Christoblog

Your call is important to us.  It’s so important that we’ve installed the AnswerBot 9000™ to manage your telephonic interaction experience.  No more talking with a half-drunk part time employee more concerned about winning solitaire than resolving your problems.  The AnswerBot 9000™ doesn’t even know how to play solitaire!  But if it did, you can bet it would be great at it……

Thank you for continuing to hold.  One thing is for sure:  the AnswerBot 9000™ has not forgotten about you.  It knows exactly where you are in queue, even if that number is approaching google!  Numbers are easy for AnswerBot 9000™.  Why not give it a try?  Go ahead!  Say a number you’d like AnswerBot 9000™ to multiply by 5,876,291.25631.

Are you going to say a number?  You can also use your keypad.

Well?

Fine, Big Ash Company knows you are busy.  We’ll come up with a number for you.  27,941.26

The answer is 164,190,981,823.3

While you’re holding, why not go grab a calculator and see if your head doesn’t explode!

….

Thanks for staying on the line!  Did you know that algorithms inside the AnswerBot 9000™ can tell us exactly how angry you are based on the amount of time you choose to hold?  It’s true.

Currently, you are willing to chew the pinkie-toe off of a puppy.

Isn’t that amazing?  But the AnswerBot 9000™ isn’t just about performing fancy mathematical calculations that humans cannot or will not do. It’s about customer service!  Big Ash Company, with help from AnswerBot 9000™, has calculated that it has saved over $726 billion dollars this quarter alone on employee related expenses.  That’s more than our entire Gross Revenue for 2007!  Big Ash Company can take that money and reinvest it in products that consumers can purchase and then call us about!  And starting next quarter, that’s exactly what we’ll do.  For now, we bought our CEO Rhode Island.

….

Wow, we don’t even need the fancy mathematical prowess of the AnswerBot 9000™ to know you are super angry.  Perhaps you’ll be glad to know that your call has automatically been escalated, using AnswerBot 9000™ ’s patented AngerFlow™ routing system, but our studies indicate that’s unlikely.  Your call is now being recorded, because we know you’ve reached a point where you can no longer control your vocalizations, and this kind of recording is extremely popular.  It’s just another way Big Ash Company creates new revenue streams in order to theoretically have the option of keeping prices low for you, the customer.

Speaking of revenue streams…did you know that Rhode Island is for sale?  If you would like to purchase this beautiful state that we believe is in the North East somewhere, press or say “one” now!

….

Did you know that the record for holding the line is 4 years? You’ve got a long way to go to get into that ballpark.  However, AnswerBot 9000™ knows that there is a strong statistical probability that, if you are still on the line now, you’ve suffered a heart attack or stroke.  As a service, for only $19.99,  AnswerBot 9000™ will transfer your call to 911 now.  Just say “Help” or “Uuuugggghhhhh” or remain nonresponsive for a few seconds now.

Thanks for calling Big Ash Company!  Your call is being transferred to your local emergency response team now!  Your bill has automatically been updated, and will be scheduled to arrive with a due date just prior to payday.

click

For graphic scenes of extended loitering, with overt references to abject indifference and a fairly gnarly sequence involving a fax that didn’t go through.

May not be suitable for people with discretion.

Viewer  avoidance is advised.

————

Now I ask you, would you not rent that?

So Sir Charles owes $400,000 to a casino, and now says he has got to stop gambling, at least for a year or two.

Now, those are the words of a dude who won’t be betting, right?  I mean, that’s strong.  “Even though I can afford to lose the money, that doesn’t mean I should.”

That’s what Mr. Barkley says, and you just know he means it, and he won’t gamble ever ever ever again, until he feels like it or something.  In fact, I’m sure he’d give you two-to-one that he won’t bet again for at least two years.

Well, it’s his money.  Just like John Daly lost a couple million (or tens of millions or something) of his very own dollars gambling.  No big deal, right?

To me, it’s worse than if they blew the money on something stupid, like food or medicine for the poor, but maybe that’s just because I don’t gamble, at least not since I lost my children trying to fill a two-pair (and the sad thing is, it turned out one of my pairs wasn’t even a pair, it’s just that the one Jack looked girly and I thought he was a queen, plus anyway I’m pretty sure the guy with the flush would have won either way).

Where the tiny women in jet packs fly into a man’s nose for a dance party?

That’s kind of an obscure fantasy for a national commercial, isn’t it?

It’s the companion piece for the “scantily clad chicks scrubbing whiskers” ad, which is a standard shaving fantasy for almost all men…who work for that particular company, apparently.

That’s the modest request that Priceline makes when you register.

Now look, I’ve got a nice little ego, been fertilizing for a few decades and whatnot, but isn’t this a little over the top?  Who’s registering here, Einstein?  Hawking?

And what if someone else gets brilliant, say, next week.  Do I have to keep coming back to Priceline and update my question everytime one member of humanity catches up on a subject?  That seems like a lot of work.  I mean, there are literally thousands of people on the earth, after all.  Some of them are bound to be, or get, smart.

Of course, you could just go with extremely personal stuff, and hope your best friend doesn’t try to hack into your account.

“What did Jenny Flurgle’s mouth taste like when we kissed under the bleachers in 4th grade?”

But then, do you want to be answering that question to a smarmy customer service rep when you’re calling to complain that the hotel you booked is, in fact, a 1974 Chevy Vega parked under a semi-collapsed bridge, which really doesn’t seem like 2 and 1/2 stars?

Are you watching this year?  It’s like going back in time to the great 80s, when the Lakers and Celtics met 73 consecutive times to determine the championship.  I know Mud wants them to call less traveling, as that’s a silly rule, but still, it’s been pretty fantastic.

Will the Celts implode?  Which team gets out of the New Orleans / Spurs fight?

So anyway, here’s how the bracket challenge works.  You pick the winners of each round, then the champion, along with the final score.  Then, when it’s all over, you come back here and tell us whether you were right (and gloat, to the extent you were, or make excuses, to the extent you weren’t and for some reason decide to admit it).

Winner gets to send me nine nouns (three proper) and eleven verbs, and I’ll write them a short story using them (along with some other words I have in a bucket under the stairs).

Ready?  Go!

Sorry for being absent.  I had a thing.

So…I was wondering…is there some sort of mentoring program for smokers?  You know, to show the novices how to make that move where you twist your mouth around to the back of your head and blow smoke away from the person you’re talking to?  Or is that a trial and error thing?

Do smokers practice that in front of a mirror (it seems not)?  When they try it the first couple times, do they pull their groin (I’m thinking yes) and burn one of their eyes?

Does anyone have the Google?  Does Marlboro have a website teaching novices how to smoke cool (not Kool, of course)?

Also, is it considered rude, as a smoker, to go into one of those smoquariums in the airports and just suck in the dense second hand smoke when you’re out of cigs yourself?  How do you know for sure when a woman asks you for a light whether she just wants a light or is inviting you to put both your hands in her pants?

So many questions.

And Why We Need Smarter Politicians -

As soon as we try to save the world with cleaner fuels, we end up starving millions of people.   We had a recent article in the Indianapolis paper about how hogs are selling for a $40 loss each, due to higher feed costs because corn prices are a lot higher now that so much is being bought to make fuel.

You really need to get the smart people involved when you decide how to fix problems, you know?

In all the world
She is the one
Her visage is beyond compare
Like silk her golden flowing hair
If e’er a lovlier woman there be
She has not graced our galaxy

Mary, true, she made me swoon
Perhaps because she is the moon
And Emily, Jane, and Catherine
Were cloudy days in a lonely June

With Carole, I was wearing shades
And Sandra was for fun
The earth turns ’round
And morning comes
And Juliet is the sun!

Apparently Ms. Rowling has never objected to Vander Ark’s publishing a Potter Lexicon.  It’s just that he has excerpted too much of her work in his book, and needs to trim it back, pretty please.

At issue is the ill-defined copyright concept of “fair use”.

“U.S. rules allow for the “fair use” of copyrighted material in unauthorized works, but there are limits. Journalists may quote from films and books when writing a review. Scholars can use excerpts from a novel while penning an author’s biography.

Generally, the call on whether such uses are legal comes down to how much material was taken and how different the end product is from the original work.”

I probably just violated CNNs copyright.  Here, hold my beer while I go load the cow-ta-pults.