Damnable things

Okay... I don't mind automated menu systems when it comes to calling businesses. I've even designed a few so I understand how in some cases they can be helpful to a business in directing calls. In fact, there are times where I would almost prefer an automated system, for example, if I'm calling the bank to check a balance or a utility to pay a bill. At those times it is convenient for me to call, punch in some numbers on my phone and handle my business briefly and without human interaction. What I HATE, however, are businesses that think they're clever or cute and use automated systems that want you to talk to them.

I can't stand those systems. Invariably, you're going to end up calling those systems at a time when either the ambient noise around you is going to be picked up by the stupid thing and it's going to try to interpret the dog farting as your response, or you're trying to make a quick payment from work or in some other public place where you don't necessarily want to broadcast your account number, pin, social security number, payment amount, etc. or that you were making the payment at all. If you want me to interact with an automated phone system, please do me the courtesy of not treating me like an idiot and trying to make me believe that these dumb things can actually think? I know better and to me they're just aggravating.

I spent a good deal of time yesterday talking to one of these stupid things and it never got me to the right person. I had to call back five different times before I received the service I was requesting.

What irks you?

Get the bread, man! No not the BREAD, the dough!

Dough! Hapless thieves mistake bread for cash
‘Pair of fools’ jailed in Australia after bungled burglary attempt

MELBOURNE, Australia - Two Australian robbers thought they were hauling away a big sack of cash from the Cuckoo Restaurant, but it turned out to be bread rolls.

[...]

During the April Fools Day holdup, Jorgensen grabbed what he believed was a bag with the Cuckoo's daily take of about U.S. $26,000 in cash, but later found it was full of bread rolls, the Victorian County Court heard.

[...]

Judge Roland Williams told the robbers they were a "pair of fools," before sentencing [Donna] Hayes to eight years in prison and [Benjamin] Jorgensen to seven.

Can you just picture how the planning for this heist went?

For the purposes of this re-enactment, the robbers will be played by '70s stoner fiends, Cheech and Chong....

Cheech: C'mon, man, we'll hit up that bakery and get all the bread, man. It's like 25 big ones every day.

Chong: Yeah, man, bread. We need more bread. My sandwich just isn't a sandwich without bread, man. And I make huge sandwiches.

Cheech: No, man, bread. You know? Cash money.

Chong: Oh, bread. Got it, man. But that doesn't explain the mustard in my wallet.

Here's the ironic thing. Hayes, sentenced to eight years in prison, was shot is the ass by Jorgensen, sentenced to seven years. What does that make the moral of the story? Steal a bag of bread rolls and get shot you'll get more prison time than if you steal a bag of bread rolls and shoot someone? Seriously, is a bag of dinner rolls worth seven and eight years in prison?

Don't get me wrong, I definitely think we need to punish criminals, but the punishment also needs to fit the crime. I would think that being shot in the ass and being publicly touted as one of the world's dumbest criminals is punishment a-plenty for Donna Hayes for being an accomplice to the theft of a bag of dinner rolls (valued, I'm sure, at less than $US100).

What was the dumbest thing you ever got caught doing? Was the punishment worth it?

[Author's Note: Okay, so this is pretty much a duplicate of my most recent post at LiveJournal. For the time-being, or until I come up with or until someone suggests something better I'm going to duplicate between the two. I, by no means, expect you to post responses at both places. In fact, where you post your responses will give me a good indication of which blog to maintain. Thanx!!]

Blank Page

Is there anything more frightening to an author than a blank page? Lucky for me I'm not an author or writer. I'm just a hack. Maybe if I'd finished school or taken any sort of classes to hone my skills I'd consider myself a writer, but for the time-being I'm just a hack. None-the-less, I do enjoy writing and I do enjoy a good lively debate. I like the idea that someone could be swayed by words.

Now, this is not my first attempt at keeping a journal or starting a blog. The first was a miserable failure. It took roughly seven years for anyone to show any interest in it and now it's a moot point. The second was also a miserable failure. I wanted to start the second as a way of working out story ideas. I had this crazy idea I could come up with a workable storyline for either a movie, television series or book. As it turns out, I wasn't totally crazy.

I had talked about a crime drama set in and around New Orleans. I'd thought maybe another Law & Order or CSI series (CSI: Big Easy or some such). Say hello to K-Ville. I'd talked about even taking my crime drama to another plane and using a forensics photographer that captured the souls of murder victims in his film and they helped him solve the crimes. It was only a rough idea, but I saw its potential. Apparently the idea of the deceased helping in solving their deaths wasn't totally crazy either. We now have the Ghost Whisperer and TruCalling for a while too....

Anyway, my Ideas blog kind of degenerated into a generic journal type blog and because I suck at keeping journals, it eventually just died a slow agonizing death. Then while working on another job where I suddenly found myself with a stupid amount of time to just fuck-off, I decided to revamp it and started out v2.0 with a new twist, I'd try to really engage the reader... get the reader talking too. It too sucked ass. I had some good articles and tried to spark a little discussion, but short of spamming the hell out of message boards, I just couldn't put together readers to troll through my drivel and make it worth anything. It kind of sputtered and sat idle for about a year.

Then came my latest attempts... I started up a random give-me-money blog to see how crazy online readers really are. Will they just give because someone asks? Apparently not, but I think driving traffic to the site is again the issue. The people I know that might read my crap are typically too intelligent to just give money because I asked for it.

In the interest of discussion, I also tried another discussion Blog. A couple of air personalities at a local radio station found and started reading the journal of some mysterious young woman. Each day came with a new entry and posed new questions. The personalities had a discussion day early in and kept promising another, but I wanted to discuss the journal with other listeners every day. So, I went back to the original journal entries and transcribed them (to make them that much more readable and to provide a place to discuss them). So far no comments.

And so here we are. I've started yet another blog. I don't really have a good reason for it except that Blogger offers the "Next Blog" button where people randomly surfing might come across your blog. For the most part, people have to know about and be seeking your blog at LiveJournal. So for a while anyway, I'm going to maintain both my LJ Blog and this one. Once I get a feel for which is getting more traffic I'll probably only maintain the one, but we'll see how it goes.

Thanks for stopping by, and if you've made it this far, I'd appreciate your opinion. Your opinion on what? Aw hell, I don't care. Anything. Make it interesting enough and I might even run with it as a blog entry and try to get a little discussion going.