Friday, November 25, 2005

Road to Hell...

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Lawyers would tell you the road was paved with malicious interlopers, but that' s a little harsh, I think.
Once in a while I'm overcome with a desire to be helpful. Like holding the door for a person loaded down with packages, or giving directions to someone, or (like now), helping a customer who has wandered onto the media relations hotline.
The hotline (manned 24/7) gets a couple of random calls every once in a while, but when it's a customer, I like to get their name + number, and a brief description on what they need. Then I call someone who can help.
Now, whenever I get the urge to help like this, I usually remember how these things normally turn out. (i.e. - I hold the door for one person and eight more take advantage without so much as a "thank you" thrown my way; or else I realize the directions I've given someone were totally wrong, and the guilt wakes me up at 3 a.m.; or, like today, I try to make it right by our customer only I make it worse by not knowing how to transfer a call correctly.)
Oy.
Road to hell.

Sunday, November 06, 2005

Disaster Flicks

Guilty pleasure alert: I *love* disaster flicks. Tonight's "Category 7: The End of the World" on CBS met every requirement for a truly great and wormy disaster flick. The cheesy dialogue, the improbable circumstances, the groovy pseudo-scientific jargon and theories, the quick camera cuts and (can someone explain this to me?) the wierd jumps between edits, and the even more improbable solutions to stop the end of the world... Awesome!
I like made-for-TV disaster flicks even more than feature films because they have nutty juxtaposition with the commercials running every frigging 10 minutes. Tonight's End of the World is brought to you by Charmin and Lubriderm. Nothing's more important than a wiped ass and smooth skin! (Perhaps there's something to that.)
I like disaster novels too. The disasters don't have to be so-called "natural" either - I'm thinking of "The Big U" by Neal Stephenson and, my all-time top-of-the-list "The Stand" by Stephen King. With a novel, you can stop reading for a minute and imagine what you would do if you found yourself in that situation. What if I were the Frannie character in "The Stand"? I'd like to end up with someone like Stu, but would I really want to leave the Free Zone with a newborn and one on the way just so I could go back to Maine, where there's nothing but dead, rotting people and deer in the supermarkets? Not so much. Plus, I'm not from Maine, so that wouldn't make sense.
But I *have* thought about what I would do if I somehow managed to survive a world epidemic or nuclear war... and while it's pretty unlikely that my constitution is strong enough to avoid a medical thing, chance is chance, and there's no telling who would be left behind.
(Speaking of "Left Behind" - have you read the ultimate disaster story? Written by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, it's the in-your-time story of the Rapture. Hey - it's a good story even if you don't believe in that stuff.)
I'd like to believe that I would make good decisions and lead people to safety, but truth to tell, I'd probably be so freaking scared that I would follow the first person who came along that seemed to have a good idea. Of course, I would realize almost-too-late that the earthy messiah was a David Koresh-wanna be and I'd have to concoct a crazy scheme to run away, taking the non-believers with me.
I'm starting to think I've seen too many disaster flicks...

Thursday, November 03, 2005

Woof

If I were a dog:


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Speaking of dogs... e-mail and Berry has been up/down for the last couple of days. It started like a slow summer cold - you don't feel quite right and then whammo - you realize "I'm totally ill!" or "The f'ing e-mail is down!"
Interesting that the emotional responses to both situations are exactly the same.
Once I get passed the fact that all of my deadlines are going to blow up, I kind of like not having e-mail. Everyone suddenly answered their phones - except the truly anti-social. Things get done faster. And better, sometimes - because you actually have to talk to people.