I am sick to the teeth of British banks. Not that American ones are much better, but at least from US banks you can expect some semblance of modern business practices.
Let's have a look at my bank, shall we? Let's call them, oh, I dunno, DouchEast. DouchEast says they close at 5 on weekdays, but that actually means they lock the door and clear the place out by 4:15, a good two hours before most of their customers leave work. Cheque deposits, done by machine or in person, take 8-11 business days to become available to you, despite their ability to be processed instantaneously. DouchEast can rarely do anything for you in-shop--most things you request must be mailed to you, and will arrive in 7-10 days. Even if they're just documents that could be easily and securely printed off in office.
DouchEast's business practices involve a great deal of pressure--both on the employees and the customers. Employees are expected to maintain a quota of account openings per week, regardless of what their customers come in there for or the number of people in the country who need to open bank accounts. They are pushed to use every tactic available to them--up to and including flat lies--to lock customers into the ugliest, most expensive accounts and credit cards they have. When modern, skeptical customers shake off this pressure, employees are reprimanded for not meeting goals, and may eventually be fired for not being good enough salespeople. Likewise, employees are required, for PR purposes, to use their unpaid time to volunteer in the community in some capacity. Rather than be at work, where the community needs them most.
I believe DouchEast has, after helping as best they could to collapse the economy, had to make some HR cuts to maintain top-tier bonus packages. Naturally, most of these cuts have had to come from front-line plebian services, as of course the investment bankers who caused the depression are too valuable to let go. Most of their branches have desks and windows for up to 8 cashiers, but rarely have more than one person running them. Likewise, they have offices for up to ten people at a time to discuss their accounts, but typically have one person or no one available to do this. This causes queues--and fury. In banks, even a queue of five people can take an hour to slog through, as there's no telling what people are coming in to handle. It's not like checking out at the grocery store, or even getting on a roller coaster. These days queues are out the door, with fifty people or more waiting for one stressed, exhausted clerk to call them. Fifty people who have stepped out early on their lunch break because it's the only time they can be there when the bank is open, and will be delighted to discover that they won't actually have their inquiry addressed until their office closes for the day.
What makes this even more fun is the fact that their operation model sends most of their employees out of the building for lunch breaks at exactly the same time as most of their customers arrive. This is not a new problem or phenomenon--most people have jobs these days. Even back in the day when women generally did not have jobs, they had no need to go to the bank because they also weren't allowed to manage accounts. Banks have Always had to deal with most of their customers at lunch time. And they've always been short staffed at lunch time.
There are several very simple, practical, and inexpensive solutions to this problem. One is part-time shift labour. The morning shift arrives at 9 and leaves at 2; the afternoon shift arrives at noon and leaves at 5. The office is double-staffed for two hours right when most of their customers show up, everyone works a reasonable amount of time between meals, you can stagger in a few 15-minute breaks for tea, snacks, and cigarettes, and everybody gets a fair day.
Alternatively, you can have lunch-cover employees. Backstage administrative assistants most of the day, this team eats first, then comes in and takes people's places as they leave to eat in groups arranged by the size of the cover team. Once lunches have cycled through, they may go back to stapling forms and playing solitaire like normal.
Another option is to do what several companies I've worked for in New York do and call in lunch for the whole office. You buy a variety of foods, making sure to account for everyone's eating preferences and allergies--some online services even allow everyone in your office to login and, within a price cap set by the company, select a meal from up to 5 delivery places a day--and then let folks sneak off for fifteen minutes at a time to eat.
What you do not do is let most of your staff disappear for an hour the hour they are needed the most. That is stupid. And it makes people angry. Angry enough to take their money elsewhere.
Oh but wait. Everyone else behaves exactly the same way.
If it weren't for the existence of banks, no one would believe that an industry could actually survive being run so poorly. People have complained about banking services, opening hours, fees, and money-making practices since the invention of the bank. They're run badly, and they're not run with the Main Street consumer in mind. I recognize that banks are businesses and need to make money. I'm not averse to the idea that employees need to be paid. I have no real problem with bankers investing my money in rational ways for their profit, provided my money is kept safe and made available to me whenever I need it.
I Do, on the other hand, have a problem with banks being under-staffed, causing queues which waste my time and the valuable time of others. I have a problem with inefficiencies, like having to wait a week for a document I need now that can and should be printed immediately. "oh, but it's printed by our secure printing service in the middle of nowhere..." bah bah bah you could get it for me but you won't because of a policy that was established in 1870.
Everyone else has modernized. I can get free wifi on the grounds of ancient ruins. I can ride into the city in air-conditioned silence at 80 miles an hour in a train wherein, if I wanted to, I could roll a football down the aisle from the conductor's cabin to the rear fire exit. I have watched a hotel be built on its settled foundations in under a week. We have a probe ORBITING JUPITER. But you. You can't go to the printer behind you, pick up the official letterhead in the sheaf next to it, and print off six pages of bank statements for me because that's just not how you've always done things.
Banks, governments and churches. They must hold everyone else down in order to stay on top, and they have the power and money to do so.
----
In other news, I'm conviced the Mimic Octopus is far more intelligent than any human.
Showing posts with label conspiracy theories. Show all posts
Showing posts with label conspiracy theories. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Saturday, February 23, 2008
dear valued customer
Thanks to your history of loyalty to Monopoly Local Connections, we believe you would enjoy being burdened with more crap! See, Value is all in what you make of it. We value your custom because so far you've been made to buy the whole bundle--everything we've come up with, up to the extent that we have utter control over what you see, who you talk to, and what you download. We hide the surreptitious face of Big Brother under pictures of happy models talking on phones and using their computers, but every keystroke you make is recorded and sent to the appropriate government bureau or marketing agency, every number you dial is entered into a vast database of numbers--and their affiliates--who can now bypass the Do Not Call List, and every word you say may be monitored for customer satisfaction purposes. Yes, valued customer, your local cable, internet, phone, and mobile service has been selling you out since the day you signed on, and you've put up with it, because without us you'd be even more cut off from the real world.
So now, loyal customer, we're excited to offer you a new method of surveillance, intrusion, and annoyance--the Single Ring function! With this fun option, every time a telemarketer calls the landline you've grown to ignore, your cell phones--yes, every cell phone on your plan--will ring too! Now your kids, spouse, and even out-of-town relatives can be bothered by obnoxious charities like the Anti-Choice Alliance, harassed by auto-dialed campaign messages, and repeatedly badgered by call centers in India who don't give a flying fuck what telecom laws are in the US. And Best of All, we'll pass our savings on to you!* Have your children's cell phones confiscated by their schools weekly! Be annoyed at work! On the road! On the Roof! And remember, if you smash your phone with a hammer before the end of your 2-year contract, you'll owe Us money!
Yes, we continue to value you because you've been duped so far, and you're paying us to sell your personal information--double the revenue! And don't worry--even if you don't select this fabulous new option, it will be tacked on to your bill--and your lifestyle!--next month.
Thanks!
Comporium Communications
Your ONLY way to stay Connected!
*The customer pays for all incoming and outgoing calls, text messages, and internet options at the rate of 10¢/minute or each partial minute, and 15¢ per voice message played (messages cannot be deleted without play). See? We're saving!
So now, loyal customer, we're excited to offer you a new method of surveillance, intrusion, and annoyance--the Single Ring function! With this fun option, every time a telemarketer calls the landline you've grown to ignore, your cell phones--yes, every cell phone on your plan--will ring too! Now your kids, spouse, and even out-of-town relatives can be bothered by obnoxious charities like the Anti-Choice Alliance, harassed by auto-dialed campaign messages, and repeatedly badgered by call centers in India who don't give a flying fuck what telecom laws are in the US. And Best of All, we'll pass our savings on to you!* Have your children's cell phones confiscated by their schools weekly! Be annoyed at work! On the road! On the Roof! And remember, if you smash your phone with a hammer before the end of your 2-year contract, you'll owe Us money!
Yes, we continue to value you because you've been duped so far, and you're paying us to sell your personal information--double the revenue! And don't worry--even if you don't select this fabulous new option, it will be tacked on to your bill--and your lifestyle!--next month.
Thanks!
Comporium Communications
Your ONLY way to stay Connected!
*The customer pays for all incoming and outgoing calls, text messages, and internet options at the rate of 10¢/minute or each partial minute, and 15¢ per voice message played (messages cannot be deleted without play). See? We're saving!
Friday, January 11, 2008
obsolete
I've come to realize lately that there's a lot of practices and rules in effect these days that, thanks to modern technology and the nature of our society, frankly shouldn't be.
I may periodically update this list as the spirit moves me.
----
Long-Distance charges. Did you know that phone companies still make a distinction between local and long-distance dialing? Calling out of your 3-digit local access zone tacks on a large amount to landline prices. While this made sense back in the day of human operators and manual switchboards, when you had to pay more people to make those connections for you, these days thanks to digital and satellite technology that's simply not done. Dialing a local call takes exactly the same amount of human effort as placing a call to China--exactly none. How is charging us extra for no extra service justified?
----
ATM loyalty fees. My bank charges me $1.50 when I withdraw any amount of cash from another bank or credit union's ATM. Frequently, the bank who owns the ATM will too. I wind up blowing $3-4 every time i make a transaction when I'm not in the same time zone as my bank. This is unacceptable. I'm paying a machine--which, i hasten to add, does not get paid--to access my own money because my bank can't or won't do it themselves. This is no inconvenience to my bank as the entire system of transfers is done automatically by mutually accessed computer systems, such as NYCE or Interlink. I know for a fact that banks do not pay per transaction to use these services because in the UK no ATM requires a service fee, even to access my US account.
I believe its fairly obvious to any reader that, if my bank is available, i would of course use my bank's ATM. If I'm Not using my own bank's ATM, its obviously because my bank has failed to provide one within a reasonable range of me. Basing my assumptions on what I'll call "expected human reasoning skills," most people aren't going to join a bank that they can't access on a regular basis from their homes. It's illogical. So if you find yourself needing to use an ATM or other service from another bank, its probably because you're not near home. Why punish your customers for straying afield? Shouldn't you be proud of them for traveling, as traveling is expensive and therefore keeps money circulating?
----
Meal time. These days people are at their desks at all sorts of crazy hours, in order to keep up with the global money market and foreign business. Every industry has people pulling all-nighters, particularly in energy, healthcare, and travel. Now, I respect most restaurants' right to keep old fashioned business hours because there still are a very large number of 9-5ers employed and its not worth the expense of staying open all night. I know that there's at least one Denny's in each town and most late-nighters are fine with their 2am fried fare. But. My tolerance ends when I enter an airport. Airport managers know good and damn well that people are departing and arriving at all hours of day and night, and that traveling does all sorts of screwy things to the metabolism. Yet every single restaurant in the airport closes by 9pm. The manager of Joe's Grass Strip can close the café at 5 if he wants--chances are it won't inconvenience too many people. But when every food joint in your wing of Las Vegas International is locked up two hours before you depart, you can't help but wonder if this is a gesture of contempt for lower-fare late night fliers.
Even more unacceptable, when you board a 6-hour flight, you expect to be fed en-route. 6 hours is a long time, and after all, you didn't have the opportunity to buy food after the security checkpoint because everything in the airport was closed. And we all know how dangerous granola bars are. But lo and behold, when you get in the plane you discover that meal-service is only provided during meal-times, and you will be fed half a diet coke and a six mini-pretzels on this flight tonight. (but hey, meal service doesn't mean a whole lot anyway when you're a vegetarian and your seat-mate is Hindu and all they have is cheeseburgers.) If the flight staff is working, it is business time. The time of day is irrelevant. Moreover, when you are in flight you are not moving with the rotation of the earth, so the passage and indeed linear concept of time becomes debatable, so how can we base "mealtime" on the land-based 24-hour clock? I've seen the sun rise 3 times in one 24-hour period--you dare to tell me that daytime is absolute?
Time zoning, and even the idea of rotational daylight phases, is a fairly new phenomenon within the human experience. It took sailors quite a while to figure out that the 3-D nature of the planet was changing the movements of navigation stars from their normal patterns in Europe, leading to numerous lost boats and scratched heads. (a full and coherent explanation of this, paired with the development of spring-movement clocks to keep accurate time where pendulum clocks failed on rocking boats, can be found at the Greenwich Observatory.) It has taken heaps of math and science to invent the standardized planetary time system we have, which is not only pathetically fallible (there are several pacific islands that are cut in half by the International Date Line, which among other problems, has led to several people missing their birthdays) but it throws the arbitrary nature of time as we've established it into sharp relief.
We are on an infinitely small (or large, given the infinite and potentially variable nature of infinity) ball spinning in circles in bigger circles in space, which as far as we know has no center and therefore cannot spin on an axis or have a central or universal time, except for one based on the hypothetical birth of the universe, as estimated through perceived planetary red-shifting in accordance with the earth-based theory of universal expansion. The only people to whom our concept of time is at all pertinent is us, and even then there are a minimum of 24 lunchtimes in a rotational day and WHY HAVEN'T YOU GIVEN ME A SANDWICH YET?
I feel better.
----
College Tuition. We all know that college is just high school II these days, and that a college degree only proves that you're as educated as the stoner on the "2-o and go" plan in the mortarboard beside you. So why are we all paying out the ass for what has become basic public schooling? Why is there competition and an application process? Everyone can get admitted somewhere, and few employers actually care where you earned your degree. Why don't taxes support grades 13-16 like the other 12? Why do we continue to break the bank and put ourselves into overwhelming debt when we know that a degree will not improve our chances of gaining employment? (indeed, it has prevented me from finding some jobs.) It is in the economy's best interest to either make a college degree mean something (if the guy next to me in line to graduate found himself playing chess against a cabbage, it could be anyone's game) or make it free. Millions of unemployable graduates defaulting on their student loans can't be good for the economy.
----
Traffic Speed Enforcement. Freeway speed limits were introduced at the time of the first oil shortage in the mid 1970's to help reduce overall fuel consumption. Now that we've started developing fuel efficient vehicles, what keeps cops ticketing cautiously quick drivers? Fast does not necessitate reckless or dangerous, as regional high speed limits will attest. If the speed limit is 75 on a flat, straight, empty road in Arizona, why do people get fined for driving 75 on a flat, straight, empty road in North Carolina?
----
The pairing of Pagan festivals and Christian holy days. Not that I mind terribly, but now that everyone knows that Jesus did not lay the first Easter egg and the burning bush was not caused by a faulty Christmas light wire, what perpetuates these unions? Its fun, but has been rendered completely meaningless by virtue of its alliance. You can't simultaneously give thanks to the Only Son of the Only God (huh?) and the Goddess of Fertility. (i love that about Christian doublespeak--"he is one god, but he is three separate entities all at the same time. it is possible because god is almighty." sounds like a typo that you guys just decided to run with.)
----
Guys, let go of the past. I'm tired of paying for employees that don't exist and quietly absorbing strains to my credit rating and patience by tolerating an educational money pit and a belief structure that has long outlived its welcome. Everything except Society is moving forward!
I may periodically update this list as the spirit moves me.
----
Long-Distance charges. Did you know that phone companies still make a distinction between local and long-distance dialing? Calling out of your 3-digit local access zone tacks on a large amount to landline prices. While this made sense back in the day of human operators and manual switchboards, when you had to pay more people to make those connections for you, these days thanks to digital and satellite technology that's simply not done. Dialing a local call takes exactly the same amount of human effort as placing a call to China--exactly none. How is charging us extra for no extra service justified?
----
ATM loyalty fees. My bank charges me $1.50 when I withdraw any amount of cash from another bank or credit union's ATM. Frequently, the bank who owns the ATM will too. I wind up blowing $3-4 every time i make a transaction when I'm not in the same time zone as my bank. This is unacceptable. I'm paying a machine--which, i hasten to add, does not get paid--to access my own money because my bank can't or won't do it themselves. This is no inconvenience to my bank as the entire system of transfers is done automatically by mutually accessed computer systems, such as NYCE or Interlink. I know for a fact that banks do not pay per transaction to use these services because in the UK no ATM requires a service fee, even to access my US account.
I believe its fairly obvious to any reader that, if my bank is available, i would of course use my bank's ATM. If I'm Not using my own bank's ATM, its obviously because my bank has failed to provide one within a reasonable range of me. Basing my assumptions on what I'll call "expected human reasoning skills," most people aren't going to join a bank that they can't access on a regular basis from their homes. It's illogical. So if you find yourself needing to use an ATM or other service from another bank, its probably because you're not near home. Why punish your customers for straying afield? Shouldn't you be proud of them for traveling, as traveling is expensive and therefore keeps money circulating?
----
Meal time. These days people are at their desks at all sorts of crazy hours, in order to keep up with the global money market and foreign business. Every industry has people pulling all-nighters, particularly in energy, healthcare, and travel. Now, I respect most restaurants' right to keep old fashioned business hours because there still are a very large number of 9-5ers employed and its not worth the expense of staying open all night. I know that there's at least one Denny's in each town and most late-nighters are fine with their 2am fried fare. But. My tolerance ends when I enter an airport. Airport managers know good and damn well that people are departing and arriving at all hours of day and night, and that traveling does all sorts of screwy things to the metabolism. Yet every single restaurant in the airport closes by 9pm. The manager of Joe's Grass Strip can close the café at 5 if he wants--chances are it won't inconvenience too many people. But when every food joint in your wing of Las Vegas International is locked up two hours before you depart, you can't help but wonder if this is a gesture of contempt for lower-fare late night fliers.
Even more unacceptable, when you board a 6-hour flight, you expect to be fed en-route. 6 hours is a long time, and after all, you didn't have the opportunity to buy food after the security checkpoint because everything in the airport was closed. And we all know how dangerous granola bars are. But lo and behold, when you get in the plane you discover that meal-service is only provided during meal-times, and you will be fed half a diet coke and a six mini-pretzels on this flight tonight. (but hey, meal service doesn't mean a whole lot anyway when you're a vegetarian and your seat-mate is Hindu and all they have is cheeseburgers.) If the flight staff is working, it is business time. The time of day is irrelevant. Moreover, when you are in flight you are not moving with the rotation of the earth, so the passage and indeed linear concept of time becomes debatable, so how can we base "mealtime" on the land-based 24-hour clock? I've seen the sun rise 3 times in one 24-hour period--you dare to tell me that daytime is absolute?
Time zoning, and even the idea of rotational daylight phases, is a fairly new phenomenon within the human experience. It took sailors quite a while to figure out that the 3-D nature of the planet was changing the movements of navigation stars from their normal patterns in Europe, leading to numerous lost boats and scratched heads. (a full and coherent explanation of this, paired with the development of spring-movement clocks to keep accurate time where pendulum clocks failed on rocking boats, can be found at the Greenwich Observatory.) It has taken heaps of math and science to invent the standardized planetary time system we have, which is not only pathetically fallible (there are several pacific islands that are cut in half by the International Date Line, which among other problems, has led to several people missing their birthdays) but it throws the arbitrary nature of time as we've established it into sharp relief.
We are on an infinitely small (or large, given the infinite and potentially variable nature of infinity) ball spinning in circles in bigger circles in space, which as far as we know has no center and therefore cannot spin on an axis or have a central or universal time, except for one based on the hypothetical birth of the universe, as estimated through perceived planetary red-shifting in accordance with the earth-based theory of universal expansion. The only people to whom our concept of time is at all pertinent is us, and even then there are a minimum of 24 lunchtimes in a rotational day and WHY HAVEN'T YOU GIVEN ME A SANDWICH YET?
I feel better.
----
College Tuition. We all know that college is just high school II these days, and that a college degree only proves that you're as educated as the stoner on the "2-o and go" plan in the mortarboard beside you. So why are we all paying out the ass for what has become basic public schooling? Why is there competition and an application process? Everyone can get admitted somewhere, and few employers actually care where you earned your degree. Why don't taxes support grades 13-16 like the other 12? Why do we continue to break the bank and put ourselves into overwhelming debt when we know that a degree will not improve our chances of gaining employment? (indeed, it has prevented me from finding some jobs.) It is in the economy's best interest to either make a college degree mean something (if the guy next to me in line to graduate found himself playing chess against a cabbage, it could be anyone's game) or make it free. Millions of unemployable graduates defaulting on their student loans can't be good for the economy.
----
Traffic Speed Enforcement. Freeway speed limits were introduced at the time of the first oil shortage in the mid 1970's to help reduce overall fuel consumption. Now that we've started developing fuel efficient vehicles, what keeps cops ticketing cautiously quick drivers? Fast does not necessitate reckless or dangerous, as regional high speed limits will attest. If the speed limit is 75 on a flat, straight, empty road in Arizona, why do people get fined for driving 75 on a flat, straight, empty road in North Carolina?
----
The pairing of Pagan festivals and Christian holy days. Not that I mind terribly, but now that everyone knows that Jesus did not lay the first Easter egg and the burning bush was not caused by a faulty Christmas light wire, what perpetuates these unions? Its fun, but has been rendered completely meaningless by virtue of its alliance. You can't simultaneously give thanks to the Only Son of the Only God (huh?) and the Goddess of Fertility. (i love that about Christian doublespeak--"he is one god, but he is three separate entities all at the same time. it is possible because god is almighty." sounds like a typo that you guys just decided to run with.)
----
Guys, let go of the past. I'm tired of paying for employees that don't exist and quietly absorbing strains to my credit rating and patience by tolerating an educational money pit and a belief structure that has long outlived its welcome. Everything except Society is moving forward!
Wednesday, January 02, 2008
Starts When You're Always Afraid
Step outta line, the man come and take you away...
The Airport Security Follies
If you read the article, my responses here will make sense.
1. I find it an excellent and coherent article written by a well-researched and eloquent journalist.
2. The comment queue cut off after 265 entries. Look at the timestamps. There are 265 responses--overwhelmingly positive--in 27 hours, yet many commentators included some reference to "the American people are too complacent. There's too many people who buy into it. There's not enough people angry enough to speak up."
3. As a recent resident of Berkeley, CA, I do know of my inalienable right to petition, peacefully assemble, and protest. I also know just how easily my government can ignore my petitions, assemblies, and protestations. Protests are pointless, (and often deemed riots by authority members and subsequently tear-gassed unless held in hidden, miles-away "free speech zones"), writing to your congressperson returns politely-worded "your sentiments will not affect your representation" form letters, voting is blatantly disregarded, and outright riots result in the immediate arrest, death, and defamation of its participants by news and political speakers. Trust me--Berkeley is ignored by the government every single day.
There is absolutely no way for average citizens to change anything except by a gross majority coming together and not spending money on whatever it is that warrants change. Which isn't going to happen. Enough people rely daily on air transit that far-reaching boycott is overwhelmingly improbable. Recall: there are 300 million people in this country, most of whom have low-paying jobs, families, and insufficient resources to attempt alternatives to the mainstream. This country is too big and run by too few businesses for a private sector boycott to make a dent in air traffic. LA and NY are just too far apart for anything except teleportation to challenge that--and even then, it would still be regulated by the TSA!
The only way you can avoid funding the antics of your government and the companies that run it is to leave, in a rowboat, hewn by hand with handmade tools from trees felled in countries that have no trade agreements with the US. Have fun.
When Big Business is in cahoots with Government by the Highest Bidder, there's no exposed toe for the common man to jump on. No matter what we say or do, as individuals, we cannot stop the corporations in charge from doing exactly what they want to us. So long as we know we're all being lied to and humiliated in the security line for the sake of generating a national threat through the power of the collective imagination, we might as well put up with it. We don't really have any other options. The world has gotten small enough for it to be controlled by one small group of people. I'm of the opinion that it's Procter and Gamble.
The Airport Security Follies
If you read the article, my responses here will make sense.
1. I find it an excellent and coherent article written by a well-researched and eloquent journalist.
2. The comment queue cut off after 265 entries. Look at the timestamps. There are 265 responses--overwhelmingly positive--in 27 hours, yet many commentators included some reference to "the American people are too complacent. There's too many people who buy into it. There's not enough people angry enough to speak up."
3. As a recent resident of Berkeley, CA, I do know of my inalienable right to petition, peacefully assemble, and protest. I also know just how easily my government can ignore my petitions, assemblies, and protestations. Protests are pointless, (and often deemed riots by authority members and subsequently tear-gassed unless held in hidden, miles-away "free speech zones"), writing to your congressperson returns politely-worded "your sentiments will not affect your representation" form letters, voting is blatantly disregarded, and outright riots result in the immediate arrest, death, and defamation of its participants by news and political speakers. Trust me--Berkeley is ignored by the government every single day.
There is absolutely no way for average citizens to change anything except by a gross majority coming together and not spending money on whatever it is that warrants change. Which isn't going to happen. Enough people rely daily on air transit that far-reaching boycott is overwhelmingly improbable. Recall: there are 300 million people in this country, most of whom have low-paying jobs, families, and insufficient resources to attempt alternatives to the mainstream. This country is too big and run by too few businesses for a private sector boycott to make a dent in air traffic. LA and NY are just too far apart for anything except teleportation to challenge that--and even then, it would still be regulated by the TSA!
The only way you can avoid funding the antics of your government and the companies that run it is to leave, in a rowboat, hewn by hand with handmade tools from trees felled in countries that have no trade agreements with the US. Have fun.
When Big Business is in cahoots with Government by the Highest Bidder, there's no exposed toe for the common man to jump on. No matter what we say or do, as individuals, we cannot stop the corporations in charge from doing exactly what they want to us. So long as we know we're all being lied to and humiliated in the security line for the sake of generating a national threat through the power of the collective imagination, we might as well put up with it. We don't really have any other options. The world has gotten small enough for it to be controlled by one small group of people. I'm of the opinion that it's Procter and Gamble.
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
beep
Today i was nuking some couscous and wandering aimlessly around my kitchen when i stopped to wonder--why does every appliance these days beep so damn much? In my kitchen alone there are at least 6 things that beep and holler at you--the phone, the answering machine, the oven, the microwave, the toaster, and even the damn refrigerator if you leave the door open too long. The microwave in particular is an offender--it beeps when you turn it on, input each number, start it, and then it beeps no fewer than 4 loud obnoxious times when it finishes. That's unacceptable. And the refrigerator needs a "i'm putting in groceries, asshole" function so it doesn't holler at me every time i leave the door open longer than 8 seconds. (my fridge at the Regent Hizzle in Berkeley used to slam the door on you unless you propped it open with a chair. One time it got a particularly good swing and caused me to hit my head on the frame.) The answering machine and phone beep loudly too, especially after the little arrogant computer voice tells you "end of messages"--you could have said that OR beeped, but oh-ho, how fun, you do both.
What's really irksome is that these bastards can't be reprogrammed not to. there's no "shut the hell up" user function. You can't even make the beep quieter--which seems ridiculous with the answering machine, as you Can set the playback volume. You can make it play as quiet as you want, but when its done it still screams like a dern banshee. Which sucks in my house, as someone is always sleeping on account of our diverse work schedules.
Maybe there's better answering machines out there, but mine is a bastard. When it picks up it plays the greeting aloud--like that's something you need to hear. And of course it beeps loud enough to rouse the dead to prompt the caller to speak, and repeats the din when they're done. It also doesn't help that we get called every morning by the National Pro-Life Alliance, who play a recorded message if you answer, dont' answer if you call them back, and their website is less than useless, so you can't even tell these anti-choice assholes to get off their collective high horse and leave you the fuck alone.
I guess my point is i'm tired of beeping. Come up with a new noise or shut up. Being beeped at all the time makes me wonder if i'm using the appliances or if they're using me.
On that note, thank you, Macintosh, for making your OS so readily adaptable. It was very easy to reset my computer to not make any unsolicited noise, show me any unsolicited notifications, or warn me not to touch things. unlike the copy of NannyState XP i use in class.
What's really irksome is that these bastards can't be reprogrammed not to. there's no "shut the hell up" user function. You can't even make the beep quieter--which seems ridiculous with the answering machine, as you Can set the playback volume. You can make it play as quiet as you want, but when its done it still screams like a dern banshee. Which sucks in my house, as someone is always sleeping on account of our diverse work schedules.
Maybe there's better answering machines out there, but mine is a bastard. When it picks up it plays the greeting aloud--like that's something you need to hear. And of course it beeps loud enough to rouse the dead to prompt the caller to speak, and repeats the din when they're done. It also doesn't help that we get called every morning by the National Pro-Life Alliance, who play a recorded message if you answer, dont' answer if you call them back, and their website is less than useless, so you can't even tell these anti-choice assholes to get off their collective high horse and leave you the fuck alone.
I guess my point is i'm tired of beeping. Come up with a new noise or shut up. Being beeped at all the time makes me wonder if i'm using the appliances or if they're using me.
On that note, thank you, Macintosh, for making your OS so readily adaptable. It was very easy to reset my computer to not make any unsolicited noise, show me any unsolicited notifications, or warn me not to touch things. unlike the copy of NannyState XP i use in class.
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
the Organic conspiracy
I think I'm onto something. The other day i was at Safeway, comparing breads, comparing prices, and I came across an odd dichotomy. For those readers who may not be aware, Safeway has its own organic food line, called "O" Organics. For organic its mediocre, but at least they're trying. Anyway, I picked up a loaf of the Safeway Selects brand whole grain bread and looked at the ingredients list. After "enriched bleached flour" there wasn't actually anything I could pronounce. All sorts of "partially hydrogenated" this and "high-maltose" that, with plenty of Xs and Zs to baffle the vocabulary of even second-place spelling bee contestants. I put it down, disgusted, and picked up the O Organics variety, and found an ingredients list I could appreciate. Whole grain this, all-natural that...for twice the price of the other subset of the same parent company.
which got me thinking.
Does anyone else suspect that food manufacturers are doing this on purpose? Making the "regular" type of food so jam-packed with artificial ingredients and petroleum-based emulsifiers that its Entirely inedible, so as to force the consumer to purchase the higher-priced natural or organic option? There's absolutely no reason for bread makers to put That much garbage into their dough except to make another option more attractive. Its like selling pantyhose with runs in them for what you might consider a reasonable price, while selling the intact version for double. It generates a feeling in the purchaser of "well if that's what it costs broken, i guess its not unreasonable to pay a bit more for something useful." We assume, wrongly, that the corporation is willing to sell the holy pantyhose at a loss in order to get rid of them, and the good tights are sold for suggested retail value. But they're selling the trash for a reasonable price so as to justify the mark-up on the products we actually want!
I admit. I lived in Berkeley for a while. Everything in that area is organic, or at very least natural, and if its neither its sold in the trash grocery stores that nobody really shops at. Good local produce is reasonably priced and bountifully available. All-natural bread is sold by the heap for a pittance. Cereal doesn't have to include high-fructose corn syrup! There are options besides $4.00 tofu and stale granola! But now I am in the middle of the country where nobody expects that, and if you want it you've got to be willing to pay to ship it. People pay hard-earned money to buy canned stench that makes my nose bleed because some asshole company's marketing department has convinced folks that they want it. People buy mononitrate diglyceride sodium laurel and/or laureth sulfate partially hydrogenated cottonseed and/or canola oil-infused breads because for some bizarre reason its cheaper now in our better-life-through-chemistry economy. And the folks who actually bother to read the back before they bite in are going to just have to pay more for being a smartass. Well excuse me for not wanting to eat soap. The Man wants me to pay more to not store non-digestible plastic products in my abdomen? When did THIS become a concern? WHEN THE HELL DID REAL FOOD BECOME A LUXURY ITEM?????
No, thank you, i don't want day-glo orange lab-created UHP artficially flavored dairy-free powdered cheese product on my chlorine-bleached wheat-germ-extract-and-talc-based French-style bread product, nor would I like any 0% juice blue raspberry flavored high-dextrose corn syrup sweetened beverage to go with it. I just want a beer.
which got me thinking.
Does anyone else suspect that food manufacturers are doing this on purpose? Making the "regular" type of food so jam-packed with artificial ingredients and petroleum-based emulsifiers that its Entirely inedible, so as to force the consumer to purchase the higher-priced natural or organic option? There's absolutely no reason for bread makers to put That much garbage into their dough except to make another option more attractive. Its like selling pantyhose with runs in them for what you might consider a reasonable price, while selling the intact version for double. It generates a feeling in the purchaser of "well if that's what it costs broken, i guess its not unreasonable to pay a bit more for something useful." We assume, wrongly, that the corporation is willing to sell the holy pantyhose at a loss in order to get rid of them, and the good tights are sold for suggested retail value. But they're selling the trash for a reasonable price so as to justify the mark-up on the products we actually want!
I admit. I lived in Berkeley for a while. Everything in that area is organic, or at very least natural, and if its neither its sold in the trash grocery stores that nobody really shops at. Good local produce is reasonably priced and bountifully available. All-natural bread is sold by the heap for a pittance. Cereal doesn't have to include high-fructose corn syrup! There are options besides $4.00 tofu and stale granola! But now I am in the middle of the country where nobody expects that, and if you want it you've got to be willing to pay to ship it. People pay hard-earned money to buy canned stench that makes my nose bleed because some asshole company's marketing department has convinced folks that they want it. People buy mononitrate diglyceride sodium laurel and/or laureth sulfate partially hydrogenated cottonseed and/or canola oil-infused breads because for some bizarre reason its cheaper now in our better-life-through-chemistry economy. And the folks who actually bother to read the back before they bite in are going to just have to pay more for being a smartass. Well excuse me for not wanting to eat soap. The Man wants me to pay more to not store non-digestible plastic products in my abdomen? When did THIS become a concern? WHEN THE HELL DID REAL FOOD BECOME A LUXURY ITEM?????
No, thank you, i don't want day-glo orange lab-created UHP artficially flavored dairy-free powdered cheese product on my chlorine-bleached wheat-germ-extract-and-talc-based French-style bread product, nor would I like any 0% juice blue raspberry flavored high-dextrose corn syrup sweetened beverage to go with it. I just want a beer.
Monday, May 28, 2007
more, harder, heavier
Maybe its just the year I was born, or maybe its just dumb luck, but somehow, everywhere I've worked and everywhere I've studied, I've come in for the year that everything has gotten more intense. In school I came in for the first year that the freshman class was so vast we overflowed the housing and wound up taking over two hotels. When I studied abroad it was the biggest class of international students they'd ever encountered and there was another housing crunch. In the Hamptons it was the heaviest show load the theatre had ever encountered with the least amount of time. Berkeley also took on the most interns they'd ever had and, lo and behold, another housing crunch. Now my Opera is 17 housing units short and is putting on the most shows they've ever tried in a summer, which means I'm rooming in a pantry and better appreciate it.
My whole Life has been like this. Always the first time we've tried this, and its always more than the institution is prepared to handle. Always above and beyond capacity, both for space and stress. For some reason folks tend to forget that when you try to build upward, its a good idea to build outward too so the tower doesn't teeter.
I'm getting tired of it, frankly. I'm sick of feeling crammed in by establishments that are not capable of handling the bulk. Feeling marginalized and perpetually reduced to child-status by companies that have no room to move upward, so they just shove bigger and bigger groups through on the bottom floor, in one door, out the other. I know a lot of money has already gone toward establishing this point long before now, but its starting to strike home with me. The human lifespan has increased so the retirement age has increased. Which means older people are holding onto jobs longer. So employment turnover has slowed. What's more, social security benefits have dropped, pensions are a thing of the past, and a lot of investment plans have tanked as major corporations have dealt underhandedly, so even folks who are of age to retire can't without being put out on the street. There's not enough money to go around, so everyone is working more, longer, and harder to try and get enough, which means more people are earning more so inflation has ballooned to compensate. This sucks enough for older people who are desperately trying to hold on to the income they have to try and slowly pay for their hip replacement ten years ago with the petering assistance of Medicare, but let's think how this is affecting everyone else. Me, for example.
My university took on more students than it could dream of handling comfortably in order to make more money in 2002. The school was literally bursting at the seams. Now, most universities are comfortable in the knowledge that they're going to lose a huge chunk of their entrants by the end of their second year due to drop-outs and transfers, so freshman and sophomore-level general ed classes are designed to accommodate for thousands of students while junior and senior level classes are smaller and more specific, to accommodate for the significantly smaller number of students who actually survive long enough to get into them. This is nothing new. Unfortunately, in this day of job competition when we know that you can't even work at Starbucks without a BA, the pressure is on for each entrant to graduate, even if they're not really college material. While this has affected the per capita suicide and therapy entry rates to a degree, the biggest impact it has actually had is the ballooning of college graduation rates. I'm convinced that the university of south carolina, seeing a potential for monetary gain, has intentionally dropped the difficulty level of most of its liberal arts courses--and phased out professors who would keep the intellectual commitment high in order to preserve the integrity of education--in order to increase the number of people who pay to stay in four or more years. Which has devalued the bachelor's degree to nearly that of the high school diploma or GED. I graduated with a Pack Of Nimrods. There were some bright students dotted in there, but a large majority of my graduating class was...dumb. But I have the same degree as the rest of them, so on paper we're all worth the same.
Which means, of course, that eventually I'll have to go to grad school--an institution that is also being flooded by folks who want to increase their chances of survival. Eventually, if the trend continues, I can imagine the Ph. D will work out to have the CV value of an 8th grade graduation ceremony. As bigger and bigger packs of young educated people flood the overwhelmed job market and corporate heads squeeze each downsized department tighter and tighter, i can only foresee revolution...or collapse.
As it stands, each year I age has tended to become a year further from adulthood. My mom was a grown-up at 18. My older cousins were deemed mature at 21. Ten years later i don't imagine I'll be taken seriously as an adult until i'm 30. I can only expect my jobs to be a series of low-paid temporary gigs in pathetic, crumbling housing, herded in groups of my equally frustrated, overeducated peers like some sick travesty of a summer camp where we're made to clean toilets and sweep floors and only discuss philosophy in undertones when the boss-man looks away.
ugh. I'm gonna apply to Yale.
My whole Life has been like this. Always the first time we've tried this, and its always more than the institution is prepared to handle. Always above and beyond capacity, both for space and stress. For some reason folks tend to forget that when you try to build upward, its a good idea to build outward too so the tower doesn't teeter.
I'm getting tired of it, frankly. I'm sick of feeling crammed in by establishments that are not capable of handling the bulk. Feeling marginalized and perpetually reduced to child-status by companies that have no room to move upward, so they just shove bigger and bigger groups through on the bottom floor, in one door, out the other. I know a lot of money has already gone toward establishing this point long before now, but its starting to strike home with me. The human lifespan has increased so the retirement age has increased. Which means older people are holding onto jobs longer. So employment turnover has slowed. What's more, social security benefits have dropped, pensions are a thing of the past, and a lot of investment plans have tanked as major corporations have dealt underhandedly, so even folks who are of age to retire can't without being put out on the street. There's not enough money to go around, so everyone is working more, longer, and harder to try and get enough, which means more people are earning more so inflation has ballooned to compensate. This sucks enough for older people who are desperately trying to hold on to the income they have to try and slowly pay for their hip replacement ten years ago with the petering assistance of Medicare, but let's think how this is affecting everyone else. Me, for example.
My university took on more students than it could dream of handling comfortably in order to make more money in 2002. The school was literally bursting at the seams. Now, most universities are comfortable in the knowledge that they're going to lose a huge chunk of their entrants by the end of their second year due to drop-outs and transfers, so freshman and sophomore-level general ed classes are designed to accommodate for thousands of students while junior and senior level classes are smaller and more specific, to accommodate for the significantly smaller number of students who actually survive long enough to get into them. This is nothing new. Unfortunately, in this day of job competition when we know that you can't even work at Starbucks without a BA, the pressure is on for each entrant to graduate, even if they're not really college material. While this has affected the per capita suicide and therapy entry rates to a degree, the biggest impact it has actually had is the ballooning of college graduation rates. I'm convinced that the university of south carolina, seeing a potential for monetary gain, has intentionally dropped the difficulty level of most of its liberal arts courses--and phased out professors who would keep the intellectual commitment high in order to preserve the integrity of education--in order to increase the number of people who pay to stay in four or more years. Which has devalued the bachelor's degree to nearly that of the high school diploma or GED. I graduated with a Pack Of Nimrods. There were some bright students dotted in there, but a large majority of my graduating class was...dumb. But I have the same degree as the rest of them, so on paper we're all worth the same.
Which means, of course, that eventually I'll have to go to grad school--an institution that is also being flooded by folks who want to increase their chances of survival. Eventually, if the trend continues, I can imagine the Ph. D will work out to have the CV value of an 8th grade graduation ceremony. As bigger and bigger packs of young educated people flood the overwhelmed job market and corporate heads squeeze each downsized department tighter and tighter, i can only foresee revolution...or collapse.
As it stands, each year I age has tended to become a year further from adulthood. My mom was a grown-up at 18. My older cousins were deemed mature at 21. Ten years later i don't imagine I'll be taken seriously as an adult until i'm 30. I can only expect my jobs to be a series of low-paid temporary gigs in pathetic, crumbling housing, herded in groups of my equally frustrated, overeducated peers like some sick travesty of a summer camp where we're made to clean toilets and sweep floors and only discuss philosophy in undertones when the boss-man looks away.
ugh. I'm gonna apply to Yale.
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
the price of stamps...
Would something, Anything, mind getting CHEAPER for a change? Gas goes up, stamps go up, airfares, food, rent--all this goddamn inflation has me pulling out my pockets and waving my Hoover flags in despair. What a great time to try and enter the workforce--at a time when my economy is actually preventing me from working where I might be able to build a career. Fact is, it can't keep it up too much longer. When we reach the point where young people truly can't afford to get a job, something's gotta collapse. The fiscal structure, the housing market, the minds of the frustrated--somehow something's gonna cave. I want a revolution! About what, for what, how it goes about, I don't care. I just want to feel like i'm fighting FOR something, alongside something, rather than constantly against the increasingly tepid culture which claims me as its own. I do not approve! Hear my squeak! LOOK at young people these days. Individuals may want to fight whatever the power happens to be, but for a general overview, look at the music scene. Nobody has any passion about anything. Pop music is edited to be at once erotic and meaningless--it encourages the plebs to shag and increase the lagging birth rate, but never bothers to express social unrest or political ire. We're square in the middle of Vietnam Mach II and nobody outside of Berkeley gives a rat's ass. We all just click "no" on the Gallup poll's endless "approve/disapprove" ticker, write infuriated blog entries that four people will read and two minds will take offense at, and tolerate the increasingly 1984-esque world we've built for ourselves. We have a vaguely established enemy ("freedom fighter" is the bad guys' word for "terrorist"), we have an inescapable status quo of war government that uses corporations to tap our phone calls and emails, and we all stare at the walls in our increasingly pointless jobs and slowly go postal. And the price of living keeps going up. The number of people in therapy, trying to tolerate their animal nature as it is caged in a grey cubicle for a longer number of hours each week keeps going up. We work harder and longer and the cost goes up accordingly. What has poisoned our brains? Why do we think its a good thing to work ourselves stupid? What has been added to the water to make us work more, love less, and delay adulthood until age 40? Why the hell don't we realize that the more we work, the more we EARN, the more they can CHARGE? We pay more because we've all worked harder to earn the fucking privilege of doing so.
I blame myself. I allowed myself to be convinced that empowering myself meant having the power to bash my own head into the wall. No, i don't work in a cubicle in corporate america. I work with my hands. I work with good people. So i guess this diatribe really isn't about me. But i still feel the suffocating angst of white middle class stagnation. I want to Want something. Not food or shelter--that's need. I want to have a passionate desire to change things. To look at the city or country in which i live and find something worth getting worked up about. I can vote, though as more people become educated we've come to realize what a joke that is. I can work--i can work myself into a pulp. I can think, write, bear arms, and even drink alcohol to placate myself when nobody agrees, reads, or allows me to shoot them. I can't find anything to fight for. To rally behind. To hope for. The war in iraq will not end--it was designed not to. Its just a money pit we've all resigned ourselves to tithe to. Gay marriage rights and abortion are feather toys our political leaders dangle over the wall and encourage us to bat at while they do their own thing without the knowledge or the consent of the idiots i like to call us. I'm so fucking TIRED of being told by the state that everything they're doing is "for my own good, whether or not i realize it" i'm sorry, politicians-at-large, you're really NOT any smarter or more capable of handling life than me. That's why you're called Representatives, not God-Ordained Saviors of the Helpless Masses.
My previous posting, written in a fiery haste, struck a chord at the end that rung a bell that spurned this. "the common interests of the majority are just that--common." we listen to what we're told to, watch what we're told to, fuck how we're told to, work how we're told to...i just want to formulate an independent thought. I know what i'm saying is trite. I know everyone else feels frustration with the world at large. I want to stop feeling like everything i say and think has been done before and was equally as futile. I want to rise up and force someone in a position of power to make transit and basic housing affordable without making a clusterfuck out of it and allowing the freeways to collapse and every street to be sketchy. I want jobs that are not only worth doing and interesting, but pay the bills. I want to stop the cycle which has spiraled out of control into this 24-hour workfest that only leads to more price hikes. I want the world to stop so I can catch up. I want to feel love that doesn't have a massive catch that leaves me at once crying and climbing the walls. I want men to think like women and willingly treat us like equals, on and off the dance floor. I want to sleep without having nightmares. I want to wake up without coffee. I want to feel like a grown-up. I WANT TO FEEL LIKE A GROWN-UP! The grown-up world keeps getting further and further away. My age seems to perpetually be the age of immaturity. Stop talking down at me. I'm worth more than that. I'm smarter than you. Really. Trust me. I get no pleasure out of reality tv, monkeys watching monkeys jump around in a box. I want to feel like someone is listening and not just looking for how to find fault. WHY does nobody care about me? Why can't i seem to care about anyone else either? What happens when a society becomes utterly apathetic? Does it collapse in a smoldering heap or does it continue as is, as it always has, because nothing has changed? Who's hoops am I jumping through? Who wrote the rules? The human intellect is too intelligent to be trapped in a human brain, constantly influenced by hormones and primal urges. I FUCK THEREFORE I AM-sterdam... i've lost my mind. I'm so sick of living in my brain. Nothing exists to free me from the manila painted walls that even now grow closer and closer together....Maybe tonight would be a good night for a nervous breakdown.
I blame myself. I allowed myself to be convinced that empowering myself meant having the power to bash my own head into the wall. No, i don't work in a cubicle in corporate america. I work with my hands. I work with good people. So i guess this diatribe really isn't about me. But i still feel the suffocating angst of white middle class stagnation. I want to Want something. Not food or shelter--that's need. I want to have a passionate desire to change things. To look at the city or country in which i live and find something worth getting worked up about. I can vote, though as more people become educated we've come to realize what a joke that is. I can work--i can work myself into a pulp. I can think, write, bear arms, and even drink alcohol to placate myself when nobody agrees, reads, or allows me to shoot them. I can't find anything to fight for. To rally behind. To hope for. The war in iraq will not end--it was designed not to. Its just a money pit we've all resigned ourselves to tithe to. Gay marriage rights and abortion are feather toys our political leaders dangle over the wall and encourage us to bat at while they do their own thing without the knowledge or the consent of the idiots i like to call us. I'm so fucking TIRED of being told by the state that everything they're doing is "for my own good, whether or not i realize it" i'm sorry, politicians-at-large, you're really NOT any smarter or more capable of handling life than me. That's why you're called Representatives, not God-Ordained Saviors of the Helpless Masses.
My previous posting, written in a fiery haste, struck a chord at the end that rung a bell that spurned this. "the common interests of the majority are just that--common." we listen to what we're told to, watch what we're told to, fuck how we're told to, work how we're told to...i just want to formulate an independent thought. I know what i'm saying is trite. I know everyone else feels frustration with the world at large. I want to stop feeling like everything i say and think has been done before and was equally as futile. I want to rise up and force someone in a position of power to make transit and basic housing affordable without making a clusterfuck out of it and allowing the freeways to collapse and every street to be sketchy. I want jobs that are not only worth doing and interesting, but pay the bills. I want to stop the cycle which has spiraled out of control into this 24-hour workfest that only leads to more price hikes. I want the world to stop so I can catch up. I want to feel love that doesn't have a massive catch that leaves me at once crying and climbing the walls. I want men to think like women and willingly treat us like equals, on and off the dance floor. I want to sleep without having nightmares. I want to wake up without coffee. I want to feel like a grown-up. I WANT TO FEEL LIKE A GROWN-UP! The grown-up world keeps getting further and further away. My age seems to perpetually be the age of immaturity. Stop talking down at me. I'm worth more than that. I'm smarter than you. Really. Trust me. I get no pleasure out of reality tv, monkeys watching monkeys jump around in a box. I want to feel like someone is listening and not just looking for how to find fault. WHY does nobody care about me? Why can't i seem to care about anyone else either? What happens when a society becomes utterly apathetic? Does it collapse in a smoldering heap or does it continue as is, as it always has, because nothing has changed? Who's hoops am I jumping through? Who wrote the rules? The human intellect is too intelligent to be trapped in a human brain, constantly influenced by hormones and primal urges. I FUCK THEREFORE I AM-sterdam... i've lost my mind. I'm so sick of living in my brain. Nothing exists to free me from the manila painted walls that even now grow closer and closer together....Maybe tonight would be a good night for a nervous breakdown.
Sunday, February 18, 2007
Command + P
I'm convinced that color printers are a scam. Everything about them is infuriatingly designed to be as counter-productive and expensive as possible. I'm convinced its a conspiracy on the part of Kinko's and Kodak photo centers in drugstores everywhere to keep themselves in business during the heaviest battle of the D.I.Y. Revolution. These companies and others are relying on the consumer becoming so frustrated with their HP MoneyPit 3000 or their Epson Print-n-Shred that they'll actually cave and come to their stores to have their photos developed the old fashioned way--inside the belly of a giant, whirring contraption that keeps customers and employees alike baffled as to how it works.
To support this claim I provide the classic examples of printer frustration: the persistent paper-jam. the $30 ink cartridges which contain exactly enough ink to print one beautiful, automatic test-page. The refusal of full black cartridges to work until the color one has been replaced. Until now everyone merely assumed it was companies such as Hewlett-Packard keeping themselves contentedly in business, even to the extent that they started giving away printers for free provided you bought a set of inks. But this system doesn't exactly add up.
Think about it. When a product doesn't work, and consistently fails to work, people stop buying it. When a computer OS, for example, is riddled with bugs and virus loopholes and a bizarre tic that freezes your cursor in a corner but still allows you to move around and click things, consumers stop buying it and eventually the manufacturer stops making it. It is no longer a wise business decision to continue making products that people don't want. Thus, the only reason why these shitty rip-off printers keep being manufactured is because people keep buying them. Which is stupid, but somehow--either through advertising, subliminal messaging, or outright ignorance--people keep thinking that its better to put up with this piece of crap than to take their film rolls to the drugstore (which, like hybrid cars, has turned out to Not be cheaper in the long run.)
So long as we idiots keep being swindled by these obviously contrived highway robbery systems, the printer manufacturers are not going to improve their products. They don't have to, and moreover they don't want to. They're benefiting from our continued purchasing of inefficient, jammy, shoddy printers--ink sales are up, replacement printers are up, home repairs are impossible. Then Krishna Copy and print labs are there to catch the rest of the people who've gotten fed up enough to toss their personal printers in the bin. No matter what, unless you can employ a personal scribe, you have to use these people's services in order to run business and maintain personal affairs. The modern world has not yet reached a point at which we can function without the ability to put words on paper, so we are essentially these people's pawns. Me, i'm just going straight digital from here on out.
To support this claim I provide the classic examples of printer frustration: the persistent paper-jam. the $30 ink cartridges which contain exactly enough ink to print one beautiful, automatic test-page. The refusal of full black cartridges to work until the color one has been replaced. Until now everyone merely assumed it was companies such as Hewlett-Packard keeping themselves contentedly in business, even to the extent that they started giving away printers for free provided you bought a set of inks. But this system doesn't exactly add up.
Think about it. When a product doesn't work, and consistently fails to work, people stop buying it. When a computer OS, for example, is riddled with bugs and virus loopholes and a bizarre tic that freezes your cursor in a corner but still allows you to move around and click things, consumers stop buying it and eventually the manufacturer stops making it. It is no longer a wise business decision to continue making products that people don't want. Thus, the only reason why these shitty rip-off printers keep being manufactured is because people keep buying them. Which is stupid, but somehow--either through advertising, subliminal messaging, or outright ignorance--people keep thinking that its better to put up with this piece of crap than to take their film rolls to the drugstore (which, like hybrid cars, has turned out to Not be cheaper in the long run.)
So long as we idiots keep being swindled by these obviously contrived highway robbery systems, the printer manufacturers are not going to improve their products. They don't have to, and moreover they don't want to. They're benefiting from our continued purchasing of inefficient, jammy, shoddy printers--ink sales are up, replacement printers are up, home repairs are impossible. Then Krishna Copy and print labs are there to catch the rest of the people who've gotten fed up enough to toss their personal printers in the bin. No matter what, unless you can employ a personal scribe, you have to use these people's services in order to run business and maintain personal affairs. The modern world has not yet reached a point at which we can function without the ability to put words on paper, so we are essentially these people's pawns. Me, i'm just going straight digital from here on out.
Sunday, November 06, 2005
bumper stickers
I just had a striking realization--i don't trust unoriginal bumper stickers. Cars that bear little yellow logos reading "smile--it confuses people" or "meat is murder" should not be trusted on the road, and their drivers should be socially avoided at all costs.
I just walked past a car with a small rectangle on its right flank reading "resistance is futile" with a big-eyed alien next to it. What does this mean about the driver? He or she is expressing to the world that they are in fact quite tame and boring. You know when John or Jane saw that sticker in the racks at the tat shop s/he lit up inside and thought "now There's a sticker that really expresses my individuality! When people read that they're going to think 'man, this driver is really cool.'"
OR
the car is, in fact, owned by aliens who are attempting to fit in with human society by decorating their vehicle in a manner that seems nicely inconspicuous. Either way, and yes these are the paranoid ramblings of one who has failed to receive sufficient sleep for a number of months--trite bumper stickers should send up a red flag to indicate that this driver is a member of the "general public" that is often referred to but rarely seen. I don't actually know one off the top of my head, but i'd imagine a member of this grouping enjoys jerry springer, american football, and ready-made dinners, and dines at Applebee's restaurants on special occasions. They work in insurance, accounting, or another of several white-collar cubicle-based jobs, drink bud light, and always gripe about how lousy their life is but do absolutely nothing to improve it. They're the same people who fill that "barely literate" category--those individuals who can just about sound out the word "Bush" on a ballot and respond well to pop-up advertising but can only offer a blank stare and a bit of mouth dribbling when you ask them their opinions on the writings of Chekhov. They fill sidewalks and shopping centers with their vapid chatter about what happened last night on reality tv and parade around in the latest cheaply made, ill-fitting and unflattering fashions that they saw worn by persons of a similar character on said programming.
I fear this group, this They, this General Public, and i can only hope that through education and devout atheism i can avoid allowing myself to gain the same glassy-eyed, complacent, sheeplike quality of the societal standard. I'm okay with being mediocre--i have no wish to meet the expectations of the exceptional or endure the hardship of the pitiful--but i will not be General, normal, or popular. "It is not worth an intelligent man's time to be in the majority--by definition, there are already enough people to do that."--G.H. Hardy.
I could go into the specific offenses i take from being stuck behind some shit-for-brains driver who has taken the opportunity provided by driving too slowly to attempt to influence my opinions by quoting platitudes expressing that i should place artificial constraints upon myself and my civil liberties, but i may wish to drive that point into the ground at a later time.
So, in no particular order, i've selected 20 bumper sticker themes that you should be wary of, as the driver is either mind-numbingly banal or a visitor from another planet.
Meat is Murder, anything involving a request for you to smile, Honk if you're Horny, My other Car is a __, W: the president, any campaign stickers for either dominant party, Baby on Board, Choose Life, any image of sporting equipment, any image of a team mascot, any number of a sports player or racecar driver, any criticism of the driver or the reader, any form of "my child is an honor student", any popular band name or logo (unless the vehicle is owned by a member of said band), any quotation from the Bible or any religious leader, any other religious reference (including half-silly comments like "who needs GPS when you have Jesus guiding you?" or "in case of rapture, this car will be empty"), any slogan from a television show or advertisement (yes, i have seen a bumper sticker that read "can you hear me now?") any reference to beer, breasts, or bodily functions, or any form of rainbow, pink triangle, purple band, or other homosexual indicator. I don't care if you're gay. just drive.
I just walked past a car with a small rectangle on its right flank reading "resistance is futile" with a big-eyed alien next to it. What does this mean about the driver? He or she is expressing to the world that they are in fact quite tame and boring. You know when John or Jane saw that sticker in the racks at the tat shop s/he lit up inside and thought "now There's a sticker that really expresses my individuality! When people read that they're going to think 'man, this driver is really cool.'"
OR
the car is, in fact, owned by aliens who are attempting to fit in with human society by decorating their vehicle in a manner that seems nicely inconspicuous. Either way, and yes these are the paranoid ramblings of one who has failed to receive sufficient sleep for a number of months--trite bumper stickers should send up a red flag to indicate that this driver is a member of the "general public" that is often referred to but rarely seen. I don't actually know one off the top of my head, but i'd imagine a member of this grouping enjoys jerry springer, american football, and ready-made dinners, and dines at Applebee's restaurants on special occasions. They work in insurance, accounting, or another of several white-collar cubicle-based jobs, drink bud light, and always gripe about how lousy their life is but do absolutely nothing to improve it. They're the same people who fill that "barely literate" category--those individuals who can just about sound out the word "Bush" on a ballot and respond well to pop-up advertising but can only offer a blank stare and a bit of mouth dribbling when you ask them their opinions on the writings of Chekhov. They fill sidewalks and shopping centers with their vapid chatter about what happened last night on reality tv and parade around in the latest cheaply made, ill-fitting and unflattering fashions that they saw worn by persons of a similar character on said programming.
I fear this group, this They, this General Public, and i can only hope that through education and devout atheism i can avoid allowing myself to gain the same glassy-eyed, complacent, sheeplike quality of the societal standard. I'm okay with being mediocre--i have no wish to meet the expectations of the exceptional or endure the hardship of the pitiful--but i will not be General, normal, or popular. "It is not worth an intelligent man's time to be in the majority--by definition, there are already enough people to do that."--G.H. Hardy.
I could go into the specific offenses i take from being stuck behind some shit-for-brains driver who has taken the opportunity provided by driving too slowly to attempt to influence my opinions by quoting platitudes expressing that i should place artificial constraints upon myself and my civil liberties, but i may wish to drive that point into the ground at a later time.
So, in no particular order, i've selected 20 bumper sticker themes that you should be wary of, as the driver is either mind-numbingly banal or a visitor from another planet.
Meat is Murder, anything involving a request for you to smile, Honk if you're Horny, My other Car is a __, W: the president, any campaign stickers for either dominant party, Baby on Board, Choose Life, any image of sporting equipment, any image of a team mascot, any number of a sports player or racecar driver, any criticism of the driver or the reader, any form of "my child is an honor student", any popular band name or logo (unless the vehicle is owned by a member of said band), any quotation from the Bible or any religious leader, any other religious reference (including half-silly comments like "who needs GPS when you have Jesus guiding you?" or "in case of rapture, this car will be empty"), any slogan from a television show or advertisement (yes, i have seen a bumper sticker that read "can you hear me now?") any reference to beer, breasts, or bodily functions, or any form of rainbow, pink triangle, purple band, or other homosexual indicator. I don't care if you're gay. just drive.
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