Bullet points is about where I'm at this week, gotta say.

* I am almost sort of unpacked. That is to say, I have put away the stuff that I actually care about, and have to haul the stuff that I don't want to the Salvation Army... that would be the stuff that my dad insisted on packing for me, and I should have pulled an all-nighter and repacked it, because his packing style is a cross between a) a squirrel hiding nuts for winter, b) one of those TLC specials about compulsive horders and c) annoying. So I have to sort through the box that was one-third kitchen stuff, one-third Christmas-themed glassware, and one-third random toys collecting dust for nearly twenty years, while thinking "why on earth would he think I'd want ANY of this shit?" Do I seem like someone that would actually ever purchase holiday tableware, or would see that as a priority to haul 1300 miles? It's almost as good as the box that I found that contained a toaster and a snorkel.

* I have been seeing a series of commercials for Michigan tourism on the tube recently. Now, they have some truly lovely shots of Lake Michigan, and Mackinac Island, and Sleeping Bear Dunes, and all of those lovely tourist spots. And then... they choose to highlight the attractions of Detroit, which is to say Greektown and the RenCen and Comerica Park. Seriously, maybe because I know too much it seems odd to me, but are there seriously people in freakin' Colorado thinking "wow, that commercial has inspired me to take a trip to Downtown Detroit!" Detroit's reputation can't have changed that much, right? I can't see how crack whores and the Red Wings would create that much of an appeal out here.

* The fact that Stephen Lynch has written a song about the comic strip Peanuts on his new album fills me with geeky joy. And he even takes it beyond the tired "Marcie and Peppermint Patty are a lesbian couple" gag! He mentions it of course; how could he not?

Freshman year of college, Don and I were talking one Sunday afternoon, and somehow the topic of being IM'd by "some random psycho" came up, and then I said "you know, SomeRandomPsycho would make a good screen name" and the two of us raced to see which of us could register it first. I won, and that screen name stuck with me for four years.

When I started an online journal, I used "randomlypsycho" as the closest variant I could think of that would be under 15 characters. Not really all that fond of it at this point, but I lack the motivation to change it at this point.

I have been ignoring this for a while, preferring to write acerbic and pithy one-liners on my Facebook status, which I could consider my art, when it hit me: I haven’t written about retail horror stories recently.

When did this hit me? This occurred to me as I was playing bouncer outside the ladies’ room today.

That’s right, bouncer. Apparently, some filthy disgusting young girl either caused the toilet to clog and overflow or took a dump on the floor. Now, I must say, I have lived in college dorms and lived amongst young men with some seriously questionable hygiene habits, perhaps influenced by substance abuse, but I never found random feces on the floor. So, as one of my co-workers who had bravely decided to clean up the mess tried to fight her gag reflex as she mopped the ladies’ john, I stood outside the door and tried to pretend I was some big burly guy outside an exclusive nightclub. This failed miserably, so I instead murmured something discreet about a “plumbing emergency” and gestured in the general direction of the handicapped bathroom by the pharmacy, where at last count there was about an eight-woman line. I then requisitioned a can of Oust to try and cover the rank sewage smell that apparently permeated the ladies’ john.

I am loath to share this next one, because if I ever DO write the sitcom pilot I jokingly say I’m going to, this is going to go in, but here goes: the dumbest damned thing that Tarzhay execs have ever come up with. See, many of us that work there are adults that expect that a workplace is going to treat us like adults. And yet, there are many of the managers who, unfortunately, confuse the concepts of “employee recognition” with that of “rewarding the special ed class that you teach.” The most out-of-control idiotic plan that they have ever devised came about this week. It came out that, since the economy dictates that we can only staff the store with about 60% of what we used to, the customer survey scores about the availability of employees has tanked. So what is the logical solution to that problem? Yup, that’s write: dictating that, whenever we see one of our co-workers helping a customer, that we must announce it over the walkie-talkies, and give them a Target knock-off LiveStrong bracelet in choice of red or yellow, and the person that has accumulated the most bracelets by the end of the month wins an iPod shuffle. Needless to say, most of us who are not salaried management zombies think that this is both gay and retarded. (And I do not wish to slander either the GLBT community or those with developmental disabilities by comparing them to this idiocy, I wish to make it known.) So I was venting about how I thought that this entire process was, well, a bit insulting/demeaning. Sure enough, the manager-in-training who spearheaded the plan overheard me, so I had to have an awkward conversation with her where I explained that my biggest complaint about Target was that there’s a culture where we get treated like children for completing the bare minimum expectations for our jobs. Fun! The best part was today when we ran out of stupid little bracelets, so they substituted strings of St. Patrick’s Day themed Mardi Gras beads, which, OF COURSE, led to the female team members being subjected to lame-ass frat boys asking them how many people they had to flash to get those beads. I suggested to one friend that she explain that since they were St. Patrick’s Day beads, she needed to tell any of our guests with lame flashing jokes that she had obviously flashed a leprechaun.

Finally, a few weeks ago, I was the closer and I had a teenage girl closing service desk. She was the same one that once had breast milk spilled on her while covering a Food Avenue break and cried out “I have boobie juice on me!” Needless to say, she seems to be a magnet for strange things to happen when she’s on duty. Sure enough, a large woman who used an oxygen tank and an electric cart came up to do a return, and I wandered off only to find her still there ten minutes later, and I see the girl’s wide eyes and expression of anguish. And then I come closer and hear a snippet of the conversation and I realize that the woman is in the middle of a massive monologue about her experiences with gastric bypass surgery. I walk to the service desk and see that, behind her back, my service desk closer has her hand out, and on her hand she has written the word “HELP”.

Since fifteen minutes of monologue had elapsed by this point, I needed to create a plan, and I grab the cordless phone and go to an office with a closeable door outside of earshot of the service desk. I pretend to be a customer on the phone demanding that she search the entire lost-and-found to find something… the lost and found being located behind the counter at service desk. I hope this break in the conversation will end the monologue. The photo lab closer, though, who was a witness to this entire hostage situation, came to tell me it didn’t work… the ruthless orator had just waited for her to finish and continued the spiel. I went to the service desk and rather rudely announced that she HAD to go take her lunch right now, playing the part of the hard-ass boss, and she meekly slipped off to the break room… where I followed her and she and I broke into hysterical laughter over the entire awkward situation.

And this is what retail has done to crush my soul this month.

Back from a much needed week in Florida, which I spent mostly relaxing at the pool and trying to remember what it's like not having any responsibilities. Seriously, I am all about being an early retiree now. We could all live in a retirement community in Florida and ride around in golf carts and enjoy early bird specials!

I also spent a day up at Disney, as it seems to be where you are expected to take the out-of-state family members; in Colorado, that "where you take the Midwestern relatives" trip generally involves skiing or visiting the Coors Factory or the Celestial Seasonings Factory tour. Disney World fills me with mixed feelings. On the one hand, I enjoy the experience. I enjoy the rides, because for the most part, Disney knows how to create fun and thrilling rides that are enjoyable for people such as me with a fear of heights, which is why Cedar Point isn’t my cup of tea. At the same time, though, a gentle menace is present that fills me with a vague sense of discomfort. I feel as though I’m a protagonist who’s a part of a dystopian science fiction novel, where something is wrong with the society but I haven’t quite put my finger on it.

This year, we visited Epcot. Now, Epcot is an interesting mix of creepy utopian propaganda, an amusement park, and a highly sanitized global exposition. You can ride a boat through a greenhouse where scientists are proudly creating nine-pound lemons, and it doesn’t seem to be even a little bit odd that you’ve paid nearly a full day’s salary to ride a boat while looking at the horrors of genetic engineering, or that you’ve stood in line for half an hour only to stand around watching a glorified Kodak commercial, or that C-list celebrities are playing the parts of the attraction hosts, or that you realize that the ride that goes through the huge-ass geodesic dome at the front of Epcot is completely lame even with the narrative skills of Dame Judi Dench. I went to see the dolphin at the aquarium, and she was being asked to do one of those shape-identifying games, and was doing poorly and getting booed, which was kind of horrifying and awesome and awkward. That being said, the GM Test Track ride is pretty awesome.

The international pavilions are interesting, even in a tacky touristy kind of way, but at the same time a bit disorienting. I like the fact that the Norway pavilion has the cool Viking boat ride, but I find that the Norwegian college students that staff the attractions make me feel fat and ugly, because they are all thin, tall, blonde, and appear to be genetically engineered by Disney in the same greenhouse with the Franken-lemons. I am confused as to why the Canadian pavilion is playing a Muzak version of the Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald; that’s our wreck, and they have several CDs worth of music from the Barenaked Ladies that they could be playing instead. I am relieved that Japan does not have any rides or attractions that involve hentai. I enjoy the pervasive smell of fish and chips throughout their pseudo-Britain, as well as the Beatles cover band with an awesome John Lennon impersonator, a decent Ringo, an average George, and a sub-par Paul even though, judging by the gift shop, the Republic of Ireland is still a part of the UK, which I did not know!

The flight back was uneventful, seeing as it did NOT splash down in any major bodies of water, although in retrospect, I now feel guilty that I complained about the plane being late on the connecting leg into Tampa, as that's probably why. It's a good thing CNN isn't on in the Tampa airport, because the LAST thing I need to watch before boarding a plane is footage of a plane crash for that would make me nervous, and then I'd have to buy overpriced tiny bottles of vodka to calm myself and doing that before 11 AM would just make me feel like a pathetic alcoholic. However, my flight on the-soon-to-be-defunct Ted Airlines was uneventful except I got stuck across the aisle from Paranoid About Blood Clots Guy. How do I know that he was Paranoid About Blood Clots Guy? Because the first thing he did was take his shoes off the second he was seated, and he wanted to stand in the middle of the aisle during the entire flight, which of course meant that his ass was in my face for half the damn flight and the flight attendants had to dodge this clueless asshat who was in the way and spent the entire flight fidgeting and swaying in the aisle. I have never been so glad to have turbulence that required us to stay in our seats.

Okay, for the six or so of you that actually read this at this point, I have something I need to talk about. It is an epidemic plaguing our generation and has fascinating psychological and anthropological ramifications and I do not understand all of what is driving this need, and I cannot believe that Things White People Like has not covered this endemic.

My question is: among our generation and socioeconomic group, at what point in a relationship is cat adoption a requisite step?

I ask this genuinely, since I am not in a relationship and am highly allergic to cats, but it seems that, increasingly, the people I know that are living with their boyfriends and/or girlfriends are adopting cats as a sort of intermediate step between moving in together and any type of further commitment. Is the cat adoption a sort of parenting simulation, a practice child, so to speak? Is this a way of silencing a ticking biological clock by providing a substitute? Is this some sort of stalling technique to create a new level of commitment and intimacy before bringing marriage into the picture? Is it a symbol of adult freedom, the thought of finally living in your own place and having your own rules? Am I way overthinking this and the need is created by a desire to have a pet that apartment complexes will allow? I am just witnessing way too many instances of this among my friends and under-30 co-workers for this to be coincidental; this appears to be some sort of rite of passage developing among adult relationships and I want to figure this out.

What are your thoughts on this, the six or so of you that actually read this?

We need to talk about my favorite part of the Christmas season. Now, as you may have gathered, I am not a big holiday festivities kind of guy. Christmas trees in November make me itchy, I have an extraordinarily low tolerance threshold for Christmas music, the thought of a holiday sweater makes me want to puke, and the unpleasant associations of working at Target during Christmas (and this will be Christmas #5, a sobering reality and a cautionary tale to liberal arts majors everywhere) kind of suck out most of the joy that remains.

I had my shining moment of peaceful Christmas clarity once as a child. Driving in the snow to the Christmas eve service at church after a Christmas Eve dinner at the house of a family friend, my mom and I stopped at a local park called Deer Park, and saw dozens of deer, up by the fence by the side of the highway, and watched as people fed the deer. They weren't reindeer, but they might as well have been. It was peaceful and vividly memorable.

A few years ago, they bulldozed the park and put in a fucking Walmart Supercenter. This is about where I am with Christmas.

Now, I must admit, I do have one favorite Christmas tradition. There is one Christmas special that I CANNOT miss for any reason: the Charlie Brown Christmas Special.

This is the ONE, seminal piece of my holiday that I refuse to give up. Other Christmas specials don't do it for me. Frosty ends in too macabre of a fashion (he went into the greenhouse! No, Frosty!!! Don't do it!) and Rudolph... well, Santa just comes across as a total asshole. But the Charlie Brown Christmas Special... I just love it. I imagine this stems from my obsessive love of the comic strip Peanuts when I was in elementary school, but I still cannot miss this one.

Now, this is where I embarrass myself by going into way, WAY too much detail and putting WAY too much thought into this. Into the abyss of my geekdom shall we go...

I identify with Charlie in that he feels this kind of melancholy disconnect from this entire commercialized Christmas, and I feel that my five years of working retail in December makes that feeling of dread and anticipation and disdain for the greed around you feel very real to me. Charlie Brown is all of us at some point in our adolescence, the kid who ends up being the butt of the jokes, the target of the mean girls--alpha female Violet (and who among us has not dealt with a girl like her in our past, needing to validate her place at the top of the social hierarchy by tormenting those not as cool as her?), her second-in-command Patty, and the vapid narcissist Frieda. I know I can look at Charlie Brown and think "I was that kid at points in high school."

Now, I also like Linus. I feel like he views his role in life to provide clarity for others, and has this balance of being both incredibly mature and intelligent while at the same time being this thumb-sucking blanket-toting neurotic. He wants to be supportive, and he's the one that never gives up on Charlie Brown or tries to discourage him... he acknowledges reality, that an actual wooden Christmas tree is a thing that is not in tune with the modern times, but doesn't berate his friend for his refusal to sell out. He seems oblivious to the cruelty of his classmates and seems more focused on what is actually important. I would like to think I'm a bit like Linus.

Lucy I find to be an interesting character because on the outside, she's all hard-core and crabby. On the other hand, though, she does actually demonstrate some faith in her hapless friend Charlie Brown. She wants to give him an opportunity to take charge and run the Christmas pageant. Unlike those stupid bitchy mean girls in the pageant who just serve to berate and belittle Charlie Brown, she wants to give him a chance to prove himself. She is critical of him but I can't help but see that she does mean well and does want to help him succeed. That, and I love for all her perception of Charlie Brown, she has a complete and total lack of self-awareness and is lounging on Schroeder's piano, trying her best to make him notice her, but failing to impress him. I don't know that I really like Schroeder all that much. He's kind of a self-absorbed prick, honestly, although I can't entirely blame him for looking at Lucy and being scared off by her abrasiveness.

And I like the end. I love how Linus is all "that's what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown", bringing the argument back to the theology, the birth of Christ, not all that retail and commercial crap, but the actual reason for why we celebrate the holiday... because, actually, it is NOT about the opportunity to shove a soccer mom to the ground to get your hands on anything you can grab from the Bakugan endcap in the toy section. I like the fact that the mangy little tree is made into a nice holiday decoration. I enjoy the music and the spazzy dancing. I just can't fathom December without watching it, and if I miss it, I feel as though the entire Christmas season is thrown off. It's a respite from the chaos.

It all began on my second day of college. I went into my freshman writing composition class and we did whatever sort of lame introduce yourself icebreaker things that you do on the first day of class, and I met the dozen or so other people in the class. A day or two later, I went to the Honors Institute welcoming barbecue in the clearing out behind Wesley Hall to meet my mentor, and sure enough, the other mentee assigned to this mentor was Krista, one of the girls from my English class. We stuck together, because our mentor promptly ditched us to go hang out with her friends, and introduced each other to the people that were in our orientation groups or geographically near us in the dorms that had become makeshift friends. The following day, we learned that we had been assigned to the same writing group in our English class.

Labor Day weekend approaches. I run into Krista in the dorm cafeteria and eat lunch with her and her friend from high school. My initial impression of the two of them together was that they were both really weird. I maintain that I was not exactly wrong, but... they weren't weird in a bad way. As the fall progresses, the four of us in our writing group became better friends. After joining them for a viewing of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, we ritually watched movies at midnight Saturday on the big screen TV in the dorm common room and we all ate dinner together, dinners that ended in four to six of us sitting at the table for over an hour, convulsed with laughter.

The rest of our time at Albion (and beyond) was a whirlwind of adventure and defeating boredom:

I remember my Sunday afternoon routine, when I was desperate to avoid homework, was go find Krista and see what she was up to, or go find her in the computer lab where we could both pretend to do homework. This could lead to many different outcomes: helping her plan a menu for a dinner party, test-tasting different varieties of citrus for a blogpost, watching Pulp Fiction with amused horror, planning a liverwurst-centered prank on a friend, or just sitting, listening to spacy indie rock and enjoying a companionable silence. Senior year, living at Burns, I can remember sitting at her kitchen table as she baked cookies at 2 in the morning, being quiet so as not to wake Lib, and helping chop nuts for the next batch.

Once we went to Victory Park during a tornado watch. I, of course, did not know that there was a tornado watch, but that did not deter us. We sat by the river and then came back through the campus which was blanketed in fog.

I remember being asked to walk her back from a newspaper party where she had become a bit inebriated. That did NOT make her any quieter.

Senior year, we would convince Leah to take us to Battle Creek, where we could go to Barnes and Noble, Meijer, and Denny's, usually in that order. Leah seldom required much arm-twisting. We made a trip to Ann Arbor to wander around and go to Zingerman's right before graduation on the rationale that none of our other friends were around that weekend and we wanted to do something fun, and we listened to Stephen Lynch in my car on the way back.

Junior year, Lib and I went to visit her in Ireland, and we toured the city of Cork, watching movies and hanging out at the pub around the corner from her apartment.

Sophomore year, we sat together in American Lit as we glanced at each other in horror as we learned too much about Hemingway's sex life and had Emily Dickinson ruined forever for us. I was a witness to the most awkward conversation known to man between my two closest friends: one where Will made some comment about lesbians, God only knows what, to hear Krista respond "Oh, you don't know, do you?" "I don't know... Jimbo?" as I looked out the window nonchalantly, cringing and laughing simultaneously.

Twice I went to Philly to see Krista and Sarah, and it all washes together in a blur of ethnic restaurants and bookstores. The one visit, our goal was to not have lunch at any place that served a cuisine that would be familiar. In 4 days, we had Vietnamese, Thai, Middle Eastern, and Cuban food. We travel well together, too... staying in Las Vegas for Leah's wedding, we dutifully played tourist all the while mocking the excessiveness of Las Vegas, standing in the elevator of the Sahara plotting strategies for how to shake off the annoying time-share salesmen. "You're the city girl and yet you were stuck listening to her like you were stuck in a tractor beam." "I didn't want to be rude." "We should make her sorry she talked to us. I act all panicked and tell her that we're not married and not to tell my wife." "I could tell her I left you for another woman because she had a bigger penis than yours." "I could tell her that you gave me syphilis." We left and went to the most visually disorienting, retina-searing restaurant on the planet, one with mirrors and neons and fake dogwood trees and waitresses in oversized Hawaiian shirts. We also went to a Star Trek-themed bar where I was berated for ordering a chick drink after Krista went through the gift shop as though it were a holy place.

Beyond these memories, though, one thing I know is that the next time I see Krista, she's going to squeal and give me a big hug. Because she does that with any friend that she hasn't seen for over a week or so.

Happy birthday to my psychically connected twin.

1. Pomegranites. I don't know. It's just... I feel, as produce, that it's trying too hard. It's like the fruit equivalent of indie rock... its mere obscurity is seen as its best merit, and now it's being infused into everything. I just don't feel the love.

2. Reality Television. See, I have figured out what the appeal is. It's a combination of validating one's self-righteousness and the spectacle that drew the ancient Romans to the coliseums to see gladiators torn apart by lions. I think that enjoying it for the mere spectacle is okay, although one might not want to discuss their reality television watching preferences with the rest of the world lest you lead to an awkward pause in the conversation.

3. U2. I get how their music is significant and ahead of its time. I get the good that Bono tries to do, in drawing attention to the problems in Africa, and I will admit he's one of the least annoying politically active celebrities. But the fact remains that when their music comes on the radio, with the exception of maybe two songs, I get bored and change the station after 30 seconds.

4. Falafel. I am not sure if either I have never had good falafel, or if I don't like it. I keep thinking I should like it, that I've had some good falafel at some point in my past (maybe at Badawest?) and I keep being disappointed time and time again.

5. Late Night Comedy Shows. I keep thinking I like them, but Leno's kind of an asshole, Letterman tries to hard to be goofy and bores me in the process, and I find Conan O'Brien too random and inaccessible, even for ME. Saturday Night Live has moments of awesomeness surround by boredom and lameness.

6. Sarah Palin. Segue from SNL, I know. Here's the thing: although I am appalled by the prospect that she could ever hold a national political office, I kind of don't want her to completely go away because I find her so damned entertaining in a psychotic over-the-top way; perhaps she has filled the niche vacated by the late Anna Nicole Smith?

7. Working with temps. I like working with temps, except that sometimes temps are temps because, well, they can't hold a job due to alcoholism or untreated schizophrenia or severe hygiene deficiencies.

8. Target. I am very conflicted about Target. On the one hand, I resent the entire atmosphere of working retail. I hate the stupid policies and protocols, I hate the schedule, I hate the bitterness it creates in me for being an overqualified drone. On the other hand, I do like some of my coworkers and I appreciate that it's a second job that allows me to keep flexible hours and availability to dovetail schedules with the other job that I want to believe is a career-path job and health insurance benefits. I just can't emotionally deal with it full-time any more for more than a few weeks.

9. McDonald's. I feel like I should resent it, and everything it stands for, and the mediocre yet unhealthy food, but at the same time, when you work late and are feeling hungry because you're keeping a zombie sleep schedule and want to make a drive-thru run, a greasy dollar-menu cheeseburger somehow hits the spot, you know?

10. Living in Colorado. I do like it here, I really think I do. At the same time, four and a half years later and there's still no real roots, you know? I don't have any real driving reason to want to leave, or any actual plans to do so, but at the same time, should an opportunity take me away, I don't think I'd be more than mildly disconcerted.

11. Wine. It's something else on the list of things I feel that I should enjoy, I should like, I should appreciate, and yet? Ehh. It's okay, and maybe because I have the easiest access to the cheap shit I haven't developed a palate, but I never enjoy it as much as I think I should. Plus, it's the only alcoholic beverage that I feel the next morning.

12. Flint. It's home. I was born and raised there, and will defend it to outsiders that mock it, or feel that they need to engage me in a debate about Michael Moore, which I am officially beyond tired of (although I did enjoy the time a guy told me that I was the first white guy from Flint he'd ever met before). At the same time, I can't see myself ever moving back, and I don't really have any friends or family still living there year-round, either.

13. The fact that I am coming to terms with the fact that Grey's Anatomy has jumped the shark. I am well aware that it is a chick show that is designed for the stereotypical unmarried 18-45 woman weeping into her pint of Ben and Jerry's, and that I should be ashamed that I watch it, but I still do even though it's starting to suck and I keep thinking I should flip to channel 9 and watch The Office instead but I never do.

13. I apparently have the psychotic Protestant work ethic that makes me feel guilty for not taking on hard assignments at work, or volunteering to work my day off, or feeling guilty for taking time off that isn't being taken off for a specifically scheduled vacation plan.

14. I keep waiting for the point where I have a sense of humor about my receding hairline, but that point just never comes.

15. The fact that I actually don't like most children. Teenagers I can deal with, but small kids, babies, toddlers? They're all loud and whiny and sticky and I just can't deal with that at this point in my life.

16. I keep thinking I should be ashamed for being such an underachiever career-wise, but the thing is, I'm kind of not. I work two jobs, one of which I genuinely enjoy and am trying like hell to make into a career, and even though it's not glamorous or well-paid, I can deal with it for now while I wait for an opportunity in the assessment field.

17. Dogs. I like dogs in theory, but ever since I got bitten by a neighbor's German Shepherd I've become really jumpy around large, unfamiliar dogs. I feel like I should want a dog, but I really don't. Cats are too aloof and full of allergens to be a consideration.

18. The fact that I am like my parents. Namely, that I get a double-barreled dose of control freak and introverted loner, and the fact that I try to overcompensate for both of these tendencies by being a doormat so that people will like me.

19. I sometimes pretend to have seen movies that I actually haven't just because I don't want to have an awkward conversation about how I haven't seen the movie and have a DVD thrust upon me that I have no actual desire to watch. I feel guilty about this but feel that it just keeps the conversation going. If I am expected to demonstrate knowledge about said film, I usually say something vague about having seen it a long time ago.

So today was Black Friday. As you all know, I work for Target part-time, and had agreed to come in and work today at 6:00 to help with the rush, because, truly, I enjoy a spectacle, and Black Friday is busy enough to make the day go by really fast. Last year, I spent the day in the toy department, which was a little, well, chaotic and migraine-inducing and overrun with ankle-biters.

I arrived and entered the employee entrance at about 5 minutes to 6. There was a line spanning the entire front of the store. I mentally prepared myself for the chaos that was about to ensue. At 6:00, as the cashiers stood by empty checklanes like sentries, I watched as the opening manager set the mechanical doors to open, and watched a three-minute stream of people like the bulls at Pamplona stampede into the store in search of discounted consumer durables, making a beeline for the electronics counter and the entertainment section. That story about the Walmart manager on Long Island that got trampled to death this morning? Did not surprise me. Around five minutes later, the first early birds wheeled their 26 inch Westinghouse HDTVs and $3.98 chick flicks up to the checklanes.

...and then the power goes out, pitch black, 6:05 AM on Black Friday.

AWESOME.

I wait patiently in the dark, laughing to myself, because as you all know, my sense of humor kicks into overdrive in situations like this. Now, after a few moments, the backup generators, which control cash registers and every third overhead light, kicked in. However, this meant that every single cash register in the store, all 48 of them, rebooted simultaneously. The reboot process takes roughly 4-6 minutes. So, everyone had to wait for the registers to reboot. Just as the registers came back on, and everyone had begun to ring items up again... every register dies simultaneously, and the lights (except for the light-up signs on the checklanes) go out again.

This pattern of lights flickering on and off and rebooting all of the registers happens five times over the next two and a half hours.

AWESOME.

In addition, the other part of the store that was crippled: Starbucks. No espresso can be made, no milk can be steamed, no working blenders or anything like that. Bargain hunters who were wanting to make their morning latte run in our store were out of luck. Now, granted, in Boulder County you can't sneeze without a barista saying "Gesundheit" but even still, it was inconvenient.

But, wait, it gets better. One of the managers, the one that, frankly, I would be least sad to see transfer to a store far, far away, volunteers me to be doorman. Basically, I need to greet customers as they walk in the door and reassure them that we are, in fact, open. (In addition, I am to watch the exit doors, so that way, if the lights go black AGAIN, I can keep an eye that people don't steal shit and sprint for the door.) As I stand there, I have to listen to one of a few quips from EVERY SINGLE CUSTOMER:

1. "Are you turning off the lights to save electricity? Is the energy crisis that bad? Heh heh."
2. "I've heard of Black Friday but not Blackout Friday, heh heh!"
3. "Did you forget to pay your electrical bill? Heh heh."

AWESOME.

Now, this does not top the story of the worst Target front lanes horror story from the store near the university (back-to-school, only one cashier before noon on a Saturday, and no working plumbing) but I rather think that those stories are exaggerated for dramatic effect, like the time I was the sole closer for the entire front lanes during a snowstorm. And, to be fair, the customers were actually really good-natured about all the waiting, or if they weren't, they just left before we had to deal with them. Black Friday brings out the people looking for specific items who want to get in, grab their stuff, and get the hell out and be on their merry way to Best Buy or Kohl's without arguing with us; the true assholes come and do their shopping on the weekend before Christmas, as well as on the morning of Christmas Eve.

I spent the rest of the afternoon restocking the furniture and bedding departments, where virtually nothing was on sale, avoiding the throngs of humanity. Partaking of the free sandwiches in the breakroom , I watched as the TV aired a Walmart commercial, and I said under my breath "Well, at least they probably have power." I took my deeply discounted DVD box sets of the first three seasons of The Office to a checklane, and left the madness behind me, visions of leftovers dancing in my head.

I'm feeling down, trapped, stuck in a rut.

I did not get the job that I really had my hopes up for... the ONE person in the office that I really, really knew I had no chances of competing against in terms of credentials, the one that is retired and had never shown any interest in applying for any of the other openings in the past... yeah, she applied and got it. Plus, the second job opening in my building went to someone from the home office that transferred (although I am beginning to suspect that the job qualifications they're looking for are much higher than what are listed on the job description.) So, taking this in consideration along with the fact that it seems that the corporate office is wanting to make all hiring decisions for the three satellite decisions and completely cut the site managers that know us out of the equation, it's becoming painfully obvious that I'm in for a long wait if I want a permanent job in this place, and that I'm at an incredible disadvantage not being located at the main office, for those candidates are more on the radar of those making the hiring decisions. I don't know. I like what I do, and I want to make a career out of this, but seeing as I don't see any additional positions opening up at my office any time soon, I don't want to sit around temping and working a second retail job for five years waiting for something to open up, either, but I know applying for any comparable jobs with a competitor would only result in me having to compete with dozens of the competitor's own temps before getting rejected seeing as overqualified English majors are not in short supply, but at the same time, I don't think it's smart to try and be an underemployed English major in this economy, plus the thought of falling back on retail management while I sort out what I want to do makes my soul shrivel up a little bit.

Bah. I just feel frustrated, like I'm wasting my life, and would not hesitate a second to run off to somewhere else, anywhere else, if I felt I had a good opportunity.

Faced with a four-day weekend and feeling ambitious enough to do something other than watching football and eating Pringles all weekend, I made some last-minute plans to visit the southwestern part of Colorado to visit Mesa Verde National Park, because I realized that I've lived here for four years and have seen nothing of the western two-thirds of the state. I was going to take a series of pictures with the elderly hand-me-down digital camera my dad gave me and force you all to look at my pictures on Facebook, but turns out the camera's a piece of crap with battery life that is roughly as long as the life span of a fruit fly, so if you really need visuals, check out Wikipedia.

Friday I set off across the state to go to Cortez, my base camp not far from Mesa Verde, which is down at the southwest corner of the state. Although I am itching to demonstrate on my hand where this is located, it is not in Michigan, so instead I ask you to draw a rectangle that is wider than it is tall, and then draw an X in the lower left corner. That's Cortez and Mesa Verde. I digress. I proceeded across the state through all the expensive ski resort communities, the ones where a trailer can set you back a good half-million, and then down through the western part of the state where I was about to embark on the last chunk of the journey from Montrose to Durango over what is known as "the Million Dollar Highway", US-550. This would take me through the Uncompahgre Mountains to Durango, just a bit east of my final destination. So I start the scenic drive to the south, into the mountains. At this point, I wish to point out that I am afraid of open heights. If I have a guardrail or something between me and a steep plummet, I'm okay.

Apparently, with a million dollars, you can't buy fucking guardrails.

So here I am, driving in slightly rainy conditions up twisting mountain roads, at an elevation of 10,000 feet, up a narrow, switchback-filled two lane road, with nothing between me and oblivion but an extra few feet of pavement. As Wikipedia so succinctly describes it, "Though the entire stretch has been called the Million Dollar Highway, it is really the twelve miles south of Ouray through the Uncompahgre Gorge to the summit of Red Mountain Pass which gains the highway its name. The stretch through the gorge is characterized by steep cliffs and the lack of guardrails, and the ascent of Red Mountain Pass is characterized by the number of hairpin "S" curves used to gain elevation. During this ascent, the remains of the Idarado Mine are visible. Travel north from Silverton to Ouray allows drivers to hug the inside of curves; travel south from Ouray to Silverton perches drivers on the vertiginous outside edge of the highway. Large RVs travel in both directions, which adds a degree of excitement (or danger) to people in cars." The Red Mountain Pass article adds "The pass is known for being treacherous in the wintertime due to the steep 8% grade (slope) on the north side facing Ouray, though the entire road is paved. At times, (while driving) you may look out your window, if you're cliffside, and see no road but only the valley 1,000 plus feet below you. Many switchbacks and tight spots add to the difficulty. Roadside monuments mark where cars, trucks, semis and snowplows have plunged off the road, resulting in death." Isn't that special?

I have never actually had an anxiety attack before, but I suspect that's about as close as I'd like to get. Needless to say, I crept up that road like a granny, and two hours and a bit of hyperventilation later, I arrived in Durango and proceeded onward to Cortez, where my first action after checking in to my deluxe Days Inn accommodation was to buy some beer because, dear lord, I needed it. It may well have been a scenic drive; I don't know, I was too busy trying to not soil my boxer briefs or plummet 1500 feet to my death.

The next morning, I proceeded up yet another series of switchbacks to Mesa Verde National Park to view the ancient cliff dwellings. The Ancient Puebloans (we no longer call them Anasazi because apparently it's not PC) built a series of temples/dwellings/grain storage facilities on the undersides of cliffs. It was actually really cool, getting to enter two of these palaces, Cliff Palace and Spruce Tree House, and look around. There was one I chose not to tour because entry involved scaling a three-story ladder, and I'd already had my allotment of vertigo for the week. Just as I was about to leave the park, it began to downpour as I went on to my next adventure... Four Corners!

Four Corners is the spot where four states converge into one point: Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, and Colorado. Since I was only about 40 miles from there, I figured I should drive out in the pouring rain to see it. I had been told it was out in the middle of nowhere, but driven by the memory of that episode of The Simpsons where they were all holding hands and standing in different states, I pressed on, driving through the rain into the desert. I arrived, and it was completely underwhelming, a series of plywood Navajo frybread shacks surrounding a small monument showing the intersection of the four states. After looking around respectfully, and placing my size-14 foot so that it was spread over all four states simultaneously, I realized that it was really kind of anticlimactic and I was wet and cold and standing in a parking lot in the middle of ass-nowhere, so I drove back to Cortez. After having assessed the town as having not much of interest aside from biker bars, fast fooderies with unusually surly and unhelpful staff that treated me as invisible, as well a Denny's and a Wal-Mart, I proceeded to go back to the hotel to drink beer and watch a marathon of MythBusters.

Upon hearing a weather forecast that indicated that the panic-inducing road through the Uncompahgres was going to be covered with 6-10 inches of snow, I changed my plans and decided that it would be a great time to go to Arches National Park in Utah, because it wasn't that out of the way, and involved a route that involved flatter land.... that, and the alternative route in Colorado, Wolf Creek Pass, apparently has a country song immortalizing it that involves a semi going off a cliff. You see, in Utah, unlike Colorado, people have the sense to make the highways go AROUND the mountains, not spiraling up the sides of them... except, of course, at the entryway of Arches National Park. Apparently, any scenic region of the American Southwest can only be reaching by driving along the edge of a cliff. At any rate, touring Arches was actually quite beautiful, as the red-rocked landscape seemed reminiscent of the Martian landscapes in fantasy sequences in Calvin and Hobbes.

On that high note, I set off for home, encountering a few snowflakes just after leaving Vail, feeling well-rested and relaxed, and vowing to never go across the Million Dollar Highway ever again.

So tonight I was back-up cashiering at the end of the evening, because there was a bit of a rush. There was a group of ten or so twenty-somethings. They had several small purchases, including eight DiGiorno pizzas, six bags of Doritos, and about ten pounds of chocolate Halloween candy. They all had red eyes and had trouble figuring out how to operate the credit card reader. Gosh, I wonder what they were doing this evening?

All in all, it was one of those obnoxiously hilarious nights... somewhere between one of our, umm, more eccentric co-worker's proclamation that her tendinitis was "probably from all the handjobs," the guy that went to the girls' department and asked for help being fit for a training bra(!!!) and the legion of potheads at the end of the night, we had a lot of fun.

Oh, and a retail horror story, because I haven't had any good ones for a while. Actually, this one isn't my story, it happened to a good friend of mine who works in health and beauty a few weeks ago. She was taking phone calls for the infants section one afternoon, and had a call on the line for diapers.

It was a guy, claiming to be a dwarf who needed help finding diapers. Apparently, because he was of such small stature, Depends would not fit him, and he needed guidance finding the correct size in the infants department. So my friend, being a twenty-something with no children and no clue what to do, tried her best to figure this out, using the weight listing on the diaper boxes to figure this out.

So what's the verdict?

a) Crank caller!

b) I'm a heartless asshole who has no compassion for the challenges of incontinent little people.

c) Dude was not only a crank caller, but he's some infantilist freak (you know, like that dude on that episode of CSI who drank the LSD-laced breast milk and jumped off his balcony wearing a diaper? Did I hallucinate that episode?) who was getting off on the whole conversation and was probably masturbating the entire time.

Personally, I am leaning towards C, but I told my friend A because I didn't want to gross her out.

Disclaimer: What follows is a flight of fantasy written by a snarky employee and does not represent the views of Target as a whole. I do not need to be sent to a reeducation camp in northern Minnesota for these views, for I am about 85% sure that I'm just joking.

So I have written before on my multiple experiences in the retail sector. I have written about myriad customers, their odd demands, strange requests, laughable antics, and occasional psychotic breaks. I have written about the somewhat absurd antics of my co-workers and their needlessly Grey's Anatomy-like personal lives. But one thing I have not written about is the Target management structure. Now, I have, in four years, worked with I would guess 30-40 different store-level managers (nine or so positions which have turned over about every year) and have worked with some truly awesome managers, many that were decent, some that were adequate, and one or two that I would not mind seeing transfer to the new store in Wasilla, Alaska opening next month.

However, I have one belief in which I cannot be shaken: that many of the Target management team are grown in pods in a series of underground laboratories in Minnesota. There is much too high of a percentage of our managers that are ex-Minnesotans, and... well... let me describe what I mean by "Target pod-people" management. The pod-people are the managers who use "brand" as an adjective, which is something that makes an English major die just a little inside, and there are many of us working retail. Example: "We need the tables in ready-to-wear looking brand." They are the ones that love, love, LOVE the culture of drowning the team members with shallow praise for, you know, actually doing their damned job. They even write out the stupid little notecards where they praise us for, well, doing our jobs. These are the ones that make inane comments praising us for properly communicating over the walkie-talkies and I kind of feel a little like I'm around that girl I went to college with that talked to everyone like she was their special-ed teacher.

The pod people come in a variety of levels. I have worked with one that is apparently the super-deluxe version of the pod-person (she's extremely hard-working, knowledgeable, and supportive) and I have worked with some that fall more to that level of smarmy douchiness that is usually only found in camp counselors.

However, outside the pod-people, there is the dreaded fresh-out-of-college manager. They are always 23 years old, and vary wildly in the amount of competence and management experience. The guys look kind of like youthful-looking college freshman fraternity pledges; it is doubtful that they need to shave more than twice a month, and yet somehow, the fratty 23-year old guys always, always, ALWAYS have a ridiculously hot fiancee. I don't know how that works. At least once a year an angry customer demanding to see a manager will become enraged that "we couldn't find a grown-up."

The 23-year old girls are usually part of the ever-changing softlines team, and are either mostly competent, kind of bitchy and like to downward delegate OR they are naive and clueless, but too nice for you to resent them for that. By Target management standards, I am elderly at the age of 26 and am older than half of my supervisors.

Once in a while, you get the Grizzled Veteran. The Grizzled Veteran has worked for Target longer than most of the other managers have been alive, and has probably worked over the course of his/her career at fifteen different Target stores in several states, and no matter how bad things are, they have experienced worse (including one that had worked at an inner-city Chicago store that experienced an arson as distraction for a shoplifting ring!) and will share those stories with you. The Grizzled Veterans are above needing to drown you in shallow praise, for which I am grateful.

Finally, there is "I have no clue how to do your job, so I assume it's unimportant/ I can do it better and give you suggestions on how to run the front lanes/ I can cut your staff and put them in my area because it's more important/ I can micromanage the hell out of you because I have nothing better to do" guy. He's always an ass; we always hate him.

Yes, I have been watching a lot of the Olympics this year. Yeah, yeah, I know, I should be all self-righteously offended by the fact that China is attempting to sweep aside its horrendous human-rights records like a college student trying to hide the bong before Campus Safety enters his dorm room, and I still find Bob Costas to be an irritating little prick, but yet I get captivated by my love of completely bizarre and obscure sports. Think about it. Kobe Bryant? Superstar all year round. But if you're a table tennis player from Bulgaria or something, this is going to be your shining moment, and for that reason, I find that easy to cheer for.

SWIMMING AND THE FEATS OF BRAVERY OF SAINT MICHAEL OF BALTIMORE: First, I must comment on Michael Phelps. I commend his performance, and I am very thankful that he can, at least, conduct an interview without coming across as a douchey asshat, so I will assume he's a good guy who works hard for what he's won. That being said, I am over hearing about him. I have seen every one of his races eighteen times, I know his shoe size, NBC tells me what he had for breakfast, and I think they've shown everything but him taking a crap; I still maintain he is AquaMan's illegitimate son. Yes, the rest of the US Swim Team has taken a backseat to him (aside from Dara Torres, who wins medals against girls half her age without complaining about those damned whippersnappers who won't get off her lawn) but I think it's deserved. I kind of would have loved, just a tiny bit, if one of the relay swimmers had told a reporter "fuck Michael Phelps, this was for me" since I suspect that Phelps would have found that kind of funny.

BADMINTON: Wow, Olympic Badminton. Okay, that was more hardcore than I had expected, watching those Chinese women with the 200 mph serves on those little shuttlecocks. Damn. It wasn't as boring as I had expected. Plus, "shuttlecock" is fun to say. Shuttlecock shuttlecock shuttlecock!

OTHER SPORTS OF THE OBSCURE: Handball appears to combine the least interesting aspects of soccer and basketball and I can't figure out why I'm supposed to care. Fencing seems in theory like it could almost be cool, except it just involves a lot of quick swordplay and then flashing lights on the fencers' helmets and I can't figure out what's going on and I feel stupid. I prefer the house style of fencing I created in middle school where Derek and I would use pencils to swordfight and we would yell out random French words.

GYMNASTS: Next, the true American dream is to have a team of gymnasts composed of the children of gymnasts that defected from the former USSR to compete against a team full of suspiciously youthful Chinese gymnasts (seriously, if you told a cop "but, officer, she said she was sixteen!" about any of them... you'd be looking at a long prison term, right there.) Hopefully, once those girls grow up, they too will defect to the US and their children will give us some gold medals in, like, 2036 or something. I think that the reporters are disappointed that cute, bouncy, winsome Shawn Johnson lost out to the quiet, introverted, cold-as-ice Nastia Liukin. This is how we know we won the Cold War, right there... the daughter of two Soviet Olympians is now a Texan.

RUNNING: Apparently the Romanian woman who won the marathon lives like three miles away from me. I would not have expected that she was a local, having assumed she lived in Romania. She'll make the cover of the local pennysaver Erie Review, at least, which I only read for the unintentionally hilarious police blotter section.

REPORTERS: Why must every single stupid American reporter do a special report on all the weird things Chinese people eat? I am fully convinced that there are restaurants in Beijing where the chefs are just bringing out the random organ meats and insects just to see if they can convince gullible Americans that they actually eat that shit. "Hey, Chang, I'm going to try and convince an anchorwoman from Des Moines that we eat duck heads fermented in six-year-old pig urine!" "Right on. I'm giving a reporter from Omaha a bowl of soup that's made out of grasshoppers and ox placenta!" After bravely trying the "local cuisine" the reporter will then go visit the panda preserve, because pandas are CUTE! and then ask some ill-advised repetitive interview questions to the athletes. "Phil Dalhausser, you're an Olympic beach volleyball player, you're freakishly tall and went bald in your early twenties, and apparently you were born in Switzerland, but more importantly, what do you think about Michael Phelps?"

Shuttlecock!

1. Never, EVER volunteer to help any packrat friends or family members, for example your father, move or pack up belongings.

2. If you are helping a packrat move or get a house ready to close, make sure that the amount of stuff that they want to take will fit in his SUV.

3. The hours of the Salvation Army in Rochester Hills are from 9-8 and the DHL counter at the OfficeMax is open until 9:00. (See #1 and #2.)

4. There is a hotel in East Lansing where, apparently, the rooms are outfitted to double as filming locations for amateur pornography, complete with hot tub, mood lighting, and most surfaces mirrored.

5a. Never mock someone, say Will, for only going for the mildest sauce choices at Buffalo Wild Wings, even going so far as to call him a girl.

5b. If someone, say Don, calls him a girl for preferring the Teriyaki, be prepared for him to challenge him to a Blazin' Wing eat-off, the Blazin' wings being apparently flavored with habanero pepper and napalm.

5c. Never try to eat the Blazin' Wings unless you have a death lust or a colon made of asbestos.

5d. If two people do decide to engage in this competition, all of your friends will engage in a mock-Sportscenter pregame debate of the merits of the two competitors and their chances of winning.

5e. If you do decide to engage in this sort of competition, make sure that:
i) you are not going to have to drive clear the hell up to Iron Mountain the following morning to meet your girlfriend's grandmother or
ii) you are not going to waste your night that could be spent with your girlfriend in a porn-rific suite with mirrors and hot tubs in the bathroom of said porn-y suite.

5f. Apparently, lamaze breathing techniques help one get through this ordeal.

5g. "I can do it. My ass will hurt for a week, but I can do it" can be said, under these circumstances, in a way that does not sound totally gay.

5h. Receiving a text message from the "winner" of the contest the next day where he asks you in all seriousness "have you ever crapped molten lead?" was my favorite part.

I assume Facebook will reach people faster, but what the hell.

In a nutshell: I will be back in Michigan later this month, but only for a few days. I have to get the last of my stuff out of my dad's basement because his house in Troy finally sold, and then my tenuous connection to Michigan is more or less completely severed. At any rate, I will probably be arriving on the night of Sunday, July 20, and probably staying for about three days. So if you want to be graced by my presence, let me know.

I have actually topped the "crapezoid" found in a student paper yesterday. One of my senior readers (that is what we call the supervisors one level down from me) came up to me and said that she had a funny but inappropriate thing to share that she had found in a student response. Let's just say that in a story problem, where the student has to explain that they had to count the perimeter, that if the student accidentally omits a single letter "o" from the word "count", pandemonium will ensue. Because we are, apparently, twelve.

I've not posted in a month, so I feel pressured to write something profound, but... yeah, that's not happening tonight.

Question #1: What is a working operational definition for the geometric shape called a "crapezoid?" We've been working on this at work for a few days now, and I must say, fourth grade math is appearing to addle my brain. We think it's either A) a geometrically-shaped poo, B) a description for the three-dimensional shape of a turd, C) a figure drawn in a standardized test where the kid just doesn't give a shit, or D) a derogatory term for our second-largest client at work. (Actually, the correct answer for D is "Clusterfuck-tucky.")

Questions #2a, 2b and 2c: A question of etiquette: how much time is a male office employee expected to spend at a baby shower for a female co-worker that he only knows slightly? Can he murmur congratulations, nab some cake, and let the women talk? Since it's a lesbian couple's shower, I assume we are supposed to avoid discussion of the miracle of artificial insemination and try like hell to not think about turkey basters?

Question #3: How many more Coldplay albums am I going to have to buy before I realize that I really only liked A Rush of Blood to the Head and that all of their subsequent albums will leave me a little disappointed?

Question #4: Is it wrong that, as a result of watching old episodes of The Office on DVD, that I sometimes ask myself "what would Jim Halpert do?" He is my new role model, and if I were a fourteen-year-old girl, I would totally have a poster of him in my locker.

Question #5: Do I have a moral obligation to tell a friend that I had a dream that he accidentally knocked up his girlfriend and was really depressed and freaked out about it? Prophetic dreams are something that run on my paternal grandmother's side of the family, even though I have not shown any evidence of such paranormal gifts. It is also possible that my worries of my potentially feeling awkward at the previously mentioned lesbian baby shower were in my subconscious, and that's where that dream stemmed from.