Dumb people

So it has been a while since I have blogged. Say, the middle of October. As a friend of mine said, maybe having a baby mellowed me. Probably true. So I am going with a post tonight about a few people - or groups of people - who bug me. Annoy me. Make me want to pull out my hair - assuming I had some. And no, I am not bald. I am clean shaven. I choose to walk around with no hair. There is a difference! So without further ado, or further ramblings from me, my list of people who big, big time!

1. Smokers - okay, what the BLEEP? (This bleep is brought to you by the FCC. Those fine folks who tell us what is appropriate for television and radio. Of course, Family Guy did the best FCC spoof ever. You can watch it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NDPT0Ph5rA ) Seriously, what is the deal with smokers. These folks smoke everywhere. When the baby was born, we were at the hospital. There you go. I bet you didn't know that. I should get some award for stating the obvious! Anyway, there were folks in their hospital gowns who were smoking outside of the hospital. Yes, you are at the hospital and sick, yet that is not motivation enough for you to stop smoking. I mean, how much of a degenerate do you have to be to smoke while you are admitted to the hospital? You rank right up there with crazy folks who post comments on people's Facebook pages and then go back and delete them. Yes, I am talking about you, you crazy lady. Michael Jackson is still dead and Chiller is still funny! Here is an idea: stop smoking. Use the patch, gum, hypnosis, or just plain cold turkey. But stop smoking. It is disgusting. Its more disgusting than the dude who called be after his glass eyeball fell out!

2. Christmas decorations - Hey, Target, Wal Mart, dude who lives near King Park: I have a memo for you: it is not even freaking Thanksgiving yet. Take down your decorations. What happened to one holiday at a time? No Target, I am not going to buy your overpriced Christmas clothes. Wal Mart, I am not going to buy your crappy Christmas decorations that cost you 25 cents to make and you are selling for $5. Put it away. Ask me about it after Thanksgiving. I want to celebrate one holiday at a time. So, the order in the fall is Halloween, Thanksgiving and then Christmas. It is not Christmas season from October 15 until December 25. Oh, and I didn't forget about you ABC Family. They have this ridiculous 25 days of Christmas. Its like an advent calendar full of movies. Fine. I can get it. Kind of. But, now they are doing the "Countdown to the 25 days of Christmas." It started on like November 5. It wasn't even Veterans Day yet. You have to countdown to a countdown to Christmas. Really? How about a countdown to a countdown to a countdown to you folks getting a brain? You do realize that not everyone celebrates the holiday, right? And some folks don't run out and buy presents for Christmas. Some people actually get that there is something to the time of year from the end of November (AFTER THANKSGIVING) to the end of the year. And it has nothing to do with your movies, some of which are old and some of which just plain suck. Hey, anything with Mario Lopez should be burned. Now. Please? Lets celebrate one holiday at a time. For now, I want to focus on my Thanksgiving turkey, stuffing and baking pies for the local fire department. And I will not watch ABC SUCKY, er, Family.

Oh, and dude who lives near King Park, take down your lights. Lights go up the day after Thanksgiving. They come down a week after the New Year. That is the rule. Live with it or your neighbors can pull down your lights. And never, ever let you put them up again.

3. Dude from India - So, I get this call today while I am working. Caller ID pulls up 64053. Um, at least in this country, we have seven digit phone numbers. So, this worries me. I know when the fine folks at the Federal Bureau of Investigation call me, and they do call me once in a while, it comes up with three numbers. But five numbers are weird. So, I answer the phone "This is Jonathan." You would think this would tell someone who I am. Apparently not. Dude explains he is from a mortgage lender. He wants to talk to me about a client, call her Stephanie. But, instead he calls her Steve. After I correct her name, he asks me for her social security number. Now, I don't know about the rest of the country, but I don't run around giving out a client's social security number. So, I ask dude where he is calling from. His answer, not surprisingly, Mumbai, India. So, I ask him to verify his identity. He won't. So I ask him why he thinks I should give out my client's social security number to some guy half way around the world. He keeps repeating his script "I need you to verify your identity by giving me her social security number." Dude, you called me. You dialed my number. I answered "This is Jonathan." Who do you think it is, Jack the Ripper? And you want me to give out information to some dude just because he called me and said he was from a bank? You are right, I trust banks. I trust them about as much as I trust insurance companies. No wait, I trust insurance companies more. I trust the California legislature more than I trust banks, and the legislature, well, at least Pedro Nava and Calderon, whatever the heck his first name is, oh wait, it is Ron, are in the back pockets of the banks. So ultimately he hung up on me. Go figure.

4. Fiances - no, not fiancees. The former are the men who are engaged. The latter are the women who are engaged. What is up with us guys? Some of us are just lame. Not me, of course. I am an angel, right? But I have watched an episode or two of "Say Yes to the Dress." It is a show on TLC that follows crazy women buying wedding dresses from some fancy shop in NYC. Got the premise? It is not earth shattering tv. Very simple. But then some of these women show up with the guy. What is up with that? The guy? He is not supposed to have ANY say in the wedding dress. Heck, he isn't even supposed to see her in the dress before the wedding. Never. Ever. You aren't cool or phresh (not fresh, mind you, but phresh so I can feel hip) or hip or happening or tight or anything else. You are a loser. A big fat loser. A big fat patethic useless loser. It is her dress. She picks it out. You have no say in it. Ever. Remember that. Now go watch 24 and Counting or however many kids the Duggars have now. You know, it would be easier to keep track if they went from A to Z with the names instead of starting them all with J. You do know that they now have to make up names since they have run out of real names that begin with the letter J.

So there you have it. 4 groups of people who annoy me. A lot. Too much! The world would be a better place if these folks who stop being dweebs and douches and start being real, the real world. No wait, that show was, and is, full of douches too. Sorry. f

Karen Bass and Banks: Do either one know how to think?

Okay, so I had some thoughts. It hurt for a minute, but I had them anyway. Here are some of my thoughts on politics on a warm summer day with no budget and an economy in turmoil:

Karen Bass - She went to LA over the weekend. She couldn't make it back for a Sunday budget meeting. She was unsure what flight she could make it on from LA to Sacramento. There are so many things wrong with this. Where do I start?

You went to LA? You decided to hop a plane back to Los Angeles when there is no budget? Do you realize that your main job, your only job, right now is to pass a budget? And you left? You earn over $100,000 per year and you thought this was a good time to go home? Really? You clearly have absolutely no concept about anything in real life. You are not expected to go home during a crisis but to lead. Lead means you cancel whatever the heck you have planned and stay here until the job is done. I keep calling you incompetent but I do not think that is a strong enough word. You are idiotically incompetent. (A little alliteration for our English majors reading this.)

You couldn't get back from LA? Its about 400 miles. How about the first plane in the morning? Or the second? Or you hop in a car and drive. Or you don't go. Oh wait, sorry I already had that portion of the rant. I don't want to pull a Karen Bass and be unable to complete a freaking thought. By the way, you should really return that college degree, which you think is a colledge deGre, since you clearly do not have the ability to think analytically. Isn't this like a 4th grade word problem? The Speaker of the Assembly is in LA. The State has no budget. She needs to be at a meeting at 2pm. It is 400 miles from LA to Sacramento. How can she get to Sacramento? A) High speed rail. B) Car. C) Plane. D) None of the above.

A is clearly wrong since there is no money for high speed rail in California. We have money to pay our legislators, but we have no money for high speed rail. B is wrong since apparently she has no driver's license or maybe she drives like Carol Migden - poorly and all over the road. C cannot be correct since she did not have enough flight options. There are only like 30 flights a day between LA and Sacramento. That doesn't even include her paying to rent a plane. I am sure she would charge the state, but a responsible leader would have paid for it out of his/her own money since it was his/her problem. Apparently, D is the right answer. It is probably the grade that showed up most on her report card in school.

Hey Karen - do me a favor? If your current brain is not functioning, go see Dr. Hfuhruhurr. Maybe he can help you. Or, here is an idea, quit now. Please? I got $20 if you quit. I am sure I can raise a bit more. Please?

Okay, so I know banks can't think, but how about their leaders. Banks spent $4.4 million on lobbying in California alone in the first quarter of this year. That is $4,400,000. That is $4 million plus another 10% of that. That is ridiculous.

Let me see if I get this right: the economy sucks. It sucks because of the housing meltdown. It sucks because banks made bad mortgages to people who shouldn't have had the mortgages. It was so bad for banks that they needed tax money to survive. Now they have an extra $4 million or so to lobby the government. And what are they lobbying on?

Two big topics for the banks: they don't want more disclosures to consumers on home loans and they don't want consumers to have legal representation when trying to deal with the banks. So, the banks are spending our money on trying to limit our rights. And the government gives this to them with no restrictions. Our leaders in the California Senate and the California Assembly are so blinded by money that they take this money and don't see it as a problem. They are taking tax money back from the banks to keep the banks from having any oversight and any checks and balances in the system.

Memo to the banks - if you couldn't run your business profitably, stop spending my money on your lobbying. I don't want you to spend the money trying to gouge consumers more.

Maybe Karen Bass and the people running the banks came from the same place - a place where responsibility is just not taught. Banks couldn't run a business without government bailout and now waste our money on lobbying. Bass can't even make it to LA for a meeting. OY!

Freaking Wells Fargo

Okay, so this was going to be a rant about standardized testing. And I started it at about 8:20. I got through part of it and my work phone rang at 8:34. Yes, 8:34 at night. PM! After dark. When most people are not answering their phones. Kids in bed time. After dinner. Looking for a little snack time. Just over 12 hours to go time. You know, NIGHT TIME!

But, being the dedicated employee, er, attorney that I am, I answered the phone. After all, the phone number that showed up on caller ID was a 414 number. You know the rule - if the phone rings at night, it is not good. The later it rings, the worse the news. And when it comes from a different area code, it is really bad. There is a 1 to 10 scale on bad news.

You know, the phone rings between 6 and 9 and its like a 4. It rings between 9 and midnight and its a 7. If it rings between midnight and 4 am, it is a 10. If the phone rings after 4am, then you know someone had a baby.

Seriously, who else calls you between 4am and like 8am? No one. Only expectant fathers whose wives are in labor and they want to tell you. No one else would call you then.

And if the phone rings between 6 and 9 and it is from a different area code, add 1 so its a 5. Between 9 and midnight from a different area code, it is an 8. And after midnight from a different area code, then is like a 12 - and the scale stops at 10!

Anyway, so the phone rings and I answer it. It is Wells Fargo. It is not the next stage, it is the never calls you back stage. They want to talk to me about a client. A client who I have been helping since OCTOBER! They are just getting around to it. It is May. Yes, it took them 7 (SEVEN) (SIETE) (SEPT) (SETTE) months to get back to me. 7 freaking months. That would be over 28 weeks. That would be more than 196 days. It would be 4,704 hours. 282,240 minutes for them to call me back, give or take a few hundred minutes.

Then this lady, who called me, and by called me, I mean dialed my phone number by herself, and by dialed, I mean she used her chubby little fingers to push the buttons. And I am sure she did push the buttons. But, this lady who called me asked me for my client's home address. Um, its 8:34 at night and I happen to be at home. How would I have my client's address? I asked her that. She said she needed it to verify my identity before she could talk to me.

I asked her, and I did this with a serious tone, "Um, you called me. You dialed my phone. I answered the phone 'This is Jonathan.' Doesn't that verify my identity?" I thought I was in Sneakers. No, not the tennis shoes, the movie. Sheesh, Robert Redford flick. Great movie. Anyway, she says that this is their procedure. She called me. She dialed the phone. I answered very simply with the name of the person she was calling. Yet, apparently, that is not good enough for her.

I asked why I was getting a call at 8:34 at night. She said that she doesn't start working until 4pm my time and most of her customers are in California. So, let me see if I get this right. You don't START until most of the people are about to quit working? Now, I understand there are some jobs that can be done at night and it works. Custodian, UPS driver, long haul trucker, police officer, prostitute, phone sex operator: all good night jobs. Bank representative who is trying to negotiate something: BAD NIGHT JOB! I mean, seriously, when you are calling attorneys for your job and you start at 4pm, how many people do you think you are going to talk to?

I know, that is the point. They can just leave us messages and not have to talk to us. Then why not have a robo-dialer do it. How about someone with at least a cool voice? I mean, maybe Billy Mays is available to record a message. "Hi. This is Billy Mays for Wells Fargo Bank. We are trying to reach you about your client. You aren't there. If you call in the next 10 minutes, we will double your order and you will get 2 bottles of Oxyclean, 2 Mr. Puddy Wall Fix Kits, 2 shark repellant thingermerbobers from Pitch Men, and 2 overly expensive mortgages that you cannot pay back." At least that would be enjoyable.

So, I asked her what would have happened if I didn't answer the phone. She would have left me a message and tried again - when I got back to the top of her stack. I figure that would be sometime around December, 2009. Maybe. If I was lucky. Which, of course, I am not!

Is it any wonder our banks have screwed up our economy? They can't deal with people during normal business hours. They have some arcane policy and don't even try to deal with real life people. I mean, if any of us ran our business this way, the government wouldn't give us bailout money - they would tar and feather us. I know the State Bar would be all over me. Yet, we let the banks do it - and we pay them to. Unreal!