Prelude to a hot mess

Okay, I'd like to officially put ESPN on blast for its coverage of the 2011 NCAA women's basketball tournament. Because, I'm sorry, it sucks.

This year ESPN has really tried to zazz things up, apparently, but I'm not sure any of the following "enhancements" were good ideas:

The addition of a "social media report" for the Final Four. No, it did not enhance my enjoyment of Sunday night’s national semifinal to know that “buzz1108” thought the keys to a Notre Dame victory were rebounding, shooting, and defense (Are you sure, Buzz? Just those three?). Attention, all people who work in television news: reading people's random, inane tweets on the air is NOT news. (Nor is showing other people’s YouTube videos or sharing the "scientific" results of your online opinion poll, but I digress.)

By the way, if you ARE going to read tweets on air, may I suggest “NCAAWomensBKB,” which offered these actual tweets Sunday night:

What the heck? Where’s the “there’s 54 seconds left in the game” tweet? The "56 seconds left" tweet? I demand a second-by-second live tweeting of the game clock...and NO OTHER game information, dammit. Just observing the passage of time on Twitter is enough to give me a thrill.

Nothing can beat the excitement of tweets that are just hashtags. Fancy!

The appalling addition of halftime player interviews. No college athlete should ever be asked to do an interview DURING a contest. EVER. This is very inappropriate.

The extra-appalling addition of IN-GAME coach interviews. Seriously. In case you missed it, they interviewed the coaches DURING TIMEOUTS in the national semifinal games. What's next? Breaking to interview a player at the line before she shoots free throws? Oh, how I wish I was being sarcastic.

Yes, add these awesome features to ESPN's already-stellar non-biased coverage of women's basketball, and you have yourself an experience that definitely does not make you want to shove a pencil in your eyeball. The UConn-ification of ESPN is no new phenomenon, but Geno Auriemma's success with the Huskie women's basketball program has definitely elevated it to new heights.

Look, Maya Moore is an excellent basketball player. In another life I may have been a great admirer of Moore's, but life with ESPN has made me utterly recoil at the sound of her name. ESPN has clearly decided that people only care about women's basketball because of Moore (and maybe also Brittney Griner) and that it really isn't the network's responsibility to try and expand its viewers' horizons. I spent a full 20 minutes Sunday night listening to Doris Burke assure me that Connecticut wouldn't lose its semifinal game to Notre Dame because it was "Maya's time" and Maya was really "percolating" and that it was "all about Maya Moore, baby."

Well, guess what? It wasn't. Maya did her best and performed well, but there was another team on the court that played AS A TEAM and won the game while Maya was repeatedly forcing up shots. And while that winning team was celebrating its hard-earned victory on the court, ESPN chose instead to show a live on-court interview with the losing coach. Oh, and later broke into SportsCenter to show us that losing team's live press conference. I think the last time I saw anything like this was, well, when UConn lost to Stanford this season. A UConn loss is apparently always more interesting than any other team's victory -- even a victory over UConn.

Hey, I know there are not as many people interested in the women's tournament as there are in the men's tournament. Not even close. And hey, I'm not out to convert those people. But maybe ESPN should be. This year CBS utilized four networks to broadcast the men's championship. ESPN, which has more channels than the Panama Canal, mostly just used ESPN2 to cover the tournament's early rounds -- while typically using its flagship station to show "sports" that can be played while sucking down a Pall Mall. (Looking at you, World Series of Poker and PBA Tour.) In the early rounds, they brought us the "most compelling action" at any given time. Apparently my definition of compelling action doesn't align with ESPN's. The "most compelling action" was almost always a No. 1 seed thumping an opponent. Those of us who are fortunate enough to get ESPN3 on our computers at least had a semi-alternative to being so gosh darned compelled.

So why does ESPN pretend UConn is the only women's college basketball team that exists? Certainly the network's headquarters in the state has something to do with it, but if I take a less cynical perspective on this issue I will freely admit that the Huskies have been dominant. Certainly they have deserved extensive coverage, and probably even more coverage than any other team. But when ESPN only covers UConn, it does nothing but help perpetuate this "image problem" that women's college basketball lacks true parity and helps, frankly, make it come true.

I've been watching games all season, but I'm merely a casual fan. Yet I knew both UConn and Stanford were vulnerable this year -- so why didn't ESPN? And now, we have tonight's national championship game: the thing ESPN most feared -- one without UConn.

How are they going to sell this one? I guess we'll find out soon.

2011 the end of 2 eras?: Why my phone & I have been together longer than Urban Meyer and Florida, but with less Tebow and more shift key malfunctions

Watching today's Outback Bowl between Florida & Penn State got me thinking about finality and whether my cell phone is more like Urban Meyer or Joe Paterno -- that is, whether the end of its career is definitely happening this year or if it could have another year in it or if its fate is even more mysterious.

As I have mentioned before, I love my old school, ridiculous dumb phone. It's this one: the Nokia 6800 -- basically one step up from the "Jitterbug" senior citizen phone. Whenever I flip it open to write a text message, people actually grab at the thing and remark about how cool it is (it DOES have a neat fold-out keyboard that's really easy to use). But then they see how old & janky it is and have only one other comment: "WHEN did you get that thing?" I actually can't remember when I got it. I think it was a Christmas gift in 2003...?

The menus on this phone are really confusing. The Nokia 6800 doesn't have a camera or voice recognition or a telescoping arm that wipes your butt for you or anything like that. You can't really put it on "silent," and to be honest, it doesn't even let you answer it sometimes. One of the shift keys on the keyboard stopped working for about 6 months a couple of years ago, but hey -- it eventually bounced back.

It's been dropped in the Iowa State Center parking lot no fewer than 30 times, and it's been all over the world: to Italy, Central America, Alaska, New York City, and several college bowl games. Some of the numbers saved in it are people to whom I haven't spoken in years -- or contacts from very old interviews I never bothered to delete in the event I needed to follow up (I haven't). There are numbers for a few takeout places that aren't even open anymore. It's been a witness to history -- at least my history, I suppose.

It probably saw its heaviest all-time use on Oct. 24, 2009, when it nearly blew up during Iowa State's 9-7 football win at Nebraska. (Turns out my friends were just a teensy bit excited about this.) It held up like a champ.

And while I remain hopelessly devoted to this piece of antiquated technology that fits perfectly in the front pocket of my "gameday purse," I'm starting to think that my phone may not live to see the 2011 Cyclone football season -- or hardly any of this new decade, I'm afraid -- because:

A) I'm not really sure how much more embarrassment my husband can take when I whip this baby out in public. A couple of years ago, I came home and excitedly told him about a gas station attendant who showed me his identical phone and said, "Wow. I thought I was the only one who still had this phone." (Keep in mind that this was two years ago. And that this was a gas station attendant who probably makes $7/hour. And that chances are good there is only one of us who is still rocking the Nokia 6800 and it ain't him.) Ben's reaction was expected: "And you're bragging about this?"

B) It seems to be losing some of its power. One thing I have always loved about my phone is that it holds a charge for up to five days. Not so much anymore. I fear the end is near and that replacing the battery will be simply out of the question since I believe it may be powered by horse or Windows 95 or something like that.

It's just that, of all the things I enjoy spending money on, cell phones are not among them. Ben tells me I should be able to get T Mobile to give me a new one for free (seeing whereas I have been a loyal customer using my glorified Jitterbug for something like 7-8 years now). So maybe the day will come in 2011 that I'll venture over to T Mobile and see what kind of deal I can get.

Provided I can get a new phone that is exactly like my old one, of course. Because who wants a Muschamp phone, really?

Why being a giant dork is a lifelong labor that involves memorizing the design of Minnesota's natural resources license plate

In the summer of 1991, my parents took my brother and me on one of those "explore the west" minivan vacations. You know the trip that includes stops at Yellowstone, Mount Rushmore, the Black Hills...and, if you were a savvy travel researcher in the pre-innernets era like my mother was, the Corn Palace in Mitchell, South Dakota, and the Jolly Green Giant statue in Blue Earth, Minnesota. It was the classic American family vacation for two children who were classic American whiners.

Mom & Dad certainly knew my brother, David, and I were giant pains in the ass. They knew that, unless they were brilliant and strategic in planning the trip's activities, they would spend hours trapped in a Dodge Caravan listening to "Owwwww!," "I'm not touching you," and "Shut up."

So they planned some games for us, the chief one being "License Plate Game," which involved watching vehicles through the window and being the first to shout out the states in which they were licensed. For example, if you saw a car from Virginia the goal was to be the first to shout, "Virginia! I got it!" And then you could count Virginia as "yours." And as long as your opponent hadn't "gotten" that state, you could continue to call out cars from Virginia as a defensive move. Winning required an intense dedication to observing oncoming traffic lanes, parking lots, and the handful of cars my safety-conscious father would dare pass ("Dad, drive FASTER," was a common command from the back seat.) Mom even gave us each one of those dry-erase U.S. maps and markers so that we could color in the states as we "got" them. Needless to say, David and I didn't like this particular game.

We motherfreaking loved it.

By the time we reached South Dakota, we were so consumed with this competition that we could barely function outside of the "License Plate Game" bubble. In fact, when we arrived at Mount Rushmore, David began racing through the parking lot, "getting" license plates instead of viewing one of our nation's most inspiring historical tributes.

Because c'mon: Only we could turn the thing that was supposed to prevent us from being annoying into the most annoying thing EVER.

And I've now been playing "License Plate Game" for two decades.

It was early in my relationship with my now-husband that we took a car trip together and I shouted out, "North Dakota! I got it!" His life has never been the same. He's become my primary "License Plate Game" opponent, even though we don't have the maps and no one's really even keeping score. We're just sort of always playing. And I'm sorry to say he's a terrible opponent. My eyes are much better, and I have a firmer grasp on our nation's many license plate designs. In fact, his only hope is to beat me when I'm not in the car -- which is something he certainly tries to do.

Because if my husband had been our third sibling on that van trip, he would have been right there with us, shoving my brother out of the way in order to "get" Alaska at Mount Rushmore. It's a freakish nerd quality about him that makes me know we're the perfect match. I can't help but smile when I receive a random text message in the middle of the work day that says, "Delaware. I got it."

Pshaw. I got Delaware at the Jolly Green Giant in 1991.

Just saying.

Defending women or defending journalism? Why I'm pretty peeved that I've been forced to make this choice.

Some news stories are so annoyingly anti-feminist that the best policy is to just ignore them until they go away. That being said, I'm going to jump in and become part of the problem by talking about the Ines Sainz situation.

First of all, let me express as absolutely as possible that I am not a victim-blamer. Nothing makes my skin crawl more than "she was asking for it" defenses of sexual harassers and assailants. And though she now says that she wasn't offended or wasn't actually harassed or was harassed but not really or whatever her current story is about the New York Jets situation, I do not condone any real or hypothetical harassment of Ines Sainz. Professional men should behave professionally on the job, whether or not their profession is playing a game. Period.

But I do have to blame Ines Sainz, at least in part, for one thing: the resurrection of more obnoxious attacks on female sports journalists that veteran professional Andrea Kremer told the New York Daily News this week she thought had been laid to rest years ago. Because while the Jets players apparently weren't behaving very professionally when Ines Sainz visited their practice a few weeks ago, it doesn't appear that Sainz is exactly a shining example of professional journalism, either.

I realize that sex sells. It sells in every industry, and especially in sports -- a world where men clamor to get front row seats so they can ogle the big-haired women in spandex bun-huggers at NFL games and where Danica Patrick ranks fourth among U.S. female athletes for earnings despite recording just one win. And even though it's taken from this testosterone-fueled, less-than-serious world of sports, I believe that Ines Sainz is just another example of the ever-blurring line between journalism and entertainment.

Check out the directory of the reporters on Sports Illustrated's Web site and let me know if any of their bios come with photo galleries that include bathing suit shots. Maybe ESPN's Sage Steele will change her Twitter background to a montage of images that includes a photo of her wearing an evening gown on a tennis court. Then again, maybe she won't. It seems that Sainz has built her career around "hey, look at me" stunts like flirting with athletes, dressing inappropriately on the job, and yes -- intentionally creating a media circus around this incident in New York.

Situations like this put female sports journalists like Kremer and even me -- someone who, yes, has had her ass patted in a working football press box -- in a tough position. Women in sports have had it very rough for decades and have been repeatedly harassed, demeaned, and ignored while trying to do their jobs. No, covering sports isn't as serious as covering U.S. foreign policy or Wall Street or even local city council meetings -- but it's still journalism. And all journalists should be treated with professional respect, just as they should be expected to behave professionally.

Keith Olbermann put it harshly when he recently named Sainz one of his "worst persons in the world," but I think he was largely correct: Ines Sainz puts all female sports journalists in the (necessary) position of defending her against the poor treatment she received, but also the quandary of whether or not they also have to defend her as a journalist (something she claims to be but which all evidence seems to indicate she is not), and in the process diminishes decades of work that serious female sports reporters have put in to gain the respect they deserve.

Does Ines Sainz have the right to make a buck off her voluptuous body? Sure, it's the world we live in. But don't expect me to only view her situation through the lens of whether or not I'm offended as a woman -- I also view it through the lens of a journalist who has watched almost exclusively pretty faces and thin bodies pop up on football sidelines and behind anchor desks over the last 20 years.

And when women's credentials for doing a job -- any job -- are reduced to whether or not they won the genetic lottery, all women lose.

Even Ines Sainz.

I'm apparently the lyrical gangster.

One recent oppressively hot spring day, I found a new hobby I didn't even know I was looking for while I was doing one of my least favorite activities -- getting my hairs done. (I realize most women view a trip to the salon as "pampering," but I loathe it. And now that I'm in my 30s I have to color away the fields of gray on my scalp, which means my hair appointments have been extended in their length of torture by nearly two hours. Spending that much time on any grooming activity, much less one that involves chemicals and gale force bursts of hot air being applied to my scalp for an extended period of time, tends to make me a little stir crazy.)

In an effort not to burst into tears and climb out of the chair like a 3-year-old having a tantrum during these hair appointments, I look for distractions -- usually the salon's music. On this particular day, the music was Sirius/XM's 90s pop music channel.

Song after god-awful song that came drifting out of the overhead speakers was something I hadn't heard in at least a decade but to which I could sing along, and in most cases indentify by title and artist. There was "Sadness: Part 1" by Enigma, "Love Will Be Right Here" by SWV (which stands, I remember all too clearly, for 'Sisters with Voices'), Skee-Lo, The Soup Dragons, Matchbox 20, Sister Hazel, The Gin Blossoms, Coolio, and an endless parade of other crap that just made me laugh out loud and which, to be truly honest, I at one point owned on cassette single. I even heard Inner Circle's cringeworthy "Sweat," which to this day you can't tell me isn't about date rape (How was that even allowed to be played on the radio?), and Ini Kamoze's "Here Comes the Hotstepper." (Murder-ah!)

The whole experience illuminated the power of popular music as a memory trigger. How does Extreme's "More Than Words" NOT immediately make me think of every high school dance I ever attended? And my college days will always be associated with Third Eye Blind's "Jumper," which my fellow intern, Josh, used to sing to me while we were endlessly scanning football players' head shots in the back corner of the sports information office. I also can't hear Savage Garden's "I Want You" without remembering those days working in the back of Jacobson Building with only a boom box to entertain us -- and the fact that our boss repeatedly referred to that particular tune as "the chicken cherry cola song."

These days, I listen to very little pop music. I don't know any Justin Bieber songs and only very recently decided that Lady Gaga was worth a listen. But I still consume massive amounts of new alternative rock and feel like music is a big part of my life. But apparently my current music consumption pales greatly in comparison to that of my teen years. In addition to knowing all the songs on the 90s pop station, I can also sing you everything by Nirvana, Soundgarden, and Sonic Youth.

So my new commute-time hobby is switching back and forth between XM's 90s pop channel and XM's 90s alternative channel (These both exist!) and seeing how many songs I can identify by title and artist. It's actually an alarming number. I even shocked myself the other day when I immediately came up with "I Know" by Dionne Faris and "I Nearly Lost You" by the Screaming Trees in the same car trip.

If you're close to my age, I highly recommend this ridiculous but highly amusing activity. I mean, where else but 90s on 9 are you ever going to hear the remix of Maxi Priest's "Close to You" or suddenly have a vivid flashback of the 1992 presidential election?

And with oil continuing to gush into the Gulf of Mexico and the Pac-10 trying to destroy the last vestiges of parity in college athletics, I certainly don't want to listen to the news or sports right now. So I'll take my 90s music, which might as well finally finish the job of rotting my brain that it started all those years ago.

I mean, come on: I know what Bo don't know. I'm the lyrical gangster.

I'm so cool I didn't even know I was cool. At all.

So one of my favorite stores, Raygun, has a new T-shirt on the shelves that proclaims, "I listened to NPR before it was cool." In what is a likely a telltale sign that I am most definitely NOT cool, I did not realize that listening to public radio had become cool and am not really sure how to handle this revelation that something I do is considered "cool." It got me wondering if some of the other things I do had suddenly become cool. Please let me know if any of the following have become cool or are likely to become in the near future:

• saying things like, "Oooh! It's almost 9 o'clock! We can go to bed soon!"
  
• watching "Top Chef" when it first airs and then watching it again when it is rerun over the weekend
• wondering if a statistical detail of a sporting event is nationally significant and then actually going to the trouble of looking it up (or, actually, any obsession with/mild interest in sports statistics)
  
• facial depilitory
• knowing how to use a semicolon
• taking pictures of your food at restaurants
• watching CSPAN (and possibly even CSPAN2)
• being able to recite all the presidents in order of service and all the U.S. states in alphabetical order as a result of past elementary school choral performances
• Al Gore crushes
• pen/marker collecting
• watching Sesame Street as an adult
  
• unflattering, uncontrollable, pants-peeing laughter
• actually having Erasure songs on one's iPod
  
• vacuuming mishaps

Because I'm gonna want the T-shirt.

Captain Weirdo has a stat sheet, and she's not afraid to use it.

In the mid-to-late-1980s my favorite toy was an avocado green manual typewriter on which I put together regular editions of the "Daily Tribune," a newspaper of fictional stories written and illustrated (with pencil drawings inside black magic marker square borders) by me while I sat on the living room floor, hunched over the machine that emitted a musty metallic odor as I told it tales of fake petty crimes, fictional football games, and imaginary international crises. I gave myself deadlines and critiqued my headline choices. I collated and numbered the pages and paid careful attention to creating ads below the fold. For me, this was playtime.

From an early age, I was obsessed with the idea of a career in journalism. More specifically, I was obsessed with a career that, until almost a decade later, I wouldn't even know existed.

At age 18 I discovered it and was even offered an opportunity to do it: sports information -- the art of compiling and distributing information about athletics teams and competitions.

You see, though I was the faithful editor of the "Daily Tribune," one of my favorite childhood projects was actually a postseason Iowa State men's basketball review that I created as a gift for my father by writing news blurbs and cutting and pasting news articles, statistics, and photos onto looseleaf pages in a red binder. I was reminded of this project yesterday when I was filling a red binder with articles, rosters, and statistics that I'll need to use this weekend at the NCAA women's basketball tournament's first and second round games in Ames. Saturday through Tuesday, I'm volunteering to help out one of my former bosses -- a lifelong friend acquired during the three years I spent working as a sports information student assistant -- who is coordinating media relations for the event. We are both out of that line of work nowadays, but we both relish the opportunity to volunteer at tournament time. Because, well, we are both still sports info geeks at heart.

It's this time of year, when the excitement of March Madness is at its peak, that I most regret not pursuing an SID career. (Though, if I'm being honest with myself, I'm probably better at the job I do now.) There's just something exciting about the yards of blue carpeting and the smell of freshly-copied stat sheets and the pressure of deadline as the sneakers squeak out a countdown to the next tipoff.

It takes a special breed of weirdo to appreciate it. And here I am: Captain Weirdo, reporting for duty. I can't wait to collate.

Fore.

None of my personal possessions are as well-traveled as I am, but I need to give a shout out to December 2009 for probably being the most adventurous month of travel my Titleist Ultra Lightweight Stand Bag has ever seen.

On December 21, it boarded a semi trailer for Tempe, Arizona and was whisked to the desert with 600+ carefully-tagged friends. But less than two weeks earlier, there were moments of doubt that my clubs would even survive to see their morning of abuse at Papago Municipal Golf Course. Because in five minutes on an icy December morning, they took a lot more abuse than I could ever have inflicted upon them in 18 holes' worth of sandtrap hacks.

It was, well, the ride of their life.

Let me just point out that I am a person who has both vacuumed her face and hit herself in the mouth with the leg of an ottoman. I once lost my car key, um, on my person while out jogging. I have torn my earlobe in half falling onto a wrought iron chair, lost my prosthetic tooth in a steak sandwich, and slashed my own tire while parallel parking. I've had bread stolen from me by a goose and been knocked on my face by a grounder in beer league softball.

So is it really any surprise that, on Dec. 7, I backed over my golf bag and dragged it 3 1/2 blocks to a quickie mart, all the while littering my neighborhood with clubs that were shooting out from beneath my car like graphite-shafted primitive warfare projectiles?

Yeah, I didn't think so.

It's our new Blu-Ray player's fault, actually. Because I had purchased the device as a Christmas gift for my husband and hid it in the trunk of my car just a few days earlier, I didn't put my golf bag back in my trunk after a joint Sunday morning practice session at the golf dome. I didn't want Ben to see his gift and figured I'd just leave the bag sitting behind my car and stash it when I left for work the next morning.

But there was a problem: I was the first to leave for work the next morning. I slipped through the door on the side of the garage, pushed the button to raise the garage door, threw my shoulder bag on the passenger seat, and started out of my driveway for work.

Upon starting down the street, I immediately noticed that the roads were icy and that I was having quite a bit of trouble getting my car to accelerate down the road. My car drove almost like it was dragging something. Stupid ice, I thought. I need to fuel up my car, so maybe I should reassess my decision to commute to work this morning when I get around the corner to the gas station.

By the time I turned the corner, I became convinced that I actually was dragging something under my car. Stupid chunks of snow and ice that get stuck under your car, I thought. When I pull up to the pump, I'll just kick that stuff off my car and it should drive better.

So I pulled up to the pump, started the auto fueling process, and took an exploratory lap around my Honda. I found no attached chunks of snow and/or ice. But, dammit, I knew there was something dragging under there. Determined to solve the mystery, I moved to the front of the car and bent all the way down to the ground, almost placing my ear on the snowy ground as I looked underneath the car. That's when it jumped out at me, peeking out between blackened pipes in vivid white script embroidery: "Titleist." The previous day's events finally came flooding back.

Holy nerds. I ran over my golf bag.

There is only one thing a person can do in this situation: Start to cry; decide that crying would be pathetic and sort of stop crying but not really; stick your arm under the car and lunge at the bag, which you have no hope of retrieving because it's in the exact middle of your car, you're wearing heels, and it's snowing; pull only your golf towel and one catty-wompus club out as they are the only items you can reach; call your husband, because surely he will know what to do; and sit in the car and be a total pussy about the situation.

So that's what I did.

When my husband arrived at the gas station it was quickly apparent that he, too, would be unable to reach the bag without mechanical assistance. But he did make one discovery that for some reason had escaped me until then:

"Ummmmm... Kate... There aren't any more golf clubs in this bag!"

He threw me the keys to his Ford Escape. "Go. Find. Them," he said. I shuffled toward the car, panic-stricken.

"Wait," he stopped me. "I need to go home and get my jack so I can get your bag out from under the car. I'll come with you."

So we left the Honda and golf bag parked at the gas pump and started up the icy road toward home. When we turned onto our street, that's when we saw it: Our neighborhood looked like a Dick's Sporting Goods. A cluster of irons lay in the middle of the road, and my other clubs were scattered randomly about. Brightly-colored head covers dotted snowy front yards on both sides of the street. I drove the car slowly with the window rolled down, pointing out clubs as we crawled toward home. "There's my driver next to that person's lampost!" "There's my 7 iron next to that dumpster!" My husband picked them up and filed them in the back of the car. I can only imagine what was going through the heads of the motorists who passed us, what with me driving three miles per hour in the Escape while my husband walked alongside the car clutching a handful of golf clubs, barely able to get traction on the ice-covered road. At 8 o'clock on a Monday morning.

We found all but four of the clubs. Remarkably, none of the ones I found were damaged. Ben was able to pull the bag out from under the car after he jacked it up, and even the bag still works! (It just has a couple of new dirt stains. I'm planning to send my story to the Titleist Corporation.) I figure there is a chance those four missing clubs might turn up when the snow melts this spring, so I decided to leave notes in my neighbors' doors. A normal person might simply have written, "I had an accident with my car and lost some golf clubs. If found, please return to Kate." But that's just not my style, so I left a note for my neighbors that told the whole story, ending with a statement of absolute and humiliating fact:

"I'm sorry to say this is probably not even the stupidest thing I have ever done. But it's at least in the top five."

Some day I may have to put this up to vote.

Clueless, toothless, and bagless is no way to go through life.

On my 16th birthday, I vacuumed my face.

Fifteen years later, vacuuming remains the household chore most threatening to my personal safety.

It would be simple enough to chalk the 1994 incident up to a freak accident. Girl grabs Dirt Devil hand vac to clean stairs. Girl fails to tie back super-long locks. Girl's locks get wound up in aforementioned Dirt Devil, causing forehead welt at point of impact and eventual black eye. Girl attends high school and endures resultant mockery/questioning. Girl eternally remembered for vacuuming up own hair on Sweet 16. Girl at least has excellent story for rest of life.

But girl, if we can still use that term, could not leave it at that.

You see, it was a few weeks ago that I found myself once again vacuuming -- this time with a Panasonic upright and an actual floor. It was in the same room where I had once ripped off half my toenail vacuuming when I stupidly tried to slide a heavy ottoman across the floor without wearing shoes. (No "Dancing with Tom DeLay" appearance for me.) Same room, same vacuum. Same girl, of course.

Different ottoman.

Our new ottoman is much lighter than the old one. It's so light, in fact, that I can just pick it up quickly, turn it upside down, and rest it on the couch to create an easy vacuuming path. In fact, that's precisely what I was trying to do when...

I clobbered myself in the face with an ottoman leg.

I'm not sure what happened, though I had just gotten done lifting weights when this incident occurred. Perhaps I did not know my own pumped-up arm strength or had lost some of my small muscle control. What I do know is that I hoisted the object with such force that I nearly knocked loose one of my remaining teeth and seriously suspected for a moment that I had cut my lower lip. My husband just happened to call within seconds after this incident occurred.

"Hey," he said. "Just wanted to let you know I was on my way home."

"Okay, great," I replied, gently patting at my lower lip. "I, um...you're not going to believe this. I just hit myself in the face with an ottoman. Really hard. It hurts."

"You did WHAT? How on earth..."

"Well, I was vacuuming..."

And that's all I needed to say.

Some people have nagging mountain-climbing injuries. Others hurt themselves playing sports. Not many people can find creative ways of hurting themselves like I can. Perhaps I need a vacuuming injury awareness bracelet to go with my hard hat and hockey mask.

Or maybe I'll never learn.

Thank you for assuming I'm an idiot.

U.S. Green Building Council customer service rep, 15 minutes into the process of annoyingly having me spell things out so she can fill out the online form with which I am reporting a server application issue, even though I've told her 17 times that I just need to be directed to their Web site support folks because the problem is an ASP coding issue: Okay, so what is the fax number...

Me: Look, can't I just send a screencap of the error message via e-mail to the technical support staff or something?

Her: Sure, you can send a screencap via e-mail. OR I can just help you now.

Me: ...

Her: Well, what's it going to be? Do you want to send a screencap via e-mail or do you want me to help you?

Me: Um...I want you to help me, I guess?

(We fill out the rest of the form. It takes at least another five minutes as I read aloud a series of extremely long numeric access codes, which she has to repeat and verify, even though I know the entire exercise is pointless.)

Her, after pressing the submit key: Okay, so. Um. Well, what I'm going to do is take a screencap of this error message and e-mail it to the technical support staff...

(To her credit, at least she apologized.)

Lord, beer me strength.

I have a ridiculously childish and self-centered attachment to my annual August lake vacation. Two weeks will never be enough, but neither will three or four. I'd even put up with the fugly cottage art forever. Just don't make me come home and have a real life.

For some reason I'm particularly cranky about having to have a real life this year. Real life people seem to be especially irritating to me this week, and my well-tanned face is already starting to peel. Yesterday at 4 o'clock, I was relentlessly fixated on the fact that at the same time a week ago I was drinking a beer and playing beanbags by the water. I totally couldn't get over it. When I received an e-mail from my mother complaining about having gained 4 1/2 pounds, I realized we have officially moved from "lake complaining" mode to "post-lake complaining" mode, the latter of which may actually be even more obnoxious than the former because it garners even less sympathy.

The term "lake complaints" was coined by someone in my family a couple of years ago, and my uncle has begun recording them for posterity. They are complaints about things that are actually good -- "complaints" that reflect just how spoiled my entire family is for two weeks out of each year. "There's too much sun," is a pretty common one that's been uttered many times -- including by me. (But in that one spot on the deck it is just BRUTAL in the late afternoon and moving the chair is just an awful lot of work -- sometimes there's not even room to move the chair.) But some of my favorite lake complaints have come from the aforementioned uncle, who last year complained that a chunk of chocolate in his ice cream cone was TOO BIG for him to bite through and this year lamented that the improvement of Jefferson County A highway had caused the road to "lose all its charm" without potholes and dangerous curves.

Yes, life is rough for us. Sometimes the motion of the lake water moves our air mattresses around so frequently that we can't even take naps without fear of ending up beached in front of houses 200 yards away.

When you run out of beer, you have to get in your car and drive back to the PartyMart to buy more. It won't just reappear in the refrigerator.

You occasionally have to get your second choice of ice cream flavor because the person in line ahead of you got the last scoop of blueberry cream pie. (There was a fleeting moment during this year's vacation that we thought my mother got the last scoop of that flavor EVER, but they ended up restocking it and the crisis was averted.)

But even with all that adversity we suffer through on vacation, I strongly prefer my vacation time to my non-vacation time. But I realize that my post-lake complaining has crossed the obnoxiousness threshold, and I today seek desperately to quash my case of the grumpies by identifying a few simple transition strategies that might mitigate the harshness of reality. These might include, but are not limited to, proposing a mandatory "beer and beanbags" social hour at work, going on a semi-permanent "staycation," and digging a lake in my back yard/petitioning to have my neighborhood rezoned such that all my neighbors must convert their homes into taverns and ice cream shops.

Or I could just try to stop being such a jackass.

Please, someone: Seal my mouth shut with a big roll of federal packing tape.

In my attempts to not look stupid, I often say things that make me look even stupider.

"Sorry, I don't really know anything about mail," was today's gem -- uttered in response to a nice but not terribly understanding official at my local post office branch.

Look, I don't mail parcels very often and generally try to avoid the post office. But on this particular occasion I had a box of eco-friendly toys to send my friends in Kansas, who just welcomed a baby boy into the world -- a baby boy I desperately need to spoil immediately.

After cluelessly grabbing at packaging supplies for about 15 minutes, I settled on a very large box and placed the gift inside. I folded the corners to form a box shape but had no tape with which to seal it. But I assumed they would make it look right at the checkout counter, so I decided the time was right to jump into the fancy, roped-off "Confident? Final answer?" line.

After listening to the man in front of me relay the tale of the "little fat boy" who had stopped his mail two months ago and to the woman who unexpectedly turned around to give me a very detailed and uninteresting account of what was inside the package she was mailing, I finally got my chance to attempt to mail something.

I set the box on the counter, along with the completed but not-yet-affixed label. "Can you mail this?" I asked.

"If you tape it up and get it ready to go, I will," the man in the very snazzy polo shirt replied.

"Oh. Well, where do I get the tape?"

"You have to supply your own if you use that kind of box. If you use XYZ box (Sorry, I don't remember what the box was called), you can use this." He waved a roll of colorful federal packing tape in my face.

"Oh, okay; that's fine. I'll use the other kind of box," I said. "I don't really know anything about mail." He pointed me toward the correct vessel, and I brought it back up to the counter.

"Um," he said, "can I please get you to put it together over there out of the line so that I can help other customers?

"Oh, yes, sorry," I replied. "I don't really know anything about mail."

And thus on a Monday afternoon when the post office customers included a nutcase wearing a bait shop T-shirt that said "House of Hookers" and a woman mailing $250 worth of Crest WhiteStrips to China, I was the crazy one, the stupid one, AND the annoying one.

It's not my fault. I don't really know anything about mail.

Kate is sitting at the computer, updating her Twitter feed.

So there's my ongoing love/hate relationship with the concept of "social networking" and its role in business. (Now fortified with doctor-recommended levels of random outburst!)

Just to bring you up to speed in the event you don't want to read or re-read the referenced outburst: When we last met our fearful protagonist she was wholeheartedly skeptical of social media experts and consultants.

This hasn't changed, but there are a few cracks in the foundation. Scott McLeod is upfront with the declaration that he is not a social media expert, which frankly makes me like him. And he pretty much knows just about as much as any self-proclaimed expert. His message: Use it or lose it.

I think he's right.

Last week I attended a presentation by McLeod and was instantly struck by how strongly he stood behind his viewpoint that businesses and organizations need presences on Facebook and Twitter. I was also instantly swayed to his side of the argument upon observing the offputting way in which the marketing and public relations professionals in the room jumped to defend his presented examples of "how not to use" these tools that existed in the marketplace. One example was a higher ed blogger who refused to respond to her reader comments and was getting digitally flogged with negative remarks about her lack of two-way communication.

"Well, how could she have time to do that?" came the fiery pant-suited counter-attack. "Who made the rule that says she has to respond just because she wrote a blog post? Maybe she's not even writing it! Who has time to do all this stuff, anyway?"

Nothing irritates me more than people doing things half-assed just to say they have done them. The entire logic is utterly flawed. Ugh, I thought to myself. If you don't have time to do something properly, don't do it at all.

Which is exactly what the presenter said, adding in a very nice way that perhaps they could stop churning out pointless press releases and try devoting some actual time to creating authentic modern two-way communication channels on the fancy innernets machine.

Amen to that.

Performance anxiety
All this being said, it was with some trepidation that I entered the world of tweeting last week (on a personal level, that is -- haven't been tripped up using it professionally yet). Thus, I have not yet written my first micro-blog. After almost six years, I have certainly become quite accustomed to the concept of the maxi-blog. Most people don't give a crap about this particular little corner of the Web, but "It's me, Kate" does have a proud tradition of being appreciated by friends and family who for some reason (Masochism?) don't get enough of my quirkiness and petty sarcasm in real life.

As a long-time Facebook user, I also have experience writing "status updates" -- which are essentially the same as tweets. I've used Facebook to pontificate on everything from Trey Wingo's inane women's basketball coverage to the Bus FM's overplaying of Paul Revere & the Raiders. My ability to generate random thoughts of mild interest to my associates is not entirely absent. But I don't want my first tweet to be any of the things that are occurring to me at present, like, "Feeling too much pressure to write a funny and/or profound inaugural tweet," or "Streaming an interview with pro-split infinitive author of 'Origins of the Specious' on IPR," or "Sad that all my hydrangea arrangements have wilted and must find a favorite summer flower." Does anyone really care about any of that?

With limitless characters at my disposal, however, I feel perfectly comfortable annoying you with pointless thoughts. This is why I think Twitter might be good for me: It would force me to edit myself significantly. As an aspiring writer of something really long who actually makes her living putting things succinctly, I should theoretically excel in this forum.

But for now, 140 characters is not instinctively part of my character. But embracing a word-related challenge certainly is. It's got me all a-twitter.

Just wave the next time you fly over.

Get yourself a Facebook account and a trip to the coast, and the country shall be revealed to you. Just be forewarned that, once you understand how people think and what they really think of you, there's no going back.

I guess I always knew this, but lately it's been reinforced to me that people tend to think Iowa -- my beautiful birthplace and home -- is rather ridiculous.

This was brightly illuminated following the Iowa Supreme Court's landmark April 3 ruling that denying marriage licenses to same-sex couples violated constitutional equal protection provisions under the Fourteenth Amendment. I thought people would look at the ruling with some admiration for our state (and some have), but mostly it has sent a barrage of unfunny, unoriginal Iowa jokes and backhanded compliments flying at our faces. For me, the fact that pundits like Maureen Dowd continue to beat the "Iowa, of all places -- I mean, look at their white bread and corn fields and goats (Huh?)" drum shows just how ignorant and holier-than-thou people's attitudes really are toward "Middle America."

Even the simple terminology that describes the geographic location of our state has been kidnapped by people who want to use the term "Middle America" to describe simpletons.

I'd love it if people could learn the term "Midwest," but that's probably too much to ask. Because after spending the last week in California, it appears that many coastal peoples only know one fact about our state: that it is "somewhere in the middle." I am trying to imagine not being able to name the other 49 states in the union and identify them on a map, but apparently our public schools in flyover country are just too darned informative.

During our trip to Napa Valley, we bellied up to the bar in several tasting rooms and answered the inevitable "where are you from?" question. I made a point throughout the trip to always answer, "Des Moines" instead of "Iowa." It was somewhat entertaining to watch the confused faces finally, in most cases, make the connection and spit out the response, "Oh! EYE-oh-wah!"

Yes, EYE-oh-wah.

At one winery the response was, "Well, Iowa has been in the news lately."

"Yes," I replied. "I guess we have."

"Well, I think a lot of people expect that kind of thing to happen on the coasts, but not in Iowa."

There were a lot of things I could have said at that point, but I bit my tongue and just smiled and said, "Well, Iowa has quite a history of pioneering for civil rights, actually."

And it has. Iowa passed one of the nation's first civil rights laws in 1884. According to the Iowa Judicial Branch Web site, "the early Iowa courts were sometimes called upon to decide cases that involved volatile social or political controversies of the time...These decisions demonstrate legal foresight as well as deep and abiding respect for the values enshrined in our Constitution and Bill of Rights." As early as 1869, women were allowed to practice law in our state. In 1949, the Iowa Supreme Court upheld the decision to convict a downtown Des Moines soda fountain manager who refused service to two African-American customers. A New York Times op-ed writer recently acknowledged, in the same breath he used to make yet another tired "Iowa, of all places" remark, that his parents were an interracial couple who moved from Nebraska to Iowa to be married in 1958.

But the thing about Iowans -- except me, apparently -- is that we really don't care that much what everyone else thinks about us, nor do we expect you to know or care much about our state. We certainly don't toot our own horn or think much of those people who do. And that's probably a big reason so many people think we're a bunch of ignoramuses. But I would love to know upon which enlightened Iowa fact-finding mission these people came to their conclusions.

Before I get too punchy and thoroughly un-Iowan, I'll just leave you with a picture of my favorite T-shirt. (It's from SMASH, which has lots of great ones -- including the new "Iowa: The California of the United States" offering. Bold. Perhaps another sign the hayseeds are getting restless. Look out, coastal peoples: We'll take a side of sarcasm with our gay wedding tourism revenue.)

I'm too stupid for daylight savings time

I am driving myself crazy.

It all started this morning when I sent an e-mail announcement that an event would be held at 8 p.m. CST on Saturday. Then came the inevitable response:

"Shouldn't it be 8 p.m. CDT?"

I never have and probably never will understand this distinction. I understand the concept of "daylight savings time" in the sense that we get an extra hour of light during the spring/summer months through the processes of "springing forward" and "falling back."

Beyond that, I am clueless. In fact, it was just this morning that I realized I don't even know what the term "daylight savings time" means. I always thought "daylight savings time" was the time in which you were "saving" daylight -- meaning the dark time when you aren't getting much and saving it up for a happier, warmer time. Even though you are not actually "saving" anything, this at least made some logical sense in my admittedly twisted mind.

But now my admittedly twisted mind is blown. Apparently it is daylight savings time NOW, as in the time period in which we are using up daylight like George Hamilton on a bender. Does this make any sense? What daylight are we saving now? It seems like we're USING daylight now, not saving it. Does the D just stand for "daylight," or does it stand for "daylight savings?" Help!

I would feel incredibly stupid if it weren't for the fact that it seems like no one else can keep this straight, either. An unscientific survey of the innernets leads me to conclude that nearly half of people are getting this wrong right now. How is this helpful to anyone? The good news is, people know what you mean no matter what you write. No one is going to show up an hour early (Or would it be an hour late? Dammit!) for your event because you "S'd" when you should have "D'd."

David Prerau, author of "Seize the Daylight: The Contentious Story of Daylight Savings Time," says daylight savings time has been confusing people for years. In the 1950s and '60s, he told NPR in March, there was no national law about daylight savings time. So any city or town could decide to have daylight savings time and could also decide when to start it and when to end it. This resulted in utterly bizarre situations like the bus trip along Route 2 from Moundsville, W.V., to Steubenville, Ohio, which was only 35 miles but required riders to change their watches seven times in order to keep the correct time as they passed through cities with different laws. The sheer idea of it makes my brain bleed.

I'm sure some really smart people like astrophysicists or something will disagree with me, but I'd like to propose, at least for journalism's sake, that we drop the middle letter and just say "CT," "ET," etc., year-round and scrap all this nonsense about D and S and whatnot.

Because I am dumb.

I'll tweet yours if you facebook mine

I work in the communications/marketing segment of our beautiful U.S. economy. It's a rather large and all-encompassing group of people that likes to spend a lot of time getting together telling one another what to do. This typically happens at conferences, lunch and learns, Webinars, etc. I recognize the ridiculousness of these frequent and redundant gatherings, yet am powerless to resist them. (There's usually food.)

I attended two such gatherings today, both conducted by experts on the subject of "social media." And now, after attending literally dozens of educational sessions on this topic, I am struck by one simple fact: There is no such thing as a "social media expert."

Maybe we should stop anointing them.

A social media expert, as far as I can tell, is someone who devotes large chunks of his or her day to surfing the Internet, tweeting, and downloading LOLCats. Then he (or she...but let's get serious, here: they're men) tells others they should be doing the same thing. "You HAVE TO blog; it's essential for your business!" "If you're not on MySpace, the market will leave you behind. It's where everything's happening." "Use these sites, but also find a way to stand out on them; you can't just blend in with the crowd." Or my personal favorite today: "Blogging is just, well, journalism." (Edward R. Murrow turned over in his grave on that one.)

Let me be clear: I don't necessarily disagree with these urgings for communications professionals to embrace social media. Surely a savvy organization will and should find a way to reach its audience on a Web site like Facebook, but I would contend that you shouldn't have to think that hard about how or why you would do it. I would also contend that there are so few success stories in the realm of social media marketing that it is mathematically impossible for the hundreds (if not more) who purport to be experts on this topic to actually exist.

Oh, and if you have to ask what sorts of things you might write about on your blog, you probably DON'T NEED A BLOG.

(*gasp*)

That's right, I said it. No master's degree in Internet marketing for me.

The write stuff

So my husband started a blog. He also totally stole my move by starting his first post with the word "so." My husband has many talents (more than I care to acknowledge sometimes), including but not limited to: making buildings that don't fall down, ensuring offensive linemen can appropriately identify aiming points, and Tecmo Bowl. Oh, and giving his opinion on things. That's a talent we have in common.

I would also include writing as a talent of his. He has a way with words, even if it's not necessarily my way. I can definitely appreciate what he brings to the table when it comes to communicating, even if his communication is fraught with comma splices. (Semicolons for life! Holler at them! Woot! Also: I use cool slang terminology and have never met a parenthetical tangent I didn't like.)

I am fully aware that anything at which I have a talent pales in comparison to pretty much everything my husband does. But can I just have the writing thing? I was pretty much writing a book when I came out of the womb. I earned a journalism degree and people have paid me to write things for them on SEVERAL occasions. You might not know from reading this bullcrap, but I CAN arrange words into sentences in an entertaining manner...and even punctuate them correctly. It's sort of my thing.

And I don't hold anything at all against my husband for trying to do the same thing I do. I'm sure if I decided I wanted to try my hand at diagramming zone blocking schemes, he'd be fully supportive. It's just that...

He's already better at it than I am, and it's giving me a complex.

Well, better is a subjective term. But he's certainly more successful. I've been published on many occasions, but NO ONE has ever read this hot mess upon which you're currently gazing via ESPN.com. My husband writes a blog, and within 24 hours, BLAM: People are telling my father that they saw the link to his son-in-law's blog on ESPN.com.

But yes, I know: The blogosphere is big enough for the both of us.

I'll just be over here with my semicolons.

Things at which I suck...

...at least according to my own blog. In lieu of writing something new, here are links to some of my favorite past disaster blog posts. Here's to me sucking at more stuff in 2009 so I can write about it!

Things at which Kate has proven to be exceedingly bad (2005-2008):
1) Sports.
2) Modeling.
3) Reviewing restaurants: See Exhibit A and Exhibit B.
4) Holiday decorating: Two examples...yet again!
5) Placing an order at Starbucks. More than once.

*sigh*

Dishing it out.

Lord knows I try, but I admit I'm not the most tolerant person when confronted with poor customer service. Needless to say, I am NOT TOLERANT OF DISH NETWORK. The following was my actual experience today:

My home phone: Ring, ring.

Me: Hello?

Me: Yes?

Me: Hello?

(Why I was so patient I will never know; I usually hang up the second I don't get an immediate response after answering the phone.)

Telemarketer: Yes, may I please speak with Mrs. B?

Me: This is she.

Telemarketer: Oh, yes, hello. How are you?

Me: Fine, thank you.

Telemarketer: Um...I am calling today with Dish Network to thank you for being a loyal customer. Words, words, words...what we would like to do is offer you three free months of HBO and Starz for the holidays. (Insert unnecessarily long explanation of HBO and Starz's programming here.) Do you like movies?

Me: Yes.

Telemarketer: (Insert even more extoling of the virtues of HBO and Starz). The only thing we ask is...

(Here comes the catch.)

Telemarketer, annoyingly shifting gears mid-sentence: Let me first ask you if you are happy with your Dish Network service...

Me: Well, actually; I've been meaning to call and ask when we are going to be offered HD local channels. Your competitors are offering them, and I'd like to know when they will be available through Dish Network. Our price keeps going up, but we're not getting any new channel offerings.

Telemarketer: Um, I will have to refer you to customer service to answer that. Do you have the customer service phone number?

Me: Well, not in front of me...

Telemarketer: Well, all we're asking is that you commit to continuing your Dish Network service for 24 more months and we will activate your free HBO and Starz tonight.

Me: Wait a minute! Commit in what sense?

Telemarketer: Well, we're just asking you to commit to continuing your Dish Network service for 24 more months.

Me: Yes, I heard that part. So is this a binding verbal contract you're asking me to make right now?

Telemarketer: We're just asking you to commit for 24 more months.

(Sigh.)

Me: What would be the penalty if I cancelled my service before 24 months?

Telemarketer: Well, then you'd have to pay $10 a month for the remainder of the contract.

Me: So this is a contract and you would bill me after I removed my service as a penalty for breaking this verbal contract?

Telemarketer: Well...

Telemarketer: We just want to offer you three free months of HBO and Starz, so can I go ahead and sign you up for that?

Me: I just told you that there is no way I would commit to 24 months of Dish Network service if Dish Network isn't willing to commit to providing me with HD local channels. Why would I commit now, especially since you haven't been able to answer my question about that?

Telemarketer: ...

Me: Should I be calling customer service about this? Who can I talk to who would be able to answer my question?

Telemarketer: Yes, um, well that would probably be customer service.

Me: Okay, I'll call them. What's the number? Thank you.

Customer service department's phone: Ring, ring.

Customer service robot: Please state what you want to talk about...you can just say anything!

Me to robot: I received a puzzling telemarketing offer from Dish Network, about which I am seeking clarification from a real person.

(I'm sure that's on the menu.)

Customer service robot: I'm sorry; let me try to understand your issue. Say "billing," "programming," etc.

Me: Sigh. Programming, I guess...

So I get a very nice man in India who wants to know all my customer information. I provide everything, at which point he informs me I am not a customer and asks me what my relationship is with the account holder.

Me: If the account holder is Benjamin, then my relationship is SPOUSE.

Nice but Unhelpful Guy in India: Yes, that's the account holder. Let me see if you are also listed on the account. (typing sound) No, you're not. Therefore, I cannot answer any questions about your account.

Me: Excuse me, what?

Nice but Unhelpful Guy in India: I'm really sorry, but you're not authorized to make any changes on this account.

Me: Okay. First of all, I don't understand why the telemarketer would call and specifically ask ME to enter into a verbal contract on the account if I am not actually the "loyal customer" she said I was. But second, I don't necessarily want to make any changes; I would just like to know if you know anything more about this HBO and Starz offer and what all it entails.

Guy in India: I'm sorry, no. I am not familiar with that offer.

Me: Okay, well do you know if Dish Network is planning to offer my local channels in HD?

Guy in India: Well, you have to have the HD package for that.

Me: I am pretty sure we do. We have the HD DVR and get all the available cable channels in HD...

Guy in India: Oh. Well, for what market do you want to receive local HD channels?

Me: Des Moines, Iowa.

Guy in India: Well, I'm showing that WOI Channel 5 is available in HD. KCCI Channel 8...(rattles off all our local channels accurately, indicating that they are available in HD)

Me: Really? They're available? Are those not automatically included with the HD package?

Guy in India: Well, I can't really tell you because your name isn't on the account.

Me: Seriously? I just want to know how one goes about getting these channels; you can't answer that question for me unless I'm an account holder?

Guy in India: Yes, surely you understand the security concerns that would preclude me from doing that.

(No, I do not. Actually.)

Guy in India: Words, words, words....I think they could help you in technical support.

Me: Okay, then can I speak to someone in technical support?

Guy in India: Sure. Is there anything else I can help you with before I transfer you?

Me: Well, I don't think so; you really haven't been able to answer any of my questions.

Guy in India: Sorry about that. So, is there anything else I can help you with?

Me: Um, yeah...no.

Guy in India: I'm sorry.

Me: It's okay; thank you for transferring me to the technical folks. I'll try them.

(And here's the part where I really start to lose my $hit...)

Tech support rep: This is Jane, how can I help you?

(I try to calmly explain the whole mess again, with probably a modicum of irritation evident in my voice as I explain that I keep getting directed to people who can't help me.)

Tech support rep: Well, I'm afraid I can't help you because your name isn't on the account.

Me, irritated beyond all getout now: That's really frustrating. Why did Dish Network call and ask me to enter into a binding verbal contract on my account if I have no authority to know anything about my account?

Tech support rep, in a super snotty tone: Well, maybe because you were on a MARK-eting list.

Me: Okay, that doesn't make any sense. I just want to know when HD local channels will be offered in the Des Moines market. Pretend I am just Joe Schmo off the street and I want to know about this; what would you tell me?

Tech support rep: Well, I don't work in customer service.

(AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!)

Me: You have GOT to be kidding me. So, I need to call my husband and ask him to add me to the account just to get you to answer a question about how your product works, huh?

Tech support rep: Yes, I can only speak to you if you're an equal person on the account.

(Perhaps challenging someone's equality as a person is not the most semantically effective way of calming down an angry customer who is actually not a customer.)

Me: I just have to say that I think your customer service is terrible, inconsistent, inefficiently segmented, and completely unhelpful. I will call my husband, have him call Dish Network, and then call you back. Can I get your name so I can call you back so I don't have to re-explain all this to someone else?

Tech support rep: AS I TOLD YOU AT THE BEGINNING OF YOUR CALL, MY NAME IS JANE.

(True; she did.)

Jane: And if you call back they will just give you to the first available representative, anyway.

Way too late to make a long story short: I finally got my Dish Network personal equality status and called back to be blessed with the information that I will have to enter into a 24-month contract, anyway, if I want to get my HD local channels, because my equipment needs to be upgraded.

Don't sign up for Dish Network. Just saying.