grate and smite.

1) Friday evening, immediately after going to the bank to make a deposit, I got the tip of my shoe caught in a crack in the sidewalk on the other side of the parking lot, directly across from where I work, and after flailing helplessly as I plummeted towards the ground with my arms outstretched and my face pulled back and turned away, I managed to catch all my weight on the palms of my hands and on the left side of my left knee, before skidding to a stop several feet later.

I was wearing gloves, which miraculously didn't get damaged, and my hands are fine. They were a little sore in the wrist-area this weekend, but are otherwise unharmed.

And also miraculously, I didn't managed to cheese-grate my pants, which is good because I like those pants a lot, and this event proves their near-indestructability. They got a little dust in one particular spot, but it rubbed right off as though it hadn't been there in the first place. Instead, I managed to skin a quarter-sized area of flesh off of the left side of my knee, right on the bendy bit, and then transfer it in finely-shredded form to the inside of my nearby pant leg.

They say 80% of all house dust is comprised of our own shedded skin cells. Well, I can assure you that the pixie dust I generated was 100% bonafide shredded skin cells.

I also generated a plum-sized lump of bruised flesh directly under and around the open wound in the aforementioned bendy bit, also known as the notorious bad zone of my left knee, which is the source of constantly inadvertent abuse, and will also inevitably end up the spot where knee-replacement surgery will be the most needed.

Today, my knee is still very sore to the touch, a little painful to bend, scabrously scraped up, and a most lovely swirl of purple, brown, green, blue and yellow.

2) Saturday afternoon as I was limping around the salon, doing my best to not bend my left knee, mostly because I don't dig that sorta pain, I found it harder than I expected to do the most basic of tasks.

Like, when I needed to open the laundry bin door underneath the shampoo backbar area, I had to twist around and stick my left leg straight and sort of to the side, and then turn my torso back in the other direction, then intending to bend down, pull the door open, and retrieve the used capes and towels inside.

However, whilst turning my torso back in the other direction and bending down, I managed to slip a little to the left, and before I could catch myself with my hands, I managed to hurl my body to the right, just at the correct angle to bring my right cheekbone down full force upon the top of the laundry bin door handle, smiting it yeah verily with a very solid thunk. Which did in fact dent my cheek for a while, right before the dent turned bright red, and then swelled up into an average olive-sized lump, right on the most prominent and cheekboniest bit on that side of my face.

And today, my cheek is still very sore to the touch, a little painful to smile, puffy yet slightly-less swollen, and a swirl of yellow and green, with blotches of purple and blue towards the center of the injury.

3) They say that bad things come in threes, so I choose to believe that the third bad thing is as follows.

While I bought this today, I don't get to have it until Friday, due to warehouse stocking issues and whatnot.

Hewlett-Packard - Pavilion Notebook with AMD Turion™ 64 dv8125nr
AMD Turion™ 64 mobile technology ML-32; DL DVD±RW/CD-RW drive; 17" widescreen; dual 80GB hard drives; 512MB PC2700 DDR memory; Windows XP Media Center; LightScribe labeling; 6-in-1 media reader; remote

Dude, it has a TEN-KEY pad and a remote control.

Which should severly cut down on misaligned numerical touch-typing corrections.

And, I can be just a little out of arm's reach of the computer, and still make DVDs play!

Plus, for like $150 or so more, I can acquire some sort of multimedia thingamajig that allows me to not only watch television programs upon the screen of my computer, but also record said television broadcast onto a disc, effectly allowing my computer to function as a DVR.

That's power, but I'm not sure exactly how often I would actually wield it.

For now, I choose to forgo the wi-fi router and pricey multimedia add-on, and use it as a notebook computer, much as I use this one under my fingers and hands.

4) Addressing the people who were wondering about the relative hotttness of Lord Sesshomaru vs. his half-brother, this is what I shared with the Dread Pirate Tif:

"Lord Sesshomaru is:

"http://www.animegalleries.net/img/7561

http://www.animegalleries.net/albums/media/48/iy_sesshomaru023.jpg

http://www.animegalleries.net/albums/media/48/iy_sesshomaru036.jpg

http://www.animegalleries.net/albums/media/48/iy_sesshomaru035.jpg

"He's missing his left arm because his half-brother chopped it off in the first season while he was in his demon dog form:

"http://www.animegalleries.net/albums/media/48/iy_sesshomaru041.jpg

"His half-brother is more whimsical and cute-ish, not hottttt.

"http://www.animegalleries.net/img/7347

http://www.animegalleries.net/albums/media/42/iy_inu098.jpg

"And at the new moon, the half-brother turns fully human, and this is his form:

"http://www.animegalleries.net/albums/media/42/iy_inu056.jpg"

5) And, as an aside, more than 2/3 of the virus emails I receive these days end in ".au."

Either I have a larger Oz readership than I imagined, or else I'm really hottt on the most popular Oz virus listings.

FYI, ".uk" is getting up there too, though.

Not that that is a formal challenge or anything. I'm not courting more disaster than I already have.

6) Thank you, please drive thru.

fifteen secrets

My mom still calls me "Boojie Lou."

I eat ricotta straight out of the container with a spoon.

I have a Ginger Spice doll.

Every morning when I blow my nose, I draw blood. Capillaries are a funny thing.

When "The Queen is Dead" came out, I hated it because I thought Morrissey was a self-important, whiney little priss.

I once got into a drunken altercation with a tree, and ended up with a scraped up lip that looked like a cold sore, and a bruise on the side of my neck that looked like a hickey. And don't worry, the tree is fine.

I subscribe to Game Informer magazine.

Even though I have an iron, an ironing board, and fusible hem tape, I still use double-sided sticky tape to hold up the cuffs on two pairs of my work pants.

I find Japanese shears* infinitely superior to German shears.

I think Lord Sesshomaru is way hotter than his half-brother.

Panty lines are very high on my list of pet peeves.

When I weighed 93 pounds during the Bell Jar era, I liked how I looked with a completely flat chest.

I take ten pills every single morning.

If I had to be a hooker, I'd rather work in a brothel than walk the streets, mostly because I know I'm too lazy to find my own tricks.

I do not subscribe to Martha Stewart Living.

********
*Seriously, dude, the Japanese were forging swords with 50-gazillion folded layers of metal when Proto-Germans were still hitting each other with sticks.

the newest nemesis...

The latest in indignant pixie-penned letters to Corporate America!

pixiemartin
delirrealm
fourth floor
chicago, illin' 606xx-xxxx
TJX Visa account: xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx


Capital One
Attn: Customer Relations
PO Box 30285
Salt Lake City, UT 84130-0285

February 12, 2006

Dear Sir or Madam,

I apologize for the length of this letter in advance, but I am writing to express my disappointment and displeasure with treatment that I received from your Customer Service department this afternoon. I was ignored, hung up on, spoken to rudely, and generally very unprofessionally treated by several members of your Customer Service team.

This afternoon, I called your customer service department with the intention of closing my TJX Visa account. This isn’t because of anything that your company had specifically done, but mostly because I am trying to be more fiscally responsible, and closing the account figured into that financial plan.

After I was finally able to speak to an account representative, at approximately 2:30 pm this afternoon, I explained politely that I wanted to close my account, and when asked why I was closing the account, I told the young man that it was a financial matter, and planned to leave it at that. I suppose, understandably, that he wanted a more specific answer than that, so I told him I was paring down my credit cards, and that it was more beneficial to earn money on a low-interest card than to earn gift certificates on a high-interest card.

He then offered to give me a low interest rate and sign me up for a cash reward program. I politely declined, telling him that at this time, that I was only interested in closing my account.

I know that in the world of telemarketing and telephone-based customer service that there are certain requirements as an employee that one must meet, so as not to lose business for one’s employer. However, after the third or fourth time I had assured him that I still wanted to close my account, and that no further inducements could change my mind, he still continued to sing the praise of the card and detail the valuable features and whatnot that I still neither wanted or needed.

I also know that in the world of telemarketing and telephone-based customer service, there are scripts that one is suppose to read, and possibly memorize by rote after a while, offering a solution to whatever problem the customer has with a company. And as the young man continued to hard sell me on keeping the card, I politely told him that I realized that he probably had a certain number of attempts to be made before giving up, and that he had a script of some sort that he was sharing with me, but that I didn’t need to hear it, and that he could consider that specific refusal as the final “no” that his employers probably required.

Sounding deeply offended, he told me that he was most certainly not reading a script, and then proceeded with the praise singing and the valued feature detailing.

I politely cut him off, and told him once again that I did not want the card, and was only interested in closing the account, whereupon he continued to ignore me, and picked up in the exact spot that he had left off before I had interrupted him.

This eventually devolved in me saying, “No, thank you. I would like to close my account,” over and over and over again, while he ignored my request and continued to tell me everything wonderful there is to know about the credit card, your company, and the benefits of everything and anything that were attached to the card and your business.

After politely repeating that phrase at least 15 to 20 times, I stopped him, told him that I was getting irritated, and wanted him to either close the account, or let me speak to his immediate supervisor, so that I could have that person close the account.

He ignored me again, still trying to sell me the card, when I again asked for him to either close the account, or let me speak to his immediate supervisor.

His response was that he was the Account Representative in this situation, and that he had no immediate supervisor to whom I might speak. Essentially, it was talk to him or deal.

I asked him for his full name, and when he didn’t say anything, I repeated the request.

He then hung up on me.

This experience had gone on for at least 5-7 minutes, with me having actually said, “I want to close my account,” more often in that span of time than I have probably used the phrase in the entire rest of my life.

I do not know if his tactic was to wear me down until I decided to keep the card, or if he was just being obstinate. To whatever end, he only succeeded in irritating me.

I called the customer service number again, and after 5 minutes of button pushing and listening to the music on hold, I finally was able to speak to another representative, who told me that her name was Marilyn.

After answering all of her security questions, she asked me how I was doing, and I told her that I was irritated by an experience that I had just had with another representative.
She apologized profusely and said that she would do what she could to amend the situation, which I appreciated greatly.

She then asked me how she could help me, and I gave her an abbreviated rundown of the previous call’s events.

I told her that I had called to close my account, and that the representative ignored my repeated requests, instead only trying to interest me in keeping the account. That no matter how many times I requested that he close my account, he kept ignoring me.

She said something like, “Okay,” and I continued.

I told her that I realized that they were not only there to help with account issues, but to also keep the consumers using the cards, and that I understood, but was only interested in closing the account at this time. I went on to say that when I realized that the previous representative was not going to assist me, that I asked for a supervisor or his name, and that he had hung up on me.

She started to apologize, and I freely admit that I was a little abrasive at this point, but I told her that I just wanted to close the account.

She then said in a voice that clearly conveyed irritation and contempt, that if I could let her get the rest of my information, she would be happy to assist.

I said that was fine.

I was then told, in the same tone of voice, that they would normally try to establish a specific reason for closing the account, “…but at this point, I do not even care. So, I am just going to close the account.”

I was taken aback, but decided to just let it go, when she told me the account would be closed immediately, and hurriedly read me a disclaimer statement.

Then, in a very insincere, very sugary sweet voice, thanked me, and told me to have a very nice day, before hanging up.

Now, normally I guess I could chalk this up to it being a Sunday or something, and that the reps were tired and wanted to be at home instead of dealing with grumpy, irritating people, but I have experienced this level of discourtesy in the past from a representative of your company, which also ended up in me writing a letter.

In that letter, which I wrote October 21, 2002, I detailed how I had spoken to a representative that was rude, and had decided to write a letter instead.

I wrote in the letter that after the girl had been abrasive and rude, I asked her if she felt she was a good representative of your company, and this was how your company was going to treat its customers, I was going to be closing my account.

She snottily replied, “You can’t close your account until it’s paid off,” and then hung up on me.

In fact, I did close the account as soon as the balance was paid off, and swore to never give your company my business again. (Amazingly, I believe the person that actually closed the account was polite.)

And when I signed up for the TJX card, and then discovered it was a Capitol One card, I very seriously considered closing the account based solely on that. But, I gave your company another chance, and am now certain that not only am I going to never do business with your company again, but that I am going to very strongly discourage everyone that I know, or will know in the future, to seriously consider not giving Capitol One their business.

And trust me, a lot of people will hear about it.

I find it extremely ironic that in your advertisements, you have actors portray obnoxious customer service representatives at some other credit card company, abusing customers, while it is intimated that you don’t receive this sort of abuse from Capitol One.

Because every single time I have dealt with one of your customer service reps, I have been treated rudely and with extreme disrespect, I now find myself only inclined to deal with customer service representatives from any credit card company that isn’t Capitol One.

I hope that in the future, your company will consider hiring employees that exhibit the ability to politely interact with society, because the people you have now distinctly lack that skill.

pixiemartin

*********

(Actually, in retrospect, that might actually be the shortest indignant letter I've ever sent out.)

comments

I was informed that whenever people have tried to leave comments in the recent past, it doesn't actually save them or some such. Ergo, no comments.

I thought y'all just hated me and didn't care.

Hopefully, the issue has been fixed, so comment away.

random

While I don't particularly enjoy the reason I have to buy 2-cent stamps, I still find it a strangely rewarding task.

You can get like 50 of them for ONE dollar.

Dude, that's awesome.

About the only other useful things in that quantity that you can buy elsewhere are paperclips and index cards.

And they come prepackaged, which isn't any fun.

If you want paperclips or index cards, you don't get to stand in line and then tell someone in a blue uniform that you want 50 of something.

And you can't pick some random number of them, either. It's like you get the 100-pack or whatever.

However, you can buy as many or as few 2-cent stamps, at minimal investment, as your pocketbook will allow.

There is no, "Hello, my jolly good man! I would like to purchase 13 fine paperclips, so that I might join together 13 sets of documents."

You just pick up a box, and then wait in line to pay for them.

That's infinitely less fulfilling of a task.

Plus, the magical addition of a paperclip or an index card doesn't make something else you already have of even greater value.

Suddenly, with an addition of a little 2-cent gum-backed paper, you can turn a practically useless other piece of gum-backed paper into a vehicle that facilitates the activity of postal correspondence.

Which totally rocks.