"How fortuitous that it is my day to blog. Yes, Jenny, I agree with you. And I have like seven years' worth of stories from Cara's Great American Adventure.
But right now, there's something I have to get off my chest.
For all my adolescent photo-shopping (my date with Sean Biggerstaff and Hayden Christensen must have made the waitress at Friendly's laugh when I left behind the accidental photographic evidence and yeesh, but it looks an awful lot like Leo and I were meant to be sometimes), for all my blogging and digital photography-taking, I have a pet peeve.
It's called technology. And yes, I understand the utter hypocrisy of venting my peeves on the internet when the internet is one of my peeves. (Not the mention the "Look at me!" narcissism of the very act of blogging. Blegh. But I do love you very much, Shetland Four, so I'll keep at it.) But you have to understand that I am the daughter of a man who thought he could make a call from a cell phone that had not been turned on (in fairness, he was trying to save the battery... he was on 24/7 call) and who calls his iPod a walkman. And I am a recent iPod convert. While every other music lover in the world -- who doesn't love music?! Seriously, where is your soul?! -- marks their relationship with the Apple device in years, I'm like a toddler. "Well, I've had my -- what is it? July? Eighteen months. A year and a half. That's how long we've been together."
In order to feel any attachment at all to my devices, I need to give them names and personalities. There is Clark, the epically large camera. Bruce the Shark is the iPod and he is the same exact age as Clark. My phone's name is Ronald Reagan and my computers, well, there was James Franco, but I took him off the life support finally, and now I have a Dr. Sheldon Cooper in my life.
As far as MP3s go, I despise them. I buy them, but I hate them. It's a strange, contemptuous relationship I have with them. Sort of like the one I have with mes freres. Except, less hateful? Anyway, if I had it my way, I'd be all about the vinyl. I like them more than CDs and MP3s sort of hurt my soul. It's like this awesome song by Erich Hochstrasser (a Berklee College student whose EP I was given for my birthday and he's sort of a god). This song is called "I Fell In Love With The Girl At The Record Store."
"If someone from somewhere else, saw the things we do,
Little things sticking in our ears, would they talk to you?
Point and click, it seems to stick, music we can't hold.
Digital downloads have eaten all our souls.
Went in for some jams but they don't sell those anymore.
I fell in love with the girl at the record store."
And it's so true. The music industry is a joke now and I blame the advent of MP3s. Sure, I could type up a ridiculous love poem, but to hand-write something, you have to actually love it. You have to live with it. I think it's the same with music. It's easy to not give a shit about digital music because it doesn't feel real. It feels fake and unimportant. But to put something on vinyl, to give it that inevitable longevity, that is to truly love it and believe in it. You don't put Britney Spears or Lady Gaga on vinyl because it won't last as long as the medium.
It's the same with connections we make with people. I hate facebook, I hate email, I hate texting. I mean, sure, I admire and perhaps abuse their convenience. But for real connections, they are pretty pointless. I could email anyone I like, or as is the case lately, dislike and it wouldn't feel like it mattered. But to write someone a hand-written note, that feels like that person is important to me. I could go on, you know how it is with the images we choose to capture on camera.
But what I really want to express my hatred for, and this is an unmitigated hatred, is direct deposit. What happens when the world becomes so super-streamlined and so super convenient that it is actually the opposite?
I use Bank of America (and paypal, if any generous donors ever wanted to help me pay my rent, winkwink) and usually, it's pretty okay. I also work for a prominent non-profit group at a job that I really love and enjoy, mostly. And usually, it's pretty okay. But I am supposed to get paid tomorrow and I have this sinking feeling that it won't be happening. Here's how it all plays out.
So Bank of America has this awesome system with their ATMs so that you don't ever need to speak to a human being. Seriously, last fall I tried to find deposit slips so that I could deposit a check at the counter with a human being, and they were nowhere to be found. I had to hop in the ATM line. The ATMs that can read your checks for you so that you don't even need to fill out a deposit slip. Not only that, but it can count your cash for you, holyshit. And the ATMs are free to use if you're a Bank of America customer. So generally, I deposit my paychecks very other Friday and withdraw whatever money I anticipate needing. Other than that, I use my card for some things, but I have never written a check in my life. Because everything gets paid online with my CHECKCARD, writing checks seems silly. I don't even order them because I don't actually need deposit slips at Bank of America. Go. Figure. Bank of America has STREAMLINED MY LIFE TO THE POINT OF INCONVENIENCE. Don't believe me just yet? Read on, my poor compatriot. You will be astonished.
So this non-profit I work for, I worked there last summer, too. They did this cool thing where they paid me every two weeks with a check. They said, "Hey, do you want direct deposit?" and I was completely free to say, honestly as it were, "No, thank you. I prefer handling the depositing of my checks and don't entirely trust the process of direct deposit." This summer, I got an email two days before I was expected at training, informing me that this summer, there would be no live checks given out to any employees who did not come from another country and that I should be prepared to fill out direct deposit forms. Well, you might be thinking, that's not so bad, is it, Miss Ashley? HA!
Do you know what a person needs to set up a direct deposit? Either a cancelled check or deposit slip -- the sort that comes from the back of a check book and has your account number printed so that ONLY YOU can use that deposit slip. Two things I don't have. Two things I have never had. Because I don't write checks. And deposit slips? My bank is hardly so antiquated as all that.
So I did what any rational Potterboomer might do and hopped online. In an instant message conversation with an exceedingly polite customer service rep named Raja or Sebastian or Flounder or something equally Disney, I discovered the webpage that had the routing numbers I needed for direct deposit to accounts opened in Massachusetts. He also linked me to a page that I needed to fill out online, print out, and give to my employers. So I followed his directions with only the most pressing feeling that only everything here could go wrong. Making it worse, I'm not even 100% convinced I remember my account number because, once again folks, sing if you know it, BANK OF AMERICA does not use deposit slips.
So I handed in the information I thought was correct to my boss and she said, "All right; we'll see what happens." Now I discover that there should be some nine-cent test deposit to my account and God help me, but it's not there. Not only that, but it is after midnight on the day I am supposed to be paid, officially, and the money ought to be in there.
Guess what. It's not.
Fuck you, prominent non-profit and your devious direct deposit ways. And as for you, Bank of America, you made my life so easy I feel like one of those lards in Wall-E. You helicopter parent, you devil in disguise. Between the two of you, I feel disgusted and frustrated. I don't understand why there is an assumption being made by my non-prophet non-profit that everyone thinks direct deposit is such a grand idea. I'll tell you what I want to do to direct deposit--pretend it doesn't exist. Just give me a live-fucking-check and let me put it in the bank myself.
And because of technology, because of my workplace's unwillingness to offer the option of a live check as opposed to direct deposit, because of their stupid assumption that what is good for them is equally good for me, I might not be able to go to Amherst this weekend, or at the very least will not be able to stay overnight. They are paying me. I work for them for peanuts on the dollar; they're barely paying me. God knows the least they could do is to pay me as I wish to be paid. In a reallivecheck. Not this direct deposit bullshit. Maybe from here on out, I'll demand they pay me in gold bullion.
I dunno; I just think that Alexander Hamilton is wicked confused right now.
