Hello, all:
For any of you readers here in the States, you may have received those delightful notifications that your student loan payments are starting up again. I’m not going to get into the associated politics of it all, because reasons (see About page), but in the interests of being helpful, I would advise against calling your loan servicer and trying to get through in hopes of speaking with a live person and asking for a lower payment.
This will not happen.
I know this because I tried. I tried a few times and hung up after a couple minutes of hold music, and then I thought, surely, I can outlast this. I can hang in there. So I called in, I pushed the appropriate buttons that guided me through the automated menu. A voice told me that the approximate wait time was an extremely high number of minutes, which I calculated worked out to somewhere around eight hours.
“Fine,” I thought, “It can’t be that bad. I can handle this.” So I settled in for the wait, and the line began playing a recorded loop of the below hold music, punctuated by intervals of a voice reminded me that I could hang up and preserve my place in a line for callback later. Not knowing how long the line might be by now, I vowed to keep on. But the music began to get to me. Have a listen below and you can see why.
An hour passed. Two. You know the scene in Doctor Strange where he traps Dormammu in an endless time loop where Dormammu keeps killing him over and over and Strange keeps resetting the loop, and Dormammu says, “You cannot do this forever!” and Strange says, “Actually, I can,”?
Reader, I couldn’t.
After two and a half hours, I gave up, surrendering to the fact that we will be paying on our student loans until our toddler is old enough to enter college and start acquiring her own student loan debt. Circle of Life, you guys. Circle of Life.
Writing Update
I mentioned last time that the next serial after the current Gaseous Girl story will be a Captain Happily Married adventure; I am thinking out that it will be the Captain’s origin story, showing how he acquired his mystical powers and met Super Soccer Mom. In the process I will be introducing his original, first, and most deadly nemesis, Professor Irreconcilable Differences. She might be French, I’m not sure yet. Yes, there might have been at one time a love triangle. Was there another guy? A love quadrangle? The Reggie to Captain Happily Married’s Archie? You’ll have to wait to find out!
Also, once the new serial begins, the one I’m doing now, Gaseous Girl and the Winds of Time, will go behind a paywall to which paid subscribers will have access (See above re: student loans). I figure this will happen by November at the latest, so catch up now!
Closing Time
I have not watched the Amazon Prime adaptation of The Wheel of Time because from what I’ve heard, they’ve made rather a few serious departures from the source material. That said, I found out this week that Rosamund Pike, who plays Moiraine Damodred in the show, has narrated unabridged versions of the first three books of the series, and possibly may narrate more.
Her narration, from what I’ve heard, is brilliant. Positively brilliant. I found a clip of the prior narrators, Michael Kramer and Kate Reading, specifically of Kramer reading the “Weep for Manetheren” speech. It was… okay? I don’t know that anyone would’ve been moved to tears. When I listened to Rosamund Pike reading that speech, however, I will admit I felt it. I hope she narrates them all.
Until next time,
Michael