Originally published at bankrupt artist v.3. Please leave any comments there.
Copied from my Facebook post
Just got into it with a serious bitch in line at Starbucks. She was in a serious rush, yelling at the staff for only having one cash running. She neeeeeded her coffee and she needed it now, and she wanted to let them know.
Flapping her limp $5 bill at them in a huff, demanding her ‘medium mild’ coffee, whatever that is… I hope they gave her decaf.
I told her to shut up and leave them alone. Exact words.
There were two people ahead of her making orders, and there were three people making iced drinks for customers waiting. They weren’t ‘standing around’ to spite her – they were doing their jobs.
When confronted by me, she crumpled up and fled once they gave her the change. She jammed that change into her Prada coin purse and ran away. Fucking Prada.
To the condiment stand, where she hadn’t had time to complete her coffee before I got there… Poor dear. Maybe next time she’ll send her assistant to fetch her coffee.
I pursued her complaint. ‘So why don’t you want I discus this with me, or do you just like yelling at service people?’
She wouldn’t even look at me. I’m scruffy as usual, but I’m wearing a nice suit jacket today. In short, I’m not one of those people that she gets of on yelling at, apparently.
She whined about there being a film festival. I told her I was aware, and that I had tickets too. I so hope that I run into her again in line and that I recognize her.
If you are so rushed for a coffee between shows, you need to plan better and stop yelling at people who aren’t doin anything wrong.
From further comments:
Before she left the register, I told her that I hoped all her movies sucked… Oh, and I defend the use of the word ‘bitch’ in this case. This person would be a bitch regardless of gender.
I was concerned with what I’d do to fill the lengthy break between movies today. I like to think that I made a horrible old woman’s Christmas miracle happen early this year. She’ll be driving her Lexus home tonight and realize that her life is empty, and tomorrow she’ll buy the biggest goose at the organic butcher’s.
Originally published at bankrupt artist v.3. Please leave any comments there.
I’ve been advised that I’ve been tried and convicted by the secret Facebook community standards tribunal. I’m under a 24 hour ban from posting anything, and I don’t know why. Which of my thousands of posts or photos has offended someone so much that they took the tiniest of efforts to flag something as offensive? Well, The Tribunal won’t tell you… they won’t even give you a link to appeal. Oh, I could appeal if my account had been TERMINATED, but I’ve only been restricted, so I need to shut up and take my restriction like a big boy, apparently. I can’t use the contact form that they have for terminated accounts… I’m in limbo.
I can still login as another account I have for use with ‘no god’ and I can verify that nothing THERE is missing, and I can’t see anything on my main Facebook account that is obviously missing.
It feels a bit like how I feel about dealing with any faceless, all powerful being. Oh, sure, I’m told I have free will, but without notice, I can be smacked down and sent to a timeout with no explanation.
Originally published at bankrupt artist v.3. Please leave any comments there.
Woke up to this email from a university student in Nebraska. As I did last time, I need to break this up a bit in order to properly respond to it.
First, the letter with my inline responses for the wider audience, and then I’ll post my email response, which was much more brief.
Dear Mr. Murray,
A couple of years back we had an interesting debate concerning Ben Stein’s movie on creationism (http://foo.ca/wp/2008/05/02/alright-who-s
hit-in-my-inbox/). Although I did send you a private email concerning my beliefs, I did not give you permission to post those comments over the internet.
The Internet’s an amazing place, isn’t it? You can meet all sorts of people with all sorts of ideas, and disagree with them. The trouble is, that these interactions leave trails. One point that I have learned since I sent my response to Eli; he didn’t send an email. His communication that I based my 2008 post on was sent through another channel. My quoting of his responses give a name and state – that’s it. No Facebook profile, no email address, nothing else.
The closest that I can see my post here on foo.ca coming to libel is that I called Eli ignorant. In the context of the conversation, I believe that the term ignorant is entirely defensible given the content of the original conversation where Eli showed he was distinctly uniformed on the subject.
This is a violation of my privacy as any content that is posted to the internet needs to be given permission if that individuals name/identity is to be used. It would have been fine if you had omitted my name and previous university label, but you did not.
My this, I’m assuming that Eli means that he wouldn’t have been able to Google himself.
I will be following your actions concerning my request to remove the posting and if it is not removed I will have to revert to legal means. I may be a man of little means, but I have several lawyer friends that work in companies that represent one of the largest companies in the world. I wish to warn you that failure to respond may result in the shutting down of your website, a lawsuit, etc. I wish to settle things as peacefully as possible. I have taken record of your address that you have posted on your site.
Oh, you have lawyer friends that work for big law firms that represent big companies? Corporate lawyers are often willing and free to provide pro bono legal support to all their pals, aren’t they?
Please consider that international libel laws do not necessarily require a court appearance by yourself or any other such procedure since this is an international libel issue. I may have the option of choosing a means of settlement that favors my purposes and neglects your interests.
That’s good to know – I won’t have to make a court appearance for libel! Hang on – libel? Quoting someone’s statements, verbatim, that make them look stupid makes me the libellous one? I thought he was the one making himself look bad in this case.
“When an individual or company is libeled in a serious manner, it is likely that the libeled individual will look to the courts for a remedy. Individuals bringing suit for libel will frequently find that being libeled on the Internet places them into a unique position of being able to select the forum which suits them most favorably.”
http://www.law.buffalo.edu/Academics/courses/629/computer_law_policy_articles/Co mpLawPapers/holland.htm
I’m not really sure what bearing some law student’s paper from the mid 90s has on this issue.
“But if you damage someone’s reputation by trying to embarrass them in a public forum, you could be sued for libel or defamation. After all, there’s no reason to assume that the messages you send through cyberspace are immune from lawsuits.” http://www.writing.upenn.edu/~afilreis/d
efamation-in-cyberspace.html
The opinion of Some Guy On The Internet in the mid 90s also doesn’t really concern me. Neither of these links concerns email specifically, nor the use of the allegedly offended party’s own word in the claimed defamation.
I do wish to settle this as quickly as possible and, again, only wish that you remove the blog posting that has my name and material that was not given permission for internet posting.
My response?
I’d hope that someone on the Dean’s List would be smarter than to make internet threats like this on first contact. I will not, at this time, consider removing the post you refer to.
You may want to have a discussion with your lawyer about what constitutes libel. Your handy post to a law course paper some kid wrote for a class in 1996 doesn’t address publishing an unsolicited email received from a third party. The defamation link, also from the mid-90s is hardly applicable as far as I can tell, although I am also not a lawyer.
I will also likely be posting extracted portions of this and any past or future emails from you or your lawyers.
Originally published at bankrupt artist v.3. Please leave any comments there.
HURT LOCKER – I found this a bit less impressive than I’d expected, given the Oscars it won. Over-rated, with characters that just don’t mean anything; to each other or the viewer.
Originally published at bankrupt artist v.3. Please leave any comments there.
BUCK – I was reluctant to watch this film; how interesting could a film about a horse trainer be? Well, it turns out it’s pretty good, thanks to a surprisingly charismatic central figure in Buck.
Originally published at bankrupt artist v.3. Please leave any comments there.
THE LAST MOUNTAIN – No real revelations; coal mining is destroying the Appalachians, and the lives of many in the area. Well produced film captures some of the impact on one community.
Originally published at bankrupt artist v.3. Please leave any comments there.
THE RED CHAPEL – Interesting bit of sneaky documentary work. They were able to get away with a lot by not speaking English. I felt bad for Jacob, as he was lead into this project under something of a false pretence by the film maker.
LEPRECHAUN – So very bad on so many fronts, but it’s a funny enough film, especially since Jennifer Aniston is the highlight of the film.
WELCOME TO NORTH KOREA – Most of the footage here is from State-guided tours, so there’s nothing very revealing in the video – that’s mostly in the narration.
RARE EXPORTS – This is a fantastic film about the discovery of the real Santa and his elves. Evil, evil, naked elves.
TRAINSPOTTING – A classic film with a phenomenal cast.
Originally published at bankrupt artist v.3. Please leave any comments there.
THE MANHATTAN PROJECT – This film features one of the cheeriest “I’m making a bomb!” montages ever produced. This is a whole lot cheesier and much more shallow than I remember.
“We’re kids – what are they going to do – it’s a prank!”
In 1986? Maybe not…
In 2011? Waterboarding.
You’d think that ONE of those books he read on how to build an Atomic Bomb would have talked about radioactivity and its dangers. Maybe they’d have made passing reference to Harry K. Daghlian, Jr. or Louis Slotin on the real Manhattan Project…
Originally published at bankrupt artist v.3. Please leave any comments there.
GREMLINS 2 – This has not aged any better than the first one. While I do enjoy much of the jokes at the expense of the company and technology, those are little more than window-dressing… there’s so little of plot of character once the empty jokes are stripped away, that it just feels like a wast of time having watched this.
Originally published at bankrupt artist v.3. Please leave any comments there.
CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER – I guess I’m just not the target audience for these Jack Ryan films… I just can’t believe Harrison Ford when he gets into the field and the action gets going. Yes, I know he’s been been in tons of action films, but this just feels hollow, lacking in any believable motivation for characters.
