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!

 


"It's the moooooooost wonderful tiiiiiiime of the year," or so the incessant Christmas carols playing in the mall have been saying for the last month and a half. I can't object too much with them, though: not only did I spend very little time out in the mall listening to said incessant carols (Mel, however, is ready to pound into bloody oblivion the first poor idiot who dares to so much as whistle "Santa Baby", and I can't say I blame her. It is a really tacky song.), but the overall carol playlist the mall had going this year was a lot better than last year's.

Granted, it's like asking which level of Dante-esque hell you'd rather spend eternity suffering in, but meh, we'll take it.

So Christmas has come and is going, going, soon to be gone. (Ironically enough, it's only on Boxing Day that we're supposed to get snow.) And I for one am pleased with this fact. Certainly, I've spent the last 3 years shuffling about and Bah-Humbugging the season, but that's more a retail hatred than anything, I've come to believe. Give me a Christmas where I don't work in the service industry, and I'll probably turn into the very customer I'd have creamed with a Customer Appreciation Amazing Pancake Maker on the spot this time around. Well, a cheerful customer anyways. I rather hope I don't get annoying, since I've had to spend enough time on the other side of the proverbial trench to appreciate the crap they do have to endure on a day to day basis.

But I'm digressing.

And digesting too. Hey, instead of a dinner, we had a late family lunch, and damned if that big-assed ball of deli turkey meat wasn't tasty! That cranberry jelly-blob, on the other hand, can stay far far away from me. Never liked it as a child, and it's now more than safe to say I still don't like it now.

But yes indeed, family gatherings were had. Gary spent the weekend discovering just what happens when you take 100+ pencil boards and more than a few wall scrolls, and eliminate almost every inch of wallspace in a guest room. But we had shelves of manga for him to read, so all was well. (Many visitors to the guest room get rather creeped out by the oodles of eyes all over the place. Heh, I love that word: oodles. Not quite as good as pyjamallama, but we're working on it.)

Due to unpleasant employee situations (and by that, I mean for the poor employee and not for me--bad things really do come in threes, it appears), I was sadly required to spend Commercialmas Eve at the kiosk. Which wasn't all that bad, if you don't count the tired state I was in by the end of it all.

And if you'll permit me to rant, but why is it that when the banks are going to be closed for 2 consecutive shopping days, they still seem surprised at how much all the stores around them desperately stock up on extra bills & coin rolls. It wasn't even 1pm on Saturday, and both banks in the mall had run completely out of rolls of pennies. And quarters. And loonies. And twonies. And dimes too, I think. And they seemed vastly perplexed by this.

Blind luck that Mel managed to get the last roll of twonies from one bank, and I finagled the last couple rolls of pennies from the other one. But that still leaves us precariously drained of most everything in terms of coinage. And this does not bode well for Boxing Day--a day which, traditionally, sees shoppers running around with $20 and $50 bills they got as gifts and want to break. Considering how everyone was paying in twenties and fifties Sunday as it was, I'll be astounded if we're not left with anything but those bills by the end of Tuesday. Ack.

Anyhoo, back to more pleasant things. Like swag. I heart swag. And as the title ever so subtly implies, I also heart Katamari. This was the year that I adpoted Mel's policy of starting to shop early for gifts. Like June/July early. And it paid off too, especially since I was able to purchase a few unexpected delights that made Mel's face light up when she opened them.

(And no, it wasn't because the flamethrower accidentally went off when she popped open the lid. Those things have safety catches for a reason.)

The seasonal swag has come to include sparkly bits, Fanshirts, Katamari balls, Fraggles, dog demons, waffles and far more Pepsi consumed in a single day than recommended. All in all, I am very please and very stuffed, and am being requested by my puppy that could I please remove my butt from the chair and let her run outside to pee, because it's been a very long afternoon and she can only hold it in for so long before she is forced to do very unsightly things to the carpet.

Merry Commercialmas to all, and to all...may you be able to sleep in Boxing Day. If I can't do it myself, then dammit I'm going to live vicariously through as many of you as I can!

Ja.


Today's Lesson: it's a bad thing when Friday's little bit of nowhere has to be called off on account of the bathroom ceiling suddenly losing all bladder control. (But on the plus side, we may get a whole new, refurbished bathroom as a result of someones--emphasis on the plural--from the wild, drunken party upstairs failing to notice their own toilet was clogged and overflowing.)
posted by Phillip at 3:51 PM

 


And let's be honest: if you really came online for emo, you'd be at MySpace by now.

Although I could whine about a lot of things if you really wanted me to. Um...if only I had a brain? A heart? A home? The nerve?

Or, "No matter how hard I try to strike up a conversation with any of them, none of these hot girls are even making eye contact with me! Why, God? WHY?!?!?1?!!"



Meh, what can I say? I can't emo as well as I used to in my old age now. But I can gripe and bitch like a pro!

Anyhoo, this is it: the final stretch. The last 3 days before Commercialmas reaches its messy climax are upon us, and so far while I must admit I'm not as aggravated as I was last year, I can still cheerfully admit to showering scorn upon the season. Bah humbug, and all that saucy jazz. (Unless there's a better condiment-like adjective out there that can describe jazz, and I am unaware of it, and if so please do contact me to rectify this descriptiveness.)

My sanity I think is mostly due to the inclement weather we've been having. A green Christmas is on the way, and with an inherent lack of snow and temperatures almost reaching points where we don't even need jackets outside, I think a lot of people haven't been shopping like usual. This entire past week was slower than the week before. There were even days where one person could hold down the store solo (which I did, all hail my managerial l33tness!) and despite always needing to do somthing, they would not feel stressed.

This means one of two possible things. Either ONE: the weather put everyone in a mood where they just wanted to get all their shopping done in one or two fell swoops. Which explains the busy-ness we experienced all last week. This implies the weekend will naturally be busy, but far from crazy. I look forward to this...especially since I'm working all weekend, be it at the store or the kiosk.

Or we're looking at TWO: the weather put everyone in a mood where they all figured they could put off their shopping just a little longer, since it doesn't feel like Christmas yet. Which means come Friday, most of the city is going to, at one moment or another, bolt up and exclaim, "Holy shit, I've only got 3 days left to buy swag!" And subsequently, most of the city will proliferate the mall in a mess that could only be described as "epic", "monstrous" and "...and that, your Honour, is why I clobbered as many of them as I could with our Amazing Pancake Maker."

I fear if it's the second possibility.

It's kind of like being Grover in The Monster At The End Of This Book. (Which, if you haven't read yet, shame on you, now go buy it for yourself on Amazon!) The dread keeps building with each passing day/turned page, and you are bracing yourself for when the other shoe will fall. Or crowds will surge towards your store like a heard of fashionable locusts.

So, there are three working days left to contend with the silliness. Somehow in the meantime, I've managed to pull off next to no extra 12-hour shifts (a plus), wrangled 2 days off per week for the last two weeks (more than a plus), and given my sister and her husband syphillus. (Only a plus if it's a Giant Microbe plushie.)

And today's been spent hanging out with Kevin & Donna, going on midnight shopping trips, visiting childhood TV memories courtesy of YouTube and watching Gabe attempt to eat the axel (and engine block) of a toy car he received only a half hour ago. At this point, he's gone completely Jurassic Park T-Rex and eaten off all 4 tires, and now removed the axel itself from the rest of the vehicle.

Perhaps we can end today's little bit of nowhere here, since there's very little else I can prattle on about before it becomes perfectly obvious I have nothing witty left to say. Not to mention I think the grammatical-brackets are multiplying like bunnies in here, and the sooner I leave the sooner we render them unable to take over the blog.

Today's lesson: there are more people shopping at Walmart at 2:30am than you think. (Not that it makes the restockers happy, oh no...)

Oh, and after getting through half of Michael Mann's MiamiVice movie, I can fully understand and appreciate why it took over $100 million to film, and made back maybe a quarter of it.
posted by Phillip at 6:55 PM

 

Truthiness Named Word of the Year
By ADAM GORLICK, Associated Press Writer
Fri Dec 8, 5:04 PM ET

SPRINGFIELD, Mass. - After 12 months of naked partisanship on Capitol Hill, on cable TV and in the blogosphere, the word of the year for 2006 is ... "truthiness." The word — if one can call it that — best summed up 2006, according to an online survey by dictionary publisher Merriam-Webster. "Truthiness" was credited to Comedy Central satirist Stephen Colbert, who defined it as "truth that comes from the gut, not books."

"We're at a point where what constitutes truth is a question on a lot of people's minds, and truth has become up for grabs," said Merriam-Webster president John Morse. "`Truthiness' is a playful way for us to think about a very important issue."

Other Top 10 finishers included "war," "insurgent," "sectarian" and "corruption." But "truthiness" won 5-to-1, Morse said.

Colbert, who once derided the folks at Springfield-based Merriam-Webster as the "word police" and a bunch of "wordinistas," was pleased. "Though I'm no fan of reference books and their fact-based agendas, I am a fan of anyone who chooses to honor me," he said in an e-mail to The Associated Press. "And what an honor," he said. "Truthiness now joins the lexicographical pantheon with words like `squash,' `merry,' `crumpet,' `the,' `xylophone,' `circuitous,' `others' and others."

Colbert first uttered "truthiness" during an October 2005 broadcast of "The Colbert Report," his parody of combative, conservative talk shows.

The link itself can be found here:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061208/ap_on_re_us/word_of_the_year

There are many levels of "how cool is this?" found within the mere concept of Colbert conjuring up a fun throwaway word, and watching it claw its way into the English lexicon. I stand in awe of the man. As it is, my own attempts to get "pyjamallama" into the dictionary have been met with repeated absymal failures.

Hm?

After a week's absence, you don't want pithy links to articles? You actually want me to talk about life, the universe and everything (beyond that whole "42" thing) in this little bit of nowhere. Well, here's the brief summary...

Sunday: "Clean...clean...dishes...buffet! Oooh, and Sesame Street: Old School."

Monday: "Work, as usual."

Tuesday: "Kevin & Donna! Future super Wii action! Dead Man's Chest! HuzzaaaaAAAH! No Gabe, don't eat the Wiimote!"

Wednesday: "Oh look, a 12-hour shift. And dammit, stop messing up those scarves! I just cleaned those, dammit!"

Thursday: "Another 12-hour shift. And, um...where are today's 40 boxes?"

Friday: "Did the whole damned town just get up today and decide 'hey, let's all go to the mall en masse!' And, um...where are today's 30 boxes and yesterday's 40 boxes?"

Saturday: "Oh look, they have a complimentary massage table out in front of the store. Perfect to relieve the stress I feel as I plan to have a part-timer meet a particularly drawn-out and gruesome demise..."

Sunday: "So...we're due to get 3 days' worth of boxes of Monday, for a grand potential total of 94 boxes? Boy, am I glad last week I scheduled myself off for this coming Monday. Ha ha, suckers!"

So there you have it: a week's worth of activities written in fantastical, pyjamallama glory! (Did it work? Is my word in the dictionary now?)

Today's Lesson:

they joy you have today from missing 94 incoming boxes will be inevitably balanced out by the sheer ghastliness that will greet you when you arrive the day after and discover how helpless your employees can be at organizing stock. (Le sigh.)
posted by Phillip at 12:26 PM