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!

 



You know, I enjoy touting public transit as a viable alternative to driving. The buses (at least here) run very much on time, someone else gets to worry about other drivers, you don’t have to pay for any vehicle repairs, and the worst thing about adverse weather is that your bus might be late.

On the other hand…taking your car to work also means you don’t have the unique experience of witnessing an escapee from the local hospital’s mental ward hitch a ride on your bus and have to be gently escorted back off by at least 2 police officers.

No, really. That’s why I was almost late for work a few mornings ago.

To their credit, the officers were very courteous and cautious, and while said patient was very large and thoroughly incoherent, at least he wasn’t violent and aggressive. Most of his 15 minute stay on the bus he spent moaning or shouting loudly at what I think might have been birds he saw outside the windows.

Not surprisingly, his unexpected decision to take a bus somewhere…anywhere…delayed us considerably. I’m still impressed this guy managed to not only get past his section’s security, but also make it outside the hospital and end up two blocks down the road (wherein he decided to hitch a ride on the bus). Having a keen presence of mind, our driver accepted him onto the bus despite a lack of transit pass and, once we reached the hospital, kept the bus at that stop while the police arrived to help keep him calm, and hospital security went to doublecheck that yes, he was in fact missing from their facility.

Over half of the people on our bus got rather impatient, jumped ship and grabbed the next bus the second it showed up--some of them grumbling rather loudly about the inconvenience of being delayed for this. I smiled and watched them go…knowing perfectly well that the bus they were defecting to didn’t even remotely have the same final destination as our current bus.

Guess who I saw get back on the bus about 15 minutes later as we pulled up to the last mutual stop before our route and that other bus’s route diverged?

And was it cruel of me to wave slightly at them as they shuffled past me in a disgruntled fashion?


Heck of a way to start back after the Con, that’s all I can say. But now I must go to prepare for (gyarg...) another day of weekend work; a Con diary shall appear tomorrow, I promise.

Labels: public transit junction what's your disfunction

posted by Phillip at 4:51 AM

 


And thusly, for one and three-quarter days, didst our hero journey off to a wondrous paradise filled with otaku in need of a bath, fangirls brandishing uke-bats and so much swag he'd have to ransom off half the guests of honour just to pay for everything that didst please his eyes.

And it should hopefully be good.


If we're all lucky, this little bit of nowhere will cough and stir and rattle its chains on Monday. Wherein I can share with you the unique experience of having an escaped mental patient riding one's bus to work. (Spoiler: it wasn't me for once.)

To those of you at the Con checking out this blog in your rooms...why the hell aren't you in the Dealer's Room or attending my swankariffic panels? And to those of you not at the Con this weekend...if you hear an agonizing scream from afar, don't worry, it's just my wallet crying out in pain.

Labels: ZOMG Anime North 2009 is upon us (so fetch me my Puchuu hat)

posted by Phillip at 6:36 AM

 


...God said, "Let there be free burgers at Harveys again."

And there was.

And the Harveys employees wept as they realized just how many penniless, starving otaku would swarm their restaurant that day.



So, yeah: the radio announcement confirmed it. Once more, with sobbing: if you're willing to brave the never-ending 2-hour long line coiled around Harveys like an infernal swag-toting snake, then you can have a free meal on the Suday of Anime North.

The employees there must be catching on. If it were me, I'd be booking this coming Sunday off at least a year in advance.

Labels: the gospel according to Harveys

posted by Phillip at 4:44 AM

 


If this were a LiveJournal account (which it isn't. Ha!), and I had a "currently listening to" fill-in-the-blank feature (which I don't have and don't particularly crave. Ha ha!), I think I'd have to list as my reply: Where In The World And Where In Time Is Stephen Colbert Going To be In The Persian Gulf?

Seriously, I've had that disturbingly catchy 30-second song stuck in my head for a solid two days now, and it's not going away. Even more disturbing, I don't particularly care if it goes away. It's that catchy--though, like all things, your mileage may vary should you decide to tempt fate and listen to it yourself.

In other news, today saw the closest thing I've had to a doctor's check-up in...well, years. Emphasis on the plurality of said "years." I'm not entirely sure if I've even had a check-up since my family moved to Alberta, and any other hospital visitation was usually ER-oriented and involving either Hand Foot & Mouth, or a slight altercation between me and something sharp and pointy...with sharp and pointy winning.

The I-can't-believe-it's-not-a-check-up was surprisingly quick, since I haven't suffered anything serious in years (save for the Hand Foot & Mouth...stupid viruses). On the other hand, I'm getting a barrage of blood tests done just to make sure I haven't had something fiendish sneak up on me over the last few years. As a result, the following conversation ensued as the nurse was prepping me for blood extraction.

Nurse: "Now we'll just get you ready. We need a few vials for the blood tests."

[The nurse proceeds to pick up a large handful of vials from the box with my name on it.]

Me: [counting at least 6 vials] "Uh...are all those for me?"

Nurse: "Oh, no."

Me: ^-^ "Whew!"

Nurse: "There's still a few more I have to get out of the box."

Me: o.O;;;;;;

[The nurse grabs another handful of vials, these ones even larger than the previous group.]

Me: [now counting almost a dozen vials on the counter. "Do I at least get a cookie after this?"

This whole situation became even more inadvertently comedic when, after filling up 7-8 vials, I started having trouble filling up the last few at the same pace. It was like my blood had gotten exhausted from spraying into the vials and was taking a quick break. The nurse had to tap each of those vials in turn to help speed along the procedure.

I have never been so grateful for having a decently higher than normal pain tolerance, and no issues with needles. But the blood-letting is over now, and all I have to do is wait for the test results to come back saying I'm fine except for one peculiar error wherein the test said I apparently have monkeypox. (Knowing the way technology tends to glitch around me, I wouldn't be entirely surprised to find even my blood has the ability to frak it up.)


Today's Lesson: after having longer, shaggy hair for so long, suddenly having it cut really really short brings so many other facial features into perspective. Like how bushy my eyebrows look. Seriously, it looks like I took two fuzzy caterpillars and glued them to my forehead!

Labels: hello nurse now put down the needle, where in the world and when in time is Stephen Colbert's song going to get out of my head?

posted by Phillip at 7:34 PM

 


Were you aware that Anime North 2009 is just two weeks away?

I wasn't. It didn't sink in until I sat down and realized, "holy crap, in two weeks' time, I'll be spending this evening at Kevin & Donna's, making sure we have all our stuff packed." This also means I need to make a shortlist of swag-to-buy, since Mel's and my Con budget is a lot tighter than usual this year (thank you recent health care modifications to the Canadian tax system...) and I need to make the most of what little cash Mel & I have that won't automatically go into paying for the hotel room.

But even still...hoorays for AN09!

In other news, I have made the mistake of buying Mel a Kimmidoll as a surprise gift. Now she's eyeballing the collection, which is rather vast. It'll be like collecting the classic Pooh alphabet letters all over again--and they took over 2 years of gradual buying before we got all 26.

What is a Kimmidoll? Well, they're kinda like dolls, and kinda like yamato-nadesico bowling pins. And while they may not hold the comedic value of an utterly confuzzled Psyduck, they're a lot cooler to collect than Pokerats.

http://www.kimmidoll.com/

Labels: Anime North 2009 is coming so hide your children, night of the living dead Kimmidolls

posted by Phillip at 6:15 PM

 


In doing a favour for a friend and fellow store manager, I suddenly found myself slingshot back in time to about 4 years ago. I spent this past Wednesday covering a shift at the Fairview Mall location, ending up in the very store I first started with. (No province-wide blackouts in the middle of this shift, though.) There was a slight sense of novelty in being back in a mall I’ve barely set foot in for years; give me a week there and I’m sure it would have quickly worn off. I speak from 2 malls’ worth of experience.

It’s quite the strange sensation to take stock of what has and has not changed within the store and the mall itself since I left. The mall’s undergone a substantial facelift, sporting a fancy foodcourt and many new namebrand stores. On the downside, it does have an even more pretentious feel than ever before, a feat I would have never though possible some four or five years prior. The store, however, has seen more behind-the-scenes changes, making me thoroughly jealous. Lots of new shelving units litter their stockroom, giving them a lot of organizational room that we’d never had when I had been a full-timer there.

Hell, my store’s current must-walk-sideways-to-get-anywhere-in-it stockroom has no organizational space…mostly because it has no space, period. Is it wrong of me to admit to shelving envy? Should I start overcompensating by bringing in larger, longer shelves? Should I start buying those Swedish Shelving Enhancer pumps I’ve seen in my Email spam folder?

As for working in Fairview, there’s also an inherent strangeness in being in someone else’s store. They have their way of doing things, and despite being a manager with near limitless power, you have absolutely no idea of whether or not you can touch anything lest you accidentally disrupt the delicate balance of order the other manager has created. It’s kind of like being in a museum.

That’s not to say Conestoga doesn’t have its own quirks. Consider the very surreal encounter I experienced last week:

I’ve mentioned this before, but our mall is currently undergoing renovation and expansion. There’s construction all over the place, especially in what used to be an epic loading bay in behind our store’s current location. They’re building a new corridor and food court, and a part of this expansion piece is a new and very long service corridor that includes a new, indoor location for our cardboard and garbage compactors.

Which brings us to last week. By now the compactors had been operational in their new chamber for just shy of a month. Almost all of the mall employees knew where to find them, and how to get there amidst the new maze of service tunnels. I was hauling a large box filled with collapsed cardboard from the day’s stock, idly humming to myself.

I got to the set of metal, double doors of the compactor room, set my boxes down to open the doors. It was then that the universe decided I was far too carefree and dropped me into a Resident Evil game.

The first indication that something was amiss was the plastic dropsheet hanging over all four walls, even covering the doors from the inside. I paused in the doorway, a perplexed look on my face. But then the man in the white biohazard suit cheerfully stomped up to the doors and assuaged all my fears. At least I assume it was a man; he sounded like a man, but it was so hard to tell through that giant gasmask he wore.

He demanded to know what I was doing, and when I stammered and pointed to the cardboard, he stated, “I’ll do that for you” and then stole my cardboard. The last thing I saw as the doors swung shut was another person in a white biosuit spraying something onto the walls.

Naturally, I turned away, and with a sincere smile on my face, decided that I’d always let someone else go into the compactor room first whenever possible from that point on, just in case the horrible mutant cockroaches were feeling a bit peckish that afternoon.

To this day, I have no idea what they were doing in there. They could have been just washing down the walls, or adding some sort of chemical sealant to the room. Or it could be something to do with the aforementioned mutant cockroaches.

Don’t laugh about the cockroaches: the mall expansion now includes a very large underground corridor and a series of connected rooms. I’ve watched enough ResEvil games being played to know a secret lab when I see one. All we need now is the Umbrella logo, and we’ve got ourselves a zombie outbreak!

Which does bring up the question of what’s more preferable: a zombie outbreak or a swine flu pandemic? Certainly, the zombie outbreak will be more interesting, and it’s quite easy to rectify that problem with a few well-placed headshots, but at least a swine flu pandemic doesn’t have the potential to end society as we know it.

I shall ruminate on this while Mel plays Lego Indy in the background....


Today’s Lesson: contrary to what the name of the band would have you believe, the newly emerging group Cobra Starship is not in fact a GIJoe cover band. Which strikes me as odd, since with the upcoming movie this would be the perfect time to have a GIJoe cover band. Their first album would also have to be entitled, “And Knowing Is…”

Labels: strange manager in a strange mall, The Umbrella Recycling Program

posted by Phillip at 6:58 PM