I get an number of calls for Medicare Advantage. I let them go on for a bit until I ask if it bothers them that they are trying to rip off senior citizens.
The poll needs a choice, "Varies by the minute." Ecstatically happily married, opening a brewery serving my awesome hometown of Detroit, not so enthused about being in the middle of the reconstituted Third Reich.
The key to my relatively good mental health is that I get almost all of my news from your Substack. The daily dump of evil somehow hurts my soul less when I hear it from you. It's sad, civically, but I have no regrets. If I were to read a newspaper, turn on the radio, or do a social media, I would be insane within a fortnight. You've sacrificed your happiness to save my mind, Gene. It's a Portrait of Dorian Gray situation, except you just get grumpier while I stay serene.
The man with the Apu-like accent, supposedly calling from North Carolina, kept asking for my Medicare number. I played along for a bit, then asked him if his mother knew he was a criminal. He assured me that he was an honest Christian who attended church every Sunday.
Our "landline" (Internet) phone has a Smart Call Blocker feature. In order to get through and actually ring the phone, a caller has to press #. Robocalls don't get through. We get a lot of "missed calls," but NO spam calls.
The majority of people answering the poll said they were mostly happy?
Donald Frigging Trump, a fascist swine, a rapist, a paranoid, a xenophobe, a homophobe, and, judging by his associations with Jeffrey Epstein, may well be a frigging child abuser, is President of the United States. Both houses of Congress are held by the fascist MAGA monsters, and the So Caled Supreme Court is hopelessly compromised.
I answered “mostly happy,” and then I asked myself the same question. The answer is that I did an internal check of my heart, and my heart is mostly content. Even with the big world in an uproar and things falling apart, my internal temperature is mostly okay.
My brain is a monkey and a drama queen and righteously deliriously furious. But I will not let those SOBs take away the beauty of small things from me.
I am kinda old, and my life is mostly behind me, and I practice not getting too riled up. I go to all the demonstrations, I take action when I can see what action to take— but my heart is pretty content, for now.
I replied very happy for the very same reasons Laura has mentioned. I do everything I can to protest and also live my life fully. I can’t let that guy and his cult ruin my life.
Beauty of small things notwithstanding (yes, some things are positive), but I am afraid you miss the point. WE HAVE TO DO SOMETHING. Sitting around watching this crap happen is just what the Germans did in the 30s. Instead of rising up and destroying the Nazi scum at the root, they hunkered down and hid. And that proved fatal.
Sorry. I'm too effing angry to be happy. Happy people get massacred at times like these.
Well, I carry my signs and I show up, and I am not hiding. And I’m not a violent person so I’m not sure what you’re suggesting. What action should I be taking that requires me to sacrifice my inward self?
I think perhaps you are picturing happiness like beauty queen smiles — all smiling and cheerful and empty. My happiness is deep contentment— the top layer may be raging from time to time, but I live a much better life when there are still waters below.
If you believe that my becoming a bitter angry person will make a bit of difference in our fight then I respectfully disagree.
They hate it when we are happy. They hate it when we smile at their middle fingers and send back a peace sign. They hate it when we laugh. And they hate it because deep down they are not sure they’re right. That’s not nothing.
You do you. And try not to give yourself a heart attack while we persist.
Can a happy warrior get it done? On do we need to be grim? That will be up to us, but sometimes I just want to give evil its way since in most cases if it gets what it wants, it self destructs. "Give them enough rope and they can hang themselves. And I take heart from Tolkien: "What does Théoden’s quote “Oft evil will shall evil mar” in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings mean?
‘Yes, there can be no doubt,“ said Aragorn. ‘At last we know the link between Isengard and Mordor, and how it worked. Much is explained.’
‘Strange powers have our enemies, and strange weaknesses!’ said Théoden. ‘But it has long been said: oft evil will shall evil mar.’
I was at a loss, too, Don. Yes, I focus on good things and not allow stress to overwhelm my life, BUT taking into account the importance of this sad era, nope, no happy.
I agree with you, despite our discussion elsewhere in these comments. I think perhaps we are not working from the same definition of happiness. Maybe Gene will address this somehow.
I get 30-40 scambot calls a day on my cell. Most of the time I put the cell on Do Not Disturb so that I don't have to deal with them. When I have some free time I let some calls through. The overwhelming majority are from some AI-generated female voice, always with a different name, who starts out with "Hello?" If I answer, "Hello," they start the same spiel about the new Medicare Advantage benefits.
I freelance my responses, depending on my mood and variations in the bot's spiel. If it's the most common, "I believe that you have Medicare Parts A & B, right?", my response is usually a variation of, "I believe you want to [insert description of unnatural sexual act they want to perform on me.]"
<click>
If I claim ignorance of Medicare, the bot usually asks me how old I am. My response is some variation of "Old enough to do you, and young enough to do your daughter, both on the same night."
<click>
My favorite spambot call starts out with, "We recently sent you a letter detailing the benefits you can receive with the changes in Medicare Advantage. Did you read our letter?" My response, "I don't recall any letter, but I did get the naked pictures you sent me. And WOW! You are HOT!"
I was mostly happy, considering the state of the union, until the 2nd of this month when my darling dog had a cluster of seizures and was gone by the end of the day. Now ... not so much.
She would have been 12 on the 23rd of this month. After 11 years of a healthy life she had one seizure last year. We knew something bad was cooking. However, I was not prepared for the way it played out. It's going to take me a while to get past it. The good news is it was over by the end of the day. She did not suffer a long illness.
When I get a spam call, which is rare, I enthusiastically say I want to talk to them and ask them to hold on for just a second, then after about 30 seconds I say I’ll be right there I’m just getting something out of the oven, then after another minute I tell them oh no it spilled all over but I really want to take the call give me another couple of minutes, then after about three minutes I say I’m almost done cleaning it up but I still really want to take the call please give me another minute. Usually, they give up on me at that point.
Emails are a different story. Most are from organisations I support so I don’t want to block them but they send way too many.
I used to regularly get calls from a young-man-sounding-voice who responded to my hello with, “grandpa”? I had fun playing along with the scam, and then said, “What would you say if I told you I don’t have any grandsons?” Then, no response, just, click.
Haven’t gotten those calls since I cancelled my landline.
My wife asked scam callers, “Does your mother know what you do for a living?”
I couldn’t answer the poll. I think I’ve averaged mostly-to-very happy for most of my life. I have a good job, decent health, a nice place to live, great kids who are living good lives and who talk with me pretty much every day, and an adorable grandbaby. But the state of the nation is too disturbing, and that distracts me from my work every day, and that causes me to get behind, which causes me guilt and shame and stress-eating. And it’s too damn hot and humid to do my gardening. And my grandbaby lives too far away. Does that work out to about the middle?
To those surprised at “mostly happy” I would have picked that but every day when I hear the news on WBJC or WETA I’m pushed into the middle or worse and then I read the Borowitz report and feel cheerier which brings me back up to the middle. I can’t say what would make me really happy because the Secret Service would be after me.
Gene, this bit was not the same, but it reminded me of your calls to customer service numbers with absurd complaints that tested their patience. My favorite was your call to Rolex to complain about the extra “l” in the brand name on the watch you just bought. You don’t seem to do those anymore. I wish you did.
Couldn't track down a mention of the call to Rolex cs but did come up with what may have prompted it. From Invite Week 827, August 25, 2009: "Name a real product or company and supply a stupid question or complaint for the consumer hotline person." So I assume any such call would have occurred thereafter.
"Rolex: I recently purchased one of your fine timepieces and I just noticed that there is an extra "L" in the logo. Would removing that be covered under the warranty, and if so, can I just take it back to the stand where I bought it to have that done? (Dan Ramish, Arlington)"
You told the cheery CS person that you had just bought a Rolex and were very happy with it except it had an extra “l” in the brand name on the face. You wanted to know where to send it to have the extra “l” removed. After a long silence, the CS person asked where you bought it. You said you bought from a guy on the corner for $30. Of course, it was funnier the way you told it.
I'm no longer in touch with my closest friend from college, but in the years immediately following our graduation he confided to me that he was tired of all the calls from university development, seeking cash gifts while he was still neck deep in student loans. Knowing that most of the calls were coming from hourly-wage students hired by the development office, he'd lure them into a conversation with the prospective promise of a donation, then suddenly switch the script and attempt to convince them that transferring to a different university was in their best interests.
I get dozens of scam emails every day, and they constitute crimes. They are trying to defraud me, and an attempted crime is a crime. I forward many of them to the phishing email address of the entity that they are pretending to be, but I have no reason to think that that accomplishes anything. Why doesn't law enforcement get involved? If they'd go after just a few of them, it might deter others.
You are correct. But i am just thinking what a deterrent effect it might be on others heading down this path of perfidy, if a few call centers randomly were paid a visit from Seal Team 6, or maybe a little singe from one our Space Lasers.
I think the phone companies are also at fault—they must have the tech to stop spammers from creating fake phone numbers that look real. Underlying that (999)999-9999 must be a real international phone number that could be disclosed/blocked.
They have a bit more of an incentive now that they have to provide basic scam-blocking tools for free. Before that, customers had to pay $10 per line each month if they wanted those tools. It was in their interests to allow lots of scam calls through so people would pay to stop them.
I wonder how long it will be before the current regime blocks that requirement?
I’m a man with a husband. When scammers ask for the lady of the house, I lower my voice and say “speaking “.
Thanks for the laugh-out-loud. I needed it! 😆
Glad to be of service
I get an number of calls for Medicare Advantage. I let them go on for a bit until I ask if it bothers them that they are trying to rip off senior citizens.
They're nonstop at our house. Mostly through the mail, but not entirely.
The poll needs a choice, "Varies by the minute." Ecstatically happily married, opening a brewery serving my awesome hometown of Detroit, not so enthused about being in the middle of the reconstituted Third Reich.
The key to my relatively good mental health is that I get almost all of my news from your Substack. The daily dump of evil somehow hurts my soul less when I hear it from you. It's sad, civically, but I have no regrets. If I were to read a newspaper, turn on the radio, or do a social media, I would be insane within a fortnight. You've sacrificed your happiness to save my mind, Gene. It's a Portrait of Dorian Gray situation, except you just get grumpier while I stay serene.
The man with the Apu-like accent, supposedly calling from North Carolina, kept asking for my Medicare number. I played along for a bit, then asked him if his mother knew he was a criminal. He assured me that he was an honest Christian who attended church every Sunday.
Every so often I get nasty with these guys and assume an Apu-like accent myself, telling them "You are a veddy, veddy bad man."
I don’t answer my phone unless I know the number. If they leave a message, I may call them back.
Our "landline" (Internet) phone has a Smart Call Blocker feature. In order to get through and actually ring the phone, a caller has to press #. Robocalls don't get through. We get a lot of "missed calls," but NO spam calls.
Should have told him to pray harder so God knows where to send the lightening bolt.
I should add that I said “Too bad you called an atheist.”
Mostly happy?
The majority of people answering the poll said they were mostly happy?
Donald Frigging Trump, a fascist swine, a rapist, a paranoid, a xenophobe, a homophobe, and, judging by his associations with Jeffrey Epstein, may well be a frigging child abuser, is President of the United States. Both houses of Congress are held by the fascist MAGA monsters, and the So Caled Supreme Court is hopelessly compromised.
How the HELL can you be "Mostly Happy?"
I am mostly happy in the way that Westley was mostly dead.
I answered “mostly happy,” and then I asked myself the same question. The answer is that I did an internal check of my heart, and my heart is mostly content. Even with the big world in an uproar and things falling apart, my internal temperature is mostly okay.
My brain is a monkey and a drama queen and righteously deliriously furious. But I will not let those SOBs take away the beauty of small things from me.
I am kinda old, and my life is mostly behind me, and I practice not getting too riled up. I go to all the demonstrations, I take action when I can see what action to take— but my heart is pretty content, for now.
I replied very happy for the very same reasons Laura has mentioned. I do everything I can to protest and also live my life fully. I can’t let that guy and his cult ruin my life.
Beauty of small things notwithstanding (yes, some things are positive), but I am afraid you miss the point. WE HAVE TO DO SOMETHING. Sitting around watching this crap happen is just what the Germans did in the 30s. Instead of rising up and destroying the Nazi scum at the root, they hunkered down and hid. And that proved fatal.
Sorry. I'm too effing angry to be happy. Happy people get massacred at times like these.
Well, I carry my signs and I show up, and I am not hiding. And I’m not a violent person so I’m not sure what you’re suggesting. What action should I be taking that requires me to sacrifice my inward self?
I think perhaps you are picturing happiness like beauty queen smiles — all smiling and cheerful and empty. My happiness is deep contentment— the top layer may be raging from time to time, but I live a much better life when there are still waters below.
If you believe that my becoming a bitter angry person will make a bit of difference in our fight then I respectfully disagree.
They hate it when we are happy. They hate it when we smile at their middle fingers and send back a peace sign. They hate it when we laugh. And they hate it because deep down they are not sure they’re right. That’s not nothing.
You do you. And try not to give yourself a heart attack while we persist.
Can a happy warrior get it done? On do we need to be grim? That will be up to us, but sometimes I just want to give evil its way since in most cases if it gets what it wants, it self destructs. "Give them enough rope and they can hang themselves. And I take heart from Tolkien: "What does Théoden’s quote “Oft evil will shall evil mar” in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings mean?
‘Yes, there can be no doubt,“ said Aragorn. ‘At last we know the link between Isengard and Mordor, and how it worked. Much is explained.’
‘Strange powers have our enemies, and strange weaknesses!’ said Théoden. ‘But it has long been said: oft evil will shall evil mar.’
I remain sanguine. We will see.
Didn't vote since "incandescent" wasn't one of the options.
I'm with you, Don.
I was at a loss, too, Don. Yes, I focus on good things and not allow stress to overwhelm my life, BUT taking into account the importance of this sad era, nope, no happy.
Well, exactly. Sitting around smiling while the world dissolves in acid in front of one is not my idea of happiness.
I agree with you, despite our discussion elsewhere in these comments. I think perhaps we are not working from the same definition of happiness. Maybe Gene will address this somehow.
I get 30-40 scambot calls a day on my cell. Most of the time I put the cell on Do Not Disturb so that I don't have to deal with them. When I have some free time I let some calls through. The overwhelming majority are from some AI-generated female voice, always with a different name, who starts out with "Hello?" If I answer, "Hello," they start the same spiel about the new Medicare Advantage benefits.
I freelance my responses, depending on my mood and variations in the bot's spiel. If it's the most common, "I believe that you have Medicare Parts A & B, right?", my response is usually a variation of, "I believe you want to [insert description of unnatural sexual act they want to perform on me.]"
<click>
If I claim ignorance of Medicare, the bot usually asks me how old I am. My response is some variation of "Old enough to do you, and young enough to do your daughter, both on the same night."
<click>
My favorite spambot call starts out with, "We recently sent you a letter detailing the benefits you can receive with the changes in Medicare Advantage. Did you read our letter?" My response, "I don't recall any letter, but I did get the naked pictures you sent me. And WOW! You are HOT!"
<click>
I was mostly happy, considering the state of the union, until the 2nd of this month when my darling dog had a cluster of seizures and was gone by the end of the day. Now ... not so much.
I’m so sorry.
Thank you
I hope you find peace in this difficult moment.
Thank you. I'll get there.
I remember you mentioning that in a comment very shortly after it happened, but I can’t remember if I said anything. I’m so sorry.
Thank you
I’m so sorry too. How old was the sweetheart?
Thank you.
She would have been 12 on the 23rd of this month. After 11 years of a healthy life she had one seizure last year. We knew something bad was cooking. However, I was not prepared for the way it played out. It's going to take me a while to get past it. The good news is it was over by the end of the day. She did not suffer a long illness.
When I get a spam call, which is rare, I enthusiastically say I want to talk to them and ask them to hold on for just a second, then after about 30 seconds I say I’ll be right there I’m just getting something out of the oven, then after another minute I tell them oh no it spilled all over but I really want to take the call give me another couple of minutes, then after about three minutes I say I’m almost done cleaning it up but I still really want to take the call please give me another minute. Usually, they give up on me at that point.
Emails are a different story. Most are from organisations I support so I don’t want to block them but they send way too many.
I used to regularly get calls from a young-man-sounding-voice who responded to my hello with, “grandpa”? I had fun playing along with the scam, and then said, “What would you say if I told you I don’t have any grandsons?” Then, no response, just, click.
Haven’t gotten those calls since I cancelled my landline.
My wife asked scam callers, “Does your mother know what you do for a living?”
I couldn’t answer the poll. I think I’ve averaged mostly-to-very happy for most of my life. I have a good job, decent health, a nice place to live, great kids who are living good lives and who talk with me pretty much every day, and an adorable grandbaby. But the state of the nation is too disturbing, and that distracts me from my work every day, and that causes me to get behind, which causes me guilt and shame and stress-eating. And it’s too damn hot and humid to do my gardening. And my grandbaby lives too far away. Does that work out to about the middle?
To those surprised at “mostly happy” I would have picked that but every day when I hear the news on WBJC or WETA I’m pushed into the middle or worse and then I read the Borowitz report and feel cheerier which brings me back up to the middle. I can’t say what would make me really happy because the Secret Service would be after me.
I saw a question on Quora the other day that asked "If you could change Trump's opinion on just one subject, which would it be?"
I replied, "Whether or not to commit suicide."
Gene, this bit was not the same, but it reminded me of your calls to customer service numbers with absurd complaints that tested their patience. My favorite was your call to Rolex to complain about the extra “l” in the brand name on the watch you just bought. You don’t seem to do those anymore. I wish you did.
I will. Working my way back to it. And just as a sign of my senescence, I do not recall that call to Rolex.
Couldn't track down a mention of the call to Rolex cs but did come up with what may have prompted it. From Invite Week 827, August 25, 2009: "Name a real product or company and supply a stupid question or complaint for the consumer hotline person." So I assume any such call would have occurred thereafter.
"Rolex: I recently purchased one of your fine timepieces and I just noticed that there is an extra "L" in the logo. Would removing that be covered under the warranty, and if so, can I just take it back to the stand where I bought it to have that done? (Dan Ramish, Arlington)"
You told the cheery CS person that you had just bought a Rolex and were very happy with it except it had an extra “l” in the brand name on the face. You wanted to know where to send it to have the extra “l” removed. After a long silence, the CS person asked where you bought it. You said you bought from a guy on the corner for $30. Of course, it was funnier the way you told it.
Those, and your conversations with your feminist friend.
I really like these, too!
Please continue to go after the spammer-scammers.
I'm no longer in touch with my closest friend from college, but in the years immediately following our graduation he confided to me that he was tired of all the calls from university development, seeking cash gifts while he was still neck deep in student loans. Knowing that most of the calls were coming from hourly-wage students hired by the development office, he'd lure them into a conversation with the prospective promise of a donation, then suddenly switch the script and attempt to convince them that transferring to a different university was in their best interests.
I get dozens of scam emails every day, and they constitute crimes. They are trying to defraud me, and an attempted crime is a crime. I forward many of them to the phishing email address of the entity that they are pretending to be, but I have no reason to think that that accomplishes anything. Why doesn't law enforcement get involved? If they'd go after just a few of them, it might deter others.
The trouble is most are outside the US, so beyond easy jurisdiction.
You are correct. But i am just thinking what a deterrent effect it might be on others heading down this path of perfidy, if a few call centers randomly were paid a visit from Seal Team 6, or maybe a little singe from one our Space Lasers.
I think the phone companies are also at fault—they must have the tech to stop spammers from creating fake phone numbers that look real. Underlying that (999)999-9999 must be a real international phone number that could be disclosed/blocked.
They have a bit more of an incentive now that they have to provide basic scam-blocking tools for free. Before that, customers had to pay $10 per line each month if they wanted those tools. It was in their interests to allow lots of scam calls through so people would pay to stop them.
I wonder how long it will be before the current regime blocks that requirement?
To paraphrase Abraham Lincoln: Most people are as happy as they make up their minds to be.
As for scammers, I answer their every question...in Latin.