Special Parking 2 -- Employee of the Month

The lot is full, as is every mall lot days before Xmas. After driving up and down rows of cars for 10 minutes, I spot it from the corner of my eye-- a clear space. It is the first in the row, adjacent to the store, and it is about 90% certain that there is not a small decoy car in that spot. It calls to me like a beacon on a lone runway. It's mine.

I nose into the spot to see the sign, "RESERVED FOR ASSOCIATE OF THE MONTH". WTF?

Yes, the coveted space has been hijacked as an incentive to make minimum-wage workers push their thin talents to the extreme. You may not get health benefits, a rational boss or a shot at vaguely nutritious stuff in the breakroom vending machine, but the good folks at Corporate know that they can make you peeons jump through hoops for that parking spot. Yesssiree Bob.

Certainly the closer to the store you are the less time you have to waste propelling yourself. Plus, your tricked out fast-n-furious Nissan Sentra with no muffler will look swell in that primo spot.

The problem is that I am the customer and I should get a crack at that spot. I don't mind competing. However, to reserve it for an employee is reprehensible. When I worked for long-defunct Service Merchandise back in the 1980's we had to park in the back of the lot, the customer was always first. Now that's completely changed!

More to come on the subject of reserved spaces.

Get Out USA!

Many would like to see the end of the USA acting as the World Cop. I'd like to see the USA stop bidding for the World Cup. Soccer is a lame sport. To its defense, it requires outstanding stamina and athleticism. Big deal, so does being a porn star.

With hockey and basketball there's no room for soccer. All three rely on placing an object into a goal. In hockey and basketball the goal is small, defended by padded or giant dudes, and it is realistically targeted several times a minute. The pace is fast, the skill (especially in hockey) is amazing.

Contrast to soccer where a guys run up and down a gigantic field for an hour and a half, perhaps coming close to scoring a few times. 95% of the game is spent in the transition and you can't use your damn hands. Boring. It sucks just more than baseball.

In 1977 I lived in Chicago and two players from the Chicago Sting, a US Soccer league team, came to our school to tell us why soccer is cool and football is not. See, our school only let us play soccer because it was safe. They didn't like tackling or line drives. They instead wanted us to focus on "headers", "bicycle kicks" and "man-on's".

While two or three geeks were enamored with the visitors, I and most of the other kids didn't buy their poison. They actually ripped American football, telling us how boring it was and how the players weren't really athletes. We should have heckled those European long-hairs right out of the gymnasium. Later, we gave any capitulating geeks swirlies until they recanted their adoration of a girls' sport.

Thirty years later nobody here cares about soccer. You still can find a drunken Scot or an exchange student that's all fired up about it. However, professional soccer matches draw small crowds of several dozen Mexican men. Amateur soccer is confined to childrens' sport, dominated by parents that won't let their kids play football, baseball or hockey. Soccer is safe, and you can glue that soccer ball sticker on your minivan.

Soccer is safe. That is the problem, it lacks strategy, speed and the possibility of critical injury. It is as un-American as the Speedo and should be banished from our shores. It is not an important sport here and it never will be. Why don't we just leave it for them? Let the world have its happy speckled ball, its knee socks and red cards. We've always been just fine without it and we always will.

Gay Hurricanes

I guess it is just the agenda of the pink liberal rainbow watchers over at the National Weather Service that want indoctrinate us with their gay agenda. As hurricane Alberto (VO5) gets ready to give Florida a good blowing I remembered how a few years back I told someone, "I got my ass kicked by Charley, then Frances really hammered me". It was the gayest thing I ever said. At that point I realized that they don't give tropical weather systems butch names.

Look at the list for 2006; it reads like a list of the stylists at the Belagio Day Spa:

Alberto, Chris, Ernesto, Gordon, Isaac, Kirk, Michael, Oscar, Rafael, Tony, William

Okay, it is "Chris" and not "Christopher" so they used the androgenous form. Tony- no problem there. Could they have made it "Mike"?

I also see their liberal agenda showing with the Mexican names. I could almost hear them say, "National language my ass, you're getting beaner hurricanes in Alberto, Ernesto and Raphael!"

So now I get to hunker down and get ready to be blown by Alberto. I think I'm going to start suggesting names for next time. At least they didn't cave into the fever and name one "Bradgelina".

Special Parking - The Able Disabled

Now a subject I just love... parking lots and the reserved spaces within them. Over the last several decades we have witnessed monumental changes in our sensitivity to the needs of the disabled. Those spots are sacred ground, as those that are inambulatory require a short distance to transit to reach necessities.

However, is it working when every asshole has a window permit to park there? It is not uncommon to find the first 10% of any parking lot reserved for disabled patrons, but is 10% of the population physically disabled? No. These are spots of convenience for many that I see. A car will park and a spunky and spry person will hop from the driver's seat and bop into the store. Where's the disabilty?

Even more common is the person that drops a wheelchair bound individual at the door and then uses the parking place for convenience. How uncool is that?

Plus, most people in wheelchairs etc just want to be treated like the ambulatory, allegedly. I've found that some didn't appreciate when I've tried to do something for them, such as help push them up a ramp. Maybe I should have asked first, or at least asked where they were going before I took them there.

The idea to make it easy for the disabled is a good one, but we need a better system to determine who absoultely needs the space. Issuing permits for love handles, splinters and gingivitis eliminates the reason for the accomodations.

Speaking for He Who Has No Voice... Only Three Arms

Last week a baby was born in China, but he was not a normal baby. Instead, he was a super sorta UberBaby, a child born with three arms. Now, I'm amazed at conjoined twins and extra heads, limbs etc, but I'm even more amazed at the miracles doctors perform to try to restore these affected childred to normalcy.

Until now. This kid has three arms, five short of octopus, and some self-absorbed prick physician sees it as a once in a lifetime opportunity to make the textbooks with groundbreaking corrective surgery. What an asshole! Not only is he dialing back an incremental step forward in human evolution, he's making a choice for the newborn that he should not make! I'm here to advocate for spiderbaby!

Let's consider downsides and upsides.

DOWNSIDES

1. Hard to find shirts.

UPSIDES

1. Can eat Subway and drive a manual transmission at the same time.
2. Great potential for an all-star hockey goalie.
3. "Drinkin' arm"
4. Can count to 15 without removing shoes.
5. He'd be an amazing guitar player, no wait, drummer!
6. Can play with his junk while cutting grass.

I'm sure there's more, but I'm so upset I can't think of them. Now all he has is the "I'd give my left arm to be normal" joke and that's going to get old really quick. I guess there's the point that kids are viscous and would tease him harshly, but what better way to strike back than a "Three Finger Flip Off"?

Once again we act before we think. That kid could have made much lemonade from the lemon he was dealt, instead he's got a gnarly scar and no drinkin' arm.

And "F" Dominick's Finer Foods...

Recently I had to drive from my home in Spuds, FL to Chicago, IL. It was not a happy time, a funeral of a clown-college mentor and supremely cool guy. I was not in a good mood going in, plus I was overcome by 17 hours of highway hypnosis and its coincident road rage. I longed to be severely wasted, so I bought a bottle of Stoli Vanilla Vodka and went to find some diet ginger ale. Together they would make a concoction that resembles creme soda.

I had the vodka in hand, then stopped at Dominick's Finer Foods, a facet of the Safeway chain of grocery stores, to buy ginger ale. I found the Canada Dry ginger ale on sale, $2.50 for 12 cans. I traveled to the register and waited in line to pay.

The old hen in front of me paid with a fucking check which left every other lane open except mine. Finally I stepped up to the register to find that my $2.50 12 pack is somehow $4.09.

I carefully inquired that the item was to be acquired at a reduced price, as specified by the placard that coincided with the item's shelf location.

Then the pizza-faced twit ringing the register tells me, "You need the Fresh Values Card to get the discount".

I explained that I was fresh off of a lengthy cross-country junket and wished to obtain the beverage for the reduced price. I told him that a funeral brought me to his fine town and that I did not possess a "Fresh Values" card.

He told me that if I wanted the sale price that I had to apply for one.

I again explained that it would indeed be a kindhearted occasion to assist a fellow man at a dire moment, and that his small gesture would be well received.

"Sorry, you need the card".

That was it. Without a word I pulled $5 from my pocket and slammed it to the conveyor belt, pressing it down with my hand. He went take the five bucks and tugged lightly at it, but it was not going anywhere.

His eyes met mine and I stated quietly, "Give me the fucking discount you son of a bitch".

One hour later I was still pissed off, but I was hammered and getting hammereder. Although I find I usually get my way by being logical and polite, sometimes I need to be a prick to get things accomplished.