Crumbs and martyrs! I'm in the midst of my final exams and it's nuts here. I'm so sorry I haven't been writing. I've been peddling nothing but excuses this past month. Please forgive me. I have an exam today but when I'm finished, I promise, I'll conclude this saga. Sigh.

Today I couldn't be happier, although it's a long story in explaining how precisely I have gotten to the point of feeling this way. My friend (written of on November 26) was recently put in dire jeopardy of losing her job (in the service sector, damnable of damnables) thanks to a pinhead who required her services at the information desk at a time when she was on the telephone handling a business inquiry from some agent or another. Due to the length and delicacy of the matters at hand, the petty tyrant in questioned decided that obviously my friend was behaving irresponsibly, engaged in some personal conversation or other, and quite frankly he felt his time was too important to waste by standing around for twenty or thirty seconds longer than he felt was absolutely necessary, so he slammed his hand down on her desk, and shouted, "Listen! Your home is for personal calls! Right here you have people waiting to be served!"
After further berating her for two minutes about her failings and grave mistakes (after all, time is money, and "wasting company time is like stealing..."), trotted off like a good little piggy to vent at the manager. This took him a good twenty minutes, and once that tirade was finished, you might wonder, well, given that she is a wonderful, responsible, hard-working employee who in no way earned that abuse, do the good people in charge reasonably explain that part of my friend's job involves handling six phone lines and nursemaiding every single token of the great unwashed masses who enters the store with ridiculous questions -- and so assert that maybe he can wait a few minutes while she fields some important, pressing questions? Well, of course not. Instead, they nearly fire her. I mean, quite honestly, what kind of a horrid person is so dreadfully self-important and obnoxious that he wants to destroy some poor, innocent young woman paid seven dollars an hour to take abuse from thousands of impatient people each and every day?

I have this open comment to this person, whoever he is, may I someday find him and leave only his eyes, entrails, and silence (oh the silence, punctuating your screams) for the scavenging hordes of birds to squabble over:

What the hell were you thinking, you prick? What kind of sadistic, abusive childhood would a man have to endure to be left stuffed like a sour, greasy, bitter and shrivelled crepe filled with poison and impotent fury and a desperate need to empower yourself by belittling young women as a way of avenging yourself upon the frigid, unobtainable mother who weaned you too early? Exactly how many beatings did you suffer at the hands of your wicked stepfather -- who clubbed you savagely with his Bible at the slightest offense -- only to grow up into an angry little man who needs to exact the same vengeance upon others by costing them their very jobs if they displease you? Does it make you feel good to yell at people who work in the service sector? Isn't it wonderful that people who work for minimum wage have to put up with the alimentary dysentery of people just like you each and every day, because they know if they tear into they'll be fired and replaced by another faceless drone in a uniform in under five minutes? When you think about the satisfaction that comes of humiliating another human being with verbal abuse for the most minor of perceived slights, do you climax in your pants? Are these revenge fantasies the things you conjure up in your clammy, sweaty mind when you masturbate?

   "Oh baby, yeah, you made me wait two minutes for my Big Mac with Cheese! I'm going to talk to the manager! Come on, I dare you to inconvenience me in any way! I'm a busy man! Time is money! Of course you can break a fifty! If you can't, I'm going to talk to the manager! Tee hee hee! Tattle tattle tattle! Me me me! Oooooooooooooh yeahhhhhhhhhhhhh...!"

I bet you feel like a big man now, right? I bet that you've never felt so good as the day you walked into that store, sauntered right on over to that desk, and blasted a pretty, busy young woman with an ejaculatory jet of your hot, greasy, icky need to feel important or special in any possible way, however tiny. I'm going to get Freudian for a second, now that we're on such personal terms -- do you have a small penis, by any chance? Maybe we're a tad impotent, too? Feeling a powerful need to overcompensate for something? Maybe it's just a lifetime of unsatisfying relationships, or a wife who doesn't understand you, or the terrifying conflict created by your forbidden latent urges to touch other men, or children? Well, take it someplace else, tough guy. I only hope that your tragic worst-case scenario lasts long enough for someone with more power than you to take away your job for something you didn't do -- or better still, something you did -- and thus ending whatever small things you took pride in with disgrace and humiliation and a fine dust of broken dreams.

Rant rant rant!

But I suppose now you're wondering why this all turned out to be good.

Well, you see, at the time I wrote this, I had just the biggest crush on this person at the time, but I found myself through fear and negative associations (I mean, ooh I've been through this heartache before) quite unable to tell her about my feelings. We would spend an increasing amount of time together, and the more we hung out (laughing, talking, drinking coffee or even partaking in the company of the nebulous Mr. Beer, watching movies, confessing secrets, and venting spleens) the closer we became to one another and the stronger my feelings for my friend became. This said, it completely broke my heart to see her seem so defeated and unhappy. To refer briefly to possible words semantics, I just couldn't describe a world with any amount of intension-extension trickery where seeing my friend so unhappy wouldn't move me to tying a towel around my neck with a clothespin, and leaping out the window with my cape flapping in the breeze in order to save the day. Which, I might add, is precisely what I did.

There are some human conditions which simply cannot be cured without a great deal of time to scab the wound over (to emply a tired but effective metaphor; you know, scars, wounds and all that), like the death of a loved one, or having your pants ripped down in a hallway at school in front of everyone you've ever known or wanted to impress. Months or years might pass before you are able to think of some horrible part of your life, and even then you'll still probably wince (at least I do). No matter how unsolvable a problem is at the time, though, I tend to try to "be there" so as to at least add a comforting, symapathetic, cuddly presence to the situation. And certainly in this case there was no question that my friend was going to be OK -- she's a strong, independent person, who has endured and survived through such things which would certainly break me or even kill me. Still, even action movie heroes need friends and loved ones (if for nothing else than to avenge the deaths of), and by gum I loved this person so I started hatching various schemes which might prove helpful to her heart. Murder seemed the most obvious choice (I mean, it's the first thing you thought of, right?), but remained grossly impractical for the reason that I had no idea who this horrendous little troll might be, and for all of my huffing and puffing I remain a pretty gentle, law-abiding person. A positive change seemed to be in order; I couldn't sweep her away from her horrible job or the horrible people, but at least I could make her feel quite special and important, which is pound for pound a far better remedy for life's ills than chicken soup, and requires far fewer boiled chicken carcasses.

The thing is, though, that even a very small gesture can make the whole difference to a person who is unhappy. I know this is the case for me. When I'm blue and miserable, I like things like hugs and attention far more than anything.

Brought to you by Jolt Cola, with
the buzzing and mild irritation of
caffeine induced paranoia.

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