Go Kippers!

Fernando is at work when his cell phone rings. The number is one which he does not recognize so he ignores it and instead goes to fetch coffee. Upon his return, he notices that he has a voicemail. He checks it and this is what he hears:

“Hi Fern, this is Latvia with Eagle 107: The Heart of the Bay! I'm giving you a call to let you know that you can give a shout out to your winning team, the Zail-Kanzin (except she mispronounced it as something phonetically resembling “Koozle”) Kippers, as they head off to the playoffs. So if you'd like to get a ten-second spot, give me a call at -insert random numerals- and remember, go Kippers!”

Many thoughts formed in Fernando's mind after hearing this: How did this lady get my cell phone number? Why would she call my cell phone if it was the Dominion she was trying to contact? Doesn't the Dominion reside in Saladolsa? Has it relocated since last I checked? Does this mean Latvia is cold-calling cell phones at random? If she's randomly punching in digits, could she happen to call herself calling herself? Would Xzibit then create a singularity which swallows the entirety of the universe swallowing the entirety of the universe? I should google “colliding black holes” because that's pretty dang badass and--

“If you would like to delete this voice message, press seven.”

Fernando did.

Those People

A lady and her daughter or granddaughter are in the store one day haggling over which movies to rent. The daughter selects the case for J. Edgar off the rack and says, “I've heard this is a really good one.”

Mom turns to see what Daughter has chosen and goes into apoplexy. “Absolutely not. I won't have that.” Mom is one of those kinds of people who throws her weight around and insists pretty heavily that her way is the way.

“It's a biopic. I like them and you wouldn't have to watch it.”

At this Mom pulls Daughter in close and starts whispering things to her. The only words Fernando can make out with certainty are “those people” and “dresses,” but despite this he has a pretty good idea as to what sort of content could have set Mom off, considering the (possibly unfounded) rumors involving Mr. Hoover's personal and social life.

In the end Daughter (who's sixteen or seventeen or thereabouts) decides on Super 8, and Mother has no objections to that one. They pay and depart.

Despite the fact that he does not share Mom's opinion about “those people” and “dresses,” Fernando did not interject into the conversation between Mother and Daughter because it's none of his business; as has been said many times before, he's Keeper of the Dominion and not Morality Police of the External World. Nevertheless, he thinks Mom is a close-minded silly billy because Daughter had the right of it: she didn't have to watch the damn movie. The kid's sixteenish. She's adult enough to commandeer a machine capable of murder and while she's probably not particularly wise (we all did absolutely stupid things at sixteen), she's smart enough to form her own opinions.

So what if Mom doesn't like “those people” in the media she consumes? I don't like cheese. I don't go on dumb crusades trying to prevent people who like cheese from having their cheese. If I had, Baldr forbid, a child and that child loved cheese more than anything in the world, I'd let him or her have the damn cheese. I loathe baseball, but if the kid wanted to do little league then little league would be had.

No, it's not a false equivalency between cheese/baseball and the myriad forms of human sexuality and gender identity (let's cut the bullshit surrounding the “those people” euphemism). Can't have it both ways; to the people who believe it's a choice, restricting people's ability to choose with whom they fool around or what style of clothing they wear is just as repugnant as forbidding someone who really really wants to have a pink-on-the-inside steak from having the damn steak. You're not wearing the dress or eating the steak, and fuck whatever moral superiority bullshit you use to justify restricting others from enjoying the things they enjoy. On the flipside, neural physiology is neural physiology whether it's in regards to cheese or sex. People don't choose their likes and dislikes. They simply are, all because our brains send whatever mix of electrical impulses and chemicals rushing through our system when the situation warrants.

So stop it. Just stop. Let people do what they want to do in peace. It's none of my business, none of your business. Rant and rave all you like about the things that people do. Go on a PETA crusade to free all the cute animals if that's what you think is best. But don't impede anyone from visiting KFC. Don't stop someone from seeing a movie which nobody is forcing you to see! That crosses the line from opinionated bullshit ranting (-cough-) into being an asshole.

Success!

A man and his girlfriend enter the store one afternoon. They come up to the counter looking somewhat awkward. “Hi, we just moved into the area and you guys are like the only store around. How does it work to rent from you guys? Do I need to set up an account or something?”

Fernando says, “Yeah, but that process is quick and painless. Let me grab an application for you guys.” He does so and the new man looks it over.

“Uh, we can come back some other time then to fill this all out because I don't have the address memorized or anything.”

“Well, if you guys can fill in everything else then it's really no problem. Except the credit card info, there. I don't need that from you. Really, if you've got your license on you, we can fill in whatever we have and go from there. It's no problem.”

“Really? That's cool of you.” He sets to work while his girlfriend browses. As he writes, the stranger makes small talk, “So do you work here, or...?”

“Actually, I'm the Keeper of this Dominion. Fernando H. Stevens.” Fernando hands over one of his business cards and extends his hand. The gent's handshake is a weak one, but oh well.

They have since rented a number of movies and proved to be quite trustworthy customers. Hooray!

Time, Interest, These Things Matter Not

A lady comes into the store one evening. “Hey, what's a good movie that you've seen?”

“Um. I really liked Burke and Hare but that one came out end of December.”

“Wait, so you haven't seen these?” She points at the new release rack and nebulously targets titles like Breaking Dawn: Part 1 and All Things Fall Apart.

“Not really. Puss In Boots, yes. The other newer ones not so much.”

“Why not? Don't you work here?”

“I do. 'Work' is kind of the operative word. I don't really find myself immersed in a film if I have to pause it or stop watching it every few minutes to help a customer.”

“Take them home and watch them there.”

“That would require me to have the free time and inclination to watch those movies after hours. I lack both on most days. Not to mention the movies would need to be in at the end of the night and if that's the case I did something terribly wrong.”

“Well, I'm just going to take this one if you can't help,” she says, plucking the tag for Breaking Dawn.

“Works for me. I'm not exactly the target demographic for that movie anyway.”

Fernando fills out the slip, she pays, and she leaves.

Movie of the Movie

One of Fernando's customers says to Fernando one evening, “So, Girl With the Dragon Tattoo's coming out this month, huh? That the Swedish version?”

“No, that's the American adaptation.”

“Says a lot about us when we have to remake every foreign movie but throw pissy-fits when some country like France wants to remake one of ours.”

Fernando never expected that sort of depth or insight from this individual. “Yeah, it does. But all they're really concerned with is how much money they can make off it. They released the Swedish version a couple years back and it didn't do so well, probably because people are too lazy to deal with subtitles, but people still stayed berserk over the book, and here we are.”

“Yeah. As long as they can sniff out a way to make money off something, they'll do it.”

“Amen to that.” He leaves, and Fernando's opinion of this customer was changed on that day.

Environmentalist

Fernando speaks with Ronaldo one Saturday at the Dominion about topics great and small. The current subject was how Ronaldo knows a man named Sean Connery who plays on the sports teams at a nearby school and how his parents are certified awesome for giving their son that name. Then a vehicle pulls up and a child aged eight or ten clambers out of the passenger's side door. "Clambered" because his shape somewhat resembles a panda bear if panda bears were pasty and rust-colored instead of white and black. That boy will have diabetes issues down the road. He holds in his hands a paper cup bearing the Coca-Cola brand.

“God, I hope he doesn't bring that in here,” says Fernando.

Ronaldo is confused for a moment, since this statement is quite unrelated to the current conversational thread. He turns and notices the lad, who stands in the parking lot and leans into the minivan to speak with his parental unit. “Doesn't look like it. I think he was just holding it--”

The boy then turns and pitches the cup out into the snow next to Fernando's building. “Or he's going to do that,” says Fernando, striding around the counter and out the door as Ronaldo watches. The boy has leaned into the van again and so does not notice Fernando wading into the two feet of snow where the cup lay. Our protagonist picks it up and finds that it is still half-filled with some variety of the sweet, dark liquid for which the Coca-Cola company is famous.

The boy and his mother, by this point, have passed behind Fernando and near the entrance to the Dominion. Fernando calls out to the young litterbug, “I think you dropped something,” and waggles the snow-encrusted cup.

The boy does not show any remorse for being caught in the act and the mother is profoundly apathetic towards her offspring's maltreatment of the world. “Oh,” he says, and takes the container back from Fernando. He opens the passenger-side door and replaces the cup inside the minivan, where it does not deface the earth nor Fernando's property, then rejoins his mother inside.

They rent some movies and depart. Fernando watches to make sure a redux of what just happened does not occur out of a prepubescent boy's spite, but it does not.

Playtime

The phone rings. The caller ID reads "Out of State." Fernando answers with his usual greeting.

"Yes, could I speak with whomever oversees your website maintenance?" asks the Indian-accented man on the line. It's news to Fernando that he even has a website.

"With whomever," eh? thinks Fernando, doubly-sure he's dealing with a telemarketer. He wracks his brain trying to remember who that could possibly be. Then he recollects who serves as his web wizard.

Fernando pitches his voice in the direction of nasal and affects a smarmy tone. "Yeah, what do you want?"

"I am calling on behalf of Easygrip Enterprises. We are having a special deal for businesses such as yourself."

"Wait a second. I'm the guy who does the inner-tubes stuff here. What makes you think I'd source this kind of delicate development out-of-house? Do you even know what we do here?"

"According to my records--"

"We are engaging in a momentous experiment! The sort of experiment you see only once every hundred...no, two hundred years! I can't have such things plastered willy-nilly all over cyberspace for the pornographers to steal my thunder!"

"Sir, could we be serious for a second?"

"Sir? Sir!? I'll have you know I resent the human-centric biases in language with regard to honorifics! Do you know how many time's I've had to deal with some fool who insisted on being called "sir" or "lord" just because his parents happened to insist on being called "sir" or "lord"? Jeans and not genes, as my uncle always said! Did you know that my uncle invented jeans?"

"Sir, please."

"Oh, I get it. You just want to call here to take up my time on piffling matters of no great importance and you don't want to hear about my uncle. How rude! How--"

Fernando cuts off here because the telemarketer hangs up. "Why does nobody want to be my friend?" he wails to the empty store.