Let Me Tell You About A Porcupines Balls

Friday, November 25, 2011

Deconstructing Idiotic Infographics

Today's Specimen




If "HUH" is the modern hipster equivalent of "Jesus Christ, are you serious? Oh, you are? Wow. Just wow.", then yeah, I suppose I'd agree with you. But for the sake of argument, let me see if I fully understand the poorly illustrated syllogism you've laid out:

Major Premise: Amassing in any space you can legally get to falls under first amendment protection

Minor Premise: Occupy groups are amassing in a place they could get to

Conclusion: All Occupy...occupations...are protected by the the US constitution

If I may, allow me to deconstruct your invalid claim through through the application of the following images:

This gathering in a space designed for gathering is fully legal. This gathering in a space designed for gathering is not legal in any way, shape or form.


Using the original image provided, allow me to explain it further, since the Occupy people are likely to be missing the distinction. The Twilight Breaking Dawn camp, are coalescing there because they're attempting to use the publicly accessible, but still private, space to engage in consumerism, as the place that owns that location would very much enjoy them doing. This is super legal. You feckless Occupy people amassing in the very same location, for the express purpose of being there, and participating in absolutely zero acts of consumerism, are south of legal. The mall didn't build you that space so you could river dance and play hacky sack in it.

In very much the same way that your home is owned and controlled by you (assuming any of you Occupy people even have homes), and is open to the idea of having welcomed guests over. And yet, if a bunch of strangers tried to come in without your consent, that crosses the line into what we call home invasion.

You don't want strangers in your privately owned living room, and, luckily for you, no one is attempting to occupy your home. Similarly, these privately owned businesses and city-owned areas don't want a bunch of dickheads there either, so you all need to jog on. Private property is private property; you can't have it both ways.

The sad part is that because the interwebs are full of half-wits and hipsters, your shitilly prepared infographic may be construed as accurate, simply because you spent time making it.
Wow, he sure did spend time planning out and making that illustration for me. I shall equate his skills with Photoshop to his skills at understanding the real world, and appeal to his clearly superior levels of knowledge.




Want that fancy new car, but can't afford it? Occupy it.

Want to sex up that lady, but she is disgusted by you? Occupy her vagina.

God bless you first amendment.

Wednesday, November 23, 2011

FedEx: Setting The Bar As Low As It Goes

Every company has their particular foibles. Invariably they all have some crock of shit policy or way of handling things that leaves much to be desired. However, none have as many stupid policies that have given me as many bouts of irritable bowel syndrome as FedEx. Those conspiring fucks.

Organizations with the worst policies:
  1. The Nazis
  2. Westboro Baptist Church
  3. FedEx
  4. Every health insurance company
  5. Super villain meetings

Please allow me to outline the primary and accurate ways in which FedEx unceremoniously fucks me, you and everyone via its services.



Mandated Shipping Bafoonary


The below table will outline the exact shipping timeline for a recent package I ordered with 3 day shipping on it

Date Activity Location Details
18th Picked up Minnesota
19th Arrived at FedEx location Indianapolis
19th At destination sort facility San Diego
21st At local FedEx facility San Diego
22nd At local FedEx facility San Diego Package not due for delivery
22nd At local FedEx facility San Diego Package not due for delivery
22nd At local FedEx facility San Diego Package not due for delivery
22nd At local FedEx facility San Diego Go fuck yourself
23rd Delivery at our discretion San Diego Hold your god damned horses


We can see that two days after I ordered the package, it was in my city. Yet it was two days after that before they began attempting delivery of said lovely box. Clearly, I ordered three day shipping on the package and they, quite foolishly, got it to its destination in only two days. Clearly this oversight could not go uncorrected.

Extrapolating turds of corporate stupidity from the delivery schedule, we come up with the following excerpt from the FedEx corporate guidelines

When a customer says "I'd like my package to come in no more than three days, please", by god, we'll sure as hell get it to them in no less than three days. Why, delivering it in any less than three days would be aspirational, and wholly unacceptable.

Should, by some unexplained bout of cognizance, a shipment arrive at its destination early, protocol dictates that you must deliver it between 1 and 3 days late, so as to remove any poorly speculated thoughts of competency.

It's better to waste time and warehouse resources by sitting on a package ready too early, then to set a reasonable and pleasant expectation with our consumers. Hell, if they wanted in a package in 2 days, instead of 3, they should have paid for overnight delivery.



Financial Rapery


You might be confused into thinking that since FedEx is loosely affiliated with couriering packages around the global landscape, that it might have a vague notion about accurate pricing models for said task. Yet, upon being tasked with shipping a package to another company, and collecting exorbitant fees to do so, we discover that HOLY SHIT there's a 100% chance of having to pay customs to get the package into said country. Should the upfront costs to the consumer reflect this cost? Absolutely not. Allow us again to refer to the FedEx corporate guidelines:

So as to best falsely curtail the expansive costs of global shipping to the end-consumer, FedEx subscribes to a very specific pricing model. Upon receiving a package from the consumer, and very precisely calculating transit costs (conscious of shipping them on a daily basis), FedEx mandates that you collect exactly 12% of the actual shipping costs from the consumer at this time.

The rest will be billed to their home address roughly 3 weeks later, with a feign sincerity about how it cost more than anticipated to deliver said package. This leaves the consumer with a exaggerated feeling that FedEx is a painless, and cost-effective choice in global shipping.

Sure, as a consumer analogy, if the shoppers at Wal-Mart paid for many goods, only to receive a bill in the mail later saying they owed Wal-Mart additional money not reflected in the suggested retail price of their items, they'd have their asses sued off. This shouldn't discourage us however. Why? Because fuck 'em. That's why.

Somewhere deep in the shipping contract you sign when you place in FedEx's charge a package of yours to be delivered, is a clause that basically whisks your normal financial practices away to a land where they're raped to death by hemorrhagic monkeys. In this clause, you give FedEx permission you charge you later for anything extra that it may cost them to do business on your behalf.

For example: If FedEx was being hit hard by fuel costs due to an increase in oil prices, they could opt to task an engineering firm to design and build a large cannon for the sole purpose of firing your package through the stratosphere to its destination. Alternatively, they could invest copious amounts of dollars into building a time machine, with the intent of bringing back crusaders from the 1100's to guard your package as it travels through foreign lands. In both of these cases, you would receive a bill and be expected to remit payment. How could they possibly have estimated these costs ahead of time, or amortized them in some way?

Financial Rapery 2: Electric Boogaloo


The exact same thing as above, only I'm the recipient of a package. Further making me intrinsically responsible for uncollected delivery fees the sender didn't pay.

Failure to submit to the either of the fiscal buttfucks above, naturally, results in legal claims or collections attempts against the end-user. Don't dare think your shipping experience is concluded, and that the money in your bank account is rightfully yours. It's FedEx's money, you just haven't been notified of that yet.

Monday, November 21, 2011

A Personal Appeal From Jimmy Wales

Wikipedia serves billions of pages of knowledge to the planet every month for free. We do all this with less than 100 members of staff, and just a few hundred servers. Please help us keep this system running so that the world can continue to access this mind temple for free. Please consider making a donation of $5, $20, $50 or whatever you can to protect and sustain Wikipedia.
Like Forrest Gump and that whore from Pretty Woman, we here at Wikipedia are attempting to better ourselves, despite great adversity. Please donate whatever you can to help our foundation continue providing free knowledge to the world. We're not tardos nor prostitutes, but we still need your help.
No one wants to help Jimmy and Wikipedia? It makes Jimmy exceedingly sad that you can't spare $5 for the cumulative knowledge of the human race. That coffee you have there, how much did that cost you? Hmm? Probably roughly five dollars. People like you are killing Wikipedia and make Jimmy Wales sick.
Wikipedia is not above lowering itself to tugging at your heart strings to get donations. Yes, this is a kitten in a cast; it's the Wikipedia office cat. If we don't raise $1.5 million in the next 24 hours, there's no telling in what ways Jimmy's next outburst will negatively effect tiny Cinnamon.
Well, I hopead you all are haadppy. Yourd lack of wdillingness to dkonate to Wikipedias, and the assocciated disdtress in my lif3 has ledd to poor Jimemy being placced in an iron lugng. Jimmy is still able to tyhpe with a cruode homemmade mouth typidng wanfd, so don'tt thinmk I'll stop pleeading folr your do4nations.
Holy Christ! There's a huge nasty spider on your screen! Click it to kill it! Click it now! You may have to enter credit card information after you click it, to make sure it's REALLY dead! Hurry, before it gets you!
We'd hate to run out of funding with which to operate our servers. We'd hate to have to find alternative means to power our servers with. We'd hate to burn homeless dogs in a makeshift boiler in sub-basement 2 to generate steam for generators. Wouldn't you hate that to? Don't you love puppies?
You're the 1,000,000,000th viewer!

Click to claim your prize!
Are your hearts so callus that without the looming prospect of genital stimulation you won't donate to help Wikipedia?! For the love of god, fine! I will suck your prick if you donate $20 to help keep our doors open! I'll work the pipe, Jimmy is not above that. I am not a proud man. Let's get those pants off and those wallets out.

Friday, November 18, 2011

Fixing America's Poor Eating Habits

"We are not saying pizza is a vegetable," said Corey Henry, the spokesman for the American Frozen Food Institute, which supports the bill. "What we are saying is if you serve a slice of pizza with 2 tablespoons of vegetable paste, it can be an important way to deliver a number of vegetables that children will actually consume."

"We believe we can improve child nutrition by ensuring that schools are able to provide vegetables in any form," Henry said. "It's a little bizarre for us that in trying to improve nutrition, you take items from school cafeterias that do provide vital sources of vitamins and nutrients."


Source
Let's face it, making smart and healthy eating decisions is hard. Lack of knowledge about, and easy access to, unhealthy choices seem to be a fixture of American dietary culture. On a daily basis we're all faced with tough dietary questions such as:

  • Which will satisfy my daily requirement of Vitamin D: 14 peanut M&Ms or an Almond Joy?
  • Would an egg McMuffin or just a deep-fried English muffin be more sensible for breakfast?
  • How many bags of kettle-cooked potato chips should I eat daily to maintain my health needs?
  • Are these Post-It notes on my desk edible?
  • Why am I told that I shouldn't try to eat my own armpits, despite them smelling like Taco Bell?

I'm not a dietitian; I don't have the answers.

But crushed under the weight of these important decisions, it's getting harder and harder for us Americans to stay healthy. That's why I wholeheartedly trust the dietetical ideas of Mr. Henry; simply redefine the unhealthy foods we already eat, as the healthy food we should be eating. Using his expanded concept of nutritional completeness, the following amendments are being made to my diet, under the hopes that they'll soon filter into our schools as well.

Used to Be GarbageNow Counts asWhy the Fuck?
1 serving of vegetables Has tomato (which is a fruit) paste layered on it. Fuck you, deal with it.
1 serving of vegetables Made of healthy-ass corn and salsa-adjacent flavors
1 serving of dairy Milk chocolate, dumbass
1/2 serving of vegetables and 1/2 serving of protein Made with some coffee --> coffee comes from beans --> beans are legumes containing proteins --> science
2 servings of grains Beer is essentially bread. Nutritious bread and nourishing water.
1 serving of fruit Don't be stupid, the package says "contains real fruit juice"
1 serving of meat Jesus Christ. It's egg-shaped. Eggs are made by meats to make more meats. What's so hard to understand?


It's a little bizarre for me that in trying to improve children's nutrition, you wouldn't feed them loads of pizza, Starbursts, Frappuccinos, 3 Musketeer bars, Doritos, cream eggs and beer. Frankly, it seems a little irresponsible not to.

Get your shit together, schools.