What the f*** is up motherf***ers!!!!!

The date is January 28th, 2025.

I am 29 years old living in East Nashville, in the great state of Tennessee. I am a shift supervisor at Starbucks. As of about a month ago.

I play guitar every day, if I can.

I have two roommates, living in half of a duplex building. The walls of my cube are lined with Yayoi Kusama artworks, Nirvana pictures that I taped up after ripping apart a little picture book that was in my deluxe Bleach album, and a tapestry that I got when I was living in Ozu, from a local Indian restaurant that I frequented, and an Aerosmith record in a nice display case, the record is Draw The Line, which came from my father, that I am borrowing, and the display was a Christmas present from Smosh, one of my roommates, who I still have not gotten a present for, as I have just remembered.

I also have two plants, and a row of books, I would guess about twenty or thirty, and some other nicknacks. I have a desk, a couch, a dresser, two guitars, an old drum that I picked up at Goodwill for $12 and am trying to sell……..

Alright, I’m getting tired of this.

The point of my writing today was to write about some things in my life, to capture them as I have done in the past…..

Today I destroyed Bush Honeysuckle stumps with a beast of a man named Don, who was about 6’2″ and seemed to be over 60 years old, but he was strong and didn’t need to take a break once. We spent a solid two hours swinging a mattock, which is like a pickaxe on one end and a spade on the other, for digging up tenacious plants, and chopping roots up with clippers. We quickly worked out an effective and efficient system, we were really a great team, of circling the plant, digging out around it with the mattock, hunting for roots, locating them and digging them out, and then cutting them with the clippers. I was generally doing the work with the mattock, but Don wanted in on it and worked with it too, and when he did it was amazing to see. He was particularly good at scooping out the ground and digging it up with the spade. After we would hit something, you could tell if you hit a really big root because there would be a thunk, and you could figure out where the major roots left were after you had already cut some, because you could put the pickaxe part of the mattock under the root ball and lift, and you would see where the ground moved, and that’s where the roots that were still holding the stump in the ground were. Or, if it didn’t move at all, you knew that you still had a lot of roots to find and cut. So we would dig up all around the stumps, and find the roots, and cut them, and go back around, and test the stump, and in this way we had a great process going, and we got out about six or seven Bush Honeysuckle root balls. I wish I had a picture to show you, one of the root balls was so large that I could barely hold it up. It was that heavy. He was a great worker and we were a good team, I think because both of us were now seasoned in the work, he had definitely done this kind of thing before, and also because we were both completely 100% about the business. We were not there to chit chat. We were there to tear up Bush Honeysuckle stumps, and that’s what we did, and did it very well.

There were about eight of us there this time around, volunteering. Eve was there, who I had met before, and Patrick, who is a group leader, and I met a guy named Boston who it was his first time, and he had a cool shirt on that looked like some kind of modern thrash metal band shirt, and I said, “What’s your shirt all about?” And he told me it was a local artist, called, Nordista Freeze. It was a cool shirt. And then we talked about the things that you talk about, why we were volunteering and etc. I am a group leader too but this time I was just a regular old volunteer. In case you didn’t think I was anybody special, you should know that.

While we were working, we were just outside of the fence that encapsulates the large Shelby Park dog park. And halfway through us working, a fight broke out among the dogs. There were about 12 dogs running around, conglomerated in the middle, and a fight broke out in the middle of this pack, and there was screaming, and a woman ended up on the ground, and there was a lot of screaming. I think that a dog was first being attacked, and then I don’t know exactly but the woman probably ended up being attacked, because she was laying on the ground for awhile. It was hard to see because it was far off and there were people and dogs all crowded around, I think there were only girls over there too. While this was happening, I thought about jumping over the fence, and running over there and trying to help. This thought did enter my mind, and for some reason I decided against it. I thought, let them handle it, I’ll only get it in the way. But on the way home in the car, I thought, what if they didn’t handle it? What if they needed me? I don’t know what I would have done exactly, but if no one else was kicking the dog in the face, I probably would have done that. I remembered that you are supposed to lift a dog up from the hind legs, to get it to let go of something. I had researched what to do in a dog fight after there was a fight at the dog shelter I volunteered at in Thailand. But in the moment I probably wouldn’t have remembered that. I thought then about an event that I had read about in my introductory psychology class, in which there was a woman being assaulted and murdered (sorry, it’s dark) in the courtyard of an apartment building, and there were many people who witnessed the event, because she was screaming loudly, but not one of them went down to help her, and nobody called the police. The takeaway was that most people just watch, because they think someone else is going to do something, and then no one does anything. When I read about this in my psychology class I thought, as we probably all do, that I would definitely have done something. But after today, which was seemingly a similar event, and I did have an urge to get involved and do something, but I decided to not do anything, I wonder what I would have done with the woman in the courtyard of the apartment building scenario. There are differences, sure, such as that in the dog fight scenario there were already people around, but I still assumed that any one of them were going to get involved, and I know that most of them didn’t. They just watched. I can’t know who exactly did get involved, because it was hard to see, but it could have been that only the two owners of the dogs did anything.

In retrospect, I think I should have jumped the fence and ran over. The least I could have done would be to run over there and see if I could have helped.

That was the interesting meat of today. So far, at least, as it is only 6:30, but there will not likely be anything more interesting than that happening. I came home and went to Kroger and secured all of the ingredients to make my now famous Kale and Cannellini bean soup. Cooking is a great thing to do. So relaxing and enjoyable. Very satisfying. This is the fourth or fifth time I’ve made this soup now, a recipe I use that’s written on the side of the box of vegetable broth. I can tell you exactly what’s in it, if you would like to know: kale (it calls for regular kale but I’ve been using red kale because that’s what I first made it with), garlic, onion, carrot, cannellini beans, tomato paste, veggie broth, thyme sprigs and bay leaves… and there you have it. Not hard at all. You get to do a lot of chopping, and there are multiple stages of chopping things up and adding them to the pot. Oops, I forgot oil. Very important. Today I actually burnt the oil, which has never happened, because I didn’t put that much in (olive oil), and I decided to use the full burner, instead of only the smaller ring inside of the big ring on the stovetop (you know what I’m talking about right), and so I used the same heat settings as I’ve done before, but because of that the pot was heated much more, so the cooking was done faster, and some of the oil got burnt, which didn’t matter at all or affect the flavor, but I did in the end have a mushier soup than I would have wanted. I cooked it longer too because I wanted the kale to be cooked well.

Yesterday in the mail I received an envelope from the National Resource Defense Council, that was thorough and well written, and the topic was: bees. There were many good facts in their letter, and in the envelope was a petition that they wanted me to physically sign, and then they were going to send to the headquarters of Bayer, the plan being to bombard them with petitions from citizens who wished that they would stop selling a product that is directly responsible for the massive bee dieoffs. I thought it was a good plan, and I signed the letter, put it in the envelope and stamped it, and filled out the form to donate $25 dollars to their cause. They are a multimillion dollar organization and are currently battling the EPA to prevent neonics from being sold on the market in the US. Europe has already banned many of the pesticides we still use here. The EPA recently approved the pesticide sulfoxaflor for longterm use even though the EPA itself, “according to the EPA’s own analysis, declared it ‘highly toxic to bees at all life stages.'” Great. Let’s keep using that then.

“45 percent of the nation’s honeybee colonies collapsed over the past year – one of the largest losses ever recorded.”

“We depend on bees to pollinate 70 out of 100 major crops – from apples and blueberries to watermelon and zucchini.”

And of course, bees are cute and fun.

Think about that.

We had Rachel Carson blowing the whistle and raising the alarm for the birds, because of DDT. Well, we are going through it again now, and this time it’s the bees and the monarchs. Although basically all insect populations are falling now, and there is a major insect apocalypse happening, and this is being followed by insectivore bird population collapses. Not good.

There is one other thing I can write about for you here, which is that recently, for the first time ever, I was a waiter. I did some waitering, including using the famous waiter platter, and bringing people food and drinks, and by the end of the night, I was even taking orders. It’s an interesting way to go about learning and getting involved in a business, because it was my second night of being there, at this fancy cocktail bar that is next to the Starbucks I work at, and that’s how I got in, my friend is the General Manager of the bar as of recently, and he asked me to come by and check it out and see if I wanted to help out. And by the end of the second night, I was a full blown cocktail waiter. I ended up having my own tables because the girl who was working the floor left, at 10, and after 10 the floor closes and everyone has to go up to the bar to get their drinks, but people still want to hang out in the comfy chairs and tables around the room, and so I was still going around cleaning up and the next thing you know, the two gals in the round comfy chairs were asking me if I could get them another round of espresso martinis, and I opened up a new tab with them, and then a group of girls came in and I sat them and waited on them, and so those were my first and still only two tabs ever, because I haven’t done this yet again. The best part of this was that when I had come over to the group of four girls that I had seated, and was prepared to take their order, bracing myself for whatever things they would say that I would have no clue about, although I had already learned quickly about many of the most popular drinks, and I could remember what people told me, such as a “vodka still water lemon and lime” and a “gimlet.. something on the rocks” (now I’ve forgotten it), but still had almost no experience using the little magical machine that we use to take orders, and so I squatted down next to the first girl ready to take her order, and she said, “Oh my god, is that Toast? I love Toast!!!” (Toast being the name of the application/device that we use to take the orders.) And I said, “You know about Toast?” And she said, “Of course!” And I said, “Okay, then you tell me what to do. This is my first day and I have no idea what I’m doing.” And lo and behold, one of the other gals sitting there also knew about Toast, her name was DJ, and between them they taught me everything I now know about Toast, and they basically did their own orders, but helped me through it, and it was absolutely amazing, that my first table ever had two professional Toast users at it, who could train me. Dessiree was the first girl, who said that she loved Toast, and was talking out loud about how to ring up her order, and I was like, “Yes, yes this is what they were saying, yes that sounds right.” Connecting the dots. And then DJ blew my mind when at the end of the night, and they were closing out, and I was like, okay I have to take your card over to machine back by the bar, because that’s what I was told to do and had seen done, and DJ says, “No you don’t.” And she showed me how to pay, right there at the table, with this magical Toast device. And I was like, uhm, this is incredible, I had no idea, and she said, “Who trained you????” To which I replied, “Old people.” Which is the truth. I was trained by old people who didn’t know about Toast. Victoria is not that old. She probably knew about Toast payment. When I had gone back over to the bar, I saw Chris (the GM) and I said, “Did you know that you can pay with this thing?” (holding up the device). And he said, “No.” And I said, “We need to talk.”

The difference between having to take their card and go across the room over to the machine, or take all of the cards of everyone who is paying and go all the way over to the main machine, and then have each one pay, and then bring them the receipt, and then go get the receipt, vs. just being able to collect payments right there at the table, is crazy. HUGE difference.

I also tried Dom Perignon on this night. Ian, one of the two working bartenders, caught me in a moment and said, “Are you busy right now?” Of course I replied, “Never too busy for you, Ian.” He’s a fun and charming guy. A lovable individual. From all that I have seen in two days of him, but he has a good reputation with Chris the GM, which matters enormously, so we can be confident in saying these good words about him. And this small story will highlight his character, because he brought me into the reserve party room to the side of the main room, used for large gatherings, and there was a glass of Dom Perignon sitting on the table, and he said, “I wanted you to try this. This is some expensive bubbly right here.” He saved some Dom Perignon for me. It had come from the CEO’s birthday party, which was happening that night, and was very entertaining, moreso for me because I was new and had nothing to be held accountable for, and so was just able to spectate and be entertained, although by the end of the night, that was already over, because I started to understand what to do, and as soon as you understand what you have to do, at least with me, that means you have to start doing it, and you are not a spectator anymore. You are part of the action. The CEO in question is the owner of DZL, the company that I work for, that owns the building that I work in, Cummins Station, and the Starbucks that I work at, and the bar that I was then working at, this night, Pullman Standard. But Ian had said something about how this glass of champagne costs more than either of us make in a night, or more than half our night’s wages or something, so it must have been expensive. And I drank that Dom Perignon, in one gulp, maybe two gulps, and that was all I had to drink that night, and it was delicious. It must have been the best champagne I’ve ever had, because it was expensive, and I haven’t had many champagnes, but at least I could tell that it was a really good champagne, because it had a lot going on with it, and a lot of complexity, which is exactly what you want, right? It was sweet at first, and bubbly, but not too sweet, and then very quickly you could taste flavor, and then it ended by being dry, and so it did not leave a sweet or sticky taste in your mouth. Pretty good. And Ian really did that for me, I hardly know the guy, this having been only my second night there. That was cool of him.

The real sitcom moment that had happened on this night, of the CEO’s big birthday bash, was that there was some uncertainty over what to do with this magnificent three-tiered birthday cake that was for Zach (the CEO) and his party’s enjoyment, and it had thrown a significant wrench into the works of the Pullman Standard team. Chris in particular was desperately wanting to talk to Zach’s wife, about how to do the cake, and I think he wanted to talk about when they were supposed to bring the cake out, and how to present it, and whatever else, and I know this was or would have seemed to be a big deal, because I have learned that Zach is quite particular, and so he probably had a particular way that he wanted this to be done, as he probably does with all things. I don’t know him very well but I can already see this about him, as he is probably very smart and smart people are often very particular about things. He seems to be quite particular about many things, so I’m sure they were thinking, how does he want this cake business done? But nobody knew who Zach’s wife was, and I thought, I can just go over there and find out, discreetly of course, just ask a member of the party if they could point Zach’s wife out for me, but when I made my move to go over to this birthday party, they were then in the middle of having a birthday toast, and so that wasn’t going to happen. They figured it out in the end and I think first ended up bringing over the cake in its entirety, to be viewed and perhaps candles to be blown, and then brought it to the back and cut it up and brought out the pieces. I was just getting such a kick out of this cake business, that it was so much drama for such a small thing, but yet, that’s how it goes. It seems small, but it just depends on whose perspective you’re looking at it from. Where is Zach’s wife, we have to ask her about the cake!!! The cake, what do we do with the cake???? We forgot about the cake!!!! You can see why that’s funny. At the CEO’s big birthday bash. And because I had no responsibility for doing anything with this cake, and had no expectation to have any answers, I could just look on in amusement, and shared no burden in the stress.

Well, I think we have achieved some good writing here. Now I will go try and play Metallica songs.