Rack and ruin, smiting and wrath, horror upon horror to the goblins, micro-gremlins and scatterbrained millennial “thinkers” that currently operate Amazon.com, a company which I now truly believe to be a devious tentacular weapon of the Illuminati (or whatever trendy cabal so many crazy-ass conspiracy theorists are barking about incessantly these days.)

Get THIS shit:

I have been an Amazon customer since its inception in the late 1990s, and a Prime Member since Prime began priming everyone’s proverbial pump. Across two states and–gee, let’s see–SIX FUCKING HOMES (I buy and flip property for kicks) I have used the same, super-secret beloved password for my Amazon account for over TEN YEARS. Never had to change it. Never had to alter a digit.

I recently sold my latest home and inhabited another in my beloved California woodlands, away from the hustling, bustling, mouth-breathing mediocrity of human civilization.

Settled and recovered from the typical stress of a major “relocation event,” I sat down yesterday with my iPad to undertake a bit of leisurely online shopping via that monolithic monstrosity named after the snaking, insidious South American river where people like me are routinely eaten by crocodiles or shot by bandits. I entered my email address and then my cherished password.

WE’RE SORRY. BUT WE DETECT THAT YOU ARE ATTEMPTING TO ACCESS THIS ACCOUNT FROM A NEW LOCATION OR A NEW DEVICE. IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO PROCEED FURTHER, YOU MUST VERIFY IT’S YOU BY PHONE OR VIA EMAIL CODE. CLICK BELOW IF YOU WISH AMAZON TO SEND YOU A NEW VERIFICATION CODE FOR THIS DEVICE OR LOCATION. (I paraphrase, but pretty goddamned accurately.)

WTF? New location, sure, but hardly a new device.

Eager to get on with things, I clicked the “verify by email” option. I’n not going to go fetch my phone. Who wants to mess with texts from another, separate goddamned contraption or brook possible entanglements featuring befuddled “help center” employees in Mumbai? Not I, baby. Not I.

After a genuine pain-in-the-ass side-trip, toggling to access my Microsoft account to retrieve THE CODE, I toggle back and enter the friggin’ set of random numbers on my Amazon page and am able to shop accordingly.

I roll my eyes, but figure THE CODE was needed for the purposes of devoted, super, Super-DUPER overprotection and “Safe Space Satisfaction” concerns that some rail-thin 25 year-old from Silicon Valley with an incongruous lumberjack beard and nerd glasses (her name is “Cynthia”) convinced “the team” to implement in order to make things extra ironclad for Amazon’s longtime customers.

Today, I wanted to return something via Amazon. Always been such an easy and convenient benefit, the returning-process, especially with Prime membership. I go to my Amazon page and am prompted to enter my password, as usual. My intimate, well-remembered password, so dear to one’s existential wellbeing.

THE PASSWORD IS INCORRECT.

Okay, maybe I typed it incorrectly, which never happens because I’ve been typing the damned thing for over a decade of constant commerce, but you never know. I’m human. I’m flawed.

I enter it again, more carefully.

THE PASSWORD IS INCORRECT.

And again.

THE PASSWORD IS INCORRECT.

Then it dawns on me. Those bastards.

The meaningless “verification code” they demanded I use from the previous day has now become my new password!

By now, I’m steaming hot and drooling venom like an atrax robustus spider in attack stance.

Off I toggle to my Microsoft account to dig up that idiot clutch of code-numbers, find them, then enter them at Amazon as my password. Presto. They work.

I’m so ticked off that my longtime password is no longer apparently valid, that I want to kick someone, but no one’s around except the cat and she’s just too damned lovable to kick. Damn her eternally.

I return my item and arrive at the stage on Amazon wherein one can print a return label or email a label. Neither of the options works when I click.

Okay. Maybe my iPad is acting up a bit. Apple’s products have been declining in quality and increasing in convoluted inanity, these past several years.

I decided I’d just go get my Macbook Air, access Amazon, and print the mofo label using that machine.

WE’RE SORRY. BUT WE DETECT THAT YOU ARE ATTEMPTING TO ACCESS THIS ACCOUNT FROM A NEW LOCATION OR A NEW DEVICE. IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO PROCEED FURTHER, YOU MUST VERIFY IT’S YOU BY PHONE OR VIA EMAIL CODE. CLICK BELOW IF YOU WISH AMAZON TO SEND YOU A NEW VERIFICATION CODE FOR THIS DEVICE OR LOCATION.

I was now forced to secure TWO different jumbled-up hogshit numerical CODE passwords for the separate devices in my ownership. AND THE SAME APPLIES TO MY iPHONE. That’s three new passwords I have to remember and access for a trio of convenient creations that are supposed to make my life-experience easier, speedier, and more devil-may-care.

Now, I want to throw all of these dastardly Hell-whizbangs out the window and live in a cave, eating acorns, pulling deer ticks out of my ass-crack, and wearing mud for clothes, like the local Indian tribes did around here 300 years ago.

But I may not survive long enough to enjoy such a simple existence.

Any minute now, I expect an Amazon Drone to buzz its way up to my remote woodland aerie, cut a 6 x 6 hole in the wall with a searing blue laser-beam, throw me down on the bed and perform a full colonoscopy and brain scan, only to fly away without so much as a kiss or a cuddle.

But there will be a note left on the bedside table. You can bet on that. It’ll read:

I’M SORRY TO LEAVE SO SUDDENLY, BUT IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO EXPERIENCE THIS THOROUGH EXAMINATION AND SOUL-GUTTING INTRUSION ONCE AGAIN, PLEASE GO TO YOUR AMAZON PAGE ON ANY DEVICE AND FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS TO OBTAIN A VERIFICATION CODE. WE NEED TO KNOW IT’S YOU.

Keep Shopping,

Jeff Bezos