"That really doesn't go into your nose."

I'm at my desk working on a layout when one of my friends comes up to see how things are going. She points at a little wooden toy at my desk - it's a chain of a multi-colored cubes linked by a string of elastic that runs through their centers. Everyone picks it up to play with it, the cubes snap all around to form different shapes and it's actually kind of relaxing to play with.

So I hand my friend the toy and she starts playing with it. I look back at monitor to work, when I hear, "...how's this?"

She had stuck one of the cubes into her nose , while the rest dangled out from below her nostril.

The beauty of that move was that I had no way of knowing which cube had now been tainted. But I'm pretty sure it was red.

Champion of the Day: Cafe Poseur Lady

One of the things that annoys me about cafe customers is that they'll make up drinks. They'll just pull some sort of concoction out of their asses. A lot of this is because of Starbucks. Their tall/grande/venti bullshit has people brainwashed. I always give people a sideways look when they ask for a "tall latte" as opposed to a "small". Oh, and don't be fooled by their "caramel machiatto" -- it's really a caramel latte. A real machiatto is a shot or two of espresso with a dab of steamed milk foam on top - that's all.

So this lady walked in the other day and said to me, "I'll have an iced double espresso with foam." Iced? With foam? I repeated her order and she nodded, and when I brought up that I'd have to steam some milk, she said, "...no steamed milk please."

My eye twitched.

That had to be the stupidest order I ever heard. I wanted to jump over the counter and shake this lady. Instead I explained that in order to make foam, I would have to steam some milk. I didn't even go into how pointless it was to have foam AND ice in the same drink. She just sort of stared at me and said, "Oh yeah." So I made her little drink and made her watch me add the foam so she could tell me the "right amount."

After I gave her the drink, she walked over to the condiment bar and proceeded to fill the rest of her cup with non-fat milk. Nice, dumbass. You just made an iced non-fat latte. I really wish people would just stick to the menu instead of trying to make up a drink -- you just end up looking stupid, and all the cafe workers know you're an idiot.

At least making fun of dumb customers with my co-workers makes this part-time job semi-worthwhile.

The coming of toe.

One of the indicators that summer is coming is that you see more people wearing open-toe footwear. Other than special corporate mandated "fun" wardrobe days, men in my office pretty much have to stick to semi-business casual.

The women, however, can get away with wearing sandals and/or flip-flops. I have no problem with this, but as general rule -- I believe that if you're going to walk around with an exposed body part, that body part should NOT be grotesque to look at.

At a staff meeting last week, one of my co-workers showed up wearing sandals. The room we were in was small with chairs along the outside wall of the room (we were basically all sitting facing each other). The woman in sandals had her legs crossed, therefore dangling one of her feet in the middle of the room. And holy shit, was that an ugly foot.

It was like a man's foot. There was nothing feminine about this crusty brick of flesh wrapped in leather straps. Every hardened crevice was visible as the leg that held it bounced it up and down. Occasionally, Manfoot would vigorously shake her five-toed appendage -- the resulting sound was reminiscent of sandpaper on a rough surface. Good lord, woman, a little Lubriderm goes a long way.

The toes themselves were another type of horror. Every toenail was overgrown, cracked, and YELLOW. I imagined that some sort of endangered fungus had taken residence under Manfoot's toenails, and that she was forbidden to wash her feet for fear that the fungus would become extinct.

And the overgrown nails were also rounded. Now, how fucking lax do you have to be at personal hygiene that you allow your toenails to grow so thick and long enough that they curve along the shape of your toe?

The Hitchhiker's Guide and almond soap.

I tweaked my knee while at the gym yesterday so it was a little tender to walk on today. I showed up at Bay Street Mall and parked over by the theater. I was still early for the movie, so I wanted to swing by the Body Shoppe and pick up some soap. Really, I'm being serious - a few weeks ago I tried out some of their face wash for men and I really liked it, so I wanted to go back for some soap. Not the foo-foo stuff, I went to the tiny little men's section and picked up some almond soap. There was a 5 for $12 special going on, so I made sure to stock up.

I think the soap stacking policy is pretty stupid at the Body Shoppe. The soaps looked nice, wrapped only in Saran-style plastic wrap, but they were displayed in an unstable pyramid formation. I swear I barely touched the top bar when half the stack came tumbling down. Just great. I made a mental note to remember to complain to somebody at Body Shoppe corporate about the lack of training their staff had at stacking non-square shapes into a pyramid.

After picking up the fallen soap, but purposely not restacking them into a pyramid, I paid for my items (all the while fending off the cashier's attempts to get me to join their discount card program --"No! I don't want the card. It's already bad enough I'm a guy in a foo-foo store, just please let me pay for my soap so I can hobble out of here on my bad knee!")

I was still early for the movie so I put the stuff I bought in my car and then headed to the theater to meet my friends. After a few minutes of waiting I get a call on my cell from one of my friends. She was aggravated. There was a blur of words to the effect that her boyfriend forgot about the movie. She was supposed to pick him up at BART, but instead he was on a bus and she was headed on an intercept course to pick him up. That sounded pretty excitng to me - I was hoping he'd jump out the bus window onto the roof of her car, and then he'd just car surf all the way down the street. So while they played out their very cool real life action movie, I went ahead into the theater to wait for them there.

How was the movie? Eh. It really made me want to read the book, because it felt like I was missing a lot of the story. It was like the script for this movie was actually the CliffsNotes version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Sam Rockwell was great, and Mos Def did okay, too - but the whole thing seemed a little "cutesy" when I expected something a little darker.

The grind is getting to me.

Tacking on an extra 25 hours to your regular full-time week can really make you feel overworked. After I get done with my regular job on Friday, I slap on an apron and head over to the cafe to work a full closing shift. Then, I work another full closing shift on Saturday night. And I top off my weekend of work by working an 8 hour mid-day shift on Sunday. How do I get through it?

It's the grinds.

There's coffee beans and grinds everywhere. I'm smelling coffee, I'm breathing coffee, there's coffee dust in the air. I'm convinced that my body is absorbing caffeine through osmosis. That's how I get through the weekend - the grind is getting to me.

Another thing about working at a cafe - there's a lot of cute customers that come by for coffee, but the difficulty level at flirting is pretty high. The problem is bringing into conversation the fact that this isn't my real job. That's not really something you can just blurt out...

"Hi, I'd like a medium latte."

"Sure, no problem. So how's the studying?"

"Oh, it's hard. But finals are almost done..."

"That's good. ...uh...I'm glad I don't have finals at my REAL JOB, where I'm an Associate Art Director of two magazines."

See? Not very smooth.

Champion of the Day: "Cell Phone at the Wedding" Lady

Wow. What can I say? That was really brilliant of you to not turn off your ringer during our friends' wedding. When the bride and groom were staring lovingly into each other's eyes as they recited their vows, I thought there was nothing in the world that could ruin that perfect moment. Boy, was I wrong.

What was that polyphonic melody that echoed through the chapel? Was it Bouganville? Or Futuristico? Retroverse, maybe? At least it wasn't the cell phone version of Baby Got Back.

Even more classy than your cell phone ringing was the fact that you let it ring TWICE. Simply amazing. Who could possibly be calling you that didn't know you were OUT OF TOWN AT A WEDDING? Seriously, screw you lady.

MySpace Cowboy: Fat and Needles

These are the stories of a hapless MySpace junkie and his efforts to meet women. As told by the people who have to listen to his "bragging."

When last we saw the MySpace Cowboy, he was attempting to worm his way into Cousin Jailbait's spring break get-away. To continue that story -- he didn't go. So CJ and her friends were free to enjoy some fun in the sun without the creepy older guy who wanted to get them drunk.

Meanwhile, back at home, Mama Jailbait found out that CJ's current boyfriend was 26 years old. That couldn't be a very good development.

And it wasn't. Outraged, Mama Jailbait called CJ and basically told her she was kicking her out of the house and pulling her out of private school. In a panic, Cousin Jailbait decided to call... the MySpace Cowboy??? If you're an underage teen, the last person you should be calling for help is the Master of Ulterior Motives.

Obviously "worried" by his cousin/ex-girlfriend's predicament - the Cowboy quickly made plans to travel to Cousin Jailbait's hometown to ...uh... to ...ummm... to talk to the mother? Nope. To offer support as Cousin Jailbait talks to her mother herself? Nope. To hopefully bring Cousin Jailbait back to live with him? You betcha.

Seriously. What kind of letch is this guy? His "cover" was that he was going to go to her hometown to help enroll her in public school -- I don't know if that's necessary or even legal, and his other plan was to point out how her current boyfriend isn't any good for her. Then, with Cousin Jailbait not being able to go home, the MSC would move her into his place -- effectively becoming Daddy Cousinfucka.

One of the good things about the MySpace Cowboy's plans is that they really never come to fruition. This time was no different. Cousin Jailbait moved in with her boyfriend and the MSC stayed home with no one to help him hang his harajuku girl posters.

So you're wondering about the "Fat and Needles" promised in the title? The Cowboy had bragged complained the other day about how sore he was. Without being asked about it, he volunteered the info that he "had his first non-surgical liposuction procedure... called mesotherapy."

Mesotherapy uses hundreds of tiny needles to inject a fat-eating fluid into the targeted area. Then the fluid goes to work and turns unwanted fat into waste.

Still no confirmation as to whether MSC will be having the procedure done on his head.