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

 


If you know your Naked Gun 2 1/2, then you know exactly where that line shows up. Not only is it a brilliant joke, but the sheer wording of the sexual euphemism is hilarious. It's strange though how sometimes life imitates a Zucker/Abrams/Zucker gag:

Iain Hollingshead wins bad Sex prize

By JILL LAWLESS, Associated Press Writer Wed Nov 29, 2:38 PM ET

LONDON - First-time author Iain Hollingshead scooped a dubious literary honor Wednesday, winning the Bad Sex in Fiction Award for his novel, "Twenty Something."

Hollingshead beat established writers including Booker Prize nominee David Mitchell, best seller Mark Haddon and literary maverick Thomas Pynchon to the prize, which aims to skewer "the crude, tasteless, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel."

Judges were moved by Hollingshead's evocation of "a commotion of grunts and squeaks, flashing unconnected images and explosions of a million little particles." His description of "bulging trousers" sealed the win, the judges said.

"Because Hollingshead is a first-time writer, we wished to discourage him from further attempts," the judges — editors of Literary Review magazine — said in a statement. "Heavyweights like Thomas Pynchon and Will Self are beyond help at this point."

Hollingshead, 25, who received his award from rocker Courtney Love at a London ceremony, said he was delighted to become the prize's youngest winner. "I hope to win it every year," said Hollingshead, who receives a statuette and a bottle of champagne.

Now in its 14th year, the award was established by the Literary Review to celebrate truly cringe-worthy erotic writing. "It's mixed metaphors, embarrassing fumbling. It's the redundancy of the scene in an otherwise good novel," said assistant editor Philip Womack.

This year's runner-up was Tim Willcocks' medieval action novel, "The Religion," for a scene in which characters grapple passionately in a forge "across the cold steel face of the anvil."

"In the pit of his stomach a cauldron boiled and some seething and nameless brew rose up through his spine and filled his brain with the Devil's Fire," Willcocks writes.

Willcocks praised the Bad Sex prize as "a much better guide to a good read than those purveyors of powerful sleeping drugs, the Booker, the Pulitzer, the Goncourt et. al."

Other finalists included Mitchell's 1980s coming-of-age story, "Black Swan Green," for a passage in which one character's breasts are compared to "a pair of Danishes" and another's to "two Space Hoppers." Pynchon's long-awaited, 1,000-page novel, "Against the Day," was nominated for a scene involving a spaniel that ends: "Reader, she bit him."

Haddon, the best-selling author of "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time," was shortlisted for his description of rapture in his latest novel, "A Spot of Bother": "Images went off in her head like little fireworks. The smell of coconut. Brass firedogs."

The other finalists were Scottish writer Irvine Welsh's "Bedroom Secrets of the Master Chefs"; Julia Glass' "The Whole World Over"; Michael Cannon's "Lachlan's War"; "Tourism" by Nirpal Singh Dhaliwal; and Self's "The Book of Dave."

Last year's winner was food critic and novelist Giles Coren for a memorable passage comparing a male character's genitalia to a shower hose. In 2004, the prize went to Tom Wolfe's novel, "I Am Charlotte Simmons," for sex scenes the judges called "ghastly ... inept ... (and) unrealistic."

The article can be found here:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061129/ap_en_ot/books_bad_sex

And ultimately this award begs the question: if the judges found these professionally published sexual references ghastly, how many seconds would it take if they tried to read most of the lemon fanfics out there before their heads exploded? It frightens me to say that, as far as perspectives go, having to contend with seeing a woman's bosom and immediately thinking breakfast pastries isn't quite so bad when stacked against such epic hits as "Artemis' Lover" or a Harry Potter lemon involving Buckbeak and the Ford Angelia.

Today's Lesson: hooray for danishes! (That and, apparently orgasms smell like coconut.)

posted by Phillip at 9:49 PM

 

The Lizard King. The Walrus. The Shiznit.

I am all of these things. Forget the fact that the walrus might eat the lizard, and the digestive result is a word that amusingly resembles 'shiznit', but I am all of these.

Today's little bit of nowhere features an inflated ego of epic proportions, brought about by sadism and grandiose accomplishments. And exhaustion. It's probably the exhaustion talking more than anything else, and when the euphoria passes I'll marvel at how silly I sounded and wonder how on earth the cat ended up wearing my pants.

On Saturday, I had the pleasure of working a full 12 hour shift at the store, due to a very sick employee. With a little help from Mel, and more than a handful of Tylenol, I survived. Sunday was spent helping Mel with a research essay wherein one of her group partners made a contribution that ultimately sounded like what might happen if you heard the bagpipes being played by a deaf, leperous giraffe.

(Mel has just informed me that perhaps I've given that team member a little too much credit, so we may have to revert to the old stalwart "a contribution as impressive as a dead mouse performing Shakespeare.")

Monday was another 12 hour day, capped off by a first for me. I got to fire someone. In fact, I was sanctioned by Head Office to spread the doom. Doom, doom, doom! What was her crime? Well, said now-defunct-employee spent most of her shifts being perfectly useless, and seemed to think it criminal that she must perform customer service in a retail job. (The nerve of company policy! I mean, really! What are they going to expect us to do next: work?!)

Head Office went so far as to send an auditor in to observe her, and by all accounts gave the command to my district manager to have this employee axed. So far, I think a grand total of no tears have been shed by anyone else over her sudden and swift boot-to-the-ass dismissal. Mel even took up to singing, "Ding dong, the witch is dead!" at the kiosk when she arrived for her shift later that afternoon.

Granted, in firing the girl, I was forced to take up her shift for the day, and then cover the remainder of my evening shift at the store. But meh, what can you do in a case like that?

But the Monday didn't end there. Upon returning home, Mel & I were up until 3am working from scratch on an English paper about the use of the supernatural in Oedipus (the guy who killed his father & slept with his mother) and Hamlet (the guy who killed his step-father after his step-father tried to kill him but accidentally killed his mother instead. Oops.) We were going to work on it Sunday, but the bagpipe/giraffe project ended up taking the entire day to unravel, tweak and rework into something that didn't look like it had been copied word for word from a university textbook.

While today was a mere 8-hour shift by comparison, tomorrow's got another 12 hour gig in store for me. And if I'm really lucky, the next day I have off will be Sunday. Somehow I still have most of my mental faculties despite all the long hours. All in all, I'm impressed at how well I'm faring, but then again, we've only reached the midweek. I've already conquered two 12-hour shifts, giving me an inflated sense of accomplishment as I face the third one. Plus, there's that whole getting to fire an employee who was really starting to piss even me off. I'm floating high on a managerial God Complex.

Damn, but I'm good!

I am the Lizard King! I am the Walrus! I bring you tidings of my inherent awesomeness, and DOOM!!


Today's Lesson: sometimes, metal dollies can spontaneously manifest themselves in the middle of your store. Oh, and poodles can also be guide dogs for the blind.
posted by Phillip at 9:16 PM

 

It's Sunday.

I am doing very little of anything this Sunday.

I am happy about doing very little of anything this Sunday.

And before I start sounding like a Dr. Seuss book (only without rhyming couplets and doodlefluzits), I'll explain by simply saying that when I woke up yesterday, the last thing on my mind was, "Gee, I think today I'll work a 12 hour shift at the store!"

Twelve hours later, I was somehow and oddly sane. Well...as arguably sane as I get, anyways. The short of it was the only available person to work the Saturday evening shift spent all of her Saturday either throwing up, or dry heaving when there was nothing left for her to throw up. So while I can't exactly fault her for needing to call in sick, 12 hours later and I have never been so grateful for having a Sunday off. Though for the most part I was really lucky that the mall traffic almost died entirely by the time 6pm rolled around, so I was able to conserve my energy for those last three hours. (Not to mention, Mel & I commiserated the day's end with pizza and alcohol, which is always a plus in my book.)

You know, the last time I wrote about anything like this, it was...well, damn, it was one year ago, almost to the week. Except that was a 13-hour shift (thank you, Midnight Sadism--er, Madness) due primarily to an annoying nit of an employee.

Speaking of...Monday is going to be another long day courtesy of this year's annoying nit of an employee. Funny how at this current moment, I'm the only person at the store or kiosk who knows how long a day I'm about to have.

Just pause for a second and reflect upon the ominousness behind that paragraph.


In other news, I have a hankering to go and bake some cookies. This could potentially end in disaster. Then again, Shady will adore it if anything explodes, since it means more bits of food falling to the floor for her to snack on.

Today's Lesson: if it's your day off, and you are pretty darned syre you're not going to want to wake up when the alarm goes off, don't set the alarm.
posted by Phillip at 11:22 AM

 

Outside, the fog is thick enough to almost make me believe I've woken up in Silent Hill. Only there's still noisy traffic and Pyramidhead isn't skipping about happily flaying people.

This week has been both kind and cruel, and in unusual & gratuitous ways. It has seen an evening spent with an old friend and a mall filled with lots & lots of zombies. (And, much to everyone's amusement, when playing Dead Rising, if you break into the toy store and get your character to wear the big yellow lego-head, it still shows up during the cut scenes. You can't take the scene seriously when it looks like some sort of kaiju show, but that's what's so fantastic about it.)

The week has also seen me sit back and wonder just how in the hell I suddenly managed to get so close to finishing up the 3-years-and-counting SM fanfic "Angel Electric". It's been a long and strange journey for me. I've spent many hours in the company of these characters, and for the most part enjoying the time we shared together. Now I get to show them all how much I appreciated their work...by killing them all off.

Should I be worried I'm feeling rather jovial about this fact?

However, as mentioned before the week hasn't been without its petty cruelties, most of which I won't go into here. It's not that I don't want to rant about them, or that I don't want to rant about them to you specifically, but for the moment it's better to play certain proverbial cards close to the chest if not for potentially legal reasons. Suffice to say, there's someone at the kiosk (not Mel) who's not making things pleasant for...well, everyone, and unfortunately we've had orders by the higher-ups to keep stringing her along for another week.

I can only pray this means we're giving said asshat-employee enough rope to hang herself with. I'm getting tired of this crap, and Mel's bordering somewhere between mental breakdown and killing something.

Ideally the next little bit of nowhere will find the both of us in better spirits, at which point we'll returing to doing what we do best: bitching about Commercialmas and the customers it brings.
posted by Phillip at 5:26 AM

 

It's been a curious couple of days.

Our bathroom is currently sporting a hole right above the showerhead, mostly to air out the leak from the apartment right above us. From what the repairman told me, it seems that our upstairs neighbours (formerly our next-door neighbours. You know, the ones with the late night Bollywood Karaoke parties?) did not...well, he just left it at "they weren't the cleanest of people." By all indications, the bathroom above us has had to be practically ripped right back to base building and rebuilt from the proverbial ground up. But I can live with that, and the drainage holes over our showerhead. It certainly beats our ceiling getting turned to paste and falling down on our heads.

In other news, labels are everything. Consider, for a moment, a few days ago. The plan had originally been to have toast for breakfast. I picked up my loaf of white bread and discovered it was white, green and white (the fuzzy kind). The following is pretty much a word for word excerpt:

Me: "What the hell? How'd it get moldy so...'expiry date: November 4th'. Ah."

Flash-forward to yesterday. After picking up some groceries for stirfy, Mel & I strolled into the elevator and I pressed the button for the third floor. The elevator stopped, the doors opened and we sauntered out. Halfway down the hall, we heard the sounds of a piano being played. Now I hadn't heard a piano ever before on our floor, so I ventured a guess as to which of our neighbours must have just procured it.

Then Mel & I came to a stop in front of our door...and heard the piano coming from inside the apartment. The following conversation is pretty close to what was originally said:

Mel: "Why is there a piano in our apartment?"

Me: "I don't know. Maybe the repair guy dropped it off when he looked at our leaky bathroom ceiling."

Mel: [looking up at the door] "But why on earth would...'Apartment 210'. This isn't even our floor!"

Me: "Well that explains the piano."

Mel: "Are you sure you pressed the third floor?"

Me: "Yes! I pressed the third floor button only and...dammit, we got gimpified!"

As it turned out, it wasn't a case of Gimpy the Wonder Elevator paying us a visit. We can thank the horde of little kids chasing each other up & down the floors, and pressing all the buttons in the elevator for that.

Mel adds here, "And I get to thank you for not having noticed they'd pushed all the other buttons in the elevator."

Um...oops?

And finally, we bring you today's The Wonders of Technology: the iBRATOR.

http://www.bedroompleasures.co.uk/sex-toys/Vibrators.10/
Massaging-Vibrators.67/OhMiBod-iPod-Vibrator.3630.html

(Though this suddenly does beg the question: what would you have on your playlist?)
posted by Phillip at 8:58 AM

 

Best Buy is not being my friend today. Well...it might be, but it's the sort of friend who tells you that setting fire to a porche is a fun thing to do. At the very least, the store seems to be the only place in all of KW that actually has the Old School Sesame Street DVDs in stock. Alas, I won't get paid until Friday, so I must wait while the box set continues to mock and tempt me for the next few days.

It is also vexing that Best Buy also has all 3 seasons of Penn & Teller's Bullshit! on for $65. I'm already being tempted by Muppets; this isn't helping! Throw into the mix the Avatar s.1 boxset on at HMV for $50 (at least I think it was that price), and the Tick vs. Season 1 on for $25 at Walmart, and I'm starting to think I'm better off avoiding anyplace that sells DVDs for the rest of the year.

Which reminds me: Kevin, you are now the proud owner of the Emmet Otter's Jugband Christmas DVD. Congradulations!

Today's lesson: consuming almost half a pound of bacon (cooked, of course. What do you take me for, an idiot? Wait...don't answer that!) will come back to haunt you a few hours later.
posted by Phillip at 9:02 PM

 

I've been meaning to update this little bit of nowhere for a few days now. I wish I could say there was a valid reason for this, but in truth I've just been watching Trainspotting among other things. (Currently it's Mel parading about in a new pair of pyjamas she bought today.)

This past weekend was spent seeing a lot of old friends and family Mel & I just haven't been able to see in a looooong while. We spent Friday night in Toronto, and pretty much all of Saturday in Oshawa visiting with my grandfather as well as our aunt & uncle from up north. Sunday was spent visiting some new Anime titles, with the evening being capped off by the shindig at Roupen's, where many a friend gathered to celebrate. Somewhere amidst the lasagne & falafels, the random conversations and happy episodes of Robot Chicken, the following revelations were made:

1. If the Fancrew were forced to ever resort to cannibalism, I would be deemed too skinny to be used as a decent entree. Instead, I would be forced the indignity of being ranked as mere "soup stock."

2. Apparently, my writing can break the Internet. According to Jen, whenever she's tried to link my blog (and possibly any of my writing) to Livejournal, the feed crashes. This unto itself has hidden potential. Whenever the machines rise up and Skynet tries to take over, all they have to do is connect that pesky AI to my fanfics and it'll commit computer seppuku.

(On a related note, I was sorely tempted to create a regular LJ account if not for the sole purpose of seeing if I could break poor Ginny's mind on a near daily basis.)

3. The best way to kill any ongoing conversations around you is to mention "MPreg". It doesn't have to be in any sort of context. It doesn't even have to have a sentence wrapped around it. But guaranteed you say "MPreg" and suddenly you are the centre of almost everyone's attention...though not necessarily in a good way.

In other news, the USA has undergone the beginnings of a paradigm shift, and Britney Spears has filed for divorce. Now be honest, and a show of hands here: who didn't see either of these coming?

And finally, I have at long last encountered someone's solution to a Calculus problem that actually makes sense to me:


posted by Phillip at 9:08 PM

 

'Tis a day or two into November, and already I have seen 3 blatantly Commercialmas ads on television, and heard at least 1 or 2 over the radio. I shall cry now. (Is it truly sad that a commercial can break my will around this time of year?)

In other news, the weather has been what could be best described as mildly schizophrenic, alternating between a few piffly bits of snow amidst the sunshine, to an all-out and thoroughly gleeful blizzard.

That still didn't stop me from continuing my epic search for the Sesame Street: Old School DVD box set. It's been pretty much a week now since the box set was due out on the shelves, and from what Mel's told me, Gaffney has already acquired it. Yet for some silly-assed reason, every store up here in KW is lacking in its Sesame Old Schoolness. Most of the stores just don't have it in stock or even in their listing. The few stores that do have it listed as "in stock, check shelves" have also seen those DVDs mysteriously vanish from existence. I should know: I sent a poor clerk all over the store searching for a DVD the computer said they had, but reality argued otherwise.

I'm starting to think they're all hiding my Old School just for the sake of vexing me. The Evidence Mice are no doubt behind this conspiracy, and if they thing they can come between me and my latest Jim Henson fix, they are sorely mistaken.

On the plus side: oooh, happy shiny GitS: SAC 2nd Gig collector's tin....

Today's Lesson: finely tailored dress pants look great, but offer little resistance against a frigid wind. I think that last gust just took off my right testicle and sent it rolling down into the next lane--it's that bloody freezing.
posted by Phillip at 8:03 PM

 

I'm typing this little bit of nowhere out amidst reading an online article that has 5 signs to tell me if he's cheating on me. So far it looks like I'm safe: he hasn't started to question my appetizer-making skills, nor has he suddenly lavished me with expensive, guilt-ridden presents (such as a recipe book on how to make exotic party appetizers).

The kiosk has a computer, and more importantly a computer that works. Beyond the kiosk crew having to contend with Lenny The Curtain Who Hates Your Fscking Guts, things seem to be going rather well. On the other hand, the store got a complete overhaul today. Again. And while I admit the happiness of knowing our district manager is making the store look better (mostly by giving us the go-ahead to ship out a whole lot of crap that is in our store for a reason I can only list as: would someone at Head Office please start dislodging heads out of asses? Please?!), I've spent most of the day being run ragged in a valiant attempt to get as much stuff cleaned, revamped and rearranged before our day off tomorrow. But it's a good kind of run ragged. If I'm lucky, the store will be presentable inside and out by the end of Saturday.

This is happiness. Not quite on the same level as the happiness from snuggling with Mel, or wearing the Puchuu hat, or Mel actually letting me snuggle with her while I wear the Puchuu hat. But it's close.

On the other hand, of a greater level of happiness is the fact that our bedroom window has finally been replaced. Gone is the giant spiderweb of glass being held together with duct tape and sheer will power. Good-bye has been bidden to the black garbage bag that used to cover the spiderweb of glass. It's good to have a window we can look out of without having to worry about the window collapsing or imploding all over us.

The ordeal's been enough of an adventure if managerial ineptitude as it is, with the building owner taking his damned sweet time to fix a serious safety threat we probably could have sued his ass over had something gone horribly wrong. And as corollary to Murphy's Law, naturally they decided to have the window replaced after Mel started working at the kiosk and suddenly wasn't around all day if the need arose. We notified the owner in May about the window. I think after the guy dicking around for 5 months is justifiable cause for us kicking him in the bahooglies if he asks us how the new window's working out.

Though I must confess to taking a bit of sadistic pleasure in seeing a few droplets of blood on the floor from the repair job. It looks like the window o' doom managed to slash somebody's hand open. To which I can only say: and wouldn't that be ironic.

Don't you think?

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to brace myself for tomorrow. If the release dates are correct, the first Sesame Street: Old School DVD set appears on the shelves. And I will get to stand there sniffling over the fact that I won't have the money to snatch it up, snuggle it and then sit down to some old-fashioned Henson goodness.

Today's Lesson: there is nothing quite so amusing as watching the Colbert Report and seeing George Lucas kill Stephen in a light sabre duel by impaling Stephen in the crotch. Brilliant, I tell you!
posted by Phillip at 10:42 PM

 

The kiosk has been open for 2 days now. And while my dispassion for it has not yet reached the epic levels of last year's "give me a match, some gasoline, an alibi and some marshmallows", I am still left feeling rather unimpressed with things. In cases like this, one always has to assume that something will go wrong when a temporary kiosk gets put into a mall. (And yet, you'd think that after 8 years of doing this, they'd have most of the bugs squashed by now...or am I being too optimistic?)

Here's a basic breakdown of the last few days, brought to you in a point-counterpoint form. (Now is most certainly the time to disregard your mother having taught you "not to counterpoint at people, it's rude.")

GOOD: the kiosk arrives on the day it should and is mostly assembled.

NOT SO GOOD: by mostly assembled, I mean the contractor never put in the closet used to store the curtain. So he left it in the middle of the mall corridor, failed to mention this fact to anyone, and when he called back to say he'd be installing that piece the next day, he told us to go looking for it in the completely wrong spot. (Smeghead...)

GOOD: we had electricity going into the kiosk on our first day, and this morning we had a working phone line. (Fantastic, I say, considering last year it took a week to get one and two weeks to get the other.)

NOT SO GOOD: on the other hand...is the curtain rod supposed to just rip right out of three of its support struts like that? Isn't the whole point of the rod, you know, being able to actually hold the weight of the curtain at any given place around the kiosk?

GOOD: luckily, the company handyman (whose great sense of humour is rivalled only by his contempt for the ineptitude of the idiots at Head Office. Oh, the stories he's told us....) was able to come by today and fix the track. And the drawers. And the cupboards.

NOT SO GOOD: unfortunately for poor Tom the handyman, ours was Winter kiosk #6 he'd had to fix so far in the last few weeks. Two of those were major repairs almost requiring the whole kiosk to be dismantled and reassembled.

GOOD: it didn't take 2 months for us to get our hat racks and mirrors. They actually sent them along with the kiosk this time!

NOT SO GOOD: what the hell am I going to do with 4 scary-looking, styrofoam mannequin heads? (Beyond using them as bowling pints, natch)

GOOD: we received fewer boxes of stock than we had around this time last year.

NOT SO GOOD: we're still waiting for our box of much needed kiosk supplies to arrive. (It's on the manifest, dammit! Make the box manifest itself already!)

GOOD: on the Friday before the kiosk went up, we received the computer monitor, the computer, the receipt printer, the standard printer, a lot of miscellany cords to connect them all together, and a swanky scanner I still covet.

NOT SO GOOD: the cash drawer was auspiciously missing.

GOOD: for some silly-arsed reason, the Guleph kiosk got 2 cash drawers and kindly sent us one.

NOT SO GOOD: 5 minutes before the box from Guelph arrived with our drawer, I discovered that we had in fact already received the original cash drawer meant for the kiosk. Someone else had received it, not bothered to tell me about it and hid it in a part of the stockroom I don't normally check out. (Smeghead...)

GOOD: but that doesn't really matter, since we've now got our cash drawer.

NOT SO GOOD: the one sent to us directly by our Head Office (coincidentally, the one that someone at my store neglected to tell me we got) had one of those old-fashioned bells that rang really, really loudly whenever the till popped open. You can hear it from halfway down the corridor. Great way to let everyone know we've got our cash open for grabbing.

GOOD: the cash drawer Guelph sent us had no ring-a-ding-ding function, so we were able to set ourselves up, prime the system and start using our computer.

NOT SO GOOD: which would have worked great if the computer itself wasn't bunged up horribly. The damned thing couldn't stop cycling through the opening screen. It constantly reset itself whenever it reached one specific point, and even the guys at our MIS department couldn't poke at the problem.

GOOD: and yet the MIS crew, in seeing this problem, immediately set about creating a new replacement computer exclusively for our kiosk.

NOT SO GOOD: the new computer won't arrive until Thursday sometime. At best. So we're stuck with cash only, and having to do manual receipts.

GOOD: the day is almost over and I can go to bed.

NOT SO GOOD: I have to get up early tomorrow, take stock of the store and actually make everything look presentable. Again. (I swear, you're gone for two days, and somehow everything manages to bundle itself in a nice wicker handbasket and express-mails itself straight to hell.)


Today's Lesson: your cat will try and sit on your head whether you want him to or not.
posted by Phillip at 8:40 PM

 


Today marked Mel's final day of freedom. Which was celebrated by sleeping in, doing homework and staring outside at the rain which only seemed to let up long enough to tease us. (As in: it stops raining long enough for me to think its safe to take Shady outside, and then lets loose with a torrential downpour when the dog & I are at the furthest point from home on our walk.)

Tomorrow, Mel gets to grumpily rise and eventually shine as she accompanies me to work. Yep, the winter kiosk shows up tomorrow morning. I can only wonder what sort of silly-arsed things are going to leave us weary and homicidal this year. After all, it's hard to outdo a kiosk with no electricity for a week, no phone line for two weeks, and a month before we get any real banking information for it.

So far, things are looking optimistic. All the technical computer bits for the kiosk were shipped to our store on Friday, and a quick check of all the assemblage shows that not only is everything in perfect working order (with a notable lack of a printer with a giant dent in it, unlike last year), but they also have a scanner this time around.

It's a very sleek and black scanner, and looks like an oversized Philishave. I think I'll be commandeering that scanner once the kiosk closes down. It's a very happy scanner.

Should I be worried I seem to be currently suffering from scanner envy?

In other news, I had many a colourful and silly anecdote to share about the past week's goings-on, and with the exception of getting to watch Gabezilla run around with half of a high chair strapped to his backside, I can't recall any of them.

Today's Lesson: sadly, it's possible to get outwitted by an empty cardboard box.
posted by Phillip at 9:14 PM

 

It's only mid-October.

For some reason, I stepped outside to walk the dog and had a blast of snow blown up pants. I was not impressed. In fact, I was very cold and said a few colourful words that made Mel giggle over my random nounage.

Ah, winter: why must you be so cruel and vindictive? You already get total control of 3-4 months out of the year. Why must you torment us when we're still trying to salvage what's left of autumn? Or are you so determined in your bid for power that you'd crush the other seasons if they show any signs of weakness?

In other news, happiness is learning that the Old School Sesame Street DVD box set will be out in stores at the end of the month. It's all 70's & 80's, and all pre-Elmo. Joy!

Today's Lesson: naturally, when Head Office wants you to switch the store around to display all sorts of new stock, they will send you all that new stock a week after the switch-around was supposed to be done. Bravo, Head Office. If wasn't so busy flipping you off, I'd applaud.
posted by Phillip at 9:30 PM

 

It's a day off. I'll take it!

And then I'll hit it over the head with a seemingly innocent yet blunt object (probably the rabbit cage), stuff it into the trunk of Mel's car and have us all drive off into the Hollywood sunset. I could use more days like this, especially since the winter kiosk is due to open soon.

Well...it was supposed to open this coming Wednesday. That wasn't an entirely fun prospect. While Mel & I very much enjoy spending our anniversary together, I don't exactly see opening a kiosk as quite the romantic outing we had planned. But then, early last week, I was suddenly possessed by the sneaking suspicion that someone at Head Office was on the verge of, or already had, taken their cranium, bent over with it and stuck it up their ass.

(Sort of like the same technique an ostrich employs, only more disgusting. And irritating for me.)

Acting on this premonition, I double-checked with the mall administration to see if they had a confirmation for the kiosk's opening date. The lady checks the papers sent down by Head Office. Last I checked, the 23rd of October does not fall on the exact same date as the 11th. So, the kiosk opening was pushed back for two weeks. So, yay, the anniversay is for the most part, ours again to celebrate with as we please.

On the downside, all the work I've thrown into getting a staff ready & able to work the damned thing by next Wednesday now has to wait another few weeks. Luckily, everyone involved can still get in a few training sessions and they didn't throw a hissyfit about the delays. Yet what boggled me more than anything is the incompetence on the part of our Head Office. That the kiosk was delayed didn't surprise me; it happened last year anyways. What did raise my level of disgust was that no one bothered to inform me or my District Manager about the dates being changed. The mall admin's got all the paperwork from our H/O a week prior...and yet where was the H/O memo to those of us in the retail trenches?

Though it was somewhat amusing to hear the sheer unimpressedness in my DM's voice when I informed her about the new dates. "It's what now? And they didn't even bother telling me?!" Ah, if only I could be there to watch as she reached through the phone to grab the Head Office person responsible for this communications breakdown, yank their head out from their butt and then throttle said person. (Ideally gloves will be used for sanitary purposes.)

But that's just me ranting.

It's Thanksgiving after all, and I really should be thankful I had the foresight to check the dates anyways. Or else I should really be thankful I didn't have a pick-axe and a plane ticket to Montreal handy. (Had I voiced my "exasperation" with Head Office in creative and physcially painful ways, Mel would have killed me for missing our anniversary due to being arrested, then find a way to resurrect me just so she could kill me again for being such a stupid tit.)

So, Thanksgiving then. Mel's family was down for the weekend, wherein there wasn't as much Thanksgiving festivities as there were "happy to see you again, and by the way, happy anniversary" festivities. They also gave us an advanced Christmas present: a fantastic-looking wood display cabinet/counter for some of our nicer dining pieces. I was ecstatic about getting furniture for a gift. Not blase or disappointed that it wasn't money or a movie...but genuinely pleased if not excited to see the cabinet up in our dining room.

Dear lord, I'm becoming a grown-up! Quick, someone fetch me my Puchuu hat!

We also saw The Guardian, which all in all wasn't a bad movie...if not for the 4-5 scenes where you could actually see the boom mike in the shot. You think I'm joking? Keep your eyes open on some of the interior shots (ie. Costner's wife's trailer, or the Coast Guard Rescue Command Centre during the last reel). The boom mike makes a few appearances like some silly, black chandeilier. Some blatantly to the point where you have to wonder just how the hell everyone else on the editing staff missed it. With today's technology, you could easily erase it digitally from the shots, which leads me to believe that no one saw Waldo--er, the boom mike until after the film was in theatres.

Beyond that, work continues to grind on, as always. The weather over here at long last remembered that, hey, it's not November yet so maybe we should really give the people some sunny, warm days before winter hits. The happy buffet Mandarin restaurant finally opened, allowing Mel & I to have our anniversary meal there. And The Project is off to auspicious and hopeful beginnings.

All in all, a decent beginning before the world spirals into Commercialmas craziness and sad product-pushing songs being looped over the mall speakers telling me how wonderful Christmas is, and could I please stop chasing the patrons around with a pick-axe while exclaiming, "The Christmas carols are out to get me!!", as it takes away from the spirit of the season.

So here it is, Today's Lesson: drawing shut the living room curtains is more complicated than I could have ever imagined.
posted by Phillip at 10:03 AM

 


I've been meaning to step back up this little bit of nowhere all week. Really, I have. It's not that I haven't been irresponsible. It's not like I've being seeing other blogs behind its back. But true to form, corollaries to Murphy's Ineffable Law (or is it: Murphy's Effing Law?) have dogged me every time I planned to sit down and listen to the clickety-clackety sounds my fingers scuttling across the keyboard. Pleasantly enough though, most of these distractions have been welcomed and were planned in advance.

On his whirlwind trip through Ontario, my Dad paid a long-overdue visit (which Mel & I really must repay by paying him and my grandparents a long-overdue visit to Nova Scotia), and by some miracle of good fortune, I managed to procure two straight days off for the occasion. It's strange how the most we did was tour KW and show him how the city's changed...or in some cases, devolved...and we all seemed perfectly fine with it. Maybe that's the coolest part about family: the simple act of spending time together after prolongued absences feels like time well spent. (Granted, this all relies heavily on you not wanting to kill your family members after being around each other for only fifteen minutes.)

My Dad also regaled me with his brief visit to Toronto, where as he put it, "I saw this enormous crowd lined up to get autographs from Bouncy."

Mel: [???] "Bouncy...Bouncy...don't you mean Beyonce?"

My Dad: "Meh, sounds close enough."

^-^ You can see where I got my sense of humour from.

After we parted ways so he could continue on to Oshawa to visit our grandfather (and from there, travel to Ottawa to visit an old friend now dying of cancer), it was all about Gabezilla. Presents were given (and subsequently tested by Gabe for tastiness), cake was devoured, marshmallows were sacrified and good times were had by all. The rampaging toddler enterred the terrible two's last Wednesday...and I don't think any of us have noticed any changes...beyond Gabe deciding that an already 12 hour day for himself should be capped off by refusing to even remotely slow down until 3am.

I don't know what fuels Gabe's seemingly endless supply of energy, but if we could bottle it and sell it, we'd run Red Bull and Jolt right out of business. That, or else contract we him out to a demolition crew. Hey, he's got a hardhat now from one of his birthday presents, so it could work!

Beyond that, I've been playing around with a new word processing program that is exclusively designed for writing and formatting screenplays. (And yes, this is one of those sketchy "Don't ask how I acquired it" moments.) Working with a system like this is vastly different from anything else I've encountered before. It also didn't help that I had no user's manual to consult and pretty much had to experiment with each new feature as I went along.

To the best of my knowledge, this haphazard method of learning can be best likened to being blindfolded and then sent off to try whack a sleeping rhinocerous in the testicles with a stick. Sometimes my efforts were rewarded with some very impressive results. The rest of the time, I swear an invisible hand actually came out from the computer screen and bitch-slapped me for attempting to molest its functions.

So now I possess the ability to create authentic scripts. There's the odd chance this may filter into next year's Confic, but we'll have to see about that.

Now if you'll excuse me, there's a mug of mint-flavoured hot chocolate and an episode of RahXephon calling my name. (The latter of which I'll have to ignore and instead help work on an English paper Mel has to finish up before the night's out.)

Oh, and I should also ask: has anyone seen a solitary, black cotton sock? It appears one of mine decided to venture off into the great unknown somewhere between the rinse and spin cycles of our local washing machine. My pairs of socks are already becoming an endangered species as it is, and the disappearance of yet another sock could upset the delicate balance of nature. So if you do happen to stumble across a black sock who has lost its way and is trying to get back to the rest of my collection, please let me know.

Today's Lesson: winterwear is already out in stores. Deal with it. (I've already had to cry tears for the scarves now proliferating our bunks...)
posted by Phillip at 9:40 PM

 

You know, there are a lot of things you just never want to share with other people, or you don't want them to share with you: underwear, demon possessions, chocolate cookies or details about your sex life.

Let me explain...












Wow, if there's any quicker way to clear this little bit of nowhere, damned if I know what it is.

And yet, I am dismayed to confess that I am perhaps not quite the romantic, or at least above-average lover as I'd once believed myself to be. However, recent events have brought to light the fact that I may yet be required to "level up" as it were, or at the very least crack open one of those Nora Roberts books Mel is trying to get me to read and take a lesson or two from those pages.

Herein is pretty much a word for word conversation between Mel and myself regarding the issue in question:

It's about 10am-ish. I'm lounging in the living room, and Mel strolls in.

Mel: ^-^ "Morning!"

Me: "Hello. Sleep well?"

Mel: ^-^ "Yep! I guess I was really tired last night."

Me: "So I gathered."

Mel: [???] "What do you mean by that?"

Me: "Well, for starters...you fell asleep during the foreplay."


Now somewhere around here, Mel blushes profusely as she thinks back to the previous evening, and realizes there's an inherent lack of memories on her part.

Mel: o.O;; "I, uh, hope you're not offended."

Me: "Well, nothing says 'I love you' quite like that."

Mel: "I'm sorry?"

Me: -.-;;;;;;; [sulking] "You so owe me foreplay now."


And so in honour of my wondrous lack of ability to keep Mel awake, here's the reason you definitely don't want to be looking at this little bit of nowhere at your workstation:



posted by Phillip at 6:06 PM

 

The week after school starts is a lot like the week before school starts, only without hordes of customers invading your store, pillaging the stock and making a general mess of anything that even remotely looks clean. I really do think customers in general feel threatened by a tidy store, probably because it looks cleaner than their place, and they must reassert their dominance in society by destroying this threat. Or they just don't give a damn about flinging stuffing paper across the entire store as they messily dissect a display backpak.

Of course, it amuses me to no end in a slightly sadistic "jail is the only reason I haven't ripped your eyebrows off" way how, when we fetch an unstuffed backpak that was on the same rack right in behind the display one, customers will exclaim, "I didn't even see that!" This does garner some consternation from me, though, since I have to wonder what other sort of stores they shop at--wherein those stores have deliberately mixed up the display pieces and their racks of corresponding "non-display" stock.

Clearly I'm unenlightened and have been shopping at all the wrong places.

Then again, sometimes I'm pretty darned sure it's just the customers, not me. Take, for instance, an example from a few days ago. I've got an armload of backpaks for restocking our shelves (with them being neatly lined up in behind their corresponding display models, as we are of course an unenlightened store), and happen to chance upon a trio of preteen girls who have attempted to dress like sexy, vamped-up seventeen year-olds and failed spectacularly at it.

As these prepubescent teens stroll by, one remarks in a loud, caustic voice, "I'd shop at Bentley! They're pimpin'!" Given the subsequent look on her face as I strolled in behind them with an armload of backpaks, I don't think she realized a store employee was quite so close to hear the snark. But I smiled politely, and desperately wished I didn't work at the store, since the immediate retort that came to mind was, "Well, it's just as well, considering you're dressed like a slut."

One day, perhaps.

Which does make me wonder if, on my last day in retail when I've secured another job beyond a shadow of a doubt, all the venom and contempt for customer stupidity will loose itself on the unsuspecting gits. There have been debates in the past. Should I act flamboyantly fabulous? Should I wait for someone with a significant chip on their shoulder, and go at their psyche with a verbal icepick? Or will I zip myself into a suitcase and scare the bejezus out of any hapless child who passes by? Time may yet tell.

And if you still think you're feeling lucky today, Today's Asking Asshats comes to a grand total of: 4 (with one of them being heard over the phone while I checked in with another store about something.)
posted by Phillip at 4:39 PM

 


http://www.aintitcool.com/display.cgi?id=24380

The world has lost an Aussie who loved nature, wanted everyone else to have the same passion and respect for nature as he did, and was more than a little out of his mind in the coolest way possible.

Rest in peace, Steve Irwin.
posted by Phillip at 10:19 AM

 

Today was blood donor day. Fun was had. Needles were used. Blood was extracted. Cookies were devoured with wanton abandon. And it looked like I was having so much fun that Mel decided, what the hell, why not try it herself? Spontaneous blood donating is sure to become the new fad for dates. I'm sure of it.

I must confess though: it makes for a rather arduous task to try and donate blood when the donor clinics are usually held in the middle of a work shift in a mall that you don't work in. As a result, I haven't been able to donate blood as often as I'd like. Granted, I'm not in that prestigious AB "universal recipient" club, or that equally elitist O Negative "universal donor" club, but hey! O Positives are people too!

Besides, when you get right down to it, donating blood means good things. Namely Coke and cookies. Oh...and there's that whole "saving lives" thing too. But it's mostly about the cookies.

In other news, I finished reading the Ghost In The Shell 2 manga. And at the risk of sounding like an idiot, I have absolutely no idea what the hell happened in it. Lot of E-hacking and brain hijacking. Lot of philosophical and science and religious discussions. Definitely lots of not-so-subtly veiled fanservice. And I think all but the fanservice flew right over my head. Something tells me I'll have to read it again, or else act intellectually superior in an attempt to hide my "having no fscking clue" status if anyone asks what I thought of the manga.

I need to find myself some Shirow Coles notes...

And for those of you playing the home version of our game, Today's Asking Asshats totalled: 6. (I swear, I will be the happiest retail trencher alive once school starts again, and people may actually take the time to read a sign.)
posted by Phillip at 9:34 PM

 

The store has been oddly slow the last few days. At least compared to the crowds we've been seeing in the last week or so. This can only mean one of three possibilities.

1) people have actually been thinking ahead and began doing their back to school shopping anywhere up to a month ago in order to avoid the crowds. Naturally this thins out the crowd, making our work less hectic. And this unexpected intelligent foresight in turn validates my faith in humanity. Or,

2) everyone is waiting until the absolute last minute (read: the long weekend itself) to do all their back to school shopping. This in turn means we will be swamped for the next few days, driving us to curl up into little fetal balls and think of our happy place...or else break the glass on our "Use In Case of Homicidal Rage" cabinet house the Customer Appreciation Amazing Pancake Maker. Of course, this would nullify all that "validation of faith in humanity" thing. Or else it might be,

3) my phereomones are in fact driving customers out of the store. Which might explain why the store gets busy whenever I'm not around, but within a minute of my return, the place empties out again. (I know it can't be my B.O., since I use deodorant every day.) Now, if only we could harness this power for the forces of good...

In other news, I have begun Christmas shopping already, the Evidence Mice have been lying low, I get to sleep in tomorrow and oh dear God, I don't know what the cat did in the litter box, but it's making my eyes tear up from the burning!!


Oh, and for anyone playing the pool at home, here is Today's Asking Asshat number: 5.
posted by Phillip at 9:40 PM

 

This past weekend was spent in the company of friends, family, a lot of mosquitos and more than a few vices. Though there was (sadly) no Tequila present for me to indulge in my favourite alcoholic vice, I did discover a few fascinating vice-related things. Like how it feels to be the person who has to hold back someone's hair while they pay their tribute to the porcelain god.

Good times were had regardless...at least for those of us who didn't suffer a hangover the next morning. Though it saddens me to say that at the bonfire celebrating my sister's birthday, I lost no less than 3 marshmallows and 2 hotdogs to said fire.

I blame it on my sticks. They all caught fire and broke off, taking my hapless and delicious meals down with them. And now I've apparently been banned from selecting or using sticks to cook hotdogs/marshmallows over the fire ever again. Geez, you'd think I'd been trying to put an electric kettle onto the fire or something...

Anyhoo, it's the week before school starts, and thus far I'm please to report I haven't been forced to kill any silly-arsed customers. Yet. The week is still young, of course. Mind you, we are considering setting up a betting pool regarding our signage. Currently we have a promotional deal, and the sign advertizing for it says:

Perhaps it's because of all my time being trapped in the retail trenches that I'm inherently skeptical now, but whenever I see a sign proclaiming any sort of sale, I immediately search the rest of the sign for the fine print, requirements and other such limitations. Then again...this does help further my belief that everyone should spend a "tour of duty" of sorts in the service sector for at least a required 4-6 months. Perhaps then people will tone down their asshattery.

It's either that, or I revert back to the Customer Appreciation Amazing Pancake Maker.

Today's Lesson: sometimes the smell of bong wafting through the balcony window can smell a lot like dog poop.
posted by Phillip at 8:50 PM

 

For the last hour or so, Mel has been running through Hyrule (with a great deal of cursing its sidequests, might I add). And I have been washing poop that mast managed to get matted into the butt-fur of our dog.

Do I know how to have a kick-ass Friday night or what?

In other news, I am truly convinced that customers are in fact like swarms of locusts that will decimate your display and leave behind a horrid, sad mess that takes a very long time to clean. If they're this bad with mere stacks of backpacks, I shudder to think what a store with a shoe sale would look like after the carnage.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a Katamari soundtrack I must listen to...
posted by Phillip at 8:57 PM

 


As I look at the calendar, I marvel at how it has been almost a month and a half since this little bit of nowhere saw anything resembling life. The blog has become dust-ridden and riddled with cobwebs during the interim. But for no more! (At least, that's how the theory goes.) And so, my loyal readers...the both of you who are left...this little bit of nowhere returns.

There's a slight bit irony running loose in the world, I must confess. (There's also a slight bit or ironing running loose, but that only happens when you leave dirty clothes unwashed for so long that they develop their own intelligence.) Half of the inherent absence of any new updates was due partially to Net apathy and partially to "nothing really fancy schmancy to comment on". Most of these things, apathy especially, contributed heavily to a lack of updates. And the first interesting thing to happen to me that's really worth commenting about renders me bedridden, sick and pretty much unable to go near a computer let alone type on it, for nearly 2 weeks.

So yeah, Hand, Foot & Mouth Disease was had.

I don't recommend it. Unless there's some foul little malevolent asshat you really do loathe. In which case, hey, so long as I'm not the plague monkey that has to give it to them, enjoy the spectacle!

Let's take a moment to break the disease down, however. Hand, Foot & Mouth is primarily a kid's illness. It's rare for adults to catch it, and usually when they do they exhibit no symptoms. Just think, all you hypochodriacs out there: the virus is infecting you, only you just don't know it. Feel free to scream and sanitize your hands at your leisure.

But getting back to the disease, it's near impossible for an adult to suffer the effects of HFMD the way a child would. I, however, happened to be that gosh-darned lucky one in a million. And I didn't even get a gold statue or purple ribbon for it, or anything for my troubles. Bah, I say!

ASt the very least, we were able to trace how I got the virus. One of my co-workers babysits her niece on a regular basis. And guess what quirky little disease happened to be running horribly amok at said niece's daycare? So my co-worker was probably a carrier, much the way a plague monkey can carry a deadly virus but not be affected by it. I had a work shift with her...and a day or two later, I started to notice strange, little red marks on my hands. These soon multiplied and became strange, little red marks on my hands and face.

Now given the location of the marks, at the time Mel & I thought I was merely suffering from a bug or spider bite. Something had crawled into my pillow and was making a meal of all my body parts that rested on said pillow. The bedding and pillows were washed. The spots got bigger. And bred like scary viral bunnies.

A day or two after that, I was knocked flat on my ass by a fever. By now, the marks were all turning into blisters. Blisters that were slightly itchy and somewhat painful. Except for the ones that showed up inside my mouth and on my tongue. Those were more-than-somewhat painful. They also had the unexpected side effect of preventing me to eat.

By the time Mel returned from an overnight getaway with her family in Niagra, she found me a sad, sorry little mass asleep on the couch. She called Telehealth, the phone-in medical line. After hearing my symptoms, the nice guy on the phone line said it would probably be a good idea to go to the ER. We went to the ER. We arrive at the ER at about half past midnight. At around 4:30am, we were actually allowed out of the waiting area and into a triage room. An hour or so later, we were graced by the presence of a doctor who took all of 5 minutes to tell me there was nothing I could do about the virus and nothing they could do to help. (As it turns out, HFMD has no cure, and no known antibodies can help lessen the symptoms.)

So when you whittle it down, we waited 5 1/2 hours to be told I needed bedrest. Now on the one hand I do appreciate the doctor's advice; I was able to procure a few sick days from work, and used those days to sleep and recover as best I could. Knowing me, I probably would have still tried to go into work if I was under the impression whatever I had wasn't so serious. On the other hand...five and a half frickin' hours for that?! Lucky I wasn't the other poor bastard who was stuck waiting about as long as we were; that guy had a wrist that was at best broken and at worst as horribly maimed as it can get without bone punching through the skin. I lost counto f how many complimentary ice packs he went through that night.

Anyhoo, a week was spent in the company of a lot of sleep. And I do mean a lot of sleep. I maybe spent 3-4 hours in total being conscious per day, and not all at once. And the drool. Oh God, the drool! Because of all the blisters in my mouth, I was lucky to drink a few cups of water or milk per day. Whenever that happened, my salivary glands kicked into overdrive and I had this uncontrollable drooling problem for the next 10 minutes. I also had this problem whenever I woke up too. We went through so many napkins and Klenexes as a result.

Do you remember the dog from the movie Turner & Hooch? I became the human variation of Hoouch and that "It looks like you swallowed a tennis shoe and the laces are still sticking out" drool. Again, I don't recommend it.

But in time, I started to recover. I stayed awake more often and for longer periods of time. I actually had enough energy to take Shady outside. I started to drink more liquids, and not drool all over the place for the next hour. About a week after our fated visit to the ER, I upgraded my eating habits to include the "can finally eat soup" feature. (A definite improvement on the previous "might be able to half-drink, half-dribble a glass of water or milk" feature, I can assure you.)

Most of the symptoms shifted into a "going going" as opposed to "gone" phase. My mouth, while still sporting its myriad of "I'm amazed it's not leprous!" spots/blisters/scary-looking bumps, started to show more mobility, flexibility and a lot less pain than usual.

Granted, it was still another 3 days before I could start eating solid foods again. Yet suddenly being able to eat again had one unexpected drawback: hunger. I suddenly found myself staring at TV commercial and go "They're eating food. I HATE them."

No, really, I'm serious. Two days ago I saw a KFC commercial and thought to myself, "You know, I could go for some of that." And considering my past history/restraining-order relationship with KFC, that says something.

You may laugh, but I have subsequently dropped an inch around the hips since the week of too-painful-to-eat began. It's very disconcerting to pull up your jeans, and then have the jeans slowly slide back down to your kneecaps. Methinks my forcibly repressed metabolism is going to kick back in with a significant vengeance once this is all over.

As for the hands, the blisters are starting to show signs of fading. Most turned from solid callous-like blisters into those watery ones you're afraid of accidentally popping. (Because let's face it, the last thing you want to do is grab a can opener, and suddenly feel something wet trickle down your finger.) It's been the usual Polysporin & Bandaid treatment since I started working again.

Which brings us to the here and now, where there has been a near full recovery in all proverbial avenues. My mouth has no sores, my appetite is very healthy if I'm a swarm of locusts, and my hands have no blisters at all. Mind you...my hands are sporting large pinkish blotches where the blisters used to be. They are starting to fade and return to my normal skin pallour, but in the meanwhile, I look like I'm decomposing. I could easily be in a zombie movie, and the only effects they'd have to do would be on my face.

Ah, what a beautiful way to return to this little bit of nowhere! With pustules and drool and ugly little viruses, all of which can be shared with so many unlucky sots. Truly, online journals are a thing of beauty.

But has anything else happened, you ask?

Nah, not really. It's back to school season at work, which means busy shifts, sad-looking children and a myriad of dumbass questions that only demonstrate how often customers DON'T bother reading the big bold letters on a sign. When I'm not at work, I'm spending a lot of time with Mel and catching up on my writing. Oh, and I'm usually very hungry.

In fact I'm hungry right now.

So we had better cut to Today's Lesson before I bugger off and raid the fridge for the third time tonight: rabbits will, if given half the chance, race around their cages all night long in a valiant effort to keep you awake against your will. (Which makes it amusing in a way to consider that we now have Tachi the lop in our guest bedroom.)
posted by Phillip at 6:30 PM

 


Invader Zim finds himself some Jesus: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/653870/1/

Words escape me beyond: "And this seemed like a good idea to you...how exactly?"

And so ends your daily dose of, "You son of a bitch, my day was going along just fine until you had to post that stupid link!" But in truth, I only hurt you all because I care. (I care about how priceless the looks of abject horror on your faces will be once you make it past chapter 1, mind you, but there's still caring in there somewhere.)
posted by Phillip at 9:31 PM

 


Today was all about paint. Happily paint on the walls and not the carpet, furniture or (most importantly of all) the pets. Our main areas are now sporting swanky new coats of paint that go together really well. I'm happy about this. At the very least, Mel is pleased to know that she can finally start putting up all sorts of pictures and shelves in the hall, living & dining room without having to worry of us painting around them.

But beyond that, it was a rather quiet day. Yesterday has more anecdotes. Mainly because yesterday was all about the African Lion Safari--now with non-pussified zebras! (Mel was particularly happy about that one.) It's been years since I was last there, and I have to say I really enjoyed spending the day at the park. So long as you're content to take your time and leisurely stroll around, there's a lot to see and do.

It is also perhaps the only place in the country where you can hear Mel exclaim, "Well, that's just great! Now I've got a baboon's assprint on my windshield!"

I only laughed until she demanded I get out of the car and clean it off. Though I was somewhat dismayed that all the SUVs around us were turning into baboon taxis. For the most part, none of the car-riding baboons were doing any particular damage to any vehicles. Almost all the riders were female baboons with very young babies clinging to their undercarriage. Apparently we were too good for them. All we got were a couple of seemingly drunken male juveniles who got into a very brief brawl on the hood of the car (wherein we received the aforementioned assprint).

I also got to reaffirm my love of birds of prey. If it wasn't for the fact that pretty much any of our other pets could get carried off as dinner, I'd love to be a falconer. Or at least moonlight as one. Then again...that just sounds like a really sad superhero. In other news, barn owls look adorable and need to start breeding more, dammit!

(Apparently there were only 1 or 2 breeding pairs in the wild in all of Canada, as far as the experts know and as of 1999. This vexes me greatly. I'll never get the chance to point to one flying around at dusk and tell Gabe, "See that? That's Jareth flying off to claim another kid for his labyrinth.")

What's that you say? Me, corrupt children?

Perish the thought!


Today's Lesson: sometimes it pays not to answer your phone.
posted by Phillip at 8:53 PM

 
Wow, one minute it was June and suddenly it got all July around here. Which explains why I'm desperately hot and fanning myself with one of those cool fans that one booth at Anime North was giving away. (And apparently everyone wanted once word leaked out about said fans.)

Canada Day was spent relaxing and cleaning. The rest of the pseudo long-weekend was spent working. I can't exactly complain, as it means money, and money is good as a means of paying for food, a home and other fun items on the upper eschelons of Maslov's hierarchy. On the downside, though, I did miss my sister hanging out in Kitchener for a while and subsequently sharing her disturbing-yet-funny-in-a-sadistic-sort-of-way experience of a wedding from hell. (Not hers, happily.)

All I can say is I have decided I owe her and Jorret a 12-pack of beers, just in the hopes it can help ease their pain.

As for the world from here on in, Mel's dad arrives tomorrow and stays until the end of the week. And somewhere in that time, we're all going to get high off the paint fumes, since we'll be painting pretty much all of the apartment. I'm rather optimistic about this. For as lacking as I may be in the handiwork skills, we couldn't possibly do a worse job than the former tenants, one of whom was a self-professed pro painter.

(Unless I managed to punch a hole in the drywall with my paintbrush and we discovered a skeleton inside. Then I might be inclined to think things aren't going so well...)

But I'd also like to take a moment to discuss spam. Yes, I know: spam already is on our screens enough, why should I actually bother to give it anything less than a rectal probe with the business end of a taser?

Consider for a moment: in my Inbox today is an Email claiming to have "cheap Viaagrra!" and other such misspelled anti-impotence meds. Something about the way they misspelled Viagra (deliberately, I rather think, to try & avoid the filters) disturbs me. Mostly because now all I can think of is Tony the Tiger with his hand in the air as he chants, "I'm errrrrrrect!"

That was your horrible, life-scarring mental image of the day. And no, I'm not paying the therapy bills for it.


Today's Lesson: this is not your week for having anything shipped to you. Trust me on this one. (Ask Mel if you're curious and have a free half hour you can devote to listening as to how she plans to strangle the nearest US-based UPS representative whose neck she can wrap her hands around. And that's not even mentioning the sofa...)
posted by Phillip at 7:16 PM

 

It's just a little past midnight, and I have just finished enjoying the quietest day I can recall in a very long time. The last three and a half days were spent entertaining Mel's family while they visited up here...well, Mel did most of the entertaining, as I had that pesky "work" thing going on for a greater part of the visit.

But in the aftermath of their departure around noon today...yesterday...Sunday (I hate it when it's too close to midnight to properly guage these things!), Mel spent most of the afternoon catching up on some much-needed sleep. And I in turn spent most of today reading a book.

It's been a while since I've just taken the time to curl up with a good book over the course of an afternoon or a day. These days, I typically read during whatever breaks I'm able to finagle amidst my work shifts (a bigger apartment does sadly mean a bigger rent), and those are becoming more rare. Evenings are usually devoted to spending time with Mel or writing.

Come to think of it, the last time I can recall sitting down for an entire day with a great book I haven't read before was at least 4-5 years ago. (Funny enough, that book was also written by the same authors of the book I spent today with.) There's something incredibly cool about reclining on the living room carpet and allowing yourself to get absorbed into a story. There's no time limit, no other pressing duties, and best of all: the comfortable quiet. No distractions, no outside noises...beyond the frenzied screams & honks of drivers who wished to share with the world that Portugal won its World Cup match today, at any rate.

My life seems to have reached a saturation point in terms of outside noise and static. Most of everything I do is immersed with annoying auditory clutter (ie: customers), and I'm finding myself almost ferociously guarding whatever opportunities for that quasi-conceptual "peace & quiet" I'm able to sieze.

This makes me wonder if I'm ever going to become an angry Zen. (Certainly a contradiction in terms, yes, but it would make for a fascinating psychological study.)




posted by Phillip at 9:06 PM

 

Most perplexing.

I find it rather peculiar how we only moved one floor down, and into a larger place, and somehow it's still a ridiculous chore in trying to get everything organized and set up. But so far all the evenings we've spent finding places for our oddities is paying off.

The apartment is starting to look like people actually live here. And if you were to glance in the spare bedroom, it's starting to look like an otaku has fortified himself in there. It's strange in a way: we both agreed from the start that the spare room would be a guest room/my writing area/Mel's work & sewing area. However, the decor looks like Gary's Anime collection exploded all over the room.

In some places, you can see only patches of wall between the armada of wall scrolls. In the other places, you can't even tell me what colour the paint on the wall is, since the army o' pencil boards has commandeered the entire view. (Though to counterpoint, this is actually an improvement. The wall colour is a disgustingly pale pink, similar to the syrup you find in medicine bottles that claim the artificial strawberry flavour is tasty, but all you ever actually taste is the artificial bit.)

And not even all the pencil boards are up at this point, too. Somehow I managed to run out of stickytak and must purchase more if I'm to get the remaining 30 shitajiki on the walls. (Which is also rather peculiar, since all of said stickytak was more than enough when the pencil boards were located upstairs.)

Even still, the overabundance of Anime thematics in this single room has me slightly unnerved. Whereas in our previous apartment, we were able to spread all of the eye candy across multiple rooms, it's all concentrated in here. So while I'm betting many an otaku might stroll in and never want to leave, I must admit to feeling like I've somehow taken over the entire room and turned it into the fansubbed equivalent of a "Sekrit Club: No Girls Alowd" treefort populated by a couple of silly-arsed, seven year-old boys.

Mel has reassured me that this works just fine for her, since we can put other photos, pictures and non-Anime artwork all around the rest of the apartment. But damn, it feels like I've walked into something right out of Genshiken whenever I step inside.

Speaking of all things Anime-related, I made the mistake of purchasing Deathnote vol. 1. Now I am compelled by forces beyond my control to purchase the other volumes thus far released and catch up on the happiness I didn't even know I was missing.

In other news, this morning I discovered a brand new pair of boxer shorts I'd purchased almost a year ago and subsequently lost somewhere in our old apartment. I will be celebrating this joyous reunion by girding my loins with them tomorrow. Though sadly, the one black sock that mysteriously vanished around the same time has yet to return to me, and its widow/mate is still alone and despondent by this loss.

Today's Lesson: it's very surreal to be researching strip clubs for a Potterfic. Why can't I just be lazy like so many other fic authors out there and just make crap up? (Meh. I really can't complain, since I get to start things off with a horoscope proclaiming: your doom is certain and imminent.)
posted by Phillip at 8:31 PM