RC's Rink Rants Volume 2

Being around people, especially LARGE groups of people whom I don't know, is just absolutely draining to me.

The local ice rink was packed the last few days. Good for the rink's bottom line, not good for me.

It's impossible to really practice anything when it's crowded. I need to work on three-turns and skating backwards. I simply cannot do that when I have to watch out for masses of humanity, especially when a good portion of them are kids that don't bother looking where they're going and what's coming from that direction.

Plus, when it's busy, the ice degrades VERY quickly. What was a smooth sheet you could zip around starts to feel like a macadam road on a bad suspension. Except directly on your knees and back. And pushing off becomes much harder and you can't glide as easily.

So the workout becomes less fun, I can't do the things I need to practice, and I'm surrounded by a mix of douchebags and fuckwits. For example:

• Shitass skaters who try to do the "YMCA" or the "Thriller" on the ice when they can't skate 20 feet without grabbing for the wall. Especially when they're fucking fatasses who think they're funny. The songs are bad enough, don't make my life any worse.
• An attractive MILF with a walleyed greybeard who probably has to mainline Cialis to give her body even thirty seconds of the sex it deserves. (By the way, old dude, Keith Hernandez and Clyde Frazier would like a word. "RE-JECTED." And man up and put on hockey skates.)
• An ABSOLUTELY GORGEOUS MILF with an idiot wearing a flat cap. Dickhead, Brian Johnson can wear one. Payne Stewart could wear one. You aren't a Geordie heavy metal singer nor a dead professional golfer. I have NO idea how you landed someone so far out of your league. Especially someone who can skate circles around you.
• A librarian-ish young hottie with a tall doof that could have passed for Qui-Gon Jinn if he Qui-Gon were 20 and had grown up with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome.
• An unattractive wannabe cougar with badly bleached hair, a tramp stamp (At your age? Seriously?), and a University of Pink track suit. A University of Pink track suit that had NO PINK ON IT. It was green and dingy tan.
• As usual, more people taking pictures right in the flow of traffic.
• And what would a trip to the rink be without a fat woman lording over a brood of ill-behaved brats? I mean FAT in this case. I didn't know Jordache made circus tent sized jeans in acid wash. How do these lardasses even wedge their corpulent feet into a pair of skates? (Hell, how do they even see their feet to try to put their skates on?) I know Darius Kasparaitis used peanut butter to lube his feet to get his skates on after breaking a bone in his foot, but I'd be afraid of women this size eating the whole jar.

I took up skating as a nice little escape from reality for a few hours. Reality is starting to creep in.

I seriously need to invest in an mp3 player so I can shut these fuckers out.

Dude, You Are Not Cool

To the guy sitting at a red light, blasting music as I was crossing the street on my way to lunch: you're a tool.

You drive a dirty, rusty Volkswagen Rabbit with the grill smashed out. Instead of getting a new car, however, you put a custom exhaust and a new sound system in the pile of crap you have.

And to top it off, you blast music with your WINDOWS UP. This tells me that you're either too much of a pussy to put your windows down because it was a little bit cold out, or you're so stupid that you've listened to loud music so long that you're now deaf. And everyone knows deaf people aren't cool. (Name one off the top of your head. See? Can't do it.)

(And don't bring up Marlee Maitlin. Yes, she's still smoking hot at 44, but she's not cool. Sure, I'd lay the wood to her and say nasty, hatefucking-type things to her, because she can't hear them and won't get offended and leave before finishing the sex and fetching me a sandwich.)

You're also not gangsta, son. A Puerto Rican flag hanging from your rear view mirror doesn't tell me you have "cred." It tells me you're not smart enough to realize that having something dangle in your line of sight while driving is not a good idea. Given the thickness of your glasses, I'm guessing your line of sight isn't that good to begin with.

A black hoodie with a skull and thorns and that ghetto font doesn't say "gangsta" to me. It says that after Little Pooky got capped, his baby mama blew her welfare check on Kools and needed to sell his stuff to Goodwill to buy Doritos and baby formula -- then the next day, you saw it in the discount bin and thought it looked "totally rad."

Fucko, why are you leaning over the center console as you're driving? Are you fat to the point that the Earth's gravitational pull got sick of pulling you down and is now acting upon you laterally?

In summation, you're not cool, you're not gangsta, you're a nearsighted fat fucking tool poseur in a ticked-out-yet-shitass car who lacks the good sense to open the windows or turn the music down.

To the four guys barhopping without coats on while I was out getting gas: I hope you all fucking die of pneumonia.

It's thirty fucking degrees out with wind chills in the teens. Not wearing coats as you walk around downtown doesn't make you tough. It makes you assclowns. I know wearing a coat means you're not showing the whole world your red Ecko Unlimited t-shirt, and that is some sort of a hardship in your world. (What, is Abercrombie and Fitch just too played out for you?)

What was your plan? "Hey baby, I'm so tough I don't wear a coat in the winter. Wanna feel the goosebumps on my scrawny arm?" Christ, did your mothers not tell you not to go out without a coat? (Probably not. She was probably too busy swilling gin and hoping the doctor was wrong about you having fetal alcohol syndrome. Or hoping you would die of exposure so her fat ass could get some charity dick from Marco the gardener.)

Put on a goddamn coat, shitheels. What it hides, no one will miss anyway.

You could say I would RELISH this

Actual text message I sent to my buddies from the bar last night:

I'm not an advocate for violence against women, but Joan Osborne deserves a poke in the chops for every time "What If God Was One of Us" gets played. Kinda like royalties, except with punching.

You can blame my mother's parenting style for the bad pun in the title.

Express Lane Lament

After my ice skating class this week, I stopped at the supermarket. I picked out three items -- iced tea, sour cream, and spaghetti sauce. I reiterate: that's three items. As I despise those self-checkouts (give me a fucking discount for checking myself out and bagging my own groceries and we'll talk. Otherwise, if I'm paying full price, I want full fucking service) I stepped into the express lane.

Big mistake.

I ended up in line behind an off-the-boat African family. Probably Muslim, based on the way the woman was dressed. Apparently, basic concepts of MATH are not taught in sub-Saharan Africa.

First of all, "EXPRESS LANE: 15 ITEMS OR LESS" is very clearly marked. This couple's cart had way more than that.

But my primary gripe is when they filled the cart, they had no idea how much money they were spending. Their original bill was something like $62. They didn't have that much money. At which point, the guy started picking up items from the baggage area, throwing them back towards the cashier, and asking in his broken English how much each item cost, and having the cashier remove the item. A good many of these things were ridiculous. Like a loaf of bread, which was like $1.50. Two pairs of socks -- each of which had different prices. Cheap soap. Loofas. Slowly, slowly whittling the price down.

Finally, noticing the backlog in what is ostensibly the express lane, a manager came over. She had the good sense to ask the guy how much money they had. The guy pulled out FOUR TEN DOLLAR GIFT CARDS. Outside of the federal government and shady contractors, how in the hell do you overshoot your budget by 50%? Also, who walks around with just gift cards and no cash?

(Is this a welfare thing, maybe? Charity, perhaps? Giving out gift cards to use at stores? Honestly, I'm asking. I don't know.)

The manager just started grabbing items and taking them off the bill. Finally, she took a big package of raw chicken off and that got them down to $39.23. I remember this specifically, because the manager then took fully two minutes explaining to the guy that he still had 77 cents on one of the cards.

Finally, they leave, and the manager stayed to bag groceries to alleviate the backlog. She and the cashier started talking about the guy:

Cashier: Who goes shopping and doesn't keep track of what they're spending?
Manager: He comes in here all the time and he's a problem every single time.
Cashier: And who does the think he is throwing food at me to take it off the bill? That may work on his Muslim woman, but I ain't her. That don't work on me!
Manager: The guy comes in here every day asking for a job, too.
Me and Cashier simultaneously: SERIOUSLY?
Manager: Yep. He apparently doesn't understand "we're not hiring" or that him making a scene every time he's here makes us not want to hire him. He actually demands we give him a job.

I get checked out fairly quickly, because I'm not a backward-assed fuck. As I'm walking out, the couple is STILL THERE in the cart area by the door, going over every single item in their cart and on their bill.

I just barely made it home in time for House.

Stores need to deal with this kind of shit. People who grossly violate the express lane should be thrown out of line. Repeat problem customers should be banned.

Also, ENGLISH should be required for anyone to get into and stay in this country. Christ, I dated a girl for whom English was her THIRD language and when I met her I had no idea she was an immigrant because her English was that good. (Actually, her English being that good should have been a tip she's NOT from America's educational system.) Cashiers should not have to explain then repeat EVERY SINGLE THING THEY SAY. Nor should they have shit thrown at them just because certain dumbasses can't do math. They don't get paid enough for that. Hell, this guy's English was so bad I'm surprised he didn't start clicking when he was talking.

Not to get too political here, but it's time we do away with the nicey-nice immigration policies and just start taking the smart people. People who are going to be net producers and not net drains on the system. And who aren't going to piss me off.