First was a cabbie Thursday night. I don't know why I continue to utilize taxis to reach my destinations here in NYC. Possibly one out of twelve are actually competent drivers and know the best routes to take. And I'm paying out the ass for these white knuckle, fingernails scraping plether interior, cramped passenger experiences. Probably cause its easier for me to stomach one asshole than a train load of assholes.

So, for the most part his driving wasn't all that bad. I was headed for Thirty Fourth Street and Eighth Avenue to see Ocean's Eleven with a couple of homies. All the sudden he's slowing down taking place in the pickup line in front of the Garden, which is on Eighth Avenue between Thirty Second and Thirty Third. So I repeat my destination. He informs me I have to "get out here so I can pick up a fare." Mind you its nice and rainy outside. Not positive but I believe my response was "I'm your fucking fare, move the fucking cab to Thirty Fourth Street or you won't see a fucking dime of my fucking cash you piece of shit son of a prison whore." He started to argue to which I roared "move it!" and snarled audibly and I bared my teeth. After making a few curses in whatever his native tongue was, he screeches to a halt at my stop and forcefully hands me back exact change. I toss the coins back at him aiming for his noggin and head for the theater.

Unfortunately, my chums were late. A serious pet peeve of mine is people that are late, especially when I'm standing there scratching my ass waiting for them. Also especially when its for a movie, cause I hate taking sloppy seconds seat wise, and am completely paranoid about missing even the first second of the flick. This did not improve my mood. Neither did the ticket vendor.

For whatever reason, movie theater workers in NYC are generally on the bottom tier of intelligence, motivation and helpfulness. Dudes, how hard is it really to scoop up popcorn, make sure preprogrammed amounts of soda actually make it into a cup, push a button that says "candy" when the customer is purchasing candy, take a perforated ticket stub and rip it in half, or direct people to the proper viewing venue? Seeing as these GED failures have difficulties with those tasks, interjecting the slightest variation in their routine causes autistic like responses on their part.

Of course the ticket guy is gonna immediately throw up a conflict shield when presented with a magazine promotional thing. My manager said only one ticket voucher per coupon......do you live in Chelsea....I already rang it up.....can't do that blah blah can't do this blah blah. I moved to the side so I no longer could see the face that had the noise coming out of it, and let my friends deal with it.

Next day, morning. Went to pick up my laundry. Bill comes to twenty four dollars and some change. I give them forty. They give me back six. Do I even need to continue the story? I actually had to write out the math on a sheet of paper before they would give me corect change back. Most of the whole debacle all I kept saying was "fifteen dollars.....fifteen dollars.....fifteen dollars" or else I was going to say some really interesting things about their parents.

Later that day took a cab to work. Okay he's driving like a candy ass, well as long as he takes a decent route we should....why is he turning onto First Avenue, if he kept going down Thirteenth Street we would be....okay calm down First Avenue will be okay as long as....fucking cock sucker got on Fourteenth Street, of course we're moving like shit you retard this street sucks....don't get off on Third Avenue, your fucking turning onto Third Avenue, its official this fucker is driving like a turd, if he avoids turning...onto...Twenty...great he's turning onto Twenty Third Street. Went like that the whole way, he basically took the absolute worst possible way to get to where I needed to go, and then drove like a constipated granny on top of it. At every green light he missed I wanted to drag him out of the driver's seat and beat him to pudding with his own cab. Cost me two dollars more than what I normally pay. I deeply wanted him to contest the fact I didn't tip him, I only needed that one excuse to unleash the beast.

There was a debacle later that evening with a delivery dude, but remembering his insipid expressions and complete lack of English language knowledge is putting me on an emotional teeter of nervous laughter and more jaw clenching. Me stop now.