I'm back.

Okay, so it's been almost a year since my last post.

To be honest, either I haven't been sufficiently amused/ticked off to feel that I had anything worth writing about (Yeah, the same lazy, stupid dipsticks that didn't shovel their sidewalks the LAST few winters maintained their perfect record this year, but I'm just resigned to it and now only hope that if I fall and split my skull open on some lazy bastard's sidewalk, that my daughter and son-in-law will get a nice settlement from the lawsuit...), or I've been TOO cheesed off (at, say, the sock-puppet-in-chief and his Vice) to be able to write anything about Iraq, Iran, the almost-but-not-really-a-recession, the Bank Bailout: Part Deux, etc., in any manner that would not get me an all-expenses-paid vacation on a lovely Caribbean island...

Today, however, I ran into a fascinating example of corporate stupidity that I'd like to share with all and sundry.

Now, I have my cable TV and internet access both provided by Comcast so if, after posting this bit of corporate asininity. I suddenly become incommunicado, you may start by checking to see if my e-mail account has suddenly ben terminated.

Because this is all about Comcast, you see, and - by extension - the inability of big business to actually fix ANYTHING out of the ordinary now that they have gone to "efficient" centralized "customer service".

So...

I turned on the TV this morning to check the local forecast on the Weather Channel. Immediately, I noticed a couple of things:

1 - There was no sound.
2 - The usual "crawl" showing the local conditions, capsule forecast, etc., was not running across the bottom of the screen.

Watching for a few minutes, I noted that:

3 - The lack of sound continued into the commercials, and;
4 - The every-ten-minutes forecast had TWC's generic "four-alphabetically-arranged-national-cities-per-page-changing-every-few-seconds" forecast, rather than the LOCAL conditions and forecast.

Having run into this before, I decided that it was a local cable-office problem, rather than a Weather Channel problem since:

A - At least some commercials are inserted locally, and ALL were soundless, and;
B - The local forecasts are inserted locally, or at most, regionally.

Having had this happen once before, and contacting TWC to find out if it was them or Comcast that had had a lapse of attention, I was told by the TWC people that I needed to get the local ID number that starts off the crawl, and they could contact the relevant people to reset their system and all would be well. I got the number, sent same, and (relatively quickly) had my local forecast back.

Of course in THIS instance, with no crawl, I have no way of getting the ID number to send to TWC.

Which left me trying to contact Comcast.

(Oh... I can hear you starting to laugh, now...!)

Because Comcast, like so many companies, has become "efficient" by having one national call-center, with no one who knows how to do anything but schedule a service call to your house.

Which is fine, actually, IF THAT"S WHERE THE FRICKIN' SCREW-UP IS!!!

There is, unfortunately, no way to schedule a technician to make a service call on the HOME OFFICE AND FLIP THAT ONE BLEEDIN' CHROMIUM SWITCH TO TURN THEIR COMPUTERS ON AGAIN!!!!!!

...And no way to CALL the local office to point out their problem, because all calls go to the NATIONAL FRICKIN' CALL CENTER!!!!!!

I won't give you the whole sordid phone conversation, because it's just TOO depressing, but I think some high(?)-lights are in order:

Customer Service Drone: ...and just to confirm that this is the holder of the account, can I have the last four digits of your Social Security number?

Me: Why do you need my (SSN) to report a problem that's at YOUR end of the wire?

CSD: It's to make sure that no one is making service requests on your account.

Me: So... someone is going to call you up... pretending to be me... in order to let YOU folks know that YOUR service is down...? Does this even make sense...?

Eventually, we got past that hangup by giving him the address on the bill.

Silly ME - I thought that that could be used to find the address and internal phone number of the local office, so that he could report their problem to them...

No... that was just so that he knew where to send the service call... and they had a slot open on Tuesday, at...

Me: No... No... NoNoNo... Let's try this again... (You may now imagine that little vein in my forehead is starting to throb...)

My cable connection... is fine.

Every other channel... is fine.

Every channel EXCEPT the Weather Channel has a picture and sound and everything...

The Weather Channel has a picture but no sound...

It has the generic national forecast that TWC feeds to its uplink, but not the LOCAL forecast information that YOU people add.

These facts tell me that the problem is NOT at the Weather Channel's end, and it's not at MY end, but at your downlink and distribution center, which is a mile-and-a-half away from me...

And which I can't call...

CSD: (Proudly) ...Because all customer help requests come to the national call center...

Me: ...And for which I do NOT feel like getting out of my sickbed - this being the reason that I'm HOME on a Monday afternoon - so that I can WALK DOWN THERE AND TELL THEM TO SEND SOMEONE INTO THE BACK ROOM AND FLIP THE BLEEDIN' SWITCH!!!!

CSD: That does appear to be the case.

Me: (Resigned) Yeah... fine... okay... thanks...

CSD: So, will there be anything ELSE that I can help you with, today, Mr. Mo...

Me: *click*

As I've been writing this, I think that I may have a solution to the problem that will get Comcast's attention:

Because, the way that I see it, all of those companies ADVERTISING on TWC on Comcast should be due a rebate for the day(s) that they lose getting their full money's-worth on their ad investments. Once "someone" calls the advertisers about the problem, the clients call their agencies, and the agencies' media buyers call Comcast asking for their money back, I think the problem may be solved...

Now where did I put that pad of paper...?

More Out-And-About oddities...

Just a few more oddments that I have spotted while on my various perambulations...

For instance - I saw this walking to the office one morning last week.



I'm not sure, but I have to assume that either our street cleaners just want to eliminate the middleman, or they're making an editorial comment on our local newspaper; I'm not sure which.

Of course, things show up when I'm going home as well - such as this slightly schizoid dining establishment.



Not that we are alone, in Our Little Town(tm), in the production of things that might nake one go "Hah?"

Oh, no.

Last Saturday, I was on my semi-regular trek into Boston to run errands that I can't do out here in Sector R, when I passed aone of the new bloody expensive residences rising on the edge of Chinatown.



Now we are all, I assume, familiar with the tendency to name a mall, housing development, office building, etc., for whatever was filled in, bulldozed over, or chased out in order to erect the said edifice: "Fox Run", "Pheasant Lane" "Piney Dells", ad infinitum. Since this is on the edge of Chinatown where the Combat Zone used to be, it probably should have been called something like "Strippers' Runways" or "The Drunks", but instead they named it Archstone.

Which would be fine, and wouldn't bother me in the least... IF THEY HAD ACTUALLY USED A FRICKIN' ARCH ANYWHERE IN THE FERSHLGGINER BUILDING!

At BEST it should be called "Lintelstone"... or maybr "LintelVeneer" since, it is after all, a curtain wall hanging on a steel-beam substructure.

...But Archstone is Right Out. (And before anyone says anything - it's at least half-a-dozen blocks away from Arch Street, so it's not named for its location...!)

I dunno...

...Is it just me...?

Okay, so this is entertaining, ...

...in a weird, borderline creepy, sort of way…

Two posts ago, I mentioned that I was fascinated with the continuing dramedy that is the YABS ("You'll All Be Sorry") forums on the Comic Book Resources website – specifically this one.

When I first mentioned the site, I only named the forum’s moderator – Gail Simone, a comics writer whose work I happen to enjoy. I figured that, if either of my readers were interested in the details of the controversy and the impetus for same, they could follow the link and decide for themselves whether there was any steak in amongst the sizzle.

Here’s where it gets interesting: I have this blog listed in my profile at the CBR forums, and have referenced my posts when the thread has veered into the realms of pop music, art and design, etc., since these were subjects on which I have posted here in the past. I have made no effort to separate my identities; my name is freely available in both places and, let’s face it – “CutterMike” and “The Yankee Clipper” are pretty well-worn jokes among my friends and not exactly world-class aliases.

So yesterday, one of the regulars on the YABS thread posts that Rick Olney (the inspiration for the thread - and whose name I had not, until now, mentioned here) had posted an item on his MySpace page: a story about how he had received an anonymous phone call from a Mysterious Stranger who, disturbed at how vindictive the “Rick Olney: Fibber or Mega-Giganta-Fibber…?” thread (which, again, I had not named in this blog until this moment) had gotten, supposedly pointed him to my post on the subject as an example of how bad things were.

Upon coming here, Rick Olney, or "Orcafresh" (one of his online names), was apparently shocked – SHOCKED, I tell you – at how vituperative my comments apparently were, because he posted a long response here (mostly cribbed from Wikipedia) on the subject of “hate groups”. He then followed up by copying my full post - making sure to include both “Mike Moyle” and “Cutter Mike” in his framing sequence - and his full response on his MySpace blog.

The curious and fascinating fact is that, rather than use my rather low-key – almost Joe Friday-ish – post regarding the YABS thread (the one to which he responded here), he actually copied my more recent post – the screedlet on SUVs and walkie-talkies – and gave the impression* that THAT was the post to which he was responding, and that the tone of that post – the patented Merkin/Moyle Rent-A-Rant was somehow typical of the sort of burden that he had to bear.

* This is another habit that I’ve seen him use on the YABS thread – he has tried to imply something in a post then, when called on it, say “I never SAID that!”

Oh… And just for giggles, I went to his blog to see whether HE allows readers to post comments on HIS entries. Was I surprised to find that I was unable to post a rebuttal there?

Not really.

Based on others’ comments on the RO:FoM-G-F, and on his OWN posts there, this is not unusual – he has even gone so far as to delete his own posts when someone has tripped him up on his posts contradicting one another.

For those who don’t feel like wading through 20,000+ posts on the thread, the gist of it is that a number of freelance comics creators and ex-employees/business associates started comparing notes, regarding non-payment of bills for work done for Mr. Olney and his company “TightLip Entertainment”, and supposedly found that the sums total to over $60,000. (Some posters have claimed that it might reach $100K, but the most commonly-accepted number is in the $60K+ range. Note that I have these numbers at second-hand; these are just the figures used on the thread.)

As far as I have been able to make out, at least part of his argument for why he doesn’t need to pay these people appears to be that, by going public with the fact that he hasn’t paid them (some, I believe, for as much as a year or two), they have broken their Non-Disclosure Agreements and voided their contracts.

(This is the moment at which most people will take a deep breath and raise one finger as if about to make a point, then sit there with their mouths open while a cricket chirps in the background…)

Thus far he has apparently lost two civil judgments (one for $4500 or so, plus costs, IIRC), through the simple expedient of not responding to the summonses. This is, according to Mr. Olney, because his attorney told him not to even bother responding, since it will be easy enough to have them overturned on appeal. (If your eyes are crossing and glazing over at this – and a second cricket has joined the first - you’re not alone; professional lawyers have gotten the same look, when asked about this legal theory…!) Reports also seem to indicate that he is a “person of interest” to the New York Attorney General’s office regarding a charity auction that he held at a convention a few years ago. The auction, you see, was supposedly held to benefit St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

Which appears to have surprised the folks at St. Jude when they were asked about it a month or two ago, since – according to the report – that was the first that they claimed to have heard of it!

That’s the Cliff’s Notes version of the story to which I alluded in my previous post.

The one good thing about all of this is that many of the unpaid creatives, and MANY others have joined forces to form UNSCREWED COMICS, a resource site and support group whose goal is to... welll... help keep comics creatives from getting screwed!

I had, in fact, planned to leave the story as it was, and let any curious reader follow the link and look the story up for hirself but, since I was denied the courtesy of responding TO Mr. Olney’s blog ON Mr. Olney’s blog – a privilege that I allow here – I felt that I was within my rights to respond on MY forum.

If Mr. Olney feels the need to respond here again, I would hope that he would at least have the decency and courtesy to allow me equal time on his blog, rather than setting me up there as a straw man for his own purposes.
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…A-a-a-a-a-and, just to complete the story…

Before posting this, I went to Mr. Olney’s MySpace page to make sure that his …borrowing… of my post was still up there.

Again: Was I surprised to find that he had taken it down…?

Nope. As noted above – it’s what he seems to do whenever someone catches him out.

Fortunately, it was quoted in full by the original (re)poster on YABS. If anyone is curious, it can be found here. (And before anyone blames Danny, it's not his fault - Rick Olney really DID originally post it with all of the text center-justified. Makes it a bear to read, doesn't it!)

Based on this… pathology is the only word that seems to fit… can both of my readers see where the fascination for this whole thing comes in for me?

I mean, I will admit that I’m far from perfect, and I will admit that, by most of Middle-America’s standards, I am decidedly not normal… but the more I read this guy’s OWN WORDS, the more I feel that, by comparison, I‘m ready to become a church Deacon and join the Rotary Club!

-No 30-

And another thing that ticks me off...

People fascinate me; they really do.

I'm particularly fascinated by their (presumably) unconscious egotism.

Okay, that should probably be "our" egotism - since I'm posting this like I think that I've got something worthwhile to say. But at least this can be ignored; the stuff that I'm talking about really CAN'T be.

Case in point: Okay; assuming for some reason that you have an actual NEED for a Hummer, or some other big-ass SUV - business haulage, you have a cabin ten miles off any paved road, etc., fine... it makes good sense. But if you NEVER take it off of city streets, then what's the point? The only one that I can see is to say: "HEY, EVERYONE! LOOK AT ME-E-E-E-E-E!!" But even that pales, almost into insignificance, against the one(s) that I've seen locally that are painted BRIGHT YELLOW.

Now there are three reasons that I can see for this:

1 - As noted above: ""HEY, EVERYONE! LOOK AT ME-E-E-E-E-E!!", but with added exclamation point action;
2 - The words "...must take delivery from dealer stock..." played a large part in the purchasing decision, or;
3 - The owner is afraid that people WON'T REALIZE THAT HE'S A DICK!

I am ignoring as almost completely unlikely the fourth possibility: that the driver is using the bright color to intentionally *WARN* people to steer clear because he's a moron - this would be too self-analytical to expect.

(...For my part, is it evil of me to be amused by the fact that the dick in question takes the Short Bus to work every day...?)

But, in all fairness, I've actually gotten resigned to the above. The latest thing that's ticking me off is the cell phones with the walkie-talkie capability.

Look, people, if you MUST carry on a conversation in public on a walkie-talkie, can you TURN THE FRICKIN' *BEEP* DOWN?!!? Is this even possible? It just needs to be loud enough that you and the person on the other end know that you've let go of the bloody TALK BUTTON!

...BUT YOU SHOULD ALREADY KNOW THAT!!!! I mean, it's YOUR THUMB, ISN'T IT?!!?

...And the beeps that come through from the other end are, generally, quieter than the one that we hear from YOUR handset, so, again... WHAT'S THE POINT!

The other thing that annoys me about them is that, while listening to one half of the average inane cell phone conversations was simultaneously boring AND annoying, listening to BOTH sides just becomes depressing, since it drives home the fact that there are TWICE AS MANY OF YOU OUT THERE!!

Again: Are you afraid that people won't notice that you're a dick?

Yeeeesh!

They say that the first step is admitting that you have a problem.

Hi. My name's Mike, and I'm a YABS addict.

See, I started reading this forum, You'll All Be Sorry on ComicBookResources.com because the moderator is one of my favorite current writers, Gail Simone (Birds of Prey, The New Atom, and others), and lots of other interesting people stop in and post.

Then she started a thread here
http://forums.comicbookresources.com/showthread.php?t=156451
regarding her dealings with a convention promoter who invited her as a guest at his convention and resisted reimbursing her out-of-pocket expenses (She fronted her own money to attend, which most convention planners would not THINK of asking of a prospective guest - thy're invited, after all, to ATTRACT the paying customers, not to BE one!), all the while, apparently, alternately swearing that the check was, indeed, in the mail, or that his his entire team of accountants had sloped off to Brazil with his bank books and his dog (Okay - I'm making up that last part... But after reading the thread for a while, one begins to feel that I'm not exaggerating by much!). This brought more people out of the mist who had done work in just about all jobs imaginable for the guy's would-be publishing company and, similarly, not been paid.

The whole thing snowballed from there, with the (alleged) deadbeat in question entering the fray, throwing racial, sexual, and every other readily-available type of insult around at the posters, as well as veiled (and not so veiled) threats - legal and otherwise.

This started on Dec. 15 of last year, and has now well-passed 1,000 pages of... I'm not sure, exacty, *WHAT* to call it...

...Did/do either of my readers ever have that friend who couldn't miss "her shows"? I knew people in college who scheduled their classes so that they could be back in the TV lounge at the dorm to catch their afternoon soaps.

That's what this is - it's *MY* soaps, and I'm absolutely addicted. Watchig what I see as the self-destructive behavior of the individual in question is fascinating - in a clinical (and, yes, slightly morbid), watching-a-cancer-choke-off-its-own-blood-supply, sort of way. Sometimes its like watching slow-motion footage of a train wreck, with that inevitability about it.

I sat up until about 3:00 AM last night/this morning trying to get caught up, and fell further behind as I did! It's insidious and addictive!

My name's Mike, and I'm a YABS addict.

An Open (and short) letter...

Senator Carl Kruger
The State House
Albany, NY

Dear Senator Kruger:

I read with interest you proposal to lay a $100 fine on persons tuning out the world with loud music when entering crosswalks, and I have to say, I agree with you wholeheartedly! While I don't live in New York, I visit New York City on occasion and it's blatantly obvious that people are tuning out the world around them by playing music loud enough to drown out all outside sounds, and it needs to be stopped - particularly with those loud subwoofers booming out and the windows closed! I mean, how can they possibly be aware of any...

...I'm sorry...?

What...?

Your bill is intended to fine pedestrians wearing headphones in crosswalks...?

...Because they're dangerous to themselves by crossing the streets without being aware of vehicles, and so on...

Hunh...

Well, it's an interesting approach, I suppose - although proving that the pedestrian in question HADN'T hit the "Pause" button as s/he stepped off of the curb and restarted the music upon reaching the other side could be difficult...

Wouldn't it just be easier to - oh, I'm just sort of tossing out a wacky idea, here - but wouldn't it be easier to simply fine people who cross against the lights or don't even use the crosswalk - we could call it something catchy like "Jaywalking"! Ohh...! Or maybe we could have the Police issue citations and fines to drivers who fail to yield the right of way to a pedestrian who is legally in a crosswalk.

Do you think that maybe actually enforcing either or both of those might do the job without adding any new laws onto the books?

Hmmm...?

Yours, EVER so sincerely

Mike Moyle

So, I'm walking to work this morning...

...freezing various body parts off...

...and I am handed a valuable lesson:

Politeness + Paranoia = The Force (tm)

After my (more-or-less) daily mile walk, I was almost to the office - I just had one small street and an open plaza to cross to get into the building and I was, frankly, not wasting time - it was bloody COLD out!.

Now, the street that I had to cross, was one half of a fork - traffic comes in from about 2 o'clock and splits so that two lanes of traffic swing to my right and behind me, and two lanes cross straight in front of me (I'm actually at one corner of a large, triangular island and the other two corners, towards which the oncoming traffic is heading, BOTH have stop lights. Occasionally (*a-HENH* Ah say - OCCASIONALLY!) drivers will see that they have a green light ahead of them and will gun it from further back than is reasonable, in order to make the light while it's not TOO red, if y'know what I mean.

(Of course, from MY point of view, it's like I'm playing a neverending game of "chicken" with a succession of cars, all of whom are pointing straight at me until they swing left or right...)

So, I'm at the corner, and bearing down on me is a BIG commercial delivery truck - like, the last step before a semi- big - what's that... a 24-foot box...? Anyway, he's coming down and I'm not sure which way he's going, so I'm standing and waiting and freezing in place. It turns out that he's going to cross in front of me, but he comes up to the crosswalk and he stops (Thanks, W.B. Mason - you have nice drivers!)

Now, both of my readers know that I'm compulsive about cosswalks - my daughter calls me a Crosswalk Nazi.

Nolo Contendere.

BUT... while I will get cranky and bounce pennies and such off of cars that ignore crosswalks, if someone is courteous and stops I will, as often as not, tip my hat and wave them through - Hey... you be polite and I'll be polite. (Let's hear a rousing chorus of "After you, my dear Gaston!")

So, this big-ass truck has stopped in the lane right in front of me at the crosswalk and, while I *AM* bloody cold, I flip my mental coin and the good face comes up, and I decide to wave him through. (There's the politeness part of the equation.) Along with that: we *ARE* both stopped, and - you know how, sometimes when BOTH of you are waiting for the other guy to do something, then BOTH of you decide that the other guy ISN'T going to do anything so you BOTH start to do that thing that you were going to do at the same time and either bump into each other or do the start-and-stop thing a couple of times before you figure it out? (Good heavens! I think I'm channelling Roseanne Rosannadanna!)

Anyway - I decide that this guy is just WAY too big to play that sort of game with, so I decide to play it safe and (again) wave him to go ahead. (...and there's the paranoia...!)

He nods and waves back, and he's just BARELY started moving into the crosswalk...

When the FRICKIN JACKASS who never so much a slowed down goes whizzing past him in the right lane, straight throught the crosswalk and, coincidentally, through where I would have been if I hadn't waved the other guy to go first!!!!

(Cue Sir Alec Guinness: "Trust your FEELINGS, Luke...!")

Frickin' moron...

(The driver, not Sir Alec...!)

So that pretty much made my day - there's something about being two steps away and hearing that metaphorical bullet go ka-PWEEENGing past really clarifies the mind tremendously.

Of course, eventually I get into the office and, about an hour or so later - when the adrenalin rush has worn off - a project that hasn't been taken care of, because it requires input from about twenty-seven people, and which no one can figure out how to do, and which is now OFFICIALLY about fifteen seconds into the last minute - gets dropped on my desk...

(Bill Cosby - as Noah, talking to God - ..."You let me bring in a PREGNANT ELEPHANT... Did you TELL ME that the elephant was pregnant...? No! You gave me NO manual for delivery; you DIDN'T tell me that the elephant was pregnant; no NOTHIN'! Here's good ol' Noah standing UNDERNEATH the elaphant...*BWOOOAAAARRRPP*!!!")

And as everyone flusters out of my office... I look at this pregnant elephant... and I say to myself: "Man... I could have been laying around a nice warm emergency room with nurses and all sorts of good drugs... But, NO-O-O-O-O...! I had to use the Ffrickin' FORCE!!"

So how was YOUR day...?
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Almost Closing Thought for Today:

"Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it." -- George Bernard Shaw
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Actual Closing Thought for Today:

"Ya HEAR that, you DIPSTICK?!!?" -- Me