Beware the surly humor columnist

I’m in a bad mood today.

Unwittingly, I trapped a raccoon in our garage last night when I closed the garage door. It proceeded to rip up the rubber strip along the bottom of the door, some drywall, a bag of garbage and various other items that got in its way.

Then, as if to add insult to injury, it urinated on my baseball mitt. Man, was I pissed!

Apparently, the masked rodent isn’t a fan of our national pastime. Maybe that's why we have teams with nicknames such as the Tigers, Orioles and Marlins, but no Raccoons.

While the nocturnal little devil did his dirty work, I slept the sleep of the dead in our bedroom upstairs. I seem to recall waking at one point in order to yell at the dog which -- oddly enough -- was barking fiercely near the door leading into the garage, but I never heard anything that might warn me of the predicament in our garage.

As a result, I feel like using today’s column to perform a little ranting and raving. And possibly a little raving and ranting.

Here are some other things that have bothered me of late:

The issue with money.

The other day I stopped at a gas station to purchase a fountain drink. I think the price came to ninety-four cents, including tax, and I handed the clerk the only thing I had in my pocket -- a twenty-dollar bill.

Instead of change, I received a dirty look. "Do you have anything smaller?" the clerk inquired, a disgusted tone evident in her voice.

"No," I answered weakly.

The clerk paused long enough to make me believe she was going to reject my purchase. Meanwhile, the people in line behind me began clearing their throats.

Finally, the clerk let out a heavy sigh and proceeded to make change.

I left quickly after pocketing $19.06, in the process nearly tripping over the tail I had wrapped between my legs.

Now this was not the first time I have encountered such a situation, so I ask you: When did the twenty dollar bill become classified as something other than valid legal tender in this country?

While I was asleep, did Congress pass a law prohibiting the use of twenties in transactions involving a purchase price of less than a dollar?

If not, and assuming the twenty is still good currency, then I would like to tell America’s cashiers to save their scornful frowns and insolent sighs for someone who really deserves it -- like the guy who decides to do his weekly grocery shopping in the gas station mini-mart.

Oh, yeah…And have a nice day!

The problem with spelling bees.

Last week I decided to take a little break from working on my latest screenplay, so I grabbed a bag of chips, hunkered down in my favorite chair and flipped on ESPN to watch a little sports television.

What I found instead was a bunch of pimple-faced middle-school kids agonizing over the spelling of words such as "gnathonic," "rhathymia," "dipnoous" and "hypozeuxis". Turns out the sports network decided to broadcast the 2003 National Spelling Bee.

Now, I’m completely in favor of encouraging children to improve their spelling skills, but do we really need to know who can spell "pococurante" (the word which 13-year-old Sai Gunturi spelled to win this year’s Bee) correctly?

Even more perplexing, why was ESPN broadcasting the competition? According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, "sport" is defined as "a physical activity engaged in for pleasure." Not only was there very little physical activity on display, but from the look on many of the faces the Bee was inducing the opposite of pleasure. A more apt description might be "dolor" (defined as "mental suffering or anguish").

By the way, "pococurante" means "nonchalant or indifferent", which might describe how I felt about the opportunity to watch this year’s Bee.

And how about those automated telephone answering systems?

We are moving next week, so I have been struggling to take care of the many tasks associated with such a momentous event. Among the many calls I placed last week was a call to the electric company to disconnect our current service and establish service at our new house.

Of course, my call triggered the company’s automated answering system, possibly the worst invention of the last thirty years. Here is what I heard:

"If you are calling to report a problem with your service, press one. If you are calling to report a downed power line, press two. If you are calling regarding your current statement, press three. If you are calling to disconnect your current service, press four. If you are calling to establish new service, press five. If you would like to hear this menu repeated in Spanish, press six. For all other calls, press seven."

After hearing these choices, I was left with two questions: First, what number do I press to both disconnect current service and establish new service -- four-and-a-half? Second, if I only speak Spanish, how would I know to press six?

Eventually I pressed four and heard: "You are being transferred to a customer service representative. Your call may be monitored as a quality control measure. Your estimated wait time is twelve minutes."

After listening to about twenty minutes of elevator music (thank goodness my phone has a hands-free option), a live voice said "Hello".

"Oh, hi. I’m calling because I’m moving, and I need to disconnect my current service and start up service at my new home."

"New service start-up is a different department. I’ll transfer you."

"But--"

Back to the elevator music, but not before I was told that my estimated wait time was now "sixteen minutes."

Needless to say, I spent an entire morning changing my electrical service.

Yet, it still caused me less dolor than buying a fountain drink with a twenty-dollar bill.

Copyright 2003 Marc L. Prey
All rights reserved.