The Penis Mightier

It's true.

I did a silly thing a couple of weeks ago. I wrote a scathing post about a shady, former client who stiffed me on an invoice. I was livid. I lost my mind for a minute. It happens.

A little while after I posted it I took it down. I don't want to put that kind of energy into the world. Amazingly, during those 15-20 minutes it was live she found it. It's like it was meant to be. (Evidently, I know a little about SEO and it helps that she loves to Google her name every five minutes.)

Regardless, the only thing I regret about it is letting myself get into such a negative place. It happens every time I have to deal with her and she's not at all worth it.

She was never worth the effort it took to write the post. She's not worth any of the effort wasted on her from the beginning. I'm looking forward to forgetting I ever met her.

Up in the Ass

If you haven't seen the movie and plan to, stop reading - spoiler alert.

First, I loved the movie. Who doesn't love watching Clooney being Clooney? And Jason Bateman is always great - more Bateman please. I liked how they made flying seem like fun, even though it's really a giant pain in the ass.

I really loved Vera Farmiga's character, Alex. She's smart, sexy, funny, adventurous, uninhibited, confident, and on top of all that, gorgeous.

*** spoiler alert ***

Then we find out she's a lying whore. Of course. She would have to be. No woman could be all that and not also be tragically flawed. Thanks, Hollywood. Fucked me in the ass again.

I could feel it coming and hoped so much that I was wrong. I knew there wouldn't be a fairy tale ending for her and Ryan, but did we have to make the interesting female lead a cheating ho-bag?

David pointed out that it's almost always the man that turns out to be the philandering douchebag and he's right. I suppose it's fair to make the female lead the asshole, it's just disappointing.

The "good" girl is shrill, uptight, arrogant, asexual, ignorant and someone I would love to slap in the face. It's a bummer that the "cool" woman in the movie turns out to be a shit bag and the "good" girl is an irritating bitch.

I don't know how else it could have been written to make her ultimately unavailable to Ryan, the little boy lost, and to be fair, he never asked her about her situation. He either assumed she was single or wasn't interested in really knowing her - but that seems hollow when it comes time to go to his sister's wedding.

If you're just banging a guy between flights and then one day he asks you to go with him to his sister's wedding, that seems like the right time to say something like, "I don't want to be a downer, but you should know I'm married and I have fifteen kids."

At that moment, she, being the smart woman she is, should have realized they were not on the same page. And if she's not wearing a ring or slipping away to take phone calls in private, why would he ever imagine she could be married? She seems just like him but as she said, "with a vagina." He's got a fair position in assuming she was unattached. Naive maybe, but fair.

So not only do we get to see an interesting female character turn out to be an asshole, we get to see marriage treated like it usually is in the movies - the drudgery of real life, the thing that needs to be escaped. How original.

It was a good movie, but I don't think it was a "great" movie or the "best" movie. Up was far better, as was The Hurt Locker and Fantastic Mr. Fox. I'd even put The Hangover above it, just for Mike Tyson alone.

The best thing about it was the powerful but dark reality of getting canned and having to start all over, even if it's almost time to start planning to retire, and asking yourself "what am I doing with my life?" So, it's got that going for it, which is nice.

CVS is S-A-D

While we were on the lam in Canada last year CVS/pharmacy bought Long's Drug's. It was sad news because I and many of my friends loved Long's.

By the way, what's with the slash? Is it a Consumer Value Store Pharmacy, or just a pharmacy, or just a store? Why not CVS Pharmacy? Or are they planning a whole collection of chains, like maybe CVS/oil changers, CVS/smoothie hut, CVS/guns & ammo? The slash is stupid, much like their stores.

Long's was my all-time favorite place to shop, and I hate shopping, but I loved cruising their aisles full of stuff. Where else can you pick up mascara, Kodak Tri-X Pan 400 black & white film, a Faucet Queen thingie for the kitchen sink, Dinty Moore beef stew, a $60 Bart ticket, moist butt wipes AND a nice bottle of wine for dinner all in one place?

Every Long's felt like a quaint, local drug store, regardless of which one you went to. Its many aisles were narrow and jam-packed with all sorts of goodies. All the usual drug store stuff, but also tons of food, snacks, candy, gifts, makeup, greeting cards, jewelry, clothes, housewares, plants, flowers, garden stuff, cameras, film, hardware, ice cream, wine and BOOZE!

When David's parents visited us years ago we stopped at a Long's to grab a few things for the road. In moments, David's mom's arms were FULL of stuff. She found me in another aisle and with big, wide eyes she said, "This store is AMAZING!"

It really was. There was something about it. Every store felt familiar but each had its own funky vibe - you never knew what you might find. A true shopping adventure.

When I heard they'd sold out, I was bummed. Another local business swallowed up by a crappy competitor. (Long's first store was on Piedmont Avenue in Oakland.)

The other day I had to find those stupid little batteries for the cat's laser toy. I saw a former Long's/CVS nearby, so I gave it a try. It was every bit as disappointing as I'd expected and more.

Gone were the numerous aisles of good stuff, replaced by a handful of aisles set so wide apart you could cruise them in a forklift. Gone was the classic, bulletproof linoleum, replaced by a sad, depressing dark grey carpet. Carpet? In a drug store? You can't splatter a jar of pickles on that. The stains look great though. Stupid.

I walked around the whole store and mourned. It looked to have a tenth of what Long's used to carry and none of it looked any good. The displays are sad, the merchandising is sad - the whole place is just sad.

Even worse was the staff. I think they grow them in a facility somewhere in Winnipeg. I waited forever behind a woman trying to use a coupon and the cashier couldn't do the math. She had to call a manager, the manager wandered up to check the price of the item - I don't even know what happened after that - I blacked out. When I came to the sun was in a different place in the sky and I wanted to take a long hot shower and curl up in bed.

I was never a huge fan of Walgreen's but I'm going to go out of my way to find a Walgreen's rather than ever step foot inside a CVS/shithole ever again. Long's, it was a bitch move to sell out. You let us down. When I'm old and even crankier, I don't know where I'm going to buy my gallons of Carlo Rossi and tins of Danish butter cookies.