Misanthropaea

RIM Job

My cell phone contract through Verizon expired back in December. Because I had heard rumours that AT&T were likely going to lose their exclusivity on the iPhone sometime in late January or early February, I chose to poke along with a month-to-month contract and continue using my now two-year-old (and very basic) LG until the glory of Apple was finally bestowed upon Verizon, who stupidly baulked at (and promptly snubbed) the original iPhone when it was offered to them.

They, of course, paid the price for their stupidity and short-sightedness.

January and most of February came and went and the iPhone news turned bleak. It might not be until June – quite possibly much, much later – that this deal would happen. Maybe. Could be next year. Kind of. Eventually. Verizon were busy fiddling with their equipment and comparing the size of their upcoming 4G against AT&T and Sprint (who are already deploying their own 4G) and were touting the Droid as the Next Best Thing Ever and an alternative to the iPhone. And Apple are busy tinkering with their iPad and don’t seem to care much about anything else.

After a deluge of email and snail-mail from Verizon about upgrading my contract - and getting tired of the idiotic array of useless external buttons on my LG constantly beeping and dialling from my pocket every time I moved or breathed, I caved in.
With a $50 credit and a $100 on-line discount, I decided to opt for a 'free' Blackberry Curve 8350, to 'Discover What Life is Like on a Blackberry SmartPhone.'

I, of course, paid the price for my stupidity and short-sightedness.

Now I know that there are millions of happy Blackberry users out there, and I’m glad for you, but I hated it. I fucking hated it with an unbridled passion. After two weeks of dealing with the counter-intuitive menu design, the miniscule keys – which were fine for texting but a nightmare for placing calls unless you had a good deal of spare time to do so – and the pointless three different folders for apps you have, apps you can have, and apps you’ve downloaded (which are also apps you have but are not in the folder for the apps you have), and two different message folders – one for your email and one for duplicate email to tell you that you have a email message in your email folder – I gave up.

And Verizon are, frankly, no help. They recommend that before activating your new phone, you should download, install, and take advantage of their back-up software so you can transfer your contact information and your saved media to your new phone  – and then not bothering to tell you that this does not work on the Blackberry. They also do not tell you that, although the Blackberry takes full advantage of Bluetooth connectivity, it cannot extract the contacts from your old (but Bluetooth enabled) phone, but it can send the contacts you currently don’t have to your old phone that has all your contacts in it.  Verizon will, however, swap your contacts for you at a Verizon store for $10, so long as you don’t mind the thirty-minute wait after you’ve driven across town.

Rather than waste more time, I called Verizon and told them that, because I was still within my thirty day ‘trial period,’ I was finished with the Curve and they could have it back and asked if I should take it to one of their stores. No. You have to send it back in the box with all of the original packaging because it was a web order.

Fine.

I erased the two apps I installed, the Guardian UK and AP news alerts (because I am a news junkie), deleted the minute amount of personalisation I had done, buffed the screen clear of fingerprints, and repackaged the Curve for its return trip to Verizon via FedEx. I called Verizon to tell them that I was ready to return the phone and the nice lady said that to save time I could simply return it to any Verizon store. I said that I had been told I could not do that. She laughed and said, no, no, don’t be silly; that’s perfectly okay to just take it to the store.

Fine.

The next day I stopped by the Verizon Wireless store two miles from work. The nice lady said that only two stores accept returns on web purchases and, surprise, they were both on the other end of town.

Fine.

Later that afternoon I drove across town, box in hand, and marched into one of the convenient Verizon locations that accept web order returns. And I waited. And I waited.

And I waited some more.

Finally a woman who looked like Alanis Morissette came to help me. I explained to her the situation (and noticed that she casually slid her own Blackberry behind her back as I launched into what I disliked about Research In Motion’s brainchild) and told her that I simply wanted to exchange the albatross for something better.

Two hours – yes, two hours – later I exited into the cold darkness of a rainy March night with everything resolved and a new new phone: the Droid. And like a curious adolescent who inadvertently discovered their genitalia isn’t just for making water, I cannot keep my hands off of it.

Is it better than the Blackberry? Yah, sure, you betcha. It makes the Blackberry seem like the technological equivalent of two tin cans on a wire, except for the part where I will still have to manually enter the contacts from my old (but Bluetooth enabled) LG.  Is it better than an iPhone? Well Verizon users will probably never know the answer to that question. 

Will they, Steve?

Fruit Loops

One of the ‘science’ requirements for my degree is an insultingly childish introduction to computers, one of the worst classes I have ever taken. To make it even worse, the instructor is as exciting as Ben Stein on a handful of Temazepam, and he butchers with painful regularity such words as ‘algorithm’ and ‘Adobe Acrobat’ (pronouncing them ‘Al-Gore-ithim’ and ‘Adobe Ok-robot’ respectively). He recently posted this brilliant dissertation on the class ‘internet discussion’ page…

He explained that, in order to gain extra credit points… ‘that is, extra points that will help you on your grades in this class if you feel that your grade might want to be raised up…’ we, as students, should post additional comments on the discussion board for what he calls ‘extra credit’ and then went on to explain that he would be looking for correct English usage, grammar, and good sentence structure as part of the grade.

Yeah. Okay. 

Tonight I sat like an animal in car headlamps as he droned on about a test we’re to take  on Wednesday:

‘You are all good students and you all perform well with your studies and your tests and quizzes because you are all good students. You have respect for human dignity and do not speak when I am speaking. And when others are speaking, you show respect for them by also not speaking or interrupting them when they are speaking. And if you do speak out of turn you can excuse yourself and ensure that it does not happen again because you have respect for human dignity and are all good students that perform well. So please do not speak or behave in a disrespectful manner when the test is being taken by your fellow students in the classroom here.’

I wanted to scream.

I feel like I need to have a small Zip-Loc baggie of Fruit Loops and possibly a bib…

Chalice

Two phrases keep running through my head. One is, ‘A picture is worth a thousand words’ and the second is, ‘Don’t put that thing in your mouth; you don’t know where it’s been.’

Working with Nardo, the current manager of The Party Store, has proven to be a bit of a challenge for me (*gasp*), as his OCD and my OCD are polar opposites. He expends an enormous amount of energy fidgeting about the store positioning the lottery tickets so that they hang in even rows, adjusting bottles on the shelves or on display cases if they are even the tiniest fraction of an inch off centre, straightening snack foods in the racks even though no-one has purchased anything – and all manner of annoying and pointless fiddly work. He does all this at a slight trot, as if there just aren’t enough hours in the day for him to accomplish all the things needing done.

And though some of what he does could be considered ‘an attention to detail’ if the store were much, much busier, mostly it just strikes me as neurotic (possibly idiotic) Adrian Monk-like behaviour that is both exhausting and exasperating to watch. What he does not do, sorry to say, is clean. Or empty the trash. Or organise. Or schedule properly. Or seem to be fully cognisant of what is happening all round him.

Unable to stand touching the computer keyboards for fear of catching something and dying, I armed myself with Q-tips and isopropyl alcohol and meticulously scrubbed away the grey-black filth to find that there were letters and numbers printed on most of the keys. Wherever I sprayed my trusty generic Bathroom Cleanser I created thick pools of grey soup on the countertops and scoured away years of muck. I washed off the dried brown pee stains from the bathroom floor and scrubbed off the old ‘racing stripes’ and fossilised pubic hair from the toilet. I found that beneath the fine brown haze, the bathroom sink was in fact white porcelain and that the misty silver thing on the wall was a mirror. I cleaned out the mop sink, washing away the brackish sludge that coated it, and emptied the mop bucket of the cloudy, scum-coated pond water it contained and washed the mop head which was hardened from lack of use. I threw out the trash that smelt of old socks and somewhat vegetal. I pulled out the disused shop vac and removed the broken glass and herds of dust bunnies from round the displays. I tried to clean the encrusted microwave but my gag reflex and watering eyes stopped me getting more than just a few slippery, gooey wipes in.

What really shocked me, though, was this…

Nardo’s cup.

I wish – truly, madly, deeply wish – that I could better capture the appalling visceral truth of this objet petit a rather than offer this sad and laughable image. Unfortunately I had only just a moment to capture this on my cell phone before Nardo turned round to see what I was doing, as he hovers incessantly as if you are incapable of doing anything without his ever-present support, or in case you do something wrong (as you are likely to do) and need him to fix any potential problem.  So you will have to click on it to enlarge it and browse more closely at your leisure.

Not being a coffee or tea drinker, Nardo will instead regularly consume a tw0-litre bottle of some no-name knock-off variety of Mountain Dew. He does so in this mould-and-dirt encrusted Goblet of Mire. When he seated himself in the ‘office’ (part of which is pictured here), a tiny cluttered corner of countertop behind the cash registers, and pulled this… thing out from behind a mountain of papers, I thought he was doing so to throw it away. Rather, he placed it in front of him, twisted open his ever-present two-litre and, after spraying a shower of day-glo syrup all over himself, the computer, the adding machine and the countertop (which he completely ignored), proceeded to splash himself a fine draught of sugary goo.

When he raised the chalice to his lips, I watched in horror.

I had to keep repeating to myself ‘Only until March. Only until March…’

On The Shoulders of Midgets

So I stared at this thing for a while.

Not because I didn’t understand what the word ‘used’ meant, but why it – and the tiny bit of cardboard upon which it was written – was even there.

At Liqu-O-Rama we use box cutters quite a lot and we go through hundreds of razor blades.  These blades, when new, arrive in a plastic container and each blade is bound, for safety reasons, in a tiny cardboard wrap. Before a fresh blade is fitted into a cutter for use, this tiny cardboard wrap is torn off and discarded.

Except this one.

Because we had received a fairly massive liquor delivery prior to the final wind up to the New Year’s Eve extravaganza, I felt that a fresh razor was a prudent choice so I would not sliced open my hand with a dull and unwieldy blade. I opened the drawer where the supplies are kept and removed the box of new razors to find the object in question.

Rather than simply toss out the tiny cardboard protector, Sloan Gay had carefully placed a small piece of tape across the back to re-seal the broken seam after he had removed the blade and had written ‘used’ on it before returning it to the box.

So I stared at this thing for a while.

There comes a point when the stupidity of people – the sheer uselessness of their actions – simply boggles my mind.

After several long seconds of contemplation, I grabbed a Sharpie and annotated each new blade, returned them to their package, returned the package to the drawer, and went about my day…

Ripping Yarns 2

Steve the Lead Neuro Tech leant over the large acrylic bowl, thoroughly disregarding the proffered greeting, and gave a loud, hard cough. Though he failed to cover his mouth, he did at least have the decorum to press the V-collar of his medical scrubs close to his chest so that no-one could see down his top.

‘Gotta get me somethin to fix this cold!’ he said.

You work in a hospital, a place of healing, a place with access to all varieties of medicine, and you’re digging through a bowl of 99 cent miniature liquor bottles to find a cold remedy. ‘Uhm… Okay…’

‘You got any brandy in here?’

‘Yeah, there’s brandy right there,’ I pointed to a bottle.

‘This one?’ he picked up a Smirnoff raspberry vodka, coughing again.

‘Uhm…no, that’s vodka.’

He picked up the bottle I had previously indicated and held it on an angle, scrutinizing it: ‘Is this brandy?’

‘Yes.’ Brandy is often distinguished from the vodka by two methods; one, the Brandy is typically an amber colour where the vodka, by definition, is not, and, two, by the inclusion of the giant word ‘Brandy’ written across the label in the largest lettering possible to squeeze onto a bottle just barely an inch wide. ‘See, it says “Brandy” just there, in big letters.’

‘Oh! Okay,’ nodded Steve the Lead Neuro Tech with another unshielded cough. I casually squirted hand sanitiser into my palm from the industrial sized bottle cunningly hidden from view and scrubbed my hands together. ‘So are these all the same thing?’

I glanced at his medical identification tag dangling from the lanyard round his neck and frowned. His Jheri-curl framed face smiled back at me from the snap shot like the back of a 70s Funk album. ‘No… It’s a mixed bowl of different flavours and varieties… Like the sign says,’ I pointed.

‘Oh, I gotcha!’ he coughed again, setting the single bottle before me on the counter. ‘How much are they?’

‘You mean price or quantity?’

‘With tax.’

So ‘price,’ then, would be the answer. ‘A dollar six.’

‘Yeah, that’s cool,’ he nodded. ‘How much I owe you?’

I realise that it was a while ago that I first explained that to you and in all the confusion you probably just forgot. ‘One dollar… and six cents.’

He laid out a dollar and a nickel.

I waited.

He put his wallet back in his scrubs.

I picked up the dollar and the nickel and fished a penny out of the Take-A-Penny dish and started to punch the amount into the cash register.

‘Matter of fact,’ he said, suddenly returning to the bowl, ‘I’m gonna get me another one…’

‘Okay.’ I waited.

He pushed bottles about, digging through the varied shapes and colours, periodically glancing at the brandy bottle sitting alone on the counter, and finally made his choice.

‘Did you want another brandy?’ I asked, looking at the 99 proof apple schnapps he had placed on the counter.

‘What’d I get?’ he frowned at his second choice.

‘That’s schnapps.’

‘Aw hell no,’ he picked it up and threw it back in the bowl.

‘Here’s another brandy,’ I said, pulling one off the top of the pile.

‘Yeah,’ he smiled. ‘That’s what I want.’

I glanced at his identification card again, that smiling Rick James-wannabe smile. ‘Two dollars and twelve cents,’ I told him as I scanned the bottle with the laser.

He jerked his head back and frowned again. ‘I thought they was 99 cent.’ He looked back at the two price signs taped to the bowl.

‘Well they are,’ I told him. ‘Each.’

‘Oh!’ he nodded. ‘Okay. Just gimme the one of them.’

I took a breath and deleted one of the bottles from the sales screen. ‘Anything else?’

‘Naw, man. That’s it. Gotta fix this cold.’

‘Alrighty then…’ I cashed out the transaction, threw his money in the drawer. ‘You’re good to go. Have a great night.’

‘Yeah, you too, man!’

And as Steve the Lead Neuro Tech departed with his purchase I turned to my smiling co-worker, Emalzo Homo, who had witnessed the event, and shook my head.  ‘Steve the Lead Neuro Tech, ladies and gentlemen. And yet I work in a fucking liquor store. Yeah. That’s fair. Jesus hates me.’

‘You don’t believe in Jesus.’

‘And I am apparently paying the vast cosmic price for that…’

Failed Comebacks

'Gimme that pint, uh... Jesus...'
'Pint of Jesus?'
'Huh? Naw, man, a pint of... uh... gimme a... fuck...'
'I can't do that.'
'What?'
'I don't give a fuck.'

***

'How much is your two dollar Paul¹?'
{*sigh*} '...Two dollars.  Plus tax.'
'What's tax?'
'The part I bet you don't have.'

***

'Gimme that small thing, baby.'
'Oh if I only had a dollar for every time I've heard that...'

***

'Yo, dawg, what's Budweiser²?'
'An Anheuser-Busch product.'

***

'How much I owe you?'
'One fifty-nine.'
'What you got there?'
'One sixty?'
'How much?'
'One sixty.'
'How much was the beer?'
'One forty-nine plus tax, one fifty-nine total.'
'What I give you?'
'One sixty.'
'How much more you need?'
[Pause]  'Ten cents.'
'How much for two?'
'Twice as much.'

***

'What up, dog?'
'1988, Was (Not Was).'

1. Paul Masson Grande Amber Brandy
2. Yes, I realise that this is a request for a long-winded recitation of the various prices & sizes.

Mean You What Say

Can you hear that sound?

That is yet another death knell for the English language.

Thanks, CNN!

A Brief Aside From Ro-Man

I must only blame myself.

Clearly a considerable and egregious error was made on my part by not providing within my previous report the fullest possible explanatory notes which, by their very omission, has lead to an obvious misunderstanding and some great confusion.

This will not happen again.

My vaguely optimistic outlook for the long term usefulness and advancement of your peculiar species has, so it would appear, harboured an unanticipated complacency and, indeed, I have quite tragically underestimated the inherent ability of many of you to grasp the rudiments of provided instructions--a lack of foresight which has been illustrated quite literally through the enclosed document:

It seems, in retrospect, unfathomable to me that even the most painfully essential act of basic extrapolation--an ability of fundamental acumen often exorcised by the simplest of creatures across the vastness of the inhabited universe (yes, even the Twerm)--has met with such resounding and spectacular failure on your part due to one tiny moment of inattention on my part to absolutely every subtle nuance and bit of minutia. 

This error has been viewed as unwarranted paralipsis by Guidance Ro-Man. I have received a stern warning regarding my indolent adherence to The Plan. You may observe this for yourself:

I must not fail, so it would behoove you to pay closer attention.

That is all.

Ro-Man's Helpful Household Tips #8

From the dawn of time, every sentient life-form to have ever existed, every civilisation to rise and fall or to have passed on into the distant mists of myth and memory was able to make rapid advancements through the development of a systematic means of transferring both formal and informal information; to express thoughts both abstract or concrete; to communicate by the use of structured sounds their hopes, their dreams, their desires, and to make these ideas known to others of their kind.

The creation of a spoken language, even in the crudest most rudimentary form, will swiftly elevate a given species to yet another rung on the long ladder towards evolution and, one might surmise, enlightenment.

Oral tradition, however, is simply the beginning. Once a species have progressed to such a point that the spoken word proves cumbersome and unwieldy in the face of transmission on a much larger scale, or in circumstances where absolute clarity becomes paramount, or when the survival of specific knowledge becomes critical, the next obvious phase is to then codify this arrangement of complicated sounds into a more portable, palatable, lasting, and instantly recognisable format.

Thus the development of a system called 'writing.'

The manner by which 'writing' functions is that an otherwise arbitrary group of forms or figures is chosen-- by mutual consensus --to represent the various sounds of the oral communication and a specific meaning, or series of meanings, is then assigned to any number of assorted arrangements of these figures resulting in, for example, the reciprocative understanding of such concepts as 'rock,' 'cloud,' 'tree,' or 'stupid fat kid.'

Whether crude pictographic representations or a clearly organised alphabetical system, the form of written language can only function properly and consistently if the symbolism and representative meanings are then reinforced by accurate and repetitive use and-- most importantly --if the meaning is shared amongst all potential users by any number of educational mechanisms. To those individuals who exist beyond the parameters of a given societal segment, however, or to anyone who does not possess the proper means or methodology to translate or decipher this cultural-specific code, the written form may present itself as a mysterious (though ultimately meaningless) jumble of squiggles and blobs, an incoherent mass whereby one might look at, for example...

Thus it becomes, by necessity, incumbent upon the individual to acquaint themselves, lest one entirely abrogate their societal bounds, with the systematic interpretation of the symbolism if there is to be further communication.

The written code is developed to make things easier, understandable, clearer, and, if nothing else, concise--all for the greater good of the species. And it also exists so that long-winded and copious expository and explanatory information (such as this) need not hinder the process by which trade or commerce is conducted. Observe the following examples: 

One could surmise that, looking at Subject A, an individual might initially be compelled to enquire 'What is a Cafe au Lait?'  Yet, in anticipation of this very query, a description (either in a pictorial or written form which uniquely clarifies and represents that which preceded it) is provided so that it negates the necessity of the planned query through the pre-emptive measure of already explaining the topic, inasmuch as offering the information that a 'Cafe au Lait' is, in fact, 'Coffee and steamed milk.' Additionally, a 'cost' or how much 'money'--explained in previous discussions--one will be requested to produce in effort to attain said product is provided to further simplify the 'transaction.'

Similarly, when confronted with an overpowering desire for a 'Mixed flavor whippy ice milk' (Subject B) one can ascertain quite easily just what this particular item is and what the 'price' of it is without needing to seek the assistance of another merely by the studious and industrious application of one's very own optic organ (wherever they are located and in whatever configuration they may present themselves) and a moment of simple deductive reasoning. Additionally, for you, hu-man, as this is entirely for your edification (as the rest of the Universe have quite got the grasp of this essential concept long ago) there is often the irritating necessity to aim a single raised digit and point in aid of completing the revelatory act, much akin to the bizarre and inexplicable behaviour of turning down the volume on your mobile electromagnetic radiation frequency receiving and translation devices when looking for a specific address during the act of driving, as if somehow there is a critical inter-connectedness between the two.

As we have foreseen and understood (another evolutionary step you might someday decide to take) that there will undoubtedly be some incessant need to copiously reiterate this information in future communications as the process of learning slowly and begrudgingly imprints itself upon the thin membrane of your cerebral cortex, we have taken the liberty of preparing a small, succinct, and much more portable reference guide to which you and others of your species may turn as the need arises.

A lot.

Ro-Man's Helpful Household Tips #7

Oh, Hu-man...Hu-man...

It saddens me so.

We go through this again and again, yet you do not ever seem to learn or comprehend or retain anything that is bestowed upon you for your progress and betterment. Is this perhaps a previously undetected congenital defect that is becoming aggressively pandemic in your species? Is this merely obstinance? Does your small carbon-based mind truly grasp that there are traits which will forever position your species firmly at the foot of the long evolutionary ladder of enlightenment and condemn you to an eternity of metaphorically looking up the dresses of the more advanced races and giggling like drooling imbeciles?

Yet here we are again.   

Let us, as your fine Earthly elixir called Schlitz once proclaimed,  'Go for the gusto' and face this issue one last time. Let us at last overcome the fear of change and challenge ourselves to resolve, forever, another misstep in the evolutionary dance.

There is, despite your misguided thoughts to the contrary, a very specific reason that the curious rectangular pieces of paper in which you sadly misplace so much confidence called 'money' often look remarkably similar to the image provided to your other left and, equally, a reason that you receive heavy sighs and looks of extreme annoyance from the low-wage-earning beings you so wrongly look down upon who do your bidding. (Though, to be candid, if it were not for this poorly mistreated servile class of beings you so effervescently treat with such jubilant disregard to your own smug self-satisfaction, one wonders how you might ultimately fare were it necessary for you to do for yourself those clearly reprehensible things such as preparing foodstuffs and various acts of requisite sanitation that you so wrongly believe remains far outside the purview of the imaginary elite.)

Yes, Hu-man, the reason your superfluously imperative 'money' appears so absolutely dissimilar in every conceivable fashion to the image supplied there on your other right is due, once again, to your implacable refusal to correctly administer the extraordinary functionality of the one item which allows you to perform such things as the effortless completion of astonishing technological advancements such as 'Channel Surfing;' to quickly flip through dog-eared books and magazines; to cunningly expel nose goblins on a wide trajectory from your speeding automobile or into random unseen areas of your dwelling or the dwelling of those whom you visit when no-one is looking; to experience masturbatory glee without clumsy manipulation and navigation or any complicated instruction or assistance; or to illustrate, in the manner of your iconic Arthur Herbert Fonzarelli, your marvellously innate ability to loudly and correctly pronounce the first letter of your alphabet.

That is The Opposable Thumb.

In the spectacularly well-researched and copiously illustrated manual, The Opposable Thumb & You, A Users Guide, Ninth Edition, Newly Revised and  Expanded  (figure A), the opposable thumb, as you can clearly read for yourself in the indicated entry, is what elevates you from your tree-dwelling and not entirely bipedal or articulate ancestors and saves you the embarrassing misfortune of having to swing from tyres and fling your faeces about to show your dominance.

What? You don't read Vorlon? Oh, Hu-man... Must everything be spelt out for you..?

Fine. Fine, then.

The standard-issue primate thumb, indicated to your other right, is entirely too short for the adequate and convenient manipulation of your paper 'bills' and the often associated 'coinage' inherent to the exchange transaction. And yet, if used improperly, your otherwise immeasurably practical Opposable Thumb becomes a thoroughly useless appendage as well, rather like the head on many members of your genus, and you are then reduced to errantly swatting about crumbled wads of paper due to the suddenly decreased ability to deftly utilise your hand-to-eye coordination or you brutishly 'monkey-hand' items--that is to say, pushing them about with the knuckles in short jerking motions as if the very act of touching them is somehow anathema.

Conversely, the skilful, adept, and ultimately correct utilisation of the Opposable Thumb brilliantly allows for the more adroit mastery of many basic motor skills and frees the cognisant higher functions of the brain from the dutiful bounds of slavishly inept fumbling and allows it to concentrate on important and far more useful functions such as working out bits like time dilation theory, torsion physics,  and understanding your fascination for watching vehicles make high speed left turns for prolonged periods of time.   

The Opposable Thumb is your key to unlocking the greater and far more profound mysteries of the vast and remarkable universe, Hu-man.  It is not often that a single physiological and evolutionary anomaly jettisons an entire species from chest-thumping dung flingers to pasty Wii players in a galactic blink, so take care not to spoil it for the rest of the sentient beings.  Please consult Tip #4 again should this problem continue.