Why Comcast is the spawn of the devil

My most recent phone conversation with Comcast (made from the office because my digital voice line keeps going out and I can’t use it to call them and tell them that my Internet is down)

Comcast: Thank you for calling Comcast. Please enter your 10-digit phone number

Me (dialing): beep bip beep bo beep beep beep bip bip

Comcast: Please enter your zip code

Me (dialing): bleep beep bip bip beep

Comcast: For trouble with your service, press 1; for billing, press 2; to transfer or downgrade your service, press 3

Me (dialing): Beep

Comcast: For security purposes, please enter your 10-digit phone number.

Me (speaking): What the eff? Didn’t I just do that? (dialing) beep bip beep bo beep beep beep bip bip

Comcast: Please enter your zip code.

Me: Seriously? (dialing) bleep beep bip bip beep

Comcast: To transfer your service, press 1…

Me (dialing): beep

Comcast: One moment. (series of bleeps)

Patricia, the Comcast lady: Thank you for calling Comcast. This is Patricia. How can I help you?

Me: I need to change the name on my Comcast account to my roommate.

Patricia: You need to go in person to your local billing station and fill out a form.

(I pause and wait for her to tell me where it is. She doesn’t)

Me: Can you tell me the phone number and address of the payment center?

Patricia: What city do you live in?

Me (thinking): Didn’t I just give you zip code TWICE?! (then, out loud) Alexandria, VA

Patricia: It’s at 508 D South Van Dorn St.

Me: And what’s the phone number?

Patricia: They don’t have a phone number because they don’t take calls.

Me: (thinking) Oh dear God in heaven above … (out loud) Ok. Can you please email me the form?

Patricia: No, we don’t have it electronically.

(I pause and wait for some kind of apologetic follow-up or explanation. She doesn’t give one).

Me: Ohhh-kay then. Um. Thanks?

Patricia: Sure, thanks for calling Comcast. Have a good day.

Me: I HATE YOU PEOPLE. (click)

Love's not Time's fool

I've recently become re-enamored with A Prairie Home Companion, a radio variety show broadcast by American Public Media. If you've never heard of Garrison Keiller and his sardonic, satirical and hysterically funny humor, you must tune in. It usually airs on Sunday evenings, which usually means that I listen to it later in the week over the Internet. The May 5th show is especially wonderful -- a special poetry episode featuring Alan Ginsberg, Meryl Streep, Billy Collins and more. Every week, Keiller does a completely off-book monologue of the News from Lake Wobegon, the fictional location of the show, and this week he used one of my favorite Shakespeare sonnets.

Suddenly, my mind was flooded with high school memories like the time my toilet flooded the bathroom because I couldn't figure out how to turn off the water. I had to memorize and recite this sonnet back in high school and as Keiller recited it on the show, I found myself reciting it along with him. I can't believe I remember all the words. I can't even remember to set the timer for my Trader Joe's frozen pizza. (Sucks when you burn your last frozen pizza to a crisp.) The human mind is a bizarre thing. Ah, highschool. I wore an afro during parts of highschool. Not on purpose, of course. It was perm gone miserably wrong. And then there was the time I got caught by the police while making out in parking lot with my boyfriend -- I tell you, they turn those lights on brighter when they know you're not wearing clothes. But my favorites memories from those days are the nights when me and a group of friends would just hang out at the elementary school playground, lying on our backs, trying to read the hidden language of the stars, putting into words life's deepest issues. We took ourselves so seriously when any adult probably would have laughed us off. But that's what high school is all about it, isn't it?

Sonnet 116

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Even God has an avatar

The Life Church, a mega-church in Oklahoma City, has invested thousands of dollars to build its online presence in Second Life. No joke, they are broadcasting its Sunday services live online. Read more here.

I'm curious. Is this really what the church should be doing, as it strives to be "culturally relevant"? These days, does something need to be made virtual in order to be made real? There is something rather sick about relying on bits and bytes rather than vivid human contact to make sense of the world.

On the other hand, people whittle away hours on Second Life because they want to escape a reality that they don't find appealing. I guess by definition that means they are searching for something. And maybe what they're searching for can be found with the help of a church, virtual or not.

Regardless, I find it interesting that more and more churches are looking at how to use the Internet and technology. And I wonder what might come next. Would we pray more if we could text message our requests to God? Would we behave better if we had a Google gadget for the 10 commandments on our iGoogle pages? Would we give more if tithing was made possible through our cell phones? Would we listen if God had a podcast or kept a blog?

Que soledad errante

Amor, cuántos caminos hasta llegar a un beso,
qué soledad errante hasta tu compañía!

Love, how many roads to obtain a kiss,
What lonely wanderings before finding you.

- Pablo Neruda

Unexpected meetings over a relaxing weekend

D.C. is definitely the city of random run-ins for me. Before I even moved here, I ran into a friend of a friend who was happened to be visiting Boston and who was moving to this city. Then there's the Gang member who went to college with an old NY high school friend of mine. And the guy I now work with who grew up in the same church as a good friend of mine in Boston. And the Houston high school friend of mine whose two best friends I dated for awhile and is currently living here. Or the weird connection that my roommate and I have with mutual friends out in East Asia.

Of course, there have been some not so great run-in's, like the time I unsoberly got into a fight with a random Australian guy on the street. Or the time I ran into cops and got pulled over twice in one week for speeding (neither resulted in a ticket, thank you very much). And the awkward moment when I ran into a guy at a club after he sent me a nasty email when I kinda ignored his phone calls and emails for a bit. And I must have run into something really hard on Friday because I woke up on Saturday with a nasty bruise on my thigh (and a nasty hangover). Side note: This whole post-finals euphoria is getting a little out of hand. Good thing I start working 40 hours a week tomorrow.

But, on the whole, I have to say the run-ins have been enjoyable and surprising. Tonight, I randomly decided to attend this church that I've visited before -- and ran into two old Boston friends who just happened to be visiting this week! We caught up over dinner and it was so great to chat with them and get the dirt on what's been happening with my Beantown gang. It's nice to know that even though I've felt really disconnected from my Boston friends lately, there are always moments that help plug you back in, just when you least expect it.

Here's to hoping the run-ins continue!

My first karaoke experience in DC

And it was so great.

Soooo great.

We started out with authentic Korean BBQ, 3 Asians and our token white friend. Naturally.

After much laughter, good food and kim chee, we moved on ... to our own private karaoke box. I should note here that we, of course, were not in D.C. Asians evidently don't live in DC and the ethnicities that do live there evidently don't like to karaoke as much as we do. Anyway, e were out in Annandale, land of ethnicity (well, lots of Koreans, at least) and, rather unfortunately, ethnic gangs. Armed now with 4 Asians and a token white friend, we sang our little hearts out. I love international karaoke -- English songs, Chinese songs, English songs...I was almost ready to break out in a little Gloria Estefan, but no. I did, however, embarrass myself fully by allowing someone else to pick a song for me, which turned out to be Whitney Houston's Greatest Love of All. My vocal coaches would have denied me three times before the cock crowed.

The song selection ran from George Michael to Ace of Base to Christina Aguilera to Stevie Wonder. But we ended the night with Boyz II Men's End of the Road. What a way to go out -- in a blaze of glory ... except that none of us could remember half the song, so most of it ended up as a bad spoken word interpretation of what my 9th grade years recall as one of the best songs of all time.

A+ for effort, though.

So close. So very very close.

Tomorrow is my very last final exam of my first year of business school.

I can't quite find the words to fit the occasion. I'm definitely relieved to be almost through the third level of hell, known as finals week, and I'm thrilled to have a great job lined up that will actually be paying me a livable wage. (ohhhh, Salary, I've missed you so).

But this is it for my first year of grad school. I'll never have this year again, never have this experience that I shared with so many people who became instant friends. And who, I hope, will become lifelong friends. The Cohorts will dissolve when the last person puts down his or her pencil tomorrow. We'll all have different classes next year, juggling part-time or full-time jobs, fewer group projects, no more study teams, and certainly won't be spending as much time in The Duck. Gosh, I'm gonna miss the Duck and its year-round frigid temperatures. I'm gonna miss fighting for breakout rooms with undergrads majoring in Sociology (they don't belong in our building!). I'm gonna miss my locker. I'm gonna miss roaming the halls and always finding friends the hidden cracks and crevices of the building.

Ah well. Life moves quickly and we need to keep up. Different doesn't equal worse. We may not have cohorts, but we'll always have the Gang of 100. We may not have study teams but we'll have happy hours! And of all the business schools that I've visited or researched, we have the tightest, coolest and best looking Gang out there. I doubt that will ever change.

Matters of faith

According to The New York Times, it seems that a growing number of college students today are turning more towards issues of faith and spirituality. The article offers a number of explanations; the following theory intrigued me:

“My theory is that the baby boomers decided they weren’t going to impose their religious life on their children the way their parents imposed it on them,” Mr. Steffen [chaplain at Lehigh University] continued. “The idea was to let them come to it themselves. And then they get to campus and things happen; someone dies, a suicide occurs. Real issues arise for them, and they sometimes feel that they don’t have resources to deal with them. And sometimes they turn to religion and courses in religion.”

Interesting. I've long believed that "mainstreaming" religion was one of the worst ways to share it. After all, history tends to show that faiths around the world spread faster and grow when under persecution not when imposed. Perhaps this resurgence in matters of faith -- all faiths -- will lead to more interfaith dialogue and understanding. Whatever God you believe in must also want this for us too.