Why Sleep?

I'm not sure where I first heard about modafinil AKA provigil. Maybe that one piece in Esquire or Wired or wherever where the author used it for three days straight, maybe on tech blogs as they raved about its medicinal prowess. Doesn't matter. The thing that matters is my reaction to it, this medicine that supplanted sleep:

"Wonderful. How do I get some?"

I don't doubt meth-heads say the same thing. The notion of a life always awake holds that kind of appeal. But still: wonderful. Because, when you look at sleep from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it makes no freaking sense. Picture it handed to the first men: "Right, folks, are you ready to breed and propagate until we dominate the entire world? Me too! We don't have stories and songs yet, but damned right we will in a few generations! In the meantime, let's all hunker down and leave ourselves defenseless for up to eight hours each night in a seething cauldron of nocturnal predators!"

That's not to say sleep is without its pluses. Sleep is defined, if my entry-level psych classes told the truth, by how easy it is to wake from. Evolution or God or the God of Evolution or Mr. Mxyzptlk conspired to make us, as a general species, light sleepers. So at least we'll wake with a start at the first hint of a sabertoothed tiger in the bearskin tent. And science tells us dreams could do all manner of important things.

And yet I prefer to stay awake.

I could blame the night schedule at my last location, that ever-ulcerating pustule from which I'm not certain I ever did escape. I could blame coffee itself, which I swill like wine laced with winning lottery tickets. I could even blame the Internet, which offers exotic delights and information errata in such volumes that I'd be insane to wander off in search of something as simple and stupid as rest.

But I blame me. Me thinking up stories in my head on the top bunk in 1994, me unable to stop reading in 1999, me hopped up on NoDoz and writing a theology paper I don't agree with but know will net good grades in 2006, me in a robot body and composing screeds against the alien overlords in 3012, me me me me me me me. There's just so much stuff to do at night. Hell, my favorite radio program (yes, those still exist) did a show about it. It's dark out, so you can play games like Hide and Go Seek or Black Panther super easily. Late-night eateries and bars are still open, so you can reminisce with friends while eating pie or swilling beer. And there's always time for a good old fashioned slinger.


Why sleep? Dreams? I dream when I'm awake. How do you get through eight hours with five customers?

 BY RIOTING! This fellow with the spear screams. RIOT LIKE CRAZY! RIOT LIKE YOU HAVE SPEARS! But I don't have spears, random Chinese drawing guy. I don't even have a spear. I have a couple swords, but I'm pretty sure rioting with those would just get me tazed.

Oh!...ohhh, he's the riot police, huh. That makes him less sympathetic and more threatening. Rather like the fellows on the back of this postcard. I'd like to claim my American defiance would stand tall in the face of their Chinese wrath, but then, I haven't yet been in a position to pit my gumption against that of several men with sticks, guns, and riot shields.


So Lisa is officially more badass than me. Well done, Lisa. Well done. Clearly ultimate frisbee is the world's sport, and love makes the world go round.

Yeah, that's right, I just busted out a Powerpuff Girls reference on this blog, big whoop, wanna fight about it?

FUHHHTBAAAAWL

I don't like football.

I like combat. I like battle. That raw, emotional clash that fuels barroom fistfights and Glasgow soccer riots. That sense of delight when your hated enemies taste defeat in your touchdown at 0:57...and that sense of terror when they almost get the lead at 0:03.

It's the same with Halo. Or Modern Warfare. Or even Mario Kart. It's the same with every competitive game and every competitive fandom: I (or my proxies out there on the field/court/whatever) win. You lose. Do I actually hate my brother just because he's a Patriots fan who dresses up his son in a Tom Brady jersey? No, of course not. Do I relish his facial expression when Tom Brady draws first blood against his own team? Of course I do.

We're civilized men. Instead of watching gladiators butcher each other for our bloodlust, we watch men the size of refrigerators run headlong into men the size of freezers all for the sake of a ball the size of a human head.

And, if that doesn't sate us, we pretend to shoot each other. What a time to be alive.

I also like ice cream.

Don't Worry, I'm Not Actually Sick

Food service workers are not allowed to work while sick. There's very strict guidelines for that sort of thing: if you see someone working with a conspicuous cough, dashing to the bathroom every few minutes, or straight up puking on their lunch break, you send them home.

And in an ideal world, the transit time google maps gives me for I-94 is accurate whether it's 11PM or 9AM.

In reality, two forces come into play when you're sick:

a) You only get paid if you're there. Paid vacation time exists, but it's earned over a span of years, and must be submitted ahead of time. There's no such thing as calling in and taking a personal day.

b) Unless you get sent home, it's your responsibility to find coverage. Otherwise, tough luck, keep making those drinks and try not to cough so much, the customers are staring.

Once I worked three days with strep throat. By the end it was so bad I couldn't talk, and I communicated in gestures and written questions on receipt tape, like some unscrupulous mime. It took a visit to a real live doctor and a handwritten note for me to get out of work, along with the warning that I could not speak for at least three days. (I made it about two before I couldn't take the silence anymore.) My boss didn't want me working to begin with, but what could he do? His usual workweek ran above 50 hours, so covering me was out, and any hourly employees would've gone into overtime trying. It was a doctor's note or nothing.

Doctor's notes don't fix everything, though. An ER nurse's response to my predicament a few months later, when both my wrists were in such agony I had to drive to the hospital using my elbows? "I can write a note saying you can't perform any tasks at work using your hands." Remember: you don't work, you don't get paid.

Me: "There's nothing I can do at my job without my hands. I need to be able to work, can you do something for the pain?"

Her: "I can prescribe you Motrin."

Me: "Is it special Motrin?"

Her: "Well, it's a larger dose than regular Motrin. But you could just buy generic Motrin and take twice as much."

Me: "Could I get...something stronger...?"

Her: "Motrin."

That conversation cost me $110. I really must remember emergency rooms are for when you're about to die or about to give birth.

This. This is what I want to see when I have my time machine. I won't even go all Bad Guy From Timecop to make myself rich--

Okay. That's a lie. I'll totally steal Confederate gold using sweet machine guns. But I won't go full Ron Silver.

You never go full Ron Silver. Otherwise this happens.

I want a giant wool cake hat. I feel it will make me look solemn and wise.

I also like to think that Playboy apparel finds its way to Uyghur-ville in much the same way "Patriots 19-0" shirts find their way to Nicaragua: People need clothes. Clothes exist in abundance. Why not send them the clothes?

Alternately, Playboy is a popular brand in Uyghur-ville, which means if they're still a highly Islamic society their interpretation of the Koran is pretty badass.

Also, I plan on using "What do? Cat." any time I notice I've got extra space from here on in.

Not Much Today

I can count on one hand the times I've been angry enough to, after storming out, return to the place from whence I stormed to continue ranting. Usually these incidents involved alcohol. Never have they involved anger over not getting free stuff.

Homeless lady wants sample. Homeless lady really only wants the sample of coffee so she has an excuse to sit inside our cafe and "discreetly" (in her mind, anyway) ask our customers for money. We've thrown her out multiple times. Now we just refuse to give her samples.

Today's the breaking point. I get called obscenities so obscene Quentin Tarantino is taking notes. I hear all about her "work history," how she gets a thousand dollars a month, how we're all losers who need to get jobs.

I get told to kill myself.

All this in front of an eight year old girl. After we finally got the cops in and the lady out, the little girl asked her mom why "that lady was so mad."

If only we knew, kid. If only we knew.

Who's getting married today? I wonder if they'll have nice hors d'ouvres. I could murder a bacon-wrapped scallop right about now--

Eyes. On sticks. Uh. Well. I can almost see myself eating hearts, but eyes...eyes look back at you, man. Eyes watch you eat them. I'm not sure I could handle being judged by my food.

[Insert Obvious Tom Petty Reference Here]

Lines suck.

I know they suck, you know they suck, we all know they suck. They're right up there with airline food and fluorescent lights. But they're something we have to deal with in this crazy mixed-up world, right? Standing behind a total stranger for an eternity only to watch them do what you wanted to do first is just a cost you pay to live in modern society.

Unless you're in a coffee shop.

Then a line is this inexplicable, infuriating thing devised by god and man to ruin your morning. What...what is this? You just want to order your drink, and then leave. Don't these creatures understand? There's no time for this! Your bus leaves in five minutes. You're illegally parked! The terrorists have your family!

And you need your coffee

RIGHT

NOW

But the people ahead of you in this seething mass of impatience don't understand, and they all take too long to order their half-decaf-double-tall-in-a-grande-extra-foamy-three-splenda-seven-pumps-chai-lattes, and why can't they just--

Oh! One of the baristas--y'know, those coffee robots who look like people--is talking to you. She's asking for your drink order! A moment later you pay and stroll over to pick up your beverage. They day is saved! 

...but your beverage isn't there. Where is it?! You need it! And then you see it: past the barista you'd describe as slaving away if baristas had feelings. Past a row of cups arranged in a formation you find disturbingly familiar. Your cup sits at the end of...

ANOTHER LINE.

It's about that time when people get angry. I once saw a man--presumably not a supervillain--point and scream "YOU DON'T KNOW WHO YOU'RE DEALING WITH!" and storm out of the cafe. Because we wouldn't take his order at the delivery counter or put his drink ahead of the twenty other drinks already on the bar. I've seen moms order ten different frappucinos blended drinks for kids and then freak out as we blend them one at a time because we only have one blender.


And people think they can get around all this somehow. People try to form secondary lines. Tertiary lines. People come in clumps of three or four and hope they can overload the order system. People stand at the hand-off station and stare at you, stare into you, like they're trying to get their drink faster using the freaking Force.

All these tricks? They're like asking a retail associate to check the back. We don't distort time and space, we make coffee, and until you replace us with robots or four-armed apes...it's going to take a minute.


Today's entry was heavily inspired by this Cracked article. I'd be remiss if I didn't give credit where credit was due.

...why do I get the feeling I'm being invited to a wedding?

Ah. Because this is a wedding invitation. Apparently the Uyghurs aren't all that into postcards.

But they are into utilitarianism! No disposable diapers? Laundry's a pain? Just aim that crotch in the proper direction! I wonder how many ruined shirts it takes to get the timing right.

Drop some food, pick it right back up, eh? Tell me, Jess, what's the Uyghur word for "five second rule"?

And Now For Something Completely Different

The explosion had been quite loud. And now Agatha's feet hurt.

Subjectively speaking, Agatha never understood there were muscles in her feet. Objectively, of course, she knew all about them, but then objectively Agatha knew lots of things. She knew, for example, that the human foot had nineteen muscles, or twenty if one classified the extensor hallucis brevis as distinct from the extensor digitorum brevis. Esoteric knowledge even for her, but then the Institute had a lot of books, and Agatha had a lot of time to kill in detention.

Knowing a muscle group existed, however, had nothing on Agatha's new subjective understanding as she tried in vain to move her legs. Pain. Pain everywhere. Every single muscle in her body burned, twinged, ached. Even the stupid little ones she barely knew she had in her stupid little feet. She blinked up into pure darkness, felt fine rock dust shift on her eyelids, and realized she didn't even have the energy to cry.

Not that she would. When did crying ever help, after all? Tears, that was one thing. Pain drew tears like wounds drew blood. But crying? Huddling into a ball and sobbing and hoping that would fix it? Crying was what you did when you couldn't do anything else.

Crying was giving up.

She lay covered in rock and dirt. She lay on the wrong side of a door between worlds--a door just slammed shut by two tons of dynamite--and every inch of her swam with pain. It would be so, so easy to simply relax, close her eyes, and die.

Instead she raised her arms above her head, hissing at the effort, and did her best to sit up. She was Agatha Byrne, and she saw no sense in giving up.

-

I've been reading a lot of Terry Pratchett. Does it show?

...oh great. Now I want noodles. And Penny's is closed. THANKS, JESSICA.

Miles to Go Before I Sleep

Recently, during a morning shift on a Sunday, my assistant boss pulled me off the floor. We weren't exactly overstaffed, so I found it odd she needed to talk to me right then and there.

"Are you okay?" She asked.

I stared at her as though I could suss out her meaning through eye contact alone. That didn't really work, so after what was either a few seconds or an uncomfortably larger amount of seconds I supplied: "What?"

"You're looking pretty low. You look--like you'd rather be anywhere but here."

She radiated concern. Not for the business, and not because I'd been rude to a customer or anything, but because when I wasn't "on" serving coffee I was clearly exhausted and miserable. This provoked two reactions on my part:

a) Touched. My previous location became a daily grind so misery-inducing I often stared into the mirror and wondered, out loud, if I could make it into work that day. This fact was as apparent to my former manager as a forest fire is to the trees, and yet he never commented once. As long as I was upright, sober, and not audibly cursing, I'm fairly convinced he couldn't give less of a damn. And now here we are: I haven't been at this location more than two months and already my assistant boss can tell when I'm unhappy on the job, and it actually worries her.


b) Annoyed. It's Sunday morning. I want to choke out every well-rested smiling coffee swiller that comes through my door and makes me navigate through my fog of fatigue long enough to pretend I'm interested in their coffee, long enough to find which stupid button I have to press to ring up their stupid warmed butter croissant, and now you're telling me I can't even drop the facade once they leave?!


Somewhere in the past year of getting home every night past 1 AM I broke my sleeping schedule. Never had a very solid one to begin with, but now every morning shift is an insult, every night I need to go to sleep before 1 AM is an Everest I must climb. An Everest filled with kittens...kittens covered in spikes.

But I know in my heart of hearts that option A is the right one. And after talking with her for a few minutes--admitting my sleeping schedule's about as reliable as the Grecian economy, making sure I wasn't screwing over my coworkers--I returned to the floor and felt awake. Enthusiastic, even. No more anger, no more bitchiness barely restrained, just the pleasant knowledge that my bosses, if you'll pardon my Mandarin, actually give a 狗屎.

That...that's not in China, Jess. I've been close enough to high-five that dinosaur, you can't fool me with clever text bubbles. You didn't even try to hide the Field Museum logo!

...oh, Sue, I can't stay mad at you.

I can't say much about these ladies, other than how utterly badass they must be. I mean, the drawing is awesome, but only sort of does their badassocity justice. Giant freaking shears! Steel spikes! IRONS THE SIZE OF GIANT MECHA ROOMS!

I won't claim I'd give anything to work there, because I value my health insurance and I'm pretty sure they don't get free coffee. But my job, and pretty much any job, could benefit from the introduction of RAZOR SHARP CLEAVERS THE SIZE OF FREAKING FRANCE, YOU GUYS.

Bonus Double-Postcard-Post

Laptop hobos. They're a thing.

Look, people: I get it. You need a place to write or draw or whatever that offers an internet connection and yet is not your bedroom, but you're not so flush with cash you can buy your own office on Michigan Avenue like those fancy-pants one-percenters with their big cigars and their monocles and their hybrid cars and their stock tickers.

But at least pretend you're a customer. Buy something. Anything. See that lady over there with the rainbow hair and the laptop so old its processor speed is measured in KB? She bought a banana for $1.10, and she's been here for six hours, but at least she bought a goddamn banana. You didn't buy anything! You just walked in, ordered a glass of ice water, then took one of our approximately four tables. And, upon finding we have no restroom, you glared at me. Buy a cookie and you can straight-up cuss me out, but buy something! 

There's a sense of expectation that goes with entering our stores. We created it, we nourished it, and from time to time it bites us in the ass. On the plus side, most of our laptop hobos are not actual hobos. Future aging liberal hippie douche I may be, but my experiences with the homeless during my time in the Coffee Mines haven't made me relish the moment any of them walk through my cafe's door.

 Hmmm. This...doesn't look Chinese. But it's a postcard and I got it in the mail. Who else would send me a postcard? And it's from New Belgium? What happened to regular Belgium? I liked regular Belgium, they were the second country sane enough to let their gays get married.

...oh.

Ohh.

I...mostly remember sending this. From the Hoptacular. I think there was this line? And I sort of, sidestepped it? There were definitely glaring faces. And I wrote it with a Sharpie. In retrospect, going to that thing on an empty stomach was a bad idea.

 See, this is what I looked like once I got home from the Hoptacular. My sample glass only held like six ounces, but we got there late and I had to make up for lost time, and I'm pretty sure six times five hundred is...a lot.

I want a sweet Uyghar hat! I may already own the best hat ever (well, not that exact one, but almost identical), but I'm always up for new and exciting headgear.

I do feel vaguely offended that the Buddha image on the front of this postcard was not actually ever seen by the person writing it. I've been lied to. I've been had. And now all of you have, too. So I'm just spreading the mendacity around like butter on toast. You're welcome.

Supply Drop Needed

Remember that one episode of Band of Brothers where "Doc" Roe keeps running around the battlefield, constantly asking fellow medics if they've got scissors?

That's where we're at with Sharpie pens. You lose your Sharpie, you'd better pray you're not on register. Otherwise it's off to the back room to scour the desk, the shelves, the bathroom--all the while vainly hoping you'll see a permanent marker somebody missed. And there's always one guy--in this case, our Supervisor--who knows where he can get one or two more. But maybe there's a price. Maybe he's gotta bum a pack of smokes from ya, or maybe you've gotta take night watch tomorrow so he can get some real sleep--

Okay, getting too into Band of Brothers. Remember that show? What a great show. Why wasn't The Pacific nearly as good? Anyway. We've all taken to bringing our Sharpies home with us, stuffed inside our aprons. It always feels vaguely like stealing. If I ever get in trouble for something else, I think they'll show a damning videotape of me stuffing my pockets with sharpies as evidence I cannot be trusted.

Other supplies run out. I've worked in stores where the manager feuded with the supervisors over daily ordering, so sometimes crucial stuff like milk suddenly be unavailable. Borrowing a CVS shopping cart in order to haul 12 gallons of 2% down the block is an experience I won't soon forget. Calling sister stores at least once a week to plead for extra whipped cream chargers and garbage bags, driving to the hardware store for replacement brooms...

In the end, you gotta hustle for what you need, and then hold onto it with an iron fist. Who knows when the command structure could come tumbling down, and suddenly it's just you, facing down a thousand customers, and they're whittlin' at your supplies--

Right. Sorry. Postcards. Here we see the Grand Courtyard of the Wangs, a lovely place which I will refrain from joking about in any way whatsoever. There's nothing funny about the word "wang." It's a highly common surname,  and without it we wouldn't have the greatest single of 1986.

Oh. Condoms. Um. Complimentary condoms from the minibar (or does "uncomplimentary" imply they're not free? Makes sense, it is a minibar). Condoms featuring everyone's favorite vampire slayer. I wonder if I can find the actual brand on google--

Yes I can. Thanks, Engrish Brog!

I like how Buffy doesn't even seem excited to be all skimpy on these condoms. They found Sarah Michelle Gellar doing her--badass face? Disapproving face?--whatever, some kind of frowny face. And now you're picturing her. Looking at your junk. Making that face. Thanks for ruining all my adolescent Buffy fantasies, China.

This Explains All The Unanswered Texts

Oh god scanning things takes so long.

But yeah, let's talk about cellphones for a second.

Way back when, I refused to even use a cellphone. I thought they were stupid. I thought anyone who used a cellphone was stupid. Somehow, using complex mental gymnastics, I even thought the brilliant dudes who invented cellphones were stupid. But in a twist of Shyamalanic proportions, the stupid one...was me.

Regardless. Fast forward to now. I have a cellphone, I love my cellphone, I use my cellphone constantly. Me from 2005 couldn't conceive of playing scrabble on your phone. Any moment there's downtime I'm all up in my phone's grill, googlin' and textin' and flingin' ill-tempered birds. Every single barista at my store is the same way every single barista in the universe is the same way. And while my previous location was a soul-devouring hell from which I thought I'd never escape, we at least got away with the occasional glance at the iPhone on the floor.

Not so now. I actually like my current location, but we've cracked down on phones quite a bit. The rule is simple and effective: keep it in your jacket, or it goes in the safe.

"Wah wah wah, Jim," you're saying. "Cry me a river and then build me a bridge and get over it, then get hurt crossing the bridge so you have to call a wahmbulance." And you're playing the world's tiniest violin.

Wave away the first world problems fog a moment, and do this for me: Pretend you work at a cafe. Now pretend you've done every conceivable task in the universe. The daily tasks, the weekly tasks, the yearly tasks. The store sits empty. It's two days after Christmas, everyone who can afford three lattes a day is off skiing, and you cannot leave this space for four more hours.

All you have to distract you from your boredom is the inevitable screeching of these goddamn things. And ten paces away, tucked inside your jacket, sits a magical tool. A magical tool that plays scrabble. That's like putting a starving man at a full table and telling him he can't eat anything until the restaurant's closed.

Jess doesn't look too thrilled on this postcard, as indicated by the multiple frowny faces. I particularly like the crossing out of "small" in favor of "isolated." I'm picturing her hunched over a rickety counter--tumbleweeds blowing by outside, natch--scribbling frownies while a puzzled postal worker looks on.

How isolated, Jess? Is it a geographical oddity?

a bit of housekeeping

Just so everyone knows, my scanner is either broken or haunted. I intend to keep posting in a timely manner, but that may involve jaunts to kinkos or the suburbs to mooch off my mom. Blogging is glamorous.

Petty Little Vengeances

I don't spit in your coffee.

I can't spit in your coffee.

I can't, as a waiter I knew once bragged about to me, rub my fingers on my unmentionables and then run them along the rim of your drink. I can't drop your food on the floor, pick it up, and serve it anyway. I'm right there behind the bar, in full view of you and three to four cameras. There are a million things I can't do to get back at you when you throw cookies in my face, tell me I'm a Nazi, or tell me you wish I would kill myself (that one didn't happen to me, but I got to watch).

All I can do is give you decaf.

And I don't even do that.

There are a lot of opportunities to be angry in this job. A lot of chances hunger for revenge. And on my bad days, my really bad days, my ultimate vengeance in the end is always:

Being so good at serving you that you feel guilty about whatever it is you did.

It's hard to be a jerk to someone being nice to you. It's hard to ignore a barista when they remember your name, your usual drink, the fact you had a game the other night. And as the barista, it's gratifying on two levels when you change a person's mood:

1) You've made his day! Maybe he'll be nicer from now own, and possibly give you a tip!
2) You've made him, on some level, take note of his bitchy behavior and feel bad enough about it to change his mind!

Passive aggression. Harnessed for good.

Below, we see a lovely wall in Datong, China, as well as the first, but probably not last, incident of what you all came here to see: hardcore nudity! 

Let it Snow, Let it Snow, LET IT SNOW ALREADY

We need snow.

Without snow, winter is just interminable cold with a dash of bitter wind. Or it's wet, cool weather that produces mud and head colds. Or it's shivering on the El platform and cursing this stupid goddamn weather.


But put snow on rooftops and winter becomes Winter. I can't be angry on that el platform if there's big, fat snowflakes falling all around me. I just can't. Yeah yeah yeah, driving sucks in snow, but driving sucks in rain, too, and we don't hate spring for that. Point being, snow is magical. I don't even mind mopping up the salt and sludge customers bring into the store, because I'm too busy pointing outside and going "LOOK IT'S SNOWING YOU GUYS LOOK LOOK LOOK!"

Here we see some "pretty old buildings" in picturesque Beijing, taunting me with their snowiness. I'm in Chicago, it's January, and the high for today tops fifty degrees. What the hell, Old Man Winter? Are you asleep, or did all that global warming finally kill you?

Of course, this could be the lull before the storm. Old Man Winter could be winding up for another gut-punch like last year. If so: good. I want to see lightning in a snowstorm again.

Sidenote 1: Blogger's interface changes how I type paragraphs next to postcards with every entry, so if the formatting seems wonky, thank the ghosts in the machine. Sidenote 2: according to wikipedia, [Red] carries a largely positive connotation, being associated with courage, loyalty, honor, success, fortune, fertility, happiness, passion, and summer. So don't worry, Jess! Happiness, passion, and summer look good on everyone!

*static noises*

*KSHHT*-ERRIBLE, IT'S TERRI--*KSHHHHT*

*KSHHT*--TERNET KEEPS CUTTING IN AND OU--*KSHHT*

*KSHHT*--ONTINUE HOLDING FOR PROPER TRANSMISSIO--*KSHHT*

*kshhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh*

Fishin'

I could make any number of points about man versus nature in this post. I could ask the most relevant question: "Why must we constantly try to improve upon nature?" You can't put a man on a gorgeous mountain ridge for five minutes without him putting a Starbucks MoonDollars there. 

I could ask the next question: "Why make the cement crane flap his wings?"

I could even ask the final question: "Is the fisherman in the process of catching a cement fish?" It's highly important. I want to know if there's a stone trout on the end of that stone fishing line. Because the thought of a fisherman locked in time, seated there long after we're all dead (except for me) never having caught anything, is incredibly depressing.

I don't have much in the way of relevant Starbucks anecdotes to go with this one, so: one day I'm working, wayyy back when, in the suburbs. Usual shift. Usual people. But one of my coworkers seemed nervous.

"What's up?" I ask.

"There's this creepy guy in the corner," she whispers, "and he's been staring at us for an hour."

I look. There, buried in shadows and hoodie, is my roommate. Waiting for me to notice him. And not for the first time. I'm forced to reassure the coworker that he's not a serial killer.

I miss that store sometimes.

Clickin' and Clickin'

You ever find a destination on Street View and just...keep on clicking around? Maybe it's just my ADD, but anytime I'm bored and futzing around in Google Maps I end up checking out the Street View in just about every direction. Got into the habit while apartment hunting last year; wanted to know what the surrounding area of my future home would be like. Granted, in the end I moved to an apartment less than a mile away from my old one, but still...am I the only one who does this? I just spent 30 minutes clicking through Baraki-Nakayama in Funabashi, trying to retrace my steps and find my old dorm. Didn't quite work out, but at least if I ever go back I'll know where the 100-yen shops are.

UPDATE: Found it! 

That's what this postcard makes me think of: Street View. Perhaps, far in the future, we'll send postcards that let you look around the area in which they were shot. And while I'm throwing out ideas here, each Future Postcard is good for one round-trip teleportation to the destination it shows! Get on that shit, science.

As for street peddlers a-peddlin', for some reason I'm reminded of the woman who showed up at my door one cold morning in Des Moines. She was selling remote control cars. Door-to-door. They transformed.

Since this was before noon on a saturday, not only did I sleepily buy a transforming car from this strange woman, I gave her a tip and benevolently sent her on her way. This sense of peaceful well-wishing lasted about as long as it took me to close the door, when I realized I wasn't dreaming. Damn thing didn't even have LEDs on it.

Testing The Waters

 ...and so far, so good. Nobody at Google's peeing in the pool, even if it did take a lot of confused clicking for me to reach the new post editor.

Today's post may feel a tad rushed. I leave for a caroling gig on Michigan Avenue in about an hour. If you see a handsome man in Dickensian clothing on the red line, give him all your money. Chances are he's me, and if he isn't, he deserves a reward for looking like me.

Christmas gigs are wonderful. Well, don't get me wrong, any gig is wonderful, but when your usual crowd is either tiny, drunk, or teetering between jubilation and belligerence, it's just delightful to have a gig with a built-in, guaranteed rapturous audience. Takes a bit of the pressure off. Plus, every one of these I've ever done, I've realized something midway through:

"My god. I'm getting paid to sing Christmas music in public. I'm getting paid to do what I constantly do anyway."

Santa gigs are still fun, but loads more intimidating. Children are picky little creatures. Shrewd, too, like goblins. Make a verbal misstep, and here comes a barrage of questions. Do something Santa didn't do last year, and you're tasked with explaining why that Santa had an English accent and you don't. And while kids sit on your lap, asking for hamsters and dogs (and in three cases, ponies), you try to assure them their dreams will come true while the parents shake their heads "NO" just out of the tykes' view.

All this going on around you, a yuletide cacophony, and if you screw up or break character, you don't just ruin the gig. You ruin Christmas.

Pay's good, though.

Heyyyy, wait a minute. I know this handwriting. Jess is back! Between the texas jaunt and a recent void in email communication, I wondered if she'd either vanished on the Silk Road to live in banditry or disappeared upon reentering the country due to subversive attempts to visit Blogger.

"Shut up," Jess? That implies I disagree with your assessment of the Forbidden Kitty. I like to think he's one of a long line of Forbidden Kitties, licking themselves throughout history. Sauntering in and out of the palace at will back when doing so meant death by a hail of arrows (even if you looked like Jet Li).

Winter In My Hand

It's the craziest thing. A while back, circa yesterday, two thousand and gosh darn eleven, Blogger had rich text formatting. I'm pretty sure they had it at the beginning of this fudging entry. Now I have to pretend I remember HTML, and pretend I ever learned> css. Not sure what exactly is going on, but screw it. Let's talk about snowball fights.

As a kid, Calvin was my hero. Not for most of the brattiness (though as the fifth of five boys, I was pretty bratty). Not for the pet tiger (though I STILL want a tiger). Possibly for the vocabulary, though lately in my day-to-day the words "dude," "awesome," and "like" often usurp verbosity.

But definitely for the snowballs. Calvin was a malicious little bastard when it came to snowballs. Whether slinging them at his man-eating tiger or at the fearsome Susie Derkins (with her mean right hook), he always attacked without hesitation or mercy. Me? Any opening shot I fired at my older brothers would result in my own personal snowmageddon. I held more fragile alliances than WWI-era Europe and they were all as useless when anyone decided it'd be funny to hit Jimmy with a snowball. I'm pretty sure Johnny was supposed to be on my side the day he hit the side of my head at point blank range and gave me one of these.

So when I look at the pair of tip jars at my coffee shop, one labeled SLEDDING and the other SNOWBALL FIGHTS, guess which one I pick?

Here we have picturesque and not at all terrifying Mt. Hua, where surely both of the aforementioned activities are common. I don't have much experience with high mountain cliffs, but I have traversed some narrow trails while skiing in Utah, and I'm sure the level of wintry fun is similar.

I don't think you can really consider not breaking your neck a failure in any context, Lisa. Unless you were hoping to be rebuilt as some kind of cyborg.

Nihao, Pardner

Ah, good old Shenzhen, China! Though it started as a poor village, its establishment as a Special Economic Zone in the 1970s created a flourishing city populated (as of 2010) by over 10 million people. Many foreign companies base operations in Shenzhen, and it's one of China's busiest container ports! If the name sounds familiar to Western readers, perhaps it's because the Apple-contracted manufacturer FoxConn bases its factories there--

...what's that?

I'm sorry. Uh, on further inspection, this postcard is from Shenzhen's sister city. Houston.

Houston...China. Right! Um...back in 1836, some very confused settlers sailed out of the Gulf of Mexico, only to somehow, against all odds, shipwreck in the Guangdong province of China and found a city--

It's...it's real Houston, isn't it? Actual Houston. Why do I have a postcard from Houston?

Oh!...OH! This explains the mysterious new narrator in those last few cards! Jessie went AWOL! To Texas! From...China. For a job interview. And then she pretty much immediately flew back. Which, wow, I wouldn't trade my worst five freshman year hangovers for the jetlag she's gonna go through. Jetlag, hell, we're talking jetwhiplash.

And she got the job!

I have no particular memories of Houston, but I do vividly remember visiting San Antonio as a child. Our hotel room porch overlooked the River Walk from several stories up, and I thought I'd never seen such an exciting view.

Until my brother started throwing down ice cubes at the tour boats, showing me how much more exciting the view could be. I joined in with glasses of water, and finally it was the two of us, flinging high-velocity ice shards harmless little ice cubes at the people below. In our defense, they were so far away, they couldn't really be people. I'm pretty sure we laughed when one of us--I propose my brother, though my memory remains fuzzy--struck a bald man on the head.

We stopped laughing when the knocking came.

My brother stood poker-faced as the hotel employees demanded information. Wish we'd had time to work out our cover story more, because even as he insisted we hadn't thrown anything off anywhere, I blurted out: "We didn't mean to hit him!" as though that would explain everything.

Well, in a sense, it did. It explained that we were responsible for the angry, bleeding passenger of a tour boat, and the employees in turn explained we were lucky to stay in their hotel.

Sometimes I remember the moment of impact: no sound, not even visible blood, just a distant bald man grabbing at his head in shock. I feel bad. Then I remember my brother and I couldn't have any soda for the rest of that week-long trip, or buy any souvenirs, and I ask you: who got off worse?

Bridging Gaps

My scanner did everything it could to ruin the front of this postcard. I apologize for the devils in the machine; clearly I should set that thing up with a curved roof. I like this wall, though! Looks good for warding off everything from ghosts to hordes of enemies. And just damned impressive in general. Ezio and Altair would need a week to climb that thing.

Here we have the city wall of Pingyao, a former banking center which looks, in many places, just like it did 2 centuries ago.

I even like to picture the bridge Lisa mentions as one of those swaying, unsteady rope dealies you'd see Indiana Jones struggling to cross. Doesn't seem accurate, but hey, it's not in the picture, so I'll just feel free to assume!

We're Driving Too Slow

High-falutin' family friendly sophisticate I am, I usually avoid employing overt profanity on this blog. Words are tools, you see, and bringing out the old four-letter gang's like conducting surgery with a hacksaw. That said, I checked my mail for the first time in 1.5 weeks today, and uh, quoting Jon Stewart:

Holy fuckballs.

I've got a whole mess of entries in the wings, postcards all scanned and ready, and then this...this treasure trove arrives? It's time to step up my game, ladies and gentlemen. If this blog were a movie, nervous scientists would be removing their glasses and the President would send us all to DefCon 1.

But nobody makes movies out of blogs, right? We can't be that out of ideas--

Oh.

Anyway, the nice thing is, blogging's getting easier. I'm not sure when it happened, but somewhere in the last three years writing a paragraph became as fun and productive as slip-n-sliding on sandpaper, and it's good to feel...well, good while I write again.

So, what've we got today?

Pagoda! A lovely example of Chinese architecture, though apparently not the one located just outside of Fenyang. Lisa, just leveling with you here, but if you blacked out the "Ying County" part on the postcard, I'm pretty sure we'd all believe it was the Fenyang pagoda. But you're too honest for that. And I am ashamed I suggested it.

Also, ooh, liquor factory! I'm sure there're some lovely views of fermenting huangjiu, but I'm glad you went with the pagoda. :)

Hot Deals, Cool Savings!

Remember that Geico commercial from a while back? Before the Cavemen, but post-gecko? Geico's web site was the bee's knees, a place you could get instant quotes and price comparisons and all kinds of neat stuff, and all you had to do was sign up.

The commercial riffed on it; some reporter guy asks the Geico Gecko (referred to henceforth as Geicko) "isn't it a little difficult to go to Geico.com to get a quote?"

And Geicko responds: "Saying you have to go to Geico.com is like saying, 'ello there, if you just...stand up, you can save loads of money. What's so hard about that? No thanks, you say. I'm so rich, I think I'll keep my seat."

Point being, people often ignore simple things they can do to save a bit of scratch. I'm not sure why I had to quote a years-old insurance commercial to make that point, but bear with me, I'm on cold medication.

The mysterious and not at all famous coffee company I work for offers a grand way to save bucks in the long run: the registered card. You buy one of their little gift card dealies, load it up with some money, register the numbers on the back at their website, and after a few transactions you get bonuses: free refills on coffee and tea. Free flavors, free specialty milks like soy or breve, free drinks every fifteen purchases.

All this for transactions you were going to make every day anyway. And yet, people endlessly try to get around the registered card requirement for these benefits, which, mind you, we're supposed to push.

"I'm only getting one pump of syrup. The Starbucks MoonDollars down the road doesn't charge me for it!"

"I just want a splash more tea on top."

"I want to talk to your manager, and I want one of those free drink coupons!"

The most egregious example was this one woman I served waaaay back in the day. She was a regular's regular, in multiple times a day every day, and despite the fact we all knew her name and how to make her favorite drink, not only did she never tip, she never even treated us like people. And she always...

always

ALWAYS

tried to get a free refill on her drink. Without a registered card, refills cost 55 cents. Big money for a suburban housewife, no? Oh, if only we'd told her she could register her card and waive that cost! Ah yeah, wait, we did. Over and over. Every day. Like water off a duck's back, this advice went in one ear and out the other.

Finally I laid it out for her, after hearing her complaints for the hundred thousandth millionth trillionth time: "Look, I'm not giving you a free refill, because it's not our policy. You know exactly what you need to do to get one. I'll even help you do it."

"You should give it to me anyway!"

"I can't do that."

"Can't or won't?"

Both, I desperately wanted to say. "Can't," I said. "Miss, we have a policy in place for this. It's not my decision, I just have to do what the people upstairs tell me."

"Yeah," she replied, snatching up her drink and slapping down fifty-five little ones in one janky, angry motion, "that's what the Nazis said."

And she was right.

That's what the Nazis did, isn't it? Overcharged the Jews?

Or is it possible that they did something far, far worse, something so awful that it forever altered and affected an entire race of people? And that invoking their name for something as petty as a fifty-five cent refill (demanded five hours after the original purchase) might make whoever invoked it...a horrible person? Particularly since geographically she was pretty close to the highest concentration of holocaust survivors in America?

I guess we'll never know.*

Moving past that ugliness, we have a lovely screenwall!

I wish we had more of this in Chicago. I don't mean murals, because between the graffiti, the community projects, and the modern art, we're lousy with murals. I mean DRAGONS!!!

Everything could use more dragons. I think I just got an idea for the city's newest art piece. It's gonna breathe fire.

I miss bilingual conversation. My Japanese was never amazing, but between my garbled Nihongo and my conversational partner's struggling Eigo, we could usually meet someplace in the middle. It served well enough when we talked about our mutual dislike of Bush, when I needed to find swag for certain kinds of anime (coughRoninWarriorsJessiecough), or when I needed to buy the absolute best kind of beer.

Nothing against Jess' handwriting, which cheers me up every time I get it in the mail, but I do love how Lisa's English seems influenced by her Chinese. Lots of lovely lines. I wish I could go without redacting my last name; the Y looks really cool in it.

*Nah, we do know. Forget you, lady.

You think you can see crazy.

Thing is, crazy's not always invisibles crawling all over you. Crazy's the edge that eccentric guy has on the markets; crazy's that weird little quirk hobbling your otherwise brilliant physics professor.

Crazy's come a long way since the Victorian sanitarium.

And yet, hovered over by a creature whose demeanor flutters between charming host and sociopath, I think I, for the first time in a long time, can just see crazy. Six foot three of it, leaning in close to my face, breaking promises and implying, always just barely implying, threats.

I came here because Starbucks MoonDollars wouldn't transfer me to the city. I found a cafe: new, independent and hiring, and I thought getting away my old place in the corporate toolbox would be rewarding. I wasn't prepared for the Crazy.

Crazy is running a crepes operation, with crepes in its goddamn name, when you can only make two crapes at a time, at roughly four minutes per crepe.

Crazy is reading negative Yelp reviews every single morning, sometimes twice a day, and still missing the point of them entirely.

Crazy is firing your training coordinator and your manager, then being angry your staff seems shoddily trained.

Crazy is seeing that your kitchen has consistency problems and firing the head of your kitchen, thinking you can run it all yourself.

But the craziest of crazy is, when Yelp complains about slow service, choosing to--rather than buying more crepe griddles or perhaps hiring more support staff--place yourself in the midst of your cooking line and micromanage the living hell out of your employees for six to nine hours at a time.

When your shift, a self-admitted night person, requests to open with the bakers at 4 AM just so he can avoid you for 5 hours, perhaps you've crossed a line.

When your customers complain on yelp--ahh, yelp again--about the "manager" yelling at and criticizing employees in front of customers kindly, perhaps you would like to avoid looking crazy. Perhaps leaning in well past the point of appropriateness, well past the point where spittle flying from your mouth is merely felt and not tasted by your underlings might be a wise idea.

We'll never know, because I worked for a crazy person.

"People on Yelp are saying they don't like how I yell at you," he said one day.

We, as a group, chuckled nervously. My crepe rollers and baristas looked with hope towards me, as though I could offer some kind of explanation, respite, or perhaps physical protection. But I had bills to pay, so I just chuckled some more. Then his eyes were nanometers from my own, and I could smell the weird spilling past his lips. You can't cover up weird, which has a smell all its own. My co-shift was a girl who chugged peppermint extract like water and believed floride to be a government plot and she was intensely sane compared to our beloved owner who now breathed angry bull breaths directly into my eyes, nose, and mouth.

"So you need to smile while I talk to you. Otherwise they'll think I'm yelling at you. And I'm not yelling at you." He gave me a look that said I can kill you, I can grind you up and serve you in our crepes and no one will ever believe you, just talk back peon, just talk back and smiled. "Am I? Am I yelling at you?"

We agreed he certainly wasn't yelling at us. Then he smiled in a manner which showed all his teeth, nodded, and strolled out to his luxury SUV.

Crazy people aren't supposed to have luxury cars.

Who is this mysterious new source of handwriting?! Who could it BE?! Perhaps China's gloriously superior economy has invented ghostwriters for travel postcards. Well it's over, then, eh? Finally those Capitalist pigs will pay for their crimes, eh?...what's that? The Cold War's over and Austin Powers references are so 1999? Well, never mind, then.

Last thought: suddenly the handwriting is far neater. Prettier, even. I wonder if that has something to do with writing kanji. I hope we find out!

But seriously if any of you know the name of this crepe restaurant I'm talking about, don't go there, the owner is probably a future batman villain.

Fireworks and Pigeons

Recently, my roommate burst into my room. His eyes held the haunted look of a man who'd seen something terrible: war. Death. The Prequels. He leaned against my desk, limbs and voice shaking, and asked:

"Jim, do you know if pigeons migrate for the winter?"

"Um," I said.

"Look it up." Not a request, not even a command, but a statement of something I needed to do. If there's a multiverse, and every choice leads to infinite other possible outcomes across that multiverse, I would still have googled pigeons in all of them.

No, we discovered. Pigeons do not migrate. In fact, their homing abilities are extraordinary. Will wasn't thrilled to learn this.

See, our apartment had a pigeon problem in the summer. We have exterior porches, and there's one additional porch outside of the laundry room. Since that isn't exactly a happening place for humans, pigeons moved right in and, as pigeons do, started poopin' up the place.

Cue entry of landlord with powerwasher. The powerwasher left grooves in the wood. I was at work that day, but I'm told the resultant guano mist drifted over to a neighbor's building while she sunned herself on her deck. Awkward.

Results of that: fewer pigeons. But two decided to stay. And when Will strolled upstairs to do laundry many nights hence, he got a faceful of pissed-off pigeon. Or possibly frightened pigeon. Confused, even? Pigeons aren't the most expressive creatures. Anyway, we've had pigeons for a while now, and it's always a lovely game of Am I Going To Fly At Your Face any time you head upstairs to do laundry.

But funny thing: since our apartment has a no-pets policy (except, ironically, for birds), and since pigeons sometimes look like they're kissing, Will grew attached to the little cooing buckets of pestilence. He suggested that we'd be kicking out a couple just trying to make their way in the world. Despite my desperate, yearning need for some kind of pet around this eerily silent living space, I asked if he'd feel the same way about a homeless couple living up there.

So: we've tried one fake owl. That didn't work. We tried three owls, two of which moved their heads and hooted. Today, just one day into that phase, Will texted me to let me know we have "three owls and three pigeons who just don't give a shit." It's a little different, though: before, they roosted on the windowsill, above our heads, and you could walk by without disturbing them. Now there's an owl on that windowsill, and those flying rats strut about your feet, so every step you ask yourself: do I feel lucky?

WELL DO YA, PUNK?

Maybe we should try fireworks? I'd make the drive to Tennessee Alabama myself. Something tells me the firecrackers in this postcard might be...slightly overkill, but then again, there's no kill quite like it. If I had a few plasma grenades, I'd aim to get a sticky.

You know, the SO HAPPY on this postcard does somewhat melt the cavern of ice Starbucks MoonDollars constructs around my heart on a daily basis. But I have to point one thing out.

Any dragon kite over 7 meters long damn sure better not look that happy, because any dragon kite that size damn sure better ward off evil spirits or bad luck or something. I'm not being smarmy, neither! I'm the man who missed prom thanks to appendicitis and who missed callbacks thanks to clumsicitis. I hypothesize that if I carried a kite at those times--a kite somewhere between Jack Bauer and Kohaku--I would've been fine and dandy.

Granted, it is 3 AM, so this hypothesis could be flawed.