Trying to get your internet provider to fix a problem can be dreadful, so based on recent experience, I offer you this handy little guide. Feel free to print it at no charge and keep it by your phone during the long hours ahead. When you signed up for service, you were quoted a speed. …
Another working road trip. My colleague needs a piece of equipment from the Apple store, which is in a mall. The Apple store is swarming with people, but in less than 30 seconds, a salesman comes alongside to take us to what we need. In the Apple store, if you have their app on your …
Call me crazy, but maybe it’s a good thing that the University of Iowa — and by extension, a great many schools in financially troubled times — has to decide not to have an Asian studies program, among other marginal offerings. Universities — their administrations, boards, faculties, and sometimes students — are almost uniformly gripped …
Here’s a conundrum. We put automatic sinks in public restrooms because we can’t trust our fellow man to turn off the water properly. We put automatic flushers on the toilets because we can’t trust him to flush. (We can’t trust him to lift the lid, either, so I suppose it’s a matter of time before …
Ordinarily I’m not a fan of government meddling, but sometimes I am ready for a regulation requiring products made in whole or part in China to be labeled as such. Poisoned toothpaste, animal food, infant formula, building products that rot and emit toxic fumes, and now deadly children’s jewelry indicate — as if we needed any …
Dear Nabisco MegaCorporation, Once upon a time there was a delicious little cracker called Harvest Grain. This cracker didn’t ask for much, nothing, really, other than to be crispy and nutritious and delectable in Tony’s mouth. Tony and his Harvest Grains were very happy together. Sometimes Tony would spread a tasty cheese spread on his …
As I bribe my children with candy to find me one of the two dozen sippy cups cleverly hidden by the baby throughout the house, it occurs to me that I have a solution for that institution remarkably like children in its propensity to lose things and then disavow responsibility for them: the airlines. After …
Dear United: Next time how about you kiss me first? Read More »
“She’s taking it to the chiropractor,” smirked one Newton Medical Center technician to another as my wife waited for them to hand over an x-ray scan of baby Isaiah’s arm. We were twenty hours into an ordeal, sparked the night before when he came wailing to his mother, his arm held tight to his side. She …
Let me see if I’ve got this straight. American mega-companies buy shoddy lead-painted toys and chemically poisonous clothes from China, and market them to our children. We stupidly trust the American mega-companies because we have happy memories of the days when you could get killed by a lawn dart or by falling from the top …
Dear Quaker Oats Megalith, You might recall that I warned you once before about disguising newfangled “quick” foods as the older, take-an-extra-three-minutes-to-cook-it fare. Well, fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, and I hate you double. That’s right, I accidentally bought those pulverized nubbins you call “Quick Oats,” mistaking them for the whole …
You’ve probably never heard of Blackstreet Capital Partners, a private-equity fund in Maryland that buys underperforming companies and attempts to make them profitable. And you’ve almost certainly never heard of a company they own, SFCA Inc. But perhaps you’ve heard about infants dying after being strangled in bassinets made by a company once known as …
Dear SanDisk Corporation, I have admired your thumb drives from the beginning. They fit in my pocket. No more inadvertantly inserting a data CD in my truck and wondering if I’d accidentally purchased some kind of post-Modern German techno-punk-death metal fusion music. You were providing the public with a much-needed product. But you couldn’t stop there, …
Dear Quaker Oats Company; Thank you for giving me the opportunity to try your new Quaker Quick 1-Minute Oats. As one might expect, they felt in my mouth much the way I imagine elephant snot would feel. Why would anyone deliberately eat elephant snot, you ask? Well, exactly. You see, I didn’t set out with …
Memo To: Obfuscus & Delay, Attorneys-at-Law From: Worldcom Accounting Group Re: Latest Audit Results In re your last memo (re: “Is a team of monkeys doing your books?!?”), we would like to point out that we are a team of seasoned professionals, and restate that you are in the employ of Worldcom on a provisional …
