Death Chic

My husband and I are moving into the 21st century.

We are disconnecting our house phone.

Not that we really wanted to disconnect our house phone. It was served us well over the years by taking calls for me when I intentionally left my cell phone off for days at a time forgot to carry my cell phone. Truly, up until the last couple of years our dear little house phone can be accused of nothing more substantial than not dropping calls from relatives asking for money.

During the last couple of years, however, the black-hearted mutants that populate the hell known as The Telemarketing Industry have made our poor little cordless their bitch. We receive calls from jackasses who want us to subscribe the SF Chronicle, buy their home security systems, vote for their candidate and take their damned surveys.

We receive phone calls at night after we’ve gone to bed and in the morning before I’ve had my coffee. Phone calls come in while I’m in the shower, in the middle of making dinner, trying to concentrate on homework and during my daughter’s nap. We have gone from a ratio of 10:1 personal-to-telemarketer phone calls to 0:1,562,201 personal-to-telemarketer phone calls because our family and friends have not bothered to use our house number since I’ve began a therapeutic regimen that involves answering the house phone with an air horn.

Last week my husband and I had had enough. We called the phone company and had our service disconnected. In order to let everyone know that we would be going to a cell-phone-only household I composed the following e-mail:

I apologize in advance for the mass e-mail but it’s the only way I know how to get a change of phone number out to everyone

As of November 30th Kris and I are disconnecting our house phone. I am proud to admit that this decision was made hastily and with very little deliberation some moments after the 5,864,021st call from someone with a fake Western name and impossible accent who is very much wishing that I could be answering a few questions? And then quite possibly be buying an item of interest that I had not been seeing before?

Anyway, the portal between our home and telemarketing hell must be closed. Therefore I’d like to give everyone our cell phone numbers:

Kris: XXX-XXX-XXXX
Steph XXX-XXX-XXXX

Please feel free to drunk dial us at 2AM. Just don’t sign us up for anything that will result in more “surveys” or phone calls from some guy in Calcutta who calls himself “Kevin”.

Then I hit “send”. But only after blind cc’ing everyone in my contacts list because my contacts list should just have those that I regularly e-mail, right?

Nooooooooooo. You know that saying? The one that goes “When you have sex with someone you’re having sex with every single person they’ve ever had sex with”? Well, Google mail’s contact list is kind of like that. Gmail has this nifty way of keeping every single person you’ve e-mailed, been cc’ed on an e-mail with, or even casually wondered about in your contacts list. This is completely handy for people who love to use their e-mail to warn humanity about the dangers of AIDS-infected needles in movie theater seats but not so good for people like me who frequently fail to look before I electronically leap.

Oh yes. I am to humanity what the Hubble telescope is to the space program.

So no sooner had I hit “send” than this nifty little missive with mine and my husband’s cell phone numbers goes whizzing around the planet several times, to mystify and irritate no fewer than one third of the earth’s population. In return for my efforts I received a deluge of responses with the line “Do I know you?” and several other people informed me in less than polite terms that my e-mail address was being permanently blocked. A few others responded with humor – an act that was much appreciated in the aftermath of my own ineptitude.

After I realized that I had mistakenly e-mailed nearly everyone in the western world I began to look forward to the receipt of each “Status: Undeliverable” message because each of those represented at least one less person who would think that I was a total idiot.

…and now for something completely different:

You asked for it so here it is… more additions to the f-list meme.

Thanks to all those who wrote up their own: Wendy, LL, Sparrow, Malathion Man, and Cazzie.

…and a hearty apology for leaving out some of my favorites: Lee, Lori, Maeve and the Berzerker Librarian who lives in my hometown. Now go and post your f-lists! And this badge! And link back to this post! And then tag five people!

So as I mentioned last Monday, the whole f-list thing has gone over pretty well. Apparently there’s a lot of folks out there whose patience with the world has been as overworked as my own. Not a few of which have submitted lists that indicate they are secretly plotting against the North American Beaver and/or members of the Peace & Freedom party.

…also, residents of southeastern Washington, Idaho and Oregon really should consider stockpiling Cipro. Not that I would know anything. I’m just a nebulous blogger from Northern California who most definitely never receives e-mails from eco-terrorists who post on Peregrine Falcon chat groups or culture deadly strains of bird flu in the ad hoc lab they’ve created in their their parents’ basement in Pullman, Washington.

Just sayin’.

At any rate, I’m surprised. Like, really, really surprised. How many f-lists have been submitted? Too many to post here. How many times did I, personally, make the f-lists? 90% of the time. To that end, I don’t think I’m stopping at stockpiling Cipro. I think I’m going to also collect a small-arms arsenal and booby-trap my home.

But the f-list has its detractors, not a few of which have e-mailed me to express their disappointment that I would electronically piss in their Cheerios. So for those who seem to have misunderstood the concept, I offer you an olive branch in the form of a definition:

F-List, defined: The f-list isn’t about hating people or animals or inanimate objects that offend the senses by being coated in pink “fun fur”. The f-list is simply an expression of an individual’s frustration with receiving a daily hammering by overzealous activists, the media, and various and sundry jackasses.

For instance, perhaps you’re a normally kind and compassionate person who loves animals but has had it up to your eyeballs with these insane morons from PETA who make specious arguments equating the life of a dog to that of a human. You have two choices: you can fabricate a pipe bomb in your garage and head over to your nearest PETA headquarters or you can compose an f-list and put “Rabid animals rights assholes” on it. The upside is that you don’t end up in prison for off’ing someone who really deserves it. The downside, of course, is that you don’t off someone who really deserves it.

See? The f-list keeps people out of prison.

Also, I have to say that I’m more than just a tad surprised that the whole f-list thing has gone the way of the dreaded meme (somebody get Grundir on the horn STAT!) But since I’ve never been one to turn down an opportunity to whore my site to anyone nor have I been the type of person to deny that modern life has its share of aggravation, I invite everyone who wishes to do so to post their own f-lists, link back to this blog and post this badge:

Here are a couple of folks who have already posted f-lists and linked back to my blog along with a few who have now received the dreaded “tag” and must post f-lists of their own (insert evil laugh here):

LL – Who has since removed the post. Damn her!!! (pumps fist in air)

Cynical Bastard

Lori

Pirate

Blondie

Janet

Malathion Man

Sparrow

Wendy