I know all of the words in this post, but I cannot make sense of them all together like this.

(Well, except for the last paragraph. I understood that part just fine.)

Yesterday I ordered an egg salad sandwich and got a 14" Evans Genera HD Dry Batter head.

Which reminds me of this one time in a diner when all I wanted was a side of plain toast but it wasn't on the fucking menu so I had to order a chicken salad sandwich to get it.

When I was a 19-year-old on spring break in Jamaica, I was sold a little baggy of cocaine that turned out to be nothing but baking soda. Probably not quite an analogous situation, though.

Somebody gave me a Foreigner earworm this morning and it was totally not the right thing.

5: Heh. Oops.

A perfume sprayer in Bloomingdale's tried to sell me some Diesel abomination because I said Tabac Blond was my favorite perfume. ("They're almost the same!") Incorrect.

Well there's this election going on.

It used to happen often in any local camera store or audio showroom. It happens less often now 'cause they're all gone.

You put dry batter heads on the mixer when you want to make pancakes without liquid.

There used to be a nice, medium-large consumer lumber yard in Uptown, Minneapolis. Sort of a hold-over from the time when the 29th St. Greenway (bicycle trail) was a working freight railroad, I imagine.

One time I went in there to get some yardwork accoutrements, as I was going over to my parents' house, about a mile away, and their yard was badly overgrown. I found the saw or whatever else I was looking for, but I really wanted a machete too. Couldn't see one on display, so I went to ask the clerk, who guffawed and said "A machete? This is Uptown!" So I had to go away grumbling about it, and it still irritates me, even though it was probably 14 years ago and the lumber yard is long since closed and torn down for condos.

No sir, I didn't like it!

I walk into a used bookstore in a small town. There are many many books around, it being a bookstore. I pick one up and take a look. Proprietress asks if I'm looking for any particular book or kind of book.

"No, I'm just looking around."
"Maybe you'd like [pikcs up a recent thriller]"
"No, I just want to browse."
"You might be interested in [a non-fiction history title]"."
"How about [major science fiction author]"

It doesn't stop. She continues to suggest completely random titles, apparently assessing my taste in literature solely from my height, clothes, and my refusal to tell her what I am looking for. The concept of customers preferring to browse without conversing being completely alien in this community. I leave bookless.

13: Somewhat similar to me in a stereo store sometime in the '70s (I forget what I was even looking for).

Young Amped-up salesdude: "Can I help you?"
Me: "Just looking for now."
Young Amped-up salesdude: "That won't move them off the shelves."

The one and only time I bought a car, I went to a Honda dealer to look at hybrids and the guy tried to sell me an SUV. He tried to convince me that it would be great for camping and surfing. I'm going to guess that he didn't last long as a car salesman.

15: Heh. The one time I bought a car from a dealer (rather than an ad in the paper) the dude literally could not get his head around the fact that yes, I was going to pay cash for my used car and had no zero nada interest in using the money as a downpayment for an expensive, new car. "Buh-but, you can have any car here?!?!?!?!" It wasn't even sales pressure -- pure bafflement.

Dwarf Lord got into a car, noted that it was too short for him to sit up straight, and was told to get a haircut.

I went with a couple of friends to look at cars recently and we decided to try an IQ just for fun. The salesmen quickly pointed out that for about the same price we could get an "entire car" and then let us test drive it ourselves because he was too tall to sit in it.

17: I'm trying to recall how women sat in cars during the teased-bangs phase of the 80s. I think the hair just smashed into the top of the car.

I had this happen at a local bike shop (Freewheeling Bicycles). I was looking for an obscure item I figured I'd have to buy online, but I called local bike shops to see if they carried it. I didn't expect any to, but the guy there said they had some, so I biked down there. When I got there, he handed me something completely different and told me that what I was looking for didn't exist so this other thing was really what I wanted. Why did you make me ride downtown just so you could pull your (incorrect) Comic Book Guy act? Argh!

The OP reminds me of this joke.

Many times waiters have returned to the table to tell me that the bottle of wine I ordered is out of stock, proffering a purported close substitute that was nothing at all like the original, and invariably more expensive. This has happened often enough that I suppose it to be a standard bait-and-switch tactic.

To be fair, most restuarants don't stock anything else in the same price range as Ripple.

I just finished a two-week course of post-exposure rabies vaccinations. The shots are expensive, even with insurance, and the disease itself is 100% fatal if not treated properly before symptoms present. Each of the four times I received a vaccination, the nurse-practitioner asked if I'd prefer injection in my hip or deltoid, and each time I chose my deltoid for convenience's sake. As it turns out, this was a fortunate choice; the CDC's rabies vaccine website indicates that "[t]he gluteal area should never be used for rabies vaccine injections because observations suggest administration in this area results in lower neutralizing antibody titers." Not quite the same as a misleading sell, but Jesus Christ. Good thing I didn't feel like taking off my pants!

Skunk? Raccoon? Old Yellow?

Bat.

Man.

Wich?

That one.

I didn't think bats were supposed to be a vector. I read it in high school or something.

Or maybe that was cats or rats.

Didn't rabies shots used to be abdominal and thus more painful?

According to the rabies specialist at the local public health department, bats are actually a very dangerous vector because their bites can be smaller and less painful than a pinprick. A tiny number of people in the U.S. die of rabies every year, but supposedly a sizeable percentage of those who do have been bitten by bats without knowing it.

Also, yes, from what I've heard, rabies vaccinations used to be much more painful, for exactly that reason.

Maybe we should use bat fangs to deliver inoculations.

"I know you think you want a hypodermic, but what you really need..."

Now I'm imagining bats genetically engineered to deliver vaccines and then released near the communes of the anti-vaxxors.

"We can't stop here: This is vaccine country!"

I think I learned that bats were among the most dangerous rabies carriers.

I was just telling the story of how my dad earned a dollar (Canadian) for catching a prairie dog that had bedeviled the local general store, and then a series of horrible abdominal rabies shots. It has always sounded like a rotten trade-off, but then I don't understand the currency of glory among boys.

Canadian dollars are the currency of glory?

That would surely be incomprehensible!

18: My kid was supposed to get a hand-me-down (and very old Mazda Miata) from his grandparents for his 16th birthday. Unfortunately, at 15 and 6'3", his eyes are above the height of the windshield. He can sit in it if the top is down, but he can't drive it safely. Fairly crushing blow for the kid, but I am quietly grateful not to be taking the hit for the insurance.

Yeah, my father's 6' even, and he's had a Miata ever since his midlife crisis started hitting when I was a junior in HS--he loves it, but he only barely fits, and it looks a bit funny to see his hair brushing the ceiling.

42: It was a Mazda, as it happens! I quite liked the ancient one I got from my grandparents, but we didn't get another as a replacement.

I carried a confused bat outside once and was much upbraided for risking rabies. I suppose I'd have done it differently if I'd known, but it was so sweet and soft and perplexed and non-bitey.

44.2: Related.

I have not had the wine upsell in 22 happen to me; I must not look like I'm willing to spend even more money. I did once go to dinner with a friend who is in the wine business, and who got into a near-fight with the waiter and then the maitre d' about whether the wine they brought us was the same as the one on the list (it wasn't - obviously different vintage year). I was very perplexed as to how the restaurant employees could keep up the argument that 200x was the same as 200y, not different.

Haven't been back to that restaurant since, which is kind of a shame.

my cat caught a bat and wanted to bring it inside to torture to death where the light was good/give it to daddy because she looooooves him like when she put the lizard on his keyboard. and the (dead) giant flying cockroach. the bat in distress was screaming in a truly unearthly way--I didn't even know what kind of noise it was. my sister freed the bat before the cat could get it in and it got airborne. she didn't get bitten because she'd already be dead (not that I'd out it past her to be the one 'rabies mary' healthy carrier in the world.) narnia is rabies free, natch, so all pets have to go into 5 or so months quarantine. but they can hardly stop bats flying from neighboring countries...so I wonder. perhaps the bats we have here don't fly so far? they're little swoopy jobbers, like in south carolina.

like oudemia, who is my identical twin, I have been offered some ludicrous perfume comparisons. "I prefer diorissimo, and fracas..." "you'll like this revoltingly powdery cup of cold sick from gucci then!"

My cat brought in a bat, which bit my hand and then escaped. They were still doing abdominal rabies shots in those days: I think they switched over the very next year. Plus they cultured the vaccine in duck eggs or something, and I was allergic to them. Then my cat brought in another bat and let it go in my bedroom in the middle of the night so I wrapped myself in the bedding like a mummy and whimpered till dawn as the frenzied cat/bat battle went all around the room. Bad times. Then I gave the cat to a friend who didn't live across from a bat colony.

47. al, nowhere is reliably rabies free because bats can fly over border posts in the dark, the sneaky little bastards. Even a fairly remote island like GB gets a case every decade or so as a result of this.

42: That's too bad. Miatas are amazingly fun to race (autocross), which is exactly what you want a 16 year old doing!

Bumper boats are fun. I'd forgotten until this afternoon.

I knew someone who had to be vaccinated against rabies. It was very expensive, because her PCP didn't stock the vaccine, so she had to go to the ER for every shot and pay the $100 co-apy. The first time I understand. After that I think that her doctor ought to have ordered it for her.

42: That's too bad. Miatas are amazingly fun to race (autocross), which is exactly what you want a 16 year old doing!

They're also really hard to make out in, even if you're short.

Totally OT: I just got a tax letter and am feeling out of sorts about it, but I'm not sure whether that's a rational reaction.

For context: I live in one municipality, work in two others (FT job and PT job). The wage tax for the FT job is 4%, so every year at tax time I tally up the tax paid and file a form with my home municipality reporting all my income (both jobs) as well as all wage tax paid (for the FT job, to the other municipality).

The amount I've paid, since it's 4%, always far exceeds the 1% wage tax charged by my *home* municipality, even when you add the extra income from my PT job, so I never have to pay anything (more). I assume my home municipality then tries to claw back some money from the place where I pay it, but I never see any of those transactions.

Now comes this letter, telling me that to "to establish statewide uniformity and efficiency," I'm not going to be able to count the wage tax paid on my FT job toward my wage tax liability for my PT job. Apparently this is to "eliminate unfairness" caused by the fact that some residents of my municipality have to pay taxes on income earned here while others (like me) do not, because we're already getting credit for other taxes paid.

I think of myself as a person who is generally downright cheerful about paying my taxes, but for some reason this is really galling me. Maybe it's because the letter is deliberately written in an obfuscating way.

Am I being totally petty here?

Obviously all of this could be solved if we consolidated municipal budgets so all taxes were collected at the state level but ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. I can sooner imagine conservatives embracing global warming than allowing that to happen.

(FT job and PT job)

That doesn't sound fun.

I don't think local liberals would regard your tax plan as getting mugged by Philadelphia anyway.

57: I don't know, ninja librarian is probably more fun than most jobs.

I don't think it's a petty annoyance because hey, it was un-petty enough for the state to send a letter, after all. I wonder if they expect more revenue gain from simpler accounting (for them!) or from the extra cheeseparings of tax.

...Surely the longterm effect is going to be more job/domicile stickiness and a knock-on sclerosis in the local economy? Oh, but in the next accounting period.

"Wage tax"?

I don't know, ninja librarian is probably more fun than most jobs.

True. Perhaps I hadn't fully considered the situation.

58: ? Not sure I follow.

60: The extra tax, definitely.

61: wage tax = earned income tax. Do they not have that in MD?

63.last: I dunno, maybe. I've never looked into the earned income tax. It seems I should.

63.1: You guys get all the nice stuff from the state.

I'm mostly just jealous of the rail transit and the united city-county thing.

the united city-county thing.

Happened a long time ago. But until 1850, Northern Liberties, Southwark and Spring Garden had all made appearances in the ten largest cities in the US lists.