I have returned and my name is in large block letters.
So, I once had a blog that I launched along with the publication of my first novel, , and it was extensive and fascinating and full of incisive and insightful postings, and then something broke, and because I’m a) dumb, and b) dumb, I couldn’t fix it, and so all that brilliance vanished and world was a sadder place for it*.
And then tonight, after a year of wandering in the wilderness, occasionally logging on to my account to poke futilely at various settings and whatnot, I tried an entirely new tact known as Calling Customer Support, and a Man With An Accent fixed everything in somewhat more than four and somewhat less than seven minutes.
At one point during our short conversation he asked if the photo on the “about” page was, in fact, me. When I replied in the affirmative he offered that I sounded very different than I looked. Ah, I said, and then for some reason completely failed to follow up on that obvious opening and inquire what he thought I should look like, if not Receding Hairline Jew.
I think I was partially distracted from asking because at that very moment I had been trying to picture his appearance — I was having a hard time placing his accent, which sounded like the product, or perhaps victim, of extensive accent reduction sessions. It struck me that the overall distance and deviation of his pronunciation from dull midwestern English hadn’t been so much reduced as shifted around, somewhat like squeezing a balloon, as if concentrating on shaping his diphthongs this way made him then mispronounce his long vowels that way. His voice also had a syrupy quality to it that reminded me of Marvin the Martian, which can only make one feel happy, and other than puzzling me with his unplaceable accent, which of course wasn’t his fault**, he was extremely friendly and helpful and as I said fixed everything in no time, and if he felt any contempt for my technical incompetence he hid it perfectly. So thank you, Man With Accent in anonymous call center located somewhere else, you have helped me relaunch my blog. Perhaps we will speak again soon, when I f@#& something new up and need help.
* Sadder in the sense that I would tell people, hey, check out my blog, and they’d then do so, only to report back to me that my blog consisted of a page saying “no input file specified.” This at least made me sad.
** And we can pretty much guarantee that I don’t speak his native language at all, so who am I to comment?
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