I dreamed about zombies again last night.

So now I'm baking muffins.

I really like that dress. I think I need to wear lipstick, though. I missed a critical lipstick learning period in life, though, so I wonder if I'll never learn how to wear it, and what colors look good on me. It can't be that my coloring is too weird for lipstick. I'm pale. I need it. I just feel like a dork wearing it. I want to, but I can't.


Is anything less interesting than the above paragraph?

Bret Easton Ellis can fuck right off.

He went to my college. Not the one I'll be graduating from; the one I was kicked out of.

And his books aren't so great. Really, I promise they're not. I watched Rules of Attraction, as a movie. It kinda sucked. It was only worth it to watch someone overdose in a facsimile of a dorm I spent two years in. The campus didn't even look the same- that's where the producer fucked up. Bennington is a strange place. It looks strange. It does not look like a college. It doesn't look like anything. There's only one brick building on campus- all the dorms are white clapboard houses that look like farms or upscale new england group homes for addicts or neurotics. Which is basically what they are. I've read some of the books- they suck.

They're alright. But they're not so great. Not greater than anything I could write. Not greater than anything anyone with a snide sense of self-satisfaction and half a college education could write. This fucker, though, takes something anyone else could write, and smears himself, brands himself, markets himself all over it, until it's entirely covered in his goo. No one wants to read about rich kids debauching themselves with the tacit approval of a decadent college administration anymore. They've already READ it. And it's got Bret Easton Ellis all over it.

Which would be fine. If the books were great. But they're not. They're style. They're marketing. They're a product of the decade they were written in- all surface and coke and savage, glittery, acid materialism. Fuck him.

I'm 23, able to string together a half-decent sentence in english, and spent the requisite time at Bennington. Where's my 300,000 second novel advance? Where's my motherfucking FIRST novel, even?

Gay, folks. Gay. There's no opportunity in the world anymore. The eighties sucked half of it out, and the internet boom sucked the rest of it. There's no point in being 23 right now. Motherfuckers used it all up. Alex P Keaton fucking Dot Com fucking Real Estate fucking Social Security fuckers. I'm young, bright, hard working. And I'll be poor forever. Unless I go to law school. Which I probably will. But I'd rather write a shitty novel.

"We're happy to serve YOU!!"

My supermarket receipt claims that they were happy to serve me.
Me? Lil' ole' me?

fucking doubtful.

I'm not even happy to serve people and I'm a customer service whore. I would be much happier, sitting at home, fucking around on the internet, baking cookies, and in general living my life rather than doing my job. I assume that's true of the great majority of people alive and working.

This whole "happy to serve you" thing is fucking ubiquitous. It's everywhere. It's become the "have a nice day" of the 21st century. Why don't people say what they mean anymore? What's so bad about "We appreciate your business."

I guess it's because the whole world is now supposed to be a GFE. We all want kisses with our blowjobs; nobody wants to confront the fact that the person you're paying to do something for you is doing it because it's their job; and the reason the company they work for exists is not to make you feel good, but to make a profit.

I like my customers, by and large (Except one guy-this one guy can go to hell). They're mostly considerate, polite, pleasant people. I'd like them just as much, probably, if they weren't my customers. But I don't forget that they are customers. And they don't forget, either, judging by tips. But the line is blurred. Customers have favorite baristas, baristas have favorite customers. But my business is a lot different from the grocery store.

I don't know the woman who rang up my groceries. She did it well, and quickly, but there's no secret that she'd rather be somewhere else. That's what working in a grocery store is. It's not a vocation. It's a job. It's menial and tedious and there's no intellectual stimulation or cozy conversation with regular customers. She's not delighted to serve me; she's TIRED. She served me well, though. No mistakes. Fine service, really. But, delighted? eh. And that's fine.

So maybe we can stop pretending. Maybe we can stop asking people to pretend to be our friends for minimum wage. How lonely are we, as a society? How in desperate need of reassurance are we that anyone we give money to has to be 'happy to serve YOU!"? Can't competance ad professionalism replace chumminess? At least competance rings true, if you have it.

Again, I really like a lot of my customers. I treat them well, they treat me well; I had more customers than friends ask me how my grades came out at the end of last term. (3.85, if you're interested) I remember who is working on a book, whose children are young enough to exhaust them, who is studying to go back to school. We're acquaintances, by this point- but behind the counter remains behind the counter, and in front is in front. I'm always a little bit happier, a little bit less tired, a little bit more optimistic at work. And these customers respond, in their part, by tipping. They pay for their coffee; they tip for the service. It's a personal interaction, but a business context. I'm comfortable with that.

Can someone else be comfortable with that?