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Someone once wrote….”The best laid plans of mice and men…” I forget the rest of this, but as I recall it made the statement that even if you have a really good plan, the conditions at large will often prevent the plan from being carried out in full. In short, something is always bound to foul up whatever you have going on. In other words…don’t always think your plans are going to get finished the way that you think they should. Most of us know that by now. However, even the mature ones of us, tend to forget the old axiom of Murphy’s
Law.” If it can be screwed up, it will be.” Last week, I was invited to go to a conference in London. So, here I am on Monday morning making dozens of calls and trying to get a decent airfare. Now, that seems to be an oxymoron. The word decent in the same sentence as ‘airfare’. At least the airlines had the sense not to call it air-fair. since there isn’t fairness to it. Anyway, I can get flights; I just have to pay an arm and a leg for them. However, I figure that since it’s business and money is involved, what the heck…book it. Then I go into my desk and look at my passport. Good God, it expired last winter. Since I’m due to leave on Wednesday, I start calling every place I can find to see how you get one renewed overnight. Let me cut to the chase real quick here for those of you who have to leave….You can’t get a passport issued in a short period of time. Oh, I suppose if you stayed on the phone long enough and were desperate enough, you could find someplace that will walk the thing through, but I didn’t get that far. First off, I started with the Passport Services Dept of the State Department in Washington. Voice Mail City. By the time you get through listening to about 65 options, you tend to forget what you wanted in the first place. “Let’s see who WAS I calling and why?” I then try the Passport Office of the nearest large city around where we live. After 10 levels of voice mail, you finally get to some computer who talks like their mouth is frozen and proceeds to give you turn by turn instructions on how to drive to the Federal Building to get an emergency renewal. This takes about a year to listen to it completely. I feel myself getting much older as I sit throughout this telephone torture test. I keep hoping beyond hope that someone live, a real human being, will come on the line and ask how they can help me. If you ever think this is going to happen in our lifetime, please call me since I have some great deals on some oilwells for sale in Iowa. Forget it. It isn’t going to happen. The instructions tell me that in order for me to apply in person, I need an appointment at this Federal Building that I can drive to with my eyes shut from any point on the compass. Do they give you a number so you can call and ask for an appointment? Nope, that’d be too easy. Make too much sense. They refer you to a ‘900′ number. In this case it’s 900-225-5674. Now what is a ‘900′ number? Why, that’s one of those that charges you by the minute to talk or listen to someone, isn’t it? That’s right. The old US Government charges you by the minute to tell you how to get an appointment to get into a locked Federal Building in order to get a permission to get out of the country. And judging by the length of time it took them to tell me where the Federal Building was located, I’ll bet we can pay off the old national debt in no time at all. Well now the 2nd phase of my torture starts. I dial the old ‘900′ number, thinking I am about to make some headway, when another computer generated voice tells me that I’m not allowed to access ‘900′ numbers from my phone. I call the operator. She says the same thing. You can’t get to this number from your house. I offer to pay for it..Take my credit card, can I send a check? Anything, just let me get through to these folks so I can get on my way. Nope, nada, nein. Not going to happen. In order to get access to ‘900′ numbers you have to get the local phone company to remove the ‘block’ on this ability to dial. The ‘block’ is put on there when you order the phone lines and you have to authorize them to remove it…..for a small fee, of course. Time to do this…about 72 hours. Time for me to be in the air and on my way…about 55 hours at this point. Is this going to work? Not in a million years. Makes me believe it was all a conspiracy and I was the target. Makes me think, they don’t want us to leave. Not going to happen. Remember what I’ve always said…”Just because you’re paranoid…doesn’t mean they aren’t watching you…” Compliments go to www.pearyperry.com. Complaints and sarcastic comments should be sent to Elvis Presley % Graceland….Memphis Tenn. The King knows where to send my stuff. |
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