Pardon Meow

You know how sometimes, you'll be walking along, and see somebody coming the other way, so you move to one side to get around them. But they move to that side as well, so you move to the other side, but they move at the same time, and it takes you a few attempts to finally get around each other?

I just did that with my cat.

Yeah, thanks for getting flooded, asshole!

What remains of Lonesome Road in Old Forge, after the Lackawanna River made a snack of it during the June 2006 floods.

From the "Why Retail Workers Should be Armed" Dept.

So the Scranton Times-Tribune has an article today about the struggles of the Dollar General store on Lonesome Road in Old Forge, which can be seen in the background of the above photo. Not struggles against rising water, or the road being out, mind you. We're talking struggles by store employees against angry customers. Let's review their plight, shall we?

1. One week ago, the Lackawanna River surged, flooding the store under several feet of water. Much of the merchandise was, obviously, destroyed, and the store needed a major cleanup as a result.
2. In addition, the road in front of the store was washed away by the river current, leaving the store inaccessible for almost a week since.
3. When PennDOT finally built a temporary road around the washed-out portion, it was too narrow for the company's large trucks to navigate, leaving the store unable to replenish its stock, most of which is now waterlogged and unsellable, even if it is a dollar store.

Yet despite all this, there are still pieces of human garbage out there that actually have the gall to complain that the store is closed! From the article:

“Great. Now I have to go all the way out of my way. Thanks a lot,” one man yelled out of his car window before speeding out of the parking lot.

What the fuck do these people expect? "Yeah! Thanks a lot for not miraculously parting the Lackawanna like Moses so I can buy all my dollar store crap right this instant!"

It was much nicer back in the old days, when problem "customers" like that were shown the door and told never to come back, lest they be charged with trespassing. Now, all the retail business is done by large chains that hire managers who are too chicken to tell the terminally ignorant to get the hell out. This, in turn, makes it worse for the rest of us to shop, since we're always trying to get around idiots who:

• Block entire aisles and refuse to move
• Hold up the register for hours on end haggling the cashier over various expensive items that she swears were all marked 3/99¢ on the shelf
• Take the motorized carts simply because they are too fat and lazy to walk a few damn feet to the potato chips, leaving none for those who are genuinely handicapped and need them
• When an employee is assisting you, walk up screaming, demanding that the employee help them instead, despite the fact that you were there first (bonus points if they just need to know the location of an item they just walked by on their way to throw a tantrum)
• Take items out of other people's carts
• Allow their filthy, grossly overweight, lice-ridden children to run around the store completely unattended, tripping people, running into shopping carts, blocking aisles, and generally making enough retarded screaming noises to rival the taping of your average MTV show.
• Are filthy, grossly overweight, and lice-ridden themselves
• And so on, and so on...

I propose that we find the "man" (note the use of quotes) mentioned in this article. When the land along Lonesome Road is rebuilt, have a cheap, one-story house built alongside the river, and force this guy to move into it. Next time the river floods, we all get together and beat him with bricks for every hour that he is not finished cleaning up and rebuilding said house. Afterwards, we all take turns yelling, "Thanks a lot, jerkwad!", and speeding off his lawn.

It'll be the best national holiday ever!

Impatient for Independence

So it's only July 1st right now, and yet despite this, most of my neighbors are already setting off enough rocketpower to launch a small satellite into geostationary orbit. The air outside reeks of smoke and beer, explosions can be heard from all directions, and I swear I just saw Iraqi security forces patrolling the neighborhood.

Needless to say, I've put the fire department on speed dial.