I Have I(rritable)B(owel)S(yndrome)

Happy Second Monthiversary!!!

So I got a call this morning around 10 o'clock from a restricted number. I look at the phone and three possibilities run through my head. Either it's:

A. My Grandparents, who I can call back in a few minutes. They know reception is bad in my house,
B. My landlady, who I never really want to talk to. A brief conversation with her is the most excruciating 45 minutes one could endure, or
C. Someone else, who will leave a message, and I can then decide, all for myself, whether or not I want to talk to them.

It was number C. (Yes, number C.) Sergeant Mick at an 877 phone number. My mind immediately goes to cop. Someone is hurt, or dead, or in trouble. But where? 877 is a toll-free number. I even go online to check to make sure it is. Yes. Toll-free. I finally call him back. From the second he picks up, after like 8 rings, I could tell he was no cop. Freakin' Army recruiter! Stupid Army!

I have finally found my drink of choice. Well, that is when it comes to the hard stuff. I still haven't found my favourite beer or any wine that I can stand. Anyway, the beverage of choicewould be the Seagrams 7 Crown.

But there is a problem. See, when my dad died my brother and I split up the family stash. My brother took all the Cutty, I got most of the Seagrams. I even got about a third of a bottle of Couvoisier. So what's the problem? My dad didn't realy drink much past his twenties. All the booze we have is over thirty years old. I think the bottle I've been drinking out of was opened some time around 1974 and has aged since then. I had some new 7 Crown, and it is a totally different experience. I've gotten myself hooked on aged (or expensive) booze. Total lamp.

I had this last Sunday off of work. I had gone on a retreat with some peeps from the church and got back early Sunday afternoon. In fact, I got back early enough that I could've still covered my usual shift, but whatevs. So instead I decided to go for a bike ride.

I'm riding around when I pass this old lady who looks at me kinda funny, which isn't all that unusual. People in LA always seem to be quite perplexed when they see someone on a bike. So I pass her and then go round the cul de sac and set a course to pass her again. I spot her. She spots me. She locks on and stops me in the middle of the street.

Old Lady: Young man. Do you want a shredder?
Me: ?????

At that point I started searching my brain for what a shredder was. For some reason the only things that came into my head were hedge trimmers and a mulcher. Even if that's not right, I thought, it is still probably some gardening thing that I don't need.

Me: No thanks. I rent and the land lord takes care of all that stuff.
Old Lady: Okay.

I then bike away. At the same time my brain starts to work again. She was probably talking about a paper shredder, which I don't really need, but it would be fun to have. I keep biking. Then a third thought hits me. She could've been offering me something more awesome then I could ever dream of. What if she was saying Shredder, not shredder? What if she was offering me a life size replica of MASTER SHREDDER?!?!?!?!



I may have just missed my one chance at true happiness.

Wouch!!!

Today at Valley I saw something totally awesome! Man, it was so awesome! Seriously, so awesomely awesome! What was it?

So, not only does AIM allow people to spread deceitful grammar across the internet, but they themselves support such filth.



Us is back indeed.

Sylvia Plath was a poet back in the day, mid 20th century. Her father died when she was eight. Much of the rest of her life sucked too. She killed herself when she was thirty years old. In English on Tuesday we read and "analyzed" this poem:

Daddy

You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.

Daddy, I have had to kill you.
You died before I had time---
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one gray toe
Big as a Frisco seal

And a head in the freakish Atlantic
Where it pours bean green over blue
In the waters off the beautiful Nauset.
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du.

In the German tongue, in the Polish town
Scraped flat by the roller
Of wars, wars, wars.
But the name of the town is common.
My Polack friend

Says there are a dozen or two.
So I never could tell where you
Put your foot, your root,
I never could talk to you.
The tongue stuck in my jaw.

It stuck in a barb wire snare.
Ich, ich, ich, ich,
I could hardly speak.
I thought every German was you.
And the language obscene

An engine, an engine,
Chuffing me off like a Jew.
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.
I began to talk like a Jew.
I think I may well be a Jew.

The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna
Are not very pure or true.
With my gypsy ancestress and my weird luck
And my Taroc pack and my
Taroc packI may be a bit of a Jew.

I have always been sacred of you,
With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.
And your neat mustache
And your Aryan eye, bright blue.
Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You----

Not God but a swastika
So black no sky could squeak through.
Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.

You stand at the blackboard, daddy,
In the picture I have of you,
A cleft in your chin instead of your foot
But no less a devil for that, no not
Any less the black man who

Bit my pretty red heart in two.
I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.

But they pulled me out of the sack,
And they stuck me together with glue.
And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look

And a love of the rack and the screw.
And I said I do, I do.
So daddy, I'm finally through.
The black telephone's off at the root,
The voices just can't worm through.

If I've killed one man, I've killed two---
The vampire who said he was you
And drank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know.
Daddy, you can lie back now.

There's a stake in your fat black heart
And the villagers never liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through.


Yup. Pretty harsh stuff. Then my intructor started talking about how losing a parent messes kids up, and gave the example of his wife diing from cancer and it screwing with his kids. Ouch, a little too close to home. The student that had prepared the analysis then made the highly informed comment of, "I don't think that the fact that it's the parent really makes that much of a difference. Really, the death of anyone would've been just as big of an impact on someone so young." Sometimes there are things in life that just remind you of how much other people can't understand you. Oh, and this was on Tuesday, October 5th, which, you know, happened to be the 12th anniversary, to the day, of my mother's death. Anyway, it was weird. I'm not really depressed at all, just weird. Can't really explain it. Anyway, I've invented a new word.

Wow!+Ouch!=Wouch!!!

So today at vork a woman, Vicky, called the store and asked if we had a certain drill. Of course I had nothing to do, so I went and found it. There were only two left so I offered to put one on hold for her. She agreed to let me do this. So I hang up and start to write the note "Hold for Vicky". What actually came out of my hand though?

Hod

Crap. Throw paper away. Start again.

Holf

No wonder I go to Valley.

"I'm a lumber company? Need some wood?" - George W. Bush

So the other day I'm at work and as usual I'm doing nothing. Well, not really nothing, but it often looks that way. See, I work in the basement next to the tools. There are people in the tool department there to sell the tools, so on most days, weekddays, I don't actually sell much. Whenever a cashier comes down to cover a break or something, they always complain that there is nothing to do. I, on the other hand always find something to do. I get one of the MCA's to bring me over huge boxes of towels to fold, or I clean the counter, or I pretend like I actually know what I'm doing and I sell people tools. Can you imagine that? Customers think that I actually know anything about tools. I just read the box or give my sage advice of, "maybe your Beamer uses metric parts".

So, I'm in there the other day and this woman comes up to buy something. Not tools, but towels. She is the wife of a guy that works at the repair center, so she gets a discount. Man, does she like to sniff out the bargains. Anyway, so she brings all this stuff up to the counter and nothing happened. I don't really have a story. I've been leading you on. People seem to like the Sears stories so it seemed a good cover. I really have nothing to say. Suckas got served!!!

So, I'm a Presbyterian. So were 11 of those that signed the Declaration of Independence. John Witherspoon, the only minister to sign, was one of those 11. Anyway, seems we're a little dissapointed in the actions our country has taken during the last administration.

I feel like I'm in a Clarinex commercial.