Life is a horrible grind.

Yesterday I was forced to go to the grocery store. Grocery stores are a microcosm of society and I suppose that if I had the right prescription I might find it educational or amusing, but for the most parts itÂ’s just depressing.

Anyway IÂ’m in the bakery section and some old bastard is standing directly in front of the fresh rolls like heÂ’s guarding them. He was talking, actually hollering, into a cell phone. From what I could gather from his side of the conversation his wife was berating him and telling him exactly what to buy, right down to the smallest detail. Meanwhile heÂ’s blocking the rolls. I stood there respectfully for about a minute, not wanting to interrupt his conversation and say excuse me, but my patience has a limit. I finally just edged him aside, grabbed the tongs and a bag and cleaned out every roll they had in the joint.

Just as I started to turn away I heard him holler into the phone, “Oh my God! Some guy just took all the Kaiser rolls!” I turned and gave him a little wave and started to walk away. His wife must not have liked what he said because he started stammering and then I heard, “He’s got all the Kaiser rolls! He’s leaving with all the Kaiser rolls!”

And indeed I was. He started to follow me like he was going to debate my right to them or even threaten to take them by force but in the end he skulked away without approaching me. And as I walked toward the checkout I could still hear him on the phone trying to explain about the guy who absconded with all the Kaiser rolls. “He even took the ones with sesame seeds!”

I drove away feeling exhilarated and optimistic.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:20 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Is there something in the water in Los Angeles? I mean, just when you thought youÂ’ve seen it all. Please, go forth and read this.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:58 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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But sometimes it just has to be done. If you are a man, and you wear cologne, you are wearing way too much of it. ItÂ’s offensive and migraine inducing. You know, itÂ’s all about subtly. Swimming laps in that shit is not going to get you layed.

And if you do wear cologne there are only two acceptable types. Very expensive or very cheap. Ignore the middle ground. I wear a tiny bit of cologne; youÂ’d have to be close enough to lick my neck to smell it. I wonÂ’t disclose exactly what it is because itÂ’s not important, but it is of the very expensive variety. Anybody close enough to smell it immediately swoons. If youÂ’re in the market, look for something classic thatÂ’s been on the market for many years. ThereÂ’s a reason itÂ’s been around a long time.

If you decide to go cheap, go very cheap. Old Spice. Yeah, itÂ’s sweet, but not nauseating like a lot of middle ground products, including but not limited to, Polo, Drakkar, et. al.

Recently IÂ’ve come across a few women who are wearing way too much perfume as well. In fact this post was partially inspired by a lunchtime incident, where I was walking into the building and even though the breeze was blowing I could smell perfume. By the time I entered the lobby I saw the source of the odor entering an elevator. I pity the people trapped in there with her. Good thing thereÂ’s no smoking allowed anywhere anymore because that broad would have gone up like that Buddhist monk on the cover of Life.

Walking back down the hall to my office I was overwhelmed, as I am everyday after lunch, by the smell of menÂ’s cologne. Maybe I should put out a memo that dousing yourself with cologne after a break does not cover up the smell of pot.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:57 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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IÂ’m having a hard time differentiating between the technically stupid, those having a very low IQ, and those who are either crazy or emotionally disturbed. I used to think that people who were acting unreasonably about something were all half-wits. My wife patiently explained to me that thatÂ’s not always the case. Her claim was that some people are so emotionally immature/disturbed that that it overrides the logical thought process.

We were discussing the idiots who claim that 9/11 was perpetrated not by terrorists but by our government. She reasoned that some people, in spite of normal intelligence, are so emotionally invested, in this case with their hatred of Chimpy, that reasonable thought is simply not possible.

I countered with the fact that if that is indeed true, and that they can’t “think straight” due to whatever emotional problems they might have, that they are crazy. There was a debate about temporary insanity versus just plain crazy, but we decided that yeah, they’re crazy.

I have assembled the following formulas to aid in your understanding of these matters:

A genuine moron = a genuine moron

Normal IQ + emotional instability = a half-wit (for all intents and purposes)

A moron + emotional instability = an online customer service rep or blogger

High IQ + emotional instability = a serial killer or mad scientist

How crazy is crazy? I donÂ’t know, but I suspect a lot of people I have contact with every day are a hell of a lot crazier than many people under lock and key on the 8th floor somewhere. I reckon it to alcoholics. You have your unemployed blathering hobos and your functioning alcoholics. Same with crazies.

And nobody knows what to do with the nuts. As long as theyÂ’re not killing people were content to let them walk around with the rest of us. ItÂ’s really the only explanation for a lot of the people I see every day. And the range is huge. I know a guy who walks around all day grunting, laughing too hard at almost anything anyone says and occasionally singing in gibberish like a toddler. HeÂ’s a fucking nut. All I can do is keep my distance and shake my head.

But IÂ’ll tell you this. Not a day goes by where I donÂ’t expect somebody to start clawing at themselves and jump through a first floor window.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 07:04 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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I bought a new grill over the weekend which was a real pain in the ass. IÂ’m the kind of guy that researches every grill made before buying one. Anyway, the market is now full of stainless steel grills because people have finally gotten tired of replacing these things every year and by now all the manufacturers have realized they can get more money for stainless.

Unfortunately, the quality of stainless steel varies greatly. When you buy silverware, actually cheap flatware, you can see on the box the ratio of nickel to stainless, usually 18/10 or 18/8. The stuff with more nickel has a higher luster. Well, you canÂ’t do that on a grill yet but IÂ’m here to tell you, you get what you pay for and most of these stainless grills are of poor quality stainless and will look like shit directly. Also, the burners, the important part, are sometimes made out of crap while the rest of the grill is stainless.

Regardless, I picked one but the half-wit at Home Depot decides he doesnÂ’t want to look for one in the box, he wants to sell me the floor model. I know the floor model wonÂ’t fit into my car because I was bright enough to measure before coming into the store and I was standing there with my own tape measure when he tried to pawn it off.

“This won’t fit in my car.”

“What kind of car do you have?”

“Just get me one in a box.”

“We can deliver it.”

“Get me one in a box.”

Forty-five minutes later I leave with the grill. I carefully unpacked each piece. I opened up the bag with all the screws, counted them, and placed each individual size into itÂ’s own little Tupperware things which I keep for these occasions. I laid out all the tools I could possibly need and more, just in case. I am an expert assembler.

I then checked all the parts according to the instructions and put them into a rough order as I would need them. The final step was to sit down on the couch and read the instructions cover to cover, insuring I knew how the process would pan out as I progressed. I noted that there were some problems with the illustrations, namely, that they seemed to be rough crayon type sketches similar to what a child draws when they have no sense of perspective. There was no detail at all, just rough blocks of out of focus shapes.

Well, I could work around that. However, the instructions themselves seemed to have a lot of words I’d never come across before and I have a large vocabulary. In three languages. I figured I could work around that too, being mechanically inclined. In addition, there was no mention anywhere in the instructions of the many washers and lock-washers enclosed. Not enough for every bolt but plenty of them and I would have to guess on those, as well as a large piece of grill, about 24” x 6” that was also mentioned nowhere in the instructions.

After struggling for thirty minutes trying to attach the heavy-ass weighted base to some legs with no help, on the next step I realized I had them on backwards and had to start again. They were backwards because the instructions were backwards. Literally. That started a long afternoon of swearing and sweating. The high point was trying to decifer sentences that went like this:

“Place F end C into equipment section vsentraew.”

Nice, huh? By the time I got the damned thing together I was fit to be tied and IÂ’m good at that crap. I was a broken man by days end.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:39 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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