Fuck You Madonna

Every morning as I walk to work I pass the advert for Madonna's new CD: "Hard Candy". The poster looks like this:




Considering children also walk the same hallway in the metro station I'd like to take this opportunity to praise the person in charge of deciding to allow or not advertising posters based on their PG rating... but I digress.

Now, I used to like Madonna, she was popular when I was a teenager and although she was never really my cup of tea musically, I could appreciate her music videos for their choreographies among other things.

However, once you start looking like an old hag, someone at the record company should start tapping on your shoulder and say something like:"Er, hum, Madonna? How about a Swing album?" Because face it Madonna; You're 50!

Yep, that's right Madonna is fifty years old that's fifty, 5-0. Fifty.

I'm not saying every woman that's 50 is too old to be a popstar or an actress, hell I've seen a few very doable women in recent movies, Sigourney Weaver is 49 and looks fabulous, Sharon Stone is 50 and looks better than she did when she was 40 just to name a few. Bette Midler still sings on Broadway (I think) and Cindy Lauper is 55 actually and also still active.

But the thing about them is that, well, they don't sell a product based on how slutty they look.

Madonna does.

Look at the damn album cover.

It reminds me of a Saturday Night Live sketch called Old French Whore with the subtle difference that Madonna is not French.

Another thing I detest about this, is that Madonna, speaks out regularly against exploitation among other things, also she's constantly arrogant with news reporters and also towards other artists.

Plus, all she seems to be able to do live, on stage, recently, is swear and curse.

She should really consider changing her musical style, maybe aiming her product to a different audience. And by different what I really mean is "non pervert".

But then she'd have to be able to carry a tune that spans more than three fucking notes. She seems to have trouble with that. I wonder if the guy from Milli Vanilli is also overdubbing her albums.

Oh, wait, she doesn't actually sing? It's Justin Timberlake? Really? So what the fuck is she doing dressed like a whore on the CD cover?

Marketing you say?

What really burns me about the whole Madonna experience is that even at 50 she's successful. Bitch!

I'm jealous...

Eco-Nazis at it again.

This is going to be a comment about an article I read in the newspaper, they basically took 35 of the 175 ways to be 'greener' as proposed by Gill Deacon in her book; 175 Simple Eco-Ideas For Every Day.

I have to say, that some of those make sense, shutting off the water while you brush your teeth for instance makes at least some sense as does her idea to repair leaky faucets. Although in consideration that most if not all major cities, have their own water leaks in the underground water system, you might be inclined to think your own faucet makes little difference.

But as I read on, some of them made little or no sense at all, and some of them, although could be a quick way to save energy, on the long run and when looking at the bigger picture, make no sense at all and might actually be worse than just doing 'it' the old fashioned way.

For instance:

Her idea that eating less cow could somehow lower the cattle's methane emissions is absolutely frivolous. I, for one will not lower my cow intake. In fact, wherever I go, they better damn have cow for it's not only nutritious, but tasty. That's not to mention that the thought occurs, if we all ate less cow, wouldn't there be MORE of them? Gill, this makes absolutely no sense. And Gill, have you considered that cows are not only used for meat but they also produce that delicious white milky goodness known as milk? Would you have us deny milk to our children?

Do you realize, that natural herds of -say arbitrarily- buffaloes also manufacture quite a bit of methane out of their asses?

You remember buffaloes, yes?

They are part of the animal herds you eco-nazis are so willing to defend and protect. Why defend them and deny us our cow?

Also, her concept about eating fresh, locally grown fruits and vegetables would be fine and dandy if we didn't live in an area of the world where it snows for six fucking months out of a year.

Eating snow is not very nutritious, in fact, the yellow snow will make you sick. Gill, please name JUST ONE vegetable or fruit that grows outdoors, without needing to use energy for heating and light, in January, in Canada. In the article they show you a picture similar to this one;


I'd like to know what kind of fucking bell peppers I can grow in my backyard next winter Gill...

Yeah, I thought not...

Another gem is the idea that using bamboo or cork as a flooring material is going to be ecological.

How exactly will that make any impact on anything and what's wrong with ceramic and marble?

In fact as far as I remember bamboo has to be imported from East Asia and most of the cork is actually made in Portugal. How green is that, considering the aforementioned tip to only consume fresh locally grown produce?

And then she continues with the weird notion that using ceiling and vertical fans will somehow save energy over using something like a heat-pump or air conditioner. Newsflash Gill; All of them use electricity but a heat pump is a few times more efficient at cooling a house than any ceiling fan ever. This actually comes across as a pretty naive idea.

She also seems to like hybrid cars. This goes to show that she knows very little about cars and has given very little thought to the subject, and that it was poorly researched.

Or maybe she only looked at the data she wanted to see.

In Ontario, near Sudbury, lies the factory that makes the battery systems for the Toyota Prius. If you ever drive along in that area, you'll notice an appalling disappearance of the natural forest around the factory. This is because of the acid rain that the factory causes.

Now, she continues on cars stating that if you don't like hybrids you should at least be driving a manual transmission car because according to her they use less gasoline. Er, Gill, this may have been true back when automatics all had three gears. Today's newer cars, and even a lot of the older ones dating back to the 1990's actually have four, five or even more automatic gears.

And some of the cars with CVTs (You may not know the term Gill so I'll post a link to an explanation about what a CVT is.) are more fuel efficient than the manual version of the same car.

Furthemore, most cars that have a manual transmission, will be geared for performance, not fuel economy.

Her final thoughts on cars is about how if you have the car washed in a car wash it will use less water and energy.

I'd like to see what poppycock study came up with that idea.

Gill, the car wash is electric, it uses quite a bit of electricity to run the air-compressor it uses, and that's not to mention all the pollutants that they use in the manufacturing of an automatic car wash, and I'm not even going to start arguing about how it will on the long run destroy your car's paint job and force you to get a new car or at least to have it repainted.

Some other luminous ideas include using -I kid you not- glass sex toys instead of plastic ones.

What if they were made from recycled plastic? Would it be more acceptable then? Also, what happens when some poor guy has a glass prop break in half right in his rectum?

All in all Gill, although some of your ideas are fine, they're far from extraordinary or innovative, in fact, someone should sue you for plagiarism because frankly, your book, from what I've seen is simply the same old list of eco-nazi self indulgent ideas repacked in a flea-market stint to make money.

Now please, don't get me wrong, I turn off the lights whenever I leave the room and I have a programmable thermostat at home, a home which is well insulated and where I don't tolerate any leaky faucets whatsoever. I don't drive hugely overpowered vehicles in fact, both my cars are considered laughably underpowered and quite efficient for the service they provide. So, no, I'm definitely not saying that it's OK to get out there and pollute.

But I'll be damned if I slow down my cow consumption unless my doctor tells me to. And being 6'/100lbs, that shouldn't be anytime soon. Also, in January, I'll buy any damn vegetables I please.

Costco and the veggies.

I think that if there's one place I'd rather not visit on any given week-end, it has to be Costco.

In fact, I'd rather be pulling teeth, shaving my head or getting a vasectomy. OK maybe not, but it's a close second.

The parking is barely adequate and it seems everyone that goes to Costco brings all their entourage complete with mom, grand-ma and the kids so minivans are abundant and filled with nervous people on caffeine.

Patrons there are known to go shopping and leave their kids to wait in line to save time, and seemingly annoy other patrons. Also the way they herd you through the registers is not only insulting and disrespectful, but also quite inefficient although, in retrospect, it actually IMPROVED in the last few years.

Why oh, why? Why did I have to go to Costco? Simple; I needed veggies and fruit.

Why go to Costco to get veggies and fruit?

Again, simple; they have platters of prepared veggies and precut fruit, ready to eat, for much cheaper than any grocery store. Also for some reason, the veggies keep longer even precut.

While I was there I decided to look around for some other stuff I needed, a 2kg pack of coffee, a pack of 11.000 condoms (or so), I think it's called the pornstar collection which brings me to my point.

How big does a Club Size pack have to be?

They'll sell you packs of 36 pairs of socks, 24 undies, 6 umbrellas, but my favorite is the plen-t-pack of vitamins. You get a jar of 1.000 vitamin tablets for about 20$.

Then when you leave the store you wind up an overcrowded DANGEROUS parking lot.

First of all, parking lots are not the Indy car Motor Speedway, it's a friggin' parking lot. There is absolutely no reason for anyone to drive over 15km/h.

Secondly, people, when will you learn to put your friggin' kids on a leash when you're in parking lots? OK, just for the love of God, hold them by their hand.

Third, people seem to forget how to park, crooked, too close to the other cars, too far, my favorite is the people who have a fetish to park backwards then complain because the car behind them didn't leave enough room for them to insert the six-pack of mattresses in their Buick's trunk.

Yeah but it's easier to get out...

Nice.

The 4" cable rant.

So there, you're at the store and you want to buy a toaster, or a microwave oven or better, a small TV like those nifty LCD panels. And you plan it all out, this goes here, that goes there, the toaster on the counter, the TV next to the microwave and then you get home.

Only to find out that those items all come with a 4" power cord!

And you realize that the reason behind this short power cord is that if the Chinese manufacturer that makes the items for whatever corporation you purchased it from, can save 5¢ over the cost of a unit, they will.

And this was their best method, shortening the cable.

A perfect example happened to me last night. I had been shopping for a unified remote control solution for my living room. Not that I have an incredibly advanced nor fancy home theater setup, or that I'm particularly lazy.

Actually, I don't mind getting up from my ass to do stuff, but to adjust the volume every time a commercial comes on I'd rather do it from my couch OK?

About those commercials, why is it that if you talk to the CRTC they tell you that broadcasters aren't allowed to boost their volume during commercial breaks yet it seems every last motherfucking channel does this. Then you contact the channel itself to complain and they basically tell you to fuck off because they don't do that.

You must have misheard.

Quite like the airport ministry. When they decided to move the major air-traffic to a smaller localized airport that also happened to be very close to residential areas, we were told not to worry, that only newer, quiet aircrafts would be allowed to take off and land during the night.

Yet every fucking night I'm rudely awaken by a jet plane.

And when you call them, or write, to complain they claim that they have no record of a plane taking off or landing at those times on those dates.

But I digress.

Last night I got home, programmed the remote control with the USB interface, this was rather easy, you simply install their CD into your PC's drive, and follow the instructions written in plain English.

Then I went to install the base, as this is a rechargeable unit which allegedly will never EVER need batteries. But it sure could use a longer cord.

WTF?

You have this real fancy rechargeable remote control that cost over 150$, has a 1.8" full color LCD display, a library of about 12 million devices it can control, and a two foot cord.

What the fuck are you supposed to do with a two foot fucking cord?

The TV's cabinet is four feet off the ground. Considering an electric outlet is, as per norm, 12" from the ground so you're left with three feet to cover with a two foot cable.

You might as well be climbing Everest with a 1 meter lifeline.

Or go on Who Wants to be a Millionaire drunk.

Or on American Idol with a faceful of pimples. Or try to popularize Oasis, soccer and pubs in the USA.

So I did what every Alpha Geek would have done. I spliced the cord with some extra cables I have lying around the basement. It's on a power adapter anyways so the power actually flowing through the cord is 6v which is pretty much harmless unless you're a goldfish.

This works well and cost me about 5¢.

But this will forever be added to my pet peeves.

Conversely that remote is absolutely amazing. The only thing it can't to is make chicken wings.

How much is TOO safe?

A-Ha, the 80's teenage band recently came up with a song titled :"Cozy Prisons". Yes, this is the same band that played Take On Me and The Sun Always Shines On TV. They seem to have bloomed into a rather good band actually.

The song in itself is a pretty, adult rock song. Something that you might hear on an FM adult relax station.

However it's the lyrics that get you thinking.

They basically amount to saying, "Please take off your kid's bicycle helmet once he's done biking and he's sitting on the porch, having low fat yogurt."

Seriously, have we, as a society gotten to the point where everything has to be 100% idiot proof? If so, then look at the message we're sending; "We're all idiots." I sure hope aliens are not out there, watching. They'd sure have a laugh.

Going back to my other post about the ministry of transport's pet-peeve against cell phone users (which by the way I keep seeing lots on the road, daily, mostly of a particular demographic but I digress...) and now, more recently and unrelatedly, when drama hit a family in the area.

Indeed, last week a young girl was found hung in her room by her bathrobe, she apparently had fallen out of the second floor of her bunk bed and, supposedly, the rope from the robe got tangled around the upper portion of the bed, and her neck. She had been alone in her room less than half an hour and she was 6. Her mother was home but, in a different room.

What were the chances of THAT happening? I can't fathom how little they must be. Consider how safe these beds have been made, combined with the constant surveillance kids are faced with nowadays, the usual marvelous timing it must have taken for this to happen just when the mom was looking the other way, etc.

Now I'm not calling them idiots far from it. My kid has the same type of bed in her room and she's had it since she was about 4. She also wears a bathrobe from time to time. No, we don't have a camera on her 24/7 although I'm sure we'd like to.

And yes, we've had to admonish our kid very recently when a friend of hers came over and they were playing "Let's jump off the top floor of the bed".

Nobody got hung.

Now, the coroner will recommend the removal of these bunk beds from the stores and they will recommend that they be removed from the reach of children.

How much is TOO safe?

Cars cost more and more, mostly because of all the idiot proofing components, safety accessories etc. Apparently over half the cost of an entry level vehicle purchased new today, is related to airbags, ABS, All-Trac, and other safety features.

Moreover, some cars have airbags that once deployed, cannot be repaired nor replaced and normally, even a smallish accident which might deploy these airbags results in an otherwise perfectly repairable car, being sent to the dump.

They have driver airbags, passenger airbags, rear airbags, side curtain airbags, Mercedes has even developed a system (get this!) that lowers one of the windows slightly when the airbags are about to go off because, the sheer amount of airbags going off simultaneously in the sealed habitacle, would result in a change in the air pressure, large enough to damage the occupant's eardrums!

That's a lot of airbags.

Now, since we've had passenger side airbags, children are not allowed to sit in the front passenger's seat because the airbag could go off and take the child's head with it.

The problem is that since people don't actually come out of the same mold, some women and smaller men also can (and have been) decapitated by these airbags so what have they done?

They removed the passenger side airbags? You wish.

No, they've embedded a scale you see? Within the passenger's seat, that allows the passenger airbag to be triggered ONLY if there is a passenger of suitable heft sitting on the seat.

Meaning that if you're silly enough to sit your three year old on your front passenger seat, the airbag will not trigger in impact.

Trouble is, someday, someone preferably an American (and their toddler) will get into a wreck. The passenger airbag will not trigger because the scale in the seat told it not to.

The toddler will be killed in the wreck, but some coroner somewhere will decide that the toddler would have been spared had the airbag actually triggered.

So what will they do? Will they develop a camera system that will monitor, in real-time, all the forces involved in the impact, and then decide whether it's suitable to trigger the airbag or not? And if so how much will THAT cost?

Can't we just place all the cars on a conveyor belt and read our papers while sitting behind the wheel, with our helmets on?

"And if you're careful, you won't get hurt,
but if you're careful all the time, then what's it worth?" -Cozy Prisons, A-Ha.

What's the worst thing that might happen?

When I turned 18, my mom and dad gave me permission to "access" some money that they had put away for me, with the help of my grand-parents. Although it didn't amount to much, it was enough for me to buy myself a car that I could use to commute to college.

Back then, it was inconceivable for my mom to allow me to rent an apartment near the school I was going to attend. I was to remain home while studying. This of course would have been fine and dandy, had I attended a college within reasonable driving distance.

I didn't. I would've liked to attend a college that would have been closer but no.

They forced me to attend a college that was a whopping 100km round trip, in horrible traffic as there was no direct route, three different highways had to be used daily, as well as two main (and very busy) bridges. (That is an entry I'll keep for next time I'm feeling particularly angry at my mom.)

As a result, I never actually attended college as much as sporadically show up once in a while.

Incredibly, I managed to maintain a decent average on both semesters I was there, and to pass, but ultimately I grew weary of the commute and quit.

College hours were from 8AM to 6PM Monday to Friday, except on Wednesdays when I had the "luxury" to start class at 11AM. This of course meant that my mom could "use" me for odd jobs around the house until 10AM because "one hour should be plenty to get you to school on time".

Yeah. If I had a jet-pack, or the Bat-mobile, or both.

That amount of traffic meant I had to be out the door on the way to college by 6:30AM, and that I would only make it back for 7:30PM. I remember my mom used to take a fit almost daily, because she thought I was gallivanting away, between 6PM and 7:30PM when I finally made it home, exhausted, only to be yelled at for being "so late". Mercifully we had no cell phones back then.

Now, in retrospect, how unreasonable was it for my parents, my mom mostly, to force me to study out of the family home when she had never been to this college and thereby never "tasted" a daily commute of that magnitude?

Quite a bit. So I quit in the middle of my third semester and went to work.

But I digress.

Back to the car. I enjoy driving on the open road, there's nothing quite as relaxing as a nice drive along the countryside with the soft top down. The problem strikes when I'm confronted with complete idiots who firmly believe that the open road is the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

When I bought that first car of mine, it was a beauty. A 1981 SVO Capri. It had an inline 6 cylinder engine with a turbo and was FAST. I had little experience behind the wheel and even though I purchased the car in January, and drove it through the rest of the winter on SUMMER TYRES mounted on low profile wheels, I failed to wreck it.

Even though it was the first time I had ever driven a manual transmission with a clutch, I failed to wreck it.

Even though most of the time I had it I had barely enough money for gas (given the commute), so tyres and maintenance were spotty. I actually ran out of brakes one morning, they simply didn't work when I needed them. I miraculously managed to pull myself off the traffic without hitting anything and to drive it SLOWLY to a brake shop.

And I drove it hard. Sometimes I drove it like I had stolen it. But myself and my friends had the common sense to know when we were going to far and to pull back way before the moment, where all hell was about to break loose.

We had our limits and knew it. We respected that.

For two years I even managed not to get any tickets which was miraculous, considering some of the stunts I pulled along with some of my friends. I did eventually get an illegal right turn ticket, it happened at 6AM while I was driving my date home from HER prom, she was two years younger than I was.

Later that summer I got a ticket for driving through a yellow light which apparently is only legal if you're driving a cab, or a bus, but not if you look 20 and have a sports-car.

However, I did manage to remain out of trouble and never hit or kill anyone like the youngster did last fall in my neighborhood when he jumped a curb while he was racing a friend, plowed through a cedar fence and buried a three year old that was decorating her baby sitter's backyard for Halloween.

So I wonder, do teenagers today have no limits or do they simply have no common sense?

Why (do?) people piss me off!

I live in a Godforsaken country.

Don't get me wrong, I like this country, in itself it's innately a very nice country to live it.

The nature is mostly glorious and the conditions of living are comfortable, there is plenty of work for "the competent" although unfortunately, it also has its part of incompetent.

Did I mention incompetence is one of the things that piss me off the most?

Did I also mention how most of these incompetents manage to wind up in politics?

And then you will find me asking myself: "How does he/she manage keep his/her high-profile job???"

But I digress since this is not what I intended to talk about today. What I meant to speak about is people who piss me off.

If you don't mind I'll keep digressing for a moment or three for I might have explained myself badly a moment ago. It's not that MOST of the incompetent wind up in politics. It's actually quite backwards.

In fact, it's that most politicians are incompetent. There.

That is rather more exact.

Back on topic; On April 1st, as if it were a monumental practical joke on all of our province, our transport ministry implemented some new traffic laws. They more than doubled fines and driver's license point penalties for several offenses, such as speeding. This is fine for me as I seldom drive over the limit by a large enough margin to attract Smokey's attention.

But the other law is what really burns me for you see? They've also made it a traffic violation to be behind the wheel of a vehicle while using a cell phone.

The law is very clear about the cell phones, you're allowed to use it, as long as you don't HOLD THE CELLPHONE WHILE DRIVING.

Meaning that if the cellphone is somehow mounted on your dash like any other cockpit instrument, and you have some wired, or wireless apparatus going to your ear, you're golden.

This is where the problem is.

So in essence, we're not allowed to have a cellphone in our hands while we drive. I can imagine my conversation with the next police officer I can get a hold of:

Me: "So we cannot have the phone in our hands while driving, why?"

Him: "Because we want both hands to be free for you to drive your vehicle and having a conversation while holding a phone in your hand will distract you from actually driving the car."

Me: "What about smokers, they have to hold a cigarette in at least one of their hands, I don't recall ever seeing hands free cigarettes. Some of them have a cigarette while passengers are in their cars and they talk with them."

Him: "No, smoking is fine."

Me: "What about having a snack?"

Him: "It's still a violation but we mostly tolerate it unless there is an accident."

Me: "How about mothers that have babies in their back seats and are being distracted by them, I've seen them, they drive with one eye on the road -if that much- and the rest of their attention on their baby, some of them even jiggle toys in front of the baby to amuse it while at the same time hogging the passing lane."

Him: "No, that's fine."

Me: "What about GPS systems, some of them are handheld."

Him: "No, they're fine."

Me: "So let me make sure I understand, if I have a cell phone in my hands and I'm caught pushing a single button on it while behind the wheel, I get a 115$ fine and 3 demerit points but, I can program my destination in a GPS while I drive and this is ok?"

Him: "Yep."

Me: "How about if one of the passengers were to hold up the cell phone to my ear while I'm driving?"

Him: "h.. err.. I dunno. I'll have to ask."

Yep...

Yep...

So by now, the brighter crowd reading this, will have realized that when I mentioned the incompetent in the introduction, what I really meant to say was: "Our fucking ministry of transport is incompetent."

I'll limit my political rant by closing with the fact that if the opposition party had opposed this new law, the same way they opposed a law allowing the energy ministry to monitor and somewhat dictate what the sales price for petrol would be, they would have managed to look competent.

Instead they ignored it and it thereby passed at the parliament.

Conversely, I can't speak too proudly of drivers. It seems that nowadays, if you try to respect the speed limit people will honk, cut you off and then finish you off with a middle finger salute.

Like it's YOUR fault that the speed limit is unreasonably low.

And it's your fault that you really don't want to get a 600$ speeding ticket for driving 90km/h in a 70km/h zone, but that the bulk of the traffic navigates the same 70km/h zone in excess of 110km/h.

And that it's very rare that the police are actually out with a radar monitoring and handing tickets out. But then, it doesn't matter does it? After all, it's only illegal if you get caught no?

Well excuse me for not gambling 700$ with absolutely 0 chance of winning.

Entry level workers; REVOLT!

I have a sister who is a bit of a hopeless case against what I'm about to say here. She's held entry level jobs or "McJobs" for her entire adult life. She somehow seems to consider these jobs as being important. Like her life depended on it.

In her case, it does not.

As a matter of fact she could leave it tomorrow and still be relatively well off because she has no children and lives at home, with mom, who pays pretty much everything except the petrol she puts in her car. Her car is paid for and she has little debt.

Yet she defends her job vehemently, it's almost like she works for NASA or something.

She is a stock "person"; Meaning that her job is to open boxes of stuff the store receives, and to place this stuff on the sales racks. That's it.

Previous to that she was a stock "person" for another store, opening different boxes of stuff and placing it differently, on different sales racks. Oh and in both cases, they make her work when the store is closed, and on occasion, on holidays for inventory. Like last Christmas day and Easter Sunday.

All that for about 9$/hour.

She has a certification as some kind of loan agent or something, not that I know much about being a loan agent, but it seems to me that being a loan agent might pay more than 9$/hour.

I also suspect she might get more respect from her superiors although I might be wrong there because having a "higher level" job does not mean that the boss will have any more class than your previous boss, at McD's...

Regardless.

I keep witnessing clients, customers in various stores and under various situations abusing the clerks or the cashiers and I keep asking myself why they just stand there and take it. I'd up and leave, of course, this is why a store wouldn't hire me, in my late thirties, close to 20 years working experience etc.

They know I'd tell them to shove their McJob up their McAss at the first sign of abuse.

This morning for instance, I was at Dollorama...

Relax, I don't go there to purchase two billion dollars worth of useless crap made in China, which would encourage the Chinese in their repression of Tibetan monks blahblahblah...

I usually will drop by once or twice a week to pick up chocolate, which is made in Mississauga Ontario, or Yum Yum chips which are actually made locally here so please save your sermons about how by simply ENTERING a Dollorama, I singlehandedly encourage a foreign economy.

Dollorama incidentally is still owned by the Rossy family. Who may be foreign, but are definitely not Chinese.

Notice? I digressed...Told you I might.

At any rate, Fat Bitch who was ahead of me in line was purchasing three coffee mugs, the cashier, a young girl, early twenties, very probably in the same situation as my sister, wrapped the mugs individually in paper, rather carefully actually, then placed them in a plastic bag and handed them to Fat Bitch. Then the conversation went something like this.

Fat Bitch; "I want another bag."

Cashier; "Pardon?"

Fat Bitch; "I want another bag, over this one, in case it breaks. I have a long way to walk."

To this the cashier proceeded to giving her another bag, over her normal bag and off she was supposed to go but no, Fat Bitch had to sneer at the cashier, then look at ME of all people, and roll her eyes like her obscene obesity, facial pilosity and the resulting bitchiness were the cashier's fault.

I held my tongue. I do that a lot in real life. It sort of serves me well that I have this "blog" as an exit for my frustrations and rants, it kind of works in a perverted Freudian way. For me writing this is a bit like masturbation but with less lubricants. Again I digress...

Two bags for three fucking coffee mugs. The whole combined weight of the mugs might have been about one pound, maybe less.

I waited patiently while Fat Bitch gathered up both her mostly empty double bag and, her miniature purse, that looked even smaller as accentuated by Fat Bitch's gargantuan proportions. She then wobbled away slowly still rolling her eyes at anyone looking at her.

I gave the cashier a smile, and was rewarded with a smile from her. I genuinely felt sorry for her. Her job sucks I mean face it, she counts items, wraps them as needed, takes payment into a cash register and hands bags to customers all day long. But on top of that she needs to remain polite and friendly with the most annoying people.

For less than 9$/hour.

I wouldn't do it for twice that. It's a question of respect.

Now, in case you've not noticed, look back up at the title of this post. Notice anything?

You called it, I digressed for a full glorious whole post. Well ok, not a WHOLE post but half of one.

So this goes out to all the entry level workers, the cashiers, clerks, everyone universally who makes minimum wage and doesn't live in a town where everyone knows one another. REVOLT!

The next time some customer asks you to do something extra for them, make sure they deserve it.

If they snicker at you, or treat you disrespectfully tell them. If they don't realize they're complete tards, let them know you will not stand there and be insulted, you too are a human being, and the fact that you happen to work as a slave does not give them the right to insult you so, REVOLT!

Keep in mind here YOU have the advantage. If you were to get fired, all you have to do next time you apply for an entry level job is say you never worked there in the first place.

And if you ever decide to get a REAL job, and you manage somehow to get an interview. And your current boss, at your current McJob, buys your excuse for not being at work that day and you actually wind up going to this interview.

A word of advise; Just don't tell them you got fired four years ago, because you told Fat Bitch to keep her attitude for her Fat Kids.

Of course some people have other type of entry level jobs. Some time ago I was working the customer service phone help desk for a large computer corporation and the salary was well above 15$/hour. Yeah, I took some abuse over the phone but the department had a strict two warning policy. If you insulted me, it was ONE warning before cutting off the phone line and if things got out of hand we had a blacklist where we wouldn't serve people who had a history of abusing the "agents".

Also once we called the police because one of the guys was threatened physically by a customer.

I kept the job for almost a full year while actively looking for another one. I wasn't in a hurry and although the job sucked in more ways that I can think of, the salary was considerable and as a husband, a father and a home-owner with a mortgage, we needed it so I bit the bullet and hung on.

Boy was I happy when I left. I'm still farting rainbows now.

My second memory

Lots of people claim that a person cannot remember past a certain age, for instance some years ago, a psychiatrist on a radio talk show (no, not Fraser Crane) was arguing with a caller that there was no way she could remember what her parents did or didn't do when she was four.

I'm not really sure what the whole argument was about in her case.

I remember though, an evening when I was about five years old. The fair was in town, I lived abroad then, and the fair was similar to the ones that roam in North America. It had games and rides etc. and the evening had started off badly; my mother didn't want to go, my father wanted to take me but I don't recall any argument between them.

However, I know now that around that time, my little sister was born so clearly, it was more of an inconvenience for my mom, than for my dad, for him to take me out. Also to be honest, I suspect that my dad enjoyed getting away from my mom.

She would have to stay home with my little sister. The trouble with my mom as you will eventually see, is that she doesn't have a single maternal bone in all her body. At least she didn't when I needed it. She might have improved as a mom now, although I still cringe whenever my mother is present.

But I digress.

You might find reading this, mostly on the long run, that I will digress often. Quite often in fact.

So off we went, my father and I.

Almost immediately, the evening started getting progressively worse, as I was walking happily with my hands in my pockets* I tripped on the front gate's rail and fell face first on the concrete sidewalk. I still, to this day, am missing part of my nose. Oh, don't worry, it's nothing major or disfiguring. If anything it gives me the kind of rugged good looks that Owen Wilson gets paid to display smugly on the silver screen.

Of course he also has a full head of hair as well as scripted lines. I have neither although I can improvise relatively well when required to.

I also scraped my forehead and my chin although both to a much lesser level. They bruised but I have no visible scarring.

My father immediately took me back upstairs, cleaned my up and after some arguing with my mom, took me back out.

Later that evening, I was riding a circular ride, the type of ride that today would completely disorient me and cause me to empty my stomach in the cockpit.

It consisted of these mock up UFOs, the cabin had a stick to go up and down, with a large button embedded on top of it with which one could, if pressed at the appropriate time, "shoot down" enemy UFOs.

A free ride was awarded to the last remaining UFO.

I'm not really sure how it worked, all I remember is that I loved it.

I also remember not wanting to leave, and peeing myself in the process, much to my father's disappointment. I doubt he was upset at me, in fact I think he laughed with a sorry look on his face when it happened, the kind of laugh you give a puppy that topples over and knocks its head on the floor while playing. Not a mean laugh, there was nothing cruel in it. My dad was not a cruel person.

However, knowing my mom, I sure wouldn't have liked to be in his shoes when he brought me home that evening.

*The hands in the pocket were a consistent sign of impending doom for me as a child. I fell head first onto ceramic stairs when I was not quite four years old yet, opened my lower lip and destroyed the gums below my lower teeth in the process. Later, when my grown up teeth came out I had to get an operation to graft some skin on the gums in order to prevent the teeth from falling out forwards. It's hardly noticeable now except for the scar on my lower lip and the horrible memory of being held down by several nurses while the surgeon sowed up my lip and gums. There were no anesthetics involved.

I will never have any piercings. Ever.