Kevrob <
[email protected]> wrote:
I note you made your first report on the Eve of St Nicholas, on
which night he should arrive by ship! Kingston may be too far
inland for that.
And you made your reply on December 7th.
I've long associated December 7th with two things, one bad, one good.
The bad thing is of course the unprovoked attack on Pearl Harbor, 80
years ago today. The good thing is that it's the day on which the
sunset starts gradually getting later again (at my latitude), leading
up to the sunny days of June.
But now I also associate it with a second good thing. It's the day
when telemarketers cease calling to tout Medicare plans (since it's
the annual deadline for an individual to make Medicare changes).
Most such telemarketers, like most other telemarketers, have a strong
Indian accent. Whenever I get a call with such an accent, I warn them
that they're helping to damage their nation's reputation all over
the world, which could lead to the world not intervening if Pakistan
attacks them. Usually they immediately hang up (which doesn't keep
them from calling back a few minutes to a few days later). But
sometimes they argue with me, which I find enjoyable. Especially when
they try to prove they're actually in the US. One who kept insisting he
was with the IRS said he had just fined me $10,000 for my impertinence.
(That was years ago, but I haven't received the invoice yet. The mail
from DC to Virginia must be slow.)
Of course I know intellectually that most people in India aren't
dishonest or telemarketers. But viscerally, whenever I hear that
"Apu" accent, I instantly recoil, associating it with lies. And
there's nothing I hate more than lies, unless it's someone who works
all day as a liar, telling several lies per minute for the purpose
of defrauding thousands of gullible people all over the world by
repeatedly annoying millions of non-gullible people all over the world.
--
Keith F. Lynch -
http://keithlynch.net/
Please see
http://keithlynch.net/email.html before emailing me.
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