Category: Crankypantsing

Crankypantsing, Letters to Esther

New Letters to Esther

Shelly

I’ve added eight new letters to Esther.

Even though it’s been warm out today, I decided to turn on the oven and make roasted vegetables for supper. They smell really good, especially the onions. I put them on the bottom, so they should get nice and caramelized. Mmmm, Caramelite Nunions.

And now for a wee rant about Netflix. I’ve been a member for, oh, three years or so now. I’ve always been pretty happy with their service. The turn-around has been speedy and there have been relatively few bad discs or mailing mistakes. Over the past couple of months, though, the quality of service has nose-dived. About half the discs I’ve gotten have been scratched, a few were broken or scratched so badly I had to return them for replacements. The turn-around time has increased, too. The kicker, though, is that twice now, they have decided to send me random discs from way down on my queue. Today, I got two notices that they were mailing discs that had been at #26 and 27. Now, that wouldn’t have been a huge deal, except that I’m watching a series and I’d kinda like to see it in chronological order. I can’t figure out why they changed my queue order, because discs #1-25 were showing as available now. There should have been no wait, and therefore no reason to monkey with the natural order of things. It seems to me, if they are going to pick random discs, that there’s not much point in having an ordered queue.

But, the icing on the cake is that there appears to be no way to complain about this new queue reordering habit they’ve developed. I looked at the “report a problem” page, and while there is an option for “received wrong disc,” that doesn’t really apply. It’s not the wrong disc, exactly; it’s just out of order. So, I went to their “suggestions” form and sent them a piece of my mind (cuz I’ve got so much to spare, dontchaknow?). Not that that’ll do any good, because there’s a big, fat warning that complaints about account-specific problems will not be entertained via that avenue.

I think, when I move, I’m going to ditch Netflix and get basic cable. Which is sad, because for three years I’ve been a very happy Netflix customer.

Crankypantsing, Ladybusiness

Make it Sto-o-o-p

Shelly

As I’ve spent the afternoon transcribing more letters, and have had the teevee on in the background, I’d like to take a moment to share a few words about commercials.

First, KFC needs to pull the plug on their new “Music to a mother’s ears” ad. It features a family sitting around the dining room table, chowing down on crispy, chickeny goodness. The idea is that A) shutting the hell up is what a mother wants her family to do and B) the noise of people smacking, chewing, and swallowing is preferable to that of normal dinner conversation. Not only is the premise bizarre, but the smacketty-smack sounds of folks eating is sickifying. And, need I add that it’s something that even my uber-lax mother would not have tolerated at the dinner table? Not only is it all sorts of bad manners, but KFC (and Hardee’s) really ought to rethink their plan to entice diners by inducing them to vomit. Somehow, that doesn’t seem like a very good business plan to me.

O ick!

Second, an old anti-smoking commercial is currently being recycled. I don’t know if these are Indiana-specific, or if they’re being run nation-wide, but there’s a whole series of similar ads. This one begins with a music box-like tune tinkling away as a mother straps her young daughter into a car seat. We see the kid sitting in her car seat. Then, the mother gets into the car and the camera pans to the rear-view mirror, where we see the child looking back at us. The expression on the child’s face throughout the commercial is unreal. The first time I saw the ad, I thought it was a PSA about mentally disabled kids. The depiction of the child is so distracting that I have a difficult time even registering that the commercial is about smoking. Now, I assume that they were going for a china doll sort of concept, in order that the viewer understand that the child is helpless; but, they’ve gone too far, making the kid look so vacant and vacuous that the point of the sermonizing is pretty well lost on me.

Crankypantsing, News & Politics

Some Bastard Company

Shelly

Title o’ the day: Friendly Fascism.

So, I meander over to Boing Boing for my daily dose of this-n-that, to find that AT&T/SBC are wasting no time getting down to business. I knew no good would come of them merging. It’s bad enough that AT&T were one of the companies accused of secretly handing over subscriber data to the US government, but now that they’re bigger and better, they’ve got the brass balls to come right out and declare that they own your private information, not you. This will apparently be retroactive, and AT&T/SBC will require subscribers to agree to its updated privacy policy as a condition of service. This policy, which will supersede their current policy (the main policy was updated June 16, 2006, but their video and satellite policies have not been updated since 2004), apparently goes into affect on June 23.

Hrmph. No good can come of ginormous mergers like the SBC/Yahoo/AT&T mess. I remember when the Bells were broken up, and the subsequent technological advancements and improvements in customer service. Yeah, I know, it’s hard to believe, but as bad is it is now, it was even worse then. Remember back when you had to lease a phone from Ma Bell? Your options were rotary or push-button, desk or wall-mounted. That’s it. Returning to that sort of business model is not something I look forward to, especially when the scope is so large that it encompasses everything from television to telephone to internet service, and eventually who knows what else?

I guess it’s as good a time as any to switch to Sage, eh? Their privacy policy is short and sweet and non-intrusive, and it actually involves keeping your personal information private. Their prices are much better than AT&T’s, too. I should have switched ages ago, but just didn’t feel motivated, as it wouldn’t have solved my other, hardware-related service problems. (Note for friends and family, Sage services the B-ton and Muncie areas.) I’m feeling all sorts of motivated now, though.

Crankypantsing, News & Politics

An Observation

Shelly

This is on a par with a recent post on Iraq. When did The War in Iraq become The War Against Iraq?

I’ve gotten into more than my fair share of debates that have ended when the other side retreated to the tune of, “It’s only semantics!” The implication being A) that I’m flogging a dead horse and B) that the subject of the debate was something trivial. I find that response frustrating. If we cannot understand the words that others use, then there is no point in trying to communicate. Since human speech–a symbolic and highly abstract form of communication–is what separates us from the cute little animals, without it, we wouldn’t be human, would we? So, I tend to think semantics might be the only thing that really is important.

And so, I am saddened to hear The War in Iraq referred to as The War Against Iraq, because anyone possessing a rudimentary facility with the English language will recognize that the two things have entirely different meanings.

Also, I used the juice from both halves of a very large lemon in my ginormous iced tea this ayem. It is sour beyond belief, and that’s coming from someone who likes to eat lemons. Oops.

Also, too, it looks like my planned migration back to civilization might take place sooner, rather than later. More on that as events unfold. I will only say that I’m conflicted, as I love the country and the wee woodland critters, but I also miss having broadband and–dear lord, I’m almost afraid to contemplate it–cable teevee.

Crankypantsing, Meta

Template Weirdness

Shelly

My template has suddenly lost its mind.  It’s shoving the sidebar down to the bottom of the page, so if you’re looking for that info, you’ll have to scroll down.  If it doesn’t miraculously cure itself, I’ll have to go do some tweaking.  So, if at some point over the weekend you notice supreme template ugliness, fear not, it just means I’m working on it.  Because, you know, I don’t have anything better to do with my time.  Grrr.

Crankypantsing

Psittacism

Shelly

This is via Ms. Lea, who likes to watch spelling bees.

Come to find out, there’s a word (of course there is!) for the aforementioned parroting of nonsense: psittacism.

Psittacism is speech or writing that appears mechanical or repetitive in the manner of a parrot. More generally it is a pejorative description of the use of words which appear to have been used without regard to their meaning.

Well, then. I seem to be suffering a plague of asschapeaux (yes, that is the correct collective noun for a group of assberets) who are afflicted with this terrible malady. God help me. The only thing that keeps me from completely losing my mind is the knowledge that I am not alone. So, for all of you who are also fighting an unwinnable war with empty platitude-spewing asschapeaux, I give you psittacism. Putting a name to the symptoms doesn’t solve the problem, but it does lessen the pain-in-the-ass somewhat.

Crankypantsing, News & Politics

It Makes the Baby Shelly Cry

Shelly

If I hear one more person say that the soldiers in Iraq are “fighting for our freedom,” I am going to scream. Iraq was never, ever a threat to the U.S. That it may now pose a threat to us is our own damned fault, but that still doesn’t justify the ignorant parroting, ad nauseum, of the “they’re fighting for our freedom” party line. That’s a big, fat, fucking lie

And don’t get me started on Iran. Why on earth are we ramping ourselves up for another war when we are stretched too thinly as it is? It’s deja vu all over again, and I’m feeling a little nauseated.

In unrelated news from the Things That Make the Baby Shelly Cry file, I noticed that Ford has stopped with the illiterate “less stops at the pump” nonsense. Their newest commercial is grammatically correct. Praise be! Now, if only the “manly men crave greasy slabs o’ meaty meat” trend in food advertising would just go the hell away, I might be able to sleep at night.

Art, Crankypantsing

Two Picts to Bone

Shelly

The season finale of CSI (the good one) was on last night. One of the story lines involved a Civil War re-enacter. A heavily corseted US Civil War re-enacter. According to the show, Victorian men favored a small waist, and would often corset themselves to achieve an exaggerated hourglass figure. Not exactly. While it is true that there was a period in which men commonly wore corsets, the extreme wasp-waist was fashionable between 1820-1835, which preceded both the Victorian period and the Civil War.

The second point I’d like to take issue with is the claim that folks in old photos were stiff looking because of the long exposure times required by early photographic processes. While that is true, by the time of the Civil War there were newer processes, like ambrotypes, that allowed a much shorter exposure time. Most of the Civil War era photos I’ve seen–and the example depicted in last night’s CSI–were the classic 1/8 plate ambrotypes. My guess is that the serious expressions common in photographs from the period were due more to artistic convention than to the limitations of the technology.