Identity Indemnity

Identity Indemnity

Somebody stole my identity. I finally made it!

So there’s a standard stock joke that all hack comics tell in reference to identity theft since it became a popular term about 10 years ago that ends in some version of “I feel sorry for them” or “Now they have a ton of debt and bad credit.” It’s stupid, but effective, however annoying for those of us who can’t even aspire to the smaller debt and better credit that a comic likely has. That being the case, this little act of thievery could be my lucky break.

It started last night when I couldn’t sign into my iTunes library to play “I’m Different” by Randy Newman. In this day and age, I have probably 10 different passwords for different things and my computer has been ill of late, so I figured I just couldn’t remember the correct password. But when I went to retrieve it, iTunes told me that my account didn’t exist. That’s weird.

Cut to the following day. I got a phone call from a strange number at 8:53am and they didn’t leave a message. I got another call from them at 10:53am and they hung up before I could get to it. Then again at 12:53pm. I don’t know what kind of program calls every 2 hours on the 53rd minute, but I was curious to find out. I was able to get to it this time. It was indeed an automated message, but it connected me upon my answer to the Bank of America. I’ve had things like this happen before. It’s never been good. I figured I missed a payment or accidentally didn’t use my home branch to withdraw money and it cost me an extra $1,500 and overdrew my entire savings account and they were going to start seizing my assets, which at this point in my life is basically a television and half a container of sushi rice.

Nope. They told me there was some suspicious activity on my credit card and wanted to know if I made these purchases. I’ve gotten this phone call twice before, both times it was me. Once I had used a couple different ATMs to download the last $600 to buy a car that wasn’t even worth that much. Then I was called because I kept mysteriously buying gas at these stations all along route 70 every couple hours or so from Cincinnati to Baltimore. Weird, I know! But at the inconvenience of a phone call, I wasn’t too upset. This time, however, I think they were onto something.

I had allegedly made two purchases earlier that morning for $41 and $45 on iTunes. That rung a bell. They may be onto something here. Last night made a little more sense now. So what I surmised is that somebody hacked into my iTunes account and that only. Or else they made some really specific decisions with the credit card info they had. The end result of that conversation is that they would take those charges off my credit card (which were the only fraudulent ones made) and they’d cancel the old card and issue me a new one. Sweet. Back to normal.

However, I logged onto my Bank of America account today to find that the savings and checking account were still there, but the credit account was gone. I’ve lost my wallet several times and needed to cancel my credit card and have them issue me a new one, but I’ve never had an account disappear like that. And if $10,000 in debt just disappeared because of some bank error in my favor that isn’t in a game of monopoly, that would be the best thing that’s ever happened to me and don’t tell Jen I said that, because I’m not kidding. I love you, honey – but $10,000 in debt just vanished? That’s the kind of miracle only Fletch could pull off. Guess I probably should have banked with Chevy Chase (groans are welcomed and somewhat encouraged at this point).

Just in case it was the unwitting error of some intern, I’m not making a financial move. No debit charges, no downloading money, no logging onto my account for a while. I’m lying completely still like I was being attacked by a black bear. Or a brown bear. Or a polar bear, whichever one you’re supposed to play dead around. Wait. Brown, lie down – black, fight back. OK, scratch that. Make it a brown bear. A huge brown bear who is not going to eat me, but looking to give me my $10,000 in debt back. It’s about now, I realize I should have used a different analogy. The point is, those hack comics who all say they want somebody to steal their identity to inherit all their debt. Well, I may have the opportunity to live it. Which serves them right for being so much less funny and yet still having more stage time than I do.

Like a Good Neighbor: The 10th Day of Giftmas 2009

Like a Good Neighbor: The 10th Day of Giftmas 2009

My life has been fairly blessed over the past five to ten years with one very obvious and distinct exception: my Sisyphean automotive life. The car gods have been making me roll a Buick up a hill, only to forget to set the emergency brake and watch it roll back down again every night. So maybe they’ve had a change of heart. Or maybe the god of the law of averages finally took over. Either way, I was just given a huge gift in the form of a fender bender last month.

Now I realize a car accident typically doesn’t qualify as a gift. It was the first thing in the morning, I was confused, and it wasn’t even a hot chick that hit me. It was some old guy in an Explorer used the front end of my Civic like a ramp. He was backing into a parking spot with apparently no knowledge that I was just sitting behind him, desperately trying to find my horn. On a 1994 Civic, the horn is located in two small buttons by the thumbs. I spent way too long desperately beating the air bag hoping it would honk, as I was not practiced in activating the stupidly-placed horn strips. By the time I looked down at the gear shift, the Explorer had already explored the hood of my car.

No one was hurt as this all happened at about 2 MPH. In fact, very little damage was actually done. My headlight was scuffed up a bit and the fiberglass was cracked. After a couple days of talking to the other guy’s insurance, an agent came out to inspect it. He left saying simply “We’ll mail you a check next week.” That was it. No mechanics, no lawyers and no bullshit.

I had completely forgot about it until I got the check a couple weeks afterwards. I figured on about a couple hundred bucks. $1004.46! Thank you, State Farm! And there’s no way I’m going to ever need that for the car. A little windex and a green sharpie and you can’t even tell anything happened. I figure that it knocks the resale value down a bit, but that doesn’t matter with me. I’ve run every car I’ve ever owned right into the ground, most of them literally. I’ve owned 5 cars before this one and I haven’t sold any of them. Unless you count scrap heaps. So this is basically free money. I’m going to start to look for people in tall cars and follow them around the city until they need to park. I figure if I can do this once a week, I can make a decent living and finally afford to quit my day job. I don’t know why more people don’t do this.

The Jessup Mafia

The Jessup Mafia

Hey. It snowed again. A lot. But just to throw a little wrench into things, it alternated snow, sleet, and rain. So there are a bunch of different layers out there, but ice is at the root of all of them, which makes for much more fun driving. I knew I was going to have problems when I started fishtailing around a corner in my sneakers. Never a good sign. But it does make driving a lot more "fun." I've gotten the controlled fishtail down to a science now. I was passing people on 95 who had skidded out of control into guard rails and were facing the wrong way and what not. Good Joe, wus that he is, asked me to slow down and stop doing donuts on the aforementioned major interstate. He was a little concerned about the aforementioned backwards cars. They just obviously couldn't drive. Modern day Darwinism at work.

There's a cool game a few of us have been playing recently called "Mafia." I'll spare everyone the details, but Russ is really good at guessing who is in the Mafia. I don't understand it. It's like he's been given one talent in his life, and this is it. How unfortunate. But anyway, he's really good at the game. In fact, he's so confident sometimes, that he lays $5 down on the table for anybody to take and says he'll bet that $5 that Julie or whoever is in the mafia. We questioned why just $5 if he was so confident. Then he showed us the glaring emptiness of his wallet with the absence of the dollar bill. Well, the game ended, proving Russ correct again, and he sighed a sigh of relief, picked up his money and said...

Quote Of the Day 1/24/00

"Thank God! Now let's put this money back in my wallet. In fact, let's put it in with this condom where I'm bound to not find it again for a good long while."

-Russel "Mafia Killer" Johnson


That'll really get you in good with a girl. Heat of passion, you pull out a condom and a $5 bill at the same time. But that's probably you're type. ;)

Carrying condoms and 57 cents in change,

X.


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