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The city's trash collectors. Because they're contracted union employees, they get paid days off for major holidays, right? This week they decided not to take off for New Year's Day. Apparently they decided they didn't want to work Saturday to make up for it.
Normally a holiday will put off everyone's trash pickup by a day. But not this week. The fuckers didn't take the day, and didn't tell anyone. Lots of people were caught unprepared when the trash collectors scooted through their neighborhood a day earlier than expected.
The arrangement the city has for trash pickup is such that if it doesn't fit in your trash can, it costs extra to pickup. Our issued trash can will fit about three bags of trash, which sometimes isn't enough for one week, let alone two. Each extra bag requires a $1.25 sticker affixed before it will be collected.
Those pricks who changed their schedule without telling anyone are going to cost us an extra five bucks next week. Bitches.
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Me. I drive me buggy.
The other day I had a very awkward exchange with a customer where I had to admit that I may have lost his software. I apologized profusely, but passed the buck to Goat about resolving my fuck up to the guy's satisfaction. And I don't feel bad about that buck-passing bit. Goat's supposed to make those decisions.
Anyway, I turned my workstations inside out. I dug through the trash. I called every customer who'd picked up a machine any time after the guy with the lost disk dropped off his. Those were some embarrassing calls. "Um, yeah… could you check your laptop bag this…"
Retard that I am, I didn't really lose the guy's software. His CD was sitting right next to one of mine. I picked up his disk and filed it away in my rack by mistake. Even though I could distinctly remember putting away what I thought was my CD, I was completely unfazed by the fact that same CD was still sitting out.
I may be an idiot.
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Keith Ellison, first Muslim in Congress. Had you seen any of the news stories about people bitching that he was going to take his oath of office holding a Qu'ran instead of a bible? Twits like Virgil Goode shouted things like "American values!"
Ellison is a beautiful, beautiful man. He took his oath of office holding the Qu'ran owned by Thomas Jefferson. How sweet is that? That's pretty goddamn clever on his part.
Tag archives for Koran
Thursday, January 4, 2007
Two things that drive me buggy and one thing that doesn't
Friday, January 27, 2006
Idiots
So I just got this forwarded e-mail titled "History of Iraq."
Hmm. I just had to see that. So I opened the e-mail and scrolled past several screens worth of forward headers to get to the actual content of the message. The message was filled with lots of accurate references to how ancient Iraq is mentioned in the bible. For example, the cities of Ur and Nineveh are there, the Garden of Eden is there, etc.
On a marginally related note, I am currently eating a take-out breakfast from a restaurant named The Garden of Eatin'.
Anyway the e-mail wraps up with a "Koran passage:"
Koran (9:11) - For it is written that a son of Arabia would awaken a fearsome Eagle. The wrath of the Eagle would be felt throughout the lands of Allah and lo, while some of the people trembled in despair still more rejoiced; for the wrath of the Eagle cleansed the lands of Allah; and there was peace.
Does that sound fishy to you? I certainly thought so. So I looked it up. The eleventh verse of the ninth surah actually reads:
But if they repent and keep up prayer and pay the poor-rate, they are your brethren in faith; and We make the communications clear for a people who know.
Additionally, a simple text search returned zero results for the world "eagle."
The forward headers for this e-mail show around fifty recipients.
I wonder how many of them bothered to look it up?
Wednesday, May 18, 2005
I'm talking about truth, not fact
Everyone's heard about the Newsweek story with the Quran in the toilet, right? The blogosphere is all aflutter over this crap. All the top-tier bloggers are jumping on this with both feet. Powerline, Malkin, Sullivan, Kos, Captain's Quarters, Vodkapundit, LaShawn, lgf, Talking Points… they're on Newsweek like starving wolves falling on a t-bone steak.
Here's my two cents.
I frankly do not care if the story is accurate or not. I agree that journalists must tirelessly strive for perfect accuracy. But I strongly disagree with the current trend among those in power to blame journalists anytime an unsavory story is reported. Am I the only one to notice this? The White House's damage control policy is becoming a two step process. Step 1: discredit report. Step 2: repeat step 1 as needed.
Here's a simple, fundamental fact. I don't know anything about anything.
I have never been to Washington D.C. Therefore, I cannot confirm that Washington D.C. exists. I've never seen George W. Bush. How can I know that Bush exists as a real flesh-and-blood human? I've only seen him on television. I'm fairly certain my TV is real, but that's about it.
I assume that Washington D.C. and George W. Bush and the Seattle Seahawks and the Grand Canyon all exist because that's what everyone tells me. When a significant majority of people agree on something, we call that something "fact." That doesn't make it factual, but that's the way things work. Five hundred years ago, it was a fact that the sun revolved around the earth. It wasn't true. It didn't matter.
With this Newsweek problem (have people started calling is Quran-gate yet?) we have two different groups of people proclaiming contradictory facts. I can't prove their facts, so their facts don't really matter to me.
What matters to me is truth.
When I heard about this Newsweek headline my first thought was "Damn, again? Haven't they learned anything?" It never occurred to me that the story might be based on inaccuracies, because the story is so damn believable.
The U.S. government has been keeping citizens and legal residents in prison for years without basic constitutional rights. Is it any surprise that we might be treating hostile foreigners even worse? Interrogation isn't supposed to be pleasant, but we've gone way beyond filling a guy with coffee and not letting him visit the washroom.
With the horror stories that have been trickling, and sometimes flooding, out of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo for the last few years, Newsweek's Quran story is completely plausible.
The real problem has nothing to do with Newsweek's accuracy. The real problem is that I believe my government capable of doing everything Newsweek says, and worse.