I Hate: Apple

I have been using Apple Macs in some form for almost ten years and up until now have had no problems with them. 

In school we had a room full of iMacs, the ones that looked like Linda Barker designed them and were heavily endorsed by Sir Stephen Fry. I enjoyed them more than Gary Glitter enjoys little children, although I hasten to add not in the same way. I enjoyed the iMacs so much in fact that I saved up my pocket money and bought an eMac from PC World (something I have since discovered I should not have been able to do seeing as they were not for sale to the general public at the time). 

That eMac saw me through thick and thin and received a hell of a bashing be it with video editing, musical downloads, dwarf porn or photoshopping. The whole of the seven years I used it, it never did anything to upset me. Sure it got a little sluggish after five years but that wasn't something a little RAM couldn't fix. When it came to time to upgrade to something a little more modern I was quite sad to say goodbye to my little eMac, so saddened that I wound up storing it with the aim of one day water proofing it and turning it into a little fish tank or simply using it as a weapon to one day drop down on Bono from a great height. 

Anyway on January 3rd 2009 I spent £959 on a new iMac with all the mod-cons I could afford. It was amazing, fast, sleek, sexy and powerful, a joy to use. I would come rushing home on a daily basis just so I could sit down and browse the best porn the internet had to offer on what I considered to be the best machine ever made, something which even for the cost, was all told, a bargain.

On June 3rd 2010, aged exactly 18 months, the iMac died.

What a piece of shit, I mean Jesus Christ does longevity and customer satisfaction mean nothing to those sorry bunch of Scrooge McDuckish malcontents at Apple Inc. When you spend almost a grand on a new computer you expect more than a year and a half out of it before it endeavors to diarrhea, shit all over itself and die while letting out a considerable sigh of unbelievable flatulence. And if it were to do that, the least you would expect from Apple would be a 'sorry for selling you a broken product, let us fix it or send you a new one' not, 'oh well Mr. Simmonds seeing as you didn't buy the extended warranty we cant help you, now sod off'.

A new iMac of similar spec would cost me almost £1500 pounds today. And I would buy one if I thought it was worth it. For that price it would probably live to see the dizzying heights of two fabulous fucking years. This makes me think actually, where do Apple get their pricing from? £1500 for a Mac, £250 for an iPod, £429 for an iPad (and what really is the point in one of those anyway?) their pricing is ri-god-damn-uber-fucking-stupid-diculous. Its not like apple products are delivered to you personally by Patrick Stewart, just a regular old sweaty fat guy squeezed into a brown trout UPS uniform.

Going back to iPods quickly, what the fuck happened with those Apple. I've worked my way through six of the bloody things all of which died just after a year for no good reason. And because your machines are so fucking arsey about what they will and will not work with I have been forced to keep re-buying your hellish mobile music contraptions because nothing else on the market has the song capacity. Talk about monopolization you greedy bastard fucktards.

I feel utterly and completely betrayed by apple, so much so that I am seriously considering purchasing a standard PC next time. And if you go back and read my post on Microsoft you might just understand how big a statement that really is.

Apple are kind of like the film 'The Wizard Of Oz', but back to front. It all began with the colorful world of iMacs, coming in all the colors of the rainbow, where I was happy, but I wished to be whisked away to a magical land where the iMacs came in black and grey and were much more powerful and could do many tricks. The only problem is now I'm in that world I want to click my heels together and once again find myself over the rainbow with the cheerful, happy iMacs of yesteryear. Sadly though I am stuck here, and can't go back. But beware Apple, I have the brains, heart and courage to bring you down and I swear to the flying monkeys that one day I will.

Mark my words...I will

Written on the eMac 2002-present, currently aged eight. 

I Hate: The Former Optimist

Less than a week ago I received some fan mail, this is more or less what it said...

"Dear Supreme Handsome One,

I have been following your blog 'The Things I Hate' for some time and I have to say that you are amazing. Your witty word play and amazingly accurate observations make my life worth living. I check your blog for new posts everyday and live my life by your example.

Forever Yours

Former Optimist

ps. please ready my blog at http://thoughtsfromaformeroptimist.blogspot.com/

pps. please send me some of your hair" -content may have been altered

Well thank you very much Former Optimist, it is always nice to be appreciated, and I indeed did read your blog and I have to say I died a little inside with every word of your nonsensical, blithering hogwash you little mutton headed, tiresome excuse for a shit cling-on stuck to the end of a prick, twat.

For those of you who haven't had the unjustifiable misfortune of reading the blog this person (who from this point on will be called Gonad) has written, don't fucking bother, frankly its a waste of time. Every single topic Gonad feels is worth posting about is of absolutely no interest to anyone who has an IQ higher than that of a celery stick. A few of my all time lowest points were his posts on Clinton Cards, Calendars, Henry VIII, Blogspots Clock and best and most pointless of all his Six Hundred and Ninety Seven word fuck that formed Gonads post on Guildford.

Something I noticed when reading Gonads oeuvre was that he seems unbelievably opinionated and critical of other peoples hard graft and vision when in fact, as far as I can tell he has achieved nothing of any great significance himself which lands him right into a group of people I like to call dick heads. During his many, many, oh so many posts he manages to put down a former prime minister, a current deputy prime minister, a popular stand up comic, Japanese game developers, a musical writer, a German singer/songwriter, a burglar and Europe. Thats not even close to the full list but trust me, each and every one of those made something of themselves and achieved something, which is less than can be said for our dear Gonad.

Thoughts Of A Former Optimist also displays some of the most one sided, self prophesying preachy speak I have ever read coming from someone who doesn't seem to have any faith in anything whatsoever. Gonad spends a whole post pratting on about life after death and the existence of a god as if he has found some kind of indisputable proof, which I know for a fact can't actually exist because if it did everyone would be a believer except for me because I know better. And I have proof. And yes I can say that, if Gonad says he has proof without showing it then damn straight I can do the same thing.

This leads me on to my next point, self-centredness. Gonad is in a world of his own when it comes to how important he is. Writing all the time as if he has the best idea and he is the shining little star up the black hole ass of the world. There are three posts in his blog about some shitty little "podcast" he and his mate did. Fifteen minutes of set ups and no jokes made the so called 'Ha Ha Show' the worst ear rape I have had since hearing Lily Allen for the first time. It did make me laugh though I have to admit, yet so did Showgirls and the American remake of Life On Mars, they were both shit as well. Gonad clearly thought he had himself a winner with his "podcast" though which he showed by posting two more posts featuring the making of photo's, 27 out of 44 of which featured himself primarily thus showing up how much he clearly loves himself. The best bit though is the post where Gonad deems his work so superior that he feels the need to copyright it, a move stuck so far up his own ass that it deserves to be printed on every page of the 'how to be a self centred, fuck-nutter' manual.

And finally the icing on the shit cake that is Thoughts of a Former Optimist, the writing. It is very well written, especially for a man who clearly struggled through school after learning his ABC's, I though encourage the deaf, dumb and blind to do their best in todays world and therefore must offer a big round of applause to Gonad for his achievement is stringing sentences together while using the correct punctuation. All we have to do now, Gonad is make the paragraphs that contain these sentences coherent and meaningful. Though I must warn you after doing so you may loose at least two of your three followers seeing as they probably only read it because they think your 'one extra scoop of ice cream' special.

All of this suggests to me that poor, little Gonad was deprived of attention as a child. Maybe he drove his family nuts with his self importance or maybe his brothers and sisters are more successful than him? I don't know, its the only explanation for 'Thoughts Of A Former Optimist' being the way it is and that is a desperate cry for attention. Why else would you post three posts on one day?

Now let this be a lesson to you all. Next time you send me fan mail and ask me to read your writing, make it worth my while. What I clearly need in life is proof that the human race still has a point, something which shouldn't be too hard to do considering how much of a people person I am.

I Hate: Bus Travel

I do many unpleasant things by choice. Shop in Tesco's, use Windows Vista, work with the disabled, et cetera but very few of these persist to pummel my patience more than riding the bus.

On a nearly daily basis I pay £3.70 to travel around and about in oxford on the wonder fuck that is the public bus. I take it to work, to the shops, back from work and back from the shops and each and every time it fills me with so much bile and rage that its amazing I don't take to the insipid congregation that is our wonderful great british public with a ball-pin hammer, muderizing them Sutcliffe style.

The first thing to piss me off about the bus's is the inevitably long wait required to catch one. Guaranteed, whenever I'm in a hurry, the bus will be running late. I will stand at the bus stop, pacing up and down, mumbling to myself, probably in the cold pouring rain, watching the wrong bus pass me by time after time until finally my bus turns up in a billow of black smog fifteen minutes late and carrying the largest group of grumpy arseholes you'll ever lay your eyes on crammed in like fatties in a chip shop.

So I get on the bus, cringe at the smell of stale food and piss and am forced to stand at the front due to the massive crowd of stupids that insist on standing in the busiest part of the bus, and hang on for dear life as the bus driver takes off like he's late for the mad hatters tea party switching between breakneck speed and emergency stop braking as if they were the only two options. I mean seriously where do they get these drivers from? I can only imagine stagecoach have set up their head offices next to a rally driving school so as to pick up the daredevil nut cases who don't make the cut.

Once a human being get on a bus something changes which makes them want to be the most annoying person on the planet and there are several ways they can achieve this. You have the people who are always too cold and insist on closing all the windows, turning the bus into one of those disgusting boil in the bag meals, making people sweat and pant causing all the windows to steam up and the freezer shopping to melt. Another annoying trait is to take an empty seat and to sit on the isle end of it and then display complete and total ignorance for the entire journey making the old and the legless flail about in the isles like pedestrian weeble wobbles. You have the people to rule the bus and display this by knowing better than everyone else, shouting orders at people and swearing as if they were in a Kevin Smith movie. There are also those irritating council estate mothers who don't understand protected sex, with their fifty kids and massive buggies that act like magical bus passes that entitle them to free space and seats no matter how crowded the bus is.

Finally you have the young and their fucking mobile phones, a factor of bus travel that I find so vexatious that it has earned itself its own paragraph. They get on and shout at one another in language so vulgar that Roy 'Chubby' Brown would find it a bit much. This language will eventually be used to insult the other passengers who are guilty of being older and on the same bus. When not insulting the passengers or each other they whip out their precious mobile monstrosities and play their music through the shitty, tinny external speakers most phones have these days. What ever happened to earphones and why were they deemed such a bad thing? The purpose of mobile music technology is to be able to listen to YOUR excuse for music where ever you want to, not so everyone else can listen to YOUR excuse for music which will never be to their taste baring in mind todays youth thought Crazy Frog was a number one worthy track!

Upon reflection its no wonder Dennis Hopper had it in for buses. Nothing about them is remotely positive for anyone and blowing them and their contents up really is the only sensible thing to do. The only draw back to his plan is that despite the drivers continued attempts the buses simply cant reach 50mph. Changing it to 3mph however would ensure a success that even Keanu couldn't prevent with his bemused garden shed style of acting.

I will however continue to use the bus being the self destructive, yet aggressively handsome chap that I am so please Dennis, hold off on the plans for a while. Or else you'll end up on my list...

I Hate: Headaches

My dear friends, relatives and sexual partners.

You may have noticed that I have not posted in a while. The reason for this is I am tired, have a really sore head and suffering for half an hour, long enough to post something to entertain you sorry bunch of ignoramus's is a lot less important to me than my own comfort.

I mean really who do you think you are demanding some kind of service out of me, you don't pay me, you don't thank me, Christ most of you wont even subscribe to me you useless excuses for homo-sapi. For the past seven weeks I have supplied hate and laughter on an at least weekly basis and you have the nerve to complain when I miss a few days.

Well fuck you all ok, fuck you. You should have known that I wouldn't care, if you care to flashback.... "I really hate everything about blogs. I hate the idea of them, the people who write them and the people who read them."...Now does that sound like a person who cares about what you think right now. No it fucking well doesn't.

For your information I was going to write about bus travel this week, but instead am planning to do nothing and let you wait it out. Feel free to bitch and whine amongst yourselves you ungrateful ingrates.

I Hate: Being Possitive

So last night I am sat in the pub enjoying a few beverages with a woman who I deem just about sufferable when we embark on a conversation about life perception and philosophy. Her view on things is that everything happens for a reason, good people go to 'a better place' (I assume that to be a little record shop full of naked supermodel bisexuals who understand the difference between Beyonce and Pink Floyd) and bad people go to hell (an unimaginative insight at best, besides hell looks awesome on most metal album covers, plus it never rains and to me that sounds like a fucking bonus). I do not shut her views down, she's entitled to be wrong, but as soon a I spin some wax on my life philosophy she goes nuts.

I am a cynical pragmatic pessimist...

Didn't understand that did you, you pea brained fucknutter? Well then prepare to be schooled by someone considerably more intelligent than you.....ME.

My view on life is thus, life is like a box of chocolates made of elephant feces, melting in the sun and slowly running down your leg and forming a puddle in your shoe squishing the nuggets up between your toes, or in short, its shit from beginning to undignified end. Nothing in this world is entirely good with the exception of cheese and pickle sandwiches. I go through my entire life assuming everything and everyone is totally and unequivocally fucked, total shit and or balls.

Now you must be saying 'Hey, Neil. Your being completely negative'.

'Wrong' comes my reply with a force equal to that of a gods fart 'I am assuming fucked, shit and balls which means what class?'

For those of you not shouting 'It can' t be that bad because you haven't come across it yet' get out of the room and stop reading my blog, you are clearly to dim to be reading this, now get back to selling dope to your kids your sixteen year old fuck. For those of you who had worked it out, well done. If you wanted more then fuck off as well you needy little shit.

I assume everything will be shit long before I come across it. The end result of this is when I finally do come to something new I am pleasantly surprised that its not the apocalypse or a Matrix sequel. So I tend to be impressed by most things, and who can say that? Not many I say.

Since starting to think about life in this fashion I have found life much more liveable. Death doesn't come as, as much of a shock, food tastes better and all films not directed by Michael Bay are worth a watch.

It was at this point in my conversation with my friend in the pub that she called me stupid, self cantered and sick. It was her opinion that I needed counselling and needed to start thinking differently or else I would die young and alone. My response to her is this, according to my life philosophy I should have died alone before this conversation even began and am therefor much happier to be alive and valuing my limited time in this world much more than she ever will.

And anyway, if I'm going to die young then according to her philosophy that means the Bisexual record shop is not a long wait away. I still win

I Hate: Product Placement

THIS WEEKS BLOG POST IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY COCA~COLA.

Enjoy!

So, I pay the astronomical fee required to see a film in a cinema, sneak into one of those more comfortable seats despite not paying the extra few bones, line up my DIET~COKE with ice and BUTTERKIST popcorn both of which make a film so much more enjoyable and settle down to watch the movie. Great, except I always find it so hard to be sucked into a movie when it bombards me with endless/obvious product placement reminding me of the completely shitty world that I'm in there to forget about.

I really do hate the outside world. Most of the people are either mindless drones or insufferable arseholes hell bent on making every living organisms life a complete and total misery. The weather, no matter what country your in, is undesirable, especially if your british because we crave disappointment and as a result are disappointed if we don't find disappointment. And those of us who are 'lucky' enough to work, do so out of necessity and therefore spend hours on end doing something we loath just to get by. All of this gets me down and being the light minded positive thinker that I am I find joy and happiness in the arts, more so film and television. So what I don't want when I sit down to get my much needed dose of escapism is to be constantly reminded about the world that I hate so very much, and nothing does this more to me than product placement of something like KELLOGG'S FROSTIES because They're grrreat!

Another issue I have with product placement is that when it involves food stuffs its always the worst shit being sold to you. Beers, soft drinks, fast food, crisps/chips, SNICKERS, you name it its gunna' be bad. It just doesn't help all the fat fucks out there who should really be eating healthy and jumping on a tread-mil once in a while instead of dreaming about where their next PUKKA PIE is coming from, and trust me thats what their doing when all this advertising is going on. Wouldn't it be great to see James Bond munching on a bag of dried apricots every once in a while? I for one would find that much more (A) realistic seeing as he's a pretty healthy looking fella, and more (B) comforting, hey if James Bond is eating em' then it must be good. And that also aids my wish not to be dragged back to reality, its win, win. Just like partybingo.com.

As I sit here, sipping my KOPPARBERG (Which truly is a) PREMIUM CIDER I wonder where the world would be without product placement. I'm thinking it would be a better place. People wouldn't all be walking around with the same mobile phones, wearing the same clothes or drinking EVIAN MINERAL WATER in order to LIVE YOUNG. We would all be much more individual and only products that actually are based on quality would be being sold, because thats what would be needed in order to sell it, not just Homer Simpson's endorsement. Of corse if it wasn't for MTV's JACKASS! I wouldn't be sat here wearing QUIKSILVER jeans, Zoo York tee shirts and VANS 'OFF THE WALL' slip on shoes.

Now I'm off to order a PAPA JOHNS pizza, did you know they aim to deliver within thirty minutes?

I Hate: Men

Men have to be the best at everything with no exceptions. Be it the best at sports or licking our own balls we wanna do it better, faster and more efficiently than anyone else. The reason for this is that we crave power and domination. Everything we do in life is done in order to reach the top first, look down on everyone else and scream 'my cock is much bigger than yours'. Now you may be thinking what the downside to this is, well my spunky little unenlightened friend I will tell you. Getting to the top is much easier said than done seeing as we are constantly foiled by our own arch enemy...sex.

Our biggest and most irritating flaw is our inability to go any respectable amount of time without drifting off to a magical, dreamworld where naked beauty's feed us grapes and perform many various acts no matter how inappropriate or demeaning they are. Not that there is anything wrong with daydreaming in such a way, its pretty harmless really, but when it happens every few seconds it just gets in the fucking way!

Let me demo this by telling you a story...

Once uppon a time there were three NAKED WOMEN bears who went for a walk to let their hot SEX porridge cool down. A young lady named MASSIVE BOOBS Goldilocks stumbled across the bears MIDGET PORN home and proceeded to FUCK IT...

This is how the story would be told if I were to insert my thought process into it in real time. Fan-fucking-tastic character trait that is, and ALL (straight) men have it. (Not to say gay men don't think along similar lines...because they do...about cocks) Honest to God why must we think like that? Its just so moronic. It makes everything we try and do that little bit more of a slower process just because we have to stop and think about SEX ever once and a while. I'l bet the creator of all things bright and beautiful had a right old laugh when he installed that one. And whats worse is when we're not getting any we think about it 100% more often, making obtaining it even more difficult and thus starts a vicious downward spiral filled with hollywood sex tapes, water sports and self fellating.

The sex issue and the need to be the best make us nightmares when it comes to relationships. Ok we have a woman on our arm and we've been saying I love you since the first month in the hopes that it cuts the time it takes to arrive at destination sex station, but are we happy...no. We're possessive, jealous and insecure far beyond reasoning. We see a man even catch peripheral sight of 'our girl' and it takes every ounce of testosterone fuelled effort not to smash his fucking face in. The only reason we don' t do this is because 'our girl' has already noticed and is busy hurling abuse at the poor sap in a voice so loud that everyone can hear in order to make him feel like the shit smear on the bottom of the social shoe. The feelings of insecurity inevitably lead men into trying too hard in the relationship and being dumped, then going too far the other way in the following relationship and being dumped. Eventually we will get it right by learning to lie and cheat in order to hide our true feelings and thus create the illusion that we are perfectly happy in the relationship. Something we will probably get dumped for later.

To sum up men are rubbish. Every woman knows this and every man is too busy trying to be the best to admit it.

I am man enough to admit it though because my cock is much bigger than yours.