I can't be arsed with mine so
Here's a condensed version of Nigel Blackwell's:

- Bus drivers who don’t wait for people to sit down before pulling away from the bus stop;
- Taxi drivers who use their horns instead of knocking on the door;
- People who moan at the council about the streets being full of litter, not stopping to think that it is people who drop litter, not the council;
- A room full of drama teachers listening to Bjork;
- Grown men with replica shirts worn over their jumpers, who stand up and stretch out their arms when the opposing team fail to hit the target;
- An assortment of scriptwriters, novelists and playwrights who own Agas but don’t know how to use them;
- A musical equipment reviewer responsible for an article titled “Microphone of the Month”;
- A woman who described herself as “A little bit Bridget, a little bit Ally, a little bit Sex In The City” and chose to call her baby boy Fred as a childishly rebellious attempt at a clever reaction to those who might have expected her to call him Julian or Rupert. (Bit of advice: call him Rupert, it fits, and besides it’s a good name. Don’t be calling him Fred or Archie, with all its cheeky but lovable working class scamp connotations, unless you really do have plans for him to spend his life in William Hill’s waiting for them to weigh in at Newton Abbott.)

- a whole wall full of teenagers spitting needlessly;
- An amateur thug in camouflage trousers whose Japanese fighting dog had run amok on a Swindon council estate;
- A man from the record company who said that George Michael continues to challenge social taboos through his music;
- Lisa Riley;
- Continuity announcers introducing comedy shows;
- A pub band who get uppity when everyone goes to the bar during a song they’ve written themselves;
- A group of football fans referred to as Commodores, as in once, twice, three times a season, who feed sugar lumps to police horses at Cup Finals;
- An artist who said his next album would be more “song-based”;
- A man who informs people that he gets up at six am every morning and seemed to want a medal;
- People who say they speak as they find and are somehow proud of it;
- Journalists who try to spell an interviewee’s laugh;
- An organisation who declared an awareness week for awareness weeks;
- And a council worker who dropped litter.

There.
(GoodLord doesn't have time for sigs., Fri 2 May 2008, 21:05, 2 replies)

It's when I have several QOTW answers that I worry.
The more I think of things and the more things I read, the more things I think of that wind me up:

- Adverts on TV, with the exception of Joel's Crusha ones. The rest of them get the mute button unless they have clever Rube-Goldberg contraptions in them like that old Honda ad. Or bouncy balls in pretty colours. My least favourites are of course Michael Winner and the Sheila's Wheels ones, both of which are liable to make me stabby.

- Those Tagged emails that you get that say someone has Tagged you but you must join the site to see - I don't care. I don't need another social networking site - I already have Facebook, which is annoyingly addictive, Myspaz, which I next to never use, and Bebo, which I never use and only got because someone told me to.

- Will & Grace - dear God I hate that show. There are approximately three jokes - she's scatty and can't keep a boyfriend, he's gay but if he wasn't they'd be perfect for one another, the other one is an alky and has a voice like a South Park character, and the other guy is a bit hyperactive. Why did this run for eight seasons?

- Ridiculously small things make me furious on the wrong day and the best example of this is my hair straighteners. As much as I love them for their ability to prevent my hair looking like a haystack, they are those annoying slimline ones with the long cord, and they next to never stand up straight to cool. All I have to do to make them fall over is look at them.

- Letting little kids dress like sluts. This irritates me more than anyone can truly comprehend; when I was a kid, and that's no more than fifteen years ago, little kids dressed like little kids - there were no miniskirts then, no tops with slogans about boys on them, no thongs for 8-year-olds, no crop tops, and certainly no child of ten who could put make-up on better than the average adult. Even when I was little and the odd 'friend' used to try to put kiddy make-up on me I used to make a fuss, it didn't seem right somehow, and it still doesn't. Of course, I blame Bratz for this - not long ago there was a series of them that actually looked like they were supposed to be standing in an S&M dungeon - leather caps and matching catsuits. What kind of message is that to be sending out to little girls, that they have to dress like a hooker to be popular and have a nice life when all they really need is a bit of common sense and parents decent enough to not let them grow up too fast? Just as well I don't want kids.

- Binge drinking - some people I know think I'm "boring" and that I "can't hold my alcohol" because my idea of fun is not drinking till I throw up any more. Guess what? Doing shots till you don't know your own name is boring, and while I used to enjoy getting drunk as much as everyone else, these days I genuinely don't like the taste of alcohol so I have to drown it in mixers or drink Baileys or anything sweet like WKD or else the spirit - especially vodka, I can no longer stand the taste of it - makes me gag. So no housemates, I will not play Ring of Fire with you because you play to lose.

I don't think anything else annoys me.
( Maladicta, Fri 2 May 2008, 20:55, 11 replies)

Screaming babies

I am referring to screaming babies who are taken to entirely inappropriate places by their dimwith parents. I proffer these real-life examples:

The underground tour of Seattle
The Natural History Museum
Any restaurant with tablecloths
I have many more but you get my gist

I am sorry but certain things should be adults only. Your kid is ruining it for everyone and it isn't getting the attention it deserves.

If you have a kid you have to face up to the fact that you can't do all the things you want to.
( BadBadman saw an incorrect comma placement on, Fri 2 May 2008, 20:49, 2 replies)

Shopping on seats
on buses. Mainly pensioners, but with the odd younger offender.

They sit down on the aisle seat, with their shopping on the window seat, and refuse to move it until someone (okay, me) has the temerity to ask them to.

Then they huff and puff, grudgingly lift the bag(s) and ever so slowly shuffle their arse to the window seat.

This is one of the many reasons why I generally prefer to walk.
(TheWeeWitch hasn't been here much recently .., Fri 2 May 2008, 20:33, 10 replies)

1. People
who claim to know the editor of The Times when complaining. I find the best responses to be "So do I, isn't he a cunt?" or "Are you in the same chapter of the BNP as him then, cuntybollocks?

I'll just do one instead of loads of smaller ones

2.Sex addiction. It is not a disease, YOU JUST ENJOY SEX. It's perfectly natural a lot of us do. The problem is that religious right wing types (especially in the US) feel that it is wrong because of the belief system into which they were indoctrinated/socialised and try to make every body else feel guilty for enjoying it. If you don't agree with something don't do it, but stop trying to force your beliefs on the rest of us.

3. The over-diagnosis of stress and depression. Before anyone screams at me, I understand that these are very serious conditions and can have terrible effects on people's lives, but that doesn't mean that every lazy cunt in the office should get a few months off in the summer. Feeling a bit down every now and then isn't depression it's just fucking life cocknose.

4. Boris Johnson. How could anyone even think about letting that cunt be in charge of anything? I wouldn't trust the fucker to piss on his own let alone run fucking London.

5. The Labour Party - get back to looking after the interests of the working man. Nye Bevan is spinning in his fucking grave. Brown you are a class A tory cunt. Abolish the 10p rate of income tax my fucking japseye. It's all well and good saying there will be something to replace it, but a Labour govt shouldn't have even contemplated it in the first place.

6. Alistair Darling - either dye your hair or your eyebrows man. You look like a nobbing zebra.

7. Irresponsible lending. Stop throwing free credit at people who can't afford it.

8. The use of the phrase "state sponsored terror" by the US. Only one country has ever been found guilty of state terrorism ever. That was the US of A when it organised a terror campaign against the people of Nicaragua in the 1980s. It was found guilty in the International Court of Justice but then refused to acknowledge the Courts jurisdiction, and followed this up by Vetoing a UN Security Council resolution asking them to comply with the ruling and pay reparations to the nation of Nicaragua.

9. Middle lane Marys - those cunts on the motorway that sit in the middle lane doing between 50 and 70 MPH

10. UKIP - UK independence? For fuck sake do you have any idea that the world is a completely different place now than it was in 1883? On our own we would be more fucked than a porn star in a twenty cock special. All we have is a security council veto, fuck all else.
How do you expect to combat the negative effects of globalisation without the assistance of an overarching regional network of intelligence, markets and regulatory systems?

11. Marches. I don't mean stop this or that or gay pride but sectarian marches. During my time in Glasgow I noted a wee bit of antagonism between certain religious sections of the community. It was suggested that this was to do with schools of a certain faith, as the kids were separated then they were seen as the "other" people from the "other" school. I now live back down south and we have schools of a certain faith here too but without the stabbings, sectarian violence, rabid bigotry etc - What we don't have is sectarian marches each year, harping back to problems in Northern Ireland (NOT FUCKING SCOTLAND)and re-opening old wounds and divides every twatting summer.

I am an angry man, but I do not have issues. People who use the word issues instead of problems are cunts. If it's a fucking problem say its a fucking problem, you twat.

I feel so much better after that.

By the way don't go to see psychotherapists as they will charge you through the fucking nose for sitting there pretending to listen and regurgitating some platitudes from a fucking fortune cookie.

Venting your anger here is much cheaper

Alternatively I would recommend punching that Lembit Opik cunt in his fucked up wobbly face.
(magic the cat will someone please think of the kittens, Fri 2 May 2008, 20:31, 7 replies)

Insensitive religious bastards
I lost count of the amount of times I flew into a genuine rage - and still do - when I mention that my brother was run over and killed a few years (almost 11 actually) ago.

Fairly sensitive subject I'm sure you'll agree. So it really doesn't help when some religious type says that it's ok as "God is looking after him now".

Thanks for that. Guess the omnipotent cunt took his eye off the ball when the car went over my brother. But as long as he is looking after him now, thats ok.

Apparently, it was quite spectacular when the vicar uttered the magic phrase to me. At the wake.
(animal252 last activated his kitten hammer on, Fri 2 May 2008, 20:20, 3 replies)

Floaters
No, not that kind, I mean the little dots that are inside your eye somewhere and just serve to irritate you whatever you're doing, particularly when looking at a screen or white surface.

My Science teacher once told me that one can have them removed surgically but they've never annoyed me quite that much. Perhaps if I win the lottery (unlikely - I don't play) it'll become an affordable luxury.

Sorry to all those people that are now noticing their floaters.
(kris kringle I only posted this message to find out the date on, Fri 2 May 2008, 20:19, 8 replies)

Cinemas...
I work at my local multiplex and there are many things that annoy the living shit out of me there.

First and foremost is, due to the fact that it is situated close to one of the most chav infested shithole estates in the country, we only get fucking ballaching dross shown - instead of geninely decent films (The Orphanage, Diary of the Dead) we get crap like Step Up 2: The Streets, Never Back Down etc. DESPITE ADVERTISING THE DECENT FILMS.

But my favourite is when people bitch and moan about the price of the popcorn/ice-cream/bags of sweets (which to be honest is shockingly expensive), then buy it anyway. And then when we sweep the rubbish up when the film has finished, guess what we find? That's right, half full bags of popcorn, undrunk coke...
(animal252 last activated his kitten hammer on, Fri 2 May 2008, 20:10, 2 replies)

People who piss about for no good reason while boarding aeroplanes
This is not a difficult or complicated task, people. Your seat number is on your boarding pass. Look at it and memorise it. It is at most two digits and one letter. Even the most braindead spacktard could remember that for three minutes.

When you get on the plane, the rows are numbered, increasing as you walk towards the back. Therefore if you're in row 45, it's a fair bet you'll be near the back. So don't piss about looking at and reading out every row number. "1, 2, 3.... " etc. Row 45 isn't going to be sneakily placed between rows 5 and 6, believe me. Just walk up the aisle, glancing periodically at the row indicators until you're getting close.

Similarly the letters refer to your seat position in the row. A is a window seat on the left (the right as you walk down the aisle) and they increase in alphabetical order across the cabin. On a two-aisle aircraft the helpful crew will direct you to the correct side as you board.

Upon reaching your seat, place your hand luggage in the overhead locker (if it's too heavy for you, why the fuck are you carrying so much stuff?) and sit down in your seat. This may involve asking a fellow passenger to move. Don't just look and point, ask politely if (s)he will let you into your seat.

And it's done. You're on the aircraft. No fuss.

I'm loving this QOTW, by the way. I suggested a rant based question a while ago, as I had lots to moan about. I can feel a load of postings coming on.
( K2k6 has a proper job these days, Fri 2 May 2008, 20:07, 14 replies)

An open letter to the science editor of the BBC
Dear Sir,

Whilst there are a number of things about your science coverage that I could complain about – paucity of detail; the patronizing tone with which it is delivered; the fact that not one of your editorial team appears to have more than a passing acquaintance with the notion of “science”, life is short and so I must pick my battles wisely.

When showing me an image, any image, of something that is meant to make me coo with wonder, or marvel at its beauty, for the love of suffering FUCK will you put a scale bar on it? For example, when you show me a picture of a colossal squid, you kindly put a schematic showing its size in relationship to a double decker bus. This is good. This allows me to look at the picture and say “Fuck me, that colossal squid is fucking huge! It's bigger than Lisa Riley! Wouldn’t want to run into one of those on a dark night.” Or words to that effect.

So when you show me a picture of say, the surface of Mars, unless you indicate otherwise, how in the name of baby Jesus and the orphans, am I supposed to know whether I’m marveling at the majesty of a rock formation 200 miles wide, or looking at a two millimeter close up of the side of a pebble?

At the opposite end of the scale, wowing me with an electron micrograph of something very, very small is great. I find this fascinating! Telling me said object is “one billionth the width of a human hair” is useful, but putting a fucking bar on the picture with a scale on would be only polite. It will be published in a journal with it, why do you feel that you can show it without? Are you concerned that the average visitor to the BBC website may be scared off by the sight of a number on their screen that doesn't pertain to the number of days Maddie McCann has been missing, or the price of a hovel in Chelsea?

I’ll stop there. I could go on, but merely typing this is making me shake with the rage of a thousand unrealized hissy fits.

Yours with unspecified length and girth,

Rakky
(Rakky (forgot her password) The muffin maverick, Fri 2 May 2008, 20:06, 5 replies)

The twat who made my life hell in school
used to love to tell me "just smile and you'll feel better!". No, it does NOT make you feel better.

Also up there with "forgive and forget" and "get over it" - yes, that's what I'm trying to do, if you would leave me alone to do it!

I feel yet another post coming on...
( Maladicta, Fri 2 May 2008, 20:04, Reply)

Tesco
Cunts hastening the death of the planet. Utter anti-freedom-of-speech wankpots. See what they're up to in Thailand? They'd do that here if they could get away with it. Scumfuckers.
( writerblock ... embedding disabled by request on, Fri 2 May 2008, 19:58, Reply)

Predictive Text
Will the people who program mobile phones please, please, please realise that people like to ducking swear!

Yankers....
( Gleeballs is mostly made out of chocolate and hate., Fri 2 May 2008, 19:57, 6 replies)

Doctors - specifically, GPs
"So, what seems to be the problem? Ah... Yes ... I see. Uh-huh. Yes... And what do you think is wrong?"

"I don't fucking know. I didn't soak up many years of a medical degree in order to find out. What the fucking fuck do you think is wrong you simpering clot?"
( writerblock ... embedding disabled by request on, Fri 2 May 2008, 19:56, 2 replies)

People who work in the communications departments of large financial institutions whose actual day-to-day work entails the obstruction of communications
Meh
( writerblock ... embedding disabled by request on, Fri 2 May 2008, 19:54, Reply)

Pensioners
Who travel once a decade and choose the railway network to make that journey. They prebooked their seat 8 months ago but still get on the wrong coach, stomp the life out of anything and anyone in their way, carry enough luggage to embarrass Phileas Fogg AND at least three carrier bags from a populist supermarket chain. They then treat their seat as if it was a strategic hilltop captured at great cost by the Americans during the Korean War.
( writerblock ... embedding disabled by request on, Fri 2 May 2008, 19:53, Reply)

The Doors.
One of the most overrated bands, EVER. Jim Morrison was a good looking man, I'll agree, and he had a good voice- but their songs were utter shit.

My test for a song is whether or not I can sit down with the lyrics and read them aloud without sounding like a complete idiot. The Doors fail that test, badly. Even if you read it as poetry, bongo drums and all, their stuff is still awful.

Jim Morrison was not a poet. He was a drug addled twit.
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Fri 2 May 2008, 19:52, 4 replies)

Opened the floodgates now...
I just seem to be angry at everything in the world at the moment. It seems like the older I get the more cynical I get. Here are a couple of things that get my goat:

Man flu
I work in an office full of women, most of them in their 20s and in between doing the smallest amount of work possible they just spend their time all talking at once, trying to be the loudest and putting us always busy designers/developers off a tricky bit of code that generally involves trying to mentally cross-reference two or three multi-dimensional arrays. And they eat crisps all day whilst simultaneously complaining that they can't lose weight.
Their biggest thing is 'man flu'. Apparently, men think that they have the ebola virus every time that they're slightly poorly and yet, in my experience, it's women that spend more time in the doctor's. Walk into any GP's waiting room and count the ratio of men to women. My girlfriend has a cold about once a month. The last time I was ill and had to take time off was two years ago.

Breakfast news
I absolutely refuse to watch GMTV and so watch the BBC News instead. But I find myself getting increasingly pissed off with their thinking that they can just advertise any other BBC programming. Big news stories include some twat who won Celebrity Dance Strictly Ice Ballroom Cooking Idol or something. They think that whoever got kicked out of the Apprentice is actually important. Then they do 'wimmin's issues and you can always guarantee the guests they have on for it usually comprise of one or more of the following: a woman who did the apprentice, a woman who wrote a book about parenthood and likes to be called a 'yummy mummy' (a posh term for MILF, obviously) and some teenage girl that wrote a book about ... teenage girls. Then they bang on about how great the ladies are and how shit men are.

Adverts
I hate those adverts where you get some dick saying "I'm a photographer and I work in the harshest conditions, so I need fashionable glasses" (or something). No you're fucking not! You're an out of work actor/actress who can't get an audition for The Bill!! And here's a bit of advice for male hair stylists: GET A PROPER JOB!!

Anti-smoking nazis
Yes, you've banned smoking! The pubs are quiet! You've destroyed a way of life! You look at me like I've pissed on your dog every time I light up! What does your car exhaust spit out then? Daisies????

There's bound to be more but I'm off for caffeine and nicotine...
(Ghostlight, Fri 2 May 2008, 19:52, Reply)

Women
The ones who sit in the 'quiet coach' on Virgin and Nat Express trains but still persist in taking and making calls at their seat ... "Aye, that's right, aye... Dundee ... About twenty minutes ... aye ... did ye get the messages from Sainsbury's? No? Och Davie, you're useless! Can I no trust ye tae dae onything?" etc
( writerblock ... embedding disabled by request on, Fri 2 May 2008, 19:50, Reply)

Men
especially the ones who sit in the middle of the back seat of the bus with their legs splayed so everyone gets to inspect their package while they have the gayest house drivel tss tssing out of their comically big headphones ... it makes me want to either
1. carry a hunting knife and slice the headphones cord with extreme prejudice or
2. invent a device that forces multi-decibel static into their ears, jamming the pish music
( writerblock ... embedding disabled by request on, Fri 2 May 2008, 19:48, Reply)

Renting sweetcorn
Why bother?
( enoughblueskyforsailorstrousers, Fri 2 May 2008, 19:43, Reply)

God squad
Jehovahs' witnesses that bring their kids with them so you can't automatically tell them to fuck off.
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Fri 2 May 2008, 19:38, 4 replies)

Things that annoy me
The Archbishop of Canterbury. According to a BBC news article from 2000, the then salary for the Archbigot of Canterbury was £55,660 per annum. FOR HAVING AN IMAGINARY FRIEND that is socially acceptable due to the venerability of the delusion. When I heard voices they put me on medication. £55,000 for being unemployed and having an imaginary friend. Wonderful.

Penguins. I hate them. We're talking approaching apoplexy here. The mere idea of them makes my blood pressure rise to the point where I look like Colonel Blimp approaching the vinegar strokes. What is the point of them? In the grand scheme of things, looking at the overarching vista of evolutionary history, these are essentially the retards of the bird world. A type of bird that decided to remain in a frozen wasteland, lose the ability to fly, develop plumage that made them look like a cross between Ronnie Corbett in a dinner jacket and an SS Officer, and also to have a vocalisation that sounds like three cats suffering from the attention of a bestiality loving proctologist. When I watched March of the Penguins (with a young lady as part of a sadly futile attempt to gain carnal knowledge of her) I had to repress the urge to cheer everytime one of the waddling little bastards died. Pingu can go roger himself too.

Rowers. Where I go to university there are, unfortunately, rather a lot of rowers. Yes I understand that you wish to achieve the 1936 Ayran man idea. Yes I understand that you successfully propelled, along with 3 other simian friends, a long thin fibre glass tube through the water for a mile faster than some other similiarly lycra clad proto-gorillas. Guess what? There are things called outboard motors that successfully do this as well. Also, thank you for turning any conversation that you manage to participate in in to a conversation about rowing. Yes, your 'erg' time is fascinating. Indeed, I had never realised that listening to a self-important and boring person could be so utterly fascinating. Your hobby, and indeed your entire life, is the single most interesting and important event in the history of human existence, and I fully advise you to impose yourself on anyone who is within, say, a 50 yard radius. Wankers.

Belgium and Belgians. Seriously, what is the point of Belgium? It is essentially a flat expanse of mud and paedophiles. Why is it that every international paedophile ring that has links to Europe is either based in Belgium, or is primarily composed of Belgians. What is wrong with them?

Scotch eggs sold in the local Londis. I trundle down there, looking to supplement my already frankly appalling enough diet with an infusion of chopped pork rectum, breadcrumbs, and boiled egg. You buy one, then eat it. And what? There is always this deflated feeling afterwards, like you've cheated on a long term partner with someone patently inappropriate (like Dot Cotton). It makes me angry that I still manage to go down to the shop full of the naive hope that the scotch eggs will be like the one scotch egg I once had c.1992 that was actually a decent boiled egg encased in sausage meat with breadcrumbs. Instead there is always this faintly weird smelling space, and the hint of a shadow of misery.

People who tut or sigh excessively in queues. For gods sake, we're all waiting in a queue and making a noise like a defective kettle will not make the bloody thing go any faster. Like the time I was stood with the aforementioned young lady in the aforementioned local Londis waiting to buy some wine and some icecream so that we could watch a film. The man in front of us (who was buying 3 litres of Frosty Jacks (or some other similiar fine cider) was shifting around and tutting and generally behaving like a cock because he had to wait 5 minutes to get served. In addition he had a swastika tattooed on his neck, which somewhat perturbed the young lady, as she is of Indian extraction.

People who tell me its bad that I smoke. Yes I know it is. Its also bad that I hear voices. I know smoking is bad, so why do they insist on talking to me like I am a three year old?

The medication I have to take. I really get annoyed by this one. Not only does it give everything I eat or drink a faintly metallic taste, but it causes me to fidget, sleep badly, get tired in the afternoon, have vivid dreams about a wide variety of women, and to compound this issue to cause occasional impotence, and then, when I can get it up, to not allow me to complete a solo on the pink oboe. Frustrating to say the least, but what makes the whole thing even more angry is that fact that I am unable to stop taking them, as it is significantly better to be on them than off them.

Vernon Kaye. For gods sake, this guy makes me angry. Plank-faced, idiotic... I'm actually shaking with anger, spumes of froth flecking my computer screen as I sit here typing... I feel my sphincter pucker every time I hear this oxygen stealing waste of DNA.

Eastenders. Average Eastenders plot line:
Phil Mitchell wheezes.
Someone is happy.
Because someone is happy something disproportionately bad has to happen, such as Walford being hit by a nuclear strike.
Then 20 minutes of screaming that would make a Rhesus monkey shudder.
End Credits.

Length etc. I'm not even sure I've finished on all the things that make me angry.
(Zapiola zip-zap-zop, Fri 2 May 2008, 19:36, 5 replies)

Digital audio and video
OK, before I begin, let me say that I think digital technology is great in principle. But I don't think that its implementation is so good.

For my money, CDs sound much better than records, pound for pound. OK, if you get a good turntable and well pressed, new vinyl playing through a top end system it will sound better than the equivalent CD through a £50 Argos boombox. But that's not my point. CDs use no data compression on their digitised audio, so the sound produced is down to the A-D and D-A converters and analogue signal chain.

Digital radio and television, on the other hand, relies on lossy compression algorithms in order to shrink the data stream to something which can be transmitted in the available bandwidth. Modern algorithms, MP3, AAC+, H.264 and so on are pretty good. But only if they're used at a decent bitrate. Digital radio (DAB) is crap. It uses an outdated algorithm, MP2, which only sounds anything like as good as FM at bitrates of above 192kbps or so. But only Radio 3 uses 192kbps, and then only for part of the time. Most stereo stations use 128kpbs, and Ofcom has now permitted them to drop this even lower. So DAB sounds awful.

It's marketed for its crystal clear reception. This is true, inasmuch as there is no hiss on the signal. But personally, I find a little background hiss much less offensive to my ears than the digital burbling and lack of stereo image that DAB produces.

And so to television. LCD tellies and digital signals are the thing these days. But look carefully at your Freeview/Sky picture on your fancy flat panel screen. See those little blocks in the image? The way that football pitches seem to move independently of the action? The little fuzzy blurs round fast moving objects?

They're all due to digital compression. Now, a good High Definition signal displayed on a modern screen at 1:1 pixel ratio is pretty good. But watch one of these useless shopping channels, and see how poor the picture is. It's like watching through a net curtain.

Another issue is pixel scaling. A standard definition digital video signal is 768 x 576 pixels. Most HD LCD screens comprise 1366 x 768 pixels and full HD ones are 1920 x 1080. A standard definition signal will be upscaled to fill these screens, but will do it using a non-integer multiple. So the digital image is being manipulated in order to make it fit the screen, but no more information is visible on an HD screen than an SD one, and in fact an SD signal will look better on an SD display than an HD one.

Old fashioned CRT televisions actually do a better job at upscaling, as even though they have a fixed number of pixels, the analogue nature of the signals driving the electron guns makes a better job at 'smearing' the image and produces a smoother result.

So don't believe the hype about digital. Just because it is digital doesn't mean it's better. In fact, at the moment, with the current bitrates allowed and used in the broadcasting industry, you'd be well advised to stick with an analogue signal and CRT television for as long as possible, so long as you get good reception. Unless of course you have a hankering for 'choice' and really want 1000 television channels showing (for the most part) infomercials, repeats of old films, football from the South Korean 4th division and porn*.

Sorry for length, which is reaching PJM proportions. Well, not quite.

_{*Actually, the porn is OK}
( K2k6 has a proper job these days, Fri 2 May 2008, 19:35, 1 reply)

z listers
People who are famous because they shagged someone else/wanked a pig/were on reality telly/present the local news/ etc
(magic the cat will someone please think of the kittens, Fri 2 May 2008, 19:33, Reply)

ooh
Jade



Mother




Fucking




Goody
(magic the cat will someone please think of the kittens, Fri 2 May 2008, 19:31, 1 reply)

Moronic interrogatives
As Rory McGrath mentioned on Grumpy Old Men. That is, people that speak every sentence as if it's a question:

"So I went to the pub last night?"
"And a had a couple of pints?"
"And I left at about half past eleven?"
"And got a take-away?"

Fucking fuck off you fucking fuck fuckers!!! Gah!
(Ghostlight, Fri 2 May 2008, 19:31, 2 replies)

"Cheer up, it might never happen"
how the fuck do you know it hasn't already?

Am I supposed to wander around with a permanent inane grin? No, thanks.

I usually ignore this remark. Only once did I respond. Standing outside a Hospice where a family member was dying by inches, some arse addressed me thusly. For god's sake, I was outside a Hospice. Not one of the patients was ever going to get better. I looked the twat up and down, then delivered a pithy "fuck off" in his general direction. He fucked off.
(TheWeeWitch hasn't been here much recently .., Fri 2 May 2008, 19:28, 3 replies)