From an earlier IM conversation.
[17:11] David: although i have to admit i’m tempted to float the idea to one of them
[17:12] Tom: i’m tempted to float one type of beer on top of another.
[17:12] David: beer on beer
[17:12] David: it’s one of my favorite types of actions
Black & Tans for everyone! (I’m not paying.)
Let’s just start this post off by saying I’d started to hold a place for it in my blog on March 29, the day after I’d found a police report request on the windshield of my car after yet another batch of “break-ins” around the way from our place. I let it sit to give myself a little cooling off period, but I’m done with that.
In August of 2007, someone broke into the passenger side window of my car, taking my Dash GPS out of my center console – an item I was beta (alpha?) testing out for the company, and causing me to have to drop $500 in deductible to have a window and the interior or my car fixed. A couple of months ago, in what we figured was “just kids” pulling pranks, someone took the right side exterior of the mirror on my car clean off the side. The mechanical part – and the glass – of the mirror worked fine, and I have yet to fix the busted exterior, but whatever. Today, we walked out to the car on the way to meet some friends at a local spot, ready to kick off Memorial Day weekend, when we found the passenger-side rear window to be shattered. This is now the third time we’ve filed a police report for an issue with my car, and considering the well-populated – no, screw that, overpopulated – area we live in, it’s bullshit.
The fact that this week, when the main road through where we live – Boulevard East, overlooking the Hudson River and NYC – was being repaved, forcing most of us who don’t have driveways to park on side streets or this particular hill road, resulting in probably 7 or 8 break-ins, based on the amount of auto glass we walked past on our way up and down the hill to our car, etc., is total bullshit. Our town’s police are super nice and understanding about it, and I’m sure there are other matters for them to attend to other than taking my information for yet another car window shattered, but how do people get away with this, over and over again. When MY car – which isn’t anything to speak of, is seven years old, and is netting these fucking losers ZERO – has three calls to the police, and we pushed that out against the population of this town, or even just the people I’m living around, this isn’t a small spree, it’s a disaster. [update 5/23 - they did get something out of this, about a hundred CDs that were in a binder in the trunk of the car. Bastards.]
It’s no wonder my car insurance company raised my insurance – already over two grand for a seven year old car – 10%+ this year, but after dropping this deductible, I’m going to have spent close to an extra thousand dollars this year alone for the “privilege” of having a car and keeping its windows closed. No wonder people don’t want to pay for car insurance. That said, I am truly starting to feel this way about Weehawken, because it’s not slowing down – it’s only getting worse – and calling in these problems and answering the question of “where my car is located?” with “I’m just north of YOUR CAMERA” that was put there for just this reason makes me feel like a fool.
This is an unadulterated rant for my own personal purposes, but I guess that’s one advantage of having a blog, however self serving it might be. Needless to say, I don’t understand how this is an acceptable way of doing things, especially when we’re all treated like crap when parking somewhere and forgetting to put a visitor tag in the window overnight, or whatever. If that’s how your tax-paying (or at least rent-paying, to my landlords) citizens are going to be treated, then I most certainly want to see someone pay – dearly – for this type of bullshit, because it’s making me less and less happy to stay in this town. How are people who aren’t lucky enough to afford to have a decent car and pay for the deductible, etc. for this sort of thing, expected to live somewhere? It makes me want to drive my car into the river, buy a piece of trash, and go from there. What a waste. I just don’t see how anyone can maintain this.
I’m sure this isn’t what Facebook had in mind when offering the opportunity to rate advertising. If you wanna get all contextual, then I don’t think it’s outlandish for me to have said this – I don’t like the Lakers, have never said I did, and so on. Just sayin’. =)
In other news, I *really* love M&Ms. No, seriously. And yes – it’s Friday, and I’m a little bit slaphappy.
[update: 5/25] It’s an epidemic!
My first PRWeek column is up, you can read it here, if you’ve got a subscription. Rather than talk about the shiny object for my initial piece, I thought it proper to talk about something that (sadly?) is still necessary to talk about in 2009 – getting real “buy in” that your agency / team needs to truly incorporate digital / different types of media into their public relations skill-sets and outreach.
Also, Googlezon. [see here]
Earlier today, I posted the following on the @MTV Twitter account.
The link was to a blog post about rapper Paul Wall and discussed, among other things, beef jerky.
Amusingly, six minutes later, the Oberto Sausage Company folks responded in kind.
Now that’s what I’m talkin’ about.