iPhone users: poor planners

I was at the mall today and saw the long line outside the Apple store for the people waiting to buy the new iPhone. And the Apple employee was busy handing out bottled water to the thirsty customers.

On the surface, this is a nice gesture; the customer is waiting for several hours to buy a phone and will probably get thirsty, so you provide water.

But then I thought, what idiot waits in line, knowing in advance that it might easily be two or more hours and doesn't bring a snack and a drink? Apparently, many iPhone customers do.

You'd think Apple would use this as a test for who shouldn't have an iPhone:

Did you know there would be a line?
No, why would there be a line?
Sorry, no iPhone for you.
Wait. Yes, I knew.
So you know there would be a line?
Yes.
Do you have a granola bar with you? Twinkie? Pop Tarts?
Um, no.
Gum?
No.
Go-GURT?
No. What's that?
It's yogurt in a squeeze tube.
Ew. No.
Mentos?
No.
Juice box?
No.
Mountain Dew?
No.
Skoal? Red Man? Marlboros? Weed?
Sorry.
Just kidding. But do you need weed? Cuz I got the shit. No fooling.
No.
Raisinets? Chunky? Sno-caps?
No.
What the hell is wrong with you? We don't want your type associated with the iPhone. We have a multi-million dollar marketing campaign showing how awesome the iPhone is, and by extension, the iPhone user. You, sir, are not by any degree, awesome. You are a putz. Go back to your prepaid TracPhone. What were you thinking when you set out today? Or maybe you didn't think. Did you leave the oven on at home? Did you feed the cat? Is your car still running out in the parking lot with your Nanna sleeping in the front seat? Do you think we want you leaving our iPhone on the sink in the bathroom at Arby's? We don't want to hear that you dropped it in the toilet and that you expect a replacement. And we don't want to hear that you take our iPhone into an Arby's. And no Taco Bell, either. Have you had a colonoscopy? You should if you're eating that crap. Come back after you've had one.

Knowledge by Consensus: a Social perspective

I am not lying. I've seen with my own eyes, people doing the "Webster's dictionary defines blah blah as..." but using Wikipedia. We know how cliché that's become, so that when you attend a presentation and the speaker says, "Webster's defines leadership as.." you open your program and start to draw cartoon characters having sex. I'm pretty good at drawing the characters from Unshelved doing it.

So now that Wikipedia has become the de facto expert on everything, does the triteness counter get reset to zero? Are speakers now free to dust off old papers and replace "Webster's" with "Wikipedia"? When did Wikipedia become the boss of everything? If you base your loyalty on popularity then it's had the corner office with the private bathroom for about 2 years. So I guess Wikipedia is the boss of me.

And speaking of expertise by consensus, what up with the "I hear it's excellent" artards? Someone came in looking for the dvd for the movie Wristcutters: A Love Story (which, as of right now, is not available on dvd), and her reason for requesting that the library buy it was that she heard "it was excellent."
Again, I'm not a smart guy (or gal or dog), so saying that you heard that something is excellent means absolutely nothing to me. You'd sound more interesting if you'd said that you heard it smelled like feet.
"It smelled like feet?"
"Yes, like feet."
"That sounds interesting. Tell me more."
See?

Mathematically, saying that you heard that a thing is excellent means that there is a thing that another entity made a critical observation about its quality. So you are at least once removed from the critic. So if the critic has a 50% track record for rating things as excellent that I also rate as excellent, then your opinion that the thing is excellent is half crap.
Why do people think that making a claim that they heard something was good rubs off on them and makes them good? If I like a movie and Roger Ebert likes the same movie, does that make me a film critic like Roger Ebert?

This is why the idea that we are all creators in the 2.0 universe pisses me off. Simply pointing at a beautiful thing doesn't make you beautiful like the thing. The beauty is supposed to transform you to make you more beautiful. Simply pointing at the Mona Lisa while sucking a sesame seed out of your teeth does not transform you.
Knowledge by consensus is less important to me the lower you go on base needs. Yes, practically any opinion is valid for recommendations on where to get my car's oil changed. Your preference for Wendy's over Burger King (you're terrified of the creepy king) is of equal unimportance. So yes, you may be an expert in those areas.
But not culture or art. Or any higher learning which requires critical thinking skills. I seek experts. In some ways, I am an expert. But not on this blog. But in the kitchen and in the bedroom, rraawwr.

I don't want to be confronted by anyone who wants to argue that Wikipedia is the new expert because everyone says so. Because then I'll have to do this:
Me: "What is your name?"
LB: "Lester Balls."
Me: "Well, Lester Balls, I'm opening a new page on Wikipedia and entering, 'Lester Balls is an idiot.' Now, save page, and there, your own page on Wikipedia that says you are an idiot, and now the whole world knows."
LB: "Wha? Huh? M.. W.. Wikipedia? I'm.. I'm famous! I'm on Wikipedia! I'm famous!!!"

And then I will kill myself.

[goes with this and this]

We're all Pimps!

The Racine Public Library says pimping is cool! They say that because MTV says that the word "pimp" has evolved into something fabulous, we should all forget the images of women being beaten and raped and hooked on drugs and beaten again and killed and cut and cut some more and punched and slapped and kicked in the face and the belly and having their bones broken and their teeth knocked out and their hair pulled out and their lives ruined and their daughters "pimped out" and put into this cycle of abuse that goes on and on and on until these women feel that they can never escape...

So, yeah! Rock on Racine Public Library. You throw some paint on a book cart and make it all better. Thank you. Now I know that pimps are awesome!

Do we love our Dewey system? Yes, we do, we do, we do.

Omyfreakinggod! What are these people thinking? This library in Arizona will not be using the Dewey system to shelve their books!

The demise of the century-old Dewey Decimal system is overdue, county
librarians say: It's just too confusing for people to hunt down books using
those long strings of numbers and letters.

Too confusing???? Have you ever been to one of those giant-damn-bookstores? I can't ever find anything in there, so I order everything online. Yes, I browse, but I CAN NEVER FIND WHAT I'M LOOKING FOR. There is a huge difference. The motivation behind browsing is to encourage impulse buying. I don't have time for impulses. I got shit to do and I need the answer now.

Maybe this will help with their circulation for people who want to wander around and look at stuff, but it will never help with anyone ever finding anything ever again.

Let's say Google is sucessful in convincing every publisher to digitize everything published; then I do my Google search and discover that the recipe for mole rat with raspberry glace is in a book somewhere in the recipe area. I can see a picture of the cover of the book on Google, but that still won't help me to find the recipe in all the 1,200 books in the section. So my mole rat will have to wait in the freezer until I can find the recipe someplace else.

I guess this is what happens when you make up your mind to destroy your profession; let's make ourselves look as stupid as possible while we poke around in the stacks not finding answers. Thanks for nothing Arizona.

(hmmm...maybe I'm being too harsh on them. after all, change is good. and who better to guide us than businesses we essentially compete with and in whose interest it is for us to fail at copying what they do. so no. i'm not being too harsh. i didn't think we were in the business of encouraging people to be less smart.)