Borderland Tales

Actual Telephone Conversations Heard at My House #15

noreply@blogger.com (Juice S. Aaron) — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 19:38:00 +0000

*RING*

ME: Hello?

AC SERVICES LACKEY: Hi, is this Juice?

ME: This is.

AC SERVICES LACKEY: Good afternoon. My name is Michael. I’m with A.C. Services calling on behalf of the U.S. Armed Forces Association Fund.

ME: (CHEERFULLY ANTICIPATING THE MEAL AHEAD OF ME) Ohhh, sure!

AC SERVICES LACKEY: I see that we got your donation to the fund last year and so if I…

ME: Um, actually, no you don’t.

AC SERVICES LACKEY: I’m sorry?

ME: You don’t see a donation made by me last year.

AC SERVICES LACKEY: Well, actually I do. It was $20 from Juice Aaron.

ME: Nope. I made no $20 donation last year.

AC SERVICES LACKEY: Heh heh, well, maybe somebody got a hold of your checkbook then.

ME: No, that didn’t happen either. No, I made a $20 donation TWO years ago. But that was back before I learned how very very little money actually gets to any of the charities represented by AC Services. Which is why we now have a hard and fast rule in this household to never donate any money to AC Services charities under any set of circumstances.

AC SERVICES LACKEY: Thank you for your time, Juice. You have a nice day.

ME: You too.

Looooooooooooooooooong Story Short (PART 2)

noreply@blogger.com (Juice S. Aaron) — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 16:48:00 +0000

Like I said, beyond getting internet service set up, my major goal in my conflict with Suddenlink was for someone to call me back after the 18 broken promises that someone would. I just wanted someone to answer my questions about the possibility of getting service (a possibility their own tech-department had introduced to me waaaaay back in April) even if the ultimate answer was “no.” So, when last I reported here, on August 17, I had finally, after six months of begging for a callback, been contacted via telephone by a tech operations manager at the local Suddenlink branch. The tech operations manager is a very nice gentleman named Ron who was indeed a helpful soul and about whom I have little complaint.

Ron did indeed try to help me out by sending out another engineer to survey the setup and determine what, if anything, could be done for me. Ron soon reported that according to his new engineer, the existing coax connection to our house (which the previous owners used for cable TV signal alone) originates over 600 feet away at their coax station located on the nearest major road. Our particular connection runs from a junction box ("drop box") that is on the far side of our nearest north westerly neighbor's driveway (not the neighbor just down the hill from us—Jane—whose drop box we have been inquiring on upgrading for six months, but one even further away and on the opposite side of our hill). This info we already pretty much knew from the original surveyor who came out in mid-April. And we were assured that this existing cable connection could not be upgraded because of the distance required and because we only own a fraction of the land between the drop box. Fine.

The next and only other option the new engineer offered was to run new data-capable coax from the coaxial hub at the main road of the neighborhood all along the existing power lines that surround our valley, to our house, for a total of 2666 feet. However, Frontier Cable and the local power company already have wires on those poles. So in order to get Suddenlink wires on it, Frontier would have to agree to adjust the position of their lines on the poles to allow for Suddenlink lines. This option would cost a total of $12,758.77 to accomplish. (Hence the $12,000 figure that showed up with no explanation in our account notes back in late May.) However, Suddenlink suggested that because there are three potential-customer-households along the route of that line, if each house chipped in, and Suddenlink paid the other 1/4, it would only cost a bit over $3000 each to have Suddenlink installed. This was still not an option as far as we are concerned. I mean, how fair is it that we have to pay even $3000 when Jane, our NEXT DOOR NEIGHBOR, has the service for sticker price.

I then again inquired to Ron as to the feasibility of simply upgrading the drop box in Jane’s yard and running a line up the hill to us. The new engineer had not covered that option. In fact, according to Ron, the maps on file at Suddenlink’s local office did not seem to show that particular drop box at all, nor did it show that Jane nor the neighbor across the road from her (Martha) were even customers. I assured him that they were, for I had already confirmed twice with Martha, and she had even given me her account number to pass along should the question arise. Ron agreed that there seemed to be some x-factors at play and he suggested that what he next needed to do was drive over (a 55 mile trip) and survey the situation for himself. Clearly something was amiss in their records if their maps didn’t show two customers where two customers existed.

In the intervening couple of weeks, I spoke again to Martha and learned a bit of history of the neighborhood. Apparently not long after the early houses in the neighborhood had been established, some 15 to 20 years ago, the people who lived here made a deal with Suddenlink that if Suddenlink would establish a central hub for cable TV service at the mouth of the neighborhood, then the residents themselves would pay to have the trenches dug from it so that cable lines could be buried and run to their individual homes. Suddenlink in turn agreed to the upkeep of those lines and had done so since then. Of course, when the lines were initially buried, high speed internet was not a service Suddenlink offered, so upgrades had been made years later in order to offer that to most of the homes. The former owners of our house had either not wanted it, or it wasn’t possible due to the distance from its drop box. But that did not preclude the other drop box in Jane’s yard from being upgraded, to my mind.

True to his word, Ron did come out to survey the situation for himself, about a month after he and I had first begun communication. (And for the record, he was as nice and helpful in person as he was on the phone.) His conclusion was that it might be possible to upgrade to box in Jane’s yard, but he thought the semi-rocky terrain between the box and our house might prove problematic. Plus, Jane would certainly have to sign off on the process for Suddenlink to do the work through her yard. He also suspected that our house might still be too far away from the box to get a strong enough signal. I pointed out that, just eyeballing it, our house wasn’t THAT much further away from the box than Martha’s house across the street was. Surely, this was still worth a try? Ron said he would go away and run some numbers and see what his engineers thought about it.

Weeks passed and I heard nothing back. At any point, I could have called Ron to ask, for I still had his number, but I was frankly of the opinion that I had been the one to initiate communication with Suddenlink more than enough and it was again time for them to start calling me back when they said they would. I wasn’t even mad about it. Over the course of the then 7 months I’d been dealing with this, my emotional spectrum had run from frustration, to blinding red fury, to wild annoyance, to bemusement, to amusement, back to frustration, and had by then settled into a sort of brown indifference. In other words, I wasn’t really expecting Suddenlink to come back with a “yes,” anymore, but if they were going to come back with any answer they were the ones who needed to call.

In October, some weeks later, I received a call from one of Ron’s fellow engineers at the regional tech office. I wish I’d written his name down, but I forgot to. The engineer said that Ron was busy, but that Ron had asked him to call me to let me know that they (the engineer and Ron) had been in consultation and had studied the maps (you know, the maps that didn’t show either of my nearest neighbors as Suddenlink customers) and they had both concluded that the distance between the drop box in my neighbor’s yard and my house was too great for us to receive a proper signal. In other words, Suddenlink was declining to give that method a try. This was pretty much the call I had been expecting to receive, but I wasn’t giving up that easy. I again reiterated that just from eyeballing the distances involved, I could see that while my house might be further away from the drop box than Martha’s, it wasn’t so far a distance that it should make that big a difference. I still thought this was a method worth trying. The engineer didn’t seem to know what to make of this, so he told me that Ron would have to call me back about it.

That, perhaps not surprisingly, was the last communication I had with Suddenlink.

And, again, that’s okay.

I’m not calling Ron out on this. He’s in a tough position because on the one hand he’s got a tech department that thinks that my house is an iffy hookup and they clearly don’t want to burn the calories (and money) necessary to give it a try—particularly if burning the calories involves digging a trench through rocky terrain to try it. It’s just not cost-effective. And after thinking about this issue from that perspective, I came up with a way that the system could be tested at little cost. Had Suddenlink called me back, I would have suggested that it would be easy enough to test my theory that my house was close enough to the box by simply unplugging one of the existing connections in the drop box (Jane’s or Martha’s) and running a coax atop the ground, up the hill to my house and then seeing if they could get a signal inside. This would require no digging and no upgrading of equipment to test. If it worked, they could then worry about that sort of thing. If it didn’t, then they would be proven right and I would willingly go away forever and proclaim myself in the wrong on this blog. Again, I bear no ill will toward Ron. He may very well have been correct that our house was simply unserviceable. I may well have been wrong. But we’ll never know for sure.

During the many months the Suddenlink situation has gone one, competing outfit Frontier Cable has been teasing us repeatedly. This, mind you, is the same cable company that promised us 12 mb download capabilities over the phone back in April, but which turned out to be less than half a meg in reality when the installation guy turned up. This was also due to our home’s distance from their nearest DSL “pizzabox” station (apparently their industry term) which was technically located in another town entirely.

Since then, we’ve received a few more telemarketing phone messages from Frontier promising us that DSL was now available in our area, only to learn that it really wasn’t when we called them back to sign up. In fact, back in October, I received the following Actual Telephone Conversation Heard at My House (#14)...

*RING*

ME: Hello?

BRITTNEY THE FRONTIER TELEMARKETER: Hello, sir. My name is Brittney and I'm calling from Frontier Communications, your telephone service?

(Pause)

ME: Okay.

BRITTNEY THE FRONTIER TELEMARKETER: Before we begin, I just want to let you know that this call is being recorded for quality purposes.

(Longer pause)

ME: Okay.

BRITTNEY THE FRONTIER TELEMARKETER: Huh. (And this "huh" was said in a tone that one might interpret to mean: "Huh, I’m about to have to read this whole next sentence.”) Sir, do you currently have internet service through Frontier?

ME: Um... if you’re with Frontier, wouldn’t you know that already?

BRITTNEY THE FRONTIER TELEMARKETER: No sir. You haven’t given me permission to access your account.

ME: Ah. Good answer. Then, no, we don’t have internet through Frontier—

BRITTNEY THE FRONTIER TELEMARKETER: (Interrupting) Well, sir, Frontier—

ME: (Interrupting right back) —because we have been told we cannot have internet through Frontier.

BRITTNEY THE FRONTIER TELEMARKETER: Oh, no, sir. You can have internet through Frontier.

ME: Not high speed internet.

BRITTNEY THE FRONTIER TELEMARKETER: Well... it depends on which speed you choose. There are different speed levels.

ME: Yes. And, from what I’m told, high speed isn’t one of them at my house.

BRITTNEY THE FRONTIER TELEMARKETER: (Pausing to consult her screen.) No, I see that it is not.

ME: And so internet service through Frontier is not of use to me at this time.

BRITTNEY THE FRONTIER TELEMARKETER: No, I can see how it wouldn't be.

ME: So... (Long pause) You have a good evening, then.

BRITTNEY THE FRONTIER TELEMARKETER: You, too, sir.

Okay, maybe I’m an asshole. But Brittney started it.

Back in early November, Frontier left yet another message with a sales rep sounding very confident that we could have DSL. Seeing no Suddenlink solution in the offing, I took a chance and called Frontier back. The sales person on the phone sounded equally enthusiastic and said the local equipment had been upgraded to allow those living in our area to have service. I was still suspicious. So I decided to test the waters by just ordering the fastest possible DSL speed they offered on the premise that it would likely be another trickle when the installer got here.

A few days later, the new installer turned up and opened up the DSL tap. It’s certainly not a trickle. Granted, it’s still a long way from a torrent, too, but it’s a satisfactory amount of DSL speed. While the 3G hotspot we’d been using for internet had been sufficient for most things, it is sure nice to not have to deal with it anymore. No longer do I have to plug in my phone in order to upload podcasts. No longer do we have to worry about battery power for the wireless hotspot. It’s all just there when we need it. (Well, except for today when it went out for four hours, but that’s not exactly huge.)

So let the word ring out that Frontier got us what we needed and with only a modicum of hassle.

Looooooooooooooooooong Story Short (PART 1)

noreply@blogger.com (Juice S. Aaron) — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 17:05:00 +0000

Okay. I have once again been negligent in my blogging duties here for a period of months, and it is again due to guilt at not having anything to report in the ongoing situation with Suddenlink.

Well, actually, there has been some degree of things I could have been reporting about the situation, but mostly it’s been a matter of still not having internet service with them and still not receiving call backs from them as regularly as I would care to. The main reason that I have kept quiet on these potential complaints is that I was trying to play nice in the hope that it would get me somewhere. And while I think it has taken me further than if I’d waged a play by play, daily, negative media campaign, playing nice has not taken me quite the distance I had hoped since we still don’t have service.

After nine—count `em, NINE—months of waiting, it appears very much as though we will never have high speed internet service through Suddenlink in our current home. There are indeed technological issues at the root of this—some woefully expensive and others simply untested by Suddenlink’s choice and my own decision not to press the issue further. And that’s okay. I’m not trying to call anybody out here, just stating the facts.

That said, as of last week, we do finally have high speed internet service through another company that had not previously been available to us. We no longer have to rely upon the 3G hotspot feature in our cell phones to go online. This being the case, I’m officially ending my “battle” to get service with Suddenlink. And I’m calling that battle a draw. Even though my dealings with them did not end as satisfactorily as I would have liked, essentially I got what I wanted, which was for someone to FINALLY call me back. Granted, it took them seven months to actually do so, but once communication was established things went fairly well. In fact, I bear no ill will toward Suddenlink anymore. I would be more than happy to use them in the future in case the wife and I move to a different dwelling that is capable of receiving service through them.

That said, I do feel like I owe what readership may still be here after all these months some degree of explanation as to the events that have occurred since I last wrote about the problem, not to mention a summation of what those events were for folks who didn't want to translate my fable-speak in the Once Upon a Time series. Again, not pointing any fingers and not trying to get anyone at Suddenlink in any kind of trouble, just stating facts.

As I mentioned in my entry back in August, a Suddenlink employee named Tina read of my troubles with the company on this blog thanks to my finally name-checking the company rather than my veiled references to The Link of Sudden. She asked for an explanation of the situation and I emailed her the SHORT SHORT history.

So, just to play catch up, below is a copy of the SHORT SHORT VERSION email I wrote to Tina in early August. I’ve edited it only to remove names and phone numbers and one other word that was incorrectly chosen but inconsequential to anything.

AUGUST 8, 2012

Dear Tina,

Thanks for the note on my blog. Since you’re a Suddenlink employee who needs to know the particulars of my case, the phone number my account is listed under (not one that works, cause we no longer have an active account with Suddenlink) is (NUMBER REDACTED) The number I can be contacted at now is (NUMBER REDACTED).

If you like, you can see in the account notes the timeline of the ongoing matter, but below is the short short version that doesn't have to be translated from fable-speak, as in the blog.

Back in February, my wife and I moved from BORDERLAND, WV to TRI-METRO, WV. We chose the house we purchased partially because it had Suddenlink service and we and our real estate agent assumed would have high speed internet capabilities. Turns out, not so much. The house, we learned, had cable TV service, but the cable line running to the house was over 300 feet from its junction box well at the bottom of the western side of the hill. We were told by two different installation techs that data signal on that line would not be consistently available so they could not install HSI (HIGH SPEED INTERNET) service. We were told we were unserviceable. This we understood, but because all of our immediate neighbors (including one only 70 feet from our house) already have high speed internet service through Suddenlink, we feel (and have been told by Suddenlink) that it is technologically possible for us to have the service as well if certain upgrades are made to the local system. We were advised by the secondinstallation tech to call and ask to speak to someone in the tech department and to request that a survey of the site be conducted. And this (THE SURVEY) was done.

The surveyor came out and told me that in order for our house to receive signal, either the entire valley would need to be restrung with new poles and new cables from the main box on (STREET REDACTED) road to us, (not a likely scenario, I admit) or the junction box physically closest to us, in my neighbor’s yard 70 feet down the hillside from us, would have to be upgraded to be able to accept a third cable and that cable would need to be buried and run up the hill to us. At that time (early March) he said that his superior officer would have to conduct a cost/benefit analysis to determine if Suddenlink would be willing to undertake either option. He also assured me that I would be contacted within a few days regarding the results. This contact has yet to occur.

In the intervening months, I’ve called repeatedly to ask for the result and with each call have been promised that someone would be contacting me by phone regarding the issue. At first I just wanted to know the results of the cost/benefit analysis as promised. As the weeks stretched on, I just wanted the promises of phone calls to be kept at all. I believe I said to one phone rep, “I just want an answer even if it’s `no.’” I wanted to know the answer of whether or not the junction box in my neighbor’s yard could be upgraded to allow us a cable. I even offered to pay for the burial of the cable itself if the junction box could be upgraded. No calls were received.

After two months of promised calls and no results, Iended my service with Suddenlink for our BORDERLAND house on the grounds that I was paying for service I was not receiving. I believe I did have some of this time refunded to me, which was nice. But I still wanted an answer about TRI-METRO. In all my phone correspondence, I made sure to leave my cell phone number as the number to reach me at, as the one on file would not work.

I must say that my dealings with Suddenlink phone reps have mostly been cheerful. Many have seemed sympathetic to the situation and have attempted to leave the sort of escalating notes to supervisors and local techs that were designed to get attention.

And, on April 23, eleven days after I had last been promised a call, seven weeks after I first phoned to move my service, I finally received the first and so far only phone call from Suddenlink. It was from a supervisor who had received the escalated note from 10 days previous and was calling to see what he could do. Unfortunately, he was a supervisor from the BORDERLAND office somehow thinking this was about the house in BORDERLAND and not the house in TRI-METRO. Upon realizing this, he assured me that a “Leon” from the TRI-METRO area office would be in contact within the day. Leon never called.

A month later, on May 26, I called Suddenlink again to try again at getting some info. The phone rep, Amber, said there was a note in the account that the cost of installation would be $12,000. That was all she said was there. No indication if this meant we had to pay $12,000, or Suddenlink would have to pay $12,000 or if we were to split it with Suddenlink or any actual details. She said she would escalate another note up the chain to a supervisor and that someone would call us back to let us know.   No call came.

On July 27, two months later, I phoned Suddenlink back to see if the notes had been updated with an actual answer since this was about the only form of communication that had actually happened. There were no updates that the rep I spoke to could see. He was very helpful, though, and made further notes as to the situation and the fact that since late February I’ve been promised a phone call approximately 18 times and have yet to receive one beyond the erroneous one from the supervisor in BORDERLAND.

I really like Suddenlink’s service. I only want to receive it. Or to be told via a conversation with an actual human being or in writing why it is that the local junction box in my neighbor’s yard cannot be upgraded.   I seem to be the only one in the neighborhood who does not have high speed internet through Suddenlink. (I know no one has it through anyone else, because I’ve tried everyone else and no one can provide it even though we’re within spitting distance of the city limits.)

I’m not requesting the entire valley be restrung on my behalf. But if the one junction box in my neighbor’s yard, which contains two plugs (one for her and one for the neighbor across from her) could be replaced with one that has three plugs, that would be awesome. I am still willing to pay for the cable to be buried if it comes to that. I just need to know if it can and will come to that. I am not willing to pay $12,000 or even $6000 to receive a service all of my neighbors and by all logic I should already have. But I am willing to go to some expense to see this done.

Clearly there is a disconnect somewhere between Suddenlink’s West Virginia office (CALL CENTER) and the actual field office in our area. The easy explanation is that the field office is not seeing my cell number listed in the request for a call and are continuing to try and call the disconnected number of the old account. Every time I've called since the account was disconnected, I've been sure to leave the new number I can be reached at. No call. It just seems to me that either a deep break in communication has happened somewhere or there is someone in the chain who doesn’t feel it’s part of their job to phone customers back after 18 promises that such callbacks will be made.

So far, I’ve kept my blogging on the matter to a thinly veiled nature hoping there would be a happy resolution for me to report.   I only mentioned Suddenlink by name in my blog post recently in the hope that someone would pay attention and see that there is a problem here that needs to be addressed. Thank you for doing so.

That is the short short version.

--JUICE

Tina received that letter and forwarded it to a director of operations higher up the chain. That director, Jack, then wrote me back to let me know that a local tech manager would be contacting me and promised that efforts would be taken to make certain that the situation that befell me would not befall anyone else in the future. (This, I believe, may be my ultimate achievement in the entire matter, since policy changes of any sort are often glacial with such companies. I’d like to think that all my effort did not go for naught and that I blazed a trail so that the people who come behind me will have an easier journey.) Jack also gave me his personal cell number in case I had any further trouble. I’ve still not had any cause to use it. So thanks go out to Jack for that.

(TO BE CONTINUED...)

The Call (At long last, the call!)

noreply@blogger.com (Juice S. Aaron) — Fri, 17 Aug 2012 13:49:00 +0000

So the big news is that I have, for the past week, been in communication with representatives from Suddenlink, including the much sought-after local office, regarding our unfortunate ongoing situation with them. And the reason for the communication is due entirely to name-checking Suddenlink on this blog on July 29 (you know, beyond my thinly veiled "Link of Sudden" phrasing I've been using for months).

Shortly after I posted the Suddenlink name-drop, I received a comment to that post from a someone called Suddenlink Help who wrote: "Hi - My name is Tina and I am a `Suddenlink agents paying attention on the lookout' for customers in need of assistance. Please feel free to reach out to me directly for assistance."

And this was exactly what I was hoping would happen.

I looked Tina up on the Suddenlink website and found that she did indeed appear to exist and worked for their help desk. So on August 7, 2012, I sent her an email containing my former account number with Suddenlink and the short short version of the unfortunate ongoing situation minus all the Once Upon a Time language. And, for a short short version, it was still fairly long. But then, the unfortunate ongoing situation is now in its sixth month, so I think a couple of politely-worded pages can be tolerated. I doubt that it's even necessary to post the short-short note here, but the truly short short short version is that I spelled out the major beats of the unfortunate ongoing situation, noting the 18 times I tried to go through proper channels to no result BEFORE I name-dropped them on this blog in anything other than a thinly-veiled way. As I explained in the note, the reason I'd not name-dropped Suddenlink sooner is that I'd been hoping for a positive resolution with my efforts to communicate with them locally. But since one did not appear to be forthcoming, after 5 months, I decided to say their name and draw the attention of someone higher up. Beyond that, I noted my willingness to work with them on a solution if only someone would call me back or otherwise contact me to answer the questions I've had for lo these last six months, even if that answer is "No."

The very next day, August 8, 2012, I received an email from a Director of Operations at Suddenlink following up on the email I had sent to Tina. He apologized that the unfortunate ongoing situation has been as ongoing as it has and asked my patience as they evaluate things on their end and correct the errors of the past so that this sort of thing doesn't happen to anyone else. He even gave me his cell number and apologized again. He said he was turning things over to the tech operations manager of the local Suddenlink office who would be in contact with me shortly.

That very afternoon, I received a telephone call (AN ACTUAL CALL ON MY ACTUAL TELEPHONE!!!! GLORY BE!!!) from said tech operations manager of said local office. He too apologized and said that engineers had been sent out that very day to evaluate the situation, take pictures and gather maps so that they could figure out what could be done, if anything. He promised he would give me a call with an update the following day. And the following day, as promised, he did.

And it is at this point in the narrative that I shall suffice to say that communications with Suddenlink regarding the issue are ongoing, but ongoing in a positive manner. This is not to say that any promises have been made that I'll be receiving service, and I was not expecting any such promises. However, steps are actively being taken to see what can be done to get service to me.

For the moment, I'm pretty pleased with how things are going.

Once Upon a Time (Part 11)

noreply@blogger.com (Juice S. Aaron) — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 00:02:00 +0000

As he said in Part 7, the scribe had allowed two months to pass since he last talked to a representative from the Link of Sudden. The last time he had, the rep had been very sympathetic to his cause and had said she was going to load up his account with note after note explaining the unfortunate ongoing situation to her superiors and they would definitely be calling him very soon about answering his questions. Yep. Very soon.

Which, of course, had not happened AT ALL. And even after the scribe had dutifully given her his new phone number, since the one associated with the account, much like the account, no longer worked.

The last he had heard, two months previous, there was a note in his account from someone local that the cost of getting Link of Sudden service to his new castle would be $12,000. There was no explanation of what this cost covered, or if the scribe was expected to pay that or if the Link of Sudden was expected to pay that, or if there was a split. Nothing. So now, the scribe had decided that since having notes left in his account was about all he could expect in the way of communication from the local office, and since two months previous he had asked the Link of Sudden to see if they could get anyone to tell him exactly what the $12,000 figure meant, he would now just phone up the Link of Sudden once again to learn if any new notes had been left for him in answer to the previous ones.

The rep he spoke to indicated there were no new notes. He could see the $12,000 note, but no further explanation was indicated. Rather than read over the 18 plus previous notes in the account, the rep instead had the scribe give him the short short version of the unfortunate ongoing situation. During the telling, the scribe once again mentioned the 18 approximate times he'd been promised a phone call but had yet to receive one. The rep seemed suitably annoyed on the scribe's behalf. The scribe, however, could barely summon up even annoyance any more, let alone anything approaching anger. This wound, he decided, had festered for so long that the tissue had gone necrotic and he was left just feeling dead inside over the whole thing, but was still left with the ability to see the absurdity of it all. So he just told each increasingly ridiculous part of the unfortunate ongoing situation and he and the rep laughed and laughed and laughed, one of them with cold dead eyes.

After they stopped laughing, the rep said he was going to write everything out in detail and send the account up the poop shoot to his superiors. He, at long last, was going to be the rep to get things moving on this issue. The previous reps had been chumps. The new rep would not rest until he had documented things fully and he assured the scribe, someone would be in touch with him very soon.

"No, they won't," the scribe said. And he laughed and laughed some more.

"So how should I word this?" the rep asked.

The scribe decided to play along. If the rep was going to let him dictate the sort of wording he wanted in the notes, the scribe was all for providing those words. He was, after all, a scribe.

"Wants to know if the junction box in neighbor's yard can, in fact, be upgraded to accommodate a cable for customer's house," the scribe suggested. "Customer is willing to pay to have the cable buried, if upgrade can be made," he also suggested. "Is very annoyed that he's been promised phone calls on the matter on 18 separate occasions since February and has yet to receive even one," he continued in suggestion. "Is about to start negative media campaign," the scribe finished.

The rep said he didn't think he should include that last part. The scribe quietly disagreed, but allowed the matter to drop.

At the end of the call, the scribe thanked the rep for his time but assured him that he, the scribe, was under no illusions that what they had just done would have ANY effect whatsoever. He'd long ago given up thinking that anyone at the Link of Sudden was going to pay any attention to mere notes in an account or the suggestions of their phone reps. Clearly either there was a disconnect somewhere in the system in which the local office was unaware he wanted a call back, or they were actively ignoring him.

However, the scribe thought he might know a way to change that, or at least get the attention of eyes and ears higher up in the Link of Sudden food chain. And it could be accomplished, he believed, with the mere reordering of ten letters.

(TO BE CONTINUED IN NON FAIRY TALE FORM...)

Once Upon a Time (Part 10)

noreply@blogger.com (Juice S. Aaron) — Wed, 08 Aug 2012 18:25:00 +0000

With the last of the improvements accomplished at the old castle in Borderland, it was time to get the place sold once and for all. The castle-sales-agent there asked the scribe and his goodly wife which lawgiver they wanted to use to do the work. Despite having lived there for four years, they had no real notions who would be good to use, so they asked for recommendations.

"Harpo or Zeppo" she said.

They chose Harpo.

Nearly two weeks then passed with no word as to a closing date. Just as the scribe was starting to notice that they should have heard SOMETHING by then, the agent phoned to say that the potential buyers were getting antsy that they'd not heard anything from Harpo's office. They were going to jump ship and go with Zeppo for the closing. The goodly wife called Harpo's office to inquire as to the date and was told by his Verified Georgia Peach of an office manager that no date had been set because she'd not even started working on it. "Well don't bother, then," the goodly wife said. The scribe and his wife told their agent to go with Zeppo, who said he could put a rush on it and set a date for the following Thursday.

The Tuesday before the closing, the scribe and his goodly wife took a trip to Borderland. Their reasons were two fold. One, there were a few things to pick up from the castle there. Two, they had an appointment for their dog, Moose.

During the intervening months since they'd moved to Tri-Metro, Moose had developed some problems. At first it seemed to be a temporary lameness in one leg, causing him to not put weight on it at time. Then they noticed it was actually in all of his legs, one at a time. Fearing something awful, the goodly wife researched it and discovered that Lyme disease produced such symptoms. Only a quick scan from their local vet in Tri-Metro showed no trace of it. The local vet had no other notions and just told the Goodly Wife to keep an eye on him. When, after a week, the problem seemed to be getting worse, to the point that the poor dog had pain with any movement and spent most of his time lying down on his comfy pillow, not daring to move even for the encroachment of deer, the Goodly Wife said, "Screw this" and made an appointment for him at their old vet in Borderland. He too ordered a battery of tests, including an indepth scan for Lyme. In the meantime, he put Moose on antibiotics and anti-inflamatories. One or more of these seemed to help and soon Moose was his usual energetic, bouncy self. But the Lyme scan came back negative, so the vet referred the dog to a university veterinary hospital. They too could find no conclusive cause to the problem, but did note that Moose's lymphatic system was active and producing fluids that were building up in his joints, likely causing him pain. This could be caused, they said, by an auto immune deficiency wherein his own systems were fighting him. The pooch was given a course of prednisone that would likely last for four months. This too seemed to work and soon Moose was gaining weight, drinking like a camel and peeing like a race horse.

The vet visit in Borderland went well. But when the couple arrived at their beloved former castle they found the power was off. From the warm temperature of the fridge, it seemed it had been off for some time. They called their power company and alerted them. However, the company couldn't send anyone to check on it until after they had hit the road for Tri-Metro once again. They were told, via a call, that it was back on.

When they returned to Borderland for the closing on Thursday, they stopped back by their former castle to pick up the one last thing they had left behind, the rope for their dog run, tied between trees in the back yard, and to drop off a welcome card to the new owners. However, the power was still off. Having very little time to get to the closing, they phoned the power company on the way and were told that the house would soon be transferred to its new name.

"Yes, but the future owners do not have the power to turn OFF our power until they are actually the owners, which won't happen for another 15 minutes," the scribe said. "Besides that, the power has clearly been off for a number of days already. We'd like it to be on for the new owners when they take possession."

Oddly, when the scribe and his goodly wife arrived at the office of the lawgiver their real-estate agent had told them to go to, they found it was Harpo's office and not Zeppo's. "Didn't we fire him?" they said. Evidently the firing had not taken. However, the future owners of their castle had had better luck with their firing, for they were nowhere to be seen since they had successfully moved into Zeppo's care. So the closing was completed without the scribe and his goodly wife ever meeting the new owners. They each signed their papers in offices one city block apart. And with that their former castle was now well and truly no longer theirs. They each had a little cry. And, fortunately, the power company phoned back to say that they had actually restored power this time instead of just saying they had.

With the old castle's sale finally concluded, the scribe bid a fond goodbye to Borderland and he and his goodly wife drove off in the opposite direction of the sunset.

(Wait, what was that other thing he was supposed to remember? Had something to do with the move... Was a source of frustration... OH, YEAH! Now I remember...)

Once Upon a Time (Part 9)

noreply@blogger.com (Juice S. Aaron) — Wed, 08 Aug 2012 18:11:00 +0000

The scribe and his goodly wife raided all the gasoline powered equipment they owned, siphoning them as dry as they could with a little hand pump. This, however, amounted to what
little was left in the two mowers and the nearly full tank of the garden tiller. Maybe two gallons, if that. This they poured into her car and hoped for the best.

The wife said that word on the street was that Asscrackton wouldn’t see power again before Sunday and it would probably be the same for Tri-Metro. They would have to find gasoline, somehow, somewhere. The only good thing about the storms was that it had cooled everything off, so they slept pretty soundly with a breeze blowing across us through the windows.

The next morning, the wife called in to work to make sure she needed to come in. No sense driving to Asscrackton if they weren’t going to be open, after all. She was told that they would be open and that one of the main gas stations on the interstate had generator power and was open. Her plan was to drive there and get gas before work. She would also fill up our gas cans.
Meanwhile, the scribe’s job became keeping the house as cool as possible for as long as possible, because temperatures were supposed to hit the upper 90s again. So he kept the windows open until the battery-powered thermometer began to creep into the mid 80s. Then he started closing windows and shuttering blinds.

Mid morning, the goodly wife called to say she had been unable to get gas because the line for fuel was out to the interstate itself. However, her old clinic in Borderland reported that they had plenty of power there, so she suggested he drive there and fuel up. He really didn’t want to drive an hour and a half to gas up the car, but figured he could make it on less than a quarter of a tank if he didn’t use air-conditioning or any other electronics that drew power. And he did make it, and was even able to gas up at my favorite station 17 miles outside of town, across the border, where the gas is always the cheapest. However, they didn’t have gas cans, so he drove on into Borderland proper where he found things were well and truly FUBAR. Every gas station near the interstate was completely full and there was a line of cars adding to the chaos with each passing traffic light cycle.

The nearby Lowes only had 1 gallon gas cans left, so the scribe wound up driving further into town where he found an Advance Auto Parts that had a 5 gallon can left. On his way there, he had driven past Kroger and saw that their gas station hardly had anyone at it. The chaos, he reasoned, had not made it this far into town. But with credit card machines down at Advance, due to the storm, it was a cash only transaction, and by the time he’d made it to an ATM and back Kroger was eat up with cars. He had to wait in line for 15 minutes while the two deep line of people at the pump filled up their vehicles and multiple gas cans each.

The scribe took his newly filled gas can and drove to Asscrackton where he gassed up the wife’s vehicle and chatted with her for a bit in the darkened clinic.

“Do I need to cancel my trip?” he asked. After all, they were in a state of emergency officially.

“No,” she told him.

He returned to Tri-Metro, where there appeared to be one gas station that had some degree of generator power, but none for the town.

Though they waited to cancel the show until close to call time, the final performance for the scribe’s play was indeed cancelled. They would have no wrap party. They would take no cast pictures.

That night, after the scribe’s wife had returned home and they had opened all the windows and doors to catch what little breeze there was, he asked her again if he should cancel his trip.

“Please,” she said. “I grew up with no electricity until I was in high school. This will be fun.” This was, of course, a reference to her formative years growing up in a series of cabins in rural Alaska, where she did indeed have no electricity until her high school years. Her point was that while the scribe could be of some help to her there, his would be another car that needed gas. Plus, he was kind of a wuss when it came to lack of air conditioning. She, however, had grown up with less than this. She had a house, she had water and so she could survive just fine. If things got bad, she would pack up the animals and the deep freeze and drive them back to Borderland where we still had a house and still had power.

The scribe awoke at 3 in the morning and drove to the nearest airport to fly to Mississippi. He noticed power in Asscrackton as he drove through it, which seemed a good sign. The wife, however, would not see power in Tri-Metro for several days yet.

A day later, fearing the loss of their deep freeze full of Alaskan salmon, the goodly wife used a set of shelf-boards as ramps and then used a wheeled dolly to roll the smallish deep freeze into the laundry hall of the castle and then from there up into the back of her Honda Element. She then packed up the dogs and drove to Borderland, plugging it into the garage. Two hours later, another set of massive storms rolled across the state and knocked out power in Borderland. Seeing that there was nothing else to do, the following morning she had Lowes locate the nearest town that still had generators for sale and she drove there to buy the next to last one. With this she returned to Tri-Metro, powering the deep freeze for a few hours each day as well as charging her phone and laptop. And because of their continued lack of power and the lack of Link of Sudden High Speed Internet even IF they’d had power, her 3G hotspot capabilities in her phone kept her connected to the net of the whole wide world.

Meanwhile, the towns of the Tri-Metro area slowly crawled back to life. Stores reopened, people returned to their jobs, and life mostly resumed, albeit on a cash-only basis.

Power was also eventually restored to Borderland, which the wife learned from her former coworkers there. She made arrangements for the last of the castle-improvements to be completed so that the castle there could at last be sold.

Finally, nearly a week later, the power was restored to our castle in Tri-Metro. And an air-conditioned sigh of relief was breathed.

Once Upon a Time (Part 8)

noreply@blogger.com (Juice S. Aaron) — Sun, 29 Jul 2012 21:42:00 +0000

Though it was only on the national news for about five minutes, West Virginia and much of Appalachia went through a difficult patch thanks to a series of violent thunderstorms that pretty much took out the power grid of much of the region one month ago.

The first wave of storms came through on the evening of June 29. The day had been blazing hot, not to mention humid. The scribe's goodly wife at work an hour away in Asscrackton, while the scribe was headed out for an evening at the theatre. (Truth be told, the scribe, being also an actor, was in a play at the local theatre and was scheduled for his penultimate performance that evening.)

Before leaving, the scribe noted a warning on his phone-of-smartness that a severe thunderstorm warning was in effect for the area that night. He left his dogs in his castle and departed. Fifteen minutes into the theatrical production, the power flickered a bit went out briefly. Five minutes later, it went out entirely (ironically, at the exact moment a character on stage said his previously scripted line of "Damn, my light!") bathing the place in emergency back up lighting.

It was decided to wait a while to see if the power would come back, but after fifteen more minutes the performance was cancelled and everyone told to go home.

As the scribe exited the theatre, he could see a tremendous black cloud in the western sky, in the direction of his castle. It was not yet raining. There wasn’t even really any wind. He drove on along the down town streets and onto the highway leading to his neighborhood with still no real weather problems. As he crested the top of that hill and got a good look at the valley beyond, he could see the storm that black cloud was producing and realized he might very well be in trouble.
A wall of wind and rain hit his vehicel. Through the windshield wipers, he could see shit flying through the air. And not little shit, like leaves, but bigger shit, like branches. The smaller trees near the road were flapping wildly to the point that he began to wonder if he was in a tornado. There were no funnel clouds that he could see, but the winds were definitely much stronger than those of your average thunderstorm.

As he reached the main road running to his neighborhood, he saw there were trees down. Most of them were smaller, but there was one larger, older trees that had been split by the wind, leaving one half standing and one half fallen. This was some serious weather!

In his neighborhood, there were more fallen limbs and even trees--mostly smaller trees, but some were dangerously close to the road or to their castles. There were leaves and small branches everywhere, creating a thin carpet in yards and along the street. The lawn furniture and trash cans of some of his neighbors had left their lawns to visit the lawns of other neighbors or, indeed, the road itself.

When he reached the side street that led directly up the hill to his castle, the road was blocked by a fallen tree at the foot of his nearest neighbor’s driveway. It was not a large tree, and he was able to drive around it through his other neighbor's yard, but it was blocking the road.

Once at his castle, the scribe could see that the kayak's he and his goodly wife had left in their yard following a kayaking trip a couple of days before were still present and accounted for. But they might not be for long if he couldn’t get them inside. He parked, not bothering to try his garage door opener, knowing it would not work without power. He ran to the side door of the castle and unlocked it and was immediately greeted by worried dogs. He dashed past them and down the laundry hall into the garage, pulling the door behind so they couldn’t follow. He yanked on the garage door release rope and then lifted the door manually before running back to the car. He pulled it into the garage and pulled the door closed.

Next he descended the Joker-striped wallpaper spiral staircase into the dim basement where he stumbled back along the length of the house toward the light of the basement's exterior doors. These he flung wide before running out into the yard, dragging the kayaks one by one back into the basement. During this, he kept listening for the tell tale freight train sound of a tornado, but heard only the rush of storm wind.

After locking up the basement, he returned upstairs and then through the back door onto the deck, where he had to rescue deck furniture cushions and plants from where they had been blown by the wind.

The back yard was a mess. A very large limb and several smaller ones had fallen from the ancient oak at the edge of the yard. The yard itself was scattered with more limbs and leaves and some of the decorative bushes looked in danger of taking flight. The winds were still blowing and a light rain falling, but most of the worst of it seemed to be over. The scribe stood in the back door and watched the lighting play beyond the mountains to the west.

Taking further assessment of the situation, the scribe noted that they had no power and from the look of the fallen trees in the neighborhood alone, power would be a day or two from being restored to the area. (What he didn't know then was that a massive tree had fallen on a nearby power substation, severing the wires for a great deal of the area.) The good news was that he still had a cell signal, including 3G, and still had running water. But who knew how long that would last?

The scribe returned to the basement and retrieved the stored water containers they'd purchased when they had well troubles back in Borderland. These included a 5 qt dispenser, a 2 gallon Culligan rectangular jug, and a giant 6 gallon plastic water cube. He filled them up.

After this, he located their supply of candles and oil lamps, though he couldn’t find actual
lamp oil for them and only one or two had any in them.

When the wife came home, she said the roads were nuts between Asscrackton and Tri-Metro. They’d lost power at her clinic, so she was able to leave right at closing time since she couldn’t do any of her computer-charting. Her next question, though, sent chills down the scribe's spine.

“How much gas do you have in your car?”

“Oh, shit,” he said, because he knew exactly how much gas he had. "Not quite a quarter tank." The scribe mentally kicked himself, for he'd been driving around all day, making mental notes to buy gas because he knew he was going to be doing an early morning drive to the airport for his flight to Mississippi in only a day.

“Okay,” she said. “How much gas do we have in the lawn mower?” The goodly wife then explained that while she’d had enough gas to get home and probably had enough gas to get back to Asscrackton in the morning, she did not have enough gas to then get back home afterward. Power was out all over Asscrackton and had been completely out in Tri-Metro as she’d driven through it minutes before. They would have to come up with some gas somehow.

(TO BE CONTINUED...)

Once Upon a Time (Part 7)

noreply@blogger.com (Juice S. Aaron) — Sun, 29 Jul 2012 20:55:00 +0000

Two months passed.

The scribe waited for the call from the Link of Sudden (Suddenlink Cable Systems, for any Suddenlink agents paying attention on the lookout for bad publicity about Suddenlink--which begins HERE), but no call ever came. And this despite the assertion from Amber, the last Suddenlink rep the scribe had spoken to, that she would follow up on the situation to make sure the much fabled call she promised would come actually did. There was no call. Not from Leon. Not from the supervisor from Borderland. Not from Amber herself. Not from anyone. And, of course, after 17 previous promises of a call from Suddenlink that had gone entirely unfulfilled, the scribe had not actually been expecting one to occur.

During that two months span of continued lack of calls from Suddenlink, the scribe and his goodly wife continued to enjoy their new castle even though the only internet service they could receive was via their cell phones' 3g hotspot. They also continued to attempt to sell their previous castle.

Back in February, they hired the real-estate agent who had held the listing on their previous castle when they had purchased it four years prior. She assured them that not only would it likely sell within 90 days but also that due to the improvements they had made it would sell for a nice bit of money over what they'd paid. The scribe and his wife decided to put it on the market for 186 beans, figuring that between offers and counter offers the castle would sell between 178 and 182 beans. The old castle began showing and within a month of hitting the market got its first offer for… 160 beans. This was disappointing, but it was a start. A low-ball offer was not something they feared, for they themselves had SERIOUSLY low-balled their first bean offer on the new castle and that had worked out fine. There was room to maneuver. The trouble was, the potential buyers were not only low-balling but were requiring the castle sale be contingent on the sale of their own castle, a deal that would effectively have taken the scribe’s castle off the market for the better part of prime selling season. That would be fine, but only if the offer were MUCH better.

The scribe and wife countered at 183 beans, which showed they were willing to drop the price, but kept it in the neighborhood they wanted. The potential then countered to 163 beans. Disgusted, the scribe countered that they would be willing to sell the castle for 178 beans and not one bean less. The potential buyer said they would be willing to buy the castle for 169 beans and not one bean more. The scribe then countered by offering them their choice of which of his supple ass cheeks they could smooch. The non-buyers declined further negotiation. Time passed.

In late May, word came of a new offer on the castle, this time a reasonable one. The offer came in at 170 beans-in-hand, which meant actual beans being passed and not contingent on the loaning of beans from a bean-loaning establishment. Even at the much lower figure (which was actually the same bean figure the scribe and wife had bought the place for when they purchased it) a bean-in-hand offer was a serious one to consider. It meant a lot less hassle to getting the place sold with a lot fewer chances of someone saying “no” along the way. However, the amount was still too low for the amount of work the scribe and his goodly wife had done to the place. They countered with 178 beans, expecting to have to eventually drop down to 176. But the 178 beans was accepted right out.

It took nearly a month for all of the inspections to be completed and for some reasonable requests for additional improvements to be made.

Before these could be accomplished, though, a great wind came along and nearly wiped the place out.

Once Upon a Time (Part 6)

noreply@blogger.com (Juice S. Aaron) — Sat, 26 May 2012 22:24:00 +0000

It had been three weeks since the scribe last spoke to a supervisor from the Link of Sudden, which was, as noted, the first time anyone from the Link of Sudden had actually called him back. That guy had promised that "Leon" would be in touch with him by phone, seemingly within hours. However, over 504 hours had since passed and no call had been received from "Leon."

Meanwhile, the scribe's phone stopped working. Not his cell phone, but his house phone. He wasn't certain how long the phone had been inoperable, for they had received only two calls on it since it had been installed in March. At first the scribe thought that the phone had quit working because he had not yet paid his first bill. This was because his first bill had got lost in the piles of paper that had already begun to collect in the new castle and upon opening the second bill he discovered he somehow owed the phone company $111 for scarcely two months worth of service. How could that even be possible? He'd barely made ANY phone calls. Upon phoning the phone company and inquiring about it, he discovered that they were overcharging him for services they were supposed to provide for free. However, his adjusted bill total would not appear online until his next billing period, so the amount he needed to pay online was in determinant. So he just didn't pay it.

After the phone stopped working, the scribe went onto the web of the whole wide world and paid his bill. Days passed and the phone continued to provide only static. So he called the phone company back and let them know. They said they'd send someone out, and a couple of days later the scribe spied one of their service people digging in the local junction box for the neighborhood. The phone did not begin to work. And, after a long four day weekend away in Kentucky, the phone was still inoperable upon their return.

On Friday morning, the scribe phoned them up to alert them to this. They did not seem to want to believe him, because their records showed that the service guy had repaired the problem and received a dial tone at the junction box.

"I know," the scribe said. "I saw him down there. The phone still doesn't work."

The phone company agreed to send someone else round, though they were dubious if this would happen before Monday.

Having just faced one large bureaucratic organization that morning, the scribe phoned up the Link of Sudden. A cheerful phone rep named Amber took the call and, after hearing the SHORT SHORT version of his Link of Sudden Tale of Woe, was able to look him up and check the notes in the account.

"And then the Supervisor from BORDERLAND said that a `Leon' would be calling me within a few hours. That," the scribe said, "was three weeks ago. No one has called. And, I might add, until the supervisor from BORDERLAND called me, not one person from THE LINK OF SUDDEN has ever called me over the course of the past, ohhh, twelve weeks."

Amber said she was very sorry that this was the case. However, she could see in the account notes that Leon himself had actually made a note in the account back in April. Leon's note explained that that hooking up the scribe's castle for internet service would cost $12,000. The scribe should have been horrified at that figure, but nothing about the Link of Sudden could surprise him at this point, except, perhaps, for an actual phone call.

"This is the first I've heard anything about $12,000," the scribe said. "And that's precisely the sort of information we've been trying to get out of THE LINK OF SUDDEN for weeks."

Amber explained that she was uncertain if the $12,000 cost was their cost, the scribe's cost or something to be split up should it come to actually acting on the proposed job. The scribe again told her about his own proposed project of just getting the Link of Sudden to EFFing upgrade the plug-in box in his neighbor's yard, 70 feet down the hill, and his offer to have the trench dug to bury a cable from their, but, again, this was something he needed to discuss with Leon, who apparently was afraid to phone him. Amber made several notes in the account and said she would send communication to Leon that he was to communicate back with the scribe as soon as possible regarding the actual cost breakdown. Amber said she was on the scribe's side. She said she had his back in all this. She would follow up to make sure it happened.

And so far.... no call.

Once Upon a Time (Part 5)

noreply@blogger.com (Juice S. Aaron) — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 02:43:00 +0000

This morning, at the crack of 8:42 a.m., the scribe and the goodly wife lay in bed in their new castle and were only barely awake when the scribe's cell phone rang. He answered it and the voice he heard upon saying hello asked for him by name. "This is him," the scribe said. And then, after seven long of ass weeks of waiting, the voice on the other end introduced himself as a a supervisor from the Link of Sudden. The scribe nearly dropped the phone in shock, for an actual call from the Link of Sudden was completely unexpected, especially since it had been well over a week since the last Link of Sudden employee he talked to had told him that she was supposed to tell him he would be called. In no way did the scribe actually expect a call, though.

Nope, in the interim time, the scribe had written the Link of Sudden off as a probability. Oh, sure, if at some point months down the line someone from the Link of Sudden were to contact him and say he could at last have cable internet, he probably would take it. But he had since made different plans.

After a bit of research, the scribe had learned that not only was his cell service with the Zon of Veri grandfathered in for unlimited data (a plan they no longer offer), but if he were to upgrade to a new phone with them he would not only be able to continue getting unlimited data but could also, for a reasonable fee, use said phone as both a tethered 3G internet connection and a wifi hotspot. The cost of this feature on both his and the goodly wife's phones was less than he would pay for service through the Link of Sudden and FAR FAR less than he was paying with his AT-AT mifi card. So he and the goodly wife had upgraded their phones, taken the AT-AT card back and were enjoying all the streaming Netflix that they wanted. Furthermore, his new phone was the latest version of the Razr, which has a screen that's so big it's practically a pad device unto itself. As far as he was concerned, the Link of Sudden could go soak their head (in a bag of dicks) because he no longer needed them. Sure, it would be nice to have high speed internet once again of the type that would allow him to play Little Big Planet with his godchild in Mississippi, but cheap flat-rate internet was once again within his grasp.

The Link of Sudden employee on the phone explained that he was a supervisor with Link of Sudden and had received the scribe's case as an escalation. (The previous LOS lackey had been made a liar after all! Way to go, lackey!) The supervisor was calling to find out what exactly the situation was to see what he could do about it.

"Well," the scribe began. Then he paused. His instinct was to punish the supervisor by making him sit through a point by point verbal recreation of the entire seven week saga, complete with reenactments of each of the times he had pointed out to the Link of Sudden that no one had called him. Then, he decided against it. Why hurt the guy who claimed to be trying to help? Instead, the scribe said the paraphrased equivalent of "We bought this house, it used to have Link of Sudden cable, it can't get internet cause it's too far from the tie in, my neighbors 70 feet down the hill have a box for it in their yard, it only has two connections in it and both are full, the surveyor who came out said we might be able to tie into it but the equipment needs to be upgraded, I've been trying to get someone to call me weeks to find out if it can be."

The supervisor then said a very VERY telling sentence. "Now, this is for 120 Arsenic Blvd in BORDERLAND, right?"

There was a pause as the scribe realized that despite the FACT that he'd explained, reexplained and REreexplained (which apparently you have to do because these people are more than a little RE-RE), each time he had called the LOS, over the course of seven weeks, the FACT that they had relocated from Borderland to Tri-Metro and that the house they had been trying to get service for was, in point of FACT, the one in Tri-Metro, the LOS still hadn't grasped that FACT and were trying to get him internet service for THE ONE HOUSE OUT OF THE TWO THAT ALREADY HAD EFFING SERVICE!!!!!!!!!!

"No. No it is not," the scribe said. "No, this is for 342 Snazzy View Drive in Tri-Metro."

"Tri-Metro?"

"Yes. Tri-Metro."

"Huh. Well I work for the Borderland office. It got escalated to us," the guy said. "Tell ya what. I'm gonna forward this on to Tri-Metro's office. The guy there is named Leon. He will definitely call you back. Are you going to be around at this number for the next little bit?"

"Sure," the scribe said.

"Cause he'll definitely call you back."

"That would be great," the scribe said.

That, of course, was over 14 hours ago. Can you guess how many times the scribe's cell number has rung since? He'll give you a hint. It's less than one.

Once Upon a Time (Part 4.9)

noreply@blogger.com (Juice S. Aaron) — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 22:21:00 +0000

This morning, at the crack of 8 a.m., the scribe received a second automated call from Link of Sudden telling him an appointment would likely occur today between 8:15 a.m. and 9:40 a.m. and would take 20 minutes. This did not seem like enough time to bury and install a cable from the box down the hill, so the scribe took it to mean someone was coming out to deliver bad news that he could not have access to the web of the whole wide world. They would deliver that news in the first minute, allowing the scribe 19 minutes to scream at them in his golden voice.

At 12:30 p.m., with no sign of the Link of Sudden, the scribe phoned them up. The phone lackey did not immediately know what the appointment was for, so she had the scribe tell her the whole sad tale and of the many promised and reneged upon phone calls while she looked through the extensive notes in the file. The scribe couldn’t even work up any anger about it all, but just answered her questions with resignation.

The phone lackey eventually discovered that the calls were for the disconnection of services to his former castle in Borderland and not an appointment for Tri-Metro at all. She asked again why he was disconnecting his service if he only wanted to transfer it, which nearly set the scribe into a hair-pulling fit. He then pointed out that he had been trying to do exactly that for six weeks, but had now been told that once the matter was in the hands of the construction department only written communication would occur, at some indefinite point in the no doubt distant future. The phone lackey said this was odd, because she’d never heard of that rule and the account had no notes to that effect. The only thing it said was “customer is disconnecting service because survey is taking too long” which was not at all accurate of the situation. The survey has ALREADY occurred; it’s the results of the cost/benefit analysis and potential Plan B cable connection to the cable hub in his neighbor’s yard that is taking too long.

The phone rep was sympathetic to the cause, however, and said she would put in another escalation form, this time going to a supervisor and not the department the previous reps had routed such escalation forms to. She said that it was company protocol to tell me that someone would call me within two days, but she didn’t want to be a liar so she would just tell the scribe that that’s what she was supposed to say. The scribe had a good and hearty laugh at this and congratulated her on a job well done.

And since she was so helpful and honest, he asked her if, perhaps, disconnecting his service entirely was the wisest move. After all, if he was no longer a customer, would he even appear on the radar of the Link of Sudden in terms of incentive to even attempt to answer his questions or, dare he even dream, hook him up with service? The phone lackey said that she completely understood why he would want to disconnect, but if it were here she would give the disconnect a couple more days in order to give the form she had just sent up the pipe at least a chance to work. That said, the scribe asked to reschedule the disconnect for the following week.

Once Upon a Time (Part 4.5)

noreply@blogger.com (Juice S. Aaron) — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 00:02:00 +0000

And then, not even two hours after he posted the previous part regarding the infuriating nature of the Link of Sudden, its lackeys and dick-filled bag-eating nature, who should phone the scribe at his castle but the Link of Sudden itself. Actually, it was an automated message alerting the scribe to an impending and heretofore unexpected service appointment at his castle, scheduled, it said, for tomorrow morning between 8 and noon.

Curious timing, to be sure. But the scribe suspects this may just be coincidence, as the link of sudden does not know him by his scribe name on this blog. Or maybe they just did the "cranky guy in West Virginia who keeps calling and pointing out how we don't call him back and whose complaint seems remarkably similar to this blogger's" math.

Nahh. I can't be the only one.

Until tomorrow, then...

(TO BE CONTINUED...)

Once Upon a Time... (Part 4)

noreply@blogger.com (Juice S. Aaron) — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 20:06:00 +0000

The following day, with NO EFFING CALLS RECEIVED FROM ANYONE, the scribe phoned the Link of Sudden back and nicely asked to speak to the specific supervisor who had promised to call the day before. The underling said she was not in the office. Furthermore, the underling said that the reason the supervisor had not called was because the local tech supervisor had promised to phone the scribe to explain exactly why he couldn’t have the web of the whole wide world in his castle. The scribe asked to speak to a different supervisor, because mounting evidence suggested that he would never receive any such phone call. The underling told him none were available. The scribe told the underling that he felt as though he were being given the runaround, but would wait to hear what the technical supervisor had to say in his much anticipated phone call.

The scribe got dressed and prepared himself for a morning of using the web of the whole wide world at the place where they hide the books. But before he could even leave the house, he saw through the castle’s kitchen window a large Link of Sudden truck parked in his driveway. He went out and this was when he met the technical supervisor who had promised to phone. The man was very nice and gently broke the news that while all of the scribe’s neighbors seemed to have internet service, the scribe’s castle could not. At least, not without a great deal of work and expense on the part of the Link of Sudden. The most direct route would be to install a series of cable poles and rewire the whole valley from their line at the nearest major road. That would be woefully expensive, though the Link of Sudden might eventually undertake it should they feel like they would get enough customers along the route of the lines. The other option would be to somehow tie in to the connection shared by the scribe’s two nearest neighbors. Currently, that receptacle only had two connectors in it which were used by his two neighbors. It would be expensive to upgrade that box as well as to bury cable up the hill to connect to the scribe’s castle, plus there was the hassle of asking the neighbors if this was okay with them. It wasn’t outside the realm of possibility, but he wasn’t holding out a lot of hope on it. In fact, he noted, the scribe should probably look into other internet options because there was no guarantee the cost/benefit analysis for either of the aforementioned options would come out in his favor. But, the man said, he would turn in his survey findings to his boss, his boss would run the c/b/a and would call me back, probably some time early the following week.

The scribe, upon hearing this news, decided that the likelihood of him gaining the web of the whole wide world from the Link of Sudden was pretty low. He didn’t feel like the technical supervisor was jerking him around, but was on the level. He would explore other avenues. But he also wasn’t willing to give up entirely on Suddenlink, especially when the supervisor had said there was still a chance.

In order to get some web of the whole wide world into the house, he put in a call to a telephony guild called Frontier. He’d actually called them a week previous and had been told that they could give him service, though the speeds they offered were pale by comparison to those he had received with the Link of Sudden in Borderland. Still, they would at least get him SOME service. The new lackey on Frontier’s line, however, could find no record of his previous call, nor an address for his castle at all. The lackey suggested that if the scribe were to visit one of his neighbors and inquire of them their telephone number, he could locate the castle more readily. So the scribe, quite grumpy, walked down the hill to one of the two nearest castles and knocked on the door of that owned by the neighbor he had not yet met. Its resident, Martha, was a nice older lady who not only gave the scribe her phone number and address, but regaled him with tales of how fast her connection was to the web of the whole wide world. Couldn’t talk enough about its blazing fast speeds and how she had been told her house was the last one on the line from Link of Sudden’s local node and that she was pretty sure she’d been told that the scribe’s house could not have it.

Once the scribe returned to his castle and phoned the next Frontier lackey, they were able to pinpoint his location. Again, he was told he could have 4 megabytes per second in his speed on the web of the whole wide world, a far cry less than the blazing 15 mps promised by the Link of Sudden. However, when the Frontier installation lackey came out two days afterward, he could barely summon half an mps let alone a full megabyte and that was directly at the phone connection to the castle. The phone jacks within the castle would not even register. Turns out, the castle is at the very tip end of a line running from Tri-Metro Town B and is at 2200 feet from that access point, wherein Frontier recommends no more than 1800. Not only could the scribe not have 15,000 mps, not only could he not have 4 mps, he could not even have 1 mps and in order to get the half an mps within his home all other phone jacks in the place would have to be disconnected. The scribe told the Frontier lackey to begone, and to relay to his vile masters exactly how many bags of dicks they were invited to consume—which is to say one bag of dicks. But the lackey did suggest the scribe look into wifi hotspot devices for possible service. He did warn, however, that no one was giving away data for free these days.

Meanwhile, the promised days upon which the scribe was to have received a call regarding the cost/benefit analysis came and went with, of course, nary a call. At the end of that week, the scribe phoned the Link of Sudden and inquired as to the result. They again said they did not know, but would put in a request that the scribe be given a call. The scribe pointed out, for probably the sixth time, that he had been given repeated promises of a call in the previous weeks and had never actually been received one outside for the calls for directions made by the first two failed installation guys. The Link of Sudden said they were very sorry.

Not willing to give up on what had become a quest, the scribe researched other options via the web of the whole wide world down at the place where they hide the books. Turned out, the Zon of Veri, the Great and Powerful Atat, and Sprint offered wireless hotspot cards that could potentially connect devices in his castle to the web of the whole wide world at speeds approaching high ones. However, they all wanted to charge a fair assload for the privilege, not to mention required a two year contract. And of the services, only Sprint offered unlimited data with their MIFI card. The other two charged around $10 per gigabyte. After speaking to Sprint, the scribe learned that their service, while unlimited in its data plan, did not have a reliable signal in the area of his castle. Plus, they would require the two year contract. They did, however, note that a sister organization, Virgin America, offered a pre-paid mifi card for $50 per month with unlimited data and no contract. Unfortunately, when the scribe researched the validity of this, he learned that it was a massive pile of horse shit. Virgin America DID offer a $50 per month mifi card that claimed it came with unlimited data. However, while the data itself was unlimited, your access to it in high speed form was limited to 2 gigs per month, at which point they cinched off the pipe to dialup speeds for the rest of the month, or until you paid them another $50. And for that Richard Branson may consume two bags of dicks.

The Great and Powerful Atat, which allegedly has some of the best connectivity in the Tri-Metro area, also offered a MIFI card for $50 per month, but they at least gave you 5 gigs for that money and for each additional gig you went beyond the initial 5 you would be charged $10. The scribe reasoned that if he had to pay for such service, at least this was metered and would not be cinched off. He popped by the Atat store and signed up. And it worked! It was pretty much blazing fast and for most things he did not notice much difference between the Link of Sudden and the Atat. However, streaming Flix of Net movies chewed through the data at an alarming rate. It was almost to the point that he was better off paying movie theater prices to watch movies through his PS3. And when it came to using the PS3 network to game online with his god son, forget it. While it would let him play games online, something about the Atat connection would not allow a direct connection with his godson. The scribe decided he would take the rest of the month to try out the service before making any further drastic decisions.

Meanwhile, life went on. Boxes continued to be unpacked and put away and their former castle in Borderland was finally placed on the market. The goodly wife began her commute to Asscrackton for her work while the scribe began to take on freelance scribing jobs once again. He also was able to resume his casting of pod for the "Tales of the Place Where They Hide The Books CAST." It hurt him deeply to know that uploading it was costing him moolah, but at least he wouldn't have to upload it exclusively at the Place Where They Hide the Books.

Over the following two weeks, calls were repeatedly placed to the Link of Sudden asking about the cost/benefit analysis results. They didn’t have them, but promised someone would phone. No one ever did. Finally, nearly three weeks after being promised he would receive a call regarding the cost/benefit analysis, the scribe called the Link of Sudden back to ask again and was told a new request for information would be put in to the local crew. The scribe again stressed that he would believe no promises of phone calls to come until one actually did, because he’d had ten of them already and none had EVER come to pass. Furthermore, he was quite put out at having paid for an entire month of service on an empty house with no one in it. He would like to disconnect his service. The phone lackey begged him not to, saying that he was grandfathered into a good pricing deal and should not allow it to lapse until he heard word officially on his connection. The scribe countered that he was getting a great deal on service he was not and could not receive, so what sense did it make to continue with it? The lackey begged again, and the scribe relented. And to help alleviate the scribe’s concerns about no future callbacks, the phone lackey gave the scribe an escalation number which he was to give to the next Link of Sudden lackey after he didn’t receive a call for a few days more. At least they were planning ahead, the scribe thought.

One week later, and still no calls, the scribe phoned the Link of Sudden and gave them the number. The new phone lacked explained that his connectivity issue had been escalated to the construction phase. This did not mean, as she pointed out, that he would be receiving any service from them, but that the results of the survey were being considered and the cost/benefit analysis calculated. Furthermore, it was no surprise that he had received no call about any of it because once the issue had been escalated all further communication would be in writing. He should expect a letter at some point in the future.

“But how long do I have to wait?” he asked.

Oh, the letter could come today. Or it could come in weeks, or even months. You couldn’t tell with these things. Yes, once it was in construction’s hands, there was just no way to estimate when they would get around to it.

“But I was promised a call within four days of the survey,” the scribe said. “That was three weeks ago.”

Yes, we know. These things take time.

“But… but all of my neighbors have high speed internet through you. If they would just upgrade the equipment down the hill, I could have it, too. Maybe. I just want someone to call me and tell me whether or not that will even work. I’m willing to pay for burying the cable up the hill if you guys will just upgrade the box to fit another plug!”

Yes, we know. You’ll receive a letter. These things take time.

Every fiber in the scribe's being wanted to tell the lackey the exact number of bags of dicks that he required the link of sudden to consume--which is to say ALL of the bags of dicks. But, instead, the scribe again noted that he was still currently paying for service on an empty house and was unwilling to continue do so while waiting indefinitely for a letter to arrive from them. He had no more faith in their ability to write letters than he did in their ability to make a phone call. In fact, he wanted reimbursed for all of his time the Link of Sudden had wasted in this matter, which had been stretching on a full 40 days previous. He was through listening to lackeys beg him to keep his service. He wanted disconnected. The phone lackey reluctantly agreed, saying that a Link of Sudden rep could come by to pick up their equipment, but would only pick it up from the castle it had been assigned to.

"That will not be possible," the scribe said, noting that he now lived in a completely different town. The lackey suggested he could drop it off at one of their local guilds, but only listed the guilds in Borderland and Asscrackton as possibilities. No, the scribe said, he was only willing to mail it to them.

And that, dear and patient readers, was how the matter was left.

(TO BE CONCLUDED...)

Once Upon a Time... (Part 3)

noreply@blogger.com (Juice S. Aaron) — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 18:24:00 +0000

After recovering from having his own jaw slam into his junk from the shock of having heard there was no job waiting for his wife in the town in which they’d just agreed to purchase a castle, the scribe could barely come up with words to express his shock and anger. Most of the words he was able to summon were variations and expansions upon the word “fuck”. Some of these he was able to keep locked in his brain for a time, but very quickly, as the gravity of the situation began to set in, they began to spew forth in such phrases as, “But we just bought a EFFing castle there!!!” What was not immediately apparent on that day in early February (nor has it become a whole lot more apparent to this day) was just what would cause Tuesday the Middle Manager to give the goodly wife the green light on purchasing a castle when there was no job for her to take at the Tri-Metro Immediate Healing Clinic. But in that moment, all the scribe could do was share and magnify the anger the goodly wife was feeling. Eventually, she suggested she should hang up and allow him time to calm down because she was at work and could not join him in ranting and screaming “fuck” at the top of her lungs no matter how much she might like to. So this she did.

Gradually, the details emerged of what the true plan had been from the standpoint of the Grand King. According to him, the first he had EVER heard about any move to Tri-Metro by Dr. Goodly Wife was during her phone call to him that morning. Beyond that, she learned that there HAD been an opening in Tri-Metro some months before, but that this position had been filled by another healer who was being moved down from a more northerly Immediate Healing Clinic to fill that void. The king would have been fine with Dr. Goodly Wife transferring to Tri-Metro, but he said no one had told him and so he and his staff filled the position from elsewhere. The king had no idea why Tuesday the Middle Manager would have thought anything otherwise, because Tuesday had been involved in the hiring of the healer to fill the position in Tri-Metro in the first place. (She would later claim she thought the healer was being hired for Asscrackton and that she was largely in the dark on most of those kinds of decisions, which conceivably might be true.) Whether she was high, stupid or just being a big bouncy “C” was not then nor today clear. What was clear, as the goodly wife pointed out to the Grand King, was that she was now in a very unfortunate situation of very nearly being the owner of two castles neither of which were in towns she would be employed in for much longer. While the king did not owe her a job in Tri-Metro, she had operated in good faith on information given to her by his middle managers and had proceeded with plans to move there. Surely there was something he could do to try and make the unfortunate situation less unfortunate.

The Grand King’s suggestion was to offer her an immediate position in Asscrackton. This was not something she wished to hear, for while Asscrackton was closer to Tri-Metro than Borderland, it was still a hefty commute and it was still a job in Asscrackton. No one wanted to work in Asscrackton. It was hellishly busy and full of surly employees, if rumors were to be trusted. But the Grand King said it would be no problem to set her up there, which would be closer to Tri-Metro, and she could have all the extra days at the Tri-Metro Immediate Healing Clinic that weren’t already spoken for. She could even have a nice raise which would combat the extra fuel expenses in getting there and maybe make the time spent in doing so worth it. And, if a position opened in Tri-Metro, it was hers and she could keep the raise. He would even put it in writing to her specifications. This sounded tolerable and even generous to the goodly wife. She later explained it to the scribe and while he was still fuming and aching in his junk, he did the math on the raise and agreed that it was in fact quite a tempting offer.

It took a few drafts to get the wording of the contract right, but eventually all parties agreed upon a set of terms and the deal was put into place. The goodly wife would start work in Asscrackton in mid-March. And, meanwhile, the closing date on the new castle had also been set for leap year day. That in mind, the scribe set about packing as much of their crap into boxes and hauling loads of it over to a storage facility in Tri-Metro in preparation for getting their old castle ready to be seen by potential buyers and to get as much of it in their new/old town. They even began speaking with the same moving company that had transported their possessions to borderland about hauling quite a bit of it back. The scribe and wife would pack and move their clothes and sundry books and crap, but the furniture and the kitchen could be moved by professionals.

At last leap day came, the papers were signed and the new castle was officially theirs. And to celebrate, and because it was the last day of the month and they didn’t want to pay another month’s storage, the two of them celebrated by hauling their crap from the storage unit to the new castle in the pouring rain.

The new castle was pretty great, albeit with a few things that needed updating in a big way. The pinstripe wallpaper in the guest bathroom, for instance, had to go, as did some of the window treatments that prevented the back door from opening properly and which infuriated the scribe, for if there’s one thing he hates its design at the expense of utility. But beyond those minor issues and some painting, the place was absolutely great. The two set about remedying the perceived flaws over the course of the following days.

In preparation for the move, the scribe had already contacted essential utilities to make certain that he and the goodly wife would be without them for as little time as possible. Not electricity and water, mind you, but the Network of Dish and the Link of Sudden for all their televisual and web of the whole wide world needs. The two companies even scheduled time to come out and do the installation on the same day.

The Network of Dish was the easiest of these installations, and happened in the afternoon. It was the Link of Sudden installation that had problems in the morning. The Link installation guy inspected the castle to find where its cable was located. Some more inspection then commenced as well as telephone device calls to Link of Sudden HQ and walks around the property. Eventually, the installation tech returned to the scribe’s presence and announced that despite the fact that the castle was wired for the Link of Sudden and had had service through them with the previous owners, the castle was now “unserviceable” for anything beyond basic cable. Apparently while the previous owners had used Link of Sudden for their television, they had not had high speed web of the whole wide world and consequently the connection from the castle into their system was over 300 feet away, which would not support web. The next nearest such node was in the yard of the scribe’s nearest neighbor, a mere 60 feet down the hill, but that particular box only contained two connection ports into which his two nearest neighbors were connected. The installation man said he was inexperienced and could not do such an installation, but perhaps someone with more knowledge than he could. He told the scribe that he would soon be called by such a tech to discuss what to do next.

After no such call was received within 24 hours, the scribe phoned the Link of Sudden to inquire as to when he could expect it. The underling on the line told the scribe that no call should be expected for the castle had been declared “unserviceable” by the first tech who’d been out.
“No,” the scribe pointed out, “the castle was unserviceable by that guy. He said he was new and that the castle might be serviceable by someone more experienced. He said they would call me.”
The underling said she understood and that she would note this in the account and request that the local dispatcher give me a call, but as far as she could tell the castle truly was unserviceable and the scribe should probably give up. The scribe reiterated to her that he really REALLY wanted this connection to happen. The purchase of the castle was made partially BECAUSE it had the Link of Sudden. He was willing to pay fees if it meant someone who knew what they were doing could come out and have a look at the place. The underling again said she would note it and that the scribe would be given a call.

After no call was received within 24 hours, the scribe phoned the Link of Sudden again to inquire. The new underling also said the castle was unserviceable which led the scribe to explain again the nature of this potentially incorrect claim and the lack of call backs. A little digging on the underling’s part and a note from the local dispatcher was discovered stating that the house actually was serviceable and that an installation could take place at my request. Nice of them to alert the scribe, no? The next available installation date, of course, was a week away and no argument would be brooked otherwise.

Because the scribe has his intelligent personal telephony device that is equipped with the web of the whole wide world and unlimited data, he is able to check his Mail of E. In order to get some of his bigger projects accomplished faster, though, he had to take his lap of top down to his former workplace at the place where they hide the books and use their wireless connection to the web of the whole wide world. He was therefore also able to hang out with his former coworkers and shoot the shit. The only former Rogue Patron he was able to see, though, was Mr. W. Perfect.

A week later, the next installation tech arrived, took one look at the wiring from road level and again announced it was unserviceable. The scribe was hardly surprised and said as much to the installer. The installer said that from what he could see there was no way to make the castle compliant with the needs of the Link of Sudden with its current setup. What was needed was to have the Link of Sudden send out a surveyor to assess the situation and make recommendations for how best to proceed. Perhaps, he supposed, the necessary cables could be connected to the power and phone pole directly behind the new castle, since they couldn’t be run from the street far beyond.

“Could you please tell me HOW I can convince them to do this?” the scribe asked. He explained that he had been phoning and phoning and begging for this very thing to happen but all anyone would say is that the house was unserviceable. Clearly, since every neighbor in spitting distance had the service, it was technologically possible to install. The intaller said it would be best to speak to someone in the Link of Sudden’s engineering department, preferably in Texas, as they could actually make things happen there. He said it wasn’t wise to call and yell as that tended to shut the underlings down and make them less cooperative.

So after the installer left, the scribe phoned the Link of Sudden and nicely asked them to speak to the engineering department, preferably in Texas. The underling on the phone did not seem to want to comply and began asking the scribe questions, which raised his blood pressure. And, after the scribe had described the issue, again and nicely, the underling said that her screen noted that the castle was unserviceable, but she could “put in a form” for the local tech supervisor to give him a call. The call could take up to 48 hours to be made, however. The scribe told her that this was unacceptable. He had been promised calls twice previously, but none had ever come. All communication with the company had been made due to his efforts alone. He did not trust that any promise of another call would be any more fruitful, so he asked to speak to a supervisor. When the supervisor came on the line, the scribe explained the whole situation again and mentioned the lack of calls and the seeming confusion on the part of their installers as to what could or needed to be done to make things work. The supervisor apologized that the scribe had not been called and assured him that she would personally put in a call to the local tech supervisor and make certain that he called. And if he couldn’t call then she, the phone supervisor, would call herself and explain the situation. The scribe, she said, could expect a call from someone before 5 p.m.

(TO BE CONTINUED...)

Once Upon a Time... (Part 2)

noreply@blogger.com (Juice S. Aaron) — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 19:04:00 +0000

A year passed.

During that year, the scribe who still missed his former life in Tri-Metro, decided to embark upon a new project that would hearken back to the material he had written during his time at the place where they hide the books—a project that would again make use of his golden voice. Since his days in Tri-Metro, the scribe had been an ever-growing fan of a new and growing industry related to the Casting of Broad, but which was called the Casting of Pod. In this industry, no one had to join a town criers guild or find a criers station to cast, or ever play Rod Stewart again. Instead, one could “record” such cries from one’s own guest bedroom and make them available to the masses via the web of the whole wide world. It had become a daily ritual of the scribe to listen to the casts of such notable casters of pod as Saint Adam of the Carollas, among many others. Wishing to step into this new medium himself, the scribe bought some equipment and began adapting and recording some of the stories he’d written for Tales from the Place Where they Hide the Books. This new cast of pod he called the Tales from the Place Where they Hide the Bookscast. It soon had tens of listeners.

Meanwhile the goodly wife’s job in the Borderland Immediate Healing Clinic went fairly well during that time. In fact, the place was ridiculously busy, leading to many a late night as the healers had to stay and finish their charting on the many patients they’d seen that day. This led to many requests by the goodly wife that the place of healing hire other healers to lighten the load and decrease the late nights. It took months for this to happen, of course, with repeated promises that it would in the interim. And while it eventually did occur, it did not until the goodly wife had voiced another promise to seek employment elsewhere if the situation did not change. She had even located said employment in the form of a place of healing back in Tri-Metro. The scribe was actually overjoyed at this prospect, because it would mean a return to his favorite place. Then the goodly wife’s bosses listened to her promise and, perhaps because she was one of the more productive healers in their employ, they listened and hired help. It seemed the Tri-Metro return was not to be. In lamenting, this, however, the scribe at last was able to alert the goodly wife of his desire to one day return to Tri-Metro—which he thought she had known all along but which she claimed she did not. This in mind, though, when an opening occurred at the Tri-Metro Immediate Healing Clinic, the goodly wife let it be known to her middle-management that she wished to transfer into it.

One of the middle managers, let’s call her Tuesday (as in “See” You Next…), said that it would not be a problem to transfer. It would be a simple matter of scheduling the goodly wife to work in Tri-Metro and continue to do so afterward that. According to Tuesday, the position would not be open for at least three months, so it would take that long before the Goodly Wife could be transferred. This was all right, however, because a new castle would have to be found and the old one sold.

Soon enough, the pair began to travel to Tri-Metro to look at new castles. And because they loved their Borderland castle so much, they were very picky. There was no point in moving if they couldn’t have something at least approaching what they had in Borderland, which was just far enough outside of the city to feel remote and woodsy, yet still close enough to get high speed internet via the Link of Sudden. There were several castles in the land surrounding Tri-Metro that they liked well enough, and most fit their vision of what they wanted in a castle, but each of them had at least one major check against it. Either they were located unsettlingly close to rivers or to avalanche-prone hillsides, or they were so far out to make for an irritatingly long commute to town, or they had an enormous crack in their subterranean basement wall, etc. The other major problem with them all was that they were far enough away from town to not receive proper high speed internet access. All of them had the Net of Hughes, which everyone knows is just awful. In fact, if you check the Net of Hughes’ own site on the web of the whole wide world, they pretty much admit to sucking really really hard. How could the scribe watch his Netflix streaming on the Net of Hughes? How could the scribe play Little Big Planet with his Godson on the Net of Hughes? How could he cast his pod? He could not. And thus the scribe declared his desire to only purchase a castle that had proper high speed internet, preferably from the Link of Sudden.

Just when they thought they would have to settle for the castle with the crack in the basement and an experimental and untested MiFi card for internet, a new castle was located. This one was barely a mile from town, located on top of a hill in the back of a quiet neighborhood with gorgeous views of mountains and countryside and sunsets. There were two massive and gnarled, centuries-old oaks in front of it, casing atmospheric shadows over the property. And the land butted up against a stretch of land with a trail where dogs could be walked and exercise had. What was more, the castle was already equipped with the Link of Sudden. Glory be! The goodly wife and the scribe went immediately to see it and were astounded at what they found. The castle had been built around the same time as theirs in Borderland, so it had much the same feel, if not the same layout. It had loads of space for all their stuff, a nice kitchen, a very nice master bathroom, a huge basement and a heated and air-conditioned outbuilding that had once been used as a woodshop but could potentially be used as a scribing retreat, and an enormous walk in closet that could easily be transformed into a studio for his golden voice and the casting of pods. Granted, there wasn’t as much property as with the Borderland castle, but what it had was all useable, not terribly steep and had a front yard that was not a right bastard to mow. This was not to say there weren’t some issues to be seen, such as a 30 year roof on what looked to be its 25^th year, some pretty hideous choices in wallpaper and some general updating to be done on the place. But none of the issues were of the deal-breaking variety. After all, it had the Link of Sudden. So, with no For Sale sign on their castle back home, the pair began negotiations on the new castle.

Meanwhile, back in Borderland, the goodly wife had been checking and double checking with Tuesday and the other middle managers as to the actual start date she could expect for her transfer to the Tri-Metro Immediate Healing Clinic. Tuesday, who was in charge of such scheduling, said that she wasn’t completely certain, yet, but that it looked like a mid-March/early April start date could be expected. It was reiterated by the goodly wife that such knowledge would be helpful to have as soon as possible, as she was about to sign on a new castle and would likely close on it within two months, possibly sooner.

After a week of back and forth negotiating on the price of the new castle, an acceptable amount for all was reached and papers were signed. The new castle was officially under contract. Inspections were soon begun and all came back glowing. If everything went to plan with the home loan, a closing date might even be reached between late February to late March. This looked like it was going to work out for all involved.

It was decided that before the castle in Borderland was to be placed on the market, it needed to get cleaned up but good. The place was awash in dog hair and cluttered with sundry crap. It was further decided that it would be financially beneficial to move a lot of that sundry crap to storage in Tri-Metro themselves rather than have movers do it. And it was during the boxing of said crap on one otherwise fine day that the goodly wife phoned from her workplace to inform the scribe that she had just learned something truly shocking. In an effort to seek an actual start date for her new position in Tri-Metro, she had used the magical telephony device at her place of work to contact the Grand King of all of the Places of Immediate Healing and inquired of him the start date that he had in mind. The Grand King had then responded, “I don’t know what you’ve been told, but there’s no position open in TRI-METRO.”

And at this point the scribe’s own jaw tagged him in the junk.

(TO BE CONTINUED…)

Once Upon a Time... (Part 1)

noreply@blogger.com (Juice S. Aaron) — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 23:01:00 +0000

...there was a beautiful maiden who came to live in an ancient hovel in the malodorous kingdom of Skyline, Mississippi. This was an odd place for this particular maiden to be found, as she had grown up in the distant land of Alaska, but the tale of how she came to be in Mississippi, while a good one, is not today’s story. Let us suffice to say that the maiden was in Skyline due to its proximity to Tupelo where she was finishing up her undergraduate apprenticeship in the healing arts of medical technology. One of the maiden’s fellow apprentices happened to mention one day that a friend of her husband was about to relocate to the Tupelo area where he was to use his golden voice to earn a living as a town crier in the industry called the Casting of Broad, or radio. And because the job of town crier paid startlingly little money, he was in search of cheap lodging. Very cheap. The maiden, in turn, mentioned that her particular hovel was very cheap to live in and rather cozy if you could overlook the fact that it had no heating to speak of, was forever on the verge of collapse, and was probably held together by the sheer adhesive power of roach droppings within the walls. Furthermore, it had a set of rooms for rent.

Within days the scribe himself had not only come to Tupelo to see the rooms in question, but he had secured lodging within them for himself and his cat. And soon after this, the maiden met the scribe for the very first time. He was a handsome fellow and she noted that he did indeed have a golden voice. She even helped him move his belongings into his rooms within the hovel and the two became friends. Soon their friendship turned to adoration, though neither would admit it even to themselves. It was a dangerous thing to adore someone when you knew you would soon be parted. For, you see, the maiden was only living in Skyline temporarily and was to be called away to the distant land of the Carolina of the North after her undergraduate apprenticeship was concluded.

The day they parted was a sad one, but Carolina of the North beckoned. They cried tears, hugged and promised to keep in touch. It did not take long for them to begin calling one another. It took even less time to start missing one another. Within months they made plans for the scribe to come and see the maiden. And so their courtship began. And thus a hellish year and a half was spent courting from 600 miles apart. Eventually, the pull of their love drew them together and the scribe left Skyline and Tupelo behind to join his betrothed in the Carolina of the North where the two were wed and the maiden at last became his goodly wife. The scribe returned to being town crier, albeit in a much bigger town. He also took a job in a call-center for the Star of “On”, because town crier still paid for shit.

Though the goodly wife had previously taken work as a technologist of medicine, her true goal was to return to a school of the healing arts in an effort to become a skilled healer herself. Unfortunately, her applications to schools in the Carolina of the North were rejected for two years straight. It wasn’t until her third year of application that she was finally accepted—not in the Carolina of the North, but in the not-too-distant province of the Virginia of the West. Though it meant their lives would be upheaved once again, the two of them gathered their few possessions and their cat and made the journey to this new and mountainous land. They settled in a collection of three small villages that together made one decent sized village, which was dubbed Tri-Metro.

While the goodly wife began her studies, the scribe sought to employ himself as a town crier in his new town as well. Alas, there were no crier’s guild or casting of broad stations that could employ live criers. It was a canned town, as they say. His golden voice would have to rest. Instead, the scribe instead took work as an apprentice to the local knowledge-keepers guild—or, as Saint Carolla once described it, the place where they hide the books. There he did labor for three years before deciding that the stories about the people he encountered during the course of his labor were too good not to chronicle. And so the scribe set about to do this on a near daily basis, amassing a tremendous amount of the stories which he shared with other people through the use of the web of the whole wide world. Such online scribing was called “blogging” and his blog was called Tales from the Place Where They Hide the Books. Many people enjoyed his stories and told him so. Other people were assholes. But write the tales he did for five more years.The scribe and his goodly wife found that they loved the Tri-Metro area, and the Virginia of the West as a whole. They had not initially planned to remain there beyond her studies, but had long since decided that it was a beautiful place to live their lives. They made friends and colleagues in their area and began making plans to remain there forever.

At the end of their first seven years in Tri-Metro, the goodly wife had secured a degree in her studies and had completed three years of apprenticeship in the healing arts. And after a fiery trial at the hands of the high lords of healing, she was given the freedom to go into the world and practice the healing arts with no supervision as a full-fledged healer. However, when it came time to decide what to do, the major opportunity to practice her healing arts came not in Tri-Metro but in a not-too-distant township on the border of their province and that of an adjacent province. This “Borderland” was where she could best practice her art. And, according to the healing guildmaster’s recruiter there, wouldn’t even have to work that hard to do it. She’d have PLENTY of time to spend with her family, because the Place of Healing would never seek to overwork the shit out of their healers. Nosir. She wouldn’t be spending ALL of her time in the hospital. Don’t even think of it. Even after all of their assurances, the goodly wife warned her recruiter that she had no intention of spending all waking hours at the Place of Healing. Their promises sounded fine, but if they turned out not to be true she would have no problem walking. They said she had nothing to worry about.

Because the goodly wife’s art earned their household far more money than the scribe earned by working in the place where they hide the books, the scribe left the knowledge guild and ended Tales from the Place Where They Hide the Books. Oh, he tried to continue chronicling his life in this new Land on the Border, but mostly this involved talking about the repairs they were doing to their new castle and complaining about people parking like assholes at the Mart of Wals. Over the coming months, he missed his days at the place where they hide the books, and the plentiful nature of his scribing life back then. He missed his friends and colleagues and the creative opportunities Tri-Metro offered.

The goodly wife (Dr. Goodly Wife) labored for the Place of Healing for two years. During that time, her knowledge base expanded quite a bit, especially when it came to recognizing members of the species of shape-shifting phalluses that ran the place. (They had only one eye, but often two faces.) She also learned much of the arcane language of contracts, which can seem to mean one thing, but be interpreted to mean something different. (For instance, the contract wording which, on the surface, promised a healthy annual student loan repayment bonus, but, upon clarification by the shape-shifting phalluses, actually meant that while they did have to pay her this bonus, they could then charge the cost of the bonus back to the goodly wife’s clinic and thus charge her own bonus back to her. Nice. What a bunch of dicks.) Furthermore, all of the recruiter’s promises of few late hours turned out to be as solid as the shit of a horse, for the Place of Healing and the shifty phalluses that ran it kept coming up with new and inventive ways to keep the goodly wife within their clutches as much as possible. They even added call to the existing arseload of call she was already saddled with. So at the end of her first two years, the Dr. Wife kept her promise, said "F*ck all ya'll" and left (after her contractual 90 days notice, of course, and just after the second annual student loan repayment bonus had been delivered—“Charge that one back to me, you f*ckers! I don’t work here anymore!”).

The other major reason that the goodly wife had departed the employment of the phalluses, is that she had found a new place to practice the healing arts. A friend of the goodly wife’s from her time of study had alerted her to this new place of healing—a place designed to see people in immediate need of healing with little to no patient followup required, not to mention NO CALL TIME WHATSOEVER. The friend herself worked for a similar Immediate Healing Clinic two towns over, but was soon going to depart her own clinic in favor of a third Immediate Healing Clinic that was being readied back in Tri-Metro. The Borderland Immediate Healing Clinic was a Godsend. And while its shifts were not short ones, it required only 14 of them per month. The goodly wife would finally be able to help those in immediate need and send them on their way with none of the usual hassle. It was pretty ideal.

Secretly, though, the scribe hoped that at some point in the not too distant future a position would open at the Tri-Metro Immediate Healing Clinic that the goodly wife could transfer into. He longed to return to his beloved township.

(TO BE CONTINUED...)

Milk & Cheese Vs. the TSA

noreply@blogger.com (Juice S. Aaron) — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 01:23:00 +0000

Just got back from visiting my sister in Austin.

In addition to eating like an asshole, as is my Austin tradition, I also had the traditional visit to Austin Books & Comics, my favorite comic shop in the whole wide world. If you can think of a graphic novel or comic book trade paperback collection, chances are quite high that Austin Books & Comics will have multiple copies of it in stock. They also have a huge supply of statues, toys and figurines to keep your inner geek happy for decades.

While there I happened to spy a set of vinyl figurines cast in the shape of cartoonist Evan Dorkin's most famous creation Milk & Cheese. For those unfamiliar with Milk & Cheese, they're dairy products gone bad, known for their hatred of most things that aren't alcohol, mindless violence or the late TV show A Current Affair. (They once engaged in a successful two man war on drugs because they were tired of the anti-drug commercials interrupting their viewing of A Current Affair.) I love the characters and own every one of their comics, most of which are #1 issues. I also have both the flat illustrated Milk & Cheese refrigerator magnet set, but also the now rare three dimensional porcelain magnet produced by Graffiti Designs in the late 1990s. (Oooooh, ahhhhh.) Until that moment, though, I'd only seen pictures of the Milk & Cheese figures, as they were produced several years ago and in limited supply. Another reason I'd never seen them in person is because they cost around $70 at the minimum when they were first released and I was still smarting over the cost of the porcelain fridge magnet. Because of this, I had no idea how huge the figures are. The photos I'd seen didn't really give any sense of scale, so I'd assumed that Milk was probably smaller than the typical smallish carton of milk and Cheese a smallish wedge of cheddar. The figures were easily twice the size I had expected, though. They came packaged in a huge foot and a half long box decorated with Milk & Cheese comic strips. The display of the figs in the shop listed them for the usual $70, so I still wasn't going to bite. However, on further exploration into the toy section of the store, I saw that they had a endcap display of them that had the sets listed for $30 each. I figured they must be a former display model, or something had to be wrong with them to be at that low a price. But when I asked a clerk he said that the figs were dairy products reduced for quick sale because the store had bought too many sets. So I bought a set for $30.

And they're completely awesome!

Inside their box, Milk & Cheese are nestled securely inside a bagged, plastic vacuform insert along with their weapon accessories: a plastic broken gin bottle, a large plastic hammer, and a plastic stick with a plastic nail through it. I left everything in its place, didn't even crack the seal on the plastic bag and put it all back in the box. For a bit I considered shipping the box to myself in WV, saving me the trouble of packing such an enormous item in my check luggage. I also considered collapsing the box and packing the figs loose within my clothing. Then I changed my mind and instead packed the full box into my carry on gym bag since it was light enough that it wouldn't be a hassle.

On Saturday, we headed to the airport, checked our check bag and proceeded thorough the TSA security line. We did the whole remove all metal and run your carry on through the x-ray machine bit. I made it through the security screening before the bags and was able to look back at the x-ray display screens while I put on my shoes. On the screen was what looked like my satchel, at least from the snake nest of media cables I could see. I was sure this would take them a few moments to suss out. But it was actually the gym bag that they'd paused the conveyor belt to examine in depth. The tech stared at the x-ray. Then stared some more. Finally, he called one of the TSA officers over and said something to her before starting the belt again. My bags came rolling out.

"Whose bag is this?" the TSA lady asked pointing to the satchel.

"That's mine," I said.

"This is your bag?" she asked.

"Yes, ma'am."

"Sir, do you have any glass products packed in here?"

"Not that I'm aware of," I said.

Then the TSA agent seemed to look at the satchel for a moment, perhaps listening to someone speaking to her in an earpiece, for she then said, "No, this isn't the bag." She slid the satchel to me in its plastic tray. Then she pulled the tray containing my gym bag close and said, "Whose bag is this?"

"That's mine," I said again.

"This is your bag?" she asked again.

"Yes, ma'am."

"Sir, do you have any glass products packed in here?"

"Not that I'm aware of," I said again. Did I, though? We had been to a Penzeys Spice store and had loaded up on little glass jars of curry powder and peppercorns and what not. But I'd definitely packed those in the check bag.

"You don't have any glass products?" she asked again, now with suspicion.

Had I stuttered? "Not that I'm aware of," I repeated.

Another pause and perhaps another listen to a voice in an earpiece.

"Sir, do you have any figurines in here?"

Figurines? Ohhhhh! .

"Yes," I said. "Yes, there are two."

"May I search the bag?"

"Go right ahead."

The TSA lady unzipped my gym bag and there at the top was the long Milk & Cheese box. She removed it from the bag, nosed around in the clothing that had surrounded it, found nothing made of glass, figurine or otherwise, and then began the process of opening the Milk & Cheese box itself.

"Um, technically I guess there is kind of a bottle in there," I said. "But it's a fake plastic gin bottle," I added. I didn't mention that the fake plastic gin bottle was sculpted to appear broken, nor did I mention the fake plastic stick with the fake plastic nail through it, nor that their accessories were supposed to represent weapons. By then she had the box open and had pulled out the plastic bag-covered vacuform insert with Cheese and Milk (that's the order they're packed in) staring up at her baring expressions of malice on their little Dorkiny faces, their hands clinched in fists of dairy fury. The TSA lady blinked down at them for a few seconds as though what she was seeing didn't compute. At least they're not flipping her off like my Milk & Cheese magnet, I thought. Then she smiled and said, "Oh, it's a game!"

"Actua-- Uh, yes, it's a game," I said.

She took the insert over to the x-ray tech to show him "the game". He seemed to approve, or at least not deny. She then repackaged my toys and zipped up the bag, after which I gathered my possessions and made my way over to where my wife was standing, shaking her head.

"Apparently Milk & Cheese caused some problems with the TSA," I said.

"Naturally," the wife said.

Humiliations and General Grossness (Part 4)

noreply@blogger.com (Juice S. Aaron) — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 18:19:00 +0000

I slept very poorly. I kept having mini panic attacks that once the septic guys dug up the other side of the tank they would find something even more horribly and expensively wrong. What if the reason the pipe had broken within the tank was because that whole end of the tank had collapsed? That would suck.

At the ass crack of dawn, I finally arose to await the arrival of Terrance and his assistant. They'd said they would roll in around 7:30. I made extra coffee in case they needed some and commenced to wait. While I did, it began to snow. We'd had nary a flake since mid-November, which I've attributed to the fact that I'd had my snow tires installed in mid-November. But down the flakes were coming now. I wondered if it would mean a halt to the project for the day.

Around 8:30, Terrance and his assistant arrived driving a different truck from the previous day. This one was a smaller and with a flat black metal bed in the back upon which was mounted a bright and shiny new portajohn pump. Hitched to the back of the truck, though, was a long trailer on which was secured a medium sized backhoe. Terrance unloaded it and soon its treads were rolling up my driveway and then across the yard to the septic dig site.

As they set up, I told Terrance the story of Sadie rolling on the pipe. They agreed it was an awful experience, but I know it was far from the worst septic-based thing that had happened to them, so they didn't feel too bad.

With a bit of digging from the backhoe's scoop, a new hole was opened a few feet to the right from the previous one. Some fine tune digging with a hand shovel later and the tank's other lid was exposed. This time they hooked the chain for it across the backhoe's shovel and lifted it off. Inside was a deep dark and relatively empty space, save for some liquid in the bottom. Terrance borrowed my flashlight again and poked his head into the tank to have a look around. He explained that he needed to see which direction the pipe leading out to the drainage field was headed. The interior portion of that pipe was the broken one that Sadie had rolled on, which is why he had to look inside the tank to see where it had been connected before the break. It seemed to be at the southern end of the tank, so that's where they next began to dig to expose the pipe leading into the yard. As expected, this pipe was also broken and partially collapsed. He said this was likely due to the whole tank settling at some point and sheering off the pipe on the outside, which led to the breaking of the interior part of the pipe as well. It probably still worked to some degree, but not at prime efficiency.

Within half an hour, Terrance and his assistant had dug out around the pipe, sawed through it below the break, installed a new section of thick PVC pipe that ran from within the tank, through the tank wall and connected to the drainage field pipe. We were now back in business.

"Wait about two weeks then pour a whole box of Rid-X down the toilet," Terrance advised. Then he added, "You still want that tree pulled up?" I explained that the wife did not want that tree dug up at all, but had agreed to it on the grounds that within a couple of months this would no longer be our house and we would not have to be concerned with whether there was a tree imbalance in front of it. Terrance's assistant hooked their chain around the middle of the tree, the other end to the backhoe and with a smooth application of reverse they pulled it right out of the ground, roots and all. Then it was just a matter of recovering both sides of the freshly repaired tank and smoothing the mud back down in a mostly level fashion. It doesn't look too bad. Not nearly as bad as the wife expected. The tree itself I sawed all the limbs from and will shortly carve it up for firewood with my chainsaw. I'll plant grass over it and hopefully by the time the place sells we'll have something of a yard over there again. And when it comes time for the new owners to have the septic inspected, we expect it will get a good grade. Much like the one the house that we are purchasing has received. The location of that new house and the story of how and why we came to buy it, however, is another story.

Humiliations and General Grossness (Part 3)

noreply@blogger.com (Juice S. Aaron) — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 02:39:00 +0000

I went back in the house and was greeted by our dogs, who were very interested in getting outside to potty and explore and see what smells these strangers had left behind. Oh, you'll smell some smells, I thought. I opened the back door and out they ran.

After several minutes, I began to wonder why the dogs had not returned to the back door. They're usually only good for a couple of squirts in the yard and then they're back wanting to be let in. Oh, they're probably around front checking out the smelly hole in the ground, I reasoned. So I stepped out onto the front porch where I could see them over by the hole. I clapped my hands to call them and they came running. Moose trotted up the steps first, happy to see his pa as always. Then Sadie rounded the edge of the porch, a huge smile on her doggy face, and I was afforded a horrifying sight nearly as bad as the gates of hell earlier. Sadie's neck and shoulders were coated in something black. To the untrained eye, it might have appeared to be very black mud. But to my trained eye and nose, I knew it to be raw sewage.

Where did she... ? How did she...? What the f...?!

And even as I watched, she gave me my answer by dashing back to the poo tank pit where I witnessed her bend over and roll gleefully onto the sewage-coated piece of broken pipe that was still laying in the grass above the pit.

"LEAVE IT!!!!" I screamed. "YOU! LEAVE! IT!!!"

Sadie looked up through a haze of filth and flashed a big ol' grin of satisfaction. This was by far the greatest and best stinky thing she'd ever found to roll in and she was in doggy heaven.

Cursing, I threw open the front door and yelled at Moose to get in the house. I then marched back to the bathroom to prepare to give that damn dog the queen mother of all baths.

But which bathroom to use? Normally we bath the dogs in the big tub in the master bathroom. But we'd not yet sealed the new grout in the master bath tub surround. I could bath her in the hall bathtub, but did I really want to chance this dog shaking wet sewage all over the freshly painted walls? Onto the good towels? I finally opted for the bathroom with the most room and the most tile and went with the master. First things first, though, I snatched up my phone and texted "YOUR DAUGHTER JUST ROLLED IN SEWAGE!!!" to my wife. Then I started the tub and turned it to hot before undressing and putting on my ratty painting shorts and a T-shirt I wouldn't mind throwing out. Sadie could not, after all, be willing to come to the tub on her own, so I would have to capture her in my arms and carry her. This would mean time spent in physical contact with sewage.

Sadie was on the back deck when I went to look for her, but she caught a glimpse of what I was wearing and went into red alert. I tried to coax her over, but she dropped her front down to the deck and woofed. Any move I made toward her sent her skittering away. She knew I was out to get her and bathe her. I opened the back door and ordered her into the house, determined to get her into closed quarters where her running range was limited. I then cornered her in the kitchen where I was able to reason with her until she let her guard down enough for me to slip my arms under her chest and lift her up.

I held my breath as I carried Sadie back toward our bedroom, but half way there I had to take a breath. Oh, it was awful. I felt my throat tighten, suppressing a gag. You never consider when you use the bathroom that you'll ever see, let alone touch that waste ever again, but here I was carrying a dog coated in it.

I lowered Sadie into the tub and set about spraying her off with the shower hose. I avoided her head, though, because that's usually the trigger that makes her shake and the longer we could avoid that the better for the surrounding room. Pulling the shower curtain as far closed as I could, I then sprayed it off too then growled loudly at her when she did shake. Dots of dark water struck the shower surround and dripped down. Ewww.

Unfortunately, in my haste to get things ready I neglected to actually bring doggie shampoo into the bathroom. What I had brought was doggie conditioner. I couldn't leave her there to go look for any shampoo, either, or she'd be out of the tub and dripping diluted sewage around the house for sure. So I grabbed the next best thing, a bottle of Head & Shoulders, and started pouring it on her. I gave the bath extra attention to detail and spent a lot of time scrubbing her face, neck and shoulders. Then I rinsed her off and, since I'd brought it in, poured on some conditioner. Finally, I took a sniff of her neck to see if the sewage was gone. It took my nose a few seconds to process it, but it seemed like the smell was gone. I gave her some extra rinsing to make sure, then toweled her off with three different towels--all of which were popped into a hot washing machine before the dog could finish her triumphant post-shower victory prance around the house.

This accomplished, I cleaned up the bathroom, washed all the sewage drops away and then had a shower myself using the same H&S technique as with Sadie. After I too was dry, I grabbed one of our industrial strength contractor's trash bags and went outside to deal with the poo pipe. I managed to get it into the bag without actually touching it, then sealed it inside the trash can.

It took a few hours before I risked letting Sadie out again and even then I watched her every move and called her back every time she tried to head around to the front of the house. I had dispatched the pipe, but who knew what sort of drippings she could sniff out and roll in. I only hoped the following day's adventure would prove fruitful and far less disgusting.

(TO BE CONTINUED...)

Humiliations and General Grossness (Part 2)

noreply@blogger.com (Juice S. Aaron) — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 02:38:00 +0000

Terrance said that when he was first starting out in the poo game, about the same age as his assistant, he was working on pumping out the tank of a man and wife whose septic system had become clogged. After they got the tank open and the clog roto-rooted, the man of the house came out and asked Terrance what had been causing the clog. Young Terrance said, "Condoms."

"What?" the man said.

"Condoms. You know, rubbers?"

The man of the house said that this was not possible. He and his wife didn't use condoms.

"Well, maybe they're from house guests," young Terrance reportedly had offered.

No. This wasn't likely either.

"Well, maybe it was the people who owned the place before you," Terrance said.

At this point the man of the house said, "I built the house." The man then excused himself, went inside and there shortly followed a great deal of shouting. Terrance's boss, who had been at the truck during this, came running up at the sound of the screaming from within the house and asked Terrance what he'd said to cause it. Terrance told him.

"Boy, you never tell the customer what's in the tank!" the boss said.

I laughed at this story, but within mere minutes we were to discover something of a different brand of disturbing within my own poo tank. As the level of the poo decreased within the tank, a large PVC pipe was exposed near the entrance. This was the end of the sewage pipe that ran from our plumbing beneath the house. It ended in a vertical T-joint, allowing the sewage to freely fall into the tank--at least until it had been submerged by it. Unfortunately, as the level of poo finally reached the bottom of the tank, yet another section of T-capped pipe was exposed, lying in the muck at an odd angle. It was not running from the house, but was instead broken, as evidenced by the shards of its non-T-capped end.

"Ohhhhh," Terrance said when he saw it. "If that's what I think it is then you're in for a world of shit."

"What?" I said.

Terrance borrowed my flashlight then got on his hands and knees and lowered his head down into the gates of hell for a look around. He shone the flashlight into the darkness, specifically toward the easterly end of the tank which extended several feet beneath the ground, running in front of the tree. When he came back up he looked grim.

"Yeah, you're in a world of shit."

It seems that the piece of broken pipe at the bottom of the tank was actually supposed to be connected within the other side of the tank and was the pipe that connected to the drainage field of the septic system. The way a septic system works is that all the waste from the house enters the tank where solids sink and paper and general sludge float. The solids are digested by microbes from the monthly Rid-X treatments we send down. The liquids (which include waste, but also gray water such as shower and general water runoff, fill up the tank faster until they reach the pipe leading out into the drainage field--which are a series of porous pipes running down into the yard. The pipes of the drainage field are surrounded by gravel and dirt and the whole thing acts as a filtration system, allowing the moisture to run back into soil where it is further filtered until it eventually returns to the ground water. According to Terrance, though, the broken pipe was preventing this system from working naturally and all the waste had just been building up in the tank itself. The system was broken and if not repaired would just lead to more cleanouts more frequently.

I shook my head in annoyance at this, but was not entirely surprised. After all, it's not like anything around here is ever going to be simple or go to plan. No, it all takes three times as long, cost three times as much and drives me nigh unto madness before the end of it. At least this time, though, I had two guys who were willing to return, venture into the gates of hell and fix our poo pipes. We'd be able to include their work in our packet of Cool Things We Did to Make the House a More Attractive Purchase for prospective buyers.

The poo tank assistant fished the broken pipe out of the poo tank with the poo rake and then dumped it in the yard. Terrance then picked it up and used it as a visual aid to explain the work that would need to be done, including replacing that thin chunk of pipe with much thicker modern PVC that wouldn't break. The work would involve a lot of digging--including possibly digging up the offending and dangerous tree, if we liked--to expose the other lid to the poo tank where the bulk of the work would need to be done. Until the work was done, the septic system would be inoperative and would just fill up to the gates of hell once again. It would take a while, but far sooner than if the drainage field was operational.

Knowing we couldn't rightly sell the house with a broken septic system, I agreed to the repairs. Soon the men were plugging the gates of former hell with their concrete lid again and winding their poo hoses back onto their truck. Terrance promised to return at the crack of dawn the following day.

If only the gates of hell had been the grossest thing I'd see all day.

(TO BE CONTINUED...)

Humiliations and General Grossness (Part 1)

noreply@blogger.com (Juice S. Aaron) — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 21:12:00 +0000

One of the most humiliating experiences I can imagine is to take a huge dump in the front yard and then invite someone over to have a look at it. It's just not something that is ever done. Even more humiliating and nonsensical, though, would be to then ask them to dispose of it for you. As unbelievable a scenario as this is, it's exactly what I did today, only several thousand times worse.

Let me back up.

We're in the process of getting our house ready to sell. Don't get me wrong, we love our house and would not want to sell it at all, except that certain opportunities have presented themselves and we are pursuing them. (I'm sure I'll have more on that in future posts.) As part of this process, we've been going down the list of home improvement projects we've intended to accomplish for the four years we've lived here and have been finally getting to some of them while consigning others to the "let the new owners do it" heap. Thusly, we finally had the automatic garage door opener on my side of the garage replaced, redid the hall bathroom--though not the complete overhaul we'd planned--regrouted some places in the master bath tub, finally painted another bit of the master bath that we'd intended to completely remodel and had left the old color up so we wouldn't have to paint it twice, etc. Other items, however, were added to the list out of the blue.

"We should call someone to come clean out the septic tank," the wife said over breakfast. I'd already been thinking about that, oddly enough--not because of breakfast but because a cleaning of the poo tank was probably due. According to the paperwork we'd received with the house, the last time it had been cleaned was the year prior to us moving in. So if you figure once every 3-5 years being the norm for emptying a poo tank (according to some standards), it was about time. The thing is, I've never lived in a place with a septic system before. We also had no real clue as to where the tank was located for most of our time in the house. We deduced it was somewhere in the front yard, because that was the direction in which our poo pipe ran from beneath our house, but we were not at all sure where exactly the tank was buried. Our upper front yard has a lot of trees, so it seemed like it would have to be located in between some of them, which didn't leave a lot of room for a 1000 gallon concrete tank.

During our troubles with the well a few months ago, I had to spend some time on the phone with the health department to try and determine when our well was dug. While I was on there, I asked if they had records of the septic tank's installation and, hopefully, location. They faxed over two diagrams, one for the proposed tank and drainage field location and one for the inspected tank and drainage field location. These diagrams showed different locations for the tank, but I figured the inspected one was correct. However, this put the tank somewhere outside my office window, with the drainage field further down into the yard. I didn't do any digging to check, but figured that would be where I'd have to direct any poo removal specialists when that day came.

That day was today.

The poo removal specialists arrived around midday and were soon awash in the oh-so-vicious barks of Sadiemoose (the collective name for our two dogs Sadie and Moose). While the dogs snarled and slavered from behind the front window glass, I went out to meet the poo removal specialists carrying with me the aforementioned poo tank diagram. I explained to them our lack of knowledge about the poo tank's location, but proposed they check where the diagram showed.

"Has it been backing up on you at all?" Terrance the poo tank man asked.

"No, not at all," I said. "We just want to get it cleared before we sell it."

Terrance and his poo tank assistant then walked out to the area in front of my office window and poked the ground with a pointy metal pole for a while in the clearing in front of the two pine trees planted there. They made their way around the clearing, then back up between the trees near the house, then back down a way. There were occasional thunks as the pole struck either concrete or rock. Still, several minutes passed this way with no real consensus between the men as to where digging should commence.

Terrance took something plastic and orange from his pocket and handed it to me.

"Could you go inside and flush this twice?" he said. I looked at the plastic device. It was about the size of a flattened golf ball, but had a slot along one side within which I could see a small metal disc, about the size of a thick watch battery. By "flush this twice" I knew he meant, flush the tracker down, then flush the toilet again to send it on through into the tank. So I went inside and did this. When I came back, Terrance had produced what looked like a metal detector handle minus the pole and detecting disc. He aimed it at the ground until he found where it seemed to be the loudest, which was beside and beneath some of the limbs of one of the pine trees. They stabbed the pole down once more and struck something solid.

Digging began, hampered a bit by the limbs of the tree.

"That tree's in a bad location," Terrance said. His point was that with the tank being as close to the tree as it was, there would be root problems eventually if not already. They might not make it through the concrete tank, but roots could certainly bore into the septic pipe leading into the tank and gum up the works. He recommended the tree be taken out.

Within 20 minutes a foot and a half deep pit was dug out and the upper surface of a section of the concrete poo tank was exposed. There was a rectangular concrete plug in the top of the tank with a rebar hook embedded in it. They looped some chain through that hook and then lifted the whole thing off. And exposed there before us were the gates of hell itself.

I will not go into detail as to what the gates of hell look like in this case, but I will say that the gates were hellishly FULL. To the brim even. I will also not describe the smell, which you already have a pretty good idea about I'm sure. What I will say, though, is that having four years worth of one's own... um... leavings, exposed to strangers is a VERY embarrassing experience, even if it is the job of those very strangers to view and smell such leavings on a daily basis. I wanted to apologize and run away and issue denials all at the same time. But there was just no denying what we were all looking at and smelling, nor which of us had produced a goodly portion of it.

"Looks like we got here just in time," Terrance said. Then he and his poo tank assistant went back to their poo truck. Soon poo hoses were hooked up and stretched across the yard and into the gates of hell. The powerful poo pumps on the poo truck soon began to make quick work of their 1000 gallons worth of burden. And Terrance stood by with a giant poo rake to help the process along. He seemed pretty skilled with that rake, and was able to use it to retrieve his orange radio tracker, which he then tossed to his assistant. Made me wonder exactly how clean that thing had been before it had been handed to me earlier.

"I been doin this a couple days," Terrance said with a grin. "Thirty five years, actually," he added.

"Wow," I said. "What's the strangest thing you've pulled out of one of these?"

"A dead body," he said. Then he grinned again and said "Not really."

But he then told a story that was nearly as good.

(TO BE CONTINUED...)

Actual Telephone Conversations Heard at My House #12

noreply@blogger.com (Juice S. Aaron) — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 22:58:00 +0000

Um... well, shit.

Okay. Before we get to the latest in my series of phone calls with professional shitty telemarketing fundraiser Associated Community Services, I have a, uh... well, something of a painful confession to make.

Months back, probably round May or so... I may have, um... sort of... donated some money... to a telemarketing charitable fundraiser. And the fundraising organization for the charity I donated to was kind of... well... A.C. Services.

(Ohhhh, shit that hurt way more to type than I imagined it would.)

Okay, okay, okay, I completely realize that donating to a charity through A.C. Services is a woefully ill-advised thing for anyone to do, but it's especially problematic for me, a guy who has done nothing but shit on them at every opportunity. Now, before you write me off as a complete dickweed who talks out of his ass and does not practice what he preaches (let alone stick to his NO EFFING TELEMARKETERS policy), let me first explain that at the time I relented and agreed to receive a donation packet from A.C. Services, I was not yet enlightened as to the glitter-specked-shitty nature of A.C. Services as a company. See, back in May, I had yet to do the research on them as a company to learn of the minuscule amount of money that actually makes it past their administrative coffers to the charities they have been hired to raise money for. (We're talking less than 20 percent of all funds raised actually getting to any given charity they serve, minuscule.) I also had yet to see how poorly many of the charities they represent are rated on CharityNavigator.org. Beyond that, my only real defense for violating my sacred rule of accepting no telephone solicitation of any kind is that the particular charity A.C. Services was representing that day was the U.S. Armed Forces Association. As a guy with a brother-in-law in the Army who spent a couple of years in Afghanistan, not to mention a father, a father-in-law, a cousin or two, half a dozen uncles and a number of friends who have served and/or currently serve in the military, I have a soft spot in my heart for the topic. This was the only reason I agreed to allow A.C. Services to send me a donation packet so I could send them a scant $20. However, in my phone conversation with them at the time of acceptance, I stressed to them that my usual household policy for all solicitation calls is to scream "EAT A BAG OF DICKS!" into the receiver and slam the phone down. And while I was indeed giving in to them this time I wanted no next time. I told Al the ACS telemarketer to take our phone number off of their call list. He agreed to this and gave me his personal assurance that he would personally never call us again.

Months have since passed and the calls have in no way stopped even though I've now told a second Associated Community Services telemarketer to put us on their do not call list.

Guess who called last week? Yep. Al, the exact same guy from AC Services who was once again raising money for the U.S. Armed Forces Association. How do I know it was him? He told me.

AL THE TELEMARKETER-- Hello, I'm calling for JUICE.

JUICE-- This is JUICE.

AL THE TELEMARKETER-- Hi there, Mr. AARON. I'm Al calling from AC Services. We spoke a while back when you donated $20 to the U.S. Armed Forces Association fund. How are you?

JUICE-- (Chills of horror run down spine as I realize that I actually did what he's describing) OkaaaaAY.

AL THE TELEMARKETER-- Now I know we said we'd cut back on the calls to you, because I know you guys like your privacy, and you've not had any calls, right?

JUICE-- Actually, Al, we've had more calls from AC Services than ever before.

AL THE TELEMARKETER-- Uh, oh. Well, um... Listen, the reason I'm calling today is because you were so generous with your donation to the U.S. Armed Forces Association fund before, and I know the people of BORDERLAND know you to be a good and charitable giver, so I was just--

JUICE-- Al, I have to let you know, not only do we once again NEVER accept telephone solicitation of any kind in this household, but we do NOT do business with AC Services. At all. I am now well aware of the small amount of funding that actually gets to any of the charities you represent and I don't like it. Therefore, AC Services is officially on my Do-not-donate-to list.

Al didn't have much to say after that.

I was so mad I went and dug up a few more more links to sites detailing the asshattery of AC Services and many of the "charities" that they serve.

Charity Navigator Blog
Practicalist
Tampa Bay Times

So let the word ring out once, our policy of no telephone solicitation is again firmly in place. So all of you legitimate charities out there can thank AC Services for being a bunch of lying assholes who have ruined it for you all. I'll still donate to charities, mind, but it won't be over the phone. In fact, I have now made an online donation of $10 to CharityNavigator.org. Seems to me off all the nonprofits I've heard about due to AC Services, Charity Navigator are the only ones who come close to doing the Lord's work.

Export Opinion

noreply@blogger.com (Juice S. Aaron) — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 18:25:00 +0000

Wish I had watched this before Christmas Day, so I could have recommended what I consider to be a new holiday classic--sort of.

Last year, I came upon a trailer online for a film called Rare Exports. It's a Finnish made film from 2010 that was marketed as a Christmas horror movie, but is actually more of a dark fantasy Christmas movie. It concerns what happens when the one, true, original Father Christmas from Finnish folklore is discovered, entombed inside a mountain on the Russian border and is dug up. This is not jolly old St. Nick, by any stretch. The original Finnish incarnation of Santa Claus is a FAR darker character and way less jolly. It was one of my favorite trailers that I saw last year, but its taken a while for Netflix to get hold of the actual film for it.

While the premise seemed pretty absurd, it was so well-executed that I found it, with its widescreen/HD/cinematic nature completely compelling. (Watch for yourself to see.) I knew then that whoever put this together clearly knew what they were doing from a visual standpoint. However, I suspected that the movie would in no way live up to the promise of the trailer. Fortunately, I was wrong.

Netflix sent me Rare Exports before Christmas, but I didn't manage to watch it until the day after. Not only do I wish I'd watched it earlier, but that I'd showed it to my family while visiting them for Christmas, too, because they would have loved it.

Throughout my viewing of the movie I kept trying to decide whether what I was seeing was one of the most awesome movie's I'd ever seen or the dumbest. Or both. However, the performances of the actors in it, as they portray people forced to deal with pissed off old St. Nick, are so earnest that you just buy into it and go right along for the journey. And a fun journey it is, with more than a few unexpected twists and turns along the way, the less said about which the better.

My main critical point about the film is that by the end of it, it turns into what feels like a kid's adventure movie of the sort where the protagonist children figure out what's going on, have all the answers and show up the adults as they save the day in a fairly implausible way. In this case, the kids (or, kid, really) wind up working along side the adults to save the day in an arguably implausible way, but it still has that feel. I was able to get over that, despite the fact that there did come a point in the end game where a plot choice was made that stuck a knife in the ribs of my suspension of disbelief. It made me think, "Oh, that's bullshit! Nobody would ever let him do THAT. I'm not buying this." Then I remembered that I was watching a movie about people fighting evil Santa Claus and calmed right down.

Overall I really liked Rare Exports. The trailer is a great representation of the film itself. So if the included clip works for you, you'll like the film.

If you do seek this out, be sure to watch the two short Rare Exports films on the DVD, which were made in the years before the feature length movie and which inspire it. I'm not quite sure if they're alternate takes on the story, or stories that, in retrospect, serve as tongue in cheek sequels to the movie. However, while you can find them online right now (and at the Rare Exports webpage), I'd recommend waiting until after seeing the full movie to watch them. They're both great fun, but there are spoilery elements to them that might lessen the enjoyment of the longer film.

"Hey, Vern. You're my older brother, and I love you. But don't ever take sides with anyone against the family again. Ever."

noreply@blogger.com (Juice S. Aaron) — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 15:07:00 +0000

A few years ago, while visiting my home town of Starkville, Mississippi, I happened to be in a DVD retail store with my buddy Joe. There I spotted a true gem from my childhood. It was The Essential Ernest Collection, starring Jim Varney as his most famous character Ernest P. Worrell. Now if you're old enough to remember Ernest, it's likely from the Ernest movie series of the 1980s and 90s, such as Ernest Goes to Camp, Ernest Scared Stupid, etc. And the Essential Ernest collection does contain two of those films, Ernest Goes to Africa and Ernest in the Army. However, Varney had been doing the Ernest character for a long while before it spun off into movies.

Ernest started as a staple of TV advertising, with Varney working for a ad agency out of Nashville, using Ernest to pitch any number of different products around the south and beyond, always using the "Hey, Vern, knowhutImean?" schtick. (His director at the ad agency would eventually go on to direct the Ernest films.) For those unfamiliar--and I don't know whether to pity you or be envious of you--the Ernest P. Worrell character was a good-natured yokel type who was constantly pestering his nearly unseen neighbor Vern. (The commercials were filmed from Vern's silent perspective, so the most you ever saw of him was a hand.) Usually, the set up was that Ernest would pop up at Vern's open kitchen window and yammer on until Vern got sick of him, slammed the window on his hands and closed the blinds. Or sometimes Ernest would pop up to a second story window on a ladder to annoy Vern from a height, that usually ended in Vern pushing the ladder away from the house. There were several other such setups and variations on those setups and they ran for years.

Varney did other acting work as well. He was a regular on the legendary talk show parody Fernwood Tonight and its sequel series America 2 Night. I don't think I saw any of those, but I did see a short lived TV series he was in called The Rousters, which I watched quite a bit, and was particularly taken with Varney's work. And I was aware of his Ernest Character around the same time because his ads would frequently turn up on Dick Clark's TV's Best Commericals specials.

Before making the leap to the big screen in Ernest Goes to Camp, Varney tested the waters with a few shorter, non-advertising pieces to see if Ernest might have legs outside of the 30 second format. I think these were all released direct to video, though they could have been shown on TV for all I know. One of those, which I was delighted to find collected on the Essential Ernest set, was called Knowhutimean? Hey Vern, It's My Family Album.

The basic setup of Family Album was a framing sequence in which Ernest pesters his friend Vern, as usual, recycling many of the bits they'd come up with in the ad campaign, minus the product pitch. Instead, Ernest was trying to show Vern his family album, which allowed them to cut away to show five or so 10 minute shorts with Varney playing some of Ernest's relatives from the past.

From junior high through high school, I had to have watched Knowhutimean? Hey Vern, It's My Family Album half a dozen times. It probably built slowly, with me and my sister first watching it, then one or two of my friends seeing it separately, then recommending it for group movie night, then re-renting it when other friends who hadn't seen it yet joined for the next movie night, then re-re-re-renting in college it just for shits and giggles, etc. And lines from it became some of the most quoted among our group. ("Ruth, what are we pretendin' we're having for supper tonight?" " "Daddy? You gonna rock me to sleep? Here, daddy, use my rock." And, of course, the immortal "Did you sayum, Luke?")

After purchasing that DVD set, I put it in my Magic bag (where I keep all my Magic: the Gathering cards) and returned home with it unwatched. And because I pretty much only play Magic while hanging out with Joe when I go home to Starkville, I had no cause to open the bag for around another year. So I was happily surprised, a year later, when I found the set again while unpacking my cards in Starkville. Didn't watch it then, either. In fact, I think I probably carried that bag with that DVD set back and forth from year to year for at least three years and the DVD remained unwatched. Eventually, I removed it from the bag and put it with the rest of my DVDs, which also don't get watched.

This year for Thanksgiving, Joe and his family drove up from Mississippi to Borderland. Joe now has two kids, a four year old and a one year old, both wildly intelligent kids that we're mighty proud to have as godchildren. Before they arrived, not yet knowing just how addicted his oldest kid is to Little Big Planet, and how he would spend nearly every waking moment for four days hounding me to play it with him, I went through my DVDs in advance to see if there was anything appropriate for kids to keep them busy if need be. (I went ahead and buried Tideland in the back yard, not only to protect the children but also to protect ME. Don't let me dissuade you from watching it, but just know that when Terry Gilliam comes on screen BEFORE the movie to warn you that what you're about to see is, to the minds of a LOT of people, seriously EFFed up, he's not playing around. I mean, it's not quite Eraserhead EFFed up, but it's somewhere between there and, say, Trainspotting EFFed up. It's also strangely uplifting, from a certain warped perspective.) And there it was, my Ernest DVD set. I told the wife of my plan and she approved, since my father-in-law is a fan of Ernest as well.

The Friday night after Thanksgiving, everyone looking for something to do together, my wife announced we were sitting down to watch Ernest Goes to Africa.

"Oh, no," I said. "We're watching Ernest's Family Album." I'd been jonsing to sit down and show this gem of comic gold to my family and friends. Oh, the laughs we would have. It would be the hit of the holiday season.

"Fine. Whatever," she said.

And so everybody settled back, I popped in the DVD, settled down on the floor in front of the fire and set my eyes to watching a film I probably haven't seen in at least 20 years. And after half an hour, I realized what a horrible mistake this probably was. Yes, thirty minutes in and I'd had maybe MAYBE three laughs. The rest of the time I was tensely sitting there wondering why this damn movie wasn't nearly as funny as I remembered it being, and how most of the punchlines could be seen coming from a goodly distance. My film-lover's perspective began noticing how the framing sequence was kind of redundant in places, and how the pacing of the stories was more than a bit drawn out. How had this been so beloved by me and my friends? Oh, that's right, we were young and stupid.

This is not to say that the film is not without its good points. The first two stories are definitely the best of the lot, though, (which is why I'm including them here via YouTube) . Particularly Ernest's Uncle Lloyd, which is the funnier of the two and contains most of my favorite lines that we used to quote. After these, though, the returns begin to diminish greatly and the squirms begin to set in. Or at least they did in me, being the guy who had insisted on everyone being subjected to it. The last two stories in the film are by far the worst. I think sum total I had probably five or six moderately good laughs and not much else.

I didn't wait for the credits to end before turning it off. I felt stung.

"Wow. That was... great... babe," my wife said dryly. I wanted to throw it in her face that Ernest Goes to Africa wouldn't have been any better, but after what we'd just witnessed I had no real proof of that. No one else said much. No one else left in the room, that is. It seemed my mother-in-law had snuck away to bed at some point during the run and my father-in-law disappeared quickly thereafter.

"Yeah. I think I can wait another 20 years before watching that again," I said.

I don't mean to crap on Jim Varney, who I still think was a very talented man. I have fond memories of at least two of the Ernest movies, as well as his Saturday morning kids show featuring Ernest and a cast of other Varney characters. (Doctor Otto is wonderful and I don't care who hears me say it.) But be warned: Beloved things from your childhood can be dangerous to revisit while wearing contemporary glasses.

This story reminds me of another story, which also involves Ernest P. Worrell and godchildren, er, sort of...

And in telling this tale, I will be staking my proof of concept claim to an idea that I had during college. I'm not going to go so far as to claim it was a good idea, but it was definitely an intriguing concept. It was thus: The Ernest/Godfather Film Festival.

That's right. At some point in one of my junior years, I announced to my friends that what we should do is hold the first annual Ernest/Godfather Film Festival in which we stock up one of our apartments with unwholesome snacks and drinks, put Dominoes on speed dial, then set about to watch Ernest Goes to Camp followed by The Godfather Part I. Then, because there are far more Ernest films than Godfather films, we'd order the pizza and watch Ernest Saves Christmas and Ernest Goes to Jail. Then, after the pizza arrived (our Dominoes was EFFing slow), we'd hit Godfather II, Ernest Scared Stupid, and Ernest Rides Again. Then, if anyone was still non comatose, we'd fire up Godfather III, which would fix that pretty handily. If anyone was alive and present after that, we'd put on Ernest Goes to School, and Slam Dunk Ernest. (This was 1995, mind you, so Ernest Goes to Africa and Ernest in the Army had not been released yet, otherwise we would have worked them in as alternates, should Movie Gallery not have all the others.) Anyone surviving to the end of the 20 plus hour festival would win a prize, which would probably be the choice of either a VHS copy of Godfather III or a beating. Most, I'm certain, would choose the beating.

While I think we considered attempting such a festival, we never actually did. We just threatened to. But it was a funny enough concept that it made the rounds and eventually came back to me from a friend of a friend of a friend, who had by then become my friend. The subject of Ernest had come up somehow and the new friend told Joe and me about the Ernest/Godfather film festival, attributing its authorship to our other friend, the infamous Mark Chow.
"Oh, no," I said. "I'm afraid that one's mine."

Now that I think about it, perhaps this would be a good film festival topic for a charity fund-raising event, kind of like a walk-a-thon, but worse. People could pledge donations based on the number of survivors. And with two more Ernest films available now, we're looking at probably a day long event.

You are, of course, welcome to try your own version at home. But you have to kick my cut upstairs.