$-mas Greetings (and Grievances)
It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas: the presents are stacking up, parking lots are crowded with irate drivers vying for open spaces like hyenas (hyenas who know how to make rude gestures with their hands, at that), and the smell of desperation is filling the mall air. You can see it on many of the faces that pass you by; as panicking customers ask you in that half-crazed, half-near-homicidal voice for specific items you know you don't have; as you kindly remind said customers after informing them that no, you don't have what they're looking for, that if they continue to shout at you, you will have to disable them with your Customer Appreciation Scarf (i.e., strangle them) before you call mall security.
So far our kiosk, at least while I've been there, has not been the recipient of many of these irate customers, but they are starting to look rather grumpy and neurotic. And then there's this guy: right in front of me, a man bares his teeth, leans up really close to one of our mirrors...and spends a minute or so thoroughly examining his teeth. Oddly enough, he didn't seem very pleasant when I said encouragingly, "They're quite clean, Sir, I can assure you."
In other news, I am bemused, grieved and perplexed to discover that the
Muppet Family Christmas DVD is missing scenes from its original TV showing. (Fozzie & the snowman's outdoor comedy routine, and the full version of the Muppet Babies singing "Santa Claus is Coming to Town", for those nit-picky ones wondering.) Normally this wouldn't annoy me, but having watched every Christmas the TV version we taped years ago, it's rather disconcerting to have my happy DVD copy, and know full well that things have been removed. Besides, they were good scenes. Now a generation of Muppets fans will never know that, upon seeing baby Piggy, Floyd the Electric Mayhem guitarist exclaims, "Hey, it's Miss Hamhock, when she was just a little sausage roll!"
And in other other news, our new cat Chance mews like one of those hooting Dilophosaurs from the
Jurassic Park movie. I'm waiting to get a toxic hairball to the face any day now...
Today's Lesson: nothing amuses me more than seeing Mel aggravated over the fact that she can rattle and shake her presents all she wants, but she still won't be able to know the boxes' contents for another few days. Yeah, I'm going to get smacked for this; I already know this fact.
posted by Phillip at 6:22 PM
