Farewell Ma Bell

A good proportion of our lives are spent doing things out of habit.  We do things "because that's the way they've always been done", or we realize that there are better ways to do things, but we just don't want to expend the time and effort to do them, even though they may be easier on us in the long run.

Take the land line telephone for example.

If you've been around as long as I have, this was as much a part of your home when you were growing up as the refrigerator, the oven and indoor plumbing.  It was either perched on a decorative table in your home's entry way, or hanging on the kitchen wall.  Maybe even both.  I even remember the type of telephone that we had (there really weren't any choices) and the phone number.

University5-2678

The phone was always there.  It was the first purchase I made when I moved away from home and into my first apartment.  And whenever Jan and I moved, it was on the short list of hook-ups right along with gas, water and electricity.

Then, about 20 years ago, we became aware of the growing popularity of these new-fangled gadgets called "cell phones".  Although they were pretty awkward and clunky, they were pretty cool, so we bought two "bag phones" for our cars and used them occasionally.  The service was expensive, and the connection was  spotty at best, but as with most new technology, it got better and less expensive.

In fact, the technology became so much better, that we began to use our cell phones more than our land line phone.

Realizations sometimes creep up on you ... slowly.  One day, about 5 years ago, I was paying our monthly bills and as I opened our AT&T envelope, the thought crossed my mind that it was really a useless expense.  Seventy-plus dollars a month for the privilege of being interrupted at least five times an evening by junk calls. But, as soon as I paid the bill, I promptly forgot about it until the next month.

After a while, it became annoying.  I started to ask the question "Why do I still have this phone?" And as I think about it, maybe it was just sentimentality.  One day I called AT&T to see if I could find a package to lower my bill, and lo-and-behold ... "Yes" said the customer service agent.  "Why, I see that you're not using many features of the package you have."  And so I negotiated another package, for thirty dollars a month.  However, when my next bill came, new charges and federal and state taxes added up to save me a whopping five dollars a month over the previous bill.  Well played AT&T ... well played.

Unbelievably, to me anyway, three more years went by with the same shopworn act being played out.  Rob gets phone bill, Rob pays phone bill, Rob gets steamed, Rob promptly forgets about phone bill until the next month. Repeat process ad infinitum.

Until last Monday.

Last Monday, I came home from work, called AT&T, sat on hold for one hour and 45 minutes ... and cancelled my phone service.  And as expected, there was much dramatic hand wringing on the part of the customer service agent.  "But sir, you've been with us since 1977!" This was followed by the "deal" ploy.  A lower rate package with coupons!  When this angle failed, it was time for the heavy guns ... fear.  Your cell phone won't work when the electricity is out (huh?).  911 won't be able to find you.  You'll lose your cell phone and then what will you do?  Huh? ... Huh?

But my mind was made up.  The customer service agent and I said our fond farewells and a 58 year old bond fell to the wayside.  I had joined the growing ranks of "The Others" ... those without land line telephone service.

On Tuesday afternoon, I came home and picked up the telephone.  And there was no dial tone.  I disconnected our three phones and placed them in a box in the basement, where I'll run across them again one day, stare at them for a second or two, and then deposit them in the trash.

As we turned in Tuesday night, Jan mentioned to me how nice it had been to go a whole evening without being interrupted by any trash phone calls.

And it was good.

Marketing Unpleasant Things

Tonight at 10:09 p.m. CST, Fall officially begins, and I don't know about you, but I'm going to stay up past my bedtime to celebrate it right.

Fall brings with it many cherished traditions.  College football, apple picking, carving pumpkins ... And getting a flu shot.

Jan is a big flu shot person.  She never misses one, come hell or high water.  On the other hand, I shun them like my mother's broiled liver surprise.  In past years, there has always been an anxiety linked to flu shot season, primarily because there never seemed to be enough vaccine available.  People would drive to the ends of the earth and wait in lines for hours for the privilege of being stuck in the arm with a needle.  And, as with Jan, they would go ahead and get the flu later on anyway, but always with the claim that "it would have been worse if I hadn't had my shot".

Bullshit indeed ...

This year, there's something a little different.  There is plenty of vaccine for everybody.  This is good for the public at large, but presents a problem for the vaccine maker.  How to get rid of all that damned vaccine and make some money off of it.  So, in case you haven't noticed, there are lots of new places you can get your flu shot.  Like drug stores and big box hardware establishments ... and even Walmart.

But, since you have so many places to choose from, all of the above places have to start being a little creative and actually market the product and service so that you will buy it from them, and not somebody else.  In one year, places that turned you away, now fight for your flu shot business.

Inevitably, some of these marketing efforts are a bit clumsy and bizarre in their execution.  This afternoon, I was in a large chain drug store, looking for a pack of razor blades (because 2 years on one blade is probably enough), when I saw the familiar table set up in an aisle manned by someone in nurses garb.

In front of the table was a sign indicating that you could get your flu shot right there, right then.  And they even had a poster mascot ...

LOL Indeed!

I smiled, but skittered away quickly.  While I was doing my razor blade hunting.  I wondered if they had a cute name for the mascot.  But I don't think they did.  If it were me, I'd name it "Stabby".

Imagine, a busy mother trying to get her kids to do what every kid in America has nightmares about ... getting a shot.  All she has to do is say "Hey kids ... want to go see Stabby?"  And of course the kids would fall all over themselves being first in line.

God, I should have been in advertising.

Amazing Inventions

Last Saturday night, I was lying on the floor watching a movie, when I became aware of noises from the house next door.  There was much clanking and grinding and hammering of metal going on, and as I looked out in the dark from my side window and noted that the time on the clock was 9:45 p.m., the first thought in my mind was ...

"What the fuck is Hillbilly Ron doing now?"

Ron has been my neighbor to the west for over ten years now.  And when he's not trying to shoot me full of arrows or scaring the shit out of me with bloody severed deer heads, he's immersed in scatter brained money making schemes.  These include, but are not limited to, bicycle and lawnmower repair, reclaiming used freezers and refrigerators and cornering the market on crappy kiddie lawn toys and structures.

I realize that you can't necessarily pick your neighbors, and I know it could have been worse, but every time Ron stumbles across his next sure thing money making scheme, I can feel the value of my home go down ten grand or so.  Imagine, if you will, a "For Sale" sign in my yard, and as prospective buyers pull up in my driveway, they see this to their right ...

You Thought I Was Kidding About The Refrigerators?

Anyway, back to Saturday night.  It was totally dark, so I couldn't make out what Ron was doing out in this driveway, but the noise went on until almost 11:00, when it mercifully ended.  Grateful that I would be able to go to sleep in peace, I forgot about it until Sunday morning, when I stepped outside and saw this ...

WTF??

Yes, it appeared to be a tennis/volleyball/badminton net welded to a trailer.  And on closer inspection, it was exactly that.  The only thing I could think of was that Hillbilly Ron had decided to expand his empire and go into the "Rent-A-Tennis/Volleyball/Badminton Net For Your Party" business.  Although the logistics of playing any of the three games with a net welded to a metal trailer with numerous sharp edges would seem to be difficult, I'm sure Ron will highlight the X-TREME angle of his set-up from a marketing standpoint.

I don't know, maybe I'm just jealous of Ron's imagination and business savvy.  I just hope he doesn't keep this piece of shit parked in his driveway forever.

"Sigh"

Update:  Much to my chagrin, I found out later in the day that the local high school was having their homecoming parade (on a Sunday afternoon?) that day and that this was a "float".  And this was exactly the way it was dragged through the streets with no embellishments whatsoever.  So, I may have been full of shit about his intentions, but he still gets an F+ for float making.

End of story.

The More I Know, The Stupider I Feel

First of all, let's get this out of the way.  "Stupider" is a word because I just looked it up in the dictionary, so for all of you spelling fanatics out there, just back off my shit.

Okay, now I'll start ... As I begin to near the point in life where I can only jokingly consider myself middle-aged, I'll admit there are times when I think I'm a pretty darned smart guy.  After all, I graduated public school and went to college; and while there managed to pass a few English classes, a handful of history courses and even one law class.  The fact that I did miserably in my chosen major of business doesn't matter anymore because my business career ended about 10 years ago and anything I do now is just for the money and not for the stupid notion of "job satisfaction" as some crazy people would have you believe.

I also think I'm smart because I'm still alive, even after that incident at the dog food plant where I mistakenly put my foot in the trash compactor they called "The Pulveriser" and it started to eat me and it was only dumb luck that I was able to pull my foot out of my boot and haul myself out of it's terrible maw. But even then I was smart because I was able to walk around the rest of the day with only one boot on and managed to fashion a shoe out of a cardboard box that nobody noticed except two people who asked me why I was wearing a cardboard box on my foot.

But, as often happens, just when I'm feeling really smart, something comes out of left field and makes me feel really stupid.  This happens a lot when I'm reading or watching television.  Several years ago, I started to see the phrase "Deux ex machina" pop up a lot in book and movie reviews.  My usual reaction when I see something like this is to take two seconds to reason it out, right or wrong, and move on.  In the case of this particular phrase, I just told myself that it was some sort of French/Italian pig latin that meant "two former machines".  And even though this made no real sense, it was more important that I finish the article than to fuck around finding out what it really meant.

Finally, I saw it so many times, that I looked it up.  "Deux ex machina:  A narrative ending in which an improbable event is used to resolve all problematic situations and bring the story to a generally happy ending."


Huh?  What the hell does that mean?  I couldn't wrap my mind around it, and it wasn't until I watched the movie "Dodgeball", that it made any sense.  In the movie, Vince Vaughn's character is going to lose his gym to Ben Stiller's evil character until a crate full of cash labeled Deux ex machina is wheeled out and Vince is able to pay off his mortgage, foiling Ben.

Having solved that nasty little mystery, I went on my merry way until several months later when I was watching the movie "Contact", which by the way would have been a pretty good picture if they had just left the first and last parts out.  Kind of like "Apocalypse Now" would have been pretty good if they had just cut out that last part with the Colonel Kurtz horseshit.

Anyway, in the movie, James Woods is asking Tatum O'Neal's lookalike (I can never remember her name) if she's ever heard of "Occam's Razor".  And again, just wanting to watch the rest of the film and not be bothered, I reasoned that Occam's Razor must be some kind of shaving device made out of a clam shell.  And I was happy ... until I saw the damned term again.

So I looked it up and sure enough, it was some fucking Latin phrase just like Deux ex machina.  Is it any surprise that Latin is a dead language?  I doubt the Latin's even understood it.  No wonder they switched to Spanish.  "Occam's Razor:  The simplest explanation of a theory is usually the one that makes the fewest assumptions".

Huh?  It's been months now, and I still haven't figured this one out.  This reminds me of my freshman year in high school when I mistakenly thought that math was not my enemy until the first day of Algebra class and I realized what the term "brain dead" truly meant.  I ended up transferring out of that and taking "General Math I and II", effectively keeping me from attending Princeton and having to settle for Southwest Missouri State College, where they still wouldn't let me in until I passed the math entrance exam which consisted of counting the number of pyramids on a line.  I aced that baby though.

Anyway, I still don't know what fucking Occam's Razor really means. There's an off-chance that if I watch "Dodgeball" again, there may be visual aid that helps me there also.

And Algebra ... maybe one for Algebra too.

Saturday Night Blues

As an easily irritated person, there's nothing quite as irritating as facing a rainy Saturday night without something decent to watch on television.  Ordinarily, we save this night to watch a new movie that comes in from Netflix on a regular basis.  However, on Thursday night, I discovered that my pick from last week was still laying on a table in the living room where I had placed it after viewing last Saturday night.  Not really wanting to watch "Coroline" for a second time, I threw it in the mail on Friday and resigned myself to being new-movie-less tonight.

We walked past a "Redbox" machine while we were grocery shopping this afternoon, but I wasn't in the mood to take the several minutes it would take to figure out how to use it.  I suppose I miss out on a lot of new experiences this way, but that's just the way it is.

So, I've scoped out a few oldies from my DVD library for tonight and have to figure out which one of these to settle on.  I haven't watched "Collateral" more than once or twice, but I've developed an aversion to Tom Cruise after watching "Valkyrie".  Besides, what's really better than the combination of John Woo in his prime, Nic Cage before he started to make bad role choices and an evil John Travolta?  "Face/Off" it is!

Put the popcorn on the stove Sadie ...