As the Third World turns...

For this, we head to Gambia, where two Spanish men were taken into custody after allegedly putting the moves on two taxi drivers, for the purposes of scoring some action. This is in light of recent remarks by the country's president, ordering all homosexuals out of the nation, threatening to behead any one found to be gay. Wow. Their tourism department must be disgruntled as all hell by now. Kind of hard to sell decapitation as a positive.

As always, I will allow you reading this a brief pause...for which to facepalm yourself.

I remember writing an article a couple of years ago marveling at the travel warnings to Saudi Arabia being updated. With everything and a half happening in that region, who in their right mind needed a warning about heading over there in the first place? Same principle here, and in abundance.

Not that I am a well-traveled person or anything, but maybe a good rule of thumb to follow would be to check to see what they will kill, or attempt to kill, you over, and if you can answer 'yes' to any of the questions, then maybe a good idea would be to find a better freaking place to vacation, and I really don't care that it was the cheapest place you could book on Priceline.

And besides, who in their right mind travels to West Africa to play sex tourist? Couldn't you just as easily trade all those frequent filer miles for a dirty needle and save yourself a whole great big batch of air travel headaches? Going to West Africa for a booty call is like going to China to protest human rights. It looks stupid on paper, and it will probably get you killed.

This is what Memorial Day has boiled down to...

I did not do a damn thing over the Memorial Day weekend, other than work the Saturday and Sunday at my B.S. job, then watch the Cubs blow two straight ninth-inning leads to Pittsburgh, of all teams, before settling in to do some work on the websites and watch the Law and Order marathon on TNT Monday. What can I say...it's a simple enough existence at present. Of course, like a huge chunk of the country, I can ill afford to go anywhere other than the aforementioned B.S. job, as if I could afford to take a day off in the first place, let alone a weekend to meander through the Midwest. Why not lounge around the apartment all day and work on some rants while the reruns are on?

With that in mind...I give you the "staycation."

Yeah, I hear you. What in the damn is a staycation? Glad you asked. Damn glad you asked. According to the Associated Press, a staycation is a vacation you spend at or near home. We actually needed someone to come up with a word to describe staying at home. Like simply saying "oh, I stayed at home, thanks for asking," is no longer sufficient. As dumb as the concept of "mancations" was/is, this cranks up the dial to 11, and then snaps it off and throws the dial away.

Yep. This is exactly how little there is going on in the world today. I pondered this over my first cup of coffee. And then my second cup of coffee. By my third and final cup of the morning, along with some strategic deep breaths, I had come no closer to unlocking the mystery of the staycation. Then again, it wasn't like I needed the 65-year old Indiana Jones or his $185 million budget to help me solve it. Then again, I wouldn't mind even a couple points of that box office gross when it is all said and done.

Near-miss great moments in customer service history

It could have been a great moment in customer service, but... A plumber in Takasaki, Japan was arrested for calling a food company's toll-free number 500 times over a sixteen-month time-span. The man did this because the woman's voice on the automated system apparently tripped his trigger, if you follow.


Wow. I'll never hear the phrase "Your call is very important to us, please continue to hold. Your call will be answered in the order in which it was received" in the same way again. If this poor guy hit his peak, so to speak, in the middle of the sentence, would that mean the date ended badly?


The company turned the police loose on the guy because the fascination with the automated voice racked up an extra 4 million yen (19,500 pounds- like 10 or 11 grand American) on their phone costs.


I'm sorry, but I call bull on this one. This guy makes the equivalent of one call a day, everyday, for sixteen months, to a toll-free number. While that's probably stalking by any definition or stretch of the imagination, how would it apply in this situation? A company opens a toll-free line, as they want their customers to be able to call, but what if every single customer called once a day, every singles day? Would the company expect the police to arrest all of their customers?
Not to mention the $10k or so over the sixteen months? That's like $625/per month. If the company is running that close to the line, maybe they should just torpedo the toll-free line and use the world-renowned, time-honored "one bad apple" excuse. As for our friend, the plumber? I think he deserves a spot in the Cheap Phone Sex Hall of Fame - Innovator Wing. I wouldn't doubt a bit if there actually was one tucked away in some corner of Tokyo somewhere.