A long day at work, home, onto the computer and my email box is full.
"A few quick revisions". Web stuff, which I've been trying to leave somewhat behind, put on a back burner while I'm doing the restaurant gig, but I'm not having any luck. There's always "more work" coming down the pipe.
Never enough that I could leave off the restaurant completely, but enough to ensure that I never, ever have a free moment to gather my thoughts.
Never.
These people, they don't know what quick is, they hope it's quick and it's all quick when your not doing it yourself, I've a mind to send them my own list of quick revisions, "World Peace", "Stop World Hunger", "Clean up the Gulf of Mexico"... I mean, it's easy enough to ask for, it SHOULD therefore be easy enough to do...
And as email after email slowly downloads into my inbox I wonder how I was unclear when I said I didn't want to do this anymore, how being "a sport" somehow got me embroiled in this....There are the "Urgent" emails, those flagged with the little "!" exclamation mark to say "Do me right away", and you do and you forward the client the notes and wait for the response. A week, maybe 2 later, another email marked "Urgent" will appear.
"A few quick revisions.." it will begin.
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Once a week at least you'll see them, three buses in a row heading in the opposite direction. The first one is full, the next 2 are empty.
It's a bad sign.
And you wait. And you wait. You check your watch and make light conversation with the other people at the bus stop. Maybe you missed your bus, but the others, they're all regulars and if you missed the bus then they did too....
And you're still waiting.
Now you try to be understanding, there's probably extenuating circumstances at play. There could be an accident. It could be the snow, or the rain, or the fact that it's a sunny day. Maybe your watch isn't working? But other people are getting on their cell phones and calling in to work.
The bus is late.
So you wait and me, I'm bad at being late. I'm usually early. To be 5 minutes late takes an hour to recover from, 15 minutes late take a day.
You think of all the big cities you've lived in, London, Prague, the buses always ran on time. But here in Calgary bus schedules, they're only approximate, you shouldn't take them seriously, they're intended as a general guide only...
And you wonder why they need three buses running the route in the other direction when 2 of them are empty, couldn't they just turn one of them around?
All the while inside I'm screaming, I'm late...
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People think, when I suggest that we hang, behead, draw and quarter our politicians and lawyers, that I'm being a little extreme.
I'm not, it's simply that I think when anyone - whether it be a police officer, fireman, Judge or politician, is appointed to public office they have not only the civic duty (like the rest of us) to obey the law, but as well an exemplary duty.
And when, as so often seems to happen, the temptations of a 12 year old girl in a chatroom or hefty bribe prove too much for them to resist, the punishment should be an order of magnitude above and beyond what we'd sentence anyone else to.
The makers and enforcers of the law should be held up to a higher bar than the rest of us. It makes sense.
Yet when I suggest, to those so silly as to solicit my opinion, that we hang, torture, dismember or employ any of a number of other classic and antique methods of public justice to not only punish the miscreants that so abused their position, but to set an example and reinforce public belief that "justice has been served", people think I'm being a little extreme. It's enough that the cop that molested children lost his job, that the politician lost face,....
Of course it's not, and as always we sympathize with the perpetrator and not the victims.
Bringing to mind Brian Mulroney, who's recent role as chief beneficiary in the bribery scandal will never involve jail time or adequate restitution for the money he swindled both from his victim and the citizens of Canada, who so arrogantly sued and won millions of dollars for libel (although he was later proved to have: "broke his own ethics code, engaged in inappropriate behaviour and evaded the truth for years by purposely concealing hefty cash payments"), who has continually cost the taxpayers millions of dollars (and continues to cost us in investigative and settlement fees), where then is the potential for justice here?
There is, of course, none.
But what we could do, should do perhaps, is Tar and Feather them. Only a slightly antique custom, properly North American, we dip them in hot tar, roll them in feathers, and run them out of town. Or in Mulroney's case, out of the country. It gives people at their new destination a "head's up" as to what to expect, it properly expresses our contempt and ridicule, it (small consideration for the liberals) causes no permanent and lasting harm to the victim, sure, a bit of humiliation, but for the million(s) he's cost us I'd happily undergo the ritual...it's something, at least, to get our money's worth. It announces to the world that he's fallen far far short of the already low standards we have for politicians.
This Canada Day lets do something great. Lets tar and feather Brian Mulroney.
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Interrupted from my nap today, cherished nap, by a call from this number: 403-310-2255.
Unknown number. I know who it is, I've looked it up, they call every day, 2 or three times even, on those few days when I'm home and I answer there's only dead air. You wait a couple of minutes, still dead air, then hang up.
I've called it back, but it's an endless menu of automated queues. It's Telus, and somehow they feel that because you've been foolish enough to buy one or two services from them it gives them the right to harass you, by phone, every day to purchase more. Maybe you'll be stupid enough to buy more. I've tried to think that maybe, just maybe, they were calling to see how I was, to tell me I had won a car in one of their promotions, that they'd like to give me a free upgrade on my internet, but the search results don't seem to substantiate that.
Over 10, 000 results from Alberta alone, many of the results are message boards with multiple postings. So, conservatively, 50, 000 irate customers?
Hell of a campaign. Most of the comments seem to express a similar viewpoint to mine, dead air, why are they calling, why can't they just leave me alone...Probably the marketing execs at Telus think it's a great way to advertise, call people, wake them, interrupt their eating, exercise, sleeping, fornicating, with dead air, sort of a telephone viral... calling two or three times a day lending an urgency to the calls, then dead air as you wait for their machines to transfer you to an agent.
What a bunch of fuckwits.
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