Imbeciles in Positions of Competence

I had to do battle with another of my pet peeves today: websites that do not function correctly.

As a former instructor of web design, I am particularly annoyed by websites that do not function well, but I become absolutely apoplectic when those sites are sponsored by large corporate entities, or, one government agency or another—any of whom have sufficient resources to hire competent, talented people to run their sites properly.

Imagine, then, how frustrating it is to try to do something as simple as creating an online account with the U.S. Postal Service, on a website that has more bugs than a junkyard dog! Even after contacting the agency responsible for the website and requesting assistance, I was STILL unable to create an account.

I double-checked all of the usual culprits: Java, cookies, etc., but still NOTHING. I will say that I received an immediate and polite reply to my query, but even the advice offered contradicted what the website states.

For instance, the website states clearly that one may use one's email address as a User Id. However, the representative who responded to my query stated that the User Id could be no longer than 12 characters and could not contain any special characters.

Hello-o-o-o-o-o, U.S.P.S., you may not be aware of this, but "@" is a special character and is a required part of any email address, and further, most addresses are LONGER than 12 characters because they must necessarily contain the ISP balance of the address. For instance, @Google.com contains 10 characters leaving one a mere 2 characters for a User ID. It wouldn't take long for America's users to use up all possible 2 character User ID combinations but the fact is, many ISP address combinations are LONGER than 12 characters.

Worse, the error messages which the U.S.P.S. website spits out are erroneous, sending one in the wrong direction in the troubleshooting process with messages such as I received that my User ID (my email address) was already in use. When I received that message I assumed I had already created an account at some distant point in time that had been forgotten, so I chose the usual "I have forgotten my password" option expecting to get an email. According to the representative who contacted me, however, there is no record of an account in the system with my name or email address. Say what?

Another problem arose from the User ID selection: if one attempts to create a User ID which is already in the system, several options are presented instead. After attempting to create my own, unique, ID in 15 tries, I gave up and decided to use one of the system options, stupid though they were. But NO-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O, the system options don't work, either, and I was spit out repeatedly with "null User ID is invalid" errors. And, EACH AND EVERY TIME, I had to reinput name, address, telephone number, etc. for each User ID creation attempt!

This is but one small example of what individuals have to contend with on a daily basis all over the world because employers no longer hire for intelligence and competence, but who they can get for the cheapest $-$-$ bottom line.

The only solution to this problem is to stop buying goods and services from those organizations who put customer service LAST. In the case of the U.S. Postal Service, or ANY government agency, that is far easier to say than to actually follow through with and the only option left for us is to file complaints as high up as they can go.

I am drafting a letter of complaint to the Postmaster General at this moment.

Nutha' Day on the Planet of the Apes

I commute to work each day via public transportation—yeah, I do goofy, ecologically sound things like that—on today's commute, I was treated to several examples of basic primate behavior, aka, low land gorillas laughingly referred to as Homo sapiens.

While waiting in a transit shelter for my transfer, I watched a yellow jacket hard at work on a nest. I had observed this nest building activity a week earlier and had reported it to the transit authority and was told that "someone" would take care of the problem over the weekend.

A week had past, the nest was still there, and the pitiful yellow jacket was still working hard on the papery brown cells. As I advised the transit company, there was only one bee visible, there appeared to be no eggs in the cells as yet, so if someone would simply knock the thing down, the problem would be eliminated early and with very little excitement to anyone.

However, as it was still there, and an opportunity presented itself to report this problem to personnel who happened to be on site, once again, I related the information.

Before I knew it, there were half a dozen employees buzzing around the transit shelter discussing ways to "neutralize" the situation, from wasp spray, to buckshot. Eventually, one employee used a broom to knock the nest down and crush it; unfortunately the bee returned to his nest to observe the destruction of it. In one swoop, however, the transit personnel slapped down the bee with the broom, stomped on him with his heavy boot, and smeared his guts across the sidewalk declaring with a grin, "They don't call me The Exterminator for nothin'." Everyone climbed back on their buses and headed out.

All I had asked was that the nest be destroyed; the bee would have taken a hint and found a better place to build his nest elsewhere. What this situation emphasized, once again, is that until Homo sapiens gets it through his knuckle-head that all life forms have a place, and a RIGHT to exist unmolested, there will never be peace on this planet for he will always find some way to justify why one race is superior to another, one religion is superior to another, one tribe is superior to another, one clan is superior to another, and so one, and anything considered INFERIOR, is subject to annihilation.

At what point do these hairy beasts finally get it, do you suppose?

Later that day, in another part of the jungle, I observed another knuckle-dragging incident.

A scrawny nondescript male in his early twenties hustling down the street, crossed over to the other side (the side on which I was seated) obviously walking with purpose, in a tremendous hurry to get somewhere; behind him an obviously pregnant woman hustled to try to keep up with him about ten paces behind. The woman was so pregnant, her inverted belly button caused by her stretched stomach, was showing through a t-shirt stretched taut across her belly. She was obviously with the male though he never once turned to look at her or speak to her. She had a pained expression on her face, but said nothing, simply trying to keep up, or catch up with the male. About halfway down the block, the male then decided to cross the road back to the side on which I had first observed him, in the middle of a 4 lane highway, with no crosswalks for another block. In doing this, he did not give a glance to oncoming traffic, two lanes of which had to stop dead to allow him to pass, and the female was right behind him also in danger of being hit.

After crossing the other two lanes of traffic, they continued up the road in the same manner; I observed them cover about half a mile before they were out of sight. They were headed in the direction of the community hospital which was about a mile from where I first saw them. Surely, I thought, this clown was not "taking" the female to the hospital to deliver, but just as assuredly, the pace at which he was driving her in the heat would certainly cause her to deliver, if not have a heart attack first.

I don't care what the POS reasons were for causing this woman to haul after him in her final days of pregnancy. There is no excuse for it. I pity any woman who is so desperate that she would allow herself to be placed in a position such as this. Message to Lady: have your baby and kick this wienie to the curb; Sweetie, the world is full of nice guys and you DO NOT have to tolerate treatment like this.

On the other hand, I'd like to meet this guy in a dark alley to explain the facts of life to him, and how pregnant women should be treated.

Clearly, he is a man in the academic sense, only—he has male genitalia, and may have even fathered the child in this woman's belly, but that is as close to manhood as he can reach on his tiptoes. He fails in every other regard and should be kicked out of the club for his shortcomings.

On days like today, I am pleased that I am an orphaned alien NOT of Homo sapiens nor from the Planet of the Apes.

Oh, and hairy, knuckle-dragging twenty-something: if yo mama had not already been brain dead, she would have used birth control and this post would have had no reason to exist.

Politically Incorrect

Remember the kid who used to plug his ears with his fingers while loudly singing "The Star Spangled Banner," so that he couldn't hear what was being said? The contemporary name for this same behavior is called Politically Correct. We used to laugh at the kid on the playground who pulled this stunt; today, we are expected to kowtow to the PC bullies who extol it.

This behavior trait lies alongside the same gene that renders victims vulnerable to The Emperor With No Clothes condition and the Ostrich With His Head in the Sand syndrome. These disorders primarily afflict Sheeple, (people who ludicrously behave like sheep), which accounts for probably eighty percent of every population at any given time.

It's one of those "chicken or egg," arguments. Did people devolve into this behavior because of environmental conditions—lead in the water, radioactivity in the atmosphere—or is it a genetic deficiency only curable by proper blood testing prior to breeding.

Whatever the cause, the result is always the same: a substantial percentage of any given population is afraid to tell the truth. Rarely do these fears involve fear for life or physical safety which is what makes the condition so absurd. There is nothing more ludicrous than a member of Homo sapiens afraid to stand up on his hind legs to utter truth without regard to what other Sheeple have to say about it.

To the contrary, that person in a hundred willing to state the obvious will be persecuted by Sheeple mobs because his courage makes them look as impotent and silly as they are in actuality.

I'm for funding a new research project to locate the gene for Politically Correct, and to find a method to modify it genetically. We need MORE truth in our culture—not less—regardless of who or what is embarrassed by those truths.

The next genetic project should be to help those who are reality-challenged to develop thicker hides (or a spine) so that truth can become more palatable to them. I would suggest that a large pool of subjects from which to draw for these experiments would be the Yahoo! News comments editors.