Back from the beyond

Month: September 2002 (Page 3 of 5)

Post – September 18, 2002

The Big Pay-Off

Congratulations! You’ve devoted your entire life so far to hopping through scholastic hoops for petty, meaningless rewards. Now all that frantic hopping is about to be rewarded – you’re about the ambark on a career of mediocrity and powerlessness as part of a giant bureaucracy where nothing you do or say will ever really matter, where you will never be your own boss, where you will spend your waking hours striving to earn enough money to buy material goods that will never satisfy you.

-Matt Groening, “School is Hell”

Post – September 17, 2002

Watched a preview for the horror movie “The Ring” before “One Hour Photo” today. The tagline was something like…

THERE’S A VIDEO – IF YOU WATCH IT – ONE WEEK LATER – YOU DIE!

…and I’m thinking to myself, “Are they talking about ‘Dude, Where’s My Car?'”?

Post – September 17, 2002

I was doing some search engine submissions for a client (Elegant Foods – go there and order something immediately) and came to Yahoo. Apparently their policy now (has it always been this way?) is that businesses must pay a $299 yearly fee to be considered for submission to the directory. They mention over and over that this fee doesn’t even guarantee you’ll be listed. I’d love to see what happens to the cheery “renew your Yahoo listing” e-mails that go out to the people who are rejected.

Post – September 16, 2002

Favorite dialogue of the week

David Fisher of “Six Feet Under” is sitting with a friend’s niece, who has just received an Easy Bake Oven as a gift for her birthday.

David: My sister had one of those. But I broke it.
Girl: On purpose?
David: Well, I wanted to make a pizza. So I put a 300-watt bulb in and the whole thing melted.
Girl: That was stupid.
David: Yes…[sheepishly]…and I was 17!

I really like “Six Feet Under,” which I happened to watch because they were having a promotional weekend on my cable system, so it was free. Yay for free cable.

Post – September 13, 2002

Adam’s wartime domestic policy outline

-One car per household.
-Tax breaks for people who substantially use public transportation.
-Greatly increased government funding of clean and alternative fuel research, partially funded by significant increases in gasoline taxes.
-Tax breaks for solar and other “off the grid” technologies.
-Nationwide plan for increasing public transportation, both locally and from city to city – sort of like a mirror image of the national highway system.
-Significantly increased fuel economy standards for all cars across the board.
-Luxury taxes on giant SUVs.

How about a wartime strategy based on individual sacrifice for the greater good, rather than one based on perpetuating our freedom to be as wasteful and damaging as we want? Or are we too soft and wimpy to handle a little sacrifice for the country we maintain we love so much? How about a homefront plan that benefits us all in the long term, rather than promotes the industries (military hardware and oil, principally) that got us into this mess in the first place? A plan that steps us away from danger rather than toward it?

We are energy junkies who need to kick the habit, for the sake of both ourselves and the world at large. Let’s put all this patriotism to use.

Post – September 12, 2002

Tales of customer service

And you are obviously an asshole.
You are one — one — of a very, very, very small list of people that have ever claimed such problems, which is why you are an asshole, and it’s not us.

Good riddance, asshole—

SMT

Scott Trautman
President/Owner
Global Dialog Internet
www.gdinet.com

E-mail from my old web hosting company, after I explained (after they asked) that I was leaving because their tech support was snarky and their prices high for the service they provided. I guess they just proved my point.

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