theinferior4+1 - revving up for leavetaking

I haven't been blogging much because it's all I can do to get some work done and take care of all the piddley bullshit attached to leaving the ol' domicile for a protracted period. My latest experience with this time-consuming BS was last night with Continental Airlines. I was taking something unwieldy as a carry-on and I checked the CA website. The total inches allowed was 51, but they didn't break it down into height, width, length, so I called CA information and asked the guy how much length exactly I was allowed to carry-on.

Uh, said the guy. You allowed a total of fifty-one inches.

Right, I said. But what I want to know is exactly how wide one of your overhead compartments is.

A pause, then he says, You're allowed fifty-one inches.

I asked again and he replied testily, fifty-one inches.

I asked to be transferred. Two transfers later, I got my answer.

Another instance:

I heard you could get Comcast to shut down your phone and cable and computer line shut down if you were gone for three months or more, so I called and was told they didn't provide that service. Suspicious, I called back and was told this time that, yes, they did, but I had to call another number. Natch, it was the wrong number. I called again and was redirected, this time correctly. The lady told me I needed to call about two weeks before I left. Once again I was suspicious. I redialed and was told I needed to call a week before leaving. This went on for a while.

Attempting to get a foreign payment address for my credit cards was fun, as was making sure they wouldn't cancel the cards because suddenly started popping up from Spain, where I was last summer.

Is this the third world or what? I get the idea sometimes that I've fallen into the middle of Cyril Kornbluth's story, The Marching Morons. Half my credit card calls were responded to by someone in Bangladesh, but the other half were answered by Americans, who despite their unaccented English, made even less sense than their outsourced colleagues. If you drifted away from their script they were lost.

This, nabbed from Ben Peeks blog, is nice: an artistic license.



And here's a link...

http://evolution-control.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=117:artistic-license&catid=44:blog&Itemid=79

I wrote the guy to see if had them for sale, but haven't heard back. I want to be a "nocternal" artist.