Drones - WTF

Say Cheese!

Yeh I know that if you ask someone as old as me to explain what a drone is, they would more than likely launch into some long story about Bees and Queens and honey making and all those bloody worker bees which spend time in the clover, waiting to sting the barefooted carefree kids as they climbed trees - those busy old Drones.

I met and killed quite a few of these suckers when I was younger. They really fucking hurt when you kill 'em and in the end I developed such an allergy to 'em that if I ran into one today, I would no doubt be yelling for an Epi Pen as I slumped to the ground. The swelling up, is pretty unattractive.

But not anymore.

Today, the first thing that comes to mind are those fucking annoying, intrusive, noisy, pieces of machinery which are armed with state of the art photographic equipment, which relays video of action as it happens.

On a very quick google it seems that they range in price from about 400 bucks up to how long is a piece of string, so they are not for nothing. And generally you see 'em being operated by geeky looking middle aged blokes. Well I haven't done any research into ownership of the fuckers, but in recent times I have seen 3 such fellas working 'em, so it's a generalisation that I am happy with, feel free to let me know if your experience is different.

There was the lazy fella who sent his up Mt Warning cos of course walking up there was outta the question. The alternative clientele, parked up in their, stinky old combie vans with the tie dyed shirted drivers whipping up veggie burgers on their camp stoves precariously perched on the manky mattress, were all unimpressed with the noise and the invasion of their privacy and then ultimately were loudly pissed off cos Dog went ape shit about the high pitched whizz of the fucking thing. Shit.

Then there was the time Dog was going nutso out the back at home and I went out in time to shake a fist at the low flying fucking thing that, call me paranoid, seemed to be looking into the lounge room and watching the tellie. This drone belonged to the neighbour across the road and I know this cos I ran upstairs in time to watch it land in their backyard.

I might have droned on about these bark inducing moments before, but yesterday was something new.

Dog and I were at the beach - Mermaid or Nobby's never sure what it's called, down the rocky end where there are usually just another couple of dogs and sometimes the odd person lazing around with not much on. But it's holidays and so it was crammed with families and kids were running amok amongst the rocks and splashing about.

Dog and I played the usual 'chuck the sand into the surf' game and she had that joyful look on her face that others might confuse with drug addled gormless stupor. We played hard and she was buggered, so we headed for the concrete pipe thing for a little sit down.

All was good with the world. Dogs, kids, parents, runners about turning, and oddly 3 old fat blokes in various stages of undress.

Then Dog was off. She went from melting into the wet sand and having a little ZZZ off, to barking like a maniac and scaring the shit out of the other punters. This is unusual behaviour.

Sure enough, I looked up and right above us was a fucking drone! Where had that come from? It did not move away. It was like it was enjoying taunting Dog. I spied the bloke -  see, it's always a bloke, operating it and he was but a few metres away. He has watching Dog live and on his screen, but he didn't move that fucking thing away.

We moved well away.

He landed the menace and then on his way off the beach he stopped to chatter to the semi-nude old fat fellas. Yeh I got an awful feeling in my guts.

All I can say is that if I had a child there yesterday and I saw this fucker flying the drone and photographing my kid, I would have at the very least asked him what the fuck he was doing, but more likely I'd have told him to bugger off with his camera away from my family.

Is this the way of the future? Everyone with their perving devices up whizzing around driving dogs mad and gathering up private footage for questionable at best old fat fellas?

It's time that someone invented a device that fucks with the remote controls, so that if the thing is too close - and remember the long lens capability, you can push a button and the fucker does a 360 spin and either goes straight home or more preferably dives hard into the ground or the water and smashes into a million piece.

I'll place the first order.

Please scientists of the world, make me one!