The Week In Review

I went grocery shopping with my family today, and during the course of our trip I ran across the good kind of public drug user. If you’re a regular reader of this website, first of all, get help. Second of all, you may remember my run-in with a crystal meth smoker driving a mini-van and brandishing a sword. That’s the bad kind of public drug user, and I hope the asshole dies of chlamydia in a car fire.

The encounter I had today was much more pleasant. I went up to the meat counter to buy some tuna steaks, and as I saw a person already waiting, I went ahead and did that “I’m really very interested in all of the meats and will look at them all very closely” thing we do when we’re waiting because otherwise you look like a hostile and impatient dickhead standing there staring at people at the meat counter. But my assumption that the other person was being served was incorrect. The guy behind the counter was standing a couple of feet away from two waiting customers, but was totally engrossed in carving a piece of meat with ultra-surgical precision.

At this point, three things happened: 1) The other customer loudly threw up his hands and walked away; 2) The guy operating the cow bandsaw (or whatever the fuck they call that thing) came up to the front and said, “Hey! Hey! Hey! What are you doing? You’ve got customers!”; 3) I realized the guy was stoned. He then proceeded to wrap my tuna steaks in plastic even though they were already wrapped in plastic, and then took over five minutes to wrap them in butcher paper because he got into a fight with the paper dispenser. Finally he threw an assload of butcher paper away, walked across the department, and got more paper from a different dispenser. Honestly, I could’ve wrapped ten years of Christmas presents with the amount of paper he wasted.

The eco-disaster brought on by working int the butcher department stoned. Won't somebody please think of the children?

All of which made me want to go up front and tell the manager how impressed I was with their meat counter guy. When I was sixteen, I used to work in a grocery store, and I used to get pretty high before I went to work. It caused a lot of confusion amongst customers when we had conversations like this:

Customer: Excuse me, do you work here?

Me: What?

Customer: You work here, right? What kind of beef is the best for grilling?

Me: I dunno, the forehead?

So I kind of wanted to do something for this kid because, hey, it’s like the stoned grocery store circle of life. It’s reaffirming to share experiences with someone from a different generation, even if that experience involves paranoia, munchies, and public idiocy. And I would’ve said something to the store manager too if it weren’t for the fact that the act of calling the employee into the manager’s office to relay my kudos would have scared the unholy shit out of the guy.

On to the week you missed because you were reading the latest Nintendo newsletter:

• On Monday we all watched a little Cop Rock and learned that you can judge a defendant’s guilt by seeing it in his eyes.
• On Tuesday, Buddy Hinton made a comeback, only to get his ass pummeled again. And we learned that Alice Nelson will be your next overlord.
• On Wednesday, we played Death Metal Bingo.
• And on Thursday, we learned that puberty is painful no matter what species you are.

So much for that week. Let’s move forward, shall we? With any luck, I’ll encounter a meter maid high on ecstasy.