drfreex.com

Yes, I should be working on my Impossible Task for This Week. Instead, I find myself moved to chronicle yet more of the Parade of Lunkheads that seek to intrude into my life on an ongoing basis.

Here is the latest episode: as you know, I recently directed a musical version version of Judy Blume’s Superfudge. You know because I kvetched about the concern over the word “stupid” earlier. Well, another “problem” with the source material is the fact that it addresses the existance of Santa Claus – it is, after all, aimed at an older demographic than the Dr. Seuss canon. But. Begged to find a solution that did not include scissoring out the middle of the show (and my favorite musical number), here is what I came up with:

Earlier (during that number), the sixth grader Peter, in retaliation for being made to write letters to Santa for all family members (in order to appease his younger brother Fudge), has asked Santa for an iPod. Soon after this number, Peter, in Greek Chorus mode, tells the audience that everybody got what they wanted, except for the iPod. Fudge enters and they talk about their presents (Fudge rather sweetly saying he would have gotten the iPod, but he doesn’t have that much money)(who does?)… and Fudge admits he hasn’t believed in Santa in quite some time. He just goes through the motions for his parents.

My subversive solution for this: While Peter and Fudge have their conversation in one corner of the stage, behind them, in the opposite corner, Santa enters the family living room and places an iPod box with an enormous bow on the table… then, hearing that the kids don’t believe in him, he snatches the box back up and leaves in a huff.

For the most part, the audiences have loved it. But… and you could have predicted it… there have, thus far, been two mothers in the lobby after the show, screaming at the staff that the theater has irreparably damaged their children for life. One even returned later for a second bout of screaming, and had to be told to leave or be removed from the premises.

It’s like working retail, except for the outside chance at work benefits.

April 26, 2005
Categories: Seething Impotent Rage . . Author: drfreex . Comments: 5 Comments

Superfudge opens today, another piece of baggage I can wrap in brown paper and stow away in a corner where it won’t clutter my life quite as much. Of course, it would not go away without incident.

In the final days of rehearsal – when I am struggling with being unholy sick of the show and trying to figure out what’s wrong with various scenes, how it can be fixed, and the cast is trying to deal with multiple (far too fast) costume changes and a high-concept set – I get a note from the director of the theatre:

“Did I hear Andrew say something was stupid?”

“If it’s in the script, yeah, he said it.”

“We can’t do that. I get complaints.”

“Now let me get this straight. You chose this script over a year ago. Longer, since it was a year ago that you were begging me to direct it. It’s been in rehearsal for over a month. And just now, at the eleventh hour, you want a script change??!!”

The problem is that I’m never that articulate when I’m angry. And angry I was, since I’ve been dealing with similar problems in the show since day one. Judy Blume seemingly made the error of writing the book from the viewpoint of a sixth grader, and then addressing things like how babies are made and the existence of Santa Claus. The problem wasn’t really with Ms. Blume’s prose, which is quite popular with its target audience, or the stage adaptation of it – the problem was I was spending too much time dealing with Other People’s Problems with the material.

And this is a very, very old pet peeve of mine, which I’ve been dealing with for over a decade now: the demonization of the word stupid. It is a perfectly good word, but having apparently solved all other problems, the prevailing standard in educational circles is that it is a bad word, and is, in fact, referred to as “the S word”. Which was, I had thought, a four-letter word signifying fecal matter. Shows what I know.

I am told that the word is outlawed so that children cannot use it against other children. I suppose this can be viewed as a good thing, as the kids will then have to avail themselves of other adjectives available to them in English language, leading them to increase their vocabularies by including such phrases as “big dummy dumb-head” or “contumacious lickspittle”.

I’m sorry, this reasoning has always struck me as, yes, stupid. Even – to use a word I never use in this context – retarded. Congratulations, you have just made a new swear word, and rendered it even more powerful by placing it in the same category as the old, venerable swear words.

At the very least, this is primitive magic: the hope that by erasing a symbol, you erase the thing it represents.

I wound up cutting the line entirely. There was also a bit associated with it, of all the adults on stage looking at the character disapprovingly, but that was not enough. That was also cut.

But that’s one more brick laid in the stronghold that is an ongoing project, the stronghold that will eventually isolate me from the strange nattering beasts that claim to be the same species as myself, but they ain’t fooling me.

People can’t be that stupid. Not on my lonely little planet, anyway.

April 13, 2005
Categories: Seething Impotent Rage . . Author: drfreex . Comments: 6 Comments

Most of December was spent working in my home office, where I was never far from my huge CD collection, or (more likely) the marvel that is Live365, which has several Internet stations laser-focused to my wants, tastes and needs. Eventually, though, I have to pack up and head to the big city for a meeting or two, to find out how the world has changed this week and therefore, how behind I’ve suddenly become.

So it was really the first time I’d been alone in the car for an extended period of time, and the first time I had to deal with Houston radio in a long while. (Except for Your Holiday Music Station, which went back to its old format the day after Christmas, doubtless with a heavy sigh of relief from its employees and the sound of several CDs being tossed in microwave ovens). Houston radio was largely mediocre at its best in the old days, before Clear Channel Communications invaded – and then they managed to grind the mediocrity down to an even blander level.

Time was, I would listen to the local news radio station, 740AM, while in the car. Never hurts to have a grip on what’s happening in the world, and the traffic reports every ten minutes were a boon while you were trapped in H-town’s road system. Enter Clear Channel, and News 740 – yes, it still calls itself that – became a talk station. News is limited to drive times and on the hour. Why? Talk is cheaper than a 24/7 news format.

I had taken refuge in that in 740’s “sister station”, 790 KBME. 790 was skewed to a much older demographic, playing a wide variety of music from the 30s on up through the 90s, featuring a lot of stuff by Ella Fitzgerald, Artie Shaw, Billie Holliday, Dean Martin, Harry Conick… this was a thrilling, eclectic mixture of music. Moreover, it seemed the DJs were choosing their own music, not playing from a list (positively novel, in these troubled times). These guys had been in the music business a long time, and often had illuminating anecdotes about the music and the artists.

Well, today, I turned on the radio and switched to 790 because I don’t care for 740’s Consumer Affairs program in the morning… and found myself listening to ESPN Sports Radio.

As little as I care about some consumer affairs expert whining that people have to stop paying in advance and get everything in writing (not that they shouldn’t, but if they did, this guy would be out of a job), I do not give a rat’s ass about sports. A very large rat’s ass. Hell, two very large rat’s asses.

The variety music format was simply not profitable enough, and apparently the senior demographic is not worth enough for Clear Channel to be concerned about alienating it. KBME was a very bright spot for those of us who wanted something new and unknown in our radio listening; the music it played cut a very broad swath through decades and styles, and it will be missed so very, very much.

As I said, at home I have my own music and internet radio to keep me entertained (I followed a suggestion from a mourning thread on a Houston forum to this station with a Winamp feed, that goes a way toward soothing the hurt – you go, guys!), but neither will do for my car. If I’m going to pay to have a CD player put in, it almost makes more sense to make the plunge into satellite radio, which I’m told does have a 24 hour Houston news station – or at least traffic updates.

It would be nice to think that a lot of folk feel as I do, and a massive surge of satellite subscription would give Clear Channel – and its competitors, who have unfortunately taken to aping CC’s tactics – a clue, a cease-fire in its apparent war to grind radio down to a flat, vanilla surface. But I also despairingly note that most people favor comfortable predictability in their day-to-day, and radio stations playing the same goddamn song over and over again adds to that predictability.

Sigh.

Hey, look! XM has an all-Elvis station!

December 30, 2004
Categories: Seething Impotent Rage . . Author: drfreex . Comments: 11 Comments

Yesterday was one of those days where everything seemed calculated to tick me off. Not that there was an increase in the average number of petty annoyances, just in my willingness to take it all personally.

Then it occurred to me: I didn’t get nuked Monday. Fancy that.

Finding something like that on the Internets (see, FBI? I’m a good American) leads to two reactions: the first is humorous, at the sheer outrageousness of the claim. The second is smaller, a self-doubting game of what-if, which leads to a deeper game of self-mockery for even entertaining for the briefest of moments that the nutjob knows some speckle of truth. Oh, but your inner opponent is a wiley one, isn’t he? He keeps bringing up the spectres of 9/11 and the Murrow Building. “Those seemed outrageous too, no?”

My Inner Opponent is a big cheater-head.

Though, really, he didn’t play the biggest card in the deck. Sadly, it was I who played it: “Okay, so you spent a year trying to get your mortgage re-financed, right? A year in which you found out it wasn’t as easy as the commercials make it look, especially if you’re self-employed. But you finally got it done, right? It takes effect next month, right?

“So that’s it. You’re going to get nuked.”

That’s the sort of reasoning a very long period of bad breaks engenders. Really though, I’ve been getting a bunch of good breaks lately, but old habits die hard, and the habit of constantly looking over your shoulder, wondering where the next dagger is coming from – that’s one of the hardest to break.

But I didn’t get nuked Monday. That helped.

December 29, 2004
Categories: Seething Impotent Rage . . Author: drfreex . Comments: Leave a comment

So I lied about signing off for the holidays.

I found this article by Jennifer Barnett Reed at The Smirking Chimp, and forwarded the URL to my wife, who sees no contradiction in being a liberal and a Christian. She’s now forwarding it to many of her friends. Like my wife and her friends, Ms. Reed finds the co-opting of the word “faith” for political purposes onerous, and that “the word ‘Christian’ has come to be so strongly associated with beliefs that are the polar opposite of mine. It’s frankly embarrassing to share a label with Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell.”

December 24, 2004
Categories: Seething Impotent Rage . . Author: drfreex . Comments: Leave a comment

Jesus accepting gays too hot for NBC, CBS – Dec. 1, 2004

“It’s ironic that after a political season awash in commercials based on fear and deception by both parties seen on all major networks, an ad with a message of welcome and inclusion would be deemed too controversial,” said Rev. John Thomas in the statement.

December 1, 2004
Categories: Seething Impotent Rage . . Author: drfreex . Comments: 6 Comments

I’m not one much for publishing the ups and downs of my day-to-day on the Internets (then what, one may ask, am I doing in Blogistan?), but a significant portion of my life has been taken up the last month by Gateway Computers.

Back in July, I bought a spiffy new notebook computer. Actually, it’s what referred to as a “desktop replacement”, it’s too damn big to truly call a notebook. So I refer to it as “The Necronomicon”. A Gateway M675XL, with a sexy widescreen monitor and a DVD burner. It quickly established itself as my favorite toy. I edited video and audio files on it, I was finally able to watch streaming video, the cable modem was finally functioning at its intended speed… life was good.

Until the day I booted it up and the display looked like a TV with a shot horizontal hold. I connected another monitor and determined that worked. A former computer technican I work with said there was a chance it was a faulty connection, so I gambled and took it to CompUSA. That was a $150 gamble. Too bad it didn’t pay out – the LCD screen was shot.

Attempts to contact Gateway by phone had failed – this was when the bulk of entry-levels consumers had attempted to install the Windows XP Expansion Pack 2, and had gone crying en masse to the support team, so by “failed” I mean I didn’t have the time or patience to hold on for a half hour or more. But the Gateway Website has a “Chat with a technician function” which I downloaded and installed on my until-then mothballed former, steam-driven computer. And I found myself in a tiny little chat room with a fellow who looked up my computer’s serial number, informed me that yes, this was covered by warranty, and gave me an address to ship it to. “What other documentation do I need to enclose?” I asked. None necessary, he replied. You’re good to go.

Knowing that LCD screens are pricey, I was greatly relieved, and told myself I really should look into one of those (similarly pricey) extended warranties. I packed the Necronomicon in its original box, which I had saved, along with the styrofoam inserts to hold it safe from harm, and journeyed down to the local UPS store.

About a week later, I e-mailed the support department at Gateway, inquiring if there was, perhaps, some sort of Web-based way to track the progress of the repair, this being, you know, the Twenty-First Century and all. This began a bewildering series of e-mails back and forth to and from a number of technicians, each more bizarre and bewildering than the last. The first basically said that repairs were done on a first-come, first-served basis, and I should just calm down, I would get my 3200S back as soon as possible.

I went immediately to the Gateway website. The 3200s is a budget desktop, available for under $400. Definitely not the two grand-plus Necronomicon. And so the nightmare began.

I kept this up for a week. I was given a customer number and reference number to use in future correspondence. There is a ten-point questionnaire detailing all these numbers, system passwords and the like, and I simply took to cutting and pasting the whole thing in every note I sent. I’m certain the techs were doing the same with their replies, as there was a lot of material that contradicted itself or had nothing to do with my plight. When I finally got an e-mail that told me that I was using somebody else’s customer number and a fraudulent computer serial number, I finally got a shipment from the Clue-Of-The-Month Club and set aside the following Saturday to get on the phone and talk to a human being.

And so began Nightmare, Phase Two.

It was actually fairly easy to get through this time. After some rummaging around their database, they ascertained that the computer was indeed in the warehouse where I shipped it, but that I was calling the wrong department. They gave me the number to call, which was not a toll-free number. And led to a department that was closed on weekends.

Lovely.

Mondays are busy days for me. I had to put off the call until Tuesday. Now, I would like to mention that I’m a preternaturally calm person, one of those people who get quieter as they get angrier. But throughout this ordeal, I kept a fairly modulated voice. It was not the fault of the drones picking up the phone, I realized, that my complaint didn’t fit into their little flow charts. About the only time I came close to anger was the first woman I contacted at the non-toll-free retail section, who made the mistake of saying, “I don’t understand what you want me to do about it.” My fairly curt “Obviously, then, put me in touch with someone who does know what to do,” seemed to galvanize her. My proper customer ID was finally turned over to me, and I was assured that it was now a simple matter of telling the warehouse who owned the computer, and I would receive a phone call from a supervisor that Friday giving me an update.

My phone was disturbingly quiet on Friday.

Okay, next Tuesday, another long distance call. This guy, at least, seemed to know what was going on. He explained that Gateway had recently bought eMachines, and the consolidation of the two customer databases had run into some hiccups, and I was such a hiccup. In short, my computer was registered to somebody else – the erroneous customer number I had earlier been assigned – and moreover, all this time I had needed to talk to the toll-free Gateway number, not the retail division. This was all in the course of a toll call that took an hour-and-a-half, with my technician constantly apologizing. He was on the line with a supervisor from that department, and he kept putting him on hold.

Finally, at the 90 minute mark (fortunately, my GameCube is in my office), I was promised – once again – that I would receive a phone call from that supervisor by Friday.

You can write the conclusion to that allegation yourself.

Finally, on Tuesday the 23rd, I called 1-800-GATEWAY once more. By now I had learned to begin each conversation with “You are the Nth person I’ve dealt with on this matter,” and related the condensed version of the tale to the tech. Who put me on hold, and disconnected me.

Suddenly, things started to happen.

Within three minutes a supervisor had called me back to apologize and get information. I was assigned yet another service number, and was quizzed rather endlessly as to whether or not I was Matt Johnson or if I knew a Matt Johnson. No, I assured the supervisor, and if I did know a Matt Johnson, I would punch him in the face right now. Once more I was assured that someone would get in touch with me in 72 hours. I’ve heard this before, I told him. He apologized again.

It didn’t take 72, it hardly took 12. I received a call first thing Wednesday morning, assuring me that the computer had, indeed, been located and an expedite placed on the repair. I was run through that questionnaire one last time, and was told I should have the computer back by Monday at the latest.

DHL delivered it to me yesterday, Friday, the day after Thanksgiving. Had Turkey Day not been there, I would likely have gotten it Thursday.

So, in the end, I harbor no acrimony toward Gateway. Some technicians need to be slapped in the back of the head, but that’s common. Once I actually got hold of some people with competence, they bent over backwards to make it right. Admittedly, in my quest to not become “that caller”, I likely erred on the side of politeness. Had I insisted on speaking to a supervisor, say, during call #2, things might have gone more quickly… but you know what? The world sucks enough as it is. I choose not to add to the suck. Everything came out alright without resorting to being a total asshole. I feel good about that.

Though Gateway did lose a few points soon after, due to the call I received while unpacking and setting up my prodigal notebook. The call that assured me that they had found my computer and I should be getting it back in 9 to 12 days.

Hell, I may get that budget desktop yet.

November 27, 2004
Categories: Seething Impotent Rage . . Author: drfreex . Comments: 2 Comments

File this under “Unenforceable”, but keee-rist. What legislator thought sponsoring this bill was a wise political move?

NBC 17 – Consumer Watch – Bill Could Criminalize Fast-Forwarding DVD Ads, Trailers

If this turns out to be a hoax picked up by a legit new source, like the recent “Renaming I-69” incident, color my face red. But it doesn’t speak well of things in the capitol if folks find such stories plausible enough to publish.

November 20, 2004
Categories: Seething Impotent Rage . . Author: drfreex . Comments: 4 Comments

The only pundit worth a damn, The Rude Pundit, has taken on my favorite politician, Tom DeLay, here and here.

Though he engages in his usual hyperbole (I find DeLay as loathsome a politican as any, but the accusations of child-raping and prostitute murder are a bit much), Rude as usual speaks the truth in the most unvarnished terms.

November 19, 2004
Categories: Seething Impotent Rage . . Author: drfreex . Comments: Leave a comment

HoustonChronicle.com – Rule change to protect DeLay approved

“If they make this rules change, Republicans will confirm yet again that they simply do not care if their leaders are ethical. If Republicans believe that an indicted member should be allowed to hold a top leadership position in the House of Representatives, their arrogance is astonishing,” Pelosi said.”

November 17, 2004
Categories: Seething Impotent Rage . . Author: drfreex . Comments: Leave a comment