A Hinged Neon Mind

[fectiverundercroft]

I randomly thought this morning “I don’t remember what Brokedown Palace was about,” so I looked it up on IMDB. I accidentally tapped on the movie Brokedown instead, whose description was something like “a couple is terrorized by a group of hillbillies after their car breaks down.”

But because I wasn’t reading carefully and my glasses were dirty, I perceived “a couple is terrorized by a group of billionaires after their car breaks down.”

I couldn’t figure out how they would have made that work, but then I realized I wanted to see it anyway.

[fectiverundercroft]

What is it about my life that makes people do this?

It’s like they half pay attention to my presence in their lives, partially developing a model of my behavior in their subconscious—this is “getting to know” me, apparently—and when they perceive or imagine a problem developing, they try to help by sabotaging.

Or maybe the other way around.

I was a squad leader in marching band. A kid in my squad was TMI, for all you professional educators out there; functional in society but needing an extra helping hand from time to time.

So for a certain drill he got confused about where to stand at a certain point. I told him to take a certain position so he wouldn’t have to move after that.

The next time through the routine, someone from another squad—to be fair, she was in the back and could see better—told him to do something else as a solution, which he then did for the rest of the season.

Thing is, she never asked or told me what was up, and didn’t realize I had already addressed the problem, so now he would stand where I told him and then do the other thing. So, still wrong.

I can’t tell you how many problems I have had in life where I struggle for a while, try something different once I have a sense for the problem, and immediately have someone…just meddle. Like, not even ask to cooperate or for cooperation, or express any awareness that I just started trying something else, but barge in and disrupt it so I have to start over but now they’ve Done Something so it’s going to be better.

Dammit, where was your help when I started? Why can’t we talk about my throwing technique before you lower the basketball hoop and I have to deal with something that won’t be like this during a regulation game? Why is it, when I try to talk about why things seem bad to me and what I’m trying to do to fix them, nothing I say matters? Is it because your advice would be moot, and you being important is what matters?

When I was young, I had a friend whose family had a cottage on a lake with a boat. One year we decided I would learn to waterski.

It took a summer and a half.

Plenty of reasons. I wasn’t coordinated or in good shape, hadn’t been watching my older siblings do it for years like my friend had, only had the process explained a few times, never did any snow skiing so the whole dynamic balance thing was new for me.

In short, when it came to skiing, I was a slow learner.

But the biggest reason was the guys in the boat got tired of my failures and were too impatient to communicate. So when something didn’t work, they’d say to each other “well, maybe he just can’t stand up with all that water pushing against, his chest; let’s accelerate hard and pop him out of the water.” So here when I’m just starting to learn how to balance as I rise, they start yanking the handle out of my hands and I never figure the rest out.

In their defense, they’re directly involved, not like the thing in band.

This has contributed to my struggles with weight loss, but I’m too fed up and have spent too much time now to feel like going down that rabbit hole now.

[fectiverundercroft]

I wonder if beautiful people disproportionately believe that others are very nice and helpful and also dopey conversationalists.

[fectiverundercroft]

Missed a chance to call these “walkos.”

[fectiverundercroft]

I’m not a big conspiracy theorist. They happen, but my only interest in things as wild as hollow earth is how people explain the contradictory evidence.

It’s entertaining.

On the other hand, or by the same token rather, how do people who actively argue against, for example, just the idea of a totalitarian global conspiracy; explain it when some bigwig makes a very gloating admission of being in on the plan?

[fectiverundercroft]

So I’m driving home after work and I come up to a driveway from a parking lot for a bunch of businesses. I’m waiting to get to the left turn lane, driveway is to my right. Normally I don’t block this driveway so exiting traffic can get through.

So I stop. A car in the driveway pulls out and I to my lane. Didn’t seem like enough room, but maybe the car ahead of me crept forward a bit while I was checking out the oncoming traffic. No big whoop. Light is red and I’m not going anywhere for a minute.

Then the car behind him pulls out. He can’t make it so he’s just halfway into the road.

Now I’m not eager to let all the cars in the parking lot cut me off, so I inch forward to make it uncomfortably clear to the third car there that I’m not going to just let everybody through and hold up all the traffic behind in a myopic attempt to be generous.

Uncomfortably so, but not dangerously so. I’m not trying to impede any drivers who are already in media res.

Turns out that’s enough for cars in the driveway who want to turn left, to weave between me and the half-in guy ahead of me. Dude in a truck who shows up after I’m sitting there for a while squeezes through, making angry gestures about what I should have done and where I should have gone.

All I could think is it wouldn’t have occurred to him to get mad at me for inconveniencing him if I had just totally blocked his lane so it was impossible for him to go until I and the other moving traffic behind me had cleared.

[fectiverundercroft]

Not dismissing the heartbreak of inappropriate body hair, but that girl who gets the yellow jacket to complement her mustache? That increasingly intense dancing through school just screams “desperately failing to cope.”

Which should also tell you something about using retail therapy or other facets of capitalism to cover self esteem issues.

[fectiverundercroft]

Niantic, what’s with the anemic spawns during special events?

I was trying to do the slopoke timed research yesterday. One of the requirements was to catch five of the guys. Fine; they’re everywhere right now and I have six hours to finish.

Except I was riding in a car on an errand so I couldn’t stop just anywhere and grind through the challenge.

By the time I got to my destination, they had all despawned. No problem, four hours and change left to catch up, right? I’ll just get my berry and nice throw requirements out of the way.

Nope. I didn’t see another one for the rest of the day. I used three incenses just hoping they would make a random spawn that would happen to be in my favor. Nope.

Niantic, why bother making the event several hours long if completing it is only feasible right at the very beginning? I get that you’re trying to encourage gameplay, but for those of us with more structured schedules, it’s just a repetitive disappointment.

[fectiverundercroft]

Ladies, you know that frustration you feel when you and your man are lost and he doesn’t want to ask for directions?

That’s how we feel when you talk about a problem but get upset when we offer to help you solve it.

[fectiverundercroft]

I don’t understand people coming out of the grocery store who, when there are two lanes of traffic right in front of the building, quickly cross the coming from the direction towards which they’re heading, but then start walking down the middle of the one that flows in the same direction they’re going so all the cars they’re not watching for get backed up driving at 2.5 mph behind the pedestrian.

I know the answer is buried in the question. And it’s just a parking lot, not a busy Interstate spur. But halfway through a vehicular traffic space is a dumb time to relax your pre-school learned survival habits.

[fectiverundercroft]

An open letter to churches in time of epidemic

I felt like I had procrastinated too much after I tried to take my time to gather my thoughts, but now I’m hearing warnings about how there’s going to be a new pandemic as if it’s normal (they did this in early 2017 as well, after all) to know when a virulent disease is going to break out.

But I digress.

I only went to a few different churches during Covid, and most of the stuff that bothered me happened at one, but I can’t imagine that this was representative.

Okay, so churches?  Please consider the following next time communicable (beyond the point we’re all willing to tolerate them by ignoring) diseases are making the rounds.  

When you take up collections, stop using those hand-to-hand plates.  I don’t care if you think congregants putting their hands on the things might give them a feeling of ownership and it encourages them to give more; you’re multiplying the amount of interpersonal touching, so with coughing and sneezing, even diseases that aren’t normally communicable by touch will get spread more.

Do you have special seating?  Be mindful of whom you’re making special space for.  Is it for people who are immunocompromised or just especially cautious?  Or is it for people who might be sick but for some reason are showing up anyway?  You don’t want to treat these two groups the same way or put them in the same place, even though it makes sense to segregate both from the main population.

Research the guidelines for preventing cross contamination of food.  This will help.  it’s actually a closely related phenomenon and you probably already have some knowledge on the subject, so there’s no need to reinvent the wheel.

By the same token:  if you’re a church where people come up to the front to receive communion, let the immunocompromised people go first, then the main group, then the potentially sick.  When they return to their seats, don’t direct traffic so that they’re all mixing together; let the compromised and sick have their own seating, as well as aisles--and permit them to use said aisles (this is the thing that torqued me off the most about my church last year)--by which they can return to their seats without passing through the midst of everyone else.  Don’t set up two quarantine areas, let alone a catch-all “socially distant” area, and direct those people to merge into the lines of foot traffic of the healthy and robust (let alone the compromised with the ill).

[fectiverundercroft]

Little bit of life advice.

Be cautious if you sign up with some local-only or family-owned service of some kind. The personal touch might be nice, it’s usually good to have workers personally invested in their clients’ lives and communities, but they also often lack the resources to do a job with all the thoroughness and professionalism you find at a bigger company.

Or maybe it’s just that bigger companies have a lower “we can afford to give them what they want if they’ll go away” threshold. It’s hard to deconvolute those two phenomena.

My experience was with a local credit union. It was attached (not physically) to my church, which was convenient; I could stop there before or after mass if I had to, it was easy to set up automated giving, I’d see the tellers at church, we got to know each other a bit.

Then I left. Moved to a new time zone, where they certainly didn’t have any branches. Went in before I left and asked how to close my account, and they said I could do it with one phone call when I had a new account set up. Easy.

Thinking it would still be easy when I couldn’t walk in and talk to a real person if I hit any snags was my first mistake.

I didn’t cancel my credit card right away but I did empty my checking account since it was easy to write a check for the whole balance when I got to where I was going. I did destroy the credit card as soon as I paid off my last statement once I got a new card through my new bank. This has has sufficed as a de facto cancellation in the past, to the point where I’d get letters from a company saying “you haven’t used this in six months so we’re closing the card.” Then I procrastinated and then forgot about it for a while.

That was my second mistake. Don’t do what I did.

Fast forward a year and I got a statement on that old credit card again. My credit card account apparently was still open, and someone hacked it to make a fourteen dollar purchase. Not a lot, maybe it was just a test by the hacker, but I realized I had put off too long what I should never have put off at all.

I called the credit card company and told them what happened. They promised to take care of it. I made my next mistake here, but I made it again later so I’ll explain it at that time. Then I called my credit union and explained the same thing, adding that I wanted to close my account for good now, what with there apparently being a liability. I even mentioned the credit card situation. They told me the person who handled this stuff was out of the office but she would take care of it when she got back. I knew they had my new contact information so I let it go.

I trusted them enough to forget about how long it would take for the financial wheels to turn. Then I got another credit card bill, not for the zero dollars I expected—I assumed this would be a final “you’re all set and we will miss you as a customer” letter like I’ve gotten before, but no—now for the original fourteen dollars plus a fourteen dollar late fee because I didn’t pay on time originally.

Okay, time to stop trusting and being patient.

I started calling the credit union and the credit card company to get things resolved. At the time it seemed wise not to close my savings account until I had my card issue resolved, but it ended up not working the way I wanted anyway. It wouldn’t have worked anyway, as you’ll see.

So I’m on the phone with the credit card company. I explain my account was hacked and I was challenging a bogus charge, and I wanted to close my account for real. Spelled out that I moved out of the area from where my union was located and I had destroyed my card a year ago so there was no way I could have used it to buy whatever the thing was. For some reason this didn’t get through. I was surprised because when I first called, I actually picked the phone tree option to report a stolen card/fraudulent transaction. But she kept “explaining” that she couldn’t close the card until I made my late payment. I told her again I wasn’t doing that—in retrospect it would have been easier, but I was getting angry enough now I didn’t want to let it go—because it wasn’t my activity on the card, and I had called a month before to report it but nothing happened.

I started to wonder if that first bill I received was a scam and I had actually called a hacker, but my card hadn’t been used again and it was the same phone number as on my union’s web site.

So we’re going back and forth, and it’s like talking to a brick wall. I’m trying to tell her I’m reporting a fraudulent charge, she seems to understand that’s what I’m asking because she’s actually repeating my words, and I want my card cancelled for real, but she’s also telling me it needs to be paid before the card can be closed. Eventually she talks her way in a full circle and I raise my voice when I remind her that I shouldn’t be paying for any charges or late fees on a card that was electronically stolen, especially not after I already called and was told this would get taken care of.

She reminds me that the call is being recorded.

I almost reminded her that she also has been recorded asking me to pay a charge that I have been recorded reporting as fraudulent. She probably wasn’t thinking about that and just got lost in her script somewhere, and remembered her “if they get upset, say X” escape hatch, because then she offered to transfer me to an account closure specialist. No apology for misunderstanding me for fifteen minutes, but at least it was progress.

The specialist can’t find my credit union in her directory.

False alarm: its name was some shorthand neither of us would have guessed.

So, she…transfers my call back to the credit union. Where I started. Where I was told I needed to call the credit card company to take care of that part of it.

At least now I’m talking to someone who, I hope, can get something done.

I explain my situation all over again. I’m told the account closing person is off that day but everything she needs will be provided to her by the guy I’m talking to now, but do I want to have the $28 credit card debt taken out of my savings before it’s closed, or pay by some other way?

I was ready to lose it again but at least this was the first time I was talking to this guy. It’s been half an hour now. Here’s the second mistake I made again: I didn’t take notes on all the conversations I had with everybody about all this. I still had my original statement with the fraudulent $14 charge, and I know I called the day I got it, but I didn’t get the name of the guy I talked to; nor did I remember the name of the woman who got defensive when I told her I’m not taking her advice to pay the fraudulent charge I’m challenging, nor the name of the specialist who routed me back to my union. It might have helped if I could have thrown more of their records, with names and dates and timestamps, back in their face when they started repeating “well all this happened because you didn’t report a stolen card,” which I did once a month ago and about five times twenty minutes ago and another time ten minutes before that when I called the credit union to see what I needed to do to get the ball rolling.

Finally, this guy seems to understand: I want to close my savings and card accounts, and there is fraudulent activity on my card that didn’t get taken care of when I tried to ask them for help a month ago or half an hour ago.

The next day I get emailed an electronic form to sign for the closure of my account. The email states the $28 charge will be reversed as well. Perfect.

A week later I get a banker’s check for what I had left in savings, along with a letter stating my accounts were all closed, and I would not be obligated to pay that $28…even though the problem was that I never asked them to take care of it before I “missed” the payment due date.

Let them believe what they want at this point. Not my circus, not my monkeys. Not anymore.

Coda: my new bank sent me a letter a week later saying “we’re not sure this check you deposited is real. We’re letting your new balance stay where it is for now but if the check doesn’t clear we’re taking it back.” I shouldn’t be surprised, after the amateur hour I went through, that they were skeptical of my old credit union. But it’s been a month, again, and I still have all my money. In a nationally recognized bank. That was recommended to me by trusted family members.

Not one of those shitty ones that tallies up all your withdrawals for the month before they tally up your deposits so they can charge you for covering would-be-but-not-really bounced checks. Don’t make that mistake either.

So there’s that.

[fectiverundercroft]

You want to know something that makes me a little uncomfortable? When I’m at the grocery store and I have to go out to the restroom in the vestibule, and the greeter says good bye or something to that effect. Then I walk back in a few minutes later.

I want to tell him “save your breath; I’ll be right back.”

[fectiverundercroft]

What are these old fogeys conspiring about?

Took this photo from the parking lot of a seniors apartment complex.  On the other side of that shipping container is the parking lot for a local church.  I’m not sure whom they’re really trying to hide from.

[fectiverundercroft]

Niantic, time to get the lead out.

I am sick and tired of being in a trainer battle and tapping repeatedly on my charged attack only to see the other guy start charging his attack AFTER ME and then wipe me out. just before I posted this, I was spamming my charged attack button and I counted half a dozen taps—I assure you, I am not slow or late at this—before I got warned that I had no shields remaining.

Look, I know it’s hard to sync the animation with the speed of fast attacks on an unevenly laggy network between disparate and accessible platforms. But it’s not fun to be trying to start a charged attack and have the other guy get off TWO CHARGED ATTACKS while I’m still tapping like mad to get off one. I’m not upset that the other guy has two full charges stored up and uses them back to back—it sucks in the ring but that’s the nature of the game—I’m upset that he gets off his second before I get off any while I started first.

[fectiverundercroft]

I think one of the things that makes me feel lonely the most...

...is when I just comment to a friend or family member on how neat or interesting something is, and they respond with “Oh, let’s not do that now.”

I’m not subtly asking you to stop making the dinner you’re about to put in the oven.  I’m just saying it’s cool there’s an Afghani restaurant in town, which means our community is much more cosmopolitan than I thought yesterday.

Or, I’m not inviting you to go to a KKK rally;  I’m just shocked to learn there’s a chapter in the northern city where I live, and what that ignorance means.

[fectiverundercroft]

If I hear one more time about scientists who have discovered a new way to travel faster than light but it’s just another rehash of the Alcubierre drive without even revealing any developments on the math or theoretical physics fronts….