The Dark Furie

When Leslie Pope went for a meal and a few drinks with friends at the Lehigh Pub in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania a couple of weeks ago, they were happy to find that despite the Christmas season looming they weren't turned away from the inn. Unfortunately that's where their good luck ended. After waiting over an hour for their meal they even had to go to the bar and request cutlery and napkins themselves as their waitress went out for a smoke after being asked for them. This was the final straw for Pope and her seven friends, who had already had to visit the bar for refills when their waitress disappeared after they'd placed their food order. When the $73 bill arrived they paid for their food and drinks, ignored the suggested tip, made a complaint to the head bartender and sat down to finish their drinks before leaving. That's when the police arrived and arrested them.

Lehigh Pub, presumably having noticed that not many of their staff were getting tips due to a bad service ethic, had installed a policy that made the gratuity a mandatory part of the bill. No longer do their staff have to earn their tips by being good at their jobs, helpful or even pretending to be a part of the service industry. No longer can customers decide that service is good and leave an extra tip or decline to leave a tip if service is bad. No, the tip is now expected regardless of the service you receive there and if you refuse to pay it you'll be arrested for theft just like Leslie Pope and her boyfriend John Wagner were.

Latreasa Goodman (no relation to John, despite the content of this story) loves McDonalds. Now you may think that you love a certain food more than anything else, but you haven't reached the levels of love this woman has for McDonalds' food. Nope, don't argue, you just haven't. On the 28th February this year, Latreasa visited her local McDonalds and ordered a ten piece meal which included chicken nuggets. According to the majority of news sources and blogs at the time she flipped out when she was told they didn't have nuggets and called 911 not once, not twice, but three times to report the incident. What a psycho eh?

Now lets be fair and take a look at what actually happened there. She asked for something on the menu, she paid for that item, they had run out of it and they refused her a refund. Oh sure, she can have something else from the menu but she was refused her money back, which is against both her rights and McDonalds' policy. Did she over-react? Of course she did. You don't phone the emergency services for something like that, and you definitely don't insist that your chicken nuggets are an emergency when the cops show up and cite you for misuse of the 911 system. But I doubt she'd have done so if she hadn't been provoked like that by the assistant manager of the store.

A spokesman from McDonald's had this to say about the incident: "We want to correct our mistake. We will be sending the customer her refund, along with an invitation to return for her original order, on us. We never want to disappoint a McNuggets fan or any McDonald's customer. Customer satisfaction is our top priority." That's very big of them. Now that the woman has been treated so badly and had her rights infringed to the point that she called 911, she can have the refund she was originally due and a voucher for one meal. That'll really make things up to her. Also I think I speak for everyone who has ever had the soggy cardboard that passes for food at McDonald's served to them by a teenager with a higher weight in acne than IQ when I point out what a pile of crap that customer service statement was.

8% Hypochondriac

While your physical health isn't always perfect, you don't freak out about it. You know there's only so much you can do, and worrying doesn't change anything. Your mental health is in check... which is key to having tip top physical health. There's no way you're worrying yourself to death!

Take This Test Yourself

That's the funny thing about pain. I'm in almost constant pain due to a back injury from years ago but because it's constant that has become my normal state and, if it stopped I'd probably feel worse before realising I was better. Unfortunately it takes a lot of concentration and effort to control this amount of pain, something that has become second nature and not really a conscious act. This means that I can lead a pretty normal life but, when I'm hit with other pains if they're large enough they divert my energies and every pain comes back as if new again, including my old back injury. Bit of a bastard really.

Anyway I'm mostly over what's been affecting me these past few days and the pain is starting to subside. I managed to enjoy a perfectly cooked roast chicken dinner earlier and that's what this post is really about. In between munching succulent chicken skin soaked in delicious gravy, I remembered the thing that made me realise that genetically engineering animals is a good thing for the future. It was the image of a chicken with six legs. For all my talk of growing replacement transplant parts on the recipient, all I really want is a chicken with extra legs. Embarrassing eh? You guys ever realise the reasons behind your standards and morals are a little more self-centred than you thought?

On November 12th 1977, the world changed and, for me at least, turned inside out. A storm raged over the Irish sea and a small ferry was rocked by the waves. As thunder crashed around and lightning briefly illuminated the coast, I was born screaming into a world that had long gone mad.

My intellect began to show through early on. By the time I was three years old I'd taught myself to read from newspapers and when I was five I joined the local library, taking the three minute walk up there two or three times a week and spending hours in my bedroom reading anything I could get my hands on. Despite being as intelligent as any adult I met, school was difficult for me as I had more than one confrontation with teachers due to questioning them beyond the bounds of their knowledge or paying little attention in class as I had already found out what they were teaching on my own. Later on a teacher in middle school would take an interest in me and put me through an IQ test during one of my many detentions. The results would show me to have an IQ of 195, almost twice the national average and this teacher approached my family to talk about further opportunities open to someone like me. They laughed in his face and my mind was left to ferment.

As I got older still, the television age slowly ended and the internet age began, progressing slowly to the point we're at now where all the horrors of the world are pulled into the living rooms of young and old alike. I embraced the web early, entering chatrooms to find like-minded individuals that I could have conversations with, about anything but the He Man and Thundercats based ones my own age group predominantly had. The small amount of subject matter on the web in those days meant there wasn't much to talk about, unlike today when you can find anything you're interested in online. This helped me find new interests and hobbies, with me becoming interested in things mostly so I could hold interesting conversations about them, and these hobbies have stuck with me throughout my life as my passion for them grew. I discussed science-fiction television shows with Americans I'd soon learn lived in basements of their parents house and had the same job they got in high school, and had lively debates about the possible realities and impossibilities of comic books with a group of people who would later become briefly famous for proving something actually exists instead of being a theory. Despite being the youngest member of those groups by far, my confidence and strong views caused me to be treated as the patriarch of most groups I was involved in, settling arguments between and giving advice to people who'd scoff at me in real life. The experience bred lifelong interests as well as exposing me to how the human mind works without physical preconceptions getting in the way, and those are lessons I've carried with me my entire life.

I suppose a lot of our early life gets taken with us that way, whether we realise it or not. Like many young boys I always wanted to be a cowboy when I grew up. While most kids who wanted that just wanted to shoot guns and be a hero it was more than that for me. I felt destined to be that straight-talking lone voice in the desert, fighting corruption wherever I found it, and standing for freedom, truth, justice and all that I believe in and hold dear. Even now, as I see in my 32nd year, I still hold onto that ideal as I ride ever onwards into the setting sun.
*whistles a mournful little tune*