We humans are just ridiculous

I've always said I need to write a book with all the stupid complaints I've recieved over my career in customer service.
These are pretty awesome

http://www.justtheflight.co.uk/blog/12-the-18-most-ridiculous-travel-complaints.html

The 18 Most Ridiculous Travel Complaints

When you spend a month’s pay on a holiday, you’re going to want to get your dream trip for it, and when things go wrong, it can be devastating. However, some people have some unbelievable expectations when they leave the country, as if they hadn’t quite realised, they were leaving the country, or that the world doesn’t revolve around them...
Here are 18 of the frankly most bananas complaints that Just The Flight have seen over the years -

1. “We went to a Mexican restaurant in Rome and the waiter was Italian. You assured us Italy was the best place for an authentic food experience.”
What did you order, the ‘Burrito Carbonara’?

2. “Our flight left Heathrow at 07:55, and they told us the flight was 2 hours. But when we landed it was 10:55, making us miss our connection. The pilot didn’t even tell us we were delayed.”
So, you’re aware that there are actually different time zones across the world, right?

3. After being told she could reach the front desk by dialling 9, a lady complained when she was repeatedly unable to do so from her mobile.
Maybe just dial 999 and ask for an ambulance. Say that you need a brain examination urgently.

4. “My husband got carsick on the boat”
Yeah, the clue is in the name. She’ll get it. I hope.

5. “We could not enjoy the tour as our guide was too ugly. You can’t be expected to admire a beautiful view when you’re staring at a face like his.”
Presumably the tour you were on was of the local sites and landmarks, rather than a tour of the tour guide’s face? Just checking.

6. “There was no sign telling you that you shouldn’t get on the hot air balloon ride if you’re afraid of heights.”
FYI, hot AIR balloons go up in the AIR.

7. A man sent a complaint to Disneyworld claiming that it was “too touristy”.
Yeah, I had the same experience when visiting Times Square and the Eiffel Tower, how odd. Something should really be done about that.

8. “The street signs weren’t in English. I don’t understand how anyone can get around.”
Here’s a clue: they don’t speak English.

9. “The beach had too many fat people. It was gross.”
Hmm yeah, couldn’t agree more. They should be caged up and taken to their own separate fat beach. That’ll teach them.

10. “We booked the honeymoon suite, and in the WC there were 2 toilets side by side. With no walls separating them! There is nothing at all romantic about that.”
Um, yeah, that's because one of them was a bidet.

11. “The animals at the zoo looked very sad and it made our children cry. Can’t they train them to smile?”
I’m sure the animals can be trained to feast on pretentious and demanding zoo visitors, how about that for a compromise?

12. “You told us that there was a rooftop pool, but above us was just another room.”
Do we really need to explain how roofs work? Like, that there’s only one roof and it’s (usually) at the very top of the building?

13. A man claimed that he was no longer able to perform sexually after a chambermaid walked in on he and his wife making love and “giggled at his size” while leaving the room.
Sounds like you have bigger problems (pun very much intended) than a chambermaid catching a glimpse of your little solider (again, intended).

14. “The local women were too beautiful; it made me feel bad about myself.”
Good, you should feel bad about that. In fact, just stay in. Don’t go on holiday anymore, because your level of beauty is clearly not sufficient, sorry.

15. “You said the town was next to a volcano, but we went and there was no lava. I’m pretty sure it was just a mountain.”
Why would you complain about that? Would you prefer liquid molten lava to be pouring through your holiday resort, engulfing everything it touches?

16. “I packed for a mountaineering holiday, and couldn’t believe no one told me that there wouldn’t be snow. I had to go out and buy new clothes.”
We recommend looking at real pictures of mountains – not ones drawn by kids with snow-capped peaks.

17. One hotel received a complaint about their advertised ‘homey feel’: it was apparently nothing at all like the guest’s home.
Yeah, a hotel with a ‘homey feel’ is still a hotel, isn’t it. Note the world ‘feel’.

18. “I spent a whole week on safari, and didn’t see any good animals. There was only a load of antelopes.”
How dare you refer to an antelope as anything but a ‘good’ animal. I’ll have you know that antelopes are the goodest animals ever. In the world.

We aren’t sure what some of these people expect from holidays – but we’re glad they aren’t in the villa next door! What are the worst things you’ve heard abroad – or the worst complaint you’ve had to make? Leave a comment below!

the saddest song ever

Look I am all for a sad, sappy love song but this is just..........DAMN that's sad

But it's been rainy and grey for......I don't know, 800 days, so it seems appropriate

Shadow puppets 2.0

This is just amazing


http://www.thisismarvelous.com/i/4-Amazing-Shadow-Sculptures-by-Tim-Noble-and-Sue-Webster

Amazing Shadow Sculptures by Tim Noble and Sue Webster

From discarded wood, welded scrap metal, broken tools, cigarette packets, soda cans and piles of trash, Tim Noble and Sue Webster make assemblages and then point light to create projected shadows of people standing, sitting, smoking, drinking or anything easily recognizable. Every debris is precisely set in place, taking into consideration its distance from the wall, and its angle with the spotlight. The result is surprising and powerful as it redefines how abstract forms can transform into figurative ones.

YOUNGMAN, 2012
1 wooden stepladder, and discarded wood

THE INDIVIDUAL, 2012
1 wooden stepladder, and discarded wood

THE GAMEKEEPER'S GIBBET, 2011
Solid sterling silver gilded in pure gold, and metal stand

SELF IMPOSED MISERY, 2010
1 wooden stepladder, and discarded wood

DEAD THINGS, 2010
1 black cat, 19 crow heads, 4 rook heads, 5 jackdaw heads, 13 crow legs/feet, a pair of crow wings, a pair of jackdaw wings, 6 juvenile black rats, 1 x chaffinch (male), metal stand

WILD MOOD SWINGS, 2009–10
2 wooden stepladders, and discarded wood

COLD DEATH, 2009
3 brown rats (juvenile), 3 brown rats (adult), 1 mink (front and rear halves), 1 carrion crow (full mounted), 7 carrion crows (head/neck), 8 carrion crows (legs/feet, 2 wings), 8 rooks (head/neck), 12 rooks (legs/feet), 11 jackdaws (head/neck), 8 jackdaws (legs/feet), various animal bones, metal stand

NASTY PIECES OF WORK, 2008–09
2 wooden stepladders, discarded wood, broken tools

DARK STUFF, 2008
189 mummified animals (67 field mice, 5 adult rats, 42 juvenile rats, 44 garden shrews, 1 fox, 1 squirrel, 1 weasel, 13 carrion crows, 7 jackdaws, 1 blackbird, 1 sparrow, 1 robin, 1 toad, 1 gecko, 3 garden snail shells), glue, metal stands

THE SPIKEY THING, 2005
Welded scrap metal

A HOLE, 2005
Welded scrap metal, wood

HE/SHE, (Diptych) 2004
Welded scrap metal, 2 light projectors

KISS OF DEATH, 2003
34 taxidermy animals (6 rats, 1 mink, 8 carrion crows, 8 rooks, 11 jackdaws), animal bones, metal stand

SUNSET OVER MANHATTAN, 2003
Cigarette packets, tin cans shot by air gun pellets, wooden bench

REAL LIFE IS RUBBISH, 2002
Mixed media

INSTANT GRATIFICATION, 2001
US 1$ bills, bulldog clips, MDF, formica, perspex, 3 electric fans, slot machine mechanism, plastic tokens

FALLING APART, 2001
Personal items trashed January–March 2001

WASTED YOUTH, 2000
Trash, replica food, McDonalds packaging, wood

BRITISH WILDLIFE, 2000
88 taxidermy animals; 46 birds (35 varieties), 40 mammals (18 varieties), 2 fish, wood, polyester glass fibre filler, fake moss, wire

THE ORIGINAL SINNERS, 2000
Replica fruits and berries, bark and moss, plastic ornamental bowls, fishing wire, cooking oil, electric pump mechanism, metal, MDF

DIRTY WHITE TRASH (WITH GULLS), 1998
6 months' worth of artists' trash, 2 taxidermy seagulls

Just good people

http://my-inner-child.com/perfect-example-why-you-should-never-judge-a-book-by-its-cover-8292/

Perfect example why you should never judge a book by it’s cover!

 

Bikers strike fear into the hearts of many. They’re seen as rough thugs… but there is more to a biker than you think. This gang, for instance, is happy to intimidate people. However, they only intimidate people who dare hurt children. They are the Bikers Against Child Abuse International.
And they mean business!

These tough bikers have a soft spot: aiding child-abuse victims. Anytime, anywhere, for as long as it takes the child to feel safe, these leather-clad guardians will stand tall and strong against the dark, and the fear, and those who seek to harm.

The girl chewing on her lip was abused by a relative, according to police reports – someone she should have been able to trust. He’s not in the state any longer, but the criminal case is progressing slowly, so he’s not in jail, either. He still terrorizes her at night, even though he’s nowhere near. She wakes, heart pounding. The nightmare feels real again. She never feels safe, even with her parents just downstairs. The unruly-looking mob in her driveway is there to help her feel safe again. They are members of the Arizona chapter of Bikers Against Child Abuse International, and they wear their motto on their black leather vests and T-shirts: “No child deserves to live in fear.”

What Rembrandt knows is that a biker’s power and intimidating image can even the playing field for a little kid who has been hurt. If the man who hurt this little girl calls or drives by, or even if she is just scared, another nightmare, the bikers will ride over and stand guard all night. If she is afraid to go to school, they will take her and watch until she’s safely inside. And if she has to testify against her abuser in court, they will go, too, walking with her to the witness stand and taking over the first row of seats. Pipes will tell her, “Look at us, not him.” And when she’s done, they will circle her again and walk her out.

After all the bikers introduce themselves, Pipes holds up a small vest covered in patches, just like the bikers’ but made of denim instead of leather. On one patch is the girl’s new road name: Rhythm, for a girl who dances and plays music.

The bikers are all volunteers, giving five, 10, 20 or more hours a week. There’s no reimbursement for gas or the time they take off work. The bikers must be tough, not only to protect the kids but to be able to stomach knowing what their young charges may have been through. An 8-year-old beaten by Mom; a 6-year-old molested by his mother’s boyfriend. A girl, 10, raped. They are trained by a licensed mental-health professional affiliated with the chapter. Each biker must be fingerprinted and undergo a thorough criminal-background check, the same one required for state child-welfare workers and law-enforcement officers, before they can join the group. They are bikers, not Boy Scouts, so if the background check turns up an arrest or a stint behind bars, they can still be in the group. The crime just can’t involve children, domestic violence or something comparable. They visit children only with permission and only in pairs, so no one is ever alone with a child.

The bikers aren’t looking for trouble. They are there so the kids don’t feel so alone, or so powerless. Pipes recalls going to court with an 8-year-old boy, and how tiny he looked on the witness stand, his feet dangling a foot off the floor. “It’s scary enough for an adult to go to court,” he says. “We’re not going to let one of our little wounded kids go alone.” In court that day, the judge asked the boy, “Are you afraid?” No, the boy said. Pipes says the judge seemed surprised, and asked, “Why not?” The boy glanced at Pipes and the other bikers sitting in the front row, two more standing on each side of the courtroom door, and told the judge, “Because my friends are scarier than he is.”

Perfect example why you should never judge a book by it’s cover ~ 6 Pics[via]

Another cool brain thing

I just love the brain things

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/30/books/arnon-grunberg-is-writing-while-connected-to-electrodes.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0

Wired: Putting a Writer and Readers to a Test

Arnon Grunberg Is Writing While Connected to Electrodes

Michael Nagle for The New York Times

The Dutch writer Arnon Grunberg, at work on a novella in New York while attached to electrodes.

By JENNIFER SCHUESSLER

Published: November 29, 2013

Writers working on new books often complain about the pressure. But on a recent evening, the Dutch novelist Arnon Grunberg was sitting at a cluttered desk in his shoe-box apartment in Midtown Manhattan, with more reason to kvetch than most.

Enlarge This Image

Michael Nagle for The New York Times

Researchers are tracking brain waves and other data with electrodes as Mr. Grunberg writes a novella.

Enlarge This Image

Michael Nagle for The New York Times

Next, members of the public will be studied as they read Mr. Grunberg's work.

First, there was the novella he was trying to get off the ground, the latest in a string of more than a dozen books that have made him, at 42, perhaps his country’s most celebrated novelist and a literary star in Europe.

But more pressing — quite literally — was his headgear, a sort of bathing cap affixed with 28 electrodes that made him look like an extra in a mermaid mash-up of “A Clockwork Orange.”

“After about a half-hour, your head starts to hurt,” Mr. Grunberg said, as a technician from a Dutch software company carefully poured water over some of the electrodes to improve their conductivity. “Also, it can get a bit drippy.”

The cap, the novella and the technician were all part of Mr. Grunberg’s latest project, a literary stunt turned lab experiment that combines the rigor of academic neuroscience with the self-obsessive spirit of the “quantified self” movement, which has inspired people to track (and broadcast) the minutiae of their lives, down to the last step taken, penny spent and milligram of caffeine ingested.

Over the past two weeks, Mr. Grunberg has spent several hours a day writing his novella, while a battery of sensors and cameras tracked his brain waves, heart rate, galvanic skin response (an electrical measure of emotional arousal) and facial expressions. Next fall, when the book is published, some 50 ordinary people in the Netherlands will read it under similarly controlled circumstances, sensors and all.

Researchers will then crunch the data in the hope of finding patterns that may help illuminate links between the way art is created and enjoyed, and possibly the nature of creativity itself.

“Will readers of Arnon’s text feel they understand or embody the same emotions he had while he was writing it, or is reading a completely different process?” said Ysbrand van der Werf, a researcher at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience and the VU University Medical Center in Amsterdam, who designed the experiment with Jan van Erp of the Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research. “These are some of the questions we want to answer.”

This experiment is connected with the burgeoning field of neuroaesthetics, which over the last decade or so has attempted to uncover the neural underpinnings of our experience of music and visual art, using brain imaging technology. Slowly, a small but growing number of researchers have also begun using similar tools to scrutinize the perhaps more elusive, and perhaps endangered, experience of literary reading.

Last year, researchers at Stanford University drew headlines with the results of a functional magnetic resonance imaging (or fMRI) experiment showing that different regions of the brain were activated when subjects switched from reading Jane Austen’s “Mansfield Park” for pleasure to reading it analytically. And this fall, a study out of the New School for Social Research showed that readers of literary fiction scored higher on tests of empathy than readers of commercial fiction, a finding greeted with satisfied told-you-sos from many readers and writers alike.

Mr. Grunberg, however, seems to be the first novelist to submit not just his work, but also his own creative processes to direct scientific scrutiny. And he claims no investment in the idea that his darkly satirical and piety-poking books — including the recently translated “Tirza,” praised in The New York Times Book Review as “never less than enthralling,” if “not always enjoyable” — will be shown to be socially or morally edifying.

“I don’t think this experiment needs to prove that literature can be good for you,” he said. “Sometimes, literature can actually be dangerous, if you take it seriously.”

Mr. Grunberg, the son of German-born Holocaust survivors, has become a celebrity in the Netherlands precisely by treating the business of being a writer as a bit of a lark, his admirers say.

His first novel, “Blue Mondays” — written after he had dropped out of high school, failed as an actor and then gone bankrupt as a publisher — became a best seller and won a prestigious Dutch prize for the best first novel of 1994. Six years later, a minor scandal ensued after he won the prize again with “The Story of My Baldness,” written as Marek van der Jagt, a fictional author who had taken some public whacks at Arnon Grunberg for good measure.

Although Mr. Grunberg has lived mostly in New York since 1995, he can seem omnipresent in the Netherlands: writing a daily 150-word column for the front page of The Volkskrant, a leading newspaper; conducting regular public interviews with prominent politicians, scientists and artists; even lending his name to a wine company (its first blend: Freud). He can also seem to be everywhere else, thanks to his newspaper articles based on his experiences embedded with troops in Afghanistan, with dining car waiters on a Swiss train, with masseurs at a Romanian resort, with patients in a Belgian psychiatric ward (where he received most of the treatments, he said) and even with an ordinary Dutch family on vacation.

“Sometimes it seems like he’s living five different lives next to each other,” said Garrelt Verhoeven, the chief curator of special collections at the Amsterdam University Library, which will be organizing an exhibition about Mr. Grunberg’s career next October. “He’s very serious, but it’s also part of a game for him.”

The current experiment, Mr. Grunberg said, emerged out of a desire to play with the darker possibilities of e-reader technology. If Amazon can track where Kindle users stop reading, he wondered, how else might an author be able to spy on his audience?

His Dutch publisher, Nijgh & Van Ditmar, persuaded him to make himself part of the experiment. And once he connected with the neuroscientists, the transformation from provocateur to guinea pig was complete.

“I was just the object,” he said. “It’s like having someone else embedded in my own brain.”

But the real quantitative science will come later, Mr. van der Werf said, when the researchers measure the novella’s effect on the 50 readers. They have asked Mr. Grunberg to try to keep each chunk of text limited to one dominant emotion, and have tracked where his cursor was at various points in each writing session, to match his words with the physiological data. The 50 readers will read the novella on an e-reader, to allow similar tracking.

Mr. Grunberg, who estimated that he would take another five months to finish the book, said the sensors have interfered less with his creative process than he feared, but he did allow that the experiment itself might end up figuring in the book, which he said will address issues of privacy and cybersecurity.

And he admitted to sometimes staring up at the cameras after the technician had left, wondering if they were really off.

“I find myself having all these fantasies,” he said, “like that I was part of an experiment supposedly looking at my brain while I was writing, but the real point was something else entirely.”

Beating people for discounts

 

I'm not a huge fan of the onion but sometimes they just hit the nail on the head. HAHAHAHA

 

 

http://www.theonion.com/articles/42-million-dead-in-bloodiest-black-friday-weekend,30517/

 

42 Million Dead In Bloodiest Black Friday Weekend On Record

 Nov 26, 2012

 

NEW YORK—According to emergency personnel, early estimates indicate that more than 42 million Americans were killed this past weekend in what is now believed to be the bloodiest Black Friday shopping event in history.
First responders reporting from retail stores all across the nation said the record-breaking post-Thanksgiving shopping spree carnage began as early as midnight on Friday, when 13 million shoppers were reportedly trampled, pummeled, burned, stabbed, shot, lanced, and brutally beaten to death while attempting to participate in early holiday sales events.
Law enforcement officials said the bloodbath only escalated throughout the weekend as hordes of savage holiday shoppers began murdering customers at Wal-Mart, Sears, and JCPenney locations nationwide, leaving piles of dismembered and mutilated corpses in their wake.
“The level of bloodshed this year was almost beyond imagination—no prior Black Friday could have prepared us for this,” said National Guard commander Frank Grass, talking to reporters in front of the still-smoldering remains of a local Best Buy that was burned to the ground Saturday. “We had fire trucks, police cruisers, and guardsmen stationed at multiple locations, but it was useless. At the moment, hundreds of thousands of American shoppers are still unaccounted for, and we expect $2 billion in damage has been wrought upon our cities. ”
“The stench of death is unbearable,” a tearful Grass added. “Simply unbearable.”
As the weekend of sales drew to a close, ambulances could be seen circling the now empty and completely ravaged shopping complexes as they searched for signs of life, while clean-up crews worked to clear the rubble, overturned cars, and large pools of blood from local Kohl’s and Macy’s parking lots.
The White House issued an official response, stating, “We mourn the deaths of those 42 million American shoppers who tragically lost their lives this Black Friday.”
Survivors of the deadly holiday sales event said that while the weekend began as a chance to “get in on some unbeatable post-Thanksgiving deals,” it quickly escalated into a merciless, no-hold-barred fight to the death.
“At some point in time we all stopped caring about the deals and the holiday shopping and were pretty much just out for blood,” said Dana Marshall, 37, a Target shopper who suffered seven broken ribs and a cracked sternum while fighting two other customers for a discounted Nikon digital camera. “I remember just sitting on top of a woman and smacking her head with a DVD player until her face was completely unrecognizable. I felt nothing. Absolutely nothing.”
The Onion will continue to publish a running list of the Black Friday dead throughout the week.

Horoscopes

are crazy..........they just are.
I mean its fun and entertaining but you know those people that are like
"oh I can't date him, he's a Taurus"
I don't even know how to respond to that. :)

However, the spot onness (it's a word) of today's horoscope is pretty scary

Daily Horoscope: Leo

WEDNESDAY, NOV 13, 2013

Share with friends:

You may experience some raw emotions today, which you should use as your ally instead of your enemy. Your heart may feel rather abused, so do what you can to gently care for it. Be careful of letting others get too close if they simply don't know how to act around something so fragile and pure. Protect yourself.

Unfortunately I did not read this this morning so I am a little dented. 

on the other hand given my cynicism, I doubt reading this earlier would have prevented the events of today.......damn you astrology