You know, there used to be a time before cell phones existed when people took great pains to do two very important things:
a. Keep their noses out of their neighbors’ business, and
b. Keep certain aspects of their personal lives private.
Apparently, this is no longer true. I won’t go into the near-impossibility of keeping most facets of your life a secret when you actually want to, nowadays (technology has made this somewhat problematic if not damned near impossible). However, one would think that some things about most people’s private lives that should be kept secret would remain safely hidden if only cell phones had not become ubiquitous…
…and if the people who insist on using them in a public setting had the same sense you’re likely to find in a brain-damaged Irish Setter.
Showing posts with label Cellphones. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cellphones. Show all posts
Monday, January 30, 2012
Saturday, December 11, 2010
Scene from A Supermarket...
This morning I had reason to do some food shopping at a local ShopRite store. Normally, I don't do the grocery shopping around here, except for the occasional "Ooops! We're all out of X!" kind of shopping, but my Mother is recovering from her knee replacement, and so this duty now falls upon me.
I was armed with a list, and a bad attitude, that left me very little patience for anyone this morning, as this is something I really don't like to do, but hell, I like to eat, too.
So, there I am, looking the douchebag, pushing a shopping cart up and down the isles very carefully following the list (because if I forget something, or get the wrong thing, I have to listen to a symphony of whining and complaining, because I'm a useless retard, you see. Mother doesn't actually come out and say that, but from her demeanor you know she's thinking it. The older she gets, the more aggravating and ungrateful she becomes. Anyways, while I'm re-enacting my Hunter-Gatherer heritage in the modern day, air-conditioned landscape of the supermarket, I caught sight of "Bertha".
Now, I don't know if her name really is "Bertha"; it's just that when I saw this incredibly massive lump of humanity, that's the name that popped into my head for her. She looked like a blob of raw cookie dough on thick, stumpy I-think-you'd-call-them legs. Easily 150 pounds overweight, she had more chins than a Chinese phone book, and she quite possibly might be the only women in the world that could make a cement floor creak. You could hear her thighs rubbing together as she stumped past. I never knew denim could make that kind of sound, or was that heat-resistant. I could have sworn that she might burst into flames from friction at any moment.
Bertha has four children in tow. Two of them, probably 8 or 9 years of age, are the sort one might associate with a Charles Dickens novel; they are dirty, given to outbursts (with especially-foul language for children so young). They are dressed shabbily. The older of the two, a boy, looks the sort who tortures animals for fun, and one day will grow up to be a convicted felon. The second, a girl, appears as if the words "toothpaste" and"dentist" are not to be found in her vocabulary. She has a set of protruding buck teeth that hang over her lower lip, and if you really had to, you could probably open a beer bottle on them.
The two younger children (perhaps 4 or 5 years old), have a hunted appearance. They are sullen, and silent. One is a habitual nose-picker, and the other has the most grotesque birthmark (I should hope it's a birthmark!) that covers the left side of his face from ear to cheekbone. They too are filthy, and appear underfed.
"Bertha", however, is resplendent in that trailer-park-ghetto sort of way; she's got bling. She's got cornrows festooned with multi-colored beads, a gold tooth or two, and has more rings than Saturn. She's also wearing a gold medallion on a chain that reminded me of a hood ornament. The Bluetooth headset hangs from her ear, and she's talking a mile-a-minute, jabbering in the Urban Patois, sprinkled liberally with the word "muthahfuckah". I would say "muthafuckah" and it's variations constituted every third or fourth word in the one side of the conversation that I could hear.
I would see "Bertha" and her herd every few minutes. Perhaps five or six times during my meandering up and down the isles. She's always talking, stopping only occasionally to threaten one of the kids who's misbehaving, or perhaps just to stop for breath. The little kids are riding on the wagon's rails, until she swats them off because, she complains, she "can't push this muthafuckin' cart with your asses hanging all over it." The older boy and girl are breaking packages open as the little brood wanders the market, pilfering food when their...ahem...mother...isn't looking. The smaller boy manages to bring an entire case of apples down when he grabs one from the bottom, spilling them all over the Produce section's floor. He's about to take a bite when he gets slapped across the face. Not because he's stolen something, mind you, but because he's "embarrassed" her in public by making a mess that the store manager might make her pay for.
I run into "Bertha" again at the checkout counter. She is in the next isle. Still talking, still spraying the "muthafuckahs" between short intervals of yelling at her children, who are now into the candy at the register. "Bertha" has $211.00 of groceries. She "pays" for them with Food Stamps, and leaves, while I'm still being "rung up".
My last sight of "Bertha" was in the parking lot, as she drove by in her tricked-out Navigator, complete with what I like to call "Ben-Hur hubcaps"; those chrome monstrosities that have a sort of spiked hub protruding from them, and of course, the counter-rotating food-processor-like blades on the interior of the wheel. I can see the seat-back DVD players...plural. The last sight I get of them as they leave is the nose-picker, his face plastered against the glass of the rear passenger window, and he's got that Thousand Yard Stare that one normally associates with an infantryman in combat.
It struck me, for perhaps the ten-thousandth time this year, that "Bertha" is probably what democrats call "working poor". People who use food stamps, and utilize more social services than one might imagine actually exist, but who somehow manage to afford cellphones, Navigators with DVD players, and enough bling to finance a small country. They're so "poor" that they're grossly obese, their distended bellies the result of too much KFC instead of the ravages of malnutrition.
We have the first generation of "poor" on Planet Earth who are overfed, and suffering from diabetes and food allergies, I'll bet.
The Welfare System in this country no longer exists to help people in need, or to provide for people who cannot do so for themselves; it now subsidizes a lifestyle in which it is no longer necessary to even make an attempt to provide for yourself, and the neglected children you've borne, while you go out and somehow (probably illegally) obtain the means to load yourself up with gold and luxury automobiles.
"Poverty" no longer means deprivation; it's only a relative comparison of obvious material wealth. The "Rich" and the "Poor" all have the same things: automobiles, cellphones, fattening food, cable television, air conditioning. It's just that the "Poor" don't have to work for it, and the "Rich" are compelled to provide it for them by the State.
The problem with all this "Tax Cut" talk in Washington these days isn't that the Rich "have too much". It's that the "Poor" can't be maintained in the lifestyle to which they've become accustomed, complete with SUV's and free food, if the government can't take (steal) enough money away from those who earn it.
Just don't expect that simple truth to be told during the "debate" over the "Bush Tax Cuts", which itself is a serious -- and deliberate -- misnomer.
I was armed with a list, and a bad attitude, that left me very little patience for anyone this morning, as this is something I really don't like to do, but hell, I like to eat, too.
So, there I am, looking the douchebag, pushing a shopping cart up and down the isles very carefully following the list (because if I forget something, or get the wrong thing, I have to listen to a symphony of whining and complaining, because I'm a useless retard, you see. Mother doesn't actually come out and say that, but from her demeanor you know she's thinking it. The older she gets, the more aggravating and ungrateful she becomes. Anyways, while I'm re-enacting my Hunter-Gatherer heritage in the modern day, air-conditioned landscape of the supermarket, I caught sight of "Bertha".
Now, I don't know if her name really is "Bertha"; it's just that when I saw this incredibly massive lump of humanity, that's the name that popped into my head for her. She looked like a blob of raw cookie dough on thick, stumpy I-think-you'd-call-them legs. Easily 150 pounds overweight, she had more chins than a Chinese phone book, and she quite possibly might be the only women in the world that could make a cement floor creak. You could hear her thighs rubbing together as she stumped past. I never knew denim could make that kind of sound, or was that heat-resistant. I could have sworn that she might burst into flames from friction at any moment.
Bertha has four children in tow. Two of them, probably 8 or 9 years of age, are the sort one might associate with a Charles Dickens novel; they are dirty, given to outbursts (with especially-foul language for children so young). They are dressed shabbily. The older of the two, a boy, looks the sort who tortures animals for fun, and one day will grow up to be a convicted felon. The second, a girl, appears as if the words "toothpaste" and"dentist" are not to be found in her vocabulary. She has a set of protruding buck teeth that hang over her lower lip, and if you really had to, you could probably open a beer bottle on them.
The two younger children (perhaps 4 or 5 years old), have a hunted appearance. They are sullen, and silent. One is a habitual nose-picker, and the other has the most grotesque birthmark (I should hope it's a birthmark!) that covers the left side of his face from ear to cheekbone. They too are filthy, and appear underfed.
"Bertha", however, is resplendent in that trailer-park-ghetto sort of way; she's got bling. She's got cornrows festooned with multi-colored beads, a gold tooth or two, and has more rings than Saturn. She's also wearing a gold medallion on a chain that reminded me of a hood ornament. The Bluetooth headset hangs from her ear, and she's talking a mile-a-minute, jabbering in the Urban Patois, sprinkled liberally with the word "muthahfuckah". I would say "muthafuckah" and it's variations constituted every third or fourth word in the one side of the conversation that I could hear.
I would see "Bertha" and her herd every few minutes. Perhaps five or six times during my meandering up and down the isles. She's always talking, stopping only occasionally to threaten one of the kids who's misbehaving, or perhaps just to stop for breath. The little kids are riding on the wagon's rails, until she swats them off because, she complains, she "can't push this muthafuckin' cart with your asses hanging all over it." The older boy and girl are breaking packages open as the little brood wanders the market, pilfering food when their...ahem...mother...isn't looking. The smaller boy manages to bring an entire case of apples down when he grabs one from the bottom, spilling them all over the Produce section's floor. He's about to take a bite when he gets slapped across the face. Not because he's stolen something, mind you, but because he's "embarrassed" her in public by making a mess that the store manager might make her pay for.
I run into "Bertha" again at the checkout counter. She is in the next isle. Still talking, still spraying the "muthafuckahs" between short intervals of yelling at her children, who are now into the candy at the register. "Bertha" has $211.00 of groceries. She "pays" for them with Food Stamps, and leaves, while I'm still being "rung up".
My last sight of "Bertha" was in the parking lot, as she drove by in her tricked-out Navigator, complete with what I like to call "Ben-Hur hubcaps"; those chrome monstrosities that have a sort of spiked hub protruding from them, and of course, the counter-rotating food-processor-like blades on the interior of the wheel. I can see the seat-back DVD players...plural. The last sight I get of them as they leave is the nose-picker, his face plastered against the glass of the rear passenger window, and he's got that Thousand Yard Stare that one normally associates with an infantryman in combat.
It struck me, for perhaps the ten-thousandth time this year, that "Bertha" is probably what democrats call "working poor". People who use food stamps, and utilize more social services than one might imagine actually exist, but who somehow manage to afford cellphones, Navigators with DVD players, and enough bling to finance a small country. They're so "poor" that they're grossly obese, their distended bellies the result of too much KFC instead of the ravages of malnutrition.
We have the first generation of "poor" on Planet Earth who are overfed, and suffering from diabetes and food allergies, I'll bet.
The Welfare System in this country no longer exists to help people in need, or to provide for people who cannot do so for themselves; it now subsidizes a lifestyle in which it is no longer necessary to even make an attempt to provide for yourself, and the neglected children you've borne, while you go out and somehow (probably illegally) obtain the means to load yourself up with gold and luxury automobiles.
"Poverty" no longer means deprivation; it's only a relative comparison of obvious material wealth. The "Rich" and the "Poor" all have the same things: automobiles, cellphones, fattening food, cable television, air conditioning. It's just that the "Poor" don't have to work for it, and the "Rich" are compelled to provide it for them by the State.
The problem with all this "Tax Cut" talk in Washington these days isn't that the Rich "have too much". It's that the "Poor" can't be maintained in the lifestyle to which they've become accustomed, complete with SUV's and free food, if the government can't take (steal) enough money away from those who earn it.
Just don't expect that simple truth to be told during the "debate" over the "Bush Tax Cuts", which itself is a serious -- and deliberate -- misnomer.
Wednesday, July 07, 2010
Why Do We Even Have a Post Office?
The Postal Service wants more money because it's going broke. I don't mind forking over another 2 cents to mail something (because I'm a 21st Century guy, and I actually mail things like...maybe twice a year), but at some point you have to start wondering just why we even have a Post Office at all.
After all, this is an Electronic Age, where e-mail is pretty much free, cell phones, computers and Blackberries a are ubiquitous, and if you're a real geek, you can get a bunch of iPhone Apps that will turn your handy little piece of Electronic Heroin into a lean, mean machine that can do calculus, allow you to watch television, read a book, and maybe even fillet a panda, if you need to. Who needs the anachronistic process of writing an address on an envelope, licking something that tastes like a mixture of those black jelly beans that no one eats and ass, and walking to the mailbox anymore?
Why, it's not as if my mail carrier actually delivers much of anything to my home anymore. I get three bills (gas, electric and cable), and the rest of it is stuff I can most certainly do without; catalogs I never asked for, direct mailings from the local politicians, those Val-U-Pacs full of mostly-useless coupons from local businesses that apparently can't get customers without a coupon for 10% off carpet cleaning on odd-numbered Thursdays only, or without offering a free set of steak knives that always break the first time you use them for every 50 pound bag of World War II-surplus no-name brand dog food you buy (I guess because once the food kills the dog, those knives might come in handy?). Same for my gas and cable bills...mostly ads.
I would guesstimate that for those three actually useful pieces of mail I get every month, I probably get somewhere between four and six pounds of useless paper and cardboard that I never wanted, never asked for, and simply toss away. And even those three useful presents I get are stuffed with all sorts of advertising and completely inane shit, which means the guy who lugs the mail around all day probably has 90% of all that wear and tear on his back thrown away.
Take my electric bill, for example; Con Edison is very thoughtful and sends me a three-page bill every month (it needs to be three pages because two of them are simply a rundown of the ass-rape taxes that the Fed'ral Gubmint and NY State have so thoughtfully put upon my energy use), and the third is taken up by those lovely bar-and-pie graphs giving me -- a complete doofus apparently -- a handy visual aid to show me just exactly how I'm getting the Big Purple Electric Shaft every month.
The other six pages of nonsense, printed in color no less, are devoted to advertisements and public pronouncements...usually about how Con Edison is dedicated to saving the environment, although not by saving trees, it seems, and those "Helpful Hints" like "Turn Out the Lights When you Leave the Room..it saves Energy!". My mother only shouted that at me all my life, Assholes, so lay off. Maybe there are Con Ed customers somewhere who weren't hen-pecked or developing common sense when they were children, and somehow it fell to the Electric Company to fill this void? That's when they aren't hectoring me to donate to some charity, letting me know that I can reach a Customer Service Representative (three lies for the price of one, complete with photo of a model who is just to awesomely gorgeous to work for Con Ed. Sure, entice the lonely, chronic-masturbator-losers out there to call by putting a pretty face on the bill. I wonder how many a day call wanting to talk to The Chick in My Electric Bill?) 24-hours a day, and reminders that you should Run Like Hell if You Smell Gas and Call a Professional, and a friendly reminder that you just might want to stop looking for the source of the mysterious gas odor in your darkened basement with your Zippo lighter aflame.
I can't, for the life of me, figure out where all the catalogs come from. I figured it was from the online services or utility companies that I use selling my address as part of a mailing list. Now, for some reason I can't discern, I get an actual J.C.Penny catalog just about every other week, and it's not the small one, either. I never shop at J.C. Penny. Radio Shack has my address, yessirrreee, and, no--- I didn't give it them. Lilian Vernon? What the fuck am I going to do with a Lilian Vernon catalog? I hate fucking cats, and I don't need a tea cozy, a hand-knitted dick warmer, or a genuine Lebanese Straw doormat with my dog's photograph silk-screened upon it under the caption "Grrrrrreeetings!". I don't have a dog, for one thing, and the only Lebanese anything that will ever enter my house will probably have D-cups, been converted to Christianity, and possessed of absolutely no gag reflex, whatsoever. Donald Trump, would you please stop asking me to feed your slot machines? No, I don't care if you have Rich Little and Dion and the Belmonts playing the Taj this weekend -- I'm not making the trip! And a man with your cash can get a decent wig, already!
I mean, do we really need all this stuff? It seems to me that a Postal Worker is really expending a lot of effort to hand-deliver information that is already on a website somewhere, and he's actually only expensively delivering absolute shyte. Wouldn't it just be cheaper to encourage those still getting a paper bill to use the website (something I'm about to start doing more often), where they can get that info and conduct their business, too? No envelope, no printing costs, no energy wasted shipping bills back and forth, no Lilian Vernon, no Lebanese, no Pizza Hut or Domino's special offers -- Pizza Hut? Dominos? This is New York. Anyone who eats at Pizza Hut when we have the best pizza on the fucking planet should be made into a Lilian Vernon Doormat -- just a Happy Postman who doesn't have to lug all that crap around; forests spared, gasoline saved, fewer trucks on the roads, fewer delays at the airports.
I mean, it's not as if the Post Office actually makes money, anyway. It's a freakin' Federally-protected MONOPOLY ... and it's still broke.
So why does it persist? Why hasn't the Electronic Age eliminated such an organization?
Primarily, because there's still a significant percentage of people in this country who aren't computer literate. These are mostly Old Folks -- who won't oblige us and die already and spare us the expense of supporting them well after their productive value to society is long past. Mostly, they remember FDR fondly (suckers!), and will tell you the tale, ad nauseum, about how they walked to school through five miles of foot-high snow, uphill both ways, without shoes (because it was the Depression, you know), everything cost a nickle (you could get a lung transplant for a nickle back then, it seems), and they never mastered anything more complicated than a rotary telephone. Which they still have. That's when they aren't ruminating upon the virtues of Epsom Salts and Jimmy Stewart, or drifting into Alzheimer's.
These people will need to be accommodated, and worse, they'll need to be accommodated in the manner to which they have been accustomed, which means a pile of dead trees delivered by an overpaid federal employee who collects, sorts and hauls absolute crap all day for a living. Asking these people to adapt automatically encompasses huge problems (not least of which, is their predictable, full-throated menstrual fury about why is it things need to change?), primarily one of expense and convenience; these people might not own a computer or cell phone, wouldn't know how to work one, can't be bothered to learn how, and would probably scream to a Congresscritter who will sponsor a Free-PC-For-Your-About-to-Drop-Dead-Anyday-Great-Gram bill.
Of course, blind people will need paper bills printed in Braille. Accountants will scream for paper hardcopies, and let's not forget the one, true advantage that paper has over a computer -- it never breaks.
The second problem is one of security. I would probably do everything online if it wasn't so ridiculously-easy to hack a computer or cellphone. The average user is dumb as a fucking stump about internet security, and even the security companies themselves routinely have their security breached (mostly by ex-Employees that they've screwed over. They never learn!). Until encryption software becomes user-friendly, hacker-resistant, and cheap for the majority of knuckleheads out there, most will still receive a bill. Even large corporations who can presumably get the best-and-brightest to hack-proof their systems will suffer security breaches (most of them already do, because you can't hire the best-and-brightest through a second-rate service that you've never laid eyes on in Mumbai, even if it is cheaper than hiring Americans).
Of course, we could stimulate the development of such software and systems, if we just made an effort to do so. I don't know why environMENTALists aren't pushing for online bill payment every goddamned day, even above Windmills, Global Warming/Freezing and The Virtues of Hemp , just to save trees and prevent air pollution. They'd be a damned sight more useful in this endeavor, and they'd actually have some things they've never had before --- a point, and an achievable goal.
Naturally, the reason why we still have a Post Office is (everyone together, now!)....Political!
The Post Office is a super-duper federal jobs program for nose-picking dolts who just couldn't qualify for that top-flight janitorial or fry cook job. Post offices employ thousands of unionized people-who-know-how-to-look-busy-when-they're-just-jerking-off, and those jobs are located in Congressional Districts that come with politicians attached to them, like ticks. The unions are often generous with the campaign cash and "volunteers". Closing a Post Office anywhere is an activity akin to suggesting that we pass a decree certifying that blind, three-legged kittens are an excellent source of protein and Vitamin C, and an excellent winter fuel. People will suggest that you be strung up for even daring to say something like that. There have probably been more Presidents assassinated than Post Offices closed, I'd reckon. So long as there's overpaid-and-otherwise-unemployable unionized government douchebags doing a completely-superseded-by-technology job, there will be politicians who will protect them.
Which means someone will have to pay more for a monopoly system that's run like a Chinese fire drill, is always broke, and that fewer and fewer people actually use. Twenty years from now, we'll all have microchips in our heads (or something) that will connect us to the internet and e-mail, and all sorts of other shit, and some dumbass in a blue polyester uniform that hasn't changed since the1950's will still be dropping a shitload of useless paper on my doorstep, and delivering Delinquency Notices to People Who No Longer Live Here. I mean, it's already getting to the point that when someone says "Check the mailbox", they automatically go to the Blackberry to start looking for e-mail. Within a very short span of years it's not entirely out of the realm of possibility that old-fashioned mailboxes will once again become valuable...as antiques.
So, I say let the Post Office have it's two cents now; but someone should just have the balls to finally suggest that, within a decade, we may not need it anymore, and then begin the process of dismantling a quaint reminder of days gone by. The occupation of "Letter Carrier" should soon be going the way of the Barber-Surgeon, Town Crier and Witch Doctor. If someone in a position of authority actually did this sort of thing-- planned the slow demise of the Post Office over time -- it might even serve as a form of economic stimulus; DHL and FedEx already do it better than the Post Office, and the technical problems of securing personal data and networks, and of protecting financial information, would draw a ton of investment money back into the Technology field. Telecommunications would experience new growth. People could be put back to work in the Private Sector, rather than the Public One. The Unions would be struck a death blow, and it might even serve as a model of how the Private sector might eventually obviate the need for many government services altogether, saving the taxpayer billions!
Which is why no one will do it, naturally. And why five years from now when the Post Office isn't even delivering the Lilian Vernon catalog anymore, the price of a First-Class stamp will be $11.95.
After all, this is an Electronic Age, where e-mail is pretty much free, cell phones, computers and Blackberries a are ubiquitous, and if you're a real geek, you can get a bunch of iPhone Apps that will turn your handy little piece of Electronic Heroin into a lean, mean machine that can do calculus, allow you to watch television, read a book, and maybe even fillet a panda, if you need to. Who needs the anachronistic process of writing an address on an envelope, licking something that tastes like a mixture of those black jelly beans that no one eats and ass, and walking to the mailbox anymore?
Why, it's not as if my mail carrier actually delivers much of anything to my home anymore. I get three bills (gas, electric and cable), and the rest of it is stuff I can most certainly do without; catalogs I never asked for, direct mailings from the local politicians, those Val-U-Pacs full of mostly-useless coupons from local businesses that apparently can't get customers without a coupon for 10% off carpet cleaning on odd-numbered Thursdays only, or without offering a free set of steak knives that always break the first time you use them for every 50 pound bag of World War II-surplus no-name brand dog food you buy (I guess because once the food kills the dog, those knives might come in handy?). Same for my gas and cable bills...mostly ads.
I would guesstimate that for those three actually useful pieces of mail I get every month, I probably get somewhere between four and six pounds of useless paper and cardboard that I never wanted, never asked for, and simply toss away. And even those three useful presents I get are stuffed with all sorts of advertising and completely inane shit, which means the guy who lugs the mail around all day probably has 90% of all that wear and tear on his back thrown away.
Take my electric bill, for example; Con Edison is very thoughtful and sends me a three-page bill every month (it needs to be three pages because two of them are simply a rundown of the ass-rape taxes that the Fed'ral Gubmint and NY State have so thoughtfully put upon my energy use), and the third is taken up by those lovely bar-and-pie graphs giving me -- a complete doofus apparently -- a handy visual aid to show me just exactly how I'm getting the Big Purple Electric Shaft every month.
The other six pages of nonsense, printed in color no less, are devoted to advertisements and public pronouncements...usually about how Con Edison is dedicated to saving the environment, although not by saving trees, it seems, and those "Helpful Hints" like "Turn Out the Lights When you Leave the Room..it saves Energy!". My mother only shouted that at me all my life, Assholes, so lay off. Maybe there are Con Ed customers somewhere who weren't hen-pecked or developing common sense when they were children, and somehow it fell to the Electric Company to fill this void? That's when they aren't hectoring me to donate to some charity, letting me know that I can reach a Customer Service Representative (three lies for the price of one, complete with photo of a model who is just to awesomely gorgeous to work for Con Ed. Sure, entice the lonely, chronic-masturbator-losers out there to call by putting a pretty face on the bill. I wonder how many a day call wanting to talk to The Chick in My Electric Bill?) 24-hours a day, and reminders that you should Run Like Hell if You Smell Gas and Call a Professional, and a friendly reminder that you just might want to stop looking for the source of the mysterious gas odor in your darkened basement with your Zippo lighter aflame.
I can't, for the life of me, figure out where all the catalogs come from. I figured it was from the online services or utility companies that I use selling my address as part of a mailing list. Now, for some reason I can't discern, I get an actual J.C.Penny catalog just about every other week, and it's not the small one, either. I never shop at J.C. Penny. Radio Shack has my address, yessirrreee, and, no--- I didn't give it them. Lilian Vernon? What the fuck am I going to do with a Lilian Vernon catalog? I hate fucking cats, and I don't need a tea cozy, a hand-knitted dick warmer, or a genuine Lebanese Straw doormat with my dog's photograph silk-screened upon it under the caption "Grrrrrreeetings!". I don't have a dog, for one thing, and the only Lebanese anything that will ever enter my house will probably have D-cups, been converted to Christianity, and possessed of absolutely no gag reflex, whatsoever. Donald Trump, would you please stop asking me to feed your slot machines? No, I don't care if you have Rich Little and Dion and the Belmonts playing the Taj this weekend -- I'm not making the trip! And a man with your cash can get a decent wig, already!
I mean, do we really need all this stuff? It seems to me that a Postal Worker is really expending a lot of effort to hand-deliver information that is already on a website somewhere, and he's actually only expensively delivering absolute shyte. Wouldn't it just be cheaper to encourage those still getting a paper bill to use the website (something I'm about to start doing more often), where they can get that info and conduct their business, too? No envelope, no printing costs, no energy wasted shipping bills back and forth, no Lilian Vernon, no Lebanese, no Pizza Hut or Domino's special offers -- Pizza Hut? Dominos? This is New York. Anyone who eats at Pizza Hut when we have the best pizza on the fucking planet should be made into a Lilian Vernon Doormat -- just a Happy Postman who doesn't have to lug all that crap around; forests spared, gasoline saved, fewer trucks on the roads, fewer delays at the airports.
I mean, it's not as if the Post Office actually makes money, anyway. It's a freakin' Federally-protected MONOPOLY ... and it's still broke.
So why does it persist? Why hasn't the Electronic Age eliminated such an organization?
Primarily, because there's still a significant percentage of people in this country who aren't computer literate. These are mostly Old Folks -- who won't oblige us and die already and spare us the expense of supporting them well after their productive value to society is long past. Mostly, they remember FDR fondly (suckers!), and will tell you the tale, ad nauseum, about how they walked to school through five miles of foot-high snow, uphill both ways, without shoes (because it was the Depression, you know), everything cost a nickle (you could get a lung transplant for a nickle back then, it seems), and they never mastered anything more complicated than a rotary telephone. Which they still have. That's when they aren't ruminating upon the virtues of Epsom Salts and Jimmy Stewart, or drifting into Alzheimer's.
These people will need to be accommodated, and worse, they'll need to be accommodated in the manner to which they have been accustomed, which means a pile of dead trees delivered by an overpaid federal employee who collects, sorts and hauls absolute crap all day for a living. Asking these people to adapt automatically encompasses huge problems (not least of which, is their predictable, full-throated menstrual fury about why is it things need to change?), primarily one of expense and convenience; these people might not own a computer or cell phone, wouldn't know how to work one, can't be bothered to learn how, and would probably scream to a Congresscritter who will sponsor a Free-PC-For-Your-About-to-Drop-Dead-Anyday-Great-Gram bill.
Of course, blind people will need paper bills printed in Braille. Accountants will scream for paper hardcopies, and let's not forget the one, true advantage that paper has over a computer -- it never breaks.
The second problem is one of security. I would probably do everything online if it wasn't so ridiculously-easy to hack a computer or cellphone. The average user is dumb as a fucking stump about internet security, and even the security companies themselves routinely have their security breached (mostly by ex-Employees that they've screwed over. They never learn!). Until encryption software becomes user-friendly, hacker-resistant, and cheap for the majority of knuckleheads out there, most will still receive a bill. Even large corporations who can presumably get the best-and-brightest to hack-proof their systems will suffer security breaches (most of them already do, because you can't hire the best-and-brightest through a second-rate service that you've never laid eyes on in Mumbai, even if it is cheaper than hiring Americans).
Of course, we could stimulate the development of such software and systems, if we just made an effort to do so. I don't know why environMENTALists aren't pushing for online bill payment every goddamned day, even above Windmills, Global Warming/Freezing and The Virtues of Hemp , just to save trees and prevent air pollution. They'd be a damned sight more useful in this endeavor, and they'd actually have some things they've never had before --- a point, and an achievable goal.
Naturally, the reason why we still have a Post Office is (everyone together, now!)....Political!
The Post Office is a super-duper federal jobs program for nose-picking dolts who just couldn't qualify for that top-flight janitorial or fry cook job. Post offices employ thousands of unionized people-who-know-how-to-look-busy-when-they're-just-jerking-off, and those jobs are located in Congressional Districts that come with politicians attached to them, like ticks. The unions are often generous with the campaign cash and "volunteers". Closing a Post Office anywhere is an activity akin to suggesting that we pass a decree certifying that blind, three-legged kittens are an excellent source of protein and Vitamin C, and an excellent winter fuel. People will suggest that you be strung up for even daring to say something like that. There have probably been more Presidents assassinated than Post Offices closed, I'd reckon. So long as there's overpaid-and-otherwise-unemployable unionized government douchebags doing a completely-superseded-by-technology job, there will be politicians who will protect them.
Which means someone will have to pay more for a monopoly system that's run like a Chinese fire drill, is always broke, and that fewer and fewer people actually use. Twenty years from now, we'll all have microchips in our heads (or something) that will connect us to the internet and e-mail, and all sorts of other shit, and some dumbass in a blue polyester uniform that hasn't changed since the1950's will still be dropping a shitload of useless paper on my doorstep, and delivering Delinquency Notices to People Who No Longer Live Here. I mean, it's already getting to the point that when someone says "Check the mailbox", they automatically go to the Blackberry to start looking for e-mail. Within a very short span of years it's not entirely out of the realm of possibility that old-fashioned mailboxes will once again become valuable...as antiques.
So, I say let the Post Office have it's two cents now; but someone should just have the balls to finally suggest that, within a decade, we may not need it anymore, and then begin the process of dismantling a quaint reminder of days gone by. The occupation of "Letter Carrier" should soon be going the way of the Barber-Surgeon, Town Crier and Witch Doctor. If someone in a position of authority actually did this sort of thing-- planned the slow demise of the Post Office over time -- it might even serve as a form of economic stimulus; DHL and FedEx already do it better than the Post Office, and the technical problems of securing personal data and networks, and of protecting financial information, would draw a ton of investment money back into the Technology field. Telecommunications would experience new growth. People could be put back to work in the Private Sector, rather than the Public One. The Unions would be struck a death blow, and it might even serve as a model of how the Private sector might eventually obviate the need for many government services altogether, saving the taxpayer billions!
Which is why no one will do it, naturally. And why five years from now when the Post Office isn't even delivering the Lilian Vernon catalog anymore, the price of a First-Class stamp will be $11.95.
Monday, October 12, 2009
The Anti-Technologist...
Recently, I had occasion to have to explain myself to some complete strangers who thought I was some sort of three-headed monster. They appeared to regard me as some prehistoric beast, a creature from another time, as out of place in today's world as a brontosaurus would be.
Why? Because I refuse to carry a cell phone.
In fact, I refuse to carry any electronic gadgets at all. No phones, no pagers, no PDA's. You'll never see me Twitter a damned thing (and from what I've seen, the name is apropos: people who 'tweet' are often twits, unable and unwilling to stop living in the immediate. They'll send "I've just stepped in dogshit!" to their friends and then spend hours waiting for responses). You will find no 'productivity tools' or 'mobile communications' devices of much utility around my house, beyond a PC and a cordless phone.
Some think this is strange, but I have a set of specific reasons for living this way. For a start, it's liberating. I used to have a job that required that I never be more than a phone call or page away from someone who may have needed help in correcting a problem. The ability to be contacted at all hours of the day and night came with the job; along with the idea that holidays and weekends didn't exist, and that if you got one off, you were exceedingly fortunate. I carried my cell, my pager and a Blackberry on my belt, and the damned things never stopped ringing, buzzing, hooting, vibrating or otherwise depriving me of sleep and sanity. Sometimes it was a necessary call, but more often than not, it was someone who just wanted to see "what was up" or "what are you doing this weekend", etc, etc, and the idea of an impersonal e-mail or text message was somehow a more productive use of time than a phone call.
Quite frankly, these devices didn't make me "more productive", they simply handcuffed me to my desk, electronically, 24/7.
And that's another thing: these aren't productivity tools. They represent the ability of your employer and co-workers to reach into your private life, your down time, and cajole you to work from home, or worse, to come back to the office at the most inconvenient times. I hate these things mostly because of the sense of intrusion they represent. If I wanted to work at home, I would. If I wanted to commute to work at 11:30 p.m. on a weeknight, I'd have taken the night shift.
The second problem with these things is the ability of anyone, for any (usually stupid) reason to be able to contact you whether you wish to talk to them or not. I would rather avoid most people, until I'm ready to speak to them. Possession of the cell, the 'berry, however, only serves notice to people who will contact you for frivolous reasons to feel perfectly comfortable doing so.
Naturally, you can always turn these things off, and after a while, I did. But, when someone who is determined to annoy you with a blow-by-blow account of how they did nothing worthy of retelling all day is determined to assault your ears, they can be relentless. No answer on the cell? Send a mail. No response to multiple mails? Page him. No response to a page? Call him on the landline.
I can't tell you how many times I have been hailed in multiple formats, multiple times, by someone determined to talk my ear off. I can hear the progression now: ringtone, loud clang of arriving e-mail, Star Trek transporter sound effect for the text message, and finally, the sterile electronic warble of the landline. One after another, literally seconds apart. If you strung the sounds together, you might be able to use them to write some sort of symphony of aggravation.
And now, these phones and gadgets apparently come with a GPS locator in them? Yeah, if people being able to annoy me at whim wasn't bad enough, now I have to worry about people tracking my movements? Get real!
I'm quite happy being incommunicado, you know. I like the idea that I'm not a slave to my electronic accoutrements, and I don't care how strange an unusual you may find this, nor do I care about how this 'isolates' me from the greater society, and even if it means 'The Office' can't contact me to get status reports; it's how I have chosen to live. I rather like it.
Why? Because I refuse to carry a cell phone.
In fact, I refuse to carry any electronic gadgets at all. No phones, no pagers, no PDA's. You'll never see me Twitter a damned thing (and from what I've seen, the name is apropos: people who 'tweet' are often twits, unable and unwilling to stop living in the immediate. They'll send "I've just stepped in dogshit!" to their friends and then spend hours waiting for responses). You will find no 'productivity tools' or 'mobile communications' devices of much utility around my house, beyond a PC and a cordless phone.
Some think this is strange, but I have a set of specific reasons for living this way. For a start, it's liberating. I used to have a job that required that I never be more than a phone call or page away from someone who may have needed help in correcting a problem. The ability to be contacted at all hours of the day and night came with the job; along with the idea that holidays and weekends didn't exist, and that if you got one off, you were exceedingly fortunate. I carried my cell, my pager and a Blackberry on my belt, and the damned things never stopped ringing, buzzing, hooting, vibrating or otherwise depriving me of sleep and sanity. Sometimes it was a necessary call, but more often than not, it was someone who just wanted to see "what was up" or "what are you doing this weekend", etc, etc, and the idea of an impersonal e-mail or text message was somehow a more productive use of time than a phone call.
Quite frankly, these devices didn't make me "more productive", they simply handcuffed me to my desk, electronically, 24/7.
And that's another thing: these aren't productivity tools. They represent the ability of your employer and co-workers to reach into your private life, your down time, and cajole you to work from home, or worse, to come back to the office at the most inconvenient times. I hate these things mostly because of the sense of intrusion they represent. If I wanted to work at home, I would. If I wanted to commute to work at 11:30 p.m. on a weeknight, I'd have taken the night shift.
The second problem with these things is the ability of anyone, for any (usually stupid) reason to be able to contact you whether you wish to talk to them or not. I would rather avoid most people, until I'm ready to speak to them. Possession of the cell, the 'berry, however, only serves notice to people who will contact you for frivolous reasons to feel perfectly comfortable doing so.
Naturally, you can always turn these things off, and after a while, I did. But, when someone who is determined to annoy you with a blow-by-blow account of how they did nothing worthy of retelling all day is determined to assault your ears, they can be relentless. No answer on the cell? Send a mail. No response to multiple mails? Page him. No response to a page? Call him on the landline.
I can't tell you how many times I have been hailed in multiple formats, multiple times, by someone determined to talk my ear off. I can hear the progression now: ringtone, loud clang of arriving e-mail, Star Trek transporter sound effect for the text message, and finally, the sterile electronic warble of the landline. One after another, literally seconds apart. If you strung the sounds together, you might be able to use them to write some sort of symphony of aggravation.
And now, these phones and gadgets apparently come with a GPS locator in them? Yeah, if people being able to annoy me at whim wasn't bad enough, now I have to worry about people tracking my movements? Get real!
I'm quite happy being incommunicado, you know. I like the idea that I'm not a slave to my electronic accoutrements, and I don't care how strange an unusual you may find this, nor do I care about how this 'isolates' me from the greater society, and even if it means 'The Office' can't contact me to get status reports; it's how I have chosen to live. I rather like it.
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