What NOT to call your Customer Service Rep.......................

I'll turn 51 on July 20th, mark your calendars, it's going to be a momentous day, because  anyone who ever knew me thought I'd never make it, myself included. While turning 51 is an accomplishment given the way I spent my teens, 20's, and 30's, in the grand scheme of things, it ain't exactly a big deal.  I have however managed to learn some shit along the way.  What I haven't managed to learn is when to shut my pie hole. Sure I can bite my tongue most times, I'm not as easily provoked as I once was, I've learned to walk away, more often than not.  But every now and again, usually at the most inopportune times, I just can't shut the fuck up. 

Two weeks ago I was at the airport intending to board a Midwest Airlines flight to Boston. I'd booked the one way flight through Expedia. I'd be picking up a truck and bringing it back for a guy, so all I need is a one way ticket. I get to the check in counter only to find that my flight was booked for the following week. I'm like 2 hours early, so I figure I can fix the mistake, there are empty seats on the plane, so it shouldn't be a problem.
Right?
Wrong.
I call customer service for Expedia and after about 10 minutes on hold I hear that increasingly familiar clipped sing song English coming over the line. The  customer service guy informs me his name is Roger, although I'm guessing it's really Roj, or some  other East Indian  name. Now, I'm already annoyed because I know when I booked my flight. So I explain to my new phone friend Roger that they made a mistake with my  flight. He  recites the standard customer service lines. "Oh, I am so sorry" and " Let me check".   After a few more minutes of holding, my buddy Roger, who sounds exactly like the guy I buy my cigarettes from at the  smoke shop / cellular store, comes back on the line.  He tells me there is no mistake, I booked the flight for the following week.  My neck starts to get that familiar heat creeping up. It's almost like  the itch you get from a visit to the barber shop after the barber shaves your neck. In my case , that itch means I'm starting to get pissed off.  I explain to Roger that I'm certain of what date I booked my flight  and that date is today.  In the back of my mind I'm thinking "Maybe I fucked up. Maybe I clicked the wrong date on that little calendar".  At this point I'm  more  irritated at myself for  possibly making a bone headed move, than I am about the possibility that my trip is going to be delayed a week. Then Roger does it, he tells me it is impossible that the mistake is theirs. He tells me there is no way I booked the flight for today.

100 percent impossible. His words, not mine.

Now that's a pretty bold statement, not to mention arrogant. I even tell Roger as much. He repeats that it is impossible that the blame rests anywhere but squarely on my  shoulders. So I  let it alone, I say, okay lets fix it. Can you get me on this flight today. Sure no problem he says. That will be 485 bucks.  Keep in mind, I only paid 155 beans for the one way flight. But there is a service charge, and fees, and the new flight. I no longer feel the burning in my neck, my entire head feels like it's on fire. What about a refund I ask. Sure says Roger, except we don't  refund. He tells me I can cancel and reschedule, again the cancellation fee is more than the original ticket.  I'm standing about 15 feet from the check in counter, my voice gets louder as I try to explain to Roger that there is no such thing as impossible, and that it is possible I didn't make the original mistake. Roger retorts that it in fact is impossible the mistake is any ones other than my own. I tell Roger  "In this country we understand that anything is possible", and I say some other shit I can't recall.

I tell Roger to give me a supervisor. I go through the whole  explanation, again. The supervisor, who is also on the same continent as Roger, pretty much tells me the same thing.  And then it happens. I forget the Supervisors name ,  but I'm sure she told me it was something American, like Sally or  Joan. Doesn't matter, by now I'm livid, I've reached that point where most reasonable people with nominal impulse control just let  it go.  I call the customer service lady a curry eating cock sucker, I refer to Roger as Haji, as in the cartoon sidekick of Johnny Quest fame. That deeply buried bit of racism and bigotry that we all, regardless of race, posses, came boiling to the surface, and I cussed out the woman on the other side of the world.  I'm not proud of it, it was wrong, I lost it. I called her and Roger shit  like they have never seen or heard in those English classes. I don't regret the cussing out part, just the ethnic slurring part. At the end of the day I was wrong as a priest at a cub scout camp out.

Jump forward a week. I'm at the same  check in counter ready to board my flight to Boston.  Turns out, I'm not  assigned a seat on that flight. In fact, the lady at the counter advised me I can no longer fly on Midwest. Long story a little shorter, I cussed out a couple of people in India, and somehow I got pegged as disruptive.
I'm still waiting to hear back from the TSA.

But did I learn anything?

When I do something stupid, I always try to come away  a little better  for it, try to salvage the wasted  time, make the moment  something less than a total loss. So I sat down after it was all over, tried  to analyze myself and that particular melt down.  I'd like to be able to tell you that I reacted like a symbol  of the angry men and women in this country who are struggling to make a living. Millions are out of work in this country, myself included. Long term unemployment, jobs being lost overseas. American corporations who farm out their business to India, or Mexico, or buy cheap shit from China, dipped in lead paint.  I'd like to be able to tell you that my bigoted rant was the result of that final straw.  I did it for all of you, the down trodden masses. Like the line from the 70's movie Network. I was Peter Finch shouting out the collective  frustration of the American people "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!

I'd like to tell you that my intentions were pure, that I'd just reached the end of my rope.

Sounds kind of nice, noble even. But that's not the truth.

The truth is I snapped. I was pissed off to the extreme. When you get mad enough, when you allow your anger to slip it's bonds of rationality and reason, the unfettered end result is usually pretty fuckin ugly. If I could have laid hands on the  person on the other end of the line, I'd probably be locked up, or in the hospital because Roger or Sally knew some kind of Hindu Kung Fu and kicked the living shit out of me for the curry remark.

In the end I learned something, so it's not a total loss. I learned the customer service people in India are as cool as cucumbers, even when being cussed out and racially slurred in a Midwestern twang. I learned that cussing out anyone within earshot of an airport ticket counter is probably ill advised.

Last but not least, it looks like I may have to drive or take the train when travelling in the foreseeable future.

***Posting has been on hiatus around here lately. I'm going to take one last run at it, so hopefully shit will pick up to at least a few posts a week.  If I can't find  my passion for it, then I'll probably  pull the plug on this thing. So stay tuned, you will either witness a bigger, badder, M M. , or you'll watch a blog die. Which is like watching a whale succumb to the attack of Orcas. Except without all the water, blood and whales.***

Remember Bali..................

In Bali a teenager was forced to marry a cow, and when I say cow, I don't mean the Balinese version of Rosie O'Donnell. I mean a bovine, 4 legs, udders, cud chewing, moo cow. Shit gets a whole lot deeper, but let me back up for a second.

  We, and by We I mean us, all of us, this country, We catch more than a little flack for our fucked uppedness.  We are seen as materialistic, shallow, vain as peacocks. Bullies, invaders, too conservative, or not conservative enough. The world doesn't Really, like us much. Sure they pander to us, scrape, bow, and kiss the fat of our collective ass, but by and large the rest of the world views us  much the same way a cowed dog views it's master. They wag their tail when we reach out to stroke them, but they'd just as soon bite the shit out of us, were it not for the repercussions, that often warranted bite, would garner.  Make no mistake, we are as fucked up as that proverbial soup sandwich I refer to so often. But compared to much of the rest of the world, we can't hold a candle to their fucked uppedness. Which brings me back to the cave people of Bali.

 Ngurah Alit, 18, was seen in a Bali paddy field standing naked behind a cow. I'm sure that "standing naked behind a cow", really means, Dude got caught knocking the bottom out of a cow. Now, I know what you are thinking.
Big deal, right?
People routinely dick down animals in this country, and far worse.

Not so fast, I told you this thing gets deep.  The guy said the cow was at fault. He claimed he believed the cow was a young and beautiful woman, and it had seduced him with flattering compliments. So what ever passes for a legal/court system, forced our lactose tolerant freak to marry the cow. You would think a guy who was ballsy enough to stand  in an open field while getting all up in a cows bidness, wouldn't rattle easy.

You would think.


In reality, not so much.

He fainted at the altar. No report on the cows state of mind. As if all of this wasn't bad enough at the end of the ceremony, they drowned the cow.  Reason being, drowning the cow and dunking dudes clothes in the river  purged the bad JuJu from the village.

One villager said: ‘Poor kid. He’s actually a quiet kid.’

Of course he is quiet, he fucks cows. People who do that sort of shit aren't usually real chatty types.

We may fuck the occasional farm animal or dog in this country, and be we, I mean everyone but me, we may do some twisted repugnant shit, but we don't drown the victim, even if it tastes good on a grill. And we don't call our animal rapists" Poor Kid". We call em sheep fuckers, or whatever species applies.  So chin up America. We may take some heat. Sure we  screw up, a lot. But the next time you are feeling low, when the rest of the world is pointing an accusatory finger at us, remember, Bali.

Tomorrow I head to Boston, where everyone talks like a hair lip with a mouth full of marbles. I couldn't leave you rubes unenlightened for an entire week. Who knows, I may post one from the road. But don't hold your breath.

"You can't go home again" — Thomas Wolfe " And if you do manage to go home again, it will probably smell bad" --Mark Smith

In order  to occupy my time during my self imposed exile I picked up a side gig, which is not to say I have a main gig, unless you count smoking copious amounts of weed and working my way through the vast array of cold cereals offered at the local grocery. Not for nothin , but Lucky Charms now have stripes and are even more delicious. Anyway, I needed to find something to keep my powder dry, lest I revert to my former lifestyle. So I took a contract type job picking up trucks for a local guy. First truck was about an hour outside of Chicago. Sounds fairly mundane, and it is, but getting there was the tricky part. Dude pays x amount for the delivery of  the truck, how you get there is on you. Flying would have  put me in Chicago quick, but  the place I needed to be was only served by Amtrak, so I took the train. Besides, with my luck I'd end up on a plane loaded with middle eastern folks, and I'd spend the entire flight waiting for a jihad.

I was stoked about riding the train. When I was a pup, my mother, sister and yours truly took the train to Oklahoma. I had these nostalgic memories of those train rides. We ate in the dining car, the train  rocked you to sleep, we played Yahtzee. Mom always had a book stashed away waiting for me when I'd get all bored and annoying. At 9 she was  turning me on to Steinbeck, Faulkner, and Harper Lee. She dug the southern writers, and in turn I still prefer southern writers,Conroy, Dickey and James Lee Burke for example. See I'm getting all nostalgic  even now.  My point being, I was looking forward to reliving a slice from my childhood.  Instead I ended up with a slice of reality.

Reality in this case smelled like ass, B.O. , and cheap perfume.  The train was packed, not an empty seat in the joint. I was seated in the upper level of the car. By the way, those upper levels sway like a West Bottoms hobo who is all faded on Wild Irish Rose and gold spray paint fumes. There was an older hippy looking dude seated next to me, and as I sat down next to him a stench hit me. We all know someone who has yet to discover the magic of antiperspirant. It might be a too close friend or relative. Maybe it's the guy who works in the next cubicle, or changes the oil in your car. Point being, from time to time we all end up in someones airspace who  just plain stinks.  Hippy guy was oblivious to the funk, and it was so strong I figured it was him. It wasn't. He departed the train about an hour outside Kansas City, but the smell remained. Eight hours of smelling someones musk is a long time. Turned out it was a big lady a couple of rows up, wearing one of those two foot tall African head wraps and a brightly colored Mu Mu. I know it was her because I got stuck in the narrow stairwell as we got off the train in Chicago. She was right behind me, a couple of steps higher. It was the longest 2 minutes of my life in that stairwell. I wanted to snort bleach and pine sol.

I was laid over for 5 hours in Chicago, so I figured I'd walk around downtown, let the exhaust fumes purge the  ass smell from my nostrils.  Downtown Chicago reminds you just how small Kansas City is in comparison. Chicago panhandlers are as thick as pigeons. I'm standing out in front of the train station having a smoke, still smelling the lady in the head wrap when panhandler number one  approaches.  Young guy, couple of grand in tatts covering his arms. He starts his spiel, " Man this is really embarrassing, but I lost my wallet and I'm trying to get bus fare to get home".  I give my normal humanitarian response, "Can't help ya".  He wanders off to the next potential mark. By the time I'd smoked that Light 100, no fewer than 3 more panhandlers  tried to hit me up.  Funny thing, at least 3  of the panhandlers used the exact same  line as the first guy.  I was walking around, took a few shots of the canal that runs through downtown, and I see tattoo guy and a couple of the other panhandlers. They are standing in a circle, every one of em has a pretty decent bankroll, as they count it up.  Being a bum appears to be lucrative in Chi Town. I grab some food,  head back to the station, wait a few hours, board my train arrive at my final destination.  The drive  back to KC after picking up the truck was uneventful.  Next trip will be to Boston. Then Delaware. If this all works out I'll then  be moving on to picking up cars that someone stopped paying on. Locally. So pay your bills.

Back to the nostalgic thing. It struck me on the long drive back that night, how perspective changes with age. I'm sure those  long train rides to Pauls Valley Oklahoma were full of funky smelling people, but I was a kid back then, and the excitement overrode the unpleasant parts. Looking out the window of the truck into the darkness, the sound of the diesel droning along, I got a little sad. I remembered the sound of dice rattling in the Yahtzee cup, the southern drawl of my mother telling me to read this book or that one. Harper Lee painting pictures with words, hoping Boo Radley wouldn't snatch Dill or Scout and do god knows what to them.  I was hoping to rediscover a little piece of that long gone  moment in time. Instead I found foul smells and unoriginal street bums. To quote another southern writer ""You can't go home again"
— Thomas Wolfe

Yeah, I know, Its been a minute......................

  After about a month  without an original post or thought, I think the drought might, I stress might, be coming to an end.  So what's happened since I've been away on my sabbatical?

Daniel Rinehart got life.  This is the douche bag who  used his daughter as a sex slave from the age of 5, fathered four children with her, 3 of whom died. The whole sordid mess came to a head when a baby corpse was found stuffed in a cooler in an abandoned garage. His lovely wife, who stood by, only stepping in when it was time to deliver the babies, is set to go on trial  soon. I'm pretty sure Missouri law won't allow for the defendant to have her uterus stretched over her head, so hopefully the bitch will get life as well. This is one of those cases that just make you want to gather up the remaining family members  who knew and did nothing, put em in a small room, and put a match to it.  Dayum Double M, that's  a little harsh, No?  No, not really.  Heres the rub, there are still members of the Rinehart brood who blame the victim. First there was the Uncle, who offered up this pearl of wisdom,
“I’d rather not get into that because my thoughts for Ashley are not for on TV,” said James Gallup, Danial Rinehart’s uncle. “There were a lot of variables in it,” Gallup said. “Like I was telling you, she could have said no. She could have went to her mother, right? "  

Wrong. Mom was in on it from the git go.
Enter Rineharts mother, who was on Fox yesterday, again blaming the daughter. Keep in mind, he started raping the child at 5. They lived in cars and campers.You hear about  these unimaginable acts of depravity. Some scum bag using his own child to satisfy his twisted urges. And you ask, "How the hell could this happen?"  The answer in this case, and in most, the extended family members are as fucked up as a stack of soup sandwiches. The world would be a better place without em, they are really fucking up the gene pool for the rest of us. Fortunately, it doesn't appear they are in danger of  branching out, they seem to prefer their own brand.

Speaking of Hillbillys, the Gaza strip is like  Arkansas, or something. It's the Hatfields and McCoys of the middle east.  Every time you turn around the Israelis and Palestinians are trying to top one another in the killing department. It's gotten to the point I can't recall who started this shit in the first place. There comes a time when all the one upmanship and eye for an eye shit just becomes one big excuse to  blow up the innocents on either side. There is no voice of reason left on either side, just lots of killing and finger pointing.


Here at home we are busy killing one another, destroying the oceans, and generally running amok.  From a writing standpoint, it's all just fodder and fuel. There is never a shortage of fucked up-ped-ness in the world to wax philosophical on.  Frankly, it gets old. I look at the local blogs, national news, pundits and antagonists, writing up the same old same, nothing changes. I think it all just got to be too bland for me. Repetitive  bullshit, me right in the middle, just as repetitive and boring as all the rest. So I gave it a rest, picked up some honest work, and spent too much time practicing preventive medicating for my non existent glaucoma. It was only after running out of rolling papers and improvising  with the third page of the letter Q, in my pocket Websters dictionary , that I slowly got my groove back. Had I only known that smoking the written word was all I needed to do, I'd have been on it weeks ago. As it stands I'm trying to get rolling again, heh, and hope to at least put out a few posts a week.  So thanks for hanging in there, at least a couple hundred  die hards have been checking  in every day. so thanks, get a life already, and get back to work.