Oh man oh man oh man

On Thursday, I went to a meeting. We talked about sales numbers, customer surveys, expansion opportunities...all the stuff you cover in your usual Starbucks meeting. But instead of remembering song lyrics, mentally replaying favorite movies, and desperately wanting to play with my phone, I was listening attentively and with great excitement.

I was taking notes.


This was an ad meeting at my Brand New Job, which starts for reals in eight hours, twenty-seven minutes.

Twenty-six minutes.

I'm all out of sorts. I wonder if I'll sleep. Does the car have enough gas? Should I shower now or in the morning? Are my slacks pressed enough? Should I wear a tie? Short sleeves or long? It's been a long time since my morning routine involved anything but "roll out of bed" and "make sure not to forget my hat and apron."

Gaaahhhh. I gotta read or something, get relaxed. This is like Christmas Eve, but instead of presents there'll be contracts and desks and--

oh my god you guys I get to sit down while I work


Okay, postcard!

Almost as tall as a man? Almost? Either the wall's eroded a bit over time (likely but boring), Chang and Bolin got lazy on their section (unlikely, less boring) or the Han Dynasty's biggest enemies were an army of Tyrion Lannisters (awesomest).

Bus tours are always terrible, Jessica. Always. Unless of course your family takes the mic and narrates the tours themselves. Then they're great! And very musical.

Chicken gizzards. Huh. I guess that's boneless in the most technical sense imaginable. I kind of want to try a plate, and I kind of don't at all.

Party Party Party

I've been drinking for...ten hours?

I'm not that drunk.

I've cleaned up bottles and compressed solo cups. I've refilled beers and provided napkins. I've turned down pot and turned up music.

My guests need to be entertained more than I need to be entertained.

Is this maturity?

I love how little context that note on the front of the postcard has...

...until you get here.

Apparently Movember was huge during the Qin dynasty.

Jess looks so proud of her head-stache. I'm proud of how proud she looks.

Monkey's Out of the Bottle

How do you tell someone you're not their friend?

I can't even make a blanket statement and say I never befriend customers, because that would be a lie. There are customers I want to see every day, there are customers I keep up with on Facebook, there are customers from three years ago I still miss seeing right now. But these associations form naturally, through conversations and personal compatibility and all the other flavors that make a good friendship stew. I don't go into work hoping to find a friend, and the customers I love don't go to MoonDollars needing one.

And then you have the customers who seem to know too much about you. Who want your phone number. Who get hurt and confused when you hesitate to give them your phone number. Who find you on Facebook when you didn't even give out your last name. Keep in mind: these people are never bad dudes. Often they're almost painfully kind. Nice, every last man and woman among them. A little awkward. A little lonely. And above all, talkative. We're paid to talk, we have to talk, and so they talk to us a lot.

It's touching, it's friendly, it can make your day. But it can break your day when you're trying to serve a line of twenty and someone is standing at the service area trying to talk to you about movies. Or when you just want to sneak a text on your phone and exhale during your three minutes of downtime and someone keeps coming over to chat. Or when you're about to get off work and someone whose name you do not know excitedly asks if you want to go out for a beer.

But there's no appropriate social strategy for telling someone "you are a decent person and I bear you no ill will, but were we not connected by these circumstances we would not be interacting." It's a dick move no matter what, and you're usually a dick for thinking about doing it. The polite, appropriate thing is to just...smile and endure, because really, the person on the other end of the bar is just looking for a friend, and you don't need to take that away from them, do you?

Man. I keep revising and revising those four paragraphs and never manage to not sound like a dick.  But keep in mind: people are awesome. Sometimes that doesn't come through on this blog, because this blog contains more bitching than March of the Falsettos. But people are awesome. Customers bring me books on voiceover when they find out I'm trying to act, customers bring me gingerbread cookies with my name on them during Christmastime, customers befriend me and perform with me at my location in an hourlong tribute to Frank Sinatra. It's unfair how awesome my customers can be. It'd be much easier if I loathed them all, in the way a dictatorship is much easier than a democracy. Posts like this wouldn't suck to write.

Apologies for the bad scan here. I tried three times and never got the text legible. It says: "I am guessing based on the diorama in the Great Wall museum, which we were exploring by flashlight because the guard wanted to go home a half-hour early, so he kept turning off more and more lights on us. (Later he realized that better visibility actually increased our speed.) Anyway, it was a bit unclear in the dark! (I swear we asked more than one person--including the guard--about the hours.)" Sure you did, Jess. Sure you did.

God, it's like a bizarro version of my MoonDollars diet. Not much variety available, so staples are the order of the day, but in my case the staples include 1) marked out sandwiches 2) marked out pastries 3) marked out fruit plates and 4) free smoothies.

I cannot properly convey how much I'm going to miss my free daily smoothie. I have that thing down to a science. Two yellow scoops of ice, three scoops of protein, the biggest banana you can find, three pumps of chocolate, nonfat milk, two shots espresso (optional), double blend, pour into Trenta cup, enjoy. There. Now you all have the keys to the kingdom. I should probably stop updating this blog, I'll never top the knowledge you've received.

Illogic

Some of the stuff we do is so illogical that when you describe it to Vulcans they burst into flames.

We keep our sleeves behind the counter. You know, those little cardboard doohickeys that protect your hand from the heat of the drink? The ones you grab by default from an accessible container at virtually every other establishment? We keep them away from you. Hidden. And we put them on some beverages by default (the really, really hot ones), and on some only if asked. So you constantly have people:

1) Getting their drinks.
2) Realizing the drinks are too hot for their delicate hands.
3) Looking furtively around the serving area.
4) Taking their drinks to the condiment bar because surely there must be sleeves there.
5) Sometimes pacing the length of the store hunting for the Sleeve Dispenser or perhaps a Sleeve Tree.
6) Finally asking in tones ranging from apologetic to totally freaking irritated, "can I have a sleeve?"

We force people into this pointless waste of precious life-minutes because it's apparently better service to give them sleeves instead of just assuming they'll take sleeves. People complain about the policy on our surveys, and still we are resolute.

I realize this may sound like small potatoes, but today was the busiest day I've had in months, and going through steps one through six about five hundred times has driven me up all four walls and left me on the ceiling.

It was my last Saturday shift ever, though.

...my god.

It was my last Saturday shift ever. I may just repeat that to myself for a while.

Holy balls, that place looks cool. I want to wander up to it after weeks of riding camels and bartering with bedouins. Um, okay, not actually bedouins, but whatever the local equivalent may be. There I will meet a mysterious woman, and my adventure shall truly begin.

What kind of powers, Lisa? Are they as cool as mine? According to this thing, I  "conquer rivals using a death-dealing tail made from mental energy. He likewise developed the talent to change shape into a hat, however only when angry. Lamentably, Jim Smylie becomes powerless in the presence of adamantium." Don't piss me off, people. I'll turn into a trilby. Maybe even a panama.

...amazing.

I've seen one one anime and one live action show based on Journey to the West and I have never thought of any dick jokes until now.

What is wrong with me?

Not A Single Boob Joke

[I actually wrote this entry at approximately 4:15 AM Wednesday morning. It was the first day I'd had espresso in nearly a week. You totally can't tell, can you?]

Wayyyyyyy too much positivity around here. Let's get into hate.

HATE

HAAAAAAAAAATE

oh god I hate making no foam drinks. So much. So much so much so much. Especially during a rush. Did you know we aren't even supposed to use our spoons anymore? Our newfangled standardized pitchers are designed for optimal, even steaming of milk. They're the pitcher engineering equivalent of the vortex bottle, a solution to a problem you didn't even know you had.

But then you come in and you order your venti soy extra pumps extra hot no foam chai and suddenly all that engineering goes right to hell, right to the lowest level of hell, and we're scrambling to aerate the soy milk just enough to avoid that jet-engine scream you hear when you steam milk without aerating it, and we can't keep sequencing pitchers because we have to focus on yours and of course there's still foam because it's freaking soy milk, the foamiest of all milks, and then you fill it with bubbly, foamy chai syrup, and OH MY GOD WHY DO YOU CARE ABOUT THE FOAM?! WHY?! WHYYYYYY---

Kidding! Kidding. I don't mind no foam drinks. As long as you're nice about asking for them. And as long as there's no major line. And as long as you're not ordering soy, or chai, or (I swear to god a customer asked for this once) a cappuccino.

You also have people who go to the opposite end of the spectrum: all foam. Like, twenty ounces of pure straight up foam. I had a wonderful customer who ordered this all the time in the suburbs. Sweet woman, late forties, and she loved whole milk all foam hot chocolate. Which is easy, because it's whole milk. But then you've got people who order bone dry nonfat milk cappuccinos, and if there's a hint of moisture in the whole damn cup they look at you like you resurrected Jesus just to kill him again.

Oooh! Which episode? Did it have Toph? She was the best character. Well, no, every single character in that show is the best character. Even the cabbage merchant. No, especially the cabbage merchant. 

Ahhh, gotta love the good old Lmpire. Sure they were brutal from time to time, but man, from the Mpire onward it was straight downhill.

I stayed at a Japanese hostel once. It had:
1) Communal showers
2) Passive-aggressiveness
3) NO PUPPIES

Man, the more I think about it, the more I realize I got shafted on the Cute Animals front when I traveled Asia.

Except for that one short-tailed cat that followed me to the train station every day. That little guy was cool. Not as cool as a luck dragon, but still!

The Times, They Are A-Changing

Welp.

I turned in my two weeks' notice on Friday.

Starting March sixteenth in the year of our lord two thousand and twelve (or as I like to call it, Saint Patrick's Day Eve), I'll be free of these coffee-stained shackles of mine. I'm hanging up the apron. Closing the till. Punching out my numbers, one more time.

It...hasn't quite sunk in yet. Damn near five years, now, I've poured myself into pouring people's coffee. I have loved the job, hated the job, tried to drink away the memories of ever having the job, and everything in between. And now it's about to end.

My life is about to seriously-for-reals-guys-I'm-not-kidding-hey-I-mean-it-this-time change. There will be set hours. There will be expectations related to my skill set and not my ability to smile and nod. There will be responsibility.


There will be weekends.

I am absurdly lucky.

I am stupendously lucky.

I am very scared. Very excited. Teetering on the edge of a precipice, about to close my eyes and jump in. Maybe it's full of fun things to land on, like marshmallows. Maybe I'll have to go all badass and catch a bird's legs or something on the way down. Maybe all that lies in wait for me is a bunch of jagged rocks and broken bottles. But the important thing is, I'm about to jump.

I hated Myst and Riven. Hated them. Hated them even more than Obsidian, which made me nearly put my fist through the family's old Gateway 2000 back in the day.

But if playing the hell out of those games means I get to go to this place--at any point in my life, ever--then I'll dig up the disks. Or just, you know, play it on my iPhone.

Man, I'm having Japan flashbacks. Cuteness on sleeve protectors? Not just on sleeve protectors, cuteness everywhere. Everything Kawaii. I once walked past a hair salon represented by a pair of beaming, anthropomorphized scissors and toward a bar with googly happy eyes on its beer sign. Even the cute mascots had their own cute mascots. Certain sections of Akihabara were probably a cynic's version of hell. Pink, big-eyed, cheery hell.

Can You Hear Me Now

How quickly we forget what life was like before the internet sat in our pockets. Not to mention lifelines to every last one of our friends. Not to mention every little distracting bleep and bloop we're used to pulling up for any dull moment in our frenetic little lives.

Well. Okay. You don't forget that. I do.

Last time my smartphone went goodbye, it was because of my stupidity and someone else's avarice. This time, if my smartphone is hitting that old dusty trail, it's due to simple entropy. Time eats everything, even the shiny expensive bits I put at the center of my life.

Last night I couldn't find people because I didn't have a phone. I couldn't even borrow someone else's phone to call the people in question, because I'd saved the necessary numbers in the phone instead of in my head. It got me wondering: How many addresses do I remember? How many phone numbers? How many birthdays can I pull up from thin air without Facebook or Calendar reminding me?

I read somewhere that if you kidnap an Aboriginal tribesman from the mythical land of barbies and eskys and put him in the middle of a city half a world away, he'll have an easier time getting around than you. See, Hypothetical Aboriginal Tribesman's language has no words for right, left, etc...just east, west, north, south. As in "you dropped your pen, sir, it landed three feet south of your feet."

Put me in the middle of the Loop without the lake in plain view, on the other hand, and I'd be grabbing at smartphones or screaming questions into taxis. Thanks for the lasting knowledge, technology.

It's not the end of the world, though: I'm about to use my computer to call the technicians working on my phone. The future's a strange place, sometimes.

Whoa! Words all over the place! Words Words Words. Deceptively competent English at first glance, until you see lines like "the shine brilliantly one another, s wonder in the Tienshan Mountains." I like it, though; I think the broken English adds to the mysterious power of the visuals. Like a stereotypical wise old merchant running a curio shop.

Ahhh. Brochures. I wonder if the writers also wrote did this Mystic Grand Canyon writeup. I give them an A for effort and several thousand A pluses for entertaining execution.

Fear of Flying

I got an interview.

Easy, folks, it's not for some kind of fancy-pantsy high-falutin' nine-to-five job. Part-time, half editorial and half fact-checking, some evenings and some weekends. As entry level as a college degree-requirin' job ever was.

I got the email at 2:05 PM on 2/28/2012. I noticed the email exactly seven hours later.

I still haven't signed up for an interview slot. In fact, I'm think I'm slightly afraid to. Afeared. Scurred, even. Why? I looked over the job requirements, and aside from a few position-specific items they call optional, it's all well within my wheelhouse. I don't mind working the occasional night or weekend, and it'd be a substantial raise.

Why does it scare me? Do I fear change? I mean, MoonDollars sucks. Not nearly as much as other things, sure, I'd never trade slinging coffee for knocking cattle in a slaughterhouse or picking tomatoes or crime scene cleanup or any number or harder lower paying more difficult more demoralizing more depressing more dangerous more static more...Okay, MoonDollars doesn't suck. I still don't want to stay there long enough to get a statuette (although the mere fact they send those things out indicates, again, that they don't suck).

Maybe I worry I'll be unreliable. Maybe I fear commitment on a level more substantial than the business equivalent of casual dating. Maybe a million things. The important thing is, I'm a little scared.

Ah, hell. May as well get the interview, at least. Paraphrasing a friend of mine: you can be totally afraid to do something and sure you're going to fail, as long as you man up just long enough to try and do it anyway. You'd think after all the auditions I've bombed I'd have internalized that by now.

Man, I'm using a lot of youtube links today. Better get 'em out of my system. Remember when The Simpsons was good?

I wonder if he tries to make each bowl unique, or if he tries to make them all as fast as possible to hit some kind of quota.

I also wonder if he's seen the movie Ghost. If it got him into sculpture in the first place he's probably bitter there's no Demi Moore. Or Patrick Swayze, for that matter.

I respect this old dude's tenacity. I hope he spoke slowly and loudly, with many inscrutable gestures, because in my experience that always gets the point across and never looks ridiculous.

Funny or Sad? Can't Tell

He doesn't want any of my bananas.

He doesn't want my coffee.

Wait, he does.

The coffee or the bananas?

"Borthgh!"

That's...is that both? You want a coffee and a banana?

"Yearrsh."

Standing still never looked so hard. I leave him swaying and I make his coffee. I set it down next to a banana in front of him and cheerfully tell him his total: "$3.02, sir." He looks at me like I've grown a second head, though given his level of intoxication perhaps I look like I have.

"Whurt?" Listening to him talk is like watching Quest For Fire. I know I'm hearing a language, I know it must have grammar and vocabulary, but humans haven't spoken it for thousands of years. "Fffrhghnn...whurt?"

"Your coffee and banana, sir. They'll be $3.02." I don't usually have to force a smile so hard. I am cheer's grim doppleganger, forced to stare down a man so far gone to drink, sobriety must seem alien to him. The growing line behind him collectively cringes in sympathy, but offers no help.

He slams one fist on the counter. "Gurttnmunny!"

"You...don't want your coffee and banana, then, sir?"

"Dunwnt yrrr fuckinbananad!" He reels around, crashes into a chair and decides that's where he's going to sit. We shrug it off and continue working, but he's not about to be forgotten. Every time a customer crosses his blurred and bloodshot line of sight, he releases some invective that I'm sure would be devastating if anyone understood it. The most prominent word fragment is a long, tormented "whooh!" which repeats every few lines. It makes him sound like a drunken seabird.

Our supervisor gently tells him to leave. This fails to work. Our supervisor tells him we're going to kick him out. Danny D. Drunkman's response is, from what we can discern, "nuh uh, I'll kick you out!"

The police are called. Forty minutes later they appear and escort the gentleman and his bottle of hobo wine (swear to god, I think it was Thunderbird) outside. They're not arresting him, oh no--too much paperwork for all involved, and besides, the poor guy's harmless. Just a drunk that gets beat up in local bars a lot.

The cops get back in their cars. Doctor Intoxo, perhaps assuming cops can't not arrest a man for the same crime twice, immediately stumbles back through our door, and this time an officer (saying "I tried to be nice!" in the most resigned tone I've ever heard come out of a Blue Meanie) hauls him away.

All that is left...is silence.

 Moral of this postcard: the Chinese need their own Captain Planet.

Wait, they got Captain Planet? And this generation still litters? Man, it's almost like instead of a useful and informative cartoon about the fragility of the environment it was a really batshit crazy show where Captain Planet fought environmental issues like AIDS.

Deal with the real, people!

Baby Steps

I just rode one of these things for thirty minutes, burning a total of 355 calories and biking nearly 10 miles.

Come the finish, my body rebelled against me in a million little ways: cramps knotting my stomach and thighs, every breath a blast of fire, that stupid pounding headache you get when you're stupid and don't drink enough stupid freaking water. I didn't exit the bike so much as melt from it, like the world's most pitiful receding glacier. I spent four minutes just panting on my apartment floor.

Of course, thirty minutes is nothing. 355 calories is nothing. 10 miles on a bike is nothing compared to 10 miles on foot. I can't hope to undo the damage of a full-sized grilled pork banh mi with one session, can I?

But you know what? Screw that noise. Last time I biked I could only do 25 minutes. The three times before that? 20. The first month I was lucky to break 10.

Maybe it's because I'm an actor and actors are powered by a combination of ego and self-loathing, but I find it so easy to write off any good thing I do: it's only good, not great. It's just okay, not amazing. Yeah I can make 30 minutes on my stupid little bike but there's dudes out there winning marathons barefoot. Yeah I wrote some cool little ficlets but I've never written a masterpiece. I'll never accomplish anything of note so why am I even bothering to try, a bloo bloo bloo.

Screw that noise. And screw the guilt that invariably manifests when I set myself for failure or fail to even try, because guilt is useless and lord knows I already have enough of it.

I like this blog. I'mma keep posting it until I nail the three-entries-a-week thing down. I hate working out, but I like the way I feel afterwards, so I'mma work out as much as possible even if they're wimpy little workouts.

Anybody catches me nursing self-pity, gimme a verbal bitchslap. I got one recently and it did wonders.

What a picturesque location! With a cool dome behind it. What exactly is the story with these--stables? Are they stables? Wait, I think it's actually the rear of that dome-y building. Make a back patio. Hmm. What's the building, then? Mosque? China Epcot? [Insert Joke About The Dome Looking Like A Boob Here]?

Ah well, I'm sure the caption on the opposite side will clear this right up.

...thanks, China.










I really dig the determined look on this woman's face. She's short-staffed and, ugh, it's all foreigners with their weirdo language, but by god, she's going to make sure they know to dip their fried things into the tea.

And there's a cat! Cat in a tree! Cat in a tree above the table! Now, Jess, did someone point it out to you and then steal a bunch of your food off your plate? Yeah. That's right. I haven't forgotten.


don't fear failure

I Got Nothing

Yesterday I drank beer with dinosaurs. Today I had to close the store. There were no dinosaurs there, only cranky people. And one extroverted drag queen.

I'm not sure the hangover will ever go away.

Be back this week with more coffee-flavored ruminations. In the meantime, here's a postcard:

It just hit me, I've never been inside a mosque. And I've only been inside two temples. And one Lutheran church. Hell, I've never even set foot in the Bahåi House of Worship in Wilmette and I've driven past that thing more often than I've driven past Wrigley Field. I wonder if there's some obscure rule in the catechism about visiting other houses of worship: does God consider it cheating? Is it like a cubs devotee partying at Comiskey?

I've also never had mutton. Or pigeon. Why do I get the feeling they're affordable staples in other places, but if I tried to find them in Chicago they'd go for fifty bucks a plate at some restaurant with three words in its name?

The Mascot Diaries: External

You are a dental supplier. From Omaha. The largest supplier in Omaha, third largest in the country. Your products sit on store shelves beside Crest and Aquafresh, and though not as famous as the former, your products are a name brand barrier. They block the consumer's gaze from meeting with the accursed generics. You are not the king of your industry, not by any means, but you are still a titan among ants.

Thus you came to McCormick Place, striding past the trade show booths of minor dental deities--toothpaste kami, one might say--and proudly staking out your claim beside the Big Boys of oral hygiene. You have a new entry-level oscillating battery powered toothbrush to hawk to the masses. And at first, the swarming crowds of dentists and wholesalers flood your booth, take your little vibrating tchotchkes, vow to buy your product in droves.

And then, just hours into your weekend-long triumph, something happens.

The crowd slowly dissipates, like stormclouds that never quite stormed. Here and there among your receding audience you hear murmurs of interest, snatches of words:

"Crayon."

"Red."

"Dancing."

Distressed, you turn to your marketing intern, a hardworking teen from University of Iowa you have no intention of hiring, and sharply tell him to watch the booth. As you fall in line behind those few last stragglers abandoning your wares, you snatch a few tchotchkes. Maybe you can get some people back once you find out where they're all going.

But once you get there, twelve booths down, you can't remember your old life. All it takes is a step through the semicircle of people gathered around an unassuming little display for children's toothbrushes and your brain is clearing out valuable cognitive real estate. Weddings, divorces, the first factory, the second, bigger factory, that thorium toothpaste you've considered test marketing--it all goes away. And how can you keep it? How can you hold onto anything but the utter, baffling joy flooding your mind at the sight of:

The biggest
happiest
reddest
dancingest crayon you have ever seen.

It whirls towards you, seven feet or more of crimson cheer. You think it's going to keep moving, you think you, the third place national dental supplier--or even fifth if you're being honest with yourself--aren't worthy of this crayon-man's attention.

But he stops.

He looks at you. He looks into you.

And one giant, gloved hand flies into your life. You drop your samples, barely aware you had them, to bring up your own hand for the most perfect moment in your entire life.

You high-five the giant crayon.

When you return to your booth, everything feels different, and yet everything is still the same. The U of I intern scrutinizes you between customers, and finally asks: "Boss, are you okay?" And you realize you've been crying.

"I'm okay," you say. You put your hand on the intern's shoulder and resolve to hire him the moment he graduates. Something mid-level with growth potential. You smile and the only thing cleaner than your teeth is your soul. "I think we're all going to be okay."

....

Me, inside the crayon: something like this.

 See, I know she's trying to sketch in what this camel actually looked like, but thanks to a pop-cultural upbringing that consisted primarily of video game commercials, junk food, and Japanimation on Channel 62, that sketchy line-y drawing overlaid on reality brings but one thing to mind:

doot-doo doo doot-doo doot doo doot doo doot doo...

Apparently riding camels requires less clothing than your average 7-11. I'm strangely okay with this.

Reliability

The thing about a job like this is, if you're not in it to advance to management or ownership, you can't keep caring. You just can't. You're not making the hot chocolate because it's what you love to do, and you wouldn't dream of calling it your fallback plan. You're doing it because it's a tax you pay to stay alive while you attempt to pursue other foolish dreams. In all my years (about 4 and counting now, oh god) of food service, I've met exactly one part-timer who said he had nothing else going on, and even he planned to go back to school eventually.

Of course, even if you don't have any emotional investment in the job, that doesn't mean you have no investment in yourself. Professionalism remains important even when--like me, towards the end of my tenure at my last location--you'd happily get punched in the face ten times a day rather than do your current job. Digging ditches, making coffee, executing prisoners, whatever, you have yourself to live up to. And usually you do.

But you get used to a...lack of investment. A sense that, as you look upon the job you've poured hours and days and years into, I don't belong here and will never have a life here, why do I care how professional I seem while I'm banging my head against this brick wall?


Because it's an opportunity, you idiot, is what I usually say. What I hadn't realized was how this quiet dismissal of obligation and expectation could color my behavior in other facets of my life; how unprofessionalism in something as "inane" as part-time, futureless employment could, say, interfere with my pursuit of performance-as-a-living.

"Jim," someone said to me recently. "We want you in this show, you're ready for it, but...we just can't rely on you. You've been late to rehearsals. Late to show calls. We hope when auditions come up a while from now you'll be ready for them."

It blew my mind. I operate on a sliding scale of lateness, where five minutes is to be expected and half an hour is where things even start to get problematic. And I'm very, very good at proving lateness or absence is not my fault. The thinking goes: I left for the [whatever] with [very, very slightly over the amount of time required to get there exactly on time]. [Something happened.] Who could have seen it coming? It's not like I caused [something], so what a shame, eh, but whatever, I'm here now, let's do this! And through the occasional disciplinary action at MoonDollars Coffee I'd learned to buffer my time, to arrive five to ten minutes early, and so on, but I'd written off other things--acting gigs, dates, meetings with friends, and so on--as informal stuff, stuff I could take my time getting to, fun stuff where reliability doesn't matter.

Nah. Screw that. Reliability always matters.

I googled the hell out of the scenario on this card. I really did. I found nothing. I'll update the entry after I've pestered Jess for more information, but for now, here's my Cliff's Notes (remember those?):

1. Xiang invites Xiao over for soup.
2. Xiang's snakelike bow just so happens to point straight into Xiao's soup.
3. Xiao, ancestor to countless people who forward chain letters, thinks anything snakelike pointing towards his soup means OHHH SHIT, SNAKES!
4. Xiang yearns for a new way to meet friends, one not dependent on geography. Through genetic memory, Friendster is born.

Once, a while back, several authentic decals for a super expensive prototype car lay within my reach. I'd just purchased my beloved Honda Civic, but the little H with the...thing around it wasn't doing it for me. I tried, and failed, to get a decal for my car, perhaps hoping some badassosity could be transferred into my engine through decal alone.

Good to know somebody in Kashgar had the same idea. And I agree with Jess, for the most part, though I'd also settle for "Serenity."

No, I'm not wiki-linking that one. If you don't know what I'm referring to, I have a DVD box set I need to send you.

What's in a Name?

"Hey, buddy!"

I can't remember your name.

"Good morning, my friend, is it the usual today?"

God I wish I could remember your name.

"Yo!"

How can I remember how many splenda packets you want in your iced coffee and not remember your name?

Someone once told me I should get into politics. The idea appealed: start somewhere small, have some kind of effect on society, do more than just bitch about things on facebook. But, more practical issues aside, something huge tanked that idea: I can't remember names.

Ever.

I certainly remember faces. Voices. Every other characteristic. But--like birthdays--names elude me unless they're drilled into my head multiple times a week. It took me a month to learn all my coworkers' names at my first location, and I only had eight coworkers.

Strange things, memories. I can remember any Simpsons quote from seasons 1-9 without hesitation, recall a song entirely from one or two notes, and picture in perfect, flawless clarity every slight and embarrassment I suffered during high school. But if we're at a party, I can't tell you off the top of my head what that longtime family friend's name is, even if they've been to every party we've thrown for five years. Because it'd be too mortifying to ask.

Scripts and lyrics are easy. You can keep checking them as often as you like until you get them right. But people? Tell a person you don't remember their name after hearing it once and you're That Guy from then on.

 I like that even without the dialogue bubbles you could easily picture this guy awkwardly lying to his sheep. And the guy on the other side of the fence can't believe he's being so dishonest.

Fat-tailed sheep! And a holiday totally dedicated to slaughteri---err, sacrificing them. A handy way to respect your religion's traditions while also obtaining metric assloads of meat and wool.

Now I want to see a bunch of sheep bleating from a car trunk on I-94. First one to do it and take a picture gets a free car interior detailing! I'll just wait for the submissions to roll in.

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.