Someone’s on my List…

On Friday around 6:00pm I got a phone call from a Maryland number. I didn’t answer, assuming it was probably a wrong number, but I looked down later to realize I had a voice mail. I listened and it was a mattress store (I won’t name them here) calling to say that they would be delivering my mattress the next morning between 7:00 and 10:00am. This was all well and good except, of course, that I hadn’t ordered a mattress and I doubted a Maryland store even delivered to Indiana. I just ignored it, figuring the actual mattress’s recipients would be surprised the next morning, but not giving it much thought.

Until 7:10 the next morning. When my phone rang. I was so disoriented and asleep I thought it was my alarm and spent the whole ring cycle trying to turn it off.

No worries. It rang again five minutes later. It was the mattress store saying they were en route with my mattress. I told them they had the wrong number. They didn’t seem to believe me. I told them I was in Indiana and hung up.

They called back again! This time I answered and without waiting for them to greet me said, “This is the same number you’ve been calling. I’m still in Indiana.” And I hung up.

They called back again! This time I glared at the phone, but didn’t answer. Seriously? Seriously? If the number was wrong the first four times, it’s not magically going to become the right number.

Keep in mind it was Saturday. I don’t generally sleep that late on Saturday thanks to the orange monster that is usually climbing on my face demanding his breakfast and my bizarre need to beat everyone else to the grocery store on student discount day. But I do like to splurge a little on sleep. Sleep till… you know… 8:00?

But no. Because of someone else’s mattress, I was denied that splurge. And for that, the mattress store that shall remain nameless goes on my list. And possibly to the first circle of Hell.

MTVMPB Designs Hell: Can’t Cancel This

Due to our hiatus, writing about other things, and complete oversight on my part, very little construction has taken place on our particular version of Hell. 

Tonight we are adding:  People who cancel television shows prematurely/for stupid reasons/at stupid times.

Before you think this is nothing but a veiled reference to the cancelation of One Life to Live while it was the only soap opera whose ratings had been steadily climbing over the past year let me explain:  This is absolutely a veiled reference to the cancelation of One Life to Live while it was the only soap opera whose ratings had been steadily climbing over the past year.  But it’s about more than that.  It’s about the people who put Firefly in a craptastic time slot and canceled it after half a season¹.  It’s about those who canceled Farscape when it was the highest rated show on its channel.  It’s about the assholes who canceled Veronica Mars (which I will admit had gone downhill) on a cliffhanger in order to bring us whatever crap it is that the CW brings us.  It’s about asshats who canceled Remember WENN because even though it had viewers it didn’t have the viewers they wanted it to have².

Oh yes, Brian Frons will have company in this layer of Hell. 

For their heinous acts against fandom I place these sinners in the seventh layer of Hell, where I am devising very fitting punishments for them.  They shall be strapped to uncomfortable chairs and forced to watch episodes of Two and a Half Men, Corner Gas, episodes of The X-Files featuring Agent Reyes, and the one bad episode of Battlestar Galactica (Yes, there was one though I think most of us choose to pretend it never happened) while Taylor Swift music plays and someone reads aloud the last chapter of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.  And if they keep putting crap on my television I will simply add it to their eternal torments³.  Because I feel it would be wrong to wish actual physical harm to any of these people, but for some reason I find no conflict in wishing an eternity of suffering upon them in the afterlife of my own little universe.

¹Cammy Footnote:  What happened to Firefly is one of the most heinous travesties of TV programming history.
²Cammy Footnote: SCREW YOU AMC!  No resolution to the Victor vs. Scubby debate.  Total cliffhanger.  AND NOT EVEN THE DECENCY TO RELEASE THE SHOW ON DVD.  FUCK YOU, FUCK YOUR CHANNEL and I AM STILL BOYCOTTING YOU MORE THAN 10 YEARS LATER!
³Cammy Footnote:  I’m thinking heads on pikes as a warning to the next 10 generations that some actions come at too high a price, or perhaps turning their bones into flutes for little children to play…..my apologies to JMS for bastardizing B5 there.  At least THAT didn’t get totally shit-canned.

Going to Hell on a City Bus

I’m tired and cranky and possibly getting sick and it’s been wintry mixing all day long.  So that must mean it’s time to put some more people in hell.

Today we’re targeting a group of people I encounter on a daily basis.  I’m calling them “Bus Blockers” for short, but what these people are more broadly are people who don’t know how to ride buses.  To be clear, I’m not talking about people who rarely ride the bus and have an excuse for not knowing how it works.  I’m talking about people who ride the bus on a daily basis and still don’t understand how basic rules of conduct.  Here are a few pieces of bus etiquette that the people on my bus route seem unable to grasp.

–When the bus stops, you have to let exiting riders get off the bus before you can get on the bus.

–This whole process can be made easier if you exit through the back doors while new riders are boarding through the front doors.

–When the bus is full, your backpack does not get its own seat.

–Sitting on the outside seat of a two seat bench so that no one can have the inside seat when the bus is crowded makes you a douche bag.

–When all seats are taken and you have to stand in the aisle, it is customary to go all the way to the back so that others can board.  You don’t just find a comfortable place and stop.  You don’t clump with your friends around the back doors and block everyone trying to get on and off.  I don’t care how important your text message is; blocking the aisle so you can send it makes you a douche as well.

It’s not that difficult.  And yet, for the average college student?  Apparently impossible.  Which is an endless source of irritation to me during my daily commute.  For this reason I’m putting bus blockers in the third level of Hell.

In Which Kristy Plays God (or the Devil)

When I was in high school and we were studying Dante’s Inferno we had to do a project where we designed our own version of hell.  Just like Dante we had nine levels and we had to decide what groups of evil doers we thought belonged in which levels of hell.  It was quite a cathartic exercise.

Misanthropes that we are, Cammy and I have decided that It’s My TV, It’s My Peanut Butter should have its own hell.  A place to put those people that really piss us off.

Today’s damned social group:

Stair Blockers

If you’ve ever had to run across a large college campus in fifteen minutes you’ve probably encountered this group.  You may have also met them when running to catch a metro train or perhaps even a bus.  They tend to travel in groups.  They’re those people who have nowhere in particular to be so they walk very slowly.  While talking to their friends.  In a position that blocks the stairwell completely, preventing you from getting by them.

If I make it through this semester without pushing several of them down a flight of stairs, it will be a miracle.

Now I’m willing to admit this is largely a sin of stupidity, rather than a deliberate one.  That doesn’t make them piss me off less, but it does persuade me to lessen their eternal torment.  For this reason I am condemning these assholes to the second level of hell.