After a grueling medley of jobs stretching through last summer and on into the fall, things have been settling down. I’ve started working as a computer instructor. At one job, during the day, I teach computer literacy in a recovery program. The individuals to whom I teach at this job vary widely in skill level; some people have never used a mouse before, whereas others are proficient with office applications already. It’s a job that requires a lot of adaptation, patience, and love of learning. Being present for someone’s first Google search has been one of the most illuminating experiences of my life—compellingly, far more so than my own first Google search!

My life-long dream of being an educator is slowly materializing. The opportunities to teach are frequent and meaningful. Already I’m working on projects to expand the programs I’m working in, so that we’ll be teaching a far broader scope of material to a great number of people.

In my free time, I’m tackling an unprecedented number of personal projects. In the past few months, I’ve written several utile Python scripts to get work done around the house, so to speak, and I’m back on the horse with improving my guitar technique. After a few more weeks, I should be ready to start sharing the fruits of these labors on this blog, like I used to in the good old days.

All in all, I have never felt so at home.

The doormat my lovely girlfriend bought for me on my birthday

(See the Flickr page for story of the doormat.)

At the start of the shift, around 6PM or so, someone walks in who is clearly a metalhead. The place is rather dead, so I’m pleased, as I suspect he might sit down for a beer, and we’ll get to have a chat. (Yes, sometimes it’s the bartender who’s dying for company.) To my chagrin, he wants only change for the meter. I acquiesce.

Later that same day, around 11PM or so, he walks back in the door. I walk over to the register, thinking he needs more change, but this time he heads for the fridge and pulls out three bottles of Heineken. Says that’ll be all. I ring him up, and while stuffing the bills in the drawer, ask him, “Where are you coming from?”

This question made a lot of sense, because there’s a venue just up the block from the bar, and when shows are over, the bar I work for typically gets overflow. I wanted to know which band this guy had chosen to see.

He misunderstood the nature of the question, however—damn present progressive tense!—and answered me in an adorable Swedish accent, “From Sweden, actually.”

“Oh, really? That’s awesome, man. What kind of music are you into?”
“Well, you know… metal, mostly.”
“Awesome. What kind of metal, though? I mean, if it’s from Sweden, it’s probably melodic death metal or something, right?”
“Yes! Yes, it is! Melodic death metal, yes. Actually, I play in a band.”
“Cool, man! What do you guys sound like?”
“Um… have you ever heard of Arch Enemy?”
“Ha, yeah, man! That’s awesome. Do you guys have a website?”
“Er… yes.”
“Great! Write it down for me, I’d love to hear your guys’ stuff.”

It was at this point that he writes carefully, deliberately, in all lowercase letters, arch enemy, and then excuses himself to piss.

I’m standing there, staring at this slip of paper, reading “arch enemy” over and over again upside-down, trying to piece this together. Maybe he thought I wanted to know the name of the more famous band? No. Maybe they’re a cover band! But with the same name, instead of some lame pun? Unlikely.

Then his girlfriend walks in and stands near the register, waiting for him to come back. As comprehension percolates through my mind, I grip the edge of the bar.

“Who was that?”
“That? That was just Chris.”
“WHAT IS HIS LAST NAME?”
“Amott. Chris Amott.”

This is the moment in the movie when the woman, wearing a corset, swoons. Fortunately, I had left my corset at home that day, and so was able to soldier on through consciousness despite my absolute certainty that the universe was playing tricks on me. I swear there was a second when I entertained the Lovecraftian suspicion that I had fallen asleep at the bar, was already fired, and merely dreaming of meeting Chris Amott.

When he came out of the bathroom, I nearly attacked him, shook his hand, told him I’d been listening to his riffs since I was a kid. All in all, I played it about as far from cool as a guy can get. I even mentioned that our bar was having an open mic night on Wednesday—he laughed, flattered, and his girlfriend poked him, meaningfully—but he didn’t come.

He did, however tip me a dollar.

\m/

In the time leading up to my recent graduation, I’ve been doing landscaping work on weekends in order to pay the bills. I took a few weekends off to graduate, but I’ll be picking it back up this weekend to keep myself afloat economically, until something bigger and better comes along.

There is something unreal about this type of work. Work of the hands. Moving earth. Touching all different types of life and telling them where to go, where they can best be provided for. Although all of this stuff is unquestionably grounded in the real, it goes—for me—beyond the physical form and instills meaning. There is a reason that the gardener is, as a character, a literary device unto itself, and I’m just beginning to understand that.

A few weeks ago, while working in a housing development, mulching beds, an old man came outside to make some special requests. I obliged, and he came out again and tipped me $20. Later, he yet again came outside, and sat down to watch our crew working. He asked me how long I’ve been doing this type of work. I said, oh, I don’t know, that it’s seasonal work and altogether maybe ten years, just over the summers.

He told me a story about how, when he was “my age,” whatever he took that to be, he had a job working a combine harvester. Made a dollar an hour, I’m pretty sure he claimed. He loved that job. But eventually he found a better job in a glass factory, making three times the money, with benefits, too. He took it without hesitation. He worked the new job for three days, then quit and went back to manning the combine.

“So, I understand why you do the work you do.”

He seemed to think there was great wisdom in there somewhere.

I don’t yet pretend to appreciate the depth of what that man was trying to communicate to me, but flavor of the message is still with me. It’s as though I entered the room during the dying fall, and while I don’t have a prayer of knowing on what chord the piece ended, the overtones haunt me. In the old man’s words I heard the memory of still older words:

My words have ancient beginnings.

This was translated from 言有宗, literally “words have ancestors.” I’ve found myself over the past year or two becoming so open-minded and philosophically promiscuous that I think I’ve crossed back over into conservative territory. I seem to believe that at some remote point in history or prehistory, some person, whether mystic or shaman or prophet or scholar, did indeed figure out the nature of reality, or at least came damn close. The odds that I’ll encounter such an individual in my lifetime, face-to-face, are rather slim, though, so I’ve turned to exegesis.

And landscaping.

In spe (και ημέρες)

The title of this post comes from a short essay by Denise Levertov, in which she discusses the process of nurturing belief through the carrying out of good deeds. At least, that’s what I think it’s about—I only read the first page of it. It was enough to inspire me. I suppose you could say I believed it.

What speaks to me about this philosophy is that I genuinely believe that certain types of work will sustain and satisfy, and others will not. Others can even lead one far astray.

Where I’m at right now is the first time I’ve ever really had to decide how I can best interface with the world. Is it wrong that I don’t really care whether Verizon uses Twitter to provide better customer service? Is it illogical that I’d sooner work for a major marketing firm than canvass for Greenpeace? I have substantial misgivings about even the Peace Corps.

It seems the only option left open to me is graduate study. I want to be a professor. To put it quite simply, I can’t imagine any other job allowing me to keep up the ritual of reading and writing I’ve envisioned for myself as necessary for cultivating a healthy soul. So I’ll spend the next year or so piecing together journal articles with the sundry professors who will hire me a month at a time to edit their work.

Who knows? Maybe I’ll even get my hands dirty one of these days.

The list of candidates ran as follows. Already I have a pretty good idea who will be appointed.

The Culture and Communication Department will be bringing in three candidates for the faculty position of Assistant Professor of Anthropology.

Please join us for their research presentations.

Friday, January 30, 2009

Brent Luvaas will be on campus on January 30, 2009

His research presentation will be from 3:00-4:00 in Room 114. The title of his presentation is “Globalization Goes DIY: The Politics of Place in Indonesian Indie Music”

Thursday, February 5, 2009

Janet Alexanian will be on campus on February 5, 2009.

Her research seminar will be from 3:00-4:00 in Room 114. The title of her presentation is “Contested Visions: Cultural Politics and Anxiety in Post-Revolutionary Iran”

Monday, February 16, 2009

Stephanie Sadre-Orafai will be on campus on February 16, 2009.

Her research seminar will be from 2:30-3:30 in Room 114. The title of her presentation is “Casting as Practice, Casting as Metaphor: Rethinking Media and Multiculturalism in the New York Fashion Industry”

Unfortunately, I’ve already decided I won’t be attending any of these sessions, as a professor (of sociology–damn!) who’s rather dear to me teaches a class at all the prescribed times.

Naturally, I’d love to meet these people and feel them out for teaching talent, but I think that this Dr. Luvaas has the position in the bag. Applying for a position at a university with an already booming Music Industry major and a rapidly expanding Media Studies division in Communication and giving a presentation on globalization, politics, social space, and indie music, and located in a classically hip anthropological place, is smart.

And before you say that it might just be mere coincidence that his topic so uniquely suits our university’s tastes, I submit to you that the chap has a rather broad swath of ethnomusicality credit to his name. Also, it appears that his dissertation was chaired by Sherry Ortner, which would definitely spruce up the pedigree around here. (Ortner, though quite a figure herself, studied with Geertz at the U of C.)

The department here already has a solid assortment of females as assistant professors (they outnumber males, actually), so I can’t even see a female hire out of motivation for political correctness or diversity mandates keeping him away.

Sorry I won’t be around to take classes with the guy.

I’m not tired. I’m just not getting any work done.

Yeah. Yeah, that’s about right.

Via.

Today I had to head to campus for classes and meetings with various faculty and administrators. I received a new parcel of research work from my mentoring prof and discussed my upcoming trip to Taiwan with the coordinator of the program I’ll be taking part in there.

This evening I haven’t done much of anything productive. I sorted through some pictures of travels during the last few weeks I was in Europe, but nothing’s uploaded yet.

I miss my old life. But I guess that’s par for the course.

I have the day entirely off, and there’s not a damn thing anybody can do about that.

With this wonderful font of free time, I’m going to listen to the new Arsis CD, as well as a lot of old Arsis, and make a post about my thoughts.

Then I’ll probably have a beer and watch a movie.

Then more Arsis.

I repeat: There’s not a damn thing anybody can do about it.

We have a little saying around these parts. It started among the Americans, actually, but it’s since spread to the Germans. The saying is, as you can guess, “six Maßes later.”

If you don’t know what a Maß is, here’s a little help.

The Maß (“measure”) is an old Austro-Bavarian unit of volume, now typically used for measuring beer. Originally it measured 1.069 litres, equivalent to 2.259 US pints, or 1.881 UK pints. Nowadays, a Maß is defined as exactly 1 litre.

OK, so now we’re clear on that much, I hope.

This little ditty of a saying cropped up around the time of Oktoberfest, and has remained in the vernacular due to our would-be-alcoholic-in-any-part-of-the-world-except-Bavaria lifestyle. “Six Maßes later” pretty much means “fucked up beyond all belief,” that the world is in a completely different state, and the laws of the universe now longer necessarily hold true.

If you’ve somehow made a grave mistake, you can invoke this face-saving adage and all is well. I’ve relied upon it several times myself.

Theory in practice

As can be expected, there are some epic tales associated with this expression.

Tale the First: Craig astray

There was a night a while back, let’s say a Friday, when we decided to go drinking. Because a Maß at any beer hall will usually run you about €7, the standard protocol has become to buy a case at a beer store and pregame with that. (A case will be €15-20, for 10L. Hella cheaper.)

We had pregamed. Then, since there were a bunch of visitors in town that weekend, we decided it was an appropriate night for Hofbräuhaus. More Maßes were consumed, and although I didn’t make it to six myself, good ol’ Craig did.

Craig is a rugby player. Big guy. We didn’t realize how drunk he was until he tried to tell us a story on the tram on the way to Hofbräuhaus. Then, once there, he dumped in two more, and that made for six.

As we were all sitting around the table, laughing stupidly, clomping our glasses around and punching one another if any spilled, someone noticed that Craig was missing. We checked the bathrooms and everything, but he was nowhere to be found. We concluded that he’d had enough and had decided to go home, which was reasonable. It wasn’t until late in the afternoon on the following day that we heard the true story.

Poor, muscular, wasted Craig did indeed decide it was time to go home. He was able, even six Maßes later, to compute that in order to get home, he had to take public transportation. Unfortunately he selected the subway instead of the tram, which didn’t make a lot of sense for where we were in the city. He even got on the wrong subway line, one that didn’t lead in the direction of home at all.

As he explained to us, his reasoning went like this: He noticed that the stops on the subway weren’t ones he wanted. So he decided to stick it out until the train went somewhere he needed to be. This wasn’t such a good idea. He ends up at the end of the line, somewhere in south Munich, and has to get off. He starts walking around that area of town, looking for something he recognizes. Craig wasn’t wearing a coat, and as this happened in February, he gradually (once again, Craig is a big guy) grew cold. He decided to start jogging in order to keep warm.

While jogging, he of course covered ground more quickly. This only led to exasperation, as he realized that he had no idea where the hell he was, and couldn’t find a way back home. So he began to run. (See what I mean? This decision doesn’t make too much sense without the six Maßes.) He was drunk, so ended up slipping on wet cobblestone, fell hard, and cut up his hand.

He was still freezing at this point, and now a little sore, so he went up to an apartment building and pressed every single button until someone buzzed him in. He lumbered into the lobby and slept underneath the stairs there.

When he woke up, he was sober enough to find his way back home and relate his adventures to us.

Tale the Second: Conor goes whoomp

OK, so this one time I got utterly plastered and kinda sorta fell asleep in a weird section of a bar and woke up way past closing time and the bar was locked so I couldn’t leave so I just kinda went back to sleep and then when the owner came in at 6am to open up I scared the hell out of him and asked if I could go and he said yeah so I left.

I didn’t think anyone would believe this story so I took a picture of myself shortly after coming to.

Let us never speak of this again.

There is no escape

The motivation to write this post was last night’s shift at the pizza place. The shop owner is a great guy, OK? Just awesome. I really enjoy working for him, because he’s a total bro.

Last night my shift started at 6pm. When I got there, he seemed happy. He seemed like three Maßes worth of happy, and that’s exactly what he was. He called me over to the part of the kitchen where he prepares the pizzas, and he lifts up a tin foil container that had been resting on something. He wanted to show me the six empty beer bottles he’d been concealing.

Everyone in the kitchen knew Ben was buzzed, so we started egging him on. I told my story about the phrase “six Maßes later,” and after much disbelief (“You fucking American, you probably didn’t even taste beer until you were 14, and you’re telling us you can drink six Maßes?”), it was unanimously agreed that Ben had to go for 12 beers. (Bottles are 0.5L.)

Well, let it be known that before closing time, Ben made it to six. And he was gone. The deadline for employee orders is 10:30pm, a half hour before the shop is closed down, so I made sure to ask him to make me a pizza around that time. I had to repeat my order several times, even though it was the same pizza I order every freaking night (Odin Pizza). He said he would try.

I got stuck doing the last run, and when I was back at 11:15pm, the guys in the kitchen were dying with laughter, and asked me to try my pizza. That gustatory-archaeological expedition yielded the following pizza makeup, from bottom layer to top: dough, tomato sauce, cheese, potatoes au gratin, peanut butter, bacon, red onions, broccoli, and peppers.

And you know what? It was fucking great.

Only in Bavaria can one hope to see their boss six liters deep, tripping over invisible things, yet still pressing onward with work. God I love this place.

]]> http://www.conorschaefer.com/blog/index.php/2008/05/10/six-mases-later/feed/ 6 http://www.conorschaefer.com/blog/index.php/2008/04/22/heartwarming-tales-of-pizza-delivery/ http://www.conorschaefer.com/blog/index.php/2008/04/22/heartwarming-tales-of-pizza-delivery/#comments Tue, 22 Apr 2008 21:39:17 +0000 Conor http://www.conorschaefer.com/blog/?p=539 Tonight was another very rainy night at work. This afternoon saw a brief reprieve from the rain, which started up again as soon as I walked out the door. Go figure. The rain was pretty steady all night, but not nearly as heavy as yesterday, so it didn’t bother me much. Plus I really only worked a half-shift, so I can’t complain.

And I really can’t complain about the tips I got tonight.

On my first run, the bill is €18.25 or something. I’m crossing my fingers that the guy will round up to 19, and enjoying pipedreams about receiving a crisp €20 bill and not having to give any change back. When I get there, I state the price, and the nice man at the door goes back inside to confer amongst his entourage. I hear him say, “Does anyone have a 2 euro piece?” I think that’s a bit weird, but maybe he needs another 2 euro piece, so he can pay me €19 and not have to ask for change back.

When he returns, he hands me a €20 bill and a €2 coin, says, “That’s fine the way it is.” I almost fell down the stairs. I thanked him profusely, gathered myself up on the mat outside his door so as not to soak the floorboards in the hallway, and extracted the pizzas from my “specially designed pre-heated Joey’s® bag” with the utmost care. After he had accepted them, I prostrated myself on the hallway floor and began to ululate.

I hope that that last decision does not adversely affect my tips from this goodly gentleman in the future.

Then, on my second run, I get another €3 tip. This time I take all the coins out of my wallet and toss them up in the air, laughing like a child running through a field of strawberries, stomping and picking and gobbling with joyful abandon. Again, I hope he still tips me well next time.

The rest of the night was filled with standard fair 20-30 cent crap, but hey, it was still a red-letter day.

Probably my favorite run all night was this gorgeous girl who was caught completely off guard by my rain-ravished good looks, and even blushed as I said hello. She started fumbling around with her purse, smiling and talking about the conditions of the delivery. “Well, because of the rain, and because it got here so fast, and, just, well, you know, because…” She then hands me a €20, then a 50 cent piece. The bill is €13.20. She tells me how much to give back, and I didn’t hear her, probably because I was staring or drooling or giggling too loudly. I have to ask her to repeat it, which is a tactic I usually reserve for particularly low tippers whom I want to give another chance before I get out the customer voodoo doll and chain it to the front tire of my moped for the trip back to the shop.

She looks a little surprised, but not quite insulted, and says, “Well, I guess, like, 7!” I purse my lips and decide whether to ask her to repeat it again, then figure it’s already an hour into my shift and far past time to break out the doll. So I thank her, hand her the pizza, which I did not shake excessively during extraction, then walk away as she tries to start a conversation.

Pretty girls can’t count.

Videoblogging is supposed to be inane, right?

Back when I was painfully broke (after losing my internship), I remember my favorite thing about this pizza job is that inclement weather would not keep me from working, as was—and of course still is—the case with my tour guide job. Now that I’m back in good economic standing, I view working in the pouring rain less like a privilege.

Damn it, I made a video of myself, and that’s supposed to be the content of this post. Enjoy.

Hooboy.

Turns out that when I’m not working, I can still order pizzas for delivery at 50% off. That’s nice. But now while on shift, instead of a free pizza, it’s 75% off. So I had to pay €1.60 for my pizza tonight, and I was pissed. At the rates Germans tip, that’s like 4 tips piled up together and deducted from my earnings for the evening.

It worked out OK, I guess, because they let me off a half hour early, which meant I got to drive the entire shift—Sundays are by far our busiest days—and then jump ship as soon as the mops and buckets were deployed.

But still, without that free pizza every night, I’m going to be in a bad mood coming off of work.

So I’ve scoped out a couple places I’d really like to work, and narrowed it down to Backstage, the metal club I like to visit, and the beer store on the corner run by the delightful old Turkish lady. I get the sense that the old Turkish lady might like to “keep it in the family” and not hire me, but she freaking loves me, so I have at least a shot.

First things first, I call up Backstage and inquire about the busboy position they have posted on their website. (Excuse the goofy link formatting, it’s how their website is designed. I’d rather see them hiring for a web developer than a busboy, but let’s not get into that.) I mention the position I saw, and the guy on the phone acts a little mystified, and says that I’m welcome to go ahead and submit a formal application with resume per e-mail, highlighting my pertinent prior experience.

That’s right. A formal, written application—for a busboy position. Every time I’ve ever inquired about a similar position in the US, it was always just, “Yeah, sure, whatever, be here Monday around 5.”

I’ll entertain the notion that I could have sounded foreign on the phone, and so the guy wanted to check me out. But far more likely in my mind is that he wanted everything laid out in the clear, so there were no hangups with taxation and hours negotiation and whatnot.

Socialism still wins, even if this is a pain.

Brutal.

I have several large blog posts which I haven’t had the connection to post yet. In a few moments I take off to travel across town (on Thursdays, I have classes on a different campus), where I should have a fantastic connection. If I can manage to show up a little early, then I can get some stuff up before class starts. That’d be great.

There will come a time when I’m posting again.