More "Twilight" Rage

Honk if you Hate Bumper Stickers!

Bumper stickers and the people that use them are getting out of control. Sure, we’ve all been use to seeing a small number of stickers motoring by. Maybe a “give peace a chance” here or a “honk if you’re horny” there but nowhere near the number you see these days – I say “these days” as if I were elderly. It’s part of my charm.

I’ve been feeling that if you have to have more than two stickers preaching the same similar message then you are an idiot. You are an idiot for treating your reader as an idiot. If you have a bunch stickers saying “save the whales”, “love is all you need”, “I heart trees” and so on – I GET IT. You throw your vote away come every election time – I UNDERSTAND. For some reason when it comes to car messages we really feel the need to drive the main message home. The main message may only contain a handful of words and colours but they do have a certain sub-text – see the image below…

The sub text of these stickers reads – “I AM A DOUCHE”.

Not only that but if have them all over your back wind shield – as most do – then how the heck do you see? Which brings me to my next point. I have created a formula that helps me manage the days when I see several sticker riddled cars. For every sticker you see on a car deduct ten IQ points. That oughta’ make it a bit easier for you.  Try it with your friends. Now you will understand the cars with all the stickers driving terribly and crushing all those that come into contact with their blind spot as they can’t check any of their windows or mirrors due to sticker overload.

Why do people get them anyway? They are so garish and moronic. Look at this.

Best bumper stickers of 2011? What part of 2011 was really marked with the phrase “Too old to care”? I guess with all the rapture nonsense that was flying around that might do it… but really. Doesn’t the population have any intelligence or dignity anymore?

Oh wait. That’s the other thing – My Family stickers. I’m sure you’ve seen these. Everybody is being really cute with their personalised illustrations of each family member plastered to their car. Wow the little girl likes – what’s that? – oh skipping. Yee-haw. They say that they are individual yet EVERYONE HAS THEM. They’ve also become a great beacon for non-nuclear families. Like ones that just have a mum and two kids – you ain’t got no daddy! Haw haw! Maybe single mums are using them as dating ice-breakers. In their minds Prince Charming will help her get her groceries to the car and notice the sticker and then they will fall in love and blah blah blah. I doubt that very much. I saw one the other day that was two older guys, an older woman and then some kids – is that some sort of messed up ménage a trois situation?

I’ve gone on long enough – my blood is beginning to boil so to ease you out here is an image I found rather amusing.

Humans = Big Ol' Suckfest

When you get a job and it involves anything to do with talking and dealing with people face-to-face you eventually come to the realization that people suck.

Let me just emphasise that a little bit more – people SUCK.

I’m sure we’ve all been in a retail/hospitality type situation where an individual goes crazy over the most trivial and insignificant matters. It happens A LOT.

I’ve been working at a hotel for a while now and I never knew people were so annoying – particularly when they are holidays. When I go on holiday I go there to see the place I am visiting, eat good food and have a good time. I never care about the state of the place I stay in (unless of course it is crawling with lice and there is no roof) but SO many people do. I am constantly bombarded by the wankiest complaints.

“Excuse me but does the body lotion in the bathroom contain wheat?”

“My soap dish wasn’t properly cleaned. I think someone might have stayed in my room before me”

“My television only gets 399 channels and I really need 400”

“When I go into the public swimming pool other people can see me and it isn’t very private”

“I’ve been in my room for five minutes and it hasn’t been cleaned again yet”

For the most part people whinge about stuff they should have found out before arriving. If you do your research then you won’t need to get all huffy about the fact that, no, your room does not have a gold plated urinal that shoots fanta when flushed whilst playing “We Will Rock you”.

Why do people suck?

Interacting with other humans is mostly an unpleasant experience and all the good people you meet and see don’t counteract the lame ones that plague the earth demanding soy sheets and turtle friendly light fixtures.

I think the only conclusion is that people are douche bags love to complain. Or rather older people love to complain. I consider myself to be in the youthful category and I have hardly ever complained about anything in any official capacity because I go at it with the thought “get over it”. Older people (and I had SO better not turn into one… though maybe it’s fun…) like to find fault in most things and nothing compares to their humble abodes which begs the conclusion to STAY AT HOME. Buy some inflatable palm trees, throw some sand about the place and BAM a tropical paradise in your own home.

What annoying people have YOU dealt with?    

DVD Dilemma

I’m pretty sure most people have had the occasion where they’ve watched a trailer for a funny film, seen it and then remarked “they showed all the good bits in the ad”.

It sucks. Basically the film industry just snuck up behind you and pinched money from your wallet whilst one of their minions did an amusing dance to keep you from noticing.

I no longer go to the cinema. Not just because of the ad thing but because it is getting ridiculously expensive. I mean they are no longer just taking the cash from your wallet but your entire wallet including the photo of the Jonas Brothers hidden behind your licence (I know it’s there).

A movie watching platform I haven’t yet given up on is the renting process. I go to my local DVD shop, choose a film and go home to watch it – nothing new or observant about that. The problem is once you put the DVD in and desperately attempt to skip the other ads and scare tactics against film piracy you reach the DVD menu. The DVD menu use to be a boring screen to merely alert you to the functions of the disc – play, extra features, set up and so on. DVD menus are now fully interactive with stuff happening all over so you get taken in and forget this is just another form of trailer ruining your viewing experience. If I haven’t seen a film before and the DVD menu comes on it does the exact same thing as a trailer would in that it shows all the decent bits and not even in a well edited version as the trailer would be but rather just the funny moments with no context and no narrating voice stating the obvious.

Why are they doing this? I get that they want the menu to represent the film but COME ON don’t ruin it for me! Someone that has seen the film over a dozen times can’t complain about the menus but if this is the premiere screening for that person then... GRRRRR! There are no words to describe.

All I can say is that I’m not surprised people download movies... at least then you don’t have to endure the film being tarnished before it has even begun.

The Almighty Facebook

First of all let me start this entry with a big hello to all you readers that – like me – have made it through the supposed 21/5/11 Judgement Day and Rapture. Honestly, could anyone really survive without this blog? Yeah I didn’t think so...

And now – onwards!

So.

Has anyone else noticed how creepy Facebook is becoming? I mean the whole thing is pretty odd how we each feel the need to update personal information and physical evidence of our lives to one another but it’s getting worse.

I’ve never been a huge fan... I mean I was forced into using the system by a friend who will remain nameless and since then I’ve lazily browsed this site for the past few years. I’m not one to update my profile picture every few days (or ever actually) and put up albums upon albums of photos constantly searching for comments from others – no. I am, as I said, a pretty lazy user. I admit it is good for sharing photos. Like when you go to a party and there are, like, 12 different cameras being passed from drunken hand to drunken hand and you really want that one picture of yourself jumping off the roof and swinging around on the clothesline hoping it will capture you in the process of turning back time – well Facebook provides. You no longer have to annoy every witness of this feat but just wait til that little red number comes up on the screen stating that someone has uploaded and tagged you in this act of stupidity. Brilliant.

First the site was fine. It seemed pretty normal. Not creepy and stalkerish at all. Gradually, bit by bit, the site has been tracking our movements and creating carbon copies of us in this virtual world so soon we will be rendered redundant by this technological god and forced into the dark and binary-like recesses of a miserable apocalypse. Wow, I started this out with a crackpot apocalypse theory and now I’m making my own – huh monkey see, monkey do.  

Anywho the site started getting annoying when it became bombarded with advertisements. Yes, we are use to these as avid internet surfing junkies but these were detecting our likes and dislikes and showing us ads accordingly. I mean if I said to someone that I really enjoyed drinking litres of juice without a doubt the next refresh would show an ad for “the best juice in town! Click here to know more”. What if I typed in something really crazy like “Man, I just found out that I totally love rubbing old rotting garbage over my naked body whilst watching monkeys at the zoo picking bugs out of their nostrils”? Then what? What you gonna say to that, Facebook? I shudder to think...

The next creepy thing – and this is the clincher – that I recently discovered was when I went to upload a bunch of photos (took me a while... I can tell you – I felt like an old person feels when they leave their front porch – tired and confused). Facebook then asked me to begin the laborious process of tagging each individual person in every photo only to stop me in my tracks. Facebook can now detect what you look like. Facebook had identified my face in most of the photos. Well in some of the photos – I mean if I was pulling a hilarious face... or just smiling for that matter... it needed more confirmation. At least it didn’t confuse my face with a toilet or a farm animal or something (yes I photograph a variety of objects – I don’t discriminate). The fact of the matter is Facebook is slowly gathering information on all of us and using it to further itself. I get that it’s a business and it wants to make money but holy smokes it’s trying to steal our identities! Remember that EVERYTHING you post is tracked and kept. Nothing goes away. So if you don’t want Facebook to know that you have herpes that don’t tell it (no idea why you’d want anyone else to know but you get the drift) – not even in private messages. Also the act of tagging where you are at any one time – stop taking the fun out of stalking.

In summary, we should all just start doing random and out of character things, posting weird entries (mostly about lima beans and wake boarding) and actually tagging our faces as strange stuff to confuse the all-knowing, all-powerful overlord that is Facebook.