A couple is in the store, shooting the breeze with my coworker, trying to figure out whether or not to get to Volume 1 of the Invincible trade or to get the first compendium, when they guy's phone rings.

Approximation of Random Guy's Call:

"Yes. yes. Well, that can't be right. No. No. I'm on vacation. Yea, we traveled. No, I'm fine. I mean. Yea. A bit of a stuffy nose." Fuck. "Just since before Christmas. I'm sure it's not. Ok. Yea. Give me just a minute."

Shockingly, he decides he and his girlfriend should go outside to take the rest of the call. I am very much appreciative of this, as I'm guessing the call is to let him know he has Covid. Both my coworker and I are wearing KN95 masks, and I know that many people don't have the means and privilege to get checked for Covid every day, but you're supposed to get checked before traveling, even if you've been vaccinated and boostered. It's just common courtesy (and not in the Skeletor voice).

Assuming they're gone, I begin entering things into the computer when the girlfriend starts WAILING. I mean people a block or so away can hear her "BUT WE ARE ON VACATION! IT'S CHRISTMAS AND YOU PROMISED WE COULD DO THINGS. WE SPENT SOOOOO MUCH MONEY. I DON'T WANT TO QUARANTINE."

She lost all my empathy with her last sentence. Look, nobody wants to, but if your partner gets a call that he has Covid, your vacation is over. You need to go back to where you're staying, apologize to whoever you're staying with (because they almost definitely also have Covid now) and fucken quarantine. No matter how much money you spent, your vacation is OVER. Binge watch a show together, read some books that you already own or are in the place you're staying, have a Youtube party but stay the fuck at your home base.

When the wailing subsided, I heard the door to the building open, and I saw her walking towards the store door, I shut it. I didn't say anything or make eye contact. It's really shitty to find out you might have Covid and then try and go into a retail establishment. Get out of public.

​She didn't argue or complain, but hung out in the hallway until her partner came back. I'm not sure what he said because I'm back on the computer, but she started crying again and they slowly disappeared from earshot.

I decided, instead of holiday movies, I'd just put Miyazaki films on in the store.

HBOMax: Because you just finished watching "Howl's Moving Castle", would you like to watch "Watership Down"?

Of course not. The hell is wrong with you?

​Happy Holidays, kids ENJOY THESE DEAD RABBITS.

​After reading a book of poetry that was so vapid and unengaging that I questioned whether I ever wanted to read again, I went and found reviews that heaped praise upon it. I friended the reviewers, and will now use their poetry shelves to make sure I never order anything they like ever again.

Every three years, bartenders have to take a certification course. It's $40 to watch horribly acted videos, followed by quizzes that are poorly worded, and frankly insulting to be asked. Then you take an exam where they, thankfully, pretend the poorly worded scenarios never happened and focus on really dumb, insignificant shit that no one who has tended bar for more than a week doesn't know.

My favorite example, they say that, due to average size and body fat ratios, women tend to get intoxicated faster than men. Fine. Then they ask, "Which one of these people will become intoxicated more quickly?" and show a woman in a dress looking wasted, and a big, burly guy with a beard who seems stone cold sober. And, somehow the answer isn't "Gender is a lie. Neither of these people are cisgender. You're going to need more context clues to determine who You Think will become intoxicated 'more quickly'."

They also had three paragraphs explaining why drugs increase the rate of intoxication when drinking. I assumed the next page would have two pictures: one would be a reasonable person politely sitting down and asking for a drink, the other would have a cocaine mustache, wild eyes, and a joint behind her ear, asking for some moonshine. Instead, one was a person saying "I don't need to take my allergy medicine right now." and the other was a woman with a pill bottle, reaching across the table saying "Emily, it's time to take your Allegra and get schwasted you irresponsible bitch!" (That's a slight paraphrase.)

​Also, the photos of the actors playing servers are hilarious. This "server" needs to be fired. Out of a cannon. Into a cement wall. Covered in metal spikes. Which have been doused in kerosene and set on fire. Never make that face at a customer, even if she is face down in a plate of cheese fries, a cigarette smushed in the ranch dressing, demanding (through her cheese-fried face) to get her "another apple fucken tini".

At around close tonight, we had a standard style frustration: a kid who wanted to sell stuff but didn't know what he wanted to sell or what he wanted to buy, but was definitely going to be in the store ten or fifteen minutes after we'd closed. That's fine. It's a kid. Kids are allowed to not fully grasp social contracts.

But as he was nearing what I imagined was the end of his transaction, I flipped the sign to closed, and went outside to get the sandwich board. As I did, a woman in her forties came in, made eye contact with the kid, and then stayed in the hallway for a bit. His mom, I thought. So I didn't tell her we were closed, or shoo her away. It actually only occured to me now that I don't think she was masked, but the rest of our interaction was so Harvard Square that I didn't even process it.

****TENSE CHANGE BECAUSE IT GOT TENSE****

As the completely unrelated child walks out, and my coworker moves to the back room, she starts jumping up and down and shouting "YES!!!! YES!!!! OH MY GOD!!!! OH MY GOD!!!! WOOOOOO!"

"You're a fan of Berserk?" I ask, as that is the book she is holding on to and jumping up and down with.

"I usually don't come in here because .... because it would be so bad, but tonight is a treat. It's really a treat." She hugs the book to her chest.

"That's great! Volume one hasn't been available to us for a while, but I ordered some last week, and we should have them in a few days. Did you want me to set one aside for you when it comes in?"

"I would normally never buy myself something like this." Uh-oh. That doesn't answer my question. "But I DESERVE a treat. I got fired today."

"Oh, I'm so sorry."

"No. No, it's GOOD. They never gave me forty hours and there was pffffffffffffffffft nothing to do. Nothing. I'm going to treat myself tonight."

"Ok."

"I'm sorry. I'm a little" she mimes drinking, which was fairly apparent. "you know. Glug glug. Shhhhhh."

Oh dear. She learned how to be drunk from lazy sitcom writers.

"OH!!!!!!" she picks up another book, and just sort of leaves Berserk on the table. "Grrrrl Scouts! Grrrl Scouts!!!! My daughter was in the Grrrl Scouts." Ok. "She would love this. She's bi. She doesn't know it yet, but she's totally bi. I should get this for her. Not that she would read it. She thinks ... she thinks she's ... she doesn't like me ... she thinks we're SO DIFFERENT but I've seen her grades, we are the same THE SAME, you know? Do you have kids?"

"I do not."

"They just don't know how much they are their parents. But they're so great. Amazing. You should have some. GRRRRL SCOUTS. WOW! Maybe I'll get this for her. Oh, I wish she'd talk to me. WOW, I am talking too much, aren't I? Shhhhhh. Sorry."

She is basically a monologue assignment from an acting class in the 1990s. Trust me.
"I have two kids. HAD. Had two kids."

Oh no.

"My daughter. She's the one who's alive." OH NO. "She doesn't talk to me. She went to go live with his father. You know what HE'S LIKE."

I do not.

"My best friend in high school, the one I SHOULD have married. He just got divorced, and his wife looks like Kim Kardashian, and my ex-husband looks like Pete Davidson, so they should just FUCK ALREADY, right? So my daughter, WHO'S FUCKEN ALIVE, she won't talk to me, but her brother, who died." She points to the ceiling, and hugs the air. "He always speaks to me. You know? He's always the one who's been there." Fuck me. "He said I should just be happy, but when is it my turn, YOU KNOW? When will my amazing person show up? I'M RIGHT HERE MOTHERFUCKERS!!!!!"

I begin texting my coworker about getting ready to leave.

"OH, Jamie Foxx and Jared Leto are absolutely 180 from each other, you know?"

I don't know how this subject comes up. We have no Jamie Foxx or Jared Leto merchandise anywhere in the store.

"They're so different, but I would fuck either one of them. Just, like, show up in my driveway, and I'm yours, YOU KNOW? Today's Wednesday. Jared LOVES Wednesdays, so why doesn't he just come to my driveway and get some, right? I deserve amazing things."

"Sure. We all deserve amazing things."

"HIGH-FIVE" she mimes high-fiving through the Covid Shield that seperates us. I'm grateful that she's content with the air-high-five. "WE DO DESERVE AMAZING THINGS. WE ARE AH-FUCKEN-MAZING my dude! LET'S GO JARED LETO!!!!!!"

I text my coworker that I'm about to politely nudge this person out of the store. Perhaps with a taser. When he texts "Here, I'll set you up." And he walks out of the backroom and asks "Are we closed yet?"

"Oooops." says the drunk lady. "Time to close the office. The office is CLOSED. I'll just ... this place is great. I'm going to come back here. Definitely." And then she lifts the doorstop, checks the lock, and says "It's all locked up. Nobody can get in now. Goodnight." which was ... unexpected.

And my coworker and I shake our heads. I ask if he'd heard our conversation but he says he just heard her Enthusiasm, but not the words.

We close up the store, and I'm telling him the beginning of the story when we reach the gas station to fill up the car for the ride home.

This is where I discover It's Full Moon O'Clock today.

See, there are two nineteen year old guys who work at the gas station. They're nice, they like my coworker, and they hate their jobs, so I relate. Also, they each get stalked by this creepy probably somewhere on the queer spectrum guy in his fifties or sixties who just stands ten feet away from the register and bothers them for hours on end. The fact that their manager hasn't fixed this lets me know they're exactly the kind of unqualified jackass that gets promoted to middle management at a gas station. The guy should be asked to leave, and it's not the nineteen year olds' jobs to figure out how.

So I walk into the gas station's convenience store just as the 19 year old says "and here comes his sidekick."

"Sidekick?" I ask. "I'm the fucken protagonist." and walk to the coolers.

Creepy Dude waves at me. "I hear you work at the Paper Insane Asylum."

"Today, certainly."

"I must have walked by it a billionty times but I don't recall seeing it. Where, precisely is this place I keep hearing about."

I point in the general direction of the store. "Over there. By the coffee shop."

"I don't drink coffee." He says, proudly.

"Me, neither." I shrug.

"What does one sell at a paper insane asylum." What a hoot, he is.

"Comic books."

"Oh. I'm not a comic booker. I grew up in the sixties when they were good." Says the guy who doesn't read them. "But just the Batman. I didn't have time to read the other stuff."

"Yea. Batman's great." I grab a soda from the cooler.

"This one here." he thumbs at the nineteen year old "He reads the anime books."

"Manga" the nineteen year old corrects him. "I watch the anime. I read the manga."

"I don't know what those words mean." He smiles. Because he does. "I just know when I was his age --"

"WHAT HAPPENED TO THE CLICKY THINGS?" My coworker comes in, drowning out Creepy Guy. Very purposefully drowning out Creepy Guy. "There aren't any more clicky things on the gas nozzles."

"Oh, yea. We took them off. People used to forget they were on, and drive off with them. I managed to work here almost a year before it happened. I saw it happen in slow motion. So my manager came in and took them all off.

"BUT I LOVED THOSE." my coworker says.

"I might just deign to go this paper insane asylum, does it sell anything else aside from comical books." Cuh-reep.

"Yea, we sell stuffed animals, action figures, pins, button, stickers, pop culture stuff, basically."

"Well, I don't really DO pop culture." Cuh-reep. "But I should come in if I can ever find the time. I just thought it was a stationary store."

"It doesn't move much." I say, paying for my belongings.

"How was it down at your end of the street?" the nineteen year old asks.

"Crazy!" says my coworker. "Adam just had ... I don't even know ...." he manages to not make eye contact with Creepy Guy as he says "It's just All Crazy Everywhere tonight, I guess. Have a good night!"

And we walk out of the store. I mention Creepy Guy, and my coworker says "Yea, he's there bothering them all the time. I just pretend he's not there. He'll ask me stuff, or try and say something funny, and I just keep talking to the nineteen year old like that guy doesn't even exist."

​And we get in the car, and drive back to Boston, where I've been sitting in my house with the lights off, pretending that everybody doesn't exist.

Shortly after we moved in 2020, Comrade and I decided to buy a couch. But the Pandemic was reigning hell on the supply chain even then, and we weren't able to order one that we liked until February. It took about two weeks to arrive, was exactly the style Comrade wanted but it was hella uncomfortable. We gave it nearly a month where neither of us ever really used it for more than a few minutes at a time, and then we returned it.

It wasn't too long after that that I became weary of Granny Entitlement, and didn't want to buy a couch and then immediately have to move.

So we haven't had a couch. We have a dozenish semi-comfy chairs from Comrade's parents, one comfy chair that we moved from JP, and some matchy furniture that we don't love, but no couch.

On Friday, we decided to go to Jordan's Furniture. We figured we'd find a cool couch, be told it was no longer available, and after three or four "What about this ones?", we'd finally settle on one that would arrive in March. That's just the way thing are right now.

So we grabbed a Lyft, and arrived at a store that Comrade informed me was the place he used to go to hang out when he was bored growing up. 

If you ever want to feel popular and antagonized, just be a gay couple trying to buy a couch in a nearly empty warehouse-sized store. I think there were three other couples spread out amongst the building, and we were all outnumbered at least 5-1 by bored staff members.

Employee #1 greeted us at the door, asked what we needed and if they could help, and we politely told them we were looking for a couch, and possibly other furniture, but wouldn't need any help for quite a while.

The couches in the front room were terrible, so we started a counter-clockwise circuit which Comrade immediately suspected was wrong. "Should we ask where the couch room is?" he asked, as we walked into a room with thirty couches. "Nevermind."

My goal for a new couch is: comfortable and grey (because Selina and Goose are going to shed all over it). Comrade has style needs, and an idea of what else to get to create a room around the couch. So we satdown on the first couch in the room, just in time for Employee #2 to welcome us, and ask if we needed any help, and to let them know if we had any questions. We politely told them we were looking for a couch, and possibly other furniture, but wouldn't need any help for quite a while.

The couch was great. Firm on the back, soft on the butt, not too deep. Also, comfy and grey with the legs that Comrade approves of.

We hit every other couch in the room and none of them was quite as good.

"Should we ask if this is the only couch room?" Comrade asked.

""I thought you hung out here all the time. Surely there are other couches."

"That was forever ago. Also, it's much different now. This place used to be Mardi Gras themed, and had a musical interlude every hour. Plus there was a Kelly's Roast Beef with an aquarium globe in it. I wonder what happened to the fish?"

There were many more couches. There were many more "Can I help yous." Some were concise and to the point. One guy, though, saw us sitting on a couch that seemed to be made entirely out of springs and thumbtacks, and said "Great couch, right? It's made of Sunbrella." He said this, standing under a GIGANTIC Sunbrella sign. "Everything in this room is made of Sunbrella."

"Thanks." I said.

"You can get that couch in any of the Sunbrella colors available over there on the Sunbrella fabric wall." And I think he said Sunbrella fifty-leven more times before letting us know that he was happy to help us if we had any questions. We didn't give him our rote polite response, we just fake smiled and nodded.

"That guy is The Worst." Comrade said.

There was a leather couch room (no can do with they tiny grey terrors), a These Couches Were Designed By Contestants Eliminated During The First Episodes Of Various Project Runway Seasons room, an abstract art for people with broken spines room, a Millionaire's Lounge with sleek black couches and expensive looking art, a room of Tilt sofas that recline at the press of a button and have their own cupholders built in, and a couple of rooms of random sofa assortments. There was also a "sleep laboratory" but I knew if Comrade went in, I'd never see him again.

There was a terrible table designed to look like an early 20th century car, where the two square feet of table was supported by six or seven feet of car. There was also a weird little cubby chair that looked hideous and uncomfortable. While Comrade was demonstrating how the wooden back brace pushed directly into your spine if you tried to sit back, Employee #72 told us how cute it was, and how easy it was to maintain before realizing that the brace was supposed to be covered by a piece that had fallen underneath. We left her still struggling to figure out how to put the "easy to maintain" chair back together.

Eventually, we had completed the full circuit, and decided that the very first chair we'd tried out was the one we would first try to get.

Nearly every employee had mentioned the Supply Chain, and that they hardly had anything in stock, and we should pick out a bunch of alternates. We already knew this, and it was a little disheartening to realize we probably wouldn't get a couch until March or April.

"Yea, I'm sorry." said Employee #80-something, "I'll check and see if they have this in the warehouse, but we really don't have much right n---Oh. We have it. And in that color. That's a nice surprise. I never get to give people good news anymore. Unfortunately, because of Christmas and The Supply Chain, we don't really have many delivery appointments available. Unless you could do next Thursday."

"I have next Thursday off."

"And where do you live?"

I gave him the info.

"It says here we've made a delivery there before, so that's good. But I guess we had to take out a window because of the narrow stairs."

"We live on the first floor. This will definitely fit."

"Then, congratulations. You will have a new couch next week."