August 25, 2005

New entry to Blogroll

Ran into this one last night.
My Life as a...Gas Station Attendant.
The online journal of a man and his daily and weekly struggles with 40oz-guzzling vagrants, gasoline pump drive-offs, cantankerous coworkers, and eighteen-year-old gangsta potheads who don't think I can spot their fake ID's. It's a Tennessee tragedy, here for your amusement. Some names have been changed to protect the indolent.
Here is an excerpt from this story:
By any Other Name.
There is a young lady standing in front of my counter; clinically speaking, a fascinating series of events is taking place. The twin clusters of cells that are my eyes are perceiving her dimensions, in their primitive and deeply limited capacity to perceive space and color. They are sending messages to the ancient, instinctive part of my brain called the amygdala. The message they are sending can be roughly translated thus: this is a female of your species, of adequate height, with large, bright eyes, indicating perception and inquisitiveness. Its round, full hips and round, full breasts, respectively, indicate excellent childbearing and childrearing capacity. Her colorful decorative attire suggests good grooming status, an excellent ploy to attract mates and keep offspring free from disease and infection.

The newfangled, oh-so-clever part of my brain called the cerebral cortex translates this information into other words so that I can comfort myself by thinking that I am more than a monkey wishing to pass on its monkey genetic material. It gives me a slightly more refined message: there’s a hot, brown-eyed, brunette, nineteen-year-old college girl with a unique, funky sartorial sense about her, standing in front of me looking to buy a pack of cigarettes.
Good storytelling. Posted by DaveH at August 25, 2005 4:07 PM