Archive for February, 2006
Dawn Donuts, Pakistan and the Old Men
Posted on February 26, 2006
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There is a petrol station near my home, and I’ve been meaning to tell you about it for awhile now.
As a vehicle refueling facility it is, at best, average. The price per gallon is always within a penny or two of the neighboring Sunoco station, and it is slightly less convenient for me because it is not on the direct path out of my subdivision, like the therefore superior and aforementioned Sunoco.
The odd thing about this gas station is that it has a symbiotic and intimate relationship with a Dawn Donuts bakery. You can purchase gasoline and fried/baked goods during the same visit and have a reasonable expectation that both will produce exhaust which falls within government mandates for clean air emmissions. I personally like the blueberry cake donuts, but will consider consumption of a custard donut if the occasion warrants.
Deep within me is a hunger for blueberry flavored confections, and this place holds the key to unlocking satiation. More on this later.
I lived at my home in Utica for no less than three years before setting foot in this nearby epicenter of petroleum and lipid proteins. But some weeks ago there was a gay wedding held in lovely Windsor, Ontario, and my family was on the move fairly early in our efforts to arrive in time to watch the fine ladies join in happy matrimony. And if you thought that sentence was long, you should’ve sat through the gay Reverend’s sermon. Blah, blah, blah. Hours before listening to his incessant droning about the struggles of the ‘community,’ I decided that I needed stimulants to get my day rolling along.
We stopped and I stepped out, stroding into the establishment intending to purchase coffee.
A slightly built young Pakistani man, no more than five and a half feet tall, stood behind the counter serving. There was a man who arrived before me being served, and I took station behind him, calmly resting my hands at my sides.
We were not, however, alone in this place. Elderly men sat in chairs and on benches, reading newspapers and arguing about politics, cars, fishing and fashion*. Most were what I would call craggy or weathered. As I waited for my coffee, I saw the smiling Pakistani man wave to one of the old men, who knodded. A woman I assume to be the Pakistani’s wife stepped out from behind the counter and poured coffee for the geezer. The little old man knodded his thanks and went back to his French foreign legion debate**.
For the next minute or two I observed this young Pakistani couple care for their cadre of elderly American white men as they bickered, joked and snored***.
Finally I was allowed to request my donuts and coffee. I greedily salivated at the blueberry cake donuts remanded into my custody with which I would soon fill the gaping, blueberry cake shaped hole in my soul. (and you thought I forgot about the blueberry key) I also received into my custody a half-liter of coffee and made my escape.
Days later I visited again, and noted the same geriatric gang, the same Pakistani fellow and his same wife. I watched the couple dote over the doddering men and reflected upon it.
So I bring you this story for your amusement.
A gas station with a bakery in it has become a gathering spot for elderly men who wish to engage in banter while being tended to by a couple of Pakistani shop keepers.
How this couple, born so far away and in such a different culture, came to care for these grumpy old white men? They seem genuinely affectionate and gentle in their handling of them. From what little I know of their culture it is not likely they are intending to fatten the old men and eat them.
Hmmm….
*They were pretty much just bitching about what the kids wear these days. Why, in their day young people wore a thick coat of elastic polyvinyl sprayed onto them by government assigned nozzle captains. And they had to be transported to school for MILES in vaccuum tubes surrounded by snow and ice.
**Apparently, he was in favor of it while I maintain that the French Foreign Legion only exists in the imagination of Warner Brother’s studio animators of the 1940’s and 50’s.
***The snoring was produced by one bald fellow who had made his coat into a pillow and propped himself up in a vacant corner.
Produce, SafeT!
Posted on February 22, 2006
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Aye, my friends, I’ve been gone for days. Did you miss me?
A project went long, and my weekend included working from 8:00am Saturday morning until 3:00am Sunday morning, and then Monday from 8:00am until 11:45pm. Tuesday was my recuperative (after working 8am-8pm, that is) and today is my first back-to-normal day. I suppose if I were a doctor or in the porno industry I wouldn’t mind so much. Sure, I’d need lubricant, but even chaffed I’d feel more fulfilled than I do today.
I’m tired, folks, and I wasn’t in a funny mood. I have a bunch of ideas and outlines, so watch this spot. I’ll catch up with you all, and I’ll leave off-topic comments.
Check out http://www27.brinkster.com/safetinspector for a taste of the BluntCog navigator engine. I’ll be providing a side-bar ready navigator for everyone Real Soon Now.
Sam in Hat on Sam blog!
Posted on February 17, 2006
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Click HERE to go and see.
SafeT is BizE
Posted on February 17, 2006
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It happens from time to time; the effort it takes to avoid work just doesn’t completely pay off and, pigeonholed by those who expect nothing less from me, I end up fulfilling my commitments. I have far too much work this weekend to do much beyond this brief post.
So I come to you, pockets filled with empty fruit snack wrappers and holy socks upon my feet, and I confess I’ve spoilt my wife by buying her no less than a new Macintosh iBook for Valentine’s day. I type upon it now, and while it is the least expensive permutation of Apple computer technology available to the American consumer (outside the iPod series of digital narcotics), it still represents a qualitative leap above my own laptop–especially in terms of raw style.
I manipulated my parents into buying my baby sister one of these some months ago (Vicky is a student at University) and Heather admired it since. Her existing machine, a circa 1997 Dell Latitude laptop with a 6GB hard drive and a 266Mhz processor, was beginning to make alarming rattles at an alarming rate. I was alarmed!
But I’ve made it right, and take some amount of pleasure observing my wife balancing this rounded, white, glowing machine upon her slightly distended and occupied tummy.
To Doctor Maroon
Posted on February 15, 2006
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Tuesday proceeds into Wednesday.
Time passes us all, Doctor… But perhaps it passes you slower than it does myself.
After all, I have higher wind resistance, on account of being a fat and lazy American. More surface area, more resistance. I think you can show me the math, but I will remain content with the evidence presented by the increased temperature of my windward posterior.
This increased drag accounts for my being 5 hours behind you on a good day. I think, perhaps, that now time is passing you slower than I.
Is it Monday still, where you are?
Monday was a good day for me, although not an exemplary day. Those don’t happen as often as they used to now that mortality bears down upon my ass. Even the best events are tempered with the knowledge that there are finite opportunities to reprise my successes.
I remember hearing of my Grandfather in his last days, consuming stacks of books while he was able. Where did all that knowledge go? All that information he consumed from the library trips his soon-to-be widow made? Of what use was it to him?
Hush, I know the answer as well as anyone. It kept the gears turning. It served as a distraction, amusement, and very likely succor.
When I arrived at his bedside he was still breathing, snoring even. He was closing up shop, however. Liquidating his stock in consciousness and, ultimately, the furnaces of life darkened as I sat next to him listening to inappropriately cheerful music–Spike Jones and his City Slickers, if you must know. I had some half-baked idea that he might hear it and be cheered by its sounds.
Time stopped that morning for him, but it accelerated incrementally for me.
My daughter has risen to nearly four feet in as many years, and her blazing soul lights up my existence. It is still five hours earlier here than where you are, but it is 29 years earlier where she is, upstairs and sleeping with her chosen plush mascot.
You know, we read a story book version of a Disney bastardization of a true story tonight. Pocahontas; an interesting and important true tale reduced by the colossal Mouse to caricatured depictions of beautiful people and anthropomorphic animals.
No, she wasn’t a gorgeous 17 year old, 6 foot tall woman in a Wilma Flintstone costume, she was little more than a 13 year old child. Probably fat-bottomed.
No, he wasn’t a gorgeous 20-something, 6 foot tall in pantaloons… OK, I’ll go as far as the pantaloons. But he was hardly heroic, and no warrior. Disney, was it necessary to rewrite an interesting truth into a ridiculously contrived fiction? What reason do you have for taking such liberties?
We read the story and she concentrated on the page and on my voice, she listened to the words intently, and she crowded her warm little form against my side. Sam had heard this same story two days ago. And, although it was hardly worth the effort of doing so, she had memorized enough of the book on that night to correct me several times as I plowed through it this evening.
”No, Dad. It’s POWDER, not POWER.”
”Oh. You’re right. It says powder.”
Later, I tucked her in, marveling again at the length and strength of her not-so-little arms as we hugged. As I retreat down the hall to join my Wife downstairs, Samantha calls out at the top of her lungs,
”Have a GOOD DAY!!”
But the day is already over, Sam. And, for Doctor Maroon it will be starting anew in just a scant few hours. The conveyor belt of occupation is drawing unwelcome work towards me, and if I have any hope of assembling my future I will need my rest.
It is 4:47am for you, but it is 13 minutes shy of midnight for me.
Welcome to Wednesday.
