Things I Get a Kick Out Of - Volume Four

Volume Four - Ambushing the UPS Guy

Nah, he doesn't look like that.  He's actually kinda tubby for a dude that hops in and out of a truck all day.  He has a scruffy blond beard and beady little eyes.  Sort of like a young Santa Claus before all his hair turns white or whatever.  I just happen to like that chair in the background of this picture.  (Admit it - you didn't notice the chair.)

Anyhow, on to the topic of the UPS guy.  I don't get a ton of packages delivered, but I do receive my fair share.  Recently I had to buy a new bluetooth headset to use while I'm working.  New rules coming down from the feds.  Who'dathunkit?  What's funny to me is that the truck drivers of the country are far more qualified to hold a phone and still drive, given that they get a lot of practice.  Now they're facing a ban but the rest of you jagoffs out there can still yap away on your phones and cause accidents as much as you like.  If handheld phones are a safety risk, then ban them in all vehicles.  Morons.

So anyhow, my old bluetooth headset fell in the toilet one night.  It wasn't securely fastened to my ear and it started to slip as I was brushing my teeth.  When I reached up to stop it from falling off my ear, I knocked it right off my ear.  Nice big bathroom... plenty of safe landing areas available... right into the toilet.  By the time I got it out, the thing was toasted.  I meant to buy another one at the time but just never got around to it.  Until this week.

My UPS guy is an odd fella.  On the occasions when I've been home to receive a delivery, I've noticed that he rings the doorbell once and then runs like a bat out of hell.  His truck is usually already around the corner from my condo by the time I hit the front door.  The FedEx guy waits for me to answer the door.  The mailman waits for me to answer the door.  The UPS guy just rings and goes.

I received an e-mail yesterday indicating that my new headset would be delivered today, via UPS.  Game on, mofos.  From my living room upstairs, I can see parts of the road that encircles my condo complex.  Basically there is a ring of buildings surrounding a pond, then a road surrounding the ring of buildings.  Between the buildings, in a few spots, I can see cars passing by if I happen to look at the right time.  I know, from receiving previous packages and from reviewing the tracking notices for other packages that were delivered in my absence, that the UPS guy usually shows up between 1pm and 2pm.

I went upstairs at 1pm and began my stakeout.  Fortunately for me, the dude arrived shortly thereafter.  I'm not sure that I would have had the patience to wait all the way until 2pm.  I spotted the brown truck coming around the north side of the road.  I headed downstairs.  I awaited the doorbell.  No doorbell.  Apparently I wasn't the only one getting a package delivered today.  Go figure.

Then the moment came.  I heard the truck's brakes squeal.  I looked out the peephole in my front door.  I saw the UPS guy walk up the stairs to my door.  I saw him set down the box before ringing the bell, just the way he plans his quick escape.  Why bother holding onto the box when he has no intention of handing me the box, right?  I saw him reach to his left and press the button.  As soon as the bell rang, I swung the door open and scared the shit out of that little bastard.  He was in the process of turning to run back to his truck.  When he heard the door open, he started to turn back and look.  But his momentum was already taking him toward the steps.  In a moment of awkward confusion, the dude almost took a tumble.  He stayed upright though.  And he looked silly.  I laughed at him and grabbed my package.

Ambush - successful.

SOPA, Stop IP, and so forth...

It appears that our Republican babysitters in Congress, with the assistance of our Democrat babysitters in Congress, are ready to pass the two bills mentioned in the title of this post.  They're going to stamp out online piracy and save $100 billion for the American economy every year.  Except they're full of shit.  Even if one accepts the premise that online piracy costs American companies this much money, it's an illogical leap of faith to assume that the same amount is lost from the economy.

For example, it's entirely conceivable that a given internet user who downloads an illegal copy of a movie was not inclined to purchase the movie in the first place.  His motivation for watching the movie may well have been the fact that he found a way to obtain it for free.  Net cost to the economy - zero.

Perhaps a different internet user would have paid to see the movie though.  Surely his illegal download represents a loss to the economy, right?  Maybe, but I doubt it.  Once he spent the ten bucks or whatever it costs to see a movie he would have had ten bucks less to spend on something else.  His illegal download would represent a loss to the movie company, but the net cost to the economy would be close to zero in most cases.

So they may as well drop the canard about money being lost to foreign countries and call the act what it is - an effort to protect companies who write big checks to people in high places.  This is not an unworthy cause, by the way.  Property rights are a fundamental building block of the American system and intellectual property is every bit as legitimate as physical property.  If piracy is a problem for American businesses, then the government has a duty to provide laws and remedies for those businesses.  They're going about it like morons though, as they tend to do.

Theft is an act committed by one party against another.  It should be handled as a matter between those two parties and nobody else.  Providing a way for websites to be shut down for speculative reasons is a disaster for those of us who think of 'freedom' as more than a catchy slogan.  Many of you probably either weren't reading my blog at the time or simply don't recall every load that I've hauled, but I recall very specifically a Christmas trip through Wyoming almost four years ago.  Yep, I drove through Meeteetse and I was reminded of Beavis.  So I found a clip and posted it.  Apparently this was a copyright violation though, as I was told a few days later.

Herein we see an example similar to that of my first hypothetical downloader.  I didn't cost the American economy a single cent and I didn't cost the owner of the material a single cent.  Posting that clip didn't keep me from buying the movie.  I already had the DVD and I never intended to buy it again.  If anything, maybe my post planted a seed of thought in someone else's mind to go and buy it.  Free advertising, if you will.  But Paramount saw things differently and made YouTube remove the video.  Apparently some people in Congress think that YouTube was complicit in piracy as a result of my actions.  Let's just say I disagree.

As I think back on the 1,300+ posts that I've made here, I seem to recall posting a lot of photos, videos, links and other assorted material.  Quite frankly I have no idea whether any of it was copyrighted or not.  I don't have a legal department working on that stuff because I really don't think it matters.  This blog is not a money-making venture and I'm not a significant writer, so I assume that nobody actually cares what I post here.  What if they did care though?  By virtue of hosting my blog with what may be infringing content on some of the pages, should the whole Blogger.com platform be considered a rogue site?  Apparently some people in Congress think so.  Let's just say I disagree.

Just when you think it's safe to go in the water and trust that the Goddamned Republicans have gotten the message, they go and remind you of what they really are - the other side of the Democrat coin.  After three years of unintended (and/or intended in some cases) consequences resulting from every big government idea that the Democrats could throw at us, one would think that the "conservative" party would have learned something.  Nope.  Screwing with the internet would lead to an endless cascade of unintended consequences and apparently these jagoffs are ready to charge right ahead.  Not all of them, incidentally, but enough of them.

Some British dude can explain concisely in twenty minutes what our own elected representatives here in the states are unable to comprehend.  Funny, ain't it?

It took this long, but...

Is it possible that, after many years of calling the guy a kook, I might actually come around and give in to the RƎVO˩UTION?  It's too early to tell, but I'm not immune to the 'anyone but Romney' syndrome that appears to be afflicting quite a few Americans these days.  Unlike most of the bandwagon-jumping wannabe pundits chiming in on the current race, however, I have a long history of backing losers.  Add one more pelt to the collection, apparently, since ole Mr. Cain managed to flame out in spectacular fashion.  I still happen to think Ron Paul is a kook, but it might be time to pull a Lee Corso and say, "Ahh fuck it."

As I look at the remaining Republican field, I can only conclude that Mr. Corso's three words summarize things pretty succinctly.  I'm not going to delve into a dissection of each candidate's pros and cons here.  That would take a long time, would bore the hell out of me, and would break no new ground for anyone.  These people have been debating for what seems like ten years now.  If you care to know where they stand, then you know where they stand. 

What I am going to do is take a second to quote a bartender that I met in Manhattan several years ago.  I was visiting New York with my then-girlfriend and we were having a very good time.  After watching the Radio City Christmas Spectacular (at Radio City Music Hall, natch) we went for a carriage ride in the park.  I had checked all of the 'romantic' boxes on my end so I knew how the night was bound to wrap up.  We wanted to grab a few drinks before heading back to the hotel though.

We wound up at a bar on the East Side.  There were only a few people inside.  One was our chubby Hispanic waiter.  One was the cross-dressing piano player.  The rest were local residents who liked the friendly atmosphere.  Everybody was really nice to us and we enjoyed an hour or two.

Upon waking in our hotel room the next day, we discovered that something was missing.  We had bought a nutcracker doll for the aforementioned girlfriend's little daughter while we were at Radio City.  The nutcracker was nowhere to be found.  Normally I'd just chalk it up as another $20 down the drain, but we were absolutely certain that the kid would absolutely love that nutcracker.  We needed to find it.  Re-tracing our steps from the previous night led us to the conclusion that we had the doll during the cab ride to the bar.  We had the doll at the bar.  We couldn't recall whether or not we had it in the cab on the way back to the hotel.

Given that we didn't know where the bar was, we were facing a bit of a challenge.  We caught a train over to Second Avenue and started walking.  It didn't take as long as we had feared to find the bar.  We walked inside and found a weathered woman in her early fifties tending the bar.  My companion eagerly explained our predicament.  The image of that woman's expression is seared into my memory forever, and it emerges every time I read a news article about Newt Gingrich leading in the polls.

She gave us a summary about how she comes into work every day and finds things that people left behind.  If they go unclaimed, she or someone else at the bar get to keep the items.  Fur coats, Rolex watches, you name it.  On this particular morning she came in and saw our nutcracker doll.  Her first thought then - my first thought now - was expressed with a classic New York flourish.  She threw her hands in the air and said, "HERE I AM THINKING - WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE!?!"

Yep.  That's about where I am right now.  She was exasperated to find that people would be dumb enough to leave behind what was an obvious gift for a child.  I'm exasperated to find that people would be dumb enough to back the fat white Republican version of everything that is wrong with American politics.

I'm not entirely past the kook thing yet, but it might be time to embrace Mr. Reagan's 80% rule and also acknowledge the fact that Mr. Paul wouldn't actually have the power to do most of the shit that he says he would do anyway.  He would have the power to veto reckless spending and I'm pretty sure he would use it.  That might be a start.  Somebody get him squared away regarding the Middle East though.  He's dead wrong.

Heh... Scotland

Pretty windy.