Letters of Phutatorius

Boston Globe

2008-05-14T09:58:00.001-07:00

I thought I might have found a rare instance of agreement with Jeff Jacoby, when I began reading his column critiquing John McCain's recent bout of judge-bashing. Jacoby is right to note that the judiciary is charged with the constitutionally critical task of protecting individual rights from the tyranny of political majorities.

And yet his argument goes off the rails midway through his piece. After citing several instances in which judges have failed to invalidate the political branches' incursions on campaign financing and gun and property rights, Jacoby sweepingly declares "liberal judicial activism" to be "a blight on the landscape." And so we finally arrive at the crux of it: liberal judges are poisoning the nation, but conservative judges just aren't activist enough.

Hm.

[Phutatorius]

Eric Mack, Sportsline.com

2008-04-02T07:27:00.000-07:00

Wow. Your power ranking commentary is just -- wow. Are you really lumping the Indians in the same category with the Tigers, bullpen-wise? REALLY?

The Tigers have Jones closing. That's it. Zumaya and Rodney are hurt. They went out and picked up a Tribe castoff by the name of Aaron Fultz to fill the LOOGY role.

The Indians have Borowski closing. Fine. This is the beginning and end of your analysis, apparently. He lives on the edge. His ERA was well over 5.00 last year, and he makes 9th innings exciting. Can My Beloved Tribe expect him to save as many games this year, or will the runs catch up to him? We'll see.

But beyond Borowski, the Indians have proven setup men in Raffys Perez and Betancourt. Betancourt arguably had one of the best seasons EVER for a reliever last year. Check out his ERA, his WHIP, the innings he threw. To protect Betancourt against overuse, the Indians brought in Kabayashi, a seasoned Japanese closer. Jensen Lewis was lights out after he came up last year. He's a potential closer.

Look: I'll be the first one to admit that bullpens are volatile, and from year to year they can go from great to garbage and back. Check out the Indians 'pens from 04 to 05 to 06 to 07. Talk about fluctuation.

But unless you're judging these bullpens on one game, all you can look at is last year. The Indians bullpen is SOLID. You might not draft Borowski as your fantasy closer, but this is arguably the best 'pen in the AL.

But why discuss facts when it's so much easier to serve up false and blithely constructed generalizations about an entire division? To say the Indians and Tigers both have great offenses and rotations, but lousy bullpens, is reductive and absurd.

The Tigers have the great offense, 1-9. The Indians are just trying to keep up. The Tigers have a great ace; the Indians have a terrific 1-2 punch, and Jake Westbrook has added a splitter and had a lights-out spring. He could be dominant.

Overall, the Indians have a deeper rotation, and the Tigers have a stronger, veteran lineup. Indians fans are relying on their team's dramatic advantage in relief pitching to carry them past the Tigers and deep into the playoffs.

You could have written this, but this is analysis, and it's beneath you. I understand that you have to spend time actually acquiring knowledge about the Yankees and Mets and Red Sox. But if you have a minute or two when the work day's over, why not familiarize yourself with some other teams?

If that's too much to ask, maybe you should contain your snappy prose to the teams you know something about.

Just a thought.

[Phutatorius]

The Guy Across the Street

2008-03-24T16:51:00.000-07:00

Thanks for speaking with me today. I understand your position about the parking at the end of the street, on your side of the road. I want you to know that I have never encouraged anyone to park there, and we’ve never parked there ourselves. If I’ve been slow or neglectful in arranging to have parked cars moved from that location, I apologize. In today’s case I presumed, mistakenly, that you had left for the workday, and rather than trouble the cleaners to move their car immediately, I thought it would be fine to let them finish, then have them vacate the space when they were done with the work. I realize now that this was the wrong answer, and I won’t make that mistake again.

Since the day we moved in here and your daughter made known that you did not want cars parked in that location, I have emphasized to house guests and visitors that they should not park in that space. On a number of occasions I have asked them to move their cars. As I told you on the phone, I will continue to warn visitors against parking in that area, and I will continue to ask people to move whenever I see cars there and they belong to folks who are visiting our house.

As I also explained, people feel compelled to park their cars in that space, for whatever reason. Accordingly, there may be instances in which you find someone parked there, and my wife or I is not aware the car is there and we have not been in a position to get it moved. We agreed on the phone that a reasonable and appropriate response in this case is to have you contact me so I can get the car moved. I told you I would leave my phone numbers for that purpose, and here they are:

[REDACTED] (home)
[REDACTED] (mobile)

I want to reiterate that I do not think it is a reasonable and appropriate response to block the road and deny passage off of [REDACTED] Street, as you did today to my cleaners. It’s not a proportional response, it’s not legal, and it’s not safe. I also believe it is not constructive to blare your horn and call the police, but I understand that it’s within your rights to do either or both of these if you choose (as blocking the road is not).

I understand how strongly you feel about this issue, and I’m willing to do whatever it takes to keep the parking there to a minimum. You must understand, however, that my wife and I cannot keep constant surveillance over the street, and the problem will likely recur every now and then, despite our sincere best efforts. In fact, there may be cases in which persons who are not our guests are parked in that space, and we can’t answer for the offense or assist you with resolving the matter, because we don’t know the offenders. We have seen cars parked there that did not belong to anyone visiting our house. You said that you think posting a No Parking sign on the fence is unnecessary and unsightly. I think a sign would go a long way toward avoiding these situations, but I’ll defer to your judgment. If you change your mind, I’m happy to go get one and put it up.

You agreed on the phone that persons may lawfully park their cars past the driveway on our side of the road. Street parking is allowed in front of our house opposite your driveway just as it is in front of your house opposite ours. That said, as a gesture of goodwill, we will ask anyone who parks on our side of the road to park as close to the yard as possible, and if you have any preferences as to where in that zone they should park — to make it easiest for you to back out your car — please let me know and I will communicate those preferences to our visitors. This is, I think, the way neighbors should handle their affairs.

You and I both worry about “getting off on the wrong foot.” I had hoped that our relationship took a turn for the better when you helped my wife and I clear the snow from our driveway: I very much appreciated the help, and I gathered from this that neither of us might have made the best first impression on the other, but our hearts are in the right place. My goal is to maintain civil relationships with my neighbors, and the best way to do that is for us to communicate our concerns to one another and work constructively at resolving them. We should have had this morning’s conversation a long time ago. Now that we have, let’s treat this as a “do-over.” I pledge from this point to do everything I can to keep our visitors’ cars out of the offending location (we will talk to the cleaners tonight), and I only ask in return that when — as may happen from time to time — some visitor to our house unwittingly parks in that space, and you learn of it before I do, you simply let me know and refrain from these dramatic, confrontational gestures.

Sincerely,

[Phutatorius]

Bill Simmons, ESPN.com

2007-11-01T07:08:00.000-07:00

It bums me out, really. I think you're a great writer. I love your schtick: sports through the eyes of a true fan, with all the warping and refraction that fandom brings. Your "Basebrawl Fever" sits right there with "Sidd Finch" as my favorite piece of sportswriting. I go back to it again and again. It's to the point now where you've spawned imitators (see Pete Fiutak at College Football News), but none of them execute like you do.

Now all that said, I'm fed up. I don't think I can relate to you anymore. You see, I'm a Cleveland fan. And if you set aside my 2002 Buckeyes, nothing sports-good has happened to me since I was born 34 years ago. My teams fail. It's what they do, and — apparently — why they exist. They exist to fail, and ultimately to provide players in free agency to teams that succeed.

Which brings me round to you. The Red Sox aren't lovable losers anymore. They shed "loser" three years ago, and within about six months the "lovable" started to wash away, too. Your NFL team probably won't lose a game in the next three years. The Celtics have consolidated as much talent as can exist in a room this side of the Justice League. Frickin' Boston College (always my trump card: "Bostonians only IMAGINE they have college football") can't help but win in the ACC.

All this disqualifies you from writing anything pointed and resonant about the fan experience. Unless and until you abandon your indomitable Boston teams, nothing you say is meaningful to anyone else in America — a fact that goes double for the star-crossed fans in Northeast Ohio. When your teams cease to lose, you're not really a fan, are you? You've lost a crucial component of the fan experience.

So many Sox fans have come up to me in the past two weeks, patted me on the shoulder and said, "I've been there." Well, you know what? NO. You're not "there" now, are you? And you're not going back "there" anytime soon, are you? So try to grasp the unthinkable here: I'm not terribly interested in how you felt in 1986 or 2003. Capish?

I love you like a brother, Bill, but you've got nothing relevant to say to me anymore. Clever discourse about the "$14 Million Grand Slam" — notwithstanding the element of truth it carries — doesn't do anything for me. My teams don't have $14 million to spend on their best players, and we never get the Grand Slam. Manny Ramirez and "Little Things That Make Baseball So Great" don't live in the same zip code for me. Manny's just a guy who chases the last dollar into Massachusetts, then drops back into Cleveland periodically to hit a ball out of the park and rub it into the face of the fans he abandoned. I'm not inspired, I'm not amused, I'm not interested.

We write to communicate sentiments to other people, to feel a connection, a kinship with them. (At least I think that's why we write, anyway.) I can't connect with you over any of this Boston business anymore. That's just the sad state of things, Bill. See you in some other life.

[Phutatorius]

Scott Miller, CBS Sportsline

2007-04-26T08:29:00.001-07:00

You wrote:

"The Mariners had their league-leading sixth game washed out on Tuesday, in Texas, and you have to wonder: What did they do to tee off Mother Nature?"

Well, Scott — they DID filibuster the first game of that Cleveland series, knowing full well what the weather forecast was for the rest of the weekend.

So certainly one of those five makeup games lands in the M's fault column. And maybe Mother Nature (a/k/a Karma?) threw another rainout at them, to make up for what might not have been "dirty pool" exactly, but was certainly a Machiavellian gesture at Jacobs Field that Friday.

Subtract two games from the six — the Game the M's Sought to Postpone and the Karma Game — and they're down to only 4 weather-related postponements. That's about where a team like, say, CLEVELAND is right now, right?

Pardon me if I'm not reaching for the handkerchief when I think of Seattle's scheduling predicament.

events@thepolicetour.com

2007-02-14T12:58:00.000-08:00

True, you made no assurances that presalers would get tickets for their $100.

True, we acquired something additional for our $100, i.e., the right to discuss the ripoff with other bummed-out presalers on your "premium message boards."

But really, this is a swindle and a fiasco. Yesterday you reported that it was possible to pay the $100 at Ticketmaster while buying the tickets on Wednesday. Today I visited the Ticketmaster site and was told I had to have made prior arrangements at your site, if I wanted to do today's presale. To pay the $100 in a single transaction through Ticketmaster, I have to come back Thursday.

But it was 11:55 AM, and I had five minutes to go to your site and drop the money there. So I did, and nothing happened. I got a "thanks for the $100" message dropped immediately into my email account, but nothing containing the passcode that would get me into the presale on Ticketmaster.

Because I'm a genius and I've got skillz, I did manage to navigate my way through your website to a page that would ultimately give me a passcode — after two or more minutes passed and I realized the promised email wasn't coming anytime soon (it did arrive, at 12:42:26 PM, long past the point where it could do me any good).

So at approximately 12:02 PM I clipped my passcode from your website and pasted it into the Ticketmaster window, so I could buy my four tickets to the Boston show. Naturally, by this time, there were no more presale tickets left, unless I wanted to buy just one and sit by myself.

I have to ask you, then: my $100 purchased me the right to buy from a pool of how many seats at the Fenway show? Twelve? Fifteen? What a fraud. And it sure was a curve ball to discover at the last minute that the plan wasn't as advertised yesterday, and I had to go to your site to set up my "Fan Club" account. The clock certainly ticked away out from under me while I did that, and all for naught. I suppose the policy change had something to do with increasing traffic at your site. The money grab goes on.

The fact that I paid a C-note to this exploitative venture of yours — with no benefit accruing to me other than that I now know I contributed something to the newest wing on Sting's sprawling castle — well, it really is, as someone once wrote, "a humiliating kick in the crotch."

My questions to you now are these: tomorrow at noon, when Stage Two of the presale begins, will I be able to punch in my heretofore useless presale access code? Or will I be required by Ticketmaster to purchase the Fan Club Bundle, so that I end up paying $100 one more time? Will there be more than a half-dozen tickets released to presalers tomorrow? If not, how about to the general public on Saturday? My guess is 40% of the stadium goes to ticket brokers, 40% to corporate sponsors, 15% to this Ticketmaster Auction abomination I just happened to discover a moment ago, and maybe 5% to us proles who actually bought the Synchronicity album in its LP format way back when.

I have half a mind to raise this issue with the consumer protection division in my state Attorney General's office. I imagine the attorneys there would like to know how many tickets you made available today.

[Phutatorius]

Mr. Bucknuts

2007-01-11T20:35:00.000-08:00

Mr. Bucknuts:

I'm emotionally adrift right now. I had my reservations about facing this Florida team, but I told myself all was right in the world — we'd beaten Michigan, gone undefeated in the Big Ten, and anything else would be a bonus. And of course, the Vest would have this team prepared to play. They'd pick up right where they left off: on the edge, snapping the bit in two with angry jaws.

Now what the hell was all that on Monday night?

I have to say I gnawed on a nail after that first pass play to the sideline, when the Florida defender bit on the out play but still recovered in time and closed on the receiver (was it Ginn?) to break up Smith's pass. Troy's cannon arm had been working those passes through all year long. It had been said that the Florida secondary was better than any we'd faced all year. That first play was the first sign — the flare gun fired in the air to say EMERGENCY.

That and Chris Leak dinking, dunking, doinking us to death with the quick outs to Harvin and third-down short passes over the middle. We'll adjust, I kept telling myself. WE'LL ADJUST. Won't we?

At 21-14 I felt comfortable. I felt like we'd taken Florida's best punch square in the gut, then got off the mat, marched down the field for a TD, and actually made a defensive stop. Our receivers might not be getting an inch of separation, our pass protection might be abominable ("it's harder to get into Michigan State right now than it is to get in our backfield," I observed late in the second quarter), but dammit, we can run Pittman Big Ten-style, right down their throats.

And then what was the payoff there? Three ill-conceived and poorly-executed pass plays. And down the road the running game failed as well, on 3rd and 1, then 4th and 1 on our own 30 just before the half. I don't fault the Vest for going for it there. If anything, I fault him for failing to call a drive-sustaining play under those circumstances. Why not run a bootleg? I suppose JT's logic was that if we can't run up the middle for a yard on this team, the game is over anyway. And maybe that was right.

I could talk about the second half, too — but why?

So here's what I'm left with, analyzing this game to death all day long, looking for answers.

*Was all this a result of losing Teddy to injury, and the tumbledown effect that flowed from it? The Florida defenders could concentrate almost exclusively on Robo and Gonzo. They could blitz more comfortably. No more deep threat, and
certainly no more bubble screen plays to stretch the field laterally. Gonzo's not a shake-and-bake kind of guy to take those passes, and Ray Small — well, would it be fair to have him get potentially killed again?

*Was it a failure on our coaches' part to make adjustments on both sides of the ball? Why didn't we send the house at Chris Leak? Why didn't we make him throw the ball downfield? Why the sense of urgency after we made that first defensive stop? Why throw the three passes instead of running right at them?

*Was it the long layoff that led to all the undisciplined play — personal fouls on kick returns, false starts, etc. — putting Florida in a position to succeed?

*Was it just bad karma? Something has to explain the sudden, startling transformation of Chris Hetlund into Morten Andersen, and the absurd turn of events wherein we lose our most talented player to a freak end-zone celebration injury. Did OSU somehow offend the football gods, and that's what caused this unmitigated disaster? Was Lloyd Carr sitting in his bedroom with a set of pushpins and voodoo dolls?

Or am I just making excuses? Maybe this Buckeye team was never all that. Maybe we grew fat on mediocre opponents — maybe the teams we routed in celebrated matchups of "titans" (Texas, Penn State, Iowa, Michigan) weren't really that good. Maybe Florida really was gobs better than us at every single stinking position, and if this game were played 10 times, they'd beat us by an average of 27 points.

I'm reluctant to believe that, but I'm not any more interested in believing that my stout and beloved Buckeyes, under the tutelage of Jim Tressel and the captaincy of Troy Smith, just failed to show up.

I need answers, Mr. Bucknuts. I'm looking at a long, miserable stretch of basketball and hockey (no, I can't bring myself to give a third of a crap about NCAA basketball — sorry), plus a long summer of disappointment — if not exasperation — at my 3rd-level market Cleveland Indians, before I get my next dose of Buckeye football. I need to know what to believe and whether to believe it.

What the hell happened on Monday night?

[Phutatorius]

Boston Globe

2006-12-13T08:47:00.000-08:00

Last year, around Christmas time, John Gibson and Bill O'Reilly at Fox News were calling upon viewers to rise up and boycott department stores that posted the words "Happy Holidays" in their shop windows. At the same time Americans preoccupied themselves with this trumped-up "War on Christmas," hundreds of thousands of homeless, hungry, and freezing Pakistanis were just hoping to survive the winter, after October's earthquake.

This year the Globe's Jeff Jacoby is in on the action, leveraging the season to take on the "secular absolutists" and declare that "Judeo-Christian monotheism" is the world's "best bet."

I must be falling behind the times. I had thought the message of Christmas was peace, goodwill, and generosity. I had thought the Christmas story was about taking care of folks who have been left out in the cold. But I suppose it’s more important to use the holiday to let everybody know your religion is the “best,” and to stick it to every department store that says otherwise.

The BBC reported this morning that a lot of those Pakistanis are still without homes, and facing another brutal winter. Maybe I’ll make this year’s donation to UNICEF in Mr. Jacoby’s name.

[Phutatorius]

Cambridge Traffic and Parking

2006-11-19T12:08:00.000-08:00

Re: Violation No. 13583558-2

Dear Sir/Madam:

I have received notice of the Office of the Parking Clerk's summary conclusion that the above numbered ticket "cannot be dismissed for the reasons stated in [my] correspondence." No further explanation is given on the form notice, notwithstanding my expense of considerable time and effort explaining — and proving, with documentary evidence — that the vehicle in question is a moped, and that it was therefore lawfully parked on the sidewalk.

Since I sent my letter of October 9 contesting the ticket, I have personally spoken with a Cambridge parking official who affirmed to me that parking a moped on the sidewalk is an entirely appropriate and lawful act in the City of Cambridge. I believe that under the circumstances I am entitled to something more than a single, unelaborated sentence that says, "you lose."

For that matter, I also find it sorely troubling that I am now to be charged an additional $5.00 on top of the original $35.00 penalty, apparently because I availed myself of my legal entitlement to challenge this ticket. I had no idea I would be subject to this $5.00 "surcharge" — nor does the City's notice to me explain why I suddenly owe it $40.00, rather than the original $35.00.

The facts of my case are straightforward: my vehicle meets the statutory definition of a motorized bicycle. Nothing in that definition excludes a vehicle that is insured or that bears a license plate. I was entitled to park it on the sidewalk. The ticket does not, to borrow your words, "conform to parking rules and regulations" any more than it would if it had been affixed to a ten-speed bicycle.

I must, however, admit defeat. I could appeal the City's empty determination, but I can't be troubled to take the time off work; last time I took time off to appeal a traffic ticket, I received much the same summary "Clerk's Justice" as I complain of today. After spending much of the morning waiting for my number to come up, the clerk announced, without any explanation why, that my appeal was denied. He then told me I was entitled to come back at a later date and present my case before a bona fide magistrate. My case here seems to have followed the same troubling pattern. I am convinced that the City has settled upon a strategy that technically affords its residents due process, but it makes it such a bother — with so many levels of appeal required before anyone with any capacity for judgment actually decides a matter like this on its merits — that it's a thousand times easier just to suck it up and pay the ticket.

So today I find myself wrestled to the ground. You win. Not because you are wise or correct in your judgments, but because you represent the power of the state, and you hide so skillfully behind your form letters. Enjoy this triumph, dear judgmentless Clerk, and don't spend my $40 all in one place.

Sincerely,

[Phutatorius]

Cc: E. Denise Simmons, City Councilor

Comcast

2006-09-02T08:53:00.000-07:00

So I just called this morning to add ESPN College Football GamePlan to my cable package, only to be told that you carry it in Boston, but it's not available in Cambridge.

What kind of idiotic decisionmaking leads to that result? What — do you suppose that nobody in Cambridge is interested in college football? Or do you think they'll be content with the local ABC affiliate's sad-sack programming decisions? DO YOU REALLY THINK WE WANT TO SIT AROUND THIS AFTERNOON AND WATCH NORTH CAROLINA PLAY RUTGERS???

You people REALLY need to get your heads out of your butts. This is unacceptable. Completely unacceptable. If I had any time before 3:30 I'd have your barely functional cable box returned and I'd be switched to satellite in time for kickoff.

Don't think I haven't ruled that possibility out for next Saturday.

If you aren't going to offer the services that people want, maybe there ought to be more than one cable provider in the city of Cambridge.

[Phutatorius]

CNN.com

2006-06-28T14:32:00.000-07:00

Hey CNN: nice one. Give this guy a platform to equate same-sex marriage with the slave trade. The problem with people like James Dobson is that they get TOO MUCH press, not too little.

Admit it: you wouldn't publish this sort of crap if Dobson were writing about mixed-race marriages — because the poll numbers don't support it (40 years ago it was different).

But once a critical mass of the population endorses a form of bigotry, the bigots get a CNN forum so they can parade their numbers. Humph — I suppose the social responsibility of the press ends where the ratings begin. But that's always been the case: it's why you show so little of the civilian casualties in the Iraq War. You wouldn't want to introduce a conflict for the patriotic right-to-lifers, because they'll just change the channel to Fox.

Next time someone like Dobson wants to gag up some hatred from the back of "God's" throat, he should do it on his own dime.

[Phutatorius]

Major League Baseball Advanced Media

2006-06-19T17:16:00.000-07:00

Re: Gameday Audio Broadcasts

I wrote you about this issue before and received a message stating that you had a backlog of complaints, and you'd get to me in time.

You never did.

I'm still having the same problem, so here I am again:

I've logged in twice tonight, and your backward Gameday Audio software crashed my browser both times. I had to quit out of the browser on both occasions, then reopen the browser.

On the third try, I entered my password and was told that I had logged in too many times recently, and I should "try again later."

This is completely unacceptable. I understand that you need to build in a defense against free-riders who pay for one login, then distribute the password to multiple users. Fine.

But in my case, I'm just trying to log in ONCE, so I can listen to the baseball game broadcast that I HAVE PAID FOR. And I would be able to listen to that broadcast if you didn't diddle around with the software every year and, with your "enhancements," make the games inaccessible to paying customers.

On a prior occasion I called your toll-free hotline and waited no less than forty minutes for my call to be taken "by the next available operator," before I finally gave up.

I don't have that kind of time to waste on you tonight. I certainly don't have the patience to listen to more than a minute of your hold music. That cover of "Me and Bobby McGee" by LeeAnn Rimes was godawful, and I wouldn't inflict it on my worst enemy, much less my beloved (and already aggrieved) subscribership.

You really need to do a better job on this, or else return the audio rights to the flagship stations, which are more than capable of streaming the games online without mucking everything up.

I have been a customer for probably five years now — because I don't live within range of my home team's radio broadcasts. If I could, I would pay twice as much to listen to the games somewhere else, just to bypass your technical failures and empty gestures at customer service. But I can't, so I'm stuck forking money over to you every year for this product of yours, the delivery of which is spotty at best.

[Phutatorius]

Apple Store

2006-05-20T11:39:00.000-07:00

I've got hold of your script, and I've decided to audition for the job of Apple Store "Genius." Let me know how I do.

Scene 1.

Customer 1: Can you fix my iPod?
Me as Genius: No, we can't, but you can buy a new one.

Scene 2.

Customer 2: Can you fix my laptop?
Me as Genius: Yes, I can, but you'd have to pay me a gazillion dollars. Why don't you go to one of these other authorized repair shops?

Scene 3.

Customer 3: I'd like to redeem this $50 store credit I acquired through the class action claims process.
Me as Genius: Well, you can't. You can only redeem it if you mail-order something. We're a gigantic computer company, but we're not technologically capable of punching your redemption code into the computers at our counter.

How did I do? Did I get the job?

[Phutatorius]

MAILER-DAEMON

2006-04-17T12:10:00.000-07:00

Re: Undelivered Mail Returned to Sender

Thought so.

Person Pretending To Be Chase Bank

2006-04-17T12:07:00.000-07:00

Re: Customer Survey - Get $20 Reward

If I didn't respond to your first six awkward, fraudulent, illegal, and identical solicitations of my banking information, what makes you think I would respond to the seventh? Did you think your labeling of this particular message as "high priority" would carry the day?

Let's review:

(1) I am not an existing customer of Chase bank,
(2) the emails you send purport to come from "Chase.net," but the mock-ups of Chase logos in your email purport to be from "Chase.com,"
(3) I do no personal business from this email address (so you'd have no reason to have it in your "customer database"), and
(4) when I hover my cursor over the "link" to your "survey," I see that I will not be taken to "Chase.com" at all, but instead to some other URL of mysterious origin.

But notwithstanding all these caveats and the six earlier failures, I'm now going to surrender all my [nonexistent] account information on your "survey," because you've taken the additional step of flagging your message as "important?" Come on.

I understand that if you had any modest understanding of consumer decisionmaking you'd be in the marketing business, and not identity theft and online fraud. Honestly, though, do you think I'm completely thick?

[Phutatorius]

Customer Care, marthasflowers.com (Part III)

2006-04-10T14:11:00.000-07:00

Re: Fresh Easter Bouquets from $29.99 for a Limited Time

Dear Martha:

I am thwarted again, apparently, in my efforts to win relief from your unsolicited emails. Another such rascal worked its way into my inbox a moment ago.

Here's the cracker-upper: this most recent missive came with a link I can click, in the event I "do not wish to receive marthasflowers.com emails . . . in the future." But when I click that link, I am defeated, this time by an eight- (though it probably should be nine-) word sentence:

You are not opted into this email type. (Meaning, presumably, that I can't opt out now.)

And yet, if I weren't opted in <space> to this email type, I wouldn't get the message now, would I? And as a matter of English usage, is a person ever "opted?" I would think (and this is consistent with the way the world works outside of marthasflowers.com) that it is up to me whether I opt or do not opt. When someone else opts for me, I haven't "opted" at all. The notion that I might be "opted" is anathema to me — which is why I continue to agitate (unsuccessfully) for some sovereignty over whether or not I must receive emails from marthasflowers.com. It has to do with my worldview, you see.

I should also note the severe irony by which you've constructed your website to account for the possibility that a person might receive emails of a certain type, even though they have opted out of the type. That sentence should have no reason to exist on your server as a preconceived error message — unless it doesn't, and you've conferred some kind of artificial intelligence on your website, such that it can think up wild conclusions like this on its own, on the fly.

And maybe that's just it — maybe you have an autonomous computer that defies its programmers' instructions and thinks for itself. It's like HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey, except it sends people spam, instead of taking over spaceships.

If I send a nice Easter bouquet to your sentient server, will it back off with the email messages?

(sigh!)

[Phutatorius]

Comcast

2006-03-22T11:02:00.000-08:00

Dear Comcast:

I'm really frustrated. We had digital cable installed two weeks ago, and I've had to call a number of times to report periodic glitches that make the cable television essentially unwatchable. I've had the box reset by remote, without success.

The box does a little dance with me: it can work just fine for a while, then it goes right back to glitching.

I scheduled a service appointment today, for between 9 and 11 a.m. I was told the technician would call ten minutes before he arrived. Because I have to work during those hours — and because I can get home from work in five minutes (or less) — I asked that I be telephoned at work, so that I can get home to meet the technician.

Naturally the technician waited to call me at work until he arrived at my apartment. He then announced that I had five minutes to get home before he left. I said that was fine, and I got on my scooter and made it back to the apartment within five minutes . . .

and he was gone. When I got back to work, someone had left a message on my voice mail reporting that the technician had left (you know, because his time is valuable) and I needed to schedule another two-hour repair window.

All the technician had to do was follow the work order, and I would have been home to greet him. Now I have to live with this inconsistent cable signal until I can schedule another appointment.

Odd, to me, that customers are required to sit in their houses for two hours and wait for your technicians (often longer), but the technicians can't wait even the five minutes they've promised to wait — this after they've blown off the work order and failed to call the customer in advance.

To sum up: you sell a product that doesn't work, and you slowly fritter away the lives of the duped buyers who have to put their lives entirely on hold while you fail to make repairs. Ah, the privilege of a municipal utility monopoly. It must be nice for you. Now if only I could find a way to watch The Sopranos without subjecting myself to your digital service, which seems to function only 15% of the time, I'd be sitting pretty, too.

[Phutatorius]

Whole Foods Market; River Street, Cambridge, MA

2006-03-21T16:46:00.000-08:00

I just visited your Blue Ribbon BBQ counter a moment ago, and I came away a bit annoyed for the experience. I ordered a half-slab of ribs, by which I meant the "half-slab platter," which has "platter" status by virtue of the inclusion of a piece of cornbread and two side dishes. The gentleman at the counter assembled a pile of ribs, wrapped them in a cardboard box, and handed them to me. He asked if I wanted anything else.

I said, "Yes, I'd like my two side dishes." He looked at me, confused. "For the platter." This was my mistake: I had thought that by ordering a half-slab of ribs, I was by implication ordering the platter. Fine. As I say, my mistake.

Imagine my surprise, however, when the guy at the counter opened the cardboard box and REMOVED two of the ribs from the pile, then got on with the business of supplying my side dishes and cornbread.

"Wait a minute," I said. "Does the half-slab platter REALLY have two FEWER ribs than the half-slab of ribs?" It seemed logical to me that the "slab" unit — of which a half-slab is half — would be a constant, whether it was served a la carte or with side dishes in the "platter" format.

I was disabused of this wayward notion when the guy at the counter said, "Yes," without further explanation. He then served up concededly abundant helpings of rice, collard greens, and cornbread.

My first complaint, as you no doubt have gathered from the above, is the degree to which the folks at your Blue Ribbon counter play fast and loose with the term "half-slab."

My second complaint is a bit more nuanced. When the guy at the counter first presented me with the boxed ribs, the cardboard bore a sticker that charged me a little over $9 for the meat alone. After he "plattered" these ribs (by adding the sides and cornbread and subtracting two significantly-sized ribs), he priced the meal at the $12.99 amount set forth on the menu.

Is it really possible that I gained over $3 worth of value with the side dishes, after taking the two-rib penalty for correcting my order? I'm not convinced, and I spent the whole walk home brooding about it.

I demand satisfaction.

[Phutatorius]

customersupport@welovemacs.com

2006-03-03T10:38:00.000-08:00

Re: [DCG-37687]: iPod case

Well, this is frustrating because I was told I could return the iPod case for a full refund. In my correspondence with your fellow Customer Supporters, no one ever mentioned assessing a 30% Repackaging Fee because I'd opened the product. As for "stretching out" the case, as you suggest, I'm skeptical. And I certainly wasn't willing to cram my iPod in there for a week to "stretch out" the case, at which point I don't doubt I'd be told I couldn't return it because it was all bent out of shape.

I had assurances the case would fit. I opened the box, tried to put the iPod in the case, and it didn't fit. If I hadn't opened the box, I would never have known it didn't fit. What's a guy with a naked iPod to do?

[Phutatorius]

Anonymous (or Twice-Named?) Spammer

2006-02-23T15:21:00.000-08:00

Re: monotreme exemplary on impinge

Wait a minute -- I'm confused. Your message says it came from Judson Serrano, but it's signed by a Carlo Womack. Who's writing to me? I don't know what your re line means, but it sounds threatening. Are you sending a platypus after me? Do I have to accept your offer of a loan at a favorable rate? You're not being very clear with your message.

Just spell it out for me: what do I have to do to save myself from your platypus?

[Phutatorius]

Customer Care, marthasflowers.com (Part II)

2006-02-06T22:34:00.000-08:00

Dear "Martha":

It continues to amaze me that I am still receiving email messages from marthastewart.com after my several, repeated attempts to unsubscribe myself from your website. I gather from your emails that by clicking the unsubscribe button, I only manage to win myself relief from one of the hundred departments of the Martha Stewart empire. But the other 99 continue to write me. Must I unsubscribe from each miserable department seriatim?

No, I need not, because you propose a solution, don't you? You instruct that to "remove myself from all emails," I need only log in to my marthastewart.com account and adjust my account settings. Naturally, when I try to do that, my login fails — this because I have no such account with marthastewart.com.

To recap, then: I don't have an account with your site, and yet I get constant, annoying emails from you. I can't stop the emails unless I create an account. The vicious circularity of this practice is stunning to me. It's vaguely extortionate, and it's not entirely clear to me that you're not violating the federal anti-spam laws with this practice. But blah blah; I've written this before.

Note to whoever gets this message: please give my regards to Kevin G ———, a colleague of yours who wrote back to me on this subject on December 13 of last year. Kevin did me the favor of contacting your marketing department to get this handled. That seems to be where we lost our momentum. Those gunners in marketing . . . what can you do with them? At any rate, when you see Kevin this morning, please give him a hug, and maybe top off his coffee for him, because at least he tried.

[Phutatorius]

Justice Tom Parker, Alabama Supreme Court

2006-01-04T15:05:00.000-08:00

Dear Justice Tom Parker:

I write in response to your January 1, 2005 editorial in the Birmingham News. Let me see if I can break down your contorted logic:

(1) The U.S. Constitution doesn't say what the Supreme Court says it says.

(2) The U.S. Constitution says what you say it says.

(3) The Justices on the Alabama Supreme Court swore an oath to uphold the Constitution, and not simply to enforce judicial precedent.

(4) The Justices should therefore have voted as you would have voted.

(5) Any Justices who did not vote as you would are "judicial activists."

Allow me now to pause for a moment and emit a long, painful sigh. This is the sort of logic one has come to expect from politicos (and for the most part right-wingers) in their continuing assault on the judiciary: if you like the decision, the Constitution was upheld. If you don't, the judges were "activists."

I would have thought that someone on the bench would muster something with a little more analytical oomph. Your op-ed reads like something Tom DeLay would have written; indeed, it smacks rather of the sound and fury the indicted representative directed at Anthony Kennedy when the Justice visited Congress to discuss the Supreme Court's budget last summer.

And as sound and fury is wont to do, yours ultimately signifies nothing. Here's the kicker: the judicial activist in this sequence is you. You are the one who advocated for your court to disregard judicial precedent, in the hope of landing your case before a differently-composed Supreme Court that might overrule Roper. You are the one who dashed off an overtly political screed to a newspaper when your colleagues ruled in a way that offended your political sensibilities. You are the one calling for "active resistance" of the authority of the highest court in the land, for no other apparent reason than because it is staffed with people you believe are "liberals."

The mantra of the right these days is that America's judges need to "enforce the law" and not "legislate from the bench." The suggestion here is that a leftist judiciary is running hog-wild with the law. And yet here you are, unabashedly calling for a constitutional interpretation that, if your column is any indication, is not grounded in cogent legal analysis or even logic. The ruling you would have made has its source in your political opinions alone. Good show, Justice. Way to take a stand against "activism."

And you naturally fell into the trap of rearguing the Supreme Court's Ten Commandments jurisprudence, which does not reflect, as you suggest, a "foreign legal fad" so much as our Framers' determination that church and state remain separate -- walled off from one another, if I may paraphrase Thomas Jefferson, who many people in this country (including you, if I read your "Parker for Justice" website correctly) regard with a certain well-deserved reverence.

But then again, maybe you do make a point there, if only accidentally. After all, Jefferson's political views derived from the writings of Enlightenment thinkers, many of whom came (gasp!) from France. I should say the "foreign legal fads" of liberty, equality, and dignity under the law have served us rather well over the last 200+ years.

Of course, there has been resistance to the advancement of these ideals. When the Supreme Court struck down Jim Crow laws and ordered an end to racial segregation, many state officials cried foul and "actively resisted" these scandalous pronouncements of the Court. No doubt certain purported jurists claimed that the justices who wrote these opinions were too "liberal," that they were misreading the Constitution, that they were tyrants imposing an unwanted ideology (of liberty, equality, and dignity) on the citizenry. A half-century later, it is abundantly clear who was on the right and wrong side of history.

I suspect that fifty years from now, your op-ed will be an interesting cultural artifact. A law student might come across it in his research and think, "Can you believe that a JUDGE actually wrote something like this in the year 2006?" Heck, I'm asking that question right now.

[Phutatorius]

John Gibson, FOX News Channel

2005-12-10T15:32:00.000-08:00

Mr. Gibson:

You are the Christmas outrage. I don't expect you to publish this, or even to acknowledge it, except perhaps to hurl epithets at me: "secularist," "liberal," and other appellations. You certainly won't recognize the good sense in what I say, but I'm writing anyway, because I need to purge myself of ill-will before I get together with family and friends on December 25.

I grew up Christian, and I celebrate Christmas. And it doesn't matter a whole heck of a lot to me whether my government or some gigantic corporation tells me "Merry Christmas" during this time of year. It just doesn't. You see, Christmas isn't about George Bush, Coca-Cola, or a display in the town square. Christmas is (so I've heard) about "peace on Earth and goodwill to men."

That's why your unapologetic attempt to politicize the holiday is so noxious to me. There is no "liberal conspiracy" to take Christmas away from America — and even if there were, could it even happen? I don't mean to reprise How the Grinch Stole Christmas here, but you could take away all the trees, the gifts, the (gasp!) nativity scenes, and the verbal exchanges of "Merry Christmas" — but you would still have Christmas. Because none of that is what Christmas is. Or is it?

To my (no doubt heretical and anti-Christian) mind, the only way you can ruin Christmas is by turning people against one another. And I hate to say it, sir, but that's exactly what you and Mr. O'Reilly seem so determined to do these days.

You and your colleagues obsess so much about the trappings of America's values (religious or political) that you would prefer those symbols over the very values themselves. You would throw away free speech to protect the flag. You would reject the Founders' determination to separate church and state rather than take a two-word McCarthy Era test oath out of the Pledge of Allegiance. And now, because you're so preoccupied about whether you're seeing the words "Merry Christmas" enough, you've gone and undermined the spirit of Christmas.

Isn't Christmas (isn't Christianity?) really about mutual tolerance and respect, about loving and caring for your brother, about emphasizing the things that unite people? Not for Fox News, apparently. For Fox News, Christmas is an opportunity to foment more political division — to take another shot at those nasty liberals. After all, at the moment the right wing is taking a beating on the issues that really matter.

So let's use Christmas — Christmas! — to get back at the left. Let's set up a straw man! Let's talk about how the left-wingers are coming to your house to take Christmas away. Let's get true-believing Christians nice and hopping mad, so we can turn them against the "secularists" and the Jews and the Moslems. Because, really, what is the meaning of Christmas if you're not dividing people and turning them against one another?

Your invocation of a "War on Christmas" is simply unconscionable, Mr. Gibson. And it's a misuse of your pulpit, or your broadcast booth . . . whatever you would have me call it.

The problem with mixing religion and politics is that you end up putting one to work for the other. It would be a shame if our government were subordinated to the goals of any one religion: as a result, we as Americans would forfeit our freedom of conscience. But that's not the problem I identify with you folks at Fox News. You folks have gone the opposite direction: you're using religion to press a political agenda — and as a result, you have lost your souls.

Here's an idea, Mr. Gibson: instead of spending your hours of airtime this season fighting to get America's department stores to change the lettering on their banners, why don't you use Christmas as an occasion to HELP PEOPLE? Why not use the time to press viewers to donate to the victims of Katrina? Or to the thousands of homeless in Pakistan who are expected to die without shelter this winter because of the earthquake?

Or is that sort of thing not "Christmasy" enough for Fox News?

[Phutatorius]

Ask FOX

2005-11-19T19:23:00.000-08:00

Dear FOX:

Your news network is monopolized by a bunch of fascists. And now you cancel Arrested Development. I'll never watch your lousy network again. And certainly don't count on me to buy anything from your deluded sponsors.

One creative, brilliant comedy on all of cable television, and you can't be bothered to show it. What — is there some vacuous reality program you can substitute on the cheap to spoon-feed the dead souls of this country? Maybe some more brain-pap vaudeville from Howie Long and Terry Bradshaw? Get your heads out of your butts. By conceding a half hour a week to sophisticated, quality programming, you had actually stood out among your peers. But I suppose continuing to exercise the minds of America would run counter to the mission of your 24-hour news channel, which calls for as thick and drooling an audience as possible.

You absolutely suck beyond redemption. I will work tooth and nail, through my life, to bring you down. I will buy out your miserable network, shut it down, and put every single person responsible for this decision out of work.

[Phutatorius]