Hello? …

Hello?

 

Spies like us….

The UK’s ITV news has just reported that one of the alleged Russian spies has admitted guilt in an American court.

As the artist’s impression shows, it seems odd that the fact they’ve obviously arrested Lenin, didn’t actually set any alarm bells ringing to begin with!

Straight to video (Betamax at that)

I just watched a film called Phantoms.

(If I tell you there’s a scene where Ben Affleck talks to bacteria on a TV screen and says “If we do as you say, will you let us live?”, you know I’m talking class.)

…and now this post is 3 minutes of my life I’m never getting back too.

Apple Mac & iPhone 4 (oh yeah, WindowsXP too)

You know that cheap trick in movies where you think the bad guy (or gal) is dead at the end and the most deserving gal (or guy) is going to escape and get away safely …only for the final scene to show a hand picking up a gun, or a car follow the heroine (or cocaine)? Well, it seems the same goes for computer operating systems.

Like the sheep I am, I queued up for, and finally obtained, the new Apple iPhone4 two days after its launch (I’m tapping this on it now).

Immersed in a world of white that is the Apple Shop, I willingly signed over the next 18 months of my life as a very helpful shop assistant tapped away at her white Apple Mac in an effort to sell me my little white box with it’s new iPhone contained within. Towards the end, during the stapling together of numerous ribbons of receipts, I took a closer look at her Mac screen. And there, in the Apple Shop, surrounded by single-bitten apples adorning white hardware of all shapes and prices, buying an Apple flagship product being processed on a Apple Mac, I notice that it is, in fact, being handled via a Windows XP emulator!

There’s not many other situations where you can effectively give Bill Gates the middle digit such as this. And yet, there he was, just as I was about to make my own escape, macabrely laughing at me.

The end of this film would have Carrie-Ann kneeling at the Mac, fingers spread apart touching the screen as she slowly turns her head, “He’s here!”

(the last picture taken with my old 3Gs)

I’m not one to complain…

Actually, really, I’m not.

But by god, did I fire off a crappy email to ITV yesterday.

They’ve done it before, and they did it again. At a pivotal moment during an important football match (and by football, I mean the sport where you use your foot against the ball, not the girls’ version of rugby) ITV suddenly switched to an advert at that exact time that England scored a goal!

As if the adverts weren’t bad enough !

Clean the car, then your ears, mate!

Not only is the customer always wrong, we obviously don’t understand what it is we require.

Not wishing the two-day-old bird crap to eat into my car’s paintwork (should it get through the volcanic ash layer first), I decided to fill up and get a quick car wash on my way to work this morning.

“Pump number 10 and your most basic car wash.” I said to the person at the till who, annoyingly, always calls me ‘boss’.

“Which one?” he asked.

“The most basic, the cheapest” I replied refusing to enter into Bronze, Silver, Gold as I would ordering a McCoke!

“That’s just the water one?” he confirmed.

I nodded with an affirming ‘mmhmm’.

“We have others with suds, boss” he says pointing to the display hanging over his head.

I refuse to look, I know what i’m asking for.

- uncomfortable silence -

He taps the sign again waiting for me to acknowledge my obvious error in what I’m asking for.

“I’m sorry,” (we British are terribly good at apologising) “But I’ve said three times already. I thought I was being quite clear about the car wash I wanted. Obviously not.”

As the till pings open he finally hands me the receipt, and mumbles “This is your number, take the aerial off your car roof.”

It doesn’t have one.

Oh yes I am…

I could never be a kids’ entertainer.

Writing this, stuck in the interval of a live kids show, I am amazed how the presenters carry on with so much shouting, screaming and fidgetting going on! I for one would wait until there was complete silence before continuing.

Oh yes I would. Oh yes I bleedin would.

(no photos allowed)

Polite Notice: Fukkertypissflaps!

Oh please.

What is it with notices begining with ‘Polite Notice’ these days?

I can understand your average Joe Shmo painting it on his garage doors stating, ‘Polite Notice – do not park garage in useing’ [sic], but for it to actually be adopted in to officialdom makes it a very sad day.

Who on earth are they to tell me whether or not their notice is polite? I may find it bloody rude! Putting ‘Polite Notice’ in front of ‘Fukkertypissflaps’ doesn’t make it acceptable, and I resent the patronising effort that deems it necessary to decide for me.

By all means, make a ‘Polite Request,’ or (and get this for a concept) maybe even say ‘please’ at the end, but let me decide how I read the sign.

Same s… stuff, different decade

That’s it. I’m officially old. The youth have spoken.

Well…’a’ youth.

Without giving too much away… dealing with a tearful young’un today, I strongly suggested that they brought to my attention any beef they had with their peers. At this point, the tears dried up and a smile broke across their face.

When I welcomed, but questioned, the smile, I was told that they never expected an old person like me to use the word ‘beef’ in this way.

The canyon has never felt so wide.

Are they missing out? No.

Sitting here, watching my 3 year old son tear around a colourful, padded, corner-free ball-park, I feel my inner retro hark back to a day when all we had was your traditional adventure playground comprising of coloured planks of splintered wood tenuously held together by 6 inch nails even more tenuously hammered in.

The clichéd old fart in me wants to cry out how things were different in my day. How part of the fun was the threat of imminent injury lurking just around the next jagged corner, or the thrill of finally managing to get 5 of your mates on a single knotted swinging rope and come out of it with both legs still intact. I want to validate each and every terrifying near death experience as an example of character building development …but I can’t.

For those old things were evil; they scared me to death. Whether it was the tough kids that played there or the apparatus itself, I don’t know. Probably a combination of the two. I actually broke my arm on one of these things as a child when I didn’t quite make a jump from one platform to the next, landing 12 feet below on sun-baked dirt&stones with an audible snap! Those wooden behemoths emitted fear out of every platform, ladder and rope swing for good reason: they were lethal.

So, for once, my inner retro will happily relegate these memories to a dark corner of my psyche and proudly admit that the modern day explosion of padded colour, balls and obstacles are much better than the assisted suicide contraptions we had back in the day. Things weren’t better back then.

If the old fart in me needs an outlet then it can be one of trying to rubbish something I’m actually quite jealous of as, truth be told, I would have loved something like this when I was a kid.

So you tear away, son. I’m content with the knowledge you’ll be a kip before we hit the dual-carriageway, and that a trip to A&E won’t be necessary this afternoon.