Monthly Archives: November 2012

Let’s talk politics

I always hear people saying stuff like, don’t talk about politics. Keep it to yourself. Don’t get political. But that’s just one person’s opinion, to not talk about politics. My opinion is a little different. In fact, it’s the exact opposite. I like to only talk about politics, to everybody I meet. It’s one of the first things that I start talking about when I meet somebody. That’s not entirely true. It’s actually the very first thing that I start talking about, even before I formally introduce myself to a new person. My goal is to just bombard people with political opinion, and somewhere amongst this onslaught of clever commentary and smart insight, you’ll feel like you know me, know where I’m coming from, and I’ll consider us introduced. Obviously I won’t have asked you about your political opinions. But I don’t have to, because my critiques are always so fresh, so spot-on, that whoever I talk to always winds up automatically seeing things from my point of view, and once they’re there, they like it better, so much better in fact that they always discard whatever rudimentary political beliefs they had previous latched onto, and replace them instantly with my patented brand of clear-cut no-nonsense award-winning analysis.

People get frustrated talking politics. People get bored. They say why waste the time and energy talking about this stuff? It’s not like you’re ever going to actually change anybody’s opinions. But that’s only because you’ve never actually changed anybody’s opinions. I refrain from talking about politics on this blog because I don’t want history to think that I unfairly swayed the outcome of the 2012 election. Because if I started talking about politics here, my views would be so welcome, so needed by our misguided public, that word would spread way too fast, and everybody would try to log onto this web site at the same time, and I’m not paying GoDaddy enough money to support that type of traffic, and I don’t know what their business model is like. Would they permit the traffic and then send me a ridiculous bill afterward? Or would the crush of page loads simply destroy what I’ve built, rendering it completely inaccessible?

And it wouldn’t stop. Once I start talking about politics, people always wind up saying to me stuff like, “Well Rob, you’ve got my vote!” I can’t run for office. I don’t need to be the center of a cult of personality. Because that’s where it would lead. My views are so all-inclusive, they’re so what’s needed right now, that I’m not sure how I would change and react to such a tidal wave of national support. It’s only honest to think that I’d be changed somewhat. What do they say about the power of celebrity? I don’t know. That’s one of my writing tricks. Whenever I can’t think of something to say about something that I was talking about, and I want to switch topics without making it seem too abrupt, I ask an open ended question, like “What’s that they say about open-ended questions?” And I end it by saying, “I don’t know.”

But what’s that they say about not talking about politics? I don’t get it. We’re one day away from the election and, before Hurricane Sandy leveled the Northeast, it was all I heard anybody talking about. Politics. Barack Obama. Mitt Romney. Seriously, before the storm, what else was there to talk about? I wait tables for a living and, pre-Sandy, as I would walk around the restaurant, every single sentence I would hear from every single table would be about politics. “When Romney finally gets this economy moving again …” “I just don’t get why Obama doesn’t press Romney about his tax returns …” over and over and over again.

But whenever I open my mouth somebody invariably tells me to stop talking about politics. Usually it’s somebody who has differing views from me. Maybe I come across as a jerk. Maybe I don’t really give anybody else equal opportunity to talk. Maybe I get a little too physical when I’m trying to drive home my point of view. Maybe I don’t necessarily need to grab people by the collar and get all up in their faces, little foam spittle flying outward from my mouth. But what does it say about us that we’re only allowed to talk about politics if everybody in the group that we’re talking to shares the same beliefs?

This is pretty important stuff, politics, leaders, policy. We are the nation that we are because of the culmination of all the small political decisions that have been made in our history. And for each decision that was made there had to have been a counter argument. All of the arguments that won, they won because they were argued successfully and convincingly. So if you believe that something should be a certain way, you don’t just shut up about it because you’re not supposed to talk about politics. No, you get in there, you grab that guy sitting at that table with his family by the collar, you tell him that he’s wrong, tell him his family is a bunch of idiots, you tell him that he better listen to you or else there are going to be some serious consequences. Tell him it’s not a threat it’s a promise. Ask him to see some ID. Wrestle him to the ground and force the wallet out of his pocket. I know it’s hard to aim the foam spittle, but try to get as much of it as you can right in his face, right in his mouth. Because politics is important. And we should all be talking about it.

A half-assed reflection on an over-privileged life

I miss being a little kid. I miss getting out of school at two-thirty and coming home and wreaking havoc and getting into ridiculous fights with my little brothers and sisters, over whose turn it was to pick out a TV show or who was up next to play Nintendo. Even though we didn’t have cable and there were really only two or three shows to watch anyway. Even though we only had a handful of video games that we’d all either beaten several times or played until we got to that really impossible level that none of us could ever pass.

I miss listening to the radio for my favorite songs to come on. I’d wait with a blank cassette tape in this little boom box my parents bought me for my tenth birthday, trying to get it just right, so I’d have as much of the complete song as possible recorded without getting any of the annoying DJ talking over. For a while, like in the mid nineties, every song that came out was great. I know that’s probably not the case. But that’s how it sounded. Everything sounded so cool. Everything so new. Now I listen to the radio and I just get bored at all of the snarky comments I’ve programmed to run automatically through my head. At some point in high school I decided I was too cool for regular radio music and I only listened to stuff I considered underground.

I miss going to ska and punk shows in high school, listening to music that, when I listen to it now, the majority of it sounds just awful. I must have been so in love with the scene, with just getting out there and seeing new things, meeting new people. These local bands would play shows in dingy event halls or church basements and I’d get pumped up months in advance. When I got there I’d buy every t-shirt for sale and every CD and demo tape, regardless of whether any of it was even any good, but high on the knowledge that you couldn’t buy this stuff anywhere else.

I miss my first car. I worked through all of high school, waiting tables almost on a full-time basis, saving up enough cash to pay for a 1991 Dodge Stealth in full, up front, and I still had enough left over to buy insurance and gas and all of the repairs I’d need to keep it running for the year that I had it before I crashed it and it had to be scrapped. Working throughout high school great; having my own money was fantastic. But not being able to get anywhere to spend it kind of made having stacks of cash a little pointless. Once I could drive I could go anywhere, buy anything. Comics, clothes, music, guitars, it was ridiculous. I miss having all of that money and basically no expenses, no serious financial responsibilities.

I miss my part-time job at college. For some reason, the university ignored my terrible driving record and hired me to drive a shuttle van between our two campuses in the Bronx and Manhattan. It was awesome. I felt like a hero, navigating through crazy traffic, transporting students and professors back and forth, taking ridiculous short cuts that in reality did nothing to save anybody any time. I drove through the NYC transit strike of 2006. I was picking random people up off the street in order to get through NYPD blockades that, much like the recent Hurricane Sandy blockades, only allowed carpool vehicles to drive past certain downtown checkpoints.

I miss writing for the school newspaper. I miss writing all of those op-ed pieces right before production, trying to fill up pages of blank space because other students hadn’t submitted their articles in time. I can’t believe the university gave me such an open forum, to write about anything. I wrote complete nonsense, much as I do now, but it was all under the title “University Journal of Record.” I would write about how much I loved White Castle, or how much I hated Tony Danza. I would make up fake students and write op-eds under their names. One time I made up a kid from North Dakota writing about how much he hated New York City. Students actually wrote in hate mail, which I’d then publish in the next week’s edition.

I miss the Peace Corps. I miss living in rural Ecuador with my wife, everyday an absurd adventure waiting right outside our door. I miss getting pissed off at the little kids looking through our windows, invading our privacy, never giving us a second to ourselves, constantly treating us like some sort of foreign-born entertainment. I miss drinking moonshine with the guys, I miss riding on the back of a pickup truck to get into town. I miss the freedom of not having had cell phone service or Internet for a solid two years.

I love my life, but I hate looking back and missing stuff. I miss two of my grandparents. I dread five years from now how I’m going to be missing everything that I’m doing right now. I hope I’m never like, “I miss riding my bike to work,” or “I miss that blog that I kept up for a while,” or much more dramatically, “I miss civilization, electricity and grocery stores,” or even much worse, “I miss my parents.” But you can only insist on planning out your life so far. Everybody’s constantly changing. But this is all really, very cliché advice. I just wish that I could be doing everything, seeing everything, meeting everyone, hanging out with everyone, all at the same time, everybody happy, smiling, fighting, watching TV, listening to music, traveling the world, racing our vans downtown.

So sappy. So emotional. The sarcastic part of me that I’ve spent way too much time cultivating and nurturing is making fun of everything I’ve just written, a cheap play on emotion, a half-assed reflection of an over-privileged life. But I just have so much to be happy about, and thus so much to eventually miss. It’s too much to think about sometimes so I rarely do, I just try to stay in the moment, not thinking too far ahead, not letting myself get caught up in what’s not around anymore. But yeah, life right? I guess. I don’t know. I really don’t.

I have no idea how to use Microsoft Excel

I never learned how to use Microsoft Excel. I have a pretty good excuse, actually. But it’s a huge long story of an excuse and it starts a long time ago. When I was a little kid I remember when my family bought our first PC. I was in love with it. All I wanted to do was be on this computer. And this was before the Internet. I’m just thinking about how lame it must have been, but I was infatuated. I remember when PCs were just coming into the mainstream and how I wanted one so desperately, every day was just me trying to control my insatiable urge to have and use a computer, but because I was a little kid, with no job, no money, I couldn’t do anything about it. I’d just have to sit around and watch my little brothers and sisters watch Barney. I wasn’t allowed to play Nintendo on weekdays, so I couldn’t even play Zelda.

At my Catholic elementary school, we had a computer lab. It was run by this ninety-year-old nun named Sister Anthelia. She was so old she still wore the nun outfit. I don’t think she knew anything about computers. I think that whoever was in charge of the school was like, “Jesus, this lady is completely unfit to teach. But what do we do with her? She’s a nun.” And finally somebody else was like, “I don’t know, put her in charge of the library.” And that first person would reply, “I’ve already thought of that, but then where would we put Sr. Margaret? She’s even crazier.” Until eventually they’d decide, “Well, whatever, just make her the computer teacher. Those kids are only in there for like twenty minutes a week anyway. That’s got to be harmless enough.”

And it was torture, because I wanted to use those twenty minutes every week to actually use the computers. Like really badly. But Sister Anthelia would make us spend the first ten minutes memorizing and reciting back these ridiculous prayers that she wrote herself. It was agony. If we didn’t place the correct inflection on just the right word, she would make us start all over again, “And slower this time! Much slower!”

Finally we’d get to power on the Apple IIs, computers that were already obsolete, even in the technological dark ages of the early 1990s. The screens didn’t even have black and white, they had black and green, like in the Alien movies. They had giant B drives, floppy disks that were actually floppy. And nothing ever worked. The whole lab was all just a huge disguise, a lie perpetuated by the school, they’d parade the parents around on Open House Day, “Look parents! Check out our computer lab! We’re getting your kids prepared for the future!” and parents back then had no idea about computers, not the majority of them anyway. There was always that one kid whose mom or dad worked for IBM, but everybody hated that kid, because he was always bragging about how much he loved playing with his computer back home. “Oh you don’t have Oregon Trail? Too bad. It’s awesome!”

But finally my parents realized that we’d have to get a computer eventually, and one day there it was. Like I said, this was pre-Internet, so there wasn’t a ton of stuff to do on the computer. I could fool around with the MS-DOS prompt, make it say stupid stuff. I could play Oregon Trail, which, yeah it was kind of cool at first, but after a while you get tired of watching all of your family members die of dysentery or chlamydia. So after that got old I started fooling around with this other built-in program, Mavis Beacon’s Typing.

Basically, with this program, I taught myself how to type really early. I think I was only in the second grade. Although, I say early now, because that was early back then, but I have no idea how early kids today learn how to type. Maybe much earlier than second grade. Maybe my kids are going to read this story someday and think that I was some sort of cave man. But whatever, I could type really fast.

I remember my older cousins used to pay me ten bucks to type out their papers for high school. That was the best. Although, I remember the first time I had ten dollars, I really wanted this Mr. Fantastic action figure, you know from the Fantastic Four, right? It was on display at the comic book store, and I just imagined it stretching out and doing all sorts of cool stretching stuff. But when I finally bought it, this piece of shit action figure, its limbs just clicked out of their hinges a bit, lengthening oh so slightly. This was the worst approximation of stretching powers, a total let down. Like I could see when it was fully extended where the plastic limbs were held together by the thin plastic joints. Even worse, one time when the arms were fully extended its right forearm snapped off, meaning the only way to fix it was with Krazy Glue, meaning after that it couldn’t extend at all. So it was terrible. But I had wanted it so bad that I lied to myself for years, telling myself that it was a cool toy, that I liked it. But what are you really supposed to do with action figures anyway? They’re cool to look at for a minute, but I wasn’t one of those kids who held them in his hands and made up adventures, making weird noises and making them fight with other action figures. I’d have much rather tormented one of my siblings, driving them to tears to the point where my mom would actually yell at them for making too much noise crying and screaming.

But what am I talking about here? Computers, right? So I taught myself how to type really fast, so fast that when I got to high school, and we’re barely out of the 1990s here, there were still a sizeable number of students who didn’t know how to type. To correct this deficiency, there was a typing class freshman year. But if you passed the typing assessment on day one, they didn’t make you sit through the class. I just got an extra study hall. I thought it was great, but I didn’t realize that during this class they not only taught you had to type but also how to use Microsoft Word and Excel.

So I never learned how to use Excel. And you don’t really need Excel in high school, or in college either. I had to take one physics class in college and we needed to do one task for one project in Excel, so the professor made everyone come in on a Saturday to learn the basics of Excel. But it was a Saturday class so everybody just kind of hung out in the classroom pretending to already know everything that the professor was talking about, not asking any questions, nobody raising their hands, so that way he’d think that maybe calling this Saturday class was a little unnecessary, and OK fine, class dismissed.

And for that one assignment, I just did all the work by hand and then I went into Microsoft Word and created a table that, when printed out, looked like it had been something that was created on Excel. And it worked, but only for that one assignment. The thing about Excel is, and I’m guessing here, because I really don’t know how to use it, you put all of the information or numbers into certain spots and then run certain functions and the program does all of the work for you, even laying it out at the end. So instead of just paying attention during that class, I made all of this extra work for myself, doing all of the calculations by hand, and then formatting it in a grid.

But that was just one time during sophomore year of college. I didn’t have to think about Excel, not even once during the rest of my higher education. I don’t even think my computer had Excel, just Word. But then I graduated and became an adult. And I put on my resume that I knew everything about Microsoft Office. I had this one job as a paralegal, and I was hired specifically to keep this one lawyer’s Excel spreadsheets organized and up to date. It’s a good thing that this lawyer didn’t know anything about Excel either, because she probably just looked at them and was like, “Whatever, these spreadsheets are stupid and unnecessary anyway and I might as well just enter the data in myself, randomly, wherever I feel like it.”

So I didn’t learn anything. That’s not to say I didn’t try. I remember one time I was like, “You know what? I’m going to figure out Excel. I’m going to do it.” And I looked online at some tutorial for how to do some function. And I followed it step by step and I think it worked. It did something cool with numbers. And I was like, “OK, I learned it.” But then maybe a month or two later a situation finally arose where I could have used those skills that I thought I had taught myself. But too much time had passed and I’d forgotten everything. And I tried to go online to find that tutorial again, but you know how Google is, right? Like what did I type in that time two months ago that led me to that tutorial? I had no idea. By the time I found it, I had spent maybe twenty minutes. And then I started the tutorial and got overwhelmingly frustrated and even depressed as I remembered how long the tutorial took the first time, and the idea of doing it again was just something that I couldn’t bear to put myself through. So I quit that job and started waiting tables.

I never have to use Excel. Every once in a while I’d be trying to open Word but I’d accidentally click on Excel and the icon would bounce up and down as the program loaded, and it took forever, creating a new blank spreadsheet, making the whole computer come to a halt as it opened up this bulky Microsoft program, only so I could close it out immediately, “Are you sure you want to close Spreadsheet1 without saving? All data will be lost.” And I’m just like, “Yes! Close! This was all a huge mistake!” So finally I just removed the icon from my home screen. I think it’s in the application folder somewhere, but I’ll never use it. Like Power Point. I think it’s right next to Power Point. I have no idea how to use Power Point. But for real, those presentations, even the good ones, even the ones with animations and stuff, they’re all so boring. Just a bunch of boring information spiced up with a couple of generic clip-arts here and there, a generic slideshow. Nobody likes slideshows. Nobody likes spreadsheets. Right?

I should start a blog where I only write stuff about waiting tables. But what would I call it?

I work in a restaurant, so naturally every time I sit down to write something, the first thing that pops in my mind is something about the business, something about waiting tables. But I don’t want to be that guy. There’s a really talented guy who writes about waiting tables, and he did it already, he wrote all about it. I’m pretty sure I don’t have anything novel to add to the conversation. But still, I spend a good chunk of my waking day serving food, and sometimes it just begs to leak out onto the page.

So I’m thinking about maybe, just this once, letting myself write some restaurant stuff. But everything that’s coming to mind immediately sounds so boring, so tired. I’d say trite, but that word is really trite. Everything is just going to come off as whiny. It’s one thing to write about stuff in a funny way, but I’m worried that once I get started on the little things I feel I need to get off my chest, it’s going to snowball into this giant Death Star of bitterness.

How do I do it without sounding too angry? How do I do it without giving everybody a huge lecture on how to behave at a restaurant? Because nobody wants that. I get it, you don’t go out to eat for the benefit of the staff; you go out to eat for your own enjoyment. And so even after I complain to myself in my head about certain things that bug me, another voice in my head starts saying stuff like, “Well, it’s your job. If you hate it that much quit. Or stop complaining.” And I hate it when that side of me butts into my inner monologue, and I get even angrier.

But a lot of my troubles all boil down to the fact that there really isn’t a cohesively American restaurant etiquette. Everything, little things, big things, they might all be done differently at different restaurants. Don’t pay your waiter, pay at the register. Don’t pay at the register, pay your waiter. You have to ask for extra here. Over here you don’t ask, it’s automatic. I recently switched restaurants, and I’m just shocked at some of these differences in the way service is carried out. At my old restaurant, I had my section, my tables, everybody had to go through me. And there were benefits to this, like I knew exactly what I had to do and I could figure out how to prioritize my actions in the short term. All while keeping my head above water and trying to make some money. I mean, that’s the idea.

But at this new restaurant everybody is supposed to be available to anybody. So a random customer asks me for a Coke and now I have to get it. At my old restaurant I would have just pretended not to see him waving. I’m only kidding. Sort of. I joke around about how I can be this huge dick, but really I had my own little tasks that I had to take care of, and so pretending not to see him was actually nicer than the alternative, me just kind of saying to this guy who wanted a Coke, “Your waiter’s coming right over.”

But customers don’t know how the staff operates from restaurant to restaurant. And the guy just wanted a Coke. Maybe he was really thirsty. I hate that whole, “I’m not your waiter,” business, even when I was working at that old restaurant and I had to do it every ten seconds. Who hasn’t ever found themselves sitting at a table for way too long without a drink? It happens. But customers get cranky and the staff gets upset for the customer getting pushy and, ultimately, if he or she is pissed off enough, they won’t get a good tip.

Tipping. It’s a pretty crazy way for people to make a living. It’s all so arbitrary. What do you do about that table that received great service but still only left fifteen percent, or less? And why? Why did they cheap out on the tip? Because they’re allowed to. Because restaurants don’t have to pay their staff a decent wage, they can leave it to the discretion of the customer. And a lot of the time customers are jerks. Why pay more when I can pay less? I’m giving myself a discount on the dinner, and in life, by being a bad tipper.

What’s the theory behind this, that without the expectation of a tip, the waiter or waitress wouldn’t work as hard, right? Let me tell you, it’s total bullshit. If I knew that I were to receive an automatic twenty percent from every check, everybody would be having a more pleasant dining experience. Because I wouldn’t be stressed out over a tip. I wouldn’t be trying way too hard to be fake nice or running around the floor like a crazy person, trying to show all of the customers how hard I’m working. I would just be chill, relaxed, and I’d perform my duties with a lot less nervous energy.

And another reason why tipping is detrimental. I don’t know about other servers, but I can only take so much disappointment in one shift. After three or four shitty tips, I basically just lower the level of work that I’m putting in for the rest of the night. Because I’ve worked hard already for money that just wasn’t coming in. Why bother? Just shift into autopilot and keep that mediocre money flowing in.

But nobody wants to hear this stuff. That’s why I’m not going to write about it. Except this one anecdote. Really quick. The other night I had these two women who refused to leave the restaurant. It was like an hour and a half past closing and I was the only waiter left, because I had to wait for them to leave so I could clean the table. Finally I begged the manager to kick them out and he eventually approached the table. They knew right away, they were like, “Yeah, yeah, we know …” and got their coats on and left. And I was just standing there, holding back the explosive rage inside, wanting them to turn around and see the look on my face as I wiped down their table, tell them thanks a lot for their shitty twelve percent tip. But I can’t do that. Waiters are strictly prohibited from being rude to a customer, even if they were rude to you by not paying you what you were owed. “Don’t you dare talk that way to a customer! Or look at them funny! Smile! Now! We’ll fire you! We pay you a special minimum wage, special in the fact that it’s comically lower than regular minimum wage, which is already comically low in and of itself, to be nice and friendly and subservient and obedient!”

And they didn’t look back anyway. They were just oblivious to my existence, not a care in the world regarding the fact that, not only did they waste my time, but they didn’t even pay me enough for the job I did for them. That’s how this works. You don’t get table service at McDonald’s so you don’t have to tip. In any other profession you complain if your employer doesn’t give you all of your money. But waiters have to stand there and smile. “See you next time! Get home safe! You forgot your doggy bag miss! Wouldn’t want to forget those two shrimp!” Come on. Who sits in a restaurant that long? Get a life. Go out to a bar. You’re just going to sit? Can’t you sit somewhere else? Like at home? Don’t they realize that other people want to get to their homes, get some sleep? Just completely inconsiderate of other human beings. It’s unimaginable.

See? That was way too bitter. I’m scowling right now. I think I’ve aged a whole month in like half an hour. I could never do this, the whole writing about being a waiter gig, because I can’t even make it funny. It just gets dark. And I don’t want to be dark. I don’t want to complain. Nobody wants to read it. Everybody’s got to work. I wouldn’t want to read somebody writing about how much it sucks to be an accountant, how these idiots come in at tax time and have no idea how to manage their own numbers, these jokes of human beings who didn’t save any receipts or bring any of the papers they were told to bring in order to have their returns processed properly. That would be super lame. And I would get pissed, thinking, hey, that accountant is talking about me. I’m not stupid. And so I’d stop reading. And I’d probably stop going to him for my taxes.

I’ll only accept the best

What can I say? I have expensive tastes. I have a palate that demands the finest things in life. Luxury automobiles, small-batch whiskies, vintage wines and exotic pets. I’m not just going to sit back and accept life by the Kraft Single. No I want the whole block. I want it to have been hanging in some rural house in Southern Italy for the better part of a decade, carefully tended to by some second generation Italian-American immigrant’s grandmother, making sure that when the cheese importer stops by later in the season to see how the batch is progressing, he’ll make faces of disgust, reaming her out in Italian, telling her that his customers, me, won’t accept anything less than the very best, most artfully crafted cheeses. He’ll spit on the floor and walk out in disgust before finding an even more rustic Southern Italian cheese maker, and he’ll buy the whole thing in bulk, whereupon he’ll chop it up into little wedges and sell them to the most world-renowned cheese shops in America. And that’s where I’ll get my cheese, really expensive, a really sophisticated cheese. I don’t eat grilled cheese sandwiches, I eat cheese in little blocks, little chunks, skewered by ivory toothpicks, and no, they’re not reusable, I still throw them out. I don’t give a shit if ivory is endangered, blah blah blah trafficking, blah blah blah poaching. Get me a fucking elephant, chop its fucking tusks off, and make me some fucking ivory toothpicks. Now. What do you think I’m joking? You’re fired. Get the hell out of my house. You want a recommendation? Sure, hand me a platinum plated pen. No not that one, the good one you moron. Throw that other one away. In the garbage. Here goes:

Dear potential employer: I see that my previous groundskeeper is looking for employment. Do me a favor. Not only should you not hire this no-good lousy incompetent piece of garbage, but see if you can’t rough him up a little while you’re throwing his sorry ass off your property. Don’t read this out loud, because he might get scared and take off running. If you’re already reading this out loud, just starting hitting him right now before he totally makes a break for it. If he calls the police, tell them he was trespassing. Tell them he stole my platinum pen. The shitty one. I know he stole it. That son of a bitch. Read that part out loud, so he doesn’t get any ideas about calling the cops.

Tomorrow I think I’ll wake up and have some caviar for breakfast. Some whale caviar. Well I don’t care if whales aren’t fish. Get me some unfertilized whale eggs before I really start to lose my patience. Yes, of course I just fired you, and do you think I’ll ever rehire you if you’re just standing around not doing what I’m telling you to do? Just get me some goddamn breakfast. I’m starving. I don’t care what time it is. I’ll have breakfast when I want breakfast.

One time somebody was reading me the newspaper. The article was about how a fisherman off the coast of Africa caught an unusual specimen that hadn’t been seen in centuries. Aristotle wrote of it, but scholars had assumed it had long gone extinct, until now. I wanted this fish. I needed it. I wanted to make the world’s most expensive fishamajig sandwich out of it. I wanted to harvest its eggs to spread on toast for a mid afternoon snack. None of my dimwitted employees could get me that fish. “What if it’s a male fish?” one of those idiots asked when I told them I wanted the eggs. Well then sample its DNA, clone it, keep breeding it and manipulating its genes until you have a fish that can get me some rare caviar. Why is it so difficult to do as I say? I fired half a dozen employees that day. One of them had a pregnant wife. Or so he claimed, as he was begging to me, pleading for his job, pleading for his family. It was pathetic. I’ve never seen a grown man cry so hard, like a little baby. I beat him up good on the way out. I taunted him, go ahead, call the police. Then when the police came I showed them all of the ivory toothpicks, I made it out like he brought them to my house from whatever country he immigrated from. I hired the most expensive lawyers to go after him, to throw the book at him. Just saying that gave me a great idea. I went to my library and fetched my first edition leather bound copies of Europe’s greatest writers and poets, Keats, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, and I threw all of those books at him, pummeling him, until he was good and bloody, and then I hired even more expensive lawyers, prosecuting him, defamation of some of western civilization’s most expensive works of literature, crimes against humanity.

I can’t believe the police, those sniveling toads, they just stood there and watched me bludgeon this jerk with my heaviest books. Even they were scared of me. Note to self: by more Wordsworth. Note to self: Buy more policemen to work at my house. Note to self: I’m serious, write these notes down! Who do you think I’m talking to! Stop standing around like an idiot and write this down! Every single word! Get me some cheese and fish eggs! I want a snack! Right this second!