Dylan Bolin

The grocery store at which I shop for weekly provisions has recently made some changes.  They’ve removed several registers and replaced them with four self-checkout kiosks where shoppers may scan, bag and pay for their purchases without any cashier intervention.  While this offers a small degree of anonymity to husbands who are forced by their wives to sheepishly purchase feminine hygiene products from that aisle that smells vaguely of cardboard and baby powder, it has offered its share of problems.

This particular store has chosen to call these four kiosks the “Speed Zone,” proving that even large, chain grocery stores are masters of irony. 

First, there are no rules regarding how we shoppers are supposed to line up.  As a result, we form a compact mass, like grains of sand in an hour glass, jostling to be the next to fall through.  The fact that this area is called the “Speed Zone” creates certain expectations of speed that supersede civility, and turns us into a throng of Third World peasants swarming a flatbed truck full of U.N.I.C.E.F. rice.  But making it to one of the kiosks is just the beginning.

Next, you have to negotiate what appears to be a M.R.I. machine with no more training than your current education.  As a person who hesitates to program his automatic coffee machine because he’s afraid he’ll end up heating an empty carafe and burning down his house at 3:00am, this is a daunting task to say the least.  Never mind that there’s an impatient mob jutting their hips and clucking their tongues while watching me fail.

A word of advice:  NEVER attempt to use one of these kiosks if you plan to purchase produce.  The “H.A.L. Foods 9000 Computer” needs to know whether that onion is White, Spanish or Vidalia as every code is different.  Stick to the highly-processed foods in the bright packaging.

And if you do screw something up (and you will), there is a light at the top of a long pole that turns red.  It not only informs an attendant that you’re an idiot, it signals to the grumbling mass behind you that their wait has just been extended.

You’d think that one time through would make me more sympathetic to the people ahead of me the next time, but it doesn’t.  Instead I’m like a recent immigrant who, one day after taking the naturalization exam, calls a talk radio station and screams in pigeon English that we should close the ports at Ellis Island.  I, too, have cast stones from the crowd as a confused 70-year-old lady attempted to check out by holding each item up to the LCD screen, even going so far as to turn the box to show the product name to the lady inside the computer.

So, to every person who has ever worked at a grocery store register:  If I have ever audibly sighed while you called for a price check, if I have ever scowled while you had to manually key in a U.P.C., if I have ever cast aspersions on your vocation, chosen or not, I apologize.  With all my heart, I am sorry.  Please come back; like John Conner, only you have the power to destroy the robots.

-Dylan

I’ve recently announced my desire to be a Death Coach.  It’s like a Life Coach, but approaches the subject from a different perspective.

As an introductory offer, for a limited time only, hire me as your Death Coach and I’ll include $100,000 worth of Death Assurance as well.

Surely, someone has tried to sell you Life Insurance, but no phrase has ever been more of a misnomer.  Insuring life?  Immortality for 30 bucks a month?  Preposterous!  And yet we gladly pay it the premiums.

What I’m offering is Death Assurance.  Every day, at a time of your choosing, I will call you to remind you that you are going to die.  I assure you, it’s going to happen, and you can’t stop it.

Is there a better motivator than that?  A cup of coffee and your pending mortality.  Bring on the day!

Please note that I am NOT offering Death Insurance.  That implies a much more active role on my part.  I have no interest in following you around, insuring that you’re going to die.  Besides, I think there are laws prohibiting that.

Dylan Bolin Death Coaching:  “Let me help you walk up to Life and sucker-punch it.”

Now with Death Assurance!

-Dylan

The Jerry Lewis M.D.A. Labor Day Telethon has always conjured a mixed bag of emotions for me.  As a child, it heralded the the last day of Summer Vacation…and not in a Mardi Gras blowout way, but rather a depressing, low-rent and local way.  While I’m no longer in school, there’s still something about news personalities from the local C.B.S. affiliate in formal wear on a Monday afternoon that makes me want to drink another beer, and another, and another until I pass out, and their awkward banter becomes the surreal plot of a dream during an oily, fitful, alcoholic nap.

As I watched the phone bank volunteers in the background squirm like actors who didn’t know what to do with their hands, I fantasized calling in to make a pledge, and having the following conversation:

(RING)

“Thank you for calling M.D.A., my name is Steve, how much would you like to pledge today.”

“Hello Steve, my name is Dylan.  The amount of my pledge depends very much on you.”

“Okay…”

“I’m watching television right now, Steve, which one are you?”

“I’m wearing a red shirt, um, I have glasses…”

“Wave your hand, Steve.”

Steve waves.

“Are you the bald guy?”

“Well, I guess you could say I’m slightly follicley-challenged…”  We both chuckle.

“Let me get to the point, Steve.  I would like to pledge $1 Million.”

“Oh my GOD, sir!  That’s great…!”

“Wait a minute, Steve, there’s a catch.  I would like to pledge $1 million IF you strangle the gentleman next to you.”

“What?”

“If you strangle the person next to you, I don’t care how, I will pledge $1 million.”

“Carl?”

“If that’s his name.”

“I don’t know…”

“$1 million dollars, Steve!  You’ll be a hero!  You’ll be the talk of the phone bank volunteer circuit!  Besides, it’s for the kids, Steve.”

Then I watch as Steve, tears in his eyes, puts down the receiver.  Next to him, Carl is arrhythmically bouncing to the 90’s Hip-hop song they’re pumping through the studio speakers and waving a Green Bay Packers pennant.  Steve clamps his hands around Carl’s throat.  Carl tries to stand, but Steve wrestles him to the floor.  Partially obscured by the table of phones, I can only see Steve’s head and shoulder blades hunched over.  Every once in a while, he’s thrown upwards by the last throes of Carl’s struggle, but, soon enough, it calms, and, breathless, he returns to the phone.

“Okay…it’s done…”

“I’m sorry, I think I have the wrong number,” I say and quickly hang up the phone.

On television, I watch Steve’s eyes widen as he throws back his head a screams from the very bowels of madness.  That’s when the local anchor woman asks him to get up and dance with her.

-Dylan

…a woman in a wheelchair was shouted down at a New Jersey town hall as she attempted to plead her case.

I just returned from a show at Marquette University where, for whatever reason, exactly half of the crowd began booing at the mere mention of President Obama’s name.

My friends, at this rate, we are two years from Mad Max’s Thunderdome.

I’ve made several jokes at the expense of the health care debate, but there’s something I’d like to say in all seriousness, and I’m paying my web host, so I’m going to say it here:  Make sure you’re on the right side on this one.

If, in your heart, you believe that our country will be worse as a result of insurance for all, if you believe that the government is going to kill your family while raising your taxes because, well, because they want to.  Surely the governement has it’s reasons.  If this is what you believe, then fight for it with all your heart.

If, in your heart, you believe that Health Care is a basic, human right, and a right that a for-profit corporation doesn’t have the right to give or take away.  Despite the fact that a massive Health Care overhaul will eliminate jobs and increase unemployment on an unfathomable scale unless those same employees become Government employees and are thereby paid with tax dollars not yet factored into any estimates.  If this is what you believe, then fight for it with all your heart.

Please, let us resort to our better natures.  Let us be thoughtful in our disagreements and empathetic in our opinions, because future generations are going to hold us accountable.  I want to tell my kids that I made my decision based on love for my fellow man, and not my fear of of him.  I want to tell my kids that I made my decision based on my love of life, and not my fear of death.

Even if I’m not currently as informed as I should be, I want to have the debate.  I want to know enough that I can say that I was on the side of what was right.  This really feels like one of those defining moments.

Anyway…

I promise I’ll go back to trafficking in fart jokes tomorrow.

-Dylan

My wife and I live on the corner of a fairly busy intersection that’s controlled by a stoplight.  For this reason, we are serenaded nightly by cars with sub-woofers that cost twice as much as the actual car.  Thanks to new city ordinances, I could report them to the police who would then send them a ticket, but honestly, I have no moral ground to stand on. 

You see, while the kids seem to like the lower frequencies and heavy bass, I, myself enjoy a lot of high end and treble.  That’s why I tricked out my Ford Focus with a new device called an Ultra-Tweeter.  When I take the lady out cruising, we pull over, pop the trunk and crank up that ultra-tweeter.  Sure some low-rent sound systems like to rattle the windows of the houses they pass with the sub-woofer, but my ultra-tweeter makes their pets explode.  But I digress.  The point is that I live in a high traffic area.

Last night, a minivan pulled up outside my house and six men of varying ages piled out.  They then proceeded to just hang out.  After twenty minutes, I decided that my Pit Bull, Bailey, and I should head out and have a look.  Under the guise of taking her for an evening stroll, I clipped the leash to her collar and, together, we nonchalantly walked out the front door.

This seemed to startle them.

“Oh, good evening, sir,” one of them said.

“Hello,” I replied and opened the gate.

“And who is this?” said the same guy, moving to pet Bailey.

“Yeah, don’t do that,” I said.

“Oh, so she’s mean, huh?”

“No.  Just nervous around strangers.”  That’s when the oldest of them chimed in.

“We’re just waiting for a co-worker.”

“Yeah,” said the apparent animal lover, “we have a siding business and, um, we’re going to be in the neighborhood tomorrow.”

“Oh,” I said, “I didn’t ask.”  Bailey barked.  “Quiet!” I said.  As I started to take Bailey around the block, I pulled a small Mag Light out of my pocket and pointed it at the back of their minivan.

“What are you doin’?” one of them asked.

“Look,” I said, “I’m sure nothing’s going on, and I’m sure that you all belong to a siding company and you’re just waiting on a co-worker.  But let’s say something does happen.  Now, believe me, I’m not saying anything is going to happen, but let’s say it does.  This might be good information to have, you know?” 

This seemed to make them even more nervous.

“Tell you what, here’s my information:  I drive a…”  And I gave them the year, make, model and license plate number of my car.  “Now, it helps if you know people who can look the information up, and I do, but if six guys are ever hanging out in front of where you live, and you happen to see a (year, make, model and license plate number), you can say:  ’Oh, hey, at least I know one of them,’ and rest easy.  Okay?  You all have a good night.”  And Bailey and I went on our walk.

Before we had even rounded the corner, the minivan sped off.  And wouldn’t you know it, when Bailey and I went on our walk today, we didn’t see anybody canvassing for siding business.

I still don’t know if what I did was incredibly stupid or incredibly cool.  I do know that I really love our sweet, little dog.

-Dylan