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A Refreshing Dose of Facebook Honesty

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f you’re on facebook, you’ve probably received a friend request from someone from years back who you never particularly liked. If you’re anything like me, you probably just accepted their request. If you’re anything like the person in this picture, you’re my new hero.

Picture found at www.passiveaggressivenotes.com

Virgin: the world’s best passenger complaint letter?

Written by telegraph

Here we reproduce a complaint letter sent to Sir Richard Branson, which is currently being emailed globally and is considered by many to be the world’s funniest passenger complaint letter.



Dear Mr Branson


REF: Mumbai to Heathrow 7th December 2008


I love the Virgin brand, I really do which is why I continue to use it despite a series of unfortunate incidents over the last few years. This latest incident takes the biscuit.


Ironically, by the end of the flight I would have gladly paid over a thousand rupees for a single biscuit following the culinary journey of hell I was subjected to at thehands of your corporation.


Look at this Richard. Just look at it: [see image 1, above].


I imagine the same questions are racing through your brilliant mind as were racing through mine on that fateful day. What is this? Why have I been given it? What have I done to deserve this? And, which one is the starter, which one is the desert?


You don’t get to a position like yours Richard with anything less than a generous sprinkling of observational power so I KNOW you will have spotted the tomato next to the two yellow shafts of sponge on the left. Yes, it’s next to the sponge shaft without the green paste. That’s got to be the clue hasn’t it. No sane person would serve a desert with a tomato would they. Well answer me this Richard, what sort of animal would serve a desert with peas in: [see image 2, above].


I know it looks like a baaji but it’s in custard Richard, custard. It must be the pudding. Well you’ll be fascinated to hear that it wasn’t custard. It was a sour gel with a clear oil on top. It’s only redeeming feature was that it managed to be so alien to my palette that it took away the taste of the curry emanating from our miscellaneous central cuboid of beige matter. Perhaps the meal on the left might be the desert after all.


Anyway, this is all irrelevant at the moment. I was raised strictly but neatly by my parents and if they knew I had started desert before the main course, a sponge shaft would be the least of my worries. So lets peel back the tin-foil on the main dish and see what’s on offer.


I’ll try and explain how this felt. Imagine being a twelve year old boy Richard. Now imagine it’s Christmas morning and you’re sat their with your final present to open. It’s a big one, and you know what it is. It’s that Goodmans stereo you picked out the catalogue and wrote to Santa about.


Only you open the present and it’s not in there. It’s your hamster Richard. It’s your hamster in the box and it’s not breathing. That’s how I felt when I peeled back the foil and saw this: [see image 3, above].


Now I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking it’s more of that Baaji custard. I admit I thought the same too, but no. It’s mustard Richard. MUSTARD. More mustard than any man could consume in a month. On the left we have a piece of broccoli and some peppers in a brown glue-like oil and on the right the chef had prepared some mashed potato. The potato masher had obviously broken and so it was decided the next best thing would be to pass the potatoes through the digestive tract of a bird.


Once it was regurgitated it was clearly then blended and mixed with a bit of mustard. Everybody likes a bit of mustard Richard.


By now I was actually starting to feel a little hypoglycaemic. I needed a sugar hit. Luckily there was a small cookie provided. It had caught my eye earlier due to it’s baffling presentation: [see image 4, above].


It appears to be in an evidence bag from the scene of a crime. A CRIME AGAINST BLOODY COOKING. Either that or some sort of back-street underground cookie, purchased off a gun-toting maniac high on his own supply of yeast. You certainly wouldn’t want to be caught carrying one of these through customs. Imagine biting into a piece of brass Richard. That would be softer on the teeth than the specimen above.


I was exhausted. All I wanted to do was relax but obviously I had to sit with that mess in front of me for half an hour. I swear the sponge shafts moved at one point.


Once cleared, I decided to relax with a bit of your world-famous onboard entertainment. I switched it on: [see image 5, above].


I apologise for the quality of the photo, it’s just it was incredibly hard to capture Boris Johnson’s face through the flickering white lines running up and down the screen. Perhaps it would be better on another channel: [see image 6, above].


Is that Ray Liotta? A question I found myself asking over and over again throughout the gruelling half-hour I attempted to watch the film like this. After that I switched off. I’d had enough. I was the hungriest I’d been in my adult life and I had a splitting headache from squinting at a crackling screen.


My only option was to simply stare at the seat in front and wait for either food, or sleep. Neither came for an incredibly long time. But when it did it surpassed my wildest expectations: [see image 7, above].


Yes! It’s another crime-scene cookie. Only this time you dunk it in the white stuff.


Richard…. What is that white stuff? It looked like it was going to be yoghurt. It finally dawned on me what it was after staring at it. It was a mixture between the Baaji custard and the Mustard sauce. It reminded me of my first week at university. I had overheard that you could make a drink by mixing vodka and refreshers. I lied to my new friends and told them I’d done it loads of times. When I attempted to make the drink in a big bowl it formed a cheese Richard, a cheese. That cheese looked a lot like your baaji-mustard.


So that was that Richard. I didn’t eat a bloody thing. My only question is: How can you live like this? I can’t imagine what dinner round your house is like, it must be like something out of a nature documentary.


As I said at the start I love your brand, I really do. It’s just a shame such a simple thing could bring it crashing to it’s knees and begging for sustenance.


Yours Sincererly


XXXX



  • Paul Charles, Virgin’s Director of Corporate Communications, confirmed that Sir Richard Branson had telephoned the author of the letter and had thanked him for his “constructive if tongue-in-cheek” email. Mr Charles said that Virgin was sorry the passenger had not liked the in-flight meals which he said was “award-winning food which is very popular on our Indian routes.”

10 Tattoo Cliches To Avoid At All Cost

Written by Kate Sedgwick

Feature photo by Jessica Driver / Above photo by Timm Williams

If you have tattoos (like me) then you know that people are often asking for advice about being inked. If you’re not tattooed, here is a short guide to some mistakes to avoid.

Before you go under the needle, have a look to see what the following might say about you.

Photo by Enricus

Tribal Band/Barbed Wire – Upper Arm

This tattoo proclaims you as a member of the tribe, that’s true. The sad part is that the tribe in question is the “sub-literati.”

Super Hard Neck Tattoo

The placement implies anything but hardness, no matter the subject matter. This is the mark of the young man with erectile dysfunction, or at the very least, a premature ejaculator. Can you say overcompensation? Go ahead and try again. I’m willing to be patient.

Garden Variety Butterfly Tramp Stamp

Beware the secret garden below. The butterfly belies a much more sinister truth, and though the garden is sure to be properly pruned, the implication that insect life may seek exodus from the deep cleavage below may not be so far off the mark.

Look At My Boobs Sacred Heart

Frank Zappa had it right about you Catholic girls. Too many years cooped up with the same sex have you making this desperate and permanent plea for male attention that you reiterate every time you “forget” to close those top buttons.

Photo by goodeye03

Any Placement Of A Dolphin

Bad enough on a necklace or a t-shirt, the dolphin tattoo indicates a desire to be seen as peace and earth loving. The bad news is that you were probably inspired to get it after an alcohol fueled domestic abuse disturbance that resulted in your arrest.

Nautical Star

Would you cut it out already? The closest you’ve been to the open water is happy hour near the naval base during shore leave.

Photo by haycarrieanne

Angel Wings On The Back

In your desire to be different, you committed the error of putting puny, atrophied angel wings on your back in an indelible medium. Were they suddenly to become corporeal, you’d be left with useless nubs that make getting dressed impossible. Shows severe spatial orientation issues.

Flower On The Ankle

The design you picked out gave you a familiar, warm-fuzzy feeling. It’s unfortunate that you failed to recognize it was because it resembled the packaging on your favorite feminine hygiene product. A future of daytime soaps awaits you.

Tazmanian Devil

Any Looney Tunes character pretty much says the same thing, but Taz is the mark of the beast – as in Old Milwaukee. The calling card of the unemployable, the Tazmanian Devil shows a character deficit that pretty much guarantees you will complacently be the recipient of public assistance for the rest of your life.

Low-Abdominal, Sub-Navel Tribal

Your shirt’s too short and your pants are too low and that means we can all see your belly tattoo. With or without a belly button ring, this almost definitely indicates a cavalier approach to birth control. Pretty soon, your tattoo will be ravaged by your impending and unplanned pregnancy.

Top 10 Inauguration Day Blunders

Written by Megan Shay

A very historic Inauguration Day is approaching. But a few presidential inaugurations became historic for less-than-flattering reasons. From extravagant parties and unruly mobs to streets littered with poisoned pigeons, let’s revisit history’s most memorable Inauguration Day mishaps.

1. Long windedWilliam Henry Harrison (Image credit: Hulton Deutsch)

The longest inaugural speech in U.S. history was given by President William Henry Harrison, clocking in at one hour and 45 minutes. Harrison delivered the long-winded speech during a snowstorm and without an overcoat, circumstances that are often blamed for his untimely death by pneumonia. However, it wasn’t exposure to the elements that really caused his illness. It was actually a common cold, caught weeks after the inauguration, which turned into pneumonia and was likely worsened by the hectic schedule of a newly elected president who had no time to rest.

2. Sneaking out the back doorAndrew Jackson (Image credit: Culver Pictures)

President Andrew Jackson, regarded as a “man of the people,” had to flee through the back door of his own inaugural reception in 1829 when the crowd crashed his party. Thousands of supporters came to the capital for the inauguration, and though some came looking for jobs, most came to support Jackson and cheer their new president. After his speech, however, the crowds swarmed the reception, mingling with government officials and generally regarding the house as theirs. Mud was tracked in, china and glasses were broken, and the crowds only left when the refreshments were put on the lawn outside.

3. Don’t feed the pigeonsNixon's Second Inaugural (Image credit: UPI/CORBIS-BETTMANN)

On the day of Richard Nixon’s 1973 inauguration, Pennsylvania Avenue was dotted with sick and dead pigeons. At the president’s request, the inauguration committee spent $13,000 to spread a chemical bird repellent on the tree branches along the parade route to deter the pigeons. According to the Washington Post, the chemicals in Roost-No-More were supposed to cause the birds’ feet to itch so they wouldn’t roost in the trees. Unfortunately, the birds ate the repellent, causing them to get sick and die along the parade route.

4. Less is more?Ronald Reagan's Inauguration (Image credit: UPI/THE BETTMANN ARCHIVE)

After criticism for his first inauguration in 1981, which cost $16.3 million for nine white-tie balls, President Ronald Reagan attempted to scale back the budget and have a more “for the people” celebration. However, the budget ballooned from $12 million to $20 million, and there were 10 balls instead of nine and two galas instead of one. Apparently, “scaling back” meant that the balls were black tie instead of white and the entertainment was less high-brow than at previous events, according to the Washington Post.

5. Turn up the heatUnion General Ulysses S. Grant (Image credit: Hulton Deutsch)

After the north wing of the Treasury Building proved too small for President Ulysses S. Grant’s first inaugural ball in 1869, a temporary structure was built in Judiciary Square for his second inaugural ball in 1873. Unfortunately, the structure had no heat or insulation, so guests danced in their coats and hats to stay warm in the minus-4-degree temperature, according to the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Events. Making matters worse, the food was cold, the hot chocolate and coffee ran out and the poor caged canaries — used as decorations — froze to death.

6. Sink or swimPresident Lincoln (Image credit: Archive Photos)

The weather was so bad at Abraham Lincoln’s second inauguration that pedestrians who could not swim were urged to stay away from the muddy, rain-soaked streets. According to the Washington Post, the great poet Walt Whitman actually referred to the rain as “slanting rain, full of rage.” It was definitely not a nice day for a parade.

7. Rats!The Checkers Speech (Image credit: Hulton Deutsch)

For Richard Nixon’s second inauguration, Vietnam War protesters dragged around a 25-foot-long rat made out of paper and chicken wire. To the protesters, the rat was symbolic of President Nixon. It was part of the largest Inauguration Day protest in U.S. history, with more than 25,000 protesters. Interesting, then, that according to the Washington Post, the ceremony went well and was “unmarred by any serious incidents.”

8. Coat check, pleaseCampaign Ribbon, 1868 (Image credit: Corbis)

Ulysses S. Grant’s first inauguration in 1869 ended with fights in the coat-check line and many guests abandoning their coats and hats due to an extremely long wait. The Washington Post reported that the coat check was staffed by illiterates who were unable to read the claim tickets, which surely slowed down the line even more. A similar event occurred at the end of the evening of a 1989 inaugural celebration when Republicans actually stormed the coat check of the Texas State Society’s Tie and Boots ball, later referred to as “The Bastille Day Coat Check Affair.”

9. It’s getting hot in hereJames Madison (Image credit: Hulton Deutsch)

At the first inaugural ball, held for James Madison in 1809, it reportedly got so hot inside the hotel that revelers broke out windows for ventilation. Madison’s wife Dolley must have been quite warm, herself — she was wearing a gown with a long velvet train and a Parisian headdress decked out with feathers and white satin.

10. All dressed up with no place to goEllen Louise Wilson (Image credit: Culver Pictures)

Woodrow Wilson refused to have a ball for his 1913 inauguration because he considered it inappropriate for such a dignified and solemn occasion. His wife Ellen, on the other hand, had no such feelings. And unfortunately for her, she had already purchased a gown for the affair.