Another Stupid Blog

One of my favorite TV stars died today. Billy Mays, the man who shouted at you through your TV and gave you amazing new products and had the most perfectly-groomed beard in the world was found dead in his home this morning.

As of the time of me writing this, there is no confirmed cause of death, however most people are speculating that he may have sustained some sort of head trauma. On a flight to his home in Tampa, the tires on the plane blew out, causing some luggage to fall from the overhead bin and hit Billy Mays on the head.

Billy said that he felt fine, that it was just a bump and nothing more.

The FAA, however, is already trying to cover their ass by saying that Billy wasn’t wearing a seat belt.

Really? Billy Mays wasn’t wearing his seat belt? Well that’s fine and dandy, but does a seat belt really prevent luggage from hitting you in the head? No, not really. I don’t think the wearing of a seat belt would have any effect on the faulty landing gear.

Fuck the FAA. That’s bullshit. You don’t need to make excuses.

UPDATE: The FAA rep that reported that Billy Mays wasn’t wearing his seat belt is now denying the fact that she said it. According to TMZ:

Laura Brown, the FAA spokesperson who gave TMZ this quote about Billy Mays — “The passenger needs to wear a seat belt during landing and he didn’t” — now says she didn’t say it.

She now tells TMZ, “At this point in time, we cannot have any idea who was or wasn’t wearing their seat belt on the plane.”

Mays was one of the passengers aboard a plane that landed roughly at Tampa Airport yesterday. He told a local FOX affiliate he was hit on the head by falling items.

Go to hell, Laura Brown.

One thing that kind of haunts me is Billy Mays’ Twitter. His last tweet read: “Just had a close call landing in Tampa. The tires blew out upon landing. Stuck in the plane on the runway. You can always count on US Air.” It’s kinda surreal to see the last tweet he ever made.

Sayonara, Billy.

As I’ve mentioned to a few people, I’m back in an office situation where I kick back behind a keyboard and take calls all day long. Beats the shit out of stocking groceries.

The only gripe I have about my new job, however, is that it’s not tech support. It’s all customer service. No troubleshooting. Nothing’s broken.

What I do now is take calls for a prepaid debit card company. Essentially, I work for the guys your email addresses are all getting sold to (I have nothing to do with this, I swear).

Now, what my company does isn’t too bad, really. They get information from partner companies and then they send you a prepaid debit card in the mail. You can use it if you want. If not, no loss and you’ll never hear from us again.

One thing I’ve noticed, though, is that the majority of the people who rely on prepaid debit cards seem to be even worse than those that can’t figure out why their TV keeps saying “HIDEO”*. These are the people who can’t afford cable.

Not that there’s anything wrong with being poor. I’m pretty poor, myself. I’m bad with money and I’ve got a lot of debts I need to take care of.

However, I’m not stupid.

Well, maybe these people aren’t stupid, either. Maybe they’re just entirely desperate and ignorant.

See, most of the people who rely on prepaid cards are the same kind of people that need to apply for loans. Lots of loans. In fact, that’s how we got your information and sent you the card in the first place (loan companies send us your information).

Now, one thing that I’ve also noticed about these people is that they do not read the fine print. On anything. Ever. Let me explain.

These people will apply for loans left and right. Anything to get some easy money and slowly pay off ten times the loan over the course of fifty years.

One thing they fail to notice, however, is the terms and conditions of these lenders. More specifically, the part where you give them permission to take out random amounts of money from your bank account without permission, even without receiving a loan at all.

One particular lender, whose name I may include in this post later once I’m assured that they’re not affiliated with my employer (though rest assured, as soon as I find out that we do not do any business with them, I am calling them out immediately), has a bad habit of performing very illegal practices when it comes to stealing from you. Here’s how they do this.

• You go online to search for a loan to apply for
• You go through many applications; most of them deny you
• One of them has fine print which says that even if they deny you a loan, you give them permission to take money from your account
• You see $400 mysteriously vanish from your account
• You scream so many profanities that old ladies miles away vomit in disgust
• You call me

Here’s a little bit about how it works in detail. While you’re going through loan sites, chances are that you’re just entering in your information, mashing the “Submit” button, and hoping to see huge letters that says “APPROVED!” splashed all over your screen while a big fat check is being rush delivered to your doorstep.

In reality, you’re almost always being denied, but because you didn’t read nor agree to the terms and conditions and you checked the box that said “I have read and agreed to the terms and conditions”, you gave explicit permission for that lender to forward ALL OF YOUR INFORMATION TO ANYBODY ELSE THEY WANT TO.

They won’t even tell you who they give it to. They don’t have to. They said “We don’t have to”, and you agreed.

And it’s about this point in time you start to notice your life going entirely downhill from there.

So who does it get sent off to? Places like [NAME OMITTED], where they have your name, address, phone number, Social Security number, and even direct deposit information all at their disposal.

Most people would think that this isn’t enough for them to just steal money from you. But in fact, it is. Your direct deposit information is more important than even your SSN.

You see, direct deposit doesn’t just allow money to come into your account. It works both ways. You can take money from an account via direct deposit just as easily as you can deposit it. Most people don’t know this, and figure that it’s safe to enter freely over the internet.

It’s not safe. Never do this. Under any circumstances. Ever. Even if you read the fine print and actually agree to the terms and conditions, never do this. You are essentially forfeiting the rights to your bank account by doing this. Unless you work for the company and are expecting a paycheck, do not give them your direct deposit information.

So, now that they have your direct deposit information, they can easily stick their hands right into your pockets without needing to ask you and take whatever they want. This particular lender likes to randomly take $400 from accounts they have. I’ve searched around, and this seems to be a very frequent amount they withdraw.

Now, what they’re taking the money out for is generally an automatic payment to repay a loan you received. Or sometimes, didn’t receive.

More commonly than not, [NAME OMITTED] will never even give you the loan. You may have been denied from every loan you applied for and not received one red cent. Fuck, they don’t care. They have the key to your account, and they’ve got an office full of people who want to go to Chili’s for lunch.

Technically, this is stealing. You’re not authorizing them to do this, but in reality, you did check that tiny little box - which at this point is nothing but a vague memory - which allows them to do whatever the hell they want with your money.

I could go on and on about some of the rest of the shit these guys pull like how many of their methods for hunting down your information for new bank accounts you’ve opened and taking money from them without you explicitly giving them permission to use a new account, and I probably will at some point (I just barely started this job, and I can already tell that I’m going to have plenty more stories in the future), but for right now, let me leave you with a few pieces of advice.

1. If you can get approved for a bank account, use it. While yes, technically I’m saying “Don’t use my employer’s product”, I like to look out for people. If you have a use for a prepaid debit card, that’s great, but make sure you know what you’re doing before dedicating large amounts of money to it.
2. Do not go searching blindly on the internet for loans. Contact your card’s provider; chances are they partner up with lenders and can streamline the process without fucking you.
3. Payday loans are a bad idea, in general. If you really need money in a hurry, take something of value to a pawn shop. Seriously, they’re 99% less likely to hurt you than some shady internet lender you’ve never heard of.

At any rate, the new job isn’t all horror stories. I finally have a wireless headset, so I can explain to you how to check your account balance online while pouring a cup of coffee at the same time.

Ever notice the way the police try to clock your speed? Of course you haven’t noticed, you’re always going too fast to be paying attention to the police. Hence why they’re clocking your speed in the first place.

But for the sake of argument, let’s pretend you have no idea how they gauge your speed. They’ve got a device called a radar gun. It generally looks like this:

Fun fact: "RADAR" spelled backwards is "RADAR".

They point this device at your vehicle, and it determines how fast you’re rocketing down the highway.

Now obviously, there are some practical uses for a device like this. First and foremost, it keeps lunatics like you and me off of the road (I include you in this, because if you’re reading this, chances are you’ve probably got your own psychotic problems and I’ll fucking bet that your average speed in a residential zone is a healthy 90 MPH). It also can be used to measure the speed of baseballs, which is a lot more fun.

The way they use this, however, is totally goofy. Have you ever watched them clock a driver? It looks something like this:

Looks a lot like a pistol, doesn’t it? Given, that’s how you have to hold the radar gun in order to accurately clock somebody, but that doesn’t make it any less startling.

Picture this. Say you’re going down the freeway, and you see a cop sitting on the side of the road. You see something like this:

Well, actually, given that you’re needle is buried so far into your dash that you no longer have any way of estimating your speed, it’ll probably look more like this:

You gonna get shot

At the speed you’re at, it’s pretty hard to tell what that thing in the cop’s hand is. Is it a radar? Probably, that was a Crown Victoria with lights mounted on the top of it, so it’s obviously a cop, so it could be a radar. What if it’s a rogue cop? Is that a gun? Is he pointing a fucking gun at me? Why is he pointing a fucking gun at me? What did I do to deserve this?

It’s the unnecessarily paranoid thoughts like this that lead to my next thought. If you can kill a man in this country just because you thought he had a weapon and that your life was in danger (tons of people get killed by the over zealous because they were playing with airsoft or paintball guns), why has nobody taken it upon themselves to open fire on a cop with a radar gun?

I’m not advocating the shooting of police. I’m not saying that you should go out and shoot a cop. Please, don’t. There are good cops out there. You know, the ones actually reporting to real crimes.

However, I wouldn’t shed any tears if something happened to one of these pigs that has nothing better to do than sit on the side of the road where the speed limit isn’t posted (see: “Speed Trap”). These so-called “officers” aren’t serving or protecting. They’re just doing a job, trying to meet a quota.

They don’t care about you. They don’t care that you’re perfectly capable of driving five miles over the limit without putting anybody in any real danger. They don’t care that maybe you’re late for work (in fact, they’re just going to worsen that situation) and that your family will go hungry and homeless if you lose this job. They don’t care that you might very well have an emergency and are rushing somebody to the hospital. They don’t care that the speed limit drops 20 MPH at the bottom of a steep hill where gravity has taken complete control over the speed of your vehicle. The don’t care about you. They don’t care about you. They don’t care about you. They don’t care about you.

So I say fuck ‘em. If they look threatening and you  feel that you’re in danger, open fire. This goes for civilians, military, and law enforcement officials.

Speaking of the term “law enforcement officials”, what makes them so official? Generally when somebody is an official representative of a group of people or a concept, aren’t they usually elected by the people they either represent or will have control over? We elect mayors, governors, chairpersons, and sometimes we elect a president when they let us. But the police aren’t elected. They’re not even appointed. They just fill out a fucking job job application.

Know where else you can get a job and do nothing but be a worthless sack of shit and piss off the general public that requires nothing other than the ability to write your name on a piece of paper?

I don't care if I'm not handicapped, I still take the automated scooter-cart.

And the funny part is that the IQ requirement for the job is just about the same.

I can respect police officers. I can respect cops. I can respect the fuzz. I can respect the heat. I can respect the 5-o. But fuck pigs.

Somewhat inspired by the “My hobby” series on xkcd, I’m going to share some of my random hobbies.

When having a conversation with somebody and they’re trying to keep eye contact, I will shift my focus from their left eye to their right, and vice versa, every time they blink.

I’ve been doing this since I was at least seven years old, and I’ve only been called out on it twice. Once by a girlfriend who couldn’t stand me screwing around with our eye contact when we were arguing (kudos to her for noticing it in such times of frustration, too), and once by a high school nurse (I had a bloody nose, and she put together a bleeding nose and twitching eyes and accused me of being high on cocaine).

I had written a rather lenghty post about a particular person who does some really stupid shit and was going to call them out on it and be my regular jackass-self.

But then I decided that right now isn’t the best time to tempt karma, so I deleted the entire post I spent about four hours researching this prick for.

You’re welcome, asshole.