"There is a good reason why I'm grinding my face into this carpet. No, really, perfectly good reasons. Stop looking at me like that!"
I didn't have a chance to say this at the time, as I was laid out behind the buy counter on our store's rough carpeted floor, my back stiff as a board. I should have said it, but I didn't. A couple of my co-workers were giving me the "O-kkkeeey" eye, a distant cousin of the evil eye (instead of projecting malice, the "O-kkkeeey" eye projects a focused beam of befuddlement and perplexed-ness). I had very good reasons for clinging to the uncomfortable ground, softly muttering "oh goddamn, oh shit, oh Moses-fuck-a-cunt" over and over again. Joey had come back into the store, his daft mom in tow.
I've mentioned El Joseph De La Poop-Pants in previous posts. For those of you who have read them, I hope that gives you enough of an understanding of the frame of mind I was in, the same frame that led me to eagerly hug the floor rather than be seen by his wild, dumb eyes. The day had already been a bit of a grind: most of the day was swallowed up by a never-ending stream of book sellers, left with nothing to do on Columbus Day but box up their water-damaged literature and haul it over to our store (one of the boxes actually had a live scorpion in it, which crawled out and clung to the side of a tower of paid-for books; one of our customers tried to play a hero and squish the damn thing, and the dumb bastard was lucky he didn't get stung). Having to spend 30+ minutes answering the same questions over and over again from a man who smelled like a landfill that had grown a set of legs and spent the last three weeks running on a treadmill in a sauna. The man reeked, this time not of shit-stained pants, but rather of the "I haven't washed since Clinton was in office" variety of stench. Of course, I couldn't embrace the cheek-gouging comfort of the carpet forever; I had to prop myself up and talk to him (the two employees with seniority had just left for lunch, leaving me at the helm of the Good Ship Half Price).
Thankfully, I've learned to embrace my inner asshole when it comes to customer service. When I need to be, I can rival a German government official in ice-cold, bare-minimum politeness. He wasn't doing the "I WANT CARRIE" dance, but he was asking me way too many questions about Racquel Welch movies, and I just wasn't in the mood to be Mr. Friendly. I pretty much kept saying "have a good night", trying to end every brief exchange with a note of finality, hoping he'd take the hint, and he and his dingbat mom would leave. This tactic worked... after twenty minutes of continued use.
Other thing of note from work: in addition to running General Fiction and Sci-Fi, I also shelve a couple of smaller genre sections, chief among them Horror, Westerns, and Erotica. One of the erotica series that we get in on occasion that sells like hot cakes is the Ellora's Cave series. I've admitted in the past to having an on-the-job guilty pleasure of reading romance and chick-lit plot synopsises, and I'm sad to say that I can add Ellora's Cave synopsises to my list. Bored and tired of pricing, I picked up one of these books, which I've shelved constantly with nary a second look, and flipped open to a random page to see the horrors it contained. The page I stumbled on had some of the funniest, most horrific prose ever committed to page: while "filling" his "fiery mate" with his "illustrious seed", the male character actually says the phrase "this wicked beastie of a cock" referring to his own member. WICKED BEASTIE? In what universe is this not hilarious? I've always figured Ellora books for trash, considering their horribly cheap computer-generated covers (do yourself a disservice and look up Ellora's Cave on Google Image: oh, the horrors of piss-poor graphic design). However, by trash, I didn't think of anything as absolutely mind-blowing as "Wicked Beastie". Flipping through other pages, I saw more and more examples of this horrid, sub-par porn writing. It made me think of a funny double-standard: if a male writer wrote a book like anything in the Ellora's Cave catalogue, they would be reviled and dismissed as a perverted hack. If a female writer writes this kind of unintentionally hysterical crap, they're just expressing their "inner-most desires" and deserve to be patted on the back for their sensual bravery. To this I say "bah humbug". No writer of any gender should be allowed to use a phrase like "wicked beastie of a cock" in all seriousness and be forgiven for such a sin.
And on an non-work related note, I must now pimp a film I've seen tonight that deserves to be pimped:
I read a brief shout-out to this film in a New Times issue months ago, and the premise of the film sounded so cool I was just itching for a chance at getting it on DVD. CSA's premise: The Confederate States Of America is a mockumentary-style film that takes place in an alternate universe where the South won the Civil War, annexed the North, and became the dominant political power in the Western World (whose most hated enemy is Canada, a hotbed of abolitonists and Northern expatriates). Part of what makes the documentary format work so well is that the film's framing device is that when the film begins, it doesn't begin with the documentary. Rather, it begins on a basic Confederate TV channel, complete with its own commercials. The doc is introduced as a controversial production from the BBC, finally getting its premiere on Confederate TV. Much like any TV-produced documentary, C.S.A. is interrupted by occasional commercial breaks, many of which are both hilarious and disturbing (most memorable: "Runaways", a "Cops" style show where cops arrest runaway slaves while a country-ified re-imagining of the "Bad Boys" song plays in the background; what's really scary about this scene is how it looks exactly like a typical "Cops" episode, almost to the point that I thought it was recycled footage from the show). What I think makes the film work well is that it feels almost like a feature length Dave Chapelle skit, only injected with a sobering amount of darkness. The film is funny, but funny in an uncomfortable, unsettling way. As a re-imagining of history, C.S.A. is pretty fanciful, so if any of you reading this has a boner for Harry Turtledove novels or seriously well-thought out "What If" scenarios, pass this up. C.S.A. isn't that kind of movie. The alternate history scenario is just a delivery system for its satire, for its relentless commentary on race relations, and it is with this polemic that the film succeeds. There are so many great bits in this film: the fake D.W. Griffith film, Abe Lincoln fleeing from Southern bounty hunters by hooking up with the Underground Railroad, commercials for a QVC-style Slave Shopping Network, Elvis Presley becoming an enemy of the Southern states and seeking political asylum in Canada (which is walled off West/East Germany style from the C.S.A). Most sobering of all is the film's epilogue, which shows that a lot of the racist products advertised in the film actually existed (items with such lovely names as Coon Chicken and Niggerhair cigarettes
).
All in all: I strongly recommend C.S.A. for anyone who is a fan of political satire, Spike Lee movies, The Dave Chapelle Show, American history, gallows humor, or watching a dead-on lampoon of PBS documentaries (right down to the film's cheap TV production values, which actually helps make the documentary conceit feel more authentic). Add it to your Netflix queues. You can thank me/hate me later.
Night all!
I didn't have a chance to say this at the time, as I was laid out behind the buy counter on our store's rough carpeted floor, my back stiff as a board. I should have said it, but I didn't. A couple of my co-workers were giving me the "O-kkkeeey" eye, a distant cousin of the evil eye (instead of projecting malice, the "O-kkkeeey" eye projects a focused beam of befuddlement and perplexed-ness). I had very good reasons for clinging to the uncomfortable ground, softly muttering "oh goddamn, oh shit, oh Moses-fuck-a-cunt" over and over again. Joey had come back into the store, his daft mom in tow.
I've mentioned El Joseph De La Poop-Pants in previous posts. For those of you who have read them, I hope that gives you enough of an understanding of the frame of mind I was in, the same frame that led me to eagerly hug the floor rather than be seen by his wild, dumb eyes. The day had already been a bit of a grind: most of the day was swallowed up by a never-ending stream of book sellers, left with nothing to do on Columbus Day but box up their water-damaged literature and haul it over to our store (one of the boxes actually had a live scorpion in it, which crawled out and clung to the side of a tower of paid-for books; one of our customers tried to play a hero and squish the damn thing, and the dumb bastard was lucky he didn't get stung). Having to spend 30+ minutes answering the same questions over and over again from a man who smelled like a landfill that had grown a set of legs and spent the last three weeks running on a treadmill in a sauna. The man reeked, this time not of shit-stained pants, but rather of the "I haven't washed since Clinton was in office" variety of stench. Of course, I couldn't embrace the cheek-gouging comfort of the carpet forever; I had to prop myself up and talk to him (the two employees with seniority had just left for lunch, leaving me at the helm of the Good Ship Half Price).
Thankfully, I've learned to embrace my inner asshole when it comes to customer service. When I need to be, I can rival a German government official in ice-cold, bare-minimum politeness. He wasn't doing the "I WANT CARRIE" dance, but he was asking me way too many questions about Racquel Welch movies, and I just wasn't in the mood to be Mr. Friendly. I pretty much kept saying "have a good night", trying to end every brief exchange with a note of finality, hoping he'd take the hint, and he and his dingbat mom would leave. This tactic worked... after twenty minutes of continued use.
Other thing of note from work: in addition to running General Fiction and Sci-Fi, I also shelve a couple of smaller genre sections, chief among them Horror, Westerns, and Erotica. One of the erotica series that we get in on occasion that sells like hot cakes is the Ellora's Cave series. I've admitted in the past to having an on-the-job guilty pleasure of reading romance and chick-lit plot synopsises, and I'm sad to say that I can add Ellora's Cave synopsises to my list. Bored and tired of pricing, I picked up one of these books, which I've shelved constantly with nary a second look, and flipped open to a random page to see the horrors it contained. The page I stumbled on had some of the funniest, most horrific prose ever committed to page: while "filling" his "fiery mate" with his "illustrious seed", the male character actually says the phrase "this wicked beastie of a cock" referring to his own member. WICKED BEASTIE? In what universe is this not hilarious? I've always figured Ellora books for trash, considering their horribly cheap computer-generated covers (do yourself a disservice and look up Ellora's Cave on Google Image: oh, the horrors of piss-poor graphic design). However, by trash, I didn't think of anything as absolutely mind-blowing as "Wicked Beastie". Flipping through other pages, I saw more and more examples of this horrid, sub-par porn writing. It made me think of a funny double-standard: if a male writer wrote a book like anything in the Ellora's Cave catalogue, they would be reviled and dismissed as a perverted hack. If a female writer writes this kind of unintentionally hysterical crap, they're just expressing their "inner-most desires" and deserve to be patted on the back for their sensual bravery. To this I say "bah humbug". No writer of any gender should be allowed to use a phrase like "wicked beastie of a cock" in all seriousness and be forgiven for such a sin.
And on an non-work related note, I must now pimp a film I've seen tonight that deserves to be pimped:
I read a brief shout-out to this film in a New Times issue months ago, and the premise of the film sounded so cool I was just itching for a chance at getting it on DVD. CSA's premise: The Confederate States Of America is a mockumentary-style film that takes place in an alternate universe where the South won the Civil War, annexed the North, and became the dominant political power in the Western World (whose most hated enemy is Canada, a hotbed of abolitonists and Northern expatriates). Part of what makes the documentary format work so well is that the film's framing device is that when the film begins, it doesn't begin with the documentary. Rather, it begins on a basic Confederate TV channel, complete with its own commercials. The doc is introduced as a controversial production from the BBC, finally getting its premiere on Confederate TV. Much like any TV-produced documentary, C.S.A. is interrupted by occasional commercial breaks, many of which are both hilarious and disturbing (most memorable: "Runaways", a "Cops" style show where cops arrest runaway slaves while a country-ified re-imagining of the "Bad Boys" song plays in the background; what's really scary about this scene is how it looks exactly like a typical "Cops" episode, almost to the point that I thought it was recycled footage from the show). What I think makes the film work well is that it feels almost like a feature length Dave Chapelle skit, only injected with a sobering amount of darkness. The film is funny, but funny in an uncomfortable, unsettling way. As a re-imagining of history, C.S.A. is pretty fanciful, so if any of you reading this has a boner for Harry Turtledove novels or seriously well-thought out "What If" scenarios, pass this up. C.S.A. isn't that kind of movie. The alternate history scenario is just a delivery system for its satire, for its relentless commentary on race relations, and it is with this polemic that the film succeeds. There are so many great bits in this film: the fake D.W. Griffith film, Abe Lincoln fleeing from Southern bounty hunters by hooking up with the Underground Railroad, commercials for a QVC-style Slave Shopping Network, Elvis Presley becoming an enemy of the Southern states and seeking political asylum in Canada (which is walled off West/East Germany style from the C.S.A). Most sobering of all is the film's epilogue, which shows that a lot of the racist products advertised in the film actually existed (items with such lovely names as Coon Chicken and Niggerhair cigarettes
).All in all: I strongly recommend C.S.A. for anyone who is a fan of political satire, Spike Lee movies, The Dave Chapelle Show, American history, gallows humor, or watching a dead-on lampoon of PBS documentaries (right down to the film's cheap TV production values, which actually helps make the documentary conceit feel more authentic). Add it to your Netflix queues. You can thank me/hate me later.
Night all!
i vote for Niobe and Norton as SG's resident know it alls.
That's some pretty awful writing. I'm not sure I would have made it as far as you did. "Illustrious seed" was the knockout punch for me.