Virtual Confetti

Ever had to kill time because you were waiting for something? I had to pick up my car from the shop today, driving into the Valley. Rather than sit in rush hour traffic, I thought I’d stop off for dinner first. Not long enough. Starbucks was next door, so I killed an hour there. Still not long enough. So here I am, in a parked car, writing about how I’ve wasted the past two hours.

As a writer, I always carry a pen around, so I’m easily able to scribble whenever I have free time like this. As a disorganized writer, I hadn’t thought of taking my current screenplay with me for editing. I improvise with napkins, making sure to tear off the bottom half-inch that bears the Starbucks copyright statement.

Ahh, the world is my napkin, and I am but a felt pen, bleeding into the papercloth. Rorschach would be proud.

Let me start by saying I despise telemarketers.  So when the opportunity arises to exploit their deficiencies and incompetence, I consider it both an art and a hobby to disrupt their industry as much as a single individual is able.

I have friends who smoke.  Being one who frequents Las Vegas, the smoker’s mecca, I’ve grown accustomed to being around smoke on occasion.  I’ve yet to encounter a rude smoker who deliberately wishes to offend me by smoking; smoke is just a byproduct of a nasty habit.  (Their words, not mine.)  When walking down the street, on occasion, I’ll catch a whiff of smoke from a passerby.  Mildly offensive, but tolerable, and certainly not worth the effort to dwell on the incident.  I’m guilty, on occasion, of emitting my own offensive odors.  It’s just something we all tolerate as living in a diverse society.  Now imagine walking down that street, but there’s a person facing you while walking backwards, blowing billowing smoke from a cigar directly in your face, forcing filth into your lungs.  That would be a telemarketer.

So I receive a call at work; the Caller ID denotes a toll-free number, and anyone calling my workplace from a toll-free number is going to be a telemarketer.  Instead of getting the usual monotone droid on the line, the discussion went something like this:

Me: Hello?
Droid: <long pause>
Me: Hello?
Droid: Uhh… hi.  It’s not coming up.
Me: What?
Droid: My computer is supposed to come up but it crashed.
Me: Who are you?
Droid: It won’t even tell me who I called. I’m not sure–
Me: <now panicking> Oh.  Oh no!
Droid: Can you wait for a sec–
Me: Oh no!!  This is bad.  Really bad. What do I do?
Droid: I’m sorry sir.
Me: Oh no! It’s broken?  What do we do? I don’t know what to do!
Droid: I’ll have to call back.
Me: Help!! Help!! Oh no!
<click>

I actually might have been in the mood to buy something that day, too.

Merry Christmas everyone!  Yes, I realize it’s only October, but I live on that street.  You know, that one cul-de-sac in the city that goes nuts every Christmas with outdoor lighting displays.  We’re the reason your dining room light flickers briefly at 7pm the day after Thanksgiving, as well as being responsible for the extension cord famine during most of December.  We cause the traffic jams that leave your drive-thru chicken cold on the dinner plate.  And eat that dinner by candlelight when the antenna beam atop the TV News van gets caught up in the light strings stretching across the street, blowing the power circuit for the neighborhood.  Ahh, the smell of pine and molten circuitry.

It’s understandable that some may see us as more of a nuisance than a benefit to society.  For those Scrooges, realize we keep electricity affordable for everyone.  The way I see it, the electric company relies on our air conditioners and pool pumps during the summer.  During the winter… nothing.  Our rates would skyrocket if it weren’t for us pulling extra power to light up our inflatable purple dinosaurs.

I was late getting my lights up last year.  This year, my neighbors are requiring me to submit plans and technical drawings by the end of October.  It’s unspoken, but it appears there’s a committee.  They’ve been picking my brain since June, trying to get a hint as to what I’m planning, but the only thing I tell them is, “Why do you always show up at my door holding baseball bats?”  Mums the word.

There’s a crisp, new ten dollar bill sitting on my kitchen counter. It’s been there for about two months now, and hasn’t found it’s way to my wallet yet. It arrived in the mail accompanying a lengthy survey from some marketing company, wanting to know who I am and what I buy. Generally I’m careful not to give out too much information about myself, so I usually toss these on the “to be shredded” pile and look forward to using it as future fodder for packing Christmas gifts. However, with a new ten dollar bill attached — prominently mounted by paper clip — I felt obligated to give it more consideration. These people were serious.

There are two sides to the notion of sharing personal information. Some feel that they have nothing to hide, so why be protective about what kind of information they give? Just fill out the survey and take the ten dollars as compensation. There are also the black-helicopter “government is out to get us” crowd that won’t even show you the color of their eyes because that information is as deadly as anthrax.

I follow the “value-added incentive” mentality. If I really want something worthwhile, like a free buffet, then I might disclose how many cats I have or how often I visit the shoe store. So when I was presented with this survey that I had absolutely no interest in, I planned on telling them nothing. They included that ten dollar bill for people like me, attempting to pander to my sense of guilt. I didn’t ask for the money; they sent it unsolicited. Should I feel guilty for spending it? Should I mail them the survey?

There are horror stories about how easy it is to steal personal information, despite how businesses swear the information is kept confidential. Recently, eleven hackers were indicted for stealing more than 41 million credit card numbers from various businesses: TJ Maxx, OfficeMax, Barnes & Noble, and others. And those are credit card numbers, not just my shoe size.

Does it matter if someone knows my shoe size? It’s not the little bits of purchase habits that bother me. It’s the collective use of aggregated sales data. If I purchase something on a website that then has my full name and address, a cookie can be planted on my computer to track visits to other websites. The aggregated information about what I buy can then be used against me. For example, if my aggregated purchase trends show that I like to buy expensive shoes, a website might dynamically raise my prices by two percent because it knows I’m more likely to buy those shoes than someone else. The technology exists and is already employed. Haven’t you purchased an item only to see a coupon for a similar item on the same (or different) website? What’s to prevent a five percent discount from turning into a five percent increase?

I think some new logic is in order… it took me about 30 minutes to write this blog. Ten dollars for thirty minutes is twenty dollars an hour. Not my going rate, but I’d say I’ve earned my ten dollars for the night.

I wonder what it would be like to work for a calendar company on New Years Eve. Executives hovering over a TV set in the board room, all eyes on that magic ball in Times Square. Tension building, foreheads sweating. Then at one second past midnight, they all sigh and relax, complimenting each other. Another year indeed begins, meaning no mass refunds for calendars sold in December.

New Years Day is a day to both reflect on the past year and set goals for the new year to come. Technically, it’s 2008, but really New Years Day is more of a “bridge” day between the two years. The day doesn’t exist. It’s in limbo. That’s why it’s a holiday — they can’t figure out how to pay you for New Years Day. I think it’s also the one day of the year that you can commit crimes and they don’t count.

Today can be summed up in one word: lists. Everyone makes a list on New Years Day, disguised by the name “resolutions.” These are things we were supposed to do last year, but say we’re going to do this year, giving us 364 days to forget them for next year. Smarter hominids write with cheap pens so that the ink fades by November. For everyone else, these lists of resolutions become lists of “what the hell was I thinking?” and are instantly replaced by lists of things we want for Christmas. Santa, of course, steals those lists and replaces them with blank paper so you have about a week to prepare for your New Years Day resolutions. It’s a perpetual cycle of self improvement. Or at least writing about self improvement.

Some make only a few lofty resolutions, like engaging in world travel, earning an educational degree, writing lists. Others, like myself, believe in setting several small goals that are easier to manage, like vacuuming. Or making pudding. Come next January, I don’t want to be the fool holding a list of incomplete goals. Pudding is not subject to flight delays or getting an “A” in Physics.

What’s on my list for 2008? I’d like to publish more work, for one. I’m putting the Egypt Room on hold so that I can build up my home studio and office. I also need to unpack; I moved into the chateau last June, and at least half of my belongings are still in boxes. I also want to do more travel and free writing, the latter being the inspiration for new works to publish.

Ohno! I just made a list!