no way I'm gonna start summat like that except from the absolute beginning! I'm sure some kind person who owes me money will buy me a nice present. I managed to get my MiL to get me BoB, I've got no chance of getting owt from the wife, but me BiL owes me a small fortune in comuter parts and time.

shrewd Taw, get it now. That way you can be up to date by the time S3 come out on bloody Sky.

as for Maw: When the hell was this a bloody competition? ive got more issues at the moment than rolling bloody stone, its just i like to keep the personal ones under lock and key and only tell a select few. Especially since airing them will have no beneficial outcome for me, only that you know more about my private life than i would care to let.

Suffice to say, the transfer of 24 to Sky from the Beeb ISNT my biggest problem right now, a blue hairded maiden, exams in 2 days, a serious threat of homelessness (or at least being charged money for my indisgressions (sp?)), my offensively bad bank ballance and mal-nourishment, rate SLIGHTLY higher on my to-get-solved list.

"Maw"? Heh. Yeah, sorry for making a joke outta your daily life, Arc, but that really is what it was...(a joke)

---

Suffice to say, the transfer of 24 to Sky from the Beeb ISNT my biggest problem right now, a blue hairded maiden, exams in 2 days, a serious threat of homelessness (or at least being charged money for my indisgressions (sp?)), my offensively bad bank ballance and mal-nourishment, rate SLIGHTLY higher on my to-get-solved list.

---

you know what the scary thing is though Arc? Thats exactly how I remember being a student, but I'd swap back to that period of my life in an instance....its really cliched, but they really are the best days of your life...

...well, imho anyway.

Heres my gripe

Systems that have been around for 10 years, and everyone involved in said system knows theres a problem and can't be bothered to deal with it. The University of Central Lancashire Timetabling system - thats what. My Monday is crammed,and I have 5 hours between lectures on Tuesdays. Oh well,it could be worse,I could have no time to do assignments.

Another thing..... Oh I can't be bothered

Vek - It's not the system that's the problem, it is the bureacracy of the academic institution! Bureacracies are the problem with such institutions. Believe me, I know .

gripte time:
I HATE the freaking "Ad Council" a so called, jumped up american body in the form of "mothers against everything" that went to one too many 'touchy feely' meetings with overly pacifist speakers who talk about loving one another and leaflet campaigns to get rid of serious problems.

I have brought along a few examples i wish to share with the class and im sure youve all seen equally annoying adverts in your time on the web:

Watch that all the way through.
How freaking pointless is that ad? its got the purpose of educating and informing (maybe) but it comes off as ill-informed and a pile of crap. A runny nose may get an extra tissue and a skinned knee MAY get a bandage but we all know theres no cure for the common cold, and that falling over in a playground is the kids own damn fault. A learning disability isnt even the same kettle of fish as a bloody runny nose and a skinned knee, its a ****ing LEARNING DISORDER, like comparing AIDS to a splinter, one will pass in about half an hour MAX, the other is AIDS. Dont burry your head in the sand, these ARENT the same thing, or indeed need to be shown side by side, one is a minor problem that your dad wouldnt get out from watching the match to give you a hand with, citing "your old enough to get your own tissues/plaster" the other would have him on the phone to the education board getting details about specialist schools. Your beginning to see the difference? good, because the bloody AD COUNCIL doesnt.


What the hell is THIS? Drug free kids? where the hell did THAT come from? i didnt think for a second that the kids were gonna be skag addicts but i guess now i know. And why the hell are the kids playing with a chef & a policeman in an abandoned restaurant? shouldnt they renovate it first? make sure its structurally sound? I want you to try to imagine what the kids get up to in there? Im thinking its like the infamous scene in pulp fiction with Zed, but maybe thats just me and years of mental abuse at the hands of Rod, Jayne and Freddy.
A policeman and a chef, doesnt either of them have a job to goto? and why does that chef look suspiciously like Don Rumsfeld? And how widespread is this scheme anyway? are we talking one in every block, one in every city? one in America? theres an abandoned resaurant in every city and they get a chef and policeman to entertain kids for about 7 hours a day in order to keep them drug free? ive got lots of questions about this scheme, primarily, why not just go downtown and bust some dealers, thats a surefire way to get drug-free kids, also drug-free politicians, drug-free businessmen, drug-free rockstars, drug-free policemen, drug-free actors, drug-free teenagers, drug-free everybody. But i guess the children are the important ones.


America's big fear at the moment is terrorists. Theyre literally ****ting bricks about these bad men, despite the fact that theyve been around for bloody years. As such, to convey the illusion that theyre in control, they say they have 2 choices, "be afraid" or "be ready". Ready isnt the opposite of afraid. So REALLY theres 4 choices, and 4 combinations, you can be aftaid, you can be unafraid, you can be ready, you can be unprepared. Either of which isnt gonna stop some guy blowing up a street corner or taking some kids hostage in an abandoned restaurant while the chef and policeman were doing some charlie. Saying you are not afraid and are ready doesnt change the fact that if someone pulled a gun in a large area and started killing indescriminantly, or set off a nerve gas agent in downtown LA (although thats impossible because Jack Bauer would prevent it) or strapped semtex to themselves and walked onto a bus, 100% of the people around them would evacuate their anus and panic like Jodie Foster. You can be ready all you want, but no one is unafraid of the orwellian enemy that the US Media has labeled "terrorists". They can attack at any time, anywhere you know. If you want to stop people being afraid Mr. Homeland Security, why not stop scaring your populace.


I love this one. Its not about the kids, its not about terrorits and its not about drugs, its about the environment, something i thought the Ad Council and its host country had forgotten about. THe reason i thought they had was because of a few dozen environmental treaties that America has either signed and ignored or just plane REFUSED to sign. I love america's caring nature. Its really personified in this banner. Regardless of how america actually conducts itself when caring for the planet, a few ad banners will make things right.
"one environmnt, one simple way to care for it" STOP POLLUTING WOULD BE THE OBVIOUS ONE, BUT YOU GUYS DONT WANT TO DO THAT DO YOU?

Just so you know americans, im NOT having a go at you, im sure your kickass people, im also not having a go at your country, i think its a cool place, ive been there twice now and i plan to come over one time to live for an extended period of time and steal your economy and women. Im having a go at the Ad Council and your nations way of putting on a cutesy face to a problem in order to appease the "concerned mothers" of you country that get all upity and arsey about any national issue and rush to save the children about drugs, sex, imorality, computer games, violence in the media, rock music and about a million other things that need counceling to resolve. Yours is a country that can be solved if we just listened to our mothers and stayed in (coming from the generation that fought the Vietnam War (the most useless and longest war of the past 100 years), got stoned CONTSTANTLY, inspired the free love movement, broke almost every social taboo there was and even CREATED rock music). Also a big sorry to the americans i just insulted by patronising them with that little disclaimer, but i couldnt be doing with taking this into a "our country kicks your countries ass" debate which inevitable comes around to the entry of america in WW2 and its military domenance over the planet.


"when you develop and infatuation for someone, you always find a reason to believe that this is exactly the person for you. it doesn't need to be a good reason..."

Helloooooooooo Arcon!

Nice to see you're in good form!

The US Ad Council promotes "goodness" on social issues as perceived by the political powers that be. I do not believe that I need to remind you who those powers may be at present.

The first one, however, is kind of a politically amalgamated position statement as it appeals to both "liberals" and "conservatives." For whatever reason, there is a perception in the US that learning disabilities are far more prevalent in today's kids than people realize (liberals suggest far more than in the past, conservatives suggest simply more than people realize).

{On a more cynical note: Another problem not addressed by this ad and, imo being abetted by it, is the over-prescription of ritalin. It seems as if ritalin now is the panacea for all kinds of childhood "issues" as kids get lumped into categories like ADD by bureacratic school systems that emphsize procedural correctness over substantive learning. But hey, the pharmaceutical companies, very big political campaign donors, are making out.}

There seems to be agreement in both camps, however, that parents need to be made more willing to accept that such a disability may exist so that the problem will be apprehended and dealt with earlier. As with most issues of human development, early intervention is key.

The over-simplification you protest is the Ad Council's lame attempt at trying to make the problem seem more common-place so that parental resistance due to familial pride or fears of social stigma may be neutralized.



Bad things are good
in Bizzaro World

Edited by - Indy11 on 2/3/2004 7:40:29 AM

Do I agree with Arcon? not necessarily. But let me just say: LMAO!

Good Gripe, man - another gripe from me, as he just pissed me off.

One of my lecturers is punishing people who BOTHERED TO TURN UP - how? By cancelling the seminars on a Tuesday and forcing evryone to go to a Friday Seminar. I know who Hitler was re-incarnated into now.

On a positive note, I passed last semester - Wahay!!!!

My Gripe is about regular forum-goers. Why do they come here? Is it that they've forgotten the address to their local IRC server and are jonesing for a chance to express themselves? Or is it that they were browing for that latest mod (which, of course, they will play for a grand total of 15 minutes anyway) and got sidetracked and sucked into posting here for 8 hours out of the day?

You see these regular posters patrolling the other forums so as to prevent a new player from making a similar post to one which was posted a year ago on the 22nd of november by a Mr Whoreallygivesadam, and these forum regulars take their jobs seriously. If anything, it is a measure of their own personal worth that they know each and every post made in each forum (evar). Also, they have developed a borderline miraculous skill with the borderline retarded search engine that allows them to call up any thread based on any criteria they can imagine. And of course, they expect the newcomers to the forum to have developed this very same skill, regardless of the contradiction between the terms 'newbie' and 'search engine user', which as we know, exists because the search engine takes months of time to master to the point of being able to preform even the most trivial of tasks.

So the irony of the situation is of course that these 'regulars', in fact, seem to rarely play the game itself, for which the forum was designed to provide information. They have post counts in excess of 6000 but should you be lucky enough to actually spot one of these fellows on a server, you'll find that you can annahilate them inside of 3 seconds because they are still using the 'masterful tactics' put forward by some guy a year ago, and haven't seen a need to allow the topic to be re-opened since. Interestingly enough, these forum regulars will frequently admit their lack of skill for the game which they have commented on for the past 6000 posts. It boggles the mind why one would bother to come to a forum and blather on about a game one plays infrequently, and skillessly, but these fellows are certainly known to do it!

Ahh. And then there is the off-topic forum, where it's like the Cheers Bar, and everyone seemingly knows your name. Until such a point, that is, at which they forget your name. But nevertheless, they know all about each other's lives and ambitions, and hopes for the future, but they haven't fired a blinkin' gun in the past 3 months. "Why isn't that little piece of information in their bloody bio?", one might ask. Well because it's off-topic! Yes indeed, it makes one wonder what the point is of having a webserver where the off-topic forum is the only valid forum anymore, since it is patently obvious that all the other topics have been discussed nearly to death.

And to emphasise the absolute perversity of the whole situation, a regular user makes a post about past posts, and it gets 400 responses, and is stickied, and placed at the top for all to recognize as the great post it is! The ultimate Icon of irrelvency! Here it is: The post: about posts! I can tell you, it is almost enough to make one wonder about the sad urge to express, and wonder why the Bio's mentioned in the forum have failed to mention how much of a life it's regulars need.

Edited by - Gung_Ho on 2/3/2004 8:09:29 AM

lol. hmmm. how do I phrase this....errmmm....**** off back to your hole you silly little ****....hmmm...maybe too strong....how about, here's 10p, go phone someone who gives a ****....hmmm no...maybe too much...

this is really simple gung-ho...

1. you gripe about regulars but you've made the rank of commander...???!! so what are you? the exception?
2. you gripe that none of us play the game anymore...well thats not true either. There are quite a few regulars who still enjoy freelancer....and the others? well who cares?? are you supposed to play a game until the day you die? get a life!
3. why do we still come here? probably the only decent question you've asked...because we got to know each other by playing the game...this board has become more of a community nowadays.
4. who care's about sir spectre's posts? well we do...because we know him, respect him and have found the threads he's produced amusing. Why do you care?

All in all....why DO you care? If you don't like it here then leave! This place is a community whether you like it or not....how can you gripe about people sharing opinions and experiences with each other? Its what friends do....? You do have friends don't you?

My one and only gripe is people like you...coming here and slagging off people you've never even tried to have a conversation with. There's plenty of other places on the net for you to spam, so **** off and go find someone who'll listen to your petty little pre-pubescent gripes.

Edited by - gromit on 2/3/2004 8:23:01 AM

I think young Gromit has pretty much said it all, except for one thing:
This thread is meant for gripes, not for Moaning!!

__________________________________________________________
Oh, dear, How sad, Never mind!!-Battery Sergeant Major Williams
Plus the newest addition!!-

Gee. I didn't realize how much a loser I was until Gung_Ho pointed me the way.
I also didn't realize that my lowliness of spirit and life was such as to upset anyone else who, clearly, had a life unlike me.

Well, I guess I need to apologize to Gung-Ho for being such a hopeless case that he actually had to take the time out of his own full life to point out to me how my pathetic nature was annoying him to no end.

Hey guy, sorry my pathetic little life figures so largely in your own. I had no idea.


Bad things are good
in Bizzaro World