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Monday, February 8th, 2010
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6:04 pm - Dealing with the banks/a Zooey moment
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So I did my electronic check with CitiMortgage, and then went to Velocity to put a stop payment on the old check. The woman who helped me was VERY sympathetic to what was happening. Here's what happened:
1) She said she has seen over the last few days several customers who all had the same problem as me - "lost" checks on overdue accounts. She put the word "lost" in air quotes. She does not think this is an accident, that the checks are lost but she did not come out and say it.
2) She reduced the fee to stop payment from $35 to $10 because she thinks there was no error on my end and that the check was indeed mishandled by the payee.
3) She also recommended that I put an electronic stop payment on my account too because evidently, on some of those "lost" checks, CitiMortgage has gone ahead and run them through banks as electronic payments instead of presenting the checks. Not sure how this is done - she did not explain, but she did say it happened, that just stopping the actual check might not be enough to keep them from seriously fucking up my bank account. So she did an electronic stop payment on the exact amount from CitiMortgage so if they ever try to get the amount from my bank electronically, it will be denied. (This is no problem to me since by the time we did the electronic check today, Citimortgage had tacked on interest on penalties that they would not remove so the amounts are different and the amount is one I will unlikely ever encounter again, since I was catching my account up - it is not the amount I pay monthly for my mortgage). And she did not charge me for the electronic stop payment. That's how disgusted she was on my behalf.
Thank you for at least one banker having an ounce of genuine sympathy and acting in a manner that shows that they respect my money, my time and my dignity.
Now for the Zooey moment:
A father and his two children were standing in line as I was waiting for the personal banker to handle my stop payment. One little boy clung to his dad while the other child wandered a bit, dancing to the music on the overhead. Clad in jeans, a pale blue, long-sleeve t-shirt, red-glitter mary-janes and a pink tutu, the kid danced and danced. The song "Head Over Heels" by Tears for Fears came on and the kid noticed I and several others were watching, and having an audience, danced for us, happy as a clam.
I assumed, because of the mary-janes and the tutu that it was a little girl with a very boyish haircut. Then the dad got finished with the teller and said, "Hey, it's time to go." The child did not hear. Dad said louder, "Hey, Ethan! C'mon guy, it's time to go." And the little boy Ethan took off running, each boy took one of Dad's hands and they walked out of the bank. What an awesome Dad to let his son dress how he wanted out in public. What an awesome little boy. I suspect all of us get that joi de vivre and internal knowledge of how to be blissfully happy kicked out of us at some point in life, but I pray it happens to Ethan later than most.
Zooey still sums up life for me: "God damn it," he said, "there are nice things in the world--and I mean nice things. We're all such morons to get so sidetracked."
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3:22 pm - Drive-bys
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I haven't had to ban_set anyone in three years. Hurrah to ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) nortex70 for breaking that streak. Y'all, if you wanna argue, that's awesome. I get drive-bys all the time when I leave entries open, single or double comments from someone I don't know. I like that. It's why I have this journal and leave it open sometimes. But topicality and good faith are necessary. When drive-bys veer off into questioning the lives of long-time online friends sans introduction and sans any fucking need to know, fuck you and computer you used to comment.
No comments because none are necessary on this one.
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| Sunday, February 7th, 2010
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10:57 pm - Not watching Family Guy anymore
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I never cottoned to the show early on but started watching a bit because Stewie and Brian are funny.
Then I started getting uneasy and I was unsure why. Last week it hit me. I can't endure any more of the rape references and pointless violence against women, especially Meg, the teenage daughter. I can take a joke, when it's funny. As a descendant of the Irish, I had no problem with the Irish jokes because they were sort of funny. But it's not really funny anymore. Are the writers so bereft of ideas that they have to include at least one rape joke/excruciating act of violence in every episode? Not talking about all the Peter "Men are great, Lois go cook dinner" schtick. Talking about outright violence and endless rape references.
The show makes fun of everyone, lol, so no one can get sick of its shit, right? I know Peter is a stupid moron and that's part of the joke. I know, I know, satire, I know, it's just a joke, blah, blah, mirrors the violence in America, yadda, yadda, equal opportunity offenders so take a joke you dumb feminist, etc.
But can someone tell me what the point is behind all the rapes and rape jokes? How was Peter getting raped by a bull funny? Will someone explain why Quagmire having Asian women locked in his trunk and possessing a rape machine is humorous? Can anyone explain why seeing Meg get set on fire, hogtied and branded, shot, physically beaten, endangered, insulted or humiliated every episode is funny?
Maybe that's the problem. None of it is funny anymore. All of it is pointless. There is no satire in Peter getting raped by a bull. Quagmire, a registered sex offender, is no longer the take-off on the eccentric next-door neighbor in so many 70s sit coms. He's just creepy and yucky. There is no social relevance in any of it, nothing rebellious, nothing interesting, and certainly nothing subversive, all of which you can sort of overlook if it at least deigned to be funny.
I think the end for me came when Peter killed Quagmire's cat - fucking butchers it with blood everywhere - and it was supposed to be funny. But I kept watching. No mas for me. This is not absurdist or politically incorrect humor. It's garbage that relies on non sequitur violence to fill in the painfully unfunny gaps. This shit is now as about as funny as Sarah Silverman, who, as we all know, is no Margaret Cho (see, The Simpsons is still funny, dammit!).
ETA: I think I can better distill why I fucking hate it. Given the outre subject matter I wallow in when I read, nothing offends me but stupidity. You can be offensive if you are intelligent about it. You can be politically incorrect if you have a point. You can be both if you are funny. Family Guy is offensive, unintelligent, politically incorrect, pointless and unfunny.
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| Saturday, February 6th, 2010
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3:14 pm - I was not trying to be manipulative but whatever
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I mailed a check for the remaining balance on our overdue mortgage on 1/27. The payment was due on 2/1 but we did not get the statement until 1/27, we've been locked out of the systems that permit us to get our balances any other way, but I wrote and mailed the check on the day the statement arrived. We were finally caught up. It felt good.
Until days passed and they have no record of any check. It takes 3-4 days ordinarily. And late fees and penalty interest continue to accrue apace at a seriously shocking rate. Of course they tell us to wait to see if the check will arrive and each day I wait I owe more and more. By the 15th, a $75 penalty will also be added.
Today we got a certified letter explaining what pieces of shit we are, we must pay, we are in default, etc.
I called and spoke to the reps again, third time this week. Earlier this week when they refused to agree to get our statements to us earlier, I set up payment via my online bill pay. Problem solved, right? Except there are three different addresses I need to mail payments to and no one will tell me which one is the correct one to use. It varies from payment to payment, some to Nevada, some to Iowa. At the time I was baffled but now I know why - if you can't pay using CitiMortgage's online system, if you are economic scum like we are and no longer qualify to get statements on time, they vary the payment address to make it hard to set up third-party online bill pay and to force you into using their phone bill pay that they charge you $20.00 to use. I could mail checks early if I had any idea where to send them each time.
So in talking to CitiMortgage again, to a stammering but stern man named Raymond, I lost it. As in I started to cry. Hard. I told him that all we want to do is pay and I don't know why they are doing this to us. I have the money. I didn't for so long but I do now, and they won't take it, they make it impossible for me to pay on time, and they are threatening our very home. Sobbing, I asked him outright why CitiMortgage was doing this to us when all we want to do is give them their goddamned money.
I don't make it a habit to show weakness to creditors. They will pounce on weakness like sharks on a man bleeding in the water and you are dead, dead, dead if they know you are beaten down. But I had forgotten that to some men, the sound of a woman crying is something completely unendurable and they will do anything to make the woman stop. I don't plan to become that woman, the one who weeps when she gets a ticket or cries on a dime, but my genuine frustration and fear that they will cost me my home if they don't fucking act like a bank, instead of angry schoolkids on a playground tormenting the poor kid, got to him.
So this is what Raymond is doing for me: Monday I call back. If there is no sign that the check is there, I put a stop payment on it and he makes a note of it. Of course they will try to cash it anyway and charge me a bad check fee but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it. Once my stop payment is in effect, I call back and pay using their phone check system and he will waive the $20.00. Because they did not get the check, the amount we owe is now $14.00 higher due to interest on the penalties and will be closer to $26 by Monday end of business, so he is looking into seeing if he can waive that as well.
Now that I know CitiMortgage has a two day pay on Velocity's online billing, I can enter the address on the statement into the system each time we get a statement with a new billing address. I'll likely have five different entries for CitiMortgage but once it's entered, who cares? Unless they start mailing our monthly statements over 30 days late, this won't happen again, I hope.
I no more believe the check got lost in the mail than I believe in God, Allah or forest pixies. I used to subscribe to the theory of Hanlon's Razor but no more with CitiMortgage. This is not incompetence. It is malice. Or, perhaps, an organized attempt to make sure that someone who was in severe financial danger continues to remain on the edge because they make so much more money this way.
Just. Take. My. Money. You. Mother. Fuckers. Just take it.
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| Friday, February 5th, 2010
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2:11 pm - New Oddbooks up - Don't let the title rile you!
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Latest oddbooks review is of Supervert's Necrophilia Variations. You can read it here.
Review snippet: "You pick up a book that is called Necrophilia Variations, and it is safe to assume all the stories are going to be about having sex with the dead. But Necrophilia Variations, while it does include tales of sex with dead people, is more a collection of stories of people dealing with the confluence between sex and death. The notion of le petit mort is an idea that is not new, yet the idea that the sex impulse is closely linked to death is hard for many to swallow. Though visionaries and poets, like Baudelaire, Rimbaud and Mirbeau, have tread this ground before, it is refreshing to see these sorts of ideas written by a modern for moderns. Heartbreaking, sickening, humorous – this short story collection pushes boundaries, and does not just push them for the sake of pushing, as I felt was the case when I read Bataille’s Story of the Eye (a book I am willing now to say I simply did not get and likely never will)."
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(2 comments | comment on this)
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| Thursday, February 4th, 2010
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10:24 pm - Again, what a difference a year makes
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This is what I was doing on this date last year.
Today, I got the results back on my blood work. Aside from some slightly elevated cholesterol and triglycerides, a situation that will be more than rectified if I get 30 minutes of cardio three times a week, I am in perfect health.
Kidney function good.
Liver function good.
Sugars good.
No sign of inflammation in my blood. That scarred pic I am using was the result of a biopsy a few years ago that identified a low-level autoimmune skin disease I had. I have since had massive white blood cell counts and there was even a lupus scare. None of that is present at the moment.
Wow. I can barely bring myself to hope that the Universe has finally said, "Hey, cut this one a break!" but for the moment, it seems like that is so.
Also, my ankle almost never hurts. And when it does, I have the coolest cane on the block.
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7:30 pm - Come for the perversion, stay for the drama
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My family has found my Facebook, which is cool with me since I actually sent friend invites to a couple of them.
Half the people on my Facebook are born again Christians and refer to things like Prayer Warriors and laying on of hands.
My upcoming Oddbooks review is Necrophilia Variations by Supervert.
To pimp on Facebook or not to pimp on Facebook?
Of course I'm gonna pimp. I just wonder how some of them will react. With love, I hope. With love.
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| Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010
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5:24 pm - GAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
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| Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010
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3:58 pm - Musical heebie jeebies
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| Monday, February 1st, 2010
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5:31 pm - Last book review pimp of the day, I swear
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New I Read Everything review is up. Mark Coggins' Candy from Strangers. You can read my review here.
Review snippet: "This book is a bag of potato chips. It really offers nothing new, but you as you eat, you don’t really think, “My god, I am eating potato chips for the thousandth time in my life. I really need to get some of those wasabi rice crackers and mix it up a little.” For snack food is snack food and regardless of the form it takes, you enjoy it and sort of forget about it until the next time you need a snack. This is no slam of this book, calling it snack food. I would never turn up my nose at a competent mystery, and this is a competent mystery."
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4:54 pm - GAAAAAAHHHHHH!
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There was a mess up today when I went in for bloodwork. Probably my fault but that part doesn't matter.
What does matter is that I had to sit for about 45 minutes in the section where kids wait for doctors because the lab is on that side. About 20 coughing, sneezing, horking, snotting, blarghing children had a chance to spread their germs all over me.
I feel something bad coming on. I took some Airborne but I fear the worst. I've been sneezing like a demon because my body is clearly trying to expel some invader. My throat already feels scratchy, there is pressure behind my eyes and I feel a little achy.
I pray to dog this is me being a psychosomatic head case because if I get the flu again, Henry may roll me up in a carpet and dump me in Lake Travis. Not to kill me, you understand. Just to make sure he doesn't get it, too.
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(2 comments | comment on this)
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4:10 pm - New Oddbooks - Bizarro with calico cats
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New oddbooks review is up. I reviewed Carlton Mellick III's Sea of the Patchwork Cats. You can read my review here.
Review snippet: "See, this is why I talk about the bizarros so much. Because in the midst of so much oddness, so much bizarro-ness, most of the novels present an intense look at the human condition. The purpose of these books may be to entertain rather than provoke thought or contemplation, but many of these writers do both far better than mainstream novelists who set out with those goals in mind. That there is no internal, at times interminable, dialogue wherein the narrator over-analyzes his failures makes it all the more real. You see it. The immediacy of his failure to act is visceral and you know the agony is there without it needing to be spelled out for you. You feel it with every drink the narrator takes after he flees the hospital district. The best part of bizarros is that of all the genres, this is the one where you will consistently find writers who genuinely know how to show and not tell."
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3:47 am - "We turn the dirt, our palms cupped like shovels..."
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| Sunday, January 31st, 2010
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4:55 pm - Things I need to do
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1) Finish the last of the garage clean up so our gym is fully accessible and we can work out in a place that does not have any ick factor.
2) Write a letter to Hodgson Mill and let them know how utterly fucking awesome it was to open a bag of their very expensive wheat flour I bought last week only to find it had moths and a fungal infestation so bad the inside of the bag looked like those spider webs you stretch out over bushes for Halloween. I actually screamed when I saw it. Henry was so disgusted he took it outside before I could photograph the horror because MOTHS OMG MOTHS IN MY KITCHEN. But honestly. What the hell? Looks like I will be purchasing all my flours bulk now and freezing them before I store them because, evidently, give bagged wheat flour a week and it will turn into a Lovecraftian horror.
3) Finish baking the now white bread recipe I began earlier and make soup, my own bastardized version of pasta fagioli that Henry seems to like.
4) Proof latest review, decide whether or not to review a mystery that was largely meh because I likely have less than 500 words to say about it and my hallmark, as we all know, is utter verbosity. Also wonder if I should review Cherie Priest's Boneshaker, which may have been one of the worst books I have read in recent memory. We all know I am not so much into the whole steampunk thing. But that doesn't mean I can't spot plot issues, anarchronisms, and flat out sloppy writing. I like Priest, and wonder if it's a good idea to openly hate a book when you like the author.
5) 9,798 loads of laundry. Approximately.
6) Start fasting at midnight so I can get bloodwork done. SInce I generally do not go to sleep until around 6:00, this will be fun.
7) Upload all my cemetery and creepy Texas spots to Flickr and organize all the shots I currently have. I got a message from a woman who saw the Slave Cemetery pic from Sam Bass and wanted to know which pics were from that section. I am terrible at labeling and tagging and need to get better at it.
8) Scope out a day to go to the Lutheran church and cemetery on Dessau and start photographing again. The church is a Texas landmark and the cemetery is a dour, Germanic resting place that needs to be photographed when the weather is cold.
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| Thursday, January 28th, 2010
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11:08 pm - January books and a plea for your input
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These are the books I read in January:
The Postcard Killer: The True Story of J. Frank Hickey by Vance McLaughlin, PhD
Sex Dungeon for Sale! by Patrick Wensink
Dandy in the Underworld by Sebastian Horsley
Sea of the Patchwork Cats by Carlton Mellick, III*
The Redneck Manifesto by Jim Goad*
Pearl by Mary Gordon
Last Night at the Lobster by Stewart O’Nan
Necrophilia Variations by Supervert
Piecemeal June by Jordan Krall
*indicates a book I reread
Even though the month isn't technically over, I'm calling this list now. I just started The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and know I won't have it finished by the end of the month.
So tell me Internets, what is the strangest/oddest/most disgusting/most disturbing/weird book you have ever read. Also, tell me a book, a regular book though it can have any elements of the above, that you feel I must read before I die. (And just for the record, often when I ask the first question, or tell anyone I review odd books, the first thing they mention is Geek Love by Katherine Dunn. Way a head of you on that one, though it has been so many years since I read it I will need to reread it to be able to discuss it intelligently. So I'm on that one.)
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7:45 pm - My prolific nature: Stand in awe of it!
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New Odd Books review up. I reviewed Sebastian Horsley's A Dandy in the Underworld. This one is an extra special review because not only do I get to express intense distaste for a terrible, terrible memoir written by a terrible, terrible man, but I get to incorporate a Kids in the Hall YouTube clip into the review. You can read it here.
Review snippet: "Hell, I take back what I said above. Don’t save yourself the time. I say read it. Read this book. About page 75, you’ll grow tired, but dancing monkeys need money, too. And when you read it, wear jeans. And sneakers. If you are a woman, no make-up. If you are a man, squirt cheez whiz from a can straight into your mouth with every page turn. Do the cheez whiz part if you are a woman too. Then, when you are finished, take a picture of yourself naked and send it to him as a thanks for all his hard work in the field of the arts. Realize that no matter how fat, ugly, and casually dressed you may be, by sucking down that cheez whiz and photographing your dimpled ass, you have still contributed more to the art of the Western world than Horsley. And aren’t smug, unearned delusions of grandeur the best revenge? Seb would agree, I think."
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3:38 pm - Goodbye, Mr. Salinger.
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I hate to say that your death will benefit me, but I know you have a shed filled with the life of the Glass family, pages you never released due to your reclusivity and overall assholishness. I hope this doesn't sound too harsh, for I am a borderline recluse and have a terrible fondness for assholes.
You gave me one of my favorite characters in modern literature, Zooey Glass, and one of my favorite passages, one that comes to mind every time I see unfettered human beauty and joy:
At first piecemeal, then point-blank, he let his attention be drawn to a little scene that was being acted out sublimely, unhampered by writers and directors and producers, five stories below the window and across the street. A fair-sized maple tree stood in front of the girls' private school--one of four or five trees on that fortunate side of the street--and at the moment a child of seven or eight, female, was hiding behind it. She was wearing a navy-blue reefer and a tam that was very nearly the same shade of red as the blanket on the bed in van Gogh's room at Aries. Her tam did, in fact, from Zooey's vantage point, appear not unlike a dab of paint. Some fifteen feet away from the child, her dog--a young dachshund, wearing a green leather collar and leash--was sniffing to find her, scurrying in frantic circles, his leash dragging behind him. The anguish of separation was scarcely bearable for him, and when at last he picked up his mistress's scent, it wasn't a second too soon. The joy of reunion, for both, was immense. The dachshund gave a little yelp, then cringed forward, shimmying with ecstasy, till his mistress, shouting something at him, stepped hurriedly over the wire guard surrounding the tree and picked him up. She said a number of words of praise to him, in the private argot of the game, then put him down and picked up his leash, and the two walked gaily west, toward Fifth Avenue and the Park and out of Zooey's sight. Zooey reflexively put his hand on a cross-piece between panes of glass, as if he had a mind to raise the window and lean out of it to watch the two disappear. It was his cigar hand, however, and he hesitated a second too long. He dragged on his cigar. "God damn it," he said, "there are nice things in the world--and I mean nice things. We're all such morons to get so sidetracked.
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| Wednesday, January 27th, 2010
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11:28 pm - New Everything Review up - a book where postmodern vampirism sometimes fails
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Over at Everything, I reviewed A Whisper in the Blood: A Collection of Modern Vampire Tales, edited by Ellen Datlow. You can read it here.
A review snippet: "This is a hard one because overall most of these stories were entertaining and well-written. Yet many missed the point entirely or I am being too strict in what I consider a modern vampire story. I tend to think it is the former. Many of the stories really pushed the boundary of what it means to be a modern vampire story and not in a good way. In a “this really has nothing to do with vampires in any way, shape or form unless one redefines the notion of vampire to have nothing to do with the concept of a vampire in a context in which vampires are recognizable” sort of way. Yeah. Seriously, that mangled sentence is the mental gymnastics one must go through to find vampires in some of these stories."
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10:52 pm - The electronic arguing machine
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This is something you need to know about me: If I am arguing with you, I am probably being silly or engaging in semi-Neoist behavior because I am bored and in a mood. This seldom happens because I am almost never bored or in a mood at the same time.
The problem with the Internet is that it is so hard to have an earnest conversation with someone because it all becomes a game of one-ups-manship so fast. Someone says something, I respond and ask questions, original someone thinks he or she is being attacked and begins an attack and I just stop because I don't need to win and I don't have that kind of time.
As of this moment, all of the people who linked to my admittedly divisive review on Jim Goad's The Redneck Manifesto, have had people give very interesting responses, some of which disagree with me (though a few times it turns out people were agreeing with me and it was all a matter of word usage). The responses are well-thought out and some make me wonder why they reached certain conclusions because it is very likely we may be talking at cross purposes or I expressed myself shittily. I correct it when I express myself shittily so I like to know.
But I am often so tense in asking follow-up questions that I do everything but offer oral sex in order to make it clear I am not attacking an opposing point of view. I just want to know. I'm pretty smart but there are a lot of pretty smart people out there, and I want their opinions, dammit!
No one has been mean or unkind or opinionated in a nasty way (because we are all opinionated), but I am a little scared when I ask questions. Gah! I hate that. I hate that Internet discourse has brought me to the point that I just anticipate people thinking I am an argumentative bitch when I really just want to clear up my opinion and seek clarification and opposing ideas. And a big fuck you to everyone who has made the Internet the number one place to start a fight in ten words or ten seconds or less.
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| Tuesday, January 26th, 2010
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3:59 pm - Inner soundtrack
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