Thanks, no.

Luther M. Siler3 Comments

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A brief rant

Luther M. Siler15 Comments

ingredients-of-an-all-natural-egg1I apparently have yet to regain my jovial equanimity.

A request for the world’s dumb people and woo addicts:  If you have ever complained upon finding out that a “chemical”  (ooooh, SCARY!!!) that is part of one thing that you eat is also part of another thing that you do not eat, and said discovery caused you to consider no longer eating the first thing, or especially if you complained to others about the presence of the chemical in the edible thing… well, telling you to kill yourself is probably a little extreme and I’m not quite that far gone today but suggesting that you begin practicing the fine art of shutting the fuck up would be good, and perhaps also I should tell you some incredibly terrible things about oxygen that would totally ruin your day.  And hydrogen, which is in both water, which you need to survive, and gasoline, which you should never drink obviously is perfectly potable since water is.

Here’s a definition of “chemical substance,” you nimrods.  You don’t get to use that word again where I can hear or see you until you understand why complaining about things having “chemicals” in them is dead goddamn stupid.

Okay?  Good.

And because apparently I have decided to be in a bad mood today, I’m off to find a politician who has done something stupid.  Gimme five minutes.

In which I’m talking about sandwiches again and also fuck Burger King

Luther M. Siler10 Comments

Hands-free-Whopper-holder-introduced-by-Burger-KingI don’t eat at Burger King very often– maybe once every three or four months, and generally only when I either have no other options or am sick to death of all other available food options.  Given that the side of town I live on has a multitude of places to eat, this just doesn’t happen very often.  I don’t dislike their food, mind you, but over the last few years the company has sort of taken on this air like they’re padding around in circles and looking for a place to die– the menu has always changed massively every time I go there, they’ve renamed things, added a bunch of food that I don’t recognize, and always, always changed their fries from the last time I was in there.

Luckily, one of the very few things that they haven’t fucked with is the chicken sandwich, or, as they’re calling it now, the Original Chicken Sandwich, perhaps to drive home the whole hey, look, this is actually the same as the last time you came in here back in 2005 thing.  I had a craving tonight, and since I was at OtherJob all day I knew I was on my own for dinner, so I stopped at Burger King on the way home.

(Sidenote:  Subway’s Big Hot Pastrami Melt, on flatbread, with provolone cheese, pickles, and dijon.  Delicious.  This is my new shit.  I love pastrami but unfortunately I live in Indiana and it’s much more difficult than you might imagine to get ahold of– even the couple of delis near my house rarely have it available, so Subway introducing a pastrami sandwich was seriously the good news of the week.  Unfortunately, the Subway on my side of town is a big pain in the ass, or I’d have just had two of these today, one on the way to work and one on the way home.)

Anyway.  Back to Burger King.  (I swear I don’t usually have fast food twice in a day, but Saturdays are annoying for eating right.)  I pulled into the drive thru and rolled down my window.  The aggravation starts immediately, because Burger King is now using some sort of canned introductory message in the drive thru now; some sort of hypercorporatebullshit  robotic cheery “HI HOW MAY I MAKE YOUR LIFE BETTER BY SERVING YOU WITH MY SERVING AND YOUR FOOD AND MY SERVICE” thing.

I do not require service from anyone.  I want you to make me some food and I want to pay you for it.  You are literally serving it to me in the sense that you are handing it to me, but that does not make you my servant.  You are not going to serve me today.  You’re gonna sell me some damn food.  I don’t know why that word bugs me so much but it does.  Also, it would be nice if it was a person talking to me and not a damn robot.  Can we not trust our employees to say “Hi, welcome to Burger King, can I take your order?” anymore?

So there’s that, but it’s a common annoyance so I ignore it.  I request my chicken sandwich and then all hell breaks loose.

“May we have your first name for the receipt, please?”

I was literally shocked into silence for a second.  I seriously couldn’t process what the hell I’d just been asked.  You want my what?  Why the fuck– what–

WHAT?

I lie.  Reflexively, damn near instantly.  Make up the first first name that comes into my head; it’s not my damn name.  Why the fuck do you want my fucking name?  For the RECEIPT?  Why the fuck does the receipt need my goddamn what-the-fuck name?  This isn’t fucking Starbucks, you assholes, I’m in a goddamn drive thru.

I seriously wish I had just refused; I regularly refuse to give my ZIP code or phone number during transactions– it just took me by surprise too much and threw me off my game.  If the drive-thru in question hadn’t been one of the type where there’s no escape once you’re in it I seriously might have left.

And then they’d printed my goddamn name on the receipt, which is a piece of paper I’m never looking at again.  Except it wasn’t my name.  I paid with cash, by the way, entirely on purpose because fuck if I’m giving you assholes any more information about me at all at this point.  I don’t know why this bugs me so damn much but I’ll be damned if I’m handing over any personal information about me of any kind to buy a fucking three dollar sandwich in a drive thru.  In fact, I won’t be handing them three dollars anymore, either; it ain’t like I like Burger King enough to overlook the fact that they’re deliberately freaking me the fuck out in the drive thru now.

Fuck.

In which I find a way to mention sriracha again

Luther M. Siler

20131108-174700.jpgI have, conservatively, and depending on how much I push down on the stack prior to measuring it, between four and six inches of poorly-organized and no doubt deeply depressing grading to wade through this weekend. I am not remotely in the mood for it right now; I think pulling together next week’s lesson plans (and, uh, this week’s lesson plans) is probably about as ambitious as I’m planning on getting tonight. I have a blog post to write, the last 40 pages of a relatively entertaining book to blaze through, and Baldur’s Gate. I think that’s probably enough to get me through a three-hour shift at OtherJob.

Three of my favorite kids (and the sister of one of the three, who I haven’t actually ever had in class due to her age but I’m fond of) all transferred out today. It’s got me in a deeply pessimistic mood about my job during a month that has already seen much, much more than its share of pessimism, and I caught myself looking at job listings at private schools again yesterday. There’s a tiny silver cloud in that one of the two Kids Who are Always Suspended was spreading the word that he was transferring schools on Monday as well, but he apparently has given two different schools out for where he’ll be landing so I’m not holding my damn breath. Naturally, even in that situation, he’s the one of the two who I actually kind of like despite his constant attempts to derail my classroom; the nicest thing I can say about the other one is that the world would be a better place had he been a blowjob.

So, yeah, that’s where my head’s at right now. Also, since I apparently review commercial food items now, I had what Subway is calling their “Sriracha Chicken Melt” for dinner tonight. While it was tasty (and spicy enough that, half an hour later, my nose is still sorta running) there are little advertising placards all over the store that describe the sriracha as “creamy.” Sriracha is a lot of things, but creamy is none of them. Something else sriracha isn’t: orange. So I don’t know what the hell I was eating on that sammitch, but it wasn’t sriracha.

Mmmm, sriracha.