What an off kilter morning so far. I woke up to my neighbors hanging up something on their wall at 7:30 in the morning, bang bang bang bang. Never mind that they go ballistic if I sneeze in my apartment after 10 o’clock at night. Then I went to the doctor, that went ok, my fears were assuaged that I will not die anytime soon, in the meantime, between now and death, I have to lose weight, exercise, eat healthy, watch my sugar, cut back on caffeine, give up chocolate, not drink so much diet soda, buy a better pair of sneakers, wear a back brace when lifting heavy objects, not expend myself unduly during sex, regularly check my blood pressure, and never forget or skip to take any of my seven different medications, lest I hasten that early death that has been feeding my anxiety lately.

Then at Best Buy, the pimply sales kid pretended like I didn’t know the difference between a jet-ink and a laser printer. My stupid Epson cartridge is up to forty bucks so I just sprung 20 more dollars and got a new printer so that those cartridges will only cost me 18 future dollars a pop. And the check out counter cool guy with the shades (why?) and the dreads (oh god, why?) tried a hard sale with the warranty. He said that for only 20 bucks if there is anything wrong with the printer I can bring it back and they will fix it, otherwise I had to mail it directly to HP. I asked him if they physically fixed it or if they sent it to HP and then he looked at me like I just sprouted three heads like a hydra and didn’t respond. So I reiterated that it just sounded like that for 20 bucks I would save myself a trip to the post office. And then he got pissy and said that they would replace it or give me another refurbished printer if they couldn’t fix it. I told him that didn’t answer my question if they just sent it to HP or not. And then he asked me if I wanted to check out. I told him I didn’t want to check out until he answered me honestly and then he had to admit that all they do is forward the broken printer to HP. Then I shrugged, paid, and left.

So I’m hungry by now and I go to the Teriyaki Chicken place. I order a bowl. She rings up a dinner. I’m standing there trying to figure out why a bowl is 9 bucks when the menu on the wall says it is only 5 bucks. Then she screams at me, because I wasn’t paying attention, if I wanted the food for here or to go. I didn’t understand her because of her thick Chinese accent and I thought she said that she wanted me to go. I asked her what did I do? Everyone was so confused. So I ended up paying something like 12 bucks for a huge Teriyaki dinner and a diet pepsi when I only wanted a bowl. Oh well, leftovers.

On my way home, I glance over at some girl in the passenger seat of a convertible and I guess I looked at her too long for her liking. She goes what are you looking at? I’m pissed off by now because of all the shit that has happened to me since I was woken up and I don’t know what kind of answer she is used to, I guess she is used to polite guys who quickly shake their heads and mutter “nothing” under their breath and look away or whatever, trouble is I’m in a bad mood and not feeling very polite, so I just look at her harder, actually lean out of the window and retort, “I’m looking at your ugly face and there’s nothing you can do about it.” The look on both their faces, her and the driver’s, was priceless. She quickly scrunches up her face like Rene Zellweger if Rene Zellweger had just bitten into a lemon and screams, “you’re the ugly pig, you’re the big fat pig, you fatso.” And I was like, “ok, but how is that gonna make me quit looking at you.” By then the light had turned green and the girls squealed out of the intersection.

I’m home now. It’s barely 1:30pm. I was going to do some other chores, you know, to take advantage of what I thought was gonna be a lazy Monday, I was gonna get a haircut, wash the truck, go to Walgreens and fill some prescriptions and also try to buy a new shower curtain but screw it, I think I’ll take a nap. I’m tired.