the only thing worse
than bad memories
is no memories at all..
[dismemberment plan]
12.30.2005
A Quick Trip to Barnes and Noble.
Yesterday, upon the insistence of my dad to go to the bookstore and try to "figure out what I want to do with the rest of my life" (the dreaded phrase of all 20-somethings with few solid plans for the future), I took a little trip to Barnes and Noble and purchased a few books.
I carried my two books to the register where a friendly gray-haired broad took them in her grisled hands to ring up.
To my horror, she held them up to her bespectacled face, one by one, scrutinizing the cover and looking at my face, back and forth. "Mmm-hmm, mmm-hmm," she muttered, between glances.
Can I just digress for a moment and say to all of you retail people out there that inspecting a customer's purchases is perhaps one of the most embarrassing, dickheaded things you can do? For instance, I was on the verge of a panic attack when I was at Duane Reade one day buying lube, pantiliners, and anti-farting medicine not too long ago (a.k.a. most embarrassing shopping experience ever), and I kept trying to decide whether to avoid eye contact with the cashier or to just bolt out of the store. Having a 16-year-old Duane Reade cashier with hair extensions and acrylic fake nails exchanging giggly glances with a co-worker about my generic anti-gas pills is one of those things that makes me want to kick an infant like a field goal.
Anyway, this was, at least, a well-intentioned gray haired lady, so I really can't hold it against her. Plus, it's not like I was buying anything completely mortifying like Scat-Play: a Beginner's Guide to Shitting on Your Loved One or So You Have Hemmorhoids: Living with an Engorged Anus or whatever. Well, not this time, anyway.
The lady took the book, looked at the cover carefully, slightly nodding her head with each word of the title she read. She then slowly looked at me, with a "oh, you poor soul" look on her face.
"I like it," she said, reaching out to pat my hand. "Yeah, um, it looks like an interesting read," I replied politely, looking around to see if there was anyone staring. There was. I started to gather my typical nervous mustache of sweat that appears when I am in uncomfortable social situations.
Again, she took the book, scrutinized the title carefully, this time nodding her head animatedly. She grinned widely, holding the book up and waving it around to show everyone around us the cover in an "Ah-ha!" moment of realization.
"Ahh. Ah, NOW it all makes sense. I see now. Ha! Ha! Ha!" she said, as she laughed like The Count on Sesame Street ("One! Two! Three bats! Ah! Ah! Ah!"). "Yes, I guess it all follows a pattern," I said, sighing with a tired smile.
"Well, good luck with all of that," she said, wrinkling her nose while peering at me over her glasses, another classic pitying "you poor thing" look.
"Thanks."
I looked behind me and saw a tired, frazzled, fat, middle-aged woman holding the grubby hands of her three preschool-aged children (who had shortly before been chastised for running around, screaming, and throwing romance novels at each other). Even SHE shook her head in pity and gave me a look that said, "Well, I don't envy YOUR life."
I took my bag of purchases, went to my car, and drove away.
Later, when I was driving home, I looked back and glanced into the backseat at the other several books I'd taken out at the public library earlier that day, along with a "lawyer-ish" DVD I had taken out as well, in hopes that it would lend me some valuable career guidance:
I drew this of my familia to send over to our relatives over in Korea. That way, we don't have to send them actual photos, so they will never know how aesthetically unremarkable we are in real life! We haven't seen them in about... 15 years!
Well, that is sad.
Happy Holidays!
<3
* * * * *
Edit: I just want to make the disclaimer that the "I love you all" at the beginning of this post is NOT a reference in any way to Kevin Federline(Mr. Britney Spears)'s rapidly-circulating, super-cheesy MySpace holiday bulletin post which reportedly reads:
"... I love you all. The ones that Love and the ones that Hate. The ones that Fight and those who Bite.
My first single "PopoZao" is dropping at midnight on New Year's Eve...check it out EXCLUSIVELY on yahoo.com
And don't forget to check out my website: www.kevinfederline.com
It's YOUR world people and I'm just living in it! Kevin"
Note: Disclaimer about my site's disappearance/reappearance can be found here below.
Some of you, in a fit of bored desperation I can only assume, took my advice and went to my ultra-crappy Friendster (shudder) blog entitled "The Creepster Watch," which chronicles my day-to-day encounters with random creeps.*** Here's the latest:
Creep #12: Porn Star Mustache at 14th Street ACE Station
Backstory: I have a cold. My throat is sore and my voice is gone, lost behind a plug of mucus (hot, yes?).
This morning, I was walking down to the L transfer at the 14th Street ACE station, when I *felt* this presence behind me. I didn't turn around immediately and just kept walking, but sure enough, this 6'3"ish man with crazy unabomber hair and a thick porn star 'stache was flanking me.
"Ko-ni-chi-wa-na."
The motherfucker couldn't even say "konichiwa" right.
Apparently, he knew it was wrong, because he tried again:
"Ko-ni-chi-ni-wa."
I didn't stop walking and I didn't even look at him, even with his eyes drilling holes into the side of my head, so he grabbed my shoulder and said, "Hello, you are very beautiful. What country are you from?"
I removed my shoulder from his hand, then pointed to the general area of my mouth and throat and shook my head, indicating that I had lost my voice.
He nodded dumbly with a big plastic smile on his face.
"Konichinowa," he said, failing once more. He nodded again, with an exaggeratedly encouraging look on his face that preschool teachers use with their students when they're learning the goddamn alphabet.
Apparently, he thought that my pointing to my mouth meant something along the lines of "HELLO, MISTER WHITE MAN. I CANNOT SPEAK ENGLISH. I AM AN IMMIGRANT/FOREIGNER AND DO NOT KNOW ANYTHING BUT MY NATIVE LANGUAGE. PLEASE SPEAK TO ME IN A PATRONIZING MANNER AND MAKE ME LOOK STUPID IN FRONT OF EVERYONE WHO IS STARING AT US."
He said, again, "What country you from?" this time speaking -- much more slowly -- complete with vague hand gestures and pointing at me when he said the word "you," as though I were a deaf retard.
With as much effort as I could muster, I tried to say loudly and directly, "Hello, sir, I am sick and have lost my voice. Apparently, you incorrectly believe that I have poor command of the English language and, quite unfortunately for me, find it adorable. I would politely like to recommend that you desist your advances immediately LEST I KNEE YOU IN THE TESTICLES, good day sir!"
but unfortunately, the only thing that came out of my mouth was "Haaaaaaallo" and painful hissing noises from my throat.
"Let me guess," he continued, encouraged by my frantic hissing. He took a good look at my annoyed, sweaty face. "Hm. Korea?" Motherfucker just wouldn't quit! "Ah. Ahn-yong-ha-sey-yo." Miraculously, the man roughly got out "Hello" in Korean.
I smiled and nodded with an expression that said, "Great! Good job! Now fuck off!" but I suppose that was instead taken as "Sir, I find your attempts to communicate with an ignorant Oriental villager like myself to be quite pleasurable and amusing. Please continue this humiliating one-sided conversation and make asses of us both!"
"I staying at hotel on West Side," he shouted loudly, still thinking I was some kind of foreign deaf/mute. I really don't understand why people speaking to foreigners start talking in fucked-up English and omit verbs and random articles at will. "You want get coffee with me?" he said, making appropriate motions of tilting a cup towards his mustache and bringing both his palms towards his chest when he said "me."
I shook my head as hard as I could. I was almost at the L train transfer since I hadn't stopped walking the entire time. "NO THANKS," I mouthed, as the sound of a gay man's fart came out of my face.
"Oh, you going to home, then? Can I treat you to something to eat when we get to your home?"
Wait a minute. When did we make plans for him to COME TO MY HOME? Did I miss something here?
"Do you have CELL PHONE?" he shouted loudly, making an unfolding motion with his hands and holding his palms up to his face like a large, meaty phone. "Can I call you to take you out in afternoon before big flight on airplane to California? Yes? Possible? Is it possible?"
At this point, my head was swiveling around at the people who were nearby in disbelief. Didn't anyone else see this fucking hairy Big Bird-like dude practically an inch away from my face, yelling at me like a deaf retard? Didn't anyone notice that he was trying to lure what seemed to be a deaf/mute immigrant to his hotel room for "coffee"? Didn't anyone else see that this mustached creep was most likely some kind of sex tourist, the type who calls 900 numbers to get "escorts" to play ping pong with his balls while watching CHiPS reruns on TNT? Didn't anyone else see the tiny stuffed Tigger keychain dangling on his luggage and think that was totally gay?
In any case, no one looked twice at this horny giant except for this snarky looking young Asian girl whose contorted face read as "How come this creep isn't making inappropriate advances toward ME? I'm HOT." in typical catty Asian female form (that's a whole other story I could write about all day), and until Flailing Big Bird Mustache Man saw that I made eye contact with an MTA employee (e.g. a man wearing a bright orange vest sweeping the floor and making much more money than you or I, most likely) did he finally pull the reigns and suddenly say, "Okay! Bye!" and ran out the nearest exit.
I got home, took a long shower to wash away the warm cloud of halitosis and the shoulder full of creep-germs he'd left on me, and considered making a t-shirt that reads, "No, I am not a deaf Oriental retard. I just have a bad cold. Fuck you."
*** Yet another disclaimer: Yes, I DO realize that pretty much anything in the city with two legs and a face will get comments from men, and No, these posts aren't supposed to indicate that I think I'm the "hottest shit ever" and that I live some kind of tragic life of homeless guys wanting to eat tacos off my legs.
That said, I do think a lot of these encounters with total creeps happen way too often and are way too funny to pass up on. Yes?
So it's finals week here at school, so of course I am spending all of my valuable study time on the important things like... fixing my website.
First of all, thank you to everyone who sent me emails and IM's asking me what the fuck happened.
Secondly, here's the short explanation of why I had to take the site down momentarily: I SUCK.
I wrote a craaaaapload of posts about those who are close to me and, though I've never considered this to be a *private* blog to be kept a secret in the least, I definitely wrote some fucked up shit that no one would want to read about themselves. And yes, I am sorry.
So I've taken some time to take down the not-so-considerate posts, and though I will always find it funny when my mom says something totally off-color or if my dad says something totally in Engrish, I will definitely be much more responsible in the way that I write about it.
K???!?!?
That said, I still have a whole lot to fix on this site. I want to eventually move it off of Blogger (sorry guys) and onto something like Moveable Type or some shit, and I also want to fix the nearly 5 years worth of comments hosted on YACCS that are constantly disappearing because of some archiving problem which is not of my own doing.
If anyone wants to help me with this, let me know. Otherwise, I'll be sitting here twiddling my thumbs and silently forming an ulcer whilst thinking of all the schoolwork I gotta do.
[Peek-a-Foo]
