What Fresh Hell is This Award — Telemarketers
September 16, 2008
Author Dorothy Parker, celebrated as the wittiest woman in America, was known to get very peturbed when someone calling on the telephone would interrupt her as she sat writing. Urban legend has it that her favorite retort to unwanted callers was:
What fresh hell is this?
Well lately I seem to be getting more than my fair share of unwanted call from telemarketers. Luckily my caller ID alerts me to the easily identifiable telemarketer numbers. But they are still an annoying interruption to just about anything I might be doing. So why are telemarketers still calling me.
I can’t figure it out. I could have sworn I registered my phone number on the Do Not Call List . Lately it seems I must have registered on the “call me all the time” list. So on the outside chance that my midlife brain got this wrong, I went back and registered — again — on the “don’t call me anymore or this time I’ll file a complaint on you” list.
Apparently it will take a month or so for my request to take effect. In the meantime, if you didn’t register way back when and you’re being bothered by telemarketers on your home phone, cell phone or email, register now. It takes less than a minute to fill out the form and submit it. Then you have to click on the email links the government sends you to make it official. Then the telemarketers leave you alone like you have the plague — or so that’s how it’s supposed to go.
I’ll keep you posted.
What Fresh Hell Is This? — A 10 Year War in Iraq
May 16, 2008
“What fresh hell is this” when a political candidate promises to get us out of the war we’ve already been in for 5 years — in another 5 years. Yesterday John McCain offered his vision of the end of the war in Iraq. According to McCain he sees us completely out of Iraq in 2013, effectively promising us a 10 year war. What kind of vision is that!! Sounds more like a nightmare to me.
I thought getting in the war on March 20, 2003 was a bad move even with the lightweight ”intelligence” about weapons of mass destruction. But once we were there, I hoped that there would be a time when we could extricate American soldiers from what became a no-win situation.
But instead of getting us out of the war in Iraq, current wisdom has kept us hanging around the Middle East trying to bring democracy to a part of the world that doesn’t want it. When you consider that democracy doesn’t always work so well over here why do we repeatedly wrap it up in a big red, white and blue ribbon and try to give it away as the ultimate gift.
Come on already. How many more lives will be lost on both sides after 5 more years of war? Quite frankly it doesn’t matter whether you vote red or blue. Getting out of the war in Iraq shouldn’t be about politics or political rhetoric. It should be about peace.
OK, I’m done with my rant. And to replace the vision of a 10 year war with one about peace, here’s a favorite video of mine on the subject:
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Karen - Midlife Coach
