A Cautionary Tale of Tomatoes
Howard C. Berkowitz
hcb at gettcomm.com
Fri Oct 17 16:55:20 UTC 2003
I do believe the Verisign discussion and the opinions of operators is
very much on-topic. At the same time, while I participated in the fun
of tomato discussions, people are right in saying it won't play well
to media.
Perhaps still on topic, if we consider protest and HOW it's received,
I had a strange public experience involving tomatoes (well, tomato
juice).
It was many years ago, when I was an OSI protocol evangelist. Mind
you, OSI is still the answer, but we still haven't figured out the
question. I had to give a tutorial in San Francisco, and had a nasty
case of laryngitis.
The only thing that kept my throat working was constantly sipping hot
soup. So, I asked the hotel to make soup available for me, at the
podium, from 9AM on. They were resistant, and said they didn't do
soup until lunchtime. Exasperated, I croaked out that they could heat
up a can of tomato juice, give a dash of tobasco and pepper, and send
it to me in a pitcher.
To get the full effect, you need to understand that the room was set
up in theater style, with a central aisle. You also have to
understand that while this was San Francisco, apparently the waiters
were all unemployed actors, ala Los Angeles.
About 9:15, the double doors swung open, and a waiter rolled a white
covered cart, featuring a pitcher of steaming red liquid and a single
glass, to me. In a fairly good Transylvanian access, the waiter
croaked out "your nourishment, Sir," and theatrically slunk out.
My students looked at me very, very strangely for the rest of the
class. So, I can testify tomato products can backfire.
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