This time I was nice enough to write to the Daily Mail to point out their mistake, rather than just whining here. They’re mocking the gentleman shown above (an intellectual, to be sure) for having jenius tattooed on his head, instead of genius.

Hi,

You may want to rethink the story available at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1353389/Man-assault-charge-pictured-misspelt-genius-tattoo.html titled “Some ‘genius’! Suspect on assault charge pictured with misspelt tattoo”. The lettering on the gentleman’s face is in cursive, and starts with a cursive G (see http://funeasyenglish.com/writing-the-english-alphabet-letter-g.htm for details on how to write one). Now it’s not a particularly well done cursive G, for sure, but then I imagine the sort of people who will put tattoos on other people’s foreheads probably didn’t have the best cursive teachers.

I look forward to your follow-up article about the ‘Daily Mail Reporter’ so dumb he or she can’t recognize his or her own language when it’s written down.

Cheers, Paul

Hi,

I know this will surprise you just as much as it has me, but this morning I got another text message from you. That’s three times you’ve told me I won’t get any more texts, and three times you’ve sent more texts. Once is a mistake, twice is a system error, but three times means you’re lying to me.

Given that we’ve established that you’re lying to me, I no longer believe the summary statement you’ve given to me, nor do I believe the details of the router return. Hence I’m not paying anything, or sending anything, until:

1. I’ve heard from somebody who has a first AND last name, and a direct phone number (and who doesn’t lie to customers)
2. I’ve received a written bill BY POST that clearly states it is the final bill.

Oh, and STOP TEXTING ME

Cheers, Paul

PS As always I hope that you, as an individual, have a really good day, and that my frustration doesn’t get you down.

I wanted to let you know just how far your delivery service was from what a reasonable person would expect. My order number is xxxxxxxxx, for a Nara Entertainment Unit. To quote from the acknowledgement email:

“We will contact you by Friday 12 November 2010 to arrange a convenient date and time for your delivery (except items delivered by post).”

I was not contacted.

I did receive an email from DHL, telling me that 2 packages were out for delivery in Stockton on Tees this morning. Note that there was no reference to Argos on that email, I was not aware that DHL were your delivery company, I didn’t know that the item came in two parcels, and I live 300 miles away from Stockton on Tees. Oh, and the email started “Dear Harris”.

Going back to the original email:

“A signature will be required for this delivery”

Or, as it turns out, they might just leave it down the side of my house with a note put through the door, and leave it to my wife to struggle with lifting them inside before they were stolen.

I’m about to open the packages now. It would not surprise me at this point to find a Peruvian basketweave chair in them.

Yours,
Paul Harris

PS. Also from the email:

“We’ve charged this order to your 6 Months Buy Now Pay Later Card under the {2}”

Variable substitution is tricky, but it’s worth the time to get it right.

Hi,

Guess what? I got another text this morning, what I didn’t get was a final letter telling me what my bill is. I’ve copied in a bunch of people this time who hopefully have the skills to actually do something. To help them out, here’s what I would like you to do:

1. STOP TEXTING ME (Seriously, how hard is it to NOT text somebody? I don’t text billions of people every day, and it takes me no effort at all)
2. SEND ME A FINAL BILL
3. SEND ME AN ENVELOPE TO RETURN YOUR ROUTER
4. STOP TEXTING ME (Just in case you forgot, it’s a while since I said it).

The real shame of this is that I only moved to Virgin broadband because there was no connection fee for my new home. Turns out their broadband sucks, and I was thinking of switching back to you even if it did cost me £100 to reconnect. But now?

Cheers, Paul

PS I’m sorry for shouting, and I hope you have a really good day today. I know that you’re doing your best, and it’s just your organization that is the problem.

PPS. STOP TEXTING ME

• 1Password
• DropBox (these two together are literally the first thing I install)
• Evernote
• Quick Search Box (QuickSilver replacement; either is fine for what I do)
• Skype (Needed for work, for personal IM I use Adium with the Skype plugin)
• TextMate (with AckMate)
• TinyAlarm
• Xmarks
• XSlimmer (because of my OCD)

He shakes his head in sadness at the life his grandson has had to live. He says he fought alongside homosexuals in those battles, that they did their part and bothered no one. One of his best friends in the service was gay, and he never knew it until the end, and when he did find out, it mattered not at all. That wasn’t the measure of the man.

1. The outrageous intrusions into our lives carried out by the government on an hourly basis, and
2. Crime/indecency/exploitation/other outrages, and when is the government planning to do something about it.

What it isn’t worried about, however, is accuracy. A couple of weeks ago they had a brilliant piece on kid’s school lunch boxes, claiming that they contain as much sugar as 10 doughnuts. They illustrated this with a picture of a lunch box containing, among other things, 2 doughnuts. Amazingly, if you chuck another 5 doughnuts in there it would contain as much sugar as 15 doughnuts! As an added bonus, they show a picture of a disgustingly high-sugar drink, only the picture they chose was for the low sugar version.

But today they did even better. In a piece alleging, in passing, that Jackie O. had an affair with her brother-in-law they included the following:

Jackie O's brother in law, apparently.

You’re not a journalist (probably), so you might be forgiven for not noticing that he looks a little worn out for a man who died when he was 42. You might not twig that his attire is rather contemporary for someone from the 60s, especially as most of the common pictures of him are in black and white, not colour. In fact, you’d probably not wonder about it at all, unless you knew that he had a son, also called Bobby Kennedy (Junior, this time), who has grown to look older than his father ever did because he has lived to be older than his father ever did, and dresses in the styles of today because he’s alive today.

Of course, if you were a journalist you’d know that immediately, wouldn’t you?

(Update: Here’s the link, if you must)

Visualizing empires decline from Pedro M Cruz on Vimeo.

This is a terrific video showing the rise and fall of the Western European empires. Among other things it’s a great reminder of just how recent some of these territories were surrendered (a process that isn’t complete to this day). Well worth a few minutes of your time.

Link via Hit & Run

I’m not much for public speaking, but it turns out that the crowd is willing to cut you a lot of slack on such occasions, so I was able to ramble without notes for a few minutes. That means I can’t report exactly what I said, but it went something like this:

When Mum was in hospital there was often something that needed to be done, whether it was a bed change, injection or whatever. Her standard response to being told about these, especially as communication became increasingly difficult for her, was to say “right”. I’m sure that the nurses took that as a pretty normal response, and of course it was. But it meant more than that.

‘Right’ meant that there was something else to be done. That could be as routine as making me breakfast, or doing the ironing, or one of the other hundred things she did to look after me. But it could just as easily mean she had to go to Brownies, or some outing for the old folks, or a PTA event, or any number of other charitable events. ‘Right’ meant that she could stay in her chair by the fire and watch TV, but there was something to be done, and if she didn’t do it then it might not get done.

That was the story for as long as I knew Mum. She was never involved in anything that would change the world, and indeed it’s unlikely she ever turned around the life of a single person. But she made a thousand people’s lives just that little bit better. That seems to me like a pretty good way to have spent a life.