Your Thoughts, Average American Male?

So my husband read a couple of paragraphs to me yesterday and I was not surprised and even chuckled a little.  So, is this really you?  Come on, be honest.

 

Another Amazon.com Horror Story, Double Charge

1-866-216-1072 Amazon Customer Service

Oh yeah. Needed this # badly after Amazon.com double charged me for an item! Considering the desperate situation I was in (I wanted my money back IMMEDIATELY!!!) I needed to speak to a live person so I clicked on CALL ME. And yes, only a millisecond goes by when you hear your phone ring. Yeah, it was fast, but the rep was obviously overseas and clearly unmoved by my dilemma. I explained and complained rather irately to the guy. He reviewed my order, stated that his system shows I was only charged one time. WTbleep I thought very loudly in my head because unless I was seeing double, my bank statement that I had up on another tab did clearly show two separate debits for the same item, same amount. So I repeated my complaint over and over again until I was able to get the guy to finally show some kind of emotion. He sighed and said it needed to go to the investigations department. So he sent it to the investigations department. After I hung up with this rep I decided to go through the process again. I wanted to make sure this guy was doing as he should in my situation. I spoke to a woman who reassured me that everything was going to be resolved. Yeah right.

I received an email 24 hours later from Mark S. in the Charge Inquiry investigation department. It basically stated that yes there was an order made for an item in the amount of $52.97. Uh, duh. I did order it, but not TWICE!! And a lame apology for not mentioning this charge during my dealings with customer service. OK. So what about my refund for the second charge???

So I went at it again. Now it’s back to the investigations department. I’ve called my bank. They verified that Amazon.com charged me twice. My bank will gladly take charge, file a claim for me if Amazon.com fails the second time around.

Can anyone explain this?

Well, see you in 24 hours with the results.

 

OBAMA, 44th President of the United States!

Obama celebrates with family at Grant Park

History has been made, the first African American was elected president this evening, November 4, 2008. Senator Barack Obama supporters filled Grant Park in Chicago, New York City’s TImes Square and Obama headquarters across the US. Whether you voted for him or not, it is hard not to feel proud to be part of one of the most monumental and historic events of US history.

My husband and I celebrate with a toast as we keep our eyes on the tv. My eldest daughter smiles a congratulatory smile feeling proud to be one of thousands of canvassers that scoured the streets this past weekend reminding swing and undecided voters to go out and vote. Indeed, every vote counts.

Congressman John Lewis speaks. He is taken back at the enormous win and what it says about our country. Only in this country will we see her citizens line up in droves, millions of voters waiting up to seven hours in some polling stations, to vote for our next president and bring a victory to Barack Obama, an African American whose candidacy just a few years ago was a longshot and some decades ago an impossibility.

And congrats to John McCain who gave what I thought was his best performance of the election, a heartfelt and genuine concession speech.

In the words of Obama,

…this is our moment this is our time….

and a historic one at that.

 

HSM3 vs Twilight

jacobblackslilwolfgirl @ flickr

Two daughters. Both hooked on the Twilight series. Both begging me to reserve tickets for the movie due to come out mid November. Utter the name Edward and their minds cartwheel to another dimension only die hard Twilight fans can relate to. Both are on their third round of reading the series, one round totaling well over two thousand five hundred pages.

Are they on their way to complete satisfaction or utter disappointment? Will the big screen transport them to the Forks, WA they know so well? They can’t get enough of Paramore’s Decode, a song off the movie’s soundtrack. They can never get their fill of fansite photo montages of Edward and Bella, not to mention, all the dark, foreboding wallpaper that creeps across their desktop. Only time will tell.

How about that HSM3. A world apart from Twilight. Did it live up to my daughters’ expectations? My second has seen it. Apparently, Zac Efron was as cute as ever, but the singing, she said, was too much. She wanted more dialogue. She suggested that just when the conversations got meaty they broke into song. Well, it is a musical isn’t it?

Her final word on HSM3: “Now that I think about it, it was pretty annoying.”

My eldest daughter is watching the movie as I write this post. Will she regret having spent eight of her own dollars? Will sneaking in a handful of Halloween treats be more momentous than the movie itself? I have a feeling this is a chapter in their lives they’ll be sweeping under the rug. HSM fan turned Twilight fan. Tween turned teen. That’s what it is. And it’s only the beginning.

As a mom on the brink of parenting two teens, I cherish this post. I am delighted that Edward is just a character in a book and that Zac doesn’t live next door and that hunky vampires don’t really exist and that my daughters don’t truly believe they’ll fall in love with one for real. I think back to when I was fourten, fifteen and the all the good and bad choices I had at my fingertips and the same choices that my girls will be toying with soon and, OMG, I’m glad our arguments at the moment concern what movie, when, where, with who and how good.

Stay tuned for a true Twilight fan opinion on the long awaited Twilight movie.

 

Opinion: Would You Bite Into a Filipino?

Okay, the first time I ever heard of this chocolate delight was from my Aunt Venus who had just returned from a trip out to Spain. This was a year or so ago. She walked into a local Barcelona market or bakery and noticed chocolate covered cookies labeled with the name Filipinos. Apparently, they come in different flavors (white chocolate, too) and sizes. Upon hearing of this and knowing a little of Spain’s history with the Philippines, I was at first really offended and in disbelief– WHAT THE #%#%!. I’ve heard in the past that the term filipino in some western dictionary was defined as ‘house servant’. WHAT THE #%#%! So I’ve googled the term filipinos and got a blastful of blogs doing as I am now. Like Ivan Man Dy’s Street Walker Tales- Manila and Beyond and Market Manila. What’s interesting are the responses to the posts. Some are clearly outraged and many are quite ok with it, often times many find it pretty amusing.

I can’t help but wonder, at the birth of these chocolate treats, why name it filipinos? Is the answer lying deep in our centuries old history with Spain? Did they prefer the philippine variety over others? Or was it simply the astonishing parallels between a sun-kissed filipino person and a chocolate covered cookie, smooth and creamy on the outside, crispy on the inside? Some have argued that plaguing a population with this type food association is nothing new; there are other foodstuffs out there that bear the name of a group of people, take for example the frankfurter.

So, I’ve never bitten into one myself. My aunt didn’t get a chance to stuff her duffel with a dozen or so of these Spanish souvenirs… But do I need to in order to have an opinion? Even if every last morsel was pure ecstasy, I’d still be wonderin’ WHAT THE #%#%#.

If you feel strongly enough that this brand name of cookies, Filipinos, should be changed to a more acceptable name, then check out Go Petition, Changing the World. Someone’s got a petition going to wipe it off the face of this planet.

Also, if you are in the mood to intellectualize this topic a bit, then you might want to read Nathan Gilbert Quimpo’s Colonial Name, Colonial Mentality, Ethnocentrism. Interesting stuff.

Oh yeah, if you read my post on champurado, you know that I myself am a filipina, born in the Philippines and everything, moved to Philadelphia area when I was six months and I now sport a Polish/Catalan/Mexican husband and four very mixed kids…just thought I’d add that to help clarify what I’m trying to say in this post…hee, hee.