Three Assorted Annoyances

First Annoyance:

No picture, but could someone please explain to me why a major CATV/Internet provider cannot keep their service running uninterrupted overnight? It's not like the servers have to get eight hours of sleep...

Second Annoyance:

There is a story behind this photo... The first cheesy snack jammed, so a second was purchased by the same person; it also jammed and pressed the first package even more firmly against the shelf above. A third bag was purchased by a second, more adventurous person (it is hidden by the first two bags); it came completely free but was somehow driven upwards by the rotating spirals so that it pressed the two other bags even more tightly against the shelf above. At that point, the machine stopped accepting sales for the jammed vending slot (as well as the now-blocked vending slot next to it), but a third person thought that something coming from above might free the jam and purchased the last bag of potato chips directly above all the other bags... which, weighing just a few grams, had insufficient mass to knock anything loose and simply joined the log jam. (The glass front of the machine is nearly invisible in the photo, but  provided the chips with a secure surface to lean against.) I could hear people banging on the machine, shoving it side-to-side and lifting & dropping it, for almost half an hour before the crowd gave up. Of course, this occurred after normal business hours on a Friday night before a three-day holiday weekend, so no one will be getting any snacks (or any refunds) until at least the following Tuesday... (Note: Yours truly did not participate; I was merely a bemused observer who happened to have a camera handy -- but I guarantee that several other people were quite thoroughly annoyed.)

Third Annoyance:

This chandelier is supposed to be lighting (and providing a welcoming atmosphere in) the foyer of a local nursing home. If you look closely, you will note it has sockets for 9 bulbs. If you look a little more closely, you will note it has 5 dead bulbs and a 6th is missing entirely. Ahh, so bright (not)! So welcoming (not)! So... well, annoying. It was dark in there...


Oh, well... have a good Memorial Day weekend anyway, everyone -- and please try to take a few minutes to think about the real meaning of the holiday. The United States of America owes a deep, unrepayable debt to its veterans past, present and future.

Oh, Please...!

Sorry for the gap in postings; life has been interesting of late... But (to borrow from the movies), I'm baaa-aack!

I have the kind of schedule that keeps me up late at night, so I have a chance to see quite a few commercials & infomercials that might otherwise not grace the photons emitting from my television screen. Some of them are truly laughable, others advertise products that sound so good, I go online to research them even before the infomercial is over. (Example: Lipozene. Short answer: don't bother.)

There is, however, something beginning to really annoy me about the majority of infomercials. (No, it's not the far-too-frequent fudging of facts; that's an entirely different can of worms). They insult my intelligence.

My current "favorite" is for a cute little device that will supposedly give me the ability to hear almost as well as Superman (my exaggeration, not theirs). I will leave it to others to test the various claims made about the capabilities of the device; I am simply having trouble getting past the opening moments of the commercial.

"Would you like to have sonic hearing?"

Hmm... Excuse me a moment while I check a couple of entries in a standard dictionary... Ah, here we go:

Sonic: of or pertaining to sound

Hearing: 1) The faculty or sense by which sound is perceived; 2) The act of perceiving sound.

Putting those two definitions together, it would appear that "hearing" is an ability related to sound, which means it is... sonic!

Wow. Big surprise (not).

A word of advice to advertisers: don't insult the intelligence of your prospective customers. Anyone who sees this particular commercial is likely to understand that "sonic" and "hearing" go hand-in-hand without the addition or intervention of your supposedly miraculous product. Would I like to have "sonic hearing"?  Gentlemen -- I already DO have sonic hearing! We ALL have sonic hearing without having to spend a penny on your product!

I will, however, give the advertiser credit for one thing: it is a rare gem of a commercial that manages to be so stupid within the first two seconds of airtime. (And please tell that otherwise very cute brunette in the background to not overact so much when she supposedly hears her boyfriend is planning to pop the question, okay?)

Annoying. Unimportant... but annoying.

What the [bleep] Are They Smoking In Arizona?!?!

Arizona has a new state law, specifically designed to make it more difficult for women to get abortions.

I am not going to get into a discussion about abortion, the moment when a soul is created, who has the right to decide such things, or any of the other myriad issues orbiting so much as the mention of the word "abortion" in... well, I was going to say "in polite company" but the truth is I can end that sentence immediately after the second quotation mark.

What I am going to comment on is a truly, massively, frighteningly absurd premise of the new law.

Part of the language in the bill establishing Arizona's new abortion law, just as in every other bill in the United States that deals with the issue, defines when a woman is considered pregnant. More specifically, it defines a temporal starting point for "gestational age" -- the age of the [baby / fetus / embryo / insert  your preferred term here] .

In their infinite (lack of) wisdom, Arizona's lawmakers have decided (against a great deal of scientific, medical, and otherwise educated advice) that the zero point in an unborn child's age is the first day of a woman's last menstrual period. NOT the day of conception, but the day on which the most recent pre-conception menstrual period began.

If you do a (very) little research on basic human biology, you will see that the lawmakers of the state of Arizona have decided that a woman is officially pregnant approximately two weeks BEFORE egg and sperm ever meet.

Take a moment to think about that. Go on, I'll wait.

dum de dum dum de dum dum de dum...

Got it? That's right. You can Google it. According to the lawmakers in Arizona, pregnancy does not begin when the cell membrane of an ovum is penetrated by a spermatocyte (in plain English, when the sperm fertilizes the egg, aka "conception"). It begins two weeks before sperm and egg come in contact -- quite possibly a point in time when the sperm and egg are separated by a gulf measuring thousands of miles.

This means (what a miracle!) that women in the state of Arizona are essentially pregnant each and every time they begin a menstrual period. One has to wonder how much longer it will be before one of the same group of geniuses who came up with this idea that the end of the menstrual period, or the taking of any medicines to lessen the unpleasant effects of menstruation, should be considered "abortion" as well.

Even without that... pregnancy begins two weeks before conception? REALLY?

I've had concerns about the future of this nation... but now I see the light at the end of the tunnel is indeed attached to a large, fast, and very badly driven truck...

Two weeks before conception?!?!

God save us.