Category: Two-Minute Hate

Disgusting People

Big Auto, Big Brother

Drive Time, Surveillance Society, Technology, Two-Minute Hate

Yesterday, I talked about wanting to own a pre-digital car — i.e. one that doesn’t fucking spy on your every move.

I often wonder what car or cars I’d get to replace the Tiguan, and what’s interesting is that I’m having precisely the same feelings that I have with guns and watches: nothing of recent manufacture at all — especially given that they’re all without exception loaded with electronic gizmos I don’t care for, or else gizmos that spy on you and/or could possibly be used to control your driving. In fact, the more I think about it, I’d probably have to go back to pre-1970s cars — fully resto-modded of course — to find a car that has not a single computer chip in its driving operation.

Here’s a business opportunity, because this is America.  (I don’t have the technical skills or capital to follow through on this but I’ll just throw it out there.)  Is it possible to turn your car into a mobile Faraday cage?  And would it be possible to turn the feature on and off?

I know, car companies and / or the godless insurance industry would probably use their lawyers and lobbyists to outlaw this, just as law enforcement tried to prevent speed-radar scanners, but it’s worth a shot.  With a switchable cage, the insurance companies couldn’t exactly deny you coverage or raise your rates if all the data showed was you doing trips to the supermarket once a week.

It’s time for us to fight back against this nonsense, and to borrow an expression:  rage against the machine — the machine, in this case, being Big Brother cars, the cunts who make them and sell your data, the even-bigger cunts who strip-mine your personal data, and and the last category of cunts who use your personal data against you.)

I feel a mega-rant coming on, but instead I’ll just go to the range.

And just to make you feel better, if my car was spying on me it could report said destination to… well, anyone who might be interested in such data.  Makes you think, dunnit?

Tight Fitting

Travels, Two-Minute Hate

…or to put it more succinctly, trying to fit 500lbs of lard into a single economy airline seat.

A photo of a plus-sized passenger struggling to fit between the armrests on a plane has sparked a fierce debate over whether obese travellers should have to pay for an extra seat. 

The man was snapped by a fellow traveller as he squeezed into his aisle seat during a flight from Helsinki to Copenhagen on Monday.

‘This guy sat behind me on my flight from Helsinki to Copenhagen yesterday,’ the man who took the photo wrote on Facebook. 

‘I felt sorry for him and the guy next to him in the middle seat, both of whom must have felt very uncomfortable for the short flight.  Maybe it’s time for airlines to address situations like this in a thoughtful and sensitive way.’

And the pic:

There are two points to be made here.  The first is that while it’s true that airlines have shrunk their economy-class seats to the point where even a heroin-addicted model has to squeeze into it, if they had to cater to dimensions like the above, they’d have to install fucking sofas.

The second point is that when it comes to situations like the above, there is no debate:  Fatso and his elephantine buddies should have to pay for two seats (in his case, maybe even an entire row). And by the way:  Helsinki to Copenhagen?  Catch the train, Doublewide.  In the goods carriage, if necessary.

Finally, there’s no need for airlines to address this in a “thoughtful and sensitive way” because if they can’t refuse service to people of this tonnage and volume, they should at least be able to charge for the extra weight — as they have no problem doing with oversized luggage — not to mention having to turn the main cabin into a de facto  cargo hold.

And I say this as a man who once was almost reduced [sic]  to asking for a seatbelt extension.  (Thank gawd that’s in my rearview mirror, never to return.)

It’s bollocks.  Fatties should have to pay more for their additional accommodation inside the limited space of a flying aluminum tube.  End of statement, period, THE END.

Wrong Categories

Food & Drink, Old Fartism, Two-Minute Hate

As I wrote only yesterday about the silliness of pubs allowing children inside their premises, and on many occasions about my permanent dislike of the whole “gastropub” nonsense, you can imagine my irritation upon reading this article about Britain’s best pubs, and finding the following results:

Best Pub For Families
and
Best Pub For Food

Bloody hell;  two anger buttons for the price of one article.

But wait!  there’s more!

Best Pub For Dogs

I need a drink.  Thanks to the article though, there are at least three pubs I know not to visit.

Turnaround

Clintons, Marxists, Two-Minute Hate

Speaking of foul political females, I see that Her Filthiness has opened her fat yap again:

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Monday called for Americans to be “criminally charged” if they engage in speech that sounds like Russian propaganda.

Some might say that just a few decades ago, such charges could have been brought against Clinton herself.

But of course, four decades ago it wasn’t “Russia” but the “Soviet Union”.

Rancid Stalinist bitch.

No Place For Children

Entertainment, Food & Drink, Two-Minute Hate

It seems like only yesterday (actually, a month ago) when I made this comment about bars and pubs:

The business of a pub is to serve booze to grownups. End of.

You can imagine my irritation, therefore, when I saw this little bit of nonsense:

Two fuming mums have criticised a historic pub for not catering properly for their kids — and claim their youngsters were told to “turn the iPads down” while they were dining.

The angry mothers took to Tripadvisor to deliver two bruising one-star reviews of Victorian pub Sam’s Chop House after having Sunday lunch there.

They say that no children’s menus were offered, not enough high chairs were available and that they were left appalled when asked by staff to turn down the iPads their brood were watching in the restaurant.

The mums said they were told they were not allowed to take their prams into the restaurant, “which was fine”.

Big of them.  Then:

“I’d rather have gone to Toby Carvery for half the price and a much more decent roast dinner than atrocious meal they call Sunday roast.”

I bet the staff, and all the other patrons, wished they had.  All of which begs the question:  why didn’t they go to Toby’s instead of a basement pub?

Okay, I have no plans to visit Manchester in the future (Mr. Free Market:  “Never venture north of the M4, dear heart” ) but if I ever do, I’ll be heading to Sam’s Chop House, you betcha.  It sounds like my kinda place.  I don’t consult any of the so-called “ratings” websites like TripAdvisor much anyway, but if I were to do so and found a one-star rating like the above, I’d be more likely to go there because it means that Management has the right idea about how to run a drinking establishment.

Kids have no place in a pub.  It’s not as though there aren’t enough fucking eating establishments everywhere that cater to the rugrats, that parents have to take their precious brood into a booze palace and disturb the serious drinkers.

Fach.