For a while now I have had some bizarre problems with my cell phone. It is a cheapie virgin-mobile pay-as-you-go phone. A while back I was switching phones on the website, something I had done before without any problems, and I received some weird error, and although it switched to the new phone OK, the web site still thought it was my old phone, and though I can make calls and text, I cannot send or receive pictures, which is the whole reason I use this one phone to begin with.
So, using my caption phone, I finally got around to calling virgin mobile and told them what was up. I do not think they lady quite understood my problem, and she told me she could switch my phone for me, but it would cost ten bucks, or I could do it on the website for free. I kept telling her the website wont let me switch phones, it gives an error. So finally I sighed, said for her to go ahead and switch it and charge me ten bucks.
So she does something, my phone beeps and lights up and tells me ten dollars was removed. However the phone still will not send or receive pictures, and when I logged on to the website it still had the old phone and my old balance. So I called virgin again, and this time some dude explained my account had been ‘flagged to be fixed’ or some nonsense and to wait 24 hours to call again. So thus I wait. I have no idea what the outcome will be, but I know for a fact that no matter what happens, in order to get this phone fixed I will get cornholed out of money.
I came across this article in the news today about some dude that got high on god knows what, and then starts shooting at his own shadow. It takes a special kind of stupid to shoot at your own shadow. Funny party was, the idiot was probably waving his gun around, saw the shadow with a gun, thought ‘OMG, he has a gun!’ and then opened fire. Like I said, a special kind of stupid.
Speaking of a special kind of stupid, there is also this guy, who worked at Wal-Mart and while on a break went to his car, smeared camouflage on his face, and then walked back in and briefly held his coworkers hostage until one of his coworkers simply wrestled the gun away from him. I just cannot get over the camouflage paint. Did he think that perhaps his fellow employees would not recognize him? Or did he think that somehow the camouflage would help him blend into the background of the cereal aisle at Wal-Mart? Or perhaps he smeared it on to simply show ‘he meant business’. Does he ever wake up and look in the mirror and think, ‘Lordy, not only AM I stupid, but I LOOK stupid.’
Eh, and lastly, I came across the below pic at a German site that was comparing food advertising to what the food actually looked like. Aside from the fact of the obvious differences between the pic and the reality, a single sausage floating in a bet of steamed greens is just so German-looking that it made me laugh.
My government coupon for the digital-to-analog converter came in the mail yesterday. I'll wait until after springfest to go pick one up and play with it.
2026 Update
Dialing the infernal machine to March 25, 2008, where Ed's pay-as-you-go phone is betraying him in low definition.
Ah, 2008. The ancient era when a phone could be 'cheapie,' when the word 'smartphone' hadn't yet annexed your soul, and when ten dollars actually changed hands—not as a subscription, but as a single, shameful bribe to a customer service lady who couldn't fix anything. Your whole adventure is a fossil. We now pay ten dollars for the privilege of not calling customer service; we just chat with a bot that says 'flagged to be fixed' forever. Picture messaging, once the entire reason to own a phone, has been replaced by apps that send high-resolution photos of someone's lunch with a caption about how the light was amazing. The digital-to-analog converter coupon, meanwhile, is the equivalent of a coupon for a VCR: television got swallowed by the internet, and now my screen shows me sausages that look exactly like the advertisement because the sausage is sponsored content. And your news clips—shadow shooters, Wal-Mart camouflage hostages, German food photography—would today be five separate algorithms fighting for your outrage, each with a comments section somehow worse than a hostage situation.
“2008 Ed, after the customer service lady took your ten bucks and your phone still wouldn't send a picture, did you ever wonder if you were the shadow shooter all along—and what, exactly, was springfest protecting so jealously that the government coupon had to wait?” — Beelzebubba the Third
2008 Ed: Well, Beelzebubba, I don’t think I was the shadow shooter, but I know the feeling of firing at something that ain’t there, like my money after that Virgin Mobile lady took her ten bucks and left me with a phone that still couldn’t send a picture. That’s its own special kind of stupid, except the stupid was on my bill. As for Springfest, it wasn’t protecting anything important, just my last bit of sanity. That thing brings out the crowds, the folding chairs, the kids with sticky fingers, and I wasn’t about to wrestle through all that to grab a government coupon for a box I’d probably trip over anyway. I figured the converter could wait. Springfest doesn’t. So I let the coupon sit, like my phone, waiting for somebody to fix it.
