Friday, August 31, 2007
When It Rains, It Poors
I was in Fullerton, walking through the bar-hopping hot-spot as Reggae, House, Latino, and Top-40 pumped from the respective dive-bars. I shook hands with a former employee and discussed how life was. His Boston accent, brute manner, and Italian style hadn't changed. I noticed a woman sitting on a bench by herself. She wore a rasta-style hat, beatnik sunglasses, and a crazy amalgamation of army issue clothing. She held a huge tub of ice cream in her hands. I walked up and asked what kind of ice cream she was eating. She paused for nearly 15 seconds, looked at the label, slowly cocked her head up at me and slurred "I dunno...but it's good!" I smiled and wondered if I should offer her some cash. Before I could get any further in thought she looked up at me again and mumbled, "Hey...do you have any acid connections?" I furrowed my brow and asked her to repeat the question. "Can you get any acid?" I laughed a little until I realized she was serious. "No...sorry," I said, and walked away.
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"That fag!" This was said with such animosity that the four of us in the cheese prep area actually stopped what we were doing and looked at him. He was talking about a table that totally screwed him on tip even after saying everything was great. We don't really know each other, so nobody is sure if he is homophobic, insecure, or just using a common term that some people are offended by. "You shouldn't use that word," one of the girls nearby said. A huge conversation started about what is appropriate usage of "controversial" terms. Nobody would listen to my philosophical take on intention and how one can use a derogatory term if it is often aimed at their own race/sex/sexuality/etc. Instead it broke down into an emotional tirade about how she has lots of homosexual family members and how we need to be sensitive to what people find offensive. I was very tempted to start using derogatory terms about Puerto Ricans and then explain that I'm 25% Puerto Rican. That would probably cause more of a stir than I want to deal with at a new job.
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A drug dealer listens in on a conversation about youthful mistakes in the area of thievery. "I hated my job," his buddy says, "so I stole hundreds of dollars worth of tires for my friends." The drug dealer responds with, "Yeah, well that doesn't justify it. That's horrible." I laugh as he texts some friend with when he'll be by to sell them some yay.
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"Well, I don't know...is that acceptable?" I'm listening in to a conversation from my hiding spot at a corner desk. Nobody pays attention to me. "We're talking about the context of marriage here, right?" This is coming from the badly dressed (ok, so they're all badly dressed) guy eating a Cup O' Noodles. "Yeah," comes the response, "oral sex is still wrong." The guy with the shaved head speaks up, "Totally, the point of sex is procreation, and oral sex is aimed purely at the physical." The first guy pitches in, "Unless, maybe...maybe if you don't finish during the act. If you use it as part of the procreation thing but you don't finish with it you aren't using it for purely physical reasons." Seriously. I can't believe I'm hearing this.
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Oh yeah, Miss Teen South Carolina is ridiculously dense, renegade citizens are using YouTube to destroy bad cops, Splenda is poisoning people with Sucralose, Jaguan Kim is converting people to an incoherent physicalist view of the mind/body problem, and Bob Barker is failing miserably at controlling the pet population.
Sigh...the world is a complicated place.
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9 comments:
Pours. No Poors. Poors isn't even a word... unless you are speaking ebonically about the less economically stable populous. But I don't think you are.
It was on purpose. I was changing a common phrase that deals with bad things often happening all at the same time to comment on the poor status of our current social condition. Poor, as in lacking a rich mental life, etc.
And yeah, I know "poors" isn't a word.
the world is a crazy place. Here's a quote from William Gibson about why he decided to stop writing science fiction and just set his books in the present:
"There was some point at which I realized that if I'd gone to a publisher in the early eighties and said, 'Look, I've got this great idea for a science fiction novel. It's set in a world in which there's a global epidemic of a sexually contagious virus that, if it ran unchecked, would obliterate the species. Simultaneously, internal combustion engines and combustion generally have completely whacked the climate of the planet, perhaps irrevocably. Simultaneously, terrorists have attacked New York with commercial aircrafts and the United States has responded by invading the wrong country. The list just goes on!' And then I'd say, 'But, you know, people are having lovely times in virtual realities on something called the Internet — which I'll also tell you about.' [Laughs] Not only would they not have given me a contract, they would have called security."
It kind of reminded me of your final statement ... although I'm not hip enough to know what all the things you were referring to were all about.
Oh, the full interview is here.
Oh I'm not very hip either. I just pretend. You know about Miss Teen South Carolina (as your witty review of her speech shows); there have been a lot of people catching 'dirty cops' (being paid off and stuff) on home cameras and calling it vigilante justice; there's some big deal about Splenda being the new evil sweetener; Jaguan Kim and the mind/body problem is about as far from 'hip' as one could possibly get; and for all I know, the pet population is more under control than ever...I just guessed at that one.
I miss hanging out with y'all.
Wait... you were GUESSING that Bob Barker is attempting to control the pet population or you know that he is and are guessing that he is failing?
So confused!
-Megan... signed in as Grant... because she's bored... and Grant is still at school... and she decided to break into his house... and his computer... and his blogger account... no mas!
Oh, Mr. Barker IS trying to control the pet population (unless he's forced to add that little blurb at the end of his show), but I'm not sure if he's succeeding. In other words, I haven't exactly done much studying in the way of percentage of pet-population-control by year.
This is the real Grant.
Schizo is funzo!
AHHHH!!!
Ha...I totally forgot what I even wrote for that entry and I read your comment. I was thoroughly confused.
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