Tag Archives: suck

Doesn’t ANYone here speak English?

Posted on by
3

There are two waitresses at U Sladečku, a.k.a. Crazy Daisy, who I have taken as a personal challenge. Both are brunette, slender, and pretty. If either speaks English I don’t want to know about it. One of them I have dubbed the Anti-Amy. Put Amy and the Anti-Amy side-by-side and they could easily pass as sisters. At least, until they start talking. Or, well, when Amy starts talking. The anti-Amy doesn’t say a whole lot. To anyone.

The czechs, I am often reminded, are a reserved people. That’s OK with me; I’m fairly reserved myself. Amy is not reserved. Not at all.

The Anti-Amy was not working today, but the other she-of-the-hard-won-smile was. Compared to the Anti-Amy she’s a ball of fire, which means on occasion she will toss a litte half-smile my way when I fuck up the czech badly enough but in a sincere way. Also working tonight was a skinny blonde with bad teeth who on rare occasions is almost friendly.

I sat with my back to the wall farthest from the door, next to the piano upon which menus are stacked. I settled in with a beer and a bowl of soup and looked for more parts of The Test that I could delete. (I found a bit I really liked that had been orphaned – it really hurt to delete “The madman Lawrence is back.” “He’s better then?” “I’m not sure. He seems all right, but he has your finger. He says he wants to return it.” You don’t get chances to write stuff like that often.) ANYway, I was unwriting along and a piano player settles in on his little red pillow and starts tickling the ivories. I had been about to leave, but I prolonged my stay.

By this time the place is pretty crowded, and all the open tables have “reserved” tags on them. I feel kind of bad taking up a table at times like that, but I’ve noticed that Crazy Daisy has a pretty plastic definition of “reserved”. At a certain time of night they want to make sure their tables are used efficiently. So it was that there were several tables unoccupied but reserved. It’s all about asking nicely. I sat in my corner, watching the ebb and flow of the bar, listening to the piano, and working on a part of the story that still makes me misty (embarrassing when you’re sitting next to the piano player, facing the whole bar).

“Do you have menus in english?” comes the voice across the room in unmistakable New York. “Do you speak English?” he throws at Smiles-Only-Rarely with hostility and disdain. He turns to the whole bar, his arms spread wide. “Does ANYBODY here speak English?”

Smiles-Only-Rarely turns away from the abuse to fetch the menus from where they sit next to my head. I catch her eye and smile ruefully, shaking my head, skrunching my eyes in a pained expression. Is it? Yes it is! A fleeting smile. She collects two menus and turns back into their sarcastic entitled bitchiness. He’s continuing to be a complete asshat, and suddenly Smiles-Only-Rarely notices, seemingly for the first time, the “reserved” tag on the table. Alas, all the other tables are reserved as well. No room in the inn. His New York victimhood fully confirmed, he escorts his wife out in a self-righteous huff. See ya, pal. Some of us have to live here after you convince everyone that Americans are jerks.

Smiles-Only-Rarely returns with the unneeded menus. She looks at me again. “New York,” I said, shaking my head. “Even Americans hate them.” I don’t know if she understood me, I doubt she did, but I got a real, honest-to-God smile. I love New York.

Thanks!

New York Sucks

Posted on by
134

Added 5 years later: The inexplicably high ranking search engines give this little rant has led to a lot of comments below, including some excellent rebuttals to my original points. There are also a lot of people adding their own complaints about the city that never sleeps. All comments are welcome, but overall I find the ones who disagree with me to be more interesting, and a few are worth digging up and reading. There are definitely some things to love about the city. My favorite comments of all, however, are the ones on both sides of the fence that hide their whiny, entitled attitude behind foul language, apparently unaware of the irony.

Recently the quality of comments has been so low that I’ve considered not allowing any more of them. Semi-literate ravers, please don’t bother anymore. There’s already plenty of barely-coherent blather on both sides.

Anyway, on with the original episode:

– – –

In the unlikely event there are two New Yorkers capable of mounting a meaningful defense of their home city, I’ll publish them both. More than two, either I’ll pick the one hardest for me to rebut, or I’ll figure out a way to let the polls decide. Messages of the form “F%*$ you, you f^%#ing f$^*!” will just add to my smug belief that I am better than you are and will be deleted and mocked.

I have for a couple of years now held the opinion that New York City is filled with victims and crybabies. Everyone knew already that the city was filled with arrogant assholes.

To start with the arrogant assholes, here’s a case in point. Tonight I was sitting in a bar, and at the next table was a pair of Yankees fans. Yankees were playing the Bosox, a game with history and significance. You would expect a Yankees fan to be passionate about such a game, and these guys were. I’m OK with that. That’s why God made baseball. That’s why Steinbrenner bought it from Him.

I overheard part of their conversation early. “They’re still talking about ’98 here. Was it ’98? The Yankees humiliated them. It was a sweep.” Now, I don’t know if it was ’98 or ’96, and yes, the Yankees did completely dominate the Padres. It was a sweep. But that year San Diego won the pennant. When dad buys you a pennant every year, that may not seem so special. But when you earn it, doesn’t it mean so much more? No point explaining that to a Yankees fan.

And that’s what New Yorkers just don’t seem to understand. They seem to believe that simply being from the hive is enough to entitle them to all the respect the world has to offer. Later, the New York fans were outraged among themselves when the best TV was switched over to the Padres game. There was still a TV right in front of them carrying their game, but it wasn’t Hi-Def. “What the f@%& are they doing showing the Padres game?” one NYB asked the other (B is for bastard). Had the man been grandstanding, trying to get a rise out of the other people in the bar, I would have simply labeled him as an asshole and shrugged it off. But the simple fact was that as a New Yorker he expected to get his game on the hi-def TV. He was entitled.

New York is inexplicably proud of being a bunch of arrogant assholes. They call it “street smart” and other transparent euphemisms. When I passed through New York I was not prepared for the incessant whining and victim attitude.

I was passing from Aruba to San Diego, and because I’m a cheap bastard my return flight included a sleepover in New York. No problem, I figured. I’d just find a less-uncomfortable place to crash at JFK. Best case, I find a bar and just hang out all night. It was a naive notion, I now realize.

My first welcome as I came off the plane set the tone for my stay in the city that never sleeps. “Did you see what he just did to me?” I heard an angry woman behind me say. We made our way to an escalator and I tell you now I have never seen such concentrated uncivilized behavior. Poor little Jerry was pushed aside and every time I said, “Oh, I’m sorry” as I was shoved into someone else I was answered with “eat me” or something worse. “Screw the other guy before he screws you” was the rule of the day.

The airport was closing. There would be no crashing in the terminal, no all-nigher in the bar. The bartender was terribly appologetic. I called a hotel and they said the shuttle would be right over. It was a cold night, freezing rain, and I was in shorts. People were not looking at me with sympathy as I stood waiting for the shuttle; they were looking at me with suspicion. I watched two old men get into a fist fight over a taxi. I shook my head. The cold rain on my legs hurt far less than the anger all around me hurt my poor west-coast brain.

It turns out the signs telling me to wait for a hotel shuttle did not direct me to the place hotel shuttles were going. After freezing my ass off (proudly, stoically, without whining) I tromped back to the terminal and called the hotel again. The friendly person apologized and the shuttle was redispatched. I stood longer in the bitter New York sleet until I was finally swept away to the warmth and security of a nearby hotel. I was happy to see that guy, and he was downright nice. Maybe New York isn’t so bad after all. Pff.

Once safely installed in my room, and with the local anger fizzing in my head, I made my way with laptop to the hotel bar. There I sat and watched the local victim hour, also known as the news. Crap, can’t there be one story on the evening not spun as injustice? The weather report was “here’s how mother nature is fucking us over today.” I have never heard a more consistent, pervasive whining than I did in NYC. I have gone out of my way in this story to mention people that were not whiny little fucks who thought the world owed them something. Two were bartenders, one drove a van. Who knows what they thought when they weren’t sucking up to travelers. [Unfair – the bartender at JFK was the read deal. She was funny as hell and a true sweetheart. I would have loved to stay up all night in her bar.]

The next morning I caught the plane back to San Diego. I staggered down the jetway and heard someone say, “Oh! I’m sorry. Go ahead.” I laughed not from humor but from joy, back where we may not be intimate but we are certainly polite, and we don’t feel that the world owes us happiness. We make that for ourselves.

7

Thanks!

Yellowstone – the First Attempt

Posted on by
2

Location: Old Faithful parking lot
Miles: 6117.6

I’m loading the first 101 pictures off John’s camera; we’ll see how they look. Don’t worry, you won’t have to look at them all. If the tiny little thumbnails are to believed, some of the pictures will not suck. I got here early this morning, but not as early as I would have liked. Getting up at six this morning was as uncivilized as I could force myself to be, though.

It’s hailing right now, but it’s mild compared to my Canadian adventure. With new tires and new wipers, the rain is no longer my enemy.

Oh. Balls.

The pictures are gone. All of them, without a trace. It went through and and said it was importing them, but there is simply nothing there. It even showed the little thumbnails as it went, so I know it was reading the files. But now they are quite simply not there. It looks like today is a practice run, because I was really digging the early-morning light and the way the cold air enhanced the steam from the fumaroles.

Balls, balls, balls.

Thanks!

Ugh

Posted on by
18

Someone explain to me why the (no longer supported) Mac version of Internet Explorer is more standards-compliant than the Windows version. On windows, my PNG is being blended perfectly – with the wrong color. Where the hell did that gray come from? Over at the Hut there is a similar problem, but since I’m flogging mac-only software I didn’t worry about it too much.

I mean, shit, when was the PNG standard adopted? I had big plans for a graphic treatment that simply won’t work if browsers don’t render images according to well-established standards.

Someone Microsoft laid off from their Mac Business Unit should go give the windows folks some lessons.

Meanwhile, I’d be grateful for some feedback from the field about how other winders and Linux browsers are handling my graphic. It should look like this:
Obviously, there was still a ways to go, but you see how the ampersand crosses into the lighter color? The ability to do that was very important for my plans. I’m sure there are ways to accomplish what I want to de despite Microsoft, but this way was easy.

I know it’s an old story: Microsoft choosing which standards to follow and which to ignore. I would have thought they would be all over PNG, since it gets them out of paying royalties.

OK, I feel better now. I have work to do. On my Windows machine. Huh.

Thanks!

Work Sucks

Posted on by
4

He has a point. There have been few posts lately because I have a release due Wednesday which is standing between me and the open road, adventure, and all that. Of course, getting paid is nice – if only LeapFrog had an address to send my checks to.

So unless you want to know what I had for breakfast yesterday, there’s not much to add. Now it’s Sunday morning and I’m sitting down in my command center trying to face fixing the last of the defects I have any control over, implement the latest design changes, etc. It’s not bad work, as work goes, it’s just that it’s work.

Thanks!

Darth Vader returns!

Posted on by
1

My roommate Travis had a serious underbite, and he just had surgery to correct it. The procedure was called Upper Mandible something-or-other. I’d ask him what it was called but he wouldn’t be able to tell me anyway.

See, the thing about the upper mandible is that it’s attached to your head. Not just sort of attached, but really fused on there. Otherwise your upper teeth would move around, and we can’t have that. What happens if you wish to scoot your mandible forward a bit? You go to a doctor who starts by breaking your face.

Once you get your face good and broken, the doctor can scoot the ‘ol mandible around to his heart’s content. The next step in the chain of misery, however, is that once your choppers are correctly aligned, you want to nail down the mandible again so it goes back to its stodgy immobile old ways. This takes several weeks, during which time your mouth is wired completely shut.

Travis had his face broken Monday, and had to stay overnight in the hospital because he was bleeding too much and some of that was getting in his lungs. His pie hole is wired so tight he can barely even spit. When he got home yesterday his face was the size of a bowling ball and he had two tubes wedged into the sides of his mouth to help him breathe. He sounds like Darth Vader and looks kinda like him as well. You know, in the scene where he’s dying.

I believe the estimate for how long Travis will be eating through a little tube the he sticks back in the corner of his mouth is 6 weeks. Then, not only will his teeth line up like little pearly cheerleaders but I imagine he will be a new, trim version of Travis.

I’m not sure – I’m embarrassed to ask – but I think he got the surgery done on purpose.

Thanks!

Terrorism Preparedness: Is not! Was too! Nuh-uh! Yuh-huh!

Posted on by
3

What it all boils down to is that Osama would still be enjoying the protection of the Taliban in Afghanistan had he and his followers not attacked the US the way they did on 9/11.

For all the posturing by the current administration that they are tougher on terrorists, the United States would not have had the political will or sufficient support from Afghanistan’s neighbors to mount an invasion. Likely we would have continued to funnel support to enemies of the Taliban, and lob in the occasional cruise missile, but you would not have seen US ground troops in there. We would still be using incentives and threats to try to undermine support for Al-Qaida in nations like the United Arab Emirates. In short, we would be doing the same things we have been doing for a decade. When it comes to fighting terrorism, it doesn’t really matter much who the president is.

Iraq, on the other hand, is not about fighting terrorism. At first the Bush administration tried to frame it that way, but no one bought it. so he switched gears and began to rail about Weapons of Mass Destruction. Now that that argument seems to have been a mistake at best and an outright lie at worst, we are hearing about freedom for the Iraqi people. It’s harder to argue against that one, since they certainly were not free before and were suffering greatly, but it’s also the hardest promise to keep. I am skeptical that we will be able to let the Iraqis have complete control over their country without dissolving into civil war, and it will be a long, long time before that changes. I have hope for the Iraqi people, but I can’t help but be skeptical about our eventual success in fostering democracy in the region.

All that notwithstanding, would we have invaded Iraq without the false boogymen of terrorism and WMDs? Many of our allies in that fight have made it clear that they would not. Spain and Poland have both said they feel bamboozled. And what was the hurry? Iraq had been known to have WMDs long before, but suddenly the danger was so urgent that it was necessary to invade immediately. The reason was as simple as an approval rating of over 70% for the president. Strike while the polls are hot.

Which leaves Afghanistan incomplete and neglected. In Afghanistan the real terrorists are still hiding, and in some areas regrouping. Al-Qaida leadership continues to elude us. Pakistan, our so-called ally (you know, the one with weapons of mass destruction) has been shipping dangerous technology all over the place, while bin Laden hides within their borders. If they took some of the troops out of Kashmir, I bet they would have the resources to track him down.

Would a Democrat have invaded Afghanistan in response to 9/11? Hard to say for sure, but I think so. I doubt, however, that a Democrat or even a McCain or Powell-style Republican would have invaded Iraq. Iraq would still be a sore spot in the region, a constant source of frustration, but Americans would not be dying daily — the victims of terrorist acts. Indeed, rather than reduce the threat of terrorism, the invasion of Iraq has made terrorism so routine that it often goes unreported.

1

Thanks!

Incredulous Rant

Posted on by
5

if he can possibly believe the things he says. His repeated mantra was that as a result of his foreign policy, the world is safer and freer.

Picture the giant exclamation point and question mark popping out of my head when he said that. China may be freer now than it was three years ago, and you could argue that Afghanistan (or, at least Kabul) has more freedom now, but we in the United States are considerably less free than we were.

And safer – he’s joking, right? RIGHT? This comes from the same administration that has insisted that we need to surrender the constitution because of dire international threats. So just what danger has been reduced? There are more countries that dislike us. There are more arab countries unwilling to cooperate with us materially to combat international terrorism. We have erected ineffective security measures all over the country so we will get the feeling that something is being done, but none of those measures do more than inconvenience the populace.

Oh, but if I’m wrong, and we are safer now, can we have our freedom back?

Thanks!

bad news is illegal

Posted on by
4

OK, I see where the desire of the media to use those images for their own agenda would be objectionable to the families and to the servicemen themselves, but you can’t help but wonder about the timing. Never has an administration been in the position of sacrificing the lives of Americans at such a rate in a war that is ostensibly over. I would love to see Wolfowitz explain to the mothers of those slain servicemen how the sacrifice of their loved ones was worthwhile as it furthered his personal vendetta against Iraq. The dude was jonesing to go over there long before 9/11. Before that day, his opinions were being sidelined. After that day, his agenda became US policy, over the objection of many cabinet members. It will take us decades to repair the damage he has caused.

Where was Bush? You don’t really think he’s making the decisions, do you?

Thanks!