I'm mostly a rational person, but I have my irrationalities.

Such as the fact that people singing in venues not generally intended for such -- regardless of how good they are -- makes me want to punch someone (generally them) in the face.

But today I'm here to talk about salespeople. Now, I don't have anything in the world against sales people. If they know what they're talking about it is a good thing for them to be around should I have a question.

However, when the store is set up in such a way that you absolutely can not make a purchase without dealing with a salesperson then their existence fills me with burning hatred. That is a large part of why we slept on the floor for four years before buying a bed. That is why we'll probably never own a house. That is why my total involvement in purchasing our car was essentially "yeah, ok, where do I sign?"

Added on top of this is the fact that I don't haggle. You post how much money you want me to pay for something and I either say yes or no. So if you want me to buy be honest in your pricing. If the expectation is that I'll say "$500?! That's robbery, I'll pay $300" then I'm already out the door. That is why we paid posted price for that bed we bought. And I'm ok with the fact that it was probably 20-30% more than we could probably have had. The posted price is something I was willing to pay. I don't care how much haggling is part of the culture in your little backward part of the world if you tell me your little knicknack is $25 then you're either selling it to me for $25 or you're not selling it at all.

All of this is a long way of saying that I really hate buying a new cell phone. You can't make a purchase without talking to a salesperson. They don't post the real price of anything (I don't want to know that the phone is only $4 if I sign a lifetime commitment and let Dan Hesse sleep with my wife. I'm not going to do that, so I really don't want to have to explain myself, explain that no I really don't want any of that stuff and please just sell me what I want.

So I get myself into the store, slowly get pissed off about the whole environment, decide that I'm just going to leave since my aggravation isn't worth it, piss off Lani in the process since from her point of view I'm being stupid, and then argue about it for 40 minutes. So, be warned, when I rule the world, as of today cell phone store salespeople are first in line for the guillotine.

I just listened to Obama's radio address and it included a line that irritates me in its sloppiness. Especially since it could be easily seized upon by those who will want to argue that he is trying to create a crisis atmosphere so that the Congress and public will go along with bad policy (I know, where were those people with their complaining in 2002?).

Direct quote:

"...our economy shrank by nearly 4% from October through December..."

This is simply wrong. Our economy did not shrink by 4% in that span, it shrank by about 0.95%. That is an annualized rate of 3.8% (or nearly 4).

I know that it isn't that big of a deal to most, but it irks me since so many people misunderstand that number when they hear it every quarter.

Of lesser annoyance is saying "almost 4%" when talking about a number where that 0.2% stretch represents losing an amount of economic output equal to the entire economy of Kenya or Costa Rica (4% would be more than the entire economy of Sweden).

PictureMail
Originally uploaded by obfusciatrist.

Concerning the previous picture of a jar of "preserved periwinkle meat" found on sale at our local Asian grocery. I am very glad to learn that what they call periwinkle is not the same thing I grew up calling periwinkle. They are referring to sea snails. Some may find that gross, but I am ok with it.

However, growing up in Washington, "periwinkles" were a type of fly larvae that we'd use as bait when trout fishing. This particular larvae uses some self-generated glue thing (think sticky slug) to encase itself in very small bits of river gravel and then attaches that to a rock on the bottom to pupate. We'd pluck them up, peel off the rocks and then use the fair sized larva as bait.

Needless to say, a jar of fly larvae didn't sound so good.