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Tuesday - Oct 21. Another Shaw Bill
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Who's Your ISP?
- Hits: 2492
Yet another bill from Shaw today, still with all charges for their Digital Phone Service that I cancelled 2 months before. It's getting to be a large bill, last time I paid in person, requesting yet again that they remove the digital phone from my billing. The customer service agent looked perplexed that I was refusing to pay for services I had not recieved. Looking looked into it, she advised me it will be cancelled, all charges will be reversed. And yet another bill arrives, with all old charges and new ones too, ever hopeful that I slip up and pay without questioning.
There is not time today, but there will be a post on "Premeditated and Systematic Incompetence", wherein I discuss how companies exploit consumers reluctance to argue, complain or simply even notice the illegal charges companies place upon their customers accounts. Think of the impetus, the rewards Shaw offers to have direct debit? And why not, then they can simply help themselves to money from your bank account at a rate of billing determined by themselves? For every customer who complains 100 customers don't even notice.
Dream Logic
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Dreams
- Hits: 1423
There is a strange logic to dreams, "Dream Logic" I like to call it. It's where seemingly random associations become imbued with meaning. People, strangers become lovers and confidantes and you don't question it, it's part of the dream. Old neighborhoods become both strange and familiar, where you can become lost in your own house, or take a shortcut that leads you across the world. Distant friends and schoolmates will reunite, people long forgotten in conscious thought reappear in new guises, new relations. In dreams, the mind functions as a whole, disbelief is suspended, incredible events are accepted as ordinary and subservient to a twisted, twisting logic that perverts and recreates memory. One has a dream and in it one recognizes an almost instant familiarity, as if one has had this dream before, never the exact same dream, but the same dream nonetheless. And yet upon awakening it is brand new. And they have the ability to overwrite memory, I have woken from dreams of my childhood, of a childhood I never experienced in a house filled with strangers become relatives, in a town I have never visited become home, yet in the dream I recognized it all and awoke strangely saddened that this dream wasn't my childhood. And strangely disturbed.
I need a TV
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 1989
I need a TV.
Perhaps need is not the right word, who, after all, really needs a TV? But, from time to time I'd like to rent and watch a movie. And having the children huddled around the laptop - well, it's not exactly the same. There is a problem, however, in that I'm a TV snob...much as some people pride themselves on their 52 inch HD Plasma home theatre systems, I pride myself on not owning one. There are other things we can do, walks, read books, conversation.
Still, sometimes it would be nice to watch a movie.
And so I oscillate, finding TV's, wondering if I should purchase them, not purchasing them and privately enjoying my superiority, until Friday night comes and I wish to rent a movie for the children...
I need a TV.
Old dream of ship at sea
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Dreams
- Hits: 1519
Last night a few dreams, a mixed-up hodge podge, I awoke to write them down, but saw no meaning in them; I was tired, they were random and chaotic, I didn't turn on the light and fell back asleep.
So I'll write of another dream once I had, an old dream - animated in rich blues and amber. It made an impression.
I am a point of view at sea, no substance, only my senses, flying, there is a tempest and from the waves rise up waterspouts that meet with the low and ragged clouds, then turn into Atlanteans, briefly, bearing the sky upon their shoulders, and then rain back, falling into the sea. I am flying through this, it is animated, deep blues, flashes of lightning illuminate the denizens of the deep, translucent jellyfish and giant shadows swarming beneath. As a wave subsides I move in, there is a ship spinning in a trough between the waves, an old galleon, timbers lit from within like logs on a fire, hot embers and glowing salamanders flicker upon the surface. I move into the cabin, there a small chest, a treasure, as I approach it opens, and within it on a velvet lining there is a silver hand holding a pen. It is almost too brilliant to behold..
I awake.
An interesting link on how television shapes our dreams: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=&xml=/earth/2008/10/17/scidream117.xml
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