If You Really Loved Me You'd Let Me Eat Your Brain

You want to know what pisses me off? The fact that USA Today, the nation's coloring book, has some kind of deal with the hospitality industry to foist copies of their publication, with its color-coded sections and bite-sized story-ettes, on unsuspecting travelers and charge them for it!

Whenever I stay at a hotel I make it a point to carefully read whatever paperwork they've given me during check-in. Some hotels give the papers away for free, some charge you and let you decline receipt of the paper, and others give you a paper, charge you for it, and never tell you. When I see the box telling me I can decline to receive Newspapers for Dummies, I check it, and with gusto. If I don't see any wording about newspapers I tell them I don't want any, even if they're free, but if they aren't free, I'm not paying for them, so don't bother giving me any. I think my intentions are crystal clear. No goddamn newspapers.

And yet every morning, like clockwork, I step out of my room for the continental breakfast and risk breaking my neck by stepping onto a slippery copy of the very newspaper I hate with every fiber of my being! Despite my stated preference for no paper I still get one. It lays there outside my door, bark-shouting its monosyllabic headline in the trademark 36 point Moronique font like a lobotomized idiot man-child with a grape juice moustache.

I let them pile up. I never touch them. I ignore them. I'm very good at ignoring. Sometimes when I come back from my work or leisure for the day the paper will be gone; I can only assume someone stole "my" copy that day, though I can't fathom why. Not my problem. I didn't ask for it, and I'm not paying for it so it isn't my property to miss.

Time marches on and eventually my check out date arrives, and with it the bill. I like the trend towards no-human-contact checkout. I love it when it works and there are no discrepancies on my bill. This is usually not the case when I'm dealing with a USA Today-aligned hotelier. No matter how many gallons of pigs blood I use to write "All work and no USA Today makes Tom a happy boy" all over the lobby they just don't seem to get it, the way I'll never get it about feminism because I was born sans Mysterious Cave of Yaga, From Which All Knowledge Flows.

Marching down to the desk for a service industry deathmatch is not my idea of a good start to the day, but principle is principle. As a tautological rapper once observed, "A (person)'s gotta do what a (person)'s gotta do," and I do, so I do.

Sometimes the desk clerk is aware that guests can refuse paying for newspapers they thought were free, and this makes the bill adjustment quick and pleasant. I once had a clerk look up my check-in paperwork and tell me she'd never heard of someone refusing the USA Today. I felt like Kramer trying to opt out of the postal system. Then I get the clerks who haven't had the proper training or experience to know that 75 cents isn't just 75 cents, it's 75 cents and freedom, democracy, the right to own property, and the pursuit of happiness. They're the ones who have to summon a manager for me to have a bossfight with.

In the end they all relent and give me back my 75 cents per day. Well, not my 75 cents, but the 75 cents of whatever client I'm working for.

What I'd really like to see is an admission from the hospitality industry that they've been forcing unsuspecting customers to pay for crappy newspapers for decades. I'd like a thorough accounting of how much money they’ve made off this little racket. If the sums are big enough, maybe I can charter a class action lawsuit! Tens, maybe hundreds, of millions of dollars are at stake here. I'm sure some bottom-feeding class action lawyer could be persuaded to fight the good fight for a few million.

And when the dust settles, we'll all get coupons for $23.72 off our next stay. And a complimentary copy of USA Today.

I believe my 1993 Saturn SC2 has driven its last miles.  The battery is worn out and I'm too lazy to buy a new one.  Plus the car is in such disrepair (easily 20 linear feet of windshield cracks, bald tires, all out of alignment, and burning oil like a Jewish mountaintop fortress) that my wife is demanding that I buy a new car.

I wonder what kind of subtle genius I must possess that I've been able to, quite unintentionally, maneuver her into a position where she's demanding that I spend lots of money on a new toy.

I think I'm going to go with a Hyundai.  Or a Chrysler.  Or maybe a...I really have no idea.  I'm open to suggestions.

Hot for teacher, indeed.  Debra Lafave, 25, got in trouble for getting it on with an unidentified male student whom I'll just call The Luckiest Kid in the World.

Under a plea agreement, Lafave will serve three years of house arrest and seven years' probation.  She'll also have to give up her "teaching certificate" ...FOREVER.  Do school administrators even check for these things?  I don't recall seeing any framed Teaching Certificates on the desks of any of the public school ass-clowns I had to deal with. 

She also

must register with the state as a sexual predator, may not have any contact with children including the victim, and will not be allowed to profit from the sale of her story or personal appearances.

Hmm.  Out of a job, at home for three years, hot, maybe single.  I'm thinking porn, right?  Does that count as a personal appearance?  If she's not playing herself an the shoot is done in her house, why not?

Unless Florida has a law against sexual predators being in porn, which I can't imagine, seeing as its a First Amendment thing.

The weakest part of Lafave's story:

[Lafave's attorney] said in July that plea negotiations had broken off because prosecutors insisted on prison time, which he said would be too dangerous for someone as attractive as Lafave. He said then that she planned to plead insanity at trial, claiming emotional stress kept her from knowing right from wrong.

Right, too pretty for prison.  Gotcha.

Hot off the IdiotPress newswire:

65 Girls At Area School Pregnant
School To Unveil Three-Prong Program

POSTED: 12:30 pm EDT August 23, 2005

CANTON, Ohio -- There are 490 female students at Timken High School, and 65 are pregnant, according to a recent report in the Canton Repository.

The article reported that some would say that movies, TV, videogames, lazy parents and lax discipline may all be to blame.

School officials are not sure what has caused so many pregnancies, but in response to them, the school is launching a three-prong educational program to address pregnancy, prevention and parenting.

OMFG!!  I have some ideas about what has caused so many pregnancies!  THE S-E-X!

Don't make Thaa Reverend go to Timken High for a Sex Ed workshop, because he is in NO mood for it, nor is the judge who signed the restraining order.

The story continues:

According to the Canton Health Department, statistics through July show that 104 of the 586 babies born to Canton residents in Aultman Hospital and Mercy Medical Center had mothers between 11 and 19.

 

11? Someone got an 11-year-old pregnant?  That someone needs to be killed, or at least severly beaten and chained to a radiator and forced to care for his spawn until it is old enough to beat him to death or free him.

P.s. Jujjment:
School administrators: Stick and loss of job. 
Story writer and editor: Stick. 
Pregnant girls: Stick and a stern talking-to about how to un-mess-up their lives. 
Guys who got the girls pregnant: Heavy sticking and a shotgun wedding.

I signed up for a Web seminar this morning.  The salesdroid wasted no time in phoning and e-mailing me.  Such pests.

You kno, if theirs one thing Thaa Reverend hates, its bad grammer:

Hi Tom,

If you like what you in during the seminar, I'd be happy to present to your team.

Best,

[Name]
Director Business Development
________________________________
Attunity Inc.
40 Audubon Road
Wakefield, MA 01880

Direct 781 XXX XXXX
Cell 781 XXX XXXX

If I like what I in during...what!?  Moron.  Thaa Reverend will not take your calls for one year!  No sale!

Anne was attacked by a suicidal insurgent raccoon early Friday morning on her way home from work.  Unfortunately for the raccoon my wyfe was in a car at the time.  The little sucker did $1,300 worth of damage to the AC and busted her front grill!

The raccoon is presumably dead now.  Anne wasn't happy about the incident, and when you consider the fact that she knows how to slowly kill an animal and stuff it, all taxadermical-like, maybe being squished by a few tons of metal and plastic isn't such a bad way to go.

Human Occupiers 1, Mother Nature 0

So late this afternoon the listing agent, representing the sellers of Dry Rot Manor, calls us up and says they're still interested in dealing with us and would knock $2,500 of the sale price. What cosmic re-alignment makes the sellers go from "we want nothing to do with you ever again" to "please let us sell to you, here, have $2,500!"?? I suspect some sort of miscommunication was happening. Anne and I make a decision and tell our real estate agent and attorney what we've decided. Our real estate agent tells the seller's agent, who tells the sellers, who make a decision, and so on.

There are plenty of opportunities for noise and I don't trust real estate agents to communicate things clearly any farther than I can throw them.

This is precisely why I prefer dealing directly with the sellers. I wonder if real estate agents are legally bound to deliver messages to their clients verbatim. I think not. My snap jujjment is that the real estate agents are exploiting asymmetrical information for their own benefit and they often fail to accurately convey the spirit and letter of messages sent to their clients.

So Anne and I paid $450 to have the house we're looking at inspected and tested for radon (or is it Radon?)  The home inspector spent over three hours going over the place. He listed a lot of little defects and three major defects. The major defects all had to do with dry rot.  And the R/radon was 0.1 over the recommended limit, whatever that means.  It's nothing major but it's fun to complain about when talking to the sellers.  "You want my kids to have three arms!?!?" and so on.

But the dry rot was the deal-killer. The problem with dry rot is that you can't know the extent of the problem without tearing stuff up. Could be $500, could be $5,000. The inspection revealed three different instances of dry rot and all had been painted recently. Hmm. Tricky.  They might have gotten away with it if it weren't for those meddling kids and that talking dog.  That and the house inspector.

To call Thaa Reverend a pessimist when it comes to human nature is an overstatement. Thaa Reverend believes that in a proper environment with a logical and coherent system that rewards good behavior and good jujjment all of mankind would live in harmony. We could even do away with money, like those 24th century Star Trek freaks. We would no longer spend our lives acquiring Stuff. We'd be enlightened, no one would work more than five hours a week, no one would have money, everyone would drink wine, education would be free, promiscuity would be the order of the day, and bathing would be optional. Kind of like...France.

As soon as money enters the picture Thaa Reverend touches his lips to his medallion of St. Cheapass and starts the bidding at one dollar. One of the teaching of St. Cheapass is "Thou shalt not have the right to cure." St. Cheapass probably got burned in a real estate transaction, like a dirt wall not being up to code or something. In real estate parlance, giving the seller the right to cure means they can fix any problems revealed by the home inspection, and letting them fix the problems isn't a great idea if they're a bunch of assclowns.  The kinds of assclowns who paint over dry rotted wood on purpose or ignore the problem in the first place.

My real estate attorney is a disciple of St. Cheapass so he's always insisted on denying sellers the right to cure.  This gives the seller more leverage when asking for concesssions.  If you find a problem you negotiate a dollar figure and take care of it according to your standards.  Leaving it up to the sellers is a bad idea.  When Anne, the real estate attorney, and I were on the phone today (me at a pay phone on a busy highway since I was in a cellular dead spot) he was absolutely giddy over the fact that we had the "sell shall not have the right to cure" clause in the contract. He even used the phrase "saved the day" to describe how valuable that clause was.  "I'd rather have my fox watching the chicken coop than their fox watching the chicken coop,"  sayeth the attorney.  Sounds like something St. Cheapass would have said, or stolen from someone else, since he;s too lazy to think up anything original on his own.  St. Cheapass probably spent his formative years staying on dirt couches at a friend's place, waking only long enough to hit his Zoroaster skull bong and order some take out halabfalaj.

Thaa Reverend and his entourage signed all the paperwork giving the sellers the finger, stapled it to our real estate agent's forehead, lashed him to the truck, and let the Atty. Humongous deliver his "Walk away...just walk away (or knock $10,000 off the price)" message to the listing agent. The listing agent was aghast and acted offended and shocked. She told Atty. Humongous that her sellers were a peaceful people and wanted nothing more to do with us unless we waived the inspection contingency. Ha!!

We, and I mean the Royal We, were in no mood for her games and did not fall for her Realtor® tricks. I don't know exactly what Atty. Humongous said to her but I know my version of the message would have been brought to her today by the letters F and U.

Maybe I should send the listing agent an e-mail tomorrow reminding her that now the sellers know about a number of major and minor defects and they're required by law to disclose them to potential buyers.

If only I had a friend or two who enjoy bothering and antagonizing people who could go to the next open house and ask for a property condition report. If the report doesn't disclose the known defects, well, who knows, maybe Thaa Reverend will come back with an even lower, more insulting offer.

Mrs. Thaa Reverend has demanded that Thaa Reverend advise his readers that if they ever want to sell a property with all sorts of defects they should go through First Weber. They seem to be good as selling places with fresh coats of paints and all sorts of ugliness underneath.  Mrs. Thaa Reverend does not agree with Thaa Reverend's idea of toilet papering and egging the house at midnight though, so it's be pointless to tell everyone that the property we were looking at is at 2582 Norwich St., Fitchburg, WI.

What a messed up day. Mrs. The Reverend and I made an offer on a place on Monday and got a counter-offer today. Our attorney met with Anne this morning to review it but I couldn't make it – I had too many meetings at work so they teleconferenced me in.  (I was at Casa de Lara trying to transact some bidness at the time.  Damn!)  The attorney advised us to change one line of the counter-offer. All we had to do was sign the counter-offer and counter-counter-offer and deliver everything to the seller's agent.  At least I think that's what he said.

But not so fast! Anne had to work at 3 PM today so I didn't get a chance to talk to her and look over the paperwork in person. The plan was for me to take the paperwork and meet with our real estate agent after work to do the paperwork.

First off, Anne didn't sign and initial the paperwork as she was supposed to, but I don't blame her. She never got to meet with, or even talk to, our real estate agent, whom I'll call Jared. He had jury duty today but he was pretty sure he'd be done by 5 PM.  Not that it mattered since Anne was at work by then, but maybe life has been rough for the poor guy and he's hitting the pipe as way to relax.  Sometimes crack messes with your short-term memory.  Anyway,  the case must have gone to the jury sometime this afternoon because he was still in deliberations as of 10:30 PM.  Suck-o.  He managed to slip a note (or a text message) to another agent in his office who would help me, in theory, to finish the paperwork.

Around 7:30 PM I got a call from a woman with a heavy accent. She asks for Anne and butchers our last name, so I assume she's a telemarketer and prepare to give her a glimpse of the soul-devouring hatred I have for said persons. As it turns out she's the real estate agent who is supposed to help me with the paperwork. It takes a while for us to establish that though. At first I though she was talking about Jerry's Kids or asking for money from some damn charity. I guess Russians have a hard time with words like "Jared."

So I make my way to the real estate office and I'm met by the women whose name I can't spell. English is her third or fourth language. She paused a few times when reading the counteroffer, puzzled by terms such as "shall", "not less than", "at" and the pesky "be." Minor little things! We eventually got a counter-counter-offer written. Now all I had to do was get Anne to sign off on it.

I drove to her place of work, tracked her down, and got her to sign everything. That was another hassle because she works in the infant ICU. She can't be out of earshot of her patients in case they explode or need her attention, and I'm not supposed to enter the area she's in. After much deliberation with another nurse as a go-between we all decide I can stand in a hallway where I can't see the patients (and medical records, I'm assuming) and she'll sign everything while still kind of standing in the room she's assigned to. Freakin' comical.

Then I go home. My next task is to fax everything in. I give the counter-offer written by the seller's agent a thorough going over. I discover all sorts of errors, eight at last count. They're not all major but, like, my name is wrong on the counter-offer. The address where Anne and I live is wrong. The non-word "Iff" appears. One line has an additional comma that confuses the meaning of the sentence containing it. And another contingency says the buyers are to "deliver a prequel letter within three days form acceptance." Form? Prequal?! What the hell is a prequal? If she meant prequalification she should have spelled it out. Damn, woman!

GAaaaaGH!! My valve is closing!!!

In the end I decided I wouldn't respond to the counter-offer. There were just too many errors for me to correct. I'll write an e-mail to the seller's agent, and maybe the sellers themselves, explaining the problems I found. All in all I think it best to start over fresh with a new offer, one free of errors, and one where my name isn't "Thomas O. Mueller."

Early last week I received an e-mail from Barnes & Noble (B&N) advertising a clearance sale. Books as low as $1.99! How could I resist? I could have all of my Christmas, Kwanzaa, Ramadan, Hanukkah, Festivus, Boxing Day and Winter Solstice shopping done before August.

I went to the B&N site and sifted through the 600-ish books that were sale for $1.99. I picked out 13 books and ordered them. As an added bonus I got $0.20 off each book because I have a B&N membership. 13 books for $1.79 each. Quite a deal.

For some reason I did a bunch of screen captures of the long Web page listing the items in my order just before pressing the "Submit Order" button. The total came to $24.58. I submitted the order. I was told the order had been received and everything was fine.

I checked on the order a few minutes later. The price of one of the books I ordered showed up on the order status screen as $9.75. I did a bunch of screen captures of the order status page and immediately e-mailed B&N. In my message I pointed out the error and asked them to make sure I’d be charged the original price of $1.79. I attached two JPG images in support of my claims that an error had occurred.

B&N’s reply was generic and confusing:

Barnes and Noble.com offers very competitive pricing on many items, resulting in the best value for our customers. However, as with all retail products, prices are subject to change due to current promotions.
As such, we are unable to credit you for the difference in price, and will honor the original price at the time of purchase.

I replied, telling them that their reply was insufficient. I didn’t ask to be credited the difference between the original price and the erroneous price, I just asked to be charged the original price! No charges had been posted to my credit card yet.

Before B&N got back to me on my second e-mail I received three more automated e-mails from B&N. First, we’ve broken your order into two shipments and you’ll be sent these three books. I specifically told them to send everything in one shipment regardless of how long I had to wait. Second, a message saying oops, the first shipment of three books has been delayed. And a third message saying that they’d shipped the remaining books.

Unfortunately the third message about the second shipment still had the incorrect price of $9.75. Also before B&N had replied to my second e-mail message there were two charges posted to my credit card: $5.67 on July 10th and $27.28 on July 11th. Great.

Next, B&N replied to my second e-mail.

Unfortunately, our system does not allow us to open attachments. Please resend your email without the attachment at your earliest convenience.
If you have a question about content on a specific page, please cut and paste the URL (page address) into the email for ease of reference.

According to our records, the total charges for your order are $32.95 with $5.67 charged on 7/9/2005 and $27.28 charged on 7/11/2005. This charged total was detailed in the order confirmation email that you received. Please review that email. We apologize for any confusion.

This tells me nothing! So I fired off a third e-mail message to B&N congratulating them on further compounding their error. I also chastised them for not telling me sooner that they can’t open attachments. In lieu of attachments, I asked them how they’d like me to prove to them that the order web page I was show totaled $24.58. I also asked how they intended to fix the entire mess. I wasn’t testy but I told them my patience was running thin.

Just before I sent the e-mail UPS dropped off a package. It was the first shipment. But not really. It had my name and address on it and the correct B&N order number but when I opened it I found a VHS tape containing a six-hour tribute to the career of Michael J. Fox and a “Fundamentals of Heat and Mass Transfer, Fourth Edition” textbook. Liang Wang of Urbana IL won’t be getting her or her books any time soon.

So I added this indictment to my third e-mail to B&N and fired it off. No reply yet.

This is really a shame because up until now I’ve had great service from them and they’ve regularly matched or beat the prices of other online book and DVD sellers. I think if I don’t get a good response from the customer service droid I’ll take the whole mess to the nearest B&N store and let them sort it out. If I get any friction I’ll just have them cancel everything, including my B&N membership!