Microsoft Word: Let’s invent the world’s largest memory gobbling piece of garbage and with all this memory we will only include 15 fonts, of which 7 will be those weird pieces of crap that make stupid symbols and don’t actually form real letters. What is wrong with those people at Microsoft? Who is their test audience? Who says, "yes, i love that little paper clip. Make him come up all the time and ask me annoying questions."? Who says, "yes, correct every error that you think i make, bury the command to turn off the automatic capitalization so that it takes me months to figure out how to make your program less annoying."? Don’t they know that red is not a soothing color? Correcting all my "errors" in red, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, can make a perfectly sane person go POSTAL. So, to you Microsoft, I say, suck mine. I type BOOMVANG in wordperfect, thank you very much. It’s only mildly less annoying but at least i feel like i’m taking a stand.

Alright, so I have to fly on Alaska Airlines all the time because they are the only ones who fly to the burg where my dad lives. Yes, it’s a podunk airline and their little napkins often have religious messages on them. Yes, they never served meals and their snacks often bite the big one. Yes, they crash little planes when they really shouldn’t. But you know what really gets me? They cancel flights all the time for no good reason. The plane is fine, the pilot is fine, but they are running behind schedule. So they’ll cancel your flight. "Sorry, it’s not convenient for us to honor your ticket right now. How about some other time?" I thought there were rules about that kind of thing?

UC Davis, Money-grubbing Swine: Look jerk-offs, I don’t have millions of dollars in my bank account to supplement my income when you people screw up and don’t pay me. Why is it that if I don’t pay them my fees on the day they are due, within 24 hours they have garnished my wages (i.e. stolen my money since it was a university screw-up that resulted in my not getting paid), however, once i make them aware of the fact that they have stolen my money, it takes THREE WEEKS for them to pay me??? Who has the bigger monetary buffer here, them or me? Who can afford to wait three weeks for their measly $1200, me or them? THEM. Enough said.

O.k., I know the world is a complicated place and we can’t all live in peace and harmony all the time and lions can’t lay down with the lambs etc. etc. etc. BUT there is something seriously wrong with the world when a cure for a disease exists yet that disease still kills thousands of people a year because it’s not profitable to make the cure. That is fucked up (freak just wasn’t strong enough there, sorry dad). And that is what has been happening with yellow fever for a while now. We have a cure but it’s not profitable for drug companies to make it. But now that it turns out that the drug may also be good for helping people get rid of wrinkles or some sort of inane luxury item like that, now it’s profitable to go into production and the kind drug companies are offering to give some of the drug to developing countries that are dealing with yellow fever for cheap. Wow, isn’t that great?

AIDS is another example. Yes the drug cocktails one has to take to keep the virus at bay are complicated to administer and that poses a big problem. But the fact that the money-grubbing drug companies that hold the patents charge an arm and a leg for the drugs isn’t helping either. But guess what? Now that India and a few other places are saying that they are going to ignore the patents and make the drugs for cheap and sell them to Africa, guess what? The drug companies have decided to be humanitarian and sell the drugs for cost to poor countries (sudden change of heart Merck??? I wonder...).

And finally, if I have to watch one more goddamn ad, asking me whether I feel irritable around my time of the month (I might have PMDD a serious and debilitating illness that, guess what? Can be treated with, you guessed, pharmaceuticals...) or whether I feel anxious in social gatherings (I might have social anxiety disorder) or whether I ever experience erectile dysfunction, I will go postal. I believe there are people who suffer from these illnesses. I’m sure that it sucks to have them and that it feels great to realize that there is a drug out there for you. But somehow I don’t think these companies have my best interests at heart. All I have to say is, beware, beware, beware. Watch out for the power of suggestion.

I hope some day, some thing (i have no idea when or what), some thing big, comes along and bites the drug companies in the ass. The system as it now is is just not cool.

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