The Importance Of Being Adrienne

Saturday morning starts with a phone call from my sister-in-law Adrienne.

Apparently her Friday night had been very eventful and since, on occasion, her parents read this blog, I will leave it at that with the assurance no laws were broken and their daughter returned home under her own power in the same condition she left.

Mostly.

Let me digress for a moment and attempt to explain Adrienne.  I’ve spent very little time with Adrienne… three thousand miles between zip codes will do that to people.  I consider myself of average intelligence and near-genius levels of smart-assery (case in point: a person of high intelligence would never use the word “assery” and only a person of near-genius levels of smart-assery would have thought of it).  Natalie’s parents are intelligent people.  Natalie was Salutatorian of her high school class.  Not to be outdone, Adrienne was Valedictorian.  Me… I had to spell check both those words.  A straight-A product of the government-run public education system, Natalie will be quick to tell you with a pride that should only be reserved for mothers.  Now here is the rub:

I have no idea what Adrienne does for a living.

No one does.  I’ve asked and no one can explain it to me.  It’s involves science and the genetic splicing of fish or something.  I often joke that she’s cracking the fish genome so they can create naturally boneless lemon-peppered salmon.  Maybe some kind of circulatory system that works on a light butter sauce instead of blood would be nice.  When you ask her about her work she dismisses you with a slight annoyance like I suspect Tom Hanks would if you asked him what a box of chocolates is like.

It should be noted, Adrienne is often annoyed.

An example, if I may.  Adrienne currently lives in the city by the bay (okay, technically she lives in Berkeley which is the city by the city by the bay).  California changes people and this is never made so obvious as when Adrienne comes to visit.

It’s so humid here… it’s never like this in California.

Olive Garden?  How come there are no decent restaurants like in California?

In California our vegetable sides come with a blend of cauliflower.  Who serves a vegetable side of just broccoli and carrots?  Savages.

No one faults her because 1) She’s Adrienne, 2) I would think California does have a lot more to offer than Florida and 3) Once they see the lights or Paris, it’s hard to get them back to the farm.  In this scenario, Florida is the farm.

There is a certain whimsy Adrienne possesses that is usually reserved characters in Doris Day movies.  People who you wouldn’t think exist in real life.  What’s the word I am looking for?… eccentrics.

One of the eccentricities is Adrienne has a secret identity.  I read enough comic books to know all scientists eventually develop one of these.

This is Jennifer Walters AKA She-Hulk and technically she’s an attorney but you get my drift.

There is part of me that finds this very intriguing although I don’t wish her to be bitten by a radioactive spider or caught in the blast of a gamma bomb because I am pretty sure she would be imbued with cancer, not a super power.  Because I was I am not Alfred Gough in Batman (1989) outing vigilantes to just anyone, we’ll call her alter ego Rhiannon.  Rhiannon’s super power is she allows Adrienne to traverse the internet, and possibly reality, with complete anonymity.  I know she has used this alias in postings on my blog.  I suspect she uses it in forums, commenting on websites and probably more frequently in the heyday of chat rooms.  I pretend this is the name she gives to hairy-chested, multiple gold-chain wearing men who ask for her number only to find she’s given them the number to a Papa John’s Pizza.

The night of our engagement during the Bride Early Warning System which is immediately activated after the ring is placed on the newly-engaged finger, Adrienne was notified.  Her immediate response to me was, “Congratulations.  Jim, you seem like a nice guy… are you sure you want to do this?”

Generally such concern is given to the bride by her sister, not to the groom.  At our wedding receptions it was Adrienne who was quick to inform me that, “All sales were final.  No refunds.  No exchanges.  No exceptions.”

Thank you for shopping with us at Bed, Brides and Beyond.  Have a nice day.

As if I would have came back and said, “This one isn’t performing that way I hoped.  Do you have anything newer?  Maybe something in a Brittany?”

When we were engaged, I was told by Natalie’s mother, “You do know Adrienne is going to be the problem.  It’s nothing personal, Jim.  Adrienne isn’t very good with sharing.”

This became apparent in the phone calls she was used to getting on an uninterrupted schedule until I showed up.  Most of Adrienne conversations with Natalie come while she’s looking for company to help pass the time while she waits for the bus.  These conversations usually go something like this.

ADRIENNE:  Natalie.  What are you doing?

NATALIE:  Eating dinner. We’re watching Real Estate Interventions.  Can I call you back?

ADRIENNE:  No.  You have to talk to me now.

NATALIE:  Well, I’m eating.

ADRIENNE:  There is a homeless man who just asked me for money and I didn’t have any change and he called me a racist.  I’m not racist to black people.

NATALIE:  No, you’re not.  Can he not tell you’re black?  You’re a dark girl with an afro.

ADRIENNE: I think he knows.  He doesn’t seem drunk.  I don’t want him to think I’m racist.

NATALIE:  Okay.  Real Estate Interventions is back.  You’re going to have to deal with this.  Are you alone?

ADRIENNE: No.

NATALIE:  Then I am going to go.

ADRIENNE:  No!  Stay on the phone with me.

NATALIE:  You’re fine.  He’s not dangerous and you’re not alone.  The bus is coming soon.  I’ll call you later.

ADRIENNE:  WHY DO YOU HATE ME SO MUCH!

Click.  ADRIENNE disconnects abruptly.

Adrienne also has this penchant for losing things.  I joke the cure to cancer will come to Adrienne while dodging sketchy Berkeley potheads and hippies at the bus stop.  She’ll quickly type it in her cell phone which she will them promptly loose along with her house keys when she sits them on a shelf at Whole Foods to examine a box of organic coffee roasted exclusively by Venezuelan women for American women.

She also has a cadence in her speech that belongs on a woman fifty years her senior.  It isn’t unusual to have a ten minute conversation peppered with “Isn’t that lovely,” “delightful” and a couple off the cuff “Oh my dears.”  And although she is quick to call her twenty-nine year old sister who is four years her senior, old, I wouldn’t be surprised if Adrienne has a crystal dish of hard candy that had merged into one amalgamous hunk.

Natalie refers to this as Adrienne’s “old soul.”  I credit it to good old fashioned genius wackery and the trauma of being the middle child.  On the latter, she would probably agree.

It isn’t like she’s without her fanbase.  All my friends who’ve met her, adore her.  My co-worker Jon once commented, in front of his wife Amy, “I’m telling you now.  God forbid anything happens to Amy, because I love her, but if anything does I’m making a move on Adrienne.  She’s adorable.”  Amy nodded her head in futile acceptance of these facts and added, “She is adorable.”

Back to my story (see, you thought I forgot).  On our way to Gainesville, Adrienne called and in relating the events of the previous evening she explains how she lost her wallet, retraced her steps through the various restaurants and bars they’d been to without luck.  In a moment of distress she tripped in the street median only to be helped up by a stranger who had been looking for her because he’d found her wallet.

Now, if you’re an expert on Doris Day as I am, and secure enough in my manhood to admit it, you know this is called the “Meet Cute” and would probably end with Adrienne falling in love with this man not knowing he’s the womanizing Lothario who lives across the hall who she’s never met but can’t stand and expresses this to her best friend, Tony Randall.

Instead, Adrienne would get her wallet back with all of its contents intact, no note, no phone number, no interesting story to tell people at parties.  Not that it would have mattered because from what I have been told, Adrienne is fairly oblivious to flirting and straight men.

The real point of the story was Adrienne woke up the next morning with blurry vision and she was concerned this may be a side effect of drinking.  Natalie and I, with only two years of Grey’s Anatomy and nine years of Scrubs between us, assured her it wasn’t.  She instructed her that if it persists, she shouldn’t wait until Monday to go to the doctor, she should go to the Emergency Room today.  After she got off the telephone I asked Natalie had she rubbed anything on her hands before she went to bed.  I had an incident in 2000 where I woke up with my eye unexplainably swollen shut and had to be taken to the ER by my brother.  Hours later I recalled before I went to get I rubbed Icy Hot on a finger I jammed into a door and somewhere in my sleep managed to rub my eyes.  I would later be told by the doctor this is the equivalent of macing myself in the face.

A few hours later Natalie would get a call from her youngest sister, Brittany.  When asked about Adrienne, Brittany quickly responded, “I talked to her.  She fine.  She told me her glasses felt different.  I told her the glasses she was wearing probably weren’t hers.  They weren’t.”

Genius wackery.  Make your own Fred MacMurray jokes here.

The Ego Has Landed

On Sunday September 13, Taylor Swift was receiving her MTV Music Video Award for Best Female Performance when Kanye West appears, takes the microphone and in the middle of her acceptance speech, states how happy he is for her and then out of the other side of his mouth that Beyonce Knowles’ video for “Single Ladies” is one of the greatest videos ever made.

Now let’s start with the obvious.  MTV is still giving out awards for music videos?  Does anybody still make music videos and if they do, where do they air them?  It sure as shit isn’t on MTV.  That precious airtime is being used for 16 And Pregnant and a Shot Of Penicillin With Tila Tequila.  MTV giving out Video Music Awards is like Steve Jobs from iTunes waxing nostalgic about how much he misses compact discs.

Weren’t you the dude that killed that format?

Secondly… “Single Ladies?”  One of the best videos ever?  Really?  I know sixty year old men who’ve seen Beyonce in a DirecTV commercial and had to find out who she is.  She works it like that.  But seriously, it’s a really catchy song.  I walk around the house like a twelve year old singing my own lyrics…

If you like it then you betta put ya thing in it.  Uh oh, uh oh, uh oh, uh oh.

…but the video is Beyonce and two other girls in heels and leotards shaking their ass and wagging their fingers.  I am pretty sure we’re not going to see fifteen hundred prisoners mimic the “Single Ladies” video anytime soon.

Back to the issue at hand.  West felt the need to stop an event, take the microphone from a nineteen year old girl on international television accepting her first award on a network that barely acknowledges her genre exists, to tell us that he didn’t think she deserved the award.

Why does Kanye West think we all give a shit about what he thinks?  This is like the person you stand behind at Blockbuster that doesn’t know it isn’t necessary to scream into a cell phone, or worse, doesn’t know how to operate their Nextel so I have to listen to both sides a conversation that doesn’t involve me.

I’m not surprised she did that… you know she’s a straight up bitch.  Beep beep.

As much as I hate Twitter, this is the perfect medium for it.  For people who “follow” him to subscribe to his thoughts and when Taylor Swift got her award, he could have tweeted, “I am happy for Taylor but Beyonce made one of the greatest videos of all time.  I’m just sayin’,” and we wouldn’t be having this conversation.  It wasn’t like someone put a camera in his face during or after the event and asked him his thoughts.  Even then it would have been acceptable.  Someone asked.  Instead, West thought whatever was going through his dumb little Shining-hedge maze head should be heard by everyone… on the planet… regardless of it you wanted to or not.  Regardless of how rude it was.  Like a small child tugging on his parents’ clothing, God forbid he isn’t given attention at all times.

Kanye, be quiet… let the grown-ups talk.

Nothing Kanye West does surprise me.  I saw this coming.  I find people who wear sunglasses indoors are generally assholes trying too hard to be cool.

If those douchebag window slat sunglasses made you cool, we’d all be wearing them… but they don’t.  They just make you look like an asshat who stole sunglasses from a gay dude at a Kajagoogoo concert in 1986.  MTV must have violated all city fire codes which clearly state the auditorium has a maximum capacity of two thousand people unless Kanye West attends in which case maximum capacity is fifteen hundred people and his ego.  It’s a little thing called humility and West needs to understand that people hate winners.  Nobody hates the UCF Knights because nobody gives a shit.  They’re too busy hating the Florida Gators.  They’re too busy hating the Yankees and the Lakers.  The lesson to be learned here is you may always have your fanbase but if you don’t shut up about how great you are, you’ll polarize everyone else against you.

America, I’m talking to you, too.

And to an extent, hip-hop fosters this self-congratulatory culture.  Seriously, when ninety percent of the songs are about 1) How awesome you are, 2) Bitches or 3) Shooting people, and the remaining ten percent are about how great you are at shooting bitches, you’re bound to produce a few people who feel they don’t have to subscribe to social norms.

What I would have given to see Eminem rush the stage and punch the shit out of that dude.

It’s not that I care one way or the other about Kanye West.  I just hate assholes in general.  Since I don’t buy his records, I’m not his fanbase and I’m sure he won’t lose any sleep over what I think as he goes home and bangs a supermodel on a giant mattress filled with Benjamins and Chaka Khan samples.

It’s obvious the only opinion Kanye West values is his own.

I will tell you what’s more pathetic that witnessing celebrities behaving badly is the fact that five minutes later when Beyonce won Best Video of the Year, she acknowledged how great it felt when she won her first award and invited Taylor Swift onstage to finish her acceptance speech.

Stay classy, Houston.

Avatards

Monday I was invited to dinner at my friend Heidi’s house and asked her stepson Gaige to show me his Playstation 3.  What I really wanted to see was their avatar system and Playstation Home, a virtual environment for your avatar to interact in.  I’ve heard about it but it doesn’t make much sense to me.

I can create a virtual me and walk around a virtual house or virtual mall?  And then what?

For those who came in late, an avatar is a computer representation of you.  These started as a picture, sometimes an actual photo or some symbol.  I rotate the avatar on my Microsoft Instant Messenger to whatever strikes my fancy at the time.  Right now it’s Janet Leigh from Psycho.

Sometimes it’s Frobama.

Sometimes it’s some random movie image.

My Xbox has avatars but they look cartoony and there is a certain charm to that.  It’s not by accident that my avatar has Little Orphan Annie Eye Syndrome.  Barney Rubble also suffers from this (Government Health Care now!)

So Gaige downloads all the things we need which is a ridiculously lengthy process and then it has to install.  It probably wouldn’t be so bad but they constantly tell you what’s happening.

NOW LOADING.  17% COMPLETE.  DO NOT RESTART YOUR SYSTEM.

I already know what’s happening.  Let me tell you what’s not happening.

I am not playing Playstation.  That’s what’s not happening.  I don’t care about your load times… just make it work already.

So it gets around to finishing and I start making my avatar.  Part of the appeal is the Playstation avatar is it looks real and by that it looks like this:

Instead of the Saturday Morning Cartoon version Xbox gives me.  So I start making my avatar and I start running into some of the same problems I have with Xbox’s avatar system.

How come I can’t be fatter?

Granted, most people want to have some idealistic version of them but I’m striving for cartoon accuracy here and at my most obese, I look like I just ate at a Brazilian Steakhouse.  I look four months pregnant in the game instead of the eleven months I normally look like.  I have made avatars on the Wii and it does the same thing.  What do these game systems have against fat people?  I should be as fat as I want.  What do those people in the Walmart’s avatars look like?  I can buy a lightsaber but can I buy a scooter with a basket in the front?

I also can’t make myself short.  I am starting to think these people are heightists which is ironic since all these systems are made in Asia, you would think I could make myself five feet tall or at least my correct five foot six.  I always look five ten or six feet in these games.  Case in point, my brother who is five ten and his son is five three and they look almost the same height.

And what if you are a little person?  I bet if there was a show called Big World, Little Gamer you’d be able to do it.

I find the avatars in Playstation, while trying to strive for a realistic feel, don’t look like me at all.  They look like a digital version of a Glamour Shot.

So I finish my avatar and I appear in, from what I learned from House Hunters International, a three million dollar one bedroom condo overlooking a marina in what looks like the Caribbean.  My living room is decorated in early twenty-first century Ikea and I can sit on the furniture and turn the lamps on.  Outside of the living room set, the house is empty like I just moved in.

JIM: Hey Gaige, so if someone else I know has this can they come to my virtual house?

GAIGE: Yes.

JIM:  And what do we do?

HEIDI:  You can have Yuri over and you both can turn lamps on.

JIM:  This is super lame.  How do I get more stuff?

GAIGE:  You have to buy it.

Of course this is where they get you.  Someone thought this was a good idea because boys love dollhouses and video games so much this is a no brainer.  Buy furniture.  Buy art.  There is a good chance if Virtual Jim went to Virtual Yuri’s house it would look pretty much the same as mine.  They give you a limited amount of free items to wear but if you want the cool stuff, you have to pay for it.  I don’t know if five dollars for a blue lightsaber that Xbox Jim waves around is worth the money but I smile every time I see it so in that respect, I guess it is.  My happiness comes cheap.  I am a man of simple pleasures.

Gaige instructs me how to leave my condo and I go to the street which actually reminds me of a theme park without rides.  It’s a lot like Downtown Disney or Universal Citywalk.  It’s very clean and sterile and there are lots of signs trying to sell me stuff.  The sidewalks are fake.  The aged concrete is fake.  The lake is a sham.  There is a clothes store, a movie theatre and some benches and jumbotrons for the fifty or so avatars walking the area and 70% of the cheap bastards are wearing the same green polo I have on.

I start walking the area and find a crowd of people.  On closer examination there is one woman sitting on a bench and five dudes all trying to talk to her at the same time.

DUDE #1:  What’s your name?

DUDE #2:  What games do you play?

DUDE #3:  My name isn’t Fred Flintstone but I’ll make your bed rock.

Okay, that last one I made up but you get my drift.  The only thing sadder than a half-dozen guys making pathetic advances on a woman at one time is  a half-dozen guys making pathetic advances on a woman at one time in virtual reality.

And getting rejected.

The girl actually said, and I am completely not making this up, “No means no.”

HEIDI:  Jim, do something!  I think they’re going to virtual rape that girl!

JIM:  Gaige, can I punch people?

GAIGE:  No.

JIM:  Do I have any weapons?  A gun or a chainsaw or something.

GAIGE:  No.

JIM:  Can I buy one?

GAIGE:  I’m pretty sure you can’t.

JIM:  Yeah, this completely sucks.

So I walk away from Kitty Genovese and find this area where eight dudes are dancing.  Only one of them is dancing with a girl.  At least it looked like a girl.  For all I know Lola could have been some sixty year old pedophile trying to lure unsuspecting boys into his virtual house with virtual candy.

It’s here I realized what a sausage party Playstation Home is.  This is where I also discovered I could do something here I can’t do very well in reality.

I can dance.

You click a button and it lists ten different dance styles.  I get behind some unsuspecting dude and hoping I can grind on him but, alas, that is not an option.  Damn you, politically correct virtual world.  Some sexy Salsa Dancing is all he gets.  This isn’t interesting unless he can see me.  I move to his front and stand in plain view and start Disco Dancing, complete with spins and finger pointing.  I supply the gun noises myself.

Pew pew pew!

We’re all laughing hysterically when his homophobia kicks in and he leaves me.

Discovering my new found skills, I find girl dancing and several guys trying to get her attention.  I force my way through the crowd and when I get to the front I launch into a series of moves that would Tony Manero proud.

I start with The Robot.  Blend it into some Disco and follow it up with the Running Man, a spin, gun-finger pointing and then I bring it home with the Cabbage Patch.

The girl walks away.  Her loss.

So you think you can dance?

No, son… I know I can dance.

Fun With Cell Phones – Summer Edition

Here I am with another blog proving nobody uses cell phone cameras for anything important and this is an easy way out of writing a blog when I would rather be playing Batman Arkham Asylum on Xbox.

First off, how stupid have we gotten that they’re actually spelling Mountain Dew as Mtn Dew?

When you figure out how to text me a cold and tasty Mtn Dew on my cell phone I’ll find this acceptable, otherwise, stop being a forty year old advertising executives trying to sound cool to fifteen year old kids.  You’re the same douches that think the Pillsbury Doughboy should rap in commercials or gangsta Mickey Mouse is a good idea.

Nothing ruins something cool like letting your mom do it.  The time I saw Katie Couric say “dissed” on the Today Show I thought my brain would explode.  You’re not fooling anybody.  You’re old.  Just accept it.  I have.

A few months ago Circuit City went out of business and we’re all better for it.  I hated those red-shirted lazy bastards.  Not being above picking over the carcass of the dead for a bargain I went into the store which had mostly been cleaned out but I did find this.

I took a double take because I wasn’t sure I saw that right but yes, that is a big box of feminine hygiene products.  How desperate did that place get?  That’s one step away from selling the doorknobs and the carpet.  Now that I think about it, it would have been worth it to by this ginormous box just to see the look on Natalie’s face.

Had they been made by Apple, Circuit City may still be in business today.  iPons… that’s funny.

Speaking of underwear…

I keep hearing about women’s bad body image created by society but is this really necessary?

This would be like buying Lil Peenie jock straps for your son and wonder why he hates women when he gets older.  What impact could there be on an A-cup fourteen year old by buying her Sweet Nothing bras?  What could possibly go wrong there?  It seems harmless and maybe a little cute and then ten years later she gets a job and a paycheck and this happens.  Thanks, mom.

And if you’re wondering that is Sheyla Hershey and those 38KKKs are all hers… and if you don’t believe me I’m sure she can show you the reciept.  I’m not staring… I just want to know what the bottom of that shirt says.  It seems important.

While we’re talking about underwear, has anyone ever felt the need to reseal a package of underwear?

I didn’t flip them over see if they had a freshness date.  When I was younger my mom used to say my underwear was ripe but I don’t think this is what she meant.

This I just found funny.  I bet they don’t sell a lot of these in Los Angeles.

I can see the Target commercial now.

It’s Back To School time for girls, boys, Crips and Bloods…

And then there is this:

Apparently this is a problem I’m not familiar with but it prevalent enough to justify two companies trying to fill this need.  Has anyone ever had an “iPod Emergency?”  You know, you’re walking down a dark alley and suddenly a street dancing gang like in a Michael Jackson video appears and you whip out the iPod only to find the battery is dead and then BAM… you just got served.

If you have had anything involving an iPod that you consider an emergency and doesn’t involve a car accident and a Nano being embedded in your forehead, come visit me so I can promptly smack you in your face.  You’re the same idiots that call 911 when someone sells you bad weed or you’re this douche wasting my taxpayer money.

I get mixed up with Spanish since there is a male and female version of words but I found this interesting.

Not Latin Food.  Latino Food.  Just for Latin men.  You ladies, get your salsa and Goya products elsewhere.  I wonder in Latin Groceries is there a White People Food section where they keep the Starbucks Coffee and organic tofu.

Okay.  This is just disgusting.

This is the Spit-Can-Vertor.  It is a funnel that fits onto the top of a soda, oh hell who are we kidding, can of Milwaukee’s Best so you can spit your chewing tobacco juice without the inconvenience or social awkwardness of spitting large amounts of viscous liquid past people when you’re talking.

Who the fuck still does this?  It’s illegal to smoke on Earth but people still chew this bullshit and spit it out?  I will gladly inhale someone’s second hand smoke than have to watch anyone spit while I talk to them.  At least smoking can be made to look cool.  Somehow Casablanca would probably loose it’s classic status if the Café Americain was filled with Humphrey Bogart et al spitting chaw.

This is just a picture of a moron.

First let’s start with the obvious; your car is an old piece of shit.  Just accept it.  Don’t try to cool it up with some ridiculous phrase on the window.  Your car doesn’t need character.  It just needs to get you from Point A to Point B.  And is there anybody with an IQ higher than 90 or over the age of seven that thinks truck nuts are a good idea.  Find the intelligence of the average person and fifty percent of people are dumber than that guy.

Heh heh, my car has balls.  Balls.

Settle down, Beavis.  At lunch Jon said he’d seen a guy with super thick chain holding the largest pair of steel bolt nuts he’d ever seen and he had to respect that.  We knew what it meant but it required a little thought and wasn’t passing off vulgarity as wit, unlike this guy.  Bravo, redneck… bravo.  I bet your mom is proud.

And then there is this genius little bit of sign placement.

These are instructions on how to open a flip phone and use it which I guess would be useful if you were Alexander Graham Bell and found yourself leaping from life to life, striving to put right what once went wrong, and hoping each time that his next leap, will be the leap home… otherwise, you’re a moron.  First, a flip cell phone has one moving part and that’s a hinge.  Explaining how to open a cell phone is like explaining how to open a door… if you’re over the age of two you probably can figure this out and now that I think about it, I am pretty sure I have seen babies under the age of two open a cell phone.  Secondly, it’s not telling you how to operate the phone.  Sure, that a little different from phone to phone.  This is just telling you how to open it.  Again, right up there with food instructions that have to tell you to take the macaroni out of the box.  I also like how the picture has the man talking on a closed cell phone which is impossible since you can’t answer the call.  And lastly, the instructions are on the inside of the fucking phone. You can’t read them until you figure out how to open the phone which is something like Dorothy after she was terrorized by flying bellhop-uniformed blue monkeys, watched her companions torn to shreds and set fire to, drugged in a field of poppies and captured, forced to kill an evil witch then being told by Glenda  that she could have gone home any time she wanted to by clicking her shoes together.

Thanks for nothing, you dizzy bitch.

Here is an idea: why doesn’t someone make some art showing people how to not answer their phone in a theatre or how obnoxious it is to play with your phone instead of enjoying the company of the people you’re with.  These same people also get points for putting the battery removal instructions inside the battery panel.

This sign I found in a restroom.

Now  Jim, There is nothing funny about that.  Cleanliness is important.  Nobody wants disease or swine flu.

Normally I would agree with you but this sign was in a Barnes & Nobles.  I don’t have much contact with the people in a Barnes & Nobles unless you’re the checkout cashier in which case your handling money which is laced with God know what and cocaine.  Her hands are tainted ten seconds after she gets back to her register.  The other thing could be they handle lots of books which leads me to my next point.

Where do they think these books go when they leave their store?

I’ll be reading this in my study and by study I mean toilet.

I know this because most of my comic book reading is done in the john since it takes me exactly fifteen minutes to read a comic which is exactly the same amount of time it takes me to relax and do my business.  Natalie read an entire Harry Potter book during toilet breaks.

Oh yeah, to Natalie’s sister Brittany… sorry about your Harry Potter book.