Floating down to Camelot

Curse you, internet, for making information so easy to find! It's quite killing conversation! I often find myself wondering about the answer to something, and mentally composing an LJ post about it, thinking that it might prompt a bit of conversation. Then I Google it, and find loads of other conversations about it, and all my questions and debates are answered, and never get around to making the post.

A few minutes ago, I was chasing a childhood memory. "Does anyone else remember...?" I was going to post, before describing the half-remembered item. "Oh! I remember those, too!" people might have said. "Now what were they called...?" And there would have been nostalgia and memories and brain-racking, and then someone would have supplied the name, and there would have been gratitude and praise.

But Google has told me. They were Wade Whimsies. And I never really liked them much, anyway.

I know it is hardly news that train ticket pricing is an arcane mystery understood only by a faceless, red-eyed cabal OF EVIL!, but I found a particularly egregious example the other day. I was trying to book my train ticket to Summerfest, in which both directions of my journey will be on trains departing at about 9.45 - i.e. counting as off-peak journeys. In previous years, I've booked the train separately online, and have bought the ferry ticket on the day, but this time I remembered that it's possible to buy both together, by putting West Cowes in as the starting point of the train journey, rather than Southampton Central. I've done this before, and the total price quoted is the same as the price quoted if you buy each separately.

This time, they quoted me £115 for a single ticket, with a variety of returns starting at £215.* Since I've done this journey a couple of times before, I knew that this was badly wrong. Last year, the train cost me £90-something return, and the ferry is around £20 return. I redid the search, this time starting at Southampton. Single was £49.50, and the cheapest return was £102.

So because the non-train leg of the journey took place in peak time, the entire journey was charged at peak prices.

* When I went to check the prices just now, I was still quoted £115 for a single, but this time they'd decided that I was allowed to get a super off-peak return for £143. The other day, this was only offered as an option on the later train, not the one I wanted. At least, I'm almost certain this was the case, since I remember saying, "Look! Look!" and jabbing an angry finger at the omission, though I do of course have to entertain the possibility that I'm wrong. *sigh* I'm really not good at this ranting business, am I. "Grr! Grr! Outrageous! Shocking!... but of course I could be wrong." Although £143 for an off-peak return including the ferry is still £20 more than it should be, so I can still do a mild, limp rant. A sort of... grutter, or grumple, or something.

Today's rant is about books that are part of a series, but refuse to reveal what number volume they are. It must be a deliberate choice by the publishers, presumably done to boost sales by conning people into buying whatever volume is in their hand, without putting it back because they can't find book one.

I'm reading the Dresden Files at the moment, and the first six volumes say "book X of the Dresden Files" nice and clearly on the cover, but from then on, the books - same edition, same cover design - just say "the Dresden Files." Granted, it's clearly a series that's been written on the assumption that people might be reading out of order - there are paragraphs of new reader exposition dotted throughout all the later volumes - but there is a lot of ongoing story arc that runs from volume to volume, so reading out of order would give you a lot of spoilers for earlier books.

In some series, the reading order really doesn't matter. My impression - not supported by any attempt to gather evidence - is that these books do indeed go out better in the library when they don't have prominent numbers of the spine. People can start with whatever book happens to be to hand, without being deterred by the absence of book one.

But I've also read trilogies that are really just one long story split over three volumes, and even then sometimes they refuse to admit even that they're part of a series at all, let alone what volume they are. I've picked up books that look exactly like a self-contained novel, and have scoured them all over in every possible place to find any evidence of a series, and found nothing. Then I to turn to the blurb and read, "After the shocking and unexpected SPOILER!, all the characters are doing INCREDIBLY SPOILERY THINGS! in an INCREDIBLY SPOILERY PLACE!" which sometimes makes me sigh sadly, and say, "That sounds like a book I would have really liked... were it not for the fact that you've just gone and spoiled it all for me! Grr!"

Here are some overdue rants, which I was seething madly over on Friday, without the internet access necessary to inflict them on anyone else.

1. The ferry gangway is wide enough for two people if they both tuck themselves in fairly close to the side. However, if someone walks slap-bang in the middle of the gangway, nobody can get past them. Why is it that very slow walkers invariably do this? They usually shoulder their way to near the front of the queue, so they can ensure that they delay the maximum number of people. An enormous gap opens up in front of them, so they must know that they're walking much slower than everyone else, but still they plod along, while hundreds of seething commuters are banked up behind them like water behind a dam. Grr! Rant! Rant! Rant!

2. How can anyone actually enjoy shopping? I had to visit John Lewis in the big shopping arcade in Southampton. The arcade is a sea of noise and blundering crowds, who cut in front of you, and stop at the top of escalators to dither, and meander around oblivious to their surroundings. Outside the arcade there is currently a market with children's fairground rides, all blaring out loud conflicting music. To get into John Lewis, you have to brave the hideous stench of a million perfumes. The whole place is set up like a labyrinth to try to trick you, and there isn't even a nice simple Coats department, but about a hundred million separate places where coats lurk, most of them colonised by inconsiderate browsers who have surrounded themselves with an enormous pool of shopping bags, and make no attempt to shift to the side to allow someone else to browse beside them. I am normally quite willing to accept that other people might love things that I detest, like raw carrots, but a busy shopping centre is so beyond enjoyable to me that I really can't comprehend how anyone might derive pleasure from being there.

I think I've ranted about the milky part of this post before, but what's the use of a good rant if you can't repeat yourself?

Driving home just now, I heard that the Radio 2 lunch time phone-in is yet again going to lambast some politician for admitting that he doesn't know the price of a pint of milk. Apparently this is proof that he doesn't live in the real world, but presumably lives on a pink cloud and gets silver unicorns to buy his milk from the friendly neighbourhood grocery dragon.

It always annoys me when the ability to quote the price of a pint of milk (specifically milk, as opposed to bread, potatoes or whatever) is taken as proof as being part of the "real world." For one thing, politicians can just learn it by rote. But I don't know the price of a pint of milk, either. We have an old-fashioned milkman who leaves milk on the doorstep, for which we pay by direct debit, which is budgeted for but on a monthly basis. When we need to top it up - which is very seldom - we almost always buy other items alongside the the price at the time, and I notice the price when shopping and add it up mentally, but I don't bother to remember it afterwards. It changes from shop to shop, anyway - and, besides, I'm more likely to buy 2 pint cartons, rather than single pints, anyway, since they're cheaper.

EDIT: I realise now that the above paragraph could read as if I'm sitting in some ivory tower of affluence, failing to understand what it's like to have to make every penny count. For this I apologise. However, even when we were living on a very tight budget, I had no idea what milk cost, because Pellinor was unemployed so did all the shopping. The last time this issue came up, I asked a lot of people if they knew the cost of a pint of milk. These included several people who really really struggle to get through the month financially. None of these people knew, either - one because they never used milk, one because their partner did all the shopping, and one because they always bought 4-pint packs since they were more cost effective, or else looked out for special offers and "reduced to clear" offers. None of them could quote off by heart the price of very much at all, even though the cost of their shopping was very important to them.

I also have no idea what stamps cost. This is probably indefensible.

What is this "real world" that people are lambasted for not living in? What is this "real life" that people are attacked for being out of touch with? Doesn't everyone live lives that are real to them. Everyone has their own fears and worries and tensions, no matter what their outward circumstances. Why are some lifestyles more "real" than others? And why does the ability to quote the price of a pint of milk (as opposed to a pound of potatoes or a loaf of bread) have anything to do with any of it?

- "Unless you've been living under a rock..." This phrase normally precedes some statement of "common knowledge" that proves to be something not particularly universal at all, but confined to one subject area or country (e.g. American football or UK reality TV shows or whatever). It annoys me very much, with its implied sneering at anyone who doesn't happen to share the interests of the writer.

- "Oh, but of course I'm a woman, so I can multitask." Every woman I've heard say this has been demonstrably very bad at multitasking, even as they trumpet how good they are. Interestingly, they invariably stop whatever they're doing in order to give their full attention to their announcement of how good they are at doing two things at once.

- Vilification of men who leave the toilet seat up. Yes, I do think that things should generally be left the way you found them (unless the way you found them is broken and bleeding in the gutter, gasping "Take me to a hospital!") and I suspect that over 50% of toilet visits require the seat to be down, which means that the seat down position is a fair default, but I really don't see why it's such an unforgiveable sin to leave it up. If someone wants the seat up and finds it down, they put it up. Why is it such a crime to expect those who want it down and find it up to put it down themselves?

I very much dislike pointy ears. No, I'll qualify that. Pointy ears are perfectly acceptable when in their proper place, which is on cats and hounds and fennec foxes and rabbits and hares and all the many other species of animal that have the decency to clothe their pointy ears in fur. I'll even allow Vulcans to exist in all their pointy glory without snarling at them for their ears, since those ears are subtle and their points are delicate in flavour. However, I have spent far too many hours of my life encountering computer generated elves whose ears are a good nine inches tall, culminating in pencil-sharp points that stick out from their hair like horns. They never wear ear-armour, either, not even the most warlike of pointy-ear-possessors, which piles bother upon bother, since these ears seem such an obvious weakness in battle. (Much like Buffy's huge and dangly hoopy ear-rings, which make me cringe whenever I see her fighting in them.) I refuse point blank to play an elf in any computer game, because the ears annoy me so much. No doubt I'd get loads of lovely racial bonuses, but... urgh! Ears! No!

Yeah, I know it's a kind of trivial thing to be ranting about, but it's something that's been annoying me in my ridiculously petty way for years, and sometimes petty bothers have to spill out.

I was supposed to be getting a new mobile phone today. Actually - and I know that many people will find this quite amazing - it's my first mobile phone. I've had a work phone for some years, and since I'm allowed to make personal phone calls if I mark them on an itemised bill and pay the cost back, I haven't seen the need for a personal one. However, the hassle of having to do this means that I very seldom do use it to make personal calls, and because it's a work phone, if often ends up on silent, or languishing in a bag, so I miss the very few calls on I get on it. I'm not a very phone-y person, really, preferring email and the like, but I've come to realise that I do really need a phone of my own.

So I've chosen a new phone, which is about the cheapest I could find that allows internet access. And it was supposed to arrive today, but I got home to find a note through the door saying they'd tried to deliver it, but I was out. Not a problem, I thought, picking up the note and preparing to head back out again to pick it up from the depot ten minutes away. Then I noticed that they'd ticked the "we will try again tomorrow" option, and provided no way for me to change this. I know that some people work part time, and some people make trips out but are at home most days, but I would be willing to bet that the majority of people who are out on a Tuesday are also out on a Wednesday, so automatically trying to redeliver sounds as if it will be waste of the driver's time more often than not.

I just wish there was some consistency. Sometimes they leave them with neighbours, sometimes they take them to the depot, sometimes they redeliver, and sometimes I get packages left under plants or behind pots in the back garden, usually with a note through the door telling me where to look, though once with no note at all, meaning that I only found it days later by chance.

As I librarian, I am, of course, very aware of the problems of classification, and I know there is no way on earth that a supermarket can arrange all its items so that everything is in exactly the place that every individual user would expect it to be, grouped next to the items they want it to be next to. I just above forgave them when I trawled up and down the aisles for twenty minutes searching for cream, only to find it on an end-of-aisle display not all that far from the milk. (I only went up and down. When I search and search for an item and fail to find it, it's always always on and end-of-aisle display facing the back of the shop.) I forgave them their hard-to-find tomato puree and dried onions, since I wasn't all that sure where I'd have put them myself.

However, I can not imagine any classification system in which stock cubes should be shelved on the end of an aisle of ice cream, just opposite the section devoted to pet food. I wouldn't have found them at all, had I not suddenly remembered that stuffing - a thing I'm inordinately fond of and therefore buy in great amounts - was shelved on the end of one of the frozen food aisles, miles away from all the rest of the room temperature food. (Pellinor's Catalogue Of The Thousand Pies tells me that the correct term for these products is "ambient.") Following this hunch, I charged off towards the stuffing, and found stock cubes on the end of the adjacent aisle, but I would have given up and gone out without them were not for this knowledge obtained as a result of my stuffing addiction.

Oh, and the other thing shelved on this end-of-aisle display between the ice cream and the cat food? Chewing gum. Analyse that, Mr Dewey.

Actually, I suppose the true moral of this story is that I really ought to ask for help, rather than trudge endlessly up and down the aisles in fruitless quests, but asking for directions is something that I don't do. And, yes, I do come out as categorically male in all those silly internet tests.

I was walking past a hairdressers' the other day, and saw their prices prominently displayed in the window. The cheapest women's haircut was three times the price of the cheapest men's cut. Even the most expensive men's cut was more cheaper than the cheapest women's cut. I realise, of course, that most women have hairstyles that are more complicated and time consuming to produce than most men's hairstyles. However, some men have very fancy hairstyles, and some women have very simple ones. When I was a child, the hairdresser used to cut my hair dry. Then I became a teenager, and suddenly the hairdressers swore blind that it was impossible to cut hair without washing it first, then blowdrying it afterwards. My hair was the same, and the style was the same, but suddenly the hairdressers insisted on all these extra expensive stages. It all seems like a bit of a con.

It was especially annoying since the whole washing thing was riddled with awfulness. I hated the feel of all the extra horrid things they insisted on putting in my hair so much that I had to wash my hair as soon as I got home, to get rid of them. They always used shampoo that I was allergic to - despite me warning them - and then sneered in a disapproving fashion when they noticed that my scalp was all red and irritated. ("Do you use a cheap shampoo?" they'd say, dripping with disdain.) I was paying extra money to get a dose of superior sneering, a dash of allergic reaction, and a whole lot of annoyance.

Which is why I did something rather rash and drastic with scissors.

In other news, I've often chuckled at those lists that reveal how many people each year were hospitalised because of clothing-related accidents, and the like - injured by killer socks etc. Today I was almost one of them. I forgot to pack any skirts or trousers when going to a folk festival last year, so borrowed a skirt from someone else, and rushed out and bought the first trousers I found, which were three-quarter length, with a decorative cord around the hem of each leg, held there by being threaded through a series of little loops. It's always looked a bit traily and messy, but today it almost killed me. I was going downstairs, when the big toe of one foot got caught in the cord of the other leg. I would definitely have fallen headfirst downstairs were it not for the fact that I've got cats. I never used to grip the bannister when going downstairs at home, but too many near-misses involving thundering cats have taught me always to grip onto it for dear life.

The cords have now been removed. The cats have ritually killed them.

Apart from that, I've spent most of the weekend playing Assassin's Creed 2. I killed the pope today, but he was evil, so that's okay.

I watched the first episode of Richard Hammond's Invisible Worlds last night. It was all about those things that happen too fast for the human eye to see, and it showed slowed-down footage of various things - exploding spores, flying bees, swimming dolphins etc. - to show what was really happening. I found it all very interesting, and there were some really arresting images.

However, if I'd received a pound whenever he said something along the lines of, "We can't see what's happening because it's too fast for the human eye to see. Only by slowing it down can we understand it," I would be rich by now - especially if I had a bonus pay-out whenever he said Invisible Worlds, in capitals, as part of this. Yes, Richard, we do understand the point of this episode. It would be hard not to, given that you've said it 59 times already in the last hour.

At least it didn't make me want to throw things at the screen, which many modern factual TV shows do. You get the first five minutes wasted on an extended trailer of forthcoming attractions, with the presenter getting ever more excited as the music swells. You get the presenter pretending to be a total idiot, as he and the viewer go on a "journey" together to "discover" the answer to some question or other. You get the presenter raving about some wonderful sight, only for the camera to whiz around so fast that you can't look at it, or else to spend the whole time focusing on a close-up of the presenter's face as he speaks about how moved the sight makes him. You get "amazing discoveries" of things that have actually been known for years, and you get minority opinions expressed as fact - something I notice in history programmes about periods I know about, and which therefore makes me sceptical of anything they tell me in programmes about things I don't know about.

I did rather enjoy the recent BBC series on geology, though, since all the jet-setting and dramatic stunts did at least serve to demonstrate valid points. I've only seen a bit of the new Solar System series on Sunday evenings, but I liked most of that, too. At least the presenter didn't pretend to be an idiot, and explained things to us, rather than standing there nodding like a fool while some "expert" explained things to him. I was, however, rather distracted by the fact that he popped up in all the four corners of the earth while still wearing the same t-shirt.

Grr! Every time I do Wii Fit, I end up snarling. Now, I know that there are far more worthy ways to get fit than to use Wii Fit, but the concept suits me well. I can do it inside - good on this rainy days - and I can do it in a short burst while dinner is cooking. Since I'm a person who will do absolutely anything to earn five shiny gold stars, that aspect of it all is good for me, too. (Or somewhat good for me, anyway, in that I will work obsessively on an exercise until I get five stars, and then lose interest in it completely until Pellinor kicks me off the top of the high score table, in which I suddenly feel the urge to exercise in that way again.)

However, although much of it is good, it is also so very annoying. It talks to me all the time. Now, I am an impatient person when it comes to computer games. I'm the sort of person who likes to skip cut scenes and get on with the killing. I therefore find it very annoying when I want to do a 1 minute yoga exercise, and first have to sit through my "trainer" waffling on about how he was up late last night and giving me an unasked-for tip about sleep patterns, and then, when I've finished, to sit through a lengthy speech which is exactly the same as it was the previous 67 times I did this exercise. To clock 30 minutes of exercise, you have to play the thing for nearly an hour. (Although Wii Fit Plus does improve on this, since you can string together exercises into a routine, which is free from waffle.)

I also get very annoyed when it tells me off. Weight can fluctuate by several pounds a day, depending on what you've recently eaten, or even on what you ate yesterday, since some foods cause your body to cling onto fluids, which can temporarily boost your weight by a pound or two. If your weight is one pound heavier than it was the day before, it does not mean that you have "put on one pound," yet the horrid machine shouts at you and interrogates you about your awful habits that might have caused this weight gain.

In fact, it seems to tell you off no matter what you do. I was once told off for missing a day of exercise, and then immediately told off for exercising too hard and not taking a break. I did a half hour exercise routine in which every single exercise earned me comments about how wonderful I was, only for the final comment to be something along the lines of "that was pathetic. Unless your posture is great you can't be beautiful."

1. Non-fiction books with no page numbers. Children's non-fiction books always have a contents page and an index, even when the book is aimed at 5 year olds and has only a few sentences a page. This is so children can learn how to use such things, and is all well and good. However, today I was faced with a request from a teacher who had decided to do a topic that isn't on the curriculum, but still expected a box full of books on it. (This is yet another grr-some thing.) Since it wasn't on the curriculum, there were precisely NO children's books on it, but I thought there was a possibility that I might get odd paragraphs here and there in books on broader topics. This required searching in about a hundred books. The topic in question was indeed mentioned in the index of a few of them, but in several cases, there book didn't actually contain page numbers. Or, rather, the number for page 1 appeared at the top left, the number pages 2, 3, 4 and 5 were missing, 6 had its number lurking at the bottom right, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 were missing... and so on. Very, very annoying.

2. Blurbs that ruin the entire plot. I also had to search for children's novels about a particular topic, and I found a likely-looking candidate. However, the blurb was a complete summary of the entire book, even including words along the lines of "until it reaches an exciting conclusion, in which..." This happens far too often. I've read several books in which the shock revelation that happened on page 500 had been totally ruined by the blurb. Why do they do it? I know that writing blurbs is hard; it's something I always find very difficult when posting my own fanfic. You don't want to spoil major plot twists, but neither do you want to say so little that the reader has no idea what the book is about. But, still, summarising the entire book, even including the final chapter. Why?

3. Public toilets with automatic hand-washing units. I went to some public toilets today that had 6 cubicles, but only two hand-washing units. When you put your hands in, you got blasted with a ridiculous amount of soap - soap that made my hands itch for hours afterwards. Then you get what felt like a bath-load of warm water, and many seconds later, you got a very long blast of hot air. The whole cycle lasted a lot longer than the average toilet visit, so the result was a long queue for hand-washing, even though there was no queue for the toilets. The person in front of me walked off without drying their hands, but I still had to stand there for what felt like a good minute while it finished its cycle, before I could start washing my hands. Grr!

*insert predicatable rant about much-ranted-about topic here*

EDIT: There was actually a real rant here. I spent the entire drive home over lunch writing it in my head, before becoming almost certain that I'd posted something very similar in the past. I was going to rant away anyway, in shortened form, but ended up with barely a minute in which I could post.

While most of the comments in this article are doubtless tongue in cheek, it still leaves me fuming in righteous indignation. I doubt that reputable journalists would get away with writing things like "men have always known that women are a bit of a waste of space" nowadays, but apparently it's quite okay for women to say such things about men. (Would fume in more detail, but work calls.)

Totally unrelated: The Google Street View camera had its lunch in our work car park today...

EDIT: And also totally unrelated: This may well be common knowledge, but it's new to me. If anyone has any forthcoming railway journeys in the Southern Railways region, tomorrow is the day to buy the ticketd, since they're offering 90 percent off tickets booked in advance. (Or "advanced tickets", as the picture shows, although they look pretty basic to me.) I've not read the small print yet, though, so there may well be millions of exceptions.

Today's rant is about food that gives a long description on the packet of its contents, and then proceeds to hit you with the overwhelming taste of something that hasn't been mentioned. Today, for example, I had a Sainsbury's Taste the Difference chicken soup. The blurb went on at great length about the happiness of the chickens, and the wonderfulness of the cream. When I came to eat it, the only thing it tasted of was onions. When I checked the ingredients, I saw that onions were the second ingredient, above cream (12 percent) and chicken (6 percent), but they weren't mentioned anywhere in the verbal description on the front. In "Taste the Difference chicken soup" presumably the said "difference" is that it doesn't taste of chicken.

I do actually like onions, so the soup was okay, but a few months ago I had some "chorizo and tomato" soup which was so thick with crunchy beans that I couldn't bear to eat it. Again, no mention of beans in its description. I've had the same happen with sandwiches, which have had a veritable essay on the front about their contents, but fail to mention the actual main ingredient.

Yes, yes, I know the moral of this story is that I should read the ingredients list, but they make it so hard, by listing every ingredient of every constituent part. I actually skimmed the ingredients of my chicken soup three times today before I even noticed that little word "onions" lurking there.

Dear self-styled poet, muse-inspired,
Your verses leave me rather tired.
The slightest drama stirs your pen;
You scribble down your verse, and then
You send it to the local press,
Where, you hope, it will impress,
The common reader there at home,
Too muse-impaired to write a pome.

( More )

What is an LJ for if not to launch totally unjustified rants about trivial things that really don't deserve your vitriol? My chosen target for today is umbrellas. Now, I'm sure that many people here are habitual umbrellas users, and many more dabble in the umbrella sub-culture every now and then, and yes, yes, I know: unreasonable, but I refer you back to the whole "trival things" and "really don't deserve vitriol" etc. etc., and I will rant away.

Umbrellas. I don't like using them. Within that simple construction of fabric and metal lurks a monster of extreme willfulness. Nothing delights this monster more than to buck and lash around, forcing the hapless person who wants to subdue it to fight it every step of the way. When it's mildly drizzling in a strong wind, I look out and watch hordes of people fighting an enormous battle to win one small foot of land at a time, and I think, "why bother?"

Most of all, though, I hate falling foul of other people's anti-social umbrella use. There you are, watching a nice joust or a ritual burning, when two drops of rain fall from the sky, and everyone on the front row immediately erects enormous umbrellas large enough to protect an army, totally heedless of the fact that no-one behind them can see a thing.

Then you have those people who put umbrellas up in crowded shopping streets, and charge ahead in their protective little bubble, not caring that they are leaving a train of people with poked-out eyes in their wake. Worst of all are those whose umbrellas are broken, due to the epic battles described above, so that they become a deadly aedifice of impaling spikes.

And then you have people who insist on sharing their umbrella with you - and, yes, yes, I know that they do so with the best of intentions, but when you genuinely say, "no, honestly, I'm fine, please, no, don't, please, please, no, anything but bring me within the deadly shadow of the deadly umbrella," they still do it, meaning that you have to walk with your neck at an angle of 45 degrees to avoid having a waterfall land on your head.

So I bring you umbrellas, subject of my unjustifed rant. Anyone else want to rant at an unjustified and trivial subject?

Ordering books today, I find these two books:

Illustrated Classics for Girls. Pink cover, edged with flowers, with Heidi frollicking with goats. "A collection of stories of adventure and magic suitable for girls. This delightful collection contains six timeless classic stories to enchant and delight." Contents are abridged versions of Heidi, Little Women, The Railway Children, Black Beauty, The Secret Garden, and The Wizard of Oz.

Illustrated Classics for Boys. Blue-ish cover, edged with black trees, showing a moonlit forest scene, with someone (a highwayman?) galloping through it. "A collection of stories of action, adventure and daring-do suitable for boys. This lively collection contains six thrilling classic stories of action and adventure." Contents are abridged versions of Moonfleet, Around the World in 80 Days, Gulliver's Travels, Robin Hood, The Canterville Ghost, and Robinson Crusoe.

Yes, yes, I know I'm ranted about this before. I know that children are usually the first to announce that something is "for boys" or "for girls." But... But...

I think it's the word "suitable" that particularly grates.

I always feel a very surprisingly strong feeling of outrage when I can't find something out of the internet. It's not as if I believe that "it's all on the internet now," to use the argument of head teachers who are closing school libraries across the land, and there are many, many occasions when I would turn to a book, rather than the net. However, when I want to look up a quick fact, apparently I expect the internet to have the answer. Librarians are forever hearing users wail "it isn't on the internet!" only to find said fact within a few seconds, utilising their super librarian powers. So when a fact does elude me, I feel this enormous sense of outrage, as if the very universe itself has betrayed me.

ETA: Ooh! 15 minutes ago, I could view my Friends page, but now it's been blocked by my work filter, so when I get home, I might have some great clues as to exactly what words it doesn't like. I still reckon it's something totally random, like parsnip or marmoset.