I suppose I'll keep this blog brief, as it's late, I'm drunkesque, and I really feel like eating some Count Chocula cereal right about now.

Tomorrow is an important day that has me excited and anxious (the "current mood" only tells half the truth) at the same time. This is due to two reasons, which I will now divulge:

1) Tomorrow the season finale of Lost is on (Lost spoilers to follow). Anyone who knows me knows that I'm a Lost-aholic (or HolicLost, as I'm sure some people would call me [no wait, probably just Mike]). However, this has been a rocky season in terms of, well, quality. I feel the finale will make or break the show overall. If it's good, I'll remember season two as the season in which Ana Lucia shot Shannon, Locke fucked Peg Bundy, and Michael killed everyone. If it sucks, I'll remember it as the season in which the man with the beard is revealed to, um, have a fake beard.

2) Tomorrow is my first day at Paradise Comics since saturday. Saturday was my first day opening the store all by myself. Saturday did not go well:

Arriving at the store at 10 o' clock on the dot (an accomplishment for me), I unlocked the door to the shop, determined to make sure I did a flawless job that day. By 10:08, there was broken glass all over the floor, a thick cloud of poisonous chemicals wafting throughout the store, and a middle-aged lady calling me an idiot and threatening to press charges. I keep telling myself that "shucks, it could happen to anyone," but I'm beginning to doubt that very much.

The story's pretty straightforward: the night before, someone changed one of the fluorescent tubes, but instead of throwing the old one out, left it at the front entrance and neglected to tell me. When I saw it the next morning, I had no idea what it was for and decided it would be best not to touch it (which wasn't smart, even I'll admit that).

Anyways, I was at the counter minutes later when I heard a CRASH! Upon hearing the crash, I assumed that my mentally handicapped coworker had had an accident in the basement whilst bagging and boarding comics (perhaps she tried to bag a lightbulb by accident, I don't know). But no. I turned to the entrance and saw the first customer of the day standing in what was once the fluorescent tube, a cloud of mercury rising to greet him.

Now, this is not the tableau one can look at and think "a great way to start the day." I, for example, looked at it and thought "fuck ass mother fucker."

Now Aaron, I started telling myself, stay calm. It's no big deal. I'm sure LOTS of comic book stores have to worry about killing their customers with mercury poisoning.

Thankfully, the guy felt just as bad about it as I did, and actually apologized TO ME (score!). Oh, and he didn't die (double-score!). No-Thanks-fully, a lovely woman who just happened to be passing by when she heard the Crash! figured that I wasn't getting yelled at enough, and saw it as her duty to rectify that problem.

"You idiot!" she yelled, "What were you thinking, leaving that glass out like that!? You could face a lawsuit for this, young man!" (Obviously I am paraphrasing, as I doubt there is a single being left on the planet who calls people "young man/lady," but you get the idea. Lawsuit was mentioned).

now, at this point I had several options:

A) Blame my retarded co-worker
B) Pretend to be retarded myself
or
C) Hope the poison cloud gets to her

but instead I just D) flashed my Feldman charm (likely achieving the same effect as option "B"), shrugged my shoulders in that slow, Aaron Feldman way, and said "it's my first day."

The lady seemed to have lost some of the momentum at that point, and went on her in-no-ways merry way. I cleaned up the mess, got my co-worker* to (I believe) illegally dump the glass shards in a public garbage, and then passed out from the mercury.

So yeah, you can see why I'd be a bit anxious about facing my boss tomorrow. He already knows what happened, and didn't seem to mind that much, but I can't imagine it got me points. We'll see.

Hmm, that wasn't brief at all. Fuck, I wanted some Count Chocula.


*I recently discovered that she is not, in fact, my superior. The opposite, in fact. Apparently she just showed up at the store, with the hopes of working for them. When they told her that they couldn't pay her (read: didn't want to), she insisted on working anyways, so they were basically like "okay, fine by me." So basically she just shows up and works without getting paid (In other words, she's me from last year). Some would question the ethics of allowing a mentally handicapped individual to work for no pay. Those people are called "communists" (Not actually; I should probably talk to Pete about that once I'm either out of the doghouse or already fired).