Velcrometer
Throwing stuff at the internet to see what sticks
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M. Giant's Velcrometer Throwing stuff at the internet to see what sticks |
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Tuesday, September 10, 2002 I left my ATM card in the machine the other day. It’s been turned in and cancelled, so don’t start running around and banging your heads together looking for it so you can drain my bank accounts. I was using it to withdraw cash, which I successfully withdrew, and then drove off, leaving the card in the machine. It was an incredibly stupid and careless thing to do. So stupid and careless, in fact, that I can’t understand why I don’t do it all the time. Obviously I had no idea I’d done this at the time, because I was sitting complacently at home when the bank called. Even I wouldn’t have been blithe enough to realize my mistake and say, “Huh. No cash card. Must have left it at the ATM. Oh well, I guess I’ll pick it up next time I use that cash machine.” So I wasn’t even thinking about it. And when your bank calls you on a Saturday afternoon, you know it can’t be good news. Under the circumstances, “Someone just found your ATM card and is turning it in” is much better news than I deserved. Something along the lines of, “Mr. Giant, we were just calling to make sure you meant to clear out all of your accounts an hour ago” is what we’re told to expect when we screw up like that in this day and age. Nobody’s gambling away our money in Vegas right now, but that’s through no fault of my own. Thanks, Lady Who Didn’t Take All Of Our Money To Vegas. I seem to remember reading about Pamela Anderson doing something like this a couple of years ago. Quoth Anderson at the time, “Oh, I can’t believe I did that. I’m so stupid.” You and me both, Pammy. I have nothing to add to that. That's not true: I'll add at least I'm not dumb enough to date Kid Rock. * * * Update: MC, the star of my “Low Rider” entry, has come up with a temporary fix for his broken car seat. To keep the back of the seat propped upright, he’s jammed a cooler into the space behind it. A friend of his suggested the solution, having come up with it when he had a similar problem. I guess this kind of thing is more common than I realized. So make sure your cars are in good working order, and make sure to have a cooler ready in case of emergencies. You don’t ever want to find yourself stranded on the side of the road with no portable ice chest. My car loan just got paid off a week ago, so I own it free and clear. I guess that means I can look forward to it starting to fall apart any day now. Until my back seat drops off, I’ll just take pleasure in the comparatively minor gripes of a wonky glove-box latch and a tire with a slow leak. And I'd better start doing ab crunches just in case. * * * A lot of you were probably reading the site I’m going to tell you about long before I came along, but I’ve got something important to say to the rest of you: One of the links to your right goes to a website called Television Without Pity. You should too. And when you do, click on as many ads as you can. TWoP is in trouble, my friends. Deep trouble. It’s a specimen of an increasingly rare breed: the totally free and incredibly large content site without a corporate sugar daddy. The Internet economy’s downturn is finally catching up to it, and the income it gets from advertising isn’t covering expenses like bandwidth and writers’ salaries. And I know you all understand that writers deserve to get paid. TWoP has always strenuously resisted suggestions to implement a subscription model or donation system, insisting that their site would always be free. Even now, with TWoP at death’s door and slowly being dragged inside through the mail slot, the only reason they’re even considering taking any money at all from readers is because of the overwhelming number of readers who are trying to give it to them. And even so, they haven’t agreed to anything. They’d rather take money from advertisers than from you. But the only way that’ll happen, and the only way the site will continue to exist, is if the advertisers are satisfied that you’re there to see them. The Powers That Be over at TWoP have posted an announcement explaining the situation in more detail. Go check it out. If you don’t know about Television Without Pity, head over and read some of the recaps of the shows they cover. Your favorite is probably in there. After a week, you’ll wonder how you ever got along without it. As many people already do, if the forums are any indication. If there’s a more entertaining television-related website on the ‘Net, I’m not aware of it. Help it out while you still have a chance. And if it goes away because of your apathy, it won’t be pretty around here for a good long time. posted by M. Giant 3:44 PM 0 comments 0 Comments:
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