Get Reality

Written whilst shuttling, Saturday, November 24:

It's sort of like a confessional, but I have no idea how many priests are on the other side of the fly screen.

I'm in a van and the van it moves. 
I'm doing jokes in Membertou tonight, so long as this guy keeps us on the road 'til Sydney.
Initially, after reading the ghoulish details of The Greyhound Bus Beheading, I decided that perhaps you shouldn't read such things while in transit yourself.
Ultimately, I've decided that you just shouldn't read about this sort of shit period.
Do you know the story?
By all means, read about it here!
Just goes to show you that reality is a matter of perception.
It's my perception that shapes what it is that I believe to be true.
For instance, my perception tells me that I'm tolerable, that green is green, and that every human is annoying sometimes.
His perception created a reality in which he was fighting a force of evil (quite effectively, I would say).
"He's crazy" is the easy answer.
Easy because it's true, probably, I know.
But who's to say what's what about something so cosmic?
You?
Me?
We're hardly qualified.
If you hear it and see it, doesn't that make it real?
Again, the easy answer is "Yeah, but..."
The much more complicated answer is the one that must go unanswered.
Philosophy majors!
Where are you guys?
Get to work on what counts as reality while those of us with jobs trudge on through the alternative.
I was a philosophy minor, which is why I have a part-time job.
Marching once more with the work force, I have yet another occupation that I'm grossly overqualified for (on paper, anyway).
Refusing to apply myself, I've returned to the social charade that names itself 'retail'.
Folding pants for the first three days, I think, "I can ride this out."
By the fourth shift, I hate every person who enters the store.
It must be this way.
As a (relatively) joyless hermit this past while, I had forgotten how truly awful everybody is when they're buying stuff.
Holding the two-pack of T-Max socks aloft, some makeup-riddled banshee yells:
"Do you have any more of these?!"
When you witness it firsthand, you can only shrug.
Are you for real, lady? What barn were you raised in?
That's the first thought that came into my head:
What barn did you come from?
You're 40-something and this is how you ask a stranger a question?
I'm ten 10 feet away and I'm ringing through jackals who at least have the decency to stand in line.
Follow some sort of order, why don't you?
What is unfair about retail is that you're not allowed to answer questions with questions.
"Do you only eat things that you first club to death?
The socks, by the way, are ten degree to your right.
Try not to choke on them."
Such anger.
It's weirdly nice in a way, though.
Items to browse for.
Discounts to wield.
Co-workers to adult with.
Staff is laid back.
Should work out so long as I don't encounter too many forces of evil by Christmas.