Death to Tomra!

Before we get started on today's blog extraodinaire (well, to be honest, it'll really be no different than any other entry, but since all my entries are extraordinary, that makes them all extraordinaires, right?) I need to take a moment to pose a question to my loyal readers. Does anybody out there know what the fuck the deal is with those "enter the word you see above" boxes? Every time I spam all of your facebooks with my status indicating I've written a new Douche, they make me copy down two words. Yeah, that's right, two. As if one indecipherable, partially occluded, curvy word weren't enough. I've never gotten this; If they want you to copy down a word, why can't it just be a word in a normal font, not sideways and quadruple italicized? Why do I even need to copy down a word in the first place? I'm sure there must be some sort of security explanation behind it, but fuck, why two? It's like, before you post your status, write the words "DUCK MARMALADE" in the box. Uh, okay, sure. Just for fun, when I change my status to alert all of you of what random words I have to write, I'll copy them at the bottom of the post. Isn't that fun?

So you may be asking yourself, who/what the fuck is Tomra? Tomra is the only company I'm aware of that makes the bottle and can recycling machines at the grocery stores. I'm sure there are more, but this is Denim Douche, and I don't do research. Yeah, I recycle my bottles and cans, because I love the environment. Whoops, I meant because I get five cents apiece for everything I stick into one of these fantastic machines! But they're not fantastic, are they? I see you shaking your head, "no." And you're right. They suck.

Have you ever seen anything in the world more reliably unreliable than the recycling machines? Honestly, you walk into that bottle room knowing full well that half of the machines will be broken or full, and that's a conservative estimate. There's always someone in front of you with a goddamn mountain of cans moving as slowly as possible. Meanwhile, the machines are beeping away screaming "change me" like a crying baby, and no one's coming.

Oh, but in the rare occasion that someone does come, have you ever seen anybody more pissy about performing their job than this person? They come trudging in like they're inches away from pulling out an Uzi and wiping out the Deli section, sigh loudly, change the bins, and then walk around the corner of the building where I assume they finish the contents of their flask. These people look so goddamn miserable about performing this menial task, it's unbelievable. My theory is that the machines that are labeled as broken really aren't, it's just that the employees put the signs up because changing the bins more often would drive them to suicide.

If you do get a machine, good for you. Now you just have to soak your arms up to the elbow with stale beer and soda, a good portion of which still have some sludge at the bottom waiting to drip on your shoes. At this point you wonder which one of your dickhead fuckass friends is incapable of taking that last sip to ensure the dryness of the can. Oh, and the machines don't accept water bottles, Gatorade, Powerade, Snapple, Iced Tea, Red Bull, and God only knows what else. If you're returning some fancies you got for a nice change of pace from the grind of Keystone and Busch, there's about a 50% chance the machines won't take that either, despite CT being listed in plain English on the side of the bottle as accepting that brand. Christ.

But I endure this buffet of fecal matter for that all important 5 cents per unit. It really gives me this nice sense that I'm saving money, when really, the store already took out the bottle deposit when you bought that shit anyway. All you're getting back is the money you already unnecessarily spent. Might as well put a gun to my head and tell me to recycle. And what about this; 2-liter bottles of soda, gargantuan as they are, are worth the same as soda cans. What? Considering they have something like 10x the surface area, shouldn't they be worth more? If I can fit 10 cans or 1 bottle into a garbage bag, aren't I going for the cans every time? Fuck this system. God Damn you Tomra, with your virtual monopoly over recycling equipment! Someone slay this giant of the returnables industry before it's too late.

The words I had to enter in the box:

"astoria m"

Yeah, exactly.