So We Stopped At This Sketchy Gas Station

There was a curb I had to step over on my way to the door, which was coated with a thin layer of dirt and smeared with breath. The cashier was a disheveled, heavy-set woman whose long, yellowing fingernails bore curving strips of glittery blue polish - crack nails, Anna called them - and she tapped them menacingly on the counter as I walked by. When I looked closer I saw that the nail on her middle left finger was beginning to detach; it dangled by its corner, swinging with the motion of her hand.

On my way to the cooler I passed a tall kid with delicate, slightly feminine features, who stared hollowly ahead at the wall in front of him. His mouth was a straight, fixed line, and he held something against his leg, covered with his hand. I pictured a knife, or a razor - something that would appear, suddenly, between his fingers, slicing through the air and turning my life into a Lifetime movie. (Two girls on the road, victimized by a teenage psychopath. Two mothers, bent on revenge - at any cost.)

I got a Sunkist from the cooler and stood in line, behind Potential Psychopath. At the front, a balding man with a body lumpy and pale as a pierogie pounded his fist on the counter, crying, "but I don't want to sign. Why can't you sign?"

Crack Nails tapped his credit card on the counter and smirked. "Well, I guess I could sign. I could sign your name."

"No! I'll sign my own name." Pierogie drew a loose slipknot slightly below the line, then looked back up and whined, "I don't cause problems."

"You don't cause problems?" Crack Nails dropped his card back on the counter, then folded her arms across her chest, digging her crack nails into her upper-arm skin.

"I've never caused problems."

"Alright, you don't cause problems."

"That's right, I don't."

"Bye, William."

Potential Psychopath's hand shifted slightly as he watched Pierogie leave. I embraced my histrionic side and flinched, stumbling back a couple steps; and then my suspicions were confirmed when he lifted his hand and held up a sleek, gleaming silver razor.

Or rather, Razr. Like the cell phone. I'm an idiot.

Douchettes of the Week

Yes, Douchettes. I think I may have made that up.

Anyway, the Douchettes of the Week are two Girls Gone Wild types named Nisreen and Sarah. Here they are:


Apparently, they're 18, although they look pretty used up for 18. It's Lindsay Lohan Syndrome, I guess.

Anyway, Nisreen and Sarah have somehow have gotten it into their heads, and subsequently onto CNN, that they are too pretty to fly. Truly. According to Nisreen, she never received any water during the flight, and either one or both girls (the details are fuzzy) got in an obscenity-soaked argument with a fellow passenger over who was next in line to use the bathroom. And these travesties occurred not because Nisreen and Sarah are two insufferable brats whose parents told them they were special way too many times, but because they were just so damn hot.

Or, to quote Sarah: "There was no one else on the plane who looked like us, except us."

Okay, the obvious first: no shit, Sarah. I've never boarded a plane and just happened to sit down next to my long-lost twin. And, um, I don't mean to be catty - truly I don't - but neither of you girls are hot. I'm sorry, but it's true. I love the part in the video where Nisreen is going on about how she thinks she was treated poorly because of her looks, and the cameraman does a slow pan of her body from her feet up, lingering on her legging-clad saddlebags as if to say, "I don't know about that."

The fact is, chickies, being a "young and decent-looking girl" will not result in a negative flying experience. Being an arrogant airhead with tacky fake pink nails and a penchant for stating both the obvious and the laughably stupid will. If I was a flight attendant and you were bitching about not having any water, and then getting into catfights over the bathroom, of all things, I'd ignore you too. I mean, what if you drank the water too fast and had to pee again? Best to stop these things before they start.

So, Sarah and Nisreen, congratulations. You may not be hot, but you are on YouTube. You even made it onto an assortment of blogs. You even made it on to mine.

Something tells me this is the most either of you will ever accomplish.