4/28/99:
SHAWT: Old Lady points at the Popov vodka, and says: "Give me a pint of Popeye."
Well, blow me down as I blow chunks! I yam what I yam, an' I yam waking up in a puddle of me own filth! I'm Popeye the sloppy drunk, Popeye the...
I could stoop even lower and say something like "It's not a drink for the Wimpy!" but I'm above that.

4/29/99:
SHAWT: (after being rung up) How much was that 6-pack of Rolling Rock?
ME: $4.99.
SHAWT: Are you sure? I thought it was around $5!
Okay, so that's no shining example of SHAWTism. But I spent almost all of my 10-hour day putting away the end-of-month beer buy-in, so there could've been a veritable Calvalcade of Mental Midgetry cavorting about me, & I never would've noticed. But it did give me time to reflect upon something else, the Stupid Slogans They Put On Really Cheap Beer.
Good beer needs slogans no more than Porsche needs radio ads screaming "No Money Down!" But for some reason, cheap beer needs to pretend that it's not being bought as a cheap drunk. If truth in advertising was required, Natural Ice wouldn't say it was "Ice Brewed For A Naturally Smooth Taste," it'd say "DUDE! You'll Get Totally Cocked On This Shit!"
You're probably familiar with Miller High Life's slogan, "The Champagne of Beers." Which begs the question...if Swiller Lowlife really is the Champagne of Beers, then what's the Beer of Champagnes? I'm guessing it'd be further from the Moet White Star end of the spectrum than it'd be nearer the $3 a bottle Andre Cold Duck.
Some slogans seem purposely vague, like Schaefer's: "America's Oldest Lager." And, umm, America's Oldest Medical Technique is, what, leeches? Schmidt's is "Brewed in the Tradition of Schmidt's Brewery for 125 Years." So I guess they still use child labor & not pasteurization. It could be traditional to flick cigarette butts into the brew at Schmidt's for all I know. The award for vaguest slogan goes to Schlitz (do all vaguely-sloganed beers begin with "Sch"?): "Just a Kiss of the Hops." That's Zen Master level inscrutable. I always thought that the inspiration of the "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" quote was that the Zen guy was finishing a 12-pack, & forgetting where his other hand was.
Other favorites: Piels (the beer named after what it does to the lining of your stomach): "A Century of Excellence." Sadly, the century started in 1849, & it's been a half-century of utter mediocrity since it ended. Keystone: "Specially Lined Can." Yeah, Keystone ate right through the old unlined ones. Look, this is like saying it's delivered in really nice trucks; you're not planning on drinking the truck, are you? Olympia: "It's In the Water." Hey, it's a slogan that could used as advertisement for beer, or a newspaper story about living downstream from the paper mill, or a horror movie (Jaws 19: This Time the Shark's Drunk). Milwaukee's Best: "Carefully Brewed for a Clean, Smooth Taste." "Yeah, we used to have it Brewed Wackily by Kolonel Koo-Koo the Klown & his Circus of Performing Monkeys, but they burned the factory down."
Not all stupid slogans are on cheap beer; Dos Equis costs twice as much as the above rotgut, & it warns: "Worth the Experience." Umm, yeah, and Suffering Builds Character. I'm sure getting your leg sawed off is Worth the Experience if you've got gangrene...
Hey, if that crap's Milwaukee's Best, what's Milwaukee's second best? Paint thinner?

4/30:
I'd like to take a moment to thank the loyal legions of SHAWT fans who've made this the world-wide media sensation that it's become.
Hi, Amy. How's it goin', Kitty.
Now that that's out of the way...SHAWT: Where do you keep your white wine? (NOTE: this is like going into a supermarket & asking where they keep the food)
ME: (while thinking, "On the left 2/3rds of the store") Is there a certain brand you're looking for?
SHAWT: Yeah, a good one.
Well, that narrows it down to the left 1/4 of the store...
That didn't compare to the SHAWT de tutti SHAWT of a few months ago. SHAWT: Do you have red wine?
ME: Uhh, yes. Is there a certain kind or brand you're looking for?
SHAWT: Yes. It's made from grape juice.
Hey, wait, I told both Amy & Kitty that a long time ago! I'm alienating my audience!
Free Tip For The Day: Don't leave fresh onion rolls in your car for 5 hours unless you really, really like the smell of onions.

5/1:
You just know it's gonna be a SHAWTerrific day when the 1st words you hear someone speak are:
SHAWT #1 (pointing at a sign that says "Register Closed"): Is this register closed? Hmm, dunno, let me call corporate for clarification. Then 30 minutes later SHAWT #2 saw that same sign & asked if the store was closed, after walking through an open door.
Next is SHAWT #3. He enters incensed, and demands we call the police because some "damn rowdy kids" have tipped over some dumpsters behind the building. Oh no, a dumpster serial tipper! New this Fall on ABC: DUMPSTER POLICE (a Quinn Martin Production). Here's the phone, sir, feel free to make a fool of yourself. Amazingly, the cops actually DID show, about 45 minutes later. The officer looked less than enthusiastic about his assignment. "What took you so long?" I cried. "There's TIPPED DUMPSTERS back there!" I was actually kinda glad he showed, so we could explain it wasn't our idea to call...Unfortunately, he didn't dust the dumpsters for prints or draw a chalk dumpster outline on the pavement before leaving.
And, oh yeah, Pin Head turned up. OK, the guy's clearly mentally ill, but he doesn't get my sympathy because he's annoying about it. Every week we have the same 15 minute conversation about exactly the same thing (No, there is no case price on Busch N/A, No, we don't have Arrow cherry brandy, yes, Mr Boston is the closest to it, and NO! We do NOT "have any pins you can wear for (fill in the name of the next nearest holiday)." This guy's the Rain Man of holidays; one time the holiday was St George's Day--where the hell is that celebrated? I was explaining Pin Head to the 2nd-shift guy, & told him how an ex-employee named Blair used to manage a nearby record store, & she said he'd always come in there asking the same question. Unfortunately, they did sell those pins. Every time he'd buy one, he'd ask some young, pretty girl to pin it on him. Evidentally the joy that would ensue when this happened was...a tad unnatural. The guy's a pin-ophile, apparently.
And only 15 minutes after I said this, who should waltz in the door after a 6-month absence but Blair herself! Which is kinda anti-climatic for you, but sure made my day worthwhile.

NEW 5/4:
BAH. I have no desire to do this tonight. But the hidden purpose of the SHAWT is to get me off my lazy butt & actually WRITE SOMETHING rather than VEGETATE at the MONITOR & so I'll WRITE SOMETHING & the PATTERN of the ALL-CAPS is KINDA CATCHY. It's got a GOOD BEAT and you can RANT to it.
It's not that I don't have a SHAWT. It's just not a FUNNY SHAWT, it's a CRABBY SHAWT, and HERE I go AGAIN with the CAPS.
WHERE did this STUPID--umm, sorry.
Where did this stupid urban legend of beer come from? This legend that claims that if beer is goes from cold to warm then back to cold, it turns into a breeding ground for HORRIBLE INTESTINAL PARASITES that will GNAW your SPINE until your EYES MELT??
Damn, but I'm in all-cappy mood tonight. Or maybe that's "all-crappy." Anyway, beer is supposed to go all "skunky" if it gets warm after being cold. Today we had this annoying weaselly guy with a bad comb-over (as opposed to...a good comb-over? Let's just say "comb-over" & leave it at that) soil his diapers over the fact we had no Coors Light warm. I pointed out that Coors is SHIPPED cold, so if he'd ever bought it warm it had ALREADY gone from cold to warm. "I know," he squeaked in his weaselly voice, "but it will go bad if it happens too many times!" So...it's the 2nd time it goes from 50 degrees to 68 that kills it.
NO, it FREAKIN' ISN'T!! It's going below freezing or above 78 that skunks it! How freakin' volatile is this stuff that a whopping 18 degrees hurts it?! Do you think beer is shipped by the CIA in secret underground bullet trains to prevent its mutation into to horrible Beer-Beasts?! (no, that's what it does when you DRINK IT) The only thing that'll be killed by a lousy 18 degree temperature change is an ICE CUBE.
I'm just cranky on the subject because I've been listening to MORONS declaim on a subject they know NOTHING about for 19 months. The American Way, pally! Shoot your fat mouth off on something you know nothing about--the less you know, the more of an expert that makes you. The way the AAA (Average American Asshole) just talks out of his ass without any sort of reality check makes me sick. No wonder we live in a country that'll believe ANYTHING. Bigfoot & the Loch Ness Monster? SURE! "Viable Breeding Population"? DUUH, what that mean? Me no unnerstand, must mean nuthin'! UFOs? SURE! They can't dis-prove ONE-lousy freakin'-PERCENT of the cases, which does-prove they EXIST! Repressed Satanic Sexual Abuse? SURE! Seems ya can't walk 3 feet without trippin' over Satanists copulating with their young'uns! Has "recovered memory" been proven? NO. Has it been repeatedly proven that hypnosis can implant memories that will seem fresher & realer than actual ones, simply through asking leading questions? YES. But, gee whiz, I'd sure rather live in a world of nonexistant Satanic cults than manipulative psychologists who need me coming back for my $100/hour therapy sessions--and wouldn't you?
HEY! I'M NOT BITTER! SHUT UP! NOOOO, YOU'RE THE ASSHOLE! GO AWAY! WHO ASKED YA, ANYWAY! DAMN SMOOCHERS, GET OFFA MY PROPERTY!
*pant pant pant*
Gee, I feel better now.
And you?

NEW 5/5:
In this state, liquor stores are legally required to be open no earlier than 8AM & no later than 8PM. The reasoning behind this is weird. In the late 50s, some guy would hold up liquor stores late at night, then kill the clerk for the hell of it, which was unheard of in those days. So CT & MA passed a law requiring the stores to close at 8. Like the loony would'nt've just gone out earlier...If it seems like an overreaction to an isolated incident, it was, but remember the Tylenol killings. 1 nut poisoned half a dozen people 15 years ago, but every product in America since has had safety seals (handguns kill 9,000 people every year, but we still have the laxest gun control laws of any democracy...Go Fig).
But still, 12 hours should be plenty of time to go get your booze, right?
Wrong. It's unusual for us not to have some dingleberry pounding on the door at 8:03. Sorry, dude, it's illegal to sell to you. Shoulda left home, oh, 5 minutes earlier, but you were probably performing life-saving surgery then, huh?
Tonight's gooberhead had an interesting reaction: he went "AAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!" like his winning lottery ticket had just flushed down the toilet.
Another guy stood there screaming "FUCK THIS!!" for 5 minutes. Before I worked here, some guy slashed everyone's tires. Boy, it sucks, knowing you'll be sober tonight, huh? You'd think we were selling insulin.
My fave is when they realize we're closed, and they run back to their car & peel out of the parking lot at 70MPH. Cause a mile up the road, it's still quarter of.

5/5.1:
Dammit! My strawberries are crunchy!
Strawberries should be soft & sweet & juicy, but these are crunchy and dry! I pulled the rubber band off of the plastic wrap on the plastic basket, & they're just dry!! And one of them is MOLDY!
Wait a minute...
I bought these a week ago & forgot about them. That's why they're dry and/or moldy.
The plastic basket is broken in the injection-molded script Made in Mexico. The rubber band is
SOMEONE'S JOB.
All day, conveyer belt, plastic basket, plastic wrap, rubber band.
conveyer belt, plastic basket, plastic wrap, rubber band.
conveyer belt, plastic basket, plastic wrap, rubber band.
And I whine that the strawberries are dry, cause I left them in the fridge too long.
I don't have a lot of friends, but they're good friends. So I get the occassional plastic basket of dry strawberries or sour grapes. Whatever.
This too shall pass.

5/6:
If you're wondering what the deal was with that last rant, all I'm going to say is: It wasn't about strawberries.

Much as I hate to disappoint my vast global audience (how's it goin', Kitty), I'm not in all that a SHAWTy mood tonight. Not from lack of material, of course. I could go off on the screamin' & swearin' ignorant white trash bitch (DOREEN!! Where yuh been, honeychile?), or the very nice old man who nonetheless smelled exactly like a wet dog, or the customer at CompUSA who couldn't understand how they could be sold out of something that was "limit 1 to a customer," or how I've never been in a Roy Rogers fast food place that didn't seem to be entirely staffed by people too disgruntled to be hired by the Post Office, or how I can't wait for Mother's Day to be over so I don't have to hear that obnoxious Outback Steak House radio ad anymore. I could, but I'm not. Maybe I used up all my ranting adrenalin last night, if you know what I'm talking about (how's it goin', Kitty).
Plus I have a new game to install. I have this brand new 350mz PII Pookie, & all I have on it is Civilization II. I've been playing that for 3 years straight awready! So I go to CompUSA & the 1st thing I say is, "WOW! They came out with Civilization III!!" What an adventurous lump I am.
Fine with me. I'm doing all my risk-taking in computer games for now on.
Regarding Outback Steak House...There's no way I'm eating a dessert called "The Chocolate Thunder From Down Under." Sounds like Australian slang for diarrhea.

5/7:
SHAWT: Where's your Pink Zinfandel?
I wanted to say, "HEY! You know Kitty & Punkie aren't old enough to drink yet! So don't even try buying a bottle of Chateau St Michelle Sauvignon Gleeeter!"
Boy, I'll bet if you're not Kitty or Punkie you're real glad you made the trip to this page to read that inscrutable in-joke. Let's see, what else happened...The woman who buys a pint of Popov vodka every day & always calls it "Pop Pop Off" just switched to Bukoff. Which she calls "Buck Off."
See? You were better off with the in-joke. You didn't know if the in-joke wasn't funny, either.

5/9:
No, yesterday was not the day I broke my promise to update this every Tues to Sat. It was the day the new Pookie officially became an Evil Anti-Pookie. I came home with every intention of not only writing, but also throwing open the Floodgates of ICQ (bet you didn't need a decoder ring to fig out that ref, eh, Lord S?). I spent 830PM to 130AM trying to connect. I hit my ISP no prob, but in 5 hours I managed to read 3 pieces of Hotmail & connect to ICQ just long enough to send 1 message to Spotti & receive 1 from Punkie (who would've been fun to gab with, as I'm sure she'd be chattering squirrelishly over the impending Return of the Prodigal Splut). The rest of the time, Netscape or MSIE just did the sit & spin, refusing to connect to any sites. I ran Scandisc overnight & rebooted successfully, just in time to do the InExOb. This is not a good sign on a 3-week-old Pookie. **siiigh** They turn to the Dark Side so quickly.
Verbatim SHAWTs: HIM #1: (holding aloft an empty 12-pack of Corona Light) Do you have any of these cold?
ME: Yes, they're i--
HIM: Are they inside or outside? CINCO DE MAYA! YEAHHHH!!
HIM: (returning from beer cooler) What happened to the handle on your freezer door?
ME: It fell off.
HIM: I can see that! Did someone get locked in?
Sign that someone's never bought wine before: HIM #2: Where do you have Pinot Grigio?
ME: Right over here. Was there a certain brand you were looking for?
HIM: Chardonnay.
"What type of Subaru were you looking to buy?" "Chevy."

5/10:
I was out photographing some future InExObs today, a couple of billboards off 1 of the busiest roads in town. But that wasn't a problem; I was able to safely park right near them at the entrance to the Laurel Marsh Trail. I've wondered about that...was it named after a woman called Laurel Marsh, or was it a marsh full of laurels? Turned out to be neither. There were laurels, but they didn't look too healthy. It most definately was a marsh however, put aside by the town to preserve its bucolic splendor.
Bucolic, my scrawny nature boy hiney. It was put aside because it was a freakin' swamp, bordered by: the highway; the busiest road in town that's the 1st thing off the highway; a line of 5-story-tall electrical towers; & the sewage treament plant. You could here songbirds throughout the trail, mixed with the endless roar of traffic, the snapping & humming of EMFs, & the squeak squeak--squeak squeak--squeeeak of some pump in the treatment plant, like the song of some giant technological bird. But it's impossible for me to find fault in much of anything woodsy in mid-May. In June, sure. Then this trail will be a malarial zoo of mosquitoes & fat horseflies. You can tell just from the flora--ferns & skunk cabbages & fiddleheads & great ghostly beige meadows of skeletal reeds from last summer, still standing 8 feet tall in death. And a seriously weird ash tree...

Clearly, it fell over decades ago, but grew 4 new trees anyway from its fallen trunk. Tree with a built-in bench, and done with out genetic engineering. It was more inviting than a bench they put up mere feet from Interstate 84, a restful vista with only a chain link fence between you & brakeless tanker truck loaded with LNG.
There was a wood & rust cantilever bridge over the "Hop River & Hockanum Confluence" ("The Hockanum Confluence"...wasn't that a Robert Ludlum bestseller?) that had a dubious sign on it, informing me that it could bear a vehicle weight no higher than 5,000 lbs. Whew! Good thing I left my 3-ton Schwinn bicycle at home. It spanned a brook of copper-colored water, though hopefully not tinted like that from the treatment plant. More likely, it was the fading sunlight, the fact it was maybe 3 inches deep (umm..I think this was the Hop "River" alluded to earlier. Don't step in that mud puddle, it's the Connecticut Ocean!), and that it was sandy at the bottom. If you've ever experienced the joyous CT shoreline, you know that we do NOT have sandy beaches, we have ROCKS. I mean, there's tiny strips of sand on the state-owned beaches, but I think they truck it in here from Cape Cod every spring & hope it doesn't sink under the rocks before Labor Day. As to the sandy brown beachlettes of the mighty Hop--well, it's next to the highway, remember?
Yep. Road sand.
Hey, it's central Connecticut. You takes your bucolics where you can finds 'em.

5/12:
No SHAWT yesterday...I took a vacation day, so I experienced neither work nor Stupid Humans. Thank Gourd.
SHAWT 1: My girlfriend has a cold, & I want to boil some whiskey & put lemon in it for her. Which whiskey do they recommend?
ME: Umm, I think what they recommend for a cold is cold medicine.
SHAWT 2: (who wants to pay with a credit card) Do I need to give you my card?
"I'm paying cash, do I need to take it out of my wallet?"

5/13:
Man, there was this stupid guy at work today. Stupider than the woman who was told 4 times in 90 seconds that, No, we don't have Newport 120s. I think she thought we'd eventually crack & share our secret stash of them with her. Stupider than the beer delivery guy who asked, "Do you want the delivery in the front or the back?" I said, "The back." "Is there a door back there?" No, there's a Burmese tiger trap. We hate deliveries. Stupider even than that same guy telling me about somebody doing the math wrong on an invoice, & getting a bill from the beer distributor informing him that he owed them 32 cents...with a 33 cent stamp on the envelope.
No, this was really stupid. He was dumping trash in the dumpsters in the back of the building (near the tiger trap). The dumpsters aren't too smartly designed, either: The lid stands at 90 degree angle, rather than, say, a 95 degree one, which means a light breeze & gravity can cause the lid to come down like a guillotine. The smart thing to do is to stand on the side of the dumpster so you can see if this is about to happen, but this jerk loads the trash in from the front, & the lid comes down & drives the bottom of the trash can right into his face, & my nose bled for 5 minutes afterwards!
HIS nose! Not my nose, his!! Cause no way I'm so dumb I'd get my butt kicked by a dumpster.
Umm.

5/14:
It was another day of intense manual labor, so I didn't much of a chance to witness any real interesting SHAWTing, but there was some minor slapstick during a visit from my bestest friend Jessica.
Jess is a freckle-faced drop-dead-gorgeous supermodel-level Total Babe. This is not a sexist comment, but an inescapable reality. She's such a striking beauty that the 1st time I met my new co-worker, I thought, "MAN! That chick is HOT!! Stuck-up, or airhead, or bitch, I wonder which she'll be..."
Answer: D, None of the Above. Jessie is proof that beauty can be more than skin deep. She's the sweetest, kindest person I know, with an easy laugh & a great sarcastic sense of humor (don't think I'm saying this to score brownie points with her--She'll never see it. All my other friends have webpages; she doesn't even have a computer). It's kinda funny & kinda creepy how guys salivate over her, even toothless smelly drain-bamaged slugs who have all the physical attractiveness of a leaky colostomy bag. Dude, even if she was ugly you couldn't get your foot in the door. Your best dating hopes may lay outside your species with Fluffy the ewe.
It's not her fault. It's like that movie, The Girl Can't Help It, which opens with Jayne Mansfield causing car accidents simply by walking down the street. That almost happened to Jess once; some leerer in a pick-up almost rear-ended someone because she bent over near traffic. And, ya know, I don't believe the guy was thinking, "I'll bet she has a great sarcastic sense of humor!" as he looked at her.
Jess doesn't work with me anymore (*sob*), but she turns up at the store a couple of times a week to chat with me. We walked outside the store, & a guy having a cigarette there did a double-take, & then spent the next 5 minutes trying to develop X-Ray vision. Jess wasn't facing where she could see him, & I think he was hoping she'd turn & make eye contact. He was so focused on drooling that he neglected to notice the big gooey wad of molten gum on the sun-baked sidewalk...
Free Tip to guys who want to hit on Hot Babes: You'll probably have more luck without anything trailing behind you stuck on your shoe.

5/15:
I didn't witness this one, but it's pretty funny if you get the joke. SHAWT: I'll take 2 different 6-packs of Cider Jack, one Raspberry, the other --[squints at package]--the other Serveicecold.

5/18:
Torporous.
That's what I be tonight, let it all hang out. Unmotivated & sluggish. No wanna do dumb SHAWT thing, no good stoopit stuff happen much. Just drab usual stoopit stuff. Though 1 of the store owners turned down a sale because the guy had an expired ID (ya see, it's hard to renew a fake 1). The guy claimed that "an expired license is good for 2 more years!" Man, I've been trying to get a credit card that work likes that for years. And if something expired lasted an extra 2 years, I'd have to clean out my refrigerator much less frequently.
*siiigh* I'm just torporous. My 2 days off were a lot of fun, but that only makes it harder to go back to work even when you like your job, SHAWTs & all.
Hmm...this person I've just started corresponding with, Miss Gunn, said she'd found my site via some South Dakota band called "Spooncat!"--(searches)--HEY! My link is right next to a web page dedicated to the SHAGGS! How cool is THAT!!
Now I'm motivated! To read someone else's web page.

5/19:
Once upon a time, CT decided to pass a Bottle Bill. Hooray! thinks Bill the Enviro-Mental Case. Back then, Bill was managing record stores. Bill did not know his future meant handling the stinky skunky dripping-wet mildewed & moldy empty beercans of strangers.
Today I opened 2 trash bags of empties--Normally we refuse to take those, as plastic doesn't let even the slightest bit of moisture evaporate (USE PAPER, DUMBASSES!!), but the empties were still in their boxes. I dumped it out & a good (meaning: BAD) full can of beer sloshed out of them onto the floor & my sneakers. Yay! Such fun. It would've been less messy if I hadn't dumped them out, but NEVER stick your hand into a plastic bag of someone else's garbage. Lord knows what's gonna crawl out. And I do mean crawl; I've seen carpenter ants, millipedes, earwigs, & cockroaches rush out of their stale yeasty feasts at the bottom of an old Bud. The day anything beady-eyed & mammalian crawls out, I quit.
Not that it's any fun to discover some moron has left you last month's Coronas with rotting limes jammed in each bottle, either. Or fur-bearing cigarette butts. Or SLUGS. Gourddamn melted dead slug mush, hey buddy--THANKS and FUCK YOU TOO!
Umm...Why was I writing this again? Oh yeah. How difficult are the instructions, "Take the empties to the back of the store, take them out of the plastic bag & put them in the boxes there"? Well, to many people, "difficult" began when Mommy bought the potty seat. These 2 losers with the trash bag's worth saw the big "Empties Policy" sign we've posted right by the door on the ice machine (so we have something to point to when some weiner dog brings in 9 shopping carts of his week's dumpster diving activities 2 minutes before closing). They decided that the empties WENT in the ice machine...They then needed clarification as to what "back of the store" meant, then tried to dump them in the 1st empty box they saw. Which, of course, wasn't IN the back of said store. The lucky guy who got to handle their trash (me) gave them a receipt printed out on this junky old "electronic" cash register (read: pocket calculator with a money drawer) that's so primitive it can only print out military time. So, a little after 6PM I hand 1 of the dudes his receipt. He stares at it & in a perfect "Tell me about the rabbits, George" voice says, "18 dollars & 13 cents?" Yeah, Torgo, it's for the 362.6 cans you brought back.
How primitive are those old electronic cash registers? I think of the old Fisher-Price toy 1 I had as a kid, but with an LED. I guess I must've lost (in the explosion-at-the-inexplicable-object-factory that is my condo) the catalog we got at work. I'd like to scan the pic they had on the front cover showing a bunch of these relics with "Y2K COMPLIANT!" stamped on them. Well...I'm sure they are. I'm getting "Y2K COMPLIANT!" tattooed on my hands. Cuz I'm pretty sure on 1/1/00 I'll still be able to count on my fingers.

5/20:
If your name isn't suffixed with "Splut," I'd stop reading right now. You'd get an aneurysm trying to decode this one.
A little girl comes into the store who is the spitting image of the She-Ra era Chibi-Kitty. Except that her mother has chosen to dress her up in a Winnie the Pooh themed ensemble. That kid's getting raised with mixed messages.

NEW 5/21:
Wow...that was quick. I've hit the Great Wall of 30K Text Files already. Guess the happenin' place is now New 6.