"meta" hours of operation

I found myself in need of a replacement Social Security card, so I headed over to the SSA's website to find the hours of operation for the nearest office. Instead, I found the hours of operation for the web page that tells me the office hours. Yes, you read that right. The hours of operation... for the web page.

This still blows my mind every single time I see it.

Not being one to shy away from leaving constructive feedback, I decided to bring the problem to somebody's attention. Although being that I'm contacting the same people who thought it was a good idea to put office hours on a website in the first place, I'm not expecting much in the way of results. But nevertheless, here's what I wrote (click the image to enlarge):

I had to edit out four different swear words before it got to this stage.

After I wrote that, I thought it might be a little too snarky to submit. After all, the recipient of my snark is likely to be a person who already has the misfortune of working in Washington, DC (oy!) for the federal government (double oy!) in a little cubicle (triple oy!), and tasked with reading and responding to people's complaints all day long (mother effing balls oy!). So I decided to tone it down a bit, and ended up submitting this:

Maybe still a little bitchier than it needs to be, but it is what it is. We'll see what happens. Maybe it'll go to a committee for discussion, and then to a task force, then back to another committee, then submitted for vote, then conditionally voted down, then rewritten and log rolled into a bill about consumer privacy protections and passed, then passed on to another task force who will resolve the problem by spending $1.3M to construct a facility to house all of the federal government's secure servers in one central location, which, in order to reduce cost to the taxpayer, will only be operational Monday through Friday, between the hours of 5:00 AM and 10:00 PM EST.

doing drugs wrong, probably as a consequence of doing drugs right

Don't all the dope heads keep their blow in decorative urns?

granny rents sexy movie for kids, outraged at sexual content

Outrage is mounting in Brooklyn after a grandma checked out a copy of Austin Powers at her local library, and found someone had taped over the end, replacing it with porno (LOL). According to The New York Post, she grossly overreacted to the incident, going straight to her assemblyman to complain. The assemblyman, who apparently thinks that representing his constituents means behaving exactly like them, responded with an even greater overreaction, demanding that all VHS tapes be removed from New York public libraries. Wait, what?

But it gets better. Quoth the Post:

Esther Klein got the tape from the Borough Park branch for her three grandkids, ages 7 to 15. The X-rated footage appeared as the credits rolled at the end.

Seriously, lady? You let your 7-year-old grandkid watch a PG-13 movie, which is well known for its strong sexual content (and has an MPAA notation clearly stating this fact right on the box), and then freak out when some porn shows up during the end credits? What's the matter with you? If I were your assemblyman, my response to your complaint would not be to launch an asinine campaign against VHS, but to tell you to be a responsible adult, to stop showing adult material to second graders, and to generally start using your brain. Oh yeah, and not to waste the state assembly's time with matters that should be dealt with by your local branch librarian.

Seriously, what's the matter with people? Every time I start thinking maybe humanity isn't all that bad...

am i the only one who sees a huge problem with this?

Michael Jackson's memorial service will be taking place tomorrow at Los Angeles' Staples Center, and promises to be a massive spectacle. Streets will be blocked off, a basketball arena will be filled to capacity, and tickets to the service are being scalped for tens of thousands of dollars (in a depressed economy, no less). It will be a circus the likes of which the world has never seen. And if that's how the Jacksons want to honor the King of Pop, that's up to them. I have no problem with that.

I do have a problem, however, with the way this memorial service is being paid for: not by the Jackson family, or by Michael's estate, or by his plethora of obscenely wealthy friends, but by the City of Los Angeles.

In case you glossed over that, let me repeat it: A private citizen's memorial service is being paid for, 100%, by taxpayer dollars. Millions of them.

If you live in LA, this should piss you off big time. This kind of squandering is not only incredibly irresponsible, it's practically criminal. Heck, it almost makes San Diego look pretty good by comparison.

if you like pina coladas, and getting caught in the rain hiding naked in the closet by a jealous husband with a loaded gun

I saw an ad a couple of years ago for a divorce lawyer that was truly tasteless, and really shocking. Now keep in mind that I've viewed – multiple times – goatse, lemon party, and well, a lot of 4chan... so when I find something tasteless and shocking, it really means something.

Sandwiched between two soap opera-esque pseudo-suggestive photos (soap-core porn, perhaps?) was the text, "Life's short. Get a divorce." Now if I have to explain my problems with this, I doubt that any explanation would actually get the point through... so I'm just going to assume that everyone reading this is in agreement that this particular divorce lawyer is scum both a prime symptom of, and a contributor to, our woefully depraved culture.


The ad in question, which I guess is sexy for people who were into cheap hookers in the mid 80s.

For all the impact that ad made in my mind, it came and left my memory about as quickly as that punch bowl of Spamburger Helper I put down in 2001 (ie., it took a few days, but when it did leave, it did so with great haste). I hadn't thought of it since.

Until tonight.

I was perusing the internets this evening when my eye was caught by an ad with a very similar slogan to the one on that sleazy lawyer's mobile billboard:


Life is short. Just like that window in the 90s when this ad's layout actually looked edgy.

Did I seriously just see that? Curious as to whether this was a legitimate ad or some sort of gag link, I decided to visit the website (entering the url manually, so as to not benefit slime like this with a clickthrough) to see what I could find. Sure enough, it was exactly what the ad, um, advertised.


Join today, and blow/get blown by a hot, lecherous harlot tomorrow!

Yes ladies and gentlemen, it is indeed a dating site specifically designed for married men and women who want to cheat on their spouses. I can't even put into words how sleazy this is. It's like a bar that drums up business at the local AA meeting. Only not at all, really. Sorry, that was a really contrived simile. Like I said, words can't describe.

And, just in case you thought it couldn't possible get any slimier, get a load of this excerpt from their FAQ section:


Just like NAMBLA does not encourage pedophilia.

Slime city! So slimy, in fact, that I spontaneously erupted in a TMNT-era interjection just now! Granted that's not hard to make me do, but still! What a bold lie statement to make. If you read the rest of the FAQ, you'll find a whole page of nothing but lies and spin to make Ashley Madison feel better about herself for facilitating the destruction of countless relationships. It's like listening to George Bush in the 2004 debates. I'm not sure whether to be angry with such obvious attempts at justifying the overwhelming sleaze, or to pity her for resorting to such wafer-thin delusions in order to stave off acceptance of being an opportunistic, money-grubbing pervert.

The maximizer in me wants to bridge an alliance between the adultery-is-the-new-skydiving webmaster and the divorce-is-the-new-Corvette lawyer to create a one-stop "Life Is Short" home wrecking shop. It'd be like an ambulance driver that cuts the brakes on all the cars in the parking lot. But of course, the part of me that's not a life-sucking bastard would rather spend my energy encouraging people to honor the sanctity of their vows, not piss all over them.

somehow, this seemed perfectly reasonable to them

Good news for all of you procrastinators, lazy slobs, and irresponsible schmucks: your failure to do things right just may pay off for you!

Take these 88 University students in England who failed to submit their housing papers on time. When they found themselves without dorms (the logical consequence), the school was gracious enough to accommodate them anyway, and found a place for them to stay. Pretty nice of them, huh? But there's a fine line between nice and asinine, and since I'm writing about it here, I think we all know which side of the line they chose.

Nice would be making some grad student dorms, or other similar accommodations, available for the self-displaced students; really nice would be bringing in some modular housing, and perhaps charging them for the added expense (and even that would be a little much, I think). But the school catapulted straight over the nice-line and landed square in the heart of asinine country when they decided to put them up in a 5-star luxury hotel, complete with gourmet food, bubbling jacuzzis, and more high-end hookers than you can shake a stick at. And with rooms going for £50-£120 per day, we're looking at a £700-£1680 bill per room for the two weeks it took for the university to find more appropriate housing. So that means, assuming that students were paired two-per-room, that the final bill was somewhere between £30,800-£73,920 (or $53,548-$128,515 US dollars), not including meals. And the really nice part for the students? They paid the same rate for this Home Alone 2-style adventure as their dorm-dwelling counterparts, with the school generously picking up the difference.

So slackers and half-wits, take heart! If you tend to fail at life, rejoice! For Leicester University has set a bold precedent, and you can now fail no more. Forgot to go to class all semester? No problem, they'll probably give you an A out of pity. Did you shite on the department head's shoes? Don't worry, they'll make you Dean. The more epic your fail, the greater your win! How can you possibly go wrong?

[Related story.]

Nothing except that stupid tattoo, anyway.

bob cratchit would shoot you in the face if he got the chance.

If I hear one more person complain about this alleged "war on Christmas," I'm gonna slap them silly. Nobody is out to get rid of Christmas. There are no supervillains sitting in their lairs, concocting diabolical schemes to rid the world of Christmas once and for all, laughing heartily with their henchmen about how now Chanukah will be the big winter holiday.

Seriously, if someone who doesn't know you wants to give you a friendly greeting, do you really expect them to say, "Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah, Happy Kwanzaa, Super Solstice, and Bitchin' Festivus, depending on whichever holiday you happen to celebrate, as well as Happy Thanksgiving, Boxing Day, and a Happy New Year too"? No, because not only would that be stupid, it would be a waste of everybody's time and an annoyance. So shut up and quit complaining about "Happy Holidays" and just be glad that you're not getting a laundry list of seasonal greetings that will just piss you off and make you late for your pilates.

But wait, it gets even worse. I was at Souplantation the other day, and there was a family sitting at the table next to mine, and the mom seemed very agitated that there was a "Happy Happy Hanukah" sign hanging on one of the doors, but not a "Merry Christmas" sign. She made a fuss about it and even asked her server why there's not a "Merry Christmas" sign. Of course he doesn't know or care about the background of the holiday decorations, so he says he'd have to ask the manager about it. As time went by, I heard her continue to complain to her family about it, and wonder aloud why she hasn't gotten an answer yet. Thankfully I resisted the urge, but I really wanted to just get up and throttle her and be like, "You see the Christmas lights hanging up in here? You see the Christmas wreaths on the doors and windows? You see how the dessert bar is adorned with holly and garland, and the pillar holding the ceiling up is wrapped in candy cane stripes? You see the red and green Christmas bows on every lamp in the building? You see that little Christmas tree by the coffee machine, with the little Christmas presents beneath it? Why isn't all this enough for you? Why are you so bent up about not having a 'Merry Christmas' sign on the door to the freaking broom closet? Yes, there is a 'Happy Happy Hanukah sign displayed in an effort to include Jewish customers in the festivities. Why is that so offensive to you? Do you hate Chanukah? Are you an anti-Semite? Would you prefer that we exclude Jews from our celebration? Huh? Well answer me!" Yeah, clearly Souplantation is fighting on the front lines of America's war on family values by not including a "Merry Christmas" banner among their many, many Christmas decorations.

And what's everybody's problem with "Xmas"? "Oh, that's secular America's attempt to take Christ out of Christmas!" they keep telling me. Bull freaking crap. If you bothered to do any amount of learning up on the subject before you started complaining, you'd know that the Greek letter Chi, which is identical to our letter X, is the first letter in the Greek spelling of "Christ", and has been used for nearly 20 centuries as a shorthand abbreviation for His name. That's taking Christ out of Christmas, alright. Just like "E-mail" is a plot to take "electronic" out of "electronic mail service".

As long as we're on the subject, am I the only one who finds it ironic that people get themselves so worked up about this supposed usurpation of Christ from Christmas, and how we need to remember the true meaning of the holiday... meanwhile they're stepping over homeless people freezing to death on the street, on their way to Wal-Mart to spend extravagant sums on unnecessary gadgets and toys that were made by 9-year-old sweatshop workers who slave 60+ hours a week to just survive? That's the true meaning of Christmas, alright. Glad you're here to defend it against those damn liberals who are trying to keep us from worshipping materialism -- I mean Jesus Christ -- this Christmas season.

So if you don't like the dechristianization of Christmas, instead of bitching about it all day long, why don't you do something to put Christ back into it? Stop worrying about buying stupid crap for people, and instead worry about what you can do to make someone's life a little better. Instead of handing your money over to line Sam Walton's pockets, why don't you use it to put food in someone's mouth, or shoes on some kid's feet? Turn off the Christmas lights and use the money you save on your electric bill to buy a few Meals on Wheels for people who can't leave their homes. Go visit some old people in the local nursing home; the only human contact those poor folks usually get is people trying to shove pills down their throats. Or how about taking all the time and energy you'd spend protesting "Xmas" and putting it towards helping out that single mom who works 50 hours a week and has three kids to take care of? You wanna get Christ back into Christmas? Go show His love to the people who need it most.

And stop shopping at freaking Wal-Mart.


Above: A man dressed in a Santa suit protests Wal-Mart's "Home for the Holidays" ad campaign, saying that it denies Christ and cheapens the meaning of Christmas, which apparently is Santa Claus.