I generally reserve my blogs for something that will find a giggle in someone’s day or some meaningless event that happened to me that I owed it to put pen to paper (metaphorically speaking) to share with whoever reads the nonsense I post.
Today, however I was emailed this link – http://www.sustaining.me – to a blog of someone who would have you believe he is educated. I mean, shit… line 3 of his pathetic little ranting gives self-proclamation to the very idea. I’m curious though as to what he’s actually attempted to educate himself on now that he’s sans a TV. Because what I find below is quite possibly the most ill-thought out 3-bullet point assessment of the liberties of Americans coupled with unfounded accusations. He has the right to think how he chooses – again, another right he is afforded by being a US citizen – but ignorance isn’t a right, it’s simply genetic make-up.
In the famous words of Ron White – You can’t fix stupid.
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Sustaining me
The blog of Jeremiah Joseph Hammer
Islam – It’s the New ‘Black’ at Ground Zero
I don’t watch TV, let alone own a TV, for 2 main reasons:
I have better things to do (like educating myself).
The content stinks.
I do read quite a bit though, and felt it important to weigh in on the ‘Ground Zero Mosque’ topic before all the major networks go back to stalking Lindsey Lohan.
I’ll lay this out as plainly as possible:
- If the organization building the Mosque legally purchased or has leased the property from the owner, and it meets all zoning requirements; then they have the same right to build there as any other person or entity who sought to lease or purchase and build at that location.
- If you do not believe they have a right to be there, then you support segregation.
- If you are angry at Muslims for wanting to build there, then you are a bigot.
How easily we forget what our fellow black Americans endured just over half a century ago.
No repita, por favor.
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Whew, thanks Jeremiah! We almost enslaved the all the Muslims living in America and ripped them of all their rights. What a gross-oversight that everyone else on the planet has made. Thank God you were here, to get us back focused on history not repeating itself.
Well it seems as if you are missing the point, now aren’t you Jeremiah. Yes, in our country urban development/planning isn’t based on religion solely. Because of those freedoms that this country allows its people, the mosque development will continue in a forward progression. As a matter of fact, there is defense to the mere idea of dictating where and how you can build as long as the builders have abided by the appropriate means of doing so.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg stated in regards to this very topic – “Should government attempt to deny private citizens the right to build a house of worship on private property based on their particular religion? That may happen in other countries, but we should never allow it to happen here.”
Fair enough Bloomberg, but his generic – We’re a free democratic country that allows our people to build where they’d like to (under proper legalities) and worship where ever they find their God under whatever name they call their religious beliefs – is just that, generic and of no consequence to the underlying contention.
It’s curious though, the controversy surrounding the decision to build a mosque 2-blocks from ground zero is being made to be all about tolerance and sensitivity. It seems that the people organizing the building of this mosque would show the same decency and respect that they so adamantly demand when it’s in relation to their personal and religious sanctity.
Furthermore, it seems a bit odd that there are active Muslim members on the Canadian Congress (Raheel Raza and Tarek Fataf) that say that what Rauf is doing has no relation to tolerance, in the least. As a matter of fact, these 2 individuals recently wrote in the Ottawa Citizen – “Muslims know the idea behind the Ground Zero mosque is meant to be a deliberate provocation to thumb our noses at the infidel.” A little later in the article they go on to say – “The proposal has been made in bad faith. Do [the mosque organizers] not understand that building a mosque at Ground Zero is equivalent to permitting a Serbian Orthodox church near the killing fields of Srebrenica where 8,000 Muslim men and boys were slaughtered?”
Well that drives the point home, now doesn’t it? There is an uneasy and disagreeable feeling from people within the Muslim community as to the decision to build a huge multi-level mosque within viewing distance where not only 2 historical landmarks were brought to the ground in an instant, but more importantly where over 3,000 Americans were murdered by Islamic jihadists.
People aren’t bitching because of bigotry or religious hatred. They aren’t bitching because they feel they shouldn’t have the “right” to build their mosque there. They aren’t even bitching that this is yet another terrorist attempt for better positioning within our US borders. The issue above and beyond all else is that we grant all people living within the borders of the USA the rights and freedoms that are afforded to them by the laws in place and their constitutional rights. It’s not a pass to show a lack of sensitivity to the Americans that perished on 9/11 when they demand respect, tolerance and sensitivity to their choice of beliefs.
And beyond what is seemingly blatant, the refusal of the release of where the funding is coming from to build this mosque is suspect. Rauf and his organizers dodge the inquiries refusing to share what should be public knowledge. Now, why is that? There’s something to be said when even Nancy Pelosi is vocal about investigating where the funding is coming from. She’s bat-shit loony. I never thought I would see the day that I would ever quote one damned thing this woman ever said, but she went on record saying...
“The freedom of religion is a Constitutional right. Where a place of worship is located is a local decision… “I support the statement made by the Interfaith Alliance that ‘We agree with the ADL that there is a need for transparency about who is funding the effort to build this Islamic center. At the same time, we should also ask who is funding the attacks against the construction of the center.’”
How is standing firm on where they decide to build this mosque with such opposition from a seeming majority of people legally living within the US bringing the cultures any closer together – you know for that unity and world peace thing that everyone is always talking about? Just because it’s within their legal rights to build there, doesn’t mean that it’s the right thing to do. This idea is supported by a substantial number of these “moderate Muslims” that everyone keeps referring to – the ones who aren’t associated with known terrorist organizations and who genuinely use the mosque to worship freely and without prejudice. It is certainly cause for question and it’s the farthest thing from bigotry, terrorist accusations or even some truly sad attempt to connect this back to slavery in any capacity. It’s people like you who perpetuate and exacerbate the dissention in a country so torn on the idea of being able to cohabitate with freedoms that are refused in other countries. It’s simple, play nice in the sandbox children.
I personally saw Rauf appear on a 60-Minutes special that was somewhere around 20 days after 9/11 and he was asked quite pointedly if the USA deserved this vicious attack. His response was as such (and I looked it up to quote it, because I remember being appalled the second he said it) – “I wouldn’t say that the United States deserved what happened. But the United States’ policies were an accessory to the crime that happened.”
Then, and here’s the real gem, he says, “Because we have been accessory to a lot of innocent lives dying in the world. In fact, in the most direct sense, Osama bin Laden is made in the USA.”
This is the guy who is organizing the urban development of this mosque. So Jeremiah, you miss the point on anything you’ve so flippantly written here. It’s pathetic that you would even make such correlations to this event and slavery. And – “No repita, por favor”?! If history was repeating itself, Jeremiah the building wouldn’t be moving forward with development, which it is. It is our right to have an opinion about it.
Welcome to America, fool.
It’s difficult to defend one set of rights while shitting on the ones you choose not to look at because they might just make it a little difficult for you to look educated in any capacity. I’d recommend you turn the TV back on and keep your ill-thought platitudes to yourself.
And just as a last note… the reality is that there most certainly exists a group of people out there, who like Jeremiah are equally as uninformed and uneducated. It’s without doubt, that some opposition of the building of the mosque so close to ground zero comes from a place of bigotry, thoughts of terrorists and terrorism in our own country and what I suspect to be the number one factor – fear. But to blanket statement that anyone who has finds some opposition to the decision to move forward with the build of this mosque, is ignorant; plain and simple.
Delete your blog, in its entirety, Jeremiah and do us all a favor because no one wants to hear you pontificate.
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
these busted feets?!
I think I might actually be ready to admit that I am completely oblivious somewhere around 95% of the time. It’s really quite shocking to me given that I take ADD meds on a daily basis, but lo and behold, I still manage to not be aware of much that is going on around me. I like to think that I have a solid grip on my surroundings, but I am constantly met with opposition to such thoughts.
Thus births an event that I classify in the – creepy – category.
Now I have very few things that I actually spend money on in any notable capacity. Handbags and shoes are easily 2 things that rank in the category of excessive spending. I’m partial to Coach and can drop $500 without the blink of an eye when I am on a mission. Shoes on the other hand, I am a little more cost contentious of from the standpoint of not spending a substantial amount on one pair but rather spending smaller amounts on a lot of pairs. I lean towards the more unique work shoes. I have 4-5inch heels that in most occasions could be considered stripper shoes. I have heels that are leopard print with a bow on the sling-back. I have a pair that is wrapped in a red Japanese-type printed cloth. I have recently added a pair of electric blue snake skin heels to the collection. I love anything Steve Madden and a newly acquired favorite being Santana’s line of heels.
These are just to name a few… the selection is endless, really.
Ok, I’m sure you don’t care about what kind of heels it is that I am wearing, but there’s a purpose to the somewhat detailed shoe explanation, I swear.
Last Friday a couple of the gals from the office and I went to get pedis during lunch. Which I have to tell you, getting a pedi is quite possibly one of my favorite things to indulge in. I digress. Since the idea to go and get one during lunch came up after I had already gotten to work that morning, I didn’t have a pair of flops to take with me. I conceded to the fact that I would have to wear those paper-thin “things” they call flops for the majority of the day to let me tootsies dry. Eh, I didn’t have any meetings planned that afternoon, so it was just going to be more of a dull annoyance than anything else.
We get back to the office and I am carrying my Steve Madden heels in hand and am wearing the teal blue laughable flops from the salon. As the other 2 gals went into the building, I sat at the picnic table to take a call. In the middle of that call, a guy who I had never noticed before was walking into my office building. To reiterate – I’d never traded a kind hello with this guy, never saw him in passing, never road the elevator together, didn’t even know he worked in my building… kind of thing.
He says to me – where are your shoes?
I say – They’re right here (as I lifted them from behind my purse to show him). I went and got a pedicure at lunch today so I can’t put them on until my toes dry.
Which, I immediately thought – why in the hell do you feel compelled to tell randoms more information about yourself then 1) they care to know and 2) more than you care to share. Like he cares that I just got back from a pedicure and needed my toes to dry. The question was simple. Where are your shoes? They’re right here – would have sufficed. Why don’t you just tell him your address and social while you’re at it? Good grief. So I was in the middle of making a simple conversation awkward when I was trumped by this guy’s next admission.
He says and I QUOTE…
Oh, that’s too bad. I always love looking at your shoes. I look forward to seeing what shoes you will be wearing every day.
I was rendered SPEECHLESS, followed by a blank stare and an awkward laugh which was then followed by an even more awkward throat clear. I managed to get out – what? – about 15 seconds later and after he’d already passed me headed into the building. He didn’t answer.
Now, I’ve taken a relatively detail poll of my friends – guys and gals – and the consensus is the same. That’s effin weird. A guy who I have never seen before and never talked to before busts out with a loosely veiled – hey I have a foot fetish and your feet are the flavor of my day, every day.
I LOOK FORWARD TO SEEING WHAT SHOES YOU WILL BE WEARING EVERY DAY?
What the hell? Who are you? How is it that you have seen me every day and I have NEVER seen you? I’d like to think that I am not that unaware, but it became inherently clear that either I am just that oblivious or this dude is sneaky as hell; sneaking around shoe peeping.
To be clear, there’s a difference in someone you’ve never spoken to saying something like – I really like your shoes. I say that to gals all the time and then usually I ask where they got them. I mean, that’s a legit transaction between 2-people who have never spoken before. Guy or girl – although if the guy is asking where you got them, there’d be some room for concern. I digress, again.
Look I’m not too naïve to know that there is a ranking of girl’s shoes for guys. There are certain pairs of heels that girls wear that guys classify in the – come f*uck me – category. PS girls know which shoes those are and when to strategically wear them. We all know about it; no one talks about it. If a guy compliments a pair that is classified in the afore mentioned category, there’s a silent unspoken understanding hinted in coyness and/or innocent flirtation. I mean, I would be appalled if some random was like – hey, l like your come f*uck me shoes… those are nice. WHOA buddy… tacky much?! Why don’t you just tell me your measurements and what you call him when you’re alone?
So yeah, now I see this guy everywhere – probably because I have gone from yellow to red alert. He’d told me on Monday he was glad to see that I was back in heels as opposed to those blue things I was wearing on Friday. Uh… that’s weird man. On Tuesday, I was taking a break from work, sitting outside playing on my iPhone when my relationship with… we’ll call him Podo (you know short for podophilia) took an even more awkward turn, as if it really could become more awkward for me.
>> Aside – which calling him Podo makes me think of Frodo which kinda creeps me out even more. Elijah Wood… hobbits… feet… fetish. God, this has gotten dramatic.
The scene was the same – I’m on the picnic bench minding my own business, except this guy straight cut right past the pleasantries of small (awkward) talk to coming up from behind me, outside of my peripheral, to lift up my pant leg to see what shoes I had on. Now, I didn’t do what I thought I would do in such a situation and that’s punch a brazen bastard square in his rabbits. My instant reaction was that clearly since you are touching me, you must be someone I know. And by know… I mean someone that I have known for longer than 4 days and traded more than 20 words with. It wasn’t until he’d dropped the leg of my pant, kept walking while saying something like – I like really those today – that I even realized that it was Podo and not someone I knew. Ok… too far… WAY too far.
Ok dude… I knew I got the creep-vibe for a reason which I that could manage if you were only going to make the occasional comment and just be weird in your own space. But you graduated to touching me! On what planet is that even acceptable behavior? I should get mace and see how he likes being in my personal space, uninvited.
No seriously, I really want to know what the thought process is with this guy? Is it like – hey she talked to me once so I’ve clearly got her permission to just walk up to her all creepy-like from behind and just touch her. Who friggin does that? I’ll tell you who… a damn freak is what. I mean, what’s next… he lifts up my shirt? You know just to see what’s under there then tell me something like I really like those today?!
I think my office building is just sits on top of the 7th Circle of Hell, to be honest. First I had the Garage Dater guy who eventually just got creepy himself and the older dude that worked with the Garage Dater who tried to ask me out on the side, you know on the DL. Although, I haven’t seen either one of those guys in a bit so maybe they don’t work in this building anymore? Which is fine… whatever – because I can tell that Podo is going to require all efforts to keep him off these fine feets of mine. I don’t know why it always happens to me and at work nonetheless. It’s like they pick to do it at the work place because they know exactly where I’ll be for 8 hours of the day. (AH! HAHA! Ok, I laughed at the whole 8hours bit… but for at least a good 5-6hours anyhow.)
Ugh… why me?!
AND I will leave you with my random thought of the day…
I have used the word oblivious a couple of times in this little rant and somewhere along the way, I wondered if while oblivious meant to be unaware then livious should mean to be aware, right? Yeah, if doesn’t. It’s not even a word. I know, I know. You’re equally as disappointed as I. But just do what I’m going to do and start using it. Say it confidently enough and people will believe you… some will even probably go look it up and then tell you later that that’s not even a word.
Then react in my most favorite ways of reacting, by saying – Oh my god, really? Good lord, how long have I been saying that and how many people thought I was an idiot? Thanks man. Then make sure to use it again within 20mins.
>> Funny last story in this ridiculous blog… I decided that if we are going to use the term – using the facility – as a reference for going to the bathroom, then when you are in there you are facilitating, no? So I would jokingly say, I need to facilitate – if I needed to go to the bathroom. I knew I was using it improperly, but I thought it was funny. One day a girl I worked with came up to me after I’d said it, pulled me aside and was like – hey, I don’t think you’re using that word correctly… I looked it up to make sure, and I am positive you aren’t. To which I said – OMG, thanks man, I didn’t know! You saved my life. LMAO – I even looked it up. That happened like 6 years ago and I still laugh about it (and I still say facilitate in reference to using the bathroom)! Good times. I'm an ass. LOL.
Thus births an event that I classify in the – creepy – category.
Now I have very few things that I actually spend money on in any notable capacity. Handbags and shoes are easily 2 things that rank in the category of excessive spending. I’m partial to Coach and can drop $500 without the blink of an eye when I am on a mission. Shoes on the other hand, I am a little more cost contentious of from the standpoint of not spending a substantial amount on one pair but rather spending smaller amounts on a lot of pairs. I lean towards the more unique work shoes. I have 4-5inch heels that in most occasions could be considered stripper shoes. I have heels that are leopard print with a bow on the sling-back. I have a pair that is wrapped in a red Japanese-type printed cloth. I have recently added a pair of electric blue snake skin heels to the collection. I love anything Steve Madden and a newly acquired favorite being Santana’s line of heels.
These are just to name a few… the selection is endless, really.
Ok, I’m sure you don’t care about what kind of heels it is that I am wearing, but there’s a purpose to the somewhat detailed shoe explanation, I swear.
Last Friday a couple of the gals from the office and I went to get pedis during lunch. Which I have to tell you, getting a pedi is quite possibly one of my favorite things to indulge in. I digress. Since the idea to go and get one during lunch came up after I had already gotten to work that morning, I didn’t have a pair of flops to take with me. I conceded to the fact that I would have to wear those paper-thin “things” they call flops for the majority of the day to let me tootsies dry. Eh, I didn’t have any meetings planned that afternoon, so it was just going to be more of a dull annoyance than anything else.
We get back to the office and I am carrying my Steve Madden heels in hand and am wearing the teal blue laughable flops from the salon. As the other 2 gals went into the building, I sat at the picnic table to take a call. In the middle of that call, a guy who I had never noticed before was walking into my office building. To reiterate – I’d never traded a kind hello with this guy, never saw him in passing, never road the elevator together, didn’t even know he worked in my building… kind of thing.
He says to me – where are your shoes?
I say – They’re right here (as I lifted them from behind my purse to show him). I went and got a pedicure at lunch today so I can’t put them on until my toes dry.
Which, I immediately thought – why in the hell do you feel compelled to tell randoms more information about yourself then 1) they care to know and 2) more than you care to share. Like he cares that I just got back from a pedicure and needed my toes to dry. The question was simple. Where are your shoes? They’re right here – would have sufficed. Why don’t you just tell him your address and social while you’re at it? Good grief. So I was in the middle of making a simple conversation awkward when I was trumped by this guy’s next admission.
He says and I QUOTE…
Oh, that’s too bad. I always love looking at your shoes. I look forward to seeing what shoes you will be wearing every day.
I was rendered SPEECHLESS, followed by a blank stare and an awkward laugh which was then followed by an even more awkward throat clear. I managed to get out – what? – about 15 seconds later and after he’d already passed me headed into the building. He didn’t answer.
Now, I’ve taken a relatively detail poll of my friends – guys and gals – and the consensus is the same. That’s effin weird. A guy who I have never seen before and never talked to before busts out with a loosely veiled – hey I have a foot fetish and your feet are the flavor of my day, every day.
I LOOK FORWARD TO SEEING WHAT SHOES YOU WILL BE WEARING EVERY DAY?
What the hell? Who are you? How is it that you have seen me every day and I have NEVER seen you? I’d like to think that I am not that unaware, but it became inherently clear that either I am just that oblivious or this dude is sneaky as hell; sneaking around shoe peeping.
To be clear, there’s a difference in someone you’ve never spoken to saying something like – I really like your shoes. I say that to gals all the time and then usually I ask where they got them. I mean, that’s a legit transaction between 2-people who have never spoken before. Guy or girl – although if the guy is asking where you got them, there’d be some room for concern. I digress, again.
Look I’m not too naïve to know that there is a ranking of girl’s shoes for guys. There are certain pairs of heels that girls wear that guys classify in the – come f*uck me – category. PS girls know which shoes those are and when to strategically wear them. We all know about it; no one talks about it. If a guy compliments a pair that is classified in the afore mentioned category, there’s a silent unspoken understanding hinted in coyness and/or innocent flirtation. I mean, I would be appalled if some random was like – hey, l like your come f*uck me shoes… those are nice. WHOA buddy… tacky much?! Why don’t you just tell me your measurements and what you call him when you’re alone?
So yeah, now I see this guy everywhere – probably because I have gone from yellow to red alert. He’d told me on Monday he was glad to see that I was back in heels as opposed to those blue things I was wearing on Friday. Uh… that’s weird man. On Tuesday, I was taking a break from work, sitting outside playing on my iPhone when my relationship with… we’ll call him Podo (you know short for podophilia) took an even more awkward turn, as if it really could become more awkward for me.
>> Aside – which calling him Podo makes me think of Frodo which kinda creeps me out even more. Elijah Wood… hobbits… feet… fetish. God, this has gotten dramatic.
The scene was the same – I’m on the picnic bench minding my own business, except this guy straight cut right past the pleasantries of small (awkward) talk to coming up from behind me, outside of my peripheral, to lift up my pant leg to see what shoes I had on. Now, I didn’t do what I thought I would do in such a situation and that’s punch a brazen bastard square in his rabbits. My instant reaction was that clearly since you are touching me, you must be someone I know. And by know… I mean someone that I have known for longer than 4 days and traded more than 20 words with. It wasn’t until he’d dropped the leg of my pant, kept walking while saying something like – I like really those today – that I even realized that it was Podo and not someone I knew. Ok… too far… WAY too far.
Ok dude… I knew I got the creep-vibe for a reason which I that could manage if you were only going to make the occasional comment and just be weird in your own space. But you graduated to touching me! On what planet is that even acceptable behavior? I should get mace and see how he likes being in my personal space, uninvited.
No seriously, I really want to know what the thought process is with this guy? Is it like – hey she talked to me once so I’ve clearly got her permission to just walk up to her all creepy-like from behind and just touch her. Who friggin does that? I’ll tell you who… a damn freak is what. I mean, what’s next… he lifts up my shirt? You know just to see what’s under there then tell me something like I really like those today?!
I think my office building is just sits on top of the 7th Circle of Hell, to be honest. First I had the Garage Dater guy who eventually just got creepy himself and the older dude that worked with the Garage Dater who tried to ask me out on the side, you know on the DL. Although, I haven’t seen either one of those guys in a bit so maybe they don’t work in this building anymore? Which is fine… whatever – because I can tell that Podo is going to require all efforts to keep him off these fine feets of mine. I don’t know why it always happens to me and at work nonetheless. It’s like they pick to do it at the work place because they know exactly where I’ll be for 8 hours of the day. (AH! HAHA! Ok, I laughed at the whole 8hours bit… but for at least a good 5-6hours anyhow.)
Ugh… why me?!
AND I will leave you with my random thought of the day…
I have used the word oblivious a couple of times in this little rant and somewhere along the way, I wondered if while oblivious meant to be unaware then livious should mean to be aware, right? Yeah, if doesn’t. It’s not even a word. I know, I know. You’re equally as disappointed as I. But just do what I’m going to do and start using it. Say it confidently enough and people will believe you… some will even probably go look it up and then tell you later that that’s not even a word.
Then react in my most favorite ways of reacting, by saying – Oh my god, really? Good lord, how long have I been saying that and how many people thought I was an idiot? Thanks man. Then make sure to use it again within 20mins.
>> Funny last story in this ridiculous blog… I decided that if we are going to use the term – using the facility – as a reference for going to the bathroom, then when you are in there you are facilitating, no? So I would jokingly say, I need to facilitate – if I needed to go to the bathroom. I knew I was using it improperly, but I thought it was funny. One day a girl I worked with came up to me after I’d said it, pulled me aside and was like – hey, I don’t think you’re using that word correctly… I looked it up to make sure, and I am positive you aren’t. To which I said – OMG, thanks man, I didn’t know! You saved my life. LMAO – I even looked it up. That happened like 6 years ago and I still laugh about it (and I still say facilitate in reference to using the bathroom)! Good times. I'm an ass. LOL.
Friday, July 9, 2010
i’m not a cabbie!
It had been a really long day. We’d gotten up at 9:30am to make it downstairs to partake in the hotel’s continental breakfast. Which PS – had they not had a waffle-maker, I would have found NO justification to subject myself to the hateful, angry old people that were taking up 90% residence at our chosen hotel.
Which, let’s back up and talk about these old people… and old people in general. I am of the mind that I like the nice old people. You know the ones who have great stories, a pleasant disposition, and toss out some unexpected zingers that remind you they were not always old. Yeah, well… we were short on those this past weekend. In Louisiana (more specifically Shreveport/Bossier City) these old people were friggin ridiculous. Maybe gambling on a holiday weekend is all they have to live for these days or maybe they bet all their Social Security on black the day before and for a cosmic chuckle it landed red. I don’t know, but I have never seen so many angry old people in one place; more specifically around the breakfast buffet. You’d think that they were dying of starvation and I was telling them – eff off… this is the last waffle and it’s MINE ALL MINE.
Let’s just suffice it to say that there was pushing. Lines were forming in the middle of other lines – like getting in a buffet line was a new concept. C’mon now, these guys were probably around when the idea of a line met its birth. They were swarming the buffet line and making rude comments like – sure, just go right ahead… I guess you don’t know what it means to be next. I will say that this is probably only the 2nd time in my life that I thought I was going to have a throw-down with an old lady. And let’s keep in mind that I wasn’t provoking the situation and firmly believe that had it come to trading blows, the old ladies would be the initiators.
>>
The 1st time I thought an old lady was going to throw-down was at a hole-in-the-wall bar in Addison. I’d been shooting pool and goofing around with friends when an old man (probably in his mid-70s) walked up and bet me that I would miss the shot I was about to take. I just retorted with – well if I make it you have to buy me a drink. He agreed and an accord was struck. 10 seconds later he’s flagging down his waitress to buy me my champions drink. Well he got to hem-hawing and thought that one of the other gals there and I were beautiful. This resulted in him purchasing several rounds of drinks for our whole group. Now what I later found out was that his 70-something year old girlfriend had been waiting at the poker tables for this guy to return. Apparently there was a tournament going on. Whatever, I hadn’t even seen the poker tables – so the fact there was a tournament happening was news to me. Want to know how I got all caught up on the tournament? Well, his 5-foot nothing 70-something girlfriend got up in my face telling me she’d been waiting for her boyfriend at the poker tables calling me a hussy and a man stealer.
To which I’d been drinking a bit so I was retorting to her name calling saying really unhelpful things like – c’mon now, he knows he’s not getting laid by me… hey, I mean unless he has Viagra, this is all a pipedream for him anyhow, pun intended… does he have a younger son with a loose wallet too, because that’s more of what I’m into…
After I threw out a couple of really funny quips that I really thought at the time would appease the situation, it became inherently clear that she was ready to defend her man. She leaned into me with finger pointed and made it clear that this was her man, and she wasn’t having any of my young self. I mean, it felt like a bar fight was about to break out… as I’m all yes ma’am-ing it and saying it didn’t need to come to this.
Now, three things went through my head – 1) removing her semi-politely from my space would make me an ass who hits old people; 2) If she hits me and I hit her back, or at the very least shove her down or protect myself from her, I will look like an ass; 3) if I let her just beat the crap out of me, I look like the ass. No matter what, I was going to look like an ass. Awesome.
At any rate she got control of herself and her man and it ended up not escalating to a confrontation – well at least not more-so then it already had been.
>>
I digress… as usual.
Back to the long day we were having. So after a very eventful breakfast on the morning of the 4th, we had all planned to go out to the El Dorado Casino on the strip to hang out, gamble, check out the 4th of July festival and then see the fireworks go off over Red River. As it might be, we saw very little of the festival and ended up spending hours-upon-hours gambling in smoke-filled ill-ventilated casino rooms. We saw about 30minutes of the music performance at the festival, we’re over it and headed back to the El Dorado casino to claim steaks on our balcony positioning for the perfect firework viewing.
The fireworks seemed to go on for forever, which I didn’t mind as I was snapping pictures like crazy. The show was playing a calming down-period in our non-stop day. The rest of the group was semi on edge, hungry and generally ready to be done with this day all together. I didn’t blame them. As a matter of fact, Casey says something to the affect of – I’ve never been pissed off at a fireworks display… how long is this going to go on?! Hilarity.
Now, Amy and I had made it down to Shreveport a day before Casey and Dawn so we’d come up with a plan to entertain all of us on the 4th. We’d gone into town and asked locals where to go and what to do. Our plan was perfection… except the leaving of downtown part. It was packed after the fireworks. There was wall-to-wall traffic on all sides of the streets. Other streets had been closed down due to foot traffic. No taxis were coming in or out of the strip on the sole reasoning that they couldn’t fight through the traffic to get in there. People were complaining that they’d been waiting for over an hour for a cab, and still nothing. The 4 of us decided to try and find a place to eat before hassling with finding a cab; let some of the traffic die down.
We’d eaten lunch at the best restaurant in the El Dorado. It wasn’t all that great so no one really wanted to eat there again. We’re tired. We all had low blood-sugar and personalities were clashing. Food was paramount. Well that or a cab, and we all know where we were with the cab situation. We come up with walking down to Sam’s Town to see what restaurants they had. I’ll save you another long story and say – they had nothing everyone could agree on. More bickering and shortened tempers.
In the meantime Casey had disappeared. Which before we understood why, we were all annoyed that we couldn’t find him, couldn’t find a place to eat and couldn’t get a cab. Basically, not good. Then I see Amy frantically waving her arms at me… we’d gotten a cab. Somehow Casey had managed to find one, wave him in to the Sam’s Town taxi pick-up lane and was calling to the ladies to get in before someone else saw it and fought us for it.
Casey takes the front seat. Amy slides in to the left of me and dawn to the right. As we’re getting into the cab and I am taking a deep breath of relief, my nose catches something a bit off. So I say – wow, it smells like someone just fired up a blunt in here… man it reeks of pot… I’m going to get a contact high from this nonsense. To be clear, it was definitely pot mixed with a vent air freshener. It vaguely reminded me of when I was younger and tried to hide that I had smoked a cigarette from my parents by covering myself in Febreeze coupled with gum. I thought I was so smooth. I became acutely aware in that moment that I hadn’t been. I asked the cabbie if we could roll down the windows and to my dismay, he tells me – all the windows are broken. Awesome.
The cabbie asks us where we are going and we tell him which hotel to take us to. He says – do you want to take HWY 20 or HWY 220? I responded before anyone else could, saying – whichever way is faster. He opted to take HWY 220. Fine, whatever. Just get us there so we could figure out a resolution to the food situation.
Being that I was sitting in the middle of the backseat, I noticed that this cab had an aftermarket system in it. It struck me as being a little odd that the cab had that and I mentioned it to Dawn who in her nervousness was laughing herself into tears. Conversely, the mere idea that there was most likely pot in the car made Amy very uneasy which caused some stressing about our safety. Without asking, the cabbie turns up the music. It’s the most gangsta ghetto rap music littered with the N-word. Now, not that this in any capacity matters to me other than it made slightly uncomfortable with the music selection, but our cabbie was black. Which, the mentioning of his ethnicity will play into more of this story a bit later.
I’m uncomfortable. Amy is uncomfortable and stressed with head in hand. Dawn is just laughing and trying to get out her observations in between wiping her tears away and catching her breath. I look out the window and realize that I see nothing that I recognize. We were on some road that was lined with abandoned buildings, seedy people just milling about in areas where there could be potential traffic, little to no lighting and no end in sight to a perpendicular meeting of the highway.
I’m officially on alert.
Amy’s praying novenas.
Dawn’s inconsolably laughing from her "contact high".
Casey’s making small talk with the guy.
I lean over to Dawn and start saying things like – this isn’t looking right… I don’t know about this guy… where the hell is he taking us… I don’t think this guy is a legit cabbie. Dawn’s laughing and bopping her head to the rap beat saying a bunch of things that were not helpful like – I think I have a contact high… I have 911 pressed into my phone just in case.
Dawn then decides that she is going to build a report with our cab driver hoping that her efforts will lighten the awkwardly unsettled mood in the cab. She leaned forward attentively in manner and started making small talk. As she asks him some general questions, he begins to look back at her in the backseat to answer her, resulting in jerky swerving unsafe driving. In the midst of their conversation, she asks him how long he’d been a cabbie.
And I swear to you, I can’t make this up because it really happened – this guy responds with…
I’m not a cabbie. What about me makes you think I am?
Uh, dude WTF?! WE’RE IN A CAB AND YOU’RE DRIVING IT. It’s the simplest of inferences that even a 3-year old could make.
So let’s stop here for a second and do a quick recap…
1) The cab REEKS of pot. I mean like he smoked a doob right before picking up his fare – AKA us.
2) There is a general feeling that given the aftermarket system beat-boppin explicit rap coupled a few other blatant context clues, indicated that this wasn’t a normal cab to start.
3) None of the 4 windows work. I mean NONE.
4) He’s taking us down a road that is seriously suspect. I’ll put it this way – I actually said I was never happier to have Casey with us, if not for sheer male presence alone.
5) Our cab driver had just made the proclamation that he’s not actually a cab driver.
As we’re all waiting with bated breath for some clarification, the cab driver – scratch that, we’ll just call him driver – the driver says that actually he’d wrecked his other cab and he was borrowing the one we were in from his brother.
I’m sorry… whhhhat?! His erratic driving and swerving became screamingly clear as to why he’d wrecked his other cab.
We’ve now formally entered strike 6 against this guy.
I tell Dawn to stop talking to the driver because it was causing him to not focus on the actual driving. I mean, it was pretty clear at this point that it wasn’t a passenger that had fired up a joint in his car; we’re sitting at a 100% probability that our driver is stoned. His increasingly erratic driving coupled with Dawn trying to talk to him from the backseat was making Amy even more stressed and nervous. She sat back and pressed 911 into her phone and just hovered over the send key… “you know, just in case” (as she kept saying in between laughing).
Unbeknownst to me, Casey had taken out his iPhone and was GPSing where we were, to make sure this guy was really headed towards a highway. From what I gathered later, he was trying to do it on the sly so that he didn’t upset our driver to the point of actually doing something dramatic. Turns out the driver saw that what he was doing and started in on a story. Now, at the time, I could not understand why he was telling us this particular story; it was out of place and extremely concerning.
He tells us…
One time I had this old guy hop in the front seat of my cab and tell me to take him downtown. He says to the guy that he will need an exact location so that he can take him where he needed to be. Apparently this old guy who got in his cab was coming from a casino and was extremely intoxicated and was being unruly and uncooperative. The old guy, according to our driver, starts screaming at him calling him the N-word and being generally aggressive. Our driver repeated over-and-over again that he ignored his derogatory comments asking him to calm down. When the old guy wouldn’t, he then ordered him to get out of his cab, which eventually the old guy did.
The story didn’t end there. He went into EXTREME detail about what this guy looked like. He was an older dude in a cowboy hat – you know the good ol’ boy type. He had this kind of jeans on, he had this kind of accent, he had grey hair, he had… he had… he had… (I remember thinking that that was an awful detailed recollection of this incident and that made me a little uneasy.)
The old guy gets out of the cab and while still screaming the N-word among other things, he apparently walked over to the driver-side door and opened it up. Then our driver tells us that he tried repeatedly to abate it from escalating any further. At some point, the cab driver had had enough and then proceeded to tell us that he exited the cab, punched this old guy square in the face – not once, but twice – then left him unconscious in front of the hotel… and DROVE THE EFF OFF.
I don’t know if that story was true or not, but I damn sure wasn’t about to ask any inquisitive questions to find out; on the off chance he wasn’t making shit up.
Once I realized that he started telling that story after he’d seen Casey check the route on his GPS, we speculated that he told us that to let us know that he wasn’t dicking around and would handle his business if questioned and/or provoked. I guess he was pissing on his preverbal territory. Whatever, I say pee where ever the hell you want to – which this instance might be the only time in my life that I have even admitted having that thought.
10-4 big guy. My ONLY priority was making it back to the hotel; safely, in one piece, and with our sanity intact; which was questionable at this point.
After what seemed like an eternity, we see our hotel. I was just thinking in that moment – well I guess it’s safe to say that he’s not going to kill us. That was until I thought too soon…
Our hotel shared the same parking lot as Harrah’s Casino & Racetrack, which had also been doing a fireworks production for the 4th. There was a lot of traffic passing in front of our hotel in route to getting on one of the 2 major highways. The traffic was blocking the entrance into our hotel drop-off area. Our driver says – EFF (he didn’t censor) this… we’re getting in there because, and I quote, “them being stopped in front of this turn in was bullshit”. So he pulls out aggressively and starts to weave in between cars, some of which still in a forward motion, others he’s instructing to back the eff up so he can get through, and Dawn’s screaming – MY SIDE!! MY SIDE!! I thought we were going to get t-boned. We didn’t. But we all dropped about 20lbs of unnecessary adrenaline in that moment.
Once he made it through and we were in front of our hotel, everyone jumps out of the cab except for me because I was the one responsible for settling up our fare. Casey was standing outside of the open back door waiting on me to get out. I realize the 3 of them were just looking to fall out of that cab and kiss the motionless ground. The cab ride was $30 and all I had was $20s. So I hand him $40 and he asks if I wanted change and I said nope we’re all set here and proceeded to scoot quickly to get out. Screw getting change. You can have it… I’m outta here. That’s all I was thinking.
As I’m sliding out, he catches my hand that was on the front passenger chair and stops me. He says – I heard you talking all that pot talk when you got in here. I slid my hand out from underneath his as I laughed, uncomfortably. He says – I have all the good shit; you know all the best kind. I said something along the lines of – well good for you as I moved quicker to get out of the cab. He continued with – you wanna get some off me. And all I could think is – there isn’t one thing on you that I want to get off of you. I mean for shits sake, I was terrified the entirety of the duration of this cab ride and NOW… NOW you want to sell me pot. WTF?! I just responded with – I’m all set here – as I slammed the cab door and bolted for the safety of the hotel.
I mean… seriously… TRAUMATIC!!!
Which the ridiculousness of the evening didn’t end there… remember, we still hadn’t found anything to eat yet. I’ll spare you the very tension-filled ride of looking for a restaurant that was open at 10:30pm on a Sunday that was concurrently the 4th of July. Hopeless is what it seemed like. But like a mirage, I spotted a Chili’s that was open until 11pm. SCORE. There was drama there. Again, I will spare you that as well. But after we were fed and back at the hotel… that part… that part is worth telling!
We get back and we’re all standing outside talking about how much better we all felt since we’d eaten. These 2 older (probably mid-50s) guys come out of the hotel. One of them kind-of creeps up, uncomfortably close, behind Amy. To which I say – hey man, you don’t creep up on a lady like that… that’s how you get mace in the face! He says drunkenly – I was just admiring her tattoo. To which I respond with something like – regardless man, that’s inappropriate! The guy he was with must’ve thought – ah hell… he’s on his own for this one – and walks off about 50-feet away.
The one who crept up on Amy begins talking about his other buddy (the one who’d walked away) – his name was Jerry. He tells us that Jerry just recently had to have his prostate removed because he had tested positive for cancer. In the middle of telling us that, he tells us just how drunk he is and how many hours they’d been drinking. Well, DUH buddy. You’re talking about prostates to young hot chicks. Clearly you outside of your wherewithal – check, check.
He then proceeded to tell us in detail what that entailed fully equipped with vivid hand jesters (like we didn’t know where the prostate was); tubes in sensitive places, catheters, surgery… on and on. Then he tells us he’s potentially going to have to go through the same thing and that he’s got an appointment to be tested and checked out after the holiday weekend. He says that if it comes back non-cancerous, he was going to have them (and I quote) “microwave the bastard”. I was certain this was not the technical term and for reasons that should be blatantly clear, I wasn’t asking for a definition of what that meant.
Casey on the other hand, never let’s an opportunity pass him up. He says – so what setting is that on the microwave… popcorn? Drunk ass laughs and like he had completely forgotten he’d just told us about good old Jerry’s prostate, he starts in on the story again. In an attempt to prevent us from listening to the whole thing over again, I call out to Jerry – hey Jerry… you might want to come over here and get your friend because he’s telling personal stuff about you! Jerry drunkenly meanders over to where we are to see what is really happening.
Once he gets over there, I put my hand on his shoulder and say to him – I’m really sorry about your loss. He says – what loss are you talking about? I respond with – well, your prostate for one… I know you guys were really close. He says – oh my god… what’s he over here talking about. And I said – I would think that that was really obvious… your prostate.
After Jerry gets involved in the conversation, somehow and I am still to this day unclear as to how we made the leap from cancer, prostates and microwaving to where we landed… crabs. So the guy who was telling all of Jerry’s prostate business starts in with his recollection of the time that he had gotten crabs, but that he gave it to 3 girls before he even knew he had them. Then he says something like – boy, those 3 calls were awkward. To which I said – uh, THIS, THIS is awkward. I think it was at that point that Jerry realized the train wreck that his buddy was on and he wrangled him towards the door into the hotel. And all this guy was talking about was needing to clarify what ended up happening with the crab situation followed up with him asking if they were going to go drink more. Jerry said a very patronizing tone – yes… we really need to be drinking more. I think he believed Jerry, because he stopped putting up a fight and disappeared into the hotel.
By the time we got into our hotel room, we all poured into our beds and didn’t really say a word. It’s like, where do you start… and why recount ANYTHING that had happened in the last 3 hours?! I slept like a damn dream that night, I much I will tell you!
Monday, April 19, 2010
CVS + C4 = sanity.
I really think it’s that simple. That or exnay on the ee4say and start taking Xanax before going to pick up my prescriptions from the CVS on Tennyson Parkway in Plano. It’s far less invasive, well for the employees at that CVS anyhow. I imagine it being me just really jacked up on Xanax and not caring a lick about how their pharmacist even graduated grade school.
In my head, I most closely compare that Xanax effect to the euphoric experience I had when I was in the hospital years ago, thinking I was dying. I truly thought my appendix had burst at the time and essentially beelined to the hospital. In the end, it was not appendicitis. I’ll spare you the details of what I was diagnosed with, but let me put it to you like this, I would have rather had a surgery to have the old appendix removed over what the real deal was. I’m still hanging out on the ass end of God’s little sense of humor; punchline Angela.
But while I was in the hospital, the pain was so horrifically unbearable that they eventually gave me an injection of Demerol. And my God! I floated about 7 feet off the bed. In that moment, I was fairly sure my shit still hurt, but the one thing I did know was that I could have given a shit less about that pain for the next 4-hours. The only thing I said was – I can see why people get addicted to this. That was the last narcotic pain killer the hospital would approve. It’s like dude, relax. I’m jacked up on a synthetic opioid. I thought I saw a rainbow colored elephant run backwards down the hall of the hospital singing It's a Small World Afterall (which true story I did think I saw it and talked about it according to my mom for the better part of an hour – I have limited recollection of that event). So does that mean you’re going to have me committed? Geez, unclench. It’s not like I had a tourniquet around my upper arm slapping the inside of my elbow looking for a good vein. I merely made an observation and the damn opiate you gave me disintegrated my ability to only think things like that – I had to say everything. I actually think the Demerol immobilized the part of your brain where you go through the process of thinking it to saying it. I was going straight to saying it. Shit. Sue me.
Anyhow, ideally that’s how I would like for my Xanax regimen to work. I take it, wait 30minutes for it to kick on in and then head over to the pharmacy. (That’s a really ironic sentence, now that I reread it.) By the time I get there, I wouldn’t physically be able to care about how stupid all these people are. Let me put it to you like this – the idea that I have to go to that pharmacy to pick up a prescription starts to piss me off hours before I actually go and pick them up.
I have a prescription for an ADD medication that I get every month. This drug falls into the Class-II Controlled Substance category.
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Classification of Controlled Drugs – Classes (also called Schedules)
Class-I: Substances presenting a high risk of abuse, posing a particularly, serious threat to public health which are of very little or no therapeutic value.
EX: Morphine, LSD, MDMA (Ecstasy), Mescaline (Peyote), Psilocybin (hallucinogenic), and Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC; AKA active ingredient in cannabis).
Class-II: Substances presenting a risk of abuse, posing a serious threat to public health which are of low or moderate therapeutic value.
EX: Amphetamines and amphetamine-type stimulants – EX. Adderol, Ritalin, etc.
Class-III: Substances presenting a risk of abuse, posing a serious threat to public health which are of moderate or high therapeutic value.
EX: Barbiturates (sedative-hypnotic and analgesic properties) – EX. Amobarbital (“truth serum”), Buprenorphine (semi-synthetic opiate), Ketamine, Hydrocodone / Codeine, and Anabolic Steroids.
Class-IV: Substances presenting a risk of abuse, posing a minor threat to public health with a high therapeutic value.
EX: Tranquillizers, Analgesics, and some Narcotics – Diazepam (Valium), Lorazepam (Ativan), Phenobarbital (Luminal), Temazepam (Restoril) and Alprazolam (Xanax).
Class-V: Substances presenting a very low risk of abuse, posing a no threat to public health with an extremely high therapeutic value. Medications deemed non-habit forming by the FDA.
Class-VI: Over-the-counter medications needing no real FDA regulations. This has since changed with the manufacturing of Methamphetamine by using over-the-counter amphetamines (i.e. Sudafed). The FDA has made it illegal to purchase over-the-counter medications in mass-quantities by a federal program that monitors their sales in relation to a person specific.
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Now given that the prescription that I pick up monthly is highly regulated, there are several steps that have to be taken in order for the prescription to be valid – all the way down to the pharmacy level. The prescription has to be written on a specific and special type of prescription pad – one that is highly improbable of being forged. Not all doctors can prescribe CII narcotics. They are registered and supervised by the FDA and the doctors who are certified to prescribe CII narcotics are held to a higher standard of repercussion if they are found to be promoting the improper use of any CII narcotic prescribed. Once a prescription is written, it is only valid for 7 days from the date that the prescription is written. If you attempt to fill it on day 8, it will be rejected at the pharmacy-level and you will have to go back to the original prescribing doctor to request another prescription – which begins a whole different process of steps to rectify the prescription that is now invalid.
I say all that to say that you’d think that the pharmacy would be on heightened alert when filling a CII prescription. Well, not my CVS. I am prescribed a quantity of 60 15mg extended release capsules. The directions are to read as follows: Take 2 capsules every morning. This means that 60 capsules should last me exactly 30 days, right? Right. I take my prescription in to the pharmacy and wait an ungodly amount of time for them to fill it. When they call my name and I go up to retrieve my prescription I notice that my co-pay is $20 instead of the usual $10. I chalked it up to my insurance plan changing, paid it and went on my way.
Now it should be said that I don’t take my ADD meds every day. Sometimes, if I don’t need them on the weekends, I won’t take them or if I wake up later than 7am, the meds can keep me up at night so again, I won’t take them. My prescription for 30 days generally lasts me somewhere around 40 to 45 days.
The next month, I go in to the pharmacy to drop off that month’s prescription for my ADD meds. As the pharmacy tech types in the prescription, she says to me – Oh, it looks like this is a refill too soon on the insurance and they won’t cover it for another 15 days. Whhhat?! No way! I am well over the 30 days and actually I’m closer to 45 days since I last got this prescription filled. Why the hell won’t the insurance cover this for another 15 days? Something is wrong because I am almost out and I need this filled! While she flitters all over the pharmacy trying to figure out what happened asking me things like – has your insurance changed and did the dosing on this prescription change? I have one unified response to all her questions – NO.
It’s about 20minutes later that the tiny Asian pharmacist (AKA the future bane of my existence) comes up and says – Oh, I know what happened. Here I’ll fix it, no problem. Ok, finally… someone who knows what they are doing! Somewhere around 30minutes after that, they call me back to the pharmacy and my prescription is ready to go and it was run through and covered on insurance. Sweet! The girl goes to ring me up and the total comes to $10. It wasn’t until after I had paid for the meds that I stopped and was like wait… whhhat? Last month it cost me $20 – what the hell? It was in that exact moment that I realized what had happened to my prescription last month. Instead of typing into the system that the 60 capsules were good for 30 days, they had typed the directions in for 1 capsule a day meaning that 60 caps should have lasted me 60 days – THUS last month I was charged 2 co-pays by my insurance equaling $20. So I tell the girl that they over charged me last month and that I wanted this prescription for free since I paid double. She stands there and looks at me like she is about to hit the highest mode of crisis and doesn’t know what to do. So I lean over the counter and call over the pharmacist to resolve this. After I waited and stared at her for another 10minutes while she pretended not to hear me and acted super busy, she came over. It was at this point that my hatred for her was birthed.
She comes over and says – yes, how can I help you (like she’d never met me before)? I tell her the same thing I tell the girl who was ringing me up. The pharmacist looks at me like she has NO idea as to what I am talking about. This situation has officially pissed me off. A line of people has now formed behind me waiting for me to get done so they can get their prescriptions. The pharmacist acts like she is confused by what I am asking from her no matter how many ways I explain it. It got to the point that I demanded she pull the prescription from last month as well as a print out of what the directions were on the meds they gave me. This little demand is about to prove me right and make her look like an ass, given that she supposedly “knew exactly what was wrong and was fixing it”. This bitch knew exactly what I was talking about and the truth as to why she was acting so dumb was about to come out.
As the girl ringing me up heads back to find the hard-copy of my prescription, the pharmacist says – that won’t be necessary. AH! HA! Got you. She then says that they processed the prescription with the improper directions through the insurance company over 30days and they could not reverse the claim in the system. It was too late for them to correct the error via the insurance company. First of all, I worked in the pharmacy for 3years, so I knew what she was saying was complete bullshit. They could recover it, but they would have to go through a process in order to do so. This lazy bitch wasn’t going to give me back what I had overpaid; instead she wasn’t going to tell me what really happened and just have me pay for my prescription again. Ohhh, bullshit!
After bickering with her for another 10-15 minutes about how she WAS going to give me my $10 back with her telling me there was no possible way to do that – she tells me she won’t refund my prescription for that month but will put a $10 credit in the system for next month. Which again, I worked in the pharmacy and I knew the system wasn’t capable of that little offer she suggested but I was tired of arguing with her and accepted it. It’s not like I would forget about it anyhow.
Xanax: 1
Self-Control: 0
I’d gone into the pharmacy several times before I’d actually remember to request the $10 credit. I’d had it out with the same stupid pharmacist more than 3x; once when I had burned my hand and I asked her what was the best thing to put on it and she told me and I quote – there’s a whole aisle devoted to analgesics over there (and pointed to nowhere in particular). To which I responded with something like – well shit, a monkey could do your job if that’s what your graduate degree qualifies you to give as a recommendation. It was almost like when she saw me come in, she was immediately annoyed. Feeling’s mutual bitch.
Xanax: 4
Self-Control: 0
About the 4th time I was in there since they overcharged me, I was picking up a prescription and I told the girl ringing me up that I should have a $10 credit on my account that I would like to use it. She looks in the system and as predicted, there was nothing noted about my $10 over-pay. The freaking bitch of a pharmacist was there that day (it seems like SHE’S ALWAYS there) and the girl calls her over to ask about this “supposed” $10 credit I was saying I had on file. The pharmacist comes over and I swear to God looks at me like she has NO idea who I am and says – how can I help you? I tell her I want to collect on my $10 credit. She goes to the computer and looks in the system to turn around and say – I’m sorry, I don’t see anything in the system that says you should have a $10 credit.
Is this bitch for real? She knows exactly who I am and what I am talking about. I’m irate. I start to not-so-politely remind her how’d she’d screwed me over a couple months before and wasn’t even planning on telling me about it. She just stood there listening to me saying the occasional – I don’t know what you are talking about – bullshit; that was until I used the phrase – Insurance Fraud.
She immediately put up her hands shaking them from side-to-side saying something like – don’t worry about it… I will take care of this for you… I will do you a favor even though there’s no record of this being true. Like she had to get just one more dig in there before she did ME a favor.
So I responded with – doing ME a favor? Oh no, no, no princess. It is I who is doing YOU a favor by not reporting you to the FDA for insurance fraud among other things. YOU aren’t doing ME any favors. As a matter of fact wasn’t it you screwed up my prescription in the first place? THEN you lied to me about it? THEN you didn’t want to reimburse me for your error because you supposedly couldn’t get it back from the insurance company which PS sweetie, we both know you could have and were too lazy to do it – instead you would have rather screwed me over so you didn’t actually have to work. YOU do ME a favor? Laughable. I suggest you get me reimbursed immediately before I Google the FDA’s phone number while I am standing in front of your Pharmacists license number. What do you think about that? Who’s doing who a favor? (Which she was stunned with silence so I finished up with) – RIGHT, I’m doing YOU the favor and you’ll do well to remember that in the future.
Yeah, my prescription was free that day.
Xanax: 5
Self-Control: 0
The ridiculousness isn’t just reserved for the pharmacist. The staff is just as incompetent and could have only been trained by the ignorance that is their primary pharmacist whose general practice is NOT customer service.
First off, I’d like to say that following HIPPA regulations means verifying you are who you say you are so that your prescription isn’t sold improperly and so that unauthorized people aren’t picking things up that they aren’t supposed to be. This does not mean that the person ringing you up asks you if – 123 Street is your address. You are supposed to ask me for 3 forms of identification… birth date, address and the medication I am supposed to be picking up and I am supposed to answer you. On the rare occasion they even try to verify who you are, they never do it properly.
Xanax: 6
Self-Control: 0
Second, I can’t tell you how many times I have been sold the wrong prescription. You know, on the more common occurrences that they don’t verify who I am. Then they act like I was the one who was in the wrong for taking the damn prescription in the 1st place.
Xanax: 7
Self Control: 0
Third, the drive through is damn ridiculous. The clerks will allow someone to sit at the window for over an hour. Again, OVER AN HOUR. The thought of asking them to pull around or come inside since it’s something that will take more than a few minutes to fix has never once crossed the minds of these employees. This results in people backing out of the drive-thru line and going inside only to be met with a line of, on average, 8 people who most likely were at one point or another in line because they were sitting in the drive-thru for an unconscionable amount of time.
Xanax: 8
Self-Control: 0
One time a gal in front of me in line, who had originally been behind me in the drive-thru line, told me how pissed she was at what was going on. Naturally when she finally made it to the counter, there was a problem with her prescription – at the fault of the bitch pharmacist, of course. After she got her situation rectified and as she walked past me, she said – good luck. After I had been in the drive-thru for 45 minutes and waited inside for another 20, I gave my name to the clerk who rang me up and I was on my way out the door. As I was walking out, I saw the gal that was in front of me walking back in, looking more pissed off than before. She muttered something like stupid pharmacy STILL gave me the wrong thing as she walked with purpose back to the pharmacy. I shook my head thinking – well that figures. And before I got to my car, I thought – you know, I better check to see if my prescription is right. I slid my hand down the bag to be met with a prescription bottle. I wasn’t supposed to have a bottle; I was supposed to have a packet of pills. WTF?! I look down at the name and said Angela Williams. I look at prescription name and it’s not even something I get or would have on file there. I look at the address… Carrollton. Dude… they sold me the wrong prescription and she didn’t even ask me to verify who I am – no wonder I got the wrong thing! You have to be EFFIN kidding me. I turn right around, pass by the window with the gal I knew quite well by this point who was yelling at the pharmacist and went straight to the girl who rang me up. There was now a line of 12 people. I’m not kidding. 12. I counted. I demanded to go in front of them as I said loudly – SHE SOLD ME THE WRONG PRESCRIPTION.
She was flustered, but then found the correct prescription and checked me out immediately. I stopped by the pharmacist who was still being bitched out by the other gal and said – excuse me, but I want to make sure that you report this medication leaving the pharmacy improperly to HIPPA. I will be checking in with them to 1 report it myself and 2 make sure you did. I hope that you prioritize that as I am sure Angela Williams in Carrollton would not be too pleased to find out that one of her meds left the pharmacy improperly.
Xanax: 9
Self-Control: 0
I could honestly go on-and-on with example after example of how this place is like the 7th circle of hell. There isn’t one person that you will run into in line that is not seriously aggravated with this place. Believe me, I have stood in line there enough times that I have made friends and traded war stories with other patrons. It stresses me out. I think partially because I worked in a pharmacy and was a certified tech for 3 years. It’s not that damn difficult, but every time you go in there, they act like you guessed their name to be Rumpelstiltskin and are there to collect their 1st born.
I have often texted my friends from CVS talking about how I hope I never come in contact with C4 because I plan on leveling the damn place. Someone once suggested a sniper attack, but you know I’m not that good of a shot and I want to make sure and take them ALL down before I get caught. Well that or get on Xanax. I’m still on the fence.
In my head, I most closely compare that Xanax effect to the euphoric experience I had when I was in the hospital years ago, thinking I was dying. I truly thought my appendix had burst at the time and essentially beelined to the hospital. In the end, it was not appendicitis. I’ll spare you the details of what I was diagnosed with, but let me put it to you like this, I would have rather had a surgery to have the old appendix removed over what the real deal was. I’m still hanging out on the ass end of God’s little sense of humor; punchline Angela.
But while I was in the hospital, the pain was so horrifically unbearable that they eventually gave me an injection of Demerol. And my God! I floated about 7 feet off the bed. In that moment, I was fairly sure my shit still hurt, but the one thing I did know was that I could have given a shit less about that pain for the next 4-hours. The only thing I said was – I can see why people get addicted to this. That was the last narcotic pain killer the hospital would approve. It’s like dude, relax. I’m jacked up on a synthetic opioid. I thought I saw a rainbow colored elephant run backwards down the hall of the hospital singing It's a Small World Afterall (which true story I did think I saw it and talked about it according to my mom for the better part of an hour – I have limited recollection of that event). So does that mean you’re going to have me committed? Geez, unclench. It’s not like I had a tourniquet around my upper arm slapping the inside of my elbow looking for a good vein. I merely made an observation and the damn opiate you gave me disintegrated my ability to only think things like that – I had to say everything. I actually think the Demerol immobilized the part of your brain where you go through the process of thinking it to saying it. I was going straight to saying it. Shit. Sue me.
Anyhow, ideally that’s how I would like for my Xanax regimen to work. I take it, wait 30minutes for it to kick on in and then head over to the pharmacy. (That’s a really ironic sentence, now that I reread it.) By the time I get there, I wouldn’t physically be able to care about how stupid all these people are. Let me put it to you like this – the idea that I have to go to that pharmacy to pick up a prescription starts to piss me off hours before I actually go and pick them up.
I have a prescription for an ADD medication that I get every month. This drug falls into the Class-II Controlled Substance category.
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Classification of Controlled Drugs – Classes (also called Schedules)
Class-I: Substances presenting a high risk of abuse, posing a particularly, serious threat to public health which are of very little or no therapeutic value.
EX: Morphine, LSD, MDMA (Ecstasy), Mescaline (Peyote), Psilocybin (hallucinogenic), and Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC; AKA active ingredient in cannabis).
Class-II: Substances presenting a risk of abuse, posing a serious threat to public health which are of low or moderate therapeutic value.
EX: Amphetamines and amphetamine-type stimulants – EX. Adderol, Ritalin, etc.
Class-III: Substances presenting a risk of abuse, posing a serious threat to public health which are of moderate or high therapeutic value.
EX: Barbiturates (sedative-hypnotic and analgesic properties) – EX. Amobarbital (“truth serum”), Buprenorphine (semi-synthetic opiate), Ketamine, Hydrocodone / Codeine, and Anabolic Steroids.
Class-IV: Substances presenting a risk of abuse, posing a minor threat to public health with a high therapeutic value.
EX: Tranquillizers, Analgesics, and some Narcotics – Diazepam (Valium), Lorazepam (Ativan), Phenobarbital (Luminal), Temazepam (Restoril) and Alprazolam (Xanax).
Class-V: Substances presenting a very low risk of abuse, posing a no threat to public health with an extremely high therapeutic value. Medications deemed non-habit forming by the FDA.
Class-VI: Over-the-counter medications needing no real FDA regulations. This has since changed with the manufacturing of Methamphetamine by using over-the-counter amphetamines (i.e. Sudafed). The FDA has made it illegal to purchase over-the-counter medications in mass-quantities by a federal program that monitors their sales in relation to a person specific.
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Now given that the prescription that I pick up monthly is highly regulated, there are several steps that have to be taken in order for the prescription to be valid – all the way down to the pharmacy level. The prescription has to be written on a specific and special type of prescription pad – one that is highly improbable of being forged. Not all doctors can prescribe CII narcotics. They are registered and supervised by the FDA and the doctors who are certified to prescribe CII narcotics are held to a higher standard of repercussion if they are found to be promoting the improper use of any CII narcotic prescribed. Once a prescription is written, it is only valid for 7 days from the date that the prescription is written. If you attempt to fill it on day 8, it will be rejected at the pharmacy-level and you will have to go back to the original prescribing doctor to request another prescription – which begins a whole different process of steps to rectify the prescription that is now invalid.
I say all that to say that you’d think that the pharmacy would be on heightened alert when filling a CII prescription. Well, not my CVS. I am prescribed a quantity of 60 15mg extended release capsules. The directions are to read as follows: Take 2 capsules every morning. This means that 60 capsules should last me exactly 30 days, right? Right. I take my prescription in to the pharmacy and wait an ungodly amount of time for them to fill it. When they call my name and I go up to retrieve my prescription I notice that my co-pay is $20 instead of the usual $10. I chalked it up to my insurance plan changing, paid it and went on my way.
Now it should be said that I don’t take my ADD meds every day. Sometimes, if I don’t need them on the weekends, I won’t take them or if I wake up later than 7am, the meds can keep me up at night so again, I won’t take them. My prescription for 30 days generally lasts me somewhere around 40 to 45 days.
The next month, I go in to the pharmacy to drop off that month’s prescription for my ADD meds. As the pharmacy tech types in the prescription, she says to me – Oh, it looks like this is a refill too soon on the insurance and they won’t cover it for another 15 days. Whhhat?! No way! I am well over the 30 days and actually I’m closer to 45 days since I last got this prescription filled. Why the hell won’t the insurance cover this for another 15 days? Something is wrong because I am almost out and I need this filled! While she flitters all over the pharmacy trying to figure out what happened asking me things like – has your insurance changed and did the dosing on this prescription change? I have one unified response to all her questions – NO.
It’s about 20minutes later that the tiny Asian pharmacist (AKA the future bane of my existence) comes up and says – Oh, I know what happened. Here I’ll fix it, no problem. Ok, finally… someone who knows what they are doing! Somewhere around 30minutes after that, they call me back to the pharmacy and my prescription is ready to go and it was run through and covered on insurance. Sweet! The girl goes to ring me up and the total comes to $10. It wasn’t until after I had paid for the meds that I stopped and was like wait… whhhat? Last month it cost me $20 – what the hell? It was in that exact moment that I realized what had happened to my prescription last month. Instead of typing into the system that the 60 capsules were good for 30 days, they had typed the directions in for 1 capsule a day meaning that 60 caps should have lasted me 60 days – THUS last month I was charged 2 co-pays by my insurance equaling $20. So I tell the girl that they over charged me last month and that I wanted this prescription for free since I paid double. She stands there and looks at me like she is about to hit the highest mode of crisis and doesn’t know what to do. So I lean over the counter and call over the pharmacist to resolve this. After I waited and stared at her for another 10minutes while she pretended not to hear me and acted super busy, she came over. It was at this point that my hatred for her was birthed.
She comes over and says – yes, how can I help you (like she’d never met me before)? I tell her the same thing I tell the girl who was ringing me up. The pharmacist looks at me like she has NO idea as to what I am talking about. This situation has officially pissed me off. A line of people has now formed behind me waiting for me to get done so they can get their prescriptions. The pharmacist acts like she is confused by what I am asking from her no matter how many ways I explain it. It got to the point that I demanded she pull the prescription from last month as well as a print out of what the directions were on the meds they gave me. This little demand is about to prove me right and make her look like an ass, given that she supposedly “knew exactly what was wrong and was fixing it”. This bitch knew exactly what I was talking about and the truth as to why she was acting so dumb was about to come out.
As the girl ringing me up heads back to find the hard-copy of my prescription, the pharmacist says – that won’t be necessary. AH! HA! Got you. She then says that they processed the prescription with the improper directions through the insurance company over 30days and they could not reverse the claim in the system. It was too late for them to correct the error via the insurance company. First of all, I worked in the pharmacy for 3years, so I knew what she was saying was complete bullshit. They could recover it, but they would have to go through a process in order to do so. This lazy bitch wasn’t going to give me back what I had overpaid; instead she wasn’t going to tell me what really happened and just have me pay for my prescription again. Ohhh, bullshit!
After bickering with her for another 10-15 minutes about how she WAS going to give me my $10 back with her telling me there was no possible way to do that – she tells me she won’t refund my prescription for that month but will put a $10 credit in the system for next month. Which again, I worked in the pharmacy and I knew the system wasn’t capable of that little offer she suggested but I was tired of arguing with her and accepted it. It’s not like I would forget about it anyhow.
Xanax: 1
Self-Control: 0
I’d gone into the pharmacy several times before I’d actually remember to request the $10 credit. I’d had it out with the same stupid pharmacist more than 3x; once when I had burned my hand and I asked her what was the best thing to put on it and she told me and I quote – there’s a whole aisle devoted to analgesics over there (and pointed to nowhere in particular). To which I responded with something like – well shit, a monkey could do your job if that’s what your graduate degree qualifies you to give as a recommendation. It was almost like when she saw me come in, she was immediately annoyed. Feeling’s mutual bitch.
Xanax: 4
Self-Control: 0
About the 4th time I was in there since they overcharged me, I was picking up a prescription and I told the girl ringing me up that I should have a $10 credit on my account that I would like to use it. She looks in the system and as predicted, there was nothing noted about my $10 over-pay. The freaking bitch of a pharmacist was there that day (it seems like SHE’S ALWAYS there) and the girl calls her over to ask about this “supposed” $10 credit I was saying I had on file. The pharmacist comes over and I swear to God looks at me like she has NO idea who I am and says – how can I help you? I tell her I want to collect on my $10 credit. She goes to the computer and looks in the system to turn around and say – I’m sorry, I don’t see anything in the system that says you should have a $10 credit.
Is this bitch for real? She knows exactly who I am and what I am talking about. I’m irate. I start to not-so-politely remind her how’d she’d screwed me over a couple months before and wasn’t even planning on telling me about it. She just stood there listening to me saying the occasional – I don’t know what you are talking about – bullshit; that was until I used the phrase – Insurance Fraud.
She immediately put up her hands shaking them from side-to-side saying something like – don’t worry about it… I will take care of this for you… I will do you a favor even though there’s no record of this being true. Like she had to get just one more dig in there before she did ME a favor.
So I responded with – doing ME a favor? Oh no, no, no princess. It is I who is doing YOU a favor by not reporting you to the FDA for insurance fraud among other things. YOU aren’t doing ME any favors. As a matter of fact wasn’t it you screwed up my prescription in the first place? THEN you lied to me about it? THEN you didn’t want to reimburse me for your error because you supposedly couldn’t get it back from the insurance company which PS sweetie, we both know you could have and were too lazy to do it – instead you would have rather screwed me over so you didn’t actually have to work. YOU do ME a favor? Laughable. I suggest you get me reimbursed immediately before I Google the FDA’s phone number while I am standing in front of your Pharmacists license number. What do you think about that? Who’s doing who a favor? (Which she was stunned with silence so I finished up with) – RIGHT, I’m doing YOU the favor and you’ll do well to remember that in the future.
Yeah, my prescription was free that day.
Xanax: 5
Self-Control: 0
The ridiculousness isn’t just reserved for the pharmacist. The staff is just as incompetent and could have only been trained by the ignorance that is their primary pharmacist whose general practice is NOT customer service.
First off, I’d like to say that following HIPPA regulations means verifying you are who you say you are so that your prescription isn’t sold improperly and so that unauthorized people aren’t picking things up that they aren’t supposed to be. This does not mean that the person ringing you up asks you if – 123 Street is your address. You are supposed to ask me for 3 forms of identification… birth date, address and the medication I am supposed to be picking up and I am supposed to answer you. On the rare occasion they even try to verify who you are, they never do it properly.
Xanax: 6
Self-Control: 0
Second, I can’t tell you how many times I have been sold the wrong prescription. You know, on the more common occurrences that they don’t verify who I am. Then they act like I was the one who was in the wrong for taking the damn prescription in the 1st place.
Xanax: 7
Self Control: 0
Third, the drive through is damn ridiculous. The clerks will allow someone to sit at the window for over an hour. Again, OVER AN HOUR. The thought of asking them to pull around or come inside since it’s something that will take more than a few minutes to fix has never once crossed the minds of these employees. This results in people backing out of the drive-thru line and going inside only to be met with a line of, on average, 8 people who most likely were at one point or another in line because they were sitting in the drive-thru for an unconscionable amount of time.
Xanax: 8
Self-Control: 0
One time a gal in front of me in line, who had originally been behind me in the drive-thru line, told me how pissed she was at what was going on. Naturally when she finally made it to the counter, there was a problem with her prescription – at the fault of the bitch pharmacist, of course. After she got her situation rectified and as she walked past me, she said – good luck. After I had been in the drive-thru for 45 minutes and waited inside for another 20, I gave my name to the clerk who rang me up and I was on my way out the door. As I was walking out, I saw the gal that was in front of me walking back in, looking more pissed off than before. She muttered something like stupid pharmacy STILL gave me the wrong thing as she walked with purpose back to the pharmacy. I shook my head thinking – well that figures. And before I got to my car, I thought – you know, I better check to see if my prescription is right. I slid my hand down the bag to be met with a prescription bottle. I wasn’t supposed to have a bottle; I was supposed to have a packet of pills. WTF?! I look down at the name and said Angela Williams. I look at prescription name and it’s not even something I get or would have on file there. I look at the address… Carrollton. Dude… they sold me the wrong prescription and she didn’t even ask me to verify who I am – no wonder I got the wrong thing! You have to be EFFIN kidding me. I turn right around, pass by the window with the gal I knew quite well by this point who was yelling at the pharmacist and went straight to the girl who rang me up. There was now a line of 12 people. I’m not kidding. 12. I counted. I demanded to go in front of them as I said loudly – SHE SOLD ME THE WRONG PRESCRIPTION.
She was flustered, but then found the correct prescription and checked me out immediately. I stopped by the pharmacist who was still being bitched out by the other gal and said – excuse me, but I want to make sure that you report this medication leaving the pharmacy improperly to HIPPA. I will be checking in with them to 1 report it myself and 2 make sure you did. I hope that you prioritize that as I am sure Angela Williams in Carrollton would not be too pleased to find out that one of her meds left the pharmacy improperly.
Xanax: 9
Self-Control: 0
I could honestly go on-and-on with example after example of how this place is like the 7th circle of hell. There isn’t one person that you will run into in line that is not seriously aggravated with this place. Believe me, I have stood in line there enough times that I have made friends and traded war stories with other patrons. It stresses me out. I think partially because I worked in a pharmacy and was a certified tech for 3 years. It’s not that damn difficult, but every time you go in there, they act like you guessed their name to be Rumpelstiltskin and are there to collect their 1st born.
I have often texted my friends from CVS talking about how I hope I never come in contact with C4 because I plan on leveling the damn place. Someone once suggested a sniper attack, but you know I’m not that good of a shot and I want to make sure and take them ALL down before I get caught. Well that or get on Xanax. I’m still on the fence.
Friday, March 26, 2010
not where i started but ended where i started...
So, I’ve decided something. It’s big. Not many people would take to a blog to make a realization like the one I am about to share. Well except maybe kids who might just think it’s cool to brag about something like this. You know the ones... on Myspace or Facebook who rant and rave about all their illegal activities from the previous weekend right next to a picture of them taking a massive hit from a 4-foot gravity bong. Right there for the whole world to see. Like an idiot. I mean sure, probably just about everyone you know did something illegal when they were younger but as I have gotten older this is the theory I buy into…
Dude, don’t talk about the illegal shit you do and certainly don’t give the District Attorney photographic evidence to prosecute you at some point in the future.
Wait… wait… wait. It wasn’t growing up and maturing that taught me that – It was going to Catholic school my whole damn life. People say public schools are bad and overrun with all these issues of overpopulation, drugs, violence, gangs, poor education, sub-par teachers, etc. I wouldn’t really know firsthand about public schools as my parents wouldn’t allow their children to deign to darken the door of anything considered a public school until college and really at that point, does it even really matter?
So what I learned in Catholic school was this… there were far less kids in Catholic school – a lesser teacher-to-student ratio – which generally meant if you were doing anything out of the ordinary, you stood out. It’s hard to skip a class and have that overlooked by an overworked underpaid teacher when you are in a class of 15 or 20. You’re empty seat screams NOT HERE when attendance was called.
Catholic schools breed clever criminals.
Catholic schools speak money. If you have it, you can make the golden rules. If you don’t, basically don’t get caught. There’s no such thing as leniency for the underling peasants.
If you think for one red hot instant that there weren’t drugs ALL over the place at my high school (and grade school for that matter), I’d outright, to your face and possibly in an aggressive manner accuse YOU of smoking crack. Let’s be perfectly clear here. Private Catholic schools are regulated differently. They get funding from different places and they make the rules differently from anything state mandated.
We’d have “bomb threats”. All the kids knew what this meant. They didn’t happen every week or month or every other month for that matter. But they happened enough and the end result was always the same.
They carted all the kids outside to have them confined in one place – nowhere near your locker, your backpack, your purse – you get the idea. We were to move quickly and take nothing with us because shit, we might eat it today when this bullshit bomb goes off. When a “bomb threat” happened, the police came with their “bomb dogs” to secure the facility and search for this supposed “bomb”. Inevitably, no real bomb was ever found. Somewhere in the vicinity of 30minutes after the school was deemed safe, there was a list of kids that would be called down to the office. Yep. Oddly enough, it was all the potheads. Even odder, it was generally only the potheads who came from money or the ones that the school had been begging for a reason to get rid of them in the first place.
Drug raids under the guise of protecting me from being blown up.
Kids became exceptionally good at not being caught. And of course, it was a harsh lesson to learn for kids in their tender teen years – dude, never carry shit on your person or in your bags. Check. Lesson learned.
The bottom line really says that while the education might be a little better in a private Catholic school, kids are the same no matter what school they attend. At my high school, to raise money, they would auction off 3 of the best parking spots in the lot – right up front. They went to the highest bidders – aka families with indulged children and lots of money that didn’t have a better use. Needless to say, my family could afford the run of the mill parking pass to park on school property. In the fine print, however, it said that that could also mean if the gated parking lot was full (which it always was), you had to park on the public street behind the school. The neighborhood that my school was in is sketchy at best. Basically if you didn’t get to school early enough and you had to park on the pubic street running the risk of having your car broken into. I was familiar with such scenario.
When middle-class Angela went to complain about my car being broken into and demanding to know why it was that I had to pay for a parking pass to park on a public street the response from the Dean of Students was shitty at best.
He said, and I quote – We sell parking passes like any business. For example, airlines oversell seats on their planes all the time. The same concept applies here. Besides, the security guard (*who was a fat lazy old man with a chip on his shoulder*) drives down that street and keeps an eye on the cars.
Yeah, until he’s not back there or off being lazy and my car gets broken into, you ass. I didn’t exactly say that to him. I think I just stood there stunned by his own admission. You see, I was on a short list of people that they wanted kicked out. They were just waiting for me to fulfill the Williams/Athas tradition.
Back in the day, my mom attended the same high school I did. She was kicked out for raising her bra up the flag pole like the damn hippie she was. Her parents had money and she was subsequently let back into the school for an undisclosed amount. I’ve never confirmed they paid to get her back in, but the unspoken rules were exactly the same 15 years later. My brother was kicked out of my high school for essentially flicking some kids off. He was on probation from a fight that had happened earlier in the year and somehow my parents managed to keep him enrolled with the agreement that he was on a no-tolerance probation plan. At his junior ring ceremony, the kids he’d been in a fight with were nothing short of harassing him. He retorted with the old nonchalant head-scratch flick off. It’s personally one of my favorite moves. Not too dramatic of an event, except for the fact it was caught on film. Which, by the way, is funny now; it wasn’t then. Ok, I won’t lie – it’s always been funny to me. It’s just that now I can laugh about it with my parents without getting grounded.
Basically, my schools administration reminded me regularly that I was on a short leash.
Anyhow, these 3 prime parking spots were always won by the rich kids. They went for several thousand dollars and kids parked their way-too-expensive-for-a-16-year-old’s care right up front. One kid in particular, I remember vividly. His parents bought him one of the 3 prime spots. In the middle of the year, this kid showed up to a football game shit-canned drunk and got caught. Now, had it been me –expelled… non-negotiable. This kid gets this as a punishment… again, I repeat a PUNISHMENT that instead of being kicked out, put on probation or any other real punishment, he’d merely lose the privilege to park his car in the prime spot that his parents had purchased for him. You know where he had to park after that? On the public street behind the school.
Let’s recap. AS A PUNISHMENT, he had to now park his car where I had had to pay for a parking pass to the school to park there or risk being towed.
Oh and it should be noted that his parents didn’t get their money back for the spot and no it didn’t sit empty for the remainder of the year as a reminder of one his irresponsible behavior and two his parents having far too much loose money. No, no. They REAUCTIONED the spot off. They held a special event for the damn re-auctioning. There were several eager parents front and center ready to buy the damn thing. This is not a life I was ever familiar with. Several thousands of dollars were paid that year for a friggin parking spot. My mom’s theory was – walk, the fresh air will do you good OR after my car was broken into, she said – well that will teach you to leave things visible in your car on that street again. These events basically were building my character for later in life.
I call bullshit. It’s of the same mind as when the person who loses a game says – it doesn’t matter, I just play for fun. You never hear the winner saying that. It’s all about the win. So in essence, my parents neither had the money to fund an upfront parking spot nor would indulge me even if they did have the money. So no mom, it’s not about building character. That’s just the guise you chose to use to try and teach me the importance of making do with what you have and being happy with that fact. Blah, boring. I wanted an upfront parking spot. Conceptualizing the value of money was something that I learned 5 years later in college.
I honestly can come up with a million examples of how ridiculous private Catholic school was. In just remembering it, I might do a blog series on my high school years. But this whole rant was far from the original purpose of this blog. I would like to think my ADD medicine helps me focus and it did… just not on my original goal. But I was real focused on telling you what I told you. So, I’d call that a win.
I started this whole journey out by saying – So, I’ve decided something. It’s big. – And I don’t want to leave you hanging, but there will be a blog after this that goes into that story so that this one isn’t a 10-page long rant with no real purpose.
My big decision is as follows: I firmly believe that in order to save lives in the near future, I might need to start taking Xanax. I mean not dramatically or daily. The RX would read – Take 1-3 Xanax 4mg tablets 30minutes before you need to retrieve your monthly prescriptions from the CVS on Tennyson Road in Plano.
So we’re clear, I’m not a fan of taking medicine like Xanax for any kind of regular reason. The only dug I eat in mass quantities is Advil – which I happen to think that they should rename the Finger of God. Shit’s downright amazing. Period. End of story. And to further my point, about a year-and-a-half ago, I started to have breathing problems. I was short of breath, felt like I couldn’t ever really catch my breath and eventually resorted to yawing or making myself sneeze all the time to get that 2nd wind breath catch. I went to every doctor under the sun to figure out what was wrong with me. To make a long story short, my PCP tells me that it sounds like anxiety attacks. Screw that. I wasn’t anxious. He wanted me to start taking Xanax on a regular basis to calm it down. What about me says I’m not calm?! I refused the prescription. The last thing I need is a pill to fix everything.
One to get up.
One to go to bed.
One to calm down.
One to kill pain.
One to focus.
One to prevent pregnancy.
One to relieve allergies.
One so I can walk on my hurt feet.
The list could go on. There’s a pill for everything and the drug manufacturers and the doctors bought by those drug companies would have you believe that you need a cocktail consisting of one of each just to get through a day. I don’t buy into that at all. So, I’m only an advocate for taking exactly what I need and nothing more and I damn sure did not need Xanax. Which for the record, I ended up being right. The whole weird breathing thing was actually an allergic reaction to caffeine. I’m allergic to friggin caffeine! I’m the butt of yet another one of God’s cruel jokes. I’ve gotten used to this reality.
Xanax + CVS on Tennyson = not killing people. And let me tell you, I have considered black market C4 as to how I would take the whole operation down. I mean not literally. No one call the police or anything, but damn… I’m really just flabbergasted by the absolute incompetence of that place and in my daydreams, I see the thing leveled and it brings a smile to my face.
To be continued…
Dude, don’t talk about the illegal shit you do and certainly don’t give the District Attorney photographic evidence to prosecute you at some point in the future.
Wait… wait… wait. It wasn’t growing up and maturing that taught me that – It was going to Catholic school my whole damn life. People say public schools are bad and overrun with all these issues of overpopulation, drugs, violence, gangs, poor education, sub-par teachers, etc. I wouldn’t really know firsthand about public schools as my parents wouldn’t allow their children to deign to darken the door of anything considered a public school until college and really at that point, does it even really matter?
So what I learned in Catholic school was this… there were far less kids in Catholic school – a lesser teacher-to-student ratio – which generally meant if you were doing anything out of the ordinary, you stood out. It’s hard to skip a class and have that overlooked by an overworked underpaid teacher when you are in a class of 15 or 20. You’re empty seat screams NOT HERE when attendance was called.
Catholic schools breed clever criminals.
Catholic schools speak money. If you have it, you can make the golden rules. If you don’t, basically don’t get caught. There’s no such thing as leniency for the underling peasants.
If you think for one red hot instant that there weren’t drugs ALL over the place at my high school (and grade school for that matter), I’d outright, to your face and possibly in an aggressive manner accuse YOU of smoking crack. Let’s be perfectly clear here. Private Catholic schools are regulated differently. They get funding from different places and they make the rules differently from anything state mandated.
We’d have “bomb threats”. All the kids knew what this meant. They didn’t happen every week or month or every other month for that matter. But they happened enough and the end result was always the same.
They carted all the kids outside to have them confined in one place – nowhere near your locker, your backpack, your purse – you get the idea. We were to move quickly and take nothing with us because shit, we might eat it today when this bullshit bomb goes off. When a “bomb threat” happened, the police came with their “bomb dogs” to secure the facility and search for this supposed “bomb”. Inevitably, no real bomb was ever found. Somewhere in the vicinity of 30minutes after the school was deemed safe, there was a list of kids that would be called down to the office. Yep. Oddly enough, it was all the potheads. Even odder, it was generally only the potheads who came from money or the ones that the school had been begging for a reason to get rid of them in the first place.
Drug raids under the guise of protecting me from being blown up.
Kids became exceptionally good at not being caught. And of course, it was a harsh lesson to learn for kids in their tender teen years – dude, never carry shit on your person or in your bags. Check. Lesson learned.
The bottom line really says that while the education might be a little better in a private Catholic school, kids are the same no matter what school they attend. At my high school, to raise money, they would auction off 3 of the best parking spots in the lot – right up front. They went to the highest bidders – aka families with indulged children and lots of money that didn’t have a better use. Needless to say, my family could afford the run of the mill parking pass to park on school property. In the fine print, however, it said that that could also mean if the gated parking lot was full (which it always was), you had to park on the public street behind the school. The neighborhood that my school was in is sketchy at best. Basically if you didn’t get to school early enough and you had to park on the pubic street running the risk of having your car broken into. I was familiar with such scenario.
When middle-class Angela went to complain about my car being broken into and demanding to know why it was that I had to pay for a parking pass to park on a public street the response from the Dean of Students was shitty at best.
He said, and I quote – We sell parking passes like any business. For example, airlines oversell seats on their planes all the time. The same concept applies here. Besides, the security guard (*who was a fat lazy old man with a chip on his shoulder*) drives down that street and keeps an eye on the cars.
Yeah, until he’s not back there or off being lazy and my car gets broken into, you ass. I didn’t exactly say that to him. I think I just stood there stunned by his own admission. You see, I was on a short list of people that they wanted kicked out. They were just waiting for me to fulfill the Williams/Athas tradition.
Back in the day, my mom attended the same high school I did. She was kicked out for raising her bra up the flag pole like the damn hippie she was. Her parents had money and she was subsequently let back into the school for an undisclosed amount. I’ve never confirmed they paid to get her back in, but the unspoken rules were exactly the same 15 years later. My brother was kicked out of my high school for essentially flicking some kids off. He was on probation from a fight that had happened earlier in the year and somehow my parents managed to keep him enrolled with the agreement that he was on a no-tolerance probation plan. At his junior ring ceremony, the kids he’d been in a fight with were nothing short of harassing him. He retorted with the old nonchalant head-scratch flick off. It’s personally one of my favorite moves. Not too dramatic of an event, except for the fact it was caught on film. Which, by the way, is funny now; it wasn’t then. Ok, I won’t lie – it’s always been funny to me. It’s just that now I can laugh about it with my parents without getting grounded.
Basically, my schools administration reminded me regularly that I was on a short leash.
Anyhow, these 3 prime parking spots were always won by the rich kids. They went for several thousand dollars and kids parked their way-too-expensive-for-a-16-year-old’s care right up front. One kid in particular, I remember vividly. His parents bought him one of the 3 prime spots. In the middle of the year, this kid showed up to a football game shit-canned drunk and got caught. Now, had it been me –expelled… non-negotiable. This kid gets this as a punishment… again, I repeat a PUNISHMENT that instead of being kicked out, put on probation or any other real punishment, he’d merely lose the privilege to park his car in the prime spot that his parents had purchased for him. You know where he had to park after that? On the public street behind the school.
Let’s recap. AS A PUNISHMENT, he had to now park his car where I had had to pay for a parking pass to the school to park there or risk being towed.
Oh and it should be noted that his parents didn’t get their money back for the spot and no it didn’t sit empty for the remainder of the year as a reminder of one his irresponsible behavior and two his parents having far too much loose money. No, no. They REAUCTIONED the spot off. They held a special event for the damn re-auctioning. There were several eager parents front and center ready to buy the damn thing. This is not a life I was ever familiar with. Several thousands of dollars were paid that year for a friggin parking spot. My mom’s theory was – walk, the fresh air will do you good OR after my car was broken into, she said – well that will teach you to leave things visible in your car on that street again. These events basically were building my character for later in life.
I call bullshit. It’s of the same mind as when the person who loses a game says – it doesn’t matter, I just play for fun. You never hear the winner saying that. It’s all about the win. So in essence, my parents neither had the money to fund an upfront parking spot nor would indulge me even if they did have the money. So no mom, it’s not about building character. That’s just the guise you chose to use to try and teach me the importance of making do with what you have and being happy with that fact. Blah, boring. I wanted an upfront parking spot. Conceptualizing the value of money was something that I learned 5 years later in college.
I honestly can come up with a million examples of how ridiculous private Catholic school was. In just remembering it, I might do a blog series on my high school years. But this whole rant was far from the original purpose of this blog. I would like to think my ADD medicine helps me focus and it did… just not on my original goal. But I was real focused on telling you what I told you. So, I’d call that a win.
I started this whole journey out by saying – So, I’ve decided something. It’s big. – And I don’t want to leave you hanging, but there will be a blog after this that goes into that story so that this one isn’t a 10-page long rant with no real purpose.
My big decision is as follows: I firmly believe that in order to save lives in the near future, I might need to start taking Xanax. I mean not dramatically or daily. The RX would read – Take 1-3 Xanax 4mg tablets 30minutes before you need to retrieve your monthly prescriptions from the CVS on Tennyson Road in Plano.
So we’re clear, I’m not a fan of taking medicine like Xanax for any kind of regular reason. The only dug I eat in mass quantities is Advil – which I happen to think that they should rename the Finger of God. Shit’s downright amazing. Period. End of story. And to further my point, about a year-and-a-half ago, I started to have breathing problems. I was short of breath, felt like I couldn’t ever really catch my breath and eventually resorted to yawing or making myself sneeze all the time to get that 2nd wind breath catch. I went to every doctor under the sun to figure out what was wrong with me. To make a long story short, my PCP tells me that it sounds like anxiety attacks. Screw that. I wasn’t anxious. He wanted me to start taking Xanax on a regular basis to calm it down. What about me says I’m not calm?! I refused the prescription. The last thing I need is a pill to fix everything.
One to get up.
One to go to bed.
One to calm down.
One to kill pain.
One to focus.
One to prevent pregnancy.
One to relieve allergies.
One so I can walk on my hurt feet.
The list could go on. There’s a pill for everything and the drug manufacturers and the doctors bought by those drug companies would have you believe that you need a cocktail consisting of one of each just to get through a day. I don’t buy into that at all. So, I’m only an advocate for taking exactly what I need and nothing more and I damn sure did not need Xanax. Which for the record, I ended up being right. The whole weird breathing thing was actually an allergic reaction to caffeine. I’m allergic to friggin caffeine! I’m the butt of yet another one of God’s cruel jokes. I’ve gotten used to this reality.
Xanax + CVS on Tennyson = not killing people. And let me tell you, I have considered black market C4 as to how I would take the whole operation down. I mean not literally. No one call the police or anything, but damn… I’m really just flabbergasted by the absolute incompetence of that place and in my daydreams, I see the thing leveled and it brings a smile to my face.
To be continued…
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
just because...
it is not me who looks back through the mirror
but the vision of a person whom i don't recognize
a smile encroaches the deepest crevasses of a once frowned being
it is just you and me here now - in this quiet moment
there are no worldly distractions to veer from the reality of this now
you are quite possibly the portrait of the most beautiful image
the sight of something so real is daunting while oddly comforting
contradicting the smile follows tears in unison
perfect chaos upon one single face
its imperfection is in its own right - perfection
there is no sadness here, not between you and i
it is a marriage of a past and the decision you have made now
the perfect harmony of two swaying to the rhythm of the wind
holding tightly to the self while relinquishing opposition
it is just you and me here now - no one can see us
this is the moment where you and i are no more
the moment where the person standing in front of the mirror ceases
and you continue forward
you will find your footing in the footprints of a past
never lose who you are or where you came from
but i cannot follow as i will only become a burden on your journey
i started all of this but it is my time to bow out gracefully
there are things that were not done in the best of intention
there are mistakes that you will have to overcome
it is just you and me here now - but i am so very tired
i could say that i am sorry for every misstep that i have taken
but i would not want to deny that that is you
from my past you have been birthed
and because of me you will be better- for that i shed no tears
it is just you here now - the refection in the mirror
panic and confusion coupled with the prospect of true happiness
it is just me here now - i will be what i was meant to be
but the vision of a person whom i don't recognize
a smile encroaches the deepest crevasses of a once frowned being
it is just you and me here now - in this quiet moment
there are no worldly distractions to veer from the reality of this now
you are quite possibly the portrait of the most beautiful image
the sight of something so real is daunting while oddly comforting
contradicting the smile follows tears in unison
perfect chaos upon one single face
its imperfection is in its own right - perfection
there is no sadness here, not between you and i
it is a marriage of a past and the decision you have made now
the perfect harmony of two swaying to the rhythm of the wind
holding tightly to the self while relinquishing opposition
it is just you and me here now - no one can see us
this is the moment where you and i are no more
the moment where the person standing in front of the mirror ceases
and you continue forward
you will find your footing in the footprints of a past
never lose who you are or where you came from
but i cannot follow as i will only become a burden on your journey
i started all of this but it is my time to bow out gracefully
there are things that were not done in the best of intention
there are mistakes that you will have to overcome
it is just you and me here now - but i am so very tired
i could say that i am sorry for every misstep that i have taken
but i would not want to deny that that is you
from my past you have been birthed
and because of me you will be better- for that i shed no tears
it is just you here now - the refection in the mirror
panic and confusion coupled with the prospect of true happiness
it is just me here now - i will be what i was meant to be
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
it's unnatural...
Over the last 2 weeks, I have been on a serious donut kick. I can’t control myself. I think about getting them for breakfast the night before when I am crawling in bed and am still thinking about them when I wake up. It’s ridiculous – like some kind of forbidden relationship that I am obsessing over. So because of all this donut thinking, I have had them more over the last 2 weeks than I care to actually admit, but not enough for anyone to really call an intervention… yet. The time might be nearing.
Conveniently, there is a Dunkin Donuts on the corner of my apartment complex. Seems like a sign from God that these delectable donuts are truly walking distance from my apartment and I have to literally drive by the place to go to work – everyday. So even on the days that I haven’t stopped, I have driven past Dunkin Donuts slowly and whispered something like – tomorrow… I will have you tomorrow – as one single tear is shed. Ok it’s not that dramatic, but our bond – the donut and I – it’s deep and it’s real… at least for the last 2 weeks anyhow.
Like anything forbidden, once you do it long enough, you start getting sloppy. You aren’t as careful and figure if you have gotten away with it for this long, you’re in the clear and start leaning toward the side of carelessness. Like at first, I wouldn’t tell my coworkers how much I was going to Dunkin Donuts. I would put them in my purse and walk into work nonchalantly. I mean, I wasn’t prepared to run the risk of someone seeing the bag and asking if there was a spare donut in there. I imagined that I would have unleashed something like – NO AND MINDYOUR OWN DAMN BUSINESS – as I hurried by making no eye contact. Then as I realized one day that the bag was half hanging out of my purse and no one even noticed it, or if they did, they definitely didn’t ask me to share. Well, if that’s the case, I’m not going to smash these guys in my purse any more and I began to carry them in, in hand. Again, no one even seemed phased.
After a while, I started to wonder why it was that no one was even asking about the donuts or asking to have one. So I found myself announcing the donuts – in morning meeting. I’d say something along the lines of – I was going to get you all some, but I just didn’t have time this morning. The reaction wasn’t what I was looking for, in the least. It was blasé even. *Humph. Friggin donuts are amazing. What’s wrong with you people?*
Next, I decided that instead of buying donuts for the whole office, I would only buy a couple spare ones. This created exclusivity – less donuts then there were people in the office. I would buy 4 donuts; 2 French Crullers and 2 Plain Glazed. Taking on 4 would be no huge feat for me to undertake should no one feel the need to join me in my new-found love of the donut I could handle it, confidently. This partially worked. I ended up just offering a couple of them out to people that I actually like in the office. It generally left me with 2 donuts – 1 Cruller and 1 Glazed. A yummy glazy manage a trios of debauchery. So wrong. So bad, yet so good.
So first, I encountered shame and hid my growing love of the donut. Second, I found myself wondering why it was that no one else was even remotely interested in how delicious these donuts really are. I outted myself. Some might call it a cry for help. I generally classify it under the – I’m going straight to hell for eating crap that’s not good for me and I must take someone with me. Whatever. Donuts are delicious. One can only resist their doughy temptation for a short period of time. Then you find yourself sitting next to me, eating a Cruller and talking about the wonder and awe that is such a simple pleasure.
So up until now, my sloppy behavior and carelessness was reserved to something that was directly correlated to me as well as justifying a blatantly obvious extremely unhealthy pattern. Eh, you only live once. Furthermore, I keep telling myself that this too shall pass. I went on a cake kick for about 3 months several months back. Eventually, one day I woke up and was like – I don’t want cake any more. And that was that. So, eventually I will be over the donut, but for now – The donut is good. The donut is wise.
Today, while of course buying my 2 French Crullers and 2 Glazed Donuts, I hit a new mark of carelessness. I felt I was owed something. I mean, I really understand the value and amazement of the donut. I’m above the law. Untouchable Sugar-high.
I’m actually late to work this morning. I knew I was going to be late when I woke up to my alarm at 8:50am. It’s set for 7am. It’s hard to say if I hit snooze 12x or if I straight slept through an hour and 50 minutes of that horrific beeping.
>>Which quick aside – waking up to a shrieking alarm is just human cruelty. I don’t like it. I am considering revolting against all things alarm related. Except maybe fire alarms. I don’t know, I haven’t put much thought into how my revolution will look or take place. It’s something I will think about… probably over donuts… tomorrow.<<
So it’s 8:50am and I’m late. I now have to make choices. Quickly. If I shower, will I have time to get donuts? What if I shower but just don’t wash my hair? I washed it yesterday. Yeah ponytail and quick shower. Done. Quickly. What to wear? Hmm… well, this tank top and slacks that are actually clean, but slightly on the short side are here. Yeah. This is good. I’ll just wear my jacket all day given that it’s 41 degrees outside and I really did just put on a tank-top without a second thought. Done. 8:57am, I’m walking out the door. I mean, I’m not looking like I would get hit on at any point today, but damnit, I would have my donuts.
9:00am I pull into Dunkin Donuts. What’s this? The only car in the lot besides mine is a cop car. Right there. Right in front of the donut shop. Well, you have to be kidding me. This is greatness. I must have a picture. This will be new for me. When I come into work today, not only will I have some donuts to share but also a funny picture of a cop car in front of the donut store. I called that a damn good start to an otherwise bad morning. I pull out the old iPhone and line it up as best as possible without getting out of my car and making it too obvious that I am taking a picture of this classic stereotype. Beyond that, I can’t see the cop IN the Dunkin Donuts store so I wasn’t entirely sure where he was. The last thing I would want would be for him to catch me out there looking like an ass taking a picture of that. Click. Got a good enough shot that people would know what the score was.
I’m giggling in my car to myself thinking… this is great. When out of the corner of my eye, I see movement in the cop car. It was actually a Police Tahoe, which we all know the cops driving those around are pretty serious dudes. Holy shit. The cop was actually in the car when I took the picture. Did he see me? Holy shit. Holy shit. Is he leaving or is he just getting here? I have no idea. I wasn’t surveying the scene when I pulled up. I friggin had donuts on the mind. That was it. No checking to see what was happening around me. Holy shit.
Which for the record, I’m not sure why I was freaking out so much. Looking back on it, it was like it was all coming crashing down. Here I am at Dunkin Donuts. I’ve been here before. He has to know I have. He’s seen me here before. Does he know about my obsession with donuts? Have my friends sent him? Is this the beginning of the end of my having donuts on a regular basis? I liked how I got over cake. One day they feelings were just gone. No police involvement. This is dramatic. I can’t take it. I need to get a donut and think this out.
I hop out of my car at the exact same moment that the police officer exits his Tahoe. Holy shit. Ok, it’s cool… be cool. I don’t make eye contact and slow my pace so that he won’t have to hold the door to let me in 1st. Once inside, I’m standing behind him and my thoughts are split between Crullers and I think he saw me. There were a couple of people in front of him in the line and it’s taking longer than usual to ring up a couple donuts and have people be on their way. The cop turns around to me, looks me right in the face and says – were you taking a picture of my Tahoe outside?
And in what I assume was the guiltiest look (one he’d seen many times interrogating a criminal of sorts) I said – What? No? Why would I be taking a picture of your Tahoe? I furrowed my brow so as to hopefully show confusion and slight agitation at the mere assumption. He says – Well you know, a cop car at the donut shop. I was here the other day and someone literally pulled out their camera and took a picture. I thought it was kinda funny. Now even though he has given me the opportunity to admit that I had blatantly taken this picture as he used an assuring tone to say he thought it was kinda funny, I was not even remotely going to back down from my original story.
I did the only thing I knew to do. I started my next statement something like this – Oh, no. I didn’t even notice your car there. Although that is funny and maybe I’ll have to snap a shot on my way out. He chuckled and turned around. But then I got to thinking that that really didn’t provide an answer for why I had my phone up, in the direction of his Tahoe and the Dunkin Donuts sign. I must keep talking. So I say to him as his back is turned and for all intents and purposes, he believed the conversation was over and that I was a liar – I was looking for reception. The iPhone has gotten really bad about getting reception and dropping calls. *Wtf? Why are you still talking?*
He turns around and says – yeah, I have heard that AT&T is bad about that… And before he could finish his sentence which was seeming going to be followed by a more inquisitive question to prove I lied, was still lying and planned on continuing to lie the cashier asked him if he was ready to order. Good Lord. I side step to the other cashier and order quickly. I know what I want. I’ve been here before. I’m even certain the cashier was on his way to the Crullers before I’d even ordered them. We knew each other. I pay quickly, grab my bag and head out the door. The cop was walking out behind me. I didn’t stop to take the obligatory picture of his Tahoe at the donut shop; I just hopped in my car and took off. I actually think I broke at least 3 laws getting out of that parking lot quickly. I briefly looked back in my mirror with full anticipation of seeing red and blue lights, but there were none and I bee-lined to work.
Crisis averted.
What’s really sad though, is when I got to work I ate 2 donuts, gave 2 away and began thinking about if tomorrow was too soon to go back to Dunkin Donuts. I think I will give it at least a day. You know, let things cool off. Hopefully by then, this donut obsession will have fallen by the cake-wayside obsession. I don’t know. I really love me some donuts. I think I have a problem.
*And if you look close enough, you can actually see the cop sitting in the car. Something I didn't notice until I put the picture on my computer. It's all pretty Angela-standard.*
Conveniently, there is a Dunkin Donuts on the corner of my apartment complex. Seems like a sign from God that these delectable donuts are truly walking distance from my apartment and I have to literally drive by the place to go to work – everyday. So even on the days that I haven’t stopped, I have driven past Dunkin Donuts slowly and whispered something like – tomorrow… I will have you tomorrow – as one single tear is shed. Ok it’s not that dramatic, but our bond – the donut and I – it’s deep and it’s real… at least for the last 2 weeks anyhow.
Like anything forbidden, once you do it long enough, you start getting sloppy. You aren’t as careful and figure if you have gotten away with it for this long, you’re in the clear and start leaning toward the side of carelessness. Like at first, I wouldn’t tell my coworkers how much I was going to Dunkin Donuts. I would put them in my purse and walk into work nonchalantly. I mean, I wasn’t prepared to run the risk of someone seeing the bag and asking if there was a spare donut in there. I imagined that I would have unleashed something like – NO AND MINDYOUR OWN DAMN BUSINESS – as I hurried by making no eye contact. Then as I realized one day that the bag was half hanging out of my purse and no one even noticed it, or if they did, they definitely didn’t ask me to share. Well, if that’s the case, I’m not going to smash these guys in my purse any more and I began to carry them in, in hand. Again, no one even seemed phased.
After a while, I started to wonder why it was that no one was even asking about the donuts or asking to have one. So I found myself announcing the donuts – in morning meeting. I’d say something along the lines of – I was going to get you all some, but I just didn’t have time this morning. The reaction wasn’t what I was looking for, in the least. It was blasé even. *Humph. Friggin donuts are amazing. What’s wrong with you people?*
Next, I decided that instead of buying donuts for the whole office, I would only buy a couple spare ones. This created exclusivity – less donuts then there were people in the office. I would buy 4 donuts; 2 French Crullers and 2 Plain Glazed. Taking on 4 would be no huge feat for me to undertake should no one feel the need to join me in my new-found love of the donut I could handle it, confidently. This partially worked. I ended up just offering a couple of them out to people that I actually like in the office. It generally left me with 2 donuts – 1 Cruller and 1 Glazed. A yummy glazy manage a trios of debauchery. So wrong. So bad, yet so good.
So first, I encountered shame and hid my growing love of the donut. Second, I found myself wondering why it was that no one else was even remotely interested in how delicious these donuts really are. I outted myself. Some might call it a cry for help. I generally classify it under the – I’m going straight to hell for eating crap that’s not good for me and I must take someone with me. Whatever. Donuts are delicious. One can only resist their doughy temptation for a short period of time. Then you find yourself sitting next to me, eating a Cruller and talking about the wonder and awe that is such a simple pleasure.
So up until now, my sloppy behavior and carelessness was reserved to something that was directly correlated to me as well as justifying a blatantly obvious extremely unhealthy pattern. Eh, you only live once. Furthermore, I keep telling myself that this too shall pass. I went on a cake kick for about 3 months several months back. Eventually, one day I woke up and was like – I don’t want cake any more. And that was that. So, eventually I will be over the donut, but for now – The donut is good. The donut is wise.
Today, while of course buying my 2 French Crullers and 2 Glazed Donuts, I hit a new mark of carelessness. I felt I was owed something. I mean, I really understand the value and amazement of the donut. I’m above the law. Untouchable Sugar-high.
I’m actually late to work this morning. I knew I was going to be late when I woke up to my alarm at 8:50am. It’s set for 7am. It’s hard to say if I hit snooze 12x or if I straight slept through an hour and 50 minutes of that horrific beeping.
>>Which quick aside – waking up to a shrieking alarm is just human cruelty. I don’t like it. I am considering revolting against all things alarm related. Except maybe fire alarms. I don’t know, I haven’t put much thought into how my revolution will look or take place. It’s something I will think about… probably over donuts… tomorrow.<<
So it’s 8:50am and I’m late. I now have to make choices. Quickly. If I shower, will I have time to get donuts? What if I shower but just don’t wash my hair? I washed it yesterday. Yeah ponytail and quick shower. Done. Quickly. What to wear? Hmm… well, this tank top and slacks that are actually clean, but slightly on the short side are here. Yeah. This is good. I’ll just wear my jacket all day given that it’s 41 degrees outside and I really did just put on a tank-top without a second thought. Done. 8:57am, I’m walking out the door. I mean, I’m not looking like I would get hit on at any point today, but damnit, I would have my donuts.
9:00am I pull into Dunkin Donuts. What’s this? The only car in the lot besides mine is a cop car. Right there. Right in front of the donut shop. Well, you have to be kidding me. This is greatness. I must have a picture. This will be new for me. When I come into work today, not only will I have some donuts to share but also a funny picture of a cop car in front of the donut store. I called that a damn good start to an otherwise bad morning. I pull out the old iPhone and line it up as best as possible without getting out of my car and making it too obvious that I am taking a picture of this classic stereotype. Beyond that, I can’t see the cop IN the Dunkin Donuts store so I wasn’t entirely sure where he was. The last thing I would want would be for him to catch me out there looking like an ass taking a picture of that. Click. Got a good enough shot that people would know what the score was.
I’m giggling in my car to myself thinking… this is great. When out of the corner of my eye, I see movement in the cop car. It was actually a Police Tahoe, which we all know the cops driving those around are pretty serious dudes. Holy shit. The cop was actually in the car when I took the picture. Did he see me? Holy shit. Holy shit. Is he leaving or is he just getting here? I have no idea. I wasn’t surveying the scene when I pulled up. I friggin had donuts on the mind. That was it. No checking to see what was happening around me. Holy shit.
Which for the record, I’m not sure why I was freaking out so much. Looking back on it, it was like it was all coming crashing down. Here I am at Dunkin Donuts. I’ve been here before. He has to know I have. He’s seen me here before. Does he know about my obsession with donuts? Have my friends sent him? Is this the beginning of the end of my having donuts on a regular basis? I liked how I got over cake. One day they feelings were just gone. No police involvement. This is dramatic. I can’t take it. I need to get a donut and think this out.
I hop out of my car at the exact same moment that the police officer exits his Tahoe. Holy shit. Ok, it’s cool… be cool. I don’t make eye contact and slow my pace so that he won’t have to hold the door to let me in 1st. Once inside, I’m standing behind him and my thoughts are split between Crullers and I think he saw me. There were a couple of people in front of him in the line and it’s taking longer than usual to ring up a couple donuts and have people be on their way. The cop turns around to me, looks me right in the face and says – were you taking a picture of my Tahoe outside?
And in what I assume was the guiltiest look (one he’d seen many times interrogating a criminal of sorts) I said – What? No? Why would I be taking a picture of your Tahoe? I furrowed my brow so as to hopefully show confusion and slight agitation at the mere assumption. He says – Well you know, a cop car at the donut shop. I was here the other day and someone literally pulled out their camera and took a picture. I thought it was kinda funny. Now even though he has given me the opportunity to admit that I had blatantly taken this picture as he used an assuring tone to say he thought it was kinda funny, I was not even remotely going to back down from my original story.
I did the only thing I knew to do. I started my next statement something like this – Oh, no. I didn’t even notice your car there. Although that is funny and maybe I’ll have to snap a shot on my way out. He chuckled and turned around. But then I got to thinking that that really didn’t provide an answer for why I had my phone up, in the direction of his Tahoe and the Dunkin Donuts sign. I must keep talking. So I say to him as his back is turned and for all intents and purposes, he believed the conversation was over and that I was a liar – I was looking for reception. The iPhone has gotten really bad about getting reception and dropping calls. *Wtf? Why are you still talking?*
He turns around and says – yeah, I have heard that AT&T is bad about that… And before he could finish his sentence which was seeming going to be followed by a more inquisitive question to prove I lied, was still lying and planned on continuing to lie the cashier asked him if he was ready to order. Good Lord. I side step to the other cashier and order quickly. I know what I want. I’ve been here before. I’m even certain the cashier was on his way to the Crullers before I’d even ordered them. We knew each other. I pay quickly, grab my bag and head out the door. The cop was walking out behind me. I didn’t stop to take the obligatory picture of his Tahoe at the donut shop; I just hopped in my car and took off. I actually think I broke at least 3 laws getting out of that parking lot quickly. I briefly looked back in my mirror with full anticipation of seeing red and blue lights, but there were none and I bee-lined to work.
Crisis averted.
What’s really sad though, is when I got to work I ate 2 donuts, gave 2 away and began thinking about if tomorrow was too soon to go back to Dunkin Donuts. I think I will give it at least a day. You know, let things cool off. Hopefully by then, this donut obsession will have fallen by the cake-wayside obsession. I don’t know. I really love me some donuts. I think I have a problem.
*And if you look close enough, you can actually see the cop sitting in the car. Something I didn't notice until I put the picture on my computer. It's all pretty Angela-standard.*
Monday, February 15, 2010
i happen to find this more appalling than…
…when the Chinese folks lied about how old their gymnast competitors were in the Beijing Olympics. I mean, we half expected it from them… but Olympic Officials – really?! I mean this poor guy isn’t even in the ground yet and already they are looking for a way to say it’s somehow this luger’s error and not the ridiculous Luge they built in that kinda-country called Canada.
________________________________________________
Luger's Death Caused By "Human Error"
Friday's accidental death of Olympic luger Nodar Kumaritashvili was not caused by the track, according to Olympic officials.
The International Luge Federation and Olympic officials have stated the deadly accident was a result of "human error" because the Georgian luger, traveling almost 90 mph, was late coming out of the second to last turn and overcompensated for the timing error.
"This resulted in a late entrance into curve 16 and although the athlete worked to correct the problem, he eventually lost control of the sled, resulting in the tragic accident," reads the statement.
________________________________________________
The officials have agreed to make a "change in the ice profile" and raise the wall that Kumaritashvili was catapulted over, but only "to avoid that such an extremely exceptional accident could occur again."
Ok, let’s start this rant where it feels most natural to me – the Olympics in general. Right now, the sole purpose of the Olympics is to gather from all corners of the world, the best athletes of their trade and have them compete to be called the world champion. Fine. Makes 100% sense to me. But it seems like as the Olympics evolve, they have become this thing of how completely ridiculous can we watch one person train to be?
I’m partial to the ice skaters – during the winter Olympics, which seems an appropriate point of reference given that Vancouver is currently hosting them. Back in the day, you’d watch the Nancy Kerrigan’s and Kristi Yamaguchi’s of the world skate to almost perfection. Triple Lutz, Double Axle, Camel Spins and the ever edge-of-your-seat Quadruple Lutz that it seemed no one landed. So it’s fair to say that even then, skaters were pushing the edge – finding a way to supersede their predecessor. An almost evolution of the sport, so-to-say. I agree that as people become more talented that the games should look for more challenge and pressure so that participating in the Olympics isn’t something just anyone can do.
But I will tell you what… it’s like they have sucked the viewer anticipation out of the whole thing. I watched ice skating last night for a little bit before I turned it off saying this is just ridiculous. It’s like when karate became an “art” and you get points for certain moves but in any street fight would get your damn ass kicked while pausing between hits to wait for a judge to mark your point (*clears throat – Jean Claude Van Damme and Steven Segal*). That’s what ice skating has become – a point system that no speculator can even comprehend for one. Two, they have made the sport so complicated that it’s likely that you will see people fall in almost every skate. Granted, there are some that don’t but somehow even when those guys don’t fall, they come in 2nd or 3rd place to someone who did fall because they crossed their foot over two-times instead of once before jumping. Something complicated – or so I’m expected understand. How the hell do you watch the friggin games and know what the hell’s going on half the time? Furthermore, has the need to add more and create unnatural complexities really proved worth it in the end?
I’d say no. And beyond that, there has been the removal of really and truly waiting for the final scores to post because it’s just that close of a performance between gold and silver.
All that to say that it is quite possibly the most ridiculous thing to even allude to the notion that this Luger’s death was caused by human error. Are you kidding me? Ok, riddle me this…
1. I tried to Google how many Luge deaths there have been over the last 10 years. And you know what? It doesn’t even rank. While the sport is considered dangerous (and really rather pointless to me), people aren’t just flying off the track and dying every year at the Olympics in the Luge competition.
2. If it wasn’t somewhat the responsibility of the Olympics Officials and the construction of these apparatuses, why is it then that they almost immediately removed like what?! 100 yards of the Luge track. I’m sorry… they what? Right, removed an entire football field of track to make it safer. I definitely hear human error in that “slight track correction” the old Olympics Officials implemented. And what the hell? Why was there 100-more yards than usual in the first place?
3. By their own accord – The officials have agreed to make a "change in the ice profile" and raise the wall that Kumaritashvili was catapulted over, but only "to avoid that such an extremely exceptional accident could occur again." BUT ONLY are really the words that stick out there. Like we’re fixing it BUT ONLY because this dumbass couldn’t get control of the ice skate under his ass long enough to not jack him however many feet in the air at 90 miles an hour to his ultimate human error of a death. Really Olympic Officials? I get what you’re selling. I’m just not buying it.
I happen to find all of this just down right outrageous. This need to make it bigger, better, faster and break some kind of record has really gotten out of hand. Fine. This I actually get. Such is evolution. And we evolve. Fine. Fine. Fair. But it’s like when some shit like this happens, I want someone to just stop and be real for a minute. Like – whoa dude, we fucked up… hard-core. The intent was not for anyone to die here. The purpose was to watch someone do something we’d never seen before. That being said, ideally you try and compensate for as many things as you can anticipate going wrong in an infinite amount of situations. We sure as shit did NOT see this happening, obviously. Now that we know based on this horrific tragedy, we are doing all we can to make his family as whole as physically possible while taking the proper steps to scale back the track and make some additions to ensure the remaining lugers safety. Then they need to pay some undisclosed multi-million dollar settlement to this kids family. Friggin 21-years old… an Olympian… dead. And some official comes on to say it’s the fault of his human error. Bullshit. I call bullshit.
It’s damn appalling. End of story.
________________________________________________
Luger's Death Caused By "Human Error"
Friday's accidental death of Olympic luger Nodar Kumaritashvili was not caused by the track, according to Olympic officials.
The International Luge Federation and Olympic officials have stated the deadly accident was a result of "human error" because the Georgian luger, traveling almost 90 mph, was late coming out of the second to last turn and overcompensated for the timing error.
"This resulted in a late entrance into curve 16 and although the athlete worked to correct the problem, he eventually lost control of the sled, resulting in the tragic accident," reads the statement.
________________________________________________
The officials have agreed to make a "change in the ice profile" and raise the wall that Kumaritashvili was catapulted over, but only "to avoid that such an extremely exceptional accident could occur again."
Ok, let’s start this rant where it feels most natural to me – the Olympics in general. Right now, the sole purpose of the Olympics is to gather from all corners of the world, the best athletes of their trade and have them compete to be called the world champion. Fine. Makes 100% sense to me. But it seems like as the Olympics evolve, they have become this thing of how completely ridiculous can we watch one person train to be?
I’m partial to the ice skaters – during the winter Olympics, which seems an appropriate point of reference given that Vancouver is currently hosting them. Back in the day, you’d watch the Nancy Kerrigan’s and Kristi Yamaguchi’s of the world skate to almost perfection. Triple Lutz, Double Axle, Camel Spins and the ever edge-of-your-seat Quadruple Lutz that it seemed no one landed. So it’s fair to say that even then, skaters were pushing the edge – finding a way to supersede their predecessor. An almost evolution of the sport, so-to-say. I agree that as people become more talented that the games should look for more challenge and pressure so that participating in the Olympics isn’t something just anyone can do.
But I will tell you what… it’s like they have sucked the viewer anticipation out of the whole thing. I watched ice skating last night for a little bit before I turned it off saying this is just ridiculous. It’s like when karate became an “art” and you get points for certain moves but in any street fight would get your damn ass kicked while pausing between hits to wait for a judge to mark your point (*clears throat – Jean Claude Van Damme and Steven Segal*). That’s what ice skating has become – a point system that no speculator can even comprehend for one. Two, they have made the sport so complicated that it’s likely that you will see people fall in almost every skate. Granted, there are some that don’t but somehow even when those guys don’t fall, they come in 2nd or 3rd place to someone who did fall because they crossed their foot over two-times instead of once before jumping. Something complicated – or so I’m expected understand. How the hell do you watch the friggin games and know what the hell’s going on half the time? Furthermore, has the need to add more and create unnatural complexities really proved worth it in the end?
I’d say no. And beyond that, there has been the removal of really and truly waiting for the final scores to post because it’s just that close of a performance between gold and silver.
All that to say that it is quite possibly the most ridiculous thing to even allude to the notion that this Luger’s death was caused by human error. Are you kidding me? Ok, riddle me this…
1. I tried to Google how many Luge deaths there have been over the last 10 years. And you know what? It doesn’t even rank. While the sport is considered dangerous (and really rather pointless to me), people aren’t just flying off the track and dying every year at the Olympics in the Luge competition.
2. If it wasn’t somewhat the responsibility of the Olympics Officials and the construction of these apparatuses, why is it then that they almost immediately removed like what?! 100 yards of the Luge track. I’m sorry… they what? Right, removed an entire football field of track to make it safer. I definitely hear human error in that “slight track correction” the old Olympics Officials implemented. And what the hell? Why was there 100-more yards than usual in the first place?
3. By their own accord – The officials have agreed to make a "change in the ice profile" and raise the wall that Kumaritashvili was catapulted over, but only "to avoid that such an extremely exceptional accident could occur again." BUT ONLY are really the words that stick out there. Like we’re fixing it BUT ONLY because this dumbass couldn’t get control of the ice skate under his ass long enough to not jack him however many feet in the air at 90 miles an hour to his ultimate human error of a death. Really Olympic Officials? I get what you’re selling. I’m just not buying it.
I happen to find all of this just down right outrageous. This need to make it bigger, better, faster and break some kind of record has really gotten out of hand. Fine. This I actually get. Such is evolution. And we evolve. Fine. Fine. Fair. But it’s like when some shit like this happens, I want someone to just stop and be real for a minute. Like – whoa dude, we fucked up… hard-core. The intent was not for anyone to die here. The purpose was to watch someone do something we’d never seen before. That being said, ideally you try and compensate for as many things as you can anticipate going wrong in an infinite amount of situations. We sure as shit did NOT see this happening, obviously. Now that we know based on this horrific tragedy, we are doing all we can to make his family as whole as physically possible while taking the proper steps to scale back the track and make some additions to ensure the remaining lugers safety. Then they need to pay some undisclosed multi-million dollar settlement to this kids family. Friggin 21-years old… an Olympian… dead. And some official comes on to say it’s the fault of his human error. Bullshit. I call bullshit.
It’s damn appalling. End of story.
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