failblog: win

So, I finally got around to checking out failblog, a site I read about in Slate here and more recently, here.

The site is just a chronicle of mundane to epic failures, from inflatable dartboards or flyers for "litercy" seminars. For the sake of categorization, there are a lot of confusing packaging and unfortunate product names, creative English translations, indictments of poor parenting and unintentional phallic imagery on the site. Some post videos that could double on America's Funniest Home Videos (with ER ending its run, perhaps Uncle Jessie could take over Bob Saget's old, old job): this sleepwalking dog is adorable (I'm sure he recovered fully) and I must've seen 10 surveillance videos in which people apparently forgot to put their vehicles in Park.

But I'm ashamed to admit that it was this video that literally caused me to fall out of my desk chair. It's horrible to laugh at the victim of the finale, but he acquits himself nicely by refusing to let this incident pass without comment.

The site has some Wins, too, choosing to highlight the odd positive moment or victory in a sea of faildom, but the Slate article gets it right: schadenfreude is the main event because it's just too satisfying. Enjoy the failure!

the biggety bailout

The best thing I've read to date about the financial crisis: the reliably foul-mouthed malcontent and gonzo journalist, Matt Taibbi. Long but rewarding - and appropriately frightening.

And yes, this is a weak return to my erstwhile blog after a long period of absence. But 1) I had to start somewhere and 2) I've been busy over the past couple of months completing my comprehensive exams and producing essays that will feed into my doctoral dissertation. What have you accomplished in the same interval? That's what I thought....

the happening

Sorry to go so long without posting anything here - and posting just a link when I finally have - but this is the best piece I've read in awhile. It's by Tom Junod in Esquire and it's a week or so old, but it's excellent stuff. (I'll grab a coffee and give you a few minutes to read it.)

(Okay, welcome back.) Though the article is the kind of thing you can only compose in hindsight, Junod pretty much sums up what I had felt when people insisted upon impeaching George W. Bush over the course of the past eight years. In the broadest sense, the system worked: the people voted and made their decisions, we chose a president and a government, and it was the president and government we wanted. Literally, to impeach a President you need a majority of the House and two-thirds of the Senate who vote at the conclusion of a trial...presided over by the President of the Senate (in other words, the Vice President; in other, other words, Dick Cheney). We never had the horses for that, people. Because, the fact is we chose those representatives, senators, VP and even (gasp!) our President. (And for those who still maintain the 2000 election was botched by the State of Florida, usurped by the Supreme Court and/or stolen by George Bush, may I reluctantly point out that: we voted them in, we voted in the folks who nominated/confirmed them and we threw enough votes his way to give him at least a semi-credible basis for doing so).

The point I felt I had to make was that we, as Americans, should feel some sense of responsibility, including for our mistakes. And if I haven't pissed you off yet, I'm going to. What I said a few times during the Bush years was basically that whoever was frothing for impeachment or revolution or whatever was out of touch with this responsibility: what happened was the product of American choices, the choices of Americans...er, us. To unenthusiastically quote from Mel Gibson's Braveheart: "The trouble with Scotland is that it's full of Scots." Of course, Americans themselves aren't the trouble - it's better said that the lacking American sense of responsibility is.

And if I still haven't insulted you, I'll now make sure of it. In the wake of the sub-prime mortgage catastrophe (you know, that butterfly that landed on the truck that was teetering over the edge of the cliff), everyone was quick to blame the predatory lenders who supplied these loans to people who had very little shot of realistically paying them back. But what about the people who signed up for these loans - they were taken advantage of, so they're exempt for their contributions to the crisis? There's nothing immoral about being a renter, um...is there? Of course, many of these people have no choice but to deal with the consequences of their decisions (they're continuing to lose those homes while we're basically bailing out the lenders), but it again comes back to that nagging question of responsibility.

Now it looks like we have a President who takes his responsibilities seriously. Perhaps we should follow his lead.

...and I haven't kept up with this blog lately because I've been attending to my own (academic) responsibilities, preparing for an upcoming comprehensive exam. So, I take it back: I'm not sorry! No apologies ever! Long live the Bush era!

iPhony

This is just a test to see if I could post to this blog from my iPhone if I had a gun to my head (and I did just board a New Jersey Transit bus in East Orange, NJ, so that's likely to happen in the next few minutes). Of course, you, my faithful reader (Hi, Mom!) must wish and hope I am not successful in posting this, as I tend to be pissed and bitter while riding the bus - think Zell Miller on reds. But if you're already reading it, well...oh dear.

dubious distinction

For anyone looking for the bureaucratic equivalent of a kids' "contest" in which everyone receives a trophy, here's a picture from the East Orange Post Office:

Now it's hard to make out the caption on the plaque, hanging there forlornly on the bulletin board at the East Orange Post Office, so I'll provide it for you:

Newark District

Holiday Lobby Decoration Contest

3rd Place

Presented to

East Orange Post Office

for

Best Integration of Postal Products & Services into Theme

Group 1

December 1999

Now...It's a bit hard to figure out where to begin in celebrating this plaque. So, let's just run down the list. 1) 3rd place. Okay, a plaque was issued for the bronze. I guess the plaque budget was riding high. If this were the only drawback, I might let it slide, but... 2) Best Integration of Postal Products & Services into Theme. Well, that's quite specific. I mean, third place overall in the decorating contest would really have been something. But the triumph is muffled a bit with such a narrow category, no? I mean, they weren't able to snag any of the top spots in the Posters and Notices Not Placed Upside Down/Not Slanted at a 60 Degree Angle or Less category? 3) Group 1? This relates to the Newark District delimiter detailed at the outset. A national competition - a worthy reason to display the plaque. Statewide...eh, still worthy. Third place in the Newark district/um, semi-worthy at best. But third place in the Newark District, Group 1...? We're really starting to push it. And, finally, 4) December 1999. Given that the fateful competition memorialized by the plaque took place ten years ago, I have a thought, echoing the immortal words of Janet Jackson, "What have you done for me lately?" All this adds up to perhaps the iffiest exploit ever immortalized in faux-marble.

Of course, the bigger issue suggested by this plaque is that this Post Office must really suck if this is the best, nay, only accomplishment they can claim. I can imagine a confrontation with a supervisor involving some aspect of the EOPO's crapiness devolving into a impassioned defense in which the postal worker points (stridently and with no trace of self-consciousness) to the plaque and exclaims: "We may have thrown away your mail which we never even delivered to your building in the first place, Sir, but you don't come away with an honor like that without being at least above average integrating postal products into a holiday theme in the Newark District, Group 1 at least once in the past ten years, so I think it's clear we know what we're doing 'round here."

Brownie, you're doing a heckuva job.

poor office

So, here's why the line at the East Orange Post Office is always so long, besides the suckiness of everyone who "works" there: the post office in East Orange is essentially a poor people depot.

First off, everyone pays cash. And not just cash cash, but wads of crap cash. People pull clumps of singles and twenties out to pay and then turn around to dig through their pockets for scads of change, rendering the average transaction time about 14 minutes. When I got there today, the line snaked around the lobby and spilled out into the vestibule. But the slowness of the line traffic doesn't explain it all away: why are there so many people at the EOPO anyway?

In short, because every other person is there to get several money orders. What is a money order? It's like a check for a poor person. If you don't have a bank account, you go to the post office (!) to pay your bills: you get a few money orders for a couple few hundred dollars each (which is usually paid out in singles, based on how long the transaction takes) and then you send them to the appropriate party. But may I ask a stupid question - how hard is it to get a bank account? I have the same befuddlement about people who go to Payday Loans places to cash checks. Why wouldn't I just cash it with a loan shark or a bookie or a mafia kingpin...at least then I can get a table dance while the money's being counted out.

Let me also say that I won't act as if it's an accident that most of the people who live in East Orange are straddling the poverty line and that they also happen to be African American. EO is over 90% black - thus, there were only a couple vanilla sprinkles in the line this morning. I say this to say that this still doesn't explain the reliance on money orders at the post office: the lady in front of me was complaining about everyone buying money orders today, saying to no one in particular, "Has anyone ever heard of online banking?!" And then, and I'm not making this up, she got up to the window and purchased two money orders. Unless your bank account would be subject to seizure by the IRS, you should have one, you should be paying bills online, you should not be purchasing several money orders every other day. Perhaps it's cultural. Cough.

There are really few people who are doing actual, no-foolin' postal business at the EO Poor Office, then. If you'd like to learn more, send a money order to 26 City Hall Plaza, East Orange, NJ 07017.

going postal

The East Orange Post Office suuuuuuucks. If you have to send me something and live in the lower 48 states, please send it UPS - and if you can't send it via UPS, I'd rather drive to Seattle to pick it up than deal with the Post Office.

So my sister sent us a package for Christmas. And, as she was the first to point out, this is the first time in recorded history that her package arrived in Jersey before Christmas. The problem was, though it arrived Christmas Eve, it was not actually delivered to our apartment. When Amy and I arrived home from work (coincidentally, we both materialized at the same time), we just found a slip in our mailbox saying the Post Office had our package and we could pick it up from them. Yes, this does defeat the purpose of having a postal service that delivers packages to you, but this is only the opening salvo. Read on.

Over the Christmas weekend, my sister, Greer, was disappointed that we didn't have the package yet, especially, she said, because there was food inside! So this gave an added sense of urgency to getting the package. On Tuesday, then, I took Amy all the way up to Paramus and dropped her off at 8 in the morning so I could then drive the other direction to go to my work. I got off at 4, however, so I was going to get the package at that point. At 4, I raced like a madman to East Orange to get the package...only to learn that the Post Office actually, inexplicably, closed at 4:30 most everyday. I arrived at 4:35.

So this brings us up to Wednesday, yesterday: the option of last resort. I would walk through East Orange, braving temperatures in the twenties and a wind chill in the single digits, and bring the package home. Well, guess what? The Post Office was closed. Granted, it was New Year's Eve, but they should have been open (someone there said they closed at 1pm that day). Their closure was not indicated by any of the several notices posted about the doors - check for yourself.

For a few posts, then, this blog will now become the "I Hate the East Orange Post Office" blog. I hope you enjoy it. Actually, it's likely you won't enjoy it, as you've never been there and have an idyllic, mutually-fulfilling relationship with your own post office. Oh well, it'll be therapeutic for me, and that's all that matters...