Happy Bastille Day, Tune-Up fans! Joyeux Fête Nationale! France’s National Day is known as the Fête de la Fédération and commemorates France’s transition from a monarchy to a republic. The reason the day is colloquially known as “Bastille Day” is because it was following the storming of the Bastille prison on July 14, 1789, that the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen was written, formally abolishing feudalism. It’s a pretty awesome holiday and deserves an equally awesome anthem, which Rouget de Lisle certainly provided. Written in 1792 and adopted as the French National Anthem in 1795, it evidently got its nickname from the volunteers from Marseille who marched through Paris, singing the song.
I do love the above version, but the scene in Casablanca when they start singing the Marseillaise is probably my favorite film scene of all time, so I’m exercising editor’s privilege and posting it, too.
—
Allons enfants de la patrie,
Le jour de gloire est arrivé
Contre nous de la tyrannie
L’etendard sanglant est levé
Entendez vous dans les campagnes,
Mugir ces feroces soldats?
Ils viennent jusque dans nos bras
Egorger nos fils, nos compagnes!
Refrain:
Aux armes, citoyens!
Formez vos bataillons!
Marchons! Marchons!
Qu’un sang impur
Abreuve nos sillons!
Amour sacr de la patrie,
Conduis, soutiens nos bras vengeurs!
Libert, Libert cherie,
Combats avec tes defenseurs!
Sous nos drapeaux, que la victoire
Accoure tes males accents!
Que tes ennemis expirants
Voient ton triomphe et notre gloire!
Refrain
Nous entrerons dans la carrire
Quand nos ains n’y seront plus;
Nous y trouverons leur poussire
Et la trace de leurs vertus.
Bien moins jaloux de leur survivre
Que de partager leur cercueil,
Nous aurons le sublime orgueil
De les venger ou de les suivre!
Refrain
Arise, children of the fatherland,
The day of glory has arrived!
Against us tyranny’s
Bloody flag is raised! (repeat)
In the countryside, do you hear
The roaring of these fierce soldiers?
They come right to our arms
To slit the throats of our sons, our friends!
Refrain
Grab your weapons, citizens!
Form your batallions!
Let us march! Let us march!
May impure blood
Water our fields!
Sacred love of France,
Lead, support our avenging arms!
Liberty, beloved Liberty,
Fight with your defenders! (repeat)
Under our flags, let victory
Hasten to your manly tones!
May your dying enemies
See your triumph and our glory!
Refrain
We will enter the pit
When our elders are no longer there;
There, we will find their dust
And the traces of their virtues. (repeat)
Much less eager to outlive them
Than to share their casket,
We will have the sublime pride
Of avenging them or following them!
This extraordinary hymn was written by Michael Weisse in the very early 16th century in Silesia.
Silesia
I can’t find the German or English anywhere for the life of me, so sorry to leave you hanging. Nevertheless, I can’t get enough of the tune. It’s classic German and classic Baroque at the same time: solid, four-square construction, with gorgeous but sober harmony. It’s an earth-bound hymn with heaven-ward eyes, like all good prayers should be.
I am not yet calling this a victory. My wounds are still too raw. BUT. I can confirm that, as of right now, I have a working air conditioner in my living room window. If you’re just joining us on the Tune-Up and have no idea why this is such a big deal, I refer you to a post from a few weeks back.
Hello, little air conditioner.
But let me fill you in on what’s happened since. If you remember, the solution that Sears presented was that UPS would come and pick up the box from my apartment and deliver it back to Sears. Did this happen? Yes and no. “Wait, what the hell,” I hear you cry, “isn’t that a binary event? It either did or did not happen.” Indeed you are correct! So let me break it down for you.
UPS issued a tracking number for the pick-up. The tracking number’s pick-up location was the same wrong address to which they delivered the bad AC. I called them back. They said to call Sears. I called Sears. They fixed it. (Sort of. It is Sears.) I got a new tracking number with the right pick-up address but no information on when they would pick it up. They tried on a Thursday but the box wasn’t there because I didn’t know they were coming. I got notified they were going to try again so I raced home, put it in a box, dragged it to the elevator, then dragged it to the lobby, where I gave it to the front desk clerk. There it sat. I checked the UPS website the next day. A second attempt had not been made. I checked the website again the following day. A second attempt had still not been made. I called UPS and said, “hey, dudes, the package is ready.” “Oh!” said UPS. “Okay cool, thanks, I’ll send the driver over by 5pm.” I called the front desk and said, “hey, thanks for holding my stupidly large 80lb box. UPS is coming over in a few hours to get it.”
Now this is where it gets squirrelly.
Front desk woman said that UPS had already picked up the box. UPS had no record of picking up the box. I called them and they swore up and down that they had absolutely not gotten the box and even got a little defensive that I would suggest they would have misplaced it. “Maybe someone just took it,” UPS Facility Man suggested. “You mean stole it?” “Yeah – maybe someone stole it.” I thought this was one of the dumber things I’d heard in a long time, since my building is access-controlled with a front desk that is manned around the clock with a very small number of people of good character who wouldn’t just let some random person walk off with a big box. Not to mention one can’t really walk off with an 80lb box.
UPS maintained they were innocent. They said to call the shipping company and complain. “Sorry…I don’t mean to be dense but, aren’t you the shipping company?” UPS Facility Man said that he meant the company that I bought the thing from. I remarked I wasn’t quite sure what this would accomplish, seeing as how Sears doesn’t have any control over anything once it leaves their warehouse. “Yeah, but see, Sears will have a lot more information on this than we will have,” Facility Man swore. “Again,” I said, “I still don’t see how that makes sense, but okay.”
So I called Sears customer solutions. Customer solutions transferred me to online customer solutions. I told them the whole story. I allowed myself to sound hysterical because, well, I was, and by this point, it would have been more productive and less time-consuming to have gotten $350 out of the bank, bought a lighter, and set the money on fire. So anyway. I told Sears Online Customer Solutions man the whole thing and he said he would issue a trace on the box. Now, how one traces a box with no label on it (oh yeah I forgot to mention that part – UPS was going to create the label and affix it to the box for me. Foolproof plan.), I have no idea. But that was the plan. I am to wait until mid next week to get an email with what they’ve found. If I don’t hear anything, I’m to call them. …Okey dokey.
So that was yesterday and today is today, and today I got a working AC put in my window. It seems to be chugging along just fine. After it was put in, I got a call from the front desk to say that one of the people working the desk had remembered that UPS had come on Tuesday at 11am to pick up the box and not only that but it was “the new guy” who picked it up. “The new guy” is “a little weird.” So I called Sears back to tell them about all of this and Sears called UPS and left me on hold for 20 minutes and now, as I type this, I am waiting for a call from UPS to tell me what they found in their “investigation.”
A friend of mine suggested I put all of this into a short story and sell it to the New Yorker. I’m considering it.
This is an instrumental version of a song from Iceland that documents a series of Ottoman raids of Icelandic towns during June and July, 1627. Annoyingly, I haven’t been able to find one with lyrics, but according to various historical accounts, Dutch pirate Murat Reis commanded ships of Barbary corsairs from Morocco and Algeria that captured around 400 people. Only about two dozen escaped and made it back to Iceland.
Islam is a beautiful religion. One of its most wonderful aspects, for me, is the Call to Prayer. I’ve heard it in in Mauritania, Morocco, Algeria, Turkey, and the West Bank. Even for a Christian, it has a calming, centering effect.
I am completely remiss in not posting this last Sunday, when the holy month of Ramadan officially began. In the Islamic tradition, the month of Ramadan marks the month the Qur’an was revealed to the Prophet Muhamed. Ramadan is also the time when the doors of Paradise are open and the doors of Hell are closed, with the devils within chained up.
To all of my Muslim readers: Ramadan Mubarak. Kul ‘am wa enta bi-khair.
Coffee I must have…
Sweeter than a thousand kisses,
milder than Muscatel wine.
Coffee! Coffee! must have it
and when someone wants to give me a treat.
Ah! pour me a Coffee.
This is an old “line stomp” dance from northern Iraq – part of the ancient Assyrian empire.
The Assyrian Empire
The Assyrian empire stretched across Israel, parts of Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia. The empire took its name from its original capital, the ancient city of Aššur, in what is now the Salah Al Din province of northern Iraq. It existed as an independent entity for nineteen centuries – from roughly 2500 BC to 605 BC. For the next thirteen centuries, until the about 650 AD, it was ruled predominantly by foreign powers, thus giving rise to a number of neo-Assyrian states within the borders of the empire. The empire fell to the Arab Islamic invasion in the mid-7th century AD.
It can be hard for westerns – especially Americans – to remember that Iraq existed before 1991, or 2003, or 2014. It has existed for thousands of years and been part of one of the richest civilizations the world has ever know. Now more than ever is it important to remember this, as ISIS pushes through parts of Iraq that used to be Assyrian.
“I don’t know much about being a millionaire, but I bet I’d be darling at it.”
Dorothy Parker is my spirit guide, as anyone who knows me will tell you. I can rattle off any number of her bon mots. The above quote is always the one that pops into my mind over the summer. I know for a fact that I would be really talented at swanning around Capri or Monaco on a yacht. I’d really be excellent at that. Why?
I look great in hats
I look great in sunglasses
I can speak lovely French and the things I don’t know I can whizz by with a smile
I know the entire history behind, in addition to being able to make and drink sizable quantities of, a French 75
So, really, what I need to do with the remainder of my youth is come into a vast fortune, and spend a season every year in the south of France on my boat. I really don’t see why this would be complicated at all.
No matter how many times you listen to this, it never fails to stir the blood. It’s amazing how such a simple melody can have such power. The tide is finally turning for some good friends of mine who have been a funk, so I send this out to them.
I also have to send this out to our boys in Brazil who play Germany today. I’m fully versed in the esoteric soccer rules that render today’s game one of the many scenarios in which the U.S. team makes it into the group of 16, but still. I can’t not post a piece rooting for a win. To all of my German readers: Es tut mir leid, aber ich muss mein Land unterstützen. Sie haben ein außergewöhnliches Team und ich wünsche Ihnen viel Glück. Mögen die Besten gewinnen.
Spending four hours on the phone with Sears customer service. YOLO.
Actually, I need to back up. This was an actual saga. This whole thing was cursed from the start. First of all, I made the mistake, ten years ago, of moving to Washington, D.C. For those of you who have never visited, let alone lived here, it is habitable for, collectively, fifteen days out of the year. Beginning in late May and petering out in mid-October, it is brain-bendingly hot and humid. It’s like the rain forest with more food options but fewer parrots.
But no point dwelling on the past. I moved here. I stayed here. I will doggedly continue to stay here, idiot that I am. But to do that, I need an apartment that is cool. For that to happen, I need window unit air conditioners. “Easy peasy,” said I! I ordered one from online from Sears. (Let me say that again. I ordered it online. This will come up again later.) A few days later, it was delivered. Excellent!
Except not excellent. Not even remotely excellent. It was delivered, alright – to my old address. My old address is a quick ten minute walk away, if unencumbered by a 78-pound metal box filled with toxic coolant. So I had to figure out a way to get it out from inside the apartment of the woman to whom it had been delivered (and who had taken possession of it without notifying the super, which was a little weird, but that’s neither here nor there). Thanks to the ministrations and car and forbearance and arm strength and all round good-person-ness of Mr. Yankette, I got it out of the old apartment, into the elevator, down the stairs, into the car, down the street, around the corner, up the stairs, into the elevator, and into my new apartment.
Just in time for the installation guys (who charge about a hundred dollars) to arrive. Phew!
Except not phew. Installation Man did his groovy installation thing, popped it in, screwed it to the window, caulked the gaps, turned it on, and *beep!* went the air conditioner. It might as well have been programmed to say, “Hello! I am an expensive piece of equipment and am programmed to disappoint! I have a hidden camera to record the number of times and different ways you will fiddle with my wires and read my instruction manual and after you’ve collapsed in tears I will send the tape electronically to my manufacturer for the company’s blooper reel! It’s a real hit at our holiday party!”
The air conditioner blew hot air. That’s all it did. It looked very pretty blowing hot air – like so many humans – but hot air was not what was required. “$%&!,” said I. So I did what anyone with an as-yet-unmaxed credit card and a grudge does: called an independent third party to verify the results. So two hours and two phone calls later, Verifier Man shows up. “Yep,” said he, “you got a dud.” He urged me to call Sears and get them to fix the problem. “But it’s not going to be easy – they’re going to fight you on this one.”
Tell me, O muse, of the ingenious air conditioner repair man who warned the unsuspecting client of the vagaries of Sears customer service, before the death of charity and reason.
Do you have any idea how hard it is to identify the correct number, amongst the fourteen options provided, to dial in order to tell a company their product is defective? It turns out they really don’t make it easy for you to do that. Amazing. Anyway, I found the general customer service hotline and three minutes later, I got a human. I explained to the human my situation. The human sympathized in a pre-programmed way and transferred me to their online purchases department. After four minutes on hold, I spoke to Online Purchases Department Human. Online Purchases Department Human said that she can’t find my records online but since it got installed today she would transfer me to the installation department. “What? Why?” “Hold please.” “What – …okay.”
The installation department now had the con. After a five minute wait on hold, I got another human. I explain to the Installation Department Human my situation. The human sympathized in the most believable way out of everyone I spoke with over the course of these four hours – but, because life loves irony more than the French, was absolutely unmoved in helping me solve the problem. Here was the problem. You ready for this? This was awesome.
Even though I bought my air conditioner online, I had to bring it into the store to get it repaired. Why? Because it crossed the “weight threshold” below which electronic items are considered too puny and unimportant to send someone out to deal with. Never mind my air conditioner weighed 78 pounds, that I had no car, and that, even if it were four pounds and I had a jet pack, that rationale made absolutely no sense at all. This human: unmoved. She urged me to call a Sears store and tell them about the problem.
So, I did. I called a Sears store. The line was busy. I redialed. The line was busy. I redialed eight times. The line rang. I told Sears Store Man the problem and what Installation Department Human had said. Sears Store Man’s reaction? “That’s insane. Call this number.” The number I got?
The “customer solutions” number.
I went back to the Sears website and could not find this number anywhere which only makes sense if you are actively against providing solutions for your customers. The plot thickened.
I called customer solutions, and after a seven minute wait (you see how this works? the closer to Olympus, the steeper the climb), I got Customer Solutions Human. I explained the situation. Customer Solutions Human said that because I ordered it online (yes!) I would have to be transferred to the Online Purchasing Department (what?! no! crap! not them again! I have so many plans for the rest of my life!) but in case that didn’t work, here was the number for…wait for it…
Online Customer Solutions.
WHAT.
So I was transferred back to the Online Purchasing Department. Which is when I met Cody. Cody is a real, honest to god, human. Cody is not Online Purchasing Department Human. Cody is like me – he has hopes and dreams, likes and dislikes, and a healthy respect for the uses of freon and time. Cody got me. I spent 53 minutes and 17 seconds on the phone with Cody. Here is roughly a transcript of what happened after I described the problem.
Me: “So, how can I solve this problem?”
Cody: “Well, let me pull up your records and take a look. Would you mind if I put you on a brief hold?”
Me: “Sure, go ahead.”
— doooo dooddoe n doot dee dooo…—
Cody: “I can’t find any record of your online purchase, which is weird.”
Me: “That is weird.”
Cody: “Can I have your order number?”
Me: “Yep. It’s **********.”
Cody: “Thanks. Would you mind if I put you on a brief hold?”
Me: “Sure, go ahead.”
— doooo dooddoe n doot dee dooo…—
Cody: “Thanks for waiting. Here is it. So here’s the problem: because the AC was picked up at a warehouse and delivered by UPS, that’s why they told you you’d have to bring it back to a Sears store.”
Me: “Wait…isn’t that what always happens? With literally everything you sell online? UPS picks it up from a warehouse and brings it to the person who ordered it?”
Cody: “Yep.”
Me: “So…if this is standard operating procedure, how is this a problem? Because I wouldn’t have to pull my fridge from the wall, rent a truck, put it in a truck, and drive it to a store to get it fixed.”
Cody: “Yeah…that’s true… Would you mind if I put you on a brief hold?”
Me: “Sure, go ahead.”
— doooo dooddoe n doot dee dooo…—
Cody: “Thanks for waiting. So I spoke to the installation department and the online services department, and I’m sending someone to uninstall the unit for you, for free, and once that’s done, give me a call, and I’ll have UPS come pick it up for you. How’s that?”
Me: “That’s great, Cody, thanks a lot.”
Cody: “You bet.”
God bless you, Cody, wherever and whoever you are.
And now, since that all took up half of my work day, I will now go about doing the work I had to do during the daylight hours before I go to sleep tonight. Which, in fact, is what “hora decubitus” means in Latin. (See? I always tie it together.)
The Daily Tune-Up 