The Devil In The White City - A Review

I just finished reading this book and it's amazing, fascinating, engrossing and a bunch of other words I could apply to a book I really enjoyed.  First off...it's non-fiction, and I just don't read all that much non-fiction.  I won't say I don't read any non-fiction, but to be honest, most of it's written really dryly and I have a hard time sticking with them even if I like the subject.

This book is written like I'd expect the script of a Ken Burns documentary to be written. (I don't know whether or not Erik Larson would consider that a compliment, but I do.) The story is told in a very easy narrative style interspersed generously with direct quotes from the people involved -- both the notable and unknown folks.  Little interesting side-factoids are dropped all the time.

The story begins in 1890 with a few American cities competing for the honor of hosting a Columbian World Exposition (A World's Fair) to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Columbus discovering America.  The finalists are New York, Chicago, St. Louis and Washington D.C.

Chicago especially wants the fair in order to establish themselves as a world class city -- not just a place with a large population and a bunch of meat packing plants. If they win their bid, they'll not only have to perform beyond expectations to hold their heads up in the U.S., they'll have to outdo the show Paris put on just a few years earlier; an exposition that featured the Eiffel Tower, then the tallest structure in the world.*

The book would be interesting enough if it were only about the fair, but the story is juxtaposed with the story of H.H. Holmes, America's first serial killer -- who just happened to be on the loose in Chicago at the same time.  With all of the new jobs available in Chicago and all of the anonymous visitors coming to see the fair, the pickings were ripe for Holmes and it took years before anyone connected the dots and realized there was a single killer on the loose instead of just a bunch of random disappearances.

Read this book.  Really.

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*I won't give it away, but the planners for the fair were at a loss for quite some time to come up with an idea to "out-Eiffel the tower".  Many people presented plans for taller towers (including Eiffel himself), but the folks planning the fair were adamant that it be something else new, unique and impressive as all hell.  It wasn't a fact that I was aware of, but I'm proud to say I figured out what the fair came up with before it was revealed in the book.

The Customer Is Always Wrong...

Except when he argues long enough and loudly enough. And has documentation in triplicate.

I guess I'm not even annoyed by this any more. Does it make me sound old to have only recently become convinced that every company I do business with will screw me...as a matter of course..if I don't debate the issue?

Let's start with Verizon Wireless.  I got a new phone a couple of days ago.  It's a shiny new Samsung Galaxy SIII (4GLTE) whatever all of that means.  It's shiny and I love it and it does lots of stuff and it's really quick and I want to have its babies!

The woman (Jennifer) at the Verizon store in Allentown, PA couldn't have been nicer or more informative. And HOLY CRAP was she patient with me. BUT, the moment she started ringing up the sale, two of her associates descended like locusts and tried really, really hard to sell me more crap.

No, I don't need a 12v adapter. I've got one in the car and another one at home. No, REALLY, it works just fine.  No, I don't need a holder for in the car.  The one in the car right now is universal and it'll fit this phone just fine. No, I've already said I don't want any insurance. Please go away!

They left.  Did I mention that Jennifer managed to find me a plan that's going to save me a BAZILLION dollars a month?  Well, she did.  Part of it involved  getting rid of my mobile USB broadband doohickey because now I'll be able to use my phone as a hotspot. (I'll need to watch my usage to make sure I'm paying for enough GB per month and not getting killed on overages, but I should be fine.)  Anyway, she said she couldn't cancel the account on the doohickey, but if I called the 800 number she was including, I could cancel it myself.

So I called Verizon Wireless to cancel the USB doohickey.  Everything went fine until we got to the billing part.  Verizon Wireless bills you monthly, in advance, so the guy was telling me that I'd already paid through September 25th but after that, I'd never see billing for it again.  Long story short...I had to argue with him for 15 minutes and get him to talk to a supervisor before he figured out how to issue a credit for the 3 weeks I'd paid that I wouldn't be using. Because, apparently, Verizon Wireless is the only company in the known universe that doesn't know how to issue a credit without an advanced tutorial and a gift of three virgins to the Volcano Gods.

And I guarantee 80% of the people who should get a credit don't argue the point...so Verizon Wireless pockets the money.

Then, there was my hotel.  We were at a Homewood Suites; part of the Hilton Honors system. When I made the reservations, I had to change something, and it was easier to call the customer service line than to try to make the change online. And, once again, the primary person I dealt with couldn't have been better. My reservation promised me one rate for the first two nights and a $20 cheaper rate for the third night.  Of course, when I looked at the final tally slipped under my door before checkout, they had charged me the same full rate for all three nights.

Now, granted, it's only $20, but it's my $20.

So, I went to the front desk, thumb drive in hand with copies of my confirmation email.  I said I'd been overcharged for the third night's stay and quoted her the rate I was supposed to be paying and the woman said, in a distinctly snotty voice, "And where does it say that?"

So, I handed her the thumb drive.  That one was solved fairly easily.

Hey, it's not the $20. It's not even that companies' mistakes are always in their favor.  It's the universal attitude that I'm trying to pull a fast one and they force me to act like total dick just to get what they promised me in the first place.

And now, I'll hop off my soapbox and find something cheerier to get my day started.

Update: I just thought I'd add something I found pleasantly surprising.

The Enterprise Car Rental place near me wasn't open yesterday when we got back to town, so I was stuck with a fourth day of car rental whether I wanted it or not.  My goal was to get the car back to them by 9:30 this morning to avoid any more charges.

Now I've talked before about the Gas Scam that all rental car places pull.  You get the car with 1/2 a tank and if you return it with less than 1/2 a tank, they charge you $1.50 more per gallon than the most expensive gas you can find in the area to bring it back up to 1/2 tank.

But how did it ever get to 1/2 a tank in the first place.  Obviously, they charge people to refill the tank, but they never actually do put any more gas in it unless it shows up running on fumes.

So, we got the car with 1/4 tank of gas and I misjudged a little and I was returning it with 3/8 of a tank. (I suppose I could have driven around the block a billion times until I got it down to 1/4, but that falls into the category of "not worth the effort".)

Anyway, I jokingly asked the guy if I was getting a credit for returning the car with too much gas, and---Holy Shit -- he said, "Sure, it's about 2 gallons, so how about I credit you $11.00?"

I swear you could have knocked me over!

Update 2: And another thing...

Earlier today, I bought an ebook straight off of Baen Books' website.  Literally while I was pressing the "confirm order" button, I realized I had already bought and read the book.

When I got the email receipt, I sent a reply (Baen doesn't send a blind "do not reply" type of thing, a reply finds it's way to a person), saying I had already bought the book once and could they give me a credit toward a future purchase. 

Within an hour, I got a reply saying they were issuing a refund.

These companies are fucking up my entire premise!

Suburbia Both Fascinates and Frightens Us. But That's O.K...We Might Not Really Be Here Yet.

So Anon GF and I are in the wilds of Eastern Pennsylvania...you know...the suburban wilds.  Both of us grew up in some version of Suburbia, but we've been living in an Urban environment so long that neither of us really believes Suburbia exists anymore until we experience it again on one of our periodic trips beyond the Hudson River.

I know most of you live out here, but lemme tell you...it's really weird.  And from my point of view, Supermarkets are the best demonstration of wonderful and weird that Suburbia has to offer.  Or, should I say SUPERmarkets.

We took a leisurely drive yesterday, leaving Brooklyn a little before Noon to beat most of the weekend warriors onto the road.  We stopped in Easton, PA and had a really nice lunch at a cute little place.  Here's a picture of our cute little red rental VW Bug enjoying the cuteness of Easton, PA while we were dining. (Who knew you could rent a cute little red VW Bug? I usually get stuck with a white or silver Taurus!)

So anyway, we eventually dawdled our way toward Trexlertown. PA.  This is not a normal destination.  Our destination was to be in the general vicinity of Bethlehem and Allentown, but we kinda like staying at Homewood Suites Hotels and the one we've stayed at before was sold out, so we just made a reservation at the next one down the road.  Who spends a bunch of time in the hotel anyway, so we only care that we'll like the room...not so much that there will be great stuff right outside the back door.  (There isn't.  But more on that later.)

Anyway, since one of the reasons we like staying at Homewood Suites is the little kitchens, we stopped off at a SUPERmarket to get some snacks and stuff to stock the kitchen.  On the way to the SUPERmarket, we were passing through some area where there was no evidence, whatsoever of a town.

I don't mean we were driving through beautiful (or even not-so-beautiful) country.  That, we like.  No...we were driving through an area of housing developments that all had their backs facing the road.  They all seemed to have been built in massive chunks, so you'd drive by one development where the same three house designs were repeated over and over again, and then you'd know you were passing a different development because the three house designs changed somewhat.  And this was going on for about five miles.

Anon GF said, "Gawd, I'd never be able to live here."

Cut to: Arriving inside the SUPERmarket.

Anon GF: "I want to live here."

You could fit about 6 of our neighborhood supermarkets into that one Wegman's SUPERmarket we visited yesterday.  Did you ever see Moscow on the Hudson?  This is kinda how I felt walking into that store yesterday.



As much as I loved the store, it's more than a little overwhelming if you're not used to it. First, there was the finding of snacks.  We thought we'd found the snack aisle, but something was wrong.  Where were the Lay's Potato Chips.  Where were the Cheetos?  Where was the Chex Mix?  Eventually, we realized we were within the SUPERsubSUPERmarket. A store within a store (the size of our neighborhood's entire store) that was dedicated to natural healthy stuff.  I'm talking raised by Virgin Tibetan Monks, watered by the urine of pure white unicorns, grown to an audio track of a chorus of innocent 7-year-old girls singing hymns to Gaia kinda natural and healthy.

Eventually, we found our way to normal snacks. (There were a bunch of baked, fat-free things there too, but we were able to focus on the goal and get the real stuff.)  We also found a bunch of other stuff we decided we needed. (So much for focus.)

Then...then...THEN WE FOUND THE MARKET CAFE!!11!!!lll!

The Market Cafe is kinda like one of the pay-by-the-pound salad bars you find in NYC delis. Like this:

Only not like that. At the Market Cafe, it's really appetizing looking.  And there are choices of about 100,000 types of entrees and salads and side dishes and bagels for tomorrow morning and pie and cake and tarts and tortes for dessert tonight.  And there's about 4 acres of the stuff.

And you hear Celestial Angels singing as you turn the corner and see it.

Our jaws dropped.  Our eyes glazed.  There may have been drooling involved.

Now, remember...we had had a lovely lunch. Tonight's dinner is already reserved at Emeril's. We decided that a meal of a few small items from the Market Cafe taken to the hotel while watching HBO would be just the ticket.  We got chicken and stuffed peppers and Caprese salad and roasted veggies (a couple of kinds) and a pound of peel and eat shrimp and beer and bagels and grilled-chicken pasta and a lemon meringue pie and a few other appetizers and...O.K. maybe we got more than a few small items.

Then we encountered THE SIGN.  At the register, there was a sign saying that you could only pay for items picked up from the cafe (and beer) at that register. You must go to the other registers to pay for the the items from the SUPERmarket.   So I ran and got another cart so we could attempt to separate our items into Market Cafe payable vs. SUPERmarket payable items.  This is not easy.  There aren't really any good clues as to how to separate them.  There's not a good geographical demarcation for one vs. the other.  Some items that you spoon into a container are Market Cafe items and some are SUPERmarket items.

Here's how you know what you can pay for at the Market Cafe register.  If the Eighty year old cashier smiles at you and runs the item over the scanner, you're O.K.  If she looks at you like a Ten-year-old who has suddenly forgotten you're potty trained and calls for a manager, you've transgressed.

While Anon GF suffered the glares of the Market Cafe cashier lady, I took the other cart and went to the Self-Pay station in the SUPERmarket.  This is also a wonderful experience.  First, you stand in line while someone tries to find the UPC on each item and more and more frantically waves her items over the reader.  Eventually, it's your turn.  Each time you successfully wave an item over the scanner, it yells at the top of it's robotic lungs something like "UNHEALTHY SNACK FOOD ITEM THAT WILL KILL YOU BY MORNING IF YOU EAT IT...$14.95!"  or 'EMBARRASSING PERSONAL HYGIENE ITEM SURE TO MAKE THE PEOPLE WAITING IN LINE BACK UP A STEP OR TWO ... $16.38!"

Eventually, we made it to our hotel.  I've only got two things to say about the hotel so far. First, I'll let the sign on the inside of the room door speak for itself.

Second, there's apparently some weird time-portal nexus at our hotel.  This morning, I went downstairs to get some coffee and danish from the morning buffet.  I also picked up a newspaper from the stack on the table near the elevators.  When I got back to the room, I realized it was yesterday's paper.

A little later, I went to get something from the car.  On my way back up to the room, I noticed they'd changed the stack of newspapers, so I picked up another one.  This one turned out to be Thursday's paper.

We might not even be here yet!

It Is With Profound Sorrow That I Must Announce...

...my Teak Hat is on it's last legs.

Or seat.  Or to be precise, the cross piece that holds up the seat to the legs so that it's a bench instead of just a wooden mat on the floor.

In spite of weatherproofing it again this spring, there seems to have been a gap at one of the joints. Water found it's way into the joint and rotted the wood away in that critical location. I'd consider amputation, but then we'd be back to talking about a wooden mat on the floor.

Anyway, I'll be deciding how to deal with it in the days to come.  I fully expect a tale worthy of The Binky to ensue.


I fully expect (and demand) that there will be gnashing of teeth, rending of garments accompanied by wailing and weeping worthy of Banshees.  Please don't let me down.

I've Always Loved This Ad.

I'm pretty sure this exact same ad for Dr. Johathan Zizmor has been running on the subways since I moved to NY in 1986.  There are just so many things to love about it.

First, there's the doctor himself; Dr. Jonathan Zizmor. Say it to yourself three times quick.  Or maybe just think -- Zizzzzzzzzmor.

Look at him in his mid-80's glory!

 Doesn't he just inspire absolute trust?  Doesn't he look like he pulled his head out of an autoclave just moments before his picture was snapped?  Zizzzzzzzzzmor!

But the real glory of the ad is his "before-and-after" model.

Nobody would ever notice her hair hanging lank and greasy in the "before" and blown out to within an inch of its life in the "after".  Nobody would ever notice that the "before" picture has all the charm of a mug shot and the "after" features a huge smile.  Nobody would ever notice that the "before" is without makeup and the "after" is decidedly with.  And more than anything else, nobody would ever notice that the "after" is lit in such a washed out fashion that she could have a 6" tumor growing next to her nose and you'd never see it.

I especially like that even with all of those amateurish tricks, I'm not really sure she looks any better in the "after" picture.

Zizzzzzzzzmor! Say it with me.  It's fun!

I'M A LITTLE STRESSED!11!!!ll1l!!!

I don't have time to go into details, but this is an ACTUAL PHOTOGRAPH of me this morning.  Extrapolate as you will.

I Don't Want To Go On The Cart. I'm Not Dead!

Okay, fine.  It's been a while since I posted anything here (or showed up much of anywhere else around the intertubes), but I haven't "suffered a damage" as the colloquialism goes. (I'm pretty sure somebody uses that phrase, but I couldn't actually prove it right now.)

Anyway, I've just finished a marathon of three consecutive jobs (Okay again...there might have been a teensy bit of overlap here and there), which means I worked something like 28 consecutive days without a day off.

I've got a day left of wrapping things up and then I'm back to looking for the next gig.

I may sleep for a day or two first.  We'll see.

In the meantime, here's a picture of me scraping schmutz off my camera's lens.