CSotD: Thursday Short Takes
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Deflocked nails my current working situation, because telecommuting does lead to becoming a bit, well, casual.
I had to buy a white dress shirt last week and the good news was that I remembered my neck size, but my sleeves were two inches short and so I couldn't shoot my cuffs like a well-dressed fella should.
Fortunately, I seem to have stopped buying ties at a fortuitous time, because the current width matched, and that's just a matter of hitting the curve at the right interval.
Unlike Mamet, however, I don't neglect personal hygiene: I shower as soon as I notice that the dogs at the dog park are showing a little too much interest.
On a related note
Retail reminds me that, as I was making that rare purchase, the cashier told me that, if I applied for their card and charged the purchase, I'd get another 25% off.
She didn't tell me that they rake it back with a $35 late fee applied the sixth of the month, and since that's about when I get paid and I do bills a few days later, well, I absorbed the lesson, paid my fool tax and cancelled the card.
But I'm still getting the emails.
Plus this …
Bizarro pushes a related button in the topic of pleasepleaselikeus marketing, though with only one panel, he doesn't capture the infuriating degrees of loyalty noted in this Key and Peele bit.
I don't mind airlines giving a few perks to their frequent fliers. Perfectly understandable.
Or, at least it was until they began to divide that up into degrees of how much they like even their regular customers. On my last flight, they started calling out gemstones to differentiate their levels of "valued customers," which certainly tells the riff-raff how little they want us on their aeroplanes at all.
It appears to be hooked into their "you get what you pay for" ticketing, which is theoretically a good thing: I don't mind paying for extra legroom some flights and taking the regular seats on others, for instance, though you need to be aware that, if you have a bag that doesn't really fit in the overhead, you can save $25 by pretending you think it does, because they'll gate-check it for free.
But priority boarding is also something you can pay extra for, and I guess that's where all the diamonds and rubies and purple hearts and green clovers come in.
They also have a test to see if you're a complete fool, which is that, as you check in, the machine asks if you would be willing to be bumped to another flight in exchange for a piece of gum and some paper clips.
I saw an auction at the gate two years ago that got up to $1500 in flight coupons before someone stepped up, and I'm sure the airline was wishing that more people had clicked that button at check-in.
Speaking of corrupt practices
Big Ben Bolt is starting a storyline that ought to prove interesting, since the strip is currently in November, 1955, giving writer Eliot Caplin plenty of time to have absorbed the fixing scandal that had wrapped up a few years before.
When I was in school, players were strongly cautioned to avoid chatting about things like how practice had gone, because all sorts of friendly folk were looking for insider info, but a few years later, another round of fixing came about anyway.
I don't know if this is where Bolt is headed, but basketball is easier to fix than football because you don't need the cooperation of as many players to alter the outcome of a game.
By the way, Bolt is a much better strip now that he's retired from the ring and the storylines don't all end with him retaining his title. And John Cullen Murphy's graphics are a treat anyway.
How to win friends
Fastrack brings to mind a lesson nobody should have to be taught, and I continue to be surprised by how many people simply don't get it. Bill Holbrook oversimplifies here: It's not just about being nice versus being nasty.
It's about respect, which is hard to depict graphically but not that hard to convey in person, dammit.
Best example is that, when my dad left the steel industry after a quarter century and became labor negotiator for a major school district, one of the things he did in settling in was to go down to the bus garage and ask for a tour.
The head guy showed him around, he asked a few questions, and then, as he was leaving, the guy thanked him for dropping by and said he was the first person from the administration building who had ever been down to the garage.
That's not really so much of a compliment to my old man, who was just doing something sensible, as it is a sad reflection on standard management style, and yet I've seen it over and over and over again since.
And then — going back to today's Bizarro — they talk of their "valued employees" while clearly demonstrating their disdain for the riff-raff.
In honour of the day …
Yes, it's St. Patrick's Day, and Bill Whitehead made me laugh at Free Range, though it's been years since I could even think of going to a party that included a young woman from Norway, much less taking her home after.
And with my luck, I'd wind up getting stuck with Sue anyway.
St. Patrick's Day to me recalls the old joke about the singer who said, "I noticed you weeping while I sang 'My Old Kentucky Home.' Are you from Kentucky?"
"No, I'm a musician."
I'm Irish-American and, as noted yesterday, not a big fan of the occasion. However, here's a playlist by other people of the music my long-lost Irish band used to play, and here's a set of liner notes to go with it. It's about an hour of music, so hit it and then go do something else while it plays.
Sláinte geal
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