on hold with me

Could there possibly be anything worse than being on hold listening to some jazz-crap rendition of “Girl From Ipanema?” I don’t think so. That’s what I’m doing right now. I’ve been on hold for almost half an hour. I’m missing other phone calls. I have a stack of phone calls I need to make, bills that need to be paid, recaps that need to be done, entries that need to be written, cats that need to be taken to the vet, a house that needs to be cleaned, a shower that needs to be taken and I’m spending all of my time sitting here waiting for the cable company to answer the phone.

There are a lot of mother fuckers in Los Angeles. They all want exactly what you want all the time. If you need a highway, they all need it right then too. If you need to go to the store, there’s a giant mob at the store all trying to buy the same bagel. If you want coffee, everyone wants coffee. If you’re going to the DMV, it’s city-wide DMV day.

I tried calling the DMV yesterday to set an appointment. I never got through. I’m trying again today, but I think the DMV gave me the wrong phone number. This one says “For Appointments,” but none of the numbers in the phone menu give you the option to make an appointment. At one point it transferred me to a message and phone menu entirely in Spanish. I know very little Spanish, and I think at one point I could have pressed “five” to order “hula puppies.”

The DMV eventually hung up on me due to my lack of Spanish skills, and I called the cable company again. The West Hollywood office (which is a walking distance from my house) said I’m out of their area. Now I’m calling the Number That’s Never Answered. They might as well call it 1-800-BAD-JAZZ.

I wouldn’t be doing this if it weren’t an emergency. Our cable is slowly destroying itself. Every channel that I watch is all fuzzy. They just eliminated Showtime entirely. I must watch Queer As Folk. I’ve already missed one episode and that’s just not going to cut it.

Our phone line keeps making these clicking noises, and I’m wondering if the DSL filter is ruining everything. I’m trying to call the cable company to see if they somehow finally have digital cable in our area. This is Hollywood. Why is this the worst town for cable, modems, dsl, cable modems or cell phones? I would imagine that these are the very things keeping this city thriving, and I can’t keep a call on my cell phone for more than three minutes before it drops. The voice mail just sometimes doesn’t work on our home phone. Now I don’t have cable. I want to use my Tivo, but I don’t understand this complicated setup Ray has put on our entertainment system. Somewhere in this mix of wires he has this rotary pay phone installed, and I don’t want to move or unplug anything that might start a fire or cause us to lose even more cable channels.

This jazz music is killing me. Killing me.

stee put up his play. I love it.

Oh. My. God. I just answered fifteen email messages and read a journal and I’m still on hold. I’m still on hold. It’s almost been an hour.

And here’s where the worst kicks in. Now. I’ve already invested this much time with the cable company’s hold system. If I hang up, I might have to do this all over again later. If I try and call a different number, they might just shuffle me around for a bit and then eventually just connect me right back here where I have to start waiting in the queue all over again. I don’t want to repeat this past hour of being on hold and I’m probably committing myself to another hour of being on hold but if I’m on hold with the cable company all day then I won’t get to the other things I need to do like call the DMV and the vet.

These are the last hours of being twenty-five and I’m wasting them sitting on my couch, huddled over my laptop listening to the worst jazz music in the world. I’m wasting time. I should be doing something important. I could be writing something important, or cleaning something or just accomplishing things on my to-do list and instead I’m just checking email like I’ve got OCD and staring at Innerspace on mute on my bad fuzzy cable television, hoping that someone on the other end of this phone line will get off their damn break and take my call.

I’m in hell. I wish I had a speakerphone. My neck hurts. It’s cold and I can’t go shut the door.

I’m now grumpy.