If You Really Loved Me You'd Let Me Eat Your Brain

From the July 22, 2005 Wall Street Journal, Joe Morgenstern's thoughts on Michael Bay's latest celluloid affront:

"The Island" comes on like an overproduced coma, and leaves you feeling comatose by the end.  In between are 127 minutes of intermittent chaos that feels like a lifetime.

I won't blow the movie's big surprise, even though you'd guess it soon enough if you actually went to see this sci-fi monument to studio idiocy.  Suffice it to say that the script's many sources include "Blade Runner," "Coma," "Logan's Run" and a rancid whiff of "Soylent Green"; that "The Island" is a poor advertisement for stem-cell research, and that the director was Michael Bay.  His specialty, in such action extravaganzas as "Armageddon," "The Rock" and "Pearl Harbor" has been thunderous, consequence-free effects, and he is up to his old trick – his only tricks.

That explains the $10-ish million opening weekend.  I'd hope this is the beginning of the end for Mr. Bay but as long as cars are plentiful and crashy and audiences stupid he'll keep making movies.

I received my Motorola RAZR V3 phone earlier this week.  Mr. Caparula's "techno porn" description was spot-on.

It has way too many time-wasting features, but I suppose the kids need something when the Ritalin wears off.  MPEG4 video, MP3 ring tones, Web browser, tons of games, the ability to download more stupid games, Java, etc.  It's flashiness (why the heck does a phone need a screen saver?) is downright annoying.  Which reminds me...

The interrupt-driven nature of the under-25 crowd these days really bothers me.  There are even some people at work who I want to smack whenever I'm talking to them and they start picking at their inane little plastic toys to read their latest meaningless text message.  Sometimes they even answer an incoming call when I'm talking to them!

The youngsters at work also have the annoying habit of keeping their IM clients open and running when they're trying to get things done or when they're sitting in meetings.  I really don't like seeing messages flash across the laptop next to me talking about how drunk some girl got last night, or how lame the most recent reality show episode was.  Aren't these people being paid to concentrate and do a job!?  Damn!  And when I do notice the messages out of the corner of my eye the laptop owners take offense as though I'm invading their privacy.

I should see if I could score me one of those military cell phone jammers we're using in Iraq.  I bet the under-25 crowd would have panic attacks within five minutes of not having cellular service.

What a messed up day. Mrs. The Reverend and I made an offer on a place on Monday and got a counter-offer today. Our attorney met with Anne this morning to review it but I couldn't make it – I had too many meetings at work so they teleconferenced me in.  (I was at Casa de Lara trying to transact some bidness at the time.  Damn!)  The attorney advised us to change one line of the counter-offer. All we had to do was sign the counter-offer and counter-counter-offer and deliver everything to the seller's agent.  At least I think that's what he said.

But not so fast! Anne had to work at 3 PM today so I didn't get a chance to talk to her and look over the paperwork in person. The plan was for me to take the paperwork and meet with our real estate agent after work to do the paperwork.

First off, Anne didn't sign and initial the paperwork as she was supposed to, but I don't blame her. She never got to meet with, or even talk to, our real estate agent, whom I'll call Jared. He had jury duty today but he was pretty sure he'd be done by 5 PM.  Not that it mattered since Anne was at work by then, but maybe life has been rough for the poor guy and he's hitting the pipe as way to relax.  Sometimes crack messes with your short-term memory.  Anyway,  the case must have gone to the jury sometime this afternoon because he was still in deliberations as of 10:30 PM.  Suck-o.  He managed to slip a note (or a text message) to another agent in his office who would help me, in theory, to finish the paperwork.

Around 7:30 PM I got a call from a woman with a heavy accent. She asks for Anne and butchers our last name, so I assume she's a telemarketer and prepare to give her a glimpse of the soul-devouring hatred I have for said persons. As it turns out she's the real estate agent who is supposed to help me with the paperwork. It takes a while for us to establish that though. At first I though she was talking about Jerry's Kids or asking for money from some damn charity. I guess Russians have a hard time with words like "Jared."

So I make my way to the real estate office and I'm met by the women whose name I can't spell. English is her third or fourth language. She paused a few times when reading the counteroffer, puzzled by terms such as "shall", "not less than", "at" and the pesky "be." Minor little things! We eventually got a counter-counter-offer written. Now all I had to do was get Anne to sign off on it.

I drove to her place of work, tracked her down, and got her to sign everything. That was another hassle because she works in the infant ICU. She can't be out of earshot of her patients in case they explode or need her attention, and I'm not supposed to enter the area she's in. After much deliberation with another nurse as a go-between we all decide I can stand in a hallway where I can't see the patients (and medical records, I'm assuming) and she'll sign everything while still kind of standing in the room she's assigned to. Freakin' comical.

Then I go home. My next task is to fax everything in. I give the counter-offer written by the seller's agent a thorough going over. I discover all sorts of errors, eight at last count. They're not all major but, like, my name is wrong on the counter-offer. The address where Anne and I live is wrong. The non-word "Iff" appears. One line has an additional comma that confuses the meaning of the sentence containing it. And another contingency says the buyers are to "deliver a prequel letter within three days form acceptance." Form? Prequal?! What the hell is a prequal? If she meant prequalification she should have spelled it out. Damn, woman!

GAaaaaGH!! My valve is closing!!!

In the end I decided I wouldn't respond to the counter-offer. There were just too many errors for me to correct. I'll write an e-mail to the seller's agent, and maybe the sellers themselves, explaining the problems I found. All in all I think it best to start over fresh with a new offer, one free of errors, and one where my name isn't "Thomas O. Mueller."

Al Sharpton is at it again, as confusing and stupid as ever.  Following Jesse Jackson's formula he's rushed to the aid of the family of some non-Caucasian person who was killed or arrested or roughed up and is urging everyone to be calm by screaming things like "STAY CALM!!  EVERYBODY REMAIN CALM!!  I URGE YOU TO STAY CALM!!!"  He spoke at a church service Sunday, a day after the funeral for 19-month-old Suzie Pena who was killed in a shootout with the LAPD.  Well, she wasn't shooting at them but her dumbass father was.  He was also killed in the shootout.

Here is a sampling of the tasty little word salad Sharpton puked up Sunday, according to CNN:

"There cannot be a knee-jerk reaction when we will always say the police is right," he said. "There cannot also be a reaction, knee-jerk in the community, saying they're always wrong."

Read the CNN story if you dare.

Humanity has reached a new low: Paying children to beat up the disabled.

PITTSBURGH (AP) -- A T-ball coach allegedly paid one of his players $25 to hurt an 8-year-old mentally disabled teammate so he wouldn't have to put the boy in the game, police said Friday.

Mark R. Downs Jr., 27, of Dunbar, is accused of offering one of his players the money to hit the boy in the head with a baseball, police said. Witnesses told police Downs didn't want the boy to play in the game because of his disability.

Read the full story here.

Another sad clown died today, and nobody noticed.

Unemployo the Klown, 36, of Madison, WI, is not particularly pleased to announced that he has signed up to work for The Man again. Unemployo regrets that he has to sell out everything he believes in and throw himself back into the grind, but you damn kids gave him no choice, what with your limited unemployment benefits! What is up with that!? Unemployo has bills to pay and you KNOW he has a serious Starbucks coffee addiction. But NOOOOooo...you had to have your precious Welfare reform. So Unemployo is forced to assume The Position and become a Tie Monkey in an anonymous cubicle farm again. Nice. Unemployo hopes you're all happy with what you've done.

Unemployo blames his recent spate of non-blogging to the fact that he was trying to lay low and not let potential employers find out about him. But now the ink is dry on the deal and all bets are off.

Finally, Unemployo would like to note that he’s only in it for the money.

Early last week I received an e-mail from Barnes & Noble (B&N) advertising a clearance sale. Books as low as $1.99! How could I resist? I could have all of my Christmas, Kwanzaa, Ramadan, Hanukkah, Festivus, Boxing Day and Winter Solstice shopping done before August.

I went to the B&N site and sifted through the 600-ish books that were sale for $1.99. I picked out 13 books and ordered them. As an added bonus I got $0.20 off each book because I have a B&N membership. 13 books for $1.79 each. Quite a deal.

For some reason I did a bunch of screen captures of the long Web page listing the items in my order just before pressing the "Submit Order" button. The total came to $24.58. I submitted the order. I was told the order had been received and everything was fine.

I checked on the order a few minutes later. The price of one of the books I ordered showed up on the order status screen as $9.75. I did a bunch of screen captures of the order status page and immediately e-mailed B&N. In my message I pointed out the error and asked them to make sure I’d be charged the original price of $1.79. I attached two JPG images in support of my claims that an error had occurred.

B&N’s reply was generic and confusing:

Barnes and Noble.com offers very competitive pricing on many items, resulting in the best value for our customers. However, as with all retail products, prices are subject to change due to current promotions.
As such, we are unable to credit you for the difference in price, and will honor the original price at the time of purchase.

I replied, telling them that their reply was insufficient. I didn’t ask to be credited the difference between the original price and the erroneous price, I just asked to be charged the original price! No charges had been posted to my credit card yet.

Before B&N got back to me on my second e-mail I received three more automated e-mails from B&N. First, we’ve broken your order into two shipments and you’ll be sent these three books. I specifically told them to send everything in one shipment regardless of how long I had to wait. Second, a message saying oops, the first shipment of three books has been delayed. And a third message saying that they’d shipped the remaining books.

Unfortunately the third message about the second shipment still had the incorrect price of $9.75. Also before B&N had replied to my second e-mail message there were two charges posted to my credit card: $5.67 on July 10th and $27.28 on July 11th. Great.

Next, B&N replied to my second e-mail.

Unfortunately, our system does not allow us to open attachments. Please resend your email without the attachment at your earliest convenience.
If you have a question about content on a specific page, please cut and paste the URL (page address) into the email for ease of reference.

According to our records, the total charges for your order are $32.95 with $5.67 charged on 7/9/2005 and $27.28 charged on 7/11/2005. This charged total was detailed in the order confirmation email that you received. Please review that email. We apologize for any confusion.

This tells me nothing! So I fired off a third e-mail message to B&N congratulating them on further compounding their error. I also chastised them for not telling me sooner that they can’t open attachments. In lieu of attachments, I asked them how they’d like me to prove to them that the order web page I was show totaled $24.58. I also asked how they intended to fix the entire mess. I wasn’t testy but I told them my patience was running thin.

Just before I sent the e-mail UPS dropped off a package. It was the first shipment. But not really. It had my name and address on it and the correct B&N order number but when I opened it I found a VHS tape containing a six-hour tribute to the career of Michael J. Fox and a “Fundamentals of Heat and Mass Transfer, Fourth Edition” textbook. Liang Wang of Urbana IL won’t be getting her or her books any time soon.

So I added this indictment to my third e-mail to B&N and fired it off. No reply yet.

This is really a shame because up until now I’ve had great service from them and they’ve regularly matched or beat the prices of other online book and DVD sellers. I think if I don’t get a good response from the customer service droid I’ll take the whole mess to the nearest B&N store and let them sort it out. If I get any friction I’ll just have them cancel everything, including my B&N membership!

Stein Night is upon us.  I'll try to get the there early to secure the big round table.  I wonder if the place is smoke-free now?  That'd be cool.

And to the putz who keeps posting comments about online gambling and boner pills: This isn't the "Low Rate Mortgages for Compulsive Gamblers with Erectile Dysfunctions" blog.  Go away.