One year ago today: October 26, 2018, my blog in orbit?
Five years ago today: October 26, 2014, most sparkling personality.
Nine years ago today: October 26, 2010, gender-biased shoplifting.
Random years ago today: October 26, 2012, never enough outlets.
Oh no, not another “improvement” in the food supply. Yes, it’s true. The new crop of avocadoes is very difficult to peel. No way to slice and slide the skins off any more. And don’t base to much on the word “organic”. For example ”Organic Great Value” is not a mark of purity, but a registered trade mark. Without a magnifying device, it is tricky to see the last two words on the package*. And, get this, I have a brand of tea supposed to “detox” your system. I picked some up in the new package this morning. The label contains 41 lines of health warnings.
6 types of intestinal conditions
2 types of dehydration
2 types of allergies
Nausea, vomit, or pain conditions
Long term bowel changes
Limits on usage, age, and daily dosage.
Warnings for spasms and diarrhea
Warnings about pregnancy and nursing.
Call poison control if you “overdose”
This, folks, is why the world laughs at Americans. First of all, most food allergies have been invented in the last several decades. I say invented for good reason. Allergies to ordinary everyday food were unheard of before the Monsanto Era. Also, people who have these conditions should be responsible for their own “what and how” and not plastering dire warnings that could kill other people’s appetites. This product is a blend of licorice, fennel, ginger, cinnamon, and peppermint. And it’s changed. It used to produce a slight flushed sensation and warm kidneys as it did the detox. Now it tastes the same but does nothing.
*this particular product is not bad, it has other certifications which the product as organic. I’m pointing out that you should look for them beyond what the label says. I regularly take twice the dosage of one cup per day and have gone past the one week limit a number of times. It tastes better than those Celestial Seasonings and such that contain “natural” flavorings.
Regions Bank. They’ve gone downhill so far, they are about to lose my business. The acting manager asked why I was dissatisfied and I honestly tried to tell her, but she could not follow the way I naturally talk in compound sentences. This got her instantly defensive and she tried to millenialize the conversation. The old she’s-sorry-you-feel-that-way jabber. You just know how much impact anything you say will have on such morons. Basically, I told her that last day when my ATM card would not work, I called customer service and before they would help me, they made me state my name, social security, account number, date of birth, account number, and the branch where I opened the account. Over the open cell network. She was like, “So what?” Empty-headed and living in a vacuum, I guess.
She starts telling me they have to do this for security. Yeah, I asked her, what about my security? Now I not only have to change banks, I have to change phone numbers. She’s like, big deal, that’s your decision, like I don’t have expensive advertising and stationary associated with this number. I estimate this low-life woman had at most a sixth grade education. Since she was not following along, I took the opportunity to insult their bank statements as totally useless and point out 8 of every 11 transactions at their bank in the past year has resulted in some form of delay. I mentioned this was my fifth trip into the branch to simply get money out for a trip, and she’s getting off telling me I’m not banking like they want people to? Stupid twat. I put money in, I take money out, and she’s got a problem with that?
Let me recount. October 3rd I deposit Item 026. October 10th, they send a notice to Miami by mail they think it might be stale-dated. October 17th, I find my balance is a twenty-year low of $1.79, and the bank is closed for the weekend. Montezuma’s birthday or something. October 19th, I drive in to deposit the replacement check (international checks cannot be deposited by ATM). Last night, the ATM won’t dispense cash and the cryptic message means no way to tell if it is the bank, the card, the ATM, or the system. That’s why I called for help, see, if it was my card, I’m not driving 30 miles one-way to the next ATM in a blinding tropical storm. Then back in today to take out enough money to open another account elsewhere. Five trips, 110 expensive car-miles.
That new account is to be my safety backup, a function that was supposed to be fulfilled by the Regions Bank when my main bank screws up. It’s not just daily transactions. A few years ago I was a thousand miles away when my debit card quit working. It was years until the expiry date, so I called it in. They had arbitrarily “decided” to “upgrade” my card with a new chip model. So they canceled my old card, saying they had sent a letter two weeks ago. I informed them I had been away over a month and they effectually said that was my problem. I told them not to send me letters unless they waited to hear back from me before canceling anything. They reacted like that was blasphemy. There you have it. American banking has become so broken down that you need a backup to your emergency backup for when your main bank sticks it to you.
Korean fiber optic plant.
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My radiator has a slow coolant leak and the garage is closed weekends. I was their big sale of last day, so they closed early. The drip is slow enough that I can monitor it on the trip. It’s only there when the car is parked slightly downhill. I pulled into Charla’s place to check it and she was heading out. The PA system is still not working, so I set up the GigRack and no luck. I eliminated everything except her rather expensive house speakers. They are not putting out sound. I’ll go home and get my small room speakers since the show must go on. This is her big Halloween party. I have the car loaded up so no way to get her my big speakers.
Then home, exhausted when I should be primed up for my long-awaited Autumn Holiday of 2019. A month touring the east Tennessee terrain and getting healthy. It’s wasteful, I know, but I buy a new styrofoam cooler for these trips, filled with ice packs for my syringes, which reminds me, that study owes me another payment. The cooler is large enough for the medicine box and a dozen assorted fruit drinks, iced tea, iced coffee, a few sandwiches, and it is not necessary to tell everyone that I still drink some types of soda. Like ginger ale.
I forget this actor’s name (again) but he actually does a decent job with this character. Course, if I had Vin Diesel punching out my sources of irritation, I’d probably act different myself. Those sources would include deaf bank managers, corrupt code inspectors, pushy cops, and FedEx people who act like my package belongs to them. That’s all the most civil servants and clerical types need to sharpen up is to be roughed up a bit. So they think twice before they say garbage like how they are just doing their job. You know, help them make a necessary career move.
In the movie, the two baggage handlers who steal the bag are punks, but one of them is the town cop’s son. The plot gets interesting because the Mafia boys can’t leave without the money and the cops can’t let them leave town either. I love this type of scriptwriting, it interweaves two different networks, the big city and the small town. Both are designed for internal self-protection. It’s that I don’t automatically buy the cops are the good guys. Like one line in the movie goes, you fail, it’s the three Rs. The river, the roof, or the revolver.
ADDENDUM
Hopefully the telemarketers have gone too far this time. As if they are not annoying enough, they now wait until they detect an busy signal on your phone and institute a call waiting alert. The only way to stop the incessant beeping is to take the call. I’ll look if the feature can be disabled, which risks missing an actual important call. These criminals further seem to know when you are on a long-distance call, so don’t tell us the cell companies aren’t in cahoots. The Fed department that polices these people keep announcing million dollar fines, but the calls keep coming. It just means the fines are issued, but are not being paid. Telemarketing, in a sense, represents the ultimate degeneration of American corporate behavior. A thriving business that 99% of people hate.
Here's a snap of the route I intend to drive tomorrow. Half-way to New Jersey on Highway 441. I was on the line to my estate executor and something is going on. I didn’t go into detail, but I have a debt to collect, and it will have been overdue by 45 years next month. I filed some papers and long forgot about this. A letter has arrived from that direction, but it does not refer to the debt. Anyway, that is not blog material but I’m including it here as a marker.
