Pink plastic flamingo faces extinction – Yahoo! News

They’re fast, but they suck. So I hate them; the institution, not the employees. People gotta live. But they could do better.

I’ve been a customer for many years. I’ve had their high speed internet for about six years. About once a year, they shut off my cable for the night. It’s not a system crash or a line down; those are more frequent. It’s deliberate; they issue a work order and shut off my modem.

Actually, I get a Web page that says, in effect:
Dear Cox Customer, We turned you off. F–k you. HAHAHAHA.

It’s always at least a week after they receive the payment, which they’ve somehow screwed up. It’s always late at night, when maybe I shouldn’t care but I bloodywell do. So I always call, get tech support, and always the same frakin’ story:

Yes, they can see in the computer that they received the payment. But there was a work order, so they can’t turn it back on until customer service says so. That’s not allowed. Yes, they have managers who could do it, but they went home. Which is why they turn people off at 11pm, not 11am. So the manager’s at home eatin’ Cheetos and slappin’ his evil monkey.

Last night I asked the tech guy – Ray – what he would do in my position. Would he just get DSL? He said, “Well I guess I wouldn’t find myself in that position.” Implying that it was my fault, even though I paid the bill and he could see I did, and rules are rules.

Well here’s a new rule, Asshats: You take my money and turn me off, I’m calling the Consumer Protection Dept, the PUC, and the consumer frauds attorney at the DA’s office. Hey – there’s a Superior Ct judge in SB who used to be the consumer frauds guy, and was one of my law school professors. Think he’d remember me? Worth a shot.

Hey Cox, F–k you! HAHAHAHA

From: comments@whitehouse.gov

Date: Oct 28, 2006 10:12 AM
Subject:
To: [me]

On behalf of President Bush, thank you for your correspondence.
We appreciate hearing your views and welcome your suggestions.
The President is committed to continuing our economic progress,
defending our freedom, and upholding our Nation’s deepest values.

Due to the large volume of e-mail received, the White House
cannot respond to every message.  Please visit the White House
website for the most up-to-date information on Presidential
initiatives, current events, and topics of interest to you.
In order to better receive comments from the public, a new system
has been implemented.  In the future please send your comments to
comments@whitehouse.gov.

Thank you again for taking the time to write.

 

One of my favorite musicians, Jennifer Terran, is a Santa Barbara local. But she just got home from a European tour. And here you can see and hear an interview she gave, apparently in Amsterdam. She plays two of her songs too.

The Web site is not in English, but the interview is. Just click the Video link in the right column.

Sweet

“In both parties, a consensus now exists — buttressed by polls — that disaffection with a war grown costly and difficult to manage is the gravest threat to continued Republican rule.”
washingtonpost.com

This is very interesting to watch. Political power uses the Media to soften the psychological resistance of the flock. A better analogy might be a frog in a pot of hot water: If the water is hot when you through him in, he’ll jump out. Heat it gradually, and he’ll sit there and cook.

Now we’re seeing the water heated in the other direction. The frogs are getting used to the idea that the Republicans’ fear-based brainwashing – only we can protect you – we have to fight them there or fight them here – is bullshit. Time for all the froggies still in the pot to make a leap for cooler waters. Right wing reactionary mentality is optional to our survival – just as the war itself was optional – and the GOP is corrupt, so it’s safe to vote for somebody else.

Boing Boing: Getting Out: Your Guide to Leaving America:

Now that habeas corpus and other basic rights, including the right not to be tortured while interrogated, have now been deemed unnecessary, more Americans than ever have been thinking of getting out the door while they still can. Getting Out: Your Guide to Leaving America (Process Books, January 2007) provides an informed consideration for all potential expats: where to go, how to get there, and how to live best outside the U.S.

I’m not seriously thinking of leaving; with or without such a book, that seems monumental. But it has crossed my mind. Maybe what we need is a new New World … Nah, we never learn from our mistakes.

via All That Arises

What we remember
is cold, afraid to leave the bed
while the room is ticking over
like an engine shivering
in thin and blue-black air.

What we remember
is hungry, reading
the morning paper,
waiting to be lifted
by coffee out of death.
And maybe there is bread.

The crows have slept
all night on the crossarm
between the milkglass knobs
in love with nothing.

What we remember
is waiting – a dog
with one blue eye,
in the frigid morning,
cotton stalks looped
with ice, and no wind.

What we remember
is praying, sleepless
all night in the kitchen
chair, drawing worries
with her fingers in
the fine spilt salt.

The crows are finally
awake and gone. The field
is rising from its fog.

Kyle Kimberlin
10.17.2006

Well all I can say is,it’s about time. And we can only hope it won’t be long before American cities get behind our progressive cousins to the north, and finally attend to this matter. It chafes at our national conscience too.

MSNBC.com :

[to Bush] “And yet you can actually claim that you and you alone can protect us from terrorism?

You can’t even recover our dead from the battlefield—the battlefield in an American city—when we’ve given you five years and unlimited funds to do so!

…

Setting aside the fact that your government has done nothing else for those five years but pat yourselves on the back about terror, while waging pointless war on the wrong enemy in Iraq, and waging war on the cherished freedoms in America;

Just on this subject of counter-terrorism, sir, yours is the least competent government, in time of crisis, in this country’s history! “

Therefore, tonight, have we truly become, the inheritors of our American legacy.

For, on this first full day that the Military Commissions Act is in force, we now face what our ancestors faced, at other times of exaggerated crisis and melodramatic fear-mongering:

A government more dangerous to our liberty, than is the enemy it claims to protect us from.

–Keith Olbermann