Can you hear me?

My cell phone speaker blew up this weekend so off to the Verizon store I went. Cell phone stores are a weird place. If one shows ignorance the sales people put on a little show using all the fancy tech lingo and charm they can muster to sign you up. The second you show the slightest bit of knowledge they shift gears. Example: I told them I needed a new phone and my only concern was good reception. I didn’t care about having a camera or even a color screen. The kept pointing me to this piece of crap . For which I had read horrible reviews about. Once I told them I was not interested in that phone and asked about another that I had seen good reviews for the salesperson turned off the charm and took on and indifferent attitude. This happened with 4 different sales people at 2 different stores. I think they were trying to dump the remaining stock and/or were getting special commissions for selling the crap phone explaining the hard push for it.

Then there was this exchange on Sunday:

L- “My Speaker is broken, etc blah blah blah.”

Verizon Lady “What’s your phone #”

L - “###-####”

VL - “How long have you had that number?” (not looking up from screen)

L – “3 or 4 years.”

VL “That was my first cell phone #.” (still not looking up)

L – “Actually I’m stalking you.”

VL - “____________” (still not looking up from screen)

Nothing! Not even an eye roll or disapproving head shake! ACK! Zombies!

Happy Holidays!

If your care, click here for the story.

Collective IQ of 12

To my coworker: When I am sitting alone reading the news paper on my scheduled break do not come up and make small talk. Especially when you don’t’ have anything interesting to say and/or it is work related. Because, as I just said, I am on break, from work and from you. More importantly if we are the only two people in our department and we have ample opportunities to communicate about work, my break is not the time I want to be listening to your boring ass. Also, did it look like I was reading that newspaper or just starring at it in some desperate plea for attention? Fucking dipshit.

To the lady that wears ear plugs: Ok you work out on the floor in a warehouse, it’s loud, makes sense to wear hearing protection. But why do you wear them when you go out to your car? Why do you wear them while you eat lunch? Why do you not properly insert them so they are actually protecting your ears? They’re hanging out and make you look like you stuck carrots in your ears.

To the lady that set her lunch on fire: Tin Foil and Microwaves do not mix. When you put a sandwich wrapped in foil in a paper bag and take it to work you shouldn’t place the entire package in the microwave. You couldn’t stop at setting the paper lunch sack on fire could you? Leaving it to smolder and going to the vending machines to buy more food showed just why your job at 45 years old is putting hangers and price stickers on clothes.

To the skanky Russian chicks: Glitter doesn’t make you pretty. Just as sequined pants or tops from Forever 21 make you look tacky and desperate. I do love the huge shinny gold purses, so cliché. I would also like to know why every time I pass one of you after you leave the restroom it smells like the perfume department of a major mall retailer on black Friday? What's the percentage of your perfume budget against your total take home pay? Do you forgo heat and electricity in order to smell like the inside of a perfume bottle?

Die in a Fire.

Epilogue: Squirrels Don’t Bounce

I was out working on the car on Sunday (changing the fuel filter, air filter, breather valve, cleaning) with David Bowie’s Changes One playing on the record player. Everything was going smoothly until some squirrels who were rather annoyed by the proximity of my work and the apple tree started barking at me. Not barking like a dog but a repetitive angry chatter that's quite annoying. It's particularly annoying for someone who has had to put up with those little fuckers in the woods while hunting. Because, when one stops and takes a break at the top of say, a huge ridge that was on your compass bearing the squirrels get pissed and try to “annoy you” out of their territory by raising an unholy racket. This generally brings forth an extreme road rage type anger with no outlet because, if you shoot it the deer/elk/etc that you are actually hunting for will no longer be around.
Anyways, so these two fat squirrels are barking at me and completely ruining my bitchin’ sing along to Suffragette City. I figured since they wanted the apples so badly I would give them what they desired. After finding a few of the apples that hadn’t turned to mush yet I took aim and let a few fly, missing by a few feet. I managed to shut them up and went about my business. I noticed a while later a squirrel was in down in the driveway eating part of one of the apples that had exploded on the tree trunk. He was lying really low to the ground so I went to investigate.

Well it turns out that Scootsie the Squirrel did in fact injure him/herself when it fell out of the tree back in September . I walked up to it and it dragged itself out of the driveway about 5 feet and being the deductive genius that I am, I surmised that it must have broken its back as it's back legs were not working. I kicked the apple chunk over to it and went back to work. 15 minutes later I look up and it is back in the driveway where the apple was chewing on a stick. I walked over to it and squatted down with about 3 feet between us. It didn’t even flinch so I poked it with a stick and still nothing. After much deliberation over the current quality of life it was living vs. slow starvation when the apples ran out I decided to call in “a guy” to “take care of things”.

RIP Scootsie 200_ - 2006

/I was rather amazed at how many results came up for Dead Squirrel on Google Image Search. Not really worth looking.