And the 2,822nd Sunday in a row I’ve somehow forgotten to go to Church. That said, it’s still early so I still have time.

Hmm.

Think I’ll pass.

Anyway, yesterday was both a good day and a bad day.

It was good because Mrs EBG is eligible for intraocular lens replacement surgery (I’m more excited about it than she is because I know first-hand the difference it makes).

And it was bad because the fucking mall was busy, loud, crowded, and made even more unbearable by the kids’ entertainer at one end playing with balloons and screeching into a PA (worse yet: the squishy thing on my earplugs tore so I spent the last hour fully immersed in the high-volume inanity).

Anyway, while Mrs EBG was off having her eyes poked and prodded I wandered around and picked up some minor shit from the health-food shop (rare Mongolian Chakra Alignment buttock-cleansing cream being top of my list, of course). 

And then I gave up.

I was intending to get some new trainers but, quite frankly, I found the whole thing too much. When it’s that loud, bright, and busy, it’s difficult for me to to anything more than not shut down; as it was it got to the point when I just wanted to sit down and cry.

Seriously.

It was that bad.

So I made my way to Starbucks, thinking a coffee and some relative peace and quiet might help.

And it would have.

Only… Starbucks yesterday was staffed by a bunch of slack-jawed mouth breathers who in past times would have been stuck in their villages being idiots. To paraphrase Rowan Atkinson: “either these people are suffering from serious brain damage or the new vacuum cleaners have arrived”.

I counted five behind the counter and only one appeared to be doing anything constructive. Three of the four were engaged in busywork, and the last was on his fucking phone, scrolling away and tapping at the fucking screen. 

And all the time, the line waited patiently for service.

Except me.

I walked out and grumped elsewhere.

The lesson: the High Street is allegedly being strangled by the Big Boys — Amazon and other big online retailers — inexorably dying, and through no fault of its own.

Bullshit.

The High Street and the local bricks ’n’ mortar business therein and thereabouts is dying because they’re fucking incompetent, for the most part.

My experience in Starbucks is by no means untypical. Go into almost any High-Street store on a Saturday and you get the same gum-chewing indolence, a social-media and entitlement-attitude fuelled apathy and listlessness turning today’s teenagers into vacuous blobs of useless protoplasm. 

Succeeding in business really is NOT hard because the bar is so fucking low.

It’s just a matter of doing what others won’t do, not what they can’t do.

And what you can (and should) do now is talk to me.

Sure, it’ll be uncomfortable and hard, but the path to success usually is.

Witheringly,

P.S. Speaking of dumb behaviour and confusing activity with achievement… 

… it reminds me of praying and believing in god and shit.

When someone says they’ll pray for me, it doesn’t fill me with a warm and fuzzy belief they actually give a shit. Not only is praying blasphemous (since their god has no choice but to follow the perfect plan and they’re asking Him to change it, thus questioning His judgement) but it requires no effort on their part whatsoever and is tantamount to saying “good luck with that”. 

I’d rather they just didn’t bother saying anything.

You know, some people say atheists deny god because we want to sin… and that means we need god more than anyone!

A neat little argument in the absence of actual evidence for something to believe in, I guess.

And if you need your fear of god to stop you from raping and murdering people, you’ve got some serious fucking problems. I don’t rape and murder people because I a) I don’t have the urge to; and b) I think it’s wrong and a violation of their rights. I don’t need an ancient book of fairytales and bullshit to tell me that.

Fact is, I’m happy with ALL my so-called sins, god or no god (being left-handed is one of them according to some).

And even if I believed in their Magic Sky Fairy (which I don’t), I really don’t feel like worshipping a being who stands idly by and watches children being abused, buttfucked, and even murdered in his own house.

Their god is either incapable of stopping it, or unwilling to make the effort. Maybe he has shares in Kleenex.

At best he’s weak; at worst he’s a sadist with a penchant for paedophilic voyeurism.

Anyway…