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Account closed.

I may or may not have spat my disgust on the building as I walked out of Bank of America.

Assholes.

No shirt, no shoes, no problem.

Working from home is not without certain... advantages.  Like the fact that my hours are fairly flexible, and I go for a run in the afternoon or take a minute to blog.  Or the fact that I have no earthly reason to put on, say, pants.  Let alone a shirt and tie.

I have a video conference with the director today, and lots of research to pull together on my Nuclear Nonproliferation project.  (Essentially we're creating a guide to addressing the issue, complete tradition perspectives on nuclear weapons, as well as model responses religious and spiritual organizations can reference to become active on this topic within their own communities.  It's probably what I'm most excited -- and nervous -- about pulling off.)  Then it's off to Iowa on a 5:30am flight this Thursday.  Homecoming Weekend at Cornell College.  And my five(!?) year reunion.  And my first board of directors meeting for the Alumni Association.  (I never get tired of saying that.)

Looking forward to being back on the Hilltop, although the Girl won't be coming with and, consequently, cannot be smugly paraded in front of my former classmates.  It's going to be an action-packed weekend, though, between my responsibilities on the Alumni Board, the work I need to squeeze in, the faculty and staff I need to visit, and all those $1 drafts that require my undivided attention.

After Homecoming and with very little time to breathe, it's off to Chicago -- probably via a 7-hour Greyhound ride, because I'm cheap -- where I'll spend the next week assisting on various matters that need to be wrapped up before the first major program deadline.  Notwithstanding the fact that I'll have to wear pants and shoes, I'm really looking forward to it.  Like I said, being home has its perks, but I would ultimately rather be in an office where I can be around people. 

Particularly when that office is not a law firm.

(Thanks, Manzo.)

Irony.

My (new) sister-in-law just called me.  She's supposed to do an interview in a few minutes about Ludacris's favorite places in Chicago, and needed a good one-liner about him.  

She sounded relieved when I picked up the phone: "I've called everyone!  You're the only person who answered."

Unfortunately, her only lifeline was the one person in her contact list whose Pop Culture IQ is roughly 11.  On the IQ Scale, that registers at "Profound Mental Disability."  Which is a tad optimistic, I think.

In which Derek blows a gasket.

Thank you, Bank of America, for convincing me to close my account and never do business with you again.  Thank you for taking nickel-and-diming to a whole new dimension.  Thank you for squeezing my beleaguered checkbook and proving to all those naysayers that you can get blood from a stone -- that, in fact, you do it all the time.

Particularly in the middle of the worst recession of my lifetime, after months of unemployment.

No really -- thank you. 

Frankly, I'm still quivering in awe of how you did it.

Imagine my surprise when I received your little note informing me that my account had been assessed overdraft fees.  Ah, but not just one overdraft fee.  Not two.  Not three or even four, but seven!  SEVEN.  In one day!  Not even that, really.  In the span of an afternoon -- a couple of hours.  Seven $35 overdraft charges -- yep, that's $245 -- for assuming, mistakenly, that my deposit check had cleared and making, foolishly, a couple of minor purchases (coffee, sandwich, a toothbrush...).  Tidy piece of work, that.

I spent $25 and you stole ten times that from my account.  It's brilliant.  To think, had I just taken out cash once that day for spending money, rather than use my debit card a few times, you would have only charged me once for that withdrawal.

I could have taken out twice what I actually spent and you'd have only. Charged me. Once. 

But who takes out cash any more?  You're really onto something here.  This way, you could slap me with a $35 fee when I bought that $3 latte, and another $35 fee for that ill-advised stop at CVS, and another for lunch, and another, and another... 

You could bend over my unsuspecting checking account and give it a solid proper rogering -- and then make me feel like it was my fault.  Battered Customer Syndrome.  Very savvy of you.  Very with the times.

I appreciate that I should have double-checked to see that the deposit had posted to my account.  Personal responsibility.  Shouldn't have assumed.  I get that.  I was out of town, away from my computer, but that's not an excuse.  I should have made sure.

What I don't appreciate is that my debit card continued to work, regardless of whether or not I had any money, so that I could continue to compound a mistake I didn't know I was making, to your complete and unadulterated profit. 

It was very kind of your nameless branch manager to endure my frustrated speech about How Customers Ought To Be Treated By Their Banks.  So very, very kind of her to "refund," as a "courtesy," a generous 1/3 of the money you gleefully pinched from my account.

But -- and I mean this in the nicest way possible -- go fuck yourself, you lousy, bottom-feeding, highway robbing, fat-kidneyed piece of shit. 

Citizens Bank, here I come.

The Cheechakos and the Sourdoughs.

You know, it's actually not half-bad as verse.

Even the meat heads are paying attention.

Louis Gates may be ready to "move on," but folks in Boston (at least the guys at my gym this afternoon) are still talking about the incident in Cambridge involving the Harvard professor and the police officer who mistook him for a would-be criminal entering his own home.

The black Harvard professor.  The white Cambridge police officer.

I can't help but wonder how the situation would have played out differently had the cop been black.  Would Professor Gates have reacted so viscerally?  What if Professor Gates was white?  What if they both were?  And I wonder, too, if Professor Gates had not been a Harvard professor?  Or even a professor at all?  What if he was a construction worker?  How would that have factored into this confrontational dynamic?

Tempting to focus simply on the obvious racial variables and ignore the gaping class divide between a beat cop and member of Cambridge's intellectual (and financial) elite. 

Not that I'm poo-pooing those racial variables, but still, I suspect what happened between those two men is more complex that it seems at first blush.