considering that most movies that come out these days, or at least those with decent budgets, are preceded to market by their own soundtracks, someone ought to start selling movie soundtracks in the theaters.
catch people coming out of the theater, humming the chorus to the closing credit song, only to find that, on their way out, they can buy in on CD.
well, that’s my million dollar idea for the day. what you do with it is up to you.
please learn to speak a little english before you go out and get a job answering phones for a living.
I find it strange that among all the porn and penis enlarging email entreaties i get in my spam bucket, i also get a bunch that claim a particular
piece of software will increase the reliability and stability of Windows. (i wonder if Microsoft has heard of this?)
as if people are just as desperate for free kiddie porn and bigger cocks as they would be to have a more stable operating system.
but, as one of my friends put it, “you gotta have a stable OS in order to masturbate while you look at porn.”
good point, i suppose.
but i think my favorite is the spam email claiming their service will make it so i “NEVER RECEIVE JUNK MAIL AGAIN!“
if that ain’t irony in a nutshell, i don’t know what is.
i’ve found them! the sunglasses i had in high school that i lost, the perfect sunglasses, the ones i adored and kept perfectly scratch-free, the ones that mysteriously made their way into and then just as quietly out of my life…
the big, chunky oldschool ray-bans with squarish frames, dark smoked glass, and straight earpieces.
giovanni ribisi is wearing them in the “Mod Squad” which i saw the other night on tv for the first time..
now, to see if anybody on ebay has them for sale…
well, here it is, 2002. here’s hoping it will be better than 2001.
just to give you some idea of what has changed, the first thing i did when i woke up in 2001 was turn on the TV and look for the football games and parades.
the first thing i did this morning was turn on CNN to see if anybody blew up Times Square.
so.. britney spears is not a girl? and not yet a woman? does that make her a pre-op transsexual?
welcome to customer service hell!
in this consumer season of unbridled spending and retail gluttony, it’s refreshing to me that the average consumer hasn’t been overlooked in the rush..
what the fuck ever. i’m getting boned here, and not in a good way. witness:
my mortgage.
biggest purchase i’ve ever made, likely to be the one of the biggest i’ll ever make. anyone who’s a homeowner will agree with me on this one: you expect some level of courtesy, of respect from the bank that’s handling chunks of money with your name attached, in amounts with six figures to them. some level of support, of trustworthiness, of basic competence is expected, nay, taken for granted.
so my bank, whose website has a popup ad on the homepage – real classic – who purchased my loan from my bank of choice – North American Mortgage Co. whose website looks like ms. jenkins’ third grade class designed it, but did nothing but help me through the purchase of my home, care for my interests, and ease my worries in the process. professional, courteous, competent. i even refinanced with them again when the interest rates dropped through the floor.
then they sold my account to another bank, whose entire customer base is purchased from other banks overstock.
a bank who, in august, had a computer problem that prevented payments delivered on august 1st being posted and processed until august 24th or so, which screwed the billing cycle for september. no statement came before september 1st, so i called and the helpful customer service guy said to stick my check in an envelope with my account number written on it and send it on its way.
while i’m on it, why is it that so damned many customer service phone systems require that i punch in my customer number, serial number, PIN, SSN, etc, just to have to recite all the same numbers to whoever i finally talk to when i finally do reach a human being? i have had the experience with reputable institutions where the numbers i punch in on the phone actually appear on the computer screen of the lucky sod i get to talk to, why not more? but i digress.
so i sent my check away on the first of september, with my account number clearly marked. a few days later, the september statement came. oh well.
then last month, the september statement came again. big deal, i think, their system is just a little out of whack. i pay my loan off for october and forget about it for another month. last week the statement came again, with a late charge, saying my october bill is already overdue and my september (having been paid) was 30 days past due, thus i owe a late fee.
but, says me, my checkbook balances (amazing feat, that) so they must have deposited all my checks, one a month, for the last several months. so i call, and i jump through hoops, and watch my “late” fees pile up, and my credit report get thwacked every few days as my tardiness adds up.
it’s all supposedly taken care of – after 3 faxes, 5 phone calls, and about a thousand digits punched into a touchtone phone, both to my real bank (the guys whose name is on my checks) and to the mortgage jerkoffs, who refuse to talk to one another, even when i offer to put them both on a conference call to duke it out.
then there’s my new iBook. a glorious little machine, the perfect compliment to my computing experience, not to mention my living room and back porch.
the ‘book, which i purchased with 18 months interest-free at crapusa, er, compusa (see previous minirant) has performed flawlessly. however, i examined my monthly statement today, and noticed that the accrued interest (considerable sum) of six months will be due by the end of december.
last time i checked, from july to december in the same year is only six months, not 18.
so i called. and called. and dialed, and punched and blooped and bleeped until finally i spoke with sharonda. her name isn’t important, but that’s what it was. sharonda.
i tell her my situation, she does the math, and says that, though it’s possible for her to fix the problem (change 2001 to 2002 and be done with it), the computer tells her that there is no 18 month option available, or wasn’t at the time of purchase. this, of course, is why i kept the flier that advertised the 18 months no interest option that was available only through july. i knew they were going to pull this kind of shit, so i saved everything.
compusa, of course, is not who i’m talking to. i’m talking to the financing company who handles the compusa financing accounts. they tell me i will have to talk to compusa – the “vendor” – to get the situation resolved.
i call compusa. predictably, they tell me i have to talk to the financing company, since their records indicate they gave me the 18 months.
it happens every fucking time. i had better get all this cleared up before the christmas buying season starts, or i’m liable to get lost in the onrush of poorly served customers. the saga continues. stay tuned
oh well, i know where the store is, and i know how to make molotov cocktails. you do the math.
oh! and don’t get me started on time warner cable. briefly, they raised my rates twice in two months, once for standard cable service, then again for roadrunner service. supposedly roadrunner was upgrading, so i could now use a dialup account when i’m on the road (like when i go home for thanksgiving!), hence the additional charge. the fine print that i read when i went to look up an access number, however, says i must a: use their proprietary dialup client which doesn’t work on macs and b: pay to use the service if i use more than a certain number of minutes a month. if i recall correctly, on the order of $.99 per minute. highway robbery. (i won’t mention that the cartoon network keeps going off the air right in the middle of dragonball Z every damned day lately.)
so i switched to earthlink. not only is it cheaper, but it also includes complete earthlink dialup access at – get this – no extra charge! and, oh yeah, i was set up and using earthlink in a matter of minutes, literally.
i called. i said i want to switch. i said i wanted this username. i got a webmail address to check for status. a few minutes later i check, and it’s already set up. i didn’t even need to have a service guy come out and do anything, or switch the modem, or change my conmputer’s setup at all. the only difference on my end is a: i pay about $5 less per month than before and b: i have a different IP number block when i connect.
that is customer service.
christmas music is probably my favorite kind of music, and there’s nothing that really defines the “holiday” season like hearing ‘carol of the bells’ or ‘white christmas’ or, my favorite, ‘greensleeves’ in public places, the radio, everywhere. it’s comforting, in a weird ‘it’s a wonderful life’ kind of way. once a year, we get all gushy about snow, and stars, and presents…
but for crying out pete’s sake, it’s barely november!
is there not a law or something that says you can’t hang up christmas decorations until thanksgiving? or at least until you’ve had a thanksgiving display up for a week or so? cripes, the grocery store and the doctor’s office both went straight from halloween to christmas. and thanksgiving is even early this year…
to all of you who took your kids out last night for halloween, i salute you. you’re my kind of americans.
for all the rest of you parents, who stayed home, cowering in your living rooms, teaching your kids how to be afraid, instead of showing them the resolve and courage that your parents should have taught you, rather than face the chilling spectre of your own well-lit neighborhood by twilight: you are all a bunch of pussies.
as for me, i stayed home to give out candy, since i have no kids. my neighborhood, though, is full of the little beggars, or it was last year. there were so many of them that i ran out of candy early and had to turn off the lights and hide from some of the later trick-or-treaters. not this year. this year, i had three.
exactly three. all of them under 6, and all accompanied by one adult. i have so much candy left over i don’t know what to do with it all. three. that’s two more than my nearest neighbor (the ones that i talk to and borrow powertools from) had. but they have kids of their own, so their candy won’t go to waste.
maybe i’ll pack up all my leftovers and send them in a nice care package to the FBI and CIA headquarters in DC. with a big note attached thanking them for issuing a warning to the public saying basically “something might or might not happen, and we don’t know when”, issuing a license to be paranoid, just days before halloween. perfect for that “return to normalcy” we’ve been working on. maybe i’ll tell them i’m a bioterrorist – i have the flu and i licked one of the Smarties. see if you can figure out which one.
sure, heighten security at airports, irradiate the mail, tap all the phones you want, but don’t fuck with halloween. the effect is as if they issued a warning of tainted turkeys the day before thanksgiving: nobody was out and about, not in my neighborhood anyway, and i’ll venture to say all over the country, last night. they were all too scared.
too scared to walk around their own neighborhoods, talking to and taking gifts and handouts from people they talk to and see every day – or should, if they live in a civilized society. to them, i want to say, these are your neighbors people, what are you afraid of? that somehow there’s anthrax in the snickers bars? smallpox in the bite-sized butterfingers? i’ve been liberally sampling my own candy purchases – you know, just to be on the safe side – and i think they’re all okay. hell, they were probably packaged some time last spring, for all i know.
or are you all afraid that some jihad-crazed madman is going to go driving down your street, every street in every suburb in america, raining bullets upon the unsuspecting pretend zombies and make-believe superheroes?
the only people i would be afraid of in my neighborhood are the jehova’s witnesses, whose church (or temple, or whatever) is just down the street. they’re out every so often, denouncing the public display of such blasphemous icons as jack-o-lanterns and all things halloween, as well as anything remotely pagan or commercial on christmas and easter as well. these are the religious zealouts i fear most.
i guess my question is this: how cowed have we become since September, to be afraid to go out of our own homes? sure we got kicked in the balls, and it hurt. a lot. but our pants were down around our ankles then. the planes are flying again, the World Series is sold out. we’re still americans, after all, and we still have Roosevelt’s Big Stick on our shoulder. though we’re getting a little slow on the uptake, we can still swing that bastard.
i hope that’s not too many mixed metaphors to get my point across. i’m done now. you can go back to pinning on your ribbons and waving your american flags now from the comfort of your personal fallout shelter. don’t forget to change the filters on your gas masks.
three. in four hours, i had exactly three trick-or-treaters.
read the latest rant, you wussies.