The Twelve Days of Dram! – Day 2

Okay, you know how I talked about being upset when I get the wrong food?  Well…

The other day, I decided to drive over to Taco Bell for some food.  More specifically, a couple of their spicy chicken burritos.

Now, when they first introduced the spicy chicken burrito last year, I felt that I had discovered my favorite Taco Bell food ever.  It was spicy… it was chickeny… and most important of all, it had no beans.  I don’t like refried beans, much less the refried bean paste that’s spread on Taco Bell products.  So, imagine my horror when I went to Taco Bell one day and discovered that they discontinued the spicy chicken burrito.  It went something like this…

“NNNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooo…”

First the gordita and now this!  So, when I heard that they brought back the spicy chicken burrito a couple of months ago, I felt it was my duty to buy as many spicy chicken burritos as humanly possible to ensure that they’ll stay around forever.*

*Total number of spicy chicken burritos bought in the last couple of months… about 8.  I’m not sure I’m doing everything humanly possible.

I drive up to the talking menu and…

Taco Bell Moron: <—-foreshadowing! “Welcome to Taco Bell, may I take your order?”

Okay, first, I’d like to add a little note about Taco Bell.  You know that commercial where the guy walks into Taco Bell with his girlfriend/wife and makes sure that they don’t make the Zesty Chicken Border Bowl until he orders it?  Then, he says,

“I’d like a Zesty Chicken Border Bo-”
“A Zesty Chickennnnnn…”
“A Zesty Chick-!”

and the guy behind the counter keeps having to stop in his tracks until the guy actually finishes ordering the Zesty Chicken Border Bowl?  Well, my advice is, don’t do this in real life.  I’d have to say that doing this will greatly increase the possibility that some teenage Taco Bell employee will spit in your Zesty Chicken Border Bowl.

Okay, back to my ordeal…

Me: “I’d like two spicy chicken burritos, an order of nachos and a medium Coke.”

TBM: *long pause* “That’s… two spicy bean burritos?”

Me: “No, that’s two SPICY. CHICKEN. BURRITOS.”

TBM: *pause* “And you said something about a drink?”

Me: “A medium Coke.” *thinking that this guy is pretty dense, so…* “And an order of nachos!”

TBM: “Your total is $5.80, please drive up to the window.”

I drive up, I pay, he gives me my food and walks away.  I check my bag and there’s no nachos.  I look for the receipt and it’s not in the bag. Now, anyone that’s been to a Taco Bell drive-thru knows that they have this thick acrylic box-thing to pass the money and food between cashier and customer.  It looks like something that was part of Superman’s Fortress of Solitude at the North Pole.

HELLO!?!  Do you still have chalupas!?!

So, it’s a little difficult to converse with the cashier.  I wave at the cashier and he comes back to the acrylic box-thing…

Me: “I ordered nachos, right?”

TBM: *looks at his copy of my receipt* “No.”

Me: “Then why is my bill so high?”

TBM: *looks at receipt again* “There’s sales tax.”

Me Thinking: Dude, how much of a moron are you to think that sales tax is $1.67?  40 PERCENT SALES TAX!?!

Me: “It’s $1.39 for chicken burritos, right?”

TBM: “Yes.”

Me: “So, that’s what, almost $2.80 for the two burritos.”

TBM: *nods*

Me: “And how much is a Coke?”

TBM: *gets receipt and passes it to me*

Me: *points to B-BFSP* “What is this?”

TBM: “We don’t have spicy chicken burritos, so we gave you two chicken burrito supremes and gave you the red sauce instead of the green sauce to make it spicy.”

Me: “So these are chicken burrito supremes with spicy sauce?”

TBM: *nods*

Me: *drives away disgruntled*

I get home, take a bite of my burrito and… it’s a bean-beef burrito supreme with spicy sauce.  I believe I have previously mentioned that I HATE BEAN PASTE!

My two burritos then went directly into the trash.

So basically, the bozo messed up my order, over-charged me, then lied to me about the sales tax thing, lied to me about being out of spicy chicken burritos (my personal opinion) and lied to me about what he put in my bag.  I was pissed off!  So, for the first time ever, I filed a complaint.  That’s right, I was that mad!

I logged onto the Taco Bell website and I filled out a complaint form.  Yessireebob, that’ll teach that guy a lesson he’ll never forget!  I’m sure a reprimand-type e-mail from Taco Bell HQ is speeding its way to him right now.  Or even better, maybe they’ll send that “Yo Quiero Taco Bell” dog to pee on him.  Vengeance is mine!

Then, I got in my car and drove to another Taco Bell (yes, there are two Taco Bells within three miles of each other) and bought two spicy chicken burritos and an order of nachos, because as you know, I’m…

obsessive
determined
pig-headed
stubborn
hungry

Welcome to the Twelve Days of Dram!

What exactly IS the Twelve Days of Dram?  Why, it’s quite simply the most ground-breaking event since Hands Across America!  It’s more exciting than a dental convention!  It’s more entertaining than listening to Fabio After Dark!

The Twelve Days of Dram is EXACTLY like that song, The Twelve Days of Christmas, where you get a gift for twelve days in a row!  Well, there are some exceptions…

1. You don’t really get a gift.

2. Instead of getting those crappy gifts in that song, you get twelve straight days of Dramamine Boy’s Xanga blogs (you decide whether this is better or worse)!

3. Instead of running from Christmas to Epiphany, which is December 25th to January 6th (I had to look that up… and I haven’t the slightest idea what Epiphany is.  I thought it was that perfume in Boomerang) like the Twelve Days of Christmas, The Twelve Days of Dram runs from today to December 24th!  Why?  Cuz you mus’ be high if you think I’m gonna blog on Christmas and New Year’s!

I’m sure you’re all wondering, “Wow, twelve straight days of Dramamine Boy’s Xanga blogs!?!  You’ve never even blogged TWO days in a row!  Are you gonna be able to do it?”

Probably not!  But we won’t know ’til we try now, will we?  And oh sure, some of the blogs probably won’t be as long or as entertaining as usual Dramamine Boy’s Xanga blogs.  It’ll be just like that whole Chanukah thing, where you get more gifts than Christmas, but they all kinda suck.

What the heck is up with that Twelve Days of Christmas song, anyway?  Who the heck gives people those kinds of gifts for Christmas?  A partridge in a pear tree?  How do you wrap a pear tree?  And how do you keep the partridge IN the pear tree?  Rope?  Glue?  Staples?

And where do you go to buy lords?  Don’t these guys have some town to lord-over or something?  How much money does this person have to be able to pay off a bunch of lords to abandon their kingdom to go jumping around some strange person’s house?  The amount must be astroNOMical!  Wouldn’t that money be better spent on GOOD presents?  A trip around the world?  A big screen TV?  Better hide that credit card bill, cuz I can hear it now…

“You spent HOW MUCH on all these frikkin’ geese!?!”

French hens?  Swans?  Pipers?  I gotta say that this so-called “true love” isn’t scoring many points with these gifts. 

“Hey honey, remember the time I got you those ten lords a leaping?”

“OF COURSE I REMEMBER!  THEY JUMP AROUND THE FRIKKIN’ HOUSE 24 HOURS A DAY!”

And would you get one gift per day, or is it like the one new gift and all of the other gifts that came before it?  Like on the fourth day, were there four calling birds AND three french hens AND two turtle doves AND a partridge in a pear tree?  Cuz that’s what it seems like in the song.  If that’s the case, you’d get 184 freaking birds!  I mean, sure, the forty gold rings would be a pretty sweet trade-off, but you’d have to sell ‘em just to be able to buy bird food for 184 birds.

And I’m pretty sure that the 140 maids, dancing ladies, lords, pipers and drummers are gonna need to get fed, too.  I don’t think you’re gonna keep ‘em happy by feeding them pears, goose eggs and unpasteurized milk three times a day, either.  I’m tellin’ ya, nothing ruins a party more than 22 hungry, pissed off pipers.  I betcha there’s gonna be some turtle dove sandwiches on the menu after a few days.

So yeah… these are the types of blogs you should be expecting for the next eleven days.  After a few days of this, you’ll probably be wishing for a dreidel instead.

Ah yes, Xanga has been the source of much information that I’ve missed out on in this generation.  The mysteries of “kuya”, “fubu”, american stereotypes and “straight chirp’n” have been (somewhat) solved by the readers of Dramamine Boy’s Xanga.  So once again, I call upon the Xanga community to resolve my quandry as we once again delve into another installment of…

Explain It To the Old/Out-of-Touch Guy

However, today’s look at my cluelessness can’t really be chalked up to being out-of-touch.  So, today’s episode will instead be called…

Explain It To the Old/Non-Chinese Guy

Okay, since I’ve been working by myself a couple of days a week, I’ve discovered a chinese restaurant right down the street that has relatively cheap food.  On my first visit, I tried out their beef chow fun and an order of white rice (because, as you know, chow fun just doesn’t have enough starch).

Good stuff!  And they give you so much food, I usually have enough left over for dinner that night.  So, I was happy that I found another option for lunch.

A few weeks later, I went there and they were closed a couple of weeks for remodeling.  Basically, their remodeling consisted of lots of wood paneling and instead of walking in and going to your right to order your food, you now had to walk in and go to your left… then around a little barrier… then to your right.  I’m not sure where wood paneling and creating a maze to get to the waitress fits into this whole feng shui thing, but since I don’t know crap about feng shui, I won’t question it.

I called the restaurant one day, ordered beef chow fun and a side of rice (to make sure that I had my recommended daily allowance of starch for the month), walked down the block to pick up my food, got back to the shop and…

“WHAT THE CRAP IS… hey, that looks pretty good.”

Now, I usually can’t stand it when I get the wrong food.  When I’m looking forward to eating the food I ordered and then my hopes are dashed when I open the bag when I get home, I’m pretty irate.  But this beef fried rice dish was pretty tasty, so it was no problem.  I’m not sure how many strange looks there were at the restaurant when they were putting together an order of fried rice with a side of white rice, but that’s okay.  I mixed in the white rice with the fried rice and voila!  MORE fried rice!… kinda.

So, a week or so later, a new day dawns (as new days are apt to do) and I decide to get some chinese food again.  I order beef chow fun and a side of rice (to officially become the person that has consumed the most starch in their lifetime), since I got cheated out of it on my last visit.  This time, I walk down to the restaurant to order my food, take it back to the shop and…

WHAT THE HECK!?!  BEEF FRIED RICE AGAIN!?!  Now, I’m starting to think that there’s something funny goin’ on.  So, in true “Addicted to Xanga” form, instead of walking down to the restaurant to ask, I will instead ask the question to you fine people out there…

Why am I getting beef fried rice when I order beef chow fun?  Here are some of my possible explanations:

• The waitress is insane


• They not only remodeled their restaurant, but also their understanding of the english language


• This is their way of revenge for Japan beating China in this year’s Asian Cup


• Gremlins

Does “beef chow fun” sound like “beef fried rice?”.  Do the chinese characters for “chow fun” look similar to “fried rice” and the chef or waitress got it mixed up?  What sane person would order a side of white rice with fried rice in the first place?

As usual, I await your answers.