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?

***************************************************************************************

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

*****************************************************************

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

Neither Sharia Nor State: Looking Behind the Veil

Following France's most excellent example, the Spanish parliament opened debate a few days ago on the possible banning of the burqa in public.

In Spain, the leading opposition Popular Party put forward the proposal to support women's rights and prevent Muslim women from being forced by husbands to wear the veil.

But analysts see it as an opposition ploy to build strength amid economic turmoil and dismal growth prospects, particularly since no one has been able to cite any place in Spain where women routinely wear the veil.

I continue to be impressed by the dedication of lawmakers and law-enforcers to carefully distinguish -- by subtle visual cues perceptible only by right-wing Christian politicians -- which women wear the burqa due to matrimonial insistence (undoubtedly violent and repressive) and which wear it for some other, inconsequential reason -- such as the belief they are observing the teaching of the Qur'an.

The slight snarkiness of the last line of the paragraph quoted above sent my sieve-like mind back to last November, and the Swiss referendum.

It is terribly warm today and I'm too hot, tired to make much of a joke of it, or even much of a straightforward post.  One day I will prove to you all my capacity for the straightforward... but not today.

{it'snottheheatit'sthehumidityit'it'snottheheatit'sthehumidityit'snottheheatit'sthehumidity}

Last autumn, it seemed so funny, the Swiss referendum barring the building of new minarets.

Switzerland being known for its minarets, and all.

As it stands now, the country has well under half-a-million Muslims, and four (4, quatre, cuatro, vier) minarets. I don't know if minaret is meant to stand for mosque.  I sure hope not, because that would be slimy-sneaky, very naughty.

Ah, no, thank goodness: There are a reported 90 Islamic Cultural Centers that are open for Friday prayer, and some small subset of that number open for the five daily prayer services.  The wording I've adopted is that mandated by those gosh-darned neutral Swiss -- Islamic Cultural Centers  makes me think of nothing so much as... worship.

Twenty-two out of 26 cantons voted to ban the wanton proliferation of those wacky looking, clearly subversive, prayer towers.

One of the resultant punchlines was that the French were officially surprised and dismayed; Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner declared himself "shocked by this decision... It is an expression of intolerance and I detest intolerance."

Yes, let's sit with that for a moment.

Outrage, shock. I detest intolerance!

Swiss officials tried to explain the vote away as an understandable expression of the mounting fear of fundamentalist Islam. (By which they mean terrorism, packaged in less-than-fair skin tone. This article appeared a few days ago, noting the rising islamaphobia in the United States -- as found in pronouncements by Sarah Palin about plans to build a mosque near the site of the Twin Towers and by rightwingers fighting the construction of a mosque that would "loom over two churches" in Temecula, California.)

"Peace-seeking Muslims, pls understand, Ground Zero mosque is UNNECESSARY provocation; it stabs hearts. Pls reject it in interest of healing." is how the ever peace-seeking Palin tweeted it.

In fair Switzerland, the winking right wing claimed that the height requirements for minarets were actually a "political-religious claim to power, which challenges fundamental rights."

I feel an etymology coming on.

fundament
c.1300, "buttocks, anus," from L. fundamentum, from fundare "to found" (see found (1)). So called because it is where one sits.
Alle þe filþ of his magh ['maw'] salle breste out atte his fondament for drede. ["Cursor Mundi," c.1340]

Playing along with the rhetoric of The Winkers, Kouchner bravely opined that "if we cannot build minarets that means that we are practising religious oppression," and ended with a Rodney King impression, asking: "Is it really offensive that in a mountainous country there is a building that is a bit taller than the others?"

Incisive, the French.

There has been a much ballyhooed dialogue ongoing in France, called the National Identity Debate. Funnily enough, that innocent discussion built up a big head of steam about the time the Swiss noticed those four massive minarets blocking their view of heaven.

The point? According to Prime Minister Fillon, the point is "to introduce rules aimed at cultivating pride in being French and promoting the values of the Republic."

It makes my blood run sufficiently cold that -- for a moment -- I could care less that we are approaching 100 degrees here today.

{it'snottheheatit'sthehumidityit'it'snottheheatit'sthehumidityit'snottheheatit'sthehumidity}

Fly the flag! Sing the Marseillaise! Pledge to uphold a list of French values! Fly the flag! Sing the... what was that?

Fly the flag! No... not that.
Er... Sing the Marseillaise? No-o-o.
Pledge to uphold a list of French values? {cough} That would be it!

Yes, immigrants are going to be schooled in the French language, in gender equality, and be made to sign a pledge vowing to uphold those values identified as quintessentially French.

This has nothing to do with xenophobia born from longstanding, well-known, well-documented resentment of immigrants and exiles, welcomed under the auspices of the hexagon's longstanding liberality, but treated according to the prevailing winds -- and certainly this regulatory nonsense is not buoyed by economic and social stressors running rampant over Revolutionary Man -- running, running, slipshod, roughshod, and shod!

Don't touch my sentences. I write like H. P. Lovecraft.

Sarkozy tippy-toed away from the great dialogue as polls began to suggest the citizenry, for the most part, found it silly. Even so, lists have been established as to what is French, and thereby, what is not. If you're unsure about some private inclination, you can consult the official web page.  I love some of the entries -- almost all are wonderfully evocative of something, to be sure, whether that be core-value Frenchification or not, I'm unqualified to say -- but the impact, if open to it, is not unlike the taste of a madeleine, dipped in tepid tea.

Frenchness, an involuntary memory (of the first reading of Proust's quintessential depiction of involuntary memory)?

Some go so far as to say that le grand débat evokes, provokes, and encourages anti-Muslim sentiments, in specific, and racism, in general. The need, in difficult times, is to scapegoat. It is not par hasard that many of the identité française proposals were put forward by French Immigration Minister Eric Besson -- no,  it is par fatalité.

I want to love the idea. People amicably exchanging ideas, sharing stories of what it means to be French. Finishing the event off with several good cheeses: stinky Livarots and runny Camemberts, maybe a nutty Cantal, served with some properly paired wines.

I want to sit back and sip my pousse-café, contente.

But I know better (this would be one of the rare instances) -- because we've done this before, with disastrous results. In fact, to take the long view, the grand débat itself is but the same conversation, disguised.

Yes, the leap is huge in scope and largely unwarranted.  It is extreme, and ugly.  I don't even care if you want to call it, and me, a left-wing exaggeration, a piece of facile provocation.

Because, sadly,  it is not absurd.  It can be imagined.  It could be so perverted.  I did not strain any mental muscle at the thought, did you?  [I confess that a tidal wave of sadness broke over my infected and infested shoulders.]

Nonetheless, haven't we promised, in good faith, to make that leap, to never forget?  The road to Auschwitz was built by hate, but paved with indifference, and so on and so forth?

Why is it called facile to invoke Nazism?  Would that it were!  Would it be better to mutter "Rwanda," and stalk off, confident of 100 days in 1994?  How about "Darfur"?  Should I speak of caste, classism?  Genetic discrimination, genism, determinism?  The killing of infant girls, sexism?  Am I responsible for the end terms of the continuum?

Do I have a stake in the mindset?

"Hannah Shah" wrote a guest blog post for The Washington Post, "Freedom to Wear a Burqa." She is the author of The Imam's Daughter: My Desperate Flight to Freedom, and her story makes what she has to say that much more important. Who would know more about rigidity and abuse founded in fundamental religious practices than this Imam's daughter, tortured in the cellar of her own home, targeted for an honor killing by her own father and brothers? She was condemned for apostasy, one of three sins punishable by death according to literal, fundamental readings of the Qur'an. She ran from an arranged marriage in Pakistan; She became a Christian. She did these things, and these things were done to her, in today's England, in a Pakistani community in the north.

One has to listen to such a witness. She writes:

In Europe, Belgium and France assume its OK for the government to say we believe in freedom, but then advocate that the laws should say what Muslim women can and can't wear. French President Nicolas Sarkozy said the veil made women "prisoners behind netting." There seems to be a lack of understanding of Muslim women and their reasons for wearing the burqa. What about the human rights of Muslim women? In banning the burqa will we become the oppressor rather than fighting against oppression? If we are concerned for Muslim women as Mr. Sarkozy professes to be, should we not concentrate on empowering them and giving them a voice rather than spending time making laws that threaten their freedom to choose.

[It probably won't surprise you to learn that my favorite culinary moments relate to cutting -- as when acid cuts through fat, or even, more literally, when a certain slice of blade frees a flavor from oblivion. Sorry, but today, for the first time in weeks, I am cooking... And so I should say something now about "Hannah Shah" and her incisiveness, her clarifying voice.]

It is perfectly lovely, as a woman, to read this -- to hear: But wait, don't you really want to give voice and choice to women, isn't that what you meant all along with these decisions about head-coverings and identity and such? Come now, isn't it?

It distresses me to have to add this here at the end, but I took the rare step of asking a reader his opinion prior to publishing this post, and I think my reader is right -- I am too glib, too free and easy with other people's pain and circumstances.  I am, in short, presumptuous.

Real women die real deaths over things that I treat lightly.

Violations of 'Islamic teachings' take deadly toll on Iraqi women
CNN February 8, 2008


BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- The images in the Basra police file are nauseating: Page after page of women killed in brutal fashion -- some strangled to death, their faces disfigured; others beheaded. All bear signs of torture.


The women are killed, police say, because they failed to wear a headscarf or because they ignored other "rules" that secretive fundamentalist groups want to enforce.




"Fear, fear is always there," says 30-year-old Safana, an artist and university professor. "We don't know who to be afraid of. Maybe it's a friend or a student you teach. There is no break, no security. I don't know who to be afraid of."




Her fear is justified. Iraq's second-largest city, Basra, is a stronghold of conservative Shia groups. As many as 133 women were killed in Basra last year -- 79 for violation of "Islamic teachings" and 47 for so-called honor killings, according to IRIN, the news branch of the U.N.'s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.




One glance through the police file is enough to understand the consequences. Basra's police chief, Gen. Abdul Jalil Khalaf, flips through the file, pointing to one unsolved case after another.
"I think so far, we have been unable to tackle this problem properly," he says. "There are many motives for these crimes and parties involved in killing women, by strangling, beheading, chopping off their hands, legs, heads."


"When I came to Basra a year ago," he says, "two women were killed in front of their kids. Their blood was flowing in front of their kids, they were crying. Another woman was killed in front of her 6-year-old son, another in front of her 11-year-old child, and yet another who was pregnant."




The killers enforcing their own version of Islamic justice are rarely caught, while women live in fear.




Boldly splattered in red paint just outside the main downtown market, a chilling sign reads: "We warn against not wearing a headscarf and wearing makeup. Those who do not abide by this will be punished. God is our witness, we have notified you."


The attacks on the women of Basra have intensified since British forces withdrew to their base at the airport back in September, police say. Iraqi security forces took over after British troops pulled back, but are heavily infiltrated by militias.




And tracking the perpetrators of these crimes is nearly impossible, Khalaf says, adding that he doesn't have control of the thousands of policemen and officers.


"We're trying to trace crimes carried out by an anonymous enemy," he says.


Amnesty International has raised concern about the increasing violence toward women in Iraq, saying abductions, rapes and "honor killings" are on the rise.


"Politically active women, those who did not follow a strict dress code, and women [who are] human rights defenders were increasingly at risk of abuses, including by armed groups and religious extremists," Amnesty said in a 2007 report.


Sometimes, it's just the color of a woman's headscarf that can draw unwanted attention.


"One time, one of my female colleagues commented on the color of my headscarf," Safana says. "She said it would draw attention ... [and I should] avoid it and stick to colors like gray, brown and black."


This extremist ideology enrages many secular Muslim women, who say it's a misrepresentation of Islam.


Sawsan, another woman who works at a university, says the message from the radicals to women is simple: "They seem to be sending us a message to stay at home and keep your mouth shut."


After the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, Sawsan says, the situation was "the best." But now, she says, it's "the worst."


"We thought there would be freedom and democracy and women would have their rights. But all the things we were promised have not come true. There is only fear and horror."

I stand by "Hannah Shah"'s message as the right message. If we legislate from a real desire to improve the plight of Muslim women, then the only legislation possible that is not as tainted as the desire to control by fatwa (even friendly, reformed fatwa) must empower these women-objects with the personal and political wherewithal to speak, and legislate, for themselves.

Assure freedom (of choice), pursue those that impinge upon that assurance, and, normally, the furtherance of human rights will result.  It is wrong to frame the problem as an argument forever proper and subordinate to either Sharia or State.




photo credit