iDallas!

Today, while I was filling up with gas, a little hispanic boy, probably about 11,
came up to me saying he was in some organization called Future Leaders of America
or something, and as one of those he said no to drugs and gangs and stuff. As
part of the activities of the organization, he was trying to sell some stuff to
get enough points or whatever to win a trip to Raging Waters (the water park
featured in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure). That sounds cool, I thought.

“What are you selling?”

He quickly puts his white carrying box down and opens it up revealing a bunch of…
(how should I put it?) junk. He starts giving me the line on the candles, asking if I want
to smell them. I decline, and point to the big box of delicious gummy bears.

“How much for the gummy bears?”

“$6.”

“6 bucks? Woah…” I pause for a moment. “Ok. Give me the $6 gummy bears.”
It’s a pretty good cause, right? I’m helping out the little guy’s self confidence
and helping to keep the streets safe from thugs. That makes me feel good.

So I get in my car and drive off, my gas tank now full, and start opening the big box
of gummy bears. Inside I find a medium size bag of gummy bears, hardly filling a third
of the box. I pull out the bag, and it’s only half full.

I got jacked.

But I didn’t get jacked by the little boy. He’s trying to win a trip to Raging Waters.
I got jacked by the people who started the Future Leaders of America. They probably make
$5.50 profit on that $6 box of gummy bears. That’s pretty crummy, but on top of that
they make little kids do the footwork, and they reward them with something worth like
$30 (a trip to Raging Waters). I bet most of the kids work their butts off, and don’t
even get to go anywhere.

I’m so glad people like that exist in the world.

Good, old-fashioned ingenuity is what got America where it is today, and it’s what’s
gonna keep us here.
God bless us. Every one.

Hectic work days suck ass. Suddenly everything needs to be done right this moment
and every person’s request is more important than everyone else’s and nothing is ever
done all the way, or so it seems because there are always 3 new things waiting to be done
in place of any one that you do check off the list.

And what makes that happen anyway? Sometimes a good couple of weeks go by where
everything goes pretty smoothly, and things are actually being accomplished and it
feels like maybe, finally, just once it might be true that all the planets are aligned
and all the tarot cards have fallen the right way and the fortune cookie has opened
with just the right crackle and life at work might actually be good. And then WHAM
one of those crappy days or two comes along and destroys all my faith in just about
everything I ever considered for a moment as significant.

and all I can say is… crummy.

I went to a major office superstore today to talk to a man there about business cards.
The man was very knowledgeable and gave me exactly the information I needed
in a very direct way. It was only my own infamiliarity with the subject matter
that caused me to ask him a couple more times. I like it when people have
exactly the information I need in exactly the format I need it. That makes me feel
good.

And then I decided to browse a little bit to see if anything caught my eye. My money
was burning a hole in my pocket the size of Montana. Strange as it may seem, I didn’t
really see anything I wanted to waste my money on. Oh well. I was starting to head
for the door when a largeish black woman in a bright red t-shirt emblazoned with the
insignia of said major office superstore asked me if I needed any help. I did indeed
look like I did. I sort of smiled wanly, and said, “Nah. I’m ok.”

She caught a glimpse
of my shiny self and said, “Well, look at you. What have you done to yourself?”

I gave her a friendly, I’m-innocent-and-dumb-leave-me-be look, hoping to disarm her, and
she just sort of smiled and looked me up and down.

I started to walk away and she noticed my nose was pierced
also (you can’t see it from the front), and she said, “You got it in your nose, too?”

“I got it all over.”

“All over, huh?”

I smiled, “I just don’t learn.”

She sort of grinned, and said, “If it feels good, do it.”

I smiled for real for the first time all day. “Yep.”

That woman really knows what she’s talking about. She had exactly the information
I needed in exactly the way I needed it, and I didn’t even have to ask.

Major office superstores are the bomb. Plain and simple.

Give me a shout!

I was thinking today (or perhaps last night) how glad I am that there are men and women.
I’m glad that humans were not created as a single-sex species that just sort of replicates
every once in awhile. On top of that, I’m glad that men and women seem to be different.
I like to feel like there’s always more to the world no matter how much I think I can
learn from it on my own. There’s always at least one other possible perspective.

As it turns out, too, when you really start paying attention, there’s a lot more than
just one other perspective. There are as many other perspectives as you can open your
mind up to. There are so many people around you every day with so many different ways
of thinking and feeling. And all you have to do is notice.

I wish it were as easy to do things as it were to say them.

Give me a shout!

“Something good”, I think to myself. “Once per day… no problem.”
But I don’t want to have to make something up.
And it doesn’t seem like I should have to, right?
So why can’t I think of anything?

Let’s see… I do like the way popsicles taste and feel. That’s a good thing about the
world. I imagine I wouldn’t like all the things popsicle manufacturing companies have to
do to keep the popsicles cheap enough for us to buy them, though.

Well, I guess I’m just lucky that the world around me has enough distractions to not
let my own ethics get in the way of me still enjoying myself once in awhile.

That’s a blessing.

It sickens me to know that we live in a world where people have been forced into feeding
on each other, both financially and emotionally. Each person must look out for their own
interests and only their own interests. That’s fine, but you must always keep in mind
that your own interests are tightly wound with those of other people. If you hurt
someone else, you are very possibly hurting yourself in some way. It may not be evident
until a long time in the future, and in fact you may never realize it at all.

I guess
some people would call a notion like this karma, but I think it’s more wordly than that.
It’s an extension of the you scratch my back, I’ll scratch your back thing. When you help
people, they are more likely to help you in the future (or perhaps just refrain from
hurting you) and the more people who are willing to help you, then less likely it is
that you will find yourself in an impossible situation. Sounds simple, don’t it?

Anyway, in case this has never happened to you… it sucks to come back to your car in the
parking area after an event of some kind and find the window shattered and covering the
front seat, the dash ripped apart, and the stereo missing. It really does.

(it wasn’t even my car, but it sucked nonetheless)

just to leave the house. People should have to pass some sort of test or at
least some sort of examination before they are allowed out into the world. I’m not
talking about the wackos walking around Westwood (hip part of LA near UCLA), or the
homeless people that dig through my trash. It’s the numbskulls that think its
a good idea to do things like race ahead to turn left or right in front of the
crossing pedestrians at a busy intersection, or the lunatic old man that shot like
a bat right out of the pits of hell right in front of my walking self as he turned into
his parking garage. His frickin’ parking garage!

That’s one thing I’ll never understand about LA… everyone here seems to be
in the biggest damn hurry you’ll ever see, and all to get somewhere they don’t want
to be. Then they leave after a long day doing things they don’t want to do,
and hurry their asses home to watch the news and find out about
everything they missed during the day.

What’s up with that?