JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

Animal the drummer, from The Muppet Show.

18 October 2009 on PNN, the Psychotic News Network: The news, fast and unverified!
All conversation relayed by text unless indicated.

1209hrs. Bernard-Henri: Hold-up/robbery/shooting at Greenbelt 5 watch store. GB5 is now sealed off because of pursuit of suspects.

Source being reliable, I forward text to sister and friends likely to go to Greenbelt.

1211. Phone call from Grover: Are you shitting me? (Yes, incredible but true: first time in history I got news before Grover did.)

Every time I walk past that row of watch shops selling Patek Philippe, Panerai, Rolex, Breitling at Greenbelt 5, I wonder if there are other places in the world where you can stick your head out of a Patek store and see Jollibee.

1216. Bert: You’re there?

1217. Ernie: Election fund-raising na.

1226. Grover: From my source—A store hold-up, may napatay na robber bt nakatakas d rest. D ko pa alam wat store.

1228. Grover: Update—Rolex store, robbers in military uniform. Undr control na bt grabe talaga

1231. From a number I don’t recognize: Guys, dont go to greenbelt. There was an attempted robbery and a gunfight. We are stuck in the kitchen of cibo. Tell your friends and family.

1237. Bernard-Henri: When I had lunch in GB5 Friday, there was an hour long brownout because a Korean tenant jumped off a high rise onto some high-tension wires. Life in Makati is becoming more cinematic.

1315. Bernard-Henri: SWAT team killed one suspect in GB5 basement parking. Hope it was not a panicky chaffeur.

1315. Bernard-Henri: chauffeur

The verified report on gmanews.tv.

Met up with Teddy-wan Kenobi, who is my favorite publisher and adoptive parent (I was adopted too late so I didn’t get his looks).

Teddy-wan has an impinged nerve, which means he has a bad back. “I’m on a diet,” he said. “I lost 13 pounds and then gained 3. Need to lose 30 in total. (Horrible cussword.)”

“But cheese has lots of calcium, ergo it’s good for the vertebrae,” I pointed out, for I am The Rationalizer.

“Okay,” he said.

“What did the doctors say?” I asked.

“(String of unprintables.) There’s a dark mass in my lower back and no one knows what it is.”

“You mean. . .they’ve discovered Dark Matter?!”

“Yes,” he said, “in my ass.”

Physicists, take note.

Blood’s A Rover, the new novel by James Ellroy. Teddy-wan covered it in plastic. I thought, Isn’t the title a quote from A Boy And His Dog by Harlan Ellison? Nope, it’s from a poem by A.E. Housman.

Oh look, a new product from GLOBE TATTOO PREPAID, THAT WORTHLESS PIECE OF CRAP. It’s called Immortal Text. I’m guessing it means you have to be immortal to use it, because it takes several human lifetimes for your text message to arrive.

I sent the Tattoo a P97 load by text last Wednesday. Today is Saturday and it has still not arrived. I loaded P300 by card last Thursday. P165 of it vanished in 12 minutes of 0.00 kbps. Amazing! Could this have happened because, all together now, GLOBE TATTOO PREPAID IS A WORTHLESS PIECE OF CRAP?

Interesting how people I work with have been contacted by Globe reps but no one has thought to respond to me. The person who complained in the first place. Could it be. . .Terror?

I’m waiting, Globe. By the way, my stats have gotten a big boost and I’ve received lots of comments from people who have experienced the sheer hell of using GLOBE TATTOO PREPAID, THAT WORTHLESS PIECE OF CRAP. Thanks! Oh, and you owe me for the free rebranding.

In this week’s LitWit Challenge brought to you by the good people of National Bookstore, we are giving away two copies of Joseph O’Neill’s novel, Netherland.

Netherland is so beautiful, I read it with my hair standing on end so it filled the room and no one else could come in. The novel is about a Dutch banker who is estranged from his wife and living alone in New York after 9/11. He finds comfort in the unlikeliest place: in the city’s parks, where immigrants from Asia and the West Indies gather to play cricket. There he meets the shady dreamer Chuck Ramkissoon, who dreams of building New York City’s first proper cricket field.

There was something oddly familiar about Netherland that I couldn’t place. And then I had one of those deja vu moments: I had been in this fictional universe before. The characters were very different, it was set in another era, but that sweet melancholy. . .

It’s The Great Gatsby!

Which brings us to our new LitWit Challenge. To join the contest, translate the first three paragraphs of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (from “In my younger and more vulnerable years” to “a sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth”) OR the last three paragraphs (from “And as I sat there, brooding on the old, unknown world” to “borne back ceaselessly into the past) into Tagalog.

Two translators will receive these copies of Netherland. You have until midnight on Friday, October 23, to post your entries in Comments.

The Weekly LitWit Challenge is brought to you by National Bookstore.

The winners of our LitWit Challenge: Why I should get this book are apanfilo and kaeos, who successfully argued that The Chess Machine should go to chess players.

Many of you actually tried the pity approach. On me!?!?! If you were street cats, maybe.

Personally I believe nothing will ever change in this country if our people are always making appeals to the pity and sympathy of others, looking for saviors and substitute parents to take care of them. “Kawawa naman kami, kami’y maliliit lamang, maawa kayo sa amin.” Feh. Have a little pride, grow a backbone. If you need help, ask for help because it is due you. Demand it of the government, because it’s their job to assist you in times of need (I know how funny this sounds). Demand it of the rich and powerful because goddammit they should give back to the community that has given them so much and they have to prove that all their talk about corporate social responsibility isn’t just for PR purposes. But don’t ask for pity because you demean yourself. By coming across as weak and helpless, you give your leaders license to oppress you.

What was I saying? apanfilo and kaeos, you can pick up your prizes at the Customer Service counter of National Bookstore Glorietta 5 starting Thursday, October 22.

Our next LitWit Challenge is coming up.

Peter Finch as the very, very angry anchorman in Network. I’m guessing he tried GLOBE PREPAID TATTOO, THAT WORTHLESS PIECE OF CRAP.

Number of times I have taken up my concerns with Globe representatives: 2.

On Thursday morning at 1 am, I called the Globe helpline 211 and told a tech support person about the vanished load. He said to call back in 24 hours if the load still had not arrived. I said, Isn’t loading supposed to be instantaneous? He said, Yes, but there may be system maintenance going on in your area blablabla, call back in 24 hours.

On Friday at midnight I checked the balance on the GLOBE TATTOO PREPAID, THAT WORTHLESS PIECE OF CRAP. The load had not arrived. Rien nada nothing.

On Thursday afternoon smoke started coming out of my ears. To vent my rage I asked my friend who works at the ad agency handling the Globe account to have a Globe tech person call me. At 2.30 pm I got a call from a Globe rep who listened to the history of my GLOBE TATTOO PREPAID HELL. I tried to be polite, though I’m told that my polite voice is even more terrifying than my regular tone. The Globe rep said he had an idea what the cause of the problem was, but he would have to check his theory.

Exactly 24 hours have elapsed since that conversation, and no one has gotten back to me. Perhaps the Globe rep had to get skin grafts on his smoldering ear after that phone call.

Lest we be viewed as unreasonable, let us explain why we say GLOBE TATTOO PREPAID IS A WORTHLESS PIECE OF CRAP.

1. It works right after you have reloaded, well enough to make you think that the service will be fine from that moment on. However, as your load decreases, so does the speed, and when the load is down to half, the connection starts fluctuating rapidly from 15 kbps to 0 then 23 then 0 then 80 to 0 and so on, always going to zero. You cannot open a page with a connection like that, much less download a file.

I tried reloading by text even before the previous load ran out, and what do you know, the connection speed shot right up! GLOBE TATTOO PREPAID IS A WORTHLESS PIECE OF CRAP THAT EATS MONEY.

2. To my knowledge, the connection cost is P5 for 15 minutes. Often the connection fluctuates wildly within those 15 minutes, so you’re not really getting 15 minutes of service. And then the connection terminates itself before the 15 minutes are up! But it has already eaten your P5, because GLOBE TATTOO PREPAID IS A WORTHLESS PIECE OF CRAP THAT EATS MONEY.

3. Sometimes the connection is stable, and you manage to surf with relative ease for 30, even 44 minutes. At 44 minutes, 45 seconds, you hit Disconnect. But the unit takes a long time to disconnect, and when the timer stops it’s at 45 minutes, 2 seconds. Those two seconds cost the same as 15 minutes because GLOBE TATTOO PREPAID IS A WORTHLESS PIECE OF CRAP THAT EATS MONEY.

4. There are times when you cannot connect at all. Perhaps there is no Globe signal in my area. . .and I live in Makati! Oddly enough, my postpaid Globe mobile phone always works. Could it be that GLOBE TATTOO PREPAID IS A WORTHLESS PIECE OF CRAP BECAUSE IT IS PREPAID? Do prepaid users not deserve the same level of service as postpaid users, who after all make up a small portion of the user base?

5. I was unused to the ways of prepaid loading, so in September I bought a Globe prepaid load card in order to try it out. However the fine print on the card said it would only work with a Globe prepaid SIM. I was not in the mood to turn off my cellphone, replace the SIM, load it using the card, turn off the phone again, put my postpaid SIM back, turn the phone on, etc.

My sister has a prepaid Globe cellphone so I asked her to load the P100 into her phone, then text the load to me. Which she did. She got a confirmation text. The load send by text never made it to THE GLOBE TATTOO PREPAID, THAT WORTHLESS PIECE OF CRAP. Apparently, the ether ate it.

I’m just getting started. Jessica, don’t you have more exciting things to do than rant about a useless gadget that gyps the public? Yes, but this is easy because I write very fast. Unlike GLOBE TATTOO PREPAID, THAT WORTHLESS PIECE OF CRAP.

This entry was posted using Rockwell’s free wi-fi.