Alright! I get it, no more existential laments of my senescent fears. No more rants about boring ass celebrities. Today I'm back to my wacky adventures and the often embarrassing results of my life and times.
As a preface, a short history lesson. When I started working at Mandalay Bay, I was a little sad to be returning to Graveyard hours, and I was drinking very heavily, lamenting my nocturnal prison. Those of you that know me, know that I cannot really hide my internal emotional state from showing on the outside. If i'm pissed, or happy, or whatever, you can see it in my face. My disdain and contempt was apparent to my supervisors and I got the non-surprising "do you like working here? You don't seem to. You're attitude is unacceptable."
Now usually when someone tells me they don't like my attitude, I would say,"I don't like anything about you, so why would I care what you don't like about me." but I needed money and a lot of people went out of their way to help me get the job, so I bit my tongue, and thus the most brilliant coping mechanism my evil genius has ever hatched came about.
When George Costanza realized every decision he had ever made had led him to failure, he decided to do the opposite, and everything would have to logically succeed. Well everything I thought or felt, resulted in the people at my job thinking I was a bitter, angry, relatively uncontentious individual who hated everything about the small minded hampsters he had to work with and under.
Since these feelings were not likely to abate, I just reversed how they were expressed. If someone asks me how I'm doing, I respond (Life is Shit, and you are the asshole.) "I'm doing super awesome! How are you doing!" Shit eating grin on my face. If some high school dropout tells me I have to comb the entire casino for chairs covered in piss, I would say (The fact that someone as stupid as you is my boss makes me want to kill everyone who ever met you, including myself) "Of course boss! Sounds fun!"
You get the idea. The more pissed off I was, the more psychotically cheerleader-like ecstatic my outward demeanor would appear. This had the added bonus of my inwardly laughing my ass off at mocking this life they all take so fucking seriously, thus relieving my own boredom and stress levels. I was using a modified anti-sarcastic sarcasm technique, pioneered (or at least introduced to me by) Justin and honed to a razor edge by hours of practice at the sub shop. That was a little different, since everyone but Bruce was in on it. My new approach worked and in less than a week I got the, "You have made a noticed improvement in your attitude, we've seen it, and we like it."
Anyway that leads into the second part of my trials this day. The first has something to do with a little hurdle I face everyday called "professional sports." I don't give 2 shits about any pro sports. If it wasn't for Nike I wouldn't know any of their names, if it wasn't for video games I wouldn't even know most of the rules. That is a small problem in most social situations, I usually surround myself with people that have more to talk about than that shit. Don't get me wrong, I have friends that are sports fags, but they can talk about other shit with me, and sports with their other friends. But at work, i don't get to pick who I interact with. And let me tell you I exaturate not a whit when I say that every male employee of my casino has no opinion, or interesting commentary on anything other than sports. That and all the things they would do to chicks that wouldn't piss on them if they were on fire, but that's pretty much all dudes everywhere. Their vapid diatribes of homosexual awe make me almost want to hear about what color Carrie is thinking of changing her fingernails to.
Anyway, this also goes for most of the customers. And this is of course, the weekend of the superbowl. On the 435th time I was asked by some drunk asshole, "Who you got on the game tonight?" I decided to have a little bit of fun. Usually I just pick whichever team the inquiring mind is advertising via hat or jersey. This results in massive amounts of high fives and cheering. This time, however, I told him the truth. This is how it went:
"I don't follow football."
"Why the fuck not?"
"I just don't care about sports."
"No sports?"
"I like girls volleyball."
"What are you gay?"
"No. I think watching a bunch of sweaty dudes root around in the dirt wearing tight pants and slapping each other on the ass, bending over in each others faces, is kinda gay. Getting such a vicarious thrill through the triumph of total strangers, is...I just don't get it."
"So, since you're a fag, you must be a Colts fan."
How does one argue with such insurmountable logic?
Still with me? Here's number 2. I was unloading off my slot gear waiting to clock out. I was waiting for this amazingly jubilant old man. Now, when someone is genuinely excited about coming into work, I instantly put them on the danger list, though it does help to feed my faux gusto.
"Hey! How are you today," I asked.
"I am doing amazing," the old man said, not a stitch of irony. Maybe I have met my match, maybe this old man has taken my technique to a level I can only aspire to. I must test him.
"Amazing? That's pretty good for nine in the morning! Why so amazing, what's your secret, I'm barely awesome right now!"
"Well I just got out of the hospital."
"Yes, always a cause for celebration."
"Yes they had to kill me for ten minutes and then bring me back so my heart would beat correctly. Now every minute of life is wonderful."
Damn! I knew it!
"Yup, life is pretty sweet, I have to agree with you! It could be worse!"
"Yes, that is how I feel. You know, you could go at any time. One minute your here, the next...you just don't know."
Yes. That is true. I agree, "Well let's just hope it's not too soon for any of us, am I right?!"
"That's why it's important to be prepared."
? what the fuck does that mean ? Prepared like, have a will in your pocket, or maybe make sure you paid your insurance so your family won't starve? No, being prepared for death means everyone you love knows you love them every minute!
"Prepared, like how?
"You have to make sure you have the love of Jesus in your heart at all times. It's what I tell all the young people in my bible study group."
At this point I would like to iterate that this kind of brainwashing is as evil to me as the Hitler Youth or teaching your children that black people are all criminals. Wasting space in young fertile minds with superstition and magic is quite possibly the most heinous thing anyone can do to the intelligent, useful development of a child's psyche. To teach them to focus more on the consequences of a life after this one, instead of making the most of this, their only one true shot....aghhh!
"Oh great! When are those meetings, sounds like you've got a lot of good ideas!"
"They're every Wednesday night. I can give you directions to the church."
"That's ok, but I'm gonna look into this Jesus thing. Have a great day!"
"You too, God bless."
"Awesome!"
So the third and final straw is a somewhat more common occurrence, but in light of my day I was in no mood for pleasantries. I had just got home from the gym. I was getting some shit out of my car, wearing what I always work out in, pink short-shorts and a black muscle shirt.
This little mexican dude comes gerbiling on my six. this is what transpired;
"Hey man, can I talk with you?"
"Uh, yeah, what's up?"
"Uh, my friend, got like pulled over by the police...and they uh took him to jail."
"Shitty."
"Yeah so, I was-"
"I'm not going to give you any fucking money."
5 second pause.
"Not even a dollar?"
"How the fuck is a dollar going to get your friend out of jail?"
"Well, I just have to-"
"Nevermind, fuck off."
I turned to walk away, and I swear this is what he said to me.
"Can I bum a smoke?"
end transmission.
