Politics, Retail, An Odyssey

Hello everybody. Trying to get back into the groove of continuously writing even without a proper subject. It's a bit like Seinfeld. It's a show about nothing. Of course, I like to think what I say here is very important in terms of letting the public know what life is like working retail during COVID, as well as providing interesting, informative, and entertaining posts about well, just about anything ranging from books, movies, music, shows, to actual real life.

The summer heat has been a true heat death of the universe. The kind of heat that burns away a planet in a 1960s science fiction novel. Yeah, it's that bad! But Fall is upon us, and my birthday will come up at the end of September, my favorite month. Mostly because its nice and cool in California during that time. 

I had an awkward Lyft ride to work today. This tall blonde white guy, who was the driver, went on and on about how the coronavirus is all a scam, and that the Democrats are using it to control the masses, while they try to turn the country into a socialist state. Of course, I've heard all this drivel before and have to say that most Republicans who believe this type of conspiracies are amongst the most stupid people I've ever encountered, even stupider than peasants who don't know English. At least peasants have enough honor and smarts to know that's not what's happening. 

So what's his problem? He's white, so he's privileged. The fact that he's driving Lyft means he didn't get to where he wanted to in life, so he takes it out on other people, in this case, Democrats, and you betcha, anybody who's brown. Mindless stupidity. It could be mind-boggling, but it's best to call a pig a pig, an idiot an idiot. Of course, I didn't tell him off, there was hardly any time to discuss politics but the fact that he spewed all that so quickly shows how loyal he is to Trump, the Trump Swamp Republican Party [that sorely needs to be drained], and the fuck you, I got mine mentality of older white Republican men. It truly was a spectacle. Which leads me to say that I'm really tired of the Republican rhetoric being spewed by the masses right now. At best its a joke, albeit not a funny one. At worst, it's the destruction of American democracy, integrity, and human decency. I'm not even a real Democrat but I know right from wrong. So yeah, that was a fucked way to start my workday. 

Work has been stressful. Despite the raging pandemic, my store will be going back to normal hours starting tomorrow; 5am to 1am, every day except for certain holidays. The employees are all exhausted. The customers have become much more irate and have forgotten how to treat retail workers with respect. At the beginning of COVID retail workers were like gods, like nurses, the essential workers. At this current juncture, it seems most of the customers don't give a shit about the fact that retail workers are possibly exposing their bodies to COVID every single day. There's no real good way to deal with it; you go in, do your work, and go home. At some point, you realize that the people are what they are; essentially gray blobs but there's always a few good ones. About 90% of the customers that come in treat you like human garbage. And then there's about 10% that treat you really great. It's a low bar over there. At some point, you have to learn to let go of all of your emotions and "not give a shit," because otherwise, the overwhelming amount of disrespect will most certainly cramp your style. The 'lose your emotion,' route is where most of my coworkers go. I can't say I blame them. Like the customers, none of us employees are perfect, but of course, some are better than others, have better personalities, and have better talents for working with people and whatnot. At the end of the day, a job is a job and if we didn't do it somebody else would.

Lastly, in more enlightening news, I took a break from Don Quixote and started reading An Odyssey. It's part memoir, part scholarly classics and philosophy. This classics professor named David Mendelsohn wrote the book. He goes into great detail explaining the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Aeneid but focuses primarily on the Odyssey throughout. He relates the journey in the story to his own life, particularly his relationship with his father. Here's the thing though; he is a gay man who has a female partner that he had kids with, and his father is a grumpy sort of fellow, a stiff mathematician that never showed his family much affection except for certain key moments in their lives. I'm in the middle of the book now and plan to finish it soon. 

One of the big points of the book is that if you're going in circles all the time you will always be traveling but never get to your destination. That's what life is like right now under quarantine. It's neverending. Infinite. Kind of like how the first half of the Odyssey feels a lot longer than the second half.  

The fact that Mendelsohn chooses to focus on his conventional father and his relationship to him rather than his own relationship to his own children, or even to other male friends, or even female friends like his partner is a sore oversight on the writer. However, his insight into the classics is downright remarkable, and if you read this book, you will have a better understanding of the classics, and be able to appreciate them more in a scholarly and emotive way. It's downright terrific. Not only that, but the writing style is personable. It's a lot like Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, a flowing easy to read style that establishes a strong father-son relationship but requires the reader to think thoroughly about what is being read. Insight and enlightenment ensue. I definitely recommend this book to anyone who's into the classics or wants to get into the classics. If you ever read the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Aeneid, reading this will make you appreciate those books a lot more. And then you'll go back and reread them with a lot more wisdom and insight.    

Keep on keepin' on, as they say. As the Dead sing, "What a long, strange trip it's been."