The Comcast ClusterF*ck Continues Unabated

due to the unimaginable response from COMCAST -- after Fred's three phone "conversations," my three (transcripted) "chats" -- coupled with my profound sadness about what is happening (has been happening/will happen) in my beloved FRANCE -- the following email was sent to Fred, ensconced in the computer turret since early this morning, trying to decipher the terrorist training that COMCAST operator-operatives under go when becoming customer service representatives. the competition for sales commissions apparently justifies the lies upon lies that these COMCAST lying liars spout with such facility. i say again, and never often enough, "dear, wonderful, brilliant, sweet Fred!" say it with me, DEAR READERS, say it with me: "dear, wonderful, brilliant, sweet Fred!"

anyway, upon receiving our fifth email from COMCAST detailing what our new billing will be -- last promised, on the phone, to be a much boosted superheroic internet speed and 140 mind-numbing television channels at a locked-in rate of $89, only to be an actual $188.86 monthly bill... my aforementioned numb mind imploded. odd, because i usually EXplode my brain matter onto the ceiling, right next to the coffee splatters.  you know?

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pertinent, if incoherent, email to Fred, this friday morning, ce vendredi néfaste, maléfique::

we will prevail over The Evil Comcast Empire, without doubt. 

but... "j'accuse" * to quote a REAL quote from émile zola versus the misquoted voltaire! 

if they won't give us decent internet speed/power, won't budge on the cost (if you can get them to say the ACTUAL cost), then: 

**tell them we will budge on the television service.
"give us the best television price you can that will bring the total,.actual, complete cost below $100."
i will go into television withdrawal before i will pay these ridiculous "triple pay" prices for "double play" services that are really ground balls hit to the first baseman!   

**if lowering the television service does not bring the price down to what they have promised (in writing and on the phone), tell them we will keep the present crappy service."
at this point would you please ask them to purge the line to the turret router (remind them that it runs through the barn and over the rope ladder to the turret) -- and maybe that will at least clean up, and maybe speed up, my internet (since yours seems to be acceptable, if i understand correctly.  are you still able to stream video without interruption and glitches? load pages quickly? i can barely get through short youtube vids and it takes between 45 seconds and 8 HOURS (okay, 4 minutes, jeez) to load the stupid COMCAST page! but then, you have the luxurious computer turret, and i, i have the creepy suite in the outer northwest manor wing.

satiric trivia below, mon chéri, in honor of what's happening in FRANCE-- 

* beginning of zola's wonderful letter "j'accuse":

Me permettez-vous, dans ma gratitude pour le bienveillant accueil que vous m’avez fait un jour, d’avoir le souci de votre juste gloire et de vous dire que votre étoile, si heureuse jusqu’ici, est menacée de la plus honteuse, de la plus ineffaçable des taches ?

Vous êtes sorti sain et sauf des basses calomnies, vous avez conquis les cœurs. Vous apparaissez rayonnant dans l’apothéose de cette fête patriotique que l’alliance russe a été pour la France, et vous vous préparez à présider au solennel triomphe de notre Exposition Universelle, qui couronnera notre grand siècle de travail, de vérité et de liberté. Mais quelle tache de boue sur votre nom — j’allais dire sur votre règne — que cette abominable affaire Dreyfus ! Un conseil de guerre vient, par ordre, d’oser acquitter un Esterhazy, soufflet suprême à toute vérité, à toute justice. Et c’est fini, la France a sur la joue cette souillure, l’histoire écrira que c’est sous votre présidence qu’un tel crime social a pu être commis...

[....]  J’accuse le général de Pellieux et le commandant Ravary d’avoir fait une enquête scélérate, j’entends par là une enquête de la plus monstrueuse partialité, dont nous avons, dans le rapport du second, un impérissable monument de naïve audace.

J’accuse les trois experts en écritures, les sieurs Belhomme, Varinard et Couard, d’avoir fait des rapports mensongers et frauduleux, à moins qu’un examen médical ne les déclare atteints d’une maladie de la vue et du jugement.

translated, but you must imagine COMCAST personnel (the CEO plus the chat and telephone "customer service" lying liar experts) in place of the french president Félix Faure, General De Pellieux, commander Ravary, and the "experts" Belhomme, Varinard and Couard.  the "dreyfus affair" would become "the Comcast Clusterfuck." france, herself, would be the irreligious USAmerican Corporate Conglomerate, i guess!

Would you allow me, in my gratitude for the benevolent reception that you gave me one day, to draw the attention of your rightful glory and to tell you that your star, so happy until now, is threatened by the most shameful and most ineffaceable of blemishes?

You have passed healthy and safe through base calumnies; you have conquered hearts. You appear radiant in the apotheosis of this patriotic festival that the Russian alliance was for France, and you prepare to preside over the solemn triumph of our World Fair, which will crown our great century of work, truth and freedom. But what a spot of mud on your name—I was going to say on your reign—is this abominable Dreyfus affair! A council of war, under order, has just dared to acquit Esterhazy, a great blow to all truth, all justice. And it is finished, France has this stain on her cheek, History will write that it was under your presidency that such a social crime could be committed[....]

 I accuse General De Pellieux and commander Ravary of performing a rogue investigation, by which I mean an investigation of the most monstrous partiality, of which we have, in the report of the second, an imperishable monument of naive audacity.

I accuse the three handwriting experts, sirs Belhomme, Varinard and Couard, of submitting untrue and fraudulent reports, unless a medical examination declares them to be affected by a disease of sight and judgment.

END OF EMAIL TO FRED

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BEGINNING OF COMMENTARY ON FRANCE, AS THAT IS WHAT I AM OBSESSIVELY WATCHING ON COMCAST TELEVISION (despite our apparently nose-bleed inducing new rates!):


i MUST add: à bas Jean Marie et Marine Le Pen, aussi bien que le Front National.  Ça va sans le dire que nous condamnons l'extrémisme sous toutes les formes, y inclus les islamistes dit jihadistes --  faux et dégoûtants -- déguelasses -- qui m'ont fait vomir hier et encore une fois ce matin, mais ça, c'était pour la dernière fois, JAMAIS ENCORE...  (mais je suis incapable de ne rien dit, de cesser de parler, comme mon cher samuel beckett dit dessous...)

[ADDENDUM: these quotes of Beckett are part of the manifesto of my life, are my essential last will and testament, if i were to have a manifesto of my life and were my last will and testament not so redundant with the minutia of debts and investments and equity and gratitude.]

[i am close to another treatise on translation, as the Beckett quotes from his fiction were NOT translated by Beckett, when originating in the French, as he never did his own translating.  the French originals are much... truer, stronger?]

I pause to record that I feel in extraordinary form. Delirium perhaps.
SAMUEL BECKETT, Malone Dies
My mistakes are my life.
SAMUEL BECKETT, How It Is
Where I am, I don't know, I'll never know, in the silence you don't know, you must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on.
SAMUEL BECKETT, The Unnamable
There’s man all over for you, blaming on his boots the faults of his feet.
SAMUEL BECKETT, Waiting for Godot
In me there have always been two fools, among others, one asking nothing better than to stay where he is and the other imagining that life might be slightly less horrible a little further on.
SAMUEL BECKETT, Molloy
If by Godot I had meant God I would have said God, and not Godot.
SAMUEL BECKETT, The Essential Samuel Beckett: An Illustrated Biography
another story leave it dark no the same story not two stories leave it dark all the same like the rest a little darker a few words all the same a few old words like for the rest stop panting let it stop
SAMUEL BECKETT, How It Is
Ah, the old questions, the old answers, there's nothing like them!
SAMUEL BECKETT, Endgame
All this business of a labour to accomplish, before I can end, of words to say, a truth to recover, in order to say it, before I can end, of an imposed task, once known, long neglected, finally forgotten, to perform, before I can be done with speaking, done with listening, I invented it all, in the hope it would console me, help me to go on, allow me to think of myself as somewhere on a road, moving, between a beginning and an end, gaining ground, losing ground, getting lost, but somehow in the long run making headway.
SAMUEL BECKETT, The Unnamable
Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness.
SAMUEL BECKETT, The Letters of Samuel Beckett
Yes, yes, it's the most comical thing in the world. And we laugh, we laugh, with a will, in the beginning. But it's always the same thing. Yes, it's like the funny story we have heard too often, we still find it funny, but we don't laugh any more.
SAMUEL BECKETT, Endgame
Tears and laughter, they are so much Gaelic to me.
SAMUEL BECKETT, Molloy
Deplorable mania, when something happens, to inquire what.
SAMUEL BECKETT, The Unnamable
Yesterday is not a milestone that has been passed, but a daystone on the beaten track of the years, and irremediably part of us, within us, heavy and dangerous. We are not merely more weary because of yesterday, we are other, no longer what we were before the calamity of yesterday.
SAMUEL BECKETT, "Proust", Samuel Beckett: Poems, Short Fiction, and Criticism
He who has waited long enough, will wait forever. And there comes the hour when nothing more can happen and nobody more can come and all is ended but the waiting that knows itself in vain.
SAMUEL BECKETT, Malone Dies
in reality we are one and all from the unthinkable first to the no less unthinkable last glued together in a vast imbrication of flesh without breach or fissure
SAMUEL BECKETT, How It Is
My life, my life, now I speak of it as of something over, now as of a joke which still goes on, and it is neither, for at the same time it is over and it goes on, and is there any tense for that? Watch wound and buried by the watchmaker, before he died, whose ruined works will one day speak of God, to the worms.
SAMUEL BECKETT, Molloy
The end is in the beginning and yet you go on.
SAMUEL BECKETT, Endgame
Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.
SAMUEL BECKETT, Worstward Ho!
The fact is, it seems, that the most you can hope is to be a little less, in the end, the creature you were in the beginning, and the middle.
SAMUEL BECKETT, Molloy

(i must add, i cannot stop from adding, that i wish my gothic wonderland students had bothered to read, to really read, to think, to really think, the beckett i forced down leurs gueules de bois ... but no, they managed to decide, in an incident of mass hysteria, that en attendant godot was "about" homosexuality. no, i'm not kidding. those essays, taken with the berkeley student, a brilliant young man, who chose to write his first composition in the form of a suicide letter, were among the most horrific teaching moments of my career.)


© 2015 L. Ryan

"Outside of a Small Circle of Friends"

good evening, i am going insane.  would you like to come with?

my eye surgeon opined, last week, that i was having an unusual inflammatory reaction in my post-op right eye.  this was no news to moi, as i experienced schizophrenic weeping:  one happy, bright eye;  one red, upset, hysterical eye leaking in much the same manner as my brain.

she got all scientific and crap, actually visualizing with her many shiny toys the aforementioned inflammatory cells.

[i make them nervous.  all of that ocular equipment is expensive, fragile, and often hanging around the exam rooms in odd and unexpected places and ways.  so in i come in a wheelchair, wielding a cane, doing wheelies, waving my shoulderless arms around like a spastic spastic person, losing my balance and reaching out to grab stuff -- anything, even expensive, fragile ocular equipment -- to avoid falling...  okay, so it's not anywhere near that bad -- but you should see their eyes, the fluttering of their hands.  they actually end up more on the twitchy end of the continuum than i am.  it's a gas.]

so... tuesday, we careened back over there, really giving them the heebie-jeebies because in addition to my usual ineptitudes, i was either having an extended asthma attack or developing a rapid pneumonia.  my pressures were elevated, which any layperson could have explained was the result of the hacking and wheezing with which i had replaced normal respiration.  i had called good old doctor go-to-guy and his supernurse, and arrangements were made for me to head over to get a chest film after getting my eye pressures and breaking the priceless ophthalmologic doodads.

no pneumonia, no asthma, just a rapid onset bronchitis, also right-sided, for which an equally rapid antibiotic was added to my collection of jewel-toned pills and capsules.

however, starting yesterday, the joys of hacking and one-sided weeping were augmented by the left eye kicking in, majorly.

i'm sure the surgeries were successful and that i can see again.

it's just that i can't see.

too busy dealing with bugged-out sclera and fuzzy, burning TEARS.  i asked tuesday whether any of the eye drops could actually get into an eye that is forever weeping, and got a throat-clearing sort of answer. doctors need to stand in front of a mirror and practice saying, in a normal, confident voice, "i don't know." who would think any less of them?  not me!

so i religiously apply the medications, and they all immediately join the downstream flow of salty goodness. they'd have a better chance of making it to mine eyeballs if i put them in mine ears.

in the realm of "too much information," phlegm chromatics have shifted from yellows to greens, and i can't remember, or care, whether that means something good or bad.

in other news, i played plumber's helper today as sven labored under one of the manor's thirty-two kitchen sinks.  it was a case of the doohickey not functioning and the plumber's clay or goo or whatever it's called having dried up.  a small leak.  but small plumbing problems still mean having to take apart major bits of pipes and whatnot.  i held the flashlight and turned water on and off when so instructed.  believe it or not, i actually made several small suggestions that were helpful, too.  sven was good-humored, my hand was steady, i felt like a wheezing, histrionic rock star doing community service.

i did a lot of reading, which clearly was stupid, but -- i ask you -- was it worse than spending the day curled up under a quilt listening to music?  there are many chores waiting but my body wasn't having that today. helping sven quell the drip-drip-drip was my best effort.

anyway -- my favorite segue -- one of the things i read was about how the online version of popular science magazine -- something i actually do read -- had reached an editorial decision to no longer allow online comments to their articles.

oh, i bet you think you know me.

"hmm," thought i, in a perfectly reasonable fashion, as i dabbed at my crimson orbs with a fresh kleenex.  "i wonder what brought that about."

knowing it to be a reasonable publication, knowing it, by deduction alone, to be science-based, i figured they had a good reason.  no, i did not phone, email, text, tweet or holler for the ACLU to come defend trampled free speech.  there was no wailing -- couldn't if i'd have wanted to -- about "big brother" coming home to roost, yet again, among my favorite chickens.  [i dunno, i just wrote it, i don't know what it means.]

the reason is sad, and it is one that all of us will understand:

A politically motivated, decades-long war on expertise has eroded the popular consensus on a wide variety of scientifically validated topics. Everything, from evolution to the origins of climate change, is mistakenly up for grabs again. Scientific certainty is just another thing for two people to "debate" on television. And because comments sections tend to be a grotesque reflection of the media culture surrounding them, the cynical work of undermining bedrock scientific doctrine is now being done beneath our own stories, within a website devoted to championing science.

for me, as an always correct progressive sort, this was a prophetic ringing of the bell.  i've been driven to distraction by otherwise intelligent people who want to so manipulate archaeological, botanical, geological facts, and other forms of substantiated historical record so that jesus had the opportunity to forgive the dinosaurs while lunching with sinful neanderthals -- just before the start of world war two and that whole charade of a story about the holocaust...

these same people can be shown facts about the frightening sang froid of the bush-cheney-wolfowitz-rumsfeld invasion of iraq by means of deliberate, repeated lying and manipulation of a grieving citizenry and a watchful but essentially trusting group of allied nations... and within minutes, these folks are parroting the lies again, but now they're also impugning your patriotism as an added lying lie.

i could start on the political right and the same process of regurgitating lies about obamacare, the economy, the ecology of the planet, or the overt racism of their entire endeavor -- how dare that smartass, dumb kenyan jigaboo socialist claim the right to try and govern the greatest country on god's formerly green earth?

and i think popular science magazine has it right.  this is grotesque aping of a very sick media culture that feeds jacked-up pop rocks to the brains of already slightly-twisted thinkers.  there's this woman whose tweets i read (because i generally care for her well-being) who grows apoplectic but also eerily HAPPY when she explains how obamacare puts the control of patient care under the devious thumb of insurance companies. you see, before now, her doctor rang up the insurance company and told them how he wanted things done, and the insurance company said, "yes, doctor... of course, doctor."  she thinks obamacare is behind insurance companies' drug formularies -- that they never existed before this black man dreamed it all up.

she is, of course, an isolationist and a fan of us/them constructions, but especially of "not me" verbiage.

her grasp of foreign affairs ends at the end of shock jocks' thought organs and smarmy rants,  and she's simply orgasmic over anything amenable to a conspiratorial story line.

facts, proof, science -- forget about it!  being a lying liar with no responsibility to transmit truth is just plain more fun.

she's not the best example, and far from influential -- i just sometimes despair over the death of common sense, science, critical (and original) thinking in ordinary people.  you know, the salt of the earth.

it makes me want to weep, except that i'd do most anything right now to stop crying a river.

i love political back-and-forth and am guilty of over-the-top yapping just to keep the shuttlecock flying until closing time... but i am, in truth, fiscally conservative, naive about political intentions, a slave to history and yet a poor student of it, and, oh, i could confess my own knee-jerk sins for far too long.  but i research the "other" side of issues as much as i can, and question my self and my opinions sans cesse.

there is also a guilt that i think only a prof, a teacher, can feel -- a sense of truly having failed at one's job, even if that job amounted to nothing but foreign language skills and the literature of "different" people.  every prof, every teacher knows that the mastery of critical thinking and stuff like logic, communication, and learning skills (for a forever plastic mind that forever thrives at learning) are the real objects of our labor, be we football coaches, french profs, or charged with special education.

by the way (another fan-freaking-tastic segue) -- did any of you follow the story of the 80-something year old adjunct french professor who dropped dead from the accumulated effects of lifelong systematic abuse and relentless poverty?  hmm?

[see "The Sad Death Of An Adjunct Professor Sparks A Labor Debate."  you'll be mumble-humming the refrain to "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll" before the end of the third paragraph. I've seen estimates ranging from 45 to 75% as the rate at which adjuncts are bearing the undergraduate teaching load at universities these days.  When I taught at UC-Berkeley in the haze of a far distant past, the number was already abominable.  This is why Brother-Unit Grader Boob breaks into frightening bizarro laughter when an angry student throws the ultimate retort his way upon receiving a bad grade:  "yeah, well, i guess you're just in this for the money..."]

if i had any voice at all, i'd be singing some dear old pete seeger piece.

or phil ochs. lately, i've picked up that old fascinator again.  not that i'm calling phil ochs an odd bit of millinery.

why not... let's finish this evenings weeping and coughing up of lung with... "outside of a small circle of friends"?  it has just the odd divergent lightness of tinny piano and tone with the rock-in-the-stomach ring of truth that this whole post has been struggling so to convey.

© 2013 L. Ryan

Extremism on the rise

Yesterday, Fox News put this out -- along with many other news outlets. So I had my choice of where to steal, um, lift, uh, where to *get* this info.

I was impressed by the integrity with which Fox relayed the story -- my stereotyping of that particular source being rather strong and negative.

Contrary to some other versions, the Fox story, after dealing with the gist of things, goes on to question assumptions.

What about extremism among the leftists?

The Homeland Security folks were ready -- referencing an earlier study done of those liberal numbnuts.

Fox did seem a little put out that the leftwing version of extremism à la The Homeland Folks concentrated less on the potential for violence and more on their propensity to understand and use technology.

Just a small dig.

Heh.

Seriously, though -- this assessment is not exactly a surprise to most of the citizenry. God bless, in fact, those for whom it *is* a shock, for they are surely... remarkable people --

Who most likely have their living room furniture covered in plastic and freezers full of what they call "TV Dinners."

I am afraid for Obama. I fear the people so rocked by race as to turn to the inflammatory reflex of violent response.

The growing degree of want and sense of loss for some U.S. Americans, particularly those whose losses are compounded by personal devastation, sacrifice, and, perhaps, war, will also drive extremist impulses -- and how to track these people without empowering Big Brother? (I know, I know. How many times have I already figured in FBI tapes -- those funloving people sporting videocams back in the days of my 'maintes manifestations'? I always posed full-faced and smiling.)

The question/thought I hope we all continually reflect upon? Whether or not, in order to preserve First Amendment rights (as we diversely interpret them), protection of the fringe elements of the extreme right and left must constitute the line in the sand.

The Department of Homeland Security is warning law enforcement agencies
that recent news is helping "right-wing extremist groups" recruit new members
and could lead to violence, and warns about the possible recruitment and
radicalization of returning veterans.

The report, issued last week, is part of an ongoing review of extremists on both ends of the political spectrum.

The latest assessment by DHS' Office of Intelligence and Analysis found
no specific information that domestic right-wing terrorists are currently
planning acts of violence, but right-wing extremists may be gaining new recruits
by playing on fears about the recession and the election of the first African
American president. The office called them "unique drivers for right-wing
radicalization and recruitment."

"Right-wing extremists have capitalized on the election of the first African American president, and are focusing their efforts to recruit new members, mobilize existing supporters and broaden their scope and appeal through propaganda, but they have not yet turned to attack planning," the assessment reads.

"The current economic and political climate has some similarities to the 1990s when right-wing extremism experienced a resurgence fueled largely by an economic recession, criticism about the outsourcing of jobs and the perceived threat to U.S. power and sovereignty by other foreign powers.," it continues.

The report also suggests that returning veterans are attractive recruits for right-wing groups looking for "combat skills and experience" so as to boost their "violent capabilities." It adds that new restrictions on gun ownership and the difficulty of veterans to reintegrate into their communities "could lead to the potential emergence of terrorist groups or lone wolf extremists capable of carrying out violent attacks."

"Proposed imposition of firearms restrictions and weapons bans likely would attract new members into the ranks of right-wing extremist groups ... The high volume of purchases and stockpiling of weapons and ammunition by right-wing extremists in anticipation of restrictions and bans in some parts of the country continue to be a primary concern to law enforcement," the report says.

The assessment notes that right-wing recruitment grew in the 1990s
but subsided after increased scrutiny by the government following the 1995
Oklahoma City bombings.

It does state that in 2009 "threats from white supremacist and violent antigovernment groups ... have been largely rhetorical and have not indicated plans to carry out violent acts."

"Nevertheless, the consequences of a prolonged economic downturn-including real estate foreclosures, unemployment, and an inability to obtain credit-could create a fertile recruiting environment for right-wing extremists and even result in confrontations between such groups and government authorities similar to those in the past," reads a key finding in the assessment.

DHS spokeswoman Sara Kuban said the April 7 assessment is one in an ongoing series published by DHS "to facilitate a greater understanding of radicalization in the United States."

"DHS has no specific information that domestic right-wing terrorists are currently planning acts of violence, but right-wing extremists may be gaining new recruitments by playing on their fears about several emerging issues," Kuban said.