When Creepers Attack

Yesterday my day was invaded by many, many creepers. Being the creeper magnet that I am, I should not be shocked by this and yet I always am.

Yesterday I went to the mall with my friend, Kari, to have conveyor belt sushi (at a restaurant next to the mall) and go to a movie. I’d never had sushi before and I loved it. :D I’m excited to go again!

After we left the sushi restaurant and actually entered the mall, we still had a couple hours to kill before our movie started so we headed for the Apple Store so I could check out the new 27″ iMac¹.

On our way, a crazy kiosk man comes at us from the side, shoves dixie cups containing a mysterious melon-colored liquid into our hands, and commands us to drink. He kept promising there wasn’t tequila in it².

And you know what we did?

WE DRANK IT. Our only excuse was that we were frightened of the crazy kiosk man who kept talking about tequila and how he bites his nails. He also demanded we come over to his kiosk (no idea which one it was!) and let him perform an unnamed “procedure” which would only take 50 seconds. At this point, I inch around and hide behind Kari. We decline his offer about 8 times and declare we have a movie to catch and then make a break for it.

The fact that the movie didn’t start for over two hours? Minor detail.

The first thing we both do, as soon as we reach our Apple Store refuge, is pull out our phones and tweet that shit so fast. You know you’re a little addicted when… </nerds>

We’ve decided that side of the mall is dead to us now. We can never return.

Then we saw Cirque du Freak which wasn’t as bad as I was expecting! Despite its flaws, I actually enjoyed it–it was funny. However, I have never seen a movie filled with so many damn creepers in it. And everybody just went along with the creepers, without mentioning the fact that they were clearly the creepiest creepers who ever creeped!

And on the way home, Kari and I were convinced the bus driver was going to kill us all. The PA system crackled and in a super-creepy and wheezy voice, informed us that the bus was past Tukwila Boulevard or something. Then he kept randomly stopping the bus on the side of the road for a few moments in random, completely dark areas and we kept having these “Oh my God, where the hell are we? Are we going to die?!!” moments every time it happened. I kept seeing a stereotypical horror movie play out in my head. The driver would slowly get up from his seat and turn to face the passengers. Perhaps a large scar would grace his face. And then we’d all effing die and that would be the beginning of the horror film. We’d be dead before the title even showed.

He also blew right past a group of teenage girls standing at the bus stop despite the fact that bus is the only bus that stops at that stop. It may have been the luckiest thing that ever happened to him because I’m surprised I made it out of there alive.

1. I’m trying to decide between a brand new 27″ iMac (the one with the 2.8GHz i7 processor) and a refurbished MacBook Pro (17″, antiglare, 3.06GHz Core 2 Duo) and wasn’t sure if a 27″ screen is too huge for the space I have. Another post is in the works about this. ↩
2. Klaus (aka Ambs) says: ………….. if someone’s like “THERE IS NO TEQUILA,” that means there is rum. ↩

I Think It Says Something About Me That I Immediately Went to the Internets for Help Instead of Finding Out What Was Going On

Um. There is a crazy man I’ve never seen before in my life in my yard with a chainsaw.

And my pear tree is missing.

Update:

Um. So. Apparently my dad¹ hates pears.

So he found a hobo on the street.

Handed him a chainsaw.

And was like, “Hey, man, go to town. Also, have some bacon.”

And now the man with the chainsaw is screaming, “YEEEEEEAAAAAAHHHHH!” every time he revs that shit up.

It sounds like an episode of CSI: Miami up in this bitch.

I wish my life was boring.

1. I get my GENES from this man. How freaking scary is that? ↩

Can One Even BE Douchier?

Cynthia Davis, a state representative from (shocker) Missouri, opposes subsidizing school lunches for low-income children because, and I quote, “[h]unger can be a positive motivator.”

She continues, suggesting that if kids just get jobs at McDonald’s then they will receive free food on their break.

I pretty much hope that the 20% of children considered hungry in Missouri go and eat her.

Ms. Davis neglected to mention when her hunger strike will begin so she can get motivated to resolve the hunger issue in her state. She also avoided the question of how she manages to sleep at night.

Colbert is amazing, as per usual:

Customers Suck

Okay, I understand people find the holiday season stressful. I also understand that people find the prospect of being snowed in stressful.

However, this does not mean you can throw a shopping basket at me when I tell you that the Transformers DVD that is on sale today (or, rather, Saturday when this happened) will not be on sale tomorrow, even if you put it on hold at guest services.

Yes, I’m serious. A “guest” threw a shopping basket at me because he was supposedly freaking out whilst trying to find provisions, but apparently had enough time to pick out a Transformers DVD set.

Everybody is freaking out because they think they’re going to lose power. Everybody is foraging for food. You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake.

After I told him he wouldn’t get the sales price, he started going off and spewing a bunch of nonsensical bullshit:

1. “I’ve been living here for 30 years and…” (So what? My store hasn’t even been there for 35 years.)
2. “I’m ex-military and…” (Is that a threat?)
3. “I’ve been to three stores trying to get provisions and I don’t need this right now!” (Dude, you’re buying ping pong balls. How is that helping your search?)

Then he threw the basket at me. I backed up into the corner of my little register section and he began yelling at me to not freak out on him because he “doesn’t need this right now.”

I informed him he couldn’t attack me and that pissed him off. He said he wasn’t attacking me, to get better customer service skills, and that his generation had to deal with “it” and so I have to as well.

Excuse me? Your generation wasn’t typically known for throwing things at shop girls.

After I give him his receipt and run away, I get sort of freaked out. When someone’s in my face, I don’t really back down. I finally found my manager, who I normally hate, and she went over with security and kicked him out of the store.

This is where it got interesting: He started rambling about being ex-military and war and some incident in Germany and whatnot.

Here’s the thing: he was only about 35, max. There is no way he was ever in a war in Germany. And again I say, so what? What does Germany have to do with throwing a basket at me?

Bastard.

Wikipedia and Self-Induced Nightmares

One of my favourite webcomics, xkcd, is exactly right about the problem is Wikipedia. I can’t be the only one who has lost hours when clicking through random pages about Brazilian soda brands and oil reserves after looking up Queen Ranavalona I.

Sometimes, I’ll end up reading up on all the really grisly things that scare the hell out of me. Such as plane crashes. I’ve figured out a way I could manage to visit every single country on the planet, should I want (and be able to afford) to, without ever having to step foot on a plane.

You have no idea how happy this makes me. I like my forms of transportation firmly attached to Earth in one way or another.

Sure, sure, I’ve heard all the arguments. The number one most quoted is you’re more likely to die in a traffic accident than in an plane crash. That means nothing to me because 1) I never learned to drive, 2) I’m not particularly fond of cars anyway, 3) I’m betting a lot more people drive every day than get on a plane, and 4) it happens to somebody–so why not me?

Then sometimes I end up reading about the most prolific serial killers in history.

And other times I’ll just end up reading about The Ring. The American version¹ scared me. It probably didn’t help that I first heard about it because they filmed some it at a (Christian!) summer camp I used to go to as a kid in a cabin that already had various murderous stories associated with it. Plus, that child frightens me. Once, several years ago on my ancient Dell laptop², everything I was typing into my computer was appearing backwards (siht ekil tsuj) and I was convinced Samara was going to pop out of my screen and kill me.

My fears are completely irrational, I know.

I really know how to induce nightmares in myself which is why it’s good I’ve recently learned that I Can Has Cheezburger is a cure for nightmares. True facts.

Now if only I knew how to tear myself away from Wikipedia.

1. Actually, I find Sadako in Ringu to be more terrifying than Samara. The look in her eyes is particularly terrifying. ↩
2. This was pre-OS X conversion, clearly–though I was lusting after PowerBooks at the time, but when you have a crap Dell laptop with broken hinges and a 400 MHz processor, anything above 1.0 GHz looks so sexy it becomes difficult to breathe. ↩

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