Big Mouth La La La La La La

Well, shit, I just can't be relaxed or keep a civil tongue about me anywhere, can I? I pretty much verbally flipped an office drone off earlier today, telling her “Well, you don't have to tip me, and I've already blacklisted this address from future delivery requests.” It's these fucking office buildings downtown. The security — hell, where the elevators are located, even — is different for each one: in some buildings you just cruise on up, but in other buildings you have to go through some kind of liaison or procedure. Senator Merkley happens to have an office in this building, so I ended up lost in a maze of some ugly computer interface ... my pole star being an utter lack of delivery directions.

The long story made short: I called her, the elevator finally came (lol for someone else, of course), I hung up after I told her it arrived, and upon hand-off the customer complained about me hanging up. The conversation was over: what about “Never mind! Here it is!” is so hard to understand? Imbecile! Most people have the social and life skills of boxcar rejects, really; it's just that some people keep their shitty jobs, some people's spouses don't cheat on them or divorce them, some manage to hide their ineptitude and laziness in the maze of middle-management politics, and a select few manage to enslave everyone around them — to leech off of and deflect accountability onto. It all could have been avoided if the fool had simply included in the delivery request instructions on how to use the security terminal to get her fucking food to her!

Still, I didn't need to point out to her that her lack of useful (okay, I was polite and said “explicit”) instructions caused the delay. Still, it was a double delivery, and the other shit was getting cold because some vapid cunt was being both retarded and lazy. And I'm sick and tired of how precious and infantilized American consumers have become; they just get more and more like children, with every passing year. Anyone ever read H.G. Wells? (That was one weird dude, for the times, by the way!) Remember the Morlocks and the Eloi from The Time Machine?

Look them up. They were very much like your standard-issue Starbucks chumps ... only infinitely more agreeable.

Time to Curb the Bellicosity

The decade that begins in the mid-forties and ends in the mid-fifties just may be the most crucial decade in a person's life, if that person is getting a late and disadvantaged start in life and has mental health and addiction issues. Or so I'm just beginning to realize.

I say this because I'm having a hell of a time controlling my obnoxious combative behavior. It seems all I see in the world around me, or more specifically the human social world around me, are injustices and obstacles and enemies. And my immediate response is to shoot off my mouth and get argumentative or retaliatory insulting, even in small matters where it's obvious that diplomacy would be much more appropriate. Example: a misunderstanding at McDonald's last night resulted in me receiving two medium fries instead of two large fries, which had to be rectified because I was delivering other people's food. Instead of apologizing and asking if I can just pay the difference and they drop another medium fries in the bag (three of those roughly equal two larges), I grew insulting and demanding — just like those entitled imbecile parents I had to deal with at the Moda Center during the Christian concerts and Disney on Ice shows!

Not only am I occasionally being an overbearing and dehumanizing customer, but I've quickly become a belligerent cyclist, of the stripe that slaps the hood of a car because it's parked in the middle of E. Burnside Street. Sure, asshole shouldn't be parked there, but that asshole can also run me down and road rage is a very real thing. Besides, I'm new to city cycling, so even though I'm confident I'm generally obeying traffic laws, being courteous to pedestrians, and signaling and all that good stuff, I'm also sure I'm committing some stupid blunders that motorists aren't screaming and waving their fists at me over. It's foolish, childish, and ultimately disgraceful, self-harming, and stupidly unnecessary. In fact, I find it kind of embarrassing, that I'm starting to behave like this; it's like I never left the streets, and that chip on my shoulder is growing even when there's no good reason for it to exist in the first place.

So, yeah, I need to deal with this, because if I don't I'll rapidly approach the point of no return, where it's too late to try to make significant self-bettering changes. Neuroplasticity can only be carry you so far, especially when approaching old age. So, I'm going to record some affirmations to have my phone play over my headset every half hour, just to remind me to pay attention to and take ownership over myself a little better, at least until it becomes instinctively habitual to do so. I don't want to end up like Fred Sanford.