The Man in the Sky

Kids Eat Free nights bring out a special kind of customer: the kind that have children in litters. This most recent Kids Eat Free night I saw something that I can't seem to stop thinking about, a scene that was wrong on several subtly textured layers. While taking food to somebody's table I saw a woman with two daughters working on their homework. Nothing unusual there, kids bring schoolwork in all the time. I am nosey so I like to read the titles of books people are reading at the tables. It has never failed to unimpress me.

The title of the textbook these little girls were working out of was God's Gift of Language. I'm going to repeat that: God's Gift of Language. It is exactly what you think: a homeschool English and grammar textbook. For some reason. Oh right, because some factions of Christians in America have become so insular and fanatical that not only is Science offensive to them but also English. What next? God's Gift of Mathematics? Because we all know that inches are based on the Pagan system of Dodecagonism and that the cubit is the only God approved unit of measurement.

It's getting weird people.

Just to be sure that God's Gift of Language is really what it appears to be I Googled it and found a shopping website for Christian homeschool textbooks. It is exactly that: a 'Christ centered' English textbook. Apparently, the people who bought it are pleased; there are three reviews from satisfied customers. All three reviews contain spelling and grammatical errors. True story.


I'm not a theologian or anything but I do like a good silly myth here and there which may amount to the same thing, but- am I crazy or isn't there an Old Testament story about a time when ALL PEOPLE SPOKE THE SAME LANGUAGE and The Man in the Sky punished them for being too ambitious by scattering them all over the place and making them all speak different languages?? As a punishment??

Yes. I just Googled it at christianity.about.com and they confirmed this. I cut and pasted this directly from the website:

God came to see their city and the tower they were building. He perceived their intentions, and in His infinite wisdom, He knew this "stairway to heaven" would only lead the people away from God. He noted the powerful force within their unity of purpose. As a result, God confused their language, causing them to speak different languages so they would not understand each other. By doing this, God thwarted their plans. He also scattered the people of the city all over the face of the earth.

"THOU SHALT NOT BUILD A STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN!  I GIVE YOU...SMOKE ON THE WATER!!"

Apparently god is not a Led Zeppelin fan.

So which part of this is God's Gift? I mean, I can only assume that the zealots who published God's Gift of Language are well aware of this story. By my interpretation of this, our language is actually a punitive measure according to SCRIPTURE of that same religion, the one that is so offended by scientific inquiry and the Theory of Evolution, which is the essential idea behind all Biology. 

What is the point of teaching your children to read at all when you are also teaching them to believe in a jealous and vengeful old man that curses and afflicts babies and strikes down entire civilisations for 'pridefulness'? If Science is blasphemy, and apparently Engineering and any other human endeavour that shows a 'unity of purpose' is going to get you smote (or is it 'smited'?) then what career can a good Christian pursue?

Sheep farming. And you don't need to know how to read to do that.

So...don't bother teaching your daughter to read, Christian lady. It will only make her uppity and most likely question her husband's authority and you know what that leads to: stoning. 
Don't set your little girl up for a stoning. 

Charlie's In The Trees!

I have a lovely co worker who is originally from Korea. Last night I ran some food to a table of his, a white haired couple in their 60's and this is what transpired:

I place a burger on the table. White haired man peers at the plate and frowns. And then he says

"That GOOK messed up my food!"

That actually happened. I took a quick step back so I wouldn't get any ignorance on me. I blink three times and say

"Excuse me??"

I must not have heard that right. He repeats it.

"That GOOK messed up my food."

I thought all those people died off. No such luck, there are still stragglers hanging on, like the last dodos wandering around the island. Who knew?

So I explain to him that:

 

1. That's not cool.

 2. His server is Korean, and I believe GOOK is a pejorative term for Vietnamese people, and perhaps by extension, Laotians but definitely not Koreans, so not only is it objectionable, but also highly inaccurate. 

 

It's not like his server shuffled over to the table wearing a rice hat and coolie shoes and  plucking a shamisen. This guy is such a 'bro' if you couldn't see his face you would assume he was from around the corner,which he is.

Old Man actually mumbles something about V.C.'s. Yes, we've stumbled into a bad movie.Charlie's in the trees!

"LET'S GET A BURGER!"

iPhoning It In

One of these days I'm going to snap and go on an iPhone slaying rampage. Of course it will serve no purpose but to make me feel a deep and resonant satisfaction as I listen to a symphony of glass screens shattering, accompanied by a chorus of gasps and shrieks of horror as families are forced to actually look at one another and perhaps have a conversation during dinner. After the cops drag me away that is.

This business has gotten completely out of hand now. It's to the point that people aren't even bothering to lower their iPhones from their faces to talk to you when you're waiting on them. I'm trying to remain polite while talking to a person that literally will not take their eyes away from the magic glowing box long enough to acknowledge the presence of another human being that is there to assist them. Entire families are like this now. It's really unnerving to watch: Dad's got a glossy black obelisk, Mom's got a sassy plaid purple one, Princess has a bubblegum pink one and Sweet Pea is sucking on one. No shit. Parents are using iPhones as psychic pacifiers for those pesky kids that might want to play hangman with them or TALK ABOUT THEIR HOPES AND DREAMS and as actual pacifiers for babies too young to play Angry Birds. These creatures would rather play 'words with friends' with complete strangers than interact with their children or the people they married. And nobody seems to see the inherent perversity of this. The kid's faces are especially creepy, with this slack jawed glassy eyed stare like their souls have been sucked out of their nostrils and channelled directly into the iPhone to power MacBooks. That's what they run on instead of batteries. It's a secret Steve Jobs took with him to the grave.

there's an app for that.

I am tired of having to stand around while these parents try to convince their catatonic zombie children to put down the iPhone long enough to tell us what they want to eat. Here's an idea: if the kid refuses to let you know what they want to eat then maybe they aren't actually hungry. Because hungry people are pretty keen on getting food. If they refuse to pay attention long enough to order food at the appropriate time they DO NOT EAT. Parents: don't bother ordering for them so you can maintain the appearance of a caring nurturer. You plugged their face into an electronic device. You don't care about them. If you did you would enjoy their company and relish the time that you have with them rather than shell out hundreds of dollars to avoid looking at them and ensure that they don't try to talk to you. The cat is out of the bag.

More optimistic types than me are comparing the iPhone to these things:

"I can haz cheeseburger? How droll..."

...but that's only because they aren't ready to accept the ugly truth,which is that our future looks more like Wall-E than Star Trek. Case in point- this:

funny how it tightens around my neck when I try to remove it

                 

                                                     ....which is just the beta model of this:

Pardon My French

I had a table tonight that consisted of two suburban couples sitting opposite each other in the booth. As you know, we have to introduce ourselves and our 'partner' on pain of death and thanks to our shit economy we actually had three poor waitresses in our section. So I go to the table and introduce myself and my other two cohorts. One of these guys snickers and says ," Ooh a menage!"
I look at him. He's giggling with the joy of his cleverness.
"Um." I say, "menage just means like, a household or a set, so technically, you guys are already 'a menage'. I think what you might be going for is a menage a trois."
He kind of explodes with laughter and exclaims, " Oh man, I just got burned by A WAITRESS! For  shame!"

There's an awkward pause as I stonily stare at him. He stares back uncomprehendingly until I say, "Wow. That's actually very insulting. The implicit statement is that because I'm a waitress I'm less educated than you. I could have a phD. Maybe I just like doing this for a living because I enjoy all the stimulating conversations I get to have with people."
And I shrug and go get myself a drink while they take their five minute penalty.
To their credit they were much nicer when I returned.

Nuclear Family Meltdown

I like children on principle. They are like small people in the throes of a really good acid trip and haven't yet learned how to properly be assholes. Most of them.  I have met my share of very advanced students, however, such as the two I had to deal with yesterday. And how does a child learn how to be an asshole before they learn their ABC's and how to tie their shoes? From their asshole parents of course. And how big an asshole would you have to be for that to be the dominant character trait that you telegraph to your offspring before you teach them to say please and thank you? The kind of asshole that would rather let an iPad interact with their child so they don't have to. 

"hush now,meatpuppet. I will console you."

There is no surer indication of an inadequate parent than the presence of an iPad on the table. If you have brought a child up that doesn't have the self control to sit through one meal without a t.v. screen in their face with a cartoon animal singing a creepy little song then you are a failure of a parent. Yay for you, you have increased the number of idiots on a planet that is already chock full of idiots. Good job, asshole. When are you going to get around to teaching the kid how to behave? After softball season is over? How about RIGHT THE *%#CK NOW? 

Here is the situation: I go to greet a table that I can already hear from the other side of the bar. It's a little family of four, two little loin monsters and Mom and Dad- the Nuclear Family. The little Princess is raising hell about something, Mom is struggling to get the iPad propped up and get some cartoon distraction going before this little creature sets fire to the restaurant. Dad is just glaring at everybody,looking for something to kill. Little Boy Loinmonster is getting down to the business of wrecking the table. The sugar caddy has done something very bad and he is making it pay for its crimes. They've been sitting there for about 90 seconds and the table next to them is already looking around uncomfortably and wondering if it's too late to get another table.

When I reluctantly go over there Dad immediately starts snapping at me, as if it's my fault he doesn't know how to pull out early.He's raising his voice to be heard above the howls of his monster children and demands that I get them some food NOW. They will settle down once they get food he says. 

OR you could make them settle down by parenting them. Just a thought. Take the energy that you put into buying the iPad and put it into some interaction with them, set some boundaries, expectations, punishment/ reward system. Put them in the Skinner box. 

Here is one of the Ten Commandments of Restaurants:

If your kids are raising hell before you even sit down to eat, do NOT rush to get them food. Rush to get them back in the car before everyone in the restaurant wills your gonads to shrivel up before you spawn any more monsters. 

what do you mean you're pregnant? How did  THAT happen?!

In a more civilised age people used to wall up their mistakes in wine cellars, or if they were kind they put them in the attic and fed them under the door. They didn't take them out to dinner.

Blog Writer wanted on Craigslist

So I'm trawling Craigslist and I come across this post under 'writing gigs':

 BLOG WRITING WORK -- PART TIME   


DESCRIPTION:
Looking for a professional blogger and writer to publish articles about various janitorial products and cleaning supply that our company sells, as well as interesting information on how-to cleaning jobs. Clear concise,engaging writing is required. The writer should be able to utilize some basic SEO tactics and write an arresting headline. 
Must be able to write 5-10 blog post per week by assignment (300 to 500 words) on a given topic, we are a janitorial supply company, so majority of the content creation will be related to cleaning and cleaning products.

- Create an angle and tone that is relevant to the blog audience based on input from editor.
- Meet all deadlines on time.
- Produce 100% original work.
- Incorporate SEO keywords if needed.

 You CAN'T make stuff like this up. 

There's more to this hilarity but you get the gist. I am sitting here trying to imagine the genius, and I do mean genius without a trace of sarcasm that could actually fill this position. Somewhere out there is a Stephen King character, an elite level 20 janitor that writes like Shakespeare and has a magic bag full of arresting anecdotes about epic cleaning adventures. AND he can produce 5-10 of these riveting narratives a week for $10 an hour.

I am not such a being. But in deference to this mop wielding mystic, I shall enter this Kumite:

"I call this beauty Beyonce"

I remember it like it was yesterday. It was a Tuesday, and the copy machine repair guy had been in. Toner was everywhere, in drifts and clumps like the bubonic plague. This was the most dire situation since the data entry clerk's menstrual cycles got synchronized, like a witches coven they were all united by their diabolical moon cycles, just menstruating all over the ladies bathroom like crazy. What a nightmare. Thank sweet Christ for Zep #12 with XTRA CLEANING POWER. It looked like the the prom in Carrie until I deployed my DOUBLE THICKNESS MICROFIBER SHOP TOWELS by Zep and exorcised those particular demons. For the love of GOD ladies. Every time you flush a tampon a little baby turtle gets eaten by a seagull! But this toner holocaust made that look G rated by comparison. One of those white collared morons had tried to wipe it up with a mere paper towel and just sort of smeared it all over the cubicles. One really big smear kind of looked like the Virgin Mary. I knew I had to clean it up before the floor crew came in or I'd never get them out of there before the first shift arrived. Amateurs. This called for the big guns. Time for SUPER SPARKLE BRITE with Tergitol 62. Now that's what I call immaculate!

Me Talk Pretty One Day

I've been really into Sherlock Holmes lately and have always loved his uncanny ability to make brilliant deductions about people based on keen observational data. So with that in mind I decided to try to alleviate the boredom the other day at the Fajita Factory. My first subject was an easy one: A grandfather in his 50's dining out with his charming little family, wife, daughter and her child. Pa orders a "Koh-Cola" and a "Jah-lapeno burger". Yes, he pronounced the J in jalapeno. What does this tell me about him? A lot actually...

1. He drives a white (black is a scary colour) pickup truck with a picture of a deer on it somewhere and a     Georgia Bulldawgs sticker. He learned to drive on his grandpa's riding lawnmower.

Damn dirty Mexi-CANs

2. He saw Grandma get run over by a reindeer.

3. He owns seven baseball caps but no ties.

4. He thinks all brown skinned people are 'Mexi-CANs' and doesn't trust them.

5. If his house were on fire and he could only save one person, it would be his coonhound.

6. He is about to willingly consume a sandwich that has 2200 calories, 144 grams of fat and 6600 mg. of sodium, which means he's not afraid to die of a heart attack, and would welcome the escape from his pilled out spouse that he married in a shotgun wedding after knocking her up in the parking lot of a junkyard while they waited for his brother Bubba II to find a carburetor for his '69 Dodge Charger,  General Lee.


 I may have stolen that last bit from The Dukes Of Hazzard. Sorry about that, Cooter.

"Right 'bout that time Pa's arteries were in a heap o' trouble!"

More To Love

Yesterday I brought food to two very overweight ladies and observed a variety of 'weight loss' pills on the table. I didn't catch the name of the pills as I was struggling with a rather heavy tray laden with all manner of fried chicken strips, freedom fries and other beige food items. My reverie was broken by their curt demands for ranch dressing to dip these beige things in. I have already been over ranch dressing. It is fat in a bowl. I wonder if you planted those pills in the garden would they grow into a beanstalk that will take you to Narnia.
So the question for today's blog is:

How can people be so ignorant as to believe that they can routinely eat buckets of fried beige meat with fried potatoes dipped in bowls of fat sauce and wash it down with a gallon of sugar water and not continue to balloon out like a bloated drowned cow?

People are getting fat in America. Those of us who aren't fat are the minority now, which means that in the future, we will have to have special toilets so we don't fall in. Look at this thing:

this is considered a bathtub in Japan

That is what the future looks like. It's rated for 500+lbs and it's almost a yard across.


I don't care what the late night t.v. commercial says. The only pill you could eat after that disgusting shame banquet that would possibly prevent the postal service giving you your own zip code would be something containing freeze dried tapeworm larvae. But people will do anything to avoid getting off their asses apparently. Look at the attention given to the whole Dr. Atkins diet revolution. I worked at the Macaroni Grill when  this travesty took hold of the nation and had to grit my teeth while these porcine wankers tried to order food that Dr. Atkins would approve of. Which at a pasta restaurant is pretty much nothing. This got so out of hand that when he died it was a bit of a relief because when I had to deal with one of those nincompoops and they started trying to order a double cheese and prosciutto sandwich with no bread and a bowl of bacon I would have only to stare at them until they started to putter out and then I would wait patiently for them to stop talking. I would stare at them until they were quite finished. And then I would say, "You know Dr. Atkins is dead right? He died. Of  a  HEART ATTACK."

Dr. Atkins prescribes...more pork rinds!

If you had told me that the new diet craze would be one in which you are not allowed to eat fruit or grains and are encouraged to eat pork rinds and butter and entire packages of bacon I would have laughed and said, "no way are people that stupid." And I would be wrong.  The well of human ignorance is bottomless, like a basket of tortilla chips at the Fajita Factory.

Auld Lang Syne= Scottish for Drunken Horde

I am enjoying a well deserved day of lounging about after a marathon gig at the biggest New Year's Eve party in the South. It's Atlanta's answer to New York City's Big Apple Ball Drop. It's called The Peach Drop. We're clever like that. I understand the one in NYC is an exquisite affair of Waterford crystal. Ours is an 800 pound plastic peach that looks like a big butt. 

checking for hemorrhoids

 Anyway, I didn't see the peach drop. All I saw was the biggest rowdy mob of drunk people outside of Times Square, but I personally believe our crowd was drunker than theirs because in New York city a beer costs $28 and we were slinging it for $5 a pop. For a tallboy. So you do the math. That is a veritable Niagara Falls of alcohol and I was pouring that hooch as if my life depended on it, which judging from the demeanor of that crowd it very well may have. If you are a bartender, try to imagine the busiest you have ever ever been, then double that and sustain it for seven hours. According the the press releases from The Peach Drop, average turnout is 180,000 per year. That is not to say I served drinks to 180,000 people, just the ones who were resourceful and determined enough to claw their way to the bar. They literally drank us out of stock. At the end of the night all we had left was a couple of bottles of Red Stripe Light (which I didn't know existed) and three bottles of tomato flavoured vodka (why does that even exist?). I have never seen such a thirsty horde. The amazing thing is that for such chaos, everyone for the most part was genial. It only started to get ugly after the Peach dropped at midnight and we started to run out of liquor. Then the crowd got a bit nasty. I only had to put my Bitch Hat on once when a  really sloshed sorority sister did the inevitable, "I saw you make those vodka Redbulls and you barely put any vodka in them." If you tend bar you are well acquainted with this phenomenon. The shitfaced crave the liquor like Gollum with his 'Precious'.

"what's Jager Bombs, Precious?"

 I leaned in close so as to be heard clearly over the roar of the mob and declared, "You can take them or FUCKING leave them."
 Abashed, she conferred briefly with her drunk ass gaggle of sisters and then took the drinks, with nothing but  a  meek,"Thank you, ma'am."
That's right. You're welcome.

So everyone came out in one piece, I'm sure a lot of  babies were made and many a snookered white boy woke up without a wallet. I made buckets of cash and still got to kiss my fella at midnight.

Epilogue:
At the end of the night while entering tips for a Sisyphian pile of charge slips that if you could stack them would have been literally a foot high something occurred to me. I still can't fully process it and the more I think about it the deeper and more textured my sadness becomes: During the busiest night of the year for the drunkest crowd ever that partied later than I would have thought possible I realised those charge slips contained less mathematical errors than my checkout on a standard Tuesday night at the Fajita Factory. Not one of them among hundreds had mysterious chicken scratch on them where the person had to carry any numbers to work out their total for payment. The full extent of how ignorant our clientele actually are is beginning to dawn on me.

Happy New Year to you all, and here's to better fortunes...