Monday, April 29, 2013

MY LATEST PIECE FOR RIOTWIRE HAS BEEN PUBLISHED!

After publishing my satirical revamp of CBC Television's programming line-up so that it squares more precisely with conservative Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Fucking Harper's thuggish ideology, followed by my collection of bite-sized dossiers on all nine of Canada's current Supreme Court Justices, the fine folks at RiotWire.com have now published my ostensibly humorous list of the Top 13 Ways to Amuse Yourself During a Global Economic Collapse! 

The list begins as all proper Top 13 lists do, with the thirteenth entry, which is...

13. Save money wallpapering your house by using worthless paper “fiat” currency (you know, like the American Dollar. Or the Canadian Dollar, for that matter…though wallpapering with loonies might be a bit difficult).

12. Diversify your post-apocalyptic skill set by boning up on such long lost arts as alchemy, leechcraft, and ceremonial ventriloquism.

11. Come up with new and amusing ways to sort and organize your family’s canned goods hoard. Start out alphabetically, then sort by shelf life, nutritional value, or even flavor preference.


Don't worry... IT GETS A LOT FUNNIER DEEPER INTO THE LIST! Just click through to find out exactly how much funnier it gets!

AN UNPUBLISHED COMIC STRIP FROM 1992!

Hey-ho, former Daily Dirt fans, not to mention anyone else who finds themselves wandering into this, my catch-all "general interest" blog! Today, as part of my ongoing quest to provide you good people with all sorts of meaningless ephemera from my many former lives, I bring you a comic strip that I drew back in my college days, roughly in the year 1992 or thereabouts. 

As you can see, I had yet to grasp the concepts of character, narrative flow, thematic consistency, etc. Essentially a collection of non sequitur text and images thrown together in slapdash fashion, its only redeeming quality is perhaps the not entirely unpleasant level of draftsmanship. Also, is there anything quite so inadvertently funny as a vacuum cleaner's crevice tool? I think not.

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Also, don't forget to check out our sister-site UselessEaterBlog's daily Paracultural Calendar updates. It refreshes every day with crazy new historical information. 

Highlights from the 26th of April include the Picasso-inspiring bombing of Guernica and the Chernobyl nuclear power station meltdown.

Highlights from the 27th of April include the sinking of the Sultana on the Mississippi (the worst maritime tragedy in American history) and the birth of the computer mouse AND South African Apartheid.

Highlights for the April the 28th include the launch of Thor Heyerdahl's Kon-Tiki and the Port Arthur Massacre in Tasmania.

Sunday, April 21, 2013

JUST A THOUGHT...

If you believe that the federal government should take no legislative action in response to the Sandy Hook massacre, but that it should institute a nationwide crackdown on Muslims because of the Boston bombing... then you might be a conservative moron.

With apologies to Jeff Foxworthy.
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Check out our sister-site UselessEaterBlog's daily Paracultural Calendar updates. It refreshes every day with crazy new historical information. 

Saturday, April 13, 2013

NOTES ON MY RECENT "CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE" WITH H&R BLOCK


This year, I filled out my 2012, 2006 and 2004 taxes at a local H&R Block mall outlet in Etobicoke, Canada. I got my 2012 refund immediately in the form of a check, but was told I'd have to wait a month for my 2004 and 2006 refunds. I've used H&R Block in the past and this year, as usual, the experience went relatively smoothly. There was only a minor delay due to a malfunctioning check-printer.

The one sore spot? My worker seemed a tad over-zealous in her efforts to get me to praise her performance to her managers. She even went so far as to dial them up, herself, on my cell phone, so that I could "talk her up" to them.

I found this odd, but chalked it up to maybe she'd had a bad couple days and needed the boost, so I played along. I was, after all, satisfied with her work.

So a month goes by. Then a couple more days, and my 2004/2006 refunds have yet to be deposited into my bank account. I decide to call H&R Block to see what's up. The employee who takes my call tells me that I will actually have to wait a further 2 to 4 weeks before I get my refunds for those years. 

I'm a bit peeved about this.  I had been told it would be a month, and now they were telling me I would have to wait almost twice that long. I was, however, at least satisfied that nothing had gone wrong with my filing. I thanked the person and tried to hang up. 

"Um... hold on!"

This H&R Block rep had something to ask me. And that something was this: Would I mind answering a few survey questions relating directly to the customer service experience that I'd just had with the individual to whom I was currently speaking?

I begged off a telephone interview, somewhat nonplussed, but agreed to fill out an email survey at some future date. Then I hung up. 

That was yesterday. Today, I got an email from H&R Block. Entitled "H&R Block Client Experience Survey", it reads:
Our records indicate that you recently contacted the H&R Block Client Service Organization for assistance. As part of our ongoing commitment to service excellence, we are conducting a survey to measure your satisfaction with your service experience on 4/11/2013. Please take a few seconds to complete our survey by clicking the following link.
So I clicked on the link and was taken to a page where I had to choose between English, Francais and Espanol. I chose English, and was brought to the following question:
Please respond to the following questions based on your recent experience with the H&R Block Client Service Organization. Using a scale from 0 to 10 where 0 means NOT AT ALL LIKELY and 10 means EXTREMELY LIKELY, how likely is it that you would recommend H&R Block to a friend or colleague as a result of your call to the Client Service Organization?
To this question, I chose the number 7.

Upon supplying my answer, I was brought to a page that asked me:
What would it take for you to give us a 10?
To this question, I replied thusly:
Basically, what it would take for me to give you a 10 is for you to give up the INCREDIBLY annoying habit of FORCING ME TO FILL OUT A F&%#ING SURVEY EVERY TIME I SO MUCH AS HAVE A BRIEF F&%#ING CHAT WITH ONE OF YOUR F&%#ING EMPLOYEES!!! STOP IT!! JUST F&%#ING STOP!!!!
Upon supplying my answer, I was brought to a page that asked me:
In the event that we would like to ask you follow-up questions would you be willing to discuss your service experience further?
I'll let you take a wild F&%#ING guess as to whether I replied in the affirmative or the negative.

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Hey, folks! Don't forget today's PARACULTURAL CALENDARS for APRIL 10, APRIL 11 and APRIL 12! Bookmark the page and check it for updates, daily!

Cheers!
yer old pal Jerky

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

KNOW YOUR CANADIAN SUPREME COURT JUSTICES!

Quick! How many of Canada’s current sitting Supreme Court Justices can you name? If you’re like most people - even most Canadians - you probably can’t name even a single one. At least, not without checking on Google or Wikipedia, first. Meanwhile, our neighbors to the south enjoy the services of a Supreme Court that’s jam-packed with judicial superstars; over-sized personalities with legal philosophies all their own – from the Latino-flavored common sense of Justice Sonia Sotomayor, to the rigid, theocratic absolutism of that erstwhile duo of strict constructionists, Antonin “Fat Tony” Scalia and Clarence “Slappy” Thomas.

The time has come for the Canadian Supreme Court to step out of the shadows of obscurity and into the blistering, cleansing fire of public scrutiny! That’s why I've written a piece for RIOTWIRE, so that you, too, can get to…

(Link takes you to RIOTWIRE page, off-site! - Jerky)

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I've also started up the PARACULTURAL CALENDAR again. So, to see what happened on this day in Conspiracy Theory and/or Occult and ParaPolitical History, check out the updates for APRIL 8 and APRIL 9!

Enjoy!

Monday, April 8, 2013

LINKS AND VIDEO GRAB-BAG, PLUS RE-LAUNCHING PARACULTURAL CALENDAR!

Ever wondered what it is, exactly, that Jehovah's Witnesses believe? Check out this extract from the 1986 "documentary" cartoon Witnesses of Jehovah, produced by the "good Christian film-makers" working at Jeremiah Films.


And here's the same company's animated, early 1980's take on Mormonism, which makes the sci-fi scenarios of Scientology seem dignified by comparison! Oh, how yer old pal Jerky loves watching all these Xian dolts go back and forth, tearing each others' metaphorical throats out in these goofy theological grudge matches!


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Hey there! Hope you enjoyed the above cartoons. I just want to let you know that I have begun posting daily Paracultural Calendar updates over at my other space, the Useless Eater Blog. Actually, I have RE-begun doing so, as I started up the same thing last year, but only kept it up for about two months before giving up. I promise to go the distance this time. After all, there are only 365 days in any given year, and I already have two months done! Therefore, barring anything crazy happening in the intervening years, once I've finished, I can keep re-posting forever and ever and ever! And nobody will ever be the wiser! Muah-ahahaha! 

Actually, I also promise to start posting more, both here at the Daily Dirt Diaspora blog, and over at the Useless Eater Blog, as well. With a little luck, I'll maybe start making upwards of a dollar or two per day at this blogging game! Seeing as I've accumulated a total of just under 30 dollars in ad revenue so far from almost three years of blogging - despite some of my posts getting thousands of hits - a buck a day almost seems like a crazy pipe dream. 

Anyhoo, I'm not complaining. I've begun putting together a collection of my best writing from the Daily Dirt days (1998 to 2006) and I'll be self-publishing that in the very near future, so if you guys want to help me out, you can always buy a few copies and give them to various luminaries, opinion makers, church leaders and coked-up Hollywood celebrities to help get my name and work known out there in the wider world. Obviously, I'll be using this space to push that as yet un-named book project as soon as it's ready to roll. 

Cheers!
yer old pal Jerky