Genius.

"Just because you've been exploring my mouth doesn't mean you get to take an expedition further south."

-- Flight of the Conchords

On Loving Your Customers

I've been a fairly satisfied customer of Sprint's for over ten years. In that time, I've only had three models of cell phone, and I've never had a complaint, though I don't exactly love the latest one. Lately, however, I've been less than thrilled with the Sprint service. Now that I actually have an office, when I'm in it I can't keep a signal long enough to complete a call.

I realized recently that my latest two-year contract is expiring in November, so I wrote Sprint's Customer Service and asked to what sort of penalties I'd be subject if I chose not to renew my agreement and started service with another provider before then.

Frankly, I didn't expect Sprint was gonna be all, "Oh, you want to leave us? Let us make it easy for you!!!"

But I have to say, I didn't really expect the classic Kill Them With Kindness, Illiteracy and Grammatical Clusterfuckery tactic:

Dear Joseph,

Thank you for contacting Sprint. I will surely assist you regarding the satisfaction of the Two year term PCS Subscriber agreement.

I noticed on the account that the satisfaction date of this agreement is November 11, 2007. If the services are cancelled before this date then our system will automatically charge an Early termination fee of $200.00 on the account.

You have been our customer for a long time. I know that you are valuable to us and we really appreciate your business. We would be really disappointed to lose you as a customer.

Please let me know if you have any concerns and I will certainly resolve them up to your satisfaction.

If you need any further asssitance then please write back.

Thank you for emailing us. It was a pleasure assisting you and I look forward to more opportunities to serve you in future. Have a great day!

Sandy O.
Business E-Care
Sprint
"Where our customers come first!"

Really? Asssistance? You're going to take my concerns and resolve them up?!?

"We love you so much that, if after ten years as a customer, you try to leave us even two months early we're gonna bend you over and dry fuck you with a $200 penalty! 'Cuz we can!"

Way to make me rethink that whole "jumping ship" thing, Fuckfaces.

Now, of course, my first instinct, being the Gadget Whore™ that I am, would be to go for the iPhone. But since I would rather have smoldering bamboo shoots shoved under all my fingernails and in my eyeballs before having Cingular and/or AT&T as a cell phone provider, I'm going to go with the upstart Helio service.

Luckily, working at The Velvet Prison affords me a pretty sweet discount on devices and service, so although I'm upgrading to a ridiculously more tricked-out device and plan, I won't be paying that much more.

I just have to wait 'til Sprint stops heaping their "love" all over me.

On Thoughtfulness

This is why it's good to have a roommate who cares about you. She knows just what to say to cheer me up:

On Near Death Experience. Not Really.

Did I tell you that my new bike tried to kill me? I've had the thing for seven weeks – two of which I didn't even ride it – and it tried to kill me.

I was riding to work, pumping my way up West 59th St. a couple weeks back and the seat post of my bike bent the seat tube – tore it like it was a piece of paper! – and nearly dumped me onto the street.

I got lucky, and managed not to fall over and break my head. Thank god.

So anyway, I took the bike to the dealer where I bought it, and the clerk to whom I returned it said, "I've been working here for 7 years and I've never seen anything like this." And, of course, they decided it was my fault.

No shite.

But they're my pals, so they're doing me the "favor" of giving me a new frame, and only charging me for the shipping of the new frame, and the labor required to strip all the parts off the old frame and add them to the new frame.

To the tune of $125.00 $137.00.

Gee, aren't I lucky? I'm so grateful to be doing business which such swell, stand-behind-your-products type people. The kind who'll go so far out of their way to satisfy a customer, never fearing/caring that said customer is taking any and every future accessory and bike purchase to the dealer down the street.

On Having Nothing to Say

On Capturing Angst.

On Vituperous Rage

A friend forwarded this to me recently. I know it's old hat, but I had never seen it before, and I was so dumbfounded by it that I forwarded it on to a select few:

Even better, one of the people I forwarded it to, The Swan, replied to me with the best. volcanic rage. ever.

"I hate him with the white hot heat of a thousand suns. I saw this video on the Daily Show and could. not. believe. it. How, how, how is it possible that Bush and Cheney have not been impeached???? Their hubris, repeated lies, arrogance, ineptitude, monarchical ideas of governance and outright disdain for the people of this country fill me with rage. The only thing that makes me even angrier is that so many ignorant, willfully uneducated Americans bought the steaming pile of shit fed to them by the feckless GWB and the misguided, cynical, deceitful Cheney. I am usually a person who tries to see even those whom I dislike with compassion. However, I hope that both Bush and Cheney rot in hell.

Whew. That felt good.

YOU, however, are wonderful and delightful and all things good in this world."

That's, at least, good to know.

On Unexpected Thrill(er)s

At first blush, one would ask oneself, "How the hell can 1,500 Filipino prisoners dance so well?"

Eventually it'll occur to you: They've got plenty of time to rehearse.

Speaking of Thriller reenactments, it is, by far, the best thing about this movie.

On Living Adjacent to Someone Living Under a Bad Moon

There are just some days when you feel like you ought to have just stayed the hell in bed.

I thought today was going to be one of those days for me. It didn't start out that well.

On the bike ride into work, I had to stop to tighten the bar that holds my left pedal to the gear sprocket thingie. It keeps coming loose, and every time I ride the bike I have to stop a couple times to tighten it up again. After I got it tightened and had embarked on my journey across the Manhattan Bridge, some guy came out of nowhere and nearly plowed into me. The effort to avoid him caused a crack up in which I was the sole participant and my bike was, by far, the biggest casualty.

When all was said and done, my pedal had dug a furrow out of my lower right calf, my back brakes weren't working, and my handlebars were out of alignment with the front tire. And I had to retighten the pedal post.

Actually, I'd feel very manly and handy about figuring out how to fix the brakes were it not for the fact that the answer was pretty much the simplest thing ever but it took me nearly 25 minutes of fiddling to figure out how to do it.

Anyway, despite that inauspicious start, I got everything fixed up, got on my way and the remainder of my day went pretty well. 'Twas busy and non-stop, but not particularly unpleasant.

It was on the ride home, however, that I discovered that someone was living under a bad moon, it just wasn't me.

As I got to the end of 59th Street, and made to turn south onto the west side bike path, a guy on a ten speed behind me decided I was going too slow and decided to zoom past me and cut across me to enter the bike path on an angle. This approach would have worked out were it not for a problem that often comes up at the 59th Street entrance to the bike path.

The quality of the bike path sorta drops off precipitously north of 59th, so there's a stop sign for traffic in both directions, sight lines being poor and the path suddenly narrower.

Thus, Speedy Gonzales didn't see the couple approaching from the south; a couple – like most people who bike the path – that didn't have any intention of stopping at the stop sign.

I bike that path often, and I know that nobody bothers to stop at those signs. That's why I was going slow.

So Speedy cut in front of me and nearly plowed into the young woman, who was in the lead. She swerved into my path, I swerved out of her way, and Speedy plowed, nearly at full speed, into the young woman's boyfriend.

I've never seen anything quite so violent up quite so close. Before I knew it there was a tangle of limbs and bodies and bicycles, and the two guys were lying in a heap on the ground. One of them kept shouting, "Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!" Over and over again. I hopped off my bike and rushed over to them, and had to disentangle the poor guy who'd been hit from his bicycle before he could be picked up off the ground.

Amazingly, neither of them was seriously hurt. The guy who'd gotten plowed into had a few scrapes, but Speedy ended up with a nasty gash over his eye, a smashed nose and road burn all up and and down his arm. The cut over his eye didn't seem to want to stop bleeding. Worse, his front wheel was bent into a wide u-shape. He clearly wasn't going anywhere in a hurry after that.

The couple eventually went on their way, and Speedy was left to carry his bike to the nearest subway station, which I can tell you was nearly a mile away. Uphill.

The worst part, from my point of view, was that Speedy was obviously embarrassed and angry at himself, and just wanted to make sure everyone else was alright so he could get out of there. He used his water bottle to clean the blood off his face and his arms, then stripped off his shirt to check for scrapes elsewhere. And Speedy was totally hot. Like, Hot Nerd™ hot. Under different circumstances, if he weren't in such a hurry to escape and nurse his wounded ego, I'd have been all, "So, can I get your number? That may be a concussion, maybe you shouldn't be alone right now."

Bow chicka bow bow.

Leave it to me to find a prurient thought in the midst of tragedy.

On a Sober Point

Okay, so, yeah, I joke about the Spawning Ground a lot, but I hope that my affection for the place comes through.

If, however, you really want to get a flavor for what the Spawning Ground is about, you need to read this really excellent article from Monthly Review in December of 2005.

On Reconsidering the Father of Our Country

So, who knew?

Apparently, George Washington had a tryst with a indigenous peoples person during his early visits to the Pittsburgh area. There's now a statue to commemorate their first kiss on the heights of Mt. Washington.

I think the sculptor has done a lovely job capturing the moment before their passionate embrace:

On Being the Early Bird

Yesterday, The Velvet Prison announced it's second quarter earnings, and the folks in my department had to be at the office at dawn's crack to publish those numbers on the web.

So it was that I had a rare chance to witness sunrise from the confines of the Prison. The picture below doesn't really capture it; it was pretty lovely.

On Forgetting

So, it's been a while since I've been back to Pittsburgh for any sort of lengthy visit. The trip back for my reunion earlier this month was only three days, but it's pretty much the longest visit I've had since my dad's funeral, I think.

I'd forgotten what a pretty little city Pittsburgh is. I think all the reasons I wanted to leave the city in the first place tend to blind me to its many good points.

There are plenty of people who are anxious to have me move back, despite my protestation that I love New York City too much.

Still, the city does have it's charms.

One of the chief charms of the city is the view of the downtown area from Mt. Washington to the south, across the Monongahela River.

It's really pretty amazing how much Pittsburgh has changed since I was a little kid. I remember the smell of sulphur wafting over the city and the filthy rivers, polluted by steel mills. The smell's gone, now, along with the steel mills, and the rivers are clean again. People actually go boating on them; they're used for recreation. That wasn't terribly commonplace during the 70s.

Despite it's charm, though, Pittsburgh's siren call still can't grab me. I'm where I am for now.