Tips on avoiding contact with customers during the Christmas season

I hate talking to customers during the holiday shopping season. Everyone is crazy. Associates are crazy and mad, customers are crazy and mad. No one is happy, really. Since I can't really avoid associates (they have to pass through my domain twice a day minimum), I like to avoid customers like the plague. Here are some tips:

1. Avert your eyes. Do not greet or smile at customers. If you don't look at them, it's harder for them to stop you.
2. Walk fast and with a purpose. If you look like you're in a rush, people don't want to bother you.
3. Whenever possible, carry a large and difficult package or boxed kitchen appliance. If you're carrying something heavy and difficult, customers aren't going to stop you.
4. Keep to the sidelines. Only go out when absolutely necessary and when going out keep to the periphery of the store.
5. Wear jeans. Jeans make it clear that you are not a floor employee and do in fact belong in the stock room.
6. Carry a PDT, or other important looking retail device. I don't know what that stands for, but it's the thing that prints price tags. You carry that and walk with purpose, no one really messes with you. You are on a mission to get them a better deal. Not them personally, but they get the picture.
7. If all else fails, go with the "I don't know I'm only the gift wrapper" bit. This is helped by having lots of ribbon on your person.

I just heard a story in NPR about the increased risk of suicide in Vegas. The results of the study were just that, that residents and visitors face a higher risk of suicide. The causes are unclear. I think they found that the deaths were not necessarily related to gambling or monetary losses. It was very interesting.

Gambling is something I just do not understand. You know that the house will win. Overwhelmingly and regularly. How can you go into something knowing you will likely lose?

Ok so I am still listening to this show on NPR and they are talking about the year's best songs. This guy was SHOCKED that bands that people are familiar with (like Death Cab for Cutie and My Morning Jacket) are not at the top of the list. Listen, dude, you're not young. Neither of those bands have been up there for years. Seriously, Death Cab? Nothing after Transatlanticism is worth listening to! And really everything they did prior to that was really building to that record. My Morning Jacket? They haven't had a hit among indie crowds for years. Were they ever particularly popular? I just really think it's funny when old folks try to stay up on this stuff. It's a young person's game. I feel the same way about the podcast "The Sound of Young America". The host is pretty outdated but still claims to be America's Radio Sweetheart and the Voice of Young America. God I hope he isn't my voice.

Maybe this is a bit harsh. The sting of youth, perhaps?

Over the moon

My parents invested in a humidifier a while ago (one year ago?) and now it's sort of broken. It sounds like a hairdryer. Now I am actually a huge fan of white noise but this is driving me bonkers. It's sounds like a mix of water going through the pipes in the walls, my mom drying her hair, and the vent above the stove. It's a little overstimulating.

Last night I looked up my fall term grades for this year. Oh boy, was I ever surprised! I expected to do really poorly in Art History 101. There was this thing at the end of the term where I didn't know when the assignment was due and sent it in but the prof refused to accept it and threatened to fail me. That was nerve-wracking, but it all worked out in the end. I prayed a lot, thought positively a lot. Things worked out. I got a B-. My other grades were fine. Reasonable, expected. But that one, boy am I ever thankful.

I have also started running. This is pretty interesting for me because my hips and knees are really bad from years of Irish dancing. Alex runs a lot and tells me about all kinds of visualizations she does to make it easier. One she likes is visualizing running a marathon. I tried that. It went something like this:

"Oh hey guys, how's it going? Yeah, we don't have to far. Great weather, eh? Oh, okay. Yeah, catch you later. Oh, hey guys. What? Oh sure. No, sorry for getting in your way. No problem. The finish line already? Yeah, sure I'll take this gold medal."

That was me unexpectedly winning a marathon. Another one I like is where I pretend to run with Alex and we catch Becky and Matt doing aerobics along the way and maybe Shannon on her bike. I also watch Legally Blonde while I run and listen to Moby's Play. Funny.

So this is my friend Shannon. She took throwing last term and they did this photo project on her final from start to finish. The final assignment was to choose a famous person and make dishes for a meal with said person. Shannon chose that old crazy dude Buckminster Fuller. He made all those geodesic domes. That was really just the only successful thing he did. He made all kinds of other housing things that were so strange and unsuccessful. But Shannon made a bunch of really beautiful ceramic pieces using geometric shapes. I have one piece that I am giving to Emily Joy. The website hasn't been fully updated yet, but keep checking because I'm sure pictures of the finished project will be up and they are well worth seeing.

I don't think this is at all surprising, but I have a bit of a creative block. I am not sure where I should start. Should I draw? Should I try painting something? Watercolor? Tempra? Acrylic? Should I knit more? Should I devote time to watching movies and reading books? There is just not enough time in the day.

Anyways, maybe I'll devote tonight to finding a good surface and see where that gets me. So much depends on your surface. Gosh I wish I could just go down to the print studio and work. Then if I got stuck I could bind a book or go upstairs and draw or walk down the hall and visit Shannon. I'm not in Boliou though, so finding a surface will have to be a place to start.

When I was looking for a silly image to go with this post, I started with "surface" in flickr image tags. That was AWFUL because a lot of the pictures were Lemon Sharks on the surface of the water. Terrifying. So I tried some other things which yielded either sharky or awful results. Then I thought about Escher and things being endless, yeah yeah yeah gimmicky I know. But then I got to this picture and I remembered this math lecture at Carleton last year where they figured out how to fill in the middle. Escher gave up on it because, well, elliptical curves are hard. I think the lecture had the disclaimer that they lacked Escher's technical skill, but they did fill it in pretty well. There was some complicated math involved that was way above my head, but it was a great lecture on the numerous and beautiful interactions between math/science and art.

Air quotes

So I was talking to "Erika" earlier this term about air quotes. She uses them when she doubts someone's existence/thinks something is dumb (like "T.Tod" or "comps").

Well yesterday on my drive home from work I listened to All Things Considered with Michelle Norris on WUWM. The story was about "Black Friday" from the perspective of workers instead of shoppers. She talked to some young punk essayist about his collection called "The Customer is Always Wrong". When she said the words "retail clerk" I could practically hear the air quotes in her voice. She actually, earnestly said, "Wait, I thought the customer is always right?" Clearly Michelle has never worked "retail" because anyone who has would never have to ask that. The customer is always, always wrong, you just have to pretend they're right.


I am also going to suggest this song:
WAYUH (Simian Mobile Disco Remix) - The Rapture, which I recently found on my "computer". I listened to this song so much spring term freshman year. Maybe earlier? I really have no idea, but I do remember that it takes the best parts of WAYUH and ditched the worst (i.e. the bits that are actually by the Rapture).

In other news I am going to use hyperlinks. Fancy, eh?

Comment dit-on "me time"?

One thing I really value is having time to myself. I like to hunker down and watch a lot of movies, read crappy science fiction, and sleep a lot. This is how I get vitamin D deficiencies. The nearly-blackout curtains in my bedroom certainly don't help. Here I have no friends so I am never obligated to do anything but work and occasionally eat with my family. Other than being forced to go to church and hide my tattoo, living here is nearly ideal.


All things considered I was tremendously productive today. I finished that hat. I watched several mini-series (produced by the BBC, pre-20th C. period pieces duh). I wrote letters, but did not stamp or send them.

Things to do tomorrow:
1. Work
2. Find my netflix movie. I know it's somewhere in my things.
3. Get this art history nonsense sorted out.
4. Read "the Humanoid Touch" which looks promising.