nin137

Nick's Journal
2006-04-20 23:47:59 (UTC)

Please Fail Again

so i decided to go to the grocery store after work to buy
myself a steak. it all was going rather well until i got to
the checkout part. now i know that i have written oodles of
journals about ordinary people who are pitted against the
"self-check out monster". now i don't know what it is about
these machines that bring out the inner idiot in people.
i'm actually starting to believe that it is not the person,
but the machine that is designed as to be so frustrating
that you are absolutely ingratiated by the service you
receive by the man that had a lobotomy on aisle 7.
so there i was wiht my steak in hand, lined up behind a man
who was buying prune juice. just prune juice. nothing
else, just a regular bottle of prune juice. at 7:30 pm.
now the reason why i got behind the man with the prune juice
and say....not the single-mother who was buying 15 frozen
dinners and three tubes of vagisil while struggling to keep
her baby from falling on its head, was because i figured
that this man new efficiency. any man who makes it a point
to buy prune juice for his body obviously wants it to run
efficiently. well not really.
"bloop" - 'invalid entry code, please scan again.'
"bloop" - 'invalid entry code, please scan again.'
"bloop" - 'invalid entry code, please scan again.'
"bloop" - 'invalid entry code, please scan again.'
after the 4th time, he stopped and turned the bar code
towards himself, with a look of unfathomable animosity;
probably the most animosity i have ever seen anyone ever
direct at a bottle of prune juice.
"bloop" - 'invalid entry code, please scan again.'
"bloop" - 'inva-' "bloop" - 'inv' - "bloop" - 'i-' "bloop"
GOD DAMN IT!!!!!!!
at this the dude slammed the prune juice down and glared
about him in a homicidal way. this was my cue to boogie
onto the next lane, where i was greeted by the site of a
heavy-set man with huge glasses and a flannel shirt (with a
t-shirt underneath of the milky-way galaxy with an arrow
indicating where you were located...quaint).
"your total is 31.13"
at this the asshole grinned slyly. oh wow, it's a fucking
palindrom, fucking awesome, happened to me at mcdonald's
once, yet i was able to keep my cock and balls from hanging
out of my pants.
and then this ensued.
"i'd like to pay half cash and half credit."
the cashier gave him this pained look (she was a latino
woman, kind of heavy-set who just seemed like she wanted 8
o'clock to roll around so she could just get home and
pretend she didn't have to deal with some fucked up gringo
jackass).
"oooo-k. how much cash?"
"i will give you, 27 and" at this he made a big ordeal about
fishing around in his pocket for change "94 cents".
she just stared at his change.
'oooo-k." now the poor girl was doing some sort of math in
her head and he piped in:
"i owe you $4.19, that's today's date! I owe you a date"
i stood there, completely slack-jawed.
"bloop" - 'inval-' GOD DAMN IT IF SOMEONE DOESN'T COME AND
HELP ME SOON, WITH THIS GOD DAMN MACHINE!
---
i can't believe this world. i mean you can't create a
weirder world with odder people in it. holy fucking shit.
---
which leads me to the post script. failure. failure in and
of itself isn't that bad, it is merely how badly you get
called out. take James Frey for example. he got called out
so hard he's done for. then take that attorney for the 9/11
trial (i forgot her name, martin something). talk about
fucking up and getting called out hard core.
see i firmly believe that the goal in everybody's life isn't
money, fame, power, or whatever, it is recognition (a lower
form of fame....provided of course you aren't a megalomaniac).
when the form of recognition you get is because you failed,
it sort of is a perverse feeling towards yourself. sure you
got recognized, but for something shitty.
failure isn't bad, but getting recognized everywhere because
of it is one of the worst things ever.




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