5: Improper use of the word "random"

I was always taught at university that it was bad form to begin an essay with a dictionary definition. Well, I think that's what they said. I never really listened that much, to be honest. But I'm all about smashing conventions man, you know, like the punk rock auteurs of our past. SMASH IT! SMASH IT ALL DOWN! HANG THIS MOTHERFUCKING BLOG IN THE TATE MODERN!

Yeah.

Random is defined (I could have made this more wanky by quoting what dictionary I took this from and listing it in the bibliography. Have you ever seen someone do that? I have. Yeah, it was me. "Ooh, what wider reading did he do? A fucking dictionary?") as "made or occurring without a definite aim, reason or pattern".

I once went on a date with a girl who described herself as "well random". I must stress that she described herself in that way AFTER the date had begun, otherwise I would not have attended at all - no matter how desperate or lonely I may have been. And I won't lie, I have been both of those things in the past. Especially as a teenager, where I would have probably been willing to sleep with a bristle-faced dinner lady in a caravan in Mablethorpe.

It's worrying enough that she prefaced using the word that stokes my ire so much with the word "well". So, let us overlook the fact that she chose the wrong word to describe herself. Even if she did think she was truly "random", it's not a word that needs quantifying. Random is random is random. You cannot be any more or less random.

And don't get me started on the lottery. It is not randomly generated. If it was then the same number could come out twice in a draw, so it's not random in the slightest. Well, it is almost random. But it's not slightly random - it strives to be random and just falls short.

So yeah, she rocks up for our date in a Vauxhall Corsa (one of the most popular cars in the land), she's a quite pretty 26 year old (quite an average age), she's dressed in clothes bought from All Saints (a major high street brand these days) and her shoes are from Office (ditto. I asked). She worked in an office (not exactly the most bizarre career path) and liked to drink Magners - one of the most beloved of all the boozes.

What I'm saying here is that she wasn't exactly different, controversial, bizarre or however you would choose to describe someone a bit odd. She was normal. Perfectly nice, but normal. No-one ever describes themselves as normal. Ever. Even though most of us are perfectly normal - and there is no shame in that. None at all. If anything, I would enjoy the honesty. We're a normal country full of pleasant normal folk. Is that such a crime?

The date didn't go well, of course. Because I have an inbuilt be-a-dickhead-if-you-think-you-have-a-point device buzzing away in my brain. She casually said that she was "well random" and my tone changed, my smile dropped and I immediately quizzed her on this. A more pleasant human being would just let these slide, but as you can tell from my daily rants I care not for the opinion of others and am spurred on by the dead ghost of a 1970s trade union gobshite that has possessed my soul. I can't leave things be, ever scratching at the surface of arguments that don't need to happen until something or someone is bleeding. Metaphorically.

I quizzed her:

ME: Why are you "well random"?
HER: Well, you know. Me and all my mates, we're all random.
ME: So, you didn't choose your friends? If you go out for a drink then you don't know who is going to show up and it could be anyone from the billions of people walking the face of the Earth?
HER: (Laughing nervously) Er, no. We're just all, you know...
ME: So, you have the same friends each time...
HER: Yes...
ME: But they're completely random people in terms of their character?
HER: Er...
ME: So if I was to check one of their passports, for example, they would always have the same name but they could turn up for a night out in one of a million different forms? So your friend Sarah, for example, could turn up one time as a twentysomething...
HER: I've got a friend called Sarah!
ME: ... and the next time she could be a bright pink Llama? And the next a bowl of Mulligatawny Soup?
HER: That's not really what I meant... we're just, you know...
ME: (Shouting) What? Different? Zany? Wacky? Is that it? Hmm? You're not random. Stop using the word. You are not a 21 year old student. STOP IT! STOP IT! (I'm weeping by now) STOP IT!

She went then.

Simple rule of thumb. If someone described themselves as "random", there is a fair chance that they are as regular and normal as a person can be. And this isn't a sin. Bad English should be, but that isn't either. More's the pity. The same applies for zany, wacky, outgoing, different, alternative - we're who we are, don't try and sum yourself up in one word. Let us try to not live in text messages where we can't use more than 160 characters to describe ourselves.

I, Jim Smallman, am not random. I'm a short tempered, badly-coiffeured stand up comedian without the slightest hint of wackiness opr zaniness. There is literally nothing to set me apart from anyone else in the world, because we're all essentially the same mix of blood, guts, water and fudge. I cheerfully admit my enslavement to the world of normality, the dirty words "normal" and "regular".

See, no-one admits that, ever.

I'm well random.