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Monday, June 23, 2003

Why do I always end up behind a couple with a very small child when queuing for the Pay-Station in a car-park? The kid is invariably given free reign over operation of this complicated machine, and invariably cocks it up in some way. This should be when the parents take over, so that I can get to use the machine. However, this is invariably where the parents decide a valuable lesson about failure, machines with poor human interface design, and the metallic / acidic kick you get from licking coins that are rejected because someone told you that the machine is more likely to accept them (because our saliva will stick the coin to the inside of the machine, right?).
This whole exercise is a waste of time. Why teach kids to use a pay-machine? By the time they are old enough to drive the pay-station technology will have changed significantly, so that techniques learned now will be redundant. A chip in our heads will be automatically scanned and our bank account debited when we leave the car park. We probably won’t even have cars then anyway, we’ll have hovercraft that wiz around the skies. There’ll be plenty of space in the sky to leave your transport; so car-parking fees will be no more. Better to teach your kids to take drugs as they’ll find such experience useful long before they have to use a pay-station.

Two gym related questions:
1) What does the kilometre display relate to on one of those Cross trainers? Surely the concept of distance is irrelevant to such an exercise. What does the machine look like that will propel you along the ground while you slide your legs back and forward while punching the air with alternate arms?
2) What are you supposed to do with those giant bouncy balls? I’ve dipped my toe in giant ball stretching exercises on a number of occasions, but I’ve just been making it up. I think the real art of using the balls correctly is to look like you know what you are doing while you make up ludicrous balancing acts with balls and parts of your body. One guy last night had only his forehead on the ground with his legs rested on a ball while he rocked gently back and forward on his cranium. Tell me that this guy hadn’t just made that exercise up. One slip of the ball and he would have snapped his neck.

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