I went to the newly opened Blues Bar with co-workers yesterday, gentle reader, and witnessed a spectacle of a woman in her late fifties, early sixties. One co-worker brought in a package, which the woman proceeded to grope drunkenly before he chased her off. Having been duly rebuked, she grabbed her coat and left the bar, only to return minutes later. While I have no idea why she came back, I do know she wandered behind the bar, sashayed into the back office, and finally ended up behind the bar again.
I’d like to tell you she did something whimsical, that she sang a ditty or danced a jig, but instead she helped herself to the tip jar. This jar wasn’t sitting out on the bar, mind you–it was right next to the register. The poor bartender, caught in a moment of supreme social awkwardness, finally succeeded in ejecting the wily woman from the premises.
What would you have done in this case? Perhaps you could visualize this better if I presented a more personal scenario, so here you go: you’re walking along the street when a woman in her late fifties plunges her hand into your trousers in a desperate bid to liberate your wallet. She doesn’t do it with the panache of a mugger or the subtlety of a pickpocket; she simply rams her hand into your pocket, no questions asked.
You could be violently angry: “Not in my pocket, wench! Here, I’ll pop the hood to my car and you can see if there’s anything in there. Yes, that’s right–while I’m driving at a modest 25 MPH.”
You could be neutral: “You just put your hand down my pants. Literally speaking. Can I help you?”
You could be the Good Samaritan: “There, there. You must have something on your mind. Why don’t we sit down, talk about it, and then you can sober up? I’ll get you a coffee. Hair of the dog and whatnot.”
Which one would I choose? The Good Samaritan option, of course. You know it.
Automobile maintenance and high seas adventure met briefly yesterday, gentle reader, when I found a pair of pliers hidden under the hood. It all began when Mother Nature expertly stuck a few twigs along the ridge of my hood. I tried to pull these twigs out, but with my luck they quickly snapped like so many mental patients. Under the driver’s side seat I went, fishing for the hood button and grumbling all the while.
I found the button and pressed it, only to discover that the hood merely unlocked itself and wouldn’t lift up completely. Great, now I needed to find the release latch. I slid my fingers across the edge of the hood until I found something that felt like a latch but certainly didn’t act like one. You see, the “latch” disappeared as soon as I touched it. When I had found the real latch, I lifted the hood and exposed the counterfeit: turns out it was one of the handles belonging to a grimy pair of pliers. When did my car turn into a frickin’ treasure chest?
This was precisely how Long John Silver felt, except that he found gold circa 15th or 16th century and I found a pair of pliers–retailing no more than $4.95 plus tax–circa three weeks ago when I brought my car into port. Slipshod service? Perhaps, but there are far graver implications at hand.
Christmas, Hanukah, and maybe Happy Meals have traditionally been our major sources of loot, but someone apparently failed to tell that to my Duxler representative. Now I am compelled to pop the hood regularly to check for trinkets. Who knows what untold riches I may find buried in my car? I could find a screwdriver. Doubloons. Maybe even a mechanic. Yaaaaargh.
Given the recent influx of commentary software, gentle reader, you may wonder why Secondhand Rants has chosen to operate without any. The answer is simple. Just as Saddam enjoyed a 99% majority whenever election time rolled around, so too do I sleep knowing that each and every investor approves of each and every comment I make. The website proper is the commentary board, a marquee for all my thoughts uncontested.
Nevertheless, some of you insist on letting your thoughts be heard, and to that end I am accessible through e-post. Occasionally I find the charred remains of a postman in my lobby, proof positive that neither rain, snow, barbed electric wire, nor sleet can hinder our fine mail system. This is what I found in my mailbox today:
too bad one can’t leave comments on your site, otherwise i would tell you that i had my own culinary highlight this week when i had leftover rice (still with hints of black bean sauce, tofu, and green beans) and old spaghetti sauce for lunch. marvelous.
and my google toolbar would like to express some curiosity in your popup ads. haha! booya!
You will go unnamed out of respect for your privacy, I can promise that much, but I cannot stress how unready we are for ethnic fusion of this magnitude. Notice the ingredients I listed for my own culinary epic: pasta, salsa, broccoli, and various spices. Pasta, as you well know, holds an almost universal appeal, spanning countries such as Italy, Thailand, and China. The same goes for vegetables and spices. Salsa is arguably the only ethnic ingredient I employed, which would make my dish unequivocally Mexican. You don’t see me tossing in Lucky Charms–an Irish delicacy–or Canadian bacon and patting myself on the back. Your dish, then, would be akin to Wolfgang Puck repeatedly clubbing Julia Child over the head with a George Foreman Grill on the set of Iron Chef, and that simply won’t do. Yes, Virginia, there is an objective standard for cooking disasters.
I am also sad to say that the Google Toolbar oppresses all pop-ups indiscriminately. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think there’s definitely room for a Communist reading of the Toolbar. Maybe a little borscht got into the old crockpot, eh? A note to all gentle readers: uninstall your Google Toolbars immediately. Set your pop-ups free.