I’m a damn good waiter. I’m attentive, have a great memory, and can talk for hours about the extensive menu. In no way do I intend to stay in the industry for very much longer, but it’s a great paying summer job. The toughest part about the job, really, is putting up with customers. I’m not anti-social. I’m not condescending or inconsiderate. I just can’t wrap my head around some of the conversations I’m forced to have.
Customer #1: I’d like an Iced Coffee.
Me: Sure, not a problem. I’ll be right back with that.
Customer #1: (When I return) - There are ice cubes in here. I don’t want ice cubes.
Me: Oh, I’m sorry, I thought you asked for Iced Coffee.
Customer #1: Well, yes, but not with ice in it. Who gets ice in their coffee?
Me: *Blank stare*….. Can I do anything else for you then ma’m?
Customer #1: You can take these ice cubes out.
Me: Sure, let me just go get you a new cup.
Customer #1: Can’t you just do it here? You just have to take a spoon or something and lob them out…
Me: We don’t….do that here… *Sigh*
Later in the day…
Customer #2:Do you have anything like a hamburger here?
Me: Unfortunately we don’t serve hamburgers, but we do serve an Antelope Cheeseburger which is very similar. It tastes a little sweeter than beef and it’s not very gamy.
Customer #2:But what is it made out of, pork…or beef?
Me:No, it’s Antelope.
Customer #2:So is that venison or something?
Customer #2:Ma’m, no, Antelope is an animal. It’s…just a separate animal.
Customer #3 (sitting next t Customer #2): It’s like a gazelle, or an elk or something.
Customer #2: It’s got to be really gamy, then, right? Where do they come from, Africa?
Me: No, it’s not gamy at all. And our Antelope is domestic and comes from out west – it’s all free range.
Customer #2: Oh, there’s so much going on in Africa and Iraq right now – who knows where that elk has been. I’ll just have the Cobb Salad.
If you’re a fellow server and need to satisfy some of your pent up customer induced rage, visit the Waiter Rant website. I borrowed their name for this post, and I have to admit, sometimes I wonder if he has it worse than I do…
Anyone read this yet? James Dobson, a prominent Christian evangelical leader, has criticized Sen. Barack Obama for speaking freely about his religious views and government to another liberal Christian group. Obama questioned in his speech, much like Martin Sheen’s season 1 rant on the West Wing, the validity of religion in government.
“Which passages of scripture should guide our public policy? Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is OK and that eating shellfish is an abomination? Or we could go with Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? Or should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount?”(CNN)
Thanks, Mr. Obama, for that insightful interpretation of the Bible. While many may not agree with your views, they are in fact your own and should be left to individuals to decide if they agree or disagree. Let’s turn to a nationally renowned spiritual leader. I’m sure he has something insightful, articulate, and non-inflammatory to say about the remarks.
“I think he’s deliberately distorting the traditional understanding of the Bible to fit his own world view, his own confused theology,” Dobson said, adding that Obama is “dragging biblical understanding through the gutter.”
Oops. I guess not. You know who else is deliberately distorting their understanding of the Bible to fit their own world views? Evangelicals. By interpreting what you believe in and what you do not from your spiritual text of choice sort of invalidates the whole basis for argument, don’t you think? For being a group of loving Christians, I find it hard to believe that they have the nerve to so frequently and radically criticize others. In all fairness, Dobson did say that Obama referencing “out-dated” material from the Old Testament, which evangelicals don’t put a lot of stock in. The New Testament is what they primarily reference, which I guess is here nor there. What I do find odd is the inclusion of the Old Testament in the Evangelical Bibles. If it is so “outdated” and “impractical”, why is it included? Dobson went on to say:
“Am I required in a democracy to conform my efforts in the political arena to his bloody notion of what is right with regard to the lives of tiny babies?” he asked. “What he’s trying to say here is, unless everybody agrees, we have no right to fight for what we believe. What the senator is saying there, in essence, is that ‘I can’t seek to pass legislation, for example, that bans partial-birth abortion, because there are people in the culture who don’t see that as a moral issue. And if I can’t get everyone to agree with me, than it is undemocratic to try to pass legislation that I find offensive to the Scripture. Now, that is a fruitcake interpretation of the Constitution.”
False, Mr.Dobson. What the Senator means is that if the majority can’t decide on a concrete outcome, there is clearly more left to debate between unbiased thinkers with the best outcome in mind. By keeping these ideals in mind, we are PRESERVING the ability to fight for what we believe in. Mr. Dobson, you’re acting ridiculous, and once again you’ve chosen to deliberately distort. Sen. Obama’s words. Wasn’t that what you just accused him of doing? I just can’t see how this could possibly be considered a rational argument by anyone’s standards.
Now, I’m not saying that evangelical beliefs or any other sort of religion are good or bad. There are enough flaws in every religion and I’m not one to point fingers. I’m not going to even bring up the freedom of religion argument, and I’m not avoiding the Rev. Wright controversy – all I’m saying is that any religion that teaches intolerance isn’t a religion at all. And with that said, I’m not sure I’d be inclined to put a whole lot of stock into someone who tries to get their point across by calling Presidential candidates “fruitcakes.”
Read the full article here. Keep an open mind, folks.
I decided it was time I chronicled a bit of my trip to La Ceiba. There’s simply too much for me to go through and account day by day, but I’ll do my best to sum up the highlights. First, watch the video below, since the boys are what the trip was all about. The project is called The Children of the Light, and their mission is to provide hope and love to the homeless children of Honduras. I created the video, so enjoy!
First, our trip wasn’t without some…er…fumbles. One of my friends had her cell phone SIM card get stolen, and my other friend lost her passport, if only for a few excruciating hours. You can only imagine how thrilled we were when the passport turned up with the help of a few honest security guards, but they’re still investigating the $7,000 worth of international calls from Central America to Louisiana…
Anyway. The best part of Honduras? Well, besides spending days and days with the boys, I’d have to say going to the river. The river, well, is more like a tropical paradise. Given, we WERE in Honduras (about as tropical as it gets), but this place was gorgeous. Even better, it was virtually hidden from the public, had giant waterfalls and lagoons, and rocks you could jump off of into the clear blue water below. Amazing.
There were lots of other good parts to the trip too. I tried my hardest to see Indiana Jones while I was down there, but the theater wasn’t playing it at the right times, so we ended up seeing Prince Caspian. It was actually in English, with Spanish subtitles, so we enjoyed it a lot. (I did end up seeing Indy once I got home, and for the record, both films were some of the best I’ve seen in a while, so go check them out).
So, originally I figured I’d write more than what I just did…but now I’m bored and I’m going to go read. Possibly more updates to come later…I might allude to other stories in future posts. Good times.
Maybe thievery isn’t the best word choice, but I liked the alliteration. Anyway, hands down my favorite part of the semester is when I get to sell back my books. Why? Being the intelligent person that I am, I buy all my books on eBay/Amazon or some other source. The point is that I don’t buy them at the bookstore, ever, because it’s over-priced and the majority of the employees are more worried about catching you stealing something than actually being of service to you.
Anyway, today I took my International Business book back to the bookstore to see what I could scrounge up for a trade-in. While the retail price is around $117, I was able to nab it in January for a mild $17.50 on eBay. That’s a significant mark-down, I’ll admit, but I was even more ecstatic to see what the bookstore gave me back. With $80 in extra cash at the end of the day (that’s $62.50 profit, for those of you who can’t do the math…), I’ll be able to thoroughly enjoy my evening of video games and Friday Night Lights. The moral of the story is to never settle for overpriced, sub-par goods. I was taught at an early age to be thrifty. Good old Boy Scouts…
For all intents and purposes, I’ve come to the conclusion that one should never (or at the very least, extremely exclusively) use absolutes. It just drives me nuts to look around at the world and see how many people think issues are so black and white, right and wrong. They aren’t. Absolute or universal truths will always have flaws, making them, well, not absolutes at all. Truth is the conformity to fact or reality, but there’s always going to be someone who doesn’t agree. Does that make the idea or the person flawed? If you think I have an answer, I don’t. Just sayin’.
Murder is wrong. Theft is wrong. Abortion is wrong. Picking your nose is wrong. Some people agree, some don’t. I’m not going to get into the legal/religious specifications of the above – I’m just using them as examples. Murder is wrong if it is senseless, correct? So, for example, if John Smith murders Jane Smith, that’s a crime. But then again, senseless implies that short of psychopathic tendencies, murder would be acceptable. But if John murders Jane out of passion, is that still a crime? I’d say so. What if John kills Jane in self defense? That’s when we get into grey area. That’s years worth of legal battles and millions of dollars in press coverage. But I digress…
What is John was suffering from depression? Still a crime? Or just plausible deniability? What if John was just acting based on a stimulant he ingested? Does it matter if it was legal? If he was using cocaine, he’d be in jail. But what about caffeine? Still a stimulant…it’s just socially accepted. Yet, alcohol is socially accepted too, but much less so than caffeine. If you don’t see the logic in the above, I’m either doing a very poor job of articulating my point, or things are worse than I thought.
Speaking of which, as a brief interjection, I hate the argument that things are “wrong” because they are illegal. Or that the Koran says so. Or because you were “raised” a certain way. Murder is wrong – why? Because the Bible says “thou shall not kill”? No. It’s wrong because deep in your psyche, you know it isn’t acceptable. You know that stealing is wrong because you shouldn’t take what rightfully belongs to others. Yet, would you really tell an Ethiopian child with a swollen belly not to take food when it was in front of them, regardless of ownership? You steal on a day to day basis, too. You steal the ozone layer away from the earth because you need to drive to work, you shop at Wal-mart because prices are cheaper than the local mall. But is it still wrong to knowingly harm the environment? Some may same it isn’t, because soil isn’t the same thing as flesh and blood. But then what becomes of the animal kingdom? (For the record, the Vatican just issued a new list of sins here in which pollution makes an appearance, among other things). I’m not chastising anyone for anything specific here – in fact, if I was, I’d be refuting my entire argument. I’m just saying that we need to consider all sides of a story before we start crucifying others for their beliefs.
Don’t worry, I’m not sociopathic…I think murder is wrong just like everyone else, and I’m almost second guessing posting this as I’m typing because rest assured, someone will get the wrong idea. I’m just saying that nothing is easy anymore. The ideas that we’re all striving for are incredibly complex. We can’t just assume that we’re going to get everything right all the time, whether it’s relations with foreign nations or the sub-prime mortgage crisis. It’s just not realistic, but that doesn’t mean we can stop striving for perfection. To quote a friend, “Though we live at the pinnacle, we yet strive for greater things.” I’m coming upon a more relativist way of thinking lately, and I haven’t decided how I feel about that yet, since I’m struggling with the whole “argument” thing. I love the battle of ideas, and while relativists claim that thoughts are boundless and shouldn’t be controlled – so what is the point in arguing? Can one be a relativist if they defend their beliefs? There we go again…grouping ourselves until there’s no room for individuality. I’d just be happy if I could get a few more of the closed minded to think every once in a while. I hope my thoughts are cogent – like I said, it’s incredibly difficult to articulate and fathom the ideas and issues we’re faced with at this time in history. I’m just not ready to give up that easily…
Andrew brought up another one of my less humorous scar stories in one of my last posts, here. Less humorous for me, that is…probably more entertaining for you.
In any case, I was in a pretty terrible relationship back in the day, and the girl I was with had a little brown dachshund. It wasn’t even that good looking - I mean, some dachshunds can be cute - but not this bugger. We were just hanging out one day when she asked me to pick the stupid thing up, which I did (keep in mind that I love animals), and put him on the bed. Completely unprovoked, the little mongrel jumped out of my hands mid air and decided it would be fun to latch onto my face. Let’s think about that for a moment. Latch on. TO MY FACE. Not fun. At all.
It hurt like hell, and I’ve never bled so much from my nose in my entire life. I was shaking my head around like one of those bad movies - with the dog still attatched to my face, clawing wildly at anything it could get its paws on. I finally managed to get the thing off and launched it into the wall, pretty much dispatching it while my then-girlfriend stood shocked, not comprehending what was happening. That was when I really started bleeding, and I had to go to the emergency room to get all put back together.
There where two really bad parts to this whole mishap (you know, besides the fact you could peel my nostril away from my face). The first was that this happened in January, in the middle of my swim season, so I was out of practice and competition for about two weeks until my goofy looking nose healed. Second, the girl’s parents were convinced that I somehow provoked the stupid animal. I didn’t. I’m not a six year old - I can hold a human child, and I’m positive I can hold a freakin dog. Thanks for the vote of confidence, jackasses…
To this day, one of my biggest regrets in life is not having that dog put down. That canine was downright nasty, and I’d challenge any animal rights activist to tell me otherwise.
So, thanks Andrew, for reminding me of the worst day of my life and the hairline scar that still appears on the right side of my nose. Jerk.
For the past five months, over 1,400 Universities around the country have been participating in the ONE Campaign Campus Challenge. ONE is a non-profit, non-partisan initiative by Americans to eliminate extreme poverty and disease worldwide. As part of the campaign, I’ve been working with some of the amazing students at Sacred Heart University to put together our “final” project using the $1,000 grant SHU received for being the #1 school. It is by no means everything we’ve accomplished in the past year – just in the past month. Watch the video below for a quick rundown.
Like the Project? Please vote for Sacred Heart University here. It will ensure that we can continue to do our amazing work in the community and give us some really amazing opportunities in the future! Please help! You can check who is in first place by going here.
When Sacred Heart University’s ONE Chapter received the $1,000 grant, we were almost taken-aback. We had already accomplished so much with virtually no funding—the options seemed limitless with even this small amount of money. We’re all about fixing problems that need solving, and the biggest and most fixable problem is awareness. We got to thinking, wondering where the money would be best spent.More importantly, we wondered who we wanted to benefit specifically from our project. Our answer was the children of Bridgeport, CT. When it came down to it, it wasn’t a very hard decision. After all, all of us got to where we are today through education. Education is that “magic bullet” that can literally kill poverty, disease, racism, and everything that the ONE Campaign is fighting against.
We found Luis Muñoz Marin School through a ONE member’s work there. Their playground had fallen in pretty bad repair, so we decided to help. You may be asking yourself what a playground has to do with poverty. We re-painted the playground, and added a giant map of the world on the ground so that the children will always know that they CAN make a difference – and that they’re not so far away from the rest of the countries in the world after all. It took nine gallons of paint and over 500 man hours, but we got it done – including a GIANT ONE logo and a Dr. Seuss quote beneath the map. As a side note, on our fourth day of painting, after we had finished the map and progressed to the playground itself, we happened to look over at some of the side-walk chalk drawings the kids had made. We were shocked when we saw that between each of the continents, they had drawn bridges. Whatever their intention was, we don’t really know – but it was especially meaningful to us nonetheless. We’re also in the process of getting recycled tire rubber to put on the ground instead of the hard woodchips, making it a much safer environment for them to play. This mulch is where the majority of our funds went, but since it costs over $3,000, we had more work to do. But just in case the playground wasn’t a good enough reminder for them, we went ONE step further. We passed our pamphlets that outlined just how students can make a difference—from recycling to volunteering in the community.
We realize that each of our over 4,000 undergrads has the ability to eat three meals a day—while many just down Park Avenue are suffering. To solve this, we sponsored a 24-hour Fast in which students could voluntarily participate, and in doing so would gain sponsors who would pledge either monetary or canned good donations. We raised several shopping carts full of food and over $1,200. All the proceeds went to St. Charles Food Pantry in Bridgeport, CT. While we were feeding the hungry, students also got a rude-awakening to what one in seven people worldwide live with every day. All students that participated were recognized at the Palm Sunday service at the University.
Taking care of one’s self is important too, so while it was great that students were able to fast, we need them to stay healthy. That’s where UNO’s Chicago Bar and Grill came in. Located in a wealthier section of Fairfield, CT, the restaurant graciously offered to hold a fundraiser in our name. 20% of whatever was purchased by anyone eating at the restaurant on Sunday (the day the fast ended) would go straight back to the ONE Campaign. Again, we still don’t have a total count, but the money raised is definitely in the thousands. We all laughed when we realized the irony: “UNO’s” was helping “ONE.”
No advocacy project would be complete without some political contact. One of ONE’s most prominent legislative projects has been support for the Jubilee Act. Connecticut’ own Senators Lieberman and Dodd, as well as Rep. Christopher Murphy and Rep. Rosa DeLauro have cosponsored the bill, whichexpands debt cancellation to the 25 countries that require it to meet the Millennium Development Goals. This legislation ensures that debt cancellation funds go to poverty reduction by requiring a report of how each country used the money and calling on governments to make these spending reports easily accessible. We sent over 500 “Measure Up!” postcards to our local Rep. Christopher Shays. Our hope is that he will realize the vast number of activists/constituents on our campus, and ultimately in the nation. How did we get all those postcards out? We talked to local businesses that were willing to donate gift cards and prizes, and then sponsored a “Free” raffle on campus. Students could get a free “ticket”, which was really the Jubilee Act Postcard. We explained what it was, and students filled them out and dropped them in the bucket and hoped for a prize. We had over $250 worth of donated prizes! We want Congressman Shays to see that we need change, and we need it soon since Congress has only 55 working days in 2008! This will definitely help.
Bridgeport Mayor Bill Finch hasn’t been left out, either. We let the Mayor know about our work and began talking about signing the ONE Declaration. His response couldn’t have been better, and he was elated with the incredible work we’d done in the city he’s governing. Bridgeport is now officially a City of ONE, and we are having a special ceremony in the first week of April. As a special surprise, we asked the students at Marin School to write “How” they would make a difference on the back of their pamphlets. We detached that section from their pamphlets, and we will hand-deliver them to the Mayor to show him that everyone has an intention of helping.
After all of this, we just want to convey ONE thing. We’re all in this together. Everyone can make a difference, and we’re stepping up to the plate. You should too.
Please visit any of the links below for more information and material!
