Phone Companies

Verizon Wireless and, at least as I'm told by one of their CSRs, T-Mobile and all the other big boys have instituted a policy. If one changes anything in her contract*, as one must if one gets a PDA (there's a mandatory minimum $30 data plan for all PDAs, at least at Verizon, and I'm sure T-Mobe has something very similar), one goes from paying after each month to paying before each month, which means that the month of the change brings a double bill. Now one can supposedly get this money back by ending the contract. Of course the only way to do this without an exorbitant early termination fee is to wait out that two year contract that paid for one's new phone after one's old phone happened to stop working properly 1.5 years into one's old contract. Supposing, of course, that one doesn't lose or break one's phone at some point in the next two years (and the insurance one pays every month, by the way, doesn't cover one for the things that actually happen to one's phone 92% of the time). And then, of course, even if one does make it through those two years and gets one's money rebated to her, you'll have to use it, and probably more, as the start up cost for your new contract with anyone else. And yeah, one could go to Cricket, if one doesn't care about not having service 25%-75% of the time, depending on where one lives.

Why does Verizon do this to their customers despite the fact that Nextel/Sprint , Tmobile, AT&T and Verizon are all being sued for forming a virtual trust with one another and are being reviewed by government panels for other corrupt practices as well? Well, my guess is that several upper middle aged white men in nice suits got together, had some scotch and some cigars and then decided to laugh at and spit on the faces of their customers by basically making them pay the legal fees with what amounts to raping their customers into lending them $30-$80 dollars a head, a loan for which the vast majority will never be paid back.

*Why do they wait until you change your contract? Otherwise, we'd all notice, and what they're doing would be quite clear and quite clearly unacceptable. In other words, they wouldn't be able to make an "explanation of monthly access charges" section that looks like this:

Monthly Access Charges These are your fixed monthly charges that are based on your Plan and Optional Services. If you change your plans or services during the month, an adjusted charge that includes partial month charges or credits, may appear on your bill.

$106.52

America's Choice 450 Refund 08/08 - 08/25	-23.22
Nationwide Basic 450 08/08 - 08/25	23.22
Nationwide Basic 450 08/26 - 09/25	39.99
Current Data Plan 08/08 - 08/25	17.41
Current Data Plan 08/26 - 09/25	29.99
WPP Insurance - Asurion 08/26 - 09/25	4.99
Extended Warranty 08/08 - 08/25	1.16
Extended Warranty 08/26 - 09/25	1.99
Ringback Tones 08/26 - 09/25	.99
500 MSG Allowance + Unl IN MSG - Refund 07/26 - 08	-10.00
500 MSG Allowance + Unl IN MSG 07/26 - 08/25	10.00
500 MSG Allowance + Unl IN MSG 08/26 - 09/25	10.00

Let's Have A Little Chat About Overpopulation

Now that this little "Green" thing has taken off and people are starting to realize that "saving the Earth" is about self-interest and not about "loving the Earth", it's about time to go the next step. We have to start on, that's right, population REDUCTION.

As a general rule of thumb, the least you can do is to limit yourself to one or fewer biological offspring. By all means, adopt the hell out of more! Seriously, if you really want to reduce your "carbon footprint" and every other measurement of pollution and waste, you have to stop breeding. Otherwise, you're increasing the problems of the world exponentially. If we don't do this voluntarily, Nature will do this anyway, and Nature will do it in ways we won't find pleasant (i.e. starvation, natural disaster, polar ice caps melting us into an ice age, not enough water to go around, suffocation on dirty air, etc.) In fact, many people around the world are already finding this out first hand, mostly due to our (American's) over consumption. All of our over consumption literally already makes us murderers through our ignorance, greed, and disregard.

Anyway, you should strongly consider having no children at all if you are not an extremely valuable member of the human race, and I find that a surprisingly high, though certainly not nearly high enough, number of you know who you are. I mean anyone in the 90th percentile, an IQ below about 125, please, please, consider condoms. The government should really pay for sterilization and birth control for these people, but we all need to start doing our part in the meantime.

Of course the best thing you can do is to kill yourself, or if that's a bit too harsh for you, at least sign a DNR and refuse medical treatment for degenerative diseases such as cancer and diabetes. You'll be much happier for your remaining years if you can eat your Cocoa Puffs, I'm sure.

It turns out the "bad guys", the gang in the silly Mormon film from the late 1970s, Saturday's Warrior, were right on when they sang "Zero population is the answer my friends - without it the rest of us are doomed!" Except of course, at this point, zero population isn't going far enough.

Here are some videos on the topic:

First, a charming, simple explanation of some of the problems involved:

Only the first few minutes of this one are about overpopulation, though the whole of it is interesting: