No means no.

Sarah and I were enjoying dinner in the food court of a local mall when two girls approached our table.

“Hi, I’m Katie and this is Maggie,” they said.

“Um, hi?” we said.

“Do you have a minute for a spiritual questionnaire?”

“AbsoLUTEly not,” I said, and went back to my Chinese food.

The girls were stunned. How dare anyone refuse a little Jesus on a Friday night in the middle of dinner at the Mall! Omg! (Wait, is ‘omg’ blasphemous in this context? Shit.)

Sarah, meanwhile, politely shook her head no.

“What’s your name?” one of the girls asked. I think it was Maggie. Let’s go with Maggie.

“No,” I said, with a mouthful of rice.

“What’s your name?” she persisted.

“NO,” I said, a trifle louder, as she appeared to be not only ignorant but deaf.

Sarah continued to shake her head no and suppress her laughter.

Katie and Maggie looked at each other, seeming to finally realize that they’d found a pair of heathens.

“Well, is there anything we can pray for, for you, then?” Maggie said, smiling.

This was now the fifth, no, 666th time they’d interrupted. Enough is enough already.

“I’m Jewish and probably going to Hell, so how about that?” I said, smiling back.

Silence.

I happily went back to my food as Katie and Maggie protested, saying they “weren’t like that, really!”, Sarah shook her head to the point where I was worried it was going to start spinning around like the Exorcist and really give those girls a treat, and they finally stomped off in search of more people to fulfill their spiritual whosamawhatsits.

Are Katie and Maggie horrible people? No, they’re just some girls, trying to do what they honestly think is right. I doubt that they were aware of the problems that can arise when you’re trying to convert people in the middle of fucking dinner, and so I was just doing my part by demonstrating a few. I find them ignorant because, generally speaking, when somebody tells you “no”, that should be an indicator that they don’t want to talk to you. Of course, in this particular case, that can be seen as “My soul needs guidance” or “I am a sinner” or whatever. Which is why they probably persisted. But honestly, common sense should have told them that they picked the wrong damn table. Especially because Sarah was wearing latex leggings and that generally puts a damper on the whole Jesus thing.

Here’s the thing. If people want to be a part of an organized religion, that is perfectly fine. However, do not assume that I would like to be a part of one, too. I was born to Jewish parents, I was raised Jewish, and I enjoy a bowl of matzah ball soup every now and again — but I am not what you would call a “practicing” Jew by any stretch of the imagination. If I ever decide to change my mind, I’ve got enough knowledge crammed in my head from twelve years of Hebrew School. So I think I’m set either way.

Similar to Katie and Maggie, we have customers who leave Jesus pamphlets in the bathroom, under random tables, and I’ve even found a few in the Judaism section. If I ever find that person, you better believe they’ll never step foot in the store again. Not only is that technically illegal, but it’s flat-out rude. I understand that it’s part of Christianity, to some degree, to spread the word and share the faith with others, but statistics would prove that not everybody wants to hear it. Not at work, not while shopping, not in the middle of a food court. I do not want it in a box, I do not want it with some lox. I would not like it in a car, I would not like it near or far. I do not care for Jesus or for ham; I do not want any, so go the hell away.

In retrospect, I probably should’ve told them to pray for my Christian boyfriend since he has the unfortunate luck of dating a Jew. Or maybe I could have asked them a spiritual question or two myself — should Anne Frank have waxed? Is matzah better for constipation or diarrhea? Did Moses really part the red sea, or was that just special effects, courtesy of George Lucas? Or..

Wait, Katie and Maggie, come back! I have so many things to ask!

She took me home and spit in my drink

Crasian enters, stage left. Stage left being the front doors.

Crasian: Hello! You’re not a unicorn today. (giggles)

Me: Well, it’s not Halloween today!

Crasian: Yes. Soo.. I went to Bryn Mawr today, looked around and stuff.

Me: Did you go to the tea party?

Crasian: What? WHAT tea party?

Me: You invited me to a tea party, remember?

Crasian: No. What is Bean Friday? (she stares at my nametag, which has a sticker on it that says “ASK ME ABOUT BEAN FRIDAY”, a promotion that my store’s cafe runs every Friday)

Me: Oh, well, every Friday if you buy a bag of {coffee} beans, you get a free medium drink.

Crasian: I don’t get it.

Me: It’s a special thing we do on Fridays.

Crasian: And that’s, like, the strategy?

Me: People usually don’t buy coffee during the week because there’s no incentive.

Crasian: I see.

Me: It was Chris’s idea. (That is a lie, but a damn good one, don’t you think?)

Crasian: REALLY.

Me: Yes.

Crasian: Chris is a good, wise man. He is wise.

Me: Yes, Chris is wonderful.

Crasian: I’ll be back.

(She then goes to the cafe and demands Chris’s whereabouts from Sara. When she learns that he is not at work, she comes back to me.)

Crasian: Hello, hello there my little friend! Do you have a minute? Can I ask you something?

Me: Sure, what is it?

Crasian: This.. Bean Friday thing.

Me: Yes?

Crasian: I’m interested. I want to be a part of it.

Me: Oh yeah?

Crasian: Yes. I need to speak to Chris.

Me: He’ll be in tomorrow, actually, tomorrow night. (I should not have told her that, but hey, she comes in most every day regardless.. I’ll be there too, anyway, and can protect him)

Crasian: Good. I need to speak to him. If there’s any, you know, money or charges involved.. I can handle that. I can TAKE CARE of it.

Me: O-ookay, that sounds good.

Crasian: Okay. See you later.

I think she and Chris are now business partners, and that this is all my fault. Chris commended me on a job well done through the art of the text message, and has forgiven me for my Crasian-induced sins. Tomorrow will be marvelous; I can feel it.

Here is a story that is not so happy, and mostly awful.

A customer comes in. She wants to exchange one book for the other, because her daughter had already read the first in the series and needed the second instead. However, she didn’t have her receipt. I explained that we need the receipt. She went from normal to irate in 2.0 seconds.

Customer: SHE ALREADY THIS I WANT TO RETURN IT AND GET THE OTHER ONE I BOUGHT THIS HERE THIS IS YOUR STICKER I AM GOING TO RETURN THIS AND GET THAT ONE

Me: That’s fine, I see that, you NEED a receipt though –

Customer (talking over me like I am not there): I AM GOING TO RETURN THIS BOOK I BOUGHT THIS HERE I DO NOT HAVE THE RECEIPT OKAY I AM GOING TO RETURN THIS

Me: ..no, you NEED to have the RECEIPT.

It went on like this for another minute until the daughter appeared with the receipt in hand. The mother and daughter had a ton of receipts wrapped around four or five gift cards from the store. I suppose it is terribly, terribly hard to keep track of so many gift cards. Imagine if those gift cards were babies! Poor things, they’d never get fed.

Customer: I HAVE MY RECEIPT, I AM GOING TO RETURN THIS BOOK.

Me (breathing sigh of relief which was only temporary): Okay, fine. You owe another $3.71.

Customer: Okay, here’s a gift card with a couple dollars and some change left on it.

Me: You still owe ninety-four cents.

Customer: Okay, here’s this gift card.. how much is left on this?

(You can’t check the balance of a gift card mid-transaction, and as it was extremely busy, I was not about to go hop on another register just to check the card and then come back. 99.9% of customers are ignored when they ask to check the balance mid-transaction. They usually don’t care, because the balance is printed on the receipt at the end anyway. So I continue doing the exchange.)

Me: This one has.. $49.06 left on it.

Customer: WELL IF I HAD KNOWN IT HAD THAT MUCH ON IT I WOULDN’T HAVE GIVEN IT TO YOU, I WOULD HAVE GIVEN YOU THIS OTHER ONE, I ASKED YOU TO CHECK THE BALANCE!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (breathes fire)

Me: I can’t DO THAT mid-transaction. I was in the middle of the transaction.

Customer: Well, can you put the ninety-four cents back on it??!?!?!?!?!??!?! (breathes fire)

Me: No, these aren’t reloadable. (They never have been)

Customer: WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT IF I ASKED YOU TO CHECK THE BALANCE (breathes fire)

Me: I was in the middle of the transaction. I was doing the return for YOU. I can’t go back. I can return the ninety-four cents and put it on a brand-new card, but not this one.

Customer: WELL HOW DOES THAT HELP mumble mumble mumble

Me: Look, I’m sorry. I apologi –

Customer: THANKS.

Me: But I can’t go back.

Customer (to daughter): FORGET THIS BOOKSTORE, WE’RE GOING TO (insert rival chain here)

Considering she didn’t lose any fucking money, I don’t know why the hell she was being such a dickslap. Look, I’m sure it’s so nice and comforting to have a $50 gift card instead of a $49.06 one, but GET. THE. FUCK. OVER. IT. You are a GROWN WOMAN, I am sure your daughter was thoroughly embarrassed (the children generally are in these situations), and I was not about to bend over backwards for somebody like you. If you are going to be rude and talk to me like I am mentally deficient and have earmuffs on, then I will do evil wicked naughty things like let you pay for a book that you almost could not return for in the first place but luckily you found the receipt at the last minute. Have fun using our gift cards at the other store, lady. Oh, wait. You won’t be able to.

Seriously, and you wonder why retail managers grow up and hate themselves. It’s people like you, madame, who are not making this world go round, but instead square. Thanks. Have a nice day.

From Superman to seduction, madness to mayhem.

Yesterday was Halloween, and thusly I spent the first half of it dressed like this:

All I can really say is that if you never want to wait on a customer at work again, wear that outfit. I lost count of how many people stared at me for a full minute, debating whether or not to ask me for help. It was even funnier because I was the only person in costume at work, thereby making me Superior On At Least Nine Levels, and also kind of a weirdo. But when the customer finally asked if we had a particular book or where a book was located, they could not make eye contact with me. It was the horn, just the horn. People are silly. And obv. jealous.

In any event, later that night my sister and I went to Philly for Of Montreal. The earlier madness of the parade had all but disappeared, and the city was instead crawling with bizarre costumes (making the unicorn seem rather tame). I opted for a lion mask that I’ve owned since age six, because I was afraid of wrecking the horn. And I can now safely say that yes, I would have come home a damaged and traumatized unicorn, so it’s probably better that I didn’t go with that. Plus it was so hot that I wouldn’t have made it out alive.

I’ve seen Of Montreal once before, again with the sis, and was prepared for a completely wild show. Add to the mix that it was Halloween, and well, I knew it was going to be even crazier.

I was nowhere near prepared for what happened.

The opener was Gang Gang Dance, a group of three guys and a girl, who is the singer. We didn’t even know who the opening act was going to be until we got there (because it didn’t really matter; Of Montreal was going to outshine them no matter what), and they turned out to be a pleasant surprise. A wailing, screeching, howling, screaming, drum-slapping, cymbal-crashing, rhythmic surprise. It was akin to being stuck in the tunnel scene from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory WHICH DOES NOT MEAN IT WAS BAD, just a bit trippy and made my brain hurt a little.

It seemed to take longer than usual for Kevin Barnes and his medley gang of crazies to alight the stage, but it was more than worth the wait. We were treated to the entire band minus Kevin coming out first, clad in variations of Superman costumes, climbing stairs and platforms to get to their various spots on stage. The lights then dimmed, the music thumped louder, and Kevin himself was carried out in a square, curtained box (think something along the lines of like, Cleopatra) by four golden Buddhas. Yes. Golden Buddhas.

He clambered out of the box, also dressed as Superman, and then it really began. Later costume changes included a pope – complete with a sexy nun affixing glittering sandals to his feet, a fuzzy purple bathrobe, gold hot pants with a shiny purple belt, getting covered from head to toe and all bits inbetween with red paint by the troupe of Buddhas (who had several zillion costumes themselves, such as giraffe, pig, tiger, and cockatoo heads, gigantic Hulk hands, ninja, bandits, afros and other wigs of all shapes and sizes, underwear, mustaches, bodysuits with pubic hair glued on and body parts scribbled in,…), a sequined blue jacket with matching blue frames and a large fuzzy pink fanny pack with his initials; for the grand finale, he hung himself, appeared again from within a large, silver cylindrical tube in the aforementioned hot pants, jumped around some more, and eventually emerged from a coffin in a whipped cream bodysuit.

I don’t think I could even make something like that up.

The final song of the night was Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” – arguably the most commercial, but still a song that defines a movement, a generation, and one that just hasn’t honestly been hammered out in concert in a long, long time. The Electric Factory erupted in mid-90s angst. It was insane, and the perfect end to a perfect concert. Well, not entirely perfect, as Lucas would say. There were a lot of shoves, pushes, people trying to get to the front, people smoking things they shouldn’t have been smoking, and other usual crowd experiences. But you have to expect it with any concert, and certainly Of Montreal is no exception, so we just dealt with it and thankfully kept all of our limbs attached. Though my left arm is aching to the point where when I woke up this morning, I thought I had had a shot yesterday and just didn’t remember. My ears, also, were ringing until approximately 10 am, and my throat is sore from all the screaming. But it was an amazing show, and though I am a bit sad we didn’t get to see the horse that was in NYC, it was completely worth every schedule change and shift switch and penny I spent to see them live again.

Thanks, Of Montreal. Thanks for keeping it real, and by ‘real’ I mean orgyravedancepartyremixdelight.

Also, that guy in your dance troupe has the most wicked mustache I have ever seen. He deserves a medal.

Plans

To-day is a day where I will get my car’s oil changed, I will get rid of a ton of clothes I no longer wear, and eat dinner with La Moustache. But I do have things to write about, so back I will be.

Also, Crasian told a barista the other day that even though sin is bad, God is basically good. And that Chris talks like a girl. Hee, hee, hee.

To the bat cave! (By which I mean curb, for what is where my car is parked; sorry to disappoint, Robin. You can take your tights off.)

Wha?

I am having the weirdest dreams every night, and I think it is because I am re-reading Interview With the Vampire. The past three nights have been filled with creepyweirdness, but the worst part is, I don’t remember any of it. I usually remember my dreams, though. VAMPIRES ARE SUCKING DREAMS OUT OF MY HEAD, OH MY GOSH, OH MY GOSH ANNE RICE!! THANKS A WHOLE BUNCH!

Actually, I am not ashamed to say that one of my first thoughts upon waking up, aside from the usual, “..coffee, please, sdjhfksdhkf coffeeeeeeeee”, “If I go back to bed, I’m sure somebody else can open the store”, and “Ugh”, was indeed, “Somebody is sucking dreams out of my head”. I am losing it. It is early. I am having my coffee now.

Just.. why?

I should be in bed, as I’ve got to be up at 6 for work, but I stayed up late last night, managed a shift at work on four hours of sleep, came home, napped, and now I am wide-awake again. A vicious cycle, indeed.

One of the things that I am currently thinking about is just how annoying people can really be. By ‘people’, I mean customers in retail. This is a topic that I have discussed many a time before, and will probably write my thesis on one day if I decide grad school is worth it. In the meantime, I am forcing the internets to suffer my brainwaves. I don’t think that was even close to proper English. O Queen, I beseech thee, forgive my grammarly soul!

My sister worked an early morning shift today, as I did, and had a Customer From Hell (CFH) within her first half-hour. She works in a pharmacy, and there was a lady and a man standing at the counter. She is not sure who was actually there first, but the lady had an Arizona iced tea and an enema (breakfast?) and the man had a question. As she had rightly guessed, the man had an issue with his prescription, and it was something that needed to be dealt with at that moment so he could get his medicine. It isn’t something that can be handled at the front of the store — unlike the iced tea and enema. Mm, mm. Nothing like a home-cooked meal, am I right or AM I RIGHT?

So while my sister is helping this gentleman, the lady begins to get angry. I am surprised she did not turn green and into Edward Norton, but perhaps my sis caught her in the nick of time. The lady demands to know why on earth she was not helped first.

“There was a customer who had a problem,” my sister says. “I’m.. sorry?”

“BUT I WAS HERE FIRST,” the lady snarls. What is she, three?

“I didn’t see you, I’m really sorry. I can help you now, though.”

“I WAS HERE FIRST, AND YOU SHOULD HAVE HELPED ME FIRST.”

She’s lucky anyone helped her. Seriously! And of course, all she wanted was her damn drink and buttplug.. she could have easily gone to the front of store. WHICH IS WHERE SHE’D HAVE TO GO TO EXIT THE BUILDING. Some people, I know, feel more comfortable with buying “drugstore” items at the pharmacy. Like if there’s a male cashier up front and I needs my lady products, hell yeah I’ll go to the pharmacy if there’s a lady back there. But if not, big deal, whatever. I’m not going to hold up a line of people for something that nearly every woman has to deal with. People are terrible, but, it seems, only in public.

I’ll give you another example. Today, I am called to the register. The cashier is nervous and says nothing but, “..Can I get a manager to the front?” which translates to “This is a coupon issue.. stand back and have your fire extinguisher on hand and at the ready OH GOD I THINK THEY JUST BREATHED FIRE ON ME”

When I arrive at the front, I find a normal enough middle-aged woman. She looks slightly annoyed, but nothing to write home about. I stand there and wait for the explosion.

The cashier starts to explain, gets flustered, and the customer interjects loudly.

“I bought this YESterday,” she says, holding up a paperback book, “and I did not know whether or not I was ELIGIBLE for any COUPONS at the TIME. I went HOME, checked my MAIL, and SURE ENOUGH, there was a coupon.”

So she wants to get a price adjustment. We used to do this all the time, because we were stupid and nice, but now, as long the coupon is still within the right time (i.e., they can’t use a coupon for a book today that expired yesterday even if they found it in their inbox today because we don’t fucking backmail coupons AND DO NOT TRY TO TELL ME THAT WE DO, I KNOW HOW THE INTERNET WORKS THANK YOU AND GOODNIGHT), the customer has to return the item, go to the shelf, hope that we have another copy of the original item, and rebuy it with the coupon. Is this tedious? Yes. Do I wish we could do it in one fell swoop? Of course. But am I going to get fired for doing it the way the customer wants? Uh, no.

I explain what I’ve just explained — return this, go to shelf, get another, repurchase. She looks at me.

“So you’re saying I have to get ANOTHER one?”

“Yes, that’s the only way we can do this for you.”

“I have to GO to the SHELF and GET another COPY.”

“Yup!”

She starts to go, stops, turns around, and asks, again, if that is in fact what she has to do. I tell her, again, yes. She gets her damn book, with her damn coupon, and leaves. Satisfied. I guess.

I don’t know, is it just me, or do people turn into huge babies when they get into a store? It’s like the minute they see things for sale, they want it all for free, they want coupons, they want everything 75% off with cash back.. I’m sorry, but the world just doesn’t work that way. Companies are being nice when they email you coupons, or hand them out in the store. We don’t owe you anything. You’re a consumer, I’m a consumer, we’re all going to have to buy this shit sooner or later. But you don’t have to buy it this instant. You’d be surprised how many impulse book buyers we get. (I am one of them — but I do not return my bookly goods. I read them. Like you do.)

I used to be patient, but that ended in 2004. Coincidentally the same year I went into retail. Ho, hum. So it goes.

Also, Halloween is Friday (as we all know), and yet we are setting up Christmas on Election Day. Is this weird? Is this just me? Why do retail stores insist upon shoving each and every holiday down our throats until we’re choking on tinsel and gift wrap? I like the holidays, I really do. I like how crisp the air is (not like I go outside, but I’ve heard it’s crisp), the magic of snow (seen through my windows), and, of course, presents. I like the madness of each and every store, how despite Christmas being on the same damn day every damn year except maybe back in biblical times, people will always, always wait until the last minute. I think it’s fun to go out on Black Friday. But it’s just weird, weird, weird that there is never a proper break between holidays. At least let me have turkey first, y’know?

Here’s to five restless hours of sleep, whereupon I will dream of sugarplums and snowmen, customers and craziness.

Hopefully, there will be crumpets.

I spot a mysteriously bare endcap in Religion. I sigh, shake my head, and start grabbing books at random from the section to put on the shelves. As I am bent down by the bottom row, I hear a cheerful, “Helloooo!”

“Oh, HI,” I say, as I look up and see Crasian.

“Hi. Hi. What are you doooing?”

“I’m straightening these books.”

“Why?”

“Because they fell over.”

“Whyyyy?”

“..because I’m making a display, and I had to take some out.”

“Whyyyyyyyyyy?”

“Do you want me to stop? I can stop if you want me to.”

“Oh, no, no! It’s your job, silly!” She giggles. I cock my head. This is weird. (When is it not?)

She holds out a book. “I’m reading this book. It’s written by this guy, this.. Philip S. Foner.”

It’s about the Women’s Movement. I nod. “Oh, that looks, um, nice.”

“HE’S SEXIST.”

“Is he?”

“YES, and he’s probably wealthy. Really wealthy, because of this book and because he’s SEXIST.”

I am not sure why a sexist man would write a book about the Women’s Movement, or, indeed, why a man would be writing about that at all, and shrug in the direction of her outstretched arm, clutching the battered library book. She’s done this before, bringing books from home or from the library to our bookstore. I don’t get it. We have plenty. Maybe she’s got special notes inside.

“Well, I’m sure he’s filthy rich,” I say, to reassure her.

“Yeah. Yeaaaah. Okay, well, good-bye,” she says, and scuttles away.

Later, I am in Cooking and she approaches me again. This time, she shifts her weight from foot to foot, looks at the floor a lot, and basically does her best impression of a shy six-year-old girl. This is borderline creepy.

“Hiii,” she calls.

“Hello again,” I say. I am trying to find a cookbook with a meatloaf recipe for a co-worker.

“I’m going to Bryn Mawr,” she says. “Are you coming?”

“I didn’t know I was invited,” I say, honestly. She makes things up, and also has no real sense of reality, so it’s possible she thinks we had this conversation. And I’m sure we did, in her head.

“Of COURSE you are!” she says, shocked. “We’re gonna drive, in my car, and go to Bryn Mawr!”

“Isn’t that where you went to college?” I ask.

“Yes, I went there.. and I’m going back.”

“Oh, I see.”

“There’s going to be a tea party!”

“Yeah? Is the Queen going to be there?”

“Mmmhm.”

“What about Prince William?”

She glares at me.

“Anderson Cooper is coming,” she says, smiling. She hates Anderson Cooper, and has told me this on many occasions. But this smile seems genuine. I am confused.

“Oh? But what about Prince William?”

“HE IS NOT INVITED,” she half-yells. “He isn’t coming. Just me, and you, the Queen, and.. Anderson Cooper.” She giggles.

“That sounds.. great,” I say.

“They’re your exes, too,” she says, so softly I almost don’t hear her.

“Who’s my exes?”

“Prince William. And Anderson Cooper. They’re my exes, and they’re yours.”

“Well, they must have been pretty boring, because I don’t remember that.”

She smiles, and it stretches into a hideous grin and erupts into a cackle. She tells me she is leaving now, and calls me “Honey” over the row of books as she walks away. It floats in the air, hanging there, as I walk to the Info Desk and wonder how on earth this woman has a license, and better still, why her family lets her out by herself. And why she likes me best.

Must be the Queen’s doing.

As promised.

I still feel a little weird having this in my possession, but maybe she wanted it that way.

Crasian made her first appearance the other night for the first time in about a month; she was extremely angry and not at all pleased. I approached her three times, three! and she ignored me each time, instead choosing to stomp past me in pursuit of Justin. This is particularly intriguing and disturbing. Like Chris, who she was previously in love with and even went so far as to leave him a note depicting what her wedding dress would look like, Justin also has red hair. Aside from that, they share no other similarities. But still. As much as I love the Crasian, to have her blow me off for my boyfriend is a bit scary. Plus, she’s never talked to him before; he’s been witness to a few encounters but only knew most of the stories based on what he’s heard from me and other employees.

Anyway, here’s what happened. Because that’s what’s important.

Crasian: ..so I married the Emperor of the Universe, and now he won’t even talk to me. He ignores me.

Justin: Hmm, it sounds like he’s really not interested. It sounds like he needs a.. Universal Divorce.

Crasian: YES I WANT TO SUE HIM FOR EVERYTHING HE’S GOT I WANT ALL OF HIS MONEY ALL OF IT EVERYTHING you know, he married me because I am so holy.

Justin: Oh?

Crasian: Yes, I am the Virgin Mary.

Justin: …oh.

She went in and out of the store no less than five times, would not speak to anyone aside from Justin and a brief word to Chris because she wanted an ice water, and the last time she came in she spoke to an imaginary person. I openly watched her from the Info desk, confused as to what exactly was going on. She was standing by the front doors, hissing at a “person” six inches in front of her.

Crasian: Why couldn’t you just be a little nicer? To the little Asian girl who had no friends.. NO FRIENDS.. growing up? Would it have hurt you? Would it?

I held my breath.

Crasian: FUCKHEAD.

That she yelled, and promptly strode out of the store. I have never wanted to simultaneously kick out and hug a customer at the same time. She is my hero, even if she is a touch insane and has that tragic Oedipal thing going on.

*

I have work tonight, and again tomorrow, but Sunday promises to be a day filled with New Hope. (The town, that is; I wasn’t trying to pull an A.A. Milne and capitalize random adjectives and nouns. Although I guess it could really go both ways.. but I assure you, it is the name of a town and that is all I honestly meant. I am just realizing how genius I seemed for a minute there.) And that is really the best kind of day. Hopefully sometime this week, all of the secrets and mysteries will finally come to an end and I’ll finally be able to talk about a few things. Until then..

Secrets.. ssssh.

My birthday was just so incredibly intense, mind-blowing, wondrous, etc, that I have been recovering from it ever since and have only just crawled out of my sickbed to tell the world of it. Or I’ve been busy. You decide.

In all honesty, my birthday was very good to me, as were the people who helped me celebrate it. Among my many gifts, where the theme was decidedly unicorns and/or Hello Kitty, I have to say a few stand-outs were indeed my golden banana of an iPod nano (inscribed on the back with “Your faithful servant, Margaret Thatcher”; she is named Queen Elizabeth II); a gigantic Domo-Kun which is simultaneously frightening and delightful; The Adventures of the Gummi Bears on DVD (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRTSZZgCUik); and of course what birthday would be complete without a trip to the mall and, therefore, a trip to the Sanrio store within.

You’d think I’d just turned 6 and not 23, judging by most of that. Well, anyway, it was a great weekend, and made even more great when we found out that a certain somebody had an interview at last. And then maybe somebody else has an interview too. And so you see, there are things I cannot discuss because I believe strongly in jinxing myself, and also because The Secret by Rhonda Byrne tells me to “think positively” and all things will come true. No, for real. I just saved you like, $17. That’s all that damn book is about. I mean, that’s all that wonderful, amazing, inspiring book is about.

On a note of something that is no secret, my love for the Crasian has increased tenfold. Chris came up to me at work last night and said, “I have a question of ethics for you.”

I said, “..yes?”

He said, “Well, the Crasian left this. It looks like it’s for her mom, so I don’t know if I should read it, or –”

It was at that point that I snatched it from his paws and eagerly read the note inside. The envelope was addressed simply to “Mother” and the note?

“You are my favorite mother, Jackie. But why? Read James Joyce. Blessings be with you. <3 (she drew a heart), your daughter.”

THIS, MY FRIENDS, IS A WHOLE NEW LEVEL OF INSANITY.

1. The ‘Jackie’ she refers to is indeed Jackie O.; she has told me previously that that is her mother. However, she also said that the actress in Memoirs of a Geisha, and I am assuming she means Zhang Ziyi, is also her mother. But according to the note, she might have more than one “mother”.

2. James Joyce BLOWS, so why on earth she would want anyone to read him is beyond me. Here, let me summarize Dubliners for you: “We’re Irish, life’s rough.. aw, fuck it, let’s have a pint! Meet ya there, Patrick!”

3. Nothing really, I just felt silly having only two points.

I will be sure to take a picture because, for a crazy lady, she does have surprisingly nice handwriting. But she’s still crazy. No doubt about it.

My manager has given at least three other people in the store a taste of her nasty, evil head-cold and I have not really been my usual self these past few days. Once the cold is officially out of my system, and everybody has gone on their interviews and found out results, then I will be able to talk freely and without fear of Jinx. I am not referring to the Pokemon, Jynx. Actually, maybe I am.

Let’s leave it at that, then. ‘Til next time.

Birthday birthday birthday birthday birthday birthday

Somehow, it never gets old.