Misanthropaea

Mindcrime

A redhead in her early twenties was standing at the counter rifling through an acrylic bowl of discounted cigarettes. As she leant forwards, her faded denim mini skirt hiked up high enough that one could almost read the sales tag on her thong. Her top, such as it was, very nearly covered the bottom third of her breasts and revealed even more as she craned over the bowl.

I'm not an idiot, though I appear to play one in real life. I know that the reason she was dressed as such was to attract attention. If it wasn't she'd be wearing a sweater and nondescript pants. I've played this game once or twice, and was actually pretty good at it Once Upon a Time. This is the cultural dance we do, sometimes subconsciously, to find ourselves a mate - even if just for an hour in a crowded bar. Of course the attention she demands - the eyes she wants popping out on their stalks so she can feign offence that someone is staring at her freckled 34Bs and not deep into her hazel eyes as they struggle to remember her name - is not from the fat liquor store guy. I know this. And honestly, unless I'm in a social situation where my participation in the game is even remotely desired, I just don't even bother any more. I've done this long enough to know that I have well since passed the 'cute' stage of attraction and settled into the MYSA¹ stage.  I can read the signals from geosynchronous orbit: 'All Access Pass - Except For You, Cretin.'

I do sometimes on a few occasions, I admit, have to stop and remind myself that I am generally twice the age of most people I know - because five of my best friends are now dead, which has tended to skew the current statistics in favour of 'the fittest' - and that the simple act of being courteous or friendly to someone is often read as 'Creepy Stalker' or 'Pathetic Old Guy' so I tend to make a concerted effort to not to appear 'interested.' It does not always work, unfortunately. Apparently I just have 'That Look,' whatever that is.  And it did not work with Miss Semi-Nude America.

Clutching at her flimsy yellow top, trying to appear casual in attempt to obscure all evidence of having breasts, she asked if we had any other cigarettes on sale other than those currently in the bowl. I shook my head and smiled. Not because I was negating her question but because I found her feeble attempt at decorum terribly amusing in an insulting sort of fashion. I told her that we had a few in another bowl - to which I pointed - and returned to the paperwork I was doing when she first approached the counter. She began to explain, as I huddled over my work, generally ignoring her, that her boyfriend smoked menthols. Oh. Okay. She continued to indicate that she had a 'boyfriend' several more times in the few minutes it took her to locate the proper cigarettes, at which point I looked up and smiled again: 'Oh,' I said. I had to wonder what it was about me, or any of my current actions, that triggered in her some feral, primordial fear that I would try to chat her up.

Throughout the remainder of the brief transaction, as she fumbled to the point of distraction with one hand at her thin top, calling even more attention to her cleavage, darting her eyes at me in something of an accusatory manner, I had to wonder at what point in our short time together did she feel that I was committing a mindcrime - mentally raping and abusing her and shooting her dog? I chose not to check her ID as she handed me her money (because clearly I would only need it to memorise her name and address and that was beyond the purview of my job) and returned her change with a smile, looking her in the eye and telling her to have a nice day.

I thought about saying to her, Y'know, I didn't just fall off the truck.  If you're so terrified of someone over the age of 23 looking at you, you ought to place smallish mirrors over your areolae to cast back the hideous vampiric reflection of Pathetic Old Guys so that, like Don Quixote fighting the Knight of Mirrors, you can dispel all unwanted advances and illuminate for them the unvarnished truth that they will never touch you. Otherwise, if you're going to dress and act like a Travelling Semen Depository you might as well have 'Approved For All Audiences' flashing above your head.  You obviously dress like that for a reason, so don't act offended if someone looks, even if only accidentally.  Besides, twenty or thirty years from now, once life and gravity has had its way with you, you will dress like that again and quite nearly weep with gratitude if someone looks.

Instead I simply returned to my paperwork, shaking my head in disbelief as she left...

1. Men You Should Avoid

The Death of Customer Service

I came home from work on Saturday night to discover a letter from National City bank. In it was a returned cheque for my March house payment. The reason stated in the attached letter was that the payment was insufficient to reinstate my loan which was now in default.

Monday morning I called the number in the letter and asked the woman from Customer Counselling to whom I finally got to speak just how exactly I was in default. She explained to me that I am five months behind and therefore in default. To reinstate my loan they want $2200. Plus legal fees.

In September of last year I got a rude call from a rude woman from National City who told me that I was three months behind in my payments. Upon some research I discovered that, in February, when I was let go from Dribble & Whizz I missed a payment. For the first time in over seven years.  For the next four months I paid additional funds because I kept receiving letters in the mail stating that I owed them a specific amount (slightly higher than my normal payment) to which I obliged.  Somehow, and I do not know how, I then missed July's payment. Again I received a letter stating that I owed a specific sum, which I gladly paid because I realised my mistake.

So when I got the call in September, I asked the woman how I could be three months behind. She told me that I did not pay for the last three months. I explained that, yes, I had and had recently sent off September's payment as well. We rent round and round until I agreed that, if indeed I had missed three months then I would work something out. She told me what I would owe to become current and for the next four months I paid additional funds - with the caveat (as I explained to her) that, as I was still unemployed, I would not be able to come up with all the money she was demanding by the allocated time but that I would try my best.

As Yoda says, there is no try - only do or do not. I guess I did not.

Despite the fact that I paid close to double payments for three of the next four months, National City cannot account for the whereabouts of these additional funds. Therefore, with the returned March payment, I am now five months behind.

I told the Customer Counsellor on Monday that by the end of the week I could have $1000 and asked if we could arrange some payment for the remainder, explaining to her my current financial plight and the fact that I only recently began working again and have been surviving pay cheque to pay cheque. This, in the inestimable opinion of National City, was a laughable and unwieldy suggestion worthy only of their derision. Pay the full amount or lose the house. That's that. No compassion, no understanding - just lose the house because you are a piece of shit.

I asked why we could not do a loan modification - as I am eligible for many of the new assistance programmes put in place by the Federal government. I asked them why are they so anxious to take my house without even trying to assist - or counsel - me. I asked why, when I am explaining that I want to work this out and make good on the debt, they are simply slapping me in the face by not taking my money.

It was like talking to a wall.

At best she agreed to 'take time away from her job,' she said, and look at my payment history if I could fax her copies of all the cheques I'd written since November 2007. I thanked her for being kind enough to 'take time away from her job' to do her job and told her that I would have the copies to her by the end of the week.

Can you live in a public storage building? I mean they are called Self Storage...

Susan Boyle Rocks

For people who get shit on, laughed at and slighted their entire lives for not being thin enough or glamorous enough or in any way good enough in the eyes of the rest of the planet, this video should be required viewing. Actually it should also be required viewing for those people who think it's okay to crush the hopes and dreams of others... 

Interim Report

Towards the middle of February rumours had begun circulating quietly amongst the administrative personnel at Liqu-o-rama that the Assistant Manager at the North Store in which I had initially been placed was unhappy with his position and was actively seeking employment elsewhere.

By the end of the day on the 16th, Fred, the Manager at the shit hole to which I had been exiled in December, couldn't hold it in any longer and blurted out to me that, barring the unforeseen, I had been selected to take over the perhaps soon-to-be-vacant position.

He was acutely aware, Fred, of how much I loathed being in the 'hood-- particularly after I almost walked out in a blinding rage on the evening I was deemed to be a 'fucking honky' by one of our more discriminating denizens --but he desperately wanted me to stay because I was the only person who actually did anything even remotely like work at that location.

'You think like a manager,' he told me. It was that very fact, however, which made me want out even more. The 'official' Assistant Manager spent her days smoking cigarettes in the back room (breaking the law in this city), talking on the telephone for hours (breaking the rules at Liqu-o-rama), playing on the internet under the guise of 'doing paperwork' and generally doing anything at all which would allow her to avoid having to run the cash register or help customers or stock the shelves or essentially give the illusion of being vaguely capable of performing the basic functions of her job-- and I'd taken just about all I could take of being played. Fifteen years of management to my credit and I was reduced to being the Register Bitch of some worthless twat who didn't give two wet shits about doing what she was paid to do.

The North District manager (who doubles as the Human Resources manager and a second-rate Buddy Hackett look-alike, except for the part where he has the personality of a sheet of oriented strand board) arrived the next afternoon to inform me that I would indeed be returning to The North Store-- on a Monday in March. He  couldn't be much more specific, he said, but my replacement was going to be trained the following week at another store and then he would be sent to us so he and I could overlap for a week and I could train him on how I did things. After that I would be returning North.

Finally.  Light at the end of the tunnel.  No more watching drug deals in the parking lot, no more watching people pee on the side of the building in broad daylight, no more skank whores turning tricks in the parking lot so they could buy another 99 cent beer and a pack of menthols, no more people in their pyjamas and house slippers angrily waiting outside in the snow at 6.30 in the morning for the store to open, no more  filthy, flea-ridden bathroom reeking of ancient shit, no more feeling like I was going to take a stray bullet walking out to my car, no more greasy stink of Ya Boy Chicago Style Chicken & Fish, no more Tha Flava and its prestigious Hood Roll (a delicate blend of mushrooms and crack, I would imagine) with free Flava Cakes, no more obligatory single grape cigarillo with every fucking purchase-- no more bullshit.

The next ten working days dragged out interminably as I tried to concentrate on anything but my impending exodus from the 'hood and tried to hold myself back from finally snapping.  And then the Week of Overlap arrived, which proved to me that my new replacement was an insufferably arrogant 23 year old punk who decided that the pseudo-work habits of the 'official' Assistant Manager were clearly the correct ones to emulate and that I was not worth listening to and had no valid input when it came to training. As a result, I spent a considerable amount of time that week pondering just how long it would take for him to bleed out if I slit his throat and disposed of his body in the giant bin behind the store.

Ultimately, though, none of this really mattered; if I was doing my calculations correctly, I had only a few more days remaining in the shit hole and could bite my tongue a little while longer.  Because I had been 'trained' at the North Store, I knew that the Manager there-- Sloan Gay --was in the habit of making the following week's schedule on Thursday.  So when Thursday, 5 March, came round I decided on a pre-emptive strike and called and asked him when he had me on the schedule for the coming Monday.

'Oh,' he said in some surprise. 'Are you coming back here?'

I nearly dropped the phone. I explained to him what Buddy Hackett had explained to me, to which Sloan replied that he would be seeing Buddy that very evening at a liquor tasting and that he would find out what was going on and get back to me on Friday.

By late afternoon on Saturday, the 7th, I called the North Store again and asked to talk to Sloan. 'I forgot to call you, didn't I?' he asked.

'Mm-hmmm...'

'Well I talked to Buddy on Thursday night and he didn't know what I was talking about. He said as soon as they were ready to release you from the South Store and your replacement was down there I could put you on my schedule and that Fred was supposed to tell me when that was.'

'Well that's nice,' I said. 'Apparently this is a new part of the story that Buddy just made up, or he rather conveniently forgot to tell Fred about it. I'm getting the impression that Buddy isn't a terribly effective communicator. Kind of strange for someone in HR. As it is, though, Fred doesn't have me on the schedule after today, and my replacement has been here for a week.'

'I wish I had known that: I could have used you last week. Well I'll put you on starting Monday at 2, if that's okay.'

'I'll be there,' I confirmed.

At 3.24pm I drove away from the shit hole and never looked back. As of Monday, I would be returning to Shawshank...

Proofreadng 101

Shortly after Valentine's Day, when I was still in exile in the 'hood, we got a stack of these nice glossy 5x8 cards for an upcoming local event. They were dropped off by a business-woman who was one of the primary co-ordinators. She was very excited about the project and spoke proudly of her efforts and of the involved men, who 'be all hot and shit,' and of the unfailingly good time promised for all. I had no idea what it was about me that made her think I was even remotely interested in how 'all hot and shit' these men 'be,' but I accepted the cards and her jubilant commentary with a tactful nod and said 'Huh. Well. Okay.'  And I told her that I would set them out for customers to take.

After that I didn't give them another thought, other than to continue to nod tactfully when female customers would begin ogling them and ask if they could take one. Or two. You know, for a friend.  Otherwise I would glance at them periodically and laugh at the pretentious Village People-esque nature of the presumably flatulent 'Quiet Storm' and the oddly no-named Cowboy dude.

Several days before the big event, the proud business-woman returned, enquiring if we needed more cards to hand out (I told her 'Yes' only to facilitate her rapid departure) and then she asked if she could leave free tickets to the show. Again, hoping to speed her exit, I agreed and went about my work.

As one might expect of anything labelled 'free,' the tickets disappeared rather quickly -- often times by the handful -- as interested customers, some of them even women,  grabbed them in hurried anticipation, though anticipation of 'scalping' them at the show or of simply handing them out to needy friends I cannot say.

It wasn't until almost a week later, as I was throwing away all the left-overs scattered throughout the lobby area, that I did a double-take at the free ticket.  I suppose it hardly mattered by then but I kind of felt bad for the person who not only flaunted their stupidity for all to see but then copied and handed it out by the hundreds...

Amber55

Not too long ago I ended up on MSN (oh I know, don't even get me started...) as I searched for pertinent weather information regarding a series of massive thunderstorms pummelling the midwest and which were known to be leaving a swath of flooding and violent tornadic activity in their wake.

Crammed amongst the myriad other advertisements choking the MSN homepage to a veritable crawl that afternoon was a strikingly familiar blurb for 'An Internet Relationship Service' which I cannot, in good conscience, advocate or bother to direct you to, as it quite egregiously manipulates its target audience. Therefore we shall refer to it, as we have in the past, as Hump-Me Dump-Me.

The long time reader of this blog may recall that I have, on occasion, mentioned that the most popular post ever written here in our own private Idaho of Misanthropaea has been -- and thus far remains to be -- a little throw-away entitled 'Kateiefun789.' The even more astute may have even read it.

The popularity of this particular post (rivalled only by 'Tell Me What's A-Happening' due to the fact that said post contains a reference to Katiefun789) continues to drive people to this site sometimes in excess of sixty times a week, however it does so entirely by mistake because it has more to do with people Googling a completely fictitious woman than it does with anyone having an active interest in anything I write. No doubt these random visitors are quite irritated to see that this blog has nothing whatever to do with the subject of their search (especially when it is the first site found when doing a search for the topic) but at least it makes the counter tick.

And sitting there staring at me in a shy and seductive manner from her casual repose inside a little greyish box was none other than our dear Ms Katefun789 -- this time, however, in the clever guise of one Amber55.

Strangely, in the almost two years since I first posted about this, she's neither aged a bit-- odd that, given the fact she was born in 1975 and is considerably older than the stated 25 years of this ad --nor yet learnt to wear clothing.  It compels one to ask, 'Is this why eHarmony and other sites are so popular -- you get to see your Mystery Date completely starkers before you even get to say "Hello?"' (I cannot speak from personal experience, of course, because the beginning questionnaire I filled out on one of these sites many many years ago apparently crashed their server).

The answer to this sans clothing dilemma is, obviously, much simpler. Amber55, like Katiefun789 before her, is none other than the wildly popular 'adult' model, Sydney Moon (available for your perusal and hard-earned cash at her own website just a brief sweaty palmed mouse-click away).

I believe the image of her used in this most recent advert is from the mid- to late 90s  pictorial often found under the mischievous little title of  'Sydney Moon Wearing No Panties Under Miniskirt,' not at all to be confused with the 'Sydney Moon, Sexy Intellectual With Bouncy Hooters' series or 'Sydney Moon Exposing Nice Natural Floppy Funbags' or the slightly lesser-known photo essay 'Sydney Moon Wakes Up From Her Sleep All Horny' which gave us the image used for Katiefun789.     

Now I have nothing against Sydney Moon; in one of her available 'Fun Facts' it states that she has a degree in psychology. Because, you know, that's fun.  And, honestly, if you can wake up from your sleep all horny and still be immediately ready for the rigours of a photo shoot, you have my respect. I often awake disoriented, with inexplicable red patches and pillow wrinkles carved deeply into my face, hair scattered wildly, and dried drool in the corner of my mouth-- much like a sadly post-death Dean Halsey in the 1985 film Re-Animator.  So kudos to Sydney, floppy funbags and all. Plus she has her own web site which draws in thousands (if not millions) of hits per month and, one would image, the accompanying profit, making her rich as Croesus. It is here that we share a commonality, Sydney and I, for people flock by the tens to this site-- often in the same week --and the lucrative ad programmes seen to your right have scored me a staggering 78 cents to date.

What I do take issue with, though, are these unsavoury scams trying to lure unsuspecting people to their websites with promises of lasting romance or a costly and embarrassing STD by using out-dated pictures of adult models as their current members seeking companionship. That fact that these sites clearly believe everyone is demonstrably too ignorant to know better is quite a slap in the face. Granted there are the despairing exceptions, witnessed by the Stats on this blog spiking from heated 2 a.m. Google searches, and certainly there are those individuals who haven't got all their chairs at home who fervently believe Amber55 (or Katiefun789) are truly lonely Girls With Low Self Esteem wannabes who agonisingly yearn for someone to sweep them from the mind-numbing mediocrity of lying round naked, but not everyone who actively seeks out these sites is an idiot.

Surely there are others who, like me, can simply glance at these things and see them for the ridiculous load of shit they are. But, just in case, if you should happen to find yourself suddenly here at 2 o'clock in the morning, staring in bleary-eyed confusion at all these stupid words you have to read and the shocking lack of full frontal nudity to appease you in your search for a moment of masturbatory glee, let me just state what the rest of the class already knows:

These women don't exist. At least not in this reality. And even if they did, the chances they would date you or anybody you know are astronomically insignificant. Go back to Craig's List.

Oh. And I'm not sure about AsHlEy23, but Rosa92? That would be ALS girl Linda, circa 2000.

I'm just sayin...