Let Me Get You The Appropriate Form For That

Today, like many weekdays that preceded it, found me sitting at my desk pondering what to do for the mid-day foodings. The obvious choice for those of us who are hungry enough to get up, but not quite hungry enough to move further than mission range from the office toilet, is the coffee cart directly outside the office building.

At this fine choice of walking-distance dining establishments one can find all manner of sandwiches, soups, candies and various disgusting older women stuck on a middle rung of some corporate ladder. It's this combination of unhealthy food options, coupled with unsavory clientele that led the the scenario that I witnessed while I was waiting for some purple acai sludge bowl to be whipped up for me.

A woman of roughly 25 years my senior, with both the physical shape and outfit choice of blueberry Violet from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory came up to the cart with a wadded up napkin in her hand.

Whaddya got there?

Silly hipster that manages the cart

"What can I help you with, ma'am?"

Orbularia, queen of the orb secretary people

*unwraps napkin*

"I bought this Snickers bar here just a little bit ago, and...well...as you can see something's wrong with it on the inside."

Editorial Aside:
What in god's name did she find in there? Spiders? Pebbles? Fetuses? We'll never fucking know.

"I'm sorry about that, please help yourself to another one."

"Just take another one?"

"Yes, go right ahead."

"Thank you."

She walked away from the cart, and in a world where humans evolve into creatures of increasing intelligence, that would have been the end of it. Sadly, it wasn't.

*After returning to cart with both napkin and fresh candy bar in hand*

"What do you want me to do with this?"

*Indicating half-eaten candy bar of AIDS in napkin*

"I'm sorry, what's that?"

"What do you want me to do with this now?"

"I'll take that..."

*Proceeds to throw it away, like a rational person, despite the nonsensical beard*

What the hell did you think the options for your half-eaten candy bar were, that you had to come back and confer with him on what the appropriate course of action was? Dear god, woman.

After her orbit took her far away from the cart, I told the hipster gentlemen that this is how the conversation should have taken place:

*unwraps napkin*

"I bought this Snickers bar here just a little bit ago, and...well...as you can see something's wrong with it on the inside."

"I'm sorry about that. It's probably just the universe's way of telling you to cut that shit out. Lord knows you don't any more encouragement to maintain your obvious peak physical condition, but please help yourself to another one if you'd like."

"What do you want me to do with this now?"

"OK ma'am, I'm going to give you Mars candy official form 22W 'Requisition form for replacement candy bar under condition of Snickers bar containing unsavory bits'. You're going to need to fill out and send this form, along with the remaining candy bar you didn't voraciously tear though, to the Mars corporation via certified mail. In 6-8 weeks you should hear back from the candy master about his findings, and potentially also receive a check for $0.75, which you can then apply towards a replacement candy bar, or add to your existing liposuction surgery fund. "

"What in god's holy name do you think you should do with the refuse you chewed on? We live in a society here, you beast. How did you manage to live this long lacking such basic knowledge? When you go to work, you put your muumuu on. When you take a shit, you flush it. When you're done eating some trash, you put what's left in the garbage."

"Now move on, you sicken me."

Public Transit: Paddywagon O' Crazy

Reminded by a friend recently moving to a new city, and having to rely on public transit to shuffle him to and from his job, I flashed back to just a few years ago when I, too, relied on the moving petri dish that is public transit. Akin to Vietnam, it brought back horrible, awful, smelly memories.

I'm sure many of you haven't ridden on a major-metropolitan transportation system before, but despite the many glaring downfalls and drawbacks to the system, it's really not as bad as you think it would be. Sure it took me two hours to traverse the same distance I could cover in a car in 20 minutes, but where's the fun in that?

Public transportation isn't JUST about a cheap and painfully slow means to get anywhere you want to go, but really it's about the sights, smells and sounds you take in while en route to your destination. There's a venerable cornucopia of freaks, degenerates, foreigners, losers, social outcasts, disease infested carrier monkeys, people with only few functioning body parts, people with MORE functioning body parts than the rest of us, gang-bangers (in both the guns, and herpes varieties), prostitutes, drunks, crazies and should-be-shots, that all call the bus their ride.

Granted, I've never used public transportation in any other city, but I imagine that southern California's city bus experience is second to only places such as New York or Paris. Although many of you perhaps have not ridden on a city bus before, I'm sure the normal rules of the bus aren't foreign to anybody. There's three simple, and easy to follow rules that are posted on all buses and trolleys, probably in every city in the world:

What many don't realize however, is that these three are not the only rules that govern public transit etiquette.

Nay.

These three were just widdled down from a much larger list of do's and do not's for riding successfully and correctly. Through many months of careful observation, and a few leaked internal memo's, I've been able to track down the full list of rules.

		If you're too old and crippled to live without assistance, and you are barely (just barely) mobile...then the bus and all it's boarding procedures are right for you. Yes, there are approximately three steps required to getting on and off the bus, but you shouldn't be able to do any of them without everyone helping you. Ideally it should take you between 2-3 minutes, compared to everyone else's 10 seconds, to get on the bus and move 4 feet to the seats meant for old people. In a perfect world, you'd be so crippled that any steps at all are beyond your scope of operations, so that the bus has to deploy its little ramp/lift thing to hoist you up 16 inches, all so you can go to the Ralph's three blocks away, get some diapers, and do the whole process over again on the return journey.
		You must be this fat *hand estimation of ginormous* in order to get the full effect out of riding the bus. If the heavy duty air suspension of the bus has to give way, leading to it listing to one side as you board, that'd be great. And please have an ass so fat that you can't fit down the aisle between seats on your marathon to the back of the bus. Don't let this discourage you from attempting to and brushing everyone's shoulder with your ass-lard on the way, however. You couldn't get out of your house without a special door being installed, but don't give a second thought about trying to squeeze into the bus.
		Under no circumstances is any one to use the rear doors of the bus. There are two sets of doors on the bus, so that entering and exiting can take place at the same time; but it's far better if everyone uses the front doors concurrently, resulting in a time wasting clusterfuck for all parties involved. Even if you're near the rear, take the extra time to walk to the front so that the people waiting to get on have to wait just that much longer. Any amount of time wasting is appreciated.
		While some people may prefer to sit with the person they wish to communicate on the bus with, it's preferred that you sit so far apart that it would warrant using two cups on a string to communicate. Just go ahead and shout your poorly-constructed, and idiotic conversation through as many people as required to speak to your friend who chose to sit six seats away. Silence may be golden everywhere else, but you should try your best to fill the bus with your important conversation about purchasing stamps. Or that old chestnut "Shandra had her baby this weekend and it was totally cute, and as soon as she determines who the father is, she'll be able to afford a crib".
		You know what the best place to practice your dope-fresh rhymes is? The city bus. Your crazy, silly, whack-ass, bomb, sick, shit-dope, retarded rhymes, that 're are totally off the chain are great, and everyone knows it. What better place to free-style rap about your hard-knock, white, suburban, teenage, middle-class life than within earshot of 20 other mostly silent riders on a city bus. Nod your head to the invisible and silent beats as you come up with asinine after asinine limerick, about your life; which I'm sure is worthy of many MTV documentaries about. Sure the buses may not have a radio for our listening enjoyment, but surely you can do us all a favor and fill the silence with the majesty of your songs.
		While shirts and shoes may be required for service in any normal establishment, they merely hinder normal bus operations. Ideal candidates for bus/trolley travel will have the top half of a shirt on (so that it looks like some shitty version of a midriff shirt, if they were made by wolverines), three or four pairs of layered pants on, all of which are sagging and being generally worn improperly, and shoes made out of trash bags. The purpose of this glorious wardrobe decision is so that their bloated, distended, sun burnt belly can hang out freely and become both a source of disgust and puzzlement for all passengers on board.
		Sanitation is a good practice for most people. By most people I mean those that don't ride the bus. It's your civic duty as a public transportation passenger to reek of as many disgusting and confusing odors as possible. If I can properly identify what the fuck you smell like or I'm not breathing through my mouth as a last defense, then your job isn't quite done. Piss yourself, have others piss on you, roll in some chemicals, and bake in the sun for a few hours then get back to us.
		Let's say for argument sake that you as a full-grown adult, for one reason or another, shit your pants. Great start to a story, I know, but let's continue with it. Your pants are full of loaf; what do you do now? Find the nearest restroom and attempt to salvage your pants? Quickly hide, and find a way home that involves the least amount of being seen? Kill yourself? The correct answer is, of course, get on the city bus and continue on your busy, shit-filled day. When you sit down, be sure to lean to one side at a steep angle so as to not sit directly on your own feces. But don't worry, no one will have to guess what you're doing as the smell of shit will be quite strong. Once you reach your destination, simply get up, and walk your stained pants out the front door, dragging as much smell with you as possible. Then just wander around aimlessly on the streets paying no mind to the nutty situation brewing down south.
		Be a grown-ass adult Get on the bus Get to seat Calmly sit down Begin weeping uncontrollably and loudly Make it so loud and powerful that people move away from you Mission accomplished
		Drinking when under 21 is generally frowned upon by most responsible adults. Drinking when under 13, however, is always a good idea as far as the bus is concerned. Don't let 'the man' tell you what you can and cannot do. You're 13 now goddamit and you make your own choices! That's why you drink the only beer manly enough for a 13 year old: Natural Ice. And you drink it at the back of the bus in plain site of all people. From the six-pack you carry around in your backpack. Which you probably bought from bullying milk money out of other 13 year-olds. No beer tastes as sweet as ill-begotten bus beer.
		Fare: Check. Idea of where you're going: Check. Shame: Check that shit at the door. One thing you may never bring with you on any public transportation medium is your sense of shame. For if one brought their shame with them, they might have reservations about dry humping their woman in the back row of the bus, while she's trying to restrain her child from climbing out the window. There's nothing wrong with public displays of erections.
		Not only can you get to your destination economically, but only on the city busses can you also get delicious chlamydia at the same time. It may be cold or hot outside, so the best and most comfortable environment for hookers to conduct business is, of course, on the bus. All the potential John's come right to you, and are trapped for long periods of time where you can entice them with a combination of dirty talk and that "cold sore" on your upper lip. Is that a shit or cum stain on my bus seat? Yes! Mixed together! "Hey baby. You want to watch me put this umbrella in my ass? Only $10."
		No one can understand your troubles and the issues affecting your life better than you. So who better to have a loud and borderline-violent conversation with about said issues than yourself? Fucking whore? I agree! My medication costs too fucking much? That's correct! Charlies in the trees? True that!
		Buses are tricky and sneaky urban beasts, and as such they can easily sneak right up on you. With this is mind, it's totally acceptable to wait until you're on board the bus to dig out and rifle through all your money to find your fare. Once you've dug out your money, feel free to argue with the bus driver over the fare you actually have to pay to get to where you need to go. It's a little known fact that each bus driver makes up the fare for their own bus, so there's plenty of room to haggle with them. When you agree upon a price, simply take the required bills and slowly and carefully force them into the bill receptacle, so that they bunch all up are aren't accepted. When the machine beeps and attempts to reject your bills...and it totally will if you fuck them up like you're supposed to...simply keep pushing them into until the bus driver has to do it for you.
		If you know where you want to go, but aren't sure how to get there, feel free to just hop on any bus. Once in motion simply ask the bus driver about all the other routes, and what it is you should do to get to where you want to go. It's best to not have the foresight to research what buses will take you where. Who has the time for all that noise, when you could just look like a a dipshit who doesn't realize there's 75 bus routes and maybe they don't all go to the Yarn Barn you want to get to. But in the grand scheme of things, this foresight is unnecessary as it's common knowledge that bus routes aren't rigid structures, and are instead open to your input and needs. Where you need to go is only three blocks off the normal route, so the bus driver will be happy to adjust his and everyone else's needs so that you might get to where you're going with the least amount of walking.
		All children ride the buses for free, so go ahead and crank them shits out! 2, 3, 6, 15 kids, the more the better! And whatever you do, don't sit with or have any control over your spawns. It's best that they freely roam around the bus under their own guidance, and take up as many seats as possible by laying in them and climbing on them. With as cheap as it is to load all the screaming, misbehaving kids up into a city bus, there's simply no reason to not have 15 of the fuckers. If you can get 50% of them crying and/or pulling the cord to stop the bus, you can also ride for free! Everybody wins!
		You see those people on the bus that look pregnant? Don't be fooled...they're not. Whatever is brewing inside of them that allows them to maintain the physique of a woman harboring an eight pound larva inside, is strictly a lifestyle choice they've made. Is she an alien incubator? Is it a giant tangled web o' tape worm colony? Perhaps storing things in her snatch is cheaper than a purse? No one can say for sure, and we'd all be truly horrified if we actually found out. But no matter what's causing her physical distortion, the point is, don't feed her. Whether it's worms or tiny Mexicans being smuggled across the border, feeding her will only exacerbate the problem.

Explaining the Unexplainable: People of Wal-Mart

For those that may not know, the eugenics movement in the United States was, in brief synopsis, a movement to improve the quality of societal members in future generations by sterilizing certain "unfit" groups of people to prevent dissemination of their genes. Several states adopted eugenics legislation, which was seen as a good idea...until the Nazis came along and showed them the unhappy end effect of believing certain groups of people are inherently better than others.

Silly me believing what I read, I assumed that eugenics (apart from genetic engineering) was pretty much dead in the United States. However, after starring in bewilderment at countless photos on peopleofwalmart.com, I'm forced to conclude that eugenics is alive and well. And that Wal-Mart operates as a identification and collection area for the dredges of society; an incorporated leper colony designed with the express intent to draw in the lake-monsters living in the general populous, in order to force mandatory sterilization upon them. What else could it be?

The photos I found on the site so confounding and perplexing on many levels, that no matter how much logic I applied to them, I could not suss out how the situations photographed came to be knowingly actualized in the real world.

Given that I could not come up with rational explanations for any of the photos, I instead must now force upon them the only irrational, but still conceivable, scenarios that led up their existence.

In the foreign world of far-eastern spice trading, little is known of the western world. However, this gentleman was given, possibly in exchange for some fennel or mace, a 1980s American workout VHS tape. The culture shock was immediate and jarring; forcing this sole proprietor to give up his trade and seek out the cultural home of his new-found idol.

In a truly tragic turn of events, a shoeless, diaper-wearing sky diver failed to check the structural integrity of their harness; resulting in the ultimate failure of their parachute system. The crucial system was jettisoned from the unfortunate soul, who proceeded to crash through the roof of a local Wal-Mart; landing directly on top of an unsuspecting shoe shopper trying on a pair of size 7's.

While traditionally native to Venezuela and other South American nations, this capybara was not dissuaded by geography. Unbelievable deals on Cheetos and housewares forced this particular capybara to trek the thousands of miles required to live the sweet, sweet economic dream it had longed for. The purple harness is just to restrain is from consuming all tremendous deals in its vicinity.

Like a modern day Noah of biblical times, this blessed elder woman was given lordly knowledge of an impending catastrophe. Instructed by the lord up high to prepare for a deluge that would wipe all the unworthy from the earth, Betty water-proofed her most precious and holy cotton candy pile by affixing it to her head, wrapped in a flood-proof plastic sack.

What may seem horribly, horribly off-putting at first glance, is actually a true tale of heroism. By some unexplained mechanism, a new-born infant had become trapped inside the blood pressure testing machine. This burly and brave man, seeing that no one else was capable of helping the starving infant, offered up his lactating and bologna flavored man-boob to satiate the poor child.

Clearly this man just finished a rigorous cardiovascular workout routine, and is re-hydrating whilst regaining his composure after engaging in his very active lifestyle.

Initially it looks as though, through some unimaginable series of events, this woman managed to put a shirt, socks, and shoes on whilst still neglecting to wear pants of any sort. The truth is that she had a pair of legitimate pants on, but narrowly escaped a run in with kodiak bear in the parking lot; where her pants were the only casualty. Being the trooper that she is, she didn't let this altercation impede her from buying cleaning supplies.

Not an out of the ordinary situation: you're at home, pantsless, and you get that dire call that forces you to rush to Wal-Mart to look at posters of the cast of Jersey Shore. In your haste to get to the poster before they're all nabbed up, the only pants you find are a pair belonging to your 8 year-old, daddy-less, daughter. 1 tub of Crisco and 2 confusingly individual butt-cheeks later, you've successfully donned the pants and away you go. Happens all the damn time.

In the 1960's a government experiment known as the Philadelphia project used theories from Nikola Tesla to allow inter-dimensional / time-travel via advanced electromagnetic properties. One of the unintentional outcomes of this experiment was the arrival of the traveler spotted in this photo; hailing from a time and place where she was paradoxically at the Wal-Mart before donning her shirt.

What originally appears to be a total fashion mystery at a cursory glance, makes more sense when viewed through the eyes of an economist. Installment plans allowed for this uniquely disadvantaged person to purchase the first third and last third of their pants, while paying for the middle third on a schedule that fits their particularly crippling budget.

At first glance, the average user might be confused into thinking this retail-dweller is nothing more a shambly wildebeest, desperate for attention and fuel for her diabetes. But nay. What you are actually witnessing is a resourceful innovator, doing some real-world tests of her latest pragmatic invention: "Soul Pants". Acting as a window into the soul, and very akin to the mood rings of the early 90s, this device allows everyone to see the cognitive desires the wearer.

Actually, I'm not even sure why this one is here; it's not that confusing. This is just a photo of two of the newest cyborg door greeters being employed by Wal-Mart; prior to being activated. Although, I can see how people might have been confused into thinking it was possibly two fuck-heads in plastic outfits and duct tape costume heads.

L&L Hawaiian BBQ Arboricultural Lesson

Knowledge ascertained from a combination of:

1. Rudimentary arboriculture factoids
2. Witnessing several patrons of said restaurant

Like a tree, if it were not for the fact that the roots underneath Hawaiian people are as big as the leviathan ordering pork katsu themselves, they would simply fall down.

Simply too massive and resource-intensive to stand unsupported while only gaining nutrients through their mouth holes, it's just science that they rely on an extensive underground root network to hold them up and fuel all their cells. It's also speculated that they may have iron cores, although, as of yet, probes haven't detected the presence of a magnetic field surrounding Hawaiians.

And a good day to you, tuberous sir. I hope your Kalua pork is finding you well.

Buffet Logic

I would like to share some rules / regulations / logic that I recently gleaned from patrons at the Wal-Mart of restaurants; Sizzler.

• An entire plate filled with croutons, then covered in ranch dressing, is an appropriate meal for human beings.
• Kids over 200lbs eat free.
• Sizzler is a fine establishment where one can order wine. Wine that most certainly does NOT come out of a bag inside of a box.
• 1 plate of salad = healthy
  17 plates of salad = 17 times as healthy
• There's a direct correlation between the number of Micky Mouse / Hello Kitty articles of clothing you wear, and the number of kids you're attempting to feed off your one purchased plate.
• Nacho cheese is the healthiest substance on earth, so it doesn't reflect poorly upon you if you ladle it on to everything
• The sneeze-guard is great for mitigating the foods exposure to you while you stand and breath heavily in awe of the tub of French dressing. But it's completely powerless against you resting your bulbous gut on the buffet shelf, smearing sauces like a hairy finger-painting apparatus.
  
  
  
• You could replace any of the decorative jars of pickled vegetables that are festooned around the buffet with a formaldehyde jar containing demons / body parts, and it'd be weeks before anyone noticed.
  
  
  
• Kids are totally sanitary; cleaner even than a dog's mouth. So it's proper health etiquette for them to finger all the bread rolls and ice cream toppings.
• If you can't find a ladle for your salad dressing of choice, it's OK to use the one from the next tub over. Others enjoy the very real pleasure that only a salad dressing "suicide" mixture can provide. 

Sizzler is damn tasty, but now I must go and be tested for foodborne leprosy and diabetes.

Food Makes Me Fat

Food is so tasty, no question about that. What is in question is the amount of degradation in both attractiveness and physical well-being that occurs when I, invariably, shovel way too much in. I call the transformation that occurs from this Jeremy Clarkson Syndrome; or simply JCS, which can be easily illustrated here:

Characterized cheifly by the following symptoms:

• Bloated, distended, sun-burnt gut
• Feeling like death inside

Wal-Mart shopper appearance and smushing of all other internal organs aside, the torso-development isn't entirely negative. Allow me to illustrate with an image enhancement sequence.

 If we enhance the last frame using all the greatest CSI technology available to modern-man, the following becomes revealed:

The otherwise disgusting protrusion is easily revealed to contain a rainforest-esque ecosystem. Due to the large size and associated gravitational pull, a warm and rainy climate develops around the belly. This, in turn, supports the life cycles of a large swath of colorful forest creatures.

The upper emergent layer, clearly visible with the tree-tops, supports many colorfully and vocally loud birds. The juicy canopy layer is perfect for a whole host of tree-frogs and (not visible) sloths. The delicate understory provides shelter for various fluffy primates that live off the grubs and fruits found in the lower layers.