3 weird sisters

Dear Jaffner,

I think I know why you like this picture. It reminds you of the time you set the gutter on fire, doesn’t it? Big flames, satisfied smirk. Was the other weird sister was there, too? It was practically in her yard, at any rate.

Recently, you must have told my own kids about this one. They refuse to believe I didn’t participate in those pyrotechnics. They tell me, as if citing from a rule book, “Well, did you do anything to try to stop it?”

I admit it. I loved that felt beanie.

Or maybe the picture reminds you of our own experience in Girl Scouts. Until recently, I thought we were atypical. How many times did we even make it in the door after our moms dropped us off? On at least one occasion, I remember smoking cigarettes behind the building. I have a vague memory of blaming it on the ugly uniforms, which I suddenly hated after doting on those cute Brownie clothes. Our moms tried to keep us from quitting. Good luck with that.

Now I know that it was Girl Scouting itself that set us on this dark path of independent thinking. I’m sure it’s why our collective closets are packed full of gay and lesbian friends. We’re only fruit flies, after all.

Liberty and justice for all in the land of the free.

Which brings me back to my own boys, who on occasion over the years begged me to let them be Boy Scouts. Each time, I patiently explained to them why they couldn’t. In fact, I think this was probably the opener for their ongoing indoctrination into civil rights for homosexual people. Which, sadly, has now deteriorated into “Not that there’s anything wrong with that!” on cue.

We should’ve stuck with that Cub Scout pack we enjoyed so much. In hindsight, my mom probably knew the Boy Scouts wouldn’t let us play once we aged out of her backyard den, Or maybe she sensed that budding feminists, latent Communists like us would never fit in with the more military (would that be Fascist, then?) agenda of boys who had outgrown pine-cone crafts and pond fishing.

Probably a good thing. Those Boy Scout shorts would have made our butts look big.

I just noticed this today.  This guy is so 1%, he’s even got “money” in his name:

Even his name is vaguely Dickensian

So the results are in from the primary voting for America’s Most Racist Party™ in America’s Most Racist State™, and not surprisingly, the candidate making the most openly racist appeals won.

I got into quite the online discussion last night with someone insisting that we should fear Gingrich more than Romney.  I disagree; while Romney really isn’t liked by most everyone, he’s not loathed the way Gingrich is in most places.  I noted that I wouldn’t be surprised if turnout was up yesterday in South Carolina, given what was offered on the menu – appeals to states’ rights (Paul), appeals to stick-up-the-ass faux religiosity (Santorum), and not-even-veiled appeals to racial bigotry (Gingrich).  You’d expect such a smorgasbord to really draw them out of the woodwork in the most reactionary state in the country, and it turns out this is exactly what happened – turnout was around 602,000, compared with 445,000 in 2008.  But let’s look where those “extra” votes went – Romney improved his 2008 showing by about 100,000 votes, which still put him far back into second place.  Gingrich bested him by about 70,000.  Both scored more votes than winner John McCain did in 2008. 

So what does it all mean?  Well, I don’t think it’s all that complicated, really.  I think what it means is that in the most reactionary state in the country, a lot of voters are motivated not by who they think is most likely to win a head-to-head matchup with the president, but by who they think is most likely to call him “ni**er” to his face, and Newt won that contest walking away.  I’m sure the magic underwear didn’t help Romney any with the snake-handling crowd, either.

Should we be worried about this?  Not particularly, I think.  Turnouts in both Iowa and New Hampshire were about even with the apathetic turnout in 2008, probably because the concentration of crazy in those states simply isn’t nearly as high as in South Carolina.  Sure, Newt may race-bait his way to further victories in primaries in the states of the old Confederacy, but that shit doesn’t play elsewhere.  Add to it the man’s history of shooting himself in the foot at the worst possible moment, and this is definitely the guy we’d prefer to go up against in the general election.  Because while Romney isn’t really liked, he’s not overtly offensive to many in the mushy middle.  Gingrich, on the other hand, seems to think it’s his life mission to be as offensive as possible to as many as possible.  And can you imagine evangelicals turning out in droves to support this guy in the general election?  I mean, we know from experience that they will be instructed from the pulpit to “fall in line” once the nominee is chosen, no matter how unpalatable to the brethren that choice may be.  But I can imagine quite a few of those folks just deciding to quietly sit at home on election day rather than going to the effort to show up and pull the lever for a serial adulterer whose fidelity to any particular church has been no better than his fidelity to his multiple spouses. 

So, while it’s true that the crazy isn’t confined to the south, what’s needed to harness it varies a great deal around the country.  God-botherers in the Midwest aren’t going to be motivated by code phrases like “food stamp president” in the way southern wingnuts will be, and Newt doesn’t have the religious fundamentalist chops to appeal to those folks the way he appeals to the bufords in South Carolina.

Go Newt!  Whether you win the nomination or not, your continuing presence in the race can only help in delivering victory to Obama in November.

Why would someone who tries to position himself as smart say really stupid things like this … and let someone record him doing it? Is he trying to achieve some sort of reverse snob appeal?

Americans can’t handle pop music? The radio has been hijacked by … something other than pop music?

Where does he think most of the world’s pop music comes from? And that’s not because Europeans are buying it (although they are). It’s because there’s a huge market for it here.

“The combined 2001 value of the recorded music industry in the US and Europe [is] (24 billion euros). … Fears of American dominance in music are not entirely unfounded: from 2001 through 2007, 31 artists have appeared simultaneously on at least 18 countries’ charts in at least one year. Twenty three of these artists – Avril Lavigne, Backstreet Boys, Beyoncé, Black Eyed Peas, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Destiny’s Child, Eminem, Enrique Iglesias, Evanescense, Faith Hill, Gnarls Barkley, Gwen Stefani, Jennifer Lopez, Justin Timberlake, Madonna, Mariah Carey, Outkast, P!Nk, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Rihanna, Usher, and Vanessa Carlton – are American.”

Now me and the wanker don’t know shit about radio music, but I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that at least a few of these qualify as “pop.” Here’s the full article, which concludes that basically people like music from their own country the best. Which may be why you’re not hearing quite as much EuroPop in gay bars stateside, Mr. Sullivan.

I don’t know why I let this get me so worked up.  It doesn’t matter who makes the music or who buys it. It’s simply a matter of personal taste.

Or maybe Kipper’s right and Andrew Sullivan has no soul >

Inspired by the Wall Street protests and the smart-ass investment bankers/brokers who apparently thought it would be a good idea to taunt the protestors with this:

… I put together a nice little T-shirt design.  I think I’ll go back and re-draw it in ink to sharpen it up, but this is the basic idea.  If there’s enough interest, I’ll have some printed up for sale – probable price, $15 + shipping (hey, Made in USA costs more, you know).  Feedback in comments would be appreciated.

*Updated above, for great justice, per actor212 & other suggestions.  I had originally tried splitting the original text to top & bottom of the image and it didn’t work so well; with this text it does.  I actually didn’t have to re-draw it; copying on high contrast did the trick.  Appreciate those of you who have weighed in elsewhere saying you’d like one of these – but if you would, please put your name in the hat in the comments along with the size you’d like.  AFAIC, there is only one size for t-shirts – XL – but not everyone likes walking around in a big baggy oversized shirt.  So if you’d like something different, name your size.  I think the XXL and bigger run a couple of dollars extra.  I’ve got another design coming later today for those who swoon at the sight of a guillotine.

*Updated again for MOAR FATCAT BANKER HEAD.

*One last update (maybe) – this one is for those who faint away at the sight, sound or thought of the word “guillotine;”  you know who you are.  What I like about this one is how it echoes a teabagger not-even-veiled threat from one of the rallies where they WEREN’T packing heat.

I got a phone call earlier this evening, from…wait for it…COMCAST.

The purpose of said phone call was so that the Comcast employee could helpfully inform me that, with a payment of only $23 and some odd, I could “avoid interruption of service.”

That would be the service that I informed not one, but TWO of their employees by phone on August 9th that I no longer wanted.  It would be the same service I cancelled, again, IN WRITING, on August 20th.  The conversation went something like this:

Comcast Dude:  “If you’ll pay $23 and some odd right now, you can avoid interruption of service.”

Me:  “Interrupt the fucking service all you like; I cancelled it over a month ago.”

Comcast Dude:  “There’s nothing on the account about that.”

Me:  “Well, THERE’S a bigfuckingsurprise.  I only told two of your employees on the phone and wrote a letter a week and a half later.”

Comcast Dude:  “Well, did they do such and such to disconnect?”

Me:  “I have no fucking idea, but you know, that’s really not my problem.  I sent in my final payment with the letter.  If Comcast is only just now getting around to “interrupting the service,” then they were providing a service that wasn’t being used and that they were told wasn’t being used…I’m not paying another penny.”

Comcast Dude:  “I’m going to give you a number to call for customer ser…”

Me:  “Forget it.  I’m not wasting another minute of my time to cancel a service I’ve already cancelled THREE FUCKING TIMES.  It’s not MY fault that Comcast hires incompetent employees who ignore what customers tell them, or that the company ignores cancellations in the hope that they can continue to charge people for services they don’t want.  I’m certainly not going to pay for incomptence or dishonesty on the part of Comcast or its employees.  Goodbye.”

Here ends my tale.

I would feel a little bit bad about being so rude to someone on the phone if not for the fact that…he works for Comcast, so I know that, had I asked him to make sure the service was cancelled, I would get more calls demanding payment.

Bonus surrealism points for that veiled threat…”interruption of service.”  Yeah, motherfucker, that shit’s got me shaking in my boots!  As if “interruption of service” isn’t the reason you dumbasses lost the fucking account in the first place.

Sheesh.

As I noted in my last Comcast-themed post…next stop, city franchise authority!  I’ve no doubt that’s where this will ultimately end; these dumbfucks don’t know when to stop, so next it will be a referral to a collection agency and it will end only when I go down to the city and raise holy hell, taking with me the notice of cancellation I gave them in writing along with the delivery confirmation slip that proves they got it.

Worst.  Company.  In.  America.

Extra bonus points:  cue “Comcast Mark” in comments in 5…4…3…2…

The following are the top search engine terms that found our site:

Since I see no reason to break this streak, I give you the following:

I know this doesn’t say good things about me as a person, but there’s almost nothing I enjoy better than writing a really inflammatory letter, usually to a large business concern, informing them that I’ll no longer be doing business with them.  Sure, I know that The Very Large Corporation of America™ doesn’t really give a shit about my business, but I can’t help but imagine the kick the employee who opens and reads it must get out of it.  I wrote a real ass-peeler to Shittybank a few years back, after they nearly burned down the economy and then informed me they were gonna increase my minimum monthly payment (always paid on time, always paid more than minimum) by double.  I can’t recall EVERYTHING I said in that letter now, but it was both scathing and funny, and offered them the opportunity to get in line behind other creditors after I declared bankruptcy thanks to their arbitrary decision to squeeze everyone’s nuts on account of their own insane business decisions, which, ironically, had put the entire economy in the shitter and greatly reduced the ability of any of us to repay them; to wit:  if you double my monthly payment, you ain’t gonna be getting a payment at all.  This accomplished both a backing off on the demand for a higher payment and the lowering of the interest rate on the account to a friendly 1.9%, which made everyone happy.

Another time Skank of America failed to post a payment made on time when they received it, then tried to slap me with some absurd $39 “late fee” on a balance of $120 or so which had been paid in full with the check they failed to post on time.  Getting nowhere with their “customer service” representative on the phone, who more or less accused me of being a liar who had failed to pay a lousy $15 on time on an account I’d had for over 10 years and NEVER paid late, I sat down to write a friendly letter, one in which I noted that I would not be able to live with the guilt of knowing I had brought the mighty institution to its knees for want of $15 mailed a couple of weeks earlier, so their employees could have been leisurely in processing it while still not putting the business in danger of collapse, and they could have their crappy $39 but it would be the last cent they’d ever get from me.  In this one, I included the two halves of my card.  And a couple of weeks later, received back a new card along with an abject apology.

So…I’m pretty good at this sort of thing.

I’ve related my recent troubles with Comcast already; unfortunately for Comcast by the time they finally got around to fixing my service, which had been screwed up for over a month, I had already signed up to switch to AT&T DSL service – they just hadn’t activated the account yet, so I kept the Comcast connected until the AT&T came online.  During this period, I was getting beaucoup calls from Comcast verifying that the problem had finally been fixed, and in every one of them I notified the caller that I had signed up for AT&T during the period when the Comcast service wasn’t working and looked as though it would never be fixed; that I would be moving forward with making the change unless Comcast could match the much better price I was getting from AT&T, and that if Comcast would do this, I would consider keeping their service in spite of the nightmares I had experienced with getting it working again.  Because, let’s face it – it’s a pain in the ass to have to change your email address and notify everyone.  None of the callers responded with an offer of better price from Comcast, so when the activation date for AT&T arrived, I switched over the service, then called Comcast to cancel my account.

First, I was put on a lengthy hold, during which a looped recording of a chirpy woman repeated over and over again, “Did you know that DirecTV sucks donkey?” or a message to that effect.  Finally I got a person on the phone, stated my intention to disconnect the service, and he immediately went into the “valued customer” routine.  You know the one:  “we value you SO MUCH as a customer that we couldn’t be bothered to fix your non-working service for over a month, and we’ve been overcharging you for six years!  But now that you’ve had it with us, we’ll offer you the price we would have been offering all along if we truly valued you as a customer.”  I more or less stated the same to him, told him that multiple Comcast employees had been informed of my intent to drop the service previously and none had offered fairer pricing, and that it was now a done deal – please disconnect.  At that point, he launched into a claim that I had “equipment” that belonged to Comcast that I had to return or I would be charged for it; because I never had any Comcast equipment, I asked him to tell me specifically what it was that I was expected to return.  He said there was a “note on the account” but that it didn’t specify what equipment belonging to Comcast I allegedly had.  I said, well, you can’t very well expect me to “return” equipment if you can’t even tell me what the equipment is that I supposedly got from you, now can you?  He said I would have to talk to someone in “service” regarding the equipment issue, gave me another number to call, and I went through the waiting routine again.  Finally, I get a woman in the service department on the phone.  She says there’s no note on the account regarding equipment.  And also, that the guy I JUST TALKED TO failed to cancel the service as I told him to do and as he said he had done.  She said she was taking care of it and at the same time issued a credit for the final bill for the month where the service was only working half of the time.

Fast-forward 10 days, and here’s another bill in the mail from Comcast – dunning me for the last month of service (which I called to cancel halfway through, and for which I was owed a substantial credit), and billing me for the upcoming month.

So I decided it was time to write another letter.  And not only to write a letter, but to mail it return receipt, so Comcast couldn’t continue to pretend they hadn’t been notified of my desire to cancel service.  I of course deducted the cost of return-receipt service and the postage from the small amount I owed them for my last couple of weeks of service, put the check and the letter in with the payment slip, and mailed it off.  I’m not going to post the entire letter, but here is the last part, which was my favorite:

I can’t imagine how you manage to stay in business.  This is the WORST COMPANY I have EVER dealt with; please note in your records not to contact me in the future with offers for service because I will NEVER, EVER, EVER do business with you again, not even if you were the ONLY provider for TV or internet in Little Rock, and you are only wasting money by mailing offers to me or calling me.  If I had a choice between free Comcast service and $100 per month service from anyone else, I would go with “anyone else.”  Some companies inspire disgust with their poor service; you folks inspire out-and-out hatred.  It’s as if you DESIGNED your company to provide the worst service possible, as if you have teams working diligently to figure out how you can make more mistakes, deal even more dishonestly with customers, and provide even lousier service.  Thank God the cable company is no longer the only game in town – having alternatives might just earn your company the demise it so richly deserves.  Good-bye, and good riddance.

I got another call from them yesterday asking if they had “fixed the problem” with my service. 

Some folks, they just don’t learn.  I suppose next stop will be with the city’s franchise authority; because I can still access my Comcast email accounts, I’m fairly certain they still haven’t cancelled the account.  All I can say is, God help them if they turn this thing over to a collection agency or attempt to put a black mark on my credit as a result of this, because at that point I’ll be done playing and it will be jihad time.

If it weren’t for the rapidly-approaching ground, this stupid debt ceiling impasse free-fall we’re in could be quite entertaining, because the cracks are beginning to show.

In what sounds like a “we can do it, yes we can!” pep rally for House Republicans, there’s this oddity reported by the Washington Post:

House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), the party’s vote counter, began his talk by showing a clip from the movie, “The Town”, trying to forge a sense of unity among the independent-minded caucus.

One character asks his friend: “I need your help. I can’t tell you what it is. You can never ask me about it later.”

“Whose car are we gonna take,” the character says.

After showing the clip, Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.), one of the most outspoken critics of leadership among the 87 freshmen, stood up to speak, according to GOP aides.

“I’m ready to drive the car,” West replied, surprising many Republicans by giving his full -throated support for the plan.

Then today, there’s this from Politico:

Well, I have … it was this scene:

Or perhaps this one:

In any case, I predict we’ll be here by Saturday at the latest:

That’s Boehner in the role of Piggy; Eric Cantor is portrayed by the kid with the modified jewfro who levers the huge boulder off the cliff, while the other fools on the hill represent the Teabag Caucus.

There’s that old back-handed curse about living in interesting times; I don’t think this qualifies.  I think we’re suffering under the much more pernicious curse of living in stupid times.

On the internet front, things seem to be fixed.  But boy oh boy, what it took to get there…

What I learned from my ordeal was that yes, my instinct was correct – it’s not that Comcast has bad people working for them - though I’m sure it’s possible there are a few, I didn’t encounter them in trying to get this fixed – it’s that they have set up a system for customer “service” that virtually renders it impossible for their employees to deliver it.

Here’s what finally happened:  after posting my Comcast rant, I got disgusted again and called again, and got a guy on the phone who was willing to entertain something beyond “let’s just set up another tech appointment.”  True, I did have to diagnose the problem myself and also communicate my suspicion that the main cable line or relays or something was worn out and being affected by the high temps we’ve been having.  He went and looked at the map and asked, “is this street in your vicinity?”  Well, yes.  Yes it is, in fact the houses on that street back up to the same alley MY house backs up to.  Turns out there are two internet outages reported on that street, and mine, and those are the ONLY internet customers Comcast has on the block, and the ONLY outages they have reported anywhere in the area.  “That’s it,” I tell him, “there’s a bad line or relay coming down the alley on our block.”  So, he says he’s going to set up another service appointment for the following morning – their procedure is that they are gonna make you sit home for another service call before they’ll put maintenance on it, even if you know what’s wrong, which is dumb - plus he will have his supervisor call when she gets back from lunch.  I never did hear from her, but a guy in the office here called later that afternoon thanks to an email this guy sent.  I go through the whole scenario with him too, and he’s continuing to insist that a service rep will have to come to my house before they can dispatch maintenance.

The next morning, the internet is working.  The service tech calls about coming out; I tell him, “you can come out if you like, but I don’t know what the point is, since it’s working at the moment and we’ve already determined that the problem is on the alley.  Or if you want to wait till noon, it will go out by then.”  He says he’s going to make sure maintenance has a ticket on it and call me back.  At noon, the internet goes out and I call the service tech back on the cell number he called me from; no answer, so I leave a message.  I never did hear back from him.  So around 4 in the afternoon, I call the guy here who had called the previous afternoon, and I don’t get him either but leave him a message to the effect of “WTF?  Is the repair scheduled or not?”

So…that evening, the comment on the Comcast rant below gets posted.  I have to say I’m really in awe of that – that Comcast pays people to troll the internet looking for people badmouthing Comcast, rather than just fixing their customer service procedures – but that’s what they do.  I sent the guy an email in which I quite pointedly noted that PR is NOT customer service, and that if they would take care of the latter they’d have little need for the former, but that it spoke volumes about the horrible but well-deserved reputation they have for customer service that they feel like they need people on the payroll to put out fires online.  I close with the suggestion that, for a reasonable fee, I’ll show them how to set up a customer service system that actually works.

Anyhoo…first thing this morning, there’s an email response from Comcast’s damage control team.  And then, around 10:00, a Comcast truck rolls up in front of the house; a guy comes to the door and says he understands there’s a problem with the cable service at the house.  “No,” I say, “the problem is on the alley.  There are two more houses on the next street over who are out too.”  Further amazement – even after all of this, I’m not sure anyone has communicated to the crew where the problem is.  And I leave it at that; by this time, I’m just not going to deal with anyone tromping through the house again for no reason.  So…they sit out in front of the house a little while, then drive off.  When I hear the neighbors’ dogs barking, I know they’re back on the alley.  The internet goes out for about 20 minutes, then it comes back on and has been on ever since.  The supervisor guy here called back this afternoon to make sure things were working, and then the guy leading the service crew called later on.  Turns out there was a bad relay – quel surprise.  And…good on all of them; they fixed the problem and actually got it done in a reasonable amount of time.

But sweet lord, what it took to get to that point!  And that is totally none of these guys’ fault.

The moral of this story?  If you’re having a problem with your Comcast service, and the first couple of calls to customer service don’t get you anywhere, bitch about it on your blog, or put out a ranting tweet or post on your ShoutyFace page, and wait for the PR flacks to come calling. 

Once the flacks get involved, your issue is as good as resolved.

Of course the great irony here is that this is a communications company which apparently cannot communicate internally.  Then again, that may explain the preference for PR flackery over a good service model.  In any case, thank god it’s over.