3/20

Why no New? I had 2 Leave-work-at-8PM, be-at-work-at-8AM days, that's why. So I really didn't have the extra time to budget in any New-writing. Not when I have inconsequential things like playing with KK or actually eating a meal to do.

Saturday was Joyous Empty Can Day. Every freakin' person on gourd's green Earth decided that they *had* to drag their 3 month supply in on a morning when I was alone in the store. Including Gummo.
Remember him? The guy who brought in the garbage bags full of empties & pissed me off royally as he had no idea how many he had? After that incident, I asked to just put the empties back in the 30 packs. Easier to carry, much easier to count. He came in with more garbage bags, but they were squarish inside, so yes, he'd followed ny advice. I asked him how many he had. Blank look. He didn't know. "How many 30 packs do you have?" "6 trash bags worth." GROAN. And I'll bet the bags are all knotted shut, too...Yep. I'll razor-knife 1 open & extrapolate, I think. There were 3 30 packs in it. None of which had 30 cans in them. They had anywhere from 12 to 32. Well, it was my fault for not telling him how many cans went in a 30 pack. So I had to open every damn bag & count them, while customers glared at me from the register (cuz it's never the fault of another customer that you're not getting waited on, even if they're blocking the register to rearrange their purse for 5 minutes). 1 of the customers bought a pint of blackberry brandy. For brunch.

I got so many empties that we went from having no bags of cans to 5 (each bag holds 10 cases). When Matt brought the paychecks over, I tossed them into the back of the store's pickup for him to take to the other store. "I hate having to drive with bags in the back," he said. "It makes me look like a dumpster diver. I wonder what the bums think when they see me ride by." "They think 'There goes the greatest dumpster diver of them all!'" I said. "'He found enough cans to buy a TRUCK!'" After he left, that same customer came back for another pint. For a mid-afternoon snack.

A few hours later, there was a big KABOOM as someone walked into the front door. Not in, into. Guess who was in for dinner. He staggered to the beer cooler & grabbed a case of Natural Light (Natty is the fave beer of white trash) & stumbled up to the register. He was mad when we refused to sell to him. "It's just cuz of my knee I walk like this!" he slurred belligerantly. "I hurt it!" Yes, prly when you slammed into the door. Or when you downed a fifth of brandy, & your liver forcibly ejected itself through your knee out of self-preservation.

We had the store's 1st-ever inventory on Sunday. Less than 3 hours work, & extremely generous monetary compensation...Hell, let's do it every week for this money! The only downside was getting to work at 8AM. The alarm interupted an amusing dream--something about Kill Kill, but I forget what. I loooove dreaming. I don't just dream in color, I dream in 3D Dolby Digital with special effects by ILM. My favorites are when I go into to some imagined store, as my hyperactive brain fills it piles of crazy stuff I couldn't begin to describe in words. I love junk stores cuz of the dreams, not vice-versa. I went to the antiques place that was closed last week. For the 1st time ever, I had a mental flash that I was *still* dreaming--There was the original label from my Yam page! Immediately sold. Here's a detail from it that cofirmed that it was a weird little label indeed. I guess 70 years ago football players were a tad less macho than the current breed of steroid-induced mutants. He's wearing enough mascara to keep both Kitty & Jessica made up for a month. And what's with the mouth on the guy in back? He's got 3 lips! This may be an Ob if I can come up with a good enough treatment.

Hey, look at what I got on eBay! I made 2 previous stabs at getting an 8 track player there recently, but I was always outbid. What idiot would spend $29 on an 8-track player?! My broken 1 cost me $6.50 at the Salv Army. I went there today & prepped for my new purchase by getting some 8 tracks: Abbey Road, the greatest hits of Jimi Hendrix & the 5th Dimension (2 different tapes, sadly--"Scuse me while I kiss the sky from my beautiful balloooon!"), & "Superstars of the 70's," 1 of those schizo compilations that follows Jackson Browne with Black Sabbath & Deep Purple with Gordon Lightweight--err, Lightfoot. 1 of the 70s Superstars is Otis Redding, who was cold in the ground 5 years before this tape was made. At least, I hope he wasn't sittin' at the dock of the bay in '73. T'would not have been a pretty sight. Or smell.

SPRING is officially here! 3 days ago we had 2 inches of snow, but that's New England for ya. Still little greenery, but the woods were filled with birdsong. I found a giant old plastic Hires root beer sign, gourd knows from where, smashed in the woods. I wonder if the pleasure of destroying it equalled the pleasure that could've been bought with the money from selling it for $100+ on eBay or at an antique store. I suppose I don't think like some people think. If "think" is the correct word here.

Welp, back to waiting for Mr Stupid-Head UPS Guy to bring me my Space Ghost figure (so I can leave & get the money order for the 8-track player), & cooking a turkey. Hopefully basting it with olive oil & store-brand margarine will achieve better results than the time I just poured water over it & made turky jerky. Wish me luck.

3/21

WHO IS THIS CHRISTINE AGUILERA PERSON?! I saw her name on a tabloid in the supermarket line last week & thought: "Who?" Now I can't escape her! Every day & everywhere I look she's there! Seriously, every damn time I turn around I see her name or vapid blonde face! It just turned up in a Geocities ad pop-up! Did I miss the part where she & her Aryan cohorts seized control of the World Government?
On the plus side, I have the definite feeling that she'll melt away faster than whatever last month's flavor of the week was. And I can safely reserve the Christine Agulierailaula part of my brain for storing important phone numbers.

Mr UPS Guy came at the precise moment I uploaded yesterday's bit o' drivel. Kill Kill hid under the armchair just in case he was really a ruthless alien cyborg from the planet Eatcatsalot. While I oohed & ahhed over my Space Ghost dolly, KK jumped into its shipping box & began to tear mouth-sized bits from the packing paper & spit them out. This has been her new Fun Thing of late. Why? Well--It's fun, is why. We ate our turkey, which unlike last time, came out perfect. But just like last time, we went into mutual l-tryptophan catatonia an hour later & slept for 2 & 1/2 hours (well, I did; KK woke up in order to follow me into the next room & sleep some more).

I saw a woodchuck yesterday. Then I saw a framed picture of a woodchuck at the Salv Army. It reminded me that I had a 2 week old email from Gordon "Canadian Tire" Kennedy that I'd never answered (uh, cuz he's in Canada, & SCTV had a faux PSA from Canada that went "The woodchuck is a denizen of snowy climes"--oh, nevermind). At any rate, it involved his creaton of a fake Nut Pamphlet, the type you find stuck under your windshield wipers. I thought it was funny, so here it is.

That Yam label incident reminds me of a trip to the Salv Army a few years back. I spotted it from across the room: an Intellivision cartridge!! By Imagic, since it was in a silver box! I strode eagerly across the store towards it, & from a distance realized: Crap. Micro Surgeon. 1 of the best Intellivison games, but I bought it way back in my Kay Bee Toys days. I worked there when the video game implosion happened; all the Atari & Intellivision & Colecovision games were suddenly $7.99 each. I built a pretty massive collection for a song. Hey, Micro Surgeon was still in the original wrapping! And had a Kay bee Toys sticker still on it! And the date code on the sticker is 1984! That was my job in '84--stickering the clearance games & crossing off the original retail with a red marker & writing the new cheaper price on it. I looked closer at the game--
And threw it down like it was diseased.
The sticker had my handwriting on it. It had made a 12-year loop away from my hands, then back into them. And 1984 was 1 of the worst years of my life...
I was quite glad that the next time I went to that Salv Army & found that the game was gone.

A far-too-regular had grown this Grizzly Adams beard that, combined with his booze-damaged brain & stained & ripped old coat, gave him an extremely bum-like look. He finally got a new coat & a shave & stopped drinking a case of Natty Ice a day. He's still chugging the beer, but at least it's a lower proof 1. Maybe now he can get a job now that he looks more employable. Toni asked "When did you shave off your beard?" "When or why?" he asked. "When." "I don't remember when." Which kinda answers the why (he was drunk). And while he's drinking a weaker beer, he now supplements it with a half-pint of Bukoff.
So much for his employability.

3/22

Crimeny. 2 days & this New's 1/3 full. This may be the 1st 1 to not last the week. My SHAWT for today is pretty weak--A guy returned 95 cents in cans, took the coins & stared at them intently in his hands. 5 minutes later he came in & asked me "Can I have 2 singles for this change?" 10 minutes after that, he bought a Bull Ice Malt Liquor 40 forty for $1.95. And paid with the 2 singles. I think we could've cut 2 steps out of this exchange.

But here's something from a SHAWT reader. Obviously a reader of New2, my 1st tirade on stupidity at work. Enjoy.

OK.  So I completely understand where you're coming from, as I am a
nightclub lighting tech and was accosted for two years with requests
from idiotic drunk people.  Take a retail situation, add really loud
music, and alcohol.  I've heard Prince's "Erotic City" called Atomic
City, and Neurotic City.  I've heard so many drunken renditions of New
Order's "Blue Monday" that I could vomit.  I've heard Daft Punk's "The
Funk Phenomena" called "The ummy-nommy-nuh".  People used to come up to
me to whine.  "Are you going to play this all night?"  Well, did you
want to hear something in particular?  "I don't care, anything but
THIS."  Well, gee.  Thanks for your help.

I've attached a good guide for club goers. ;-)

On the other hand, I've also worked retail, with body jewelry, clothes,
cds, videos, posters, hair dye, and everything else you can imagine all
rolled into one.

1.    Don't ask "Do you work here?"  No.  I don't get in enough cleaning
time in my house, so I thought I would go to the mall and put things
away, in a store that I don't work at, for fun.

2.    If you don't know the gauge of your piercing, or don't understand
what the word "gauge" means, you should have never been pierced in the
first place.

3.    If you have dark hair, NO, BLUE DYE WON'T SHOW UP IN IT.  It
requires this neet thing called "bleach" to make it light enough for you
to actually SEE the blue.

4.    If you come into the store, see me cleaning glass, and want to get
something from the case that I'm cleaning, why MUST YOU TOUCH IT?

5.    I had hoped that by now, everyone knows that most stores have
sensormatics and put sensors on their clothes.  YES, if you stand too
close to the front door, the alarm goes off.  If you walk out of the
store to show your mom/dad/uncle/dog  the shirt, the alarm will go off.
If you try to steal something, running really fast does not deactivate
the sensor.

6.    Pierced people get really sick of all of you asking, "Did that
hurt?"  Think about it.  Someone shoved an 18 gauge needle through your
nose.  Do you think it hurt?  Duh.

7.    DON'T EAT FREAKING SUNFLOWER SEEDS IN THE MALL.

8.    You know what?  I have no idea where you can find that in the
mall.  I come here, I work, I deal with you stupid people all day, and
then I leave and I go home.  If I had my way, this store would be across
town and I wouldn't have to come here.

9.    I am not your personal maid.  How were those clothes when you took
them INTO the dressing room?  Neatly on hangers?  PUT THEM BACK THAT
WAY.  Don't leave the clothes and the hangers in a big pile on the
dressing room floor.  You never know, someone may be quitting that day
and get just pissed off enough at you to hang you from the ceiling with
one of those hangers.

10.  Don't ask me to help you get your body jewelry in/out.  A.) I don't
know you, what you have, or where you've been.    B.) If you're not
smart enough to think that about me first as well, you probably aren't
going to have a very long life span.  How do you know I wasn't just
cleaning the toilet or something, you're asking me to help you put in
your tongue barbell?  C.) Nowadays, if your piercing gets infected, you
can be just smart enough to figure out that you can sue me, and no idiot
is taking away my hard-earned money.

11.    Don't walk into a store a minute before they close and hang out
in there for a half an hour.  We can't get started with closing until
YOU leave.  Hence, the heavy drinking brought on by having to deal with
you idiots is put off by a half an hour, and we don't like that.

12.    Any rude, suggestive, dirty, or evil comment you may have will be
rebuffed by something that will make you (and/or parts of you) feel very
small.  We've heard it all, and we have practice.

13.    If I'm standing with someone helping them in a case that I cannot
leave unlocked or unguarded, don't walk up to me expecting immediate
help.  It is fairly obvious when we are helping someone else, and we get
very tempted to take an hour with that person JUST TO MAKE YOU WAIT.
You are not the only customer on the planet, have some patience.  Lord
knows, we have to with you.

14.    If I tell you that we're out of something, don't systematically
ask the rest of the sales associates if we have that thing.  I didn't
tell you no because I have some personal vendetta against you, I told
you no because WE DON'T HAVE IT.

That's about all I can muster at the moment.  I've been out of the
retail business for a while now, and as a result, am a much more stable,
less angry person.  I no longer have to take requests at the club.  The
peace is wonderful.

--
Stephanie Phillips
      "Doing things for you when you don't
       feel like doing them yourself."
"Oh drat these computers ... they're so naughty and
complex.  I could just pinch them." - Marvin the Martian

ATTENTION
Before requesting songs, making comments, or 
asking questions of the D.J., PLEASE�
CHECK BELOW FOR YOUR REQUEST

PLAY SOMETHING GOOD, SOMETHING WE CAN 
DANCE TO!
The D.J. has to play for more than one person so 
what you hate may be another�s favorite song and 
EVERYTHING played here can be danced to in one 
way or another.

EVERYBODY WILL DANCE IF YOU PLAY IT!
The D.J. won�t.  I guess that blows a hole in that 
theory!

I CAN GET LAID IF YOU PLAY IT!
Why settle for one night?  Buy the album and get laid 
for a whole month!

WOULD YOU PLAY SOMETHING WITH A �BEAT�?
BE SERIOUS!  We know of NO songs played in a club 
that don�t have some sort of BEAT!

I WANT TO HEAR IT NEXT!
The ONLY people who can get away with that 
statement write the D.J.�s paycheck.

I DON�T KNOW WHO SINGS IT AND I DON�T KNOW 
THE NAME OF THE SONG, BUT IT GOES LIKE THIS:
PLEASE don�t sing for the D.J.. They have to put 
up with smoke-filled rooms and dangerous 
decibel levels all night.  Do them a favor and 
DON�T give them a rendition of your favorite 
song.

I DON�T KNOW WHAT I WANNA HEAR. WHAT DO 
YOU HAVE?
It�s a lot easier for you to go have another beer and 
figure out what you want to hear than it is for the D.J. 
to recite the name of every record in the booth.

EVERYBODY WANTS TO HEAR IT!
Oh sure - you polled everyone in the club, and, as 
their spokesperson, you�re requesting the song.

HEY MAN!  NOBODY CAN DANCE TO THIS!
It is NOT advisable to say this when the dance floor is 
packed (but some people do it anyway) HOWEVER, 
even if there is only ONE person on the floor, it STILL 
contradicts the statement.

SOME ASSORTED THINGS NOT TO SAY
If you ask for a song and the D.J. says he just played it, don�t say 
Well, I just got here!  
It makes absolutely no difference and you sound like an idiot.  

DON�T SAY, 
Is this the only kind of music you play here?  
If you go to a Chinese restaurant, you wouldn�t ask for Italian food.  Rock clubs play rock, new
wave clubs play new wave, discos play disco, etc etc etc.  

If you ask for a song BE SPECIFIC.  
DON�T SAY, I wanna hear something good, anything but this!  You have no right to complain if
you�re not SPECIFIC.  HOWEVER, if you ARE specific, and the D.J. says he doesn�t have that song,
DON�T SAY, What?!?! What do you mean you don�t  have it?  What kind of D.J. are you?  You
obviously have no idea what you�re doing!
HE MAY SHOOT YOU!!

-SPECIAL NOTE-
A nightclub D.J. gets very little respect.  They are expected to play everything for everybody. 
It is impossible to satisfy all of the 
people all of the time, yet club jocks are expected to do just that.  If a radio jock tells his
listeners a song is a hit, the majority of the people figure it must be because they said so on
the radio.  However, 80% of the time that same song was being played in a club  
long before the radio DISCOVERED the NEW song.  So Give the D.J. a break!  The next time you
request a song, stop and THINK 
before you speak.

And ABOVE ALL if the D.J. has one hand on the mixer, one hand on a turntable, and has his
headphones on DON�T BUG HIM!
HE�S MIXING!!!!

An overly friendly customer asked the cashier what her name was. "Shelley." He was taken aback, then said, politely, "Well, that's...an interesting name. Yeah. Jelly." "SHELLEY!"
I told her to call me Jif, cuz my Mom was choosy.

3/24

A 30-second radio ad for an area car dealer's website said to not go to "those national manufacturers' sites, which have all these extra links that'll just slow you down." Exactly 17 seconds later, they give as a reason to use their site the fact that "you'll find links to all the national manufacturers' sites." Guess they switched advertising agencies 15 seconds into the ad.

Well, Im back to InExObbing. This one's a big one. And it's interactive!
Vote The Inexplicable Party in 2000!!

3/27

The highlight of the weekend was buying a bath mat. It was that kind of weekend. That was the plan, though: Sleep in, do nothing when awake. Mission accomplished!
I bought the mat to replace the old 1, which SOMEone had ground her cat litter into. I got it at Big Lots, a store that just opened down the far end of our plaza, in the old Paperama building where Jessica worked. I was eyeballing some furniture when I noticed that 3 generations of Jessie's family were shopping there, too. "Look at all the stuff I'm getting!" enthused Jess. Umm, how nice, said Bill politely. She's buying those dirty shoes for her daughter?! No, the shoes were already on Jacqueline's tiny feet. Patent leather with Zoe from Sesame Street on them; not bad for $4. My main purchase was pony-tailers, as SOMEone has lost all of them playing fetch with his cat.
Then I cooked a turkey, we catnapped, blah blah blah.

OK, the highlight of the weekend wasn't the mat. Last week I looked through the News of a year ago, in 1 where I enthused over the 1st sign of Spring. In CT, there are actually 2 1st signs: Robins & skunk cabbage. Robins are no different than "1st day of Spring"printed on a calendar--they're here around the equinox even if there's 2 feet of snow still on the ground. Skunk cabbage, however, is the REAL 1st sign: it's the 1st green thing to grow, & they're growing NOW. We had as close to a non-Winter as we've ever had; we had many days of 30/40-below windchills, but they began in mid-January & ended 5 weeks later. I knew that this meant an early arrival to my favorite season, but 3 WEEKS early?! YEEE-HA! In a month, it should be Green Everywhere!

Freaky synchronicity: remember that Ugly Clock I bought? Sewwhatmel sent me a photo of some toddler, & Guess What is in the picture! The same damn clock! What are the odds? Her mom's clock is currently on the way in the mail to her, in exchange for an InExOb to be named later.

Speaking of the Ob...The Primary isn't turning out the way that I'd planned. And after all that damn work, too (this is why there was no SHAWT Sat--I was too involved in the Ob. Not that you missed much, just some guy spending $60 on beer & wine, then bitching over the fact he was overcharged 40 *cents*). The voter turnout is horrendous; only about 20%. Umm, either the thing isn't loading, or people are reacting very negatively to the Ob & quitting the page in disgust before the end. Maybe my disdain for the American Way isn't being reciprocated...But we won't know that until next week, when we see how many hits we don't get. I also expected that the votes would be spread out between the candidates. There was a brief neck-to-rump struggle between Kill Kill & Pia Zadora's Ass, "butt" Pia's support has shown a "crack" & she's fallen "behind" to the "rear." GEDDIT?! KK is well into the lead, with only Jellied Veal Loaf & Cthulhu at Pia's "tail."

Speaking of voting...How come that Putin guy in Russia "barely" gets elected with "only" 52% of the vote? I remember when Reagan got elected in '80. I went to bed confident that, yeah, the bastard won, but he didn't get the mandate he wanted to fuck America over. Not with 50.75% of the vote, he didn't. Then I awoke to headlines screaming about his LANDSLIDE. In the Electoral College. Less than 25% of the registered voters actually voted for the mandate he now claimed that he had. And everyone just rolled over & pulled their pants down for Ron the figurehead & his corporate owners. The buzzword this year is "election reform," but we don't even elect our own president! Why do we have this 40-year-old war with Cuba, now at its latest head over this damn refugee kid? Can't win the presidency if you don't get Florida's electoral votes, & you can't get them without being anti-Castro. We spent 30 years trying to get peace in the Middle East, so why did we do nothing when the peace process was almost destroyed by Benjamin Netinyahu? Can't win without New York, can't win New York without the pro-Israeli vote. Why do we throw money at defense projects even the Pentagon says we don't need? Can't win California without feeding corporate welfare in the defense industries...
I wonder what people would think of the Ob if I'd left in this, from the original draft:

Rambimbo
George W Bush has said:
"I will have a foreign policy with a touch of iron - driven by American values and American interests."
By who, YOU?! "Oooh, Daddy dinna wanna wet me bomb da bad Viet Congs mens! Me'd stay home, pwoteckted Texas! Daddy, he gimme a airyplane, it go VROOOMMM!"

Lemme nip this little bud in the nip--
AMERICA is the HI-TECH BAD-ASS SMART BOMBIN' SEMI-RETARDED BULLY of the WORLD, baby! But we are so like threatened an' stuff by countries like...
Well, DUH, we are like SO ARE threatened! By...countries! Every country bigger than Rhode Island wants to take US on! So they can get BOMBED.
I could probably name one of them. If I had to.

If you wet yourself with fear over John McCain, George Wussy Bush, wait till you meet--
RAMBIMBO!
Blah blah blah.

3/29

As the SHAWT nears its anniversary, it's looking more doubtful that it will live to see its 1st birthday. Perhaps you've noticed that the Weekend Update is getting longer, as the daily is shortening. I still see the usual stupidity at work, but it's becoming just More of the Same. I want this to be amusing, not a list of annoying customers. That would get real dull, real fast. I'm not thinking of actually killing it off right now (hey, I got some fan mail today! From someone who says: "ps. you mentioned somewhere that you used to live in Willimantic. I was born there - my parents moved away soon after. And I have never been bck since."--Well, that's pretty much the only good way to experience THAT town), but I may make it weekly, so there's more worthwhile stuff here to read.

And, as a prime example of lack of worth--I don't have anything today! Well, you could go check the comments page for the Inexplicable Poll. They started off pretty intelligent, but have quickly reached Web Standard. You know, Retards with Keyboards. The guy who says "Americans suck"--Is he insulting me, or agreeing with me? I like the d00d hoo sez "THE FREEKIN CAT DIES", then after a careful 22-second consideration, decided that what his important message really needed was 6! exclamation! points! But it says something about the people I write to that someone can say "Who needs a prez when you're the goddess? Really. Politics." & I don't know if it's Kitty or Cole or some other FPC. And there's someone babbling all Elder Godlike about Mr Octopus-Head. Hmm, could it be Govynda's own subversion of the political process?

Siiigh. The Freekin Cat is all hopped up on the goofballs (catnip), & shrieking for tonight's 3rd game of Fetch. This is another reason why the SHAWT is a problem--writing it falls into her playtime. Someday, hopefully very far into the future, there will be no Kill Kill. And I will regret every second I spent typing & not playing.

3/30

A guy got the unwelcome surprise of buying his regular beer brand & discovering the price jumped $3. "I guess I'll have to start buying something other than Miller Genuine Draft," he sighed. I said helpfully, "Maybe they'll make Miller Fake Draft & it'll be cheaper."

We got a new product today, a copy of the wildly successful Mikes Hard lemonade named "Sublime." After 6 years in record stores, I notice something odd about it: its logo is the same as the band of the same name. And every bottle has a little dedication to their lead singer (who committed suicide, if memory serves). Raspberry Lemonade seems a bit femmy a drink for a punk band to me. I wonder what products we would've seen if Marketing was the all-powerful force back in the 60s as it is today. Hendrix brand Ipecac? "Scuse me--while I toss some pie!"

Luthurian is another pro-Evil Squid Head voter:

R'lyeh Cthulu ngghgghgg! Ai! Shub-Niggurath!  :) 

Cthulhu for President!  He will get the Necronomicon passed as an amendment to the
Constitution!  America will forever be safe!  Imagine citizens - a Shoggoth on every
streetcorner, carefully herding your children to our Psychick Schools of Elder Lore, and
guarding your storefronts from criminals (who will be summarily engulfed, of course).  Imagine
quick and painless travels into the vacuum of space, between the stars on the back of a Mi-Go
fungus bat!  Behold the vision of the Elder Gods as the Sunken City of R'lyeh becomes the 51st
state - and the first mobile state, to be used as a base for the total subjugation of the REST
of the human race!  Thrill to the concept of becoming a carefully culled elite herd, the best
your race can be, caringly engineered by the BloodLords to be the fastest, strongest, and
tastiest beings on the Planet (next to the Elder Gods, of course)! Imagine mindbending weapons
of ultimate destruction pointed around the globe and into the galaxy at all enemies who could
possibly threaten the Earth! 

Free your mind!  Vote CTHULHU!

3/31

Saint Stupid. Now go away, ya bother me.

4/1

The lights in the store are off as we leave wearing our coats. I set the alarm, open the door for my fellow employees, & as I start to put the key in the lock, this loser asks "You closed?"
Ever see that Looney Tune, with the Lenny-like moron cat & the parrot? The cat runs up to the parrot, desperately pointing at his bright blue face. The parrot slaps him & screams, "BREATHE, stupid! You forgot to breathe again!!"
That cat is smarter than some of our regulars.