h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

(Never understood it myself.)


PH: Yard sales are always in the morning, never in the afternoon or evening. I am not a morning person!

I think I may have whined about this before.

Thoughtless pedestrians and pedestrian controlled crossings.

When approaching a crossing and there is no approaching traffic, it isn't necessary to press the button. It's even less necessary to press the button and cross straight away against the red pedestrian light.

This morning, again, I find myself pulling up at a crossing as the light changes just to watch the back of a crosser walking away from the crossing having done exactly that.



PP.

Was it raining?

No.

Is the button supposed to stop the rain then?

PP.

This is why PUFFIN crossings were developed. They sense when a pedestrian crosses before the lights change and cancel the crossing request. Similarly, they sense when there's no traffic and change sooner, rather than waiting for a specific time.

PH: Gadgets that don't come with sufficient printed instructions. Worse still, the website given for reference also has no simple guide available.

Ikea.

1. How handy it is.
2. Being herded round because the place is so damn busy all the time.
3. Their habit of changing basic ranges that imply they are 'forever'. Their basic crockery (known as 365) has changed shape twice in the last few years. How my stack of pasta and cereal bowls is messed up. I need to stop bashing the edge on the tap.

PP.

Not only that but their Brio-compatible wooden train set bridges are too small for Brio, Thomas the Tank Engine and other compatible wooden trains to go underneath.

Another annoying thing with Ikea is everyone pronounces it differently. So I say Eye-Key-Ah while my mother calls it Icky-ah, for example.

<BB<

Ikea is like Nestles.

When I was young, I lived where Nestles was a major employer and people would talk about the factory. AND there was the Milky Bar ad too:-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muJDv6Do124

It was definitely Nestles as in trestles. Now its nes-lay.

What used to be eye-key-ah, now seems to be ick-ee-yah.

For no good reason so far as I can see.

PP.

RAS Syndrome isn't really a syndrome at all. So why do they call it that?

I had to look that one up. I thought it might be related to Restless Leg Syndrome (RLS Syndrome?).


Man, that's definitely one of my favorite PHs, especially ATM machine and PIN number.


What would be a better word than syndrome? Is it more of an effect, like Dunning-Kruger, or more of a complex like Baader-Meinhoff?

Strikes me as a linguistic tic. They should call it RAT Tic.

Regarding the pronunciation of IKEA, the name is made up of the founder's initials, IK, and those of the family farm and nearby village where he grew up. Ea is pronounced ay-a, so IKEA is pronounced Ik-ay-a. Simple.

As for Nestlé, that's another one we pronounced wrongly for years. Same with Skoda (Shkoda) and Citroën (See-tro-en). In fact, foreign businesses of all kinds seem to be insisting that their company names are pronounced property in advertisements. On the one hand I can see their point, but on the other hand I'm not sure how much it matters. We know who we're talking about. Surely that's the main thing.

I pronounce Nestlé "EE-vil ". Their habit of siphoning up vast amounts of public water in drought zones and selling it at a premium and their CEO declaring that no one should consider access to clean water a right earns them my contempt.

That they own a few of my favorite consumer products, Maggi sauce in particular, irritates me even more.

That's almost another PH - all these different brand names that are actually part of one big company.

While double checking my spelling I found an alternative to Maggi seasoning; Bragg Liquid Aminos. It's soy based rather than wheat, but I ordered a bottle and look forward to tasting it. I was rather surprised to learn more about Maggi. I assumed it was an Asian product as I first discovered it at a Vietnamese place. It does go great on Rock & Roll beef and vermicelli. But it was created by a Swiss fellow in Germany. I also learned Maggi seasoning varies by region. The German Maggi probably doesn't taste very similar to the American version or the Polish version or the Filipino variety, &c.

I just do not get Anti-Immigration sentiment. At all.

PH of the day. The week. The month - Hell since last October. The stupid company I work for. They told me I would be laid off when they re-organised and put the admin staff into a new company which was being formed and since then I have heard nothing. When I last asked, I was told I would be out on the streets on 1st March. That's next week and I haven't heard anything since.

I am so pleased to be leaving that place, but am keeping a low profile - I don't want to look as though I'm pleased to go or they might not be quite so generous paying me off.

But at the moment, planning the rest of the year is getting quite difficult.

To provide an example of targeted advertising gone horribly, horribly wrong:

Yesterday I listed a pair of leather trench coats for sale on ebay. Not five minutes later and now EVERYWHERE I go, EVERY ad on EVERY website is trying to sell me my OWN GODDAMN COATS!!

What the hell?

I've been thinking about downsizing from my 1800cc motorcycle to something with better mileage that's good for my commute.

So, of course, I'm now getting lots of ads for both mobility scooters and children's push scooters.