2007 began for me with an ethereal stop into a cozy English pub to ask for directions. It was called The Pelican Inn, and everyone inside was really drunk and really British and slightly helpful. Eventually we gave up on our destination, as the roads were all washed out. But Evan and I couldn't help but shake the feeling that if we went back looking for The Pelican Inn in the daytime instead of on a spooky, foggy morning on New Year's Day, it just wouldn't be there. Especially because we weren't even in England. We were in the woods in Sausalito, CA. That's kind of how I feel about this whole year. In ten years when I look back, I don't know what I'll have filed away in my brain for 2007. So here's my attempt to cement proof I even did this year before it vanishes into the mist.
So. By the holiday.
New Years was spent camping in the Redwoods, my favorite place on earth, with Evan, Justin, and Wiggle. It rained the whole time and was freezing and beautiful.
On Valentine's Day I took the girl I've loved for years to dinner. She told me I "get" her. Then she told me about this other guy, and when it comes to who actually gets her, it's him. I don't get it.
Saint Patrick's Day was spent at Los Hermanos, peddling yucky "Mexican"food to a bunch of grouchy old Mormons who don't believe in tipping or wearing green.
On Easter I bore my testimony in church.
Mother's Day was spent getting ready to go camping and to Disneyland with my mom and step-dad and 5-year-old sister.
My Father's-Day phone call was cut short because dad was at work at Home Depot, and I was at in my apartment in a scary Eskimo ghetto.
Independence Day was a let-down, since it doesn't ever get dark enough for fireworks in Fairbanks, AK in July, and I ended up on a plane most of the day anyway. The company barbecue consisted of hot dogs, to which I'm allergic, so we went and ate pizza in a bar.
Pioneer Day started out on a plane as well, on the way back after giving up on that horrible job. We opted out on fireworks and went to see Hairspray with Caitie and her mom. It was wonderful, and we saw fireworks from the freeway on the way home anyway.
Halloween was spent at my new job at a school for euphemismed girls. I didn't get to dress up as Urkel, as I had planned.
Thanksgiving was also my birthday, and I had to work, but my friends did Thanksgiving dinner with me at Tara's house before I had to go to work. Wills made a Turkey, and Evan dressed up in full pilgrim regalia for the occasion. Jordan lured me unwitting into a reenactment of the first Thanksgiving by stealing the food off my plate, even though I was the one who cooked it. The when I stabbed him with my silverware in an attempt to steal it back, he made me sit in the corner, which was referred to as "Oklahoma." That night the girl I took out on Valentine's Day told me she was still interested in me and was considering leaving her boyfriend for me.
I got to play Santa for Maggie, since she and Rusty and the folks were in town again for Christmas. Then off to a 14-hour shift at work, during which that same girl let me know that she had chosen to stay with the other guy. Bummer.
Most of the big events in my life fall on holidays. But lots of other stuff happens, too.
2007 was the year that:
My dad's second divorce was finalized. He celebrated by going out with his new ex (Darla II: The Meltdown, as opposed to the woman he left mom for, who was named Darla I: A New Hope) and getting drunk or worse and not showing up to Home Depot for over a week. He lost his job and his apartment and now lives with a maid named Rosa, we believe. He's gone dark ever since he was supposed to show up at the rehab center in Healdsberg where he was during my mission.
I learned a traditional Eskimo greeting: "Hey! Can I have two dollars?" I would fend off the throng of Eskimo beggars by beating them to the punch and asking them for two dollars before they had a chance to ask me.
I bought the most expensive thing I've ever owned: a Nikon D40 camera for $650 in Alaska. That's more than my computer ($300 including the scanner/printer) and my car (another $300) combined. Got some great pictures with the camera, and I have them all backed up on the computer now.
Our house was broken into and burgled. Burglarized. Whatever. I just know it wasn't "robbed" because the biotch ladycop on the phone gave me such a hard time about reporting the wrong crime. Anyway, someone took all of our stuff out of the house last week while we were all asleep. The take: Jordan's iPod, Aarons record player, speakers, and record collection, the apartment DVD player, and my Nikon D40 camera and my computer. Bummer. The cops only dust for fingerprints if there has been a homicide, apparently, which begs the question, "who do I have to kill to get the police to do their job around here?" I had even dusted everything the morning previous. Oh well, when did the police ever help anybody?
Also my car broke down. Been getting rides from some great friends, including Ryan and Evan, foremost.
I came up with a surefire new weight-loss method: poop more. An easy way to ensure it works is to get food poisoning by eating a chicken burrito at Beto's at 2:00 a.m.
I got all enrolled for school and will soon be taking classes at UVSC,which will soon be UVU, and hopefully will soon have a film program. For now I'm a Behavioral Science Major.
I finally got my Utah driver license and registered to vote as a Republican. Glade says that makes me an official Utahn now. Before you get your hopes up, Mom, I just registered as a republican to help swing the primaries in favor of Ron Paul. A little party crashing, if you will. Soon as March rolls around, I'm back out.
Evan and the gang and I finished our film, Lords a-Larping. Episodes two and three are slightly stalled in the works, but will come eventually, have no fear.
I was invited to be in the musical program, Joseph Smith: The Prophet. We recorded a DVD and a CD. Wonderful testimony builder, that.
I watched my two best friends as one started to drift away from the church and the other started swimming toward it. I love those guys.
I went to see Wicked in L.A. with Evan, Ronnie, and Sheri, and fell in love all over again with the ocean. I also went to Vegas with Glade and Evan, and again with Evan and Tara.
I was called as FHE committee chair in my ward, which is the second time I've had that calling in this ward. Also I don't like it, but whatever.
I've started to actually enjoy reading the Book of Mormon. Weird.
I've also started receiving notices about my ten year class reunion this May, which has me a bit freaked out. I need to hurry and do something with my life.
Anyway, that's my life this year. Obviously, other stuff happened, but that's what I'm going to look back and remember. Some happy, some sad. Mostly anti-climactic, I feel. Lots of build-up to something awful. Lots of fizzling out. But I also feel fresh hope on the horizon, like the first spring breeze. I'm happy, healthy, and I feel an energy I have missed for a while now. Things are going to move forward, whichever way that is from here.
Finally, a more philosophical note. Sometimes in this life, we are carried along. Sometimes we are led. Other times we are given directions, and have to walk about on our own. And sometimes we're merely released into the wild, to see which way we'll go. Our path is tortuous, and is meant to be. Usually, as we're coming around a bend, we make the mistake of thinking that in the direction in which we're currently headed lies our final destination. "That's where I'm headed," we think, "and so it must be where I'll end up." But the twists and turns are leading us somewhere unexpected. Coming up over a hill usually reveals only more hills. If your final destination were whatever you could see from here, you might as well stop right now, because that hill and this don't really differ so much. But we move forward based on the faith that beyond all the hills there is a beautiful blue lagoon, people waiting to greet us with drinks in hand, a peaceful end to the journey. So for now we trudge along and find beauty in what we have. We know that just because the road bends south toward the barren dessert, or north toward the frozen forest, it doesn't mean that that's where we're going to end our journey. Unless we stop walking halfway through....
If you zoom out far enough from the rainbow, you might see that it's just a sheen of oil leaking from under your broken-down '93 Ford Tempo, into a mucky puddle of stagnant water that has been ever growing these last six weeks of relentless dismal rain. That's when you squint your eyes and just look at the rainbow, and give thanks to God that He showed you this infinitesimal beauty in the midst of a vastly grey and dreary world.
Showing posts with label Los Hermanos. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Los Hermanos. Show all posts
Monday, December 31, 2007
Friday, April 21, 2006
Revolt
Protest seems to be the word on everyone's lips these days. Sometimes it even feels like I'm in a real college town, what with all the demonstrations and campaigns going on around here.
My co-worker Keri, frustrated by the oppressive system we have at work for who gets to wait on which tables, complained aloud and announced her plan to bring about change when she gasped, "Why don't I ever make any tips? I am REVOLTING!"
I told her she'd just answered her own question. I don't think she caught the joke.
My friend Hero, also in the spirit of social reform, performed a small demonstration against the Malt Shop on University Avenue recently. He told the girl that he wanted the Wednesday student two-for-one special and asked for a shake and a root beer freeze. She sent the order back and then charged him almost eight dollars.
"Eight dollars! I asked for the two-for-one deal!"
"well, you can't get the two-for-one deal with the freeze. Only shakes," said the bovine employee, repeating the price through a mouthful of cud.
Well, Hero is the sort of being whose whole night can be ruined by one single interaction with an imbecile. This girl could have told him that he couldn't get the discount on the freeze before sending the order through. She also refused to cancel it. So he paid for the shake and the freeze, and when they came, he dumped half his shake on the carpet in protest. Then he said "whoops," stepped in the mess, and marched out of there. It was funny.
Meanwhile, real and actually organized protests have abounded recently.
One involved unattractive vegetarians standing on the street corner right in front of the restaurant at which I work, making out in their underwear and telling people to avoid meat, and handing out tracts with pertinent quotes about animals and their souls and brains from such leading spiritual and scientific leaders as Paul McCartney and Pamela Anderson. As I've said before, I think there must be some sort of animal by-product in soap, because Vegans always seem to need a shower. These ones had a mattress out there and had adopted the slogan, "Vegetarians make better lovers." If anything, having mostly-naked people dancing about in front of our store only increased our business that day, and I made sure to suggest the steak enchiladas or the beef chimichanga to every customer I got. I sold tons.
Then there were some whose causes I respected a little more.
The first surrounded a controversy over BYU's firing of a man named Todd. If you live in the Provo bubble, you have probably heard whispers of this story. The reason I am retelling it now is that I have a little bit of ironic personal involvement in this story.
Todd was a grown-up who worked for the BYUSSR, more legitimately known as the BYUSA. He had a number of job responsibilities, one of which had something to do with BYUSA "elections." Over the course of his years at BYUSA, Todd noticed some unsettling glitches in the operation of the BYUSA electorate machine. So he decided to write a letter in the Daily Universe which decried the entire process, pointing out that an anonymous cadre of randomly selected students were put in charge of disqualifying candidates, a power which he inferred had been used unfairly by members of the group to aid their friends.
Certainly the letter was timely; this past election was once again riddled with scandal as students were disqualified for getting photocopies of campaign papers run off with a discount at a private copying center rather than at whatever the committee deemed to be "market price," whatever that means (there is a rule in the election procedures that students need to spend their campaign funds only on items they purchase at "market price"). The discount they received was actually available to all the other candidates. It was time for somebody to speak up, and Todd was our man. He mailed out that letter to the DU.
So they fired him. That's right, BYU fired Todd for publicly calling into question practices of the organization for which he worked. They offered him hush money, saying that if he would agree to not disclose the reason for which he was fired, they would continue to give him health insurance and other benefits for a grace period. Todd, always one to stand against censure and the man, refused the offer and sent off another letter to the Daily Universe. Soon a full-scale real protest was in full swing, with students duct-taping their mouths symbolically.
Well, I see some interesting parallels between myself and this Todd fellow....
***FLASHBACK ABOUT A YEAR***
Once upon a time there was a small community of smurfs that lived somewhere in the woods of Belgium in stone houses that looked like mushrooms to the untrained eye. Further into the wood, they had a computer, and it was attached to the internet, and the smurfs found a BYU website called the Hundred Hour Board, where BYU students could anonymously and cleverly answer people's questions about anything and everything. They applied to write for the Board, and were accepted, and in the time during which our story takes place, they had been writing for the Board for several months, and it was their raison d’être. Then one day a dark oppressive shadow loomed over their idyllic little forest. BYUSA decided to censor the Hundred Hour Board. The poor little smurfs ran for shelter, but they were too late. Soon all was black in their forest. Were they defeated? No. They made a last-ditch effort to battle the forces of the evil bureaucracy, answering questions just as they always had. One day a question came in about how to improve race relations on campus. The smurfs pulled out all the stops, giving an informative yet amusing answer, citing examples shared with them by real minorities attending BYU. Before that answer could ever post, however, it caught the attention of one of BYUSA's cronies, who was floating around in the smoggy cloud overhead. He sent the smurfs a letter, demanding that they remove any evidence of actual instances of racism on campus. The smurfs refused, and used the last of their energy to respond angrily (although cleanly) to this unreasonable letter. But they were too late. The next time they tried to visit the computer, it had been slashed to pieces by BYUSA, and they were never able to log in on the computer again.
So you see, I can totally relate to Todd's little predicament. But if you grease the machine for long enough, Todd, eventually it'll slip and cut you.
Also I should mention that this Todd fellow is the selfsame troll who was censoring the Board, and who kicked me off. So while I admire the fact that you finally grew a backbone and tried to take a stand against the monster, I still have to chuckle at the irony of the giant monster swallowing you up after you helped feed it until it grew big enough to eat you too. Hahaha, Todd. Seriously, that's what you get, especially when you mess with THIS smurf.
I'm not still bitter about it, I swear.
Later that same week, there was another on-campus protest, led by a group called Soulforce. Soulforce was a group of thirty-two gays and lesbians who decided to rent a bus and tour religious and military universities to help stop "religious oppression" of homosexuals, as they put it. Their leaders said at a rally the night before the protests began that BYU was the "crowned jewel" of the tour.
I didn't attend any of the on-campus events, but I came near the protests at the park. I couldn't hear much that was being said because the rumble of the generator they used to power the microphone was louder than the microphone itself.
Soulforce's points were many. They cited the numbers of gay Mormon teen suicides (a BYU student named Matt even took the mic and testified about his own failed suicide attempts), said that BYU students are uneducated about and intolerant of homosexuals, and basically just complained a lot. They said that their surveys showed that more than ninety percent of BYU students said they wouldn't want a homosexual as a roommate. I'm skeptical, to say the least.
Your name: Smurf
1) Would you rather have roommates who are gay or straight?
a) gay ___
b) straight _x_
2) Would you be ok with a lesbian roommate?
a) yes ___
b) no _x_
See? Even I don't pass the test. It's all in the way you word it. And I present as evidence to the contrary Asmond, BAWB, Toasteroven, Gravy, and the Snake, all of whom willingly entered roommate situations with gay kids and/or were staunch defenders of them afterward.
At any rate, I had several beefs with Soulforce's message.
1: "Religious oppression of homosexuals?" I'm doubly offended. I don't appreciate three dozen hippies coming to my school to tell me that I'm at once oppressor and oppressed.
2: The use of Gandhi's and Martin Luther King Jr.'s countenances in their logo. I don't care if they DID have permission from relatives of the two men. This was a cause that a Hindu and a southern reverend would NEVER have been behind. In the words of Alecia, my sassy black manager, upon her hearing about the logo, "Oh HEEEEELL no!" That's just plain offensive.
3: The issues presented were for the most part issues from years past. Today's political climate with regard to homosexuals is one of tolerance at worst, even here in conservative Utah. The head lesbian was a minister for some religion and proudly claimed to have been excommunicated thrice, eventually leaving the church altogether and taking up residence with her former visiting teacher. She delivered an angry speech, much like those presented by other alumni, about how horrible it was to attend BYU. The problem was that she was speaking to a bunch of students who currently attend BYU and were having trouble seeing any of the problems she mentioned.
4: The idea of the homosexuals blaming religion for the suicides. It just pisses me off. The problem isn't solely with either side. The problem is the imagined chasm between the two sides, with poor youths feeling trapped with a foot on either side. Religion and homosexual tendencies are not naturally at odds. For years, churches painted the picture thus, but our church has come a very long way in the manner in which its leaders deal with those who experience same-sex attraction. We are aware that feelings of incongruousness between a religion believed to be true and an immutable sexual desire believed to be false can cause great psychological trauma to our young people. But just when our little bubble community seems to be taking steps to find middle ground, the other camp pulls away even more vehemently, and those chasm-straddlers are going to find themselves falling to one side or the other or down into the blackness. We need to be closing the gap from BOTH sides.
5: They weren't friendly. Tell them you're a closeted homosexual fighting to keep your sexual identity under wraps until just barely after graduation, and they'll welcome you with open arms and offer you the drinks they're serving in the corner. But stand with the small peaceful counter-protest (as I did) and suddenly you'll find an angry middle-aged redhead in a pantsuit storming toward you and unsavorily unplugging your music. Many of the lesbians from the bus decided to smoke on campus, or march around distributing fliers and otherwise breaking the protest rules set forth by the university. The smoking thing particularly got my goat, since not only is it a BYU rule that one cannot smoke on campus, but it is also against the state laws of Utah to smoke within a hundred feet of a public building. When students (such as my roommate Asmond) kindly asked the lesbians to refrain from smoking in front of their workplace, the lesbians took it as an affront on their message and their sexual identity and refused to either extinguish their cigarettes or move along.
The counter-protest was kinda weak, really. There was an insane hispanic woman with two people I can only assume were her own progeny, shouting "Shame on you" louder than the speakers AND the generator. "Let me tell jew something jew don't know," she said to me, advancing until she would have been right in my face had she been a foot taller. I let her, but she only told me things I already knew or that I still don't believe, like the idea that the gay movement is secretly being run by politicians and filmmakers who aren't actually gay themselves but rather hope to make a buck off the whole idea. Then there was a guy whose wife and daughter were playing on the playground while he distributed his own manifesto to the classy tunes of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir under a banner that read "You want your freedom of expression; please allow us ours." Then there was me, standing silently in the cold with my arms crossed, the ever non-partisan participant.
Why was I standing with the counter-protest? I just wanted someone to know that Soulforce does not speak for me. I don't think I'm a radical. I don't imagine for one second that I'm typical. But I like to think I am reasonable, at least. I didn't appreciate Soulforce's rhetoric. I didn't like their tying depression and suicide to homosexuality. I especially didn't appreciate that they purported to represent me. AND accuse me. As Wiggle so often repeats, "You don't KNOW me."
My old friend LLama was the one person whose actions that day receive a full endorsement from me. He was out there distributing lists of resources for people who are trying to deal with homosexuality in a positive church context. Way to be, LLama.
So, the point is that BYU seems to be at least taking a step forward by allowing these protests on campus, right? Especially after the American Association of University Professors put us on its list of censured schools in 1997 after a female professor was allegedly fired for being pro-choice and feminist.
But wait, by some coincidence(?), the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities happened to be visiting our school that same week that the protests were being graciously (and uncharacteristically) allowed on campus. This is the organization that every ten years decides whether BYU should maintain its accreditation status. So the question remains, is BYU actually becoming a more progressive school, or is it just trying to save face for the man?
Amid all this chaos, the Mexicans are enojados. It seems they feel they are under-appreciated. I'll agree with that. On May first, there is to be a nation-wide walk-out for all trabajadores of hispanic descent. In other words, the Mexican restaurant where I work is going to have an absolute dearth of cooks and dish washers that day. The owners are considering making Alecia cook fajitas and serving everything on paper plates all day. I guess Alecia is the next closest thing we have to Mexican after the real Mexicans and the Chileans and Salvadorians and all.
Now here's where it gets interesting for me. Norma and the other cooks and dish washers have told me that I'd better not come to work that day. After all, I am one quarter Mexican, and would be doing my old abuelita great dishonor by coming to work on that day. If our restaurant weren't situated exactly in the heart of downtown, I might just ignore their invitation. And also if it didn't have huge glass windows that look right out onto the street where the main demonstrations will be going on. And if the cooks hadn't been whispering about how they fully expect things to turn quickly into a riot.
And really, I do respect their cause, and my grandmother, and all. The last thing I want to be is a scab. So not only am I moderately interested in their cause, and medium terrified of the prospect of a thousand illegal immigrants hopped up on tequila coming at me with whatever the Mexican equivalent of pitchforks and torches is while I'm at work, and extremely excited about the idea of a totally good excuse to not show up for work for a whole day, but I also am relieved when I check my calendar and realize that the whole thing is moot because I have Mondays off anyway. I think I'll go have me some all-you-can-eat fajitas that day, as long as Alecia's cooking.
So there you have it, folks. Three major protests going on, all of which really relate to me (after all, I am a BYUSA-censored, homosexual, Mormon who is descended from illegal Mexican immigrants), and yet while I feel passionately about each of those subjects, I just can't find myself getting behind any of those causes.
You want to know the cause I CAN get behind? Protesting Panda Express. Seriously, Gravy and I always talked about marching in front of that store with signs that say "Don't believe their lies!" and "Panda Express is chicken" and distributing PETA-esque pamphlets that explain that there is no actual panda meat in ANY Panda Express products. I can't believe the number of people who still eat there, seemingly unaware of the flagrant false advertising. I hope Vero will be back in town on May first, because I am off work that day, and I'd bet she would help me with my movement. And that day is perfect, because there won't be any workers there to come out and stop us. Because after all, not only is their panda secretly just chicken, but their Chinamen are secretly just Mexicans.
My co-worker Keri, frustrated by the oppressive system we have at work for who gets to wait on which tables, complained aloud and announced her plan to bring about change when she gasped, "Why don't I ever make any tips? I am REVOLTING!"
I told her she'd just answered her own question. I don't think she caught the joke.
My friend Hero, also in the spirit of social reform, performed a small demonstration against the Malt Shop on University Avenue recently. He told the girl that he wanted the Wednesday student two-for-one special and asked for a shake and a root beer freeze. She sent the order back and then charged him almost eight dollars.
"Eight dollars! I asked for the two-for-one deal!"
"well, you can't get the two-for-one deal with the freeze. Only shakes," said the bovine employee, repeating the price through a mouthful of cud.
Well, Hero is the sort of being whose whole night can be ruined by one single interaction with an imbecile. This girl could have told him that he couldn't get the discount on the freeze before sending the order through. She also refused to cancel it. So he paid for the shake and the freeze, and when they came, he dumped half his shake on the carpet in protest. Then he said "whoops," stepped in the mess, and marched out of there. It was funny.
Meanwhile, real and actually organized protests have abounded recently.
One involved unattractive vegetarians standing on the street corner right in front of the restaurant at which I work, making out in their underwear and telling people to avoid meat, and handing out tracts with pertinent quotes about animals and their souls and brains from such leading spiritual and scientific leaders as Paul McCartney and Pamela Anderson. As I've said before, I think there must be some sort of animal by-product in soap, because Vegans always seem to need a shower. These ones had a mattress out there and had adopted the slogan, "Vegetarians make better lovers." If anything, having mostly-naked people dancing about in front of our store only increased our business that day, and I made sure to suggest the steak enchiladas or the beef chimichanga to every customer I got. I sold tons.
Then there were some whose causes I respected a little more.
The first surrounded a controversy over BYU's firing of a man named Todd. If you live in the Provo bubble, you have probably heard whispers of this story. The reason I am retelling it now is that I have a little bit of ironic personal involvement in this story.
Todd was a grown-up who worked for the BYUSSR, more legitimately known as the BYUSA. He had a number of job responsibilities, one of which had something to do with BYUSA "elections." Over the course of his years at BYUSA, Todd noticed some unsettling glitches in the operation of the BYUSA electorate machine. So he decided to write a letter in the Daily Universe which decried the entire process, pointing out that an anonymous cadre of randomly selected students were put in charge of disqualifying candidates, a power which he inferred had been used unfairly by members of the group to aid their friends.
Certainly the letter was timely; this past election was once again riddled with scandal as students were disqualified for getting photocopies of campaign papers run off with a discount at a private copying center rather than at whatever the committee deemed to be "market price," whatever that means (there is a rule in the election procedures that students need to spend their campaign funds only on items they purchase at "market price"). The discount they received was actually available to all the other candidates. It was time for somebody to speak up, and Todd was our man. He mailed out that letter to the DU.
So they fired him. That's right, BYU fired Todd for publicly calling into question practices of the organization for which he worked. They offered him hush money, saying that if he would agree to not disclose the reason for which he was fired, they would continue to give him health insurance and other benefits for a grace period. Todd, always one to stand against censure and the man, refused the offer and sent off another letter to the Daily Universe. Soon a full-scale real protest was in full swing, with students duct-taping their mouths symbolically.
Well, I see some interesting parallels between myself and this Todd fellow....
***FLASHBACK ABOUT A YEAR***
Once upon a time there was a small community of smurfs that lived somewhere in the woods of Belgium in stone houses that looked like mushrooms to the untrained eye. Further into the wood, they had a computer, and it was attached to the internet, and the smurfs found a BYU website called the Hundred Hour Board, where BYU students could anonymously and cleverly answer people's questions about anything and everything. They applied to write for the Board, and were accepted, and in the time during which our story takes place, they had been writing for the Board for several months, and it was their raison d’être. Then one day a dark oppressive shadow loomed over their idyllic little forest. BYUSA decided to censor the Hundred Hour Board. The poor little smurfs ran for shelter, but they were too late. Soon all was black in their forest. Were they defeated? No. They made a last-ditch effort to battle the forces of the evil bureaucracy, answering questions just as they always had. One day a question came in about how to improve race relations on campus. The smurfs pulled out all the stops, giving an informative yet amusing answer, citing examples shared with them by real minorities attending BYU. Before that answer could ever post, however, it caught the attention of one of BYUSA's cronies, who was floating around in the smoggy cloud overhead. He sent the smurfs a letter, demanding that they remove any evidence of actual instances of racism on campus. The smurfs refused, and used the last of their energy to respond angrily (although cleanly) to this unreasonable letter. But they were too late. The next time they tried to visit the computer, it had been slashed to pieces by BYUSA, and they were never able to log in on the computer again.
So you see, I can totally relate to Todd's little predicament. But if you grease the machine for long enough, Todd, eventually it'll slip and cut you.
Also I should mention that this Todd fellow is the selfsame troll who was censoring the Board, and who kicked me off. So while I admire the fact that you finally grew a backbone and tried to take a stand against the monster, I still have to chuckle at the irony of the giant monster swallowing you up after you helped feed it until it grew big enough to eat you too. Hahaha, Todd. Seriously, that's what you get, especially when you mess with THIS smurf.
I'm not still bitter about it, I swear.
Later that same week, there was another on-campus protest, led by a group called Soulforce. Soulforce was a group of thirty-two gays and lesbians who decided to rent a bus and tour religious and military universities to help stop "religious oppression" of homosexuals, as they put it. Their leaders said at a rally the night before the protests began that BYU was the "crowned jewel" of the tour.
I didn't attend any of the on-campus events, but I came near the protests at the park. I couldn't hear much that was being said because the rumble of the generator they used to power the microphone was louder than the microphone itself.
Soulforce's points were many. They cited the numbers of gay Mormon teen suicides (a BYU student named Matt even took the mic and testified about his own failed suicide attempts), said that BYU students are uneducated about and intolerant of homosexuals, and basically just complained a lot. They said that their surveys showed that more than ninety percent of BYU students said they wouldn't want a homosexual as a roommate. I'm skeptical, to say the least.
Your name: Smurf
1) Would you rather have roommates who are gay or straight?
a) gay ___
b) straight _x_
2) Would you be ok with a lesbian roommate?
a) yes ___
b) no _x_
See? Even I don't pass the test. It's all in the way you word it. And I present as evidence to the contrary Asmond, BAWB, Toasteroven, Gravy, and the Snake, all of whom willingly entered roommate situations with gay kids and/or were staunch defenders of them afterward.
At any rate, I had several beefs with Soulforce's message.
1: "Religious oppression of homosexuals?" I'm doubly offended. I don't appreciate three dozen hippies coming to my school to tell me that I'm at once oppressor and oppressed.
2: The use of Gandhi's and Martin Luther King Jr.'s countenances in their logo. I don't care if they DID have permission from relatives of the two men. This was a cause that a Hindu and a southern reverend would NEVER have been behind. In the words of Alecia, my sassy black manager, upon her hearing about the logo, "Oh HEEEEELL no!" That's just plain offensive.
3: The issues presented were for the most part issues from years past. Today's political climate with regard to homosexuals is one of tolerance at worst, even here in conservative Utah. The head lesbian was a minister for some religion and proudly claimed to have been excommunicated thrice, eventually leaving the church altogether and taking up residence with her former visiting teacher. She delivered an angry speech, much like those presented by other alumni, about how horrible it was to attend BYU. The problem was that she was speaking to a bunch of students who currently attend BYU and were having trouble seeing any of the problems she mentioned.
4: The idea of the homosexuals blaming religion for the suicides. It just pisses me off. The problem isn't solely with either side. The problem is the imagined chasm between the two sides, with poor youths feeling trapped with a foot on either side. Religion and homosexual tendencies are not naturally at odds. For years, churches painted the picture thus, but our church has come a very long way in the manner in which its leaders deal with those who experience same-sex attraction. We are aware that feelings of incongruousness between a religion believed to be true and an immutable sexual desire believed to be false can cause great psychological trauma to our young people. But just when our little bubble community seems to be taking steps to find middle ground, the other camp pulls away even more vehemently, and those chasm-straddlers are going to find themselves falling to one side or the other or down into the blackness. We need to be closing the gap from BOTH sides.
5: They weren't friendly. Tell them you're a closeted homosexual fighting to keep your sexual identity under wraps until just barely after graduation, and they'll welcome you with open arms and offer you the drinks they're serving in the corner. But stand with the small peaceful counter-protest (as I did) and suddenly you'll find an angry middle-aged redhead in a pantsuit storming toward you and unsavorily unplugging your music. Many of the lesbians from the bus decided to smoke on campus, or march around distributing fliers and otherwise breaking the protest rules set forth by the university. The smoking thing particularly got my goat, since not only is it a BYU rule that one cannot smoke on campus, but it is also against the state laws of Utah to smoke within a hundred feet of a public building. When students (such as my roommate Asmond) kindly asked the lesbians to refrain from smoking in front of their workplace, the lesbians took it as an affront on their message and their sexual identity and refused to either extinguish their cigarettes or move along.
The counter-protest was kinda weak, really. There was an insane hispanic woman with two people I can only assume were her own progeny, shouting "Shame on you" louder than the speakers AND the generator. "Let me tell jew something jew don't know," she said to me, advancing until she would have been right in my face had she been a foot taller. I let her, but she only told me things I already knew or that I still don't believe, like the idea that the gay movement is secretly being run by politicians and filmmakers who aren't actually gay themselves but rather hope to make a buck off the whole idea. Then there was a guy whose wife and daughter were playing on the playground while he distributed his own manifesto to the classy tunes of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir under a banner that read "You want your freedom of expression; please allow us ours." Then there was me, standing silently in the cold with my arms crossed, the ever non-partisan participant.
Why was I standing with the counter-protest? I just wanted someone to know that Soulforce does not speak for me. I don't think I'm a radical. I don't imagine for one second that I'm typical. But I like to think I am reasonable, at least. I didn't appreciate Soulforce's rhetoric. I didn't like their tying depression and suicide to homosexuality. I especially didn't appreciate that they purported to represent me. AND accuse me. As Wiggle so often repeats, "You don't KNOW me."
My old friend LLama was the one person whose actions that day receive a full endorsement from me. He was out there distributing lists of resources for people who are trying to deal with homosexuality in a positive church context. Way to be, LLama.
So, the point is that BYU seems to be at least taking a step forward by allowing these protests on campus, right? Especially after the American Association of University Professors put us on its list of censured schools in 1997 after a female professor was allegedly fired for being pro-choice and feminist.
But wait, by some coincidence(?), the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities happened to be visiting our school that same week that the protests were being graciously (and uncharacteristically) allowed on campus. This is the organization that every ten years decides whether BYU should maintain its accreditation status. So the question remains, is BYU actually becoming a more progressive school, or is it just trying to save face for the man?
Amid all this chaos, the Mexicans are enojados. It seems they feel they are under-appreciated. I'll agree with that. On May first, there is to be a nation-wide walk-out for all trabajadores of hispanic descent. In other words, the Mexican restaurant where I work is going to have an absolute dearth of cooks and dish washers that day. The owners are considering making Alecia cook fajitas and serving everything on paper plates all day. I guess Alecia is the next closest thing we have to Mexican after the real Mexicans and the Chileans and Salvadorians and all.
Now here's where it gets interesting for me. Norma and the other cooks and dish washers have told me that I'd better not come to work that day. After all, I am one quarter Mexican, and would be doing my old abuelita great dishonor by coming to work on that day. If our restaurant weren't situated exactly in the heart of downtown, I might just ignore their invitation. And also if it didn't have huge glass windows that look right out onto the street where the main demonstrations will be going on. And if the cooks hadn't been whispering about how they fully expect things to turn quickly into a riot.
And really, I do respect their cause, and my grandmother, and all. The last thing I want to be is a scab. So not only am I moderately interested in their cause, and medium terrified of the prospect of a thousand illegal immigrants hopped up on tequila coming at me with whatever the Mexican equivalent of pitchforks and torches is while I'm at work, and extremely excited about the idea of a totally good excuse to not show up for work for a whole day, but I also am relieved when I check my calendar and realize that the whole thing is moot because I have Mondays off anyway. I think I'll go have me some all-you-can-eat fajitas that day, as long as Alecia's cooking.
So there you have it, folks. Three major protests going on, all of which really relate to me (after all, I am a BYUSA-censored, homosexual, Mormon who is descended from illegal Mexican immigrants), and yet while I feel passionately about each of those subjects, I just can't find myself getting behind any of those causes.
You want to know the cause I CAN get behind? Protesting Panda Express. Seriously, Gravy and I always talked about marching in front of that store with signs that say "Don't believe their lies!" and "Panda Express is chicken" and distributing PETA-esque pamphlets that explain that there is no actual panda meat in ANY Panda Express products. I can't believe the number of people who still eat there, seemingly unaware of the flagrant false advertising. I hope Vero will be back in town on May first, because I am off work that day, and I'd bet she would help me with my movement. And that day is perfect, because there won't be any workers there to come out and stop us. Because after all, not only is their panda secretly just chicken, but their Chinamen are secretly just Mexicans.
Wednesday, March 29, 2006
Mood Music
Some thoughts on music. I put three new songs over on the side here for El Veneno. I hope you guys will listen to all three. I love them all. The first (the one you are probably hearing right now) is from the CD that the Neverbird gave me for my birthday. I love the message it contains, about pressing forward when you're not sure about things. The next is War on Drugs by the Barenaked Ladies. It's one of the most moving songs I know of. They said at their concert that they were singing about a bridge in Canada that had the world's second-highest suicide rate (after the Golden Gate). When the city put a net under the bridge, people just moved up to the next bridge and started jumping from there. So that was the basis of the song, and it has helped me to understand people who suffer from depression more than anything else ever has. Finally, we have a song that is simultaneously funny and sad. It's called Jim Henson's Dead and Gone, by Stephen Lynch, the same guy who does Dead Puppies and If I Could Be a Superhero. I love Muppets, and so I present this song as an homage to Jim Henson. What a brilliant man, who really seemed to understand dreams and making them a reality.
In fact, my dinner group has recently been transformed into a dinner/muppets group. I love that. Turns out my buddy Robb is just as big a muppets fan as I am.
Robb and Pinetree both just got jobs at Los Hermanos. I love that job. I made $15/hour in tips again tonight. I have been making more than anyone else lately. It's been a major blessing. Alecia says I've been doing a great job there, which makes me very happy. I'm learning the joy of hard work, which was what I talked about in my testimony at this Sunday's Latter Day Sounds fireside in Ogden, speaking about the song Come Come Ye Saints. We can't fear toil and labor, but we have to wend our way with joy. The media would have us believe that work and joy are antithetical. That we work only so we can have joy later. But I believe that we are to find joy in serving, and not stop until we have finished our work or died trying. And then either way, it will be a happy day, and only THEN can we join the saints in crying "All is well."
Latter Day Sounds is so good for me. On Saturday Rachel stayed late at work and closed for me (I love that girl) and Nick let me off early so I could catch up with the choir in northern Utah. And so I took a bus to Ogden last-minute to go be with the choir. I ended up screaming in pain and cold in the pouring windy snowy rain, as I got drenched. It was super miserable, but we all have to make sacrifices for the things that are important to us, huh?
Like Pinetree has recently done. Wow. Dr. Robinson says that I'll have to get rid of every gay everything if I want to beat this thing. So of course I thought, "No, that is too much." But then I remembered the rich young man, and how he had been told he would have to give up all he had. And then i remembered Naaman, who really only had to give up his pride, but found that to be almost an insurmountable task, and I started thinking, "What wouldn't I be willing to give up in order to be the man that God wants me to be?" And really, there is nothing. So I am doing what I can with the Dr. Robinson suggestion. Cutting off contact with a lot of people. Identifying which parts of my life strengthen those dangerous connections that my brain makes, and cutting them out, as they stand in my way, triggers to the booby traps I've set for myself in years past, now obscured by dust. Time to bust out the pledge and figure out exactly where those triggers are, and dismantle them. Anyway, I had a long conversation with Pinetree about that yesterday, and then today he tells me he up and cut off someone who I know means a TON to him. I really appreciate his example. I feel like I learn so much from that kid. So now it's my turn to do the same. Time for some major spring cleaning.
I might be losing a lot of things in this process. A lot of friends. We will see.
But I will be okay. I have so MANY other friends who are so good for me these days. My friends from my ward, and from my choir, and from work. I love all of these people. On Friday Jessica and Goat and Wiggle and I are all going to go to see Guster. I am very excited. They have such haunting voices, and can sing melodies both happy and sad. Which brings me to what I really want to say tonight, a message inspired by everything in my life, and most recently and noticeably by the Jim Henson Company movie "Mirror Mask," which I recommend whole-heartedly to anyone who reads this. Anyway, on to today's moral:
I love music so much. It's so good for me. I like to listen to sad music best of all, because "sad" isn't easy for me to feel on my own.
I think sadness is beautiful, like rain and strong battered women and fancy melting candles and rooms all done up in red velvet. Like wildflowers growing raggedly from a crack in a barren rock, or like sputtering, flickering stars, fighting to shine their light down through earth's muggy, twinkly atmosphere. I want to cup the stars in my hand, make someone's sadness my own, protect it from the tempestuous winds of life, shade it from the overpowering glare of sunshine. In the summer, I lie in the crunchy golden grass and look at the ghosts of giants and heroes and magical beasts placed in the night sky to remind us that we all must pass on, that we are only visitors here in this strange land. And I love them. I love their stories. And then the sun comes out, and the stories fade to a soothing baby blue and all can be forgotten. The heroes and their tragic tales are lost. Their beauty exists only in the darkness.
Will Heaven be all light all the time? Or will there be shadows dancing from the fireplace onto the cozy earthen walls? Will there be the dark spaces between the stars, or will they all be filled in with such blinding light that there won't be stars any more at all? Will the forest still hold its dark secretive appeal, or will the leaves in the canopies be forced to move aside and let in the light, stripping the woods of all their murky mysteries? Will all music be in major chords, all clouds cumulus, all stories have happy endings? Will we mourn our damned loved ones? Will we have to forget we ever loved them?
In moving closer to God, will I have to be homogenized? Will we all eventually shine the same bright white, or can I shine golden, or spring green, or vivid tangerine? Will my dark desires be the catalysts that make me more like God, or will they keep me different? Do I give off my own wavelength of light just by moving close to God, a cosmic Doppler Effect that somehow allows my movement to shine my own color of beauty to the stationary viewer, even as I draw closer to the center of the Universe, where gods and matter end? Is my individuality burned up beautifully like a meteor as I draw closer to my goals? Is the incredible journey to sameness the thing that sets us apart in the end? Are our scars what make us beautiful?
I am still discovering so much. I love life. I love the light, and the dark, and the moments like these, right before the proverbial sun rises, when the field is still shrouded in mist, and everything is grey and blurry and coming coldly alive.
In fact, my dinner group has recently been transformed into a dinner/muppets group. I love that. Turns out my buddy Robb is just as big a muppets fan as I am.
Robb and Pinetree both just got jobs at Los Hermanos. I love that job. I made $15/hour in tips again tonight. I have been making more than anyone else lately. It's been a major blessing. Alecia says I've been doing a great job there, which makes me very happy. I'm learning the joy of hard work, which was what I talked about in my testimony at this Sunday's Latter Day Sounds fireside in Ogden, speaking about the song Come Come Ye Saints. We can't fear toil and labor, but we have to wend our way with joy. The media would have us believe that work and joy are antithetical. That we work only so we can have joy later. But I believe that we are to find joy in serving, and not stop until we have finished our work or died trying. And then either way, it will be a happy day, and only THEN can we join the saints in crying "All is well."
Latter Day Sounds is so good for me. On Saturday Rachel stayed late at work and closed for me (I love that girl) and Nick let me off early so I could catch up with the choir in northern Utah. And so I took a bus to Ogden last-minute to go be with the choir. I ended up screaming in pain and cold in the pouring windy snowy rain, as I got drenched. It was super miserable, but we all have to make sacrifices for the things that are important to us, huh?
Like Pinetree has recently done. Wow. Dr. Robinson says that I'll have to get rid of every gay everything if I want to beat this thing. So of course I thought, "No, that is too much." But then I remembered the rich young man, and how he had been told he would have to give up all he had. And then i remembered Naaman, who really only had to give up his pride, but found that to be almost an insurmountable task, and I started thinking, "What wouldn't I be willing to give up in order to be the man that God wants me to be?" And really, there is nothing. So I am doing what I can with the Dr. Robinson suggestion. Cutting off contact with a lot of people. Identifying which parts of my life strengthen those dangerous connections that my brain makes, and cutting them out, as they stand in my way, triggers to the booby traps I've set for myself in years past, now obscured by dust. Time to bust out the pledge and figure out exactly where those triggers are, and dismantle them. Anyway, I had a long conversation with Pinetree about that yesterday, and then today he tells me he up and cut off someone who I know means a TON to him. I really appreciate his example. I feel like I learn so much from that kid. So now it's my turn to do the same. Time for some major spring cleaning.
I might be losing a lot of things in this process. A lot of friends. We will see.
But I will be okay. I have so MANY other friends who are so good for me these days. My friends from my ward, and from my choir, and from work. I love all of these people. On Friday Jessica and Goat and Wiggle and I are all going to go to see Guster. I am very excited. They have such haunting voices, and can sing melodies both happy and sad. Which brings me to what I really want to say tonight, a message inspired by everything in my life, and most recently and noticeably by the Jim Henson Company movie "Mirror Mask," which I recommend whole-heartedly to anyone who reads this. Anyway, on to today's moral:
I love music so much. It's so good for me. I like to listen to sad music best of all, because "sad" isn't easy for me to feel on my own.
I think sadness is beautiful, like rain and strong battered women and fancy melting candles and rooms all done up in red velvet. Like wildflowers growing raggedly from a crack in a barren rock, or like sputtering, flickering stars, fighting to shine their light down through earth's muggy, twinkly atmosphere. I want to cup the stars in my hand, make someone's sadness my own, protect it from the tempestuous winds of life, shade it from the overpowering glare of sunshine. In the summer, I lie in the crunchy golden grass and look at the ghosts of giants and heroes and magical beasts placed in the night sky to remind us that we all must pass on, that we are only visitors here in this strange land. And I love them. I love their stories. And then the sun comes out, and the stories fade to a soothing baby blue and all can be forgotten. The heroes and their tragic tales are lost. Their beauty exists only in the darkness.
Will Heaven be all light all the time? Or will there be shadows dancing from the fireplace onto the cozy earthen walls? Will there be the dark spaces between the stars, or will they all be filled in with such blinding light that there won't be stars any more at all? Will the forest still hold its dark secretive appeal, or will the leaves in the canopies be forced to move aside and let in the light, stripping the woods of all their murky mysteries? Will all music be in major chords, all clouds cumulus, all stories have happy endings? Will we mourn our damned loved ones? Will we have to forget we ever loved them?
In moving closer to God, will I have to be homogenized? Will we all eventually shine the same bright white, or can I shine golden, or spring green, or vivid tangerine? Will my dark desires be the catalysts that make me more like God, or will they keep me different? Do I give off my own wavelength of light just by moving close to God, a cosmic Doppler Effect that somehow allows my movement to shine my own color of beauty to the stationary viewer, even as I draw closer to the center of the Universe, where gods and matter end? Is my individuality burned up beautifully like a meteor as I draw closer to my goals? Is the incredible journey to sameness the thing that sets us apart in the end? Are our scars what make us beautiful?
I am still discovering so much. I love life. I love the light, and the dark, and the moments like these, right before the proverbial sun rises, when the field is still shrouded in mist, and everything is grey and blurry and coming coldly alive.
Tuesday, April 26, 2005
Snappy Goes to Work
I've decided I don't like our main manager at work. We'll call her Stacey, since that's her name. The other day I showed up to work early so I could eat some food before my shift started. It was busy when I walked in, and she said to me, "Oh, good, you're here. We just sat [sic] you." I've mentioned before that when I get hungry, I turn into Grouchy Smurf and just walk around silently hating things. So I just went over and clocked in and waited on my stupid tables. A while later I went to charge the credit card for my table, but in my cloud of cantankerousness I accidentally charged the wrong table. I had to go ask stupid fake green smiley Stacey to fix it for me. She was standing with Alecia, my sassy black manager.
"Stacey, I charged the wrong credit card. Could you fix it for me please?"
She gave me a disapproving smile. "Well, why'd you do that?"
I was so annoyed. I threw my hands up in the air. "Oh, I just thought it would be FUN to charge the wrong table! You know, just to change things up!"
She didn't know how to respond. "Let's just get this fixed for you," she said automatically.
A moment later we were standing at the computer, and I could see that the wheels were turning in her head. She clearly felt she'd been defeated, and I steeled myself for a second wave of the underhanded attack. She looked at me and said with a smile, "When you make this kind of mistake it charges the wrong amount to their card, and then I have to fix it."
I said, "I know," with a bit of an attitude.
"Well, I'm just telling you because this isn't okay!" she said, and laughed a bit.
"If it isn't okay," I said with mock chipperness, "then why are you smiling and laughing :) ?"
She fixed the credit card charge and didn't really say anything else after that.
I was worried later that I had pissed off the wrong person. A little while after that Alecia came up to me and told me that she loved me for having said what everyone else always wants to. Things are great at work now, and Stacey is going away.
Man, I love my job. I have another story about Snappy at work, but I am starving right now, and I'm too grouchy to tell it. Maybe tomorrow. I saw Supersize me last night, so now I've decided to not eat fast food any more. The problem is that I don't have any clue what else there is to eat, really. I'm screwed. I'm so hungry. The Blag Meister is cooking me some Rice-a-Roni right now. I can't wait.
"Stacey, I charged the wrong credit card. Could you fix it for me please?"
She gave me a disapproving smile. "Well, why'd you do that?"
I was so annoyed. I threw my hands up in the air. "Oh, I just thought it would be FUN to charge the wrong table! You know, just to change things up!"
She didn't know how to respond. "Let's just get this fixed for you," she said automatically.
A moment later we were standing at the computer, and I could see that the wheels were turning in her head. She clearly felt she'd been defeated, and I steeled myself for a second wave of the underhanded attack. She looked at me and said with a smile, "When you make this kind of mistake it charges the wrong amount to their card, and then I have to fix it."
I said, "I know," with a bit of an attitude.
"Well, I'm just telling you because this isn't okay!" she said, and laughed a bit.
"If it isn't okay," I said with mock chipperness, "then why are you smiling and laughing :) ?"
She fixed the credit card charge and didn't really say anything else after that.
I was worried later that I had pissed off the wrong person. A little while after that Alecia came up to me and told me that she loved me for having said what everyone else always wants to. Things are great at work now, and Stacey is going away.
Man, I love my job. I have another story about Snappy at work, but I am starving right now, and I'm too grouchy to tell it. Maybe tomorrow. I saw Supersize me last night, so now I've decided to not eat fast food any more. The problem is that I don't have any clue what else there is to eat, really. I'm screwed. I'm so hungry. The Blag Meister is cooking me some Rice-a-Roni right now. I can't wait.
Friday, April 15, 2005
Toasterovens Need Not Apply
I hope enough time has passed that I can tell this story and totally razz my roommate about this funny thing he's done. At any rate, it makes me laugh, and I want to share it.
So Toasteroven decided to apply for a job at the Mexican restaurant where I work. I wasn't able to be there for the interview, but from what I can gather from both sides, the discussion included the following:
"Describe for me your favorite food."
"Oh, Gushers. They're made from dried fruit and they have juice inside. I sometimes eat like two boxes of them in one day."
"Okay, do you like Mexican food?"
"Actually, not really, but I can fake it."
When he recounted this to me, I couldn't help but laugh.
"Why did you tell them you don't like Mexican food?"
"Well, I thought they would value my integrity."
"Well, Toasteroven, you sure killed that the moment you said you could fake it. Why didn't you just fake it right then?"
"Oh. I didn't think of that."
Poor little Toasty. You just kill me sometimes, bro.
Note: think of this more as a historical fiction, since, as I said, I've had to recreate these conversations for which I wasn't present. You can still see why it's so funny to me, though, right? Maybe I should have waited until after he got that job before I shared this. Oh, well. You know I love you.
So Toasteroven decided to apply for a job at the Mexican restaurant where I work. I wasn't able to be there for the interview, but from what I can gather from both sides, the discussion included the following:
"Describe for me your favorite food."
"Oh, Gushers. They're made from dried fruit and they have juice inside. I sometimes eat like two boxes of them in one day."
"Okay, do you like Mexican food?"
"Actually, not really, but I can fake it."
When he recounted this to me, I couldn't help but laugh.
"Why did you tell them you don't like Mexican food?"
"Well, I thought they would value my integrity."
"Well, Toasteroven, you sure killed that the moment you said you could fake it. Why didn't you just fake it right then?"
"Oh. I didn't think of that."
Poor little Toasty. You just kill me sometimes, bro.
Note: think of this more as a historical fiction, since, as I said, I've had to recreate these conversations for which I wasn't present. You can still see why it's so funny to me, though, right? Maybe I should have waited until after he got that job before I shared this. Oh, well. You know I love you.
Wednesday, February 02, 2005
Warm Chip Lady
There's a lady who has shaken my faith in my ability to read people. She's called the "Warm Chip Lady. "
Several times a week the warm chip lady and her pre-teen daughter come into the restaurant where I work and request their favorite server. If he's not there they have a back-up list. When they've been seated, she requests "just a warm snack. Just a little snackety today," all the while scrunching up her nose like some marsupial mating call. She requests warm chips and a Diet Coke and asks for refill after refill and never orders a real meal. She leaves a fifty cent tip.
During the time the server was helping her, he could have been helping someone else who would have left a real tip. The thing that is so terrible to me is that she thinks the servers are delighted to be requested. And sure, that's nice, but no waiter cares whether you like him if you don't tip. So the question is one of whether I do this to people, whether, in fact, we all do it to each other all the time. Do I think I'm being nice by dropping in on friends, when really all they want is some quiet time? Et cetera.
Several times a week the warm chip lady and her pre-teen daughter come into the restaurant where I work and request their favorite server. If he's not there they have a back-up list. When they've been seated, she requests "just a warm snack. Just a little snackety today," all the while scrunching up her nose like some marsupial mating call. She requests warm chips and a Diet Coke and asks for refill after refill and never orders a real meal. She leaves a fifty cent tip.
During the time the server was helping her, he could have been helping someone else who would have left a real tip. The thing that is so terrible to me is that she thinks the servers are delighted to be requested. And sure, that's nice, but no waiter cares whether you like him if you don't tip. So the question is one of whether I do this to people, whether, in fact, we all do it to each other all the time. Do I think I'm being nice by dropping in on friends, when really all they want is some quiet time? Et cetera.
Sunday, January 30, 2005
Gravy
Dear Blog,
Friday I received an unexpected visit at the restaurant wherein I am employed. I was performing a libation of water for a table when I heard a voice behind me: "Can we have [smurf's real name] as our server?"
The hostess replied jovially, "Sure. What's your name?"
"Gravy," came the response. "Gravy" is the moniker by which his associates refer to him in real life.
Soon Gavy and Gravy's lady had been deposited in my section. The future Mrs. Gravy is the relief society president in my erstwhile ward, so I conversed with her about the matter of our mutual acquaintance, Rose. More on that to follow in subsequent entries, dear blog.
At the end of the meal, I processed Gravy's credit card and returned it to them. Gravy wrote "Tip on table!" on the slip of paper, signed it, and returned it to me immediately. When next I approached the table, I found that the duo had absconded.
Upon nearing the table, I beheld a grisly eyesore. Upon a napkin, Gravy had left a note that said, "tip," with an arrow pointing at a solitary can of gravy. Furthermore, the scoundrel had opened an envelope of gravy mix and disembogued the pulverized contents haphazardly across the surface of the table, the dishes, and the chairs. Amid the maelstrom was a cup full of what was meant to appear as urine, but was in actuality apple juice.
My fellow servers were astonished at the scene. I suppose I should have expected as much. Still, I was downcast by the reminder that instead of a monetary gratuity, I was left a can of mushroom gravy and a mess.
Until next time, dear blog, I remain faithfully yours,
-Smurfed Off
Friday I received an unexpected visit at the restaurant wherein I am employed. I was performing a libation of water for a table when I heard a voice behind me: "Can we have [smurf's real name] as our server?"
The hostess replied jovially, "Sure. What's your name?"
"Gravy," came the response. "Gravy" is the moniker by which his associates refer to him in real life.
Soon Gavy and Gravy's lady had been deposited in my section. The future Mrs. Gravy is the relief society president in my erstwhile ward, so I conversed with her about the matter of our mutual acquaintance, Rose. More on that to follow in subsequent entries, dear blog.
At the end of the meal, I processed Gravy's credit card and returned it to them. Gravy wrote "Tip on table!" on the slip of paper, signed it, and returned it to me immediately. When next I approached the table, I found that the duo had absconded.
Upon nearing the table, I beheld a grisly eyesore. Upon a napkin, Gravy had left a note that said, "tip," with an arrow pointing at a solitary can of gravy. Furthermore, the scoundrel had opened an envelope of gravy mix and disembogued the pulverized contents haphazardly across the surface of the table, the dishes, and the chairs. Amid the maelstrom was a cup full of what was meant to appear as urine, but was in actuality apple juice.
My fellow servers were astonished at the scene. I suppose I should have expected as much. Still, I was downcast by the reminder that instead of a monetary gratuity, I was left a can of mushroom gravy and a mess.
Until next time, dear blog, I remain faithfully yours,
-Smurfed Off
Friday, January 14, 2005
Wiggle to the Rescue
Work was Hell this afternoon. I got some customers who said the service was excellent but the food was "yucky and cold." The owner placed me on probation for not having gotten help (yes, that's two probations now). The tips were lousy and it really just sucked all day. Then I had a one hour break between shifts, and Wiggle came and ate with me. And guess what? It totally cheered me up. And tonight was great, and I was extremely cheerful all night! Thanks, Wiggle! You're a good friend.
Thursday, January 13, 2005
A Conversation with Rachel
You really should read my last post, "Dude, Where's My Job?" before proceeding.
Tuesday:
"Thank you for calling [Name of Restaurant] in Provo. This is Rachel. How may I help you?"
(All right! Rachel is an awesome and hilarious girl!)
"Yeah, Hi Rachel, this is [Smurf's real name]. I'm just calling to make sure I don't work tonight."
"Oh, hey, Smurf. You actually do work tonight."
"WHAT! You're freaking kidding me!"
"Haha, yeah, you're not scheduled to work. But actually the manager DID have me call your phone just now to see if you could work for Erin tonight."
"Oh, sorry, I have plans."
(The plans are watching a movie with Shoebox and the rest, but she doesn't need to know that.)
"So you can't work tonight?"
"No. Sorry."
"And why NOT?"
"Well, I'm meeting with some other students."
(technically true, right?)
"Oh, and why couldn't you have done that yesterday when you weren't coming in to work even though you were scheduled?"
"Well, I just found out about it."
"Mmmmm-hmmmm. I bet."
"Right. What's that supposed to mean?"
"It MEANS that I don't believe you. ESPECIALLY after what you tried to pull yesterday."
"All right, all right. I feel bad enough about that as it is. I don't need YOU rubbing it in."
"Well I don't know who else is gonna rub it in for you."
"Dude, why are you giving me all this sass? And what's with this sassy accent? Why are you trying to sound black or something?"
"What do you MEAN why am I trying to sound black? I AM black!"
(Oh crap. This is my manager, and has been for about a minute now.)
"Oh, crap."
"What you say 'Oh, crap' for?"
(Time to change tactics and apply some counter-sass.)
"Listen, woman, if you're gonna just grab the phone away and switch who I'm talking to, you best TELL a body. 'Cause Here I am all this time thinking I'm still talking to Rachel."
"Well? That ain't my fault! I tell you what, you pull this crap again I'ma fire your butt. And also, I don't even love you anymore."
"Sad. Well, I still love you."
"That's right you do. I just saved your job; you BEST be loving me."
"Oh, I do."
"You need anything else?"
"No, I'm good."
(I'm playing the meek card by now.)
"You need me to check your schedule tell you when you're coming in next?"
"Yes ma'am."
"All Right. You're closing cash with me tomorrow."
"Oh, man. I'm so glad it's you and not David. He doesn't do a very good job and we end up staying forever."
"Yeah, you just watch, I'ma have you outta here by 11:45 at the latest. At the LATEST."
"Oh, I know it. Everyone knows you're the best manager to close with."
"That's RIGHT I'm the best manager to close with. Which is why I love you again."
"You're the best, Alecia."
"I know it. See you tomorrow, and have fun at your made-up study group."
"I will. Bye."
"Bye."
*Click*
"Phew!"
Tuesday:
"Thank you for calling [Name of Restaurant] in Provo. This is Rachel. How may I help you?"
(All right! Rachel is an awesome and hilarious girl!)
"Yeah, Hi Rachel, this is [Smurf's real name]. I'm just calling to make sure I don't work tonight."
"Oh, hey, Smurf. You actually do work tonight."
"WHAT! You're freaking kidding me!"
"Haha, yeah, you're not scheduled to work. But actually the manager DID have me call your phone just now to see if you could work for Erin tonight."
"Oh, sorry, I have plans."
(The plans are watching a movie with Shoebox and the rest, but she doesn't need to know that.)
"So you can't work tonight?"
"No. Sorry."
"And why NOT?"
"Well, I'm meeting with some other students."
(technically true, right?)
"Oh, and why couldn't you have done that yesterday when you weren't coming in to work even though you were scheduled?"
"Well, I just found out about it."
"Mmmmm-hmmmm. I bet."
"Right. What's that supposed to mean?"
"It MEANS that I don't believe you. ESPECIALLY after what you tried to pull yesterday."
"All right, all right. I feel bad enough about that as it is. I don't need YOU rubbing it in."
"Well I don't know who else is gonna rub it in for you."
"Dude, why are you giving me all this sass? And what's with this sassy accent? Why are you trying to sound black or something?"
"What do you MEAN why am I trying to sound black? I AM black!"
(Oh crap. This is my manager, and has been for about a minute now.)
"Oh, crap."
"What you say 'Oh, crap' for?"
(Time to change tactics and apply some counter-sass.)
"Listen, woman, if you're gonna just grab the phone away and switch who I'm talking to, you best TELL a body. 'Cause Here I am all this time thinking I'm still talking to Rachel."
"Well? That ain't my fault! I tell you what, you pull this crap again I'ma fire your butt. And also, I don't even love you anymore."
"Sad. Well, I still love you."
"That's right you do. I just saved your job; you BEST be loving me."
"Oh, I do."
"You need anything else?"
"No, I'm good."
(I'm playing the meek card by now.)
"You need me to check your schedule tell you when you're coming in next?"
"Yes ma'am."
"All Right. You're closing cash with me tomorrow."
"Oh, man. I'm so glad it's you and not David. He doesn't do a very good job and we end up staying forever."
"Yeah, you just watch, I'ma have you outta here by 11:45 at the latest. At the LATEST."
"Oh, I know it. Everyone knows you're the best manager to close with."
"That's RIGHT I'm the best manager to close with. Which is why I love you again."
"You're the best, Alecia."
"I know it. See you tomorrow, and have fun at your made-up study group."
"I will. Bye."
"Bye."
*Click*
"Phew!"
Monday, January 10, 2005
Dude, Where's My Job?
Well, I woke up a bit late today, but that was all right because I'm off work until Wednesday. I did some stuff, and then around 1:00 I got a call from work. They wanted me to come in and work untill 4. I said I would be there in a while. Then I lollygagged and painted monkeys for about an hour and finally went in. When I got there, my big brassy sassy manager was giving me this look that you can only give if you are a black woman or have extra joints in your neck.
I decided I'd better say something. "What?" I said with a level of attitude intended to match hers. I didn't come even close.
"Where have you been?" I think she has a ball and socket in there.
"Sorry," I said, with ostensible sheepishness. "--"
Yeah, that's as far as I got. "Sorry!? I hope you were in the back of an ambulance or something! You better have REAL good story about why you missed the first two and a half hours of your shift!"
Luckily, I'm pretty good at math. "Wait a minute. I only got the call an hour and a half ago."
"Yeah, and you were supposed to be here an hour before THAT."
....
Soon she had me convinced. I had actually been scheduled to work this morning, and must have written down my schedule incorrectly.
After the tongue-scourging, she made me sign a probationary form. This was a piece of paper that informed me that should I be more than five minutes during the next thirty days, they can fire me. I assume it meant five minutes late, but I didn't want to press my luck by asking. It made me sad to fill out the form, but I'm sure I can be on time for a month. I made a whopping six dollars in tips after that, but after a while I was done and as I was leaving to come home, my boss told me she still liked me anyway, and just had to give me the sass because it's part of her job. That was nice.
Anyway, I conducted FHE tonight since they're redoing the groups, so I just decided to do my own thing with the few people I have met in the new ward. We played do you love your neighbor. Which was fun.
At least, it was fun until I got a phone call from work, asking me why I wasn't there for my second shift. Um, whoops. I guess I forgot to check before I left. Who knows what will happen next? That wasn't exactly the best feeling, you know? I keep meaning to ask Toasteroven and Pa Grape for a blessing. I don't know why I thought I could start school without one. Anyway, if you readers out there care at all, send a prayer for my job up to Heaven along with all your own problems, please. I'll need a bunch, I think.
I decided I'd better say something. "What?" I said with a level of attitude intended to match hers. I didn't come even close.
"Where have you been?" I think she has a ball and socket in there.
"Sorry," I said, with ostensible sheepishness. "--"
Yeah, that's as far as I got. "Sorry!? I hope you were in the back of an ambulance or something! You better have REAL good story about why you missed the first two and a half hours of your shift!"
Luckily, I'm pretty good at math. "Wait a minute. I only got the call an hour and a half ago."
"Yeah, and you were supposed to be here an hour before THAT."
....
Soon she had me convinced. I had actually been scheduled to work this morning, and must have written down my schedule incorrectly.
After the tongue-scourging, she made me sign a probationary form. This was a piece of paper that informed me that should I be more than five minutes during the next thirty days, they can fire me. I assume it meant five minutes late, but I didn't want to press my luck by asking. It made me sad to fill out the form, but I'm sure I can be on time for a month. I made a whopping six dollars in tips after that, but after a while I was done and as I was leaving to come home, my boss told me she still liked me anyway, and just had to give me the sass because it's part of her job. That was nice.
Anyway, I conducted FHE tonight since they're redoing the groups, so I just decided to do my own thing with the few people I have met in the new ward. We played do you love your neighbor. Which was fun.
At least, it was fun until I got a phone call from work, asking me why I wasn't there for my second shift. Um, whoops. I guess I forgot to check before I left. Who knows what will happen next? That wasn't exactly the best feeling, you know? I keep meaning to ask Toasteroven and Pa Grape for a blessing. I don't know why I thought I could start school without one. Anyway, if you readers out there care at all, send a prayer for my job up to Heaven along with all your own problems, please. I'll need a bunch, I think.
Wednesday, December 15, 2004
Not with a whimper, but a bang.
Work update! Tonight was friggin' awesome! So here's what happened (are you ready?):
The managers decided to have their big manager party tonight. One of the lead waitresses was going to act as proxy. Then somebody decided to accept a reservation for 70. So we reserved the whole front room for the party. It turns out it was for some Provo Youth Hockey team, so there were tons of obstreperous eleven-year-old boys everywhere. We had two parties upstairs, also.
We were sizzlin'. Then we ran out of quarters. "Here are seven dimes; I'm sorry." Everything's still fine. Until the power went out. I guess the power went out for at least six city blocks. We had some emergency lights and flashlights, but it was basically pitch black. We couldn't print checks, place orders, cook food, get drinks, or anything. The little kids we had packed into the front room were wailing and crying and screaming. It was just like 3 Nephi 8:23. The fans turned off in the kitchen, and soon the heat was oppressive. All the poor Mexicans were just huddled quietly in the muggy darkness, tring to use their keychain-lights to identify the food that was ready. The waitress/managress was on the phone with the managers, the owner, the city of Provo. People were asking for their money back. Some woman claimed that she had already paid before the blackout, but her server insisted she hadn't. Some people were impatiently trying to pay with credit cards; others had just come in and were insisting that we seat them right away. Fortunately for me, I had already printed my tickets so I could save a trip to the computer (others were having to calculate tax with a calculator), and my food was ready shortly after the darkness fell. One of the nice Marias grabbed my order book and went around the kitchen gathering everything I needed for me. I told my tables I had made arrangements to create a more romantic setting, just for them. They all tipped me very well after all was over. Fifteen to twenty minutes later, the power came back on. The computers were still down for a good while after that. One of the managers was there helping by that point.
The surprise of the lights coming back fell into the umbrage of the scene that it illuminated, however. The hockey children had thrown chips and salsa everywhere. Some were on the tables throwing pinecones at each other (the head mom had brought pinecone decorations for some reason!). About six of the brats had taken off their jackets and were IN THE FOUNTAIN collecting everbody's wishes and splashing the elderly couples who were seated nearby. Before we could ask them to get out, one of the kids grabbed the sides of the terra cotta fountain and tried to climb on top. It toppled over, cracking the whole thing. We got the enfants terribles out of there, and by that time, there were so few other customers that they let me clock out, on the condition that I help them rearrange the tables and clean up the slops. So I did. Things were almost back in order, except for the computers and the fountains, when I clocked out and went into the bathroom to change my cothes. The toilet was overflowing. I did what I felt was the right thing; I left without saying a word to anyone.
The managers decided to have their big manager party tonight. One of the lead waitresses was going to act as proxy. Then somebody decided to accept a reservation for 70. So we reserved the whole front room for the party. It turns out it was for some Provo Youth Hockey team, so there were tons of obstreperous eleven-year-old boys everywhere. We had two parties upstairs, also.
We were sizzlin'. Then we ran out of quarters. "Here are seven dimes; I'm sorry." Everything's still fine. Until the power went out. I guess the power went out for at least six city blocks. We had some emergency lights and flashlights, but it was basically pitch black. We couldn't print checks, place orders, cook food, get drinks, or anything. The little kids we had packed into the front room were wailing and crying and screaming. It was just like 3 Nephi 8:23. The fans turned off in the kitchen, and soon the heat was oppressive. All the poor Mexicans were just huddled quietly in the muggy darkness, tring to use their keychain-lights to identify the food that was ready. The waitress/managress was on the phone with the managers, the owner, the city of Provo. People were asking for their money back. Some woman claimed that she had already paid before the blackout, but her server insisted she hadn't. Some people were impatiently trying to pay with credit cards; others had just come in and were insisting that we seat them right away. Fortunately for me, I had already printed my tickets so I could save a trip to the computer (others were having to calculate tax with a calculator), and my food was ready shortly after the darkness fell. One of the nice Marias grabbed my order book and went around the kitchen gathering everything I needed for me. I told my tables I had made arrangements to create a more romantic setting, just for them. They all tipped me very well after all was over. Fifteen to twenty minutes later, the power came back on. The computers were still down for a good while after that. One of the managers was there helping by that point.
The surprise of the lights coming back fell into the umbrage of the scene that it illuminated, however. The hockey children had thrown chips and salsa everywhere. Some were on the tables throwing pinecones at each other (the head mom had brought pinecone decorations for some reason!). About six of the brats had taken off their jackets and were IN THE FOUNTAIN collecting everbody's wishes and splashing the elderly couples who were seated nearby. Before we could ask them to get out, one of the kids grabbed the sides of the terra cotta fountain and tried to climb on top. It toppled over, cracking the whole thing. We got the enfants terribles out of there, and by that time, there were so few other customers that they let me clock out, on the condition that I help them rearrange the tables and clean up the slops. So I did. Things were almost back in order, except for the computers and the fountains, when I clocked out and went into the bathroom to change my cothes. The toilet was overflowing. I did what I felt was the right thing; I left without saying a word to anyone.
Skipping Has its Drawbacks
So I saw Ocean's 12 last week. When it was over, I had no idea what had happened. I didn't get the plot at all. Wiggle and the Man on the Oatmeal Box had to explain it all to me. I was disconcerted, mostly because I've never seen a movie without being able to catch the clues and understand the plot at least by the dénouement. There was key factor that I missed: the identity of the Night Fox. They told me it had been given away when he pointed at something. That explains a lot, considering my nonverbal learning disorder. Still, though, I shouldn't have been as confused as I was. I was starting to think maybe the movie was just poorly written and my friends were reading too much into it. Then I had a flashback.
7 hours earlier:
I was at work, and just in one of my unaccounted-for cheery moods. I was humming along with the Christmas music and skipping about the restaurant like some sort of nancy. The problem is that I skipped through a low archway and smashed the top of my head. OOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWW. White flash! I was on the ground, blocking the arch with my over-long body. I stood up and felt the swelling on my head, and there was blood on my hand when I pulled it away. I had to run and keep serving my tables, though. Luckily my good mood wasn't at all affected by the concussion. However, my brain seems to have been. When the lump on my head goes away (it's been five days and there's still a scab and everything) I'll go see the movie again. Hopefully nothing permanent happened there. If so, oh, well. I'm still happy!
7 hours earlier:
I was at work, and just in one of my unaccounted-for cheery moods. I was humming along with the Christmas music and skipping about the restaurant like some sort of nancy. The problem is that I skipped through a low archway and smashed the top of my head. OOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWW. White flash! I was on the ground, blocking the arch with my over-long body. I stood up and felt the swelling on my head, and there was blood on my hand when I pulled it away. I had to run and keep serving my tables, though. Luckily my good mood wasn't at all affected by the concussion. However, my brain seems to have been. When the lump on my head goes away (it's been five days and there's still a scab and everything) I'll go see the movie again. Hopefully nothing permanent happened there. If so, oh, well. I'm still happy!
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