monroe county blues

Yesterday I felt as if some terrible malaise had descended upon me. I blame it in part on Cingular. I went to the trouble of driving to their storefront downtown and promptly assumed a headache upon entering (my natural reaction to american mobile telephone companies). I was immediately referred to their 1-800 number. Keeping sarcastic comments to the effect of, "Well, if my phone were working, maybe I would have tried that" to myself, I pressed on for general information, but this was promply rebuffed by the assertion that, as a Californian, I cannot be helped in New York State. The lady insisted that California is a magical fairy land where Cingular telephones work in a completely different way than everywhere else in the country. Also, apparently number portability is an entirely intrastrate phenomenon; I couldn't transfer my 510-area code phone number to an account based in New York. Rochesterians, anyway, are a sweet provincial people, and when they recite their telephone number for you, you'll be left hanging for three more digits. Likewise, when you throw a full ten-digit number at them, they look a little bewildered and confused.

This reminds me of something I witnessed the other day in the hospital cafeteria, where I frequently eat lunch (what costs $8 on the University of Rochester college campus costs $3.15 at the medical center). At the grill, a man asked for a "hot dog." The griller (?) then asked for clarification: "White or red?" Confused, the man repeated his request: "a hot dog." With growing agitation, the grill attendant repeated his response: "WHITE or RED". Et cetera, ad nauseum, and so forth. The situation was resolved by default through some stochastic process. Afterwards some gleeful person brought forth this bit of trivia to the others standing by: "Did you know, in some cities outside of Rochester they don't know about 'white hots?'" Much surprised murmuring resulted.

Well, grad school sucks, but I've already belabored that in my brain, so no need to go on here. Time to go work on some homework. I think I'm going to go see Garden State tonight, most likely by myself.

a place with a name

This house needs a name. What should we name it?

• If we were soul-less copycats, we'd call it Fort Awesome.

• someone suggested "wallabee"

• "43 westview" is the street address (boring)

• if we found something with the initials "CZ" I could use one of my neon signs here!

• I want to name a house after Buckminster Fuller (BuckyHouse?) and/or to name one "Ant Farm II" (after Ant Farm, duh), but not this one.

• ...

I want to get a big California flag to hang out front. Oh, sure, Micah and Vijay would protest, but we Californians have a plurality here! I see lots of polyester flags on ebay, but it seems that canvas is more proper.