A bit of confusion at the Sheng Kee Bakery

My day got off to a bad start. I go to this bakery to get coffee and a pastry. The bill comes to $6.19. I give him a ten and he gives me back some bills and 30 cents change. I says:

“Um, I think you got that wrong. My bill is $6.19 and you gave me 30 cents change.”
He looks at the bill and says: “No. I got it right. Your change is $4.30.”
I says: “That can’t be right. My bill is $6.19. I should get 81 cents change.”
He says: “No you’re wrong. Look at the receipt.” He shows me the paper receipt. “It says you get $4.30 in change.”
I says: “Well that can’t be right. Look at the bill. It says $6.19 on the bottom. One dollar minus 19 cents is 81 cents. Right?? Not 30 cents.”

We go back and forth about this several more times. Each one of us telling the other that they’re wrong. I start to get mad, there’s an edge to my voice (I haven’t had my morning coffee yet so all bets are off). I start to wonder if I’m losing my mind. Maybe one dollar minus 19 cents really is 30 cents. The woman waiting on line behind me butts in with her two-cents. And I have to restrain myself from turning around and facing her and saying: “Would you mind your own business,” and then throttling her until she’s dead. By this point everybody in the bakery is looking at me.

Finally the manager comes over to sort it out. She studies the receipt, circles some numbers. “Oh that’s it,” she says. “The pastry was on sale. That didn’t register on the bill but it registered on the change.” Now I’m totally confused, but I’m realizing that he probably gave me back MORE change than I thought, not less. I hadn’t even noticed whether he had given me four bills or three. All I noticed was that the bill didn’t match up with the change.

“Whatever,” I said. “I really don’t care.” And I really don’t care about the money. What I cared about was the confusion and the frustration I’d been subjected to. “You can just keep the change.” I leave the 30 cents sitting there on the counter and go fix my coffee.

Life can be like a weird little series of one-act plays where we write our own lines on the spot. The End.

Keith Richards — Still Alive!!

The birthday boy — born December 28, 1943 — turns 80.

Christmas morning at the Backwords household

The thing I remember about Christmas: Me and my little brother slept in the same bedroom, and we’d always wake up on Christmas morning about two hours before it got light. It was still pitch-dark outside, but we were so excited we couldn’t go back to sleep. And we were under express orders not to go downstairs until Mom and Dad got up. So that was a LONG two hours. Sometimes we couldn’t contain ourselves so we’d knock on our parent’s bedroom door and ask them if they were awake yet. Which pissed them off.

Finally — after several lifetimes — they called us to come downstairs. We’d go charging down the stairs to the living room, and there it was — this mountain of presents around the Christmas tree. And what a magnificent sight that was!!

There were five kids in our family. And we’re all in our pajamas, and mom and dad are sitting there in their bathrobes, Dad slurping on his coffee trying to wake up.

We weren’t one of those families who immediately tore open all our presents in a feeding frenzy. We had this ritual we went through every year. We each had a red stocking with our names on it hanging on the mantel, and the first thing we did was take them down and open them up. They were loaded with candy and little toys and knick-knacks.

Then, one-by-one, we’d open the presents that we children had bought. “First let’s all open all the presents from Peter.” And so forth.

And then the big moment. We each had a pile of about eight presents from our parents, numbered from one to eight. From the smallest present to the biggest present. And we’d open them up one by one. “OK, everybody open up present number one.” And so forth. The first couple of presents were usually pretty dull. New socks or new mittens, stuff like that. But they got progressively better as we moved up the numbers. And the big number eight present was usually the one thing we wanted most of all. So my parents milked it for all the excitement they could get.

By the time we were done, the living room was a mountain of ripped-open wrapping paper and ribbons piled half-way up the Christmas tree. And we’re all playing away with our new toys and eating all the primo candy bars, and generally it was a pretty merry Christmas every year at our household.

A boring Christmas story from my nostalgic childhood past in High Bridge, New Jersey

Cats

Mini Scaredy the feral cat is my baby. I’ve known her since she was a new-born kitten. And I still know her now 8 years later. She hangs out with me all the time, just about every day for 8 years. Sitting on my chest, and looking at me like: “Yeah. You’re all right, boy.” Ha ha.

Cats

Cats can be a bad influence. . . Every time I think I should get up in the morning, I look at her and think: “Why??”

Cats

An Ace Backwords comic strip from that fabled year of 1982

I like this one. And I like that someone colorized it. I still remember fondly that year of 1982 when I drew this one

Politics

People sometimes ask me about my politics….

Over the years I’ve never strayed from this basic position:

“I’ve never been able to decide who’s more of a threat to my civil liberties and general well-being. The assholes on the Left. Or the assholes on the Right.”

So, naturally. I’m hated by one and all across the political spectrum. Ha ha.

Mini Scaredy vs Wiley Coyote

Some of you have been wondering about — and worrying about — Mini Scaredy. So I just wanted to make this post to let everybody know that she finally showed up last night and she was fine! Though she was quite hungry and quite exhausted. She ate a big breakfast and then slept until noon (she was still sleeping when I left my campsite — I didn’t have the heart to pack up my blankets!).

I was particularly concerned because there’s been a pack of coyotes that have been lurking around my campsite lately — their population has noticeably increased recently — and apparently they’ve been hunting Mini Scaredy.

Generally, cats are no match for coyotes. Coyotes are much faster. They can run up to 45 mph whereas cats top out at 30 mph. On a flat plane, coyotes will simply run down the cats. But the feral cats in the Berkeley hills have a few advantages. For one, the steep terrain favors the cats’ quickness, and nullifies some of the coyotes’ superior sprinter speed. Plus, there are trees all over the place that the cats can escape up (coyotes can’t climb trees, sans Acme Tree-Climbing products). Also, there are patches of thick, low-hanging foliage that the cats can burrow into like a bunker, and the larger coyotes can’t gain access to it.

At any rate, Mini Scaredy no doubt greatly appreciated all of your concern. And she said for me to tell you all: “Meow!”

The Twisted Image Newsletter

This popped up on the internet the other day. A copy of my old TWISTED IMAGE NEWSLETTER. I used to crank the thing out every month for about 5 or 6 years. I think I started it in 1989 and kept doing it until around 1994. But I can’t really even remember for sure. It’s all a blur. I xeroxed off about 500 copies every month, then I folded it in half, and scribbled the address of my subscribers on the cover, put a 25-cent stamp on it, and mailed it out to all my subscribers. So it was a pretty simple and cheap format.

You can see on the right the address of the guy I mailed it out to. Mark Sasaki Prather . Now, like 33 years later Mark — who was one of my subscribers back then — emailed this copy of the cover back to me. Mark is now one of my Facebook friends all these years later. Which is a little bizarre when you think about it.

It was great fun publishing my own Ace Backwords newsletter. It was like broadcasting from my own little radio station.