Smokers and garbage

I’d like to know why smokers think cigarette butts don’t count as garbage. I work in a smoke-free building with designated areas for smokers outside and for some strange reason, there are hundreds of butts on the ground starting at the door and ending 25 yards away at the gazebo that used to be for everyone but is now just for smokers because it’s filthy and smells bad. Why do smokers throw their butts on the ground? Why do smokers throw butts out the windows of their cars? I rarely see anyone throw papers out of a moving car but I see cigarette butts fly out of windows all the time. I think instead of researchers trying to find a link between smoking and cancer, they should try to figure out the link between smoking and being a garbage-spewing moron.

A proof: Why it should be legal to hit dumb people with a rock

A. Stores like Wal-mart and Sears spend millions on advertising but refuse to spend 6.50 an hour to pay people to work the registers.

B. Since there are always long lines, no one should be paying with a check.

C. Dumb people pay with checks.

D. Since people who are dumb enough to pay with a check are also to dumb to fill the check out in advance, they take EVEN longer to get checked out, often also balancing their checkbook at the register oblivious to the people waiting behind them.

E. Hitting dumb people in the head with a rock will teach them to stop doing this or kill them, with either outcome being acceptable.

Hollywood Sucks Part III

Why does every movie coming out these days have to have a woman “saving” everybody? Is this supposed to be a plot twist or shocker? Am I supposed to think it’s rebellious, daring, refreshing, or empowering instead of just boring, predictable and asinine?
I had the misfortune of watching the 2003 John Travolta dud ‘Basic’ the other day, which is what inspired all my questions. Watching tiny Connie Nielson beat up an army ranger cadet was almost an unbelievable as watching Roselyn Sanchez pretend she was a ranger cadet too, lugging a 90 pound backpack around when she doesn’t way 90 pounds herself. Is Hollywood that hung up on politically correct nonsense that every movie has to have some ridiculous, “everybody’s equal” theme? Those two women couldn’t beat up Michael Jackson, never mind a man, and certainly not a ranger. Why? Why were they there? The movie couldn’t just have guys on the ranger team? Is there a female quota that has to be filled? Watching that movie was so annoying that I put in the director’s cut of The Wild Bunch…then I felt better.

Technology we don't need

Have you seen those commercials that show how great technology is and how it's revolutionizing American business? Have you ever noticed how completely untrue that is? Amex has some guy on now bragging about how he invented, or sells, or owns (or something) the company that makes Blackberry pagers. Of course, now the blackberry pager is a pager, phone, pda, and a few other impressive-sounding but entirely useless things. Wow, executives can now make important decisions in this ever-changing economy on a moments notice...or make monumentally stupid ones on a moments notice. I saw that commercial the other day and thought it was an ad for a sitcom. Yes, it was that funny. There aren't 5 companies in the entire United States that need that kind of portable power.

Here's how it really works:

CEO goes to a conference to learn something new, but really just takes a few days out of town on the company dime to goof off. CEO sees other CEOs playing with new toy. CEOs trade lies about how "indispensable" new toy is and invent reasons why they need it. Usually it's just an excuse to be totally ill-prepared at all times and make their employees drop everything to cater to their silly requests. CEO goes home and orders new toy, actually using about 5% of it's potential. I try to order tapes to backup the network and get turned down because there's no money in the budget. It's understandable, though, since the company spent 1,500 dollars on a battery-powered address book for the Boss.

Don't laugh, I'm not writing a sitcom either.

I don't care who it is, just blame somebody!

How about all this stuff in New Orleans? The city must be evacuated in the worst natural disaster in US history and the only thing anybody's worried about is who to blame for lives lost in the aftermath. I don't know about you, but I work in corporate America, where nothing is efficient. I don't even know why someone would think that's possible. We had a guy last week take a company car out of state and it broke down. He was able to get it towed to his hotel using his own AAA card (because that was free), but do you think he could get the car fixed? Think again. Sure, it would have cost 40 or 50 bucks tops, but it may as well have cost 50,000. Manager approval, spending freezes, confusing policies, PO's, automated accounting, budget restraints, it's a wonder anything gets paid for at all (and sometimes, it doesn't). It's 5 days later and the car's still broken, by the way. The way I see it, the delays in helping the stranded had nothing to do with one insensitive bad-guy and a lot more to do with a thousand little policies that snowballed into tragedy. Let's get that city cleaned up and try to learn from our mistakes. Yes, "learn," not "make it so this never happens again." People who expect perfection are stupid, crazy, or just CEO's. They don't live on planet earth, that's for sure.

The US Open, not always great under the lights

Andy Roddick loses to Gilles Muller in 3 tiebreaks. Number 4 seed Roddick goes home after the first round because Muller played the match of his life. The minute I saw him painting the lines, returning Roddick's serve as if it were mine, saying in an interview afterwards when asked about whether he could read Andy's serve that he basically just picked a side and it worked out, I knew one thing for sure about this kid. He was going home in the second round. Nobody, but nobody, hits lines 6 or 8 times in a match, gets every bounce off the tape, or has a first serve percentage in the 80's without being lucky. Those are the breaks, Andy, it happens to everybody and it wasn't much fun to watch.