But...Avenue Q....

It is a merry New Release Tuesday that happens to coincide with the date on which Fernando was born into this world. He is enjoying what passes for a day off: playing Final Fantasy XII and drinking a cool, refreshing Pepsi he has procured from a sodey pop fridge.

The phone rings. NEVADA CALL, reads the caller ID. Fernando pauses his game and picks up.

“Hello, Dominion of Movies.”

“Ah, yes,” says a weaselly, pleasing voice not unlike that of a servile but treacherous chancellor, “Do you carry any, ah, adult films?”

“Uh, no, I'm afraid I don't.”

“I see. Does anyone ever ask you about adult films?”

“Er. There's not really much demand for them here.”

“Well, I'm calling from Ecstatic X. We distribute adult videos to retailers like you.”

“Um. That's very nice. But I'm afraid I'm not interested in your product.”

“If you can give me just a minute, I'll be happy to give you a number of statistics regarding sales of adult video for home consumption,” says the man.

“Well, okay, but first I'd like you to answer a question for me,” says Fernando.

“Absolutely.”

“Why would I, or anyone else for that matter, spend money on something that could be had for free just about anywhere on the internet?”

“Well, you see, people like to enjoy adult videos in a relaxing home environment--”

“Pretty sure that it's still illegal to whip it out at the local Starbucks,” interrupts Fernando. “Are you suggesting to me that people in general don't consume their internet porn in the privacy of their own homes?”

“Sir, adult videos--”

“Porn.”

“Sir, that label is grossly loaded language and--”

“I mean, frigging Human Centipede is an adult video. Kill Bill is an adult video. Backdoor to the Orient is an adult video. That one is squicky gross-out horror and the other an exploitation revenge flick and the third some consenting adults doing naughty things in front of a camera really doesn't concern me and is silly sophistry. That being said, I'm not interested in your services. Good day.”

“But sir--”

Fernando hangs up, unpauses, and resumes his trudge through Barheim Passage to attain the Esper Zalera.

Permission Denied

It's a rainy evening. Fernando sits in his chair and looks out at the sheets of precipitation, thinking happy thoughts full of petrichor. A white pickup truck pulls up and a lady enters the store.

She doesn't pass by the counter, but this does not cause Fernando undue concern. The sales rack is, after all, right there. Perhaps she is browsing and this will lead to Fernando receiving income from her purchase. Thoughts like this also cause Fernando to feel happiness.

But, no, about a minute later she departs, clambers into her truck, and speeds off.

“What was that all about?” Fernando asks the empty store. He comes out from around the counter and spies the reason upon the wall.

It is a gaudy poster for some bandstand thing that is being sponsored by Miller Lite. It was not there before this lady entered the store. What's more egregious is that Fernando's own pushpins were used to secure it to the wall.

“Well, okay,” says Fernando, moving to the wall to do what needs to be done. Another customer pulls up and enters the Dominion.

“What's that all about?” he asks Fernando, pointing.

“This?” Fernando says, holding up the advertisement poster in his hand. “This is what happens when you put things on my wall without asking first.” And Fernando strides to his paper recycling box and jams the poster in amidst its garbage brethren.

By My Own Petard

A woman and her daughter enter the store one evening, browse for a bit, then approach the counter with a pair of tags. She had been in before but Fernando, ever a paragon of recognition, fails to dredge her name up from the depths of his memory.

So he goes ahead and asks. “Can I get your name?”

And then it happens. The woman looks at him and says, “Yes, you may have it. Paula Polestar.”

The daughter sighs and fixes an embarrassed gaze upon the carpet, but Fernando looks upon the woman in amazement and chagrin. “Y-you must be an English teacher,” he stammers.

“No. I just prefer it that people use proper English grammar.”

Right about there is where people on an internet forum would inject an Oh snap! flowchart jpeg.

The Noun that Verbs Your Noun

Fernando's chilling at the store one slow afternoon watching videos on Youtube. He finds himself singing along to the expository theme tune at one point. Because he wears headphones and is caught up in musical splendor and nostalgia, he misses that a customer enters the store.

He continues with his serenading until he catches a bit of movement out of the corner of his eye. He sees a young woman standing at the counter with an amused look on her face.

“You didn't just see that, okay?” Fernando says, pausing the video and removing his headset.

“See what?” she asks. “I'm not even sure what I was looking at. What is that?” She points at Fernando's computer screen which has frozen upon it the image of a white mallard with a pimping purple fedora.

“That's Darkwing Duck,” Fernando says. He eyes the young lady. “You do know who that is, right?”

“Um, no, actually.”

Fernando produces an exaggerated sigh of consternation. “How old are you?”

“Nineteen.”

“And you don't know who Darkwing Duck is?”

“No.”

“This is the part where I'm supposed to go all old fogey on your ass about your misspent youth.”

“Aren't you only like twenty-five?”

“God, I wish I was twenty-five again. That's like being a young whippersnapper somethingsomething kids these days.” Fernando shakes his fist at an unoffensive guardian spider lurking in one corner. The guardian spider pays him no mind.

The young lady laughs and promises to keep Fernando's embarrassing shenanigans to herself.

Horses and Water

A group of three people enter the store one day. Normally this is a nonissue, but today it prompts Fernando to come to full attention. It just so happens that the sole male member in this group is on Fernando's ban list for absconding with a couple of movies earlier in the year: Afterlife and Scary Movie 2. Fernando double-checks his records to get the numbers and dates correct for the inevitable, forthcoming conflict.

The group browses the store and the bastion of masculine gallantry preens his courtship feathers by remarking on how “gay-looking” this or that actor is on a given movie case. He proclaims that Jake Gyllenhaal's role in Prince of Persia wins first prize. Anyway, after too long a time to Fernando's tortured ears, they come to the counter. The gent slaps down a pair of tags with a superior smirk upon his face.

“I'm sorry. I won't rent to you.”

The smirk vanishes, to be replaced by an angry scowl and a visible twitching of the shoulders and upper arms. This man is taller and more ripped than Fernando, and he seems to feel that physical intimidation is the way to go on this one. “What?” he asks in an angry monotone.

“I'm sorry. I won't rent to you,” Fernando repeats.

“What?” The angrybrows grow more beetled in the face of Fernando's defiance.

“I'm sorry. I won't rent to you,” Fernando says a third time. “The reason being that you rented a couple of movies and never returned them. Until the $70 in late and replacement fees that I am owed is paid, I won't rent to you.”

The adolescent-minded young man growls and bunches his muscles more. “I want to rent these.”

Too easy. “And I want you to pay the $70 you owe me. Since neither is going to happen anytime soon, I don't see any point to continuing this discussion.”

One of his fangirls, Mr. Eyebrows' sex-buddy for all Fernando knew, pipes up at this point. “How does he owe you $70?” she asks, accusation in her voice.

“Two weeks of late fees plus replacement fees on top of that.” Fernando smiles. “Normally I call the cops about thefts but I didn't want to bother them with something so unimportant.”

Eyebrows' face flushes, either in petulant anger at not getting his way or because he detected an insult in the words Fernando had just said. “What'll it take to let us rent here?” asks Fangirl Two, who is the nicest-looking and politest in the bunch.

“To let you rent here? You'd need to open an account. Driver's license, cough it up.” Fernando retrieves a membership application.

“You'll let her rent but not me?” Eyebrows thunders as Fangirl Two gets to writing.

“Well, yes. For one she's not you; for two I find it is bad business practice to prejudge people based on what their relations or friends have done. She hasn't stolen from me.” Fernando decides at this point he's trolled the guy enough and needs to open the doors to redemption. “Understand that it's not personal, despite how it may seem. You pay off the seventy bucks and earn your way back into my good graces, it's all forgotten. I had a guy who owed me like ninety bucks at one point. Came in, paid it off, now he rents just fine. Something to consider.” At this point Eyebrows' expression transitioned from face-smash to mere annoyance and Fangirl Two had finished filling out the application. “Ah, excellent. It'll be three-fifty.”

Fangirl Two pays and leaves. Eyebrows still owes seventy dollars.

Canned Air

A middle-aged, scruffy-looking gentleman enters the store one day. “Yeah, I got a quick question for ya. Ya know anything about cleaning DVD players?”

“Um, there's not too awful much out there to know on the subject. Used to be that I had a cleaning disc for the players but I lent that out years ago and it was never returned. I haven't really been bothered to get a new one because canned air does everything that thing did.”

“Canned air?”

“Yeah, it's used for cleaning dust off electronics and stuff, for when you can't use water or a vacuum for fear of static electricity or, well, water damaging your things. Runs seven to twelve bucks a can depending on where you get it.”

“How's it work?”

“Um. The can has a long nozzle and you stick that where it needs to go, squeeze a little trigger, and pressurized air shoots out. Cleans the dust off the laser array pretty well.”

“Oh, okay,” says the man. “I'll give that a shot then. I've got an air compressor at home. Thanks.” And he leaves.

The man failed to return, so his plan must have worked.

Gaming the System

A high school girl enters the store one day. “Hey, if I rent one now can I get the other free later if I come back later today?”

Fernando sees no harm in acquiescing to this request. “Sure. No problem.”

So the girl selects the 2003 movie Thirteen, pays, and leaves. About three hours later she returns. Fernando is helping another customer as she enters and brings back the movie from before, but he hears her rip a tag off a case somewhere. Soon she arrives at the counter.

True Grit. That movie came out this week. Hmmm.

“I'm going to need an extra buck-fifty from you,” says Fernando.

“Well, you said this one would be free.”

“So I did. The problem is that you gamed the system by renting a less expensive movie and then tried to claim one of greater value for your free one. Had you rented them at the same time that never would have flown. Hence, you owe me an extra one-fifty to make up for the difference in value between the two.”

“Well, I didn't bring any money with me.”

“No problem. You can just leave the money in the case when you drop it off tomorrow, or come in to pay it then.”

“Oh, okay. I will,” she promises. Then she takes her movie and leaves.

The next day True Grit is returned in the drop box upon opening, but the money is nowhere to be found. The next time she comes in and is informed she still owes Fernando a dollar and a half will surely lead to a follow-up chronicle.