Mea Culpa

I was at a kitchen party earlier tonight, chatting with an Irishman who asked me why I didn't write anymore. I had earlier told him that I loved to write but hadn't worked on anything in months.

I had no good reason to give. I responded with a shrug and sipped beer out of a red plastic cup. The beer was a Corona, and as I had stolen it from someone's stash in the fridge, he recommended that I pour it in a glass so that if the owner appeared, I couldn't stand accused.

It's 3:30 am and I'm watching Sunday in the Park with George, only it's full of very dramatic cello music for this time of night. Bum-bum-bum-bum, bum-bum-bum-bum. Repeat. Endlessly.

So, here I am writing. I've been sick all week. The doctor says I've got involuntary back muscle spasms, and I need to "break the cycle" with Advil. A friend of mine tells me I've got Transitionitis. That is what one gets when one does the following all at the same time:

1. Packs up ones place and belongings into three suitcases
2. Works full time
3. Bids teary farewells to people and places
4. Reads endlessly and plans itineraries for new countries to visit before
5. Moving somewhere new (in my case, somewhere old)
6. Unpacks and repacks backpack at least once a day to make all essential items(and maybe an extra pair of heels) fit
7. Reflects on nine years of life and love and friendships sown.
8. Cleans house
9. Finishes laundry
10. Makes lists

Buffy-Edward Throwdown: the Chosen One wins

Ithaca is Gorges (I do not take credit for this phrase)

A month ago, I visited a friend I hadn't seen in over six years, and we made the most of it, staying up until the wee hours, shopping at Target (I heart), and having her cook me the most delicious food (her husband is a lucky man).

Oh yes, the scenery was pretty spectacular too. Famous for its geological significance as part of the Finger Lakes, Ithaca is lush with gorges and waterfalls, to rival many other more famous falls in beauty, even if not in size. I had two short days there, so I spent time visit Cornell with Here are some photos:

Rogers Wireless Makes me Feel Powerless, or, Rogers Wireless Disgusts Me

I hate being bullied. I hate being taken advantage of. And yet, for the past year, Rogers Wireless has done exactly that to me.

After observing my cellphone usage over the last few months, I want to downgrade to a lower plan (which actually is a new and BETTER plan than the one I currently have and pay more for). I read on the FAQs online that there's no charge to change monthly plans. When I called Customer Service I was told I'd have to pay a change penalty. When I said that I read online that I don't, she put me on hold, then told me I'm right - I don't have to pay a change penalty or a fee.

We changed the plan. I asked her if I should downgrade my $11 Communicate Value Pack, since with my new plan, I had more text messaging capabilities.

SHE advised me not to cancel, because the cheapest current Communicate Value Pack started at $12. I thanked her for letting me know, and kept the $11 add-on.

A couple weeks later, I checked my account online to see when my new service was to come into effect, and imagine my surprise when I found out that Rogers Wireless had cancelled my $11 Communicate Value Pack without informing me, along with changing my monthly plan.

At first, I thought, maybe it was an accident. I'm used to Rogers Wireless screwing up on my Wireless account since the day I signed up (it is a LITANY, all of which have kept me for hours on the phone - either waiting on hold, or talking with them).

I was prepared to take a deep breath and get it sorted. (To stay calm, I like to think that Rogers is like my problem child. You tell them one thing, they do another. Just to piss you off.)

I called Customer Service, reached the right department, and before I could say hello, had the phone slammed down on me. I called back.

Derek in Customer Service answered. I explained the situation. He told me it had to happen. It was a default cancellation. I lost my cool. I couldn't understand why my plan should affect my add-on service -- isn't that why it's an add-on service that I pay separately for?

He spoke to me as if I was five years old, explaining that because my Communicate Value Pack texting features conflicted with my new cellphone plan, the Communicate Value Pack effectively got cancelled out.

But that also meant I lose my voicemail and my caller ID. Derek said that I'd have to add them on separately (at $8 per service), or pay for the new Value Pack at $12 a month.

Okay, so it's one dollar more. But it's not just about the dollar. (And it's my dollar.) It's the principle.

The Customer Service Representative - a representative of the company - advised me to keep the Value Pack. She never once told me that it would be cancelled by default. If a Customer Service person tells me something regarding my account, I'm supposed to believe it, am I not? Should there be a need for me to find the error in my account and to call up, only to be told by another Customer Service person at the same company that the previous Customer Service person was wrong! And on top of that I have to pay for their error. How unprofessional is that?

What if I hadn't happened to check online and notice that my plan was scheduled for cancellation? What if I had just woken up on April 11 to find that I no longer had Voicemail or call-waiting or Caller ID and I was expecting an urgent call? What if someone was trying to reach me in an emergency and my phone was off and I didn't know I no longer had Voicemail?

If I call Rogers Wireless Customer Service, and Customer Service misinforms me, and I take her word and go with her advice, it is beyond my comprehension how the onus should fall upon ME to fix the error that she made. And it is my understanding that the Customer Service person represents company policy and company rules. So by that logic, her error is the company's error.

If any current or potential Rogers Wireless customers are reading this, I strongly caution you not to listen to anything their customer service people say. Do your own homework and make your own decisions. Best of all, don't sign up with them at all. It will save you a heap of frustration.

They have some of the most inept, poorly trained Customer Service staff I have ever had to deal with, and instead of making things simple, they have caused me more problems than I could imagine with a simple cellphone monthly plan. 8 out of 10 times I've been snapped at, spoken down to, kept on hold, redirected to incorrect departments after waiting an hour on the phone, only to be told I was at yet another incorrect department... A nightmare.

I should not be made to feel as I currently feel: like a kid whose lunch money is stolen every day by the class bully. Like I've been pushed into a corner and prodded in the chest by the nubby, gnarly fingers of Rogers Wireless, forced to pay for something I did not agree to, just because their technical specifications don't allow for two services to run concurrently. Feeling not only misinformed by Rogers, but uninformed, then misled, then made to pay for being misinformed and misled by ignoramuses who don't even know how to do their own jobs.

Rogers Wireless disempowers me. That is not a feeling I am accustomed to as a human being in a free country. Worse than that is the added irony that I pay to made to feel like this -- totally bound and unable to do a thing because of my nebulous contractual obligations. Huh. Talk about zero power of consumption. For one year, I have paid them to treat me badly, and it has culminated in me staying up until 2 am to write this rant.

I might be making a mountain out of a one-dollar molehill, but honestly, this is the last straw.

I urge you to complain! Link your complaints! I've just posted this post on Ellen Roseman's Blog, and I've done it twice. I've Twittered it and Facebooked it.

I was told a Customer Service Representative would respond to me within 24 hours. Ditto for email. That was at approximately 11:15 pm last night. It is now 5:05 pm. They have exactly 5 hours and 10 minutes to respond.

Meme Me #2: BBC's The Big Read

So, there's this meme going around on Facebook, (of which I am a guilty participant), which is half-baked and half-based in fact. There's no real proof that the BBC ever stated that most people have read only an average of 6 books on that Facebook list. Or that the list is real. But here is the BBC's Big Read list from 2003, on which this meme seems to be based. There's 200 titles on this list. How many have you read?
1. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien X
2. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen X
3. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman
4. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams X
5. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling X
6. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee X
7. Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne X
8. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell X
9. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis X
10. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë X
11. Catch-22, Joseph Heller X
12. Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë X
13. Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
14. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier X
15. The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger X
16. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame X
17. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens X
18. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott X
19. Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
20. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
21. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell X
22. Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone, JK Rowling X
23. Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, JK Rowling X
24. Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, JK Rowling X
25. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien X
26. Tess Of The D'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
27. Middlemarch, George Eliot X
28. A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving
29. The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck X
30. Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll X
31. The Story Of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson X
32. One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez X
33. The Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follett
34. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens X
35. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl X
36. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson X
37. A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
38. Persuasion, Jane Austen X
39. Dune, Frank Herbert
40. Emma, Jane Austen X
41. Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery X
42. Watership Down, Richard Adams
43. The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald X
44. The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas X
45. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh X
46. Animal Farm, George Orwell X
47. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens X
48. Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy X
49. Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian
50. The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher
51. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett X
52. Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck X
53. The Stand, Stephen King
54. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy X
55. A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
56. The BFG, Roald Dahl X
57. Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome
58. Black Beauty, Anna Sewell X
59. Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer
60. Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky X
61. Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman
62. Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden X
63. A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens X
64. The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough
65. Mort, Terry Pratchett
66. The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton X
67. The Magus, John Fowles
68. Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
69. Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett
70. Lord Of The Flies, William Golding X
71. Perfume, Patrick Süskind X
72. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell
73. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
74. Matilda, Roald Dahl X
75. Bridget Jones's Diary, Helen Fielding X
76. The Secret History, Donna Tartt
77. The Woman In White, Wilkie Collins
78. Ulysses, James Joyce X
79. Bleak House, Charles Dickens
80. Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson X
81. The Twits, Roald Dahl X
82. I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith
83. Holes, Louis Sachar
84. Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
85. The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy X
86. Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson
87. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
88. Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
89. Magician, Raymond E Feist
90. On The Road, Jack Kerouac X
91. The Godfather, Mario Puzo
92. The Clan Of The Cave Bear, Jean M Auel
93. The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett
94. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho X
95. Katherine, Anya Seton
96. Kane And Abel, Jeffrey Archer X
97. Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez
98. Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson
99. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
100. Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie X

MY TALLY: 59 (on Facebook's list it was 66)


THE NEXT 200 (notice the presence in both the Top 100 and 200 of Terry Pratchett novels -- all of which were missing from the meme list on Facebook.)

101. Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome X
     
102. Small Gods by Terry Pratchett
103. The Beach by Alex Garland
     
104. Dracula by Bram Stoker X
     
105. Point Blanc by Anthony Horowitz
106. The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens
107. Stormbreaker by Anthony Horowitz
108. The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks
109. The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth X
     
110. The Illustrated Mum by Jacqueline Wilson
111. Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
112. The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾ by Sue Townsend X
     
113. The Cruel Sea by Nicholas Monsarrat
114. Les Misérables by Victor Hugo X
     
115. The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy X
     
116. The Dare Game by Jacqueline Wilson
117. Bad Girls by Jacqueline Wilson
118. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde X
     
119. Shōgun by James Clavell
     
120. The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham
121. Lola Rose by Jacqueline Wilson
122. Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray X
     
123. The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy
124. House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
125. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
126. Reaper Man by Terry Pratchett
127. Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging by Louise Rennison X
     
128. The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle X
     
129. Possession: A Romance by A. S. Byatt
130. The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov X
     
131. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood X
     
132. Danny, the Champion of the World by Roald Dahl X
     
133. East of Eden by John Steinbeck
134. George's Marvellous Medicine by Roald Dahl X
     
135. Wyrd Sisters by Terry Pratchett
136. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
137. Hogfather by Terry Pratchett
138. The Thirty-nine Steps by John Buchan
139. Girls in Tears by Jacqueline Wilson
140. Sleepovers by Jacqueline Wilson
141. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
142. Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson
143. High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
144. It by Stephen King
145. James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl X
     
146. The Green Mile by Stephen King
147. Papillon by Henri Charrière
148. Men at Arms by Terry Pratchett
149. Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian
150. Skeleton Key by Anthony Horowitz
151. Soul Music by Terry Pratchett
152. Thief of Time by Terry Pratchett
153. The Fifth Elephant by Terry Pratchett
154. Atonement by Ian McEwan
155. Secrets by Jacqueline Wilson
156. The Silver Sword by Ian Serraillier X
     
157. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey X
     
158. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad X
     
159. Kim by Rudyard Kipling X
     
160. Cross Stitch by Diana Gabaldon
161. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville X
     
162. River God by Wilbur Smith
163. Sunset Song by Lewis Grassic Gibbon
164. The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx
165. The World According to Garp by John Irving
166. Lorna Doone by R. D. Blackmore
167. Girls Out Late by Jacqueline Wilson
168. The Far Pavilions by M. M. Kaye X
     
169. The Witches by Roald Dahl X
     
170. Charlotte's Web by E. B. White X
     
171. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley X
     
172. They Used to Play on Grass by Terry Venables and Gordon Williams
173. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway
     
174. The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
175. Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder X
     
176. Dustbin Baby by Jacqueline Wilson
177. Fantastic Mr. Fox by Roald Dahl X
     
178. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov X
     
179. Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach X
     
180. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry X
     
181. The Suitcase Kid by Jacqueline Wilson
182. Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens X
     
183. The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay
184. Silas Marner by George Eliot
185. American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
186. Diary of a Nobody by George and Weedon Grossmith
187. Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh X
     
188. Goosebumps by R. L. Stine
189. Heidi by Johanna Spyri X
     
190. Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence X
     
191. The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera X
     
192. Man and Boy by Tony Parsons
193. The Truth by Terry Pratchett
194. The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells
195. The Horse Whisperer by Nicholas Evans
196. A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry X
     
197. Witches Abroad by Terry Pratchett
198. The Once and Future King by T. H. White
199. The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle
200. Flowers in the Attic by V. C. Andrews

MY TALLY: (significantly poorer due to my total ignorance of the works of Terry Pratchett and Jacqueline Wilson) 35

Way of the Smock Episode 2 of 4:The Making of Stripmalling

Way of the Smock Episode 1 of 4: The Making of Stripmalling

“Who am I, Margaret Atwood? No. I’m Jon Paul fucking Fiorentino.”

This is just hysterically funny if you're a fan of Canadian literature. Or if you just appreciate silly humour.

P.S. Roland Michener was the Governor General of Canada from 1967 to 1974.
Jon Paul Fiorentino is a badass.