Beware Questionable Package Notices

Received by a friend today. This "Delivery Notice!" sent up yellow flags because it has no service name (UPS, the Postal Service, etc.), nor does it contain a manufacturer or vendor name. The only packages we are expecting would come either by UPS or USPS and have the sender's name and address on them. It only says to call Dion Lesote at 402-689-8370.

I called the number (after using the "Caller ID" block on my phone to remain anonymous). only to hear a leave-your-name-number-message instruction typical for a home answering machine. I guess that is how they circumvent the problem of callers slamming the phone down upon hearing a recorded sales pitch.

I wonder if anyone knows more about this person.

The Columbus Dispatch had an article on a similar notice circulating in their area, warning consumers not to respond. (The notice Ohio residents got used an 800 number.)

Skunk Totem's Blog: A Twitter-Free, Facebook-Free Zone

I'm sick of Twitter and Facebook. More accurately, I'm sick of the craze that seems to obligate everyone to use social networking. Fans even dare to assert that shunning Facebook is a kiss of death to your career. It reminds me of the Borg in Star Trek: The Next Generation: "Resistance is futile! You will be assimilated!"

At least the Borg are fiction.

I hope that Twitter and Facebook go the way of CB radio. (CB remains the ideal communications medium for truck drivers and volunteer emergency responders; it just isn't a dictatorial fad like in the late 1970s. So I'm not wishing TW and FB out of existence)

I'm hardly alone. Read this Omaha World-Herald article on the Slow Media Movement. It quotes and journalism professor Jennifer Rauch: "The movement attracts people who feel 'that some sort of boundaries need to be set;' that technologies should be chosen, not embraced blindly; should serve, not be served."

No, I don't drive a '72 Pinto with an 8-track player. I don't have a black-and-white TV. And if I hated the Internet, you wouldn't be reading this. But I am content with my Stupid Phone and a computer that must be plugged in. If I wrote books, I'd have them available on Kindle (but I read the old fashioned kind: no batteries required.) I, Ms. Rauch, and other "Slow Media" advocates bristle that we are Luddites or even "anti-broadband." We just want to take our technology in smaller doses. I love peanut butter, but that doesn't mean I want three pounds of it in one sitting or to put it on everything I eat.

Forget Nostradumbass prophecies: I figure we'll be doomed when the Old Order Amish are on Facebook.

Toyota Highlander Kid Sucks

I don't think I could write anything new with regard to contempt for the recent advertising for the new Toyota Highlander. (If you haven't seen them, the ads star an eight-year-old boy with messy reddish-blond hair disparaging other vehicles: his message to parents: You don't have to be lame, buy a new Highlander.) In fact, when it comes to Internet "rant" articles on the subject, it's impossible to tell whether the authors have plagiarized one another. This fellow pretty much word for word sums up why the ad is so annoying and presents the wrong message to parents: Ad Rage. It has received widespread condemnation, including online parents' magazines and even Time. It's hardly a favorable message about American culture when one of the world's biggest manufacturers thinks that this ad will boost Highlander sales.

Update: I don't know how I missed this article from AutoTrader.com: "Is Toyota Lame for Calling Parents Lame?" (November 10, 2010). That article quotes a Toyota spokesperson who responded, in part, "Our values as a company have always been to put our customers first and provide them the highest levels of respect and understanding." But just a few sentences downstream (after blathering about "research") he includes, "While we regret that the ads have been misconstrued as insensitive [and] we don’t have any plans at this time to discontinue the campaign (emphasis mine)." So much for providing the highest levels of respect and understanding. C'mon, Toyota, you don't have to give us an apology on the front page of the New York Times, just yank the damn ads! The only car that brat would inspire me to buy is a secondhand Buick Roadmaster station wagon.

Unseen effects of employment discrimination

This is the third time a window on this vehicle has been hit by vandals in the dark of the night. The owner is a foreclosure refugee. He lives with friends on a block developed before the Model T; the houses have no driveways and residents must park on the street. Apparently window-shooting is a sport among local lowlifes.

A couple years ago, the guy who owns it was a top candidate for a job, but the would-be employer discriminated against him on account of his credit record. With that job, he would have caught up on mortgage payments. That means Wells Fartgo (WF or WTF?) would not have foreclosed on his house (with an attached garage). The employer ass-umed that this applicant's bad credit signaled a thief. Congratulations, dumbasses: Instead of preventing crime, you in effect caused three cases of vandalism and an attempted burglary (foreclosed-on buildings attract trouble).

A Long Overdue Tribute to Ted Andrews

Noted writer and teacher Ted Andrews passed away last October. I did not learn about it until some time later.

Ted's famous book, Animal Speak, inspired me to choose Skunk Totem as the name of this blog. It made apparent that the skunk is one of my major animal totems. I think if I were an animal, I probably would have ended up being a skunk. This often misunderstood (like me) animal teaches how to give and demand respect, and live peacefully among others. (Despite its reputation, skunks are pacifist animals and only spray in self-defense, usually as a last resort. They typically reciprocate how we treat them--good or bad).

Ted's legacy will live on.

OWLTHENA'S ROOST: Ted Andrews dies

Employee Screening Questions Too Intrusive

I just filled out an online application for a major retail chain and, after the main application where I submitted my legitimate information, came across the "personality screening" section that included the following:

• You have big regrets about your past.
  
• You were absent very few days from high school.
  
• Your stuff is often kind of messy.
  
• You have always had good behavior in school or work.
  
• Your friends and family approve of the things you do.
  
• You have to give up on some things that you start.
  
• You look back and feel bad about things you've done.
  
• You sometimes thought seriously about quitting high school.

The answer choices were "Strongly Agree," "Agree," "Disagree," and "Strongly Disagree." You couldn't weasel your way out with a choice like "Neutral" or "Neither."

Personally, I wish there had been one labeled, "None of your damn business!"

After that one about quitting high school, I stopped worrying about whether they'd like my answers or not. I'm not sure I want to work for a company that weeds people out based on how they click radio buttons on a web form before they actually get to meet me in person or talk to people who actually know me.

Nostradamus? More like Nostradangerous

"When ancient prophecies and current events begin to intertwine, that's what we call the Nostradamus Effect." That is The History Channel's advertisement for its series The Nostradamus Effect. In it, the writings of Nostradamus as well as creative interpretations of the Mayan calendar hint that the end of the world will be December 21, 2012.

I say, when Christians forget Christ's warning about false prophets (Mt 7:15-20), that "you will hear of wars and rumors of wars; see that you are not alarmed; for this must take place, but the end is not yet (Mt 24:6)," and "but of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only (Mt 24:36)," and instead turn to "prophets" whose ambiguous writings can be molded to have "predicted" numerous calamities, and ignoring artifacts that don't fit the doom-and-gloom (some Mayan artifacts indicate the world will still be around in 4772), that is what I call the Nostradangerous Effect.

Following Nostradamus may indeed be dangerous: How many people have committed suicide, ignored health problems, let their houses fall apart, pour money into smart phones, self-navigating cars and other here-and-now luxuries they can't afford instead of saving for the future, because they believe there is no future? Could this be adding fuel to the fire of the consumer credit problem? How many marriages and other relationships between believers and nonbelievers have broken up? I shudder to think.