SHUT UPPP

I was uncharacteristically watching local news this morning and what to my wandering eye should appear but the delightful "headline" that the DTV switch has been pushed back from next week until June to "give people more time" to prepare. WTF?! Because I'm pretty sure they've been scrolling that message with the switch date and the number to call across the bottom of my TV for almost a year now. So the DTV groundhog saw its shadow and now we're in for four more months of stupid commercials, scroll bars, and obnoxious advertising for a switch that's probably not going to affect that many people. Oh and it's because "some people" didn't get the memo. Darwin says that those people should lose their TV signal 'til they get their stuff together.

Shut the hell up.

No, really. Dale, Ben, and I went to see "Taken" tonight and I know this only happens because I have one of those "I like to screw with you" relationships with the Universe, but every freaking time I go to the movies I end up sitting next to/in front of/nearby the guy who insists on giving the running commentary on whatever's going on onscreen. I don't understand: just like I don't need your help watching basketball, I don't need your help watching a movie. I've done this before; I've got this. However, this guy seems to think not only his idiot wife needs the in-theater commentary (I'll wait for the DVD, thanks), but the entire theater needs to hear how he's awesome and has this whole thing figured out.

In the first five minutes of sitting by this d-bag, I knew I was in for it. He spent a good couple of minutes passive-aggressively berating the waitress because the bar was out of the two beers he'd ordered, and while the waitress was trying to offer suggestions he wouldn't even let her finish her sentence because he was making fun of her taste in beer. And apparently this was fine with Idiot Wife because she just said there and explained, "He's a beer snob." Uh, excuse me?? How about "Total d-bag with no people skills that shouldn't be allowed to talk in public"? I really hope the Belhaven he ended up settling on was laced with some delicious waitress saliva. I know better than to piss off the people who serve me my food! Anyway.

So the movie starts, and it's pretty exciting. He's making those stupid comments that people who have to say something all the time are known to make but they're small and fleeting so I'm able to let it go. Then at some point a car appears on the screen and suddenly this guy is four years old. He points and emphatically shouts "Audi!" at the screen. Wait, what? Yeah it's an Audi...the story's set in Europe, like every other car in the movie is an Audi. I almost got run over by and Alfa Romeo when I lived in Switzerland and it was awesome until I realized that European cars in Europe are kind of no big deal. Thanks for the update, moron, but from now on unless it's a Slug Bug keep your mouth shut, k? Then at another point the main character finds a dead girl (Don't worry there are a lot of dead people in this movie, I'm not really giving anything away) and it gets all dramatic for a moment, and it's pretty clear she's dead but just in case we weren't sure, there's Moron: "She's dead!" Good to know. The best one, though, came at the end, at a particularly dramatic moment of the movie when one character has the opportunity to shoot another character in the head and all is very tense and quiet. Our old friend Moron then advises the whole theater, "A bullet to the left temporal lobe, that'll almost always kill you." I couldn't help it. Tensest, most interesting moment of the movie or not, I freakin cracked up. Bizarre. And somehow, not that uncommon. Thanks for that, Moron in the movie theater.

But the movie was good and then we got ice cream.

Before you read this, I'd like to formally apologize to my mother who is a wonderful parent and an awesome lady and raised me much better than to get in a fight with a total idiot stranger in public. I swear that this almost never happens and I won't do it again. For a while. :o) Ok moving on...

Last night was trivia - YAY! And a bunch of people who I haven't seen in a while were there, double YAY! Annnnd some jackass decided to start screaming the second Duffy started talking on the mic. Not so much yay. There was a basketball game on that this d-bag wanted to watch and apparently he couldn't figure out what was going on on the screen without the play-by-play so when they turned the sound off for trivia he started screaming like a two-year-old who didn't get his way. No words, nothing specific, just a loud, sustained, Tarzan-like yell. Really, guy? What I don't get, and I never got the answer because he wouldn't actually talk reasonably to anybody, was why he needed the sound on to watch basketball. I mean, you get that if you're actually AT the game there's no commentators or anyone telling you exactly what is going on, right? They invented that job for the old washed up players and coaches who nobody actually in the sport wanted to work with, but d-bags like you still relate to because they've spent their entire careers being not good enough and not liked by their peers, and you both live by the delusion that if the coach/owner/boss would have given you one more chance then you would have been awesome. (With the exception of Lou Holtz, who is extremely awesome but is currently paying his debt to society for coaching the Eevil Notre Dame.) I don't even really know that much about basketball but I am perfectly capable of watching a game with the sound off because...well, there's zero things that I actually need to hear.

So anyway, this d-bag is screaming his head off and at first nobody can tell if he's just drunk or if he's "serious", and somehow we almost ended up (ok when I say "we" I'm really just talking about me and Ben) in a fight! Except I don't really know if it can be considered a fight if the best the other guys can do besides a Tarzan yell is to say "SHUT THE FUCK UP!" repeatedly to the trivia host and to yell "WHATEVER!" and ask if I'm retarded. I mean, I suppose it's a valid question, I was pretty much ready to cut a bitch with a butter knife right there in the middle of the bar. I have been looking for a fight for a while now, apparently. Oh, and did I mention that Fireman's #4 was on special last night and apparently I was reaaalllly thirsty and achieved Pluckers-like levels of drunkenness? Anyway, it was all about to get REALLY awesome and then...yeah, they just kind of left. As the guy's idiot friend left he smiled really big at Ben which Ben quite rightly pointed out he wouldn't have done if there hadn't been a massive oak table between the two of them and the friend commented to Duffy that he has some "real nice" trivia fans, like maybe he'd just achieved the burn of the century.

So that was trivia, or the start of it anyway. GTYO took the damn trophy back which is halfway fine with me because really we didn't want it again and I swear if she takes any of the screws out of the gnome's face I'm gonna paint its face like a pirate. Beeyotch. And we're pretty sure they cheated but they did win best team name for the 2nd time in a row even though their name was pretty lame both weeks. So we're gonna have to have a super strong showing next week because this week was kind of a bummer, what with the screaming Tarzan idiot and GTYO. Apparently I'll be spending the next week brushing up on my grab-bag trivia (so...reading the encyclopedia, I guess?) because that was the only round that we didn't get a near-perfect score in, like always. If anybody wants to throw random trivia facts my way I'm all for it!

So I was standing in line at Ulta this morning, just trying to buy stupid lip gloss and eyeliner and the inevitable happens: I'm stuck behind a crazy bitch with a coupon. Actually it was an entire coupon magazine like the kind you get in the mail. APPARENTLY, this lady is unable to read, so when the cashier gives her the total, Crazy Bitch tosses down the coupon thingy and says "I want to use this." Ok, no problem, the cashier looks at the coupon and then tells her something about blah blah, certain items are excluded, etc., which I get is frustrating but still, sometimes it's just that way. She even flips the brochure over and shows her where the items are listed that are NOT 20% off. Sure enough, the lady has a big giant Tigi set that she's trying to buy that is not on sale. Instead of taking it like a human being and saying "That sucks, but I understand that it's not your fault," Crazy Bitch flips the f out and gets up in the poor girl's face about it. So the cashier says she'll call a manager, who then comes over and says "Oh, that promotion doesn't even start until Saturday. See here? It says January 24." I scoffed out loud. Like, really really loud, not even caring if the crazy lady buying expensive shampoo and conditioner to go along with her tucked-in tee shirt, tapered ankle-length Mom jeans, and manly hiking shoes heard me. Because she might be nuts but I promise you, I'm crazier. But still nice! Anyway, the adorable mom/daughter team behind me laughed.
Adorable Mom: It never fails, right?
Me: Every single time.
So at this point Crazy B is raging at the manager, and she actually says "EVERY OTHER STORE WILL HONOR THEIR PROMOTIONS EARLY AND I EXPECT YOU TO DO THE SAME!" at which point I burst out laughing because a) That's not true, b) That's not a nice way to ask, and secret option c) I'm looking for a fight. Unfortunately for my fight, instead of turning around and attempting to clock me she throws this pedicure set at the poor cashier and yells at her "I DON'T WANT THIS AT ALL, AND I WANT MY 20% DISCOUNT ON THIS!" holding up the much-needed shampoo set. Freaking FINE! The manager just glares at her, pulls a 20% coupon out of the drawer, scans it and types in whatever manager code she has, and walks away, very noticeably sharing a Look with the cashier. I can't say I would have done anything differently, having been in very similar situations ("Your ad says $350 off every dress in the store!" "Ma'am, that is impossible, that dress is only $299, I'm not going to pay you $51 for shopping with us, am I?") but I enjoyed the fight. So in the end, the awesome cashier finished the transaction, tossed the bag at the Crazy B and just left her with a "Have a nice day." Aww.

Yeah, people are weird.

Last Sunday Dale and I wandered over to HEB around 11 in the morning just to pick up a couple of things. When it was time to leave, all of the checkout lanes were understandably full, especially since it was a holiday weekend, so hoping to defy the odds we got into the "20 items or less" (can't type that without wanting to correct it) self-checkout lane. There were three lanes open and all three had people at them so we were next in line. How bad could this be?

OMG OMG OMG. Seriously? So, I don't think any of these people ACTUALLY had fewer than twenty items but that ended up being beside the point, because they're also not at all fit to operate the technology required for self-checkout use. First there was this guy there by himself who had a ton of produce he was trying to ring up. Apparently, he couldn't see the big "PRODUCE" icon there on the screen because he took out his celery (that's what she said?) and was looking for a BARCODE there on the stalks. Ummm...this is not going well. At the next line was more of a classic fail. The lady there had two children who were getting away while she had to take things out of her bags and then replace them, etc. because she couldn't figure out that doing things like touching the bag carousel messes with the scale and will F your stuff up. THEN she takes out her wallet and awesomely begins trying to shove dollars in the dollar slots at the ONE CHECKOUT LINE with a handmade (though still large enough for me to easily see from where I was standing) sign that said: CREDIT CARDS AND CHECKS ONLY - NO CASH BACK. At this point I began giggling gleefully and uncontrollably because it's just so damn funny and also my luck to be behind these jokers.

Maybe the best, though, was the yuppie couple at the third and final checkout lane. I still have no idea what exactly was going on, but at various points they were standing there doing absolutely nothing, then she yelled at him for...something, I don't know, and then they stood there doing nothing some more, then the poor cashier/babysitter came over and tried to help but was kind of chased back to her stand, then the cashier came BACK with a whole thing of coupons but at the same time the wife yelled "JUST HAVE THEM ZERO IT OUT!!" and ran back into the store. What?! It's all so amusing! So by now I'm laughing like an idiot because this is just so funny. I mean, these are exactly the people who used to treat me like crap when I was a cashier at Target in high school and I still see it while I'm waiting in line behind someone - the cashier is so inconsequential to them and it's "not a real job" or whatever and...you know what? It's not so easy, is it, beeyotches? Seriously, between the three of the checkout lines we stood there for a good eight minutes. Not all that bad if you're just in a regular line on a Sunday but to be NEXT IN LINE with three different people standing there utterly confounded and losing it was just hysterical.

Dale has gotten really good at making it look like he's not with me when I make no effort at all to hide when I laugh at the stupid things that total strangers do in public. Poor guy.

OH and for the record the lady with the two runaways and all the cash finally saw the sign, figured it out, and paid with a card. GAH! But at least we got her checkout lane. :-)