Merry Christmas vs Happy Holidays

So, I promised a post bitching about Christmas, and this is about as close as it's going to get, for now anyways.

Two days ago I was at the maul mall, picking up a Christmas card for my friend's teenage son.  I found one with a suitably silly fart joke on it, and was waiting in line to pay.  It's important to note at this point in the story that the cashier was of some ethnic background other than white. (That's all I got...I won't try to pinpoint what exactly her background was, I have no idea; just that she was dark-skinned and wore a head scarf.)

She rang up the purchase of a bitchy old lady in front of me, then brightly wished her "Happy Holidays!"

From this old woman's reaction, you would have thought the cashier had broken all ten commandments at once.

"What do you mean, 'HAPPY HOLIDAYS??' the harpy absolutely shrieked.  "Whatever happened to 'Merry Christmas'??  It's people like YOU" (here she jabbed an accusing finger at the cashier, who was very rapidly going from shocked to upset) "that take the Christ out of Christmas!" and on and on and on and ON she went.  At this point, I'm getting annoyed and impatient and my natural desire to protect service staff kicks in.  The cashier can't say anything.  But I certainly fuckin can.  And I will. Finally I interrupted the old bat on her rant.

"Lady," I snapped, "get a bloody GRIP!"  She spun around, looking as stunned as she would have if I had smacked the back of her head.  Believe me, I was tempted.  "What did you say??" she screeched at me.  "I said, get a grip.  Calm down, you are flipping out over NOTHING.  LESS than nothing.  'Happy holidays' is a well-wish, just like merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah, joyous solstice, Happy zombie Jesus day, or whatever the hell you celebrate.  She could have told you to go to hell.  She could have told you to go die in a fire.  Take 'Happy Holidays's as the well-wish it was meant to be, shut your cakehole and get on with your life!  Good GOD!!"  (Okay yeah, I realise I wasn't very polite.  I just hate when people act like that.  I spent a lot of years in customer service, in the same position as that poor cashier, and I can't tell you how many times I wished some other customer would come to my rescue.)

The old bag looked surprised to find someone who could make as much, if not more, noise than her, and she gave me what we in the service industry like to call, "Cat-butt face".  I can't describe it; suffice to say that when you see cat-butt face, you'll know EXACTLY what I mean.  She exclaimed, "Well, I never!" and I had one more brain-to-mouth filter failure when I snapped back, "Well maybe you SHOULD!"  She snatched up her receipt and her items, gave the cashier (who was now trying very hard not to laugh) and I one last, incensed look before storming out of the store.  The cashier rang up my stuff uneventfully and on my way out of the store, I stopped in the doorway and called out, "Happy holidays, miss!"

My scarf, or how hawky ruined Christmas.

So, the weather here in my corner of Canuckistan has turned cold again, so of course I bundle up for work, because well...it's cold.  And I hate the cold.  I told you there'd be at least one post about me bitching about the cold, and this is partially it.

When I bundle up for the trip to work, I wear a jacket I've named Gargantucoat.  Gargantucoat weighs a lot, and is normally issued to northern offshore rig workers.  It's rated for something like -50C, is fireproof, waterproof, and probably bulletproof.   Lord knows it's thick enough.  I inherited Gargantucoat from my father, who no longer works in the field but is now a paper pusher.  I also have a pair of black fleece mittens, and a green striped toque (pronounced "tuke", rhyming with "nuke" for you Americans) with ear flaps, tassels, and a pom pom on top.  I bought this hat a couple winters ago, my friend T had a matching one, but lost it.  Lame-sauce, T.  I also wear a scarf made of variegated green wool that, when hanging loose around my neck, reaches to my knees.  This is the scarf this post is about.

My trip home, depending which way I take, involves either two buses, or a bus, a train, then another bus.  Today was a train day, suiting me fine, because at least the train station is underground and somewhat out of the weather.  I settled myself in my seat when the train came and was looking out the window, thinking of nothing in particular other than what I needed to do when I got to the mall station, when a woman sat down across from me. (The seats on the train are in pairs facing each other.)  She said hello to me, and since I'm Canadian and politeness is deeply ingrained in my being, I said hello back, even though I honestly have no interest in speaking to strangers on the train. 

After a few minutes of semi-awkward silence, she said, "I like your hat."  So I replied, "Thanks.  I got it at Zellers a couple winters ago."  "Oh, that's nice," she replied brightly.  "Where did you get your scarf?  I LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOVE it!  I want one just like that for my daughter.  She'd loooooooooooove it too!"  Yes, she actually drew out the word "love" like that.  Oh lord.  Here we go.  They need to have crazy-people detectors at the train station entrances, if you ask me.  Nothing like being trapped on a train with a scarf-obsessed loon.

"Sorry," I replied.  "It's one of a kind."  She pounced on that immediately, her tone suggesting I was deliberately withholding information from her because there was no possible way I could tolerate some other being on the planet having a scarf anything like as nice as mine.  "How do you KNOW it's one of a kind?" she demanded.  "Maybe it was just the last one in the store!"  I sighed.  I'd already had a long day and now somehow I was roped into this insane conversation about my scarf, of all things.  "I know it's one of a kind because I made it," I replied, which is true.  It may surprise many people to know that I'm actually an avid wool-worker, I love to knit and crochet.  This particular scarf I crocheted two years ago, and it's served me very well. I've actually grown quite fond of it.  Maybe someday I'll post a picture of it or something.

"But my daughter would LOOOOOVE it!  Can I have it?  You could just give it to me!  You can always make another one, right?  Right??" 
"Lady," I replied, pretty much at the end of my patience, "I made this for myself.  I've been wearing it two years.  I got the yarn at Wal-Mart, if you're really that interested.  I'm sure they still carry it.  Learn to knit, scarves are easy to make.  Then your daughter can have one just like mine."

Okay, that was totally the wrong thing to say.  I realised it a split-second too late.  This woman went from whiny to hosebeast in about half a second, and I am still trapped on the train with her, two stations away from my stop.  She flips out at my suggestion and starts YELLING IN ALL CAPS!!!

"I DON'T HAVE TIME FOR THAT, JUST GIVE ME YOURS!! YOU CAN MAKE ANOTHER ONE!  I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU WON'T GIVE ME A STUPID SCARF, I HOPE YOU'RE HAPPY, YOU'VE RUINED MY DAUGHTER'S CHRISTMAS!!"

Uhh...did your daughter have hear heart set on my scarf?  Has she been following me around all winter, watching and waiting for an opportunity to steal it?  Do you realise I need it to stop my face from freezing off?  Does your daughter know that her mother goes around shaking people down on the train in order to complete her Christmas shopping?

I wrapped my scarf around my neck and stuffed it down the neck of Gargantucoat, zipping it up in case she got desperate and made a grab for it.  Thankfully by then it was my stop and I got off the train and just about ran to the exit.

On the plus side, I ruined someone's Christmas!  A complete stranger!  Over a scarf that cost me about $7 in wool and one afternoon to make!  Woo!

The Shower

Well.  It's been an interesting couple of weeks.  Getting into the swing of things at my new job, which, though it pays well enough, is boring as fuck.  Making some improvements around the apartment, and trying to get myself together for Christmas, which I hate.  I'm sure there will be at least one angry post about Christmas, Christmas shopping, fad toys, my bitchy sister, or all of the above.  But today, I'm talking about my shower.


Everyone has to shower.  If we don't, we smell bad, and repulse people.  While repulsing people isn't necessarily a BAD thing, being smelly, grubby and itchy is.  I shower typically daily, when I get home from work, because I have a dirty job, and I also have masses of very long thick hair that takes a billion zillion years to dry.  I could speed up the process with a hair dryer, I guess, which I may or may not still own.  I honestly don't know.  I can tell you that I never DID own one until I got a longhaired dog, though.  But I digress.  The shower.


I like my showers to be a relaxing experience.  I love the warm water pouring over me, the white noise from the fan, the steaminess, everything.  I even have speakers in my bathroom that I can hook my Zune up to so I can sing and not take a break from actively annoying my upstairs neighbours while I attend to the necessary task of showering.  I also have a wall-mounted candle holder in the shape of a tree that holds 8 tea lights, so I can even have a nice candle-lit bath or shower if I want.  However, I also live in an apartment building, which means I cannot be in complete control of the water temperature.

I'm pretty sure everyone has had this experience.  You're in the shower, rinsing your hair, using the back brush, jerking off, whatever your shower routine is, when all of a sudden your nice warm shower betrays you.  Everything's fine, then all of a sudden someone's washing machine or dishwasher kicks in, and the spray goes from comfortably warm and steamy to JESUS CHRIST ICICLES!!  Once you recover from that unpleasantness, which may or may not involve slipping, hitting your head on the wall or faucet and/or possibly ripping down your shower curtain to escape the arctic blast, you manage to get back into your shower groove and are just starting to trust the water again when some jackass in the building has the nerve to flush his toilet.  Then once again, suddenly the water temperature has a major mood swing.  Only instead of Jesus Christ Icicles, you get MOTHERFUCKER MOLTEN LAVA!!  This is usually the point where I pull out the serious cuss words and as long as I don't have a head full of shampoo or conditioner, at this point my shower is officially over. 

Sometimes, just out of spite, I like to flush my toilet or run my dishwasher or washing machine when I know my upstairs neighbour is in the shower.  It's my bitchy, passive-aggressive way of getting revenge for having to listen to him and his wife having boring, mechanical, practically SCHEDULED sex every Wednesday and Sunday nights, as well as that one time he tried to pull off some DIY plumbing one summer evening when I had a friend over, the end result of which was a rain storm coming through my bathroom ceiling and culminated in one of the most surreal moments in my entire life.  Maybe some day I'll get around to telling that story.

On the phone in the bathroom.

So, sometimes when I go out into public, I occasionally have to avail myself of a public washroom.  I don't like it; I don't really think taking a crap is a spectator sport, but sometimes you just have to.  One of my pet peeves, aside from water everywhere or a filthy bathroom or no toilet paper, is this new trend of people talking on their cellphones while in the public washroom.

I always wonder, do the people on the other end of the phone call KNOW that their friend is talking to them while they're on the crapper?  What would they think if they did know?  Is there something I can do to make them more aware?

So the other day on my way home from the job interview I mentioned previously, I stopped at a Tim's on my way home because I wanted a bagel, I was horrifically thirsty, and I REALLY needed to pee.  So I go into the washroom, pick a stall, sit down and am doing my business when I realise the person in the stall next to me is on the phone.  I was a little thrown right at first, I thought she was talking to me, which seemed weird.  Who strikes up a conversation in the bathroom with a complete stranger in the stall beside them, really?  I could tell she was trying to be quiet in what she was doing so the person on the other end of the phone wouldn't know she was in the bathroom, so I decided to make it clear beyond a shadow of a doubt that someone was being subjected to a bathroom conversation.

I waited for a brief lull in the conversation, put my hands over my mouth (like when you were a kid.  Don't deny it, we all did it) and let rip with the loudest, lengthiest fart noise I could possibly produce.  I had exhaled so hard and so long to make this fart noise that I was actually starting to see spots by the time I stopped.  I followed that with a series of loud, quick, staccato fart noises, punctuated with the occasional groan or sigh. 

Then I really started to get into it, partly because I was enjoying myself and partly because I knew if I stopped, I would start laughing.  So I upped the ante, making longer and louder fart noises, mixing in some groans and moans and the occasional plea to God, sometimes banging on the walls of the stall or stamping my feet on the floor like I was taking the longest, loudest, biggest, most hellacious dump in the history of ever.  From the stall next to me, there was a sudden, shocked silence.  I could tell she was still there though; I could see her feet.  On to the grand finale!

I took a big, deep breath, and made the loudest, longest fart noise I think I have ever produced in my lifetime, pressing my hands over my mouth harder to vary the pitch from a deep rumbler to a high squeal.  I stamped my feet on the floor, and banged my elbows (my hands were busy) on the wall of the stall, then I cried out, "Oh god.  Oh god, there's BLOOD!"  I think that's what did it.  I heard a rattle of TP roll, the bang of a stall door and retreating footsteps.  She didn't even stop to wash her hands.

Yeah.  I can be like that sometimes.

This is why I don't leave my house!!

I'm pretty well-known for being kind of a shut-in.  There are a lot of reasons for this.  I don't like cold weather.  I hate people.  I don't like crowds, or really loud places.  I don't really drink or dance so I totally don't belong in a bar. But the biggest reason, and I'm honestly not kidding, is laziness.  I don't like to go places because going places puts me in a position where I have to do one of my must hated activites:  Getting out of my chair.

I can almost hear you rolling your eyes at me.  Knock it off.  If you don't understand why I hate getting out of my chair, then clearly you have never felt the seductive power of a good sit.

However, because I've grown accustomed to certain luxuries, like living indoors and eating regularly, I HAD to go out today, because I had a job interview.  I got offered the job on the spot, by the way.  And so to get to this interview, I had to brave something I haven't had to deal with all summer:  The bus.

Now, there are many people who, like me, are (reasonably) sane, normal, functional members of society.  Our failing is that, for whatever reason, we do not drive and therefore need to avail ourselves of public transit.  I despise taking the bus, in spite of the fact that for years, I've had to do it almost every day.  This summer I was (dubiously) lucky enough to be working close to home, so I walked back and forth to work every day, but this new job means I'll be taking the bus every day again.  Nngh.  The bus is full of CRAZY PEOPLE.

I once saw a guy on the bus having a very animated argument with his own reflection in the window.  I once also saw a very large drunken woman's over-taxed Yoga pants fall off, completely and indisputably solving an argument my friend and I were having over whether or not she was wearing underwear.  In case you're curious, she wasn't.  I once had my hand closed in the door of a bus, which then started pulling away from the curb.  I lost a nice bracelet that day, but am glad that I did at least get my hand back.  The drivers of our local transit are....special.

Today, because it's the Friday before Halloween, and I happened to be headed home from my interview about the time that the large high school across the street was letting out for the day, I couldn't even tell the difference between the crazies and the sane people anymore.  When you see some dude on Halloween, wearing a large pink bunny suit, it's easy to think, "Hey, that guy is just getting into the spirit of things, nice costume!"  When you see some dude wearing a large pink bunny suit on, say, September fourth, you can be fairly sure that his saddle is starting to slip, and you'll know to steer clear.   Before I left my first inspection job with National Oilwell, on my way home one day in like...July...I saw some guy dressed head to toe in an outfit that made him look like Jigsaw, from the Saw movies.  I decided it'd be better to just wait for the next bus, because I really didn't feel like getting stabbed that night.

In conclusion, public transit is full of crazy people.  If you're lucky, they'll identify themselves by wearing some kind of totally out of place costume, like a pink bunny, or Jigsaw, or the Jolly Green Giant, or whatever the fuck.  Or, you could end up sitting next to some whacko who looks like everyone else.  Just like me....

No coffee at the Macs!!! NO NO NO NO!

I walked up to the Macs today to buy a carton of eggs, because, hey, eggs.  I was browsing around to see if there was anything else I needed when the door chimes and three guys who look like industrial or construction guys walk in.  They head straight for the counter that every convenience store in the history of ever has, usually near the back.  You know what I'm talking about.  The coffee counter. 

All is going well until I hear, "Hey!  There's no coffee!"  As a former retail peon myself, my first instinct is to dive behind a rack of Doritos until the storm passes.  I know what coffeeless customers are capable of.

Fortunately, these gents seem to be fairly reasonable, which any customer service person knows is a rarity.  The guys working in the store, however, seem to be a little less so.  They are both Indian (as in, from India) and the first one replies, "No, no, coffee is there!" 

These construction guys, however, beg to differ, and they inform the guys behind the counter that there is, in fact, no coffee left in the urn.  They turn to leave, since the store does not have what they want.  This does NOT sit well with the clerk.

"No no no no no!" He exclaims.  "One second, one second!"  He shoves the other guy out from behind the counter and says something in a language I don't speak.  (I assume Hindi, since the Indian guy I worked with when I worked industrial spoke it, but I couldn't say for sure.)  I assume he is telling the other guy to get his ass over there and make some damn coffee.  In this town, a convenience store without coffee is pretty much an affront against God.

"One second, one second!" The second guy exclaims as he rushes toward the counter to start a new pot of coffee.  "Sorry buddy," one of the construction guys says.  "We don't have time to wait."  I glance at my watch and judging by the time, I guess that it's about their break time and they just wanted to grab a quick cup of coffee before getting back at it.  They're doing some kind of road work in the street just outside the door, these guys are probably part of the road crew, which makes the lack of coffee that much more inexcusable.  There are dozens of guys out there, and this particular Macs is the nearest and most convenient place for them to buy coffee, smokes, gum, newspapers and whatever else it is road crew guys buy.

The construction guys turn to leave, and the first clerk...I swear...runs to the door and gets between it and them.  He does NOT want them to leave.  They came in for coffee and by God, he is going to sell it to them if he has to chain them to the Slushy machine to do it.  The clerk holds up his hands and lets off another volley of  "No no no no no no no!"  Once again, my Customer Service Sense is tingling.  This clerk must be new to the game or something. 

Once again, I'm shocked by the customers' reasonable...ness...as the lead one (also the biggest one.  My eyes are about on level with his chest) says again, firmly but politely, "We don't have time to wait, buddy." ("No no no no no no no!  One second, one second!")  The clerk, finally at least partially accepting defeat, allows them to leave, though not without one final wave of "No no no no no no no!" 

Maybe next time they'll just keep a closer eye on the coffee pot.

The first post ever!

So, this is my first post on this blog.  I'm currently unemployed and therefore have a LOT of free time on my hands, and this seems to be what happens when I have too much free time.

I guess I can start by telling you a little bit about myself.  I'm 29 years old (I can feel 30 hovering over me like a vulture.  A vulture.)  I live in a city that's frozen solid pretty much 8 months of the year.  I'm sure there will be at least one or two following posts about how much I hate the cold, because I really, really do.  I hate the cold with the fury of a thousand suns.  In fact, I'd rather be in the middle of the fury of a thousand suns, because at least then I wouldn't be so freaking cold.  My landlord is a cheapskate and refuses to turn the furnaces on until November 1st every year, so in the meantime we are all left to our own devices if it gets cold before then, like it always does.


I have two dogs, Jagger and Radar.  They are shelties, and are grandson and grandfather.  Jagger is 10 months old.  Radar is 10 years old.  Radar is a pretty normal dog.  Jagger is a weirdo.  He likes to sleep splayed out on his back, which is weird if you're a dog, I guess.  I once came home to him with his nose inextricably trapped in one of my dirty socks.

I also have two cats, Tango and Samba.  They are about 3 months apart in age, both are orange.  Tango is, again, a pretty normal cat.  Samba is...yeah.  He's a special snowflake.  He's too smart for his own good and is the most efficient stuff-wrecker I have ever come across.  He's also madly nosy, and right now he has half his whiskers singed off because he doesn't seem to have the instinct that normal, non-retarded animals have to stay away from fire.  He stuck his face in a candle and burned off some of his whiskers.  Don't worry, he's fine.  A little crispy, but fine.

I started this blog because, as I said, I have a LOT of free time on my hands just now.  Also, I'm a total freak magnet.  Crazy people seem to just appear out of the woodwork when I leave my apartment and venture out into public, so I thought this might be a nice place to share some of those stories, too.