Hey little girl, want some candy?

Yesterday started out bizarre enough when a lady called the store going on about Morgellon's Disease. It just so happens that I have heard of this from a link that was e-mailed to me months ago. It is a real disease but it sounds like something out of a sci-fi movie. People with the condition will get open sores and lesions where fibers of different colors will grow. It is very strange stuff, but it is also very rare. So this lady is going on about Morgellon's saying her house was infested with these cotton parasites all due to a rug that she brought back from Mexico. She then went on to say that you can see the parasites under a black light because they glow. Well, lady, a lot of things glow under a black light. She tells me to go out and buy a black light, which are hard to find right now because of the Morgellon's scare, and shine it on everything in the store and at my house. Only then will I be safe from the cotton menace. I told her I surely would so she would hang up and never call back, but came to two conclusions about her. Maybe she really is just a paranoid hypochondriac who feels the need to call places of business and warn them about parasites that come out of cotton made products. Or, she works for a black light company and is using fear to sell more black lights, kind of like the Chewley's Gum representative in Clerks.

The day progressed somewhat normally after this. Until around 8:15 when a five year old girl got bit by a fucking dog in the store during a training class. The trainers and the parents have the girl in the office with the first aid kit and are disinfecting the wound (I thought I saw fibers growing out if it). She had been bitten on her right side which broke the skin and drew some blood, and was really not that bad. Then again, I'm a grown-up and she is a five year old girl, so to her it was probably the worst pain she had ever been in. They put a band-aid on it and I go into the next office with the mother and the girl to fill out an incident report. They were actually very cool about the situation considering their daughter had just been almost eaten in the store. We get down to the end of the report and I ask if it would be okay to take a Polaroid picture of the wound for insurance purposes and the mother says 'sure'. Now comes the hard part. Now we have to convince this girl to take the band-aid off. She is not having it. We are in the office for 30 minutes trying to talk this girl into removing the band-aid, not because she thought it would hurt to take it off, but because she thought it was making the pain of the sore go away. I offer her candy, a soda, and eventually a Finding Nemo flashlight shaped like Dory to take this thing off for two seconds so I can snap the picture. Finally, the dad had to come in and hold the little girl while the mother rips the band-aid off with the girl screaming the whole time. I take the picture and the girl takes her candy and new flashlight and they go off to buy some Barbie band-aids at the grocery store. The picture didn't even come out that well.

Agent O'Mally Must Die

Saturday night the little woman made a trip to Denton to see her family which left me with a kitchen pass for the night. I called my friend Rob up and went over to his place thinking we would just get some beer and play X-Box all night. Rob had been out by the pool all day so he was already kind of drunk when I got there at around eight o'clock. We decided to grab some dinner so we called our friends Robert and Jennifer and met up at a little micro brewery restaurant called Two Rows. After dinner we went to go rent a video game but the local Blockbuster had crap for a selection so we just went to get beer instead. After the beer run we stopped at a convenience store so Robert could get a Monster and Rob and I pulled up to the side of the building to wait for him to run in and out. A car pulls up beside us and the driver gestures for us to roll down our window after which he says, "I'm Agent O'Mally and I want to know what you guys have been smoking!" which is then followed with him laughing maniacally, his wife looking embarrassed, and he drives off leaving Rob and I very confused and kind of irritated. The rest of the night we spend at Rob's place watching the last part of Die Hard 3 and some really crappy vampire movie to which I don't remember the name of; during which the topic of discussion was 'who would we cast if there was to be a live action G.I. Joe movie.' We would want Jessica Alba to play Lady Jaye.

Sunday Lady M and I met up with Sam and looked at a few houses in Arlington. We looked at four. One had water damage and stained carpet, one had about twenty dead roaches on the floor and cracks in the walls, one had a kitchen the size of a closet, and one was a hud house which needed way more repairs than we could afford. It wasn't a complete waste, though, as it was nice to see Sam again and I got to spend the day with my special lady friend.

Back from the Grave

Long story short, Tuesday night the computer dies. We try to fix it. We can't fix it. Last night we went and bought a new one. The really sad thing is that absolutely nothing worth mentioning has happened since then.

My brother is throwing me a bachelor "party" at the end of the month and I was thrilled to find out that the whole handful of my friends will be able to make it. I have no idea what this thing consists of, nor am I supposed to, I just know that it will probably not involve booze and it will definitely not involve strippers. My brother and I have always been like night and day. Growing up he was always into sports, school activities, Girbaud jeans, and anything that didn't involve swear words. I, on the other hand, hated sports and school activities, had a closet full of nothing but comic book and rock band t-shirts, and swore like a sailor then and continue the practice to this day. Fuck. See? Don't get me wrong, I do love the guy, in the sense that brothers should, and I am looking forward to seeing him and partaking in this event, I'm just curious to see how well the mixing of family and friends goes. Also, thank you to everyone who agreed to take part in this thing. I appreciate it more that you know and look forward to seeing you next week.

The Sensei and other Tragedies

This was a wicked long week at work. I mean, every night there was at least one crazy person that walked through the door. This includes the girl that came in looking for a little filter insert for a small two gallon fish tank we sell. That is, we sell the fish tank, not the insert she was looking for. She goes on about how she was supposed to be leaving for a cruise but couldn't because she needed this part for her tank and how was her friend supposed to take care of her fish while she was gone without it? She was in tears, literally crying at this point. She asked why we would sell a tank but not the replacement parts that go to it. "Why would you do that? WHY?!?" Like it was some malicious plot we had going on just because we thought it was funny. She also showed me the filter she bought that day that didn't fit and said that she would like a refund on it. The filter was about 12 bucks. A brand new tank to replace the one she had was $19.99. I asked her why she just didn't spring for the extra eight dollars and get a brand new set up. She didn't think that was funny. I told her to go home, get her old tank and bring it back and I would exchange it for a brand new one. She said, "Now I have to go all the way home and come back again? I'm supposed to be going on a cruise right now!" She runs out the door and I haven't seen her again...Yet.

Last night I came home after a long day and found Lady M entertaining her sister. I empty my pockets and pull out a ten dollar bill that belongs in the safe at work. Fuck. The girls offer to go with me to give the money back after I shower and change. We deliver the money and on the way home we pull into a restaurant that Lady M and I favor called BJ's. After dinner we stop at the Movie Trading Company to browse for a minute. I find a copy of Young Frankenstein that I decide I need to own, and the little woman opts for nothing because they don't have Romancing the Stone. That's the deal with Movie Trading Company, though. You can't go in looking for anything specific. That store is such an unorganized mess you just have to go in and see what you find.

When we get home, Lady M's sister heads out and M and I settle in for a movie. A friend of ours was the cinematographer on a film called The Sensei which he gave us a rough copy of and which you can read about on Wine When Drunk From A Mug. The movie was balls out awful, and if I didn't have the little woman there to trade comments with and good supply of beer I wouldn't have made it five minutes in.

Finally, I was able write my Ice Pirates review so be sure and check that out on the Big Suck Loser. After The Sensei and Ice Pirates, tonight I really need a good movie.

X-Men and Ed Norton

We just finished watching 25th Hour and I have to say that I do believe that this is the very first Spike Lee flick that I enjoyed. The funniest thing that I noticed was that it had Anna Paquin (Rogue), Aaron Stanford (Pyro), Brian Cox (Stryker), and Ed Norton delivers the line, "I wish I was like that girl in the X-Men. The one that can walk through walls."

Netflix just sent an old nostalgic piece of film that I plan on re-visiting in the next day or so; Ice Pirates. I remember that the very first movies that we rented on our brand new Beta VCR were Time Bandits and Ice Pirates. I haven't seen this thing in probably 15 years or more, so I'll let you know how it goes. I think it will be the next review for me on Big Suck Loser, so stay tuned.

Now I'm going to try and figure out how to do the links and stuff that everyone else but me seems to know how to do.

Really, lady?

I awoke this morning at 5:00am because Wednesday is the day we have our manager meeting up at the store. Our genius boss prefers to have this meeting at 6:00am because if we did it during normal business hours like every single other fucking store in the chain we might be interrupted. I shit you not. I drag my ass up to the store and the meeting is pointless as usual. I get home around 7:30 and cook the little woman breakfast, which gives me the chance to break in the Scooby Doo waffle iron I got this past Christmas which I had been dying to use but never had the chance until now. The waffles actually come out looking like little Scooby heads, which I thought was the coolest thing since our Hello Kitty toaster. After breakfast, the wife gets ready for work and I go back to bed. I have to close the store tonight so I have to go back at 2:00.

The day was plagued with idiots. The gold medal goes to the woman who calls me saying that she had a litter of stray kittens back in May that she gave to the dog trainer at the Mesquite store so she could find an adoption agency that would take them. Now she wants to find the cats to make sure they are alright. I told her she is calling the Addison store, not Mesquite. She said she knows that, but she was wondering if I could go look at the cats we have in the store and tell me if I see her kittens. This conversation goes on for about 15 minutes. I tell her that I don't work in Mesquite. I don't know anyone at the Mesquite store. We don't have any fucking kittens, only adult cats. No, the trainer in Mesquite does not also moonlight at our location. We work with different adoption agencies than they do. You will never see your damn kittens again. She finally accepts this fact and hangs up. I hope she finds her kittens. I hope they eat her.

Beginning

If everyone else is doing it, why shouldn't I? It seems that everyone I know is on the bloggin' bandwagon, so I'm jumping on. I don't think I'll be able to keep up with this thing daily like my friends and better half does, but we'll see what happens.

Today is my day off. I usually work fifty plus hours a week as operations manager at a pet supply store. The job shouldn't be as stressful as it is, but my boss is abso-fucking-lutely crazy. He is the most forgetful man I have ever met, he refuses to learn certain aspects of the job, (probably because he'll just forget how to do it immediately), and when he talks, he goes on and on and strays so far off the original subject that nobody knows how we got there or what the original point was. You'll hear more about him later, I'm sure. I don't want to think about work on my day off.

So, today I spent a few hours working on a flier for my job. Dammit, there it is again. My job. There is no escape. The flier is to help recruit new dog trainers for our store. You see, our two trainers that we had just quit, and for this particular company training is a big deal. Anyone who has worked retail knows that there is always something that is being pushed to sell or else your store gets an ass reaming for not meeting your goal. This certain something may be convincing people to sign up for a credit card with your store's logo on it, preordering an item in your store, or signing people up for some kind of discount card, but for this place it is all about the training. So, a few weeks ago I made a flier for a parking lot event for my store which everyone seemed to like well enough, so I was asked to make another one trying to get applicants in to fill the void that our previous two dog trainers left behind.

Seriously, enough about work. A few weeks ago, a package was delivered to my store. Fuck. I can't believe how much crap revolves around that place. Anyways, a package is delivered. Inside is a few DVDs that we sell about, you guessed it, dog training. Along with these DVDs on how to properly train your animal was a copy of Harold and Maude. Strange movie to be getting in for a pet store, I thought. I called the vendor and it was indeed a mistake on their part, but she tells me to just keep the movie as it wouldn't be worth the hassle to send it back. I am no fan of Harold and Maude, so I leave it on the desk for someone else who may want to watch it. It sits on the desk for about a month so I finally take it thinking there must be some sucker willing to exchange this movie for another DVD. I first venture out to Target hoping to make a trade for Charlie and the Chocolate factory. My fiancee and I went with our friend Rob to see the new Pirates of the Caribbean flick last weekend and ever since I have felt the need for more pirates and Johnny Depp in my life. Neither of these cravings are new or odd for me but they have been particularly strong this week. So, Depp as Wonka is what I need to come back with today. I take the Harold and Maude in to Target and she scans the DVD, throws it back at me and says, "We don't even carry this. Sorry." What a bitch. She tells me to try Wal Mart. Fine, I feel less like a scum bag trying to scam Wal Mart anyways. I go into the evil establishment and ask the white trash customer service lady if I could exchange my crappy DVD for a good movie. She says, 'Sure', and I go back and look at their selection. For such a gigantic store, they had a tiny and shitty selection of movies. I guess everyone that shops at Wal Mart only wants to own Basic Instinct 2. I mill around for a while, and after not finding Chuck and the Chocolate Factory, I opt for another DVD which I will not mention due to the fact that it's embarrassing. I bring my choice back to white trash and she scans the Harold and Maude to which she says, "We don't carry this. This came from somewhere else." Fuck me. What kind of horrible place full of dark magic did this curse of a DVD come from? I took my crappy DVD back and decided to just go see how much in trade I could get for it at the Movie Trading Company. I guess I just wasn't cut out to be a scam artist. Oh well. I get $3.50 in trade for this thing so I only have to pay nine bucks for the Charlie. Good enough. Time to go home.