But it's a major reason.
Saturday, March 8, 2014
Thursday, February 13, 2014
Vagina Dentata.
I wasn't looking to stir up controversy and be infamous.
Not really.
I was being insomniacal like I usually am.
Refreshing Facebook every five minutes and commenting on and liking things that I liked.
Not commenting on things and hiding things from my News Feed that I didn't like.
I saw a Status Update from someone that I wasn't that familiar with.
The Status Update was "Wow. That's fucked up. I just got blocked by an actress for asking her to be upfront with her complaints about a convention. Sigh."
I was curious, since I used to work the convention circuit, but I don't like stirring up public drama, so I private messaged her, asking her which actress and which convention.
She told me which actress and which convention and we chatted about the whole thing.
I checked out the Facebook profile page of the actress in question and her cover picture was a promotional image for Women In Horror Month.
Another problem I have with Women In Horror Month is that it is almost entirely a self-promotional tool used by women to try to receive special consideration for a month.
I would fully support posting a list of women authors and film-makers and saying, "There's a gender bias in the horror genre. Here are some excellent women working in the field. Check out their stuff."
Instead, all I've been seeing is, "I'm a woman, so check out and buy MY stuff."
It's self-centered.
I'm all for self-promotion. That's how you sell things.
If you don't promote what you're working on, people rarely wander over and check it out organically.
As an author, and soon to be a publisher, I am my brand.
My participation in social-networking is about half personal promotion.
Not exclusively, mind you. I hate those people whose Facebook content is nothing but promotional posts and links to where people can buy their books.
I understand the necessity of it and know that it works, but that's just not me.
I like to actually provide people reading my content on Facebook with a variety of content so that they don't get promotional fatigue and remove me from their News Feed.
It's not the self-promotion I mind, it's if we're going to do a Women In Horror Month, then let's celebrate WOMEN in horror, not just you. Stop being so selfish.
What is my solution?
I was having a conversation with Selene MacLeod and I think that we managed to resolve our differences and found that we actually agreed on a lot of points. I suggested that later on in the year, around August, that we work together to put together a gender-blind horror anthology. I'm not sure what the theme will be yet, but the point is that if there is a gender bias in horror, let's remove the gender tag of the author's name, and remove the gender bias. I'm still working on the details, but I figure we can have a third-party, probably one of my gay friends so they don't have any stake in the contest, act as an impartial central-mailer. They will receive and keep track of the submissions by the authors, and send Selene and I the submissions with the name of the author removed and have to unanimously agree on the quality of the final selections.
Then, at the end, when the contents are locked, we reveal if there is actually a gender bias based on the content of the stories
The kicker? All proceeds will go to help women.
My knee-jerk first thought is to spend it on horror novels by women authors to donate to a domestic abuse shelter for women, but they're probably had enough horror in their lives that they won't want to read about horrifying things.
Ideally, if the sales are strong enough, I would like to contact a women's college and set up a creative writing scholarship that can be given away to help an actual women author.
I'm not sure if this is a mic drop moment, but I think it might be, so, here...
Not really.
I was being insomniacal like I usually am.
Refreshing Facebook every five minutes and commenting on and liking things that I liked.
Not commenting on things and hiding things from my News Feed that I didn't like.
I saw a Status Update from someone that I wasn't that familiar with.
The Status Update was "Wow. That's fucked up. I just got blocked by an actress for asking her to be upfront with her complaints about a convention. Sigh."
I was curious, since I used to work the convention circuit, but I don't like stirring up public drama, so I private messaged her, asking her which actress and which convention.
She told me which actress and which convention and we chatted about the whole thing.
I checked out the Facebook profile page of the actress in question and her cover picture was a promotional image for Women In Horror Month.
As some of you may already know, I'm not a huge fan of Women In Horror Month.
I might as well attempt to clarify my position on that matter first.
The reason that I don't like Women In Horror Month is not because I don't like women.
That's the most common knee-jerk reaction from people when I say that I don't support Women In Horror Month.
"Well, you just don't like / are scared of / are intimidated by / hate women."
Quite the contrary.
I like women.
Not only as my preferred variety of sexual partner, but I also have a fair amount of platonic female friends that I really don't see as potential sexual partners.
I actually posted a blog post about the problems that arise from men sexualizing their female acquaintances because there had been some controversy over the whole "Friend-zoning" / Girlfriend-zoning" phenomenon and I decided to offer my unsolicited opinion on the matter:
http://lovecraftwork.blogspot.com/2014/02/friend-zoning-girlfriend-zoning.html
It only had 37 views.
Hopefully it well get a few more looks based on the reads that I anticipate this blog post will receive since I managed to inadvertently incur the wrath of about half of the world.
I front-loaded my defense because I anticipate what the accusations will be as I state my position regarding Women In Horror Month.
My problem with Women In Horror Month is many-faceted.
My primary problem is that women use it as a promotional tool to try to receive special consideration because there is a generally assumed bias against "Women In Horror".
With the recent advances in self-publishing, where the power of "the press" is in the hands of anyone that wants to publish whatever they want to publish, the playing ground has been leveled.
Some women argue that the bias still exists and that some men don't buy books written by women because they're sexist.
That may be true, there may be some men out there that think, "Oh, this was made by a woman! Pfft! No thanks!" but those jerk-offs are missing out on some excellent stuff as a result.
I'm not one of those men, although as of late I have been accused of being so.
Again, to front-load my defense, the first person other than myself mentioned in my bio is a woman, Helen Hoke. I didn't design it that way, it just happened organically. I used to read her horror anthologies at my local public library when I was a kid, and the stories she collected really fueled my early interest in horror literature.
If you don't know who Helen Hoke is, click the follow links and learn about someone awesome.
I might as well attempt to clarify my position on that matter first.
The reason that I don't like Women In Horror Month is not because I don't like women.
That's the most common knee-jerk reaction from people when I say that I don't support Women In Horror Month.
"Well, you just don't like / are scared of / are intimidated by / hate women."
Quite the contrary.
I like women.
Not only as my preferred variety of sexual partner, but I also have a fair amount of platonic female friends that I really don't see as potential sexual partners.
I actually posted a blog post about the problems that arise from men sexualizing their female acquaintances because there had been some controversy over the whole "Friend-zoning" / Girlfriend-zoning" phenomenon and I decided to offer my unsolicited opinion on the matter:
http://lovecraftwork.blogspot.com/2014/02/friend-zoning-girlfriend-zoning.html
It only had 37 views.
Hopefully it well get a few more looks based on the reads that I anticipate this blog post will receive since I managed to inadvertently incur the wrath of about half of the world.
I front-loaded my defense because I anticipate what the accusations will be as I state my position regarding Women In Horror Month.
My problem with Women In Horror Month is many-faceted.
My primary problem is that women use it as a promotional tool to try to receive special consideration because there is a generally assumed bias against "Women In Horror".
With the recent advances in self-publishing, where the power of "the press" is in the hands of anyone that wants to publish whatever they want to publish, the playing ground has been leveled.
Some women argue that the bias still exists and that some men don't buy books written by women because they're sexist.
That may be true, there may be some men out there that think, "Oh, this was made by a woman! Pfft! No thanks!" but those jerk-offs are missing out on some excellent stuff as a result.
I'm not one of those men, although as of late I have been accused of being so.
Again, to front-load my defense, the first person other than myself mentioned in my bio is a woman, Helen Hoke. I didn't design it that way, it just happened organically. I used to read her horror anthologies at my local public library when I was a kid, and the stories she collected really fueled my early interest in horror literature.
If you don't know who Helen Hoke is, click the follow links and learn about someone awesome.
http://www.nytimes.com/1990/03/31/obituaries/helen-hoke-86-writer-and-publisher-of-children-s-books.html
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?10830
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?10830
I also have a tattoo of Frankenstein, which I am well aware was written by a woman, and a tattoo of a fragment of a poem by Sappho, the Greek poetess who is the woman that the term "Lesbian" was derived from as in "a women attracted to other women" and "from the isle of Lesbos" since she was both.
I digress. I apologize, but it's just how things fall out of my head sometimes.
Do I agree that there may have been a bias against women in the horror-genre and that it is mostly a boy's club? Yes and no.
I agree in theory, but I'd like to see some statistical proof that proves this.
I'm sincerely interested, so if you're reading this, send me some links.
Some people say that there is a bias in the number of horror books written by man and that men sell more books than women.
First off, there shouldn't be a quota enforcing that an equal number of books in any genre are written by both genders. If you're a woman and you want to write a horror genre book, go ahead. These days, no one can stop you from doing so and I would actively take your side and defend you against anyone that tried. Also, send me a copy. I like books.
I digress. I apologize, but it's just how things fall out of my head sometimes.
Do I agree that there may have been a bias against women in the horror-genre and that it is mostly a boy's club? Yes and no.
I agree in theory, but I'd like to see some statistical proof that proves this.
I'm sincerely interested, so if you're reading this, send me some links.
Some people say that there is a bias in the number of horror books written by man and that men sell more books than women.
First off, there shouldn't be a quota enforcing that an equal number of books in any genre are written by both genders. If you're a woman and you want to write a horror genre book, go ahead. These days, no one can stop you from doing so and I would actively take your side and defend you against anyone that tried. Also, send me a copy. I like books.
As for men selling more horror genre books than men, some men sell more books than some women. Some women sell more books than some men. If men, in general, sell more horror books as a gender than women, that's an interesting statistical artifact, but is only indicative of a market trend and not proof of a gender bias. People buy what they want to buy.
As a side note, I am aware that there are some vile, reprehensible men that send women working in the horror genre disgusting misogynistic messages filled with unsolicited sexual / sexualized statements and threats of physical violence and rape.
I'm truly sorry that happens. But I have never, and would never do that.
Again, in my defense, if I find out that someone is doing that, I'm on the woman's side, and I would defend your freedom and right to do what you do regardless of your gender be it male, female, or in-between.
I don't have to like what you do, but it's not up to me to tell you that you can't do it.
As a side note, I am aware that there are some vile, reprehensible men that send women working in the horror genre disgusting misogynistic messages filled with unsolicited sexual / sexualized statements and threats of physical violence and rape.
I'm truly sorry that happens. But I have never, and would never do that.
Again, in my defense, if I find out that someone is doing that, I'm on the woman's side, and I would defend your freedom and right to do what you do regardless of your gender be it male, female, or in-between.
I don't have to like what you do, but it's not up to me to tell you that you can't do it.
Another problem I have with Women In Horror Month is that it is almost entirely a self-promotional tool used by women to try to receive special consideration for a month.
I would fully support posting a list of women authors and film-makers and saying, "There's a gender bias in the horror genre. Here are some excellent women working in the field. Check out their stuff."
Instead, all I've been seeing is, "I'm a woman, so check out and buy MY stuff."
It's self-centered.
I'm all for self-promotion. That's how you sell things.
If you don't promote what you're working on, people rarely wander over and check it out organically.
As an author, and soon to be a publisher, I am my brand.
My participation in social-networking is about half personal promotion.
Not exclusively, mind you. I hate those people whose Facebook content is nothing but promotional posts and links to where people can buy their books.
I understand the necessity of it and know that it works, but that's just not me.
I like to actually provide people reading my content on Facebook with a variety of content so that they don't get promotional fatigue and remove me from their News Feed.
It's not the self-promotion I mind, it's if we're going to do a Women In Horror Month, then let's celebrate WOMEN in horror, not just you. Stop being so selfish.
What is my solution?
I was having a conversation with Selene MacLeod and I think that we managed to resolve our differences and found that we actually agreed on a lot of points. I suggested that later on in the year, around August, that we work together to put together a gender-blind horror anthology. I'm not sure what the theme will be yet, but the point is that if there is a gender bias in horror, let's remove the gender tag of the author's name, and remove the gender bias. I'm still working on the details, but I figure we can have a third-party, probably one of my gay friends so they don't have any stake in the contest, act as an impartial central-mailer. They will receive and keep track of the submissions by the authors, and send Selene and I the submissions with the name of the author removed and have to unanimously agree on the quality of the final selections.
Then, at the end, when the contents are locked, we reveal if there is actually a gender bias based on the content of the stories
The kicker? All proceeds will go to help women.
My knee-jerk first thought is to spend it on horror novels by women authors to donate to a domestic abuse shelter for women, but they're probably had enough horror in their lives that they won't want to read about horrifying things.
Ideally, if the sales are strong enough, I would like to contact a women's college and set up a creative writing scholarship that can be given away to help an actual women author.
I'm not sure if this is a mic drop moment, but I think it might be, so, here...
So what's all the fuss and why am I suddenly such a controversial person?
Because I spotted an obvious use of the vagina dentata and pointed it out.
For those of you that don't know what a "vagina dentata" is, which seems to be most of the people that have gotten upset, here's the Wikipedia listing:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vagina_dentata
Pretty much, a vagina with teeth.
It's not something I just came up with, although a lot of people seem to think I did.
It's a bit more complicated than that, so you may have to do some supplementary reading.
Here. I'll Google it for you. Go ahead and do some reading. I'll wait.
https://www.google.com/#q=feminist+horror+film+theory+vagina+dentata
As I said, I saw the cover picture I posted, and will post again by way of example, and immediately thought "vagina dentata".
I thought that was interesting, so I tried to find the least offensive picture of a vagina that I could find. A picture from a textbook, presumably, and put this together.
With the accompanying message:
"This one's going to sting a little folks...
I like women.
Both as humans and as sexual partners and either and neither and both.
As long as they do the same amount and quality of work I believe they should receive the same amount of pay and vice versa.
But do you seriously think that a sideways vagina dentata with a huge clitoris is a great logo for your feminist horror movement?
I've read the feminist horror film theory and criticism have you?
If that's not a vagina dentata, then a knife plunging into a female victim isn't a substitute metal male penis being used out of impotence frustration.
Stay classy ladies.
Oh, and anyone that finds this offensive, grow up.
Every single one of you was shoved out of a vagina at birth and if the picture on the right of the attached image arouses you, you have a serious school book sex-ed diagram fetish.
Let's see how long this stays up before someone complains."
Okay, in hindsight, I admit that the message was a little confrontational, and being in an insomniacal stupor is not much of an excuse for being confrontational.
But I stand by what I noticed. That is clearly a vagina dentata.
Coincidentally, I was as surprised by and enlightened as anyone else when I first read about the vagina dentata while reading feminist horror film theory.
It also ruined the film "Teeth" (2007) when someone tried to recommend it to me.
I took one look at the DVD and said, "Vagina dentata." and the person recommending the film said, "What?". I said, "Vagina dentata. A vagina with teeth." They said "How did you know?" and I tried to give them a simplified version of the feminist/Freudian concept of the vagina dentata.
I figured I couldn't be the only person that noticed this and that everyone knew what a vagina dentata was and that at most I would get a few likes and comments and that would be it.
Instead, people lost their motherfucking minds.
Some people didn't.
Some people knew what a vagina dentata is and just shrugged it off, with a "Well, duh!"
They were in the minority.
Most people became self-righteously offended and posted some really fucked up comments insulting me as a person, and when I left the thread to work on a painting yesterday and the conversation continued in my absence, insulting others that decided to participate in the conversation.
Keep in mind, I didn't ask anyone to check it out and comment to stoke the controversy.
Anyone that I'm acquainted with that decided to participate in the conversation did so of their own free will. I just posted it, rode the thread for a few hours and defended my position with as much civility as I could, defending myself against personal attacks and trying to unsuccessfully keep the conversation focused on whether or not this was obviously a vagina dentata and to discuss the concept of the vagina dentata by way of feminist criticism and them clicked "Stop notifications." because it didn't seem like there was any constructive conversation to be had.
Then I woke up this morning as an infamous misogynist.
What I find most interesting about this now, is not the whole "vagina dentata" thing, but just how vile people can be to someone they don't know personally using the internet.
I know... it's the internet.
It's a hive of scum and villainy and cat memes and porn.
But for people that consider themselves so self-righteous, and pious and defenders of women, there was some seriously fucked up hateful misogynistic shit said.
As I said, before, and this time I'm a bit more well-prepared, "This one's going to sting a little folks...". I'm going to name names and show you exactly who has been saying what.
I'm posting this now, as I gather my reference materials so feel free to read this as a preamble.
I'll be updating with screenshots of all of the wonderful, kind, gracious, pious people as the day goes on.
For example, Allison M. Dickson, decided to comment on Twitter with this:
And, believe it or not, I sincerely was, and am, offended.
I would never say anyone was "asking for it".
I've been in relationships with women that have been victims of rape and molestation and it's really not much of a laughing matter, but, keep in mind, that's what she said.
Her words, not mine.
This seems to be a result of Chuck Wendig deciding that he was offended and posting a blog about his offense.
http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2014/02/12/i-saw-this-on-facebook-today/
I hate giving him the page hits, but it's necessary for the purposes of this conversation, and if you scroll down and read the comments they are amazing.
He also posted a link to the blog on Twitter which, I assume, is why Allison, someone who did not know me, and does not know me decided to attack me on Twitter based on someone else's opinionated paraphrasing of my intent filtered through their offense.
https://twitter.com/ChuckWendig/status/433715780732325888
I didn't go looking for Chuck Wendig to try to start trouble with him.
He came looking for something to be offended by and then posted a defamatory post about me and someone brought it ti my attention.
This is Chuck Wendig's comment on my post.
Keep in mind, Chuck and I were not previously acquainted so he went looking for something to be offended by, knowing that he would probably be offended by it.
This is what Chuck had to say as a comment in public in the thread:
"This entire thread is actually pretty shitty. If anybody wonders why women sometimes feel unwelcome in genre spaces -- it's because of posts and threads like this one.
Nice work, folks. Way to be part of a problem instead of its solution. Way to see a set of red, vampire lips and say that what YOU see instead is a place to stick your penis. High class."
Fair shot. I did compare lips to a vagina.
I didn't say anything about my penis though. Maybe Chuck just has my penis on his mind.
Now, this is what he had to say publicly on his blog:
"Saw some toolbag “horror author” this morning on my FB feed post this thing about how some WOMEN IN HORROR group is advertising itself using an image of a vampire woman (replete with fangs) licking blood from her lips.
And said toolbag whipped up an image that put this banner image next to the anatomical image of a woman’s vagina and from there proceeded to explain how it was silly for this feminist group to advertise their efforts using what was effectively a woman’s ladyparts. He also explained that women paint their lips red in order to simulate flushed labia. Translation: he sees every woman’s mouth as a place for him to, erm, stick it.
In the comments, which were a delightful circus act of dipshittery, he went on to explain that OH IT’S OKAY because he took a writing class taught by a lesbian once (why is it that lesbians are the token “black friends” of misogynists everywhere?) and he was the only man in that class and it was cool to have to defend the male gender from all their misinformation.
I don’t have much to say here except, goddamn. What the fuck is wrong with people?
I want to excise all this toxic stuff out of genre. Because most genre authors are awesome.
And this was decidedly not awesome.
And we wonder why women don’t feel welcome at the table."
So, we start with character assassination.
Because he's a mature adult and mature adults use "toolbag" to refer to people they disagree with.
I'm not a "horror author" I write in many different genres, but that shows how much Chuck knows about me.
I didn't say it was "silly" I said that it was a paradox.
"He also explained that women paint their lips red in order to simulate flushed labia. Translation: he sees every woman’s mouth as a place for him to, erm, stick it."
I did say, "that women paint their lips red in order to simulate flushed labia". because they do. I thought that the premise was generally accepted and if not, then someone had better be able to explain why women spend millions of dollars a year on lipstick. It's the same reason that women wear bras that push their breasts together to enhance their cleavage. It's a secondary sex characteristic. If it's just a matter of back support, there's be no need for padded bras or "push-up" bras.
It's the same reason that women use eye make-up to accentuate their eyes. Women who say that they "just do it to make themselves feel pretty" are inadvertently supporting this premise. Pretty as in attractive? Attractive how? To whom?
As far as seeing every woman's mouth as a place to "stick it" presumably referring to my penis. That's a misattribution and the equivalent of slander.
And, seriously, Chuck, stop fixating on my penis.
If you really want to see it, just ask and I'll send you a picture.
He goes on to say, "In the comments, which were a delightful circus act of dipshittery, he went on to explain that OH IT’S OKAY because he took a writing class taught by a lesbian once (why is it that lesbians are the token “black friends” of misogynists everywhere?) and he was the only man in that class and it was cool to have to defend the male gender from all their misinformation."
So, he suggests, by analogy that I am also a racist, which was a pretty common trend in the "discussion" in the comment thread.
I'm not going to trot out a list of all of my friends that are female, gay, transgender, and of a different "race" than I because that's demeaning to them, because I don't think of them that way. I think of my friends as my friends, not my female, gay, transgender, or "black friends".
But that was a really awkward attempt at trying to compare sexism with racism and it doesn;t stick. I'm not a sexist or a racist or a homophobe. I don't care what you are or who you fuck as long as you're a decent person.
Chuck thought he knew everything there was to know about me based on one thing he saw from someone he didn't know that offended him.
Judging someone without getting to know them first?
Last I checked, that was a pretty decent definition of "prejudice".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prejudice
I also never said it was cool to have to defend the male gender from all of "their misinformation". If he had asked for clarification instead of paraphrasing what he thought I said and attributing it to me as an actual statement, again, slander, I would have explained that all semester long, the girls in the class were trying to use the class as a misanthropic venting session, and, being the only man in the class I was pretty much put on trial for having a penis for a whole semester and had to defend myself against the blanket accusation for everything awful that men have ever done in recorded history.
I didn't go in there looking to fuck with a bunch of college girls.
I liked the teacher, we got along well, she was teaching a class and it would fill one of my distribution requirements so I strapped on my armor and threw myself into the den of the lionesses.
I got a little taste of what it was like to be a woman in a man's world.
It was a really eye-opening experience.
It also showed me that women can be just as sexist as men when given the opportunity and superior numbers.
I'm not complaining. I knew what I was in for, taking a Women's Studies class as a male, and I admit I was trying to prove a point and that over-all it was a positive experience.
So, Chuck, I ask you, if you really want to "excise all this toxic stuff out of genre." why not start out by excising all of the toxicity out of your blog post?
You could start by not being prejudiced and paraphrasing misattributions.
The things that you say that I said, that I never actually said, are much more revealing about who you are as a person than anything derogatory I could ever say about you.
No wonder the comment thread is full of righteous indignation and reactionary vitriol.
If I had read your post, not knowing who it was about, I would be offended also.
As things stand, I'm not offended by what I said, I'm offended by what you said.
You paraphrased, lied, insulted me personally without knowing me and misattributed my statements reframing the conversation into what you wanted it to be.
I find you to be reactionary, small-minded, prejudiced, slanderous and not a very nice person.
If you would like to have a conversation or a public debate to defend yourself against the preceding I would welcome the opportunity to defend my original statement using my actual words to explain what I actually meant rather than your misattributed paraphrasing.
We could co-host a call-in blog or do a Skype chat and everyone can feel free to chip in and tell me all of the horrible things that they think I said, and call me all sorts of names and try to hurt my feelings by accusing me of being a sexist, and a racist and of being impotent, or having a small penis or being afraid of women or whatever they have to get off their chest.
For that matter, if you can think of a way that we can use it to help sponsor some kind of Women In Horror Month Event that focuses on the accomplishments of women in the genre that aren't actively exploiting the phenomenon for the purposes of self-promotion I would be more than pleased to do so.
As I may or may not have clarified, my problem is not with celebrating the contribution of women towards the horror genre.
My problem was the self-promotional nature, the special entitlement that is demanded, and the paradoxical dichotomy of not wanting to be objectified and treated differently as women working in what is generally accepted as a male-dominated genre, but simultaneously wanting to be treated differently for being women.
You can't claim to be insulted for being treated differently and suggest that the solution is that you be treated differently.
I mean, different in a better way, obviously, I get that.
Not as a series of holes for penises to be put in or body parts to be glazed with semen.
I fully support that. I don't look at women that way as a general rule.
If the paradox inherent in that is not clear, then this blog post was probably not for you.
Also, before you start typing a scathing response, I suggest that you do a little reading.
Here are two books on feminist film criticism, written by women, by the way, that should set you straight on a few things about "Women In Horror".
Because I spotted an obvious use of the vagina dentata and pointed it out.
For those of you that don't know what a "vagina dentata" is, which seems to be most of the people that have gotten upset, here's the Wikipedia listing:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vagina_dentata
Pretty much, a vagina with teeth.
It's not something I just came up with, although a lot of people seem to think I did.
It's a bit more complicated than that, so you may have to do some supplementary reading.
Here. I'll Google it for you. Go ahead and do some reading. I'll wait.
https://www.google.com/#q=feminist+horror+film+theory+vagina+dentata
As I said, I saw the cover picture I posted, and will post again by way of example, and immediately thought "vagina dentata".
"This one's going to sting a little folks...
I like women.
Both as humans and as sexual partners and either and neither and both.
As long as they do the same amount and quality of work I believe they should receive the same amount of pay and vice versa.
But do you seriously think that a sideways vagina dentata with a huge clitoris is a great logo for your feminist horror movement?
I've read the feminist horror film theory and criticism have you?
If that's not a vagina dentata, then a knife plunging into a female victim isn't a substitute metal male penis being used out of impotence frustration.
Stay classy ladies.
Oh, and anyone that finds this offensive, grow up.
Every single one of you was shoved out of a vagina at birth and if the picture on the right of the attached image arouses you, you have a serious school book sex-ed diagram fetish.
Let's see how long this stays up before someone complains."
Okay, in hindsight, I admit that the message was a little confrontational, and being in an insomniacal stupor is not much of an excuse for being confrontational.
But I stand by what I noticed. That is clearly a vagina dentata.
Coincidentally, I was as surprised by and enlightened as anyone else when I first read about the vagina dentata while reading feminist horror film theory.
It also ruined the film "Teeth" (2007) when someone tried to recommend it to me.
I took one look at the DVD and said, "Vagina dentata." and the person recommending the film said, "What?". I said, "Vagina dentata. A vagina with teeth." They said "How did you know?" and I tried to give them a simplified version of the feminist/Freudian concept of the vagina dentata.
I figured I couldn't be the only person that noticed this and that everyone knew what a vagina dentata was and that at most I would get a few likes and comments and that would be it.
Instead, people lost their motherfucking minds.
Some people didn't.
Some people knew what a vagina dentata is and just shrugged it off, with a "Well, duh!"
They were in the minority.
Most people became self-righteously offended and posted some really fucked up comments insulting me as a person, and when I left the thread to work on a painting yesterday and the conversation continued in my absence, insulting others that decided to participate in the conversation.
Keep in mind, I didn't ask anyone to check it out and comment to stoke the controversy.
Anyone that I'm acquainted with that decided to participate in the conversation did so of their own free will. I just posted it, rode the thread for a few hours and defended my position with as much civility as I could, defending myself against personal attacks and trying to unsuccessfully keep the conversation focused on whether or not this was obviously a vagina dentata and to discuss the concept of the vagina dentata by way of feminist criticism and them clicked "Stop notifications." because it didn't seem like there was any constructive conversation to be had.
Then I woke up this morning as an infamous misogynist.
What I find most interesting about this now, is not the whole "vagina dentata" thing, but just how vile people can be to someone they don't know personally using the internet.
I know... it's the internet.
It's a hive of scum and villainy and cat memes and porn.
But for people that consider themselves so self-righteous, and pious and defenders of women, there was some seriously fucked up hateful misogynistic shit said.
As I said, before, and this time I'm a bit more well-prepared, "This one's going to sting a little folks...". I'm going to name names and show you exactly who has been saying what.
I'm posting this now, as I gather my reference materials so feel free to read this as a preamble.
I'll be updating with screenshots of all of the wonderful, kind, gracious, pious people as the day goes on.
For example, Allison M. Dickson, decided to comment on Twitter with this:
I would never say anyone was "asking for it".
I've been in relationships with women that have been victims of rape and molestation and it's really not much of a laughing matter, but, keep in mind, that's what she said.
Her words, not mine.
This seems to be a result of Chuck Wendig deciding that he was offended and posting a blog about his offense.
http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2014/02/12/i-saw-this-on-facebook-today/
I hate giving him the page hits, but it's necessary for the purposes of this conversation, and if you scroll down and read the comments they are amazing.
He also posted a link to the blog on Twitter which, I assume, is why Allison, someone who did not know me, and does not know me decided to attack me on Twitter based on someone else's opinionated paraphrasing of my intent filtered through their offense.
https://twitter.com/ChuckWendig/status/433715780732325888
I didn't go looking for Chuck Wendig to try to start trouble with him.
He came looking for something to be offended by and then posted a defamatory post about me and someone brought it ti my attention.
This is Chuck Wendig's comment on my post.
Keep in mind, Chuck and I were not previously acquainted so he went looking for something to be offended by, knowing that he would probably be offended by it.
This is what Chuck had to say as a comment in public in the thread:
"This entire thread is actually pretty shitty. If anybody wonders why women sometimes feel unwelcome in genre spaces -- it's because of posts and threads like this one.
Nice work, folks. Way to be part of a problem instead of its solution. Way to see a set of red, vampire lips and say that what YOU see instead is a place to stick your penis. High class."
Fair shot. I did compare lips to a vagina.
I didn't say anything about my penis though. Maybe Chuck just has my penis on his mind.
Now, this is what he had to say publicly on his blog:
"Saw some toolbag “horror author” this morning on my FB feed post this thing about how some WOMEN IN HORROR group is advertising itself using an image of a vampire woman (replete with fangs) licking blood from her lips.
And said toolbag whipped up an image that put this banner image next to the anatomical image of a woman’s vagina and from there proceeded to explain how it was silly for this feminist group to advertise their efforts using what was effectively a woman’s ladyparts. He also explained that women paint their lips red in order to simulate flushed labia. Translation: he sees every woman’s mouth as a place for him to, erm, stick it.
In the comments, which were a delightful circus act of dipshittery, he went on to explain that OH IT’S OKAY because he took a writing class taught by a lesbian once (why is it that lesbians are the token “black friends” of misogynists everywhere?) and he was the only man in that class and it was cool to have to defend the male gender from all their misinformation.
I don’t have much to say here except, goddamn. What the fuck is wrong with people?
I want to excise all this toxic stuff out of genre. Because most genre authors are awesome.
And this was decidedly not awesome.
And we wonder why women don’t feel welcome at the table."
So, we start with character assassination.
Because he's a mature adult and mature adults use "toolbag" to refer to people they disagree with.
I'm not a "horror author" I write in many different genres, but that shows how much Chuck knows about me.
I didn't say it was "silly" I said that it was a paradox.
"He also explained that women paint their lips red in order to simulate flushed labia. Translation: he sees every woman’s mouth as a place for him to, erm, stick it."
I did say, "that women paint their lips red in order to simulate flushed labia". because they do. I thought that the premise was generally accepted and if not, then someone had better be able to explain why women spend millions of dollars a year on lipstick. It's the same reason that women wear bras that push their breasts together to enhance their cleavage. It's a secondary sex characteristic. If it's just a matter of back support, there's be no need for padded bras or "push-up" bras.
It's the same reason that women use eye make-up to accentuate their eyes. Women who say that they "just do it to make themselves feel pretty" are inadvertently supporting this premise. Pretty as in attractive? Attractive how? To whom?
As far as seeing every woman's mouth as a place to "stick it" presumably referring to my penis. That's a misattribution and the equivalent of slander.
And, seriously, Chuck, stop fixating on my penis.
If you really want to see it, just ask and I'll send you a picture.
He goes on to say, "In the comments, which were a delightful circus act of dipshittery, he went on to explain that OH IT’S OKAY because he took a writing class taught by a lesbian once (why is it that lesbians are the token “black friends” of misogynists everywhere?) and he was the only man in that class and it was cool to have to defend the male gender from all their misinformation."
So, he suggests, by analogy that I am also a racist, which was a pretty common trend in the "discussion" in the comment thread.
I'm not going to trot out a list of all of my friends that are female, gay, transgender, and of a different "race" than I because that's demeaning to them, because I don't think of them that way. I think of my friends as my friends, not my female, gay, transgender, or "black friends".
But that was a really awkward attempt at trying to compare sexism with racism and it doesn;t stick. I'm not a sexist or a racist or a homophobe. I don't care what you are or who you fuck as long as you're a decent person.
Chuck thought he knew everything there was to know about me based on one thing he saw from someone he didn't know that offended him.
Judging someone without getting to know them first?
Last I checked, that was a pretty decent definition of "prejudice".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prejudice
I also never said it was cool to have to defend the male gender from all of "their misinformation". If he had asked for clarification instead of paraphrasing what he thought I said and attributing it to me as an actual statement, again, slander, I would have explained that all semester long, the girls in the class were trying to use the class as a misanthropic venting session, and, being the only man in the class I was pretty much put on trial for having a penis for a whole semester and had to defend myself against the blanket accusation for everything awful that men have ever done in recorded history.
I didn't go in there looking to fuck with a bunch of college girls.
I liked the teacher, we got along well, she was teaching a class and it would fill one of my distribution requirements so I strapped on my armor and threw myself into the den of the lionesses.
I got a little taste of what it was like to be a woman in a man's world.
It was a really eye-opening experience.
It also showed me that women can be just as sexist as men when given the opportunity and superior numbers.
I'm not complaining. I knew what I was in for, taking a Women's Studies class as a male, and I admit I was trying to prove a point and that over-all it was a positive experience.
So, Chuck, I ask you, if you really want to "excise all this toxic stuff out of genre." why not start out by excising all of the toxicity out of your blog post?
You could start by not being prejudiced and paraphrasing misattributions.
The things that you say that I said, that I never actually said, are much more revealing about who you are as a person than anything derogatory I could ever say about you.
No wonder the comment thread is full of righteous indignation and reactionary vitriol.
If I had read your post, not knowing who it was about, I would be offended also.
As things stand, I'm not offended by what I said, I'm offended by what you said.
You paraphrased, lied, insulted me personally without knowing me and misattributed my statements reframing the conversation into what you wanted it to be.
I find you to be reactionary, small-minded, prejudiced, slanderous and not a very nice person.
If you would like to have a conversation or a public debate to defend yourself against the preceding I would welcome the opportunity to defend my original statement using my actual words to explain what I actually meant rather than your misattributed paraphrasing.
We could co-host a call-in blog or do a Skype chat and everyone can feel free to chip in and tell me all of the horrible things that they think I said, and call me all sorts of names and try to hurt my feelings by accusing me of being a sexist, and a racist and of being impotent, or having a small penis or being afraid of women or whatever they have to get off their chest.
For that matter, if you can think of a way that we can use it to help sponsor some kind of Women In Horror Month Event that focuses on the accomplishments of women in the genre that aren't actively exploiting the phenomenon for the purposes of self-promotion I would be more than pleased to do so.
As I may or may not have clarified, my problem is not with celebrating the contribution of women towards the horror genre.
My problem was the self-promotional nature, the special entitlement that is demanded, and the paradoxical dichotomy of not wanting to be objectified and treated differently as women working in what is generally accepted as a male-dominated genre, but simultaneously wanting to be treated differently for being women.
You can't claim to be insulted for being treated differently and suggest that the solution is that you be treated differently.
I mean, different in a better way, obviously, I get that.
Not as a series of holes for penises to be put in or body parts to be glazed with semen.
I fully support that. I don't look at women that way as a general rule.
If the paradox inherent in that is not clear, then this blog post was probably not for you.
Also, before you start typing a scathing response, I suggest that you do a little reading.
Here are two books on feminist film criticism, written by women, by the way, that should set you straight on a few things about "Women In Horror".
Oh my!
Look at that scandalous book cover!
What could that woman possibly be thinking by using a pair of reddened lips presented sideways as her book cover.
Perhaps she was suggesting something?
I'm sure that Chuck Wendig has an opinion about Barbara Creed and wants the world to know his opinion.
I'd love to be a part of that conversation. Can we make that happen?
Look at that scandalous book cover!
What could that woman possibly be thinking by using a pair of reddened lips presented sideways as her book cover.
Perhaps she was suggesting something?
I'm sure that Chuck Wendig has an opinion about Barbara Creed and wants the world to know his opinion.
I'd love to be a part of that conversation. Can we make that happen?
Friday, January 24, 2014
Facebook: Anti-social Networking.
Woke up.
Performed the Triple-S of the male body maintenance routine.
[Shit,Shower,Shave]
Fired up Firefox.
[You still use IE? Don't do that. Download Firefox. And Avast! Antivirus while you're at it.]
Checked my Facebook notifications.
Two new people like the Facebook fan page for my publishing imprint?
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Burnt-Offerings-Books/1408858196016246
Awesome!
Let's see who these two people are.
First guy's got 385 imaginary friends in common with me?
*shift/clicks through opening his profile page in a new window and check out his profile/wall*
Posts cool stuff on his wall?
Doesn't seem like a Jesus freak or a fake profile?
No bitstrips?
He's okay in my books.
*clicks "Add Friend"*
Two minutes later he accepts my invitation to become imaginary friends.
*makes mental note to follow-up and see what that guy's up to*
Second guy? Same deal.
Pop-up box with the attached image...
Wow.
No, I don't know this person outside of Facebook.
I have around 1,800 "Friends" on Facebook.
I only know about, maybe 300 of them IRL.
[That's "In Real Life" for all of you senior citizens out there And what are you doing reading this anyway? Shouldn't you be playing shuffle board or pricing out coffins?]
Anyway, that means that there are 1,500 people that I'm electronically acquainted with that I have probably never spoken to in person.
So, no, I don't know most of those people personally.
For that matter, I don't really like most of my "classmates, family and coworkers".
I've got most of those assholes blocked on Facebook for being assholes.
I am the most misanthropic, antisocial person I know.
If I don't even leave the house in a day and don't talk to a single person personally I'm that much happier.
But I am also an author.
Us writer-types are like that.
We might hate people, but we LOVE our readers!
I am trying to start up my own publishing imprint to help other authors to publish their work.
[Because so far, my publishing imprint is pretty much a vanity press. Nine books in two months and it's all my stuff. Sorry, I write a lot, don't be jealous. You can write books too.]
I also run an interview blog.
I have a Facebook Fan Page for that too.
https://www.facebook.com/YouAreEntitledToMyOpinion
Since October 1st, 2013 I've conducted over 125 interviews and the blog is going to break 12,000 unique page views tonight.
*brushes nonexistent dust (or chip) off shoulder*
Where did I find all of the people I interviewed for the blog?
Through Facebook, using what claims to be a "social networking" website to become acquainted with people that I didn't know before and making new friends from all over the world.
You know... being "social".
Also, as an author and an aspiring publisher, I am my brand.
My profiles on social networking sites often feature promotional posts for the projects I'm working on. I try to keep these posts to one per project per day so my imaginary friends don't get promotional fatigue and take me out of their News Feeds, but it's hard because I'm usually working on five projects at once.
I don't fuck around.
And when I do fuck around, I don't fuck around while fucking around.
Sorry about that.*
[*Totally not sorry about that.]
I use the internet to sell books and to announce the submission calls for my publishing imprints.
"Imprints you say? Plural?"
Yes, imprints, plural.
https://www.facebook.com/RadiationSicknessBooks
So, my question is, if I'm not allowed to send a Friend Request to someone who has 30 "friends" in common with me and seems to be into the same kind of stuff, (I mean, he "liked" the fan page for my publishing imprint, maybe we'd get along?) then how is Facebook a social networking website?
Does Facebook really think that everyone using their site is the kind of person that only has friends from high school, college if they went, their work, people from their Zumba class or church group or what the fuck ever, and people that they're related to through blood or marriage?
I know there's a lot of those people on Facebook, but they're part of the problem.
The kind of people that report a profile if they see a picture of a female nipple or if they see something that doesn't jive with their opinion.
I don't want to see people getting fucked in the ass in my News Feed while trying to wake up while smoking the day's first cigarette either, and if I want to see people getting fucked in the ass, the internet is woven out of porn and cats.
But it shouldn't be forbidden.
If I don't like it, I don't look at it.
I don't like your stupid fucking simple-minded Christian posts or your bitstrips or your inspirational memes or your pictures of your kids or your pets or you making out with your significant other, but I also don't report that stuff.
I just click "I don't want to see this." and hide it from My News Feed and if all you do is post that kind of shit, I click "Unfollow..."
"Why doesn't anyone ever like anything I post?"
Because the stuff that you post sucks.
Post stuff that people will like and I'll like it.
No one wants to see a hundred pictures of your newborn baby except the kind of people that Facebook apparently thinks that you should be friends with.
You know, "classmates, family and coworkers".
Oh, and grandparents.
I love you Grandma, but trying to start a conversation with me asking how I'm doing in the comment thread about a snuff porn book I'm publishing isn't the best place to try to catch up.
Send me a private message or call me on the phone. Yes, I do answer my phone.
What's the solution?
There isn't one yet.
I've got a Google+, a Twitter, a Tumblr, an Etsy, a GoodReads, a LinkedIn, a Pinterest, a dozen Blogger blogs, and easily a couple dozen other "social networking" accounts that are a pain in the balls to remember all of the usernames and passwords for.
But Facebook and Etsy are the only sites that I have been able to use to make money from any of the many projects I'm working on.
Etsy, because that's where people go to buy cheap art, and Facebook because it currently dominates the internet, commanding something like 90% of the traffic.
Everyone except musicians abandoned MySpace like socialites off the Titanic.
Google+ is like a new housing development that people are gradually moving into.
It's really nice and they're trying really hard to get people to move there, but there's not a lot of people there yet.
And I always say that LinkedIn is where nobodies go to do nothing.
I haven't managed to develop any kind of work or project using that stupid site.
I had one inquiry about a painting through Twitter, and one inquiry about a painting through Tumblr, and neither inquirer ended up following through with the deal.
That's all I've got to rant about the matter for now.
Find me on all of the other social networking sites in the bio below...
Scott Lefebvre can write about whatever you want him to write about.
Mostly because when he was grounded for his outlandish behavior as a hyperactive school child, the only place he was allowed to go was the public library.
His literary tastes were forged by the works of Helen Hoke, Alvin Schwartz and Stephen Gammell, Ray Bradbury, Richard Matheson, Stephen King, Clive Barker, Edgar Allan Poe, and H. P. Lovecraft.
He is the author of Spooky Creepy Long Island, and a contributing author to Forrest J. Ackerman’s Anthology of the Living Dead, Fracas: A Collection of Short Friction, The Call of Lovecraft, and Cashiers du Cinemart.
He is currently working on ten novel-length book projects which will be released in 2014.
He also publishes themed collections of interviews from his interview blog You Are Entitled To My Opinion.
His reviews have been published by a variety of in print and online media including Scars Magazine, Icons of Fright, Fatally Yours and Screams of Terror, and he has appeared in Fangoria, Rue Morgue and HorrorHound Magazine.
He is the Assistant Program Director for The Arkham Film Society and produces electronic music under the names Master Control and LOVECRAFTWORK.
He is currently working on a novel-length expansion of a short-story titled, "The End Of The World Is Nigh", a crowd-funded, crowd-sourced, post-apocalyptic, zombie epidemic project.
Check out the blog for the book here: theendoftheworldisnighbook.blogspot.com
Check out the Facebook Fan Page for the project here: www.facebook.com/TheEndOfTheWorldIsNighBook
Check his author profile at: www.amazon.com/Scott-Lefebvre/e/B001TQ2W9G
Follow him at GoodReads here:
www.goodreads.com/author/show/1617246.Scott_Lefebvre
Check out his publishing imprint Burnt Offerings Books here:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Burnt-Offerings-Books/1408858196016246
And here: http://burntofferingsbooks.blogspot.com/
Check out his electronic music here: soundcloud.com/master_control
And here: master-control.bandcamp.com
Check out his videos at: www.youtube.com/user/doctornapoleon
Check out his IMDB profile here: www.imdb.com/name/nm3678959
Follow his Twitter here: twitter.com/TheLefebvre or @TheLefebvre
Follow his Tumblr here: thelefebvre.tumblr.com
Check out his Etsy here: www.etsy.com/shop/ScottLefebvreArt
Join the group for The Arkham Film Society here:
www.facebook.com/groups/arkhamscreenings
Stalk his Facebook at: www.facebook.com/TheLefebvre
E-mail him at: Scott_Lefebvre@hotmail.com
Performed the Triple-S of the male body maintenance routine.
[Shit,Shower,Shave]
Fired up Firefox.
[You still use IE? Don't do that. Download Firefox. And Avast! Antivirus while you're at it.]
Checked my Facebook notifications.
Two new people like the Facebook fan page for my publishing imprint?
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Burnt-Offerings-Books/1408858196016246
Awesome!
Let's see who these two people are.
First guy's got 385 imaginary friends in common with me?
*shift/clicks through opening his profile page in a new window and check out his profile/wall*
Posts cool stuff on his wall?
Doesn't seem like a Jesus freak or a fake profile?
No bitstrips?
He's okay in my books.
*clicks "Add Friend"*
Two minutes later he accepts my invitation to become imaginary friends.
*makes mental note to follow-up and see what that guy's up to*
Second guy? Same deal.
Pop-up box with the attached image...
No, I don't know this person outside of Facebook.
I have around 1,800 "Friends" on Facebook.
I only know about, maybe 300 of them IRL.
[That's "In Real Life" for all of you senior citizens out there And what are you doing reading this anyway? Shouldn't you be playing shuffle board or pricing out coffins?]
Anyway, that means that there are 1,500 people that I'm electronically acquainted with that I have probably never spoken to in person.
So, no, I don't know most of those people personally.
For that matter, I don't really like most of my "classmates, family and coworkers".
I've got most of those assholes blocked on Facebook for being assholes.
I am the most misanthropic, antisocial person I know.
If I don't even leave the house in a day and don't talk to a single person personally I'm that much happier.
But I am also an author.
Us writer-types are like that.
We might hate people, but we LOVE our readers!
I am trying to start up my own publishing imprint to help other authors to publish their work.
[Because so far, my publishing imprint is pretty much a vanity press. Nine books in two months and it's all my stuff. Sorry, I write a lot, don't be jealous. You can write books too.]
I also run an interview blog.
I have a Facebook Fan Page for that too.
https://www.facebook.com/YouAreEntitledToMyOpinion
Since October 1st, 2013 I've conducted over 125 interviews and the blog is going to break 12,000 unique page views tonight.
*brushes nonexistent dust (or chip) off shoulder*
Where did I find all of the people I interviewed for the blog?
Through Facebook, using what claims to be a "social networking" website to become acquainted with people that I didn't know before and making new friends from all over the world.
You know... being "social".
Also, as an author and an aspiring publisher, I am my brand.
My profiles on social networking sites often feature promotional posts for the projects I'm working on. I try to keep these posts to one per project per day so my imaginary friends don't get promotional fatigue and take me out of their News Feeds, but it's hard because I'm usually working on five projects at once.
I don't fuck around.
And when I do fuck around, I don't fuck around while fucking around.
Sorry about that.*
[*Totally not sorry about that.]
I use the internet to sell books and to announce the submission calls for my publishing imprints.
"Imprints you say? Plural?"
Yes, imprints, plural.
https://www.facebook.com/RadiationSicknessBooks
So, my question is, if I'm not allowed to send a Friend Request to someone who has 30 "friends" in common with me and seems to be into the same kind of stuff, (I mean, he "liked" the fan page for my publishing imprint, maybe we'd get along?) then how is Facebook a social networking website?
Does Facebook really think that everyone using their site is the kind of person that only has friends from high school, college if they went, their work, people from their Zumba class or church group or what the fuck ever, and people that they're related to through blood or marriage?
I know there's a lot of those people on Facebook, but they're part of the problem.
The kind of people that report a profile if they see a picture of a female nipple or if they see something that doesn't jive with their opinion.
I don't want to see people getting fucked in the ass in my News Feed while trying to wake up while smoking the day's first cigarette either, and if I want to see people getting fucked in the ass, the internet is woven out of porn and cats.
But it shouldn't be forbidden.
If I don't like it, I don't look at it.
I don't like your stupid fucking simple-minded Christian posts or your bitstrips or your inspirational memes or your pictures of your kids or your pets or you making out with your significant other, but I also don't report that stuff.
I just click "I don't want to see this." and hide it from My News Feed and if all you do is post that kind of shit, I click "Unfollow..."
"Why doesn't anyone ever like anything I post?"
Because the stuff that you post sucks.
Post stuff that people will like and I'll like it.
No one wants to see a hundred pictures of your newborn baby except the kind of people that Facebook apparently thinks that you should be friends with.
You know, "classmates, family and coworkers".
Oh, and grandparents.
I love you Grandma, but trying to start a conversation with me asking how I'm doing in the comment thread about a snuff porn book I'm publishing isn't the best place to try to catch up.
Send me a private message or call me on the phone. Yes, I do answer my phone.
What's the solution?
There isn't one yet.
I've got a Google+, a Twitter, a Tumblr, an Etsy, a GoodReads, a LinkedIn, a Pinterest, a dozen Blogger blogs, and easily a couple dozen other "social networking" accounts that are a pain in the balls to remember all of the usernames and passwords for.
But Facebook and Etsy are the only sites that I have been able to use to make money from any of the many projects I'm working on.
Etsy, because that's where people go to buy cheap art, and Facebook because it currently dominates the internet, commanding something like 90% of the traffic.
Everyone except musicians abandoned MySpace like socialites off the Titanic.
Google+ is like a new housing development that people are gradually moving into.
It's really nice and they're trying really hard to get people to move there, but there's not a lot of people there yet.
And I always say that LinkedIn is where nobodies go to do nothing.
I haven't managed to develop any kind of work or project using that stupid site.
I had one inquiry about a painting through Twitter, and one inquiry about a painting through Tumblr, and neither inquirer ended up following through with the deal.
That's all I've got to rant about the matter for now.
Find me on all of the other social networking sites in the bio below...
Scott Lefebvre can write about whatever you want him to write about.
Mostly because when he was grounded for his outlandish behavior as a hyperactive school child, the only place he was allowed to go was the public library.
His literary tastes were forged by the works of Helen Hoke, Alvin Schwartz and Stephen Gammell, Ray Bradbury, Richard Matheson, Stephen King, Clive Barker, Edgar Allan Poe, and H. P. Lovecraft.
He is the author of Spooky Creepy Long Island, and a contributing author to Forrest J. Ackerman’s Anthology of the Living Dead, Fracas: A Collection of Short Friction, The Call of Lovecraft, and Cashiers du Cinemart.
He is currently working on ten novel-length book projects which will be released in 2014.
He also publishes themed collections of interviews from his interview blog You Are Entitled To My Opinion.
His reviews have been published by a variety of in print and online media including Scars Magazine, Icons of Fright, Fatally Yours and Screams of Terror, and he has appeared in Fangoria, Rue Morgue and HorrorHound Magazine.
He is the Assistant Program Director for The Arkham Film Society and produces electronic music under the names Master Control and LOVECRAFTWORK.
He is currently working on a novel-length expansion of a short-story titled, "The End Of The World Is Nigh", a crowd-funded, crowd-sourced, post-apocalyptic, zombie epidemic project.
Check out the blog for the book here: theendoftheworldisnighbook.blogspot.com
Check out the Facebook Fan Page for the project here: www.facebook.com/TheEndOfTheWorldIsNighBook
Check his author profile at: www.amazon.com/Scott-Lefebvre/e/B001TQ2W9G
Follow him at GoodReads here:
www.goodreads.com/author/show/1617246.Scott_Lefebvre
Check out his publishing imprint Burnt Offerings Books here:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Burnt-Offerings-Books/1408858196016246
And here: http://burntofferingsbooks.blogspot.com/
Check out his electronic music here: soundcloud.com/master_control
And here: master-control.bandcamp.com
Check out his videos at: www.youtube.com/user/doctornapoleon
Check out his IMDB profile here: www.imdb.com/name/nm3678959
Follow his Twitter here: twitter.com/TheLefebvre or @TheLefebvre
Follow his Tumblr here: thelefebvre.tumblr.com
Check out his Etsy here: www.etsy.com/shop/ScottLefebvreArt
Join the group for The Arkham Film Society here:
www.facebook.com/groups/arkhamscreenings
Stalk his Facebook at: www.facebook.com/TheLefebvre
E-mail him at: Scott_Lefebvre@hotmail.com
Wednesday, November 20, 2013
BLOGSPOT ROLL CALL
Bored at work?
Need something to read on your computer so you look busy?
Yeah, I got that...
My Blogs:
Personal: http://lovecraftwork.blogspot.com/
Interviews: http://youareentitledtomyopinioninterviews.blogspot.com/
My post-apocalyptic zombie epidemic book project:
http://theendoftheworldisnighbook.blogspot.com/
Film Reviews: http://nooneaskedforyourfuckingopinion.blogspot.com/
Book reviews: http://destroyallauthors.blogspot.com/
Music reviews: http://thewordsaboutsounds.blogspot.com/
My publishing imprint: http://burntofferingsbooks.blogspot.com/
The first book from my publishing imprint:
http://seandouglasbooks.blogspot.com/
Need something to read on your computer so you look busy?
Yeah, I got that...
My Blogs:
Personal: http://lovecraftwork.blogspot.com/
Interviews: http://youareentitledtomyopinioninterviews.blogspot.com/
My post-apocalyptic zombie epidemic book project:
http://theendoftheworldisnighbook.blogspot.com/
Film Reviews: http://nooneaskedforyourfuckingopinion.blogspot.com/
Book reviews: http://destroyallauthors.blogspot.com/
Music reviews: http://thewordsaboutsounds.blogspot.com/
My publishing imprint: http://burntofferingsbooks.blogspot.com/
The first book from my publishing imprint:
http://seandouglasbooks.blogspot.com/
Tuesday, November 5, 2013
Burnt Offerings Audio Books is now open for commissions!
Greetings!
After having spent the last year or so honing my skills in the art of recording spoken word and audio books, I am now confident enough with the quality of my output to offer my services recording audio books.
What you will receive as an audio book client is an adaptation of your book as an audio book product, in your preferred format, ready to be distributed via your preferred method of distribution, to allow you complete saturation of your target demographic of readers.
I also offer assistance with setting up a site to host your audio books, branding the site, and coordinating the payment gateway for your audio books. As long as you have an active PayPal account coordinating the payment gateway is relatively simple to do.
Pricing for the production of an audio book depends on the length of the material.
To listen to samples of audio books I have produced, you can click through to the page that I maintain for my audio book projects. http://scottlefebvre.bandcamp.com/
If you are an author, or know an author that is interested in having their book adapted into an audio book, please contact me at the e-mail at the end of this post and we can discuss the project.
Scott Lefebvre
Burnt Offerings Audio Books
Scott_Lefebvre@hotmail.com
Tuesday, October 8, 2013
Open Letter to The Edward Gorey Charitable Trust
To: info@edwardgoreyhouse.org
Greetings!
I just received notification that you or someone representing your organization filed copyright complaints against four videos that I created and posted on my YouTube channel.
The videos were for The Doubtful Guest, The Insect God, The Object Lesson, and The Fatal Lozenge.
They were slideshows accompanied by audio tracks reading the text and were intended as homage pieces to share the appreciation of Edward Gorey's work.
I received no form of compensation aside from "hits" or "views" which do not translate into currency.
The videos were relatively well viewed and well-appreciated by Edward Gorey enthusiasts.
Also, in accordance with the guidelines of Fair Use, I did not profit from the use of this content, and they were not intended to, nor can I conceive of any way that they could, deprive you of any monetary compensation or your ability to profit from your copyright.
So essentially you've just had four videos created by a fan of Edward Gorey to celebrate his work that have been viewed and enjoyed by tens of thousands of other Edward Gorey fans taken down out of pure spite and as a way to flex your muscle as the copyright holder of the work of Edward Gorey.
How charitable of you!
Particularly annoying about all of this is that I sent your organization an e-mail, like, four years ago when I originally made the videos asking your organization for your blessing or if you'd be interesting in allowing me to borrow the copyrighted material to expand the concept and create narrated videos for all of the works of Edward Gorey with the intention of creating a product, such as a DVD of the videos that you COULD sell to allow you to further whatever the intentions of your charitable organization are and I NEVER RECEIVED A REPLY!
So, for the past four or five years it's been fine that people have been enjoying the videos I made to celebrate the work of Edward Gorey out of a common appreciation for the artist that you claim to represent in a charitable capacity but now, suddenly, it's a problem because you learned how to use the internet today?
Again, how charitable.
If you would like to reply and try to ameliorate this situation I'd be interested in knowing what the opinion of the Edward Gorey Charitable Trust is regarding this incident.
But I won't be holding my breath as I've been waiting around FIVE YEARS for a response to my initial inquiry by e-mail.
So in the meantime I guess someone will just have to make professional quality DVDs out of the videos, which they are well capable of, since they still want to share their appreciation for the work of Edward Gorey.
And I don't think it would be unreasonable for them to charge a slight fee from potential purchasers of these DVDs for the time and effort it would take to put them together and for the cost of the materials to make the DVDs.
So, thank you, the Edward Gorey Charitable Trust for filing a complaint against the videos where I was sharing the videos I made for free.
You've inspired me to make the videos available for someone to distribute as hard copies for profit.
Please, by all means continue your charitable efforts on behalf of one of my favorite authors.
I'm sure he would be pleased to know that you are actively preventing the well-intentioned distribution of his work in his absence.
Yours,
A Fan Of Edward Gorey
(But Decidedly NOT A Fan Of The Edward Gorey Charitable Trust)
UPDATE: October 20th, 2013
From: edwardgoreyhouse@verizon.net
To: scott_lefebvre@hotmail.com
Subject: Re: Edward Gorey
Date: Sun, 20 Oct 2013 13:33:55 -0400
Scott,
I checked my past messages and I find that I did respond to you inquiry of 22 Feb 2009 with this response. I will forward your email of 7 Oct 2013 on to them as well.
Rick Jones
Edward Gorey House
Director / Curator
On Feb 22, 2009, at 12:09 PM, Rick Jones wrote:
Hi,
Thanks for your message and information on your proposed project.
We will send your message to the Edward Gorey Charitable Trust as they hold and control all copyright for Mr. Gorey's images and uses.
They are the only people who can grant the appropriate permission, especially on items that are to be sold, as they do require contracts on items for sale.
Thank you for your interest in Edward Gorey.
Rick Jones
Director / Curator
Edward Gorey House
On Feb 22, 2009, at 8:28 AM, Scott Lefebvre wrote:
Greetings!
I have long been a fan of Edward Gorey.
Both his printed works and the general style of his art and aesthetics.
I have been thinking about doing a series of animated projects based on his works.
In preparation for preparing several of these narrated projects, I have prepared an example.
This example, a rendering of 'The Insect God' is available for review here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-ait6MSqmM
I was interested in discussing the possibility of obtaining permission, or at least the blessing, of The Edward Gorey House as the most prominent preservers of the life and work of Edward Gorey.
If The Edward Gorey House is pleased with this initial example, I would like to prepare a DVD worth of narrated Animated Amphigorey and discuss the possibility of offering this DVD for sale through The Edward Gorey House, thus allowing me to do my part to help to preserve the legacy of Edward Gorey.
I am most interested in reading your response to my proposal, as I am eager to begin production of additional projects.
Thank you.
Scott Lefebvre
Rick Jones
Edward Gorey House
Director / Curator
UPDATE: October 21st, 2013
Thanks for your interest in Mr. Gorey’s works, and kind regards.
M. Graham Coleman | Davis Wright Tremaine LLP
1633 Broadway, 27th Floor | New York, NY 10019
Tel: (212) 603-6442 | Fax: (212) 379-5242
Email: mgrahamcoleman@dwt.com | Website: www.dwt.com
UPDATE: October 22nd, 2013
Edward Gorey Works
Dear Mr. Lefebvre,
As co-trustee of the Edward Gorey Charitable Trust, I can tell you that the Trust has no record of having received the email you sent back in 2009 to the Edward Gorey House, although I now see that Rick Jones had attempted to forward it to us at that time. I do not know why we never received it. When we discovered your videos of Edward Gorey’s works on YouTube we did not know that they were produced by a person who had attempted to request authorization to use Gorey works in this manner 4 years ago. Having said that, upon seeing your videos it was our duty as trustee of the Edward Gorey Charitable Trust and counsel to the Trust to act immediately to have them taken down, as their public display constituted extensive copyright infringement and risked a reduction in the value of the infringed works, which we use to raise funds for the support of animal welfare organizations, that being the reason for the existence of the Trust.
It is ordinarily our practice to require that infringements of this kind be taken down immediately, but on the assumption that the infringement may have been an innocent act of one unfamiliar with the law of copyright we do not ordinarily pursue legal action against the infringer if the infringement does not continue. If, however, in your case we learn that you have continued to exploit these videos after being advised that they constitute copyright infringement and after as copyright owners we have insisted that they no longer be displayed in any manner, it may be necessary for us to take necessary action to terminate this unauthorized use of the works of Edward Gorey and to seek appropriate damages. Your email of October 7 seems clearly to threaten continued actions in violation of the copyright in these Gorey works, and we respectfully request that you reconsider this plan and confirm that you will not publicly display, sell or otherwise make available the videos that were displayed on YouTube. If you truly admire the works of Edward Gorey and wish not to interfere with the charitable purposes to which he asked his works to be applied, we will expect to hear from you without delay that you will agree to this request. This request is without prejudice to our right to take action if deemed necessary.
R. Andrew Boose | Davis Wright Tremaine LLP
1633 Broadway, 27th Floor | New York, NY 10019
Tel: (212) 603-6408 | Fax: (212) 379-5208
Email: andrewboose@dwt.com | Website: www.dwt.com
Anchorage | Bellevue | Los Angeles | New York | Portland | San Francisco | Seattle | Shanghai | Washington, D.C.
My reply:
Duly noted.
The preceding reply from M. Graham Coleman was sufficient and much more polite.
"Dear Mr. Lefebvre – The trustees of the Edward Gorey Charitable Trust, owner of all copyrights and related rights to Mr. Gorey’s works, have asked me to inform you that they do not wish to license the rights you have requested. As I am sure you will understand, there are many proposals pending at any time for these and related rights to Mr. Gorey’s works, and the trustees are obligated to pursue those they believe most likely to result in increased revenues for the Trust’s charitable beneficiaries.
Thanks for your interest in Mr. Gorey’s works, and kind regards.
M. Graham Coleman | Davis Wright Tremaine LLP
1633 Broadway, 27th Floor | New York, NY 10019
Tel: (212) 603-6442 | Fax: (212) 379-5242
Email: mgrahamcoleman@dwt.com | Website: www.dwt.com"
I request that any future correspondence from the Edward Gorey Charitable Trust be conducted through M. Graham Coleman.
Thank you for your time and effort in consideration of the preceding.
Greetings!
I just received notification that you or someone representing your organization filed copyright complaints against four videos that I created and posted on my YouTube channel.
The videos were for The Doubtful Guest, The Insect God, The Object Lesson, and The Fatal Lozenge.
They were slideshows accompanied by audio tracks reading the text and were intended as homage pieces to share the appreciation of Edward Gorey's work.
I received no form of compensation aside from "hits" or "views" which do not translate into currency.
The videos were relatively well viewed and well-appreciated by Edward Gorey enthusiasts.
Also, in accordance with the guidelines of Fair Use, I did not profit from the use of this content, and they were not intended to, nor can I conceive of any way that they could, deprive you of any monetary compensation or your ability to profit from your copyright.
So essentially you've just had four videos created by a fan of Edward Gorey to celebrate his work that have been viewed and enjoyed by tens of thousands of other Edward Gorey fans taken down out of pure spite and as a way to flex your muscle as the copyright holder of the work of Edward Gorey.
How charitable of you!
Particularly annoying about all of this is that I sent your organization an e-mail, like, four years ago when I originally made the videos asking your organization for your blessing or if you'd be interesting in allowing me to borrow the copyrighted material to expand the concept and create narrated videos for all of the works of Edward Gorey with the intention of creating a product, such as a DVD of the videos that you COULD sell to allow you to further whatever the intentions of your charitable organization are and I NEVER RECEIVED A REPLY!
So, for the past four or five years it's been fine that people have been enjoying the videos I made to celebrate the work of Edward Gorey out of a common appreciation for the artist that you claim to represent in a charitable capacity but now, suddenly, it's a problem because you learned how to use the internet today?
Again, how charitable.
If you would like to reply and try to ameliorate this situation I'd be interested in knowing what the opinion of the Edward Gorey Charitable Trust is regarding this incident.
But I won't be holding my breath as I've been waiting around FIVE YEARS for a response to my initial inquiry by e-mail.
So in the meantime I guess someone will just have to make professional quality DVDs out of the videos, which they are well capable of, since they still want to share their appreciation for the work of Edward Gorey.
And I don't think it would be unreasonable for them to charge a slight fee from potential purchasers of these DVDs for the time and effort it would take to put them together and for the cost of the materials to make the DVDs.
So, thank you, the Edward Gorey Charitable Trust for filing a complaint against the videos where I was sharing the videos I made for free.
You've inspired me to make the videos available for someone to distribute as hard copies for profit.
Please, by all means continue your charitable efforts on behalf of one of my favorite authors.
I'm sure he would be pleased to know that you are actively preventing the well-intentioned distribution of his work in his absence.
Yours,
A Fan Of Edward Gorey
(But Decidedly NOT A Fan Of The Edward Gorey Charitable Trust)
UPDATE: October 20th, 2013
From: edwardgoreyhouse@verizon.net
To: scott_lefebvre@hotmail.com
Subject: Re: Edward Gorey
Date: Sun, 20 Oct 2013 13:33:55 -0400
Scott,
I checked my past messages and I find that I did respond to you inquiry of 22 Feb 2009 with this response. I will forward your email of 7 Oct 2013 on to them as well.
Rick Jones
Edward Gorey House
Director / Curator
On Feb 22, 2009, at 12:09 PM, Rick Jones wrote:
Hi,
Thanks for your message and information on your proposed project.
We will send your message to the Edward Gorey Charitable Trust as they hold and control all copyright for Mr. Gorey's images and uses.
They are the only people who can grant the appropriate permission, especially on items that are to be sold, as they do require contracts on items for sale.
Thank you for your interest in Edward Gorey.
Rick Jones
Director / Curator
Edward Gorey House
On Feb 22, 2009, at 8:28 AM, Scott Lefebvre wrote:
Greetings!
I have long been a fan of Edward Gorey.
Both his printed works and the general style of his art and aesthetics.
I have been thinking about doing a series of animated projects based on his works.
In preparation for preparing several of these narrated projects, I have prepared an example.
This example, a rendering of 'The Insect God' is available for review here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-ait6MSqmM
I was interested in discussing the possibility of obtaining permission, or at least the blessing, of The Edward Gorey House as the most prominent preservers of the life and work of Edward Gorey.
If The Edward Gorey House is pleased with this initial example, I would like to prepare a DVD worth of narrated Animated Amphigorey and discuss the possibility of offering this DVD for sale through The Edward Gorey House, thus allowing me to do my part to help to preserve the legacy of Edward Gorey.
I am most interested in reading your response to my proposal, as I am eager to begin production of additional projects.
Thank you.
Scott Lefebvre
Rick Jones
Edward Gorey House
Director / Curator
UPDATE: October 21st, 2013
RE: Edward Gorey / permission request
Dear Mr. Lefebvre – The trustees of the Edward Gorey Charitable Trust, owner of all copyrights and related rights to Mr. Gorey’s works, have asked me to inform you that they do not wish to license the rights you have requested. As I am sure you will understand, there are many proposals pending at any time for these and related rights to Mr. Gorey’s works, and the trustees are obligated to pursue those they believe most likely to result in increased revenues for the Trust’s charitable beneficiaries.Thanks for your interest in Mr. Gorey’s works, and kind regards.
M. Graham Coleman | Davis Wright Tremaine LLP
1633 Broadway, 27th Floor | New York, NY 10019
Tel: (212) 603-6442 | Fax: (212) 379-5242
Email: mgrahamcoleman@dwt.com | Website: www.dwt.com
UPDATE: October 22nd, 2013
Edward Gorey Works
Dear Mr. Lefebvre,
As co-trustee of the Edward Gorey Charitable Trust, I can tell you that the Trust has no record of having received the email you sent back in 2009 to the Edward Gorey House, although I now see that Rick Jones had attempted to forward it to us at that time. I do not know why we never received it. When we discovered your videos of Edward Gorey’s works on YouTube we did not know that they were produced by a person who had attempted to request authorization to use Gorey works in this manner 4 years ago. Having said that, upon seeing your videos it was our duty as trustee of the Edward Gorey Charitable Trust and counsel to the Trust to act immediately to have them taken down, as their public display constituted extensive copyright infringement and risked a reduction in the value of the infringed works, which we use to raise funds for the support of animal welfare organizations, that being the reason for the existence of the Trust.
It is ordinarily our practice to require that infringements of this kind be taken down immediately, but on the assumption that the infringement may have been an innocent act of one unfamiliar with the law of copyright we do not ordinarily pursue legal action against the infringer if the infringement does not continue. If, however, in your case we learn that you have continued to exploit these videos after being advised that they constitute copyright infringement and after as copyright owners we have insisted that they no longer be displayed in any manner, it may be necessary for us to take necessary action to terminate this unauthorized use of the works of Edward Gorey and to seek appropriate damages. Your email of October 7 seems clearly to threaten continued actions in violation of the copyright in these Gorey works, and we respectfully request that you reconsider this plan and confirm that you will not publicly display, sell or otherwise make available the videos that were displayed on YouTube. If you truly admire the works of Edward Gorey and wish not to interfere with the charitable purposes to which he asked his works to be applied, we will expect to hear from you without delay that you will agree to this request. This request is without prejudice to our right to take action if deemed necessary.
R. Andrew Boose | Davis Wright Tremaine LLP
1633 Broadway, 27th Floor | New York, NY 10019
Tel: (212) 603-6408 | Fax: (212) 379-5208
Email: andrewboose@dwt.com | Website: www.dwt.com
Anchorage | Bellevue | Los Angeles | New York | Portland | San Francisco | Seattle | Shanghai | Washington, D.C.
My reply:
Duly noted.
The preceding reply from M. Graham Coleman was sufficient and much more polite.
"Dear Mr. Lefebvre – The trustees of the Edward Gorey Charitable Trust, owner of all copyrights and related rights to Mr. Gorey’s works, have asked me to inform you that they do not wish to license the rights you have requested. As I am sure you will understand, there are many proposals pending at any time for these and related rights to Mr. Gorey’s works, and the trustees are obligated to pursue those they believe most likely to result in increased revenues for the Trust’s charitable beneficiaries.
Thanks for your interest in Mr. Gorey’s works, and kind regards.
M. Graham Coleman | Davis Wright Tremaine LLP
1633 Broadway, 27th Floor | New York, NY 10019
Tel: (212) 603-6442 | Fax: (212) 379-5242
Email: mgrahamcoleman@dwt.com | Website: www.dwt.com"
I request that any future correspondence from the Edward Gorey Charitable Trust be conducted through M. Graham Coleman.
Thank you for your time and effort in consideration of the preceding.
Thursday, June 27, 2013
VERIZON WIRELESS: Can you hear me now?
I’ve been a Verizon Wireless
customer for as long as I’ve had a cell phone which is about twelve years or so
now.
I remember having a pager.
The pager company I went with offered standard issue pagers in two colors surprisingly reminiscent of the colors of NyQuil cough syrup. You could go with NyQuil Green or NyQuil Red, roughly the equivalent of “his ‘n’ hers” colors but I went with red anyhow because I’ve never been one to fall for gender stereotyping in colors. I mean, if it was hot pink versus cobalt blue I’d go with the cobalt blue, but red and green are pretty ambivalent. Christmas-y even. So I went with the red.
Between having a pager, which, when you think about it, was essentially an early version of someone text-messaging you their phone number for you to call them back, and having a land-line in my apartment with an answering machine so people could leave voice messages, I was able to do what I needed to do. There was a fair amount of phone tag and leaving messages for each other, but it was what we had so we made it work.
Then, cell phones were made widely and relatively affordably commercially available.
I don’t remember exactly when I made the switch from pager and land-line to cell phone but it was around 2001 because I remember making a joke about having a musical ass and farting melodies when I would forget to mute the ringer on my cell phone at work and an 8-bit Nintendo version of Chopin’s Nocturne #1 would suddenly come drifting from my pants pocket. So I don’t remember when I got my first cell phone, but I remember my first ringtone and that it was an LG.
I also remember that it was around 2001, because I was living in an apartment block that was essentially a concrete bunker and I never got cell phone reception when I was indoors, so every morning I would have to go outside and retrieve all of my missed calls and voice messages. It was inconvenient, and I missed a lot of opportunities because of not having cell phone service in my home. Opportunities for work, when my employer would call to ask me if I could work overtime, and I didn’t receive the call until the next day. Social activities, like people inviting me to go out and do things with them, or people trying to call me to see if they could come over and visit me. And one time, when my friend Kristina called me when her and a girlfriend were leaving a lesbian bar and decided that they wanted to, in her words, “put some meat in their girl sandwiches”, my lack of cell phone reception cost me a ménage a trois. Imagine waking up the next day and realizing that you missed that call. Yeah. That sucked.
It never occurred to me to try to hold Verizon Wireless responsible for any of these inconvenient accidents as it was never done out of malicious intent. I lived in a sturdy concrete dwelling with windows on only one side of it. So although at least I didn’t live underground, I didn’t expect to have the best cell phone reception and I made due. So, due to lapses in their signal strength or coverage area, I was being billed for twenty-four access to a service that I was only able to access only about half the time.
Maybe you can see where I’m going with this.
Although Verizon Wireless was unable to provide me with the service that they were charging me for about half of the time, I never received any kind of discount on my bill, my bill was never “pro-rated”. Verizon Wireless billed me for service that they did not provide, and in the words of the law, that is fraud. It is fraud, pure and simple.
Don’t know what fraud is?
Here’s a definition from Wikipedia: “In criminal law, fraud is intentional deception made for personal gain or to damage another individual; the related adjective is fraudulent, and verb is defraud. Fraud is a crime and a civil law violation, though the specific criminal law definition varies by legal jurisdiction. Defrauding people or entities of money or valuables is a common purpose of fraud.”
By taking my money for service that Verizon Wireless was well aware that they were unable to provide, they were engaging in fraudulent activity and by doing so, they were putting themselves in a situation where they could potentially be liable for damages in a civil action. I know that there was a long contract that I was required to sign each time I renewed my contract with them every two years or so, and somewhere in that contract there was a clause that probably said something like, “Verizon Wireless is not responsible for any loss or damage incurred through the use of our products and services.” and, I thought that was fair. I can’t blame Verizon for my only being able to afford to live in a bunker with windows on only one side, and therefore only being able to receive service most of the time. But they were probably aware that half the time my phone was unable to connect to their network, and if they weren’t already aware, I let them know, and they were still pleased to demand full payment each month as if I actually had access to the service I was paying for. But I didn’t really mind that much at the time. It only worked half the time, but it was only $50 a month at the time, which wasn’t a lot of money for a telephone you could carry around in your pocket. I always paid my cell phone bill in person, resisting their persistent suggestion that I let them have my bank card number and bill me automatically, because I didn’t trust Verizon Wireless to act in a just and legal manner if given unchecked access to my financial network. And when I went in to pay my bill I often mentioned that I was only receiving service about half the time and said that I would appreciate if they would pro-rate my bill to reflect the fact, because $25 isn’t a lot of money, but it did build up over time, but the Verizon clerk, and manager of the location if the clerk was a dullard, would just shrug and say that there was nothing they could do about it. The old “I don’t know what to tell you / we’re all just cogs in a big machine / are you going to pay your cell phone bill or will we have to hold your access to our service hostage until you render payment in full” routine.
My relationship with my cell phone service provider hasn’t always been copacetic.
Sometimes I’d be short on cash due to other financial obligations or a lapse in employment. I’m not perfect, and sometime employers and I didn’t see eye to eye, and sometimes my lifelong sleep cycle problems came between me and showing up to work when I was supposed to and I’d be informed that my services were no longer needed. So cash would be tight, and I can’t eat cell phone service, so I’d let it slide a couple or a few months, and sometimes my cell phone service would get shut off.
For a few years there, they would tack on a late fee if you didn’t pay your bill on time. I can understand why they would do that, but it always seemed a bit harsh. I already don’t have the money to pay my cell phone bill. Now you’re going to levy an additional fee when I already can’t afford to pay the initial fee? Kind of a dick move. Do you even want customers?
And sometimes when my service would be disconnected for non-payment I would have to earn beg or borrow enough money to pay of my overdue balance, and my overdue fees, and on top of that they would levy a reconnection fee. Verizon could have waived the reconnection fee in consideration of my customer loyalty since I had been a customer of theirs from the beginning and reconnecting my service happened instantaneously as soon as I rendered payment and the clerk made the necessary changes. But they didn’t, and despite my suggestions I’d get the same shrug and the same explanation that it was beyond their control from the clerks and managers of the location I frequented. It wasn’t beyond their control, as sometimes I could get them to waive the fees. So, essentially the clerks and managers were lying to me the other half of the time, which, as you can clearly see is more fraud and not cool.
Then, one day, I get a postcard in the mail.
The postcard is inviting me to participate in a class-action suit against Verizon Wireless to entitle myself to a piece of a multi-million dollar lawsuit over illegal overdue fees.
Interesting. Turns out that I wasn’t the only one that thought that it was kind of a dick move on the part of Verizon Wireless to kick people when they’re down. But since I’m not overly litigious by nature, I declined to reply to the postcard. Verizon would presumably stop levying late payment fees and that was enough for me.
Cell phone technology evolved and text messaging was the next thing that everyone started using and you kind of had to participate in. Sure, at first you could get non-text message enabled phones, but that was temporary, and if you wanted to be part of the next wave of computer-mediated communication you learned how to text message and learned how to emoticon and “lol” like everyone else.
Of course, text messaging wasn’t going to be something that Verizon Wireless just gave its customers. Despite the fact that they could just make their money from charging people for the phones that were text capable when people upgraded to a new phone every two years or so, Verizon levied either a per-text or a variety of different monthly subscription packages.
I opted for unlimited nights and weekends for phone calls and unlimited text which was an extra $30 a month so now my bill was up to $80 per month. It worked out fairly well, and I told people like my mother and my best friends that tended to want to talk for over an hour on the phone to call me during off-peak times, and on the off chance that I went past my 300 or 500 allotted monthly peak minutes, I was usually able to argue my way out of the surcharge which was a small victory. Plus I think that Verizon Wireless was aware that it wasn’t worth arguing over an extra fifty bucks here or there considering that ten of the twelve months I wouldn’t exceed my minutes and I didn’t receive a refund for any minutes that I didn’t use so things sort of balanced out.
That was how it was for a couple years.
Sometimes I was ahead, sometimes I was behind, but it was relatively uneventful, and aside from the service areas being unreliable and missing calls and messages which would cause social complications and missed opportunities of the employment/financial/social/romantic variety I wasn’t completely dis-satisfied. It was still only $80 for me to have a telephone in my pocket all the time.
Cell phone technology evolved and smart phones became mandatory.
I had been rocking a RAZR V3 for years and I was perfectly happy with it.
It was and probably will be my favorite cell phone until they can make a smart phone that slim and cool looking.
Texting using the alphanumeric code was a bit of a nuisance, but after practice I was able to compose whole messages without even looking at the keys. Press “2” three times and you get a “c”. Pretty simple when you get used to it.
I had my RAZR for so long that when I finally developed a problem with it, a misfunctioning number key if I remember correctly, that I had skipped a couple of my “every two years new phone” opportunities and the clerk was amazed that I was still running off the original battery. Turns out I’m pretty good at taking care of a cell phone when it’s not too big to be unwieldy. I never dropped any of my cell phones into a toilet bowl or down a stairwell or out the window/under the wheel of a moving car or got pushed into a swimming pool with it in my pocket or anything like that.
The clerk told me that I couldn’t have another RAZR as they were being discontinued and I would have to upgrade to a smart phone. This was only half true. It’s true that the RAZR V3 was being phased out in favor of smart phones, but Verizon was offering a smart phone compliant updated variant. But maybe the location I frequented in Long Island didn’t have any of those in stock, or it wasn’t an option for my “free” phone upgrade. So I let the clerk talk me into a Blackberry Curve. I think it was an 8530. I’ve never been a tech fetishist so I usually don’t know the tech specs for my cell phones. All I know is that it was a Blackberry, it was black, and it had the trackpad instead of the roller ball.
Of course, upgrading to a smart phone wouldn’t be free and there would be an increase to my monthly bill for taking advantage of having access to the internet in my pocket. So now my monthly bill was around $100 each month, give or take. But I fell in love with my Blackberry. The tiny keypad was kind of a pain for my big sausage fingers, but I developed callouses in the corners of the fingertips of my thumbs and forefingers and with practice was able to type with relative ease. Plus I was able to receive and reply to e-mails and access Facebook from my phone which was quite a valuable privilege to have since I was a brand manager for an horror-genre-merchandising company which did most of its business online so some days I could do my work from home or while away from my computer with relative ease. I was happy with my upgrade, the $20 per month surcharge was worth it, and I was making decent money, so keeping current on my bill wasn’t a problem. All was right with the world.
I mean, there was still the problem with spotty coverage. That’s continuous. Sometimes you’d have cell phone reception but no internet, and sometimes you’d have no reception at all, and you’d come out of spending time in a dead spot with no internet and be swarmed with a tsunami of notifications about e-mails and Facebook notifications you had missed, but for the most part it was serviceable. I didn’t expect perfection, and although I was still being billed for continuous service when I was only able to access cell phone service about ¾ of the time, and the internet about half the time, I didn’t make much of a fuss because, as I said, I didn’t expect perfection and I was a loyal Verizon customer.
I listened to my friends complain about their cell phone providers and when asked who I went with and if I was content I’d usually say that I hadn’t had any problems with Verizon. The service was spotty at best, but what do you expect?
The job ended and I moved.
At my new residence, I was sharing a flat with an insane senior citizen. The kind of deal where you rent a bedroom in a house, and share the common areas with whoever is renting the other bedrooms. Kind of inconvenient, but it was all I could afford at the time since money was tight. The old codger had cable, but not internet and trying to add on internet was going to be a hassle. I was able to steal internet from a guy that lived upstairs, but after a few months I think he started to get wise. My friend Josh told me that he had the same phone that I did, except a slightly different model through T-Mobile and that he was able to “tether” his phone. For those less tech savvy than I am, to “tether” your phone is to use your cell phone as a modem to connect to the internet with your computer, using your existing cell phone plan. I had unlimited everything on my phone so I figured it was worth looking into. For those more tech savvy than I am, I apologize for any over-simplification.
When I tried to activate my cell phone as a tether, I was notified that tethering a Verizon phone was a premium service and would require agreeing to pay an additional fee and would I like to do so? I contacted my friend who tethered his Blackberry through T-Mobile and he said that it was free for him. The phone can do it, and he pays for cell phone service so why would he have to pay for the privilege? I agreed with him, so I went to my local Verizon location and asked what the deal was. The first clerk I talked to said that he could enable tethering for an additional $20 per month. Another price increase and kind of a rip-off considering that T-Mobile offered the same service for free but I needed access to the internet from my home so I was willing to pay for the price hike for the privilege.
The clerk begins to process the change to my account and encounters a problem and calls a manager over. Okay so far. Then the manager informs me that the clerk was mistaken and that it would cost me an additional $60 per month to allow my phone to function as a tether.
Me: “But that guy just told me that it would only cost $20.”
Manager: “He was mistaken.”
Me: “My friend has the same phone through T-Mobile and can tether for free. So why should I stay with Verizon?”
Manager: “-something rude about who cares if you stay with Verizon or not, loser, we’re a giant company so take it on the arches, chump-“
But I’m resistant to change so in spite of being told I could take it or take a hike, I stuck with Verizon and continued to steal internet from the guy upstairs, lying to him about it whenever he’d ask me about it. He wasn’t tech savvy enough to cut me off or change the password and I tried to only use heavy download access when he was likely to be out or asleep. I know it makes me look like a bad person, but desperate times inspire desperate behavior.
I moved back to Rhode Island and the trackpad on my Blackberry stopped working which made the phone just a telephone which would have been fine if I wasn’t paying for internet access.
I went to a Verizon location, but, unfortunately, the location I went to was a satellite location. It looked like a legitimate Verizon location. All of the signage and collateral read Verizon and had the proper brand colors. There were phones in the store, the store was a storefront in a mall, and the card that the clerk gave me said “Verizon Wireless” on it. It was quite a clever illusion considering that this wasn’t really a Verizon Wireless, just an “authorized dealer”.
I went in with my broken Blackberry and said, essentially, “This is broken. I liked this one. I’ll take another please.”
The clerk gave me some shell-game bait-and-switch story about how Blackberrys are a thing of the past and if I wanted a new phone I’d have to go for a smart phone. I was skeptical, as I loved my Blackberry. How could such an awesome phone be obsolete? The clerk talked me into a Samsung Stratosphere which is not the phone I wanted. I wanted a Blackberry. But the Stratosphere seemed the least of all possible evils. It was touchscreen, and I hate touchscreens, but the screen was easily twice as big as the Blackberry, and the phone slid in half revealing a keypad which was a nice concession. So I got talked into it, knowing I was being misled, but having no choice in the matter.
The next month when I went to my usual Verizon location, a legitimate Verizon location, they had Blackberrys in stock. I had been lied to, and the clerk had made his commission. Thanks dude.
The Stratosphere was awful. It’s a cool device, kind of. I immediately named it “Spacephone”. I bought a big 16G Micro-SD card so I could listen to music, downloaded Winamp so I’d have a decent player, threw on a bunch of movies in AVI format so I could watch my favorite movies on a screen the size of my hand if I was bored, but it wasn’t much of a phone.
But the Stratosphere was even worse than the Blackberry for poor reception and I was paying for internet service that I was more often than not unable to take advantage of unless I was standing on a hill on a clear night with my arm raised like the Statue of Liberty petitioning the invisible internet gods to let me check my Facebook. Also, I was never able to synchronize my e-mail with the new phone, so I would receive messages but be unable to reply to them until I got back to my laptop. I don’t know much about wireless connectivity. I don’t know anything about 3G versus 4G except that 4G is supposedly better because it’s one “G” more. [“Yes, but these go to 11.”]
What I do know is that more often than not I’d be lucky to even have cell phone service, and again, Verizon was happy to demand payment for a service that they were unable to provide with anything resembling consistency and my bill was never pro-rated to reflect what I was being billed for but not receiving.
I hit a lapse in employment again and fell behind on my bill.
Verizon has a method of gradually strangling your service when you fall behind.
First you can receive text messages, but not send them. This sucks because it makes you unable to conduct business via text. Business from which you will presumably use the proceeds to pay off your cell phone bill balance.
Then you can receive phone calls, and talk to people if they call you, but if you try to call out, you get redirected to Verizon Customer Service where they mispronounce your last name and ask you to give them your ATM card number so they can take your money and restore your cell phone service, which they are somewhat justifiably holding hostage until you pay your bill. This is inconvenient because when you’re between jobs in a tough economy and you’re trying to line up job interviews it’s embarrassing to try to line things up using just your e-mail and you become terrified of going anywhere or doing anything on the off chance that a potential employer will call you to try to set up a job interview and you won’t be able to return the call so you can get a job and earn some money and pay off your cell phone balance. I actually missed a couple of those calls and let me tell you, checking your voice mail and hearing that “if you want to schedule a job interview give us a call back” and not being able to call them back is quite frustrating.
I was in a desperate situation, but thankfully a business partner for a new business opportunity felt bad for me and lined me up with his cell phone carrier.
In one day with the help of Sprint customer service, my phone number was ported over to Sprint and as an added line to my business partner’s account it’s only $20 per month for everything I was paying $100 a month for at Verizon. Yes, you read that correctly. I’m saving $80 per month by finally ditching Verizon and their fraudulent overcharging for services that they only sporadically provided.
Now I’ve got a Samsung Galaxy S III for FREE. Don’t get me wrong, the service is still spotty and unless I’m sitting on top of a cell phone tower I never see 4Gs whatever that means. But at least It’s only costing my friend and business partner $20 a month. We spend more than that on beer and appetizers when we have a dinner meeting.
All should be well with the world.
Then the phone calls started.
Verizon, like a jilted lover, did not take well to being spurned for another carrier.
The final bill they sent me, almost $300 I owed them in unpaid monthly bills which is kind of fair considering I contracted for a service that they usually couldn’t provide, also had a $250 “Cancellation fee” tacked onto it.
I had been a Verizon Wireless customer for twelve years, give or take.
Often when I could keep their cheap shoddy “free” phones working for longer than the two-year contract period, I would be continuing to subscribe to their cell phone service out of contract. When I had my RAZR I went for about five years without renewing my contract. Despite their spotty service, I would recommend them as the least of the evils when it came to cell phone companies. Slapping me with a cancellation fee is no way to repay the thousands of dollars I have rendered over to them willingly over the years.
I figured that when I had built up some cash I would settle with them for the outstanding balance, being a relatively honest person and not wanting them to continue to further stain my already blackened credit by reporting my delinquency in settling up with them. I would also tell them that there was no way I was paying their cancellation fee so they could take my offer of the outstanding balance for unreliable service rendered or take nothing.
Verizon referred the debt to a collections agency.
The agency was calling me two or three times a day and leaving blank voice mails. Now I’m not that familiar with the laws regarding creditors and how many times a day they’re allowed to call you before it crosses over into harassment, but I’ve always been of the opinion that the number of times per day they were allowed to call you was one. Once per day.
Thankfully my new phone allows you to block incoming phone calls by number.
Did a bit of research. Interesting what you can learn.
Apparently, according to The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act a creditor is quite constricted in their lawful authorization to contact debtors. Also, over-stepping those boundaries can result in civil legal settlements of $1,000 per call or $500,000 in the case of a class action suit.
I called Convergent Outsourcing Incorporated, operating out of Renton, Washington and informed them that by calling me repeatedly, day after day, that they were engaging in harassment and that I am going to seek legal counsel regarding the possibility of engaging in individual or class action legal action against their company for harassment.
Why have I bothered to write all of this?
Because I have a proposal for Verizon Wireless.
I want them to waive the outstanding balance on my account and the “cancellation fee”.
My credit is already bad enough without them further sullying my reputation.
But I also want compensation.
I want compensation for every time I wasn’t able to take advantage of the service that they were billing me for. I want compensation for every missed and dropped call and all of the missed business opportunities and social opportunities I missed. For every missed dollar and kiss I lost out on because Verizon promised and billed for something they could not and did not provide.
A hundred dollars a month times twelve months per year times twelve years is $14,400.
I’m not asking for a full refund.
I contracted to take advantage of the service they provided and I did take advantage of their service fairly regularly and with few problems when the service was working reliably.
I’m asking for compensation for the other half of the time when I missed important phone calls, e-mails, and text messages from my friends and professional contacts.
Half the time Verizon did not provide the services they were contracted to provide and that is a breach of contract, so in exchange for them levying a charge for my breach of contract by changing cell phone service providers I am contemplating counter-charging for half of the amount paid for the service that they only provided half of the time.
Simple math indicates that that would be around $7,200
Now I know that I wasn’t paying $100 per month for the duration of our relationship, but in lieu of filing for damages by way of lost wages and the “pain and suffering” of missed social opportunities I am willing to accept $7,200.
I’ll be e-mailing this to Verizon Wireless if I can find an appropriate e-mail and I will also be contacting a few of my friends engaged in the legal profession to inquire about beginning an individual or class action suit to carry forward my complaint.
This is not a threat.
I am not in the practice of threatening people.
This is a statement of my intentions.
If Verizon Wireless would like to take the easy way out of this and concede to my request I will be pleased to make a public note that they have done so and cease any further inquiries regarding the possibility of legal action against them.
If not, I will continue to move forward with my inquiries and will post a link to this entry into any and all public forums inquiring if any other Verizon Wireless customers who have been unsatisfied with the services rendered would be interested in participating in a class action suit against the company.
I’m sure that there’s a lawyer somewhere that would be interested in the commission for what could potentially be quite an expensive legal action.
And I can’t be the only person that is unsatisfied with the overall unreliability of the services provided by Verizon Wireless can I?
I remember having a pager.
The pager company I went with offered standard issue pagers in two colors surprisingly reminiscent of the colors of NyQuil cough syrup. You could go with NyQuil Green or NyQuil Red, roughly the equivalent of “his ‘n’ hers” colors but I went with red anyhow because I’ve never been one to fall for gender stereotyping in colors. I mean, if it was hot pink versus cobalt blue I’d go with the cobalt blue, but red and green are pretty ambivalent. Christmas-y even. So I went with the red.
Between having a pager, which, when you think about it, was essentially an early version of someone text-messaging you their phone number for you to call them back, and having a land-line in my apartment with an answering machine so people could leave voice messages, I was able to do what I needed to do. There was a fair amount of phone tag and leaving messages for each other, but it was what we had so we made it work.
Then, cell phones were made widely and relatively affordably commercially available.
I don’t remember exactly when I made the switch from pager and land-line to cell phone but it was around 2001 because I remember making a joke about having a musical ass and farting melodies when I would forget to mute the ringer on my cell phone at work and an 8-bit Nintendo version of Chopin’s Nocturne #1 would suddenly come drifting from my pants pocket. So I don’t remember when I got my first cell phone, but I remember my first ringtone and that it was an LG.
I also remember that it was around 2001, because I was living in an apartment block that was essentially a concrete bunker and I never got cell phone reception when I was indoors, so every morning I would have to go outside and retrieve all of my missed calls and voice messages. It was inconvenient, and I missed a lot of opportunities because of not having cell phone service in my home. Opportunities for work, when my employer would call to ask me if I could work overtime, and I didn’t receive the call until the next day. Social activities, like people inviting me to go out and do things with them, or people trying to call me to see if they could come over and visit me. And one time, when my friend Kristina called me when her and a girlfriend were leaving a lesbian bar and decided that they wanted to, in her words, “put some meat in their girl sandwiches”, my lack of cell phone reception cost me a ménage a trois. Imagine waking up the next day and realizing that you missed that call. Yeah. That sucked.
It never occurred to me to try to hold Verizon Wireless responsible for any of these inconvenient accidents as it was never done out of malicious intent. I lived in a sturdy concrete dwelling with windows on only one side of it. So although at least I didn’t live underground, I didn’t expect to have the best cell phone reception and I made due. So, due to lapses in their signal strength or coverage area, I was being billed for twenty-four access to a service that I was only able to access only about half the time.
Maybe you can see where I’m going with this.
Although Verizon Wireless was unable to provide me with the service that they were charging me for about half of the time, I never received any kind of discount on my bill, my bill was never “pro-rated”. Verizon Wireless billed me for service that they did not provide, and in the words of the law, that is fraud. It is fraud, pure and simple.
Don’t know what fraud is?
Here’s a definition from Wikipedia: “In criminal law, fraud is intentional deception made for personal gain or to damage another individual; the related adjective is fraudulent, and verb is defraud. Fraud is a crime and a civil law violation, though the specific criminal law definition varies by legal jurisdiction. Defrauding people or entities of money or valuables is a common purpose of fraud.”
By taking my money for service that Verizon Wireless was well aware that they were unable to provide, they were engaging in fraudulent activity and by doing so, they were putting themselves in a situation where they could potentially be liable for damages in a civil action. I know that there was a long contract that I was required to sign each time I renewed my contract with them every two years or so, and somewhere in that contract there was a clause that probably said something like, “Verizon Wireless is not responsible for any loss or damage incurred through the use of our products and services.” and, I thought that was fair. I can’t blame Verizon for my only being able to afford to live in a bunker with windows on only one side, and therefore only being able to receive service most of the time. But they were probably aware that half the time my phone was unable to connect to their network, and if they weren’t already aware, I let them know, and they were still pleased to demand full payment each month as if I actually had access to the service I was paying for. But I didn’t really mind that much at the time. It only worked half the time, but it was only $50 a month at the time, which wasn’t a lot of money for a telephone you could carry around in your pocket. I always paid my cell phone bill in person, resisting their persistent suggestion that I let them have my bank card number and bill me automatically, because I didn’t trust Verizon Wireless to act in a just and legal manner if given unchecked access to my financial network. And when I went in to pay my bill I often mentioned that I was only receiving service about half the time and said that I would appreciate if they would pro-rate my bill to reflect the fact, because $25 isn’t a lot of money, but it did build up over time, but the Verizon clerk, and manager of the location if the clerk was a dullard, would just shrug and say that there was nothing they could do about it. The old “I don’t know what to tell you / we’re all just cogs in a big machine / are you going to pay your cell phone bill or will we have to hold your access to our service hostage until you render payment in full” routine.
My relationship with my cell phone service provider hasn’t always been copacetic.
Sometimes I’d be short on cash due to other financial obligations or a lapse in employment. I’m not perfect, and sometime employers and I didn’t see eye to eye, and sometimes my lifelong sleep cycle problems came between me and showing up to work when I was supposed to and I’d be informed that my services were no longer needed. So cash would be tight, and I can’t eat cell phone service, so I’d let it slide a couple or a few months, and sometimes my cell phone service would get shut off.
For a few years there, they would tack on a late fee if you didn’t pay your bill on time. I can understand why they would do that, but it always seemed a bit harsh. I already don’t have the money to pay my cell phone bill. Now you’re going to levy an additional fee when I already can’t afford to pay the initial fee? Kind of a dick move. Do you even want customers?
And sometimes when my service would be disconnected for non-payment I would have to earn beg or borrow enough money to pay of my overdue balance, and my overdue fees, and on top of that they would levy a reconnection fee. Verizon could have waived the reconnection fee in consideration of my customer loyalty since I had been a customer of theirs from the beginning and reconnecting my service happened instantaneously as soon as I rendered payment and the clerk made the necessary changes. But they didn’t, and despite my suggestions I’d get the same shrug and the same explanation that it was beyond their control from the clerks and managers of the location I frequented. It wasn’t beyond their control, as sometimes I could get them to waive the fees. So, essentially the clerks and managers were lying to me the other half of the time, which, as you can clearly see is more fraud and not cool.
Then, one day, I get a postcard in the mail.
The postcard is inviting me to participate in a class-action suit against Verizon Wireless to entitle myself to a piece of a multi-million dollar lawsuit over illegal overdue fees.
Interesting. Turns out that I wasn’t the only one that thought that it was kind of a dick move on the part of Verizon Wireless to kick people when they’re down. But since I’m not overly litigious by nature, I declined to reply to the postcard. Verizon would presumably stop levying late payment fees and that was enough for me.
Cell phone technology evolved and text messaging was the next thing that everyone started using and you kind of had to participate in. Sure, at first you could get non-text message enabled phones, but that was temporary, and if you wanted to be part of the next wave of computer-mediated communication you learned how to text message and learned how to emoticon and “lol” like everyone else.
Of course, text messaging wasn’t going to be something that Verizon Wireless just gave its customers. Despite the fact that they could just make their money from charging people for the phones that were text capable when people upgraded to a new phone every two years or so, Verizon levied either a per-text or a variety of different monthly subscription packages.
I opted for unlimited nights and weekends for phone calls and unlimited text which was an extra $30 a month so now my bill was up to $80 per month. It worked out fairly well, and I told people like my mother and my best friends that tended to want to talk for over an hour on the phone to call me during off-peak times, and on the off chance that I went past my 300 or 500 allotted monthly peak minutes, I was usually able to argue my way out of the surcharge which was a small victory. Plus I think that Verizon Wireless was aware that it wasn’t worth arguing over an extra fifty bucks here or there considering that ten of the twelve months I wouldn’t exceed my minutes and I didn’t receive a refund for any minutes that I didn’t use so things sort of balanced out.
That was how it was for a couple years.
Sometimes I was ahead, sometimes I was behind, but it was relatively uneventful, and aside from the service areas being unreliable and missing calls and messages which would cause social complications and missed opportunities of the employment/financial/social/romantic variety I wasn’t completely dis-satisfied. It was still only $80 for me to have a telephone in my pocket all the time.
Cell phone technology evolved and smart phones became mandatory.
I had been rocking a RAZR V3 for years and I was perfectly happy with it.
It was and probably will be my favorite cell phone until they can make a smart phone that slim and cool looking.
Texting using the alphanumeric code was a bit of a nuisance, but after practice I was able to compose whole messages without even looking at the keys. Press “2” three times and you get a “c”. Pretty simple when you get used to it.
I had my RAZR for so long that when I finally developed a problem with it, a misfunctioning number key if I remember correctly, that I had skipped a couple of my “every two years new phone” opportunities and the clerk was amazed that I was still running off the original battery. Turns out I’m pretty good at taking care of a cell phone when it’s not too big to be unwieldy. I never dropped any of my cell phones into a toilet bowl or down a stairwell or out the window/under the wheel of a moving car or got pushed into a swimming pool with it in my pocket or anything like that.
The clerk told me that I couldn’t have another RAZR as they were being discontinued and I would have to upgrade to a smart phone. This was only half true. It’s true that the RAZR V3 was being phased out in favor of smart phones, but Verizon was offering a smart phone compliant updated variant. But maybe the location I frequented in Long Island didn’t have any of those in stock, or it wasn’t an option for my “free” phone upgrade. So I let the clerk talk me into a Blackberry Curve. I think it was an 8530. I’ve never been a tech fetishist so I usually don’t know the tech specs for my cell phones. All I know is that it was a Blackberry, it was black, and it had the trackpad instead of the roller ball.
Of course, upgrading to a smart phone wouldn’t be free and there would be an increase to my monthly bill for taking advantage of having access to the internet in my pocket. So now my monthly bill was around $100 each month, give or take. But I fell in love with my Blackberry. The tiny keypad was kind of a pain for my big sausage fingers, but I developed callouses in the corners of the fingertips of my thumbs and forefingers and with practice was able to type with relative ease. Plus I was able to receive and reply to e-mails and access Facebook from my phone which was quite a valuable privilege to have since I was a brand manager for an horror-genre-merchandising company which did most of its business online so some days I could do my work from home or while away from my computer with relative ease. I was happy with my upgrade, the $20 per month surcharge was worth it, and I was making decent money, so keeping current on my bill wasn’t a problem. All was right with the world.
I mean, there was still the problem with spotty coverage. That’s continuous. Sometimes you’d have cell phone reception but no internet, and sometimes you’d have no reception at all, and you’d come out of spending time in a dead spot with no internet and be swarmed with a tsunami of notifications about e-mails and Facebook notifications you had missed, but for the most part it was serviceable. I didn’t expect perfection, and although I was still being billed for continuous service when I was only able to access cell phone service about ¾ of the time, and the internet about half the time, I didn’t make much of a fuss because, as I said, I didn’t expect perfection and I was a loyal Verizon customer.
I listened to my friends complain about their cell phone providers and when asked who I went with and if I was content I’d usually say that I hadn’t had any problems with Verizon. The service was spotty at best, but what do you expect?
The job ended and I moved.
At my new residence, I was sharing a flat with an insane senior citizen. The kind of deal where you rent a bedroom in a house, and share the common areas with whoever is renting the other bedrooms. Kind of inconvenient, but it was all I could afford at the time since money was tight. The old codger had cable, but not internet and trying to add on internet was going to be a hassle. I was able to steal internet from a guy that lived upstairs, but after a few months I think he started to get wise. My friend Josh told me that he had the same phone that I did, except a slightly different model through T-Mobile and that he was able to “tether” his phone. For those less tech savvy than I am, to “tether” your phone is to use your cell phone as a modem to connect to the internet with your computer, using your existing cell phone plan. I had unlimited everything on my phone so I figured it was worth looking into. For those more tech savvy than I am, I apologize for any over-simplification.
When I tried to activate my cell phone as a tether, I was notified that tethering a Verizon phone was a premium service and would require agreeing to pay an additional fee and would I like to do so? I contacted my friend who tethered his Blackberry through T-Mobile and he said that it was free for him. The phone can do it, and he pays for cell phone service so why would he have to pay for the privilege? I agreed with him, so I went to my local Verizon location and asked what the deal was. The first clerk I talked to said that he could enable tethering for an additional $20 per month. Another price increase and kind of a rip-off considering that T-Mobile offered the same service for free but I needed access to the internet from my home so I was willing to pay for the price hike for the privilege.
The clerk begins to process the change to my account and encounters a problem and calls a manager over. Okay so far. Then the manager informs me that the clerk was mistaken and that it would cost me an additional $60 per month to allow my phone to function as a tether.
Me: “But that guy just told me that it would only cost $20.”
Manager: “He was mistaken.”
Me: “My friend has the same phone through T-Mobile and can tether for free. So why should I stay with Verizon?”
Manager: “-something rude about who cares if you stay with Verizon or not, loser, we’re a giant company so take it on the arches, chump-“
But I’m resistant to change so in spite of being told I could take it or take a hike, I stuck with Verizon and continued to steal internet from the guy upstairs, lying to him about it whenever he’d ask me about it. He wasn’t tech savvy enough to cut me off or change the password and I tried to only use heavy download access when he was likely to be out or asleep. I know it makes me look like a bad person, but desperate times inspire desperate behavior.
I moved back to Rhode Island and the trackpad on my Blackberry stopped working which made the phone just a telephone which would have been fine if I wasn’t paying for internet access.
I went to a Verizon location, but, unfortunately, the location I went to was a satellite location. It looked like a legitimate Verizon location. All of the signage and collateral read Verizon and had the proper brand colors. There were phones in the store, the store was a storefront in a mall, and the card that the clerk gave me said “Verizon Wireless” on it. It was quite a clever illusion considering that this wasn’t really a Verizon Wireless, just an “authorized dealer”.
I went in with my broken Blackberry and said, essentially, “This is broken. I liked this one. I’ll take another please.”
The clerk gave me some shell-game bait-and-switch story about how Blackberrys are a thing of the past and if I wanted a new phone I’d have to go for a smart phone. I was skeptical, as I loved my Blackberry. How could such an awesome phone be obsolete? The clerk talked me into a Samsung Stratosphere which is not the phone I wanted. I wanted a Blackberry. But the Stratosphere seemed the least of all possible evils. It was touchscreen, and I hate touchscreens, but the screen was easily twice as big as the Blackberry, and the phone slid in half revealing a keypad which was a nice concession. So I got talked into it, knowing I was being misled, but having no choice in the matter.
The next month when I went to my usual Verizon location, a legitimate Verizon location, they had Blackberrys in stock. I had been lied to, and the clerk had made his commission. Thanks dude.
The Stratosphere was awful. It’s a cool device, kind of. I immediately named it “Spacephone”. I bought a big 16G Micro-SD card so I could listen to music, downloaded Winamp so I’d have a decent player, threw on a bunch of movies in AVI format so I could watch my favorite movies on a screen the size of my hand if I was bored, but it wasn’t much of a phone.
But the Stratosphere was even worse than the Blackberry for poor reception and I was paying for internet service that I was more often than not unable to take advantage of unless I was standing on a hill on a clear night with my arm raised like the Statue of Liberty petitioning the invisible internet gods to let me check my Facebook. Also, I was never able to synchronize my e-mail with the new phone, so I would receive messages but be unable to reply to them until I got back to my laptop. I don’t know much about wireless connectivity. I don’t know anything about 3G versus 4G except that 4G is supposedly better because it’s one “G” more. [“Yes, but these go to 11.”]
What I do know is that more often than not I’d be lucky to even have cell phone service, and again, Verizon was happy to demand payment for a service that they were unable to provide with anything resembling consistency and my bill was never pro-rated to reflect what I was being billed for but not receiving.
I hit a lapse in employment again and fell behind on my bill.
Verizon has a method of gradually strangling your service when you fall behind.
First you can receive text messages, but not send them. This sucks because it makes you unable to conduct business via text. Business from which you will presumably use the proceeds to pay off your cell phone bill balance.
Then you can receive phone calls, and talk to people if they call you, but if you try to call out, you get redirected to Verizon Customer Service where they mispronounce your last name and ask you to give them your ATM card number so they can take your money and restore your cell phone service, which they are somewhat justifiably holding hostage until you pay your bill. This is inconvenient because when you’re between jobs in a tough economy and you’re trying to line up job interviews it’s embarrassing to try to line things up using just your e-mail and you become terrified of going anywhere or doing anything on the off chance that a potential employer will call you to try to set up a job interview and you won’t be able to return the call so you can get a job and earn some money and pay off your cell phone balance. I actually missed a couple of those calls and let me tell you, checking your voice mail and hearing that “if you want to schedule a job interview give us a call back” and not being able to call them back is quite frustrating.
I was in a desperate situation, but thankfully a business partner for a new business opportunity felt bad for me and lined me up with his cell phone carrier.
In one day with the help of Sprint customer service, my phone number was ported over to Sprint and as an added line to my business partner’s account it’s only $20 per month for everything I was paying $100 a month for at Verizon. Yes, you read that correctly. I’m saving $80 per month by finally ditching Verizon and their fraudulent overcharging for services that they only sporadically provided.
Now I’ve got a Samsung Galaxy S III for FREE. Don’t get me wrong, the service is still spotty and unless I’m sitting on top of a cell phone tower I never see 4Gs whatever that means. But at least It’s only costing my friend and business partner $20 a month. We spend more than that on beer and appetizers when we have a dinner meeting.
All should be well with the world.
Then the phone calls started.
Verizon, like a jilted lover, did not take well to being spurned for another carrier.
The final bill they sent me, almost $300 I owed them in unpaid monthly bills which is kind of fair considering I contracted for a service that they usually couldn’t provide, also had a $250 “Cancellation fee” tacked onto it.
I had been a Verizon Wireless customer for twelve years, give or take.
Often when I could keep their cheap shoddy “free” phones working for longer than the two-year contract period, I would be continuing to subscribe to their cell phone service out of contract. When I had my RAZR I went for about five years without renewing my contract. Despite their spotty service, I would recommend them as the least of the evils when it came to cell phone companies. Slapping me with a cancellation fee is no way to repay the thousands of dollars I have rendered over to them willingly over the years.
I figured that when I had built up some cash I would settle with them for the outstanding balance, being a relatively honest person and not wanting them to continue to further stain my already blackened credit by reporting my delinquency in settling up with them. I would also tell them that there was no way I was paying their cancellation fee so they could take my offer of the outstanding balance for unreliable service rendered or take nothing.
Verizon referred the debt to a collections agency.
The agency was calling me two or three times a day and leaving blank voice mails. Now I’m not that familiar with the laws regarding creditors and how many times a day they’re allowed to call you before it crosses over into harassment, but I’ve always been of the opinion that the number of times per day they were allowed to call you was one. Once per day.
Thankfully my new phone allows you to block incoming phone calls by number.
Did a bit of research. Interesting what you can learn.
Apparently, according to The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act a creditor is quite constricted in their lawful authorization to contact debtors. Also, over-stepping those boundaries can result in civil legal settlements of $1,000 per call or $500,000 in the case of a class action suit.
I called Convergent Outsourcing Incorporated, operating out of Renton, Washington and informed them that by calling me repeatedly, day after day, that they were engaging in harassment and that I am going to seek legal counsel regarding the possibility of engaging in individual or class action legal action against their company for harassment.
Why have I bothered to write all of this?
Because I have a proposal for Verizon Wireless.
I want them to waive the outstanding balance on my account and the “cancellation fee”.
My credit is already bad enough without them further sullying my reputation.
But I also want compensation.
I want compensation for every time I wasn’t able to take advantage of the service that they were billing me for. I want compensation for every missed and dropped call and all of the missed business opportunities and social opportunities I missed. For every missed dollar and kiss I lost out on because Verizon promised and billed for something they could not and did not provide.
A hundred dollars a month times twelve months per year times twelve years is $14,400.
I’m not asking for a full refund.
I contracted to take advantage of the service they provided and I did take advantage of their service fairly regularly and with few problems when the service was working reliably.
I’m asking for compensation for the other half of the time when I missed important phone calls, e-mails, and text messages from my friends and professional contacts.
Half the time Verizon did not provide the services they were contracted to provide and that is a breach of contract, so in exchange for them levying a charge for my breach of contract by changing cell phone service providers I am contemplating counter-charging for half of the amount paid for the service that they only provided half of the time.
Simple math indicates that that would be around $7,200
Now I know that I wasn’t paying $100 per month for the duration of our relationship, but in lieu of filing for damages by way of lost wages and the “pain and suffering” of missed social opportunities I am willing to accept $7,200.
I’ll be e-mailing this to Verizon Wireless if I can find an appropriate e-mail and I will also be contacting a few of my friends engaged in the legal profession to inquire about beginning an individual or class action suit to carry forward my complaint.
This is not a threat.
I am not in the practice of threatening people.
This is a statement of my intentions.
If Verizon Wireless would like to take the easy way out of this and concede to my request I will be pleased to make a public note that they have done so and cease any further inquiries regarding the possibility of legal action against them.
If not, I will continue to move forward with my inquiries and will post a link to this entry into any and all public forums inquiring if any other Verizon Wireless customers who have been unsatisfied with the services rendered would be interested in participating in a class action suit against the company.
I’m sure that there’s a lawyer somewhere that would be interested in the commission for what could potentially be quite an expensive legal action.
And I can’t be the only person that is unsatisfied with the overall unreliability of the services provided by Verizon Wireless can I?
If a
representative from Verizon Wireless would like to contact me to settle this,
you’ve got my number. I know that you
may be busy with the impending class action suit levied against your company
due to your complicity with the NSA’s surveillance program, but this one should
be much easier to settle. I’ve tried to
resolve this issue in private with your representatives but I feel that you
haven’t been listening to my concerns.
Can you hear me now?
The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act:
http://www.ftc.gov/os/statutes/fdcpa/fdcpact.shtm#806
Can you hear me now?
The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act:
http://www.ftc.gov/os/statutes/fdcpa/fdcpact.shtm#806
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