Monday 8 November 2010

Newsfalsh!

Welcome once again to Newsfalsh!, an alternate take on the news you might have missed. It's been a while, so let's get right to it.

£9 Hotel Room, but Everything’s Extra…Even a Towel

This is one of those things you see tucked away every now and then. For me, I was driving home from work and heard it on the evening radio a few times. In fact, after a couple of listens I was convinced that it was simply a particularly poor techno song with the monotonous beat replaced with a tedious monologue. Not so, however, as this turned out to be a news story. Incidentally, it’s worth knowing that this doesn’t happen as often as you might think.

As I say, this sort of story does the rounds every now and then.

Company A today announced plans for a £100 3D television (with production planned for 2029).”

It’s an extreme example, but this is the sort of thing that a lot of companies try for a little good PR as well as some extra traffic for their websites and maybe a few bookings while these offer things are running. It’s shameless self-promotion at the best of times, and worthy of Newsfalsh! inclusion at its worst.

So this hotel alleges that you can rent a room for as little as £9.00 a night. “What’s the catch?” I hear you ask? It’s simple, oh loyal E14ies, you pay for only the bare essentials. Eagle eyed readers may even have spotted the list of what’s included:

"A five star bed at a one star price"
A power shower
Air conditioning


Everything else costs, so if you have a shower but want to dry at a quicker rate than at the heat of the room, then a towel is £1.50 with soap and shampoo. Hang on a second, so you’re telling me that there’s not even soap for the free shower? So let me see if I’ve got this right. You can sleep there, and you can bathe in clean water, but you can’t actually wash yourself in any more meaningful way than just being out in the rain naked for a long period of time? As an aside, if you’re ever after a good way of getting banned from a major national theme park, I can vouch for being naked in the rain. Just ask Chessington World of Adventures.

Or the Dorchester Dinosaur museum. I suppose it’s more effective than even I thought.

Anyway, there are a couple of problems with this cheap hotel room idea. Firstly, the prices for this thing seem to have just been created using a dartboard and a series of sharp objects. £1.50 for a towel, which most would consider a pretty essential object for a room with a shower, but the TV is £3.00 a day?! This is why I objected to some cabbage in the comments section saying “Couldn't you just live there at prices that cheap? Lol”, because ultimately I like knowing that I have the option of using a TV without being butt-fucked. On the other hand, kudos to said cabbage, because they actually managed a grammatically correct comment, something that happens about as often on the Internet as me taking an interest in Crufts.

More comment joy incidentally, one of the commenters states:

”I would stay there if the chick in the pic was in the room”.

There seems to be quite a bit of lust for Lisa Minot, the Sun’s Travel Editor, and she’s a nice enough looking lady, but I can’t imagine that she’d be particularly turned on by a guy whose username is acidbathbob. Or indeed someone who comments on stories on The Sun’s website.

Secondly, it occurs to me that if you’re being charged for a towel, there doesn’t seem to be anything in the rules about having a shower just before you check out and drying off by simply rolling on the bed sheets over and over again until you’re dry. Take that, thinly veiled capitalist model!

Thirdly, I tried to book a room for next August, bearing in mind that the date was the furthest I could find from now, and the price was still £45.00 for a single night. Unless you want a Special Needs room. I’m still trying to get my head around that concept if taken literally, I’ll let you know if I get there.


Woman Blames Vampire for Car Crash

If ever there was an argument against letting stupid people drive, this story represents Exhibit A. A woman runs her car off the road into a canal, and then claims that it was run off the road by a vampire. That’s right, a vampire. One of those undead things from the Bram Stoker novel, or those sparkly pussies from the more recent literature.

I can only imagine being the person at the breakdown roadside assistance call centre who handled the call.

“Hello, AAA, what is your emergency?” (Yeah, I know, it’s strange for the US to have a third ‘A’, but I think it’s ok because it stands for ‘America’)
“Hi, I’ve crashed my car. There was a vampire in the road, and I reversed my car into the canal.”
“…I see. How big was this va-“
“About the size of a deer.”
“Right, and was it standing upri-“
“No, it was on the ground on all fours.”
“Did this...vampire have antlers? Maybe a deer’s face?”
“Yeah, I thought it was a little odd.”
“Somebody will be with you within the hour.”
*Disconnect*
“Fucktard...Didn’t believe me about the vampire.”


It doesn’t surprise me in the slightest to find out that this woman was driving an SUV, in fact I will go one further and bet that she has one child (if that), and just thinks that the incline on her driveway is that little bit steeper than a normal car will provide. Either that, or she just feels that bigger cars must mean that you own more of the road and can drive like a complete prick. If you’re an SUV driver reading this and that sounds ludicrous to you, then I have bad news for you regarding those hand gestures you’ve been receiving.

Back to the vampire-seeing woman, has anyone noticed that when these sorts of things happen, they always seem to be things that could very easily be confused for...a bloke in dark clothes? In this case, it’s almost exactly comparable, as generally you don’t tend to see vampires in Urban Outfitters shopping for some autumn colours to match their new shoes. Though if the more sucktacular vampire literature has its way, you may have to brace yourself for some vampires wearing the new Levi’s and using Macbooks in coffee shops that now have to carry a blood-based alternative to the staples of lattés and frappuccinos.

As an entirely unrelated aside, has anyone ever noticed that these stories, no matter how ludicrous, always (and I mean always) end up in a fiery religious debate between twats? Oh, and on the vampire subject, the woman was unharmed (physically anyway), there were no witnesses and no evidence was found of any vampire at the scene of the accident. Shocking, I know. Here’s a picture of me dressed as the Count Von Count to ease the shock.



DC COMICS: THE 75th ANNIVERSARY POSTER BOOK GIVEAWAY

The Covers Collection celebrates 75 years of DC comics history by showcasing hundreds of their most famous covers - including 100 full-size posters that are perforated and ready-to-frame.

Arranged in chronological order, each poster honors a milestone in DC Comics history with a full-page perforated poster of a famous cover-like Action Comics #1, easily the most sought-after comic book of all time. The reverse of the poster features brief commentary along with smaller images of related covers, concept sketches, and other archival material.

Thanks to our friends at Quirk Books, we've got two copies of DC Comics: The 75th Anniversary Poster Book to give away! For your chance of winning, send your name and full postal address to dcposterbookgiveaway@yahoo.co.uk before midday on Monday 15th November. The first two name out of the electronic hat will win a copy each!

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