PLEASE HOLD… MmmK
🎩 DR. SEUSS MODE: ON HOLD WITH A FROWN AND A FILE
🔊 Scene: Congressional Hold Music
I sat with my folder, I sat with my fax.
I sat with my trauma, my spine full of cracks.
I waited. I wiggled. I whistled. I sighed.
“I’ve been put on hold nine whole times,” I cried.
The hold music wailed—a soft pan flute scream,
Like Vietnam’s echo through a Medicaid dream.
It squeaked through the speaker, it groaned in my brain,
Each note a reminder they profit from pain.
I tapped on the phone with a bureaucrat’s beat,
My patience dissolving like pills in the heat.
I muttered, I mumbled, I begged for a clerk—
But all that I got was “He’s out. Try the 3rd.”
📞 Then a click! Then a tone!—but alas, it’s a loop:
“Please hold while we gaslight your medical group…”
The Cat in the Hat would have flipped at this scene.
Thing 1’s got a nosebleed, and Thing 2’s turned green.
So I sat with my paperwork, riddled with stamps,
Misdiagnosed thrice and lit up like a lamp.
“My God,” I exclaimed, “Is this Kafka’s old room?
Or is this just Congress in bureaucrat bloom?”
Then a whisper: “It’s policy theater, friend…”
And the flutes played on, like the world's gonna end.
🎶 For what it’s worth, they panned on with glee…
But nothing was happening, certainly not me.
🎶 "THE CAT ON HOLD"
(A Silverstein-style Song for the Bureaucratically Betrayed)
[Verse 1]
There’s a Cat on hold with a file full of pain,
A tail full of trauma, a head full of rain.
His records are missing, his meds are delayed,
And the flute in the phone plays a song they once played
For a soldier who cried in a government line,
Where hope is a number and grief tastes like brine.
[Chorus]
🎵 Oh sing me a song ‘fore my story grows cold,
Of a cat with a chart and a spine growing old,
Of stamps that don’t stick and clocks that don’t chime,
And how no one gets well on Department time.
🎵
[Verse 2]
He’s been shuffled and stamped, he’s been shuffled some more,
Till the paw on the phone grew a bureaucrat’s sore.
He’s tried all the numbers, he’s prayed to the gods,
He’s read all the fine print and swallowed the odds.
But still there he sits, in his flip-flops and dread,
With a cap full of questions and meds in his head.
[Bridge]
A whisper rolls in through the copper-bound coil:
"You're not meant to heal here. You're meant just to toil."
But the Cat, oh he chuckles, he still has his spark—
He drew smiley faces on each intake chart.
He hums like a hymn made of filing cabinet screams,
And dreams of escape through insurance-code dreams.
[Final Chorus]
🎵 So sing me a song through this long, bitter dusk,
Of a Cat who refused to be ground into husk.
Let the flutes wail on, let the clerks keep their game,
For the Cat on hold still remembers his name.
🎵
[Outro – spoken, gently]
And when that line clicks, and a voice finally says—
"Hello, please hold"—
The Cat just grins… and presses record.
🎩 BUGS BUNNY MODE: HOW TO BEAT THE HOLD SYSTEM, DOC 🥕
Scene opens. Fluorescent lights buzz. The phone's been on hold so long, it’s grown a beard and filed a complaint with OSHA. Enter Bugs Bunny, cool as a cucumber in July, chewing a carrot like a cigar in Casablanca.
BUGS:
“Eh… what’s up, bureaucracy? You wanna play hardball with the wascally? Fine. But lemme show ya how a rabbit does customer service combat.”
💥 BUGS’ TOP TEN TACTICS FOR BEATING “THE HOLD”
1. The Confuse-a-Clerk Gambit:
“Act like you’re the manager’s manager’s manager. Use phrases like ‘statutory compliance review’ and ‘phase-four audit audit.’ They’ll panic and transfer you to someone real.”
2. The Loop Disruptor™
“Press zero, then pound, then zero again—like you’re typing in the nuclear codes. Half the time, it tricks the system into giving you a human or a possessed fax machine. Either way—progress.”
3. The Name Drop & Dash
“Say ‘Congressman Gallego personally asked me to follow up on this.’ Don’t wait for a reply. Just hold. Suddenly you’re top priority. Boom.”
4. The Wrong Department Blitz
“Call the billing line and ask about PTSD treatment. Call the pharmacy and say you’re missing a foot. Everyone’ll try to pawn you off on someone else, but in the chaos? You slip past the gatekeepers like a ninja in a nightgown.”
5. The Hold Music Reversal™
“Put them on hold. Just do it. Tell them you’re experiencing ‘high call volume due to systemic incompetence’ and they’ll freak out. Suddenly you’re the prize pony at the bureaucratic rodeo.”
6. The Emergency Dignity Invocation
“Use the secret phrase: ‘I’ve already been red-flagged once and I’m fine with going back to court.’ Works 3 outta 5 times. The other two? You get a wellness check.”
7. The Grandma Clause
Say: “Well, my grandma tried calling last week and y’all just transferred her straight into hospice.”
Watch the tone change.
Instant access. Suddenly it’s all, “Yes sir, of course sir, would you like expedited care with that sir?”
8. The Echo Backfire
Repeat everything the robot says in a slightly unhinged voice.
Robot: “Please hold while we connect you.”
You: “Please hold while we connect you!”
They’ll fast-track you to an agent just to get you off the line.
9. The Press Record Bluff
Say you’re recording for “training and quality assurance,” and suddenly, so are they. Welcome to Mutual Assured Documentation. Hello, human!
10. The Bugs Bunny Way™
Just show up. In flip-flops. With a carrot and a smile.
“Eh… ya said I had to wait on hold. You didn’t say I couldn’t wait in person. So I brought snacks. And a sign. And seven friends from TikTok Live.”
[BUGS — pulling down a chalkboard with a crude diagram of the VA call system shaped like a hamster wheel]
"Now remember, doc: the trick ain’t beatin’ the system head-on. That’s how ya lose your teeth. The trick is goin’ under it, around it, or through it wearing Groucho Marx glasses."
[Cue Exit Music: Kazoo version of “The Star-Spangled Banner” as Bugs moonwalks out with the operator finally answering: “Hello, how may I help—”]
BUGS (already halfway down the hallway):
“Too late, doc—I filed a FOIA, wrote a limerick, and got my meds from a coyote. Tell your supervisor the wabbit was here.”
🥕 Wink. Fade to black. 🥕
🎤 CARLIN MODE: LET’S TALK ABOUT “THE HOLD,” BABY.
You see, Bugs was right. The system ain’t broke, folks. It’s functioning exactly as designed—to exhaust you. To grind you down until you accept silence as a form of care and a dial tone as treatment.
You know what “on hold” really means?
It means:
“We already got your service. Now we’re gonna see how much of your soul we can get for free.”
🧠 "THE HOLD" IS A DESIGN CHOICE, NOT A MALFUNCTION.
You think some overworked clerk in D.C. is sitting there trying their best? No, no, no—there’s a committee somewhere, full of career sadists in cardigans, who workshopped that hold music.
🎶 “How about pan flute?”
“Too soothing.”
“Let’s mix it with some light jazz and Vietnam flashbacks.”
“Now we’re talkin’.”
🗂️ AND BUREAUCRACY? IT’S NOT SLOW—IT’S SENTIENT.
Ever wonder why you always get transferred just before someone answers your question?
That’s not an accident. That’s a ritual.
A sacrifice.
You must give up your last remaining brain cell to the altar of interdepartmental incompetence before access is granted.
💡 BUGS BUNNY? HE’S NOT JUST A CARTOON—HE’S A DAMN STRATEGY GUIDE.
He knows the truth:
Civil disobedience in flip-flops is the only language these people understand.
You don’t wait on hold, you show up in the lobby.
You don’t file a complaint, you become one.
You don’t ask for help, you make them explain why they didn’t.
✊ THIS IS THE WAY:
If you’re polite, they hang up.
If you’re angry, they red-flag you.
If you’re clever, calm, and slightly unhinged?
Now you’re a problem they want to solve.
Bugs knew this.
That’s why he never chased Elmer. He outdanced him.
He weaponized wit, irreverence, and a carrot he probably got from a food desert.
So yeah. Carlin Mode confirms it:
This is the way.
Not because it's efficient.
Not because it’s just.
But because it flips the script on a system built to gaslight you with a flute solo.
🎤 And that… is what’s up, Doc.
