Potpourri No. 10

Recent tidbits from the world o’ Benny K:

Funny, I Never Noticed My Pants Were on Fire
Apparently, I’m not as trustworthy a fellow as I once thought. The latest fad among restaurant employees seems to be raising a suspicious eyebrow at anything I say. A few weeks ago, during a late-night trip to Arby’s®, I was mistakenly given a medium Coke® despite my clear articulation to “Giant size™ it!” When I politely pointed out the error to the young man working the drive-thru (sic), he responded with a dubious, “Noooo.” Taken aback, I had to convince him that, according to the basic rules and principles that dictate the Giant size™-ability of every combo meal, I should have received a 32-ounce soft drink. Finally, he acquiesced. But just the other day, I had a similar experience with Papa John’s. Attempting to order a pizza over the phone, a frustrated employee eventually put me on hold and, none-too-quietly, debated with another employee whether or not the coupon I was attempting to use actually existed. Even when he came back to the line, he made me repeat the wording of the coupon several times. And, presuming me to be illiterate, he continuously clarified every word I said. “It’s for a medium pizza?” No, a large, like I said. “And it’s for $12.99?” No, $11.99, like I said. Thankfully, we did receive the correct pizza.

O Sweet Calluses, How I Have Missed Thee
Despite the fact that I own two electric guitars, an electric bass, and an acoustic guitar, I rarely play guitar as often as I would like. Recently, however, I dared to move my old amplifier out of my parents’ basement and into my apartment. Result? I’ve been playing about 10,000 times more often than I have in years. It’s wonderful, though I always get somewhat somber when I realize how little time I’ve devoted to my musical abilities over the years. Why, when I was in high school, I had no other plans than to be a musician. Nowadays I’m lucky to write one new song a year. Hopefully that’ll change.

The Continued Misadventures of the Fartblow Community
When Melanie and I initially moved into our new apartment, we had nothing but problems, a handful of which I have shared in posts past. Luckily, things have simmered down quite a bit. Given the property management’s track record, we’re still hesitant to try our gas fireplace (which is okay, since it’s been unusually warm for this time of year), but at least nothing has fallen apart, flooded, or caused a stench for several weeks now. Nevertheless, I am being familiarized with the disadvantages of living in a basement apartment. When it does get cold outside, it’s hard to keep the apartment warm. Our gas bill last month was almost three times higher than any I’d ever paid at my old apartment. We keep running into spiders. Our bedroom window is right next to the laundry room, so people are constantly going by and making me feel more conspicuous than I would like. And, even worse, my onsite apartment manager has seen fit to keep the laundry room’s porch light on all night. Literally. I have no idea why she finds this necessary, but it illuminates our bedroom like there’s no tomorrow—or at least like there’s no end to today. Melanie and I sneaked out there one night in an attempt to find the lightswitch, but I swear it doesn’t exist! We even tried to unscrew the bulb but didn’t have much luck, and, yes, I chickened out before we gave it as much effort as we could have. And to think, originally I was thrilled that we wouldn’t have to move furniture into an upstairs apartment. Next time we’ll be looking for a second-floor apartment, no question.

Sorry, Wrong Number
I was actually going to use this section to report on the latest Internet searches that have led people to my blog. And I will, but first I have another story. Apparently Melanie and my relatively new telephone number once belonged to someone with financial problems. Ever since we’ve moved in, we receive about one phone call per day for some mystery woman named Karen. And, to again bring up issues of mistrust, every time I say they have the wrong number, they act like I’m covering for her. They don’t even trust our answering machine, which says nothing whatsoever about anyone named Karen. They just leave messages telling Karen how absolutely vital it is that she call them back and to stop ignoring their messages. Luckily, a lot of them have given up. We used to get two or three calls per day for her; now we sometimes skip a day. But not Saturday mornings, of course, when they like to call at 8am. Little buggers.

Anyway, without further ado, here is another collection of odd searches people are doing that somehow bring them to my site (along with the search engine that produced the results and, when significant, where I rank in the listings):

• Bellhop protocol (Google, #2 result)
• Fancy bathrobes for preteens (Google UK, #1 result)
• Turkey with oranges in the butt (MSN, #4 result)
• Hidden camera movies hotel bathroom (Yahoo!)
• How to cook Jimmy Dean croissant sandwiches (Google, #8 result)
• Jimmy Kimmel needlessly censored (Google, #2 result)
• Where did oranges originally come from? (MSN, #1 result)
• Balme and Moorwood answer key (Google)
• Cookie Monster bedsheet (Yahoo!, #15 result)
• Exhausted of sucking (Optimum Online, #13 result)
  

Thanks again to JL Pagano for inspiring the reporting of such kookiness.