Shipping irk:
Hello internet companies. I am ordering shit from you. This implies I have income, which suggests I have a job. One might suspect that I don’t want to take a day off to sit at home and wait for the package. One would suspect correctly. And yet your best advice is “ship it to a friend or relative that lives nearby.”? Figure out a real solution to the problem and get back to me.
Language irk:
The phrase “ethnic cleansing” offends me deeply. Partially because it’s bureaucratic weasel language for “genocide”. “Genocide” sounds bad, because it is. There’s nothing wrong with “ethnic”, and some might argue “cleansing” is a good word. Genocide doesn’t deserve pretty language to cover up for it. Let alone pretty language that validates the underlying viewpoint of those who practice it. When someone uses the phrase “ethnic cleansing”, correct them, and tell them to say what they mean.
ship it to work??
I can field this one!
If I wanted to cart that fucking thing home on the subway, I probably would’ve picked it up from a brick-and-mortar store.
<-- experiences verbal catharsis
“Enlightening?”
“Homogonizing?”
“Sorting?”
“Iraq?”
“Retrodiversification?”*
“Voting Republican?”
*-I like this one.
Assimilation!
It’s not just shipping though. Think cable company, exterminator, bulding super, Housing Department, some doctor’s offices. Most places only have 9-5 and assume everyone gets PTO and wants to waste it on them. The lease they could do is provide something like a two-hour window, so you don’t have to miss a whole day. Fuckers.
Hah, never thought of it that way. Will do from now on 🙂
I have whined vociferously about this issue many times before. Though it wasn’t until reading your post that the following occured to me: for UPS and the cable company, at least, the hours may well be written into the union contract.
Ethnic cleansing
My reaction to the term “ethnic cleansing” has generally been to find it more disturbing than the term genocide. I’m not really sure what the motivation for this reaction is. Maybe it’s the dishonesty in addition to the brutality, but something seems really creepy about referring to elimination, or at least removal, of a whole category of people as “cleansing”.
*shudder*
Bacteria. Native Americans. Dirt. Muslims.
They all have the same value, right?
RE: Shipping Irk
Thank you!
Grr.
Rebut!
Sometimes there’s no “-cide” in the cleansing. Sometimes it’s just deportation (viz. Georgians) or terror to drive people from a territory. Or sterilization. So, yeah, maybe a better word, but people are a lot more creative and can think of plenty of non-lethal ways to get the job done.