Technological Regression is Depressin'

Where: Grocery Store
What: Express Self-Checkout
Who: Ol' Matty

The Skinny: Right. So, Ol' Matty is buying some necessities the other day -Fruit Loops, comic books and Axe Body spray (according to the Telescreen if you wear the stuff women flock to you in the middle of a subway, as it is laced with pheromones) - and I encountered what seemed to be something quite cool: the self-checkout.

You place each grocery through a scanner, it logs each one, and you pay for it at the Interac machine that tabulates the grand total. It prints a receipt, and BAM! you are on your merry way, right?

Wrong! You will notice that after you pay, a few metres to your right of this special aisle is a checkout girl standing behind a counter. I smile, nod in approval of this speedy payment process, and am startled as she beckons me over.

And why, dear readers, is she beckoning? Well, now she has to "double-check". So she takes the receipt, then looks over each grocery to make sure everything was duly charged, and there were no mistakes.

Yeah, that's right - a checkout girl took out each grocery individually, made a note of it, and ensured I paid for them all.

Umm.....

I Just Wanted A Lemonade

On the way home from a recent bike race wherein I finished in my typical millionth place, we stopped at a fast-food type place to get something to drink.

I had an urge for a lemonade.

So, I approached the young go-getter behind the counter, pulled out a few toonies to show I was serious, and said:

"You got any lemonade?"

And he, perked his head to the side like a parrot, smiled, and responded:

"We have ice tea."

"That's," I said, squeezing the toonies in between my fingers, "-- not lemonade. Ice tea, is not lemonade."

"Would you like some?"
"Some what? Lemonade?"
"Ice tea."
"No. I want lemonade.  Do...you...have...it?"
"We have ice tea."
"Once again, ice tea and lemonade doth not equal," I said, looking at the tag on his green golf shirt, "Bobby."
Now is where I start to feel like I am really wasting my life, that I need to do more, to give to charity, maybe get married, have kids, go and see Mecca, whatever. Right when he smiles, and chirps:
"Small or large, then?"
"Lemonade?"
"Ice tea."
"Look, I want lemonade. Do you have it?"
"We have ice tea. It comes in small or large."
"So you don't have lemonade."
"Yes, we have ice tea."
"See, that should be 'no, we don't have lemonade.'", I say, staring him right in the eyes, all the while seeing this almost botoxxed grin on his face, "Ice tea isn't even like Lemonade at all. It's tea. That's iced. I guess you can put lemon in it, but that's it."
"Oh, ok." he smiles, "I can put a lemon in it."
I'm reaching for a blunt object at this point, but decide against it. He's still smiling at me. There are people behind me, and they are growing restless.  I breathe in, tell myself this is not happening - there is no spoon, I say, there is no spoon.

"Look, Bobby," I exhale, and place the toonies on the counter, "I'll just have a chocolate milkshake."

"Ok." He says, smiling, takes my money, and presses the button on the cash register. "We have smoothies."

 

Grow Some Balls, Stand Up

Ah, the washroom. A refuge for full bladders of men all ages, races and creeds. A place to get away from it all, relax, clean up, and meditate. The Fonz even used to hold business meetings there. Men can talk about whatsoever they wish (and in some select bathrooms, do whatever they wish) and there is no one to judge; the only sound we hear are collective sighs of relief or the gentle buzz of the hand-dryer, highlighted by an occasional grunt and a flush of the toilet.

The washroom. Men can be men. We don't judge each other in there. There's a row of toilets, some sinks, and, for our sex only: a row of urinals. For those not in the know, these handy devices are used by men when we need to do a number 1, but not a number 2. Just pull up, zip down, badaboom badabing - and you're done. This is why the pee-break ratio at a club is often 3 men in the time of one woman. It's express-piss, and what makes us guys, well, guys.

SO WHY THE HELL DO SOME OF YOU MOMMA'S BOYS INSIST ON PISSING IN THE TOILET!

Honestly, nothing disturbs the serenity of a quiet and relaxing urination more than that noisy splatter of some dufus who can't pee in a urinal. What's the problem? Are you worried someone's gonna take a peek? Afraid of sharing the space with one of your fellow brothers? Honestly. Not only is it fucking annoying and loud, but most guys don't even put the freakin' seat up, which means when the time comes for one of us guys to do a number 2 -- well yeah, you guessed it -- there's a little pee surprise waiting on the seat.

To these infidels I say: be a man, embrace your manhood and stand up. It's what makes us "us" and if you can't join the club, well, we just don't want you.

Comment Me To Death

By the way - please feel free to click the comment link at the bottom of any of my ranting blogs and post your opinions. I would be love to discredit them.

I Learned Everything I Know From The Telescreen

Where was I when Hollywood decided to become our moral advisors? Was there a meeting on this?

When I sit down to turn my brain off and watch twenty-two minutes of inane set-up lines and punch lines, I don't wanna learn nothin' about nobody. I want to laugh, eat my TV dinner in peace, and drown out my sorrows with an unoriginal cast of archetypes and some unoriginal jokes. That's what I want, so why can't I get it?

I don't get why cokehead writers in L.A. need to instill some kind of lifelesson thanks to Frasier Crane, Chandler Bing, or Danny Tanner? (Remember Full House? And we are vomitting in 3....2....1) How can, in fact, there be a lesson that makes any sense when it is surrounded by ridiculous, nonsensical situations? Imagine three single guys taking care of a bunch of teenage girls, a bunch of Friends that don't just say "ah hell, we've all pretty much been with each other by now, let's just have an orgy", or a bloody English nurse that can't see her bosses brother is desperately obsessed with her? (Jesus, were you daft, Daphne?)

There's nothing "real" about a sitcom, and that's why we watch it. It's a little utopia with clean beginnings and clean endings. Where everything works out in the end, where relationships work (and if they don't, somehow there's always one waiting in the wings), where everyone has a good job and nice house, where everyone is attractive, and more importantly, everyone always knows just what to say next. So why do they have to crush the bubble and teach me? Just give me the schlock, show me some beautiful people, and keep me living in this world of make-believe until the next set of commericals.

Launchin' New Sites, New Books

Ladies and Gentlemen, boys and girls, transgendered and eunuchs, all the chicks in the world that hate me, and Republicans everywhere:

As you can see www.matthewhansen.net is undergoing some interior decorating. Pull up a chair, rest the dogs, stay awhile. In the coming week there will be a few more changes as well. The best part about mh.net will be the blogs. Hopefully my large fanbase (mom, dad, cat) will enjoy even more rants. I *might* even be able to do a daily blog with this upgraded and improved site. Yowsa - imagine that. Thanks to Kevin Field, webdude extraordinaire, mh.net plans to compete against aol.com and yahoo.com for the world's # 1 site.

Another big ol' round of applause goes to the many people who showed up for the book launch last night at Jet Fuel Coffee last night. After a great day of racing, it was muchos coolio to see friends, family and a whack of strangers come and grab a copy of Therapy. To those who had other plans more important than my book launch (pregnancies, weddings, cardiac arrests) I glare rudely in your general direction.

Note as well, with this badass blogging system, you too can spew as much pigswill as you like. In fact, it is almost a form of counter-pigswill, I guess. I say a whole bunch of crap, you see my crap, and raise it.

So, here's to new sites, new books, and spewing bullshit about nothing.

Cheers,

MH