Let me preface the following remarks by assuring the reader that I have no sympathy for murderous revenge. What Seung-Hui Cho did at Virginia Tech was inexcusable. No amount of taunting, ostracism, or downright bullying behavior warrants murder. None of Cho's victims posed an immediate, deadly threat to him. That being said, I think it's time that some people learn that they do not live in a vacuum.
I'll never know the extent to which Cho was marginalized by his peers. I'll never know who sincerely offered to help, or who put up nothing more than a socially acceptable facade. I'll never know the extent of Cho's anxiety, frustration, grief, depression, or plain instability. But I do know how it feels to be socially awkward and isolated, to be ridiculed and harassed, to be mocked and tormented. And I know that each person who bullies and teases makes the choice to do so, whether or not any one of them understands or accepts the possible consequences.
Wake up. This is not a Saturday Night Live sketch. This is not Seinfeld or South Park. This is not Friends or Futurama. This is life, and no one will guarantee you a happy ending at the end of a half-hour episode. Real people have real passions and real feelings. You wake the tiger at your own risk, and perhaps someone else's.
It's all fun and games until someone gets bit.
Tigers: 32
Provocateurs: 0
Friday, April 27, 2007
Thursday, April 19, 2007
People, Please
Guns don't kill people.
But people do kill people.
People help create people who kill people.
Few people bother to treat people like people so some people won't become people who kill people.
People: -999,999,999,999,999,999,999
But people do kill people.
People help create people who kill people.
Few people bother to treat people like people so some people won't become people who kill people.
People: -999,999,999,999,999,999,999
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Make Up Your Mind!
Do not solicit expert opinions on matters you have already decided - unless of course you just enjoy pissing people off. If you disagree with the advice you're given, fine. Even experts can be wrong, and they may not share your vantage point. But don't ask questions that only pretend to be hypothetical.
If you're just sure you have the answer, don't ask the damned question!
Experts: 0
Questions: 1,000,000
If you're just sure you have the answer, don't ask the damned question!
Experts: 0
Questions: 1,000,000
Sunday, April 15, 2007
Don, Who?
... Is probably what I would have asked had a whole bunch of idiots not gotten all fired up over how insignificant Don Imus is. Make up your minds already.
So, I'll give Don another little plug here, just to spite them. How many fewer times do you think you'd hear his voice or read about his comments if he didn't have your attention? But he does! You handed it over willingly, you insisted on it, just to have the opportunity to tell him how wrong you think he is. And he got paid.
Don Imus: 1
Ass-biting Public: 0
So, I'll give Don another little plug here, just to spite them. How many fewer times do you think you'd hear his voice or read about his comments if he didn't have your attention? But he does! You handed it over willingly, you insisted on it, just to have the opportunity to tell him how wrong you think he is. And he got paid.
Don Imus: 1
Ass-biting Public: 0
Friday, April 13, 2007
Their Em-barq Is Worse Than Their Em-bite
I got a call on my cell. My girlfriend's mother had left a message. She had been trying to call our home all day, she said, but she was getting a recording that told her our line had been disconnected.
Funny, I thought. Our daughter had said something about the school principal trying to call us about some schoolyard gossip that had involved her, but the principal had complained that our number had been disconnected. (Good riddance!) I had checked the phone then and, sure enough, there had been a dial tone.
So I checked again. It still had a dial tone. I dialed the modem, but got a busy. I dialed my girlfriend's parents in New Jersey and got an error recording. I dialed my grandfather at his cell, and viola! I got through.
So I could get through to cell networks but not to land-lines, local or long distance. I tried dialing Sprint/Embarq's customer service number, 1-800-whatever, and got another error. I dialed it without the 1. Bingo!
When I got a live representative, I asked if there were problems in my area. "Are you referring to the fact that your account was suspended?" she asked. Oops. I typically wait until the last few days to make a payment, just because their service sucks so much out in the woods but I pay regular rates like everyone else. They had moved up the due date, randomly, just for that month as far as anyone knew. So they had cut me off from land-lines, but presumably I could still call cell phones and 800 numbers, which the representative also couldn't explain.
"Fine," I said. "Is there a fee?" Yes, there was. A $30 fee would be added to my next bill. They could tie up several hundred dollars of my cash, on hold over the weekend at my bank, because an Embarq computer glitch had billed me a half-dozen times one month, but they wanted $30 the first time they cut me off for non-payment. She was sorry, she said. Did I still want to get reconnected? Naturally.
So she clickety-clacked on her keyboard at her end, and I muttered about their lousy service on my end. "It should be back on within four hours. Probably sooner, but I have to say four hours, just in case." Right. Like the technicians who estimate 48 hours in addressing a complete service outage and show up five days later. She asked if she could help with anything else. As a matter of fact, ...
I wanted to know who was responsible for authorizing a credit to my account in the amount of the reconnection fee. She would have to look at my account, she said. They keep notes. I have called more than two dozen times over the last three years, not counting the times when my phone connection died for less than a few hours. She took awhile. She said she could authorize the credit herself.
Oh, goody. You're authorized to not screw me, at least while I'm talking to you in person and begging to not get screwed. What service!
Me: 1
Embarf: 12,337
Funny, I thought. Our daughter had said something about the school principal trying to call us about some schoolyard gossip that had involved her, but the principal had complained that our number had been disconnected. (Good riddance!) I had checked the phone then and, sure enough, there had been a dial tone.
So I checked again. It still had a dial tone. I dialed the modem, but got a busy. I dialed my girlfriend's parents in New Jersey and got an error recording. I dialed my grandfather at his cell, and viola! I got through.
So I could get through to cell networks but not to land-lines, local or long distance. I tried dialing Sprint/Embarq's customer service number, 1-800-whatever, and got another error. I dialed it without the 1. Bingo!
When I got a live representative, I asked if there were problems in my area. "Are you referring to the fact that your account was suspended?" she asked. Oops. I typically wait until the last few days to make a payment, just because their service sucks so much out in the woods but I pay regular rates like everyone else. They had moved up the due date, randomly, just for that month as far as anyone knew. So they had cut me off from land-lines, but presumably I could still call cell phones and 800 numbers, which the representative also couldn't explain.
"Fine," I said. "Is there a fee?" Yes, there was. A $30 fee would be added to my next bill. They could tie up several hundred dollars of my cash, on hold over the weekend at my bank, because an Embarq computer glitch had billed me a half-dozen times one month, but they wanted $30 the first time they cut me off for non-payment. She was sorry, she said. Did I still want to get reconnected? Naturally.
So she clickety-clacked on her keyboard at her end, and I muttered about their lousy service on my end. "It should be back on within four hours. Probably sooner, but I have to say four hours, just in case." Right. Like the technicians who estimate 48 hours in addressing a complete service outage and show up five days later. She asked if she could help with anything else. As a matter of fact, ...
I wanted to know who was responsible for authorizing a credit to my account in the amount of the reconnection fee. She would have to look at my account, she said. They keep notes. I have called more than two dozen times over the last three years, not counting the times when my phone connection died for less than a few hours. She took awhile. She said she could authorize the credit herself.
Oh, goody. You're authorized to not screw me, at least while I'm talking to you in person and begging to not get screwed. What service!
Me: 1
Embarf: 12,337
Thursday, April 12, 2007
I Want My MTV (or You Only Call Twice)
Okay, not really. I hate MTV actually. But my satellite service is nonetheless a necessary evil, since my girlfriend is homebound without me. (Anyone want to donate a car? And hand-controls and some insurance money and - yeah, nevermind.)
I poked around the website for my bill. I'm looking for something around $60 or $70 amid the rest of the numbers, often including the previous month's debits and credits - maybe even $140 if two months got lumped together in the balance history. But I saw $223.
After I cleaned the Coke out of my keyboard, I fished around for the physical copies of the statements for the last two months. They hadn't yet molded to my desk. The statements each listed two plans, plus additional receiver fees, debit and credit history, taxes, and such. Wait - two plans?
Sure enough, there were both Plus and Pro plans on each statement. I called their 800 number and got a bossy young woman. "I need to know what plan you want." That was the problem, I told her. I never authorized any changes. I wanted her to undo any changes that were made to my account in recent months, and credit any associated fees, however she had to go about it. "I have to hear you say which plan you want."
No no no. I wanted the plan I had before someone made changes, period. She had records, and I insisted that she use them. She wasn't going to get me to try to clumsily identify a plan that I couldn't even be sure still existed anymore, now that they had changed things on my account. That's how they walk you into higher bills. The company had made a change, so she could unchange it or find someone with the right authority.
She was silent and I listened to call-center chit-chat in the background. I wasn't going to give up. I asked if she was making the changes. "Yeah." I waited perhaps ten more minutes. I asked if she was still with me, and she put me on hold without a word. I waited another three minutes, bombarded with chipper recordings about new services and how great the company was, before I killed the call and redialed.
I got a male the next time around, but he was rational. He explained that, a few months prior, someone had shut off the service and then immediately restarted it but had inadvertantly turned on settings for two different plans that offered only slightly different features, one being an upgrade of the other. He had no problem locating the original plan, turning off the wrong one, and crediting my account for the accumulated charges from the rogue plan.
When he was done, my bill for two months ended up being about $40 less than what I would have expected for that time frame, but I'm not complaining. It's the least they could have done, even if they wouldn't have done it intentionally. And I only had to call twice.
Me: 1
Satellite Company: 0
I poked around the website for my bill. I'm looking for something around $60 or $70 amid the rest of the numbers, often including the previous month's debits and credits - maybe even $140 if two months got lumped together in the balance history. But I saw $223.
After I cleaned the Coke out of my keyboard, I fished around for the physical copies of the statements for the last two months. They hadn't yet molded to my desk. The statements each listed two plans, plus additional receiver fees, debit and credit history, taxes, and such. Wait - two plans?
Sure enough, there were both Plus and Pro plans on each statement. I called their 800 number and got a bossy young woman. "I need to know what plan you want." That was the problem, I told her. I never authorized any changes. I wanted her to undo any changes that were made to my account in recent months, and credit any associated fees, however she had to go about it. "I have to hear you say which plan you want."
No no no. I wanted the plan I had before someone made changes, period. She had records, and I insisted that she use them. She wasn't going to get me to try to clumsily identify a plan that I couldn't even be sure still existed anymore, now that they had changed things on my account. That's how they walk you into higher bills. The company had made a change, so she could unchange it or find someone with the right authority.
She was silent and I listened to call-center chit-chat in the background. I wasn't going to give up. I asked if she was making the changes. "Yeah." I waited perhaps ten more minutes. I asked if she was still with me, and she put me on hold without a word. I waited another three minutes, bombarded with chipper recordings about new services and how great the company was, before I killed the call and redialed.
I got a male the next time around, but he was rational. He explained that, a few months prior, someone had shut off the service and then immediately restarted it but had inadvertantly turned on settings for two different plans that offered only slightly different features, one being an upgrade of the other. He had no problem locating the original plan, turning off the wrong one, and crediting my account for the accumulated charges from the rogue plan.
When he was done, my bill for two months ended up being about $40 less than what I would have expected for that time frame, but I'm not complaining. It's the least they could have done, even if they wouldn't have done it intentionally. And I only had to call twice.
Me: 1
Satellite Company: 0
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Half-baked Chicken
The other day I was putting away some donated groceries that one of my girlfriend's nurses had brought by. One of the cans was large and white, with bold black print: "CANNED BONED CHICKEN FULLY COOKED."
That's right, I thought. I'm fully cooked. I'm fed up. I'm more than just warming up, I'm done.
Or maybe I'm just better than half-baked.
That's right, I thought. I'm fully cooked. I'm fed up. I'm more than just warming up, I'm done.
Or maybe I'm just better than half-baked.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
