no.
I'm walking with one of these things -- pushing it, not just striding alongside it, asking it about its holiday to Waitrose like some bizarre hairdresser -- and I feel my legs getting faster without me realising it. It is then I realise; the trolley has taken over. It drags me through the aisles, I push with one hand, and shove the products in with the other, shoveling food into the trolley as if it was a metallic Eric Pickles. I'm getting faster all the time, and I feel fine; none of the panting, sweating or tiredness of the standard fast walk.
And this is where it all goes wrong.
You don't slow down again.
Oh, you can stop, but why would you ever need to stop in any supermarket? You know what you're there for, you buy the same things week-after-week, that's how it works. SO you speed up, and speed up. Aisles are a blur, your shoes are smoking, feet burning, but no fatigue. The trolley takes care of that. You lean into the trolley and time slows down around you, like you're in a Michael Bay film. But you don't turn to look, just in case you are, and you run and run and run and run. Boom. Sound barrier broken. People are thrown back, products shattering and breaking.
Whoosh.
You blink and the supermarket is there no longer. Instead, you seem to be in ancient Greece, surrounded by the class of Plato; you broke light speed and travelled back in time. For some reason, you gain the ancient Greek language and explain to them their situation. Oh, you think this could be good? Oh no. They are millenia away from the shopping trolley! But not anymore, I've given them the trolley now. "Tesco" becomes like a new messiah, and the first store is opened over 2000 years earlier.
This may seem like a good idea, but it really isn't. Think about it. Time travel. They've got all the tech I'd have on me. Granted, they're probably only a decade or so from making my shit phone anyway, but now they have the tools to make it earlier! They have an early industrial revolution, two thousand years earlier! But this doesn't matter, because with this technology, weapons follow. Spartans with AK-47s attack the shores of Athens, who defend with organised drone strikes on Sparta, reducing it to rubble.
And finally, as the world descends into a militarised chaos-pit, 1066 rolls around. The Battle of Hastings, the war of kings. Fought with swords, sheilds, arrows and nuclear warheads.
With Shopping Trolleys remaining how they are, the world will be obliterated by William of Normandy in the year 1066. While some could argue that as a positive -- probably depressed emo kids with delusions of how they'd be better at dying than they are at living --, I don't think it would be, because I would never have been born to start all of this palava, leading to a paradox that creates a rift in space-time which swallows up everything that ever was, and ever will be.
And that is my issue with shopping trolleys.

Random Mini-Rant: Pret a Manger

Ah, Pret. Very nice place “manger”.

First thing's first, is the pretentiousness of the whole thing. It sells a collection of overpriced food to the middle-classes, using the classy “French” title to lure the poor suckers in. Although, we're led to assume that the title translates as “ready to eat”, which is something else I'd like to question about this restaurant; why, if I'm ready to eat, do you think I would want to spend 15 minutes of my life reading a description of a fucking sandwich?! And, dismissing that, shouldn't the name have a question mark? “Are you Pret a Manger?” No. It's just Pret a Manger. It is telling me I'm ready to eat. If I wanted to be told I was “Pret a Manger”, I'd go to France and starve. In England, I want to be told “Ready to Eat”. Does Pret a Manger have stores in France called “Ready to Eat”? No! Because apparently, knowing French means you're cultured. Why, if I want a sammich, do I have to be cultured?

And, staying on the name, “Pret” does not just mean ready. It can mean “loan” or “price” when interpreted as a noun according to Google Translate. Whether this is correct or not doesn't bother me, it backs up my point and it relevant with their prices; you'll need a payday loan just for a Sandwich, don't even get me started on the soup or wraps. It's like Wonga was saying “Hey, we're sick of just having lower classes in here.” And Pret replying “Our sammiches can help you there..."

And I could forgive this, I really could, if it was good food. But it's not. Or if it was in some way French. It might be, I suppose, I don't know French food. There's no frog, I mean. But the combinations are just bizarre. And yes, I'm focusing on the sandwiches. Some, I admit, are great. All-Day Breakfast, Beech Smoked BLT, oh yes. Egg and Tomato on Rye? Noooo. Not for me. I mean, how do you get those tastes to blend? Do you have to eat each ingredient at a time like a three-course meal? They sell Wild Crayfish in their sandwiches! Let me tell you, Pret, when I want to manger some crayfish, I don't want it wild. Dead, or at least dazed, would be preferred. But wild?! My god, I get what they mean, but use a better word, one that doesn't have connotations of needless violence!

I'd rather not have to get a wonga pret just to manger an attacking sandwich in a pretentious restaurant.