The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. ―Edmund Burke
So I call Cox Communications and ask what the outrageous gouge for $115 is for, since I never make long-distance calls and hardly even make local calls. The moron who answers says, in effect, that’s just the regular price.
No, it’s not. I’ve never had a $115 gouge for ordinary local phone service.
Sheeeee-ut. Now I’ll have to ask the Owner of the Male Voice — i.e., my son — to call those clowns and ask WTF that’s about.
Jayzuz! Never a dull moment.
Well: Day of Spring: it’s only April. But in Arizona, the weather will be summerish by most region’s standards.
What a strange and gorgeous day. Lovely, balmy temperature beneath high, soft gray clouds.
Normally, Ruby and I would have taken off for the park by now. But I’ve spavined a hip, so she and I loaf. She has taken over the foot of the bed, and I’ve repaired to a pile of pillows. What could be better, eh?
A-a-a-n-d…as we scribble, in comes another fake email under a friend’s name. At least two dozen of these have hit my in-box over the past year or two. She’s a fellow volunteer at the church — or was a “fellow” while I was still doing that. Dropped out of the choir and the church phone-answering job when my son started dragging me to the Mayo every Sunday morning: the end of a fun activity and the loss of a bunch of friendly associates.
ohhhh well. Anyway, I haven’t been able to shake the scamming emails, no matter what I do to try to block them. Just now, dozens of these reside on my in-box…it’s gonna take an hour or two to delete them all. What a damn nuisance!
Better get to work on that….
Here’s another one, claiming an auto-payment to Cox will be made…in the amount of $115.
Oh, yeah? I don’t normally do auto-pays, for obvious reasons. So…scam or no scam? Do I really have to call Cox today and navigate their nuisance-y system to find out WTF this is? And if it is a scam, how did they get my payment data???
And why would Cox be gouging me for $115, when I don’t make long-distance calls?
Godlmighty, am I sick of this stuff!!!!!!!
Ever find yourself wondering What the dickens was the matter with me that I didn’t {do X, Y, or Z} instead of the stupid thing I did do?
Afraid that’s not a rare occasion for Funny. Honest to Gawd. I’ve done and said the stupidest things over the years…when if I’d kept my mouth shut at the time — even for a few minutes, to say nothing of a few days — things would have turned out much for the better.
Case in point: My father & his bitch wife. If, that time when they came mincing up to me and said “ohhhh we want your permission to get married,” instead of uttering a slack-jawed “well, o’course!” (while thinking these idiots are grown adults: why do they imagine they need their kid’s permission to get married?), I had said “Are you kidding? You’re sixty-some years old, not sixteen years old. You don’t need my permission to do anything,” things might have turned out a lot better for them.
Why?
Well, this is just a guess. And that guess is: if they had stopped and thought about whether they really wanted to marry, rather than getting a kid’s imprimatur, they might have thought twice about it. Or who knows? even three times… They might have slowed down enough to give themselves several weeks or, better yet, a couple of months or three before they waltzed into marriage.
A marriage that turned out to be flickin’ miserable. The LAST thing those two needed to do was get married.
Living in sin would have been infinitely preferable: at least they wouldn’t have had to navigate courts and laws to get un-hitched.
Simply proceeding as girlfriend and boyfriend — keeping their own apartments at the old-folkerie but acting as grand friends — would have more than infinitely preferably. Then they would have no hitching to un-do.
Like all of us, I’ve occasionally made spectacular mistakes. Some of those have had less than sterling results.
The upshot of these adventures, over the years, has been one crucial rule of thumb:
When in doubt, don’t.
Sounds glib, but it ain’t. Seriously: if you’re not sure about some decision you’re about to make, don’t proceed with it.
STOP!!!
Stop and wait. Nine times out of ten, you will indeed have time to wait long enough to think things through; maybe to discuss with a trusted friend or advisor, or just to put it all off until your head clears.
And that, my friends, is what you most need to do before making any key decision.
Cop copter buzzes the neighborhood, as we scribble. Again.
Goddammit! What a PLACE this is. Every time you turn around: cop copters, burglars, prowlers, sh!theads… Lordie, but I am tired of lovely uptown Phoenix.
Alas, though, as one of the cops remarked after the Great Home Invasion Episode, this sh!t goes on all over the county.
I’d said to him, “Maybe I should move to Scottsdale or Fountain Hills to get away from this sh!t.”
“Don’t do that!” said he. “You can’ t get away from it. We go to these things all over the Valley.”
Ugh. What a world we live in.
Even in somnolent Sun City, this kinda crap goes on all the time. My mother lived in terror out there…and not for no reason.
I need a shotgun, not a mere pistol…
Hmmm…. Apparently SCREAMING into the phone does indeed hurt a nuisance phone solicitor’s ears enough that the word spreads: don’t call THAT number. 😀 It’s almost 11:00 a.m. and I have yet to receive a pestering phone call this morning.
Well. Waitaminit: can’t guarantee that. The phone has been set to block incoming calls. So…some pests may have tried to call and not been able to get through.
This is why I argue that telephone soliciting should be illegal. You and I shouldn’t have to jam up our phones and waylay calls from our friends and business associates to stop jerks from pestering us with unwanted calls.
But…with that feature engaged, my handset says it has blocked dozens of nuisance calls. I gave up counting when the thing showed call #20.
Problem is, it also blocks calls from people I want to hear from. It apparently has blocked calls from my son, for example. And no, I can NOT figure out how to change that.
Yes, I have told folks they need to e-mail me to reach me. But…why would my son have called this number when he could’ve emailed me? That sounds…ominous.
***
Nope: He reports that there are no problems on his end. Sounds like he’s working. His employer escapes the cost of office rent by making all its staff work from home. That, IMHO, is nice enough for the workers who want to make their home double as their workplace. But…not everyone does.
One should, IMHO, have a choice in the matter.
{sigh} I was not born to live in the 21st century!
Comin’ right on to 7:00 p.m. No sign of my excellent son. He’d said he would make a grocery-store run and bring a bunch of stuff by here. {chortle!} Apparently, the “run” turned into an expedition! 😀
Seriously: I do hope he’s OK. If he’s gone to the slum market to the north of the ‘Hood, that place ain’t very safe. It sure isn’t a venue one would want to visit in the dark. Or near-dark.
Well…we’ll find out, soon enough.
Hotter than the hubs out there: dusk or no dusk.Walked about six houses down the block to drop a misdelivered piece of mail into a neighbor’s mailbox. Ugh! Not only hot, but humid!
No clouds, but the air feels like a sauna.
Oh, well. The envelope (with its contents) is now in the correct mailbox. The human is back in its house. The dawg is snoozing in her favorite hideaway: under the toilet. And…I wonder where my son is!
Gosh, I hope he’s OK. If his car is crapped out, I’ll have to hire the Uber guy across the street to schlep me over to wherever the kid is. That, as we know, is because my son has purloined my car, in the belief that his superannuated muther needs to quit driving.
Well…I’ll give him another half-hour or 45 minutes and then pester him on the phone. (Won’t he be pleased?)
What a yucky afternoon/evening!! Hot, hot, HOT. Humid. And now dark.
Y’know…I’m coming to really dislike living in Phoenix.
* Driving around this place is a freaking nightmare.
* Walking ain’t any better.
* Where once I rarely felt unsafe, now I get the willies every time I walk to the grocery store.
* The Albertson’s grocery store staff has conceived its own willies! They’ve decided everyone who walks in the door is a shop-lifter, an assumption that does not make for a fun shopping experience.
* The Fry’s ain’t much better… And it’s a longer walk away, through a shadier neighborhood.
Considering the possibility of moving out to the far, far east side, where my cousin lives in an upper-middle-class tract. Problem is, it’s a LONG way from my son’s present home: damn near an hour’s drive through Phoenix’s bat-sh!t traffic. He sure ain’t gonna move out there because I do: his dad and New Wife live here in the ‘Hood.
So…I reckon as long as he’s here, I’m stuck here. Could be worse, o’course: lots worse. This is a nice neighborhood, very centrally located, with three major grocery stores in easy walking distance and a train and a raft of busses and…on and on. Dunno where I’d go that’s any better.
***
Ah hah! Got him on the phone. He was (audibly) in a restaurant, apparently with his Dad and New Wife. That’s good! Sorry to pester him…but happy to hear he’s with loved ones and glad he’s not out there driving around the dark. 😀
Never a proverbial dull moment….