Erin The Great

With Valentine’s Day literally around the corner there is an abnormal amount of hustle and bustle with ideas about what to get your significant other.

Have no fear! There is one Utah establishment that has hit the Darwin ‘Genius Jackpot’ with a fabulous idea! Why give your sweetheart roses and chocolates when you can give them a gift card for….

LAZER HAIR REMOVAL.

Seriously? Are you kidding? Have you ever dated a woman? Why don’t you just yell out ‘Hey Yeti!’

I guess nothing says I love you like ‘hey mammoth women, go get hair removed it’s freaking me out’!

Don’t get me wrong, I hate shaving like the next female but for Valentine’s Day? In theory it’s a good idea only because shaving every day is numero uno on my list of things I dislike doing, but for Valentine’s Day? In case you didn’t get that…for Valentine’s Day?

Of all the bad Valentine’s Day ideas, That one takes the cake!

Ever since I was a child I heard of stories from my family and relatives about the evils of the DMV. It wasn’t until I was 15 and went to go take the test for my learners permit that I truly understood what they were talking about.

           Going to the DMV is like going to the dentist for a root canal. Most of the time you show up, wait half your life time in back of someone who is seemingly at the end of their rapidly fraying rope or someone who wasn’t informed of the invention of soap. When you finally reach the counter to do whatever you came to do (and secretly wish you’d done via the internet or the mail) you are usually standing in front of someone who’d rather see you die a horrible and painful death, then actually help you.

I’m not quite sure why DMV employees are all that disgruntled, mainly because I think jobs like; postal worker, banker, or retail assoc. pretty much have the market cornered on that one. I honestly think that the experience of the DMV is more painful for the patrons and as customers we usually are the disgruntled ones leaving the establishment…. That is unless you live in Utah Valley, then you REALLY have something to complain about.

In most states, the process of registering your car, changing over your license, or even changing over a car title seems painful but relatively simple right? You go to the Department of Motor Vehicles and you can accomplish all these tasks under one roof. This is not the case in Utah Valley. They have three, count them 3 different places where you can do said ‘tasks’ but none of the others things you need done. It’s sort of ironic that this would be the case in a ‘dry state’ when normal DMV experiences would usually drive one to drink.

One day I needed to do all three of the errands mentioned above and I had to crawl all over creation just to accomplish it. On one side of the city is where you register your car if it’s never been registered in the state of Utah. For registration renewal, that’s a whole other building. The second location on the opposite end of the city is where you change an out of state driver’s license to a Utah one but you can’t renew a current driver’s license there, you have to go back over across town to renew…its asinine! Not to mention taking an already painful process and REALLY making it memorable.

If you’ve purchased a car in a state that doesn’t have sales tax i.e. Oregon, do not I repeat DO NOT register your car in a state where sales tax is enforced, because you’ll have to pay ALL of the sales tax at time of registration… I learned that one the hard way.

I’m beginning to think that they operate on a ‘we can do whatever we want because we’re protected under a million laws so therefore we get to screw over everyone’. You’d think they’d have the decency to buy me dinner first.

I’m thinking that I should remember to take a sedative next time… or just take my chances with the police.

Where has common sense gone? The phrase ‘Do unto others as you would have them to unto you’ has lost all meaning. I do believe that we live in a country that takes everything for granted and gives to nobody unless we think it’ll benefit them. Granted not everyone is like this, but an alarming number are. We manipulate, take advantage, scapegoat, and generally treat everyone we come across like crap… for the love of Pete, when did we turn into the French?

It’s almost comical when you’re working, out shopping or just outside walking around, and see America’s finest lose it when some tiny little thing goes wrong or they don’t get what they want the second they want it. They digress into a two year old and throw some of the biggest fits I’ve ever seen when something doesn’t go their way.

I despise the fact that our nation has fallen into a sense of ‘entitlement’, it’s ridiculous! No wonder every other country wants to see our continent go up in a big old mushroom cloud. I honestly don’t blame them at this point. Anyone who has ever worked any job in customer service especially on a Friday understands the want of Darwin’s theory of ‘Natural Selection’ to be true.

Who ever came up with the idea that yelling and throwing a tantrum would get you anything you want, should not only be shot but have their arms ripped from their body and savagely beaten by them!

These are the people who should take trips to 3rd world countries and see how the other side lives. People there are mostly happy to have a roof over their head and or running water. Where has America’s priorities gone? I’ll tell you where they’ve gone… around the bowl and down the hole!

It’s pretty rare to find people who not only serve others but do it un-conditionally. It takes a remarkable individual to leave this worth un-scathed so to speak. People who continue to think people are basically good and in the words of ‘scrubs’ are not ‘bastard covered bastards with bastard filling’.

My hope is that one day the vast majority of the people in this world will stop being self serving and actually give a crap about the people you feel are beneath you or feel has wronged you and treat those people with respect.

There are many things on this planet that I don’t understand. Like how Red Sox fans hate Yankee fans because they’re the highest paid baseball team when they themselves are the second highest paid in MLB. Or why Carrot Top still has a semblance of a career, or how that kid from ‘Differn’t Strokes’ never understood what “Willis was talking ’bout”.

Among the things that basically mystify me about this universe is one dominating factor. If Charles Darwin was right about ‘Natural Selection’ or ‘Survival of the Fittest’, how is it that stupid people have not only survived through the ages but seem to be vastly dominating the planet!

Everywhere you look there seems to be people that should have been killed off almost instantaneously at birth or shortly thereafter. Is the ‘stupid person’ gene genetic or just a highly developed gene mutation that was thrust upon some poor unwitting soul? Either way it boggles the mind as to how they still exist. Life is hard enough without having to deal with people that make you want to constantly pull your hair out.

I have a bumper sticker that says ‘don’t drink and park, accidents cause people’ and it couldn’t be closer to the truth. It makes me wonder how something like common sense not only completely bypassed these people, but also didn’t even get close enough to slightly slap ANY kind of sense into them. Is it the effect of education? Or lack thereof? If that were true then how would you explain Albert Einstein flunking math and not going to college; Thomas Edison and Benjamin Franklin, who were basically high school dropouts…answer me that one?

There are stupid people everywhere who have been to college but still give concern as to their development as a knuckle dragger. Not only that but they hit you with absolutely no warning. You are defenseless against their powers, especially if they swarm ‘en mass’. It’s almost like the movies ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers’ or ‘The Faculty’.

I hope one day in the not-so-distant future, there will be a cure for those who suffer the syndrome of the stupid and this place will once again be inhabitable with out worrying about being at the bottom of the ‘intelligent life out there’ totem pole.

  The Holiday Shopper. There are many kinds of holiday shoppers but the only ones who survive the mass display of chaos are the ‘crusty holiday shoppers’.

The crusty holiday shopper is the one who elbows you in the ribs when you go after the last ‘Harry Potter’ calendar, or the one who all but has a rifle strapped to thier belt if you try to get the last ipod of the shelf. These people go under my ’super special’ list. People like this are unbelievably nice under normal circumstances but turn into absolute beasts when put in a shopping situation as well as put in the presence of actual human beings. Grab your torch and pitch forks! These people need to go down!

Everyone gets into bad moods when shopping for endless hours on end but here’s a little advice, I don’t care how good the sales are, if you know going shopping is going to turn you into Mr. Hyde, then for the love of pete stay the freak home! Do a little online shopping if your very exsistance in ‘retail land’ makes others want to put a gun to thier head. Be a nice human being. Be the kind of person that makes the sound of the holidays not have people develop a twitch. I know it’s a stretch but try to be a decent human being. Be considerate, responsible and nice. This will makes others not want to follow you to your car and slash your tires.