And:
Not much has changed, has it?
Tag: Things that totally suck
Bad Optics
…or “not a good look”, as people used to say.
While slouching through the usual dreck on Teh Intarwebz the other day, I came upon an article which was a thinly-veiled sales schtick for this charmingly-named self-help book:
In fairness, there was an asterisk placed strategically to bowdlerize the Bad Word, but I hate them because I’m not interested in having to slow my reading down to decipher Rosetta Stone-type glyphs inserted into words to prevent people with delicate sensibilities from assuming the principal characteristic of fainting goats.
But that’s not what I wanted to talk about. This is.
Underneath the book cover was a pic of the author:
…no doubt, he took up his legal career after a stint in the Merchant Navy, or, as his name implies, after realizing that grave-digging didn’t have good prospects what with this Kubota stuff becoming all the rage in modern cemetery operations.
Now I’m somewhat famous for hating the way that people dress in the modern, oh-so casual world (to say nothing of body art), and I’m sure that this publicity pic Sexton has chosen must appeal to love-starved women seeking a way out from their joyless marital unions.
And I know that very few lawyers nowadays go to the office looking like Harvey Specter from the Suits TV show (more’s the pity).
But seriously?
Sorry, but I can’t take “high stakes” as a description for a lawyer with full sleeve tattoos, in a pic. For Mike Tyson and his ilk, hell yeah. For a lawyer? No.
Come back Harvey, all is forgiven.
Bricked
On Monday morning, just as I was starting a fresh round of posts, the new ASUS laptop bricked. Black screen, no response to the power switch. Tested the power cord (I have a spare), but nothing.
So I took it to the Geek Squad, who took two days to tell me that the problem was not the power cord. And I was out of town for those two days on personal business, which is why I only got this thing back in motion last night.
Aaargh. So now I’ll probably have to send the fucking brand broken new laptop to the ASUS service center or some damn place, while I revive the old HP and press it back into service one more time — you remember, the old machine held together with duct tape, with the touchpad masked with cardboard and the letter “o” which doesn’t always respond to a finger’s touch.
Hello, Windows 10 my old friend.
Of course, I don’t know what the real reason for the bricking can be — broken motherboard, some other problem from a cause I know not what, it will all be revealed at some point.
Fortunately, all my data is backed up, but there is a distinct possibility that I’ll have to rebuild all the apps and programs and such from scratch, as I did when the ASUS was fresh out of the box.
Fuck.
Bear with me while I go through the travails of the modern digital world, again.
Posting may be light for a few days, I’m sorry.
Sign Of The Times
In a promo piece from Kohl’s (normally the squarest of Midwest retailers):
JHC.
Well, I won’t be buying any of those.
Goodbye To All That
Longtime Readers will be very familiar with my penchant for travel, especially to the U.K. and parts of Euroland.
However, as I’ve been paging through my travel pic folders to find landscapes and cityscapes to post on Thursdays, a feeling of gloom and melancholy is starting to make its appearance.
I’m not sure I want to travel internationally again.
There are several reasons I make that statement, but let me deal with the easier one first.
I’m getting old, and while my overall health is pretty good (according to my doctor, not just for my age but for just about any age), I’m not sure how I’d feel about, for example, climbing up the steep cobbled street from the ferry dock at Meersburg to the town itself on top of the hill.
Hell, it was tough when I last did it — in 2004 — so now, over two decades later… you get my drift. And I loved Meersburg, with a passion.
Also, when strolling around cities like Paris or London, I thought nothing of walking all day — I mean, for those who are familiar with the cities, from Notre Dame to Sacré Coeur and back to our hotel next to the Sorbonne; or from the V&A Museum to World’s End at the other end of Chelsea, and back.
Either of those little jaunts would take me two days, now.
Which brings me to my second thought.
Even if I could do those walks, I’m not so sure I’d want to because of the crime that seems to have overtaken most of Europe’s cities. It’s not that I’m afraid of becoming a victim of some Rolex Ripper on Bond Street or Rue Royale; I’m not a fearful person by nature — but I can be an aggressive person when faced by thuggishness of that kind, and I don’t want to deal with the possibility of having to explain to an unsympathetic bobby or gendarme why some little scrote is lying there screaming with a broken arm or, for that matter, having to deal with the NHS or its French equivalent when said little scrote hacked at me with a machete because I had the effrontery to refuse his attempt at property redistribution.
And we all know how the Filth in Britishland regard the matter of self-defense Over There. Nothing puts a damper on the travel experience like having to explain to some judge why you didn’t want to just let the little choirboy take your property and shake your head sorrowfully at your loss. That you applied your walking-stick to the little shit’s cranium (in lieu of having the old 1911 at hand) would no doubt land you in Serious Trouble, just as your attitude to the cops being more or less on the criminal’s side rather than on yours might also result in the cop’s uniform being ruined by the flow of blood (his).
Altogether, not a prospect worth spending thousands of dollars (which I don’t have) just to visit their poxy paradise.
And then there’s this little nugget, from one of my most-favored places on the planet:
Most famous districts in Vienna are in the heart of the city and during summer or at Christmas season they become overcrowded, which can lead to pickpocketing, mugging and even terrorist attacks. In these areas frequented by tourists, bus and train stations, people around you need to be carefully watched and your possessions should be kept close to you.
WTF? Now add to that the chance that some “migrant” takes offense that your female companion doesn’t have her head covered to his satisfaction… do you see where I’m going with this?
Fuck that for a tale.
One might think, given all the above, that the places to visit in Europe would be those which haven’t allowed untrammeled African- or Muslim incursions. We’re talking here of Poland and Hungary, for instance.
But here’s my problem. I would love — love — to visit those two countries, but I’m completely unfamiliar with both their languages, and honestly, I’m not sure that my old brain can handle learning even a smattering of either with the facility that used to be one of my strengths.
This really sucks.
So it may be that at long last, I’ll have to trim Ye Olde Bucquette Lyste of the travel items therein, sadly and regretfully.
I think I’ll just go to the range, assuming my eyesight is still up to the task of seeing the sights of a gun instead of the sights of a foreign city.
Bah.
Handing Over The Reins
Read this story and see if you don’t get a slow burn, or even an RCOB:
An Australian small business owner says she lost about $50,000 after Instagram suspended her accounts over what she describes as an innocent photo of three dogs.
Rochelle Marinato, managing director at Pilates World Australia, recently received an email from Instagram’s parent company Meta stating her accounts had been suspended because the image breached community guidelines relating to ‘child sexual exploitation, abuse and nudity’.
The photo had been mistakenly flagged by an AI moderator which confused the image of the dogs with those of children.
She appealed the decision and sent 22 emails to Meta, but received no assistance from the global tech giant, which owns Instagram, Facebook, Threads, Messenger and WhatsApp.
Ms Marinato claimed her story was just one of many and that the problem was widespread.
She also said it was impossible to talk to a human at Meta to explain her situation.
‘I couldn’t get a human to look at it. Clearly any human that looks at this photo is going to know it’s completely innocent,’ she said.
‘You can’t contact a human at Meta. There’s no phone number, there’s no email, there’s nothing and you’re literally left in the dark.’
To paraphrase Insty: And Skynet smirks.