This is inspired by Nora Ephron’s own unsympathetic litany of complaints in I Feel Bad About My Neck.
1. Someone I used to date who caught the gmail wave before I did saved his log-in information on my computer. This would be interesting if he still used the account and I could read private emails and such. Alas, it seems he realized what he did or grew out of the address and now uses a really cheesy one instead. (I think addresses where you have what you want to be called + a number, because someone else already thought of that, are cheesy. I’ve been online for years and have never had an email address or screen name with a number in it).
Every time I try to get into my gmail, I first have to delete his information. It doesn’t sound like a big deal, but it’s really tedious. I know there must be a way to fix this, but I just haven’t looked. Like my drippy showerhead and various other apartment issues, I probably won’t look into this until it’s impossible for me to log on or I snap one day. Today I was close, but then gmail stopped working period.
2. My internet was on the fritz today, which makes it sound like a really cute situation. Like it was doing a softshoe jazz number and someone handed it a cucumber sandwich or something. “Puttin’ on the fritz…”
It wasn’t cute. At all. I had to call Time Warner and talk to an automaton who kept reading a prompt that commanded I rewire my apartment and connect an ethernet cable to one of my own nerve endings. It was Frankenstein talk.
I protested, “No way! This is going to get screwed up, and it’s not like anyone from Time Warner is going to come over here and fix it!”
The automaton paused a scripted pause. “Now, ma’am. Just [insert scripted spiel].”
Ma’am?! I’m 24 years old! I hate being called ma’am. “You’re of no help. Never mind. I’m not unplugging anything,” I said and hung up.
I went to a wifi cafe. When I got back, the internet was working again, off the fritz.
3. I hate the post office. It wasn’t even as bad as it usually is today, but I can’t stand it. I like teaching kids to write recipe poems, like “How To Make A Teacher.” The ingredients would be something heartwarming, like “three cups of patience, a pinch of humor, and two spoonfuls of compassion.” My post office recipe? “Two cups of screaming children, a dash of urine smell, seven spoonfuls of inefficiency, four scoops of postal worker surliness, and a pint of bumbling old people trying to cut in line.”
I need to learn to use the automated postal center, but the thing looks so intimidating. The people using it always look like they’re experiencing pulmonary embolism.
