Curt and My Reading Habits

Curt and I now do one incredibly large and annoying food shopping circle which includes going to Whole Foods in Greenville to get meat from humanely treated animals and foreign crap, and then driving to the Anderson Publix

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to get more mundane crap like (hopefully) American-made cat food... Anyway, in Greenville, there is this guitar store Curt wanted to stop by the other day and where he ended up buying this awesome beat-up Epiphone Something guitar cum new amp he fell in love with.

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Though this is nor here nor there, it means we spent a lot of time in the area the store is located in.  He tried a new guitar one week (and trying guitars in Curt's book, or maybe anyone's, means hours spent noodling), did not fall in love with it, and we eventually left to buy food.  Then we went back on another week, and while I was at the dollar store picking up dollar things, he tried this second hand guitar and just fell in love.  We left without it, but he couldn't get “her” out of his mind, so we had to go back and get it, thus making our food shopping trip take even more time than the usual 4 hours. 

Anyway anyway: the store is located in one of these defunct old outdoor malls; and, weirdly for me, I love these defunct old outdoor malls because of how they feel and because of the marginal businesses that seem to inhabit these places after mainstream businesses who used to thrive there have abandoned them for bigger concrete bunkers.   In this particular defunct outdoor mall whose karma and Feng Shui totally suit me and where the Guitar Center has located, there is also a Books-a-Million. 

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No, not a marginal store per se, but of the big retail bookstores, it feels marginal; and this particular one feels particularly marginal.  It feels like the corner bookstore, and hey, it’s Podunk America, we have no real choice; it’s as good as it gets...  And, just as he did with his guitar, Curt fell in love with this particular Books-a-Million. He much prefers driving out of his way to go there, rather than go to the brand spankin’ new Barnes and Noble, in a brand spankin' new kind of outdoor mall, full of brand spankin new retail outlets, right across from the Whole Foods we drive 40 miles out of our way to shop in.  And on our food shopping trip yesterday, Curt decided, once again, to take us out of our already out of the way trip in order to stop at his favorite big retail bookstore in search of magazines. 

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As I was wallowing away the time waiting for him while he first looked for the ideal music magazine he never seems to find, and then while he ran off to the guitar store, a place he does not seem to get enough of, I noticed that among the bad art magazines, mostly geared towards amateurs and lovers of kitsch, they also carry, as if it were the physical embodiment of an antidote to all the other magazines, Cabinet (!)  So heck, I picked it up, started reading, and decided “what the hell, I’ll buy it.”  The surprise here is that Cabinet used to annoy me... My reading habits seem to be a-changin'...

Addendum: Having read this, Curt asked me about "subtext": it's the visual thread that refers to the American built environment: click on pictures to view one ugly experiment in living...

Addendum 2: pictures captioned "home" came 2 weeks later- we were back in Curtis' favorite outdoor mall and I had the camera... 

The Welcome Mat of Death

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One more little "present" left on "the welcome mat of death". Unfortunately Tomtom is a doer and not a thinker; and a well-fed one at that.  He'll humor me with abstraction, but he can't deny his nature. A nature now compromised by the domestic; he no longer eats his prey.

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United we stand

Read United Hell to understand the context of this entry.  I imagine it is still practically impossible to get someone from United on the phone.  But after we called our credit card company to see if we could get a refund for our, up to that point, cancelled tickets, only to find out that we could not; the credit card company gave us a phone number for United Airlines that enabled us to talk to a human being after only a 90 minute wait. 

When, after a whole day of trying, we actually connected to a person, we were able to get re-routed on different flights and make it to our international connection.  There were some funky glitches all along the way that were quickly and efficiently resolved by the personnel manning the various gates we had to go through.  The trip was easy, efficient, mostly on time, and the service was great.  

Maybe after United resolves the problems caused by the merger with Continental and the integration of both systems, it might end up being a decent airline after all.  I was pleasantly surprised! 

United Hell

My husband and I were scheduled to fly Continental from GSP South Carolina to GVA Switzerland through Newark tomorrow. Unfortunately, between the time we bought our tickets and now Continental merged with the worse airline on earth: United.

We confirmed our flight this morning; and not two hours later, a United computer called to tell us that the first leg of our flight had been cancelled making it impossible to catch the second leg.  The computer left us a number to call and apologized for our inconvenience.

As far as I can tell, in order to save money during the merger, United fired ALL its and Continental's employee's, for no one ever picks up the phone.  The other night we stayed on the phone for three hours to change our seats, which we never did because no one ever picked up. We read on the internet that people have stayed up to 12 hours on the phone to no avail; and that even travel agents had trouble getting through.

At the moment, we've pretty much lost our flights.  Mercifully we paid by credit card and will contest, and moreover, we got insurance. Getting money back from United would probably involve talking to a person; and it has been established that that is not an option.

I will go around the world to get somewhere before I ever fly United (not again because I've never done it).  United's behavior is extreme; unfortunately, it is endemic to the world we have created for ourselves.  Bring back regulation, this little experiment in "free market flying" has failed miserably: it's not free, it's not market determined, it's not profitable and it's obviously not flying.

Addendum: we can't get money from credit card because we bought the tickets more than 6 months ago- that will teach me to think ahead.  And the insurance does not cover "airline f--- you in the ass" reasons, only weather cancellations which this wasn't.  Ahhh, bend over and fly the friendly skies...  ... as I type I am back waiting on the phone at united where their recording is telling me how wonderful and eco-friendly and omnipresent they are...


more: --- am (maybe) in line to talk to someone- the recording keeps telling me over and over how they are spending billions of dollars being eco-friendly, improving their carriers etc.  What they need is to spend money and re-hire all the people they fired to save money so someone can answer the fucking phone...

... oh fleeting miracle:  someone with an Hispanic accent  just said “hi” - I explained my problem and he told me he would transfer me to the correct person- I asked how long it would take for someone to answer, he said “not long”---

Well I am back in the loop and the computer said “more than 30 minutes wait”...  Last time it said “25 minutes” and it took 53--- seriously don’t fly them ever; though even if you try, chances are you won't...  


more more: finally got through!  and they actually re-routed us--- the United Representative was actually great...  ... ok, my anger is dissipating.... 

Again: Words Have Lost All Meaning

I quote from the radio news:

Ahead, a report about what American troops are doing to protect themselves from their Afghan allies.

Remind me again what the word "ally" means...

Addendum 2 days later: American soldier (or soldiers, depending on who one wants to believe) kills 16 Afghani "civilians"...  

I guess that's one way of protecting oneself when one no longer can see who the enemy (or ally, if you will) is.

It is definitely time to get out of Afghanistan.

Reason in the Wilderness

about Iran  (click link to listen to the voice of reason)

Too bad reason does not reign anywhere these days.... if ever...