Forgot To Write A Title For This One At First

Tonight, I am in a mildly tetchy mood. All things considered, life is good, and yet I have twisted my ankle and it hurts. Unfortunately, I can't expect any sympathy because I always come home from football on a Tuesday moaning about some minor injury, usually a knee, and the boy-who-cried-wolf thing has kicked in just at the point where I can't really walk properly. To add to this source of annoyance, the DVD of 'Seven' arrived at my house this morning from Tesco DVD Rental, and I decided to watch it after football, ankle on ice, expecting to love it. Except...many things stopped me loving it.

1. Radiohead's funny parody of the movie spoilt the ending - I won't link to it or give you any more details, just in case I spoil it for you, but it's on YouTube if you want to see it.
2. The film wasn't that good anyway - considering Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt are both great, you'd expect a bit more chemistry.
3. I have a normal telly, so why would I want to watch the whole film in widescreen with most of the viewable area unused? Movies on TV seem capable of getting around this problem, so why can't DVD players? Well, my cheap one, anyway.
4. I've said it before and I'll say it again - DVD's get scratched, so why use them as a format? The closing voice-over, which may have been a great ending to the film, was rendered incomprehensible by the shitness of the DVD. I'm tempted to cancel my subscription to this Tesco DVD thing, based on the fact that it's a flawed system - if you're renting a DVD, you don't take care of it, and depending how unlucky you are and how many you rent, some are going to be unwatchable.

This really is a dull post tonight - sorry. It's also not going to get any better, because I was only moaning about the DVD because it vaguely leads into what I actually want to moan about - technology, and how it doesn't actually work. Things like computers, MP3 players, mobile phones and DVD players are all made by companies who are under pressure to get the latest features "working" as soon as possible. The upshot of this is that very little of it works to a standard that would have been acceptable back in the day (I'm guessing this - I'm not that old so I don't think I was alive back in the day, whenever it was). Things that don't really work properly:

1. Infra-red mice. The pointers shoot off all over the place on a whim, like a real mouse making a break for freedom.
2. DVD players. They skip.
3. Digital TV. The audio sync is crap, the colours are blotchy in random places and the signal sucks in my village.
4. Ipods. I don't have one, but everyone seems to tell me they break.
5. Nintendo Wii. The stupid wiggly stick is unreliable.
6. Mobile phones. Unreliable.
7. Windows Vista. Why can't it just automatically work with all my old soundcards and things? Why do I have to wait almost a year for new drivers? A year in which I can't use my soundcard?
8. Energy-saving lightbulbs. Granted, if you want to save the planet they're better than sitting in the dark, so I'll look the other way, but in case the people who make them are reading this, their colour is depressing.
9. MP3 download sites. They charge a lot of money for tracks that have lower audio quality than was achievable in the sixties.
   

Perhaps I should refocus this rant on the positives - here is my list of approved technology that works well and can be sold to the general public: LED's, USB memory sticks, mobile phone batteries, videos, audio cassettes, kettles, electric guitars, and Windows XP. This list is not definitive but it's a good start. I fear the pain in my foot may be distracting me from writing about interesting things.