A Day in the Life

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(I wrote about my time working at McDonald’s in my Monday article, so I thought for this fiction Friday I would write a nonfiction account of my time there)

I’m not the audience for this place. This play place. I crawl through tight tunnels not meant for my five foot ten frame. I’m barely through the first tube, trying to figure out how to bend my body so that I can get through when I see a small child coming the other way. I wonder if he’s a holdover from when I put the sign up that I needed to work in here. Either way, I can’t have him here while I clean up.

“Hey buddy, I need you to get out of here,” I tell him.

“Why?” he responds.

“Because I need to work in here. There’s a mess that I need to clean up. You should head out of here because it’s yucky in here.”

The kid thankfully crawls away and out of the play place. I keep crawling through the multicolored tubes. I’m nearly at the mess that I, years later, would find out later you need a hazmat license to clean up.

It’s then that I hear someone shrieking at me. It sounds like a dental drill. I’m so close and now she’s banging on the tubes. Getting up here was bad enough, crawling back out is worse. I finally flop out and this woman gets up in my face.

I remember what this woman looks like but I’m not going to describe because it doesn’t matter what she looks like. Imagine a Karen and you’ll have a rough estimate. I’ll never forget her red face.

“Why isn’t my child allowed in the play place? He wants to play, why won’t you let him play?!” she screams at me.

“Because there’s a mess in there, ma’am,” I deadpan.

“Then why isn’t someone cleaning it up!?”

There was a time when my sister and I worked with her friend, who said that when the two of us get yelled at, we are clearly disassociating. Our minds are elsewhere. Not today though, I felt the rage burst its way up through me. But I need to keep this job because it would be far too depressing to get fired from McDonald’s.

“I’ll get right on that, ma’am,” I say.

I crawl my way back up into the play place. I clean up the poop and spray everything down. I crawl my way back out and throw away the towel I used. I would quit like three months later because I found out you could work at CVS at the age of sixteen. I got yelled at a lot more at CVS. I eventually got used to it though I never liked it.

Oh, by the way, especially in the post pandemic world, don’t let your kids in the ball pit. We never bothered to clean that and I doubt anyone else did either. Those places are disease and germ pits.

Sherwin Williams’ company logo is insane

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Here it is.

They’re putting their intent in the forefront. They want to cover the earth in life erasing, world killing paint. Choking the life out of the land and filling the oceans. Would it be a uniform color or would it be a rainbow of them? Behold our eighteen different types of beige as they cover Belgium.

Let’s look at if other companies were truthful like them.

It’s like Google or Meta making their company logos, “We’re building death robots and killer AIs.”

Every medical insurance company: “We want your money, we hate you and don’t care if you die”.

Every printer and printing supply company: “This is going to run out far faster than you expect, the printer’s going to break and everything costs way more than it deserves.”

How to make a CPAP mask sexy

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I have to wear a CPAP mask because my throat is very crowded. Even if I lost weight and got my tonsils out I would still need to wear it. The problem is that there’s no way to make this thing look cool or sexy.

Of course, there’s something to be said about stigma that when you put it on, you have to admit that you need this thing. Plus it leaves a weird red mark around your mouth. However, it helps me breath and I love it for that.

So now I’m going to make it cool and sexy.

Cool: It looks like a vague attempt to make a dollar store version of those breathing masks that jet pilots wear. If I put sunglasses and a bicycle helmet on when I fall asleep, I’m basically fitted out to fly an F-14. God, that would be so funny if someone came in and saw me sleeping like that, I think I might do that just in case a burglar comes in.

Let’s make it sexy. This one is far easier. Just say this to the person sleeping next to you.

“Hey lover, get ready for me to not snore and keep you up. That’s right, here comes the mask. Prepare for peaceful slumber and when we wake up we’ll have enough energy to make more love or go to the farmer’s market like you want. Hell yeah.”

Also, I think that I should paint some flames on my mask to make it look even cooler and sexier. Plus I need to give my CPAP machine a new cooler name. Let’s see this is going to be difficult because the name lends itself closely to the idea of pap smear. Let’s go with Turbobreather. Oh, fuck yeah.

Welp, done. I’ve fixed CPAP machines for all. You’re welcome.

Once again I have overthought a game genre

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Another game genre that I’ve been enjoying are simulator games. Two in particular lately, fast food simulator and supermarket simulator. I can say that the first one is a highly accurate version of what it’s like working in a McDonald’s as I did for my first job. The only thing is that I’m not horrendously shy and scared of people.

The work in both games is just as monotonous. You perform the same actions day in and day out. You can throw on a podcast and just cruise. There’s no story to pay attention to.

So, why do I love these games?

Yahtzee the very swear-y video game reviewer has called these dad games and one of his points is that it lets you envision your life if you had taken a different path. As someone who has played these games it also allows you to pretend that these are viable career paths. I put together one bag of food for someone coming through my drive through and it had four items an somehow cost fifty-six dollars.

I’m not a dad and never will be but I’m dad age. Sometimes I imagine pulling a dude from American Beauty and going back to work at McDonald’s when things in my life were simple. But I don’t think that’s why I actually like these games. McDonald’s made my clothing stink no matter how many times my mom washed them. One of my prize Kurt Cobain t-shirts was forever cursed with the smell because I put my work shirt on it overnight.

The real reason that I think that I like it is that I have another hobby that some people might consider boring: knitting. For a lot of people, it might seem so boring to sit still and slowly knit stitch by stitch. But there’s something that I love about the click of the needles and the slow creation of a scarf or washcloth(I’m not that good. I need to work on getting better).

It’s the same thing with these games. Watching as my level goes up in either one and expanding on the things I can make in my fast food restaurant or watching my supermarket slowly expand. It’s the satisfaction of a job well done. Even though it’s just a bunch of 1’s and 0’s.

When I knit, the world falls away, my mind clears and I can just focus on that. It’s the same thing with these simulator games. I don’t care if people think they’re a waste of time or boring, for me those moments of peace are what make it all worth it.

I’m including the Yahtzee video if you want to hear more about dad games:

Drinking misconceptions

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I don’t drink. I’ve drank on a three occasions. The first was when I was working with my dad when I was like eight. My dad was drinking a Budweiser and I asked him if I could have some. I took a sip and it was disgusting. Put me off beer for the rest of my life.

Secondly, my grandfather put his gin and tonic next to my water during a barbecue. I drank from it, thought it tasted weird and he said what are you doing. I spit out what was probably some very expensive gin into the sink.

Thirdly, I was on a date with a beautiful woman and she poured me a glass of wine. I didn’t know how to back out of it, so I drank it in one gulp. She then said accurately, you don’t drink wine do you.

So, I don’t understand how alcohol works. Here are three ways that I don’t understand how alcohol works.

  1. Champagne flutes

I read about champagne flutes before I ever knew what they were. It’s the same thing as the word quiche. I read the word but it translated in my head to “qwincha”. My parents and sister made nonstop fun of me, constantly asking where did the n come from?

So, when I read about champagne flutes, did I think long thin glasses? Nope!

I thought that people were having fun and drinking out of flutes that they were covering all the holes of. Do I need to look at the dictionary? Nope! Just continue with my stupid thought until my young adulthood.

2. You can just mix whatever.

When I was younger, I listened to a lot of the Good Life where Tim Kasher is singing constantly about getting blackout drunk. So, I thought that that was the point. So, you would want the highest alcohol content in all your drinks.

That means you would want to drink like a rum and scotch. Irregardless of things like taste or texture.

Hell, if I was coming up with my signature drink given the parameters of what I thought people wanted it would probably be everclear mixed with absinthe. We would call it the straight to the grave.

3. A Scotch and soda was just any soda

I loved Law and Order and M*A*S*H and watched them religiously when I was in sixth grade. During the summer, they had like four episodes of each on in the morning and evening. I watched them nonstop.

The thing is there’s a lot of drinking in M*A*S*H and after many cases, McCoy would go to the bar and order a scotch and soda. I now know that that was seltzer, which is just water ruined through carbonation. But to my young mind, I thought that it was Coca-Cola or Pepsi. They’re both brown, right?

In conclusion, don’t let me make your drinks. I’ll either kill you or disgust you.

Rewriting the Phantom Menace

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The Phantom Menace sucks. We all know it. It was such a disappointment. But the thing is, I think that you could make the movie a lot better with one change and it’s not just get rid of Jar-Jar.

The actual answer is to simply age Anakin up. There’s no reason for him to be a small child and in fact, it makes him a lot more sympathetic to do so.

Okay, so the movie starts as it normally does, invasion of Naboo and everyone flees on the shiny ship. But as the ship is whipping through space and being saved by R2-D2, no one knows who the pilot is but they know he’s very good.

The door opens and a handsome, smiling young man enters the room. It’s Anakin. He’s carefree, he’s joyful and he loves what he does. You can still have the scene where Padme can’t sleep and she speaks with him. He can ask her if she’s an angel and he can talk about how much he loves being out here. How they’re returning to the place that he hates. She says that if she helps him retake her planet, she’ll find a way to free his mother. Suddenly, he has emotional investment.

When we get to Tattooine, Anakin reunites with his mother. He brings up that he has gotten closer to buying her freedom. Watto can still stiff them for the part and he says he’s willing to get back into the podracer to win the part. That’s how he won his freedom the last time but it nearly cost him his life. He survives and he has to leave again.

The rest of the movie plays out the same way with them realizing that he’s powerful with the force and they save Naboo. He has to leave Padme and his mother behind to do the job of becoming a Jedi.

The thing is that having him already grown with his own opinions that are hardwired into him, makes a lot more sense for his eventual fall. Especially if you do something like have him having never killed anyone before. Death comes pretty quickly in the Star Wars universe. Luke kills stormtroopers in the first movie and doesn’t bat an eye at it. It would be interesting to have Anakin be a kind hearted person that doesn’t like violence. He’s suddenly thrust into this world that he doesn’t understand why he has to harm people.

His journey to becoming Darth Vader can become that he wants to end suffering in the galaxy. That he wants to make sure no one can be harmed again. It’ll become a bigger part of him when he has the visions of Padme dying in childbirth. You could also use the idea that Jedi are violent by being the thing he’s trained the most in.

Having him be a child, it just doesn’t make any sense. You can have him be innocent but it turns him into something other than precocious. It makes him annoying. Plus, child actors, for the most part are not that good. It’s like in the Ender’s Game movie where you have to have Ender react to finding out that he killed a whole race. He couldn’t act it out that well because no one could act that out.

Also you have a ten year old hitting on a fourteen year old and it’s so weird. Age him up and they become equals.

You could also play more into the Han and Leia thing. Making him a dashing young pilot, then there could be a thing that oh like mother like daughter when it comes to the men they like.

Why did they send their ducks to war?

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I went to Great Adventure this weekend and I got to meet Daffy Duck. I thanked him for fighting Hitler. But then I had a thought that both Daffy and Donald went to war against the fuhrer.

I know that there are images of Donald doing the heil but those are from a nightmare he had to sell war bonds. He later went on to fight in the navy. Daffy confronted Hitler directly, smashing his skull with a hammer.

My question is why? We know that they’re both true Americans for fighting against fascism. But why did Disney and Warner Bros specifically send their ducks? We also know that Donald has PTSD from his time in the war, hence why he flies off the handle so often.

But maybe that’s it. Maybe they saw the intrinsic traits of both ducks and knew that they could handle the mental load of taking life. Daffy has always been full of himself. Maybe he had an internal competition to fight as many Nazis as possible. Working his way up to confront the fuhrer personally. Fuck giving Captain America the shield, give it to Daffy. Or at least have them tag team him like Bucky and Cap did to Iron Man.

Donald though knew that being a duck he was uniquely positioned to work with the navy. If the ship goes down, he can provide aid to his fellow soldiers. His official rank in the armed forces is a sergeant in the military. Maybe he was on special assignment.

In conclusion, these ducks did their part. They saw injustice and they rose against it.

The Poison You Inherit

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It doesn’t come through fangs

It comes through words

The ones you say when you’re home

Leaking into your kids’ ears

It fills their veins and fills them up

They say the same thing to someone else

You smile and laugh

That’s my kid

You raise your glass

The poison moves

Bit by bit

Piece by piece through your bloodline

Until one day someone makes a friend

Someone reads a book

And feels the antivenom flow through them

That new Psycho Killer video

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So, a little under two weeks ago, the Talking Heads released a video for Psycho Killer, a fifty year old song. You can find it here:

It’s a simple video, a woman played by Saoirse Ronan, wakes up, she talks to her boyfriend, she brushes her teeth, she goes to work, sometimes she goes to a field, sometimes she goes to therapy, she goes to bed and the cycle repeats. In that simple premise though we see a perfect representation of anxiety and depression. The way that she seems cut off from everyone. How her emotions go wild while no one pays attention to her.

The biggest part of this is of course Ronan’s performance. Her facial expressions and body language tell the entire story. Sometimes she’s gently rocking back and forth while reaching out to take a coworker’s hands, she’s annoyed with boyfriend, she’s scared, desperate, she’s crying, she’s ecstatic, she’s being weird and every scene you somehow can imagine how she got into that scenario. Of course, it’s unsurprising given her remarkable talents.

Having had anxiety and depression throughout my life, everything she does is accurate. Despite what movies and tv shows illustrate, you’re not able to just lay in your feelings. You have to get up and do the thing. No matter what it is, no matter how you feel, you have to live.

There are moments when you feel like you’re weeping or begging for help in front of people and they can’t hear you. Then there is the endless repeating of the days. Where you feel you’re just moving through copies of the same day. The only thing that changes is your clothing or roughly how you feel.

This is why art is so important and to be made by as many different kinds of people as possible. I would have loved to have this when I was younger so that I could point to it and say, “this is how I feel almost all the time”.

The other great thing about this and the description of the video points it out, that you could make something so on the nose. Some murderous man harming people, blood and violence. Instead, we have this showcase of a great song by a phenomenal actress.

Father’s Day

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Being a fatherless child these days

What should this day become?

Should it be ignored and left on the shelf

Pushed to the back of my mind

Where it can only tug at my brain

And make me sad out of nowhere

Or should it become a day of remembrance

Talking and thinking about all the things

Dad and I used to do

The things he said, the way he smelled

How that changed once he quit smoking

Either and any way

It doesn’t matter

There’s no way to make me less sad

Or miss him any less