My chapped lips rub roughly against the blanket as I awake with too little sleep yet again. From under the covers my arm reaches out to the night-stand, groping blindly for Chapstick. In darkness the lip balm burns with a kiss of peppermint, but my eyes have yet to open. I lay there clutching the small tube because it's too cold to return it to the night-stand. My mind goes cloudy and I start to drift. It's warm under the blankets and I'm in no hurry to leave them...
RRRRRRRRING! RRRRRRRRING! RRRRRRRRING!
F#@%ing telemarketers.
While the number of calls I get have dropped drastically since the "National No-Call List" was enacted, they have not stopped completely. This time it was a travel club offer or some kind of crap like that. I don't really remember, because I was screaming "PUT ME ON YOUR DO-NOT CALL LIST AND NEVER, EVER CALL ME AGAIN!!" at the top of my lungs.
I spent the rest of my morning wishing that it were possible to shoot a gun into the phone and have an explosion come out the other end, just like in Bugs Bunny cartoons...
Maybe not a gun, that's kind of violent, but you should at least be able to bitch-slap somebody through the phone.
Although if you could shoot into your computer and have it come out and explode all over a spammer, I would definitely do that. The only thing I loathe more than telemarketers is spammers.
In better news, MRK over at Itch & Be Merry has finally figured out why I keep getting Google search referrals for "penis salad" out of the UK. Apparently the phrase was used in some kind of risque sitcom. At least I think it was a sitcom. The video clip MRK found was a bit vague, but I would certainly hope that any use of "penis salad" would be for comedic effect.
Eww... what if it was a reality TV show??
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those telemarketers are the fucking bane of my life.
You so obviously want the clown people to get all tweaked at you again. 🙂
What show was it?
The clip was taken from an episode of shameless. Thinking about it I really ought to have said something about it shouldn’t I. I just enjoy being a little mysterious.
The episode only premiered on Tuesday so tt doesn’t explain the search referral’s per se, but it does suggest that the phrase does exist. Earlier in the show the guy had convinced the woman to eat lunch with him whilst naked, naturist style. So maybe Penis Salad means to eat in the nude? It’s set in Manchester so probably it’s a Manchurian thing.
You should also tell them/scream to remove your name from thier list…as well as “Do not rent your name to other companies”
Or…Ask for their home ph# so you can call and wake HIM up
Or…tell them to hold on a minute, and pipe in some elevator type music all morning. However, I do like your idea better.
My strategy for telemarketers takes MUCH patience, but is VERY effective at pissing them off.
First, you let them get through their ENTIRE spiel. This may take anywhere from 2-7 minutes. Then when they’re AMAZED that you let them finish and are waiting to hear, ‘no thank you’, instead say: ‘that sounds FASCINATING, tell me more’.
They will stutter a few times in awe and continue talking for quite some time. Go ahead and put the phone down, run to the store, check your mail, get a load of laundry in the machine, etc…
By the time you get back to the phone, they should be wrapping up their pitch. That’s when you laugh loudly in the phone and ask if it hurts to be retarded. But DON’T hang up yet. You have to stay on for another brief moment to listen as bloodflow to the brain stifles and they spontaneously get an aneurism because you’ve wasted so much of their valuable time for naught.
Responses to this have varied from, “uraghhh!” to, “hu?” to, “you’re just a bitch, you know that?”–and I do know that, thank you very much. Bu-bye now.
“..Eww… what if it was a reality TV show??”
4 words.
DONT. EAT. THE. DRESSING.
I agree. And to add to that, I’d like a big fist to come out the front of my car (I’m imagining a boxing glove-clad fist, actually) so that I could “punch” other drivers who were annoying me. Maybe you can arrange for that to happen at the same time as the phone-gun.
I’m telling you, dude. Record those mothers. RECORD THEM.
it would be so freakin’ great to have a bitch-slap service you could just order along with phone service features like caller id and call waiting.
i always say “i’ve already got it.” they can’t go anywhere after that.
“would you like a lifetime subscription to Field & Stream magazine?”
“nope. i’ve already got it”
it works for me…
Careful with all the gun stuff Dave. First you’re shooting Jared, then telemarketers. Don’t forget, with Bush listening to your phone calls and reading your Google searches, you never know – cartoon blog threats might be next!
Dave – you’re using the wrong lip balm.
A lip balm should comfort you. Print this out and refer to it when purchasing future lip balms, and stay away from peppermint.
A. Lip Smackers are great – they have enough flavors that you can find one that is mostly boyish. Besides, cool chicks would think you rock if you’re man enough to use something slightly feminine, kinda like a loofah in the shower.
B. Chap-Stick – um, no. this stuff is a last option. They serve their purpose, but they are kinda like the Kia of lip balms.
C. Burt’s Bees – this is popular with the earth lovers. Some are pretty good, but I don’t recommend the Beeswax Lip Balm…because of the peppermint.
D. Caswell-Massey Natural Therapy Lip Balm – this stuff is my absolute favorite. and it’s unisex. in fact, this is what you should purchase.
there you go.
My uncle is the best with dealing with telemarketers… his favorite method is to put the phone down and go make himself dinner.
This link was posted on Weblog Wannabe a little while ago… it’s very funny. I think using this flowchart a couple of times would automatically put you on the *telemarketer’s* no-call list…
http://www.xs4all.nl/~egbg/counterscript.html
But they know what you really want. That is why they call from 730am and 10pm
Sometimes I read a little too fast, or my brain gets ahead of my eyes, or something…you know, like when you were a kid and running downhill and all of a sudden your top half was going faster than your legs could keep up with and you knew you were going to fall and couldn’t do a darn thing about it except try to pick a soft spot?
ANYWAY, I read what you typed: “this time it was a travel club offer,” and my brain told me this: “this was a time-travel club offer,” and for just a nanosecond, I went (mentally), “WHOA! He hung up on THAT?”
I wouldn’t have hung up on that… I would have joined their time-travel club, then traveled back in time all Terminator-style and terminated the idiot before he could have called to wake me up in the first place.