Category: Rants

#oneaday, Day 292: TV Get Bent

Most times I watch TV, I’m reminded why I don’t watch TV any more, besides the occasional isolated incident of The Apprentice (which I can’t really be bothered with this year, anyway). And the reason for that is that 99.87% (approximately) of it is complete, unadulterated, unfiltered dross and bollocks, and the rest are reruns of old, unadulterated, unfiltered dross and bollocks.

Now I understand and appreciate that some people enjoy zoning out in front of the TV and enjoy having things that they don’t have to think about. I do the same with video games. But at least I’m interacting with video games, and even the most mindless, dumbest video game requires at least a bit of co-ordination and use of your reflexes. Unless it’s Farmville, in which case you just require to be non-vegetative enough to click a mouse a few thousand times. But even that demands more brainpower than staring at the TV.

Not all TV is rubbish of course. But I find myself picking up favourite TV shows on DVD rather than watching them when they air. There are a couple of reasons for this: firstly, being tied down to a schedule at the behest of an inanimate object is a pain that I can do without. Secondly, if I really get into a show, it’s nice to be able to watch several episodes of it in succession to get a greater sense of “coherence” than watching a one-off. Try watching a season of 24 when it airs on TV as opposed to being able to watch several in a row on DVD and you’ll see what I mean. Not that I ever got into Lost (the TV schedule thing meant I lost—no pun intended—interest about halfway through the first season) but I imagine that, with all its confusion, would be much the same.

The kind of TV that doesn’t lend itself to a sense of “coherence”—random quiz shows and reality TV—doesn’t particularly interest me anyway. So everyone’s a winner, then. TV can keep its dross, its reruns, its uninspired crap and endless repetitions of Alexander the fucking Meerkat adverts. I’ll stick to my DVDs, iPlayer and 4OD, thanks.

Will we eventually reach a stage where the concept of traditional TV broadcasting itself is obsolete? Thanks to services like those I’ve just mentioned, it’s entirely possible to have a completely personalised staring-at-the-gogglebox experience consisting entirely of programmes you actually enjoy. And with services like Netflix, LoveFilm and MUBI offering a variety of niche as well as mainstream content, you can even populate your own personal TV and movie playlist with things that would never have been on TV in the first place.

Also there is no need to wait for Alexander the fucking Meerkat to come on screen to go and have a toilet break, either.

The more I think about it, the more this concept sounds very appealing. But will the TV studios ever go for it? The concept of “primetime” is still very firmly in the heads of most broadcasters, and so it’s likely that scheduled programming will continue for at least a little while yet. But as time goes on? Who knows. Perhaps one day TV will move to an exclusively on-demand system.

I look forward to that day immensely.

#oneaday, Day 288: Where’s The UK’s Netflix?

So the new Xbox Dashboard went live today. Pretty neat, isn’t it? Lots of new sound effects, a clean white aesthetic, Kinect compatibility and all manner of other goodies. In fact, let’s take a look at the list of new features, shall we?

  • Kinect Integration
  • ESPN on Xbox LIVE
  • Zune Music
  • Netflix Search
  • Improved voice chat quality
  • Improved Gamertag creation
  • Streamlined virtual keyboard
  • Improved wireless networking
  • Improved family settings

Pretty nice, I’m sure you’ll agree. Particularly if you’re an American, because here’s the list of new features I got in the email today:

  • Kinect Integration
  • Zune Music

Granted, some of the features that weren’t mentioned were fairly minor ones. But it’s still pretty clear that if you’re a European Xbox gamer, you’re missing out quite a bit on some of the things that make the Xbox and its LIVE service particularly appealing.

One of the biggest things us poor Europeans are missing out on is Netflix. I don’t watch many movies and thus feel rather ill-equipped to contribute to conversations that start with the words “Have you seen…”. The reason I don’t watch that many movies is that I have it in my mind that buying DVDs with movies on is a bit more of a waste of money than buying box sets of TV series that I’m more likely to watch several times. Once I’ve seen a movie, I tend not to watch it again unless I really, really loved it. As such, I don’t own many movies on DVD or Blu-Ray, and I rarely remember to get to the cinema in time to see movies while they’re on the big screen.

If I had access to a service like Netflix, however, I’d be more inclined to watch more movies, since paying a monthly fee for access to whatever I wanted seems like less like a waste of money than purchasing a DVD or Blu-Ray I might never watch ever again.

So then, Points of View, I ask why oh why oh why don’t we have a Netflix-like service here in the UK? The company LOVEFiLM (or however the hell they capitalise it) already offer a similar DVD rental-by-post system, as well as a streaming service via web browser. So isn’t it about time they pulled their fingers out of their celluloid arseholes and got on with integrating their service with the Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii? A huge number of households now have one or more of these devices hooked up to their fancy-pants HDTVs. So LoVeFILm would probably stand to make an absolute fortune from new subscriptions if they got on with integrating their service with various devices.

I’d go off on a similar rant about ESPN’s lack of appearance on the 360 in the UK too, but for me watching sport on TV is an experience only mildly less appealing than having my eyes pulled out through my bellend.

So… Netflix-or-UK-equivalent YES PLZ. I’m sure it’ll happen. Eventually. It’s just a shame we get it years behind you pesky Americans. YES, YOU. You are pesky. You may gloat in the fact that while we have the greatest condiment in the world (HP Sauce) you have an awesome streaming movie service available via your Xbox.

Hmm. I’m actually not sure which one I’d rather have, thinking about it…

#oneaday, Day 284: M25? More Like… Hell… 25?

There are many famous roads in the world. The Champs Elysees in Paris (or however you spell it… I have no idea where the accents go and also have no idea how to type accents on my netbook). That really dangerous road they drove along in Top Gear. Yungas Road. I knew that and totally didn’t Google it.

But there’s one road you won’t find in the tourist guides, but it’s a well-known road to British motorists. It’s a name which strikes fear into the heart of motorists from Land’s End to John O’Groats.

It is the M25, the Devil’s Road, also known as the London Orbital. For the uninitiated (or American) amongst you, this is a motorway (freeway) which runs around the perimeter of London (capital of England) and goes round and round and round and round. In theory, this sounds like fun. Who doesn’t like driving laps around things?

Unfortunately, the M25 is the single most frustrating road in all of Britain to drive on, largely due to the fact that despite it being (sometimes) one of the widest roads in Britain it is also one of the fullest. Particularly if they’re digging it up. Which they always are.

Couple this with the inexplicable “variable speed limit” section (“You must drive at 60! Now 50! Now 40! Now 60 again! Now 70! Go wild! Oh! 50! Got you! SPEED CAMERA.”) and you have a road which is infuriating, frustrating and capable of producing some of the most creative expletives on the planet.

Particularly if you drive on it at rush hour, as I did tonight. And Rush Hour on the M25 lasts for approximately six hundred years and features a time distortion allowing six hundred years to take place in the space of a single day. You could read War and Peace in the time it takes you to get from Heathrow Airport to Staines at rush hour.

So fuck the M25. Fuck it right in its stupid ass (somewhere around the Dartford Tunnel) and find another route. Seriously. If you need to go from somewhere north of London to somewhere that is in a different compass direction from London, then for God’s sake avoid the hell out of London. Because for all its good points, London and its surrounding suburbs hate cars. HATE them. They want them to die. And they think that everyone who drives a car should die too, or at least pay considerable amounts of money for the privilege of driving a car.

Which is probably for the best, given that without the various tolls and “congestion charges” in place, London would be more backed-up than an old, constipated man’s bowels. I mean, more than it is already.

This has been a Public Service Announcement on behalf of the Highways Agency, who also think you should fuck the M25 in its stupid ass, which is why they keep smacking it with hammers and diggers. In, you know, an attempt to, like, get at its ass. Or something.

I don’t know. A 2.5 hour journey took me nearly 6 hours tonight. So my brain is addled. I think it’s time to drink Cherry Coke and scrounge a satay chicken skewer. Good night!

#oneaday, Day 279: Saturday Drivers

I don’t know why anyone bothers to try and do anything on a Saturday, particularly if doing said thing involves riding in a car for any length of time.

“Why’s that?” I hear you ask.

“Well,” I say, “it’s to do with traffic.”

When asked to elaborate, I elaborate on the fact that traffic gets bloody everywhere on a Saturday, but particularly in the various town centres of the UK. Everyone decides that Saturday is “shopping day”, which makes a certain amount of sense, given that normal people (i.e. not unemployed scrotes like me) are normally working throughout the course of the week. But to this I respond “why not Sunday? What’s wrong with Sunday?”

It’s a fair question, I feel. Although the opening hours of most shops are shorter on Sundays, opening later and closing earlier, there is, these days, otherwise nothing to distinguish the experience of shopping on a Sunday in a town centre to shopping on a Saturday. Sure, there may be more people coming and going from church. If you happen to be passing by a church, of course. Which, let’s face it, shopping centres aren’t known for being built in close proximity to.

The net result of all this trafficky nonsense on a Saturday, of course, is that any time you actually want to get something done that involves passing through (or even near) a town centre on a Saturday, you had better budget at least twice as much time as you think you need. Because a good 50% of your journey will be spent staring at another car’s arse wondering if you’ll ever see your home again. I experienced the joy of this today, with a trip into Eastleigh town centre earlier in the day (Eastleigh being a town remarkable for featuring a road layout designed by someone who has no idea how big a car is) and later a trip to Southampton (jammed solid) to pick up my friend Tom in order to give him a lift to my other friend Sam’s in Winchester. Oddly enough, Winchester, which is usually a traffic-infested hellhole thanks to being a medieval city that wasn’t really designed with cars in mind, and features a Gowalla spot for the traffic jam which occurs every day like clockwork between 5 and 7pm, was pretty clear. Result.

The above isn’t just limited to town centres, either. Anyone who has ever had the pleasure of driving on the crown jewel of Britain’s road system, the M25, will be well familiar with this feeling. Except on the M25 you don’t even have any interesting towny sights to enjoy while you’re stuck behind a million other cars that stretch off to the horizon with no obvious reason for stopping dead on a road designed for driving at 70mph. No, you have concrete, and other cars. And trucks. And that’s about it. Not fun. At all. Better hope there’s something good on the radio, or at least that you have some entertaining content on your iPod.

So basically, my advice to you? If it’s Saturday, then just stay in. You don’t need to go out. Just stay in. Catch up on TV. Watch a DVD. Play a lengthy video game. Listen to some music. Read a book.

Anything. Anything but go for a drive.

#oneaday, Day 275: Inexplicable Advertising

Advertising copywriters have a largely thankless task in front of them. Responsible for making people want to buy shit that they don’t really want to, it’s their job to come up with new and innovative ways to attract people to various products and inspire them to give them a try, usually by convincing people that they wouldn’t possibly be able to live without said product.

Some advertisers and product designers take an entirely different tack, however, and lapse into the realms of the bizarre. Let’s explore a few, shall we?

Options: Sexy Hot Chocolate

Hot chocolate: sexy. Confused nerd: less sexy.

Think of a nice warm mug of hot chocolate and what is the first thing that comes to mind? Perhaps snuggling under a nice warm blanket, maybe in front of a roaring fire. A large shaggy dog may be draped over the rug in front of said fire. Alternatively, you might be thinking of a camping trip, gathering around the campfire to warm yourselves before. Whatever specific image you have in your head, it’s probably related to night-time, warmth, cosiness and possibly being about to go to bed. For sleeping. Not for naughty reasons.

So, then, let’s take a look at the mint chocolate variety of Options hot chocolate.

“The flirty mint green kitten heels were madness at the garden party,” proudly proclaims the sachet. “Mint” and “madness” are much larger than the others, so you have to look close to read the rest of it.

Which is probably just as well, because it’s complete nonsense. What in the name of the nine Hells has mint green kitten heels (whatever they are) and garden parties got to do with a steaming hot chocolatey beverage? Why is there a woman in a slinky dress on the logo? She’s not even wearing heels!

Options hot chocolate is delicious, by the way, despite all this.

Maoam Stripes Enjoy Back-Door Lovin’

The fact the orange is winking leads me to believe that this is EXACTLY what it looks like.

Maoam are weird fruity chew things that taste like fruit flavour and are very addictive. They also have a weird name that is impossible to type correctly first time every single time it becomes necessary to type them.

Now, perhaps the nature of the sweets dictated the artwork on them—a fusion of fruit flavours, or something—but is it really necessary to have a picture of a lime gleefully bumming an amputee orange on the wrapper? I vote “no”.

These bizarre decisions pale in comparison to what you find in your average commercial break on digital or satellite TV these days, though:

Alexander the Asshole… I mean Meerkat

For those of you outside the UK, this irritating twat that a frankly depressing number of people seem to find utterly hilarious is the product of an advertising campaign for an insurance price comparison website called “Compare the Market”. The “joke” is that “Compare the Meerkat” sounds a bit like “Compare the Market”. If you’re a complete retard who can’t speak properly.

The above video is for his book. Yes, his book. A character dreamed up to sell insurance has a book out. I guess this should be a heartwarming story of a new national comedic treasure. But… oh, for heaven’s sake, it’s a mildly racist advertising campaign with an annoying catchphrase for—let’s not forget this fact—insurance—and the world is going crazy for it. Actually, the world is just going crazy.

Go Compare? Go Away

I don’t think anything else needs to be said, apart from pointing out insurance price comparison websites’ predilection for changing one of the most boring things in existence into one of the most irritating things in existence.

The Credit Idiot

“Hey, boss, shall we hire some actors?”

“Nah, fuck it, hire the guy from the takeaway around the corner. He’s cheap and he’s always wanted to be on TV.”

Seriously? All these ads have convinced me is that I never want to use any of those services, ever. Yet when I do actually need a service like that, the only sites I can think of are these ones because of their incredibly irritating adverts. Which I guess is sort of the point.

Oh well.

And people wonder why I don’t watch much TV.

#oneaday, Day 253: Pay-Per-Everything

I came to a realisation today. I have a thing about the word “monetize” (or, arguably, “monetise” if you want to be English about it, although the latter is not recognised by a British English spellchecker). This is not news to those of you who have been following this blog for some time. Some of you may even recall the Money Robot, star of Day 128 on this blog, and, of course, the thing that goes around monetizing everything in sight by applying green electricity to their genital areas, assuming they have genitals.

But, as I say, I came to a realisation today. And my problem is not with the word itself as it is with the fact that we even need a word for this concept at all. “Monetize”, after all, pretty much means “convince people that it is acceptable to pay money for”. And sure. There are some things out there that could stand to be charged for—certain content online, for example, could be charged for in order to make sure that writers could actually get paid for once. The iPad, Kindle and other devices like them are doing a lot to help people think about how they consume content—a move away from the whole “EVERYTHING SHOULD BE FREE!” philosophy that the Internet has embraced for so long and a move towards “most things should be free, but really good stuff should be an appropriate price”.

At least that’s the theory of how it should work. How monetization works in practice is that you get people charging you to go to the toilet at railway stations. You get a 30p “convenience charge” for paying your parking fees via phone instead of via small change in a machine—change which some poor sod will have to come and collect at some point rather than an automated robot who steals your credit card numbers over the phone, I might add. You get charged £30 to disconnect your broadband (at least you do if you go with Orange Home, fuckers). And Endsleigh Insurance (also fuckers) wanted to charge me £85 for the privilege of cancelling my home insurance, all because I had moved house just after the policy had renewed, ignoring the fact I’d been paying them for the last ten years. Let’s not even get started on bank charges, where they take the money you haven’t got in order to punish you for not having any money.

You get the picture. Not everything being monetized is good. And that’s why I think the fact it’s happening so much that we need a new word to describe the concept is very much a bad thing. We don’t need to pay for everything. I pay a bloody fortune to travel by train in rubbish, smelly, drunk-infested conditions so the least I should be able to expect is the opportunity to have a piss for free at the other end. Conversely, I’d be more than happy to pay for some exclusive content, eBooks or virtual magazines delivered to the iPad I don’t have. It’s all a question of value.

You may argue that the ability to have a piss is inherently more essential and therefore valuable than an eBook. But technically I can have a piss anywhere. The charge on the toilet is not stopping me from, say, pissing myself. The nice policeman standing on the corner might, however.

The eBook or virtual magazine, however, has had love, care and attention ploughed into it and therefore, it’s only fair that the writers and producers should receive some recompense for that. So more premium, high-quality content, please, and less in the way of “convenience charges”.

THANKS.

#oneaday, Day 252: 5 Social Norms That Need To Die The Hell Out

There are some things which have become so firmly entrenched in normal society that we just don’t question them. We don’t necessarily like them, but we certainly don’t question them if someone happens to bring them up. They’re so well-known that countless comedy routines have drawn attention to them over the years; so much so that many of them are now clichés. That doesn’t stop people writing about them and perpetuating said clichés, though, as I’m about to do right now.

So without further ado, let me present Five Inexplicable Social Norms that the World can Really Do Without™.

The toilet seat thing

Alluded to above. Roughly 50% of the world’s population, give or take, have to take a piss standing up. Well, they don’t have to. But gentlemen who choose to urinate whilst in a seated position are generally scorned and looked upon as some sort of weirdo. For a chap, sitting is for pooing and standing is for pissing. Would the ladies out there who whinge about toilet seats being left up prefer it if said gentlemen just left it down all the time and pissed all over it instead? No? Then consider this: the seat has a hinge on it so it can be lifted up and put down. If it is in the incorrect position for one’s desired toilet activity, one need simply use one’s hand to move said seat to the correct position.

While we’re on, those toilets whose seats don’t stay up can die in a fire. Having to hold on to the toilet seat with one hand and directing one’s flow with the other often feels rather precarious and I feel that anyone who inadvertently spills in a place they shouldn’t whilst under such arduous pissing conditions should not be held responsible.

Man flu

Apparently, guys aren’t allowed to get ill any more. Whether it’s a tickly cough, some form of debilitating brain cancer, ebola or itchy scrot, it seems that everyone is quick to cry “Man flu!” at the first opportunity. The zombie apocalypse will not come from some sort of biohazard outbreak at a local lab. No, it will come from the man who caught zombie disease, went to hospital, was accused of just having “man flu” and sent on his way.

Overenthusiastic use of the word “random”

“OMG! I’m such a random person really. We went out and had a drink and it was like OMG! Random!”

No. “Random” means… well… random. Completely by chance. Out of all the possibilities that are there, everything has an equal possibility of happening. It is not “random” that you met that hot girl at The Dungeon one night, because you knew she was there. Your night out was not “so random”, because you’d planned it weeks in advance with your compadres. You are not a “random” person, because otherwise your conversations would run something along the lines of “Cabbage! 352! Cocks. Horatio! England. Belching squirrel. 976!”

Settling for second-best

This could be applied to so, so many things but I’d like to particularly refer to the world of employment. How many people do you (yes, you!) know personally who regularly bitch and moan about their job, their colleagues, how much they hate what they’re doing, how they “wish” they could do something “better” and then never do a damn thing about it? Some people don’t have a clue what it is what they want to do. To those people I say: think harder. If you are sitting in an office surrounded by other people who clearly want to slit their wrists or take far more regular toilet breaks than a normal person because they’re actually going there to cry for five minutes at a time, then you are probably in The Wrong Job.

Being unemployed has been a festival of suckitude, but I just know that if I was in that aforementioned office, while money might be coming in the way I’d be feeling would be ten times worse, because I’d feel trapped and unable to pursue the things I really do want to do. (Talking of which, I have a job interview for a job I really do want tomorrow. Wish me luck.)

Embarrassment over bettering oneself

I went out for a run today, but felt the familiar pang of anyone who is unfit going out in public to exercise: “what if anyone sees me?” This immediately jumps up to something doubly worthy of panic if you are doing some form of exercise which has the potential to hold up traffic, such as cycling along country lanes. But running! People will see you doing exercise, and they will laugh at you. Because going out and doing something about your own fitness is inexplicably somehow more shameful than just walking down the street gasping and wheezing after climbing a flight of five steps.

This whole thing also seems to apply to kids in school, many of whom seem to see success as being somehow shameful. But that, of course, is a topic I have waxed upon at great detail many times in the past.

So I know I certainly wouldn’t shed any tears if any of the above norms disappeared overnight. Perhaps they’re uniquely British things. In which case… anyone want to help me get a visa?

#oneaday, Day 251: Teamwork, Do It Together

I’m going to quote a LazyTown song at you and there is nothing you can damn well do about it.

Links in a chain
Tracks for a train
They’re always better together.
A cocoa in a mug
A kiss and a hug
They’re always better together.
When nothing seems to fit
And you just want to quit
Teamwork, do it together
Teamwork, friends forever
We’re all for one and one for all, we’ll—

Okay, enough already. Even I’m feeling a little nauseous*. But it’s an apt introduction to the matter I would like to talk about today, which is collaborating, working together, being a team player, whatever you want to call it.

In life, teamwork is essential, even for the most inept recluse there is. At some point, they’re going to have to deal with other people. So it may as well be a pleasant experience for everyone involved.

The thing I don’t understand is why so many people don’t seem to get this. For example, I was talking to a friend the other day and it seems that a work colleague had gone behind her back and caused an unpleasant, tense situation when in fact all that was needed was a quiet, friendly word. In fact, given the situation in question, even that wasn’t warranted at all, but this isn’t the time or place to discuss that.

But it seems to happen over and over again; I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard friends comment about the stresses of working with other people, either because they don’t pull their weight, or because they’re the sort of person described above, who is only concerned with making themselves look good and balls to how everyone else feels.

If you’ll indulge me a moment, here is something which truly can be learned from the world of video games. I was enjoying a friendly game of Halo: Reach with some friends earlier, and we were playing Team Slayer. For the benefit of my readers out there who don’t play games at all, an explanation: this mode splits eight players into two teams of four and tasks each team with blowing seven shades of snot out of each other until one team or the other has scored fifty kills. Very simple. And yet what many people who play it don’t seem to realise is that by working together—simply a case of sticking with someone else and protecting them, and occasionally telling other team members where opponents are—success can be pretty much guaranteed, at least until the other team figures out the same thing. Which often doesn’t happen.

It’s the same in reality, only with less shooting each other in the face with rocket launchers. Usually. Rather than striking out as a “lone wolf” that just happens to be part of a larger venture, working together with others is a far more sure-fire way to get things done. Things get done a lot quicker and everyone is a lot happier as a result. So I have to wonder why so many people try and put up barriers to this sort of collaboration. Whether it’s wilfully ignoring things that they’re told, making themselves inaccessible, refusing to listen to feedback or simply not chipping in their bit of effort at crunch time, it makes life unpleasant for everyone. Those who are spurned by the git who isn’t helping end up feeling bitterness and resentment. And said git often starts to feel superior, like they don’t “need” to get involved.

I’m very fortunate in that all the ventures I’m currently involved with are very much team efforts run by people who are friends with mutual respect for one another, and people who talk to each other. There’s no bitchiness, no backstabbing, no resentment. I think. Unless I’m causing it.

Oh God, am I the git?

* inserted to draw attention away from the fact that I have listened to the LazyTown soundtrack on Spotify far more times than is really healthy. This is just between you and me.

#oneaday, Day 247: This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things

Twitter broke earlier today. This in itself is nothing unusual, as the existence of the term “failwhale” will attest. But this time it was partly a result of some new changes that the service made, particularly with regard to posting links.

Twitter recently launched its own link-shortening service, called “t.co”. This is one of the shortest link-shorteners out there, and when characters are a precious commodity as they are on Twitter, that’s really important.

Unfortunately, some clever young person discovered that by using t.co it was, in fact, possible to embed HTML code and, worse, JavaScript in these links. It was also possible to format tweets, change their colour and black them out.

Said exploiter quickly discovered that by blacking out a tweet and adding a “mouseover” JavaScript event to automatically retweet the exploit, post giant text on the screen or in some cases, redirect to websites you wouldn’t want anyone to catch you on ever whenever a user moved their cursor over the blocked text, they could cause absolute chaos. Thankfully, most people got wise to the exploit pretty quickly and retreated to the safety of Twitter client apps, as it only affected users on the website itself. Of course, there were a few people who started screaming “OMG VIRUS!!!” and panicking, but most of them were put in their place pretty quickly with a simple, calm explanation (hah, right) that an exploit and a virus are two very different things. And Twitter stepped in to plug the security hole reasonably quickly, too. So the whole thing was over within a matter of hours.

The main point of this, though, is that it wouldn’t have happened at all without the new functionality that Twitter was offering. It seems that every single time something new and potentially awesome appears, there is at least one person out there who wants… no, seemingly needs to break it. Why? Because they can.

This explains the existence of “glitchers”, people who deliberately play video games in order to break them. It explains the existence of software pirates, who are out to break copy protection and DRM on software. It explains the existence of hackers, people who write viruses and spammers. And, indirectly, it’s the reason why every single time you turn on Windows you have fifteen bajillion updates to install.

This is all getting a bit tiresome now. It’s such a shame that things that are new must seemingly go through the “initiation” of being broken by some idiot sitting in his pants in his basement, probably masturbating furiously as he watches the chaos unfold before his eyes. Because you just know it’s a “he”, too. (I’m all for equality, but when it comes to stupid, pointless and inconvenient things to do with computers, it’s always a guy.)

Thankfully, the world seems adequately set up to deal with such dribbling idiots these days. We have spam filters, virus scanners, scripts to clean out malicious code from websites. Companies have teams to fix broken functionality like we’ve seen here. And of course, it’s easy to say that things should be tested more thoroughly before release. But there’s no way you can predict every single possible stupid thing that some member of the human race will try and do. If we could, no-one would ever go outside and the world and everything in it would be covered in sponge just in case we fell over and hurt ourselves and/or tried to kill someone else with something.

So if you know anyone who’s ever come up with one of these exploits, or anyone who’s ever ruined a Nice Thing for anyone else, do the world a favour and go and punch them really, really hard in the testicles.

#oneaday, Day 242: Original and Best

I p-p-picked up a Penguin earlier (note to Americans: this is a chocolate biscuit, not an actual penguin nor a low-cost paperback reprint of a classic novel) and was dismayed to see a word on the wrapper that seems to be becoming more and more common on the foodstuffs of my childhood: “Original”.

To me, the word “Original” written on something implies “Hey! You used to like this. But very soon, we’re going to do something that utterly destroys your memories of it, like adding fifteen new flavours completely unnecessarily!” The word “Original” implies that there are soon to be “non-Original” varieties. While I certainly wouldn’t be averse to the idea of a chocolate mint or chocolate orange Penguin bar, it does seem somewhat unnecessary given that a number of other chocolate biscuit maufacturers have the whole “flavoured chocolate biscuit” thing pretty well stitched up. Similarly, Penguin have had the whole “chocolate-coated chocolate biscuit with chocolate cream filling” thing working for them for many years now. So why the change?

The ultimate sacrilege of this type I’ve seen is Rice Krispies. Rice Krispies are Rice Krispies. You can customise them with milk and sugar and those interminably homosexual mascots they have, but they’re still Rice Krispies.

Not any more! They’re “Rice Krispies: Original”, which again implies that there are soon to be “non-Original” Rice Krispies invading our cereal cupboards. The thing is, non-Original Rice Krispies already exist. They’re called Ricicles (sugary Rice Krispies) and Coco Pops (chocolatey Rice Krispies). So are we going to lose these established, recognisable and, to some (who really enjoy cereal, like, a bit too much), beloved brands? Perhaps.

Why does this happen, though? Perhaps it’s part of the growing culture we have where Choice is Good. Yes, Choice is Good. But there are some things where we don’t really need quite so much of it. Breakfast cereals and chocolate biscuits being two such examples. Mobile phone packages and varieties of bottled water are two more. Electricity tariffs. Types of coffee. Whether I want chillisaucesalad on my kebab. Too much pressure!

The upshot of all this is that people begin expecting choice in everything they do, even when it’s completely inappropriate to do so. Look at education; both the Government and parents seem to expect teachers to be able to deliver a personalised, customised experience for every child. There’s even an official “programme” for it: Every Child Matters. And yes, they do. But there are 30 children in an average classroom. And one teacher. Perhaps one or two assistants. Have you ever tried to get thirty different people, some of whom already have attention-deficit disorders, to do a selection of different things? It’s immensely difficult and nigh on impossible. But it’s expected. Because Choice is Good. Personalisation is Good. People should be able to have the experiences they want, when they want them.

So, with that in mind, balls to non-Original Penguins. They’re destroying our education system.

Possibly.