Stupidity is Circular, Like Time and Circles

At the phone store...

ME: "I need a phone charger please. For that phone." [I point at a display case.]
HE: "Ah. Let me see... No, we don't carry a charger for that phone."
ME: "But I bought the phone in this shop."
HE: "Yes. It's a very good phone."
ME: "I see."
HE: "You like it?"
ME: "I can't turn it on. I need a charger. Mine broke."
HE: "But the charger is unusual. It has a micro USB port."
[I listen politely.]
HE: "We don't have the charger, but we have this MLine universal travel charger, and one of the attachments will fit in your phone. You can use this."
[I am grumpy.]
ME: "Yeah, but that charger doesn't work. I bought it before, and it fell apart. Plus it's expensive, and I don't need 16 extra attachments for phones I don't have."
HE: "Oh." [A beat.] "Well, I'll need the original receipt if you want to replace it."
ME: "Thanks. I don't have the receipt. I don't want to replace it. I just need a new charger."
HE: "Well...we have this MLine universal travel charger."
ME: "Which doesn't work."
HE: "It does work. Just not very well."
[He looks sad. I contemplate filching his stupid name badge and poking both of us with it until this conversation goes away.]
HE: "*Sigh*. Their products really aren't very good."
ME: "Sorry, what?" [I pretend to be listening through an ear horn. Like a jackass.]
HE: "What do you want me to say?"
ME: "Uh, if their products suck, then why do you keep buying them?"
[Silence.]
HE: "They might have the charger you need at Niedermeyer."
ME: "That's miles away. Why don't you sell it here, where I bought the fucking phone? Don't you think that would make sense?"
HE: "We have this MLine universal travel charger."
ME: "Right. Thanks. This is stupid."

Several hours later, at Niedermeyer

ME: "Hi! I need a phone charger."
GUY: "What kind?"
ME: "Um."
[This is where karma comes round and kicks my butt. Uh oh.]
ME: "Uh. For a Nokia. A flat, black Nokia."
GUY: "Really."
ME: "Er. It takes a mini USB."
[She said, confidently.]
GUY: "Sure! Right over here."
ME: "No, wait, that doesn't look right."
GUY: "But you said mini USB.
ME: "Yeah..."
GUY: "Where's your phone? Let's try it out."
ME: "I don't have my phone with me."
GUY: "Oh. I see. That makes sense."
[I wonder if he wants to poke me with his badge until this conversation goes away.]
ME: "Well, the other guy said mini USB. Or tiny USB. Or something. A teensy-weensy USB."
[She said. Confidently.]
GUY: "Do you mean a micro USB?"
ME: "Tiny USB."
GUY: "It's smaller, and flatter."
ME: "Oo, maybe. Can I see that?"
GUY: "Sure!" [We walk to a rack. He hands me another charger.]
ME: "This doesn't look right."
GUY: "Listen. There are mini USBs and micro USBS. And nothing else."
ME: "Yeah, but they both look funny."
GUY: "Do they."
[Yeah. They kinda do.]
ME: "Sorry."
[At this point, I'm pretty much prepared to inconvenience everyone and their mom to get a phone charger.]
ME: "Can you look it up online?"
[He blinks slowly. He's calling me names in his head, I can tell.]
GUY: "SURE. Which phone did you say you have?"
[His voice has a certain sour edge.]
ME: "It's flat. And black. Oh and it starts with a six. Six...five... something?"
GUY: "I will fucking shank you." (p.s. he never said that.)
[Five minutes later, after scrolling through pictures of Nokia cell phones on Google.]
GUY: "Got it. Your phone takes a micro USB."
ME: "Right. Which one is that again?"
GUY: "The one you're holding."
ME: "But this one looks funny. And it's from MLine."
GUY: "YES."
ME: "Oh. Do you have one that isn't from MLine?"
GUY: "NO."
[Gosh, why is he so touchy?]
ME: "Oh. Okay. I guess I'll have this, then."

P.S. The charger from MLine works great. Way to go, MLine. But don't think I'm going to forget the travesty of your stupid universal travel charger. I mean, really.

Help, the Internet Is Slurping Up My Soul

The Internet is kind of like those machines for making slurpees that you see in drug stores. You know, those clear plastic boxes with the rotating cylinder that keep the slush frozen but not solid. The web is an ever-revolving slurry of brightly colored garbage that is kind of satisfying, but mostly it rots your guts and costs four dollars and gives you brain freeze if you get greedy. Flavored nonsense goes in, frozen nonsense comes out.

Not here, of course.

I was pleading with my coworker. "Help me. Tell me a word. Any word. Or a phrase. To write about," I begged, because apparently I have no mind of my own. (And I love her.) "Okay! Any word? And you have to write about it?" she asks.

I sense she has some devilish suggestion in mind. Like thermodynamics or penis or Robert Pattison. Except I wasn't thinking of thermodynamics or Robert Pattison at the time. "You can't use cock," I tell her, smugly. She arches an eyebrow, which she's really good at. "Or and. Or the," I hasten to add. "Those totally don't count." She just stares at me. "Idiot," she says.

And then she says, "Oh I know, let's ask mystery google."If you don't know, and I didn't, http://www.mysterygoogle.com/ is a site that looks just like Google, but the schtick is that once you type in your query and hit enter, the site cunningly gives you the search results for the last thing that was searched. Hilarity presumably ensues forthwith.

So Peaches and I typed in some crap or another, and this is what we got (I blacked out the number):

...Yeah, exactly. Ahaha.

Nonetheless, in the interest of journalistic seriousness, I accepted the mission. Plus, Peaches made me. I got on skype and texted: "Hi! I'm gay! Well, not really, but google told me to tell you, so that's what I'm doing, you infant. If you get this, tell me. I'd be totally excited." And I gave my email address.

Strangely, that was ages ago and I still haven't gotten anything back. What the hell? You go out of your way to accomplish a Mystery Google mission, and no one even cares enough to send you an amusing ending to your story. Typical.

To be fair, maybe the person that put this mission online added his best friend's phone number, because that's like, totally hilarious. Or his worst enemy's phone number, or his stepmom's phone number. Because actually, oh shit, its probably some kid. If his mom got it (am I wrong to assume the writer is a pimply adolescent boy?), I hope she put two and two together and yelled at him, which he totally deserves, since he didn't bother to send me a thank you note after I went to the trouble of doing his stupid mission. On the other hand, when she asked about it he probably did the right thing and blamed it on someone he hates.

Although actually, it was probably his best friend, who totally has a crush on his bb's MILF. Because the perp is probably in, like, the eighth grade. Where the sprout of sexuality has not yet seen the sun but it's germinating like a wild beast anyway, cheerily exploding tendril after tendril into wrong, dark places, and you end up doing bizarre things like thinking it would be totally hysterical if your friend's hot mom got a text from someone who's (*snort*) gay! Haha. Little perv. Yeah. That totally explains why I haven't got any email. Um. Because I sound like a freak who's sending sick texts to some zitty adolescent.

Or the kid really did send his own phone number, and is just too lazy to write an email. Or he's pissed that I called him an "infant," although really, only a total infant would be pissed about that.

Or, come to think of it, maybe the mission came from some pathetic loser in her mid-twenties who hopes that soliciting such a text on Mystery Google is so tragically lame that it's awesome again, and will make for a sort of meta-cool story and she'll write about it and it'll be totally fabulous and everyone will be like, ooh, you're so meta-cool. Stupid bitch.

It's Amazing I'm Not Dead Yet

I fidget.

I can't sit still for two minutes unless I'm drunk or terribly ill. And even then I twitch my feet under the blankets and look around every five seconds like a driver checking his mirrors.

I'm a klutz, with all the natural grace of a newborn rhino. I can't pass a sobriety test sober. True story? I'm such a spazz that a highschool teacher once sent me to the nurse to have my inner ears tested. Like, to see if my problem was actually medical, like it could be explained or even treated. To be fair, she did the right thing. People in class were talking about me. That's because, a week before, on a class trip to Venice, I had accidentally rolled backwards off a bed. I was sitting when I fell. The next morning, I had done a sort of tumble into traffic while walking down a wet stone sidewalk. And the day after that, I tripped flamboyantly over a chain barrier in the middle of a cathedral and landed, loudly, on the floor. (In my defense, I was gaping at the ceiling and turning around slowly in circles. Anyone would have fallen over.) On the last day, the whole class went and took pictures on the Rialto Bridge, only I wasn't allowed to sit on the ledge. Fact.

Still, my walk home today was something special.

It was already dark out and I was rushing home with great purpose, barreling across Stephansplatz and thinking about nothing and narrowly missing strangers' shoulders. Then I tripped.

"Gaargh!". It was right by the side of the church, where the Fiaker line up their horses and carriages. You see, I have these boots with floppy straps that had come undone, and somehow my right foot had gotten stuck on a loop of leather on my left foot and I basically heaved myself onto my face, except at the very last moment I threw both my feet forward and sort of caught myself in this awkward two-footed stomp. I landed with a yelp and somehow managed to spook one of the horses, this little piebald mare, who totally freaked me out 'cos she freaking whinnied at me and reared a little, and she was wearing a harness and everything, so then that all clattered together, and then the second horse neighed and started hopping up and down. The driver just looked at me and shook his head.

But not for long because the horses had started to skitter into traffic and then cars were honking and people were staring. I laughed and tried to do this casual, falling-on-your-face-and-causing-a-traffic-jam-with-horses-is-totally-the-new-cleavage walk but that was pretty much an epic fail because about four seconds later one of my purse straps got caught on this fire hydrant and I did one of those things where your feet walk off without you (I hate those) and had to go back and untangle my bits.

Oh, and then I nearly got hit by a tram because my hat is too big and when it slips down I can´t see or hear properly and I sort of stepped off onto the tracks and the tram driver dinged at me and stared. Dude, even his walrus mustache was judging me.

Long story short? My accessories are totally trying to kill me.

Hallelujah

Lately I've been all worried and troubled and shit which has put a real damper on my ability to think. My coworker and I decided our inner lives were dying. I would have writer's block, but I'm pretty sure you have to actually be a writer for that. I just have block.

So last night, while I was lying in bed, I was praying that some kind of inspiration would strike me and, even better, that the heavens would send me some kind of sign that everything is going to be okay. Some kind of green sprout in my soul, or fairy lights.

I was hoping for something to write about. Or at least freaking think about.

And then, a miracle happened.

This morning I rolled out of bed and plodded into the bathroom. Warily, I looked up into the toothpaste flecked mirror and what did I see?

There, pasted into my eyebrow, was an enormous green booger.

That's right. A squishy ball of snot. It might have been mine, it might have been Dan's... The mechanics of its fated arrival two inches above my eye hardly bear thinking about. Especially if it's not even mine. Although I guess it sort of belongs to me now.

The point is, it was serendipity.

Because now, I've posted something. And I know there will always be something to post. Hallelujah.