MisterNihil.com
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27.2.02Oh, yeah, and Toshi's getting a haircut. This odd. It's possible that my hair will be longer than Toshi's, for the first time (possibly) EVER. Posted at 5:15 PM I've gotta say, all in all, your car is an important part of life. If you couldn't work further from your home than you could walk, you'd be out of a job, I'll bet. My Toshi's car is in the shop right now, but the mechanic's grandmother fell and broke her wrist this morning and is in surgery. The mechanic is somewhat overwhelmed, and is the only person in the shop right now. She has been working on cars all day, and plans to work on Toshi's car. When I cut my fingers offish, the plastic surgeon (that's right, I've had plastic surgery, but it was medically necessary) wouldn't start the operation until he'd slept a night, because he'd had a meeting that day and was "feeling kind of shaken." Do you know why there is a difference? Because you can't sue a mechanic for malpractice. Posted at 5:12 PM - - - - - - - 26.2.02I'm not allowed to hate the world. I gave it up for lent. Is life funny because it's full of funny things, or is it full of funny things because it's funny? I can't answer that until after Easter because, as I said, I'm not allowed to hate the world until then, and the answer is one that is full of hate. If you take yourself too seriously, people like me will lampoon and lambast you because we like those words, but I am a coward, and will do it quietly. Posted at 12:41 PM - - - - - - - 24.2.02One of my little brother's songs includes the Eels lyric "You're goddamn right, it's a beautiful day." You are, it is. Posted at 1:40 PM Tomorrow, when you wake up and your hair's a mess, and you look as groggy and completely somewhere-else as you feel, stop. Look in the mirror. Wave hello like you mean it, like you've just seen a friend on the street. Say "Hi." Then go take your shower or whatever. Try it. It's almost magical how useful it is to be worth something. Posted at 1:37 PM - - - - - - - 22.2.02I drove my daughter past the house where I was born, and she looked at it and said, "It looks smaller than I remember." She asked me if it was the white house with the spiral staircase, and I have since realized this is a memory she may well have for her entire life, haunted by a house wth a spiral staircase. I told her that, yes, it was, sort of. In her mind, she had mishmashed the descriptions of that house, where she spent three of her six formative years thus far, with the house where she was born, which is in town. It is white. It was funny. She remembered a white house with a black spiral staircase. As a side note, this was Posted at 9:44 PM Once in a while, things get weird, and that's when I say "Hoo Hah." Posted at 9:41 PM Because I think it's worth saying, And they were singing like this: I have a little reigns looking down my nose I can't destroy the frogs and they squish in my toes I gotta dance I gotta dance I gotta dance There used to be a water but the lawyer took mine You can find a baseball when you look down the line I gotta dance I gotta dance I gota dance SOOOOoooooo Jumping on the bandwagon hurt my friend but the struggle for supremacy is dust in my wind I gotta dance I gota dance I gotta dance I'm a mentholated tire jumping into your ditch You can find me stealing rulers off a trailer hitch I gotta dance I gotta dance I gotta dance The pornographic tailpipe of the men in the way Cut the filigree's bones in the middle of the day There wasn't no duress but there was a can of clay As the horsemen drove the buggy to the cult of display I Gotta Dance! Yeah. And then they said "Hot Cha!" and they were done. Posted at 9:39 PM I went home to visit my parents today. They gave me fresh eggs and green leafy vegetables I plan to make into a salad. I don't know what I'm going to do with the eggs. They gave me 28 of them, which, for anybody who doesn't know, is a lot of eggs. I think I'll make cake. Or I'll invite Paul Newman over and see if he's still got it. I'm joking. Probably. Posted at 9:29 PM I'm not joking. I'll make a cake. Once upon a time there was a little chipmunk. It decided it did not like being a chipmunk any more, so it moved out of its tree. The Chipmunk noticed that there were other, odd creatures around it, and they often seemed not to be Chipmunks. They were very big, and pink, and mosty hairless, but they had strange hair on their bodies that changed color all the time, althought the thing still smelled the same. The Chipmunk decided to be one of these creatures, so it went to go see how they lived. Then it got hit by a car. The end. Posted at 9:26 PM You will never go broke overestimating the ignorance of the American People. I don't remember who said it, but I remembered it suddenly while I was doing something else today. Posted at 9:23 PM - - - - - - - 18.2.02So, pointing further down toward fate, she lept from her second-story window onto the hedges below. Since they moved into the house some twelve years ago, she had felt an urge to do this, and now was the perfect time. Later, she remembered thinking only one clear thought on the way down: This feels just like a movie. She extricated herself from the bushes, stood up, and started walking. She didn't stop until she was more than a mile from the house and its memories. There, she flagged down a ride with an old lady in a big old buick, and they rode off to tomorrow, the sunset slowly dying behind them. On the day she died, years later, she would remember these moments. Her last words to her grandchildren were: "It felt just like a movie." Posted at 2:18 PM - - - - - - - 13.2.02Final, a poem by M. Nihil You can't stop me You can't see me I am your last and first and I hate you. You don't know me You don't want to You are the first, I am miles beyond The line starts here. Don't cross it. Whatever you are, Whatever you were, We have grown apart, we are no longer One. There is no peace, There is no honor, You are clueless, blind and as Wrong as Dead Puppies. Thousands touched my greatness Thousands will strive for it Thousands cannot acheive what I was born to carry. I am the Last Fool Alive. The seed is burned, the mold broken, the Formula forgotten. There will be no more after me, try as you might. Not Great. Merely Final. Posted at 11:50 PM So, to change the pace for a second, I played the coffee shop with my little brother. We did OK. A good live show is a keenly tuned machine, full of wheels and gears, chains pulling gearteeth, long shafts of metal connecting steel shocks, oiled ball-bearings smoothing the way for air-filled rubber tubes to spin with all their might, and ball-and-sockets used to steer the whole mess. Well, our show was OK, but not great. Now, we'll go re-invent the fucking wheel, and get back on that thing an' ride. Can I get a hell yeah? It was OK. It'll only get better. Such is life, if you let it. Anyway, back to weirdness. Posted at 11:39 PM - - - - - - - 12.2.02More Fairy Tales for the Generation with Much to Say and No Voice: Once upon a time a person decided to invent a better mouse-trap, but he just wound up sitting outside a mousehole with a hammer, feeling silly. When that didn't work, he moved to Wisconsin, where he got a job chasing nails. The end. Posted at 2:01 AM Fairy tales for a generation with much to say, but no voice: Once upon a time, a little girl got a note. It said: "My time runs short. I have only this space to tell you the secrets of" She quit reading there and threw it away. The end. So, once upon a time, there were these little people, no bigger than an ant. Ants ate them. The end. Once upon a time, a chicken laid an egg. A rodent ate the egg, then a lizard switched the small parts of eggshell for another egg. The new lizard was, like its parents, poisonous. When it hatched under the chicken, it ate the other eggs, and killed the chicken. The end. Once upon a time, a little boy found a dollar, so he bought a soda pop. The end. Once upon a time, a beautiful princess was captured by dwarves, and she was rescued by a knight, but he was ugly, and she didn't marry him. Instead, she said "thank you," and went home. The end. Once upon a time, a man wrote a book which was very interesting, and many people bought it. It sold well, and he never had to work again. He wrote another book, but it wasn't very good. The second book was about radishes. The end. Once upon a time, there were two people who lived in a shack near the woods. They were very happy until they died. The end. Once upon a time, there were books and books, filling shelves and shelves. The shelves were at the bottom of the sea, so nobody read them. The end. Once upon a time, there were two little girls. They were good at collecting shells, so they collected shells. They would take them home and glue them on sheets of cardboard. They did this until they were old. When they died, they had lots of shells. The little girls did not know each other. They only met once, in a small sea-side restraunt, where one asked the other to pass the salt. Neither of them remembered the incident for very long after it happened. The end. Once upon a time, grass grew under a house. The house was up on stilts, so as to allow flood waters to pass under it without damaging the house itself. The grass was there because it had grown there by spreading from other places. There had never been a flood at the house, but the builder had been cautious. Once, a hamster got away from a little boy who was playing with it in the house, and it fell to its death in the grass. Another time, the boy (some years later) was playing with a snake, which also escaped, but it lived, and had babies which spread and became the dominant predator in the area. Thus, it is a good thing the hamster did not live, or its children would have been eaten by snakes. The end. Posted at 1:50 AM I'm gonna try something different again. Instead of these sort of coherant thought type-of-things, I'm gonna start with a project I've had in mind for a little while. I wrote a letter to a friend of mine recently. His name is Brian, which is Beside the Point. I don't usually write Brian letters like "Hi how are you here is the point, your pal, ben." He doesn't like letters like that, or so I hope, as I write him the other kind. One of these included a set of wackyfun which I titled Fairy Tales for a Generation with Much to Say but No Voice. I'm going to post that portion of the letter (Let the record show: the "Not Dirty" part) (heh heh heh). I plan to write more of them, but I wanted to get that part put here. I was proud of it. Laugh if you must. Brian: next maybe I'll post the Book of Wednesday Night, although you probably don't remember it. I sure don't. Posted at 1:46 AM Five months, and my life is the damn same. Wow. So, does that make us resilient or just apathetic? I sure as hell can't answer for you. Posted at 1:25 AM So, as life continues, I wind up playing music with the previously mentioned little brother. Wow. Wednesday: the 503 Coffee Bar, about 9ish. They do an open mic night there. We're gonna rock the house, as it were. Posted at 1:23 AM - - - - - - - 2.2.02Oh, yeah. and HAPPY BIRTHDAY SHARON! Posted at 6:24 AM I have a thought: My little brother played his second professional concert last night. He plays his third tomorrow. My little brother is a professional musician right now. He's getting paid to play music. Sometimes, he makes me feel old. Posted at 6:23 AM When did you stop paying attention? Posted at 6:21 AM Chasing My Money, the Final Inconvenience I closed the account a week ago. I had to wait for my rent and tax checks to clear (I was paying my taxes; that's why I needed the money), and then closed the account. It felt good. Or, it would have felt good, if it were done right. I went to close the account. I decided to take the remaining money out in cash, because I trust them to write me a cashier's check like I trust them to build a rocket ship. I stood there, at the branch location, waiting for the money for an hour. It took them a whole hour to decide whether or not to give me my money. They were waiting for a signiture card from the main office, which I assumed meant they were waiting for a card for me to sign. Nope. A signiture card is a piece of paper with my signiture on it, taken when I opened the account 5 years ago. It's amazing how much a signiture changes over 5 years. I'm going to leave it at that. I'm at a new bank, and I am happy now. My spleen is vented. I just wanted to get it all written, so it'd be out of my head. I hope you understand, and if you don't, phooey. Posted at 6:16 AM Chasing My Money 4: What, Me Worry? So it was early the next morning (the 21st. I graduate tomorrow) when I returned to the bank. My representative explained that none of the people whom she had called had returned the calls, and that she couldn't reach them the previous day. However, there was good news: now the account showed as being empty. Yep. No money in it. Good news! Happy Day! Oh wait. Clearly, somebody had done something to the account, and perhaps the money was even then being transferred to my account. Unfortunately, there was no record of where the money was, or what was being done with it. For all intents and purposes, I was $10,000 in the hole, and Wonderful Bank felt that was an acceptable alternative to doing it right. What, I asked, could be done? Well, she said, if the money didn't come through, they could credit my account so that I could still use the money. However, if the money was not found, I would be in debt for the amount I had used and they would have to charge me for overdraft either way. What a wonderful solution, I said. I don't think those were my words. I think what actually escaped my lips was something to the tune of "No, thank you. I prefer not to be charged for Using MY Money." So, I left. I couldn't take it any more, and my representative couldn't do anything else. I graduated the next day. My heart was warmed by the turnout of friends and loved ones for the ceremony. I was really happy to do something less fiscal for a day, and just to enjoy the company of friends, and not think about the Chase (by which I mean the pursuit of the money, not the bank; No, really). So, skipping ahead a little, my representative called on Tuesday (the 25th, for you math wizards) to let me know that the money had been deposited in the account, and the it only took a week. During my time spent in the bank on the 21st, I consolidated my accounts. This was OK, because the money was not going to be deposited in my savings account as I had asked, but in my checking. I closed my accounts, and she asked me why, particularly, I wanted to do that. I told her I wanted to leave the bank. Well, she said, I'm not trying to make you stay, but when you leave, if you'll come here to me, I'll give you a cashier's check and not charge you for it. Now that's customer service. Posted at 6:09 AM Chasing My Money, the Third Part, where it gets good. So, the 18th passed, and I finished my finals. I did, eventually, graduate, but it took another 4 days. When I graduated, I was $10,000 poorer than I was before my last finals. I went to the bank on the 19th, at about 3:45pm, which is really too late for a bank to be open in any capacity, don't you think? The office was closed, but the same helpful representative from the previous episode (not the first one. that was another, more helpful repersentative) was there. Could she, I asked, check the account for me to see if the money had been properly handled. She checked it for me and said: "Yes sir, everything was done correctly. Your money is in the CD IRA where it should be." This confused me. Had the money matured, I asked. "No sir." (smile smile smile) I vowed to be back early the next morning. And so I was. I got up early to come to the bank on the 20th. I went in and waited for a representative. There, lo and behold, was my friend the helpful representative again. She took me to her desk, and she looked at the computer. She said to me that the account was marked for maturation on the 18th, but that it hadn't been done yet. Was this normal, I asked? No, she said. It had not been done at all. That's how the problems start. I left the bank to drop off my girlfriend at work, then came back. It was about 10:30am. I sat down at her desk, where she punched dejectedly at some keys, as if to say "please go away and stop wanting your money." She said that there was a name attatched to the account. She tried to call the number for that name, and was told that that person was not in, and could not be reached by telephone in any way, including voice mail. She left a voice message for another person to whom she was transferred, but who could not help. She tried two other people while I sat there, but apparently the management of that Special Bank go out to lunch at about 10:30am. She explained that she would like to help, but there was nothing she could do. I vowed to be back early the next morning, in the hopes of finding my money. Posted at 5:53 AM Chasing My Money, an interlude: So, why am I doing this? Why do I feel the need, now that this is all over, to vent on the internet? Can't I just be happy at my new bank and put thoughts of the old out of my head? Nope. I'm displeased, and this seems the perfect way to get this out of my system. If you don't like it, you don't have to read it. When you read the next part, you'll perhaps understand a little of why I am unhappy. I'll give you a hint: it involves the words "lost" and "all your money." Posted at 5:40 AM Chasing My Money, Part TWO! So, here comes funfunfun, six months later. I went into my friendly neighborhood Unnamed Bank, and explained that, due to three of my last finals ever in my Baccalauriate career, (yes, I spelled Baccalaureate wrong; what's your point?) I could not come into the bank on the 18th to close my CD account, but that I wanted my money all the same. A representative of my friendly neighborhood Random Bank said that the operation I wished was, sadly, impossible. SHe used the word impossible, with a smile on her face. She Smiled and Told me No. This is what the bank in question calls "service." I call it Damn Rude. Disgruntled, I walked out to the parking lot, my understanding and surprisingly calm girlfriend in tow. I was mad, and she was trying very hard not to laugh, because apparently I am very funny when I am mad. I looked at the front glass of the bank, thinking, for some reason of large rocks, and noticed an 800 number for that bank. I pulled out my trusty cell phone, and, through the static, called the bank. My belief was the they would at least have a more creative answer than "impossible, darken no more our doorstep." I asked the customer service representative if it were, in fact possible to mature the account without my being present at the actual bank branch. She said that it was not only possible, but easy. She gave me the number for their "product specialists," and the nice person on the phone set up my account to mature on the 18th, while I struggled through my Finals. That was the 10th of December. On the 14th of December, I went to my bank location, and asked if one of my friendly representatives could check my account, and see if, perhaps, it was set up properly. This she did, and it was, indeed, set up properly. Only 4 days previous, she told me the process was impossible (yep, same representative), and now she read from the screen that the process was set in motion, and that I should be able to access my money by the 19th, or the 20th, as there was a one day clearing period. Do you feel the tension mounting? Posted at 5:35 AM Chasing My Money, Part the First This is all over now, so I think I can write about it. My money used to be with a certain bank. I won't mention any names, but they made me Chase my money from here to Manhattan, nudge nudge, wink wink. I've been banking with them since about 1995, so I knew most of the kinds of crap they pull, most of the time. Sadly, they caught me off guard (for the last time, as far as I'm concerned) in December, which is 2001 for those who are counting. So, the set-up for this goes like this: I put my money in a CD account because it gets better interest than a normal savings account. I didn't put all of it in that account because I knew it'd be hard to get it back, and I knew that the Mystery Bank makes things harder than they need be. I put a relatively large sum of money into the CD. When I put the money in the CD, I wanted half in one account, and half in another, so that I could take out half and still earn interest on the other half, should I need half of the money at a future date. The person who "helped" me decided, apparently, that I did not want two CD accounts, and so consolidated the money into one. She brought me the paperwork, and told me that she had, in fact, done what I asked. She explained that I only received one receipt because they do the withdrawal in one piece, and then put the money into the appropriate accounts. She Lied to my Face. I know that's a technical term, but you non-bankers can figure it out. So all went well for about a week. I went back to the bank to check, to make sure the account was set up correctly. Speaking to another representative, I was told that, yes, the account was correct. One CD for the entire amount, which was, yes, what I wanted. That's right: they told me what I wanted. I explained to the representative that what I wanted was, indeed, what I had asked for, and I asked if, perhaps, what I wanted could be done. She said that, yes! it could be done, but I would have to take the money out and start a new CD, lose any interest I had earned during the week, and be charged a nominal fee. So, yes, but it would cost me something to the tune of $200. I said that, no, thank you, if it were all the same, I'd just live with the screw-up and keep my money. I resolved then that, when I could extricate my money, I would leave. Posted at 5:18 AM - - - - - - - | All material copyright 2002-2003 Ben Gibbs. | |||||||||
