Attention K-Mart Shoppers

Now, I know that Zirk's Irks is my forum for my personal events, but there is a story that is so wonderful, it bears sharing with a larger audience.  In keeping with my own life experience, it is a story of youth, good intentions, and good intentions gone horribly wrong.

My brother, while he was in college, had a part-time job working at K-Mart.  It wasn't that he sought this particular job out.  It was inevitable that someone in our family would end up working at K-Mart, since they built one directly across the street from the house we grew up in.  Literally.  Across the street.  The story of when they constructed it is the subject for another Irks.  That is a tale of suburban development, of the loss of childhood innocence, and the awakening of a nascent environmental awareness . . . but I digress.

If you ask politely, he'll gladly ramble off their theme song of capitalism:

"Attention, K-Mart shoppers!  For the next 5 minutes you will see the blue light flashing back in the Garden Department where we will have six-foot decorative ficus trees on sale for only $19.99!  Please be sure to head back to the Garden Department and take advantage of this blue-light special, and as always, thank you for shopping at K-Mart!"


My brother worked in the Garden Department, but knew the entire store layout.  Being young and helpful, he noticed a shopper one day wandering back and forth, looking down the aisles forlornly.

"Is there anything I can help you find, ma'am?" he offers.

Sheepishly, he leans in and responds. "I was wondering if you could tell me where I could find the tacks."

Since the Hardware Department was adjacent to the Garden Department, he knew exactly where they were.  Wanting to hone her search ever further, he inquires, "The kind you push in with your thumb, or the kind you hit with a hammer?"  

His arm flails back and forth, miming the action of hammering.

No sooner did he say this when two things happened simultaneously.  All the color drained from the shopper’s stunned face.  And my brother's over-eager synapses caught up and processed what the shopper had really asked for.  

She wasn't looking for thumbtacks.  She was looking for Tampax.

Realizing the error of his initial response, he blurts out, "They're a few aisles over, near the Pharmacy!" and beat an hasty retreat.

He never did find out which particular ones she needed.  He assumed that a hammer would not be necessary.  But he could tell her where they were.  If she wanted. 

Life In the Drive-Thru

Sometimes it takes something as banal and ubiquitous as a trip through the McDonald's drive thru to reveal a facet of your life and personality you never realized.
Running uncharacteristically ahead of schedule the other morning, I decided I had time to stop for the most American of early morning treats, the Egg McMuffin combo meal.
Many who know me know that I stop quite often at drive-thrus.   While not overweight, I do have all of the invisible killers no one would suspect.  High blood pressure and high cholesterol are kept in check by baby doses of medication, freeing me from the concern of what damage the occasional Egg McMuffin would wreak on my system.  Often, as I got the evil eye from my wife as I ordered something hideously unhealthy at a restaurant, I would waggle my eyebrows, raise a finger and proclaim, "Zocor to the rescue!".
So I veered through the drive-thru and placed my order.
"I'll have a #1 Breakfast Combo Meal, please.  With a milk."
(While I cared not for the effects of cholesterol on my body, I did try to make sure I got enough calcium, as a fractured femur two years ago alerted me to another invisible malady I had lurking beneath my skin:  low bone density.  But that's a story for another Irks.)
I pay the cashier and pull forward and get my food.  As I pull into traffic, I peek in the bag to make sure all is as ordered.  Hash browns, milk and wrapped muffin-shaped food ball stared back at me.
It wasn't until I unwrapped my breakfast food ball that I realized that they screwed up my order, and gave me a breaded chicken biscuit instead.
Now, I was aware of the fact that McDonald's had these sandwiches for lunch, but not that they had incorporated them into their breakfast menu.  Being hungry, and several blocks away from the restaurant, I had a dilemma:  return and rectify the order, or make due and eat the mystery sandwich?
So, I ate the mystery sandwich.
Which brings me to the point of the story.  Which was worse?  The fact that the crack drive-thru staff couldn't fill the most basic of orders, in what had to have been one of at least 1000 Egg McMuffins processed that morning?  Or, the fact that despite not filling my order correctly, I still opted to shove that Egg McMuffin analog food ball down my pie hole?
 If there were enough people like me out there, what incentive did the drive-thru staff have to improve their service?
I can hear them conversing now.  "It doesn't matter what you put in the bag for the drive-thru orders, as long as you are in the ballpark.  No one ever comes back and argues.  These slobs will eat whatever you put in front of them!"
Which I did.  I just wish I had ordered an extra milk, as the biscuit was forming a concrete-like paste on the back of my teeth.  Next time I'll make two milks part of my order.  Then I'll be ready for whatever McDonald's throws at me.

Because you know I'll eat it.

Don't be a Lurker

One nice tool on blogspot is that you can become a member of a blog.  That way you can get updated automically when something new comes on the scene.
Just click the link to the right and join.  Don't be a lurker!  Be a ZirksIrks-er!  Show your support and become a member!

Statistically Happy

Imagine my surprise and delight when a Chicago Tribune article finally answered the age-old question of "What does it take to make people happy?"

According to Keirsey research, an organization that looks at how personality relates to a person's preferences, when they surveyed 3,900 people from 18 to 70 they found the following:

• Extroverts are happier than introverts.  Extroverts recharge through being in contact with people.   Introverts recharge themselves through solitary time. 

Are you the straw that mixes the drink socially, or the angst-filled poet that longs to be with your thoughts?
Me, I'm both.  I love being with people, then retreating to my world and blogging about it.  My wife definitely is an extrovert, until the next morning, when the hangover makes her an introvert. 

• People making $75,000 or more were happier than those who made $50,000 or less.  For the people surveyed, $75,00 was the tipping point.  More money did not mean more happiness, but having enough money certainly helps a lot.

So THAT"S what I was missing in my life - money! Just a few more auctions on eBay and I'll be happy!

• For relationships, people who are engaged are the happiest, whereas people who are separated but not divorced are the least happy.  Married people are somewhat happier than divorced people, but even they have average happiness. 

Of course engaged people are the happiest!  Their life is a new blank page lying before them.  Life hasn't worn them down and disillusioned them with its cruel mirage of higher expectations.  And for people who are separated but not divorced, of course they are the least happy.  They haven't gotten rid of the dead weight of a failed relationship and moved on with their life. 
I am intrigued by the fact that divorced people are almost as happy as married people.  You would hope that after the pain of divorce, you would be happier than married people.  The advice you could draw from this survey is that if you are divorced and want to be happier than your married friends, get engaged!  Hope springs eternal.  Just find someone who is outgoing, and makes over $75,000 a year.

So there you go, your road map to happiness.  Now get out there and enjoy life!  And if you aren't happy, you can't blame me!

Happiness Is a Warm Gun?

Anyone who knows me can attest that overall, my political views run to the left. I was president of the student labor union in college, have voted Democrat in every election except one (that will be the subject of another Irk!!) and have even travelled overseas and spent time working on a collective farm picking plums in what was then the Soviet Union.
So would you be surprised if I wanted to get my Firearm Owners Identification card?
Conservatives that I have known over the years often would comment when they learned of my liberal leanings.
"You're a Democrat?  You want to repeal the 2nd Amendment!"
Thanks for the sweeping generalization.  You hit the nail on the head there!
Seriously, though, I do not have a problem with people owning firearms.  And like any other issue, there are varying degrees.  My view is I can understand owning a gun for protection, and for sport hunting.  I question some people who feel the need to have an arsenal under the guide of being a "collector".  Personally I have a hard time rationalizing why anyone outside of the police or armed forces would need an assault weapon and armor-piercing bullets.
So my interest runs towards practical knowledge and the technology of firearms.  I don't want to start a collection.  I don't even hunt, thought I know plenty of people who do, and I can see the appeal.  Just like I know plenty of people who fish.  God bless them.  I do not have the patience for it.  I just want to gain a familiarity with guns, now that I have the means and the interest to access them.
So, over the years, I have acquired several friends who own guns, are smart about their use of guns, and make a strong argument for gun ownership and gun stewardship.  They enjoy guns in a controlled setting, keep them locked away safely, and make a point of passing their knowledge and safety practices on to their children.  In a word, responsible.
Does this mean I'll be a card-carrying member of the NRA and adopt every plank of their platform?  Hell no!  Just like I can't follow blindly any other political or social cause.  (Christ, I'm a Democrat that voted Blagojevich into office.  Look where that led!  Let that be a lesson!  That is a whole another Irks by itself.  Stupid hair helmet idiot.)
So weigh in on this one.  My application is being processed as we speak.  For $10 and a passport photo I'm on my way to gun ownership.  I'll be curious to see how this develops.

My $300 Mid-Life Crisis

I know it's fairly trite to talk about or to have a mid-life crisis. Usually it was an excuse for some guy to make a poor decision in his life and then hold on to that poor decision with delusional strength, under the guise that some "crisis" prompted him to suddenly reevaluate his entire life. I always joked that it would be a sports car, or a tattoo or a mistress. Or a tattoo of a mistress in a sports car. But little did I know the object of my midlife crisis would creep up on me like some adoloescent urge.

I wanted to learn how to play guitar.

Not Rock Band guitar. And not electric guitar. Just plain acoustic guitar.

Now, I have no compulsion to be a guitar performer and grace the subways with folk songs for spare change, or to work some coffee house or open mic night. I always enjoyed folk-oriented rock, and found the guitar appealing. And with the years slowly passing by, I figured, why the hell not? If not now, when? And being 45 and not overly active, it dove-tailed perfectly into my sedentary lifestyle.
The advantage to learning to play guitar now and not in my youth is that now we have the internet.
I was able to browse around and research what would be the best guitar for a beginner. And since most guitar players are like any other enthusiasts, you can't shut them up when you ask them for their opinion.

So after some modest research I settled on my guitar of choice, a Yamaha FG700S.
Awesome! Now that I know WHAT to buy, I had to find where to buy it. So I did a search for local retailers and the first hit that came up was . . . Best Buy?

I was a little confused. Since when did Best Buy go into the musical instrument business? From the answer of my local Best Buy associate, about 3 years ago. Not every store has a musical instrument department, so it wasn't a well-known fact. And for the entire state of Illinois, there are three locations that sell them. And one was 10 minutes from my house.

It sounds like the start of an insult. "Where did you buy that guitar? Best Buy? Haw haw haw!"

Amazingly, the people at Best Buy were very knowledgable. They could play the instruments they sold. And the prices were as good as any online. Also, I wanted to talk to a person, and have somewhere I could go back to if I had questions. So off I went. Guitar: $200. Case: $50. Guitar Stand: $15. Total cost for my mid-lefe crisis, plus tax: $300.

Now, how much for that tattoo?

Six Flags - More Pain!

They say that your body has no memory for pain. That is a great survival adaptation that helped us evolve as a species from the plains of Africa, and enables us to keep returning to amusement parks!

Spent the day last Sunday with my brother and his family at Six Flags. Robyn and I had never been there as a couple, and neither one of us had been there since our teenage years. My brother had season passes for his family and accrued enough credits to get two free passes for the park for us. The admission is free, but you pay for the rides later!

The first ride that we went on was the American Eagle. For those of you who don't know this ride, it is a very large, relatively old wood frame roller coaster. I'm not saying the ride was rough and bumpy, but I had smoother rides on the railroads of the Soviet Union. At comparable speeds. And they served tea.

I was convinced that pieces were shaking off the cars as we went around, and that there had to be a park employee with a metal detector below retrieving them. Robyn and I exited the ride, each clutching different parts of our anatomy that had gotten wrenched. For her it was her neck. For myself, my lower back.

"Screw the signs about what height you need to be to ride this thing," I offered. "They need a sign stating the maximum age for riders, because I'm sure we're over it!".

While the ride was rough, it was not nausea-inducing. That's where our next ride comes in - the Demon. Now, I remember the Demon from my youth because it has loops and corkscrews and didn't jar an internal organ loose from its moorings. I was about two people from getting on the ride when they announced the ride would be delayed temporarily. I decided to stick it out, since the cars were so tantalizingly close. As I watched, they ran 2 sets of cars through empty. Then, as the third set pulled up, a park employee put on latex gloves and starting dragging a trash can to the back of the cars. Obviously the excitement was too much for one rider. As the attendant swabbed the seat and safety bars with disinfectant and paper towels, I daydreamed about the other riders getting enveloped in a mist of someone else's barf. I would hope there were a few free park passes for the asking for any victims after an event like that.

Since Kevin and his wife Jody had gone to Six Flags multiple times this summer, they were able to steer us clear of any other potential hazards.

"That ride over there is the Iron Wolf", Jody stated. "They say that if you have neck or back problems, that you shouldn't go on it. I found that anybody that HAS a neck or a back should avoid it, as it will be in pain once you leave the ride!"

We deferred to her wisdom. Besides, there was a food court somewhere that needed patronizing, right?

One entire area that didn't exist in my youth was the water park at Six Flags. We were able to enjoy several of the rides there, as well as the wave pool. The wave pool was fun, but for whatever stringent safety reason it was closed down for 15 minutes of every hour. I conjectured that it was either for:

a. Keeping people from getting exhausted in the unrelenting waves

b. Changing lifeguards so there were always attentive people overlooking the throngs; or

c. They needed time to fish the bodies out and clean the place, much like the floaters get cleared from the fish tanks at the K-Mart pet department every morning.

So visit Six Flags when you can. And if you get hurt, just remember, no one forced you to get on those things, you idiot!