Month: July 2002

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

I’m broke. I barely have enough money to get by through the next month. And my “royalty” check I received this weekend was only 36.00 – I was expecting 1000.00. Still, I can manage. I can manage…until today.

Don’t worry – I’m not asking for money. Support, yes. Advice, yes. But not money.

The story:

When I moved to San Francisco last year, I let Sprint talk me into covering my long distance in addition to my cellphone. I figured what the hey, I use my cellphone for long distance anyway.

Long story short – I had International calls in May. Total time of 195 minutes. That’s a little over 3 hours.

I tried to call with my cellphone, but was told that I didn’t have international calling turned on for the cellphone. So, I used my regular phone and my Sprint long distance. I assumed that the rate at the time was the standard high but manageable amount of 40 cents a minute, US. Cost would be about 80.00 at this – stiff, but I could still swing it.

Well, I just received my bill – $618.84. Let me repeat this amount – $618.84. Over $3.00 a minute.

I called SprintPCS – there must be a mistake. There had to be a mistake. I don’t have this kind of money. I was told by Sprint “customer service” that since I had not signed up for International calling, I wasn’t eligible for the .40 a minute rate. I told the person I wasn’t originally told that I had to sign up for International calling when I signed up for SprintPCS to cover my long distance. I didn’t even know there was a specialized international long distance calling plan until I tried calling with the cellphone.

(If I had stayed with the regular phone company, it would have .40 a minute.)

The supervisor told me that they didn’t say anything to me when I signed up for long distance, because I had never called International numbers before. (And I’m not exaggerating this one, this is exactly what he said.)

Since I had never called International, they didn’t feel that they had to tell me there was a massive penalty for calling international numbers without signing up for international service. But once I had, they would tell me the next time I signed up for long distance service and I could get international rates on calls in the future.

(Question – why let the call go through if a person is supposed to sign up for international calling in the first place?)

I told the supervisor that I was signed up for international calling on the cellphone. This doesn’t matter because I needed to be signed up for the other phone – the regular phone. The process isn’t by customer, it’s by phone.

Oh – and there’s nothing they can do about the fact that they didn’t tell me ahead of time about having to sign up for international calls or face a penalty.

If anyone has suggestions on how I can fight this, please, please, please email me. Please. I’m pretty desperate.

Update: I had thought about some form of call in campaign against SprintPCS, but let’s face it – we’re all nothing to corporations such as this. If you don’t believe this, all you have to do is look at the daily paper.

Moral of Story: It may seem as if there’s no difference between your national and international weblogging buddies, but there is – about 3.00 a minute. As a suggestion – stick with email.

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

This last month has been about the worst month I’ve had in years. This last week has been one of the worst weeks I’ve had in months. Today was one of the worst days I’ve had in weeks.

And then, tonight, I watched Robin William’s cable special and laughed until I choked, tears streaming down my cheeks, face red, sides hurting.

The man’s a miracle.

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

The world that lieth in wickedness, the sensualist, has no taste nor relish for that bread which cometh down from God out of heaven, and nourisheth the soul up unto eternal life.

Thomas Lechtworth, They that wait upon the Lord

Roget’s Thesaurus defines a sensualist as a person devoted to pleasure and luxury, a hedonist or sybarite. Merriam-Webster defines the sensualist as a person in “…persistent or excessive pursuit of sensual pleasures and interests.”

Weighed down with this association to addiction of earthly delights, the sensualist has been cast as the wanton, the wicked, and the antithesis of both the intellectual and the spiritual throughout history.

Eyes and fingers speak in its favor, visual evidence and palpableness do, too: this strikes an age with fundamentally plebian tastes as fascinating, persuasive, and convincing – after all, it follows instinctively the canon of truth of eternally popular sensualism.

Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

Small wonder that I’ve spent most of my life trying to deny my own sensualist nature; first wearing the misty face of the spiritualist, and later donning a mask showing the placid wisdom of the intellectual. It’s only been recently that I’ve stripped away all such self-doubting foolishness, and have felt confident enough, or perhaps indifferent enough, to show myself.

The populace think that your rejection of popular standards is a rejection of all standards, and mere antinomianism; and the bold sensualist will use the name of philosophy to gild his crimes. But the law of consciousness abides.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Being a sensualist doesn’t mean I run into the street, tackling every man I see – a modern day succubus. With laptop.

Nor does this mean that I am not capable of intellectual pursuits or appreciation of same. And if my spirituality is tempered, it is more so by the intellectual aspect of my personality rather than that part of me that is sensual.

Being a sensualist just means that I’m highly attuned to and very aware of my senses, to the point of defying conventional behavior at times.

Helen woke up in the middle of the night wearing someone else’s breasts. Not her own insignificant, almost non-existent bumps, but huge, pendulous, full ones. Breasts whose only master was gravity, whose creases ached in bands across her ribs, whose weight cascaded irrepressibly onto her lap. Breasts that could round shoulders and cave in chests. “Damn,” she murmured to herself, “it’s begun,” and then went back to sleep.

Barbara Hodgson, The Sensualist

I will stop to listen to a bird, or alter my course to follow an intriguing smell. I hesitantly place a hand on shoulder or arm when in conversation with another – being aware of the possibility of giving offense with said action.

I love sparkly sidewalks.

 

i love sidewalks that are all sparkly. i can’t imagine why a city would not get sparkly sidewalks. the sidewalk company says, “ok, 50 new sidewalks…. you want sparkles with that?” and the city says, “nah, we’ll take the ones with black, dried up chewing gum on them, instead.”

eggstone 2000

Being a sensualist also does not make me a sentimentalist. As much as I appreciate subtle and complex emotional interplay there is nothing I abhor more than maudlin, contrived sentimentality.

The movie Titanic would have been best served by sinking the ship in the first ten minutes, and taking the Bridges of Madison County with it. Debbie Boone singing “You light up my life” or Helen Reddy’s “I don’t know how to love him” generate an almost overwhelming revulsion in me. Yet the Andrew Sisters World War II classic, I’ll be with you in apple blossom time never fails to move me.

Yeah, okay, fine – and I did cry when I watched Old Yeller.

As for writing, there is some writing that is so sensual and that invokes such strong mental imagery that I have to put the material down; there is no room left within my mind for processing the letters into words and the words into sentences.