Buffet

There’s this pancake joint at the edge of town that I frequent in the small hours of the morning when I’m too bored to stay at home and too wired to sleep. It’s not even that good. In fact, I tried the rival chain across the street and I actually enjoyed it more.

            Something always calls me back to this specific place, though. It’s not the pancakes. Definitely not the pancakes. Most of the time they’re still half-batter when the plate hits the table of my usual corner booth that could seat six but only ever seats two.

            It’s certainly not the staff. They act with as much tact and grace as anyone working graveyard shifts does, except they’ve somehow found a way to be less enthusiastic about it. The only good thing about them is that they act as a constant reminder that my life could be a whole lot worse.

            They come from all over. Most of them are Mexican, of course, but there’s also a German woman and an Albanian man, neither of whom have gotten a complete grasp on American culture and customs. The German woman has always struck me as the type to be a dominatrix in one of those European BDSM houses. She looks like she had the required foxiness and unorthodox beauty to fit the part when she was younger.

            My favorite of all of them is the constantly strung-out teenaged girl called Ruby. She never seems to know where she is or what she’s doing. I call her the “and a show” part of my dinner and a show.

            The condition of the place is desperately lacking as well. It’s part of a big and famous national chain that got some screen time in a few big budget movies, but it seems like the corporate offices forgot about this location when they were upgrading the look of all of their franchises.

            It’s still got the same mustard-yellow wallpaper that it had when mustard-yellow wallpaper was last considered acceptable, which was at least thirty years ago based on the missing flakes and decrepit nature of it all.

            Honestly, if I were the CEO of the whole company I’d have made a special point to forget about this place too, solely because of the owner. His name is Buster, a name he pronounces “Busthter” on account of the large gaps in his mouth where teeth should be. He’s probably the most unpleasant person I’ve ever met. He’s racist, misogynistic, and - despite the miraculous survival of his business – irreconcilably stupid.

            “Them niggers that run th’ comp’ny want plathes like thisth t’die off,” Buster told me once when he was so short-staffed that he had to serve me food. “They ain’t got the sthame focusth on usth sthmaller franchisthesth anymore.”

            I’ve done a lot of research on this chain, mostly because my line of work gives me an exorbitant amount of free time. I know for a fact that the higher ups are actually Jewish and not, as Buster tries so hard to believe, black. I told him as much when he talked to me next.

            “Ah don’t matter,” he said, waving a withered hand dismissively. “Kikesth isth justh olive sthkinned niggersth.”

            What really brings me back here, and not somewhere classier with less “riff-raff”, is the kinds of people that walk through the door. Every time a junkie with mad-dog eyes sits down at a table next to me, I remember that you just can’t beat the selection of people who come into pancake joints at one in the morning.

            This is mostly because there is no good reason for wanting breakfast food after noon and before 4 in the morning. You’re either drunk, severely depressed, destitute, going through some shit, or some variation thereof. If you’re in a pancake joint in the part of the 24-hour day that no one is excited for, you’ve got some issues running through your head.

            For a telepath like me, it’s an all-you-can-eat buffet.

            Tonight I came by myself and was disappointed by the selection. Ruby is working, which is at least a little fun, but the rest of the crew is made up of high-school kids, who are usually too young to have done anything interesting that I can read into and are almost always thinking about sex and alcohol, which is only interesting until you’ve heard about exactly three of their “epic keggers”.

            I’ve been sitting down for a few minutes when a derelict-looking man who looks like he’s never heard the word “shave” used in a sentence sits down opposite me.

            Hank has changed a lot since he taught me in 1^st Grade. Back then he was a fresh-faced Irish-Catholic kid straight out of University. I suppose I’m more than a little responsible for his current appearance, seeing as I was the one who ruined his career all of those years ago.

            It was within the first few weeks of 1^st Grade, I was maybe 6 or 7. I was one of those “trouble kids” you hear about whenever teachers share their battle scars. I never wanted to sit still and whenever I did I’d never shut up.

            Hank was a few months removed from graduating Magna Cum Laude from the University of North Texas with an Education Masters. He could have had any job he wanted, but he had a special passion for teaching young children. He took the first vacant 1^st Grade position he could find and ended up teaching me my basic math and grammar.

            To his credit, he did an outstanding job of it. He had “Teacher of the Year” written all over him from Day One, but the class – more specifically me – seemed to want to make sure he earned it.

            One day I’d found out how fun pulling on little Susie Jenkins’ ponytail was. Hank, then known to me as Mr. Kennedy, told me to stop repeatedly. After I didn’t he went through the process that he’d learned in school for dealing with my kind of situation, which ended up in him dragging me out into the hallway to lecture me on how I should play nice with others.

            I continued my campaign of rebellion outside of the classroom. Hank kept telling me that I needed to calm down and I kept responding to his increasingly desperate pleas with what he’d later call a “shitty little smile”. After he realized that he wasn’t getting through to me, he hung his head and sighed deeply.

            And that’s when I first heard it. Even though his mouth was visibly expelling a sigh, I heard Hank Kennedy think.

            He had thought “all the kids that have been aborted and this one had to avoid the coathanger.”

            I asked my parents what “aborted” meant that night and was told to explain where I’d learned that word. My fuming mother and father marched me into school the next day, bursting into the Principal’s office and demanding that he fire Hank on the spot. The look on Hank’s face when my mother shouted what he’d thought to himself the day before was priceless. I remind him of it constantly.

            “So what’s everyone thinking today, sport?” Hank asks me while looking over the menu.

            “A few are asking when this place turned into a soup kitchen,” I reply, examining Hank’s tattered green coat. Hank ignores the comment.

            “Any emotionally damaged chicks I can take advantage of?” he asks. If I tried, I could probably find the answer to this question fairly easily. I’m certainly not above using my ability to get someone laid, but I enjoy screwing with Hank more than I do seeing him together with someone.

            “Uncle Ben,” I tell him sagely. This is in reference to that one line in Spiderman about power and responsibility. If I felt compelled to help people, it’s probably the mantra by which I’d live my life. As it stands, it’s just a convenient way to kill Hank’s carnal dreams.

            Hank shakes his head and keeps on reading the menu.

            “The Big Breakfast?” I ask after reading his thoughts and seeing that he’s dwelling on the most expensive meal on the menu.

            “I’m hungry,” Hank mumbles. Hank is never hungry, a side effect of the crippling alcoholism he’s been sustaining since he had his teaching license revoked. I look deeper into his thoughts.

            “Two weeks sober,” I say. “I’d congratulate you but it was hardly by choice, was it?”

            “Fuck off, kid,” Hank snarls. “You’re the reason I’m in this mess in the first place.”

            This is the line Hank uses whenever I start to criticize his habit. It’s the last bit of “high ground” over me that he has left, mainly because there’s a bit of truth in it.

            “Right,” I say, “because I’ve forced you to drink a 12-pack of Bud Light a night since I was 10.”

Hank glares at me over his menu. My favorite thing about our relationship is how he just has to think about shooting me the bird for me to get the message.

A waitress steps up to our table. She’s new, which is always an interesting experience. I do a quick scan of her. She’s got one of those new-age punk haircuts; closely shorn on both sides of her head with the middle still long and pulled back into a ponytail.

“Can I get you guys anything to drink?” she asks. Of course I get stuck with a fucking hobo on the first table of the night, she thinks.

I read a little deeper. She just got scheduled on a bunch of graveyard shifts because she started shouting at a family of four during a breakfast shift for only tipping 5%.

Hank waves his hand dismissively, I see a muscle twitch in the new waitresses’ face.

“A few more minutes then?” she asks. I’m gonna spit in this motherfucker’s food, she thinks.

“I’m actually ready to order now,” I say. “Breakfast Sampler with Coke, please.”

“How would you like your eggs?” she asks. This asshole is getting spit too, she thinks.

“Spit-free,” I say, unable to resist. She and Hank give me quizzical looks. “Sorry, scrambled, please. And a Big Breakfast for him, Sunny side up.”

“Okay, we’ll have it right out,” she says slowly as she takes the menus. He orders for him? God, a fag and a hobo and it’s not even 2 o’clock, she thinks.

I quickly grab Hank’s hand and massage the top of it with my thumb. The waitress notices and walks away as quickly as she can without looking like she’s in a rush. I follow her with my eyes until she disappears into the kitchen.

“The hand,” Hank says. I look down to notice that I’m still grasping his hand.

“Sorry,” I say, pulling away. “She thought we were gay so I ran with it.” I reach into my coat pocket and pull out the silverware I always bring from home. I don’t trust the dishwashers here after reading how they feel about their jobs.

“Spit-free?” Hank asks, still wearing a slightly confused expression.

“It’s good to specify when I’m eating with you,” I reply. 

“So the new girl,” Hank shifts.

“You want to know all about her?” I ask. He nods. “Why? So you can try to impress her by buying her a case of Natty Light and giving her a tour of that closet you call an apartment?”

“Are you done?” Hank asks without a change of expression. Years and years of my brand of critique has numbed him to its effect. I bet most people would have stopped trying to get through to him by now, but I just see it as a good vent.

Really it’s a wonder that he still keeps hanging around me. I guess it’s not that he wants to be in my company, he just knows that no one else will talk to him anymore. He looks about fifteen years older than he actually is and at least that many years closer to his death.

I sigh. Every night, except for the rare occasions when Hank finally has enough and storms out, eventually ends up in me actually using my power for Hank’s entertainment. Most of the time I can hold off until our meals come out.

“The new girl,” I say, seeing that our waitress has stepped back out of the kitchen. I start digging as deep as I can. “Hailey Melrose. 18. Dropped out of Plano West in Junior Year. Now lives with her 26-year old half-hispanic boyfriend who sells pot out of his job in a meat market a few blocks from here. Crippling fear of spiders. Got pregnant at homecoming during sophomore year, got rid of it by riding the Texas Giant as Six Flags. Last two boyfriends are in prison for armed robbery.”

“Bad luck,” Hank says.

“Not really,” I say. “It was the same incident. They were – oh wow – they were brothers. And she was with them at the same time.”

“Doesn’t look the type,” Hank says.

“That’s because you can’t see her tramp stamp,” I say. “It’s a fairy.” I point to a table across the restaurant. “Over there. Woman in the pink and white striped shirt with bleached blonde hair reaching into her fake Prada bag. 56, divorcee, just got dumped by her most recent latin lover because ‘joo are like a blow-up doll, senora.’”

“56?” Hanks says. “From here she doesn’t look a day over 30.”

“From here,” I stress. “She’s got ‘Dancing Queen’ by ABBA stuck in her head. No one under 40 actually listens to ABBA anymore.”

“What if it’s the…”

“It’s not the Mama Mia version,” I interrupt. “I checked.”

Before Hank can reply, the woman turns around towards us, revealing a face that looks as though it’s been repeatedly assaulted with a leatherbound collection of botched plastic surgeries. Hank straightens up in his seat and does his best to avoid making eye contact with the woman.

“So,” he says quickly. “What about daddy issues over there in the corner?” I turn to look at who Hank is referring to.

There’s a girl sitting in in a corner booth to my right. She’s wearing a black leather jacket over a white wifebeater and a pair of jeans that wouldn’t look out of place at the end of an industrial paper shredder. All of this is over the top of a remarkably small frame and capped with a completely shaved head.

“This is going to be good,” I say. I start to dig as deep as I can.

I hear someone thinking inside this girl’s head, but I know it’s not her. I’ve hear that voice whenever I’m in need of a quick laugh. It’s Ruby’s voice, that distinct, vacant tone that’s usually thinking about toenail polish and pink socks.

God, Ruby thinks. Look at this walking fashion disaster over here. Oh my god, is this even a girl? She looks like a boy. I should tell her she looks like a boy.

I turn to look at Hank. Maybe my power is on the fritz or something. Maybe I’m just not focusing.

What the hell? Why’s he suddenly look so frantic? Hank thinks. It’s not me, then. It’s this girl. She can read minds too. I turn and look back at her.

Why does she even have a leather jacket, Ruby thinks. This is Texas. She doesn’t even need a leather jacket. It’s like 86 degrees outside. I should tell her she doesn’t need a leather jacket.

Ruby’s thoughts are suddenly cut silent. I notice that the girl has noticed me staring at her. She’s got this contemptuous look set on her face that I’ve only ever seen before on nature documentaries about highly venomous snakes.

The fuck do you want, someone else thinks. This must actually be her.

How did you read her mind? I think. The girl’s eyes widen suddenly. The look of contempt is replaced with one of alarm.

Who are you? she thinks abruptly.

Who am I? Who the hell are you? I think.

“What’s going on?” Hank asks, perhaps noticing the sudden change of expression on both of our faces.

Shut up, Hank, I think.

Who the fuck’s Hank? she thinks.

Sorry, I think.

“Shut up, Hank,” I say aloud.

That’s Hank, I think.

Is he with you? she thinks. I look at Hank discerningly.

Well... not “with me”, per se, I think.

Who are you with?

Who am I with?
            FBI? CIA? How did you find me?

Whoah, whoah, what? Why would the Feds want to find you?

I can read minds, fuckwad. Why do you fucking think they want to find me?

Well I can read minds. they aren’t after me.

Yeah, well maybe you didn’t tell anyone about it like most of us did.

I told Hank.

You told a homeless guy.

He’s got an apartment.

Who the hell are you with?
            I’m not with anyone.

Bullshit.

I’m not.

We’ve all found ways to make a quick buck out of this. You’re with someone.

Really, I’m not.

I don’t have time for this. She stands up out of her seat, the fierce look back on her face, and storms past my corner booth.

Wait! I think. She keeps walking as I realize she can’t hear me unless she wants to.

“Wait!” I call out. She turns on her heel and fixes me with the same contemptuous look.

We can… I don’t know, team up or something? She starts to laugh derisively.

Un-fucking-likely. You’re on your own, she thinks. She turns back around and storms out of the restaurant.

“What the hell,” Hank says, “did I just watch?”

“She could… read minds,” I say. Hank looks at me as if this is some kind of unheard-of phenomena. “No really. She could.”

“What’d she say?” Hank asks.

“She said there were others but… I was on my own,” I say.

I think about this for a second. Am I on my own? I can’t be. I know so much about so many people. I can get through someone’s entire life story over dinner without even having to say a word to them.

But they know nothing to me. Hank doesn’t even know anything. He hasn’t even called me by my first name since he was y teacher. He just hangs around me because no one else but me will take the bullet.

Oh god. I’m on my own.

Second First Steps

-->

She was staring at a pile of dead bodies on the floor of a hallway when she finally realized what was happening.

She floated just above the floor, going slowly at first to get the hang of the brand of spectral movement she was expected to endure from now until the end of days. The carnage seemed less shocking from her current perspective. In her last few seconds, covered in her own blood and breathing frantic breaths, she had been mortified by the sight of so much gruesome death all around her. Now it was just part of the scenery, a painting done exclusively in shades of crimson, and it was oddly beautiful.

In life she had never been attracted to death. in truth she had been utterly terrified of it. But now it was as if every dead body she saw was just an affirmation that, in stark contrast to her time spent among the living, she was most certainly not alone.

“Hello?” she hazarded, expecting ghostly avatars of the bodies strewn across the hall to spring out of their mortal confines and join her in the afterlife. The air remained still and apparition-free, however.

“You’re new to this, aren’t you?” someone asked from the top of the stairs. She looked up in shock, even though she had just been steeling herself to see a chorus of ghosts erupt from mangled bodies. At the top of the landing, there was a translucent young boy with dapperly combed hair and a striped t-shirt looking down at her with a child-like expression of curiosity on his face.

“Y-yes,” she stammered. “Just started a few minutes ago, I think.”

“I’m Mike,” the boy said abruptly. “What’s your name?”

“Dana,” she replied without really knowing why.

“Does that scare you?” the boy asked, nodding at the pile of bodies in the hallway. She looked at the scene again, still expecting to feel repulsed by the sight of it, but still she examined it with a strange sense of appreciation.

“No,” she replied hazily. “Why is that?” The boy shrugged.

“I guess it’s because you aren’t afraid of dying no more. You know, ‘cause you’re already dead,” he posited. “Come upstairs. Everyone’s upstairs.”

“Everyone?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Mike said, “All of the others.”

“What others?” she asked.

“You’ll see,” he said. “Come on.” He waved his hand invitingly and disappeared through a wall. She glided towards the staircase and started walking up it, though her feet never actually touched any of the steps. Mike reappeared at the top of the stairs, a curious look on his face.

“What are you doing that for?” he asked.

“Doing what for?” she asked.

“Using the stairs like that. You know you can fly, right?”

“Sorry,” she chuckled, “Old habits die hard.”

“Harder than that?” Mike asked, nodding once again at the carnage in the hall. She looked down at all of the bodies again. From this angle, she finally realized the brutality of the scene. Blood had splattered the fading green wallpaper where severed arteries had sprayed out the last of their contents, a collection of limbs were hanging from the cheap plastic chandelier, and internal organs that she would have known the names of if she’d paid attention in high school had been distributed untidily on top of a cabinet in the corner of the hall. But still none of it fazed her.

“No,” she admitted. “I suppose not.” With a tremendous amount of effort, she willed herself off the ground with such force that her head went straight through the ceiling and into a children’s bedroom on the next highest floor, wherein there was another grisly scene involving at least five different men of varying size and ethnicity.

Mike’s head popped up next to hers, a boyish grin splashed on his face.

“It’s okay,” he said reassuringly. “Some people never really get the hang of it.” His head started to slowly drift away from her. “Come on. This way.” She followed him slowly, not wanting to accidentally pass through Mike before knowing the ramifications of ghost-on-ghost contact. He rose out of the floor just before reaching a door and turned back to her with a smile.

“She’s here,” he called out loud before disappearing through the door. She slowly rose upwards as well, her feet drifting a few inches above the floorboards.

For some reason she couldn’t understand, she took a deep breath. That would have been her normal response when she was alive, but even now, just a few minutes after she had lost the need for oxygen, she thought she was just being silly.

Old habits die hard, she thought to herself, but not as hard as the poor bastards in the hallway downstairs.

She drifted into the next room, eager to start her afterlife.

Some Inspiration

You are an infinitesimally small and insignificant fleck of dust. No matter what you do, no matter how hard you try, you will never make an impact on the Universe.

When the Universe comes to an end, when time itself ceases to be, no one will cry your name. Nothing will look to you for inspiration.

When you die, the only things that will mourn you are more flecks of dust. Flecks of dust that you might have helped form into the flecks of dust that they are.

It's time to come to grips with something, and that is that this slice of time and space was not made with you in mind. Had two small, insignificant pieces of matter not been particularly fond of each other and you hadn't come into existence, the Universe would never have known the difference.

Deal with it. It's a harsh truth, but, as a great man once said, knowledge is preferred to ignorance.

While we're at it, this microscopically small piece of cosmic real estate called the Milky Way does not exist so that our spherical collection of rock and water can lazily float around a ball of gas.

It exists for only one reason, and that is, rather redundantly, just because it does.

There is no hidden meaning, there is no purpose or pattern. There just is.

Now with that in mind, you trifling piece of carbon, look up from whatever screen you're reading this on and contemplate how trivial your existence is.

Now back to me.

There is one phrase that wholly defines the "carpe diem" philosophy to life. Whenever Carl Sagan spoke about our pale blue piece of dust suspended in a beam of light, albeit with a more impressive education than I can claim ownership of to back him up, he got a bit long winded.

When I said "one phrase" I exaggerated slightly. It's really just two words.

As much as it pains me to disagree with the great Douglas Adams, the answer to life, the Universe, and everything is not "42".

Then what is, you ask?

"Fuck it."

When you do something less than flattering in front of a group of people and start feeling embarrassed - Fuck it. Your faux pas has not shifted mountains nor split atoms. When you finally straighten your irrelevant ass up, you'll be living in the same Universe as you were before you make a complete dunce out of yourself. The only difference will be that a pointless and unsubstantial collection of flecks might have a poor opinion of you.

Luckily, the Universe doesn't run on the opinions of those of us who don't have a sense of humor so, you guessed it, fuck it and fuck them too.

What I'm trying to get at is that life, otherwise known as the period of time that we are warm flecks of dust as opposed to the rotting, cold ones that we will inevitably become, is not given to us so that we can carefully tip-toe within pre-determined lines and preserve our fleshy tokens of existence so that they will stay warm for longer and look good when they're buried in the ground.

It was given to us, by nothing more than the sheer randomness of the Universe, so that we could trip and fall into the mud, pick ourselves back up, maybe go careening off into a metal barrier or two, and come away with a smile on our faces saying "I'd do that again if I had the chance".

Except we don't, and hopefully never will, have that chance.

We have one life. It is short and it is, from time to time, a bit turbulent along the way, but what I believe some people have trouble grasping is that you really only do have one chance at it. Even if you believe that someday the sky is going to open up and you'll sit by some really bright dude's side for eternity, you will only have one chance at THIS life.

You have one, brief window to be young and in love. You have one first kiss, one first precious minutes with a newborn baby, one family, one 20th birthday, one first speeding ticket, one first home-cooked meal, one first bad experience with sushi, one first vulgar slip of the tongue in front of an audience, one first incredible first date, one first broken bone, one first case of stomach flu, and one first crying session at the end of a sad movie.

So the next time you're debating whether or not you should do something, remember that it might be your only chance to do it. So, in those situations, say what Carl Sagan (essentially) once said.

"Fuck it, might as well."

Now that you know just how minor and minute you are, go out and enjoy your damn self.

And always remember not to take yourself too seriously. You are, after all, nothing more than a paltry mass of dust.

The Fishmongers Lament

Look, I'm thrilled you're here to buy seafood. I'm thrilled that, given that you have a choice as to who you want to hand you your slimy slices of omega-3's, you chose this fine establishment. Really, I am legitimately delighted with your choice. It's probably going to contribute to my paycheck somewhere along the line. Hell, if you keep coming back enough, said paycheck might jump up a few bucks.

But, and I'm only saying this because I want this fresh and fun little thing of ours to continue on past today, I think we need to lay some ground rules.

1.) Once this fish leaves the store, it is not my problem.
Again, I'm simply chuffed to bits that I'm the one handing you this fish, but let's make one thing very clear: the only thing I care about is handing you that damn fish so you can get on home and enjoy that smug sense of superiority I've always imagined people who eat fish to have. I don't want to lead you on here. I don't want this simple transaction to give you hope that I can and will engage you in a riveting conversation about how you are going to prepare that fish.

I cannot and will not. Hell, even if I could I wouldn't. The world is full of interesting things and you're wasting our precious time together telling me how you might be a bit naughty and sprinkle some lemon pepper on your salmon? Do me a favor and turn on the Discovery Channel or something before you come into the store. Talk to me about what you saw. Enlighten me. Make my day a little more interesting.

But as to how you're cooking it? Well, in the words of a great scholar, "Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn."

You'll notice that there's a specification at the beginning of the heading that says "leaves the store" and not "transfers from my hands to yours". This is because, as shocking as I'm sure you'll find it, some of your fellow seafood enthusiasts have decided in the past, possibly mid-nose pick, that they don't want the fish that they just had me wrap up for them. Instead of politely returning the fish to me so that I can sell it to someone else, maybe even you, they chose to leave it on shelves next to dog food or in fridges next to the shredded cheese. Strangely enough, Tilapia doesn't go well with Alpo or Pepper Jack.

I know you aren't one of those people, so if you have a sudden change of heart, don't be afraid to come back to the place where we first met and give me back what I gave to you.

2.) I am not Gordon Ramsay.
In addition to not telling me about what you plan on doing with your fish, please please please don't ask me what I would do with it were I in your shoes. I know that the beard and the aura of raw masculinity might make it seem like I spend my days thinking up exciting new recipes for the fillet of salmon that I just gave you, but unfortunately for you and that remarkably off-the-mark imagination of yours that's just not the case.

Instead of telling you what my cooking prowess cannot do, let's take a look at what it can do.

My culinary skills require me to spend, on average, about 5 minutes picking through the cheese of the oven ready pizza I just cooked for little bits of melted plastic that I was either too lazy to or too stupid to remove from the pizza while it was still frozen, my signature dish is EasyMac, the only personal touch I've ever added to a food item was when I decided that I liked my peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with more peanut butter than jelly, and until recently I think I honestly thought that since Wheat bread was brown it tasted inherently worse than its white counterpart.

I'd also like to point out that, if I wasn't contractually obligated to answer your questions to the best of my ability, I would let you know, just about every time, that a few years ago someone who was probably Russian started this thing called "Google" and you should give it a whirl.

3.) Get your hands off it, you bitch.
"It" in this case refers to just about anything within the market that you haven't expressed interest in. This includes, but is certainly not limited to, the glass that we have to painstakingly rid of your grubby little handprints at the end of the night and the air on the other side of the glass.

That second part, before it got lost in the word-soup, was supposed to detail how I don't appreciate it when you point at things, especially while reaching over the glass that separates me from the outside world. Let me just say that whenever you do point at something in our case, regardless of whether or not your hand is on your side of the glass or not, you look like a massive dickhead.

Pointing at a fish in our case while saying "that one" or perhaps while somehow being even less helpful and just making a strained and slightly annoyed face does not tell me which piece of fish you want. Seeing as there are 3-4 pieces of fish in the area that you're pointing at, you're basically just saying "yes, that kind of fish. That one there that I just said you should give to me."

For the full effect of that last line, read it again in the voice of the dog from Up.

4.) This is a seafood market, not a political forum.
I don't know how things work where you're from, but a "political discussion" usually takes place between two people, most often when said people are on different sides of the argument. Part of that is true with us (the latter, if you're interested), but there is something blocking the other half from mixing together our dangerous cocktail of intrigue and opinion.

And that would be my contract.

If I hadn't pissed into a cup and signed a paper saying I wouldn't respond to your crackpot theories about who was really behind the Gulf oil spill (hint: It wasn't the government), I'd love to sit you down, open a nice bottle of wine, cook you a nice three course dinner, treat you right, maybe put on a little mood music, and thoroughly tear apart each and every aspect of your mind-crushingly dumb theory as if it were an ant colony in need of a good smiting and I were the cheeky little bastard with a magnifying glass. The kiss on the doorstep is optional.

Look. I am stuck behind a two and a half foot wide layer of what the tide dragged in for five hours of my precious life almost every other day. I really don't want to have to put up with your "unique and hard-hitting" opinions as well. What's that? The store is empty on a Sunday because people are praying extra-hard so that "Obama will fucking die" (actual quote, although (relatively) thankfully from a co-worker instead of a customer)?

Fan-fuckin-tastic. Take that one home to your family and friends. Maybe they'll listen to your truly inspirational ideas and not want to bound over the two and a half foot tall windows in front of me so I can wring your neck.

5.) I do not sell beef tenderloin.
I cannot describe to you how many times people have asked me about beef, pork, or chicken. Now, I could see the logic in doing so if I, say, wasn't surrounded by the most foul-smelling product legally available in supermarkets, seeing as I wear the same kinds of clothes as the people not ten feet away from me in the meat market, but unfortunately I am surrounded by just that.

If you ever ask me for something that didn't at some point live in water or was made to appear as if it did, I will smile, tilt my head to one side, and tell you that I've never heard of that kind of fish before. It's little thoughts like that that keep me from actually hitting you in the face with ten pounds of Halibut.

Keep Calm and Admire the New Scenery

Today, more specifically this morning, marks the first day of the rest of your life.

Before this moment, you, like the majority of Earth's children, were unaware of the presence of this blog, pre-makeover. Now I, as your shepherd for this corner of the internet, have moved you on into a new age where you are now enabled to be blissfully unaware that this blog, in all of its shiny new features (including, as you may have already noticed, a sleeker design and new fancy font), exists or has even been thought of.

You're fucking welcome.