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