Perhaps it’s time for me to find a new bank.  This kind of crap pisses me off.

Recently, JPMorgan Chase completed extensive research examining our company’s history for any links to slavery to meet a commitment to the city of Chicago. Today, we are reporting that this research found that between 1831 and 1865 two of our predecessor banks – Citizens Bank and Canal Bank in Louisiana – accepted approximately 13,000 enslaved individuals as collateral on loans and took ownership of approximately 1,250 of them when the plantation owners defaulted on the loans.

We all know slavery existed in our country, but it is quite different to see how our history and the institution of slavery were intertwined. Slavery was tragically ingrained in American society, but that is no excuse.

We apologize to the American public, and particularly to African-Americans, for the role that Citizens Bank and Canal Bank played during that period.

Although we cannot change the past, we are committed to learning from and emerging stronger because of it. Since these events took place in Louisiana, we are establishing a $5 million college scholarship program for students living in Louisiana.

Not only are they apologizing for something done by a completely different company, they’ve been guilted into coughing up $5 million in appeasement money.  If it’d been me, I’d have told them to ‘sod off’ (if I was feeling polite).

I started off with Bank One, which was assimilated into the JP Morgan Chase collective recently.  Of course, I wouldn’t doubt that Bank One would have done the same thing.

It’s tempting to ditch them over this, but it’s such a pain the ass to change banks.

I was fidding around looking for a printer stand and came across something interesting on the Staples website.  Take a look at the highlighted GET parameter in the URL of the search results:

http://www.staples.com/catalog/search/Search_Sum.asp?
PageType=2&SearchPageType=2&cromulent=
&Keywords=printer+stand&image1.x=0&image1.y=0

Looks like one of their web coders is a Simpson’s fan.

Update: had to break that URL because it was breaking the blockquotes.

In one of those strange situations that wouldn’t be believable as fiction, a UPS driver found himself in a catch-22 yesterday.

In a odd twist, a United Parcel Service driver was on his way to deliver parts to Cheshire Medical Center in Keene when his van was in a serious crash involving two tractor-trailer trucks on Route 9 at Chesterfield Hill, police said.

The driver’s name and severity of his injuries were unavailable this morning.

The driver was taken to Cheshire Medical Center by ambulance with a head injury, but the hospital couldn’t do some of the tests he needed because one of its machines was down, police said.

And the parts to fix that machine were in the man’s wrecked truck on Route 9.

Fortunately, after a brief delay they were able to retrieve the parts and perform the tests.

Instead of sending the driver to Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, someone was sent to get the parts out of the truck, they were installed, and the machine was put to work, police said.

I wonder if UPS Tracking has a code for this situation?

Link via Engadget.

It amazes me that there are still people who idolize Josef Stalin.

Dozens of residents of Josef Stalin’s hometown celebrated the 125th anniversary of his birth Tuesday, singing, dancing and drinking champagne toasts to the late Soviet dictator.

People cried and kissed a 6-foot-tall cardboard cutout of Stalin and laid wreaths at the base of a monument in the small town of Gori, 50 miles west of the capital, Tbilisi, paying honor to the man who oversaw years of brutal purges and remarkable industrialization of an agricultural society.

Some of the people at this “celebration” remarked on how at least under Stalin they had jobs.  I suppose it’s easy to think this if you were one of the lucky ones who didn’t get sent to a death camp.  I wonder how the families of his victims and the few remaining survivors feel about him?

Careful!  Guard goose on duty!

Four jails in Brazil are using geese to help prevent prisoners from escaping.

The prisons, in Sao Paulo’s Paraiba Valey, say no inmates have escaped since they brought in the geese.

The geese are kept in areas just inside the prison wall and make a lot of noise whenever anyone goes near them.

Idalecio Pereira Campos, director of Tremembe Prison, told Terra Noticias Populares: “When I was a child there were wild geese that would run after me on a nearby farm.

“That is where I got the idea from, I thought that the geese would do great in the prison, and they do!”

Anyone who has been chased by a goose can attest to the fact that they aren’t so cute and cuddly when they get riled up.

It seems that just about everything you could ever think of is somewhere out there on the Internet.  Curious about what condemned murderers eat for their last meal?  Consult Dead Man Eating, which is a compendium of last meal requests from death row inmates around the country.  They also have a section for readers’ last meals.

It got me to wondering, though.  For whatever reason you’re on death row and it’s your last meal.  You’re not going to see tomorrow.  What would you request?  I know for sure I wouldn’t give a damn about Atkins at that point, so I’m thinking along the lines of the following:

I wonder if they would allow a Partagas or Macanudo to be slipped in?  I know the damn smoking nazis have made the prisons non-smoking, but it’s not like you have to worry about dying from smoking at that point. 

Update:  I should have looked over in the right-hand sidebar and the smoking question would have been answered. 

lorenzo morris
texas
november 2, 2004
fried chicken and fried fish, french bread, hot peppers, apple pie, butter pecan ice cream, two soft drinks, either Sprites or Big Reds and a pack of Camel cigarettes and matches. The request for the Camels was denied.

Damn, that’s harsh.

Has anyone else noticed on that U2 iPod commercial that Bono is saying, “Uno, Dos, Tres, Catorce” at the beginning?  In English that comes out as “One, Two, Three, Fourteen.”  I’m not sure whether he’s doing it on purpose (for some arcane political reason that hasn’t been made known to us yet) or if he just didn’t realize it was supposed to be “cuatro.”  It bugs the hell out of me every time I hear it, though.

Some people are too stupid to be allowed to live.  Unfortunately, they usually take someone else out instead of themselves:

Murder charges were filed Monday against a 19-year-old Waxahachie woman who authorities said tried to commit suicide a week ago by crashing her vehicle on Interstate 35E in Lancaster but killed another woman instead, the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department announced.

Sgt. Don Peritz, a sheriff’s spokesman, said Lindsey Alyn Crumpton was southbound on the interstate at 10:37 p.m. Nov. 9, between Bear Creek and Parkerville roads, when she drove her 1995 Ford Explorer across the median and into oncoming traffic.

The Explorer struck a Chevrolet Impala driven by Kristina Kelly Bartlett, 47, of Corona Del Mar, Calif. Both drivers were pinned in their vehicles after the head-on collision, Peritz said.

“Crumpton told law enforcement officials at the scene that she intentionally drove her Explorer into oncoming traffic in an attempt to commit suicide,” Peritz said.

The irresponsibility and callousness of this act boggles the mind.  To intentionally involve someone else in a suicide attempt, and then to end up killing them instead of yourself is so stupid as to approach the level of evil.  I hope she survives and then gets life in prison so that she can have a long time to contemplate her actions.  Although someone so self-absorbed and irresponsible is likely to blame someone else, rather than accept any herself.  Still, I can wish for a bit of suffering on her part, given that it’d be richly deserved after what she’s done.

I was paging through Cabela’s Christmas catalog last night and came across this:

It’s a gas-powered blender called the TailGator.  It’s got a 24cc Poulan 2-stroke 2-1/4 hp engine.

For when you absolutely have to make a margarita right now and the nearest electrical outlet is 20 miles away.

So very wrong, yet so entertaining. 

Somehow, I think this guy would greatly enjoy it.