Black Friday was the worst ever this year. First, my sister brought her weenie boyfriend. (Let's just say the highlight was when he claimed that his spine was crooked and this was making one leg longer than the other while he sat with his feet up and stretched one out farther than the other. It was also great when his back miraculously began healing shortly after we finished carrying heavy items.) Then, all of Canada emptied into Grand Forks, ND, to spend their suddenly far more valuable Canadian dollars and ruin my figurative life.
I have a long standing vendetta against Canadians who travel to the U.S. strictly to shop and screw the tax system as they go back across the border. Some might argue that this is perfectly fine because they boost our economy, especially during this unfortunate slump we are experiencing, and while this is true, what they fail to realize is this: OOOOO CANADIANS!
This is not some ill-informed, Americentric opinion based only on the fact that they budge in line and demandingly ask me whether or not the MP3 player that they just snatched out of my hands is a good deal. It is based on years of working for a grocery store where every Sunday shift (which was worth 50 cents more an hour and for good reason) was punctuated by at least four and sometimes six Canadian buses, sometimes arriving two at a time. They would treck to the casino, and then they would return, armed with several rolls of quarters as payment, and demand that all their orders be split into no more than $13 so that they wouldn't have to pay tax as they crossed the border back. Imagine, if you will, that you are purchasing $200 worth of groceries, and you demand that it be split into seperate checks of $13. Do you know how long that takes? Especially if you don't have any idea how many things it takes to get to $13, so you have to have the cashier stop and check the total every two or three items to be sure you haven't exceeded the amount? Now imagine there are 60 or even 120 of you. Now imagine me throwing things at you. Cause being able to throw things would have made it a whole hell of a lot better.
They wouldn't read the signs, and they'd become irrate when whatever they had picked up wasn't the item that was on sale ("This is orange juice. Orange juice is on sale. This is frozen and the one on sale is not, but that shouldn't matter! One dollar! One dollar!) When they were gone, we spent the next hour and a half pacifying the enraged locals and most of the rest of the night cleaning up the horrible mess they'd make.
So, suffice it to say that I do not like shopping Canadians. (I know some Canadians who are not tourists, and they are lovely.) But as far as the tourists go, I think they are a rude, annoying bunch. And I like them even less when they are standing between me and my Black Friday goals, snatching items out of my hands as I wait to pay for them.
On the whole, I have never seen the crowds so bad, and I have never seen so much stuff that I didn't want, either. I did most of my shopping online yesterday. I also did some shopping before I went. My mom waited for over two hours at Khol's. The line at Bath and Body Works stretched out into the hallway. I feared for my life several hundred times in the car. Grand Forks is not big enough to fear for your life several hundred times whilst driving. There are not that many streets. There are, however, that many Canadians. I pray the economy and the dollar recover soon.
In the meantime, suffice it to say, my mom and I have decided that we will spend "Boxing Day" in Bemidji, thank you very much, and leave Grand Forks to suffer the invasion without us.
Also, tempers are fraying at my work, where there are only three weeks left in the semester, but I swear to GOD, ALLAH, ZEUS, THE FLYING SPAGHETTI MONSTER, WHOEVER, that the next student who yells at me is getting yelled at back. I have had it with people who have been rude for 14 weeks and then expect me to bow down and worship them because they think I should help them cheat. And then they tell me that I don't have to be mean about it and that they don't need my attitude today. Like hell. Here's a thought: FOLLOW THE GODDAMNED DIRECTIONS AND DON'T CHEAT! It's called ethics, not attitude, and more people should try it.
It's been a fun semester, and I've REALLY enjoyed all the lovely people, but I would really like it to be over now.
I was watching a show called Coupling last night when I heard the best monologue ever. It was in regards to this guy and his ,,video watching habits,, and he shouted this at someone over the dinner table when she asked why guys would want to watch films like that.
He replied:
"Because it's got naked women in it! [...] Look, I want to spend the rest of my life with that woman there at the end of this table, but that doesn't stop me from wanting to see several thousand more naked bottoms before I die. When man invented fire, he didn't say 'Hey, let's cook!' He said, 'Great! Now we can look at naked bottoms in the dark!' As soon as Jackson [sic] invented the printing press, we were using it to turn out pictures of, hey, naked bottoms! We've turned the Internet into an enormous, international database of? Naked bottoms! The entire history of male acheivement through the ages, feeble though it may have been, has been the story of man's struggle to get a better look at your bottoms. Frankly, girls, I'm not sure how insulted you really ought to be."
I laughed until I cried. Then I watched it about 10 more times. Hillarious!
I have now been listening to the dowstairs neighbors blasting their stereo off and on for the last 24 hours.
It started last night, much the way it's going now, with the bass on the stereo blasting so loudly that I can feel it vibrating in my bathroom floor. Then, around eleven, the standing in the street and/or parking lot and yelling expletives and racial slurs at each other began. Finally, that moved indoors so that it was right under my bedroom as I was drifting in and out of sleep. I woke up several times to really loud laughter and all the time, underneath it, was the incessant pounding of their f-ing subwoofer.
Then all was quiet this morning, which was a relief, but it started up again around 12. Then just as I was dialing the super, it stopped. Now it has started again.
My head is killing me. My neck is cramped. I can't concentrate on my work, and I AM PISSED.
This has gone on every weekend since they moved in, but this is the worst it's been. Two weekends ago, they woke me up at 1 AM while I was sick, and I came out into the living room and stomped on the floor until they stopped.
I really want to move out of this dump. Anybody else out there have noisy neighbors? Anybody have any good suggestions for where to go that isn't noisy? Because I've about had it.
The Old Ones say that herons are the spirits
of those condemned for the sins of their previous lives,
confined to learn in an inferior form
until they can be reborn as humans.
But in this life, I have been human,
crouching in pools of evening,
denied of every delight,
bound to the mud by my toes,
trying to bathe the humanity from my lifelines
with raindrops of regret and longing—
with sky sorrow echoed by my own salty tears.
I have stretched out in my pain:
Reaching to melt back into the sky,
knowing I have only stretched out my arms
to let breezes stream through my fingers like water.
In this life, my body has been crying to be lengthy and graceful,
aching for the weightless power of wings through wind,
remembering in a tattered scrap of myself
the strength of heron feathers,
the depth of heron eyes.
I have been a blue heron
Scissor-slicing precisely through tissue paper skies—
An elemental daughter, zephyr dancing between the stars:
A wise and psychic guardian of incarnation—
wanting no Heaven or Hell,
soaring on my wings in the night.
If that was my penance,
May I pay for my sins for the rest of my lives.