Story Time I

First up, announcement: I’m not abandoning the road trip series. I have detailed notes of every day of the trip and it will be continued at some point. Those posts take at least an hour to write though, and since I am busy with school, it’s difficult to motivate myself to write for an hour after doing homework for 5+ hours. Anyway, to fill in the down time, I have a new project I’m starting here.

Basically, I’m going to be writing more frequently with dumps of random things that have happened recently. This was inspired by the atrocious awareness of Massachusetts drivers, bikers and pedestrians. I have so many stories of people who should have died, and Twitter doesn’t always do it justice because of the space limitations. Instead, those will now go here. Also, random quotes/anecdotes that I wanted to share, but had nowhere to put them, so enjoy!

I’m starting with an idiot in Harvard Square, because he led to the inspiration for this. I was driving and had a green light. As I, and the car next to me, proceeded through the intersection, each of us had to slam on our breaks and come to a screeching halt, because some moron decided to cross the street, against a green light. That’s bad. What makes it worse: he was texting on his phone AND NEVER ONCE LOOKED UP. WHAT THE HELL?!  Even after two cars almost hit him and splattered his brains on our windshields, he had a complete lack of awareness of the situation. I sincerely hope that message was of vital importance. (Note: this will be a recurring theme here. I frequently drive near the 50 million college campuses in Boston and I’m starting to believe all of them need to have a course during orientation to teach them that they are on an urban campus, and can’t walk wherever the fuck they like whenever the fuck they want. It’s a public safety/traffic flow issue).

Comcast

When I first signed up for my cable package, I flipped through the stations to see what came as part of my subscription. On all of the stations I did not receive, there was this message: “This channel is free as part of subscription.” No shit.

Comcast apparently does not have a centralized system across the country (this astounds me. How can you be a national corporation, but divide it into different territories where information cannot be accessed? Bank of America did this also. They broke it down even more though, where Northern and Southern California were different territories. How is this legal?). Anyway, I needed to cancel my service in California and open a new account in Massachusetts, because it was impossible to transfer my package and account. So I call Comcast to set up an appointment and order my new package, then I needed to call them again to cancel my old subscription (yes, I really needed to call again). When I inform the service rep that I’m cancelling my subscription, he asks why (as everyone does. When I cancelled my gym, they asked for so much of my current information that I could’ve sworn they were building a FBI dossier on me). I tell him that I moved and had to open a new Comcast account in Mass. Direct quote: “Sorry to lose you as a customer” ……… I understand these people work off a script, but does that limit their ability to comprehend what the person at the other end of the line is saying. YOU DID NOT LOSE ME AS A CUSTOMER. I CANCELLED THAT ACCOUNT TO OPEN ANOTHER ACCOUNT WITH THE SAME MONEY BECAUSE YOUR SHITTY COMPUTER SYSTEM CAN’T HANDLE ALL OF YOUR CUSTOMERS.

Last one:

I went to visit the doctor last week for some immunizations. Before he comes in, the nurse weighs and tests my blood pressure (which is fantastic by the way, not that anyone could tell that from these posts and my Twitter feed). She goes through the standard questions and we have this exchange (and picture her thick Russian accent, I think that adds to this):

Nurse: Do you do drugs?

Me (remember that I am an idiot and apparently deaf): Hmm… I mean, I drink probably twice a week.

Nurse: No, I said drugs. No one cares if you drink. Everyone drinks.

Duly noted.