Living on the Edge

It's my dad's birthday today.  To celebrate we had salad (his special homemade kind with romaine, bacon bits, tomatoes, and ranch dressing), and pizza.  My mom opened the lid of one of the pizzas, and immediately went, "What?  No sausage, pepperoni, or mushroom?"  If you know my dad, you know these are his three favorite pizza toppings.  No, tonight he decided to go for ham, pineapple, and bacon, to which my sister commented, "Livin' on the edge there, dad."  And it quickly became the running joke of the evening along with the other joke that he turned ten years older than he actually is.

I think somewhere hidden in the depths of all places named retail (or possibly just in the glare of the fluorescent lighting) there exists some sort of supernatural siphon of commercialistic monster that slowly drains you of any resistance to its will.  I could feel myself dying, cell by cell, today as I swiped things across a scanner.  I suppose it did not help that I was tired.  But still.  I felt more disgusted with myself today than I ever have before: Because I'm actually succumbing to their will, and I even prefaced it for some of my customers as being for my own selfish gain.

Selfish gain my ass (and there's really no other way to word it as to evoke the same disgusted meaning, else I would've).  It's so incredibly overrated.  And don't you dare tell me otherwise. If I keep up this behavior, I'm gonna have to smack myself pretty soon.  Selfish gain, however, is not to be confused with gain.  Gain is not bad.  After all, to die is gain.

If commercialistic siphon monster be the stuff of earth, then I'll just have to go take a nice long dip in God's ocean to replenish what the monster continues to suck out of me.