A vexing question

I was complimented at yesterday's barbecue on the neatness of my bratwurst. The clean design of my pale sausage edged with a line of mustard and a line of relish prompted someone to ask, "Is that the flag of Jamaica?" I knew it wasn't, but when it came to the question of whether some lame country had come so late to the party that a crappy design of green-white-yellow horizontal stripes was the best choice available[*], I was stumped. "Is there a vexillologist in the house?" I asked. But, alas, there was not. Fortunately, I have found a passable substitute in the form of this website. The various search engines leave much to be desired, but the use of one reveals no matches. There are a couple of tricolours with these three colours, but they have the green in the middle--which, I have to admit, more closely follows the rules of heraldry (i.e. metal may not lie upon metal) than that which was on my bun.

[*] Far from the worst choice possible, sadly, as some of the examples here attest.

The never-ending phone rant

Back when I had my phone trouble (anyone remember that? it was two months ago now) and decided to give up on RCN, I knew that things would get a lot worse before they got any better. Someone, I still managed to underestimate the utter incompetence of my local service providers.

At least I've discovered what it takes to get a response out of RCN: File a complaint with the Illinois Commerce Commission. (You can do this easily and simply online.) I wrote to RCN, but no one answered my letters. I tried calling them, but they decided that having staff on hand until 7:30 p.m. to field service requests was insanely generous and cut their office hours back to 5 p.m. Less than a week after submitting my complaint to a regulatory agency, however, I got someone on the line who explained why they hadn't turned my phone number over to SBC: When I cancelled my account (which I did to keep them from charging me for service I was not receiving), it went back in the pool. To get them to release it, I would've had to resubscribe, get the number back, and then get them to turn it over to SBC. No way I'm masochist enough to do that and I wish someone had told me, oh, I dunno, a MONTH AGO that this would be a problem.

So I called SBC to ask why they had dropped the ball (I mean, shouldn't there be a flag somewhere that says, "Hey, this order was placed six weeks ago and hasn't gone through yet! What's up with that?") and got the Mouth Breathers' Call Centre. The operator wasted ten minutes of my time until I realised he wasn't just taking my existing order and noting that I needed a new number (as he led me to believe), he was creating a brand-new order! (The tip-off was when he asked, "Did you remember what calling plans you ordered?"). I told him to get stuffed, I'd fill out the request online.

Meanwhile, YAK-RAPE has decided it really doesn't like holding a charge for longer than it takes to make like one or two calls. So if you've had trouble trying to get in touch with me lately, this is part of the reason.

Jaded by Pride?

Pursuant to something sfbear79 and I chatted about not too long ago: The man who stabbed three people at Jerusalem's gay pride parade has been charged with attempted murder.