Dear gomers who design ATMs.

This is what I see when I look at your creations.

“Insert check”???

I don’t see anywhere to insert a “check”!

I get actual cheques maybe once or twice a year, so I always forget where the damned slot is. (Hell, ’cause there’s usually a new model ATM installed by then, or my bank has been assimilated by another bank, Borg style.)

I stand there looking all gormless for approximately forever, and people are waiting behind me. Attractive people. Always attractive people, when I’m gormless. Waiting and judging.

Oh, right. The slot is just barely visible in the top left of the photo there. And this photo doesn’t quite accurately represent my POV because I cannot actually see that thing at all at all at all in real life without making like I’m hover-squatting over the toilet in a nightclub bathroom stall.

You have made your machine accessible to midgets and people in wheelchairs. Congrats. It is now inaccessible to tall ladies in heels.

Yes. I’m complaining about this. I have nothing better to complain about today, and well, complaining is my only hobby.

I have a thing or two to say about public water fountains as well, FYI.

Here’s our service activation summary, showing that my AT&T DSL account was activated on 01/30/2007:

The phone number and website listed on this form no longer exist.

A bit ridiculous, I think. I forgot all about this rebate sometime in February of 2007. I cancelled my AT&T service sometime in March of 2007. I have no idea what the rebate was originally supposed to be, so I don’t know how much the “additional amount” is, but damn straight you better pay me some kind of interest after almost four years! I’m surprised they honoured it at all. Who would notice if they didn’t? I figure there must have been one wiener out there pursuing this rebate all along. Congrats to them, it’s finally paid off. I hope the time they spent over the last four years is adequately rewarded by the $54.99 they’ll be receiving.

Especially when it’s watched by gigantic nerds, many of whom are early adopter types who (like me) have cancelled cable in favour of Hulu, Netflix, streaming from network sites (PlayOn makes this super awesome), purchasing through iTunes or Zune, etc. or (yes) torrenting?

Dumb.

Although, as a gigantic nerd I have generally seen most of the featured videos. But the banter! I can never absorb enough witty banter.

I do know that that it’s been beeping 90% of the time meaning that 90% of the time it’s been going “backward” and that 100% of the day I’ve been pissed off.

Either the person operating the equipment is doing it wrong or the entire machine has been constructed backward. Because it’s my opinion that whichever direction the machine spends the majority of its time going in is obviously forward.

And if it’s going forward it doesn’t need to be beeping.

Somebody involved along the line could have used these instructional videos back in preschool.

I can understand why my address is “required information”, even though not everybody has an address. It may indeed be difficult to ship something to someone without an address.

However, “home phone” is also required by you. I do not have a home phone. I do not (think I) know anybody under the age of 30 who has a home phone. Not unless they have DSL, in which case they have may or may not have an actual phone attached to that phone line, and if they do have a phone attached to that phone line the only people who call it are telemarketers. I don’t know why they know that the only people who call it are telemarketers since it was silly of them to answer a phone that rings when someone dials a number they never gave out to anyone, but that’s kind of irrelevant to my main point here.

I filled in your “home phone” field with “N/A” because it is not applicable, but that’s not good enough for you. You only accept entries in the form ###-###-####. Give me a break. Even if I did have a home phone number your form should at least be programmed to be smart enough to figure out that any entry with at least ten digits (or alternatively a “1″ followed by ten other digits) is an acceptable phone number. But, as I’ve pointed out, I don’t have a home phone number. Your form is impossible to fill out without lying. And lying is bad. You will not accept the truth, even if I spell it out in full: “not applicable”. You can’t handle the truth.

Didn’t you see that I also filled in your “cell phone” field with my cell phone number? That’s better than a home phone number. If you call my cell phone number you can contact me all the time, even if I am not at home. But when I am home, it still works there, too! You can send me text messages. You can leave me voicemail even if I don’t own some fiddly analog tape-thingy.

Get a clue, dudes.

Down with this kind of thing:

MTV wants me to advertise MTV and ZYNC. They want me to spam my Twitter followers and Facebook friends. They want me to subject myself to a deluge of marketing. On purpose. They want me to tell you that I like it.

Do I look like a bitch? Then why you try to fuck me like a bitch?

This isn’t a good bribe. There is approximately 0.0000001% chance of any real payoff. You want me to annoy and to be annoyed for (almost definitely) absolutely nothing? I do believe I will pass.

I believe it’s true that everyone has a price. But if I ever do sell out (and as a big fan of Andy Warhol, it’s one of my ambitions in life), you can be damned sure that you won’t be buying me so fucking cheap. Free is way the fuck too fucking cheap. Tweets aren’t worth much, but they’re not worthless. And you know this if you’re trying to trick me into selling them to you.

I do not “RT to win”, and if you need to use this kind of persuasion to get me to promote your product it probably sucks eleventy-seven penises.

I’m all for shameless self-promotion. I’m promote things I’m actually interested in all the damned time. But my personal endorsement is expensive. Even my “this is awesome, *winkwinkIknowyouknowI’mdoingitfortheprize*” endorsement. Fuck the fuck off. If you want me to contribute to your brand recognition, you’re going to need to cough up.

And my dear followers… don’t be Twitter whores. Have confidence. You’re worth enough to be classy Twitter escorts.

By which I mean: I take money out of the ATM (from account A), and I put it right back into the ATM (to account B).

Why in the hell should that be necessary?

I might not complain so much if it wasn’t for the fact that there is a branch of my bank (Chase Chase Chase Chase I hate you Chase) less than a block from my apartment.

But the ATM at that particular location is always giving me this bullshit:

In case that’s not legible, the marquee at the top reads “This Chase ATM is currently unable to accept cash deposits…”

That marquee mocks me about 50% of the time I visit that ATM, so I’m forced to go to the next branch. And I usually have to walk both ways because the CTA sucks. I believe I’ve complained about them many times previously, so I’ll spare you now.

All to take money out of the machine and put it right back freakin’ in.

Did you Americans know that in Canada you can just e-mail money to someone? And I ain’t talking about PayPal, neither. I’m talking about Interac, a mystical, magical future technology that I miss with ridiculous amounts of missitude, and am not going to bother explaining because, having tried before, it is clearly beyond the understanding of Americans. But with the Interac network I certainly wouldn’t need to walk to an ATM to transfer money to myself, and I wouldn’t have to move my ass from in front of my computer to send money to anyone in Canada with a bank account and an e-mail address. An. Y. One.

When I tell people in Canada about the American banking system, it’s like I’m describing something from the Stone Age. They are amazed by how bass ackwards it is and look at me with confuzzlement. America: please to fix before I curmudgeon myself to death.

Compare that to this bus stop (circled):

That’s at the intersection of N Marine Dr, N Lakeshore Dr, and W Montrose Ave. Routes 136, 144 and 146 stop here. In case you can’t tell, the ones labelled N Marine Dr and W Montrose Ave are N Marine Dr and W Montrose Ave, which are both two-way streets. The thin yellow line is the Montrose exit to the southbound lanes of N Lakeshore Drive (cars on the road head only south (that’s down, for those of you who aren’t used to our Northern Hemispherically Biased mapping system)). If you’re not figuring this out for yourself, that circle is a median in the middle of a busy intersection where cars can be heading in any one of 20-something different directions (I’m not sure which turns are forbidden here, not having a car and all).

This is a picture of a bastard NB 146 CTA bus stopping to let people on and off to or from a median into the middle of what (‘s not seen here, but often is) heavy traffic:

And here’s a nice shot of the bus stop itself:

This is the SW corner of N Marine Dr and W Montrose Ave:

You should notice that there is a fence curving all the way around that corner, so that you can’t get to the sidewalk if you are walking towards it from the east. Not unless you walk around the fence to the left (and climb up fairly steep, frequently muddy, presently snowbank-covered hill) or to the right, on the busy street.

Couldn’t the bus just stop at the NE SE corner of N Marine Dr and W Montrose Ave instead? Where there’s a sidewalk and a crosswalk? Would that muck up traffic too much? Because we all know that not mucking up traffic is far more important than the potentiality of having me, myself or I (or any other passengers of CTA bus routes 136, 144 and 146 who happen to live near this intersection) maimed and/or killed by large, fast-moving objects.

Pfft.

Sick of having my feet get wet in the snow every time the first bus that happens along is one that stops here.

What the shitting fuck?, originally uploaded by Lintilla.

This was in the soup I was just eating. The vegetable soup I was eating. It went in my mouth. I did not finish that soup. That vegetable soup. Campbell’s Soup Company, could you please explain to me which part of what sort of vegetable this is? Because to me, it sort of looks, I dunno… A little more like one of these:

I should have thought to stick this next to a dime, but I was too busy being disgusted. But. You would have seen that it is the same length. As a dime. And. I am never. Eating. Again.

Maybe I’ll mail this to them, and see what kind of freebies I can get. And not fucking eat after I get them. Because…

Yeah, I’m going to go wash my mouth out with bleach now.

In conclusion, no:

See ya.