Costco

So, I'm like, in Costco to check up on my application and their seasonal employment. I'm standing there, looking damn fine, chatting with the clerk who is wilting under my powers. Yeah, that's right.

Without warning this contessa on my right suddenly looks at me and says, "Jason!" and goes for the hug. I'm surprised, so I fake her with a left and let the bottle of Johnnie Walker in my right do the rest.

I catch myself mid-swing. Hey, I know this doll. Way back time, like the 60s, man. Yeah, all that fly dope, and stuff. We chat warmly. I compliment her on her memory and turn back to the wilting clerk, so obviously wishing that her boyfriend was damn fine like me. But the dame isn't done yet. She says, "You're just unforgettable, J."

Yeah, that's right.

I decide the clerk is reaching toxic levels of exposure to awesomeness, and I hit the parking lot. Light rain. Kinda like that mushy drizzle on the day you realised Santa wasn't real. I'm halfway to my car, parked on the far side.

I've never known why people insist on nearly parking inside the building. They clog up the lot, and their reward for circling three times? A ding in their door, a crack in their fender, may be even a rolling cart to the side panel. I prefer walking.

I pause for a second. There's some kind of sound. Almost, but not quite entirely unlike my name being called. Years of training kick in, and I turn around. There's the clerk, running me down in the mushy drizzle. Damn, I'm fine. She's carrying a pen and paper. Paper's probably a subterfuge for the pen, a stabbing instrument, since she can't have me.

Yeah, I just said that.

Turns out the fella helping my long-lost, well-brained friend happens to be a manager. Saw the whole exchange. Sent the clerk out running to catch opportunity before it drove away.

Well, she took my particulars and asked a few questions. Writing all the time. But it never occurred to me until just now that she was likely burning out there to get my phone number. Had to make up some excuse to keep from babbling like an idiot in front of me, so she kicked into office-speak. Happens all the time. Pity. Makes it hard to get work.

Quotes Galore

  'The people of Krikkit,' said His High Judgemental Supremacy, Judiciary Pag, LIVR (the Learned, Impartial, and Very Relaxed), Chairman of the Board of Judges at the Krikkit War Crimes Trial, 'are, well, you know, they're just a bunch of real sweet guys, you know, who just happen to want to kill everybody. Hell, I feel the same way some mornings. Shit.'
  'OK,' he continued, swinging his feet up on to the bench in front of him and pausing a moment to pick a thread off his Ceremonial Beach
Loafers, ...
  '... so we won.' He paused and chewed a little gum. 'We won,' he repeated, 'but that's no big deal. I mean a medium sized galaxy against
one little world, and how long did it take us? Clerk of the court?'
  'M'lud?' said the severe little man in black, rising.
  'How long, kiddo?'
  'It is a trifle difficult, m'lud, to be precise in this matter. Time and distance...'
  'Relax, guy, be vague.'
  'I hardly like to be vague, m'lud, over such a...'
  'Bite the bullet and be it.'
  The clerk of the court blinked at him. It was clear that like most of the Galactic legal profession he found Judiciary Pag ... a rather
distressing figure. He was clearly a bounder and a cad. ...
(Ellipsis separated by spaces are mine.)


I've recently been reading the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy (obviously called) trilogy again after some years. The only one I've never read is the fifth on, Mostly Harmless. That bothers me. Deep down in my heart I know that I'm not complete because of it.

Douglas Adams was a freakishly brilliant fellow, if his writing is anything to go by. I can't say anything about his moral fibre, or whether he had any, because I don't really know anything about him. But if you doubt the brilliance, just read chapter seven of Life, the universe and everything. Honestly, Bistromathics! And it's true. I got the opening quote from the same book, chapter 14.

What's really startled me as I've hacked and slashed my way through these books, again, is how much they may have subliminally affected my own writing. I don't write exactly as he does, but my thought patterns are very much like his. I'm almost disturbed to see it, and would be, if I wasn't so impressed with his freakish intelligence.

Thank you, Jessie, for introducing me to this series in the first place. That was long ago, while the earth was still young, in 1998. That was also the point where my own writing began to take its own shape.


(It should go without saying that any mention of the Guide must include a disclaimer: Please don't bother with the crap 2005 movie, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It's an embarrassment to the books, which just don't transfer well to visual media. Note that I say this after having only watched five minutes of the movie in a theatre before getting up in disgust and going to another flick. This isn't book snobbery, though. The movie is awful.)

hilarious...

I was reading through some Debian info, when I happened to follow a trail which lead to another dude's page. One thing lead to another, and then I saw this:


I laughed a slight laugh, a breezy laugh. Not a guffaw.