Sunday, June 22, 2008

To Whom it May Concern,

I had to rewrite this post about Blogger being an abysmal failure of a platform, because Blogger is an abysmal failure of a platform. Apparently I am not allowed to use the character "!" as well as copy, paste, add links or anything remotely useful.

The point is, is that there is a new blog that I am posting on, that has a better url, a better title that matches the url, and some other stuff that I don't want to get into.

So if you are one of the seven people who has become acquainted reading my fiction, poetry, rants, lists and anything else is that is vaguely homoerotic and associated with creativity then go here:

howfarisohio.wordpress.com

Thanks. The whole team appreciates the effort.

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Ten Reasons I Should Not Do Color Commentary for the Seattle Mariners

1) I have a short attention span.
2) I swear often, and without realizing it.
3) I drink. A lot.
4) I wouldn't make baseball knowledge a priority career-wise.
5) I'd probably start reading and stop paying attention to the game.
6) The Mariners suck right now. I wouldn't want to be affiliated professionally with a dismal organization.
7) I would talk about things other than baseball. Not that announcers never do that, but I would do it too much. 
8) I don't live in Seattle and hate commuting.
9) The food there is too expensive.
10) I mumble.

Sunday, June 15, 2008

The Trouble with Sleep/Lost in the Supermarket

There is this crick in my neck this morning. It is an ancient dull bruise that yearns and mutters and gives my spirit a testing. The curve that follows from my ear to my shoulder blade, is a worn band, sputtering and sweating, and I favor that whole side of my body. If I want to look in that direction, I move my body in that direction, I cannot twist my neck. I must have a karmic deficiency. Each morning it is a weakness in a new location. My bones must be brittle my muscles must be thin and stringy, a weak padding for a weak skeleton. Yesterday a left forearm, the day before that a right wrist, the other day each hand somehow. 
I search the mattress for rocks, tacks, sticks, lumps, bottles, or maybe even a dwarf that would barrage me with little fists, small enough to bruise my muscle, and soft enough to not wake me. He must be tenderizing my body in preparation for a feast of theirs, where I am the centerpiece. I strip the sheets and shake the pillows, but a bare mattress is just a bare mattress without a knife strong enough to waste on a task such as this. The only thing inside a mattress is springs and boards, and some foreign agents giving me comfort. Today there would be no dwarves, no lumps, no offenders.
I go out. I lose myself in consonants and vowels, fragments and formations. I put my glasses back on, and my skin feels different. I walk back and forth on the bridge. I walk back up the hill to where we started. Guarded under blankets positing darkness. The only thing I can imagine is Judge Holden waiting for me at the outhouse. And now there is an ache in my stomach to accompany my neck.  I wait for my girlfriend to go to work, then I go to the store.
What I enjoy about chain supermarkets is that every store has nearly an identical layout. The differences are subtle, either the floorplan is mirrored, or departments are swapped in a discreet manner. It feels the same, it is the same for all practical purposes, but the environment is just so subtly different, that this couldn't be a different store on a different day, this is this store, today. I traverse the aisles, and I pause in a frozen food aisle, underneath a sign curiously labeled "novelties" and notice some odd products. Unconventional combinations of two different food groups. The Safeway version of the national brand, a minute variation on the original. Frozen entrees, lined up and pushing out past the glass. A thundering hum of that of a windstorm preceding the light misting of the vegetables. I crank my neck over, and the tenderness is still present, like a house-guest who fell asleep in the bathroom - you just forgot about it.
I wander about and mill on certain items, and scoff at others. I feel the rippling cascade through my shoulders once again. I purchase some chicken, and the woman behind the counter asks if me and the middle aged woman in line are together or separate. The middle aged woman quickly protests, and laments the fact that a conversation had to come to this precipice. I give a low false intonation, an extended no with a squelching of the eyes. The chicken smells good.
I've come to notice people staring at me. I catch sideways glances, and notice pursuing peripheries, they are taking notes, they are measuring my height. But they could be secret shoppers, with a professional demeanor. Most people who work at grocery stores, that are adults, take themselves too seriously. 
I couldn't imagine a secret shopper working lackadaisically.
I arrive at the checkout counter, the ten item or less line, and plop my items onto the conveyor. I have some Safeway brand cookies that were beyond cheap at a dollar, two bags of chips, for my girlfriend and I, she gets the baked ones, I get the Mission chips, the chicken from before and a box of Banquet Maple Syrup Sausages for a dollar. I am wretched. I must have interrupted two cashiers talking, one of them glances at me, and scurries off without a word. The balding man with blue hair who is my cashier doesn't make eye contact, and counts the cracks in the ceiling as I put in my Safeway club card and my debit. He doesn't react swiftly enough for me to print out a receipt.  I must redo my purchase, and I mutter and act perturbed and offended on some karmic level, and he calls me Mr. and looks me in the eye. I look at my feet and say glibly "Thanks." There's a voice in my head talking about generosity of spirit. Don't I know it.



Post-Script - Formatting on Blogger is a fucking joke, and I'm not laughing.

Thursday, June 12, 2008

Dogtors!

I overheard a man on the bus today talking about how he is training his dog to sense low blood sugar. He mentioned that his girlfriend had type 2 diabetes, or hypoglycemia, one of the two, and that the dog senses when her blood sugar is perilously low. He said her dog was the on the verge of retirement, (she's getting old,) and that this dog was groomed as the replacement.

As far as I have ascertained, this is true. These dogs sense low blood sugar reactions, which occur often at night, and will wake people up to warn them of impending death.  I can see the value in this, the task of sensing the impending death of myself, or a loved one, awake has been never suited me too well. I am not much better in my sleep, so the dogs have arrived to save the day. This all seemed very possible and likely as my ears creeped over my book, listening to Will prod him on. I looked at this man, who now appeared to be sitcomesque in his immaculate appearance, which was very strange. Perfectly combed hair, not a speck of hair anywhere on his face, and a big full smile of blinding white teeth. I like my strangers telling me bullshit to be beraggled, drunk and screaming incoherently.

Apparently cancerous cells emit a specific odor not detectable by humans, but detectable by dogs with their sensitive hearing and smelling senses. This is the standard scientific explanation to prevent you from going to google to find out more about this and stop reading this post. Because I know lots of people are reading this, and expect nothing but journalistic integrity from me. I cannot disapoint my followers. They are my lifeblood.
ANYHOW, I think Lassie would do an appropriate job of barking to warn me of extremely low blood pressure and seizures- this has serious merit. But dogs that sniff cancer?
Alright, if they can detect the early onset of cancer, kind of like a doctor, after the dog warns you of the tumor, and the doom implicit in it's implications (aside: how could you distinguish the dogs "warning" from any other "warning," like "I'm hungry" or "Take my bitch ass for a fucking walk?") wouldn't you inevitably end up going to a doctor anyway? What, do you save maybe one co-payment? What's the difference between this and being regularly scanned and tested for cancer? Could there be perhaps, in addition to the dogs that detect cancer, an entire field devoted to dogs practicing medicine? A hospital staffed exclusively by dogs trained in the medical field? Could there be institutions educating dogs in the field of medicine? Would there be older professor dogs teach the student dogs, wearing tweed jackets with patches on the elbows and maybe a little dog cane? Does this not seem as preposterous as the dog sensing the tumor? Isn't he just as qualified to treat it?
Then someone made an interesting point. Perhaps these dogs are good for people that arehypochondriacs or at the very least paranoid they have cancer. Again, maybe these people should be seeing doctors anyway, which they will if they pass the first test, which is presumably a dog barking.
 
The stranger said that the dog won't tell you what kind of cancer it is, but that whether or not you have it. Good! Because wouldn't that be just too much? All of this is believable, except that the dog knows what kind of tumor it is. Now I don't believe a word of it. Anyway, I would ask the dog(tor) whether or not it is in remission. I would ask if it is a benign tumor. Is it a malignant tumor? Can the dog only detect tumors? Can it detect blood cancer or melanoma as well or exclusively tumors?
 
With this new information, I am dropping my health insurance, and going to the pound, with some great references I have received from a stranger screaming about his chicken coop when he was a little boy, of some great dogtors to check out. Have a nice day. Don't get cancer.

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Friendship Application

Please fill out the following test to be considered for friendship in this season of recruiting. The autonomous individual James Case, who we represent, appreciates your interest in becoming his friend. He wishes he could respond to every application individually, but he knows that is not within the realm of possibility.  Mr. Case gave us this set of questions, which he feels would best single out the strongest candidates for potential friendship.

Part I : List the following basic information
1) Name:
2) Age:
3) Gender:
4)Nationality/Ethnicity
5) Measurements:
6) Hair Color:
7) Astrological Sign:
8) Wonderlic Score:


Part II : Answer the following short answer questions as truthful, graphic and concise as possible

1) Do you consider yourself to be a good person?


2) Would you check my mail for me whenever you visited my house?


3) Are you seeking to fufill any of your own personal needs in a friendship with me? 


4) Do you have a criminal record? Why? Why not?


5) How often would you be available to chauffeur me on my errands?


6) What kind of car do you have? (If you do not have a car, don't bother.)


7) Does the car have cup holders? How many?


8) How vast is your disposable income? What is the exact dollar figure you would feel comfortable lavishing upon me without feeling used?


9) Describe your diction. Imagine yourself reading me poetry or bedtime stories after tucking me in.


10) Describe your experience in forgery, siphoning, accounting, larceny, group leadership, international finance and sandwich-making.

11) Would you be willing to perform fellatio on me?

Questions 12 - 15, are if you answered yes to Question 11. If you answered no, move immediately to Question 17

12) How often?


13) Do you spit or swallow?


14) Please describe the level of enthusiasm and technique of your fellating.


15) Would feel uncomfortable with me videotaping the fellating in order to properly critique your work?


16) Please provide three personal recommendations and phone numbers of persons you've fellated in the past.


17) Imagine I have been bitten by a venomous snake, which will kill me, unless I am fellated. Would you reconsider your non-fellatio stance?


Only answer Question 18 if you have changed your stance on fellatio. If you remain non-fellatio and pro-death then move on to question Question 19 immediately.


18) Please describe your level of enthusiasm and technique of your fellatio under the circumstances of venom extraction. Provide three personal references and phone numbers of fellatio performed in the past under the circumstances of venom extraction, if applicable.



Part III. The final part of the application consists of three long answer questions. Please take as much time as you need with each question, and use the back of this application or an additional piece of paper if you feel it is necessary. This portion of the application will be looked at most carefully.

1)What is your favorite thing about me, your potential friend?










2)Which aspect of your personality would best mesh with Mr. Case's personality? What do you see as being the strongest bind of your potential friendship?











3)You wake up in the middle of the night. You spring out of bed and burst into my bedroom, but there is only a faint impression of my gorgeous figure in the sheets. You whip your head around when you hear my screams emanating from below, I am courageously kicking and screaming to warn you of the events that are transpiring. You run downstairs, and hear my muffled cries of terror from the basement, you try to open the door but there is too much blood on the handle. The cowards holding me hostage are demanding your suicide in turn to let me live. What do you do?










Signature:
Date:
Blood Type:

Thank you for applying to be a friend of James Case. He appreciates your interest and will get back to you shortly. (Approximately 6-8 months)

Saturday, June 7, 2008

The King Of Nails


The king of nails is out standing in his field.
The headlights pass street signs,
But they're all different,
I trickle my eyes back towards the road,
then I see him. 
The straw of his hat peeking pass its silhouette
My car curves past the bend, 
I could smell his breath,
the window half down,
between a sieve and a shell.
 
This couple at the bar are yelling over the crowd and I hear it:
"Not all birds can fly."            
I tell the story at the house, and we get back to talking.
My chin has stubble, and the creak in the stairwell match it
Lapse in attention, the center becomes the edges,
The floor becomes the house.
And an immobile, brutish bird,
Born in a nest tethered and tarred,
Joints lathered with a thick fog,
And spider webs adorning its imagination, 
Its survival is a tragedy of some proportion.
I see the sound, and wonder,
How many more ways until it's over.

I'm walking there, on the side of the road
Twigs and loose gravel tear my feet,
my skin is unaccustomed and tender. 
A cinematic view breaking through the streetlights
A thank you note written on my sleeve
There's a lesson hiding in the night
Like a deserts regrets concerning water.
This cassowary, this dodo, this emu
must be a testament of treatment.
Is there a reason they were given wings?
Is this empty night, of murmuring robins and silent wings,
our evolutions stasis?
A bottleneck can be a destination.
I gaze at the moon and agree;
Its a careless sloven sculpture.

Each house I slept in 
Was like the moral in a story,
Told in ambivalent voices, and drenched in melancholy.
I lie patient on the floor, my eyes shut
Counting every aching reoccurrence.
I'm taking my doctors advice,
I will be less earnest, and will eat more carrots.
I sit in the waiting room, 
Flipping through all the magazines, 
It came without surprise when I read, 
"Flightless birds almost always live on islands."

The in joke now, is that reunions 
Are an exercise in dull surprises,
I keep on glancing up at the skyline, murky, gray and constant.
I nod and smile,
But I wish there was a a keeled breast for me, 
to keep me full
to cover the gap, 
to shoulder the load.
The king of nails must have been born in a parking lot.
I close door with a thud, I named it eternal reoccurrence,
And head home where the sky is sovereign and open.

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Weekend in Massachusetts

Roll on down the hill, feel the wind and the rush of temptation,
Draw me a portrait, of its slope and its turbulence eroding your face, 
blades of grass, blurring metaphors. Later you crawl into bed with
yourself and one too many pillows. The cup on the table whispers "myth"
And you're back on the crest of the hill, near the bakery and
your old house, where they called you a hero. Smell where the sand
sleeps, where the granite steps fade away into a beach, from your old house up around
the corner, a place my uncle watched through his telescope, and I with him, the sound
salient and slowing near the deep end of the neck. They all have good
jokes out there, they wrote them in advance 
They know people with names like Pettigrew and Constance,
and names like Willy are accepted until your thirty. The ice cream
stand is the social center of the town, where I'm from the scene
is grocery stores and cigarettes and looking for answers to questions
we never securely tied down, at the top of the hill before we rushed down
for good. I crawl into bed in my uncles attic, and like clockwork I see the mound
out near the baseball diamond. Out there, they love the patron saint of hopeless causes,
myths and ground balls drooping between your ankles. I define my life when it pauses,
and there is time.
There is time to not look at my watch
There is time to sit on porches and talk about my father.
There is time to walk down the spit to the club and dive in head first, little legs underwater.
There is time to coast, and say goodbye to what wasn't mine
There is time to ponder
There is time to dip my feet in near the edge of the dock and wonder.

Then I'm on the south side of town again, and I look at my watch until I can't look any longer.
My legs cramp up, so I go into the back of the trailway, and the mixture of piss and shit rattles,
I come back to work, and the gravel seems different now, it seems like it missed me, this battle
wasn't a battle. It was the way things are.
I look at my watch.
The band had rotten and broken off.
I threw it somewhere in the bottom of my pocket.
I roll on down the hill with you, you know, our wagons fuse is nearly done my rocket
is your rocket.

Monday, May 19, 2008

Cinder

When I drive down Kaiser,
and the sun beats me with it's tiny fractured waves,
I squint.

Stretched and sovereign, on the shoulder, limbs extend pas the normal frame. There is smoke fuming out of the Volvo, which I don't drive or ever did.  Everything is green out here, that sharp florescent green, like algae in a dirty fish bowl, and I don't fit in.

I can't
No, I don't apprehend my apprehensions.
I play dead, nod and stay quiet.
On the inside, I remind myself and count things, and stay very quiet. Like a nationless soldier on a battlefield,
squinting.

The sun is a sweaty ball of blindness, above an empirical sky. These messy feelings, pushed through a sieve of math and order. The sun was like a big hug, but after the atmosphere and the ozone layer, it has become these rays of sun, this energy which for some reason bothers me.

I sit down, and I realize I can't see straight because I couldn't see straight. One can't replace another, like a flamingo and a ballerina, two different forms of elegance, so I sit down on the hood of the car, while my driver is arguing with some person on his phone, yakking about a faulty part. I close my eyes and breathe, and hear a bird chirp, succeeded by a flock, and the sudden vacuum of engines and wheels approach in front of me.

An effecting helicopter of four windows, two all the way, two as children would, and they are young and tan honest lovers, with foreign hairdos and exotic postures. They seem strange and somewhat reassuring. But then I realize they just live on campus and have too much time on their hands. They are wearing sunglasses.

Maybe,
If I wore sunglasses, I could relax.
Maybe,
If I had more money, I would have better friends, or at least more of them. They would have a much higher chance of being better. Whatever that means.

My friends now are either distant or in the process of becoming distant, emotionally incomprehensible, or more commonly, simply missing. Nobody has heard from some people.

 I don't know. I could just clone my old friends, I can imagine them emerging from cellars with mist and carbon and all sorts of sciency things like Urkel turning into Stefan. But that would be hopeless, a failure, an abysmal mess. I mostly miss having somewhere to go when I had to be able to say I had somewhere to go, so it didn't look like I had didn't have anywhere to go, and now none of that exists. Nobody cares. And that is much worse, or much better, depending on my situation.

But money doesn't buy happiness. Money buys friends and exotic unnecessary material things, which brings material happiness. Which dies as assuredly as friends do.

But I am sitting,
on my hood,
staring at a picture,
I should've taken.

The car is busted, the smoke is this resultant without ash, without a profit. And I just wish I could wear some sunglasses.

Things would be different,
I am not meant to be a poet.
Maybe a domesticated animal, waiting for praise and belly rubs, with fingers outstretched and popping, my voice whistling with the birds and the falling leaves of a rain forest. 

At least, one with a suntan, and an expensive pair of sunglasses.

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Signals

This morning, I turned up Harrison from the pseudo-round-a-bout and didn't signal when I shifted over to the left lane. There were no other cars around, and I thought, "What does it matter?" The thing is, is that I always signal my turns, even if nobody is around, a force of habit I guess. The turn to go up Harrison hill is usually a pretty senseless one to signal at: there are two lanes, and before ten or after six there is hardly ever anyone out there, yet whenever I changed lanes entering the hill, even late at night, I always signaled. Why was today different?

I began to ponder this as I sat waiting for my food at Egan's. I remembered conversations with my father, asking him why he didn't signal, pointing around to the absence of company and declaring, "If a tree falls in the woods does anybody hear it?" I felt told, that he knew something maniacally human that I had not picked up on. But then again, he wouldn't ever signal even in traffic, and is widely known as one of the most inattentive drivers in our community. Maybe I didn't miss anything, and maybe it was more than a force of habit.

I tend to lift tedious things into a spiritual meaning. I feel whenever I pull the signal down or flip it up, I am declaring my existence, at least as a driver. I thought back to my initial question during my internal monologue. "What does it matter?" If I do not signal, I am leaving it as a tedious action of my upper-lower-middle class quasi suburban existence. But if I announce my next move, if I signal what I am doing, it becomes realer then it was if I didn't.

Then I remember that I signal when nobody else is around. I think of the tree falling in the woods and nobody is around to hear it. The tree makes a noise, creating the opportunity for the ear to hear it. I signal my turn, creating the opportunity for someone to recognize it. The tree has no control over if it makes the sound, I have control over whether or not someone can recognize my forthcoming action. And this crucial difference has a strong implication. The conscious choice I make implies that I feel there is someone else to recognize it. Even if there is nobody visible on the road, a higher power would be watching over me, that I have subconsciously acknowledged by pulling the lever. If there is no human eye to witness the right deed, then I have created an eye to see it.

My force of habit, my routine, may actually be an unintentional offering, a prayer if you will, to society. And in the absence of a visible society, I have created one to replace it.

So maybe it does matter.

Monday, February 25, 2008

Dear Jude Law

Who decided to give you money? How in the hell did you get famous? When did prissy British pretty boys get big time movies roles for practically nothing?

What is wrong with your face? The only two expressions you do are these two:

1) The sullen, "please take me seriously, because I am being serious," look.



This is the head shot that your agent sends out. More than likely this photo, is scattered around every large oak desk in Hollywood for fifteen minutes before it ends up in the trash because you are flat out terrible for every role, except for two. Those roles are playing the spoiled British pretty guy, who is ultimately a coward or a fraud (Talented Mr. Ripley) or the creepy guy who takes pictures of dead bodies (Road to Perdition) which you played so damn well I am convinced that is what you do in your free time. Why are you wrong for every other role? Because you can't act your way out of a paper bag, and everyone thinks you're Jude fucking Law and not a character anyone could identify with.

2) The fake awkward smile.



This is the look that Jeffrey Dahmer must have made after eating someone. You are a sick freak.

On a more serious note, what drug-fueled orgy/three-week drinking binge/trip to Vegas to kill some hookers whilst having a crack party, led you to the retarded epiphany that remaking Alfie with you in the starring role was a bloody brilliant idea? What makes you think that remaking an already great film is good for anything except as fodder for your own ego? Is there any other legitimate reason? Do you want to be Bogart in Casablanca too?

Imagine someone sitting on their couch seeing endless advertisements for your shitty movie, thinking "That pretty asshole Jude Law is doing Alfie." then, "I've already seen Alfie with Michael Caine and it was good." then taking a moment and concluding, "Why would I want to pay to see Alfie again but with that pretty asshole Jude Law and it's obvious that it's really going to suck." Why didn't anyone not explain this to you ahead of time? Do you not have friends? If you do have friends, are they the kind of friends who secretly pine for your downfall? Does anyone really love you Jude Law, the person, and not Jude Law, the facial features? I doubt it.

Let's continue critiquing 2004, the year you really were supposed to shine, but bombed harder than any war torn third-world country. You appeared in six major motion pictures, four of them with you're character being essential to the plot, (The Aviator and Lemony Snicket don't really count.)

This leaves I Heart Huckabees, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, Alfie, and Closer.

I Heart Huckabees
; This must have been based around one weak acid trip when some college freshmen questioned existence, that got stretched into a feature length film, then tagged as existential because nobody understood it, because there wasn't much to understand. Nobody had the heart to tell David O. Russell that his idea was really shitty. (It's not like people are afraid of him or anything right...?) And since I remember you played some sort of yuppie with three inches of personality in the movie, I won't blame you for that tragic mess of a movie, though I really wish I could, I'd rather blame you than Russell. He made Three Kings. You haven't made jack shit.

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow; Did you even read the script? Was there as script? I assume some Michael Boy clone/wannabe convinced you that this film would look pretty and retro, and other pretty people like Angelina Jolie and Gwyneth Paltrow would be in it, and lots of pretty planes and pretty sunsets and pretty buildings would be going on around you, the centerpiece, the pretty Jude Law. But since it would be really expensive, they needed your filthy amount of money to finance it, so they threw on a producer credit for you to make it worth your while, so you would believe in the project. And you went with this concept!?!?! They should have just called the movie Style and saved a bunch of money on those things called writers. But I don't think they hired them anyway. Not using writers is a very postmodernist invention. You'll hear about it soon.

Alfie; See above.

Closer; A next of kin to The Talented Mr. Ripley character. Whiny rich spoiled asshole get mad at everyone because he fucked up his own life, a character you hit a home run with. But instead of just Anthony Minghella and Matt Damon carrying your ass through the movie, you got Mike Nichols, Clive Owen, Julia Roberts and Natalie Portman carrying your whole fucking talentless piece of shit body through the movie. I guess you're good at crying, infidelity and hitting women. A real method actor you are Jude.

So in closing, I really hate you. I wish it was you and not Heath Ledger that OD'd, because you're stealing his role in Gilliam's next masterpiece that will get fucked over in production. And I think it's great that you're "doing" charity and getting back into theater instead of fucking the nanny in your spare time. Have fun playing the mildly insane pretty boy on the screen and in real life for the rest of your paltry existence.

Sincerely,
James

Thursday, February 21, 2008

Dear Best Buy

I was recently perusing your store while a friend was acquiring a keyboard. There was a compact disc I decided to impulsively buy, so I got in line to pay for it. A young woman was the cashier and we, together, forged ahead in the bartering of currency for goods. I was paying with my debit card.

My purchase was approved, however, the receipt machine ran out of paper when my order was authorized, leaving me alone with no receipt to prove my purchase. The young woman appeared nervous explaining it was the beginning of her shift and she had "bad luck" with this station. I coordially requested, "But that's okay, I don't want a receipt anyway." My idea was denied, "You need a receipt to get out of the store," her eyes wandering away from mine, wincing at the senselessness.

You bastards. You make it that I cannot leave the store with an item without that silly piece of paper called a receipt. Why is it that at your store, a cashier cannot be trusted to inform the merchandise security detail that I honesty bought a product? Do you have no trust in your employees? Why even have them? Why not robots?

The young cashier called an assistant manager to the station and he also found himself puzzled to the situation. Another manager, the older female manager at this one of your stores, walked into the station and turned off the computer with a special key, never apologizing for your mistake, never speaking to me, or never noticing my existence- me! the customer! the consumer!- the one who keeps corporate whores like yourself running.

The older manager returned with a piece of plain paper. This was my copy of the purchase, this was my new receipt. I attempted to talk to your manager but she walked away back behind a white door of mystery before I got the words out of my mouth. I walked out your door, and the man who checks the receipt looked blankly down at the paper and waved me past, not even caring if I really had the piece of paper. It was all for naught.

Fuck you, Best Buy. Fuck you, for wasting my time with your stupid bureaucratic methods.

Sincerely,

James