Sunday
All good cretins go to heaven
1) On Thursday, I was getting lunch at a small pizza place. While sitting there, two men came in to pitch their services to the pizza place. These two men wore matching uniforms which included hats labeled with the words "Table Shox," and they were carrying four bulky looking tool kits. Their pitch was that they would level all the tables in the restaurant such that they would never be wobbly again (this involved putting small springs at the ends of each of the legs in order to make it (the table) self-leveling); they would do one table for free as a demonstration, and then it would only cost $120 for them to do the rest of the tables.
I found this utterly mind-boggling for the following reason: I cannot imagine any diner who might be considering this restaurant for their eating options (as opposed to a more upscale establishment, where even the most minor problem with the dining experience may rankle) weighing the wobbliness of the tables at all (consciously or otherwise) in deciding whether to eat there. Admittedly $120 is not a particularly large investment. However, since the expected return on investment is, according to me, zero, I don't get how the Table Shox guys are expecting to make a sale here. But perhaps I'm just insufficiently imaginative about diners' calculations, or wrong to expect the management will make an ROI calculation at all.
2) One of my earliest posts, over a year ago (that post is terribly formatted and I no longer agree with all the claims I made in it), lamented the tendency (primarily exhibited in the United States by Bush-supporters) to call one's political opponents "traitors." I further noted that this should only be done if you think that person being so described should be executed, or at least put in prison for a very long time. I was hoping this would have the effect of leading to fewer accusations of traitor-hood, but the other consistent response is to call for your political opponents' deaths. Today, I learned from Glenn Greenwald that Michael Reagan had, back in December, chosen the second option. Reagan responded to Howard Dean's, "[The] idea that we're going to win the war in Iraq is an idea which is just plain wrong," with, "Howard Dean should be arrested and hung for treason or put in a hole until the end of the Iraq war!"
3)Kiss of Death? Really? I saw that with you in 1995, and if I recall correctly it was mostly made up of shots of Samuel L. Jackson wiping his eye with a handkerchief over and over again.
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I found this utterly mind-boggling for the following reason: I cannot imagine any diner who might be considering this restaurant for their eating options (as opposed to a more upscale establishment, where even the most minor problem with the dining experience may rankle) weighing the wobbliness of the tables at all (consciously or otherwise) in deciding whether to eat there. Admittedly $120 is not a particularly large investment. However, since the expected return on investment is, according to me, zero, I don't get how the Table Shox guys are expecting to make a sale here. But perhaps I'm just insufficiently imaginative about diners' calculations, or wrong to expect the management will make an ROI calculation at all.
2) One of my earliest posts, over a year ago (that post is terribly formatted and I no longer agree with all the claims I made in it), lamented the tendency (primarily exhibited in the United States by Bush-supporters) to call one's political opponents "traitors." I further noted that this should only be done if you think that person being so described should be executed, or at least put in prison for a very long time. I was hoping this would have the effect of leading to fewer accusations of traitor-hood, but the other consistent response is to call for your political opponents' deaths. Today, I learned from Glenn Greenwald that Michael Reagan had, back in December, chosen the second option. Reagan responded to Howard Dean's, "[The] idea that we're going to win the war in Iraq is an idea which is just plain wrong," with, "Howard Dean should be arrested and hung for treason or put in a hole until the end of the Iraq war!"
3)Kiss of Death? Really? I saw that with you in 1995, and if I recall correctly it was mostly made up of shots of Samuel L. Jackson wiping his eye with a handkerchief over and over again.
