Still Here: Once an Optimist, Often a Realist, Presently Evolving

378 days have elapsed since my last post. For those of you who follow me (are there any of you left?), you'll know I've had some tribulations in the last two years – mostly health-related. And to say that these past two years have deeply affected my soul/spirit/chi is quite an understatement. Even more of an understatement is that my drive towards enlightenment and my appreciation of different worldviews has undergone even more of a radical transformation. This blog – the entirety of my dialogue with the public – was intended to be a intersection of important ideas and critical thinking. A place I could share my thoughts as philosophy, and elicit yours as learning points. For a while, it worked – and was gaining traction and depth. My ideas were out there, people were responding (publicly and privately), and the world of the Frank Spot was coalescing as I'd hoped. So much has happened since then, and so much of me has changed, that I had all but abandoned it. I knew my Katra had become so out of sync with the world that it was hard to hope for any connection. And I always wanted and hoped to connect.

I've often pondered the difference between a philosopher and someone who just spouts off about ideas he thinks are better than those of the general masses. It's a tough nut to crack. Historically speaking, the only differences seem to be that:

1. Philosophers retain gentler airs than loudmouths (even under "fire," so to speak);


2. Philosophers have new and different ways of looking at things, that often fail to coincide with mainstream OR fringe thinking, and;


3. At some future point, usually once a person has been published, widely read and debated, and often already died, others/history confer the title of Philosopher upon him. (It also seems to help if the person is destitute while plying his trade; living openly off of friends and family, and on coins dropped into a pail at his roadside pulpit...)

Ultimately, this suggests pretty strongly that you can't self-dub and be seen as a philosopher. I strove regularly for the first, and felt I often surmounted the second...but I fell short on the third. I'm not widely read and debated, I'm not poor, and I haven't died yet; most importantly, nobody else has referred to me as a philosopher. So I guess I'll call that my root error. I have, therefore, withdrawn my application to the society of acknowledged philosophers, and already started penciling the phrase, "Just Another Guy with an Unusual Opinion" at the top of my { frank } :: { philosopher } stationary.

{ frank } Defrocked

Now, even though the philosopher door is closed, I still have opinions and ideas based on (what I'd call) my uniquely apt, ongoing critical analysis of everything. And in emulation of true philosophers, I feel that these ideas and opinions constitute "truths" which can withstand the weight of the heaviest scrutiny, and the most rigorous debunking. Hence, I still have stuff to write about. But again, Frank the author is much angrier and more out of phase with the world – I no longer care if anyone does any additional analysis of the world, or if they use my words as an invitation to self discovery. I'm just going to blog from time to time, and let the population churn as it will. In time, I may reach someone, or even posthumously attain a title of visionary, prophet, or my initially coveted philosopher. If not, oh well. A fully diminished { frank } is still frank...

Why a New Post (or: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to this Post)

On Friday, I did something here that was an absolute first: I deleted a comment someone made on one of my posts. I've never done or felt the need to do that before. I've seen some lively debate here, but it trended towards civility in tone and word choice, even when the comments were harsh and heavy barrages against my ideas. This unnamed commenter was an ass. His post was everything I despise about the world of internet posters: it was directly insulting to me, sexist towards women, included few correctly spelled words or valid punctuation, and was grammatically equivalent to things written by my daughter's kindergarten classmates. So, I deleted it. And I'm happy about it. New { frank }, new rules: sell nastiness and incivility someplace else.

But, in the spirit of full disclosure, I have to admit that the nasty post I deleted was what actually crystallized the final content of this post. It was the final push I needed to move these brewing ideas from brain to screen. So here we are...

Twenty-One Things I Know (That You Should Know Too)

I think the world is full of unwritten rules, and knowledge that's supposed to be common but really isn't. I think this discontinuity is at the heart of many societal ills. So I've cobbled together 21 morsels of wisdom/critique that should resonate for anyone still interested in trying to build a better world. I've kept them pretty bare for now. It's up to whoever stumbles upon them to decide if, how, and why to expand and use them. But be assured, despite my damaged psyche, I believe I have stumbled onto some fundamental truths here; they could be game-changers if seen or redelivered by the right few people.

1. Being angry/outraged/shocked/hurt doesn't automatically mean that your opinion on the matter is the right one. You can be "wronged" by decisions/laws/others' personal choices that are logical, rational, and the "right" thing to do for the majority.


2. The adult population of the United States is MUCH larger than most people realize; so even when 100,000 people on the internet agree with you on something, you are not necessarily part of the majority. Try to remember this the next time you get ready to start a revolution, boycott a business, or burn down a building.


3. In matters of opinion: for every person who believes something, there is a very strong possibility/likelihood that there are plenty of others who believe the exact opposite thing.


4. Believing "something else" doesn't make somebody evil or corrupt. If it does, then you're corrupt and evil too.


5. Not all Republicans are rich people, and not all rich people are Republicans. (Hello, Hollywood! I'm looking at you...)


6. Fairness doesn't favor one side/person over another, and doesn't take more from or give more to anyone; in best practice, fairness imparts equality and the uniform treatment of others, and the uniform disbursement of rights/benefits. If there are ten people and ten one dollar slices of pizza, the only fair division is one slice per person, at a cost of one dollar per slice. It is not "fair" to tell the fat person to take only a half a piece, and give a skinny person one and a half pieces. It's also not fair to ask anyone to pay more than a dollar for his slice so somebody else can pay less. This relates directly to:


7. The United States uses a progressive income tax code; people who make more, pay more. People who don't make enough (roughly 50% of us) pay absolutely nothing. If you're arguing fairness, this is basically wrong – it means that many people are getting something (government service) for nothing. Everyone who gets something should pay something. Many people try to argue this by pointing out that poor people pay other kinds of tax; but other kinds of tax are not income tax, and the debate is about income tax. In the current world, everyone pays sales tax and such; but where all rich people pay some income tax, many non-rich people don't.


8. There are about 55 million registered Republicans and 72 million registered Democrats at last count. That means there are 22% more Democrats than Republicans. This does not constitute a "vast majority" of the population, and Democrats should stop pretending it does. It means that there are roughly four Republicans for every five Democrats. There are also about 42 million registered Independents, who, when voting, can easily change the outcome if all the Democrats and Republicans vote the party line.


9. Anyone can look so closely at a problem that they can believe they are right about its nature, scope, causes, and solution. This is great way to feel absolutely right about something, but still be completely wrong.


10. Most people are ignorant about hate. They imagine and project hate onto candid statements of simple disagreement, honest retellings of personal beliefs, or others' adherence to almost any kind of principle; then they absolve or deny it when it comes from someone with a compatible point of view. Not-so-ironically, the people who cry "hate" the loudest and most often tend to be the ones whose words best fit the hate template.


11. It's wrong to be uncivil, no matter who you are, or what side of a debate you're on.


12. Keeping your promises and sticking to your principles is an inherently good thing; it's not good only when your champion does it, and bad when someone else's champion does it. Remember this next time your least favorite politician keeps a promise.


13. Compromise doesn't mean that you get everything you want, and the other guy only gets a little of what he wants. Furthermore, not every principle or idea lends itself to compromise. Reread number 12 for clarity.


14. If you can't afford it, or don't know how you're going to pay for it, you shouldn't buy it. This goes for the individual, the corporation, and the government. Don't ask/expect the government to give you something it can't afford to pay for, no matter how important a thing you think it is.


15. Corporate tax loopholes and outsourcing are basically bad. However, the big companies that benefit from these things also tend to employ a lot of Americans. Don't mess it up for them because you're angry about their company's profits or practices. If that "hated" corporation packs up shop, a lot of American people will lose their livelihoods (and possibly their houses, cars, families, etc...) And there's one less company to hire you next time you're out of work.


16. There are a lot of great and noble ideas out there, and most of them will never give rise to anything.


17. Most opinion polls are irrelevant. They are not a good representation of anything EXCEPT the opinions of those polled. Remember what I wrote above: the population is huge. We should never trust that the opinions of 1000 people could accurately stand in for the beliefs and leanings of 350 million people. Divide 1000 by 350 million – all those zeroes between the decimal point and the two should tell you something.


18. The internet makes people believe they have more complete information than they really do, and that they are in the majority when they really aren't.


19. Ridiculing someone's faith or deeply held spiritual beliefs (such as believing in a God or the teachings of the Bible/Torah/Koran) is wrong, childish, and mean. And let's face it: until you die, you really won't know what's true anyway.


20. The law is not a collection of guidelines and suggestions; you are expected to obey them all. You do not actually have a "right" to choose which ones to obey. Sadly, a vast number of people seem to do so anyway.


21. The country is in a bad way because of the people in it – politicians and the general public alike. We take when we should give, want more than we deserve, horde what we should share, ridicule what we disagree with or don't believe in, and think much too highly of ourselves. And we are still surprised at the bad, immoral, and destructive behaviors that are borne of those traits.

I'm out.

"There are cemeteries that are lonely,
graves full of bones that do not make a sound,
the heart moving through a tunnel,
in it darkness, darkness, darkness,
like a shipwreck we die going into ourselves,
as though we were drowning inside our hearts,
as though we lived falling out of the skin into the soul."

- Pablo Neruda, Nothing But Death

I've been gone for while: by my count, it's been 362 days – just short of year – since I last put text to screen. I'd like to say I've been busy with some fulfilling new project, or pursuing some long-delayed dream; but in fact, dear readers, my blogging – indeed my life – was interrupted by the thing Neruda is talking about above. Not long after I wrote my last post, I, your humble narrator (with props to Anthony Burgess and the parlance of Alex DeLarge), nearly shuffled off this mortal coil, in a series of events that were real horrowshow. In the aftermath of that, I haven't had the inkling, energy, or fortitude to write anything. I've been surviving. And without going deeply philosophical, things start to look different when you viddy your own expected-but-untimely end. Writing this blog takes a chunk of my spirit that I simply haven't had to give. I don't really have that spirit now, but as I approach the one-year mark with nothing but silence here, I thought I should at least take a moment to mark it, and give those of you who read me a brief explanation-cum-apology. I hope it's enough.

I'd also like to thank those who've continued to check back, or stumbled upon me through Google, or through other sites to which I've posted; especially those who've taken the time to comment. I created this place to share my philosophy and views, and to invoke yours. I'm always glad when someone joins the dialogue. That said, I've spent the last week perusing new comments, and without trying to spin it – or even be particularly open-minded – I've realized anew that there are too many people out there who love to comment without speaking to the specific issues in a post, and who dodge every actual question at the core of a debate, and who do both with malice and aggression. For those people, I have a special condemnation, courtesy of my yearlong odyssey, and the scar it has etched into my drive to become enlightened:

YOU are the people I rail against: you are the people that ruin the world. You, with your prefab, narrow-minded, unshakable ideas, who don't engage in a conversation, but try to overpower it; you, who attack under the guise of contributing, and think bullying is akin to sharing; you, who lambaste others for not seeing things your way, or for having the audacity to publish thoughts or pursue agendas that run counter to yours; you, who litter the world with shameful nonsense, and claim that those who do not agree are willfully ignorant, stupid, or lazy; you, who breed hate, contempt, and intolerance, all while ignoring the rules of kind society, and the basest needs of your fellow man; you, who thwart humanity's evolution and enlightenment by turning the world into an ideal- and soul-crushing meat grinder; you, who spread hate, and take without giving, and consume to the point of wastefulness; you, who want to be heard and have the world change to suit you, but who would never suffer the same for others; you, who can't muster enough guilt or regret to even contemplate an apology, much less work to change for the better. You are the people who, even when my spirit is strong, make it hard for me write here. And make it hard for me to do more than survive.

The Future of the FrankSpot

So, is there still a blog here? I just don't know. As I said above, there's a lack of spirit in me now. And although there's a lot to blog about – including many interesting tidbits I'd love to share about the sorry state of doctors and medicine in this country – I'm barely treading water in my quest to provide for those I love, and lamenting much of what I've lost this past year. So, for now, I think the FrankSpot is still on hiatus. But:

My best to all the good people out there. I hope you find what you're looking for.

A few months back, I published The List – my unabashed, profanity-laced diatribe on all things irritating. It was a fantastically satisfying exercise – an anger-releasing orgasm that left me with a month-long afterglow of self-satisfaction and general sense of rightness in the world. It felt so good, that by the time I wrote my closing, I was fairly certain there’d be more volumes. The many visitors who grokked what I put to page only fed my certainty, and I immediately started a new cache of hastily scribbled post-it notes detailing my daily frustrations. So, even though there are plenty of real issues I could devote my fingers to typing, I’m taking a detour back to The List with hopes of another teeth-rattling release. So here we are, with the second volume of things that really tick me off; a proverbial beatdown of minor irritants which, when added together, make my life suck more than it should.

And another disclaimer:

Warning: (Really) Adult Language Ahead

In my last post, I issued a semi-adult language warning. Then I used the f-word about 900 times, often accounting (in some form) for 40-50% of any sentence’s content. So, clearly, there was nothing semi there. With that in mind, I amend my warning: I intend to swear at least as much in this volume. My profanity will be in noun, verb, adverb, and adjective forms, and will spew unapologetically across the page. If you don’t like that kind of harsh language, stop at the end of this paragraph and go look at my Goulash Recipe. The rest of you: welcome back, and I hope you enjoy. And I hope you’ll add more of your own world gripes. Misery likes company, and my blog LOVES comments.

See you on the other side.

The List (continued, and in no particular order)

Who/What: The Cancel Button on any Printer
Why: Oh, my fucking God! When I press cancel, don't print another thing. Don’t print the whole document, don’t print half a page and then stop, and for the love of God and all that is holy, don’t print 400 one-line-of-garbage-at-the-top-of-each-page pages. Stop immediately! That means right fucking now! Whoever designed this button should be strapped to the paddle wheel on a river boat and churned from New Orleans to Japan.

Who/What: Ronald D. Moore (Warning: Spoilers ahead!)
Why: Battlestar Galactica’s last episode. Are you kidding me with this shit? That was your idea for a good ending? The bad guy gives up and shoots himself, the main character vanishes without any explanation of what the fuck she was, and the last remnants of the human race discard their technology and wander off to mate with cavemen? Forget the freakin’ plot holes you never closed – some of which were big enough to drive the Galactica itself through – this was just bad writing. I wanted to drive to your house and slap you. Seriously. I’m glad your next pilot flopped. I bet you pissed off the network executives as much as you did me.

Who/What: The Folks Who Loved and/or Defended the Aforementioned Finale.
Why: Well, you’re either stupid suck-ups or pretentious pricks, or both. Line up behind Moore, assholes, the slaps are coming your way next.

Who/What: Bands that Release CDs Without Lyrics in the Liner Notes
Why: It’s 2009! How do you not get this? People want to know what you’re saying. So much so that there are entire web sites devoted to translating your drunken, mushmouthed ramblings into readable text. Save us the hassle, and the embarrassment that comes when we sing the wrong lyrics around someone who knows the right ones. I’m giving you $15 for 15 songs. Spend the 1/10 of a cent on ink and print the freakin' words.

Who/What: Ron Livingston (Actor – Band of Brothers, Office Space)
Why: Put your fucking eyebrow down, jerkwad. Jeez.

Who/What: RoadRunner Web Mail
Why: Where is the Goddammed Empty Trash button? Are you telling me that nobody has mentioned that it’s missing from your interface? I shouldn’t have to delete messages from a folder, then go to the Deleted Items folder and delete them again. Every other fucking mail client on the planet has an Empty Trash feature. Get with the freakin' program, jerkholes!

Who/What: Joss Whedon, Screenwriter of Alien 4
Why: I know Ripley was being kind putting all of those other half-formed/mutant clones out of their interminable misery, but shooting them with a flamethrower is not the best or most humane way to do it. Yeah, it’ll end their suffering...with excruciating pain (a proverbial cherry on top!). "Hey, mutants! You thought you were in agony before, and it couldn’t be any worse? How about bathing in 1400 degree napalm for a few minutes as you die?" Writing a flamethrower-based mercy killing is just plain wrong. Shame on you, Joss.

Who/What: People my Pants Size
Why: You fuckers have been thwarting me for 25 years now, and I’m tired of having to shop for two fucking weeks in 17 freakin' stores to find one pair of jeans in my size. I mean come on – when I was a 30/30, I could only find 28/30 or 32/30. When I was 32/30, all I could find are the 30/30s I always needed. It’s like you’re following me through my exact nutrition/exercise/weight gain pattern, but just happen to leave the house five minutes before me. Stop it, Goddamn it! I need some freakin' pants!

Who/What: Unclear Windows System Messages (No matter what software makes them pop up)
Why: Here's another Oh, My Fucking God! I don’t know what SVCHOST or RUNDLL32 are, so how the fuck do I know whether they should have access to the internet through my firewall, or whether I should force quit them when they stop responding? How about telling me something useful, like which program is using those things? I’m not sure who to blame for this one, but who ever you are: fuck you, and your grandchildren, pets, neighbors, and anyone who serves you spit-free food in a restaurant.

Who/What: Elevator "Close Door" Buttons
Why: What the fuck? There weren’t any more jobs in the printer cancel button business, so you moved on to elevators? Don’t give me a button that doesn’t work, dickwads, or that only works in some elevators. Go back to every elevator you ever designed and make them work. In fact, just to pay me back, I want an additional Turbo Close button that will bisect a 700 pound man in less than a second, and get me to my floor before the bloody torso stops twitching.

Who/What: Kellogg's Frosted Mini Wheats (also good for any other flavor-coated foods or snacks)
Why: Listen to me very carefully, brain trust: if the wheat biscuit comes through without frosting, it isn’t a fucking Frosted Mini-Wheat. Send it back and spray it again. That includes the ones that were on their side, or went under the clogged nozzle. If you didn’t know, eating an un-frosted Mini Wheat is akin to eating a fucking Brillo pad. It’s called quality control, jerkwads. Do some.

Who/What: The Fucking NY State Lottery/Mega Millions
Why: Pay attention, stingy lottery gods: I’m tired of going to work, missing every sunny day, and never having enough cash to rent a fucking DVD. And I’m especially tired of seeing other people win. It’s my turn. No more “I never play the lottery, but I grabbed a ticket when I went to buy myself some Skoal and a Diet Mountain Dew on the way back to my mobile home” winners. In fact, no more fucking wins for other people at all until I win – they’re probably all pedophiles and atheists, and should never, never have access to big money.

Who/What: Democrats Who Know How to Comment on the Internet
Why: What a whiny bunch of know-it-all childish pukes you are. You make us all look bad. So just shut the fuck up. And when you do have something to say, try using good grammar, proper spelling, the correct fucking words, and some punctuation. The only thing worse than an obnoxious computer-savvy Dem, is one who writes like a retarded 5th grader. In fact, I bet it was you who designed all those cancel and close buttons. Fuckers...

Who/What: Sam’s Club
Why: What kind of sadistic mother fuckers sell me something for six months, get me hooked on it, and then NEVER FUCKING SELL IT AGAIN? Oh, there’s a special place in Hell for you, my friends – and I guarantee you it will be a place where the close and cancel buttons don’t work, and every Windows message is too obscure to be of any use.

Who/What: Television Stations
Why: Stop putting extraneous promotional shit on the screen when I’m watching a show. I want to see the entirety of the image, not clever graphics for other shit I’m never going to watch. And I already know what show I’m watching, and what channel it’s on. Stop telling me, “You’re watching 24 on Fox.” Really? I thought I was watching fucking Madagascar on PLEX! And another thing: let me see the fucking credits. I waited 45 minutes to find out who played that hot freakin' waitress or who sang that great song – don’t scrunch up the screen, run the credits at turbo speed, or tilt the whole thing to one side. And don’t fucking talk over the music/end jokes/epilogues/previews. Wow, that’s annoying.

Who/What: Town/County Tax Assessors
Why: $189,000? For my house? In 2009? Are you fucking kidding me? Did you pull that number out of your ass while you were sucking down martinis in Boca? Have you ever actually seen my house? Have you read about the economy? Are you fucking blind, deaf, and stupid? And don’t tell me I have to prove my house value is down. Is my house in some kind of magical fucking bubble where it’s unaffected by everything else that’s happening in the world? Of course it’s down, you prick. Pick up the paper, turn on the TV or the radio, or talk to any person in earshot. Know what they’ll tell you? Housing values are down, you pig-headed moron! Start cutting people’s assessments.

Who/What: Cottonwood Trees (and the people who own them)
Why: Holy fucking Christ! Does my entire ½ acre have dandruff? Why does anyone even have these freakin' trees? And I’m not just talking about my neighbor who has a forty foot tall cottonwood that hangs over my yard and craps so much white fluffy shit that it looks like ten flocks of birds got sucked into a jet engine 30 feet above my house (Karma will get you one day, my friend; if not karma, then Ripley with her flamethrower). No! In fact, it snowed cotton for a month in my town. Rise up, comrades! Burn those fucking trees down! Every one of them! I don’t care if the species goes extinct. It’s time to take back our lawns!

Who/What: Smokers
Why: Hey, assholes! The can is right there! It’s less then three feet away. What kind of lazy motherfucker are you that you can’t walk three feet to the can? Stop throwing your still-smoldering butts on the ground. And for those of you who smoke in your car: first, close your fucking windows – you wanted smoke, why are you letting it out? And second, there’s a place in your car to throw your ash and butts, dicklicks - use it! What’s that? You don’t want it in you car? Oh, I see. Then what the fuck makes you think I want it on my lawn, or bouncing off my car while I drive behind you? I’m a non-smoker for a reason, dipshits. And a special shout out for those bonus-sized assholes who bury their butts in the sand in the beach. You are absolute gems among human beings – I’m gonna tell Ripley to use a lower heat setting when she puts you down with her flamethrower.

Who/What: Advocates of Pretty Much Anything that isn’t Yet Mainstream or Legal
Why: What a self-important, self-serving, blind bunch of assholes you are. I know I speak for the majority when I say, "Oh, my God, shut the fuck up!" We don’t agree with you, and we don’t want to hear it. And what’s more, even if we don’t have strong feelings about your cause, I guarantee that your obnoxiousness will turn us against you. So to be clear: shut up and go fuck yourselves sideways in whichever holes make you most uncomfortable and have the highest risk of bruising.

Epilogue

Well, that’s it. I burned like 10,000 calories worth of angst and anger there; and yes, the language was pretty strong, and awfully harsh. I’m not usually an “in for a penny, in for a pound” guy, but this is a pretty faithful example of that. I’ll be writing a serious post at some point in the near future, so look for it.

Peace out, y’all.

If you read The List in February, you’ll know I take issue with bad retail practices (among many other things!). As I consider our failing economy – and specifically, the frothing nightmare that is now the retail industry – I can’t help but make one obvious observation:

American retail sucks.

Now I know that last word is kind of harsh, and unsophisticated, but every other word I typed at the end of that sentence couldn’t capture the overall “suckiness” I’m here to describe. So, I stand by it, and ask your indulgence as I write on...

So far this year, I've read more than two dozen stories (and countless more headlines) about the state of the retail industry and its effect on the flagging economy. Retail businesses are failing at an alarming rate, and consumer confidence is at a near-historic low. Economists know that a healthy retail industry is a key component in any kind of national economic recovery, but they rarely address issues in the industry itself. Instead, they talk about broad economic and employment trends that only factor slightly into the health of the industry: rising unemployment and gas prices, failing lenders and credit card companies, sudden inflation, and people saving for rainy days (or downright hoarding). They never – well, I should probably say, almost never – fix the blame where it belongs: on the shoulders of the many retailers and manufacturers who just don’t “get it.” You know – the businesses that suck. If you want to understand why consumer confidence is so low, perhaps it's time to look more closely at them. That's what I'm doing here.

To make it easy, I’m going to focus on three personal retail nightmares: replacing a worn-out cell phone battery; buying replacement supplies for two of my daughter’s toys; and trying to buy some strawberry ice cream. I have hundreds that I could write about, but I thought I’d start with a small, recent cross-section. As you can probably tell from the title, I expect this to be the first in a series of retail-critical posts. Not only do I have a huge backlog of nightmares to share, but I’m still shopping, which means plenty of new opportunities for retail suckiness and future posts.

Oh, and if you’re wondering what the heck a SpotShot is, it’s something I’ve been toying with for a while. It’s a play on “pot shot” that I've decided to use whenever I want to rant about a minor (or semi-minor) thing, and want to do it in a not-completely-serious way. The health and well-being of the retail industry isn’t exactly minor, but my concerns don’t necessarily speak to some greater purpose or philosophical truth. It’s gears-grinding with a message. So let’s get to it!

LG Electronics: The Cell Phone Battery Debacle

Let’s talk cell phone batteries. Back in summer 2007 – just under 2 years ago – I renewed my family's Cingular contract, and bought three brand new cell phones. It was time to upgrade phones, and since I was already planning to keep my existing service provider, it seemed a minor inconvenience to sign a new three-year contract – especially since it would secure three below-retail-price cell phones (one for me, one for my wife, and one for my mom). I shopped hard, and finally settled on the LG CU500. It’s an amazing phone: does lots of cool stuff, sounds good, looks mod, easy to use. Overall, a pleasing purchase. And with the signup discount, they cost me about $50 apiece, much lower than the $350 price for a non-contract-upgrade-related purchase. I walked away quite satisfied.

Fast forward fifteen months:

My phone battery started losing its charge. Or, more precisely, it started burning through its charge in an unusually short period of time. When it was new, the phone would stay charged for three or four days with moderate call volume, a few picture snaps, and a couple hours of MP3 playback. Pretty good performance, and one that was duplicated on my wife’s and mother’s sibling phones. (And remember, these are three identical phones – so the comparisons in performance and expectation is appropriate.) I thought it was odd, but I wasn’t that concerned. Batteries age, and manufacturing differences can affect the life of any specific battery. But when the problem got to be – well, problematic – I decided it was time to buy a new battery. (This is a key point of my story – I wasn’t looking for warranty replacement, or reimbursement, or any kind of compensation. I just wanted to buy a new battery.) So, I went to Best Buy, where I bought the phone, and learned that since the phone was fifteen months old, replacement batteries weren’t going to be an off-the-shelf thing. Apparently cell phones turn over quickly, and it doesn’t make a lot of sense to stock them, or their parts, for very long. Not a big deal, especially when the salesman told me that batteries usually outlasted their phones. Fine. So I went to Radio Shack, then the Cingular store. Still, nothing – same set of reasons too. But again, I was okay with it. The Cingular rep suggested going online to buy one, so I headed home and fired up my browser. My first stops? My favorite shopping sites: Amazon, NewEgg, Buy.com, Overstock. These four sites came up blank. No such thing as a replacement battery for this phone. Curious… Next stop: the Cingular site. Again, nothing. Also odd. Final stop: LG. They’ll obviously have one, right? They make and sell the darn phone. But the result was surprising: a stunning, inexplicable nothing! What’s this? The folks who make the phone don’t have replacement batteries for sale? Huh? Headsets…cases…solar chargers? But no batteries? How can that be? Where’s that “contact us” link?

Even after all this, I still wasn’t annoyed. I was baffled that I could buy a solar charger for my existing battery, but not a new battery. So I wrote a quick note to customer service (fully expecting some marginally helpful, if broken-English, reply) and waited for them to send me a link to the correct product page. I got a response in 36 hours. Wow, talk about service! Except...the response told me to go the LG web site to buy a battery – the same website I used to click the contact us link. Okay, fine. I wrote back and explained that it wasn’t there, and asked for some real help. The next response: "Sorry, we don’t have a replacement battery for that phone." Chagrined and confused, I wrote back for clarification: were they out of batteries, or didn’t they offer one? I couldn’t get a straight answer. And that finally did it; I was peeved, and more than a little.

What followed was a confounding string of emails with "David G" at LG. He was about as unhelpful as any person I’ve ever dealt with. Not only didn't he ever answer any of my questions with clear, definitive language, he couldn’t even grok the fact that I wanted to buy a new battery for my expensive, not-so-old phone. Again, let’s revisit the proposed transaction: I (customer) wished to pay money to them (vendor) to purchase a product (battery) for a currently produced and sold phone. Simple right? Nope. And there was no information on why my proposed transaction was un-completable. I confirmed that they do still make the battery – although getting to that fact took months, especially because it was obscured behind David’s poor language skills and obvious mental deficiencies – they just didn’t have one to sell me.

(I took a little side trip just then, back to my favorite online shopping sites. Suddenly, Buy.com had an “OEM” replacement battery through one of their “marketplace” vendors. I was saved! I paid and waited, and I finally received…a cheap Korean knock off that didn’t fit my phone, and clearly wasn’t made by LG. A few emails later, the marketplace vendor assured me it had been an honest mistake, and offered me a full refund if I returned the product. I did so, and still haven’t received an acknowledgment or refund…but that’s another story. Back to LG…)

Finally angry (no longer just peeved) I contact David G one last time, and reminded him of the entire four-month odyssey. His otherworldly response was perfectly in line with all his previous responses, and it was undeniably clear that he still didn’t understand the purpose of our long and unfortunate correspondence, or the transaction I was proposing. My next message to him would likely look something like this.

David –

You are idiot. Me want give you money. You sell me battery.

Signed: Dissatisfied Customer You Not Helped in MONTHS and MONTHS

Of course, this little LG experience wouldn’t be enough to spawn a whole blog post on its own, even though it scored the top spot here. But, it was one of a large patchwork of similarly fruitless and vexing retail experiences. Thus, the first SpotShot was born.

(And for those of you wondering, I did lots of at-home troubleshooting, including changing batteries and chargers between the three phones. The performance issue always followed the battery. That said, let’s move on to the next one...)

Toys R Us, Crayola, and Imaginarium

My daughter is 4. This past Christmas, we bought her some cool new toys from our local Toys R Us: a sidewalk paint sprayer, and a spin art toy. Fantastic toys, simply fantastic. Spin art was the first one opened – it was winter, and sidewalk painting is more of a summer thing. So spin we did, and the splattered toddler art flowed beautifully. I was quite happy. She was quite happy. All was right with the world. But – the replacement demons were waiting just out of sight! After one particularly spin-ful February day, we were suddenly out of supplies. No more fancy spinnable paper, no more glitter paint. No big deal, right? We packed up and took a trip to Toys R Us for supplies. They sold the thing, so they should have the refills, right? Wrong! (And to make matters worse, the shelves were a lot more bare than you’d expect for a major retailer – but more on that in my closing…) Since I’m sure you can divine what happened next from the cell phone story, I’ll just say this: it’s June, and we still haven’t found replacement supplies. Not from the retailer, or the manufacturer, or the countless online stores that sell knockoffs and universal refills.

Luckily, it got warm/dry early this year, and it was time to spray paint on the front walk and driveway. Another great toy. Effective, easy, creative, and my daughter loved it. Twice! Why twice? Because the supplies run out fast for creative kids, and my daughter has creativity in abundance. But I was fine with it: of course the supplies run out fast – they want to sell you frequent replacements to keep your money flowing. I get it. I’m good with it. Retail 101. Except – can you guess it? NO replacement supplies at Toys R Us. None online. None directly from the manufacturer. A favorite toy, basically dead because nobody wants to make or stock replacement supplies. Ugh, I say. Ugh!

(For the curious: local craft stores are going to be our last hope for both of these toys, but I’m not betting on a positive outcome. Let’s hope my daughter forgets both these toys before she needs therapy…)

Next Up: Wegman’s – the Store that Shuns Strawberry Ice Cream

This past Saturday, I wanted ice cream. It’s summer, it’s hot, I like sweet stuff…kinda makes sense, right? But Wegman’s, our local mega-supermarket chain, threw a wobbly curve ball at me. Seven major brands of ice cream, one store brand, and not one half gallon of Strawberry, That’s right. Two full coolers – probably 1000 gallons of ice cream – and no Strawberry. Now I know what you’re thinking: not everyone likes Strawberry…what’s the big deal? You could be right. Except, Strawberry is one of the ruling class flavors of ice cream – a member of the original ice cream triumvirate of Vanilla-Chocolate-Strawberry. A flavor that’s pretty much as old as ice cream. And yet it’s not part of Wegman’s plan-o-gram. (And yes, if you’re wondering, I confirmed with a department manager that they were no longer carrying the flavor…) Let me draw an analogy: you just bought your first box of crayons, the one that has the original seven colors (Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet), and Crayola decided that it didn’t need to include Green. That would make me nuts. I wouldn’t be upset if burnt sienna or pumpkin was missing – those are more on the cusp of specialty colors – but green is a standard. Just like Strawberry. So the weekend math looks like this:

Wegman’s – strawberry ice cream = unhappy and hot consumer { frank }

Fix It! (Or: Fix it, Dammit!)

Now what’s the consequence here, and in fact with all these stories? Simple: I have money; in my wallet; that I’m actively trying to give to several different retailers; and I can’t. Get it? I can't buy four things that I want and can afford, because every company I deal with doesn’t have them to sell me. And it’s not because they’re hot sellers and hard to keep in stock. It’s a deliberate decision of the manufacturers and retailers not to have them for me to buy. That’s key mistake, and a boldface knock of the folks who make the manufacturing/stocking decisions. I’m no economist, but I’m pretty sure that having a product for me to buy is a crucial element of retail success. When I do the math, it looks something like this:

Their product + my money = their profit + my consumer happiness

And the best part of this equation is that it leaves a remainder of healthy economy. It's a simple lesson: it doesn’t matter if it’s ice cream, a replacement battery, sparkly paint, or winter gloves and hats in January (again, see The List). If you don’t have the product, I won’t give you my money. And let me add a stern warning to the “marketing genius” who thinks, “well, they’ll just buy something else if they can’t find what they’re looking for.” You need to go back to school, buddy! Not only won’t I buy something else from your store/company – because I still intend to buy exactly what I’m looking for, and I need my money to do it – but I’ll be angry. And petty. I’ll visit your competitor, and tell everyone I know why I think you suck. And I’ll post stories like this in my blog.

Folks, this is not rocket science. This is basic supply and demand. I mentioned above that Toys R Us was remarkably empty. They aren’t the only ones. Store after store – in my town, at least – have empty shelves: signs and shelf tags for products they don’t stock, with unrelated products faced out in bulk – mainly, I suspect, to try and hide the basic lack of product variety which is the actual meat of a successful retail strategy. Like selling products that practically guarantee repeat business (in the parents who file in dutifully to resupply their child’s beloved toys), and actually selling the refills. Or selling common, expected products, like basic ice cream flavors, popular deodorant scents, potato chip varieties, or national brands! Otherwise, my consumer mind boils over with slews of uncomplimentary words and phrases, including a favorite that my daughter is starting to pick up: “Hellooooo? Duh!”

Want to fix the economy, or at least the retail portion of it? Here’s The FrankSpot recipe (the main ingredients, anyway):

Recipe for Better Retail

2 Cups Stock Your Shelves (Empty shelves mean empty cash registers.)
2 Cups Sell Replacement Parts/Supplies (If you sell me a product that needs replacement stuff, but don’t sell the replacement stuff, I won’t be back. I’ll shop at a competitor, and say bad things about you in the church bulletin.)
1 Cup Provide Good Customer Service (Good customer service means fast, efficient, and productive. I don’t want you to commiserate with me, I want you to help me in a material way. And if you can manage it, speak my native language as well as I do…)
1 Tbsp Let Me Give you Some Money (Of course, this is really more of a serving suggestion than ingredient, but the point is solid.)

I’d say it’s a pretty simple recipe, but stay tuned, FrankSpot readers. Since I have no real pull in the world, I expect that exactly nobody will cook this meal. In fact, I’d be surprised if, even after a forced feeding of this essay, any retailer could even see the problems I’ve described. I'd expect the typical follow-up thought to be: “I bet people will buy Worcestershire Sauce Ice Cream – let’s stop selling Chocolate.” Thus, there will be more volumes in my war against retail. David Horowitz, meet your successor.

See you soon.

Prologue: Writing the Unwritable Post

So let's talk about torture.

It's been in the news for a while now, and has quickly become a defining issue of the last 9 years: legally, politically, and ethically. It fairly clogs the news cycles on some days – the media trots out questions and talking points, which ripple into the morning shows, local papers, and countless web sites:

• Is it right or wrong?
• Who authorized what?
• Who knew or didn’t know, and how much?
• Republicans versus Democrats.
• Which religious demographics support it or don’t.
• How America + Torture = Nazi Germany.

Tough stuff. And I’ve been ruminating on it the entire time; trying to decide if I could blog about it. I mean, it’s obviously a provocative topic – it riles and offends people, and triggers family-event-destroying blowouts – but it's dense, and impenetrably gray. I want to weigh in; I want to entice others to the public debate, and I want to enrich the public dialog. But it's a window that's hard to see through. Even in the brightest light of human outrage, the image beyond the glass is shadowy, and indistinct. How do we define torture? Is this it, or is that it? Why is it being used? Does it work? Look as I might, I can't get to a clear picture. And if there's one thing I like when I start a post, it's a clear picture.

When we discuss things like racism, or gun violence, or whether drugs should be legalized, there are plenty of folks with first-hand knowledge, and even more with second- or third-hand knowledge. Mention torture, and suddenly almost no one is an expert (even if they have an opinion). The folks “in the know” are people most of us will never meet. Many are deliberately hidden from the world, so even if you do know them, you don't know you know them. This makes torture a unique consideration to the common man. How do you genuinely contemplate something that you know nothing about? If you're a FrankSpot reader, you know that I lament that people generally opine (and take up fortified positions) in relative ignorance, but this topic is unique in that there really isn't any way for the average person to contemplate it with a foundation of experience. By default (and lucky for all of us), we lack the ability to speak on the topic from place of knowledge. Everything we think we know is anecdotal. That's one of the things that made it so hard for me to put words around this topic. What do I really know about torture?

But the story is still very much in the minds and in the media, and I’m drawn to it because it speaks to our fundamental humanity. I want to explore the philosophical notions that underpin the outrage, and the real world considerations of torture’s application and efficacy. Unfortunately, it more and more seems that every measuring stick is insufficient, and there’s a good chance that the only thing likely to be borne of the debate…is more debate. That poses a special and significant challenge for me: what do philosophers do with a conundrum like this? What if there is no final answer? No absolute right or wrong? No way to build true consensus? What if we just can’t solve this one?

These questions dogged me every time I tried to put words to page. What follows is my wholehearted attempt to make sense of it all.

Defining the Indefinable

What is torture?

As I mentioned above, the main problem with this discussion is that torture isn't one easily definable thing. It's a word open wider to interpretation and semantics than most in our language. Sure, there's a dictionary entry, but as I survey the outrage of everyone touched by the topic, it’s clear that that the “official definition” has barely informed the debate. It turns out, instead, that the notion of torture is as personal and subjective a thing as anything out there. People define it through a combination of religious, moral, and ethical beliefs, political affiliations, gut reactions, and their own sense of place in the world. So the dictionary entry doesn’t add any meaningful text to the discussion. What is torture? It’s whatever the debaters – the observer, the victim, the state enemy, the foreign government, the special interest group – want it to be. If we were discussing torture as a philosophical exercise, or a re-examination of unfortunate history, we could stop there. And it wouldn’t matter that we couldn’t reach a consensus. But the debate has changed: it is no longer a lukewarm ethics discussion, but an urgent legal issue. That brings us to the second problem:

The Legal Definition

In a society of laws (which I’m glad I live in, despite the sometimes rickety condition of our legal system), we classify specific behaviors as illegal. It makes sense if we want to surround ourselves with safety and order. But, there’s a catch, and it’s the same one that makes the torture debate so hard to resolve: what measuring stick do we use? This is an important consideration in any debate, and doubly so in this one. Laws require both a proverbial watermark as a starting point – a consensus-based standard to be used any time we perceive a transgression – and very specific wording. Like it or not, laws aren’t meant to be flexible; and well-written ones don’t leave much room for interpretation (even if they are dense with legalese and abstraction). That’s an important protection for us as citizens. (And yes, that creates a host of other issues, but I’ll save that for another blog entry.) Laws need to be specific if they are to be understood and enforced fairly. This applies to simple stuff – don’t take something from a store without paying for it – and deep, unwieldy stuff like torture. So, regardless of your personal feelings, torture needs a legal definition if we’re going to address it as a society. That means specifics, examples – dictionary entries. It means a legal consensus even when there is no philosophical one. And to be clear: it can’t be a moving target.

Let’s stop on that for a second, just to make sure we’re all on the same page. Torture – from a legal standpoint – has to be strictly defined. That means one clearly stated description of what constitutes torture. It can include a laundry list of citations and examples, but the definition has to be finite. It has to end. If you look to the law, you’ll find that there’s already a legal definition in place. That’s a key problem with the current debate: people keep forgetting (or ignoring) that definition in favor of their personal outrage, and want to categorize as torture treatments that currently fall outside the legal definition. In itself, that’s a noble pursuit. Something has rankled us, and we want the law to be rewritten so that thing can’t happen again. But, the problem is further complicated here by the public's need to punish someone: it’s not good enough to rewrite the law for tomorrow. People want to bend the law to create a retroactive illegality. An interesting idea, I suppose, but impractical at best, a path to absolute ruin at worst. As a rule, we don’t criminalize past behavior, only future behavior. Call it a conceit to the linear, forward-only nature of time’s passage – and to our basic inability to predict which of today’s legal behaviors would land us in the electric chair tomorrow. It’s a basic protection we have to embrace: what you did yesterday might become illegal tomorrow, but you won’t be prosecuted because it was legal when you did it.

Now some people argue here that the Bush administration’s lawyers deliberately exploited the finite nature of legal language to “get away with” treatments that don’t violate the letter of the law – but still cross into unethical/philosophically shaky behaviors we’ve retroactively classified as torture. They’re right, but skirting the law isn’t actually illegal. As despicable as it seems in this context, “going around the law” is just another part of the legal process. Those lawyers aren’t the first or only ones to do it. It happens every day, sometimes in our favor, sometimes to our detriment. That is a conceit to the vagaries of our language, and a basic fact of life. I recently wrote a post about the drive to legalize drugs in America, and I posited that every regulation (or law) breeds loopholes. This is the same problem. If you don’t list smacking someone in the head with a rolled up magazine as torture – or have intersecting laws that constrain any of the constituents of that treatment – then it’s legally not torture. And guess what – it’s not just lawyers and government officials who exploit that fact. Almost everyone you know does too (in some form), and so do you. It’s obviously not in the same vein as torture, but the principle is the same. We have imperfect language, so we have imperfect laws. The best – and some would say smartest – thing we can do, is use history and better language to help us redraw ineffective and incomplete laws. In this case, we can rewrite torture laws to include what was done to those alleged terrorists; add as many new clauses and behaviors as we like – dig into history books, and even popular fiction, and litter the legal definition with examples. We’ll be behind the curve, but we can be assured that those specific tactics will be illegal the next time they are used.

Which brings us to:

The Three Killer Questions: Efficacy, Intent, and Degree

Despite the basic disagreements about what specifically constitutes torture, there is one common belief that seems to resonate throughout the national debate, and across many international borders: torture itself is bad. It's something only bad people or bad countries do. Proof of that belief is found in treaties and pledges, and in the outspoken condemnation of those who torture. But just below the surface, beneath the philosophical condemnation of the act, lies the tricky question of efficacy. Does torture ever work? If you follow the national headlines, or read books like Daniel P. Maddix’s The History of Torture, you probably get the idea that it doesn’t. And if the national uproar is an indication, we don’t want it to work.

But there’s an important question that lingers, even if it’s fully obscured by the shining spotlight: what if it does work?

I know that’s a scary question. It sets people’s hair on end, and makes people reach for antacids, or their bibles, or the television remote. But, what if torture isn't the ineffective black hole of the popular belief? Sure, you can point to what happens when you torture an ignorant someone for information: they’ll say anything to stop the torture, and none of it is worth the breath it arrived on. But what happens when you torture a person who actually has the information you need? This is an interesting point that comes out of the Bush administration: they say that “harsh interrogation” produced actionable intelligence. Regardless of your personal feelings, if it’s true, then it’s a fact that counts in the reality of the world, and has to count in our debate. And it begs the larger question: how much is a life, or a handful of lives, or a way of life worth? How far would/should we go to secure something important for ourselves? What happens when talking simply doesn’t work, and when the clock is already ticking? I know this is dangerous water, but aren’t these questions valid parts of the debate? Some people argue that the loss we stand to suffer (personally or nationally) is insubstantial compared to the moral breach we commit when we abandon talking in favor of inflicting pain. They could be right. I think it's probably a question for the ages, and certainly for the people that have already lost something or someone because of our adherence to principle over the need for positive results.

Lets focus on that for a moment: why does anyone use torture? I’ve been exploring the efficacy question, but I haven’t really touched on the purpose question. Like efficacy, it’s an important thing to explore.

As I’ve absorbed the national commentary, I’ve noticed that there are lots of different ideas about why we used those interrogation techniques in the first place. A good portion of people accept that they were used to obtain information – some about yesterday, but most about tomorrow. Some people think it was to extract confessions – like the Viet Cong used, a way to demoralize the prisoner’s parent nation – or to exact punishment, or gleefully inflict pain on inferior races. They evoke images of World War 2 Japan and Nazi Germany. Provocative stuff, to be sure; more importantly, a prompt to discuss intent – to examine if and how the intent of the torturer factors into our considerations. Does a lack of sadistic intent count in the torturer’s favor? Is it a more acceptable practice if torture is used strictly to garner information, and not applied with malice or hatred? If it’s an unfortunate escalation, in situations where gentler methods don’t produce the needed results? If it’s applied clinically, dispassionately?

And what about degrees? As we build our new legal and national definition of torture, does degree count for something? Should we compare types of harsh treatments? Is that informative as we draw our lines? Is a slap as bad as genital electrocution? Is a flushed holy book as bad as pliers-based fingernail extraction? Is being forced into a naked human pyramid, or being deprived of sleep, as bad as being beaten lame with batons and 2x4s? If we take degrees into consideration, don’t we run the risk of more unethical treatments slipping through the legal cracks? If we ignore degrees, aren’t we opening the doors of interpretation so wide that our “enemies” can complain that restricting access to cable TV and alcohol in prison is just as harsh as crushing their fingers in drill presses? How do we factor in the common sense comparisons without opening the door too wide, or shutting it too tightly, and without ignoring something key? Is there even an answer?

Sudden Epilogue: A FrankSpot First

So, I’ve just asked a bunch of questions, and I know it seems like I have a lot more ground to cover. But I’m not going to cover it. As unlikely and abrupt as it seems, I’m going to end here – after two months, and 2500 difficult words. As I predicted in my prologue, I haven’t found any answers on this. Not for myself, not for my readers, and certainly not for the national debate. Instead, after all this time and typing, I’ve become exhausted by the topic. I’m truly at a loss to draw some profound overarching conclusion, or make any valid suggestions on how to address the ongoing issue. I can’t even answer most of the questions I’ve raised here. At least not definitively, and not in the space of a single post. The most I can do is ask my readers to keep this post in mind as they add their voices to the debate. I hope they’ll remember that religion, ethnicity, age, political belief, and level of education impact how people feel about torture; so do being touched by loss, or war, or terrorism, or fearing for the lives of people loved. I hope they’ll remember that the law is an important tool – especially in this debate – but one that shouldn’t be used for revenge, or to apply retroactive justice. And I hope they’ll remember that – even without one we can see from here – the pursuit of an answer is still important. As we strive, we grow; and as we learn, we change. Hopefully, all for the better.

Peace.