Month: September 2009

A pox on all Multiplexes. They’re ruinously ugly, uncomfortable, purveyors of the worst kind of dreck. It’s true, I suppose, that they occasionally show a film worth watching – but even then they manage to badly mess up the experience.

You might grumble about having to pay extra for 3D glasses. My grumble is that the hellish Multiplexes ruin a good film BY PLAYING THE SOUNDTRACK AT ANTISOCIALLY LOUD VOLUMES. Why? I’m not deaf. Nor do I wish to be. Are they planning on charging extra for ear-defenders in the near future? Or hearing aids for those customers whose hearing has been irrevocably buggered? Can we please have a campaign for cinemas to turn the bloody volume down before I turn into a curmudgeon. I’m not old enough for that yet.

Praise then to the Picturehouse and Screen chains and all ‘arthouse’ (I hate that term) cinemas. Small. Comfortable. Sociable. And sadly non-existent in south-east Hertfordshire.

A dictionary has been censored by Apple prior to its acceptance on the app store. Not only have unambiguously rude words been removed; words like ‘screw’, ‘snatch’ and ‘ass’ have been purged too.  Whoever made that decision is a cock.  It’s a type of bird, you know, although the bird is apparently extinct by Apple’s request.

Personally I have no problem with rude words.  If your child can’t get them on your phone then they’ll underline them in a paper dictionary instead.  Maybe Apple are trying to protect me.  I’m grateful.  Really I am.  I shall send over my copy of Rogers Profanisaurus without delay so that they can censor that too.

I do have a problem with all the gun simulators on the app store though.  A rude word has never resulted in injury to another – but guns kill hundreds, if not thousands, of people around the world every day.  Surely that is more offensive?

To quote South Park it seems that “Horrific, deplorable violence is okay, as long as people don’t say any naughty words.”