I’m at Sea-Tac airport 2 ½ hours early for my flight, heading to Boise for the Holidays. I was starving and had to find a place to eat. The Sea-Tac airport has numerous options, the only problem was because of the holiday traffic most places had long waits which I didn’t have time for. I swallowed my pride and decided that the Quiznos was looking pretty good and it wasn’t super ridiculously over priced like most airport fare. You should never have to pay $9.00 for McDonald’s under any circumstances…ever.
Back to the story, I got into the long ass line and began to check my e-mail via my phone. It wasn’t like I was expecting an important message or anything; I just felt that it made me look like a mover and shaker even though I was looking at Viagra ads and home refinancing options. As the line moved I looked up to see the guy in line ahead of me, he was rather tall, dressed in black, and I had a feeling that he was rather attractive. He turned his head slightly to reveal a boyish face that looked like…. John Cusack.
I began to freak out, could it really be him? Why would he be eating Quiznos? Why would he be in the Seattle airport alone? How come nobody else noticed him? How do I explain to him that I once wrote blog about wanting to get a date with him? Would it be wrong to grab him and make out with him on the chip rack?
These questions flooded me at once. And I answered them in my head because that is just how I work.
Could it really be him? Sure I have seen numerous famous people on regular flights and hanging out in airports before, not every celebrity has a private jet even though we like to think that. Plus he can’t be that loaded, his recent run at the box office has been pretty unfortunate. Maybe he will be on my flight and we can join the mile high club?
Why would he be eating Quiznos? He seems more like a Subway kind of guy.
Why would he be in the Seattle Airport alone? Not everyone has an entourage; (nice Jeremy Piven shout out) maybe he is on his way back to LA for the holidays and his family is in LA or something. Or maybe he is preparing to do a movie and wants to examine how the other half lives… However, I think it boils down to him just stalking me. That crazy hot little mofo.
How come nobody else noticed him? Well it is Seattle, unless he was Frazier Crane or fronted a 1990’s grunge band nobody down here cares. Honestly if I ever see an unkept guy wearing a flannel shirt again I am beating that person to death because they are too stupid to live.
How do I explain to him that I once wrote a blog about wanting to get a date with him? I don’t think I need to tell him, you know one of his publicist’s googled his name and found it one day. They thought about setting us up on a date but then thought better of it as they didn’t want him coming back saying, “that bitch is crazy”
Would it be wrong to grab him and make out with him on the chip rack? No, nothing would be hotter than a bag of salt n vinegar chips getting shoved where the sun doesn’t shine, plus men love this type of spontaneous sex shit. Of course some might not find this spontaneous or romantic and would possibly consider it sexual assault; I don’t need another strike on my record.
Finally, after answering all these questions in my head his cell phone rang. When he answered it, he turned fully my way and revealed himself to not be John Cusack. My dreams of a chip rack make out session were ruined, so I just went back to reading the e-mail on my phone and dreaming of what could have been and really needing to eat something before I start to really hallucinate.
Monday, December 31, 2007
Friday, December 28, 2007
Bad Santa
We have all had our share of grandma's knit sweaters, fruitcake, and random crap given to us. Do you ever wonder what goes through people's minds when they go to buy a gift? Is it that they just don't care, or worse, they don't know you at all?
Here's a list of things from past boyfriends of me and my friends. I won't go into who's are who's, you'll have to try and guess. But let me just say, I laughed my ass off when my friend Laura told me some of hers. The first one (not from her) I will start with, will be the one that made me fall out of my chair laughing. Here we go.
1. Gift basket of lotions/showergel from WALMART.
2. Tshirt from Abercrombie. Tshirt, may I remind you that said something like Hot Sun Rentals
3. $10 cash
4. Toothbrush
5. Snowglobe
6. Gift Certificate to the mall
7. A carebear
8. Lime green baseball tee
9. 6pack of Corona
10. House plant
11. A printer that came free with a new laptop
12. A homemade Jamaican necklace.
13. A ring with 2 hearts intertwined from like a mall jewelery store.
14. A teddy bear that came free with a $50 purchase from American Eagle
15. American Eagle shirt two sizes too small
16. Picture frame with the giver's picture.
17. Going to the movies with a 12 pack of beer and asking me to have sex in his car.
18. A gangsta chain with my initials on it, with fake diamonds all over it.
19. A J-Lo CD.
20. A jewerly box that quote "looked like it was bought with greenback stamps"
21. A cactus
22. A Purple Red Hat Society Tee-shirt given to a then 28 year old.
and for the best one of all time
22. A borrowed video camera so they could record the sex.
Here's a list of things from past boyfriends of me and my friends. I won't go into who's are who's, you'll have to try and guess. But let me just say, I laughed my ass off when my friend Laura told me some of hers. The first one (not from her) I will start with, will be the one that made me fall out of my chair laughing. Here we go.
1. Gift basket of lotions/showergel from WALMART.
2. Tshirt from Abercrombie. Tshirt, may I remind you that said something like Hot Sun Rentals
3. $10 cash
4. Toothbrush
5. Snowglobe
6. Gift Certificate to the mall
7. A carebear
8. Lime green baseball tee
9. 6pack of Corona
10. House plant
11. A printer that came free with a new laptop
12. A homemade Jamaican necklace.
13. A ring with 2 hearts intertwined from like a mall jewelery store.
14. A teddy bear that came free with a $50 purchase from American Eagle
15. American Eagle shirt two sizes too small
16. Picture frame with the giver's picture.
17. Going to the movies with a 12 pack of beer and asking me to have sex in his car.
18. A gangsta chain with my initials on it, with fake diamonds all over it.
19. A J-Lo CD.
20. A jewerly box that quote "looked like it was bought with greenback stamps"
21. A cactus
22. A Purple Red Hat Society Tee-shirt given to a then 28 year old.
and for the best one of all time
22. A borrowed video camera so they could record the sex.
Purchase of the Week
I just bought these cute Seychelles ballet flats in gray with scroll cut outs from Piper Lime, on sale and I used my $20.00 off coupon.
I seriously think I have a problem. I should find the nearest Compulsive Shoppers support group. If they are like Weight Watchers locations next to Krispy Kreme and all you can eat Chinese buffets, it'll be next to a Target or a Marhall's.
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Scan this b*tch...
I thought that instead of regaling you with stories about my very low-key holiday -- lots of butter, high fructose corn syrup, and the occasional bucket of Crisco -- I would treat you to a cute little tale about inconvenience, aggression, and me losing my shit all over a complete stranger, albeit one who totally deserved it. Think of it as my way of spreading a little holiday cheer, like a roll of used toilet paper tossed high above a Christmas tree.
Last week I had to make a late-evening run to the grocery store to pick up some ingredients I needed to make the creamed onion dish I’d been assigned to make for my work potluck linner/dunch. Because I was also out of my very special organic cereal, the one with the whole grains and blueberry clusters, the one that has enough dietary fiber to kill a horse, I decided to go to the grocery store that is further from my house than my normal grocery store as it is the only one of the two that carries this cereal. I know that the extra gasoline I spent driving that longer distance totally cancels out any good I am doing by buying organic, but that isn't what keeps me awake at night. This is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4PypWIByQk
So here is where I switch to present tense because I keep reliving the horror over and over again, as if what happened that night is happening again right now. And I am normally the person who just gets over these types of things, the one who is incapable of holding a grudge, whereas my father is still mad at a mosquito that bit him on a camping trip in 1984.
So there I am burning thousands of brain calories as I try to locate ingredients while simultaneously keeping track of a three-year-old who keeps getting in my way…this is a good time to bring up the kids on a leash discussion.
Thirty minutes and a basket full of bulky boxes later I head to checkout, and by this time I've got sweat dripping down the back of my neck, and all I want to do is set down this heavy basket and catch my breath for a second. Part of the reason I don't normally shop at this grocery store is because of its enormity, because there are far too many people and way too many screaming free range children running about, far too many miles in between those two things that I need, and by the time I'm done shopping I've got shin splints.
Another reason I don't like shopping here is the fact that they force customers to use the self-checkout machines. Poorly designed, unusable self-checkout machines that routinely eat fingers. And when I walk to the front of the store I find that they have only one regular checkout open in an attempt to force almost everyone into two 12-person lines for the self-checkout machines. This is what I refer to as Outsourced Caring™, when a company cannot be bothered anymore with basic service and hires someone else to do the caring for them. It's why you're always getting transferred to someone else when you call customer service, because the person who answered the phone doesn't get paid to care.
In this instance they are so fed up with caring that they've hired ROBOTS.
Now, I understand why self-checkout machines are a good idea. Ideally they're supposed to save the store money because you're doing the work someone else would have to be paid to do, and eventually this might trickle down and affect the price of those pickles you just bought. But this is PLANET EARTH where no such thing as IDEAL actually exists, and these particular self-checkout machines are so fundamentally broken that it takes the average person no less than 15 minutes to pay for an apple.
So it's finally my turn to walk up to a machine with my bulky basket, and I start to panic a little bit because I haven't ever had to operate this towering piece of crap while also trying to give death stares to the mother of the same crazed three year old terrorizing me in the cereal aisle. At first, everything goes okay, I scan a box of cereal and it reads aloud a price. But then the brat touches that box of cereal with her finger and all of a sudden the machine starts to have a seizure.
"PLEASE PUT THE ITEM BACK IN THE BAG!" it shouts at me AS IF IT IS LOOKING DIRECTLY INTO MY SOUL. But the cereal is still sitting in the bag, I have not taken it out, so this machine has clearly lost its mind.
Not knowing exactly what to do, I remove the cereal and then put it back again, just to make the machine happy. But apparently the machine was mistaken. That is not what it wanted at all. It wanted me to re-scan the item, or excuse me, RE-SCAN THE ITEM! RE-SCAN THE ITEM! as clearly its voice has been programmed by someone who forgot to turn off caps-lock.
I gladly re-scan my box of organic cereal only to be told to PLEASE WAIT FOR ASSISTANCE! and then I hear a loud voice over my right shoulder scream, “WHAT’S THE PROBLEM” I look over at her and say "TELL YOUR KID TO STOP TOUCHING THE EFFING MACHINE!" And I say the word “KID" as it is pronounced like it is some sort of raging case of vaginal herpes.
I look down to see the spawn of Chucky has rested her hand on what looks like a railing but what is apparently not a railing at all. And because it is illegal to shock and kick anyone under the age of eight, the machine instead punishes me. And forces me to rescan all of my groceries.
This goes on for twenty minutes: the machine yelling at me, me trying to please the machine, the machine giving up and I having to yell at the bitch of all mothers who produced this vile child. Finally, success or so I thought…I go to scan my debit card AND IT CANNOT READ IT. That's when the actual human store employee is forced to care and walks over to manually finish the checkout for me, and it is obvious she is not happy about having to care, it was not a part of her training.
Oddly, I've never been trained to tell someone that their machine needs a right good fucking, and that their child needs to cattle prodded, but I manage to do it as if everything in my life has been leading up to this exact moment.
Last week I had to make a late-evening run to the grocery store to pick up some ingredients I needed to make the creamed onion dish I’d been assigned to make for my work potluck linner/dunch. Because I was also out of my very special organic cereal, the one with the whole grains and blueberry clusters, the one that has enough dietary fiber to kill a horse, I decided to go to the grocery store that is further from my house than my normal grocery store as it is the only one of the two that carries this cereal. I know that the extra gasoline I spent driving that longer distance totally cancels out any good I am doing by buying organic, but that isn't what keeps me awake at night. This is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4PypWIByQk
So here is where I switch to present tense because I keep reliving the horror over and over again, as if what happened that night is happening again right now. And I am normally the person who just gets over these types of things, the one who is incapable of holding a grudge, whereas my father is still mad at a mosquito that bit him on a camping trip in 1984.
So there I am burning thousands of brain calories as I try to locate ingredients while simultaneously keeping track of a three-year-old who keeps getting in my way…this is a good time to bring up the kids on a leash discussion.
Thirty minutes and a basket full of bulky boxes later I head to checkout, and by this time I've got sweat dripping down the back of my neck, and all I want to do is set down this heavy basket and catch my breath for a second. Part of the reason I don't normally shop at this grocery store is because of its enormity, because there are far too many people and way too many screaming free range children running about, far too many miles in between those two things that I need, and by the time I'm done shopping I've got shin splints.
Another reason I don't like shopping here is the fact that they force customers to use the self-checkout machines. Poorly designed, unusable self-checkout machines that routinely eat fingers. And when I walk to the front of the store I find that they have only one regular checkout open in an attempt to force almost everyone into two 12-person lines for the self-checkout machines. This is what I refer to as Outsourced Caring™, when a company cannot be bothered anymore with basic service and hires someone else to do the caring for them. It's why you're always getting transferred to someone else when you call customer service, because the person who answered the phone doesn't get paid to care.
In this instance they are so fed up with caring that they've hired ROBOTS.
Now, I understand why self-checkout machines are a good idea. Ideally they're supposed to save the store money because you're doing the work someone else would have to be paid to do, and eventually this might trickle down and affect the price of those pickles you just bought. But this is PLANET EARTH where no such thing as IDEAL actually exists, and these particular self-checkout machines are so fundamentally broken that it takes the average person no less than 15 minutes to pay for an apple.
So it's finally my turn to walk up to a machine with my bulky basket, and I start to panic a little bit because I haven't ever had to operate this towering piece of crap while also trying to give death stares to the mother of the same crazed three year old terrorizing me in the cereal aisle. At first, everything goes okay, I scan a box of cereal and it reads aloud a price. But then the brat touches that box of cereal with her finger and all of a sudden the machine starts to have a seizure.
"PLEASE PUT THE ITEM BACK IN THE BAG!" it shouts at me AS IF IT IS LOOKING DIRECTLY INTO MY SOUL. But the cereal is still sitting in the bag, I have not taken it out, so this machine has clearly lost its mind.
Not knowing exactly what to do, I remove the cereal and then put it back again, just to make the machine happy. But apparently the machine was mistaken. That is not what it wanted at all. It wanted me to re-scan the item, or excuse me, RE-SCAN THE ITEM! RE-SCAN THE ITEM! as clearly its voice has been programmed by someone who forgot to turn off caps-lock.
I gladly re-scan my box of organic cereal only to be told to PLEASE WAIT FOR ASSISTANCE! and then I hear a loud voice over my right shoulder scream, “WHAT’S THE PROBLEM” I look over at her and say "TELL YOUR KID TO STOP TOUCHING THE EFFING MACHINE!" And I say the word “KID" as it is pronounced like it is some sort of raging case of vaginal herpes.
I look down to see the spawn of Chucky has rested her hand on what looks like a railing but what is apparently not a railing at all. And because it is illegal to shock and kick anyone under the age of eight, the machine instead punishes me. And forces me to rescan all of my groceries.
This goes on for twenty minutes: the machine yelling at me, me trying to please the machine, the machine giving up and I having to yell at the bitch of all mothers who produced this vile child. Finally, success or so I thought…I go to scan my debit card AND IT CANNOT READ IT. That's when the actual human store employee is forced to care and walks over to manually finish the checkout for me, and it is obvious she is not happy about having to care, it was not a part of her training.
Oddly, I've never been trained to tell someone that their machine needs a right good fucking, and that their child needs to cattle prodded, but I manage to do it as if everything in my life has been leading up to this exact moment.
Shopping....
I really like xmas. I like shopping for gifts. I like tacky decorations. I like knowing that a good portion of the world's population is doing the exact same thing, listening to the exact same music, and feeling the exact same nostalgia as I am. I like that so many people can keep an idea like Santa Claus afloat for so many years without forming a religion around him. Unless you consider consumerism a religion, I guess. But heck, sometimes I like consumerism, too.Sometimes I don't like people, though. I was at Target on Christmas Eve buying a few last minute items. As I stood in the express check-out line, the elderly man behind me tapped my shoulder.
Elderly Man: Excuse me, young lady.
Me: Yes?
Elderly Man: You went in front of me.
Me: Excuse me?
Elderly Man: You went in front of me to get in line.
Me: I did?
Elderly Man: Yes, back there.
He was pointing toward the housewares department. Granted, it was right across from the checkout section and a direct shot to the lane I was standing in, but he was making it sound like I was just cutting in line when in fact I had passed him in an unrelated shopping aisle a good twenty feet back. Was I really supposed to know that the slow old man I was briskly passing was headed to the same checkout counter as I was? Should I take to remaining behind elderly people at all times while shopping, just in case they are headed to the same destination as I am, lest be accused of budding? And since that was a rhetorical question, what exactly is the etiquette for appeasing a crazy old man?Being the xmas season (and seeing as how the cashier was giving me a dirty look by this point), I apologized and let him ahead of me in line. But afterwards I felt taken advantage of. It's not like he was crippled or pregnant. Do I really have to give up my place in line for some lazy coot just because he happens to be elderly? Eff that. He was lucky I was in the xmas spirit. And he better think twice before trying that shit again with me in a non-xmas environment.
Elderly Man: Excuse me, young lady.
Me: Yes?
Elderly Man: You went in front of me.
Me: Excuse me?
Elderly Man: You went in front of me to get in line.
Me: I did?
Elderly Man: Yes, back there.
He was pointing toward the housewares department. Granted, it was right across from the checkout section and a direct shot to the lane I was standing in, but he was making it sound like I was just cutting in line when in fact I had passed him in an unrelated shopping aisle a good twenty feet back. Was I really supposed to know that the slow old man I was briskly passing was headed to the same checkout counter as I was? Should I take to remaining behind elderly people at all times while shopping, just in case they are headed to the same destination as I am, lest be accused of budding? And since that was a rhetorical question, what exactly is the etiquette for appeasing a crazy old man?Being the xmas season (and seeing as how the cashier was giving me a dirty look by this point), I apologized and let him ahead of me in line. But afterwards I felt taken advantage of. It's not like he was crippled or pregnant. Do I really have to give up my place in line for some lazy coot just because he happens to be elderly? Eff that. He was lucky I was in the xmas spirit. And he better think twice before trying that shit again with me in a non-xmas environment.
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