Thursday, April 24, 2008

Rainbow Connection

My non-professional job experiences aren't just limited to discount grocery. For a short time of my life, I took up the most exotic, chic title known to mankind. That's right, I was a door to door salesman.

Your mom or grandmother (depending on the reader's demographic) may have heard of the contraption I was employed to distribute. Let us hop into the Way Back machine, and bask in the events that lead up to this adventure.


The job market is a lot like a dismemberment competition. The more you prepare for it, the less chance you'll have of success. Using this analogy, college is much like lopping your head off. I had struggled for nearly a year searching for a local job that wasn't in the dog food industry. I received a BA in Fine Art, specifically, computer art, and tried to roll with it. Unfortunately, nobody wanted to hire someone with a background that consisted of education. During many interviews, I was told I was overqualified, and rejected. Now one might think that a Bachelor's degree isn't that big of a deal, but in my backwater hometown, it's a sure sign of witchcraft.

At last I found a listing for an undisclosed job offering a highly disclosed amount of money per week. I jumped the proverbial shark to check it out, and was hired without an interview. Instead, the sales pitch was cast upon the half-dozen new recruits, and the brain washing began.


The Rainbow Clean-Air Cleaning System.
Basically, that's a pretty way to say over-glorified vacuum.
(Image courtesy of http://www.thevacuumcenter.com)


We were impressed. Of course we were impressed. Six sweaty guys in suits in the middle of summer in a tiny room in a small brick office will be impressed when presented something that removes odors from the air. After a couple days of intense training on the features of the Rainbow and it's ability to suck dirt, we were destined to enter the world of doorstep marketing. I gathered my first set of leads; neighbors, immediate family, and former teachers. With the exception of my mother, who vacuums four times a day, these leads were only allowing me into the house as a gesture of assisting me on my long road of salesmanship. Let's face it; nobody wants to pay for a $2,000 vacuum, with the exception of my mom. Nobody needs the Rainbow's patented separator device, which is essentially a grooved spinning thing found in most Lego Technic sets.


This is basically what spins the water,
keeping the dirt from coming back out of the Rainbow. Fascinating, no?
(Image courtesy of http://www.active-robots.com)

Beyond the overpriced hunk of reinforced carbon fiber, the sketchy and over-rehearsed sales pitch, and the way we gathered new leads by knocking on doors and signing people up for fake contests, the job was highly profitable. At least, that was what we were told. District meetings where someone with a fancy smart phone would brag about how wealthy he is captivated even the most unsuccessful Rainbow Sales Drone. Evidently, enough Rainbow Cleaners have been sold to make several people multi-millionaires. I even bought the idea myself. There were days where I came home with a thousand bucks stashed in my pants, but most of the time, my gain was less than zero. In that industry, you make nothing unless you sell. The eighty mile round trip to the office certainly wasn't rational on my behalf. I suppose I took some joy in knowing I couldn't get fired from such a job. Going home at night knowing you just put a family of Mennonites in severe debt is an extraordinary feeling altogether.

Thursday, April 10, 2008

An Open Letter from the first Goomba

This open letter is both a means to connect with those out there who feel they have been stepped on by others, and to cast the public eye towards a situation that has been left widely unnoticed for far too long.

Dear Man with the Moustache,

To me, the most critical thing in life is to be happy with what one has. About two feet tall, soft and brown, with a thick unibrow; I didn't have much to work with. Not to mention I suffer from a hereditary deficiency of sorts that leaves me with two unsightly fangs sticking over my upper lip. No dentist dares touch them, as they are impacted into the base of my brainstem. I live a quiet life, not entirely alone, but I often wander by myself, shuffling and side-stepping leisurely. I enjoy looking up at the clouds. They all look like big white bushes to me. I stay out of the politics of the world around me; I know a tyrannical turtle-dinosaur thing has been raking in a lot of votes. Most of my neighbors hail his name, I can hear them on the other side of the pipes clamoring on about how great this new revolution will be. I suppose my civic pride is not as strong, but the fact that these folks are spoon-fed Koopa propaganda from birth is a little unnerving. Frankly, I don't care what castle the princess is in, but I'd gladly let the next guy to walk through know if it would mean a little piece and quiet around here. I'm rambling again, I'll get to the point.

I've got a nice plot of land, living at the edge of 1-1 Mushroom Way. I've got a few coins stashed away for a rainy day (or if I find an orthodontist who thinks he can help me with my fangs). I've got some neighbors to my right, but nothing but a vast beautiful expanse to my left. I hear nobody has even traveled that far down the path; I've been told for some reason that it's simply impossible. I was feeling courageous.

I woke up early one morning, did my stretches, completed a crossword puzzle, and packed a sandwich. I was going to get the nerve to do what no Goomba has done before. I was going to shuffle to the left until the stage flagpole was hardly a dot on the horizon. It was time I made a name for myself. That's when I met… him.

My attacker was eyeing me. Normally I would have nodded a kind 'good morning' to any stranger, but I felt very uncomfortable with his dastardly stare. I kept going, not knowing how to react otherwise. The path was narrow, and he was standing with his legs gated. Just the way he looked at me, I knew he hated me. You could see this immense anger in his eyes. It didn't matter who I was, there was nothing I would have ever been able to do to change his baseless opinion about me. Why did he hate me? Was I different? Has he never seen a Goomba before? Did I say or do something that could be translated into something that sour? I kept trotting, slowly, tapping my feet on the solid brick. That's when he started to run.

I could see him clearly, as if time were slow and the air thick like tar. He ran at me, his red overalls (or were they blue? Goombas are very colorblind) kicking the air as he dashed in my direction. I could see his gritted teeth showing under his moustache. His intentions were ungodly.

Tell me, what would drive someone to hate someone else so much without any provoking? Why does this exist in nature? Why can't we all be in this together? Life is hard enough with disease, carnivorous plants, and bottomless pits to be at war with one another, especially as individuals. I could hardly react to his swift and unexpected actions. He leaped in the air from nearly thirty feet away, and an instant later was plummeting down from the sky towards my head. He came at me with such an angle that his knee impacted the side of my soft, malleable head. Fortunately, Goombas are built to bump into things; a direct concussion from above or a hot flame can do us in without any hesitation, but we can take plenty of abuse from any other angle. The moment he made contact, he flew into a madman's rage. His red (or was it green?) hat flipped off his head as he waved his arms and legs in the air, and he propelled himself off the path down into the great unknown. I stood there, safe, but broken.

Perplexed? Confused? Suffering from shock? For some reason or another, I drove that man into a blood-lusting rage. While his actions were unexplainable as much as they were incoherent, I still felt like I was at fault. Somehow, I made him that way. I should have done something different, I should have been something different. It has been tearing me up from the inside ever since. I've felt… incapable. I don't even feel like a Goomba anymore, as if I were just some object or soulless sprite. I just want to connect to other Goombas, or anyone for that matter, who understands, but I'm not sure if anyone does. Why would you shatter someone's life like this?

Monday, April 7, 2008

When You're At the Bottom

I'm not one to say I've lived a very hard life. There are individuals who have not been as fortunate as myself, and they've developed their own backwater mutant society, where weight correlates to one's position in the hierarchy. While discovery and integrity push some of us forwards, those left behind seem to flourish in greater numbers with no hint of natural selection in sight.

I grew up in a very unforgiving town. Don't let the vast number of used car lots fool you; the advanced physics behind the wheel stirred the locals into a concourse of club-wielding banshees. They accepted television very quickly as their God, perhaps somewhat in fear, otherwise as an arbitrary piaculum. Just as long as they did not have to better themselves in any way, life was perfect as is. My hometown is much like the dark undercity of a corrupted metropolis, but without the buildings. Instead of motorcycles, the local street gangs were known to operate deer.

For most, life was very simple. A parcel labeled "EBT" arrived monthly that was surprisingly not edible, but could be taken to the largest of burrows in exchange for Wonder Bread, Sour Patch Kids, and diet soda. It kept occupied the denizen collective, allowing the culture to assume a hunter/gathering tradition. They donned skins trapped from a burrow known as Wal-Mart, which they wore to the food burrows, where they exchanged the magical sliding money card for food. The most elaborate zoos couldn't simulate a more primeval environment. I played a role in this of course. Back then, I was essentially a part time zoo-keeper. I cleaned and maintained the most accessible of the food burrows; Save A Lot.

Save A Lot is a large national chain that caters to shoppers who aren't too ashamed of their lot in life to go to a Save A Lot in the first place. Once inside, you'll find knockoffs to every branded consumable you can think of. Some product names are offensive, while others range from borderline racist all the way to Asian street vendor. You'll find no shame on Save A Lot's behalf with product brandings such as Bubba-Cola, Dr. Pop, Pinaz (an intoxicating carbonated pineapple simulation for your mouth, named using red-neck's argot for a word meaning "male genitals"), Almost Butter, and Bar-S "Practically no Toes" Hot Dogs. While these brands may cater to the NASCAR watching, rifle wielding, Looney Tunes attitude oversized t-shirt wearing crowd, don't be fooled; these products are made with love. And a small portion of factory worker hair.



This is a prime example of Save A Lot's incredibly powerful audience-targeting initiative. Mountain Holler is known for it's diet Mountain Dew-like taste, but with a sustainable aftertaste that is similar to iodine. It is also clearly the radical citrus thirst blaster due to it's concentration of solar radiation. (Photo courtesy of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Mountain_Holler.jpg)

For six years of my adolescence, I worked at Save A Lot. During the later half of my employment there, the store was handed over to a clan of new owners. All of the employees were fired and rehired, to bring forth some kind of feel-good relationship with the new overlords. A new nepotistical caste system was formed, granting rights to anyone of the Owner's bloodline or those who were performing secret acts of indecency for members of the Owner's bloodline in the back office, meat room, or produce cooler. While on the floor, I observed incest and gender-confusion among the customers. Inside the sanctity of the back room though, darker arts were performed. I'd use the technical term to describe them, but my editor tells me I'm not allowed.

If you take a young Save A Lot employee and stand him or her next to a very seasoned marine, you will find that the Save A Lot employee is far better versed in watching old women scoop their own feces out of their pants and stash it behind a peanut butter display. A marine might not know how to effectively stop a man from pushing the cart return area across the parking lot with his station wagon. Furthermore, the Save A Lot employee knows who the terrorists will be as they walk in the door; subtle differences in stench offer many clues that no other occupation could train a person to pick up.

It is because of these few, proud grocery store employees that my irrelevant hometown can sustain life and balance outside of the wild-game season. It turns out that the primates can in fact use applied knowledge to receive their food pellets in an organized manor. Science triumphs again.