Good King Wence's car backed out on a piece of Steven

Tis the season to be bitchy… so, let me be bitchy about a few random things that have crossed my Bitch Threshold over the past couple of weeks…

Last weekend, SuperFiancee and I dropped by The Zone in quest of Christmas presents, and so I could get a few comics. Max Bitch Points must go to the counter guy at The Zone, who on this occasion magnificently upheld the Zone's reputation (with me, anyway) for Employing The Most Astonishingly Rude And/Or Straight Up Couth Free Employees In Any Comics Shop Ever. Usually you can count on Zone employees to know little to nothing about their store's stock from one moment to the next, to ignore you while talking to other people they find more interesting for ten minutes or twenty minutes at a time in the most abhorrently and repulsively vulgar fashion imaginable, and generally to do the most astonishing impression of a bunch of emotionally retarded rejects from a Kevin Smith movie I have ever encountered.

This guy, whoever he was, carried on in that wonderful tradition by repeatedly, and with increasing volume, saying "I HAVEN'T READ JSA YET" while a friend of mine and I were discussing our opinions of the issue as I was paying for some comics.

Now, normally, it’s a fine line in these situations. Two or more people who have read a particular book, or seen a particular movie, or a particular TV show, want to discuss details of said entertainment, and someone else there would prefer they don’t, because they haven’t read/seen said entertainment yet and don’t want it spoiled for them. Which party is being rude can generally depend on many factors, not least of which is, the manner of the presentation of one party’s desire that the other party or parties shut the fuck up.

However, in this case, the counter guy was being flat out rude, and here's what I should have said to the idiot, and I might have said it, too, if I didn't want SuperFiancee to see me being all confrontational and shit, and risk getting her banned from the shop along with me.

Still, here's what I should have said: "Okay, jackass, I understand you haven't read JSA yet. I heard you the first time, and I ignored you, which was giving you the benefit of the doubt as you were being unbelievably impolite, but now that you’re repeating your unbelievable impoliteness at even louder volume, okay, here is my response -- the issue has been out two weeks, and you work at a comics shop, and your goddam slowness to get around to reading something is neither my fault nor my problem, and beyond all that, I'm standing here giving you some of my money for some of your merchandise, and, finally, WHAT THE FUCK IS YOUR PROBLEM, you goddam rude ass dimbulb receding hairline douchebag?"

I didn't say that. But I should have.

The friend I was trying to discuss JSA with was Bane, who happened to be there in The Zone when SuperFiancee and I walked in, and it was very nice to see him again. Hi, Bane. Your buddy behind the counter is a fucking jerk. But it was cool to see you for a couple of minutes. Drop by over here soon.

Moving on to other bitchworthy things -- let’s talk briefly about mindless goddam participants in Flexible Spending Accounts who are apparently completely incapable of connecting Concept A, I've been on hold for ten/twenty/thirty/forty minutes now, with Concept B, Maybe I should call back tomorrow. These are the people who, unable to hurdle that miniscule ideational gap, hung on their phones for half an hour at a time all day yesterday until they finally managed to get hold of me, at which point, they all initiated our exchange with some variant on "I HAVE BEEN ON HOLD FOR FORTY MINUTES!!!!"

Some minor praise is, perhaps, due to me, for never once pointing out to any of these people, however badly I wanted to, that it is the nature of Flexible Spending Accounts that there are absolutely no emergency situations, and there is never anything about a Flexible Spending Account that requires you to speak to your FSA administrator right that very second... unless you're a dipshit and you let things go all year until some deadline suddenly looms, in which case, to quote a somewhat popular contemporary aphorism, your lack of forethought and/or planning in no way constitutes an emergency for me.

I should, however, take a moment at this moment to offer sincere gratitude to Fangirls Supreme Ragnell and Kalinara, who are apparently so consumed with guilt for how badly they've treated me in the past that they just keep linking to anything even vaguely comic book related I post here. This sends huge, infrequent swarms of lemminglike chick and chick-whipped traffic my way, and I occasionally end up with a comment from it, too.

I will also offer up a moment of thanks for all my lemminglike chick and chick-whipped traffic, too. Over the past couple of days, hundreds of viewers have hit on my JSA article, taken a second or two to scroll all the way down to the end of it, slapped their hands to their cheeks like Macauley Culkin in Home Alone, shrieked "HOLY FUCKING JESUS THIS THING IS REALLLLLLLLY LONG!!!!" and gone flitting away again, in search of something that they can, as Elayne Riggs once described it, "finish reading before my work computer’s word processing program fully opens in the morning".

Lest anyone think I'm joking about lemminglike chick and chick-whipped traffic, go here. The post, brief though it is, is emotionally retarded enough in its own right – another in an apparently endless array of Ragnell's "I have found yet another thing that offends me in this world, now ATTACK, my winged monkeys, ATTACK!" type psycho-hissy fits -- but the real hysteria (in every sense of the word) lies in the comment threads.

The chicks themselves I can nearly understand -- they're young, they're strident, they're on hair triggers, they have no senses of humor about anything they take seriously, and they are simply incapable of understanding something like, um, gee, well, if an alien gem possessed the body of a comely Earth woman and sets out to use that body to attract a particular Earth man, said alien gem might well garb it in a manner designed to get and hold the libidinous attention of said Earth man -- this isn't a depiction of an actual woman actually dressing this way for no reason other than artistic whim, as, alas, happens so often in superhero comics.

No, I don't expect chicks like Ragnell to get any of that, so, as I say, I very nearly understand them, to the extent that any sane human being can really comprehend such as they. These are nearly sentient humanoid entities who do not think, they simply feel, and this particular image viscerally offends them, and the entire world must and shall revolve around their own particular emotional hot buttons, and so they're off to see, and, they fondly hope, castrate, the Wizard. I get that. I do. It's insane and unbalanced, and they all badly need to get back on their medication, but still, I get it.

But the accompanying comment thread is long, and has a lot of male commenters in it, too, and... okay, I get them also, kinda. They're equally young, and they haven't yet learned that sympathizing with the hard core insane femazon as she's strapping on her armor and sharpening her melon-baller will not ever get them any, and even if it did, it wouldn't be very good. So there they are, throwing their skirts over their heads and pissing their panties over the outfit an alien gem puts on a comely Earth woman in order to attact the attention of a particular Earth man, right alongside the chickie-poos. Yeah. I get them. I pity them... but I get them.

Also making the Bitch List -- my dear beloved employers, who have given me a job, albeit one for which I am substantially underpaid, where people scream at me all day long largely due to my employers’ incompetence and/or their unnecessary and idiotic policies, where I get no Christmas bonus, and where I can rejoice in the knowledge that all the uppermost executive positions will take home millions in bonuses this year, mostly due to my efficiency at answering the phones for them.

While I’m bitching, I would be remiss not to include brilliant fantasist and all around bitter disappointment George R.R. Martin, who has recently announced on his Not A Blog feature that he's been too goddam busy fucking around with Wild Cards bullshit to finish the newest Westeros novel, as he has repeatedly assured us he would by the end of this year. But at least he's learned his lesson; having failed millions of loyal paying readers abysmally and utterly, he's rising above any temptation he might have to blame himself for being a lazy faithless undisciplined wank, and instead putting all responsibility for his own fecklessness firmly where it irrefutably belongs -- on us, for believing him and expecting him to do as he'd told us he would. No longer will he promise anyone a hard deadline for anything, he declares, or, perhaps, snivels; it's just too tedious for him, when he fucks around and fucks around and fucks around and then, suddenly, he can't get the work he's promised done, and everyone gets mad at him. So here’s a glass lifted to you, George R.R. Martin. Never has one man done so little for so long for so many.

Oh, yeah, and he may put up a different preview chapter of the forthcoming book, eventually, but if he does it will be something that he's had up before, because he found that nearly half of his previous book had been previewed on the Internet before it was actually published, and he doesn't want that to happen again. The notion that it couldn't possibly happen again if he'd get his thumbs out of his ass and FINISH THE MOTHERFUCKER is, apparently, a bizarre and outrageous concept, anathema to all thinking beings, and not to be borne for the most fleeting instant. You go, Mr. Martin. You’re a man among men.

Let me also take a moment to thank Blogger, for letting me vent regarding a lot of minor little annoyances like, you know, dipshits on other blogs and dumbass people who call me at work and feckless dopey goddam authors who lead millions of people up a beautiful, beautiful beanstalk and then leave us stranded on a leaf for years at a time while they (heh) jack off. If not for Blogger, I’d be one of those people who writes this stuff up longhand, Xeroxes it all off, and staples it to phone poles. Thank you, Blogger, for getting me here. Ooo wah, Magic Blogger.

Despite the generally sarcastic nature of this post, let me close by noting that even with all this annoying and irksome stupidity hurtling past the windows of my existence, my life in particular is an oasis of wondrous blissfulness in a sea of raging chaos, and that’s all due to SuperFiancee and the SuperKids. Ex husbands and their current paramours may rant and hate and scream and spray spittle; politicians may take bribes, send our soldiers off to their doom, break campaign promises and murder foreign children with mad élan; authors whose house payments I contribute to may continually disappoint me and then bitch that it’s all my fault for being so mean in the first place; participants may shriek and supervisors may spew; but at the start and end of every day, I have the finest woman and the finest children any man has ever shared life, breath, hearth, and heart with, and I am a lucky, lucky individual indeed.