Ray is currently Annoyed with... (another fun Rant!)

I was recently interviewed by a New York website ( www.FineAndDandyShop.com / www.FineAndDandyShop.blogspot.com ), who are doing a Profile piece about little ol’ me - I’ll let you know when they post it up.

And there in the list of questions was: “Currently Annoyed with?”

Well I just sat down and let it flow. Whether they publish all of it, I don’t know, but here are a few morsels for thought:

“ Where do we start? [Take your pick] -

A - Starbucks: Have you noticed that in every Starbucks, in every city and every town of every state and every country in the world, however large the Starbucks shop is, they Still have only ONE bathroom? [OK, there is one store - in NYC - that has two bathrooms…one of them is usually bust].

B - Facebook. For continually telling me to “download this” and “download that”. For changing the layouts and formats of their pages when nothing was wrong with them in the first place (change for the sake of change signifies desperation); and for not allowing me to go Invisible when I want to - I keep getting approached or hit on to start engaging in a chat when all I wanna do is clear out my emails. (For all its faults, I still prefer myspace). Still, the moment facebook is no longer ‘Kewl’ everyone will migrate elsewhere…. From the completely pointless twitter to some other networking site.

Moreover, Facebook has recently agreed to let third party advertisers use your posted pictures without your permission. Click on SETTINGS up at the top where you see the log out link. Select PRIVACY. Then select NEWS FEEDS AND WALL. Next select the tab that reads FACE BOOK ADS (top left). There is a drop down box, select NO ONE. Then SAVE your changes.

C - J Crew for restricting their online purchases to the US, Canada or Japan only. Everywhere else in the world? - we don’t wanna know. Wake up, J Crew, it’s supposed to be a WORLD-wide web…and a Global economy. A matter of principle here.

D - Tucker Carlson for caving-in to MSNBC network pressure and ditching the bow tie! (yes, I’m still annoyed at that, after all this time).

E - Increasingly sophisticated cellphones. I don’t want them with internet access, bells and whistles and thermometers. I just want a simple, basic mobile phone that sends and receives calls and texts and wakes me up in the morning. That’s all. Nothing more. Surely, I am not alone in this?

F - Ageism - everywhere and in everything, especially the creative media. How many times have you heard the phrase “we’re always on the look-out for new talent”? - when what they actually mean is “we’re on the look-out for Young talent“. It permeates the media and creative arts and is the un-admitted shame of our industry.

There is a such a wealth of untapped / un-encouraged creativity out there in all fields; we shouldn’t write people off after, say, forty just because they maybe never had the breaks. Perhaps the Chinese have got it right: the older the person, the more respected they are within their community.

G - Everything to do with the UK, especially the inept, paralysed, useless government (see my “Broken Britain” series of postings on my blog). At least in the States now there is a sense of a “coming-togetherness” to fight this recession and pull yourselves out of it (and, believe me, I do respond to that American ‘can-do‘ spirit). We in the UK have a dithering leader, like a rabbit caught in the headlights, who does not have the guts to do the honourable thing and have an election now. We have an angry and bitter electorate who are ready to rise up and vote for the far-Right (and the longer it goes on the stronger those passions become). Sadly, we also realise that Nothing will happen in the UK until our next scheduled General Election (June 2010), and the hope that with a new government there might be a new perspective in things. Currently, we are a country in limbo with a government holding onto power by its fingernails and determined to stay on at all cost. Besides, I have been planning to relocate for some years. It’s time to draw a line and move on.

Am I coming across as a grumpy old grouch? (I guess when I hit 50 I thought: “this is fantastic: I can officially become a miserable old git AND get away with it!”)



- Well that was it, off the top of my head.

No doubt You can think of a few more…