Thursday, March 31, 2011

Boy, I just hate it when people leave unintelligible voice messages on my home phone.  The land line, which doesn't have Caller ID.  Yeah, I know, I hate a lot of things.  Right now, though, I hate this.

Most messages, I know right away what to do with them.  Some, I delete immediately.  Some, I recognize the voice, and call them back when I can. The others, I actually have to understand, especially the phone number.  This is when I get pissed off by people that blurt out their message as fast as they can, then hang up.  Makes no sense to me.  Why leave a message, if you aren't going to take the trouble to leave one I can understand?  Just blow me off with no message; THAT'll teach me to not pick up.

I could even understand someone leaving a clearly-spoken, taunting message: "Hey, I'm not going to leave a message.  Because of your machine, you just missed out on free money (or something like that), and YOU DON'T GET ANOTHER CHANCE!"

But, even though these calls are for me, the equivalent of a crank call, the messages that I can't understand are not left that way for a reason. The caller is simply a thoughtless dolt.


Clerks from doctors' offices seem to do this a lot.  Thanks to the internet, I can track them down.  My Primary Care Provider was just changed - the previous one no longer accepts my insurance - and the new guys are very eager to have me run in there and get a free checkup.  I know because they called me and gave me an appointment when they first became my PCP.

When I went to get my free appointment, after I had spent a while in their nice waiting room, they wouldn't even see me, because my insurance card had the old doctor's name on it.  I asked them what I would do if I couldn't wait until I got a new card.  They told me to go to the emergency room.  Such helpful people.

This time, they left me a message telling me that, BTW, I had a doctor's appointment the next day.  I didn't know who it was - they use multiple doctor's names at this place - so I had to track down the information.

I decided to give them a taste of their own, er, medicine.  I waited until after hours, then called the number, intent on leaving a half-garbled message about somebody that wasn't coming in for their hastily-scheduled appointment.  As usual, I was too clever by half - they had an answering service.  One of those rare moments when you actually get to talk to a human being! Not only that, a human being that isn't located in India!

Taken by surprise, I stuck to my script: "Glj;ejr;lkjgt."

"What?" they said. "I didn't understand you."  Well, yes.  Of course.  That was my point, though it wasn't as satisfying as I had hoped.

"Could you repeat that?" they asked.  I was stumped.  Determined to get something, I gave them the best I could come up with, then hung up.

"Do you have Prince Albert in a can?"

Sigh. Another missed opportunity for glory.

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Getting Off With Murder

I see that the killer whale that drowned his trainer at SeaWorld of Orlando, Tilikum, is going back to work.

I know Barry Bonds is thinking, "Damn! I could've killed my trainer?"

I get that we hold animals to a low standard.  Sometimes.  I mean, if a dog or a snake kills somebody, it gets euthanized, which is a euphemism for 'executed.'  I think the word is interesting; I worked at an animal lab in Houston where the animals were 'sacrificed' after being subjected to different chemicals.  It seemed to me that the animals had already made a big sacrifice in being exposed to stuff that might very well harm them.  If they survived that, WE were making a sacrifice?  Besides, the word 'sacrifice,' calls up images of making a tribute to the gods.  I guess, since we had no more use for these animals, maybe we could get the gods to give us something for killing them, which we were going to do anyhow.  Maybe some rain.  No, Houston has enough rain.  Maybe a tax break.

I mean, it's not like we could keep these animals.  I don't know how many were involved, but it was certainly more than a thousand mice, rats, and rabbits a year.  OTOH, if you only have a few killer whales, and you paid lots of money to bring them to your giant aquarium, and you have thousands of people paying to come see them... well, you don't want to waste an asset like that, right?

I'm not actually in favor of putting a cap in Tilikum's ass.  Like they say, killer whales will be killer whales.

RIP, trainer Dawn Brancheau.