"Madame, bear in mind That princes govern all things--save the wind." -Victor Hugo, The Infanta's Rose

Friday, July 18, 2008

We all just want to dance

Forget about all the trouble and strife in the world for four minutes and twenty-nine seconds while you watch this truly amazing video from Matthew Harding. The words to the original music by Garry Schyman were adapted from the Bengali poem "Stream Of Life" from Gitanjali by Rabindranath Tagore; the video spans 42 countries and was three years in the making.



Smile. Sing. Dance. Live the dream.

Wednesday, July 02, 2008

Posting, weakly

So it appears that a once-a-week-or-so post has now become the norm for me. Gah. Sorry about that folks, there just hasn't been a whole lot of stuff happening worth blogging about lately. As clear evidence of this, here's the most important, pressing matter that's currently occupying my time:

Imagine for a moment you buy a new car from the Ola Motor Corporation. It comes with everything you'd expect a car to have in order to work properly, e.g., an engine, steering wheel, brakes, tires, etc. But after you've driven it for a few months, one day you get a flat tire and discover a fact that you were not told when you bought the car: the tires are proprietary, and no other tires will fit this vehicle but the ones made by Ola Motor. Obviously, you need to use the car, and since it won't work properly without one of its tires, you contact the manufacturer to obtain a replacement and receive the following (extremely courteous) reply:

Dear valued customer,

Thank you for contacting Ola Motor e-mail support, we appreciate your interest in our products.

Regarding your concern, please note that Ola Motor warranties all our vehicles for a period of one year from the date of purchase to be free from manufactured defects in materials and workmanship. Our products are manufactured and tested to give our customers the performance they have come to expect when purchasing a product made by Ola Motor.

We regret to inform you that replacement tires are not available separately. However as a one time exception we can replace the vehicle for you.

To obtain a warranty replacement for your vehicle, please reply back providing us with your personal information (full name, address, city, state, zip code and day time phone number, vehicle part number and model number, certified copy of your sales receipt and method of payment, social security number, bank account numbers, mother's maiden name, and the description and location of any identifying marks on your body such as tattoos.)

With this information we will create a return authorization and will let you know the address where to ship the vehicle to.

We look forward to assisting you in the future.

Thank you for contacting Ola Motor e-mail support.

Best Regards,


OK, now that you've got the basic idea, the following helpful illustration should put this in perspective for you:


This is my relatively-new Ola Motor Model S9 Bluetooth Stereo Headset. It sounds great, and has been very comfortable to wear for extended periods, allowing me to listen to mp3's from my cell phone. Its fatal design flaw, however, are the ear pads: they are not attached all that securely, and I have managed to lose one. So in order to obtain a small piece of rubber that can't be worth more than fifty cents, I have to send the entire unit in because the ear pads are not available separately.

What freaking genius at Motorola, er, I mean Ola Motor, came up with this plan?

So there you have it; if this is the most serious thing I have had to frustrate over lately, my life must be pretty damn boring, wouldn't you say? Hopefully yours is way more exciting than this.