Proving once again that Scotland is truly among the favored lands of this Earth, a group of Aberdeen schoolchildren recently drove a pair of PETA anti-milk protestors away in true South Park fashion.
¶ 9:06 AM 0 Comments
I want to go check out that Madonna flick Swept Away. Any movie that bad has to be worth seeing. Is anybody with me on this?
¶ 8:59 AM 0 Comments
From the moment that Alexander Graham Bell first asked his assistant to come upstairs, people living under the same roof have argued about the phone. So it would at first appear unsurprising that the cursed device would become a major source of discontent within the household.
It all began when Janet moved in. She asked what kind of local calling plan I had, and I said, I don't know, the kind that makes the phone work when you pick it up. Do you know what kind of local calling plan you're on? Didn't think so. She asked how much I paid, I said I don't know, about 35-40 per month. The account was on auto-pay and I just saw the bill when it got paid from my checking account.
"Well, where do you call," asked Janet. I don't know, just local. "Yeah, but there's different kinds of local. Like there's really cheap plans, which just cover downtown, and others which, like, you know, cover more..." Well, I just call locally. "You mean like local local?" Yeah, down the street local. I use the phone to call Charlie at Nanning Wok and the dial-up line for my modem. "You mean everybody you know is in 617?" Yes. As far as I am concerned, anything outside of 617 might as well be in a different time zone. As for the area beyond Rte. 495, doesn't that require a passport?
"But what about calling, like, people?" Well, I said, that's what I use my mobile phone for. "Yeah, but what about, like, long distance?" Cell phone. "What about firends and stuff, do they all call you on that, too?" What part of "Cell phone" don't you get?
See, I tried to explain, I'm at home and awake maybe 4 out f 24 hours of the day. The rest of the time that I might be at the office, I'm traveling, so I could be in any of three time zones, let alone area codes. So yes, I use my mobile phone for everything, so I pay not attention to my local calling plan.
"Because, you know, you could probably pay a lot less." Like what, I ask, "You know, thirty, or thirty-two dollars a month." Sure, it's worth it for me to spend twenty minutes on the phone with some schmuck from Verizon, to save five bucks a month. I tell Janet that if she wants to shop around, she can go right the bleep ahead. I'll go along.
The fun part of all this is, that after Janet did call and find out what would be the bext plan for "us," by which term "us" can be taken to mean "her." Guess what Verizon told her?
The plan I was on already.
So all was well for a few weeks, and then the topic of discussion became the answering machine. I had a perfectly good digital one that had served me well several years, no tapes, a real solid piece. Well, it wouldn't do, quoth Janet, we should switch to Verizon voicemail. Why? Because you see, the answering machine belonged to me, and Janet's current purpose in life is to erase every record of my existence from the apartment. This suspicion was confirmed a few days later when she unplugged the cordless phone one of my roommates left in the living room and left it in a pile in front of my door. I asked her why and she said, "Well, it's so dirty."
But wait, we're not done with the voicemail yet. A few days after we had that discussion, I come home and she handed me a card with directions on how to set up my mailbox. Two weeks later, I still hadn't done it, and Janet asked me about it.
"Well, why haven't you set up your mailbox yet?" Hadn't gotten around to it, I responded. "But what if somebody calls you?" They'll call on my cellphone. I thought we'd been through this already? "What if it's an emergency?" Why does it matter? "Well, the greeting says Janet, Chrissy, and Colin, and if you don't have a mailbox, well, it might confuse someone." I explain that the only way that would be confusing is if the person's calling for me, and if the person doesn't know my cellphone number, then he or she doesn't really know me and I don't want the message. "Okay already, I get it with the cellphone!" Typical Janet- she starts an argument about something, and then sulks in retreat when I don't just roll over and go along.
A little while later, I'm talking to Chrissy about something, and she mentions to me that Janet's been talking to her about getting a second phone line for her computer. Let me be very specific here: Janet went to Chrissy to have a talk wherein she suggested that Chrissy and I should pay for a second phone line for our computers, so that the other line wouldn't be busy when Janet needed to make a phone call to some loser ex-boyfriend in Dennis.
"See, what I don't get," said Chrissy, "is that I might be using the phone for my computer ten or twenty minutes a day, which is less than she uses it for phone calls." I smile and nod. "I just don't get it, I mean, it's like she thinks she's the center of the world."
It was like encountering a fellow-member of the French Resistance in a side-alley of Paris circa 1942. But was she really in?
She spoke: "It's just this thing about her, she has this passive-agressive way about her that just pisses me off. I mean, if you want something, just say so."
She was definitely in.
More to come...
¶ 6:25 PM 0 Comments
