ultra-mini-moan: on the trail!

This!
Need I say more?

Just imagine the horrific accident that could have been caused if a blind driver had pulled around the corner into the car park, there is no way their guide dog would have been able to see this obstruction from the passenger seat! Quite literally a Trail(er) of Obstruction!

daily life: what's that sticking up in the covers?

This is more of a re-rant.
We live in the Information Age, or so I am told, the world is full of information, information at the touch of a button, information spitting it's juicy goodness right into your face, and you like it, you want the information in your face.
So why is the information I want impossible to find?
I want to telephone a company to inform them they've been incompetent - Can I find their phone number on the website? My arse I can. Even if the website has a 'Contact Us' button at the top of the page it certainly doesn't take you to a page with contact details, likely a page telling you the company has helpful customer service advisers working 24 hours a day to solve your issues. Well they are wasting their money paying a team of 'friendly and helpful' customer care staff to work 24 hours a day, I doubt anybody has successfully located the phone number yet.
If the page contains more than the tagline for their next TV advert it probably has a selection of 'Frequently Asked Questions' that will solve your need to speak to a human, though it's more like a scavenger hunt, and you have to find the clues and answer the questions in order to proceed to the finish line.
So finally after wading through the 'Forest of FAQ' you might stumble across a link to a 'Live Chat' thingy, well it's not quite a phone number but at least I can have a 'Two-Way Dialogue' with a real person (or a super advanced AI that would give Vest-Man a run for his money), though your hopes of resolving your problem as dashed by the heart shattering message 'Unfortunately our Live Chat service is not available at the moment, but you can speak to one of our customer support team on the telephone'. ARGH!!!!, and they don't even list the telephone number.

Are you getting Deja-vu yet?

Or recently I needed to give several organisations the address of the new Laboratoire, that was certainly not easy, especially HMRC who required me to know some special number to prove I am who I claim I am, only I don't know that special number, some other person knows that special number so I have to ask them what the special number is. So to prove I am who I claim to be I need to provide them with a number that only another person knows! In what world does that ever makes sense?

Can somebody also please tell me what the light on my Vax means - There is this red light that goes on and off, sometimes off completely, other times flickering, others flashing at regular intervals. I would guess it's telling me how much I suck at any given moment, but the instruction manual doesn't even mention the existence of a light, and most definitely does not explain it's various phases. I can only assume the light and the corresponding instruction manual were produced by a team of women (we have many female teams working tirelessly at the Laboratoire, getting to grips with some very long and hard problems), that would certainly explain why I have absolutely no idea what is wrong, and why when I ask the response is "If you don't know I'm not going to tell you!"

Oh, and there is a whirry thing that I haven't got a clue as to its purpose is!

food: mmmm dunno

So this post was triggered after consuming a Danone Danio yoghurt, well I'll have to take their word for it that the product was yoghurt as it had a bizarre spongy texture and quite literally absolutely no taste.
Danone claim that the milk is passed through a special fat extraction thingamajig which leaves the yoghurt extra thick and with 0% fat.
This yoghurt was completely vile, and I'd sooner lick the white fluid from the inside of George Michaels underpants than the white crud in a Danio pot, but it's 0% fat so that apparently makes it acceptable to sell tasteless goo for lots of money.
But ultimately what is the point of all these fat free, reduced fat, completely disgusting things? If the thing you are eating is unpleasant then just don't eat it, because there's no fat freeer, calorie lower item than nothing.

Plus I've never understood people that don't eat butter and cream. In particular people don't put butter on their bread because it contains salt and fat, instead they spread vegetable fat based stuff full of chemically and mechanically altered I don't know what. How can you ever argue that an almost natural product rich in vitamins and protein is worse for you than whatever Utterly Butterly is? I Can't Believe It's Not Butter! I Can't Believe People Eat That And I Definitely Can't Believe It's Food!
And if the bit of fat and salt in butter is a problem for those people's health then how much butter are they spreading on their bread?

Here's a crazy new idea, if you want to lose weight and stay healthy eat a sensible amount of tasty food and not a massive amount of 'Low Fat' crap. You might just enjoy eating your dinner for once.

daily life: square hole

The new Laboratoire is nearing completion and alongside high technology such as the Photon-Fabulator and Electro-Knobulation machine, all vital to the daily operation of The Laboratoire, a fleet of new toilets have been installed.
But today I was trying out one of the new toilets and noticed that the toilet seat was square. Perhaps being from another world I am anatomically different from most, but my posterior is more round than square, I'd go as far as to say it isn't square in any way. As a result trying to sit my round plug on the square hole was a deeply unpleasant and uncomfortable few minutes, and it definitely failed to provide the appropriate amount of purchase often required when carrying out the numerous activities a toilet seat is accustomed to.
It has me wondering what bizarrely shaped derrière the toilet seat designer must have had. What shop sells trousers that fit a square backside? Are they able to sit on a futon? Do they use specially manufactured round toilet paper?

daily life: can't get it out

I'm not an expert screwer, I probably only screw a few times a year, Christmas generally involves some screwing. Screwing is hard enough, but it's made all the worse when the previous screwer has left behind a shattered mess.
How difficult is it to look after the head while screwing? It is after all the most important part of any screw, you need to care for the head, touch it gently, definitely don't apply too much pressure, and if you go too fast the head just explodes in your face and the whole thing will be an exercise in futility.

Remember, when you screw be gentle with the head.

mini-moan: a good hump

You are probably still wondering where the epic post is, I assure you it is merely stuck in a puddle and will dry out soon.

I've got the hump with humps. Everywhere I go I'm getting humped, regularly 5 or more humps in the space of a few minutes, it's leaving me tired and it's certainly not doing my backside any favours. For the love of my bottom give me a break from the humping!
So I get to my local Tesco Extra after being humped to within an inch of my life, now I've got to manoeuvre into a really tight space and while trying not to scratch the sides I get humped from behind... they'd only gone and put a hump in front of the parking bay.

mini-moan: it's gone everywhere

This post skirts around the issue of false advertising in a way, more precisely product labelling.

Today I decided to have some pickled red cabbage with my tea and opened a new jar of a brand I had never previously purchased. This wasn't some cheap Tesco value or even Waitrose Essential product, no this was the good stuff by Garners (well the hefty price implied it was good).

So I whacked the lid with a spoon as years of idleness has left me weak, feeble and barely capable of opening the jar. I stuck in my fork, pulled it out, and to my dismay there were but a few scrawny pieces of cabbage. Bewildered by this I once again stuck in my fork and stirred expecting resistance, I'm use to resistance when I stick it in, but there was none and it became clear that my jar of pickled cabbage was more pickled than cabbage, by which I mean mostly vinegar.

So I wondered, legally what proportion of the jar actually has to be cabbage in order to label it as pickled cabbage? Based on my experience it should have been labelled vinegar with a cabbage ganish!

Logically it would need to be at the minimum 51% cabbage so the majority of the jar was cabbage, but the experts at The Laboratoire Condiments and Accompaniments department, who also dabble in Preserves, Conserves and Pickles and are the only individuals in the world that actually know the difference between a Preserve and a Conserve, assure me that this was not the case.

Therefore Garners pickled red cabbage does not get TheGuyWhoMoansCalledMatthew seal of quality.