…you almost forget use a filter when making coffee.
Details, please?
Excerpt from a recent Food Allergy Alert:
Sunny Lake Trading, Inc. is recalling 10-oz. plastic bags of “Candy” because they contain undeclared peanuts.
Gotta love their marketing scheme. “I’d like to buy some candy, please.”
It reminds me of those long-distance phone companies with names like “The Cheapest One.”
Telemarketer Scum
Yes, the American Teleservices Association is suing over the do-not-call list.
The ATA estimates that the do-not-call list will cost as many as 2 million U.S. telemarketing jobs, wiping out almost a third of its industry.
Sounds like a good start.
Maybe they can get jobs that don’t involve annoying the hell out of people in their own homes.
Spam is a problem because it’s pervasive. There are no limits on how many messages one business can send, and very little in the way of entry barriers. If outside controls (societal, legal, or technological) leave it unchecked, it really can destroy email as a useful means of communication. (Consider getting 500 spams with one order confirmation somewhere in the middle.)
Telemarketing does have limits. Even with recorded messages, it takes time to make the call. There’s usually a limited number of outgoing phone lines. And if they’ve got live people making the calls, they can only make as many calls as they have people – and people need paychecks and space to work.
No, the problem with telemarketing is that it’s invasive. The phone just screams for attention, interrupting whatever you’re doing. You can choose when to check your email, or your postal mailbox, but the telephone wants you to answer it now, and even if you choose not to, it keeps ringing until your answering machine takes the call or the caller gives up.
Telemarketers don’t just try to reach you at your mailbox, front door, or living room. They are the only form of advertising I know of that reaches into the bedroom – even when you’re asleep.
And yet these scumbags are defending their “right” to interrupt you while you’re eating dinner, or reading a book, or watching TV. They want to be able to wake you up when you’re sleeping in on Saturday. If you have a cell phone, they can get you at the grocery store. They can get you on your lunch break. Someone can start jabbering about resort condos while you’re in line for Space Mountain.
That’s not protected speech. It’s harassment.
Borg: The Musical
I dreamed I went to an audition for Borg: The Musical. I swear, it was messed up enough for Something Positive.
Hazard. Trip Hazard.
While the stage hands were setting up for the Alanis Morissette concert last night, we noticed a sign on the stage that looked like this:
As far back as we were sitting, we couldn’t read the words, (although “Caution” was obvious, and since it was next to a bundle of cables and showed an off-balance stick figure, the meaning was clear) but it stayed up during the show, and eventually the cameras caught it in the background, and we could read it.
At that point, or possibly after the end of the song, I leaned over to Katie and remarked, “You know, ‘Trip Hazard’ sounds like a good name for a band. Or maybe an action hero.” She replied: “Can you imagine Trip from Enterprise in a superhero costume?”
And there was much laughter.
Casualties of Retcon
The title comes from a series of articles on The Quarter Bin. The subject is a pair of very literal casualties from the recent mini-series, Titans/Young Justice: Graduation Day. I am speaking of Lilith and Donna Troy.
I was rereading the story yesterday, and I realized the two characters killed were those whose origins had been rewritten so many times that people didn’t know how to write them anymore. In fact, Donna has her own article at the Quarter Bin.
And both of them can be traced back to the post-Crisis decision to move Wonder Woman’s origin forward in time.
The immediate result of this was that Wonder Girl had appeared on the scene several years before Wonder Woman. So (1) she was no longer a teenaged sidekick, just a teenaged hero, and (2) she needed a new explanation for her powers. This was left an open question for a couple of years, then handled in Marv Wolfman and George Perez’ excellent “Who Is Wonder Girl.”
The only problem with that story is that it contradicted Lilith’s origin. Lilith had been an orphan, who could see glimpses of the future, but knew nothing of her own past. Her search for her parents (or at least her mother) served as a series of backup stories in the original Teen Titans series, and was finally concluded when she learned (just months before the Crisis) that she was the daughter of Thia, the sun goddess of the Titans of Greek myth. Unfortunately, Donna’s new origin also involved the Titans of Myth, but Thia had never left — leaving Lilith an orphan again.
The real messing up I lay squarely at the feet of Dan Jurgens and John Byrne (although a healthy amount can be blamed on the editorial policy of killing off any concept whose series has been cancelled — like the Darkstars, whose ranks Donna joined after she lost her own powers). Continue reading
Now I know why they call it “Northern”
Okay, so this may border on TMI, but… Continue reading