October 8th, 1999

Annoying Things II

  Here's me being a whining prat. For a change...

  Pokemon. What the hell is this? I once made the mistake of switching to channel 10 in the morning and was greeted by this. I don't get it, I don't think I want to get it. If I ever do get it, I hope there's an antidote. The show, the trading cards, the Nintendo games, the Nintendo special edition consoles, I hate it all!!

  The Australian Electoral Comission ad featuring a man asking us "Do you mind if I ask some questions?" he then gives the impression the answer he received was "yes", yet he continues to ask the questions! Look people, when someone answers "yes", that means yes, they mind if you do whatever the heck it is. So don't do it.

  Crud. Disappeared from Sydney airwaves rather abruptly one Wednesday night. What's the problem, Triple M? I, for one, didn't want "my" night-time show "rebuilt".

  Progress indicator requesters. They're alright in theory, however all too often, after about two minutes of smooth progress, the bar will sit at 99% or 100% complete for five minutes.

  Lexus. What's the point? A Japanese-made version of the Camry (which itself is assembled in Australia and throughout the word) with a leather-clad interior and a big price tag. Why bother, I ask you? A particularly stupid phenomenon is salespeoples who tell potential Camry buyers that it features a Lexus engine and transmisson... well the whole Lexus is by Toyota, what do you expect?

  Jeep. Cramped, poorly made, outdated off-roader which only sells due to some sort of "image" buyers associate with it.

  Land Rover. See Jeep. Defender.. eugh. As for Discovery, what's with the back seats? No leg room at all - and I don't mean the seats in the boot, I'm talking about the middle row.

  ICQ chain messages. Look, the graphics won't change, little Johnny from Azerbaijan who has three testicles won't be given a scalpel every time the message is forwarded, a little sound won't play, the frog won't jump across the screen, and you won't be deleted if you don't forward the message. If you're the sort of person that simply MUST forward such messages, I suggest you make yourself ten extra ICQ accounts (some people appear to have this many anyway), and send the message to each of these accounts. Then when you log in to each of these accounts, you can again forward the message to the other ten accounts. Repeat endlessly - hours of fun.

  "Could of", "should of", "would of"... I'm seeing these more and more often, these make no sense. Examples include: "I could of done that". I've even seen someone try to convince others that this is correct. Consider this: "could have" can become "could've"; and "I could have done that" can become "I could've done that". See what I'm getting at?

  IRC, not mIRC. The protocol is not called mIRC. You may use mIRC to access IRC, but not everyone chats on mIRC.

  The guy dancing about on that Michellina's ad. "Give it a little toss-a" says the reworked version of that stupid Macarena song. Mate, no "little toss-a" needed, you're a great big tosser.

  Whiny kids on TV and radio ads. "BP Express Freeeeeezy" to name but one instance. Aaaargh! Shut up! Shut up! It's not "cute", heck, maybe it is! Cute things make me puke! Ban children in advertising!

  Dubbed commercials. Ads from overseas that have had voices substituted by Australian actors. Especially bad when you can spot it's not a local ad, such as the woman in her Kia with the steering wheel on the wrong side racing the Chevy Suburban for a parking spot, or the greeting card ad with a distinctly American streetscape.

  Americans. I had about five individual points down, but could sum them up with that one word. Sure, not all Americans, but on the whole, eurgh... "We invented TV, you know" "Yes, in your capital of London"

Copyright � October 8th, 1999.
Opinions expressed here are purely those of Adam Smolarczyk.