the continuing saga of american stupidity.

i pity foreigners. they have to put up with all the stupid shit americans do. i mean, the stuff we do in our own country is bad enough, but then we have to go and infect the whole rest of the world with it.

i will not travel until i learn the language of the country i want to visit.

i had something that particularly incensed me today that i wanted to write about, but now i'm too tired to remember what it was.....it might have had to do with the parents of young children. oh, oh, it was definitely the rudeness of using a hand basket to gather groceries in the store and then putting the whole basket, full, on the conveyor belt and expecting the cashier to remove the items for you.

please don't do that.

for one thing, it's a waste of time--yours, the cashier's, and the people's behind you. for another, it really pisses us off. we are not your slaves....no matter how much you might like to think we are. we're paid. we have a union, for chrissake. and then you get mad at us if we say anything to you! come on now. god forbid we fellow human beings assert ourselves....

then there was the lady who finished paying for her order today and handed me this little pamphlet, "something to read in your spare time...it's bible based, but it's very positive, not like all the other stuff we hear so much of nowadays."

i collect these. i think they're hilarious. silly jehovahs witnesses. and other groups, too....my favorite one had to be the one i pulled off a telephone pole on long island, the one called "Are Roman Catholics Really Christians?" oh man....i laughed. really, if you're trying to convert people, handing them pamphlets while they are at their job is not the way to do it. at least she put her own stuff on the belt.

y'know, non-christians never do things like that. you never hear about muslims going door-to-door.

the other thing that i have never understood about jehovah's witnesses is that their conversion tactics seem counterintuitive. jehovahs witnesses believe that only 144,000 people--literally--will be allowed into the kingdom of heaven. so why do they keep trying to convert people? shouldn't they be trying to keep everyone else away, so they can ensure a space for themselves? and what happens if good people have been dying for so long that heaven is already full? i mean, after thousands of years of human history, we've gotta be getting close. how will they know when to give up? i welcome comments on this, just don't try to convert me because it isn't going to work.


there is hope.
yesterday i was ringing up a woman and her son, and the boy had downs syndrome. he had the most wonderful laugh i have ever heard in my life.