man salad and the end of the world
Last Friday, J and I got to go out for dinner...alone. The restaurant we chose was busy, and oddly, since the restaurant is actually more of a bar/lounge, it was packed with families. High chairs were everywhere; tired, listless looking parent's with giant glasses of red wine staring off into space while their kids played on their iPhones...it was really creepy. Anyway, we bucked the trend and sat next to each other on the bench at our childless table and settled in for a nice cozy chat without a single, "mama? mama? Mama!?"
We noticed things from our perch. The manager was hands-y with his wait staff...the girls tried to avoid him, but he was everywhere. At the table next to us sat a family of three, a son in his mid-twenties and his parents. The mother didn't shut up for the entire meal. Seriously, I don't even know how she managed to eat her food she was talking so much. The son would say two words and suddenly she would be telling what he had do, what so-and-so would or had done, what she would do, blah, blah, blah. The husband looked resigned. The son, to his credit, just took it. He didn't even look at his phone ONCE until the dinner was over. He must have been asking them for money. There were two aging men having drinks together across from us. They were dressed young, younger than they could carry, and one of them was obsessed with his smart phone; he kept trying to show his companion things on the screen but neither of them could see well enough without their reading glasses. He tried the pinch-zoom, but it wasn't working for him. As with most older users of technology, he was unwilling or unable to use his thumbs (used only his index fingers)...rotary telephones really fucked with the Boomers ability to use their thumbs productively.
So, the man salad...the waiter who came over with our dinner, salad with seared tuna and an extra cheesy pizza, assumed that I was the salad and J was the pizza. Of course, it was the other way around. Pre-conceived notions about people are inevitable. All the "ism's" exist because human brains love hierarchy and are built to classify, predict and prioritize. I like making up stories about people I see around me, but I certainly don't like being judged by others...hypocritical, yes.
The power went out at the office today. Had a fleeting thought, when I walked into the bathroom and stupidly tried the light switch anyway...what if the power never went back on? That's how the end of the world would likely happen - there would be no build up, it would just occur. Yes, I started another apocalyptic sci-fi book..."Fiend". It's actually really good (it's a zombie apocalypse with a side of meth addiction), but it's fucking with my head. Looking to my immediate future I don't really see an end to this literary theme since I requested books by Eggers and Coupland for Christmas. Maybe there is such a thing as a "merry apocalypse"?
We noticed things from our perch. The manager was hands-y with his wait staff...the girls tried to avoid him, but he was everywhere. At the table next to us sat a family of three, a son in his mid-twenties and his parents. The mother didn't shut up for the entire meal. Seriously, I don't even know how she managed to eat her food she was talking so much. The son would say two words and suddenly she would be telling what he had do, what so-and-so would or had done, what she would do, blah, blah, blah. The husband looked resigned. The son, to his credit, just took it. He didn't even look at his phone ONCE until the dinner was over. He must have been asking them for money. There were two aging men having drinks together across from us. They were dressed young, younger than they could carry, and one of them was obsessed with his smart phone; he kept trying to show his companion things on the screen but neither of them could see well enough without their reading glasses. He tried the pinch-zoom, but it wasn't working for him. As with most older users of technology, he was unwilling or unable to use his thumbs (used only his index fingers)...rotary telephones really fucked with the Boomers ability to use their thumbs productively.
So, the man salad...the waiter who came over with our dinner, salad with seared tuna and an extra cheesy pizza, assumed that I was the salad and J was the pizza. Of course, it was the other way around. Pre-conceived notions about people are inevitable. All the "ism's" exist because human brains love hierarchy and are built to classify, predict and prioritize. I like making up stories about people I see around me, but I certainly don't like being judged by others...hypocritical, yes.
The power went out at the office today. Had a fleeting thought, when I walked into the bathroom and stupidly tried the light switch anyway...what if the power never went back on? That's how the end of the world would likely happen - there would be no build up, it would just occur. Yes, I started another apocalyptic sci-fi book..."Fiend". It's actually really good (it's a zombie apocalypse with a side of meth addiction), but it's fucking with my head. Looking to my immediate future I don't really see an end to this literary theme since I requested books by Eggers and Coupland for Christmas. Maybe there is such a thing as a "merry apocalypse"?
posted by wattlebla at 21:32
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