So I went back to the very Sandwich fixin’ outlet that destroyed my ideas of a drinkless sandwhich special a week earlier. The same “artist” was behind the counter – and I noted some apparent annoyance at my arrival, perhaps remembering the shenanigans of a week ago. So I order. I got my extra sauce this time (proving the existence of miracles). Then the fateful moment arrived – I was going to attempt to avoid getting a drink, as per last time. So I asked for the special for Sunday and said I didn’t want a drink. She paused, looked down and to the side. Moments passed. Off in the distance a dog barked. Then she rang up my purchases and that was it.

VICTORY!!!!!

So I wander into my local footlong custom made sandwich making place. You know the one – with the ugly yellow interior and furnishing draped in the usual adornment of bored teenagers and old folks who look like they are feeling as though its simply nice to be out. It is Sunday, and on Sunday they have this deal where you get your second footlong custom made sandwich for free – if you buy a drink (the catch). So we went through the usual game of “i want this kind of bread” and “sorry – we are out of that kind of bread – pick another” followed by “ok then – i want that kind of bread” and once again “sorry – we are out of that kind of bread – pick another”. Fine. So then we get into the usual argument of “NO – really – I DO want more sauce than that! LOTS of sauce. More sauce!” I like a lot of sauce – they usually balk at that – maybe there is a sandwich weight limit I'm violating or something. Hey – you're an “artist” – can't you just add more stinking sauce? So we shuffle along the line, doing the usual condiment dance and get the the cash register. At this point, I tried something new. Usually I provide a debit card that isn't acceptable to their machine, yet works everywhere else. This time, I tried a different move – the UnreasonableRequest^TM. The deal was: Buy one foot long, get your second free with a medium drink. So asked that since I had absolutely NO use for a drink at this point in time – if I could simply pay for it and get the deal and forgo the hassle of corralling an unwanted, poorly mixed carbonated beverage during the drive home. Nope – the “artist” couldn't be that accommodating. Sorry – we don't' do that. Then, as is my usual mistake (much like the onion ring incident) I attempted to reason with the “artist”.

Consumer: “I don't WANT the drink – so whats the difference if I pay for it, forgo having to drink something I don't want – or throwing it down a drain somewhere”?

BreadWrangler: “We can't do that – you have to buy a drink!

Consumer: “But I'd be PAYING for it – whats the difference?”

BreadWrangler: “We can't do that – the deal is you have to buy a drink.”

I was getting nowhere

Consumer: “Sigh…. so you'd rather I take the drink that I don't want and pour it down a drain than pay for a drink and walk away happy with my sandwiches”?

It was clear that this was what it was going to take – my sandwiches, which I hadn't yet paid for – were sequestered behind the counter out of reach, and unless I took possession of a drink, it seemed I would not get the second one for free. There was no way out – as I went over to fill the damn cup I pointed out that I wouldn't be drinking it – and really they were just wasting it. So I put it down on the table with the bored teenagers who had raptly been watching the proceedings and offered it with my compliments. The “artist” watched disapprovingly. Perhaps she could take comfort in the fact that there was still not enough sauce on my sandwiches. I had needed to make the point that I wasn't going to have the damn drink but as of yet I haven't really come up with a way to have handled it differently. I still don't know why the fuck it mattered that I actually TAKE the drink.

So we'll see if she remembers me NEXT sunday!

Every time the spring weather turns to things other than constant rain, the nuts in my neighborhood see fit to start burning all their yard trash. This drives me nuts, and its legal with a permit. What bothers me is not the burning, is the fact that these idiots burn WET foliage and I even caught one guy emptying his grass catcher from his mower onto his fire. What the hell is the matter with you? Burning grass clippings? As if this wasn't bad enough – the air fills with smoke, it gets hazy and so bad that you can't even open the windows or doors in the house or everything will stink inside too. Odd how they only burn when the wind isn't blowing towards THEIR house. One guy across the street burns only at night, leaving me to believe that he hasn't got a permit. Unfortunately, he burns wet stuff too – although he does attempt to encourage it a bit with spurts of gasoline. Why is it that when you drop by with a big bucket of water and throw it on the fire suddenly YOU are the bad guy?

Ok, so I have two moral questions for you. Sort of a “what is the right thing to do” or “what would you do” kind of questions. Oh, and I'll tell you how these turned out in real life….

1. You go to the grocery store. You buy a large number of groceries, all kinds of things. Among your items are two 1 liter jars of purple grape juice. You carry everything in their plastic bags out to your SUV, placing things on the floor of the back of your SUV. When you get home, you notice that the unsecured bags have been rolling around in the back of your vehicle, and both jars of grape juice have broken, staining the light tan colored interior or your SUV. Subsequent cleaning bills mount to the tune of $120 (CDN).

Is this the fault of the grocery store that packed the plastic bags or the person loading them in an unsecured manner in the back of the SUV?

2. You are driving past a B&B in a residential neighborhood. An oncoming car pulls over to the side, two people, a man and a woman, leap out of the car, grinning madly. The run through the front yard of the B&B, start ripping up flowers and plants out of their beds. When they've collected enough tulips and daffodils they run back to the car, pursued by the owner of the B&B – who looks like he's in his 80's – and is waving his rake in the air.

Now, you've noticed that you went to high school with the plant pilferers, and you notice the make of the car and the name on the vanity license plate. Do you give this information (and their names) to the B&B owner?

Last night I went to UnSafeway^TM for something to eat. I was out of cookies and… well… that was clearly an untenable situation. So, after I had rounded up my desired food items, I managed to fight my way past the harassment of the free samples lackey and got to the checkout. At UnSafeway^TM they have two different sizes of those baskets you carry around with you. At the checkout I chose, this resulted in a tangled mass of baskets stacked such that the top one was at such an angle that the tower would no longer accept a new basket. So… I took the three or four small ones at the top, made them their own pile, added mine…. and moved on. The lady behind me took exception to this, for reasons still unbeknownst to me. So, she REARRANGED them so that they were all haphazardly stacked again. It could have only been designed to piss me off. Now, don’t leap to the conclusion that I was terribly bothered by the fact that the basket stack was all crazy-like. I could have easily ignored it. Now… if she was too lazy to put her small basket in the right pile, and had simply placed it within the bigger basket at the top, there would have been no further thought or discussion about the matter. This was not what occurred.

She actually took a number of them and specifically mismatched them – recreating a haphazard pile! Then she looked at me with this kind of “well – whatcha gonna do about THAT huh!?” expression.

Now, this kind of debauchery isn’t uncommon at UnSafeway^TM, as any reader of my page – or customer of UnSafeway^TM will attest. I’m never sure what to do at this point. Murder seems slightly extreme, although not out of the question. Usually my response is tempered my fears of someone killing me – perhaps even fatally. So, in this case…. since clearly a response was necessary – I merely said: “Good JOB! and gave her a thumbs up sign. Then things got interesting.

So she picked up that bar that is supposed to separate customers groceries and tapped me on the head with it! I was more than slightly flabbergasted. Then the checkout girl told her that she needed to go to another lineup – she was going on a break. She put out the little sign saying just that. As soon as the basket case left – she took the sign down. Hmmm… and unexpected ally!

So what would you have done in that situation – bearing in mind that she was toting her two small demon spawn along with her? Suggest a good anti-psychotic medication? I probably should have pretended I was bleeding from the whack on the head….

Usually the way that phone solicitation is received in my house is that once the intention of the caller in known, they are met with a “I'm not interested thank you”…. and then are hung up upon. Tonight, just minutes ago actually, I got a call that was a bit different.

Women's voice: Hello – we are doing a clothing drive. Is the man of the house there?

First of all, this was different. I haven't heard that question in 15-20 years. I should have claimed to be the “lady” of the house just to confuse things right off the start. Hindsight, you know.

So…. my preprogrammed response was…. “I'm not interested thank you“. Then I hung up, of course.

Then she phones back! This time she sounds annoyed….. she managed to start explaining something about a school… a clothing drive…. before I YELLED into the phone “I told you I'm not interested DAMMIT – stop pestering me or I'll have to call YOU back!“. Then I hung up in a determined manner. I don't know why she pissed me off so much, but perhaps it was this “how dare you hang up on me!” attitude. All this at 9pm.

While I admit my response was slightly harsh, usually these people just give up, as they should, and move on to the next target. I sense she's new at this. If she continues in this manner, I suspect that she'll get even more intense responses. Especially when she calls back to talk about it further!

The other day i was visiting a friend of mine who works in the aquarium room in a pet store. Some guy came in and wanted to know if he could use goldfish to do an experiment for his Vertebrate Biology course. This was interesting. He was in third year, and I have no idea why he was allowed to get that far. However, I had some fun because I got to put my biology hat back on after a bit of an absence and talked to him about design, ways of coming up with experiment ideas (often the hardest part), planning ahead with your design with stats in mind (something I learned in 1st year ARTS courses, but seems to be absent from my Universities science department) etc…. Then I torpedoed the whole thing by suggesting a natural selection angle on a particular idea we were discussing. It seemed he went to the Christian University nearby, and not only do they not teach evolution there, the mere mention of it is apparently quite offensive. I'm surprised they are even offering a biology program. No matter what you believe…. how can you teach a “complete” biology program without a mention of evolution or natural selection etc?

Everyone's life is touched by events so significant that they can remember exactly where they were when they heard the news. Many people, older than I am, vividly remember the day President Kennedy was shot. The day World War II began, ended. There have not been many events with those levels of significance in my life, but even so there have been too many. I will always remember September 11, 2001. I also remember watching on television the first night Baghdad was bombed during the Persian Gulf War. Still, the one with the most impact for me was the first such event I recall. The day the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded 72 seconds after liftoff on January 28, 1986, killing all 7 astronauts aboard.

My mother always watched the news in the morning before I went to school. That morning I woke up, went downstairs and watched the televised news during breakfast. I was 10. Within minutes of the explosion, I saw the first pictures on the television that I will never forget. We can probably all recall that video right now. I took the news to school, but nobody believed me. As I insisted it was true, I was actually punished for lying! Then people realized I was not lying, and as a class we talked about it. The Space Shuttle program made the news more in the late 80's than it does these days; I suppose people take the procedure for granted. It seems anything but routine.

I wrote the first 2 paragraphs here on January 28, 2003. I was reflecting upon how there are days I can remember so many details about, because of the significant events of that day – both public and private. I'd read that Tuesday of last month was the 17 year anniversary of the Challenger disaster and I was surprised at all the details I remember from that day. I wrote this not really expecting to post it publicly. Things change.

This morning I woke up, went downstairs and turned on the news during breakfast. The first thing I saw was video footage of the Challenger explosion 17 years ago. Then there was new footage of another explosion. Today the Space Shuttle Columbia burned up at 200 000 feet reentering our atmosphere. Again 7 astronauts were lost. Again everyone's attention is drawn to the space program.

I have always wanted to go into space. I suppose that isn't a rare desire by any means. I know that I never will, but the fact that others do and have the courage to face the challenges in so doing allows me to vicariously live the experience.

I will remember the details of today.

I hate boredom. No, really! JobLand^TM WAS boredom. Tedium. Repetition. There were very few ways to alleviate this problem, other than talking to coworkers, occasionally boring in themselves. So I'd tell stories and when I ran out of actual things to say, truth would occasionally be forsaken.

So I'd end up talking about going to school, or whatever. Occasionally politics, though many there wouldn't know much about current events and end up… puzzled. Occasionally someone would ask what I studied at University. BSc. in Biological Sciences and an Extended Minor in Psychology. Blah Blah blah.

Things were proceeding in this sort of predictable manner during the course one such conversation so it was aborted. The subject then turned to our jobs at JobLand^TM. I said, as though I were confiding in this individual, that I wasn't actually an employee. I pointed out that I was here doing research for a Masters degree, and I had this arranged with my supervisors. Shit, I was making up this crap as I went along so I start to talk about how my research deals with how one can manipulate people's behaviour just by putting things into ordinary conversations that you have with them. Make them do things, etc – and the things you put into the sentences aren't ones that people would immediately notice and wouldn't have anything to do with the behaviour that you wanted them to engage in. Still, you could manipulate people without them knowing. This gathered some attention.

I was struggling because even though I had a rapt audience I didn't know where I was going with this. This is just the kind of thing that can disintegrate quickly because you are lying through your teeth and don't have the prior thought organized to answer questions/prove your claims. He asked a few more easy to answer questions when the opportunity arose to really seize the moment and turn it into something memorable.

He knocked over his cup of water all over me. A moment of beauty. No, really.

As I pushed my chair away from the table to partially escape the deluge, I said: “Dammit (insert name here)! You weren't supposed to do that until after I left!”

He immediately got up from the table, looking shocked, fled, and I was never able to coax him to have another conversation with me ever again.

I found this (LINK) rather interesting. Not only is it illegal, but it is a JUDGE doing it, and unrepentant one at that. I have no problem with a smoking area, closed off from those not willing to inhale. What I think people working in this building should do is show up at her door and announce that they have heard there is a taxpayer funded smoking room available and light up right there in her office.