The Scottosphere

I received an “impor­tant ques­tion­naire” today from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Mass­a­chu­setts. The return address on the let­ter­head is a P.O. Box in Oaks, Penn­syl­va­nia. The des­ti­na­tion address printed on the reply enve­lope is a dif­fer­ent P.O. Box in Omaha, Nebraska.

Am I the only one who thinks this is a lit­tle weird for a com­pany whose name ends in “of Massachusetts?”

At the very least, they should offer some explanation.

• Amer­ica does not have air conditioning.
• Amer­i­cans are brac­ing for attack from tourists. Big poster near immi­gra­tion agent warns: “WE ARE AMERICA’S FIRST LINE OF DEFENSE.”
• Amer­i­cans are strong in the face of chal­lenges. Emer­gency evac­u­a­tion instruc­tions inside Air­Train read: “Step 1: Remain inside the train.” Where I come from, when train catches on fire we run out the door!
• Amer­i­cans do not clean bath­rooms so much. Crust on floor and stink of ani­mal quar­ters reminds me of out­house in the old country!
• Newark is in the state of New York. My friend, he tells me it was in New Jer­sey, but sou­venir t-shirts all say “New York.”

The low-slung, decay­ing Boyl­ston Street build­ing which houses, among other things, the Berklee Books + Music store has been get­ting some much-needed remod­el­ing recently. But I was a lit­tle dis­ap­pointed by the appear­ance yes­ter­day of a gar­ish, one-story-high sax­o­phone sculp­ture bolted between the win­dows over the bookstore.

Unfor­tu­nately for the book­store, the space above is low-rent stu­dent hous­ing. Pasted in the win­dow beside the sax­o­phone is a large hand-lettered poster which reads:

WANTED: 15 FOOT TALL BASSIST + DRUMMER FOR GIGANTIC SAXOPHONE TRIO

A cou­ple of days ago, a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the tran­sit author­ity handed me a sur­vey. I am happy to pro­vide any feed­back that improves train ser­vice, so I promptly filled it out. But imag­ine my sur­prise when, after being forced to iden­tify my age, pro­fes­sion, income, race, and non-Hispanic sta­tus with multiple-choice check­boxes, they left another key ques­tion open to, um, greater interpretation:

What is your gen­der (exam­ple: male, female)? _________________________

A sim­ple lazy error or a anti-discriminatory con­ces­sion to ane­u­ploids? I wonder.

I finally got to shake hands with Jim—the bald, mus­ta­chioed co-owner of El Pelón Taqueria—at a neigh­bor­hood meet­ing tonight. He wants every­one to know that the restau­rant is com­mit­ted to re-opening in the same loca­tion as soon as pos­si­ble. And while that may mean wait­ing until 2010, he assured me that my fully-punched fre­quent bur­rito card will still be honored.

As we were talk­ing, I real­ized that he is the face on the front of my t-shirt. How weird is that?

An era of wrong-number phone calls draws to an unlikely end.

ME: Hello?

MAN: Yes, hello, do you know a Mr. Kings­ley [redacted]?

ME: No, I’m afraid you have the wrong number.

MAN: Is this [repeats my phone number]?

ME: Yes it is, but I’ve had this num­ber for over two years. A lot of peo­ple call look­ing for this Kings­ley guy. Mostly cred­i­tors. Does he owe you money too?

MAN: This is the police depart­ment. I’m look­ing for a relative.

ME: Oh. Sorry, I’m afraid I can’t help.

MAN: Thank you for your time.