A Critical Ethnography of Social Media: The Homiletics Horror Show

 

There is a striking tendency among YouTube reactors that is quite noticeable to the critical ethnographic observer. It is a tendency that is hardly new and it is a tendency that is hardly a monopoly of YouTube reactors. It has long been quite common and widespread in the human community for some time, probably, in fact, since the beginning of thinking and speaking human community time. And it is a tendency, as a consequence, that has long been present among contributors to YouTube

While a lot if not most YouTube reactors are characterised by this tendency I am going to focus on three YouTube “reactors" who are, paradoxically, also amongst, in my opinion, the better Buffy the Vampire Slayer reactors on YouTube: domi e, TheLexieCrowd, and Sofie Reacts. All three have been reacting, if sometimes fitfully to Buffy as they have other things in their YouTube barrel they are reacting to in order to generate notoriety and, as a consequence, generate monies, for years now. Of the three domi e is the only one not to have finished the series at this point.

The human tendency I am referring to relates to method, if one can assume that there is indeed some method to the YouTube “reactor" madness. Like most humans most YouTube reactors and most YouTube Buffy reactors, even the best of them, apply a faulty method of “analysis” to the text they are reacting to, in this case to the Buffy text. Instead of starting with exegesis or a close textual analysis and one that draws on what the authors of a text professed to be up to when they created it and moving on next to an exegetically grounded hermeneutics, putting, in the process, the Buffy text in its empirical economic, political, cultural, demographic, and geographic contexts, most YouTube reactors and our three YouTube reactors in particular, start with the third aspect of the method in this chain of interpretation instead of the first, homiletics. They, in other words, begin and largely end their "analysis" by inscribing their ideologies into the Buffy text sans essential exegetical and hermeneutic analysis both of which should check and balance speculative readings of any text.

One recent example of this tendency or method—beginning and ending with homiletics—is particularly apparent when one explores how all three watched and reacted to the Buffy episode “Once More With Feeling”, the seventh episode in the sixth season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Buffy, of course, as those who have watched the show know, died at the end of the fifth season as heroes often do during the heroes journey sketched out by Joseph Campbell (see Campbell’s book The Hero With a Thousand Faces). In the heroes journey the hero doesn’t stay dead and in Buffy’s case her friends Willow, Xander, Anya, and Tara refuse to let her die and literally resurrect her in the first episode of season six of the show.

Buffy, however, doesn’t come back right. Her friends assume she was in a hell dimension, a hell dimension similar to the one Buffy sent Angel to at the end of season three of the show. She has been instead, as she tells the vampire with a chip in his head Spike in the third episode of season six, in what she describes in her theologically naive way, heaven. So like the damaged men of Wuthering Heights, Pride and Prejudice, and even Buffy itself, Buffy is returned to what she calls hell, a real life in the real world, an ordinary life in an ordinary world (a shout out to Sartrean existentialism) that for her is literally hellish. 

Buffy faces not only emotional and psychological problems after she returns to life, problems related to that eternal existentialist question of why am I here. She also faces economic problems given that her mother’s long illness and death has left her in financial straights (a shoutout to the broken US health care system that often leaves many in debt and with debt even if they have medical insurance). She needs to get a loan to pay her many piled up bills and get a job in order to make ends meet and to fix the broken water pipes in her basement (metaphors and allegories become more tangible and obvious in season six of the BtVS bildungsroman, in the Buffy growing up tale of season six, for obvious reasons).

Getting either a bank loan or a job proves difficult for Buffy in season six. Buffy has no collateral and her home, which she inherited from her mother Joyce, and which she tries to use as collateral to get a loan from the bank, has  already, as the bank loan officer she goes to for a loan tells her, been fully leveraged and has been losing equity for years (a shout out to the fact that Joyce’s and Buffy's home has been trashed on many occasions given that Buffy already has a job, slaying). So she can’t, like many poorer Americans, get a loan. As for getting a job, Buffy never graduated from college dropping out from UC-Sunndyale in season five in order to move home to help take care of her sister Dawn and eventually her sick mother as well so her job options are, as little sister Dawn notes in season six, pretty much limited to poor paying retail and service industry work that literally in the Buffyverse, turns many fast food workers into retail automatons. Moreover, Buffy, who is called to be a slayer—it is her vocation not her job—can’t charge those she aids for killing the monsters, demons, and vampires of Sunnydale that are out to kill them.

Fortunately, for Buffy and those, like Willow and Tara who live with her in her home and who don’t have jobs or much income either, Giles, Buffy's mentor, is there to help. He gives Buffy monies to fix the broken water pipes in her house and to take care of her other financial issues. Instead of trying to find a job immediately, however, Buffy, admittedly somewhat depressed thanks to her resurrection to the hell of ordinary life, rushes off to meet her former boyfriend Angel somewhere between Sunnydale (a low rent Santa Barbara) and Los Angeles, where Angel now resides, shirking, as Giles sees it, her more mundane financial and familial duties foisting the disciplining of her sister off on Giles in the process.

Giles, Buffy’s watcher and mentor, is concerned with Buffy’s shirking of her adult responsibilities and this concern along with his feelings that he is “standing in the way” of her growing up comes to a head, 

in “Once More With Feeling. Buffy is not the only Scooby in season six shirking her adult responsibilities. Willow is using magic to make things easier for her including making things easier for her in her relationship with her girlfriend Tara, who, after an argument, she casts a forgetting spell on. Xander and Anya are having second thoughts about their forthcoming marriage. Sister Dawn is stealing in order to get attention. All these oh grow up story and character arcs come to a head in the episode “Once More With Feeling”.

In “Once More With Feeling", a musical episode, our characters sing out, thanks to a spell cast, their deepest feelings and, in the process, they learn about some of each others deepest secrets. It the episode it is revealed that Buffy was not in hell as her friends thought but in heaven, that Willow has been manipulating Tara’s mind, that Xander and Anya have things that bug them about each other, that Giles is sensing that he is standing in the way of Buffy becoming a responsible adult, and that Dawn is feeling alone and unwanted.

What is happening in season six up to and after “Once More With Feeling” is part and parcel with what Buffy creator, show runner, writer, and director said was the broad theme of season six of the show, the need to grow up and take responsibility for your actions. All the Scoobies, save for Giles, are stuck in pre-adult overdrive, including what seem like the villains or big bad of season six at first (they actually aren’t, the inability of our Scoobies to grow up is), the trio of Jonathan, Warren, and Andrew who, after graduating from high school, decide to become supervillains just like those they emulate in the science fiction and action adventure media they devour like fanboy kids. 

It is this, this exegetical fact, the fact that Buffy season six is about growing up and taking responsibility, that many YouTube reactors including our own trio of domi e, TheLexieCrow, and Sofie Reacts, miss because they have not (and perhaps will not) engage in empirical analysis and explore what those who made Buffy say about their intentions for season six. They prefer to “approach” Buffy tabula rasa (which is, of course, impossible given the reality of socialisation), paradoxically "Tabula Rasa” is the title of the episode of Buffy that was broadcast right after “Once More With Feeling”.

All three reactors are, as their reactions to “Once More With Feeling” reveal, particularly angry with Giles who sings to a Buffy who is not paying attention and who is lost in her own little hermetic world that he feels he is standing in the way of Buffy’s life course development and needs to leave, which he does in the next episode, so she can become a responsible adult. They want him instead to continue to play the father to Buffy,  not the father who realises that some tough love is sometimes necessary to aid someone to grow up but a father who solves all problems with the wave of the money want.

It is not surprising that many “reactors” read Buffy in this way and take Buffy’s side against Giles in this episode. Buffy, after all, is the main character of the show and though many reactors identity with Giles and other of the Scoobies, many, including our trio of “reactors" also strongly identify with Buffy and take her side in crises like the ones Buffy faces in season six. One might also argue that it is not surprising that reactors take Buffy's over that of Giles because they too in a world where good and good paying jobs are fewer and fewer, where the service sector with its poor paying and poor benefit jobs is dominant, where sons and daughters sometimes have to live with their parents to make ends meet, where marriage is being delayed, and where pregnancy is delayed, where delaying growing up is kind of a functional strategy for life in the real world. 

One thus has to wonder whether many of our “reactors" are, like their fictional counterparts in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, stuck in life course neutral and consequently take the side of someone who is delaying growing up just like they are (though I suppose one can argue that engaging in the mundane and banal not so fine art of YouTube reaction video capitalism is not unlike working in the fast growing fast food industry). One has to contemplate, in other words, whether YouTube Buffy “reactors" are creating a reality in Buffy that mirrors their own in reality, something made possible if not probable by their studied ignorance of the Buffy text the creators of the show actually made and the meanings they, and particularly Joss Whedon, put into the show, along with an ignorance of the broader economic, political, cultural, demographic, and geographic aspects of the show into which the television show fits. Needless to say this studied ignorance is something very much akin to the situation that the Trio find themselves in in Buffy season six, a situation where the Trio of stuck in neutral males who are still living in the basements of their parents' homes, who don’t have jobs, who are still playing with their beloved Star Wars toys (the detritus of a mediocre adolescent franchise), discoursing on who was the best James Bond, and who seemingly can’t or don’t want to grow up.  Oh the humaninanity...

Life as Crisis Management: Skankizon Does it Again.

Well, it happened again today. I ordered a book, The Authoritarian Personality, from Amazon and it arrived damaged just like other books I have ordered from them, and just like other CDs in jewel cases I ordered from them, and just like other DVDs and Blu-rays in keep cases I have ordered from them. This means that I received a book from Amazon that they claim is new but which is actually very good plus. It is vg+ because, empirically speaking, it has a bump in the top right cover. It is vg+ because it has massive bumps within bumps in the lower left corner that also affects the spine. It is vg+ because page 757 of the book is folded in half and then that half has been folded in half too. Again, this is a book—a $35 dollar book—that Skankizon claims is new. It is not given this damage.

I contacted Skankizon, of course, but since I don’t have a phone with internet access and I don’t have a printer Skankizon punished me for receiving a book they claim that is new that is clearly not. They want me, a 70 year old with a history of asthma, arthritis, and stomach problems, in other words, to pay $8 dollars to return a book that they claimed that is new but is not. It is heavily damaged. I guess this is Skankazon’s notion of taking responsibility for its own actions.

I don’t know why I continue to buy books, CDs, and DVDs/Blu rays from Amazon. Well perhaps I do: Amazon seems to have deals. However, when you order books or CDs that are in jewel cases or DVDs/Blu ray that arrive damaged they are not really bargains anymore, are they? 

So up yours, Amazon, up yours Skankizon, up your automatons reading a slaggy and skanky moronic script in customer service and up your morally and ethically challenged powers that be. I will be much more circumspect about buying from you in the future and I will not purchasings books or CDs or DVDs/Blu rays from you in the future. If there is a hell, which I doubt—Skankizon, in Sartrean fashion is hell—you deserve to go there. 

Postscript: I posted this on the Amazon page on Facebook. I got a response from someone calling him or her self a customer service agent or something similar asking me to contact them by clicking on their title. I did and explained the problem: I was sold a damaged used book masquerading as a new book. I was proffered a repetitive canned we are sorry and was told I would receive a gift card  for my troubles and would be contacted about this via email. As of yet nothing of the sort has happened. No email. No nothing. Perhaps this customer service agent on Amazon is, and I would not be surprised if he or she is, a fake. After all, Amazon is nothing but a fake save when its emperor with no clothes is kissing Trump’s arse. Caveat emptor.

Life as Crisis Management: The Renting a Flat Kiada

I never wanted to buy a house so I have rented places in a variety of cities and towns for all my life. If I could go back into a time would I change this? Perhaps. I might, for example, use a Tardis to go to the past and buy real estate in Toronto, Vancouver, or even Bloomington, Indiana. But I would not buy an house in which to live. I would buy one for the money that would result from real estate inflation. You see, I know, thanks to the vantage point of the present that in an absurd world governed by capitalist irrationality real estate values will rise (if also fall given the fact of that doppelgänger of capitalist booms, capitalist busts) and that I could make a proverbial killing from buying cheap in the past and selling high in the future.

Renting, of course, has its advantages and its disadvantages.The main advantage, I suppose, is that you don’t have to engage in that Sisyphean task of keeping the place up. The main disadvantage is, I suspect, having to deal with property of varying quality and landlords of varying quality if you rent. 

I have rarely made much money over the course of my life so most of the rented flats I have lived in have been in general OK. Only one of the apartments I resided in was beyond redemption. It never should have been allowed to host renters in the first place but then cities and towns are not always good at assuring that a place is liveable. The political powers that be tend to cozy up to the landlords the money men who sometimes grease their palms. A couple of the flats I let were very good. Most, however, have been mediocre at best and that includes the one I live in presently in Albany, New York.

Most of the landlords I have rented from have also been OK. Only one, the one who rented me the apartment from Hades, have been less than responsible and mediocrely ethical. A couple, one that worked for the corporation that owned the apartment complex I lived in, were excellent making sure that what needed to have fixed in the flat was fixed within a few days. Most of my landlords have been, including the one I have now, more slow in fixing problems.

The landlord I have now, for instance, is often as slow as molasses in fixing the things in the apartment that need to be fixed. For instance, the apartment I live in at present has a tile shower—a mould bearing tile shower to be precise—that has needed fixing for ten years or so. It still does. Why the dlanlord uses tiles in a shower which requires  early upkeep because of the humidity and the resulting mould is beyond me. Fetish for tiles perhaps? It is certainly not because of the aesthetic qualities of tiles which make up tile shower because my tile shower would drive even beauty is in my eye Christina from the HGTV TV channel batty.

There are other things in the flat that also need fixing and which, though I have told him, the dlanlord ignores. The kitchen cabinets of particle board, for instance, are literally deteriorating and the detritus of these needs to be swept up periodically. I had to remove the doors of several because their magnets no longer work and they have holes in them where the knobs used to be. Lovely.  The kitchen light is one of those long fluorescent tube light fixtures that looks like it belongs in some low rent down on its luck office buildings on the wrong side of town from 1950. I can no longer change the bulbs in this installation because it requires a step stool and flexibility I no longer have given that it hangs by wires from the old ceiling above where one of those panel and metal ceiling replacements was installed in the 1970s. This delightful desecration—the drop ceiling that is—is found in every room of the flat save the water closet. The kitchen linoleum looks little better than a dirt floor given its age and state of disrepair. It is shedding The living room light barely lights the living room. The gas stove and oven is kaput. The dlanlord said he would wheel in another used one in—the last one he wheeled in was not well cleaned and the rust he failed to clean off led to massive cracks in the stove and oven—and I said yes if he did a thorough cleaning job—not his usual crap one he does and calls it pretty—after he wheeled it or if he laid down moving rugs so very minimal cleaning could be done. He refused both options. There are no laundry facilities and so I have to drive a mile or so to do the laundry. The place is cold because the radiator heat is nineteenth century—the house first appears on an 1850 census—though the landlord does allow space heaters (he pays the electricity), which, alas, are of limited utility in raising the temperature in a place with virtually no insulation and walls so tender that a moderate touch cracks them. There is almost no ventilation in the flat since there are no fans (save the ones I now have blowing from the floor its windows) and its old windows do not open. There is no fan in the windowless kitchen and there there is not window that opens in the water closet (contrary to city laws). The place is dry because of the radiators and space heaters and requires a humidifier to try to correct the imbalance. It can’t. Water leaking from the ceiling—which thankfully has not occurred for a while—has, in the past, damaged my possessions including several limited edition and now out of print DVD’s and Blu-ray’s one of which now goes for over $300 dollars. I suspect the place I live in hardly does wonders for my health.

The house in general—which contains five flats, two of which are empty and in need of extensive repair—is three storeys high and four people live in the remaining three flats. It is next to impossible to take an uninterrupted shower (something I was reminded of yet again today) since it seems that all all times of the day someone is using the water which ain’t fun when you are in the middle of a shower and suddenly someone turns on the water and yours goes cold. Oh the joys of a single water heater! The electricity is in need of a little loving care. This fall the dlanlord did some work on it and we had to, well I had to since I am the only retired person in the place, endure four or five interruptions of electricity so he could try to fix it. I still don’t know whether he was able to. The furnace has gone off four times over the last several years, one of which was one of these new high tech jobs that the dlanlord finally junked since it was a piece of crap.

Something that may give you further glimpses into the mind of the dlanlord is the fact that when he needed to shut the electricity off yet again recently he asked us what would be a good time for him to do this, suggesting that 1:00 pm in the afternoon would be good for him. I suggested over night or 11 am on subsequent days. Instead of changing his schedule, however, he told everyone else in the complex that the electricity could not be fixed because I would not allow it to be fixed because I did not want him to do it at 1 pm. Of course, he conveniently elided the fact that I gave him several alternative options because I wanted him to do it at a time better for me, a time when I could, with ease, do chores while he mucked about with the electricity in the cellar. 

Another thing that might help understand the dlanlord is this. I am getting older with all that entails. I bought some sucker grab bars and put them up in the shower. They do not really work and after about a month the sucker stops sucking and well you know the drill. You have to take them off, alcohol them, alcohol the tiles, and stick them back up again followed by further rinses and repeats. Anyway, I asked the dlandord to put in the traditional grab bars, you know the ones that screw into the wall. He said he would but when he went out to get he—I am sure you are shocked—bought, yes, a sucker grab bar. I told him I already have two neither of which really function as they should anyway so. Well oh well.

Do I regret not buying a place? No. I don’t like to be tied down to a place though my possessions kind of make that moot at this point. Do I love renting? No. Those of us with limited incomes and who feel the limits of age, however, are ultimately beggars who can’t be choosers though so our options are inherently limited by social factors that impact us. And that means that sometimes we have to choose between not so great choices. As a consequence you sometimes can’t fear the reaper.
 

Life as Crisis Management: The Spectrum Kiada

 

I have said it before and I will undoubtedly say again, the internet and all it brings with it is a double edged sword. It makes some things easier while making almost everything harder. Today the harder is Spectrum.

I have had a Spectrum account for some years, since it was Time-Warner, in fact. You can depend on Spectrum for two things when you have an account with them. First,  prices will rise and second, the customer account online page will not work even if you have saved the user name and password to access the account in your computer.

Let’s take the first, first. My account costs with Spectrum rose from $49.99 in July to $52.99 in August and to $67.99 in January. I suppose Spectrum has to keep those executive salaries going up and up since the poor poor pitiful well off are always well off and want to be even more well off, all at our expense. By the way, I was not informed of the cost rise by either email or text message for that latest price rise. 

I suppose I have could have gone and seen the announcement of this price rise on my Spectrum customer account at Spectrum.net. I did try to look but guess what? I got an error message when I tried to log in

This is the second time I have got an error message when trying to log into my Spectrum personal account page. When I called Spectrum about this issue the first time I had this problem I was told that the reason I could not access my customer online account was because of a switch over on their part to a different system or some such like issue and needed to update my account. I did just that and like a good boy in this age of too much information to remember, I saved my updated user name and password into my computer so I could easily login in the future. 

I know I should never had assumed logging into my Spectrum account would work flawlessly after that. But a boy, even if he is cynical, can hope. When I tried to log in, however, I was, as is so often the case when dealing with online services these days, nutted by reality yet again. I tried to log in to my account at least a couple of times before today and I got the same seemingly inevitable error message I had seen before. I did not pursue the issue at the time because frankly I have better things to do.

Well today I tried to access my account again because I could find no email or text message from Spectrum. I clicked on my username and password to try to get into my account and instead I got yet another error message from good old Spectrum. Past is prologue, I guess.

So I contacted Spectrum chat and had to go through the whole annoying rigamarole of verifying who I was, verifying again who I was, and verifying my phone number so they could send me a code because I did not want to open Pages and get my security number while chatting. 

After much internet gnashing of teach I gave up the Sisyphean task of trying to get my online account to work again. I asked that my account be deleted since it never works anyway and I was assured that I would get account bills via email and text message. Fingers crossed.

Well we will see how this works out. I am sick and tired of dealing with Spectrum sick and tired that I am on the verge of cancelling my service and going elsewhere as I am sick and tired of the price rises within months of each other and I am sick and tired of expending energy and time trying to get the log in issue with my customer account page corrected (three strikes and out). But then I remembered something, the grass is probably not green anywhere else in this age of corporate greed and incompetence.

A Critical Ethnography of Social Media: Hannah Stoddard and Latter Day Mormon Apologetics and Polemics

 

YouTube is a wonderful mirror into the mentalities of modern and postmodern humans. It tells us, for example, something about the ways people read television shows. It tell us something about the ways people read classic rock and roll songs. It tells us something about how contemporary Mormon apologists and polemicists interpret the history of Mormonism, the history of the United States, and the history of the world.

Recently, I have been exploring the videos Mormon “traditionalist" Hanna Stoddard and her Jospeh Smith Foundation have produced and posted on YouTube and the YouTube videos in which Stoddard appears as a guest star. These videos, to pick a few examples, condemn the works of “progressive" Mormon historians like Leonard Arrington and Richard Bushman, condemn Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution, celebrate those Mormon celebrities like Joseph Fielding Smith, Bruch McConkie, Boyd Packer, and Ezra Taft Benson who Stoddard and her fellow travellers regard as saints, and condemn modernity with its materialistic approach to history and its contextualism (history as the longue dureee product of economic, political, cultural, biological-demographic, and geographic factors).

Stoddard’s discourse has all the hallmarks of Mormon polemics and apologetics of the past, to Protestant Fundamentalist apologetics and polemics of the past, and to right wing Christian nationalist apologetics and polemics of the present. Like all apologetics since the beginning of apologetics time Stoddard’s apologetics are grounded in the assumption that “we", “us", however we and us are defined, and it is defined selectively by Stoddard, have the fullest essence of the truth. Stoddard assumes that Mormonism, her particular Mormonism, is true (she does admit that echoes of the truth can be found in other religious cultures). She believes that god exists, that the devil exists, that some people are inhabited by devils, and that there are evil witches out there in human land. She believes that the Mormon prophets are prophets of god. She believes the Mormon doctrine that America is a promised land and hence exceptional. She believes that the LDS Church is in danger of apostasy thanks to indoctrination by conspiratorial Mormon “progressives” (who are, in her mind, little better than devils and witches, Marxists and liberals) like Leonard Arrington and Richard Bushman (her apparent bete noirs along, echoing Benson, with Karl Marx, who, in an uncredited answer to what the teaching of class in the BYU Sociology Department on the Stoddards' Latter-day Answers (aka LDS Answers), refers approvingly to a book that accuses Marx of being a satanist, Charles Darwin, Sigmund Freud, John Dewey, John Maynard Keynes (all amongst Benson’s “antichrists” in “A Plea to Strengthen Our Families”, a document often cited by right wing Mormons but not apparently emphasised by the contemporary Church) and the “Darwinists" and “socialists” at contemporary BYU, the, in common LDS parlance, “Lord’s University").

Not surprisingly, these assumptions, assumptions that are grounded in Stoddard’s religious “testimony” (a Mormon term for spiritual guidance) provide the bedrock and foundation for Stoddard’s polemics. She claims that only true believers or the faithful can write quality history (faith history) not only of Mormonism but of America, Europe, the ancient Near East, and the world. Joseph Smith, Stoddard clams, could not have been a treasure hunter, someone who engaged in the occult, because the Mormon prophets said he wasn’t and those who say he was are secularists like the new Mormon historians or anti-Mormons, who the new Mormon historians draw on extensively claims Stoddard, and who can’t, as a consequence of the fact that they are anti-Mormons, be trusted. She claims the earth has only been around for around 6000 years and that Noah’s flood actually occurred globally because the Bible tells me so and god’s prophets, god’s real prophets, tell me so.

Like all apologists and polemicists Stoddard is selective. She condemns new Mormon history materialist contextualism but she is a contextualist too. She assumes, for example, that the context of the Book of Mormon is ancient Near Eastern history and ancient American prehistory and history. She is selective in that she applies the canons of critical history to what she regards as the mythhistory of the new Mormon historians but she doesn’t apply them to her faith history, an actual mythhistory since it is grounded in ideological assumptions rather than empirical evidence, something that makes her kin to Sandra Tanner, someone who also doesn’t apply the analytical strategies she applies to Mormonism to her Christian faith. She sometimes seems to conflate the critical new Mormon history with anti-Mormonism. She is selective in the evidence she uses. She, for example, far too often bases her dismissal of evidence that does not line up with her ideological assumptions because of the supposed character defects of the person from whom the evidence originates (the ad hominem strategy). She, for example, dismisses evidence about Smith on the basis that the person making the claim is someone left the Church while, at the same time, claiming that any analysis of evidence must be grounded analysis rather than assumed "analysis". She selectively dismisses evidence on the basis of it being taken down after the fact except when that evidence comes from those she regards as prophets and true religious authorities. She downplays differences among the Twelve. She ignores the fact that the LDS Church and its revelations have changed over the years. See plural marriage or polygamy and Blacks and the priesthood.  She uses inductive analysis for deductive purposes. All one has to do, Stoddard’s logic demands, is simply “verify” what god and his prophets say and bingo, you’ve got it. All of this makes Stoddard an apologist and a polemicist and only kind of an historian, one that plays in the clays of mythhistory more than real history. And this is why Stoddard is a kind of intellectual demagogue, a kind of anti-academic intellectual, and a kind of anti-intellectual intellectual since, for her, once god speaks all the thinking that needs to be done is done. That is dogma and dogmatics not history or social science.

Life as Crisis Management: The CVS Health Silver Script Kiada Yet Again...

 

I am sick and tired of dealing again and again with American prescription insurance corporations. This time the problem, this time my latest life crisis, involves the muscle reliever Cyclobenzaprine and the prescription company I that covers my prescriptions, CVS Health Silver Script, the prescription corporation the New York State and Local Retirement System farms out their prescription contract for their retirees to. It sucks.

I have been taking Cyclobenzaprine for probably ten years or so now. My GP’s and my back doctors prescribed it and prescribe it for me. Today, however, I was unable to get my 30 pills of Cyclobenzaprine for this month because I turned 70 and the bureaucrats at CVS now need to approve it because I might apparently injure myself while taking it. Apparently 70 is, or the prescription insurance thinks it is, a magical boundary I have recently crossed that might now send me collapsing to the ground because of drowsiness and dizziness caused by Cyclobenzaprine.

Do the bureaucrats at CVS know anything about my case? No. Do they have all of my medical records that might indicate any history of dizziness throughout my life or any dizziness caused by Cyclobenzaprine? No. Have they contacted the prescribing doctor or doctors? I highly doubt it. Have they made my life and my health much more difficult? Absolutely. Ain’t that wonderful? NO. It isn’t a joy for an asthmatic, arthritic, elderly person to walk up to get medicines in 20 degree weather that he can’t get unbeknownst to himself.

Whether I should and can take Cyclobenzaprine should be between me and my doctor not me and the insurance company. My doctor knows me. She knows the specifics of my case. She knows whether I can safely take Cyclobenzaprine or not. The prescription health insurance company does not. 

Modern bureaucracies, of course, are a pain in the arse and perhaps no bureaucracy, one geared to making profits, is more a pain in the arse than health insurance companies as recent events show (nudge, nudge, wink, wink). These paternalistic bureaucracies should not be deciding what I can and cannot take. My doctor, who I see regularly should. But then the US health insurance system is the worst in the core nation world and I know because I have availed myself and experienced first hand and in reality what health care systems in Canada, England, France, and even Russia were like. They were all, in my humble opinion, far superior to the crazy, idiotic, and moronic one in the US.

Up CVS.

Life as Crisis Management: The Arkiv Music Kiada

 

It is another month and I have had to deal with yet another manmade bureaucratic crisis. The more things change, as they say.

Tis the season as they say and I have gotten into the holiday spirit by consuming, the Western capitalist way. One corporation I bought some stuff from, several CD’s of classical music to be more precise, recently is Arkiv Music.

This is not the first time I bought items from Arkiv. When Arkiv was owned by Steinway I bought a famous classic disc of chamber music by Dvorak performed by the Suk Trio. The transaction went well. I had a coupon which I used, a coupon which defrayed the transit charge.Generally speaking it was this postal charge and the fact that Amazon, which defrayed postal charges if you purchased more than $25 dollars in goods (now $35 dollars with corporate inflation), was competitive in prices and gave you free shipping under the right conditions, that kept me from making more purchases from Arkiv even though I despise Amazon (though I like some Amazon marketplace sellers).

I remained on Arkiv’s list, however. Recently I got a free shipping coupon from Arkiv via email. So I decided to dip my toes in the Arkiv pool again, create an account, and purchase several items, all Naxos discs, CD’s that were on sale at Arkiv. I unfortunately, assumed—never assume anything anymore dear reader—that all of these items were made in Germany, the place Naxos, who now owns Arkiv, makes many if not most of their discs and which, I assumed, now made all of their CD’s as I had not seen an American made Naxos release in months. I was wrong. The Gliere and Taneyev I ordered were, as I found out in short order, made in the USofA.

As a general rule I don’t buy American made discs if I can avoid it. I prefer to buy European made discs including from corporations that produce CD’s and DVD/Blu ray's for both European and North American markets like Naxos apparently does once again. I prefer to buy CD’s from places that respect the right of their workers and have laws in place that respect their workers unlike much of the US including stone age Tennessee, the home of Naxos USA.

So, I wrote Arkiv customer service a few hours after my purchase to cancel the Gliere and Taneyev. The Gliere was mercifully cancelled after my initial message to them. The Taneyev, however, remains on order despite my contacting Arkiv customer service now three times about this now unwanted disc telling them to cancel the bloody thing.

Needless to say, I am annoyed. I have told Arkiv customer service twice now that if this item is sent I will demand a prepaid postal label so I can return it. If they do not do this, something they should if this is sent to me despite my cancelling it thrice, given their incompetence. I also notified them that if the disc is sent I will ask that my account be closed and deleted and told them that if I receive a thrice cancelled disc I would not be purchasing anything from Arkiv in the future despite the wonderful Presto Classics like sales they have on labels like Bis and Brilliant on occasion.

I am sick and tired of corporate bureaucratic incompetence. Unfortunately, there is no escaping them—bureaucracies—or it—bureaucratic incompetence—as my many missives on private bureaucratic incompetence on this site well show. And so it goes. And so it will always go.

Postscript: After I contacted Arkiv customer service I finally managed to cancel not only the item Arkiv cancelled several days ago but the other once I asked them to cancel several days ago. Huzzah.

Then I made a mistake, I ordered a few more items that were on sale. Why do I say I made a mistake? Because Arkiv/Naxos says if you buy $150 dollars or more shipping is free. Well that may be true but it isn’t true if your discounts take you below the $150 dollar mark.

So I said up yours to Arkiv. I asked them to cancel both orders and to delete my account. I don’t like complications and Arkiv is too complicated for me. So good riddance Arkiv Music. 

Postscript Two: The Arkiv saga unfortunately continues. To show how incompetent they are let me note three examples of this incompetence. First, for several days they issued me a refund for an order they already refunded me for (42618NRS). Now that refund has disappeared from my credit card. Presumably, they figured out their mistake. Second, they issued me a refund for two discs from another order (42447NRS). Now they have pulled the refund of one of those discs from my credit card. Third, they still owe me a refund for four discs from this order. After five attempts to get this refund I contacted the New York Attorney General Consumer Fraud office and filed a complaint.

Postscript Three: After a number of emails that went unanswered I finally got a reply from Arkiv customer service or the for profit entity that does customer service for Arkiv. They say they refunded 42447NRS though they haven’t. As of today, 9 Dec, I have received a refund for 42618NRS for $159.49 and a refund of $12.99 for the Gliere in order 42447NRS. I have still not received a refund for the Monteverdi, the Taneyev, the Mignone, and the Castelnuovo from that order amounting to $73.96.

It should be obvious by now that I do not trust Arkiv customer service for a variety of reasons. See the complaint against the company on the Better Business Bureau complaint site, which isn't positive (and which—I am shocked, shocked—the BBB offered no aid in resolving). I also know that they are incompetent. At one point they refunded me a second $159.49 and another $12.99 (presumably for the Taneyev), both of which have now mysteriously disappeared from my AMEX feed. Apparently, they finally figured out their mistake after I told them several times. They have not yet, however, refunded me the additional amount that is due me. I have asked for confirmation of the refunds and the transaction numbers of the refunds. Stay tuned.

Postscript Four: After innumerable emails Arkiv Music finally realised their mistake and issued me a refund. I finally got this refund on 12 December.