Comments:

i'm admittedly not much of a consumer. recently on the shit news (CNN, MSNBC, BLAH, BLAH) theres been a lot of shit stories about consumer confidence plummeting. in the last few months, i've tried to purchase three items. just three. and each new experience has been worst than the last. gone are the good old days corporate control whereby the trading of currency for goods was a common practice. so to george w. bush and his economic team, your economy is in the fucking toilet because the retail industry on its highest levels is stupider and less motivated than $7/hour assholes they use for slave labor. here are my examples:

1.) the desk.
my work let me take home a computer so my boss can make excuses to his boss about why i'm late all the time, some productivity increasing initiative, i dunno. anyway, i go to staples.com to pick out a desk to buy. i go to the staples 'super store' to see the desk before i buy it. they don't have the desk. they have another desk i like more. i ask if i could please give staples some money in an amount they specified for the desk. no. salesman goes to (get this) staples dot fucking com and says i can't have the desk because its not in inventory. the desk that i want to buy is sitting in the corner the whole time. the next logical question is 'why can't i have that desk?', pointing at the desk in question. no. that's the display. well how are you going to display a fucking desk that isn't even in inventory? hes just the saleman, i had to go to the staples upper echelons for resolution. my email was the shot that was heard all around staples corporate headquarters. the regional manager (ooohh) assures me he will find out exactly what happened. it turns out the desk was discontinued and the store manager called me to apologize while trying hard not to start screaming 'BITCH, YOU MADE MY BOSS YELL AT ME!!!!' he promises me 15% off any desk of my choice. ignoring the original fact that the desk of my choice was the one sitting in the corner, that some policy somewhere states staples can't sell the floor model even if there's no way short of a jesus style miracle they'll ever sell another of those desks again. fuck it, i went to the hoboken classifieds called an old lady gave her 50 bucks threw it in my buddies van and hauled it home to brooklyn.

2. the bed
my old bed was the mattress i stole 4 years ago from the college i went to when i left in my third year in the middle of the night. so one morning right after thanksgiving i steal the macy's catalogue from my upstairs neighbors mailbox. i see a nice post bed for $269. i call macys and tell them, i want to buy this bed. they say ok, in light of the desk incident, i think i'm almost home free. nope. first it will be delieved and assembled before christmas. then the day after christmas they call and say, 'i know we said christmas, but its looking more like the end of january.' LOOKING MORE LIKE?!? what the fuck does that mean. this isn't some high end interior decorator i'm going through. this is macy's, loved by america for its disorganized piles of heartless shitty christmas gifts for people you don't really know or like at 50% off. you go to macy's because what you need is sitting there somewhere. guy from ordering tells me the posts ain't done yet. makes no sense, he says, to send guys over when the posts ain't done yet. no it doesn't make any sense to do that sir, but do you know what makes even less sense? PUTTING A FUCKING BED ON SALE IN THE MACY'S CHRISTMAS CIRCULAR THAT HASN'T EVEN BEEN MANUFACTURED YET. the sunday after this conversation, i'm talking to my bookie. the call waiting beeps. i put my bookie on hold to here a macy's automaton state my bed would be delieved between 1 and 5 on tuesday. great. if its anything like that fucking cable man, they'll either be knocking on the door at 1:05 or 4:55. this has been a hard fought battle and i'm determined not to fuck it up. i have a meeting tuesday morning at 9:30. at about quarter past 10, ring, ring, yeah its macy's, they're outside my apartment with my bed and i'm not there. WELL NO SHIT SHERLOCK! I'M NOT FUCKING THERE BECAUSE THE MESSAGE SAID BETWEEN 1 AND 5! IF THE MESSAGE SAID BETWEEN 9:30 and 10:30, I WOULD FUCKING BE THERE. i at least talked them into going off route and taking their lunch (thereby toying with the wrath of the corporate gods assuming his supervisor is sober enough that week to check the shippers milage) and coming back so i would have time to get home. if i'm sufficiently recovered in a few months, i'll take a stab at ordering a mattress.

3.) history of britian
this christmas my grandma used half of her social security stiped to send me a barnes and noble gift card. i took my gift card along with another gift card i got from some mutt i watched like 6 months ago for two days (well the owner signed the dogs name and i have no idea why creep dog loving folk always have to do that) and trotted off to barnes and noble. i buy all my books from discount catalogs and dover books (because they're a buck) so i went straight to the video section. i see simon sharmas history of britain. this guys a pretty good historian and its like free barnes and noble money, so what the hell. but lo and behold only two of the three parts are on the shelf. seasonal sales boy wonder(as this one was)can't find the missing part on the lookup screen so he can order it for me. well fuck, here we go again. fine. buy the two parts and go back to the office to order the missing one from the website, as i have more confidence in my ability to use a title look up screen. i find it, after endless keyword searches. its finally there by the grace of god with britain misspelled as britian. so i click the buy button. i got to go through the entire dog and pony show of setting up a profile and a shopping cart and then some other half ass thing till i finally get to the point where i can order my videos. i have the remainder of my grandmas gift card and the dogs gift card. the two of them together is worth a few bucks more than what this video costs. unfortunately, the gift card technology hasn't advanced to the point where i can use two gift cards for one order. theorectically, the laws of economics that apply when you go to the store itself and use two gift cards should apply on-line, right? nope. no such luck. back to the store. look, pimple face, i got the number, here order this. it will be here 3-8 business days. well thats good because its only coming to NYC from secaucus, nj. i'm assuming they make frequent trips. anyway, videos come in, i purchase them with my two gift cards and begin an 18 hour journey that night into the history of britain. a case of beer and a quarter ounce of weed later, queen victoria has died and we're about to be ushered into 20th century britain. i put the last tape in the series into the vcr. all the tapes are 120 minutes long with two episodes. this one is 60 minutes with one episode, the next to last episode of the series is mysteriously missing from the tape. FUCKING GREAT! all this build up and i now i can't fucking see what happened to winston churchill (well i KNOW) what happened to winston churchill, but thats not the point. anyway, i have a new tape on order and i'll keep you posted on how that works out.

its nearly five, and i still haven't picked a bar to go get drunk at after work.

lemme pack up and go out into the world to find something else that pisses me off.