Item is not in bagging area, stupid!

today i went to the Home Depot. man, what a store. did you know the owner of the Home Depot own's the NFL's Atlanta Falcons? just a little trivia for you. anyways, all i wanted to buy was a pair of gloves. just one little thing. as i prowled the cashier line of about 4000 registers, i noticed only about 4 of them were open - with about 15 people in each line. i mean, why put so many registers out there if you never have any intention of opening them all at once? you know, Wal-Mart and Target also share in this little anomaly. "lets see how many registers we can fit in here". can you imagine what it would be like if Wal Mart had every register open? what kind of madness that would be....? so i decided i'd head for the self check out line. ok, this is something that astounds me. i think a lot of stores are switching to this but not one of them has perfected it yet. everytime i see one, i think "ok, i'm not THAT bad with technology. i can do this". and Home Depot has one that talks to you. "Please place item in bagging area...". so of course i fuck it up and i've got the computer voice e-screaming at me... "Item is not in bagging area, please remove it. please place item in bagging area. Please enter the number of items. Item is not in bagging area. Please place item in bagging area. Please scan item. Item is not in bagging area.." and finally the inevitable "Please wait for assistance..." It's like the computer is telling you you're too stupid. "Please place item in bagging area. Please? Come on, you fucking idiot! Place the fucking item in the fucking bagging area. What are you, retarded or something... UGGHHH... Ok, hold on, you dumbass. let me call someone over here". and the best thing is, as i'm being berated by my personal station at the self check out, i can hear scores of others being insulted as well. over and over again "Item is not in bagging area". it's the section where masochists would shop. you can get the best of both worlds. you're shopping but you're being berated at the same time. so to make a long story short, i spent more time buying a pair of gloves at the self checkout then i would have spent standing in one of the long lines of manual registers. i think that as i breezed passed all the frustrated shopers standing in the long lines, they were all probably thinking "Oh, this should be great. He's making an attempt to use the self check out. this should be a good laugh. bastards.

E! Presents the Top 100 Horsewhip Beatings.

ok, i've had enough with a certain format of television shows and i can't take it anymore. a few years back, vh1 popped up with the I Love the 80's mini and everyone loved it. it was the greatest little show of wit and banter from pop culture in recent memory. people were like "oh my God, this is the funiest thing i've ever seen...". from Michael Ian Black to Donel Logue, ha ha ha ha! Cathy Griffin, Dong from 16 Candles, ha ha ha! but then i started picking up on a trend. It's the newest thing in pop tv since reality tv. everyone started doing this. some little video package montage, then cut to some semi celebrity to hear their semi coached response to it. back to montage - cut to different sub celeb. is this the new way to get Americans' attentions? and everyone is starting to do this but they're doing shittier and shittier jobs at it. i mean, E! had the Top 100 Celebrity Anal Leakage Moment List on, and i didn't know ANYBODY doing the commentary. even the little produced shit they're supposed to rant about is bad. footage of Lindsay Lohan. Voice over says : "Lindsay Lohan, blah blah blah..." cut to the guy who played the mailman in Who's The Boss: "yeah, she's hot..." more footage. "Lindsay Blah Blah..." cut to Fabio saying "She is girl with nice breasts..." i mean, it's really getting bad here. i'd rather watch animals mating or something. or maybe some footage of the kid from My Chemical Romance getting maimed by lions or boars.

freeze frames.

the other day i was thinking about those voiceovers in the Dukes of Hazzard. you know, where there would be a freeze frame and Waylon Jennings would say something like "Now, I don't know how them Duke boys think they're gonna get out of this one...", then there'd be a quick 2 guitar chord progression and they'd cut to commercial... what if my life was like that? i mean, what if when something was about to go awry, i could have a freeze frame with a gentle voiceover, politely asking how i would correct my current wronging? like the other day when i spilled coffee all over my desk. my arm nudges the side of the 24 oz Circle K cup, causing it to lean at about a 45 degree angle and just as i'm staring at it with my mouth gaping, eyes wide, coffee flying out of it...FREEZE FRAME! "Now, I wonder how MAD sam is gonna be, when the Carnation Hazlenut Creme he added to this coffee dries into a sticky mess all over the desk and floor...". (que guitar chord). i guess i couldn't have Waylon since he's dead. i'd have to have someone else. some other obscure celebrity... like Joanna Kearns, the mom from Growing Pains. or the girl who played Lisa on Saved By The Bell. maybe Wayne Newton, Corky from Life Goes On, or Stephanie on Full House. and i could have my voiceover freeze frame for a variety of issues. from spilling popcorn, peeing on the side of the toilet (when it's dark. geez... sorry.), drinking too much and playing volleyball on the beach without any pants on... you get the idea. "Now, normally one would remember to not go bounding around a public place with his wang flying around everywhere..." Peace. p.s. lately whenever i'm sitting through the start of a movie, and the MGM Lion roars, i mouth the roar along with the lion. i don't know... i just have to do it. i don't know why.

there's some girls you just don't wanna mess with.

someone asked me the other night about the most interesting thing that happened to me so far in the bar business. about 2 months after we opened, there were these 2 girls sitting at the end of the bar just hanging out. now, these were kind of hard looking chicks. i mean.. i wouldn't want to piss em off if you know what i mean. so they're just talking away when eventually i suppose the conversation took a wrong turn. supposedly there was some debate about a guy both of them knew or something. so they start yelling and at this time, people in the bar are starting to look over at them. so one of them (we'll call her girl A) grabs the other one (girl B), and they just start screaming and shit. then Girl B picks up an empty pint glass and smacks Girl A in the fucking face with it...hard enough to break it. this is when it gets ugly. so Girl A is bleeding like crazy... her face is cut really bad, as is Girl B's hand. you'd think this is where it would end, but they end up on the ground swinging. blood flying everywhere. door guys had to pull them apart, and i mean.. you know. we called the cops and the paramedics and it was just nuts. i've never seen people fight like this. it was the wildest thing i'd ever seen. anyhoo. i'm spent. 3 blogs in a day. i'm tired...

bowling for Wisconsin

a few minutes ago, i went to the circle k and bought the biggest coffee i could get. then i brought it back here to work and knocked it over on my desk. motherfucker, man. you know, it's times like this when you just want to give up. has anyone been to the shaw center downtown? supposedly it rocks to the max. there's a sushi restaurant on the 5000th floor called Tsunami. i bet when they were designing the joint, they were all going "Wow. Tsunami. Great name... we're gonna be millionaires." i bet they weren't so happy with it a few months back when that tsunami in bangladesh or where ever was killing everyone. DAMMIT! back to the drawing board. i want a bowling shirt and bowling shoes. in fact, i want to be a professional bowler. the other day we were having some drinks at Mike Anderson's (the restaurant. I don't want you thinking i was at some guy named Mike Anderson's house), and i was drinking this huge beer. so this middle aged couple comes in and starts asking me about my beer. i was like "yep. just a beer, buddy..." and it was then i noticed they had a yankee, Fargo-ish accent. so we get to talking and it turns out the guy is in town for that massive PBA bowling tournament downtown at the Centroplex/River Center. he's just an amatuer, right? but he made like 300 bucks that day. thats what i need to get into. eventually the conversation dwindled and he was like "so are you from Baton Rouge?" "Yeah. I can tell you're not though..." they were from Wisconsin, and since i don't know much about the cheese state, i had to walk off. went to Boutin's the other night for all you could eat crawfish. good lord, can i tell you i ate until i was sick. it brought back memories of the crawfish boils we used to throw back in the day. i'll never forget when steve carmena and marco saia showed up with a 5 foot alligator and went after ryan clark with it. it was dead, but he didn't know it and i think he nearly peed his pants. oh, the days. i'm gonna throw one soon.

scary phone messages

you know what freaks me out? the numbers at the end of error recordings on phones. you know, mostly on cell phones. "Your call cannot completed as dialed. Please try again later. B-R-1-9-40..." or something like that. in fact, all error recordings freak me out. "We're sorry but you've reached a number that has been disconnected or is no longer in service. If you feel you've reached this recording in error, please check the number and then dial again...". Reached this recording in error? what, do you think i MEANT to reach this recording at all? i think i may be addicted to that recording though. I listen to it all the way through every time. Maybe she'll say something different at the end. "If you feel you've reached this recording in error, please check the number and ...um... you know... yeah."

the douchebag store.

i'm going to open a store where you can turn yourself into a douchebag. it's going to be this one-stop place where you can get the whole workover. a place where you can take creatine and work out all day, bleach you hair, shave your arms, pierce both ears, get a tribal armband tatoo, wax all of your body hair off, equip you with a new wardrobe from abercrombie/pacific sunwear, put you in a 1999 honda accord with a six-inch exhaust tip with little dragon stickers, and free cover at the Station for a year.... everything you need to be an asshole. i guess it will have to be some sort of 8 week program. ponder this: if you're a sucide bomber and you're having a really shitty day, i bet its that much easier to hit that detonator button.