underdogishere

This didn't happen to me. It didn't even happen to the person who told it to me. It happened to a friend of the person who told it to me. We'll call her "Kim," because that's easier to type than "my coworker's friend."

Kim had deramped from our local Interstate highway and pulled into the parking lot of a Starbucks. She was on her cell phone, and remained in her car to finish the conversation. Her window was down, and while she sat there a woman approached and asked her for eighty cents:

"Can I have or borrow eighty cents? That's all I need. Just eighty cents."

Kim keeps a cup full of change for tolls, so she fished out eighty cents and gave it to the woman, who thanked her and left.

Kim, still on the phone and still in her car, then spent the next three or four minutes watching this woman approach everyone who was entering the Starbucks and ask them for eighty cents: "That's all I need. Just eighty cents." Her success rate was 100% -- everyone gave the woman at least eighty cents. Some got out a dollar bill and gave her that. Each of these people then entered the store and didn't see the woman approach the next -- only Kim, talking on the phone, saw the whole thing.

Then the woman went into the Starbucks and emerged with a super-vente-grande sized mocha-latte-cuppa-capachino -- or whatever it is Starbucks serves. I don't drink coffee or patronize Starbucks, so I don't know. But anyway, that's what she had. Kim watched as the woman crossed to the convenience store/gas station adjacent to the Starbucks. Her boyfriend/husband/brother/male companion was just finished gassing up an expensive, late-model car. The two of them jumped in and took off.

Most people that I've been around when they hear this story say something about the woman's nerve. My first thought was, what a concept!

Micro-begging!

How long will it be before someone takes it to the next level: Micro-fraud? Micro-cons? Micro-burglary? Will we someday push the frontier to Micro-assault-and-battery? Who knows where the end may be?

Labels: Out and About

"It was our second-ditch effort."

Okay, a last-ditch effort implies at least the existence of a first-ditch effort (otherwise it would have been an only-ditch effort), even if there were no intervening ditches, so if there was a last-ditch effort then there must have been a second-ditch effort, even if it was also the last one.

But what I want to know is, who counts their ditches anyway?

Labels: Language, Overheard

Sign outside a printing business:

OUR ADOBE IS YOUR ADOBE

Labels: Seen

A fat, flabby man wearing a t-shirt that said "Body by Rudy: Rudy {snipped}, Personal Trainer."

Note to Rudy: This guy isn't winning you any business.

Note to me: If I ever get into the personal training business, only have t-shirts printed in Small and Medium sizes.

Labels: Seen

In I go!

Labels: Transcendental

"I'd rather talk about myself than have other people talk about me, because then more good things are said about me."

Think about it....

Labels: Overheard

In all these dreams of the politicians and merchants, sailors and geographers who pushed back the limits of the unknown world, there is the same glitter of gold and precious stones, the same odour of far-fetched spices

- Sir Walter Raleigh, 1605

What I love about that passage is the use of "far-fetched" -- not to mean, "You want me to belive what?", but in a literal sense: Fetched from afar.

Labels: Language