15 things I like about unemployment.

In no particular order.

1) I get to play guitar.  A lot.

2) I’ve had the opportunity to “remember” that the world still exists from 8-5 on weekdays, and it’s pretty awesome.

3) You know that whole thing about being joyful in times of trouble because you get to see God take care of you?  Yeah, that’s happened.

4) Showers are so much more enjoyable when I’m awake for them and know what I’m doing and don’t forget if I’ve washed my face yet or forget to rinse the conditioner out of my hair.

5) I’m verging on the threshold of “never needing to aimlessly wander the internet again” because I’ve done it so much.  The thought of doing that now is becoming very close to the thought of eating cheese curls, and I haven’t done that since 1st grade.

6) The odd thing about looking for work is how broad ones possibilities seem, so right now the whole world is open to me.  Grad school?  Corporate ladder?  Teaching English?  Music career?  Work from home and make $900 a week like this 22-year-old college student?  Stay tuned and find out!

7) I’m not wearing out my good pants and shirts and getting lunch stains on them.  Actually, I’ve spent a good deal of my weekdays not wearing pants at all.

8 ) By having the chance to get chores and errands over with before Dona comes home, I get to spend more time with her.  We have an afternoon coffee tradition now. (awww)

9) Oh, yeah–I like coffee again.

10) People tell me they can see that I’m working out.  I can’t really see it, but that’s how it goes.

11) I have been downtown more in the last month than I think I have in the last year.  Which is fun; I love the city.  When one’s job keeps them in Bellevue or Renton all day, the downtown experience is usually kept to only I-5, and is hindered by slow traffic.

12) I get into a made bed almost every night.

13) Seriously, this coffee is GOOD!

14) Someone’s actually doing the dishes at home, now.  Maybe they should also clean the bathroom.

15) Every now and then, I stop to think about how there is a strong chance that I will never work in the mortgage business ever again.  That’s nice.

 

More letters to people.

I have no other ideas so I’ll re-use an old idea that I stole from someone else.
—————————–

Dear Old Boss –

I had you by the proverbial balls, but, true to form, you played it calm, padded me with money, and sent me on my way.  I often wonder if you have always been as corrupt as you are now.  I found your Facebook page and you seem to have lots of friends, though I have not been impressed by the quality of friendships people have when it comes to party-and-drink-all-the-time relationships, as yours appear to be.  But then again, what do I know?  My wife made the comment that your attitude towards women is a tell-tale sign of the quality of person you are, and I have to agree.  I was about to say that it seems you treat your wife well, but then I realized that’s just because she’s extremely nice and didn’t throw a fit when you made her work 8-hour days for no pay in the office when she was 7 months pregnant.  The sooner I can forget about you, the better.

—————————–

Dear (Former?) Friend –

Yeah, you really have me confused.  Based on all I can see, there is no manic-depressive behavior anywhere else in your life, just when it comes to us.  I would have hoped that you would have been someone to stand in my wedding and someone who I could visit or have visit regularly to often reminisce about the turn of the century days, but you have decided instead to wallow in the hostility you imagine I have.  It’s very sad.

—————————–

Dear HR Director of GeoEngineers, Inc. –

I would completely rock that marketing position you’ve had open for more than 3 months.  On one hand, I can’t imagine why it has stayed open for that long, but on the other hand, you DID turn me down without an interview within 48 hours.  Twice.  Well, I hope you find the right person.

—————————–

Dear Guy in Some Class I had at SIU –

I don’t think you had actually heard of the band Aloha when I mentioned them, and when I asked you if you knew the song “Warsaw,” I think you were thinking of that weird one on the disk we had to listen to for our Music History class.  It’s not that song.  It’s way better.  I was listening to it as I wrote this letter to you.

—————————–

Dear Craig from Screwattack.com –

Did you really knock Bad Religion and then sing the praises of Powerman 5000?  I like your taste in, and commentary on, video games, but my goodness man you have horrible taste in music.

—————————–

Dear Former Classmates in Mrs. Boyer’s 2nd period Literature/Comp. Class in the school year 1996/1997 –

I’m really sorry for reading those parts in MacBeth in a really bad British accent.  Even those of you with the tiniest bit of compassion in your hearts could have seen how stupid I felt when I remembered that last night, you’d forgive me in an instant.

—————————–

Dear Mrs. Boyer –

Some of the most interesting people we meet in life are those who think they understand the whole world, but it turns out they’re just really full of themselves.  You’re #1 on my list.  Hope you’re doing well!

—————————–

Dear anyone who read these –

Sorry they were almost all condescending and mean.  Can I do one more that might be funny?  Thanks.

—————————–

Dear Person Who Played Every Pixies Song They Could at Beth’s Last Weekend –

I have a sneaking suspicion you like The Pixies only because you think it will give you indie cred.  Well, turns out that NO ONE who is really honest about the music they like, likes The Pixies so much that they’ll pick 7 of their songs when selecting 10 songs from a jukebox.  I actually would submit that as a litmus test for phonies.  I go to Beth’s like once every 9 months!  I don’t want to spend it listening to “Debaser!”

—————————–

Dear anyone who read these –

Yeah, I failed.  But trust me, that had to be said.

 

Unfinished Drafts summary

I have ten unfinished drafts saved to my blog account that I haven’t touched in at least three weeks, most of them 7 or 8 months or more.  I’m never going to finish all of them, so I’ve decided to summarize the primary thoughts from the ones that are dead-ends in a few quick one-shots and delete them forever.  Finally.

1. Lots of people hold opinions and views on things because they saw someone on TV say it.  I’m guilty of it, too, but at least I can recognize it.  What inspired this observation is from when I watched I Love the 90’s on VH1 years ago, and they brought up the great Mississippi River Flood of ‘93, and they made fun of people for living close to a river.  Man, that made me mad.
2. The mortgage industry is designed to greatly reward moronic narcissists for minimal effort, which encourages their overall lack of education, cognitive abilities, and interpersonal skills.  It is designed this way for the same reason Rent-A-Center exists, just on a much larger scale – intelligent, well-to-do white men with a serious lack of morality have figured out ways to take lots of money from stupid people.
3. I really want to start writing that fantasy story again.
4. There are a lot of things from my childhood that have not aged well.  Among those that have: Quantum Leap, 8-bit Nintendo, and Lik-m-Aid.
5. Now that I’m no longer employed in the mortgage industry, I want to share some important tips with everyone: 1) NEVER let a loan officer make a YSP off of you (and if you’re not sure if there is one on your loan, ask him, ask escrow, ask the lender, and if you find it, demand it be removed or threaten to walk); 2) ALWAYS assume your loan officer’s first goal is to make money; 3) ACTUALLY, don’t even deal with a broker at all, just go to a bank or a credit union.  Brokers squandered their chance and they deserve to be broke.
6. I cannot, for the life of me, figure out why so many people are so hostile towards the American Super Mario Bros. 2.  It may not have been the REAL Mario 2, but have you even PLAYED The Lost Levels?  It’s not that fun, it’s so hard that it borders on cruelty, and it looks EXACTLY like the the first Mario Bros.  I, for one, am glad we were given a new, colorful adventure to take Mario, et al, through, and I celebrate the few things from that game that have lasted (shy-guys, high-jumping Luigi, Birdo . . .).
7. I was going to write some more similes, but I can’t think of any and I think I’m the only one who really enjoyed the first ones.

Okay . . . there are three that I left.  What could they be?  Well, my goal is to finish the heck out of them so I don’t have to stress over finishing old, incomplete ideas anymore.

 

Nine thoughts on 9. Sort of.

Over a month ago I stumbled across a trailer for an animated movie which would come out in September.  It caught my attention up-front with its original premise, but REALLY sucked me in when “Welcome Home” by Coheed & Cambria started playing.  Check this out:

So now I’ve seen it.  And since I have seen it, I want to discuss it.  Also, I like lists in blogs.  The name of this movie is a number, so that works out perfectly, wouldn’t you say?  So here we are — Nine thoughts that I have relating to or inspired by the movie 9.

1. I think Elijah Wood is awesome.  Seriously.  I think it’d be cool if he and I bumped into each other one day in some yet-unknown circumstance that would require us to get to know each other.  Then we’d be buds and he’d meet all my friends and we’d just hang out and do cool things like I would with any other friends, except this friend is Elijah Wood; but I don’t let that influence me because, you know, he’s just a friend, and I’m cool like that.  I’d get a call someday, “Hey, man, it’s Elijah.  What you up to tonight?”  But that would be awkward because then what if I wanted to have a Lord of the Rings marathon?  I would invite him, no question, but would he come?  And if he did, would he tell us all kinds of cool things about filming the movie, or would it just feel really weird with Frodo sitting there saying nothing at all?  I may never know.
2. I commented that this movie has an impressive cast at one point.  Soon after I realized that by “impressive cast,” I meant that I recognized most of the names.
3. The concept of this movie deserves something WAY bigger than an 80 minute film.  Here is an entire world that was destroyed by technology that is now only inhabited by nine little dolls and a robot.  There is so much room for stuff there!  I get not pursuing a franchise with it (and appreciate that), but a two-film or three-film story arc could have really worked here.  Or, at the very least, a two to a two-and-a-half hour movie.
4. I really hate the way movies sometimes rush through exposition.  For anyone with a brain, the exposition is where the movie really lies!  This is my main beef with Michael Bay movies – somewhere (waaaaaaay down there), there is a story, but he refuses to tell it.  9 did this to a degree (though nowhere near Bay’s offenses).  As I sat in that crappy theater, I was completely sucked in by this neat concept of a story, but it seemed to jump from one big, defining event to the next very quickly.  That bugs me.  That’s how cartoons in the 80’s told stories in 25 minute episodes.  Slow down, please! Anyone who would sit and complain that the movie is taking too long doesn’t deserve to be there!
5. It did have quick-fixes to very big problems. (Spoiler alert).  I can appreciate the ways in which the assassin robots are taken out, but they’re all taken out in sequence like mini-bosses in a video game.  The threats don’t last long enough for us to care about them.  (I’m going to start calling such a story move “a Darth Maul”.)  Also, getting back and forth between the factory and the church started taking about 5 minutes, when the first journey was clearly (at least) a couple hours.  Lastly, the distruction of the factory was too easy.  It worked the way they planned it the first time — granted, the big robot survived, but the point remains that, while the tension was present, it did not hang on nearly long enough.
6. I noticed the song “Welcome Home,” nor any other Coheed & Cambria tune (the whole soundtrack was Danny Elfman), was not in the movie.  One of my friends expressed mild frustration over this fact (quote: “All my problems with that movie would have been forgiven if it had a Coheed & Cambria song in it.”)  But I thought putting that song in the trailer, despite it not ending up in the film, was a very clever marketing move.  Maybe this aspect of it wasn’t on purpose (like maybe they just liked the song), but I like to think it was:  what kind of demographic is going to see a movie set in a post-apocalyptic world following the exploits of hand-sized, sentient burlap dolls, facing an evil machine?  Maybe the same people that listen to a progressive rock band whose albums tell a very complex and original sci-fi story?  Yeah, maybe.
7. I’m glad to see Crispin Glover doing stuff these days (since I’m such a big fan of Back to the Future), but that man seriously creeps me out.  It’s like he takes the stereotype of “weird theater major” to a whole new level.
8. Someone, somewhere, is going to describe this movie as “Toy Story meets The Matrix.”  I think that would (or will) cheapen the creativity here, so I will not be happy when I see that.
9. My final word on this movie is that it was wasted.  All of the potential is there, but it was trimmed too much and finished in a hurry.

 

Let’s put this to rest once and for all.

I was going to write up a whole blog on how I have said time and time again that a “sugar high” or a “sugar rush” is not at all true – meaning that you, nor anyone else, anywhere, ever, have gotten a surge of energy from eating an excess of sugar.  No, not even kids.  (This does not account for caffiene). I was going to search and search and search and provide references out the proverbial butt to support my case so that all you nay-sayers can see what I have on MY side so you know what  you need in order to prove YOUR side, and thus effectively knowing that what I know is RIGHT.  I was going to do that, but the first place I looked turned out to be all I needed.  It’s The Straight Dope article from February 15, 2008, where this reality was first introduced to me.  In it, Cecil Adams (self-dubbed as “The world’s smartest human”) cites many studies that have been done over the last 30-40 years which have all effectively failed to prove that sugar has any effect on people even closely resembling what is commonly believed.  In fact, what HAS been observed is that parents’ behavior around children, when the children have been given sugar and the parents know it, is what changes.  If you still refuse to believe me after reading this article, then there’s no hope for you.

So in your FACES! I love you all.

 

Seriously, who has time for this?

Ever since six months ago, after an extremely fruitful trip to Kohl’s, I’ve had a craving for really good button-up shirts. In early July I had a very frustrating weekend of shopping in which I learned that most shirts which have my neck size will also double as a parachute in the event of an air emergency. Therefore, I have since been on the look-out for shirts that more closely match what I bought in February.

Last weekend I swung into Macy’s at Northgate Mall before heading over to my friend’s driveway to be all awesome at fixing my car. I was actually looking for shorts, but shirts were on my mind, too. Well, Macy’s was having a killer sale and I found two really nice dress shirts that were originally $60 and were reduced to $15 each. Score. $120 of shirt for $30.

I bought them, took them home later that day (remember, I was being manly with wrenches and grease for the hours that immediately followed the purchase), and washed them as I do all new clothes. I was thrilled to be able to put on my I-look-like-I-waste-money-on-things-that-I-can-buy-cheaper-somewhere-else-but-actually-I-got-them-cheap-so-in-your-face shirts the next morning and look stylish for the other corporate slaves, whose minds are deteriorating like mine. Imagine my shock when I took them fresh out of the dryer and the sleeves were bunched-up long-ways like a twisted-up, wet paper towel, the collar was creased in about 20 wrong places, and the row of buttons and the opposite places-for-buttons were folded in half, right where they shouldn’t be. I had crappy shirts I’d “borrowed” from people I knew that did that, but never had I seen a new shirt do this. It’s extremely frustrating considering where I bought them. And this is obviously not something that a bachelor’s best friend, the dryer, can fix, because they came out of the dryer that way!

A series of odd events that week which I will not bother explaining led me to realize the solution that a 29-year-0ld man would have known full-well 30 years ago – ironing. Most of my shirts are either half-polyester or wrinkle-free, so to me, ironing is something you do when someone in authority over you says that your pants, which have been lying in a ball on the floor since you took them out of the dryer a week ago, will not do.

Well, I went and bought some starch and set out to get my new shirts back into crisp, flat condition. And now, after a total of probably 45 minutes of ironing, those TWO shirts are ready for the week. TWO SHIRTS! FORTY-FIVE MINUTES! That’s a one-and-a-half episodes of Duck Tales! Make no mistake – this was not like quickly ironing a pair of pants or even flattening out a crinkled dress-shirt. I had to meticulously pull things flat as I ironed to make sure the desired shape of the shirt was restored and not permanently setting in the post-dryer creases. I’m also using starch, so I’m continuously having to brush away white starch clumps that build up on the shirt.

Honestly, I’ve never faced something like this before. Clearly, these shirts will do this every time they are washed. Clearly, they are nice shirts that fit well, so I will want to wear them. But I’m a 21st-century man! I have things to do! Places to go! The world didn’t move slower in the 50’s because they didn’t have satelite or iPhones – it moved slower because everyone had to iron their shirts!

I’m happy that at this moment in my life, the worst I can find to whine about is ironing dress shirts.

 

Is it Just Me?

Since getting married I’ve began to experience again an odd reality – not everyone has the same sense of humor as me. My dad used to tell me all the time that the stuff I like “just isn’t funny,” but I figured that was because he was old. Nope.

But that’s okay. I have come to embrace the things that make me laugh and make others cringe or scoff. It’s part of that spicey lifey stuff . . . what was it? Oh, “Variety.” That’s it. Here are five things I recall thinking were drop-dead hilarious that others really didn’t find amusing:

Rosanne Barr singing the National Anthem. I looked up the date. On July 25, 1990, Rosanne sang “The Star-Spangled Banner” at a Padres game. She was loud, rude, off-key, and ended with mooning the audience. It pissed a lot of people off, caused a huge uproar in the media, and then-President Bush called it “a disgrace.”

And I thought it was hilarious. Granted, I had just turned 10, so what wouldn’t a 10-year-old find amusing of an overweight woman screaming a song I’d been forced to sing in music class for 5 years at a baseball game, and ending it with showing her butt? But I will hold that this was not an issue of age! One of my most vivid memories of my whole childhood is visiting my Grandma that summer, sitting behind the driver’s seat in her huge van at that one park with the amphitheater in Murphysboro, and hanging out with my cousins. One cousin, Steven (he’s 3 days younger than me, so we were and are the same age), was appalled at her performance and was appalled that I could find it amusing. “That’s our national anthem,” he told me. So, again, I don’t think it was an age issue. It’s that I really thought it was funny. And I still do.

(Also, who organizes a list for guest singers to sing the most revered song in America, watches Rosanne on ABC and says, “THAT’S her! She’s the one. Book her!”? Okay, okay. Maybe she made the request. But who okays it? Seriously. But I digress . . .)

When someone cut the head off the spartan statue at my high school. This one didn’t make national news, of course. One weekday morning during my junior year (this would be early 1997) I went upstairs to read the comics in the paper before school. I saw on the front page that someone had cut the head of the fiberglass spartan statue off, and no one knew where it was. This had been attempted a year before, but was unsuccessful. School groundskeepers (none of them named “Willie,” I don’t think) noticed a cut in the back of the spartan’s neck then. But this time, everyone noticed on their own that it appeared our school mascot had faced the wrath of the Queen of Hearts. Somehow, they knew that it was a student at our school and not a rival school. I guess it had something to do with the previous year’s attempt (for the record, I personally knew all the guys who were responsible for both events (they were not connected), but didn’t know that until later).

I was so excited to get off the bus that morning and gawk at the decapitated greek. It was obvious I didn’t have much company. Most people rolled their eyes, deeming the act “so immature” (as if 16- and 17-year-olds honestly have a grasp on “maturity”). Others were disgusted that someone could deface their own mascot. I just laughed. I don’t know why people took high school so seriously, but the movies I watched in the 80’s and early 90’s taught me that things like this were what high school was all about.

Within a day or two, they found the head in a nearby corn field and it was repaired. They had to remove the torso from the waste to reattach the head, so we just had a pair of spartan legs for about a month or two greeting the classes of 1997-2001 as they arrived each morning. They did not include a photo of it in that year’s yearbook, either – the closest being a picture of Betsy Gladish from the waist up imposed over the legs, and if you didn’t know what had happened, you wouldn’t know that the rest of the Spartan wasn’t behind her.

Dramatic Prairiedog. Also known as the “Dramatic Chipmunk,” but I’m with the latter-day crowd that noticed that it is not a chipmunk, and actually looks nothing like a chipmunk, save that it is brown and furry.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about . . . take 5 of the funniest seconds of your life to enjoy this -

If you watched that and had to watch it again . . . at least 10 times . . . and you’re still laughing . . . we can be friends.

If you watched it and immediately scrunched your face in confusion or rolled your eyes, and you are not enticed by the perfect camera zoom, the excellent choice of music, or the looooong stare . . . then you fully understand why I’m writing about it here.

When George W. Bush was re-elected as President in 2004. There are lots of people who annoy me. Some of those people are far-left narcissists who insist that their alarmism and profiling is different than the alarmism and profiling that the far-right does. Kind of like the guy two years ago who sat in the waiting room at a auto repair shop with me and my (then-very-future) wife. He started a light-hearted conversation with us about how he’d just gotten back from a trip to the Mid-West. He went on about how dumb Mid-Westerners are and how they’re all conservative hicks that worship Bush and watch Nascar, all the while assuming that Dona and I were just like him – smart, in-touch, Seattle liberals.

When people annoy me, I like to see them squirm over something that upsets them that I could care less about. The morning of November 3, 2004, was a great day for that. Ol’ Dubya beat that block of wood John Kerry, when all those annoying leftists were comparing the man to Satan himself. And this time it was not a question of popular vote – George’s victory was undeniable.

I became so sick and tired of hearing people whine insescently about the man (and, ironically, had to listen to four more years of it). I did not hear the voice of young America demanding to be heard in a corrupt administration. No. I heard a bunch of spoiled children whining about things they didn’t understand, thinking that the sky is falling and “knowing” but not understanding that they are not the first, nor will they be the last, generation to live through a war – just or unjust.

So, on that Wednesday morning I woke up to my radio announcing that George Bush was sticking around. And I laughed.

I saw the local university newspaper sport photos of young, first-time voters crying at rallies for Kerry, one person saying, “I’m just, so, like, MAD at America right now . . .” And I laughed.

I saw liberal leaders trip over their words as they tried to fathom that not everyone in the country sees things the same way they do. And I laughed.

I laughed not because I supported Bush, or even really cared for him. (Okay, yes, I voted for him, but who was I going to vote for? Kerry? The guy’s entire campaign message can be summed up in three words – “I’m not him”). I laughed because people got a reality check and it was fun to watch.

Okay. This blog’s long enough.

 

A clean rant

I don’t think I’m alone when I say that Axe Body Spray and Body Wash commercials annoy the crap out of me. Is this product of such low quality that they have to try to convince guys that women will not be able to resist carnal assault at the very wiff of Shock, Kilo, or Snake-Peel? What’s worse is that they’re coming out with scents for chocolate and leather and who-knows-what-else-is-on-its-way. I mean, what woman can control herself at the scent of a man who smells like a stale Hershey’s bar or the shoe department in Wal-Mart?

Honestly, though, I’d be afraid of a woman that actually found that attractive. My mind produces an image of a way-too-small tube top and an aluminum bottle of Bud Light sitting behind a trailer on an otherwise-vacant 16-acre lot. Perhaps I’m being mean, but regardless I’ve found yet another reason that I’m glad I’m married to who I’m married to.

I’d still be bar-and-wash-cloth if I didn’t determine years ago that such a method was the reason I itched constantly. However, since I did, I’ve switched to the body wash method. It’s often quite a challenge to find neutral-colored washy thingies, but I get by. I’ve bought Axe before, though it was years ago, when the stuff was new, the ads weren’t as prevelant, and it was really cheap. I think it’s still pretty cheap, but in addition to a personal boycott on the stuff, I’d be a little embarassed to buy it. “Hi, I’m buying this because it’s soap, not because I expect women to make out with my drain after I take a shower. No, seriously.”

Currently I’m using that Nivea for Men stuff. Why? Well, Dove was too expensive, nothing else was on sale, and I was getting tired of Old Spice. But besides those reasons, they had a very effective ad run for a while. It had all these annoying teenagers going on about how important their body wash was for attracting women, etc. etc., and this Nivea stuff doesn’t fit the bill. Then they cut to Mr. Biz-Caz, wearing his suit with no tie and the top button unbuttoned, murse over his shoulder, getting into a cab in the big city. He looks the bottle over, smells it, says, “doesn’t reek, won’t dry my skin . . . works for me.” That’s right, my fellow corporate slave, it does work. So does the ad. Kudos to the advertising department that came up with that one. It’s not so much that I’ve been convinced that “this is the body wash for those of us who are smarter than those who buy and perhaps buy into Axe,” but more the fact that I can clearly see that someone else out there sees an Axe commercial and feels a small part of them die inside.

Well, my bottle of Nivea is running low, my unnamed brethren. Keep it up and I might get another.

 

DMV Syndrome

I spend a lot of time talking about problems I see in other people. One thing that might surprise you is that I’m actually very hard on myself when it comes to comparable issues. It’s one of the things that makes me so awesome.

<waits for polite laughter>

I’ve always struggled with what I’m going to call “DMV Syndrome.” Now, of course, I got that name from the stereotypes of the ladies at DMV offices. You know, the ones who chew their gum and roll their eyes at you because somehow DIDN’T know that you’re supposed to fill out the yellow form and not the light-yellow form, or that you (amazingly) were unaware that you needed two pieces of OFFICIAL mail, not just mail, and then on your return trip didn’t realize that this cell phone bill doesn’t count as OFFICIAL. How on earth could you think that ANY bill is official, and not government mail only? Yutz. I’m going on lunch. Again.

When I worked at McDonald’s (waaaaay back in 1998-1999 – can you believe it’s been a decade?) I would often work the drive-through. It drove me batty when someone would ask to “up-size” their value meal. Seriously? Up-Size? You’re at McDonald’s, the fast food chain that not only invented fast food chains, but invented the value meal and the concept of the “super-size,” and you’re asking for an “up-size”? When I repeated back the order I’d often be sure to emphasize the word “SUPER” to make sure they learn to respect the arches. FACE!

Don’t even talk to me about coupons. No, way, lady. I don’t care if you go to my church of 60 people and are in my Sunday School class and your 3-year-old son adores me. That coupon does NOT discount value meals. Even though the computer will let me do it, it’s the principle of the matter – and that principle is that I like to be in control and I like to say, “No.”

It’s definitely easy in food service. At Steak n’ Shake, your burger would not come with fries. You had to order them separate or ask for a “platter.” (And with the platter, which is your choice of two sides, remember that one of them can be fries, not that it’s two sides AND fries.) In a society that has become used to the words “includes fries,” and would expect that it does since the burger is pictured with fries in the menu, many people do not feel it necessary to mention wanting them (I should mention that the fine print DID say “does not include fries“). Well, I can only handle asking, “do you want fries or any other sides?” and subsequently can only handle answering the question, “you mean it doesn’t come with fries?” so many times in a 10-minute time-frame. So I’ll take the order as you asked for it, and then roll my eyes at you when you’re shocked that  your $4 burger the size of what you’d get in a Happy Meal doesn’t have little fried potato sticks next to it. Hey, that’s GRADE A STEAK in that paper-thin burger, buddy. That stuff doesn’t come cheap. I don’t even get free soda at this joint, and I work here.

In retail it takes different forms, and is the same idea, but this is where we (ever so slightly) approach the realm of “you really, seriously should have known that, dude.” I’ve spoken before of the man who looked like he wanted to murder me and all in my bloodline because I ran his “debit” card as a “credit” card, so “now Visa is going to send me a bill.” Well, many other people misunderstood that same thing, but were quieter with their frustrations, and their eyes did not have a reflection of my bloody corpse in them, so I was able to mock them after they left the store with much greater ease. Also, there’s the ladies who would barge into the bathroom, despite the “bathroom closed” sign that’s been up for 10 minutes, and say, “I cannot wait any longer. I am going. I don’t care if you’re here.” And let us not forget the people that seem to follow you through the tables of shirts and unfold every shirt you’ve just re-folded, and then wad it up in a I’m-almost-trying-to-pretend-like-I’m-helping manner.

Now we cross into that realm . . . that realm where either I just haven’t yet figured out that I should have been better at my job, or those people were seriously lacking in brain capacity.

I worked at Rent-A-Center for a while, and in case you’re thinking of trying out their stuff — don’t. We had some people that would pick out a stereo, a computer, a couch and table set, take it all home, and then not pay for a month (payments were due every week). When we’d demand our money or our stuff, they’d scoff at us and say, “why do you care when you get the money? I said I’ll give it to you and I will. It’ll just be a while.” Or when I went on a service call to fix a guy’s computer. He said the keyboard and mouse didn’t work. Well, I took along extras, but didn’t take them in since I had a suspicion, and was right, that he had plugged them in backwards. For some reason he was very mad at me when I pointed out the mistake. I think his speakers were plugged into the microphone jack, too. He seriously didn’t bother with any trial-and-error. He basically tossed it into a pile and screamed because it didn’t work.

Oh! Oh! Or my FAVORITE one! This family had a HUGE stereo system and they called, complaining that the speakers were popping and the sound wasn’t working right. I went to figure out the problem and saw that they had their surround system hooked up very wrong. Please refer to the below demonstration of my mad skills with Microsoft Paint:

To further explain this debacle: they had the speaker wire coming out of the left front speaker output on the receiver to what should have been the left rear surround, and the wire twisted together to the next wire that led to what should have been the left front speaker, and the wire twisted again to the next wire, leading to what should have been the left front speaker, wires twisted together again, going to what should have been the right rear surround, and the wire twisted to the last wire going into the right front speaker output on the receiver. The surround outputs were unused. Again, the customers were mad at me for telling them their setup was wrong and threw a fit that when I fixed it they “had too many wires” running through their living room,” (one wire to each speaker coming out of the receiver).

To their credit, they got positive and negative correct.

In the “defense” of all those who rent from such places as Rent-A-Center, one has to have a certain lack of intelligence to even buy into such a ploy, so who can really be surprised when their dryer won’t dry because they haven’t emptied the lint tray in 6 months? (Yeah, that really happened. More than once). If you rent from one of these places, I want you to try something. Take that TV back to them, so instead of spending the $40 a week on it, you put that money to the side, and give it about 4 months and see what you can actually OWN.

Nowadays I’m struggling with another manifestation of the DMV Syndrome. I debate daily if I’m justified for scoffing at loan officers and processors who “read” our documents we provide to tell them who to ask certain questions, and then ask the same person everything. Or THOSE . . . . WHO TYPE . . . . . . . . LIK THIS . . . . . . IN ALL THERE EMAILS . . . . . WONDERIN IF . . . . . . . . . . WE CAN TEL THEM . . . . WITCH LENDR CAN DO FL 203K . . . . . . . . . . . . . . THNX.

I don’t know if it’s me or them when I tell a branch manager to send identification and resumes with his new hires’ applications three times in a row, and number four comes in with, yet again, no identification or resumes. Or those who are told to re-disclose the terms of the loan they’re working on to the borrower, so they sign all the forms themselves and are shocked that we would say that to do such a thing is against the law. I don’t know if I’m the right one or the wrong one when we ask for 3 forms and they send one and it’s not even complete, and then complain that it’s taking too long to get things done.

Okay, I’m sure who’s right. Me. I was just trying to take an approach of “maybe I’m overreacting, maybe I’m ‘going DMV’ in this situation, to coin a new phrase,” but these guys typically make $50,000+ easy every year and they can’t spell or read instructions.

So, before I run off on THAT tangent, let me bring us back to the subject at hand. DMV-ism. What I find amusing now is that I make efforts to not allow fast food workers or retail cashiers, etc., to get snobby with me. I honestly am not sure if I’m doing as a gesture of “I know where you are – I’ve been there,” or if I’m afraid they’ll spit in my burger. But all the same, I don’t excuse a whole lot – like if I ask for my hot mustard sauce and they forget it. How the heck am I supposed to eat 12 nuggets without any hot mustard sauce?! It’s not that hard to get it right, but somehow it’s my fault for not holding up the lunch line in the drive-through to check to make sure it’s there (which, by the way, I always do now). I’ve allowed myself to troll around some forums before and gotten into debates with people who are obviously me 10 years ago, working at Dairy Queen or Target, as they defend their attitudes and blame us, the customers, for all their issues. I don’t see much of an excuse for it anymore. I look at myself then and want to tell me, “get over it, chump.” Maybe I’ll do that when I’m not in the mortgage business anymore, too. Yeah . . . or maybe not.

For the record, I never spit in anyone’s burger.

 

There’s a reason it matters.

One way to get someone mad at you really quick is to point out their flaws. However, many people’s responses wouldn’t be to the tune of, “why do you have to focus on my imperfections? We all have them,” but instead a justification of themselves (citing extenuating circumstances) and/or belittling you for noticing. It is my belief that such a response is a sign of both narcissism and lack of education.

Recently, the movie Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen came out. I paid $6.75 at a theater in illustrious Carbondale, Ill. to watch this piece of trash. Thank goodness I saved my additional $3 that I would have spent in Washington; Michael Bay will never get that.

Now, you can go anywhere on the internet to find blogs and reviews of why this movie was so bad, with its poorly edited exposition, gaping plot holes, crude humor, plastic characters, and overall minimization of the title characters. And anywhere you go you will also find a mass of people attacking the reviewer for taking things too seriously, or forgetting that it’s just a movie, and reminding said reviewer that it’s just meant for entertainment “and it did just that.”

What is happening here? It is my opinion that, more and more, people in America today are allowing themselves to become uneducated and are losing their ability to recognize quality in forms of art, or lack thereof. We are allowing ourselves to be stimulated by only our most basic and primal of instincts, and not just leaving our brains at the door but never taking them with us anywhere; so we end up with Michael Bay movies, useless reality television, and music that consists of nothing but the most basic of chord structures, over and over, and poorly written lyrics. And what’s worse is that when someone points this out, we attack them like rabbid dogs. But we’re not really upset at them for not liking that movie, or that show, or that musical artist. We’re upset at them because they’re saying that it was unintelligent, and we are subconsciously denying that we have bought in to such a ploy, and we can never be convinced otherwise because our pride won’t let us.

And on the flip-side, when something requires a little more thinking, or some time and focus to appreciate fully, it is diminished by the masses. This is, at the end of it all, what makes this so concerning. It’s not that we just allow ourselves to be filled with sugar-for-the-brain, but that we also despise that which is truly visionary and creative.

I have no redeeming comments; I’m very saddened by this and hope that when I become a father that  can instill in my children an ability to appreciate that which is good and wholesome.