da: A smiling human with short hair, head tilted a bit to the right. It's black and white with a neutral background. You can't tell if the white in the hair is due to lighting, or maybe it's white hair! (Default)
I haven't received a reply to my email requesting cancellation from Harpers Magazine after 15 years, but I got a letter from their subscription department this week thanking me for my loyalty.

This feels like a good time for another followup, cc'd to the VP Subscription and the 2nd at the magazine under Rick MacArthur. Couldn't find MacArthur's address. Hope that's good enough for action.


Dear Shawn Green, Subscription Department, and Ellen Rosenbush,

It has now been three months since I sent my cancellation request in response to Rick MacArthur's appalling statements on the CBC in September. I have never received a reply. I do not want to receive another re-subscription letter from you. I am not a "loyal subscriber." My original statement on September 29 stands; I do not want to see the magazine in my house. Once again, please advise as to the resolution of this issue.

/s

(no subject)

Saturday, 29 September 2018 09:21 am
da: A smiling human with short hair, head tilted a bit to the right. It's black and white with a neutral background. You can't tell if the white in the hair is due to lighting, or maybe it's white hair! (Default)
Concerning CBC's interview with Rick MacArthur, publisher of Harper's Magazine:

From: Daniel Allen
Date: Sat, Sep 29, 2018 at 1:04 PM
Subject: cancel my subscription.
To: harpersmagazine@cdsfulfillment.com


I would like to cancel my subscription. I have listened to Rick MacArthur's defence of publishing John Hockenberry's essay, on the CBC on September 18th. MacArthur is beyond the pale. I barely know where to start, but his defence of Hockenberry is uninformed, sexist, ablist, disrespectful of the host- who can't get a word in edgewise over him repeating the same tone-deaf statements that #MeToo is so unfair to men. As a man, I am offended. As a feminist, I am enraged. I do not want to see the magazine in my house.

I do not need a refund; I feel sad about the history of this magazine which I have subscribed to for over fifteen years and your record of liberal thought over the last century. This isn't the only problem but this has been the last straw. If this is where you're going, that's where we diverge paths. If this is where liberalism is going, I guess I'll need a new philosophy. Maybe it is truly radical, not liberal, to examine ones own biases before opening one's mouth.

cc'd @Harpers @EllenRosenbush @cscarroll222 @katiabachko

Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Best regards,
Daniel Allen
subscriber ID xxxxxxxxxxxx

bike log

Friday, 2 April 2010 11:13 pm
da: A smiling human with short hair, head tilted a bit to the right. It's black and white with a neutral background. You can't tell if the white in the hair is due to lighting, or maybe it's white hair! (Default)
On this beauuuuttiful day, we took [livejournal.com profile] roverthedog for a longish walk, I did a bit of yard work, did some more decluttering in my study, read most of two issues of The Atlantic, and went for a 16km bike ride. My odometer rolled over 1,000km again, which I missed because I was paying attention to traffic after one of the new roundabouts. It rolled over at the site where they're turning farmland into a WalMart and movie-theater. ...As opposed to 5km up the road, where they're turning farmland into rental housing, or a few km in the other direction where they already turned farmland into a large plaza where they had the genius idea of a roundabout immediately followed by a stoplight. Yeah.

So, it would be another 1,000km, only my odometer is lying, or [livejournal.com profile] roverthedog is taking it out for joyrides, because my records from last fall said I stopped biking at 800km, and when I started riding 17 days ago it said 858. Then this Wednesday it said 980. The intervals when I'm actually on the bike, so it's jumping in the night.

Oh! I bet it's the house poltergeist. That makes more sense now, since the clock is mostly working these days.

Anyhow, I can guess I've gone something like 120km since I started riding this season. Feels good to be back on the bike.

Just, no way in hell I biked 200km in 17 days.

?

Friday, 29 January 2010 10:40 pm
da: A smiling human with short hair, head tilted a bit to the right. It's black and white with a neutral background. You can't tell if the white in the hair is due to lighting, or maybe it's white hair! (Default)
http://www.myheritage.com/collage


No, I think Billy Bob Thorton isn't a likeness. So, gang, who do I look like: Chiang Kai-Shek? Or Tony Danza?

OK, that's weird.

Tuesday, 26 January 2010 09:20 pm
da: (blue)
On my walk with Rover, my iPod decided to make me a random playlist. As far as I can tell, it was a shuffle of everything, 5327 songs.

The first four songs were a great combo:

Laurie Anderson - Statue of Liberty: she says, "...It's a good day / To run away / Freedom is a scary thing / Not many people really want it."

The Cure / Open ("I really don't know what I'm doing here / I really think I should've gone to bed tonight but...")

Brian Eno, Music for Airports / Ambient 1/2

O Brother Where Art Thou / Highways and Hedges

And then we got a middle chapter of the book Stumbling on Happiness, where Daniel Gilbert helpfully reminds us that "most people do prefer to have more freedom than less. Even if it makes them less happy."

So, is he agreeing with Laurie Anderson, or disagreeing. I'm not sure. Maybe my electronics want to remind me that free choice isn't always the ticket to happiness.

*shrug*

How was your day? Mine included excellent raw fish at Taka Sushi; and good news from two different parties about job offers. So, not so bad overall.

In Threes

Sunday, 1 November 2009 06:56 pm
da: A smiling human with short hair, head tilted a bit to the right. It's black and white with a neutral background. You can't tell if the white in the hair is due to lighting, or maybe it's white hair! (lego)
"What's funny to me," I said, "is the front doorknob to our house came off in my hand yesterday."

"Well, bad things usually come in threes," said the tow-truck driver.

"I'm hoping that the storm-door latch shattering a week earlier was number one. I really am."

Yup, I got my first tow-truck ride yesterday.

Welcome back to North America, [livejournal.com profile] melted_snowball! You've been experiencing the hour from 5:20pm to 4:20pm repeatedly since you left Tokyo 12 hours ago! As a special bonus for taking the [livejournal.com profile] da_lj Corolla Chariot back home, now you get to sit on the side of the 401 for an hour, after the muffler bracket decides it's had enough and now's the time to fall off. Whee!

Joining CAA this summer was a good idea. I called and they said they'd send someone ASAP, since the 401 isn't a safe place to be broken down. After a mix-up when the first CAA towtruck arrived just ten minutes after I called, and determined he was looking for another broken down car in roughly the same place (WTF?), it was a relief that the second CAA truck was actually going to stick around and help.

According to him, the only thing we need is the bracket and bolt which hold it on. He tried to wire it up with a coat-hanger, but the connections were difficult, so he had to put the car on a big dolly to tow us from Mississauga home.

And we made it home by 8pm, after d. and I acted like an old married couple when I was giving directions and dan woke up in the back seat and wanted to give slightly different directions. ;)

And the tire place on the corner, which we trust for minor fixes, can replace the bracket and bolt, I hope. I left them a voicemail. "The car that appeared in your lot on the weekend? That's us. Can you fix the muffler bracket? I'll call back early Monday."

--

The front door breaking, which feels anticlimactic now, was Friday's fun. Bleary morning routine: walk downstairs, get newspaper, make breakfast, deal with [livejournal.com profile] roverthedog. Fail step 2, open front door successfully: the handle pulled off in my hand, but without taking any of the innards with it. I'm like, "wait, there's a set of tabs sticking straight out inside the lock, which match the 4 slots in the handle, but... that doesn't look so easy to reattach." Blink. Blink. Hey, I need to get to Physio and to work. So I dealt with it in the evening. It turned out to be fixable, without even needing a trip to Home Hardware. And I also sanded down the top of the door, figuring that was the real cause of the failure. Only 8 years we've lived here, now we finally have a front door that doesn't stick.

--

What I'm (hopefully) calling failure number 1, almost two weeks ago now, was coming home to discover the latch for the storm-door had shattered into a pile of little metal shards on the front stoop. I haven't made it to the hardware store to see if a reasonable replacement can be found. Oddly enough, I feel busy otherwise.

I'm not sure what there is to learn here. Entropy happens? Replace stuff before it fails? Always have spares on hand? Have friends with good advice? I like that last one. If the muffler had actually fallen off, I liked the recommendation of one friend, who said "throw it in the trunk and drive on home. It'll be loud, but that's fine." I was tempted to just do that anyway, while we were waiting the hour for the CAA truck, but I'm glad d. convinced me not to, because I expect it would have cost a bunch more to reconnect the muffler.

So yeah. Just another boring weekend Chez nous.

Boggled

Monday, 17 November 2008 10:03 am
da: A smiling human with short hair, head tilted a bit to the right. It's black and white with a neutral background. You can't tell if the white in the hair is due to lighting, or maybe it's white hair! (Default)
[livejournal.com profile] melted_snowball and I were wondering about something this morning. Why do some autos have a metallic strap hanging down from the rear bumper onto the road?

I thought I read somewhere it was to prevent charge buildup in the car so the gas tank didn't explode. But oh, it's so much better than that.


09:48 <@dnm> They believe it cures motion sickness.
09:48 <@dnm> yarly.
09:48 <@dnm> (It doesn't.)
09:50 <@daniel> wait, I thought you were kidding still.
09:50 <@daniel> http://www.mizter.com/testimonials.htm


*boggles*
da: (duck)
Somehow, I expect the overlap set on my friends list is... kinda large.


So pretty:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/sep/22/10

University of Manchester Library to share 14th-century royal cookbook online. Look at that pic. I can't wait for it to go live.

So scary:
http://lovelylisting.blogspot.com/2008/09/listing-listing.html

[livejournal.com profile] lovely_listing (It's Lovely, I'll Take It) is "a collection of poorly chosen photos from real-estate listings". This one had me chortling out loud. Even now, after I've snuck looks at it all through the afternoon, it still makes me chuckle.

December 2024

S M T W T F S
12 34567
891011121314
15161718192021
22232425262728
293031    

Syndicate

RSS Atom

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Wednesday, 2 July 2025 12:55 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios