Bullshit - Part 3

Y'know...prior to these rants about Pearl River County, I was writing a review about Infinite Undiscovery. I kept seeing that sitting in my post list and I came to the realization that these fuckwads hooked me.

If you thought I was pissed before about this situation, it doesn't compare to when I finally come to my senses and feel like I got hooked. I'll get right to the points.

I am more than likely being scammed. The problem with this scam is it's coming from a legitimate judicial district and a legitimate debt collection agency over a legitimate ticket that I have never denied receiving. Both of which have the power currently to do long term damage to my credit and driving record. The other problem with this "scam" is that there aren't any attorneys who really want to challenge the information being presented. I get why they don't. By the time they challenge them, $211.88 ends up being chump change compared to the bill that I would pay. While I certainly don't expect things to be given to me for free and I certainly do understand the concept of "It's the smallest issues that take up the most time" just from my experience in computers, it's become harder for me to imagine that a simple concept such as "principle" has taken a back seat.

The principle of the matter is the reason why I'm pissed off. Start back at the beginning:

- A "speeding" ticket for doing 72 in a 70 because the police officer "had been working accidents all night and wanted to slow people down on the wet roads." I generally respect police officers and the work they performed, but most officers give you at least a 5MPH buffer.

- A court house that waited 6+ years to even bother to notify me about the ticket not being paid. Yes, I paid it. I marched my angry ass over to Kroger, bought a money order with a company check, mailed said money order to said court house through gritted teeth the last week of July 2003 (according to my crappy records) and left it at that.

- A collection agency that is not actually providing the information their letter states they will provide. A copy of the judgement to this agency is apparently a printout of a summary screen that has the ability to be edited and looks like one of those dumb terminals with the black background and green computery writing.

Actually, here's a better visual of what I'm dealing with:



I didn't just pull that image out of my ass. You can view their website by clicking here.

After speaking with my attorney yesterday and being told that I should just pay it and be done with it, I came back to my office. I mulled it over a bit. I knew what I had going in my favor and I knew what I was missing that could just be the silver bullet (the canceled check). Since there really is no way that I've discovered to get the check without paying damn near what it costs to get the ticket paid anyway, I decided that I would call up the courthouse and offer a settlement.

My offer was that I would pay the original amount of the ticket, but I wasn't going to pay the contempt of court fee or the collection agency fee. That's about the middle of the total bill and I felt that was reasonable. The grounds for the offer were simple.

I was a dumbass and didn't keep accurate records back then. They were dumbasses and haven't kept accurate records or performed anything in a timely manner.

The whole situation is stupid.

I called them up. The lady that answered flatly refused my offer with a snide "If that's what you want to do, but it doesn't actually remove the other fees you owe from your record". When I pressed her on the timing, she backed off a bit and said she didn't have final authority on the matter and I would have to speak to her boss who wouldn't be back for a couple of hours. I asked for her name, jotted it down and that was that.

Ok, so there's still hope.

While I was waiting for the couple hours to pass, I got to looking at the information that had been sent to my attorney from the collection agency. Here at Blue Ridge, they have an attorney on staff and he owed me a favor for fixing his personal laptop. I took this information to him and pointed out the following:

- They didn't send me an actual copy of the judgement.
- The lady that faxed the information to my attorney has the same last name as the "boss" at the court house. It's not a common last name like "Smith", "Jones", etc.

"BR Attorney" looked at those points and said if they couldn't provide a copy of the judgement, then there was technically no debt. For those of you that aren't familiar with a "judgement", it's basically a stack of paper that outlines the case with various signatures from the people involved in the proceedings.

On top of that, he found the last name thing to be highly suspect, but also figured that this city is small to begin with, so same last names were probably rather common and might not mean anything at all. He then suggested I press the collection agency (who I've been trying to avoid as I've found it to be a lot easier to deal with the person/entity who says I owe them money).

Back to the collection agency I go. I asked for the lady that sent the fax. When she got on the phone, I asked for a copy of the actual judgement. I was told that what she had sent me complies with the FDCPA and if I wanted further information, I would have to contact the courthouse myself.

Wait. That's new.

WTF type of collection agency actually refers you BACK to the people they're trying to collect money for? My federal student loans have been in default for years and even when I try to call the Dept. of Education, they tell me to contact the collection agency.

BR Attorney was in the room with me when she says that to me. I put her on hold a minute and tell him what she just said. He told me not to make a huge issue out of it right then, but that was information we could use later on.

I took her off hold, talked with her a little bit more about the judgement (which got me a long lecture about how her company has always complied with the FDCPA) and then got off the phone.

That's when I posted Bullshit - Part 2.

Still an hour left until I had to talk to the "boss".

I entertained myself by doing more research and dug up a nice little tidbit about the judge herself that's on my summary report.

She was apparently suspended for 30 days, fined $100 and publicly reprimanded for discussing details of an active court case outside of the courtroom. That just screams "Good ol' boy network" to me. Really has nothing to do with my situation, but I did find it amusing that the one judge in that vicinity with any sort of disciplinary action taken against them is the judge that signed off on my case 6+ years ago.

I was hoping when I called the "boss" that I could resolve the situation entirely. Despite the information that I had learned from BR Attorney, I still felt the best course of action to avoid dragging this bullshit out was to get the settlement deal done. I called her up when the time came and...

...she was ready for me.

(Or at least she thought she was...)

She was so ready in fact, it became painfully obvious she had spoken to the lady by the same last name from the collection agency. After barely being able to get a word in edge-wise, (and after BR Attorney told me 'let her have it' over my earpiece-he could see me getting pissed off through the window in my office) I concluded there was only one way to deal with this old bitty...

Q-style.

Fuck this political correctness. I've had enough of this bitch.

Q: You realize you haven't given me any form of a legit excuse as to why it's taken you guys this long to take further action on this right?

Old Dirty Bitch: We don't have to, the court's not responsible for the mail.

Q: No, the court's responsible for timely action. If I failed to appear in your trailer trash of a court-room, it was YOUR responsibility to contact KY's DMV about the outstanding ticket and get my license suspended until I came correct. You had other courses of action you could have taken to resolve this long ago, yet you didn't. This tells me someone there fucked up.

Old Dirty Bitch: Hurri---

Q: Don't give me that bullshit either. You say Katrina slowed you down, I say it fucked up your records. Either way, it doesn't account for a TWO YEAR GAP between the time I got the ticket and when that hurricane blew your courthouse over, if it did. I'm of the mindset to accuse you of using it as an excuse for anything you get busted being an idiot about.

Old Dirty Bitch: What do you want me to do about it then?

Q: I've already given you my offer. I'll pay the ticket again because I'm a dumbass, but that contempt of court fee and collection agency fee? That's on your heads for dragging your feet through the mud for 6+ years.

Old Dirty Bitch: I can talk to the judge to get your hearing reset if you want.

Q: My hearing reset? You mean the hearing where I'm supposed to show up regarding the ticket? What the fuck good is that going to do for me? You guys don't have the original ticket, I certainly don't have it. I'd be surprised if you guys even had a copy of the alleged judgement against me.

Old Dirty Bitch: It coul---

Q: No. I'm not driving 7 hours to appear in your double-wide courthouse. The only purpose that hearing serves is for me to say I'm guilty or innocent regarding the ticket itself. I've told you repeatedly I'm not contesting the goddamn ticket. I'm contesting your handling of it. I paid it, I don't have proof. I'm offering to pay it again, but your handling of it tacked on fees and penalties that otherwise wouldn't have been there if you had...i don't know...addressed it within 90 days like every other respectable county?

Old Dirty Bitch: I could talk to the judge to see about getting your contempt of court fee removed, but there's nothing we can do about your collection agency fee.

Q: Why not?

I knew I had her here.

Old Dirty Bitch: We signed a contract with that agency and the fees are non-negotiable.

Q: And this would have never gone to said agency if you guys had done your jobs correctly, right?

Old Dirty Bitch: We're not responsible for the mail.

Q: That excuse again. I'm not either. Do yourself a favor. Call your fucking sister/cousin/mother or whatever relation she is, and get a pass. I'm not a dipshit. I saw both of your last names. There's not a damn thing either of your organizations do right. She doesn't want to collect this very much as she refers legit questions back to you. You guys obviously don't want to collect this very much since it's taken you six and a half years to do anything else about it beyond that sham of a hearing you have listed that allegedly took place. For all I fucking know, there's some 3-toothed, corn meal fed, inbred fucker that smells like a cow pasture sitting at one of those desks in that trailer just mashing keys on a keyboard and just happened to mash the right sequence for my stuff to come up again. There is no fucking excuse for you guys taking this long.

Old Dirty Bitch: I'll t----

Q: Also, think of your relative at the collection agency. If I find out you guys don't have that judgement on file and it violates the FDCPA? How many attorneys down there do you think would love to sue the piss out of a collection agency?

Old Dirty Bitch: I'LL TALK TO THE JUDGE TOMORROW!

/hangup

Now I get to play the waiting game a bit.

After a few minutes, I stopped pacing around my office. BR Attorney comes in here and tells me if I ever decided to go to law school, I'd probably be the Happy Gilmore of justice with a performance like that.

Then he's like..."Y'know, I agree with your attorney. You should have just paid the $211.88."

If a man isn't willing to fight for his principles, he's not much of a man at all.

As cliche as that is, it's the truth. Battles have to be picked wisely and a lot would look at my decision to fight this as idiotic, but goddammit...

I stared $160,000 in debt in the face 5 years ago that was tied to my mom and dad's house. I fail, they're finding a new place to live. I have scratched and clawed my way out of that one penny at a time. I'll be damned if some goddamn idiot in Mississippi is going to take any of those pennies away from me.

Bullshit - Part 2

Bullshit

Back in July 2003, I took a trip to New Orleans. On the way there, I was pulled over for speeding in Mississippi. Not just any speeding...

72 in a 70 speeding.

While that's technically still speeding, it seems to me that a police officer would offer up a little leeway for other factors like...going downhill. The act of passing, etc.

But nooooooooooooo...

This officer pulled me over, despite the fact I was going down hill because he had been working a bunch of accidents that night due to the wet roads.

So ok, whatever. I get back home and no more than a month later, I paid something I noted as "Speeding Ticket" in the amount of $87.00. No check number or anything in this entry (yes I was terrible about record keeping back then), so that likely means I hand-wrote the check and added it into Quickbooks later when I was reconciling the account. The date here is important:

The offense took place in July 2003.

About 2 weeks ago, I get a letter from Southern Financial Systems, Inc trying to collect a debt of $211.88. I note on the letter that the client for said collection agency is one "Pearl River County Justice".

I'm scratching my head. This is completely new and my first inclination is to believe there's been some sort of mistake. So I called them up.

Come to find out, this agency is trying to collect what I allegedly owe on the aforementioned ticket. Now I have a few questions about the legitimacy of this. The first of which is:

Why in the blue hell did it take 7 years for this to even show up? The ticket was from 2003. Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005. You can't possibly use that excuse.

The second is:

Why is a court house using a collection agency? Don't courthouses just do things like...I don't know...issue warrants for your arrest? Kill your license?

The third is:

If this ticket is that old and their records indicate that I haven't paid it, why wasn't I issued a summons to appear in court for the ticket? The address on my license hasn't changed since I got it. I had my address on my license as said address because I was generally moving to a new place every couple of years. Now I actually live at said address, so it wasn't like the address wasn't valid.

The fourth is:

Does the bank that bought the bank that bought the bank still have the records for said bank? Confused yet? Bowling Green Bank was purchased by Area Bank and that was purchased (or absorbed) by Branch Bank and Trust. I wrote the check out of the store bank account. The corporation that had the controlling interest of my business is defunct and I was removed as one of the officers of said corporation during a bit of a brutal buy-out process.

Anyway, I could clear this up instantly if I had that cleared check, but unfortunately, it's not. Well, I shouldn't say it's not the case. I should say they want to charge me $150 just to research the records and that doesn't guarantee they'll actually find anything.

So now this ticket has come back to haunt me and I apparently am going to get fucked out of this money one way or the other. If I can't find the cleared check, I'm of the mindset that if I'm going to lose that money no matter what, I'd rather give it to someone who can stick it to these guys.

Here's the other amusing aspect of this:

I was issued the ticket on July 5th 2003.

The ticket was filed on August 4th 2003.

I was apparently sued/summoned to appear regarding this ticket on August 19th, 2004.

Obviously, not having received any notification about this, I failed to appear. (Doesn't it seem far more likely I would have addressed this issue if I had known back then, when...records were a hell of a lot more current for me?)

This failure to appear got me strapped with some sort of "Contempt of Court" fee.

August 20th, 2004 to Feb 10th, 2010: Nothing happened? Six years and nothing.

Feb 11th, 2010: I receive a letter stating I haven't paid it from a collection agency. Not the courthouse mind you, a collection agency.

This smells of a pasture full of bullshit that only Mississippi can produce.

8 Wins, 0 Losses and...

...a whole lot of junk.

Team Splitting Heirs reunited last night for the first time since July to take on the team's namesake Campaign Op BCNM. Jess surprised me a bit Sunday morning when he pointed out that Odin server managed to pick up La Vaule[S]. Prior to this recent drought, you could pretty much count on this zone being picked up at least once every couple months. For whatever reason (guessing campaign boredom), we had a near 8 month drought.

The great thing about this team is when we originally did our initial batch of runs back then, we went something like 10-1 over the course of the week that the BC was available. Eight months later, our characters (namely our DDs and Tank) were insanely improved.

Izman has a lot more enmity gear. Jess has an E.Body and an augmented +2 Damage Death Scythe. Ravax, I think, picked up more Usu gear for his SAM (although that didn't do him much good since he died in every run except for one). Myself personally, I've tweaked my gear a little bit. Gone are the Homam pants. Those were replaced by +2 DA/+3 Haste Blitzer Poleyn. I also picked up a white tathlum and a forager's mantle since then.

Once we all got word that the BC was available, we all picked up Op tags Sunday and had 8 available tags for Monday evening. Naturally, work kept me late, but that wasn't a huge deal as Inbred had Limbus to take care of.

I figured our first run, we'd be rusty as hell, but nope...done in 9 minutes and our reward was...

Junk.

Ravax didn't even die in that one.

Our second run saw us wipe in the early going thanks to Ravax and Izman having a little bit of bad luck with counter and shoulder charge and Mav getting slept. Girlfriend went to wake Mav up (who was down in the big area of the BC sleeping stuff while the rest of were in the passageway) which pretty much sealed Izman's fate after the shoulder charge connected.

We're pros though. We wiped quickly once Izman went down, got up and had more than enough time to recover and finish the job. We were rewarded with a Cuchulain's Mantle for our efforts.

The next 4 runs saw similar results to the first one, only with Ravax dying at least once in every run.

I apparently picked up Miss Cleo's powers as I had a rather uncanny streak of accurate Tigris Stone and chest predictions.

An example:

On my way to the BC the 7th time, I aggro'd a RNG orc. Earlier in the evening, Ravax had aggro'd an orc and tried to train everything to the BC entrance where...

...the entire team just let the orcs beat on him and kill him.

When I got aggro, they came back to help me.

(Ravax) I hope you die.
(Qtipus) I won't. The stone is going to drop off this one too.
Obtained Key Item: Tigris Stone.
(Ravax) I really hate you Q.
(Mav) lol
(Izman) lmao
(Jess) wow


I think I went something like 5-1 on Tigris Stone predictions and made 3 accurate predictions on treasure pool loot.

I'd also like to point out that our average time spent in the BC was around 10 minutes. Our average time spent outside farming/getting op tags?

Around 20 minutes each.

Our last two runs ended up being profitable. The 7th run dropped another Cuchulain's Mantle and the 8th run dropped a Witch Sash. There were a couple runs where Izman dropped in the last 10-15% and we'd just muscle our way to the finish. There were a couple of close calls, but I think the six of us are probably just so cool under pressure that it didn't phase us much. While I would have loved to see another mantle/sash or two for the efforts, I won't complain at all since we won every time, thus maximizing our chances.

It really seems strange sitting in this position given the struggles I had initially with that BC. While we were there last night farming, we saw a number of groups fail (some numerous times). One of the groups was built similar to us, sans relic DRG. Given those observations along with my own, it seems to me having someone that can dump out a steady amount of damage (DRG's specialty) that has the ability to help keep hate on the tank (MP conservation) goes a long ways towards success. Breaking down the jobs we went as:

Izman(PLD/NIN): Obvious role.
Ravax (SAM/THF): Plant hate when possible.
Jess (DRK/SAM): Dish damage without pulling hate very often. Stun a lot.
Kaylea (WHM/BLM): Focus on healing the tank primarily.
Mav (RDM/BLM): Control the sub-NMs, let melee know when the BLM NM is on the way.
Qtipus (DRG/SAM): Dish damage, shed hate, secondary Trick Attack target.

Hate control and killing that damn BLM NM were pretty much the two keys to success here. Most melee don't know how to pull their punches or time their weapon skills so that you don't pull hate. Thirty minutes is a world of time to whittle that NM down.

Team Splitting Heirs might try to sneak in a run or two after Einherjar tonight if everyone's around (and if tags have regenerated), but tenatively, we're looking at Friday evening as the next day we do a batch of these runs. Hopefully we won't run into the whole gate spamming bullshit, but we likely will.

I'm halfway wondering if we can force a mantle or a sash to drop if we all have Orcish Gauntlets in our inventory...

2 Mantles, 1 Sash in 8 attempts. Off to a good start :)

Wow...

Haven't seen a commercial this awesome in a very long time:

Olympic Hockey

Canucks...



USA: 5 Canada: 3

For the record...I don't watch hockey. I have a basic understanding of how the game works and that's about the extent of it. I also understand that nothing preempts hockey in Canada.

There are religions like Christianity, Buddism, Islam etc.

In Canada, there's Hockey.

And the USA just pwnt them.

LOLCANADIANS

At least you guys can take gold in another category...

Number of average hours spent online in the month of December.

More Tiger...

Out of curiosity...

Why do some of the attorneys for Tiger Woods' alleged mistresses feel the golfer owes them an apology or at least public acknowledgment that he had an affair with them? Is this what our justice system has come to?

You'd literally have to be living under a rock to not know Tiger was married. In my eyes, if you're the mistress and you know the other half of the affair equation is married, you're just as much of a slimeball.

People really do pretty much anything to get their 15 minutes don't they...

Memo to the mistresses:

Not only is who Tiger slept with none of our business (meaning he doesn't and shouldn't have to tell us), but you fucked the world's most famous athlete. I'm guessing you want Tiger's public acknowledgment just so your friends and family won't call you a liar. If you didn't want that sort of scrutiny to begin with, you shouldn't have opened your crotch-hole to Mr. Woods to begin with.

Something Different

It's amazing how little I pay attention to when I'm wrapped up in FFXI. Since fixing that Xbox 360 of my brother-in-law's, I've been absorbed in a number of games. On top of that, I've managed to start paying more attention to the media (while bored at work).

I'm starting to think this was the reason I used to be so short-tempered. The sheer number of idiots that get cameras shoved into their faces seriously pisses me off to no end. Here are a few examples:

Sarah Palin

Does this woman have any credibility left? She's done things most people can only dream of doing, and for that, she should be commended, but really, getting hooked by an episode of "Family Guy"? She had this to say about it on her Facebook Fanpage:

People are asking me to comment on yesterday’s Fox show that felt like another kick in the gut. Bristol was one who asked what I thought of the show that mocked her baby brother, Trig (and/or others with special needs), in an episode yesterday. Instead of answering, I asked her what she thought. Here is her conscientious reply, which is a much more restrained and gracious statement than I want to make about an issue that begs the question, “when is enough, enough?”:

And her daughter, Bristol's response:

When you’re the son or daughter of a public figure, you have to develop thick skin. My siblings and I all have that, but insults directed at our youngest brother hurt too much for us to remain silent. People with special needs face challenges that many of us will never confront, and yet they are some of the kindest and most loving people you’ll ever meet. Their lives are difficult enough as it is, so why would anyone want to make their lives more difficult by mocking them? As a culture, shouldn’t we be more compassionate to innocent people – especially those who are less fortunate? Shouldn’t we be willing to say that some things just are not funny? Are there any limits to what some people will do or say in regards to my little brother or others in the special needs community? If the writers of a particularly pathetic cartoon show thought they were being clever in mocking my brother and my family yesterday, they failed. All they proved is that they’re heartless jerks. - Bristol Palin”

Anyone else want to bet that Bristol watched and enjoyed "Family Guy" before she became the poster child of Pro-Life, Non-Wedlocked, Teen Mothers?

Oh...and nevermind the fact that the actress playing the part that offended the Palin family HAS DOWN SYNDROME HERSELF. That would be one Andrea Friedman. She politely sent this email in:

My name is Andrea Fay Friedman. I was born with Down syndrome. I played the role of Ellen on the "Extra Large Medium" episode of Family Guy that was broadcast on Valentine's day. Although they gave me red hair on the show, I am really a blonde. I also wore a red wig for my role in " Smudge" but I was a blonde in "Life Goes On". I guess former Governor Palin does not have a sense of humor. I thought the line "I am the daughter of the former governor of Alaska" was very funny. I think the word is "sarcasm".


In my family we think laughing is good. My parents raised me to have a sense of humor and to live a normal life. My mother did not carry me around under her arm like a loaf of French bread the way former Governor Palin carries her son Trig around looking for sympathy and votes.

OK, so now what's Palin's next step? She just got flamed and she apparently is fond of responding to each and every flame hurled her way publicly. Not only that, the person flaming her has Down Syndrome and is apparently a very accomplished career woman.

In typical Palin fashion...

Open Mouth - Insert Foot.

(There's even rumor that Trig isn't Palin's baby to begin with.)

Who knows what to believe though. I do know this. Anyone who has repeatedly made the dumb public mistakes that she has only has the camera put on her for the same reason a lot of people tune in to watch Hockey or Nascar.

They want to see the fight or the crash.

Tiger Woods

The Golf Writers Association of America is boycotted the "press conference" Tiger Woods had today.

Yeah ok. Boycott a Tiger Woods appearance that you can't enter anyway. C'mon. This "statement" Woods made today was his first public appearance since Tiger-Gate went down and you guys are pissed off that you can't get in there and grill him for the salacious details.

Since Thanksgiving, there's been nothing but Tiger Woods bullshit all over the TV. The thing that perturbs me the most about it is that it apparently has come as this huge surprise that he wasn't loyal to his wife.

Really? Show me someone with his kind of money that's loyal to only one person (other than himself) in marriage. When I see organizations like the GWAA and hear other news outlets ripping Woods for not letting them grill him about his issues, I really only have one thing that comes to mind:



It's not enough that these guys just want something to fill the air time with, but these guys also want stories that will give them raises.

I WAS THE GUY THAT GOT THE FIRST QUESTION IN TO WOODS!

Don't give me this bullshit about Woods' moral obligation to stand up there and take questions about his personal life. If you're one of the people that liked Woods because of his squeaky clean image, then you just set yourself up to be disappointed. You don't go out to buy products he sponsors because he's sponsoring them. You don't build your life around Tiger Woods.

Well, some media pundits do, but once that cash cow is done, they just move on to a different one to suck dry.

People liked the guy because he dominated his profession. Up to this point in his career, he's been better than anyone else who ever played the game. On top of that, what percentage of the global population actually gave a shit about Golf until Woods showed up and killed the rest of the field?

His affairs/cheating/immorality are none of our business, public figure or not.

OH BUT IF HE'D CHEAT ON HIS WIFE IT MAKES HIM A COMPLETELY DISHONEST PERSON.

No it doesn't. It makes him a flawed human. Show me a perfect one and I'll take back everything I've said about him. He only owes his family, close friends and whoever else he felt the need to use his putting wedge with a few inches from the hole an apology.

When you have that kind of money and one of the most globally familiar faces around the planet, anyone from Steak N' Shake employees to Goldman-Sachs reps are going to be throwing themselves at you trying to get a piece of your pie. The only thing I'm surprised at is how well he kept it hidden cause I damn sure know it's been going on a very long time.

The media just needs to cool it's jets. No pie for you.

No three-year old temper tantrums about it either or no supper on top of that.

More Kevin Smith stuff.

Cathy Ladman's opinion on the matter. She's on the "widen the seats" side of the issue. She doesn't do anything to show why she's right on the matter. I'm sorry, but at the end of the day, the airliners are a business and if you want to do business with them, you adhere to their policies. Blaming their seating for your own issues is pretty much a microcosm of what's wrong with society today and why Reality TV is so popular.

A. Pawlowski's report. This one just does reporting and doesn't offer any opinions. Good job!


An article out of NJ.com with some opinions illustrating both sides of the matter. Some of the comments are rather comical.

MSNBC Poll Article illustrating a sampling of opinion on the "fat tax". It should be noted this was done before the Kevin Smith debacle, but linked to a Kevin Smith article. The actual poll with comments is here. Again, some comments are rather comical.

My favorite NAAFA representative with more bullshit. "It's not fair to single out one group."

Hooboy...what I'd give to spend about 15 minutes with her. She really doesn't get it. Fat people are being singled out because you can generally do something about being fat. Tall people? Off with their legs! Muscular people? Penalize them for busting their asses to build their bodies. Big breasted women? Breast reduction surgery should be provided (unless the big titties are because someone put a 4 gallon sack of saline in there)! Tall, muscular, big-boobied women? See all of the above.

I'm not saying she doesn't have a few legit points. She's not even that fat herself and I wouldn't expect that she'd be kicked off an airline. What she's guilty of is deflecting blame. Until she comes out and says that fat people have to take responsibility for themselves rather than trying to get various companies to alter their policies to accommodate them, there's not going to be much she says that makes NAAFA look good.

Fat People Part 2

So I probably need to clarify a few things from my angry rant yesterday. A quote from an anonymous poster yesterday:

I don't have a problem with people wanting to advocate that the human race comes in lots of different sizes. I don't think that someone is less of a human being because they're fat and I think that wanting to support that isn't a bad thing.

I have rather more of an issue in how they dealt with this. Whilst I'm overweight I too can comfortably sit in an airline seat and do my seatbelt up too but should I get to the point where I can't, I'd much rather someone told me up front rather than waited until I got on the plane...

I wasn't suggesting that people are less of a human being for being large nor was I suggesting that an organization like NAAFA shouldn't look out for discriminatory practices.

The problem is that an organization like NAAFA seems to play the discrimination card as much as Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson play the race card then expect the moon when they find a horse to hitch their agenda-wagon to.

I mean really...comparing Kevin Smith to Rosa Parks (even though she was asked that question by the dipshit reporter) is just plain stupid. If she had answered that question with something like "Y'know, there's really no comparison given the eras", I probably wouldn't have been as pissed off.

Well, maybe I would have cause of the other stuff that she thinks companies should do to enable bad behavior, but that's beside the point...

The Rosa Parks comment is what got me fired up the most.

Teaching people to embrace "fat acceptance" is a ludicrous idea as well. I stated before...if you have a legit medical reason (or even genetic...which can be medical), you get a pass. You're not the target of the rant.

Organizations like NAAFA exist to make money and push an extreme agenda. Instead of actually addressing why people are fat, they want to make sure everyone just accepts people that are. I could care less if someone is fat, but if that fat is going to invade someone else's space or require you to spend more money because, well, there's more of you, then that's what NAAFA needs to be pushing. They need to be talking to their own memberbase and training them to accept the consequences of their own size rather than trying to get companies like Southwest to change their policies and spend more money so that most people can continue living lives they CHOOSE to live. Those policies are there for a reason and I'm 99.9% certain they weren't created because the person writing them hates fat people.

(Anyone catch the emphasis there on the word "choose"?)

Fat people don't have to choose an airliner to fly. Get in a car and drive yourself. But that's why most people are fat to begin with right?

Let me tell a story.

When I originally opened my business, I opened up next door to a Big & Tall store. The building we were in had 8 parking spaces out front that were split between my store and the Big & Tall store. About a year after I opened (in 2002), I was staring out the front windows on a rather slow night when I see this old car pull up and triple park across my spaces.

I was slightly irritated at that.

I was even more irritated when a guy about an inch shorter than me and at least 350lbs gets out of the car and goes into the shop next door.

So I went outside and waited for him to come out. The following conversation ensued:

Q: Hey, next time you go shopping in there, you mind triple-parking in the spaces that belong to the store you're shopping in?

Fat Guy: Doesn't look like you're busy.

Q: That's beside the point. Those spaces were empty too.

Fat Guy: F*** off.

(gives me the bird and starts back towards his car)

So as a 22 year old, rather immature man...you can probably guess what happened next.

Q: If I see your car in my spots again, I will have you towed.

(another middle finger)

Q: Hey, did you ever wonder why you have to shop in that store to begin with?

(now I've got his attention)

Q: Perhaps it's because you're too f***ing lazy to walk the extra 6' from the correct parking spaces?

It was go time now. That guy unloaded this obscenity-laden tirade that I barely understood because I was rather mesmerized by the sheer amount of fluid coming out of his mouth while he was yelling at me. I know he asked "Are you saying I'm fat" and "Come down here and say that to my face" a couple times, but that's about all I remember.

Nothing else of note really happened during that exchange. After he got finished, he gets in his car and peels out of the parking lot.

The next day, the manager of the Big & Tall store comes over. She's one of the nicest ladies I know (and is still a customer of mine). She asks me about the exchange. Apparently, the guy called her up and complained about me and, at the time, they had this "Good Neighbor Policy" that required management of the various stores to observe the "sensitive nature" of their client base.

She had to come over to fill out the report to file.

Chew on that for a bit. I get that this guy was probably in a minority. Hell I don't even know if his condition was medically-related. I just know that he acted like an asshole and got treated like an asshole. That aside, this is the sort of garbage an organization like NAAFA promotes.

Y'see. For most people, "Fat" is a choice. You make a bad choice, you pay the consequences. "Fat" is a medically/scientifically proven BAD CHOICE. NAAFA would have you believe there should be no consequences for being fat. Widen the doors and seats or boycott the company fat people! Does that mean people should go out of their way to make fat people feel horrible about their size? No, it doesn't, but it does mean that fat people have to understand the consequences of their choice to be fat.

If you're fat...

- You're at a higher risk for health issues.
- You're probably paying more to fuel that car of yours.
- You have to pay more for clothing since there's more clothing to begin with.
- You have to pay more for food since you more than likely take down more food.
- Your size is invading personal space in places like aircrafts, theaters, carnival rides or various other events with close-quarter seating.

But hey, where's NAAFA's policy on Wal-Mart charging more for XXL clothing than L or XL? Where's NAAFA's policy on McDonald's charging more for super-sizing? Don't I get a couple extra hot apple pies because I'm overweight? Why isn't NAAFA going after the auto-industry to make cars that are more fuel-efficient when a scale in the driver's seat detects more than a certain weight?

That's exactly the sort of logic used in NAAFA calling for the boycott on Southwest and demanding airliners to widen their seats.

Back to Southwest and Kevin Smith a minute...

Southwest could have handled that situation a lot better and I get why he's pissed. That's not saying I necessarily agree with everything he's done after the fact, but I still get it. Kevin Smith calling for a boycott of Southwest is one thing.

NAAFA calling for a boycott is just stupid. NAAFA calling for airliners to "widen their seats" is stupid. NAAFA stating that it's wrong for airliners to force people to pay for multiple seats when those fit in one seat is stupid. If I were Southwest, I'd take a few notes from Six Flags, Universal Studios or the Disney parks...

Put up a sign at the door:

"If you don't fit between these lines, you don't get to fly."

At least then, the passenger isn't seated and forcibly removed from the flight.

Get your f***ing priorities straight NAAFA. Focus on finding ways to get people with legit reasons for being overweight the care they need from various companies. When you force a company like Southwest to accommodate bad choices, the costs get passed onto everyone else and personally, if I'm going to be paying for a bad choice, I'd rather it be my own.

Fat People

I was watching a piece on Nightline last night about director Kevin Smith getting booted off a Southwest flight for being too fat. Before I go further, I want to say...

I'm 5'11, 200lbs. Kevin Smith is about 2-3" shorter than me and has at least 50lbs on me. This rant isn't going to be about whether Southwest was right or wrong in removing him from the flight.

It's going to be about a little organization I learned about called:

National Assocaiation to Advance Fat Acceptance.

There are associations out there for pretty much anything you can imagine. Hell, there's probably some association out there called "Teabaggees Everywhere Against Boys Arbitrarily Gonadding" that's probably got my in-game character on their hit list or are lobbying various video game companies to stop making animations that could refer to the act of teabagging.

Some of these associations are necessary. As much as I hate to say it, an organization like PETA probably does more good than bad, but it's organizations like these that will jump on huge news stories for nothing other than to push their agenda.

Which leads me to the question of...

Who in their right f***ing minds organizes a group to teach people to accept fat?

I'm not a model of fitness and exercise, but it seems to me anyone can have one of two reasons for being fat.

1. An actual medical reason like Type II diabetes, thyroid issues or meds being taken for a different issue. An airliner in this case can simply ask for some simple proof of medical issues (prescription? doctor's note?) and keep it on file.

2. You're lazy and you eat nothing but fast food and don't exercise anything but your digits on the remote or game controller.

The VAST majority of people that are considered to be overweight/fat fall into the second group. There really is no excuse for it and why an organization called "NAAFA" is trying to work to make it so that fat people are accepted in all walks of life is beyond me.

In watching the Nightline article last night covering the Kevin Smith brouhaha, they had a representative from NAAFA (Golda Peretzky? I didn't quite catch her name) on there to discuss why this was bad for Southwest. As part of her spiel, she stated:

people of size to seek out and travel airlines that do not have such discriminatory policies

On top of that, she goes as far as to answer a question comparing Smith's debacle to that of Rosa Parks.

HOW IN THE F***ING HELL IS THAT EVEN CLOSE TO COMPARABLE TO WHAT HAPPENED TO ROSA PARKS?!?!? ROSA PARKS WAS BEING DISCRIMINATED AGAINST OVER SOMETHING SHE WAS BORN WITH. SHE DIDN'T GO OUT AND WILLINGLY CHANGE HER SKIN COLOR.

DON'T GIVE ME THIS "HE SPOKE OUT AGAINST UNFAIR TREATMENT ON PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION" BULLSHIT AS ANY FORM OF A COMPARABLE IDEA TO ROSA PARKS HERSELF.

/deepbreath

Ok, I get it. Medical reasoning aside, the guy next to you on the airline has to be completely cramped his entire flight just so you can continue to sit on the couch, shove whatever edible form of food you can get your hands on into your mouth, avoid exercising and watch TV all day.

F*** off lady. I'm overweight myself and if I get to the point where my fat rolls are surrounding the arm rests of an airplane's seat or my ass won't fit into one seat alone, I would expect to get kicked off the plane or charged double. And you know what I'm going to do if I get kicked off the plane?

I'm certainly not going to appear on Twitter or Nightline advocating that being insanely fat because I'm lazy is perfectly acceptable. I'm not going to convince myself that an airline should buy planes with extra large seats to accommodate passengers that can't fit into the current ones. I'm not going run around and act all butthurt because the staff of a company was thinking of safety. I'm not going to go on a rampage trying to get people to boycott said company because they were trying to make the other 149 passengers on the plane safer.

No, I'm going to park my fat ass right on a goddamn exercise bike or a f***ing treadmill and work my ass off until I can fit in the seat again. You want companies like Southwest to be considerate of your size?

How about you be considerate of the fact that your size takes away from the space of the others in the plane next to you? Space they paid for that you're occupying because you want shovel pork rinds into your pie hole 24/7 and drink 3 gallons of soda with every meal?

But wait! BOO HOO MAKING FAT JOKES HURTS MY FEELINGS. IT LEADS TO DEPRESSION AND THAT'S WHY I'M FAT.

Please.

If you weren't fat, jokes wouldn't be made. I'm sure I speak for the vast majority of people that make fat jokes when I say:

If we know you're fat for a medical reason, we leave you alone about it. If you're fat because you're a lazy slob? Deal with it. People make jokes about my man-titties all the time. Does it hurt my feelings?

No.

Why not?

Because they're there. If I were truly bothered by them, I'd work to turn them back into the pecs they once were.

Mimi Roth, at the end of that interview (from another oddball organization called National Action Against Obesity) pretty much nails it on the head when she says it's getting to a point in this country where fat people are getting super-sized senses of entitlements and expectations relative to their size over how they should be treated.

The fault isn't on the companies who's service you're requesting fat people. It's on your own head (usually).

I don't see anyone complaining about their three year old being unable to ride a carnival ride for being too short.

(I'm betting there's an organization out there against that too...)

Why? Because people understand if you don't fit in the restraints, you get thrown off the ride and killed.

How is an airplane any different? Come talk to me when a Chinese Buffet kicks you out because you're fat.

Even then, you won't have much sympathy from me.

As for whether Kevin Smith was wronged...he probably was. He still fit in the seat mostly comfortably. Southwest attendants used poor judgement there, but if NAAFA thinks they have a horse to hitch their wagon to with this case, good luck with that.

Click here for the ABC News Nightline article.

World's Been Waiting...

It's on.

Apparently.

Bret Hart vs. Vince McMahon at Wrestlemania 26.

I'll be buying that PPV (first one I will have purchased since Wrestlemania 20) if those two actually have a match.

Yeah I know Hart is old, but that guy is an icon and hasn't wrestled in 10+ years. The reason why is he legitimately had a motorcycle crashed that caused him to have a stroke. The stroke left him in a wheelchair and the guy fought his way out of it. You have to respect a guy that has the ability to do that.

Read here for details.

So yeah, knock wrestling if you want. We all know it's scripted and probably some of the worst acting ever (it's still better than reality TV...). The Hitman is a wrestling icon and one of the few that could actually wrestle. The punches may be fake. The kicks may be pulled, but the collisions, drops and bumps are not. He had a stroke. Caused by an accident in which he hit his head.

And there he is, 8 years later getting back into the ring after being paralyzed and in a wheelchair.

Here's hoping he's still got it and blows the roof off the joint. :)

Even if he doesn't, big props to the guy for getting back into the ring to begin with. That alone is worth the price of admission.

Legendary Fuckups

I don't know if anyone has a collection of these anywhere, but from time to time, you hear of legendary fuckups that end up costing a group of people something they want. The guy that's subbin' THF that attacks a wyrm from behind and spikeflails their group. The guy that enters limbus and immediately starts attacking shit before everyone gets in. The guy that enters Dynamis w/o distributing the glass. Things of that nature.

Yeah I joined that group last night in prepping for Odin.

Our troubles between Odins this time seemed to be rather higher than usual. Between a lot of late starts, bickering, hacked mule accounts and rooms that just refused to use lube, it really seemed like I was postponing Odin for a lot longer than we actually did.

So we're together for the most part and ready to start on time. About 15 minutes before the run starts, I get a tell from Idalis asking how long until start.

Normally when someone asks me that question, they're about to AFK for however long I say minus one minute, so I'll often times avoid answering that question cause that just pisses me off something fierce.

This time, I answered Idalis mainly because he showed up as the wrong job. Nevermind the fact that it was in the /lsmes and on the forums. He still managed to show up as the wrong job. On top of that...

...he showed up as BLM.

We've done something like 20 Odins and there's exactly ONE person I've ever let come as a BLM (only job she has leveled). I've made it pretty clear throughout our 1.5 years of Einherjar history that BLMs are damn near completely useless on Odin.

So now I'm thoroughly annoyed. Fortunately, we had a member who hadn't used their coat-warp yet, so I send them back with Idalis while he changes to the job we wanted him there as. He still had time to change and get back before we were insanely late.

"Insanely late = More than 10 minutes."

What does that have to do with the title and intro to this post though?

Depends on your perspective. I often times like to try to find reasoning in why things happen through the series of events that lead up to the happening itself. I personally don't blame Idalis for this, but some would say this distracted me enough to cause this to happen. These are the sorts of things that happen pretty much every run. Someone's late and I'm trying to find replacements. Someone on the wait list needs the clear on that particular wing and I'm trying to find someone to boot. The list goes on and on and it's not exactly an easy thing for one person to handle most of the time. Point is, it's stuff that I'm not unaccustomed to dealing with.

After Idalis job changes and Zerolzero warps them both back to Nashmau, I inexplicably broke the lamp from Dantess (who had our feathers).

Now I'm super pissed.

I haven't ever done that before. Out of the 157 runs our group has done in the past 1.5 years, I've busted the lamp via mules or myself probably 140 of them. I didn't panic, but I had to make a decision pretty quickly. Do I...

A) Bust ass breaking the lamp further and leave Idalis and Zerolzero out of the run?

or

B) Pray that I didn't get subjected to the 72 hour cool down since I didn't actually ENTER the room or lose the feathers.

I opted for B.

If it had just been Idalis out there, I would have left him no question because he failed to pay attention and was already causing us to be late. Since I sent Zerol back though, I didn't feel it was right to essentially punish him for Idalis' fuck up and more importantly, punish him for my fuck up.

I had Zerol bring me another lamp on his way back out just in case the 72 hour cool down didn't happen.

"You cannot enter the chamber for another 75 Vana'diel days."

...

. . .

. . . . . . .

SONOFABITCH

I actually said that loud enough at the time that my Mom thought I hurt myself.

I start looking around for some other members that might have full sets to no avail. With no way to do Odin now, I'm forced to change to a diff. room and create probably one of the biggest buzzkills I've ever been responsible for.

So how did it get to that point?

Like this:

Because I'm currently the only person manning the mules for Obsidian's einherjar runs, I got myself into the habit of minimizing the amount of time I spend getting a lamp to them. This means, when I get them into Hazhalm, I get Qtipus targeted from each mule, place them close enough to the door so that when I hit F8 to target it, I'm not targeting someone's wyvern (yes I know about /ignorepet, see how well you remember htat across 3 accounts that are typically logging in as guest), with the menu open and on "Trade" to accept the trade request Qtipus gives them.

The same thing applies to when one of the mules has to break the lamp. I'll park them by the door with all the dialog boxes cycled through until it's at the final confirm before the Smoldering Lamp gets turned into a Glowing Lamp. I'll even go so far as to have "/item "Glowing Lamp" [me]" in my chat cycle so I can just scroll back through my previous entries to break the glass while I'm actually trading to someone else.

What happened last night was I mashed the enter key by accident on the keyboard controlling Dantess. One busted lamp later, Dantess cannot enter for 72 hours and instead of Odin, we're doing T1 since a different mule needed it and we're starting about 10 minutes AFTER we should have finished.

Awesome fucking night I tell you.

Odin's postponed a week. We could have gone in on Saturday, but we have such a large population that can only go on Saturday or only go on Tuesday that I'd probably get lynched if I did Odin a third Saturday in a row.

At the very least, the feathers weren't eaten and it gives us a chance to have a different set of feathers in place should I screw up again.

I do know this...

If 2 E.Bodies and a V.Fork drop next week, there will probably be a unanimous vote for me to fuck up every Odin like that.