LIKE I CAN EVEN WORK NOW

In important Psychonauts news, I was accused of counterfeiting $20 bills this morning! By a lady! In a hardware store! Screw you, lady.Man, why can't I think of great comebacks like that at the time? It totally made me late for work, too. Well, later. I was already running late for reasons I won't go into but you should assume are noble reasons. When I got down into the Muni underground station I realized I didn't have a Fastpass yet because our commuter checks were late, and I only had a $20 on me and Muni only takes coins because dealing with other forms of money is a completely unsolvable problem in the Muniverse. (Man, is this getting really whiny? I don't want to get all whiny-sounding just because this kind of stuff always happens to me and only me.) So, I clawed my way back to the surface, like Orpheus crawling out of Hades, and somehow made it into a place where I thought I could get a little mercy and change for a twenty: the overpriced Ace Hardware store. I went in and saw a familiar, older lady behind the register. I thought maybe she would cut me some slack because of how I was being singled out for persecution by Muni, and because I had bought her overpriced hardware for years. I could have just asked her to break my twenty for free, like some sort of sociopath, but instead I offered to buy something.

I pulled a mini Reese's Peanut Butter Cup from the counter display, set it down gently while giving her a twenty dollar bill and a nine thousand dollar smile. She held my twenty up to the light, and rubbed it, and made a face like it smelled bad."Mmm. Mmmm. I don't know," she said, "It looks funny."Maybe she just doesn't like giving change, I thought. So I upped the ante. I pulled out a mini York Peppermint Patty from a different basket on the counter, and slid it up next to the little Reese's, and with my finger still on it I give her a look like, "Eh?" And, "How d'ya like me now?"

She just snaps my twenty like she's trying to stretch it, like it's made of rubber, like if I were going to counterfeit a twenty I would print it on rubber, like I'm the stupidest counterfeiter in the world. I spend my evenings moaning and drooling over my hand-cranked counterfeit machine like the hunchback of Notre Dame, shoving in rubber balls and green crayons and hoping for the best.She frowns and says, "We've been getting a lot of bad twenties in here. Every day." And then she just pushes it back at me and shakes her head."You're not going to take my twenty?" I said."I can't. I'll get in trouble." I stood there for five quiet seconds, and then my head exploded and skin and blood and bone fragments and brains splattered all over the hardware store, because I could not process the fact that my fresh-from-the-ATM $20 bill was no good in this stupid, overpriced Ace, and I couldn't buy these (probably) stale mini candies that I don't even want because this lady who I have been paying too much for spackle and sandpaper since 1999 thinks I suddenly decided to start counterfeiting twenty dollar bills, and I'm late for work and my neck still kind of hurts.Let me tell you, I left that store in a hurry and I didn't even put those candies back. I left them next to each other in the middle of the counter because that's your problem now, b-word. You mess with the bull, you get the horns, and you deal with the effing candy. Here is the moral of the story: This is all Daniel's fault, for not ordering the commuter checks earlier.

Here is a picture of Daniel, just to let him know we are all thinking of him.