OOOH, I am so steamed. The kind of steamed where I feel like my head’s going to pop.

I have this dreadful, ridiculous Ongoing Saga with Dell (the computer company, not tha Funky Homosapien).

I ordered a computer from them in September. The Dell website said that it came with a shitload of freebies–$100 or a free digital camera, and a free CD burner. Swell! I thought. I wanted a digital camera more than the computer, honestly. I was required to have a computer, but a camera would be totally fun and useful.

The thing was, you could only get a discount if you actually called them. The person I called couldn’t pull up my order basket because her computer wasn’t working. (Red flag #1.) I should have asked to be transferred, but no, I was too stupid to wait another day, or speak to someone else.

My computer came in early October, AND SURPRISE, no camera! Huh, I said. I will call them and clear this up.

So she wrote down my order, and it was wrong. I know I said “I want that camera,” since it was the only thing I cared about.

When I called back to say that my camera was missing from my order, and reminded her that I called on the day her computer was down, she said, “Okay, here’s your order number, it will be there in a couple of weeks.”

Two weeks…no camera…so I followed up…and she didn’t return my calls. I emailed the main customer service, and they said I would have to contact her directly, even though I told them she wasn’t replying to me, and that’s why I contacted them. I know how these things work, I follow procedure.

I wrote her one more email yesterday, laying it all out. I concluded by saying:

“This is such a trifling matter! I’d hate to have to take my business to another company next time over something that could be so easily resolved if only someone would put energy into making it happen.”

Today I get the most passive-aggressive customer service reply EVER:

“I apologize for the confusion. I was looking back to the original date of purchase which I noticed was 9/23. Dell was not offering a camera at
that time. We did have $100 in mail in rebates. In addition to the free CD burner
you received. Please excuse the misunderstanding.”

The italics are mine. How infuriating is that? Like I’m some kind of ingrate because I’m complaining about wanting the camera THAT THEY WERE OFFERING.

The worst part is that I can’t actually prove that they were offering a camera, because their employee purchase program deals rotate constantly, and they offer’s been gone for a while now. And I called on a day when she made no actual computer record of what I ordered. It is her misinformed word against mine.

I don’t know what to do next, but someone in charge at Dell will certainly get a copy of this email. I would rather someone call me a crack ho with camel toe than to get all passive-aggressive on me. ROAR!

So. Large Presentation looms…well…large.

I feel really betrayed. I thought library school was going to be a lot of, you know, sitting there…taking in lectures, quiet contemplation. Instead they’ve got us jumping through every academic hoop known to man.

“OKAY, cadet! Over the course of the next few weeks, you will read thousands of repetitive pages on bizarre, non-implementable theories; write papers that will be marked down if you use the word “very” (Thanks Per

You’ve got…PEE-MAIL. Just in time for winter….

Mr. Husband is wrapping up week two of his New Job, the one his grandmother refers to as a “real job,” since everyone knows that taxi driving is for “alcoholics and drifters.”

After two years as a cabbie, I’m surprised that Seth didn’t become one or both of those things.

Two years of driving around whores, old lady rummies, and people to a “pick up” at a meth house three blocks away from our house.

Two years of people shitting their pants, leaving drugs behind, and being driven to the Shoreline casinos when they open at ten o’clock in the morning.

Two years of driving junkies to the methadone clinic on the state’s dime, sometimes from two hours away, and usually daily, as well as driving around giant boxes of blood and tissue samples to the labs to make some extra dough.

Driving crazy people with alien implants to the hospital where they take crazy people.

If that’s not a REAL job, then fuck, what is?

So now he sits at a desk, at his “real job,” and orders sheet music for a local instrument and sheet music chain.

“Is it better?” I say.

“I guess, but you know I run into the same kinds of people in the warehouse as when I was driving. They swear like pirates.”

This is funny, because he makes it sound like he went to college with a bunch of pirates or something, and knows.

“Well, what do you mean?” I say. He knows I am not flinchy.

“This UPS driver comes in all the time to drop packages off, and he walks up to the head guy in the warehouse, and he says, ‘What’s up, cum-drippins?”

“WHAT? That’s a very weird insult.”

“Yeah, they’re weird all the time. The UPS driver is black, and the manager said something about him being colored. And the driver called him a koala bear cracker.”

“What does that mean?”

“Well, the manager’s from Australia, I guess it was a reference to that.”

“Oh.”

A “real” job. I guess that entails working in a place with a non-stop barrage of bizarre, made-up insults. I am keeping a list.

Cum-drippins, penis flakes, fucking fuck-donkey, jizz hound, Aussie ass-muncher (from the UPS guy, again), sideways fuckbag. I swear I am not making this up.

In Other News

Sometimes it’s fun to run over to the Goog and enter a common mispelling of a word to see what pops up. So the question of the day is, where is Austrailia? Apparently it offers “fun times, scenic views and friendly people.” I want to go there. Do you think it’s cheaper to fly to than Australia?

Speaking of geography, I think surveys like this are super stupid and pointless. Okay, so young Americans can’t find Iraq. Can most older people who aren’t from that region? Really, if you take the names off of any map, don’t country shapes just look like a bunch of arbitrary blooges?

I would also argue that the reason people flunk these little mini-quizzes is because they DON’T GIVE A SHIT. I mean, in a capitalist society like this one, there has to be some kind of REWARD for a correct answer. Something to generate effort. There has to be a carrot at the end of the stick. I answer survey questions falsely when I get snookered and find out someone is just mining my brain for information, and there’s no payoff at the end.

I imagine a bunch of eager-beaver scientists, standing around at a typical college campus. “Hey, kid, got ten minutes?” I can see the look on the student’s face as they’re rushing to class, or to their drug connection, or home to sleep.

“What, no prize? Not even a a candy bar?” The student thinks for a moment. “Where’s Iraq?” DOINK. The finger lands somewhere in the vicinity of the Indian Ocean. “Somewhere over there, who the fuck cares?”

Also, for a generation of people (myself included) who have been raised with the unconscious message that WE (the U.S.) are the center of the universe, why would a person be motivated to look outside our borders? Some would call it nationalism, but I say it extends beyond that. Other people from other places may look to us as the enemy, or a place of opportunity, but we don’t even need to leave unless we want to scope out how quaint some other country is, or grab some delicious food or art. For WE are the CENTER.

I see survey results like this and it makes me want to spit, because the subtext is that our people don’t NEED to know anything, because we are so rich and taken care of, and our society is *whispers* a little caddywampus but, hey, there’s nothing BETTER out there than what we have.

Of course those Swedish kids knew where we are, we’re the U-S-FUCKING-A!

My sister totally cracks my shit up. She has this live journal thing going on, and I love it when she goes on a tear. If you check it out, she’s Modesto720, the person who was ripping the random chatter a new one.

I am really aware of a generation gap between us when I read entries like this– the fact that she was IM-ing while she was writing a paper. I am incapable of multi-tasking like that. That’s the whole Gen-Y thing, right? Doing school work, eatin a burrito, reading a comic book, and watching MTV2 all at the same time? Or maybe it just turned out to be a mediocre paper…

I still give people dirty looks for whispering in the Quiet Reading Room. I just can’t concentrate when YOU are LOUDLY WHISPERING about your YEAST INFECTION! That’ll teach me to try to study at school.

Ahh, school. Me and school don’t get along no more. Maybe this is symptomatic of grad school? Perhaps there has been so much school I am merely bitter and my heart has been replaced with pooey kitty litter?

So my Jive Ass Pr’fessor (NOT to be confused with Pr’fessor Hottie) was hoobley-hobbling on and on about how the customer service model should be applied to library service.

He spent a few minutes soliciting suggestions about how we can expand the reference interview if the question is as simple as, “What’s the postal code for Alaska?” in order to find out more information about the true nature of the user’s need.

Someone raised the point that you could offer some information about yourself, such as, “Oh, I have a brother who lives in Alaska.” According to the library laws (I guess) this may prompt the user to reply, “I’m sending a package there, (or) I’m finding out to settle a bet, etc, etc.” So you can help them the best way.

This prompted me to write the girl sitting next to me a note:

The SJ Alexander Model of Offering Information To The Questioner, In Order To Ascertain The True Nature of Their Need

Questioner: “Can you help me find some books on metacognition?”

Me: “Sometimes I lay on my kitchen floor and cry.”

Questioner: *runs*

Me: “Heh heh.”

In Other News

Does anyone else think that the new insipid, condescending J-Lo song should really be rewritten to be “I’m Just Jenny Smoking Cocks?” Cause I do. Obviously. And I can’t get that version out of my head.

Did you know that if she marries Ben Whofleck she will become “J-Aff?” Not so cool now, eh, J-AFF????

Ooh ooh ooh, so much to do. How will I find time to fuck off? I will just have to start getting up earlier, I guess. We at the offices of I, Asshole present to you: “Much Ado About What To Do: One Woman’s Guide To Purposefully Accomplishing Nothing, and Then Complaining About It Later.”

Should: Clean house. Scrub sink, especially scrub sink. Should have been cleaning, but read Fast Food Nation instead. Is that stuff churning around in the sink an evolved version of E. coli that needs to be Comet-ed back whence it came?

Will: Stand in the bathroom for forty-five minutes, plucking eyebrows into perfect twin arches of evil. Will then leave bathroom and exclaim loudly to no one in particular, “Whatta dump!”

Should: Start paper that is due Thursday. Must go to uni library and photocopy relevant articles. Must convince Mr. Husband to stay home with Frannie while I get on the bus, go down and come back.

Will: Realize that total bus ride/waiting time will take longer than actual article-fetching time. Will become frustrated, then apathetic, then sleepy, then hungry. Will then forget about paper until Wednesday.

Should: Take a shower; shave damn legs. Attempt to fulfill marital duties with Mr. Husband.

Will: Fall asleep reading The Yellow Fever Plague in Philidelphia, 1793. Mr. Husband will fall asleep immediately after becoming horizontal. What is it about years of marriage that turns sex into a concept, instead of a priority? And what does it say when both people are so tired/content they don’t even miss it?

Am I starting to sound like Phyllis Diller?

Should: Make dinner. “That’s some nice lamb I bought today, and it’s been so long since I made that Indian dish or…cooked at all.”

Will: Wait until my blood sugar gets so low I start swinging at people. “Who wants teriyaki and beer? Quit looking at me like that.”

Should: Make kitty food.

Will: Write in blog.

In Other News

Did you know that both Wil Wheaton and Shannen Doherty did voices in The Secret of NIMH? They sound like little pipsqueaks, because they both were.

Good stuff: Fametracker.com. Now 100% Wil Wheaton free.

Well. Just had my third paper assigned in two weeks, plus I’ve got a presentation to slap together to boot.

Looks like Trent McHugh’s murder is going to to have to go unsolved. Pity, I was so enjoying myself.

Part of me wants to say fuck it, libraries don’t want to look at your transcripts anyhow. I could just glide though getting Cs and write for fun in every spare moment.

Alas, I am anal retentive.

In more cheerful news, Mr. Husband got a new job. After two years of driving jerkasses around in his taxi, he is going to work behind a desk for eight hours a day. Salaried work is a great improvement over driving for twelve hours a day, sometimes making less than minimum wage. No more day-to-day stress. How much did you bring home today? Only eighty? Only forty? We’re out of diapers again? Fuck.

Now, like ordinary people, we will have the stress of living paycheck-to-paycheck.

Yakov Smirnoff: What a country!

In his honor, I’m going to start dragging over NorthEnd Taxi stuff from my old archiving spot.

In Other News

I met the Japanese translator that my presentation group is using for interviews. He is so adorable; if I could, I’d but him in my pocket.

I think he is nineteen or so. His name is Kentaro and he has only been here for a year, but he was immersed right into dorm life with a bunch of white kids, so he is really fluent.

When we were emailing back and forth I told him I couldn’t pay him, but I could write him a letter of recommendation and that our group would take him out to lunch. When I met him in person, he said, “Really? Lunch?” He was very excited.

I thought that maybe a person with such a valuable skill would be a little cutthroat about it. But he was just like, “YAY! Food!” He has a lot to learn. I refuse to take advantage of him though, even though I had to resist asking him to recite some of the French he’s been taking with EVERY BONE IN MY BODY. How cute is that? French with a Japanese accent. Oh I shouldn’t even be let out of the house.