Crystal of DOOM!

Fractured Crystal of the Terrible Truth

So the other day, I was shopping for the useless drivel that festoons our wunnerful, commercial, consumer driven shallow little lives, at one of the finest purveyors of such drivel. I probably can’t mention the name because they might throw one of their high ticket lawyers at me, but their logo features a letter that comes after j in the alphabet unless you are in second grade. In that case it is part of the larger and way more awesome letter “kalmeno” (which is very under used considering our time strapped culture!)
And so I had selected my bits of consumer driven detritus (One of them on sale, no less! Nothing like consumer driven detritus that’s been marked down) and I then proceeded to the checkout area where, as is normal, there was one lane open. At my local Store That I Can’t Name Because I Feer Lawyers, instead of installing the automated checkout machines to save money, they just laid off all but two clerks. The good thing about this is it gives you plenty of time to reconsider your purchase. Do you REALLY need one more tidbit of cheap Far Eastern junk? YES! I do! My shallow life demands every tidbit I can acquire!!!
When I reach the cashier, who has one of those lip stud jewelry articles poking out of her lower lip, I take out my munny to prepare to pay. Somewhere in the back of my mind a small light goes off. It’s a red one. One that flashes. Something is wrong. But instead of holding up the line, I step outside and check my receipt. They have charged me several dollars more then the “sale” sticker on one of the items showed. This is because the store checkout scanner probably had not been updated. It probably happens quite frequently and who knows how many people notice. Since I am fairly good at keeping a running tally in my head, the little red warning indicator in the back of my skull had come on when the woman with the lip stud had rung up the merchandise. Now, I must say that at this moment, my cost- benefit analysis program was already up and running. It told me right away that in terms of time and energy it was better to just walk. But it’s the principle, I argued back. How many times have we done stuff “on principle”? Yea! They were ripping me off. Gosh darnit, I’ll just go back to the customer service island, calmly explain the situation, and get a refund. The cost-benefit program sighs and shrugs. I show the nice young lady at customer service my receipt and point out how the item in question was on sale, even though the large “Sale” sticker is clearly visible. All is well. I am about to Nyaa Nyaa Nyaa my cost-benefit program when suddenly, the woman frowns and informs me that a part of the receipt did not print out. I can see that the other part that did print clearly shows the item name, skew number, and the price it rang up for. What more could they need? Just give me the balance, or if it’s easier, just refund the whole purchase price. Oh no. They need some other number or code located in the smeared portion of the slip of paper. They will have to reprint it in the managers office and THEN they can issue me the difference between what the item scanned for, and the “On Sale” price. The nice young woman behind the counter gives the receipt to another nice young woman who smiles cordially at me and walks away. I glare at my cost benefit analysis program who merely shrugs again. A half an hour passes while I make small talk with the clerk. Any time spent making small talk with an attractive young woman is not counted as time wasted, I rationalize to myself. At length the other woman arrives with my newly reprinted document. For it was now a true Document, occupying a whole sheet of fresh white printer paper. Some goobledy gook at the bottom was, seemingly, the key to coax the register at the managers station to give me back the amount they had over charged. The lady who had originally rung up the sale looked over, and I waved to her in a friendly manner.
I would like to say that the DVD movie that had caused all of this was worth it, but sadly, that is not the case. It was a mindlessly written sci-fi flick featuring hissing zombie retreads from other sci-fi movies of the past. My cost-benefit analysis program slept through the whole thing.

Sapphire

Yea so I finally did get around to reading Googles new (as of 02-02-12) privacy statement that has been at the top of their search results page for several days now. They claim it is a simplified privacy policy that covers their whole range of services under one easy to understand statement. They even define words like “cookie” and “child pornography”. No just kidding on that last one.
Although the Google lawyers are probably patting themselves on the back for reducing the morrass of legalese that usually permeates these types of documents, I can easily one up them by rewriting the whole document thusly:

Googles New Privacy Statement.

“You don’t got no privacy EVAR!!!!
(period)”

See, I managed to say in six simple words what still took Google, even in their simplified statement, six pages to say. They should fucking pay me. PAY ME GODDAMMIT GOOGLE!!!

As an addendum, and just to make sure even the least intelligent web users understand, I would add:

“This means that we will basically be camped out on the screen of your smart phone or computer even if you only use ANY Google service incidentally. We will be looking at what you look at, reading your mail and laughing at the jokes any if your friends post on any social feed that touches us. We will know who you call, what you browse for, and using the accelerometer built into your phone, can even know when you are masturbating to raunchy Internet porn.
We will use all this knowledge to our own best interests and won’t hesitate to turn it over to authorities whenever they want it. Love Google”

Of course I knew this was coming. No one who’s mission statement is “Don’t be Evil” ever remains Not Evil. It’s just a sad fact of human nature. Since I am actually a fox, I have the moral high ground. No fox has ever tried to dominate the world, information or otherwise. So NYAA!

Sapphire