officially unemployed [Ben]

last day of work at the restaurant was saturday. nothing really special happened: some people were normal and polite, others invented food allergies to justify their epicurean shortcomings; foreigners, old people, lesbians, and discover card holders didn't tip for shit, kenny g came in and no one recognized him, but, like most celebrities, was an ideal customer... really, the last 4 months or so has been one of the most enjoyable work experiences i've ever had. the money and hours are great, the work isn't physically difficult, and thankfully i possess the extreme patience and insincere obsequiousness needed to do this job well. the only thing that was really getting to me about waiting tables was that i couldn't help taking the work home with me. when your section is full of people spending $50+ a person on dinner, you can't afford to fuck up--and the only way to keep from getting buried and losing your 20% is extreme focus and economy of action. you'd better be refreshing drinks and dropping food on each trip out, and clearing plates and taking orders on your way back, constantly gauging what amount of attentiveness each table requires to feel prioritized and catered to. when i'm really kicking ass this way, i fall into a bit of a trance--similar to the way the body, in times of extreme tension, withholds blood from inconsequential areas like the stomach, my only thoughts are queues of actions: water table 7, bread table 9, order table 12: sm shrimp, pear no gorgonzola, beet, scallops, flank medium rare, fire table 8...

although these nights can be extremely lucrative (last saturday i served 57 people and cleared $480 in tips before my busser, bartender and hostess got their cut), it wears on you mentally. during the busiest parts of the season, i'd have trouble sleeping because my dreams were haunted by unsatisfied tables and trays of undelivered food languishing tepidly in the waitstation. multiple times i found myself clad only in boxers, in the complete darkness of my kitchen quite intent on taking the order of some fantasy 4-top. i never found a good way to calm down on nights like that--i pretty much persisted in a state of restless fantasy servitude until i got out of bed in the morning. while annoying, i just considered this an unfortunate occupational hazard. so... i'm quite pleased to report that, last night, i was having the same issues--somewhere around 3:30 a.m. some little snot-nosed brat sent back his penne bolegnese for angelhair with butter and parmesan on the side. the annoyance was sufficient to disturb my sleep, and with a fluttering of eyelids i awoke and realized that not only was i nowhere near a restaurant, i wouldn't be, outside the capacity of customer, for at least the next three weeks. not quite silently i cussed myself out, rolled over, and enjoyed an entirely dreamless sleep for the rest of the evening. hopefully it persists. blessed are the pleasures of unemployment my friends.

Preacher name contest - warning, Naruto humor [Mowgli]

Surfing late night TV yesterday I ran across a telesermon. I flipped away, but not before something caught my eye. Going back, I saw the eye that had been caught had not been deceived. The sermon was being delivered by the Rev. Jae Rock Lee. The beautiful green beast himself! If you know of any other preachers with entertaining names, stick 'em in the comments below. My money's on Jae!

I like the internet. [amy]

Why Captain Picard make things funnier, I don't know.

I also enjoyed Corn on the Cob (do not understimate the power of suggestion, original melody i think)

(thanks to alan)

i almost got stabbed at the laundromat (pt. 1) [Liam]

So.... I went to the laundromat, looking to do some laundry.
You know, because that's what people do at the laundromat.
That, apparently, and start the stupidest fucking disputes in history of stupid fucking disputes (with yours truly).
Check this out-- around 9:30 on Monday night, I drag the hamper out of my room and make the block-long pilgrimage to the laundry place on my block. Intending to observe the amount of foot traffic in the joint and assess whether or not I can leave my clothes unsupervised for any length of time, I've also packed a sketch book, a steno book, a book book and a cd player.
I figure I have all my bases covered, in fact I know I'm covering them a bit too much. I feel like a kid on the first day of school. Laundromat school... like... you know, this whole public access washing machine thing is pretty new to me. The coin-op machines in my various dorms have provided all my pre-requisite technical experience, but I'll be damned if I pretend to know the first thing about the culture of a laundry place on Taraval street. Granted, it's probably nothing difficult at all, but I'm just not the most confident guy going into a new situation sometimes.

I'm listening to the soundtrack for Wong Kar Wai's "In the Mood for Love," and selections from my newly purchased "Wu-Tang Clan: Enter the 36 Chambers" (more about that later). Thirty minutes into my wash cycle a skinny, dark haired dude with rather effete mannerisms asks me if the clothes sitting idle in one of the dryers are mine. The rest of the bank of dryers are occupied, and busily spinning away.

I tell him: "Nope."

He turns, walks over to the immediate area of the dryers, and poses the same question to the rest of the patrons. No luck. I continue scribbling in my steno pad.
Time passes. I think about a lot of stuff (Mowgli, I should try calling you in India sometime. Mike Barnecut, I need your email).
Some indeterminate time later (I'd guess about a half hour from where my laundry was) this rather tightly-wound guy with a shaved head approaches me, and asks me "did you move the stuff in one of the dryers." There's no question mark because he says it with the dry intonation of a statement rather than a question. He has a faintly latin accent and I need him to repeat himself three times before I can tell if he is saying "Do you move" or "Did you move." I think "Diyou" is how I would write it.

I tell him: "Nope."

He poses this question to various patrons of the laundromat. No luck. He goes outside and makes a call on his phone. Time passes. I decide to try making my first true type font when I get back. I buy a beer at the liquor store across the street, but don't open it. It's one of those 24-ouncers in the individual brown paper bags. That's just ghetto, Liam. I'm on my way to go add more quarters to my dryer load when I see the bald guy unloading laundry from a dryer. He seems to be dumping the stuff on the floor. I see a maroon-striped towel like the one I have. And a grey and black polo like my favorite grey and black polo. This guy is dumping my clothes. On the fucking floor. Is this some ritual of the laundromat natives I don't know about? Is it a common thing to put other peoples' stuff on the floor? No... no. There's band-aids and lint there.

I'm all: "Whoawhoawhoawhoa dude, what are you doing?"

Guy spins around. His eyes are very intense. He's mad... which strikes me as odd considering it's my clean clothes on the floor. The word "crazy" jumps into my head in big block letters.

He's all: "You took my girlfriend's stuff out of the dryer. You can't do that. That ain't cool."

I'm like: "I don't know what you're talking about."

He's like: "No. You took it out of this dryer. That's not cool."

So then I'm all: "I didn't take anything out of any dryer. It was empty when I got it."

Then muhfucker is yelling: "No. Uh-uh. You did. That's not cool."
and some other shit like: "You can't do that."

He is very mad, and very convinced that he is right. It occurs to me that for this man achieving "very convinced" does not require a mountain of empirical logic. I could not get that mad at a stranger I didn't catch in the act. His nostrils are flaring up like black, hairy gun barrels and he has this wrinkly, veiny shit going on near his temples.
I'm cornered, and totally disarmed by his clever use of precedents established in the famous case of "nuh-uh versus yeah-huh"

TO BE CONTINUED
(i'm going to sleep)

Stretching an analogy [Mowgli]

School is like a factory. A factory to which my fellow teachers bring me the raw material of stupidity for conversion into anger and frustration, intended for export. Here is a double shipment, because today was very productive.

Santosh, the other math teacher, brought up an issue before the 9th standard class. He had a set of photocopies of some basic problems on matrices. Unfortunately, he said, the first problem on the reverse had been photocopied badly and was too light to make out; we'd have to explain the question in class. Upon looking at the page, I was able to suggest a simple and elegant solution to this dilemma. The problem in question was quite visible, about 2 inches further down on the page than in the original.

One of the teachers there is an older woman named Claire. An American whose family was in the diplomatic corps, she was raised in France. She teaches a class called "English for Science", or EFS. I've only interacted with her once, a month or so ago. She was trying to get one of the kids to stop writing on one of the learning aids. The conversation went roughly as follows:

Her: Please stop writing on that.
Him: (Mumble mumble)
Her: How would you like it if I drew on your car?
Him: I'd get it repainted.
Her: (Can't think of a response, leaves)
Later on, he's still drawing. He's filling out the grid to write part of his IM name.
She comes back.
Her: Please don't draw on that.
Her: How would you like it if I drew on your car?
Him: I'd get it repainted.
Her: (Can't think of a response, leaves)

Afterward she said something to the effect that kids' rotten behaviour is a message to us to let us know that we are failing them as teachers. Hmmm.

Since then I haven't talked to her, but the kids constantly complain that her EFS class is terrible. When asked for suggestions on "How to make our school #1", they all suggested removing it and said it was their worst class. I took this with a grain of salt - maybe the don't like it because it's hard, or because they don't like being forced to use only English. Then I found the quality of her English when she put the following question on a blackboard for them:
----------------------------------
On a scale of one to ten, what was the most

Interesting
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Useful
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
(Some other similar category)
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

thing that you learned in this class?
---------------------------------

What does she expect for an answer? A number? An activity? I'll bet she doesn't know. This is an American woman whose father was a diplomat, teaches English, and she can't even write a coherent survey question. Sometimes I hate people.

My Future [amy]

My brother recently bought a cd of 24 Sousa marches. Right now the plan is to bump it in Juan's jeep while rolling through Berkeley. There might be other plans too, but they aren't fully hatched yet. There's probably a lot of potential though.

It kind of freaks me out, but I actually started feeling strangely patriotic when he started playing it in the car. (Ok, so maybe I shouldn't admit this on the internets) Like I had an overwhelming urge to go out and buy some bonds or something.

some possibilities:

1.It seems that middle school marching band has had some (really freaky) net effects that I had never before anticipated.
2.It might be just some kind of thing that gets burned into your soul by growing up in the States.
3.It's just me.

I can see my shameful demise now:
Amy does battle with some kind of Super Villian.
Super Villian plays cassette tape of Stars and Stripes.
Amy gets taken out by a BB Gun.
Other superheros do not afford me a proper superhero funeral for dying such an ignominous death.

(I also have lofty career goals)