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various flavours of yay. Also, can(n)on.
Monday, 9 November 2020 04:57 pmSerious kudos to any Americans likely to be reading this, for having ejected the Orange Menace handily by democratic processes in the teeth of despair, distraction, astonishingly egregious voter suppression, media manipulation, a no doubt by this stage burning desire to rather eject him into the heart of the sun by cannon, and the determination of a resolutely blinkered subset of your population to cling to said Orange Menace in the teeth of corruption, racism, sexism, anti-intellectualism and the wanton and unnecessary deaths of in excess of 230 000 people. Also, to bring in the orange-ejecting election result in the teeth of an entirely lateral and unexpected broadside from the Supernatural fandom meltdown, which has catapulted Destiel to heights of trending despite the urgency of the election news. It's been a bloody bizarre week, is all I can say. Were I to have grandchildren, they'd never believe it. But it's deeply satisfying, that the best efforts of the bloody Republican corruption machine couldn't actually torpedo the election results. Y'all reasonable Americans have worked so hard, and the world is so grateful.
Can I also just say? Four Seasons Total Landscaping. It's an entirely symbolic and deliciously schadenfreude-laden ending to this whole sorry mess. Yes indeed does the Orange Menace exist, futilely and incompetently, between the sex shop and the crematorium. Snerk.
In other, unrelated yay-news, I have prevailed over the labyrinthine twistings of French banking websites! I spent twenty minutes on the phone last week with an utterly delightful French helpline lady whose English was, it transpired, only somewhat better than my French, which means we negotiated the conversation haltingly and bilingually, with much recourse to slightly frangled self-translation as things became utterly bogged down. The eventual upshot was that she couldn't help me with the account access issue, that needed to go through a different helpline, but she could undertake not to close my account while she sent me forms through the post so I could submit the necessary documentation.
I boggled a bit at doing technical cellphone access queries in French through another helpline, and made one last-ditch attempt at a web form, and the third version I found actually worked! a nice techie person has just sent me a charming email to say they have eradicated the extraneous zero in the phone number I originally uploaded, which I could swear I didn't actually insert myself, I have no idea where the system unearthed it, and it now dutifully sends me French SMSes in South Africa. This means I can access the account (it works!) and have now uploaded all the necessary documents, thereby rendering entirely futile both the desperate conversation with the lovely helpline lady, and all her forms.
But it's ok. I exist again, and have proven my existence in the nick of time, and in the teeth of language difficulties. I am exhausted, bloodied but unbowed. As is, I think, America. I'll take it.
Can I also just say? Four Seasons Total Landscaping. It's an entirely symbolic and deliciously schadenfreude-laden ending to this whole sorry mess. Yes indeed does the Orange Menace exist, futilely and incompetently, between the sex shop and the crematorium. Snerk.
In other, unrelated yay-news, I have prevailed over the labyrinthine twistings of French banking websites! I spent twenty minutes on the phone last week with an utterly delightful French helpline lady whose English was, it transpired, only somewhat better than my French, which means we negotiated the conversation haltingly and bilingually, with much recourse to slightly frangled self-translation as things became utterly bogged down. The eventual upshot was that she couldn't help me with the account access issue, that needed to go through a different helpline, but she could undertake not to close my account while she sent me forms through the post so I could submit the necessary documentation.
I boggled a bit at doing technical cellphone access queries in French through another helpline, and made one last-ditch attempt at a web form, and the third version I found actually worked! a nice techie person has just sent me a charming email to say they have eradicated the extraneous zero in the phone number I originally uploaded, which I could swear I didn't actually insert myself, I have no idea where the system unearthed it, and it now dutifully sends me French SMSes in South Africa. This means I can access the account (it works!) and have now uploaded all the necessary documents, thereby rendering entirely futile both the desperate conversation with the lovely helpline lady, and all her forms.
But it's ok. I exist again, and have proven my existence in the nick of time, and in the teeth of language difficulties. I am exhausted, bloodied but unbowed. As is, I think, America. I'll take it.
