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Posts Tagged ‘shopping’

Last night I tasted a beer called Monkey Knife Fight. It was delicious.

I also got hit on by a 53-year-old man named Paul who used to be a rocket scientist but decided he wanted to go into work for himself and has now built some genius technology he hopes I will remember him for when it becomes all the rage. He did not tell me what this incredible breakthrough was. I’m not sure I’ll care when the time comes anyway. He was drunk as shit. He’s probably the school janitor.

Mom and cousin Allie stole a massive beer sign and then couldn’t find their way out of the school, so they walked it out into the middle of some back parking lot and left it on the windshield of someone’s SUV. The owners were probably too inebriated to notice.

The highlight of the evening was peeing in a high school bathroom. Man, if there’s ever an experience I don’t need to relive from my youth, it’s the joys of the perpetually-grungy school bathroom. I expected better from a private school. Obviously my expectations are way too high for an educational institution that costs more per year than most state colleges. But as I remarked to the girl standing next to me at the sink, at least there was toilet paper and hand soap.

The evening was hot as a bitch. I wore capris and a short-sleeve blouse, and I still sweated like a whore in church. Which technically makes sense since I WAS in the middle of a giant Christian school, complete with the three-story iron cross in the main courtyard under which I consumed a fat glass of really tasty tempranillo and ate a fistful of shrimp and Spanish tortilla. Allegedly there was some fantastic barbecued whatnots going on, but the heat kept me from getting close enough to find out. Too many bodies and too much grillin’. Mom told one of the alumni he was an ass. I was outwardly mortified but inwardly proud. He was definitely being an ass. We asked him if he was pouring any red other than merlot and he replied “No. Better move along then.” Fucker.

I think the beer tasting portion of the event was far more impressive than the wine tasting portion. I dug into some organic pomegranate hard cider, a delicious IPA from god-knows-where (seriously, by that time of the night, people were just handing me stuff and going “Taste this!” and I wasn’t asking any questions), and more heffies than I’ve ever encountered before.

Amusingly enough, as we were sitting at my aunt’s house afterwards, we passed around a portable breathalyzer to see who was still legal to drive. Almost everyone blew .08 or above. I blew .00 and got ruthlessly ridiculed for it. Thing is, I don’t go to tastings and get plotzed. I go to, you know, taste. So I kept my portions and number of tastings to a reasonable level. Though I have to admit I was still surprised by the results. I was definitely feeling the effects of the tasting. Oh well. That’s what you get for buying a $30 piece of crap from SharperImage, right?

They Call Me Han

You’ll be proud of me. This morning while grocery shopping at a big box store that shall remain nameless because although they provide me with the best prices for frozen foods, they are a giant pile of shit on the American economy, I managed to resist the urge to impulsively purchase a gargantuan Millennium Falcon. I don’t even know what the damn thing did except look cool. And the price was gobsmacking.

And then I thought “WTF am I going to do with a huge Millennium Falcon? Hang it from my eight-foot ceilings?”

So no. I have no Millennium Falcon. I shall have to live my dream of being a character in the Star Wars franchise another day.

I don’t know how I could forget. Seriously, how is it that I forget every single time I plan a trip to Fry’s how completely ridiculous and uneducated the bulk of the human race is when it comes to technology?

I’m not saying that I expect everyone to know the differences in memory, motherboards, CPU’s, etc. or to understand that flux capacitors DON’T REALLY EXIST. However, I do think there should be an intelligence test before one is allowed to enter part or all of any computer store, especially a place like Fry’s where precious electronic components line the shelves and walls, waiting to be snapped up by the latest round of society-at-large retards who don’t know Thing One about what in Sam hell they’re doing, only to be returned by said retards within a day or two, leaving nothing but rows upon rows of boxes marked “Previously Opened” for those of us who actually KNOW what we’re doing and could have been perfectly happy not buying something them and their ilk had their greasy moronic paws on already.

Can you tell I’ve been through this before? Many many times? About the only thing at Fry’s that I’ve ever sought out that hasn’t been previously opened is the memory I’ve occasionally purchased. I’d like to say that I never once got a returned CPU, but there was indeed one time and I raised hell until the manager got me a new one from stock. Thank god I wasn’t ordering a meal from them, otherwise there would have totally been bodily fluids all up in it.

Ran to Fry’s today to pick up a new video card for my new system. For some reason going to the Concord location seemed a better idea than the Sacramento location (in retrospect, not such a good idea; had to take a completely different, backwater highway system to get home without holiday traffic). I must remember to only use the Concord location in times of extreme desperation, as it is more compact and therefore the technology tards are all up in my grill the entire time. Case and point: At the Sacramento location, the first thing you encounter when you walk in is all of your media…games, CD’s, DVD’s, software, etc. They often have game demos going, but for the most point it’s a relatively innocuous experience, and you can quickly walk through it to the more tech-savvy part of the store if you don’t feel like browsing for music or movies (I tend to come back to that part after I’ve finished getting my nuts ‘n’ bolts). Any obnoxious DVD’s that may be playing are sequestered in this little pass-thru alcove with a reasonable volume.

The first thing I encounter upon entering the Concord Fry’s? A giant flat-screen TV parallel to the pathway blaring a live Don Henley DVD. There is nothing more demoralizing than trying to shop to “Dirty Laundry.” On the opposite side of the aisle is the entire video and PC game section, complete with two huge demo stations complete with sofas. So they actually want people to camp out there and game all day. Crappy games, too. Really crappy games that made my vagina ache with the knowledge that somewhere in that town, women were abusing the privilege of being able to bear children by raising a bunch of impotent nose-miners who would do nothing but sprawl across a department store couch for four hours while playing Super Mario Sunshine with other diseased mongrels of society.

Fortunately Fry’s actually had the video card I wanted at ten bucks cheaper than I expected, and because the rest of the store was packed to the rafters with holiday shoppers (buying what? I have no idea…I think most people were there having the equivalent of the 1960′s “Kids, get cleaned up and put on your Sunday best…we’re going to Sears!” experience; there was entirely too much wandering aimlessly and not much actual procuring of goods), nobody wanted to stick around longer than it took for me to get said video card. In and out in fifteen minutes. Perfect.

As I was standing at the checkout counter, I happened to notice a display of rather elegantly-wrapped candy bars. Upon closer inspection, I saw the words “the finest Belgian chocolate” emblazoned in gold leaf lettering on each bar. I turned to my shopping companions and said “Really? The FINEST Belgian chocolate in all the land…right here, at the checkout counter, in Fry’s Electronics. For only a buck ninety-nine. Really?” The cashier, overhearing this, informed me that the bars had been selling like hotcakes all weekend. I glanced over my shoulder at the small crowd cheering and dancing to the Don Henley concert. I glanced back at the chocolate bars. Somehow it all made sense.