Good December 1 to anyone out there. I was a good morning for me until we got four calls within half an hour about "new" "benefits" from Medicare and all the agent has to do is "confirm" that we have Social Security, and Medicare A and B. Bullshit!! They don't have to "confirm" anything and what ever "benefits" they are offering we have already been informed about and few "new" (if they are really new) "benefits" are things we find useful. I am so utterly sick of these calls. What really burns me up is there is NO WAY TO TELL THE BASTARDS NOT TO CALL US. Yeah, I am shouting. I am tired of being abused by this damned system. I tried being polite when this all started but I found that, if there was an actual person on the other end, they simply didn't understand the concept of NO. They usually tried to talk over me. Lately I have had the feeling that it isn't an actual person but some damned computer programed to mimic a person. Damn, Damn, Double Damn!! I have begun simply hanging up but simply closing the flip phone isn't nearly as satisfying as slamming the handset down on the base was when we had rotary phones.

Ah, GIZMODO has a perfect article for my mood today. "Enshitification" has become the big word of the year for the national dictionary of Australia. That term refers to the frustration we all feel dealing with the technology that seems to run our lives. Or ruin them. But I think Ives Smith at NAKED CAPITALISM had a broader term: crapification. And that perfectly encapsulates my feelings about more than just the tech itself. Has anyone noticed that the commercials on TV have become really weird? One commercial starts and suddenly, only a second or two into the spiel, it gets cut off for an entirely different one. Or, have you seen the commercial breaks in which the same commercial appears two or even three times in the same sequence? Or how badly the program gets cut up by the commercials? Or how producers change their products without much notice? A while back I read a blogger who complained that a batch of pickles didn't work out and found that the vinegar she customarily bought was no longer 5% acetic acid which is required for pickling. I thought I would check it out at our supermarket and sure enough the vinegar was 4%. Though the store did have the usual 5% as well, I was struck by the fact that the prices weren't very different. Crapification/enshitification basically describes things very well.