You know what bugs me? Apart from men who wear novelty ties and socks, people who have tidy houses, people who smugly inform me that they’ve finished their Christmas shopping in October and people who buy Christmas cards and wrapping paper in the Boxing Day sales for next Christmas. Oh and people who speak ‘Sconglish’, e.g. Lulu. Make yer mind up, doll.
Apart from that short list, what really bugs me is pseudoscience. In particular, astrology. I hate when people confuse astronomy with astrology. If I tell people I’m a bit of an amateur astronomer there’s always a numb nut who says “Oooh, can you do mine? I’m on the cusp of Pyrex and Matalan”.
This misconception has one of two consequences. Either I force out a smile which never reaches my eyes and politely correct them while going “nnnngnnnggnngggnngg” under my breath thereby grinding my teeth to bloody stumps, or I gaze enigmatically into the middle distance, take a deep breath and say “Ah yes, you’re going to experience a dull pain in the middle of your stupid forehead right about NOW” and poke them between the eyes with a stabby finger.
Don’t get me wrong; there are some pretty mind boggling aspects of astronomy that require quite a bit of pencil chewing to get your head around. I have many, many books on the subject, which I have proudly purchased, slavering, from amazon.com, only for them to end up forlorn and unread, beside my bed, because either a) they’re too floppy to read in bed (I HATE that) or I read a paragraph and automatically my brain starts going “FLUFFY BUNNIES FLUFFY BUNNIES FLUFFY BUNNIES” and I have to start all over again.
So I will concede that astronomy, the study of the stars and that, is at times incomprehensible unless you’re very, very brainy and have a beard. Neither of which applies to me. Well…maybe one, and it’s not the brainy one.
Yes OK it’s a difficult subject, but it’s not easy to confuse astronomy with astrology because basically, to misquote Henry Ford - “astrology is bunk”.
There, I’ve said it. Astrology, psychic phenomena, ghosts. Add them in too. A Victorian parlour game. Bunk. All these things make me do my patented cat’s arse face.
Take Derek Acorah. Please. Take him. The erstwhile resident "psychic" on the hilarious Most Haunted with Yvette Fielding. Derek has all the authenticity and believability of a thing that’s not actually authentic or believable in any way at all. If you’re familiar with his infamous Mary loves Dick episode, you’ll know what I mean. Go on, YouTube it. Derek came to my home town, and a pal and I paid good money to see Derek adlib and bluff his way through a hilarious “Can anyone take the name John?” routine. We left at half time. It wasn’t even entertaining. It was just embarrassing.
I’m a sceptic. I don’t believe in fairies or angels. I don’t believe in things that go bump in the night, or "paranormal activity". The famous sceptic and pseudoscience debunker James Randi - aka the Amazing Randi (he started his professional career as a magician) founded the James Randi Education Foundation (JREF) in 1996, which includes a million dollar pledge to anyone who can demonstrate irrefutable evidence of any paranormal, supernatural or occult power or event, under test conditions agreed to by both parties. Despite many potential claimants, the million dollars remain, to this day, unclaimed.
There is no such thing as paranormal activity or magic or mind reading, in my humble opinion. Surely Occam’s razor applies - that the simplest solution is usually the right one. I’m too scientific for such nonsense. Hell, I even had a chemistry set when I was wee.
Don’t argue with me by the way, we Cancerians hate that. We’re ruled by the Moon, and it makes us moody and sensitive. Yeah, right.
LIndsey Mason is a finalist in stv.tv's The Write Factor competition. The views expressed are not necessarily those of STV plc. If you would like to read more from this writer, use our comment system below.
