christophe thinks out loud

Death to the Extremist

I can’t believe I’ve gone this long without mentioning my favorite web comic: Death to the Extremist. It is eerily timed with my life; just as I was recabling the speakers in my new home, this happened.

Want to work for Blowfish?

We’re hiring a bookkeeper and an inventory clerk.

Does Amazon Get Email Like This?

Just tonight, we received the following happy missive from a customer (original spelling, punctuation, and capitalization):

Yes, My order HAS shipped. YES it HAS arrived. BUT THE DRIVER WOULD NOT LEAVE IT WITHOUT MY SIGNATURE ! WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE ? YOU KNOW I SLEEP DAYS ! I am very displeased. CONTACT UPS IMEDIATELY and tell them they can leave it tomorow. ELSE I have to drive to xxx. I DO NOT HAVE TIME FOR THIS SHIT. Thank you

Here is the reply that we didn’t send to said happy customer:

Dear Moron:

Let us explain something to you, since you obviously have the brains of a turnip. We have more customers in our database than live in the stupid little infected pimple of a town you live in. We do not keep track of which of them sleep during the day, and even if we did, we are not able to tell an employee of the the largest package delivery company in the world, “Oh, this moron sleeps during the day, so please just go ahead leave his expensive package sitting out on his porch next to the pit bull and the Wal*Mart lawn furniture, even though his meth lab-operating neighbor will steal it and then you’ll get fired. Really, it’s fine.”

The driver isn’t going to leave it. It’s not going to happen. So get off your fat lazy ass and get down to the UPS depot and sign for the package. You’re just going to have to find the time, or the package will come back to us, and we’ll rip our satisfaction return fee out of your pasty little behind. Get the picture, sunshine?

And before you give us a spittle-coated rant about not ever ordering from us again: We think it is a dandy idea if you never order from us again. We need your business like we need smallpox. Every company knows that 90% of their customer service problems come from 10% of their customers. The trick is to identify that 10% and get rid of them. Thanks for making it so easy.

Love,
The Blowfishies

Of course, we’ll say something else. Why did I ever get into retail?

Porn Critiques Can Kill

Note to general populace: Please leave the critiques of pornography to the professionals. Thanks.

The arguments against gay marriage have no intellectual merit, part 2.

Laws do not persuade merely because they threaten.

— Lucius Annaeus Seneca, c. 4BC - 65AD.

That the California Supreme Court annulled all of the gay marriages performed in San Francisco this year isn’t surprising; like it or not, the law is clear on the subject. Reasonable equal-protection arguments can be raised, just like Lawrence v. Texas, and this is going to end up in the Supreme Court’s lap sooner or later. (My guess is that the current court, at least, will pass on reviewing this particular case, though.)

As previously noted, though, the legalistic argument is not an argument at all; it may be a statement of fact that gay marriage is not legal under California law, but that is not a reason for or against it.

The next argument being considered is that allowing gays to marry “weakens marriage.” Now, in order to “weaken marriage,” unless we are talking about structural damage to some Platonic Ideal of Marriage somewhere in the astral plane, we are talking about weakening marriages.

So, what marriages are we talking about? Precisely which real, non-thought-experiment marriages are going to be harmed by this?

Anyone?

I didn’t think so. I’ve never heard anyone stand up and say, “My marriage will be harmed if gay people are allowed to marry, too, and here is why.” If challenged, it is always something along the lines of, “Well, of course, my marriage is immune to Gay Cooties floating through the aether, but some other marriage might possibly be harmed.”

Bullshit, of course. A thought-experiment relationship can be constructed that will be harmed by gay marriage, or by no-fault divorce, or by Cool-Whip™. So what? I can imagine a person whose life will be destroyed by the existence of Purple.

If we are now going to make things illegal because we can come up with a story about how some unreal person will be harmed if we don’t, we have completely lost it.

Spare Us, Please

This is, of course, completely pointless, but it would be very nice if the froth-at-the-mouth anti-gay types would not attempt to paint New Jersey Governor James McGreevey's resignation as having anything to do with his being gay or not. But, of course, we will be treated to a round of We’re Shocked That He Had An Affair But No Straight Politician (Except Bill Clinton, Who Might As Well Be Gay) Would Have Done That.

And they’re right: A straight politician wouldn’t have resigned over it, because having a heterosexual affair is just barely within the boundary of acceptable behavior for a public figure, whereas having a gay affair isn’t. Apparently, for it to be unacceptable for a straight politician to have an affair, the mistress has to turn up dead.

Anyway, isn’t McGreevey most likely bi? It’s interesting how “gay” or “straight” are the only two options the press seems to be able to digest.

I feel much safer now, part 3.

A security drone on the NY-NJ ferry attempts to confiscate a copy of a role-playing game rulebook for security reasons, saying it is “inappropriate.” RPG player displays admirable cajones in facing down said idiotic security drone.

I wonder what the nice Coast Guard guys on the ferry I ride would have done if they had seen my copy of Christy Canyon's autobiography.

The line between "crazy" and "talking on cell phone" continues to shrink daily.

When I was a boy, we had to make our anti-mind-control caps out of aluminum foil and hoodies from the Salvation Army or Goodwill. You tell the kids today, they just don’t believe it. They can just buy them off the rack.

How Pervasive is Wi-Fi?

My new commute takes me from Alameda to San Francisco and back each day, via ferry. Just for giggles, I fired up MacStumbler during my commute home last night. I managed to pick up WiFi networks (although not strong enough to connect to) in the middle of San Francisco Bay.

I feel much safer now, part 2.

The Justice Department is ordering public libraries to destroy certain books it has deemed not “appropriate for external use.”

The Department of Justice has called for these five public documents, two of which are texts of federal statutes, to be removed from depository libraries and destroyed, making their content available only to those with access to a law office or law library.

The topics addressed in the named documents include information on how citizens can retrieve items that may have been confiscated by the government during an investigation. The documents to be removed and destroyed include: Civil and Criminal Forfeiture Procedure; Select Criminal Forfeiture Forms; Select Federal Asset Forfeiture Statutes; Asset forfeiture and money laundering resource directory; and Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act of 2000 (CAFRA).

I am starting to wonder if the Justice Department is deliberately trying to make this administration look bad. If so, they are doing a superb job of it.

Link, via Boing Boing.

Update: The Justice Department has rescinded the order.