Let’s All Rant.

“A new password has been mailed to you and should arrive within a couple of days. Please check your mail.

This is a single-use password. You will be asked to change it after you login.”

Really? The best your system can do is take 36 hours to mail a password? With our current state of technology?

Now that’s certainly confidence building.

E-Z Pass. Bastards.

800 333-TOLL

“I’m sorry, you have called the E-Z Pass New York center after regular business hours. Please call during regular business hours.”

How about I only pay tolls during regular business hours?

Bastards.

So I am on my way home from a spectacular weekend in Connecticut. I will write about the adventure later tonight, as I am currently sitting at the Sloatsburg Service Area on the New York State Thruway. I am having a quick lunch and taking a moment to chill before continuing the 200 or so remaining miles to home.

It was a year or so ago that the expiration date on our credit/debit cards from HSBC expired and the bank dutifully sent us new cards that were good until 2012 (impending date of doom notwithstanding). Good enough. However, a couple of weeks ago HSBC sent us an additional set of credit/debit cards with a completely different set of numbers on it. Since we pay many of our bills through online services using this account, this has turned out to be a pain in the ass.

One such service is E-Z Pass. Normally I would provide a link to this service but quite frankly I think they are a bureaucratic ball of red tape and quite frankly they can go suck it as far as I’m concerned.

Here’s the deal. We have been changing credit card numbers on the aforementioned accounts as we received notices from the organisations because Earl and I like to act like big-wigs and have multiple accounts with different banks and sometimes we like to spread the financial love around to the bank we deem most worthy. Apparently HSBC is the card on the E-Z Pass account.

Driving to Connecticut in Friday I received NO alerts that something was amiss on our account. I breezed through the tolls with nary a message aside from “E-Z Pass Paid”.  On his way back home, Earl encountered an “account low” message and promptly notified me of this. This has happened in the past; we make a call to the E-Z Pass center and then all is well.

This morning, as I was driving Dave to LaGuardia so he could do the flying thing I decided to try calling E-Z Pass to fix the issue over the phone. Admittedly, I shouldn’t have waited until I was on the road but I had more important things on my mind this morning. After fumbling through an endless menu of options I reached a woman that couldn’t help me, who then transferred me to a man that said I was at the wrong department who then transferred me to someone else. The third person was encountered as I was approaching one of the bridges; I figured I’d get an “account low” message and go on my merry way.

Wrong.

The gate stayed down. Traffic began to pile up behind me. A gruff looking woman came from a nearby booth and asked for my tag. As the THIRD person at E-Z Pass asked me for my account number (quick aside: we can use the account all over the Northeast but the call-in center can’t send my tag number with my call when they transfer me?) I said I’d give it to her as soon as I got my tag back from the gruff woman.

“Oh, you’re not getting the tag back”, she shouted over the sound of backed up traffic behind me.

“Never mind, she won’t give me the tag so I don’t need you”, I yelled into the speakerphone and then hung up the phone.

$5.00 later and without my E-Z Pass tag, along with a notification of account suspension, I was back on my way to LaGuardia.

After dropping Dave off at Terminal B, I decided to get E-Z Pass back on the phone to fix the issue. I might not have a tag, but at least I’ll get the account fixed and they’ll send me a new tag.

Nope.

You can’t fix this sort of thing over the phone. No tag number, no can do. They can look up the account by my address but they can’t tell me that I’m me, even though I confirmed the last four digits of my phone number, the make of my car, the license plate number and the fact that I had just had my tag taken away from me.

I have to go to an E-Z Pass center in person to pick up a new tag. The closest center to our house is 60 miles away and quite frankly I don’t have the interest nor the time.

So all in all, I snapped. I told the unfriendly phone person that she sucked, the service sucks and then I rambled on about something like Big Brother and I’m not going to be chipped by the likes of her.

Tonight I will log on and make sure they have the correct information for our account so that we make up a negative balance. Earl will still be able to use the account for work. But I am NOT going to drive 120 miles (and pay their high toll!) to get another tag. I refuse to do it and I’ll make sure hundreds of toll collectors choke on my exhaust before I set foot into an E-Z Pass Center to get a tag all in the name of convenience.

By the way, take a look at some Thruway overpasses sometime. You’ll notice there are E-Z Pass readers NOWHERE near an interchange. Someone is watching you. The conspiracy theorist in me knows they are going to start issuing speeding tickets via the E-Z Pass service someday. I just know they are.

But not me. I will NOT be using an E-Z Pass tag in my vehicle for as long as I live.

E-Z Pass can go suck it.

I know I’m not the brightest bulb in the chandelier when it comes to economics and the government. I admit that I reside in my own near-lunatic fringe with how I usually feel about this sort of thing, but I can’t help but be infuriated about this sort of thing:

New York Times: A.I.G. Planning Huge Bonuses After $170 Billion Bailout

This is absolutely unbelievable. As an American, dare I say “proud American”?, I am outraged at this! The article says (emphasis mine):

“We cannot attract and retain the best and the brightest talent to lead and staff the A.I.G. businesses — which are now being operated principally on behalf of American taxpayers — if employees believe their compensation is subject to continued and arbitrary adjustment by the U.S. Treasury,” he wrote Mr. Geithner on Saturday.

Are we really to believe that they really have the ‘best and brightest’ when A.I.G. is one of the major contributors to the financial mess currently in progress?

Greedy, greedy, greedy.

It is crap like this that makes me spew words that makes me sound unAmerican.

This crap must stop. Now.

I’m going say right here and now that I hate being called a homosexual. Oh I’m one of the gays, there’s no doubt about that. I’m sure some of you’d be amazed at what you saw if you looked behind the curtain of this blog wizard. But the way the right-wing freaks say ‘homosexual’ is so ridiculous. Homo-sexual. THey must divide up the syllables to give it an air of credibility. Ho-mo-sex-u-al. It’s their attempt to make it sound like a sickness. Homo-sexual. Bah. It’s more fun to say “condom” but they don’t like those either.

I can’t help but be reminded of Anita Bryant when I see Sarah Palin. She’s mildly attractive on the outside. She’s a beauty queen. She has a “non-neutral” accent. And of course she’s big on that whole “pray away the gay” thing. Have you ever heard anything so ridiculous? “Pray away the gay”. That’s like saying “pray that my blue eyes turn brown” or “pray away the freckles” or better yet “pray away the gray”. Why can’t we pray away Wal*Mart?

Going to the extreme, perhaps if her church keeps up this crusade of “pray away the gay” more and more teen gays and lesbians will commit suicide from believing the message of hate. The gay teen prays and prays and then buries away the gay but they still feel the gay. “Pray away the gay”. Once they discover the gay won’t go away they turn to drastic measures: In a paranoid, confused state it makes sense: The gay won’t go away, ergo they’re sick, so they kill themselves. I know that sounds completely fucked up, but guess what, that’s what happens. “Pray away the gay” says Sarah Palin and her church. Gay teen suicides are on the rise and I’m sure the likes of her and her church are contributors to that statistic. Isn’t that a way of saying believe better off dead than gay?

I am really nervous about what is going to occur in November. I do not have a good feeling about the American election coming up. I have a feeling it’s going to be screwed up with errant voting machines, mass confusion, swinging chads, an ugly woman from Florida trying to be important and god knows what else. I have made it known that if I had my druthers, I’d live elsewhere. Earl says we need to stay and fight, no matter the outcome of this election. We can make a difference. I want to believe him. So I’m making a lot of noise about this election. I’m afraid that the sheeple are turning this into a new season of American Idol. What if they treat this vote as if it was “Who Wants To Be A Vice President?” where they just vote for the pretty one. And that’s exactly what the Republicans are betting on. You’ll vote for the one that can see Russia from her house.

Everyone tells me to calm down when I talk politics. “Stop yelling.” Bah.

This ho-mo-sex-u-al has only just begun.

A couple of weeks ago Earl and I ventured out on a Monday night to see “Mamma Mia”. We had seen the stage production a couple of years ago in Chicago, so we had a good idea of what to expect in the movie. We weren’t disappointed.

I think I blogged about this before, but the crowd in the theatre was having a grand time during the entire flick and it’s one of the few times that I’ve seen a theatre full on a Monday night. At the end of the movie much of the audience applauded. That’s always a good sign.

One of the things that bothers me a little bit is that I keep hearing all this negative stuff about the movie. “It wasn’t believable.” “The singing wasn’t stellar.” “The cinematography was awful.”

Listen. The movie was **fun**. Remember when we used to go to the movies to have fun? Going to the movies is a chance to escape from this drivel we call “reality”. Engaging yourself in a television show or a movie and disconnecting from the laws of society is a great way to escape. So what if Pierce Brosnan didn’t sing like some great opera star. Who cares if it’s unlikely you would see people running through a Greek resort singing. The movie was meant to be fun! It was a friggin’ campfest and that’s the way it was suppose to be!

I think one of the problems with American society is that we are taking ourselves WAAAAAAAAAY too seriously these days. People just don’t know how to have fun anymore. (I also think another problem is that people aren’t getting enough sex, but that’s a different blog entry).

Crimminy, lighten up people! After all, you can dance, you can jive, having the time of your life!

So Earl was looking around on one of the bear sites when he saw a new user from London that looked quite familiar:

This is tempting me to fall off the grid.

Monday, April 30
Them: “Hello, this is Davidson’s Chevrolet in Rome (author’s note- caller ID says they’re calling from Watertown, over 80 miles away) and we’d like to let you know that the part you ordered has arrived. Could you please call and schedule a time to bring your car in?”
Me (ignoring the fact that she wants me to hang up and call back to schedule an appointment): “Uh, the car is already there. You looked at the problem, determined that you needed to order a part and so you did. Can you just go ahead and install it?”
Them: “I’ll call parts.”
Me: “Shouldn’t you call service?”
Them: “Yes. Thank you. Good-bye.”

Wednesday, May 2
Earl: “Hello, I’m calling to check the status of my car. The part has been in since Monday. Has it been installed?”
Them: “We are waiting for you to bring the car in.”
Earl: “You’ve had the car for the past week.”
Them: “We don’t know where it is.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Thursday, April 26
Earl at the bank: “I’d like to apply for a home improvement loan.” (patio and landscaping)
HSBC: “No problem.”
They complete the application, Earl signs his life away.
HSBC: “We’ll have an answer for you on Friday, Monday at the latest. I’ll call your cell phone when I have an answer.”

Wednesday, May 2
Earl (after searching 45 minutes for the local branch phone number, since HSBC only wants you to call Singapore, Pakistan or India, depending on who’s cheapest today): “I’m calling for the status of my loan application. It’s been almost a week and I was told that I would have an answer by Monday at the latest.”
HSBC: “We don’t have any record of a loan application.”

This, gentle readers, is one of the many reasons that Old Glory is going right down the tubes. Lousy customer service has become commonplace and fully accepted in our society and no one gives a care.

This is just plain wrong.

I think I am going to go postal. I am ready to lose my mind. I am ready to grab the closest thing I can find that resembles Excalibur and run out into the lawn and begin screaming at the sun. “Why are you doing this? Why can’t people see this isn’t right? Why? Why? Why? Why?”

The National Weather Service has issued a Winter Weather Advisory for this area. It is in effect until tomorrow morning. We will see lots of rain, sleet and snow before all is said and done.

I am so sick of this whacked out weather that I am ready to seriously lose my mind and not in a funny ha ha sort of way. Are they fucking kidding me? Snow? Lots of snow? On April 12?

I don’t give a flying fuck. I’m not plowing the driveway. I’m not shoveling one single, solitary flake of it. I don’t care. I don’t care. I don’t care. I’ve had it. I’m done with it.

And if I hear one moron utter something like, “Where’s this global warming you liberals keep chirping about?”, they will lose their head and it will not be done in a pretty matter.

And while I’m at it, if I get one more spam comment on this blog that incoherently screeches about the virtues of credit cards I am going to lose my mind. I will download viruses and I will just start e-mailing all over creation at these idiots until they plead and beg for mercy.

And since I’m all fired up, if I hear one more newsbrief about Imus’ idiotic racial comments I am going to rip the knobs off the nearest radio and mail them somewhere important. Between clips of Elisabeth from The View saying he should get a “time out” (someone should give the American public a reprive from her stupidity) to those interviewed on the street who obviously have to briefed as to who Imus even is, it’s enough to make a person gag. The man is an idiot and said some idiotic things. Get over it. (And yes, I would feel the exact same way if he said similarly spirited remarks about gays.) If you don’t like him, change the channel. You don’t even have to walk to the television and turn the knob, just sit on your lazy ass and click the remote. They tout “As a broadcaster, he should be ‘responsible’.” Please. Someone. Get. A. Life. He can say what he wants. His job is to say what he wants. Don’t like it, change the channel. I keep changing the channel trying to escape the coverage of his comments but it’s everywhere. At least Imus is confined to one network.

Where’s Don Knotts and his magic remote? I want to be in black and white. I want to go to Pleasantville. I want a malt with Wally Cleaver. I’m sick of this static we call the present.