Garbagemen.

I think the MAIN problem in our town right now is the garbagemen. That's right, garbagemen, I'm not afraid to speak out against you even though you have a powerful union and could "potentially" cut off my service even though I pay your exhorbitant fees and have placed this preventative salvo into the river of public discussion. The date of this posting: April 19, 2005. 2:31PM. Google will postmark this within the hour.

Garbagemen, as everyone knows, are highly overpaid button pushers whose actual labor is done by truck-mounted hydraulic devices. In days past this may have been an honest trade (though I strongly doubt it) but these days their work is no more demanding than that of a simple receptionist. I challenge any garbageman to defend his honor and occupational dignity. He simply won't be able to. He has become lazy and complacent. He deserves a pension no more than the hamburger cooking teenager.

On my particular route, the garbagemen come around 6am. This wouldn't be so bad if their truck machinery didn't make so much noise while hoisting the various cans and recycling bins (the resultant trash-crash around the insides of the truck seems to last an eternity. I can hear every single bottle or can slide down its respective guide chute).

My current idea is to lobby the city to have garbage personnel lift all trash receptacles onto a flatbed, then transport them to an unpopulated/commercial area, where they could be dumped into a trash truck. Then the receptacles could be placed back at the corresponding properties. If the city could see how much more productive its populace would be if it wasn't rudely awakened by thugs and "noise polluters" at all hours of the morning, it might take my suggestions seriously to heart. Mine is the sort of thinking that trickles UPWARD to a Nobel Prize in economics. The broad thought, applied locally, proven, and spread out over innumerable civic programs, is where the real power lies.

I can't wait to see the look on the Nobel Prize committee's face when I refuse their political whore of a medal.

I've had it with people who think that looking sloppy is fantastic.

Not far from my house is a small industrial park, and in it resides a discount sporting goods outlet. Recently they advertised an extremely good sale on all of their stock, so I was compelled to go and see if they had any hiking boots which could replace my current pair, which I have literally worn into the ground. Literally: the ground has eaten away almost the entire sole, and I am in danger of suffering foot damage.

Yesterday afternoon just before dinnertime I walked over to the outlet (don't worry, not in my old dilapidated boots) and was rather enthused. The ad had inspired me to start dreaming of a crisp new pair of solid, supportive, new-car-smell hikers, and I was in high spirits.

I should have known better.

The problem with a sale is that it just attracts the absolute gutter of society. Far and away the most represented bunch were sloppily-dressed teenagers, smugly flaunting their family-supported indolence as they dropped platinum cards on everything from snowboards to the most expensive downhill skis and boots in the store. Every last one of them, upon completing their purchase, loaded their spoils into an oversized SUV and motored off. One thing I really hated was their hair. They tended to cultivate sloppy overly-long curls that made them look just unbearably arrogant. If youth are born into this world with curly hair, it should NEVER be longer than one inch.

Needless to say, I never got so far as the shoe counter before self-ousting and hoofing it angrily for home. I don't need a damned sale if I'm going to have to hang out with curly-haired idiots. I can spend the money someplace decent that doesn't have to have sales simply in order to rely on the teenage dollar.

I'm back.

Earlier this month I was attacked but now I am better. I will not go into the details of the abduction as I have several lawsuits pending. I may update on this subject if they begin to bear fruit, but until that time I am under a personally-administered gag order. I do not wish to endanger the purity of my litigation.

What I really want to talk about is the low quality of clerks these days. No matter where you go, you constantly run into morons who have the mental acuity of a potato clock. Just this afternoon I called Walgreen's pharmacy to ask if they carried a certain homeopathic burn ointment, and the woman who answered the phone had the presence of mind of a dandelion. When she answered, she shrieked the name of the store in a thick accent ("WahGrin!"), and then had me repeat my question THREE times before exclaiming exasperatedly, "well, *I* doh' know!"

I let her off with a curt "Well, I bet that's not all you don't know!" and hung up in her ear. I ended up ordering the ointment online, and will just put up with the discomfort until it shows up. There is no way Walgreens is getting a dime of my money, not after a spectacle like that. I also will no longer go there to purchase any other things, including their 25-cent ice cream cones. They are out of my life. With people like that representing the public-facing side of the company, who knows what sort of mucous-vomiting, mathless maniac is working in the back, touching all the products?

Screw Walgreens, and screw the low quality of workers today. America is going down the tubes.