I'd like to keep it all political, but there ARE other issues.

Like the updates on my pet peeves.

I got a laugh from the crowd at Second City in Toronto a few years back. Of course it would be the dream of any improv performer to get a laugh out of that crowd, so there was some frisson in that, but I got it as an audience member, not as a member of the cast. They asked for pet peeves as grist for improvised skit material, and when I mentioned "mispelled graffiti", I got that big laugh. And they did use it in a skit.

But today my first updated peeve (Peeve 2.1) is mispelled subject lines in spam. I mean first of all they send me this soggy pink meat stuff thinking that I (a vegetarian) am going to love it, and then they have the nerve to reveal that they are either not English speakers or at least not English spellers, by using a subject line like:

"Your stranded and your cell just died!"

I'm sorry, you may be a serious lowlife scum spammer, but you are seriously destined for hell if in addition to all that you mispell the subject line of your dirt ball meat subsititute sent anonymously to someone you obviously don't care about.

I don't care that much what you do, as long as you don't hurt anyone and/or mispell whatever it is that you are doing. (Oh, by the way, spam hurts).

Peeve 2.2

Last week the local food store reorganized their stock and ditched underselling items and brought in new ones and kept some old ones and in the shuffle the three brands of ginger snaps were reduced to two brands, and the one that was dropped was A) the cheapest and 2) the only REAL gingersnap in the store. You can tell which are the fake gingersnaps simply by inspecting the tops. The real ones have naturally occuring cracks on top. The fake ones have die cut "impressions" of what a real cookie would look like if it was there instead of the fake one.

I've asked my wife not to get the "printed" ones again. It's the first ever one man gingersnap protest. I mean I draw the line at that. You can genetically engineer my food (as long as I don't know, you pond scum money-driven food scientist/marketer), but please don't print the cookies!

Dang!

Peeve 2.3

The local insurance guy (this was American Family... I'm naming names) had the nerve to tell my wife this one today when she caled to check our rates:

A. Our car insurance is going up because our cars are getting older because parts for older cars are more expensive and so repairs are more expensive.

What I want to know is, how does he sleep nights having said something like that during the day? We of course can put that statement rigt beside the other thing that we all know, which is

B. New cars are more expensive to insure, because after all they cost more so they cost more to protect.

Adding that to something that we also know about insurance,

C. You get insurance to protect yourself in case of an accident, but if you ever need to collect on your insurance, even if someone else hit you, you are now considered a bad risk, and you will have to pay a higher premium.

Therefore, if you get an accident, you don't want to tell the insurance company, because your rates will go up.

So... you pay for insurance, but woe be to him who actually uses it!

I'm sorry. The one thing that I think is a super scam in our society is the insurance business. Just a few examples, tonight. I suppose there are more.

Want more?

There's always

Peeve 2.4

It's the cleaning your teeth scam. You may not know it, but you can't get your teeth cleaned in Iowa unless those teeth are inspected first. This is because the dentistry industry has lobbied to make sure that only dentists and their assistants can do teeth cleaning, even though it wouldn't take a full fledged dentist to do the job in most cases. Not only that, you can't just get them cleaned, even by a dentist's office. They have arranged it for you to have a mandatory inspection along with the cleaning, for which, of course, they bill you.

What your legislators have approved while you weren't looking. And now that your jaw has dropped, pay up.

There's more, of course. But not tonight.

Just for the record, there are some things I like. Root beer. Bagels and CC. Norah Jones (and so does the new baby, Johan, though the first song on Norah's first CD puts him asleep almost every time). But that's another story.

Cheers,

-p