Unbreachable Wall of Cynicism

Shouldn’t Labor Day be called something like "Non-Laboring Day," just to alleviate any confusion there might be?  I mean,  I haven’t had a Labor Day off in a few years now.  That includes today, of course.  But that’s just one of the severe side effects of working retail.  I expect no less than to work on pretty much every holiday.  At least it’s time and a half this time, unlike July 4th.  I wasn’t tenured enough for it back then.  But I am now.  So I got paid for nine hours of work for only being on the clock for six hours, and only working about four of those.  Not too bad.  I did at least get to have some sort of cookout before work.  My dad re-scheduled his so I could come have lunch before I had to go in today, so that was nice.

When I actually got to work, it was absolutely booming.  The place was nuts.  Fucking one day sales.  Why?  I know it’s great business, but damn.  It wore me out.  The four hours I actually worked were hard hours.  Constantly running after shit.  Upstairs, downstairs, upstairs, outside, downstairs….and so on.  Then, of course, at about 6:30 p.m. all the customers fell off the face of the earth.  None to be found anywhere.  By the time the store was ready to close at 9 p.m. (yep…open normal hours on a holiday…fucking capitalism), it was a complete ghost town.  Not a customer in the store.  Hilarious, yet, predictable.  I wasn’t complaining.  Too loudly.

Besides…at least I didn’t have to see the MDA Telethon on every channel.  So I had that going for me, at least.

Now Playing in Dave’s Mental Jukebox:  "A Different Kind of Pain" by Cold (that CD is fucking awesome), "Metalingus" by Alter Bridge, and "St. Anger" by Metallica

Gas stations need to hire people to stand by their gas pumps and poke everyone with a stick while their gas is pumping and say "gouge, gouge…" repeatedly.  That’s really all they’re missing.

There’s nothing I can really say about the hurricane thing.  It’s horrible.  We all know that.  Being the cynic I am (no matter how hard I may try to stifle it sometimes), I’ve found myself wondering how no one ever thought something like this could happen to New Orleans.  It’s so damn far under sea level that something like this was bound to happen eventually.  I just find it hard to believe there was no contingency plan.  I’m also amazed it took a few hundred years for the city to flood.  All that time, all that water nearby, all those storms….it’s amazing, really.  The city will get fully rebuilt.  I have no doubt of that.  It’ll be a typical display of American "Fuck You (Insert Problem Here…in this case Mother Nature)."  It’s what we do.  Not saying it’s a bad thing.  It just is.  A few days ago I would’ve complained about the lack of attention being paid to the rest of the areas slammed by the storm, but that’s improved massively.  So I’ll let that go, and just wish everyone well in recovering.  It’s going to take obscene amounts of time, and even more obscene amounts of money…but it’ll get there.

P.S.  All of my Louisiana-dwelling relatives are fine, as they live a few hours north of the Gulf Coast.  My cousin is about to head down there to help out (he’s an EMT). 

And as I knew it would (hence one reason I didn’t want to bring it up) that whole thing just took away any steam I might’ve had built up.  In other words, I got nuthin’ left.  So, uh, I guess that does it for this ‘un.  Go home, cuz you can’t sleep here…unless a two seater couch or the floor is enough for you.  But even then, you probably wouldn’t want to sleep here.  Nevermind.  I’m off on some other planet with this now.  I’ll shut up.

"I tried to let you go…I wish I could turn back time and show you just how I feel…"

Sayonara.