The Beauty Myth & An Open Letter to Some Trinbagonians

In case you missed the awfulness surrounding the 2012 Miss Trinidad and Tobago World 2012 representative: Athaliah Samuel; the awful missology thread headline proclaiming how ugly she is; the Jay Blessed weigh in; the Miss Trinidad and Tobago Fans page’s awkward, painful, cringe-inducing retraction and the numerous Trinbagonians online bemoaning her as choice — the fact that she is a “non traditional beauty”, from Laventille, dark skinned or “not your cup of tea” are all bullshit explications for the classism, colourism, elitisim, racism and just all around, meanness of spirit that has been shown to this girl in too many places.

Many of the people who would allege that their assessment of her features have absolutely nothing to do with colour are talking crap. Everyone is carrying around internalized beauty ideals and deeply entrenched racial ideals (especially simultaneously) — especially us. Contextualize your notions of symmetry or whatever stupid yard stick you are using for cover over internalized, cultural mind fucks. The diaspora has been officially and thoroughly fucked over in that regard. (I have come to that sad conclusion). Some of us resist (and are resisting), and some of us are unlearning and have done so. Some of us still don’t know that we need to. Harriet Tubman knew what the hell she was talking about. Athaliah’s beauty (the perceptions surrounding it), her colour and class status are all blessedly intertwined, make no mistake around that. People didn’t think Wendy Fitzwilliam was beautiful once upon a time, either. Remember that? Then lo, and behold…

I am a Trini, but the self absorption and levels of superficiality of some of you are disgusting, almost on the verge of nauseating. This whole fantastical narrative of ‘some of the most beautiful women in the world’ has gotten to your heads and I want you to check yourselves on that, please and thank you. If you think a globally commodified “beauty” competition is the best platform to exemplify some cultural estimation of “beauty” — and you are personally offended when said choice/s don’t meet your own personal standards, you need to open your mind some more and get over your fucking self. A beautiful people don’t move that way. And your clearly unexamined biases and perceptions of East Port of Spain communities, its people and your narrow constructs of beauty are showing. Even if you don’t agree, the audacity of being affronted by her looks — her physicality and phenotype, style choices and saying so in terrible terms is still disgusting. You and your words disgust me. All this to a daughter of the soil who is young and undoubtedly a work in progress at 24 (aren’t we all in some ways?), trying to achieve her goals.

Athaliah, sistren, my hope for you is that you know that you are beauty, whether you win or lose, that crown doesn’t define you. Pretty is conventional, often stereotypical, fleeting, falls slack off the bones and finite. Beauty is inside and out. It scares and enthralls. And is sometimes elusive to pin down in exact words. It’s still there when your back bends and skin is weighed down by the extent of life’s journeys. Third-eyes often espy it. And spirits know it is there when your spirit takes to somebody and vice versa. Beauty, like love — is deliberate. The people that see it, mean to see it and it is for them (and you) to savor in those realizations. Everyone knows a pretty girl when they see her but everyone isn’t going to see beauty in you.  Not everyone can. Fuck the naysayers. May your journey be splendid and filled with growth and new experiences.

The echoes and reverberations of some folks’ voices about all of this, will say more about how we view our collective cultural selves than any of the other people and things we rush to rally around the red, white and black for.  And right now, those colours eh looking too nice. Not at all.

The Color of Justice

In a white supremacist society, white people are the victims EVEN WHEN they are the perpetrators. #TrayvonMartin via Son of Baldwin

So, so much fuckery happening in the state that I currently reside it, I can barely process it all. A young boy leaves to get a snack and ends up dead — probably the most tragic juxtaposition of doing anything to ‘taste the rainbow’ ever. Firstly, Florida’s awful stand your ground law is truly the stuff nightmares are made of. Please consider yourself informed if you plan on ever coming here. Everyone is in some danger, but brown and black bodies are especially unsafe here which each passing year of this madness.

Secondly, I’ve found some of best sense-making, calm-after-the-infernal-storm-inducing and people of color rage on some tumblr and facebook interwebs and wanted to share some powerful contextualizations; for their grief, their rage, their solidarity, overstanding, love and fierce truth-telling, when I couldn’t even find the words to myself. If, as Dr. West has said, “justice is what love looks like in public” — then how much do we love slain children of color? Not a whole bloody lot, it seems like.

“Whiteness is White people telling a person of color that not all White people are bad and saying so would hurt their feelings when they are expressing their pain over one of their babies being killed.” – theoceanandthesky via Son of Baldwin

Save Your Tears (For the Day when our Pain is Far Behind)

“It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of nonviolence to cover impotence.” —Mahatma Gandhi

White people, this is for you. And only you.

For a long while, during discourses about racism, race relations, and human rights in general, I have watched you and your interject your opinions time and again, derail the discussion, and center it on yourself and your feelings. And I have watched—and participated in—the attempts to either shut you up or make you realize that these issues are not about you; these discourses are not a personal attack on you. You aren’t even welcomed in those discussions most of the time.

This one is. This one is yours. Feel free to interject, but don’t cry when we barbecue you. You’re the one who came with a thin coat of BBQ sauce on your ass.

Recently, if you have kept tabs on the POC on here like you are so wont to do at the wrong time, you may have caught wind of the cold-blooded murder of 17 year old Trayvon Martin (TW: violence). I will condense the story for the convenience of those who haven’t heard it, and to keep you focused on this thread.

George Zimmerman, the self-appointed Neighborhood Watch President for a gated, mostly-white community in Florida, stalked Trayvon Martin in the middle of the night, and shot him; not once, but twice. The police tell Zimmerman not to follow Trayvon and to let them handle it. Zimmerman claims that Trayvon looked suspicious. It was raining, Trayvon was on his way home from from the store with candy for himself and his brother, and he had on a hood.

Before you ghost your fingers over the keyboard to bang out some indignant defense, ask yourself this: had Trayvon been a white kid, would Zimmerman have stalked and shot him?

Had Trayvon’s screams for mercy and begging for his life been that of a white woman, would Zimmerman be able to walk freely? Would the police be trying so ardently to cover this up and chalk it up to an honest mistake?

He shot the boy twice. Not once, twice. Once to silence his screams, and second to finish him off. That’s what we call an execution…a double-tap. That’s an execution if ever there was one. If I didn’t think Zimmerman was just another racist white person, I’d be demanding to look in to see if it was a sanctioned hit.

It was not someone trying to protect his neighbors. It was someone looking for a reason to kill someone, and all the better that the person happened to be Black. Why?

Because in this society, we are conditioned to believe that Black lives hold little to no value in comparison to white lives. In this society we’re conditioned to believe that Black boys are destined for prison and one less Black boy in the world is one less Black boy in the prison system that your tax dollars clothe and feed. In this society, we are taught that Black people are expendable and interchangeable, incapable of anything more than lawlessness and decadence.

It’s 2012, and Black people aren’t safe in their own neighborhoods. In white neighborhoods, where some of us go to escape REAL dangers of everyday life in the city. And here we are, being taught that the no where is safe for us. We’re in danger from real criminals in the city, and we’re in danger from our white neighbors in the suburbs. And what did Trayvon’s fellow neighbors do? What did they do?

They defended Zimmerman.

How can they look Trayvon’s parents in the face, now? People who live in the same neighborhood as them who are burying their firstborn son because one of their neighbors EXECUTED HIM?

We’re angry. All of us. Every last one of us are angry, and you all should consider yourselves lucky that we don’t rise up and take every last one of you out, now for this. Because this demands more than that. This demands justice. This demands vengeance.

Zimmerman should not be rotting behind bars. He should be executed, as he executed an unarmed, Black boy—his own neighbor, on the grounds that he looked suspicious. When he came up to Trayvon, how come he did not immediately recognize him as his neighbor’s son? As someone he has probably seen everyday going to school and coming home? How come as Trayvon begged and screamed for his life, Zimmerman didn’t back off?

Where was the compassion of the man who claimed he was protecting his neighbors? Compassion does not dwell in the hearts of those who have decided to kill. A true self-proclaimed protector would exercise reason, would retreat, would stop themselves from doing something that could possibly bring harm to another.

But Zimmerman is not a protector. He is a cold-blooded murderer, and he went through with the execution because he knew—even if it was a subconscious knowing—that the law would always be on his side because he is a white, cisgendered male, and Trayvon is what society will write off as just another nameless Black boy who was probably never going to amount to anything.

That’s what Whiteness does to you. That’s what Whiteness does to us.

But I’m not going to let this pass into memory. We’re not going to let this be swept under the rug until there’s justice meted out, or until Zimmerman’s blood soaks the streets.

Either way, we’re not going to be silent about it.

Now, if you want to interject, feel free, but it would be in your best interest to utilize reading comprehension before you do…because I am not fucking with you people anymore. No GIFs, no image macros. This is not a joke. (via thegoddamazon)

hashtag SOE

i purposefully hadn’t bothered to comment on the trinidad and tobago government’s state of emergency all this time because i think it’s a load of crock and save for that, i really didn’t have anything constructive to employ in the conversation initially. who goes pulling states of emergencies all willy-nilly from out their backside like it’s nobody’s business? & sorry, but i also don’t trust the average local officer to not exploit the SOE — i feel like some might be gorging themselves on power, beating the pavement like giddy overlords drunk on the high of tossing alleged miscreants into the backs of pick-up trucks with no recourse. the whole thing just doesn’t sit well.

also, i’ve mused on crime & race before on here and though jack warner doth protest too much — images do tell a perspective, a slant, that is all. the whole discourse in parliament and outside is often full of fail. first of all, coming from the presupposition that black males in trinidad are posited, innately, as The Criminal — that in and of itself is a flickin’ problem! all the hand-wringing is coming from these problematic, patronising places from atop a moral high ground that makes some of us feel good about ourselves and meanwhile, root issues and inequity aren’t being solved. the kinds of insensitivities being spewed also makes me shiver to my core: “lock dem up” — “all ah dem” and things of that nature, when you don’t even know the hows and whys. bet your talk change when they come for you or someone you love though.

Viral Pain

Yesterday, I happened to press play on another one of those newly posted, awful viral videos via facebook; it was incredibly disturbing: a woman, somewhere in Jamaica, getting ferociously pummeled by a guy. He punched her about her face and body, screamed epithets while she cried and tried to get away, as he caught up with her, only to continue delivering his “lesson.” It was disgustingly painful to watch—but I did.

No one did anything for a while. Interestingly, two women—one seen in clear view of the camera and one heard from off-screen, are the first attempts to valiantly intervene. The video runs almost 7 minutes, punctuated by her guttural cries and the cracks of his hand against her skin throughout. The camera keeps taping. She picks up a cement block, it falls from her hand. In comes a guy with dreads for a fleeting moment, trying to pry the abuser off, then he too flickers away with no impact. Someone shouts something. He (dread-man) flounders. The abuser keeps on slapping and kneeing her in the stomach. And there is standard commentary in support of this scene, classic gems, like the camera holder saying: “Dada (the abuser) not wrong. Dada express how he feel. Any man’d a get mad—me’d a get mad and do di same ting too.”

speaking of masculinity…

When I’m semi-lost in DC, looking for the right bus (a city that I don’t even know) while trying to do some sightseeing, I really don’t need a random man to say, “dang, it’s not that serious! Smile!” in a growling command like he’s more vex at me that anything else, a pitch that almost makes me jump out my skin ’cause I’m busy trying to sort out where the heck I am and most certainly, not smile.

Before that,  a bus driver told me I must have an attitude because I wasn’t a bundle of perkiness and presumably, coy smiles, when I boarded (and I could see him giving me The Eye). He assumed that I was one of  those females with my “defenses up”. On the bus! Yeah, it wasn’t even that serious. I just don’t do perkiness. That’s not me. So I humor him and once he heard my accent, I ended up hearing a tirade about ‘Trini women’ and how we are ‘trouble’ though ‘beautiful’—apparently he is allegedly familiar with “us” in some capacity. Cause all of us are all the same. (Then, he switched off his shift and passed me his number as he left. I kid thee not).

And anyway, who the hell commands someone to smile?

Why?

I was instantly triggered to think about Renina’s blog post where she talks about black women and street harrassment and this famous phenomenon:

From Friendly to Hostile to Bitch in 10 Seconds

“Hey, why so serious, honey? Give us a little smile.” My sense of humor, he didn’t know, was temporarily out of service, so of course I didn’t give him a little smile. But in not smiling, I had again violated the code, provoking another seizure of silent suffering that became verbal. As I passed the sleeve on the street, it hissed a word at me, with the edge of anger to it, with a sharp rebuke in it: “Bitch.”

This account describes a common pattern, in which the target’s failure to response results in escalation and a superficially friendly interaction is transformed into one that is transparently hostile.

So not feeling any of this. Not one bit.

The Trouble with Culture

Part rant, part retrospective, part pissed off-ness for my friend…

The trouble with culture is that it belongs to all of us, yet to no one person—-simultaneously. There are those who may say Ellie Mannette and Rudolph Charles (God res’ de dead) are responsible for the innovation of our beloved pan, does that make Mr. Mannette and Mr. Charles the sole bearers of the culture of pan? No, it doesn’t and as a Trinbagonian, it belongs to the collective registry of all that is part and parcel of our cultural landscape. You can possess it—but you cannot actually own it. But what happened after word got out that the Japanese tried to patent the steelpan shows that whether you can or can’t actually own vestiges of culture, it does matter who tries to do so however.

Sometimes Trinis like to bemoan the alleged carnivalesque nature of our work ethic and you frequently hear other Trinis complaining that it is hard to get anything done properly with our fellow country folk and things along those lines. You hear it all the time and I am not going to dig into that issue/perception right now but the fact is that there are plenty of enterprising sons and daughters of the soil, all over the place, both IN and OUT of our islands, making their mark in a variety of areas. Some are doing so through creatively re-appropriating and re-inventing cultural idioms and images. They’re making art, t-shirts, jewelry, sculpture, music and so on. Which is fine. Good.

Which leads me to wonder, when one is aiming to employ and economize off of a uniquely Trinibagonian aesthetic, does said individual owe anything to the inspiration of their art? Any responsibility to that culture? What about the people therein? If so, how and in what ways? Who is to say what that is? One of the ways to do so is to respect your other countryfolk. Respect their money and respect their interest in your product. They would have after all, more of a vested interest in some of your images than say, people half-way across the world who don’t. (Not that they can’t either but it’s not the same).

Ultimately, I wonder, what is to be the legacy of what you are doing? To just make money? To create a vision about what it means to be from this place called Trinidad and Tobago and make a statement about it—-whatever that is. On your own terms, re-imagining what that means for yourself and the greater cultural landscape at large. Because when you are putting products out there, the people who buy them with a critical eye, will be (and should be) interested in that. Yes, it can just look good too. No, it doesn’t always have to be that complex but I am hopeful that it might because I happen to value complexity.

So there is a clothing company called Coskel University which is partly owned and spearheaded by a Trinidadian. Coskel makes a wide array of women’s, men’s and children’s apparel. Many of their designs employ some vision of a uniquely Trinbagonian aesthetic and their designs are influenced and inspired by the music, culture, flora and fauna of Trinidad and Tobago. Their designs, their Kaiso icons t-shirt series are amazing. David Rudder on a tee is a yay! for me. I even own one of their coat-of-arms university tanks (pre John Legend and pre-stiffing my friend out of money!).

But I question the goal behind their vision the more that I see and hear. A press release statement issued last year, announced the company’s partnership with John Legend’s tour. In the same press release, the company’s statements on the vision of Coskel asserts, “if our product is marketed properly and is stylish the quality will speak for itself and reach the masses even if they are unaware of the culture itself.” Hmmm. Which somehow got me to thinking of that silly Skippy peanut butter ad with the elephant with dreads, wearing a Rasta tam, replete with a bad, pseudo-reggae jingle. If we don’t contextualize our own cultural images, when we put them out there, clearly no one else is going to do it for us. People will do want they want with it anyway! I don’t claim to know how it should be done, I’m just suggesting that if Coskel is selling shirts with Black Stalin and “beat pan” on it, how then, is it okay if people are “unaware of the culture itself?” It has to be two-fold I think, especially when you are capitalizing off a culture. I can’t tell someone what to do with their art, but I can certainly ponder what this means for the ways in which I subsequently view and/or choose to support their product.

On to my friend. A friend of mine, who co-owns and co-runs a small business in East Trinidad, selling all things Caribbean (clothing, accessories, handbags, natural soaps etc.) had placed an order with Coskel, that to this day, hasn’t been fulfilled. There is an outstanding balance of 250 USD still to resolved and the goods, yet to be delivered. Furthermore, to go into all the ins-and-outs of this situation: the e-mails back and forth, the tireless wrangling for what was sent—how many times allegedly by Coskel and the fact that they never ever reached my friend, could be a whole other blog of its own. The fact of the matter is that money was received for goods that have never materialized. NO refund and no product has been forthcoming til this day. And based on what I have heard, gleaned and peeped in e-mail transmissions and the like, I can’t help but see their dealings with this small business venture in Trinidad, as indicative of their broader product culture. I bet if this was some large-scale retailer in Asia courting them, the outcome of this scenario would be very different. Plain talk.

Extend to them, the same courtesies and opportunities and presumably prompt service, that you do to foreigners. In between the global expansion and while you are slapping the national coat of arms on a shirt, how do you not see the relevance in selling your product in said homeland and investing in doing so. Or to quote Sizzla Kalonji, “dance ah yard—before yuh dance abroad.” To my knowledge Coskel has been courted by a certain Syrian-Lebanese enterprise in Trinidad (a deal which didn’t materialize for whatever reason) but the brand has yet to set up any kind of showroom and be regularly stocked anywhere in Trinidad or Tobago, least of all by my friends for whom the order and the money is still outstanding to.

This does not mean that the brand is “limited by [its] Trinidadian culture” (from the Oct 31st 2008, John Legend and Band to wear Coskel University Clothing press release statement) but serving Trini retailers large OR small, locates the brand squarely there, literally and figuratively, much in the way that the brand is “defined by its cultural references.” There is nothing wrong with that. For instance, you can go to Jamaica and encounter lots and lots of people wearing the brand Cooyah. We can also find it on the streets of Port-of-Spain just as much.

You would be hard pressed to find the same amount of Coskel anywhere in TnT, at any time, because there’s nowhere to get it easily. It’s mind boggling that a world-expanding Trinbago-inspired brand, with a base in Brooklyn, New York could be so hard to access in Trinidad and Tobago. Similarly, the company’s website touts Coskel as a response to “Caribbean-themed apparel…from the Bob [Marley] or beaches viewpoint” (in the company profile) yet the company has no kind of recognizable presence within Trinidad and Tobago, on par with what they have set-up elsewhere.

Personally, as I have assessed everything, I would rather buy any new funky tank tops or t-shirt digs from local artists like Tanya Williams (among others) and other lines that show a real interest in locating their Trini specific products in Trinidad, about as much as they are intent on making a splash in the rest of the world. Not just Trini, but I would quicker support any West Indian cultural product or other product that does so. Which is also why I buy fair trade shea butter from an African booth in the flea market. West African women (and their communities) who cultivate karite have as much a right to benefit from the reach and popularity of shea butter around the world as anyone else.

Finally, Coskel can ultimately do what they want, where they want, with their own product. But the ways in which they fail to integrate the Trinbagonian market in any way is slightly problematic because of the way in which the Japanese aesthetic (the other half of the Coskel duo) is not as prominent as the other, nor is the product entirely marketed as such. Their products are marketed and located admittedly within a Trinbagonian aesthetic. Naturally, there is more money to be made elsewhere and one’s culture is only exoticized and fetishized outside the homeland, not in it. But there are several generations of Trinbagonians right now, reclaiming some kind of Trinbagonian aesthetic and placing a high value on it, just as they do with other Western brands. Which is a good thing.

Somehow Coskel is already in the works of a distribution deal, factory and store in China (which may or may not be up and running already). And they are big in de dance in Japan. Good fuh allyuh. But they still are yet to fulfill their order in Trinidad or grant my friends the money and/or goods that has been supposedly coming to them for the longest while. 2007 was  when my friend last tussled over this and they haven’t heard anything from Coskel since then. Or seen a refund. I won’t be surprised if one day, I see Coskel on the racks at Wal-Mart stores worldwide (hopefully by then, people will be able to distinguish between Stalin the dictator and Stalin the great calypsonian) but in the meantime, before that happens, I hope they find the time to give my friends their blasted money!

In Trinidad? Check out the D’Caribbean Culture Shack for all things Caribbean and Caribbean oriented [except Coskel apparently] Give them a call at  @ 377-9869/748-1927. Find them on facebook groups and fan pages and see what’s new in stock!

D’ Caribbean Culture Shack

 Citing for Coskel’s press release statement:

 http://www.coskeluniversity.com/news/pressrelease_nov08_eng.htm

 ok, on a related side-note to ALL ah dis. This comment was left below on my “about” page. Why not as a comment under here? *shrug* Didn’t see the comment link, didn’t care to….who knows. Either way I really didn’t want us going into a whole diatribe about this THERE cause that’s not the place to. So after several days of irking me from the “about” page, I just copied them from there, deleted the posts and reproduced them for anyone concerned about where the[ir] comment/s went.

person David Hubert says on:

May 18, 2009 at 2:24 pm

I read your article about “The problem with culture” and wile I understand your point of view, I wholeheartedly disagree. More so much of your information is incorrect feel free to drop me an email I will be more than happy to discus your views in further detail, or even have a phone convo about the subject

Then I said this on:

May 18, 2009 at 4:23 pm

hmmm…what is incorrect specifically? the fact that coskel did receive money from my friend’s business [which i know for a fact that they did], that they in turn didn’t receive the goods? [which i know for a fact that they didn’t and there’s an e-mail trail to prove both]. the fact that coskel ISN’T as engaged in the trinbagonian market on the same scale as they are elsewhere—cause if they are, it must be way under the radar cause no one i know of, seems to know that. the fact that i am musing about cultural capitalism and the ways in which people may or may not engage in that practice? musings, last i checked are more or less substantiated [or unsubstantiated] opinions and renderings.

if i’m wrong about the product culture of coskel then it’s only because i am locating my view based on what i have seen [and heard and know and read] of their practices thus far: in regard to a friend vs. their global [asian] expansions etc. when i KNOW otherwise–i’ll FEEL otherwise.

if you disagree with specific points about what i have written, i’d rather if you posted as a comment to THAT blog and take the discussion there, respond as a comment under “the trouble with culture” and i’ll be happy to address your concerns there. otherwise: phone conversations and e-mails are really not warranted or necessary. if you happen to be connected to coskel—i am hardly the person that you need to be e-mailing or talking to on the phone.

Then Lin had her say:

May 18, 2009 at 5:03 pm

Who are you Mr David Hubert as far as what is written in this blog everything is on point nothing is incorrect and if you want to challenge me talk to our lawyers.

Drama fuh yuh mama y’all. <— My final assessment.

Because rantings are a kind of therapy: The Anti-dell rant

 

This post has been a long time comin’……

Honestly, I feel as though I am one of the nicest people when it comes to telemarketers and other types of folk who make a living talking to people from one end of the telephone. At least in comparison to some of the other people that I know. No screams of  “fuck you!” and “leave me the fuck alone” from these here lips, no abrupt dial tone in their ear. Oh no, I will actually listen to your WHOLE spiel. [Maybe cause I have also worked in call centers like the annual fund on campus and others.] In my mind’s eye, I could pratically see the supervisor hovering over the poor drone on their headset and I feel bad about not at least listening to what they have to say. As a result, I tend to end up stuck on the phone with them going, “no I will not like to hear about your identity theft protection plan,” but actually I end up hearing all about it anyway. sigh.

The exception would be dell computers and my complete meltdown with them on the phone, in late January of this year. I felt bad too because I’ve watched that documentary, I know that a whole generation of young Indians populate these call centers where dell has outsourced their business. But according to dell’s automated system, before you are connected to Delhi [or where ever] for an extra FEE you can talk to  a technician right here in the United States, which already supposes that the US based technician will know MORE or at least, is worth the extra expenditure if for nothing else, than being saved from having to decipher someone with a bad accent as a result of them trying to clip their OWN natural accent, to deal with callers from across North America. And I have a non-American accent myself and consider myself very comfortable around accents but I was still irked by the agents that I had deal with. I think things would have flowed smoother if (among other things) a) I didn’t end up so annoyed with their non-help and b) service reps were able to converse in their natural element and c) for that amount of money, you could at least talk to someone who knew the ins and outs of a pc better. Our exchanges were so clipped, so stilted and scripted from their end–that really didn’t help the progression of the situation at all.  Between the script reading and the not so sucessful imitative American accents which took me down a road to nowhere.

First off, dell made me pay 50 US upfront before I even spoke to anyone. I was calling because my dell pc had begun to give me an “IP address conflict” error while simultaneously not allowing me to access internet explorer. I went online and looked it up and even though it’s a common enough problem to generate thousands of hits/links/advice/web boards devoted to the issue: the dell agent that I finally spoke to had NO CLUE what I was talking about, that is to say, no clue how to rectify the problem right away. sigh. I felt like my inability to decipher computer-and-technology based fix-it tips/jargon painfully frustrating in light of the hordes of “this is what you can do to fix it” information that I found. This has to be relatively easy to fix! I however was totally inept at actually employing any of them. Again sighs.

Based on my experience and what I’ve gleaned and viewed, it’s obvious that most of these outscourced call center drones are not actual computer technicians. Rather they’re the equivalent of me in a head-set, with a script of commonly reported computer errors on my screen and probably a query key, where I could hastily type in and look up stuff. I was subsequently late for work that day and ended up wasting over an hour’s time for said “technician” to eventually after a long rigmarole, talk me up to a system’s restore. I was slowly inching toward Angry Trini mode. I’m technologically clueless and even I know how to do a blasted system’s restore. Plus I’d already tried one. It did not work. Calling dell was a last, desperate resort.  When I informed the techie of that fact, while being unsuccessful in hiding my exasperation, then he really faltered. Visibly. Or as visibly as you can through the phone.  The confidence in his voice in the system’s restore was gone. We were both up shit’s creek without a paddle but I had paid for this. Can’t you google it and then go in and do it? I already knew there were remedies all over the net but I am unsure how to actually do those things. Sheesh.

Anyway to make an already long story short…after all the yapping around, techie admits that he doesn’t know what to do to help me fix my IP error. After the system restore suggestion, no other ideas were forthcoming except alluding to maybe my internet provider’s service being down as the cause. Even though I had already told him more than once, that  the internet was clearly running, the connected icon was there and I also called my leasing office and my provider to be doubly sure earlier. But it seemed as though my pc wasn’t being recognized and I would get booted off the internet, if I got on at all. Since dell makes my pc–shouldn’t they be able to fix THAT? A computer generated problem? But it’s a recession and I still paid 50 bucks for a fix. Or least some semblance of something. 

Next day, I call dell bright and early, after talking with a REAL tech at my internet provider who reset my IP addy for free. (Who knew they did that?) He talked me through things and tried multiple routes before he did that. He also laughed at the notion that I had actually called dell for help prior. So when I linked up with dell, after the obligatory pleasantries, as SOON as I stated that I had a complaint and wanted a refund—all kinds of things happened: because my pc was no longer under warranty, I had to be put on to some fictitious department that dealt with “refunds outside of the warranty” [or something to that effect] which clearly didn’t exist because it couldn’t be found! I was lost in the bowels of dell automated phone hell over and over, transferred here and there, from automation to people and back, more times than I could keep track of. EVERYone’s voice and spiel changing [male and female] the moment when I stated my reason for calling. By now I was clearly slipping into Angry Trini mode. Like they never hear from an irate Trini yet?

I was subsequently informed of other phantom departments who could surely deal with my complaint but it was NEVER the person or department that I was currently talking to. Ever. And they could NEVER help, only THAT department. The one that couldn’t be found. Each time having to explicate what happened: in a nutshell, I paid 50 bucks for your “technician” to not do shit.  The last tech drone I spoke to said that they couldn’t and wouldn’t give a refund as dell doesn’t do them, at which point after everything I’d been dealing with, made me flip. I told him in not too subtle terms about my thoughts on their shitty service and terms of service, the ineptitude of the bloody 50 dollar techies [which is good for one call of NOTHING], the fact that we are in a recession and I do not have a money tree growing in my back-yard,  the fact that my internet provider fixed it while informing me: yeah, it’s a relatively commonly heard of problem and told me to NEVER call dell to fix my pc, the fact that I will be listening to him, the fact that if I can afford to, I’ll be upgrading to a mac one fine day. Among other things. I’m still nice to telemarketers and others who work from call centers. Just not ones at dell who piss me off.