One step up from 404

Well, lame first post. I'm still figuring out how to get this thing going. Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.

I think I'm going to treat my blog kinda like I treated the space that needed filler in newspaper last year, meaning I'm going to rant and rave and whine about whatever I want to.

That said, people in Scottsdale are savages. Seriously. I finished up a delightfully horrifying #1 combo at In-N-Out, and I strolled outside with some of my friends. In the next five minutes, as we leisurely walked to our cars and tried to figure out what to do next, I heard a total of five morons screech their car tires leaving the parking lot. I understand if people have really serious hot rods and they're screeching their tires to further demonstrate their emotional need to prove they have balls, and I understand a little screech if someone's on a slick surface or gravel or something. I don't understand it if it's some moron in his daddy's Escalade (you know, the ones with those absurd spinning rims). I guess the moron in his daddy's Escalade may just be stupid. When it is the Daddy in his Esacalade and not just his dumb kid, however, I'm not buying the "I'm just a pitiful, deplorable idiot" justification. The Darwinian nightmare must be reasonably intelligent, as he held a job that would get him enough money for a down payment on the inefficient, abominable, hunk o' burnt cash, and he's apparently charismatic enough to convince someone (probably someone else with an Escalade) that he deserved a loan and some insurance.

But that's just one gripe. I worked eight and a half hours today, at REI. Usually, REI is a cool enough place; most of my co-workers are all right, and the overwhelming majority of our customers are fairly pleasant people. During sales, however, there is no more wretched hive of scum and villiany in this town. Well, yeah there is, but I'm not counting golf courses, car dealerships, law offices, strip joints, tobacco shops, the 104.7 radio hub, the state legislature, Wal-Mart, anywhere that harbors a tilt-n-whirl or carnival games, that stupid shoe store at Desert Ridge, Desert Ridge, Abercrombie and Fitch, and a smattering of other places that I'm not willing to type and you're not willing to read. Anyway, the store gets chock full of wankers. Someone was talking on his cell phone the entire time I was ringing him up. A lot of people enter the store, come right up to the register, and say, "I need this," and point at the catalogue. I direct them to where it is; they have two arms and two legs (except for the handicapped guy, but he was wicked cool; I don't have anything bad to say about him -- he's currently inventing a wheelchair with an automatic lift in that holds him upright so he can hit the driving range or the batting cages), and I politely tell them that if they have any questions, someone would be happy to assist them. They stare at me indignantly, since they're better than the eight people in the line they just cut into and I should serve them.

Which really just brings me back to my original point -- to quote Randall Graves, there are a buncha savages in this town.

Leave a message if you wanna, or don't; you know, whatever floats your boat. Once again, I'm working on this web site still, so it's probably all jacked up.

Russ