Ever notice how it's the little things in life that amuse us so much? More to the point, ever notice how it's the silly little idiocies in life that amuse us more than anything else? Well, this is not as much ''the little blog that could'' as it is ''the blog that enjoys going up the down escalator in your local mall.'' Will it have anything of real importance? No, probably not. But enjoy the ride never the less!

 
"Whee-hah, that one blowed up real good!"

If you're reading this, then you know I survived Boxing Day. In all honesty, when I dragged my sorry ass out of bed at an ungodly hour in the morning (by my definition, any hour of the morning is ungodly when the sun has not yet risen, but you have), I was expecting Boxing Day to look more like Judgement Day. I had painful visions of Terminator endoskeletons trying to dress up like customers and mow down the kiosk.

And yet, I'm almost disappointed to say that there was no need to make use of the Customer Appreciation Pancake Maker yesterday. That was the most peculiar thing about Boxing Day: the whole mall threw its doors wide open all day with big sales...and not a lot of people came.

Certainly we made steady sales throughout the day, but the volume was probably half of what I was told to fear. In a lot of ways, I've spent the last two weeks dreading what amounted to nothing. I wish I had known this prior; I would have rather liked to not waste all that perfectly good dread. In the stead I could have dreaded something like lichen, or bikini waxes.

And yet, the horror I was anticipating was not wholly wasted. I did make the unpleasant discovery (probably due to exhaustion and stress) that morning that Corn Flakes taste the same an hour later coming up as they did going down. Blind luck that one of the other kiosk staffers arrived for her shift when she did; I made a beeline for the nearest bathroom, and discovered that Gerber might be able to score big with a pureed version of breakfast cereals. The form may be liquified, but the taste marches on.

Disgusting anecdotes aside, I am pleased that Phase Two of Operation: Get This Freakin' Season Over & Done With has come to an end. So has the season, for that matter. Things can now quiet down. Is it peculiar for me to look forward so much to Christmas just so it can be finished?

In other news, some of you are now doubt wondering about the SCTV reference found in the title of this particular bit of nowhere. It all relates to Boxing Day evening, where despite my physical ailments, Mel was suffering more than I was. So I tried my best to cheer her up by doing many things: steaming rice for her, throwing a movie in, bundling her up in a nice, warm afghan, reading Neil Gaiman's The Wolves In The Walls to her, and exploding a chocolate milkshake for her.

Mel adds here that if my intent was to have made her laugh, I succeeded. She also adds that if my intent was to get drops of chocolate milkshake all over the ceiling, then I also succeeded. In my defence, when your wife tells you (after you've removed the lid of the blender's pitcher) that the milkshake could use a little more blending, and forgets to add that you should put the lid back on first, it's not entirely your fault.

(Mel's Note: "Excuse me, it's common sense!")

And so, as Mel sits next to me, and plucks my shoulder hair with a pair of tweezers, I leave you with the

Pondering of the Day: if you cross paths with an abandoned, uneaten tunafish sandwich, is it considered unlucky?


posted by Phillip at 6:29 PM

 
Christmas Hours Are...

This little bit of nowhere is closed for the holiday. So go drink your egg nog and demand your figgy pudding and make funky-looking origami animals out of your wrapping paper. I tried to make a swan. It looks like an exploded ladybug instead...

As for tomorrow, if there is any life in me after the hell that will be Boxing Day shopping hours, my rant will probably be short and homoicidal or delusional. Something along the lines of: "Smash...customers evil...all of them...smash....just smash..."

Today's Lesson: a little phone call can go a long way to endearing you in someone else's heart.


posted by Phillip at 7:39 PM

 
Night of the Merry Ho Ho

Well, it's upon us all once more. Let the retailers rejoice, let the people be glad, Christmas Eve has arrived. In my slightly more cynical mindset, the significance of tonight runs more along the lines of, "At last, Phase One of Operation: Get This Freakin' Season Over & Done With is completed."

Incidentally, Phase Two will be over in the next few days, once the Boxing Day crowds are satisfied and placated, shot and sedated. After that...I don't know. The world around me might quiet down for a while. It's a bit of a frightening thought, to suddenly find yourself enjoying some quiet time. I don't think I've seen that since, oh, maybe July or August.

So, in dropping all snarky guises and "Curse you, Red Baron!" cries at what Commercialmas puts the retail industry workers through, I might as well offer this up to everyone: Merry Christmas. May tonight be filled with peace, quiet, and the sounds of either laughter or collective sighs of relief. Especially since tomorrow will be filled with the sounds of shredded wrapping paper, get all that peace while you can.

I plan on sleeping in most of the morning myself. I've bloody well earned it...

And as God is my witness, I swear if I see any of you in my over-crowded mall on Boxing Day, you will be klonged in the face with my Customer Appreciation Pancake Maker.

Today's Lesson: amazingly enough, a season filled with exhaustion, exasperation and incessant homicidal-tendencies-inducing Christmas music still can't entirely kill the serenity needed to enjoy the next day and a bit.




posted by Phillip at 2:24 PM

 
God Is A Bollywood Karaoke Singer

So there we are, Mel & I, sitting pleasantly in our living room watching some of the deleted scenes of A Knight's Tale, when suddenly loud music Bollywood music fills the room. And then as sudden and unexpected as it appears, it vanishes again, like a vision. It does make one wonder if God is indeed as the title of this suggests, or if He has a deranged sense of humour.

As Kevin Smith suggested, God must have a sense of humour; look at the duck-billed playtpus.

But sudden, booming Bollywood voices speaking to us aside, the day is over, I somehow have defied the odds and have energy to continue on through the remainder of the evening. I really have come to loathe the whole Christmas season now--shopping and songs especially--as I now find it more exhausting than exhilarating, and more aggravating than inspiring. I am at least relieved to know that this loathing feels only transient, and so long as I don't spend another Commercialmas in retail, the loathing won't grow to eternal despising.

The last thing I want to do is have Mel shoo me off because I'm ranting a tirade to the grandkids about how much Christmas sucks [insert word I shouldn't be saying in front of grandkids, though senility has gotten the better of me here].

In other news, the mustard incident mentioned in the last little bit of nowhere has now become known as "Mustard Bukkake." Those of you not familiar with Japanese might be best to remain blissful in their ignorance....

Today's Lesson: it is counter-productive to go to a store to buy garland for the Christmas tree that you'd selected the day before, and then completely forget what sort of garland you had been looking at.


posted by Phillip at 4:18 PM

 
Where Everybody Knows Your Nickname, 2.0

It's always good to hang around with friends, especially when it's a day off that can be spent with friends. Not that many days off have been given to me as of late (which could see me being blamed, since I did technically make the work shift's schedules), but it does make me rather viciously savouring the fact that when New Year's rolls around in a few weeks, I'll be calling in the favours everyone else at the kiosk owes me. I'm starting to understand the Maquise de Carabas' joy of collecting debts owed & favours to call in one day, instead of collecting knickknacks of some form or another.

Currently Mel is lounging on a couch watching Iron Chef with Donna (where French Master Chef Sakai is dueling a Buddhist monk for supremacy of Yam recipes); Servo is cooking a meal for happy carnivores; Shady is lounging around with their two cats; and I am sitting here writing about what everyone else is doing. I suddenly feel like Randy Newman.

Friends always make for wonderful sources of entertainment as well as conversation. Servo is the type of guy who will happily walk with me down the path less travelled where deranged writing ideas are concerned (I still maintain that I'd be the Scarecrow if we were an Oz movie, though I guess that would make Servo the L33T Lion), and watching Mel's horrified reactions to the ideas we concoct is quite amusing. It's equally amusing to see which of us fights not to lose bladder control whilst watching 2 hours of Robin Williams live on Broadway.

We also sank a small, plastic Usagi Tsukino action figure into Servo's fishtank. Read into that as Fruedian as you want to.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have meat to consume and Jet Li kicking some Hong Kong butt to enjoy.

Addendum: in other news, tonight has also seen me assaulted by a jar of mustard (thankfully I was wearing black instead of white), and bested by a balcony door. But in my defense of the latter, how was I supposed to know that in order to unlock the bloody thing, you have to push the lock downwards instead up upwards? Yes, yes, insert your favourite Midvale School for the Gifted line here...

Today's Lesson: it was homemade relish in that jar in the fridge after all, not homemade chili sauce. Either way I'm happy I didn't use it for lunch.


posted by Phillip at 4:42 PM

 
"That was Ali BaBanwah and the Punjabi Band..."

Have you ever wanted to sing karaoke to Bollywood's Greatest Hits? Have you ever wanted to hear someone sing karaoke to Bollywood's Greatest Hits? Well, if you were in our apartment right now, that's exactly what you'd be hearing from the next door neighbours. It's Karaoke Saturdays, and enthusiastic words I can't even pronounce let alone spell (though I'm sure most of those words have at least 4-5 syllables) are sounding through the walls.

You'd think that after suffering the incessant prattling of Commercialmas carols all day long at work, hearing this somewhat muted karaokefest would drive me to foaming at the mouth. But oddly enough I'm quite enjoying it. The karaoke music is a welcomed change from season's greetings I'd as soon shove in someone's ear. It's not loud, the songs actually change, and it's curiously effective at enchancing the quiet, relaxed mood I'm in.

In short, I like these neighbours. I think more people should have neighbours like these. May their Karaoke Saturdays be forever blessed.

In other news, Mel and I have the most unique and wonderful relationships. Take this actual conversation we shared a few days ago as we left the mall together...

Me: "Mel, I can't sing with you fondling my crotch like that."

Mel: "That's the point."

Indeed, my wife and saucy wench is like no other. Who else can say to me with a perfectly straight face and menacing voice: "If you pull your groin muscles [by falling on the ice], I'm going to kill you"?

Today's Lesson: there is a time and place for everything. Whispering naughty bits into your wife's ear while standing in a crowded line at Walmart is probably not a good time or place for that.


posted by Phillip at 3:23 PM

 
Elucidean Rage

50 boxes of merchandise sent in from the Head Office.
1 small kiosk.
0 places for anything to sit, let alone walk.

I've never been good with math to begin with, and I believer earlier on in this little bit of nowhere I ranted about the restraining order Calculus and I filed against each other at the end of high school. I'm not ashamed to say that math is been victorious over me in a war of wills; I may be strong, but I have not the stamina to figure out what the inverse cosine of (dx) over (dy) is. You'd be lucky if I dared venture an answer like, "Tuesday?"

Subsequently, it would appear that the Head Office is following mathematical logic of another kind. To make a Lovecraftian reference, they probably checked out the specs for Ryleh and thought that our kiosks would conform nicely to the angles and dimensions. If only some sort of Old One would eat them.

Fifty boxes of merchandise (almost all of which are photo albums) cannot simply be stored out in the mall corridor. We tried. The fire marshall begged to disagree with us. The Customer Appreciation Pancake Maker begged to disagree with him. The first officers arriving on the scene begged to disagree with the pancake maker. And in the end I somehow evaded getting charged with anything.

So the result was that 50 boxes of merchandise (mostly photo albums) sat inside the kiosk, which doesn't have a lot of walking room in it to begin with. The boxes were at least stacked about chest-to-shoulder height on top of each other in a long, single row running the length of the kiosk's interior. So at least there was some form of narrow walking space. It still didn't stop one's chest getting crushed between boxes and the cash drawer whenever you made a transaction on the till.

Though I am considering patenting the concept as part of a slim-fast diet, or ab-cruncher exercise machine.

But at least we were able to start receiving all those pesky boxes, and put the merchandise either on display outside the kiosk, or store it amidst the understock inside the kiosk, yes? Well...that would have truly been a smashingly good idea...had the long row of boxes not been blocking access to most of the cupboards we could have used to store the box's contents in.

Not to mention that while roughly 150 odd photo albums are sitting in some, way, shape or form at our kiosk, the kiosk can only hold 70 comfortably at best. All empty space underneath the kiosk has been pretty much used up to store extra albums. We've been resorting to clearing as much space on the kiosk counter behind the displayed items at the front end as possible to make more room.

I left when only 1/3rd of the boxes had been opened, and 9/10ths of available storage were already used up. I'll have to visit the kiosk again tonight to help close it down--the disadvantage of being short-staffed due to college final exams being on, having part-timers who are college students taking said finals, and me being the top banana of the kiosk and having to actually assume some degree of responsibility.

I am going to be quite...irritable if Head Office sends us another 50 boxes of photo albums tomorrow. And my wife is suddenly Puu-ing behind me.

There she goes again: "Puu! Puu!"

So it's perhaps best that I stop ranting, and distract her from channeling the spirit of Mokona any further.

"Puu!"

Too late.

Today's Lesson: Cthulhu was right by eating them all first and not even bothering to sort any of 'em out, period.


posted by Phillip at 6:06 PM

 
Crack Santa!

Today's been full of firsts.

Now I'm sure by now everyone knows how much I am coming to cheerfully and downright despise Christmas music, after having to suffer a constant chanting of it over the mall PA system for the last month and a half at 8-hour intervals a day.

Well, fate has never been one to lack a sense of humour, or be ever so helpful in rubbing a little salt into one's wound/evolving psychosis. this morning there was the radio on the car ride to work, where the D.J. happily told me that since they were going to be gone after Christmas, I should be requesting and enjoying as many Christmas classic songs as possible. I promptly flipped the radio (and the D.J. on the other side of it) the bird. This is the first time I have ever given the one-finger salute to a voice that doesn't even know me.

And then there was the visit after work to the grocery store to stock up on food. As we passed down the cereal aisle, I spotted a festive cover on a box of Cornflakes. It featured this Norman Rockwellian Santa Clause face wearing a happy Ho-Ho-Ho smile. However, the expression coupled with his open mouth made it appear as if Santa had taken a little too much crack, and was laughing maniacally at me through the box. (Probably because he was delighting in thinking I'd never find the free toy inside, because there was no free toy inside that particular box)

That, or else it was a blow-up Santa doll leering at me. I swear, his mouth had that disturbingly "round" quality about it. I was certainly unnerved by it. That sort of face seems better suited for a box of Porn-Oh's! rather than Cornflakes. (In a similar vein, please don't think about the type of "milk" you'd find with a bowl of that...)

I advise anyone out there to check it out and determine for themselves whether or not this festive Cornflakes box cover is of Crack Santa or Blow-Up Santa. In the meantime, I'm sticking with the much safer and blase Special K boxes. And I'm also waiting to see if someone else thinks that it's a Blow-Up Santa on the box, and protests or sues the Kelloggs Corporation.

Quote of the Day: "You're a sexual pervert, you'll never get reincarnated!" (from a badly-dubbed Hong Kong ganster movie)


posted by Phillip at 6:45 PM

 
Curiouser and Curiouser

It's been a strange day all around. The sort of strange day that makes you half expect to see actual Puchuu bears running about the hallways of your apartment complex. Either that, or the day ending where you watch Batman & Robin or Battlefield Earth and start to think, "Hey, that movie wasn't so bad after all!"

Mel has also just informed me that should a Puchuu infestation be found in our apartment, we're moving.

Anyhoo, the day started out with my alarm clock going off at 10am. This wouldn't have been a problem...but the night before I had set it for 9am. It wasn't even a digital clock either; the alarm hand was still pointing at the big "9" when it was distinctly ten in the morning.

Then the water in the apartment was out. This wasn't really surprising, since the supers had warned us of it the night before, saying that a few water valves had to be replaced, and could we pretty please refrain from speaking to them in words that really shouldn't be repeated in front of small children. They hoped (and I stress, hoped) to have the water on by 9am.

Six and a half hours later...the water was finally back on.

This proved rather problematic for me, since I had to be at work for noon and could not exactly shower. So taking some bottled tapwater we had stored in the fridge the night before, I doused my hair and gelled it up. I still haven't showered yet. I don't think my scent's reached the skunk-funk levels yet...though the skunk never does smell its own scent.

Added to this is that Shady, our beloved Shih-tzu does something auspiciously not Shady, and craps all over the rug. Sure, she has to do this on the rug, the one thing on the floor that needs to be washed, since the rest of the floor is vinyl tiles. Not to mention the night before, she must have dropped 3 pounds worth of the stuff in the snow while I was walking her at night.

But at least I wasn't the one to discover the evidence. Mel was. More specifically, her foot. At the risk of stating the obvious, she wasn't exactly thrilled. Especially since there was no water in the apartment aside from what we had bottled to wash the sole of her foot with.

Then I arrive at work, and discover as I pass some television sets at the Rogers store that Saddam Hussein has been captured. In all honesty, I half expected the U.S. to find him hiding out in Disneyland inside the It's A Small World ride, where he was ethnically cleansing those dancing puppets on one of the continents.

The remainder of the evening has more or less been quiet, a mere echo of what strangeness slid in from underneath our front door this morning. I have yet to encounter a white rabbit with a pocketwatch scurrying about, but if I do, I'll share with you all a wonderful recipe for hassenfeffer.

Today's Lesson: look first, then step on the rug.


posted by Phillip at 8:30 PM

 
Not Quite A Waterfall

Remember that Commercialmas song, the one that proudly boasts, "It's the most wonderful time of the year!" ? It makes me laugh, it really does. Granted it's the sort of half-maniacal, half-you go squish now with our Customer Appreciation Pancake Maker laugh that makes everyone edge away from you, but it's a laugh never the less.

This is the sort of season to be experienced from the purchasing side of the retail counter. I'm not entirely thrilled with working large crowds to interact with and watch so no thefts occur, equally large daily shipments to sort through, 6 work days a week for the next 3 weeks, and the knowledge that on Boxing Day I have to be at the bloody mall at 8:30am.

As always, I'm keen to keep in mind that my entire situation could be worse, but there's nothing that gets one's eyebrow twitching like discovering that someone at the company's head office thought it was a brilliant idea to force our stores & kiosks to open 15 minutes before every other store in the mall, and stay open 15 minutes after every other store in the mall has closed.

They're paying us for the extra half-hour, which helps balance it out somewhat (not to mention that if they didn't, the unions would come down on them like the mighty foot of Godzilla), but I do not appreciate the prospect of having to get up earlier to go to work, and staying even later than usual. Luckily I don't have to take a bus (which would be ridiculous since most of the buses leave right around the time we'd otherwise get everything closed up), but some of my co-workers do.

Remind me to send that brainiac in the head office a Customer Appreciation Pancake Maker, along with the proper instructions on how to use it on oneself. Ideally they'd take the hint and the hit. Of course...that does make me wonder of the victim would become a Darwin Award honourable mention, or else an Upperclass Twit of the Year honourable mention. Or else maybe they're a masochist.

In any case I'm still not impressed.

But I think I've ranted enough about that. Let's rant about something else, shall we? It's time for me to tell a story (and it's not of the fearless crew of the S.S. Minnow), and I only wish it was fiction. Last night, Mel & I were in the parking lot of our apartment complex, having just come back from some happy shopping.

We headed to the elevator, which connects the parking garage with the 4 other floors of the complex. The call button was pushed, and we waited for the elevator cab to glide on down. There was a whirring of air as it descended, and then abruptly stopped on another floor. And there it stayed.

And stayed a little longer.

After a minute or so, Mel & I decided that perhaps taking the stairs would be faster. So we headed for the nearest staircase. We had only taken three or four paces from the elevator doors when the sound of the elevator getting itself back in motion greeted our ears.

So we returned to the elevator...only to have a new sound greet our ears. Splashing. Lots of splashing, as if someone had spilled a drink (and a large drink at that), and it was dripping down through the base of the doors.

Suddenly the elevator doors opened up, revealing a man reeling with a beer bottle in one hand. His other hand was busy zipping up and adjusting his pants. I don't quite think he was expecting to see Mel and I standing there on the other side of those doors. If he wasn't so drunk, the expression on his face would have been priceless. Instead, he staggered out over the puddle he'd left behind and went back upstairs via the stairway.

I don't know if he had in fact spilled his beer all over his pants and the floor, and was merely trying to clean himself up. I wasn't about to test the puddle on the floor either. I'd like to think that in the ideal world, it was at worst spilled beer on that elevator floor.

In any case, Mel and I took the stairs back up to our apartment. We didn't use the elevator for the rest of the night.

Today's Lesson: two words, people. Bladder control.


posted by Phillip at 6:33 PM

 
Territoriality
(or, This Is How Pillow Fights Start)

When I woke up this morning, I discovered that I had roughly a foot of the bed's length all to myself. My feet and knees were dangling over my side of the mattress, as were my elbows, and there was not a thing I could do about it. You see, Mel had curled right up into my back, which also means she had taken up half of my pillow. And as if it had been a conspiracy of sorts, our Shih-tzu, Shady, had curled up right against the back of my knees, which made it near impossible to move with her weight pinning down the sheets.

Moving Shady would have required me to get up and physically pick her up and transplant her furry butt to another part of the bed. However, I was also pinned down by Mel's arm draped over my side and holding onto me rather snugly. So I couldn't move, and was practically teetering over the edge of the bed.

Mel was vastly amused by my recounting of this when she woke up. She also added that I deserved it for always hogging the comforter at nights. In my defense, I don't overly set out to yank the comforter over to my side of the bed; it amazes me just as much as anyone else to discover each morning that most of the comforter is not on Mel, or even on me, but is instead sitting on the floor on my side of the bed.

I'm beginning to wonder if laying claim to all the mattress space is a subtle declaration of war on Mel's part. And what's worse she's managed to coerce our puppy to fight for her side. This can only mean one thing. I don't really know what it is, but I'm sure it's something important....

Today's Lesson: Leonard Nimoy should eat more salsa.

http://web.tampabay.rr.com/lnsemsf/lowres/menu02.htm


posted by Phillip at 8:26 AM

 
A Quarter-Century of Chaos

Apparently, while I'm not as old as dirt in general, I am now older than some layers of strata found in the earth.

Mel is rather enjoying herself as she calls me, "Old man!"

In response, I've had to cup a hand next to ear and mutter, "Eh? What was that? You're not insulting me again, are you? That's the way it is with youngsters today! No respect, and no sense of resposibility. Why in my day [insert walking-naked-in-snow-uphill-both-ways rant], and what were we talking about again?"

Personally, I'm rather amazed I can even recall how old I am. And no, I'm not going senile. This is what happens when you inherit genetics from your parents that make you look about 5 years younger than you really are, and your parents exploit said genetics to get better deals at restaurants.

For the longest time, since my sister and I both looked about 12 or 13 even though we were roughly 15-16 years old, my parents would look at the Kids' Menu at restaurants and see if there were any decent deals. If there were, they'd be, "Great! This looks pretty good, and we can save money! You both are 12 today!" So we'd get the Kids' Menu.

Other times, they would frown and remark, "Well, this one's not so good, so you can be over 13 today." And thusly my sister and I were allowed to be as old as we were. After a few years about this, we were the ones walking into the restaurants asking, "And how old are we today?"

You can well imagine what jumping back and forth with your age does to a kid. As a result, I regularly lose track of how old I am (or am supposed to be), and need friends and family to remind me of my age.

With any luck, this year will prove easier to recall than others past, since it's a bit of a milestone. Just think: I've been on this earth for 25 years now...and it's a miracle I haven't either managed to accidentally get myself killed, or cause the world to implode. Here's to life's little victories!

Today's Pondering: if you're only as old as you feel, then what is the age for insanity?





posted by Phillip at 8:25 AM

 
Chaos FM

So here I am working on my little bit of nowhere, listening to Tom Servo & Crow T Robot's fleshoriffic song Boobular Tubular!, followed almost immediately by R.E.M. singing Furry Happy Monsters with a bunch of Muppet monsters. I've also just managed to crack my elbow against the side of a chair and loose all feeling in my hand.

It's been a strange night.

Then again, the Arrogant Worms' blasphelicious Jesus' Brother Bob just came on. ("Hey, Bob!" / "Hey, Judas.")

Of course, it's been an overall strange day, so it seems only fitting that the evening be this way. Though I'd prefer the strangeness to be without the inability to feel my fingers no matter how hard I wiggle them. What sort of strange things have transpired today?

Well, in a Mulberry Street-esque recounting, let me tell you what I bore witness to. As I was idling about at the kiosk, I saw a man. He was a modern man, a new-millennium professional with his business suit, slick sunglasses and a wristwatch that no doubt cost a lot more than my "PH33R MY L33T NeKK1D SK1LLZ!" Megatokyo boxers. Yes indeed, this man looked every bit the cutting edge of the new and distinguished century.

A shame his hair was trapped in the 1980's and refusing to let go. Ah, the mullet: it is simply amazing to see the power it can still hold over those with lesser minds...or no fashion sense.

Then onto my lunch break, which is meant to be a relaxing time. A time where I should be able to eat, relax and take a refreshing breath away from work. Instead it became something my therapist will no doubt rue once I start ranting about it without showing any signs of stopping. I'm quite certain that my sheer, stunned disbelief is the only reason I haven't already regressed the memory.

The lesson of the day could very well be: Walmart is not as safe as their corporate propaganda would have you believe.

As I was pricing some presents for friends & family, nature called and like an insistent telemarketer I could not put this call on hold. So to the Mens' Room I go. Now I've apparently a bit of a reputation for being able to move very silently and "sneak up" on people who never know I'm there until I'm right behind them. It seems that my stealth mode was on as I stepped into the Mens' Room...and I wish it hadn't.

There I am in front of the urinal...when I hear a curious noise coming from one of the toilet stalls behind me. It's rhythmic. It's rapid. It can only be described as the word: "Fap." Those of you familiar with the online strip Sexy Losers are already screaming and planning to write me harsh Emails about how unnecessary it was for me to share this with all of you. But hey, the way I figure it, if I'm going to hell, I'm taking you all down with me!

The "Fap", as it's known, is the sound effect for someone enjoying their own company way too much. Now I don't ask for much when I go into a family-oriented store like Walmart: just a little courtesy from employees if I have a question or two; products that are properly priced; and the knowledge that if I need to use the facilities, there's not going to be some guy in the stall wanking off!

Alas, I was unable to leave the restroom with the loud shout of, "For God's sake, keep it in your pants, you bloody wanker!" in as best a mock-Irish accent as I could. Someone walked into the Mens' Room with louder foosteps than I'd had, since the fapping stopped. I escaped while I could, my bladder still full, and decided that the Mens' Rooms in Sears would be much safer. And I was right.

So Today's Lesson could also be: don't use stealth mode when entering a Walmart restroom, or else that "fap" can be both a verb and a noun. But instead of dwelling on that unpleasant reason for me sooner or later developing an extreme phobia of Walmart, I think I'll sit back and groove to the sounds of Marvin Suggs and his Muppaphones, followed by Tim Curry's brilliant rendition of Sweet Transvestite.

Today's Lesson: ladybugs who drop dead and land on your muffin without you noticing taste a lot like a bad walnut. No wonder people cover these things with chocolate first before eating them.


posted by Phillip at 6:19 PM

 
Brought To You By W.K.R.P.'s Flying Turkeys!

Thanksgiving in the U.S. has shown me many new and strange things. Such as: unusually happy & cheerful border guards (not that it's a bad thing, and I am rather hopeful to encounter such an uncommon thing more often than not); a woman grocery shopping for turkey in her pyjamas, housecoat and slippers; and Mel eating more voraciously than me.

I'm not sure whether to be proud or frightened by the fact that my saucy wench, notorious for grazing on food at best, packed away the equivalent of two meals in a single sitting, and still had more than enough room for dessert. I'm beginning to think she eats all this food and then stores it for the remaining winter, like a bear or a squirrel.

(That earned me a tongue being stuck in my general direction from her too. But it is admittedly better and less painful than a pillow.)

But now after 3 days off, 16 hours of round-trip driving, and 2 more days of slow recovery amidst work shifts, I have returned. I think there was supposed to be some trumpetting fanfare somewhere around here, but I might have left the procession in my other pants.

Speaking of pants, the film's resident costume designer/screenwriter/assistant director/jill-of-all-trades has informed me that she has finished my costume for the big medieval dance sequence. I have pants now. Glorious!

Today's Lesson: it's probably a good idea to make new additions to this little bit of nowhere when my brain is not on auto-pilot.


posted by Phillip at 7:33 PM