A caution when in an eatery

Beware (I almost typed “beawre”, which might be an Olde Englishe Worde).

The frequently posted “Employees Must Wash Hands Before Returning to Work/Empleados Necesitan Levantarse Las Manos Antes de Regresar al Trabajo” is not only ineffective but was never really intended for the empleados in the primera place.

That sign is there to make you, the customer, feel better, because you think employees will read it and then wash their hands.  Here’s five reasons why that’s bologna:

1.  Anyone who doesn’t wash urine molecules or poo particles off of their hands before preparing your food is probably not the kind of person to stop and read signs, let alone obey them.

2.  Most of the time the sign is placed on the exit door, which would necessitate a u-turn to complete the requested sanitation process–again, someone who doesn’t take the effort in the first place is probably not going to turn around and walk back to the sink.

3.  This one time I saw a sign like that posted right over the sink, below the mirror, where you would only read it if you were already bent over the faucet anyway, washing your hands.  Or popping a pimple.  The best place to put these signs is in the stalls over the graphic but often creative illustrations that adorn the walls, or over the urinals where the sports page goes if it’s a quality establishment.  But they’re not there.

4.  Some of them are probably part-human part-feline mutants and they don’t like water anyway.

5.  Oftentimes these signs are accompanied by an illustrated, multi-step process for washing your hands with soap.  I saw one with over ten steps once.  I read it for fun.  While I was already washing my hands.  Signs that insult your basic capacity for simple manual tasks are not likely to be heeded.

6.  Here’s an extra one, since number 4 is not widely accepted in mainstream media.  Employees sometimes have their own commode in the back of the place and they don’t use your room to rest.

No no, faithful eaters.  That sign is for you, to make you feel better about dining in this place.  It’s placed in a spot that you’ll see if/after you cleanse yourself with the nameless pink goo.  It may also shame you into washing your own hands (and give you an illustrated guide if you forget where the soap goes), but it has nothing to do with employees.  Like the mood lighting and the little “guiltless” icon stamped next to the healthy items, it’s for you.

Beawre ye.

Reasonably accurate quotes from this past week.

“That was awesome…like falling into the sun.” This was not from this week.  It was from 1999 or so when my friend Ralph walked out of our Math final exam.  I include it here because it expresses so much of the spirit of the moment.

“Please don’t kiss me anymore.”

“No, no, Drew.  The final is today, not tomorrow.” “It is?  Wow, this is the worst news ever.  I’m in a huge hole of crap.”  “Boy, am I relieved!  If it was tomorrow, that would be inconvenient for me because I have a conflict at that time.  See, look at my schedule here–”  “Can’t talk now, Joram.”

“The meal plan is way too expensive.  And you know, girls eat less than guys, so it’s like we’re paying for their meals.”  “Yeah, they should charge people for meals by weight. Like weigh people before and after each meal, in front of everyone.”

“Well, just come by my office.  It’s 125A.”  “Yeah, we know.  We’ve seen you in there before.”  “All by myself.”

“My baby can speak Latin.”

(mental stream of consciousness) “Man, where is the professor?  It’s like 20 minutes after the final was supposed to start, and he’s never late.  And why is no one else bothered?  Shouldn’t somebody go get him?  What are they doing, anyway?  Oh.  Looks like everyone is taking the final right now.  That explains the strange hush in the classroom, as well as the pile of blank final exams up at the front of the room.  It all makes sense.”

“I have to get a signed note from my wife before they will let me pick up her cap and gown.  I hate this place.”

“Hi, I need to get a book.  I turned it in last night and you haven’t reshelved it yet.  Can you find it back there?”…[several minutes later]…”Do you really, really need it?”

“So, how are classes?”  “Drew, I graduated a year ago.”  “Oh.”

Aw yeah

Yes I did.

All you haters should know, my wife digs it.

Who says you’re not a winner?

This morning I was eating my cheerios laced with matured (read: brown and mushy and sweet and if you like them green what the heck is wrong with you, they’re sweeter if you let them sit for a few days) banana slices, and I looked at the cereal box to read something.  (My wife makes fun of the fact that I read cereal boxes, shampoo ingredient lists, movie plot summaries and the weird tall/small writing at the bottom of the DVD that tells you who is in the movie and who produced it, things that I myself have recently written on scraps of paper, signs on walls like “fire extinguisher” that have been there for years, and other less fascinating material.)

Anyway.  Cereal.

So instead of a good story about Fred and Barny in Cocoa-Falls, Bedrock, having a chocoriffic time and me counting hidden flattened rice flakes in the picture, there was this notice about another sweepstakes, where you could win 10 million bucks or something.

And I did.  Win 10 million bucks.

Or something.

Inside the cereal box there was a neat silver-wrapped Discover debit/gift card worth five big fat bucks.  Usable anywhere Discover is accepted.  Yes, faithful reader–either one of those places!

So today my wife and I are going out for coffee and orange juice to celebrate the fact that I am a rocking winner of a man.

So who says you’re not a winner?  Go out there and make it happen.  Maybe you won’t get as rich as I have, but they have prizes of lesser value as well, so it’s not like it’s all 5 bucks or nothing.

By the way, the odds of winning 10 million or something according to the faithful box are 1 in 10.  That means if you buy 10 boxes of cheerios, you should win at least once.

Actually, there’s a 35% chance you still won’t win even once.  BUT if you buy 20, then you’re chances of not winning anything go down to about 12%.

So, who says you’re not a winner?  If you buy 20 boxes and don’t win anything, then I do.  Otherwise, don’t ever let them put you in a corner, baby.

You are on display

I bought a fountain pen.

A short story from my vacation

So today my wife and I played a game.  We each had 30 minutes to write a short story, and then share it.  She had already written one weeks ago and spent the 30 minutes editing hers, so the game wasn’t so fair at all.  Anyway, here’s my story.

It was the end of the world, and Hal could not find his shoes.  In between the intermittent blackouts he dug through piles of dirty clothes and layers of junk in his closet or under the bed.  When the lights went out he would use the Yoga techniques he had picked up by looking through the plate glass windows of the gym on Tuesday nights and calm his body and mind, trying to re-trace his steps and remember where he had left them.  Slow breathing: in through the nose, out through the mouth.  Indian style, on the floor, back straight, serene expression.  He never heard what the Yoga instructor said they were supposed to be picturing in their minds, so he always pictured himself picturing the perfect image for facial serenity.

He thought back now: to the shoe store, the week before the financial markets collapsed.  A pair of soft leather shoes, light brown color, firm arch support, the new shoe smell wafting up from inside.  He paid cash.  Tissue paper wads stuffed in the shoes, the shoes stuffed in a purple cardboard box.

Lights on again, and the hunt resumed.  Not behind the piles of old newspapers.  Not in the hallway, not on the porch.  (Nothing on the porch since he had boarded up the windows and doors.)  Not with the canned food or the water supplies.  Not with the guns.  Where were they?  He always misplaced stuff like this when he really needed it.

Lights off, the Yoga position.  He had carried them home under his arm, not wanting to wear them before tonight.  The vagrant with the bandage on his head asking for them.  Wheedling, whining.  “Don’t need no new shoes now, man.  Give em here and let me hold em for a day.”  Hal had moved on quickly.  Ever since the police services had stopped the homeless were getting more urgent, aggressive.  He had seen them surrounding a teenager the week before, searching him for food or weapons.

Home, finally, with his shoes.  Where had he put them?  He remembered setting them on the bookshelf.  But three days ago he had burned it and all his books to keep warm.

Lights on.  Not in the kitchen or the bathroom, not on the floor.  He was heading back to his room, probably to begin searching in all the same places all over again, in that fruitless repetition that helped him to feel like he was doing something, being active, while hopefully his subconscious would bring the elusive new shoes and their location bubbling to the surface of his mind, unbidden and certain.

Then he heard the bell.  It rang out so loud that he couldn’t pretend to ignore it.  A slow, sombre clong that resonated throughout the city–throughout every other city, too.

Hal stopped walking, paused for a moment, and sighed as he turned.  He shuffled slowly, glancing around one last useless time.  He turned the handle on the front door and walked out into the night, bare feet slapping on the wet sidewalk.

If you forget everyone you know…Happy new year

So we always sing “Auld Lang Syne” on New Years, and whether it’s my bad ears and faulty imagination or the slur of sleepy singers with too much punch in them, or the fact that I don’t speak Scottish and no one told me we were switching languages,  I always heard the words different.

To my tender ears the song was called “Old Anxine”, and it went thus:

“Should all acquaintance be forgot, in days of Old Anxine…”

Difficult to interpret, no doubt, but after much thought I came to the conclusion that Anxine must be something about anxiety, some stressful condition or state of woe.  Old Anxine, then, was some pretty bad days that our forefathers went through, and then they wrote this song referring to them.  Like the Potato Famine or the 1976 Bucs.

The gist then, is that if you forget everyone you know, like you wake up and have amnesia and you forget who all your friends and family and co-workers are, so that you have no more acquaintances; and then on top of that you find yourself in days of Old Anxine, meaning either really bad days that are like the really Old Bad Days that we all remember, or else actually in those bad days themselves (whether by time travel or else the guy was living in those days when he wrote the song)…

That’s where I always got stuck, because then everyone would sing about Old Anxine over and over:  “For Old Anxine, my dear, for Old Anxiiiiiine…”  Then they would start over.  No one ever told me what to DO if all acquaintance should be forgot in days of Old Anxine.  It was like people were coming up with this horrible hypothetical situation where you wake up in terrible times and don’t know anybody, but then right when they’re going to tell you what to do about it, they are drunk and so they just start singing about those Old Anxine days over and over again to their old drunk wife.

Therefore the song could run thus in a modern way:  “Hey man, here’s some advice.  If you ever forget everyone, and you’re in some trouble like those really bad days…hey, wow, remember those bad old days, pretty mama?  They were really bad, huh?  Yeah, they were bad.  So anyway, if you ever forget…”  And on and on in meaningless repetition.

Why those depressing, frustrating lines were always just right for joyfully ringing in the New Year and kissing someone was beyond me.

I am just glad I have never yet found myself in that situation.  But if I ever am an amnesiac in times like those bad times, I’ll tell you what I’m going to do:  wow, those times really sucked.

Some observations about the X-people

So I was watching X-men for the sixth or seventh time a few nights ago, while my wife was hanging out with her chick friends in the other room.  And I may not be the world’s biggest X-men expert.  OK, I am definitely not the world’s biggest X-men expert.

But how about Wolverine’s claws?  Where do they go when they retract?  If they only go back right beneath his knuckles then there’s no way he could bend his wrists.  He would be Stiff-Wrist Logan, the Canadian Mystery Guy.  Think about all the things you couldn’t do with adamantium wrists.  Like play the fiddle or deal cards in a smooth and attractive manner, or chip.  (As in golf.)  Or hold out your hand in the universal gesture for “stop”.  He would just be giving the sign for “I punch you in the face” or “I poke you in the throat”, which would make directing traffic awkward and give him a bad reputation.  Come to think of it, how would he arrange his hair in that swirly horn pattern without some repeated circular wrist action and a lot of product?

Or if they retract all the way into his forearms, he has to make sure his wrists are straight when he extends them or they would poke through the wrong spot in his hands.  Even with instant healing powers that would get annoying over time.

And cyclops.  OK, what’s the advantage of having laser eye beams if you have to use your hand to make it fire?  That’s like just carrying around a laser gun, which any storm trooper or GI Joe cartoon character can replicate.  Or it’s more like a laser gun that is attached to your face all the time.  Gunhead McGee is what they’d call you in school, and you couldn’t do anything about it because if anyone ended up with a laser hole in their chest, you know who they’d blame every time.

And why doesn’t Rogue steal her own powers when she touches herself?  And why are Storm and the frog tongue guy just all-around lame?

Don’t get me wrong; I believe we could all use some gratuitous genetic mutation that would bestow amazing powers or double jointed-ness in our knees and elbows, or the instinctive mastery of the semi-colon.  I just think the creators could think through the implications of some of the mutants they invent.

For example, you could invent a guy named Plastic-Face Alan.  His face looks regular, but it’s genetically really plastic.  So in addition to being able to change his face into whatever he wants it to look like, he could also absorb any face-punch ever, and trap your fist in liquid face-plastic.  That’s a double payoff for a single mutation, which is exactly the kind of thing we need to be working towards here.

Come on, Autozone

photo by jurvetson

So many men will find this totally irrelevant, because they either know enough about cars that they can hold their own in a conversation about dual overhead cams, or because they are wise enough to know their own limits and pay someone else to maintain their vehicle. I neither know enough, nor am I smart enough. Hence many of my problems in life, including the Autozone factor.

Let me ask you this, O faithful reader: auto parts stores–what the crap?

For many of you that says it all. For those who have never ventured beyond the outer sidewalk and through the double doors of the mechanical Purgatorio that is my experience every time I need a part, I will explain further.

I am driving to the store, rehearsing my lines over and over in my head. I will have to say clearly but in a casual way, like I am totally comfortable with the jargon, “Yeah, I need an accessory belt for a 92 Honda Civic.” You have to say it just like that, just like you’re saying “yeah, I need a quarter pound of thin-sliced honey cured ham” from the deli people (which is a much easier process, both because I feel at home with sandwich meats and because I come out with something I am sure is the right thing and not some foreign object that I have to nod wisely at in faked recognition).

You have to say it like this, because the guys behind the counter can smell fear. And they know you’re coming; they see you in the car, breathing heavily and rehearsing your line over and over again. As soon as you walk in, they deliberately start doing something else, so you have to interrupt them to get what you want and so now it’s clear to everyone who doesn’t belong and shouldn’t really be allowed in here in the first place.

So you lean in casually, knocking over the jar of tiny multi-colored flashlight keychains with laser pointers on the end, and you say, “Yeah, uh [voice crack], I’d like a pump. I mean a belt. A belt for…uh…my car.”

Now they’ve got you on the ropes. “Do you know what kind of a belt [or is your memory full after storing that one word in it]?”

“Yeah, OK, an accessory belt.” [Confidence is building, but they only want to set you up to knock you over.] “There are 17 different kinds of belts on most standard vehicles. [pansy] Do you know what kind it is?”

“Uh…[cotton mouth]” “Did you bring it in with you [for show and tell, or did Mommy forget to put that in your My Little Pony lunchbox with your Hi-C juicebox]?”

“No, I forgot [my brain was full after memorizing the word "belt"].” “OK, well, I’ll look it up and maybe we can find it [we really can't, but I want to prolong your awful experience so that you'll never come back here again]. What kind of a car do you have?”

“The one I drove here or the one at home?” [disrespectful silence while he waits for it to click home.]

“Oh! Yeah, stupid of me. The broken one.” “Yeah, that one. What kind of a car?”

“It’s blue. My car is blue, but it has gray interior.” Silence to make the disdain evident. “What’s the make [you don't know what that means, do you?]?”

“The make? [No, I guess I don't know what that means.]” “Like Honda, or Ford, or Subaru.”

[Something clicks and the rest comes pouring out]: “I need an accessory belt for a 92 Honda civic.” [internal sigh of relief.]

“Four cylinder or six?” [Thought you were home free, didn't you?]

“Uh, six cylinders.”

“Are you sure [because we both know you totally made that up on the spot, and it gives me one more chance to humiliate you], because the belts are different for different engines.”

“Yeah [busted], I’m sure. Definitely six [and I can bring it back if I'm wrong but please get me out of here].”

“OK, six cylinder accessory belt of some sort. There are four options here. Do any of these pictures look like it [they're all the same picture, but if I can actually get you to pick one I win $5 from my co-worker for serving the lamest customer of the day]?”

“It’s definitely the third one, yeah that one [let me go home I want to go home my wife will come back and get the right part let me go home i shouldn't be here].”

“OK, normally you need to replace them in pairs [there's only one on your car, but why stop having fun now?].”

“Yeah, I knew that. I meant I need two. I’ll take two. [maybe I can buy my way out of this.] And two more for a friend of mine; he has the same car I do. His is red though [I am six years old]. And one of those keychains [wow, a laser].”

“OK, that’ll be $90.98.”

“The price here says $16.30.”

“Yeah, but you ordered four, and there’s a disposal fee for old parts and an oil recycling tax [and you owe me for putting up with you].”

“OK, well, thanks for your help [I will go home and cry now].”

“You’re welcome, have a good one [I can't believe I have to breathe the same air as you.]“

On days like today I remember that the pain of Jr. High never really ends; it just relocates.

Notice

I just wanted to let all three of my faithful readers out there know that I have had two more “encounters” in the last few days, but that I didn’t post them because they both had to do with bathroom material and I thought that would be disturbing.  Honestly, I’m not trying to make that happen.  It just is.