Conversation With My Student Loan People

Sooo I lost my temper at my Student Loan people the other day. The bad news is they probably recorded it. The good news is my service couldn't get any fucking worse, so whatever. The other bad news is that the problem still isn't worked out. The other good news is that when I get really angry, I tend to work a good blog post out of it. So here it is, my unedited* conversation with my student loan people:

*Okay, it might be a bit edited because I don't remember exactly what I said, but below is the gist.

Twenty Minutes of Electronic Touchpad Bullshit

Her: Hi this is (LOAN PEOPLE) how may I help you?

Me: Hi, I've been calling about four or five times a week since, uh, July, trying to sort out my loan forbearance, which you owe me for (reasons I legally can't publish online), so I'd love you to take care of that.

Her: Okay sir let me bring up your file… yes, it appears we emailed you that form last week. Also you're a billion days delinquent and owe us all the money in the world!

Me: Really? You E-Mailed it? Because last time you specifically told me you couldn't email it, you had to mail it via normal mail.

Her: No sir, that's not true.

Me: We had a long, irritating conversation about it. I wrote a sticky note to myself saying "they have to mail it for some reason so I can fax it back to them." I was angry when I wrote the sticky note so my handwriting is all fucked up. I remember this very clearly.

Her: Well, sir, I can email it to you now.

Me: Well what does that mean? Will you actually email it, or are you going to, like, text it to me or something now?

Her: Sir, I will email it to you.

Me: I don't believe you. Like, I'm sorry, but I really just don't believe you at all. I feel like you're just screwing with me. Are you just screwing with me?

Her: Sir, I need you to calm down.

Me: But I'm being straight-up lied to. By you. A huge, multi-national corporation. What do you possibly have to gain? I don't owe you that much, and what I'm trying to do is going to benefit both of us.

Her: Sir…

Me: No! I don't think you even want me to calm down. Nothing you're doing is making any sense! I don't even think you need my money, I think that's all a sham, and your corporation actually runs off the frustration of people in their mid twenties.

Her: Sir?

Me: Does it? Do you have a doomsday machine powered by rage-drinking and indigestion? Are you sucking the anger out of me through a microchip installed in my phone?

Her: No.

Me: I still don't believe you. This is the kind of thing that is starting to make sense to me, okay? I hear the things coming out of my mouth and they're insane, but I still believe them because they make more sense than the alternative. As Sherlock Holmes once said, when you remove the impossible whatever remains, how improbable, must be true. Do you disagree?

Her: Do I disagree I work for a company with a doomsday machine powered by frustration? Uh. Yes.

Me: So you're saying you're smarter than Sherlock Holmes.

Her: What?

Me: I'm asking if you're smarter than Sherlock Holmes. I'm asking if you're smarter than a fictional character whose defining characteristic is being smarter than everyone. It's the easiest question I could possibly ask you.

Her: Can we talk about your loans?

Me: No, because whenever I try to be productive with you people, nothing happens, so I'm trying the "ranting like a crazy person" route. At least this way I'm starting to feel a little bit better.

Cereal Habits Are Hard to Break

Today was an auspicious day for my grocery habits. For the first time in my life, I was unembarrassed by the content of my foodcart. Normally I buy stuff like ten frozen pizzas, a sixer of Dr. Pepper and a can of beans that everyone quickly infers I will eat cold. I've been doing this for so long that as I approached the check-out I started to feel guilty out of sheer habit.

But then I realized that, without even trying, my groceries weren't that bad. I was buying stuff like cheese. And Capicola ham. And mustard -- And not French's Yellow Mustard with the little American flag either, it was the fancy spicy brown mustard that looks a little bit like poop when you squirt it out on your food. The closest thing I had to my usual groceries was a box of Lucky Charms, and even that was kind of a step in the right direction because I had actually worked up the courage to buy Lucky Charms.

That may require some explaining.

As a child, my household had some pretty strict rules about sugar intake. While I don't remember the exact numbers, I do know that there was a specific number of grams of sugar a box of cereal was allowed to have to enter our home, and I know that, as a child, I was well acquainted with exactly where on the side of the box the Sugar Grams measurement was. Every time I visit a new grocery store and we got to the cereal aisle, I would run ahead to give myself plenty of time to research which box would give me the highest amount of sugar while still containing nothing gross like fruit or nuts or anything that was made in a "mill".

I would only have to do this once per grocery store of course because once I got the research down, I was an efficient little motherfucker. I knew right where the best cereal was and I was not afraid to make it my bitch.

The point here is that after 18 straight years of this process, my decisions regarding cereal were far too firmly ingrained to change. When I went to college and walked through a cereal aisle for the first time, I remember thinking "Wow! I can get absolutely anything I want! It doesn't matter one hairy Republican armpit what the sugar content is!" I gazed, as if for the first time, at the bounty before me, and spread my arms to bask in the corporate glow of symbolism and mis-spelled puns.

I then promptly bought a box of Honey Bunches of Oats -- a cereal I've always been allowed to eat. I did this every week for five years.

But no more. Now, for the first time ever, a box of some ridiculous, sugary, tooth-rottening, life-span shrinking cereal sits in the cupboard of my new home, taunting me with its diabetic goodness. I'm even going to get around to eating it. Totally. Any day now.

The Scary Door: An Official Petition to Whoever Writes Futurama

Dear Futurama Guys,

Wow, I totally should've looked up your names. That's embarrassing. Too late now, I guess.

I'm writing to officially request that you give me the rights to write a spin-off show titled "The Scary Door." I'm also officially requesting the money to get started, as well as some actors and maybe a producer because I'm betting there's a lot that goes into making a TV show that I don't really know about.

To prove that I'm capable of this, I submit three alternative introductions that I wrote during my lunch break last week. (By the way, I'm talking about this, in case you've forgotten how brilliant that thing you created is).

It's, uh, best if you read it aloud to yourself in your best Rod Serling voice. My Rod Serling voice is fantastic, but I guess that's not really going to be communicated here. Trust me though it's totally the bomb.

You're walking down the hallway of your mind, looking for a place to pee. Every door you open isn't a bathroom -- it's the remedial geometry class of your past, the PE of your very soul. You pass your grandmother, but she's not your grandmother, she's a fish or something. I'm not making this up. Finally, frustrated, you decide to pee on whatever you find behind...

...The Scary Door

You're traveling to another dimension, or at least another time zone. Maybe across the state, maybe just downtown. Across the street at least, most likely. Hell, some days, just getting you to stand up is an accomplishment. Let's do babysteps -- your first one going right through...

...The Scary Door

You're traveling down the road when your car makes a funny noise. You pop the hood and find Narnia, only instead of Christianity it's a dark, edgy Narnia with Christian Bale as Aslan and directed by some European guy. The whole thing is European as fuck. Also,

...The Scary Door

Two New Cracked Articles: Ridiculous Superhero Weaknesses and Parodies That Succeeded Because Nobody Got the Joke

Look, I've just started working as a teacher at an honest-to-god-real-High-School-that-isn't-a-prison-this-time, and it's been pretty busy. Both of these articles are "new" in the relative sense of the word only -- both are outside the first week, so promoting them doesn't even get me any closer to the monthly traffic bonus, but whatever. They're both fucking awesome. Especially the second one, because it's the most of my writing that's ever made it into the final draft (damn near all of it).