Lordleiter's blog

If you are going to dress up for Halloween, what will you be? Why? 
Submitted by Auweea.

I tend not to dress up for Halloween anymore.  Not for lack of interest or a sense of being "too old" to do so.  It's just that I work from home.  So if I don my killer bee outfit or transform myself into Dubmbledore, then spend all day by myself working in the house, I worry that such behaviour would technically be some sort of disorder.  Perhaps a low-grade schizophrenia.  I have enough neuroses already and can't afford anymore.

However, I do have a sweet "Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown" t-shirt that I do where every Halloween.

What was your very first job? 
Submitted by Laurel.

My first paying job (as far as the government knows) was hosting at The Olive Garden. (My older brother, who was a waiter there got it for me.)  It was a decent gig.  Sadly, I don't even remember what minimum wage was at the time.  I have no idea how much I got paid.  I'm sure it was a paltry sum.  It was a lot of standing around and a bit of high drama during the dinner rush (6.30 - 8.00).

Are you familiar at all with the music they play in the lobby at The Olive Garden?  Things may have changed in the last 10 years, but when I hosted there, that music was on a 45 minute loop and I could hum the whole 45 minutes within a few days of working there.  In a six hour shift, I would hear that loop 8 times.  After a week, I had complete lyrics to most of the songs.  The lyrics usually involved lampooning one of my pinhead managers.

One specific pinhead manager was famous among the hosts and hostesses (all five of us) for screwing up the dinner rush (hence the high drama).  It would usually unfold thusly.  We'd be hosting smashingly as the dinner crowd started to surge.  We'd take names, remember special requests of certain parties, know the status of all the wait staff...in short we had The Bead on the restaurant.  Usually around 7 o'clock, Pinhead would get kicked out of the kitchen because he was making a mess of the situation in there, so he'd wander out to the host station and demand to take control.  Not surprisingly, he'd make a right mess of the dinner rush.  He'd seat families out of order, he'd give one waiter four tables all at the same time, he'd promise anything to any customer, no matter how outlandish. ("Oh sure, we'll seat you now, even though you just walked in and the wait is an hour!")  In short, he'd ruin everything we'd built up all night in about 10 minutes.  Then realizing he created utter anarchy and crazy angry patrons, he would promptly ditch us and move on to screw up the bus boys and dish staff.  What a chode.

Show us your favorite animal.
Inspired by the Emporer.

Humboldt

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Thank you, Chuck Norris.

My wife, Miranda Kopfschmertzen and I were in Target this morning.  As is mandated by Target's bylaws, the store was filled chockablock with whiny children.  Usually I do my best to call upon all my Buddhist abilities to acknowledge the offending child and then to let it go.

However, today there was a rare specimen that caught my attention.  This boy wasn't just a mere whiner for the sake of whining (a feature typical to most of the Target children).  No sir.  This kid was a pioneer in the field of whining.  He has taken the mere act of whining and developed it into a fine art. Clearly he had developed approach to whining over several months; refining his theories and constantly testing his hypothesis. He is a method whiner.  A whining iconoclast - a (dare I say it?) whiconoclast.

Here's how it works:  Choose something delightful from a shelf and present it to Mother.  She refuses to purchase your delightful item.  ("Immediate refusal" is a whining axiom.  Were the mother to immediately concede to the purchase, the entire bedrock of whining would crumble and space-time would collapse.)

Next, plead your case.  Explain to Mother, just how important it is that you have said delightful item.  Extrapolate just how horrific your life will be forever more if you are asked to live without your item.  Again the mother will refuse.

Step three is to whine.  Stomp your feet.  Wail while further arguing your case in two to three word chunks between cry-breaths.  Make a scene.  Embarrass Mother.

This is where all other whining before The Wunderkind ended.  Usually the item was ripped from your grasp, tossed aside like so much trash and you were hoisted off the floor by your elastic waist-banded pants and hauled out of the store.  (Preferably anyway.  Some parent choose to just leave the child whining in the aisle and continue shopping.  I am firmly against this practice.)

My genius little buddy however did not stop there.  This is where he gets clever.  While Mother is not looking, the boy would put the item back and select a different item, but continue to appeal to Mother as if it were the first.  He treated his whining time like rollover minutes.  So though he may go through four or five items, Mother was not wise to the switching and thought he'd been whining about the same item for some time. Eventually Mother will come around and agree to buy whatever item he currently had.

The genius is twofold.  First, Little Dude gets something where he would have otherwise received nothing.  Second, he appears to have only really, really wanted one thing.  All of the other children will whine for every dandy item to pass there eyes. This give Mother the idea that "he must really want that one particular thing."  Once it appears that you do actually have an interest in an item and aren't just picking it up because it was shiny and within your grasp, the purchasability index increases exponentially.

Furthermore the kid had style.  He didn't just grab junk off the shelf willy nilly.  He would consider an item much like a woman considers a blouse still on its hanger.  Looking the item up and down, giving it a once over and a second over, turning it around and considering the back...and sometime deciding against the item.  But also still crying and babbling about how much he needs "it" while considering the item.

I'm still not in favor of the whining at all, but kudos my friend.  A tip of the hat to you.

Show us a sign.
Submitted by the roo.

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2 comments

Puzzle

BAM! (As previously indicated by the title.) Taube recently returned from the Philippines with an assortment of sweet gifts.  One of which was this puzzle.  And this afternoon, it taunted me.  I was innocently drinking my coffee, watching Scrubs reruns, and it taunted me.  And so I put it in its place.  Rather, I put the pieces in their respective places to form the "T" as it's called.  All you get is some wood blocks and a card that reads thus:

Perfect - to a "T"

Puzzling - interlocking pieces fit to form the perfect solution

Process - executive exercise for hand, eye and mind

Presence - desktop sculpture to remind one of individual worth and cooperation in arriving at a solution

Precision cut, oil finished mahogany.

Beyond that, you are totally left to your own devices to solve.

Show us something you can't live without.
Submitted by awkwardidity.

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Show us your favorite mug

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