Life Catering

Today I attended an event in a conference hall. The event was catered by the hall’s staff and throughout the five hours that I was there we were treated to fresh fruit and snack mix as well as coke products and water to drink. Every fifteen minutes or so one of the employees would pop in to check on the state of the food and restock anything that was depleted. There was always more fruit, sliced and ready to eat. There was always plenty of snack mix to munch on. I never got thirsty.  At the end of the event, a sandwich cart was wheeled out with neatly organized breads, meats, cheeses, cookies, and chips to be enjoyed by all who attended. When we had all eaten to our fill we turned to look back at the table to see the dent we had put in the food only to find a fully stocked cart that appeared to have been untouched.

            This got me thinking how great it would be to have a life caterer. Someone who will check in with me every fifteen minutes just to make sure I had everything I needed. Imagine working diligently on a paper for a few hours, when you realize that you’re hungry. If you’re on a writing streak and the creative juices are flowing, you don’t want to stop and fix yourself something to eat. Your life caterer would stop in and deliver some delicious food for you without ever being asked. A life caterer wouldn’t only take care of dietary needs. A life caterer would be useful in all situations.

            Imagine getting in a car accident and within a few minutes having a new car delivered right to you. Imagine that same car accident but instead you are severely injured and require a new organ. A life caterer would wheel you your brand new lung/heart/eyeball on a beautiful covered tray wearing his finest tuxedo shirt and a bowtie. Now that’s service.  

More Jems from the internet

I read a few amazing pieces of news in my facebook feed today. There are times when I feel like People abuse the amazing piece of technology that is facebook to say unimportant things. Not today Times like these make me thank the powers that be that I never went on a facebook purge of people who I was acquaintances with in high school. Here's one:
 

"Lol. Patròn is awesome. XD"

This is the kind of thing that everybody needs to hear. All facebook users should take note that THIS is what facebook should be used for. It starts with a laugh, out loud, because this statement is really funny. I mean this is the kind of thing that I hope we all would have the general decency to stop what we are doing (Drinking Patrón) and inform, or at least remind everyone we know who can access the internet, that Patrón IS in fact awesome. This is the kind of original thought that needs to be spoken. This is not one of those statuses that make me wish I didn't know how to read so that my sight of the words wouldn't trigger a translation of symbol to idea in my brain.

“Really wants to do something fun tonight...sick of just laying around all the time!” 

Thanks to the wonder of facebook people like this facebook friends don’t have to go through the hassle of calling a friend to hang out, instead they can post passive statements that might prompt both sympathy “likes” and perhaps one of their friends can call them instead. Before facebook we couldn’t just be lazy friends. We all had to put in the work of contacting a specific individual to make plans with them. Now, thankfully, we can put that responsibility in the hands of everyone else while subtly blaming them for our boredom: Thanks Mark Zuckerberg.

All sarcasm aside, I am saddened by the amount of time that must be put into typing pointless statuses into your facebook account. I know that I have been guilty of posting these kind of things. There should be a monitoring system a la Reddit.com that filters the stupidity that we inject into the internet. Whether it is an impulse to share this unimportant info or some people actually think it is important, the world could use people who get paid to filter through the overwhelming amount of meaningless information that flows through our news feed.

Thanks

History is filled with many people of note. Great inventors and inovators, people who lead the way into the future by way of their ideas are among the most famous in all of history. Bell's tellephone, edison's lightbulb, and george washington carver's peanut butter are just examples of great inventions that made people famous. I want to talk about the people who invented vitally important things who were somehow lost to knowlege.
I want to talk about. The nameless man or woman who discovered bread. It takes a unique type of curiosity to combine all the intricate parts of bread that come together to create the final product.
Who in their right mind decided it was a great idea to mix up a concoction of ground wheat water and bacteria. Bread has been around for a long time too. This guy must have been expiramenting with the grain. Where were the people saying " hey dude quit playing with your food." And where were the people saying " hey dude quit dumping that those micro-organisms into the food." I guess it's a good thing that they didn't.
Along the lines of food I'd like to thank the person who discovered that we as humans can drink the milk of other animals. This is probably one of the strangest practices of human beings. Now I go through a gallon of milk a week by myself, so don't think that I dislike milk, but if you think about it, somebody had to be the first person to drink the white liquid out of the bottom of a cow. The only reason that this is an acceptable practice for people is because of this guy. So, thank you milk drinking guy.

The Internet.

This contains some negative material. Nothing too vulgar, but I like to keep my blog pretty neutral on political and social stuff. This is just a forewarning to let you know that there’s some mean language that I personally don’t condone in here.  

I just checked the weather for tonight because of all the storm activity that has been going on. I went to the TMJ4 website and watched the video clip of the weather from the 5 o’clock news. As the video wrapped up, my finger pulled on the scroll wheel, bringing me to the comments section. Here I was greeted with a new file in the ever growing cabinet of evidence that internet forums on any website about any topic can have only one outcome: Heated, Idiotic argument.

The first comment on the page was this.

Maybe the north side would look better if some F-5 tornados rolled through and sucked up all the garbage, crack houses, and humanoids.”

Now I understand that parts of Milwaukee are very seedy places and a lot of crime happens there, but does this comment really need to be posted to a WEATHER forum? This sounds like something someone would just say in conversation with someone else to attain a small chuckle in return. People need to realize that these small comments do not need to be forever stored in cyberspace. Now I don’t think that this was meant to be a racially charged comment, but at the very least it was in poor taste. I would love for people like this guy to be able to efficiently evaluate what is actually worth typing into a local weather comments section.

Here is the next comment.

“awwww! DID SOMEBODY'S MOOMY GO "PLAYING WITH THE BRO'S WHEN HE WAS LITTLE"HA! LOVE U REPUBLICANTS.. AT LEAST U ADMIT YOU'RE A RACIST! NOW RUN ALONG TO YOUR TEA PARTY CONVENTION IN THE TRAILER PARK, AND WAIT FOR MOTHER NATURE'S RESPONSE!HA! OBAMA '12!”

Now this person just turned what was a stupid comment into a full on racially charged argument with one All-caps post. I think he has every right to call this guy out on something that was insensitive, but at the same time I have no Idea who is to gain anything from this argument that has just been started. The constant struggle for racial equality and the quest for tolerance most likely will not be ended on the weather forums of the Milwaukee area affiliate of NBC’s website. Please take note that a poor taste comment leads to a few assumptions, a personal insult, and a political statement: Classic Internet.

The rebuttal from the first commenter, I will not post on here because it’s really gross, and I don’t want something like that on my blog... But I’ll happily link the website (http://www.todaystmj4.com/news/local/147487705.html ). This comment consisted of a personal attack that was disgusting and uncalled for but at least somewhat creative, and finally person A telling person B that he hopes a tornado hits him. 

The final comment took the argument to it’s only logical conclusion: a comparison of genitalia size, involving the bragging rights to two of the Kardashians. I totally saw that one coming.

Bravo people of the internet, you have managed to take the least controversial of topics; the universal conversation piece and make it into a stupid, pointless argument that did nothing but give me a topic to blog about. Think before you comment, people. Please. 

Customers Part II: Why Literacy is Important

            I have sounded off before on this blog about particular fine citizens who have graced my place of employment with their amazing rudeness. Today I would like to talk about another group of patrons of the convenience store world: stupid people.

            A few months back, I was tending the register at the front counter and a man in his mid twenties walked up, and set his desired purchases on the counter. He was wearing what he normally wears to the store: a pair of dress pants with dress shoes, and a button down work shirt with a cell phone company logo from his job on the right breast. His hunt of the aisles yielded three 2-liter bottles of mountain dew, and a box of imitation Twinkies (you know… the essentials). I remember this because this guy gets this same group of items weekly. This occasion however he also wanted a “five-hour energy” from the case on the counter. So he gestured toward the case and said “Gimme one of those too.” As I moved over to the case of tiny, shot sized bottles I asked him what flavor he would like. He looked at the case for a second and said “I’ll take that red one.”I took a moment to sigh silently to myself. Immediately I knew that my day was about to be invaded by idiocy. I threw on my best customer service voice and explained to the man that six of the seven different types of bottles in the case were red and that he’d have to be slightly more specific. He looked at me and asked this question

“What flavor is the red one?”

Here’s what I said to him spoken in American Dialect English

“Hey Idiot, they’re all red and each one is a different flavor. If you’re too dumb to figure out what these strings of letters that make up words mean there are tiny pictures of the fruit that show what each one is supposed to taste like.”

Here’s how it came out of my mouth translated into Customer Service Dialect

“Well sir, they’re all labeled with individual flavors on each bottle.”

He then proceeded to point to a specific bottle and ask me what flavor that particular one was. Sadly, like an elderly woman at an elementary school does for a first grader; I read to this grown man.

“Grape”

“what about that one?”

“Berry”

“Is that one the same as the Grape?”

“No”

This went on for each of the seven different flavors!! Finally he made his selection and then asked me to grab him a lottery ticket. At that moment sheer terror swept through me. If this man ever won the lottery there would be no such thing as justice. If this man who was either too dumb or too lazy to read the flavors on a five hour energy bottle won millions upon millions of dollars, I would leave this country because it had failed in keeping justice. I also realized that in buying a lottery ticket he also proved that he legally can vote in elections, and do anything else that adult citizens of the United States could do.

For all our sake, I hope he doesn’t 

Beards

“Great men are not defined by their courage, their honor, or their accomplishments, but rather by their facial hair.”- Me

Why should you grow a Beard?

Reason 1: Facial Customization

Men get a rare opportunity to customize their facial appearance with Beards that women, children, and pets can never have. Thanks to modern technology such as razors and scissors Beards can b e trimmed and groomed to each man’s (or circus woman’s) personal preference. The variety beard and mustache stylings are vast and plentiful with new ones being discovered all the time. All these different choices give you the opportunity to change the way that you want to be seen. Beards are the ultimate form of self expression.

Reason 2: Respect

Beards emit respect. Growing a bear will grant you respect just because people will relate you to other great bearded men. When someone sees the hair on your face they will say to themselves in an internal monologue. “Hey me, check that guy out. He has a Beard! It must have taken a while to grow that. You know who else had a beard? Abraham Lincoln. He freed the slaves and reunited the country. I’ll bet this bearded guy could both free and reunite things like all the time, just like Honest Abe. I respect that.”

Reason 3: Powers

I can’t confirm this completely but some evidence does hint that Beards may actually give people special powers. If you think about it Beards are prevalent in a great deal of extraordinary people. I mean pretty much all ancient gods had Beards, Odin and Zeus being the most epic of them. When was the last time you saw a Wizard without a beard? Gandolf’s Beard was so powerful, when he shaved it off the residual effects let him continue to control metal and people started calling him Magneto! Grizzley Adams’s beard was so epic that he gained wilderness skills and was buddies with a bear (a word which I will point out makes up the majority of the word Beard… coincidence? I don’t think so). Jesus has a Beard, and there’s a whole testament about the cool things he did with it.

I have one, and I wrote this blog! Start not shaving right now

            

How My Childhood Got Poohed On

Say no to the Pooh

I like bears. This fascination most likely stems from my obsession with the Werner Herzog documentary “Grizzly Man” which I’ve seen more times than I can count. My fantasy football team is the Sheboygan Grizzly Men. I have used bears as unit of physical strength measurement before. For example: A bear has one “Bear” of strength, A T-rex would have like 15 “Bears” of strength, Batman would have like six “Bears”, and so on. Bears are something that I enjoy talking about and enjoy learning about for strange reasons. There is one bear however who I do not approve of. This bear stole part of my childhood, part that I will never get to experience again. He and his band of animals with personality disorders destroyed something that created some of my oldest fond memories.

This year for spring break I’m heading to Disney world with some friends. This will mark my first return to the most magical place on earth since 2001 when I was in fourth grade. Before that I had been there once before. I was very young, probably four or five years old. I remember this trip to Disney world probably more than the rest of that year of my life. Specifically I remember spending lots of time with my dad.

I am the youngest of four children and on that trip to Disney world I was too short to ride most of the rides.  My Dad, who couldn’t ride most of the rides because he has problems with motion sickness would stay with me and we’d go to other attractions. The most memorable instance of this was when the rest of our family went on the “Space Mountain” roller coaster. My dad and I found a ride that I was tall enough to ride in “Mr. Toad’s wild ride”. This ride, to the four or five year old Jeremy was the greatest thing on the planet. I remember riding it 3 times while waiting for my siblings and my mom to get through the line and ride “space mountain” just once. I’m pretty sure we went and rode “Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride” at least one more time while waiting for the rest of the family a different time.

Fast forward to 2001 when I returned to the Mecca of childhood dreams. While searching for the same ride that captivated my young heart. I came across the spot that it should have been only to find it missing. In its place was a Giant stupid bear with a red t-shirt and no pants staring back at me. “Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride” was replaced with “Winnie The Pooh’s Honey Pot Adventures”. This is inexcusable. This is why I hate that bear. I have since boycotted all Winnie The Pooh related things.

I have really never spent a lot of time with any donkeys but if I ever meet one he better be nothing far from spritely, I won’t have anything to do with him if he even resembles that sad sack of a donkey who is friends with Winnie. This may make any sort of grand canyon trip a little more difficult but  I can live with that so long as I am in no way showing compassion towards anything related to that fuzzy bear.

If I hear Kenny Loggins I better be taking the highway to the danger zone, cutting a few feet loose, or possibly learning about how my parents can’t do musically related things, because if I hear “Return to Pooh Corner”: See ya later Kenny. “Count all the bees in the hive?!” Really Mr. Loggins? Hey kids, found a bee hive? Why don’t you get close enough to count them. Not to mention that any other song featuring the words “Back to the days of Pooh” would seem really gross.

Many people in Sheboygan might know of the pooh bear that is high in a tree across Taylor drive from festival foods. It has been stuck up there since I can remember and last time I paid attention it still was. I sadly was not the person who marooned the bear in the tree but seeing him in his weathered state gives me hope that one day, he will fall from his tree and be ripped to pieces by raccoons or something.

I urge all who read this to join me in this boycott. How long will it be before your favorite theme park ride is taken over by an animal who wears a shirt but has not the decency to wear a pair of pants. It’s the right thing to do.

Dear classmates,

To quote one of my favorite series of online videos “What are you doing? What, what. What are you doing?” I have always wanted to voice some complaints about some of the brilliant students with whom I attend class. So I’m going to. There have been many people who I’ve shared a class with who have been distracting, disrespectful, and just plain dumb. These individuals make me worried that our standards for who we let into higher education are too low.

I will start with a gentleman who I’ve had the pleasure of having a few classes with already. We’ll call him “Restroom Jones.” Now Restroom Jones shows up for classes about 60% of the time. When he does grace the class with his presence however he takes a five minute bathroom break during the middle of a lecture. This is every time we have class!? Now I understand having a schedule to do your business, that’s all fine and good. That however, cannot be the case with Mr. Jones due to the following evidence. During one class period he left the room twice for five minutes apiece, and I’ve seen him do this in consecutive classes that are just an hour apart. Unless Restroom Jones has a severe case of irritable bowel syndrome, it is clear to me that he thinks so little of the person behind the podium who has a Ph. D that he feels he does not need their assistance in passing the class.

My next case is another gentleman who was a lab partner of mine for a science coarse, we’ll call this upstanding student “Ipod McLaptop.” Now, Mr. McLaptop went to a prestigious school out of state last year and made a point to tell everyone around him. He talked about the great parties that he went to and all the classes that he would skip there. All this, along with talking about how smart of a guy he was. I mean that’s how he got into POSU “Prestigious Out of state University” (I know that could stand for something else, I’ll let you decide) last year. Unfortunately for Mr. McLaptop due to the quantity of aforementioned skipping and partying he failed out of his old school and ended up back here. Now he shows up to most of his classes, however when he does he constantly plays games and texts friends on his iphone. During lecture and lab, Mr. McLaptop can be seen with one ear-bud in his ear at all times. If you sit close enough to him, you can hear the bass from his music, When he is not texting his friends, he can almost surely be found surfing facebook on his laptop without any attempt to pretend that he is paying attention. Tapping away at his keyboard when no one is even lecturing.

These are people who may have had the high school GPA’s to get into higher learning, but that does not make them acceptable student material. It’s people like this that should be removed and have their tuition used for the people who could not afford tuition but are willing to put forth an effort to respect the instructors and the learning process.

Family

Families are bodies. They work when all the pieces can collaborate and function together. Without there are few things that can be missing from it and it still works. Every body is unique. My body lost its heart a long time ago. When this happened it forced the other parts to work harder to survive. The brain in all it’s amazing glory somehow found a way to pump the blood through the veins all the while it thought as well. After all it had the rest of the body to care for. This went on for some time. All the while the body kept working. At a slower pace, but it kept moving. Because it had to. The heart if it were there would not have let it down so the brain and the rest of the body were not going to let the heart down in its absence. The body could feel itself moving slower, but it kept moving and was content to move at that speed. The brain used what blood it needed for itself to give to the rest of the body parts. The brain, though it learned to pump the blood out of necessity, couldn’t do it as well as the heart could. After all it’s just one organ. So the brain found a new heart. And the heart became part of the body. This heart was different. It pumped the blood differently and the blood was not the same.  The new heart came from a body of its own. This heart was damaged, but so was its new body. When the transplant was complete the body felt different. It didn’t see how hard the brain struggled doing the thinking and pumping the blood at the same time. Some of the tissue rejected the new heart. But other parts took to it. This new body was full again and the brain was happy to have a heart. And the heart was happy to have a brain. The brain thought of ways to repair the heart and the heart was able to pump the blood to the brain that it so desperately needed. If it weren’t for this new damaged heart, the brain would have ceased to function and  the body would have died, leaving just parts, not a functioning whole. And if the heart had no new body it would have remained damaged until it to ceased to exist.

I ‘m just thankful for the transfusion.

The origin of the Kung FU Custodian

In the wake of my last blog, I was feeling a bit complain-y so I've decided to steer clear of complaints this week.  I decided to instead shed some light on the origins of my url for this blog.

For years now I have been using the moniker KungFuCostodian as my xbox live gamer-tag as well as numerous other places where a unique name is required. The name came from my favorite cartoon series as a child: "Hong Kong Phooey." To my 6 year old brain, this cartoon is about a dog who is a janitor at a police station who becomes a super hero who uses karate to defeat his foes. I remember singing the theme song while running around my house at an early age. I don't know what I loved about karate so much, but apparently every other kid in the 90's loved it too. I know a large chunk of the movies I watched with my brothers centered around karate and martial arts... or ninjas. Movies like Three ninjas, Surf ninjas, Three ninjas: 2, Teenage mutant ninja turtles, Three ninjas 3... Ahhhh those were the days.

It wasn't until recently that I watched some of this karate based entertainment as an adult. Watching "Hong Kong Phooey" I can now see that it is clearly a riff on the black-sploitation films of the 1970's, and it's vaguely racist and sexist. The dog/janitor/superhero has the voice of a sole station radio dj and he and his cat sidekick make a complete mockery of martial arts. The only female character on the show is a phone board operator with a jersey accent that would annoy Fran Drescher.

Though I can identify the bias and misrepresentation of these characters I can't honestly say that I care I don't think that this had a profound effect on me growing up, even though it was my favorite cartoon. The thing is that I was a kid. I never heard Hong Kong Phooy's voice as a black guy, I heard my favorite dog super hero. There's a lot of talk about childhood development  in relation to television exposure and what they see on tv. I think tv does has a lot less of an effect on kids than is thought. At least, I think it did on me.

Crime and Punishment

I work in the customer service industry and have for the last five years. I generally do not despise my position behind the counter helping people to pay for their various goods. Many times however my day is soured by rudeness and lack of decency. It is for this reason that I would like to offer some new propositions for a punishment system for rudeness that this world needs badly. I will present a situation that I have encountered and provide an example of the system of punishments for this.

My first instance of note comes from my current job. I work at a convenience store/gas station. This is the most frequent situation that Irks just about everyone who works in my position. A guest will approach the counter swiftly, toss a bill onto the counter, mumble a pump number and sprint for the door. Often times these people cut through a line just to do this. I’m not sure if this sort of behavior is just the case with the purchase of gasoline or if people do it other places. I can’t imagine paying my rent by tossing a handful of cash in the face of my landlord and saying my apartment number as I leave her office. I wonder if these same people toss their insurance card at a doctor and say, “gastric bypass.” This is not socially acceptable behavior and ought to be punished. Here’s how J. I don’t think that there should be a fine of any kind for these people. I would like a more creative solution. I think that we should be allowed to tag these people in the way that scientists tag animals that they are studying. Give them a nice orange tag on their ear or something. This tag should signify to everyone else that this man or woman is in a hurry. They’ve got places to be and don’t have time for trivial things like ensuring that they’ve properly paid for seventy five dollars worth of gas.  So from that point on these people should be prioritized. We will put these people first in all lines and put them on the top of all the lists. Up to this point this doesn’t really seem like a punishment, here’s the catch. Everyone that they pass in line should have the opportunity to punch them right in the face. This face punch would be totally legal and permissible by the law. The passed people would not be required to do any punching, but they would have the legal right to. This will insure that these people will learn what is really worth treating other people with a complete lack of respect.

Now, I have been in a hurry before, but I can’t imagine a situation where in I could act that rude to complete strangers. I have, in my time in the industry, learned to brush off people like this for the most part. I am however still wishing for there to be some kind of universal justice system for people who completely lack courtesy and respect for people whom they do not know.