A Few Good Men

As a departure from the normally demure tone of this blog, its good to see Tom Cruise turning up at a UK film premiere recently 2 hours early so he could meet-and-greet the fans. Jonny "Scissorhands" Depp likewise. Why can't more stars adopt this attitude? The fans contribute to their success and it's nice to see them give something back.

S!

Smokey & The Bandit

Or rather...Smokey and they Banned It! I'm all for restricting smoking in certain places - restaurants being one of them. No-one likes smoke in your face when you're eating right? Right. Its also good that the government has finally faced up to its responsibities and is acting to ensure the younger generation doesn't get hooked in like many did "back then". Of course the less people that smoke, the more taxes everyone else will pay, but thats not how the propaganda goes. All you have to remember is that smokers are bad people and you have to hate and chastise them whenever you can.

I see Wetherspoons the pub chain have banned smoking in all their pubs. This is ahead of the proposed country-wide ban apparently. Good for them. My local bowling alley has banned smoking outright. Good for them. It's their businesses, they can turn away who they like. Just pump the food and beer prices up...that should cover it.

And now they're talking about introducing bans in all public places? I can live with that and I think we should also ban cars from roads with pavements which actually does more damage to my health as other peoples smoke does.

My point? All things in moderation. Let smokers smoke but give them designated areas like airports tend to. Keeps them out of the way, lets them feed the habit imposed on them "back then" by a greedy heads-in-the-sand government, and saves everyone having to pay the extra taxes.

S!

Driving Miss Daisy

Ok...who's bright idea was it to market 4x4 off-road vehicles to UK middle-class England? Stand up and be counted. More to the point, why do people buy them? They're ugly as hell, too big for many roads, hated by the majority of "normal" car drivers and selfish as hell.

Come on...who actually lets one of these things out into traffic (apart from other 4x4 drivers)? Who actually thinks they look good (apart from other 4x4 drivers)? Who would willingly consign the buggers to the scrapheap (apart from other 4x4 drivers)?

There's nothing worse than parking your car and coming back to find one of these monstrosities next to you. How the f*&k are you supposed to see round it to get out? Not that the driver of the bloody thing gives a monkey's. As long as they're alright Jack, sod everyone else. They'll probably argue that they bought it for the safety factor! Yeah right - aside from the fact that they probably cause more accidents than any other type of vehicle simply by obstructing the view of other drivers, that attitude is pretty typical of society today..."if i have an accident I'll be OK and the other driver will come off worse". And how right they are...

Imagine being shunted by one of those things. Little point in medical insurance if you're not going to be around to use it. Best advice to non 4x4 drivers...stay off the roads til the Schoool Run's over! Like you need those things for 2 kids and a dog! They were built for off-roading and thats where they should stay...out of harms way and in the hands of people who know how to drive them.

Buy a bloody Volvo if safety, space and being universally disliked on the roads are your main concerns.

S!

American Pie II

Well, if you read my rant on the "American Pie" blog entry regarding the American proposal to fine people whose underwear is visible over their jeans then fear not, it gets worse! So how's this for a nation thats lost the plot...

I'm watching "The Joe Schmo Show" (aside: actually very watchable for an American Reality show it must be said) and there's this overweight guy called Brian. In one of the shows, he's required to get kitted up for the pool which, of course, means removing his shirt. Nothing wrong with right? So WHY THE F*&K has the TV channel put a fuzzy panel over each of his nipples? He's a frigging guy!!! So he's eaten a few more pies than a lot of people. So what? Just who's being "protected" here? Who would complain about seeing a guy topless for f*&k's sake? No-one that's who. Well no-one you'd consider even half normal. Where is America going...you'd think that of all the nations on earth, they'd be able to tolerate fat people! Land of the free, home of the brave and all that.

Can someone explain this madness to me? On second thoughts, don't bother...just take those little tablets they give you and lie back down.

Sheesh. The American Dream is over, wake up people!

S!

The Money Pit

Banks. A necessary evil and lets face it, for all their "customer care" the majority are pretty much intent on only one thing and thats making money from you and I. Some make billions in profit but that doesn't stop them treating us more like we need them than they need us.

This is the latest scam from my bank: I have a fairly hefty direct debit of around £400 which my mortgage company by agreement take on the last day of the month. Last month, with my paycheque delayed, i transferred the money to cover it on the last day of the month (a Monday). Sure enough, i check the next day and all is hunky dory - money in, money out on the 31st, still in credit. Phew.

A couple of days later i get a letter from the bank - they'd refunded the mortgage payment to my account and rejected the DD. Whats more they're charging me £30 for the privledge! So i phone them...whats going on? Now get this...

Because they run their computer programs in the early hours of the day, and my transfer hadn't come in until 9.30am, I was overdrawn for a few hours hence the rejection!! You what? The Last Day Of The Month is the Last Day Of The Month isn't it? Apparently not so. The Last Day Of THe Month when you pay out is close of business the day before!

Anyway, after a loooong phonecall involving a couple of bank people, they agree to refund the £30. Poor show but at least they accepted my argument. Because they'd rejected the DD, the guy asked me if i was going to sort out payment with my mortgage provider myself. I said i would. I withdraw the money and send them a cheque.

Two days later - what happens? The bank puts through the DD again, takes me over the limit and charges me another £25!! I've yet to calm down enough to follow this up.

All i can say is...Thank you Bastards Bank!

S!

No Escape

Hot on the heels of yesterdays rant about spam, another method of "selling" that makes me do the exact opposite of what they want. Intersticials! You know - those frigging annoying animated adverts on websites that fly in over the text that you're trying to read and/or follow you down the page 'til you click the bastards closed. Grrr. How to make me hate a website Part 1.

You know the really galling think about these ads, is that you try to close them, miss the tiny "x" close icon and end up on the page they want to take you to and you just know the website owners are going to their clients with "look see, people do click them, they really work!". Idiots. Then they probably tag you as gullible or a "soft touch" and show you even more of the little buggers!

So I've have started my own "blacklist" of sites that use this type of ad and I refuse to visit them anymore, no matter how good they are. Until now, thankfully there weren't too many sites I used regularly that pushed this crap into my face. I can live with adverts at the side, top, even between paragraphs - after all, a site needs to survive. Fair play. Hell i even clicked some of them. But Intersticials just piss me off and anyway, there's usually enough competitor sites to find a good alternative. So its "bye bye" to:

Skysports (replaced by the BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport/ a while back)
Lastminute (replaced by www.Latedeals.com - some great offers at LD too!)

and just spotted today...

Yahoo UK (its back to Google i guess)

Any more sites considering using these adverts, let me know in advance please so I can find decent alternatives. I thank you.

S!

You've Got Mail

Spam spam spam. Everyone gets it but are people really stupid enough to click it, or answer it? Guess they must be or I wouldn't have received 21,000 spams in the last 7 days! Seriously...thats how many my Spam filter has intercepted...21,000!! That's 3,000 a day - or 250 an hour, or 4.16 a minute. Do they really expect me to care about their half-arsed products?

Thank God i put that filter in place (www.spamarrest.com - $34 p.a.). In the past 9 months since I signed up, 95.83% of the 210,000 emails i've received have been spam! I can laugh 'cos i never see them, but I pity those who do.

Even if i did get an email with something interesting in it now, I wouldn't click it or reply on principle. It beats the hell out of me why people act so dumb sometimes. The more people use it, the more we'll get. Fact of life: "live with idiots, get branded an idiot". Simple really.

And now, to top it all, as I write this entry, what do I get? An answering machine callback on the phone which (as it invariably does) starts "Congratulations...". Couldn't tell you what happens after that 'cos thats as far as I let them get.

If you're reading this, do everyone a favour...IGNORE THE BASTARDS!!

S!

American Pie

America...what's up with America? It's turning communist that's what! I've got nothing against Americans at all - i know quite a few and they're great people. But it's slowly being transformed into a communist state courtesy of the administration and the so-called moral "minority". I just don't get it...can they not see what's going on? Is "protecting" people from gambling more important than giving people a tool to shoot each other? Anyway, it gets worse than that...

As if the Janel Jackson "nipple incident" wasn't funny enough (talk about making a mountain out of a molehill), I'm watching a US TV documentary the other day and there's this girl walking down the street with a "fuzzy" panel at the base of her spine. So what's the TV producer trying to cover up here? Has she got a 4-letter slogan on her belt? Is she wearing a swastika patch? Not at all. Apparently the top inch of her bum (yes i know the US call it a fanny but best not do that over here eh!) is slightly visible above her jeans!!! YOU WHAT??? What the f*&k is wrong with that? You see it everyday in the street. You see it with models on billboards. Its part of the human body. It snormal. Its not even frigging "rude" for God's sake!

Anyone who complains about that is more screwed up than their kids will *ever* be, so if its a "protect the children of America" thing, then God help the children whose parents are this misguided :-( I'll lay any money you like these people go to church and have misinterpreted, or been misinformed of, life's priorities.

So anyway, I chuckle to myself in that mad "its a joke right?" kind of way and thank my lucky stars we're not "protected from evil" to that extent over here, then what do i read yesterday? Only that one state in the US has passed (not just acknowledged one loony proposing it, but actually physically PASSED!) a vote to fine people for having the top of their underwear showing over their jeans! You have GOT TO BE KIDDING? If this had happened in Russia a few years back, the Americans would have been laughing and gloating about how democracy was soooo much better than communism! And while the police are busy apprehending these so-called "evil-doers", your frigging apartment has been broken into. D'uh! Priorities. Wrong.

Remind me...what is the American Constitution? And is that really "the land of free" in the National Anthem?

I have a feeling i'm scratching the surface here. But there's plenty of time to uncover more from the country where you can legally buy a gun, but you can be locked up for gambling ;-)

S!

Meet The Focker (Intro)

You probably wouldn't know it from reading this blog, but I am in fact a fairly optimistic person. But like anyone else, there are things going on in the world that quite simply wind me up. And i want to vent...oh boy do i want to vent!

I'm male and have always lived in the South West or South East of the UK. I'm just the wrong side of a big birthday...hell, this could explain a lot! I generally enjoy life but you know how it is...the older you get the more like your parents you get. You spend years raising your eyebrows at the trivial things that rile them and then suddenly, bang! You are your parents. But what can you do. Start a blog thats what...warn the others...put up the early warning signs. If you're still growing up, take this blog as a warning. It WILL happen to you! Ha!

Anyhow, I guess my main gripe is people. People, as a generalisation, are selfish fools. Sure there are the good ones, but in true gutter press fashion, bad news is good news, so them they ain't gonna get the headlines, right? Not until something bad happens to them anyhow. But that's the world we've created and we all have to share the blame.

So enough of the introduction. I'll be regularly sending in life's little (or large) idiocrities to Bête de la nuit, as daily as i can in fact and hey if no-one cares, no-one cares, but I'll feel better for it!

S.