Don’t ask the Question if You Don’t Want the Answer!

I love it when people ask you a question because they have to, and then seem completely upset that you actually want to give them a response. I had to call the lovely people over at OSAP, that is the Ontario Student Loan centre. Every time I call, I first get the automated system. It asks me if I want English or French. I say English. This is also something small that I always wondered. There are two voices you hear on the phone. The very english guy and the heavily-accented French woman whose English is fine, but she has an obvious French accent. The English guy says his piece and is gone, but the accented woman’s voice stays around, even when you say you want service in English. Why not get the very English guy to do the, um, English prompts and let the French woman do the French prompts? Anyway, that’s beside the point.

I say I want English and the guy comes on with a message that apparently is the answer to the most common question at the time. Then I press 0, meaning, give me a human. But oh no, the automated thing asks me for my Social Insurance Number and password. I give it and press 0 again and finally get a human. At the end of her conversation with me, she says, “Do you have any questions about the automated system?” I say, “Yes, as a matter of fact I do. How come, when I press 0, it still demands my Social Insurance number and password, even though when I get to you, you’re going to just ask for it again? Why won’t it just put me through to you guys?” The response is a slow, hesitant chuckle and an ok. What? You were hoping I’d have no question? Or you’re sick of that question? Maybe if you’re hearing it a lot, there’s a reason, and the system should be tweaked. I think we’ve reached a sad day when companies actually advertise the fact that you can sideline their automated system and get a human. That was the way it used to be, and that’s the way it should be! Some automation is great, but a machine can’t do it all!

Only in Canada!

Only inCanada would kids be able to walk up to 24 Sussex Drive and Stornoway, knock on the door, yell “trick or treat!” and receive candy from the Prime Minister and head of the opposition. Seriously, it was on the news last night. Holy wow. That’s just funny. Did they always do that? I used to live near Ottawa and never heard about that on the radio or TV or anything. That’s just cute.

Big Doctor is Watching You.

I feel like this theme is getting stale, but this one just baffles me. The story is this. the health commissioner of New York City has decided that Diabetes is an epidemic, and should be treated like infectious diseases. If someone has an infectious disease, health officials know about it, so the threat to others is assessed and we don’t have rampant outbreaks of stuff. Now they want to apply this to Diabetes. So, if you have Diabetes, when your doctor tests your sugar levels, they are sent to a city’s database and if they get too high, someone from the city’s health department can come knocking and tell you to do better. The way it is worded is, “The patient is prodded to do better.” They say this is because there is a massive spread of diabetes in the poor and obese, and this can lead to many other health problems like blindness, amputations, kidney failure, bla bla bla, and this is where my head begins to spin.

First off, if the poor are the problem, how many of those have health insurance plans to pay for doctor’s visits to test their blood sugar? Second, I hate to sound like a selfish prick, but what is really motivating them to bother doing this? People are going to have to pay for their own health care anyway, so it’s not like this whole thing is going to prevent unnecessary burdens on a universal health care system because, um, there isn’t one. Plus, I’m sure it’s costing them something to do this, so why are they laying out this dough? Third, if the person already knows their blood sugar is high, what in christ is some random nosey bastard from the city going to do to stop it? Fourth, this is just way too creepy to me and doesn’t make any sense. Maybe I’m too synical, but it seems like what they’re telling us isn’t the whole truth and something else is at play here.

Who Says There’s No Such Thing As Bad Publicity?

Living in the crazy and uncertain world that we call home, it’s nice to know that now and then it is still possible to stumble across an absolute, irrefutable fact. So in that spirit, I present just such a thing, in the form of
possibly the worst advertisement for any product in the history of product advertising.

I’m not sure how long this page has been there, so maybe go and check it out quickly before somebody has the good sense to take it down.

What Resides in my creepy mind?

I woke up this morning quite disturbed by a dream I had. I dreamed I was at a banquet. There was tea and coffee and soft piano music and people clinking glasses and eating little squares. You could hear the murmur of people talking. Then I found my way to my table. There were administrators of various organizations, I can’t remember what they all did, or why I was shmoozing with them. But then one of them talked about the human rights work they were doing. They said they were trying to help people who were, for one reason or another, political prisoners in foreign prisons. They said that as they sat nibbling on desserts, they were awaiting a page with news about one particular prisoner in a Chinese labour camp. Apparently the prison officials were going to make him have a brain operation that would render him incapable of communicating with the outside world to tell anyone what was done to him, but would still leave him physically capable of doing manual labour until the end of his sentence. The human rights people were trying to stop this, using all legal means they could, but it was a slow process and what could they do, being so far away? For all they knew, the operation could have already been done. Then the dream just ended and I woke up going, “What in the sweet holy christ was that?” It sort of reminded me of how it felt whenever they would talk about the whole William Sampson thing when he was being held in Saudi Arabia. I don’t know. The whole atmosphere was very weird. So happy, even though everyone seemed to be there for very sad reasons.

I had another dream a couple years ago that the government had figured out that the best way to find out important secrets that people had was to always have their agents in crowds. They even created opportunities for crowds to form, like big celebrations and events. Then, they would simply disperse agents throughout the crowd whose sole purpose was to listen in on conversations. They had figured out that people talked more in crowds because they falsely believed that it was impossible for people around them to hear what they were saying. Then the event would end, the crowd would disperse, and guess who would disappear from their home that night?

The weird part about that dream is I can see some truth to it. Not the government part, although with all the listening in on phone calls and such, I guess it’s not impossible, but the false sense of security people have about crowds. I’ve been in crowded buses and heard people’s stories about an abusive boyfriend, someone having AIDS, stuff about drugs, stuff about putting laxatives in some brownies and giving them to someone, stuff that probably shouldn’t be talked about openly. But they think no one will listen because everyone seems to be wrapped up in their own conversations.

The scariest part of these dreams is I have never had these thoughts consciously before I had the dreams. I can’t even begin to figure out where they came from. When I woke up from the dreams, it was as if someone else was dreaming in my head. There are some dreams you have that you understand why you had them. But these were like completely new concepts to me. What is crawling out of the recesses of my mind that I didn’t even know existed? God I sound like I’ve lost my mind. But I swear I haven’t.

A Few Ways to Be a Little More Helpful

To everybody who posts apartment listings: when choosing between whether to mention how much the damn thing costs or to gush about the apartment’s view, you might want to choose to mention the rent. If you do mention the monthly rent, please tell me if it’s inclusive or not. I know you’re thinking you’ll get more calls if you heighten the element of mystery, but I’d rather call about something I can afford for sure than call, find out the utilities are not included, and have to hang up disappointed. This bugged me when I was doing my own apartment hunt, and now that I’m helping a friend, it’s bugging me again!

To the people who share the computer at the place where I answer phones: How hard is it to lower the system volume by using the, um, system volume control? I mean, we made an icon appear right in front of your eyes for that purpose. Does it make you feel like a computer genius to lower the volume by playing with the extremely hard to adjust embedded speakers, even though there are specific instructions taped to the computer telling you not to do that? If it does, why don’t you show your skills of genius and come over here and fix it so I can actually use the system when I’m on shift? Or would you prefer to type up my reports and be my personal internet surfer, because thanks to your cute little adjustments of the volume, I can’t use the damn computer! Thank you.

And finally, to people who I ask for help finding places: When I ask you a specific question about where a certain door leads, if you don’t know, say “I don’t know!” How hard is that? Saying “yes” when it doesn’t lead where I ask will only frustrate both of us, especially when I ask the same question 3 times, you insist it does, and then woops, it doesn’t! I appreciate the help, but sometimes it’s like talking to a wall.

Ok, I think my bitch session is over. I’ll go away now.

Dingo was Its Name Oh?

Um. Yeah. People in Australia really want us to stop saying, “Perhaps the Dingo Got your Baby.” Now they’re training them to be guide dogs!

Yep, I’m serious. Ok, first we got guide horses, and now we have guide dingos! Are we really running out of dog breeds? I mean, I understand looking for new things that work, but this is a fucking dingo! They like to hunt and are still very wild. I think they look like a wolf since they’re a sub-species of a wolf. You need a special permit to even own them as a pet! So do you really think they’re going to calm down enough to guide? I understand they’re very smart and they bond very strongly with the owner, but they’re…a dingo! It even said in the story that this guy’s guide dingo was getting old, so he wanted to get a new one, but the old one didn’t take kindly to getting the new pup, so he’s going to have to wait until she dies before he can get a new pup. Ok, now the dog is ruling the guy. Is that a good idea?

What animal is going to be guiding next. Are we going to have guide coyotes? Maybe I’m just too tradditional. But I still can’t get over the fact that…it’s a dingo!