So I'm presently staying in the Hotel Clarion in Manchester, New Hampshire. Not a bad place, but dull as all get-out. The staff are nice, the rooms are decent, but I've come to encounter through this hotel possibly the most worthless wireless network service provider on the face of the earth. Devil, thy name is Fusion Hotspot!
Last year I stayed in a Lebanese monastery in Italy on top of a miniature mountain with a router that may as well have been made from old bean cans and an internet connection conveyed by semaphore. And yet, it somehow seems preferable to this nonsense. I'm no IT guy, but this is the impression I get of the way it works (or rather, doesn't): they give you these little 48 hour cards that will log you onto the network. Okay, fine. Then every time you open your browser or bring your computer out of standby you have to enter the code and log in. Inconvenient, but not bad. And then a malevolent company wizard takes a dump in your computer through the internet and every thing goes to hell. Seriously, a 54 Mbps connection and it takes 45 minutes and dozens of tries just to get onto this blog? What in the name of Satan's spiky dong is this!?
I was gonna post on something else, but the unadulterated fuckery that is Fusion Hotspot has so incensed me that I'd entirely forgotten my other subject in the nigh-eternal aeons it took me to log in! And, as if they somehow expected this sort of reaction, I've found that Fusion's website is conspicuously lacking a Feedback section...
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
This Shit Needs to Stop
Shotgun is plainly out of control. Even if this is some barren corner of the internet, someone needs to put their foot down.
Everyone knows calling Shotgun reserves the proud and noble passenger's seat and prevents would-be usurpers from claiming one's Throne of Power (Seat Adjustment). It's a long-standing and respected tradition among American passengers. Shotgun, akin to the Social Contract of Enlightenment thinkers such as Locke or Rousseau, is an unwritten rule that all living souls agree to upon entering society for mutual protection for one's most coveted seat.
However, this fine tradition is rapidly becoming corrupted by ridiculous overcomplexity. In any Shotgun decree there is usually a No Blitz clause affixed as well. This is a simple little extra rule that is nigh inseparable from shotgun in the collective consciousness. No Blitz is a useful added safeguard and sets up interesting interplay between the Caller and the Challengers, should No Blitz not be issued. Sadly, a sect of vile and twisted individuals around the globe have taken the inclusion of No Blitz as license to instate all manner of foul and wicked addendums. New rules and calls are springing up seemingly daily. I recall recently reciting nigh on an entire paragraph to attempt to reserve Shotgun, only to have it stolen away by yet another treacherous play I had not yet even conceived.
These new additions seem not only limitless, but growing ever longer as well. One of the possibly more widely known changes may include the Rosa Parks maneuver, whereby a Challenger sits in the front seat despite the caller's reservation and refuses to move. Another is the Scramble tactic, which a challenger may call out "Scramble" (unless, of course, the caller has previously laid down an edict against such ploys). When Scramble is called, both the Caller and the issuing Challenger must dash for the car and hold the Shotgun position by any means necessary. This tactic often leads nearly to knock-down-drag-out fights for the front, hardly a civilized passenger's means of seat appropriation. There are dozens other techniques that I have witnessed, but most are variations on Blitzing. All of these are further compounded by the challenger's ability to invoke a Reload, where the whole process starts all over again.
My motion to simplify Shotgun is not unsupported, and clearly the Social Contract approach isn't functioning, so to solve this problem I would like to propose the Canonical Rules of Shotgun.
Article 1) One non-driver party (hereafter referred to as the Caller) wishing to ride in the passenger's seat of any motor vehicle with no less than two (2) and no more than twelve (12) seats with seatbelts (excluding the Mclaren F1 and the Mossler MT900, bench front seat vehicles such as the Ford Crown VIctoria, and single cab pickup trucks or similar vehicles) may issue vocally a call of Shotgun while within one hundred (100) yards of the vehicle in question and out of doors.
Article 2) The first call of Shotgun must be honored by all non-driver parties (hereafter referred to as the Challengers) as a reservation to the front passenger seat parallel to the driver.
Article 3) Any Challengers may attempt to Blitz the front passenger seat by reaching and sitting fully in said seat before the Caller, unless the Caller vocally calls No Blitz immediately after calling Shotgun.
Article 4) Further articles and revisions may be incorporated into or repealled from the rules of Shotgun (excluding Article 4) by any group of consenting parties. When in company of parties not consenting to these revisions all Challenger parties must adhere to the established canonical rules.
There, that's that taken care of. Gotta find more social injustices to right on my unknown blog...
Everyone knows calling Shotgun reserves the proud and noble passenger's seat and prevents would-be usurpers from claiming one's Throne of Power (Seat Adjustment). It's a long-standing and respected tradition among American passengers. Shotgun, akin to the Social Contract of Enlightenment thinkers such as Locke or Rousseau, is an unwritten rule that all living souls agree to upon entering society for mutual protection for one's most coveted seat.
However, this fine tradition is rapidly becoming corrupted by ridiculous overcomplexity. In any Shotgun decree there is usually a No Blitz clause affixed as well. This is a simple little extra rule that is nigh inseparable from shotgun in the collective consciousness. No Blitz is a useful added safeguard and sets up interesting interplay between the Caller and the Challengers, should No Blitz not be issued. Sadly, a sect of vile and twisted individuals around the globe have taken the inclusion of No Blitz as license to instate all manner of foul and wicked addendums. New rules and calls are springing up seemingly daily. I recall recently reciting nigh on an entire paragraph to attempt to reserve Shotgun, only to have it stolen away by yet another treacherous play I had not yet even conceived.
These new additions seem not only limitless, but growing ever longer as well. One of the possibly more widely known changes may include the Rosa Parks maneuver, whereby a Challenger sits in the front seat despite the caller's reservation and refuses to move. Another is the Scramble tactic, which a challenger may call out "Scramble" (unless, of course, the caller has previously laid down an edict against such ploys). When Scramble is called, both the Caller and the issuing Challenger must dash for the car and hold the Shotgun position by any means necessary. This tactic often leads nearly to knock-down-drag-out fights for the front, hardly a civilized passenger's means of seat appropriation. There are dozens other techniques that I have witnessed, but most are variations on Blitzing. All of these are further compounded by the challenger's ability to invoke a Reload, where the whole process starts all over again.
My motion to simplify Shotgun is not unsupported, and clearly the Social Contract approach isn't functioning, so to solve this problem I would like to propose the Canonical Rules of Shotgun.
Article 1) One non-driver party (hereafter referred to as the Caller) wishing to ride in the passenger's seat of any motor vehicle with no less than two (2) and no more than twelve (12) seats with seatbelts (excluding the Mclaren F1 and the Mossler MT900, bench front seat vehicles such as the Ford Crown VIctoria, and single cab pickup trucks or similar vehicles) may issue vocally a call of Shotgun while within one hundred (100) yards of the vehicle in question and out of doors.
Article 2) The first call of Shotgun must be honored by all non-driver parties (hereafter referred to as the Challengers) as a reservation to the front passenger seat parallel to the driver.
Article 3) Any Challengers may attempt to Blitz the front passenger seat by reaching and sitting fully in said seat before the Caller, unless the Caller vocally calls No Blitz immediately after calling Shotgun.
Article 4) Further articles and revisions may be incorporated into or repealled from the rules of Shotgun (excluding Article 4) by any group of consenting parties. When in company of parties not consenting to these revisions all Challenger parties must adhere to the established canonical rules.
There, that's that taken care of. Gotta find more social injustices to right on my unknown blog...
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