rant

All I want for Christmas…

Christmas is the season for giving. It’s better to give than to receive. Giving is the king’s – – you know what? That’s BS. All of these quips have one thing in common. They all involve giving stuff away. Well they have two things in common. They all involve someone receiving something. You can’t very well give something away without someone receiving it, right? Well I’m ready to be on the receiving end! That doesn’t sound good. But I’ve already made the joke, so I expect no comments containing jokes about me being “the receiver” and all that nonsense. It’s Christmas, people.

So I wasn’t going to complain, but now I think I am. Just a little. All of this giving is going on. And I’m doing quite a bit of it myself. SpaceBrew did really well this year, so I’ve been able to afford a few thousand dollars worth of stuff to give to family and friends. That doesn’t mean I want a seven-thousand dollar gift coming to me. (Well actually I wouldn’t complain…) But I would like a couple of little somethings to open. Yeah? Yeah. Is that so wrong?

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Happy Halloween. Yawn.

The building where I’m working this week had a ‘fall festival’ today. Everyone was supposed to dress up in costumes (aren’t we getting a little old for that shit?) and each team carved a pumpkin. Yawn. Well, I’m not really a part of this company. I’m sort of stationed in the building using their resources while away from my home office. I’m out here building servers. But anyway, one of the organizer ladies likes me, so she invited me to the what-have-you for some free pizza and soda pops. Who can resist?

Let me start by saying I’m not totally against parties and festivities based around holidays by default. I’m just kind of against the idiocy that typically arrives at such events.

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Elevator Etiquette Refresher

I know I’ve spoken about Elevator Etiquette before, but it’s time to bring it up again. People still haven’t caught on, and some of this stuff is worth repeating. There should be some formal set of rules one must follow before he intends to board an elevator. It pisses me off when people misuse the power and authority that comes with being the only one inside the car.

For instance, when I’m rushing up to catch the closing car (because in my building there are five cars that go to my floor, and if you miss one, you’ll be waiting at least three or four minutes for the next one…) and some woman sees me coming but just stands there looking down, chewing her lip and clutching her purse because she doesn’t want to reach out and push the door open button, she should lose her privileges. For the next three months, she’s forced to use nothing but escalators and stairs. Selfish bitch.

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Is there a woman who can drive?

I had to miss work yesterday because of an injury. Let me tell you what happened. I (once again) was the victim of a CWDOCP – a Careless Woman Driver On a Cell Phone. Not a big deal, but it did render my vehicle undrivable this time. I was sitting at the intersection of my street and the main street, waiting patiently to get out of my neighborhood when a woman comes barrelling into the entrance, aiming for the wrong side of the median! It was obvious she had been going too fast, and since she didn’t want to set the phone down, she couldn’t stop fast enough, and rather than keep going and u-turn to come back to the entrance of the neighborhood, she decided to turn into the wrong side of the median. While I was there.

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Customer Freaking Service

I’ve something to say today about something that’s very near and dear to me. Well let’s not mince words here, I’m going to rant. I’m going to use very strong language. Language I never use on the site. But I’m so full of rage I can’t see straight, and I think to shave off the language would be to strip the column of its spirit. I’m madder than a mean bull in a – what are those bullfighting things called? In one of those things. This issue about which I want to write is Customer Freaking Service. And yes, those words should always be capitalized. I will attempt to outline the reasons why.

One: Because of the first word, Customer. If I’m a Customer, that means I’m either buying a service or a product from you. I’m not one who is automatically of the opinion that the Customer is always right, but I’m definitely one who believes that the service side of the counter should try to make the Customer happy.

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Shit on the Radio

We all know that the quality of music these days has suffered pretty drastically. And thus the standards have dropped, so we expect less of our musicians – if you can even call them that these days. And with lowered expectations, it’s easier for shitty bands like Mediocre Charlotte (See what I did there?) and Simple Plan to “break in” to the music scene where truly they don’t belong.

And of course instruments and pedals and effects processors and pre-amps and synthesizers and harmonizers and all this other gear makes it easier to make music without really having any talent. And who suffers for it? We do! All these singers who try to sound like Eddie Vedder are kind of phasing out, and we’re left instead with all these singers who try to sound like Tom DeLonge, who is altogether less desirable in the vocal department.

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Steroids in Professional Sports

There sure has been a lot of talk about steroid usage in the news lately. Namely pertaining to professional athletes. This bothers me only slightly. What bothers me surprisingly isn’t the fact that they are using steroids, but the fact that it is newsworthy at all. Of course we all get to hear the ‘news’ that Brad and Jennifer broke up, and the ‘news’ that woman got lost in a corn field. With no corn in it. (Isn’t that a dirt field?) So in these cases, we are shown that anything is indeed newsworthy.

Thus my complaint can’t really be that this is news so much as that it shouldn’t matter enough to ever make it into the news. Who the hell cares if they use steroids? If Jose Canseco wants to pump up so he can knock one over the fence, I say more power to him. So to speak. Why should this bother us?

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People are like birds.

I’ve noticed over the last however-long-I’ve-been-driving-now that birds are evolving to be less afraid of cars on the road. Slowly but surely, they and their children grow more and more daring and brave about sitting there in that damn puddle drinking shitwater – and not moving when I’m about to run over them. Sometimes they wait so long that I don’t see them fly away, and when I look back, there’s nothing there. So they’re obviously still getting away, but they just wait until the absolute last second to move now. What the hell is up with that? I know I’m going to hit one one of these times, and I’m not going to feel the least bit bad about it. You want to take your chances and play chicken with me, then don’t bitch when I squash you with my tire.

Similarly, I’ve noticed humans evolving the same way. Nothing is more annoying, in fact, than having to slow way the hell down to wait while some asshole struts across the street like he’s on a Sunday stroll, staring right at me to see if I’m going to react. These people know they’re holding up traffic, and they know they’re being arrogant selfish pricks, but they do it anyway. And that look they give you while they’re walking is like ‘yeah, what are you gonna do about it?’

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Newscasters: A Hive of Scum and Villainy

We watched House tonight on television – great show, by the way – and as I was getting up to turn off the TV, the ‘next on’ bit came on to tell me what was going to be on the news at nine tonight. Immediately I got so disgusted I wanted to hit someone. Real hard. And this isn’t one of those annoyances – this was an almost incoceivably inconsiderate and disrespectful piece they were advertising.

She said it with fervor, “… Plus, how this swimsuit supermodel barely survived the crashing winds of the tsunami!” played against some moving footage of the woman modeling in a bikini.

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Women Drivers – An Oxymoron?

I know, I know, you’re all getting sick of hearing about how bad women drivers are. But they keep staying bad. And I had to laugh this morning on my way to work when I saw an overturned SUV in the middle of an intersection.

Now I would never laugh at someone’s misfortune or injury. But I gladly laugh at their stupidity. Because I am of the opinion that 100% of accidents can be avoided with defensive driving. You might not be able to prevent someone REAR-ENDING YOU, but the person behind you COULD HAVE PAID ATTENTION (what a novel idea) and prevented it themselves. So when some pompous SUV driving idiot tries to make a light when it’s yellow – and they’re still a hundred yards out – they end up running through an intersection, phone glued to head, on a red light. They deserve to be plowed into. Teach their ass a lesson.

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