|
|
| Monday, July 25, 2005 08:49 PM |
| The Best of You |
 by Fëanor |
- I just received another Diceland expansion in the mail today from Cheapass Games--Dragons. To say I'm excited would be a huge understatement. I'm looking forward to a Diceland tournament on Game Day to try out these new expansions. I'm hoping I won't be the only one in the tournament, forced to play both sides of the table. So, come on, who's with me?! Let's fight with dice! Sarcasmo? dje2004? Anybody?
- Have I mentioned recently how awesome In Your Honor is? Because it's really awesome.
- I've just started reading the fantasy novel Howl's Moving Castle, which was lent to me by the generous Peccable a while ago. He'd read in the journal here that I'd seen the movie and was curious to know what it was like and how it differed from the book. After a short discussion we concluded that they were almost completely different, but now that I've actually started reading it, it's interesting to see how Miyazaki discarded main characters (like one of Sophie's sisters) and major plot events (such as Sophie's sisters secretly changing places using a magic spell) while at the same time capturing certain other tiny details (such as the way in which a fellow employee shoves his face between two boxes and into a store room in order to tell Sophie's sister that she must return to work) with absolute exactitude. The novel is far more postmodern, and more aware of itself and of the conventions of fairy tales, than Miyazaki's rather straightforward (though certainly still quite exciting and humorous) fantasy film. It's not really the same story at all, but it has the same sense of fun and magic, and I'm enjoying it quite a bit. Although maybe I should hold off on reviewing it until I've actually gotten further than the first couple of chapters...
- I made the mistake of going to McDonalds for dinner tonight. I do love me some McDonalds cheeseburgers and fries, with a nice big Coke to wash them down, but that stuff treats my body very poorly, and man do I hate the atmosphere in the McDonalds. I'm thinking specifically of the one I ate in tonight, in the mall underground, near 9th and Market, but most McDonalds are the same (though I've noticed the ones in cities are particularly bad)--filthy, loud, and depressing. Most of the employees and customers are poor and unhappy. The woman at the register nearly sneered at me when I came asking for ketchup packets.* She didn't acknowledge me at all, either, but simply grabbed a paltry handful of three packets and spilled them on the counter in front of me. As I had feared (I've seen this before in many another fast food restaurant), they were covered with some kind of unidentifiable sticky brownish substance (old spilled ketchup? Syrup?), so I asked if she could give me some that weren't covered in stuff. Admittedly, I asked this in a slightly confrontational tone, but I don't think I was being unreasonable. But she came back saying, "What? What?!", poking at the ketchup packets as if there obviously wasn't anything wrong with them. And I had to explain again, this time getting even louder and more confrontational. She was highly insulted that I wanted clean ketchup packets, and pointed out that it wasn't like they were open or anything. But finally she consented to give me three packets without brown sticky stuff on them, and I wandered away, muttering to myself that I didn't think I'd asked for too much.
Basically, the atmosphere in McDonalds brings out the worst in people. It's a high-pressure, fast-paced environment, the employees are tense, constantly badgered, underpaid, and don't want to be there, so they get surly and work poorly and their attitude filters down to the customers and just makes the whole place stink with angst (not to mention the other more obvious and less figurative stinks).
So, yeah. I'm lovin' it!
* Which I should think would be a familiar request at this point, as they don't put ketchup anywhere where people can just get it themselves--what's that about? Wouldn't it speed up the whole process, keep customers from hanging around near the front of the restaurant after they've already ordered, and allow employees to handle other orders instead of having to be interrupted by ketchup requests? Can we not be trusted with unfettered access to ketchup? Well...okay, maybe not. There were some pretty untrustworthy-looking folks in that McDonalds, and plenty of messy areas already, without adding ketchup into the mix... Still, though. I want my ketchup! |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Jim Genzano's books on Goodreads
