The worst hold music of all time is now official: HSBC. A three-minute loop of what sounds like Zanfir played on a $30 keyboard. Key change!

Kid (circa 6pm): “When is it going to be night time???”

Me: “November.”

Whatever you do, don’t let yourself get signed up for any General Electric newsletter, or you’ll have to deal with this.

Time on the phone spent trying to close a checking account with a lingering, $0.16 balance: 9 minutes.

Implied wage: $1.06/hour.

This is a photo of the actual warning notice on a new Blu-ray disc… not a joke.

(click for larger photo)

Publicity still from today’s Lady Gaga/Polaroid event…

(click for full size to see if you can spot “the issue”…)

This week my home phone started bristling with static. Again. Had the same problem a year ago, thought it was something with the cordless phone. After many weeks finally got a repair guy to come out and he discovered it was a short at AT&T’s junction box.

Now it’s back. This time I didn’t hesitate, but after using AT&T’s oh-so-helpful online diagnostic tool (which says the problem “is with your phone”), there’s a new kink: Namely, the phone here rings, one time, every two hours, on the half-hour. All day and all night. Just the one ring, but that’s enough to wake you up at 1:30am, 3:30am, and 5:30am, I promise.

Only took six minutes on hold with AT&T to determine they “had me on a repeat code.”

Meanwhile my appointment to fix the static looms. The scheduled time for the repair: “Any time on Friday.” Midnight to midnight, I presume.

For the record, because you’ll never find it on AT&T’s website, the number for the AT&T repair center is 1-866-346-1168.

Update: And 4 hours later, it’s still ringing…

Anyone else find themselves trying to read the faux newspaper articles and notes that appear for a split second on TV shows and movies?

Here’s a classic from Leave It To Beaver.