Sunday, August 30, 2015

Dear Pumpkin Spice People

We get it.  You won.  Everything is going to become pumpkin spiced soon, as it did last year, and the year before.  You've turned fall from a season of harvest and turning leaves to the over-saturation of a lackluster flavor that doesn't even taste like the thing it says it is. How about you do the honorable thing and quit bragging about it then?

I don't need the posts about your pumpkin spiced lattes, your pumpkin pie flavored pancakes, or your spicy pumpkin netty pot add in.  When Muhammed Ali won a match, he danced around.  He didn't pull down his trunks and pee on his opponent, and then force his vanquished foe to legally change their name to "Shitty Loser".  Show some damned class. 

I like my pancakes to taste like little pieces of heaven, small pats of butter, and however much maple syrup I choose to guzzle as a chaser.  I don't need them to taste like cinnamon, nutmeg, or allspice, just mapley diabetes inducing pleasure. 

Do any of you even know what pumpkin tastes like?  It tastes like an unappetizing version of butternut squash.  That's why canned "pumpkin" that you use to make your pies and the pumpkin pie spice you snort to dull the pain that your ugly cardigan brings to you is made of yams for the former, and spices for the latter.  No pumpkins were smashed in the making of your fall fetish. 

Somehow, some way, I will make maple, the Rocketeer, or Asylum 880 cigars into a seasonal phenomenon, then you'll have to hear allllllll about it, because turnabout is fair play, bitch. 

Sunday, August 2, 2015

Dear Axe Body Spray

I have many different things that I do in the course of the day at my new job.  A big one is building new setups of products on the ends of aisles, making them look good for the guests in the store.  Some sections are better to do this in than others.  Anything towards the back of the store is quite, and you don't get bothered much.  Of course the opposite is true at the front end, so I was already not thrilled to have to build a new one in the shampoo and cosmetics section, located right near the front and on the main walk.  People constant stop you and ask questions, and a 30 minute job gets stretched by an hour. 

On this day, I was unlucky.  I was in the worst of the swarm.  Not only was I constantly answering questions, but I was around the cologne, soap, and shampoo.  It was a nauseating cloud of fragrance and I worked as hard as I could to get done and move along.  I had just gotten all of the shelves cleared, and was ready to restock when I hear a whoosh of aerosol and the prickly awful sound of youths giggling.  Before I was able to freeze the urchins with my dead eyed disapproval stare, the unsupervised preteens had set off probably half of a can of Axe Body Spray in the aisle next to where I was working.  After they shrieked, dropped the can and ran, I tried to be a hero and clean up the aisle.  Well, I was sure, I was soon, and I am always larger than life, and while I was strong, I was not fast, and I was in no uncertain terms fresh from the fight.  I had let Bonnie Tyler down.  I was no hero.  Stuck in an aisle that smelled like the entire population of Secaucus, New Jersey had recently met there to listen to Bon Jovi and wish they lived in New York City, I had no choice but to turn tail and run.

I worked frantically as the fumes seeped into every pore of my being.  Tears would have been streaming from my face from the acrid stench, except there were none to be had.  How can one cry when they've seen the end times and they know that everything is useless.  Customers hurried past, giving me horrified looks like I was the one who decided to pretend he was a 12 year old on the way to a Homecoming Dance.  I was almost finished,  The end was in sight, and I tore open cardboard, threw products to shelf willy nilly, and slapped up price tags.  I was almost free to succumb to the fumes and die in piece, when I heard this behind me.

Teen Girl #1: Wow.  That is STRONG!
Teen Girl #2: I know, right?

Now I really was reverting back to a 12 year old.  The mean teen girls were mocking me to my face.  I was about to turn around and give then the dead eyes when they continued.

Teen Girl #1: It.  Smells.  Soooooo.  Goooooooooood.
Teen Girl #2: I know, right?

They thought the scent which I can only guess was originally marketed as Floral Nose Sodomy was good.  The folks at Axe had done their job.  Whatever concoction of plant pubes and donkey pheromones they mixed really did attract young girls.  As my nose and eyes started to bleed from prolonged exposure, a worse realization hit me: anyone that was over 18 that wore this demon spunk had to be a pedophile.  There was no other way, because they were wearing something that only teen girls could find enchanting.  It needed to be locked up with the nicotine gum, and closely monitored for who purchased it.  Anyone out of high school that wore it had more than likely recently quoted Wooderson and probably was really into GTL.  They needed to be locked up immediately. 

I tried to warn everyone, but by then I had lapsed into an Axe induced hysteria.  My coworkers tell me they had to restrain me as I had barricaded myself in the Seasonal department with a wall of grills, spraying lighter fluid everywhere and threatening to burn the place down, because fire was the only was to ever get clean.