She was threatening to go home which, as understaffed as that workplace was, would have been a disaster for the day’s work, so I decided to share with her an old trick; I would show her how to make a home made heating pad.

Stomach Ache

The process was simple. First, I sent her to the store on her break to fetch a small bag of uncooked rice. Next, I took a sock (It was a second-hand store, there were an abundance of widowed socks) and filled it with said rice, tying it securely off. Third, I microwaved it until it was sufficiently warm.

I gave it to Lee with these specific instructions:

• Never microwave it for more than a minute at at time.
• Never microwave it for more than two and a half minutes altogether.
• Always take it out and shake it before putting it back into the microwave, to test its temperature.
• Don’t leave it in the microwave unattended.

And in the end it looked somewhat like this:

Socky

I hand her the freshly warm sock and this advice. So what, readers, do you imagine the first thing she did was? Gratefully place it against her sore stomach? Grab a belly pack (again, thrift shop) and wear it with the sock snuggled inside? No. She shoves it into her pants.

So it’s gone from me hearing her complain about her pain (mainly on the plain), to hearing her make jokes about how, with the sock in her pants, it looks like she’s got a…well, it’s an easy joke. And a lame one. And she told it every chance she got.

But eventually, like all things, the sock cooled down. So Lee moved to the back room to reheat the sock. However, when she did so, she ignored all my specific instructions and placed it back into the microwave for a solid, uninterrupted two and a half minutes. The sock was already slightly warmed when she put it in, and I can imagine it was pretty scalding once it came out. But, because she didn’t shake it and check the temperature, she wouldn’t know that. Instead, she put it right back where she had it.

Welp, time to shove this in my pants.

Soon Lee was complaining of a new pain – a severe burning sensation. However, since she’d leapt right back into work, she had to help a line of customers before she could get back to the back room and pull the offending sock out. One might say, if she hadn’t stuck the thing in her pants to begin with, she wouldn’t have had that problem. I might also say it.

But the real punchline is not Lee’s burnt biscuits, but rather the fact that she went over my head to file an injury report about it. She was denied. Because it doesn’t take an HR genius to know that when you shove a hot object into sensitive places, you’re going to get burnt.

Have any of you heard of this thing called the “iPhone”? Well I guess these “iPhones” have weird little programs called “apps” and basically, from what I understand, this is a pretty good representative of such apps:

And that’s basically how I feel about iPhones.

In addition to being a stellar craftsman, Lee was also an amateur poet and writer! I remember like it was yesterday the sunny afternoon Lee pulled me aside and told me about the poem she was going to write. When it was completed, she intended to donate the poem to a local homeless shelter.

Actually, we’d rather have money

The poem was about how, if you really thought about it, like, tsk, love really is the only thing you need.

How original

“I mean,” she continued, “you can have all kinds of money and like, things, but if you don’t have love, it’s like…I mean, just being alive is a blessing, you know? I think the people at the homeless shelter will appreciate that.”

Hmm…actually, I’d rather have money.

Now, you know me. I do like to poke at bad concepts for songs and poems. But I figured here it was in everyone’s best interest to keep my mouth shut. And was I ever rewarded. Later that day, Lee pulled me aside again, and told me the story of a lifetime. She was going to write a book, she told me. She was going to write…a masterpiece.

Now this I really hesitate to share in case she finds it, but you know what? I can’t keep anything from you guys.

The book revolves round a couple in Germany. Why Germany? Why not. It’s before WWII (because she doesn’t want to have to “deal with all that.” I assume “all that” is “the Nazis” but they were definitely around before WWII so I’m not really sure what her point was.)

Basically a couple meet and fall in love and it’s perfect. They are high school sweethearts. Together they have their perfect wedding (her standing in a field, with wildflowers….I always thought it took more to make a wedding than that, but what do I know) and everything is great.

“I do!”

He’s a musician, and she’s a seamstress. They try having kids but it doesn’t seem to be working. At this point in her telling Lee looked at me earnestly and asked if I thought they “knew what infertile and fertile was back then.” I assured her that by this point they had decent doctors and institutions and electric light, they most assuredly knew what fertility was.

So they go to a doctor (” ’cause they’d have gone to like, doctors back then, I think,” she explained) and he tells them she’s infertile (assuming they know what that is of course).

But then, in a miraculous turn of fortune, SHE HAS A BABY AFTER ALL. Hooray!

But that baby is AUTISTIC and DEAF. Alas!

So they raise the daughter as well as they can, and she learns how to sew, and run the house, by watching her mother. This, for those of you unaware, is the opposite of autism. Autistic people don’t really have the ability to learn by watching. Moving on though, the mother then DIES OF HEART CANCER. In Lee’s pre-war Germany, doctors know about autism and cancer, but not fertility.

So it’s the inspirational story of a widower and his deaf autistic daughter who can run the home with him. Lee believes this kind of story, even though it’s unrealistic, will appeal to mothers of autistic children because “they’ll want to believe that kind of thing, you know, could happen with their kids.”

I’d almost worry about her writing this one day and it actually becoming a giant hit, but honestly, I don’t believe it will ever be written, just like her Etsy site will never be built and her poem will never be donated. Lee was a woman of ideas.

And some of her ideas would sometimes lead her astray…

(to be continued)

“Work” is one of those things everyone is all concerned about these days. People having jobs, people stealing jobs. I’ve been fortunate enough (if you will) to not be without an abundance of work. My current job is one of those jobs protected by “rights” and “acts” and “bureaus” so I won’t talk overmuch about it. However, it’s been a solid six months since my last job and I’m finally ready to DISH.

You know what the best part about a bad job is? Bad coworkers. Meet…uh…let’s call her “Lee.”

Pictured: not Lee

Lee is a woman 25 years old, but if you were to cut about eight years off her age, that’s how she behaves. I’d worry about her finding this and becoming angry, but I’m not 100% sure she’s totally literate. She likes arts and crafts, which, when I met her for the first time, I thought was great. I talked to her about sewing and craftwork. She described ambitious projects to me and I suggested she take them to Etsy.

She thought etsy was a great idea! In fact, she wanted to set up a booth at a fair to sell her homemade purses and bags and belts! She wanted to make her own store someday! I thought that was super ambitious of her, so I asked her to bring in one of her homemade purses. I expected something like this:

D’awww

What she brought in looked somewhat like this:

Is…is it finished?

Her “purses” were hollowed-out pillows, one with a big famous brand name on it, with tacky, mismatched, fraying strips of ribbon hand-sewed on for straps, and a big uneven square of even more mismatched cloth to be a flap, like a messenger bag. The stitches were large and uneven, with thread the wrong color so the sloppiness stood out.

I try and tactfully suggest things like, an iron to make the seams look a touch more finished, a sewing machine to make the stitches less embarrassing, some patters to teach her what the heck she’s doing. She says she can’t use an iron because she always burns and ruins what she irons, she can’t use a sewing machine because she doesn’t know how, and why would she want to? It’s the little imperfections that make a hand-made work more valuable.

So valuable

That may be true, but who can notice the little valuable imperfections when faced with HUGE GAPING ones?

And what kind of grown woman living away from home can’t iron without lighting things on fire? As I continued to work there, I got a clearer answer to that question…

Whoopsie daisy

1. A lightsaber

When I was a kid, this was the ultimate icon of being awesome. This weapon of the Jedi was only to be used by the capable, the talented, and, naturally, the awesome. Every kid thought that he could be that way too, if only he had one of these.

The problem, of course, is that, were it real, the lightsaber would be the most dangerous weapon one could wield. At least with a gun, you can be fairly certain the deadly part is facing away from you. With the lightsaber, it’s flailing all about your face, and getting hit means you lose a body part. Instantly.

And, while the new series may have made some parts of the Star Wars universe less awesome, lightsabers only got better.

Everything is better when doubled

2. A dinosaur

For some reason, it seemed every kid my age went through a dinosaur phase, where it was all we could talk about, or read about. It may have had to do with the fact that Jurassic Park came out during this period, and was oddly being marketed to kids, despite featuring lots of gory, dinosaur-related carnage.

Cuddly

But that didn’t matter. Most kids, especially kids that were smaller than the others, or maybe got picked on a lot (I was pure muscle and eight feet tall, this wasn’t a problem), wanted a dinosaur to be their best friend. Everyone would do what you said out of fear of being eaten. Bedtime was a thing of the past.

3. A Wise-Cracking Animal Sidekick

The dinosaur thing kind of fits in with this. As its been said, everyone is the hero of their own story. Being pumped full of Disney cartoons, I grew up with the assumption that all heroes had sarcastic animal friends who were quick with a song, joke, and eventual straight-to-video spinoff. So I never could understand where my sidekick was. I knew many animals as a child, and not one of them sang, or even had the voice of Nathan Lane. The only animals I could get to follow me around were the wasps whose nest I disturbed.

And their jokes are terrible

2. My Parents to Disappear

For some this may seem odd, but I know at least one person my age read that and went “Kevin!” No, not your brother. Though he may have stolen your car again.

Kevin!

One of the biggest hits of my childhood was Home Alone. This movie knew what kids wanted. Every kid deep down knows that he could take care of himself, if given the chance, and this movie proved it. Kevin not only learns to feed himself, and go shopping, but he also fends off two burglars, as inept as they may be. We could all do the same. In was inherent in our genes. We just needed to opportunity. If my parents had gone on vacation, accidentally leaving me behind, I knew that I could not only do as well as Kevin, but better. I knew it wouldn’t end with me crying in the corner the second the wind outside made scary noises. No, that only happens now.

1. Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Room

I don’t even feel the need to explain this one. I’m just going to show you.

Beautiful.

I’m not sure who I feel worse for in this video. But let that stand as a lesson. A kid can be anything he wants to be in life, even a single lady.

Seriously. Alvin and the Chipmunks weren’t even good as cartoons, why on Earth someone would make them live action and real chipmunk sized is beyond my fathoming. But that’s not my point today.

This is the song in question, for all of you viewing this website from a neighbor’s wifi under your rock.

I have a host of objections against this song. First, what is that weird squeaky noise? They accompanied this song with what sounds like an alarm clock underwater and then washed their hands of it. That’s all that is accompanying Beyonce’s voice! Angry boring drums and some weird sound effect over and over. I’m sorry, but Beyonce’s voice is just not strong enough to carry a song by itself…and I don’t think Pavarotti himself could have held his own accompanied by that weird zippy robot noise.

If someone were to bottle pure annoying, I think they’d find it could be crystallized in the form of that noise.

Or into this.

And the lyrics aren’t so great either. Let’s put aside the Buzz Lightyear quote for a moment and focus on the fact that she either refers to herself as “it” throughout the entire song, or she is under the impression her ex just really, really liked her ring finger. And, while the chorus scolds the ex boyfriend for not putting a ring on it, the bridge chides him for treating her to “things of the world,” because, “she’s not that kind of girl.”

…So did she want a ring or not?

Either way, I’m left scratching my head. Needless to say, I hated the recording the first time I heard it and I still do. It’s boring. It’s hard to listen to on account of there being nothing but Beyonce’s voice, weird noise, and drums. It’s insulting. I imagined there was nothing on this earth that could make me like it, not even a weird ill-fitting music video with a weird robot hand and chicken dance moves.

I was mistaken. Motown made me like it. Motown fixed this song. The people at Endless Noise decided that what this song was lacking was a band. Music. Something to accompany the vocals. Piano. Bass. Horns. Guitar. A band.

It just goes to show you: if your lyrics are crap and your melody can’t stand alone, don’t throw out the band. Motown’s got your back.

He was caught shoplifting some baseball caps, no doubt in order to update his look a bit.

Now no one will know how much I love the Cardinals

When store security stopped him, they discovered “injection devices” which I suppose were needles. But Robin, quick on his feet, tried to cover his tracks, assuring the officers that they were “for heroin.”

Realizing he may have put his foot in his mouth there, he recovered quickly by basically incriminating himself as deeply as he possibly could by apparently handing law enforcement all they could ever need to know about his criminal history. Presumably on a platter or other serving dish.

I guess it just hurts to finally come to terms with the man behind the legend. Oh well, Hood. Perhaps it’s about time he retired anyway.

And I shudder to think what their definition of fast would be.

But the point stands. The majority of the elderly are aware that they no longer move with their same youthful speed. So would it be so hard for them to get out of my way.

Say, for instance I am at the store. I have less than ten items, a fact which entitles me to my own lane. This makes the trip potentially much quicker, and I do not wish to bathed in fluorescent lights and muzak for longer than I have to be. Nothing in this world should prevent me from exchanging money for goods in a hurry – except for the elderly roadblock nice lady who has decided that her Metamucil can only be found in the middle of the aisle.

An easy solution presents itself. I could simply go around, correct? Simple enough, if I wanted to send an old person hurling to the floor faster than they’ve been able to walk in twenty years. What do you take me for?

You see, in addition to losing their ability to move at a reasonable speed, the elderly also tend to lose the ability to move in a straight line. They will weave left and right until they either bump into something or someone – and I don’t want to be that someone. Asking politely if you could slip by rarely works either, as that would require them to hear you, or, at the very least, give a young person a break.

Excuse me, ma’am…um…never mind.

But let’s not dwell on the unpleasant. Think for a moment: when driving on the Interstate, there’s a lane for people that wish to go slower, is there not? The choice is clear: an elderly grocery store lane.

Section off a part of every store aisle exclusively for the aged. This way, those who can move faster than a glacier will be able to get what they need quickly, and those who think the glacier needs to slow down a tad can meander towards the Tom Brokaw books. We can even add bumpers to the sides to protect against weaving.

And aid bowling

Of course, if we’re building separate lanes for people who are ticking me off:

You, Ms. Hurry Goesfast. There is nothing you have to get that will not still be there in two more minutes. This isn’t a catch your own rabbit store.

Though that would be AWESOME.

There’s no reason to bowl everyone over on your way to buy those q-tips. Ear wax is not a pressing issue. I hope. But whether you get it at sixty miles an hour or an actual human speed makes no difference. It will still feel all weird when you stick it in your head.

So, by pushing and shoving me out of the way, by cutting me off because you cannot wait one second for me to finish picking a candy bar, you’ve broken store etiquette. You can’t just cut someone off in the checkout lane. That’s like the real-world equivalent of…something…bad.

Pictured: something bad

So slow down people. Life’s too short to go racing through it after over-priced frivolities. And, speed up. And get off my lawn.

…But you know what? All these new, hip, updated versions of all my favorite Christmas songs has made me come to realize just how outdated those songs are – their old-fashioned lyrics and messages simply don’t mesh with the sexy modern treatment Christmas has been receiving. I mean, peace and love to mankind? Love and magic and family togetherness? Yeah, okay, grandpa, now tell us about vinyl records and hoola hoops and president Truman and buffalo nickles and powdered wigs and the Great Serb Migrations.

Okay, grandpa, nice stick guitar can we play Rock Band now?

So on this special day, I’d like to suggest to the public at large a few minor changes to old traditionals that might just help bring them up to the twenty-first century, okay? Bear with me now.

1. Frosty the Snowman.

So. A magic hat makes a snowman come to life. He dances around with some kids and then leaves, promising to come back some day.

Yaaaaaaaaaaaawwwwnnn.

Don’t be sad, Frosty. You’re just obsolete.

Picture this: Frosty comes to life, and leads all the children thumpity-thump-thump all the way to Wendy’s for a tasty Frosty with french fries. See? Just a little product placement can really take it places. Genius, I know. You can have that one for free.

They even make them in vanilla now too, so that’s ok

2. Santa Claus is Coming to Khol’s.

You better not save,
You better come buy
You better not wait, I’m telling you why,
Santa Claus is coming to Khols

He’ll see you when you’ve reached him
After a giant, crowded wait
He’ll advertise our discount racks
So spend for goodness’ sake!

As if Claus hadn’t sold out already

…Now that one, that one’s not free. I accept paypal payments.

3. Silent Night.

With a little tweaking, this song becomes the sad tale of a man who’ll never turn to Verison again for his mobile phone needs. Round yon Virgin Mobile more like!

Radiant signal from thy satelite…”

The list is as endless as imagination itself. This, as we know, is the season for receiving, and I think that includes receiving ideas and subsequent royalties. Greensleeves? Or Spend some Greensleeves. Do you hear what I hear? Or, did you hear what he bought?

I hope this season finds you all in appropriate spirits. I know I am! Merry Christmas!