Welcome to room 101. This isn’t Orwell’s Room 101 - or at least it’s only very loosely linked to it. This Room 101 is the dungeon into which you may consign up to five things you would like completely deleted from existence. More like the memory hole, in fact.
However, if anyone else in the thread can think of a highly plausible reason why one or more of your items really must not be consigned to Room 101, then you’re stuck with them, like an albatross sitting on a millstone, around your neck.
So to begin…
Into Room 101, I would send:
-Any singer who releases more than one single containing their own name in the lyrics. One is not fine, but it’s excusable, do it more than once, though, and you’re goin’ down. Yes, Shakira and Craig David, I’m looking at you.
The losses to the genres of rap and hip hop would, I feel, be quite horrific, but it’s a price I’m willing to pay.
-Spammers. No excuse. Begone. Depart existence now.
-People who pick up their dog’s shit in a bag, then leave it there in the bag. If you can’t understand this is worse than doing nothing at all, you need to find yourself a different planet to live on.
I’m not sure this counts is a highly plausible reason why your suggestion does not belong, but, having a dog of my own, I suspect that no one actually, intentionally does this. Since there is no way to prove my position and since you are likely to fight hard against having a sack of dog shit hanging about your neck, I’ll simply leave it at that.
The only thing I can think of off the top of my head is: Soft-Core Porn Either tone it down and go for the R rating or spice it up a little!
There’s a place where I walk that has a whole collection of bags - a few more every day. Also, I’ve seen people do it - pick up the shit in a bag, tie the handles, then swing it into a tree or a bush, or over the hedge. The universe won’t miss these assholes, and I know they’re not the majority of dog owners.
Sadly, I refute religion. There are tons of utter morons who would be left without a moral compass were it not for the one conveniently provided for them by their religion of choice. (Please note: I did not say ALL religious people are this stupid.) Would that we as an entire race were capable of functioning as a society without religion. Sadly, I fear that is idealism, not realism.
Okay, I’ll give you that Pope because I haven’t the faintest idea who you’re talking about, so I can’t raise objections.
Put viruses in there, though, and you’ll cause a human population problem and simultaneously put Symantec out of business while taking away a major selling point for both Mac OSX and Linux. Please don’t do that.
Oh, and I hate mosquitoes too, but some of my favorite fishy friends feed on mosquito larvae. (Enough alliteration for ya?)
Into the room, I’d stick:
Vanilla Ice - No value whatsoever. Not even as an object of ridicule or as a lesson to children about the value of an education.
People Who Won’t Get The F**k Out Of The Way. 'Nuff said.
Prescription drugs created for nonexistent diseases - Start with Vytorin. Then round up the rest of them that were created in Big Pharma brainstorm meetings where execs were trying to find a condition to match the worthless crapola they just “engineered.”
Those gross McDonald’s breakfast sandwiches where instead of the English muffin they use syrup-infused pancakes. What’s next? Are they going to pre-digest this stuff for you and hand you a steaming grogan in a styrofoam container?
People who do movie quotes to death. Nobody wants to hear you recite the effing “Knights who say ‘Ni!’” sketch from memory. Everybody’s tired of hearing “Not so much…” when you describe the relative attractiveness of the girl sitting at the bar. And no, we don’t want to say hello to your little friend. Develop an original thought, please.
Game shows that take twice as long as they should because they have to include all the confrontational Weakest Link stuff. What exactly was wrong with Play Your Cards Right or Gambit, where everything was done and dusted in 30 minutes and they maybe won a fridge freezer? No dramatic blue laser lighting or contestants slagging each other off. Happier, gentler times.
The phrase “going forward.” It’s suddenly everywhere, and it’s almost entirely redundant. “Going forward, we will fully leverage our sales potential.” Maybe so, but you are already using the future tense, so why bother with the “going forward”? Your sales strategy is unlikely to require travelling back in time, after all.
Film-ization. The practice of processing interlaced video so that it looks like film. Now so cheap to do, and so de rigeur on British TV, that you even see live TV that has been film-ized. Never mind that it necessarily involves a reduction in picture quality - film (even fake film) is better than video, right?
They are an American Icon. They symbolize the best and worst of their era, and have been adopted with fresh perspective in every succeeding era.
Some are actually attractive. Not, perhaps, the three foot ones drapes in pink fairy lights, or the original plastic-with-metal-rods for legs, but the two dimensional ones can be nice.
They are ideal for annoying arrogant neighbors who fancy themselves the lawn police, measuring your grass with a ruler to verify that it is no more than four inches and leaving nasty little notes about property value if your lawn is more than 1% what they define as weeds.
Watch the episode of Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe (Season 3, I think) where he discusses digital processing as part of TV programme making. The raw unprocessed video from the cameras they now use just looks harsh and nasty. I also dispute the “reduction in picture quality” claim you make.
