The Best Medicine

Sometimes you just gotta laugh, amirite? More times than not really. Otterwise you just spend your life perpetually enraged and that’s no good for the old BP. It can be a struggle though, especially when you’re dealing with one of the giant mega corp chatbot clusters:

Me: I have an account but can’t seem to log in.
Them: I see you’re using Chrome. Have you tried using another browser?
Me: I don’t want to try another browser.
Them: OK. What’s your account number?
Me: [pastes it in from last auto-billing email notification]
Me: I have an auto-reject message saying it looks like a credit card number and won’t send.
Them: Oh, sorry. You’ll have to break it in half.
Me: {whaaa?}
Me: [does that]
Them: Thanks!
Me: K
Them: The problem is you don’t have an online account with us.
Me: Then how have I been auto-paying my bill all these years?
Them: …
Me: All I wanted to do was log in so I can see my options since my bill has increased and it seems ridiculous to pay $75 per month for just internet.
Them: Understandable! Would you like to switch to a package deal?
Me: Well, I’d like to see what’s available. Do you know why my price went up?
Them: Can you open your January bill?
Me: Apparently not. I can’t log in, which is why I began the chat.
Them: You were upgraded to extreme internet!
Me: I don’t need extreme internet. Can I return to normal internet?
Them: No. We only have extreme now, unless you buy a package.
Me: …
Them: Has your issue been resolved satisfactorily?
Me: Not really. I still can’t log in.
Them: Let me get an account specialist.
Me: Great.
A Different Them: Hello! I hear you need to create a new account! I can help you!
Me: {whaaa?}
Them: Are you still there?
Me: Yes. I think I have an account, since I’ve been auto-paying my bill online for years.
Them: Can you log in?
Me: No. My credentials don’t work.
Them: I suggest making a new account. I can walk you through the steps!
Me: {%*#&@*$&}
Them: Here is a link to get started!
Me: [clicks link, makes account]
Them: Are you having success?
Me: It says I can’t use my email as my username, since that account already exists, as I told you.
Them: …
Me: Never mind. I’ll use another name.
Them: How’s it going?
Me: I’m done.
Them: Has your issue been resolved satisfactorily?
Me: Yes.
Them: Please take this survey.
Me: [rates them high because who cares and they were polite]
Me: [checks out the package deal options in my ZIP code only to discover there aren’t any and I will have to continue paying $75/month for extreme internet, wotever that even is, probably some stupid thing for people who watch 17 TV’s at once and play Dragonpr0n Ap0calypse]
Me: [takes valium and laughs]

The End.

~*~

The Daily Prompt: Laughter

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Chocolines

Scrumptious (pre) birthday tiramisu with my lovely daughter in Los Angeles on Sunday. Luckily for me, it also fit this week’s photo theme. 🙂

~*~

Photo Challenge: Lines

Happy Birthday Dad

It was fun looking through the box of unsorted photos and finding this gem from around 25 years ago ~ Dad and my eldest in the backyard of our old Huntington Beach house. If he were still around, I’d probably be baking his favorite fudgy wudgy brownies for a birthday celebration tonight. Miss those days, love you Dad, RIP.

Corncobs & Donuts: A Friday Morning Rant

I was curious today about why some Twitter users had donuts in their profile descriptions, so I began googling up the meaning. I mean, of course donuts are delicious, especially coconut ones and the kind that have little cimmanom crunchy whatsit coatings (never know what you call these donuts ~ I just point at them like a grunty caveperson), but I had a feeling Twitter donuts meant more than this and I was right. Back in my day, when all we thought about was sex, the meaning of a donut would have been sexual, but now everything is political, so naturally donuts are too. I’m not even going to attempt to paraphrase the ridiculousness of the political donut, but simply link to the article I found which essplains the whole insanity. Scroll down, donuts are in there, after the roses and corncobs.

Also, back in the day, roses and corncobs had sexual meanings too. “Roses” stood in for dollars as payment for sex on certain personal ad websites, some of which, notably Craigslist personals, have had to shut down since the passage of FOSTA on March 25th, the anti sex-trafficking bill. Oh, you probably didn’t notice that bill with everything else going on people rage about 24/7, but it will probably end up changing the internet as we know it, making service providers actually liable for content, starting with subjecting websites to criminal and civil liability when third parties misuse personals unlawfully. I agree with this btw, even though probably most of you do not. The liberal media (see previous link) has been crying about how closeted gay & trans peeps, adulterers, and others are losing an important venue to find anon hook-ups. How sad. If only websites had followed their own damn TOS in the first place, including Facebook, these “free speech” catastrophes might have been mitigated somewhat sans gobblement involvement. But they were all too greedy. I digress. You can find the sexual corncob meanings here, after the otter ones.

Why is everything so stupid? Rhetorical. Don’t personsplain at me! It’s part of the reason I left Facebook ~ I keep finding new reasons. Privacy breach/data scraping, too addicting, too political, too irritating, too many memes, people constantly reposting headlines, BORING, and just… stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid. RAWR! Sure, all that same stuff is on Twitter, but I can block it all there. I’ve blocked an entire family from my Twitter feed, every one of their names, and it’s marvelous. I do not see any of them. How awesome is that? And I’ve also blocked most of the other SOS politicians and keywords to keep the crap that people obsess over out of my face. When a new story comes up that everyone goes nuts over, I block that too. I occasionally see some politics, a joke, or something that doesn’t mention a person by name ~ what’s funny is that generally those tweets are usually much more interesting than the normal political garbage because someone is expressing an honest opinion, not reposting a link. So, I don’t mind them. But, as I’ve said, I am mainly there for the poetry, which is fab.

I find it amusing that every day the Facebook horror seems to be getting worse. The only thing I regret is not dumping it sooner.

Okay, time for a donut ~ and that is not a euphemism!

You Are The Product

How many times have we read that lately? I actually read it a long time ago and it made a lot of sense. Who the hell gives away anything for free? We always knew our eyeballs were being sold to advertisers, or we should have known. And of course it isn’t only Facebook ~ insurance companies, credit bureaus, Google, etc. all have your data. Sometimes you’re the product even when you pay for the privilege, like on Match dot com. Isn’t that a kick?

Several years ago I was searching for a fun Google map I had created of all the places I’d lived and traveled to, maybe a couple years prior to that. I was just poking around, as you do, wondering if it was gone forever, when I blundered into my total location history since the beginning of time. Whoa, what? I thought I’d deleted all that! I had a big sad as I emotionally revisited the restaurants and hotels I’d gone to with the man who broke my heart… and then I deleted my location history permanently up to that point. Well, I think it was permanent. Who knows? No biggie, except I don’t want to see all that ever again. I know the gobblement and Google and Russia and some creatures on another planet have it. Whatevs.

Oh, I found the fun map. Whoopee.

Some peeps on the Book of Face used an ad blocker, which I’m sure was very clever. I never bothered with that. But it turns out FB was still able to gather gobs of data from your phone logs and your friends’ profiles too. You could be locked up tight, but they could still sell you to people based on stuff your friends had public. Plus anything you “liked” was up for grabs to create a shadow profile of you to package and sell. One of my friends said she liked incorrect things to throw THEM off the scent. Maybe that helps. I have to say that my ads were pretty inaccurate as is. I didn’t hide my true self, and yet I was shown very few tempting ads all those years ~ where were the adorable kitty tee shirts, the romance novel 4-packs, the c00kie cutters, the stitchery stuffs? I saw loads of ads for real estate and spa trips, things I could never afford. I’m assuming they, whoever THEY are, figured anyone in Orange County must be wealthy. Wrong!

I’m not going to bother linking to the scary articles that tell us how much FB and Google know about us because we’ve all read them in the past week. Plus you can easily find them yourself if you haven’t. For me, though, FB was the least necessary of the bunch and the easiest to jettison (along with Messenger and Instagram). And yes, I’m going to keep talking about it as much as I want to, pffft. I do miss some of the interaction with FB peeps, but I accept that’s the price I pay for reclaiming a huge chunk of my free time.

*

I watched an interesting movie on Prime yesterday called Paperback, kind of a writers’ movie and also a movie for the romance-cynical. No spoilers just a rec!

Stripey C00kies

My dad loved stripey c00kies. Not sure why I have a pic of these actually, but I found it while searching for something to poast for the “sweet” photo challenge and decided to use it instead of cupcakes (since I don’t feel like going through the gallery to check which cupcake pics I’ve used already). I still love stripey c00kies too. There’s just something so nostalgic and wholesome about them for me.

Wishing all my blogfans a happy Valentines Day!

~*~

Photo Challenge: Sweet

Peeve Tuesday

Last week I ordered a couple essentials from Amazon: cat food and hairspray. I order a lot of stuff from Amazon, a lot. They know who I am and where to find me. As does the clown who signed me up for Us Magazine ~ thanks a lot, dingdong. I don’t want it, I’m not interested in celebs, and it’s going straight to the trash. No one better bill me for it either! (Okay fine, I have been glancing through it, under protest. It’s very shiny.)

Anyway, I forgot my essentials were scheduled to arrive on Sunday because I was so wrapped up in watching The Big Game, as one does. But yesterday I thought, hey, where’s my stuffs? So, I did the tracky thing and lo found an exception. Amazon outsourced my delivery to USPS, who couldn’t get in.

Let’s think about this for a moment. The actual U.S. Post Office, who delivers my actual mail (rain or shine), didn’t know how to get into my apartment complex. WTF? How do they deliver my real mail then? No problem, I figured, I have an account with them, so I will contact them, give them my gate code (idiots), so they can redeliver.

Nope, nope, nope. Can’t do that. Only the sender can intercept. I could be some weirdo trying to steal someone else’s cat food and hairspray in the middle of the delivery. With my own log-in credentials where they have my real name, address, etc, and I’d be at risk of a felony for committing mail fraud. To steal cat food and hairspray. Yes, that could happen and the Post Office isn’t taking any chances. Can’t contact Amazon to give them the gate code to give to USPS because the transaction is now out of their hands. All gone, wheee!

The only thing for me to do is wait and see what happens. Either the USPS buttheads will redeliver my package properly or they’ll return it to Amazon, at which time I can ask them to use another delivery service, or pick it up myself at one of their stations. Luckily however on Monday (yesterday) the next USPS mailperson figured out how to get into my apartment complex (miracle!) and delivered my package.

I received an email notice at noon that my package had been “left with an individual.” An individual? What? Why? Who? I don’t even know any of my neighbors. Would I have to knock on doors saying, “Excuse me sir do you haz my cat food and hairspray?” Was not looking forward to this scenario. NOT AT ALL. Though it could be a romance novel cute meet… But this is real life, and I don’t meet men cutely, or in any way whatsoever. I just want my G.D. cat food and hairspray!

Why is life so hard? I want my mommy! Waaah!

In any case, I had to go out to dinner with friends last night and was forced to play a long complicated game that was sort of like… scrabble plus poker and… well, I can’t explain it, too weird, but it went on forever and I got home after 10PM… and guess what?

MY PACKAGE WAS RIGHT OUTSIDE MY DOOR!!!

What a week I’m having. And it’s only Tuesday.

 

Promptsoup

It’s been an age since I’ve blarghed, though I’ve had plenty of ideas… they tend to loop around in my mind without ever making it to the page, eventually sinking down into the sludge of abandoned dreams. Who’s to say what causes one notion to blossom into a concept that demands my full attention? It’s a mystery!

I feel this writing lull is temporary and soon you, my dear and faithful readers, will be able to gorge on a sumptuous buffet of glorious essays and blissful pomes rather than these meager snippets, bites, and crumbs I’ve been parceling out like a blarghy Scrooge. You’ve been so saintly to continue to hang in there with me and I appreciate you all. ❤

Please let me know in comments what you’re up to during these jolly holidays. Traveling, baking, immersing yourself in a lit’ry or other masterpiece? Just working and/or hanging with your peeps? I can relate to that.

~*~

The Daily Prompt: Relate

Honk

Most vehicular honking is stupid and pointless. People are just expressing outrage for a fait accompli. They’re mad that someone cut them off, so they honk. They’re frustrated that traffic isn’t moving, so they honk. This temper tantrum does nothing except create unnecessary noise and annoy me. The purpose of honking is supposed to be to warn someone to prevent a dangerous situation, not to express your childish feelings. It’s okay to tap your horn to remind someone to move if they’re distracted with their phone or radio. I’ve done that and vice versa. Don’t get me started on alarms.

~*~

The Daily Prompt: Honk

Hater Dater Later Gator

Miss me?

While I was away someone told me about a dating site that matches people up by the things they hate, which sounds like a good idea because matching by likes is totes for 15 year olds.

Of course the thing I hate most is dating sites. And dating. So, already we’re in an infinite existential loop like when we program the system to put the catalog of catalogs in the catalog of catalogs. Or something.

Just in case you think I’m making this up in order to have something funny to blargh about (as if), here’s a link to the app.

And here’s an article that sorts hates by state. It’s a strange list. Then again… people. Right?

Whaddayagonnado.