The Universe in a Coffee Cup

I recently had the worst cup of coffee of my life. It was nearly unbelievable, at the very least it was literally extremely difficult to believe. I took a sip of it and just looked at the cup. How could things have gone so wrong? I found myself grappling with the realm of possibility in a coffee cup. It was so bad that I truly had a hard time believing it. I had another sip to confirm I wasn't crazy. How could it such a simple corporate process have gotten so horribly off track? The only feasible explanation I developed to help me keep my sanity was that there was a bag of potting soil (complete with fertilizer) right next to the coffee grounds bag, and a new employee accidentally scooped soil into the coffee filter. Trust me on this one.

Teachers Taking a Break

My old boss Pete hates teachers. At first I thought it was because he's a towering idiot, but now I'm pretty sure he just likes to argue. I ran into him at a tradeshow awhile ago after not seeing him for about three years. After catching up on our jobs and personal lives for a few minutes, he jumped right into a story about how the teachers back in my hometown are still all complaining about not getting paid enough. He knows I always take the teachers' side since everyone in my family except for me teaches, but for the first time yesterday I could see where he was coming from. Don't get me wrong, I still think his angle on teachers as lazy whiners is utterly stupid beyond compare, but when my friend here told me that she was on summer break for the next three months, I caught of glimmer of what he was talking about. Important job, though.

Bad Jobs

I worked at a place for a year where I had to wear a beret. Worst job I ever had, and that includes the ski rental shop where I adjusted bindings from 6a.m. until 9a.m. on Saturdays and Sundays during my freshman year of college. At least I only did that for a week. At the beret job they made you wear a chef's jacket, which could have looked kind of cool, but they only came in sizes big enough for our tent-shaped chef so we all ended up looking like French orphans. After my beret job, I decided that I wouldn't take another job where someone made me wear a hat. I arrived at that decision after the place put a hotdog stand out front and made the hotdog vendor wear a hat that looked like a hotdog with "the works." The manager at the beret place was really unhealthy, and she's one of the few people in this world I absolutely cannot stand to be around. When we worked alone at night I would think, "You better hope you don't have a heart attack on this shift lady, because there's no way I'm calling 911." Ha!

Don't Do the Snuff

I used to go to a German bar that sold beer in liter mugs and had barmaids running around in lederhosen. Some of the barmaids sold shots, but the ones to watch out for carried little wooden trays with what looked like a clothespin attached to the top. They would load snuff onto little spring-loaded trays and shoot it up your nose. The first time I went to the bar I did a bunch of the snuff, and then I promised myself the next day that I wouldn't ever do it again. The problem is that those liters of German beer are like moonshine. I would wake up in the afternoon after a day at the German bar and think, "At least I didn't do the snuff." Then I would blow my nose with a piece of toilet paper and loads of black gunk would come out, and I would know that the lederhosen barmaids had gotten the better of me.

Crossing Guards

My crossing guard used to wave a really bent up 'Stop' sign into traffic to help me get to elementary school uncrushed every morning. Once I asked her why it was so badly bent, and she said it was from clobbering cars that didn't stop. That's pretty bold for an old lady, but I guess she didn't have to worry any of the people she hit with the sign complaining to the police.

Don't Let the Door Hit You

It took me a few hours to figure out why there are so few chairs in the Las Vegas airport. The only places to comfortably sit are tucked away right next to the gates. They have so few normal chairs in the rest of the airport because they want you to sit down at the slot machines (where you have to play if you take a seat). It's really a good metaphor for the whole city.

Expiration Date

I just used some Visine. Right after using it I thought, "I've had this for a really long time," so I checked the expiration date. June 2001. It deeply troubles me that they bothered adding a month to the expiration date. The month designation indicates to me that it goes bad quickly--it's okay for your eyes one month, Drano six weeks later. Now imagine what happens if you use it six years after it's expired. It probably makes you deaf. Still, I think I'll hold onto it.

It's Weird How Much I Hate Richard Marx

I've always hated Richard Marx. Consider yourself lucky if you don't remember that twisted bastard. He sang at least one song every year during the mid-1980s that would be put into heavy rotation on the top 40 radio station played in my parents' house and car. I still remember most of the lyrics from "Should've Known Better" and "Right Here Waiting," and I even remember that he wrote them for his wife on her birthday. The "Should've Known Better" year must have been rough for them. I thought it was his name fueled my hatred when I was a kid, but now I'm pretty sure that it was his mindless droning and derivative lyrics that don't even make sense. I compare him now to a band like the White Stripes, who I think I would have liked growing up even though I'm not particularly fond of them today. Or maybe the White Stripes melodic simplicity would have driven me crazy, too. Either way, the 80s were a rough time to grow up.

Smalltime Cake Dealer Threatened

A community was outraged awhile ago after a 9-year-old girl threatened to kill another 9-year-old girl over a snack cake deal gone wrong. These inner-school cake deals are tearing our schools apart and threatening to kill youths. The dispute was over an unprecedented bag-of-pretzels for Little Debbie trade, showing that the value of snack cakes is dropping inside grade schools as they become more available. Stricter penalties and cancelled recess has had no effect. Snack cake sniffing dogs, snack cake urine tests, and banning backpacks from schools is our only chance to save our most precious resource--the children. Who will save the children?

The Dog Whisperer

One of my friends will whisper to me if he's saying bad things about a dog that's in the room. I think he's doing more harm than good since dogs can't understand English, but they can probably understand the tone in which people discuss them. If that's true, than the best way to say bad things about dogs around you is to speak at a normal volume in a light, cheery tone--of course, then you would seem like a psycho on several levels.

Choose Your Thumb

No 7th grader should be forced to make a decision that will affect them for the rest of their life. My typing teacher didn't share that opinion, and our first day of class she made us choose the thumb we would use to hit the space bar for the rest of our lives. The worst part was that she only gave us a few seconds to make the choice. I still question the decision to use my right thumb, but there's no going back.

Lobsters, Bar Tabs, and Skill Cranes

One of my friends won a free bar tab by grabbing a specially marked lobster out of a skill crane. My friend was from out of town, and the bar insisted that they didn't have to give him the bar tab. They didn't offer a specific reason, only that the lobster was erroneously marked and they wouldn't honor the bar tab bracelet worn by the crustacean. Being from out of town and having no recourse to go after the deadbeat bar isn't even the worst part of the story. My friend decided he would free the lobster in the ocean instead of eating it, but it died moments after hitting the Atlantic. To this day, I'm unsure if there's such a thing as "fresh water lobsters," but if they do exist, then this poor bastard was among their kind.

Hockey Commentary

My friend Rob and I entertained the idea of being hockey announcers for a little while. He would have done play-by-play, while I was the obvious choice as color commentary since I don't know anything about the game. It came up because I heard on college radio that the women's hockey team was looking for radio announcers, and they were hosting an open call via sent-in tapes. Our tape would be of us calling a game that we were watching while people played NHL '97 on a Playstation. We practiced for a few hours, but never got around to finding a tape recorder. My life could be very different right now if we'd had a tape recorder on hand, we really had a great dynamic that I think the women's hockey world would have loved.

Fiery Wrecks

Tomorrow afternoon I'm connecting through airports in two small cities that I didn't know existed a week ago. It's causing me anxiety because I hate flying. Well, it's not the flying that I hate so much as the taking off, landing, and potential that I'll end up in a fiery wreck. Writing this email about my anxiety surrounding flying adds to my anxiety. It's because I value irony on such a deep level. It would be a fitting end for me to write an email making jokes about my anxiety of flying in small planes, then set it up to send hours before I get into one of those wrecks. Man, I hate flying.