A friend of mine is an expert in alternative skin care and health. She is starting her own line of products and has a very informative blog on the industry. Check it out here: Willow & Oak Skin Care
While having to take a PTO day to succumb to the ineptitude and monopoly of National Grid, I’d like to focus on the positives. Such as the sound of the rain beating against the floor and railing of my balcony as I sit and write with a good cup of coffee and a warm dog at my feet. I’m making great progress with my spec script and the guidance of both my professor, Ms. Kim Borwick, and the thorough advice of Alan Watt via his book, The 90-Day Rewrite. As I sit and wait for what will inevitably be a nightmarish encounter with a technician who will be soaking wet and in no mood to turn on someone’s gas, I will soak in all the calm and serenity before the chaos barges through like ketchup in a glass bottle. I hate monopolies. 
Verizon, Minimum Wage, and a Fuck Not Given
It is so obvious to me that Verizon FiOS bases their low-level “customer service” call-center somewhere in the Philippines. Not only do I recognize the unique accent each and every time I call 1-800-VERIZON, memories of all my filipino friends in high school come swarming back to me. They are filled with friendly gestures and never seem to lose patience or nerve. They’re always so polite and sound like gentle, little, delicate fairies fluttering about while you yell and curse and vent out frustrations at them. 
It is almost enough to calm you down…….almost.
I say almost because when they cannot help you and your bigger than normal issue (which is why I call in the first place–I am quite capable of doing my own troubleshooting with online FAQ’s, technical checkups and online chat service available and not to mention with Verizon, bigger than normal issues are, how can I put this, NORMAL!) they transfer you to another department (probably the next cubicle) and this goes on for 2-3 times until finally they transfer you to an American. Now, this is where it gets ugly. Because at least the pseudo Asian, pseudo Spanish folk across the Pacific feign a sort of politeness that can almost excuse their uselessness. Here in America, the phone reps literally do not give a flying fuck! Sadly, this is not isolated to Verizon alone. I just happened to realize it while being hung up on by an American Verizon representative. Yes, this representative represents all of what Verizon and large corporations of that ilk stand for. In fact, they are a bi-product of society and the common man’s utter ignorance.
It all came to me as I was deciding who to be mad at. I could be like the abusive husband and father and take out all my life’s frustrations and failures out on the wife and kids, but I’d still have to deal with the Verizon issue at a later time. I could get mad at the lumpia and ketchup eating South-Pacific asians, but they literally did nothing wrong; they have been given only enough information and technical prowess to do no wrong. They leave all the wrongdoing to the Americans who could give a shit less about you and your trifle issues. As soon as I was transfered, I heard a voice as lazy and apathetic as I’ve ever heard, with no enthusiasm and no hint of the type of tone used when someone really wants to help someone else. She “axed” for my name and when I said my seemingly-complicated Japanese surname, she uttered the first consonant, hesitated, and then had the nerve to pause and say, “Uh…sorry. I wasn’t able to hear you. Can you repeat your name, please? Uh (with no pause) there seems to be a bad connection so you can call back at a later time.” Click. This was after I had been on the phone for 20 minutes, dealing with an issue that spans the past two weeks. 
Backstory: I just bought a condo in Brooklyn and if anyone knows what the process of buying property in New York City is like, you’ll understand that your cable provider is the LAST thing on your mind. Well, at the time I had Verizon FiOS. I closed on the condo. Time for celebration, right? Not according to Verizon! They do not service my building. I can request FiOS to be installed but it will take anywhere from two to six months! Yes! MONTHS! Bill DeBlasio and his grand idea to give away free internet to housing projects makes it so that the poorest of the poor don’t even have to worry about 2-6 months without internet! But I have to. Fuck that, I said! Close my shit up, I’m going to Time Warner. At least they have no contracts. They closed my account and asked for my new address, said they would mail me a return package so that I could return my modem and cable boxes. Great! Saves me a trip to some god-awful FiOS store. But of course, all things promising with regard to Verizon are empty at best. I waited two weeks. I got a text telling me to return their equipment and realized I had to make the fucking dreaded call to their fairytale land where hints of Tagalog seep through like rainwater through a drafty window sill.
I made the call, got the runaround, was transferred a few times, more runaround, transferred some more, until someone finally understood that they needed to transfer me over to an American who didn’t give a shit about my problem, because really it is their problem and they don’t have it in the queue to fix their problems any time soon.
So, who am I mad at? Not the wife and kids, not the filipinos (bless their hearts and infinite patience). You see where I’m going with this? We fucking Americans. That’s going to be the name of my next album, BTW, so don’t steal it. We fucking Americans (has a nice ring to it). Not all of us. Just the one’s who make all the noise, the one’s with no bite behind their bark. The one’s who won’t get an education even when it’s there for the taking. There are so many people outside this country who would sever arms and legs to get an American higher education. Instead, we’d rather work at McDonalds all our life. 
We think our chances of making more money by causing a fuss about minimum wage is better than getting an education and therefore getting a better job. How does that make any sense and how is that at all related to Verizon?
Well, I think I have established that most American customer service representatives don’t give a shit about you and I don’t think I had to really establish that anyway. Why? Because they probably get paid pretty shitty and if you get paid shitty in America, you do the bare minimum. 
You go home and blow all your money on weed because it takes you to a frame of mind where….wait for it….you don’t give a shit! I did customer service when I was 15. I hated it. I did something about it. I learned graphic design and I got a better job. Customer service is not meant to be a career, at least not in today’s world. Machines are taking these jobs over, and why? Because people who try to make a career out of these jobs ask for more money? They probably don’t get drug tested. They probably don’t get judged for what they wear or how they act or what they post on Twitter. They can do whatever the hell they want because there is no accountability and their position is so menial that responsibility is not a requirement. In other words, they are comfortable. This lower class attitude where we all think we are entitled to everything has got to stop. It is causing problems that trickle down to areas where they don’t need to be. Like my life, for instance! And many others I’m sure.
So, am I mad at Verizon? Surprisingly, not so much. They as a company, are doing what a fiscally responsible company needs to: outsourcing their phone reps because it costs too damn much to employ a whole bunch of lower class Americans who don’t give a fuck, who would rather go on not giving a fuck about anyone or anything but themselves as they protest for more money without having to really work for it. I’m sure people will say these jobs are hard, backbreaking at times, stressful, yada yada. You don’t like it? Get a better job. Can’t get a better job? Figure out why that is and do something about it. I’ll even tell you where to start: By giving a fuck!
Special K Original
Special K Original cereal (not the drug, although I’ve never tried it, so…) has got to be the most perfect cereal. It’s good at any time of day or even two or three times a day. It’s good crunchy, it’s good soggy. It’s good in ice cold milk, it’s good in lukewarm milk. It’s not too sweet and not too bland. There’s always a little crunch no matter how long it’s been lying in the milk pool. For a cereal, it’s on the healthy side and it fills you up just enough to get you to your next meal. In my opinion, it can’t get any more perfectly utilitarian than that. Good on you, Special K. KUTGW.
Joel Demonsteen
Not much is more scary than Joel Osteen. Of all the inhuman things I could be stuck in a basement room with, I would dread him and I in that room. I could just imagine the skin peeling off from his rat face and exposing the demon hiding inside. Then his blonde plastic wife entering as her hair turns into daggers, her lips split her face, mirroring the demon her husband has become. They enclose me in a corner and hand me a bible. I tell them amen and they retreat. They turn around to exit the room and look back, their guises returned to normal. I smell shit and piss as I tremble and cry. One of the daggers lies on the floor. I think I’ll stab my eyes and bleed out.
First Self-Published Work Available Now!
My school made me self-publish a book. The nerve! So I published a collection of my short stories.
My school made me write a press release for it. The nerve! Here it is:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Emerging author, Kelly Kusumoto, self-publishes his first eBook.
Brooklyn, NY March 23, 2015
With five flash fiction stories published and a slew of unpublished works in his arsenal, emerging author, Kelly Kusumoto felt it was time to dive into the self-publishing world. Using the aggregate site, Smashwords, Kelly’s first self-published eBook titled, First Works: A Collection of Short Stories is now available online for your viewing pleasure. Not only can you download the eBook on Smashwords for ninety nine cents, it is also available on your favorite eBook platforms like Amazon Kindle, iTunes and Apple iBooks, Barnes & Noble, and other fine literary fiction stores.
Kelly Kusumoto has been writing professionally since 1998 where he has written for the Arroyo Seco Journal and NOLA Gallerie in Los Angeles. He has also written articles and reviews for cheaprooms.com and is the lead writer for Los Yorkers Productions, an indie film house based in New York City.
Get your copy of First Works now and find out why this up and coming author is making waves in the Creative Writing world.
Find out more about Kelly Kusumoto on his Smashwords profile site or on the Los Yorkers site here. ###
If you are interested in purchasing a copy (only $0.99) or finding out more info, check out the book at Smashwords. Thanks!
First Hand @Mysterical-E
Please read my newest published story on Mysterical-E, titled First Hand.
I hope you enjoy it! Please share and leave feedback! THANKS!!!
Stuck in my head
Thanks to my filmmaking partner, Rob Shaffer, I can’t get these two songs out of my head. People look at me funny when they randomly invade my mind on the subway, or walking down the street, or sitting in my cubicle at work.
The Difference Between American and British Humour
Bingo, Ricky. I agree, with no surprise. Seeing as though he is one of my favorite screenwriters, I truly think I was born in the wrong country. I am happy to be American, but for me, it just seems too small. Borders, in general, are rather stupid, except for the ones made by large bodies of water…those aren’t stupid. For me, I sometimes feel alienated or wrong for liking British humour over American humor. Is that sad or what?
Don’t quote me
A classmate asked me if he should reference a famous quote he used in his paper. This was my response:
That one is tough…I used a popular quote once and went through a maze looking for the original source. Now I don’t remember if it was required or not? I’d say if you reference it…it won’t hurt your grade, but if you don’t reference it and it hurts your grade, that’s pretty ridiculous and petty if you ask me…
…My quote was something everybody knows and I think it came from some philosopher in the Dark Ages, then was used by Lincoln, who changed it a little, to a bunch of other people. Damn, of course I can’t remember it! But I went as far back as I could to try to get the original source…funny cos it was in Old English and if someone said it in Old English today, no one would understand it. Everything but the quote is coming back to me. Anyway, I went on a tangent just to reference this damn quote for a dumb paper and now I have this dumb story to show for it….so there’s that.
I’m not sure if I answered his question.
A Thought a Day Keeps Insanity Away 