I got your email from ICQ, may be it will be interested?
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Good luck.

And of course, I got four copies of this, one to each of my different email addresses

Purple Prose
The early ’70’s leitmotif of the vehicular mayhem subgenre of action drive-in flicks are Motown muscle cars reflecting anti-social behavior at the hands of maniacs. Of course the vehicles in question are phallic and powerful extensions of man, automotive swords cutting a swath through backwoods America .

Full review of “Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry” (1974) is here.

I’m sure you all thought of my riduculous MCI encounters when you read about WorldCom, right? Well, hey, they sent me my calling card earlier this week. Despite all my attempts to make them go away.

An article of mine has been published in LineZine. Check it out here.

Boombox museuem here.

I heart the Internet.

I posted my ChemLawn experience on a local community bulletin board, and asked for recommendations for other providers in the area. So far I’ve received three messages telling me to go organic, to plant fruit trees and rip up my lawn, etc. Despite having been doing the online thing for 14 years, I actually forgot about that Internet thing:

Q: I need help with X
A: Why are you doing X? You should be doing Y.

Whether it’s about photography, movie watching, relationships, hardware, software, or lawn care, there’s always folks online who feel this is their best contribution to your life.

They are talking about the Southwest seat occupancy deal on the morning news show now, and the host referred to “people of size.”

?

New word: blogeur
Definition: someone who knows enough to setup a blog account on blogger.com but couldn’t figure out radio userland or movable type or whatever to save their life. Their blogs are amusing and sometimes interesting, but they won’t ever end up as guest bloggers on boingboing (say), or be interviewed by someone from the press, or be asked to hang out at a blogger f2f. They probably still use old terms like f2f.
Note: not to be confused with blogby.

Full-disclosure: I am a blogeur.

Beware Trugreen/Chemlawn
I’ve had them doing a regular lawn treatment for a while. However, once in a while I’ll get a call confirming some scheduled appointment and ensuring the timing is okay. It turns out this is an upsell, but they are very sneaky about revealing this is an extra charge service. I finally complained to the BBB, and to the California dept of consumer affairs (or something). The BBB, a toothless organization if ever there was one, merely forwarded me a printout of the Chemlawn email - that said they don’t do this, they practice good sales, and they’ll take me off their list of calls.

So, today, I get a call wanting to make sure that tomorrow is okay for a specific treatment. We discuss watering and mowing or not mowing before or after. I have no problem with tomorrow (why should I?) and agree. Then they call back and confirm that tomorrow they’ll be coming for a cost of $89. Ahem?

The ridiculously evil sales tactics continue, and they didn’t take me off their list. I am pretty unhappy about this. I’m looking for another provider right now.

I don’t know why this amused me, but it did: on the plane to Tokyo about two weeks ago I saw a guy with a book entitled “Japanese for missionaries.”

From the clothing and nametags that he and his group wore, the fact that they were missionaries was obvious, but there’s just something Mad Magazine-esque about the book title.

If you live in the US, you can find the demographic profile of your neighborhood here. I live near Upper Crusters! And people who are likely to shop at Ann Taylor and watch NYPD Blue.

Now I know how to open up the awkward dialog when my neighbor’s dog craps on my lawn again.

Pinochle.
Pinochet.
Pinochle!
Pinochet!
Pinochle!
Pinochet!

Lotta steam in the press recently about Southwest Airlines and their policy towards passengers who require a second seat. Their response is here. I like the first paragraph which attempts to clear up any mistakes in the press, and uses a “lot” of “quotations” in the “text” - it’s very funny if you read it in a quotey voice in your head. And of course, anything legalese and bureaucratic such as airline policies is always worth a laugh. I also like their repeated use of the word “checkin.”

September 11, Security, and Sea Mammals
Looks like some sea lion got on the tarmac at SFO.

I returned from Tokyo to find that my credit card company had phoned me (”urgently”) here at my house to verify my perhaps fraudulent usage in Tokyo. Well, if the usage was valid, then I wouldn’t be at my home, would I? So they suspended my service. Anyone got a suggestion for a decent credit card company?

After MCI told me I had to disconnect my DSL if I wanted to sign up with them, I figured that was the last of them. The order couldn’t be processed, we were done. Today I get an email from them saying “Welcome! Your order is complete” - so either they are going ahead anyway (which is probably bad news for my high-speed connection if they start unplugging things up there in the CO) or they don’t know how to stop an order (and it’s various messages, appropriate or not) in mid-stream. Nice.

Nuclear submarines
Does this mean that the submarine is using nuclear power for its engine, or that the submarine is armed with nuclear weapons?

Quick example of Japanese Kawaii (although I wish I could post the TV commercial that is just now running on Japanese TV, complete with squeaky singing) here.

Gotta love the credit card company. Every once in a while, they decide to put a flag on my account because they don’t like some random set of usages - perhaps there is too much activity (egad!) and they fear fraud. Right now I’m out of the country and they decided to do it again. Whoops, I forgot to warn them I would be travelling. Nice, the onus is on me. And of course, what happens is they claim the merchant is given notification to “call in and verify purchase” but of course, the merchant (as my credit card company likes to call them) simply says “nope.” Or tries again. I don’t believe that the merchant actually sees a “call in” message, but they insist that they do.

It’s really annoying dealing with these people.

Belt buckles
How the hell does this work? Have you ever owned a belt that did not include its own buckle? Or that had provisions for attaching a secondary buckle to it? Do those trucker belt buckles actually serve to buckle the belt or are they some sort of decorative gizmo. Please, if you have any clue, let me know.

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Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: 30 years later.

Crap. Dee Dee Ramone died.

Today I received a message misdirected to one of my domains (under-cover.net) that contained 24 attachments in this vein:

The message was in German, but using an online translator, I was able to figure out it was someone sending pictures (duh) from a shoot (duh) to someone else, after their first attempt to do so bounced. Right. Anyway. Not sure what to do with ‘em.

Kiss Kondoms, apparantly. How this could be news, after the Kiss Kasket, I don’t quite understand. And hey, in Japan, they’ve got Hello Kitty douche. I just purchased one, since it’s the kind of story you want to have proof of. I do. I have proof.

I was compelled somewhat by MCI’s recent promotion for The Neighborhood - the brand was kinda cool, and then the all-inclusive aspect of it was really neat - one price for caller-ID, call-waiting, local, toll, voice mail, etc. All inclusive, all features, one provider. and - it would allow me to get away from those incompetent over-charging bastards at AT&T (hint: don’t ever use your calling card internationally, it’s like $10/minute). And then nothing. Weeks go by. I send email asking for information about when my account will be created and I get a blurb back telling me to log on and enter my account number.

Anyway, today a letter comes “We have been trying to reach you with important information about your MCI Local Service account. Unfortunately, we have been unable to contact you by phone.”

What a crock - they never called me. They have been unable because they can’t get around to making a phone call - so they send a letter with NO information in it except that I have to call them. I do, and of course, get transferred here, there and, everywhere, put on hold, until they tell me that I can’t get MCI local, if I have DSL. Okay, whatever. Nice to find this out so late in the game. And, of course, they suggest that I disconnect my DSL in order to get MCI. Umm, right.

You know, with the consumerization of the Internet completely taken for granted, it’s refreshing to find a humor page like this one. John (it’s his site) has created a really great piece of software (freeware?) to manage mailing lists (hey, I use it to run Undercover, the Stones mailing list) and he’s obviously a long-time computer dude. So, the humor is appropriate. Not that I could make it through any of these “funny” pages, I just like the fact that they are still around, because they remind me of a different time online.

I found this list of books about annoying topics on Amazon. Worth a quick browse.