I’m just kidding.  But here’s a bulleted list.  I wish I could make this a mulleted list by giving the dots little mullets, but I just can’t.

• Since we last talked, I shaved all the hairs (more than you might think) from my head.  I’m going with the shaved head look for a while, so you better get used to it.  Thankfully, it doesn’t really affect you, my blog readers.
• The World Cup is here.  I think I wrote the definitive piece on the World Cup and American’s reaction to it four years ago.  Here’s a link to it.  Yesterday, France played to a tie with Ecuador.  I’m a big believer in the Monroe Doctrine as it pertains to soccer, and so I’m very happy that big bad France got tied by the swarthy Ecuadorians.  That’s a good first day.  Also, I always root for the African teams, except of course for South Africa.  We will not forget, South Africa.  We will not forget.
• ESPN has come out with something called “ESPN3.”  We’re moving ever closer to “The Ocho” becoming a reality.
• Man, Milwaukee is Brewer-crazy.  I had forgotten what it’s like to live in a real sports town.  And the Brewers aren’t even good!  I don’t care about the team at all*, and yet I know all about their players and their hopes and dreams and contracts and failures and Steakhouses.  For example, did you know the Brewers have a guy named Corey Hart who’s a total hillbilly?  Also, he’s stick-thin and has an absurd Amish beard.  Also, he totally sucked last year but is currently leading the NL in home runs.  These are some of the things I know, for no dang good reason.
• I’ve developed a lot of theories about God and Life and The Universe and Everything, but I’m not quite willing to share them.  Perhaps if someone were to get me drunk, that would unloose my tongue.  These theories have helped me a lot, actually, in my day-to-day life.  I still hate talking to people, but I’m not as burdened about it now.  And it’s not like my theories are some sort of secret, a la The Secret — they’re right there in the Bible, and other places.  Perhaps I’ll just start a cult and have done with it.  Can you have a cult with no followers?  Isn’t a cult with no followers just a crazy person?
• With regard to camping/hiking, I have purchased:  1) A cool tent, 2) a Wal-Mart brand (technically “Ozark Trail) camping pad, 3) a tarp, 4) a point-and-shoot camera, 5)  a sleeping bag.  Now, if I could only purchase something that stops it from raining.  Any evil geniuses out there with a weather machine I could borrow?
• I like coffee shops.
• The USA plays the England in soccer today in what some people are calling “The Dixie Chicks Revenge Game.”  C’mon USA, think about how much Natalie Maines will hate it if you win!
• What the heck — Nebraska in the Big Ten?  Colorado going to the Pac-10, which might soon be the “Pac-16?”  The Big 12 becoming the “Big Five?”  Nobody wants Rock Chalk Jayhawk anymore?  Things like this are why the NCAA needs a commissioner who manages which teams are in which conference.  They need me to be that commissioner, actually.  I’ll set them straight.  My first edict?  Notre Dame is disbanded for being snooty.
• I’m not delivering pizzas right now, which is weird.  My real job has become a real job, and that means real busy.  You would not believe how busy I am all the time.  That’s ok though, I like it.  It gives me something to do during the day.
• Oh, and LOST ended.  I don’t have time to deal with my feelings on that right now, I got too much to do.

That’s all I got.  Sorry.

*obvs, that’s not completely true.  But it’s baseball, and baseball doesn’t care about me, so why should I care about it?  I’ve been less and less passionate about sports lately, because it all seems so silly.  Also, the Yankees, the Lakers, and the Blue Devils keep winning championships, we might have to disband the whole sport world and start over.  Thank God for the Saints, right?  Literally.

1) I got a job.  As someone once said, I now get up early like a birdie.  “A job” doesn’t really cover it, because I now technically have two (2) jobs.  This might not last forever (I’ve been torn on whether or not to quit delivering pizzas), but for now it’s lucrative and time-consuming.  This is ok.  The only way is ISN’T ok is this: I don’t have time to post blogs anymore.  I only have time right now because I have the day off.  I’m barely even twittering these days, it’s gotten so bad.  It just goes to show you that I’ll stop being social the moment I get an excuse to stop.

Fortunately, this also means I have benefits, something I haven’t had for a long, long time.  My bosses are all great Americans and I love them.  There’s also a chance they might be reading this.

2) I’ve been doing other writing.  That’s the other reason this blog lays silent as a turtle in a box made of sound-absorbent tile.  I just wrote an insane Anti-Oprah short story for the Online Apologetics Conference.  Writing takes a lot of time when you’re as scatterbrained as me.  Seriously, my brain is always melting in 20 different directions for no reason.  I’ll write something, then look back on it and wonder what kind of alien would have written that.  I may just have a split-personality, actually.

3) I’ve decided that life is pretty much meaningless.  “Vanity” and “Doesn’t matter” are also applicable terms.  Yes, I’m ok.  No, I’m not insane.  This is a good thing.  I said “pretty much,” not “completely.”

4) I attended a funeral in Northern Wisconsin and reacquainted myself with church potlucks.

5) I upgraded to Ubuntu 10.04, which is nice but a lot like 9.10.  Also, there were two really dumb things the developers did that hurt my first impression of the OS:  They got rid of the volume control in the panel (you have to re-enable it in order to see it) and  they put the minimize-maximize-close window buttons on the left side of the windows.  Seriously?  Even if you think have “big plans” for the right side, you should resist the urge to execute them.  I could hack GNOME to put them back on the correct side, but what’s the point?  They’d just end up on the left every time I change the theme or upgrade something.

Other than that, though, it’s fine.  Not revolutionary, but fine.

6)  Lala.com is closing, having been purchased and destroyed by Apple (or at least it’ll be gone on May 31).  Steve Jobs just bought them so he could take their engineers and technology and use it for evil.  But hey, I get credit in the iTunes store!  Whoopee!  This is like having a Tolltag account and Hitler buying the highway system, closing all the tollbooths, and giving you credit in his Nazi paraphernalia shop.  I stand behind this analogy.  It’s exactly like that.

7) The Milwaukee Bucks made us all Fear the Deer, then backed away like, well, a real live deer.  At least we now have a “The Pack is Back”-style slogan to use to beat people down.

Yeah, duty calls.  Story of my life.  See ya later.

(I’m in some sort of employee review situation)

Generic blonde woman: Now let’s talk about clothing.

Me:  Ok.

GBW:  Would you say you’re a good dresser?

Me: Um…I don’t know…

GBW: (shaking her head) No, you are not a good dresser.

In the hallway, just now:

Engineer: And I’m telling you that it depends on the size and complexity of the (data set).  Getting the data from it could take 5 minutes, or it could take 16 hours.  If Armstrong were here he’d be going ballistic.

Boss: It could take that long, but it shouldn’t.

Engineer:  Oh, right.  (dismissively walks away).

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My day started out well with 5 blades, but quickly took a turn as I spilled coffee all over my tax return and blackberry.  I blame the generic blonde lady.

Yup, this is me.

It’s not only that I have a full-time job AND a part-time job now (the part-time job mostly to make up for the taxes I pay at the full-time job), it’s that on successive nights I have: 1) discovered gin and tonic; and 2) attended a Brewers game.  Both were great, but have left me so tired I don’t have time to even post here or read a 1000-word story for a writing contest I’m judging.  It’s time to cram activities into any blocks of time I can, I guess.  You know what else?  And this is a shocker…

I missed LOST last night.  And a Desmond episode, no less.  Ugh.

But you can’t just say that, because it’s unprofessional.  It’s like the business world has chosen to wring honesty out of itself for the sake of preserving the status quo, which is mostly based on nepotism, class warfare, and trying to artificially make the positive-thinking dogma of The Secret a reality.  In that climate, I’m toast.

It doesn’t help that I only recently discovered that I’m called to be a writer.  The main reason it doesn’t help?  I’m totally unestablished in the writing sector (and using words like “unestablished” can’t be helping, btw), a place where it usually takes a long time to establish one’s self.  I’ve been gaining meaningful experience in the past three years, but it’s been in computer support.  Yeah, so has everybody else, apparently.  I’m convinced it’s nearly impossible to get a job in the technical world without one of those things I mentioned before, such as nepotism.  And here’s the important thing — not that I would really even want to get a job as a computer technician, at least if it wasn’t in the right company.  I really am a writer now, sad to say.  I know people support themselves in other ways as they get established in their careers, a la all the waitresses in Hollywood who are looking for their big break.  It’s part of dues-paying.  Or as I like to call it, “carving a hole in the wall of life and sleeping there like a badger until something better comes along.”

So I apply for these jobs that I’m overqualified for, and keep getting told (either explicitly or by impersonal and unprofessional silence) that I’m not qualified for them.  This has made me cynical, and bitter, and a giant ball of seething unprofessionalism.  HR representatives are the gatekeepers for me, and I can’t think of a way to explain my way out of the courtyard and through the gate.  Obviously, they’re not going to change.  What I need is somebody to take a chance on me, like Abba says.  If HR representatives change their mind about the kind of false qualifications one needs to get a job in IT, I’ll be first in line.  Honey, I’m still free.  Take a chance on me.

Look, I get it.  I know it’s hard for hiring managers in this current climate where everyone is underemployed and disloyal and looking for a new job.  Part of the blame lies with me and my inability to convince anyone that my work the last three years has actually prepared me to do tech support.  It’s hard to tell people that, yes, I believe I could figure out Novell e-Directory, or administration of a Citrix server, or how to enter support calls into a database, etc…and have them believe me.  Truth is, I’ve been having to figure out stuff like this on the fly for the last three years.  For some reason, nobody can see my point.  Again, all I need is a chance.

I’m going to put at least one book out in 2010, which will hopefully be the start of a long and fruitful career composing things that people actually read.  I’m probably going to go back to pizza delivery, because how else is a man supposed to support his writing habit these days?  That is, if I can find somebody to hire me for that job.  Even though I’ve only been doing it for 12 years, I feel I might be qualified.

The second thing I’m obsessing over is this list in the NY Times: 100 things Restaurant Staffers Should Never Do, by Bruce “I’m starting my own seafood restaurant” Buschel.  When you make a list like this, it’s always going to be a clearinghouse of your own personal pet peeves, and contain virtually nothing of universal value.  What Mr. Buschel does provide is a glimpse into the world of fine dining, where each table has their own personal waitperson/slave and every $200 bill has great value, which of course it does because it’s a $200 bill.  Such a place certainly doesn’t suit my temperament or the level of preferred comfort, with its overthought and overpresented cuisine that can usually be trumped by an above-average grilled-cheese sandwich; but for some people, especially NY Times-y people, it is the highest of high culture.  It therefore doesn’t surprise me that somebody would try to standardize the service part of these establishments as another arbitrary “barrier to entry” for the unwashed.  I’ll put all this another way:  Classy people like to be around other classy people; it makes them feel classy.  Therefore, they come up with some classy-feeling (but ultimately arbitrary and subject to personal preference) standards to make things seem classier.

The unintended consequence of a list like this is totally giving us a glimpse into the mind of the culturally elite eater.  A lot of Mr. Buschel’s 50 rules were things that I never would have guessed classy people prefer.  Who knew the rich don’t like to be touched, or that they enjoy looking at their dirty empty plates after dinner?  I think this calls for a different kind of list — 10 things this list says about fine diners:

10. They think they are a different species than the waitstaff, and don’t want to have any sort of human-subhuman interaction with them. (#7, 10, 38-50)

9.  They think that “My pleasure” is something that people say non-ironically in 2009.  This means they probably never watch TV, or see movies, or engage popular culture in any way. (#41)

8. They don’t like to be touched, and they assume that service workers are germy. In fairness, they’re probably right about this. (#12, 13, 28, 32)

7.  They take compliments to other people as slights to themselves.  From this, we can determine that they are mentally disturbed and possibly sociopathic.(#40, 42, 46)

6.  They don’t drink beer, or soft drinks, or coffee, or tea, or anything you or I might drink.  They expect free water, and they drink wine.  Oh my gosh, do they drink wine. (#6, 22-30)

5.  They do not like to answer questions, especially from you. (#2, 6, 18, 48)

4.  …Unless those questions have to do with their precious wine, because God forbid you serve it in a bucket of ice or even pour it without asking them first. Oh, the humanity. (#26, 27)

3.  Amuse-bouche is a real term that hasn’t yet been replaced by something better, even though at this point just about anything would sound better.  This tells us that they like speaking French. (#4)

2.  Their constitutions are so delicate that they can’t handle even the sound of other human conversation.  Nor can they handle non-classy smells. (#33-36, 47).

1.  Not only that, but every interaction with them must be done with the utmost of care so as to not disturb their waking classy slumber.  You might think, then, that the ideal restaurant would have well-programmed robots instead of servers.  But you would be wrong –  ironically, they’d just complain about the servers being too “robotic.” (#9)  From this, we can determine that they are impossible to please.  The best course of action is therefore to have nothing to do with them.

—————————————————————-

The article in question created quite a comment firestorm — 1158 comments in three days!  When it comes to food service, everyone has their 2 cents to contribute.  Aren’t you glad I decided to put my opinions aside and scientifically study these fine New York diners?  Perhaps one day we will come to an understanding of why these people are the way they are.  It’s probably genetic, or buried deep within the folds of their head-brains.  In any case, could somebody pass me a grilled-cheese sandwich?

Donald Driver, Not a Traitor

I haven’t felt this good in a loooooong time.  The people I’m living with (and I certainly don’t mean to embarrass them should they ever read this) are being fantastic to me.  They bake all the time.  All.  The.  Time.  They’re also feeding me other kinds of good food, which food has nearly totally cleaned up the on-and-off intestinal problems I was having.  Sorry if that’s TMI.  Anyway, yesterday we had these awesome buffalo wings during the Packer game, and I told them that it was the greatest day of my life.  I was only 99% kidding.  They are great, their kids are almost always fun, and the whole situation has worked out far better than I could have ever dreamed.

But now it’s time to get a job.  It was probably time a couple of weeks ago, but apparently God had other ideas.  I really have tried, though, and I think this week is the week it happens.  It just has that feeling about it.  As sure as the geese that just landed in this river in Grafton are cute, I will acquire a job.

We’ve been going through old seasons of the American version of The Office.  The last episode we watched was the final one of Season 3, where Jim and Pam finally finish their awkward avoidance dance.  It was heartwarming.  Not as heartwarming as Dawn coming back to Tim with Yaz playing in the background at a Christmas party*, but still heartwarming.  Watching all the episodes in a row like that showed exactly how annoying the American version was with the whole Jim-Pam thing.  Did the length of the pain make the coming-together moment more meaningful?  Maybe.  But it was still annoying, for example, when Pam got back together with Roy for an episode.  It seemed like a penalty kill to me**.

I’m looking forward to Season 4 now, because I have fond memories of Dunder Mifflin Infinity and the extremely uncomfortable Dinner Party episode at Michael and Jan’s home.

Office HSO of the day:  Angela is the worst character on the show.  As weird as Creed is, even he is more realistic.  It seems like they started out wanting her to be a Christian prude, and ended up at oddly hypocritical psychopath who really likes cats.  It’s not that she’s not a funny character (see the time when she and Oscar fight over the “babies and saxophones” poster), it’s just that they developed her badly.

—————————

In other news, it’s a beautiful day in Wisconsin.  This river I’m looking at is cleaner than any old river in Texas, because it’s real and doesn’t dry up every other year.  The sun is out, the trees are popping with reds and yellows, and I’m drinking “Jose.”  It’s a kind of coffee at Alterra, and it’s better than their regular coffee.  I picked “Jose” largely because he had hair, and the other choice, “Paco*****,” looked like Kojak.  So not even I am free from racism against us balds.

Oh, and like it really needs to be said:  The Pack is Back.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, Pink Floyd is on and it’s time to write a book.  It’s going to be about monkeys, and it’s going to be awesome.

—————————————–

* For this reference, please see the British version of The Office, which is probably still a little better, if only because it’s more concentrated.

** Because sometimes girls don’t know sports analogies***, Penalty Kill is a hockey term meaning the time when a shorthanded team just tries to run out the clock, and doesn’t try to score.  That doesn’t really explain it for the non-sportsy, but the important thing is that the team Killing the Penalty is trying to Kill Time, and not Play Hockey.  Thus, the Pam-Roy reconciliation was just there to fill up two episodes or so, as the Office was bound and determined to wait until the end of season three to finally put Jim and Pam together.  The only thing about Pam-Roy II that wasn’t a timewaste was the scene where Roy attacks Jim and Dwight pepper sprays him (which, if you think about it, could have been accomplished without any Pam-Roy dating activity).

***A la the Jan conference with the office ladies, leading to Kelly’s has her finest moment****.

**** Namely, the time when they were talking about sports analogies, and Kelly asked Jan what it means when people say that Jan and Michael got to second base, and then Kelly winks at the camera.  So now you see where I was going with all this.  Sheesh.

***** I don’t remember his real name, but I’d like to think it was Paco.  I’m too lazy to walk 20 feet and look.  Welcome to my world.

• We routinely run out of stuff like boxes and crushed red pepper packets, despite the fact that they don’t spoil.  I’ve had four store managers in my time at this restaurant, and the last three couldn’t seem to figure out how many boxes to order.  Thankfully, the current manager has appeared to figure this one out, at least for now.  But we’ve had to “halve” large pizzas and serve them in two medium boxes at least five times since he’s arrived.  Once is too many.
• Andrea the shift manager happened.  She was from Brazil, and didn’t understand why nobody was following her totally crazy orders.  Her 2-week tenure started badly — she went on and on about how every employee in the store was “immature” and “not team players” because we wouldn’t do her job for her.  Really, that’s all it was about.  I’d explain further, but maybe in a footnote*.  Anyway, her time there ended with her calling the cops on an employee’s mother, after said mother came in the store and yelled at her for yelling at her daughter.  Andrea left in tears, saying she just couldn’t handle our store.  This really happened.
• I think I’ve already written about this, but for two weeks the Area Manager came in and ran the store himself, because he didn’t like the way things were going.  He cut everyone’s hours 40-50%, which ran the store to a grinding halt the next week.  Also, how do you think morale was?  Do you think that a completely unannounced time (and therefore pay) cut for everyone was something that people do, I mean ever?  It was a new one for me.  I had literally had the same 5-night schedule for two years.  Since that week, I haven’t had the same schedule twice.  It’s just amazingly disrespectful.
• Speaking of blatant disrespect, meet our new food policies.  If they seem like the result of a labor negotiation where only one side was allowed to speak, that’s because they are.  These were just unilaterally decided one day, and posted on a dry-erase board in a harsh scrawl.

In exchange for Pizza Hut buying us cheap bottled water we can drink for free (until it runs out),

– Sodas are now full price, and require a receipt on the bottle (they were previously half-price)

– The employee discount goes from 50% to 20%, unless the employee is on a half-hour “break” (which rarely ever happens).

– All mistake pizzas/deliveries that don’t answer the door/breadsticks that need to be thrown out are now contraband and not to be eaten by the employees.  They are put in the freezer for the Harvest Program people to pick up once a week.  If an employee wants some of this food, he/she has to buy it at a 20% discount.  Seriously.

The first two line items make sense, especially when coupled with the water thing.  But why, you might ask, would this Hut break the cardinal rule of restaurants everywhere, namely that one of the perks of working there (perhaps the only perk) is free food?  Here’s my theory:  The last time the Harvest Program people came in to pick up food, we only had three pizzas for them.  They weren’t even real pizzas, either — they were Pizza Mias.  I think this somehow got back to our Area Manager, who called the store manager and told him to “get a handle on this food situation.”  So they put their brains together and crafted a policy that rivals the most insane policies I’ve ever seen in a restaurant.  Must have seemed like a good idea at the time though.

The problem in something a child could see — every time hungry employees watch perfectly good pizzas go past them and into a give-away truck, they can’t help but be insulted.  It’d be one thing if they were just insulting employees once and then moving on, but this is all night every night.  It’s driving people crazy, because what Pizza Hut is basically saying is, “We’re giving this stuff away or throwing it out, but if you want it, you people who made/delivered/prepped it, you’re going to have to pay for it.”    They’re basically saying we’re not worthy of their garbage.

This whole policy came to a head yesterday, as one of our new managers decided that every day is Power Trip day and suspended a driver for a week because he didn’t want to pay to eat cinnamon sticks the store was just going to throw out. That’s right, he suspended the driver for not just throwing the food in the trash.  It’s one thing to have an insane policy, quite another to enforce that insane policy with an insanely heavy hand.  I’ve seen a lot of things in my years as a pizza driver, but this takes the cake, if that cake is frosted with pure insanity.

And so then later in the evening I’m forced to take a delivery way out of the area, and the nice shift manager is planning on giving me extra money for my gas and time.  Power Trip Manager tells her to give me one dollar.  He could have decided on any reasonable dollar amount, but chose one dollar.  Why?  Because he thinks that employees are impossible to piss off, I guess.  It’s a good thing I’m a grown-up chilled-out human being, because otherwise I would have taken that dollar as the slap in the face it was.

The good news?  If I’m annoyed by him, the rest of the employees must be 10 times as annoyed.  This will not end well, peoples.  It never does.

———————————————————————————–

*Her first night, she’s running the register and I arrive back from a delivery.  Now, her job is to cash out deliveries and carryouts, not just carryouts.  So she helps carryout customer after carryout customer, I mean for like 15 minutes this goes on.  Meanwhile, a line of 7 drivers have formed behind me, and they are getting restless.  So some snide comments are made, and Andrea, having skin made of tissue paper, internalizes them and later accuses us all of being immature and not helping her.  All us drivers were flabbergasted, since she was the one who was failing us.  As this was happening, 20 deliveries sat on the shelf an extra 10-20 minutes because she just wouldn’t cash us out.

This story is a microcosm of her entire 2-week career there.  I have no idea where they find these people.  Anyway, Tia’s mom Tia put and end to her reign of terror practically before it began.  That’s right, Tia’s mom is named Tia.

Had a meeting for work last week, at which I won a camping chair and a seat cushion.  The camping chair was a raffle prize, and the cushion was given to me for treating customers well at the door (as a pizza delivery driver).  There’s no way they could ever know how true that is, I mean me being awesome to customers at the door, but that doesn’t stop me from sitting on the cushion.  My chair’s natural cushioning system was getting a little flat anyway.

It was a two-hour meeting on a Thursday night, billed as a “rally.”  It was held at the only sit-down restaurant in our gaggle of eight stores, and representatives of all eight were present and accounted for.  All the store managers were there, and they had wildly varying personalities and management focii.  Some of them were nice, and some were brutal.  All of them, however, were buying the company line on this particular night — the line of “we’re a team, be team players, if you don’t we’ll make you, etc.”  Their attempt to wring concern and teamwork from a room full of apathy was both quixotic and kind of charming.  It made them seem almost human, like they’re real people who have this job that’s horrible and their boss is forcing them to do the soul-crushing task of drumming up some enthusiasm for arbitrary corporate pizza policies, i.e.,

“Yay!  We aren’t giving out the 1-800 complaint number anymore!  If the store can’t take care of it, we give them the Area Manager’s cell phone number!”

“Yay!  We can’t let drivers take over 3 deliveries on a run, thus giving them a de facto paycut!”

“Yay!  We’re cutting labor hours!  This means more money for…the Area Manager!”

See what I mean?  They did everything but put up an “Is this good for the company?” banner.  Those poor managers never had a chance.

It was interesting to see the demographics of the employees.  About half of the total employees for the eight restaurants showed up, and apparently our franchise is the only one who hires black people.  Every other race on earth seemed to be represented except African-American, and I’m not counting the guy named Sunday who was actually born in Africa.  Our three black girls were the only brothers or sisters there.  They were sitting in the corner booth by themselves, so I decided to take it upon myself and combat segregation by sitting with them.  For some reason, the Beard gets along great with women who are black, or really any race besides white, no matter what age.  I can’t explain it, but it’s totally true.

We had about as much fun as you can at one of these things, and won way more loot than any of the other booths or tables.  In addition to my chair and cushion, there was a blender, a blanket, and $20 cash money.  Some might say it was Fate, since Fate is a sworn enemy of The Man and his Keeping People Down behavior.   But I don’t believe in Fate –  I believe in pizza, because I haven’t met a man alive who can stop it.  And pizza continues to be good to me, despite the best efforts of my bosses.

I almost forgot the best part, where we broke into groups by role (in-store personnel vs. drivers) and had a “breakout” session where they did nothing but berate us about how much more we could be doing for the team.  The Unibrowed Manager (you’d know him if you saw him) let loose several pro-teamwork-related gems:

“People tip based upon how you look.  If I order a delivery, and the guy isn’t shaven, I don’t tip him.”

“You need to answer the phone.  Also, there’s always cleaning to do.”

“One guy got fired for putting a load of laundry in at his home during a delivery.  I had to fire him.”

“I don’t give people raises for just doing their jobs — they have to go above and beyond the call of duty.”

For a guy who’s been delivering long enough to know that 95% of people already know what their tip is going to be when the answer the door, and who also knows that our chain has an answering service that will pick up the phone if we don’t get it, and who realizes that a clean store is a failing store, and who rejects categorically the notion that a slow unprofitable shift should mean MORE work for LESS money, and who hasn’t gotten a voluntary pizza raise since he got to the great state of Texas, all those unibrowed words sorta rang hollow, you know?

*  This inside joke is way too hard to explain.  You had to be there, or at least have to know R. John  Buuck.

Not the normal, “which color shirt do I want to buy” type of stress — real stress.  Stress that had me yelling in my car.  Stress that made me wonder what the heck I’m doing here on earth in the first place.  It was really, really bad.  And it took the flare-up of a disease I didn’t know I had to knock me out of it.

The other thing I learned for my $150 I paid the doc?  My blood pressure is too high.  Hmm…seems like somebody’s under too much pressure…making too little money working for people who don’t want to pay him…there’s a reason he can’t stop thinking about Texas and the anti-labor culture here…what is all this for, anyway? It’s that kind of thinking that could lead to health problem after health problem for the rest of my life, if I don’t get out now.

So I left.  Took off.  I’m done.  No, not in that way.  More like, I accept that life is going to be bad.  It’s ok.  It doesn’t have to affect me.  I have to affect it, instead.  Remember when I said I was going to start a cult?  Well, I sort of joined my own one-person cult, one that involves chilling out instead of obeying some dude in a robe.  Not that I’m starting my own church or anything, it’s just that I realize that none of this matters, and I’m tired of pretending that it does.

So I’m sitting at a coffee shop writing this blog post.  I haven’t paid much attention to the blog in a while, because every time I post I can’t wait for the minute I’m no longer posting.  That’s probably not a good sign.  But if I say I’m going to take a break, I’ll want to start posting again immediately.  It’s just a pile of absurdity, right now, inside my head.

The answer to all this, of course, is that I need to love people, and not care about myself.  So I’m going to go do that, now.