OK, so I went to Kroger's one time over the summer to buy something. So I grab the stuff, which is good, medium-sized stuff that doesn't have that oh-so-charming twang of rat urine that is found in cheaper stuff, and I walk up to the register.

So, I casually stroll up, and this snotty little 17-year-old is standing at the counter. How do I know she was 17, you ask? Well, have you ever worked in a grocery store? These cashiers believe they are the greatest gift to mankind since the invention of waxed fruit.

I like waxed fruit because you can leave it out and it makes your home festive and decorative anytime of the year. So I put the stuff up on the counter, and she says with a sneering little voice "Can you scan it?" And it wasn't a nice, polite, "Can you scan it." It was a very condescending, I-make-50-cents-more- than-minimum-wage-so-boo-ya "can you scan it." So you would think that I, being a relatively intelligent person, would simply say "Grand!" and pass it across the scanner. Well, this was not the case.

I ask her why I have to scan it. And she tells me "Well, since I'm only 17, I can't sell people stuff." At this, I snicker derisively and ask her, "Wait, if I'm scanning the stuff, and you're accepting the money, aren't you still selling the stuff to me, except that you think that you're too good to move the stuff two inches across a scanner before I pay?" Of course, she says, "Yes" and motions for the manager to come over.

Point of the story: Only give cashiers enough grief to be within two inches of calling the manager over. Otherwise you get in trouble, and they take the stuff away.

Then one time, I had this donut. Man, I tore that thing to shreds. It was a lemon bismark. Mmm. You ever see a movie where they have one of those guard dogs that snap and snarl and have the spittle flying off of their gaping jaws? It was kind of like that, but without the dog.

Have you ever heard about how the legend of Dracula started? I guess there was this guy in Romania who would capture all the armies moving through his territories back in the day when warring was popular, and the Turks were sacking most of Eastern Europe. His name was Vlad the Impaler. He had all these giant metal stakes, and when he ran out of metal, he began using wood from his forests to supply himself with wood to make stakes. I don't know where they got the whole vampire thing, but he would just impale whole armies on stakes as a warning to the invading Turks to stay out of his territories.

The point: You decimate belligerent armies in a gruesome and inhumane way and everyone starts calling you a vampire. Not to mention you end up getting some guy named Bram Stoker writing a huge hunk of poo that's supposed to be about you. That sure does make me mad. And when you're playing Risk, and the Turks attack out of southern Europe into Afghanistan ... that really ticks me off.

That, and when the man takes my stuff away.

• I be thinkin'...