I Got SERVED.

In the last few weeks, I've felt exponentially more optimistic about life in general. Maybe it was finally getting enough sleep. Maybe it was the Girl Scout Cookies. Maybe it was the discovery of a K-Cup I can finally love. Maybe - maybe - it had something to do with the meds that balanced my brain chemistry so I didn't feel *quite* so much like lying on the couch until I starved to death. WHO CAN SAY?

The point is, I was flying way too close to the sun, so I did the only reasonable thing I could do. The only thing that would bring me back down to the level of abject misery on which the rest of the country lives 24/7. I did the thing...that could irretrievably destroy a good mood.

I called Customer Service.

I love Customer Service. I love everything about it. I love the dystopic sound of a robot on the verge of tears as it starts every sentence with "I'm sorry..."! I love the even more dystopic sound of the human being who finally picks up where the robot left off, terrified, knowing I'm already seething as she reads from a script that requires her to thank me for literally everything I do or say in the course of our conversation! But the thing I love most is that the end of a Customer Service call is never really "Goodbye", but merely, "I'll call you right back, even more pissed than I already am, since you've routed me to this dead-end and refuse to fix my problem". 

It all started when I decided to switch from AT&T to Comcast, because I wanted faster internet, and Comcast could give me that *plus* a more useful cable connection for less! Wonderful! I signed up online, which was super great, because who's gonna give me better customer service than ME? Nobody, that's who! And I can prove it! The process of finalizing my order with Comcast involved a quick little live chat with a New Account Specialist Or Whatever. He informed me that my number could be ported, but not yet, because AT&T needed to "release" it. I was assigned a temporary interim number, to be replaced with the old one once it was free. So I called AT&T!

Here's what you experience when you talk to the AT&T Robot:

ROBOT: Thank you for calling AT&T! I see you're calling from [your phone number, read out in a slow voice that takes only ten short minutes of your life]! Is that the number associated with the account you are calling about?

ME: YES

ROBOT: Great! Now can you tell me, in a few words, what it is you're calling about today?

ME: I NEED TO-

ROBOT: You can say "I want to sign up for U-Verse TV" or "I'd like to order another U-Verse box"

ME: (muttering to myself) Really? Can I also tell you where you can shove U-Verse?

ROBOT: It sounds like you're calling to set up U-Verse! Is that correct?

ME: NO!

ROBOT: (long pause) Now can you tell me, in a few words, what it is you're calling about today?

ME: I NEED TO GET-

ROBOT: You can say "I need technical support" or "I'd like more information on U-Verse"

ME: I NEED TO GET MY NUMBER RELEASED FOR PORTING

ROBOT: Hang on while I get more information... It looks like AT&T just received a payment from you! Would you like to hear the details of this payment?

ED NOTE: This is by far the dumbest part of the whole stupid spiel. Obviously they've done this because most people are calling about their bills(?) but if you're going to assume that's why I'm calling, WHY DID I HAVE TO TELL YOU WHY I'M CALLING? Also, I don't know what the rest of you people are doing, but when I make a payment, I already know the details of that payment. Because I made it. I don't need it read to me. I'd also like to point out that in two days, I called AT&T FIVE TIMES, and I got to hear the "recent payment" crap EVERY SINGLE TIME. 

So when the robot first passed me to a person, I told her what I needed and she gave me a different number to call. She conveyed the number with an air of authority and unshakeable confidence, so it never crossed my mind that this might not be the right number. I thanked her, hung up, and called the number. I'd provide a transcript here, but I can't. Because the robot at that number only spoke Spanish. I let it run through its options, waiting for the English equivalent of the standard "Para Español, marque el numero dos!" message. Nothin'. So I hung up and, figuring I had misdialed, tried again. Same result. I began to wonder if the friendly AT&T lady had somehow gotten the impression that I spoke Spanish, despite my accent-free English in our entirely English-language exchange. Finally I gave up and called the standard AT&T Robot back. We went through the same song-and-dance as before, in which he read me my phone number in the same amount of time it took to build the pyramids, asked what I wanted twice, didn't know what the hell I was talking about, offered to read my last payment aloud to me, and finally offered to hand me off to a human being. When the AT&T Robot picked up this call, it was 5:57pm. By the time he offered to hand me to a human, it was 6:01, and instead of hearing a human, I heard the Robot saying, "We're sorry, this office is closed for the day. Please try again tomorrow." 

So I did. I tried again the next day. I let him pat himself on the back for knowing my number, I yelled gibberish at him when he asked what I needed (makes no difference to him!), he told me I had recently paid an obscene amount of money for this crappy service as if this information might come as a surprise to me, then connected me to a person. I told this person that I needed my number liberated for porting. She said, "Please hold while I connect you". There was a click. Silence. Another click. Silence. Click. Hold music. Click. Silence. Click. 

ROBOT: Thank you for calling AT&T! I see you are calling from...

So we did it AGAIN, with me now screaming unintelligibly at the Robot, who moved unperturbed through his script, not registering my bloodboiling rage because why would he? He hasn't listened to a word I've said EVER! This time, when the human picked up, I was ready. "DON'T HANG UP!," I yelled before she could speak, like a kidnap victim who's finally gotten through to an ex-friend who is now her only hope of rescue. I explained my request once more, but this time I added, "I have talked to your robot four times, but he DOESN'T KNOW HOW TO HELP ME! And the last lady I talked to just gave me back to the robot. Please. Please. I don't want to talk to the robot again." (Yes, I literally said this. That is how crazy Customer Service makes me.)

Fortunately, this nice lady was able to help me, insofar as she could tell me that the number is free for porting, and Comcast has their info screwed up. In other words: Call Customer Service! And I will. As soon as I get approval to quadruple my psych meds. 

Blubber and the Burbs

Wanna know a secret?

I'm not Carrie Bradshaw.

I'm not even close. When that God-forsaken crap was on the air and every woman in America was yelling "OMG! Her life is EXACTLY LIKE MINE!!!", I was licking orange Cheeto salt off my fingers and dumping Midori in my margaritas by the quart so I could get good 'n drunk before completing my work on "Little Matthew Vance", a rhyming children's book I wrote and illustrated, about a kid who has no friends and never gets invited to parties, so he tells his parents he's going to a party (so they won't think he's pathetic), but really he just goes into the woods and talks to an amphibian for fifteen pages. Hey - they always say "write what you know"!

Aaaannnnyhoo. My point is: there was never a moment, ever, in my entire life, when I saw a single parallel between Carrie Bradshaw's life and my own. And yet, the Cult of Carrie seems to have become such a basic part of American culture that everyone else thinks there must be something wrong with me if I'm NOT Carrie Bradshaw.

Hi. My name is Kimberly. And this ain't Sex and the City.

See, I am currently taking a hiatus from the improv theatre where I perform. I needed a little mental health holiday. But somehow, every time I say "I'm taking a break from the theatre", every woman within earshot hears "I AM NOW DEDICATING EVERY WAKING MOMENT TO THE HUSBAND HUNT AND WILL GLADLY MARRY THE NEXT PIECE OF PRIMORDIAL SLIME THAT LOOKS AT ME SIDEWAYS! PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE GIVE ME ANY TIPS YOU HAVE ON HOW I CAN LOOK SEXIER, BE MORE APPROACHABLE, OR, MOST IMPORTANTLY, FIND AVAILABLE MEN!!!!"

I appreciate what these women are trying to do, but it's just not gonna happen. As a point of reference, I should tell you now that while no one has EVER said "Wow, you are so much like Carrie Bradshaw!" to me, a dozen different people who do not even know one another have said: "Holy crap. Tina Fey owes you royalties for basing Liz Lemon on you."

I don't want a purse dog, I'm not gonna go to church just to meet men, I would sooner go to an AA meeting than a "running group", I have a policy against straying more than 2 feet from the food table at parties, I categorically refuse to read The Rules, I don't wear makeup to the gym, I think the editors of Cosmopolitan should be tried at the Hague, I don't shoe-shop recreationally, I HATE dating, and no, thank you, I will not stop putting mayonnaise on everything.

Look, I'm not completely anti-men or anti-relationship. I've been in some downright pleasant relationships in my time, and even now, there's a guy out there I would not mind sharing my Cheetos with. But you know why I like him? It's because: he's fun to watch TV and/or shoot pool with. That's it. I don't like guys who hit on me when I'm out at a bar wearing a metric ton of eyeliner with a headful of gorgeous curls that smell like burnt hair (because FYI boys, that's what gorgeous curls are made of: acrid smell-of-death burnt hair). I don't trust guys like that. They don't like me. They like my eyeliner and my burny hair. Those guys would have no appreciation for my favorite pastime of yelling "EEEWWW!" and laughing hysterically while I run a neti pot through my nose. I want the guy who joins me in making fun of 2am infomercials. Because he can't sleep either, and neither one of us is getting up at 6:30 to go to the gym.

And I'm not going to spend my month looking for Mr. Right. Because the kind of guy who really puts the mayo on my tater tots, so to speak, is precisely the kind of guy you DON'T find by looking for him. So IF IT'S ALL THE SAME TO EVERYONE, I'm going to get back to doing what I want to do, boring and shut-in-y though it may be. I may not be Carrie Bradshaw, but at least I'm not a walking petri dish like she would be, and you can take that to my local American Red Cross blood donation center. Where they will vouch for me.

Lemon OUT!*

*copyright Tina Fey, no infringement intended

Oh WHAT THE HELL!

2 blog posts in one day! And neither of them worth a crap! You must've been good boys and girls all year.

I was assigning "labels" to that last post and I saw "John of the Week". I am genuinely sad that I haven't been naming my Johns of the Week lately; it's good to be gratitudinous, and I feel like such an ass for letting so many people go unthanked.

But I'm FAR too lazy to do some sort of ginormous catch-up post, so let's just assume that if you:
- saved my life
- loaned me some of your meds
- complimented my Christmas party outfit
- brought me food
- gave me a present
- wrote "Happy Birthday" on my Facebook wall
- listened to me whining
- held my hair while I puked
- let me crash at your place once I was done puking
- refrained from letting your impending baby steal my birthday thunder
- loaned me a wig
- presented me with a page full of authentic Disney™ character autographs
- declined to press charges
...then you know who you are, and I'm grateful.

On a related note, did anybody else find that 2011 got a little weird right at the end?

Well 2012 is starting off on a weird foot too, because guess who the John of the Week is! That's right...

IT'S HANNAH MONTANA, Y'ALL!!!!

I'm not even kidding either. I heart this song so GD much that it is now the default ringtone on my phone. That is how weird shit has gotten. And you thought I was crazy before. The 2012 version of Kimberly...y'all don't even know. BUT YOU'RE FIXIN' TO FIND OUT!!!

"You're Never Alone With a Phone"

Thus spake Mark Corrigan on an episode of Peep Show.  Nine times out of ten, I agree with Mark's pithy little phrases, but this time, he's way way WAY off. In my experience, he would've been better off saying something like "only the phone-ly" or "all by my cell-f". (Give me a break, it's late.)

I remember when text messaging first caught on. I bought myself an adorable little Sony Ericsson phone. It was pricey (compared to my previous phones, all of which had been free), but I didn't care because it was an investment. This wasn't just a phone! This was THE phone! The phone that would someday ring with the call that would change my life! My soulmate would call me on this phone! A major record label would call to offer me a contract on this phone! It had to be good, because it was going to be the conduit for SO MUCH amazing, life-changing, wonderful information! And when you factor in text messages, it would also be the hub of my incredibly active social life, with friends always calling and texting, wanting to hang out with me.

Yessir. I had high hopes for that phone.

In reality, of course, the only guy who called me on that phone turned out to be a douche. Not a single record label, major or otherwise, rang me up. I had so few friends that eventually I signed up for AT&T's daily horoscope service just to see what it was like to receive a text. Times were hard. The funny thing is that my life wasn't any different than it had been before; it sucked exactly as much as - but no more than - it had previously sucked. I had the same friends, did the same things. But somehow my previously satisfactory life had become an empty shell of an existence, and I had become a boring, useless pile of crap.

Madison Avenue bears some of the blame for this, of course. I mean, cell phone commercials are ridiculous, and they always have been. Invariably there's some model-handsome guy, standing in the middle of some HUGELY trendy city (usually Tokyo), at night, under a bunch of crazy neon lights. The gorgeous woman he's with moves a few feet away to pose so he can take a picture of her with friendly siberian tiger that has just finished crossing the street. Then the three of them decide they could really go for some sushi, so he looks up restaurant ratings and directions on his phone, but while he's doing that five people call and two leave voicemails and he gets twenty-five text messages from movie stars and one of the voicemails is from his boss so he has to pause for five seconds to design an entire Keynote presentation on his phone which he then sends back to the office in New York just in time for the alarm which tells him it's time for him and his girlfriend to board their private Concorde where he sits and listens to music that he downloaded to the phone while setting a new high score for Angry Birds.

WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE?

It's hard to see a commercial where a phone does all of that only to buy one for yourself and watch it sit, silent and motionless, on your bedside table for four years. Every second that phone does not spend ringing and vibrating and bursting with incoming messages is a moment it sits in silent dismay, judging you and your entire social life to be tremendously inadequate. There are times when you could swear you hear it doing a big exaggerated sigh. I wish I could've made the Real Life Sony Ericsson phone ad. It would've consisted of me (then an unemployed 20-something in her parents' basement), sitting in bed next to an open bag of Cheetos watching Adult Swim all night long, occasionally picking up the phone, looking at it, then putting it back down. Cue single, lonely tear.

I hated those feelings of inadequacy, but today I'm grateful for them. If I hadn't spent so many lonely nights trying to wipe my salty orange thumbprints off that phone's keyboard, I would never have survived the endless parade of horrors that the iPhone has brought into my life.

I got my iPhone in February of 2010. I had been dumped almost exactly a month before, so naturally I was in a hyper-optimistic phase, meaning I shelled out for the best model they had at the time. Why? Because this was the phone that would someday ring with the call that would change my life! My soulmate would call me on this phone! A major record label would call to offer me a contract on this phone! It had to be good, because it was going to be the conduit for SO MUCH amazing, life-changing, wonderful information!

Granted, I have my own place now. And I have far more friends than I had back in the day. But just as I have managed to carve out something like a life for myself, the advances in phone technology have stayed one step ahead of my feeble attempts at personhood, and managed to leave me once again wishing the stupid thing had never been invented. The phone still doesn't ring, except when I owe the Red Cross a pint of blood. I do get the occasional text, but I'm not exactly struggling to keep pace with all the correspondence. And now I am not only being judged as boring and inadequate by every call and text I DON'T receive, but I'm also being pointedly ignored by four email accounts, the whole of Facebook, most of Twitter, the better part of G+, and, apparently, Bump. The iPhone sits at my side, day in, day out, staring me down and saying, "There is no one - IN THE WORLD - who wants to speak to you. No one has seen something funny that made them think of you. No one wants to tell you something. No one wants to declare their undying love. No one even wants to send you a spam email."

As if this weren't bad enough, I finally got talked into subjecting myself to The Final Insult tonight: I got the Find My Friends app, or as I like to call it, "DELETE THIS APP IMMEDIATELY". Here's how it works:
1. You request to follow your friend.
2. Assuming your friend grants your request, they may also request to follow you.
3. This is not like "following" on Facebook or Twitter; whoever you allow into your little circle of friends will have access to your phone's exact GPS location at all times, unless you disable the feature.
4. When you look up your friend's location, Find My Friends shows you a little Google Map with a dot indicating his or her position. It also offers you the option to message the friend in question or get directions to where they are. Curiously, it does not provide a one-click connection to a suicide hotline. That's a pretty massive oversight, if you ask me.

My initial concern was that this was a little too invasive, but you can stop the phone from transmitting pretty easily, so I figured what the heck! I hadn't counted on the real evil here, and it's not stalking. Stalking is the least of your problems with this app. The problem is that now my phone is not only capable of judging me in its silence, but it can also actively tell me what a total reject I am. See, once I installed the app and hooked up with a few friends, I played around with checking their locations to see how specific the thing could be (answer: VERY SPECIFIC). But then I said the most fateful words I've said in weeks: "Hm. I wonder what [name] is doing at [place]. Weird." I say these words were fateful because they piqued my curiosity and led me to check in again about thirty minutes later, only to find that [name] had subsequently gone to another [place], this one even more fun and exciting than the last! I should point out that by this time (10:30) I was already snuggled up in bed with so much anti-aging cream on my face I'm surprised all the wine in my stomach didn't transform back into grapes. As [name] continued his or her tireless fluttering from one awesome destination to another, I became increasingly depressed at my depressingly depressing existence. Even if it had occurred to me to go somewhere fun at 10:30 on a Monday night, I wouldn't have been able to because I have work in the morning! And even if I hadn't had work in the morning, who would've gone with me? Probably one of the many people who are always blowing up my phone to hang out. OH WAIT.

And as the sheer magnitude of my patheticism settled on my shoulders with a great big WHUMP, I was further alarmed to realize that someday - mark my words - I am going to open that damn app to find that a BUNCH of my friends are all out doing something fun together...without me. Sigh.

I yearn for the days when I could've sat blissfully in bed at 10:30 on a Monday night feeling smug about how incredibly youthful my Blood of Virgins Anti-Aging Cream would make me look, enjoying my soft, warm mattress, feeling perfectly OK with myself and my life. I wish I could go back to a time when I could be the most boring person in my entire circle of friends without having to be constantly reminded of that fact. But no. I'm stuck in the 21st century, stuck with my iPhone, and stuck with a 24-hour news stream that simply says "NO ONE WANTS TO TALK TO YOU". At least until they invent an iPhone my cat can use.