Topic: Personal
On Monday, I came to work in the morning to find no computer at my desk. The IT technician had taken it away for rebuilding, and had promised me that it'd be back by Monday. So, I call the help desk, and it being Monday morning, got transferred to their "overflow" answer service, which I think is located in Bangladesh, based on the amount of help I was able to get from them.

Anyways, the technician arrives with my computer at 9am, by which time I was fuming. The man walked into such a tirade as you would not believe. I had sadly lost my normally composed mien, and berated him roundly for several minutes. Then, while he was busy working on my computer, I start to go through my InBox...where I found some health-insurance snafu paperwork. So I call R, and berate him roundly for a minute or two, just to stay on my roll.

I put the phone down, looked at the technician beavering away at the computer (and trying to make himself as small as possible), and said, "You a married man, John?" He replies, "Hell no."

Ah ha ha.

So finally he's finished with the work, and informs me that I needed FMIS installed but he couldn't do it, the FMIS guy has to come do it. I shot him a look - perhaps you know to what type of 'look' I am referring here - and he stepped back away from me, whipped out his Nextel, and says, "I'll call him RIGHT NOW."

Laughing, I said, "Yeah, better him than you, eh?"

His response? "Well, I wouldn't wish you on anybody or anything, but..."

WHAT?

"...when you call the help desk, we all draw straws, and the short straw has to call you back."

I related the story to S, who said, "Is that what happened to R? Did he take one for the team?"

Oh, people think they're so funny...

Topic: Review
How simple stories move me.

Every Cat, by Laura Wenger, as posted on http://www.1000words.net/

Seems as good an idea as any.
Topic: Fun

Japanese businessmen hold a service aimed at fending off viruses and glitches for their computers in a purification ceremony conducted by a Shinto priest according to Shinto rituals at Kanda Myojin shrine in Tokyo January 6, 2004. REUTERS/Haruyoshi Yamaguchi

Topic: Fun
In a rare moment of candor, Washington insiders reveal something you NEVER thought they would!

From San Diego's STAR100.7 radio station site...

Topic: Fun
What happens when you have:

1) nothing to do;

2) a sharp knife;

3) a large lime;

4) a patient cat;

5) too much tequila and

6) it's football season?

Are You Stresse?

"Stress sneaks upon us so easily, that so very often we're not even aware of it when it hits. Take this self-stress test by hitting the link below. You might be surprised as to how stressed out you really are."

This might prove to you that you're needing a vacation.

Topic: Cute

A pony rubs his nose on a cat in the Budakeszi game park near Budapest, Hungary on Wednesday, Jan. 7, 2004, after snow started to fall in the morning hours in some parts of Hungary. (AP Photo / MTI, Mate Nandorfi)

You know in the Lord of the Rings movie, when Elrond's people were leaving Rivendell in droves?

Right.

Would you say, while looking at the emptied Rivendell, that...

"Elves have left the building"?

Topic: Personal

The good-luck bamboo in my office shriveled up & died. Should I be concerned?

Topic: Opinion
Dudes, WTF?

"BAN THE SLAUGHTER OF HORSES FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION
Your help is urgently needed to prevent the continued slaughter of horses!" ----ASPCA advocacy call

Now I love animals, I generally support the ASPCA, but this is a tad...inconsistent bordering on hypocrisy, non? There is nothing anywhere on the ASPCA advocacy site about saving cows or chickens or clams from slaughter, although we eat them also. As I read further on the page, I encountered this passage:

"Americans don't eat horsemeat so it may be a shocking revelation to many people that thousands of horses are slaughtered every year to please the palates of the French, the Belgians and the Japanese." A-HA! Clearly we must save our special, darling, American animals from these aberrant foreigners, who will eat anything.

This suddenly reminds me of the stink run up by that French actress has-been...now what's her name again? a couple of years ago bashing the Koreans for eating dogs: "on November 28, 2001, French actress-turned-activist Bridget Bardot implored South Korea to stop their practice of eating dogs. According to Reuters, she said, "Korea needs to listen to what foreigners say about the eating of dog meat as it harms Korea's image... Though Koreans do not eat their pet dogs, eating dog meat is part of Korean culture." She argues, "Dogs are humans' friends, not animals for food, helping the blind walk, so eating dog meat is like eating humans.""

Okaaaaaaaayyyyy. Clearly the Koreans are inferior and cruel for not aligning their legitimate cultural practices to the newly minted,[yet to Ms Bardot] superior Western way of life.


Why can't these misguided souls just keep their self-satisfied, hypocritical, biased and essentially racist bourgeois morality to themselves instead of constantly trying to stuff it down other culture's throats like so much narcissist, solipsistic foie gras? So what if the Belgians and Japanese eat horseflesh and the Koreans eat dogs? I don't see anyone working up a froth trying to save the clams from cruel consumption in America's clam chowder restaurants.