When you think you might just have seen most of the unwarranted nastiness that gets dished up via an email to customer service, one gets left sitting once again in a shocked and somewhat nauseated silence at the patent unfairness of a distant coward come bully, hiding behind a keyboard reveling in letting the vitriol drip from their veins via the keys, as the smallness of their lives becomes apparent via ( in this case ) a…phoenix.edu address.

For a dozen years or so Flowerbud.com has published an online calendar, free as a download, to anyone and everyone wishing to enjoy it, regardless of patronage. Its free and it always uses a proprietary photograph shot by Flowerbud of  floral product from one of any number of photo shoots. Once in a blue moon it (the calendar) may have been published a day late or ( heaven forbid ) a day early, given what day of the week the 1st fals upon and my thinking that for the most part employees appreciate the weekend off and that a “freebie” arriving a day late is not going to tilt the axis of planet Earth too far. How wrong could I be?

Over the last few years the sniping of the ungrateful has been brought to my attention, those that have never spent a dime at Flowerbud but stridently demand “their” desktop calendar, most often times with a rudeness matching their stridency. To me, the desktop  and the aberrant behavior of a few users has been an ever growing source of pain in my rear end as well as a direct affront to the way I view the world and observe its essential courtesies. Every month when asked by staff to select an image, the rudeness of these people would come top of mind and I would advise staff that the calendar had outlived its usefulness. I never got my way …until now that is, and the demise of the Flowerbud desktop calendar as of 1/31/12 can be directly attributed to the “Meanness of Menelika”.

Its not worth all the tea in China for me to witness the discomfort of an employee upon receiving a rudely couched complaint, answering it with politeness and sagacity and then being unloaded on by one such as this “Mean Menelika”. Our inability to comprehend the illogical and the untrue in this situation leaves us helpless and frustrated. A day is quite thoroughly ruined for those of us tainted by the hostility of the repost and experienced people at Flowerbud are left wondering as to the why’s what’s and wherefore’s of the poison that a free desktop picture has generated.

There will always be the straw that broke the camel’s back. This one came wrapped as educated, as in …phoenix.edu.  My real regret being that some genuinely nice people were presumably enjoying our desktop and will now have to look elsewhere through no fault of their own and doubtless this mean miscreant will wander off to abuse someone else’s largess. My apologies to whoever that might end up being. You will recognize them easily enough because the day after the email abuse your staff  may be sent the image below, as if further infantile idiocy were required.

—–Original Message—–
From: Menelika
Sent: Wednesday, January 25, 2012 11:28 AM
To: Marcy
Subject: RE: Contact Form RESPONSE

Hi Marcy, I can assure you that this is NOT a clear cache on my end.
This is done weekly on my computer because of the type of business we
do. I have a friend in Texas who gets the same thing when she checks
Flowerbud calendar; she checked on the 9th and you all still had
December up.  This has been going on for about a year Marcy okay.

Nice try for an unprofessional explanation, but sorry that winged monkey
won’t fly. It’s a good thing that this is probably going to be your last
calendar month as it has not worked for you for at least a year as I’ve
stated before.  I have found another reliable monthly calendar source
that gives several beautiful monthly calendar options so I don’t think I
will waste my time checking to see what your LAST HURRAH is all about.

Thanks for responding.

RIP,
menelika

—–Original Message—–
From: Marcy …
Sent: Wednesday, January 25, 2012 2:15 PM
To: Menelika…
Subject: RE: Contact Form

Hi Menelika-
Our January calendar is actually current. A reason why you’re still
seeing December is most likely because you need to clear your cache on
your computer. With most browsers, you’d go to Tools–> Internet
Options–> Delete Cookies/Cache.

Once you have cleared your cache, here is the link to download the new
calendar: http://www.flowerbud.com/download/.

Please enjoy this months calendar, I think it may be the last one!

Thanks!
Marcy



—–Original Message—–
From: Menelika …..
Posted At: Wednesday, January 25, 2012 9:00 AM
Posted To: Customer Care
Conversation: Contact Form
Subject: Contact Form

Name: Menelika…
Comment: Are you serious? You still have a DECEMBER desktop calendar
posted and its the end of January??!!  Really?

Our rather ugly maroon dune buggy by Selvagem shudders its way over the cobbles in search of a barge by which we will cross the estuary, its engine emitting popping and wheezing sounds rather than anything that might be construed as mechanical and trustworthy. Our driver, the trusty cousin, fakes the wearing of a seat belt while our own flap around, perhaps awaiting a six pack to secure …as if the salt rusted ends would ever have a hope of connecting anyway. Coughing our way off cobble and onto tidal flats we are motioned up a couple of well placed planks onto a flat barge that sees us two up with another buggy about to be poled across the estuary for a suitable sum of cash. The punters, members of a cooperative work a week on, week off shift and it appears there are only a slight few hours when service is not provided, while at peak periods there may be twenty or more craft jostling for buggies, bikes and donkeys not wishing to swim.

Passing an obvious tourist from Natal, rental car buried to the axles in loose sand and still within site of the crossing “cousin” driver gives the old Vdub motor enough ethanol to smooth it out and it picks up speed enough to make eyes squint and hair fly while exposed skin gets sun scorched and dermabraided simultaneously from the sand whipping back off the tires. The tracks of such fun will inevitably lead to a favored dermatologist. Its all a roiled and warm Atlantic ocean to the right and wind blown, dune perched palm trees to the left, Fishermen’s shacks and Jangadas both drawn up above the tide line, windows and doors open, sails set as awnings and hammocks everywhere swaybacked in occupancy. Barely indented tire tracks lead north to Maracajau and points well beyond and out of site, even after a day or so’s hard driving is my guess.

Before the old motor gets to breath really hard on the sandy straightaways we veer off into the dune scape on some “enforced” tourism that involves patient donkeys draped in Bougainvillea, daft photos with ones own camera, dromedaries, wind blown beach attire and best of all an opportunity to have a long pull of sweet coconut water from a freshly and deftly decapitated green nut. It’s all in good fun and the young guys doing the sales pitches are good natured and dying to try out their english language skills. When not engaged in commerce they loll against the obliging donkeys, deep in cell and text conversations, presumably with all the absent girls, left back in the city of Natal, plainly seen in the far distance from atop these dunes and seemingly a world away.

Taking a near vertical drop of some 150′ down the side of a dune and into shrubbery …riding unbelted in the back of a vehicle that has never seen “better days” takes largish amounts of faith and stupidity, neither of which were summoned in time before it happened and was over and done with. The feeling of  being still alive after a dumb move is a good one and really should promote much sounder decision making. Something about a good breakfast of papaya, the sun, the salt and no doubt a beer while speeding along a wide open beach in a manner surely outlawed most anywhere else must stifle good decision making. Veering away from the ocean and its cooling southerly breezes a couple of  giddy full throttle maneuvers sees us perched atop ever taller dunes and overlooking a rather ominous yet fresh water filled lagoon across and into which, zip lines are suspended. Its a surreal place and it is furnace hot. It takes no time at all for an enterprising “dune youth” to lead this lamb to a slaughter far from home and equally as far from rudimentary medical care, If I am any judge.

The modus operandi of the next close to death experience is to sit in the remnants of a a very old tire and some canvas webbing, If my memory serves me right. In colloquial English it would be referred to as “getting your ass in a sling”. Whatever it is, It is suspended from a wire that spans the lake with sufficient slack in it to ensure you slam into said lake rather than the far shore. Abject fear or false bravado alike will be captured on video, this time by “lake youth” comfortable in a lawn chair upon on a raft close to where you and the dark waters will come together.

Being strapped in requires “dune youth” to practice his English and expound on how he deems it insufficient and requiring of further night school classes. You have to place this rather astonishing conversation into the context of this place that visually might as easily be Yemen as it is Brasil. Before I can even ask why he seeks fluency in English he starts by telling me how we all now live in a wireless and globalized world ( witness his cell phone(s)) and that the people he daily hurls off the dune come from across the globe and English is the common thread of communication and commerce at this point in time. Of course by now I am feeling less than intelligent, not because of the ridiculous ride I am about to take but because I am privy to a crash course in globalization from a kid so insightful, resourceful and hungry that I feel painfully uncomfortable with my own suddenly meagre skill set and perspective. Speaking of pain, the sand beneath my feet is in the process of vitrification and only now does the water below look like a good idea. “Dune youth”, through with the globalization of this particular idiot, bids me lift my feet and then switching to Portuguese, ( I am sure ) tells me to kiss my ass goodbye as gravity and the wire above give me an entirely new focus.

Propped up thus, the far view reveals a low slung horizon of the most exquisitely sand colored sand dunes. Sand the color it is in ones dreams, fondest imaginings and bragging brochures. Lapped on their far side by barely heard, unseen and ever ceaseless, warm Atlantic waves. The dunes lay across a broad, silt loaded estuary, where with a methodic step wades a dark skinned man who pays out the silvery white mesh of a gill net bundled over arm and shoulder. It slips beneath the surface, a graceful, wishfully captive arc, visible and suspended only by bobbing white floats. In the immediate foreground sways a hammock, and now coming seemingly to rest in its own creamy cotton arc the fisherman shakes finger length slivers of silver into a grass basket at his waist. Now, a mere elbow’s height no longer reveals enough and as a Jet and its lag are of a distant yesterday, exploration is the order of the day.

Upriver, over a coffee cup’s rim, a steady flotilla of rafts ferry an assortment of vehicles from our shore out to the sand dunes and the first of a string of fishing villages. It appears a real melee out on the river with rafts for bikes and motor bikes, rafts for a car and rafts for three cars …and maybe more. Punted by one or two sinewy types who plant their poles onto river’s bottom and then proceed to walk the length of their raft, it slides beneath bare feet as they walk in place. Time and time again with quite some exertion as indicated by a slight bow wave. The whole procedure having something of an illusionary quality. Raft gazing is accompanied by a shameless savoring of an endless papaya …picked and proffered at the point of perfection. Multitasking is easily displayed  as not only can I study the art of punting while savoring a tropical fruit, I can make river waters froth and boil with the toss of a piece of breakfast roll into an expectant school of catfish, no doubt habituated to this time and place, out of the current and momentarily safe from the cast and recast of the silvery white mesh.

The rough and ready english translation of a spiel delivered in portuguese by a gent who appears at table side, is that rather sadly, he is just too darn busy to take us to where I had  know idea we wanted to go in the first place. How remiss of me. Yet there is no need of despair, he having a most reliable cousin ( who just happens to be close by, as in out in the street! ) and he would be thrilled to furnish a dune buggy into which we could jump and thus proceed to tear down endless, trackless miles of spectacular beach and on to infinity. Infinity being Fortaleza some 500 km up and around the nub of Brasil or south to Rio some 1500 km straight down …its beach all the way, baby! Obviously, I’m in, as the other choice calling my name is a delicious day of hammock, a good book and ice cold Bohemia. Sipped to the delicious cadence of the trades, too decadent by far. (to be cont…)

A car rental transaction in Brasil bears no resemblance to that same transaction in the US (Supremely easy) or even in the the EU (Moderately difficult). In Brasil the manner of the agent is always most pleasant but its clear each hopeful driver’s transaction will take one to one and a half hours and being fourth in line is going to allow you to eavesdrop your way through a full immersion Portuguese class. You come to the conclusion that the Amazon Rain Forest is giving itself up to produce multiple forms in triplicate and that in signing them all, one has more or less purchased a car they fully expect to be stolen during your kidnapping or at the very least be parted out to become a beach buggy as you savor a two Caipirinha lunch. Provided neither happens, then a few days on “normal” roads ensures you hand back a car where every kilometer driven accumulated the wear and tear of a hundred kilometers and the front end will never again know the joys of proper alignment or even tire wear …and the triplicate form person knows it! Its not clear if the insurance you are also signing up for will cover your own disappearance. A final escape from the solicitous and ever worried looking car attendant requires a full blown walk around the car as if it were a billion dollar jet fighter and signing off on every nick, ding, scratch and missing part. More signatures acknowledge you will drive away with spare wheel, jack and a battery.

The next billionaires in Brasil could well be those that know where they are at the moment and have the knowledge to name the next few towns down the road in all directions. They ought to get a contract from Brasilia and go about stamping out and erecting legible highway signs marked with direction arrows and accurate distances. As the country grows in mass prosperity and mobility increases, signage would be a very good thing. Surely its not only me that enjoys knowing where I need or want to go. Then again perhaps Brasil will deal with road signs ( and maps, having advanced little since Pinzon & Cabral sailed in ) like land line telephones. They will simply pass over them in favor of a GPS in every car much as there is a cell phone or three in every pocket. Signs for Genipabu are like hen’s teeth so it takes several gas station inquiries and not a few short conversations with other gridlocked drivers who appear to have never heard of the place but still assure you that your present course is correct. These window down conversations have people materialize selling everything imaginable, or with great dexterity and a filthy squeegee they make your windshield filthier than ever for a monetary demand.

An interior city route has been advised as sand may have drifted across the coastal route making it a little iffy in the dark. Five or six lanes of traffic make very slow going of a two lane highway that at times is tarred, sometimes cobbled and often the two blended with some red dirt for good measure. Eventually it becomes packed sand and always you must pay attention to the moto boys weaving and beep beeping their way past you. Jam packed buses belch more carbon than all of  Al Gore’s dreams could sequester and the smart asses cut through gas station forecourts to gain three cars on you. Its bedlam, and mixed in with this lot are trucks of every size, shape and denomination. It is hardly a twenty first century picture… this agonizingly slow puke of near death vehicles out of Natal’s night time gorge.

Yet the way is lined with a gleaming bright lit evidence of a smokin’ hot economy supplying an eager consumer not yet saturated with credit induced debt. The supermarkets are vast and numerous and every other corner has either a Home Depot equivalent or a pharmacy. A very sensible idea, a Brasilian pharmacy is even more of an Aladdin’s cave of treasure than a True Value Hardware store in the States. Always open, they seem integral to a population adept at more than just a little competent self medication. While I am stuck on the road to Genipabu I should also note that not only is the city’s retail scene looking very modern in many places, the airports in places such as Natal, Fortaleza and Recife are models of modernity and cleanliness. So typical of the Brasil I have idled through these past few years, is its ability to stream the twenty first century into one eyeball while the other blinks in disbelief of observing the eighteenth & nineteenth centuries …and don’t think there is any museum like quality in the latter, because there is not… its a hard working reality of very hard work for many people. As the impromptu observer I am hard put to bridge these gaps between a past that is still present and the quite visible future… so I ease a half car length forward under the curious gaze of a van load of teens ( Do I really look that exotic?), sip some water, take a quick hit of ethanol and diesel fug from outside and ponder on the blue helmeted people who whizz so artfully around those gorgeous airports on inline skates, armed with broom and dustpan ensuring all is immaculate. It is, and the litter ballet is a nice diversion while doing the rental car thing. In defiance of their efforts are the wastelands of plastic trash you step out into all other places you look and go and always the young affluent in the new SUV is flinging a spent beer can out the window. Too much at odds sometimes…to think clearly.

Three hours into late evening the stranglehold of traffic ( on a 20km jaunt ) is broken and with rudimentary directions now skyped onto the laptop in the passenger seat that lead cautiously to a Pousada perched by an estuary, and brushed by 80F trade winds from the south. This warm, ocean scented air is the first truly fresh air breathed in 35 hours and its gourmet. The trades sing in the palm fronds, the beer is ice cold and the room is a convent crisp white and as plain and simple as a cell. Do you sleep beneath the ceiling fan on a snow white sheet or sprawl in the hammock strung beneath the moon and all its stars? Its time.

Google Earth can makes this all appear to be as easy as pie and in all fairness to those gone long before, It is. It just doesn’t quite feel like it at this very moment, sitting passively, inertly, much as Vern & Larry, the crash test dummies might, perched up here at the shiny sharp end of some very long con trails that I helped pay to spray across the world’s skies today. Delta providing some small measure of space from PDX to JFK and then as far as Sao Paulo from where the upstart Webjet took over for the milk run to Brasilia, to Fortaleza and onto Natal. Brasilians flying to the nations capital and beyond can only be viewed as “little people” if the dearth of space between seats on these aircraft is anything to judge by. An absurdly charitable sentence re the clean and punctual Webjet would end in the words ” a bit of a tight squeeze”.

It is while up here on the milk run and in particular the leg ( stretch would carry connotations of comfort) between Brasilia and Fortaleza that I spend some time gazing out of a window that I am wedged tight against… and the view is spectacular. It has the beauty to take a mind and its imaginings outside of the craft and for it to forget what the previous thirty hours have done to move a body ever closer to a DVT. I look from on high on vast, empty swaths of the states of Bahia & Ceara with just a sliver of territory at one point beneath, that I imagine rather than knowledgeably identify as the boundary between Piaui & Pernambuco. From up here it is an empty landmass, empty that is of roads, of visible infrastructure and the scars of progress. It gives off that wild and reckless feeling of having no boundaries at all. It reeks of opportunity and adventure, there is nothing to stop the wind, the heat, a person… and for all I know at this point there is nothing to make a person stop there at all.

Looking outward rather than downwards there are some of the most exquisite cloud formations imaginable and for some reason up comes the ‘cloud creche’ in my mind. The clouds have a hint of that “mackerel” sky to them as they scale off across the whole western horizon. They are beautifully back lit with a sun being gently extinguished in the Mato Grosso. Is it perhaps because of their small sizes, the infinite variety of height and color and in how they whisper in a shadow language to each other and to the land beneath? This arid landscape surely cannot be their birth place as where on earth would all that moisture come from to form and nourish… No, this must surely be the nursery. Where they come to grow and to form and  then reform…  and then take the directives that will see them float and spin throughout a continent, it’s reefy edge and then an ocean itself…  all before dissipating, heaven knows where.