Sorry this wasn't posted this morning. Blogger would not let me post for some reason.

Ah, finally, a fully formed edition of The Idiot Speaks. Sorry it's been a while, I've been busy, and I was also kidnapped and locked in a trunk by an unruly mob of drunk Swiss watchmakers. Long story, but it has a happy ending. I only lost the tip of my left thumb, and they got better holiday pay.

I had thought that the Cap'n leaving the Idiot would cut down on my material, but that drunk asshole keeps showing up, sometimes to cover a shift, sometimes just to stand there drunkenly and mumble incoherent things at us while we work. Six of one, half dozen of the other, really.

The following is actually one of the last things I heard over the weekend, but definitely the funniest. We're preparing for Columbia's big St. Patrick's Day Festival, and I'm one of the opening cooks.

JT: Hey Bri, I'm going to go ahead and warn you - I'm going to be really hungover for my opening shift next Saturday.
Bri: Just as long as you're not as bad off as Mo was last year, we'll be fine.
JT: Nah, I do some of my best work here hungover.
Bri: True.
Mo: Man, I wasn't that bad.
Bri: You only worked for three hours and then went home!
At this point, Mo goes to the computer and pulls up last year's time records.
Mo: Man, I was here for almost seven hours!
Bri: Yeah, but you spent the first four in the back alley sleeping and puking.
Mo: Yeah, I learned an important lesson that day. Me and brown liquor don't mix, which is odd since I'm brown.

We're also going to have an outdoor pizza and beer tent, so Brian was busily cleaning up an old cash register when I got in last night. After about thirty minutes of wiping it down, scrubbing it, and generally just de-funking it, he went upstairs to print out an instruction manual from the Internet. About twenty minutes later he came back don, holding a sheaf of papers approximately the same thickness as a phone book, or a list of countries that our current administration has alienated. So, after around an hour of work and waiting, he plugged in the cash register to program it. It proceeded to emit a series of beeps, and would not respond to anything he did.

Bri: Fuck. Would someone remind me next year to plug in and test the cash registers before I spend an hour cleaning them?

This is not an actual conversation, but it should be noted that Drew and the Nuge got drunk and gave each other mohawk haircuts a few weeks back. Then, last weekend, they went together and got piercings (Drew got his eyebrow pierced, Nuge got some wacky ear cartilage thing.) Now, I'm not saying they're on the down-low, I'm just saying that if they get a tandem bike or roller blades, well...

I kid, I kid. I love those two guys (platonically.) They're just fun to pick on.

Eric, one of the delivery drivers (not to be confused with E-Rock, one of the managers,) has a fun game he likes to play with people who piss him off on the phone. At the end, when they give him the credit card number and he punches it in, he'll tell them that their card is showing up as stolen and he is required by law to report it to the police. It tends to freak them out a bit, and then he tells them he's just kidding. On those nights, he is my hero.

Saturday morning, I had a really, really, terribly bad hangover. It wasn't that I felt terrible, it was that my brain was functioning on the same level as your average crack head who also happens to be mentally handicapped. E-Rock had a lot of fun laughing at me as I aimlessly wandered around the kitchen, trying to figure out why I had the scarper in my hand and what I had planned on doing with it. I was also having trouble remembering words such as "lettuce," and "box."

JT: Man, I don't think I'm drinking again until St. Patrick's Day.
E-Rock: Bullshit. You said that last weekend.
JT: Oh yeah.

Have a great week, I'm sure next week's edition will be incredible due to the St. Patrick's Day weekend.

JT out.