It's only a few more days until Christmas. Time for me to explain my feelings on the one part of Christmas that SERIOUSLY needs to be put out of its misery. And I know that many people agree with me on this because we all seem to be trying to get it as far away from ourselves by sending it to others. So what is this yuletide atrocity? It's FRUITCAKE. That hideous loaf of dried fruit and leftover cupboards scrapings we dump into a pan, coat with rum, wrap in foil, and then send to our loved ones when, more appropriately, it should be sent to our most hated enemies.
People don't even know where this god damned thing originated. I looked on the Internet just to see if maybe I could shed a little light on its origins and perhaps point an accusatory finger at the inventors of this gastric apocalypse.
As near as I can figure, it came from an English version of Plum Cake. 'Plum' being the word for any dried fruit at the time. It seems there were certain laws or restrictions which did not allow for this cake to be made at any other time of the year save Christmas and Easter. Apparently, they were already aware of its malicious intent and felt the need to limit its distribution to times when the population had good cheer in abundance. But if this is so, then why the hell does it have the ability to remain edible (and I use the term edible loosely and to refer to the ability to chew it not necessarily to digest it) for weeks, months, and quite possibly years??
It just dawned on me that I have never made a fruitcake in my entire life. Neither has anyone I know. And yet we have all received one at some Christmas or another. Maybe there is a very small finite number of these fruitcakes floating around and that by merely coming into contact with one it has scarred us for life. Perhaps fruitcake can actually last for generations and we are simply receiving and re mailing the same fruitcakes over and over to each other like some twisted, hideous, semi-edible chain letter.
I ate a fruitcake once just to test a hypothesis of mine. I postulated that by eating a fruitcake that quite possibly I would have been infected with a toxin that caused me to seek out and create a fruitcake so as to keep the number of them constantly the same. It was proven false. I did, however, come to find that by eating a fruitcake by yourself for the purposes of scientific research, that your insides will bunch up and suddenly cease to function. Were it not for the candy like fruit jewels encrusting the top of the cake, my colon would have begun to resemble, in both shape and rigidity, the exhaust system of a 1957 Chevy. Thank you, Jesus, for the fiber contained within. Now I can spend hour upon hour gripping the toilet seat like a Chuck Yeager's ass did breaking the sound barrier. evacuating myself of every once of fluid with the efficiency of a fire hose.
Who knew that fruit could possibly weigh so much. My God, the damn thing is only a few inches across and yet has the density of a small star. With what it costs to send these things through the mail, it's surprising we haven't found some other way to dispose of it. Now I know why mail trucks have double rear axles. With the price of heating oil here in New York, It may be more prudent to simply cram it into the pellet stove and use it to heat the house.....until August of next year!!!!
One year, I actually considered making a website asking people to send all of their unwanted fruitcake to a single location to be used for the worlds largest ski chalet constructed of nothing but fruitcakes all lined up like adobe bricks. Then I'd leave the address of my old boss in the hopes that he was sucked into the black hole caused by that much mass in a single location.
Just to alleviate a bit of the mystery here, can anyone tell me what the hell the green round things are inside of it?? Those and the small bitter orange pieces. My mother, trying her best to be helpful, told me that they were orange... and bitter. Well thanks, Mom. Your redundancy has been duly noted. Remind me to thank you for your cheerful contribution to my culinary knowledge. Remind me to send you a fruitcake. I am going to assume that she meant that they were pieces of orange peel, but who in the HELL uses something they have thrown away as inedible refuse for an entire year and then suddenly considers it to be a primary ingredient for a cake sent to loved ones??
This year I have decided that, rather than eat these wretched foil wrapped, 'urban legends of dispair', we should use them for other purposes. Sliced thinly(I suggest using a table saw for this) they could be used for roofing shingles. Painted grey they could patch holes in battleships before going to sea.,Jimmy Carter may be able to use them as cinder blocks for Habitat for Humanity, New Orleans needs a levee. They are heavy enough to use as artillery shells instead of depleted Uranium, and, given their propensity for filling stomachs without ever seeming to get any smaller, would be more useful in an underdeveloped nation. But then of course, after biting down into an unidentifiable colored piece of organic material, they may opt for starvation as a more viable alternative.
So Merry Christmas. And keep your damn fruitcake!!!!!!!
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
WORST JOB EVER!
When I was a teenager, I had a lot of crappy jobs. I delivered newspapers for assholes, I washed and bussed dishes, shoveled dirt, and basically tended to the wishes and whims of sycophantic store managers who desperately tried to cram their noses into the descending colons' of their superiors. But nothing NOTHING is worse than delivering pizza.
Pizza seems to be the food we all eat when we are too lazy and stupid to cook for ourselves. Now we are well within our rights to indulge in pizza, and it's accompanying air of sloth, from time to time, so this isn't about the 98% of us. This BLOG is about that 2% of the population who make this job a complete an utter HELL by making pizza their primary food source, and, by default, making me deal with their almost endemic stupidity.
When you order a pizza, wouldn't it be a good idea to KNOW what it is that you want? I mean, it isn't difficult. It's a flat piece of bread with cheese on it, right? It isn't rocket science. If you can't organize your thoughts enough to cook, and you can't agree with three people at home about what goes onto your pizza, are you sure there is enough mental faculty left to to chew? Let's hope that your your autonomic nervous system works when the rest of your brain has taken a sabbatical or you'll choke.
In order for me to explain this, I'm just going to write out a noteworthy pizza order I had.
"Hello. Thank you for calling Dominerd's Pizza. How can I help you ,Sir?"
"Um..okay....How big is your sixteen inch pizza?"
" Ummm.... Sixteen inches?? Oh no wait. I'm afraid we have misled you. The pizza is a TOTAL of sixteen square inches which is not even a morsel for a yapper like yours that could quite possibly suck up a Volkswagen with no ill effects." "It's sixteen inches."
"Well...how big is sixteen inches?"
"About the size of a hubcap, Sir." "Which is a good frame of reference seeing as how you no doubt pried them off of cars to get the cash for this 'Fare Of The Feeble-Minded'. "I mean.. how many pieces is that?"
"It's usually twelve, Sir." "Ironically, The same as the collective IQ of you and your buddies." "Okay..I'll have that one."
"Alright, Sir,and what would you like on it?"
Okay... on the FIRST slice I want....".
THINK PEOPLE!!!! I'm making a total of $3.35 an hour to do the job a typing monkey could perform. The only difference is that a monkey has the common sense to prefer smearing himself with his own feces than to get pizza sauce on him. I don't have the time to be hand feeding and spoon feeding the sick, lame, and lazy through a task as simple as this.
Never mind. Screw it. I don't have time to get all bent around the axles about this. Time is money, and as the last person to have anything to do with the preparation of a pizza, a Dominerd's driver will take the heat for it by having to pay for the pizza it took 5 people too long to screw up. Luckily, this one goes perfectly giving me the maximum amount of time to deliver it.
Okay, so the pizza is made and on it's way out to my car in 12 minutes. Careful to mind the "30 Minutes Or It's Free" motto, I quickly calculate that I have 18 minutes to get to this guys house. I drive for 9 minutes, filling my car vents with the noxious smell of someones idea of taste to get to the street and that leaves me with another 9 minutes extra. right? WRONG. The guy who only 21 minutes ago couldn't order a pizza without serious help has now figured out that if he can stall me for 9 minutes, he gets a free pizza. It's not too hard though. All I need do is look for the car with the wheels pulled up to the address on the curb and the house numbers pried off. It's also the ONLY house on the block with all the lights off. No problem. I have a spotlight large enough to be used on a Coast Guard cutter, and shine it through the window. It's not really there to find the address, but more as a subtle way of showing the dimwitted money-grubber that even a raccoon has better evasion skills.
Pizza in hand, I put on my hat which completes the Dominerd's delivery ensemble which identifies me, and what we refer to as, "The Man Most Likely To Get Beat Up For Looking Like A Homo", and ring the bell with 4 minutes left.
(How fitting)
The neandertha.....I mean man, opens the door and looks at his watch with the theatrics God gave to Omar Shariff. I'm not sure why. Apparently to reaffirm to me that he is of an intelligence high enough to tell time. I don't dare tell him that all it does is prove to me that he has the IQ to comprehend Velcro.
He's big. I mean REALLY big. His body fills the entire frame of the door leaving only a small triangle above his shoulders to show me that the entrance to his troglodyte domicile is open.
"How are you, Sir. Here's your pizza."And please don't eat me."
"How much is it?"
"It's $13.50, Sir."
He hands me a twenty dollar bill and i quickly make change.
"Okay that's $13.50. Here's 50 cents. That makes fourteen, and here's fifteen and twenty.", I say as I hand him a one dollar bill and a five.
"No.....That's not right."
"Yes it is, Sir. The pizza is $13.50 and you gave me a twenty. That means I owe you $6.50.... two quarters, a one, and a five."
"That's not right."
"WTF do you mean it's not right, you Dumbass??? Twenty-eight minutes ago I had to explain the complexities of an abstract mathematical concept like SIXTEEN!!! Did you take some kind of "New Math?" "Well how much is it then?"
"This is a twenty.. And the change from a twenty is $6.50."
"That's right, Sir. It is. But YOU paid for the pizza. So $13.50 is the price of the pizza. NOT YOUR CHANGE."
The man was beginning to look very confused. And if you've ever seen Mutual Of Omaha's, Wild Kingdom, You know how freaky and angry the big animals get when they're disoriented.
This continued for another 2 minutes until I realized that keeping my face securely screwed onto my head was going to cost me $13.50. I returned to the store and found the eighteen year old store manager waiting for me in his office. He proceeded to tell me that the big monkey....I mean man, had managed to operate the telephone correctly twice in the span of an evening and that he was displeased with his pizza. (He no doubt forgot to remove it from the box). I explained to him that I had to basically sell the pizza for 6.50 cents.
"That's not how much a pizza costs,Tim. You owe us...."
He leaned over and started looking for his calculator, mumbling to himself.
"Let's see... 13.50 minus.... 6.50....leaves...."
"Seven Dollars"
" Is it?
"Oh shit. Here we go again." "Yes, SIR. I'm QUITE positive that it is."
The evening finally ended and I went out the door and counted my meager tips for the entire evening. Grand total for spending an evening dealing with idiots from both sides of the counter?Thirteen dollars......and 50 cents.
Karma is a BITCH!!
Pizza seems to be the food we all eat when we are too lazy and stupid to cook for ourselves. Now we are well within our rights to indulge in pizza, and it's accompanying air of sloth, from time to time, so this isn't about the 98% of us. This BLOG is about that 2% of the population who make this job a complete an utter HELL by making pizza their primary food source, and, by default, making me deal with their almost endemic stupidity.
When you order a pizza, wouldn't it be a good idea to KNOW what it is that you want? I mean, it isn't difficult. It's a flat piece of bread with cheese on it, right? It isn't rocket science. If you can't organize your thoughts enough to cook, and you can't agree with three people at home about what goes onto your pizza, are you sure there is enough mental faculty left to to chew? Let's hope that your your autonomic nervous system works when the rest of your brain has taken a sabbatical or you'll choke.
In order for me to explain this, I'm just going to write out a noteworthy pizza order I had.
"Hello. Thank you for calling Dominerd's Pizza. How can I help you ,Sir?"
"Um..okay....How big is your sixteen inch pizza?"
" Ummm.... Sixteen inches?? Oh no wait. I'm afraid we have misled you. The pizza is a TOTAL of sixteen square inches which is not even a morsel for a yapper like yours that could quite possibly suck up a Volkswagen with no ill effects." "It's sixteen inches."
"Well...how big is sixteen inches?"
"About the size of a hubcap, Sir." "Which is a good frame of reference seeing as how you no doubt pried them off of cars to get the cash for this 'Fare Of The Feeble-Minded'. "I mean.. how many pieces is that?"
"It's usually twelve, Sir." "Ironically, The same as the collective IQ of you and your buddies." "Okay..I'll have that one."
"Alright, Sir,and what would you like on it?"
Okay... on the FIRST slice I want....".
THINK PEOPLE!!!! I'm making a total of $3.35 an hour to do the job a typing monkey could perform. The only difference is that a monkey has the common sense to prefer smearing himself with his own feces than to get pizza sauce on him. I don't have the time to be hand feeding and spoon feeding the sick, lame, and lazy through a task as simple as this.
Never mind. Screw it. I don't have time to get all bent around the axles about this. Time is money, and as the last person to have anything to do with the preparation of a pizza, a Dominerd's driver will take the heat for it by having to pay for the pizza it took 5 people too long to screw up. Luckily, this one goes perfectly giving me the maximum amount of time to deliver it.
Okay, so the pizza is made and on it's way out to my car in 12 minutes. Careful to mind the "30 Minutes Or It's Free" motto, I quickly calculate that I have 18 minutes to get to this guys house. I drive for 9 minutes, filling my car vents with the noxious smell of someones idea of taste to get to the street and that leaves me with another 9 minutes extra. right? WRONG. The guy who only 21 minutes ago couldn't order a pizza without serious help has now figured out that if he can stall me for 9 minutes, he gets a free pizza. It's not too hard though. All I need do is look for the car with the wheels pulled up to the address on the curb and the house numbers pried off. It's also the ONLY house on the block with all the lights off. No problem. I have a spotlight large enough to be used on a Coast Guard cutter, and shine it through the window. It's not really there to find the address, but more as a subtle way of showing the dimwitted money-grubber that even a raccoon has better evasion skills.
Pizza in hand, I put on my hat which completes the Dominerd's delivery ensemble which identifies me, and what we refer to as, "The Man Most Likely To Get Beat Up For Looking Like A Homo", and ring the bell with 4 minutes left.
(How fitting)
The neandertha.....I mean man, opens the door and looks at his watch with the theatrics God gave to Omar Shariff. I'm not sure why. Apparently to reaffirm to me that he is of an intelligence high enough to tell time. I don't dare tell him that all it does is prove to me that he has the IQ to comprehend Velcro.
He's big. I mean REALLY big. His body fills the entire frame of the door leaving only a small triangle above his shoulders to show me that the entrance to his troglodyte domicile is open.
"How are you, Sir. Here's your pizza."And please don't eat me."
"How much is it?"
"It's $13.50, Sir."
He hands me a twenty dollar bill and i quickly make change.
"Okay that's $13.50. Here's 50 cents. That makes fourteen, and here's fifteen and twenty.", I say as I hand him a one dollar bill and a five.
"No.....That's not right."
"Yes it is, Sir. The pizza is $13.50 and you gave me a twenty. That means I owe you $6.50.... two quarters, a one, and a five."
"That's not right."
"WTF do you mean it's not right, you Dumbass??? Twenty-eight minutes ago I had to explain the complexities of an abstract mathematical concept like SIXTEEN!!! Did you take some kind of "New Math?" "Well how much is it then?"
"This is a twenty.. And the change from a twenty is $6.50."
"That's right, Sir. It is. But YOU paid for the pizza. So $13.50 is the price of the pizza. NOT YOUR CHANGE."
The man was beginning to look very confused. And if you've ever seen Mutual Of Omaha's, Wild Kingdom, You know how freaky and angry the big animals get when they're disoriented.
This continued for another 2 minutes until I realized that keeping my face securely screwed onto my head was going to cost me $13.50. I returned to the store and found the eighteen year old store manager waiting for me in his office. He proceeded to tell me that the big monkey....I mean man, had managed to operate the telephone correctly twice in the span of an evening and that he was displeased with his pizza. (He no doubt forgot to remove it from the box). I explained to him that I had to basically sell the pizza for 6.50 cents.
"That's not how much a pizza costs,Tim. You owe us...."
He leaned over and started looking for his calculator, mumbling to himself.
"Let's see... 13.50 minus.... 6.50....leaves...."
"Seven Dollars"
" Is it?
"Oh shit. Here we go again." "Yes, SIR. I'm QUITE positive that it is."
The evening finally ended and I went out the door and counted my meager tips for the entire evening. Grand total for spending an evening dealing with idiots from both sides of the counter?Thirteen dollars......and 50 cents.
Karma is a BITCH!!
UP UP AND AWAYYY!
Okay, Halloween has come and gone and I just can't get a memory out of my head about a kid I went to school with. His father was one of the only people I have ever known who made his fortune as a true inventor. It always seemed to me, however, that the inventions were totally out of place. He was the kind of person that, in theory, would be good to have with you in an emergency situation. Given little more to work with than a tampon string and an Eggo waffle, he might invent something that could really save your life. In reality, however, the invention would have as little relevance to the surroundings you were in as a ham and cheese sandwich does to a bull fight. With this in mind, let's move on two ingredient number two for this story.
When I was growing up, just North of Los Angeles, the Santa Ana winds would blow twice a year. Once in the Spring, and again in the Fall. They are VERY strong and have been known to lift Spanish tile roofs, one tile at a time, and throw them over the house until there is nothing but bare wood on the windward side of the house. Kids love it because it blows the Hell out of everything and has gusts so g that it isn't unusual to be talking with one of your friends one moment and suddenly watching them land face first in the dirt the next. So what does this have to do with an inventor and Halloween? Well, happily, at least as far as this story is concerned, Halloween is in the Fall. I know. You're asking, "How the Hell do these two things relate?", right? Well in order for these two things to even begin to get funny, we need a final component. We need the desire of a small boy to be a pilot for Halloween.
The costume this man made was absolute GENIUS. It was a World War II fighter pilot in a Dauntless Dive Bomber. The kid was dressed with a fur hat and goggles and the rest of his body was designed to resemble the fuselage complete with a vertical fin attached to his butt. His father had made hollow "wings" out of cardboard taped around the edges of a pair of crutches that he could hold tight to his armpits. The nose of the aircraft was a tapered box on his chest with a propeller on the front. He even had small cardboard fairings on his legs and two round pieces attached to his shins to resemble landing wheels. The entire thing was painted a beautiful navy blue; nose art and identification numbers as well. I could see him standing in his kitchen from our living room window. When he held still, he looked like a display from the Smithsonian Aviation Museum. But that's not what Halloween costumes are for, are they? No. They're for walking around in to get candy. And here is where we get to put all the ingredients together into a sick , twisted , 'Easy Bake Oven' of Fate, and then coax it, with the help of a small irony powered light bulb, into a recipe for disaster.
Jeremy stepped off the front porch and for a brief instant he was RESPLENDENT!! The sun shined on the smooth upper surfaces of the wings and his white scarf lifted off the edge if his collar. He WAS a fighter pilot!.....And then the stiff Santa Ana winds took notice of Jeremy.
A gust of wind assaulted the brave fighter pilot as he attempted to taxi onto the front yard. For a brief moment, with his nose pointed defiantly at the raging tempest, it looked as though Jeremy was going to succeed and ride out into the wild blue yonder. But it wasn't to be. The wind caught the under side of the wings and propelled him backward across the yard with a speed usually reserved for catapults. His little feet, encumbered by cardboard landing gear, pinwheeled as fast as they could, but were unable to make
purchase. The wings folded up over his head and the wind swatted him into the chain link fence along the side yard like a mosquito on a windshield. Being a child myself, I did the only thing I could. I howled with laughter. Were it not for the fact that his parents were standing right on the porch, I am sure that the wind would have squeezed him piece meal through the fence like so much Parmesan cheese.
Fear not. Jeremy is now an inventor himself and lives in Iowa. I hear he takes the train anywhere he goes too.
When I was growing up, just North of Los Angeles, the Santa Ana winds would blow twice a year. Once in the Spring, and again in the Fall. They are VERY strong and have been known to lift Spanish tile roofs, one tile at a time, and throw them over the house until there is nothing but bare wood on the windward side of the house. Kids love it because it blows the Hell out of everything and has gusts so g that it isn't unusual to be talking with one of your friends one moment and suddenly watching them land face first in the dirt the next. So what does this have to do with an inventor and Halloween? Well, happily, at least as far as this story is concerned, Halloween is in the Fall. I know. You're asking, "How the Hell do these two things relate?", right? Well in order for these two things to even begin to get funny, we need a final component. We need the desire of a small boy to be a pilot for Halloween.
The costume this man made was absolute GENIUS. It was a World War II fighter pilot in a Dauntless Dive Bomber. The kid was dressed with a fur hat and goggles and the rest of his body was designed to resemble the fuselage complete with a vertical fin attached to his butt. His father had made hollow "wings" out of cardboard taped around the edges of a pair of crutches that he could hold tight to his armpits. The nose of the aircraft was a tapered box on his chest with a propeller on the front. He even had small cardboard fairings on his legs and two round pieces attached to his shins to resemble landing wheels. The entire thing was painted a beautiful navy blue; nose art and identification numbers as well. I could see him standing in his kitchen from our living room window. When he held still, he looked like a display from the Smithsonian Aviation Museum. But that's not what Halloween costumes are for, are they? No. They're for walking around in to get candy. And here is where we get to put all the ingredients together into a sick , twisted , 'Easy Bake Oven' of Fate, and then coax it, with the help of a small irony powered light bulb, into a recipe for disaster.
Jeremy stepped off the front porch and for a brief instant he was RESPLENDENT!! The sun shined on the smooth upper surfaces of the wings and his white scarf lifted off the edge if his collar. He WAS a fighter pilot!.....And then the stiff Santa Ana winds took notice of Jeremy.
A gust of wind assaulted the brave fighter pilot as he attempted to taxi onto the front yard. For a brief moment, with his nose pointed defiantly at the raging tempest, it looked as though Jeremy was going to succeed and ride out into the wild blue yonder. But it wasn't to be. The wind caught the under side of the wings and propelled him backward across the yard with a speed usually reserved for catapults. His little feet, encumbered by cardboard landing gear, pinwheeled as fast as they could, but were unable to make
purchase. The wings folded up over his head and the wind swatted him into the chain link fence along the side yard like a mosquito on a windshield. Being a child myself, I did the only thing I could. I howled with laughter. Were it not for the fact that his parents were standing right on the porch, I am sure that the wind would have squeezed him piece meal through the fence like so much Parmesan cheese.
Fear not. Jeremy is now an inventor himself and lives in Iowa. I hear he takes the train anywhere he goes too.
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