LargetrouserS

Bad products

2006-03-02T20:35:00.000Z

I've decided to start occasionally posting about terrible products and services. If anyone wants to join in, please feel free. This week: The iPod.

Terrible Product: The iPod
1) It makes you look like you've got a head full of spaghetti
2) There's no radio
3) You can't record on it (without buying a microphone)
4) It's got a rechargeable battery that you can't replace when it runs out and you're on the tube or in Ilfracombe
5) You can't plug it straight into the USB socket - you need cables and cradles cluttering up the desk
6) It makes the user look incredibly chavvy and un-educated, "...need MP3 player...uugh...get iPod..." as though the user is incapable of doing any consumer research for themselves
7) It wasn't the first MP3 player on the market, it certainly isn't the best and yet it is becoming a generic term.
8) For all its drawbacks, it still comes as a premium to better players, rather like a car with no wheels or engine selling for more than a complete vehicle
9) Despite the drawbacks and overpricing, ovine people still buy it, even though there are cheaper, better equipped alternatives
10) I can't think of a tenth thing and that's just irritating.

If you can think of a tenth or eleventh thing that is just plain rubbish about the iPod, let me know.

Also, if you have other products that are just rubbish, bad, irritating, terrible or dangerous, let's have a look at them too.

LargetrouserS: The bottom bracket since 1990

Get to work or Dai trying

2006-01-24T23:42:00.000Z

This morning, my 6am porridge was interrupted by the sight of an old college friend on the telly. Wyre Davis, or "Taff" as we knew him then, was reporting on the new government proposal to put sponging paraplegics back to work, at least until theit teeth fall out, when I presume Phony Bliar will just use them as draft excluders.

I was minded to think how appropriate the juxtaposition of this story and reporter was. In his younger days, Taff was disabled by a quite appalling degree of Welshness, and considered almost unemployable. However, the plucky little Celt has turned his disability to an advantage and now regularly pops up on reports from the fourth world to tell us how the pobl y cwm are getting along.

Well done Wyre !

MawrllodraU: And that's swearing

I, pod

2006-01-21T15:26:00.000Z

For a number of years, the authorities have been trying to clean up the Thames in order to encourage salmon back into London. I was never quite sure what the point of this was, especially after cheap, farmed salmon became ubiquitous in the local Happy Shopper, despite it being mostly pink fat and tasting oddly of mutton. Truth be told, I've never really cared for salmon, wild or farmed - by which I mean that I don't like the taste as opposed to keeping one as a pet.
Anyway, recent events have overtaken this well-meaning experiment. The water is now so clean that we've now got illegal immigrants swimming up Old Father Thames. I mean, a bloody whale, where's it going to end ?

Next thing you know it'll have settled in Richmond and invited its whole bloody pod to stay. Of course, being a whale, nobody's going to say anything are they - nobody wants to offend a whale, oh no - heaven forbid, "fabulous creature", "nicely spouty", "not at all as fishy as I'd imagined". That's the problem with whales - they're so bloody middle class, "Oh we had the pod round for sherry and canapes at the weekend - Jocasta made these mini plankton vol au vents from Jamie Oliver's new "Cocking about with Cooking" book".

Now if a giant squid was lolling about at Battersea, you wouldn't see the do-gooders patting it down with a damp towel. The cheeky Chelsea bunch would be down there with their jetskis and Sabatiers helping themselves to calimari.

As usual, its one rule for large cetaceans and another for abnormal cephalopods. Tchoh.

LargetrouserS: Free Willy: ask owner for details

A load of old pony ?

2005-11-20T00:20:00.000Z

You know when people have too much money. It's when they start treating their pets better than their children.

We've seen designer clothes for dogs, diamond collars for lizards and dieticians for cats.

Imagine my astonishment this evening when I turned on the telly and saw an advert for horse perfume. One can only assume that the enthusiastic equestrian is no longer happy with the astringent smell of saddle soap and thus this new fragrance has been borne of repeated market focus groups.

The product is blandly called "Lovely", almost as forehead-smackingly crass as calling the new Will Young CD "Unlistenable" or anything that David Beckham advertises as "Chav Toss".

Whilst there are no actual horses in the advert, presumably due to some Equine Equity kerfuffel, the makers have substituted the suitably horse-like Sarah Jessica Parker.

LargetrouserS: Two legs: good; three legs: Large

Parkinson's Alzheimers

2005-11-16T08:31:00.000Z

Last Saturday evening saw veteran celebrity interviewer Michael Parkinson extract 60 minutes worth of "chat" from American songstress Madonna, whose hits include "Papa get the breech...loading rifle, there are poor people on the lawn"; "Vogue ? - no Country Life, actually" and "Get orf moi lahnd" (sorry - couldn't think of a pun).

For someone who started as a penniless jobbing dancer and ended up a lady of the manor, one may have expected a rich and sustaining broth of an interview instead of the flavourless consommé that was delivered.

Nevertheless, the piece served two valuable purposes:
1) the effortless promotion of Timothy Taylor's Landlord Ale, quite possibly one of the nation's finest beers and now favoured by the Duchess of Dirge; and
2) confirmation that Parky really is losing his marbles.

Let me illustrate the second point. After watching his guest perform two of the most openly boystown, leather clad, oiled up, rainbow-coloured, Heaven-sent, bump and grind songs, both of which would have blown Soft Cell, The Communards, Erasure and the Village People off stage, the dear old buffer (Parky, not Mad Donna) was heard to enquire, "...so...why do you think you have become a bit of a gay icon?"

LargetrouserS: The bottom bracket since 1990

Norwegian Blue

2005-10-27T22:07:00.000+01:00

Blogging has been somwhat light on the ground, following an outbreak of what was at first thought to be Bird Flu.

When the male inhabitants of Trouser Towers also became somewhat under weather it was obvious that it had mutated to a strain of Bloke Flu, which mainly entailed sitting within easy reach of the widescreen, remote in hand and uttering feeble remarks such as "...I don't think I can make it to the toilet...", "...my arms are all wrong..." and " oh yeah, two sugars'd be nice...".

Following this the virus rapidly mutated through a series of weakly infective and totally ineffective puns.

The hiatus did give us time to discuss a new submission to Large Business by our German correspondent, Herr Grossen Hosen, about the rebranding of Iraq ("Branding Sand...with a Smile"). Keep watching the pies.

LargetrouserS: All trousers, no talk.

Ass lickers

2005-10-14T00:30:00.000+01:00

Good evening, and apologies for the temporary hiatus in service.

Tonight we return to an animal theme. The other day, fueled up on a heady concoction of canteen super-saturated lipids and chemically enhanced beverages ("lime", "flavour", "diet", "cola" is a current favoured nutri-narcotic), conversation turned to the surprising recent upturn in the price of donkeys. It would appear that the recent "Shrek" films have enhanced the image of these traditional beasts of burden, such that they have become the must-have urbane pet of the moment.

Those of you who have watched disappointedly as your carefully nurtured sea monkeys fail to sport little crowns and perform acrobatics and stubbornly remain featureless specks, will recognise the way in which the pet donkeys become abandoned in the back garden after they refuse to repeatedly make weak wisecracks and partake in discourse in a jingoistic black patois.

Left at the bottom of the garden, perhaps used to store tools or as mobile planters for spring bulbs, the donkeys are now suffering.

One enterprising idea may be to rehabilitate these equine outcasts as part of a service to city dwellers. Many apartment dwellers have both windowboxes, which having been enthusiastically planted in the spring soon beceme unkempt miniature jungles, and windows, which are notoriously difficult and dangerous to clean at heights.

Dangling Donkeys (TM) Ltd. will solve both problems by carefully lowering donkeys over the sides of large apartment blocks. When the donkey is level with the window of a paying customer the operator will stop lowering the donkey, which will proceed to munch the excess herbage from the windowbox before licking the window clean. Small oscillating movements may then be used to scrub the donkey against the pane to dry the window,providing the customer with a sparkly clear view, unobstructed by wilted daffs.

Of course, there is always the danger that instead of falling on your arse, your ass might fall on you.

A full business plan and cashflow forecast will be available soon for interested investors.

LargetrouserS: Orange is the pigment of my imagination

Genetic muddification: Pavlovian pillocks

2005-10-01T22:54:00.000+01:00

Most of us are familiar with the Pavlovian response: the way that you can get someone to salivate, merely by showing them a picture of a raspberry-covered meringue.

This is of course a conditioned response. A similar trick is used to get a rat to press a button in order to receive a reward or to get a pigeon to peck at an image of the Tirpitz and thus guide a avian-directed torpedo.

This brings me to the SPANKRDs, a new social sub-class that I believe I have identified. Those of you who have read my recently published paper will be familiar with the term but for the rest of you it stands for Socially-inept, Pushbutton, Anaemic, No-mates, Reclusive, Dullards.
These etiolated individuals, festering like toadstools in the sickly blue light of the CRT, have become addicted to being cerebrally rewarded at the push of a button: a TV turns on; a microwave speedily prepares your minced jessop; a camera provides an instant image of your unfortunately unattractive child; a mobile 'phone connects your bus to another vacuous skull almost 100yards away; and another animated sprite lose its innards in a hail of sanguine pixels.

All hail the button, which really is more powerful than a sword.

Of course, progress has left the the SPANKRDs unable to leave any button unpressed in the vague hope of some form of reward. Truly a modern conditioned response that has been bred into the latest scions.
A few days ago, I was waiting with some colleagues in the basement of our building, having called the lift. Just then a slack-jawed SPANKRD loped up and repeatedly jabbed the lift call button. I saw fit to open a dialogue:

LT: "Excuse me, what does that button do ?"
SPANKRD (removing earphones and hefting gum wad to rear of maw): "Uh ?"
LT: "Well we've all been standing here wondering what that button did and we saw you press it - what is it for ?"
SPANKRD: "Makes lift come"
LT: "Really? Well aren't we lucky that you happened along when you did, otherwise we would all have been standing here until next Tuesday !"
SPANKRD: "When ?"

Another thing that I've noticed about SPANKRDs is that they've had the last vestiges of humour bred out of them. Genetic muddification at work.

LargetrouserS: Smell the quality, eat the width

Doner donors

2005-09-25T20:23:00.000+01:00

Ah, Autumn - season of misseds and mellowed fruitiness.
As the gymnosperms embark upon their annual autophagous process of shedding their leaves before snorting up the mulchy goodness in the spring, the thoughts of Trousers turn to wondering why homophagia is so frowned upon by our society.

For many years now, our society has condoned cannibalism, of a sort, through the donor card system. I don’t know what else you would call it. If you had an old car whose parts you could use to mend another vehicle, we would describe such recycling as cannibalism. All very effective and efficient and a process that has happened in humans, with hearts, lungs, kidneys, livers, blood, bone marrow, corneas etc. etc. being re-used to patch up those folks who have failed their MOT.

Why then is still a continued resistance to using the other, more appetising bits of the body as food ? Why are we not carrying cards that tell people what to do with our buttocks (chateaubriand), ribs (presumably spare) and lips, eyelids and aresholes (saveloys). Maybe rangy old great aunt Hermione would only be enough for a few sandwiches, but uncle Bertrand would see us proud for Sunday lunch and provide enough cold cuts for supper for the rest of the week.

What of the fat: we are constantly bombarded with the message that ever more people are dieing of obesity-related conditions but ne’er a fig is mooted about rendering down these tallow-laden tubbies into a form of biodiesel. This would not only be effective recycling but also a form of poetic justice as they payback for all the extra fuel that they would have consumed during the course of theri lives on escalators and in lifts, aircraft, hearses etc.

It is a shame that, given the British reticence to engage in the consumption of odd things such as horse, snails, frogs, garlic and wine (we’ll leave that to the Old Enemy, thank you very much), I don’t see us adopting this practice anytime soon, unless Europe were to ban it, in which case we might take it up just to spite them.

LargetrouserS: May contain nuts

ID my id

2005-09-12T21:34:00.000+01:00

Over in his sandblasted obelisk, The Moai has recently raised the thorny issue of ID cards.

Now I have to admit, I'm rather in favour of these little gadgets. At present, whenever I get mugged by a needy immigrant I have to report my passport lost to the passport office, my driver's licence to the DVLA, my credit cards to the bank, my birth certificate to Somerset House, my mobile to Vodafone and my wife to the registry office - the list is endless. With the new card, once I have staunched my bloody nose and made myself presentable, I shall only have to present myself once at the local police station, where, with a mug of strong, sweet milky tea and a chocolate hobnob in hand, I can relate my tale of woe to a solitary, caring constable and be back on my way in just a few short minutes.

What is rum, however, is the cost of these little doohickies. I am hoping that the success of the ID card system will be monitored and that if tide of feckless and unwashed will not yield then Tony Blair will all give us a rebate like the King Cnut he is.

Musing further, I wondered if there could be a market for a more interesting card - the id card.
In Freudian theory, the id is the division of the psyche that is totally unconscious and serves as the source of instinctual impulses and demands for immediate satisfaction of primitive needs (thanks reference.com). Rather than the boring stuff about nationality, height, arse size etc., the id card would actually record what has made you you. For example, favourite sweets, first kiss, best ever gig, fear of cheese, those "funny" games with uncle Raoul, close encounters with Pam Ayres, etc. Carrying a PDA or mobile phone that could read other people's id cards would enable you to prepare a devastatingly pithy gambit to slap the saddoes down before they trap you in a corner at a party and the ensuing ennui makes immolation unavoidable.

LargetrouserS: Object in my trousers may be larger than they appear

Fowl cocks

2005-09-06T20:58:00.000+01:00

I spotted a young oaf on the bus the other day wearing a T-shirt with this slogan. At first it occurred to me that unless he worked on a battery farm, it was exceedingly unlikely that the person stood on his left would be a chicken owner.

Then I considered how on earth he could make the supposition that this random person might be in possession of a smaller than average bird ? Surely any serious breeder of poultry would have more than one animal and, assuming a gaussian distribution within that population, there would obviously be bound to be certain individuals that were smaller than their brethren.

I decided to approach the buffoon in question and remonstrate that his slogan should read "If the person next to me is a chicken breeder, it is possible that at least one of his cocks will be statistically smaller than the average of that population".

Unfortunately he had already left the bus.

LargetrouserS: Sometimes size is important

Celebrities: supply and demand

2005-09-04T08:51:00.000+01:00

Time was when being a celebrity meant that you either had to be good at something that nobody else could do (like excelling at lacrosse), do something that nobody could be bothered to do (like going to the moon), repeatedly play yourself in a number of movies (like Cary Grant), or be a record breaking mutant (like John Merrick). In those golden days, celebrity was something rare and unusual, a goal that could only be attained through sweat, blood and tears or a genetic abnormality.
The intrusion of political correctness has now meant that even the most extraordinarily ordinary person thinks that it is their right to a degree of celebrity, even if they have done nothing more heroic that sit in a house for ten weeks with no television and a group of like-minded retards.
Tonight, ITV will be screening a special shark night (catching up with Discovery after all these years), the highlight of which will involve lowering "celebrities" into the water in a shark cage so that they can be at risk of being eaten. I'm not sure if this will be an interactive programme, where a press of the red button will open a flap and condemn another "actress" to becoming selachimorphic dental floss but we can only hope.

This latest laudable venture follows on a number of attempts to redress the celebrity supply:demand ratio. Following a number of programmes which attempted to bump them off one by one (Lenny Henry in a jungle, Joanna Lumley on a desert island), we heaved a sigh of relief when they started carting them off in groups to an Australian jungle-based concentration camp where they were not only subjected to the prattling of Ant&Dec&Ant but were to be ritually humiliated before the final execution. Somewhat disappointingly, I don't believe that any celebrities have actually suffered in the making of the programme to date but surely its only a matter of time. The Channel 4 programme "The Games" had a more subtle approach: train unfit "celebrities" to take part in sports where they would inevitably damage themselves.

Seizing on the latter format and realising its limitations for celebrity culling, ITV came up with Celebrity Wrestling, where the Z-listers were "trained" by pro-"wrestlers" in advanced physical techniques such as gurning, pointing at your opponent in a particularly hard way, and posing in spandex. Of course all of this was useless in the face of the ludicrous games they were forced to endure, all of which were seemingly designed by torture experts to break little bits of their bodies without actually killing them. This programme wass such a success that in a few short weeks all the original participants had been maimed and all the substitutes had either run-out or run away. With the satisfaction of a job well-done, ITV was able to pull the series well before its planned finale, which I am led to believe may have involved a bear.

Their success in this public service obviously guided ITV to run a second series of the X-Factor. This is effectively a prophylactic device, designed to cut ridiculous dreams of celebrity short beore they can take root in the person's mind and fester like a brain cancer. Week after week it is a delight to watch the stultifyingly untalented cut down to size and told to go back to the jam factory from whence they came. The need for this programme is emphasised in every episode when tone deaf lunatics with an unbelievable self-belief - "...I knows I as the X-Factor, I'm pretty with a good voice and a great personality...", "...that's right, I'm her mum and she sings like an angel..." - are basically told that they are unattractive tone-deaf rubbish. You really start to beleive that these people live in a house where all the mirrors are broken and all their friends and family are deaf.

So we have seen that the media are trying to clear up their own mess and clear up the celebrity supply:demand imbalance they have created. The latest venture, which I overheard on the Christian O'Connell show this week, will be to recreate the trek that the survivors of the Andean plane crash made (the ones that weren't eaten, obviously), as depicted in teh movie "Survival". I can see that this could be the start of great things in the recreation of famous disaster movies (not necessarily depicting real events).
My favourite concept at this time would be a recreation of the Towering Inferno, possibly at Trump Tower. Funding would come via telephone and text votes from the public who could vote on such things as "Who gets to go in the bosun's chair ?" and "Who gets to face the exploding water tank ?". There could also be a weekly challenge of running through a burning, exploding room protected solely by a damp flannel in order to win a family size tube of Savlon. It can't fail.

LargetrouserS: Never knowingly underbold

Attack iguanas

2005-09-02T22:52:00.000+01:00

Before anybody accuses me of being iguanist, I should begin by assuaging anybody's fears that I am advocating indiscriminate drubbings of these gentle reptiles.

The train of thought began one perry-fueled lunchtime following a brief discussion around the difficulites of speying an iguana. The creatures can hold their breath, apparently, giving the impression that they are anaesthetised, only to "wake up" some minutes later and attempt to crawl off the operating table, leaving their innards behind, somewhat disappointingly.

We mused on the possibility of using the animals' ability to hold their breath, along with the Galapagos iguanas' well-developed swimming capability and sharp claws, to produce a strain that could be trained to swim out to enemy warships with a mine and cling to their hulls.
Talk rapidly turned to the possibility of training the beasts to fly fighter jets; now I'm no herpetologist, but I'm damn sure that the lack of opposable thumbs would prevent an iguana from grasping a joystick. Bobbo suggested that the application of Velcro to front feet and the joystick might be a form of workaround but Cripplit rapidly pointed out that this would prevent the iguana from pulling the eject handle and thus constitute a safety hazard.

The debate concluded that iguanas would be a most ineffectual ally in a combat situation and we resolved that we should all watch our backs if we were ever unfortunate enough to be drafted into a mixed human/reptile fighting force, especially if the iguanas were flying the planes.

LargetrouserS: For your glistening pleasure

LT2

2005-08-30T16:46:00.000+01:00

LargetrouserS: Size is in the eye of the beholder

LT1

2005-08-27T18:05:00.000+01:00

LargetrouserS: Softwear for Hard Folk