Talk about Forbidden Fruit

I've heard it said that the age of epics has passed. Anyone who truly thinks that has clearly never called tech support.

Who is our victim this time, you ask? Why, no other than Apple!

Our story begins with a rather bewildered Apple employee that not only DIDN'T speak English, but was so terribly misinformed as to nearly cost me $39 for a cord set I didn't order by telling me to keep it. ("IS FOR YOU MA'AM!") He finally became so exasperated by his own job that he basically tricked me into hanging up with the false presumption that he would be calling back.

Good thing I wasn't holding my breath, because it has been weeks and I've yet to hear from him.

My second Apple associate was very helpful, albeit the runaround he gave me was more than I bargained for. And I mean that literally. I had to run up and down the stairs probably half a dozen times to get credit card information. He informed me of what I could do with the cord to avoid being charged for it. Sadly, it wasn't for slapping the stupid out of that guy in India. I instead put it back into its envelope, wrote KGP (Karma Gutted Potato? Klingon Gliding Parakeet? Kaleidoscopic Glittered Pattycake?) on the outside, and sent it back. Whatever it means, it worked.

I managed to get my warranty renewed on my iPod Touch, which I do miss very much. Seriously. How in the world can I be expected to ignore the adult portion of the human race if I cannot tastefully shove some earbuds into my head and drown them out? It has been a LONG 2 weeks, let me tell you. Much of it had nothing to do with my missing iPod, but the fact that it was gone left me defenseless. Think wounded gazelle on the Serengeti, only throw some ebola on top and chop off my horns.

Anyway, due to a sudden change of address (we'll blame the mafia for this one), my iPod could no longer be sent to the address on file. Called Fed Ex a few days ago. They gave me the terrorist treatment--you know, where they assume you aren't actually you and give you a really hard time in the event you aren't you. All they can do for me is hold my package in White Marsh. Why White Marsh? White Marsh is so far from here and consistently has the WORST traffic in this part of the state? Can't you be a decent human being and hold it in a store closer to here?


They elected to not be decent human beings, which leads me to believe that Fed Ex is a secret combination of INdecent human beings. Or pod people. OR BOTH!

Tell your friends.

Which leads me to today's development. By now, I've pretty much exhausted all of my impatience with the ordeal. I called Apple to have them change the shipping address so Fed Ex will come on and deliver the goods already.

Silly me for thinking it would be easy. Has this experience taught me NOTHING? I got another English speaker (Was the first guy just a terrible joke or something? Because I'm NOT laughing. Watch, I bet it was one of the 3 Nephites! I'm SO SCREWED!) and he was also very good spirited and helpful. There were just REEEAAALLY long pauses between his helpfulness because I was on hold for so long. And at first the hold music was TERRIBLE. You know those ridiculous people that listen to music on their cell phones and it sounds all garbled because they have it up too loud and their phone speakers SUCK? Times that by a billion and that's what it was like.

BUT THEN they played that amazing song by U2 (Elevation) so I did what any self respecting white girl stewing in her own boredom would do.

I danced to the hold music.

Eventually even THAT got old, and I kept holding. And kept holding. It got to the point where I had to get ready for Institute, so I can now honestly say that I've brushed my teeth while on hold... and tried to confirm my customer service representative (AKA desk monkey) that I was still holding while rinsing.

I remained on hold all the way to Institute. I remained on hold as we sat in the hallway waiting for the teacher. I remained on hold as I celebrated the fact that they REPLACED my iPod as opposed to fixing my old one. I remained on hold as--WHOA hello! You got ahold of the Apple repair center? They're sending the change of address request to Fed Ex? Excellent! Goodbye!

Like I said, anyone who believes the age of epics has passed has never been as resilient as I am with tech support.

I should have asked the guy who took the bite out of the Apple. If he said Eve, it would have been worth it.

What happens when I no longer have my iPod

"...then I guess you don't go, since Heather was the only one who went to bed..." Am I even awake right now? Nope, I don't think so... ZZZZZZZ


Wake up. Wonder if I dreamed that. Spend a LONG time arguing with myself about it, then promptly forget all about it.

Read scriptures and talked with God for a bit. I've said it before and I'll say it again, I don't understand WHY people skip 2 Nephi. The BEST stuff is in that section! It's like people waited in line for the roller coaster, got to the front, and then decided it was too much work to sit there and be impressed!

Bored of being befuddled by bipedal beings.

Facebook quizzes? OK, maybe just one. OHBUTWAIT there's one where you answer questions with song titles! I LOVE THOSE! I'm gonna use the Beatles for mine and then send it to Brian because then it counts as supporting a missionary and therefore is NOT a waste of time!

Checkin my phoney phone phone... how in the heck do I have phone calls from 4 digit numbers?! That's not good. Perhaps I should take my phone offa Twitter.

I'm so glad I finally have time to read, I mean I know it's Hugh Nibley and he's about as dense as it gets for LDS readings, well, except maybe in like an encyclopedia or something but seriously I'm so glad I finally have time to read this book. OK brain time to shut up now so I can focus on the Nibley magic!

OHBOYOHBOYOHBOY! I gots my popcorn, and my soda, and I'ma watch me a Pixar movie! How much longer until it starts??? OHMYGOSH that kitten is the cutest thing I've EVER SEEN!

What the heck Disney?! A miscarriage? Really. I didn't know I paid $8 to cry at a DISNEY MOVIE anymore! What is this world coming to? I can't--SQUIRREL

Dishes... dishes... doin dishes. Makin important realizations about family and how glad I am to be home and cool revelations I probably won't remember later when I go to write them down because that's just how it works apparently.

Important conversation about opening checking accounts that I can access in Utah and that my mother can put money into once I get poor and look at all the bubbles in the dishwater. Hum de dum de dum de dummmm. OOPS! I'm so glad my finger didn't get in the way of that knife!

The Simpsons--OH what's he writing on the chalkboard this time? FRANKINCENSE IS NOT A MONSTER. Hahahahaha that's funny. I love Jesus humor! As long as it isn't offensive. Dude, that's just not cool.

What is my sister WATCHING?! That deer thing is throwing rabbits at a window, and I feel compelled to sit here and stare stupidly as he continues to do it. There seems to be a relationship with the increased size of our television and how often I find myself doing just that.

You know what would be funny? If I wrote a blog post about how RANDOM this day has been.

Remember the bit about my phone. Go back and write it into the events where it actually happened.

Check Facebook. YAY I got a message from one of me palsies. Write her the most SATISFYING bit of accidental redundancy I've probably ever written.

Redundancy Unintended. Would make a good band name for a bunch of elitist college word nerds!

I'm classifying that misspelling of "elitist" as a typo.

YEAH! I LOVE when iTunes surprises me with great Muse songs! That bass riff is to DIE FOR!

I wonder what kind of music God would have on His iPod. I'm pretty sure that thought counts as sacrilege... or maybe He's just thinking I ought to know by now EXACTLY what He likes. He only tells me on a regular basis what I should and shouldn't bother listening to.

I want curly hair. I wonder how much a perm is. Probably more than I want to pay. And if I do that, my excuses for my aversion to hair dye will never work again. And perms look weird when they grow out.

I'm bored of explaining my boredom. Gonna watch Ace of Cakes or something. I wonder if I can watch it online somewhere that doesn't have Chinese characters on the bottom.

Dude! What do nuns crossing a street with high heeled shoes and golf clubs have to do with paint? Commercials are so weird when you stop to think about them sometimes.

Life is weird when you substitute your own dialogue in general.

Word Nerd + Boredom =

So I recently discovered Googlewhacking.

What is it, you ask?

It's when you do a Google search for two words and try to get only 1 result. There are other rules of course.

And without further ado, I give birth to my very own Whack.

Nucleopeptide timbre

.... Or not.

The secret to this is simple. Find two words accepted by Answers.com as words, that when combined have NO entry. Then, using a blog, create an entry using the two words to give Google something to find. It appears to be taking Google quite a long time to find the entry though.

Hummmm.... Now I'm bored again.

For rich or for poor, for hairy feet and pointy ears...

So recently over on Nerdfighters, John Green (author) was asked by one of his fans (Phil) to propose to his (Phil's) girlfriend (Kelly) on behalf of Phil. (Can you tell I love parentheses?)

Besides the fact that such an act really suggests to me that boyfriend is rather spineless (as in, I can hear the echo of his lack of vertebrae all the way from here), it makes me wonder what I would say if my beau-to-be chose to do such a thing.

To which I would respond, it depends on the author.

Ray Bradbury? Maybe, probably. Shakespeare? Ignoring the fact that he's dead, that would be a HECK YES! Dr. Seuss? The only benefit to that one is bragging rights, really.

Perhaps an even more crucial question is which authors would I NOT want to propose on behalf of my (in)significant male counterpart-husband-boyfriend thing. (Yes, I'm giggling right now)

Herman Melville. Henry James. Anyone who's ever written for or published a Harlequin romance novel. Charles Dickens. Edgar Allan Poe. D.H. Lawrence (how AWKWARD would that be??)

Oh, and J.R.R. Tolkien. He'd probably be the worst. Anyone who's willing to go into that much detail about hairy hobbit feet could not have proposed properly! He probably put his poor wife to sleep!

Shakespeare meets CATS

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Be paid $70,000 a year to do WHAT?

If sitting in a "rubber room" is what being a teacher potentially has in store for me SIGN ME UP.

The state of the American education system is absolutely appalling. For reasons unbeknownst to me, the objective seems to be less and less about teaching our children to deal with real life situations and more about quantifying their education and making those false numerical values go as high as possible because they'll bring money from the government. I mean, I know my teachers always told me that education is an investment, but I didn't realize they meant it because the act of educating children has become a business.

I wasn't in high school that long ago, and I can honestly say that the state testing performed on a yearly basis has become the biggest hindrance to learning in the classroom. Besides the fact it was nearly impossible to get ANY help with my Calculus homework at certain points in the year because of state testing for Algebra, the pressure on the educators to deomonstrate improvement (as opposed to success with the resources they've been given) has forced many teachers to focus only on the students whose success is attached to more government money. And in my experience, the students in this category would rather be texting, or even on house arrest, than putting any effort into their education.

Does anyone else see the problem with this? And while many parents fix this problem by sending their kids to expensive private or charter schools where they could get extensive college prep classes, many of my peers and I had to FIND other ways to be competitive applicants to colleges who could easily take in other students that have anywhere from 10 to 20 AP credits built up.

How did we do it? If the realization that being a productive, altruistic contributer to society is more important than a GPA never quite sinks in, then cheating is one way. I will admit that none of the people I knew ever resorted to this, which would only represent a very small, specifically moral cross-section of a student population. No, the popular method of coping is what is commonly referred to as "grade grubbing."

I can't tell you how many times I overheard students in Honors classes arguing with teachers for over half an hour while going over a test, hounding them at the door over a grade in the B, B+ range. This was particularly popular in my AP Calculus class, which incidentally was DENSLY overpopulated because a large number of the math teachers were teaching Algebra and other classes required to take the dreaded HSA's (High School Assessments--like changing its name from test to assessment has any visible effect.) The kids that were (un)affectionately referred to as "grade Nazis," including by themselves, were all too commonly seen on the computers all over the building checking their grades. If they could hit up at least two teachers about that reading assignment, that homework grade, that presentation before they had to catch the bus, it was a productive day. And the sad part is that I can as good as promise you that they were on Grades-to-Go again the second they got home.

And what exactly does all of this lead to? Kids getting better grades than they deserved for the sake of getting rid of certain students, or even wishful thinking on the part of some educators for others--"if I will just give her an A, she'll believe she can actually do this."

But the fundamental premise of learning is that a person acquires the ability to be exposed to information and is able to retain it and apply it. The problem with the American education system is that it doles out plenty of information to use on a test, but those tests don't actually prepare anyone for real life.

And with a lot of universities taking action to their own hands by deciding to cut back on the number of A's their institutions hand out (this article from the Washington Post can back that up for me), I really hope that eventually public education will follow suit and do the same.

But with a certain Taxman in office, I don't see how that could possibly happen any time soon... yes, I did just create a parallel between Obama and the Beatles song. Tax collector/ super hero. Someone make the man some Underoos!

OK, so maybe I'm the only one who thinks it's funny. And true. We can't forget true. But perhaps I should be nice. I mean, Iranian elections are more important that our broken education system right?

Right?

Cultivate the Word Nerd

Couple of links I've had sloshing around in my brain juices for a while...

*Pause to let mental image seep in*

(Eww)

At any rate, the first is Wordle. Paste text or a URL and all of the words from either will be arranged in a colorful, customizable arrangement. I made a Twitter background out of mine. Check it out.

Second is something ESPECIALLY awesome. Literature Map is a site where you enter an author's name and authors that are similar will pop up in a virtual web that you can click on and find other authors. Similar to the Visuwords dictionary.

Yay for cultivating the inner Word Nerd.