Modernisms #4

Oh look, it's another entry in the slightly intermittent Things You Wouldn't Have Heard Ten Years Ago:

#4: Please do not swear

More specifically, "Housemates, you are live on Channel 4; please do not swear" as shrieked by everyone's favourite hair colour advertisement, Davina McCall, at around 10pm each Friday night of the summer, when the 257 cameras cut live to the house and the imprisoned buffoons learned of their fate in the viewer-funded eviction vote. Of course, swearing (& arguing & fighting & crying & shagging) were the only honest reasons anyone tuned in to Big Brother so it always struck me as a little incongruous to have to tell them to stop on the most-watched episode of the week.

But there you are; that's the glamour of television.

Modernisms #3

Astonishingly, a further instalment in the ongoing series of Things You Wouldn't Have Heard Ten Years Ago:

#3: I need to top up my Oyster

Travel used to be relatively straightforward. You wanted to go somewhere, you bought a cardboard ticket from a large man in a small office, you got on your chosen mode of transportation and you got off again at the other end. As that irritatingly ubiquitous meerkat might opine, "Simples!". However, rather like the proliferation of self-service checkouts in supermarkets, London Transport came up with* the rather super idea of allowing people to come and go as they please on the tube and buses, as long as they carried with them a credit-card sized, pre-paid 'token'. Brilliant. Or, in fact, not. Because as fast as they could introduce rules to govern the use of these cards, regular travellers were not only finding ways to bend the rules and commute for cheap and/or free (compulsory amongst the modern youth) but also that the system utterly failed to take account of relatively normal city-wide travel behaviour; unsuspecting Oyster punters were often charged the full single fare for entering a tube station at which they were told the line they wanted was closed but they would have to swipe their Oyster card to get out and try a different route. Brilliant money-making scam; less-effective urban transport policy. They claim to have fixed that now, although 2010 sees the Oyster system being extended to the entirety of the suburban London railway network. I know; God help us all.

* OK, they copied it from any number of other schemes around the world, not least the similarly-monikered Octopus card in Hong Kong, but give me a break here...

Modernisms #2

Next in the somewhat hastily conceived series of Things You Wouldn't Have Heard Ten Years Ago:

#2: You have been poked

Now it is fairly well known on t'internet that for reasons best known to myself, I am a full-on 100% complete-and-utter Facebook refusenik. All the same, I am aware of some of the social functions provided by the aforementioned site, not least the idea that you can send someone a short greeting/message/reminder known as a 'poke'. Having given this some thought, I have come to the conclusion that this must be the equivalent of a Post-It note on your computer screen when you return from a lengthy liquid lunch which, in my experience, is never A Good Thing.

And anyway, it sounds rather rude :)

Modernisms #1

To vaguely acknowledge the impending end of this first decade of the millennium, I shall be bringing you a series of Things You Wouldn't Have Heard Ten Years Ago:

#1: Unexpected item in bagging area

The proliferation of self-service checkouts is gathering pace. Whilst any kind of staff-based cost saving was always going to be a winner with the retailer, there is now an opportunity for a visceral kick out of cheating the system in tiny ways e.g. holding one of the apples just off the scales whilst it is trying to weigh your fresh produce, entering a wildly inaccurate number of plastic bags used and of course, la pièce de résistance, placing an unexpected item in the bagging area.

I like that :)