Damned computers!
Actually, it's not computers' fault – it the fault of the person who designed the software without thinking further than the end of his (or her) nose.
You might think that, with thirty years in the IT business, I'd either be an expert on how to get around the foibles or become numbed to them.
Neither.
So, when I get the zillionth email from AMEX informing me of suitable job postings within their company – which I can't access because I no longer have my User-ID or password and, to be honest, don't remember whether I ever did - I am irritated to learn that the only way to cancel the automated delivery of this email is to visit my AMEX profile and uncheck the item that authorizes email. In order to do that, I have to login with my User-Id and password; yet another example of circular logic.
It started me thinking back over all the other irritations with technology and how little effort the designers seem to put into what they intend for us to use daily. It's not always computers – software is just the most recent example of people not thinking. Similar incidents have happened many times and each sticks out in my memory, as it was so simple and yet so impossible to fix.
Imagine these...
Delta airlines' air miles account used the ZIP code from the original setup location address as some form of security PIN, but I couldn't remember where I had lived five years previously when opening the account, so I couldn't change any details or reclaim mileage. My problems was that I had somehow managed to acquire three separate accounts and wanted to merge them. Neither supervisors nor managers could help and the problem was never solved. Somewhere in the internals of their system there are still three air miles accounts bearing my name, all with different addresses, ZIP codes and mileage balances.
It's not that long ago that I spent a good part of an afternoon trying to book a Hertz rental car for collection at Auckland airport in New Zealand. After struggling with a non-intuitive dial-up system for almost an hour, constantly back-tracking to correct lost data, I reached the payment section to be told that the 'special rate' was only applicable to US residents. The site then closed. I am a US resident. I used a US credit card. I had a US address. So what was it trying to say? I never found out.
Westpac Bank Visa (Australia) list only toll-free phone numbers to call in case of emergency – but those numbers are only accessible from within Australia. The so-called 'international' numbers, which bear no relation to the toll-free ones, appear only on their web site. Who thinks to check the back of their card before traveling and ensure that all phone numbers are accessible world wide? Isn't is possible that someone might be in an emergency situation – without access to the Internet?
Everyone in the western world, I assume, has some tale concerning telephone voice menu systems. It's not simply that the required option is not obvious - some of them give no option to press keys and rely entirely on speech recognition, which fails to understand my accent. After several iterations of trying to pronounce a simple 'Yes' in a manner that the machine might accept, it will give up and allow me to press '1' instead, or even allow a person to come to the phone but, by this time, I am in no mood to be polite. What do people do, whose knowledge of the language is slight?
Some time ago, in England - my own country - I found it impossible to prove that I was entitled to open a new bank account. I could not identify myself to the bank's satisfaction. I produced a passport, credit cards, a British driving license, a British telephone statement, a contract of employment, British charge cards, British bank statements and a cheque book. One by one, each was dismissed as insufficient proof for one reason or other connected with security. The most absurd part of the situation was that I was trying to open a second account at the bank where I currently held an account that had been open for eighteen years and where I was personally known. It did not matter. Rules were rules, I was told.
Telephone credit card banking systems all require you to enter you 16-digit account number 'for faster service' but, as soon as an operator comes on the line, she demands that you dictate it to her. I have a Capital One master card and one of their phone options is to increase the credit line. I tried that and immediately heard a recording saying that it was not possible to change the credit limit in this way.
I get statements from my health insurance company, supposedly to inform me of whether they've paid a claim, how much they've paid or why they've decline it - but the numbers make no sense, the totals do not represent the figures they are supposed to include and I am bewildered. When I call, after navigating myriad telephone voice menus, I get a call center girl who knows nothing and can do no more than read to me exactly what I can already see, but not understand, from the statement. I cannot speak to a supervisor but one will supposedly call me within 24 hours. It never happens.
Citibank's system dictates that they send your new credit card by regular mail. If you are not there to receive it, you have moved or there is some other reason that it cannot be delivered, it will be returned to them and your account will be suspended without warning. It happened to me five times in a single month before a Citibank manager suggested changing my address to a friend's, where a new card could be delivered and simply reside, unused, allowing the one in my hand - sent to me at a hotel via UPS - to work.
So many telephone systems either have no listed keys entry to get a human operator that there is even a web site dedicated to what key, keys or commands one must give to summon one. It's not always '0'. Sometimes it's '00' or an asterisk or two pound keys or a combination even more convoluted and unguessable.
Orbitz travel booking site, which has multiple credit cards listed on my account, will not allow me to change the details or delete one without entering the 3-digit security code; the number printed on the back, which fades quickly. That card is destroyed, which is why I want to delete it. I have no record of the 3-digit security code – after all, they tell you not to write it down....
We're heading into the realm of science fiction as it was before computers took over the world. Our lives are controled by computers and by simpletons who are little more than mouthpieces for the machine.
In the 1980's and before, no one would actually believe that society would be so dumb that they would believe every line on a computer screen or bank statement - but now they do. Otherwise intelligent adults are convinced that anything the computer says is correct. I have listened to educated people trying to rationalize and defend what is so obviously an error – as if incorrect data is something for which the machine should be forgiven.
Where do we go from here?
I don't know.
Maybe the third world has it right.
I'm gonna go live in a hut.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Sunday, August 9, 2009
37: A Town With No Beer
The disappointment is tangible.
The frustration hangs there in the air like an over ripe pear not quite fallen from its tree.
It's like the building anticipation of sex after not seeing your girlfriend for a month, waiting throughout the day for her to arrive and then hearing that she's not in the mood.
After pedaling more than seventy miles through the South Carolina heat, I arrived in Southpoint last Sunday afternoon, tired and sweaty, hungry and thirsty, to find that it resided in a partial dry county. Nothing alcoholic could be sold, served, given away or in any way dispensed, on the Lord's Day.
Suddenly, all I wanted was a cold beer. Not being able, the desire intensified until I could think of nothing except a chilled glass, frothing over as the bartender filled it.
“Where's the county line?” I asked the check in clerk, almost in desperation. Maybe it was simply over the bridge and slightly out of sight. Another five minutes' worth of pedaling.
No.
“That's what most people say,” she said with the cheeriness of one who didn't care. “Right after they stare at me for ten seconds and then wanna know if I'm joking. It's thirty miles south on the interstate. Staying or going?”
Thirty miles. By bike, tired and aching? No way.
Perhaps this explains why all the motels were cheap. The standard, familiar names were all there – Knights Inn, Days Inn and the like - surrounded by a host of others and many sported signs promising rates of $30. Probably those prices doubled or tripled on any other day.
The inability to sell booze extended into restaurants being closed altogether. “They don't do so well on Sundays," the cheery desk clerk said, "So most of 'em are shut. The ones that are open become family places and you find a lot of kids. Folks around here who like a drink go to the liquor store on a Saturday and then stay home with the TV on Sunday nights. The Lord's Day gets us all somehow.”
Who is this Lord, I wanted to demand, who said that you shouldn't drink on Sunday? Does it say that in the bible? What about other religious faiths? Maybe they don't see it the same way. Why should the city elders, or whoever they were - probably upright Christian souls - determine that everyone else should follow their religious imposition? After living in places where no such restriction existed, losing this simple ability away without warning was like regressing to childhood and having my bedtime cut by an hour.
There was no point arguing with the friendly desk clerk so, with an inaccurate grunt of, "Heathen town," I accepted the key and went to clean up. A steak was just so much meat without a nice glass of wine. Burger without the beer was only fat-loaded ground beef. It's sad, I suppose, that the absence of a bottle changed things so much.
Ruby Tuesday's was open but the bar itself remained in darkness. I sat in a booth and ordered a salad, self-righteously pretending that this enforced period of dryness was healthy. It was, of course, but just because something's good for your doesn't mean you enjoy being forced.
In a way, it was funny, I'd been dry all week for one reason or another and now, when I intended to reward myself with a glass or two of wine and a nice meal, the realities of a small town in the the bible belt had hit me.
So, fresh and entirely hangover-free, I left Southpoint earlier than intended and headed to Wilmington. Perhaps, if I'd had a drink or two the night before, I'd have left later. I'd certainly have traveled at a different rate and would've encountered the railroad crossing at a different time; a time either before the rain began or well into the storm, which means that it would've been either dry or I'd have been more careful and focused more attention on the road. With than enhanced attentiveness, I may not have skidded, lost the bike from under me and smashed my wrist and head into the ground.
The injury, although not serious and certainly not life-threatening, forced a three-day rest period, which included, due to boredom, three evenings visiting local pubs and restaurants. Southpoint's enforced Lord's Day abstinence led directly to pain and enhanced consumption.
Where's the sense in that?
Sobriety hurts.
The frustration hangs there in the air like an over ripe pear not quite fallen from its tree.
It's like the building anticipation of sex after not seeing your girlfriend for a month, waiting throughout the day for her to arrive and then hearing that she's not in the mood.
After pedaling more than seventy miles through the South Carolina heat, I arrived in Southpoint last Sunday afternoon, tired and sweaty, hungry and thirsty, to find that it resided in a partial dry county. Nothing alcoholic could be sold, served, given away or in any way dispensed, on the Lord's Day.
Suddenly, all I wanted was a cold beer. Not being able, the desire intensified until I could think of nothing except a chilled glass, frothing over as the bartender filled it.
“Where's the county line?” I asked the check in clerk, almost in desperation. Maybe it was simply over the bridge and slightly out of sight. Another five minutes' worth of pedaling.
No.
“That's what most people say,” she said with the cheeriness of one who didn't care. “Right after they stare at me for ten seconds and then wanna know if I'm joking. It's thirty miles south on the interstate. Staying or going?”
Thirty miles. By bike, tired and aching? No way.
Perhaps this explains why all the motels were cheap. The standard, familiar names were all there – Knights Inn, Days Inn and the like - surrounded by a host of others and many sported signs promising rates of $30. Probably those prices doubled or tripled on any other day.
The inability to sell booze extended into restaurants being closed altogether. “They don't do so well on Sundays," the cheery desk clerk said, "So most of 'em are shut. The ones that are open become family places and you find a lot of kids. Folks around here who like a drink go to the liquor store on a Saturday and then stay home with the TV on Sunday nights. The Lord's Day gets us all somehow.”
Who is this Lord, I wanted to demand, who said that you shouldn't drink on Sunday? Does it say that in the bible? What about other religious faiths? Maybe they don't see it the same way. Why should the city elders, or whoever they were - probably upright Christian souls - determine that everyone else should follow their religious imposition? After living in places where no such restriction existed, losing this simple ability away without warning was like regressing to childhood and having my bedtime cut by an hour.
There was no point arguing with the friendly desk clerk so, with an inaccurate grunt of, "Heathen town," I accepted the key and went to clean up. A steak was just so much meat without a nice glass of wine. Burger without the beer was only fat-loaded ground beef. It's sad, I suppose, that the absence of a bottle changed things so much.
Ruby Tuesday's was open but the bar itself remained in darkness. I sat in a booth and ordered a salad, self-righteously pretending that this enforced period of dryness was healthy. It was, of course, but just because something's good for your doesn't mean you enjoy being forced.
In a way, it was funny, I'd been dry all week for one reason or another and now, when I intended to reward myself with a glass or two of wine and a nice meal, the realities of a small town in the the bible belt had hit me.
So, fresh and entirely hangover-free, I left Southpoint earlier than intended and headed to Wilmington. Perhaps, if I'd had a drink or two the night before, I'd have left later. I'd certainly have traveled at a different rate and would've encountered the railroad crossing at a different time; a time either before the rain began or well into the storm, which means that it would've been either dry or I'd have been more careful and focused more attention on the road. With than enhanced attentiveness, I may not have skidded, lost the bike from under me and smashed my wrist and head into the ground.
The injury, although not serious and certainly not life-threatening, forced a three-day rest period, which included, due to boredom, three evenings visiting local pubs and restaurants. Southpoint's enforced Lord's Day abstinence led directly to pain and enhanced consumption.
Where's the sense in that?
Sobriety hurts.
Thursday, August 6, 2009
36: Statesboro Blues
I'm trapped in Statesboro, Georgia. Not the Georgia in Russia although frequently, over the last week, I have wished to be there. No, I am in a land where the word 'ham' spans two syllables.
"Woke up this morning...."
Tuesday:
I reach Statesboro in the late afternoon, looking forward to a rest day. The sprained wrist is now almost better, but my back is beginning to stiffen. It probably needs an infusion of beer. Such demands will be met.
Familiar motel names proliferate along South Main Street: Ramada, Best Western, Days Inn, Baymont, Quality Inn and more. Budget Inn has a sign promising $29.99. I'll take it. Sixty bucks for two nights is impressively low. Porsches, BMWs and Mercedes stand in the parking lot, so how bad can it be?
Bad.
Only two light bulbs work. The towels look as though they've been used for the last two decades. Hopefully the stains on the bedspread are only water.
Those decent cars outside probably indicate a secondary use as a crack house and have little bearing on state of the motel, which might be just a cover. Should have seen the sign in small print on the door threatening 'No refunds'. Note to self: OPEN YOUR BLOODY EYES.
I'm starting to feel as though someone has hit me over the kidneys with a baseball bat. It will be good to finally reach Tampa in two weeks and visit the chiropractor. Now though, it's time for that medicinal beer.
One might think that a restaurant named the French Quarter, advertising itself in the Yellow Pages with phrases such as 'Balcony Dining', 'Authentic Cajun Cuisine' and 'Statesboro's home for live music', might embody a flavour of New Orleans.
One would be sadly disappointed.
The balcony, I am told, is not open to the public. A drunk at the bar, his face so bloated it looks sandpapered, thinks there was karaoke last week, but can't be sure. The single laminated sheet of paper that is the menu, is devoid of anything from New Orleans except gumbo and the only item not fried is the crab cake special. I ask how they're prepared - fried also? "Oh no," the under age bartender reassures me, "Sauteed."
I order a beer - bottled Sweetwater 420 Extra Pale Ale - but do not get a glass. There are glasses for wine, glasses for shots, but nothing for beer. I ask for a plastic water cup and all four regulars watch in silence as I fill it from the bottle. Maybe they think I'm gay.
Conversation around the bar concentrates on such subjects as why Person-A had to whack Person-B with a pool queue, recent fights and how many Jagermesister shots it takes to get Jeremiah really ferked erp, all at a volume great enough to wake the inhabitants of the next town. Hopefully, this is not the intelligencia of Statesboro.
Wednesday:
I can't stand up straight and even the most comprehensive stretching does no good. The back is killing me and I feel like an old man. The shower is a chest height so I have to bend and the bath moves like stepping on marshland. Finding a local chiropractor is now a requirement, rather than a wistful thought. How? Maybe the office has Yellow Pages?
I struggle up the slight incline and the desk clerk appears from a back room, as if by magic. His head is wrapped in something that could be a cross between a turban and a towel and he has a large orange paint blob where his nose meets his forehead. If I wasn't in such pain, I might have laughed. There's a pause after I tell him what I want, as though I should justify the request, but then he disappears again, leaving the back room door open. I can see nothing in the dark void but the smell that emanates threatens to dissolve the hairs in my nose. When he returns, he hands a Yellow pages across the desk and tells me to leave it in the room.
Armed with information and now in more pain that I have experienced for years, I organise a chiropractor and make my way, slowly, to his office.
It's a painful adjustment and I still hurt afterwards. Just swelling, Dr Ward said. The joints are back where they were supposed to be, he said. Take Ibuprofen, he said. Ice it every hour lying face down, he said. He said a lot of things, including that I should come back on Friday.
Some things in life are just hard and icing your own back, like applying your own sunscreen, is one of them. It's a fundamental rule of the universe - if something's good for you, feels nice and is desperately necessary - it's impossible to do. Necessity is the mother of invention though and handfuls of painkillers helped me through.
Thursday:
Back is stiff, but better and stretching helps. I'm moving from the crack house motel today. The Budget Inn has been a learning experience and I thank the owners for their material contributions to my next book. The Baymont, at the opposite end of the quality scale, offers a mini-suite, high-def TV and in-room computer, all for under $60 per night. If I have to stay in Statesboro, a little luxury will make up for the pain.
It occurs to me that I could use this time productively, by buying a computer book - C# perhaps - and learning whatever I can without actually having computer access. I'm directed to a local bookshop but, apart from fiction, they have simply a few technology reference shelves where books on photography, writing and motor mechanics sit shoulder to shoulder with the single one on computers, all mixed together in alphabetical order by authors with no concern for subject. It should surprise me, this lack of educational material, but, strangely, it doesn't.
After more pills, more icing and a sleep, I feel in need of sustenance. Across the street is RJ's, a renowned steak house and I believe a rare New York Strip and a whole bottle of Cabernet should be mine, but I am thwarted. Yes, they are the best steak house in town, I am assured, by a waiter who looks like a young church minister in training, but something persuades me otherwise when I am informed that they do not serve wine - and that is the end of my steak aspirations.
That is how I discovered my own slice of heaven in the form of Christoper's most wonderful eating and drinking establishment. People at the bar don't shout. Conversations don't include bragging about violence or bouts of drinking and customers don't look as though the task of propping up the bar all day is theirs forever.
I stay there until they close. I don't care if I have a hangover - which is just as well. Plans for tomorrow include the second and final visit to Dr Ward, resting for the day and then leave early Saturday; back on the road again....
Friday:
Fuck, hangover city. At least I can stand up. Shit, my head hurts. The adjustment helps but I am informed that yet another will be necessary on Monday. Will I ever get out of Statesboro?
I'm bored. It's not even noon. I find a local coffee shop but it serves the usual thin translucent stuff from an urn brewed at some time in the past and I have to put up with three sound sources in the form of background music, the TV and a crying baby. There's only so much thin coffee you can drink without bursting. How long do I have to wait before it's acceptable to go for a beer?
I decide to try the bike. There's a cinema two miles away so I go there and find a Books-a-Million, which has many computers books and - oh thank you Lord, I am a true believer, yes I am, whatever I said before, hallelujah - a STARBUCKS. Oh, the world is is mine, la la la. I love Statesboro.
Not for long.
I sense the onset of toothache and get back on the phone immediately. Statesboro dentists don't work weekends, I discover, and Friday is seen as one, so the earliest visit would be Monday. After the chiropractor, perhaps? Make a day of it? I call three, but all are busy for the entire week. First available appointment would be a week on Tuesday. Should I go or should I stay? I could just take more painkillers. I hate Statesboro.
Credence Clearwater revival recorded a song once called Lodi, about a town that they couldn't leave. Maybe I'll write one about this place. I could call it Statesboro Blues.
Oh - someone already did that?
"Woke up this morning...."
Tuesday:
I reach Statesboro in the late afternoon, looking forward to a rest day. The sprained wrist is now almost better, but my back is beginning to stiffen. It probably needs an infusion of beer. Such demands will be met.
Familiar motel names proliferate along South Main Street: Ramada, Best Western, Days Inn, Baymont, Quality Inn and more. Budget Inn has a sign promising $29.99. I'll take it. Sixty bucks for two nights is impressively low. Porsches, BMWs and Mercedes stand in the parking lot, so how bad can it be?
Bad.
Only two light bulbs work. The towels look as though they've been used for the last two decades. Hopefully the stains on the bedspread are only water.
Those decent cars outside probably indicate a secondary use as a crack house and have little bearing on state of the motel, which might be just a cover. Should have seen the sign in small print on the door threatening 'No refunds'. Note to self: OPEN YOUR BLOODY EYES.
I'm starting to feel as though someone has hit me over the kidneys with a baseball bat. It will be good to finally reach Tampa in two weeks and visit the chiropractor. Now though, it's time for that medicinal beer.
One might think that a restaurant named the French Quarter, advertising itself in the Yellow Pages with phrases such as 'Balcony Dining', 'Authentic Cajun Cuisine' and 'Statesboro's home for live music', might embody a flavour of New Orleans.
One would be sadly disappointed.
The balcony, I am told, is not open to the public. A drunk at the bar, his face so bloated it looks sandpapered, thinks there was karaoke last week, but can't be sure. The single laminated sheet of paper that is the menu, is devoid of anything from New Orleans except gumbo and the only item not fried is the crab cake special. I ask how they're prepared - fried also? "Oh no," the under age bartender reassures me, "Sauteed."
I order a beer - bottled Sweetwater 420 Extra Pale Ale - but do not get a glass. There are glasses for wine, glasses for shots, but nothing for beer. I ask for a plastic water cup and all four regulars watch in silence as I fill it from the bottle. Maybe they think I'm gay.
Conversation around the bar concentrates on such subjects as why Person-A had to whack Person-B with a pool queue, recent fights and how many Jagermesister shots it takes to get Jeremiah really ferked erp, all at a volume great enough to wake the inhabitants of the next town. Hopefully, this is not the intelligencia of Statesboro.
Wednesday:
I can't stand up straight and even the most comprehensive stretching does no good. The back is killing me and I feel like an old man. The shower is a chest height so I have to bend and the bath moves like stepping on marshland. Finding a local chiropractor is now a requirement, rather than a wistful thought. How? Maybe the office has Yellow Pages?
I struggle up the slight incline and the desk clerk appears from a back room, as if by magic. His head is wrapped in something that could be a cross between a turban and a towel and he has a large orange paint blob where his nose meets his forehead. If I wasn't in such pain, I might have laughed. There's a pause after I tell him what I want, as though I should justify the request, but then he disappears again, leaving the back room door open. I can see nothing in the dark void but the smell that emanates threatens to dissolve the hairs in my nose. When he returns, he hands a Yellow pages across the desk and tells me to leave it in the room.
Armed with information and now in more pain that I have experienced for years, I organise a chiropractor and make my way, slowly, to his office.
It's a painful adjustment and I still hurt afterwards. Just swelling, Dr Ward said. The joints are back where they were supposed to be, he said. Take Ibuprofen, he said. Ice it every hour lying face down, he said. He said a lot of things, including that I should come back on Friday.
Some things in life are just hard and icing your own back, like applying your own sunscreen, is one of them. It's a fundamental rule of the universe - if something's good for you, feels nice and is desperately necessary - it's impossible to do. Necessity is the mother of invention though and handfuls of painkillers helped me through.
Thursday:
Back is stiff, but better and stretching helps. I'm moving from the crack house motel today. The Budget Inn has been a learning experience and I thank the owners for their material contributions to my next book. The Baymont, at the opposite end of the quality scale, offers a mini-suite, high-def TV and in-room computer, all for under $60 per night. If I have to stay in Statesboro, a little luxury will make up for the pain.
It occurs to me that I could use this time productively, by buying a computer book - C# perhaps - and learning whatever I can without actually having computer access. I'm directed to a local bookshop but, apart from fiction, they have simply a few technology reference shelves where books on photography, writing and motor mechanics sit shoulder to shoulder with the single one on computers, all mixed together in alphabetical order by authors with no concern for subject. It should surprise me, this lack of educational material, but, strangely, it doesn't.
After more pills, more icing and a sleep, I feel in need of sustenance. Across the street is RJ's, a renowned steak house and I believe a rare New York Strip and a whole bottle of Cabernet should be mine, but I am thwarted. Yes, they are the best steak house in town, I am assured, by a waiter who looks like a young church minister in training, but something persuades me otherwise when I am informed that they do not serve wine - and that is the end of my steak aspirations.
That is how I discovered my own slice of heaven in the form of Christoper's most wonderful eating and drinking establishment. People at the bar don't shout. Conversations don't include bragging about violence or bouts of drinking and customers don't look as though the task of propping up the bar all day is theirs forever.
I stay there until they close. I don't care if I have a hangover - which is just as well. Plans for tomorrow include the second and final visit to Dr Ward, resting for the day and then leave early Saturday; back on the road again....
Friday:
Fuck, hangover city. At least I can stand up. Shit, my head hurts. The adjustment helps but I am informed that yet another will be necessary on Monday. Will I ever get out of Statesboro?
I'm bored. It's not even noon. I find a local coffee shop but it serves the usual thin translucent stuff from an urn brewed at some time in the past and I have to put up with three sound sources in the form of background music, the TV and a crying baby. There's only so much thin coffee you can drink without bursting. How long do I have to wait before it's acceptable to go for a beer?
I decide to try the bike. There's a cinema two miles away so I go there and find a Books-a-Million, which has many computers books and - oh thank you Lord, I am a true believer, yes I am, whatever I said before, hallelujah - a STARBUCKS. Oh, the world is is mine, la la la. I love Statesboro.
Not for long.
I sense the onset of toothache and get back on the phone immediately. Statesboro dentists don't work weekends, I discover, and Friday is seen as one, so the earliest visit would be Monday. After the chiropractor, perhaps? Make a day of it? I call three, but all are busy for the entire week. First available appointment would be a week on Tuesday. Should I go or should I stay? I could just take more painkillers. I hate Statesboro.
Credence Clearwater revival recorded a song once called Lodi, about a town that they couldn't leave. Maybe I'll write one about this place. I could call it Statesboro Blues.
Oh - someone already did that?
Saturday, August 1, 2009
35: If the World Needed an Enema...
It's rare that I find a town so deserving of the description 'no redeeming qualities', but Andrews, South Carolina, fits the bill. Looking back, Grants seems like a paradise of dining and entertainment opportunities by comparison.
There's only a single motel half a mile from the centre of town, but I doubt that there's a need for any more. There's no reason except unfortunate accident that would bring visitors to Andrews and I seriously doubt that anyone, having suffered the experience once, would voluntarily repeat the circumstance.
Considering all the aspects of services and fittings that could so easily have been missing given their monopoly on accommodation, this one was almost perfect - even to the degree of having cable TV. It's like an invisible hand had plucked a perfect country motel from somewhere and zapped it straight into Hicktown. Maybe the owners had been bad in a previous life and this was their punishment.
The two main roads, which formed the centre of town where they crossed, possessed an equal number of establishments currently not open for business and ex-business that had not possessed even that status for many years, if the crawling ivy and overgrowth of weeds covering their windows was any indication.
After traversing both roads for half a mile in either direction, the only actual restaurant I could find not covered in several years' worth of ivy and weeds, fell into the category of not open for business. No sign in the window suggested when this might change, so I suppose it's possible that in a few weeks it too may be sprouting vegetation.
Had I wanted to wash laundry, buy automobile parts, clean my truck or attend church -which, if the plethora of religious buildings and billboards was anything to go by, the locals did with great frequency - there were multiple opportunities to do so, but to sit and eat, there was only McDonald's and a miniature Subway occupying space at the back of a gas station, which eventually took my business.
To take up time, I sat in a corner booth in McDonald's to watch the people of various levels of intelligence interact with the staff, all of whom appeared, if their trousers size was any indication, to have been on a McDonald's diet for some time. After an hour I had to go; there's only so much fun I can stand without bursting.
At the far end of town, near the Food Lion grocery shop where I used up another thirty minutes of wasted life perusing the shelves, a third road shot into no man's land. No signs showed where it might go, none faced the other way to advise incoming traffic where they were unfortunate enough to have arrived and nothing controlled the priority of either road. Given that American drivers all think they have priority all the time, the resulting confusion - usually won out by over-sized trucks alternately muscling forward and screeched to a halt two inches later - proved most entertaining.
I could imagine that this would be the Sunday draw for the locals, who might flock to the Y-junction with their decks chairs and a few coolers of Piss-Lite to spend an enjoyable afternoon.
After they've got out of church, of course.
There's only a single motel half a mile from the centre of town, but I doubt that there's a need for any more. There's no reason except unfortunate accident that would bring visitors to Andrews and I seriously doubt that anyone, having suffered the experience once, would voluntarily repeat the circumstance.
Considering all the aspects of services and fittings that could so easily have been missing given their monopoly on accommodation, this one was almost perfect - even to the degree of having cable TV. It's like an invisible hand had plucked a perfect country motel from somewhere and zapped it straight into Hicktown. Maybe the owners had been bad in a previous life and this was their punishment.
The two main roads, which formed the centre of town where they crossed, possessed an equal number of establishments currently not open for business and ex-business that had not possessed even that status for many years, if the crawling ivy and overgrowth of weeds covering their windows was any indication.
After traversing both roads for half a mile in either direction, the only actual restaurant I could find not covered in several years' worth of ivy and weeds, fell into the category of not open for business. No sign in the window suggested when this might change, so I suppose it's possible that in a few weeks it too may be sprouting vegetation.
Had I wanted to wash laundry, buy automobile parts, clean my truck or attend church -which, if the plethora of religious buildings and billboards was anything to go by, the locals did with great frequency - there were multiple opportunities to do so, but to sit and eat, there was only McDonald's and a miniature Subway occupying space at the back of a gas station, which eventually took my business.
To take up time, I sat in a corner booth in McDonald's to watch the people of various levels of intelligence interact with the staff, all of whom appeared, if their trousers size was any indication, to have been on a McDonald's diet for some time. After an hour I had to go; there's only so much fun I can stand without bursting.
At the far end of town, near the Food Lion grocery shop where I used up another thirty minutes of wasted life perusing the shelves, a third road shot into no man's land. No signs showed where it might go, none faced the other way to advise incoming traffic where they were unfortunate enough to have arrived and nothing controlled the priority of either road. Given that American drivers all think they have priority all the time, the resulting confusion - usually won out by over-sized trucks alternately muscling forward and screeched to a halt two inches later - proved most entertaining.
I could imagine that this would be the Sunday draw for the locals, who might flock to the Y-junction with their decks chairs and a few coolers of Piss-Lite to spend an enjoyable afternoon.
After they've got out of church, of course.
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