I went to lunch at this restaurant Rice, this eclectic pan-Asian place where the dishes feature — go figure — rice. It's actually a pretty good place to eat, especially when it's not crowded, but lunchtime today was really busy and I was sitting about an inch away from two people who were annoying the living hell out of me. First of all, they weren't using their twelve-inch voices — and I'm gonna go off on a tangent here, but I don't understand why cell phone users are singled out in public for librarian-style shushing. We've all been around those cell talkers who've apparently never used a phone before and are unaware that you don't need to scream into the thing because the microphone is a millimeter away from your mouth, and I totally wish they'd make it legal to physically gag those assholes, but I don't see how people talking to each other like their conversation is a great proclamation that needs to be spread to the masses is any less irritating. I think the general rule of thumb should be, "Don't talk any louder than I'm talking," and I'm just taking a moment to enjoy dreaming about what a pleasant, tranquil world that would make.

Anyway, this couple's talking really loud, which annoys me, and then the waitress comes for their order and they're asking her for recommendations, which annoys me even further. Not that they're getting recommendations, but if I were the waitress, I'd totally be like, "I don't even know you, how the hell am I supposed to guess what kind of food you'd like?" Which is why I don't wait tables. Also because if I did wait tables, the first dumb question such as, "Is the chicken marsala good here?" or "Does the fettuccine have any salt in it. Cause the doctor says I can't have anything with salt in it and now it's been such a long time that I'll taste even a single salt molecule and...," and I would just fly into a homicidal rage. I mean, I go out to eat with my parents (rarely these days, cause I know better) and they ask dumb questions and, frankly, it makes me want to strangle them. What do you think they're going to say when you ask if the crabcakes are made fresh? "No, we usually buy our seafood a week old or so, and then sometimes the chef takes a piss in the sauce, too."

These people were getting recommendations on everything, but what really made my ears perk up and hope these people choked on a skewer is when one of them asked the waitress, "What kind of rice would you recommend with the curry chicken?" Granted, the place is called Rice, and they have a larger-than-expected choice of rice, but dude, it's freaking rice. It's not fine wine here! I've been going to Rice for about seven years now, so I'm not just saying this: they all taste exactly the same, which is to say, they all have that distinctive nothing taste of goddamn rice! This might just be a hang-up of mine, because when I go to Rice with one of my friends and they ask me which rice I prefer, I feel like I actually need to justify my answer (the Thai black rice, because I bet you've never seen rice that's black before...), but still, I think we can agree that you've gotten a bit anal when you're micromanaging rice.