Overheard in the Detroit Pistons Locker Room

I am working on some articles about the Detroit Pistons for the NBA Finals program (if the Pistons make it, the articles will be used. If Miami beats Detroit, no one will ever read these...), so I went to the Pistons-Sixers game in Philadelphia to do some research.

As I was milling around in the Detroit locker room, waiting for guard Richard Hamilton to return from the showers so I could ask him about mid-range jumpers, I overheard the American veteran Elden Campbell chatting with second-year Serbian import Darko Milicic. Campbell was asking Milicic, whose English is passable at best, where he was going for dinner after the game.

"Friday's?" he asked. "You like Friday's? There's a Friday's right across the street from the hotel..."

Milicic mumbled something I couldn't hear.

"Cheese cake? You want to try Philadelphia cheese cake?" barked Campbell. "No, man, you're talking about the sandwich with the meat, right?"

Milicic nodded.

"That, my friend, is Philadelphia cheese steak."

The Money Problem

Last weekend when this blog was hopping with gay rights talk, some guy called Tom Maguire left a comment here.

Something about it seemed odd, so I googled him and found his blog, which funnily enough mentions me.

Then I read down a bit, found he had some interesting information about the whole Microsoft thing, including this quote from the religious man who is said to have inspired Microsoft to back off in the first place:

"What I was upset about," the pastor reportedly said, "was when they tried to step outside their four walls and make their policy my policy. That gave me the right to step out of my world into theirs."

I can hear a lot of conservatives saying "yay pastor!" on that one.

But let's remember--back when campaign finance reform was the big deal, conservatives across the board were opposed. They essentially said that money is speech and its expression is not to be curtailed.

So, let me get that straight: Corporations should be able to slather their money around wherever they like in the public square, unless it goes to a cause you don't agree with, in which case corporations are overstepping their bounds?

One other point: a lot of corporations support all sorts of causes, including theater troupes, symphony orchestras, little leagues baseball diamonds and more. In this crazy world of ours, I'm sure every single one of those things has opponents. Are those examples, Mr. Pastor, of corporations stepping inappropriately outside their four walls?

Real Life NBA

Maybe you're not like me. Maybe you don't wonder what it's really like to play in the NBA. I'm not talking about being rich or playing a game for a living.

I'm talking about having people befriend you for the wrong reasons, having to work out all the time or lose a step to the competition, eating ten thousand meals a year in restaurants, never being home, and trying to make conversation with athletes all the time.

Not that I pity NBA players by any stretch of the imagination. We all have it tough. They have it less tough, to be sure.

I just bet that, in terms of all those small quality of life things, it's hardly a dream.

But don't take my word for it. Here's a lengthy direct report from the last guy on the bench of the NBA's best team so far this year, the Phoenix Suns.

Ticketmaster Update

Here's the latest response John got from Ticketmaster, which to my ear is so dizzyling loaded down with obfuscation that I'm too lazy to even really follow the reasoning:

(Not sure what this is about? It all started here.)

Dear John,

Thank you for contacting us regarding order processing fee charged by Ticketmaster to all orders. Please be informed that an order processing fee is charged for every order as this covers the delivery options of U.S. Mail or will call. As an added convenience, certain events offer ticketFast delivery. This delivery method is optional at an additional fee, as this allows the convenience of receiving tickets within 24 hours of the ticket purchase. A detailed description of all the charges to be made are advised at the time of purchase, and as confirmed at the time of purchase, there are no refunds, exchanges or cancellations.

We apologize that we charge additional fee only for the convenience of purchasing tickets over the phone or internet. However, you are able to purchase tickets in person through the box office directly without having paid for services provided by Ticketmaster.

As a service oriented company, the satisfaction of our customers is always our utmost concern. Ticketmaster regrets that an issue may have negatively impacted our valued customers, and would like to extend our sincerest apologies for any inconvenience created by this situation. Your feedback will be provided to the proper group responsible for your inquiry.

Again, I apologize for the inconvenience created by this situation, and hope that this provides you with more insight into our processes.

Sincerely,
Sara (Customer Support)

John's sharpening his pen to respond now, and open to suggestions, which you can post in the comments.

I'm encouraging him to make a little bar graph that shows what percentage of purchase price different online businesses collect in handling fees. For instance, you can pay a tiny percentage in handling fees for airline tickets. The handling fees at Amazon are tiny. Let's show Sara all that very clearly and simply ask: what gives?

Albom Fallout

A while ago Weasel and I had a fabulous comments back-and-forth about Detroit Free Press superstar columnist Mitch Albom, who was caught with his truth down in a recent article. One of the 10,000 points I made in the comments was that this would hurt his reputation.

Case in point: go here and scroll down to the last entry on the page. His name has become a synonym for pure BS from the leading sports publication in the nation (and Albom's sometimes employer).

Mitch Albom is not enjoying that, I promise.

Robert Scoble: He's No Censor

In case you didn't read the posts below, the story goes like this:

• The New York Times has a story today about Microsoft withdrawing its support of a gay rights bill in Washington state, possibly due to pressure from an influential local church.
• I visited the website of Microsoft's celebrity blogger Robert Scoble to see how he was handling the issue.
• He had a post that was four-square in favor of gay rights.
• Others had commented in a way that struck me as anti-gay. (Click on comments.)
  
• I left a comment that was really, more than anything, pro-human rights.
• People commented on my comment supportively, including this guy called Alfredo Octavio.
  
• Then it disappeared!
• I declared that I had been censored by Microsoft, and e-mailed Robert Scoble.
• He replied immediately that he had not censored anything and I should try posting again,
• I posted again, and it was deleted again!

Now, however, the problem appears to have been solved at last. The kindly Robert Scoble has apologized, and re-posted my comments (with attribution) under his own name. I don't what he could do better to demonstrate that he wasn't trying to stifle opinion.

His guess: somehow the thing was being ditched by his spam filter. Who knows. I'm glad it's sorted out.

UPDATE: His post has come down too. No idea why. The person I know who's savviest about computers says he's clearly being hacked. Who knows.

Censored by Microsoft!

Read the post below and you'll read some comments that I left on the blog of Microsoft blogger Robert Scoble an hour or two ago.

Since then, people have commented on them. So they have been up and read by the public.

But now there are gone!

Wonder what part of my basic human rights speech they didn't like at Microsoft.

UPDATE: I e-mailed Robert Scoble to find out why the comment was deleted. He responded immediately that it wasn't! He never deletes comments. I applaud his quick response, and his policy. Yet it's gone, somehow, which is a little mystifying. He has urged me to re-post it. Here goes.

I'd Hate to be Robert Scoble Today

Being the face of Microsoft to bloggers is great on a lot of days, but not on the day when The New York Times has an article that starts like this on its cover:

The Microsoft Corporation, at the forefront of corporate gay rights for decades, is coming under fire from gay rights groups, politicians and its own employees for withdrawing its support for a state bill that would have barred discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

Many of the critics accused the company of bowing to pressure from a prominent evangelical church in Redmond, Wash., located a few blocks from Microsoft's sprawling headquarters.

Talk about a flip flop.

To me it's simple: either you think homosexuals are humans deserving of basic rights, in which case you have to fight for them, or you think they are subhuman and not deserving of basic rights. What's Microsoft's take? I'm confused. We all have to cave to political pressure sometimes on some things, but not on basic human rights. I don't see a lot of wiggle room for Microsoft on this one, and bloggers will rightly be making Scoble squirm in the next few days.

Update: He has already addressed it here. He's outspokenly pro gay-rights, which I applaud.

But read the comments from other people on his blog. There are several saying they applaud Microsoft for a shift to being "neutral" on the issue of gay rights, rather than carrying out a pro-gay agenda.

So I got on my soapbox and left the following self-righteous comment (if you scroll down in his comments section you'll see it):

To all you who want Microsoft to be neutral on this topic: There is no neutral when people's basic human rights are being compromised. Either you're against it, or you're complicit.

It's like when the school bully is taking it to a younger kid. Watching is not OK.

Aren't we all glad Abe Lincoln wasn't neutral on slavery? Historians know we almost stayed neutral too long in World War II.

Surely we all have heard this quote from Pastor Martin Niemoller. I bought a postcard of it at the Holocaust Museum, and it's on my desk right now:

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me.

The Columbia River is Devoid of Salmon

The Columbia River is massive--the largest on the west coast. According to this article, however, it is almost devoid of salmon:

Governments have spent billions of dollars to rebuild the population after overfishing, logging, agriculture and development decimated salmon, placing a dozen species on lists of threatened and endangered fish.

Scientists have been unable to explain why so few fish returned this spring.

They have reviewed several theories, such as sea lions eating the salmon or large numbers of smolts dying on the spring migration to the ocean.

It ain't no sea lion. I know the truth--and I have photo documentation to prove it. Here's my stepdad removing one of the Columbia's salmon just the other day:

The Nitty Gritty of the NBA Draft Lottery

If there is a geeky bone in your body, and you are an NBA fan at all, I beg you to take a look at this fascinating and incredibly thorough academic examination of the NBA Draft Lottery. I have two reactions: I could read it again and again with a grin of satisfaction on my face the entire time. But I also can't believe our nation's precious research dollars and bright minds are going to this meaningless crap.

Anyway, it's great. You should read it.

(If you have trouble with the link above, try this.)

I am now a published book reviewer

A few years ago I read This Organic Life by Joan Dye Gussow, the legend of gardening, eating locally, and homesteading.

I believe in all of these principles very dearly, and in fact this past weekend we just planted a bunch of blueberry bushes and veggies. But she's a bit of a hard-ass. She goes on for several sentences about how she'd love to eat a banana, but she can't bring herself to eat a food that requires so much petroleum etc. to get here.

I sort of wrestled with that. Surely, she's a maniacal zealot on this point. But is she right?

A few weeks ago--after a few drinks--it suddenly struck me out of the blue: for my tastes, she was too strict. Life is short. We must smile. If a banana will make you smile, then eat the damn banana, I say. (It's not like she has a passion for beating people up, or something that's REALLY hurtful.) We should all try to make the world a better place however we can. But bananas aren't the worst thing in the world. She should learn from Warren Zevon, who recorded an album while suffering with terminal cancer. He called it "Enjoy Every Sandwich."

So I went to the website of her publisher, and they had a thing where readers could send in reviews. I dashed off a smarmy one. A few minutes ago, I got an e-mail that they had published it. Hilarious!

The Blazers Have Betrayed Me

The team I love is the Portland Blazers, and this has not been a good year for them.

A few weeks ago, they fired coach Maurice Cheeks and more or less openly decided not to try to win too many games--preferring instead to play the young players.

I agreed wholeheartedly with both moves, especially as losing extensively at this stage of the game will dramatically improve the draft pick they will get this June. As it is they are likely to get the fourth or fifth pick, and thanks to the lottery system the NBA uses, they could luck into the first, second, or third pick. More losing increases the chances of that.

In short, our talented young nucleus will soon have yet another top young player, which is fantastic. Watch out for us in 2008.

But things got a little but screwed up yesterday, when we played Utah. We had been tied with Utah in the standings. But then we did the unthinkable. We beat them.

It was a callous lack of discipline. It was arrogant and immature. With the regular season ending Thursday, this will probably cost us the fourth pick in the draft.

Under the regimented discipline of Utah coach Jerry Sloan, the Jazz knew far better than we did how to lose. I tip my hat to them. They just did a better job. Hopefully we can learn from their example.

Five years from now, let's compare who the Jazz and Blazers get from this draft, and remember this game. I wouldn't be at all surprised if there's a big difference.

Ticketmaster and the $4.05

Scroll down to see how this all began.

Anyway, in near real-time, here is John's latest salvo in the war against Ticketmaster.

Dear Scott,

Thanks SO much for your reply. I wasn't quite clear on the meaning of the Ticketmaster order processing fee the first time Andrea laid it out for me, but your verbatim repetition cleared it right up.

Unfortunately, now I'm really confused. See, Andrea told me that the convenience fee covers "ticket distribution, installation and maintenance of computer hardware and software, telephone lines, labor, and all other costs associated with the ticket transaction." If that is the case, I don't understand how any technology necessary for electronic distribution should be subject to a per-ticket delivery fee. Funnily enough, I actually work for a company whose primary business is business process automation, and it was my understanding that investment in technical infrastructure was just that: an investment undertaken by the company in anticipation of future cost savings.

In any case, I believe I am still owed my order processing fee of $4.05, as I did not avail myself of any Ticketmaster "ticket stock, ticket printers, ink/toner, and envelopes." In all honesty, I had actually been a little worried when I submitted my original request that the infrastructure necessary to generate the PDF version of my tickets would fall under the "includes but is not limited to" stipulation in the enumeration of ticket printing and distribution costs that are paid for with the order service charge. I am relieved to know that those costs are accounted for in the delivery fee, whether or not I agree with their being placed there.

Again, payment of my $4.05 can be refunded to my credit card of record or mailed to my billing address.

Thanks,
John

The Ticketmaster Saga Rolls On

I'll spare you the bulk of Ticketmaster's woe-is-me response, but the gist is that John will not be getting his $4.05 for the following reason:

Ticketmaster has implemented a delivery fee on all orders delivered via Ticketmaster's ticketFast delivery option. The ticketFast delivery fee helps Ticketmaster pay for its investment in the technology that makes this service possible, including product and software development, as well as, thousands of barcode scanners installed at the venues multiple access points.

They still haven't addressed John's original point, which is that he objects to all the ticky-tacky charges. It seems like a smarmy way to bilk someone. What if McDonald's had "food-handling fee?" At some point, you say "ahh, for God's sake, just tell me the price. This little jedi mind trick of lots of little charges isn't working on me."

Ticketmaster Responds

This is a minor miracle! John's letter to ticketmaster got a response.

Dear John,

Thank you for your e-mail. Ticketmaster is a business that provides a service for a fee. Ticketmaster charges service fees in the same manner that a travel agent might charge for the convenience of using its service.

The Ticketmaster convenience charge pays for ticket distribution, installation and maintenance of computer hardware and software, telephone lines, labor, and all other costs associated with the ticket transaction. Ticketmaster does not benefit financially from the actual face value of the ticket. Our charge provides the convenience of being able to purchase tickets either online, through our Charge-by-phone lines, or in person at a Ticketmaster outlet.

If you wish to purchase tickets without the convenience charge you may purchase tickets in person at the venue box office.

Ticketmaster charges an order processing fee on all orders to cover the cost of materials required to print and distribute tickets. This fee is applied regardless of whether the tickets will be held at the box office Will Call window or shipped to your billing address. These materials include, but are not limited to, such items as ticket stock, ticket printers, ink/toner, and envelopes. If the US Postal Service delivers your tickets, the fee also covers the cost of postage.

If you have any further questions, please reply, and include all previous correspondence.

Sincerely,
Andrea (Customer Support)

He has already replied as follows:

Dear Andrea,

Thank you very much for your scripted reply. You didn't specifically enumerate the delivery charge, but I suspect it would be something like, "Ticketmaster charges a per order delivery fee to cover the cost of ticket delivery. The allocation of these funds depends on the mode of delivery selected; for example..."

There are just two more things I'm not quite clear on:

1. If the order processing fee covers the cost of postage when my tickets are delivered through the US postal service, what does the delivery fee cover in that case? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I do not recall seeing any free delivery options when I placed my order.

2. I appreciate your specification of the costs covered by the per-order processing fee. However, I had my tickets delivered electronically, and will thus be providing the ticket stock and ink myself. By my reckoning, Ticketmaster therefore owes me a $4.05 refund. Payment can be credited to my credit card account, or you can remit a check to my billing address.

Thank you,
John

If he gets the $4.05 he should frame it. I'll keep you posted.

Mitch Albom's Unethical Column

I spend a fair amount of time in the pack of NBA reporters. They are, by and large, surly, humorless, rote, bitter, jealous, cranky, and joyless.

A few of them, however, are supernovas. Once in a while, one will make it big in some way or another, transcend the pack, and bring sunshine to the pressroom.

One of the best examples of such a writer is the talented and touching Mitch Albom of the Detroit Free Press. After writing the best-selling Tuesdays with Morrie and The Five People You Meet in Heaven he must have made about as much money as a writer can make. But he's still in the pack covering the NBA, still writing about it for the Free Press, and still about the best in the business. So you have to salute him for that.

But he recently did a big bad thing. He wrote this column which was essentially a pack of lies. He wrote about stuff that was supposed to happen, but hadn't yet.

He interviewed former college teammates, and current NBA players, Mateen Cleaves and Jason Richardson and wrote, on Friday, about how they were going to get together to watch their alma mater on Saturday. Only, his column was coming out on Sunday, so he wrote in the past tense about how they had already watched the game together. He mentions what they wore, how they got there, a whole bunch of stuff.

Then it never happened. They reportedly had scheduling conflicts and didn't go to the game. But the column came out all the same.

Now there are investigations and apologies galore.

Of course, shame on Albom and the Free Press both for letting this happen. There should be two safeguards against this: no one should ever make crap up and stick it in a news story, and aggressive editors should go to great lengths to make sure they never publish fabrications.

After the initial errors, however, I salute the Free Press for its very public handling of this. Most papers would have taken his offending column off their website, for instance, but instead they attached a plain English explanation of his mistake over the column. The publisher and editor apologized. Albom apologized (His one fault here: he said he considered the parts he got wrong to be "details." That's misleading. They may have been tangential to his main point, but they are still the core facts of his story.). The public editor got on the case.

Some people are upset that such a fuss is being made about this. Not me. I support the public airing of Mitch Albom's dirty laundry. He's great. But he screwed up this time. Harmless as the column was--its underlying point was to enjoy yourself while you're young--it was on a slippery slope heading straight to having make-believe crap in our newspapers. No, no, no, we can't have that.

Robotic Camel Jockeys

Two new blessings we should apparently all be counting: that we're not racetrack camels, and that we're not racetrack camel jockeys.

About a dozen different things about this article simply blow my mind.

Sexuality Education

Since last fall, I have been co-teaching a group of eighth- and ninth-graders in the curruculum of Our Whole Lives, which is a pretty remarkable sexuality education program.

This is not the sort of thing I had ever done before, but it is amazing and I recommend it wholeheartedly. Rather than teaching the simple mechanics of condom use, or the simplistic "no means no," it teaches things plenty of us adults would be wise to learn. For instance, how in relationships of all kinds, it is wise to learn how to be assertive, as opposed to passive or aggressive.

If everyone had that skill, we could eliminate 90% of the the world's troubles.

But I digress.

The news I really have today is this: in preparing for tomorrow's class on rape and sexual abuse, I learned a shocking thing: people who run programs for at-risk youth estimate that as many at 100% of the girls (and maybe even the same percentage of boys) are victims of sexual abuse. 75% of those were abused by someone they knew well.

To me, this gives a powerful new argument for a big effort to prevent sexual abuse. Consider that when "Uncle Charlie" or whoever slips into a little kid's room, he has more than one victim, because in many cases he is essentially ruining the life of the child. He is dramatically increasing the likelihood she will get in all sorts of trouble, and need the intervention of the state, the police, corrections facilities, counselors, the list goes on...

There are people in this world who decide priorities based entirely on dollars. Memo to them: Uncle Charlie is costing a lot of dollars.

You could almost make the argument that if the Uncle Charlies of the world could learn to control themselves, we might not need programs for at-risk youth anymore. And if we didn't have at-risk youth, who knows how much the prison population might fall. And if the prison population fell dramatically, who knows how many more families would be united and happy. And if more kids were raised in happy, healthy families, who knows how much less drug abuse there would be. And there were less drug abuse...

Sorry, I slipped off into liberal utopia for a second.

Anyway, I think it's fair to say that "Uncle Charlie" is to blame for A LOT, and it's no good turning a blind eye to it. I know, no one wants to call the cops on a family member. But the alternatives are devestating.

Mitch Hedberg Died

Who the hell was he? I didn't know either. This morning a friend faxed me a bunch of jokes. One went like this:

"I bought a doughnut and they gave me a receipt for the doughnut... I don't need a receipt for the doughnut. I give you money and you give me the doughnut, end of transaction. We don't need to bring ink and paper into this. I can't imagine a scenario where I would need to prove that I bought a doughnut... To some skeptical friend, 'Don't even act like I didn't buy a doughnut... I've got the documentation right here... "

I thought the whole thing was pretty hilarious. I did a little search (actually, for the phrase "doughnut, end of transaction") which revealed millions of websites of his jokes, and the terrible news that the guy who wrote them all was called Mitch Hedberg and he died on Friday! There's a nice little write up from a college magazine about him here.

If the IRS Fulfilled Its Mission, There'd Be No TurboTax

I can understand that it's always going to be hard to pay your taxes. But why does it have to be so tough to file your taxes?

According to the IRS website, the agency's mission is to: "Provide America's taxpayers top quality service by helping them understand and meet their tax responsibilities..."

If that's their mission, then they are failing miserably. A MASSIVE, multi-trillion dollar industry (including accounting, bookkeeping, all those software companies) exists solely to duplicate the core mission: helping Americans "understand and meet their tax responibilities." If that's what the IRS is doing, then what the hell does H&R Block do?

Imagine if you needed to hire a professional, or buy software, just to get a fishing license or pay a parking ticket. Anyone would tell you it's simply not good enough. The government agency involved, we would all insist, must go back to the drawing board and find a better way to interact with the public.

The IRS should too.

Take that argument a step further. Imagine that half the population bought a "fishing license paperwork tool" to make buying fishing licenses easier (much like so many of us own TurboTax or similar to make paying taxes easier). If you're the government honcho in charge of making buying fishing licenses easier, wouldn't you want to copy that tool and make it your new way of doing business?

Or, to put it another way, shouldn't the government give us all some free Uncle Sam version of TurboTax? It has been field tested and proven to meet the needs of millions of Americans. Far more than anything the IRS provides, TurboTax helps people "understand and meet their tax responsibilities." What does it say if that's the IRS's main mission, but a private company does it in tandem and better? We're paying the IRS to do that job for us. We shouldn't have to pay Intuit to do it too. It's massive incompetence, compounded over decades. Who's going to fix it?

Clifford Ray Knows Basketball

Earlier I talked about how I'd love it if my beloved Portland Blazers made Orlando Assistant Coach Clifford Ray their next coach. Here's a new article about how great he is from the dean of NBA reporters, Sam Smith.

John's Letter to Ticketmaster

This is a letter my brother-in-law John sent to Ticketmaster:

Dear Ticketmaster,

I just made my first purchase with you in quite a long time, and I can't even describe how appalled and irritated your service makes me.

It's one thing to gouge me on the handling fees. Should your business practices be ruled illegal and monopolistic in some sort of settlement involving gross civil and punitive damages? Yes. However, I recognize that, until our government stops listening to your lobbying firms, or whatever other dubious means you employ to maintain power, you are operating under the generally accepted tenets of capitalist society, so rock on.

My problem is simply that you make these pathetic efforts to apportion the funds you suck unmercifully out of us poor saps who have the misfortune to enjoy, well, any live event on earth.

Take my recent purchase. Somehow, the 5 minutes I spent on your website and the 49KB file you sent with my tickets was worth:

- $7/ticket for convenience
- $4.05 for processing
- $2.50 for the delivery

Let's think about this. We'll start with item 1, convenience. There is no doubt that TicketMaster offers a convenient service. It might be slightly more convenient if there were an inconvenient alternative with which to compare it--say, permitting the box office or any other entity on earth to also sell the tickets--but I will not deny that it is quite convenient to get the tickets that are required in order to attend any given event. Without the tickets, I couldn't go, and that would be decidedly inconvenient.

It's the addition of the final two that really trips me up. The $2.50 delivery sort of makes sense. I mean, I don't know why a 49KB email should cost as much as an international fax, but I'll give it to you that you need mail servers, PDF generation software, technical staff, etc. Then there's $4.05 to "process." See, I really though that the delivery of the tickets, combined with the "convenient" means of finding them was really all the processing you had to do. And, now that I think about it, one might even say that the "convenience" of your service encompasses--or is probably limited to--the fact that you process and deliver tickets for people. I mean, I probably wouldn't be so nice about the $7/ticket for convenience if you didn't give them to me, or if you skipped some processing step that meant someone else was sitting in my seats, so why do I have to pay twice?

(I will gloss over the fact that sheer magnitude of your fees--$34.55 for my 4 ticket, 5-minute transaction--could have legitimately paid the staff of an entire box office for an hour.)

Basically, what I'm asking is: why you gotta play me like that? If you're going to charge me a 27% surcharge to get tickets, can't you at least be polite about the whole thing? Can't you add a single line-item labeled "you're a sucker" to the invoice and put all the charges there? I mean, this is in your interest too--people are going to ask questions when you have to really start reaching for fee names (cuddle charge? we didn't break anything?).

Thanks for your time,
John

Politeness

As a parent who loves to hear kids say "please" and "thank you" I understand the value of politeness. I'm on board. I think it's part of being nice, and if you're not being nice, you're being mean.

But, on the other hand, there is a line. If you cross that line, you're not being polite, you're being odd and misleading.

For me that line falls somewhere this side of the phrase "dog dirt." I heard that for the first time a few years ago and couldn't believe that an adult would actually say that to another adult. This is allegedly a polite way of saying "dog poop." But to me, it's not the polite way to say it, because that's simply not what it means. Dirt is one thing, poop is another. Dirt on your shoes is an everyday occurence. Poop on your shoes is cause for immediate cleaning.

If you call if dog dirt, you're just in denial. It's poop, people! SH*$! (That's the polite way of writing...)

Another example of a similar thing: the litter box. News flash: that stuff in their ain't litter! If I show up at your house with an empty bag of chips and a soda can, that's litter. What would you think if I put that stuff in your litter box?

To me that's sort of like if someone says "would you mind helping me lift this heavy thing?" and you say "yes" to be polite, even though you have a bad back or some other reason not to want to help. "Yes" in that instance is not polite, it's a lie. And I think it's usually mean to lie to people. Because when you go to the hospital after lifting their file cabinet, they're going to wish you'd given them the opportunity to find someone else to help.