Walmart: where awkward moments blossom into awkward days

When I was little, the biggest reward imaginable was for my brother and I to both be allowed to go to food shopping with my mom at the same time. Usually we were either brought individually or not at all, because when we joined forces, we always had way more success than my mom would have liked at finding things to laugh at, thinking up loud noises to make, and choosing interesting cans of who knows what to sneak into the cart while she wasn't looking. Neither one of us was much of an annoyance alone, but together we were unstoppable.

Not too much has changed since those days. At 22, I will still occasionally convince myself that I need a can of off-brand tomatoes because of the hilarious drawing of some stupid guy on the wrapper, or that I can't go without some headache-inducing Lisa Frank folder to store the assignments from one of my less favored classes in. I think I get it from my dad. One time he and my mom were taking turns riding a shopping cart in a parking lot, trying to set the world distance record, and he ended up losing control and accidentally smashing out one of her car's tail lights.

A few days ago, I sneezed twice in my first class. I never sneeze unless I'm coming down with something, so I decided I'd preemptively hit up Walmart for some Nyquil and Advil before a sore throat could get its foot in the door. Nobody likes shopping for medicine once you're already sick; it completely takes the fun out of it. Not that buying Advil is all that exciting in the first place, but there's nothing worse than being sick and getting stuck behind some old lady that's taking ages in line because she has to explain to the cashier about how her cat doesn't like the better cat food so she's buying the cheap cat food and not the better cat food, because her cat won't eat that better stuff, he knows better than to spoil his palette before his birthday on March 14th, so I need to get this cheap cat food because my cat is so smart, et cetera to infinity.

So I searched around the store for approximately forever, browsing their crappy Walmart CDs and being amazed at the wide variety of different types of printer ink that can be bought for outrageous prices, before I finally realized that Nyquil would probably be in the pharmacy aisle. I grabbed a bottle of the regular flavored stuff, a pack of Advil, and headed to express checkout.

The checker was a somewhat strange looking youngish woman with cracked lips and wild eyes. She looked like the type that, if not employed at Walmart, might be seen loitering outside of a Dennys or something, flicking cigarettes at birds. I put my cold medicine on the conveyer belt, put my hands in my back pockets, and stepped up to the register.

"Hi," I said.

"Hi," she replied coldly, eyeing the Nyquil. She glanced up at me, back to the Nyquil, back to me, and then slid it slowly across the barcode scanner.

"Date of birth," she stated flatly.

"...Huh?" I asked, caught slightly off guard. I hadn't remembered that Nyquil can be used to make meth or whatever it is that creepy people who flick cigarettes at birds make with it.

"Date of birth," she said again.

"Eleventwentyfoureightysix," I mumbled. She stared at me, chewed the inside of her lower lip for a second, narrowed her eyes and glanced back to the bottle of Nyquil, and then back at me, like she was on the verge of figuring out the exact mathematical reason why I must not be telling the truth.

"I think I'm getting a cold," I offered as I slid my card in the machine.

She didn't say anything as she finally put the Nyquil in a bag with the Advil and then handed me my my recipt. She didn't ask to see my driver's license; apparently to buy Nyquil, you only have to claim to be a certain age and be willing to engage in a staring contest.

I never did end up getting sick. But before I got back in my car, I took a shopping cart from the return lane, located a slightly downhill part of the parking lot, got a running-jumping start, and rode about twenty feet before crashing on some ice.

I wish pizza guys wouldn't take pizza so seriously

I'm going to go ahead and assume that I'm not the only person in the world who thinks ordering pizzas is way more fun when you use a funky alias. For as long as I can remember, I've used the name Tyban to order all my pizzas. There's a long and involved story about how this name was invented, but the basic idea is that a pizza guy on the other end of the phone heard what I said wrong and the box had "Tyban" written on it when I went to pick it up. I've never had any huge problems ordering as Tyban, although I have been asked a few times what culture the name comes from and/or how I got it ("Nordic" and "born with it" have been my respective answers). In fact, the name is apparently so convincing that nobody even seems to mind when I pay with a credit card that clearly lists my first name as "Jack."

However, I guess for every ten pizza guys that are cool, there has to be that one killjoy who just doesn't understand how much better pizza tastes if nobody involved in the making of it knows your real name. A few weeks ago, I was ordering pizza, and they must have already had my phone number in their database or something because when I gave the guy my cell, he asked, "Uh, Doctor Tyban?"

I had to crack up because I didn't remember that I'd gotten my PhD in pizzaology. "Yeah, that's me," I said, still laughing a little.

"So what's your real name?" the jerk asked flatly, as if there was no chance a Nordic Doctor of pizzaology could possibly be in the mood for pizza right now.

"...Jack," I finally admitted. I could hear keys clacking on the other end of the phone, and I could just picture the douche bag's sadistic grin as he entered my real name into the international pizza database, which I guess could have a life-threatening pepperoni meltdown if it fails to retain a completely accurate listing of all customers' given Christian names.

"What can I get you, Jack?"

I wanted to yell, Your pizza license number, asshole!

"Uhh, medium sausage. Oh, and I have a coupon for a free two-liter soda."

I didn't really have that coupon. Screw you, pizza guy.

I guess I can understand not wanting people to order with all kinds of crazy fake names that could be allusions to drugs, gangs, violence, rock n' roll, pornography, and other such riff raff, but seriously--Tyban is perfectly okay, but adding the title of Doctor pushes it over the edge? I'd never before been asked if Tyban was fake. Oh well. I guess I was the only one that didn't know that once you get your Doctorate, you stop liking pizza. Damn. Guess that's what I get for not bothering to look that up on Wikipedia.

Global warming is dominant

How can anyone not be excited about global warming? It's so totally win/win that I can't understand how environmentalists could possibly be against it. Maybe it's just because I live in a frozen hellscape six months out of the year, but I always have to groan whenever I hear some annoying white guy with dreadlocks going on about how I should stop driving because it increases my carbon footprint or whatever. If you don't like spring and fall temperatures, than screw you, because they're awesome.

Today I walked outside in the morning onto my balcony, looked out over the beautiful skeleton forest of early sunlight and glistening streams, singing birds, and newly sprouting leaves, and I breathed in the sweet, sweet reward I earned for all my efforts to warm the globe. And hey, suppose it does actually come to the worst case scenario, and global temperature shift actually does cause life on planet earth to end. What would be so bad about being able to say, "I died in the freaking APOCALYPSE"? Honestly, I'd rather die from something totally amazing like the end of the world than of something stupid, like oldness or the flu or hypothermia.

Someone should give Al Gore a Razzie for his movie about how I'm not right. That movie was super boring before we hooked the TV up to Jon's electric guitar amp and cranked the distortion on Al's voice up to 11.

Finally, a kids movie that isn't afraid to scare the shit out of kids

In case you don't follow movies very closely, Coraline is a new PG-rated stop motion film about a terrifying, skeletal, praying mantis woman who lives inside the wall and tears out the eyes of children so that she can lock their souls in a dark room for the rest of eternity.

Hells yes.

I can't even remember the last time there was a good "scary as shit" kids movie. These days, all we get is Ice Age, Cars, and other formulaic CGI bore-fests that all look identical and cast tons of B-list celebrities for no apparent reason. None of them have bite and nobody will remember them 15 years from now when they're blogging on the mindnet (or whatever the future holds for written communication). But me, I remember all the kids movies I saw when I was a kid. And do you know why I remember? Because they were damn terrifying, that's why! I remember the awesome scene from the otherwise terrible movie The Phantom (rated PG, by the way) where the bad guy tricked this other bad guy into looking into a microscope that had blades hidden in the eye scopes that shot up when he turned the knobs and blinded the crap out of him. That was awesome as a ten year old. That opened up a whole new world of terror that I'd never even realized could exist before. And Nickelodeon did a whole day of programming dedicated to promoting that movie when it came out, because old school Nickelodeon knew where it was at: MIND-SHATTERING FEAR.

Which is why it's good that Coraline has come along to scare today's children. Even though it was pretty predictable, a little gimmicky with the 3D, and pretty obviously trying to milk the fact that it had Nightmare Before Christmas' director behind the wheel, Coraline was pretty freakin' scary in a kiddish sort of way. If I had seen this when I was ten, you know what I would have been having nightmares about for the next week and a half? This. And this. And I would have gained a new fear of sewing needles that would probably persist into my early 30s. Because that's what a good kids movie is all about.

Memories.

Higher education needs a boost

I've been noticing recently that something is pretty obviously askew in the college degree system. Some people who really know their stuff beyond what should be required for a degree don't have one, and some guy who ended up growing a soul patch, painting himself silver, and bellowing things like "we are only five years away from the 21st century" in a disorienting, vaguely offensive advertisement for the shamefully bad Sega Saturn probably had his doctorate in sociology or something. For this reason, I think it's high time the academic community thought about doing a revamp of the educational titles.

For instance, who really wants to be a "Bachelor of Fine Arts"? I don't. I want to be a "Guardian of Arcane Knowledge" or a "Tireless Champion of the Unseeing Eye" or something else that sounds way more kick ass and important than a "bachelor." Graduating from college shouldn't conjure images of a scruffy guy in a bad tie and a graduation cap; it should conjure images of a tyrannosaurus uppercutting a demon. Anything less awesome than that should not be imagery associated with higher learning.

Also, I think some people should have to have asterisks next to their titles. For instance, if you have a PhD in something that the average ten-year-old would not aspire to study, you should have to have an asterisk after it that leads to a footnote reading, "Lame." However, if you actually did become an astronaut or a wild animal vet or a rock musician, your asterisk could be something like, "Danny Baker, the asshole that made fun of me in 3rd grade for the time I threw up during recess, can suck it."

Also, I think that Sam Neill, Wayne Coyne from The Flaming Lips, and Adam and Jamie from Mythbusters should be given automatic PhD's in the field of dominance.

Magnificent inventions from the future

(And a few other things I thought sounded like really cool ideas when Jon or I first thought of them.)

5. Condiment ray gun
How many times have you wanted to put mustard on something but you didn't have an awesome enough way to do it? Well put your hands together for the condiment ray gun. Nothing can impress a blind date the way a concealed weapon can, and it's a two-birds-with-one-stone type situation if that gun shoots condiments. Your E-Harmony meet ups will still be awkward and kind of creepy, but at least your hot dogs won't be bland.

4. Clothes made out of blankets
Straight from the mind of Mitch Hedberg comes this gem among gems--clothes that were also blankets, so you could just sleep where you stand! Imagine the possibilities. Boring lecture? Pow, dreamland. Cold? Not with a nice set of blanklothes. It's like the next natural step up from pajamas. It was recently brought to my attention that this has actually been made into a real product.

3. Mortal Kombat coloring book
Now your children age 4-8 can relive the heartwarming adventures of Sub-Zero, Liu Kang, Baraka, and Sonya Blade whenever they want, in full color! 1995 may have come and gone, but the feel-good antics of everybody's favorite Outworld Kombatants are here to stay. Krimson Red Krayon included.

2. Disposable computers
Everyone knows the best way to fix a slow computer is to hit it, but what happens when things get out of hand? Hey, we've all been there. Cracked screens, bloody keyboards, and speakers with forks stuck in them are common sights in any bachelor pad. But now there's a better option: disposable computers. Punch and kick all you like, you've got a box full of these things! Your internet shuts off during a lengthy download? POW! Professor calls you on using Wikipedia as a source? ZIFF! Don't forget to check out edible ethernet cords, too.

1. Game Boy Shuffle
Imagine a Game Boy that had no screen. The buttons would all work... maybe. You wouldn't know if you were winning or losing because there would be no screen and it would be small enough to clip to your lapel. But while it was up there you could voice chat with people on wi-fi by talking into your lapel like an awesome secret agent or something. You wouldn't know if anybody was online, though, until you synced it up to your iTunes and found out if you had won or lost to them at a game that you didn't even choose to play because it was selected from your playlist by a random number generator. Headphones not included.

Good times with power tools

"Do you have blue training?" the guy at the front desk of the wood shop lab asked.

"Yeah," I said, "but it was like two semesters ago and I'm sort of rusty."

"You want a quick refresher?"

"Please."

And that's how I met the table saw. I mean, became reacquainted with the table saw--as I said, I had been trained to use it once, but that was months and months and months ago. All I really knew about it was that it was large, dangerous looking, covered in strange levers and Plexiglas finger guards, and that it would probably try to kill me if I got too close.

Jon and I had come to the processes lab, the indigenous home of the table saw and various other implements of destruction, so that we could cut some panels for painting class. See, for Painting 2, paper isn't good enough as a painting surface; that shit has to be wood. But, like all art students, the processes lab freaks us out super bad and we try to spend as little time in there as possible. We just wanted to get in, cut, and get out, and since I was the only one of us that had the blue training that would let me use the table saw, the responsibility to cut that wood fell squarely upon my shoulders. And since I cared more about getting out of there quickly than about equally sharing cutting duty, I agreed to do it.

"You move the blade up so it's above the thing you want to cut," the guy said as he showed me how to arrange the plank we were about to cut. "Then you slide it through, pushing from both sides, with these wood pusher stick things. See?"

"Got it," I said, and turned on the blade.

"Be sure you push it all the way through, even once it's past the blade," the guy told me. "If the blade catches the corner as you push it through, it can shoot back out at you like a missile."

I made the first two cuts easily and without issue, and I was feeling pretty good. A girl in our class had come in to cut her own wood, the guy who had showed me how to use the table saw was now browsing the internet from his laptop, and everything seemed casual and safe.

Seemed.

On the next cut, I suddenly saw the smaller piece of wood begin to turn beneath the blade. I watched it rotating in slow motion; it turned, stopped, and then the blade caught it. There was a loud, shrieking noise, like a velociraptor descending on a dilophasaurus, as the 7x7' plank of wood shot out of the table saw backwards and slammed me in the pelvis. For a moment I was stunned as I slowly realized that although I had just taken the full force of a flying inch-thick sheet of oak right in the waist, I had not been sliced in half. I heard the wood clattering on the ground, bouncing out the door of the lab, and hitting the far wall of the hallway. The counter guy was running over to me, people outside were peeking in, and I was staring open-mouthed down at the giant rectangle of sawdust on my shirt.

"Are you alright, dude?!"

"I'm fine," I said, shocked. "I think. I think I'm fine. I--"

"Nobody's ever been hurt on my watch before!"

"I'm fine," I stammered again.

And I was fine. Mostly. I'll probably have a wicked sweet bruise tomorrow which will be a barrel of fun, but at least I got my painting surfaces all cut and ready, and I didn't get disemboweled. I just got shot. By a flying square of wood. At point blank range.

"You see, my philosophy is simple. In a world where there are literally ten million ways to mutilate yourself on a normal day, why go messing around with tools?"

Amen, Pete. Amen.