As I have said in the past, I like holidays and occasions, no matter how strange or phony the reason for them.
Fathers Day is totally a bogus hallmark day. My dad isn't a sentimental guy, he doesn't go all rubbery when he sees cute black and white photos of little children in suits. Nor does he like sappy junk. He comes from a time when people dealt with problems by being bravely stoic, and didn't have feelings about anything. I can respect that to a point. Someone who can stand up in life's hurricane of self obsessed people and not flinch or complain are impressive.
I'm not that kind of guy. I'm more a hysterical crybaby rage factory. Everyone gets to hear my opinion on everything, and I give up to the minute updates on my mood. Plus, I get mad really fast, like Joe Pesci, then I get unbelievably mean.
Anyway, me and my brother went shopping for my dad for fathers day, we went to Chapters, which is a bookstore.
Chapters is basically the Starbucks of books, and appropriately has a Starbucks in the store. Just in case you crave a Latte while flipping through Angela's Ashes and wondering how you became such a clone.
I am not welcome at chapters, due to some, unpleasantness. But before that I went into Chapters once to purchase the big book of dinosaurs. I wandered around the store, up and down the escalators, wondering what form of cataloging they use since I can't find the dinosaur section. Only pretty girls worked at this store. I wander around to find someone to ask about the dinosaur section. So I see a girl working, I try to approach her to ask her a question, but she sees me coming and like hides behind a shelf and then vanishes. So I see another girl, I try to approach her and she hides behind a stack of books.
This goes on for a long amusing time, its a fun game. Finally I catch one of the girls. So I ask her about the section and she gives me a quick answer, but she lied. I grew weary of all the resistance to helping me and eventually I got annoyed and forced everyone in the store to help me, and as it turns out the book didn't exist anyway since I made it up. So really I wasted a bunch of all their time, which was oddly satisfying.
I thought this over for a while, and when you look at me, the first thought that jumps into your head isn't "successful marketing executive". Probably more like "lazy moocher". So these girls assumed by looking at me that I was bad news.
Sadly they didn't realize that all I wanted of them was a little information. If they hadn't been dummies they would have helped me right away and saved a lot of trouble down the road. The moral is, don't judge a book by its cover.
Also, you never know how much free time a guy in baggy shorts and a worn out t-shirt asking you about dinosaurs really has, but it's safe to assume its a lot.
So we went to Chapters to buy my dad a book, and my brother had a thing for 10 bucks off a purchase. Well we get the book and go to the cashier where he asks for his $10 off. She says, "this is for chapters.ca, the website, its not the same company as the bookstore". I find this strange, since her name tag actually reads,
Mandy
Associate
I don't bother to note that fact since it would be pointless. What amuses me more than anything is that of course they are the same company, there is no way in the universe they could be separate companies. chapters.ca is the fucking stores website. The reason the coupon is useless in the store is because of a choice by the company to make it useless, no other reason. The website turned out to be a big white elephant because no one buys books on line, and their pipe dream about firing all their employees and reducing their overhead to $30 a month for site hosting went south with that pachyderm.
Fuck that. Never buy anything on the internet unless you want the CIA to know about it. Better yet, never buy anything ever. I never buy anything except liquor, cigarettes and gasoline. As a result I pay more taxes on my purchases than anybody. When you drive down that freeway thank me, I paid for it. When your car skips a median and knocks over $4000 dollars worth of city trees, thank me again.
This hasn't made any sense.
Bye.