Earthlink ripoff, a.k.a. sharp practice - caveat emptor

ok, so at the beginning of March i was laid up with a bad hip. knowing that i'd have a lot of time on my hands, i signed up (again) for dialup (no high speed available being available where i live) internet connection from Earthlink, a company i've dealt with before (from when i bought my first iBook, back in 2000). they had mailed me a special offer: $6.95 a month for the first six months for returning customers. so i signed up, giving the promo code, all fine and dandy.

but then the bill comes for the first month -- $9.95 -- so i called up Earthlink to ask why. the reason, they tell me, is that the $6.95 offer i signed up for had already expired when i first called (only they didn't tell me at the time). coincidentally, another identical $6.95 per month offer had arrived in the mail that very day; so i asked them if THAT offer, with a different promo code, had also expired. they said it had.

why mail expired promo offers? so that they don't have to honor them.

the conclusion, patient reader? apparently Earthlink has gone from being a somewhat respectable company to being just another ripoff scam. a sad day, but i suppose i shouldn't be surprised. don't you be either, next time you respond to a tempting advertisement -- especially from Earthlink.

Quand Tombe La Nuit -- When Falls The Night

otherwise known as 'When Night Is Falling' -- a low budget Telefilm Canada & Ontario Film Development Corp production, but to me a masterpiece of discovery, joy, and rebirth. saw it twice with friends at the Valley Art Theatre in Tempe AZ back in '95 or '96, and finally now found it on DVD. not a man's man flick by any means. and the final scene makes it an Easter film, too (in the pagan sense of Eastre, goddess of spring).

finished FRANKENSTEIN, read some of the critical bits (it was the Norton Critical Edition, which uses the 1818 text), and re-learned some stuff i'd forgotten about it. for instance, it was Mary's *husband* (not brother, heh :-) Percy Byshe Shelley who was involved in some early editing, but who died 9 years before the 1831 third edition came out, perhaps shaped some by the deaths of 3 of 4 of Mary's children, and a miscarriage, over a period of seven years.

Emily Brontë's WUTHERING HEIGHTS (also Norton Critical Edition) is next on my stack.

and my advice to you on a rainy grey day like this? put on some disco, find a comfy chair, and enjoy a hot cup of tea while you read, write, or study -- it works for me.

paradise

the sky out today is grey, but i'm snug in my apartment listening to sounds of the ocean on my stereo, sitting in a comfy chair and reading, and sipping warm chai tea. paradise.

am reading Donna Tartt's THE SECRET HISTORY again -- a book i love dearly -- and it's even more fun this time because i'm also in the process of learning Homeric Greek myself. (there are elements in the story about Greek and the Classics department, etc.)

have also been going over Mary Shelley's FRANKENSTEIN again (i read it quickly once before), though that's more an academic exercise -- interesting and worthwhile, but not as close to my heart -- and i do that mostly at Starbuck's

fiction is such fun. and reading a good book makes me want to write again myself (and even sketch out ideas in a notebook i keep beside me). just call me Οδυσσευς. heh. [Odysseus]