The Quarterly Grain Report

*Disclaimer: What follows is a list of thoughts that have occurred to be over the last few months. Sometimes I make the decision to write bits that would probably sound better being performed in some sort of stand-up bit, but since I'm probably never going to venture down that avenue ("what if I get a nosebleed onstage," and so forth...) I figured they might look okay on paper, or virtual computer screen paper, as it were. So if anyone has trouble understanding the concepts I'm shooting for, or isn't amused by those concepts even after they have comprehended them, just imagine the words coming out of someone's mouth and being transmitted to your ears through a technological process involving a microphone and wires or something. This will undoubtedly increase your amusement tenfold.*

I have come to the conclusion that the majority of people that I encounter on an everyday basis have no idea how to function in any type of society. That's as far as I got with that one, but it's true.

I went shopping at Trader Joe's the other day. I hate shopping there. All their cashiers have apparently been trained to talk to each and every customer they check out. You can tell the one's who haven't been there that long, because the whole exchange just sounds so forced. Here I am, with my gallon of milk and nothing else, and this guy starts in on me. "River Valley? Where's that?" so I tell him, and then we talk about the touristy shit that everyone who has never been there knows about, and finally I can take my one gallon of milk and leave.

If you go in that place with any sort of distinguishing feature or article of clothing, they'll key on it and talk to you about it. Why are you talking to me? I came for milk and eggs. Not a conversation about how you don't see too many guys wearing backwards hats these days.

That's why I like shopping at a huge grocery store chain and not some aggravating hippy market. The guys at Copps must go through the complete opposite training program, because they don't even look at you. And if you try and talk to them, they act exactly like I do at Trader Joe's. Half of them look like they're on work-release bagging my bananas 3 hours a day. They're sure as hell not gonna talk to you. The most social training that they've ever had to go through is in a prison shower, or in a special class that prepared them to re-enter society.

So even though I try to avoid it at all costs, for the times when I have to go get milk or something at Trader Joe's, I just go in clean. I wear a blank t-shirt and jeans, and when they ask me a question, I just stare at them. What is he going to say then? He cant call me a jerk or anything, he just got his job, and one of the basic tenets that that job rides on is his ability to be personable with the customer, me. "Hey there, where you from?" (...) "Alright, just the milk today?" (...) "Okay then"

Why were the punishments handed out by Zeus so outlandish? I understand he was "Lord of the Gods" or something, but his reprimands hardly even make sense. "Kronos, you must wander the desert FOR ETERNITY!! Oh, and WITH A MOUNTAIN CHAINED TO YOUR BACK!!"

Why not just make Kronos wear an itchy sweater for a year or two? Or maybe try thinking of some psychological punishments. Instead of having your liver pecked out and eaten by crows every day, maybe Zeus could sentence somebody to wear a Boyz II Men shirt in public every day. Zeus must have an inferiority complex or something, because the punishments he comes up with make it seem like he's just trying too hard.

"You will roll a giant stone up a hill. . . FOREVER!!"

"You will constantly feel tired and too full. . . FOREVER!!"

"You will be waiting in line for the bathroom and will miss the whole movie. . . FOR ETERNITY!!"

Blood sacrifices I've never understood. I can't comprehend the logic. God The Mighty and All Powerful (as I refer to him) created the world and every creature in it (hypothetically of course; I'm not trying to get all church-y), so what better way to display our love than brutally killing something he made.

God: Human! What have you done with one of the goats that I, God, molded with mine own hands out of iron, and dough, and other things?!

Human: Uh, we uh, slaughtered it. . . for you O Lord!

God: Why?!

Human: Uh, we thought it would please you, O Great and Mighty King of Kings.

God: Well, I am pleased indeed! I had planned on throwing some tidal waves at you guys, but this horrible, horrible scene that you created might just make me reconsider! Well done!

If punctuation marks were people, nobody would hang out with them. Think about it. Question Mark is confused all the time and never be able to make a decision. No one is able to argue with Period because he's too definitive. Dash is always combining weird shit, and then just pausing for a while. Parenthesis is always be clarifying things for people, making them feel retarded, and Exclamation Point is always just yelling and trying to beat everyone up. As for Semicolon, well, he's a pedophile.

The tag on the back of my Levi's portrays a situation where a pair of jeans is being pulled apart by mules attached onto opposite legs. This might have been a big selling point years ago, but today, I'm not sure how many people are going into JC Penney's and saying "Yeah, I'm looking for some pants that are going to be able to withstand a lot of crude, medieval torture, for under $40."

Have you ever watched an episode of The Nanny with Fran Drescher, and then afterward you decided you had to reevaluate your life?

Me neither. That's a great show.

I went to the zoo recently, and that's not just a fictional joke set-up, although it does sound like one. I was actually at the zoo, and I got to see and laugh and learn with all the animals, but when we got to the monkey area, they were all gone. The sign said that the monkey exhibit only went from 9 am-3 pm.

At first I just accepted the schedule and felt a little disappointed. But then I thought, What else do they have to do? Every other animal can sit and do nothing for eight hours a day, but monkeys can only manage six? I don't know what happens in that little shed that they go into after their six-hour shift is over, but I'll take a wild guess that it's vaguely similar to what they do all day in front of an audience. Swing around. Poop. Repeat.

Unless they go in there to use chewing tobacco and look at monkey-porn, in which case it's probably a good thing the kids don't see that. But me on the other hand, my tax dollars paid for that monkey-porn, and I want to see firsthand that it's being appreciated.

There are too many people in the street handing out leaflets that I never read. They ask me questions like "Do you want to know the secret to eternal salvation?" No. I have the internet. I just want a burrito.

I'd like to see someone just handing out blank sheets of paper and saying "Would you like some garbage?"

They always say that you should cut the rings of six-pack plastic so fish or ducks won't get caught in them, (and by "they," I mean Indians), so I do my part for nature. I take the time to snip each and every ring before I throw it into the ocean.

Before I worked at Subway, I had fill out the application form. It contained all the usual questions that you would expect about service and morality, and then it had four questions that were just math problems. Addition and subtraction. I just wondered, does this section really narrow down the field of candidates at all? Are there any people who get to the math problems and are just like "Fuck."

Whenever anyone messes up, someone is usually there to comfort them with "Everybody makes mistakes. That's why pencils have erasers." But when that pencil eraser wears all the way down, what happens to the pencil? It's thrown away. It dies. That mistake-maker never hears that half of the story. So what incentive does he have not to make any more errors? None. A more effective saying would be: "Everyone makes mistakes, but if you make too many, you'll die."

I decided I needed to get more organized in my life, so I asked people to get me a calendar for Christmas. I guess I should have been more specific, because all I got was a one-a-day tear-off calendar. This was of little help. Now I just end up panicking every morning when I tear off the paper and see all the shit I forgot I had to do.

"Get to McDonalds before 10:30?! Why did I even write that ahead of time?"

I saw an infomercial for some chopping device, and the pitchman boasted that it can make chicken salad in six seconds. Now, I thought my life was pretty hectic, but who are these people who only have six seconds to make their lunch? Moths?

My aunt used to have a huge fish tank with a bunch of goldfish. Inside the tank was a castle, and some toy men, and a treasure chest. I thought, this must make the fish feel empowered. Like they're the rulers of some sort of deep-sea kingdom, and all the toy figurines with grime and algae all over them are their humble servants, who stumbled upon the fishes' treasure but were soon captured and given the choice of servitude or death.

But then I imagined their fantasy would probably fall apart as soon as the miniature scuba man saw the train of feces that always accompanied his aquatic overlords. How embarrassing.

*End transmission*