I would not know where to begin to day. I swore at two people and had four people swear at me over differing concepts of how to drive. You cut me off, I take your picture, you swear at me. I know the drill. Later, I stopped at a bar and drank a beer. I made arrangements for a database meeting on Monday. I put a record 39.144 miles on the bike and I figured I’ll wear a suit and tie into work tomorrow.
First, here is a picture of what some elements of Florida call a “family business”. I don’t know about the rumor that they steal flowers from the graveyards and sell them at traffic stops, but this is a cardboard rack of mostly ladies panties set up on Pembroke Road.Now, the details. I stopped at that bar under the watertower for an hour and watched two of the regular women pass out trying to pick me up. Of course, I could be making this up, but you decide. One was so drunk she was asking me to move in with her and the other, far too ugly for me. I know better than to fall for easy prey and she literally leaned forward and passed out on the counter.
The ugly one kept demanding to know why I was wearing a hat when I arrived, since it was “not raining”. I tried to ignore her, feign deafness and give evasive replies, but I told you, she was not asking, she was demanding to know. I drove all the way out to BrandsTupid on 37th to discover they did not have a single television in my price range that worked on an F-cable. That’s a 26 mile round trip and I wanted to have a quiet bottle of beer. Incidentally, I wound up leaving and brought the beer home with me. It was still a third full this morning when I poured it out. However, I dislike the taste of wine and whiskey even more.
Two dudes came in today with an interest in database. They are public school graduates, but I can work around that if the interest factor is great enough. We have an appointment scheduled Monday where they show me how to download and install PHP, Apache and MySQL.
The strangest part of today was ramming into a gate on 37th Ave. Some residence had the gate swung open into the sidewalk, and despite my light I could not see it until I crashed into it. The neighbor or visitor, whatever, jumped out of her car and accused me being too blind to see the gate. In reality, even my bike light fell off and smashed because of the impact. She demanded that I “leave the property” although this entire episode took place on the public sidewalk. She threatened to call the police if I did not leave, so I offered her my phone. She declined.
She was protecting the owners of the property, for I then saw she had just left from a visit. She was trying the strategy of trying to make me drop the issue because she was both a woman and black. When that didn’t work, she became very aggressive and impolite to the point of rudeness. So, to give her worry, I pretended to take pictures of her license plate (“It’s not my car”, she repeatedly screamed, like I cared.) She tried to close the gate and kept on about how I was drunk. Maybe that’s why I stopped for one twelve miles down the road. Do you think?
She lit right up when I suggested it might be her who was impaired; that really hit a sore spot with her, let me tell you. Methinks she did protest too much. This incredibly stupid woman had a four-year-old son watching. As I left, she called me “White trash.” Yeah, the kind who carries a voice recorder in his bike bag. What a dreadful example in front of her own offspring.
Nearly forty miles on a bike lets you see a few new things, even in Florida. I have now put 1,390 (logged) miles on the Jamis. I went over to Nextel to pick up the phone (Fred’s) which they promised earlier this week. Not so fast, the manageress now claims that they neither promised anything nor was it supposed to be this week. Wrong. On Monday last the service tech said it would be 48 hours. The phone was not there and the manageress, a remarkably stupid woman, said it was not her fault. Odd, because nobody said it was, but now I do!
This mention is because it was a textbook example of how American business trains their “managers” to squirm out of everything. When I indicated to her this was the fourth time we had arrived to pick up the phone, she said that nobody had “promised” it would be there. She was lying and was trying to argue that unless somebody said the actual word “promise” that it was not a commitment, duh. She persisted to introduce a half-dozen standard “not my fault” tags into the conversation.
She kept saying she was sorry, but the Florida “sorry” where they try to transform what they did wrong into how graciously you accept the fake. I asked her if she accepted responsibility for the phone being late and she flew into a rage. Here was a situation where she had to accept the blame or say I was responsible for situation. Guess which angle she tried, right there in front of people. She stated the problem was my fault.
She said that it was our responsibility to keep phoning in. What got me is that she had received training on how to dodge responsibility. She repeatedly asked baiting questions to trap me into saying something wrong, something she could intentionally misinterpret so she could “win” the argument. Remember, by now the entire store including the other employees had heard me expose her lies and deceit. Nextel, you lose big time. How dare you [even try to] train a stupid woman to outwit me.While on the topic, allow me. She was around 30, trying to look younger and failing miserably. She was accustomed to getting away with things by being a woman and was incensed when that didn’t work today. Standing maybe 5 foot 2, she had oodles of ugly fat rolling out of her waistline. She looked like a sausage rack. Cubans don’t mind that, but it makes me nauseous. She had that hard cellulite stretch-mark back that distorted her figure and a plain face that never did her any good in her prime. Don’t call me prejudice, for I doubt I would have mentioned any of this had she not tried a number on me. Yes, I have a name, but you’ll have to come back t’mow to get it.
To end on a different mood, here is a picture of a set of a speaker. Kind of novel, it is designed to look like four books with classic titles.
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