September 2005 Archives

At work, our marketing department puts out feelers to attract clients. When they try our product, we in sales get notified and we then engage the customer either with a phone call or a template email. Once in a while we get some doozies as replies. The following is one of those boilerplate emails sent by one of the sales guys here:

Seamus Fanucci wrote:

Hello,

My name is Seamus Fanucci and I tried contacting you last week regarding your interest in our technology tool called Techtool. Do you need help starting up? Blah blah blah? Have you taken the product demo? Need resources to help you get started?

Feel free to contact me or you can send me an email at seamus@company.com and I will gladly help you with any questions.

Thanks for your interest,

Seamus

I never said that his boilerplate emails were any good. Anyhow Mr. Withheld responds:

Warning: graphic sex entry ahead.

Rose is currently serving time in a call centre, but may get sprung soon because I know all kinds of people in all walks of life. I found out about the nepotism involved in getting a job in Canada Post. A friend of a friend works there, and his uncle is the plant manager at one of the locations. The only way to get a job there is for an employee, preferably a high-ranking one, to submit your application on your behalf. Now mail sorting isn't more interesting than working a call centre, but the pay is about 60% higher, so.

Last night we were enjoying some bedroom shenanigans when she playfully put a hair clip in my hair, since it was getting in her face. Now, I am the type that likes to give as well as I get, so at some point I was...how shall I put it, trolling the trout-filled waters eating at the Y yodeling up her yoni, yeah, that'll do...anyway as I was doing that I was particularly into it. I think she was, too. Towards the very end of that lovemaking session, the phone rings, and I figure that it could be none other than MacEachran, my contact at Canada Post.

MacEachran is a cool guy with Scottish blood and red, red hair. He met Diana, his girlfriend two years ago, and three months later she was pregnant. The only time I had met her she was four months pregnant and had long hair. And I had forgotten how cartoonishly girlish her voice was. He was calling to tell me that they and their baby (who also has flaming red hair, but very short) were in the neighbourhood and that he had the application for Canada Post. He would call when he was outside and I could pick it up.

Do you litter? I know that I don't litter, and I am quite aware of what I throw away. Apparently I don't hang out with people that litter, either, because none of them litter. That's what they claim, plus I've never seen them litter. I'm wondering who's doing all the littering, though. I asked seven people here at work two questions.

1. Do you litter, even sometimes?
2. Do you know anyone that does?

Not a single one of them claimed that they littered, or knew anyone that did.

But apparently there are many excuses for littering. For example, if you throw away an apple core in a park, it's okay because it's biodegradable and a squirrel might pick it up. If you leave your newspaper somewhere, like on the metro, it's okay because chances are, someone will want to read it. Do these things count as littering?

Rose and I went to a kids park with Petunia two weeks ago. There was garbage everywhere near the entrance. Now it's possible that the garbage cans which were right there were full, but somehow I doubt this. It was a Sunday morning, which meant that possibly the night before, neighbourhood punks were making a mess in the area. I hated the sight of all this garbage in an otherwise nice little park.

I don't think that people realize the impact that littering has on the urban environment. The dirtier a place is, the more unlivable it becomes. It might be true that you are simply going to work, in drone mode, and not paying attention to anything else, therefore it doesn't matter to you what is lying on the ground. That, unfortunately, is symptomatic of a much larger problem, but that's for another post. The immediate thing is that if there is more crap lying around everywhere, then we will earn a reputation around the province as being a bunch of irresponsible pigs living in a dirty smelly city, and evenutally people from the rest of the world will get sick of our grime and stop coming here unless they want a cheap place to make a movie about a crappy city.

I don't want to live in such a place. I'm not the cleanest person, but I know that I do not litter. Ever. So take the time to ask the people around you if they litter and if they know anyone that does or has recently. Ask them not to, and they just might not. If won't hurt to ask.

So Pookie, now known as zura (link her, you Yulblog people, hopefully you'll get to meet her at the next Yulblog experience), now has a blog. And in this blog she posted a bit of a dilemma. I don't know how to answer her, so I thought I'd put it out there for all of you to ponder. To summarize, she has a friend that has decided to forego worldly things such as friends in order to find meaning in her meaningless life, but who has also a vacuous, superficial personality that seems to forget that the spiritual version exists. How should zura deal with this? Please read the post for details.

As I mentioned last week, we at work recently lost Dick, the CEO. I hadn't mentioned it, but our CFO was on vacation for a month, and returned last week. The announcement from Queen Zeal went out Thursday:

There are some changes coming in the Finance group.

First, I wish to inform you that Diamond Mine has decided to resign. Although this is being announced today, she actually resigned earlier this summer and it had been hoped that she might change her mind after some much deserved downtime and rest with her family. Instead she has decided to move forward with her decision and is back with us until October 7th in order to facilitate the knowledge transfer and bring closure to some specific projects.

I would also like to announce the addition of a new Finance resource: Likely Bastard will be joining our organization on September 26th in the role of Director, Business Planning & Strategic Analysis. Mr Bastard is a very experienced finance professional who will bring his considerable analytical capabilities and business modeling experience to help guide our team toward tighter, actionable (Actionable! Gah!-Ed.) business deliverables.

Please join me in wishing Diamond success in her future endeavors and in thanking her for her tremendous contribution.

Queen Zeal

You know how some women get pregnant (usually only the first time) and start to believe that they are goddesses? Like Lilith Sternin-Crane in one episode of Cheers, if you could remember that. Anyway, I'm talking about the ones that emit a phony air of superiority and condescension that appears only when pregnant or nursing. They sometimes turn into hyper bitches, or mega-dependent to the point where even the massive doses of hormomes they are getting can't explain this ridiculous behaviour. I've coined a new term for it.

The Gaea complex.

Sounds pretty good, doesn't it? Right up there with Oedipus and Electra.

Anyway, you heard it here first.

Blork had an interesting post about men and their keys. It's like we have some kind of satisfaction about knowing that we have keys, and that they can be used just in case street vendors or Christians come harassing them. I am SURE that there must have been studies on this. Here's another one: maybe it's me, or do women just assume that men will open the door? Why don't they even bother? Anytime there's a choice between whether I open the door, or they do, I end up opening the door except when I am far behind, my hands are full, or she's pissed at me, whomever she may be. And my mom? She'll wait five minutes for everyone to load everything out of the car and haul it to the door than actually use her key and open the door herself.

But why is that? I can accept that it may partly be a response to the guy needing to be useful bit, I guess, but I don't think that's the whole answer. If it is, maybe it means that they are going through the motions to make us feel like men, like faking orgasms.

Took a while to make the link, huh?

Since month-end was last Wednesday, and I couldn't see me closing any business last Thursday or Friday, I decided to take those days off. For some reason, I thought it wise to check my work email. Here's the irony:

I am writing to inform you that Dick has made the decision to resign from his position as CEO; he advised the Board of his decision in July and the Board has decided to accept it effective today.

-snip-

With his departure, I will report directly to the Board and will have the mandate to lead the organization as its most senior officer.

Dick will continue to contribute to our success during the next few months, providing strategic and business development assistance on a consulting basis and will take on a role on the Board.

-snip-

Regards,

Queen Zeal

Note: You may have seen this posted at my other blog, but I have since moved it here.

My biggest fear may seem rather insignificant compared to the fears of others, but it is something I think about regularly.

Sometimes, rarely but sometimes, I feel dirty and guilty when I know I haven't done anything wrong. For example, when I walk into a store and I am the only one getting followed. I hate it when people look askance at me because I am male, black or at one time, young. The worst is when you can taste the fear that a woman has whenever I happen to be walking behind them, or towards them. Many times (and there are many of you who probably know what I am talking about) they go as far as to walk across to the other side of the street. I even rehearse how I see a situation playing out if she decides to enlist the aid of a store owner, a passerby or even a police officer. "But I really was going in the same direction! But I live over there!" Sometimes when I pass them I think to myself, "See? I am fucking harmeless! I'm just a guy walking down the street that wants nothing to do with you!"

I am making this entry from a brand new laptop 80 gig HDD my ass! There's only 70 at capacity!) that I bought yesterday that I have no intention of keeping. Is that wrong? I just wanted to use a decent laptop for once, and experience the joy that is wireless networking and Internet, not to mention the pain in the ass of typing on a funny keyboard.

Labour Day was the saddest day of the year, and not because we had school the next day. On the contrary, I loved school back then. I was pretty much the best in the class, and socially I wasn't doing too badly, either unlike just about everyone else I know. That's a whole other entry. But do you remember the Jerry Lewis telethon? Jerry's kids? That used to be every year on Labour Day weekend. I used to force myself to watch as much of it as possible, because I felt as though it was the least I could do. I felt truly obliged. And it was pure torture seeing all those kids my age in such wretched states. Every year, one of Jerry's kids that was on the telethon the previous year was dead the following year. It just killed me. Year after year.

When I look back on it, apart from Remembrance Day (which used to be a holiday in Ontario, and CHRIST were those sad days) I don't think that I have invested so much emotionally in strangers since. I wonder when that all changed. I wonder why one year I chose to no longer watch the telethon, empathize and care in my own way. If I were more enterprising, I could have raised some money for them, or something. What could I do, though? I was just a kid, or so I thought.