Bill’s Content

One would think that any day that starts off with a fender-bender in the parking area next to the Peoria Police Station would end up being a bad day.

Since neither one of us was at fault, we were given reports to fill out and sent on our way. Good news.

I got home and found a check in the mail. I picked up another check a few hours later. Good news. At work, I found out that I had a week of vacation time coming that I didn’t know I had. More good news. And to top it all off … the McRib is back. Yummy news.

It’s a good day.

[youtube]6Ve21XwzXqs[/youtube]

I hate telemarketers. I love this idea. Only I would have played it totally straight and got the guy’ name, home address, home phone, social security number and driver’s license number … and them posted ‘em on the Internet.

Heh.

[tags]telemarketers,pranks[/tags]

[youtube]7h3GPc_yMCE[/youtube]

And the U.N. has approved sanctions — the horrors — in response to N.K.s nuke tests. And there’s no indication Bush is gonna do anything else.

Forgive me for thinking for a few years there that Bush “got it.” He doesn’t.

[tags]North Korea,David Zucker Albright Ad[/tags]

I work in tech support, so I know sucky tech support when I encounter it.

I’m on the phone with some third party tech support person (someone who isn’t an employee of the company with whom I do business) regarding my domain name registration. She’s trying to verify my identity.

I tell her my first name. “Bill,” I say. No, that’s not what’s on her records. I glanced at the domain’s WHOIS information the night before, so I know that’s it’s correct, and I tell her to check again. She tells me that she has something completely different. I ask if it’s “William.” She hems and haws and I tell her — with not a little bit of tone, I’m afraid, that “Bill” is short for “William.” Her reply: “How am I supposed to know that?”

Sweet mother of God. You are supposed to know because you presumably listened when people in your presense are called by different names in different situtations, and you learn the concept of the nickname. And somewhere along the line, you learn what these names are. Perhaps this airhead thinks “Bill Clinton and “William Jefferson Clinton” are two different people?

I’d take a spoonful of cyanide If I thought for a second I was a culturally stupid as this person.

And I still don’t have the issue resolved. Emails are flying back and forth. I may take my business elsewhere.

[tags]tech support[/tags]

When I woke up yesterday, Wal-Mart was already on my last nerve.

My parents work there. The company is doing everything it can to make it impossible for people to work there on a full-time basis — except for the managers, who they will work to death if given the chance. And the company really hates having long-term full-time employees who earn more than some kid who’se dropped out of school.

You know that $4 prescription plan they are trying out in Florida? They are funding it with reductions in employee health benefits.

Screw ‘em. As soon as Mom qualifies for Social Security, she’s out of there.

But Dad likes to work, expecially in the lawn and garden section. He’s a born gardner and were he healthier, he could make a living at it.

Well, yesterday, he was using electric clippers to clip a free at Wal-Mart when the sliced the hell out of his finger. So, natually, Wal-Mart calls an ambulance, right? Of course not. They load him into another employee’s car and drive my bleeding, elderly, just-had-a-heart attack dad to one of thos eprompt-care places for some stiches. Of course, they tell him he needs plastic surgeon but make sure it’s fixed correctly. Had they taken him to the emergency room, they would have had one on call. Had they called the ambulance — which is what you are supposed to do — the E.R. docs would have had the personnel ready.

Meanwhile, Mom was having a a fit trying to get them to take Dad to the E.R. Meanwhile, Dad is telling everyone he was OK and that it was all his fault.

Had I been there, I would have picked up the phone, called 911 and told the store manager what was going to be happening and that if he didn’t like it, I would be happy to shove his head up his ass for him. And I certainly wouldn’t have let Dad sign anything. And I’m also cersonaly certain that nothing Dad signed in the personnel office right after he got back from the E.R. could possibly be used against him.

And get this: Dad gets a prescripion for pain pills and he sends me (I head heard abotu the accident by then) back to get it filled as Wal-Mart — he’s still in the personnel office filling out their paperwork — and the parmacist keeps me and my Dad waiting for a half hour while they get their paperwork in order. Because, you know, Wal-Mart isn’t completely convinced yet this is an on-the-job injury. Meanwhile, Dad is sitting there needing the paid medication THAT’S SITTING RIGHT THERE ON THE COUNTER.

[tags]al-Mart,evil,work place injury[/tags]

Yeah, I know death by typhoid fever is no picnic. But I would rather have seen Osama bin Laden arrested and brought to the U.S. for a fair trial and a fine hanging. Justice would have been for him to face the justice system for his war crimes, or to die in an attack. To let nature take its course isn’t justice. If he’s dead of natural causes, he escaped justice.

Is his alleged death a failure of the Bush administration? I don’t agree with those who equate victory over terrorism with whether or not bin Laden is dead or captured. The fact is that he was chased into seclusion and rendered strategically irrelevant. There has not been one successful terrorist attack on U.S. soil by his followers. Even if he’s dead in a cave somewhere — we won.

Still, I would have liked to see that bastard paraded down Broadway in chains. Who wouldn’t?

Likewise, the Internet is buzzing about President Clinton’s tart responses to FOX News reporter Chris Wallace’s questions about why Clinton didn’t do more to capture Bin Laden after the original World Trade Center attack. I agree with Clinton, to a degree. The right wing holds Clinton to a higher standard than they seem to hold President Bush, who also did nothing to arrest bin Laden during the first nine months of his administration.

But the sad fact is that bin Laden studied the behavior of the United States for the past fifty years and concluded that the United States didn’t have the stomach to maintain a long-term attack on Islamofascism that woduld be needed to destroy his movement.

Since the end of World War II, our official policy hasn’t been to defeat our enemies, but contain them and to maintain a status quo. We didn’t defeat North Korea or North Vietnam. We just sat back, occasionally tossed some soldier’s lives at a problem, then declared victory and walked away, mission accomplished or not.

President Carter was paralyzed by the hostage crisis. President Reagan did nothing to retaliate against Iran after the hostages were freed. The first President Bush rolled all over the Iraqi military, then declared victory and left with Sadaam still in power. President Clinton let Somali Warlords kick our asses.

Our response for decades has been to lob a few smart bombs and declare justice has been done.

President Bush seems to want to break that mold, and there’s a sizeable portion of the American people who absolutely hate his guts because of it. An argument can be made that he invaded the wrong country (although we need never apologize for bringing down Sadaam), but I believe we could have gone after Iran or Syria and Bush’s harshest critics would instead be claiming that Bush should have gone after Iraq because of all those unaccounted for weapons of mass destruction.

So, I’d have to conclude that Osama bin Laden had America pretty well figured out.

[tags]Osama bin Laden death,typhoid,Clinton,Bush[/tags]

Trust me. I’ve never seen a “Girls Gone Wild” video. I’ve seen the commercials, which seem to be the only thing the E! channel’s late-night programing afloat. My take is that they film lots of naked college age girls., at least me of whom appear to be drunk and who need to be talked into flashing for the camera.

So there’s nudity and some fake lesbian action, with no hardcore and no “money shots.”

But this is an era where network or television station could lose its license is someone flashes a pasty covered nipple during halftime.

So naturally, the Feds are after the guy and they get him: $2.1 million in fines and restitution for failure to documents proving the age and identity of his “performers,” and for not properly labeling his products.

There’s nothing to indicate in this article that anyone underage ever appeared in one of these videos.

Well, I certainly feel safer. And you fathers of teenage daughters should feel safe too, knowing that if your nearly grown-up daughters go off to Spring Break where they get drunk and willingly show their naked bodies to strangers, the guy who puts it on video or DVD could get a fine. Their innocence is protected. Or, at least the illusion of innocence is preserved.

Look, the guy who runs this company is a tool, and anyone who pays cash for these videos are pathetic.

But this crap frightens me. It’s censorship masquerading as a child protection.

[tags]girls gone wild,joe francis,censorship[/tags]

I mean, it’s one thing to make sure your buddies and supporters get jobs. It’s crooked, but this is Illinois.

It’s another when one of those pals gives your very young daughter a birthday check for $1,500. This is cheaper that hiding cash in shoeboxes, or in your freezer.

This is after you make state employees go through ethics training that spells out that this very thing is illegal.

Blagojevich is either very stupid, very naive or very dishonest. He ain’t stupid. And he ain’t no virgin, either.

What a tool. Judy Baar Topinka doesn’t pass the integrity test, either.

I’m voting Green this time around. By default, they are the none of the above party in Illinois this year.

[tags]Blagojevich,corruption,green party[/tags]

Let’s get this straight: Meredith Vieira went from a moderately well-known, somewhat light-weight reporter to one of five harpies on a talk show, from which she was able to leverage into a gig as a highly paid game show host. She one of televisions most notorious lightweights managed to get herself hired sit in Walter Cronkite’s chair and read a script, and Vieira was hired to fill the lightweight’s shows on the flippin’ Today Show, another once proud news venue that’s turned to crap.

So, how does she thank the biddies who got left behind? This way:

“I’m proud of the work we did there, but it’s not a good time in the history of the show,” says Meredith. “It’s hard to watch. It sort of became a joke.”

Meredith, darling, the show was a joke when you were there too.

Folks, the whole Katie-Meredith-Star-Rosie saga just proves how fake and contrived all these shows are. These people are not friends. They aren’t even co-workers. They are competitors. And none of them are real journalists. They are performers.

Hat tip: A Socialite’s Life.

[tags]Meredith Vieira,The View,Star Jones,Katie Couric[/tags]

Thanks for the heads up, buddy.