A Customer Gets Served

(Marty calls up the Happy Health Care, and auto-identifies himself. He is connected to Daisy.)

D: Hello, this is the Happy Health Care. You’re speaking to Daisy. Is that Marty?

M: Yep, thanks Daisy. Do you have my account info there?

D: Yes. I do. How may I help you?

M: Thanks, Daisy. I got a letter from you guys, saying that because of Covid I’m owed a refund on some of the services that were unavailable, but that my bank details are missing. The letter said I could add the details online, but when I tried it didn’t seem to work. So, I’m hoping you can sort it out for me. Continue reading “A Customer Gets Served”

RatS 10: Adam Curtis’s CGYOoMH

Well, to be more accurate, this is a WatS, since it’s a BBC series.

Adam Curtis is a unique, brilliant filmmaker, exploring the psychology and politics of modern society like no one else. Two previous series, The Power of Nightmares and The Century of the Self, are musts. Curtis now has a new series, Can’t Get You Out of My Head: an Emotional History of the Modern WorldIt is viewable on BBC iPlayer (with VPN trickery) and, at least for now, here. It is great.

RatS 9: The Campus as Factory

Jacob Howland is an emeritus professor of philosophy at the University of Tulsa. For the last couple of years Howland has been watching the demise of his university, and the perversion of other American universities from the same anti-academic forces. (Of course, Australian universities are entirely immune from such anti-academic perversions.) This has come together in Howland’s article,

The Campus as Factory: corporatist progressivism and the crisis of American education.

RatS 8: Donald McNeil Has His Say

Last month, science writer Donald McNeil got shoved out of the New York Times. McNeil has waited until he was formally out of the Times to have his say. Now, he has done so. The whole thing is insane.

Part One: Introduction

Part Two: What Happened January 28?

Part Three: What Happened in the 2019 Investigation?

Part Four: What Happened in Peru?

RatS 7: Taibbi on Dr. Seuss and eBay

It was big news that the estate of Theodor Geisel – aka Dr. Seuss – had decided to cease publication of six Seuss titles, because of their portrayal of people “in ways that are hurtful and wrong”. Seuss is huge, of course, but in the scheme of it the news shouldn’t have been that huge. Geisel-Seuss wrote plenty of mediocre stuff, and some grotesquely racist stuff. It’s complicated. Books – good and bad – go out of print for all sorts of reasons – good and bad. We were a bit surprised by the discontinuance of Circus and Mulberry Street, but they aren’t great, and it’s not like they’ll be hard to find.

But then, eBay decides it will no longer list the Bad Seusses. And, as Matt Taibbi points out, that is batshit insane. Read it and Scream.

 

It’s Square to Be Hipping

It turns out we’re now at an age to require new body parts.* So, tomorrow we go in for a hip replacement. (Life’s a bitch and then you get a hip.)

Presumably, we’ll be back in around a week or so. Of course, everyone should work under the assumption that the next five posts will be drug-induced: no one need take offense or contemplate any  defamatory interpretation.**

Back to you soon.

*) The problem really started 45 years ago, but whatever.

**) Except ScoMoFo.

 

UPDATE (05/03/21)

“You’ll feel like a new man once you get your hip replaced.”

They lied: we feel like an old man with a new hip. But, the surgery went well and we’re recovering well. Looking forward to the day when we can kick a torpedo again.

We’ll soon be up and about, back to the noble work of pissing people off.