With all of the back to school hubbub finished, I’m finally drawn back to what the smoke hut is rather than a post to view the most atrocious throws of humanity before me. In this round, we discuss how smoke huts where people gather can be an awesome news source to the world around you. It’s true!
A lot was going on for a few days in a row and I would have had no clue about it if it weren’t for my comrades in the hut. So, we begin.
1) Flaming Hay Trucks.-- The weather has been rather dry here. Nine months out of the year, it’s rainy. But those three months of solid summer? Not a drop. The grass achieves an August brown by the end of June and the warm summer days draw longer and hotter as the summer continues. Oh, the Pacific Northwest. Anyway…the other day I was in the stockroom doing my thing and I went out for a smoke. I overheard a couple of people talking about the highway being blocked off due to a truck carrying a load of hay catching fire. It ignited grass fires in the near vicinity with no clue as to when the situation was going to taper down.
2) Mall Employee Suicide-- On the same day as the flaming truck incident, there was a barrage of cop cars littering the premises of the mall parking lot. I had no clue as to what was going on, but a fellow cancer fiend worked at the same place as this particular employee did. Apparently, a few customers saw a few cop cars and a tarp. A tarp, yes, covering a body. A body. I kid you not. Turns out, a disgruntled employee was so miserable with their job and what it had done to their life that they decided to end it all by jumping off of the tallest parking garage in the parking lot. Yikes.
I’ll refrain from boring you with further details, but these two incidents alone are huge events that I would have been clueless about if not for the smoke hut. For the most part we all talk about how horrible our jobs are, but other conversations filter in as well. I get updates, gossip, local news, national news, and just about anything else I’d need to know from the smoke hut. Am I encouraging all of you to take up smoking? Maybe, maybe not. But I do encourage you to take up a hut. You know, if not smoking itself.
Happy Hutting,
RY
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
Friday, September 2, 2011
Asshole Parents
I don’t want kids. I never have, I don’t see that ever changing about myself. I love my siblings and my family members still of youthful stature, even my friends’ kids I can tolerate swimmingly. It’s just the children that part themselves into the category ‘general public’ that I’ve got a problem with.
I was in the smoke hut the other day people watching and as many of you know, Back to School time at the mall is fucking chaos. Hundreds of parents brave the premises with their children to drop hundreds of dollars on merchandise that their kids 1) probably don’t appreciate anyway and 2) they’ll be lying on the floor of their closets in just under a months time. I know. I was one of these asshole kids one time.
Anyway, I saw this kid (one of the few who wasn’t on a leash) running around like a crazy little shit and he started climbing a lamp post. A lamp post, yes. The parent was sitting in the smoke hut next to me talking on their cell phone (Bluetooth, mind you, suggestively for the purpose of being able to attend to their child better) and playing with an iPad. Not even looking at their kid. This particular lamp post was about a foot off of the curb next to the street where a good majority of the mall traffic passes through. It wasn’t until the kid got about twenty feet up the pole before panic ensued.
After this mother realized what was happening, she ran over to the lamp post presumably to attempt to get their child down from their now 25+ feet height achieved and you know what she did? She continued her conversation only breaking briefly to yell at her kid, ‘hey! Get down from there!’
The child threw his head back in laughter and continued climbing. He reached the top, which was at my best guess 35 feet or more, and neither party started panicking until a UPS truck started backing up directly toward the lamp post. Now, I’ve seen this UPS truck almost each day I attend the smoke hut. I’m there pretty regularly and around the same times every day. Many of the stores at the mall get their shipments via FedEx of UPS, fair enough. Well..the UPS truck looked like it was going to hit the lamp post. I’ve only seen them actually hit it a handful of times, but that handful is more than enough cause for me to warn this not-so-troubled mother.
It was at this point that she finally put down the iPad, stopped the conversation, and asked the UPS driver for help. It took THAT MUCH. I was shocked, appalled, and filled with an unnerving sense of joy knowing that my parents would never have let me pull that kind of shit and technology would have never taken over my parents will to take care of me as a child.
So, what can we conclude from this? I’d say it’s the fact that yeah…kids suck. But parents today are much worse. This, more so than the whole stretching out my body for a little shit that won’t respect me in the end thing, deters me entirely from having kids. I never want to join that category of selfish parent. I love myself too much for that.
Happy Hutting!
--RY
I was in the smoke hut the other day people watching and as many of you know, Back to School time at the mall is fucking chaos. Hundreds of parents brave the premises with their children to drop hundreds of dollars on merchandise that their kids 1) probably don’t appreciate anyway and 2) they’ll be lying on the floor of their closets in just under a months time. I know. I was one of these asshole kids one time.
Anyway, I saw this kid (one of the few who wasn’t on a leash) running around like a crazy little shit and he started climbing a lamp post. A lamp post, yes. The parent was sitting in the smoke hut next to me talking on their cell phone (Bluetooth, mind you, suggestively for the purpose of being able to attend to their child better) and playing with an iPad. Not even looking at their kid. This particular lamp post was about a foot off of the curb next to the street where a good majority of the mall traffic passes through. It wasn’t until the kid got about twenty feet up the pole before panic ensued.
After this mother realized what was happening, she ran over to the lamp post presumably to attempt to get their child down from their now 25+ feet height achieved and you know what she did? She continued her conversation only breaking briefly to yell at her kid, ‘hey! Get down from there!’
The child threw his head back in laughter and continued climbing. He reached the top, which was at my best guess 35 feet or more, and neither party started panicking until a UPS truck started backing up directly toward the lamp post. Now, I’ve seen this UPS truck almost each day I attend the smoke hut. I’m there pretty regularly and around the same times every day. Many of the stores at the mall get their shipments via FedEx of UPS, fair enough. Well..the UPS truck looked like it was going to hit the lamp post. I’ve only seen them actually hit it a handful of times, but that handful is more than enough cause for me to warn this not-so-troubled mother.
It was at this point that she finally put down the iPad, stopped the conversation, and asked the UPS driver for help. It took THAT MUCH. I was shocked, appalled, and filled with an unnerving sense of joy knowing that my parents would never have let me pull that kind of shit and technology would have never taken over my parents will to take care of me as a child.
So, what can we conclude from this? I’d say it’s the fact that yeah…kids suck. But parents today are much worse. This, more so than the whole stretching out my body for a little shit that won’t respect me in the end thing, deters me entirely from having kids. I never want to join that category of selfish parent. I love myself too much for that.
Happy Hutting!
--RY
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