Appelle-moi

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to turn on the phone line in my apartment. When I moved in, my roommate had only used a cell phone. I thought it would be so au courant of me to do the same thing. But after six months of dropped calls and missed calls and aggravation trying to convince Cingular that their ad campaign in San Francisco (which touts the fewest dropped calls in the Bay Area) was a piece of horseshit, I caved and called AT&T...from work, of course. So I turned it on, bought a cordless phone, and thought I was hot shit. But when the cordless phone didn't work because of interference from the wireless broadband connection in the apartment—which I would never get rid of—I bought a corded phone and then everything worked out great. And now, when I get home from work, I find four or five new messages per day, all of which are spam. WTF, Maynard? Spam phone calls? OK, not all of them are junk like we find in our e-mail inboxes nowadays, but several of the dozen so far are geared towards lowering my mortgage rates, clueing me in on yet another way I can make money on the Internet, and such like that. The rest of the messages are all political ads exalting so-and-so and decrying someone else. Last night, as I was putting the finishing touches on my new Windows installation, I heard the phone ring three separate times in one hour. I crossed the room to see who could possibly have this number so soon, and was wholly discouraged. It's not enough that they litter our telephone poles with their propaganda and mudslinging, they have to litter our telephones themselves with the same crap? What ever will they think of next?

Just a rant for a gloomy Friday afternoon.

Another Friday Rant

I had a meltdown last night. My friend SP called me, and we started chatting like we always do and then the phone call was dropped. So I called him back, and within 10 seconds that call was dropped. And I did it again, and again, and again, until finally, I was so absolutely fucking pissed off that I nearly threw my phone into the toilet. OMG, I was so angry. So I called Cingular Wireless and talked to their tech support. I didn't need to know this, but apparently, my neighborhood—more or less the middle of San Francisco—has "moderate" cell phone coverage by Cingular, their words. "Moderate." Is that a euphemism or what? Fuck me.

Poor Jessica had to deal with my rant, and I did apologize for the outburst, but come on! It's the twenty-first century for crying out loud! How many years have cell phones been around? And they're just now getting around to building new towers in areas that aren't covered?

So I fired off a nasty angry spiteful letter to the "Customer Care" division of Cingular Wireless. Who knows if it will do any good. I'm just so tired of being the schlemiel who sits around and pays their bills and lives with inadequate service all the while the people he's paying put up big (ugly) orange billboards everywhere touting how great that service is...OK, now I'm repeating myself.

And so then I get to work, where people were so happy to welcome me and so happy that I would be taking the tedious job of formatting documents off their hands, and what do I do? I upgrade my fucking blog to Version 3.31—and that took all day, believe it or not. And what else do I do? I listen to my iPod, weeding out mashups that I can't stand and five-starring the ones I love (a horrible mix of Jet and Whitney Houston, and a fantastic combo of Stevie Wonder and Destiny's Child, respectively). And it's only 11 a.m. Now what?

Let's order lunch, shall we?

IMRU?

www.lost.eu/43d9

With Every Beat of My Heart

I got a call yesterday...on the landline (I promise I won't become tedious about the whole phone thing)...inviting me out for the beer bust. I was bemoaning the idea because my last memories of the beer bust are not so good. But, I was bored and kinda Tivo'd out, so I gave in and went. I walked over to the Badlands and met H, who had a cold Rolling Rock waiting there for me. We grabbed a seat on the wall and watched music videos and stared at the twinks.

I only intended to have a couple of beers and then head home, but as always happens, I noticed the time and got real cheap and said, "hurry, drink up so we can get a couple more in before cheap beer is over." They're a buck fifty before eight, so, instead of the self-imposed two-beer minimum, we ended up going through at least five apiece. I even had to run around the corner to get some more cash in the middle of it all just so we could keep going.

I enjoyed it, and as before, I liked the videos the most. There were a couple of cute guys there, but not really my type anyway. But they played, among others, Taylor Dayne, Bananarama, and a remix of "Xanadu" with clips from the movie, which did bring quite an extreme gay inhale and a tear to my eye...silly.

I got home around 10:30 p.m., and went to bed promptly thereafter. I woke up this morning at 8:00 a.m. with no hangover, but I'm extremely tired. Not drowsy tired but exhausted tired. Thank goodness there's nothing for me to do today. I can sit around and be lazy for a while.

Gosh, it's such a great, rainy Monday.

Did You Know...

...that if I dug a hole under my apartment through the center of the Earth, I would end up in the middle of the Indian Ocean? Where would you end up? Silly no-brainer stuff for when you're bored.