Thursday, April 28, 2016

Oh, those shitty little gob knobblers

Well, the motherfuckers strike again. Tonight.

Firstly, what am I doing? Am I, little ole' me, such a threat as to warrant all this attention? I'm not gesturing, or articulating, or being overt in any way. Is it the mere sight of my imposing physical existence, all 5' 7" and 150 lbs of me which advertises the imminent threat which triggers the 'drive-by' response in otherwise most likely normal kids with probably mostly positive morals?

Is it that I'm such an ubiquitous night-time presence? That such a teensy little man such as myself should get away with seizing the streets of Denton during the small hours, every night, with such impunity? Is it that I can lay claim to both the sidewalk AND the road when absolutely nobody else is using them? What, is it because I'm not bound by a speed limit? Or that I'm always on my phone in the school zones? Is it my prehensile hair? It's my prehensile hair, isn't it?

Whatever the specific reason, it must be because I represent a threat of some kind. A threat, or a disagreeance. Yeah, I said disagreeance.

And I know who it is that I'm threatening, or in a state of disagree dance with, too. I have a good idea, anyway. It's the young, male college freshman frat kid and/or good ole' country boy that drives the late model F150 and/or the Ram Charger and wears the popped collars and/or the brush poppers and uses way too much mousse, if this were the 80's. It's never the gangbangers, or the gutterpunks, or the hipsters, or the middle aged guys wearing the casual dress pants, or the working class Mexicans, or the homeless folks (who vary extremely widely in age), or the Pakistanis or the Chinese or the Indians or the Koreans or the Japanese or the cute girlies or the beautiful women or the Old Timers, or the stoners, junkies and freaks, or the little old ladies crossing the street, or the little kids who just haven't learned the hard lesson yet that forces upon us the requirement of having to give a flying fuck about everyday bullshit... it's not even the regular college kid who comes into the store and asks for the Camel Crush with headphones on.

It's entirely another type of kid. That is, they who consistently choose to insert themselves into my timeline in this specific manner. I'm sorry, but this is the word for who and what they are to me.

The motherfuckers.

That's them. That's my special name for them. I'm being honest when I say that I didn't consciously make the decision to call them that... and that it's a relatively new moniker. What it is, is that it's just the label that finally happened to them because they happened to me. What?
They feel threatened by me, because... somehow, somewhen, I must have demonstrated a serious potential to do some serious damage. Right? What other reason could there be? I mean, have I really pissed off that many customers that I've earned an entire demographics worth of enemies?  Schneriously??

So, yeah. That happened again tonight, and I of course went into Full Charge, Forward Volume, Knives Up, Wake Out The Neighborhood Mode, and as always the MF'ers drove away... fah fah away... as fast as they could, leaving me there and holding a big bag of pissed off.
Whatever. That happened two hours ago, so I ain't even really pissed off anymore. I do wish though, for once, that the mother f'ers would actually stop and back up. I don't care if I get curb stomped. I just want to tell 'em that wouldn't their mothers be proud.

Tuesday, April 26, 2016

Two kindsa people

People love to make a mess at the slurpee machine. That's gotta be the reason for it, right? For why it always looks like a snowman exploded in a food coloring factory over there? They do it for the pure joy of it. How lovely and nice! And it has to be for that reason, because otherwise, it would be because most people are lazy, inconsiderate, self-absorbed slobs.

I've worked here at the Smelvenelven for a lotta years and I've seen a lotta shenanigans perpetrated, and as a result of having witnessed so much constant shenaniganizing, I'm pretty dadgum sure that along the way I've discovered something pretty fundamental about people.

What it comes down to is this... before anything else, before you can describe people in any other way, there's a basic thing that comes before everything else. A foundation out of which all shenanigans get pulled. You wanna know what it is? Well, I'll tell ya. So here it is.

The thing is see, is that people come in two distinct flavors - those who knock on the bathroom door, and those who just barge right in. Do you see what I'm getting at? How that says the broadest, most fundamental thing about a persons mindset, and how everything he or she does, every behavior, will be expressed with that mindset at the root? D'ya GET IT?

It's like this. There are people who's natural inclination is to consider first how their actions might affect others, and there are those who's natural inclination is to think primarily of themselves, and who need to be reminded regularly that they do, in fact, share the world with other people.

The butter aisle

After work the other night I walked to wallyworld to purchase some conveniently packaged, life bestowing protein and carbohydrates. I had a drink or 3.14 beforehand of course, because doing that makes walking easier. More ENDURABLE and more INTERESTING, and less SHITTY.

When I got to the wallywhirle, I headed for the butter aisle, and as I was zeroing in on the specific butter that I wanted, and drawing a bead on it, I saw a young, pretty, by herself lady-woman-girl (I notice these things) vectoring in on the same butter. And, just as I imperceptibly crooked my noggin a little to acknowledge the new traffic in the butter aisle, the young-pretty-lady-that-probably-wanted-some-butter did an abrupt 90 degree turn away from the butter and toward the chicken.

Huh.

Do you think that maybe she just up and suddenly changed her mind about the butter and realized that it was chicken that she needed all along? No? Neither do I. I think that she was scared of me, and that she wanted to avoid an almost-close type of situation. Hell, it ain't a big deal... it happens all the time, and I mean All The Time. I just don't ever get used to it, is all. So what happened next was, these here words pooped out of my mouth...

"Sorry, I just need some butter and I'll be out of your way in half a second, sorry... I'm already gone, the butter sections all yours."

See what I mean about me being an inexcusable asshole? I can't help it. Actually, I probably could help it, but it would take practice and whatever. Anyway. So after converging with the butter margarine thing... whatever it was that I thought I needed. That thing. After I finally got there, I grabbed one of 'em and then wheeled my punk ass over to the egg section, feeling just a little discombobulated about the butter lady thing that had just happened.

Once I got to the egg section, I grabbed a six-pack of eggs (ain't it cool that eggs come in six-packs?) and opened it, so as to inspect it for cracks and greeblies, and as I was doing that, I was saying out loud in a conversational tone, just to myself, see? I was saying to myself, out loud...

"See, I'm a normal person too, like you. I know, I know... I'm a scary looking sumbitch, but I need eggs that ain't cracked, just like everybody else. I can't voodoo a cracked egg, you know."

And just as I finished saying that at full volume, thinking that I was relatively alone in the egg section, well, there was the butter lady from before, like... two feet away. Right there, see? RIGHT THERE!

Fuck.

You think I'm making this up? Nope. My life is a continuous, poorly written horror sit-com sci-fi wanna be dramatic series, which is always always always in the process and on the verge of being, but not quite, cancelled. And nobody watches it anyway.

INEXCUSABLE INFORMATION

CRITICAL UPDATE
PLEASE READ CAREFULLY

Today I made a discovery of multi-dimensional proportions and unparalleled magnitude. After several minutes of thoughtful contemplation, I have now realized that the widespread dissemination of this information could potentially lead to a paradigm shift of unprecedented scale, the repercussions of which would absolutely, likely be devastating to something or another... probably global civilization. Plus you, personally. Therefore, I strongly feel that my initial reticence toward unleashing this potential Planet Buster upon The Planet is thoroughly justified.

However...

If there's one thing I absolutely know that I have zero chance of misunderstanding about my own understanding of myself, plus the public, which includes myself, is that that misunderstanding would necessarily be the understanding of the public demand for the truth, and by 'the public', I mean of course, you, dear reader, and also myself. We demand the truth, don't we? We know we do. Allow us to demonstrate...

Try to think of a word that rhymes with truth that doesn't sound silly when spoken out loud, over and over.

See? You demand the truth, and nothing but the truth will do of course, and I know this about you. Now, I don't wanna be a party poop, but this next part pretty much has to come next.

It all started with a dream I had several months ago. In this dream I was at work, checking a never-ending line of customers. After each customer, I'd crumple up the receipt and toss it into the wastepaper basket behind me, but every time, it would miss and land on the floor or under the counter. This continued for an interminable amount of dream-time, until the mountain behind me finally collapsed upon my head and back, suffocating me and crushing me underneath an avalanche of used receipt paper.

Ever since then, and until just a few hours ago, I've been living that nightmare at work each day, hundreds of times a day, with my ever mounting anxiety continuing to mount, like that ever mounting mountain of receipts... and like that mountain, I fully expected my sanity to collapse very soon, instantly transforming me into a pile of wet, gibbering idiot.

Today my fears were finally realized, as just a few hours ago I was blithely tossing a crumpled up piece of receipt paper directly through the unoccupied space immediately to the left of the wastepaper basket. At that moment my sanity choose to finally and unexpectedly collapse, just like I knew it would, and for a few seconds I really was a pile of wet, gibbering idiot.

However... I wasn't just any idiot, wet or gibbering or otherwise. I was an idiot savant! Oh, the memory of such glorious terror, of knowing the sheer slobbering genius of retarded brilliance, of witnessing the pristine potential of an unfettered moron, of experiencing the animalistic, bowel evacuating horror of undiminished, soul crushing understanding, and at the same time, fully realizing that it was the spasming shittle of pure genius which was violently evacuating my nether regions!

What seemed like several seconds of that was in actuality only a couple of seconds, and afterward, and to my own chagrin, I emerged from that temporary fugue state, slack-jawed and drooling, to the baffled regard of a customer who was waiting patiently for his receipt... the very receipt which, only seconds before, had elicited the cavalcade of synaptic effluvium from my embradtled brain. I told the customer that there wasn't no way that I was gonna dig around for that stupid piece of receipt paper, and that he couldn't make me do it either, and after that I lay me down to sleep.

Now comes the piebaldism. The moment of revelation. Here goes. What it was that I realized today, Rosario, was that those bunched up and crumpled little bits and pieces of receipt paper aren't aerodynamic, AT ALL. In fact, they're the exact opposite of aerodynamic, so that when you toss 'em, the result is just barely, but not quite, pure chaos. They just do whatever and go wherever, which is usually but also always NOT where or what you wanted them to go or do.

Finally, everybody knows...

Don't you feel dumb and sleepy now. Here comes the end.

Monday, April 25, 2016

A dream - old mixed with the... less old

I'm living in Pittsburg again and driving home from class on Dukes Chapel Road. I'm almost to the house, and as I'm pulling into the driveway, I can see that a note has been stuck to the front door. I step onto the porch, and upon approaching the door, I discover that it's not just one note, but several. A stack of old, familiar love notes that I'd written to someone once, and had long since forgotten about.

I pull them off of the door and go inside. As I'm flipping through them, my heart starts to thump in my chest as I realize that the reverse sides of all the notes have new writing on them. The handwriting is unfamiliar though, and as I try to focus on it, it gets blurry and I can't read it.

For a moment I'm confused by the unfamiliar handwriting, and I can't remember who it was that should be making my heart go pitter-patter like this. At first I think that it's Erica, since I'm at the old house on Dukes Chapel Road, but then I realize that over twenty years have gone since then.

I pass by the door to my bedroom several times as I'm puttering about the house, squinting at the old notes with the new handwriting. Finally I look up to see that my bedroom door is open just a crack, and that a tall sliver of yellow light is shining where the edge of the door meets the frame. I'm suddenly very afraid to open that door, because I know that I didn't leave the light on, and I'm sure that I had closed it earlier.

Then the door opens, and Leah is standing there. She's dressed in the same clothes that she was wearing when I laid eyes on her for the first time... a brown, floor length skirt decorated with flowers and paisleys and a thin, dark green button up sweater with long sleeves and a pair of sandal shoes, with her hair pulled back into a kind of bunched up pony tail.

The surprise and the sudden realization feels like a solid blow to my midsection, and I fall backwards and hit the wooden floor, hard. As I'm sitting there on my ass, stunned, I look up and I can see Leah's silhouetted form standing in the doorway, surrounded by a nimbus of light emanating from the room behind her. I raise my forearm in an attempt to shield my eyes from the bright, disorienting glare.

Then she takes a step toward me and leans forward, effectively blocking the light, and I can see her face clearly as she smiles and reaches for my hand to help me to my feet.