Regrettable Acts – Page 33 – Splendid Isolation

Killing Off Your Favorites

March 11, 2019 Kim du Toit Business

This story got me thinking:

Ed Sheeran has got his neighbours choking on their chorizos – with plans to turn a much-loved Spanish restaurant into a music bar.
The star bought the Galicia tapas bar in London’s swish Portobello Road for £1.5million last year.
The 28-year-old, who lives nearby, reportedly wants to transform it into a live music venue with a ‘members’ club vibe’. But residents who described Galicia as ‘one of the last authentic Spanish restaurants in London’ spoke of their dismay yesterday at finding out its new owner is one of the world’s biggest pop stars.

There are all sorts of issues to be addressed here.

I think we’ve all asked the question, “What happened to that cool place where we used to go..?” (the typical answer being, of course, that if you’d gone there more often, the place wouldn’t have disappeared). I have no idea whether the Galicia fell into this category, but I suspect it might have. After all, Spanish food is pretty much an exotic cuisine in London, and people will not go there all that often (much as, say, Murkins don’t often visit Greek restaurants Over Here unless they’re of Greek origin or if they, like myself, love Greek food). Clearly, the owners of the Galicia either wanted to sell the place for personal reasons or had to sell it because they weren’t making money off the place.

The second issue is that of course, if you buy a piece of property, you’re quite within your rights to change it (subject to the usual restraints, of course), and pop star Sheeran wants to create a private drinking club for himself and, probably, his buddies — which makes nonsense of this wail from a local:

‘If it turns into a members’ club where they charge £3,000-4,000 a month to join, nobody from around here will go.’

Hate to break it to you, you idiot, but you’re probably not welcome there anyway. Sheeran doesn’t need the money from the subs: it’s a means to keep the local riff-raff out, much as the restaurant in L.A. that used to sell $100 burgers and was frequented mostly by celebrities who welcomed the privacy those prices afforded them.

No, I can’t say I have too much sympathy for the complainers here. If Galicia was indeed “one of the last authentic Spanish restaurants in London”, it doesn’t say much for the popularity of Spanish food there, does it? (You only have to go to southern Spain, where Brits go to avoid the crappy London weather, to see the truth of this. Almost all the restaurants and bars offer “Full English Breakfast!”, “Fish & Chips!” and “English Bitter Ale!” — Spanish food clearly doesn’t satisfy the visitors.)

The only thing that mystifies me about all this is how the reedy-voiced Sheeran managed to amass an £80-million fortune.

Descending To The Common

February 22, 2019 Kim du Toit Grooming

As Longtime Readers know well, I am somewhat old-fashioned when it comes to ~~pretty much everything~~ matters of clothing and grooming, and I see with alarm that sartorial standards are falling — or being encouraged to fall — among people who should never let them do so.

I speak here of the British Royal Family — of which institution I have been a longtime fan — and of whom I, and everyone, should expect some kind of respect for good grooming.

However, it appears that of late, the younger members of said family have been dressing down to that horrible “smart casual” look. Actually, there’s nothing “smart” about it; a suit just looks sloppy without a tie, but apparently this makes princes George and William seem more “approachable” to the crowd (Latin: vulgus, from where we get the word “vulgar”). So people can now relate better to these scions of a family once known as the Royal Family of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, and more recently as the Windsors.

Ugh.

So here’s how Prince William, heir to the throne, should be dressing for his daytime engagements, compared with how “Wills” now dresses:

As for his brother, Prince Harry… well, he’s not exactly heir to the throne anymore, and he married some Hollywood harridan; but even so:

And for both of them, I should point out that there’s a special part of Hell designated for people who wear suede shoes in the city (as opposed to out in the country, where they are perfectly acceptable). And as a cautionary note to Harry: blue suede shoes should remain an Elvis song and not a dress choice.

My point, in all this, is that if you’re going to have a Royal Family — i.e. one that is special and not part of the common herd, then one should strive to keep them above said plebeians and not part of them. And dress is as much a part of that distinction as anything. Here’s their dad, who has always understood the thing:

…and I should point out that the second pic was taken after Prince Charles had just played a polo match, i.e. he was dressed for the occasion.

Now I must caution everyone not to go off on some anti-royal diatribe in Comments, because that isn’t the point of this post. This is.

If you are special (in the eyes of society), you should always look special. Here in Murka, no less a person than President Ronald Reagan (PBUH) understood this better than anyone. He always dressed presidentially, except when working on his ranch:

The standard: dress well at all times, except when you shouldn’t (e.g. when doing manual labor or playing a sport). That goes for everyone, but most especially for people in high social standing. Like the Royals.

Banzai

January 31, 2019 Kim du Toit Business, Food & Drink

I don’t quite know what to make of all this:

London Pride maker Fuller, Smith & Turner, better known as Fuller’s, is to sell its entire beer business to the European division of Japanese brewer Asahi.
In a deal which values the division at £250million, the London-based brewer will sell the production and distribution of its well-known beers, including its flagship drink London Pride, as well as its ale, stout, porter, craft lager and cider brands.

Considering that London Pride is my second-favorite beer (after Wadworth 6X), I can only hope that Asahi won’t look at Pride’s miniscule U.S. distribution and decide that it’s not worth it.

On the other hand, they might also think that Fuller are a bunch of morons for not getting Pride greater exposure in the U.S., with the result that I could soon buy it at Kroger.

So it’s “wait and see”, not something I typically enjoy doing.

Gah. I hate change.

Dumping The Spouse

January 23, 2019 Kim du Toit Men & Women

Here’s a little bit of cheery goodness for you. In the Ultra-Self-Centered Wing of the Museum of Solipsism, you may find this:

One in ten women admit they would DUMP their partner in return for more free hours in the day — as most confess they need an extra 82 minutes every day
2,000 American women aged 18 and over took part in the study, which looked at their average daily routines
The average woman said she needs an extra 82 minutes a day to accomplish everything she wants to get done
If they had more free time, 36% said they would use it to read, and 29% would use it to work out
Over 30% said they have less than 30 minutes to themselves each day
Due to lack of time, half of those surveyed have given up hobbies
22% would use their time to learn a new skill like knitting or photography

How precious. Momma wants more time to improve herself, even after admitting to this:

30 per cent of women would give up social media and TV for more free time

Here’s an alternative statistic for you. If women weren’t so stupidly obsessed with social media bullshit and their appearance, 100% of men wouldn’t leave them.

Or something like that.

Comings And Goings

January 11, 2019 Kim du Toit Business, Technology

This story pissed me off, for all the usual reasons:

“For years, TWC has deceptively used its Weather Channel App to amass its users’ private, personal geolocation data — tracking minute details about its users’ locations throughout the day and night, all the while leading users to believe that their data will only be used to provide them with ‘personalized local weather data, alerts and forecasts,’” the complaint reads.
The data serves no weather-related purpose, but was only collected in order to allow TWC to turn a profit, the complaint reads. The data was sold to at least 12 third party websites over the past 19 months.
The Weather Channel app has about 45 million users, according to the complaint.
TWC intentionally obscures this information” in a 10,000-word privacy policy “because it recognizes that many users would not permit the Weather Channel App to track their geolocation if they knew the true uses of that data,” the complaint goes on to say.
The lawsuit is seeking an injunction prohibiting TWC from continuing to collect and sell the data, along with civil penalties of up to $2,500 per violation.

Just this week, I went through a store (Forever 21) instead of using a mall entrance because my car was parked closer to the former than the latter. And on leaving the mall, I went back out the same way.

Needless to say, when I got home I had one of those “personalized”, annoying little requests: “Tell us about your shopping experience at Forever 21” with a link attached. Being annoyed, I went there and wrote the following:

“I walked around your store TWICE today, and not once did anyone from your staff offer to help me. In fact, given that the people I THINK were employees were dressed like customers, it was hard to tell whether there were in fact any employees in the store at all. Certainly, most people in the store were standing around chatting to their friends and ignoring everyone else completely, so there was no way of telling. It will be a long time, if ever, before I visit Forever 21 again.”

And every single word of that is true. Yeah, it’s possible the wrong people will get punished. I don’t fucking care. If enough people turn this data snooping around and use it against these “marketing” bastards, maybe they’ll stop using it. If not… did I mention I don’t fucking care?

And to return to my original gripe: I deleted the Weather Channel app off my phone, just in case and just because.

A spokesperson for The Weather Company — which operates the Weather Channel – provided CBS2 with the following statement:
“The Weather Company has always been transparent with use of location data; the disclosures are fully appropriate, and we will defend them vigorously.”

Fuck them and their transparency. I hope the lawsuit costs them many millions, and they go out of business. And I wish I knew which dozen organizations bought TWC’s tracking data so that I could boycott them too. If anyone knows who they are, please share that information in Comments.