Immigration

From the sublime to the ridiculous in one easy move – the US is proving itself to be ever more paranoid. Todays two stories, firstly that the US wants airlines to ask passengers to not ‘congregate’ near the ‘plane toilets, and second, that Britons may need visas to enter the US. Frankly, the entire thing is just hysteria – I’m amazed they haven’t gone completely insular, and just said “right, we’re closing our borders to everyone. We can get out, but you can’t come in.” As it is, they seem to be doing that, only in incremental steps rather than one monumental move.

The first story would be hilarious if it weren’t so obviously the ravings of a paranoid delusional. As Warren Bennett, from the Australian Board of Airline Representatives is quoted as saying

Passengers are caught between a rock and a hard place. On one hand, they are advised to move around an aircraft during flights for health reasons; but now they are being told not to congregate. It doesn’t make any sense”

The entire US Department of Homeland Security appears to be living on planet chuffhead – my favourite quote from Darrin Kayser (a spokesman for the US Transport and Security Administration, itself part of Homeland Security) in the story is

“We frequently say security is not a spectator sport… we can’t be successful about stopping terrorism without everyone playing a role”

As for the story regarding visas – again, it’s just laughable. If you have a passport issued before October 26th, then it doesn’t matter – as long as it has a barcode, you won’t need a visitors visa to the US. If the passport is issued after October 26th (and why didn’t they just go the whole hog, and make the deadline September 11th?) and is non-biometric – i.e. doesn’t contain data on fingerprints, and/or digital photographs (because, like, no-one can fake those, can they? *rolls on the floor laughing*) – then you’ll need a visitor’s visa. And again, it’s not like a terrorist would get caught at the stage of getting a visitor’s visa.

All of this “improved security” really is just cosmetics – regardless of all of it, if terrorists want to attack the US again, then they will. Osama Bin Laden must be just about killing himself with laughter by now, seeing all of these “precautions” that won’t add up to a cup of warm piss when/if the next attack happens. Maybe that’s the US’s “plan” – to make him laugh so hard he breaks several internal organs?

Stunned

via Meg, a regular joy that I’d forgotten about. Avon and Somerset police record all their 999 calls, and the most spectacular wastes of 999 time get put on their very own webpage. It’s simply amazing the kind of things that the fuckheads general public think deserve a 999 call – in this case, my “favourite” is the “very angry” person calling to complain that the police are doing bugger all about there being no buses on one particular road. Hopefully, he can be sent back to his own planet any day now.

Twelfth Night

So yes, that was Christmas ’03. All over and done with. The one nod to the Festering Season™ on d4d has been altered back to how it should be, and we can all wend our merry way through the adverts for Cadbury’s bastard Creme Eggs, and Valentine’s Day cards in the shops instead. Oh, what rapacious materialists we are.

As I was wandering round the city centre this morning though, I did find myself wondering about Twelfth Night. Is it something that people still believe in? Supposedly if you haven’t taken the Christmas decorations down by Twelfth Night then bad luck will follow you all year, and really you should leave the decorations up for the complete year. Looking around the town hall, the tree was still up this morning, and all the decorations – I found myself thinking it was a shame that the council didn’t organise it so that (even for overtime) all the decorations came down overnight on the 6th, so that when people came into the city on the 7th, the decorations had all just disappeared. Now that would be something fun – and add some sense of magic back to the season. Christ knows, it needs it.

Cat, meet Pigeons

My dentists has a policy where if you don’t turn up for an appointment, or cancel it on the day for an unconvincing reason, you still get charged for it. That’s fair enough, stops people pissing them about as much.

Today, I turned up at 8.45 for my 8.50 appointment. Nothing special, just one of those scrape and clean jobs, about 10-15 minutes all told. By 9.15, I still hadn’t been seen – not even a word from the receptionists. So I asked to make it for another day, and do it first thing.

However, the suggestion that they should pay me the cancelled appointment fee, as it was their chuff-up rather than mine, was definitely not well received. In fact, you’ve never seen a mouth turn into a replica of a cat’s arse so quickly – it was hilarious.

UK Advertising

Is it me, or is all the Sky One advertising for their latest import, “Nip/Tuck” beginning to reek slightly of desperation? I don’t know how much they’ve paid for this series – which, to be honest, sounds like Six Feet Under for cosmetic surgeons – but it certainly feels like they’re now trying to drum up interest in the programme just so they can justify the expense of it.

Personally, I suspect it’s one I’ll be giving a miss, as the adverts have sent me in the opposite direction, and made it look more and more unappealing. (or less and less appealing, whichever you prefer)

International Advertising

I meant to write a little bit about this story before Christmas, then completely forgot about it. As such, thanks Meg for reminding me about it. AdAge produced a list of ten adverts that the US will never see – it makes for quite interesting reading. Several of them have been seen in the UK already, including the #1 “Mr Kipling’s Nativity Play“, which had me laughing out loud, but received 570 complaints, primarily for the closing punchline of “it’s a girl!“.

Lardy

Did anyone else watch the documentary on Channel 4 on Sunday, about “America’s Fattest City” ? (Sorry, I can’t find a link to it at the moment) It was pretty horrendous – although apparently Detroit has now deposed Houston as America’s Fattest City – and included people who apparently drive their children the 50 feet to the stop for the bus-stop. The old rumour that Americans are going to evolve into limbless creatures still appears to (pardon the pun) have legs.

And was it just me, or were a good 75% of the adverts in the programme for diet programs like Weightwatchers? Never let it be said that advertisers don’t have a sense of irony.