Connectivity and bonus puffery

Yesterday, I called AT&T to inquire why my bill was suddenly about $100. The answer was, as it always is, that I had been in a promotional period and it had ended. Mind you, these promotions are usually a year long, so one is lulled into a sense of certainty that the high bill one is paying every month will go no higher. Then BAM! Secret year anniversary is reached and you owe $100. Considering the number of movies I watch on Netflix in a given week, this is probably a bargain (thanks, internet), but that doesn't mean I can readily afford it.

That is how I came to have a very long conversation with Shanti, who wanted to know how she could make me feel like a valued customer. Shanti offered me a phone/internet package for half the cost of my current plan, however, it would require me to purchase a new phone and a new modem--neither of which I want. (This is where I admit that I don't have wireless internet in my house. This is where I further admit that I fear I will get cancer if I have a wireless modem directly under my bed [which is where it would have to be connected].) Shanti told me that in my new wireless world, I would be able to connect up to ten devices without lowering my speed. I was sorry to tell her that I have no devices, but on the bright side, I did make her laugh. I enjoy making customer service representatives laugh.

Ultimately, I agreed to have cancer-internet, but I will not agree to have their special phone, as I am quite attached to the (lousy, but very fetching) phone I already have. This compromise will bring my bill back down to the high rate I have already become accustomed to paying, but not the still lower rate I would pay were I willing to join the 21st Century.

However.

To pay what I was already paying, I must buy a modem that I do not want for $100. Shanti agrees that that is a high price. That is why she is pleased to offer me a $100 rewards card that I may use to offset this cost. Why, one wonders, can she simply not charge me to begin with? Mysterious are the ways of commerce. I was then given the option to have a technician come install the new cancer modem for a fee of $99. I declined. No problem. I am also able to install the cancer modem myself. For $49.

I think that bears repeating. I may opt to personally install the $100 modem that I do not want. For this privilege I will be charged $49.

Rather than making me feel like a valued customer, this makes me feel like an enraged prisoner. Those feelings seem very opposite to me. They might want to look into that.

In closing, Shanti reminded me not to text while driving. I told her that I was certain it would not surprise her to learn that texting while driving is not one of my personal shortcomings. That's what comes of having no devices. It makes me a bit of an oddball, yes, but it also significantly decreases the chances of my running you down in the street. Perhaps I should charge for that service. I'm thinking $49 is about right.



***

Friday bonus.

My favorite sentence from NPR yesterday: "Puffery is not actionable."

That is what keeps you from being able to sue your local diner for saying they serve "The World's Best Hamburger." I would like to think that the joint commons of sense and decency would keep you from suing anyone for that, but this is America, so we need a law. And, as luck would have it, "puffery" turns out to be a legal term. Hooray.

What's the word, Hummingbird?

Because my feet have been hurting (oh, how elderly I feel with the aching and the limping and such) I constructed today's ensemble from the shoes up. In this case, the Keds up.

And that, dear readers, is how--quite accidentally and rather unfortunately--I came to be dressed as though I plan to audition for the ingenue role in Bye Bye, Birdie immediately after work.

On triviality

On Sunday, I heard only a very brief snippet of City Arts and Lectures as my mother and I moved her car from an expensive parking meter (5 minutes for a quarter. How is this possible?) to an expensive parking garage. I don't even know who was being interviewed, but I have to assume she's an important Thinker of Our Time because that's who they invite. In any case, I rather wish I'd missed it altogether because I was only radio-adjacent long enough to hear her say, "Well, you don't read blogs the way you read...writing. Here's some advice for young writers [of whom, alas, I realize I am no longer one]. Just because something occurs to you, you don't have to write it down."

Ouch.

I don't even disagree. This is why I have not been successful in incorporating Twitter into my life. Yet I felt like a mean girl had sauntered up to me on the playground to tell me that only losers wear those dumb jeans--didn't I know? Which is to say, I felt embarrassed and deflated and I don't even know who she was.

For a long time, I didn't tell anyone at all that I had a blog because it seemed so incredibly trivial and self-indulgent. Also, I could not hate the word "blog" any more if I tried. I started it to encourage myself to write anything at all. I thought that the theoretical notion of an audience might help me show up. It didn't, not really, because I am inherently lazy and writing--even silly, brief writing--is harder than it looks. Also, writing for a theoretical audience is like the absurd suggestion that setting your clock ahead ten minutes will keep you from being late. That scheme seems to imply that you are not only tardy, but also an amnesiac who can go around changing your clocks and then entirely forgetting that you've done it. Both of these things are just you trying to outsmart you. Or, rather, me trying to outsmart me. I'm harder to fool than that, it turns out. This is why the advent of the Blog Bully was such a boon. One non-theoretical audience member. One person who is not me who cares whether I write anything or not. It is strangely powerful.

Sometimes I write things here that I consider capital W Writing, but mostly not. It's been a long time since I've devoted any energy to what I consider "real" writing and, lately, that work has been for performance more than for would-be publication. Meanwhile, if I weren't here, my writing would be limited exclusively to my personal correspondence (which, I'll have you know, is sparkling as all get-out) and, like the Italian verbs conjugations I briefly knew and promptly forgot, I might lose the knack altogether for lack of practice.

The reality is, in order to show up here with any kind of regularity, I am obliged, truly, to write anything that occurs to me. Indeed, I am always very relieved when something does occur to me.

Perhaps it doesn't count as writing, but I'm practicing. Thanks for standing by.

It's not easy being green

The end of the school year is a veritable frenzy of events and acknowledgements. It's all cakes and presents and details, details, details. I know it is only my imagination that I am in charge of all of these things, but it feels as though I am in charge of all of these things.

Today, with a start, I realized that I had not yet ordered the hundreds upon hundreds of service items required for graduation. Where there is cake and cider, there need also be plates and cups. For many years, we've been using compostable everything for this. The plates are made of grass; the cups are made of corn; the forks are made of potato. I don't know what the napkins are made of, but they are a very drab color, so they must be virtuous. I was given a price sheet from a different, slightly cheaper vendor this year and was all set to place an order when I noticed that they are in Brooklyn. When you are in San Francisco, having your compostable forks shipped all the way from Brooklyn is to miss a bit of the environmental point. (Mind you, it is also possible that only Brooklyn and San Francisco have ever encountered a compostable fork, which suggests we may be missing a far more daunting environmental point, but that's to ponder another day.)

Begrudgingly, I went back to our local green office supply vendor's baffling website and began the annual adventure of decoding their numerous product categories. After a longish time, I had managed to add the plates, cups, and forks to my shopping cart. But where, pray tell, are the napkins? They are not in kitchen/food service supplies. They are not in paper supplies. Indeed, they don't appear to be anywhere among the TWENTY-FOUR categories of products listed. Among these is the curious office supply option of Art&Nature/Wildlife Photography Gallery. I clicked on it. For all I knew, they were hiding the napkins in there. Nope. Here are the subcategories:

Images-Bears
Images-Birds and Owls
Images-Other Wildlife
Images-Sea Life
Images-Scenics


So, if you're having a party where you need plates, cups, forks, and [presumably recyclable] images of bears, you're in luck. I know just the place.

You need napkins? You're wrong. You don't need napkins. Anyway, we don't sell that kind of thing around here. Wipe the frosting on your skirt and move along.

Take two

I just wrote a whole thing and then realized it wasn't true, so I erased deleted it (isn't it quaint how I still accidentally say things like "erase?") and now where are we? Nowheresville. Hmmm.

All right. I'll tell you this. I saw eight (for your future reference eight is actually more than enough. Eight is too many) student-written one acts yesterday. They went pretty well, in fact, but, what with the set changes, it was almost interminable.

One play has a sort of prologue courtship montage. You know the sort of thing. A voiceover narration and little glimpses of the couple picnicking, skating, driving in a convertible, attending a sporting event, etc. (What? I like romantic comedies. I'm not ashamed.) In the play, the montage is mostly achieved by the actors standing in front of various projected backdrops (for instance, "They went to a soccer game." Actors stand in front of projection of a stadium and say "Yay!") But there was also, "They attended the amateur wine-making festival." Projection of a vineyard. The actors move to a barrel stage right; the boy, almost twice the height of the girl, lifts her straight up and sets her the barrel. She begins stomping.

Theatrical gold.