Yeah, this was basically begging for it’s own niche blog. Tada!

Also, this post hightlights the query “when will jesus bring the pork chops”, which would be a great one except that it’s the title of a George Carlin book.

Hey, I totally complained about this months ago, and apparently the Senate Commerce Committee read my blog and got right on that shit.

“One Webloyalty employee acknowledged in an e-mail that most of its calls were from members who are questioning charges or want to cancel their membership, while a Vertrue employee had estimated that cancellation calls represent approximately 98 percent of call volume. The companies‘ internal manuals train their call center representatives to answer questions such as, ‘what is this charge?’ or ‘who are you?’”

An internal Vertrue customer survey found that 43 percent of visitors to its “membership center” were trying to find out about “the charge on my credit card that I did not recognize.” Another 44 percent had come to “cancel the program.” A single person showed up to “find out more about my membership benefits.”

Who could have ever imagined that customers wouldn’t appreciate companies secretly handing off their credit card details to totally sketchy third parties for monthly abuse? Seriously, everyone who came up with this scheme, and everyone who went along with it, do the right thing and go to jail. Don’t pass go or collect any more millions of dollars, just report directly to jail. Dicks.

So earlier this week Slate published this article about things that come up through the Google suggest feature, and now I am absolutely hooked. I have no idea what sort of algorithm Google is using to come up with these suggestions. Some of them seem unlikely to be very common searches. But regardless, the results are fascinating.

why is:

Is this dead Pakistani on the couch thing a very common problem?

why are:

Why are there school?? That’s why!

how can i make my:

People want more hair, bigger breasts, faster computers, better personal websites, and longer “pennises”. Good luck with that.

how come:

Those bitches are obviously playing hard to get. Try “randomly bumping into them” and bringing up stuff you’ve learned about them on Facebook.

where can i find:

Chuck Norris can be anywhere, at any time. But most likely he’s online trying to find the Erin Andrews video.

This has been been popping up all over the place in my Google reader this morning:

At first glance, I thought was this was actually an ad for mayoral candidate Bill Thompson, since the guy sort of looks like him:

But then I read the actual ad text and remembered no one but Bloomberg could possibly afford to plaster the internets promoting himself like that. Did Mike Bloomberg just try to trick me into thinking that even Thompson would be voting for him? What else is the motivation for random non-Bloomberg, vaguely Thompson-esque guy wearing a Bloomberg NYC button in a campaign ad?