Why HP should pay for it's crimes against humanity

So I was writing an email to a friend while waiting on hold with HP, and thought it would be fun to record the process; though short-lived in real time, it was humorous in retrospect, so I tweeked it for Blogdom. My friend and I exchange thoughts in a manner that fully embraces our distractability with the acronym: ADDPDE-- Attention Deficit Disorder Progressive Distraction Events. The reader has been warned. Here goes:

Twenty-Two minutes and fifty--nope, wait: Twenty-three minutes! and counting, as I listen to the HP call center blast th-- [sudden disruption of writing process] My previous rant is interrupted by "Mike"-- Mike works for HP. A pox on HP; Lord, protect Mike.

Oooohhhh...UUuuugh.... YAHAAHHH! CRrrrrrrrrRRRAAAAP!

My following exclamation came after my conversation with Mike, who it just so happens answered after over 23 minutes of listening to painful... painful advertising by HP by a lady who was probably pretty as a teenager but started smoking cigarettes at a young age to get that announcer voice to help create a vocation. And she said-- wait: I shall name her Betty: Betty said, repeatedly, that if I wanted all the problems I could possibly want solved with the HP products, then I should go to HP dot com slash go slash support. And I did.
Twice I followed Betty's advice entering information before I could pass through the next portal. Both times finally getting to the link that invites me to click here to chat with a support person: thank heavens. Click: "server unavailable blah blah cheap-butt excuse thingy"! YAAHHH!
So after 23 minutes of waiting on my cell-phone, stymied by the HP servers not working (I thought they made servers?), Mike saves me.
(A pox on HP; Lord, protect Mike.)
So Mike comes to my rescue except I think he's playing video games or something because there were a couple of times where he did that Doug-the-dog: "Squirrel!!"--listen thing? but there was nothing said... just this open space and so I ask if he's still there, and he says yes, but he seems annoyed because I asked, except maybe i was hoping he would ask me what he could do for me or something? right?

WAIT-- you don't know why I yelled "crap", which is not a great word, but I know a lot worse ones that I don't use, except for shock value from close friends who would never expect it from me, but it's naughty either way, ... I digress.
So I'm unpacking my HP Deskjet4480 that I bought the other day thinking that one day I actually might need to print out something at home. It was the cheapest thing they had at Office Depot that didn't look like it was already broken.
I get everything out, including the happy little instruction fold-out/paint by the numbers/page and I'm following these steps because I'm thinking: I might want to print out some stuff for Ecuador-- afterall, I'm going there tomorrow.
Step one is easy enough: take off the blue tape that's holding the paper tray up like the hand of a child in the back of the line who is trying to ask permission to go potty but is afraid if they interrupt or yell they will embarrass themselves worse than drooling cheese on a keyboard [inside joke].
Step two is related, for when the powerful blue tape is removed, the tray reveals some cardboard cutout that is jammed up in the poor machine, and the cartoon shows clearly through the transitional pictures that this piece of cardboard does not belong.
I will not go through each step. I will say that there is within my heart this little boy who is sometimes afraid of breaking something if he's not careful, which is why sometimes it takes me a little longer to assemble things-- like this wonderful, inexpensive printer/scanner/copier.
So I'm putting it all together, and it really is a simple process: the cartoons have not lied, nor have they been hard to understand. So I get the ink loaded, the power cord assembled and plugged in, the paper loaded, the "alignment page" printed and then rescanned back into the machine so that the print heads can self-align themselves based on the self-scan of the alignment page.
Sweet. I can do this. No plastic fragments falling off. I've not broken it, nay verily, I'm feeling more Master than toad, and then you get to the part about Mac or PC, and since I have a Mac, I skip down to the picture that shows you where the USB cable is connected from the printer to the USB port on the Mac: I find the plug port, though it is black on black and would have been a little challenging had not the cartoon been so well done. So all I need to do is plug the cable in.
Now where did I set that cable?
Looking.
Looking in box... nooo?; looking all over table-top, under papers, behind stuff that could only hide a cable if I accidently threw it... noooo?.
I look on the floor; maybe it dropped out of the box... noooo?.
I check the box again, this time palpating every crack that might hide the cable in some cool Chinese-designed packaging foam compartment... noooo?.
Dang it!! They forgot to pack the stupid cable in my box!!
So I call Mike.
So I'm waiting in cyber-limbo-hell listening to Betty lie to poor fools who would do anything rather than listen to the overdriven saxophone belt out simple jazz to a captive audience, lying to them by saying they should go online because it's faster, people who would do just that, but who probably couldn't because they, like me bought an HP product, and unlike me--they probably bought a PC and thereby showing Betty to be the Uber-cruel witch that she really must be. website... pshaw.
So Mike actually asks me how he can help me, and I come right to it and tell him HP forgot to pack the USB cable in the printer box.
"I understand. I hear that a lot," says Mike, who now is no longer playing Peggle but actually listening to a customer. And I'm thinking if he hears this alot, maybe the Chinese factory thats using the slave labor should maybe chop some fingers or something to get some action going on stopping that pattern when Mike continues, "HP doesn't provide the cables for their printers."
WHAT??!!!
WHATT??!!!!
"So Mike, You're telling me that HP sells printers to people so that when they buy them, they can't use them?"
"Well, they sell the cables at stores," says Mike. "Besides, it says so right on the box that they don't have cables."
"Where!?", I demand.
"I dunno, but I know it says so on the box."
"Where? I can't find it... not on this side; not on this side; ope! here it says 'certified USB HighSpeed'; nothing I can see that says 'no cable'."
"Well I know it's there somewhere. It's gotta be..."
"Nothing on this side; nor this last side. Let's look at the bottom... nope not there, either."
"Well if they forgot to put it on the box", says Mikey, "they screwed up because HP's don't come with cables."
"What if it's hidden on top by a sticker from shipping?"
"WAIT--THERE it is, next to the shipping tag." [A little note the size of a fortune cookie script right next to a small picture of a USB cable saying "(not included)" though it's there with all the other pictures in the part that says "Contents or Contenu de l'emballage"].
"So Mike, I've been on the cell phone for half an hour waiting on HP to tell me they don't pack printer cables with their printers because it's hard to see on top of the box? I gotta go."
And that's when I wrote "crap".
The end.

Before Christ, retro blog

So a while back I thought I had posted my Advent cry, my shaking-of-the-fists at the misuse of Rudolf and Charlie Brown and Frosty to seduce us into hedonistic consumerism. I was wrong. So here is a piece I wrote a few years ago; not perfect, but it speaks to me like a timeless echo:

“BC- Before Christ?” *

This time of year whispers premonitions, forthcoming shadows of seasons to come.

It starts in parking lots. That sort of makes sense, considering that erecting seven-foot Mylar globes (festooned with appropriate props to elucidate the thought, “ornament”) is a space-intensive process in a venue that will soon be crammed with frantic frenzy-feeders, omnivores not likely appreciative of the pragmatics of preparation when it impacts THEIR steed’s stall.

Parking lots during the holidays remind me of the “canyonlands” of Western lore, those secretive coves from which the guys in the black hats take shots at you, or perhaps offer a hidden valley around the next corner… a place you go not knowing what to expect, yet wearing a robe of visceral apprehension that hopes to cry out, “Don’t hit my car,” or “Hey- I’m on my way to that parking space for which I’ve been waiting for five minutes.”

Or maybe parking lots are the metaphor of lost-ness our culture proudly displays, thinking we’ve arrived while not even beginning, a starting point for a quest to seek, nay verily, to capture that sacred object and transport said trinket back to our storehouses (perhaps stopping first at gift wrap, of course).

Or maybe it represents the chaos of chasing wind, a myopic madness that perpetuates itself into the GNP only to be later assessed as taxes for the new land-fill. Chaos that knows that something should happen, and happen quickly, and if it doesn’t happen, well you’re just…. just… not good, or something! Chaos that feels the tug of things still undone, couples it with a due date, and frames it with Precious Memories.

Chaos and lost-ness are not new to me. I remember a time of my own, a time of fear and shame, a time when I did not know if I were truly loved or just “handy” for parental-peer accolades; a time of depressive darkness that hung so thickly that I could not differentiate my despair from my childhood asthma. I remember the pumped up pressure to perform or better yet, pretend. I remember what it was to be lost amongst a crowd, not in a mall, but in a church congregation. I remember the hungering question, not unlike a boy getting socks instead of a pocketknife, “Is this it?”

Enter: the donkey. Not a stallion, not a burley mule; just the donkey of a Palestinian tradesman in the occupied territories of Israel, a scene right out of the pages of Life magazine or some other photo-journalistic record. I remember the story since childhood, how this girl got pregnant with God, and decanted Hope from the dregs of daily life. The scene was not cute; it was cruel. There were no bathrobes, just impoverished people lost in the chaos of trying to find a space… and most of them missed it. Too busy trying to find their own place to park.

I praise God for the memories of what it was like before Christ: the loneliness, the despair, the empty searching. It reminds me I don’t ever want to go back to Egypt, and it garners for me the hope for others who do not yet understand what is so Good about the news that a child was born in Bethlehem. Come Lord Jesus.

* Jim K. Kelley, November 15, 2004