SONIC RAGE

Currently, I am a ball of rage. Every cell of me is oozing with anger and supreme irritation. Here's what just happened to me:

Sarah C. is visiting for a mere 2 nights. Tonight, instead of going to a bar with her from about 9:30-11:30, I went to the Apple Store for a 10:45 appointment for them to fix my 10 DAY OLD iPOD. Bear in mind that the fact that this brand new item is irrevocably broken is ludicrous. But OK, I think, it's a lemon. It happens. So it is VERY cold out. And I've given up going to a bar with an out of town guest to go to the Apple Store. That's the backdrop.

I bundle up in a sweater, gloves, scarf and jacket. I trudge all the way crosstown to the Apple Store (20 excruciatingly frigid minutes). I get to the SoHo den of Satan: the Prince Street Apple Store. I enter the gigantic glass doors and am soothed by the illuminating brilliance of the flashy store. This, I think, is the pinnacle of commercial architecture and design. My heart swells with the passion of a true Apple acolyte. I am told to head upstairs to the "Genius Bar." I do so, and see a GIGANTIC crowd of very very grumpy looking hip and gentrified people. I go up to the bar and ask an employee where I go if I have an appointment. This employee, by the way, is fat, ugly and disgusting. He looks me up and says, "OK, we're running REALLY late." His expression is of pride and smugness. How late? I inquire politely. "At least an hour and a half," the cretin intones. "Are you kidding?" I ask, incredulous. This, needless to say, was meant as a rhetorical question. "If I were kidding," the fiend says, "I would have said, 'A man walks into a bar. He says to the bartender . . . ' " Now, let's take a step back. I just turned down a beer with my visiting friend so that I could trudge in the freezing cold to a fat man who is now telling me a crappy joke. I mutter obscenities while he concludes his infuriating attempt at comedy. "Well, OK then," I say, walking away, filling with rage like an open-topped container on the ground during a monsoon. "Well, OK then!" He shouts, jovially and boisterously.

Then I decide to go to Duane Reade to do some errands, so the entire venture wasn't totally useless. I ask an employee, "Do you stock tin foil?" She replies, "Tin foil!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?" I falter. "You know, aluminum foil, for food and such," I stammer. "Hahaha, no! We only have seran (sp?) wrap!" Apparently, asking for tin foil in Duane Reade is like asking for prompt service from the Apple Store: chimerical.

If Sonic the Hedgehog were made purely of rage, and if he exuded only rage, and if he left a trail of rage in his wake, then I would say that I am about 1.5 times as angry as that.