The Pen Dilemma

I take my school/office supplies very seriously. By this, I mean I take somewhat of a perverse joy in buying them. Two weeks (minimum) before the start of each semester, I begin to stalk school supplies like the determined hunter of a Hemingway story. My prey: pens, notebooks, folders, and of course, tabs. Once, I spent the entire afternoon in an Office Depot.

This is why I was happy, nay, thrilled, to encounter a fellow pen connoisseur tonight at the grocery store, of all places. I was pretending my mini-cart was a scooter, semi-surfing it down the office supplies isle just like the faceless people on the child seat tell you not to, when I overheard a rather good looking young gentleman on the phone. He was standing in front of the pen selection, lamenting to his phone compatriot the difficulty he always had when choosing a pen. "The line can't be too thick and the ink can't smear, because then my writing just looks a mess," he muttered with exasperation. Okay, maybe he said "is messy" instead of "just looks a mess", but a girl can dream.

Needless to say, I was tempted to propose on the spot, or at least give him a crisp hi-five. But sadly friends, I didn't even say hello and share pen buying tips with him. Foiled again by this cursed shyness!

I know you are eager to hear what I consider to be the best pen after my years of searching, so I'll let you in on this most precious secret; my favorite pen is the Uniball Jetstream. I prefer a nice 0.7 point, but the 1.0 is good for those who like a bold stroke. No smearing, friends! Check-forging proof!

Also, it turns out Uniball is not owned by Lance Armstrong. I've also been told they don't appreciate tasteless Lance Armstrong jokes.

Isn't it beautiful?

The Mall

 Once in a while, I forget how ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE the mall is. My brain (the eternal traitor) convinces me I really need something only the mall can offer me.

If you go to the mall in my hometown, here are a few things you will find:

1.     An interesting variety of people, including the power-walking elderly and goth teenagers

2.     Mannequins with eyes that follow you like a painting from a Scooby Doo mystery

3.     People with fanny packs

4.     People with mullets

5.     People with mullets and fanny packs

6.     Voldemort behind the Clinique counter

7.     A friendly Asian woman who is ALWAYS cleaning the food court bathrooms, seemingly stuck in The Twilight Zone

8.     Children running amok and smearing their jam covered fingers on your nice sweatpants (children like jam)

9.     Sales people who will ask you multiple times if you want to sample their perfume, and then spray it directly into your face regardless of the answer

10.  SPANX. For women who enjoy feeling like a sausage.

11.  Someone from your past you really didn't want to see...ever

The mall is a cauldron of blatant consumerism and human misery. You can quote me on that.

Don't try this at home

If you don't know me very well, you probably don't know that I can be exceptionally lazy when it comes to cleaning types of things. Putting away my clothes, for instance. My clothes are stored in a never ending rotation of laundry baskets, despite the fact I have plenty of room to store them elsewhere, in things like "dressers" and "closets". Once in awhile, usually when I've had too many Snapple Peach Teas, I'll actually put all of my clothes away. This is rare, friends, rare. Like Alec Baldwin failing to look at himself as he passes a reflective surface. JK, I don't know Alec that well. We're only acquaintances.

The funny thing is, I actually like buying cleaning products. I do like using them in some situations, like when they dispense the product in fun ways (Magic Erasers) or promise astounding results, like being able to dissolve blood stains in carpet. But eventually, the novelty wears off. This is when the laziness kicks in. And the laziness starts giving me bad ideas... "shortcuts", if you will, to shorten my cleaning time.

Warning: this next tale is one of caution. Never, I repeat, never do this yourself.

Some Web Thing

I told my mom an anecdote from my oh-so-exciting week, and she found it amusing. She said, "That should be some web thing!" That was all I needed. If a 50-some-years-young woman thinks that this anecdote needs to be shared with the masses, what more confirmation could I possibly seek?

The other day when I was on my way home from something that was definitely not getting "chicken" nuggets at Wendy's (because I'm still mad at Wendy's for reasons to be discussed in the future), I saw something odd occurring in front of this income tax place. This happens to be the income tax place where they make some sad individual stand out in the elements wearing a bad Statue of Liberty costume and dance around like they are either suffering from a grand mal seizure or have ants (Claudes*, if you will) crawling all over them. They always remind me of the fits of hysterical dancing people used to have in the Middle Ages. (Otherwise known as MPI- mass psychological illness. You're welcome.)

What I saw immediately intrigued me. I saw not one, but two statue mascots standing in front of the crappy cement hut that served as their place of employment (I think the look it was going for was "recently firebombed"). One was a portly fellow with an astonishingly bushy brown beard, and the other was a scrawny youth. The bearded man was upset. He was gesticulating wildly; his green Statue of Liberty costume billowing around him as he waved his arms about, like a chubby green Jesus. The youth just stood there, looking agitated. I wanted to stop my car and watch this most interesting argument, and possibly befriend this bearded chap, but I had to hurry home. Not because my "food" was getting cold.


The horrible realization I came to is that one of these two men would have to resume dancing after this disagreement was over. Imagine having to embarrass yourself and fake joy by dancing after a terrible fight! That is pure torture. 

I can only imagine what they were fighting about. I like to think it was a love triangle gone wrong or perhaps a disagreement about plans for a jewel heist.


*See Attack of the Ants post. Footnotes are so fancy!