MOTHER OF GOD

I THOUGHT THE FUTURE WAS PAPERLESS

Hayley Mills on Loose Women

Hayley Mills talks about Wild at Heart (Now starting a 7th season YAY but still can't see it in America BOO!) and the power of nature from January 2011.

You'll feel your heart skip when Hayley replies to a question from the panel by saying "No, Dear...[SPOILERS]", just see. It's those familiar Hayley Mills speech inflections that does it.

A failure to communicate

I've used Discount Tires for my vehicle needs for years. Like most people I first became familiar with their company through their classic, hilarious and highly-effective commercial touting their return and replacement policy. Their service and price is why I began going to them when I started to drive.

But I'm going to have to think pretty hard about going in again any time soon. A few weeks ago I went to my usual location to get a new tire, which was worn. When I went in I told the salesperson what I needed and why and let them know that was all I was purchasing that day. Getting only one tire at a time is a young man's gamble. When you change one tire you should change all of them so they all wear evenly, everything balances right and you have no surprises a week later when an old tire fails. But I had been out sick from work for a few months and cash was tight. So I made myself clear about my needs that day

Apparently, through no fault of the employees I'm sure since they are very likely pressured to make sales from upper management, my desires as a customer where pushed aside. Before I left I received no less than six attempts to up-sell my purchase. Quoting a price, then lowering it, adding services and then discounted incentives (still adding up to more than I told them I would spend). Between my last visit to Discount Tires and this one it was like I had visited two different companies. At least at least on the front end experience. The exception being the swiftness and quality of their labor service in replacing the tire which remained great and if anything was better than before.

I understand the hard up-sell. The economy has been in the dumps for years and companies are desperate for every nickle and dime from their brick and mortar outlets as they can be (while still somehow being able to afford using private jets to fly to meetings to exotic vacation resorts). My current employer tried the hard-sells at every opportunity until they realized the customer backlash wasn't worth it and dropped the requirement for most departments. When a customer says no that should be the end of it. No guilt trips, no acting like I just duct-taped loaded guns with filed down sears to the heads of the passengers of my car, no miming like Pontius Pilate washing his hands of the whole deal and so be it, the fiery deaths of my passengers is on my head.

The pitches that the tire crew was giving me were presented in terms of my safety. I can appreciate that message. They pointed out the others tires were worn (Meh, not so much. All four were new less than a year ago. I wanted one changed because it kept getting scraped on a curb) and that I should change them and here's a great deal on 4 tires, etc., etc.

But the intent and sincerity perceived by the customer is important. If the pitch doesn't come off as sincere then I would think you are playing me for a sucker. The first tell that the clerk really was only saying what he had to was that he wouldn't look at me. Our last conversation before I left went like this:

"Have we told you that you really should replace all those tires? They are getting worn."
"Yes. Four times now in the last half an hour."
"Well, that shows you how important it is."

Sure, except you were looking everywhere but at me when you said all that. It doesn't mean he was a bad salesman, just that he was uncomfortable pushing another sales pitch on me. At least I hope that is what it was and he wasn't some predatory huckster. Also, one thing the clerk wasn't aware of: Their company's email message.

During the purchase the clerk asked for and I gave my email address. I didn't mind. This is important because that way I can receive tire recall notices, a handy and necessary service. So while seated in the lobby waiting for the tire to be replaced I did what anyone else would do: Browse the internet, check email and read some news. While waiting I got hit up again for more tires and shortly after received an email from Discount Tires thanking me for my purchase. I read it, knowing I needed to head off a barrage of emails and catalogs mailed to my house by changing my marketing preferences. It was after going to their website via the email and personalizing my visit I felt like was nothing more than a mark with a wallet.


In the image above there are several options for receiving messages from Discount Tires. This is an original, cropped screenshot with the only the customer name changed. In the initial view the message options default to sales pitches and one service reminder which would just be a sales pitch when you go in to the store. The two safety notices, really the most important part for the consumer and in the worst case scenario can mean life or death for a driver, is left unchecked by the company.

So this is the business plan? Hit me up for another sale but, in the case of the many who don't bother to sign up, or those that do but don't update their marketing preferences, not receive any notification that they might be driving on a faulty tire?

I guess ultimately the responsibility for checking the warranties and disposition of almost anything anyone purchases is on the buyer but only to a point. Any company has a moral if not legal obligation to inform someone using their product it may be faulty. The government regularly posts information about faulty products and recommends or orders companies to do so on their own. But if there was a recall of tires how would one find out? If they did, would I receive any notification because I did not opt in to the service? Is regular mail an option? Is it still an option if one did not opt in on the website? Would it take weeks or months to mail me a letter when email goes out almost immediately?

It wouldn't hurt to have the communication preferences default to choose all options, none of them or prioritize the safety notifications and then let the customer decide. Hold the sales pitches and default to caring about your customers a little bit more. The front end sales pitches and the way the customer notification service may be unrelated but it looks like it is a part of a narrowly focused top-down business strategy that prefers making a sale over any other consideration.

By the way, guys? Don't bother to contact me with offers or that "you are sorry I wasn't satisfied with my experience" or even as I know happens on occasion...threats. The tire service was great, the annoying hard up-sells were not. I know you won't change the front end sales pitches because if you did, let's be honest, sales would drop and that's the reality of business. In my experience few respond to those ads and instead search for the best deal they can through the internet going to their favored supplier first, based on their past experiences. Instead, just think about maybe changing the set up of those initial customer communication options.

A Thing I Spontaneously Said

gesturing dramatically in front of a group of people as I passed by it on the street.


A few people got it but the rest were stupid and screw them I don't care because they are stupid and I hate them.

PSA: Teach Your Children Well

Monday with Hayley Mills: Parents offered a Renoir for Lolita role

In an interview last year with Penelope Andrew, actress Hayley Mills reveals she was considered a primary choice to star in the 1962 film Lolita.

Her parents were reportedly to even have been offered a Renoir painting if they allowed their daughter to star in the notorious film.

While I'm sure Hayley could have acquitted herself in the role quite well I am glad she never did it. It would have been a major shift in Hayley's career path and I doubt we would have ever received The Parent Trap, That Darn Cat and many other great films.

Read more about it at the link...

PICTO-DIGITIZING IS NOT UNLAWFUL

TRITTSYC

Jeepers! Got to escape that robot!

TRITTSYC

A delicious part of this complete lifestyle change

I don't mind the dietary changes that come with being diagnosed with diabetes. What is frying my eggs is the misleading, dissembling, fact-twisting and downright lies of most labeling, advertising and packaging of food stuffs that purport to be healthier and "low sugar" or "low sodium" when they contain the same or greater amounts of ingredients I am trying to avoid.

All the marketing that appeals to hippies, hipsters and the health-conscious is really a shameless scam that borders on criminal negligence. Reading between the lies, their products are not necessarily healthier but is a part of a managed diet of people weighing portions and counting ingredients. 700 mg of sodium in a serving of a "healthier, all-natural, low-sodium" bread compared to 500 mg of it per slice in a far less expensive, cheaply made, junk-food processed loaf doesn't seem too beneficial to me.

It really is caveat emptor when it comes to food.

Monday with Hayley Mills: Parent Trap

Twisted Nerve (1968) and The Parent Trap (1961) mash-up!

In the made-for-TV sequel Lindsey Lohan doesn't live past the opening credits.

The Hydra Club

The Hydra Club, a function-less invite-only organization of science fiction contributors from the pulp days of yore.

From Marvel Science Fiction (November 1951). Written by Judith Merril, art by H. Harrison.

Aholeoids A-Plenty

Click to make Hubble-sized!

Monday With Hayley Mills: A Retrospective

Welcome to the first installment of 2012's Monday With Hayley Mills! Rather than try to create something original I'm doing what amounts to a clip show. Thank the pain meds and exhaustion from my medical issue for that.

Never fear, though! More original items featuring America's Sweetheart, Hayley Mills to come in 2012!

It's lazy on my part but clicking the below link will load up your browser with nothing but Hayley goodness.

Everything Hayley Mills on Lady, That's My Skull!

Happy New Year 2012

Click to make humungous, print and put it together to usher in 2012!

From Child Life (January 1928).

Happy Birthday, Son!

23 years old today?

Wow.

This kid is pretty lucky. Having a birthday so close to Christmas in most families means that the youngster often gets ripped off gift and party-wise. The holiday and the celebration are often combined. That sucks! But not only did we as parents make sure his birthday and Christmas were as equitable as if they were months apart, we also gave him two parties. One would be low-key in December because friends and families are burnt out. The other party would be a few months later and would be the big blow-out par-tay!. Not only would people be recovered emotionally from the holidays but financially as well, ensuring enough time had passed so my son didn't get re-gifted the crappy Christmas presents that nobody wanted.

Oh, like no one else would do or has done that, too. Liars.

If anyone wants to send presents then please make it in the form of cash or something that can be readily changed into cash.

HE isn't from outer space, he's the AUTHOR

Still feeling unclean from that purposefully horribly-structured X-Files "fan-fic" I posted yesterday. It was more of an exercise in provenance than anything else, though I did enjoy the idea of a sequel of sorts to the Bat Thing episode and the idea of a Dana Scully ready to open up a barrel of whoop-ass. Also, a reference to Mulder showing and feeling his age because he doesn't trust the benefits of medical advances that everyone else takes advantage of was funny. I was amused by the thought of Dana appearing 35 and grrrrrr-hot while Mulder is thin, turkey-necked, creaking and firmly in his 70s.

The concept of the Sof-Wall© comes from Tru Dat. An as yet unpublished opus of mine, Tru Dat is about what happens to a person during an era of unprecedented access to private information. Due to a compromised suite of programs called True Data released into the wild, personal privacy is all but gone and the most trivial, minute detail of anyone's life is open for casual perusal. Being boring is one's only haven from constant intrusion and meddling by friends and strangers.

The Sof-Wall© is just my idea of taking the interactive environment that exists today mostly as art installations to an extreme. In the future, I see people totally immersed in sensation, shapes and images, based upon their personalized Tru Dat preferences, that is reflected in their physical environments via shifting, malleable objects and structures. Residential walls will be the least of the advances, serving mostly as interfaces for entertainment and information.

I think it is inevitable that gesture and voice commands will relatively soon be commonplace in our environments. It is already available in a nascent form for entertainment and communication purposes. A universal user interface for technology, that can adapt to needs and requirements is not only very likely but also necessary.

Winding up season 9 of the X-Files on the tablet. I watch about one episode a day sitting in the car during lunch at work. Our break room is a freak show, uncomfortable and no one SHUTS UP and LEAVES ME ALONE. Yes, some of those episodes are nearly unwatchable but the good episodes are great. Looking around the internet I noticed there are no decent pictures (other than Scully in her dirty, dirty shoes*) of the fictional book cover From Outer Space written by two-off X-Files character Jose Chung.

So in LTMS-style I decided to create one of my own. I found a nice painting of a classic Roswell alien (from the book Communion that From Outer Space is riffing on), shifted some colors, added some science fiction-y text, a cigarette and some smoke. The smoke was the hardest part given my level of photo manipulation skills (somewhere south of a North Korean propaganda minister).

The result was a reasonable facsimile of the cover to Jose Chung's From Outer Space, as seen in the 1996 X-Files episode of the same name. Use it as wallpaper, a treeware notebook cover, tarantula habitat liner or however you want. This is fair-use fan-art so be cool and don't stick it on anything for sale without entering into some agreement with the original artist for the painting of the alien and probably whoever owns the X-Files franchise. It's also uncool to gank it, put your logo on it and slap it on your site. You know who you are.

I'm a big science and science-fiction nerd-fan but I don't believe for a moment in anything supernatural or of super-nature. Science as we know it just doesn't support all the fringe claims of weirdness out there. But when I first read Communion back in 1987 I have to admit it was the only thing in my life as an adult that ever gave me recurring screaming nightmares. I'd read a chapter and that night have the most awful dreams. Typically, I embrace nightmares. They are not at all scary and like thunderstorms, I think they are great and entertaining. Fear is the mind-killer, you know.

Yet reading the book by Whitley Streiber messed me up on a predictable basis. It got so bad that as an experiment I'd forego reading it for a couple of days just to see what happened and would sleep like a baby on whiskey and sedatives. Then I'd read a chapter and that night wake up to the sound of an apple being crunched in my head** and losing my crap. I mean I was shaking, sweating and had the whole feeling like I'm dying thing.

Someone who believed in aliens (don't get me wrong, I want to believe. Aliens would be great!) would propose that the book was bringing repressed memories of when I was abducted by aliens to the surface. But that is stupid. Unless of course I repressed memories of being kidnapped by a pervert when I was young and the descriptions of Streiber's "true story" was causing me to recall them and causing my discomfort. Nah.

I eventually made it through the book but it was a rough couple of weeks. A few years later I saw the movie based on the novel and it was hilarious***.

*What?
** FYI, Whit. It's called "waking up during mid-snore".
*** An alien glory-hole vacuum probe. Are you kidding me?

X-Files: 2025

The bed room air quickly cooling to her preferred temperature, lights slowly dialing up and the soft trill of her phone connection roused Dana Scully from her sleep. A glance at the shifting patterns of the malleable Sof-Wall© revealed it was 2:09 in the morning. With an irritated gesture of one hand that was detected and interpreted by the house sensors Scully halted the standardized announcements and home preparation of a phone call. Scully knew a call that early was never a good thing and another gesture dimmed the lights back to their previous darkened setting. years of sharply-honed instincts told Scully it was better to remain in a covert mode until she was better informed.

"This better not be you, Mulder." Scully grumbled. In spite of advanced medicine she often felt, if not appeared physically, all of her more than 60 years. "I'm retired from the FBI, NSA and medicine and too old for chasing monsters."

Scully sighed and rose from the bed, pulling her robe closed around her. "Ugh. I'm a mess. Audio only, answer call."

A wave form representing the connection rippled on the Sof-Wall© followed by the sound hisses and crackles. Scully frowned. "What, it's 1993?" she mused. There was another moment of static and then a male voice could be heard. "Mom? Are you there?" The voice sounded as if it came from an incredible distance but it was instantly recognizable to Scully. It was her long missing son!

"William? William! It's been over ten years! Where are you? What's wrong?" Scully felt her heart beat rapidly, over-riding the software in the coronary nan-bots of her health prescription. "It's been years! Where are you?" There was a pause and then William responded. "No time to explain, Mom! Do you still have your old field weapon? You need to protect yourself right now! Hurry!"

The house pinged and symbols for a lost connection scrolled across the wall. Not hesitating any further Scully gestured at her bed and the Sof-Wall© opened a secure pocket, ejecting a shiny SIG-Sauer P228. Scully snatched it from the temporary shelf-tongue, grabbed the magazine and slammed the it into the weapon, jacking a round into he chamber and taking the safety off in smooth, well-remembered actions. The gun was an old nearly obsolete weapon but still deadly. "Kind of like myself." Scully muttered grimly. Somehow, William had known his mother was in danger and she was experienced enough not to dismiss the warning as some conspiratorial feint to deceive, inveigle or obfuscate.

Suddenly, the bedroom window shuddered under a terrific impact. The Sof-Wall© shifted and the artifice of a window vanished and merged with the rest of the wall as the house responded to the attack, transforming into a protective mode. Scully chuckled. Whatever was seeking to gain entrance through the mock windows wasn't very smart, not being aware enough to realize that actual windows and doors were nothing but programmable and temporary transparent sections or portals in the structure of modern Sof-Wall© housing.

Scully heard a piercing shriek of frustrated rage and then there was a rapid pounding of fists on the wall. A short thrill of fear arced through her but Scully swiftly crushed it down. She was used to weirdness. Standing directly in front the area of the raucous disturbance Scully calmly took up a shooter's stance and said "Interrogation room." A section of the wall immediately cleared but only one way. She could see out through the wall but the raging attacker could not see in, like an the one-way mirror into a law enforcement interview room. It was a common privacy setting for most homes, only the name was personalized. To Scully's irritation, Mulder called the one-way setting the "Sexy Exhibitionist Peep Show."

Scully shook her head, recognizing the pale, scrabbling shape and vestigial but functional wings that beat on the exterior of the nigh-impenetrable house. "Well." She said. "It took you long enough. House...STARBUCK"

The house data net pinged an acknowledgement and in a matter of a few seconds it responded. Swiftly, a long narrow slit in the shape of a crucifix formed in the Sof-Wall©, mimicking in design the arrow slit favored by ancient castle builders to fire projectiles through at enemy soldiers. Sensing the gap opening in the wall the maddened bat creature put it's face up to the opening and screamed. Scully stepped up to the arrow slit and aimed her gun directly into the toothy maw of the monster. It had hunted for Scully over many decades out of revenge for a fallen mate and moments from perceived victory it realized that something was wrong. A strange guttural noise of surprised issued from the red-lipped mouth. "That's right." Scully said grimly. "Ruh-Roh!"

The creature made a motion to flee put Scully was too fast, too prepared. She fired her gun, emptying the entire clip into the face of the bat-creature before it could duck out of sight or fly away. Smoke filled the arrow slit but only briefly as the house whisked away harmful or unpleasant pollutants. Scully peered through the gap in the wall and a medical diagnostic screen appeared on the Sof-Wall©, confirming the creature was indeed truly dead, though the absence of most of it's head by the impact of twenty-four high powered rounds of ammunition was confirmation enough for Scully. She was sure it would not leap up and attack when she least expected it to. After all, she was a medical doctor. Tucking the warm gun into the pocket of her robe Scully turned away from the still form of the creature, remarking, "There is no scientific explanation for you being so stupid."

Snapping her fingers and gesturing, Scully let the house return to normal mode after confirming that law enforcement was indeed notified and on it's way. While she waited she poured herself a glass of wine and wondered where William, her baby, was now and how he managed to glean she was being threatened. She hoped he was thriving though there was no conclusive evidence to suggest otherwise. She knew, though, that she would not rest until she was able to hold William in her arms again. She would have to locate William, wherever he may be. Scully made a decision, knowing she might regret it. "House...Call You-Know-Who."

The Sof-Wall© formed a video screen and moments later it connected, depicting the image of a handsome man with a heavily lined face that showed the results of eschewing medical nano-bots. Scully sighed. "Mulder, it's me."

Separated at Birth?

Interesting that in the absence of the classic Fourth World characters to yet be fully realized in the NewDCU that Professor Insidd, the sadistic Yellow Lantern has a look similar to the Jack Kirby design of Desaad. While the Prof and the Apokolptian interrogator have the same sadistic predilections and toothy grin it is Desaad's hair and the skull designs on Insidd that are creepily similar.

From the Collection: From Friend to Friend

From Friend to Friend: A Partnership in Friendship (1916) by Edwin Osgood Grover.

Monday With Hayley Mills: Our Ways Will Part

Eerie, suspenseful music by Hans Zimmer inserted by a fan into a scene from the 1961 Hayley Mills film Whistle Down the Wind (1961). Fans really like using this song in other movies.

Here's the opening scene with original soundtrack intact. Be shocked at the casual cruelty, rejoice as HAYLEY SAVES SOME KITTENS!