"Musicians don't eat!"

Remember the movie Shakespeare In Love?  Though most of the details of the film have evaporated from my memory, one fragment of a scene has stuck with me.  It was the dance sequence where Shakespeare encounters his love interest - I think he was crashing the event.  Food and wine are flowing liberally among the company, but as a servant brushes by the performers' stand with a tray, he sternly admonishes the lutenists, "Musicians don't eat!"

As my larder dwindles and my food choices begin to become monotonous, I find myself having a very short fuse and blowing up at circumstances that I used to dismiss easily.  For example, I made a point of cancelling my 3-month Match.com (definitely a frivolous purchase) subscription on-line early this month to interrupt their auto-renew payment scheduled to kick in last week, but they charged me anyway!  Yesterday I had to run a torturous maze of "Press 1 if you have a billing problem, press 2 if you want to discontinue service,  have your account number and password ready, enter your credit card number here (repeat) (repeat), all the while listening to a continuous fugue of a sales pitch for all the benefits of the service that will be lost, lost, if you depart.   "It may be 7 - 10 days before you see a return in your bank account."  It took them less than a breath to bill me against my wishes in the first place!

The Combined Life insurance rep. called me yesterday - I cancelled that accident insurance plan years ago but they're still after me, oblivious to reality.

And today I stood in line for over an hour to convert my Verizon phone to a Straight Talk track plan.  My Verizon contract expired over a month ago, I removed my adult son's phone from the plan at that time (would have done so earlier, but there was a penalty).  I told the rep. at the time that I would be discontinuing the service for cost reasons - they immediately offered a nominally reduced rate, which I turned down.  I coasted on Verizon until this week - when I saw they planned to jack my bill up an additional $20/month.  With that bill (and necessary account numbers) in hand, I went to Wal Mart and waited behind an elderly couple for a full 45 minutes while they went through the 40 steps necessary to do the same thing I wanted to do, convert to a $30/month track plan.  They kept glancing back at me, offering apologies for the delay, and I smiled and replied, "I am going to drop dead standing in this line before giving up getting this phone today!"  And Verizon can whistle for their $92.

It's the anonymity of the whole thing that burns me now.  You have to fight not to be charged for things that you can no longer afford.  And the companies involved, while going through the motions of offering more affordable options remain oblivious to the fact that there are none!  Cut the crap!  Your stupid overcharges mean I have to live on lentils, rice, and my pantry garden produce for an additional month.