I can’t stand that commercial for the Christian Children’s fund with that old guy with the beard. I despise his accusatory tone that implies that we are bad people unless we sponsor a kid. Worse still, I despise that the commercial runs on basic cable. Why don’t they air it on a premium channel like ShowTime, HBO, or PlayBoy instead? It is like a bum hanging around the unemployment line begging for money. Get lost! If I had money, I wouldn’t be here; go beg at the Mercedes dealership.
Month: May 2007
There Can Be Only One
Here’s a little blurb in a newsletter from the most hated company on Earth, yours and mine, Rogers:
Thousands of movies. Hundreds of shows. Tons of free programming. And instant access to it all — On Demand only from Rogers.
Well, I’m sure that somewhere in the world there is probably at least one other company that provides those things. If you’re going to bandy around an absolute term like “only”, then you should be damn sure that you really are the only one. Then again, they’ll probably just take what they already have and throw in something exclusively unique to themselves like a brand name and say “only” again. In fact that’s probably what they (deceptively) meant, that the products known as “On Demand” is only from Rogers—even though it may very well not be; I doubt that they bothered to check.
…blah blah blah, Rogers On Demand—only from Rogers.
Well, duh!
An Ounce of Prevention, Moron
I am so disappointed and disgusted by the reaction to school shootings. After the Virgina Tech shooting, people did the same thing that they did with Columbine and other such incidents.
Instead of understanding that those people took such drastic actions because they were miserable, that they were at the end of their ropes, and helpless and powerless to fix their lives, everybody just blames and insults them.
The Virgina Tech incident was an even more illustrative example because Cho left an explanation in video and writing as to why he did it. He explained how and why he was miserable and why he felt he had no other choice but to go on a rampage. However rather than taking this information and using it to come up with a way to provide other people who find themselves in the same situation—which there will be more and more of as time goes on—a place to go to get help to fix their lives, they instead bad mouth and bash Cho. They call him insane, that he had a deranged mind. They ignore the content of the letter and video, pleas for change and instead take issue with his grammar. They call his letter a rambling, ranting, incoherent manifesto. They ignore WHAT he’s saying and WHY he’s saying it, and nag about HOW he says it. That helps nobody. Even worse, they try to hide it from the world and only release what they feel is appropriate for public consumption—specifically the parts that are good for ratings and helps their attacks on him. That certainly helps nobody.
They try to understand why he and the others did it, but for the wrong reasons. Instead of trying to understand so that they can prevent it from happening again by helping such people, they instead try to understand so that they can prevent it from happening again by finding warning signs that they can use to catch such people. They want a way to punish these miserable people instead of help them. Those people are the sad and pathetic ones.
Some may excuse their behavior by saying that they are just hurt and angry over what happened and are just lashing out at the bad guy. However this doesn’t stand up because the victims aren’t the ones analyzing the cases and letter, it’s the so-called journalists and paparazzi doing it; those people doing that are not lashing out, they’re just incompetent and aggressive fools.
Spam From an Unexpected Source
Last year I signed my mother up for a free subscription to Biography magazine. Little did I know that the “free” came at the expense of being stuck in their system for all eternity.
Every now and then the address I signed up with gets an email from A&E.; I have unsubscribed from the newsletter numerous times, each time receiving a “Successful Unsubscribe” receipt. And yet the emails keep coming. Granted it’s not nearly as much as spammers send, but unwanted mail is unwanted mail, no matter how little it is.
The emails come from different addresses the way that spam does. I have gotten the A&E; newsletters from the following addresses:
ae-insider-notifications@newsletters.aetv.com
ae-insider-one@newsletters.aetv.com
clubfeedback@aetv.com
ae-club-surveys@newsletters.aetv.com
ae-club-one@newsletters.aetv.com
ae-club@newsletters.aetv.com
bioclub@newsletters.aetv.com
bioclub-one@newsletters.aetv.com
biographyclub@aetv.com
They just keep changing the from address and keep on spamming. Apparently you have to unsubscribe from each address separately. Worse still, your address isn’t removed from their system, it’s just flagged for removal from that specific address’ mailing list. Next time that the send the newsletter, they change their from address and send it to you again. Frankly, the unsubscribe option is worthless since they won’t be using that address to send the next one anyway.
It’s very surprising and disappointing that A&E; would resort to spamming and using spamming techniques.
I sent a strongly worded letter through their contact web page demanding that they remove the address from all of their systems permanently. We’ll know whether it worked or not in a month or two.