Haiku 4 5.18.2007

Ah, it’s been a busy weekend! I’m glad to see that New Yorkers take some extra time on Friday night and Saturday to really tend to their Craigslist needs.

I have gotten SO MANY responses to my Dating in 17 Syllables Project in the past few days. Most are, excitingly, in haiku format. Some are terribly dirty (in the bad way), and some are terribly flirty (in the good way), and some seem to have nothing to do with me at all, but are simply a poignant and human 17 syllables about a total stranger. Form poetry is some kind of portal, apparently, which allows people to share deeply and genuinely about themselves, about their hopes and dreams, about their fears and secrets, and about their interest in wearing my underpants while being my sub.

Fascinating.

The other thing that’s happened is that someone else started posting haiku in the personals, too. This got a few of you all up in arms, which I appreciate; your fierce loyalty to my brand integrity invests me all the further in this particular exercise in self-indulgence. I prefer to think of myself as a trendsetter than to think of “Haiku 4- 35” as a threat, although I do wish that she had started her own numbering system instead of tagging onto mine.

So, I’ve just posted for today, and here it is:

Haiku 4

Political and
compassionate, I prefer
my bike over all.

I’ve been trying to think of what my big finale is going to be. I mean, I have all these haikus now; it seems like I should do something with them, right? Maybe I should invite everyone who’s responded to all meet at a certain place at a certain time and we can have some kind of big singles haiku party. With booze. Or, maybe I should start sending people’s haikus to each other, and act kind of like the online broker of 17-syllable dating…

Personally, I have zero interest in dating. I also have zero interest in working, cleaning my room, eating, going to the gym, taking a shower, or leaving my apartment, to be honest. I think I am deep in the throes of my post-relationship self-loathing. I am committing as of today, right now, that I will not be re-reading any more old emails. I will delete some, if not many, text messages. And I will stop comparing myself unfavorably to other women, movie stars, college professors, and Rockettes. It’s true, I’m not M’s ex-girlfriend, and i’m not Angelina Jolie, and I haven’t published any books, and I can’t kick that high (though I’m practicing- a lot). But there are other things that I offer the world, and I am going to start making a list of them VERY SOON.

Meanwhile, I did dig out the cocktail napkin listing the “New 7 Stages of Grief” that we crafted at my last caucus of heartbreak, and it looks like I’m right on track. If I’m currently slogging around in self-loathing (and oh, trust me, I am…) then that would mean that I’ve successfully earned my merit badges for step 1 (substance abuse), and step 2 (bitter diatribes). Indeed, I think I could find some substantiative data from the past few weeks to support both of those experiences. I’ll keep you posted on my progress there, too.

Haiku 3 5.17.2008

I got the following email today from the most recent breaker of my heart (there was more to it than this, but this is the main thing):

“I talked to J from 9 to 4am this morning. The gist of what came out of our conversation is, I’m going to be in this relationship with her, fully. I’m going to work. We are going to therapy. She asked me to not talk to you until July. I agreed.”

Really? REALLY?

Because the thing is, that email sucks. The whole experience has sucked. And I don’t know that it makes sense for me to hang around and submit an application for friendship in July. It may be that I have other things to do with my time.

Like, for example MY HAIKU PROJECT.

So, this Craigslist thing is really taking off. I’m delighted. The only downside is that i don’t want to date my respond-ees anymore; I want to start a writing collective with them.

Over the course of the past 2 days, I’ve gotten over a dozen haikus in the mail. They’re amazing. Yesterday’s rainy poeticism seemed to really inspire people.

I’m posting some gems I’ve received below; and then, of course, my haiku for today:

“flirty, curious
quirky, shy, interested
cure rainy day blues”

“Things that amuse me
Board games, theatre, the beach, naps
It seems you do, too.”

“Aspiring chef
Astoria is my home
Eating alone sucks”

“Hands folded, waiting
What will you post tomorrow?
Haikus make me smile.”

and there are many, many more…

Meanwhile, here’s my post for today:

Haiku 3

More than half smart, my
sunglasses are enormous.
Less than half crazy.

Haiku 2 5.16.2008

Total responses so far: 7
Total responses crafted as haiku: 4
Total responses using incorrect haiku form: 1
Total replies by me: 0 (should I be doing this?)

And, for today’s Haiku:

Creepy, delightful
A little self indulgent
And reckless; but not.

My Newest Social Experiment- Dating in 17 Syllables 5.15.2008

If you haven’t caught the news yet, I’ve recently had yet another relationship spiral out of the sky in a screaming streak of smoke and flames and crashland into the drought-addled brush field of my heart, which then burned sadly for days and days and days. Awesome. Clearly, the next reasonable course of action in this metaphor is that I should lose, or at least have suspended, my pilot’s license. I should stay out of the skies for a while. I should slow down.

I understand that slowing down, or “not dating,” might seem like a good idea. I can see why, after being in a nonstop serial of relationships for the last decade, it might seem reasonable- or even recommended- that I spend some time unattached and solitary. That I “get to know myself.” That I become comfortable with developing my own routine, unfettered by the needs of another, uncluttered by the dreams of someone else. That I recommit to all of you, loyal readers, and post “Top 10 reasons why I’m sexier than her exgirlfriend” blogs, and write, and think and take up yoga again.

And I promise you all that if this next series of craigslist postings doesn’t work out, that I am going to do just that. No joke. Scout’s honor.

But for right now, I’m going to take all of you, loyal readers, on a joyride of a social experiment. Here’s the plan: I’m building a miniseries of personal ads, each written as a haiku that reveals something of myself, and posted daily to craigslist. The goal is that I’ll get someone who follows along and reads them all; I’m really looking to build a fanbase for my bad poetry as much (more than?) I’m looking for a date.

I’ll copy and paste each day’s haiku here, so that you can follow along. And, if I get any responses, I’ll update you on those as well. I think that this is going to be a lot of fun for all of us. And, it merges craigslist and myspace, which makes me feel like I’ve hit a venn diagram of self-promotion.

The joy of this project has completely supplanted the sadness of my failed love life. I’m ebullient (again).

Here’s today’s Haiku:

Haiku 1:

Freckled, postmodern
My brain is like a racecar
And so is my heart.

Stay tuned for daily updates! We’re about to have some FUN.

xo.

Homecoming 5.9.2008

08

Homecoming What is it about Tucson that makes me so compelled to post to this thing? Either way, here I am in AZ- swimming in nostalgia and dust, waiting for the surly wench to open, and navigating that “everything changes by staying the same” kind of mindset that makes me simultaneously wince and smile. As many of you know, I’ve had a shitty two weeks. Furthermore, I’m an extremist by nature, (This has been scientifically proven by many many personality tests.) so when I have a shitty two weeks, I don’t just miss the train and get behind at work. Oh no. I go out with a bang. For me, a shitty two weeks means that my entire world view gets smashed and splintered through a heartwrenching betrayal that I survive by focusing my attention on my imploding professional life. A shitty two weeks means that the showerhead in my hotel falls out of the wall and smashes me in the skull while I’m trying to scrub the hangover off my poor marinated self before getting on another plane. A shitty two weeks means that I’ve cried a lot a lot a lot, and that the F train was doing that thing where getting anywhere on the weekend means I have to transfer three times, which means that I’ve had moments of teary misery at Hoyt-Schemmerhorn, which is my nemesis station, where nothing good ever happens. Shitty Shitty Shitty. So, like a Phoenix, I have come to Tucson to rebuild and recover and re-emerge. Some people think that Tucson has some kind of weird spiritual energy that heals the soul. I think it’s just hot as hell and so stunningly gorgeous that it changes you forever. But either way, there’s something here that happens, at least to me, and it seems like when all my roads get blocked, I end up here on a bicycle for a minute. And then it all opens right back up again. I have faith that this is what’s about to happen. I think. So, I’ve got 48 hours here to pick up my pieces and figure out their next configuration. I’m holding a caucus with my people tomorrow night, which is always a good grounding force, and then I’ve got some time to stare at the mountains and think and grow and build and heal and recover and try to stop asking “Why?” about the shitty weeks, and thinking “Now.” about the next few weeks. And then I go to LA, so I better make sure that my soul is all healed and sealed before I go, because that place tends to send me flying too… I moved away from here a year ago. I think I’ve changed the most by staying the same. I can’t wait to figure out what that means, exactly.

It’s Christmas Time in the City 12.16.2007

It’s Christmastime in the City

I am susceptible to advertising. It’s true. Not that many of us like to admit that about ourselves, but I am ready to break free from this shroud of silence that surrounds our consummerist vulnerability and admit freely that commercials rule my life.

For example:
I fantasize about the iPhone. Probably for about 3 – 7 out of every 24 hours, I am thinking about the iPhone.

I can, to this day, sing the entire McDonalds song (that was really just the entire menu) that came on a floppy record taped to an ad in the Sunday paper in, like, 1983.

I am a fervent, zealous believer in Vitamin Water, which is pretty much liquid television with added sugar.

And so on.

The holiday season is like one long running commercial that lasts from October until January. The messaging is clear: if you care about your loved ones, the world, baby jesus, poor children, cancer, or terrorism, you will buy things. If you don’t care about any of those things, and prove your social apathy by not torpedoing yourself into suffocating and irreperable credit card debt, then you will be exposed as a fraud and added to a list that the House Committee of Unamerican Activities is keeping, and be blackballed from jobs and parties and things. And, no one will buy you any presents, which will make you very sad, and you’ll end up standing on a bridge on a cold night waiting for Clarence the angel to come and talk you down. But, since you didn’t buy the special collectors’ edition of “It’s a Wonderful Life,” with the deleted scenes and diretor’s commentary, Clarence didn’t get his royalties, so he’s not coming. You’re on your own. Merry Christmas. Go ahead and jump.

I know that everyone who’s anyone has already written their anti-consumerist holiday blog, and I’m sorry that mine is so late. The truth is that I haven’t had time to write it because I’ve been standing in line at Crate and Barrel for the last seven weeks. Oh, yes, I am PARTICIPATING in this consummerist ritual. (And hopefully, someone out there is reading this and becoming inspired to participate RIGHT NOW, and buying me an iPhone.)

It’s my duty to buy. And I can whine and compain and grumble the whole time, but at the end of the day, I’m still down a few thou and can rest assured that I haven’t missed out.

I remember a big hooplah last year about the War on Christmas. As a Jew, I can assure you firsthand that the War on Christmas is run by the Jews. We rail against Santa references in our public schools, tear our hair out at the nativity scenes that pop up in our neighbors’ yards, and make quiet furtive jokes about the wise men and what they are REALLY doing with their myrhh behind the backs of all you Xmasonians. I’ll tell you why Christmas drives us so crazy: It’s because we are insanely, insatiabley jealous.

The rest of the year, it’s not such a problem. I don’t feel like I need jesus in my heart, I never wonder what he would do when I find myself at any moral crossroads, and I certainly am not wishing for all of that penance and prayer stuff. You won’t find me egging the easter bunny or giving anyone a hassle about Flag Day (which I have always conceptualized as a Christian holiday). No, we Jews only care about Christmas. Because dammit, I want to wake up in the morning and find an oversized sock stuffed with chocolate hanging over my fireplace! I want to hear those sleigh bells ringaling, and learn lessons about diversity from the reindeer story. As a Jew, I can tell you, there is no Joy to my World. The Lord has not come, and thus, we get no candy canes, no sleigh bells, no egg nog, no lights, no elves, no tree. We get greasy latkes and chocoalte coins, and maybe a little bit of gambling and some gifts. Big whoop. I mean, compared to the other Jewish holidays, Chanukah is actually kind of high-ranking on the fun scale; there’s no real religious stuff, no fasting, no services, you play with fire, you get presents. This is all good stuff. But it is so grossly overshadowed by the mirth and love of Christmas that you’ll hear reports in December of Jews defecting left and right. The Leibowitzes are suddenly spotted at midnight mass. The Steinbergers feebly try to rationalize their “Hanukah Bush” to the rest of the congregation. The Rosenstein kids all come to school wearing red hats with white poms at the end. Irving Berlin was, like, THE White Christmas guy, and he was also a well-known member of the tribe. But don’t feel bad, Irving. It happens to the best of us.

We can’t help it. It’s just so much fun, all this Christmasness. We love love love it. And, since I love commercials anyway, this is a time of year when I can truly feel like my reckless spending is actually a way of participating in a single unifying community of vapid holiday spirit. It’s like hands across America, only more moving. More powerful.

Kind of like “I’d like to buy the world a Coke.”

Happy Holidays. Don’t drink and drive. Buy iPhone.

The end.

Yiddish expression of the day: Don’t Imagine a Lung and a Liver on the Nose! 11.28.2007

I am sick. I have been sick for days and days and days. Last night, I believed for a little while that I would be sick forever. That I might not make it through. Dramatic? Perhaps. But I was feverish, and had made the terrifying mistake of actually looking at my throat with a flashlight in the mirror. Stricken and speechless, I realized that my body had turned on me. That it is capable of very gruesome and sad things. That I might be sick for the rest of my life.

I imagined the whole scene: slowly fading from work, lapsing on the rent, moving into my parents’ basement in Ohio, and then weakening, daily, despite my mother’s endless trays of ginger ale and toast and jello (have you ever had kosher jello? There’s a reason it’s only used on the sick) until I finally slip away, my pale hand resting slack across my chest, eyes dropping closed. I would be the first documented case of a healthy 29-year-old woman dying of strep throat.

I called the doctor this morning, though, and he seemed pretty confident that the above scenario was more in the camp of “alarmist drama” than “realistic visions of the future.”

He says I will be better next week, and not to rush it. Although I was glad to hear that I will not be sick forever, next week sounds unreasonable.

The thing is, despite a decent fear and broad knowledge of both common and exotic maladies, I am generally a pretty healthy person. I don’t get that sick, and when I do, I bounce back. But, since moving to New York, I’ve been sick almost every six weeks, which is way too much sickness. So, I’ve decided that once I kill this strep-throat-tonsilitis-cabin-fever-possible-scarlet-fever crap, I am going to embark on an aggressive immune-boosting campaign. I mean, winter isn’t even here, and I need to be prepared. So, here’s my plan:

STEP ONE:
No more devil cigarettes. For real.

STEP TWO:
New York Sports Club. Twice a week at least. I can reward myself for vigorous, heart-rate-raising exercise by sitting in the nice hot steam room on cold winter days. This sounds awesome.

STEP THREE:
Kick my Spermophobia into high gear. (This does not mean what you might initially assume, although I have that phobia a little bit too.) Spermophobia is a fear of germs. And clearly, I have let my fear get a little lax. Starting next week, when I re-enter the world, I am going to stop touching anything with my bare hands except when absolutely necessary. I will sanitize ritually. I will get up and change cars on the subway- EVEN IF I HAVE A SEAT DURING RUSH HOUR- if someone is hacking up a whole lotta grossness in my car. I will learn to open doors and hold handrailngs with my elbows, which is one part of my body that I don’t think I could ever get into my mouth. In fact, keeping things out of my mouth should probably be its own step, since I have kind of a problem in this area. I actually should probably avoid the steam room at the gym, as well as hot tubs, public showers, and when possible, public toilets. Spermophobia. I’m all about it.

STEP FOUR:
I will stop putting the following things in/near my mouth (don’t ask):
pens
pencils
erasers
my hands
my arms
my hair
other people’s toothbrushes
money
my Metrocard
jewlery
candy that maybe fell on the floor for a second

Instead, I will put the following things in my mouth:
listerine
vitamins
fresh fruits and vegetables THAT HAVE BEEN WASHED AND THAT HAVEN’T FALLEN ON THE FLOOR
lots and lots of water
wheatgrass juice

I think that’s it. Four simple steps to robust health and happiness. And then I can stop worrying about dying of strep throat and refocus my attention on the fear of dying 147 other ways that I used to have so much fun thinking about.

I can’t wait. Stay tuned for a healthy new me. I’ll tell you all about it.

Apartmental Health 10.30.2007

Largely, I love where I live. It’s close to the train, which feels increasingly important as the daily temperatures continue to plummet. The neighborhood is fairly quiet if you don’t count the stereo speakers blasting a call to prayer six times a day from the roof of the mosque, the blaring sirens, the giant trucks, or the chirping crosswalk. And the building itself is a great, a sturdy brick building, with a laundromat on the first floor and only a little bit of graffiti in the hallway, which is nice, because it covers up the places where the wallpaper is peeled off, anyhow.

But it’s true that my apartment itself is in need of a few repairs. We keep talking to Sam, the landlord, but we can’t seem to get him moving on things. Understandably, with all of his Albanian Nationalist lobbying meetings, and flying his Cessna upstate, not to mention constantly changing the color and slope of his hairpiece, he’s a very busy guy. Plus, he has the laundromat to run, and all those brothers who come and visit.

It’s nothing personal, his slumlording. I know that he likes us, because he always comments on my smart professional smile and my sister’s striking European sensibilities. But we can’t quite get him to fix the apartment.

It’s starting to feel a little chaotic now that the heat’s been turned on, and the radiator’s noisy hissssssCLANG!gurglegurgle sound seems to be getting louder by the day. My sister and I can barely hear each other shouting over the racket (CLANG!CLANG!hissssssssss) back and forth about the screaming shower, the peeling paint, the slow drains, or the naked wires where the light in her bathroom should be. Not to mention the broken oven, which, sadly, only seems operable at the broiler setting. (I also am positive that there is a weird glue smell right as you walk in to my bedroom, but no one else has confirmed its presence. Of course, my suspicion is that the whole place is held together with Elmer’s mucilage. I’m having a hard time getting anyone to back me up on this.)

We actually did manage to get Sam upstairs one day this weekend, on a partially trumped up but could-be-true odor of gas that we felt would need his immediate attention. He puzzled over the oven with us, offering, as compromise, that he could switch out the heating element from the top of the oven to the bottom, which would mean that we could bake, kind of, but at the expense of the broiler.

“I don’t know,” I ventured cautiously, taking a bite of broiled lasagne, “That might not be the best solution.”

“Ideally,” my sister countered, “We’d really like to have all the temperatures.” She eyed the broiled apple crisp on the counter, and the bag of broiled garlic bread leftovers. “I mean, we could use the full range.”

CLANG!CLANG!gurgleCLANG!hisssssssss

“WHAT?” shouted Sam,

“ALL THE TEMPERATURES,” She shouted back.

“YES, TOMORROW SOUNDS GOOD!” he agreed, and with a cheerful wave, headed back down the stairs.

I mean, there’s not much we can do beyond that, I guess. My sister suggested that we refuse to pay rent, which would feel like a threat with a little more clout if he had actually cashed my rent check from last month. Which he hasn’t. Our other roommate suggested putting something in writing, but, given that we don’t actually have a signed lease, we’re not sure what kind of legal standing written notice might really hold, either.

It could be worse. At least we have heat, right?

CLANG!

Right.

Emo-nster Truck Rally 10.25.2007

If emotions were crafted by architects, mine would, undoubtedly, be of the skyscraper/stadium variety.

If emotions were mammals, mine would be the great blue whale, eating over 40,000,000 krill each day.

If emotions were dinosaurs, mine would be a sauropod, with a tail so big that it would create sonic booms when it swished from side to side.

You get the point. I’m prone to dramatic fits of feeling. You have no idea how exhausting this can be.

There is quite a bit of ethical-global responsibility incurred with having such a sizable emotional composition. Because the thing is, my emotions do not live in a vacuum. My emotions are constantly interacting with the rest of the world, and the many emotions therein. My emotions eat entire rain forests and disrupt weather systems and create other general havoc on my social world. My emotional footprint, so to speak, is cavernous

Now that the tumor of my identity theft has been fully removed from my financial anatomy (although we’re still in wait-and-see mode before we can be sure it hasn’t spread to my credit lymph nodes), and the dust has settled from the zephyr of my cross-country move, it seems that I’ve redirected all of that newly available energy into my somewhat muddy and very messy personal life. And my emotions, those quiet vegetarian creatures, have suddenly taken on this identity as monster trucks. My emotions are now hungrily plowing around in the mudfields of my life, leaving behind great trenches, kicking up terrible, messy waves, and crushing my peers’ normal, healthy-sized emotional personas into giant flattened lines of crumpled steel.

It’s gotten just a little bit out of control.

Obviously, I need to reel this in, before I accidentally squoosh somebody who forgot to flee their car when they saw my emotional mess of a self barreling over, or before I inadvertently tip myself over and end up spinning my tires in the air and making a sad, whining noise.

In Tucson, I would have maybe gone on some very long bike rides to serve as an emotional pressure valve, or possibly done a whole week of twice a day $5 yoga to try and offset some of the crazy.

But, here in New York, it’s a little bit more complicated. Because big emotions need lots of space, and space is one commodity that’s a little hard to come by here in the big apple. So I’ve been making a lot of baking soda volcanoes, which serve as a great release, and I have been trying to write in a journal, which is far less fun than blogging, and then finally, it struck me! I need to let my emotions breathe through my FAVORITE BLOG GIMMICK EVER! (And, I will also be going tomorrow to ride the great glass elevator, which never fails to make me feel better. So things are looking up.)

That’s right, folks. It’s time for the top ten list. (Whew!)

Top ten least effective ways to relieve emotional stress in an already kind of hard week (based on solid experiential research data):

10. Go out for drinks with a bunch of rabbis from your hometown and find yourself at a terrifying surprise reunion of your 6th grade Jewish Day School.

9. Work 60 hours a week.

8. Witness human poop on the F train.

7. Re-read correspondence from every failed relationship in which you’ve partaken in the past decade. Map out obvious patterns that have repeated over and over and over. Then stare in the mirror for an hour.

6. Google people you knew in Junior High.

5. Remember the poop that you saw on the F train earlier in the day.

4. Check your credit report.

3. Wear high heels that feel a little shaky, so that one is sure to break off when you are 30 blocks from anywhere. Realize that this is not nearly as fun as the Mentos commercial makes it out to be.

2. Run through Times Square on a Saturday night with a broken, ragged, cardboard box, wearing a cocktail dress, looking desperately for an office supply store.

1. Talk incessantly about said emotions to anyone and everyone who will listen, including neighborhood butchers, cab drivers, roommates, friends, and people in line at Filene’s basement. Realize with horror at the end of the day that you have become “That crazy lady with all the emotions.” Repeat every day for a week.

“How am I not myself?”: Existential Crises and the Worldwideweb 10.10.2007

A few weeks ago, my roommate, noticing the copious number of packages that arrive regularly for me at our apartment, inquired about my online shopping habits.

“Sure, I buy a little something off the worldwideweb every once and again,” I muttered from behind a small mountain of dot-com cardboard crates. “Who doesn’t?”

And had I not been ensconced in bubble wrap and shipping labels, maybe I would have paid more attention as she rambled on about “secure” this and “credit card” that and “steal” and “your” and “identity” and a bunch of other paranoid stuff.

“Look,” I explained to her, while trying to figure out the return policy for apple.com, which seemed alarmingly complicated to be written entirely in iScript (I mean, really, what is an iExchange? And can you order one from a PC? iDon’t get it.) “you can’t live your life if you’re always afraid. Sometimes, you just need to prioritize convenience and consumerism over all else. This is AMERICA. We have VALUES.”

“Besides,” I joked. “Who’s going to steal MY identity? After all the existential trauma it’s given me? I would wish a lesser fate on my worst enemy.”

It has since come to my attention that my worst enemy is, indeed, that jackass loser who stole my identity off the internet last week. And I have dreamed up some fates for that enemy. Oh yes. And they are fates much, much, worse than being a queer agnostic jewish anticapitalist fundraising internetaholic. Trust me.

Yes, it’s true. In a gruesome re-emergence of my “everyone’s out to get me” luck, someone has stolen the very essence of my American soul- my freaking debit card number.

I’m thoroughly annoyed.

I’ll admit, even I didn’t believe it at first. I mean, it wouldn’t be the first time that someone had run up my credit cards and drained my bank account. I really had to retrace my steps, but in the end, I realized it was true; for once in my life, it was not I who did the running and the draining. I’d been had. Had to the (i)tune of about three thousand dollars worth of skateboards, shoes, and cell phones.

So I have spent the last few days trudging back and forth from the bank to the police station and back to the bank, on the phone with credit bureaus and fraud claims people, and fortunately, it appears that I have something called “fraud protection.” Unfortunately, I and the great network of people with apparent access to my bank account (all of whom, of course, I suspect of being the identity thieves themselves) cannot seem to arrive at a consensus in regards to how we actually activate said fraud protection. So my bank account is still frozen, which doesn’t matter, because it’s so overdrawn anyway, and the fraud protection people’s best attempt at giving me clear direction and information about the next steps I should take seems to involve telling me all about some episode of Dateline that they saw where this EXACT SAME KIND OF THING happened to diabetic old people.

My faith in humanity was plummeting rapidly, and I realized that I had no choice but to invoke the powers of the elusive “quality assurance” to get these fraud-claims goobers on the other end of the line to really help me. So now, when I make my hourly call to the fraud claims place, I start the conversation by cheerily informing them that before we begin, I am obligated to tell them that this call is being recorded.

Of course, I’m lying. An actual recording of me being berated by the claims department would be totally useless, anyway. But the power of a perceived recording- that’s the magic ticket.

No one asks me why (or how) I’m recording the call. They’re too intimidated. And if I really were recording the call, would I be obligated to tell them? Of course not! But boy, are they suddenly efficient. It’s all “Yes, ma’am, no ma’am, we’ll have the money back in 24 hours. Thank you so much. No, really, THANK YOU.”

So, there are two lessons here. The first one is: You should live in constant fear that everyone is out to get you. The second, of course, is: when in doubt, make up some story that makes you sound more powerful than you ever really will be, and stick to it.

Also, if anyone wants to buy me a consolation gift for my troubles, send me an email and I’ll tell you all the online boutiques where my wish list is cached.

iThank you.