The trip home to PA with Miss Charming Melodee went reasonably well. Everyone got along. I ate a lot. We drove around some and saw some of the old haunts. Mostly, we just lounged around. It was too cold to really go do anything, and we were feeling lazy. We did go to a few of the parks I frequented as a child, after showing her pictures of said park. Again, it was freezing outside, so it quickly became very unpleasant. Here's a picture of Tully the Turtle, at the Gring's Mill park a short distance from my house.
I had about the most aggravating day I've had in recent memory yesterday. People in general are just making me very, very angry. Mostly, it's slow fucking people. The dawdlers. The slow speaking, slow moving, dim-witted fuckheads who get in my way every single day. Examples: People on the subway. I have to transfer twice in the mornings, and it's quite a distance between the trains. So I try to position myself at the proper doors of each subway car I'm getting off, and then walk or run to the next train. Nothing makes me angrier, at least in the morning, than when someone else is standing by the door, deliberately so they can be the first ones off, then when the train doors open, their moving like cold motherfucking molasses. They just walk along, al "humpter-dumpter-diddley doo!" like there's no one else behind them. I was reading the entire "Preacher" comic series again, and there's one scene where one of the characters is in an airport, on the moving walkway, and the entire page shows him standing behind a woman, who's not walking, but just letting the conveyor belt move her along. And the only dialogue is an announcement played over and over about using the walkway. In the last panel, after about 100 feet of this, the guy whips out a gun, starts shoving the woman and screaming "Moving WALKway! Moving WALKway!! NOT MOVING FUCKING STANDWAY!!" That's pretty much what I go through every single fucking goddam day. I really hate people. I mean, I really, really hate them.
So everything took me twice as long as it should have yesterday. I left work early to get tickets for tonight's Bonnie Prince Billy show at Irving Plaza before my guitar lesson, then stopped off at the McDonald's on West 4th st. for a coffee. I was already running late, but i really needed the coffee. So of course some chubby Asian dude beats me there by about three seconds. And he says "I want a Big N' Tasty, but I only want it with the cheese, lettuce, and tomato." So the fucking cashier girl takes note, then charges him about $1.70 for the $1 burger. And he's like, "No, that's wrong." And she said "Well, you wanted it with all that stuff." My blood is boiling, "Christ!" i'm muttering, and they both just stare at each other. "no, that's not what it costs." he says again. Basically, what happened here was that the fucking cashier girl heard all this stuff he wanted on the burger, and added those as extras, apparently not taking into fucking account that those are the things that already come on the fucking burger! Jesus Christ. All he wanted was a big n' fucking tasty without ketchup and mayo. So then she settles that. Then he's gotta order a fucking butter scotch sundae an' all this other shit. I was feeling so crazed that as I walked out, this little girl was complaining to her mom about something in a whiny voice, and I started going "Wah wah wah!"
This was actually the second time during the day I was stuck behind someone in a fast food line. After going to a late lunch around 3:30, I decided Wendy's would be faster. So there's only one person in line, and I think "What luck!" Of-fucking-course, when the cashier calls her up, she breaks out with the "Umm...yes...I...will have...two potatoes...one with...sour cream...the other with...uh...butter." I'm already pulling my fucking hair out. Little did I know this was the preamble. So this fucking beast goes on to order a buncha burgers, chili, fries, and a frosty. I hope it wasn't all for her. The worst part was she had so long to wait in line and couldn't mentally prepare her order. What the fuck was she doing that whole time? And of course she was particularly obese. And of course the cashier screwed it all up.
Speaking of fucking idiots, when I got home last night James was watching the reactions to the State of the Union address. Some woman on CNN- I forget who, the older blond woman- had this to say about the address: "Maybe I'm the only one, but I just find it odd that he (the President) spent almost a third of his time talking about a country that's the size of California." That may have actually been the stupidest thing I heard amongst all the stupid things I heard yesterday. I could not believe it. As if a country's size had anything to do with it. Say, can you believe we got all worried when Iraq invaded Kuwait? What's that, smaller than New Jersey? Christ. That's like saying "Gosh, isn't it weird how people spend so much time worrying about nuclear weapons, when the atoms they're splitting to make these weapons are so gosh darn small?" Seriously, this woman should be shot. Not killed, but maybe just a glancing blow to the foot or the knee cap. OK, shot is a little extreme. Shocked? Like someone next to her with a pair of jumper cables and a car battery, who could, at his/her discretion, shock the stupid little tart every time she said something like that? I'd do that for free. I'd even pay for my own travel to go to Washington, D.C. to do it.
I could go on and on about what people said about the speech, but that would just infuriate me further. Though I will say I'm conflicted about the impending war. The way I see it, it's a lose/lose situation for our dear old Pres. And also, for me. If he goes in, there will of course be all sorts of protests, and I'll be subject to even more trendy protest stickers/graffiti in the subway. If he does nothing, and something terrible happens, people will be like "Why was nothing done sooner?" ABC had a focus group watching the speech, and afterwards one person said "I want to see the smoking gun first." All I can think about that is, no, you don't. I do like the fact that Bush would make an unpopular decision. After so much pre-packaging and pandering, it's nice to see him do something that seems to hurt his approval rating.
Anyway, in general my shittiest day in recent memory. I swear, if I didn't get to watch Gilmore Girls at work last night, I don't know what I would have done.
