Everyone knows that jews don't drink. I am a decided lightweight. Anyway, for your information mr. you know who, vodka is not hard alcohol, they make it from potatoes. I am not much of a drinker but there are times you have to indulge in order to be neighborly. Last night I had a glass of a very special 2006 french Grand Cru something or other that was delicious courtesy of Jan and Jim.
The truth is, my back is in one of its annual, left sacral, L4 and 5 let's fuck with Robert moods again and I have been looking at life from the vantage of a medium baked bavarian pretzel. And it's not my spare tire, and its not the booze and its not my bad attitude, it is this;
My cheap office chair, my broken cheap office chair, my third in a year, this one a loaner from Renée. because I am too cheap to spring for something decent I have become a sore backed, ibuprofen laden, zombie and a shadow of my former self.
I dragged my tormented body out of my contorted position and drove to Temecula, to look at the chairs at Staples and hopefully solve my back problem. I sat in about 30 chairs from armless modernist numbers that look like they would break if you looked at them wrong, to backless zen like chairs that keep you in the perfect satori state, to the chair equivalent of the new camaro with racing stripes, massage chairs, the whole gamut. Really liked the Posturpedic chair but it was padded like grandma's sofa and had a floral print and looked kind of dowdy. I ended up picking up a slightly more expensive cheap office chair. Hey, they all break anyway, right?
I did my best Festus impression and coaxed the box up to the register. The young checker asked me if I wanted to spend another $4.99 on the extended warranty? "Well how long is the implicit warranty," I asked? She said, "One year but you have to ship it back to the manufacturer and the shipping will cost more than the chair."
I stood there a bit dumbfounded and said, "What you're telling me is that the actual warranty is a scam and that Staples doesn't stand behind its products." I saw the cashier behind her nodding vigorously in assent. I went into a mini dissertation of the sadness of living in an age when such poorly made necessities are designed for built in obsolescence and to be throw aways and I saw a glazed look coming over her eyes, I had lost her.
"So you want the new warranty?"
I bit my lip and shuffled my tired self and my new chair out the door.
