Cox & Companies

Okay, here's another idea for a running segment on The Cox Section:  "Cox and Companies" covers the near daily roller derby between the corporations and customers.  Here's just a quick example of my on-line response to a Disney poll asking me to rate my satisfaction with its website.  Oh, they'll be funnier in the future, but for now, I do think it communicates my point:

Q: What do you like the least about the Disneyland.com webstite.  Please be as specific as possible.

A:  I was trying to purchase discounted tickets to Mickey's Trick or Treat Party.  I registered and created a logon and password.  An apparent but in the website, however, put me on a perpetual loop back and forth between putting items in my cart and logging in (or registering).  That is, when I put the tickets in my cart, and tried to proceed to checkout, I instead was taken back to the "Logon - or - Register" page (except there were now no fields to accept my logon or password).  When I called the company to make the purchase "manually," team members seemed resigned to the idea that "You've arrived in Never Never Land" and that nothing could be done.  Even Christine, the supervisor, seemed under-empowered (not unwilling or uninterested, only under-empowered) to complete the transaction, until I offered possible solutions.  I want Disney (and all companies) to remember that Walt Disney and Disneyland itself, are testaments to the truth that (as I said to Christine) "just becasue no one else has ever thought of it before, that doesn't mean that it can't be done, or shouldn't be done, or won't bring happiness to those we will encounter in the future."  Furthermore, especially a company such as Disney should be a great example that we use technology to pursue our goals, and not to govern our potential."  So make the website do what we want it to do -- and provide speedy recourse to achieve our goals when technology fails us.  I want to thank Christine, however, for listening, and doing what she could to resolve the situation in a timely and friendly manner.

I mean, can you imagine the crew of Apollo 13 calling Houston and getting the response that I got: "I can give you an e-mail address for tech-support.  I can't promise that they'll get back to you today, but they're your only option."  

Commander Lovell:  Houston, what is "Tech Support?"

Command Module pilot Swigert: And what is e-mail?

Lovell: To hell with you, Houston, we'll do it ourselves.  Swigert, hand me that duct tape and box of Jujyfruits.

COLUMBUS STOP FOR DIRECTIONS? Apparently, There Are No Gas Stations or 7-Elevens Between Portugal and New World

Catch the cryptic series of digits on the side of the Santa Maria?  The same strange numbers that won the lottery for Harley on ABC's hit TV show, "Lost," and perhaps altered the navigating coordinates for another of history's most-lost individuals: Christopher Columbus, whose holiday we celebrate today.

Some malign the day as the first shot in what would become the greatest genocide in the history of the planet.

Others revere the man after whom dozens of American cities, towns, squares, and one Transcontinental Highway (a.k.a. the 10 Freeway leading from Santa Monica, California to Jacksonville, Florida) are named.

Either way you see it, you can't deny that the continental ethnic cleansing that followed Columbus' arrival in the New World would be the injury added to the original insult of misidentification of the indigenous people as "Indians" by the explorer who thought he'd landed half a world away from where he actually was.   Of course, those white Europeans who followed the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria embraced the malaprop.  [Maybe it's what some would call "bleeding heart liberal" of me, perhaps simple pedantry (I like to think it's a simple desire for truth) but I'm not even sold on the updated term "Native American." No one on the North American continent before the Europeans arrived knew who the hell Amerigo Vespucci was; why should their culture(s) be named after him?]

                            

Cartographer, Vespucci, America's First Top Chef?

Let's for a moment give Columbus the benefit of the doubt.  The climate of Bermuda is similar to that of India, and the inhabitants of both locations often have dark skin.  But weren't there other clues that he was not at his intended destination?  Language, for example?  Or the fact that nothing matched up with anyone's descriptions of India?  How about the fact that none of the local restaurants made a decent samosa?  Whatever the reason, here stood Christopher Columbus, hemispherically challenged, to be kind, sticking a Portuguese flag in the sand, calling everything by the wrong name, and earning an eventual three-day weekend for millions of American taxpayers. (the percentage of whom are of Portuguese descent is too small to find in fifteen minutes searching the internet).

Columbus was lost -- again, he was fully half-way around the world from where he wanted to be.  If you look at a globe, you'll see that the only way for Columbus to be farther away from where he thought he was, he would have had to have gotten into a space ship and left the surface of the planet.  If Columbus had been any more lost, he'd have fought Sawyer and made out with Jack.  

So happy Columbus Day.  It's back to work tomorrow, but don't worry if you get lost on the way there, wind up in the wrong office, call everyone by the wrong name and initiate the demise of those who predated your arrival.  If all goes as it should, you'll get a holiday, not to mention cities, squares and maybe a transcontinental highway named for you.

The Im-Palin!

How's this for Liberal guilt: I already feel bad about myself for looking forward to tonight's Vice Presidential debate in the same way that I feel wrong for rubbernecking at the scene of a car wreck on the freeway, looking for victims.  But I'm not looking for a car wreck involving two vehicles.  I'm expecting, rather, a locomotive running out of control, off the tracks, and off the trestle to plummet 300 feet into the gorge below (which just may be the unsuspecting site of the world's largest dung heap, say) to explode in a spectacular eruption of carnage the likes of which the world has yet to witness.  Does that make me a bad person?  I mean, I am hoping for some minor insights on policy.  But who we kiddin'?  We all already know who we're voting for, don't we?  This is pure spectacle.  

Maybe the Republican strategy is to appeal to Joe Biden's sense of chivalry and decency, hoping he'll bow out in a gesture of pre-debate mercy.  They've implemented worse plans.

Anyway, between now and 6pm Pacific Time, I'll be BIDEN my time before the im-PALIN.  Oh, that was sublime.

Are You F*%#king Kidding Me?

Now, I try to keep this blog PG at most, but I can only imagine that if Kylie ever asks me, "Daddy, can I have $1,000.00, a dime bag of weed, two bottles of Jack, the car and six guys from the football team over on the weekend you and Mom are out of town?" I would (at least mentally) respond with something similar to the above headline.

And she has no track record of insane requests upon which to heap this hypothetical.

But here comes the Bush administration.  Oh, it's not George.  Instead, it's Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson.  Same team, though.  You know 'em; they're the guys who brought you cries of "yellowcake" and "WMD" -- and now, they want 700-Billion Dollars, no questions asked, no strings, no accountability.  

I can't help but to think the above words.

Read Pete Cedenella's article in today's Huffington Post.  He suggests an eerily similar circumstance with the run-up to the Iraq "war" (it's never actually been declared a "war," so the Bush admin. can circumvent international law.)  It's the profiteers mantra:  Break it, then buy it, and then keep it sick, and watch the cash roll in."

It works with health care:  Destroy the health care system (or prevent a comprehensive and effective one from ever existing), let the drug companies write policy, and keep Americans ailing, so they keep coming back for more.

It worked in Iraq:  blow the place to kingdom come, send in Halliburton to do shoddy work that doesn't get done too quickly.  The Iraqi infrastructure has been milked so much it should wear a bell.

And get this: Iraq, huge an issue as it it, is only part of another issue: the energy issue.

And it works with energy: De-regulation sent energy bills through the ozone here in California, and it cost a governor his job.  De-regulation led to Dick Cheney  behind closed doors allowing energy companies to draft U.S. energy policy, and next thing you know, we're in Iraq fighting for oil, gas prices are nearly four times what they were when Dummya took office (remember $1.37/gal, anybody?)

Now they want to try it with the finance and banking industry.  They've already destroyed it through de-regulation, and now, they want your blank check -- for 700-billion dollars, with no curfew, no chaperone, all the beer they can drink, and (as Dick Cheney said after shooting his friend in the face) "no cops."  

Everyone, repeat after me.

I HATE EVERYTHING!

Okay, maybe I just can't enjoy anything.  Maybe I'm just an old curmudgeonly misanthrope.  But COME ON!  Welcome to the first of what I'm sure will be a fairly regular installment here on The Cox Section: "I HATE EVERYTHING!"  Another title could be "Rob Rants," but everything doesn't have to be f-ing alliterative to be good!  

So here's today's installment:

The new Barbie Movie:

What's Barbie's whole deal?  It's that she's versatile and independent, strong, and capable of doing or being whatever she wants.  Great role model for girls.  She can be a doctor, a lawyer, she has her own house, car, all that.

So how does Mattel decide to cast Barbie in her own movie debut?

Oh, she's a PRINCESS who has to be RESCUED by a handsome prince, who takes her to HIS kingdom (all the Disney-style animal side-kicks are there in all their half-hearted predictability; she even sings EXACTLY like every other Disney princess, it's sickening!) and she then has to COMPETE for the prince with ANOTHER WOMAN; another woman, mind you, who is EVIL!  (Never mind that the evil woman is a red-head named Arianna; I'll wait to find out that the religious right is behind this effluvium to be pissed off about that subtle dig against populist pundit Arianna Huffington.)  I mean, COME ON!  As I watched this trailer, I couldn't be any more sickened or uninspired.  Where's the Barbie message: "You can be anything you want, girls?  Strive for independence and self-discovery?"  The message this movie sends is simple:  If you're born a princess, or lucky enough to be swept away by a prince, and you're beautiful (I mean, that's a given, you have to be beautiful; the whole paradigm breaks down if you're not beautiful, kiddies -- did you not watch the Opening Ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics?) you have a chance to be surrounded by mechanistic, effeminate, animated animals and take on the liberal left and defeat it's evil scheme to (forgive us, Lord) empower women such that they do not define themselves according to how rich, handsome and woven into the aristocratic tapestry are their male rescuers!  Can this crap, Mattel.  "Oh, it's harmless," you say?  "It's just entertainment," you say?  "Little girls like princesses," you say?  I say it's sh*t.

And I hate it.

Numero Luno

Cincinnati Bengal wide reciever Chad Johnson has legally changed his name to "Ocho Cinco," to reflect the number on his jersey. But his jersey won't reflect the name change, at least not for now. Reebok says the jerseys have already been made with "C. Johnson" printed on the back, but that should Senor Cinco opt to purchase the stock of smocks (it'd cost him about $4 million). It may take a level of narcissistic knuckleheadedness even beyond the out-stretched reach of rival reciever (and egomaniac) Terrell "I Love Me Some Me!" Owens of the Dallas Cowboys to write that check. Ironically, Sports Illustrated has picked Cinco's Bengals to finish not ocho-cinco, but rather a sad cinco-and-ocho to capture last place in the AFC North. No word whether Reebok plans to compliment any future name change on the jersey with a change to the number to "1" to reflect the number of people to whom any of this nonsense matters. Go Joe Flacco!