STUPID THINGS
Stupid Thing #1: This promotion at Wal*Mart
Who, exactly, would purchase golf balls bearing the likeness of a child or grandchild? And why? As portraits, they’re completely inefficient: very small and poorly rendered. As golf balls, they’re problematic, too: how could anyone with a conscience take a five-iron to little Mary-Jo? (I mean, I totally could, but the kind of sentimental wuss who’d buy this crap? Forget it.) Hell, they’re not even keepsake items; anything that comes three to a pack is ipso facto disposable. If someone held a gun to your head and forced you to identify one thing that epitomizes the sappiest, tackiest, most conflicted human impulses, photo-embossed golf balls could seriously save your life.
Stupid Thing #2: United Parcel Service
It should come as no surprise that Jonno receives a lot of Fleshbot-related swag–sometimes as much as three or four packages a day. And over time, delivery men (and occasionally, delivery women) have grown lazy about ringing the bell. Perhaps it’s because Jonno doesn’t always answer the door, or perhaps it’s because the packages are marked “ADULT MATERIAL” and therefore seem unimportant, or perhaps it’s because we don’t really have a doorbell, but for whatever reason, they don’t even attempt to get a signature anymore. We just step outside to discover wee piles of filth stacked on the porch. It’s like getting visits from an X-rated Santa all year round.
Last Friday, I emerged to discover not only a minor cachet of pornography waiting patiently on the doorstep, but also this ginormous box containing a very expensive piece of musical equipment that our theatre company ordered for an upcoming show. I guess the UPS man felt that a 100-pound keyboard was about as worthless as an eight-ounce Chi Chi LaRue DVD. I’m happy to say that both survived the ordeal, but wow: that’s pretty freakin’ stupid.
Stupid Thing #3: FedExKinko’s (née Kinko’s)
This particular photo shows a view of the front counter at the St. Charles Avenue store–a parched, barren landscape I endured for TEN FULL MINUTES before any of the incompetent FEK-drones even acknowledged my presence. Not that this is the only location full of ‘tards. Apparently, idiocy runs so rampant throughout the chain that video games have been made about it. (Or at least one, anyway.) In the nearly 20 years I’ve lived here, I’ve found two responsible, rational islands of sanity in this sea of corporate nonchalance: one now lives in San Francisco, and the other I haven’t seen in a while. If this keeps up, “going postal” could potentially be replaced with “going FedEx”.
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