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It Sucks to be Dudette

This one could have also been titled, "No Good Deed Goes Unpunished"

Apparently the Gods of Mootings have taken a very dim view of Dudette's recent attempt to help me with my mooting plight. Her punishment is, naturally, a mooting of her very own. Worse, this is a cross-continental mooting, scheduled well after Normal Office Hours, and the real insult to injury is that she may brought this upon her own head by simply being a good WorkerBee. (Verily, the Gods of Mooting are a vindictive lot...)

What follows is Dudette's lamention, scrubbed and paraphrased to protect, well, not the innocent, but Companies are always on the lookout for some disgruntled (as opposed to gruntled) WorkerBee sullying their good name by having the temerity to openly make a complaint about them. (Ungrateful peasant!)

Recent interactions with [overseas arm of Dudette'sCompany] had left me with more than one unanswered question. I was tired of the once per day email exchange that simile's to this:

Dudette: Could you provide details surrounding the [project]. (Which apparently was read to mean: Could you provide details surrounding the required functionality of a Minbari Hat-rack)
Comrade Overseas [Ed: apparently named Kosh]: Doors placed on the kitchen cabinets must be able to open and close easily.
Dudette [Ed: doing her best Corben Dallas]: Uh huh...

Anyway, I called the product line manager and asked him for an additional source of information - a document or perhaps someone local. And what do i get for my diligence? You guessed it, an evening, dial-in from my home, mumbling a prayer that the kids somehow squash the usual 17 requests for stories, re-tuck-ins and glasses of water, post litl'un bed-time, mooting!

Oh, Father, forgive my pomposity and disregard for the law of mootings which states: You cannot hide and you certainly cannot escape, the indelible schedule hogger, the mooting. [Ed: And you'd better not help your fellow It Sucks to be Us Club member with one either...]

Oh, Dudette! Such a price you pay! You're loyalty to me does not go unnoticed or unappreciated! When the day of your entrance on this little mudball arrives, we shall gather and celebrate its passing in grand fashion!

[Update: Ye, the Gods of Mooting are vicious indeed. Not only has Dudette suffered a cross-continental evening mooting, she was subsequently piled on with the dreaded Weekend Mooting, infinitely worse than the Evening Mooting. (Technically it was a seminar, or some such, but still a mooting in my book...)]

Oh, the Mootings You'll Have!

I loathe mootings. Actually loathing isn't even good enough. They're the antithesis of my nature, the bane of my existence. Nothing in my TheCompany email fills me with weepings and gnashings of teeth like seeing an mooting "invitation" (as if I have choice), where I can be sure that large amounts of oxygen will be needlessly consumed and absolutely nothing will be accomplished.

Just so we're clear, a mooting is defined by a gathering satisfying any one of the following criteria
1) An pre-determined agenda or topic of any sort
2) 3 or more people in attendance
3) 15 or more minutes in length
4) If the phrase "action item" is ever uttered

Should you have all four in play, congratulations, you're in Hell. (And not that wimpy Fire & Brimstone kind, either...)

What's worse, this abundance of talking also deprives my brain of badly needed oxygen. As a result, I usually spend most mootings in a pitched battle to keep my eyes open, regardless of my previous night's sleep or the amount of caffeine coursing through my veins. Even Red Bull's much ballyhooed "wings" are no match for a good mooting. It makes the year 2004 even more forgettable in that while at my previous TheCompany (which was, not to put too fine a point on it, the closest thing to a "dream job" I will probably ever have... before it was wretched away from me by a merger... Damn you, Beavercreek, OH!) I had set a record of 6 months without a mooting (Me popping into the boss' office to bandy a few ideas around was it. It! O' Lost Nirvana!). My current TheCompany? They love mootings. They thrive on them. Some people's entire workday is nothing but going from mooting to mooting.

Dudette must have sensed my lamentations on my most recent narcoleptic adventure (Monday, trapped (like a rat!) in a 3-hour blather-thon). She sent me this pic, suggesting a possible way to camouflage my rendezvous with Senor Sandman. I'd have to grow a beard and dye my hair, but with future mootings already in jammed into my Outlook calendar, I'm seriously considering the look.


That's a capital idea, boss! Let me take an action item on that!

Everybody was Kung-Fu Fighting

Your next movie to see should be... nay, must be Kung-Fu Hustle.

This thing was a delicious piece of work. It may not be the best movie I've seen in a long while, but it was certainly the most fun. Kung-Fu Hustle is where Jackie Chan meets the Road-Runner. The "dance" number by the Axe Gang at the beginning in nearly worth the price of admission alone. And the fights... this is what the Burly Brawls in The Matrix movies should have looked like, even if the CGI's a little rough around the edges.

Go see it with a big bag of popcorn!

The Lil' Brudder (and Sometimes Tendafoot) Show

Ok, it's not a new Strong Bad email per se... but OMG, it um... well.. here. (And here's the Strong Bad email that inspired it, one of the funniest they've ever done... I'm going to hell for it, aren't I?)

Ramming Speed!

To the jerks who - either because they're lazy slugs and don't have the energy to walk from the parking spot not 20 feet away or are so pretentious they think they're special and shouldn't have to sully froo-froo shoes with the same dirt trod upon by us worthless peasants - stop next to the mail hut to retrieve their postal deliveries, thus blocking my lane of travel and forcing me to go around them while hoping I'm not clobbered by oncoming traffic...

So help me, one of these days, I'm gonna snap. When that day comes, I'm going down to Billy Bob's Rent-O-Rama and get me the crappiest, rustiest, nastiest POS that will still turn over. I'll max out the no-fault insurance options. When you pull your Pretentiousness-mobile/Slug-Sedan next to the mail hut, I'm gonna line that hunk of junk up, gun the engine for all she's worth and plow that sum-beech right up your tailpipe (having first loosened the brake lines just enough so when I make my token effort to stop, the brakes fail, thus achieving my desired goal of rendering into your vehicle into an abstract work of art while providing me plausible deniability. I did, after all, rent a POS.)

And if you're really unlucky, I'm going to arrange for a semi to have half-unloaded plywood, just so I can get proper hang-time. Beware horns playing "Dixie"...

Adding Insult to Injury

As if on cue, I received my renewal for my apartment insurance, replete with updates to the policy (read: things they don't cover anymore)

You'll never guess what's no longer covered?

Did you say fungus/mold/mildew damage, costs due to related repairs or even related detection/cleaning services?

No fair. You peeked.

My latest online wooing...

I love online dating.

I can always count on it to provide me some amusement when I'm down. The latest in my Inbox was from "Susie" in L.A.

Hi!!! I am glad that you have considered my structure and have decided to choose me from thousand other girls. It is very pleasant for me. I as have considered your structure and would like to learn you on better. Please give me e-mail the address that we could correspond. I shall send you the photo. Or write to me [deletia!] I Shall wait for a prompt reply.

So. Who wants odds she's a Valley Girl from Pasadena?

And she's persistent, too! She wrote before saying "I have considered your structure and it is liking me." I promptly had a long talk with my structure about its activities while I'm at work. We'll be having no more of that.

"Some People Just Don't Never Loin...."

That's one of my favorite Bugs Bunny lines, and it's so apropos here...

I read somewhere that since its opening in April '03, iTunes has sold 350 million tracks. At about a buck a pop, that's a lot of dough for something just 2 years old. Apple's certainly happy, and you'd think the recording industry would have smelled the coffee, the birth of the new paradigm is at hand.

You'd be wrong, of course.

In a classic "kill the golden goose" move, these recording execs, in their infinite wisdom, are considering raising their prices to iTunes and others. They do it, it'll almost certainly push the retail per-track price over that magical $0.99 which, for some reason is a breakpoint in our heads about what we're willing to pay for the latest Britney or Julio Iglesias. Marketing research says so.

Can you just imagine the RIAA nitwits, all scratching their heads when sales drop and people flee back to the nefarious file-sharing back alleys? Why, whatever for?

Idiots.

(Note, I'm referring to studio execs. I continute to await the day artists seize their own digital destiny and start cutting deals with iTunes and the like directly, leaving the RIAA-types in the dust where they belong... I'm already seeing some movement like this on the EDM scene...)

Can You Hear Me Now?

If you have Verizon as your cell phone provider, read this little gem then consider switching. Maybe then they'll get the message... (Me? I use Mr. TrenchcoatMan's... and feel about it the way Churchill felt about democracy: "It's the worst form of government, except for all the others.")

Indiana, No!

Real quick. I just read that Indiana is considering adopting Daylight Savings. This would render Arizona as the last bastion of sensibilty, especially given that Congress is considering extending their chronological meddling even further. The proposed bill would have Daylight Savings 8 months out of the year, and Standard Time 4 months. Standard - ha. They should change the names too. There's no way you can call something on the short end of a 2:1 ratio "Standard".

"What the... hell?" Goes Shopping

Ok, this one might be a little... um, well, let's just say that it might be a little South Parkian and to avoid offending easily offendable sensibilities, I'm going to black text this one. If you wanna read it, just highlight the text below.

So, where were we?

So I was in the mall, doing a little shopping and having had a bite, I went where one might go to do what one does after having consumed food and drink. So I'm standing there, doing my thing, minding my own business, when a fella of nondescript description shows up and begins his own process.

With me? Remember, I did warn you.

After a moment, he starts... well, he starts thrusting his rear to and fro. Not in a major way, but enough to catch that corner of your peripheral vision designed to catch movement. So he's wiggling, gyrating or whatever you want to call it. And my first "What the... hell?" trickles through my mind as I wonder if he's not doing something that might be illegal in some states.

And then they start.

Poot. Poot. Poot. Poot.

Apparently his motion was to encourage... the release of methane into the atmosphere. Cue my second "What the... hell?". And apparently he'd done this before because he didn't as so much bat an eyelash at his activities. That or he's so "secure" with his fellow self-scratching flatulent male brethren that he's perfectly happy to let a few fly in whatever manner the situation calls for.

For fear of meeting him there, I am Never. Ever. eating at Taco Bell again.

Belated Wishes Are Better Than None at All

This goes out to my Best Friend of the Female Persuasion, Dudette. It would have gone out on time if not earlier, but that's what she gets for not cc'ing me on the memo.

Dudette was a bit under... well not under the weather, but when the tale was originally told to me, my reaction was "ow!". Thankfully all is well with her, but as one can never have enough of this sort of thing, heartfelt prayers and positive energies are flowing northward, just to cover the bases. The "It Sucks to Be Us" Club just wouldn't be the same without her.

Hm... though now that I think about it, this is a perfect time to challenge her to a match of Kung Fu(!). I think I might actually have a chance...

The Tax Man Cometh

I did my taxes tonight...

The next clown that tells me I'm not paying my "fair share" is getting clocked upside the head.

That's my rant on the matter, because otherwise you'll be reading this blog entry for days.

The Quill, The Page, We Wreck, Rampage!

New Strong Bad E-mail

A Reprieve from Hell?

Ok, so they didn't hire Harry Potter, just his ne'er do well cousin, Henry.

As of 4:30pm, I have a new shower wall. Looks like "Henry" came in here while I was fetching new antibiotics for the throat infection I picked up from the miasma unleashed when the Tile Towers fell. To be fair, it looks like he ripped out the entire wall section and replaced all of the drywall, tile and grout and did a decent job at that (though he forgot to replace the soap dish, not that I care, never used it anyways).

But, of course, the entire fiasco begs two questions:

1) How quickly would this have been done if I hadn't raised such hell about it?

2) Wouldn't this have been avoided altogether if, when I had repeatedly (this being the operative word) complained about a water stain and "popcorn" peeling off the ceiling above my shower head, which suggested a water leak, they had properly investigated the problem instead of taking the easy was out by just spackling on new popcorn and declaring victory? This is the maintenance version of me complaining about an a leaky radiator hose and the mechanic just adding more water until the hose blows entirely.

Still, the mold has hopefully been sealed away. I'll do my meds, saturation-bomb the domicile with Lysol and begin a search for a new abode...

My Hellhole of a Bathroom

I recently blogged about the subpar "service" I receive at my fine Camden establishement, but even I wasn't expecting the special hell unleashed upon me today. (I'll spin as best I can, but my brain can only convert so much into black humor...)

I was attacked by my shower this morning.

No, really. I was reaching for my bottle of shampoo when I noticed about 4 tiles bulging. I thought to myself, in my best Seinfeldian inner-voice, "Well this can't be good..." and made a mental note to call the maintenance promptly upon their opening. I was rinsing my hair when the tile version of "He's onto us! Make a break for it, boys!" erupted by a cascade of 30+ tiles (and one soapdish) crashing off the wall and into the tub. (At the risk of offending some, it was kinda like the Twin Towers. Once one tile went, the entire thing collapsed.) God or Someone was looking out for me because my only injury in this ceramic storm was a small thump on an (now bruised) ankle. If I had been standing two feet further up, as is my wont when letting hot water loosen stiff back muscles, I very well could have had some broken toes from the soap dish.

My mental note is now an immediate crisis. I call up PropertyManagerWoman (the same one who made the brilliant decision to remove the postal lockers) and relay my tale of woe. Her first question is "How did it happen?" with a tone that smacked of suggesting I had a hand in this. I had to restrain myself from firing back "From taking a sledgehammer to the wall... How do you think it [bleep]ing happened????" I reminded her that I had asked them to check for a water leak from my upstairs neighbors based on them having to repeatedly fix an area above the showerhead where the roof popcorn would fall away, leaving an ugly stain that eventually ate through altogether. She seemed to back off an suggest they'd take care of it.

I got a call this afternoon from PropertyManagerWoman saying they were On Top of This. I'd just have to sacrifice "showers" (sit down baths were ok). I figure they were already working on this. But no, upon my arrival late this evening, the tiles were all there. In fact, more came crashing down, and I suspect even more will. As you can see in the picture, the drywall behind the tiles is rotted and more mold has been unleashed into my environment than in my Ionic Breeze's worst nightmare. My nightmare too, I have dosed up on every prescription and OTC medicine I have to keep my allergies from blowing my head completely off my shoulders. Tonight's gonna be a bitch. If I had any brains, I'd rent a motel. As it is, I'm going to have to go to the gym just to shower for work. Can you f-ing believe it?

Why am I paying these people rent again???

Update: As of 12:30 on this fine Friday, the repairmen are nowhere to be found. Done by today? Yeah, right, if your name is Harry Potter.

Where are you going, Jack?

"To find John Locke..."

If you don't know what I'm talking about, don't find out now. You'll just spoil it for yourself. Wait until the first season of "Lost" comes out on DVD and then run to get it (this means you, L).

If you do know... OMG! Is this show great, or what?

In Case You Were Wondering Where I've Been

Spent a few days down in Miami at the Winter Music Conference. Partied hard (but responsibly!) Sleep schedule was completely inverted. Wore these not-so-young bone out. Wouldn't have had it any other way. Someone I know wrote up a report about his time there (yeah, I know, swiped the pic), posted it for the local mullet-wrapper. Read about it here.

Daisy Dukes From Hell

New Strong Bad email. (The previous two were marginal... plus, that whole Hadn'tPostedInAWhile thing)

Plus, a nice little April Fool's bit.

Meddling with Time Should be Left to the Professionals.

[Doctor's note: Yeah, I've been offline in way too long. First I didn't have anything really rant worthy, I lack L's talent for spinning the most innocuous of events into a proper tale of action & adventure. Then, when I did have something, I simply didn't have time to sit down and write it up. But thanks to the magic of blogspot, I can retro-actively post my rants into their proper timeframes. I'll try to keep up from now on...]

Now, where was I?

Ah, yes. This entry is dedicated to Dudette. Normally I'd just email this to her directly and keep up one of our most treasured traditions. But I figure I'll share it with all of you too.

Ahem.

The onset of April has once again been hallmarked by the Federal Government's semi-annual meddling with my sense of time. Unsatisfied with intruding on every other aspect of my life, they want to impose their mastery of the clock on me as well. And its not even a long standing tradition, don't let them fool about that nonsense about Ben Franklin being its "inventor". He may have thought of the idea, but aside from its usage during WWI, we only embarked upon this bit nonsense during the "energy crisis". Mind you, I kinda like Daylight Savings, if only because I can leave the office with a slice of daylight remaining. But unless we plan on reverting our networked-global-24/7 society back to its agrarian roots, Daylight Savings has long outlived its purpose... which can be said of just about every modern federal program out there.

Fixing What Isn't Broken

My apartment complex is run Camden, the same Camden whose name is plastered on the home park of the Baltimore Orioles (which I'll never go to now. Granted, it's not much of a boycott, but I gots me principles). My apartment complex is also run by Idiots. I don't mean just lacking intelligence, any jackass can pull that off. No, I mean a stream of breathtakingly bad service, each instance begging the question "And I'm paying you people rent because...?"

Their latest bit of stupidity has unnecessarily complicated my life. Not in some dire sense, but if you want to push one of my buttons, make my life just that much more of a hassle without a good reason. In this case, my nearby mail hut used to have these spiffy little lockers in which Mr. Postman could put my various and sundry parcels (I'm a frequenter of Amazon and deepdiscountdvd.com). Its beauty was in its simplicity. Put parcel in locker, leave key in my mailbox and voila!, I could get ready access to my goody whenever my day permitted.

You know where I'm going with this, right?

So you can imagine my displeasure when instead of a key, I get this poorly photocopied note that says a parcel of mine was delivered to the cadre of incompetence. That's it. Not who it's from or any kind of indication what it might be or the like. The lockers are, of course, nowhere to be seen. I had to sacrifice my lunch hour to scurry back there during their bankers hours to retrieve it. While there, I channel for Taz when he asked Bugs, "What for you bury me in the cold cold ground?" by inquiring whose decision (as opposed to "bright idea", I was trying to be nice) it was to remove the lockers and when, pray tell, they might return. Well, DingBat #1 tried to give me some party line about it being a mutual decision, which I wasn't buying. So I finally dig up PropertyManager Woman, who happily informs me that it was HER decision. You see, Camden has been undergoing "beautification" efforts in order to increase the property value (I *pray* in lieu of selling it to someone else) and well, those lockers look rather unseemly and since our poor public sector wasn't willing to pay for new ones, she decided to have them removed entirely.

So there you have it. Aesthetics trumps basic functionality. Fix the parking lot drainage so it's not a lagoon every time it storms? Nah. Fix the drying machines so they don't moan like damned souls? Eh... We'll get around to it. Upgrade the so-called exercise room so you don't feel like you're in some bad remake of Rocky 4 (you know, where he was in Siberia "training"?). Not a chance. But, hey, slap a fresh coat of paint (thus gumming up the keyholes) of the mail boxes in some vain effort to make the place look prettier, and she's Johnny-on-the-spot. (Speaking of such, when said paint was slapped on, we were kindly requested to refrain from getting our mail that Saturday because the painter would be working. Now, I may be wrong, and correct me if I am, but wouldn't there have been a more convenient day, a day when the mail isn't delivered? They must not have been able to find an atheist or Jewish painter...)

Well, I wasn't going to put up with this. Nosiree. I have a note on my door instructing UPS/FedEx and the like that under no circumstances are they to leave any parcel of mine with the front-office boobery for a reason. The Leasing Orifice once lost a $400 piece of electronics of mine and their only dealings with me regarding it was to remind me that they aren't liable for lost packages. (Long story short, I got my money by going to war with UPS and reminding them they were unable to prove that *I* signed for my package... oh, they know not to make that mistake with me again.) In fact, I specifically have a clause in my lease forbidding them to accept my packages. (Should I consider this a violation of lease terms?)

So I go to the post office to deal with the problem at the source. The Nice Postal Man there just had that knowing nod, handed me a form to fill out and said from now on, they'd hold my parcels for me to get, just like UPS & FedEx. Apparently I'm not the first person to lodge this complaint and said Nice Postal Man wasn't too pleased with this move either, for it completely screwed up their "delivery confirmation" system. They're about to inform all Camden residents that they will no longer be dealing with the Den of Dundery.

I may follow suit.