I Ran Over a Dog Today

But it wasn’t my fault!  At least, not entirely.

And the dog’s fine.  At least, he seemed to be.

Perhaps I should explain.  You see, not far from where I live, there’s this dog.  I don’t know if this dog actually belonged to anybody or if he was a stray, but the point is that this dog is kind of an idiot.

I’m not sure how long this dog has been around, but I first encountered him when I was getting prepared to get my driver’s license.  Every once in a while (I’d say about once a week on average) this dog would meet up with me when I was driving home.  I learned to hate the sight of that dog more than anything else when I was driving.

Before I go any further, allow me to explain that I don’t have a problem with dogs chasing my car.  And that’s more or less what this dog would try to do…kind of.  You see, he understood that he was supposed to do SOMETHING with the car, but he evidentally was never taught the proper way to chase a car. 

So instead of chasing behind the car, he wanted to attack it head on.  Or maybe he wanted to try playing chicken.  Or something.  Whenever this dog was out, he would come charging toward me barking the whole time.  Every single time I was afraid I would hit this dog, and I would slam on my brakes and come to a near dead stop just when it seemed like the dog was not going to move out of the way in time.  But he did, every single time.

At some point, this dog met up with a smaller dog of its same breed somehow.  I’m not sure where this smaller dog came from, all I know is that it’s way too big for it to be the big dog’s puppy.  So I’m guessing that whoever owns this dog (if anyone does) must’ve bought it just to make the drivers on the road twice as nervous as they already are.

As you might’ve already guessed, the big dog taught the smaller dog the improper way to chase cars.  So now I had two suicidal dogs charging me and barking at me when I was driving home.  And every time I would brake to almost a dead stop, and every time the dogs would get out of the way in time and just stand at the side of the car barking at me.

Well, today I met those dogs while driving to school today.  And they did the same routine.  By now, I was confident that the dogs knew to get out of the way in time, and I was determined to not let them freak me out.  So, I didn’t exactly brake as much as usual.  And the smaller dog evidentally hadn’t perfected playing chicken quite yet.

You know that miniature panic attack you get when you tip your chair back a little bit too far and it feels like you’re going to fall?  That’s the best way I can describe the feeling I got when the dog dissapeared under my car.  The next thing I knew, I heard yelping.  And the yelping wouldn’t stop.  As I looked in my rearview mirror at the dog, I could see the smaller dog limping around trying not to stand on the leg that just got run over while the other dog…tried to see if it was okay, or something.

Well, I didn’t stop the car.  What was I supposed to do, give it first aid?  Fact is, after I saw that the dog wasn’t dead my first thought was “Well, maybe you’ll learn to not charge cars, you dumb mutt.”

Dear Microsoft:

I recently made an inquiry on your customer support page.  On the page, you asked me to provide very specific information on the problem I had.  So I did.  The email I sent you went like this:

”Microsoft Office 2007 came pre-installed on my computer.  In order to activate it, I’m required to enter a product key.  However, I can’t find this product key anywhere.  Whenever I use the activation assistant, all it says is that it was unable to request it and asks me to check my Internet connection and try again.  After about a dozen times of checking, it’s evident that the Internet is not the problem.  Since I also installed Microsoft XP on my computer, I would usually just ignore Office 2007.  However, whenever I download a Word Document or PowerPoint off of the Internet for my college classes, it only works on 2007.  Not only that, but documents I typed up myself on XP will somehow move themselves over to 2007.  I recently discovered a WordPad Document in my documents folder that’s called Office2007TrialActivationKey, but the key it provides doesn’t work, as several characters aren’t even valid characters in Product Key.  Can you please help me find my product key?”

Now, since you deliberately asked me to provide specific information, I naively assumed you would give me a specific answer.  However, when I got a reply back, all it did was give me a very standard letter response thanking me for using their customer support, and providing links to OTHER  customer support pages with which to ask my inquiry AGAIN.

This little experience has led my to believe that there might be a misunderstanding between your customers and your customer support that needs correcting right away.  So allow me to take my time to specify something that you don’t seem to grasp:

Your customers are actual, living people.

It’s true!  I know that that contradicts everything you were taught in the technical and business schools you went to that mistakingly led you to believe that your customers were just a bunch of walking wallets.  But the truth is that that phenomon you know as “customers” that mysteriosly provides you with about $300 every time one item dissapears from your inventory are actual, thinking, breathing, living human beings.

I know this is a shock.  But I’m confident you can handle it.  After all, everyone in your company from the CEO to the janitors have a PhD in at least 3 areas.  However, allow me again to specify that having a PhD doesn’t make you anymore of a human being than the poor blokes who actually waste hours of their precious lives on your hugely ineffective customer support page.

Now that we’ve cleared that up, allow me to provide the next mind-boggling idea that you should take to heart: if your customers are human beings, you should put more effort into helping them than what it takes to hit the “reply” button. 

I know you guys absolutely delight in spending all day talking to your computer, but most of us actually need a human to clarify the situation.  As you can see in the above letter I’ve provided, my problem was created because I don’t understand computers.  What’s more, anything the computer provided as help was wholly ineffective.  It doesn’t take a PhD to realize that automatic answers spewed out by the computer is probably not going to help me until the day the basic underlying laws of the Universe are rewritten.

So, in conclusion, your customers are humans, your customer support is not up to snuff, and you need to sit up straight and fly right.

There.  Now is that so difficult a concept to grasp?  Perhaps that insta-reply computer of yours won’t understand a lick of this, but any intelligent, thinking human will be able to understand every word of this letter, and take it to heart.

…………………….If you even HAVE PEOPLE WORKING THERE!  I mean, seriously, WTF!!??  I just spent a solid five minutes trying to clarify my problem so that even  AN IDIOT could understand it, AND YOU DON’T EVEN LOOK AT IT?????  Aren’t you people PAID ENOUGH TO CARE????  WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE???!!!! ARE YOU ALL JUST PSYCHOPATHS OR SOMETHING?????? You know what your problem is?  YOU’RE TOO DAMN SMART.  You’ve figured out how to be able to spend your life DOING ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO HELP, and you’ve become the biggest software company in the world!  Congratulations, You’re a proffesional SOCIOPATH!!!!!!  You know, if it wouldn’t get me thrown in prison, I’d take a bat and

I’m certain that together we can work this out.

Sincerely,

A unsatisfied customer.

Dear Great Aunt Whoever,

Please don’t buy me this for next Christmas.

So, another Christmas has come and gone.  The hustle and bustle is over, and there’s nothing to do now but wait until New Year’s Eve.

Today is now Boxing Day, a day for sitting around bored, returning gifts, and maybe something about giving gifts to those less fortunate than you.

Well, in case you were wondering (and you weren’t), here’s the presents that I got for Christmas:

Two “Pearls Before Swine” books:  The Sopratos and Pearls Sells Out, both by Stephan Pastis.

The Book of Useless Information, The Ultimate Book of Useless Information, and The Best Book of Useless Information Ever, all by the Useless Information Society.

The newest Alex Rider book, Crocodile Tears, by Anthony Horowitz.

For my stocking stuffer I recieved the Encyclopedia Britannica Student and Home Edition CD for my laptop.

Oh…and two “Bloom County” books: Happy Trails! and Bloom County The Complete Library Volume One: 1980–1982 both by Berkeley Breathed.

Now, I was too polite to say it to everybody when I opened these two specific presents, but I think it’s about time that everybody out there know this one simple fact:

I hate “Bloom County”.

As well as any of the follow up series done by its creator.

I know it probably should’ve been wiser to inform my family that one Christmas about maybe two years ago when I recieved Opus: 25 Years of His Sunday Best, but I didn’t.  Because I was much too polite to inform them that a better gift would’ve been the assurance that I wouldn’t get anything relating to Opus the Penguin.

I still am.  That’s the reason that I’m blogging about it here instead of saying it to their faces in hopes that maybe two months from now they’ll see it and won’t think too ill of me for saying it this soon after I recieved it.

What’s the reason I dislike it so much?

Well, anyone who’s seen this blog before should know that I lean politically right.  “Bloom County”, however, leans so far politically left that it fell over (In fact, in Happy Trails! one of the characters actually state “Maybe it’s time we reconsider Communism.”  It’s on page 24 for those who think I’m making that up.)

Sure, “Pearls Before Swine” leans left as well, but it doesn’t make nearly as many political jabs in an entire year as “Bloom County” does in the average month.

I’ve put up with so much left-wing propoganda from comics, television shows, and an entire series of teachers I’ve had through High School, that I actually feel like the Secret Police is going to burst through my door and drag me away to Siberia for writing what I do on this page.  I don’t need anymore, thank you very much.

So, for future reference, no, I don’t care if “Opus” is still currently running in the newspaper, even though you may feel an unsatisfiable urge to show me this, even though I know, and the particular comic that was running that day made me want to use it to catch my vomit (based on a true story.  The part about me being shown the comic, not the vomit part.)

In conclusion, if you can’t decide between new socks or a “Bloom County” book to give me as a gift, please give me the socks.  At least I won’t have to set them on fire to keep my feet warm.

Arrrgh.

So, Saturday Mom put in Amadeus, or whatever it’s called, the movie where Mozart dies, into the DVD player.  She had been reading books about Salieri and/or Mozart, and she felt she had to watch the movie.  Now, I had never seen this movie before, but Mom did tell me something about it.  She told me how the movie portrayed Salieri as being a once-famous composer who was quickly fading from the public eye when Mozart came about, and became so jealous that he Rejected God, and claimed that he and God were now enemies.

In reality, however, Salieri didn’t really think about Mozart much, because his fame was never jeopordized by Mozart until he was nearly dead.  Mozart actually didn’t become the famous composer he is today until he died.  Futhermore, Salieri never turned his back on God, and actually became more religious the older he became.

When I first heard of the inaccuracy of this movie, it generated nothing more than a simple roll of my eyes.  You see, I assumed that the movie portrayed Salieri as being sort of the villain, and the whole rejecting God bit would be sort of a subplot.

Well…As I mentioned before, she put the movie in Saturday.  She had audio commentary on, so I didn’t hear much, but she also had the subtitles to the movie on, as well (No, nobody in this family is deaf, we just like to have the subtitles on because Baby has a tendency to talk over the movie.  We don’t even think about it anymore, really.) so I did get to catch the basic plot.

See the above title.  It will tell you exactly how I feel about it.

As it turns out, Salieri is actually portrayed as the very sympathetic tragic hero throughout the movie.  Plus, far from being a subplot, the rejecting God bit turns out to be the main plot of the entire movie.  The story is told by Salieri to a priest, whom he constantly mocks throughout the entire tale for believing in a merciful God.  The priest appears to not be able to come up with an answer to any of Salieri’s questions about God’s motives, and seems to be questioning his own faith by the end of the movie.  Salieri’s perspective is never refuted throughout the entire movie.

I used to think that the decision to portray Salieri as a blasphemer was simply a stupid way of adding drama to the story.  Now, after seeing it, I can hardly stand to have this trash in the house.  This is perhaps the most anti-Christian movie I have ever seen in my entire life.  And I’ve seen V for Vendetta.

Not only that, but the story is based entirely on lies.  Not half-truths, not historical innaccuracies, lies.

So, that had me pretty upset.  Then I overheard Chao and Gameboy talking about how the obviously complex CGI in the 2007 Transformers movie was still beaten out by what’s generally regarded as fake polar bears in The Golden Compass.  I realize that it’s incredibly old news, but I had never heard it before, as I didn’t follow the Oscars, Golden Globes, and whatever other stupid “we know more about movies than the general public” awards they have.

Anyway, my first thougt was WHY THE @#$%ING HELL DID THEY DO THAT?!  Of course, there’s only one answer: they enjoyed Christianity being portrayed as the ultimate evil.  Of course, when four Muslim extremists fly planes into various inhabited public areas, we have to do our best to not hate Muslims, and realize that they were extremists.  However, Christians are obviously all villains for not supporting homosexuality, abortion, etc.

So, now I was downright pissed.

That night, when I was praying to God, I honestly considered praying for the end of the world.  I had never, ever thougt about doing that before.  I was actually scaring myself.

So, I’m here to tell you hate evil and injustice.  But don’t hate people.

In Case You Were Wondering…

The following is a list of reasons on why President Obama deserves the Nobel Peace Prize:

1. He’s black.
2. He replaced Bush.
3. He apologized for America.
4. He had an omelet for breakfast this morning.
5. Oprah Winfrey really, really, really likes him.
6. Rush Limbaugh despises him.
7. He showed up on Jay Leno.
8. The International Olympic Committee hurt his feelings.
9. He made promises, and BY GOLLY he’s going to keep them.
10. Saturday Night Live needs to get it’s facts straight.
11. Capitalism is evil.
12. You’re racist.
13. His wife has the right to bare arms.
14. He’s black.
15. Because we said so, that’s why!

I hope this clears some things up.

From right and left, questions about peace prize

I’m not going to say anything, just note Charles Babington’s deadpan sarcasm in the opening paragraph.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091009/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_obama_nobel_us_reaction

But since he’s not FOX news, Yahoo’s obviously perfectly fair and balanced in it’s reporting.

GOP backing off scolding Democrat over rhetoric

The Democrat Party is willing to let those without sin cast the first stone.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_congressman_harsh_rhetoric

“You lie!”

“Death camps”

Break out the hurling stones if you hear any of the above statements.

“Die quickly”

Ignore it.  I’m sure it was a mis-quote.

Dems: GOP Rooting Against America

http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20091005/pl_politico/27902

Oh, snaps.

They finally figured it out.  Yes, we admit it.  We’re all a bunch of Nazis who’ve smuggled across the border in an effort to take down this country. 

All of that patriotism during the aftermath of 9/11?  Yes, it was all just a big show.  We really hate this country and everything it stands for.  F*ck the first amendment, and f*ck freedom.

By the way, Michael Moore was right.  We really did make up that whole story about the Taliban.  It was all just a very well done conspiricy in order to invade Iraq and spread our racist ideals.

Yes, I’m being sarcastic.

Let’s set some things straight:

1.  The reason we want Obama’s plan to fail is because we believe that if it succeeds, it will ruin the country.
2. The reason we’re happy Chicago lost the Olympics bid is because we like the idea of the Obamas (as well as the media) getting an ego check.  Hopefully, they now know that they can’t convince everyone of anything just by putting on a big production number.  That, and South America has never hosted the olympics before, so it’s nice to give them the oppurtunity.
3. The reason that we’re pointing out that the economy is still doing poorly is because IT’S STILL DOING POORLY.  You can’t use grass shoots to try to convince us that throwing money at the problem is working.  Even if it does work, it’s a short-term solution.  Trust me, we’re going to get it in the bud 10 years from now.
4. With this talk of limiting our constitutional rights (we can’t own guns, protest higher taxes, speak out against the government without being called racist, etc.) seceding might not seem like such a bad idea.  There’s no point in staying in America if it doesn’t have any of the ideals it was built upon anymore.

We still love America.  We just don’t like this Oceania you’re trying to set up.

DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER

DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER DOWN WITH BIG BROTHER

More Hypocrisy

So…When Cheney said “go f*ck yourself,” it was all over the news.

But when Obama called Kanye West a jack@$$, ABC has to apologize for tweeting it?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090915/ap_on_en_tv/us_tv_obama_tweet

Isn’t it nice to make exceptions?