Bullies, Bitches and Bastards
A hilarious guide to dissing the dicks in your life.After years of meeting and putting up with crap people, a serious illness left Eileen Condon with plenty of time to ask herself why she ever put up with them. Her recovery was aided by countless hours spent in pubs with friend Amanda Edwards where they purged their bile about all the bullies, bitches and bastards that they have encountered.Bullies Bitches and Bastards is the result of their cathartic trawl through a rogues' gallery of crap boyfriends, girlfriends, bosses, family members, neighbours and work colleagues – people whose characteristics read like a thesaurus of cunning: sly, Machiavellian, gerrymandering, duplicitous, crafty, vulpine bastards.There's The Enormous Baby Boyfriend. He thinks you're his mummy. You have to cater to his every whim and pay him round-the-clock attention. Or he'll cry, throw a tantrum and vomit – all over you! Ta-da!Or, how about Beelzeboss? Marvel at the amount of energy they put into bitching and backstabbing. If they worked as hard at their actual job, they'd be Bill Gates. Particularly deft at wheedling out your Achilles heel and using it against you at every opportunity.Have you met Miss-Fortune Teller? She delights in your disasters. Don't be fooled by the sympathetic ear on the end of the phone, she's biting her knuckles with glee, barely able to contain her excitement at the good news that you're having such a bad time.Divided into a number of sections including partners, friends, bosses and colleagues this book will appeal to early mid-life, disaffected, disillusioned, burnt-out 30/40-somethings who have met these grotesques at some point in their lives. They, like the authors, want to see them pinned, slit open and dissected like a frog in a school lab.
Читать Bullies, Bitches and Bastards онлайн беплатно
Bullies, Bitches and Bastards
(Not so much a book, more a moral crusade)
by
Eileen Condon
and
Amanda Edwards
Illustrations by Joy Gosney
This book is dedicated to all our family and friends—the perfect antidote to the BBBs out there. (You’re not in it. OK!)
All the characters in Bullies, Bitches and Bastards are entirely fictitious. Sadly, their behaviour isn’t. Furthermore, the authors accept no liability for persons recognising in themselves any of the bullying traits described herein. Quite frankly, if you do—shame on you.
Table of Contents
Chapter One Husbands/Boyfriends
Chapter Three Bosses/Colleagues
‘I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: “O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.” And God granted it.’ (Voltaire)
That’s it. That’s enough. They’ve gone too far. By all that’s right and holy, they should be shuffling round a prison yard, shackled by the ankles to a Russian cannibal. But they’re not. They’re everywhere—people whose characteristics read like a thesaurus of cunning: sly, Machiavellian, gerrymandering, duplicitous, crafty, vulpine.
Bullies. Bitches. Bastards.
Unfortunately, you can’t get away from them. They’re in your home, in your workplace, and—God help you—even in your bed. And they didn’t come with a whiff of sulphur and a tail, did they? Bastards!
You’re trapped, doomed, finished—damned to hell in a Hyundai. Hold on: brakes, reverse. There is a solution: pin them down, slit them open and dissect them like frogs in a school lab. Not in a vivisectionist way, obviously, but metaphorically speaking.
So here they are, fully exposed: the Snake Charmer, the Utter Nutter, Beelzeboss, the Wicked Whittler, Foul Weather Friend, Lord of the Manor. And that’s only a handful of the…BBBs.
Beggar me backwards! They’re ridiculous.
The Git-ometer
The following icons will help you rapidly identify your bullies, your bitches and your bastards. (Oh dear—some have even scored a hat-trick.)
Never grows up. Even if you have babies of your own, he’ll be a bigger baby than any of them. At least your proper children will give you intermittent periods of joy and wonder. He won’t. He’ll whinge, whine, make demands, have moods, inflict sullen silences and throw tantrums. Ultimately, he’ll chuck his toys out of the pram and vomit all over you if you don’t give him your Full Attention.
His priorities in life? Music, electrical-techno things, money, mates/booze/footie/rugger, socialising (the pub), holidays (snowboarding), DVDs (Tarantino), games (monster-girl-gun-shoot). Oh, and the kids. Anything else? Ermmmmm. Oh yeah! You.
Mooching about in his skateboard gear, he drinks latté in a takeaway cup—with a straw. He will text, text, text, text, text. He’ll plug into iMacs, iPods, PSPs, hi-fis and Wi-Fis in the company of friends and family. He will glaze over if the conversation doesn’t revolve around him.
When he’s not hooked up to a gadget, he will take to his bed for afternoon naps because you and the children ‘exhaust’ him, and he needs to preserve his energy for…more takeaway coffee and downloading iTunes. He is 42.
That’s the age at which people used to die years ago, having led a full, adult life, with all the trimmings: fighting for their country, starting a family at 20, not getting into debt for shiny things and trinkets, being mature enough to realise that once they had children of their own, they had to put away childish things.
Not this one. Even in his early middle age, he still requires a babysitter himself.
If, say, you decided to leave your infants in the care of a 15-year-old youth with a penchant for sinister video games and self-harming, fair enough: you wouldn’t be surprised to find him splayed out on the sofa while the fruits of your womb are running amok, sticking their fingers into every available socket. This, however, is not what you expect when you ask your other half to mind the kids while you take a quick phone call in the bedroom.
Essentially, when you require him to be at his most grown-up, he will let you down worse than any five-year-old denied access to a Wacky Warehouse Christmas free-for-all.
A halogen-downlit office. You, trying to unpack the cargo of verbal nonsense a 19-year-old estate agent is offloading. EBB next to you, head down.
You:…so, essentially, what you’re saying is that the vendors’ purchase has fallen through?…oh, they’ve found another house?…but that’s in probate, isn’t it?…and doesn’t that mean it won’t go through for months, if not years?…but we’ve sold ours and we’re renting on a six-month lease—can we get our solicitor to put pressure on the vendors to go into rented accommodation?…but then, surely, if we do that, we can at least go ahead with our purchase and not be out of pocket?…oh, I don’t know, I’m not sure I know just what you’re advising us to do at this point…
