#452 Dumbstuff

I’m holding in my hand a testimony to the persistence of American commerce. It’s an example of the proliferation, nay, the ubiquity of mailing lists. Now if you come from a family like me, whose marital circumstances have changed over the years, you know how sometimes you’ll get a piece of junkmail targeted at your old spouse. I was married to a woman who also had an ex-spouse and a couple of years into our marriage, we started receiving mail for our ex-spouses at our new address. Addresses where neither ex had ever lived. Then, when computers entered the fray, we would get mail where some of the ex-spouse’s names would be combined. I once got a letter with my current spouse’s ex-husband’s full name and my former spouse’s first name and my last name. The piece of mail I received the other day is even weirder. The address line begins with my first name. Then there’s a semi-colon, then my last wife’s maiden name, then her first name, then my last name. And here’s the kicker, it was delivered to the former address of my current house. That’s right, the post office changed the address of this house over 12 years ago. My last wife never lived at that address, maiden name, married name, or named-as-a-defendant-in-a-lawsuit name. But hey. The zip code on the address had the right 4 digit extension. The mass mailer who bought this butchered mailing list? An investment counselor who’s trying to tell me he’s an expert in how to spend my money. I’m hoping he’s not going to tell me I should invest in a mailing list. So, to totally change the subject, recently I flew a plane. We were on the tarmac for a while. Not, thank goodness, for 14 hours like those people pushing for an airline bill of rights. There’s commerce gone wrong. In order not to lose its place in the queue, an airline refused to move off the tarmac in the takeoff line and waited there for 14 hours. With customers pleading to be taken back to the gate. With toliets overflowing and children screaming and severe butt cramping kicking in from being crammed into one seatback-up tray-table-locked position for hours on end. And what’s weird is, no passenger decided to test the emergency slide. Personally, I was ready to pop the exit on the flight to Hawaii. More than 5 hours in any one confined space with a hundred other people and I’m psychological toast. So anyhow, when we were waiting on the tarmac the cabin attendant, formerly flight attendant, formerly steward or stewardess, told every one to “power down” their electronic devices. Now, I’m marginally okay with powering something up. Like firing up a motor. You supply a form of energy to something to make it active. I’m not okay with powering something down. You are not powering it at all. You are removing the power. You don’t power it down. You shut it off. Like we all wish we could do to the flow of junkmail.
America, ya gotta love it