Well, I don’t like having to take back my words, but I think I sort of have to at least soften them this time. In my thought shake post, I got mad at a friend for not seeming to show much compassion for her sick relative that she was taking care of. I thought I’d heard the whole story. But I heard a little more yesterday, and now I sort of understand why she was so snippy about the whole thing. So, I’m sorry for ranting like a crazy thing about that. That is all. Hopefully I’ll have something more interesting later.
What’s a Bed and Breakfest?
I saw something that wouldn’t bug me much if I’d seen it anywhere but where I saw it. I saw a typo. Someone had written breakfest instead of breakfast. No biggy. Everybody makes a mistake sometimes. But where did I see it? On the main page of the newspaper’s website!
To me, this is huge. First, I remember catching six different kinds of hell when I was in school and made the occasional spelling booboo or typo. I appreciated the correction, but I sure didn’t appreciate the piles of bullshit about “You need to not make sloppy spelling mistakes if you want to work anywhere.” So how can someone who puts together a newspaper’s website get away with errors?
It especially bugs me when I see errors in a newspaper, because some people tell their kids to look at the newspaper as an example of how to write. It’s kind of the same level of annoyance as when I see typos in a textbook. I mean, come on, breakfest? Even a spellchecker could catch that one.
I wrote their web team, let’s see if they fix it.
Rub One Out For Research
Charity wants people to lend a hand…
The most striking part of this story to me isn’t that they’re holding a masturbate-a-thon, I’ve heard about a few of those before. What really gets me about this is that the event is being put on with the help of an HIV charity, and the article says that “Participants, who have to be over 18, can bring any aids they need.” That’s just so wrong on so many levels.
You Pay? We’ll Pray!
I so should be in advertising. That was a perfect slogan for these bottom-feeding sacks of shit I’m about to describe.
I just learned something. I learned that there’s a company out there that, for a fee, will sign the person paying the fee up with someone who will pray for them. Doesn’t that scream scum to you? To me, it screams scum on so many levels.
On the first level, the person sends money on the *hope* that someone will pray for them. This prayer partner as they call it doesn’t know the customer from Adam. They’re just given their name and told to pray for them, and that is what happens if the company is being honest. They could easily just fuck off with someone’s money, tell them someone prayed for them when no one did anything of the sort.
Second, isn’t the point of praying, for those who believe in that sort of thing, supposed to be done out of genuine care and concern for someone? Say a minister asks his congregation to pray for someone who is sick. Or, a family member prays for someone going through a hard time. It’s not supposed to be something bought and paid for. It’s like paying to be told good things about yourself. It’s insincere.
Finally, what kind of praying is being done here? Praying for, or preying on? Who would this kind of service appeal to? Probably people who are feeling low and desperate, people who have few friends, lonely people looking for some sort of sign that someone might care, and sadly enough, poor people. I hate to generalize, but some people who are struggling with money might be pretty desperate. So these scum-suckers are taking more money from them that could be better spent on food and necessities of life.
I can hear it now. “But churches ask for money. Are they no good either?” I can understand churches asking for money, to a point. The church still has to be heated. They might have functions to run. If they starte asking for a lot of money, then yeah, they’ve fallen into the pile of sludge in bottom-feederville.
I hear something else from the peanut gallery. “What about therapy? You’re not getting anything solid from that either, and you’re essentially paying to have someone help you, which could mean saying good things about you. Plus, a lot of poor people need counseling.” Again, there are some therapists and counselors that take advantage of vulnerable people, and they are an especially dangerous kind of leech. But if you need one, and you get a good one, they can do a world of good. Plus, they may know of other things that may help you, so they’re a resource. As far as the money stuff goes, there are places to go that have sliding scales, and if you do manage to have some kind of health insurance, it will often cover it. Also, counseling isn’t all about buttering you up and saying meaningless, insincere things. It’s about listening to you, being an objective person to bounce things off of, and giving you perspective on your own thoughts. That is something you can get your head around. It’s not something nebulous like telling someone to pray for you if you pay the right amount of money.
So, at the end of the day, I wonder if these prayer partner people feel the least bit disgusted at what they take part in to earn a living. Or have they had the soul sucked out of them as a prerequisite for working there? I guess they wouldn’t want to have it left over to find out if there is or isn’t a god when they die. Something tells me, if there is a heaven, St. Peter would slam the pearly gates in their faces.
Oh…my…God!
There is no better title for this. I will keep my blabber to a minimum, and let our friendly neighbourhood idiot from the previous post speak for himself. I’m going to paste a story from the Guelph Mercury, and, after I’m done convulsing with laughter, I will leave my thoughts in bold.
Activist charged with mischief, days after last charges
GUELPH (Aug 5, 2006)
A well-known Guelph activist faces three more charges of mischief after police found two people spray-painting the words “eco-terrorist” in and around the downtown Thursday, Guelph Police said.
Sound familiar? It will very soon.
Two days earlier, Matthew Soltys, 23, was charged with mischief under $5,000 after police found a man spray-painting with a similar stencil.
Soltys, a former member of the Mercury’s community editorial board, said only, “I look forward to being found not guilty on all counts,” in an e-mail to the Mercury.
He was a member of the Mercury staff? I’m sure that makes a few people hang their heads in shame. And he looks forward to being found not guilty? How does he hope to have that fantasy come true, because, wait for it…
Guelph Police say police saw two people spray-painting the railing of the Wyndham Street bridge with red paint just before 9 p.m. Thursday. Under the rail was an image of a front-end loader and the words “eco terrorist.”
Police then watched them spray-paint similar graffiti on a door at 83 Neeve St., a former textile mill that now houses condominiums.
Police arrested them shortly after they spray-painted similar graffiti on the Heffernan Street footbridge. They had cans of spray paint at the time of their arrest, police said.
Busted!
Soltys was charged with three counts of mischief, and an additional charge of failing to comply with conditions related to his Aug. 1 arrest.
Bryn Hobbs, a 24-year-old woman, was also charged with three counts of mischief.
All I have to say is, dude, know when you’ve been beaten. And…you’re an idiot.
Eco-satire?
Does anybody remember my rants about stupid activism? The kind where people just do stuff with no clear sense of why they’re doing it? The kind where nothing productive happens, just a lot of noise and arrests? Well here’s another example, and it makes my head spin from beginning to end.
A local activist, Matthew Soltys, was arrested for spray painting a stencilled image on a wall of an affordable housing building downtown and having a stencil of the words “eco-terrorist” with him. He’s known for his strong environmentalist stance, and hosts a show on CFRU about it. When asked by the paper about the graffiti, he said he would consider it satire.
Ok, let the head-spinning begin. If you’re a big environmental activist, and you’re also into being concerned for the poor as he seems to be from the kinds of things written on a website he is affiliated with, why in the good holy christ would you choose an affordable housing building to vandalize? Second, if you’re so concerned about the environment that you would put your own neck on the line, why would you choose a spray can, an aerosol can that puts noxious fumes into the atmosphere, as the instrument to spread your message? Third, he says it’s satirical. I don’t care if he wrote the funniest joke known to man or the most brilliant piece of writing ever to have been created. It’s still vandalism! he still did it without permission on someone else’s property. If he wants to write satire, he already writes for a website, that would be a perfectly good place to write it. Or, he could start up his own website. He has the technology. And no trees will be harmed in its writing, unless someone decides to print something off. But at least then he won’t be causing the damage himself. Finally, does he really think his message will be received as satire, considering how many fires have been set locally by eco-terrorist groups? Can he really be surprised, if he’s paid attention at all in the last year to what’s been happening in his own town? Oh yeah, that’s not part of the activist’s job. They just do stuff because they feel driven to do it. Do you see why this kind of activism bugs me?
Has your head stopped spinning yet? Mine has, and it’s stopped on the conclusion that this man is an idiot.
What’s with That?
Why, if your mailbox is full, do a lot of ISP’s send you an email to let you know your mailbox is full? That’s the dumbest thing. But tons of them do it. That’s like the postman telling you to check your bulging mailbox by shoving a note in there telling you you might wanna check your mail, or bell telling you your answering machine is full by leaving a message on it. Yup, real effective communication. Way to not get your message across and make the problem worse.
Am I a Perv, or are they?
Ok, this question has been bugging me since I heard this song, partly because the song has been in my head and I catch myself humming it and I want to know what I’m humming, and partly because I’m just too damn curious for my own good. Barby sent me this French song called Porteclef, or La Ziguezon Zinzon if you look all over the net, by La Bottine Souriante. When I first heard it, I had no idea what it meant, my French isn’t awesome, but its melody crawled up into my head anyway and followed me everywhere. It wasn’t as bad as this gem, stay away from it, Matt, but it was very powerful. So I got curious about what it meant. She asked a friend who spoke French and I looked up the lyrics. Her friend said it was just a bunch of old men singing about how their keychain or their keys are rusty and the key won’t fit in the door. But I read the lyrics, and because my French isn’t so good when it comes to slang, they still confuse me, but they make me wonder if there is some serious innuendo there. Seriously, anyone who knows french, take a look at these and tell me what you think. Is it just rusty keys, or is it more about…well..parts that don’t work so well now that he’s old? I want to know what I’m singing!
Speaking of Subs…
I forgot to write this in the last post, but what in hell is with that voice on the subway commercials? I don’t know who the guy is, but he sounds like he should play a cartoon character. He talks pretty normal through the whole ad, until he gets to the slogan. Then he wigs out and yells something that sounds like, “Subway, eat pishe!” Eat what? flesh? Fish? It can’t be “fresh” because he says that word completely normally while talking about one of the fancy new subs. Seriously, why are they telling him to do that? Or did they just do one take of the slogan and throw it in all of the commercials and that’s how he talked at that moment? Whatever the reason, it’s annoying!
Oh Mister Sub, Sub, Mister Broken Sub, Please Don’t Spill on Me!
Yes, I’m an idiot. But last night’s experience with Mr. Sub just had to be written down.
It starts off fairly ordinarily, with a few weird things, but nothing overly bad. I phone, I order a sub. The girl doesn’t seem to know how to take an order down because as I’m giving my address, she’s saying, “Anything else?” like my address is the ingredients in the sub I’m about to order. But I manage to get it ordered. She says she has to call me back with the total. This isn’t super odd, since sometimes they get busy and they have to take care of the angry mob standing in line, and then when the smoke clears, they can calculate your order. They call back in a few minutes, but the wierd part is a guy is phoning this time. He wants to make sure I didn’t ask for lettuce. I say I didn’t ask for lettuce. This shows his confidence in her ability to take orders. She must have screwed up a few before. What’s that? A warning signal?
Then my sub comes, and it’s surprisingly light. There’s just one bag, which amazes me, since I ordered a sub, a bag of chips and a pop. But I take it, since I think that it all must be hiding in there. I check, and no it is not! All that’s there is a sub!
I phone back, slightly annoyed, but no big deal, at least it was, in fact, the sub I ordered. I get the same girl, who recognizes me almost immediately. I say that the pop and chips are missing from my order. She says very slowly, “Oh shoot, I forgot!” The next words floor me. She asks me if I really want her to send me chips and pop, or do I just want to call another night when she’s working and then she’ll give them to me for free? Um chicky, I ordered them now, I want them now! Plus, if I get them another night, I’m not just going to want chips and pop, I’ll want a sub too! And, how in christ am I going to know when she’s working? I don’t even know her name! She eventually defeatedly agrees to send the chips and pop.
Then I take the sub to the microwave, since it was a hot sub. As soon as I put the sub in the microwave, I know something is horribly wrong. The buns practically fall open, spilling the contents all over the microwave. I get them back together, sort of, and nuke the thing, praying for the best. But the best wasn’t very good at all. I had to eat my sub with a knife and fork. A knife! and fork! How shitty is that. Kind of loses the whole sub experience doesn’t it?
Then, to topit all off, when I go to eat the chips, they are spicier than I remember that kind being, so I couldn’t even eat them! I think the gods, if they exist, were punishing me for being a lazy bastard and ordering a sub when I had food I could have cooked.