Overheard in the hallway from a woman checking her voicemail:

You know, I don't know why people always call my cell phone expecting me to want to talk to them. If she really wanted to talk to me, she should have called me when I'm home.

Labels: overheard

Overheard two lines over at the DMV:

Unhappy woman: "I am not pregnant!"

Labels: overheard

Sixty-something waitress at next table: "You gotta have good fingernails for it. You get a fingernail in someone's eye, that makes you a real fighter."

Labels: overheard

Overheard at a buffet tonight:

Customer: Is the food here any good?
Manager (cheerful): It's very good.
Customer: My friend Ray works here, and he keeps trying to get me to try it. He says it's- . . .
Manager (icy): Ray doesn't work here anymore.
Customer: . . .
Manager: That will be $6.50.
Employee (muttering): I wish I didn't work here anymore.

And, awhile later:

Customer 2: Can I get a to-go box?
Employee: This is a buffet. There will be no food carried out! How do people not get the concept of a buffet?!

Labels: overheard

Overheard in the elevator today:

Middle-aged woman: "I don't understand it. They covered all but $60 of the last root canal, but not this time. Bastards. So I'm selling stuff again. Marie, she's like 'Oooo, anything good this time?' and I'm like "Marie, only you would see me getting kicked out of my apartment and having all of my stuff in trash bags in the hallway and think 'Wow, I hope I get some good deals out of this.'"

Labels: amusement, overheard

Overheard in the next aisle at the grocery store, where a group of employees were stocking shelves.

"Did you see wrestling last night?"
"Man, wrestling is fake."
"Hey, Tom, do you think wrestling is fake?"
"Why are you asking him? He thought that girl was 18, too."
*peals of laughter*

Labels: overheard, social commentary

I had some vague awareness of a sporting event of some degree of magnitude today (enough to know that Denver wasn't playing, anyway; silly Yahoo). My antipathy toward commercial sporting events is no secret (although my fondness for the word "antipathy" might be; it amuses me that the root word allows one to be "antipathetic"). So I skipped the testosterone and aggression of the football game and instead did something that makes many grown men quiver with trepidation. I saw "Brokeback Mountain."

Either the time period during the Super Bowl is a uniquely opportune time for seeing a movie or there's some secret network that keeps track of my comings and goings and spreads the word that everyone else should avoid the theater, because Oakview was completely dead. Like, the deadest I've ever seen it. No lines at the ticket counter, no lines at the concession stand, etc. It was almost like "28 Days Later" where everyone else has fled the city and only those who haven't heard of the impeding disaster are wandering around wondering where everyone is. Even though I arrived only 10 minutes before the movie started, I was the third person in the theater (and I held the door for the first two); grand total by the time the movie started was two couples, nine other women in various group combinations and me. So we all had plenty of room. If I was capable of playing my cards right, my odds for finding a date might have been good (except for the whole "there's a 4% chance you like a good film and aren't bothered by the context and a 96% chance you're gay" thing that seems to have been attached to the film - "I don't know what straight men will make of 'Brokeback Mountain,' but I suspect it won't be much. Only the homosexuals, the henpecked, the metrosexuals and Chris Martin will go.").

I liked the movie, even though it was sad. I will admit to a few moments of discomfort; there was, unfortunately, a few minutes of material whose content really wasn't suitable for, well, anyone. I speak, of course, of Grand Ole Opry-style country music (ahhhh!). This is 1960s Wyoming, after all. That aside, the movie was great, and I won't spoil it for the people who haven't seen it.

I also saw a preview for another "difficult relationship" movie that I might see next weekend (the preview looked good; not only do I like both of the main leads, but it has Donald Faison in it, too). The other previews failed to catch my attention in such a spectacular fashion that I don't even remember them. I did, however, see the "Fritz" Coke commercial again. Which isn't really notable except for the fact that I've had 14 people find my site by searching for a variation on "fritz coke commercial" in the last week (and until a couple of days ago, I was the number one return on Yahoo! for it; I'm currently number 9). I realize I'm only feeding it by posting this again, so for everyone who has discovered this page by searching for those terms, no, I don't know who sings the song and no, I don't know what language it is in, but the official site for it is linked from this post (as of the time of this posting, anyway; if it's not there, e-mail Coca-Cola). Knock yourselves out.

One other thing of note: As I was buying my ticket, I overheard a group of high school kids at the next counter trying to get into "Underworld 2." Conveniently, they were all "old enough" but, despite the fact that at least one of them had to have driven them there, none of them had a license to prove it. They didn't get in, which I found ironic considering my rant on the abundance of 6-year-olds at the showing I saw (I considered telling them that "Brokeback Mountain" was only PG-13, but I doubt that would have gone over well).

Labels: overheard

Heard on the radio on the way home tonight:

An ad for Dr. John's (a local adult novelty store), inviting listeners to come see it's "scintillating new merchandise." Only the speaker pronounced "scintillating" with a hard "c" (making it "skin-tillating"). At first I thought it might be a pun, given the establishment so being advertised, but there was no emphasis on the syllable and I doubt most of the shop's target audience would get the pun, so chances are the radio station just needs to buy a dictionary.

So ends your English geek humor for the night.

Labels: overheard

Overheard at the checkout line at the grocery store:

Checkout girl (eyeing what was, literally, an entire shopping cart of different kinds of alcohol): "Wow, um, having a party?"
Woman: "Nope, it's for work."
Girl: "Do you work at a bar?"
Woman: "No, I work in real estate."
Girl: "They let you drink at real estate jobs?"
Woman: "Well, you know, sometimes people are nervous about spending a few hundred thousand dollars, so we offer them drinks to settle their nerves."

Apparently "settle their nerves" is code for "get them to sign the damn check." ;)

Labels: overheard

Excerpts from the stream-of-consciousness:

1. The great mentor and guide known as "experience" has taught me, in no uncertain terms, that the night of one of the biggest concerts of the year is a uniquely inopportune time to attempt to find parking in the Old Market in order to pick up a pizza (leaving one with the unenviable choices of walking 8 blocks or driving in a random pattern for 20 minutes - either way the pizza is going to be cold . . .).

2. At World Market yesterday I encountered my first openly misogynistic candy bar. One would think a company as established as Nestle could find a way to appeal to the male demographic without resorting to a silhouette of a woman with a line through it. Maybe another stereotype that doesn't alienate the majority of its customer base, such as a monster truck or a guy watching soccer (I'd say football, but this is a British offering, after all, so soccer *is* football).

3. I stopped to watch the mall Santa at Crossroads for a few minutes yesterday. Then I repressed a chuckle at the desolate incomprehension on the faces of two 7-year-olds when Santa pointed at two wooden mock-ups of elves and said "That one makes the toy trains. And that one makes the iPods. He's real good at electronics. Small hands, you know."

4. I overheard 30 seconds of a conversation between two employees at Nebraska Furniture Mart wherein a woman at the checkout lane enthusiastically relayed her proximity to "the place where the guards took him down, right over there" to a somewhat less-impressed colleague.

5. A recent Public Pulse submission complained about people who "use terms like 'logic' and 'reason'" and suggested people "should throw aside the civil liberties" and establish a theocracy, "because Christians are the happiest people in the world." Which is remarkably forthright and honest, if somewhat unrealistic in a democratic society.

6. I watched "Black Mask" on SciFi when I got home last night. Gotta love awesome Chinese kung fu films with a poorly dubbed Jet Li.

7. Congratulations to Lane for qualifying for the district spelling bee (by being the only student at her school with perfect scores on both written qualification tests).

8. I have no 8. I just wanted to see if people kept reading.

Labels: overheard

Heard from one of the checkers at Hy-Vee the other night:

"Man, that lottery is just nuts. Someone has to win it this time. And whoever wins it will get divorced right after. Not me, man. I wouldn't tell no one. I'd divorce my wife *before* I cashed in the ticket. No way she's getting half my money."

Charming.

Kind of goes along with the game three kids were playing across the street from my house while I was resealing some of my windows over the weekend. As far as I could gather, the game essentially consisted of the oldest child being the "mother" and the two younger children being the "kids," with a round of play commencing with the youngest finding new ways to act up, the other "kid" tattling to the "mother" and the "mother" doling out punishments (including, but not limited to, taking a picture of him with a camera and putting it on a "bad kids" Web site and making him dress in girl's clothes). Then a new round would start. I don't seem to remember this game from my childhood.

Labels: overheard

So this is what Lisa heard at work yesterday after I arrived late:

Me: Sorry I'm late. I had to stop and chat with my next door neighbor when I was in the backyard taking pictures of my panties.
Lisa: Your what?
Me: My panties.
Lisa: Um, why would you do that?
Me: Because my mom wanted to see them. And they're bright and colorful.
Lisa: . . .

Turns out I need to learn to pronounce "peonies" more distinctly . . .

This part is mostly for my mom, but feel free to look anyway:
My peonies are starting to bloom, but the majority along the south fence aren't ready yet (although they're getting ready). The storms have kind of beat the hell out of my irises, but I have a few in one piece yet. And Lisa told me what these things are, but for the life of me I've forgotten already (they smell good, though, even if they are sort of taking over that side of the house . . .).

Labels: overheard

"Okay, can I go to the bathroom now?!"

-The girl at the drive-through window of Taco Bell tonight, overheard as I was pulling away after I noticed that she seemed really enthusiastic about finishing my order quickly.

Labels: overheard

Knock Knock

Overheard in my hallway today (keep in mind it's only one side of the conversation):

"Knock knock . . . knock knock . . . orange . . . knock knock . . . orange . . . hello? . . . What? You have to play along! . . . knock knock . . . orange! . . . no, wait. @#$%! Knock knock . . . banana! . . . knock knock . . . aren't you, no, wait, orange you glad I didn't say banana, @#$%! . . . I can't even tell a third-grade joke right. Just open the @#$%ing door."

Labels: overheard

Insults and Ice Cream

Overheard while waiting in line at Dairy Queen today:

Elderly (mid-seventies) woman speaking to middle-aged (early forties) woman: "I remember that happening once when I was your age." *pause* "Well, not when I was your age. When I was young."

Ouch.

Labels: overheard