I should start this story by telling any of you who might not know that the only nickname (or set of nicknames, I suppose) that have ever stuck to me center around cats. I am frequently known as Cat, Kitty, Koshka, Neko, and a host of other things that mean, well, cat. And no, I am not some ridiculous hardcore anthro fetishist, I am simply very catlike and have a great fondness for the creatures. This makes for a good deal of humor when there is a cat around or something that references cat behavior, for instance, when discussing the typical roleplaying merit of 'Catlike Reflexes', &c.
Now, on to the story.
A few weeks ago, Walrus and I and some friends were out to dinner. We had all been very hungry, so we ate pretty fast and then were very full. I'm sure you know the feeling: happy food-coma lethargy. Walrus had been eating ribs, and had a good portion left over, so he asked for a box. It is well established fact at this point that I love chewing on bones, and getting the marrow and such out where possible, and rib bones are pretty good for that. So when he got the box, he started putting his finished rib bones in the box as well as the ones that were still intact.
The waiter, seeing this as slightly odd behavior, stopped and asked, "Taking those bones for your dog?"
The Walrus replied, "No, cat, actually."
Friday, June 25, 2010
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Worst Couple Ever
The other night, I happened to wind up on the last subway train home. Just before the busiest stop on my ride, the train stopped, mid-tunnel. This is not hugely unusual, and I was prepared for it, so I just kept reading my book.
Unfortunately for me, the people across from me on this relatively uncrowded train were not so prepared, and were evidently not having a great evening anyways.
They were a hetero couple, a standard looking blonde woman and a slightly metro man, late twenties or early thirties. The woman was holding a bouquet of flowers, mostly lilies, to which I happen to be terribly allergic. Since they sat down, the woman had been whining about what a horrible evening it was, and the man had been getting progressively more terse in his attempts to quiet her. I wasn't listening too closely, but at one point, I heard the woman say, "Fine. If you want to pay for it, open the doors and I will get out here." That's right, in the middle of the tunnel. The man replied, "Will it shut you up?" At this point, I was finally curious enough to look at them again, and was deeply perturbed to see the two of them, miserable expressions and all, snuggled up like the closest of lovers.
I looked up, sneezed, looked down, sneezed, and buried myself in my book until they got off at the next station.
Unfortunately for me, the people across from me on this relatively uncrowded train were not so prepared, and were evidently not having a great evening anyways.
They were a hetero couple, a standard looking blonde woman and a slightly metro man, late twenties or early thirties. The woman was holding a bouquet of flowers, mostly lilies, to which I happen to be terribly allergic. Since they sat down, the woman had been whining about what a horrible evening it was, and the man had been getting progressively more terse in his attempts to quiet her. I wasn't listening too closely, but at one point, I heard the woman say, "Fine. If you want to pay for it, open the doors and I will get out here." That's right, in the middle of the tunnel. The man replied, "Will it shut you up?" At this point, I was finally curious enough to look at them again, and was deeply perturbed to see the two of them, miserable expressions and all, snuggled up like the closest of lovers.
I looked up, sneezed, looked down, sneezed, and buried myself in my book until they got off at the next station.
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Humorous Interlude: Dodging Phones
So, yesterday morning I was walking along the sidewalk not far from our house. Just like a perfectly normal walrus might do. As it happens, there's a section building which is presently under construction/repair/something, and is thus faced with scaffolding, which is built right over the sidewalk in question.
As I proceeded along, I heard a rattling noise, and was then narrowly missed by a falling object. Investigation proved it to be an older-model cell phone, apparently plummeting from the scaffolding.
I thus decided that either:
A. Someone wanted to murder me and had managed to climb up the side of a building but forgotten to bring any rocks OR
B. A construction worker just couldn't cope with the idea of one more bloody wireless bill,
In case it turned out to be A., I moved out from under the scaffolding. Once clear, I turned to look back up, and perhaps confirm either hypothesis. The scaffolding was deserted. This lead to hypothesis C:
C. Verizon will shortly be adding 'wormhole generation' to their monthly phone packages. (And yet, people will keep buying iPhones instead.)
As I proceeded along, I heard a rattling noise, and was then narrowly missed by a falling object. Investigation proved it to be an older-model cell phone, apparently plummeting from the scaffolding.
I thus decided that either:
A. Someone wanted to murder me and had managed to climb up the side of a building but forgotten to bring any rocks OR
B. A construction worker just couldn't cope with the idea of one more bloody wireless bill,
In case it turned out to be A., I moved out from under the scaffolding. Once clear, I turned to look back up, and perhaps confirm either hypothesis. The scaffolding was deserted. This lead to hypothesis C:
C. Verizon will shortly be adding 'wormhole generation' to their monthly phone packages. (And yet, people will keep buying iPhones instead.)
Saturday, June 5, 2010
Mr. Slimeball
It occurs to me that I have not yet taken the time to introduce you to the insanity that was my high school. I foresee that it will be the subject of many stories to come, so let me begin by painting for you a portrait of my first high school principal, Mr. Slimeball.
What I did not know going in to high school, although apparently my parents did, was that the newly appointed Slimeball was a devout follower of Louis Farrakhan. While I couldn't give a toss about his religious views, the fact was that he seemed to despise anyone not black, and this is something of a problem in a school which is 58% Hispanic and 2% white (with a few Asians mixed in), especially when, because of the fact that we were in a ghetto, that 2% are pretty much exclusively in the magnet program. The magnet program, by the way, was maybe half Caucasian, but that other 50% didn't stop us from being seen as exclusively white.
Naturally, there were conflicts from the start between my program and the principal. He would cut our funding, rearrange our teachers, and screw with our records. He put his mistress in a position of power over the magnet program, and she had no love for us either in her crazy little head. Her daughter was caught fucking some boy in a stairwell, and this lady's reaction was to get in a public screaming match with her daughter and chase her across the parking lot, beating her with a shoe. When a teacher should have been fired, Slimeball spent his oily words on keeping her around and making sure the Board, headed by his mama, wouldn't allow her to be removed. He did drive off one of the primary drivers of the program who should have been around for years to come.
It was well known that he would take every opportunity to use the funds the school received for him to spend on teacher workshops or conferences or whatever improvements he could get away with taking to vacation with his mistress. He wasn't always very bright about it, either, since one time the two of them stayed at the same hotel as a bunch of magnet kids on a field trip.
When he finally replaced his mistress as magnet counselor (maybe due to complaints, maybe he tired of her, maybe because his daughter was starting school and he didn't want to put his own daughter in her charge, or maybe his wife found out), the woman he got was even more of a racist nutjob. It all came to a crux when she sent an email, obviously meant only for Slimeball's eyes but mistakenly CCed to several of the magnet parents it was about, calling the magnet parents blue-eyed devils and using the most horrid grammar I've ever encountered (and I am a proofreader!). Incidentally, the people she called blue-eyed devils? Three Jews, a man from Africa, and a woman from China. They considered getting letter jackets.
I am skipping a number of things, but you get the idea of how he treated the magnet program. On to how he treated the Hispanic kids. You remember, the majority of the population of the school? He embezzled nearly all the funding for the ESL program, which in that neighborhood was an absolute necessity. He hired exclusively black underlings and gave them all the idea that because they were black and in power that they were superior. I don't know how many times I saw a black kid get away with something and blame it on a Hispanic kid with no retribution. He treated them with utter contempt, and encouraged it in those around him.
Naturally, the magnet parents opposed him every step of the way. They started by protesting to him, making it known that they saw what was going on. Eventually, they took it to the School Board, one of the largest in the country, and to the press. The biggest newspaper in a very big city ran a story on Slimeball the slimeball. And still, because his mama was on the board, he was never removed. In order to shut us up, the board decided to give the magnet program its own campus. Fine, we agreed, but what about the poor Hispanic kids? Well, what about them. Eventually Slimeball was promoted off the campus and into an administration position as 'punishment'. That's right, promoted.
At my graduation from the newly formed school, a tiny, underfunded affair practically designed to anger anyone with anger left to spend (in a church, presided by a board member who was firmly in Slimeball's pocket), the thing that, to my mind, was the absolute slimiest of all the slimy things I'd seen him do happened. Maybe because it directly involved me. As we waited for the ceremony to start, grumbling at our disgustingly patriotic graduation robes and absurd situation, who should show up but Mr. Slimeball himself. You could have cut the silence with a knife. Up he walks to me, and forcibly takes my hand, and shaking it, says, "Congratulations." And then he tried to chat with me. I washed my hand like an OCD hard case for a week.
What I did not know going in to high school, although apparently my parents did, was that the newly appointed Slimeball was a devout follower of Louis Farrakhan. While I couldn't give a toss about his religious views, the fact was that he seemed to despise anyone not black, and this is something of a problem in a school which is 58% Hispanic and 2% white (with a few Asians mixed in), especially when, because of the fact that we were in a ghetto, that 2% are pretty much exclusively in the magnet program. The magnet program, by the way, was maybe half Caucasian, but that other 50% didn't stop us from being seen as exclusively white.
Naturally, there were conflicts from the start between my program and the principal. He would cut our funding, rearrange our teachers, and screw with our records. He put his mistress in a position of power over the magnet program, and she had no love for us either in her crazy little head. Her daughter was caught fucking some boy in a stairwell, and this lady's reaction was to get in a public screaming match with her daughter and chase her across the parking lot, beating her with a shoe. When a teacher should have been fired, Slimeball spent his oily words on keeping her around and making sure the Board, headed by his mama, wouldn't allow her to be removed. He did drive off one of the primary drivers of the program who should have been around for years to come.
It was well known that he would take every opportunity to use the funds the school received for him to spend on teacher workshops or conferences or whatever improvements he could get away with taking to vacation with his mistress. He wasn't always very bright about it, either, since one time the two of them stayed at the same hotel as a bunch of magnet kids on a field trip.
When he finally replaced his mistress as magnet counselor (maybe due to complaints, maybe he tired of her, maybe because his daughter was starting school and he didn't want to put his own daughter in her charge, or maybe his wife found out), the woman he got was even more of a racist nutjob. It all came to a crux when she sent an email, obviously meant only for Slimeball's eyes but mistakenly CCed to several of the magnet parents it was about, calling the magnet parents blue-eyed devils and using the most horrid grammar I've ever encountered (and I am a proofreader!). Incidentally, the people she called blue-eyed devils? Three Jews, a man from Africa, and a woman from China. They considered getting letter jackets.
I am skipping a number of things, but you get the idea of how he treated the magnet program. On to how he treated the Hispanic kids. You remember, the majority of the population of the school? He embezzled nearly all the funding for the ESL program, which in that neighborhood was an absolute necessity. He hired exclusively black underlings and gave them all the idea that because they were black and in power that they were superior. I don't know how many times I saw a black kid get away with something and blame it on a Hispanic kid with no retribution. He treated them with utter contempt, and encouraged it in those around him.
Naturally, the magnet parents opposed him every step of the way. They started by protesting to him, making it known that they saw what was going on. Eventually, they took it to the School Board, one of the largest in the country, and to the press. The biggest newspaper in a very big city ran a story on Slimeball the slimeball. And still, because his mama was on the board, he was never removed. In order to shut us up, the board decided to give the magnet program its own campus. Fine, we agreed, but what about the poor Hispanic kids? Well, what about them. Eventually Slimeball was promoted off the campus and into an administration position as 'punishment'. That's right, promoted.
At my graduation from the newly formed school, a tiny, underfunded affair practically designed to anger anyone with anger left to spend (in a church, presided by a board member who was firmly in Slimeball's pocket), the thing that, to my mind, was the absolute slimiest of all the slimy things I'd seen him do happened. Maybe because it directly involved me. As we waited for the ceremony to start, grumbling at our disgustingly patriotic graduation robes and absurd situation, who should show up but Mr. Slimeball himself. You could have cut the silence with a knife. Up he walks to me, and forcibly takes my hand, and shaking it, says, "Congratulations." And then he tried to chat with me. I washed my hand like an OCD hard case for a week.
Friday, June 4, 2010
Taking the Meter
Normally, I'm rather fond of my current gas/electricity company. They are much less of a hassle than any I've dealt with before, in general, not least because they make online payment exceedingly simple. But occasionally they pull out all the idiot-stops.
Several months ago, I received a letter saying that our gas meter was overdue to be inspected or changed or whatever it is they actually do. So I called to make an appointment, figuring that they don't really need me to be around because gas meters go on the outside of the house anyway, but I may as well schedule it for when I'm here in case something is wrong. I work out a time with them, and they say they'll be here within a four hour window. Fine.
About two days before they are supposed to come, they call to reschedule. Something has come up and the earliest they can reschedule the meter checking to is nearly a month later. That's silly, but fine; I can handle the day they want to come, although I may have to get my housemate to be in charge of idiot control.
About a week later, though, they call back AGAIN. They have to reschedule again, for some unspecified reason, and their date is yet another month later (a few days ago now). Fine, fine, as long as it's after I'm back from vacation, you silly whatsis.
Finally, the date they are supposed to show up arrives. I am faced with a mild conundrum; I have a four hour window in which to expect them, and I haven't yet showered. So I figure, okay, I'll just take a quick shower and by the time I get out, either they will have called and I can call them back, or they won't be here yet. Besides, they're supposed to call fifteen minutes before they get here, so unless they call the second I get in, I won't miss them.
Predictably, however, the second I step out of the shower, the doorbell rings. Hello, Mr. Gas Meterman. I step out to say hello and ask if there is anything he needs from me, which as far as I know there shouldn't be. Instead, I am cut off by a rant about how important it is that I answer the phone, and what if he had rung the wrong doorbell and gotten someone who hadn't taken their meds today and came out shooting, because that happened once you know.
After a few seconds of staring at him in annoyance and mild disbelief, I interrupt the flow of vaguely accented words to apologize briefly and ask if there is anything he needs from me.
Yes, he says, he needs to get into the basement. Wait, what? No one said anything about that. So I ask, isn't the meter outside? Well, apparently he needs to get to some 'appliances', mainly the furnace, to make sure that everything is relit after he messes with it. Well, I say, I didn't know that, and I can't get into the basement because that's my landlord's apartment. If you'll just wait a moment, I'll go get my phone so I can call him.
Only I don't get to say all of that, because as soon as I say I can't let him in, he goes on another tirade about how I should have made arrangements for this and where is my landlord can he talk to him and... At this point, I cut him off midsentence, because I couldn't figure out what else to do. If you will excuse me for just a moment, I said, I will go call my landlord and find out about this. Please wait here. He didn't shut up long enough for me to leave, so I left him standing there talking to the door while I called my landlord.
Here comes the interesting part, because as soon as I told my landlord what was going on, he says: What's the guy's name? Unsure how it matters, I find out and tell him. He goes, let me talk to him.
Turns out, my landlord knows the guy, and well enough to be able to shut him up and get something useful out of him. When I get the phone back, the meter guy goes and works on the outside of the house, like I thought he would, and I am assured that everything else is normal and needs no interference.
What a lot of bother over nothing!
Several months ago, I received a letter saying that our gas meter was overdue to be inspected or changed or whatever it is they actually do. So I called to make an appointment, figuring that they don't really need me to be around because gas meters go on the outside of the house anyway, but I may as well schedule it for when I'm here in case something is wrong. I work out a time with them, and they say they'll be here within a four hour window. Fine.
About two days before they are supposed to come, they call to reschedule. Something has come up and the earliest they can reschedule the meter checking to is nearly a month later. That's silly, but fine; I can handle the day they want to come, although I may have to get my housemate to be in charge of idiot control.
About a week later, though, they call back AGAIN. They have to reschedule again, for some unspecified reason, and their date is yet another month later (a few days ago now). Fine, fine, as long as it's after I'm back from vacation, you silly whatsis.
Finally, the date they are supposed to show up arrives. I am faced with a mild conundrum; I have a four hour window in which to expect them, and I haven't yet showered. So I figure, okay, I'll just take a quick shower and by the time I get out, either they will have called and I can call them back, or they won't be here yet. Besides, they're supposed to call fifteen minutes before they get here, so unless they call the second I get in, I won't miss them.
Predictably, however, the second I step out of the shower, the doorbell rings. Hello, Mr. Gas Meterman. I step out to say hello and ask if there is anything he needs from me, which as far as I know there shouldn't be. Instead, I am cut off by a rant about how important it is that I answer the phone, and what if he had rung the wrong doorbell and gotten someone who hadn't taken their meds today and came out shooting, because that happened once you know.
After a few seconds of staring at him in annoyance and mild disbelief, I interrupt the flow of vaguely accented words to apologize briefly and ask if there is anything he needs from me.
Yes, he says, he needs to get into the basement. Wait, what? No one said anything about that. So I ask, isn't the meter outside? Well, apparently he needs to get to some 'appliances', mainly the furnace, to make sure that everything is relit after he messes with it. Well, I say, I didn't know that, and I can't get into the basement because that's my landlord's apartment. If you'll just wait a moment, I'll go get my phone so I can call him.
Only I don't get to say all of that, because as soon as I say I can't let him in, he goes on another tirade about how I should have made arrangements for this and where is my landlord can he talk to him and... At this point, I cut him off midsentence, because I couldn't figure out what else to do. If you will excuse me for just a moment, I said, I will go call my landlord and find out about this. Please wait here. He didn't shut up long enough for me to leave, so I left him standing there talking to the door while I called my landlord.
Here comes the interesting part, because as soon as I told my landlord what was going on, he says: What's the guy's name? Unsure how it matters, I find out and tell him. He goes, let me talk to him.
Turns out, my landlord knows the guy, and well enough to be able to shut him up and get something useful out of him. When I get the phone back, the meter guy goes and works on the outside of the house, like I thought he would, and I am assured that everything else is normal and needs no interference.
What a lot of bother over nothing!
Thursday, June 3, 2010
AirTran
I recently took a vacation to visit my friend Wolf down in parts far enough from here that driving would have been more than flying. Upon perusing the cost of tickets, I determined that AirTran was the cheapest and the most direct. I had no experience with AirTran, despite having travelled at least once every couple of months for most of my life, but reviews were decent, so I (poor, foolish me) went ahead and booked them.
Dear readers (if indeed any of you are still reading after my absurdly long hiatus), please do yourself a favor and do not use AirTran unless it is the only option. The customer service bucket? They took it.
Due to circumstances which could be another entry here entirely, I was five minutes late for my 7:30 a.m. flight home. I assumed that I would be put on another flight and perhaps made to spend slightly more money, but that I would still be able to get home relatively soon. That was, while not making me any happier, fine.
What actually happened was this. When I got in the line to the check-in counter to go deal with this issue, I tried to ask the woman directing the line about it. Before I could do more than say that I had missed my flight, she snapped at me rudely and said that I'd have to go on standby. She didn't even tell me whether or not I was in the right line, which was all I wanted to know from her.
Then I got to the woman behind the counter and began to ask her. At the same point in my question, she interrupted me to tell me the same thing and peremptorily asked for my ID. She looked at me as at a small child who had misbehaved or a dog which had shat in her best shoes and told me to go to gate FarAway39 and wait to be told what to do.
Annoyed, but glad to know where to go, I left. When I got to the gate, I went up to the counter to see if there was anything else I should be doing. I was informed off-handedly that I was number five on the list of standbys and that the flight was oversold, so not to bother waiting. The next flight would be four hours later at the next gate over.
At the next gate, they told me that I was number 12 on a standby list of nearly 30. Having now been at this airport for two hours past when I was supposed to arrive home and having been treated horribly thus far, I persisted in asking what else they could do to get me home. At length, they asked if I had been confirmed on any flight. No, I said, what does that mean and why hasn't it been done already? It meant that they should have, at the check-in counter, confirmed me on a seat for the first open flight after mine when they put me on standby, and if they had, I'd have had a seat on the 2:00 flight. By the time I found this out, however, the only seat they could get me was for the 9:00 flight, the last one of the day. Fuming, I waited as they called perhaps five standbys on to that flight and sent me back to the previous gate for the next flight, going out at 3:00.
Back at the first gate, I went up again and explained a little less patiently my situation. They told me that I was now 15 on a list of 40 standbys, and that there was nothing they could do about it. Predictably, this flight, too, went by without me, and I was sent to yet another gate to wait for the 4:30 flight.
At this gate, at last, someone seemed to give a shit. They seemed shocked at how I'd been treated thus far, and not only moved me up to number 1 on the standby list, but then figured out that they could confirm me a seat on their flight. At last, I would go home!
And then the flight was delayed by weather. Hah.
But I think the best part is that after all of that, AirTran sent me a survey. Well, I guess they won't like that data!
Dear readers (if indeed any of you are still reading after my absurdly long hiatus), please do yourself a favor and do not use AirTran unless it is the only option. The customer service bucket? They took it.
Due to circumstances which could be another entry here entirely, I was five minutes late for my 7:30 a.m. flight home. I assumed that I would be put on another flight and perhaps made to spend slightly more money, but that I would still be able to get home relatively soon. That was, while not making me any happier, fine.
What actually happened was this. When I got in the line to the check-in counter to go deal with this issue, I tried to ask the woman directing the line about it. Before I could do more than say that I had missed my flight, she snapped at me rudely and said that I'd have to go on standby. She didn't even tell me whether or not I was in the right line, which was all I wanted to know from her.
Then I got to the woman behind the counter and began to ask her. At the same point in my question, she interrupted me to tell me the same thing and peremptorily asked for my ID. She looked at me as at a small child who had misbehaved or a dog which had shat in her best shoes and told me to go to gate FarAway39 and wait to be told what to do.
Annoyed, but glad to know where to go, I left. When I got to the gate, I went up to the counter to see if there was anything else I should be doing. I was informed off-handedly that I was number five on the list of standbys and that the flight was oversold, so not to bother waiting. The next flight would be four hours later at the next gate over.
At the next gate, they told me that I was number 12 on a standby list of nearly 30. Having now been at this airport for two hours past when I was supposed to arrive home and having been treated horribly thus far, I persisted in asking what else they could do to get me home. At length, they asked if I had been confirmed on any flight. No, I said, what does that mean and why hasn't it been done already? It meant that they should have, at the check-in counter, confirmed me on a seat for the first open flight after mine when they put me on standby, and if they had, I'd have had a seat on the 2:00 flight. By the time I found this out, however, the only seat they could get me was for the 9:00 flight, the last one of the day. Fuming, I waited as they called perhaps five standbys on to that flight and sent me back to the previous gate for the next flight, going out at 3:00.
Back at the first gate, I went up again and explained a little less patiently my situation. They told me that I was now 15 on a list of 40 standbys, and that there was nothing they could do about it. Predictably, this flight, too, went by without me, and I was sent to yet another gate to wait for the 4:30 flight.
At this gate, at last, someone seemed to give a shit. They seemed shocked at how I'd been treated thus far, and not only moved me up to number 1 on the standby list, but then figured out that they could confirm me a seat on their flight. At last, I would go home!
And then the flight was delayed by weather. Hah.
But I think the best part is that after all of that, AirTran sent me a survey. Well, I guess they won't like that data!
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