Hyperion-X

Thursday, September 30, 2004

970: Things that Piss Me Off

HyperionX⁹⁷⁰

Things that Piss Me Off (but apparently only me)

Hyperion bitches like he’s on 7 rags at once.

What I don’t understand is: why do people reply to emails and not include the original text in the reply? The only reasons I can possibly think of are A) they like the clean aesthetics of just their words in the email or B) they are too lazy or unaware of how to make it otherwise.

The reason to include the text is obvious: to give the other person a point of reference. Sometimes it takes them several days to respond. Or, sometimes it takes me a while to get to it. Either way, by the time I answer, I have no idea what:

“I didn’t care for it. What did you think?”

is referring to. If they would keep all the conversation in the text of the reply, I could follow along and figure out what the hell they are talking about. Am I the only one who thinks this way? If you answered the phone and I said, “Why did you do that?” you would probably respond with “What the hell are you talking about?”

Who’s with me?

One great thing about Canada is that many of the regular channels show lots of nudity. Some do it during the day, but almost twenty different channels will do it at night. Oddly, up here they have warnings after every commercial break:

“The following program may contain scenes of nudity, sexuality, violence and coarse language. Viewer discretion is advised.”

When you get all 4 I call it the Holy Quatrany (not a word: I know, but it’s a take off of trinity, so don’t hate).

Anyway, the only problem is that the warning says the show “may” contain these things. That’s not good enough. At 4:00 in the morning, if I’m skipping an infomercial of the Magic Bullet and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off in French, I need to know these things will be there. In fact, I will go further. I want to know that the offending items will be in the next segment of show. I don’t think this is too much to ask.

I know I’ve written about this before, but I am already sick of the announcers acting like every show is a must-watch, and god forbid you miss an episode; you should probably commit ritualistic suicide with a snow blower. Seriously: get the fuck over yourselves. (NBC: I’m looking in your direction.) Just announce what’s coming up in a normal tone of voice, and I’m much more willing to watch.

And tell me you’re not sick of Bush and Kerry yet? I don’t care if you’re the richest of Republicans or the gayest of Democrats, these people are overexposed and boring. They don’t have enough to say, so the media searches for ANY story that they can file. (Witness: the mind-numbing four weeks on Kerry’s medals and Bush’s air service. Even if all the allegations on both sides are true, who cares? It’s what they are saying now, baby.)

Worst of all, with all the time the Media spends on these two morons; they could be spending it on me and my campaign! I would be so much more interesting to cover. I wouldn’t be afraid of the press (being smarter than most of them), and wouldn’t hesitate to mock them. And, I’d say what I truly felt, each and every time, and screw the handlers and test-marketing answers. I think the world is so starved for someone who would do this that they’d vote for him no matter what he said. (Well, more or less. Don’t get your hopes up, Perot.)

Okay, this isn’t really something that pisses me off, but I promised to include it in the next HyperionX, and here we are. The other night at dinner Marcellus—an architect--and I (and later Aslan) came up with how women are like architecture. (On the plus side, maybe it will piss you off.)

· If you’re a connoisseur, you admire the beautiful and tight lines in the design

· Measurements (and proportions) matter

· You rarely get out of it as much time/money/effort as you put in, and it always costs more than you expect

· The designs change every time you turn around

· You don’t know how well the building will age (helps to look at the previous work of the architect)

· The structure often looks far different in the light of day and it looks better in pictures than in real life and close up

· The better looking the building, the higher the maintenance

· Location Location Location! (You have to find that right spot or it’s all for naught), and if you’re off by an inch or two you’ve missed the whole project

I hate when stores won’t make things right. A few weeks ago I was at this mega-mart called Canadian Super Store. I bought $220 worth of groceries. I get done right before they closed, and I used to hate customers who weren’t considerate and would stay late, so I hustled out. I got home and reconciled the groceries to the receipt and found they overcharged me on three items. Not a huge amount—less than two dollars total. I didn’t get a chance to go back until the next week’s shopping. I went up to the front counter and explained the situation to the clerk.

She didn’t believe me. She said I couldn’t prove they’d charged me for three puddings when I only got two. As for the two items they just priced wrong, she said the prices were all different now and they had no record.

I tried to stay calm. Normally, this is an effective tool. But as she continued to stonewall me I got more and more irate. It wasn’t just the asinine policy of requiring same day returns (which wouldn’t have been possible) it was how she kept lecturing me on how I should have come back that same night, and how people scam them. I realize people scam stores, but I have been buying $200+ per week in groceries there for months. On a $220 bill I was asking for three small items to be changed. Like it would be worth my time to scam them for that much. Just for customer loyalty they should have made it right.

I had this huge cart—which you have to put a dollar in just to use. (That’s another thing that pisses me off, but I’ll save it for the Canada vs. U.S. column in a few weeks.) The carts at Superstore are ginormously heavy—think Costco or something. I got so angry that I picked up my cart by the handle and spun around twice, building speed as I went. I flung the cart and it went flying like 150 feet in the air. (Seriously: other than when I tipped over a Volkswagen by myself and when I did not sleep with Rosalita Peréz right after her boyfriend dumped her, this might have been the strongest thing I have ever done.)

The carted landed on its side, but forward momentum carried it all the way down the aisle to the pharmacy. I was escorted out and asked not to come back (like I would), and as I drove away I realized my dollar was still in the cart!

Now that pisses me off.

Hyperion
September 30, 2004

Credits
Thanks to Marcellus and Aslan
Thanks to all the stupid people out there who yearn to make my life miserable.

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