The Notarization Fiasco: Taking It to Legal

To Whom It May Concern:

In early March, I had sent the e-mail below to Time Warner Cable's customer service department, alerting them to what seemed to me an unlawful practice by Time Warner customer service personnel: encouraging customers to obtain fraudulent notarizations of leases in order to prove residency at a service address (although, admittedly, the personnel with whom I spoke did not believe they were endorsing anything unlawful). In response, I received a brief, generic apology from a Time Warner customer service representative. I am not satisfied, however, that my issue was forwarded to the appropriate department. As I was not able to locate a general e-mail address for the Legal Affairs department, I am forwarding my e-mail to this address, which appears to deal with copyright issues. I would appreciate it if you could forward my e-mail to the appropriate section of the Legal Affairs department. Thank you.

Very truly yours,

Christopher W.

Phew! Glad this is being taken care of...

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NYTimes.com

Dear New York Times:

I have a suggestion for your website: stop making it so that when you double-click a word in an article, a "New York Times Reference Search" window pops up. Most websites don't have this. It's weird that yours does.

Concerned clicker,
Chris W.

Elvis Costello / TicketMaster

Dear Mr. Costello:

I have to begin a letter to you with a brief acknowledgement of your rockgodness. It's as necessary as the salutation line, only with none of the stink of formality: smash up job so far, keep it up.

Now to the main point. I recently bought three tickets to your 5/16 show at the Nokia Theatre in Times Square. At $55 each, the tickets were steeper than the average show I see, but for me it's more than worth it. I mean, it's Elvis Costello, dude!

Now, due to your aforementioned rockgod status, you probably don't have to pay for many shows. But the rest of us typically buy tickets in advance through Ticketmaster. And man, these guys are the worst. Like TimeWarner Cable the worst. For each $55 ticket, I had to fork them over eleven bucks. Eleven bucks per ticket! That's a twenty percent tax to see you live! And the worst part is, Ticketmaster has a stranglehold on the online ticket market for most big shows. And, for a working man like me, I just don't have the option of going to the box office to get tickets: I have to buy them online.

As a dedicated fan of all your work (and ardent defender of Mighty Like A Rose), I just wanted to air my ire at these arm-and-a-leg Ticketmaster charges to see your shows. If it's within your power or interest to change what online service doles out the tix to your shows, you should really consider switching from Ticketmaster to something with more reasonable charges. Not like you really need any more cred, but if someone heard you started offering your show tickets through a cheaper service, they would be like: "Hell yea, he did. What do you expect? It's Elvis Costello, dude."

Very truly yours,
Chris W.

TOTO's response

Dear Christopher,

Thank you for your letter about the sweater and the flushometer.

In this case, I don’t think the issue is the type of fiber in the sweater, but more likely the color. Is it black?

All toilet flushometers have two sensors in the unit. One emits an infrared beam, which when it hits the user, gets bounced back to the second sensor, which detects the returning beam. If you think back to your basic Physics class, you will remember that true black absorbs all incoming light, which means that there will be no beam going back to the receiver.

You can do one of two things when you wear your sweater.

1)Hold your hand about 6 inches in front of the sensor when you are finished using the facility. This will reflect the beam back, telling the unit flush. Or,

2)You can push the manual flush button when you are done.

I am copying Old Navy, so they will know that there is nothing wrong with their sweater.

Please let me know if you have any additional questions.

Jim K.