My Nightmare with Dell

Today, my babysitter signed for a package from FedEx from Dell. Now, I didn't order anything from Dell. The address was mine, but the person to receive it was someone else. Being the Good Samaritan I am, I immediately called Dell to figure out how to return it to the person eagerly expecting some sort of technological goodness, but I got sucked into at least 40 minutes of rerouting to different offices. I am currently with someone who sounds like they have the authority to deal with my problem, but he keeps putting me on hold to do something. Maybe he's getting the chance to go through Dell's horrible customer service system. I'm hitting the one-hour mark here, watching Nealon and changing his diaper in the meanwhile.

I guess no good deed does go unpunished. Please let this nightmare end soon.

Someone give me some good karma for once!

Edit: He just asked whether another address was the right address to send it. How the hell would I know that?

Edit 2: While I'm still waiting, let me compose a list of what I hate about this experience.

- Automated menu system that sends me to the wrong person.

- Having to go to four different offices, with all of them assuring that I will be sent to the right person.

- Having to have a person tell me every 3 minutes, "Just a minute," for 20 minutes.

- Having to change a poop diaper to the crappy hold music on the phone.

Edit 3: Finally got off at 2:38 pm. I've been on the phone for an hour and 5 minutes. He didn't even say thank you. Screw you, Dell. They are going to have FedEx call me to ask when would be a good time to pick it up, and will deliver it to the person, who lives like a block or so from me. I should have just called that stupid phone number on the box.

Final Edit (hopefully): I will never buy a Dell computer. This is just a taste of how horrible my life will be if I buy Dell and actually become a customer.

Actual Final Edit: Oh yeah, so to summarize: Dell mistyped a 6 where an 8 was supposed to be, and that's how it got sent to my house. Awesome.

I'm sitting here at the Honolulu airport and starting to get pre-homesick. Home is awesome. Family is awesome. I'm going to miss it REAL badly.

Today I had an epiphany.

So I have this Baby Einstein music CD on my PS3, and I couldn't shake this feeling for the longest time about why xylophony versions of classical music seemed so creepy and familiar.

Then, I hit upon it.

This CD is basically like the entire soundtrack for "A Clockwork Orange."

Life is good.

It's not that I hate Christmas. . .

but really, we went to this house off of SE Belmont on Peacock Lane and that whole neighborhood is like psychotic. I have never seen such over-the-top Christmas decorations for crappy, run-down houses. We went to go to this estate sale there, and the person who owned it had an unhealthy lust for all things Father Christmas. It was just creepy as Fuuu.

The good news? We got two awesome baby pianos for like 30 bucks total. Nealon's going to party like it's 1999, y'all.

Little Coffee Shop of Horrors Dec. 2, 2009

Of course, you know I'm back at Southeast Grind when you overhear someone explaining to the register girl about reading people's energy as one of her psychic abilities. She's really good at it, by the way, or so she alleges.

I allege that I have a job. It doesn't make it true.

I Regret Trying to Get Work Done at a Coffeeshop.

I'd rather study at a truck stop. I think I'd fit in with the people there and could actually relate. I had to sit through an insufferable exchange between two young hippies who were performing some complicated fake-intellectual mating ritual. I have never heard so much continuous bullshit in my life, and really was torn between tearing my eyes and ears out or laughing my ass off. Some high points:

• She said it was hard to accept spiritual guidance from someone who broke her heart (talking about an ex who is still creepily trying to get back together).
  
  
• He knows the creator of hackysack. . . I mean, "footbag" because he lives in Oregon. He goes to Reed College to participate in some weekly "footbag" event, and was talking about how this awesome "footbag" guy has now made it into some kind of martial art. Seriously.
  
  
• Either he or she went to Halloween dressed as "a random act of kindness." I had a random act of aneurysm right there.
  
  
• Dick Cheney is the Penguin joke. QUACK QUACK.
  
  
• His name is Happiness (or some foreign language equivalent of it), "THOUGH NOT LEGALLY" BECAUSE YOU WOULD BE A MORON TO DO SO.
  
  
• We all love acupuncture! Yay we love random bits of Eastern culture because it makes us "educated."
  
  
• Something about a PC-version of Merriam Webster's where there are no anti-women references. I don't even know what that means.
  
  
• Oh I think we should live off the grid and barter our excess deer meat instead of CONSUMER CULTURE SMASH.
  
  
• Something about living in a hippie forest commune in the middle of Oregon.
  
  
• He doesn't have a cell phone anymore (DON'T YOU WANT TO GET CHICKS' NUMBERS?!!!!1! OMG worst reply to the question of "Do you have a phone number?" ever. This dude has NO self-preservation instinct) because people wouldn't answer his phone calls. *tear*

I am surprised that I got ANY work done after all of that pretentious posturing. They were SO in love with each other and themselves that the amplitude of the ridiculousness kept ratcheting up. It was funny at the end when he awkwardly tried to get her to play something on her guitar-like instrument and she was like, "Oh my acupuncture appointment." SERVED.

I've been reading too much Wonkette.

Today has taught me that I need to get a Rubric's Cube.