Me So Hornee ...

Truly. Okay. So, I pretty much play it level on this blog. I have had a place to live now for almost three months, and, while I'm not exactly a millionaire yet, I am paying my bills, feeding my cats and surviving. That's where the "hierarchy of needs" comes in. I really need to get laid.

Let's face it: the need for sex IS A NEED. Yeah, you can put it on hold for awhile (and I HAVE), but it's going to pop up again sooner or later, and you had better do something about it or your testicles might explode in your pants one day, splashing the entire block in spooj, possibly with loss of life.Granted, I am a kinky little fucker, but, in my defense, if I am a dirty old man, I started out as a dirty young one. I really only have two kinks, and they are pretty harmless: I have a thing for underwear and athletic gear, and I'm into spanking.So, now you know. Actually, if you know me at all, you already know, and I don't care how many people know, because it might help me get the hook-up with somebody who shares my , ahem, predilections.

Okay. Last payday, I went to Wally World, to see what they might have to offer in the way of jock straps. Yeah, I have a bunch of them, but they are all in storage, and I haven't even put one on in uh, like a year.It isn't my fault: a previous boyfreind (name witheld, even though WE ALL KNOW WHO YOU ARE) turned me on to wearing them under jeans, as a turn-on, and it stuck. I swear to God, I was an innocent before! So, I went to WM, and checked out what they had to offer, and to my complete surprise, I found a combination compression short/cup supporter (I never knew such a thing existed!) and HAD to buy it. Of course, having found such a marvel, I had to let some friends know about it, including this boy I had met on ManHunt (umm ...) who likes stuff like that, and, so, I invited him over to take a look at it, so, I HAD to put it on for him, and he really got turned on by it, like I did, and, somewhere in there, a, ummm, spanking happened. Okay, it was two spankings.

Don't judge me! It was fun, and nobody got hurt (any more than he wanted to be).

So, here I am, at, like 5 AM, blogging about my perverted life, and, FYI, wearing a jock strap under my jeans. Hey: whatever blows your skirt up.Me so hornee. Me love you longtime. Have jock, will travel.

Mortality

Kind of sad, really. Right down the street from where I live, on the 17th, a 22-year old LSU student died in an apartment of Carbon Monoxide poisoning. He was found by EMS personnel that afternoon, along with a 22-year old female, who was unconscious, but survived. They were in an unventilated apartment with an old space heater, the kind that I have in my apartment. It wasn't mentioned whether or not he had a CO detector, but his parents handed out CO detectors to students in the neighbourhood yesterday. There are two funeral wreaths out in front of the place. I had passed them every day, without noticing (in my defense, I spend more time watching traffic so I don't get splattered than looking at scenery).

The creepy thing is that I was going to rent the same apartment before I rented the one I am living in now. It makes you think. Of course, I have the same kind of old heater that is in most of these buildings, but I do have a CO detector (even if I don't know if it works or not). And, another thing: I don't trust the detector any more than I do the heater: I just don't use the heater at night, when I go to bed. It's on now, but I will turn it off before I go to sleep, because I am really counting on waking up tomorrow. Of course, so was he, and, when you're 22, you are incapable of dying.

I suppose he grew up in a nice suburban home, with central heat, not like I did, with ancient gas furnaces that had to be cleaned and maintained and properly vented. So, no-one probably ever warned him about the dangers of an open gas furnace, which is a pity.

I am sure that there will be repercussions, as well. I rent from the same landlord who owns that building, and, when I moved in, I was given a checklist which covered the CO detector, the fire extinguisher and the smoke detector (which goes off whenever I light the furnace or cook anything, so I take the battery out of it unless I am going to bed). There is a good chance that there was a CO detector at the apartment, but I don't know, and I don't know if it worked or not, which really doesn't change things because the boy's parents have just lost heir son, and they are probably pissed of, just at everything in general, and hurt, and there is bound to be an investigation, and maybe a lawsuit over this, even if it is just simply a case of accidental death.

At any rate, the CO detector here (which may or may not work) is plugged in, I am turning off the heat before I go to bed, and I have set the cats on firewatch, with orders to wake me if anything happens. That's about all I can do: that and hope I wake up in the morning, because I am planning to wash clothes and hang out with friends tomorrow, since I have Sunday off, the first one in six weeks, and I would rather spend it alive than dead.

More Bitchin' and Moanin'

Pulled a double the other day at the store. Happened like this: I thought I had to be in for 11, but it tuned out I was on schedule for 6. So, feeling like a total spazz, I changed back into riding gear and was on my way out, when my boss stopped me and asked me if I wanted to work. Turned out that two people had not shown up at all, and the store was really busy, and so, I went back upstairs and re-dressed, and worked 12 hours, with an hour for lunch, in the middle. The first half, I worked in the main store, and the latter, in the liquor department, my old haunt.

It was intense. We were so busy that I got one chance to run to the toilet and no break for almost six hours. A horde of the most imbcelic and insane customers descended upon me like, uh, locusts or something: perhaps cicadas.

Okay. When I go to the store, and I buy stuff, I pretty much know two things: (a) how much the stuff I am buying actually costs (this may easily be ascertained by reading THE FUCKING SHELF TAG, YOU MORON) , and (b) how much money I have to spend for it (you can look in your pocket or at the balance coloumn of your checkbook or CALL THE FUCKING BANK INSTEAD OF DISCUSSING THE BITCH YOU FUCKED LAST NIGHT OR THE LATEST SHADE OF MAKEUP YOU HAVE ON ON YOUR CELL WHILE YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO BE CONDUCTING BUSINESS, YOU DICK/AND/OR CUNT!). Gawd, that felt good! Mental defecation is good for the soul.

So, I get this extremely well-dressed black lady in her 60's, the kind that you would think would be a wonderful customer, only she has the sale paper in her hand, and she's in for the sale, only there is an issue with the cost of, um, like, every other item. The first was BOGO (q.v.), only she had two different items, from the meat department. So, I had to call J., from the meat department, and he explained it to her in great detail, but she either failed to grasp the concept or was a good scammer, because he finally said "just give it to her", which meant I had to do a POS coupon on it. Okay, that crisis averted, she hands me a "rain check" ticket for orange juice, only the coupon is a year old. I bring to her attention that there is (written on the coupon) a 30-day expiration date, and she gets huffy, so I have to get J., the manager on duty, who tells her the same thing, and finally, exasperated, tells me to honour it. Think it's over now? Oh, no. No such fucking luck.

The third item rings at $1.59, but she claims it is $.99, because the tag said so. So, I summon a third person, this time from grocery, who checks the item and comes back and tells us that the item next to it is the one for $.99, so she doesn't want it, and I have to void it off. Still ain't over.

Next thing, she has ten items that she says are "10 FOR 10" (q.v.), and produces her sale paper, which is two weeks out of date, and the items are now for the regular price. So, once again, I summon a manager, J., again, only, this time, he's had as much of her as I have, because he has plenty of other things to do, and, he tells her, we can't honour it, so, I have to void all ten of the items off, and he has to stand there and validate it, and I have to write every item down, individually, on my Cashier's Report. Finally, she leaves. It took me two minutes to ring her items, and twenty more to sort out HER mistakes, and EVERY ONE WAS HERS. The four people behind her were remarkably patient, and very kind to me.

That was the other day. So, Sunday, I have to open the liquor department at 11, which is the earliest you can sell alcohol in Baton Rouge. I've got my till and stuff, and I'm waiting for C., the manager for the morning, to open the department for me, and this crack whore, waving money, is in front of us, demanding the door be opened. Of course, before I do any business, I have to count my till and sign the paperwork, because I am responsible for the money that I am "sold", every time I take a till. So, while I'm counting my money and doing my paperwork, she runs to the back and grabs a bottle of Wild Irish Rose, which is this awful sweet wine that only stone alkys drink, and puts it on the counter, and, I tell her, "I'll wait on you in just a moment; I have to count my till." She can't wait, and she puts her money down, $4.11, and rushes out.

So, I look up, and she has left not only the money, but her wine, too. And that's why you shouldn't do crack.

My last customer is so impatient that he swipes his credit card right after I ring his first item, and, when I tell him that it didn't go through, that he did it too quickly, argues with me that it SHOULD work faster, and it's MY fault.

And that's why I should do crack: just to get in tune. Oh, well: it's my day off, and I have nothing better to do than write, drink wine, and liten to music all day. UB40 now. I'm chillin'.

Thoughts Upon Listening to Ravel

Well, I have been having more digestive problems. Last week, I missed three days' work because of them. I woke up on Tuesday, really nauseated, and threw up for 48 hours straight. No lie. It sucked. Imagine vomiting, every hour on the hour, for two days. I couldn't even keep water down. This happens too much. I have no medical insurance, so I will have to go to Earl K. Long Hospital, way across town, and sit in a waiting room with other poor people, all day, to be seen about it; but, I have to do it: these problems with my stomach are making me miserable and interfering with my job. I have two mouths to feed, other then mine: I am responsible.

These are not cats that K. gave me: they are demons from the Ninth Circle of Hell. I don't even need an alarm clock (which is a good thing, because they keep unplugging it). About seven in the morning, every fucking morning, whether I work or have a Holy Day Off (which I like to sanctify with sleeping late), the Kitties of Doom wake me up by running around the apartment like escaped lunatics from a Pink Floyd album.

I am listening to Bolero right now. One of the only things I ever got from Jeremy, other than a desire to break both of his ankles (try doing drag in heels with broken ankles, you bitch!) is a crummy little portable boombox, and I did find, among some of my rescued items, of all things, a CD of Maurice Ravel's music, and upon it that most famous of his inventions. It was written, actually, to represent, musically, an aspect of the French Revolution which gives me great pleasure of reminiscence: the tumbrel drawing the condemned to the guillotine. At the end of the building tower of music is the short, sharp shock of the descending blade, which gives me almost orgasmic pleasure when I imagine that Jeremy's neck is placed within the lunettes. See: I actually do have a sense of humour.

It's just funny that I am listening to this and imagining that, with Jeremy's stupid boom box that he used to spend hours with, in our bathroom, doing his makeup for some stupid drag show. I wonder where the little coked-out creep is now. It is probably better that I don't know, because I don't think it would be better for either of us to meet up again. Even after he left, sticking me with all the fucking bills, the little shit billed his cell phone to my bank account, overdrawing it. That is like cutting your head off and shitting down your neck, isn't it? Well, that's Jeremy Kocke.

He told everyone, including his family, that he was attending LSU. That's a laugh. Jeremy has never spent one minute on campus except to turn tricks. I hope they read this, but I doubt it. He always whined to me about his hard life: being deserted by his father and having his mother give him up to her parents to raise, but, when I looked into it, I found that his grandfather is one of the wealthiest men in Donaldsonville (q.v.), where Chester and I used to run the bread truck. His granddad owns a construction company and a cement plant. So, Jeremy's whining about his unhappy childhood is just that: whining. Jeremy whines a lot. He is a whiny little bitch.

Well, Ravel is over, and I'm listening to Patsy Kline (yeah, I know: but she is classic), on Jeremy's stupid boom box. Jeremy, sweetie, if you're out there: I don't fall to pieces any more. I would love to see you in them. Really. You bitch, you deserve it.

My Lovely Day Off

So, my friend D., with whom I spent about two hours on the phone on Christmas Eve, came back into town yesterday to go back to school. This is about the third (or fourth?) time that he has attempted to finish his Bachelor's degree at LSU, having settled last year for an Associate degree in Psychology. He told me that this semester would "make or break" him.

D.is an intelligent guy, and certainly capable of finishing school and getting his B.S., but he carries a little baggage with him. First of all, he likes to get fucked up a lot, and when I say fucked up I mean TOFU'd. He is an expert on how to combine OTC and prescription medication in order to get as totally fucking wrecked as possible. His big thing used to be Robitussin DM and Mini-thins. Robitussin DM contains Dextropomorphan, which is a morphine analog, and Mini-thins (which, I think, are no longer availible) contain pseudoephedrine HCL, which is used to make crystal meth. His behaviour on this cocktail landed him in the mental hospital and in drug programmes several times and led to his being granted a large amount of money which now allows him to attend college virtually for free, without having to take on student loans. If there is one thing that he is good at, it is working the government to get stuff for free.

He got in touch with me before I got of work, and came over after I got home and hung out for a couple of hours, and we talked about a lot of different things. I told him that what he needed to do was lay off the drugs and alcohol and trashy sex while he is in school and just concentrate on passing his courses. He is probably the least disciplined person I know, and, I told him, school requires quite a bit of self-discipline, as I know, having worked my way through university. He doesn't have to work, I told him, so he really has no excuse for not passing his courses, especially sinced he is carrying only 12 semester hours.

Typically of D., he hit up on quite a bit of my wine and I wound up feeding him a grilled chicken dinner and some steamed vegetables. He can really be the biggest mooch: Travis and I used to demand a deposit from him when he stayed with us, because he would eat everything in the pantry and fridge while he was staying. He asked me if he could stay the night, saying that he was lonely, and I told him no, that I had writing to do, and he would have to go back to his dorm, which is less than a mile away (he came by bike). I know him: he just didn't want to have to ride back home. Oh, yeah: laziness is another of his character traits.

He had gone to see my former friends, Bridget and Christie, who were directly responsible for my living in the street, and stll owe me $430, which I will probably never see again. He told me that they had explained why they didn't feel that they owed me anything: that I had "disrespected" them, which is, of course, just an excuse not to repay a debt. If I don't pay my car note, and the bank "disrespects" me by sending me a letter asking for payment, does that mean that I don't owe them the money any more? If I use this as my excuse, and disregard the letter, they will eventually "disrespect" me even more by sending a man around to take the car away, and then, they will sue me. Of course, I have no such recourse. So, I guess I will never see that money again. No-good deadbeat bitches. Some friends, huh?

So, today, Travis and I went to the water company, where I payed the deposit to put the water in my name and went to the storage space and picked up some things, including my TV. We stopped at Wally World and I bought a cheap rolling drawer thingie and plastic shelves, and, when I got home, I got all my clothes squared away and put up and hooked up the TV and LO, I HAVE CABLE! I'm going to watch Adult Swim tonight!

I treated Travis to lunch at Louie's. The head cook there is an old friend of mine, who used to live in the same complex where I did, years ago, before they tore it down and built Jack-in-the-Crack. We ate lunch, and the same awesomely cute little boy who waited on us before was there (but he didn't wait on us). God, but he is adorable! He's so little, too, but he's got the hottest little round butt .... oh, well. I can forget that. He's way too young and cute for me.

So, I am blogging and watching TV. I have eaten, and the cats are both passed out. I got hold of the manuscript to Bughouse, which I haven't touched in almost a year, and, so, I will be working on that now, besides my blog and a couple of other projects. I am supposed to be off tomorrow, but if they call me in, I will go to work.

Not a bad day off. Got a few things done. Everything's kewl, for a change.

Cat-Tastrophe

My friend K., whom I work with, is a really great guy. He's 20, and cute and (unfortunately) very straight, and he was one of a few people who actually raised a hand to help me when I was homeless. He lives in a two-bedroom walk-up in Tigerland, a huge ghetto of student apartments North of LSU campus, along Nicholson Dr. Since has been living there (which is about 7 months) he has gone through a veritable menagerie of pets, including two dogs, two cats and a snake.

The story of the snake is a sad and convoluted one. K. kept his snake in a large aquarium tank with some bedding stuff and an electric rock in it, to keep him warm, since snakes are cold-blooded and require external heat in order to function. He initially told me that the two cats had killed the snake. I said I really didn't see how they could have, since they are small cats (about 6 months old) and the snake was probably more capable of killing them. Well, he said, they didn't actually kill the snake but were complicit in its demise.

It seemed that his original dog, which was large, had torn the blinds down in the living room, and that K. had kind of put them back up. Exit dog #1, since his roommate had recently acquired a Pit Bull (in an apartment?), and it was getting crowded, with two dogs, a snake and two cats. Apparently, the cats, eager to look out the window (which cats love to do), pulled the already damaged blinds down, which stuck the aquarium, breaking the top to it.

"So," I asked. "The blinds fell on the snake, killing it?"

"Not exactly," he said. "I had to put him in a smaller aquarium, until I got a new top for the big one, and I didn't put his rock in it, and he froze to death."

"So," I asked. "What you're saying is that you neglected to provide your snake with a suitable heat source and it snuffed it as a result?"

"Well, yeah," he admitted.

What is behind all this is that he had been twisting my arm for an entire week, begging me to take his two cats (a matched set, black with white markings), as he had recently acquired yet another large dog, this time a Husky, a breed well-suited by it's diminutive size for apartment life (what is it with straight boys and immense dogs in small flats?), and wanted to get rid of the cats, only K., being very soft-hearted, didn't want to just give them away to just anyone, or break them up, as they were happy together. Hence his campaign to get me to take them.

Now, remember, I have just been in my new apartment for a month, having spent six months on the streets, homeless, and I barely have furniture yet. I told him that I could not possibly take on two young, fully intact cats, as two would very quickly become six or seven, and I would be up to my ass in cats, and have to find friends to foist them off on, as well. He thought about this and told me that he would talk to his girlfriend, who knew a place that would neuter pets cheaply, and get back to me.

So, the other night, he texted me to tell me that, if I took his two cats, he would pay for their medical expenses and throw in a bag of cat food, litter, and their litter box and food bowls. I said, okay: if he would do all that, I would take them. He showed up at work the next night with cats and cat stuff, bought an huge bag of cat food and two containers of litter, and we installed both cats that evening, which was two nights ago.

So now, I have two cats, whom I have named Yin and Yang. They have settled in famously and made themselves quite to home. Today was my day off, and they woke me about 7 AM, chasing each other all around the place (even across me) for about two hours before eating breakfast and settling back to sleep on my chair. They are very affectionate and compete for lap space (even though Yang seems to prefer the back of my ugly green chair, from where he can look out of the window. They are currently asleep in the closet, on top of my storage bin in which I keep my clothes. I am not really unhappy to have cats, since I have kept them all of my life. Besides, there is alwys someone here when I come home, which is nice. Oh, well: here we go again.

And the Rains Came ...

South Louisiana isn't noted for its wide range of seasons.We get about eight months of Summer, which is unbearably hot and wet. There are about three months of Winter (or something resembling Winter), when it is cold and wet. There is about a month, combined, of Spring and Fall, when it is comparatively nice, and wet. The operative word here is, of course, "wet".

It has been raining every day now for about a week. So far, I have been pretty lucky to miss most of it: it has rained a lot while I was at home and a lot while I was at work, but not too much while I was in transit, which is good when you ride a bicycle everywhere, like I do. Well, it looks like my luck ran out today. The image on this post is the view from my north windows of the Jack-in-the-Crack parking lot, and it is a veritable monsoon. It rained last night, but only after I got home, and again, about 3:00 AM. It started raining again about 20 minutes ago, and, from the look of the skies, I am either going to have to catch a ride with Travis at 4, when he goes to pick up Fernando, or pack dry socks in my backpack and brave the flood.

Fortunately, I texted him, and that is not a problem, since they live in the next block, and I can walk there. Of course, that means that I will have to find a way home tonight when I get off at 11.

I really love riding my bicycle. I do it all the time. But weather like this takes all the fun out of it. The rain is so hard that it feels like having gravel thrown in your face. The water drips down in your bike shorts and soaks your nether regions, and your shoes fill with water. When I get to work I have to strip off my wet clothes in one of the stalls in the employee bathroom (people at work are used to me using it as a dressing room, so this doesn't shock anyone), dry off, then change into work clothes. My underwear is usually wet, but I wear lightweight nylon underwear (a good thing to do when you ride a bike), so it usually dries of in an hour or two.

The main problem is the maniacs on the road.At their best, Baton Rouge drivers are incompetent idiots; at their worse, they are insensitive, overaggressive road demons. They have absolutely no concern for anything on two wheels, other than to become annoyed when they are forced to slow down for you, in which case they show their displeasure my leaning on the horn or blowing past you with a rush of acceleration, or both. Often, they drench you with standing water as they pass. I know I have posted about this before, but it is such an annoying fact about living here that it bears reposting. You would think that, in a place where it rains so much of the year (5-6 inches per month)that people would learn to drive in it, like people learn to drive in ice and snow up North. There, you would be wrong.

When it rains in Baton Rouge, drivers are transformed from simply annoying assholes into psychopathic juggernauts. They actually drive faster and more recklessly, presumably, to get out of traffic and the rain, more quickly. The number of traffic accidents doubles: sirens are heard everywhere. They take chances. They cut each other off. They drive as if they were in some kind of soggy demolition derby, they object of which is to take out as many vehicles on the way to where they are going as possible. Riding a bicycle on Baton Rouge streets in the rain is, well, suicidal.

So, why do I do it? Well, with no automobile (I can't afford one), I don't have a choice, a lot of the time. I have to get to and from work, even if I curtail other expeditions in poor weather. Maybe some of it is bravado: I pride myself on being a tough, competent street rider, capable of negotiating city streets under any conditions. Maybe I should reconsider that. I have to admit, though, that out of all the times I have been hit by vehicles while riding, only once has it happened in the rain (which is probably because I go a lot slower and take fewer chances). Hmm.

Maybe some of those idiots out there should do the same: go slower and take fewer chances. Naw. Where's the excitement in that?

And You Call Yourself a Fag?

No, really ... This is criticism that I have frequently had to address during my life, and recently received from a YouTube friend (although I think he was kind of joking ... I hope so, anyway). Okay. I am not your stereotypical male homosexual (if such a thing exists), and probably not the GAY IDEAL (whatever the fuck that is), but I am as gay as any of the rest of you ass-fucking butt-pirates, and there are more than a few guys out there who can attest to that, although I might not acknowledge all of their accolades. Okay, maybe some of them don't want mine, either: I'm man enough to admit that. But I still have my lavender card (although it may be a bit frayed around the edges, as am I).

I was a gay/jock/geek. I guess I still am one. I played football (both kinds) and swam and played tennis, in high school and at university. At the same time, I was a total science nerd, one of the very first of all of my peers to own a computer (I built my first one, from a kit) and I put together my high school's first laser. I collected comic books, played chess and devoured anything ScFi: books, movies, television shows. I was the only kid I knew who had a collection of Dr. Who on Super-8. The problem was, that the geeks never really trusted me, because I was a jock, and the jocks never trusted me, because I was a geek. Add to that the problem that Carl had a little secret that he didn't really feel like sharing with any of his peers, not in the early '70s ... well, I rather liked other boys, and not the way they liked me ... more like they liked girls.

Okay. I'm also rather eccentric. I think I would have been eccentric anyway, even if I had been born straight. I am well known for my rather erratic (sometimes) behaviour, my tendency to bring totally off-the-wall trivia into any conversation, and my rather voluminous, albeit sometimes pedantic, paedogougery. See, I use big words, too. This sometimes upsets people whose basic conversation revolves around what to wear, what's cool to dance to and who's fucking who this week. Sorry, but some fags are shallow, and, damn it, I'm not going to pretend to be just to fit in!

Oh, yeah: and I'm a bike fanatic. That's weird enough (unless you're a tree-hugger, which I am, too), but not quite considered as gay chic. I ride a bicycle every where I go. I do it because I love it. I have had cars and will probably have more motor vehicles in the future, but I am happy on two wheels, under my own power. It makes me feel alive in a way that riding around in a wheeled box doesn't. It also keeps me fit: still have a hot butt, really.

In my defense, I am listening to Pet Shop Boys as I am writing this post. Yeah, I wear jeans and t-shirts and cargoes everywhere, but I have an huge collection of really hot underwear that no straight boy would dare wear (unless he were European). And I love boys: always have, since I was one. One of my first crushes was Billy Mumy, the cute freckle-faced redhead on Lost in Space (a sixties SciFi show). He and I are the same age. When I was 11, I thought he was the cutest boy in the universe, and, watching old episodes of the show on Hulu, as I do a lot these days (having no cable), I remember exactly why. Of course, he is straight, married, with kids, but I still feel a bond with him, even though we never met. I knew I could never talk to other boys my age about what I was feeling then, but I could always imagine that I could tell him. I wonder what he would think if he read this. Well, I'm still a fan.

Oh, yeah: I write. Used to write poetry (gay?). Mostly fiction now. Of course, most writers are straight (I guess). I like art and stuff. I love to cook, and one of the best things about not being homeless anymore is that I get to cook at home. I love the word home. I say it like ET did: hoooome. I made black bean soup last night, with a Caesar salad and garlic bread. I guess straight guys could do that, too, but most of them don't.

Oh, yeah. Used to belong to Act Up (if anyone remembers that far back), did demonstrations and stuff. Hung out in drag bars, leather bars, dance bars, behind bars, too, if you count my 10 years or so of service as a bartender, mostly in gay clubs. Okay, I was a police officer for awhile, but wasn't there one in that fag dance band ... what was their name? And I am DEFINITELY NOT a uniform queen, thank you.

So, make up your own minds. What kind of a fag am I? Because I'm definitely queer, even if I don't fit in like some of you guys do, and I wouldn't have it any other way (because I've probably done that).

BOGO and 10 for 10 Blues

There is this plague upon the retail world called "BOGO". It stands for "Buy One Get One Free". It totally sucks from where I stand, which is behind a cash register in a grocery store. Basically, if you buy one item, you get another of the same item free. Sounds simple? Stupid, fucked up things always do, until you really have to deal with them on a personal level. Actually, BOGO (when it works, which it doesn't a lot) can mean one or more of the following:

Buy one of the same item and get one of the same item free.

Buy one item of a group of items and get a second similar item free.

Buy two of the same and/or similar items and get both at half-price.

Complicated enough already, is it? Factor into this that the average cashier has the mental capacity of a nesting hen and that the average customer has the intellect of a free-range chicken, and that the average customer is incapable of reading the advertising in his or her hot little hand, nor any shelf tag, even the big red and yellow ones that accompany said sales, or comprehending such phrases as "limit one" or "with $50 order or greater", and you already have a disaster in the making. But that's not all (as television commercials always shout at you)!

10 for 10 seems straightforwards enough: you buy 10 of any of the "10 for 10" items, and you get them for $10. Easy enough, huh? It usually is. What it really means is that most of the items actually cost you $1, but, some items (and no-one knows which ones they are, until you ring them at the register) you actually have to buy ten of to get them for $1, and some you can "mix-and-match", and some you cant ... get my drift? Try explaining all this to the customer when even you don't really understand how the system works.

This seems bad enough, right? Well, it gets worse. There are two people in our Scanning Department. Scanning deals with those funny little bar-codes on everything that you purchase (except produce, which has its own PLU (Price Look-Up) codes, which have to be manually entered). When prices change, like for our Sale From Hell, most of the price changes are downloaded into the store's computer system via satellite downlink. The Scanning Department receives a printout of the items and the price changes and the UPC (Universal Product Code) for each one. All they have to do is to go around the store with a marvelous little hand-held computer that is WiFi'd into the store computer system, which includes a laser scanner (called a "960"), zap the barcodes for the various items, and adjust for errors, which can be done, for the most part, from the 960 itself. Afterwards, you can run a printout of all of the changes you made and compare them to the list, to see if you missed any. Not hard, you say. It is definitely beyond the capacity of our Scanning Department.

So, many, many, many of the 1,613 items advertised for our Sale From Hell are improperly entered in the system. This means that the customer, who is already confused, finds his or her grand programme to save a fortune stymied at the register. And who do you think they blame? The Scanning Coordinator (they don't even know that there is such a person)? No. They blame ME. Now it becomes the job of the cashier and the front-end staff to figure a way to make the item ring at the proper price and in the right department (woe be unto you if you mistakenly credit or debit the wrong department!) and satisfy the customer without making a mistake which loses the store money.

And the Scanning Department? They are full-time and get benefits, and they work 9-5, with week-ends off. Nobody yells at them. Nobody knows they exist. When there is a fuck-up at the register, it is my fault. If I become unhinged and throttle a customer, it is I who will lose his job and go to jail. And that sucks.

2009 Hath Erupted

So, how did I spend New Year's? Well, I worked New Year's Eve until 8, when the store shut. My friends were all going to New Orleans to party at The Parade, but they left at 4, so I didn't get to go. I really didn't have the money to blow on booze, drugs and anonymous sex with hot boys, so I guess that worked out OK ... umm ...

Got home and fixed dinner. I bought a bottle of cheap spumante for the occasion. I watched an Almodovar film (I forget which one) until I got sleepy and went to bed about 10:30. Pretty exciting, huh?

Well, at precisely 12 o'clock, 2009 erupted outside my window. There is a perfectly awful straight boy (who isn't even cute) who lives behind me and to the East, in a walk-up like mine. He and his friends are loud and obnoxious (as only college students whose parents pay for everything can be). They had previously shattered the trellis on his landing in order to gain access to the roof of the adjacent shed, so that they could dance around on it in an inebriated condition, and, having gained such access, used it on New Year's as a launch pad for a formidable arsenal of fireworks, most of which went right past my bedroom window. They also screamed and yelled and threw bottles and things, by way of celebration. That was how I knew it was 2009.

So, I woke up and had some spumante and got a text from my friends, who were partying in NO, and, about 2 AM, went back to sleep, because, of course, I had to work in the morning.

New Year's at the store was like Christmas: horrible. People with hangovers came in to buy more inebriates and food: lots of cabbage, meat and black-eye peas (traditional New Year's food in South Louisiana). I went home afterwards and then went by and saw a few friends and had some egg nog and hung out. Not exactly a momentous change of year. Then I slept a whole lot, because I have worked every holiday of the holiday season, and, frankly, I am glad it's over with. If I can celebrate anything, it's goodbye to 2008, which, I have to say, was the worst ever fucking year in my life. So, that's good. Also, ONLY 15 MORE DAYS AND COUNTING! After that, 'W' passes into the oubliette of history. Goodbye and good riddance. May he rot in Crawford, Texas, which I hope, will keep him, lest he slither again into the public arena and afflict the nation again with his cancerous presence.

I need to blog more. I have been lazy, lately, since I actually have a place to live and I am comfortable and stuff. I am sorry. I am trying to find a cute young guy to punish me for this and other transgressions. I'll certainly post the results of my search, if they are fruitful. Pun intended. Oh, that's another one, isn't it? Hmm. Better add that to the list.