h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Right, I'm now over half-way through my second day back at work (well, I am if part of being at work entails having access to e-mail) and I still have over 250 unread items in my inbox. Suppose I'd better go and do some reading...

But you have to admire everyone for not posting to..any...threads...that...you...have, um.

I mean, for 6 days, no one posted to this, so you should be well through your mail by now, eh?

Yes, good point. I thought it was just that any postings I'd made were nonsensical and fit for nothing but ignoring.

The method I finally struck upon to get through my e-mail was to lose a whole load of it accidentally. I thought that I'd stuck it all into a new folder but I can't find it now so I'm buggered if I know where it's gone.

Well, yes, that'd probably work quite well too. 'S what I do when I have a big stack of mail--I ignore it all, then when I get the "Do you EVER read your e-mail???" letters, I know I missed something important. Saves all that trouble filing and doing organizy stuff.

*pokes Spartus enthusiastically* But you read all the mail I send you. DON'T YOU?

Actually, I only do the "lost it" ploy with live mail. The phone company is starting to send the red ones. Ooooo... pretty.

Krissy, I print out and put all the mail you send in my Krissy Shrine, right next to the voodo--er, the dolly I made that looks like you.

Um, if you felt any sharp, stabbing pains around 3:00 AM yesterday, it was the cat.

But...but Maggie is in Luxembourg!! It's got to be some kind of voodoo! *hobbles off to get help*

In the good old days you needed a lock of the victims hair for a spot of voodoo fun, nowadays, it would seem, all you need is a print out of thier e-mail. That's progress for you.

Right, back to this ignoring phone bills thing:

I had some great letters from Pac Bell regarding my final statement, all of them post marked after the date that they were requesting (or should that be demanding?) payment. The first one said, and please forgive me if I paraphrase a little here, "Pay up or we'll cut you off." (Erm what? I've already moved out, how's that going to affect me?).

The second one was, "Pay up or we'll make sure that you've got a bad credit rating for the rest of your natural days." (a little more scary, but not that much since my UK and American credit ratings are entirely seperate beasts).

The third one said, "Right this really is your final chance, and we genuinely will report you to someone to make sure that you'll never get enough credit to buy so much as a peanut ever again if you don't hand over $22.37 this instant."

Mind you, at least they cared. AT&T never bothered to send a bill and were quite surprised when I called 'em up, about 4 months after coming back here, to pay up.

Yeah. My favorite bills are the ones that never get there. My credit card company once called me and raged at me that I hadn't responded to any of their mail. They were pushy and nasty, and, as it turns out, sending all the information to the wrong address.

Heh. Bastards.

It's really REALLY tempting, btw, to just walk away from my debt here in the US and never pay it off and just go of UK credit... but I won't. *sigh* That closes the door pretty darn effectively on me coming home ever. *grumbles and pays her bills*

I don't think I ever paid a bill on time while I was over there, for one thing being billed once a month mad it such a pain in the arse. I just let 'em build up and pay two or three months at a time. AT&T were the best since they'd eventually call up to say that I owed them money, and would I like to pay it off by credit card, which saved be all the bother of having to go through their crappy phone system which, when I was naive and didn't realise that they'd call me if I waited long enough, normally took about 15 minutes.