A final outburst of profanity closes the book on Halloween

Two women who were screaming insults at one another woke me up from a sound sleep at 2:45 a.m. on Nov. 1 when they decided they had walked far enough following their Halloween revels, so they might as well stop and stand directly in front of my house to continue their “discussion.”

The conversation, such as it was, adhered to a strict formula. One of the women used the f word (no, not federalism — the other one), then tossed out a few words that were not obscene. This was followed by the f word, a few inoffensive gutteral sounds, the f word, a semi-sensible remark, the f word, a conversational gambit, the f word, and then, for good measure, several variations of the f word. The other woman then responded in kind, except when she interrupted the first speaker, at which point they hurled the f word at each other in unison.

“I’m high, I’m hungry and I’m tired,” one of the women said in what may have been the only complete sentence she uttered without using the f word. By this time, I had grown tired (so to speak) of this interchange, so I trotted downstairs, flung open the front door, and demanded that the women take their colloquy somewhere else. I did not use the f word, even though I was sorely tempted to do so.

When I dropped back into bed, I was angry, but as I tried to get back to sleep, which took a full 45 minutes, I began to feel sorry for these seemingly lost souls. How were these women raised as children? What opportunities were they denied as kids because of poverty or abuse or neglect? What must their day-to-day lives be like if they’re roaming the streets on foot well after midnight on a damp and cold morning, maligning each other in profanity-laced tirades?

I’m not the most tenderhearted person in the world, by a long shot, but at least this once, some higher angel of my nature won out. Of course, it wasn’t long before my true self emerged once again. As I was finally on the verge of falling asleep, I remember thinking: “It’s nice and quiet now that those two (f word with "ing" suffix) birdbrains have disappeared.”

Nutty Boston drivers, snooty R.I. diners & proud Portlanders

I don’t read Travel + Leisure magazine. But I’m always intrigued by its online rankings of various tourist destinations because, invariably, they seem kind of goofy.

Take the recent survey of America’s cities, which rated 35 of them in dozens of categories that ran the gamut from the attractiveness of the locals and the quality of cafes to hotel options and how "charming" the hometown accent is.

So how reliable are the rankings? Not very, if the results on driving ability are any indication. The magazine’s readers ranked Portland, Maine, No. 1 in that category. As a Maine resident, that struck me as sensible. But Boston, which is universally recognized as having the worst drivers in the known universe (and possibly beyond), placed 32nd out of 35 cities, according to visitors.

That means tourists are making the preposterous claim that three cities  - New York, San Juan and Miami - have drivers who are even more reckless and demented than those to be found careening through the streets and along the highways of Beantown. (As a Massachusetts native who went to college in Boston, I love the city more than I can say. But worse drivers somewhere else? Please!)

To their credit, Bostonians know they’re lousy drivers, although they don’t realize just how bad they are. Boston residents who took part in the magazine’s survey placed their city in 27th place, meaning they have deluded themselves into believing that the drivers are even worse in eight other cities on that list of 35.

Some of the rankings are on the money. For example, visitors placed Portland, Maine, in 6th place in the “proud of their city” ranking, and Portland residents were not far behind in their own evaluation of city pride. Visitors and residents alike also scored Portland very high in the “gay friendly” category. As a Maine resident, I can attest to the accuracy of both of those rankings. Deservedly, Portland also scored well in affordability, cleanliness, environmental friendliness, intelligence, family vacations, safety, microbrews, ice cream and pizza, among other categories.

But elsewhere in the survey, things took a predictably weird turn, and not only in the misguided belief that Boston’s drivers could be even worse than they are now.

In the fine-dining ranking, San Francisco, Providence, Philadelphia and Portland, Oregon, all fared better than New York, which placed fifth. No doubt there is fine dining to be had in each of the top four cities, but simply in terms of size, how could Providence (population 182,000) possibly have more high-end restaurants than New York, whose 8.3 million residents make it the largest city in the country?

And then there are the categories that are just plain silly, such as the attractiveness of each city’s residents. That surely varies from day to day depending on the weather, the season, how people are dressed, who is out and about and who happens to be doing the watching. For the record, San Francisco came in at No. 1, followed by Providence; Nashville; Portland, Maine; and Savannah.

As a former resident of Providence and a frequent visitor to Maine’s largest city, I’d have to say that the subjectivity of magazine readers may not be the most accurate way to evaluate who looks good where. Then again, how could anyone participate intelligently in a survey like this unless he or she had visited all 35 cities on the list? And what are the odds of that?

Here's one snippet of conversation I didn't need to overhear

As I walked one of our dogs through the neighborhood this morning, we approached a house where two women were chatting on the front porch. I assume I saw them before they saw me, otherwise the speaker might have lowered her voice a bit before proclaiming, rather loudly: “My body doesn’t like deodorant.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw the other woman back away a couple of inches, but it probably was my imagination.

A star is born . . . at the tattoo parlor

I'm thinking of having a bunch of stars tattooed on the back of my neck. It seems to be all the rage in certain quarters, and I'm nothing if not hip.

When a friend learned of my plans, he suggested that I tattoo a swastika on my forehead instead, but I pointed out to him that I'm not going for the Charles Manson look. My goal is to find something that says "white trash" in a more understated fashion. It's important that such things be done tastefully, after all.

They speak Swedish in Norway, right?

A Maine TV news anchor who shall remain nameless to protect the guilty apologized on the air this morning for mispronouncing the name of a city in Brazil, in connection with a story on the pope's visit to that country. "I didn't take Spanish in high school," she said. That would have been an appropriately gracious explanation, except for the fact that Brazilians don't speak Spanish. They speak Portuguese.

If you're going to apologize for something, it's always a good idea not to screw it up by making yet another mistake, because then you'll have to apologize for the apology.

Dzhohkar Tsarnaev lands "on the cover of the Rollin' Stone"

America is outraged, positively beside itself with disgust, because Rolling Stone had the audacity to stick a photo of accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzhohkar Tsarnaev on its cover, in connection with an article that explores how a popular and promising young man became a terrorist. People are threatening to boycott stores they probably never frequent unless those businesses refuse to carry a magazine they probably never read. One guy is even urging folks to buy the magazine so they can burn it, like that's going to hurt Rolling Stone's bottom line. Where's Ray Bradbury when we need him?

As a Facebook friend of mine put it yesterday, “the image belies the words, and it's the image most people are reacting to and will remember. He's presented as some sort of post-modern rock god, Jim Morrison with explosives and chin fuzz.”
 
Perhaps. What I see in that photo is a seemingly detached and calculating young man whose blank look suggests he is devoid of empathy. Obviously others disagree. In any case, the story's about Tsarnaev so the cover features a photo of him. That's standard journalistic practice, folks. Maybe the magazine's art director should have tried a little harder to scare up a photo of Tsarnaev that shows the horns he's hiding under those curly locks.

What I find troublesome in all this is the venomous reaction to the cover from people who feel compelled to condemn whatever irritates them, without so much as a moment’s reflection. Thanks to the fact that the Internet allows us to mouth off instantly and anonymously, restraint has gone out the window, leaving us with arguments like these.

The cover glorifies Tsarnaev. Huh? The headline describes him as a “bomber” and the subhead labels him a “monster.” Where’s the glorification? Should we assume that everyone is illiterate these days, so all that really matters is the picture? Other news organizations have used this photo without being heaped with scorn. Why the selective outrage?

Tsarnaev is a terrorist. End of story. Have we lost all curiosity? Do we not want to know how a smart, American-educated kid who was well-liked by his peers could have gone so horribly wrong?

This shouldn't be on newsstands because it's offensive. Really? To whom? Who appointed these would-be censors to decide what I can and cannot buy? Do we still believe in freedom of speech and freedom of the press in this country, or are they as passé as privacy? I see mags for sale that I find offensive, but I don't claim to have the right to deny other people access to them.

Rolling Stone is just being provocative. Thanks to cable television and the Internet, many Americans have no understanding of what journalism, is, or should be. They have come to see it as some sort of twisted melding of Entertainment Tonight, talking heads on cable “news” shows, propaganda posted on Facebook by special-interest groups, and tweets that tackle every issue in 140 characters or less. So when a magazine does its job by seeking the roots of a horrific crime with a cover story that tries to dissect the birth of a despicable criminal, people react with cynicism and disbelief.

Rolling Stone is in it for the buck. This is one of my favorites, because it shows an abysmal ignorance of how the news business works. Yes, Rolling Stone is trying to make money. It's a business in a capitalistic society. But no, making money is not what gets reporters and editors to crawl out of bed in the morning. Corporate execs and writers may work for the same outfit, but I can assure you, as a former newspaper reporter, that bean counters and journalists have very different motives and priorities.

This is crap, so I won't read it. How do you know it's crap if you don't read it?

Bad guys should not grace the covers of prominent publications. As another Facebook friend posted yesterday: “Didn't Time magazine put Hitler on its cover back in the 1930s? Wasn't bin Laden on magazine covers? Charles Manson? I will boycott the stores that refuse to carry this issue of RS. It's the height of stupidity to be outraged by a magazine featuring a story on this guy and how he became a killer.”

I haven’t read the Rolling Stone story yet, so I don’t know if the magazine succeeded in explaining how Tsarnaev “fell into radical Islam and became a monster,” as the cover puts it. But I’ll give Rolling Stone credit for at least trying to answer a question all of us should be asking. And I’ll wait until I’ve read the damn thing before I grab a pitchfork and firebrand to charge the castle.

"He's a friendly dog . . . except when he isn't."

We dog owners tend to view our pups in the best possible light, even if that requires downplaying certain bits of unpleasantness.

I was walking our chocolate lab Aquinnah in the neighborhood the other day when I spotted a well-dressed woman whom I did not know. She was walking a small, long-haired dog of indeterminate pedigree - probably a terrier mix.

The woman was almost a block away, but heading in my direction, so I took a detour into a parking lot. Aquinnah (aka Quinn) gets very excited whenever he meets other dogs. Quinn isn't remotely aggressive, but these encounters always involve a lot of exuberant jumping and lunging and pulling and barking on his part, so I usually try to avoid them.

To my surprise, the woman detoured into the same parking lot, so we were now walking parallel to one another. I stopped. She stopped. She waved. I waved back. She then began walking toward me, so it seemed clear she wanted the dogs to meet.

“Is your dog friendly?” she shouted, because we were still separated by a good 50 feet or more of pavement.

“Yes,” I replied. “He’s noisy, but he’s not aggressive.”

She continued to walk in my direction. So, out of courtesy, I turned, to meet her halfway.

Nodding to her pooch, who did not look at all pleased by this turn of events, the woman said: “He doesn’t get to meet many other dogs.”

By this point, we were only feet apart. Just as Quinn and the grumpy looking pup were about to touch noses, the woman smiled at her dog and tossed out an afterthought.

“He bites sometimes.”

As if on cue, Grumpy growled and bared his teeth. I yanked Quinn's leash, pulling him back, to make sure this didn't become one of those times. Then I looked at this seemingly sensible woman and asked myself a question that I was too polite to ask aloud: What were you thinking?

Jimmy Hoffa . . . still missing after all these years

One of the great rites of spring - the annual search for Jimmy Hoffa's body - has drawn to a close yet again. The Teamsters boss, who disappeared in 1975 and was declared legally dead in 1982, remains as elusive as ever. So the tradition lives on! Better luck in 2014, guys. Or maybe 2015 will be the year, or 2016 or . . . . 

Every morning, every evening, ain't we got fun?

It’s awfully hard to book a cruise these days, isn’t it? There are so many alluring options from which to choose that picking just one is all but impossible. Do I want the fire-aboard-ship cruise? Or the dead-in-the-water-with-engine-failure tour? The Somali-pirates-to-starboard trip? Or the backed-up-toilets poop sail? The man-overboard vacation? Or the ever-popular influenza voyage?

Remember "The Love Boat"? Sure, it was chock full of marginally talented actors playing tacky people saying sappy things while wearing the latest in hideous polyester clothing, but at least you never worried that the ship might sink midway through an episode. As they say over at Carnival: “Every morning, every evening, ain’t we got fun?”

Royal Caribbean's fire-damaged Grandeur of the Seas. Who names these tubs?

When your memory starts to falter, turn to Facebook

As much as I enjoy dumping on Facebook because it’s such a time-wasting sinkhole, it does have its uses, especially for those of us whose mental powers are on the wane.

If you check the "about" section of a friend's Facebook page, you'll likely find information about his or her hometown, education, employment, marital status, etc. This can be quite revealing, because some of our Facebook "friends" would better be described as acquaintances, or even strangers. (Who the hell is that guy, anyway? And why did I friend him?) So we may be surprised to learn, through Facebook, that ostensible buddy John Smith is married to . . . Jane Doe.

When I looked at my wife's Facebook page the other day, it listed where Liz is from, which college she attended, and where she's employed. Among the helpful tidbits I found there was this entry, next to a tiny heart: “Married to you.”

So that's why we're living under the same roof! Good to know.

Woodchuck: a grizzled marmot that is litigious in Vermont

I don’t have a groundhog in this fight because I’ve never sampled the wares of either the Vermont Hard Cider Co. or Woodchuck Coffee Roasters. But the lawsuit that Vermont Hard Cider has filed against Woodchuck Coffee Roasters, also of Vermont, strikes me as so comical that it’s worth a mention.

The Associated Press reports that Vermont Hard Cider, whose logo features a woodchuck, has accused Woodchuck Coffee Roasters of trademark infringement. The coffee mavens, whose business is the newer of the two, are using a woodchuck to peddle their product as well.

Yup. These folks have hired lawyers to wage war over who has proprietary rights to the good name and image of that most noble of all creatures, the mighty groundhog.

The cider company says Woodchuck Coffee Roasters' logo is "strikingly similar" to Vermont Hard Cider's label, according to The AP, because both feature an oval "with a woodchuck sitting on its haunches. The logo and name are creating confusion and have led to Vermont residents asking if the cider company has gone into the coffee business, the suit says.”

So what do the coffee merchants have to say about this?

"We were thinking of names and my brother said 'we're a couple of woodchucks' — our family has been in Vermont several generations — so why not?" said Tony Basiliere, who runs the company with his brother. "The general consensus of people I talk to is you don't own 'Woodchuck' just like Green Mountain Coffee (Roasters) doesn't own ‘Green Mountain.’”

The lawsuit might make some sort of sense if the two companies were in the same business, or if Woodchuck Coffee Roasters owned an oozing hazardous-waste site whose very existence had tarnished the reputation of Vermont Hard Cider, or if both companies had identical mascots named Wally the Wondrous Woodchuck.

But none of that is true. What we have are two reputable Vermont companies in separate lines of work, with logos featuring woodchucks that, to my eye, don't look at all alike, beyond the fact that they're both members of the same species. (Actually, the Woodchuck Coffee Roasters critter has charisma, what with his steaming cuppa joe and his self-satisfied smirk; the other guy is just another generic groundhog.)

If the suit is to be believed, the world of commerce isn't big enough for two woodchucks, at least not in Vermont. So even if you've never asked yourself how many lawsuits would a woodchuck file if a woodchuck could file lawsuits, you now have an answer.

Hey, who are you calling "sir"?

As the years race by, I’ve noticed that more and more store clerks have taken to addressing me as “sir” when I sidle up to the counter to pay for my purchases. Is this their way of saying that my white hair and serious demeanor give me a professorial appearance that warrants respect? Or that I’m so obviously in my dotage that pity mandates a false show of deference? I'd like to believe it's the former, but I'm still sufficiently lucid to suspect that it's the latter.

Sometimes, a solution doesn't solve much of anything

Chalk it up as a classic case of the cure being worse than the disease.
 
There's a fellow in our fair city who stuck a sign in his lawn a few weeks ago that reads “private property” on top and “no dog waste” across the bottom. Between those two messages is a drawing of a black dog that is squatting in what is universally recognized as the pooping pooch position.
 
This guy's frustration is understandable. I hate it when owners leave their pups’ calling cards on my property. It ticks me off no end to walk out onto the sidewalk in front of my house and spot a pile neatly deposited under my hedges, especially because the irresponsible owner who refused to pick up after his dog is never anywhere in sight by the time I get out there.
 
So I can sympathize with the homeowner in question, who presumably decided to take action after one too many people used his yard as a canine toilet. But here’s the thing. This guy didn’t put up just one sign featuring a squatting dog. He didn’t settle on two signs. Or even three. He’s got four identical pooping dog signs scattered across his yard and on a nearby strip of grass between the public sidewalk and the street. Each one features the same image of a dog that’s about to do the deed.

So instead of occasionally having to clean up after a wayward pup, this guy has to eyeball multiple images of a squatting dog whenever he looks out into his own yard. As much as I hate picking up after someone else’s pet, I’d rather do that occasionally than stare at a bizarre parody of the March of the Toy Soldiers in which the soldiers have been replaced by dogs and the dogs are armed with . . . well, let's just say they aren't carrying wooden rifles.

"Is there anything else I can do for you today?"

For reasons that escape me, corporate America has embraced yet another bit of tomfoolery. Now it has become a help-center phenomenon.

If you’ve called almost any large retail chain, credit-card issuer or other business behemoth lately with a complaint or a problem, you'll know what I’m talking about as soon as I give you a couple of examples.

Several weeks ago, my wife Liz returned a call from the fraud unit at the firm that issued one of our credit cards. The company wanted to know if we had charged an unusually large purchase. We had not, so the credit-card issuer chalked up the purchase as fraudulent, canceled our credit card and promised to issue a new one.

Problem solved. Liz was about to hang up. But the conversation wasn’t over just yet. The woman on the other end of the line had to add this superfluous parting question: “Is there anything else I can do for you today?”

Um, no, there isn’t. We were returning your call, remember?

Fast forward to last week, when I called a major retailer to report that it looked like a gift card I had used online had not been applied to my order. The woman on the help desk checked the order and explained that the gift card had been used, despite a misleading e-mail from the company indicating otherwise.

Problem solved. But once again, the conversation wasn’t over just yet. This time, too, the woman at the other end of the line tacked on that pointless parting question: “Is there anything else I can do for you today?”

Um, no, there isn’t. Why would there be?

Isn’t it obvious to these companies that, once a caller’s problem has been resolved, there's no reason to continue the conversation? This little addendum of theirs is not a spontaneous effort to be helpful. These folks are posing this question with predictable uniformity because it's part of a carefully rehearsed script, and a (mildly) irritating one at that.

Maybe the next time this happens I should respond by saying: “Why yes, there is something else you can do for me today. Thanks for asking. I’d like an everything bagel with cream cheese, please. Oh, and a medium tea. I'll be out on the sunporch when the food is ready.”

Dumb, dumber, dumbest

Do stupid people pride themselves on being dumb by wearing their cluelessness as a badge of honor? Or does stupidity, by definition, prevent the truly brainless from realizing that they are, in fact, empty-headed?

Recently, the Massachusetts Office of Travel and Tourism, which has a Facebook page called “Visit Massachusetts,” posted a photo of a beautiful covered bridge (see below) with this text: “Massachusetts Photo Trivia! Who knows where this lovely winter scene was captured?”

Now, keep a few things in mind here. It was state tourism officials in Massachusetts who posted this. They did so on a Facebook page designed to promote tourism in Massachusetts. And they described their trivia question as Massachusetts trivia. So it’s safe to assume from the get-go that the bridge is located in . . . Massachusetts! Otherwise, what's the point?

As it happens, the bridge is in Colrain, Mass., and most people posting comments mentioned small towns in the Bay State by way of guesses. Some even had the right answer. But the responses from readers also included the following seven suggestions, some of which were posted by more than one person:

• New Hampshire;
• Jackson, New Hampshire;
• Franconia Notch (which is in New Hampshire);
• Henniker (also in New Hampshire);
• Vermont;
• Brattleboro, Vermont;
• Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine or New York (posted by a guy who's obviously serious about hedging his bets).

As goofy as those answers were, another one was even worse, considering who posted the photo and why. Guessing various and sundry states in the Northeast was bad enough, but at least those poor saps had the right part of the country in mind. Not so the person who offered this response: Madison County. There is no Madison County anywhere in New England. As for The Bridges of Madison County, it's set in . . . Iowa.
 

A dangerous man or merely an eccentric dog lover?

There are some decidedly strange people cruising the highways and byways of this weird place known as America, and you never know when you'll run into one of them.

I was out walking our chocolate lab Aquinnah on a quiet side street the other day when Quinn, as we call him, stopped to sniff a patch of grass beside the road. I had my back to the street, but when I heard a car stop directly behind me, I turned around. A smiling middle-aged man in a beat up Volvo sedan rolled down his window and held up a dog biscuit.

“Does your dog like treats?” he asked.
 
My heart skipped a proverbial beat. What? Did this guy really think I’d accept a biscuit from a complete stranger and give it to my dog? Would a mother take candy from some passing motorist, and give it to her child? Maybe this fellow was nothing more than a well-intentioned dog lover who keeps biscuits in his car to have them on hand when his own pup is riding shotgun. Or maybe he was something else entirely.

I quickly noticed that there was no pooch in that Volvo. A chill ran up my spine, and I envisioned conflicting headlines in my mind's eye. "Dog lover spreads joy with free biscuits," one read. "Beloved pet felled by poisoned treat," read the other.

“We’re going home now and I’ll give him one when I get there,” I answered, trying to sound polite rather than freaked out.

The answer man is ready for all comers

I never thought of myself as The Answer Man, but maybe it’s time to reevaluate that.

Monday morning, as the frankenstorm was barreling up the Eastern Seaboard, I headed out to our riverside trail here in Augusta, Maine, to squeeze in a three-mile walk before the weather worsened. As I stomped along in the drizzle, a man whom I do not know approached from the opposite direction, and stopped dead in his tracks when he reached me.

“Hey, where would I go to buy the cheapest candles?” he asked with that manic I've-been-watching-the-Weather-Channel-round-the-clock look in his eye. "I was going to buy batteries for my flashlights but then I decided, the hell with that, I'll get candles instead. So, where should I go?"

He stared at me so expectantly that I felt he would dutifully drive off to Michigan if that's where I sent him.

“Gee, I don’t know. I guess I’d try Walmart,” I replied. This wasn’t exactly a well-informed answer because I haven't bought any candles lately, I can't stand Walmart, and I never shop there. But it seemed like a safe bet.

“Thanks, bud. That’s where I’ll go.”

I hope if this guy found out that some other retailer undercut Walmart’s prices on candles during the build up to the storm, he won’t expect a refund on the advice I gave him. Of course, considering what he paid for it . . . .

Toto, we're not in Massachusetts anymore

I love my adopted state of Maine (even though some of the locals refer to my fellow Massachusetts natives as Massholes). My wife and I have lived here for 26 years now, and we like it just fine, thanks to the breathtaking natural beauty, the quality of life, the lack of affectation, the relatively low crime rate, the laid-back lifestyle and the state’s generally progressive politics (our wacky governor notwithstanding). 

After a quarter of a century here, I think we know the place pretty well. Maine is part of New England, after all. We're still on our home turf, if not in our native state. But every once in a while, something happens in largely rural Maine to remind me that, in some ways, we're much farther from urban, thickly settled Massachusetts than the maps would suggest. Such was the case a few days ago when the following news headline and lead appeared on the web site of the Kennebec Journal here in Augusta. 

Saturday ceremony marks Readfield sidewalk completion 

READFIELD -- It took several years of preparations, and then a few weeks longer than anticipated to build, but there is finally a sidewalk running through the center of town.
 

When Alice fell down the rabbit hole and met National Grid

Are all bureaucracies maddeningly inefficient? Or does an institution - in this case, a utility - have to reach gargantuan proportions before it ensnares its customers in a Wonderland-like parallel universe?

National Grid is “an international electricity and gas company and one of the largest investor-owned energy companies in the world,” according to its web site. So I should have realized from the get-go that getting this outfit to disconnect the gas and electricity at my late mother’s newly sold house in Massachusetts would not be a pleasant experience.

Having tracked down a toll-free number on an old bill, I called National Grid on Sept. 18 in the naive belief that someone at that number could close both accounts. No such luck. The service rep told me she could disconnect the gas, but I’d have to call a different number to shut off the electricity.
 

In an era when everyone can access everything with the click of a mouse, this made no sense to me, but what the hell. This is National Grid, "one of the largest investor-owned energy companies in the world." I, on the other hand, am a mere human. No contest.
 
Gassy Gloria, as I like to call the first customer disservice representative I dealt with, asked for some basic information, including the last four digits of my Social Security number, which I gave her. Once she verified that I was who I said I was (namely, the guy who’s been paying the bills lo these many months), Gassy Gloria and I had the following exchange.

"When would you like to end service?"

"Immediately."
 

"I can’t do that. The soonest date on which we can end service is September 25th."
 

"Really? Why can’t you close the account now, or at least sooner than September 25?"
 

"The earliest date on which we can end service is September 25th."

"Yes, you said that before. But why can't you do it until September 25th?"

"The earliest date on which we can end service is September 25th."

"Okay, fine. September 25th."

Hanging up, I then called National Grid's telephone number for electric service, where I was connected to a woman I like to call Kathy Kilowatt.
 

"Can I have your account number please?"
 

"I don’t have it with me."
 

"Can I have your Social Security number please?"
 

"Why do you need my full Social Security number? The woman I talked to a minute ago to shut off the gas only asked for the last four digits."
 

"That’s a different department."
 

"But you’re both part of the same company, right?"
 

"That’s a different department."
 

"Well, why don’t you have the same rules for verifying information, if you’re all part of the same company?"
 

"That’s a different department."
 

"Okay. Could I speak to a supervisor please?"
 

"You’d like to speak to a supervisor?"
 

"Yes."
 

"Let me put you on hold while I check to see if one is available."
 

"Okay. Thanks."

"There isn’t a supervisor available. Would you like one to call you back?"

Suspecting that there was little, if any, chance of ever getting such a call, I gave Kathy Kilowatt my Social Security number, so she could call up my record.

Then, the kicker.
 

"Your account was closed yesterday," she said, "when someone else started service in their name."

The happy hooker and the vagaries of credit-card fraud

You know how your eagle-eyed credit-card company, in its quest to fight fraud, calls you if someone puts an unusually large or suspicious purchase on your card?

It’s a great service. Except when it isn’t.
 
My wife Liz tried to charge an inexpensive gaming-system upgrade to one of our credit cards recently and the MasterCard folks were on the phone within seconds, questioning this small purchase from a company with which Liz routinely does business.

She assured the caller that the charge was legit. End of story, right? Not quite. The caller then asked her about an earlier charge that MasterCard had not questioned at the time: Had Liz bought “dating and escort services” from a certain online outfit?

Quickly recovering from her shock, Liz said no. Not to be deterred, the caller asked Liz to check with me, to see if I had been tripping the light fantastic with assorted call girls.

For a fraction of a second I considered confessing my “sins,” just to see how Liz would react, but I decided to go with the truth instead. The only escort I need is someone who can point me to the Geritol aisle at the pharmacy.

All of which may make you wonder what it is, exactly, that trips the alarms over there at MasterCard’s not-so-secure security central. Use a stolen credit card number to charge dalliances with hookers? Okay, sure. But buy a low-priced add-on for The Sims3 and it's: "Houston, we have a problem."

Computer gaming is more suspicious than racking up sheet time with streetwalkers. Whodathunkit?