| Because I don't have anywhere else, I'll put them here.
Bless me, Father Jung, for I have sinned. It's been six months since my last confession: Once in a while, a couple of times a year, there are moments when I am That Asshole Driver I complain about.
Like Thursday, August 5, 2010, right around 40 minutes into rush hour.
Kobalt/Lowes: "Heavy-Duty Metal Workbench"--with MDF top??? Fuck off. And "$30 installation fee?" Bitch, please. First project on new workbench: assemble workbench. Show me the man who pays someone else to assemble his workbench, and I'll show you a man who won't be using it very often. Well, at least then we don't have to worry about the fiberboar--- Ah, yes. I see.
Stanley/Bostitch: You make some intriguing looking tools. I have to admit, I generally like the design elements/balance/feel of them better than those of many of your competitors. I mean, I would Tear It Up with one of those anti-vibe framing hammers with the built-in magnetic nail-set feature. But could you try, just once, making One Goddam Thing in America? You may be the largest manufacturer of hand tools in the world, but I assure you I am not the only young, redblooded male who has turned down your full-tang chisels (great idea!) for a potentially less-stout, yet Apple-pie-and-baseball-star-spangled-Americanly less-stout, alternative. Still, as the biggest tool (HOLDINGS) company in the world, I guess you're gonna keep doing your thing. So whatever you must do, do so cheaply. And with limited environmental oversight. (Yay, China!)
Growing older means that, in public places everywhere, instead of making googly-faces at good-looking teenage girls, you return increasingly to this recurring fragment of internal monologue:
- Excuse me, Ma'am--MA'AM ... I know this is a bit random--and please forgive me for being so forward--but, despite the obvious difference in our ages (which I recognize as highly problematic), and though your husband might kill me if he heard me say this--I just couldn't live with myself and all the infinite possibilities of regret if I waited even a moment longer to come to you and tell you that, well ... I mean, uh ... Your daughter is fucking SMOKIN'!
( ... while the alleged wisdom that comes with age claps its hand over your mouth and shoves you on toward, say, the checkout counter.)
Having once majored in English means that you still derive a modicum of pleasure in deciding how best to order a series of parentheticals, or how to build intensity in an already italicized world. It's like playing with Matryoshka dolls.
I tend to bitch more passively than proactively, but if you find yourself any time soon at a certain, unnamed fast-food Taco joint, DO NOT TRY THE NEW PROMOTIONAL CORN-SOFT-TACO-THINGS! No one has been this underwhelmed by the size of something since ... Actually, I'm kind of tired, so I'll save myself the hassle and just let you fill in the blank with your favorite self-deprecating comment. Although I will save my energy for the phone survey that could win me $1,000 tonight. That's 200 times I can go Not Buy three of those things and a large drink.
Besides, strike two for only carrying Pepsi products.
There's a Sierra Club sticker on my LeSabre, and I've planted a couple of trees in my life, but when you're rocking out to AC/DC in a big old truck loaded down with tools and lumber, there's sometimes a split second, almost imperceptible, as you throw it down into third gear and roar ahead of a pack of indecisive Nissans--there's just a tiny, fleeting moment, Brian Johnson screaming in your ear and RPMs gunning up past 5,000, that you whisper to your environmentalist self:
Mother Who?
God, I want a truck.
Thanks for listening. |
