This is gonna be like all those "it was only a dream" endings, or "we went back in time and made everything you just saw not happen" endings, only it's for an episode you never really cared about in the first place.

I went to Blockbuster to try and return the video game with their sticker on the back that I'd gotten bundled with a $5 Dreamcast at a yard sale. My plan, as it all too often is, was to act naive and hope the tellers were apathetic enough to take the game back without any questions. Still, I felt a need to tell my whole story (fully orchestrated, 4-part harmony) to the glazed-eyed kid behind the counter. He seemed stuck on the concept of "yard sale," but I refuse to call them "tag sales," just because.

In any case, he assured me that Blockbuster would never sell a game in a regular old jewel case, so the thing must have been one of their old games that they sold outright. The dude at EB probably didn't notice or care that the game was from Blockbuster, and wouldn't give me money for it because it was too old, not because it was stolen.

GameSpot wouldn't take it either.

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When your manager is on vacation

And your supervisor is at the doctor, with slim prospects for coming back to work

And there's only one other guy left in the whole row of cubicles

Why, again, do you stay at work?

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There should be a system for determining the status of hot people you want to hit on. Here is what I propose: as everyone knows, the government will be issuing barcodes to everyone to place on their heads in the next few years. These barcodes will allow the government to track all people's transactions with others, and any time there is personal interaction, citizens will be required to scan each others' barcodes for homeland security purposes.

The barcode itself contains only a number; that number links to an account on some government server somewhere. If civilians had the ability to access non-classified parts of anyone's record, then they could look in the "Marital Status" of anyone they come in contact with. "Single and Looking"; "Dating a Guy I'd Be Willing to Get Rid Of"; "Married to Someone You Could Never Compete With," etc. Access that database through your wireless PDA and you have a nearly instant answer to that most vital of questions: "Should I even bother?"

• • • • •

 
Memorial Day is coming up. I'm sure it'll be a three-day orgy of jingoism, self-congratulation by people who've never done more fighting than a drunken fist to a drunken nose and teary-eyed TV news anchors with digital flag images behind them. Meanwhile, real veterans who oppose unnecessary war shake their heads sadly at what our country has become.

I'll be watching the Indy 500, of course, and lamenting the sad feud between CART and the IRL.

Hey, it's patriotic in its own way.

• • • • •

 
Used Sega Dreamcast and two awful games at yard sale: $5

Trade-in value of one awful game at Electronics Boutique: $3

Two good games, extra controller, memory card and AV cable at GameSpot (because EB apparently decided to sudenly start sucking in that area): $49.95

Look on my face when I noticed the "BLOCKBUSTER RENTAL" sticker on the back of the game that EB had mysteriously refused to take as a trade-in, and that to give me money for the other game, they'd taken my name and address: PRICELESS

• • • • •

 
So I have this Web site. There's a News section there that an obnoxious pal of mine has been complaining about. Apparently some posts are not so much "News," he claims, but more "bloggish." And he demands that I have an actual blog to put them on.

I do what I am told. Because I'm a tool like that.

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