quote:

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Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:

Any road, I would like to nominate the hell of upgrades.

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Can I nominate specifically the sentence used by our beloved computer support people: "You shouldn't expect every upgrade to be an improvement."

Just stop and think about that one for a while.

[ 20. March 2017, 16:00: Message edited by: Leorning Cniht ]
 

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Posted by Schroedinger's cat (# 64) on :
 
Well, we have three entries. Let me see.

Computers as a whole, I struggle to put into Room 101, not least because I would be out of work. That may seem selfish, but computers can be really positive. I think your real problem is people, especially people who blame computers for everything.

Windows, I often condemn it to hell at work. But I have also been using a Mac these last few days, and I realise that Windows is not as bad as I thought, so sorry. Windows has to stay.

But upgrades - ah yes. My computer has turned itself off twice in the last week because it felt that it's need to do an upgrade was more important than anything else.

So yes, computer upgrades get into Room 101. I think, in fairness, Leorning Cniht gets this, because people who think their updates are more important than my work are even worse.
 

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Posted by Leorning Cniht (# 17564) on :
 
OK - new category.

Sports.
 

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Posted by North East Quine (# 13049) on :
 
I condemn school sports to Room 101. Specifically the aspect of school sports designed to humiliate the slower, fatter or clumsier students. Examples include allowing sporty people to pick sides, with the sportier students picked first, until only the hopeless cases are left, and appeals are made to the gym teacher along the lines of "We don't have to have her, do we? She's useless!" etc.
 

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Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on :
 
NEQ's entry is like shooting fish in a barrel.

I'd like to consign football. Not so much football itself, which could happily go on as far as I'm concerned, and I can happily ignore. And therein lies the reason for consignment. I can't ignore it. It won't let me. Not it itself, but too many of its devoted fans.

I consign it for the arseholes who mocked me throughout my childhood for not being into their obsession.

I consign it for the noisy arseholes who take over town centres on Saturday afternoons shouting about the bunch of overpaid ponces through whom they celebrate vicarious victories.

I consign it for the takeover of the telly every two year for weeks at a time for the World Cup and some European thing that they go on about.

I consign it for making Saturday afternoon radio virtually unlistenable to because nearly every fucking station interrupts the music every few minutes for some juvenile man-child to shout "Goooooooaaaaaal!!!!" in a way that no-one over the age of about 9 should think is cool.

I consign it for taking up valuable slots on otherwise serious and interesting news magazines on Radio 4, like the Today programme.

I consign it for having a "season" that lasts most of the year, and even when it's not "in season", still dominating the news because of bickering about transfers and managers being fired.

I consign it for being so all-pervasive, so divisive, so always fucking there.
 

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Posted by Lyda*Rose (# 4544) on :
 
I consign post-game/match interviews to Room 101 because there isn't a remotely original or interesting way of talking about a possibly exciting (or not) sporting event that is now over. They all say the same things over and over and over in the same lingo. Same questions, same answers, same yawners.
 

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Posted by Leorning Cniht (# 17564) on :
 
Lyda*Rose: post-game interviews. This one's going to escape. Not because I think they're interesting: I find them exceedingly dull, because I don't really care about the sport they're talking about. But they escape because I'm a geek who finds value in an analysis of what happened, and so imagine that for people who are sports geeks, such interviews have interest.

Which brings us to a close-run contest between NEQ's compulsory school sports / ritual humiliation of the slow, fat, and uncoordinated, and Karl's ubiquitous beautiful game.

Both have their merits.

As a fully-paid-up member of the plodding along at the back wheezing fraternity, I sympathize with NEQ's position. But despite being picked last on most occasions, I grew to almost enjoy school sports. I didn't have to perform better than the athletic types - I just had to try do do a bit better then the other team's crappy athletes.

But at the end of the day, there can only be one winner, and Karl is going to walk away with the cup for his culturally dominant arseholes forcing their culture on the rest of us.
 

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Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on :
 
Why thank you. I can only feel sorry for whatever else gets consigned to the vault of horrors from this point on.

New category - Public Transportation
 

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Posted by Sioni Sais (# 5713) on :
 
I have to use public transport to get to work and I would like to consign to Room 101 those who manage, administer, arrange funding and legislate for public transport without having to use public transport to get to work.
 

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Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on :
 
I would like to consign the Pacer trains which are converted buses STILL used on our journey to Manchester.




Pacer trains

🚂 🚂
 

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Posted by Doone (# 18470) on :
 
My suggestion is Southern Rail for its overcrowded, late and expensive trains, compounded by strikes, stoppages and treating the public as pawns in some sort of surreal game.
 

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Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on :
 
So we have three candidates. And by gum it's hard to choose between them.

Pacers are an easy target. And yet such a deserving one. Anyone who's alternately had their teeth set on edge by the squealing of one, and then shaken out of their sockets by the ride, will have every sympathy with Boogie's desire to never have to ride one again.

Public transport systems are always designed by people who don't use them, just as was also observed about state schools and the NHS in Yes Minister long long ago. It's absolutely maddeening; there are times when the quickest way by train from Sheffield to Darnall, for example, is to get a train to Kiveton Park, which passes through Darnall but doesn't stop, then get the next one back towards Sheffield, which does. About 15 miles to do 2. This could not possibly have been designed by anyone who ever had to actually use the service.

Southern Rail, with its strikes and delays - I don't have direct experience of this one but I keep on hearing about it. I feel the pain, but overcrowded, late and expensive trains happen everywhere, so it's hard to particularly pick on Southern Rail particularly without putting all the other operators in with them (and why not, I hear you cry - well, because no-one made the case for it, as if it needs making...)

The buses on wheels (actually a design based on a bus, rather than actually made from one) or the rubbish systems - it's a hard call, and my heart wants to see the Pacers condemned to Room 101. But, you know, taking the long view, the buggers will rust eventually or fall apart, or shake themselves to bits. Crappily and thoughtlessly designed systems on the other hand will always be with us unless someone boots them into the Outer Darkness, so Sioni takes the prize. Don't leave it on the train because you know it'll never get to lost property. Or at least never get out.
 

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Posted by Sioni Sais (# 5713) on :
 
OK, my category is that child-substitute, furry companion, servant, slave or boss. Yes, which kind of pet should be consigned to Room 101.
 

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Posted by Imaginary Friend (# 186) on :
 
I nominate lap dogs.

I mean, seriously. If you want a dog then get a proper dog. One that can bark and chase sticks. If you want a rodent, then get a rodent. Trying to do both at once and ending up with a tiny, yappy, fragile animal which has to be carried everywhere and looks utterly ridiculous is the worst of every world.
 

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Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on :
 
Furry Psychopaths, aka cats.

I speak as staff to a cat (the idea that these things have owners is laughable. And as for masters, as with dogs? )

Firstly because they use their psychic mind control powers to make us actually like them, despite being sadistic balls of spitting hatred.

Secondly, because despite all we do for them, they reward us by finding inoffensive bits of wildlife (mice are totally inoffensive when they're outside) and doing one or more of the following:

1. Leaving them in the shadowy netherworld between life and death, twitching gently, in the middle of the floor.

2. Eating them then throwing them up again half an hour later.

3. Eating them, keeping them down, and costing you a fortune in worming tablets, during the administration of which they tear your hands to pieces.

4. Dismantling them and leaving the bits (when they find you can't put them back together again and they don't work afterwards even if you try) all over the kids' bedroom floors.

They have slighty ornamental value, but they even ruin that when they walk away with their tail in the air showing you their teatowel holder.

Bastards the lot of them.
 

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Posted by Lyda*Rose (# 4544) on :
 
I assign tarantulas (which some people adore as pets ) to Room 101 because they give me serious heebie-jeebies. Which makes them true inhabitants of 1984's Room 101 for people like me who are arachnophobes.
 

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Posted by Sioni Sais (# 5713) on :
 
The time has come (at last, I hear) to announce the winner of the competition and therefore the loser who/which will be consigned to Room 1101.

Three diverse contenders with pros and cons, so here goes:

Lapdogs: indeed, are they dogs? They do few of the things dogs do, but maybe that isn't such a bad thing.

Cats: these must be the Marmite of pets; you love them or hate them, but there is no middle ground. Almost worth a Dead Horse thread.

Tarantulas are unlikely pets, but I know people who keep rats and swear to their charm and sociability. All spiders are industrious so this objection to Tarantulas so I guess this points to simple arachnophobia, which is nobosy's fault, least of all the spider.

That makes it a straight fight between cat and (lap)dog. Had it been cat and dog (as a whole) cat would have to go, but lapdogs really have none of the virtues of a real dog and pound-for-pound the vet bills are staggering.

Imaginary Friend therefore wins this round and cats survive, bringing them down to eight lives.
 

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Posted by Lyda*Rose (# 4544) on :
 
(I do like fancy rats. But not tarantulas, oh no.)
 

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Posted by Imaginary Friend (# 186) on :
 
Okay, the new category is famous evangelicals.
 

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Posted by Mamacita (# 3659) on :
 
The first evangelical into Room 101 needs to be Pat Robertson. At 85, he is well past his sell-by date for headlining a TV show. He has gone past the usual evangelical pronouncements on [insert favorite Dead Horse here] and has been making truly wackadoo comments like feminism leading women into witchcraft or the Haiti 2010 earthquake being a curse from God.

(More here )

[ 30. March 2017, 01:38: Message edited by: Mamacita ]
 

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Posted by Sioni Sais (# 5713) on :
 
I would like to nominate Franklin Graham, son of Billy. Billy Graham might not be everyone's cup of tea but WTF would his son be doing if he had been born Joe Schmoe? Above all he needs a Grady Wilson, to keep him on track, but I'm not sure he's the kind to listen to anyone, least of all his old man.

I have read that he has become a vegan, citing the experience of Daniel: does anyone have a convenient lion?
 

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Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on :
 
I'd like to nominate Jonathan Edwards.

"Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" is the sort of thing that totally buggers up my faith because I keep on living in fear that he was right.

So into Room 101 with him and let me believe in the love of God again.
 

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Posted by Amanda B. Reckondwythe (# 5521) on :
 
Not exactly famous evangelicals, but a priest who once told me in confession, "If you had been run over by a car on your way to confession, you'd have gone straight to hell!" And another who told me, "If you kept your hands on your rosary beads you wouldn't be doing that."
 

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Posted by Sipech (# 16870) on :
 
I would like to nominate John Haggee. I found him being given a slot on TBN UK a little while ago. He’s a hellfire and damnation preacher who is so filled by hate that the excess spews forth from his mouth like diarrhoea. The pinnacle of his stupidity, though, was found in the fact that his “ministry” largely revolves warning people against antichrists and yet he went and endorsed one for president of the United States!
 

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Posted by Imaginary Friend (# 186) on :
 
Okay, so we have four (and a half) nominations this time. And they are all very worthy.

Pat Robertson's slow descent into warped dementia is definitely a Bad Thing™, but given his advancing years I suspect that we won't have to worry about him for too much longer.

As for Franklin Graham, nepotism is definitely not something to be condoned. But these days, building a career based on your father's "successes" appears to be able to take you all the way to the White House, so I think this if rather small beer in comparison.

Endorsing the aforementioned father in his presidential bid is sadly de rigueur for these crackpots so while of course it is an idiotic position for a professed person of faith to take, perhaps John Haggee can be excused for simply trying to fit in with the crowd and we can move on.

But for propagating the enduring misery caused by the doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement, I think KLS's nomination of Jonathan Edwards has to win it. The sooner that theology is banished to a place that never sees the light of day, the better the world will be.
 

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Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on :
 
Almost feel sorry for him with all the football fans in there.

So it falls to me to nominate a new category, and I invite you to knock yourselves out over Dining Out
 

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Posted by Sioni Sais (# 5713) on :
 
Oooh! This is quite specific.

If I decide to have steak, which is relatively often as we aren't equipped to cook steak properly at home (ie, for a short period of time at a very high temperature), then a few minutes after we have been served some obsequious smarm-pot of a waiter will ask "How is your steak sir?".

Not a word about the chips (soggy), the salad (tired) or the other vegetables (over cooked and uninspired) just the meat. I can't blame the waiter tbh, s/he has been instructed by some suit who hasn't served food since they worked at McDonald's in their college days.
 

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Posted by Pigwidgeon (# 10192) on :
 
My nomination for Dining Out is the restaurants (and they are legion) that treat single diners -- especially women -- as if they have the plague when they ask for a single table. First they question you: "How many?" "One," you answer (after all, you could be meeting someone, or your dining companion could be parking the car). But then they repeat it, "Just one?!?" "Yes," you reply. "Do you wanna sit at the bar?" "No, I would like a table." So they take you to the very special table they reserve for the likes of you. If they don't have a table next to the entrance to the restrooms, they'll sit you right next to the entrance to the kitchen.

They don't seem to realize that single women generally tip quite generously, and since they're not chatting with their companion(s) they're going to be freeing up that table a lot more quickly than that couple over there at the premium table.
 

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Posted by Leorning Cniht (# 17564) on :
 
How to compete with that?

Well, I'll nominate waiters that want to be your best friend. This is probably a pond thing, with my natural British reserve being set on edge by American egalitarianism or something, but I'm not really interested in Hello, my name is Carl telling me what his college major is, asking if I'm here for a special occasion, or telling me about how much he enjoys the main course that I have just selected.

The kind of relationship I'm looking for with Carl is one where I order food, he brings it, and then retires discreetly to somewhere from where I can summon him with a glance or gesture if I require his services.
 

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Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on :
 
I nominate plates that are not plates - boards, slates, you name it.

Arrrrrrgggghhhh!

Ceramic plates have been with us for millennia for good reason, they work. None of the other nonsense does the job of keeping your food in just the right place and being hygienic to wash up.
 

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Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on :
 
Well, I was going to have trouble awarding this one, but not now.

Sioni - a very annoying thing, yes, but as you yourself said, very specific. Now, if you'd more generally fingered the annoying habit of staff asking you how your meal is half way through it (I'm probably on the ASD spectrum, but even neurotypicals tell me they don't know if this is a politeness question or a real one), you could have been holding the key even now to the vault.

LC - I can see how that grates. But compared with the other extreme, the sniffy waiter who makes it abundantly clear that only a neanderthal philistine would order that wine with that dish, it's a minor irritation. As someone who prefers his dead cow, if not a Burnt Offering to Odin, at least cooked so it doesn't bleed, I've had my share of sniffy foodies, so I'd prefer the over-familiar one, really.

Which brings us to looking down on singletons. And as someone who endured a Sad Wenchless Condition (not my words! Not my words!) for many years, I sympathise with any negativity towards the alone. But then Boogie swept in.

Boogie's nomination needs no justification. She's Just Right. But for those who don't realise how bad this can be, I give you http://wewantplates.com

Boogie - the floor is yours.

[ 02. April 2017, 16:05: Message edited by: Karl: Liberal Backslider ]
 

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Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on :
 
New category -

Items of clothing


 

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Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on :
 
Ties.

What other item of clothing is so:

*Pointless
*Functionless
*Uncomfortable
*Ubiquitously required?

I mean, why? It's like a boy's initiation into a curse that will remain with him until he retire, the day his school uniform or dress code require he place this stylised noose around his neck. And there it'll stay, that faint feeling of strangulation, rendering it impossible to open his top button in hot weather without transgressing the Rules Of What Is Considered Smart, lending an air of artificiality to the marking Hatches, Matches and Dispatches, adding an unwelcome layer of discomfort to job interviews, and getting in the butter at breakfast when he's still too addled to notice what's happening.

And they mark you into the tribe of your oppressors. The man who refuses you a loan will wear one. The man who fires you from your job will wear one. The man who refuses you entry to a club will be wearing one. Every bad decision that impacts you, if it's made by a man, will be made with one wearing a tie.

Fortunately the stranglehold (see what I did there?) is loosening, but it needs acceleration. Let's finally declare "no more" to these stupid pieces of cloth and stick ties, once and for bloody ever, into where they belong. Room 101!
 

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Posted by Leorning Cniht (# 17564) on :
 
Branded clothing.

There are clothes that are well-made. There are clothes that are well-cut, and flatter your figure. Clothes come in all different styles, fabrics, and colours, and all these are valuable.

But then there is cheap clothing which is apparently rendered both desirable and expensive by the addition of a clothing company's advert. It's as pointless as the Kardashians, who as I understand are famous for being famous, and are desirable because they are famous.

It's a massive ponzi scheme. They've got no bottom (if you can excuse the statement in reference to the Kardashians, who famously do have bottoms). Some brand is "in" for entirely random reasons unrelated to the quality of the clothing, and therefore any clothing carrying that brand's logo is high-status and desirable, regardless of its quality.
 

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Posted by Sipech (# 16870) on :
 
I'm going to nominate men's trousers.

I'm not the tallest of people, at 5 foot 6/7 inches. As a consequence, I have an inside leg measurement of 29 inches. I'm also not overly skinny. Not fat; just not skinny, so need a 34 inch waist. But men's trousers are designed for how fashionistas think I should be shaped, rather than how I am shaped. So most trousers that have a 34 inch waist (or even a 32) have an inside leg that is for someone far taller. There are only one or two places I can go to get clothes, simply because shops won't stock trousers for the slightly shorter man.
 

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Posted by la vie en rouge (# 10688) on :
 
And women's trousers can join them. Also shaped for what the fashion industry thinks people should look like, not what they actually do look like. My impossible dream: finding a pair of trousers that fits in the waist AND the hips AND the thighs.
 

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Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on :
 
I agree entirely about the trousers and branded clothing.

But I can't even begin to imagine what it must be like having to wear a tie. It must be pure torture.

As a child I wanted to be a boy, as I'd noticed men get all the best jobs etc etc. But I'll give all that up not to have to wear a tie!

In they go to Room 101!
 

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Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on :
 
Me again? I'll be running out of ideas!

New category - Telly (that's TV to our friends in the colonies)
 

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Posted by Leorning Cniht (# 17564) on :
 
Since moving to the US, I can only possibly make one nomination here.

Adverts. US TV is basically unwatchable because of the frequency of adverts. You get a few minutes of programme, and then - oh look, it's a middle-aged man with haemorrhoids, and a woman who inexplicably selects a pair of tight white shorts to go rock climbing. They aren't nearly so omnipresent in the UK - the advert breaks on ITV are even useful for the purposes of brewing tea and going to the loo - but they are the reason I don't watch TV in the US.
 

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Posted by Amanda B. Reckondwythe (# 5521) on :
 
News anchors who engage in silly, mindless prattle instead of reading the news.
 

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Posted by Schroedinger's cat (# 64) on :
 
Reality TV shows.

OK, they were interesting once, but they are tedious. They generally involve people being laughed at by vile humans for trying to do something useful.

So this is anything involving Simon Cowell, for starters.

And stuff like Gogglebox - I don't want to watch boring people talking about TV shows that I wasn't interested in the first time.

And "Celebrity" reality shows - Big Brother, The Jungle - populated by people who I (and many others) have never heard of, who usually feature in shows that I have only barely heard of. Normally other reality shows.

Can we not get something decent on instead of this tripe?
 

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Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on :
 
Cat, I hear you, really I do. Pink Floyd thought fifteen channels of shit on the TV to choose from was bad enough. Luxury! Luxury!

Amanda, fortunately we don't get too much of this, except on local news, and who bothers with that? Local news has always been crap; aliens could land in Abbeydale Park in Sheffield and it'd probably get a mention towards the end of Look North; meanwhile a lost dog in Leeds will be the lead story. But it's been like that since I were a lad (replace Sheffield with Bedford and Leeds with Norwich and you've got Look East, or, worse, God help us, Anglia TV) Somehow we survived, so we must look further I think.

Which brings us to LC's adverts. I hate to tell you this, but it's getting that bad here now. The pattern is this. Hour documentary. Four five minute advert breaks. So that's four ten minute segments. The last five minutes before "the break" tells you what will be after "the break". Then the first five minutes after "the break" will tell you what happened before "the break".

There's therefore ten minutes of actual content. And that's commonly shite.

I think they have some kind of random title generator for most digital channels - it mixes phrases like "best/worst ever", "from hell", "celebrity", "restaurant", "Gordon Ramsay's", "mad and dangerous" just to see what comes out.

So, because the phenomenon LC has put their finger on is such a Clear and Present danger, I think it warrants a robust and thorough solution. So into Room 101 go adverts, especially in their current digital telly incarnation. Ker-clink!

LC - your round.
 

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Posted by Leaf (# 14169) on :
 
Paging Leorning Cniht, paging Leorning Cniht, please report to the Circus deck for game continuation!
 

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Posted by Leorning Cniht (# 17564) on :
 
Sorry folks - life happened. New topic coming up.
 

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Posted by Leorning Cniht (# 17564) on :
 
Your neighbour hosts a party. You're having a good time, you've met an interesting person or two who you think might be a valued addition to your social circle, and are just getting yourself a new drink when he appears and starts going on. And on. And on. And on.

Yes, it's the party bore, and he has you cornered. What's he talking about?

[ 06. April 2017, 01:33: Message edited by: Leorning Cniht ]
 

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Posted by Sipech (# 16870) on :
 
He's talking about the brand new guttering that he's just got, along with all the intricate details of how the drainage works. This is combined with what he believes is an amusing anecdote regarding the previous state of his guttering, which resulted in water being in a place it ought not to have been.

And I'm supposed to feign interest in this.
 

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Posted by Schroedinger's cat (# 64) on :
 
I talk to myself at parties. So this always happens....


Anyhow, he is talking about his lower management job in an office somewhere, doing something, and most of his talk is about people above him (who are stupid) and the few below him (who are lazy). He always refers to them by their pay-grades, which is confusing. He discusses internal processes that nobody else ha a clue about, and laughs when people get the procedures wrong.

"And then he filled out a Z-332, instead of a Z-222a. You would have though as an S4 he would know the difference. And it came back from division with a comment - ha ha ha - about whether he was - is was so funny - mistaken or wanted that many staplers! I ask you. The fun we have!"
 

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Posted by Jack the Lass (# 3415) on :
 
He's talking about how he got to the party venue from home, primarily about every last intricacy of the route he took, including diversions because of roadworks and shortcuts that he knows because he's so clever.

If you don't get away from him in time, he'll also tell you about each of the idiot drivers he encountered on the way, precisely what they did that was so enraging, and what clever things he thought or said in response to their idiocy.
 

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Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on :
 
He's a she and she talks endlessly about make-up and beauty treatments.


 

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Posted by Pigwidgeon (# 10192) on :
 
He's telling me about his recent golf game -- every stroke, every hole. He seems to think golf is interesting. (The only thing more boring than playing golf is hearing about someone else playing it.)
 

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Posted by Sioni Sais (# 5713) on :
 
Oh I don't know. Anything financial, especially what a great mortgage deal people have is bloody tedious.

As I have no smalltalk whatsoever I take refuge in the kitchen. You get all the best people there, either doing useful stuff or talking about food, which is OK too.
 

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Posted by Leorning Cniht (# 17564) on :
 
Well, we seem to have quite a selection of bores to choose from. Perhaps we can introduce them to each other, and then go off somewhere else.

But we can only pick one to exile forever to "that table" at the wedding, so which one is it to be?

Jack the Lass offers up the road bore, and I feel her pain. But every now any then he'll mention that that pub outside Leighton Buzzard - you know the one, it's on the main road a couple of miles past the petrol station - has new management and now keeps a decent pint, or some other nugget of potentially useful information. So he's going to escape.

Schroedinger's cat offers the small-minded office bureaucrat, who can't see past the minutiae of his pointless employment. He's dull, but somehow mundane.

Sipech's Gutter Man and Sioni Sais's mortgage bore are rather similar - both tedious in the extreme, unless you happen by chance to be in the market for a gutter or a mortgage, but just ordinarily boring.

Pigwigeon offers the golfer, who is certainly a contender in this little bouquet of bordedom, but the saving grace of golfers is that they tend to seek out other golfers to regale with their tales, so they're a little easier for normal people to evade.

Which brings us to the inheritor of this tontine of tedium. It's Boogie's Makeup Princess, who wins the prize for her sheer obliviousness, and inability to understand that there are members of her sex who just don't care how much volume her new mascara has.

So off she goes to the bores table at the wedding, carefully tucked away in room 101, where she can tell all the other ladies at the table about how she's just become a consultant for some multi-level marketing makeup company, and would love to have them all come to one of her parties, where she'll show them this wonderful new way to apply bronzer.

[ 06. April 2017, 16:10: Message edited by: Leorning Cniht ]
 

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Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on :
 
Phew - rid of her at last!

Next subject food.
 

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Posted by la vie en rouge (# 10688) on :
 
Clean eating. Pseudo-scientific nonsense, designed to induce guilt and persuade people to eschew all the foodstuffs (wheat, eggs, meat, dairy, potatoes) that have been keeping civilisation alive for the last six millennia. My theory: religion is out of style so attractive middle class people on Instagram have taken up organic turnips as a means of cleansing the soul.
 

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Posted by Sipech (# 16870) on :
 
I would like to nominate mayonnaise.

I like all the things that go into mayonnaise, but once you put them all together, the whole is far less than the sum of its parts. It looks pretty horrible, has an unappealing texture and when you add it to any food, it inevitably makes it worse.

It's foul-tasting, entirely unnecessary and should be banished for good.
 

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Posted by Amanda B. Reckondwythe (# 5521) on :
 
The "just add water and serve" fad that defined quick on-the-run meals of my youth has given way to "gourmet feasts delivered to your door in a box" -- all you have to do is read the easy-to-follow preparation instructions included, cook the resulting miracle, and serve. No consideration of the fact that the cost of just one of these modern day delights probably equals my entire weekly grocery budget.
 

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Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on :
 
Mayonnaise is nectar and will not go near Room 101!

I agree, to an extent, about the ready prepared recipes - but I would buy them if I could afford them - it's the messing about which puts me off cooking!

Silly middle class fads (NOT true food intolerances) it is. In fact, the fads make it far worse for those who have genuine food needs.

In they all go!
 

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Posted by la vie en rouge (# 10688) on :
 
Yay! Clean eating must go!

Next: holidays.
 

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Posted by Leaf (# 14169) on :
 
Room 101 can receive the Labour Day holiday.

I am all for having a day to honour workers, and encourage observance of same. It's the timing of the Labour Day holiday - the first weekend of September - that fucks up everything.

Got a kid in school? Half the time school starts, unforgivably, on the Friday before the Labour Day weekend. Nobody likes this. You gear up everybody to get back into a routine which instantly falls apart and is somehow even harder to resume.

Got church programs you want to start in the fall? Ha! Not until sometime after Labour Day, because until then people are still at "the lake" (euphemism for cottage or cabin).

The worst of it is, there is absolutely no recognition of the ostensible reason for the holiday - no workers' parades, programs on workers' safety or rights, the history of the labour union movement. Nope, it's just a stupid-ass day stuck awkwardly at a time when things should be gearing up, not grinding down.

For the liturgically-minded: It's like having the Sharing of the Peace immediately after the Collect of the Day.
 

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Posted by Sipech (# 16870) on :
 
For holidays, I would like to nominate Bob from Stourbridge. I came across him (or rather, he found me) during my last holiday. He is a prime example of a holiday leech.

It's the random stranger who, solely because you happen to be from the same country and speak (pretty much) the same language, that you're going to be new best buddies.

I know they mean well, and in their eyes, they're trying to be friendly, but I go on holiday to be alone. I spend all my working days surrounded by people, so please allow me a few days of peace that only come round once every few years.

Yet Bob from Stourbridge, with your slightly right wing politics and your misogynistic jokes, you're never going to be friend, and my memories of the Swiss Alps will be forever tainted by your dirty laughter and the smell of your cigarettes.
 

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Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on :
 
I nominate Going Home

It overshadows the latter half of the holiday. Once you know there are fewer days to go than you've already had; that you're more than half way through, you start thinking of work, and having to get up at stupid o'clock again to get the kids off to school, and not getting to the pub much again, and all the stuff you went on holiday to get away from.

It never seems it's been long enough.

And then when the day comes, you have an anxiety-fuelled commute wondering what they've found out about, I mean, what's happened or gone wrong in your absence. Then you get there and there's the reality of the pile of emails and phone messages and urgh

So I wish to consign Getting Back from Holiday to Room 101
 

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Posted by la vie en rouge (# 10688) on :
 
Labour day – nah. The solution is to move to a sensible country where it falls on May 1st. And generally you won’t find me griping about days off.

I get Karl’s point about coming home, but the only way to avoid it is never to go on holiday at all, which makes it a bit of a necessary evil.

Bob from Stourbridge, OTOH, has no redeeming features whatsoever. Sipech, your turn.
 

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Posted by Sipech (# 16870) on :
 
Thank you, La Vie en Rouge.

Our topic of collective griping shall be: family traditions.

What is that your family insists on doing, possibly that few others do, that really winds you up or is just still a mystery after all these years?
 

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Posted by kingsfold (# 1726) on :
 
There are so many.....
How to choose between them!
 

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Posted by Sioni Sais (# 5713) on :
 
Every year, usually some time in the summer, the family gets together and we decide that after last year's disaster we are going to have beef for Christmas dinner. Everyone likes it, hot or cold. Yes we say, we'll definitely have beef. Hooray I say to myself.

Come December however, Eldest Son and Younger Daughter make it clear that turkey is a Tradition and is therefore an immovable feast. Bugger, it's that same dry bird with a distinctly unpleasant taste again. TBH I'd rather eat corned beef than turkey.
 

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Posted by Amanda B. Reckondwythe (# 5521) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Sioni Sais:
Eldest Son and Younger Daughter make it clear that turkey is a Tradition and is therefore an immovable feast.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Sipech:
OK, so we have our 3 contenders:

1) Turkey for Christmas dinner
2) The fastidious aunt
3) Adult family Christmas presents

Everyone always talks about abandoning turkey but the one year we did it, everyone was a little wistful. It's almost as though it's meant to be a little disappointing.

Eccentric family members can add a little colour to a family gathering, though unreasonable behaviour can quickly descend into resentment.

Exchanging presents certainly shifts emphasis, as one aims to please another rather than look at what you've received. Though it seems that a lack of imagination is what results in socks, more than the ongoing tradition.

All in all, I think Miss Amanda's pernickety great aunt gets sent to Room 101. Others can, and do, put themselves out for you, so you should show a bit more gratitude.

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I mis-read that and thought you'd nominated Miss Amanda for Room 101

Tubbs
 

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