86'd by Dan Fante Read Free Book Online Page B

computer’s death, he gave me a seven-hundred-dollar cash advance from the inch-thick bills on his money clip. An hour later I had a new PC.
    The rage of losing my sixty pages of work, then being subjected to Microsoft’s absurd “customer support” at the hands of Ramesh, twelve thousand miles away, had made me insane. I decided to put my PC to work. My first order of business was a letter to an asshole named Bill Gates.
    Mr. Bill Gates
    Microsoft Corporation
    1 Microsoft Way
    Redmond, WA 98052
    Hiya Bill:
    Just a note to say atta boy and keep up the good work.
    I’m a believer in capitalism and I know you are too. As of today I’ve decided to sign up and join you in yourstruggle for the rights of the bankers, Dubai oil sheiks, and instant payday advance broker shops everywhere. We both know that there are plenty of bloodsuckers and sniveling lowlife losers out there. Like you I’ve come to an inescapable conclusion: They get what they deserve.
    Bill, there are two slogans that just this morning I taped to my bathroom mirror. I wanted to pass them on to you—words that I will try to live by day in and day out using your example. I was hoping that you and your guys up there smoking cigars in the THINK TANK just might get a kick out of them. #1: WHEN IN DOUBT CHARGE MORE. And #2: NEVER GIVE A CHUMP AN EVEN BREAK.
    That brings me to reason number two for me sending you this letter. I’ve got to hand it you, Bill. In my book when it comes to wham, bam, thank you ma’am, most American companies shiver like drowned puppies compared to an outfit like Microsoft. When, just recently, I had occasion to speak with one of your offshore customer support techs regarding my computer’s software collapse and death, I really learned a thing or two about the old now you see it, now you don’t. After over an hour with your guy on the horn, at the end of a conversation, when nothing on my machine had changed, I actually discovered myself becoming physically sick when your trained tech—in his giddy and nearly inscrutable Hindi accent—presented me and my ATM card with the charges for his services: seventy-one minutes @ $3.95 per minute: two hundred and seventy-one bucks. That phone call left me speechless and I found myself contemplating a big sip of drain cleaner.
    There are some people who would say that you are to the computer industry what Idi Amin was to population growth in Uganda. Let’s not mince words here. To me any man who will whimsically crush a groveling call-in client or the tiniest software competitor at the drop of a hat is a man to be reckoned with. Personally, I’m hoping that someday your company will expand to the publishing industry and gobble up a firm like Random House. You and the guys could put out a pamphlet on corporate beheading or maybe a how-to chapbook on holding back a grin while encountering an amputee. I read quite a bit and I can pretty much guarantee you that there’s an untapped market for stuff like that.
    Your comrade in arms,
    Bruno Dante

eight
    W orking in the limo business in L.A. is a bizarre way to make a buck. Like licking up wet dog shit for God. The clientele for Dav-Ko in Los Angeles was mostly made up of night freaks and zombies. Rich, cranked-out movie producers, spoiled rock star punks, gangsta rappers with their black Glocks tucked into the belts of their pants, alkie ex-actors with too many DUIs, and a gazillion wannabe high rollers. Human beings who exhibited the most unpleasant personality characteristics common to L.A.: Too much ego and way too much money.
    People come to L.A. hoping to discover something out-pictured beyond themselves. Something they hope to name and believe in, some idea of satisfaction through success or accumulation or recognition. Of course it never comes. Then they buy a bigger house in Brentwood or another Benz or get more plastic surgery or smoke more amphetamine and marry someone they meet at the gym. Whatever’s next. Whatever it takes to hold