Penny Hero (dot) Net

I just realized that it amuses me when trillian keeps trying to reconnect to the chat servers long after the connection to the internet is gone. It just keeps trying… fails… waits 90 seconds… tries again… fails…

And it does this all night long.

Kind of like the fly that keeps beating itself against the glass. Only better… because trillian doesn’t die and become crusty, black, crunchy, winged corpses you have to clean out of the window sill with a damp cloth and 409.

send a thought my way
can I get you something else?
there’s syrup dripping from my ears
so messy, I can’t think.
this flooded freeway thinks nothing of you
or me.

the cars yell back and forth
and minds bash like bulls.
important impotence
petty like carbon, alone.
we all live
on the surface of blue glass
where the nearest star is too far away.

It’s a rare and satisfying experience when you can simply switch two paragraphs and discover new meaning, new transitions, and a stronger piece of work altogether.

That’s when the piece writes itself. And makes me think I’ve perhaps got a muse.

How do I make this sound interesting enough for you to read?

half-hour of over-time does not make up for the 8.5 hours of HELL I had to smile through today. Because today was the first really sunny day of the year, naturally my boss called me in to work 2 hours early. Everyone else in the world apparently took the day off and came to the store as well… I had a line all the way from my counter down to aisle 9 (at least 8-10 customers) from 2:30 until 6:30 straight. I did not have five seconds to even take a breath for myself. Every action, step, motion and word I spoke until 6:30 was directed to someone wanting lottery tickets, money orders, pay-roll checks cashed, western union, lottery cash-out, video rentals, or just some stupid groceries.

The bad shit: on top of it being obscenely busy, my register crashed and took three re-boots and about 8 minutes to return to working order. Shortly after that, the printer connected to my video-rental computer jammed up/ran-out-of-ink/both. A co-worker spent 40 minutes trying to repair it, and finally gave up. This forced me to write out every single video-rental contract by hand… and this was on our “.49 cent Thursday” movie special day… meaning everyone and their fucking dog wanted to rent five movies. Oh yeah… and then there was the phone. At one point, this poor lady had to sit there watching me answer the phone, hang up, answer the phone, hang up for at least 10 minutes before I could count her cash back to her. It just would not stop ringing. (and not even smart people calling… this was a series of people who wanted to know if we carried leather shoe-laces, or if anyone had found some milk by the front door, or if I could “please tell Chad that his mom is bringing him a coat because he must be cold in the milk-cooler”.

One guy came in to purchase a $400 money order with ones, fives, and a single hundred dollar bill. oh my effing god. I had to count all that shit.

Now, I’m supposed to close at 10pm. at 9:56pm, a family comes in wanting to rent five movies. of course, they can’t make up their minds, and I’m still helping them at 10:05. Whatever. I was over it. Unfortunately, the rest of the store was still packed… so packed that the PIC asked me to pull a few people from line and ring up their groceries at the video counter. Following them came another mass of money-order/lotto/western-union/video/etc customers because it was apparent that I was still “open”. I couldn’t even begin my closing duties until 10:30… gah. and did I mention I’d been there since 2:30?

Bleh, didn’t leave til 11:15… which means I think I get a half-hour of over-time or something. Such an adventure. oh so great to work at that job.

Tomorrow, off to the theater for day two of not-really-training. It’ll be bloody cotton candy compared to today.