Why?:

* Why, when you call businesses and get their voicemail system, do they insist (still) on saying that "Your call is very important to us"? Isn't it kind of like "If you have to ask 'How much?' you can't afford it"? If you have to repeatedly tell your customer that their call is important, and you insist in doing it in an automated, bored, vanilla voice (with no hope extended of actually connecting you to someone), is it really that important? If your call were truly important, wouldn't you have a live person to answer the phones 24/7?

** Along those lines...Why do voicemail systems have to give you a litany of instructions after the voicemail message (i.e. "If you'd like to leave a message, stay on the line, otherwise hang up or press "0" for more options."). Don't we all kind of have it figured out by now? Beep, then talk. That's really it people.

*** Why is it so life-or-death important for countries to host the Olympics? I'm convinced it only matters to IOC and its host country counterparts, that get to share in the spoils (I mean, of course all the corruption has been taken out of the process, I'm just speculating here). Just look at Greece. The Olympicos have torn the hell out of the country, de-spoiling probably countless classic archaelogical sites forever, while spending billions of dollars on security for a bunch of games and the people who play them. The whole country was getting shellacked with criticism for not being ready, which only increased the frantic efforts of the government to further impose upon the lives of its citizenry so that they can essentially leave the country for a month while the hordes of foreigners invade to make a big mess, and then leave. I mean sure, a new subway system is nice and all, but who really thinks the Greeks will have the money to keep the thing operational afterwards? An apt analogy can be made with the GOP and Dems conventions, to be sure.

I need some answers here...