Hotel in which you are paired with a complete stranger to share a room for the night or your entire stay.
You are able to stay for free if you find a way to get your roommate to check out, willingly within 10 hours of checking in or 8 hours from specified check out.
No physical fighting or damaging physical behavior is permitted.
Naturally you would pay the full price and a penalty if you check out early. You would have to get your roommate to attest to the fact that you are not checking out under duress in order to not have to pay an early check out penalty.
If you want to switch roommates you can however this costs you.
A history will be kept of repeat customers behavior at the hotel and this information will be utilized to pair you with a more challenging roommate should you request a new one.
Last you sign away your privacy when you check in for the purpose of safety. The hotel owns all HD video camera footage and publishing rights. Each customer is however entitled to a minuscule royalty payment should footage that they are in be televised.-- vfrackis, Jul 06 2009 Dick's Last Resort http://www.dickslastresort.com/The service is sarcastic and shitty. And you pay more for it. [MikeD, Jul 06 2009] Would you consider staying there [vfrackis]?
How about a shit restaurant where you are paired with someone else who spits in your food? You can spit in their food too, or whatever else you think will disgust them enough to leave - at which point, guess what, you get your (spat in, and lord knows what else) food for free to enjoy at your leisure.
Or a crap theatre where you have to f*ck everyone else off enough to leave, at which point, the last tw*t standing gets a refund?
Would you (or anyone) actually go to any of these awful venues?-- zen_tom, Jul 06 2009 British people would, and they would submit to the experience stoically. If asked if everything was Ok, they would respond, "Yes - fine !". They would never complain or make a scene.
Then they would relate how horrible it was to everyone they met for years afterwards.-- 8th of 7, Jul 06 2009 Ha, that sounds like a plotline from Faulty Towers.-- zen_tom, Jul 06 2009 Hmmm. From this, we deduce that you have never stayed in a small private hotel in an English South Coast seaside resort. You genuinely have no concept of how bad it can be.
We envy you.
By the way, it's spelled "Fawlty". This is a "pun", or play on words, wherein assonance is used to promulgate ambiguity.-- 8th of 7, Jul 06 2009 //they would submit to the experience stoically//
"Quiet desperation is the English way" - Pink Floyd
If any of you British Bakers tour the states, I highly suggest Dick's Last Resort. <link>
It would be an excellent opportunity to practice reserved condescension.-- MikeD, Jul 06 2009 Oh, and ... [-]
Although I would definiately win a fight of 'who can be the bigger ass'.-- MikeD, Jul 06 2009 //Dick’s has always been known for its outrageous, surly, energetic waitstaff who inflict humor upon our guests.// Golly - I expect their really outrageous and have irony and sarcasm down to a tee.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Jul 06 2009 // ... their really outrageous ... //
Their really outrageous what/s? The suspense is killing me.-- MikeD, Jul 06 2009 //Fawlty Towers// And there was I thinking it was just an anagram! It's not really a pun though, unless the word Fawlty itself has a meaning of its own, and isn't just a made up proper name that happens to be a misspelled version of "faulty".
As it happens, I used to live in one of those English South Coast seaside resorts, so no, I never had cause to stay in a B&B.
Had I have done, I would probably have used some of that fabulous English tact of which you speak (and which built an Empire - I'll have you know young man) It's far worse to stay in a shit B&B with an openly hostile owner than it is to stay in a shit B&B where the owner just thinks you're an idiot. Of course, where there is more than one B&B (in the larger resort towns like Bognor or Bournemouth) it's usually best to decamp from the shit one, to the other one, with the hope that the new one isn't quite as rubbish. Providing the initial one with a partial excuse to explain your early departure - something along the lines of "something having come up" or the like, serves to smooth over the loss of face to the owner, and to keep the option open of returning should the other B&B turn out to be even worse than the first one.
The final option is to buy a tent.-- zen_tom, Jul 07 2009 I should get extra buns for getting ZT upset.
I would check in to stay at this type of hotel.
I would visit a marriage arrangement service if I had contempt for the institution and freedom to do so.-- vfrackis, Jul 07 2009 ZT i think that i might have deleted your post in error. I hit the wrong button. Can Jutta restore your annotation? if not tell me how and I will make it up to you.
I had to look up /micturated/ some people would pay $500 for that alone.
I would stay at this type of hotel for the adventure of it. If one existed in las vegas I would stay there to heighten the experience.-- vfrackis, Jul 07 2009 OK, I get it. "The adventure" - same as the marriage thing, or your themepark idea, or that one about random cigarettes.
So the formula is: i) Take something that already exists ii) Make it annoying - oops I mean "adventurous" in some way iii) Post it as a halfbakery idea iv) Hilarity Ensues
So similar plays on the theme might be: Shit Coke: Coca Cola that's got shit in it, you drink it for the "adventure" and have to pay double if you're sick. Shit Bacon: Bacon that's got swine flu on it. If you die from swine flu, you have to pay more because you died. Shit Police: You have to pay them bribes, or they beat you to death. Shit Casino: You can't leave the casino until you've lost all your money - on pain of being locked in a cell with a diseased ape. Shit Monkeys: You are forced to have sex with a monkey (think of "the adventure") and if you don't get it right, you have to have sex with double the monkeys until you do. Shit Films: see above anno. Shit Divorce: When you file for divorce, you and your partner are forced to live on a desert island with one another untill one of you dies - for the "adventure". Shit Adventure: You pay for an adventure, but it's a shit one - the reason for this is paradoxically, for "the adventure" - After all, you can't expect to pay for the same experience that you would intend to get, because, apparently, that wouldn't be adventurous enough.-- zen_tom, Jul 07 2009 ZT you are upset, I can tell.
The Butt Hopper was about a mechanism of automated variety for people who get stuck in a decision making rut. How is that annoying or adventurous? Positive social impact I say.
Happy Ending Park was about framing the thought of suicide in a new way. The "adventure" of a theme park engineered to guarantee your death is a peripheral value-add and not primary. Certain death is the product. I declare the prospect of facing a Kevorkian Style intravenous death drip mechanism is certainly more annoying.
In certain moments the thought of an arranged marriage from a sexual perspective is kind of hot. Moreover I have always had trouble with the myriad of ways in which people cheapen the institution of marriage and so I thought to orchestrate a way to take it a step further with an idea that really embodies "cheapened marriage incorporated" its not funny at all how easy it is for people to marry and divorce. - I was inspired by the break up of Jon & Kate and their 8 children, i considered the long term tragic ripples that will inevitably filter through time and effect the world that my children face 25 - 30 years from now. i was thinking that the inability to maintain or frame a thing as "valuable" or set limits in life is a form of mental illness.
ZT what about Bum Lid or Clip on ankle mount fans?
Solving shallow problems that don't need solving and peppering long winded essay descriptions with jazzy vocabulary words in an attempt to infuse depth, hoping that we will all be entertained is not from my perspective such a clever formula. Neither is attacking people that have views you don't agree with or ideas that you don't like.
Just because I have contempt for smokers you have a problem with me. My Mommy smokes and I have contempt for her because of her habit but I still love her just the same. Its not a big deal, I am allowed to be a pragmatic-realist-idealist if I want to be one.
Also a device for tracking and zapping mosquitoes within a Cartesian space using sound and lasers is plain foolish and cruel and while possible its not that great an idea and certainly did not deserve 3 buns.-- vfrackis, Jul 08 2009 //double the monkeys//Just so fun to say, and in a variety of voices, too: cockney; Leslie Crowther; doughty Tyke; 'hilarious' Pakistani-Welsh. Top hole, [zen_tom]!-- calum, Jul 09 2009 [vfrackis] - first of all, your //Solving shallow problems that don't need solving and peppering long winded essay descriptions with jazzy vocabulary words in an attempt to infuse depth, hoping that we will all be entertained is not from my perspective such a clever formula.// critique is bang on. In fact, it's so bang on, you made me laugh, and should probably be [marked-for-tagline]. To return the compliment, I think you've got a great way with words [vfrackis] and yes, I see the humour in your posts, I just think it could be so much better if you didn't stick to the "make it crap, let them fill in the gaps" concept (which you don't always do by the way - I just saw what looked like that theme running through some of your ideas)
It's really, really difficult to present a weighty concept in a light-hearted way - take this one - right now (just my opinion mind) this idea could be brilliant - you've got the nub of the of the interesting dynamic mirrored in gangster movies where only the most ruthless, crazy-ass nutcase rises to the top of the pile - providing people with the opportunity to safely experience that might be interesting - a sort of old-school social Darwinism gone mad, only microcosm'd (yes, jazzy made up vocabulary there for your benefit) in a hotel.
Only it doesn't work, because the majority of people (or at least me, anyway) done want that kind of experience in a hotel. Maybe if it was more of a themed holiday so that people knew what it was they were getting into. Maybe it's just my view of a hotel as being a functional convenience that provides bed and breakfast when you're away from home - maybe your view of a hotel contains conflated ideas of holiday and theme and role-playing that I don't share.
If the idea were a Irritation Holiday (I still wouldn't go) but it sort of sets up the fact that it's more game than facility.
Maybe it's my reaction to that "only the most ruthless will survive" thing - If you look at it in game theory terms, by checking into this hotel (or book an Irritation Holiday - you have to either expect someone else to be horribly unreasonable to you (and there are plenty of masochists who do like that kind of thing - it's not my idea of a restful evening though) - and pay for the privilege - or - expect to be thoroughly unpleasant to someone else - and again, that doesn't float my boat either. To be honest, you can get that (assuming you are suitably venerable) at an 18-30's holiday, or by going out on a Saturday night in Clapham High Street. And people do both those things, though I really can't see why.
I don't know Jon & Kate, but I hope they do the right thing by their progeny. On the theme of marriage, I think it is already difficult to enter into, and expensive to exit - doubly so when there are children to consider. Further exaggerating the perils of a failed marriage is like having a great big spike attached to the steering wheel of your car - it's not something anyone is going to choose to install, without suitable motivation. Yes, if forced into it, they'll probably drive/be married a lot more carefully - but what was missing from that idea was this coercion factor that would make someone take a bet that they can only break even on.
So, hopefully you laughed at the funny bits, and pondered thoughtfully over the thoughtful bits - it's meant to be engaging, and totally sans malice - didn't you think my themed ideas were just a little bit funny?-- zen_tom, Jul 09 2009 //Dick’s has always been known for its outrageous, surly, //Sounds like Paris.-- coprocephalous, Jul 09 2009 random, halfbakery