Squirrelly bastards!

I caught a scammer the other day at work. After having read some tips that had been passed around by email to all the local stores, I was on-the-ball enough to call a supervisor when a younger guy, about 20, came in trying to buy $1000 worth of our store's gift cards on a Visa card. I told him "Just a precaution," and he said "No problem." Of course, immediately after saying that it was no problem, he got a cell phone call and sounded panicked, yelling "Where?? Okay, I'll be right there." He quickly turned to me and said, "Someone just crashed into my car, can you keep those aside for me??" Sure, bud. Although, your asking your imaginary cell phone friend 'where' your car was smashed into was rather suspect, as you'd think you'd have some idea where you last parked your car. So he got away, of course, but we know who he is now.

He had apparently first asked our assistant manager if we had a Post Office, which is where the prior scammers usually tried this such stuff, and panicked when supervisors were called to verify their ID.

I tell this story because it makes me feel good inside that someone didn't scam $1000 out of either us, or an unsuspecting victim of credit card fraud. Even if it probably did work out for him at some other store, we now have him on our Wall of Shame with our other photos, for example, of people who take things off the shelf and try to return them moments later without a receipt with sob stories of their grandfather just having died of a coma yesterday (why would returning a container of vitamins be first on your To-Do List after your gramps had died anyway?). Ahh, people.

I also tell this story because of how naive I normally am, and how I would never suspect a nice-enough person of trying to steal $1000 unless I'd read those warning emails. I grew up seeing the general 'good' in every person, regardless of how bitchy I am about how stupid a lot of them tend to be. I'm never suspicious of people as thieves, just as jerks. And the thieves are always real, real good at pretending not to be jerks.

Just goes to show. There are scammers in this world other than the ones who try to con you into joining Primerica. (Which also happened to me this week.)

Or something.

You can be an asshole too!

Do not:

• Tell me the whole grain bread you have is on sale when I know it's not, and then ask me in an old Italian man accent "Why your computers not updated for the sale?" and then look caught in a lie when my coworker comes back and says "It was another kind of bread, not this one", and then do not hand me an unsigned credit card to pay for the substitute sale bread (and your various other sale items) and then get angry when I ask you for some ID. You just tried to swindle me over bread. I would not put credit card fraud past you.
• Yell at me "HOW ABOUT PUSHING THEM ALL THE WAY THROUGH!?" when I am in the middle of collecting shopping carts for a kiosk that you didn't pull a cart out of on your way into the store like you're supposed to, when you are old and wearing those big black sunglasses with the blinders on the side. The only consolation I can find to your being impolite is that you will die soon anyway.
  
• Do either of these on the last day of my seven-day work stint.

Customer service, she has worn me down. Three days off though. Good for me.

Also, I had an adventure! last night. Said adventure! was on the pier in Port Dalhousie that stretches right onto Lake Ontario, where seemingly oceanic waves were crashing up onto it as my friend and I tried fruitlessly to get photos of the giant moon behind some docked boats. Damn! The waves crashed onto the pier so high at one point that I grabbed my tripod in fear, mid-shot, because it probably could have been swept off into the lake otherwise. Adventure! So we settled for some church fotoz instead. Also... Firefox did not red-underline "fotoz" just now. Is that actually a word?

Headphones on, listening to nothing.

deathstar rocketboot. says:
your voice is so sexy hahaha
deathstar rocketboot. says:
god damnit
Nik says:
lol what
deathstar rocketboot. says:
you should be one mof those girls who talks on the phone late at night
Nik says:
hahahahha
deathstar rocketboot. says:
your voice! its super sexy haha
Nik says:
well if HR doesn't work out
Nik says:
i've got a lucrative career at Quest ahead of me

Here's what I'm at:

• Reading John Tesh's Intelligence For Your Life website at 2am.
• Returning a crab today because the pet store lied to me about what living conditions it needs... cool! Hope all the other people who bought them also do their own research before their pets die.
  
• Waiting for my essay to be graded (we're not expecting aces, kids)
• Anticipating the next season of Survivor and America's Next Top Model because I'm at a loss for shows that rob my mind of all thought
• Hoping to go up north next week after my 7 straight days of work are over
• Eventually going to read the chapters I'm supposed to this week
• Trying not to wash my hair every day because apparently I am a moron for always doing so, and my hair will suffer the consequences if I continue. Dirt for president!
  

Walls

I was just lurking someone's Facebook shit and I gave myself a start when I found a photo of her with a girl I know. I did not know they knew each other. I need to stop this lurking stuff before I give myself a heart attack.

Oh.

And if you haven't yet, you must listen and re-listen to Modern Guilt (the album, as well as the title track) by Beck. Listening to it while driving is preferred.

I remember albums and songs by certain environments was in at the time I over-listened them. For instance, I remember two Interpol albums as the ones I listened to on the subway to work a couple of years ago. I remember Ashtray Rock by the Joel Plaskett Emergency, and especially as the album I kept making Andrew listen to in his car a year ago, and specifically I remember driving through a tunnel (seymour! I don't like you driving through tunnels! you know what that symbolizes!) during "Cruisin'". I remember "Autobiography" by Sloan as the song that always came on on Brown Road in Welland on my way to work at the mall. "You Shook Me All Night Long" is when I drove my dad's ancient Z24 the summer I came home from Toronto to start school and there was no cd player, and bad reception on everything but the classic rock station. "Roxanne" is a song my dad used to sing mockingly, but secretly enjoy. I already know how I'll remember Modern Guilt. On the long, long drive home from up north, just after I dropped Andrew off in Toronto and got on the packed-house highway, it began to pour. I mean pour. I was driving through the goddam ocean, on a highway. No one could see anything, and that included me: Perfect-Vision Girl. I was certain someone was going to slam into the car at any second. And for some reason, through all this, all I can remember is the driving beat of "Gamma Ray" suggesting a hint of fun in this terrifying ordeal.

Hey, I didn't die! Listen to it!

Should've been in marketing instead...

Formula for a Rogers commercial:

1. One of the four characters, usually a guy, is intrigued by a new device or service that another of the four rich kids has picked up this month.
2. The guy or girl who owns the new Rogers device/service summarizes its innovative new features.
3. Guy/girl listening sounds impressed.
4. One of the two more popular guys (never the East Indian guy who may or may not have been on Renegade Press; usually the dorky white guy), does something goofy.
5. Better looking hipster (possibly-mixed) guy with curly hair uses quick wits to make endearing quip.
6. Rogers theme and logo are played.
7. [ Exeunt. ]

That's a shame.

The college has gotten my goat again, if there was any goat left to be gotten. This time, the library didn't have even one (1) out of three (3) books recommended for research for an essay worth 15% of my final grade, due this Friday. Fantastic!

All I do is laugh.

I dreamed this morning that I was in a small hotel room full of bees. I think I bit one. I woke up thinking I should eat a steak a day, and dreading writing an essay for which there are no sources. I also had a song I made up in my head.

Dan, every time I saw Axe today, I thought of Corner Gas. Thanks, bud.

And another thing.

Pretentiousness level: High

Tonight at work, a woman with two young children approached the cash desk. Her son held a pack of gum in his hand. She noticed it, jerked it out of his hands, looked at the package, and loudly proclaimed, "Oh, NO! No no. It has sorbitol in it. You're not getting that."

"Why not?" the child asked innocently.

"Because sorbitol is bad for you."

And then, she instead bought 12 packs of Smarties, a bag of Gummy Worms, and a pack of M&Ms for her sons named Rylen and Nolan.

Fuck PETA

A man was brutally murdered and decapitated in his sleep on a Greyhound bus on his way home to his family last week; this week, PETA has chosen to exploit the incident for their own preachy cause.

Listen. Animals slaughter each other in the wild. I wonder how many political rallies PETA has had in the African savanna opposing such instinctual behaviour. I have made the conscious choice to continue to eat meat. If I didn't, I would probably be dead because I don't have the patience to check every label to see if it has the essential amount of iron and protein that I can easily get from a steak. I respect anyone who has made the decision to not eat meat or consume/use/wear animal products, and I understand their reasons without them even having to explain them to me. I just really, really enjoy meat, and whether I choose to eat it or not, the same animals are going to be made into food for human and animal consumption. (Dogs and cats eat animal products too! Animals?? Go figure!) I don't torture animals for fun in my backyard, wear leather, or poach elephants for ivory. I'm not making anything go extinct by eating meat.

But when an organization uses the brutal murder and decapitation, even cannibalism, that happened to a real family somewhere, to support their outlandish vegan cause that no one takes seriously anymore, a bit of bile rises into my throat.

I am willing to bet that Tim McLean's family is not going to go vegan because some piece-of-shit organization decided to compare their son's absolutely disturbing, horrid murder to killing a bull that was bred originally to one day make some delicious steaks.

Fuck!

In lieu of this ridiculousness, I am going to encourage everyone I know who normally eats meat to eat FIVE steaks this week, TEN hamburgers, FIFTEEN porkchops, and a shitload of chicken. I apologize to my vegetarian friends in advance, but if I were vegetarian or vegan, I would be outraged that there was such a terrible organization known worldwide for its thoughtless tactics giving such an awful name to me and the people who chose the same lifestyle as me.

Hey PETA. Cows can't read the foul things you write, and they can't understand what nonsense you're trying to convey, but people can. And that man's family gets to read about your antics and feel even worse now. Well done.

Bring it all back.

So. I think I've got this figured out.

Everything happens for a reason. Usually that reason is to bleed me dry of any money I thought I still might be entitled to spending on things I actually enjoyed, but anyway.

So I'll finish up this piece of shit program, then I'm moving onward to some other program on which I'll waste more money. Hopefully, this time it'll work out! And if it doesn't, hey, I'm used to post-secondary disappointment; it's almost a joy to me by now.

H-ape-piness

I'm only posting because I love this photo. That's awesome. I hope there are actually a billion gorillas hidden somewhere. I'd like to hug them, provided they didn't kill me.

Mysteries!

Each week, something new happens so that the woman I work with who speaks only of tragedies will have something new to tell me they should reinstate the death penalty for.

Similarly, but less likely to be a contributor to the argument for the death penalty by my coworker, there might have been another foot found, this time in Washington. This mystery intrigues me, although it's probably just as simple as a bunch of people drowning and no one caring enough to report them all missing.