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cloyingly flag-bedecked
Thursday, July 8 2004
I returned to that Red Hook bank again today to continue with a subcontract to fix a printer. It quickly became apparent that Lexmark had shipped the wrong parts. Also, "Martin," the Lexmark tech support guy in Bangalore1, had been wrong about the printer being under warranty. And then their goddamn tech support phone system suddenly became useless. I'm referring to the kind of morale-destroying useless wherein you're on hold for ten minutes and then you're forwarded to a line with a busy signal, at which point the only option is to hang up. Nearby a cloyingly flag-bedecked placard cheerfully informed customers that under the USAPATRIOT Act, people opening accounts would have to prove their identity. As I wasted those minutes of my life, I found myself thinking, "How did I come to be sitting in this bank now, doing the work I'm supposedly doing?" It seemed like such a miserable experience at the time, but in retrospect it didn't really cause me all that much injury.
The experience left me ferociously thirsty, so as I headed back towards the bridge to Kingston, I popped open the only beverage I had in the truck. It was a Yuengling lager that had been heated so much by the sun that it felt warm in my hands. I was self-conscious to be drinking it in such heavy traffic (though I'm sure none of the other motorists could tell it was a beer) so as I whipped it up to take swigs, I moved the bottle faster than I normally would. It quickly became agitated and foamed up dramatically, overflowing onto my lap, further adding to my misery. I really ought to know better, on so many levels.
Did you hear the shocking news today? Terrorists, yes terrorists, are planning to strike America in a bid to influence our Presidential election! The nerve of those bastards! I read it on the CNN website today. Unlike the New York Times and the Washington Post, CNN even saw fit to use the large-point headline for this complete non-story. Whenever the Bush administration needs help with changing the subject - whether it be from the arrest of Kenny Boy Lay or from the emergence of an "optimistic, photogenic" Democratic ticket - CNN is happy to oblige.
1How do they make those 12,000 miles of phone lines and microwave links so responsive? Unlike, say, Christiane Amanpour reporting from Kabul, there's no discernible delay whatsoever. Have those clever outsourcing engineers figured out how to send signals faster than the speed of light?
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