...to clean up their act and start producing the honey. As we all know, because bees are good, industrious creatures they are able to produce honey. Because wasps are idle and on job seeker's allowance and have bad attitudes, they only produce marmite - which is a divisive product at best. The criminality of the wasp is best understood by its a ability to sting at will. A bee will use its sting as a last resort in defense of its hive, spelling the end of its life, whereas a wasp will sting someone because there's nothing good on television or the team they support lost at whatever it is wasps play. Rugby Union presumably.
If they can be reformed and if they can be convinced to wear tiny pollen-grabbing velcro trousers, then perhaps this once summer pest could become our saviour. And should they refuse, then they will be rounded up and trapped under pint glasses on tables outside pubs.
Thursday, 17 December 2009
Saturday, 5 December 2009
Retrograding...
I was in a pub the other day and in the corner there was a guy playing records. He wasn't mixing, or scratching, or sampling or anything. No, the bar was paying him to chose songs and play them before lining up another song to play. Weird. Wasn't there a labour saving device invented 60 odd years ago to do that for you? Better still, this 'juke box' would actually make the pub money. There was no advantages to this guy. You couldn't even make a selection on him. You couldn't put coins into his mouth or hit him on the side of the head when he made the wrong choice.
Isn't there a point when reverting to previous systems for the sake of style become pointless? Strangely, next to the man playing records, there was a cigarette machine. Not a guy standing there selling over-priced cigarettes. Inconsistent!
I guess if they wanted to add a gambling element, they could have a guy behind a green table holding fruit. "Lemon...lemon...grapes...ahhhh, too bad."
Isn't there a point when reverting to previous systems for the sake of style become pointless? Strangely, next to the man playing records, there was a cigarette machine. Not a guy standing there selling over-priced cigarettes. Inconsistent!
I guess if they wanted to add a gambling element, they could have a guy behind a green table holding fruit. "Lemon...lemon...grapes...ahhhh, too bad."
Monday, 21 September 2009
Free Range Twats
We seem to spend most of our time trying to make ourselves feel better about decapitating our bouncy, fluffy animal friends and devouring their flesh. On most food packaging, you will now find words to ease your conscience: 'Free range', 'organic', 'woodland reared'. 'This chicken had plenty of space to scratch around in and cluck. It also enjoyed windsurfing and scale model railways'.
This isn't really enough for me. Eating meat makes me feel guilty, but I know the one thing that would stop me from feeling guilty. That's if I knew that the animal I was about to eat, in its lifetime, was really, really annoying. Example:
'This chicken lived on a farm and was a right dickhead.'
That would work for me. I would even do the killing. Line up some sheep and I'll make my choice.
SHEEP 1: BAA
ME: NO
SHEEP 2: BAA
ME: NOPE
SHEEP 3: BEEEEIGE
ME: THAT ONE.
FX: Gunshot.
If an animal is loud, or has no self-awareness, or too obviously public school educated, or wears designer sunglasses on their head even though it's not sunny, or plays their music out loud on the bus, or shops at Jack Wills, or thinks those 'Compare the Meerkat' adverts are funny...fuck it. Bring me people like that and I'll go cannibal. I'll eat the lot of them. I'll play tennis with their heads. I'll make Idi Amin look like Ben Fogel in a jumper petting a duckling and getting all moist around the eyes because a badger stubbed its toe.
If Idi Amin had ever been put on trial for human rights violations, he could have stuck a 'd' in his name. Idi Admin. Then he could have said "I'm just temping here".
That's the second time I've threatened to become a genocidal dictator tonight. The first instalment came when I was talking to my flatmate about the Liberal Democrat policy of putting a tax on homes worth more than a million.
HIM:
They can't do that. It's crazy.
ME:
Why not? Rich bastards. They can afford it.
HIM:
Yeah, but there are a lot of people who live in expensive houses who aren't rich.
ME:
Then they should sell up and get out of the area. The rich must be ghettoised.
HIM:
But you can't discriminate against people who are well off.
ME:
Yes you can. Put them on trains. Send them to camps. We can seize their assets and dole out the loot amongst us...hey, I've become a Nazi. (Stands and salutes) Zeik heil.
NOTE: My flatmate is black. Ordinarily, I wouldn't salute most people in a Nazi style, particularly not those of an ethnic minority. Fortunately he's Ethiopian, and they have no specific beef with the Fuhrer. In fact, according to Prof. Dr. Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis, Ethiopia has a racist education system. I don't know if this is true or not, but I'm not sure if I trust someone whose surname sounds like 'megalomaniac' and who uses two academic titles. It's ridiculous. You don't get it anywhere else do you? In the army you don't get Lieutenant-General or Sergeant-Major do you? Of course not! The British Army wouldn't have been able to defeat the Nazi war machine single-handedly otherwise. No one would know whose in charge. There'd be too much arguing.
"I'm a sergeant major. That's highest."
"But I'm a lieutenant general."
"Yeah, but a major is higher than a sergeant."
"Yeah, but I'm a type of general."
"You're a type of nob."
This isn't really enough for me. Eating meat makes me feel guilty, but I know the one thing that would stop me from feeling guilty. That's if I knew that the animal I was about to eat, in its lifetime, was really, really annoying. Example:
'This chicken lived on a farm and was a right dickhead.'
That would work for me. I would even do the killing. Line up some sheep and I'll make my choice.
SHEEP 1: BAA
ME: NO
SHEEP 2: BAA
ME: NOPE
SHEEP 3: BEEEEIGE
ME: THAT ONE.
FX: Gunshot.
If an animal is loud, or has no self-awareness, or too obviously public school educated, or wears designer sunglasses on their head even though it's not sunny, or plays their music out loud on the bus, or shops at Jack Wills, or thinks those 'Compare the Meerkat' adverts are funny...fuck it. Bring me people like that and I'll go cannibal. I'll eat the lot of them. I'll play tennis with their heads. I'll make Idi Amin look like Ben Fogel in a jumper petting a duckling and getting all moist around the eyes because a badger stubbed its toe.
If Idi Amin had ever been put on trial for human rights violations, he could have stuck a 'd' in his name. Idi Admin. Then he could have said "I'm just temping here".
That's the second time I've threatened to become a genocidal dictator tonight. The first instalment came when I was talking to my flatmate about the Liberal Democrat policy of putting a tax on homes worth more than a million.
HIM:
They can't do that. It's crazy.
ME:
Why not? Rich bastards. They can afford it.
HIM:
Yeah, but there are a lot of people who live in expensive houses who aren't rich.
ME:
Then they should sell up and get out of the area. The rich must be ghettoised.
HIM:
But you can't discriminate against people who are well off.
ME:
Yes you can. Put them on trains. Send them to camps. We can seize their assets and dole out the loot amongst us...hey, I've become a Nazi. (Stands and salutes) Zeik heil.
NOTE: My flatmate is black. Ordinarily, I wouldn't salute most people in a Nazi style, particularly not those of an ethnic minority. Fortunately he's Ethiopian, and they have no specific beef with the Fuhrer. In fact, according to Prof. Dr. Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis, Ethiopia has a racist education system. I don't know if this is true or not, but I'm not sure if I trust someone whose surname sounds like 'megalomaniac' and who uses two academic titles. It's ridiculous. You don't get it anywhere else do you? In the army you don't get Lieutenant-General or Sergeant-Major do you? Of course not! The British Army wouldn't have been able to defeat the Nazi war machine single-handedly otherwise. No one would know whose in charge. There'd be too much arguing.
"I'm a sergeant major. That's highest."
"But I'm a lieutenant general."
"Yeah, but a major is higher than a sergeant."
"Yeah, but I'm a type of general."
"You're a type of nob."
Monday, 13 July 2009
Where were you while we were getting high? The row behind you, trying to ignore it.
I went to see Oasis at Wembley Stadium on Saturday. It was all a bit last minute and nicely discounted, but was a fantastic spectacle. If you pointed the speaker stacks in the stadium up at the sky and played the instrumental bit from 'Live and Let Die', the sonic blasts could probably take down a Boeing 747. Al Qaeda Wings fans take note. The visual displays are so flabbergastingly awesome that they were able to make Noel Gallagher's haircut look not shit. You also have to pay £4.00 for a pint of flat Carlsberg. It's a remarkable place.
The only problem with Oasis, other than the unashamed volume of plagiarism and monkey genetics (the boys are so simian that I thought we'd ended up at a Gorillaz concert - oh, the irony) is, when massed together, their fans could well be confused with the 'International Cunts Convention' - which was actually taking place next-door at Wembley Arena. A larger collection of coked up scallies, wideboys and mini-cab drivers was rarely witnessed. We used to export these types to Australia, now instead we intern them in Wembley Stadium for a few hours a night to give the rest of the UK a bit of a breather. Most spent much of the gig commuting back and forth to the bar to make sure they had drank the 12 pints necessary to exclude them of accusations of homosexuality. Even then, they must have actually ordered 14...allowing them the obligatory 2 extra to hurl at other people in the crowd. It's not all bad though. When Oasis finally appeared (after Kasabian and 'Kasaboasis, it's got a lady'), the scallywags were so delighted that they threw plastic pints up into the air like a staggered fireworks display, thus already outdoing the opening ceremony planned for the 2012 London Olympics.
Being a bit of a social anthropologist (i.e. sniffy) I observed the easy back and forth of the stadium savage. For example, at one point I was having a wee at one of the many overflowing piss troughs around the stadium when some girls walked in. One of the men standing next to me said. "Aaa cam there's so many gels saddenley come in?". "Well" said the toilet attendant, taking his cue: "Gels only go into the toilit in gwoops of fawa, dan't they" causing a ripple of mirth and wheezing amongst the gentlemen. Delighted by his own comic genius, the attendant continued. "Oi, gels. Get aaat, yeah? If you is gonna stay in ere, least you cud do is suck my cock!" The queue of full bladders broke into yet greater bouts of lung collapsing chucking was met with one of the 'gels' saying "Oi! Cheeky!" in a flirtatious, mock-outraged manner. Enjoying the mastery of both wit and 'the ladies' the Wembley Stadium official continued. "Cos, if you don't get aat soon, I'm sure the lads ere wouldn't mind taking it turns wiv ya" causing the lads to nod in grinning agreement and one of them to say "Phwoar" in a sinister, piggy-eyed Robin Askwith fashion. The girls simply giggled at this thinly veiled threat of gang rape and said something along the lines of "saucy", in the same euphemistic cockney way that foamingly psychopathic career criminals are described as "a little bit naughty". Before threats of skull sex were misinterpreted as bawdy chat up lines, I decided to scarper. I couldn't go by that point, anyway.
It wasn’t all terrifying sexual assault at Wembley. They also did food. As well as being predictably exorbitant, the marketing bods had also cottoned on to the idea of selling more meal comobs with the simple use of alliteration. Thus the menus consisted of ‘burger and a beer’, ‘pizza and a pint’, with ‘lucozade and langoustine’ and ‘whisky and a wagon wheel’ presumably being phased in at a later date.
A similar novelty was the feature, on our row, of a black guy dressed in a shiny suit, star-shaped sunglasses and a plastic cowboy hat passionately playing an inflatable purple guitar. We couldn’t decide if the guy was employed by the venue or was a slightly deranged day-release patient who had the burdening delusion that his efforts were central to the enjoyment of the 150,000 strong crowd and the success of the entire enterprise. However, the fact that we found him asleep in a nearby phone box after the gig suggested the latter. Not to poke fun at the flamboyantly dressed minstrel. He was 'fookin boss'!
Thursday, 2 July 2009
Never Ending Goal Orientation
Strange that the whole plot of Neverending Story 2 is basically a boy overcoming his fear of heights. In order to get passed this he visits a magical land called Fantasia, meets a talking bird named Nimbly, conquers his own imagination AND battles Xayide and her magical army of mechanical giants.
Now, call me unadventurous, but wouldn’t a couple of therapy sessions done pretty much the same job? Perhaps if he had been, say, molested by a parent, then I could see a role for talking rock men and flying dogs – but for simple vertigo, well it seems so frivolous.
Perhaps counselling through visitations to magical lands could extend to corporate weekends.
BILL:
Hi. Bill Simonsen. Spirax Sarco.
GREG:
Hi Bill. Greg Mitchell. IBM.
BILL:
So, have you got Narnia at 11 as well?
GREG:
Ya. Then lunch. Then back into the old wardrobe.
BILL:
Little tip for you, Greg. The Turkish Delight proposition? Steer well clear.
GREG:
Really? I’ve been hearing good things about the White Witch’s organisation.
BILL:
Oh sure. Great pension plan, but she will turn you to stone.
Now, call me unadventurous, but wouldn’t a couple of therapy sessions done pretty much the same job? Perhaps if he had been, say, molested by a parent, then I could see a role for talking rock men and flying dogs – but for simple vertigo, well it seems so frivolous.
Perhaps counselling through visitations to magical lands could extend to corporate weekends.
BILL:
Hi. Bill Simonsen. Spirax Sarco.
GREG:
Hi Bill. Greg Mitchell. IBM.
BILL:
So, have you got Narnia at 11 as well?
GREG:
Ya. Then lunch. Then back into the old wardrobe.
BILL:
Little tip for you, Greg. The Turkish Delight proposition? Steer well clear.
GREG:
Really? I’ve been hearing good things about the White Witch’s organisation.
BILL:
Oh sure. Great pension plan, but she will turn you to stone.
Wednesday, 1 July 2009
Have You Got the Bottle...
I saw an advert for recycling asking passers by "HAVE YOU GOT THE BOTTLE?" For the first time, recycers have embraced the mainstream advertising philosophy of 'If you don't agree with our line of thinking, you're in some way inadequate'. As far as traditionally passive green grass roots activism goes, this is pretty confrontational stuff.
MARKETING MEETING:
Woman:
So, the middle-class demographic is responding well to our campaigns, the only group we're having real trouble with is young working class males.
Man:
Hmm...We need to challenge their masculinity somehow. It's the only way to get a pro-active response.
Woman:
Yes, they are very homophobic. How about "Not recycling? Why? Are you a woofter?"
Man:
Yes. But that may alienate our core woofter demographic. They're some of our best recyclers.
Woman:
True. Let's be a bit more clever about this. A pun perhaps. I've got it! 'Have you got the bottle?'
Man:
Genius! I see it as a TV ad.
Woman:
Great.
CUT TO:
Croydon terraced house. An unsahven, despondent man (Terry) comes in in a stained dressing gown and throws a beer can into a bin. His wife (Donna) is sullen, sitting at the kitchen table nursing a cup of tea.
DONNA: (without turning)
Just going to throw that in the bin, are you?
TERRY:
Yeah.
DONNA:
Even though there's a special bin for aluminium.
TERRY:
Don't start.
DONNA:
Do you know how many aluminium drinks cans are used every year in the UK? Five billion.
TERRY:
Who cares?
DONNA:
You did. You used to care. You've changed, Terry Davies.
TERRY:
I've had enough of this. I'm going to watch the snooker.
(He pushes out of the door, and she stands)
DONNA:
When I first met you. You was a recycler. You was a real man.
TERRY:
I don't need this.
DONNA:
You used to bag everything up. Every Wednesday. Remember? Now look at ya. Papers in with plastics. Glass and aluminium all mixed in together. I can hardly look at you. Ashamed to show my face round here, I am.
TERRY:
Leave it! Just leave it, Donna.
DONNA:
Do you know what they're saying about you down the pub? Do you know? They're saying you haven't got the bottle to recycle.
TERRY:
Shut up!
DONNA:
You HAVEN'T GOT THE BOTTLE!
TERRY:
Shut up you bitch! (He slaps her)
DONNA:
That's your answer is it? My mum says I should leave you...says I should shack up with that Dennis at the butchers. He knows how to treat a woman. (provocatively) You should see him Tel, got his own boxes for newspapers, cleans out his sauce bottles....he's triffic, you should see him. The things he can do to a stack of magazines...
TERRY: (grabs Donna my the hair. She wails)
You don't think I can do it? You don't think I've got it in me, eh? Yeah? Well, we'll see. Get my marigolds...I'll show you how well I can still recycle...you're going to love it.
FREEZE. RECYCLING LOGO ONSCREEN. SCREEN FADES. IT IS A VIDEO THE ADVERTISERS WERE SCREENING.
Man:
Powerful stuff.
Woman:
Absolutely. Is it me, or was there a slight...rapey undertone.
MARKETING MEETING:
Woman:
So, the middle-class demographic is responding well to our campaigns, the only group we're having real trouble with is young working class males.
Man:
Hmm...We need to challenge their masculinity somehow. It's the only way to get a pro-active response.
Woman:
Yes, they are very homophobic. How about "Not recycling? Why? Are you a woofter?"
Man:
Yes. But that may alienate our core woofter demographic. They're some of our best recyclers.
Woman:
True. Let's be a bit more clever about this. A pun perhaps. I've got it! 'Have you got the bottle?'
Man:
Genius! I see it as a TV ad.
Woman:
Great.
CUT TO:
Croydon terraced house. An unsahven, despondent man (Terry) comes in in a stained dressing gown and throws a beer can into a bin. His wife (Donna) is sullen, sitting at the kitchen table nursing a cup of tea.
DONNA: (without turning)
Just going to throw that in the bin, are you?
TERRY:
Yeah.
DONNA:
Even though there's a special bin for aluminium.
TERRY:
Don't start.
DONNA:
Do you know how many aluminium drinks cans are used every year in the UK? Five billion.
TERRY:
Who cares?
DONNA:
You did. You used to care. You've changed, Terry Davies.
TERRY:
I've had enough of this. I'm going to watch the snooker.
(He pushes out of the door, and she stands)
DONNA:
When I first met you. You was a recycler. You was a real man.
TERRY:
I don't need this.
DONNA:
You used to bag everything up. Every Wednesday. Remember? Now look at ya. Papers in with plastics. Glass and aluminium all mixed in together. I can hardly look at you. Ashamed to show my face round here, I am.
TERRY:
Leave it! Just leave it, Donna.
DONNA:
Do you know what they're saying about you down the pub? Do you know? They're saying you haven't got the bottle to recycle.
TERRY:
Shut up!
DONNA:
You HAVEN'T GOT THE BOTTLE!
TERRY:
Shut up you bitch! (He slaps her)
DONNA:
That's your answer is it? My mum says I should leave you...says I should shack up with that Dennis at the butchers. He knows how to treat a woman. (provocatively) You should see him Tel, got his own boxes for newspapers, cleans out his sauce bottles....he's triffic, you should see him. The things he can do to a stack of magazines...
TERRY: (grabs Donna my the hair. She wails)
You don't think I can do it? You don't think I've got it in me, eh? Yeah? Well, we'll see. Get my marigolds...I'll show you how well I can still recycle...you're going to love it.
FREEZE. RECYCLING LOGO ONSCREEN. SCREEN FADES. IT IS A VIDEO THE ADVERTISERS WERE SCREENING.
Man:
Powerful stuff.
Woman:
Absolutely. Is it me, or was there a slight...rapey undertone.
Tuesday, 23 June 2009
I got Hitler in the spareroom, I got Stalin on me sofa bed...
My parents have spent a good deal of their adult lives looking after lodgers and foreign students, so that they now generally remember a student by whether they hung the towels properly or if they had too much milk on their cereal at breakfast. In some ways they've rewritten Dr Martin Luther King. Whereas he believed in judging people based, "not on the colour of their skin, but by the content of their character", my folks couldn’t care less for colour or character, as long as they spend less than 10 minutes in the shower and remember to give the bathtub a going over with the shower nozzle, then you’re all right by their standards and are more than welcome to rent a room and indulge in a spot of light genocide. As far as the delineation of what is good and evil by moral standards goes, my house is a brave new world of gas-bill related divine wrath.
What they fail to realise is that whilst someone like Jesus would probably end up cluttering up the bathroom with different brands of conditioner, clogging up the sink with prostitute hair and leaving miraculous but unsightly wine stains around the bath tub, this doesn’t make him a worse individual than say, Mussolini, who would probably be a slightly more considerate lodger – only needing a dab of polish for the jackboots and a shammy to give the bald spot a good buffing of a Tuesday.
But logical protests fall on deaf ears. For, in their mind, hot water consumption is intrinsically linked to moral fibre. If you start the day with a 5-10 minute shower, you’ll go off and lead a productive, wholesome and fulfilling day.
If you’re there for between 10-12 minutes, watch out ethnic Kurds!
What they fail to realise is that whilst someone like Jesus would probably end up cluttering up the bathroom with different brands of conditioner, clogging up the sink with prostitute hair and leaving miraculous but unsightly wine stains around the bath tub, this doesn’t make him a worse individual than say, Mussolini, who would probably be a slightly more considerate lodger – only needing a dab of polish for the jackboots and a shammy to give the bald spot a good buffing of a Tuesday.
But logical protests fall on deaf ears. For, in their mind, hot water consumption is intrinsically linked to moral fibre. If you start the day with a 5-10 minute shower, you’ll go off and lead a productive, wholesome and fulfilling day.
If you’re there for between 10-12 minutes, watch out ethnic Kurds!
Monday, 22 June 2009
Jurassic Disappointment
Scientists have discovered that the original statistical model used to calculate dinosaur mass is flawed, suggesting dinosaurs have been oversized, with dinosaurs like the Tyrannosaurus Rex only half the size previously thought....which is just typical! The only thing that’s kept me going all these years in this grim, boring, scaled-down world is the fact that there used to be these massive, monster fire-breathing lizards that went around fighting each other and sort of ripping flesh off each other and stuff and eating cavemen...now scientists have taken that away from me too. Do you know what the UK’s biggest predator currently is? Badgers. Crappy badgers... (muttering)
FX:
Jurassic Park style music. Roars of dinosaurs, bird song, the crashing of waves.
KEEPER:
Welcome to Dinosaur Park. The place where you can see real life dinosaurs thanks to dangerously frivolous genetic meddling.
TOURIST:
Wow! Look at the size of that dinosaur! How far away is that?
KEEPER:
No, it’s right in front of you. It’s really quite small.
TOURIST:
Is there some way we can get closer?
KEEPER:
Put your hand out. You can literally touch it.
TOURIST:
We’re going to have to take a jeep to get to that one. Must be MILES away.
KEEPER:
Look, dinosaurs weren’t that big ok? We miscalculated, and it seems that we’ve been overestimating for years to sensationalist effect. Happy?
TOURIST:
Well, not really. As an exclusive visitor to this resort, I don’t feel like I’m getting my money’s worth.
KEEPER:
Oh piss off. All our rich clients have pulled out. The only reason you’re here is that you got the two-for-one offer when you bought a 12 pack of toilet paper, just like everyone else.
TOURIST:
I thought this was meant to be ‘Dinosaur Park’.
KEEPER:
Yeah, but we’re going to rename it due to a Trading Standards complaint. It’ll soon be called ‘Medium Sized Lizard Island’.
CUT TO:
FX:
Chilling music and the thudding footsteps and terrifying roar of a T-Rex a la Jurassic Park.
LAURA DERN:
Oh my God...Oh my God, it’s...tiny.
FX:
Squeaky mouse type noises.
JEFF GOLDBLUM:
Yeah, I think we left the PA on and it got close to the microphone. Sounded bigger than it was.
LAURA DERN:
Oh, I see. Yeah.
JEFF GOLDBLUM:
Does anyone have a cat basket we could put it in?
Wednesday, 17 June 2009
Auto-mate-ic?
Recently, I’ve heard a lot of middle-aged people bemoaning automated services as ‘you don’t get to talk to a proper person’ or ‘A machine never smiles at you’.
This is the latest major gripe. The gripe before this one was ‘I don’t want to talk to someone in a call centre in INDIA, I want to talk to someone I can understand’. A lot of companies buckled and moved call centre operations back to the UK. Some companies cunningly renamed Talan or Anjalli ‘Darren’ or ‘Stacey’ to give their customers the impression that they were phoning a call centre in the UK. For the cannier caller, knowing that someone called ‘Darren’ probably didn’t spend his childhood learning English in Lahore kind of gave the ruse away. Frankly, I had no problems with call centres in India. I’d rather have my mobile phone topped up by someone with a PhD in nuclear physics than a reject of the McDonalds training programme. In that respect, global inequality worked very much to my favour.
The new complaint is about supermarket self-service kiosks, an older one is about ATMs. The problem with these technologies (apparently) is that the customer is denied a smiling face and the personal touch. Frankly, they can keep it. I don’t know what country people think they’re suddenly living in but the chances of getting a cashier to give you a cheery smile and the benefit of their years or scanning experience are very slim indeed. Not being a particularly organised child, I generally do my food shopping 25 minutes before I cut my purchase up or poke holes in it and shove it in a hot place. I don’t need po-faced incompetence to be yet another step between me and eating. I’d rather not wait behind a woman who has bought an army standard year’s supply of toilet paper and pizzas whilst I queue patiently with my £4.27 worth of sub-luxury goods. Furthermore a machine will never judge me for buying economy tuna or a sensitive brand of condom (during my bi-annual contraceptive purchase).
I am by no means a misanthrope (not by UK standards anyway), it’s just there are too many people to deal with in everyday life, and (this being 2009 after all) surprisingly few robots. I say let’s even up the balance. As we all know, the place of robots in society has been a constant pant-wetting controversy since a Tomorrow's World presenter was stabbed in the knee by a suddenly self-aware kitchen helper robot in 1971. Thus I've tried to rationalise the automaton's role in society:
Robots dispensing cash – GOOD THING.
Robots totalling up my shopping – GOOD THING.
Robots with guns – BAD THING (see Terminator).
Robots driving taxis – BAD THING (see Total Recall).
Robot prostitutes – DECISION PENDING (see Blade Runner and AI...but only if you're really out of options at Blockbusters).
This is the latest major gripe. The gripe before this one was ‘I don’t want to talk to someone in a call centre in INDIA, I want to talk to someone I can understand’. A lot of companies buckled and moved call centre operations back to the UK. Some companies cunningly renamed Talan or Anjalli ‘Darren’ or ‘Stacey’ to give their customers the impression that they were phoning a call centre in the UK. For the cannier caller, knowing that someone called ‘Darren’ probably didn’t spend his childhood learning English in Lahore kind of gave the ruse away. Frankly, I had no problems with call centres in India. I’d rather have my mobile phone topped up by someone with a PhD in nuclear physics than a reject of the McDonalds training programme. In that respect, global inequality worked very much to my favour.
The new complaint is about supermarket self-service kiosks, an older one is about ATMs. The problem with these technologies (apparently) is that the customer is denied a smiling face and the personal touch. Frankly, they can keep it. I don’t know what country people think they’re suddenly living in but the chances of getting a cashier to give you a cheery smile and the benefit of their years or scanning experience are very slim indeed. Not being a particularly organised child, I generally do my food shopping 25 minutes before I cut my purchase up or poke holes in it and shove it in a hot place. I don’t need po-faced incompetence to be yet another step between me and eating. I’d rather not wait behind a woman who has bought an army standard year’s supply of toilet paper and pizzas whilst I queue patiently with my £4.27 worth of sub-luxury goods. Furthermore a machine will never judge me for buying economy tuna or a sensitive brand of condom (during my bi-annual contraceptive purchase).
I am by no means a misanthrope (not by UK standards anyway), it’s just there are too many people to deal with in everyday life, and (this being 2009 after all) surprisingly few robots. I say let’s even up the balance. As we all know, the place of robots in society has been a constant pant-wetting controversy since a Tomorrow's World presenter was stabbed in the knee by a suddenly self-aware kitchen helper robot in 1971. Thus I've tried to rationalise the automaton's role in society:
Robots dispensing cash – GOOD THING.
Robots totalling up my shopping – GOOD THING.
Robots with guns – BAD THING (see Terminator).
Robots driving taxis – BAD THING (see Total Recall).
Robot prostitutes – DECISION PENDING (see Blade Runner and AI...but only if you're really out of options at Blockbusters).
Saturday, 13 June 2009
When Pigs Dry
I noticed that we have some of those swanky hand driers installed in the toilets - the 'air blade' type. They look a bit like paper shredders for hands. Although perfectly positioned on the wall, I don't think I'd trust them with the demoistification of my testiclays.
Apparently their installation in toilets across the land has something to do with the Swine Flu scare, in that they leave your hands a few percent cleaner. Sure, this global pandemic is a bitch for human life on earth as we know it, but it's party time for the hand-dryer boys. It's almost tempting to believe that manufacturers have cooked up this little flu themselves, using a bath tub, some sparkles and PVA glue and lots of sneezing.
"Well John, I admire your thrusting presentation and…yes…the new X340 Airblade IS a hand drying revolution…but cooking up a global pandemic in a bath tub...is that the direction that we want to be taking at Global Wetness Solutions?"
All dissenters probably had their bollocks fed into the n
ew model.
Apparently their installation in toilets across the land has something to do with the Swine Flu scare, in that they leave your hands a few percent cleaner. Sure, this global pandemic is a bitch for human life on earth as we know it, but it's party time for the hand-dryer boys. It's almost tempting to believe that manufacturers have cooked up this little flu themselves, using a bath tub, some sparkles and PVA glue and lots of sneezing.
"Well John, I admire your thrusting presentation and…yes…the new X340 Airblade IS a hand drying revolution…but cooking up a global pandemic in a bath tub...is that the direction that we want to be taking at Global Wetness Solutions?"
All dissenters probably had their bollocks fed into the n
ew model.
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