So it looks like our April trip to Oz has had to be called off, or at best postponed for a long time. Here are the five reasons why:
1) They won’t let me take any of my guns into the country
3) No cricket (the season has ended)
4) I hate snakes
…and the actual reason:
5) Angie can’t leave the country until her permanent residence visa gets approved, minimum six months’ time.
Now ask me whether we got a refund for our canceled air tickets from Qantas Fucking Airlines…
As Longtime Readers may know, one of my favorite stops when I’m in Britishland is Patisserie Valerie, which makes some of the best pastries I’ve ever tasted (along with outstanding croissants at breakfast time). Apparently, quality merchandise hasn’t been enough:
Patisserie Holdings plc announces today that, as a direct result of the significant fraud referred to in previous announcements, it has been unable to renew its bank facilities, and therefore regrettably the business does not have sufficient funding to meet its liabilities as they fall due.
As a consequence, the directors have appointed partners at KPMG as administrators to the company and its various subsidiaries.
The Chairman Luke Johnson has personally extended an unsecured, interest-free loan to help ensure that the January wages are paid to all staff working in the ongoing business.
This Loan will also assist the administrators in trading as many profitable stores as possible while a sale process is undertaken.
Needless to say, stores will be closed and people will lose their jobs.
This after one of its senior executives siphoned money out of the place to support his jet-set lifestyle. And if I could get hold of the asshole, his legal and financial problems would be the least of his problems.
Yes, I take my pastries that seriously.
According to this report, our household appliances are about to become snitches on just about every aspect of our lives:
One day, finding an oven that just cooks food may be as tough as buying a TV that merely lets you click between channels.
Internet-connected “smarts” are creeping into cars, refrigerators, thermostats, toys and just about everything else in your home. CES 2019, the gadget show opening Tuesday in Las Vegas, will showcase many of these products, including an oven that coordinates your recipes and a toilet that flushes with a voice command.
With every additional smart device in your home, companies are able to gather more details about your daily life. Some of that can be used to help advertisers target you — more precisely than they could with just the smartphone you carry.
And the news just gets better and better:
Despite the fact that there’s plenty of information available showing how these devices collect data about every aspect of your life and the manufacturers both use and sell that data on the open market, the majority of people seem to either not care or are willing to accept this “new reality” as part of living in the modern world.
Once again [sigh], it appears that I’m in a minority.
No doubt, there will appear at your local drugstores condoms which measure the number of thrusts, such data sent back to the manufacturers of K-Y “Duration” gel, said antidote for premature ejaculation to arrive at your bedside by special delivery within two strokes of initial insertion. And that’s a benevolent outcome for such intrusiveness.
Never mind that. Here’s a situation already in being:
T-Mobile, Sprint, and AT&T are selling access to their customers’ location data, and that data is ending up in the hands of bounty hunters and others not authorized to possess it, letting them track most phones in the country.
I don’t often agree with church leaders about, well, anything much. But I’m in absolute agreement with this man.
Allow me to offer a suggestion for a brand-new industry. When a new generation of “smart” phones arrived on the market and appeared to be “locked” to a specific carrier, within days we saw phones being unlocked by street vendors, sometimes right outside the stores selling the damn things.
I’m calling on all privacy-minded geeks of the world to unite, and to design apps or hacks or whatever to bypass the Big Brother mechanisms of these new infernal fink machines so that people (like me) who aren’t interested in letting Global MegaCorp Inc. snoop into the most intimate areas of our lives may avail themselves of their inventions.
I will be at the head of the fucking line to buy them. I promise.
My many rants about the shittiness of modern architecture are by now a fixture of this weblog, and I see no reason why I should end them anytime soon. Take a look at Britain’s Ugliest Buildings, and tell me why I shouldn’t pray for a series of Muslim assholes piloting airliners on one final mission for Allah, with these dungheaps as targets.
My least favorite (and it was a tough decision, let me tell you) is the so-called “Walkie-Talkie” building, not because of its inherent ugliness — it would actually work quite well in a more modern city e.g. Abu Dhabi — but because of the violence it has done to the skyline of one of my favorite cities in the world, viz.:
Somebody hide the TNT, willya?
[This should have appeared over a week ago, but I screwed up the posting date thingy, sorry. It’s still relevant, and now updated.]
From the Diplomad, talking about the revolting French:
France is in real trouble. I mean REAL trouble. That once great country, in fact, is dying. It, along with most of the rest of Europe, has a worthless leadership class that, as we saw at the WWI commemorations, sees nationalism as a bad thing. That leadership argues that true patriotism means going along with the elite’s efforts to kill the sense, the very idea of nation; it means allowing one’s culture, traditions, and history to be wiped away, and rewritten to justify the on-going social, economic and political destruction. To object, for example, to the importation of hundreds-of-thousands of poor, illiterate and often violent migrants from some of the most failed countries on earth, many espousing an ideology of hatred for all that France and Western Civilization represent, makes you a vile racist and a deplorable, one who should not be heard, a “far right” pariah. In other words, Citizen, fermé la bouche and let your betters decide for you. Nothing to see, keep moving. Leadership should be left to the professionals; do not attempt decision-making at home . . .
Before any of us start to crow at the Frogs’ expense, however, look carefully at the words “true patriotism means going along with the elite’s efforts to kill the sense, the very idea of nation; it means allowing one’s culture, traditions, and history to be wiped away, and rewritten to justify the on-going social, economic and political destruction” and try to deny that this is precisely what our own “leadership” class — political, academia and corporate — is doing to the United States. [Hint: you’ll fail]
Now go and buy some more ammo.
(Some of you may wonder why I haven’t suggested also buying a hi-viz jacket as used by the French protesters. That’s because we Murkins don’t do hi-viz — we do camo.)
I have a theory that people only eat airline meals out of boredom — anything to relieve the tedium of a long flight — because I absolutely cannot imagine another reason for subjecting your taste buds to the bland, horrible pablum that passes for airline “food”. And I cannot fathom why any airline would offer meals on a flight lasting less than three hours anyway, but they do.
So you can imagine my disinterest when yet another survey came out to see which airline offered the “healthiest, most nutritious / calorie-conscious / whatever” meals on their flights. Apparently, Alaska and Delta are at the top while at the bottom (to nobody’s surprise) comes Spirit Airlines (motto: “We invented cheap ‘n nasty travel, and we never forget to remind you of the fact”).
What amazes me is not that cheapskate Southwest Airlines (“Get where you’re going via five stops”) comes near the bottom of the list, but that they offer any food at all. As far as I’m concerned, Southwest passengers should get free water and maybe a small pack of nuts, and count their blessings — and ditto people who fly with Spirit and all the other “budget” airlines.
As most of my travel is transoceanic ergo long-haul, I always make sure to take my own food on board, which has two features in my favor: firstly, I can eat anytime I feel hungry and not when the airline thinks I should (e.g. 15 minutes before touchdown, the idiots), and secondly, I’m always assured that I’ll be getting food which I love to eat and is not nutritionally suspect (unless I decide to make it so, see below). I have no dietary restrictions other than voluntary ones, so I can take pretty much whatever I like.
The only problem I have is booze, which dehydrates me anyway, and coupled with the regular dehydration of high-altitude travel therefore gives me a real chance of a painful gout attack. So I never drink booze while flying — which kinda sucks, but waddya gonna do? — and instead, I take a couple of empty quart bottles through airport security (150ml? go fuck yourselves) and fill them up at a water fountain before boarding ($5 for a pint bottle of Dahani? go fuck yourselves, x 2). I know, I often complain about how much I hate the (non-)taste of plain water, but I figure that I can endure pretty much anything for eight or so hours, and water isn’t the worst of those, by any means. Additional note: the last couple of times I flew out of London’s Heathrow, there was a promotion inside the secure area-stores which offered a free 500ml bottle of Evian with purchase of the Daily Telegraph, an excellent bargain because it provided me with in-flight water and gave me something to read while eating my pre-flight meal of a Full English breakfast / fish ‘n chips (depending on time of day or mood).
I divide my on-board food into three categories: food, snacks and self-indulgence; and I take one of each kind every time I fly.
The travel food is simple: meat. Specifically, it’s 1lb of South African biltong (never American jerky because it’s too sweet and tastes like crap anyway). I know, biltong is generally nosebleed-expensive no matter where you buy it, but a pound lasts me for both outbound and return flights. Also, biltong (unlike jerky) is made of steak, so it’s quality meat. Sometimes I’ll take some droëwors (another South African delicacy, pronounced “drew-uh-vorce”) which is spicy dried sausage, and I buy it and the biltong at a little shop in Grapevine. That takes care of the protein, which is really all one needs to keep fed for 8-10 hours anyway. (Warning: both biltong and droëwors are highly addictive if you develop a taste for them. I grew up eating the stuff, so I’m screwed.)
My travel snack is likewise simple: salted cashew nuts, kept in a resealable plastic bag. I love the damn things, and a large bag is seldom far from reach at home anyway. (I know, they’re not as good for you as almonds, but I cannot stand the taste of almonds.) I take nearly 2lbs of cashews when I travel simply so that I don’t have to buy them for the return flight — go ahead and see how much cashews cost in the U.K. and Europe, and you’ll see why. Sometimes, if I remember to buy them ahead of time, I’ll also take some dried cherries, just for variation, or else I’ll buy a banana at one of the airport shops, if available.
My self-indulgence is even more simple: a large bar of chocolate. (I know, I know, don’t scold me.) I have over the past three years managed to if not conquer my addiction, then at least tame it. And if ever there’s a time when I can justify spoiling myself, it’s when I’m flying in a cramped coach-class airline seat for ten hours. No jury would convict. As for which specific chocolate, I leave the choice till the day of, or the day before my flight, but it’s generally drawn from Nestlé’s Aero, Milky Bar or Cadbury’s Dairy Milk. All are available at the World Market just up the road or at the Grapevine shop en route to DFW, so it’s an easy purchase. If I’m going to England, then I’ll forego those choices (because I can buy them Over There for the return trip), and take instead a bag of chocolate-covered cherries from Central Market on the outbound flight.
I think you’ll agree that the above yummies constitute a compelling alternative to bland, tasteless airline food. If you disagree with me, I don’t wanna hear about it. And please: I know that airline meals are “free”, and if ever there’s truth in the saying that you get what you pay for, that would be it.
Finally — and this can be important — my airline food and water supply makes me less vulnerable to long flight delays, even if overnight ones. There’s nothing worse than being told your flight has been postponed to the next day meaning an overnight stay in the airport, and finding out that all the restaurants have closed.
It’s all part of being prepared for the worst, isn’t it?