Some people wind up in their dream jobs. I am not one of them. However, no matter how much I might be annoyed by what I have to do to earn my keep, and sometimes I wish they'd import a sackful of Iranian mullahs to work in there for a week — put the fear of God into them, it would — I am eternally grateful that I don't have to deal with jerks customer inquiries.

And maybe I can strike that <strike> tag:

From there, it descends to "you suck," and farther.

Mere answers won't give them the satisfaction they desire.

I didn't invent this technique, but I recommend it highly. Write back to the offender with the following piece of boilerplate:

Even if it doesn't work, you'll feel better.

A Roseburg, Oregon woman was injured when she crashed her 1971 riding mower into a parked van this week.

In addition to suffering a broken leg, Kirstina Burkhart was written up by police for careless driving and driving without insurance.

Two questions:

1. You need insurance for a riding mower (okay, it was in the street at the time) in Oregon?
   
2. How the heck do you get one of these contraptions to last thirty-five years?
   

(Via Fark.com.)

Seen on the street by Gail:

Sounds like the troll who hangs around under the Belle Isle Bridge.

Notice: This is not the approved method for towing.

Well, maybe for a Volvo.

I link to this purely for its amusement value, and there's plenty of it, what with the bald assertion that there have been "460,000 Additional Motor Vehicle Fatalities Since US Supreme Court Banned School Prayer in 1963." (There's even a graph, just in case you had any doubt.)

Then again, that's a side issue: what this fellow really wants is to get people who shouldn't be driving off the roads entirely. On the face of it, this isn't a bad idea, until you look at the people he thinks shouldn't be driving:

• Anyone who's black;
  
• Anyone who's female.
  

Jalopnik linked to this drivel because, they said:

And, well, the least I can do is to help.

When you're eight years old, you can build a fort and put a "No Gurls Aloud" sign over the entrance.

This isn't quite so impressive when you're forty-four:

I'm assuming this isn't the guy who wrote this.

Let me know when you can redo something that I messed up, okay?

Oh, you can't?

Why am I not surprised?

Addendum: And while we're at it, a note to a (let us hope) soon-to-be-ex-customer: How the hell do we know whether you used the "right" credit card or not? Do I look like the Amazing Fargin' Kreskin?

And to think people get exercised over Al Gore's electric bill.

And some weasels, apparently:

This happened:

I asked a Circuit City staffer about this sort of thing, and was told that they don't have a setup like that, and what's more, sometimes their Web site has lower prices than the stores and "it really pisses off the managers."

Not one but two faxes came in this weekend from something styling itself "Domain Registry Support," demanding a reply within 24 hours. (Cleverly, they sent the faxes 24 hours and 9 minutes apart.) Rather than type in all that crap, I'll point you to Flyte's encounter with these guys from a couple years back. They weren't impressed either:

Well, I have a few .us sites on Ye Olde Blogroll, but I daresay I'm not particularly worried about squatters, and the .com domain here is registered through the spring of 2011. (And yes, my Whois information is public; all else being equal, I prefer to hide in plain sight.)

Just received: Amy Winehouse's Back to Black, arguably the niftiest melding of Sarah Vaughan and Martha Reeves available on CD. If you actually buy the CD, though, be advised that an absurd amount of jewel-case (and disc-surface) real estate is taken up by a fatuous "FBI Warning," an attempt by the RIAA to appear badass. (As always with organizations of this size, they are at best half right.)

I suppose, though, it's a good thing it's the FBI and not the CIA; you let the Agency in on this sort of thing and one day, out of the blue, your iPod playlist shows up in The New York Times.

Quote of the Week contender from Pete Guthier: "You let these idiot legislators start making one thing illegal because it's connected to something else, and the next thing you know, everything is illegal."

Like, for instance, sodium bicarbonate, otherwise known as baking soda:

Logically, a dihydrogen-monoxide ban should be next. There's already plenty of support for it.

(Via Bitter Bitch.)

Someone texts Rita, and then some:

Another reason, I suppose, to hold on to my photo-unready phone for another few years.

Best Buy is being sued by a San Gabriel Valley woman and her mother. It seems that the woman had ordered an in-home repair from Best Buy's Geek Squad unit; when the tech arrived, he was directed to the hardware, while the customer went off to take a shower. When she emerged from her ablutions, she found an unfamiliar cell phone in the bathroom, set to record video.

The woman's younger sister came up with the idea of swiping the chip from the phone. They took it to a retailer and had it installed in another phone, where they discovered the recording of the shower scene. According to the suit, the tech tried to get the chip back from her, offering discounted services as an incentive.

A couple of things bother me about this:

1. Since when does anyone ever get any kind of service discount from Best Buy?

2. I've been a small-g geek long enough to know that when you're working on something important, you don't get distracted by — wow, who's that?

(Via the Consumerist.)

The ever-annoying Joe Francis has announced plans to open a chain of "Girls Gone Wild" theme restaurants.

A word of advice if you're calling for reservations: don't order the crabs.

(Seen at Modestly Yours.)

Not that I have any particular reason to want to go to Renton, Washington, but if I had, it's gone now:

No more lamb fries for you, darlin'.

Any notion I might have had of upgrading my cell phone vanished the moment I read this:

And what's to stop some cheesy marketroid from sending out thousands of the damn things at once? The only thing worse than spam is spam you have to pay for, and air time ain't free, Bunkie.

I sincerely hope these people lose every last bit of their investment, and a few million besides, and that the next time they get ideas this stupid, they put their heads in the oven. It's a far cleaner place than where they are now.

(Via Engadget.)

If you're planning to swipe stuff from the Home Depot, you might consider visiting the Midwest City store, which recently fired four staffers for catching thieves:

One has to assume that this is due to fear of litigation: the company presumably doesn't want to be sued by someone falsely accused. (Or, for that matter, by someone who isn't falsely accused but figures he can impress twelve people who couldn't figure out how to get out of jury duty.) The price of that fear: thieves having free run of the place, and employees catching flak for low loss-prevention scores that they're not allowed to do anything about.

And it's not like there was a whole lot of doubt in this particular case:

Down the street at Circuit City a few months back, a chap was reprimanded for having the temerity to pursue a couple of urchins who were trying to make off with a brace of Xbox 360s.

Is there a solution to this? I don't know. I don't think anyone's quite ready for arming the entire store staff. On the other hand, a trail of dead shoplifters might have some small but measurable deterrent value.

"Why did you shoot at us?"

"You have Avril Lavigne ringtones."

If you're going to blame PayPal's debit-card unit for two consecutive declines — and the abuse you heaped upon our poor, unsuspecting customer-service people indicates that you are — you probably ought not to use that same card again the same day.

Which, by the way, was declined. Again.

Nice work if you can get it:

If these guys ever get out of stir, they have lucrative careers waiting at the Recording Industry Association of America.

(From Freshare via Boondoggled.)

Obviously no one is going to dislodge this guy and his $50 million pants from the Dumbest Farging Lawsuits Ever pantheon, but this could come close:

And they don't mean high-octane stuff, either:

Plaintiffs are evidently ignorant of the fact that almost all the gasoline sold in this state is stored in underground tanks, where the temperature is generally around — wait for it — 60 degrees Fahrenheit.

The papers were filed by lawyer Jona Hefner. I wait with gleeful anticipation for the moment when the judge tells her, "If you're that worried about it, buy your goddamn gas in the morning."

There must be some explanation for this question:

I don't think of myself as particularly creative, but I'm pretty sure I could dispose of the stuff in a non-wasteful manner.

As for the religious stereotype in the title, well, we have a saying down here: if you can find four Baptists together, you can usually find a fifth.

(Via Spitbull.)

Something called Cavalry Portfolio Services, a collection agency with delusions of grandeur, left a message on my machine today for somebody who isn't here and never has been: I assume they saw a similar name in the phone book and decided that yes, this is the woman we're looking for.

And their pitch was one I hadn't heard before: "If you are not [debtor's name] you must hang up." Pause. "By continuing to listen to this call you acknowledge that you are in fact [debtor's name]."

On the off-chance that they might Google themselves:

Dear Cavalry: By reading this article you acknowledge that (1) you are complete and utter tools and (2) you are expected to remit one thousand dollars ($1,000) by cashier's check or money order to me at my address, in partial compensation for wasting my time and for assuming that your feeble excuse for skip tracing somehow equates to actual identification.

I am not a lawyer, nor do I play one on TV, and it's been almost a month since the last time I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express, but I believe this is every bit as enforceable as the crap they put out over the phone.

And he's taking steps to keep it, too:

Which would theoretically make it harder for Zanu-PF to win seats in Parliament, except for this minor detail:

So the ZPP is Aquafina to Robert Mugabe's Pepsi. Downright ingenious, if I say so myself. The only way Mugabe loses this election is if he hires Bob Shrum.

If your package is coming from this firm, you probably should fake an illness and stay home:

During the period specified, I might be at home for a total of seven minutes, max.

Who puts the "cur" in "courier"? She doesn't say, except that it "sounds like an internet speed." Damned hard luck if you don't know your broadband options.

So you carefully divided your order into two different segments and proffered a different credit card for each, reasoning that you were close to being maxed out, but you could still slide this in under the wire.

What are you going to do now that both your cards were declined?

(This isn't exactly the most unheard-of thing I ever heard of, but people who pull stunts like this should be sent to Gitmo and stuffed under the sofa.)

Actually, if he'd been more alert, he'd have been less of a doofus. Grrl Genius Cathryn Michon explains:

Can't be me. I'm not going around L.A. these days, and I can spell.

Who is this knucklehead?

But that's not what makes him a maroon. This is:

Sheesh. Remember when criminals used to have standards?

You know what would be really cool?

If you actually closed the top of that goddamn truck so cardboard boxes and such wouldn't come spinning out of it every time you changed lanes.

But then, you'd be deprived of the joy of watching someone catching the edge of one of them and then schlepping it six miles down the highway, so I suppose that's not part of your plan.

Doesn't exist, not even in the European Union:

No woman? Ever?

Hugh Hefner was not available for comment: I suspect he was at the Grotto with a couple of blondes.

(Via Kathy Shaidle.)

It's not so much that I object to fixing the problems you caused — that is, after all, part of the job description — but it's galling in the extreme to know that you won't suffer any consequences for having caused them.

Yeah, I know. Life isn't fair. Never has been, never will be. But if there's anything to this karma business, somewhere down the line you're going to be spending all your waking hours searching for Purina Weasel Chow.

After all, he has crowbar.

This guy shouldn't be allowed in a parking lot:

Apparently it's not just Bimmers, either:

A '91 Buick? This guy is hard-core and then some. They're going to have to chain him to an AMC Gremlin, drive him halfway up the Dempster Highway, and leave him there.

(Via The Poor Farm.)

Yeah, this ought to work just fine:

Note to defendants: when your own counsel wants out, you're in deep kimchi.

And it gets deeper:

"Go away before someone drops a house on you!"

I am not a lawyer, but I believe this to be the procedural equivalent of "A sphincter says what?"

And it just keeps on getting better:

Which suggests a solution: how about parachuting the three of them into the middle of the Gaza Strip? If finances are tight, they could skip the parachutes.

Rita says this proves her rule:

Someone want to tell this guy?

In recent weeks, as much as half of the linkage accorded to me on Technorati has come from scraper sites, a subset of spam blogs ("splogs") which are explained thusly:

One which perplexed me greatly was Treadmill Reviews and Information, a subdomain under, of all things, a John from Cincinnati message board. The operator basically scrapes everything that mentions the word "treadmill" — including this recent post of mine, which uses the usual "42nd and Treadmill" shorthand to describe my workplace. Obviously it has nothing whatever to do with treadmills, but the splog is just jam-packed with the Google AdSense links you might expect.

Of course, I'm putting this up to see if it gets scraped — which is why I put all the derogatory definitional stuff in the first couple of paragraphs.

It looks like they'll be busy in Azeroth for a while:

To E. M. Zanotti, this explains much:

And there's this possible vulnerability:

I should point out that this doesn't work in reverse: there's no evidence to support "unlucky in love, lucky in delegate selection," which is just as well, because if there were I'd have done at least one keynote speech at a convention by now.

EXTRA CREDIT (10 points): You discover that you know absolutely nothing about multivitamins. Commendably, you seek to remedy this situation. Which of the following scenarios presents you with the best opportunity to do so?

1. While the second-to-last lifeboat is filling up
   
2. During a Senate filibuster
   
3. In the middle of a pit stop at Darlington
   
4. Halfway through a CT scan
   
5. In the drive-through lane at the pharmacy at 5 pm on the day before a holiday
   

Caution: This may or may not be a trick question.

General Motors knew exactly what they were doing when they began producing the Hummer: they were creating a niche vehicle, instantly recognizable — something you can't say of too many of the General's generics — with off-road and rock-hopping capabilities as good as any you could get anywhere. So I have no trouble defending the Hummer.

Some of its owners, maybe not so much:

If he'd left it at that — but no:

No such luck.

And for the coup de grâce:

The curtain of charity descends.

"I am a professional proofreader," she insisted.

There are twenty digits associated with a credit card: sixteen in the number (unless it's American Express), four in the expiration date. Of these twenty, she managed to screw up nine.

And of course she claimed it was our fault because, after all, she is a professional proofreader.

A pox on her. Not a big pox: small will do nicely.

The attitude of some people is "As a matter of fact, I do own this damn road." Brad Neese has an unfortunate encounter with one of them:

He got a picture of one of her gestures: the classic digitus impudicus. It's a shame he couldn't have snapped the tag on her Civic, so we'd have some way to identify the miserable trollop and steer clear of her until such time as either (1) she learns how to drive or (2) she's compressed into an oblate spheroid as she slams into a Jersey barrier during one of her hissy fits.

Really, hasn't everyone in retail or services, at one time or another, wanted to shoot a customer in the backside?

For your daily dose of cognitive dissonance, a wrong turn at Albuquerque, cut and pasted without corrections:

Which might also describe the person who wrote up this story for Channel 7: there are at least four places where I'd be tempted to insert "[sic]" without even seeing the original outline. If I'd written something like that in junior high school, Mrs Muckenfuss would have had me stranded on a trail somewhere.

Still, I feel for Ms Trevino. She's got a wonderfully complex and devious mind, capable of executing the most elaborate plots; simultaneously, she's dismissed as dumb as a post. Now I know how George W. Bush feels after reading editorials.

Australian writer Bob Ellis, apparently wounded by a Tim Blair taunt, actually comes back with this:

Regular readers of these pages will recognize this particular gambit as Playing the Rob Schneider Card. Background, early 2005:

• Patrick Goldstein, in the Los Angeles Times, took a shot at Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo, to the effect that it was "sadly overlooked at Oscar time because apparently nobody had the foresight to invent a category for Best Running Penis Joke Delivered by a Third-Rate Comic."

• Deuce Bigalow star Rob Schneider subsequently took out a full-page ad in Variety attacking Goldstein's credentials: "Well Mr. Goldstein, as far as your snide comments about me and my film not being nominated for an Academy Award, I decided to do some research to find what awards you have won. I went online and found that you have won nothing. Absolutely nothing. No journalistic awards of any kind, Disappointed, I went to the Pulitzer Prize database of past winners and nominees. I though, surely, there must be an omission. I typed in the name Patrick Goldstein and again, zippo — nada." And so forth.
  

Which would have been the end of that, except that six months later, Roger Ebert stepped into the fray:

Were I Bob Ellis, I'd be listening carefully for another shoe to drop. Just in case.

With gas pushing four bucks a gallon and maintenance prices out of sight, you, too, may have to abandon your motor vehicle, as did the owner of an early-Nineties Buick at 42nd and Treadmill Tuesday night. If this should happen to you, the following advice may be helpful:

• Do not draw attention to your plight: pull straight into the space, within the lines if at all possible. Taking up one space is considered merely disrespectful: taking up two spaces is heinous.

• Make arrangements to have the vehicle picked up no later than the following morning, before the actual property owners notice.

• If your vehicle is front-wheel-drive, park with the nose out: this will simplify towing, if necessary.
  

The preceding has been brought to you as a public service.