humor – Page 33 – The only certainty is bad grammar

does this mean i can finally ask penelope trunk to connect on LinkedIn without looking crazy? / lessons in marketing

Published: March 3, 2009 / Updated: March 3, 2009 Crystal humor, im cool, long

holy mocha do people have some strong emotions about starbucks.

i sit around thinking about my blog all day long, trying to come up with clever ways to spin my tales, and it ends up being the post i write in six and a half minutes about starbucks needing to grow up and get free wifi that garners attention.

ok. let me back up a second. see, because im addicted to online networking (see here) and because i have an unhealthy fascination with Penelope Trunk, i joined brazen careerist a while ago, which aside from having the great honor of being THE hardest url to spell in all the world, also connects you to people. I’m pretty sure it’s supposed to connect you to potential employers, but I don’t really understand that. so instead, i use it to spread my blog around the globe ( aka, give a full rss feed of my work to the site for free in hopes that maybe, someday, three people will click over to my actual blog).

i was under the impression that my posts disappeared into oblivion and that it was just another failed attempt to get the word out about how awesome i am, but alas, the folks at brazen careerist had other plans. yesterday, they randomly decided to feature my post about starbucks on the home page.

i was so happy that i took a screen shot and saved it to my desktop. but then. THEN, people started to explain to me how much of an idiot i was. Here’s a link to the starbucks post on brazen careerist, where you can view the comments in their entirety. don’t get me wrong, i pretty much think im an idiot all the time. but it was weird to have random peopled deciding that they thought i was stupid enough that they MUST, in an effort to save humankind itself, take the time express their disgust in my decisions so that maybe, hopefully, i will one day fix my evil ways and CHANGE!

don’t fret. for those of you too lazy to click over, i have decided to include a couple of the comments below:

so… you’re complaining because “free stuff” isn’t perfectly convenient and because *you* didn’t bother to take the time to read up the fine print? oh wait… didn’t those people who signed up for sub-prime mortgages do the same thing?

wow. that man just compared me to people who got bad mortgages. for the record, my credit is so far beyond repair that i really don’t think it’s fair to the people who could qualify for ANY kind of mortgage to be compared to me.

AND

Is it just me, or did this entire post just seem like an internet tantrum?

nope. not just you. that’s exactly what it was. i had NO freaking idea it was going to be a featured post on brazen careerist. if i had, i a. would have capitalized at least a FEW of the words, and b. would have presented less of a tantrum and more of a coherent argument.

AND (from the same commenter who said it was a tantrum)

Starbucks is not required to uphold your ridiculous fantasy of what the overly-trendy-yet-still-totally-“unique” coffee shop chain SHOULD be. They’re a business, as others above me have said, and are going to try to make as much money as possible. I’ve never heard it said that Starbucks offered free wifi, and why should they?

to be fair, a majority of the commenters seemed to sympathize with my plight:

Starbucks always had this arrangement. However, I agree with you that it is super annoying. Ever other coffee shop and restaurant on the planet is starting to offer free wi-fi, I don’t know why Starbucks thinks they are any more special.

AND

“It’s not a fun time.” Haha, at least their employees are empathetic. Don’t worry, I did this exact same thing one day last summer.

anywho, i have a learned a few things from this experience. A. all my posts should have the word starbucks in the title, just in case featured posts are chosen based on a list of pre-determined words. B. i need to start back linking like a crazy person in case this happens again. that way people will find it easy to read my other work. c. in the online world, what sticks and what doesn’t has nothing to do with talent, and everything to do with how controversial your topic is.

and for those interested, i have taken my coffee business elsewhere. to a lovely, magical place where the wifi is ALWAYS free, the soup comes in bowls made from BREAD! and there’s plenty of booths to spread out on. that’s right, i have become a super loyal panera bread patron.

im pretty sure this is mis-directed anger. but STILL

Published: February 24, 2009 / Updated: February 26, 2009 Crystal humor, medium

stupid, fudging IRS! I mean holy heck people. is it SO hard to give me last year’s AIG AGI so i can freaking file my taxes? that’s all i need! just one little itsiby number.

ok. ok. i shouldn’t have lost last year’s return. i should have kept it in a fire proof box or something. but i didn’t. i lost it. it’s gone. we all need to just MOVE ON. and tell me my adjusted gross income.

shouldn’t be too big of a deal, seeing as how there is a convenient 800-number im told you set up so i could call during normal business hours to get that information. op. nope. nevermind.because THAT number was too busy to even put me on hold. no. no. no. instead they just hung up on me. that’s right. THE IRS AUTOMATED ANSWERING SERVICE HUNG UP ON ME! what? what? what?

i would have waited uncle sam. i swear. i don’t have to work for like three hours, and im just sitting here online. one measly step away from filing my taxes and getting my refund. but NO. you couldn’t even give me the option of waiting. nope. you were all snippy with your “due to the high volume of calls, we recommend you call back during the next business day. good-bye.”

well screw you irs. screw you.

and while we’re on the subject. screw you wisconsin department of revenue as well because YOU won’t let me efile AT ALL. it is 2009 WISCONSIN! get on board for crist’s sake. get. on. board.

here. i’ll help. internet meet wisconsin. wisconsin meeting internet.

there. now we can all be friends.

i seriously never look there

Published: February 13, 2009 / Updated: February 14, 2009 Crystal humor, medium

ok. i may or may not have been growing a broccoli swamp filled with mold on my roommate’s shelf in the fridge. and i say may or may not because i didn’t actually see the swamp because it was on my roommate’s shelf, and i seriously never look there. nope. i just skim right down to the shelf below it where i keep my hummus, cherry tomatoes and left over spaghetti.

i figure it’s better that way so that i don’t get jealous of food i can’t have, like orange juice and well, i don’t actually know. like i said, i never look at those shelves.

im assuming my soup ended up on her shelf because i had gotten it as a gift back when i couldn’t even do basic tasks like feed myself while recovering from my surgery. and seeing as how i couldn’t feed myself, i also couldn’t do other simple things, like put away food. instead, my mom, sister and grandma were in charge of that. so one of them must have put it on her shelf.

you might have realized by this point, that my surgery was more than a month ago, so that soup must have been at least as old. you’re right. it was. but everyday, id go the fridge and skim right past the broccoli swamp filled with mold to where i keep my hummus.

every. single. day.

until finally my roommate decided that on account of the fact that we were having company, and that there was about a 50 percent chance they would look at her shelf in the fridge, she’d just clean the stupid swamp- and mold-filled container out herself. and seeing as how she’s nice and whatnot, she didn’t even mention it to me, until i was like: hmm? where did this large empty soup container in the dish drain come from? and she was all: oh. that. ya. that was the most disgusting thing i’ve ever done in my whole life. your soup was in there. how could you have not SEEN that?!

what? it was? crap. wow.

my friend robert from high school was like that soup.

we were bestest friends back then. back in 2000. and 2001.

and we’d go to off-campus lunch together like every single day. to mcdonald’s. or taco bell. or even that little gyro place where i used to get gyros from until i got food poisoning from them.

and i remember one time someone stole his coveted parking sticker from inside his car, and we walked up and down the hundreds of cars in the my school parking lot looking for it. for like a week. and i thought it was a hopeless endeavor because holy automobile, there were like 1,472 cars in that parking lot. but robert was so cool, that i walked along the rows just so i could spend time with him.

and then one day he found a sticker with a number that had been altered with white out, and i’ll be darned if it wasn’t HIS parking sticker.

and even though we had so much fun together, doing even simple things like walking through a high school parking lot looking for his sticker, we never dated.

and we didn’t even go to prom together or anything. instead, we both went with people we thought we wanted to go with. and then, while at the dance, we both ditched our dates and hung out all night laughing.

robert always made me laugh. the boy would crack me up. and i can’t even remember a single joke, but i vividly remember the laughing.

and then on graduation day, he came up to me after the ceremony, grabbed my arm and said ‘im going to college on the east coast. what if we never see each other again?’ and i was like ‘that’s crazy. of course we’ll see each other again.’

but of course we never did.

and i still wonder if maybe we were meant for each other. or maybe we were at least meant to see if we were meant for eachother. but we never got that chance. because even though we hung out everyday. i never saw him. like that soup in the fridge, i just skimmed right past him. and dated a bunch of losers instead.

and i often wonder how many amazing people are in my life who i just skim right past. how many people are right there in front of me who i never even see?