I’m getting a little tired these days of stopping by Blockbuster and looking up and down and left to right for movies they never have, not to mention having to put up with adorable looking couples sassing each other and being so happy together that I just want to start lobbing DVD boxes at them for daring to pollute my air with their irritating public displays of affection.  Just die, please.

Truth be told though, I rarely go to Blockbuster nowadays, opting instead to grab up DVDs at my supermarket, which has a Redbox Machine.  But even that’s become an aggravating chore lately.  Nothing quite puts me in the mood to wreak death and destruction upon mankind then having to wait behind somebody who takes their sweeeeeeeeeeeeet ass time checking the Redbox listings while I loudly tap my foot and check my watch, knowing I’ll have to pay a dollar more if I can’t jam my DVD back in there within the next three minutes.

“BITCH GET THE F*&^ OUT OF THE WAY I GOT TO RETURN THIS THING BEFORE 9PM CAN”T YOU SEE THAT DAMMIT TO HELL!?!?!”

So yeah, I think RedBox has pretty much lost its appeal as well.  Solution?  Netflix!!

But as I surfed the site and prepared to sign up, a thought occurred to me:  am I being too antisocial here?

It seems the more I go out there and run into the scum sucking, methane ripping porkbags otherwise known as the human race, the more I want to stay home and have everything including my groceries mail-ordered to me instead.  Then I can just hide under the bed with my laptop and my Tostitos and play Nancy Drew games until the end of the world comes, which should be oh, shortly after people realize the bailout didn’t do zippy dinks to save the economy and The Great Depression Part 2:  Obama Takes Us To Hell officially gets under way.

But then I think, perhaps I’m being too harsh here?  That maybe, just maybe, with a sincere effort to go out there and connect with other human beings I’d end up finding some who are not so rudely vile and disgusting after all, and maybe even attract a nice girl for once in my life?

Nah.  Indiana Jones first ever DVD in my Netflix queue baby!!  BOOYAH!    Now where are my Tostitos…

By being an absent-minded schmuck monkey, that’s how.

You know how you can opt for “cash back” when you use your debit card at the supermarket? I needed some cash so I could use the vending machines at work the other day, so I punched in for $10, took my receipt and groceries, then walked out. And completely forgot to take my $10.

And of course I don’t realize this until hours later too, so no chance of going back and retrieving it either.

This wouldn’t be so bad… except that today I did it AGAIN, opting for $10 cash back and then once again completely forgetting to take it.

I hope whoever ended up with my money got a good meal out of it at least.

Remember Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies. - Andy Dufresne, The Shawshank Redemption

There are times when life really gets me down, and during those moments I’m often guilty of having a defeatist attitude about things. When I see a hurdle that seems insurmountable, I figure what’s the point in trying to leap it, I’m never gonna succeed anyway. The odds are always against me, so why bother?

Then I learned a little lesson recently. One of my most favorite Snapple flavors is Diet Iced Tea-Lemonade. I could drink gallons of this stuff in a day and still never get bored. But then suddenly I had a hard time finding it anywhere. The local supermarkets no longer seemed to stock them, so on a friend’s suggestion I decided to email Snapple. I figured it can’t hurt, even though I expected my email would be ignored. Nobody cares what I think anyway.

Well, I actually did get a response, but they said they were no longer distributing that flavor and would be discontinuing it due to low demand.

Figures. Why did I bother to send the email anyway? Really, when is a major corporation gonna care about anything I had to say? I’m just one guy after all. And I’m not even good looking.

Then a few months later, I hit one of the local supermarkets to get some grub and was shocked to find STACKS of Diet Iced Tea-Lemonade Snapples littered all over the place. Now every supermarket had ‘em on the shelves, so I started buying up cases like crazy as soon as there was a sale. You should see my apartment right now, it looks like a Snapple warehouse.

I guess Snapple had a change of heart, but whether I was part of the reason why or not, I got the point.

If you have something to say, then your voice should be heard, regardless of whether anyone is listening or not. If we lay down our arms, accepting defeat, we will never have victory. But if we stand up and fight and let our voice be heard, whether it’s for justice, (or to get back a favorite drink), then we have hope. We may not always have the victory, but we will always have hope of one.

So in all things, let us hope. Hope for a better future. Hope for justice to prevail. Hope for good to triumph over evil. Hope that Jessica Alba will someday give me a call.