The middle ages…

No, not the fun ones with Knights and swords and maidens and dragons and wizards with pointy hats.

The boring ones. The boring one. Middle age. The point where you are officially dead. I’m haven’t quite gotten there yet, but I am.

Slowly but surely I am.

And the inexorable slide towards that dreaded period began this weekend. And it wasn’t the fact that I spent New Year’s Eve at work , trying to desperately beat a deadline, or the fact that I was so exhausted that I fell asleep through that momentous minute, or the fact that I did not bother to make plans because I knew I would be working.

No what drove it home were the events of the next day. I went furniture shopping. To an Ikea showroom. Furniture shopping. Bah! And not for anything reasonably irresponsible, like a bar stool or a Laz-Boy recliner. What I went looking for was a Chest of Drawers. Something Nice. That Would Go With The Carpet.

And the sad part of it is that I did not go shopping like I usually do. In and out with a minimum of fuss. I spent time comparing products and visualizing furniture placement. Where has that boy gone, the one who fell asleep as his parents were shopping for living room chairs, the one who refused to leave the car as they were looking for new curtains. (For the record I haven’t sunk low yet. Yet.)

I finally have a car. I have named it “Debt”. I own one of the cup holders and some of the air in the trunk. My bank owns the rest.

I’ve figured out the exact time when you’ve become old. It’s when someone says that you look younger than you actually are and you take that as a compliment.

Oh yes, a Happy “Gratuitous Obscenities and Assorted Expletives” New Year. To all those I forgot to call up, and that list is longer than I am comfortable with, I apologize.

Now go get drunk.

You know who you are.

It’s 23 degrees (Fahren-fuckin-heit). I’m at the train station at 4 am waiting for the train to Newark Airport. Since it is four in the morning the waiting room is shut and I’m out on the platform, at the mercy of the elements.

I have dressed in layers. An overcoat, a blazer, shirt and a T-shirt. Well layers on the top, where I am uncomfortably warm and beginning to sweat. The rest of me feels like your average Naked Person Stuck At The North Pole In Winter.

So…If we average it out, I am actually quite comfortable.

Side note: Me, Gym Shorts and Shakira having an Orgasm on the Gym Television screens. The potential for embarrassment looms large. (Yes I did mean that double-entendre.).

I vote that Shakira get the award for Best Televised Orgasm. She can win the sub-categories too, Best Orgasm with a Sports Car, Best Orgasm with a Sand Dune, Best Orgasm with a Can of Black Paint, Best Orgasm with a Rolled Up Newspaper, Best Orgasm With a Non-Rolled Up Newspaper. And the critics award, Best Moan in A-Minor.

I dislike most music videos. I truly do.

I do like the New Victoria’s secret advertisement. According to it, there are mind bogglingly gorgeous women who lounge about in their underwear and moan suggestively. They are a more evolved form of humanity that has gone beyond the need for any clothes which cover more that a square inch of skin. Their purpose isn’t quite clear yet, but I’m sure that with time enlightenment will come (This one was completely unintentional). Personally, I believe that they are here to solve world hunger and end human conflict. Perhaps by making out with each other. However, making any conclusions now would be premature (Freudian slip).

I will now end abruptly and leave you hanging (Gah!).

Looking at the kitchen at my office, I see that we are out of any kind of tea that I may drink. The only teas left there are the Hippy teas, teas that would wear goofy jeans and talk about flower power and Marx. Teas with chamomile, and jasmine and essence of orange rinds and apple extract. Teas in bright yellow boxes, and teas in gently blushing cardboard cartons.

Bah.

Those are not the kinds of teas that I drink. I want a tea that could run an empire, teas that would suitably subdue the natives and decimate the local ecology.

Guess I’m going to have to settle for tea’s mutated pirate half brother. Evil icky black coffee.

I like the chain supermarket near my house. No really I do. It is large, carries my favorite brand of cereal and has copious amounts of dead animals(Aisles and aisles of frozen corpses, as far as the eye can see.). Most importantly, it is open round the clock.

I have no reason to complain.

None what so ever.

Um…

Except for one.

Their slogan, catch phrase, national anthem, whatever you may call it is, well, fucked up.

They have signs with it all over the store. Sign that boldly declaim, “I love this store.”

Now, there are two interpretations to this statement. Perhaps unsurprisingly I have a problem with both of them.

The first is that the supermarket is being narcissistic and is brimming with admiration at the supermarket’s beauty and wide display of… stuff. Unable to contain itself, the supermarket loudly proclaims its self love from the roof tops and other high places (Including but not limited to telephone and electrical poles, the top of basketball players heads and the radio antenna behind the supermarket).

Now, being the peaceable, easy going person that I am, I can live with this. As long as I can get the aforementioned cereal, I have no problems.

But, the second interpretation is far, far more sinister. It could be that the supermarket is proclaiming my love for the supermarket. And that scares me. I like the supermarket, one could say that I feel mild affection for it, but I do not love it. I would not donate a kidney to the supermarket if it needed one. I would allow it to borrow my vacuum cleaner, but I would not take a bullet for it. If tomorrow, this supermarket went up to that great big strip mall in the sky, I might shed a quiet tear, and then I’d go back to wasting my time.

The thing is I haven’t been going to this supermarket for all that long, and I do not think we have yet reached that stage in our relationship where we can bandy about words such as “Love”. Things are going too fast. I know that this place looks good, but there may be something new around the corner. I think that I should see other super markets. Perhaps ones with longer aisles, or more rounded checkout counters, or maybe ones with shopping carts that did not infernally squeak. And only then make my decision.

I guess the point I am making, (The tumbleweed that blows through this blog faints with surprise. A point in this blog? Tis not possible.) is that no customers fucking love chain supermarkets. They are as interchangeable as things that are easily interchangeable and are often used in sentences as similes for things that are interchangeable. Please for heavens sake, come up with a slogan that is a little less inane. Here is a suggestion: “Rajneesh’s favorite cereal and aisles and aisles of frozen corpses.”

Addiction is a beautiful thing.

So turn the volume up and click here.

…makes the cable bill bearable.

I hate telephonic customer service. Well the human part of it usually is fine. The reps are almost invariably polite and helpful. Their service may suck, but they’ll sure be polite about screwing you over. However, getting to them is an ordeal by itself. For that you need to run the gauntlet of the Interactive Voice Response System (made and distributed by the agents of Hell).

There used to be a time when these systems used to be helpful. They would say “Press one to talk to Sales”, “Press two for customer service”, “Press three to talk to Sexy Single Women In Your Area Who Want To Have A Good Time”(Option three might have just been for numbers that I dialed, but I could be wrong. It is quite possible that no matter what the number is that you call; option three will always connect you Sexy Single Women In Your Area Who Want To Have A Good Time. Stranger things have been known to happen).

But someone couldn’t let well enough alone and they decided to make the experience more interactive. Perhaps the powers that be labor under the fond delusion that their customers will believe that a real live human being is talking to them. Let me disabuse them of that notion. NO WE DO NOT. And now we have systems that need you to talk to them. They claim to be more intuitive and able to handle simple responses like “yes” or “no” or “antidisestablishmentarianism”. I wouldn’t mind these systems if only they worked. But they do not. Actually they do work…as instruments of fine torture.

Interactive Voice Response System (hitherto known as The Spawn of Hell): Welcome to We Will Happily Screw You Over Ltd. How may I be of assistance today? Please state the service that you need and I will direct you to the concerned department.

Me (I’m my normal cheerful self at this time, a song on my face and a smile in my heart.): Customer Service.

The Spawn of Hell: Sorry, I did not under stand that. Please repeat what you said.

Me: Customer Service.

The Spawn of Hell: Sorry, I did not under stand that. Please repeat what you said.

Me: Customer Service!

The Spawn of Hell: Okay, I think you said you want to listen to our Long And Torturous Spiel Trying To Sell You Useless Yet Ridiculously Services That Nobody Will Ever Need? Say yes to confirm or no to um…unconfirm.

Me: No!

The Spawn of Hell: Thank you for confirming that.

Me: Oh Fuck me!

The Devils: Sure, bend over.

Me: What?

The Spawn of Hell: I said one moment please.

Me: No you did not! You asked me to bend over! In a nasty perverted voice!

The Spawn of Hell: I said one moment please. The spiel will now begin. Disconnecting during the spiel will require you to listen to it thrice when you call up again. Twice in English and once in Latin.

Thirty minutes later, I have listened to every possible service that they have, their enthusiastic bubbling at having a functional website and their pride in serving the community. All the while with the most irritating possible muzak in the background. And I’ve made the mistake of calling them up on my cell phone. During peak hours. Goodbye minutes.

And finally I get through to customer service.

Me: Hi! (edge of desperation in my voice)

Bored Voice At The Other End: Heylo.

Me: Um…I’m trying to track down a package.

Bored Voice At The Other End: Tracking number please.

Me: 1Z 38E W19 03 6569 372 0

Bored Voice At The Other End: Was that a Z 38E or βΏΘΨ?

Me: (With admirable restraint) Z 38E!

Bored Voice At The Other End: Ah yes. I see it here in the system.

Me: Excellent. What’s up with it? I’ve been waiting all day for it and it’s kinda important.

Bored Voice At The Other End: Hrmppph. Ah yes. We did not feel like delivering it.

Me: Huh?

Bored Voice At The Other End: Yeah, we know we’re UPS, the United Parcel bloddy service, but not so much. We may get around to it tomorrow.

Me: Huh?

Bored Voice At The Other End: Have a nice day and all that shit.

Me: Get back here dammit!

The Spawn of Hell:: Welcome back presciousssssssss!

Me: (Muffled Sobbing)

However, they did deliver the package the next day and I am happy since this is now sitting on a shelf next to my desk.

So I now have my own apartment, and that is a good thing.

(When I say now, I mean since the evening of the nineteenth of September.)

However I have to set up the apartment and go buy those little luxuries which make life worth living.

Like furniture.

The apartment is currently Spartan. Austere. Barren. Like the surface of the moon; after a particularly boisterous (and apparently directionally challenged) windstorm has scoured all traces of life from it. Heck, the storm has fucking scoured all traces of rock from it.

Well, you get the point. My currently consists of three rolls of toilet paper, a toaster and a vast expanse of carpet. Carpet as far as the eye can bloody well see. Carpet, carpet everywhere and not a drop to drink; except for the orange juice in the fridge.

(That sentence contains the second semicolon that I have used in this post. I really have no clue where a semi colon goes. I used those to stop the ugly green squiggly lines from appearing in Word. My screen informs me that I had counted my punctuation marks before they had hatched. The green line has reappeared. I am currently flipping it the bird. It does not respond. I consider it subdued by my superior intellect. And while I’m at it, I’m changing tense from narrated past to present fucking active something.)

But today the even surface of my carpet was broken, and broken pleasantly I might add, with the appearance of a cable modem, a set-top box (for HBO which I wont ever have time to watch) and a rather wet cable guy. Fucking Comcast was finally here! But again I had counted my punctuation marks before they had hatched. The cable guy proceeded to rip the carpet up from its mooring with distressing alacrity (To run the wires to the cable outlet I had told him I would be using). And once the wires were laid out he re-laid the carpet…by professionally stamping on it firmly and tapping it in.

I looked on bemused silence (Bemused because I was in fact bemused and silence because I’m a strong, silent kind of chap. Much like Bertie Wooster) as the dude went ahead and busily connected wires and disconnected others, and then disconnected ones that were just connected. And then he turned the television on…and there were pictures. Moving ones! And Sounds! It was a miracle. I now had cable. All I needed now was the Internet part of the package and I could head off to work a moderately satisfied person. (And did I mention that I had asked my boss permission to come in late because the Comcast guy was finally installing the shit?).

Cable guy marched over to the wall, and yanked at the outlet. And then he said, and I kid you not, he said, “Oops!”

A chorus of little imps went, “Your FUCKED!” in my head.

“Oops?” I queried.

Well, to cut a long story short, and to stave of the symptoms of carpal tunnel syndrome that I feel in my left hand, the cable guy’s supervisor now needs to come in and dismantle part of the outer wall and replace the outlet. I envision this happening sometime in late November. Late November 2525. When Pigs fucking fly and we have Jet cars and all that fancy crap.