i hate the hilton.

let me back up.

last thursday morning me and mine piled into our family van and pulled away from our home's curb in the direction of fort collins, colorado for my high school's twenty year reunion. the drive from saint louis to fort collins takes between twelve and sixteen hours depending on wether you're riding with me or my father, respectively. using the band-aid removal theory, my intention was to drive straight through. after one hour of smooth sailing we watched the brakelights stack up in front of us which resulted with us sitting for one hour. this was followed by torrential rains, more traffic congestion and then more rains. the only saving grace of this seemingly cursed adventure was the children traveled amazingly well, better than i could even hope for and this without the aid of the portable dvd crutch (which very well may be the reason our kids travel so well).

so instead of arriving at 9pm, as i had intended, we arrived in the fort at 2am (MST). a classmate had offered his carriage house to us. he caveated the offer by saying it was on the tail-end of a renovation, but thought it was far enough along to house my brood. he was going to be gone when we arrived and told me where he kept a key secreted away. i had hoped i would be looking for this key in the late dusk light instead of the moon's, but as i said the trip thus far had been cursed. with everyone sleeping in contorted positions throughout the van, i momentarily sat and looked at the dark house. i got out of the car and went into the backyard. my goal was to find the key and get into the house before a neighbor reported a prowler to 911. my eyes were still adjusting to the dark when i heard a bush move. i turned to find a well-built figure clad in only a pair of shorts rapidly coming at me. as he neared, images of blairwitch entered my mind and i thought i was about to experience the final scene first-hand. he then spoke; "hey. i wish you had called first." it was my friend, and for reasons i won't get into, the lodging wasn't going to work out. i returned to the car and tentatively told marty we needed to get a room somewhere for the night. she silently nodded in understanding and i pulled out in search of some red-eye lodging. at one point during the hotel quest marty said with very succinct and frustrated tones she needed me to find a room, and like right now. there was a time in our relationship such an urgent mandate was a sign of good things to come. our relationship is sadly no longer part of that time. so i amped up my efforts.

i found a ramada for $90 a night. the room was of a nice size, had two beds, free internet, a pool, a fridge and complimentary continental breakfast. but given that we were going to be staying a week, marty wanted to get a nicer room closer to our activities. once we got settled marty went online and price-lined better accommodations. she scored a $220 a night room for $75 a night at the hilton. the next morning we packed up and headed across town for our new digs. hilton hotels are nicely appointed with lavish lobbies and clean rooms. upon checking in the first thing we noticed is that there was no fridge. marty called the front desk. they said they could deliver one at a charge of $10 per day. we needed one so requested it. never-mind that given the length of our stay, we could have purchased a new one at target for the same price and got to keep it in the end.

next i plugged in my laptop to check my mail and couldn't get a connection. i called the front desk for assistance and they said they'd send an 'engineer' up. two dowdy looking twenty-somethings arrived minutes later and i showed them what was happening. one of the two asked if i had yet payed the internet service fee. i said i had not assuming it came with the room. i assumed wrong and was told the fee was $12. i commented that that seemed steep for a week of internet given the availability of free hotspots. the technician corrected me saying the fee was per day and not per stay. i asked him to leave my room.

later that night my folks arrived to watch the kids while we attended an event. i told the children i'd get them an in-house movie for the night and queued it up. the pre-purchase warning screen advised of the $12 charge. $12 doesn't seem like a lot for r-level porn when you're away from home but it somehow felt like a burn for disney. i shrugged the imbalance off and accepted the charge. the next screen informed me $14 dollars had just been billed to my room. that is $12 plus a $2 tax and service fee which was obscurely footnoted in the previous screen.

the next morning i went down to get a coffee and bagel. i was greeted with a neon sign that said breakfast buffet $12.99. no morning coffee. no morning bagel. i stopped at the front desk to ask if i could get a microwave for my room (so i could make oatmeal). i absolutely could ... for a mere $10 a day.

i got back to my room and grabbed a bottle of water sitting on the television. just before i cracked the seal i noticed a piece of cardboard at the top that had in a bright red font, $4.00. below the price in a softer blue text were the words PLEASE ENJOY! i put the bottle back in place, went to the bathroom and scooped a handfull of water out of the toilet. before raising it to my mouth i looked behind the tank checking for a water meter with a dollar sign on it. i didn't see one but figured they could have hidden it behind the drywall. i poured the water back into the commode and then peed in the sink, afraid to use or flush the toilet given the distinct possibility of a hidden flow-meter.

now don't get me wrong about this. i'm far from uptight about spending money, especially when on vacation. in the past, i've laid out upwards of $600/night for a room on a ski mountain. i do believe you get what you pay for and am willing to appropriately compensate service providers. but i also believe one should charge what it costs to accommodate a client. if you can't shoulder basic and what i would say are reasonable requests from your guests, then you should charge more. some of these services routinely cost this business money and some do not thus making some of the added dings definitively frivolous. the net result of this treatment is that not only will i never again stay in the fort collins hilton but i will never stay in any hilton (wether they engage in such nickel and dimery or not) and i will actively evangelize against anyone else staying in them. an honest translation of such evangelism is if ever asked i will say i'm not sure where you should stay but i am certain where you should not stay. i'm told this tactic of repeated ten dollarish thumpings is a main-stay of pricier hotels. i reckon there's some battle-tested psychology that the more affluent appreciate perks when a fee is attached to them (anything someone will give you for free is not worth having you know). and conversely, sub-hundred dollar travelers expect everything inclusive, al a buffet-restaurant hell.

i for one, regardless of price, would like to engage a service and then not have to think about it again so i can focus my thoughts on my leisure or work. this hilton did nothing to improve my experience, all of their energy was spent increasing the size of my bill which on this stay they did succeed in doing but the obvious short-sightedness of their approach has forever lost my patronage and by extension anyone who cares to listen to my opinion, which record has admittedly proven is not all that many. so be it.

let me state again, in the event i have not been clear.

i hate the hilton. i'm not a huge paris fan for that matter either.

i once read that mcdonalds restaurants were designed to make a person want to leave after twenty minutes. something about the molded chairs, brilliant colors, plastic art and the like. i never gave this theory much credit until i saw a target store's effect on my wife. within seven minutes of entering a target marty will need to defecate. and i'm not talking about a subtle sensation that needs answered in the next half hour or so. i'm talking about an urge so swift she grabs waify high school employees by the arm and commands them to direct her to the nearest restroom. i think their new store designs, which place the bathrooms up front by the checkouts, are in direct response to marty and others like her.

i on occasion get the feeling that having a website may have run its course, then i get to post some cherry life detail (about someone who is not me), like how target's color scheme makes my wife's sphincter go limp and i wonder what i'd do without such a viable and diverse platform.

a guy at work showed me the above ad which he found in a 1978 issue of national lampoon. if you own one of these shirts, bumper stickers or bags, you should email me right now because i'm paying a grotesque amount of money for one i can call my own. note: low-rent substitutions will not suffice.

spinning through this rag it's bizarre to see many domain-less advertisements. i can't help but wonder what i would be doing for a living if i was 35 in 1978 instead of 2004. the other noteworthy aspect of leafing through this is the commercial space is way funnier than the humor magazine's actual crafted content, by today's standards at least. allow me to expound:

---

[click to enlarge]

is that jeff goldblum?
it seems an unfortunate side effect of this in dash sparkomatic is that it causes your head to begin morphing into that of a common housefly. that and dressing like an aspiring adult film star. on studying this scene i'm thinking mr. reams here may want to shag his ass out of dodge in that mag-heavy firebird because i don't see the natives being too warm and fuzzy to a guy with huge, white, compound eyes, especially one wearing that bombardier jacket.

---

[click to enlarge]

i'd like to join your hell's angel club ... please
i can't tell you how much i'd like one of these. but i also couldn't tell you about the black and blue beating i'd get if i showed up to work riding it. no worries though given my super-secret and uber-effective self-defense. although that might not save me from dodging the nickname CHAPPY.

---

[click to enlarge]

i kind of miss the big silver dials
so we all know i have one of these. and i recently added one of these. just last night i was trying to explain the ipod/henry kloss setup to my father and he just kind of stood there blinking, wanting to understand, trying to comprehend but because he came from such a different school we weren't really firing on all cylinders. but, you'll never find me to be too scathing on this front because as e-love points out i'm closer to 70 year's old than i am to my birth which means i'm just a few birthdays from the doddering phase of my own life.

---

[click to enlarge]

they got everyone but gopher
now i bet you never knew that tom sellek, dana plato and jacques cousteau posed for an ad together. and if you think you're spying ron howard up on the gangplank, i would say you have a keen eye (this is obviously ron in one of his earlier directorial cameos). one would think with all this star power you could leave the cool-ass diving bell back in the shop but camel has never been one to pull a punch when it came to their advertising. i mean if it weren't for the diving bell, i wouldn't have a smoke dangling from my mouth as i type these words. to recap ... no diving bell ... no sale ... diving bell ... i got an opened carton on top of the fridge. and this is 25 years after the ad initially ran. i'm going to call that a well spent advertising dollar.

---

i am starting a business. i'm going to be a Nula. to answer your next question, a Nula is a naked doula. and, if you don't know what a doula is, it is someone who helps a woman have a baby.

why does the doula have to be naked? well, simply because the woman having the baby is naked, or should be naked at least. and why should this naked woman have to be surrounded by a bunch of folks who are dressed. i strongly believe everyone in a delivery room should be naked and this is my contribution to this missive. i will show up at anyone's delivery, undress in the bathroom, walk out and say "now let's have us a baby" while rubbing my hands together excitedly. this is the service i will provide.

and lucky for me i have two friends days from having a baby. guess that do-it-yourself brazilian waxing kit isn't going to go to waste after all. only question is will jenn or tracy get to see the goods first.

i recently heard a commercial advertising a new product, the totally silent tampon wrapper or as they put it 'you would need bionic hearing to know this tampon was being opened.'

3 seconds after hearing this i thought ...
'oh lord, you've got to be kidding me. what next?'

42 seconds after hearing this i thought ...
'but wait a minute. is this akin to plopping in the toilet. i know some people can't drop their payload if others are in earshot and do things like hold it to the point of discomfiture or padding the water with a few squares in attempt to absorb the sound (and we all know that's only about a 50-50). is announcing to others in the room that your endometrial lining has begun sloughing from your uterine walls equally embarrassing? i can see wanting to avoid advertising that.'

2 minutes after hearing this i thought ...
'i just don't know. in some respects it seems like it would be a far more embarrassing admission but i've never gone through with it so cannot say. must begin asking women if menstruation is embarassing.'

2 hours after hearing this ...
'i wish i had something that required a totally silent thing that someone needed bionic hearing to hear me using.'

1 day after.
'i never get any cool stuff.'

scientific footnote: i have always likened the sloughing of the endometrial lining to large shards of an iceberg sliding into the water even though i know that the female version must be a much more gelatinous affair but i just can't come up with a better comparison. and, don't get me wrong, i'm thankful each and every day for not having a better something to visualize this against.

everytime i turn around this week, i'm hearing someone talking about wal-mart. not wanting to get left behind, yet again, i thought i'd throw my wal-mart experience into the ring, even though it's not exactly my experience.

me at wal-mart, pah-leeze.

wednesday night i drove a shiny new honda odyssey home. it started out with 5 miles on the odometer and ended up with 30 by the time i backed it into the garage. i know that the car is for marty and most would think that she would have been jonsin' to drive it but she was afraid of wrecking it pulling onto the busy road in front of the dealership and how sucky would that be. so i got the honors of driving my/marty's/our first brand new automobile off the lot.

now, how marty got this car is an interesting story. she researches everything to death and in her studies she learned of this technique of purchasing a car over the internet. she sent an email to every honda dealer within 100 miles and basically said, i'm buying a car, this car, this week and am looking for who will give me the best deal. she was worried that no one would respond for a number of unforeseen reasons. well she worried for naught because they not only responded but they were climbing over one another to get her in their showroom. one guy offered this. the next guy offered this plus this. they ratted one another out on available deals going on this month until one guy ultimately said, i'll beat any offer you get. well all right then.

now unfortunately our good fortune hit a wall. and that wall was we were looking to purchase the most sought after car of this type on the market. additionally it is year end so the deals were there. our ultimate challenge was finding someone who could keep a 2003 odyssey on their lot for more than three hours let alone finding a salesman who will come down on their price. so in the end we got partially screwed and had to buy one that was on a tractor trailer en route. when cars are selling in this manner, it's hard to get dealers to budge. why the hell would they. but this scenario aside, the internet deal has legs, as the motley fool claims, and if you're in the market, i'd recommend considering such a strategy in your process.

bella spent the weekend at the betty ford clinic (mom's house). we were to drive out on sunday to pick her up and have easter dinner with the folks. my mom called early sunday morning to say that bella was having asthma attacks and her medicine was empty. this was ok because we had dropped the prescription off the day before. this was bad because our neighborhood pharmacy was closed on easter sunday.

the health of my child is the only thing that could make me pass through the doors of a walgreens, especially on a holiday (*). i felt like gilbert grape at the super-mart. did you know they sell picture frames at walgreens? how about sporting equipment? and, if you ever need gourmet pasta made in a microwave they'll hook you up there as well.

while marty got the prescription filled i checked to see if they were carrying the penis numbing condoms yet. it's not that i need them or would use them it's just that i feel this is an exciting step in man's progress. they don't stock them though. kites, yes. penis-numbing condoms, no.

* i not only boycott walgreens, i also boycott shopping at places that are open on holidays. these people should be home with their families, friends or laying around watching carter country marathons on cable. i still remember when everything was closed on sundays, the grocery, target, the mall, everything. i'd like to see us go back to this for the sake of our communities. our society is lacking a social element, not consumeristic greed.

my dad was selling a car on autoTrader.com. he quickly got an inquiry from a guy in africa saying he wanted to buy it. the guy said he was going to send my dad a check for more than double the cost of the car and asked that my father forward the excess funds to the company that was going to ship the car to africa. while a bit of a pain in the ass, my dad agreed happy to get a buyer. so africa-guy sent a cashier's check for $8,000 (4k over the cost of the car) and asked my dad to wire the extra jack to the delivery people. now something i failed to mention is that every time dad talked to this guy he (the guy) used one of those operator assistance services where he types his messages and a third party voices them to the other person. the guy cited a speech impediment in explaining the reason, a touch bizarre, but not a deal-breaker. my dad agreed and the cashier's check came but looked a little off in ways i won't get into, it just looked wierd. but it was a cashiers check all the same, essentially legal tender, so pops deposited it but asked the bank to notify him after it cleared because it looked kinda funky. they called two days later and said it was a fraudulent document.

dad spoke to the fraud units of the fbi and secret service to report the situation. they asked him to forward any further correspondence their way. so my dad, emailed the guy, said he got the check and what should he do next. the guy replied and said to wire the extra jack to such and such company in atlanta or somewhere. my dad said he would do it the next day by 3pm and then forwarded all of this information to the coppers.

the authorities did not do anything with the information in the window my dad gave them (3pm next day). my father obviously didn't wire the cash and was working towards getting the car re-listed and for the most part forgot about it. forgot until he got a call at 2:30 in the morning from the guy (sans his operator assistance) asking where his money was. after taking a moment to ponder the gargantuan balls on the dude my father asked him where a cashable check was. the guy then got haughty with my dad who simply cut him off to ask what happened to his debilitating speech impediment and hung up.

my father later asked the feds why they didn't do anything with the information he sent them and they apologized for the lack of response but unfortunately get thousands of these a day and don't get to all of them. thousands a day. amazing. abso-bloody-lutely amazing.

i mentioned earlier that a new super mall opened in saint louis. while i don't usually commit cycles to mall happenings, this one had special import in that it brought an apple store to saint lou. another goodish effect of this opening is that all the other respectable malls got face lifts and new stores were introduced to the market to keep shoppers tantalized given the new player in town. our snob mall even got a tiffany's, which is great because i obviously do a lot of business at tiffany's.

our prior alpha mall got a, brace yourself, cheesecake factory. like the apple store, this is our first. so last friday night while out with elove and dr j we decided to give it a tryst. we swung by at 9pm figuring that most people would have eaten by then. i think most had but i got to make a new facial expression when the hostess looked at me and said it would be two, possibly two and a half hours for a table. so it appears you have to make a reservation and then go eat somewhere else and just about when you're ready to eat again, a table may, possibly, be available for you at the cheesecake factory.

two and a half hours?!?! it would take me two and a half hours to list the things i could achieve in two and a half hours. and it was 9pm! i don't even think they were open two and half hours from then. how pissed would you be if you sat around all that time and they would just call your name to say that the kitchen is closed and they were going home but if you put your name in they may, may possibly, be able to seat you by 4pm the following day. she didn't even laugh demonically or scoff or mock me when saying this. two and a half hours! two and a half hours my ass.

so bookpimp was moaning the other day about this.

for me this is is not a sign of the apocalypse but rather simply a long overdue measure. to me, eating the crust on bread is like eating the rind of an orange or the wrapper of a candy bar. just cuz it's there doesn't necessarily dictate that it's meant to be ingested.

now something i do hate is our society's neurosis about convenience because if truly analyzed it is not so much about time saving as it is about sheer laziness. from yogurt in a tube to peanut butter and jelly mixed in a squeeze bottle there just seems to be no end. and given this i'm wondering why the hell i'm still asked to apply my salt separately from my pepper.

the sad thing is you know some greedy-ass company somewhere has actually looked at this. can you in any way imagine dedicating your professional life to creating a vehicle that would allow the morton folks to combine the salt and pepper together. although challenges would exist because the very fine salt keeps moving to the bottom, damn it and then when you tip it to shake something out you get mostly pepper but when upside down that wily salt races to the top and when it gets there comes out more rapidly than the pepper. damn the constantly moving salt. i'd love to be that guy. after reporting that it looked like it just wasn't going to work because the salt is finer and heavier and my boss would fly into a rage. "dammit dearmitt, cannot is not an option. won't work is unacceptable. you WILL figure out how to make our Sepper product work. we cannot expect people to just continue to pass salt AND pepper shakers up and down the dinner table. it's un-american. and i won't have it. not on my watch by god and so help us and get back to work dearmitt you sniveling little nay-sayer!"

i'd quit that job quick and start working on my own dream-child; the odorless bowel movement in a tube for when you just don't have to go. and you know i'm all about co-branding this with the handi-wipe folks and while i'm at it i'll hit up those waterless hand-cleanser people and i'm sure someone could figure out how to package it all up in a convenient, pocket sized, recyclable aerodynamic piece of belt-wear.

so friday was the grand opening of the new super mall for saint louis. wanna know how big a deal it was? vern from trading spaces was making an appearance.

saturday morning was the big unveiling our very own apple store in said mall. you know what there is a big difference between? soccer moms who make an event of going to the new super mall and geeks who go to pay homage to a particular brand of computer the day there first local store opens.

earlier in the week man who screams like woman (MWSLW) asked if i was going. sure. you want to go together? sure. ok, i'll meet you at 6. for those not reading the news, this would be four full hours before the doors were to be opened. but, if you wanted a shirt (to the first 1000) you best get their at 6.

since i could make my very own shirt in the same 4 hours, i elected to not join MWSLW. when i arrived shortly before they opened the doors there was a line. there was a line so long that it went down the mall and wrapped around multiple potted trees and lengths of glass handrails blocking the way of the hustling mall-goers. in trying to get through the mass they would anxiously ask what all the ruckus was about. new apple store. what's an apple store? apple is a computer company. hmm, what are they giving away. well, shirts, but that's not why everyone is standing in line. well why then. ... there's a reason these two groups of people don't mix by choice. by the end of my wait i was simply saying "if you gotta ask, i can't explain."

and, by the way, i did get a shirt. i'm wearing it right now. have been since i got it. the next time you see me, i'll still be wearing it. i shower in my new shirt. i mean, i did wait in line and talk to all those silly humans after all. i earned this shirt.

sorry, you'll have to forgive me because i know it's old news but it happened while i was away and i must speak to the sony music protection debacle (which i was moaning about back on 04.16.02). let me just take a moment to say HAAAA HAAAA AAAAHHH HAAAA HAAAAA (gasp for breath) BAAAA HAAAA AAAAHHH HAAAA HAAAAA.

keep up your ground-breaking and bullet-proof innovations sony because you WILL win. we all know it.

have you heard the latest? in attempt to quell the music sharing revolution, music companies are now selling cd's that not only won't play on a computer but will, by design, actually crash the computer if attempted ... like halting a computer mid-processing is some innocuous and meaningless matter.

before today i kept my napster, limewire, morpheus and other music sharing avenues to a moderate minimum before, out of respect of the abuse factor. it is now my intention to download every song sony music has ever produced and make it easily and readily available for any and all who may be so inclined to do the same. and if those dollar whores at sony and the other record companies think that the geeks on this planet will not break, crack, destroy and annihilate any safeguards they may take, they are thicker than the prophylactic measures they employ.

crash _my_ computer in the name of your profit margin. yeah, right. bite me sony.

I saw a borders bookstore while out tonight and was thrown into another ill-will fest over those destructive book whores, which is negating my ability to think of anything jovial or perky. Sorry. Hate is all consuming.

The best bookseller in all of St. Louis for many years has been a place called Library Ltd. They sported a comprehensive and diverse collection, greatly knowledgeable staff, comfortable environs and premium location. A few years ago the owner sold the place to Borders. The new regime promised the community that not a thing would change through this transaction, right down to the name. One month later, hard to find and unique books began being replaced with more commonplace selections. Six months after that the Library Ltd sign came down and the shiny white Borders insignia went up. Today I swung by to pick up a few magazines and a novel only to be greeted by an empty building with a hand scrawled sign that read, "To serve you better we've moved! Please visit our new location in strip mall hell three miles away."

So to recap, in moving into my neighborhood and in attempt to service me better Borders gutted a respectable book collection, turned a comfortable walk and easier bike ride into a car trip and evolved the best book retailer in the metro area into nothing more than another hyper-mall boutique. Borders, you can go to hell.

did you hear about the hooters employee who won a company contest for selling the most beer? she was under the impression, from the company, that the grand prize was a Toyota car but when she was presented with her spoils it turned out to be a "toy Yoda," the original star wars munchkin. And, lo and behold hooters finds themselves embroiled in yet another lawsuit.

now what i ask is what makes a company think they can deceive and fool their employee and customer base in so many ways? well, if you've ever been to a hooters i reckon you know the answer.

I ran into a website for a clothier and their motto reads "happy clothes for happy kids". Talk about getting a jump on breaking humans into thinking that their well being and emotional fortitude is encapsulated in a shiny and crisp garment specifically from their storehouse. I'm rarely offended, and am not here, but if I were more offendable, this marketing campaign may have sent me into a raving fit.

I just sent them an email stating that I am currently constipated and wondered if they had something in a clam digger jumpsuit, taupe preferably, that could resolve my discomfiture.

I think bell has finally gotten their act together. Some may recall my previous tirade(s) regarding how they treated me when I called them and wanted to give them my money. After they said they would be at my house between 8am and 10pm on three different occasions and never showed up, I decided to go with another company.

Since then, every few months I get a phone call from some hyper-perky girl named Becky or the such inquiring as to the status of my pending order and wondered if it had been installed yet. No. Do I still have interest in it? Sure. What day will work for you? You pick. She picks some random date three weeks in the future? I'll be here. Ok, and thanks for choosing southwestern bell as your internet service provider. Ok.

I then tell Marty to clear out on that day or at the least to not answer the door. I initially justified this arguably unethical behavior as payback for the three times they left me hanging. The fourth and fifth times were questionable and I've yet to see if we will rank a sixth time, but I'm fearful of making the right decision because there is something oh-so satisfying about that yellow "Sorry we missed you sticker" on the door when I get home from work. Some people call it pettiness, I call it retribution heroin.

I feel that yesterday's log entry may not have adequately conveyed my distaste for ads, which is to simply say I thought of more to vent about on the matter. To expound, I loathe all forms of advertisement be it junk mail, cold calls, commercials, spam, billboards, car magnets, sign yards, plane banners, t-shirts, bar cups, door flyers, bumper stickers and yes, even free mousepads.

I make two exceptions to the above credo. First, Times Square does advertising right. If you are going to do something annoying, do it huge, phenomenally huge. I want the sky obstructed from view and my head to have to pan left to right to take it all in because as my pal e-love says, "enough of anything is funny." Granted when he said that he was referring to biting the backs off of Easter peeps and sticking them all over someone's car. What can I say, I ran with it.

The second ad I will turn the other cheek for comes to me about twice a year. The book of the month club (BOMC) is solely responsible for about 1/5 of all the works in my library. And, they're nice hardbound and trade paperback's, not those low-rent consumer rags. Their plan is simple; pick five, receive five, write cancel on the monthly subscription card and wait for their next mailing in six months to repeat the process again.

So in other words either make me think the planet is being attacked in some Independence Day kinda way or make my reading your literature actually worth my time. If you do that, call me your customer for life.

people in quest of money will stop at nothing in chasing the almight dollar. pah-leez.

Paying for things with damp money equals huge fun. After an energetic bout of tennis or an afternoon at the pool, nothing rivals reaching deep into a front pocket and placing this dark and heavy paper into the upturned hand of a cashier. The facial contortions made while studying the soiled bills and contemplating the source of the money's funk are unrivaled.

Unrivaled at least until the tables are turned and a cashier deposits moist bills in my hand at the conclusion of some transaction. The look of compounded disgust on my face is absolute while I consider the amount and whether or not to put them in my pocket, wallet or garbage can. Heathens.

First Volvo, then Chips Ahoy and now Amazon. What is it with these successful companies that have a good thing going and then have to go and wreck it by changing some major aspect of their business? With amazon, I agreed to look the other way when they announced the revision of their privacy statement, which essentially stated they would maintain your privacy unless someone was willing to pay them to not maintain it. I will not be so forgiving on this annoying ad box that pops up every time I visit their page now. I'm glad to see one of the most popular and usable sites on the web de-evolve into a less functional utility after defining the model to so many e-business efforts. Keep up the amateur dot work amazon dot com.

I've noticed an evolution in the food industry's policy on plastic gloves. When initially implemented this prophylactic measure protected consumers from any contaminants the server may have been exposed to. Now their primary function seems to provide a protective barrier between the wearer and the public at large. Back in the day, you'd see employees swap these gloves out with surgeon like ethics, donning a fresh pair with each new customer or task. As of late I get the impression, they go on in the morning and are discarded out the car window on the way home.

This morning I watched a gloved waitperson pause from her chore of preparing turkey sandwiches for the lunch rush, to ring me out at her register. In this side-mission she handled my beverage, the cash register, the cash I gave her as well as the change she returned only to resume her prior burden of piling mounds of shaved turkey on cheese-laden buns with the same gloved hand. The only thing I'm certain to have left that transaction germ-free was her epidermis. Now don't get me wrong, as I've alluded to in the past, I would more than consider sporting a form-fitting body suit made of the sheerest, yet non-permeable material possible, so I don't blame them, I simply take issue in that I am not one of them.

People who gripe about "all those damn foreigners coming to the states and taking American jobs" make me wild. Just stop it already. First off, the jobs these individuals 'steal' predominately represent work that the native faction either does not want to do (migrant field worker) or are lacking enough people with skill (technology) to fill. Much of this can be attributed to the majority of our citizens not force-feeding the three R's down the throats of their children as well as growing kids who feel they occupy a particular station in life (pre-achievement) and are above many forms of menial labor. This parenting philosophy results in an ill-equipped workforce therefore crippling our highly demanding and specialized needs.

Secondly, recognize that importing human talent works in our favor. America is absolutely raping the intellectual wealth of the world. Other countries expend their public resources making their offspring smart only to have them plucked from their population as soon as they are ready to contribute. You see, this is a good thing for us and a very bad thing for them and we as a society benefit significantly through this dynamic.

A side facet to this debate I find irksome falls into the equal opportunity squabble. What percentage of people screaming about the loss of American jobs are the same dolts griping about quotas and equal opportunity acts ("The best candidate should get the job"). Well, guess what Clyde, sometimes the best or most willing candidate doesn't speak your native tongue. So instead of preaching about this or that atrocity why don't you get qualified so you do not have to worry about some bloke from here and there taking a job you were not ideal for in the first place.