(no subject)

[levertovfan]

Yes, it's time again for another installment from my father's alter-alter ego (..groan), SexMan.

Those of you who have been following my livejournal comments know that, yes, one of my father's aliases is SexMan. The name is not his invention; other members of his leadership workshop gave him the name.

Without further ado...SexMan Sues after Involuntary Explusion by Chain Store’s Bouncers



“This is not about me or about the pain I suffered when I was propelled into the row of shopping carts in front of the store. I’m suing for the cause of living logical, meaningful lives and not being manipulated to imagine we need to count the number of fibers in our sateen sheet covers or use a special flame retardant dispenser for guacamole.”

That was SexMan’s opening volley in what he claimed would be a protracted legal and cultural struggle against Bolsters, Bidets, and Boudoirs (disguised name), a national chain of stores selling 287,000 purportedly essential household items that George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and our other founding fathers and their illegitimate children never could have imagined in their wildest dreams.

It all started quite innocently, at least according to SexMan’s lawyer, Kimberly Su Yu. SexMan is not known as a big shopper even though he occasionally buys yogurt and light bulbs in a supermarket and once bought a sump pump in a local hardware store. He and SpaceGrace went to Bolsters, Bidets, and Boudoirs with their friend the Beauteous Altoona to help her look for sheets for her mother’s new room in a nearby half way house for recovering junior high school principals.

Upon entering the store SpaceGrace sensed a strange foreboding when she saw SexMan’s slightly queasy _expression upon being greeted by a garish display proclaiming a one day sale on self-cleaning kumquat reamers. Her training in abnormal psychology had noted that queasiness is sometimes associated with fallen pride syndrome, which happens when a supposedly knowledgeable individual suddenly confronts fundamental personal failings such as the inability to visualize a kumquat compounded by complete ignorance of why a kumquat might need reaming. Always careful to validate her assumptions about matters personal and psychological, SpaceGrace decided to resist premature conclusions, especially since she knew a bit too much about the inner dysfunctions of SexMan’s convoluted mind, and suspected that his response might involve a deeper issue.

In SexMan’s view, his mind was one of his most important resources, almost at the level of his prized 1975 Pinto convertible and his two stuffed armadillos, and somehow he had concluded that the marketing department of Bolsters, Bidets, and Boudoirs was engaged in a nefarious plot to turn that mind to mush. In a flight of hubris he thought he could fight them with logic. How wrong he was. According to his deposition …

“I was just asking simple questions about products this store was trying to foist on the American consumer, and their barely trained sales people couldn’t answer even simple questions. I don’t know why that led the store manager to call the bouncers from the organic beer and tequila bar next door, and I certainly do not accept the supposed applicability of the Customer Ejection provisions in California’s Commercial Code. As a loyal and well-intentioned citizen I fully understand the Customer Ejection provisions allowing storekeepers to kick out weirdos who don’t wear shoes or shirts or tobacco chewers who treat store displays as spittoons. But it is obviously quite a stretch to assume that those rules could also apply to honestly curious customers who embarrass the sales force by asking straightforward questions about the 287,000 products in the store. After all, aren’t the employees there to answer questions?

That wasn’t the way those sales people saw it. They were convinced that all of those questions from SexMan were harassment, no more and no less. In their view, no one making their piddly salaries should be subjected to questions such as:

… Do “flare coolers” interfere with the functioning of “electric candle warmers” or “smokeless candle snuffers with wick trimmers”?

… Is it better to use a “soap pump palm brush” or a “soap dispensing kitchen brush” when cleaning a “double sided dry erase door hanger”?

… Do I have to buy both a “pizzelle press” and a “mushroom press”, or can I trick the “pizzelle press” into pressing mushrooms?

… Does it hurt when you use a “palm grater”?

… Can you use the same “fabric shaver” on a “gusseted bed pillow” and on a “shiatsu massaging cushion”?

… Does someone who needs a “turkey lifter” typically need a “bed lifter”, a “bed elevator”, or a “sheet snuggler”?

… Do you need to use a “chair seat protector” when sitting on a “vanity stool” while using a “natural bronzer”, a “non-surgical face lift kit”, or a “hair removal system with refreshing cucumber and melon scent”?

… Is it possible to use “suction cup soap” with a “soap pump palm brush” to clean a “French press replacement glass”?

… Does a “gourmet olive oil sprayer” need a “pouring shield” when “non-stick egg rings” are being used?

… Is it uncouth to store an “intimate wash bag” in a “stainless steel bag holder”?

… Are “washable timers” more reliable than “AM/FM fog free shower radios”?

… Is it usually necessary to use a “revitalizing color therapy machine” to recover from spending three hours in Bolsters, Bidets, and Boudoirs trying to match the color and texture of a “ruffled eyelet bedskirt” with the fluorescence of a “lace and gathered tulle satin” “queen sized duvet cover” that comes pre-packaged with “a Euro sham and a square toss”?

… Can real men understand the significance and implications of lace and gathered tulle satin queen sized duvet covers, with or without shams, tosses, and ruffled eyelet bedskirts?

To the store manager, the final two questions were the last straw. After several employee reports of a weird dude asking cruel and unusual questions, he retreated surreptitiously to the store’s homeland security bunker, called the FBI’s surveillance permission hot line, and began monitoring and recording SexMan’s every move. He interpreted some of SexMan’s questions as sheer ignorance of household matters and others as feeble attempts to hit on several attractive female employees who were installing a display of “moth sachettes” and “stainless skimmers”, cleverly paired with their surprisingly expensive instruction manuals and replacement kits. The question about real men was a clear escalation, however, and this destructive game had to stop immediately. This was no longer about this phony customer’s ignorance or attempts to play a doddering Don Juan. Commercial heresy is a serious offense to American capitalism. Bolsters, Bidets, and Boudoirs was a serious store that tried to maintain an attitude of piety and solemnity in helping people make important purchase decisions that they or their designated recipients might have to live with the rest of their lives, or until the store’s marketeers reversed the fashions early next year. Hints of belittling the products or the shopping experience were intolerable in the store’s sacred space. Casinos had the right to kick out card counters and B, B, and B surely had the right to reject customers who did not play by the rules of consumer commerce.

The bouncers arrived quickly from next door, but not before SexMan had entered a deep philosophical conversation with the more intellectually curious of the moth sachette ladies about the difference between a duvet, a comforter, and a bedspread, including issues such as why duvets needed covers when bedspreads didn’t, whether comforters needed covers, whether it was fashionable to use flannel bedspreads with duvets, and why Americans, who are supposedly so free and happy, need to pay money for comfort objects at Bolsters, Bidets, and Boudoirs, especially in the form of recycled, 372 thread per inch recycled burlap. Unimpressed with these inquiries, the bouncers pushed him into a shopping cart, hustled him to the door, and launched the cart on its fateful trajectory before he learned the answers to questions that American consumers must wonder about frequently based on the number of cars in the parking lot. The symbolism of being stuffed into a speeding shopping cart about to collide with fifty other carts was not lost on SexMan. He just didn’t know what it meant.

Comments

[alirose.livejournal.com]

your father is certainly strange, but quite amusing and clever none the less. Thanks for sharing! heh

[bladeforge.livejournal.com]

I would be interested to hear your father's opinions on real men and quiche.

[draskireis.livejournal.com]

Your father is highly entertaining, and I too would like to hear his opinions on real men and quiche.

[levertovfan.livejournal.com]

I believe my father approves of quiche as a supplement to a manly diet, a concession to bad cafeterias where quiche is the best option or else the need to occasionally wine and dine the womenfolks. Quiche is certainly not a mainstay of a manly diet.

Incidentally I should mention that, per my father, the mainstays of a manly diet are brocolli, oatmeal, yogert and yams.

My father is, of course, an expert on all things manly. The degree of his expertise is illustrated by the fact that he once asked me, on a trip to the post office, to buy manly postage stamps for him. No flowers or impressionists or mamby pamby holiday stamps with turkeys and dancing christmas trees for him, no sir.