slashdotted?
All I get for the blog at the moment is a google server error message.
I wonder what the El Reg equivalent of the slashdot effect should be called?
It's come to our attention that Times hack Michael Moran has a book out - the snappily entitled Sod Abroad which explains "why you'd be mad to leave the comfort of your own home". We were alerted to this new tome by a pretty shameless email from Mr Moran asking us to punt his cautionary travel tales through El Reg, and in …
What is your name?
Steve
Where do you live?
Peterborough, UK
Where did you go on your worst ever holiday?
News International Limited, 1 Virginia St, London E98 1XY
What is the worst, most disappointing, or most embarrassing anecdote you can bear to remember from your holiday?
Awful place, full of whiny self-important media types trying to flog their books.
Worst part was when I bumped into some shameless hack who insisted on trying to get me to buy his nonsense book about why everything British is so much better than anything foreign. Furthermore he expected me to tell all my friends and relatives and anyone I might meet on the street about how great his book was and how they should all buy it.
I believe you can read all about in in his next book "How to pretend your book launch is actual news in an attempt to garner a load of free advertising and hype for what would otherwise be toilet paper."
Title to be confirmed.
Well, given the fact that the English Tourist Abroad has had a reputation both on the Continent and at home from the mid seventies* onward for an attitude they didn't have a name for at the time**, this website could be seen as an exercise in self-fulfilling irony at the expense of the posters rather than jingoism run rampant.
No doubt I am being naïve.
* And possibly earlier; I'm relating personal experience here.
** But "chav" seems a pretty good fit, at least from a behaviour standpoint
"In the early 90s I was on holiday in Curfu [sic], I went out one night got so horrifically drunk on cheap cocktails and beer, I woke up in the morning feeling really unwell in a strange grubby room alone, with a sore arm and bruised face and body, and an empty wallet, there was a used syringe on the floor, apparently I had been mugged, had my wallet emptied of a couple of hundred pounds and in return they filled me with heroine [sic]. I’ve never wanted to try drugs and I’m crap scared of needles so I certainly didn’t volunteer to do it willingly."
How is this in any way worse than what would happen in this country?! He should thank himself lucky he didn't have his face rearranged or set alight in a large dustbin behind the nightclub for the sum of £5.
Maybe the reality is he's a complete prick, since he has such a shitty time everywhere he goes with himself...