Seller Beware!

What would that be in grammatically correct Latin? Caveat vendit? Caveat vendor?

So, I'm just sitting there innocently working on my things and listening to some tunes when a JCPenney ad comes on advertising the store's "biggest sale of the season," taking place now through Saturday. I wasn't really listening, in an active listening kind of way, rather just allowing the save-big-discount-save-money-discount-blah-blah to wash over me, subconsciously knowing the music would come back on soon. Then, that telltale advertising voice shift happened, and the bright and chipper "Come save money!" gave way to the "NowI'mgoingtotalkreallyfastforthefineprintdisclaimertalk" lower voice. And this latter voice informed me that "biggest sale of the season" refers to the duration, the most days of sale, but that there might be another sale later that lasts for fewer days but has more items on sale.

To which the only possible logical response, of course, would be: Oh, you selfish stupid lazy entitled consumers of the US and wherever else your sorry selves are located, what the !@#$&* is wrong with you and why don't you go back to whatever !@$&* glacier you stepped out of?!  (As Julia Sugarbaker would say.) This is what we need disclaimers about now??! Because otherwise some jerkwad (I'm tempering my language right now to try to keep this blog reasonably family friendly) is going to come screaming into JCPenney and say whine-whine-whine you owe me money give me a refund i want my money back i am stupid i suck i have no life whatsoever but you said the BIGGEST sale and then later you had a BIGGER sale and I'm a total f****** loseramus but give my money whine whine pout I am terrible and horrible and give me my money. Ye gods, do I ever feel for JCPeneny, having to deal with and anticipate shite like that. It makes we want to go shop their "Biggest Sale of the Season" just to support them in the face of the abject loserdom that is US consumer society. Because I know from my Borders days that these kinds of things are what consumers waltz in demanding all the time.

You may be thinking that it was just a joke. That in this particular advertisement, JCPenney is making fun of the "NowI'mgoingtotalkreallyfastforthefineprintdisclaimertalk" voice that we hear all the time in ads. But that doesn't account for what happened yesterday.

Yesterday, the news went viralish that Cheerios or General Mills or some cereal corporate entity or other was including mandatory arbitration in their terms and conditions if you "Like" them etc. on social media. Meaning you can't sue them later when they say their cereal is "a healthy morning treat" and you find some jackass lawyer to support your jackass loserdom and you try to take them to court so you can get thousands or more dollars from their deep pockets when you say that "healthy" is a term reserved for the medical establishment-approved Ritalin and Prozac that big pharmaceuticals are pumping through your stupid, loser, jackass body and they totally wronged you by daring to claim that their cereal was "healthy" and oh by the way your 300-pound meat-eating dairy-drinking Walmart-shopping preservative-purchasing park-in-the-closest-spot-and-never-walk-on-any-errand-in-your-life self had better be compensated for such an egregious affront to your health.

Guess what, asswads? (trying, trying, trying to use gentle language, and failing) You have agreed to SO MANY mandatory arbitration clauses. Probably for Facebook itself -- and your car insurance -- and your credit cards -- and god knows how many other things. AND IT'S NOT ANYONE'S FAULT BUT YOUR OWN if you aren't reading the terms and conditions you agree to. You are NOT entitled to any of this shite! Any of it! You are not entitled to Facebook, or Cheerios, or Baby Einstein, or whatever.

Get the mighty !@#$&* over yourselves.

This really, truly makes me feel sorry for corporations. No, they are not people. They are corporations. You know who "people" are? "People" are the consumers who actually walk into a courtroom trying to get money from corporations who said their cereal was "healthy" or their Baby Einstein DVD was "educational" instead of those people focusing on real, actual, malevolent corporate wrongs such as those perpetrated daily by our military-industrial complex, for example.  Jeez, I hate people so much. The people that would find it anywhere within the realm of their possibility to sue Cheerios for claiming to be healthy. I hate those people. I hate them. This is the basis of my hatred. For today anyway.