Archive for September 8th, 2009

Early Morning Target…

8th September
2009
written by jed

…is the same as Afternoon Target and Evening Target — a crowded ordeal over-staffed with incompetents. Ten of us on the returns/exchanges line. Three employees milling about at the entrance, doing nothing. Two employees at the photo register, serving no one. Seemingly thousands of red-shirted employees wandering the floor, texting each other and rehearsing their “uh… I’ no” for whichever customer might harass them with a question.

And one woman in returns/exchanges.

She’s helping a woman who is trying to return something that, according to their computer, she returned last week. A manager is summoned. He walkie-talkies someone who never responds, despite multiple pleas of “where you at?” So he goes behind the register. He overrides the thingy and gives the woman a refund.

This shocks me as the computer is rarely wrong, b’also what she was returning was pretty beat-up (it was an air-mattress and the box was demolished) and the policy that’s blown up on the wall so that even the elderly can read it says rerurns must be unopened, in really good condition — no one would fault Target for telling this woman that she was stuck with the ratty air mattress (original price: $14.99) and to please let one of the 9 other customers try their luck (though by this point the number of customers had doubled — without doing anything, I was now half-way through the line!). But after 15 minutes of seemingly-random button-pushing, the lady got moneys and the lone cashier could deal with someone new.

Five minutes later, the manager returned and opened a second register. After another 20 minutes, I got to chat with him.

Teresa loves Northerm Exposure. Like Law & Order, it helps her go to sleep. Through a bizarre turn of events, we wound up with 2 sets of Season 4, so I returned one to Target and all was right in the world. But that was 3 weeks ago. Since then, Teresa opened at watched the remaining Season 4 DVDs, the last of which was scratched (during packaging) and wouldn’t play at all. So I was bringing that back and hoping to exchange it for a replacement (maybe it would be the one I returned three weeks ago!). As with the first lady he helped today, the manager was totally cool with the exchange.

But he charged me $0.15.

I said, “you’re kidding, right?” and he said, “I don’t know why it says that, but you owe $0.15.”

It allowed me to leave the returns/exchanges section of Target (hopefully forever), so I feel like I got a bargain.

Let’s hope all of these discs are watchable.

In an EXCLUSIVE, the Post reveals that (at least) six city building inspectors — some with known mob ties — were videotaped taking bribes and selling cocaine and prescription drugs.

Well, that helps explain CitiField.

Sacramento, California is the only city west of Denver, Colorado that has more single women than men.

One of the explanations given for this: “a higher proportion of government workers, who are likelier to be female.”

I hereby propose that, in honor of this little factoid, we refer to our government as “she” and “her.”

Just like a boat! A criminally negligent boat!

You know that Fulton Street Transit Center that the MTA is allegedly building? The one they said would cost $750,000,000 when they started and then changed it to $1,400,000,000? Well, it just went up another $40,000,000.

B’also? The date of completion has been moved to 2014 (barring Apocalypto).

I’m happy and sad for the Yankees.

Happy because they swept their doubleheader against Tampa Bay yesterday and Boston lost, widening the gap between them to 9 games.

Sad because Jeter was 0-for-4 in the first game and 0-for-4 in the second.

And sad because Tampa Bay’s chances of passing Boston in the Wild Card race get dimmer every time they lose.

I hope Jeter doesn’t have A-Rod disease (that’s when you panic as you approach a milestone and choke for a week or two — but the judges also would have also accepted “Kate Hudson”).

“Indoctrinate” is a pretty big word for a moron.

Following last year’s rehab stay, Kirsten Dunst doesn’t drink anymore.

I’ll finally be able to tell her apart from Rosie!

If you’re worried that Lee Daniels’ new movie Precious might win the Academy Award that you’re going for this year, might I suggest re-releasing Shadowboxer in theaters?

Sean Penn and Robin Wright Penn are re-getting divorced.

Will she be Robin Wright from here on out?

There’s a picture of George Clooney on Page Six (on page 12 today) with his hand in a cast and the caption “What happened, George?”

If the Page Six folks actually read the paper they “work” for, they’d know he slammed his hand in a car door (by accident). Not that I can blame them for not reading it.

In Tel Aviv, Madonna recently had a dessert coated with pistachios, coconut and pomegranate syrup. It was called “malabi” which made her muse, “Didn’t I steal two children from their parents there?”

NEW DEVELOPMENT IN THE TILA TEQUILA/SHAWNE MERRIMAN CASE!

Tila Tequila is denying that she was intoxicated when Merriman allegedly prevented her from driving drunk.

She recently Twatted: “I am allergic to alcohol… That is how I got the name Tila ‘Tequila’ cuz the irony. I can’t drink.”

If I thought it wouldn’t make me suicidal, I’d go through episodes from her MTV show and find footage of her drinking. Or at least her repeated insistence that if you want to date her, you have to be able to drink copious amounts of alcohol.

Mac, how could you?

Trouble in paradise: Antigua jails six NYers

Four gals and two guys (“at least four of whom are from Brooklyn”) agreed to pay a cabby $50 to get a ride to and from a local beach. But on the ride back, the cabby demanded $100. They refused to pay twice their earlier agreement, so the cabby said he’d drive everyone to the police station. The building he took them to, however, had no signage that indicated it was a police station. And when a group of men started charging at them, the tourists started throwing punches.

But the un-uniformed attackers were plainclothes cops. And they were, in fact, at a police station.

Their trial is tomorrow. Let’s send positive thoughts to our Brooklyn brothers and sisters.


Is there a food-truck mob? Are people that have been threatened by them referring to them as the Halal Mafia?

Does this give me a good idea for a sitcom?

(yes, yes, no)

Thug Life!

Khamir Grant is 15. He wears his pants low. He also packs heat.

At 1:30 early Sunday morning, he was walking home from Amersfort Park when he felt the gun in his waistband start to slip. He fumbled for it and shot himself in the penis.

He made it home and told his mother what happened. The two of them then took a livery cab (“Your son isn’t gushing blood from his penis onto my backseat, is he?” “Of course not!” “OK. Where to?” “The nearest emergency room.”)

Bonus: once his junk stopped ex-sanguinating (may not actually mean what I think it does), Khamir was arrested for reckless endangerment and criminal possession of a weapon (the same charges brought against Plaxico Burress!).

Moral of the story: PULL UP YOUR FUCKING PANTS.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is planning on staying at the Inter-Continental The Barclay later this month.

Protestors are already demanding the hotel to cancel his reservation.

I would much rather he stayed at The Standard (where people could watch him masturbate over the High Line Park).

A 64-year-old man was found dead in his Upper West Side apartment, seemingly the victim of autoerotic asphyxiation. The man allegedly used ropes around his feet to tighten and loosen the rope around his neck, but “something went tragically wrong.”

Who wants to bet money that he owned at least two of Glenn Beck’s books?

Teresa? Remove Durant, Oklahoma from the list and start packing.

Someone called the cops there to report shrubs littering a road. The police showed up and discovered that the “shrubs” were actually 236 high-grade marijuana plants that police believe were “tossed after a domestic dispute.”

And that’s when I decided to become a divorce attorney in Durant.

Hey, Regurgitate Dicks (sorry, Ralph Peters)! Using the last sentence of your op-ed as your answer, why do you continue to write such narrow-minded hateful bullshit week after week?

“For shame.”

Ah.

9iu11ani says he’ll decide within 60 days whether or not he wants to lisp as governor of the state of New York.

The Post thinks his candidacy “would be a step in the right direction” for the Republican Party.

And I think he married his cousin.

(only one of us is right)

Jerry Jones of Manhattan wrote in to the Post to defend Ashley Dupre and also to let everyone know that he is in denial.

“Dupre’s words about the hypocrisy of the women who judge her ring true with me.

One day, I was rudely awakened from my romantic delusions when my fiancee left me for a man with more money after repeatedly complaining about my lack of it and joking that “you might as well marry a rich man as a poor man.”

Of course, afterward she wouldn’t admit that money had anything to do with it or that her cheating with another man with more money had anything to do with the problems in our relationship.

No, she looks down on me and on people like Dupre.”

I imagine the original unedited version ended with:

“Long story short, I agree with the whore because I once loved someone and she left me so she’s also a whore and she must have left me because of the money because why else would anyone want to leave a romantic like me? P.S. – I watch WNBA games naked. Send S.A.S.E. for proof.”

Rep. Charlie Rangel also wrote to the Post, but he was responding to the editorial that accused him of adding IRS stuff to the healthcare bill.

He says it isn’t true. And I’d believe him if I thought he was an honest law-abiding citizen.

Who do I side with? The shitty newspaper? Or the shitty elected official?

The Zagat family is in trouble.

People aren’t buying their books as often as they used to. And even worse, their web traffic is evaporating. But why? Surely it isn’t because they charge people $25 to get access to their online database. Nor could it be because their online database doesn’t include their full reviews (“how” could “their reviews” online be “any smaller” than they “already” are in print?).

Might it be because sites like Chowhound and Yelp are free and contain reviews that aren’t Frankenstein monsters cobbled together from various users’ comments?

Did you know that the Cadbury bars you buy in America were made in America… by Kraft?

Bleh.

The current cover of Newsweek asks “Is Your Baby Racist?”

Now THAT gives me an idea for a sitcom.

Ah! The Magic Number has returned!

According to the least reliable publication in New York, the number of combined Yankee wins and Red Sox losses necessary for New York to clinch the AL East is 16. We have 23 games left in the regular season, Boston has 25.

Sweet 16.


Finally! Curb Your Enthusiasm returns! The running storylines this season (if I remember correctly) are a Seinfeld reunion (that isn’t really a reunion, but is) and how Larry and Cheryl met. And it may or may not be the final season. And you should watch it.


But what REALLY pisses me off is that some Black guy is using televisions to spread some bullshit “pursue an education” empowerment message into the minds of people no smarter than your average 7-year-old.

I am, of course, referring to LeBron James’ (and Kelly Clarkson’s!) appearance on VH1’s Get Schooled: You Have The Right special, which premieres tonight at 8:00 p.m.

I miss Flavor Flav.

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