Sunday 16 February 2003
Rant On
/rant on ...
1. USAns
I think this one is pretty much self-explanatory at the current time. Dressed-up war-mongering xenophobic fat bastards who are incapable of coming right out and saying what they're really wanting to take the whole fucking world and everyone in it to war for: "just give us yer oil, baaaabe". Argh.
2. Restaurants With "No Booking" Policies
... who then go and get booked out. When you want a romantic evening out. And food, now, for fuck's sake.
However I've found that chucking one of my patented incredibly-sweet-and-polite-and-beautifully-projected (read: you'd hear me at the back of the Carnegie, wearing earplugs) shitfits right in the middle of the floor works wonders. It was a damn good meal too. And I don't think we'll have the same trouble again; we'd be on "VIP" status now as (a) we asked for chopsticks and (b) I ordered the dishes in Cantonese. This in rather startling comparison to the real quality at the next table; swilling beer, grinding out cigs (in a no smoking area) in the bottom of their glasses and ordering curry and chips. In a posh Chinese restaurant, no less. I believe I shall leave "restaurant manners" for another rant, though.
3. In flight pretzels
What the fuck is it with airlines switching from doling out peanuts with pre-dinner drinkies to icky salty poisonous gluten-loaded pretzels? And not even providing a choice??? Okay I know a lot of people are allergic to nuts, but hello? Coeliac Disease is more common? Get with it and provide a choice so I don't have to take my packet of illegal cashews and raisins on board. Dicks.
4. Lord of the Rings Shops
I'm crossposting this from Elsewhere because it's really getting on my nerves, up my nose and under my skin - a state made worse by seeing The Two Towers yet again on Saturday and not being able to get the Eomer figurine anywhere waaaaaah (and of course I'd never take it out of it's packaging and take it to bed with me or pose it in questionable acts .... no, not me, nope ... though the 6" figure would be about right for my Breyers ... ).
The big, big problem I have with the Official Lord of the Rings Movies site is it's shop and "fan club" - and the same goes for other "official LotR" sites - is that all stores and products are USAn driven, to be paid in USAn dollars, and items are often not able to be shipped outside of the US. This pisses me off particularly - and okay, I'm probably the only one - because the entire LotR project was such a specifically New Zealand-Australian collaboration. The directors and writers, cast (apart from the couple of Yanks and the wonderful Sir Ians and Mr Lee), crew, etc were predominantly NZ and/or Australian. Palming off the merchandising to US companies, creating monopolies and making it exceedingly difficult for ANZ fans to actually purchase products that they have an almost national pride in is just plain bloody disgusting. Yes, yes, I realise the producers and production company are USAn so a certain level of USAn-centricity is unavoidable, but cutting out the ANZ contingent is hardly reasonable, or sensible economics for that matter (hellooooo? market niche here ...). We can talk fair trade practices if you want as well. So there.
If I am 100% inaccurate on this point, and/or totally out of my tree then please let me know and point me in the direction of the relevant Australian/NZ online shopping sites because I'd really really like to purchase a fair whack of LotR merchandise, from bookmarks to t-shirts to chess-sets to figures. Grrr, arrrgghh (tm Mutant Enemy).
5. Current Fashion (Belfast, Norn Iron)
I went into town the other day, to run a few boring errands before meeting Tuxedo (after he'd finished work) for a Friday drinkie. My mission/s: to collect plane tickets, to get some lip balm and other toiletries at Boots; to buy a new T shirt; to buy a crop top/sports bra as 36 hour flights in a normal underwired bra is a torture yet to be properly realised by the Khmer Rouge, North Koreans, Iranians et al. Amnesty International, watch out for huge orders on Wonderbras coming from those countries.
Plane tickets - accomplished. Toiletries - more or less accomplished even though they didn't have my favourite type of lip balm, I mean for heaven's sake Carmex is the *business*, fuck stupid dumb-arsed bad-advertisements Nivea and Blistex.
T-shirt. Oh silly silly me. To think I should be so so misguided as to think that plain, V-necked t-shirts in a sort of pale khaki/olive shade would be easy to find. Actually, make that just a plain, V-necked t-shirt, period. Belfast has this thing for T-shirts with glittery writing and applique all over it; for ruffles and fringe and tassles and ties; for a worrying slip in trend back to leopard print and military/utility tops (in fluorescent yellow, I kid thee not) and anything but a plain V-necked t-shirt in sight. Jaysis fuck. I'm not even going to mention the absolute uselessness of even trying to look for a crop top. Feh.
This is one time I cannot wait to get back to Perth; okay it's not "Europe" or even the "United Kingdom" but Jesus Mary Joseph and all the Saints it has Target and Sussan. And Myer or course, with that wonderful 10% shareholders discount (*orgasmic sigh*).
I fear I shall be getting on that plane without a crop top bra or t-shirt - wonder if that'll make me a terrorist suspect ("hmmm, she's obviously hiding something ...." )
... /rant off.
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And for all those bloggers out there; here's an interesting project I've just come across, an English chap is putting Samuel Pepys' diary (1659 ->) into weblog form, using Moveable Type! It makes fascinating reading, being very gossipy and chatty, including all the daily trivia as well as the "big picture" happenings of the time. The annotations/comments by readers and historians are, if anything even more interesting and revealing (and Sam didn't exactly hold back in his private writings - he talks more about food than I do, and a helluva lot more about money ... not to mention the occasional bawdy and sexy reference!).