Payday's Wednesday, which means that during the several days leading up to Wednesday, I usually am poor. I am poor because I budget poorly -- and before any of you tsk-tsk my paycheck-to-paycheck budgeting, keep in mind that it really only takes one instance of poor budgeting to ensure you're living in hell perpetually for the rest of your life. Say, for instance, that you get $100 a week and that you need $100 a week to live. Due to poor budgeting, one week you spend $150. You're now locked in a cycle of always having to take $50 from your next paycheck, and believe me, it gets ridiculous quickly. I suppose using the same example, you could tell me: "Hey Jay, why don't you just spend only $50 one week to straighten yourself out?" But I might very well respond with "Hey Calculatron, what's the square root of eating my shit?"

Jay 1, you 0, the crowd is roaring from the stands.

Anyway, fortune smiled on Jay today when, after stale bread resulted in no packed lunch resulted in no food at work, I discovered I had $12 left in my checking account I'd forgotten all about, and bought my famished self a pizza after work.

I went to Pizza Hut and got one of those Big New Yorker pizzas -- the ones where if you only get one topping you can walk out of there with a pie for $9.99 plus tax. I didn't see it on the menu when I ordered, so I asked about it and, sure enough, they still had the promotion. They just weren't taking any pains to inform anyone of the promotion. I suspect from the amount of different things the cashier tried to sell me that the promotion was meant to be a loss leader: "Anything to drink with that? Want to make that a meat lover? No? Just one topping? How about some twisty bread? No? Sure you dont want any drinks? No? Okay, sir, that's $9.99 plus tax. Are you sure there's no way we can hold you down and take more than $9.99 from you today? No? What about garlic bread?"

I found it best just to shut my brain off and say "no" reflexively to everything she asked me, so it's lucky for me she didn't get crafty with something like "Sir, would you mind if we put six more toppings on that pizza for you?" because I only had $12 and I would have had to stick around and wash dishes to pay off the bill.

After I ordered I had to hang around the closet-sized take-out room with some large woman who looked like she'd just hammered something blunt up her sinus cavity. A very small Indian couple came in after this and asked the cashier seventeen thousand questions about pizzas (at first I assumed they were conducting investigative journalism, but it ended up just turning out that everything to do with pizza openly confounded them) while flipping open paper menus and touching everything available to touch on the counter, including napkins and forks. It wasn't revolting, but it was unsettling, since the woman was also reaching through bags looking for money and god knows what else, pulling out socks and god knows what else, and then touching cutlery. I hope I'm not alone in finding that at least unsettling, and even a little gross. I don't know why it is that foreign people unaccustomed to the mores of other cultures unfailingly act so insane in the most unpredictable ways, but it's one of the reasons I never travel. I'd hate to walk into a restaurant in India, grab a breath mint from a bowl after a meal, and find out it was the equivelant of walking up to the napkins and forks and touching all of them. Actually, you know what? Fuck that. I'm going to assume that's fucking nuts in India too and that this couple was just insane. Anyway, after touching everything for five minutes and mauling four paper menus, they bought two slices of pizza and left.

Then this large Iranian guy walked in, and instantly won the hands-down prize for the stupidest thing I've ever seen. Previously I'd given this award to the panhandlers outside my beer store (note to American readers: in Canada, beer can only be bought in Government-sanctioned stores and nowhere else; due to union pressure, these stores typically hold the same hours as most banks -- it's as tragic as it sounds).

Every time I walk back to the Beer Store with a case of empty bottles, I get some idiot in the parking lot of the beer store asking me for a beer. Now, on the face of it, I admit it makes sense in a very loose way. He's sitting in the parking lot of a beer store. I have what looks to be a case of beer in my hand. I may be stupid and not thirsty, and eager to give urine-stained strangers anything they ask. Fine. But the second you think about it with any depth, you'll realize it's the stupidest thing in the world to ask. Who walks into a beer store with full cases of beer? If I had a full case of beer, why would it make sense for me to heft it out of the fridge in my house and walk to the beer store with it? "I'm sorry, can I switch this case of beer for another case of beer? I don't think these were quite "beer" enough for me. No, I realize I didn't open the case. I just have a feeling. Plus, I was hoping there might be a guy covered in his own filth outside huffing paint, so I could give him all my beer. I like to do that, because I'm a fucking idiot."

But the Pizza Hut guy hands down beats the morons hanging around the Beer Store asking guys carrying empty cases into the store for spare beers. This guy asked for, then demanded, then tried to haggle with the cashier for a half a pizza.

Not a small pizza. Half a large pizza, because he only wanted four slices. This following the insane Indian couple who touched every item in the restaurant and pored over the menu like Hindu scripture for twenty minutes before buying a $2 slice. I now have limitless respect for the poor woman working the counter at Pizza Hut. If you'd told me there were people out there who'd walk in and touch other people's cutlery in a restaurant, or loudly chastise you for not cooking them half a pizza, I never would have believed you, because as dumb as people can be, they're not actually that dumb, right? Half-a-pizza man dressed himself, and even managed to drive a car to the Pizza Hut, so I refuse to believe he's just that gaspingly retarded. I think I'm more comfortable believing that he's just a a little stupid, not a lot stupid, but so unwilling to either admit to or correct that little stupidity that he's just barrelled through life inflicting it on others.

Since I've already spent this entire post ranting, I'm going to wrap up with one more diatribe before I close off. This weekend I went and saw Kill Bill. I went and saw it at one of those enormous multiplexes with the big bucket seats and the Olympic stadium-style seating so you never get someone's big fat head blocking your view, and plenty of legroom and enormous screens.

Back before the multiplexes took over completely, I used to go to movies all the time; especially in university, I remember going to a movie every Tuesday for "cheap night", and hitting weekend matinees (before 4:00), since they were also very cheap.

We seem to have sacrificed the thrift in the modern movie-going experience. To be honest, I'm not complaining. I hardly ever go to the movies now, because at $14 a ticket, I'd better really wanna see it. This means I see like 1/20th the abominable crap I used to see. Plus, for that $14 ticket I'm at least getting the assurance for my money of previously-lauded bucket seats, legroom, big screens and absence of big heads. I likes this lots. (I'm not as cool with the commercials at the beginning of the movies, but since I've yet to meet anyone that is, I'm willing to take it as a given that we all hate them and move on).

So anyway. I go see a 12:00 Sunday matinee showing of Kill Bill. I think matinees are the absolute best time to go, which is why I don't even mind doing it alone (convincing someone to meet you at a theater at 11:00 in the morning on a Sunday is difficult to impossible if you have friends as lazy as you are). But watching matinees does mean it's cheaper. Plus, there's barely anyone in a theater (I find I only ever enjoy a packed theater for comedies, since laughter's contagious). You get those big bucket seats to yourself, a huge theater, and when you get out of the movie, you still have the rest of the day to yourself. It's nice.

My Kill Bill ticket cost $11 -- not as nice. I did a double-take and asked the cashier about it. "I thought matinees were cheaper."

"That is the cheaper price," she told me apologetically. "Matinees cost more on weekends now."

Ah. Gouging ratfuck bastards. Well, that sucked -- I was down to my last $20 (see beginning), so that took me down to my last $9. This movie'd better be good.

I pocket the ticket and go find Theater Seven -- but the weird thing is, Theater Seven doesn't look to be showing Kill Bill. The poster out front is for Mambo Italiano, some stupid indie My Big Fat Greek Wedding gay Italian Three's Company Canadian Film Board pile of stool. Next to the poster is a crudely-drawn sign and an arrow that reads KIL BILL! You've got to be kidding me.

I'm immediately suspicious, like if I suddenly walk in the door, two employees will leap out and bolt the doors shut, and I'll be stuck watching back-to-back all-day showings of Mambo Italiano until I turn either Italian or gay. But I suck it up. As I open up the door, I notice another sign, this one on the door: "We apologize for the inconvenience; the venting is broken. Don't take off your jacket!"

Gouging ratfuck bastards.

I walk into the theater. I immediately walk back out again just to check.

KIL BILL! says the sign.

I walk back in. I look around.

I walk back out again to make sure I'm in a cineplex. I walk back in again and examine the screen, which is the size of a television. Gouging. I look at all of twenty cramped seats. Ratfuck. I look for legroom or stadium-style seating and find none. BASTARDS. This was the goddamn shitty Indie theater! Kill Bill was their big action movie! I paid $11 to see a big kick-ass kung fu action movie!

If I'd paid $5, then go ahead -- shitty screen me up! Cram me in a small seat and put some big fat head in front of my view of the screen! But for $11 -- for a matinee -- I want a big fucking seat and a big fucking screen, lots of fucking legroom and no big fucking idiot heads in front of me! Ratfucks, I'll kill them!

I storm out and look for the next theater over. Sure enough, Theater Eight, the mega-screen googoplex, has got the Kill Bill poster on it, except over THIS poster is another hastily scrawled note, which I dont bother to read because I already know what it says. I walk into the theater and am greeted to applause, which stops me. Luckily it's not for me, and sI'm not forced to rip the applauder's arms out of their sockets and beat them to death with them in my anger -- the applause was for something happening at the front of the theater. The director and producers of Mambo Italiano are having a little wank party for investors or other producers or someone, and they're all having a few speeches and congratulatory ass-pats on their shitty derivative Big Fat Canadian movie before going to sit in their big bucket seats with all their big leg room in their stadium-style seating and watch Mambo goddamn Italiano.

In MY theater. In Kill Bill's theater. In the theater with the huge ass screen and Dolby surroundsound where you fucking show kick ass movies and charge $11 for them. You show Indie shit like Mambo Italiano in little 20-seater theaters with small little screens, because only twenty people are gonna show up to see it, and you charge 'em $4 to see it because they'd leave if you asked for more, and then you cram them in the theater with broken vents because they deserve to freeze because they paid $4 to see Mambo Italiano. And every other time this would have been the case, and I'd have been watching Kill Bill in my big dick theater while Mambo Italiano fans were one theater over watching their little 1950's television and freezing their little mambos off, because that's how life works.

Except this one time, because the director of Mambo Italiano showed up with all his bigshot Canadian movie friends so they could sit and watch the barren excretus that is Canadian cinema on the biggest screen in the theater. And the Cineplex Odean (Varsity Cinemas, by the way, in Toronto) booked the room, put all the Kill Bill fans in the shitty theater, and charged us all the same anyway, because as I might have mentioned they're gouging ratfuck bastards.

Mambo Italiano was directed and written by Emile Gaudreault -- so in addition to making stool, he's French. Therefore, you should feel little remorse if, in your travels on this Earth, you ever happen to meet him. If this is the case, please do me a favor: punch him in the stomach. When he doubles over, tell him that anybody who watched Mambo Italiano deserves to give Paul Sorvino an enema, and that he owes Jay Pinkerton $11.

Well, time for bed. It's 11:30 at night, so the person in the apartment next to me has begun drilling. But only sporadically, because that's quieter and he has respect for his neighbors. Ask yourself what on earth could be worth drilling at 11:30 PM, and you'd better list me off a body part. I have two theories -- that this shithead's making crafts to sell at a fair; or that he's wiring a bomb. If the former, I'd like to kill him; if the latter, I'd like to leave him alone. My fear of one has stopped me from moving on the other. If you're my neighbor and you're reading this: Punch yourself in the stomach. You owe me $11 too.