planet fucking never felt so good

I read recently that all over the world the sales of SUVs were dropping sharply as a result of surging oil prices (not as you would hope out of a greater environmental awareness that fuck me, yes, we do actually have only one earth and we're using it up way too fast). So, sales of these pointlessly immense hunks of steel are falling. Well, except in Britain where sales seem to be doing a contrary pirouette and are rising fast.

Planet Fuckers are people who show no awareness at all of the damage they're doing to the environment, and indeed they go so far as to fall off the other end of the scale by doing things specifically designed to render the end of our world that much closer and that much quicker. An SUV encapsulates this perfectly - it's a huge - often 4x4 - car with a huge engine that massacres petrol, will probably never see the inside of a field and will rarely even get outside the city. So why do people feel it necessary to buy them? Is it the safety factor? Perhaps it is, but perhaps these cretins might also consider that with the height of these cars they are more likely to kill rather than maim the people they hit - just a nice little add on there - and so this begins to look like uncompromising safety for me, I don't give a rat's piss about you kind of mentality.

Even here in Japan people are always overdoing it on the car front - you often see big saloons with 4.6 V8 written on the back, as if that kind of engine could ever possibly be justified. What it does signify is a clear message to others - that the planet may be two thirds used up (most of that ransacking having taken place over the last 100 years or so) but I, for one, choose not to give a shit. It makes me feel so ludicrously angry sometimes that these people exist, in their own little world of pampered excess, ensconced in all that leather trim, smirking out at the world, never even remotely aware that they are the kind that are helping it on its way to the end. It's sad but one day I'll be dead and I'll no longer care about the myriad prattishness that envelops this world, but I know that when I go I will shuffle off this prattish coil knowing that all my wailings will have caused not a shred of difference, and that the planet fuckers will have won.

Perhaps HP stands for How Pathetic

Our Hewlett Packard all in one printer / scanner / copier / arse wiper packed up after a thoroughly miserablely stingy one year and 5 days of low frequency usage. It could never have claimed to be overworked, unless you count a 30 page document as some kind of traumatic marathon. We didn't even use all the cute little new features like scanning - all we needed it for was copying and printing, and not too much of that either. But still that was too much for its wee heart to cope with.

And so, this technological marvel has already firmly bitten the dust. First though, I went through the troubleshooter and saw how much trouble the company go through to keep the pesky things working, or to try to keep you believing they actually care about you once you've bought their nasty products. I sent several tetchy emails to the technical support crew (Total Care I think they call it, which is sort of unintentionally hilarious) to no avail. The chap suggested taking the back off and cleaning the rollers, and more complicated this - turning it on and off several times. I wasn't surprised when it farted its last and TechnoMan stopped writing to me.

So it all got me thinking - just why are they making these machines so impossibly complicated when all most people want them to do is copy and print? Why all the pointless add-ons? If a machine is £120 you can guess that plenty of that went on paying for these useless bits and pieces that never get used but HP thinks will get people to buy their stuff. Well, it's all stuff and nonsense - we just want something that we can trust will work when urgently needed - that's all folks.

It seems technology has to go on this pathetic perpetual march forward when all we want is stuff that works. There's no point having the best computer in the world if the sod can't cope with a few simple tasks. That seems too much to ask in this age of gimmicks, of the 'New Improved!' version which turns out to be more flashy but more prone to breakdowns usually when needed the most. And these days the people who design them, and the people who work in their customer support departments, simply can't keep up. They just don't realise how much we're all crying out for something that works well, doesn't complain when pushed a bit, and, important this, doesn't collapse right after the guarantee is up.

So, whatever you do, steer away from HP, and forget Lexmark too - their standards are little higher than trash. Choose Canon or go elsewhere, and ask for a printer that prints - not a multifuctional showcase whose only raison d'etre is to look good, burn fast and die young.