All right, kids, I don’t have much time tonight. It’s been a long day, and I’ve got another one tomorrow. But I just wanted to tell you about some things. I woke up this morning, tired. Oh so tired, one of those where it feels like you just barely closed your eyes and then it’s time to get up. My princess made my coffee, though, so I staggered into the kitchen and poured a giant plastic cup full of it.
I dumped it down my throat while I contemplated the words on the side. “Palace Theatre,” they said. “Canadian, Texas,” they said. Usually I understand what these words mean. This morning, I stared at them dumbly until it was time to go.
It was sprinkling a little as we dashed out to the car, and by the time I dropped my princess off, it looked like it was going to start pouring at any second. One thing about me, I really like gray days, and I despise the sun. Like this: “But Ray, if there was no sun, there would only be darkness. There would be no warmth, and everything on the planet would die.” And I go, “Yeah, but I feel it’s a pretty even trade.”
Because, frankly, I’m not sure keeping things living on this planet is such a good idea anymore. But we’ll get to that.
Anyways, so by the time I got back home, I was feeling more awake, and I was really enjoying the overcast sky. It started pouring not long after that, and that’s when I really started enjoying myself.
An hour later, it’s time to go to work, and that’s when I realize that my umbrella is out in my car. And this isn’t any fooling-around rain, either. This is heavy rain, it’s already flooding all kinds of places around Austin, and my umbrella is in my car. Lucky for me, I’m parked close. I’m exposed for about three seconds, and by the time I get the car door closed, I’ve got water dripping from every square inch of my body. Still, though, it’s not so bad. I’ve actually even left early so that I can stop by McDonald’s for a delicious Sausage McMuffin (hold the weird egg thing). By the time I get to the top of my hill, I realize that this is no longer an option. Austin traffic is hellish and stupid on a good day. When you add something like nature, it just gets worse. Break it down S.A>T.-style, “Driving ability is to Austin drivers as intelligence is to an average customer.” That means people can’t drive for shit here, and customers are stupid-asses.
So no breakfast. I get to work, it’s still pouring. I perform all my opening duties, and as soon as the doors open, all these waterlogged jackasses immediately dump in directly to the customer service desk.
And this is where it all went bad.
I used to work with this girl, she would ask anything, even if she already knew the answer. I think it was because she talked so much that her mouth actually worked better than her brain. I used to always tell her, “Why think when you can just ask, right?”
I’m tired of people, man. They can’t think for themselves, it’s like they aren’t even trying. And it seems like they want to train a whole new generation to do the same thing. I’m sure most of you have heard about the Grand Theft Auto video game. What that amounts to is all these older grown-ups protesting a game that is actually made for younger grown-ups, because it might screw up the kids. You know what I’ve noticed? The younger adults, they actually monitor their kids a little. Not much, but a little. With everyone from Eminem to game designers to game players to movie makers talking about how it’s about time that parents actually got off their asses and did their own parenting, it seems to sort of be working, just a little. The world is not your babysitter, so piss off! If you can’t raise your kids without the help of everyone else on the planet, kill yourself, okay? Because that way you’ll at least be out of our hair while we raise your bastard kid.
So yeah, I hate people a little right now. All people in general, and the older generations to be specific.
I’ve always been puzzled by the generation gap, and by the morons on the other side of it. Like this: you have these old people, they’re talking about how kids these days, blah blah blah, about how the entire place is heading to hell in a hand basket. These are the guys that polluted the entire world, man. They threw garbage out of their vehicles, they dumped garbage in the oceans, they ruined the air. And now they’re roaming around in an age that they don’t understand, bitching and moaning, and they’re still screwing everything up.
This guy came in the other day with a printer. He put it on the counter and tossed some papers and shit beside it. “I was supposed to get a rebate, and I didn’t. I want to return this.” You can’t return printers after 14 days, it says it right there on the receipt.
I work in customer service, though, which technically means that it is my job to make the customer happy. I begin to tell him that he was supposed to send in the UPC barcode with his rebate form—it’s right here on the form, and besides, most three-year-olds know that you have to send in the barcode with a rebate. I tell him that right here is a phone number he can call and-
“I’m not calling any goddam phone number! I returning this goddam printer! I’m not leaving until I get my fucking money back!” This is the old man screaming. This is the old man throwing a temper tantrum like a foul-mouthed infant. This is an old man gone full circle in life, but everyone who should be spanking him for his behavior is already worm-food, and I can only hope that he’ll be following them soon.
I wanted to just call the cops—you can do that if a customer is getting out of hand—but my manager wouldn’t let me. Instead, she gave him his money! Look, everyone and admire the backbone! I would have burned the store down with everyone in it before making that decision. He was wrong, and he was a child, and he made me ashamed to be of the same species. I almost threw up being near him, that’s how despicable I found him. I’m not exaggerating, either.
My manger rolled right over, though, because they train you good in manger brainwash class to be a complete whore to the public: customer yells, you bend over, pull down your pants, and start talking dirty.
My manager left, I started making the adjustments on his ticket so that he could get his money, and he starts trying to talk to me. I looked up and said, “Don’t talk to me like we’re friends. You didn’t do the right thing here.” I wanted to say so much more, but I bit my tongue.
People like that, they’ve been ruining the world for too long. Whatever ailments come and take them, they don’t come fast enough. You know why people die of old age? Because I’m not allowed to kill them.
I have crossed a line. Working in customer service might have been good for me at one point. Maybe I needed to learn a little about humanity, maybe I needed to learn what it was like on the Polo-shirt side of the counter. But I’m not learning anything from it now, except that people are worse than I thought. Every day, it’s just a new example of how childish, how selfish, and how horrible people are.
But that’s rather harsh, and I don’t want to end on that note. Click this link.
See, don’t you feel better now? I know I do.
I’m trying to think of a quick happy topic to talk about before bed, but nothing is coming to mind. I had the new chicken fries from Burger King the other day. As disgusting as that sounds, they’re actually pretty tasty. They look pretty suspicious, though, so if you’re conscientious at all about what you dump in your body, you should probably skip the chicken fries. Plus, the name leaves a lot to be desired.
There are these things that look like chicken nuggets, and they’re called calf fries. These are cow balls. People in the know will tell you that, no, cows aren't the ones with balls, but whatever. Bull, calf, steer, whatever, it all amounts to the same thing—you’re eating cow balls. Testicles.
They don’t have them at Burger King, thank goodness, but I grew up in Texas, where the calf fries were a pretty common dish. Not for me, though. I tried it, because I’ll try just about anything once. Cow balls didn’t taste good to me, though. It tasted like the color grayish brown would taste, in my opinion. Musty and skank and not to be tasted.
They’re also known as Mountain Oysters, by the way. I don’t get that one at all. I guess it’s because people that run around eating testicles are a pretty screwed up group. I mean, come on man: once you have a mouth full of bull nuts, does it really matter what you’re calling it? In my opinion, no.
Anyways, my point is, the Burger King should have really thought about coming up with a different name. I would have called them chicken lines, maybe. Or perhaps, deliciousticks. Get it? Like a combination of delicious and sticks. For the commercial, you could have a little bitty ninja using them as nun chucks, and then maybe there would be this little heavy metal band made up of rockin’ out kittens, and the drummer would be using the deliciousticks as drum sticks. And the voice-over would go, “The preferred sticks of ninjas and kittens.” Because at that point, you’re really covering the shit out of pretty much any demographic. And then have a robot reading poetry to some weird Goth chick. About deliciousticks.
.
.
So I had yet another CD recommended to me. My friends are always telling me to check this out, check that out. I always do, too, because I’m easy as hell to influence, and I really just live to surf the next wave of popularity. The thing about me is, I don’t like good music. It’s something I’ve had to come to terms with. It’s not a tragic case—I mean, I’m not the asshole responsible for Britney Spears having a career or anything. But I realize that I like a certain amount of crap music. Linkin Park? Kind of dig it. Eminem? I own every album. REM, yep. For Pete’s sake, man, I bought a Limp Bizkit Cd once! I have problems, man, I admit it. You know what song I really like right now? “The Whistle Song” by P J Olsson. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you can download it here.
It was in a Starburst commercial once. I checked out some of this guy’s stuff on Amazon, too, and kind of liked it. I don’t know if that’s a good sign or a bad sign, and I don’t really care.
That whistle song, I haven’t really listened to the words yet, but I like the parts I’ve paid attention to. I just tried to look up the lyrics online, and every site I saw was different. The only thing I discovered was that no one on the world wide web can spell the word “angels.”
Yeah, I can see angles way up in the sky, too, you jackasses.
I’ve also been listening to a lot of Paul Okenfold lately. I like what I’ve heard, but this isn’t supposed to be a music review, is it?
I like toast, too, with bacon. Or with Cocoa Krispies. Not Cocoa Pebbles, though, because those suck. They get all soggy real fast, and when it gets soggy, it always reminds me of eating fish poop. Not that I've ever eaten fish poop. Man, did that ever come out sounding all wrong and overly-defensive. Here's the story:
When I was a little kid, my sister came up while I was just finishing off a bowl of Cocoa Pebbles, and she’s like, “Ew! Fish poop!” Scarred me for life. Also, I used to like tuna fish, until she told me that they swim around and they eat their own poop. “And then you eat it when you eat the tuna fish.” Tuna fish makes me vomit now.
It’s weird, because I’m pretty sure I could rip out a beating human heart and finish it off in about three bites, but I can’t fathom the idea of eating a fish that eats it’s own poop. Because a tuna fish is a filthy animal. It’d have to be ten times more charmin’ than that Nemo motha fucka.
All right, so we’ve covered pretty much everything we needed to, right? Old people suck, customers suck, Burger King rocks, we shouldn’t eat fish or testicles, we can see angles in the sky, bacon tastes good…pork chops taste good.
Two Pulp Fiction references in two paragraphs, it must be bedtime.
Night, li’l homies.
|