5/12

A guy paid with a pile of loose, uncounted change, & irritatedly told me to "speed it up! I gots to be at work in a few minutes!"
Yeah, chugalug a 40 of malt liquor right before you go to work--at 11AM. Hope you're not using heavy machinery...

Yesterday's entry was supposed to be several Kute Kat Piks, but I ran out of K kwicker than I kthought (I'm making up for it now). Here's some more KK-mania (which ties into the next InExOb, as she has an unenthusiastic cameo in it).

Welcome to BAGLAND, the Kitty Theme Park! Don't let its resemblance to a big pile of grocery bags fool you! RUN & JUMP into the bags like a pile of raked leaves! RIP & BITE little pieces off them! BURROW like a naked mole rat in the many layers! CHILL OUT in the baggy ambience! LURK NINJA-LY until the Mommy's feet walk by, then LUNGE out in KITTY AMBUSH!!
"Theme park"? Hey! I should call it--Six BAGS Over New England! Ha ha ha ha ha h--
No, why don't you shut up.

Further proof of KK's love of nesting lies here. A size 8 Converse sneaker box. The fit's a tad snug.

"Impatient Dog Wearing Sunglasses"? Line from a customer explaining why he was in a rush, & yes, he had 1.

5/16

I never got spam until Hotmail was bought by Microsoft. Now I get things like:

Men Only---You CAN enlarge your Penis Size at home, in Private !!!

"Men Only"?
"in Private"?
One would hope, one would hope.

Weekend Report: Spent most of Sun in bed with migraine. Mon: Went to 'X', an anime not worth the time it would take to describe.
Yay for the end of that weekend.

And not much at work, either. Such as the very nice old (nice VERY old, like late-80s) man who comes in twice a month to buy a 12 pack of Schlitz & to hand me his Lotto number. I say, "We don't have Lotto anymore." He is always surprised, & I don't add "...& we haven't in 9 months." That would seem cruel. And I'd just have to say it in another 2 weeks anyway.
It also seemed to be the day when--well, I don't exactly know, but it sure seemed like Hickory Farms was standing outside our door handing out free samples of New Garlic All-Beef-By-Products Summer Sausage to all our customers. It's no exaggeration to say that I must've taken a step back from the beefy, by-producty breath of about 15 customers today. Weird. And not at all pleasant. It's sad when you're sucking on a Breathsavers mint just so your own nostrils can fight back.

Jake got a bunch of newspapers from Quoddy from a customer. I assume that Quoddy's some remote island off of Maine, as the big front page headline was "Extra Summer Ferry Added" (Main inside story: "Mayor Officially Opens Children's WIng At Library"). And that was about all the news in the bimonthly paper. I liked the Help Wanteds, which had positions open for "Clam Shucker," "Crab Picker," "Crab Cleaner," & "Crab Cooker" all at the same location, & "Blueberry Insect Research Assistant." All I could picture was some PhD throwing the paper down in disgust & screaming, "Oh, YEAH! I just HAD to pick RASPBERRY Insect Research Assistant as my major! DAMMIT!! Looks like it's a life of clam shucking for Dr Bob now!"

Jake (the owners' father) altered an ad in a local paper. I'm not sure if the figure represents us, or the speaker.

5/18

I was a-typin' away last night when *ping* the monitor died. It's only 3 years old, but it was a discontinued floor model from Lechmere, & their way of powering down the display computers was to hit the main breaker for the whole store. It was prly old beyond its years. Annoyingly, if it had happened 30 minutes earlier, I could've bought a new 1 at Staples before they closed; 30 minutes later, I would've been done with most of what I do in a night on the net. 5 minutes later, I would've finished the SHAWT. Now I have to retype the whole thing from memory. Which is more fun than realizing last night that there are very few activities that can hold my interest that don't involve a damn computer. I was only lucky that TLC had a dinosaur documentary on.

I had a weird dream Tues night. That's redundant, as all my dreams ar festivals of wackiness. I was in a house with a sunken living room, in both senses of the phrase: lowered like the Brady Bunch's, awash with waves of water as the sliding glass patio doors directly bordered the ocean. On the "patio" someone was raising shrimp. A jumbo shrimp (in the sense of "larger than my cat") jumped through the open door & began running around the house in exactly the way real shrimp don't. I looked for a broom to shoo the thing out, when suddenly it attacked me! I kicked it as hard as I could &
woke up & discovered that the "attack" was Kill Kill jumping on the bed, to be greeted with a boot in the chest. "As hard as I can" in a dream isn't very hard at all in real life, so KK was uninjured. She stood on the bed with a "What the hell was THAT about" look on her face. She decided that it meant PLAYTIME! & I lost 30 minutes sleep while she rampaged throughout the bedroom. Serves me right for kitten-kicking.

I went to the bank to get change for the store. I had a narrow time frame; I couldn't go until 3 when the 2nd shifter got in, & I had to have all the week's beer orders written & called in before 4. There were 8 people behind the counter, but only 1 open window cuz they were doing an audit or such; luckily, I was next in line.
Yeah, luckily. The last customer asked for 2 5s for a 10, & the automated change-spitter at the teller's window shot it out. As I walked up, kaching-ching-chik the machine spat out a quarter, 2 dimes, & a nickel into its tray. The teller had a "What the hell was THAT about" look on her face. Then 4 quarters spat out. "He didn't ask for change," she said. Then a quarter, 2 dimes, & a nickel came out again. Then 2 quarters. kaching-ching-chik I made a joke about slot machines. The thing kept going. The teller, who was obviously a trainee, tried to flag someone down to help her, but they were all to busy doing what ever it was they were doing. 1 guy irritadedly told her that "it had to run its course." Still the loose change came. 1 of the tellers finally came over to tell the girl not to raise her voice cuz "People might think there's something wrong with our computers." The bank's come to halt & a line of people are watching your computer spew nickels like a pay phone that's been hit by a dump truck. It's kinda clear that there's something wrong with it. I think that we're mainly wondering why you aren't DOING something about it. "It'll keep doing this until it hits $10," the head teller told me. "I think it's past the $10 stage," I said, as the was easily $20 piled on the teller's counter. After almost 10 minutes of kaching-ching-chik they opened another window--for people to make a deposit with no cash back. Umm, like there's an ATM 10 feet from here, those people aren't IN this line anymore, DU-UH!
kaching-ching-chik I'm starting to get irritated. My FREAKING CHANGE ORDER does NOT require your damn bezerk computer. The main teller keeps saying "We should shut this off," while never actually doing it. kaching-ching-chik Oh, now the coins have piled up so high in the tray that it's CLOGGED. But, yeah you guessed it kaching-ching-chik they're still coming but going...Where? Ah, the wily Y2K bug has waited till now to make itself heard. I expect any minute that the teller's monitor wil spell out FOOLISH HUMANOIDS, TODAY YOU ALL DIE IN THE ROBOT HOLOCAUST!
FINALLY I get my lousy $300 in ones. "I'll get you the $150 in 5s as soon as this thing's working again." "I don't need the 5s that badly, I need to get back to work." Yeah, like I'm gonna wait for your paper shredder to transform into a giant human-shredding Gobot.
15 minutes after the start, I was finally out of the line. And Robot Frank the Killer Change Machine was kaching-ching-chiking the final death-knell of the Reign of the Humans. Colossus: The FDIC Project.

Old Man in a Hat SHAWT: "I want 2 Rossi burgundys." ME: "Which size?" "I want 2!" "There are 3 sizes, & you need to tell which as a laser-eyed berzerker gumball machine has just crashed through the window & is killing everyaaaaaAAAUUUUUGGHHHH!!!"
Wait, that didn't happen.
"There are 3 sizes." "I want TWO!" I held up the 2 extremes of the sizes. "Yep, that's what I want. A small 1 & a little 1."
The 2 sizes were a quart & a gallon. I wonder which was the small size.

5/19

I've been doing the SHAWT so long I can't remember if this has come up before: Shelley asked for ID, & the guy gave her a prisoner ID card. It didn't have a birthdate on it, but he said "If I'm old enough to go prison, I'm old enough to drink!" "How do I know that you didn't go to prison when you were 18?" asked Shelley, before realizing that she'd said it so loud that everyone else in line stared at the guy. And prly made sure that they still had their wallets...

A woman dug through the Glen Ellen chardonnay to buy 2 bottles with the newer labels. Same vintage, same wine in the new-labelled bottles as in the old. I guess she wasn't buying it for the wine, but to lick the labels.
Actually, I've discovered over the years that people will always prefer the same product in a new label. Blank audio is the worst; they can change their packaging every 6 months. In my record store days, people would ask what the difference was between the 2 labels. I'd say "Nothing. This 1 has the new packaging." And they'd always buy it, never knowing that I was pointing at the OLD packaging in order to clear it out of the inventory.

I ID'd a dude with a state ID from 5 towns over. "DO you have anything else with your name on it?" I asked, especially since it was 1 of the old, no expiration date IDs. He looked through his wallet, continually passing over things that should've had his name on it, before saying he didn't. It used to be very easy to have a friend lend you his birth certificate, which you'd take in to get a legit (but faked) ID, I turned down this blonde, blue-eyed, pasty-faced suburban cracker boy. The name on "his" ID was "Sergio Valez." "Lin Yi Tang" would've been about as believable. Don't you have any friends named "Johnny WASP" or "Bobby Wonderbread"? It might've thrown me off a bit longer.

5/20

I need to look at my guestbooks more often than...never. Given my terrible record in answering email, the 1-way street of a guestbook is better than "Tomorrow, tomorrow, I'll write ya, tomorrow/Tomorrow is now a month" (BWA-HAHAHA! Now you have that awful song stuck in our head, too!).
Whoo, even people in countries full of FOREIGNERS read this, like Celeste from the UK! She describes my writing as "riveting," which is either a big compliment or means that things in Britain are painfully dull indeed. Possibly she means it feels like a jackhammer pounding metal, right in your monitor. It seems like the oddest description of my cheesy oeuvre since Kitty described a truly awful poem of mine as "precious."
Celeste sends a page about bad kitties. Which is HUGE; I only made it halfway to the end of page 1 of 9. It makes me glad that my furry roomie's worst habit is believing that everything's a scratching post, except, of course, the scratching post. My fave thing that KK doesn't do: "I will not sniff at my male human's feet after he takes his shoes off, freeze my mouth open in disgust and then sniff my private parts to compare odors. My female human might find it amusing, but my male human does not appreciate it, especially in front of company."

5/23

Odd that I should mention KK's "everything's a scratching post" problem the day before I was playing Fetch with her, & the ponytailer fell near the door frame she likes to maul. It fell in a pile of SAWDUST. My Cat, The Chainsaw.
So off we went to the pet grooming place to get her talons clipped, & off KK went into a room with an absolutely HUGE dog. KK was not eaten. "What a beautiful cat!" cooed the young woman who clipped her. "She was perfectly behaved!" Yeah, but the new plan is to bring her every month, & eventually KK won't freeze solid in fear. Then I suggest clipping her wearing Kevlar full-body armor.

Really ditzy old lady, wanting to know how long a bottle of Sutter Home white "ziff-nan-dell" will last once it's opened: "Will it still be good after I get home from Florida?"
No, you want to buy Vendange. Sutter Home's only lasts till you get home from Georgia.

5/24

Well, I don't have much of anything, just a woman who hastily pointed out "That's not ours!" as I went to ring her up. She was pointing to an open bag of candy that I was eating. In this state, all we can legally sell is alcohol & cigarettes, so it's not like she got confused by the Slim Jim display. Here's something from the Psychoceramics ML that's more...entertaining.

In 1995 a friend of mine who worked on Mayfair Magazine (UK) told me about a correspondent to their letters page. He was from Seattle and was
writing to them, on average, three times a week. Sometimes these handwritten letters would mention the girls from that month's issue, but only
really as extras in the author's extravagant and clearly medication-aided scenarios.

The letter reproduced below is by far the shortest I've seen, but pretty typical. In my opinion what makes him so entertaining is that he has a
very broad brief: never staying with one strand of thought for too long, he always has a surprise waiting around the corner. If there is an
underlying theme in his work, it is that he has designed almost everything in the world, only to have the patent stolen from him time and again
(Boeing planes, the Jetsons and the Flintstones, the Space Shuttle, and the cellular phone, the last of which was stolen by the Queen of England
in 1974). And you should hear what he claims to have got up to with the women of the Monaco Royal Family. 

Other letters reveal him to be a half Caucasian, half-Korean 28-year-old living at home with his parents (although he insists that he is actually
ageing Ferrari designer Pinin Farina - the Italian claiming to be him is just an impostor), and the variously-spelt name of a medication called
something like 'Rispeladahl' keeps cropping up throughout, providing a vital clue as to what's keeping this man from running amok in his local
mall with automatic weapons. 

What's fascinating is that although there's nothing to suggest that the author reads any conspiracy literature, a lot of this stuff could have come
straight from the outer fringes of the field. In fact I wouldn't be surprised to find the Clinton allegation in David Icke's next book, although even
he might hesitate before publishing this guy's pet theory (not reproduced here) that Hugh Hefner and David Letterman conspired to beam
images of beautiful women into his head while he slept to propose marriage to him because of the moon landings (sic). 

A. Cheffie
'To protect and to serve'


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mayfair they call me the truth because that�s all I know I did design Volvo�s in 82, and 81, I hope they pay me soon for it & the Saab
convertible�s in 82 for 94 I did the accesory brosure in 1985 for the 94 year. 

The Volvo truck of the year 94 that�s my design done in 82 at 15 when will they pay me Isuzu got a design from me in 82 right after I designed the
Volvo truck of the year. Mayfair what do I do Im so fucking bored. 95 Cadillac�s & catalog created by me in 1976 after baseball practice & after
school, President Clinton killed his own twin son�s in 1976, in the wooded area at the outfield of a baseball park connected to Newport High Bill
killed one Hillary the other the first time Bill and Hillary met was in 1972, Newport High of Bellevue, I took photo�s of the incident. Vice President
killed a man in cold blood to get the steely eye look He sometimes show�s. � in 82 by Lake Bozen again I witnessed it. Renton WA, Dana Carvey
cut off his own penis in 85 to steal SNL ideas. A dog ate his dick. Phil Hartmann shot a man in the BACK in 88 to try and steal the kid�s Brita
water pitcher design money & logo. I was the kid it hit something else it was very close. Spate of SNL, cut of his testes in 78 and stomped on
them like grapes to complain to Lorn Michael�s that someone had done so from his show so Spate deserve�s to be on SNL for it!

Charlie Sheen & the two Cory�s and other U.S. celebrity�s have all attempted hits on me with gun�s the closest by Charlie Sheen in 88 point blank
at my head I grabbed a block of wood and saved my life. 

Kurt Cobain�s BALL�S were cut off by my sister because Kurt would not pay me for my song�s I wrote all the song�s on Nevermind except
Lithium. Verse Chorus Verse � written by me was supposed to replace Lithium, I played guitar for that song in 81 � I not painting an imaginary
world just the real world. He was killed by his band member�s � I believe because like clockwork Courtney Love said she would be in the hospital
the day before he got killed. 

P.S. I have all these musicians admitting their guilt in stealing song�s on video I should show that some day. 

Got to go say hi to Gillian & to the other�s. 

                                              (NAME & ADDRESS WITHHELD)

P.S. My sister must be real mad because I was told she convinced Emilio Estevez to chop off his pecker in 92 I wrote movies with them Men At
Work & Three Musketeer�s in 1985 in a bar called GARCIA�S in Redmond.

I have nothing SHAWTy, but I do have something that makes all burstfull with proudocity. I jumped when I looked over my email (to kill the spam) & saw 1 from L. Fitzgerald Sjoberg. If you recognize that name, you're jumpin' too--if not, he is the standard I don't hold myself against, as I could never attain his level of consistent web hilarity: BRUNCHING SHUTTLECOCKS! How awesome is THIS!

InExOb cracks me up. That's great. German singers, veal loaf,
the
whole twenty-seven feet.

Thanks,
L. Fitzgerald Sjo:berg
Editor, The Brunching Shuttlecocks

5/30

This is how the SHAWT will end, not with a bang, or a whimper, but a withering away. No no, I'm not declaring another end of this. It just tires me to write it more & more. This is my 3rd attempt in 4 days to put something here. I'd start, then say "I don't feel like doing this," & ergo I didn't. 1 day the updates just won't come. Not that there's been anything stellar to write about. Well, I know the point is to write about nothing interestingly, but that requires inspiration.
There was no inspiration last week. I had no InExOb. I mentally compared my page to No Really I Did, The Brunching Shuttlecocks. He's been doing the page since the dawn of Web-Time, it's the only page left that I laugh at out loud, & HE does it FIVE DAYS a week. Not a measly once a week like the Ob. Then, 2 days later, there's a letter of praise from him...And Lore Sjoberg saying that you're funny is like Robert DeNiro saying you're a good actor. I wrote back the next day, telling the above to Lore, & within an hour he'd replied: "If it makes you feel any better, there are plenty of weeks where I never want to see another package of foreign snack foods in my life, but I've got one in front of me and it's Monday morning and I've got to find something new and presumably interesting to say about it. The time to worry is if you stop struggling and start coasting, having Garfield kick Odie off the table once again because that's what sold the last twenty-eight paperback collections. So to speak." Then I picked up a thing that'd been sitting next to the Pookie for months & was instantly inspired by the magic of Lucy Ozone. Then the next day, I went to the Big Lots store & was inspired for next week's Ob! Since it was 1 of those cascades of inspiration, like the David Lynch storybook or the Cute Hitler, I'll share it with you. "Similar [sic] to items seen on TV!" it's a clock depicting the Last Supper (quite lamely) that plays "Hallelujah!" on the hour, every hour. Sadly, it was not a cuckoo clock, with a tiny crucifix popping out at the same time.
Later the day I bought it, some busty chick wearing a string bikini for a top came into the store. After she left, Toni said that she was going to come over to my house that night. "She wants to check out your new clock," said Mike. I said, "Yeah, and the clock won't be the only thing shouting Hallelujah! BADDA-BING!"
There's other stuff that I could put here, but I don't feel like it.
Get used to it. Next week's my vacation, 9 whole SHAWT-free days. I wonder if I'll be chatty, or take a well-earned vacation from this thing, too.

6/1

Well, here I am updating again. Maybe it's the fact that it's a sweltery night after a humid day, so KK's more interested in staying under the fan than playing Fetch, or maybe it's the cheezariffic sounds of my latest eBay purchase, "Big Band Moog" on 8-track. No, it's not Swing music, it's standard 70s Moog fare (pop music covers like "Michelle" or "Age of Aquarius" or "Smoke Gets in my Moog"), but there's an actual orchestra backing it. It's a lot like the Sound Gallery CDs, which I'm sure gets a shrug of non-recognition from everyone reading this (the type of cool-but-bombastic music that was used in British-imported action TV shows of the 70s). At any rate...

Retail Fact You May Not Know: Using your credit card costs us 3% of the total (except AmEx, which costs us much more), plus 35 cents just to swipe the card. ATMs just cost us the 35c. This is why we refused to let a guy charge $1.03 today; this is why we always ask if you want to use ATM or credit. Shelley asked a guy that yesterday, & he sneered "ATM." When she started to put it through, he said "That was a joke," making her redo the transaction. Then he went into a-bitchin' about how "I'd better not get charged twice! I check my statement, you know!" Of course, he hadn't put in his PIN number, so that wasn't going to happen. Special Note to People Who Make Jokes: "Jokes" involve something that remotely resembles "humor." "Acting like a stupid asshole" means that you're the joke.

Guy (pointing at the Bukoff): "Gimme summa that whatchacallit, that--Burp-Off."

6/5

2 things:

Lovin' the vacation, crappy weather or not
Lovin' not updatin' the monkey on the back, whose name begins with "S" & ends with "HAWT."

What have I done so far? Little of import. Antiqued in Putnam again was yesterday's thing. Found an InEx, paid for it & when I was told the total I pointed out that it was 50% off. "We have no way of knowing that if you don't tell us!" said the cashier, an older woman with a tiny, puckered, "I last smiled during the Ford Administration" mouth. I almost pointed out that *I* had no way of knowing that she had no way of knowing, but didn't. Try putting a sign of the register that tells us to mention the discounts before ringing. Or, since you're doing this on a PC, how about programming it to tell you? Another cashier (with the same bitter mouth) came over as she was voiding it out. "Booth M1," she said knowingly, as if All Evil flowed from Booth M1.
At a different--& far friendlier--store I picked up for 2 bucks a 1932 Diamond Salt giveaway, the Adventure Map of Captain Ezra Diamond. I'd love to learn the details behind it. It includes cartoony features such as Mid-Summer Tidal Wave, Death Volcano, Fever Cathedral (?), Ravaging Reindeer (??), Ruined City (which looks like it's being nuked!) & The Whale That Killed Wendall. Wendall who? Willkie? I also like the Steaming Geyser that appears to be destroying the entirety of the South Island of New Zealand.
Today was supposed to be the day I went to Gay City (INSERT JOKE HERE--it's actually a state park that's supposed to have great walking trails), but given the weather, it was Plan B: Junk Shopping! In 92/93 I was unemployed. Of course, some really cool Junque came across my path when I couldn't afford to buy it. $25 for a 60s World Time Clock (a world map with tiny readouts for a good 50 cities). $25 for a lamp in the shape of a twice-life-size Elvis head. And $10 for 1 of those absurd vibrating-belt weight reduction machines that you sometimes see in old Hanna-Barbara toons from the early 60s. Well, I still have yet to get the clock & the lamp, but today I found a 2nd vibro-belt machine. What am I going to do with it? Umm... Possibly my finely tuned sense of the absurd is tuned too fine.
I also found another InEx, an LP so bad I don't even need to crack wise on it (though I will). Yay, 2 Obs in 2 days!

GROAN. The radio news just mentioned Clinton in Ex-Commieland, & his attempt to explain our really desperate need to build the "Star Wars" nuke shield. The Russians have said that they will gut EVERY arms treaty if we're stoopit enough to try & build this thing, which is like Reason 4,235 not to do it. If it was Bill Young & not Bill Clinton over there, I'd pull Putin aside & tell the truth: "Vlad, the thing's not a shield, it's corporate welfare. I need to buy the votes of the arms-building states or RoboGore hasn't a chance. And why you got your balalaika in a bunch for anyway? There's NO WAY the thing'll ever work! We've been pretending for over 15 years that it will. If we built it today, cruise missiles would have a 25 year technological jump on the thing! What, we're gonna use it to shoot down missiles flying 100 feet off the ground? This whole 'rogue state' crap, don't buy into that. Yeah, like North Korea's gonna build this ONE missile, then shoot it at us. Spy satellites will tell exactly where it came from seconds after they launch it. What do you think we'll do then, even if we do shoot it down with our magic force field? Yeah, we'll H-Bomb the fucks to ashes. North Korea's the size of Maine, for Gourd's sake. How many bombs would it take to incinerate MAINE? We're not talking a rogue state that'd try this, we're talking a severely retarded state! If they want to nuke us, they won't spend years building a missile program, they'll buy 1 of those 1000s of tactical nukes your own military says it can't account for, & stick it on a ship, sail it into a major harbor like New York or Frisco, then blow it to hell! When Hezbollah wants to blow something up, do they put a crazy man in a van filled with dynamite, or build a squadron of Stealth Bombers? C'mon, lighten up! Have a vodka & show me that famous Putin smile! There ya go, you old KGB bastard!" (gives Putin a noogie, Putin messes my hair, everyone laughs, even the Illuminati who REALLY run the world)
I ain't joking about the missing ex-Soviet tactical nukes, BTW. There out there somewhere, & someday, they'll get used. If it happens here, our stock market play-money economy will collapse, & the next presidential election will be our last, as we elect a dictator. Americans will be more than willing to give up all their personal freedoms in order to guarantee their personal safety.
Yay. Fun.
If you don't know what "tactical nuke" means, that's what the Army calls anything smaller than 100 kilotons. Hiroshima was hit with 20 kilotons...
Glad I could brighten your day!!

6/5.5

Oh, how I abuse you poor New readers, what with the long delays of posting anything new. Here's something, just for you loyal few. OK, don't look at it if you want to laugh at next week's Ob, as this is 95% of the joke. Currently, it'll read "Good News, Girls! They're Both Available!"