Pardon the Interruption

The cat's way out of the bag on this one but it drives me insane every time I see it. If you watch t.v. for even only five minutes, regardless of what station, you've noticed the ridiculous amount of pop-ups that appear on the screen every couple of minutes. Most of them are for shows that you're going to see a commercial for in about six minutes but that doesn't seem to matter to the powers that be. The most egregious example I've seen is on TBS. Not only do their ads take up half the screen, they've now taken to pausing their shows to advertise the Bill Engvall Show. I've never seen the show. Maybe it's a great show. But I'll never watch it just because they've pissed me off so much by freezing the show I'm watching so Bill can do his little spiel. I really want to throw my remote through the t.v. sometimes. I realize it's way too late to do anything about this problem. It's only going to get worse. I just had to get this off my chest. It's a good thing I love to read. Luckily they haven't found a way to put pop-up ads in my books yet.

Rise of the Machines

What the hell is with all these companies that have automated machines call you? I'll pick up the phone and hear "if you wish to speak with a representative, press 1". How's this? If I wish to speak with a representative, I will call you. I understand that there are buisness reasons why companies do this but, honestly, I didn't like any business or economics classes when I was in school. It's bad enough most of these jobs get outsourced. Now they aren't even getting humans to do this crap. Skynet ain't far off people.

Rich People Suck

In one of the rich neighborhoods I have been delivering in there are signs that I find to be a bit offensive. They are for a website that I believe is called Pump to the River. The point of this website, as best as I can discern, is to urge politicians and city planners to pump flood waters into the Mississippi River. If you are not from New Orleans this may not sound like a problem. But it really is. They already have the spillway here open because the river was getting too high. The spillway allows overflow from the river to fill what amounts to acres of barren land, for those that don't know. During Katrina, on top of the levees breaking, the river overflowed at certain points which contributed to the general flooding. So basically these rich assholes want to pump water back into the river to keep themselves from being flooded (the bottom of their little signs read "so we stay dry"). Now, having been through Katrina and having my own property flooded, I would not wish that upon anyone. But if it is going to happen who is in better position to recover quicker than millionaires? There was a plan during the storm or thereafter (not sure when) to redirect the water into a nearby playground and golf course. Of course the rich bastards wanted nothing to do with that. Heaven forbid that their golf course get a little extra water (since water is so bad for grass). Let the people in the poor neighborhoods suffer instead. After all, they are poor because they want to be (yes, there are people stupid enough in this world to actually believe that poor people are allergic to making money). Now, as with every issue, I'm sure there are two sides to this story but for the life of me I can't side with people who would callously let other people suffer just to protect their privileged lifestyles. Maybe money does change people. Maybe it makes them stupid.