One of the most amusing things about visiting my parents in Cleveland is reading the Plain Dealer. I used to particularly enjoy laughing at the people who write letters to the editor, but my new favorite thing is regionalism-spotting. I don’t know if the PD uses regionalisms as a conscious style decision or if their copy-editors just don’t notice them. Either way, it’s rather charming.
My list so far:
I wonder how many more I can spot the rest of the week.
This morning I went to breakfast at Cracker Barrel with some friends who were on their way out of town. In the “country store” area they had these fake pets that look pretty lifelike and “breathe” as they “sleep” in their little baskets. I’ve seen these things before, and I always have to walk away, because they’re so pathetic it makes me sad.
The copy on the website says “Perfect Petzzz are cute sleeping puppies and kittens that offer unconditional love and are maintenance-free.”
I can’t help imagining some elderly lady who’s lonely and needs a companion, but can’t have a real pet because she’s too stiff to care for one or too poor to feed it, and her grandchildren who can’t be bothered to keep her company themselves buy her one of these things so she can try to pretend that she’s getting unconditional love from this pet that never ever wakes up. Gah, it’s so sad.
(As if my imagined pathos weren’t bad enough, I had to go read the testimonials at that website. Don’t do it.)
Ever wished there were some sort of record of cell phone service providers’ outages, so you could see who provides reliable service before signing up? The FCC keeps one, but you can’t see it.
The Federal Communications Commission does know something about outages, however. It has collected outage reports from telecommunications firms since the early 1990s. Any time a carrier has an outage that affects 900,000 caller minutes – say a 30-minute outage impacting 30,000 customers – it must report it to the Network Outage Reporting System.
In the beginning, the reports all were from “wire line” telephone providers and were available to the public. But in 2004, the commission ordered wireless firms to supply outage reports as well. But at the same time, it removed all outage reports from public view and exempted them from the Freedom of Information Act.
The FCC took the action at the urging of the Department of Homeland Security, which argued that publication of the reports would “jeopardize our security efforts.”
“The same outage data that can be so useful … to identify and remedy critical vulnerabilities and make the network infrastructure stronger can, in hostile hands, be used to exploit those vulnerabilities to undermine or attack networks,” DHS said.
It’s unclear how terrorists would use this information; perhaps with an appeal to the same magic force that would let them use an ounce of shampoo in an 8-ounce bottle to take down an airplane.
But it sure is clear how this policy benefits the cellular companies.
I recently finished reading Ian McEwan’s Atonement, which I really enjoyed. In lieu of an actual contentful post, here’s a passage from the book that I found very evocative.
She was walking under a bridge as a train passed overhead. The thunderous, rhythmic rumble reached right into her bones. Steel gliding and thumping over steel, the great bolted sheets of it high above her in the gloom, an inexplicable door sunk into the brickwork, mighty cast-iron pipework clamped in rusting brackets and carrying no one knew what–such brutal invention belonged to a race of supermen.
I like that a lot.
I am really annoyed at the amount of garbage companies - some of whom I have never even done business with - force me to throw away.
To Sierra Trading Post, Norm Thompson, and Omaha Steaks: Yes, I ordered from your website. That was because I want to shop online. I do not want to shop from catalogs. If I want anything else from you, I know where your website is because I’ve ordered things from it before. Stop sending me your freaking catalogs. (And Norm Thompson, the one thing I bought from you sucked anyway. You should have a disclaimer that your products are meant for middle-aged women.)
To the phone company: WTF? Why have I gotten three sets of phone books in the 17 months I have lived here? I am not even your customer, nor have I ever been. T-Mobile, whose customer I actually am, doesn’t leave heavy phone books on my porch so that I have to lug them to the dumpster. Why do you? Seriously. Why is it OK for you to drop garbage off on my front porch when I have never had any doings with you whatsoever?
Maybe I should save all the phone books and drop them off at the phone company’s doorstep once I have too many to carry at once.