Archive for the ‘Rants’ Category

July 22nd, 2010

AT&T
This one is just charmingly funny. Someone made a serious booboo at AT&T recently which resulted in every customer getting an email announcing new store openings in the midwest. It’s nice and all that there’s a new store opening in Michigan, but I live in Philadelphia. Oh, okay, wait, there’s another store opening somewhere else I can’t easily get to? La de fuckin’ da. Twitter is abuzz about this snafu. Will AT&T send yet another email apologizing or come up with a more creative way of harassing their customers to apologize for harassing them?

Facebook
Facebook allows you to search for friends by plugging in their email address. Email addresses that aren’t registered with facebook will get email messages telling them that So and So has invited them to Facebook. If you’re already on Facebook, you can link your accounts.

There’s one hitch – you can’t look at the person’s profile without logging into facebook, and if you search for them, well, odds are you’ll get a good couple hundred of results. So here’s the scenario:

1. I have multiple email addresses.
2. I don’t know immediately who this person is, but I can’t view their profile to confirm one way or another
3. Facebook keeps sending me reminders that this person has friended me on their site.
4. I can’t stop this email from sending without blocking all future emails (from people I may in fact want to be friends with for sure).

Now, I don’t arbitrarily have multiple email addresses. I have multiple email addresses for an excellent reason, namely that I use them on different sites and they help me preserve my anonymity. My facebook profile is public in one sense, but I don’t want to link it to say, an old forum account where I was a site administrator for a few years. While all of these profiles are public, they aren’t all tied to me.

What pisses me off is that Facebook doesn’t allow for the possibility of someone wanting to keep their online identities separate. Facebook is arrogant enough to try and force me to connect all of them. I don’t have any desire to do that. I can’t identify who’s trying to friend me on that email, but it doesn’t really matter – I’m pretty sure I don’t want to be friends with that person. Still, there’s no way for me to contact them outside of Facebook, and Facebook won’t let the subject drop and stop emailing me about it.

If I block the Facebook notification emails, I block all emails of that variety, even from people I might know and care about and want to reach out to on my existing account.

Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, Facebook.

March 7th, 2010

In our house, recently, we’ve been discussing the injustices of life, like, why real estate is so crazy inflated in Philadelphia, and why Alex can’t get a little chihuahua right now. Of all of these, however, the most unfair and cruel realities of them all is the tremendous discrepancy in underwear pricing for men and women.

OBSERVE, NON BELIEVERS:

There are several problems with this. keep reading »

February 13th, 2010

Hey, do you like fish? Do you ever order fish at restaurants? Have you ever been asked this question when ordering? We had a server today who asked me, “How do you want your [grilled] fish cooked? Rare?”

No, I don’t want raw fish. Fish, depending on what it is, needs to be cooked differently, and I expect the chef to know that. The first time I was asked this question I sort of stared at my waiter and said, “I don’t understand. Just however the chef would ordinarily prepare it. That’s what I want to shove into my mouth.” keep reading »

February 6th, 2010

We’re about to be hit with this intense storm. I was just at the food store to pick up food for tomorrow if we get snowed in. I live in a major city. Not near a major city, in a major city. I don’t have a car, because I can walk to everything. Because I live in a major city. So what’s perplexing to me is that the shelves were empty. People were squealing into the parking lot and running, running into the food store to pick up all the non-perishable food they could find, and a head of lettuce. No, seriously. Every non-perishable item was gone. And the lettuce. Fuck you guys.

keep reading »

October 7th, 2009

I had originally password protected this because I was afraid people would read this and take away only the fact that I had at one point considered dumping a shit load of bodies in a ravine in South Philly. Then set them on fire. CONTEXT IS SO IMPORTANT. I’m making it public for two three reasons: 1) it’s fucking funny; 2) it’s like reading one of my normal blog entries ON SPEED – I can’t remember exactly why, though it may have been beer and or sleep deprivation; 3) there’s a 75% chance it will earn me a concerned phone call from my mother.

Why is this a common theme for horror movie scenarios? I guess it would be unnerving if you woke up and it was just you and no one else anywhere ever, and you were alone for the rest of your life until you died, the end. I guess. I mean, it doesn’t really horrify me personally, but I can kind of understand why it might be eerie.

I personally have amazing dreams where the city is completely abandoned, and it’s just me running around, exploring alleys and houses and little shops that look like someone just stepped out. I might see something out of the corner of my eye or hear something just behind me, but in those dreams, it’s kind of exciting, not terrifying or horrible. Everything’s in sepia tone, too. In those dreams. keep reading »