Tag Archives: Mr. Blog’s Tepid Ride

I love You Verizon, You Stupid A**hats. (UPDATED!)

26 Apr

April 26, 2010

I love Verizon, the giant corporate entity that consistently and completely fails to give me a strong cell signal, even when standing on one of the highest points in Staten Island with a direct line of sight to Manhattan. I’ve often thought that, with a good pair of binoculars, a partner, and some puppets, I could get better communication to lower Manhattan

I’ve avowed my love of Verizon before, notably here, but my love for them keeps growing, much like the fungus you find after a strong rain, so here is some more to keep you reading, or at least more to stare at while you more and more think about surfing for porn.

Last year I had to change my Verizon cell phone account. They had shut off my service for the indefensible reason that I had failed to pay my bill. Really, can you believe the nerve of them? Anyway, the phone was shut and to restore service I had to pay my bill in full, which I did. There was a reactivation fee but I managed to slip around it by opening a new account, which also made me eligible for some special offer of theirs. They would give me two lines, and I would give them more money. I thought it over and, tempting as it was, I declined. I kept my old phone number but got a new account number.

(I know what you are thinking. “Why,” you are thinking, “if he hates Verizon so much and gets such lousy service, does he continue using them as his cell phone provider?” The reason is that they give me a free phone every two years, and at the time of the cancellation I was only three months away from an upgrade. That’s why. And as for the other thing you are thinking, screw you too.)

Anyway, I paid them in full and they gave me my service back and everything was back to normal, meaning that I still get bad service but now I use that as an excuse as to why I don’t return anyone’s calls.

Then last month I got a bill to the old account, claiming that I owed them $20.41. How? I paid the account in full, and if I didn’t, they wouldn’t have let me open another account. The proof was in my hand. (My cellphone was in my hand. I don’t know what you were thinking, but it was my cellphone in my hand. Perverts.) Not that it worked very well. (STILL my cellphone. Get your mind out of the gutter.)

Since my online account and their automated phone help were linked to my new account, they were no help. And if you knew what I went through the last time I had to deal with a Verizon employee (did you click on the link above? I’ll wait. Here it is.) you’ll know why I didn’t even bother going down there and just cut them a check.

Fast forward to today, a month later, and I’m happy and about as well as can be until my two cell phone bills arrive.

Two?

Yes, two. My current bill (which is a full 20% taxes, thank you very much. 20%!) and a bill for my old account. Yes, the old which I had paid in full. Twice.

It was a bill for $0.01.

A penny.

They claim that I only paid $20.40, a penny less than they were owed. Do I have the stub to prove I paid the correct amount? A receipt? A cancelled check? A bank statement?

Of course not. So I sighed and wondered what to do. Send them a check for one cent? I’m pretty sure my bank will charge me some kind of fee. A money order? Pay 99 cents to send one cent? And waste a stamp? I couldn’t make an electronic payment as Verizon’s website links to my new account. This was a stupid as it gets.

Then it got stupider.

I looked a little more closely at the bill and, near the bottom, it said COURTESY BILL do not pay.

Rarely have I seen the words “courtesy” and “bill” together but there they were.

I think it would be more courteous to not send the bill and drop the whole matter, seeing as they do not want payment anyway.

They paid whatever printing and postage costs to send me a bill for one penny that they did not want paid in the first place. I’m sure Yogi Berra has a term for this.

So thank you Verizon, I love you. How can I ever think of leaving you? Where would my blog be without you?

 

UPDATE!
April 29, 2010 

Just a few days later, those busy little angels at Verizon sent me this letter, with a bit of my editorializing added.

RE: Verizon Wireless Account Number ending with **** [my cancelled line]

Dear Customer.

Your Verizon Wireless statement is now available for viewing online.

Our records indicate that all wireless lines on your account have been disconnected. [Therefore my account is closed and there is nothing to see online.] While you can still view and pay your disconnected account online using My Verizon [There is no payment. The last bill was marked do not pay.] you will need to log in using your name rather than your former Verizon Wireless phone number. [I can’t. Everything is linked to my new account.]

Please note that any future bills will be sent to you in the mail. [So why the big push for me to view my bill online, which I can’t do in the first place, but even if I did, the account is closed and I owe nothing?]

We appreciate your business [I’m not so sure they do] and hope to be able to serve your wireless needs again in the future. [Future? They can barely get me connected across The Narrows now.]

eServices and Support
Verizon Wireless

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Jim Jones and the Sandinistas

19 Apr

April 19, 2010

No, “Jim Jones and the Sandinistas” is not the name of my new punk band but feel free to mock up an album cover and send it to me.

No, it is the title of another blog where I get all cranky, crusty, and curmudgeonly about the sorry state of the English language. (See that cool alliteration? That’s why I can beef about other people’s grammar; I know my shit.)

Anywho (way, whatever,) the first thing that flies up my nostril lately is the term “drinking the Kool-Aid,” as in “Wow, you must have really been drinking Omar Minaya’s Kool-Aid if you thought that John Maine could be a number two starter.” It does not, however, refer to Jimmie “J.J.” Walker from Good Times.

Generally, “drinking the Kool-Aid” means to fall for someone’s line of bullshit. It has become a fairly prevalent phrase, to the point that you can’t listen to an episode of Mike Francessa on WFAN without hearing him say it a couple of times an hour. The show is unlistenable in many other ways too, and the irony here is that the listeners have fallen for his line of bullshit, but that’s beside the point.

So why does it bug me? It bugs me because it casually trivializes the deaths of over 900 people.

From Wikipedia, also a pet peeve of mine, but let’s skip that for now:

James Warren “Jim” Jones (May 13, 1931 – November 18, 1978) was the founder and leader of the Peoples Temple, which is best known for the November 18, 1978 death of more than 900 Temple members in Jonestown, Guyana along with the deaths of nine other people at a nearby airstrip and in Georgetown, Guyana.

Jones was a well-connected paranoid communist, who formed a commune to live in “pure socialism and communism.” He had some very kooky theories and managed to form a devoted cult around his strong personality. There were many allegations of vilolence and abuse within, leading to the shooting of a U.S. Congressman. More from Wikipedia:

Later that same day, 909 inhabitants of Jonestown,, 276 of them children, died of apparent cyanide poisoning, mostly in and around a pavilion. No video was taken during the mass suicide, though the FBI did recover a 45 minute audio recording of the suicide in progress.

On that tape, Jones tells Temple members that the Soviet Union, with whom the Temple had been negotiating a potential exodus for months, would not take them after the Temple had murdered Ryan and four others at a nearby airstrip.  The reason given by Jones to commit suicide was consistent with his previously stated conspiracy theories of intelligence organizations allegedly conspiring against the Temple, that men would “parachute in here on us,” “shoot some of our innocent babies” and “they’ll torture our children, they’ll torture some of our people here, they’ll torture our seniors.”

Given that reasoning, Jones and several members argued that the group should commit “revolutionary suicide” by drinking cyanide-laced grape flavored Flavor Aid (often misidentified as Kool-Aid) along with a sedative.

Over 900 people died. Granted, they were over 900 wacky cult people with bizarre beliefs, but they were people nonetheless, and nearly one third of them were children. I don’t see the point in trivializing their deaths.

I’m just sorry that the good people at Kool-Aid were dragged into the whole mess.

The second thing that bugs me (in terms of grammar. There are a ton of other things that bug me.) is the term “fashionista,” as in a “soldier in the fashion war,” or “one who shops for fashion strongly and mercilessly.”

We’re talking about fashion here folks, so calm down. Ever see Fashion Week in NYC? Skinny models who look like they could use a good steak strutting down the runway, eyes glazed straight ahead, wearing coats that looks like they are made out of tin foil and straw, with what appears to be a stuffed kangaroo folded into a hat on their heads.

Yeah, we need that. Speaking as a guy, finding a clean sweatshirt somewhere in the closet is fashion enough.

None of that, however, is my real problem with the term fashionista. The suffix “-ista” means “one who works in the area of or represents or participates in.” Unlike the suffix “-ist,” it has a negative connotation. It usually refers to those with a “fanatical devotion.” Though it derives from Latin, it came into general usage with the word “Sandinista” in the 1980’s.

More from Wiki:

The Sandinista National Liberation Front (Spanish: Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional, or FSLN) is a socialist socialist political party in Nicaragua. Its members are called Sandinistas in both English and Spanish.

In March 1982 the Sandinistas declared an official State of Emergency. They argued that this was a response to attacks by counter-revolutionary forces.  

Under the new “Law for the Maintenance of Order and Public Security” the “Tribunales Populares Anti-Somozistas” allowed for the indefinite holding of suspected counter-revolutionaries without trial. The State of Emergency, however, most notably affected rights and guarantees contained in the “Statute on Rights and Guarantees of Nicaraguans.  Many civil liberties were curtailed or canceled such as the freedom to organize demonstrations, the inviolability of the home, freedom of the press, freedom of speech and, the freedom to strike.

All independent news program broadcasts were suspended.

The State of Emergency was not lifted during the 1984 elections. There were many instances where rallies of opposition parties were physically broken up by Sandinsta youth or pro-Sandinista mobs.

On October 5, 1985 the Sandinistas broadened the 1982 State of Emergency and suspended many more civil rights.

Time magazine in 1983 published reports of human rights violations in an article which stated that “According to Nicaragua’s Permanent Commission on Human Rights, the regime detains several hundred people a month; about half of them are eventually released, but the rest simply disappear.”

Isn’t it cute that here in America we can take such horrible abuse of civil rights and turn it into a nice catchy phrase for T.J. Maxx?

The problem with the English language is not with the English language at all. It is with the lack of knowledge, or historical background, of the average person. When a society gets to the point that mass suicide and “disappearances” become fodder for television commercials for cheap blouses, something is very wrong.

I’m doing all I can. I haven’t used the term “hyperizin’ ill-dunkification!” since February first.

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