It's The Little Things

I was minding my own business when I got hit by the shrink ray.
   It must have been some fight between costumed superheroes and a bad guy. I don't know which one had the shrink ray - probably the bad guy - all I know is one minute I'm at Starbuck's 'enjoying' a $5 cup of coffee when BAM!! I'm suddenly three inches tall. About the size of a shot glass, give or take.
   There was all the commotion that usually accompanies a fight between people who wear their underwear on the outside, lots of explosions and smoke and debris and property damage. Me? I was just concerned that someone would sit on me. Or step on me.
   What are you supposed to do when you're shrunk to 5% of your former height? There's no manual for this sort of thing, we didn't cover it in Boy Scout first aid training, we didn't have 'shrink drills' in elementary school. So I was at a loss. My first priority, as I mentioned, was not getting killed accidentally by people panicking. It was pretty much my only priority, to tell you the truth. So I stayed put on the chair, wondering if one of the people racing around was going to knock the furniture over and put an end to me.
   Then I saw her. Slender and dark-haired, and about three inches tall, just like me. Only she was on the floor. Where people were running around. I saw her almost get creamed three or four times, but she wasn't frightened. She was pissed. I could see her screaming at people, giving them the finger with her tiny little right hand, but they couldn't hear her any more than I could. And to see her they'd have to be expecting a three-inch tall woman on the floor of Starbuck's, and, let's be honest, even the most baked stoner wouldn't expect to see that.
   She was moments away from getting trampled, so I did the only thing I could. I slid down the chair leg and ran for her. I tackled her and we rolled under the pre-packaged coffee display, where we hid with the dust bunnies and the dessicated corpse of a cockroach until the commotion died down.
   Of course the superheroes realized what happened and went looking for shrunk-down people. Turns out there were quite a few of us. Like over a thousand. And, long story short, no one can figure out a way to un-shrink us. So we're stuck like this.
   My grandmother always told me there was no use crying over spilt milk, and I agree. If I'm stuck being three inches tall, I might as well make the best of it. So the girl I rescued, Lois, and I are getting married, and I'm running for Mayor of Tiny Town - what else were we going to call it? - and trying to build up an outsourcing industry. On the phone no one can tell how tall you are.
   Not the best thing that's ever happened to me, but not entirely the worst, either. I did get the girl.

That's An Entrepreneur

I was driving to the fencing studio this afternoon, in the hot rod with the top down. Had the radio going, minding my own business, when I heard someone say something. I turned to my left where a large gray van sat idling. A young boy was looking over at me and I realized he was the one who'd been speaking. I turned down the radio and asked him to repeat himself, thinking he was asking for directions or some such.
   "Would you like to buy some candy, sir?"
   I laughed. There was no way I was going to buy candy from some kid in a van at a stop light. But that doesn't mean I don't admire him for the effort. For a real salesman every encounter is an opportunity for a sale, even if it's some guy driving a convertible you talk to in the middle of traffic. The kid looked like he was in middle school, probably trying to win a sales contest where the grand prize is a go-kart or something else equally cool and ultimately unattainable where you have to sell a million Snickers bars.
   He was young enough that he hadn't quite thought out the actual logistics of the deal. Had I agreed to buy candy, where would we have pulled over? How would we have made the exchange? How much would the candy have been and what would I have gotten for the cash? Despite all that, I still like his go-getter attitude. He's got a long career ahead of him selling something.
   Of course, I'm so un-hip I'm thinking 'candy' meant actual candy. For all I know I could have scored some meth or crack or something. That sure would have made fencing interesting...

Hey There, Tiny

I drive a truck. It's a 1999 Tahoe, it's big and blue (and tan), it fills a lane, and in California it says 'Texas' with a capital 'T.'
   Here in Texas, though, it's just one more truck out of the crowd, and it's not even a particularly big specimen. A Tahoe is just a Suburban on a shorter frame, after all.
   I was out today, shopping with my family, and we had one of those occasions when you park in the lot and there's no one nearby, and then when you come out of the store you're surrounded by huge trucks, monstrosities with push-bar front bumpers and gigantic tool boxes in the bed, and tires taller than a third-grader. Back when I used to drive a '72 Chevelle this happened all the time, especially in Sherman, TX where I went to school and rednecks outnumbered regular folks twice over. It's just what you deal with when you make your home in the Lone Star State.
   I've never once had that happen to me in California. Not even when I drive my car, because there just aren't enough trucks on the road to make it possible. My truck is always one of the largest in any lot, if not the largest by far, compared to all the hybrids and rice-burners and sensible econo-boxes that seem to multiply like rabbits under the SoCal sun. So it was kind of disconcerting today when my sister's crossover got lost behind F-250's and Silverados and Tundras, some of them diesel and still idling, surrounding her vehicle like so many metallic bison circled to protect the little one in the center.
   I did't like it. To be honest, I've grown used to being the guy with the truck in the land of car-owners. The one-eyed man in the kingdom of the blind, so to speak. I didn't appreciate having one of my defining characteristics reduced to mere background clutter.
   God help me, I'm looking forward to going back to SoCal, where my truck is unique, and people pay it the respect it's due.
   Oh, the humanity...

Litterbug, Litterbug, Shame On You

Pardon the perspiration but I just lugged a 70+ pound book case up three flights of stairs - because the elevator STILL isn't fixed - and I'm sweating like a whore in church.
   Which is kind of my topic. Perspiration, that is, not whores. Or church. It's unseasonably warm in LA today, 80 degrees in Pasadena, and as I was driving home from work I noticed a lot of rolled-down windows with people's arms sticking out of them. A lot. Usually LA driving is hermetically sealed, unless you're in a convertible, everybody in their own little cocoon of metal and glass. But today people were becoming one with their environment, at least the part that jets by at 30 miles an hour. But there was something else I noticed a lot of. A lot.
   The people with their windows down were littering. Brashly and brazenly. Unapologetically.
   I noticed a bus driver lady first, flicking something off her fingers and out into the street. Took her a while to get rid of whatever it was. Not two stop lights later I saw a guy throwing a wrapper out his window. And a guy behind him tossed something out too, which bounced and rolled down Wilshire. I noticed debris-tossing about five more times on the way home, and then another five or six when I picked up the monster book case I mentioned before. All were people who had their windows down, sunning their left arms.
   So I figure one of two things is true:
a)    people who like to litter also like to roll their windows down when it's hot
OR
b)    having a car window down makes otherwise fastidious people into scofflaw litterbugs.

I'm guessing it's a) because I had my window down and I didn't toss one thing out of my truck. Didn't even spit.

COMMUTE - there - 35 minutes      back - 35 minutes
CONTRACT COUNTDOWN: 38 days

Some Days You Just Can't Win

I'm not normally one to revel in another's misery... well, maybe I am. A little. I do love it when liars get what's coming to them, and cheats lose all their ill-gotten gains, stuff like that makes my day. I should say I'm not one to revel in an undeserving stranger's misery.
   Until today.
   I was at the gas station, putting a few gallons into the truck* when a lady drove up to the pump next to me. The credit card reader on that one was broken and I tried to tell her, but she realized she'd pulled up on the wrong side of pump, the cap was on the passenger side.
   So she got back in the car and turned it around. Only to get back out of the car - this time with her back to me - whereupon she found the sign that said the card reader wasn't working.
   She got back in the car and drove around to the other row of pumps. She got out of the car only to realize that once again she had lined up the driver's side, but the cap was still on the passenger side.
   I tried not to be obvious as I watched her turn her car around AGAIN, this time facing the right way. But the story doesn't end there, I took my time cleaning the rear windows on my truck to watch. She tried a credit card, which didn't work. She tried another one, which also didn't work. She pressed the button to get the attendant's attention, and asked, a little irked, if any of the card readers on any of the pumps worked.
   He told her both her cards had been declined.
   The poor lady screwed the cap back on, got in her car and drove away.
   Man, some days the best stuff just falls into your lap.



* by the way, has anybody noticed gas is still over $3 a gallon? During a recession when people are out of work and no one's driving? I smell a conspiracy.

Corporate Monkey-Spank

The more things change the more they stay the same. And just when you think corporate weasels would start to get the message they prove that they just don't get it.
   I worked out this morning, and as I was walking home I decided to stop in at the convenience store along the way for a soda and a lotto ticket, my only two vices if you don't count curling up in my robe on the couch Friday nights to read the latest vampire book while my hot rollers set my hair just-so.
   The place is closing.
   They have a half-off sale on most things, including beer, as they try to liquidate inventory before they close in ten days. So I doubled up on the diet soda - half off is essentially 'two for one' - and I asked the guy behind the counter why the place was closing. I expected to hear 'raising rent' or 'losing money' or 'lost the liquor license' something like that. Not even close.
   The corporate offices decided to close the store because it wasn't making enough money. Not that it wasn't making money - the manager assured me they had been turning a profit since the day they opened - but that they weren't making the kind of profits the corporate weasels wanted them to.
   This is why I hate, hate, hate MBAs. They don't know how to run a business, they know how to do algebra on a spreadsheet. Some jerkoff who's never actually operated any kind of store, web site, or even a cart at the mall sets a sales goal, a number he creates out of thin air according to his flawed analysis of whatever bogus metrics he can think up. Then when the store doesn't meet those artificial goals, he makes the 'command decision' to shut the place down because, after all, not meeting goals needs to have consequences. Ridiculous and short-sighted.
   'But Don,' you MBAs say, 'there are all sorts of considerations beyond profitability that might call for closure.' Bull and shit. If a place is profitable it should stay open, even if the profit is only $1. If it doesn't make enough cash to contribute to the middle-manager corporate bloat of do-nothing asswipes then the ranks of those weasels needs to be thinned.
   So for want of a few extra dollars to pay the salary of someone who shouldn't be working anyway, people lose their jobs, the neighborhood loses a store, and I get an excuse to go on my anti-MBA rant again.
   Oooh... it just angries up the blood...

Gas Station Pickup

Sometimes, as a writer I have to struggle with a concept, I have to tease a finished product out of a rough mess that refuses to make sense. There are days I have to work hard to get anything close to a cogent narrative, and there are occasions where I have to struggle for hours to get just a few good words.
   Sometimes, though, pure gold falls right into my lap and I don't have to do a damn thing but write it down. Sunday night was one of those times.
   I was at a Chevron in Eagle Rock - a newly-hip and still run-down part of Los Angeles immediately adjacent to Pasadena - putting gas in the truck and buying a soda I definitely did not need to drink. The line to pay was long because some jerkoff was cashing in a fistful of lottery scratchers, and so I got at the back of the line and an Ed-Hardy-wearing greasy hipster dude got in line behind me; that's Eagle Rock for you. Moments later a 'blonde' woman in shorts got in line behind him. She was attractive in that 'been clean from meth for six months' kind of way skinny bottle-blonde white chicks can have.
   This is their conversation, which I ran to my truck to write down.

'Blonde' woman: Man, did a bus let off just now?
   Greasy hipster douchebag: Yeah, that's a long line.
What's happening up there?
   So who are you here with?
My husband.
   Oh yeah? Which one is he?
The one with the Raiders shirt.(pointing to the big bald guy pumping gas into his pickup)
   Yeah, okay. (...pause...) You should come party with us.
Nah, I've done enough partying in my life. Hardcore, man.
   You don't look old enough to be done partying.
I'm thirty-five. A lot of long years partying, I'm done.
   Really? I thought you looked... maybe... twenty-eight or thirty. A lot of paryting, huh?
   (... pause..)
   Are you high right now?
No. Are you?

~~~ at this point I have paid for my soda, a habit I'm unsuccessfully trying to kick, and I'm trying to think of a slick way to stay there and eavesdrop on the horrible, embarrassing conversation behind me. I finally abandoned all pretense and just re-folded my cash while they finished ~~~

   Well, I just... you know. Here let me give you my number. ( douchebag actually has a business card he tries to hand over )
No, that's okay, I don't think my husband would want me to take it.
   Oh, hey, he can come too. He looks like a party guy.
He's not.
   Okay... well... I guess I'll see you around.
I don't think so.

Ugh and ewwww. While on the one hand I do have to admire the greasy hipster's bravado and willingness to take a chance, on the other hand I think his choice of venue was questionable, and his banter was reprehensible. If this is what you ladies have to put up with on a regular basis no wonder we men have a bad reputation.
   Oh, final note, as you probably guessed the greasy hipster guy in full Ed Hardy regalia was, in fact, buying cigarettes. Livin' the sterotype...