And on the 6th day. . .

Ah yes, my job. I have six days left until I leave. Looking back on it I have had so many fond memories. Waking up and knowing that I don't have to go to work will be destructive. Oh wait, I forgot to mention the sarcasm that is oozing out of those previous sentences. I HATE my job and with the small amount of money I have made, I am leaving. I have six days left of this nonsensical occupation. Here are some of the "fond" memories I will forever take with me (the first part of this post I wrote several months ago. . .):

I categorize people during the time they walk around and in the bakery, here are some of them.

A. Waiters/Campers - When I'm scheduled to open, I wake at 5 a.m. During the longest day of the year, at 5 a.m. it's still dark out and chance of zombie attack is still relatively high. We open at 6:30 a.m. By six, there are actually people who sit in their cars and look at our store. Probably the most vivid memory of a waiter/camper as I call them, was a man who sat in his jeep cherokee, which was the only car within sight, and read the paper for about 20 minutes until we were in the final 15-20 minutes until the doors unlock. No joke, this dude stands there for the remaining time reading the paper. Another woman joins him. They stand there together. Then my co-worker goes to open the door and the camper waiters are pulling on the door so that the very instant the bolt slides back on the lock the door opens for them. . . WTF. WE SELL PASTRIES NOT CRACK. I mean honestly I'm not that great of a person to ask (well maybe I am) because bakery goods are not a real magnet for me but the stuff from the bakery that employs me is not exceptional (though most call it "the best"). I still don't see the draw to getting coffee cake before the sun comes up. It's not like if it is exposed to light it goes bad. . . Unless it's a vampire cake. Yeah, I know it looks like red velvet. . .

B. Pointers - I think old women are the best at getting up early. I mean, I know that is stereotypical especially on sundays, but I have statistical data, and receipts. Anywho, I'm not sure if it is lack of eyesight, or perhaps just senility setting in, but pointing at something in the store that is 40 feet away and proclaiming "I'll take two of those," just is not specific enough. I'm sorry Eleanor-Ruth but there are a lot of products being specified by your elegantly bony finger. There is a formula to find just how many products you are pointing to at any given time. (Y divided by two where Y is equal to your age)

C. Tellers - There is nothing like a customer who describes to you, what is best about your product. Here is just a sample for you to try:
Me: Hello, what can I get for you today?
Cust: Your fruit torte is so delectable the flavor is amazing!
Me: (chuckle) Well I'm glad you enjoyed it!
Cust: Oooh, soft pretzels! I remember my father used to buy them for me at market.
Me: It's good our products bring fond memories.
Cust: Are these rolls from today, the last time I tasted them I thought they were a little hard.
Me: (THATS WHY THEY ARE CALLED HARD ROLLS) Oh, well yes they were made this morning I personally saw them as they arrived I guarantee they are fresh.
Cust: I never really liked your bagels though, I was always partial to [other bakery].
Me: Sorry to hear that.
Cust: Your cookies are delicious, however, especially the sugared ones.
Me: Delicious is what we bake for.
Cust: I have always been a fan of your brownies as well
Me: Me too they are so moist.
Cust: I remember when this bakery was [in other location]
Me: That was a while ago wasn't it.
Cust: I think you should put more salt in the rye bread
Me: You could always add salt.
-Then the customer will proceed into the following options:
1. Get nothing and leave
2. Get the only thing in the store they did not look at or comment on

D. Askers - It would not surprise me if there was a hidden camera crew directed by a game show host being televised live on, "Memorize your inventory like elementary vocab!" with these people.

Cust: What is in this?
Me: An oatmeal coconut base glazed with a butter-sugar icing. As you can see the yellow in the middle of the oatmeal coconut sandwich is a lemon filling that is both tangy and sweet but not too much of either.
Cust: How bout this?
Me: A graham cracker cookie base with 3 layers of sponge cake, each one separated by exotic fruit jellies that you've never heard of. On top is a hand decorated white chocolate swirl. FYI the fruit was not touched my latin american migrant workers and it was flown in this morning by cybernetic fruit machines so it tastes like it fell out of the tree into your mouth.
Cust:And this?
Me: Well this is something really special. The elves in the back have had this recipe for generations. Before the garden of eden, there was the elves garden called "What if you could make the most intense aphrodisiacs grow on trees AND look like pastries?" But then some some guy name Ogd or something made this weird garden of Eden. Anywho, this may look like a normal cheesecake, but look again, the elves have been able to extract the DNA from the cheesecake tree in their ancient garden from a mosquito in amber and now cheesecakes grow on trees!
Cust: It all looks so wonderful I think I'll be back sometime next week to ask questions again!

E. Complainers - These are the kind of people who would argue with the mathematical fact that 2+2 is indeed 4 just to get two pennies back, save half a second, or get a sick satisfaction out of making your breathing more exacerbated than it really needs to be. These are the people who make comments like:


"Ummm, your coffee is not empty at all but I just dont think 211 degree is hot enough. I would prefer it if you could make another pot of coffee and bring it out while its boiing. . ."
AND
"Can i feel the bread. When was this made? Oh wow just today? Really just 3 hours ago because it feels really hard like its been out here for three weeks. . ." (if you want i could just run back and grab some bread dough for you that has not been cooked it's usually nice and soft.)
AND
"Are you serious? 8 Dollars for a pound of cookies!? Wait you expect to make some kind of profit. I thought you were running a promotion for a charity. . ."

Complainers can also be characterized by doing things like:
Ordering a cake, purchasing it, taking it home, eat all by half a piece, and bringing it back complaining, "I ordered a cake that was chocolate on the left and yellow on the right. Well it was all chocolate.
Me: yes mam it looks like that last sliver of a piece is chocolate. and it is on the left side.
Yeah well, I want a full refund.
Me: I understand and I sympathize but I won't pay you back for a cake you ate.
Yeah but we didn't enjoy it.
Me: Well I'm sorry but you still ate it.
MAN WHATEVER IM NEVER COMING BACK
Me: Well I hate to lose a customer but try saying there was a hair in the cake with the next bakery, it's more compelling.

AND

(It takes a good 30 seconds to a minute to make a box. It takes a good minute to two minutes to select a dozen donuts and put them in the box. Imagine a line of five different customers anxiously awaiting bakery crack. 90 seconds is relatively close to infinity.

You bag two dozen donuts. Then:
"Oh my gosh you bagged them. I'm soooo sorry could you like do you think just put them in a box that was be so great and im running a little late so if you could like you know try to speed it up that would be so fantastic you would like be my favorite."

-=-=-=+OK Part II+=-=-=-


F. Agents - I don't know whether these (mostly women) think they are on some kind of world saving top secret mission or something but they certainly act it. They usually some in around lunchtime. You can tell who they are before you see them because you see their cars, and how they are driven. Typically large SUVs or expensive sporty looking cars. They come in looking like they just played tennis with other rich white people, or like they same from the same business meeting as "Jan," from 'The Office.'

Incredibly polite (and by polite I mean to say that they take time out of there NASA compressed schedule to look at you and sometimes even speak). Often times they walk through the door and stop me at "goo-" or "hel-" to announce their order as if by a king.
"Rogers, an order for Rogers. . ."
I then look up their name in our order book and attempt to confirm the items of purchase. Often while doing this as a professional and personal attempt on my part, they become confused and anxious like a cat in water. Since they have been on a cellphone the entire time they are forces to say "hold on," and frantically inquire,
"yes that was my order is it here!? is everything OK? I called it in last week and the person who took the order was an older sounding woman. . ."
I really do my best to reassure them by showing them the item they called in, "yes, it is here I'm sorry for the confusion there are no problems."

Just let me cut in here real quick. Confusion? PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE if you think that confirming an order with someone is cause for confusing please email be at: etokarinae@gmail.com and explain to me how I can do better. I am genuinely concerned that I have some kind of anxiety release on people because of these outrageous panics that come over people followed by an apology as if it were MY fault. . . UGH!!! six more days.

Then they get the order and sign for their credit card and leave without saying thank you or anything. Often times eye contact is not even attempted.

I had a particular case the other day in which a woman came in and strolled about the store. She waltzed around on her cellphone looking at everything and looking at nothing. Tired of watching her talk about medical issues on her pleasure stroll, I turned to grab a swig of my water from the back. As I twisted into this 180 degree maneuver, I her violent snapping. The customer had actually put her hand in the air and snapped a signal for me to come over, though she never left the phone conversation. She started writing in the air as a sign for me to grab paper for her? I guessed correctly and she wrote down her order and then continued her Nokia Waltz. I grabbed her items and rang them up. I want to say her total was around 19.96 or something. She put down a 20 and left, without saying a single word to me. It's OK though because that cellphone of hers WILL cause cancer, karma said so. . .

G. Inept Mothers - Yes. These are the mothers that refer directly to their children as "psychopath." Since when was it OK to say to a four year old, "Oh Johnny you're such a little psychopath." Hello! mom did you just get out of your straight jacket or what!?

Also the mothers who like to say, "point to what you want!" She's five! I think it's time to say use words, because frankly, banging on the glass/pointing to your food reminds me of caged animals and monkeys at the zoo.

H. Co-Workers - We all have them. Sometimes we luck out. I have two people in particular that I work with who I get along with. Maybe even three. But at the end of the day it's difficult to look back and say I had mostly good experiences with them. I am plagued by people telling me what to do. I admit that I have a horrible work ethic while I am there. I generally try to help as many customers as I can and do the dishes as little as possible. But then again I try to make it into a game, I try to have fun at job. I don't want to be bored and sleepy all day because I hate where I am. My co-workers don't need that apparently. They like to tell me to sweep. It's the way they say it though. The rhetoric of it:

"Would you like to sweep?"
"Would you like to do the stales?"
"Would you like to make the calls and faxes?"

Well, of course. My dreams have escalated to those things. The epitome of my time on this earth has coalesced with all my dreams and aspirations in this moment to perform those tasks!

I mean of course I will get stuff done in time that WE and more importantly I can get the "Lucifer's Lair" outta here!

Not to mention the people that tell me to do these tasks have worked at this bakery for less time than I have. . .

Oh well. Only 40+ hours for the ETA = Eternity 'Till Absence. Also I heard a very funny conversation a few days ago that went something like this:

Man: Kapira, I told you I got work like six minutes ago.
Kapira?
Man: Yuh, I am late.
Kapira?
Man: Look at me right now Kapira doe it look like I care if I make it to yo auntie party?

Wait wait wait, sir, you are on a cell phone. Did you mean "listen to me does it sound"

Feel free to use this wallpaper, it's quite jammin'.

The paradigm of my life.

Let me share with you where I stand right now and where I will stand in just a few hours. . . This is the true paradigm of my life. As you read this you will find that I indeed live two lives divided entirely by my own discordant brain chemistry.

Today I awoke around noon. So I have been awake for over 6 hours. Over the past 25% of this full 24 hours of my day/night I have accomplished nothing. By nothing what I mean to say is this:

I downsized some of the dvds in my collection to put on my ipod. So today I put all of season 1 from The office, The Bourne Ultimatum, Casablanca, and several talks from ted.

One of those talks was from Jonathan Harris so this goes out to you Jonathan (who has some tremendously creative ways of doing things): WARNING DO NOT READ THE FOLLOWING!



I feel that if I were to type out this sentence long enough and just keep dragging it out by continuing to type basically nonsensical information in the format that the computer program of Jonathan Harris that identifies that this could possibly be taken note of in such a way because it was written entirely intentionally to grab the attention of their audience and their exploration and so for that reason I apologize to anyone who is just curiously reading this blog though I feel that nobody reads this outside of the people I already know even though my real target audience would be people that I have never met who, if I have never met you then this was probably not the part of the most that you were interested in reading and at this point I have the urge to end the sentence so badly but I do not believe that it is long enough or worthy enough to be shown as a gigantic dot and so I am just going to keep going for a few more lines now and maybe i could put this in bold and write a disclaimer before it about how you don't actually need to read this or read at own risk due to curvature in the river of thought that this thing follows but maybe I was just exaggerating and it could possibly turn out to not be that big of a deal at all and in the end just exist as some stupid thing some stupid blogger wrote and if I don't seem all that great right now it's because I have not really done anything today except existed and I cannot bullshit myself into trusting that I deserve this life but in saying that I am not suicidal at all and you can trust that as soon as this rant is over the entire post will continue and you will see more postings tonight and tomorrow maybe but likely and so without "further to do (say)" I will present you with a remarkable tool and symbol which really holds a place more unique than the zero in that within literature it might just be a dot but it is the nail that holds up structure within the writing as well as the beginning and the end of a thought simultaneously and therefore without any expertise or research I'm just gonna say that it is used across cultures more than the click of a mouse per day here is my friend (who may be invisible based on your eyesight) the period.

now that THAT thing above is out of the way I'll move on with my post. So yes, I have done nothing. I have not eaten. I have had very little to drink. I have not eaten because nothing sounds good and nothing looks good either. But I know that I must eat soon because my blood sugar is dropping and I can feel my body getting weak. I feel slightly dizzy and almost disoriented. I also feel nervous and impatient. The techno music is certainly NOT helping very much/at all.

The paradigm that was talking about earlier is laid out real simple. On days in which I work I awake and feel refreshed. I do not feel tired, but I do not feel energetic. I do not feel excited to be awake or alive but simply relieved to think about the nothing that is planned for me on that given day. On days where I have to get up and go to work two things happen:

If I did not get enough sleep or if I had to go to work before 8am then I awake cranky. I feel angry and I often curse under my breath about how awful it is to have to "live in a world where I am a slave to my schedule, a schedule that does not contribute to who I am or take advantage of my abilities. . ." and then my day continues and usually starts off "bad" and by bad I mean that I don't like being around my job at 5, 6, or 7 in the morning.

Or I awake knowing that I have an hour or two before I must get ready for work. It is on those days I feel the most anxious and uncomfortable. I don't feel that I can afford to really do anything I want to do and so I end up not doing much at all. I convince myself that it is OK to let the time slide by for 60 minutes by checking my email, listening to music, checking LH, checking Bungie, checking Live, etc. Then I go to work while calculating the seemingly endless days previous to this filled with one to two hours putterance.
NOTE: putterance is a word that I just made up. I like it. Feel free to use it without giving me credit, though I'm sure I was not the first.
NOTE: I was just inspired to write a book about Putterance - A consideration of knowledge attained, aspiration, and motivation. . .

Anywho, I'm pitiful. I have so many options for what to do right now and all I really need is some structure and balance. . .

My days are unproductive and every task is equivalent to climbing a 20,000 ft. mountain. That is one life. My nights which typically either don't start at all or hit me after midnight, are the opposite. I find ideas seeping their ways into my head. Often I can't find the output to get them down quickly enough. My entire perception of the world changes after a single synapse fires in my brain. Everything that comes after that blows me away. Every night I feel reborn. Every night The world is full of awe and wonder. Hopes for an everlasting utopian paradise don't seem far off and I imagine myself leading the change and starting a social and cultural revolution to get there. I feel full of energy and enthusiasm for all my thoughts and while I admit to myself that I am probably just high on dopamine, some of my ideas and thoughts hold true during the day too.

I may revisit this subject later on but for now I am well aware of just how badly my body needs food.

Let's Talk Jazz

Everybody has their own hypothetical example of music. If you have heard a kind of music enough you can imagine clearly in your own mind a section of that music. If I say "polka" most people are thinking that umpa lumpa sounding 1-2 time beat in fast forward. . .

So imagine some jazz. Not big band or swing. Nobody is dancing to this. This is a music that changes where you are and who you are. Sure, you walk into the club that night with a set identity. There are rules in the universe that are followed and expected. With those rules, you can make predictions whether you know it or not. Sometimes those predictions are expectations.

Like you can expect to walk into the jazz club and hear people softly talking. No exact words exchanged but a cloud of language hangs in the room as subtle as the smoke. It blends into the dark ceiling and molds against the fabric on the walls almost enough to see it and even though you can't, you get the impression that every word is trapped in this room eternally. This sanctuary is lit mostly by candles and table lights. On the walls are 20 watt bulbs, just bright enough to give everyone a soft silhouette and show the folds and creases of the cloth.

You find yourself seated and concentrated on the subtle notion of an expectation. While the mist of language has not left this place, the air becomes crisp and clear as the musicians ready themselves for this journey. It is a quartet. You can't seem to find where they started. Certainly you only now hear this music but it feels more like they are just amplifying or perhaps intensifying what was already there. You let go of everything but the frequencies streaming into you ear.

The bass player's hands climb up and down the strings with ease. He appears almost robotic, though his fingers move with such grace you would think they were swaying in the wind. The sound of the bass smoothly reverberates within the room. You can feel it in your stomach and you can feel it in your soul. It vibrates everything it touches.

On his right, sits the drums and behind the drums, the drummer. He's playing his snare with brushes. He's painting his sound better than Vincent Van Gogh and he's blending into the rest of the sound where the ocean meets the sky. When you listen closely enough you can hear each metal hair of the brush strike the skin of the drum; a pebble falling into water.

Further off to the right, but further forward sits a piano. Its flipped lid reflects the entire room back on itself. The piano player's arms swing like a pendulum back and forth across the piano in a rhythm just constant enough to keep up with his fingers, who jump to and from the keys like a frog on a lily pad. Each finger that lands magically blankets its impact and somehow stays afloat long enough to jump to the next. The result is intentionally constructed chords that captain the mood without any orders at all.

Across from the piano stands the trumpet. He stands tall and still like a statue until the trumpet reaches his lips. Suddenly a sound emerges from his horn. Accelerating out of an almost endless slow motion that was as controlled and intentional as a horse and jockey leaving the gate; entirely distinct entities becoming unified. The trumpeter's sounds bond the four instruments together. None of them are leading or trailing, but threading and intertwining like rope.

This very rope that started as an infinitely small bind, grows endless in your presence. It slowly wraps and warps. But it is just a single thread of rope that is the infinite exponential or infinity itself. It has no center and no edge. These ropes crest into never-ending peaks and trough into limitless valleys. This is the landscape of the universe; waves, rhythms, patterns. Jazz taps into a microcosm of that vastness and tugs and pulls at a few of those tiny fibers that twist into the threads that wind into the strings that wrap into the ropes that hold the fabric and declare order out of this epically unbound chaos.

Live Veeb Debate Comments. . .

Palin - What are the sources of domestic energy that we are not harnessing?

QUESTION ANSWERED BY BIDEN . . . sort of

I won't lie, I just walked away to grab some chocolate, oreos, water, juice, bread, and cottage cheese.

Palin - Why is sitting down and having a talk with Mahmouhd Ahmenajad such a bad idea?

Veep Debate Tonight

I will be watching the debate from a steaming feed off the internet.

Currently there is a great deal of discussion that is incredibly interesting. I am going to be making a few predictions about what is going to happen with a very insistent bias.

Right now I feel it is incredibly uneven. What does Palin have to lose? honestly. I think most people on the left are expecting her to bomb it. Most people on the right are expecting her to bomb Biden. She can go on attack as much as she wants, but Biden has to sit back and take it no matter what. So the people who are not set on what direction they are will probably see Palin attacking Biden relentlessly, showing Biden as weak or over-restrained. Or, they might see Biden attack Palin which would portray him as an arrogant condescending washingtonite prick. Neither is good for Biden. . .

Anywho, I predict that it will be seen as even, and the voters in the middle will not be swayed one way or the other. Liberals want to see Palin fail miserably while all the conservatives hope that somehow she will pull it off as more than a well equipped soccer mom.

I might post some word counts later, but unlikely.

On a side note I have flown over Alaska, the Berring Strait, and the Russian airspace. Does that make me fairly well equipped to run the country Palin?