Coffee heat rising

Making Telephone Solicitation FUN….

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Mwa ha ha! The idea I came up with for harassing the goddamn nuisance telephone solicitors is WORKING. And it is a bit of a hoot.

Thought I’d described this antic in a post here on Funny, but don’t see the thing in the blog’s dashboard. Must have held forth about it on Facebook. Oh well…

Here’s the gambit:

When a phone solicitor calls, instead of hitting “call block” (which, since they spoof telephone numbers, doesn’t block THEIR phone but instead blocks some innocent soul in your area code or even your own exchange), pick up the phone and speak sorta politely into it.

Let the crook begin to deliver his pitch. As he yammers on, take a deep breath and SCREAM AT THE VERY TOP OF YOUR VOICE, as LOUD as you can, into the phone. SHRIEK YOUR GUTS OUT. Give him the shrillest, loudest, earsplittingest

GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHH

you can blast out.

Scream nonstop until you run completely out of breath. Then hang up. Do not speak a word. Just hang up.

Most of the criminals are probably using headphones to do their job. That means you leave not one but both of their ears ringing. With any luck, maybe you’ll burst the bastard’s eardrum.

Interestingly, this seems to have worked. It’s 10:15 a.m. just now, and I just repelled only the first nuisance call of the day. Usually they start about 8:00 a.m. — sometimes even earlier. And the number of nuisance calls has dropped spectacularly, from around 10 calls a day to one or two. Some days even none!

No kidding: I was getting up to a dozen pestering calls a day. Never fewer than eight or ten.

Within a couple of days after I started the Scream Gambit, the phone soliciting harassment dropped like the bastards all fell off a cliff — down to one or two calls, and some days even none. For those that persist: it’s strangely gratifying to know you left the SOB’s ears ringing.

So far I haven’t done it, because I haven’t wanted to pony up the cash, but part of the plan is to buy one or more recorders so I can play back the SHRIIIEEEEEEEEEK into the phone without having to strain the vocal cords. But seriously: after s few days of this, the number of calls has dropped to the point where that may not be necessary.

Silence is golden…

The Cancer That Is Not a Cancer

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So…a couple, three months ago, I trot out to the beloved dermatologist — halfway to Yuma — for a regular check-up. When you’ve lived as long as I have in the desert subtropics, you have a continually budding crop of cancerous and precancerous growths on your hide. So what you want to do is get every new excrescence excised before it does develop into skin cancer. She goes checkity-check-check-check and then she sees a little mole on the side of my nose. It’s about a 16th of an inch in diameter, something I never noticed because I’m covered with spots, rather like a two-legged leopard.

She says oooohhhh that’s suspicious! We’d better biopsy that.

Okay. Nothin’ new there.

Time passes: a week or so. They call and tell me it was a melanoma, and now I must come in and get it and a chunk of my face removed.

So I arrange to traipse across the Valley and have a plastic surgeon slice up my nose and then repair the damage. She does an awesome job — truly amazing. Friends who have had this kind of surgery have ended up with their faces…well, shall we say, defaced. I expected to come away with some baby-scaring scars, at the least. But hallelujah, brothers and sisters! When the incision heals up, after some weeks, it heals with NO scars.

Seriously: you would never know that my face had been laid open from the top right side of the nose to the bottom left side. I’m told it was a good thing I came in, because the thing was a malignant melanoma.

As a side-show to the hypochondriac’s jamboree, whilst searching the Hypochondriac’s Treasure Chest That Is The Internet for something, anything that might relieve the crazy-making peripheral neuropathy, I discover that PN can be caused by the presence of a malignancy. Like, for example, a melanoma.

It all begins to make sense, right?

Time passes.

And now it’s time to re-up my Medigap insurance. I call my agent. She asks me the usual litany of nosey questions, one of which is “have you had a cancer diagnosed in the past year?”

Well, yeah: a malignant melanoma falls into that category.

The upshot is that, even though insurance companies are not legally allowed to deny Medigap coverage, what they can do is charge you piratical rates, at the drop of any hat that comes along.

I end up with a bill of something over $3750 for one (count it, 1) year of supplementary coverage!!!!!!!

You can’t do without this, BTW. Because “supplementary” is not exactly le mot juste. If you don’t have it, you will be gouged THOUSANDS of dollars for medical bills that regular Medicare doesn’t cover. Many thousands of dollars.

Okay, so…there’s the backstory.

Yesterday, I go to call the dermatologist’s office, having realized that I forgot to ask them to forward a report of their activities to MayoDoc. When I ask them to send their records about the malignant melanoma they removed a month or so ago, the clerk there says, “Oh, that wasn’t a melanoma.”

Say what?

“Uhm…they told me it was…”

Are you kidding? you put me through all that sh!t for a tiny black spot on the side of my nose, totally benign, one that if I thought it would make me feel too ugly to go to the ball, I could cover with a dab of make-up????

It’s a 40-minute drive each way, plus the fun and games of injecting anaesthesia and laying on a table stock-still for 30 minutes while they hack the thing off  my face and glue and sew me up plus three weeks of healing time plus having to keep applying topical medications…but that ain’t the half of it!

No, indeed.

Now, we’ve fucked up my insurance record! Because when I went to renew my Medigap policy a day or two ago, the broker asked me if I’d ever had cancer, and of course I had to say “yes, a melanoma.”  If it was really nothing, then chances are my Medigap insurance won’t cover it — because removing it would be deemed “cosmetic.” But that is as naught compared to the amount I will have to pay, going forward, for Medigap coverage. The $3,700+ I sent to the insurance company the other day was, no doubt, just a starter.

Reached the broker as dawn cracked this morning. — she said she hadn’t sent any applications in. Looks like we’ll recover this time.

But what happens next time?

The Doggie (and Fire Siren) Jamboree

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Augh! This morning’s doggie parade was more crowded than usual. And forgodsake, it’s Tuesday,. Wouldn’tcha think, SOME of these dog-lovers would have to get ready for work?

We leave at 5 a.m., in hopes of missing the worst of the Doggie Jamboree. Didn’t work today: apparently everybody else has the same idea. Often we pass about 10 dogs — each of whom Ruby wishes to despatch to its maker. So I try to get out of the house the minute we roll out of the sack. Didn’t work this morning. We must have had to do avoidance maneuvers around at least 15 pooches…maybe more.

When they say the corgi is in effect a short German shepherd, they’re not kidding. Ruby brooks no shenanigans from other dogs, which if given her choice she would clear from the earth. This was the way the great Anna the GerShep behaved: she wished for nothing more than a dog-free planet.

The human species, however, is a hopelessly stupid animal and is unable to grasp the idea that other people’s dogs don’t necessarily “just wanna playyyy” with their li’l furbaby.

Why, one wonders, would you assume that a human who lives with a given dog doesn’t know how to read her dog’s body language? That she’s never had any other encounter with any other nudnik’s “furbabies”?

After two miles of dodging and wrestling, we arrive back at the Funny Farm. Feed the birds. Toss together a breakfast. Brew the coffee. Dodder out to the side deck and lay out breakfast. But before the human can sit down, it’s

WEEEEEEE–EEEWWWW WEEEEEEEEEEEEE-EEEEWWW  WEEEEEEE–EEEWWWW WEEEEEEEEEEEEE-EEEEWWW  –EEEWWWW WEEEEEEEEEEEEE-EEEEWWW  EEEEEEE–EEEWWWW WEEEEEEEEEEEEE-EEEEWWW  WEEEEEEE–EEEWWWW WEEEEEEEEEEEEE-EEEEWWW  WEEEEEEE–EEEWWWW WEEEEEEEEEEEEE-EEEEWWW  WEEEEEEE–EEEWWWW WEEEEEEEEEEEEE-EEEEWWW

unendingly WEEEEEEE–EEEWWWW WEEEEEEEEEEEEE-EEEEWWW  WEEEEEEE–EEEWWWW WEEEEEEEEEEEEE-EEEEWWW  WEEEEEEE–EEEWWWW WEEEEEEEEEEEEE-EEEEWWW

WTF is going on now? Sounds like every fire engine, fire truck, fire chief’s car, ambulance, and cop car is converging on us. And it goes on and on and ON! The dispatcher’s website shows SIXTEEN units dispatched, another on the way, and a commander at the scene. And now we have a Play-Nooz helicopter hovering over the house. Goodie.

Apparently it’s a “car yard” fire — which would be another way of saying “junkyard fire.” The area north of Gangbanger’s Way is chuckablock full of junk yards and cemeteries for defunct vehicles, refrigerators, stoves, freezers, washers, dryers, toilets, damaged construction material, busted cabinetry, kaput drywall, and whatnot. Hmmm…here we are: Doesn’t this look like a fun way to start your day!

Eleventh Avenue is four blocks east and ten blocks west of the two major thoroughfares that carry commuter traffic from north Phoenix, Sunnyslop, and North Central into downtown Phoenix  from the east and west and that intersect with two freeways bearing traffic into town from the northerly whitey suburbs. It’s 7:20 in the morning…

Heh. You don’t even want to know what a mess the traffic must be out there.

Thank the Gods for not having to commute anymore.

Pool Dude lives in Sunnyslop. This would be about the time he leaves for his first job of the day. Dollars to donuts he’s dead trapped in unmoveable traffic, as we scribble. Lucky him!

 

Count Your Blessings…

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…Among which we can number the things that don’t happen to us.

As Ruby and I started our morning constitutional into the Richistans, we came across a bevy of fire trucks, emergency vehicles, and cop cars.

One of the big old 1950s ranch houses in Lower Richistan — to the east of Feeder Street N/S — caught fire during the night. The carport and the vehicles therein were carbonized. The neighbors escaped with their two dogs and teenaged kids, but apparently their two cats died.

What a mess! It looks like the house is probably unlivable — the smoke damage would make it impossible to stay in there, even if they could turn the electric and water back on.

Jeez…they’re long-term residents who have been in that place longer than I’ve lived here.

Unclear, at last mention, what the cause could have been. One of the neighbors remarked, on the ‘Hood’s Facebook page, that a female transient had been seen making a fire — presumably for camping purposes, unless she just liked to watch sparkly stuff. But another discounted that theory. A lot of houses in this neighborhood — mine included, lhudly sing goddam — have aluminum wiring, which, as you may know, entails a fire hazard.

At any rate, it’s one unholy mess. Sure hope they were fully insured! The neighbors are taking up a collection for them, though…so it doesn’t sound like they expect their insurance to cover what will be some very large expenses.

For the moment, the Funny Farm itself is quiescent. That’s something.

Well, not exactly: a brisk wind has been whaling around all afternoon, and one of the whirligigs on the roof has decided it needs to be lubricated. So as it spins in the breeze, it goes wooodleoodleoodleoooo. Charming. I ain’t a-climbin’ up in the attic or onto the roof to spray it with WD-40, so I’ll have to wait till Monday to hire a handyman to come lubricate the damn thing.

But that’s one heckuva lot better than shoveling out ashes and fighting with insurance companies…  🙁

Life in Dystopia…

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Memo from the Dermatologist’s Waiting Room…

…way to HELL and gone out on the far west side of the Valley…

HOLY maquerel!  Had to fill up in order to get all the way out to the west side for this morning’s traipse to the dermatologist. Gas at the corner QT is $4.79 a gallon! Three-quarters of a tank set me back SIXTY-TWO BUCKS! And 41 cents.

And that’s cheap! Driving westward, ever westward, I passed gas stations offering the stuff for over five bucks. Yes. That is “per gallon.”

How are people who have to commute or use a vehicle to do business managing this?

I figure we can expect this is gonna be pretty much permanent. Have you ever seen gas prices actually go down? Not likely…leastwise, not significantly.  And you hear the excuse bandied about even now: “After all, these prices are what they have to pay in Europe.”

Sure enough.

But Europe has adequate public transit.

Europe has commerce and services situated in reasonably safe central parts of cities and towns.

In Europe, you’re not likely to get brained and robbed walking down to the nearest grocer’s. Or dragged off from the corner bus stop and raped.

European cities are CITIES, not vast sticky puddles of formless sprawl.

At any rate, these prices make it worth sitting in line (and sitting in line…and sitting in line…and sitting in….) at the Costco to fill up and stay filled up at their tanks. But since that’s what everybody else figures, the lines at the Costco pumps stretch halfway to Yuma. You can figure on a 15-minute wait just to get up to the pump. And if the damn thing refuses to take your card – as it did mine, the last time I went by there – all that thumb-twiddling is just so much wasted time and annoyance.

There’s a Costco on the way back into town from Derma-Doc’s place. It’s actually a business Costco, but thanks to the incorporated editorial bidness, I happen to have a business account. So on the way I’ll stop by there as I’m driving driving driving eastward and ask them WTF was with their rejection of my card. And while I’m at it, renew my membership, which I believe to be due about now.

Godlmighty I’m so, sooooo tired of doctoring.

My mother’s relatives were Christian Scientists. Her grandmother and her aunt lived into their mid-nineties and NEVER saw a doctor. Her uncle, who was not a religious nut, also lived into advanced old age…and died of something that no one was ever able to diagnose – the guy just kinda wasted away.  But honest-ta-gawd, sometimes I think Christian Science is not such a bad idea. You’re gonna die when you’re gonna die – not much sooner and not much later, far’s I can tell. Why make yourself miserable being poked, prodded, sliced, diced, dieted, and lectured?

* *

Arrived out on the west side at the doc’s office  way, wayyyy early, having had to allow some unholy amount of (unneeded!) time to fill up the gas tank. So drove around one of the new look-alike stick-and-styrofoam developments. Gosh…some of those houses can’t be more than 20 feet apart, eave to eave!  My father’s aversion to investing in residential real estate kinda makes sense now, looking at these acres and acres and acres of junk.  And he hadn’t even SEEN junk, back in his day….

* * * *

Back in Town:

{chortle!!!} Successful interlude with derma-tech. I REALLY like those folks.

From there, I proceed back across town over grody Indian School Road. Dodge into the Costco down by the railroad underpass, figuring to renew the annual membership and then pick up a few not-very-necessaries.

Belly up to the customer service bar. Present my membership card and my Visa card (Costco doesn’t take AMEX: costs them too much).

The CSR demands to know some three-digit number for the Visa card.

Huh?  AMEX has a three-digit nuisance number, but I’ve NEVER been asked for one for Visa and didn’t even know such a thing existed. Thrash around my wallet. Can’t find it. Lose my temper (quite frankly) and stalk out. On the way I tell her I’m sorry her employer has lost a customer – permanently.

Driving driving driving driving back across the interminable and interminably ugly west side, it crosses my mind that CC mailed me a renewal form. Drive and drive and drive and drive and dodge importuning Death two or three times and dart in the house and dash to the pile of unattended mail on the dining-room table, and Yea verily! There’s a mail-in form to renew membership. Doesn’t ask for a secret code of any kind, for any vendor.

Fill it out. Stuff it in an envelope. Stick an (expensive!) stamp on it. Jump back in the car. Drive to the PO. Drop it in a USPS mailbox.

Note to Self: do not even THINK of renewing in person next year. Incompetent nuisances!

When William Shakespeare had Miranda say “What a brave new world we live in” and added Prospero’s ironic riposte, did he think that brave new world was as dystopic and as shitty and as nuisancey as the one we live in today is? What on earth would he have made of a life that consists of one techno-hassle after another after another?

Also amongst the unattended mail, I find a notice to renew the Medigap insurance. They want THIRTY-SEVEN HUNDRED DOLLARS AND FIFTY-TWO CENTS for a year’s worth of Medigap coverage!

Speaking of Brave New Worlds…what IS this effing Brave New World we live in?

Skeeters and Coils and Termites and Stuff…

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So Termite Dude showed up a couple days ago. Nice guy: I liked him instantly. He sprayed the new settlement our little ladies had installed in the attic’s wood facing, explored…examined…examined…explored, sprayed everything in sight, collected a wad of dough, and went on his way.

Gerardo had already  inspected the attic. Termite Dude went up there, too, and looked all around. He confirmed Gerardo’s report that as yet our little pets have not made their way up there.

Termites are a chronic problem in Arizona. That notwithstanding, I don’t have the house sprayed every six months, for two reasons:

The stuff we used to have sprayed in our house downtown (which was built atop a delicious wooden crawl space) used to make my stomach upset every time the guy came around. Did the same to the cats, too: they would barf all day until the fumes aired out.

One of my friends...omigod! Her health was permanently ruined (no kidding!) and her dog was killed when fumes from termite gunk an exterminator sprayed into the foundation (most houses here are built atop concrete pads, which have to be drilled to apply the chemical) found its way into a crack, seeped up into the home office where she was working while her dog snoozed on the floor, and poisoned both of them.

So, no. I don’t want that stuff around my house!!!!!

But with the gals having staked out a claim, I felt that if I had to take the dog and rent a motel room for a week while the place airs out, it would probably be worth it.

The new termite gunk, however, has no odor! At least, none that’s discernible to a human.

That alone was amazing. Then came the next surprise: it didn’t make me queasy! I did take Ruby down to M’hijito’s house and left her there all day. So, she wasn’t exposed directly to it. To what extent any odorless fumes may linger, I do not know. But it’s now been a day and a half, and she seems to be fine. No barfing, no listlessness, no other visible sign of harm. Yet.

This morning I realized that I forgot to point out the decayed remains of an old tree trunk out in front…which very likely is where Her Majesty and her minions originated. Dunno whether he sprayed that or not. But I happen to have half a gallon-sized container of bug granules, which probably will do the job on any ladies lurking around that grocery store. Whenever I get off my duff, I’ll go out there and sprinkle the stuff all over the pit.

Meanwhile, speaking of bugs, it’s mosquito season in lovely Arizona!

Can you imagine? We didn’t used to have mosquitoes. Literally: you never saw skeeters around human habitation in this place.  Matter of fact, that used to be one of the draws: Michiganders and Ohians and the like loved the mosquito-free yards as much as they loved the warm winters.

No more! Now every summer we’re overrun.

Dragged out the mosquito coils — there are only a couple left, so I guess I’ll have to order up some more from Amazon.

These damn things are, I’ll say, pretty creepy. First came upon them in Tahiti, where DXH and I stopped for a few days on the way to Australia & New Zealand, where he had always dreamt of junketing. Tahiti, being a jungle island in the middle of the Pacific, is overrun with savage biting mosquitoes. And yes, they do carry disease. The hotel provided mosquito coils for the guests, and yes, the things DO work to repel the little ladies.

Not nuts about using them in the house…but outdoors, they don’t seem to be too unsafe. During skeeter season here, I keep the screen doors and window screens closed, which works effectively to keep the gals out. But why would you live in Arizona if you didn’t want to sit on your garden porch for breakfast and dinner and cocktails, hm? These things make that possible in the springtime, the only pretty bug time…

Termite image: Alabama A & M University
Mosquito coil image: Amazon