I’m not the kind of guy who likes to talk much about me.  That’s not the point.  It doesn’t matter much that when I was five, both my parents abandoned me or why.   Doesn’t matter I spent most of my childhood in the San Diego area being gawked at for my tall skinny frame and unruly blond hair and steel grey eyes. What does matter is that know I am on the lookout.  For what? For things that are WRONG in this world.  We need to get another thing straight. I do this for ME, not for you, though you can certainly benefit. And, when I say “wrong” I don’t mean things that are evil, though God knows there is plenty of that too.  No, what I am talking about is plain simple stupidity.  People make a product or sell you some so-called “service” and it sucks.  And why does it suck?  Because they are not satisfied to make a billion dollars by selling a shipload of vacuum cleaners or cameras or software systems that actually work.  No.  Instead, they want to make 1,000,020,000 bucks by not spending 20K to bring me in and see whether their blasted microwave or or digital watch or whatever actually works for human beings.  And, do you want to know what’s *really* frigging stupid?  They don’t make their stupid billion dollars anyway?  Why?  Because they end up spending millions of dollars on help lines and millions more on TV ads that show some sexy, tight-skirted, plump-lipped open mouth girl seeming to have a big O just from using their vacuum cleaner.  At least those ads I like even though it isn’t going to get me to buy their vacuum cleaner.  But what is with these ads showing people being completely idiotic and pointless.  If the girl air-brushed into that desperate anorexic twitch isn’t going to make me buy their machine, why is some bumble-headed fat guy walking into a wall going to do the trick?  

Case in point: Telephone menu systems that have no obvious option for talking with a human being.  Have you ever run into one of those?  “Please listen to the following menu items and choose the one that describes your car.  Press 1 for black car.  Press 2 for a convertible.  Press 3 for a hummer.  Press four to hear these options again.” WHAT???!!   I own a white BMW sedan.  The Greeks had an interesting word: “hubris” to describe self-defeating pride.  First of all, nobody thinks of all the possible things you might want from this “service” number ahead of time.  Nobody.  So, there should ALWAYS be a choice for talking with an operator.  Do you really need a Ph.D. in psychology from Stanford to know this?  Wouldn’t just living on the planet for six or seven years do the trick?  More later.  I have to go try to glue the fragments of my phone back together before Aunt Rennie gets here.  She gets freaked out by my temper.