No, please… take your time arguing with the guy at the cash register.  I’m enjoying all the headlines of the magazines in the rack.  I mean, who knew Demi Moore was having Pauly Shore’s lovechild?  That info will come in really useful for me at my weekly housewives bridge game.  You know how we love to gossip!

Of course, I probably didn’t need to read that same line 37 times.  It sunk in after the first 15, you know?  But I’m enjoying myself immensely, and not considering ways to kill myself with last month’s People magazine at all.

As a point of interest, however, I’m wondering what exactly a 73-year-old woman needs with 14 bottles of rubbing alcohol.  On second thought, please don’t tell me; I’m sure the thought wouldn’t do much for my future sex life.  That is, if I’m not afflicted with arthritis and age spots by the time you get done debating the fine print of your coupons.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m on your side.  You totally deserve that 5 cents off each bottle.  I mean, that’s a savings of nearly $0.70!  Think what you could do with that money… it’s enough to buy… to buy… well, I’m sure with your exquisite skill at clipping newspapers you could find something to spend it on.  And with any luck, I’ll be behind you in line again when you do!

Oh, good!  You’re sending the cash register guy to the back of the shop to check the sticker on the one bottle of purple hair dye you didn’t buy!  That’ll give us some good quality time to stand around looking awkwardly at each other while you roll your eyes at me like we’re lifelong friends.  No, no, there’s no need to explain to me your position on the issue of buy-one-get-one-free in regards to gum in exponential quantities; you’ve been shouting it at the top of your lungs for twenty minutes.  Say, what is the brand of that hearing aid, anyway?

Yes, yes, you’re totally right: customer service isn’t what it used to be.  Also, Harry Truman was a great man, children used to respect their elders, and when did young women decide it was appropriate to show their bellies in public?  And while we’re at it, wasn’t it so much better when dinosaurs roamed the earth and all you had to worry about was whether or not that glacier was getting closer?

Yay!  The cash register guy is back!  By all means, let’s discuss your 23 coupons for milk of magnesium.  I always wondered why the Penny Saver kiosks in this neighborhood are perpetually empty.

Of course, this is a Duane Reade, and those clippings are for CVS, but don’t let that stop you – I’m quite certain Duane Reade has a sophisticated and expedient price matching policy on $1.49 items.  I’m sorry, $1.46 items; you’ve got the documentation right there.  Would it be easier if I just gave you 69 cents?  No, of course not.  A penny saved is a penny earned… tediously.

Alas, a number has finally appeared on the cash register screen; it appears our time together is almost at a close.  Also, I think I qualify for Social Security now, so that should help me afford this one item I’ve got.  And to think, I considered throwing it at you!

Yes, I’m sure the cash register guy added it up wrong; $17.23 is way too much for only 58 items.  Of course, I’m pretty sure he has one of those new-fangled machines that does the math for him, but by all means, go through the receipt line by line as if it were a mortgage agreement until you’re satisfied that your superior mental adding skills have confirmed his ability to press buttons with numbers on them.  I don’t have anywhere to be until my lunch break ends… well… 20 minutes ago, so take as long as you need.  Don’t worry about the 16 people behind me in line; we’re all rooting for you.

You know, I’m pretty sure there’s not a trophy or anything for having exact change.  Just give him… give him the quarter and the… yes, count out three pennies and… there’s a dime, a dime right there under the…

Fuck it.  I’m stealing this.

Love,
Pip

You know when they say “Order when you’re ready?” I hate to be the one to inform you of this, but they don’t really mean it. It’s code for “Start talking, asswipe.” Maybe if they could say that out loud, the job would be worth the $5.50/hour they get paid, but alas, they can’t.

I know, I know, the menu is big and pretty and you got confused. Plus, you only had twenty minutes to peruse it while the three Dodge Neons in front of you were ordering. But guess what? It’s fucking McDonald’s. They’ve had the same basic menu for 50 years, so stop staring at it like it’s the Rosetta Stone.

Yes, they’ve recently added a bunch of chicken crap and salads to the menu, but let’s face it: you’re not going to order any of that stuff. After a solid half-hour of questions about value menu sizing, what you’re going to order is a Big Mac meal, Super-Sized. So stop kidding yourself that you’re going to live up to your New Year’s resolutions and order the damn thing so we can all get on with our lives. And don’t worry about the fact that it’s got about 600 grams of fat, because you’re going to leave the last two bites and four fries and convince yourself you didn’t eat much of it.

What’s that? You’ve got a soccer team to order for? Fuck you, buddy. Park that ‘92 Caravan of yours and go inside. I’m not sitting here in my car for an hour and a half while Trevor figures out whether or not he’s allergic to the Fillet o’ Ecoli. He’s a crappy goalie and he’s going to throw it up when he takes a ball to the gut in the first half anyway.

Seriously. Stop ordering Happy Meals. Now. Rob Thomas has been on the lite rock station my radio is stuck on for like the last half-hour and I’m going to put a tire gauge in my eye if I have to listen to another song while I slow-cook in my car. It’s a no-fault state and I’ve got enough room to get some decent momentum when my foot “slips” off the gas.

Yes, he said around the corner. Around the corner. Yes, drive around the corner. You’re in a fucking driveway; where else are you going to go? There’s a little wall on one side and a building full of miserable community college dropouts on the other; it’s not brain surgery. Just follow the little road to the little window with the guy who looks like Paul Wall on a bender.

NO! NO! Do NOT back up! I will get out of my car and kill you with this broken Soul Asylum CD if you back up! I’ve already pulled forward; so have the 92 cars who showed up while you were asking how much more the 6-piece nuggets were. There is nowhere for me to go, and you do NOT need any more food! Stop! STOP! You ass.

Okay, I’ve got my McChicken sandwich and coke ordered, and I’m considering forgiving you. Oh, cute. Your 4-year-old son is staring at me out of the back window. Hi, little guy. Daddy’s a tool. Yes he is! Yes he is! And you’re going to grow up to be a tool just like him, coaching soccer teams to distract yourself from the fact that your wife has had a headache every night for the last seven years.

Okay, seriously. Stop staring at me, kid. It’s hot, I’m looking forward to undercooked and over-fried chicken for lunch, and I still have this jagged CD.

Dude, your kid’s starting to drool. Maybe you should have him looked at, before he ends up pushing a mop in this fine establishment.

Or maybe it just runs in the family, judging on the number of condiment packets you just demanded from the window. What the hell are you planning to do, build a fort? Take a sweet & sour bath? Or is your counting so off that you don’t realize that 172 barbecue sauce tubs for 6 nuggets is overkill?

Yes, your youngest kid gets a crappy Happy Meal toy. No, I don’t care that it’s the same one. What difference does it make? It’s a 42-cent piece of plastic made in Taipei, and it’s going to get tossed out onto the street in 4 minutes where it can get caught in my axel and manage to do $748.65 worth of non-claimable damage. No, you can’t exchange them. Tell Sling Blade back there to sack it up and deal; in a month he won’t remember what Kim Possible was anyway.

Yes. YES. Drive away now. No, don’t pull up 4 feet and stop to count your cheeseburgers. I can’t… I CAN’T PULL UP TO THE WINDOW WITH YOU THERE. Idiot. Just a few more feet. Yes, they got it all. Wonder upon wonders, they got the order right. Now fuck off.

…

What do they mean, they’re out of barbecue sauce?

Love,
Pip

“Trix are for kids?” Seriously.  It’s a $3 box of crappy, unreasonably-colored sugar balls with little to no nutritional value.  A cartoon rabbit is about the only thing it is fit to be fed to.

Besides, he’s an anthropomorphic talking rabbit.  One with an obsessive fixation on a breakfast cereal, who’s shown time and time again the ridiculous lengths he’s willing to go to to score his fix.  He’s not silly; he’s scary.  And it’s only a matter of time before this gets out of hand.

So quit being a dick and give him a bowl.  Before somebody gets hurt.

Love, Pip

Love, Pip

P.S. I will hire a hacker to break into the iTunes account database and find the personal address of the next fucker who posts a review saying “should i wach this show? click YES if u think i should ”.

Then I will find you, and I will do things to you. Dark things.

Wh- but why?  Why would you… why?  Why.  Why.  WHY.

You’re a semi-moderate… why?  Why.  Why?  I don’t underst… why?  What were you going for, the neo-conservative vote?  Who else were they going to vote for, Obama?  They’re neo-cons – as a rule, they don’t like black people, much less liberal, free-thinking ones.  So why?

Why.

WHY?!?

I’m trying to wrap my head around the… WHY?  WHY? She’s like Hermann Göring with breasts.  And you could have grabbed on-the-fence moderates if you hadn’t backed… Why?  Why.

I mean, don’t get me wrong.  I wasn’t going to vote for you anyway.  But I want to understand.  I WANT to understand, John.  Tell me why.  Just send me an email and let me know before my head explodes.  Simple question: why?

What, because she’s a woman and you don’t want to run on the “old white man” platform against the potential first black president of the United States?  Is that why?  Is THAT WHY?  I MUST KNOW WHY!  Please don’t tell me it’s because she’s a feminist – the only resemblance between her and a feminist is a vagina, and I don’t even have proof she has one of those.

And FEMINIST?  Seriously?  You can’t even say that with a straight face, and your face has been stuck like that since 1972.  She’s anti-choice, balks at the rights of rape victims, and tilts about as far to the Christian right as she can without tipping over.  She makes Arthur Schopenhauer look like Ruth Ginsberg.

So… WHY?

Because she’s the governor of the largest state?  Get real; the population of Alaska is like 27, and 15 of those don’t count because they’re Innuit and the government ignores them anyway.  If you put Alaska where Texas is, it’d melt down to the size of Rhode Island.  So why?  WHY?

This is making me NUTS.

Maybe that’s why!  Maybe you brought her on to make your “abstinence only” education platform look sane by comparison.  Was that it?  Was it?  Please tell me what it was, John.  I mean the woman named her kids Todd, Piper, Willow, Bristol, and Trig, so if you’re not running on the “I’m not the craziest one in the room” principle, I don’t know what you’re up to.

Moderate Republicans were going to vote for you, because you’re a bit moderate compared to some of your cohorts, which means you don’t openly wear the swaztika on your lapel.  Neo-conservatives were going to vote for you, because who the hell else would they vote for?  Buchanan?

But some very conservative Democrats might have voted for you because you’ve got more experience than Obama, but now you’ve slapped them across the face with an Alaskan salmon by nominating Rush Limbaugh in a dress as your running mate.   So what are you playing at?

There must be a reason.

There must be a reason.

There must be a reason.

There must be a reason.

There must be a reason.

There must be a reason.

There must be a reason.

There must be a reason.

Is it because she’s young and pretty and you look like you’re going to go into cardiac arrest if the Secretary of Labor cuts a loud fart?  Is that it?  Surely there was another pretty Republican woman you could have chosen – hell, even Ann Coulter would have been a better choice than Sarah Freakin’ Palin.  A rhesus monkey would have pulled more votes for you, if for no other reason than sheer novelty.

And how did you let this pregnant daughter thing slip past you?  HOW?  I mean what kind of vetting process misses that SARAH PALIN’s teenage daughter is pregnant out of wedlock?  What did you do to vet her – ask the guy at the Starbucks where she buys her coffee?  Google her?  Oh, wait, guess you did.

I mean, Jesus, John.  Why?  Why did you… why?  WHY?

Is that burning toast I smell?  Aaaagghhhhrrrr….

Love, Pip

idk where u learn ur eng skillz but i h8 2 read wat u type bc it l00ks like its a) md5‘d or b) written by a 5yo w/ downs rofl.

also, b4 i 4get, i rly h8 2 b the 1 2 tell u this, but “ur gay” is not as gr8 a comeback as u think. +, i think ur making that smiley up

i no ur 28, but i think ur momz wants u upstairs now O.o i hope u will b afk while u eat ur rice crispy tr33ts.

Who the hell are you talking to on the phone? You’ve been chattering nonstop for the last half-hour. I don’t think I’ve even seen you breathe, much less allow the person supposedly on the other end of the line to speak.

Who is your carrier, and what crazy rate plan are you on? I know you’re not swimming in cash or you wouldn’t be driving a Towncar that looks like it ended its career as an extra on a Dukes of Hazzard episode.

Speaking of which, I may not know much about cars, but shouldn’t this model have come with, y’know, a dashboard? I know you don’t have a meter, but a speedometer might be nice. I’m just saying, is all. The fact that you appear to be shifting gears with a socket wrench is a tad off-putting.

And what is that smell? I didn’t want to say anything at first, because I thought it must be some kind of ethnic dish and I didn’t want to be insensitive, but now my eyes are starting to bulge. It smells like Andrew Dice Clay’s career in here, and I can’t take it much longer. I thought I knew what “stench” meant from that time my roommate left a burrito in the sink for a week, but that was before the word was so brutally redefined in this backseat.

What’s that matted clump stuck to the window? Is… is that… is that hair?

Uh… that SUV is… it’s… it’s gonna… JESUS H. CHRIST! C’mon, man – I know I said I was in a rush, but my dismemberment insurance isn’t paid up this month, so how about you relaAAAAACK!

Erm… does the West Side Highway really seem like the best route to get from Midtown to Queens? Okay, okay! Sorry I asked. I don’t know what you’re saying but you’re obviously very excitable. Eyes back on the road, please, ’cause there’s a Dodge NeOOOOOOLY FUCK!

Hey, that was neat. You actually managed to re-locate my spleen. Cool as that is, though, I just retched a bit of street-corner gyro into my mouth, so how ’bout we ease into the gas from now on there, Sparky? I didn’t know an ‘83 Lincoln could go from 0 to 60 in 0.2 seconds. Learn something new every day.

What do you mean, where’s Queens Boulevard? It’s Queens Boulevard. It’s the big fucking boulevard that runs right down the middle of Queens. Well, I don’t know how to get there, man, I just moved here. I’m not the one who drives around New York for a living. How about you take the money you didn’t spend getting properly licensed to do this and invest $3.49 on a map?

Just up here. No, keep going. A little further. No, a little furth… oh, just drive. I’ll tell you where to pull over. No, not on the corner; I just said I’d tell you where to… oh, fuck it. Here’s fine.

Forty bucks? Forty bucks? Where’d we go, Midtown to Queens by way of Rhode Island? I’m not paying you forty bucks to scare the hell out of me.

On second thought, it’s worth the extra ten bucks you’re overcharging me just to get out of the car.

Love,

Pip

*The term ‘Gypsy Cab’ is used to refer to a cabbie who cruises for passengers, most often without a license to do so, and has nothing to do with actual Gypsies.

Hi! I’m the guy who sits behind you in class. You know that odd crunching noise you hear every time you speak? Yeah, that’s me griding my teeth. I know you look down on me because I rarely speak in class. I know you think I have nothing to add to what you say. And you’re right, I don’t.

Because what you say is stupid.

You know that professor you told us you worked with at Moderately-Prestigious University? The one whose name you’ve now said in class 16 times? Nobody’s ever heard of him. Yeah, he wrote some papers. Guess what? That’s what professors do. I’ve written some papers too. One of my favorites is a particularly poignant one entitled “What I Want for Cristmas is Peece.” I wrote in the 1st grade. My mom showed it to her co-workers, which probably means that more people have read my paper than your professor’s.

What’s that? You did a workshop with <insert meaningless name here>, where you learned to use your bodies as tools to fight oppression? That’s great. I’m a little fuzzy on how it relates to our discussion of iambic pentameter, but still… great for you. How about you continue to tell us about the workshop while I take a little brain nap and think about that chick from Lost sunbathing?

I’m not staring at my pencil, by the way, because I’m retarded. I’m staring at it because I’m wondering if the graphite in the tip is strong enough to make it through my eye and into my temporal lobe. I’m going to try it in a few minutes. Possibly sooner if you encourage us to “unpack this issue” one more time.

On a side note, the word you’re looking for is “gravitate.” People gravitate towards certain trends and pretty rarely levitate towards them. Levitation would be more interesting, sure. And maybe, if that’s really what you were actually talking about, I could focus for more than 1.73 seconds on what you’re saying, and maybe ask for a little of what you’re smoking after class. But I’m reasonably sure that’s not the word you want. Keep using it, though – I’m enjoying the laugh.

I honestly do know that it’s rude of me to roll my eyes every time your mouth opens. Forgive me; its an autonomic response to complete bullshit. Usually, I try to doodle stick figures in various inappropriate poses so that my eyes are averted when this unfortunate reflex occurs, but sometimes I take a break from my erotic/anorexic masterpiece to look up, and that’s always the moment at which you choose to speak.

Or maybe you’re just always talking.

Speaking of which, are you still talking? Feels like you’ve been pontificating since roughly, oh, 1994. I tune in every once in a while to pluck some tidbit with which to mock you mercilessly later, but even this pasttime is losing its joy. Plus, since I paid $1000/credit, I’m sort of hoping that the professor will get a chance to speak this class period. Or semester, come to that.

Love,Pip