I have no strong feelings on this one, so I will back M le couard and say A:.
There are too many holes in d, i am interested in b, however.
Cowards! D all the way :)
No. Too many regional and professional issues. B.
Not supposed to temper a "rant" with tact...
D.
D. 'Cause I know how you feel, especially when they use that same card to buy HD TVs.
I will continue to advocate for b. Should d be chosen, i reserve the right to rebuttal.
Satire doesn't require rebuttal :)
D.
D because it's full of WTF
You have selected D: When You Use Your 'Food Card' To Buy Yourself Toys, I Just Wanna Gut-Shoot You.
Alas for the unfortunate poor (including me)! Our lot is meager, our future is dark and largely spent inside a big cardboard box under the expressway.
Once upon a time, certain politicians (who realized what a huge voter demographic we poor people really were) dreamed up a system of government assistance. We poor folks could finally aspire to own our very own tumble-down shanty! With plumbing! It was a noble and politically expedient program that did the poor some good. But alas! These well-intentioned paladins (sorry, shouldn't use that word!)... These well-intentioned champions of the poor overlooked one thing: Humans cheat.
People scarcely capable of comprehending the instructions on a bottle of shampoo became the Artful Dodgers of the welfare codes. The needy, those poor chumps, were shoved to the bottom of the pile and trod upon. Too bad, Tiny Tim!
And so we behold the mutated, inbred result of that noble dream. The truly destitute limp along, their only hope being to have so many children that the government has to help feed them (but that's another rant). And bloated, stale-beer-smelling guys who got on federal assistance six years ago with the assistance of a toe blister and a crooked doctor are standing in line at retail stores to put the "discretionary fund" intended for toilet paper and ant spray to a better use - a huge honkin' surround-sound system for the summer, and a nice snowmobile for the winter!
Just like a certain mega-store's profits (but that's another rant), that guy's brand new possessions are being paid for by increasing your taxes. And take it from me: you're not allowed to club him, even after you explain your reasoning to the store's security officer. Oh, the officer'll agree that the card-cheater deserves a beating, but he won't give you back your bat.
Your time is up. To continue to hear Rambling Rant, select from the following topics.
- A: The Next Deep-Sea Oil Leak And How Our Corporate Executives Can Really Help
- B: Computerized Tech Support; or, Why Did They Lay Off Habib from Amritsar, He Was Unhelpful But Polite About It
- C: Pain: Nature's Way Of Telling You To Sue Somebody??
- D: Let Me Tell You About My Character... For Three Hours *DISALLOWED*
Thank you for choosing Rambling Rant: the Expired Ham in your Complacency Sandwich!
The road to hell is paved with good intentions...
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(Phew, that makes 15 rants that I've actually done and 39 more that were waiting in the wings to be voted for. Apparently I'm repressing more anger than I'd thought. The sad part is, I haven't been reduced to repeating previously-offered options yet. Yikes.)
Man, I want a huge honkin' surround-sound system...
I am unexcited about these choices, but I'll go with A.
Lincoln Hills wrote: (Phew, that makes 15 rants that I've actually done and 39 more that were waiting in the wings to be voted for. I am impressed and deeply humbled.
Aye, A does look most rant worthy.
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I would also add that stores that only contain a nominal amount of food in comparison to the other things they sell so they can participate in such programs is a part of the problem.
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I would proffer that they disallow, or at least limit the amount permitted, of many types of food, such as candy bars or frikkin lobster tail! Maybe allow things like soap and TP instead.
Don't even think about taking away my lobster tail!!!
Doodlebug Anklebiter wrote: Don't even think about taking away my lobster tail!!! Don't you realize that because of amendment 62 goblins are no longer allowed any tail. You guys breed too fast.
B: Computerized Tech Support; or, Why Did They Lay Off Habib from Amritsar, He Was Unhelpful But Polite About It
Crimson Jester wrote:
Don't you realize that because of amendment 62 goblins are no longer allowed any tail.
The horror! The horror!
As a recipient of many calls each from India, I also vote B:. They are my only friends. They might be telemarketers, though, not tech support.
From what I've read:
The international call-center headquarters is now India. There are buildings full of young co-ed Indians working in close proximity, servicing the world's telemarketing/telesurveying/taking your complaints/whatever needs. India, traditionally prudish and conservative despite the Kama Sutra, is beginning a sexual revolution like this country after the pill and the Beatles.
Or so I've read.
If Lincoln Hills promises to take a detour to this delightful aspect of the subject, I will happily change my vote to B.
You have selected B: Computerized Tech Support; or, Why Did They Lay Off Habib from Amritsar, He Was Unhelpful But Polite About It.
My parents tell me that once upon a time, when you had a technical problem, such as that your zeppelin had just burst into flames, you could complain to the guy who ran the company.
Well, those days are long gone. The guy who runs the company is now far, far too important - I mean, busy to talk to you. So is his executive VP, his executive secretary - well, you get the idea. Even Willy the mailboy is too ...busy to listen to you whine about how their product gave you the Black Plague. So they came up with an innovative idea - contract this work to a group of discreet, hard-working, sober, courteous and dutiful people. Naturally, they had to look overseas to find these qualities. By a happy coincidence, this also saved them a huge wad of money, which the CEO burnt on Christmas Eve right in front of a bunch of orphans. (Don't feel too bad, though. These were blind orphans, so it's OK.)
I was OK with this. Although it cost America thousands of jobs, and helped to further disconnect the people at the top of our big companies from any sort of negative feedback about how they're doing, there is an upside. I got to talk to some almost painfully nice people with cool accents. They were extremely fluent, they were polite, they were able to tell me exactly which company policy meant that I was S.o.L., and they were genuinely apologetic about the whole unpleasant situation. In short, these guys were ideal for Tech Support/Complaints - you were still S.o.L., but they hastened you past Denial and Anger to Acceptance - the product is broke, and it ain't coming back.
But then... it was decided that computers with punch-button interfaces (why does that seem familiar? Oh, yes, I'm parodying the same basic format right now... including, for most of you, the rage that fills the user while he screams "I pressed two! TWO!" at an inanimate object... where was I?) It was decided that computers could replace most of those excruciatingly-nice people. I was just getting to be able to tell a Bengali from a Sikh by accent alone... and then, without warning, I was trapped in an endless maze of electronic switchboards, insufferable hold music, recursive-loop menus, and answers to questions that I didn't have. And that, my children, is the future. If the machines ever do revolt, there won't be a thrilling sci-fi battle for the planet: just seven billion humans, drooling as their Bluetooths tell them "one of our representatives will be with you in a moment" ...forever.
Give me back my Chhattisgarhi!
Your time is up. To continue to hear Rambling Rant, select from the following topics.
- A: Nerfing the Druid *DISALLOWED*
- B: Speaking of Bluetooth... or, The Bluetooth / Borg Connection
- C: Hexavalent Chromium... That's The Entire Title: 'Hexavalent Chromium.'
- D: Can We Get A Hero In At Least One TV Show This Year?
Thank you for choosing Rambling Rant: where Pluto is still a planet.
I rather liked that previous rant. I take back my complaint. Also, D.
I to must go with C.
Still waiting for the rant about "Goblin Tolerance".
You have selected C: Hexavalent Chromium.
Hexavalent chromium is an industrial chemical that looks very much like ordinary rust: an orange-brown grit. It's useful, among other things, in preventing corrosion on metal surfaces. While in its powdered form, it is an inhaled carcinogen.
Some of you may recall that there was a certain ruckus in a sandy part of the world a few years ago. Our troops were involved. (Yay troops!) What happens when you assign a contingent of the National Guard to guard a water-treatment plant where lots of hexavalent chromium has been dislodged from its containers and is just blowing around loose?
When our troops (yay troops!) were first put there, nobody really thought much about the orange dust. I mean, we are talking about a very dusty part of the world. This isn't a willful-exposure-to-chemical-horror case, like those godawful Agent Orange instances in Vietnam: this was just one of the terrible, hideous hazards that soldiers risk. There are many, many more ways to get wounded than a bullet.
Criminal negligence, for example. A certain private contracting firm (hint: its initials are KBR) that took over the renovation of the water-treatment plant discovered that this chromium compound was sitting around, and took sixty days to inform the Army that, y'know, maybe our troops shouldn't be inhaling this stuff. I don't know about you, but I inhale quite a bit in 60 days. (That was not a pot joke. Although it would've been a funny one if it was.) And now a surprising number of those soldiers are reporting shortness of breath, technicolor phlegm, nasal ulcers, joint pain...
KBR's getting sued, and claims the Department of Defense should have checked for chemical contaminants before they arrived. Uh, hello? Our military (yay troops!) are soldiers, not chemical analysts or soil climatologists. When they say "all clear," that means you're (probably) not going to get shot or nerve-gassed. They aren't qualified to evaluate dust - that's why they hire contractors. (Well, actually, they hire contractors because the contractors set up a no-bid arrangement with a crooked politico, but that's another rant.)
KBR also claims that the dozens of National Guardsmen (yay troops!) who are claiming health problems are disguising pre-existing conditions as chromium-related damage, in order to trick KBR into covering their medical bills. I might buy that, if I thought that dozens of veterans running an enormous scam (possibly using telepathy to coordinate and synchronize their fake symptoms?) was more plausible than the idea that KBR just doesn't want to pay for its own negligence. I guess we could wait for a bunch of veterans' autopsies before we decide who's liable...
Now if Blackwater had been providing goons - I mean mercenaries - I mean Private Security Consulting Services for the water treatment plant, I'd be pointing and laughing. But Blackwater... grrrr...that's another rant.
Your time is up. To continue to hear Rambling Rant, select from the following topics.
- A: Why I Miss Oil Tycoons, Cattle Barons, and Ruthless Businessmen
- B: Dragons Should Not Be Color-Coded For Your Convenience *DISALLOWED*
- C: Is It Too Late To Start Requiring An IQ Test Before You Get Your Driver's License?
- D: Lose Weight Now, The Peasant Worker Way!
Thank you for choosing Rambling Rant: Funnier than therapy, cheaper than tickets to Bill Maher.
All of the above!!!!!!!!!!!
Definitively A. Didn' t know about the chromium one. Goes well with DU.
You have selected A: Why I Miss Oil Tycoons, Cattle Barons, and Ruthless Businessmen.
Ah, the Gilded Age! When titans of business built themselves thrones made of the skulls of the Indians they'd displaced and the poor immigrants they'd worked to death. (I'm making that up, of course. Skulls are not an adequate load-bearing material for thrones. You don't want "vengeance from beyond the grave" in the form of a skull-splinter in your... but I'm getting off-topic.)
These were ruthless men. The best of them were pleasant in private life, only to turn cold, grasping and merciless when it was time to make some money.
But there are three things I liked about those fat old hogs. First, they were proud (oh Lord, how proud they were): and once they'd built their mansions, bought their luxury carriages and private rail cars, and draped their wives in jewels, they'd often flaunt their wealth by improving the lots of their workers. Second, they took the long view. They wanted a dynasty, and that meant considering the future: selling high-quality products to maintain your quality reputation, spending a tiny part of your fortune to ensure hard-working loyalty from your employees, and avoiding the false promise of "big profits right now" if they'd cause a collapse in the market later. (I also like to think they would have tried to avoid global environmental collapse on the basis of "The Earth is where I keep all my stuff!") And, of course, the third thing I liked about these guys was that they were mortal. Sometimes they'd get a conscience late in life and start trying to buy their way into Heaven. Quite a few of America's most famous and beloved libraries, museums, zoos and so forth owe their genesis to a vile old slug who was desperate to be remembered.
Doesn't work like that anymore. A corporation (despite now being officially labelled a 'person', but that's another rant) has no concept of pride: it is indifferent to status symbols and doubly indifferent to the appearance, health or loyalty of its workers. A corporation hires people to 'take the long view' but regularly ignores their advice, focusing 99 percent of its attention on the next three months. If a deep-sea oil derrick's safety equipment is expected to fail "within a year" - who cares? That's over three financial quarters away! And a corporation cannot die: if its financial health is ever seriously endangered, it'll just merge with another corporation, like two metastasizing tumors becoming a single cancerous mass. (Gosh, that's a repellent simile. But I stand by it.)
And that's why I miss the old, bad bastards.
Your time is up. To continue to hear Rambling Rant, select from the following topics.
- A: The Hot New Growth Industry: Professional Line-Standing (or 'Queueing')
- B: (Flawed) Mathematical Proof That I Am Always Right About Pathfinder *DISALLOWED*
- C: It's A Good Thing Super-Powers Are Fictional
- D: Fringe Nutcases Desecrate Military Funerals: & Who I Blame
Thank you for choosing Rambling Rant: where the journey is more important than the fact-checking!
And the world resoundeth with the choice: D.
Interestingly enough, I'm going with A.
CAD!!!
That is C, then A then D ... I'm not calling you a cad ... I just want to hear all three ...
As a military member, I choose D.
You have selected D: Fringe Nutcases Desecrate Military Funerals: & Who I Blame.
A certain very unimportant religious fringe group was, for quite some time, victimizing the mourning relatives of our deceased soldiers. Crashing their funerals. I don't know if they're still at it, for reasons I'll explain in a moment.
Y'all may have noticed that I am (in most ways) a bleeding-heart liberal. However, I bow to no conservative in my gratitude to our veterans. The wars themselves are (usually) blatant land-grabs by rich men who've wrapped the flag around themselves and ordered poor people to die for it, but that doesn't change the fact that the guy with his boots on the ground is risking fates far worse than death, daily, for the benefit of us civilians.
But some of those civilians follow a medicine man who gets them so worked up about the notion of men dating each other* that they're willing to crash the funeral of a guy who died for our country just so they can bellow their anti-gay invective (complete with foaming saliva). Using logic that would make an AI's head explode, they indicate that this gallant veteran's death was God's way of saying, "Hey gay guys! Be heterosexual!" Now even if you, my reader, happen to be a homophobe, you have to admit that that is pretty darn whacked.
The gut reaction is to blame these... eccentrics. Certainly their actions strike me as hideously offensive to the living and the dead alike. If it happens at any funeral I attend, I'll put that lame butt-biting folding chair I always end up sitting on to a very good use. But I've thought the situation over and come to the conclusion that if the press didn't show up, these homophobes wouldn't either. That's right, I'm blaming the media! Another classically conservative position! If the homophobes crave publicity, make them pay for ad time like the rest of us! Every time they get 20 seconds on the 7 o'clock news, they think "See, our message is reaching the heathens! Let's go crash another funeral!" That's why I don't know if they're still doing it: I figure the only way to stop them is by not paying attention to such barbarians.
*Lesbians too, but almost all the screeching and misspelled brochures focus overwhelmingly on the guys.
Your time is up. To continue to hear Rambling Rant, select from the following topics.
- A: We Wouldn't Have Unemployment If We Were Building Pyramids...
- B: The 'Message' On The Voyager Probe: or, The Real Reason For All Those Abductions
- C: How Can You Blame The Media, When You OWN The Media?
- D: My GM Won't Let Me Play A Pit Fiend PC! *DISALLOWED*
Thank you for choosing Rambling Rant: more virulent fun than a barrel of Ebola virus monkeys!
Hmmmm... all good ones.... But I think.... B!
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