it's absurd really

from the overseas telephone spammer who nearly convinced me that i had an operating system defect which only he could cure to the veteran library lady who stubbornly refuses to speak in hushed tones to the elderly coffee shop patrons who perch themselves in their pre-assigned seats from dawn to dusk to the even more elderly morning mallwalker crew decked out in their oversized velvet tracksuits who can still outsaunter most folks half their age to the dutiful sandwich shop servers who insist on greeting each and every g-ddamn customer with an almost painfully cheery "good afternoon, welcome to subway" to my three-year-old daughter who has somehow managed to tie the 8 a.m. ritual of brushing her teeth to the promise of candy treats to follow to the 35 grams of sugar that my already overhyped eight-year-old consumes each and every time she downs a juice box and granola bar following a soccer match to the three standup comics who between them must have dropped the f-bomb a good dozen times a minute over the course of saturday night's two-hour cussfest to all the audible gumchewers who invariably park themselves behind me in the supermarket queue while a trainee cashier attempts to break the world record for the most register overrides in a single shift to all the senseless and irrelevant trifles that folks like me spend the better part of our lives pissing and moaning about.

it's absurd really.

apples to oranges

so i stumbled upon a rather interesting phenomenon in the produce section of my local grocery today. you see, i had been furiously scouring the fruit and vegetable stands in search of a decent granny smith apple - you know, one absent any manifest scrapes or bruises or soft spots or elongated stems or whatnot. but as i repeatedly relocated one malformed fleshy fruit after another from the pyramid-shaped pile before me, i gradually began to recognize a pattern unfolding: it seemed as if all of the aesthetically-pleasing apples just happened to be grouped together in a single, isolated location upon the display table. now at first i thought nothing of the odd little occurrence. but then it slowly began to dawn on me that perhaps this was no mere coincidence. no, perhaps this was evidence of an even larger pattern of curious sociological construct that silently epitomizes our modern communities. one that extends beyond the facile insignificance of the apple kingdom. one that instead characterizes the blithe and almost blinding harshness and cruelty of everyday homosapien interaction. and one that is seemingly most evident within the realm of that highly-concentrated microcosm of societal relationships... yes, i am referring to none other than that petri dish of the human condition, the schoolyard. for wasn't it in the schoolyard where most of us first came to recognize the sheer brutality and the utter callousness of what we now understand to be the class system, the pecking order, the fraternity of fellowship, the sorority of sisterhood, the cult of popularity? wasn't it in the schoolyard where most of us first came to recognize that birds of a feather do, indeed, flock together? wasn't it in the schoolyard where most of us first came to recognize how the pretty people of the world are almost magnetically drawn to one another within their chosen peer groups? and so perhaps i had indeed stumbled upon the proverbial missing link, as it were. the linchpin that finally connected all of those hazy dots between ourselves and our agricultural cousins. for perhaps we are not alone in this universe after all. perhaps we share more in common with our farm-raised friends than we are willing to concede. perhaps apples and oranges and avocados and even papayas share a desire to be part of the in crowd as well. to be part of the a-list. to be hip and happening and all that and a bag of chips. yes, perhaps apples and oranges and avocados and even papayas share a desire to be cool.