It doesn't cost a dime to be nice, but it's $154.49 for courtesy.

So, I just got off the phone with AT&T.

I called them with a simple idea. They charge me too much for cable/internet/TV. I know this because if you are a "new" customer you can get their service for like 8 cents a month. Ok, I'm aware that's a loss leader and they make up the money 6/12 months later when your promo prices expire, but the very little you're paying means that the true price is somewhere far below my 154.

This is the game they force us to play. I called and I said, "Hi AT&T person, isn't it silly that all you companies charge 8 cents a month for new customers and then when you have a customer like me, long-time bill payer, good-looking skylarker and whatnot, you hold me over the coals until I switch to BU&U service? How about this time, you give me a lower *fixed* rate and then I won't have to switch and you'll still get my money?"

The first guy I talked to found this irrefutable and put me through to a "specialist." The specialist's job is to argue that AT&T is a really nice company and does a lot of things as a courtesy. If you are curious, in the AT&T vernacular, a courtesy is when you don't charge more for something. "We don't charge you for the DVR box as a courtesy." WTF does that exactly mean? I am passing along 155 of my hard-earned female deer to this company and they claim things are a courtesy. That's like me saying, I use the phone for 10 minutes a month* "as a courtesy." "I know I could use it more and your phone lines would burn down as my dulcet tones whipped across our great land, but I don't want that to happen. Instead, as a courtesy, I don't do that. I never use the phone and as a courtesy to me, you charge me 30 bucks a month." With friends like AT&T . . .

I emphasized my point. AT&T has no great feature preventing me from switching. I don't use the whole world DVR streaming to my brain or whatever it is, so, no plus there. AT&T is actually a detriment to me because I can't splice a line to watch local/basic cable like I can with "cable". Instead, when I have a Super Bowl party I have to snake rabbit ears out to my porch in the driving snow. To me, it's a commodity, like milk. I said, if I can get 12 months of service for half the price, even if it's just for a year why wouldn't I do that? Even if I have to switch every year. She said she didn't understand why people did that. I said, that I had just explained that it was cheaper and while inconvenient, it wasn't splinters-under-fingernails inconvenient. She said we had a different way of looking at things (I can only assume mine is the correct way to look at things).

She continued to tell me that she lived in a rural area where SHE COULDN'T GET UVERSE. (Can you imagine the discourtesies?) And she's had the same provider for years and never called to see if she could get her rates lowered. It was the strangest thing. It was like she was trying to make me feel guilty for not being a dumbass. What with all the talk of "courtesies" and her unending devotion to her rural tv/isp.

Now, I know what you're thinking. Don't pay for tv/phone. Just get an internet (why is blogger underlining internet as a spelling error?) connection and do everything through that. I would. I so would. But the rub is sports. It's like 80% of what I watch. (The other 20% is typically TCM.) Sports means you can't get the "basic" package. It also means you can't really ditch the TV portion. Sure some things stream, but streaming is a fickle mistress which I'm not prepared to rely on.

It was an odd conversation. She didn't seem to understand the premise that I would like to keep more of my money for myself. In the end, I got $20 off per month . . . for 6 months. So now I'm off to look into Time Warner's and WOW's promotional offers. And the dance continues.

* This is literally true. Well, 11 minutes last month. I told her that I spent more time waiting on hold than what I've used the phone all year - an exaggeration, but not by much.

something wicked this way comes

Some co-workers and I were at the mall food court today and saw a sight of which has never been seen - at least by any of us. Worse still, once seen, you can't "unsee" something. It's there forever, haunting you.

I should say, before going on, that this isn't my usual kind of thing to write about. No, normally, I would let something like this go without a word. But I figured since you might be seeing this on NatGeo after the girl who cries blood, that you might want a heads up.

Please take a moment to consider . . .

Neverminding the alien-type head (which LOL'ed me when I drew it), the ziggy hand and my the police sketch artist's general lack of ability to convey things via picture, that bitmap pretty much accurately represents what we saw. A lady with a ginormous chest and a greater inability to find supportive undergarments. I think. I mean, it was just the oddest thing. Maybe she blew her bra out? I am at a loss.

Her shirt was low cut as well, because, you know, let it all hang out. And we are OMGing all over the place. Then we see that she has sat down with 2 business men (?) looking dudes in suits. And on the way out, we notice that they are very intensely discussing something. Man, I would have given 5 dollars to listen in on that conversation.

wife beater dilemmas

So I wore a wife beater today. I wore it to dinner last night (I had the roast duck with the mango salsa) to this snooty bar theMonica and I & friends went to. I don't mind the wife beater normally as fitted sports-type polo shirts tend to have shorter sleeves so I can take y'all to the gun show. I don't know; I don't make the stuff it's just how they do these days.

Ok, I had this saved on my hard drive from long ago and I can't figure out what my dilemma was. Was it the conundrum of how to expend the surge of testosterone from wearing such powerful garb? I have no idea. So, somebody go madlibs on this and finish this bastard post up. It's going to take some hard work to get it to marginally clever because frankly, that premise sucks. For serious. Get to work.

irish jesus

theMonica and I went to see The Swell Season, which if you're not wise to Academy Award-winning (I think) songwriting, is the group who wrote the songs featured in the movie Once.

A friend had recommended the movie to me. For him, it was seemingly a life-changing experience. I liked it fine enough and theMonica liked it more, but not treasurer of the fan club more. There was nothing wrong with it per se it was just one of those flicks that kind of happens and you go, "Oh, that was nice." It featured time-tested plotting, enjoyable characters, etc. Your ultimate enjoyment of the moview is directly proportional to how much you enjoyed the music. I hate Irish music as a rule, but this was more singer-songwriter lamenting-lost-loves music by an Irishman, rather than drunken tales of whiskey and whatnot, standard-issue Irish music. Out goes the pennywhistle, in comes the lone acoustic-guitar playing street musician singing for his Guinness.

Ok, so it should be your standard concert-going experience, right? Right? Wrong. I knew there was something amiss when the place was pretty much jam-packed. Fine - a little more popular than I expected. Then, the opener (whom I had never heard of before) completed every song to uproarious applause. Strange, right? Usually audiences tolerate an opener and will, at best, offer surprised applause, like, "Wow. I don't totally hate these guys." But this was genuine, WOOHOO kind of applause. I've been to my share of shows and this one was starting to get creepy . . .

Then Swell Season came out. Hallelujia He has re-risen! Never had I seen such an effusive response for a musician before. It was, quite honestly, kind of unsettling. I kid you not, the guy took a sip of tea and the crowd busted out in guffaws. Seriously. For drinking tea. And then he went on this long, rambling, largely incoherent spiel about tea and being Irish and drunk maybe or it was about corned beef - whatever, made no sense - but you would have thought it was Seinfeld. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA - everything you say is hilarious even though it makes no sense. Every other move was met with extreme approbation. The same kind of thing happened when the chick came out and started stammering about falling in love with a goat or some such. I don't know. Again - made no sense. But man was the crowd eating it up.

Needless to say, it was a sing-a-long show for everyone in attendance but theMonica and I. At one point I whispered to her, "If they start passing around kool-aid, we're out." I had to whisper because I didn't want to be exposed as a non-believer. I felt like I had mistakenly ended up at a Jimmy Swaggert service. "Wait isn't this the average-musician-wrote-ok-movie event? Oh, it's not. My bad."

so far, off to a bad start

If you're looking for love, I'm sure this is a GREAT way to find it. You know, assuming you don't have a branding iron handy.

Update: As Alan points out in the comments, the store if F for Fake and I'm pretty dumb. What can I say? I got a case of the Mondays. The Weekly World News URL was deftly hidden within the Yahoo URL. The attribution to WWN at the end of the article wasn't hidden at all. Whatever the case, I apologize to the 7 of you. Oh, but the hilarious branding iron comment still stands.

clear the 23rd . . .

I hope you don't have plans for next Friday because THE ASTRONAUT FARMER will be blasting off in a theater near you!!! I haven't been this excited about a movie since The Lisping Speech Therapist. TAF will have more rockets though . . . probably.

I have to believe Hinder wrote the soundtrack to this bad boy. "I sound like I'm whispering because my face is in a protective helmet-bubble." Fuck. That's gold. I can't even fake-write lyrics as bad as Hinder.