Attention billing departments: If you send me a bill that’s due on June 25, and its postmark reads “July 7″, guess what? You aren’t going to get your money on time. Billing is not rocket science, but you can’t leave it in the hands of untrained monkeys. This is happening more and more often, though, because of pressures to cut costs and the lucrative practice of tacking on punitive late fees. If I receive any @#$%^ing “late fees” from this complete screwup, I’m naming and shaming the company involved, and taking my business elsewhere. If you can’t get your billing right, you don’t deserve my business.

Currently reading Yellow by Frank H. Wu. It’s an examination of how racism affects Asian-Americans, and an argument that dialogue about race in the USA is based on a black/white dichotomy. Wu says it needs to move beyond that dichotomy to some sort of multipolar thing. I just started it, so I haven’t really gotten to any profound insights. I don’t know, does “White people can be extremely clueless” count as a profound insight?

I still haven’t gotten my economic stimulus check yet. (It should show up this week.) But I went out to the mall anyway and bought a pair of shoes. Also, saw “Hellboy II”, which was definitely worth a matinee ticket. The scene with the professor and Hellboy in the locker room had the whole theatre laughing.

However, there was a problem (as always). Some guy sitting in the row in front of me had brought a bunch of kids in. One of those kids was about 5 or 6, far too young to enjoy a movie like “Hellboy II”. This kid started whining. I could almost ignore it—living with Fuzzball has given me some tolerance for whining kids, since a Siamese meow is almost as annoying as a whiny 5-year-old. But another guy in my row took exception to the kid, and said something like “Will you shut up?!” to the kid after the 25th time the kid whined. The kid’s excuse for a father figure got up, faced the guy in my row, and said something like, “What’d you say to him? I’m gonna cut you!” It could’ve gone very badly. It didn’t; the idiot backed down. I still had to laugh at him. First, he failed miserably at being a parent (multiple times). Second, he failed as a human being for threatening the man who complained with violence. Finally, he failed for making a threat which he couldn’t (or wouldn’t) carry out.

In fact, I think he deserves another image: