Cancel your credit card before you die

 
 Now some people are really stupid!!!!
 Be sure and cancel your credit cards before you die.
 
 This is so priceless, and so, so easy to see happening, customer
 service being what it is today.
 
 A lady died this past January, and Citibank billed her for
 February and March for their annual service charges on her credit
 card, and added late fees and interest on the monthly charge. The
 balance had been $0.00 when she died, but now somewhere around
 $60.00. A family member placed a call to Citibank.
 
 Here is the exchange :
 
 Family Member: 'I am calling to tell you she died back in January.'
 
 Citibank: 'The account was never closed and the late fees and
 charges still apply.'
 
 Family Member: 'Maybe, you should turn it over to collections.'
 
 Citibank: 'Since it is two months past due, it already has been'
 
 Family Member: So, what will they do when they find out she is dead?'
 
 Citibank: 'Either report her account to frauds division or report
 her to the credit bureau, maybe both!'
 
 Family Member: 'Do you think God will be mad at her?'
 
 Citibank: 'Excuse me?'
 
 Family Member: 'Did you just get what I was telling you - the
 part about her being dead?'
 
 Citibank: 'Sir, you'll have to speak to my supervisor.'
 
 
 Supervisor gets on the phone:
 
 Family Member: 'I'm calling to tell you, she died back in January
 with a $0 balance.'
 
 Citibank: 'The account was never closed and late fees and charges
 still apply.'
 
 Family Member: 'You mean you want to collect from her estate?'
 
 Citibank: (Stammer) 'Are you her lawyer?'
 
 Family Member: 'No, I'm her great nephew.' (Lawyer info was given)
 
 Citibank: 'Could you fax us a certificate of death?'
 
 Family Member: 'Sure.' (Fax number was given )
 
 After they get the fax :
 
 Citibank: 'Our system just isn't setup for death. I don't know
 what more I can do to help.'
 
 Family Member: 'Well, if you figure it out, great! If not, you
 could just keep billing her. She won't care.'
 
 Citibank: 'Well, the late fees and charges will still apply.'
 
 (What is wrong with these people?!?)
 
 Family Member: 'Would you like her new billing address?'
 
 Citibank: 'That might help..'
 
 Family Member: 'Odessa Memorial Cemetery, Highway 129, Plot Number 69.'
 
 Citibank: 'Sir, that's a cemetery!'
 
 Family Member: 'And what do you do with dead people on your planet???'
 
 Priceless!! Have you wondered why Citi is going broke and need
 the feds to bail them out!!

Green Fairy

from the restaurant (Kavarna Slavia) across the street from Narodni Divadlo, the National Theatre where we had just seen Carmen . . . tangentially and parenthetically . . .
a very interesting, very Czech presentation, IMVHO . . .
a very intriguing patina of slavic morbid puckishness overlaying the French tragic insousiance of Carmen, with prison wall barb-wire back grounds, transvestite ballerinas, and bicycles instead of horses . . .

the lead tenor had a sort of nixon posture issue and an uncertain quality to his voice that sort of negated his romantic lead.

Carmen was arguably the 3rd best soprano on stage . . . the second gypsy woman was a better singer but too short . . . the mousy childhood girlfriend was too blond to be carmen, but her solo in the 3rd act was the best thing on stage, got chills, if you know what I mean . . . not just IMHO, the crowd loved her and held her with applause then and again on her curtain call . . . now I know how those opera feuds get started . . . humiliating for the lead . . . who received gracious but tepid applause . . .

she didn't really give it her all -- if she has more to give - - -who can say . . . she just sorta minced around stage hitting all the right notes . . . her stage presence was  . . . unimposing, if one can complain about something so ephemeral . . . it could not be because she was dressed in white instead of red, could it?

People are wrong when they say opera is not what it used to be. It is what it used to be. That is what's wrong with it.
Noel Coward

At least we can console ourselves that Carment was not opera as it used to be . . . .

Czech Japanese Garden

 the Top Hotel near Chodov . . .

See if you can use your imagination to interpret these stones . . .

How to Act in First Class

From the Couch Trip, with Dan Aykroyd.

 

He has just escaped from a mental hospital, is impersonating a psychiatrist, boarding a flight to LA in first class in barely disguised prison clothes.

 

When the flight attendant asks him if he will have anything before the flight, he does not stammer out some feeble drink order, like I do:

 

“A Bag of Macademia Nuts!

“All your available cheeses!

“A dozen Raspberries with Crème Fraiche!

“And a Double Shot of BlackBush!”

 

A little non-plussed, but totally dominated by his suave insistence, the attendant thoughtfully asks, “would you like the shot on the Raspberries?”

 

“NO!” he states firmly, yet unruffledly, on the side, straight-up!”

 

We memorized it for our next trip, but got demoted to coach by some cost-cutting dragoon.

Embedded Cattlemen's Rhetoric

Brother:

I wonder if this word is more common in cattle country.

·                                 Main Entry: ²goad

·                                 Function: transitive verb

·                                 Date: 1579

1 : to incite or rouse as if with a goad
2 : to drive (as cattle) with a goad

 

I always thought of this as "persistant persuasive pressure" and not the optionless prodding with a pointy stick.  

 

PukkaDave:

Naw, man,

Coax, or cajole, even,

But goad, is to use the sharp stick.

Or in modernity, the taser-like impetuatator .  .  .

 

Brother:

Now I know....but (whenever this term came up) it was always people "goading me" into things.   At least the way I heard it...I thought folks meant I was being talked into it but they meant I was being pressured to an inevitable outcome "right out of the chute"

 

PukkaDave:

Well it’s good that you know now, anyway . . . 8^D . . .

But I assumed you were the goad-er, not the goad-ee

 

Brother:

"The good of goad depends" he said.

Then added as he nodded,

"On which end of the stick you are:

The Prodder or the Prodded" 

 

 

VENT VIOLENT UTILISER DEFENSE

An ordinary traffic warning of the potential for high winds in the south of France, and that caution must be used . . .

 

But, observe the found poetry herein: the way that VIOLENT springs from the cloven VENT, like Aphrodite from Jove, with an internal rhyme that seems positively familial, if not incestuous.

 

Rejoice in the stentorian hudibrastic of VIOLENT(violence) and DEFENSE, which in its oracular simplicity reverberates with joycean connotations and imputations.

 

And even more sonorously, metaphorically, this cogency warns us to prepare for the turbulence we inexorably approach: the Winds of War, Tsunamis of Debt, Cyclonic challenges . . .

 

Yes, this is Found Poetry . . . maybe I should not claim to have found it . . . some nameless bureaucrat in the French Hiway department has been charged with conveying this message . . . has he taken care with it, or dashed it off? Did he consider its import or was he perfunctory?

 

All Art is Found . . . but you have to be looking! Was this bureaucrat looking, or am I the first to see it? So often, when you find what you did not know you are looking for, did not realize precisely what you would find when you came across it, yet recognize it immediately, as the Truth-with-a-capital-T . . .

It is Luck, to find it, but Luck is when Preparation meets Opportunity. 

 

 

Visions of Algorithms Dancing in her Head

I forget what exactly we were talking about, but basically I was thinking out loud while analyzing family finances . . . when Mrs interrupted me and said “Number talk puts me to sleep” . . . we were in bed, and she wanted to go to sleep, anyway, so I gratified her . . . “the square of the hypoteneus is equal to the sum of the squares of the other 2 sides of the triangle” – zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz . . . .  she needed no more from me . . . .8^D . . .