Taste of a Golf Ball
Monday, June 28, 2004
So this weekend I went to the Chicago area which I sometimes do when I don't feel like going to a wedding. It wasn't because street performers are more entertaining than wedding DJ's, it was just because I wanted to be an opportunist and try to maximize my fun for the whole weekend rather than a short amount of time with people I hardly know.
So we went to a festival deal that they have in Chicago every year. It is probably like the summer fest in everyone's home town where fat people and hyperactive children suddenly stop walking in high traffic areas while they decide what kind of sauce they want to get all over their faces next, except there are about a million extra people. We tried to buy some food so we would fit in, but the festival had it's own currency - paper tickets.
Paper tickets are used because no one that works at a festival can be trusted. First of all, no change has to be made with cash and it prevents grafting by underpaid carnival who have no way of keeping track of how much food they sold. They're also designed to make sure that the money you spend on tickets only goes towards goods at the festival, but we saw that they could be used otherwise. There was a lady and her two kids eating bugs, standing by the orange plastic fence near the festival exit mumbling, "Extra tickets, any extra tickets..." We saw a man walk up to her and hand her a wad of 20 dollar bills wrapped in festival tickets. She gave him a bag of green plant things also wrapped in festival tickets. Tickets double as wrapping paper for presents!
The best thing about the tickets is that they try to use as many prime numbers as possible so you can't do any of the math in your head. You get 11 tickets for $7 and each ticket is "worth" 50 cents. Then each food item costs up to 9 tickets and was usually an odd number. You could not figure out how much you were actually paying for things unless you can do repeating number long division in your head. Also, it turns out that buying 22 tickets is not enough to fill you up but buying 33 tickets is enough to make you cry from the pain as your belly tries to snap your belt in half.
My new Health Insurance company using my money to
help cause a few auto accidents.
The only other thing I really did this weekend was go to the driving range with some friends. I kind of want to learn how to golf so when I'm hanging out with gas company fatcats I can avoid looking like a total retard. I spent a lot of the time swinging at the air but I was ok with that because I felt like I was getting a deal from my super $9 bucket because I was able to swing at each ball more than once.
Eventually I wanted to get serious with the things. I had my eyes focused on the ball. Hand positioned, left arm straight, wrists bent, knees bent but straight; I was ready to hit the thing. I took my swing. To my dismay, it sliced right in a line drive, 45 degrees off of where I was aiming.
KONK!!
Oops. I was so focused in my task that I didn't realize that the ball catcher tractor thing was right in front of me when I swung. The 50 something old man slammed on the brakes and stared at me. "You think that's pretty funny, don't you..." he said. He stared for a good 30 seconds. I hadn't laughed but he must have been using his stare to read my mind because I did think it was kind of funny. But, if he was reading my mind he would have known that I had no idea what I was doing and that I couldn't have hit him if he was driving around picking up balls in a barn.
Then I thought he was making fun of me - telling me that I should think the fact that I can't play golf should be pretty funny to myself and everyone else. I wanted to show him funny by running up and attacking him with the golf club but I realized if I was 50 years old and had to deal with 24 year olds that looked like they were 17 all day long I'd get mad pretty easily too.
posted by Ghengis @ 12:36 AM,
