RE: Post July 4th

 

Good evening, denizens of the internet. It's been a long time since I've written any blogs, and it's good to be online tonight at 2 in the morning, jotting down thoughts and ideas. 

    First, post July 4th, I can't help to have the blues. Yes, life is good, as long as you don't weaken, but looking at everything in terms of our government, our environmental challenges with global warming, job security, and even just basic life's necessities like rent, food, and gas, its like Americans have really been pushed to the farthest limits. The War with Iran seems to be winding down and there's security and so called peace talks but nobody really knows what's going on for sure with this current second Trump administration. Trump has become the ultimate right-winger's dictator. 

    Everyday, there's some new scandal involving Trump, what he's doing, this and that, and almost every other day you see it on the news TV or even news online headline readings, and you just know that any one single incident of these are grounds for removal of the Presidency, termination of the Presidency from him, and impeachment. The fact that nothing happens and he walks away unscathed is a stain upon the US Constitution, which is not being upheld by this current administration. 

    But the main problem I have with Trump is that he's become a fascist demagogue controlling a vast amount of the US population through Fox News, social media, cable news media, and a vast array of extreme right wing MAGA republicans, who seem to not only be extreme right wingers that want a fascist dictator strongman, but who may unknowingly and begrudgingly be doing harm to the US constitution, government, and even ethics itself. 

    Think of all the right wing MAGA idiots out there, some of them I've physically encountered myself in the workplace, on social media, and various personal associates of mine. Most of these people aren't complete haters, they love America, some of them are racists and nationalistic, but you'll find that among the extreme right wing in any country. A lot of the MAGA crowd people are simply not guided by the facts, reason, evidence, and proof. 

    Instead, you'll find that the MAGA population have a limited worldview, they all watch from the same news media sources, they don't read books unless its some sort of Ayn Rand. Once you get to know them individually you find that some of them have some sort of vendetta against certain things of the world: they hate immigrants even if they are immigrants themselves, they have low information tendences, they watch Fox News and listen to right wing podcasts, and almost all of the information they get from these sources are all very much low information things. For example, a right wing podcast would talk about something Biden or the Democrats did a few years ago and say what a controversy it was, and that it went unreported. I see that type of thing from the MAGAverse all the time. It's a cheap, crappy tactic. 

    So, forgive me if I'm watching England destroy Mexico during the World Cup 2026, and right after the Fourth of July, forgive me if I feel that a sense of right wing extremism of imperialism has taken over the day. Those weird Ayn Rand kids from the early 2000s I used to disagree with in history class are loving the Trump era. But I think for those of us who know better, who had to work harder, who had to learn much more, and struggle and persevere more, those people, those are the people know that something is not right. But hey, that's not to say that you can't have an easy life and still be cognizant enough to know that this second Trump administration is hastening the destruction of the American experiment. 

      Okay, so I'm kind of rambling a lot about Trump tonight. But even bigger than Trump himself is the cult of personality that surrounds him. Isn't it a little strange that people who like Trump seem to love everything about him and his close government officials praise him like a lapdog? To quote Adam Schiff, here is a guy who's using the highest office of the land for his own, private, personal, political gain. That being said, I worry about the future of this nation, if it will really still stay a nation in the same characteristic sense that it always has been, but for those who know, we know that the American experiment was never supposed to include everyone, all the time, and allow everyone the right to vote. So there's a bit of a sour taste to this year's Fourth of July. Consequently, I spent the Fourth just chilling by myself, reading Kafka's first unfinished novel entitled Amerika [with a k, ironically], and its funny, because I find myself feeling like the young German immigrant who just freshly arrived in America, because I find that my country, this modern America, is almost alien to me, and a lot of MAGAverse people probably wouldn't want to allow me to be in it and living a good life while they are struggling. 

    That's a lot to unpack there. So yeah, I've been bummed out with this Fourth of July. I've been trying to put more of my focus into my reading, continuing to read the western canon as well as history, philosophy, artbooks, and books on culture and ideas. I've found that with this job having less hours, it's given me a lot more time to work on my personal pursuits like reading, music, gaming, walking, and listening to music for relaxation. I've found with this job budgeting is a lot harder, but who knows, perhaps this is good for me, having less money to spend and go crazy going out all the time with. Next time you see someone giving cash to homeless person, stop them and say, 'Don't delay the revolution!" 

    Lastly, with all seriousness, I think the comedown on AI is coming because now we're at the point where most Americans are realizing that although the stock market is focused in on AI, the truth is that AI wasn't really what it was supposed to be. It's rather a lackluster tool to generate ideas based on words, most are our advanced AI are chatbots, regurgitated language and ideas from the internet, or who knows from. AI video ended up being a bust, and AI generated video content isn't that fun, creative, or exciting. AI chatbots tend to be useful only for specific things but not things that most average people need them for. For me personally, I've found a lot of creativity and utility in using AI for images and I've sort of gotten a thrill out of doing that since the beginning of AI image generation, but in terms of actually doing anything serious with AI or AI actually becoming a mainstay in peoples' lives, or even buying a CHATgpt subscription? Forget about it. More and more Americans are realizing that if you couldn't do it without AI, having the AI won't really change much for you, in a sense, the AI is overhyped, overplayed, and its so 2000-and late, as the Black Eyed Peas song goes. 

    If you read through this, you're probably pretty smart and a bit of a reader. How does it feel to be smart and read things? Keep playing on the A Team, folks. Thanks for reading. Below are several of the AI images that I've had a lot of fun creating in terms of the word descriptions used to create them, a lot of my prompts are sometimes tons of paragraphs long, much like this sort of spontaneous dialogue online here. Watch this space.

Holidays, End of 2025

Good evening, ladies and gents. I haven't written in a long time so I decided to take some time tonight to jot down some of my thoughts, ideas, activities on everything up to this moment in time-let's say the Holidays and the End of 2025. 

First, I'm glad 2025 is coming to a close. It's been rough for me, and more importantly, for America, and the world, as President Trump is pretty much taking an axe to The Constitution, the Government, and Our Way of Life [in terms of affordability and health insurance/jobs]. I had a bad year, came out of a twelve-year job unemployed for some months, and luckily I was able to land something in the same year because for a while I wasn't sure where I was going to get a job, cash, or even a good hot meal that wasn't ramen with hot dogs. 

And here's the thing, there are many more Americans that were dealt much worse than what I went through. Yeah, I lost my job and had no income for a while, but there are others with families who lost their homes, their jobs, their cars, had to live in shelters or their cars [or warehouses], and are still unable to get into a job. Also, consider the number of people who lost their homes in the Palisades Fire [here in CA]. So yeah, it hasn't been a cakewalk for pretty much every American citizen this year. I know for me personally, this has been the hardest year of my existence out here in California. 

I know for myself personally, I've had to go into hibernation mode and not really go out to too many places or spend too much cash. I only really go to restaurants when I'm spending cash. I haven't been out to the bar or a concert for a year straight. It's a bit like covid 2.0. My new job is okay but they only have limited hours but the volume of work is vast and unwieldy for anyone working there. The work itself isn't hard but the volume is difficult to deal with. This job has drastically changed from the summer up to now, vast changes that have made the work much harder, but I've been hammering through with it, because I know that there aren't really too many other jobs available at this time, and maybe not for months, if not years, especially with this current Administration.

As a result, going into 2026, it doesn't exactly feel great, for me personally, and for all of us Americans. I spent the entire year trying to catch up in terms of my finances and now I'm just barely catching up. And like I said, I think its worse for other Americans with more assets who have families, cars, houses, rent, upkeep, etc. The holidays didn't feel festive this year. My family didn't do gifts at all this year but that's not why it wasn't festive. It wasn't festive because everything has become  much more difficult and we notice it much more often nowadays, everything is out of control in terms of affordability, and things like health insurance might be impossible to get without getting it at a good company job. Like I said, its good to say goodbye to 2025, it was a bad year for our country, for us as Americans, and the word affordability is not a hoax. 

Second, I've been trying to wholly inrich my personal life with lots of literature because otherwise, what's a boy to do? I've been reading a lot and listening to a lot of music-mostly jazz livestreams from a nyc jazz club and a bit of classical like Mozart arias and Bach. I tend to think that without the reading and music my life wouldn't be quite so fun and engrossing. I read 49 books this year, the last book being Charles Dickens, a title called Hard Times, about people living in a lumber mill town. It's dark and gritty but doesn't quite have the strong influential characteristic Dickens voice of say A Tale of Two Cities or David Copperfield, yet it was great. This is an important part. Even when I was at my darkest points this year with little cash, I was still reading, still listening to music, still practicing music, still going to the library. I think that's what kept me resilient, even after going through one of the harder darker chapters of my life out here in California. At one point when it seemed like I wasn't going to find work, I thought about leaving California and moving back to the Midwest, where I'm originally from. But theoretically, it would be difficult to find a job there too, as its a much smaller pool with a lot less resources. You can't really win in terms of the job market right now. And what's crazy is that lots of people I know personally are struggling with work-getting fired, getting laid off, not able to get unemployment, struggling to find another job, forced to work a job that they're overqualified for just to pay rent, etc. The struggle is real right now folks. 

Third, here's a Christmas Eve story for you. I was working my new thrift shop job on Christmas Eve and there was this homeless lady yelling in the front patio area to the side of the front door of our place. A guy was riding his bike past her and she ran and threw him off the bike. He may or may not have been hurt, I didn't really see the full impact of the fall from the cashier stand. 

But he jumped on the homeless women, and beat the crap out of her with his fists pretty hard. He got in maybe 6-7 hard swings on her face, even pushing her down on top of a car while swinging at her. A man from inside my work ran outside and got between them to break up the brawl. The homeless lady sort of came to her senses after that. But Jesus Almighty, what possessed her to tackle a man off his bike? 

I don't condone the man's behavior but you have to admit, if some random lady threw you off your bike, and you were injured, you would probably want to take a few punches to her face, like he did. It was a pretty crazy incident. My co-worker called the cops but they didn't show up. The lady chilled outside for a long time and came inside the store, and just looked around for a bit, bought some clothing, and left. 

I tell this story online as a warning to people who work in stores and retail. At my place I was the only one there after a bit so there's not much I could do. Sometimes when you're dealing with these types of issues you don't want to get involved, especially if you're alone, but sometimes you're going to have to develop psychological tactics in order to deal with this sort of stuff. So when the lady came in I acknowledged her and made her feel welcome but also made her aware that I was there kind of watching. So yeah, that was my Christmas Eve...lol. 

Lastly, I think more and more, I'm beginning to realize that most of the content online in terms of social media, news media, even information from real friends on social media and irl, most information from people you know from your past, now, online, or irl [in real life], I'm beginning to notice that a lot of it is negative based doomer-maxxing sort of content/information. For example, yesterday, I was at the library reading the news and after maybe an hour of reading it, I just felt sick to my stomach, like it was just such awful information to absorb and take in, albeit it may have been important information like about how we were going to rain this week and stuff, although that was one of the less disturbing news even though it sometimes brings mudslides and floods. 

For example, just think about the people you know, knew, work with now/past, family, friends, co-workers, management, a lot of them are telling you some really bad stuff. For example, this might not be the best example, but I remember there were a few girls I was sort of infatuated with even though they didn't really have such nice or great personalities, but I just liked them, and I noticed in a lot of long conversations irl or online, they would often say some messed up stuff to me about myself, my personality, or how I'm too-this or too-that or that's why people don't like me, some kind of messed up doomer-maxxing type stuff. 

This was like a few girls I was in talking stages with. And then I thought maybe I'm the problem? Until I realized that wasn't actually the case, that in actuality everyone's different, and everyone's capable of being an asshole, even when you think they're a pretty girl and should have a nice perky personality. It took me a bit to really understand that. Even girls can be assholes too. I usually prefer to talk to girls and women. Hard lesson on that one, lol. 

Another example of this kind of bad stuff you hear from others is from your management at work. Hardly ever does the Manager or Boss tell you you're doing good, keep it up, and keep bringing the A-Game. Instead, you hear them nagging you, saying you're not doing this, you're not doing that, etc. They're telling you to do it their way and they're changing it all the time and then they're getting mad that you're not getting it, even though they keep changing everything. Another example is family. Family will always be there to tell you you aren't doing enough, you're not good enough, you should do this or you should do that, and then when you try something new they'll tell you, 'you can't be that.' 

In conclusion, I guess the reasons why I'm going into this sort doomer-maxxing type stuff topic is because I notice that this current paradigm of human history is mostly just that. As we go into 2026, you'll begin to realize that genuine people who are good, happy, and have the capacity for happiness have become fewer and fewer in number and you don't really see them in the big crowds or the club or the bar anymore. Maybe you'll only see them online in a post here and there. 

I feel like something has changed. And maybe its not, maybe its not even them, but perhaps just our society as a whole has sort of gone down the drain? You don't wanna go around blaming people even if they are unhappy saps or a-holes or lack a good personality, but after a certain while, if you're one of the good ones, then you're going to have to realize that you and them won't be compatible for long. 

This is a hard lesson for the die-hard good people out there, you know if you know. That girl you liked that called you out numerous times, yeah she's a rotten apple lol. That co-worker that you get along with but who complains to you 24/7, yeah you probably aren't good with that person in the long run. That management that ratted you out and got you fired, yeah there's a special place in hell for that guy. LOL, you get the picture. In a Matrix where everyone is doomer-maaxing/scrolling and complaining about every element of their life, be the child who has his own. 

If you don't hear back from me soon, happy new year! 

November Thoughts

Good day early morning readers. 

Here I'd like to jot down some ideas that I've been thinking about lately or within the last time of writing. First, is it just me or has American society become and/or has always been like a pay-to-play subscription? Hear me out. You have to pay for rent to live in a place if you don't own it, you have to pay for food, you have to pay to go to work if you drive there in your car or even take the bus, you have to pay to go out to bars/clubs if you want easy cheap entertainment, and if you're a homebody you will most likely spend money on streaming services, movies, and/or video game computers and/or systems. So where exactly is America, home of the Brave, right now?

I would say not in good place. Think about everyone you have ever interacted with on a personal level, how are they really doing? Would they be mad to hear that you're doing better than them? In this sort of climate, it's hard to even define what a better life would even be. For me a better life would be playing music in bars, making money off it, and not working a day job. Or perhaps becoming a day writer and somehow writing novels that somehow sell millions of copies. Or even running a small record shop in China or Japan, being the only black guy in a small area. Or, this would ironically be the easiest one, to marry a wealthy girl and still pursue all these other things with her. 

But it seems most people I know or have interacted with on a personal basis are not doing good. Neither am I really. I'm living but I'm not thriving. At this middle age of life, I should be doing a lot more and thriving. Oftentimes, we know what we should be doing but we keep getting distracted in life by various things, people, work, family, and friends that we forget the reasons why we are living and what we should be doing and we're not pursuing our true goals. It's like going to a job, it's good because it provides you money in order to pay rent and buy food but overall, a job isn't going to make you reach your goals faster, in fact, its going to be a hindrance to it. For me, working jobs has slowed down my growth and lowered my ability to be creative and think outside the box. Working, ironically, has become a hindrance to me.

It seems the more people you know now and the more people you knew in the past, the more you know about people, their lives, and their goals, and how and if they go about achieving it. Some people inspire you and you can grow with their help, but only for a little while. Other people are sinking more and more into the abyss, even girls you really like. It's hard to figure out where you stand and everyday is a struggle in order to figure out who you truly are. 

It's hard to figure out if anyone is even real or authentic anymore these days, online especially, but even people you know personally and see day to day, a lot of them are living a lie. I've had a few strange off occurrences that make me truly believe than even some of the people around you who you think are really good people are actually working towards and/or trying to hurt you, defame you, or ruin you behind your back. This is kind of dark but last year I was laid off from my job and when I called the work union about it I told them my situation and they told me that so-and-so, a female manager I worked for six years before this incident, had called them and said something to them about my case, even though she wasn't there, and there's no telling what she might have said, it could've been really negative, thus encouraging them to get rid of me. I only say that because when I asked what she said about me, they said some negative things about it. 

There's a darkside to the soft underbelly of Los Angeles. Like sometimes, people from your past, like past jobs or old friends and acquaintances will want to keep tabs on you but not for good reason. They'll ask you questions about what you're doing, what job you're doing now, and that you should be doing this and that instead, and this and that. And you're just wondering, why does this person want to know all this stuff about me? And it makes you wonder who they're reporting the information to. There's this funny black youtuber I've watched and as he says, "We are trying living in the worst times of history, people showing their horns, its like you're truly alone."

I've seen the darkside of the Los Angeles valley over my entire tenure out here, although technically I'm just visiting from the Midwest. I will probably leave when the time is right. But back to the darkside. I was a part of a small friends group where the leader of the pack, my friend, was sort of going off the rails. He lost his girlfriend, was about to lose his apartment, and pack everything up to leave to go live in a different city, kind of far away. He was doing coke and lsd and weed/beer and just in general very scatterbrained, paranoid, and crazy. I mentioned this to other friends of the group and they told him and he instantly came at me hard and said we can't be friends anymore. This is a guy I was friends with for like ten years. All the guys in the group were friends for at least ten years and when he broke the friendship with me, he must've told them to stop talking to me too, because after that none of them ever responded to my messages and calls, except for one guy in the group. Looking back on it, I think I did a good job warning the other guys that he was on a crazy binge and that they should be weary. If I was a spiritual person, I would say that he was a sort of demon, or possessed. Ironically, I was sort of glad to be rid of him, because being around someone like that isn't fun because they're always only seeing the negativity of life and making you see through their demon-infused lenses. 

I'll leave you with another weary tale. I was at work at this clothing shop gig and this guy called out to me in the storeroom that somebody had taken down the clothes off a manakin [it might've been him]. The guy manakin has like a little junk pouch, so I had to put some pants on it to cover it up. The guy took a picture of the naked manakin and he said, "I'm going to send this to corporate." I said, "Okay," calling his bluff. Then I took some pants and put it on the manakin and he took another picture of me doing that and said "look at this picture, I'll use it to blackmail you," I called his bluff again and just said, "Okay," nonchalantly. Then he proceeded to tell me about how he wanted an item off a manakin and an employee told them they couldn't have it until the manager takes it down at the end of the month. And how he had to go through hoops and make a lot of phone calls to get the clothing off the manakin. Okay, so you get where I'm going with this story. This is a possibly psychotic individual, maybe he's even under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol, because usually people don't get to this level of pettiness without being altered by substances. 

Why am I writing about all this? It's mostly a cautionary tale. Not everything is a coincidence. And believe it or not, there are people who are out to get you. I'm not afraid to leave my stoop or anything but I do realize that most of the people in my inner circle that I was actively engaging with and talking to, hanging out with, and meeting with at bars/clubs were in fact bad actors. They might not have been straight up demons [demons are mostly people who don't know you personally] but they had bad intentions, and being around them so often dimmed my light. Not that I'm a saint either, but generally I have a much better more positive attitude than everybody I've ever met. It's nothing special, it's innate. 

Lastly, I guess I write this to say, yeah, we're in dark times. Remain in light. 

Christmas 2022

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, 

Merry Christmas! This year has been busy on the job but I've surprisingly been able to make time for a lot of reading, practicing different instruments, as well as writing.

Christmas is that special time of year. Why? 

"Christmas is a holiday that is celebrated by many people around the world, and it holds great significance for many people. Here are a few reasons why Christmas is so important:

1. Christmas is a time of love and generosity: Christmas is a time when people come together to celebrate the love and generosity that exists in the world. It is a time to give gifts to loved ones, to spend time with family and friends, and to show appreciation for the people in our lives.

2. Christmas celebrates the birth of Jesus: For many people, Christmas is a time to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, who is considered by Christians to be the son of God. The birth of Jesus is seen as a miraculous event, and the holiday is a way to remember and honor his life and teachings.

3. Christmas brings people together: Christmas is a time when people from all walks of life come together to celebrate. It is a time when people put aside their differences and focus on the things that bring them joy and happiness.

4. Christmas is a time of tradition: Many people have long-standing traditions that they participate in during the holiday season. These traditions help to create a sense of community and bring people together.

Overall, Christmas is a special time of year that is important for many people around the world. It is a time to celebrate love, generosity, and the birth of Jesus, and it is a time to come together and create lasting memories with loved ones." [openchatGPT]

I've been somehow able to have a great time this year despite working nonstop with no vacation. You see, it all starts with the individual. I'm happy despite working all the time because I have the capacity for happiness. I've created time outside of work to create a persona, the persona of an artist, that is what I've done.

I've started doing a lot of AI art, ever since the AI art generators came out two months ago. I've even started using openchatGPT here in this blog post, practicing drums, piano, guitar, singing, writing blogs here and there, as well as reading a lot, the latest edition being historian Will Durant's Volume 2 of his Story of Civilization Series, The Life of Greece. So I seem to be awash in activity, but the activities give me a sense of who I am, and help with my capacity for happiness.

It seems that the older I get the more I realize you can't escape from pain in this world. But you can learn to be resilient and improve your capacity for happiness to live through it. Work seems more vital than ever, especially in California, where every man seems to have to prove his worth by having to earn more and more money, but I've also realized that work is essential to the intellectual artist outsider life as well.

"Work is important for many reasons. It provides individuals with a sense of purpose and meaning, as well as a sense of accomplishment. Work also allows people to contribute to society and make a positive impact on the world. In addition, work provides people with financial stability and the ability to provide for themselves and their families. Finally, work can also be a source of personal growth and development, as it allows individuals to learn new skills, gain experience, and expand their knowledge and understanding of the world." [openchatGPT]

On Christmas Eve I was joking around with a customer and he liked my sense of mirth on the holiday and he tipped me $100, not too shabby! This year the family and I ate lobster at a wonderful Chinese restaurant. If you need me, I'll be practicing drums and piano or reading more of the Will Durant series.

image ai generated

Holiday Retail 2022

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, 

It's been a while since I wrote one of these. Here I'd like to explain to you what it's been like working the retail gig this holiday season. 

First, the work has been intense and nonstop. I've been working 42-48 hour weeks since November and the work isn't letting up even going into this week and Christmas week. The good news is that the pay is decent but it's tough making it through the slog every shift. I've been working five days per week with only two days off since the summer. 

Second, cold/flu and covid season is here again, and with that brings sicknesses, mostly of a respiratory nature. For the first time since covid began in 2020, I finally got a regular cold. It only lasted a day or two but it was setback from my usual day to day routine. I still went to work as I felt well enough, but I probably initially got sick from work, from customers and/or employees. 

Third, my job has become easier but its still grueling. I've sort of graduated from having to do regular checkout scanning large orders. Rather, my management has decided they want me to run self-checkout for my eight hour shifts, as its mostly machine button pressing menu, and the older cashier employees who aren't used to computers don't want to do it at all. So I sort of lucked out. Because the older employees don't want to do it, I end up doing it, and I get to avoid doing all the heavy lifting $400-$600 holiday orders and bagging a million bags. Not too shabby! 

Fourth, the type of employees that get hired and stay on the job has diminished immensely. Right now, they want anyone they can because they need cashiers. So they hire them and immediately promote them to cashier. The problem is that none of them stay. There are two other young people my age, two girls, who are very good cashiers but all of the other young people are baggers or other positions that work menial side jobs in other departments. A lot of them are special needs and the regular ones seem to have a lot of behavioral issues. I've had to learn how to talk to these kids in a certain type of way to get them on my side and help me out. Not ideal to getting the job done everyday! 

Fifth, management seems to be good this year at getting the job done. But they have done a horrible job in encouraging mask wearing so oftentimes the youth get sick easily and spread it around so that's concerning. My main problem with the management is that since day one in 2020 they weren't enforcing mask wearing either by customers or employees. That has been a problem since the early days of covid. The actual boss and co-director never wear masks and have had covid already several times. They probably spread it. One of the sales managers has had covid several times as well. I keep my mask on and keep my distance from all of them for my own safety. They all have failed horribly on this one simple task. 

Lastly, the job has become more machine-like. You really get a sense that you're a cog in the machine in there nowadays. The upper management lack empathy, but you also see it at the lower management level as well as from the customers, that that's expected from customers at this point in the game. You have to really dig deep to see empathy and compassion from others there nowadays, but it is still there in small doses here and there. It's not the worst place in the world, but you can sort of see that one day this entire operation, this job will eventually become obsolete if replaced by machines. The self-checkout tells me that everyday. 

All that being said, my personal life is quite magisterial. I learned how to play piano, sing better, and drums. I can speak Spanish pretty well now, as well as a little French, Italian, German, and even Portuguese. I'm still reading the western canon and loving every minute of it. C'est la vie. 

Happy Holidays!

image ai generated 

Live Jazz Muzak! 12/15/22! Saxophone and drums!

 Good evening, 

Here is today's jam session recorded on 12/15/22, featuring Jason Tomas on alto saxophone and Orlando Figueroa on drums. Usually I play guitar but I decided to switch it up to add some spice to my life. Songs in order are cminor blues improv, blue monk by t.monk, autumn leaves by jerome kern, and Spanish blues improv. Tomas played a Selmer alto saxophone, I played a limited edition pearl snare, kibaga practice pad, and a meinl cymbal with sticks and brushes. 

Recorded on laptop via Facebook then transferred to YouTube 

image ai generated, Replicant 

Jazz Guitar Trio Improv

This was some jazz guitar trio improv with my friends from earlier tonight. Everything we played was straight ahead jazz except this one piece, this one stood out. It has some more classical and rock influences on my guitar parts. 

https://soundcorset.com/r/YlFIOSV3nZ?fbclid=IwAR2wQfW53rEVL4hwi1DXkCfAdsKyX_MByS1G8fJUTfsyuGouxgUC4aZ9EVg

Featuring Orlando Figueroa on guitar, Jason Tomas on alto saxophone, and Feather Robley on drums.

Lebensmitteleinzelhandel

Gute Abend, 

Here I thought I'd share a post about what it's been like working the retail grocery store, this far in the game, two years into covid, after working there for nine years. Buckle up, here we go. 

Okay, so let's start with the good. After busting my ass working hard for nine years, on the ninth year I finally got promoted to full-time status as a full-time cashier. I no longer have to push carts, take out trash, do carryouts, or open the gate for the truck driver. My pay went up slightly but it's really not all that and a bag of chips by any means. 

Now for the bad, get ready for chapter and verse. 

For starters, my management has become more aggressive and intense towards me. One of my managers has formed an active dislike for me and yells at me across the front end to shut up, and threatens me that she will talk to my store director unless I actually do shut up. So that's a new one. The other managers let me do my thing most of the time, one of them actually puts me in charge and he goes on about doing his own thing the entire night. 

Second, my overall eight hour work days have become much more intense. We lost a lot of employees. The ones that get hired quit once they see how hard the work is. Not many of the young bagger kids want to be promoted to cashier because they know dealing with the customers is tricky and difficult especially in combination with dealing with the sales managers, front end manager, co-director, and store director. Consequently, I end up doing a lot more work. 

Most of my shift now includes running seven self-checkout machines by myself for eight hours, usually from three-thirty pm to twelve am, five to six days per week. I get two ten minute breaks and one thirty minute break. The machines are glitchy but I've already figured out some ways to speed up the machines manually if things get too busy. When you're helping one person, another person needs help on another machine, then another, ad infinitum, per eight hours. 

So there's the machine I have to deal with, as well as the customers themselves, as well as the money and cash handling. I've done the work piece meal here and there over the years but I was only part-time and wasn't working many hours. In comparison, I used to work about 28-35 hours per week for many years, and now I'm working 42-48 hours a week, sometimes six days a week. I never thought I would become a shopkeeper. The joke is that I've become petite bourgeois. 

Third, more good. I get to meet many new and different people each day. My money addition and subtraction skills are instant. I can read people now. My customer service skills and dealing with the public has improved. My paychecks are larger. My job has stayed the same but the same old has surprisingly become better. I got a snare drum, cymbal, and two guitars from customers. And not only that, but the other day, a neighbor, who's a customer gave me a ride to guitar center.

There's always two sides to the coin. Retail is very intense and unforgiving, but me, being the person I am, surprisingly I've made it work all these years and I've been at the company since 2013. In 2023 it will be ten years and I'll get a small pension out of it. 

Lastly, there's one critical element that we're missing. Can you be happy doing something like this for employment? 

For me, yes you can. Because, using the free time I have between shifts, I've been able to become a better musician [I now can sing, play bass, piano, and drums], and I've even become an intellectual [I've read the western canon, philosophy, history, and learned languages]. 

But it's still a tough job. In fact, the first five years were brutal and I had to do a lot of life learning to get past those first five years. But now, I'm older, tougher, but yet fundamentally still the nice guy with the gift of gab. 

In terms of covid the stores are doing much better but I'm still wearing a mask for personal safety.

Happy holidays!

image ai generated 

FTO Trio

Gute Abend, 

I got my friend Feather, a death metal drummer to come over and play my snare and cymbal drum with brushes for a jam session. And Jason Tomas, a wonderful, amazing saxophone player played with us, with myself on seven-string guitar. This is the results. 

If you like what you hear here, check out my youtube channel, where you can hear Jason and myself do a lot of straight ahead jazz as a saxophone guitar duet. 

Thank for listening and keep on rocking in the free world. 

[recordings listed in order performed, two improvisations and standards include autumn leaves and blue monk, recorded on android phone with soundcorset app, a free application]

https://soundcorset.com/r/loxu0bkA6x?fbclid=IwAR19ncfwUhAPRHhJhzF5JcXgzhBzFiF0j0CostYR8uDkoASJSLle2B7YeXA [fto trio abend blues]

https://soundcorset.com/r/sTe3vZfK4B?fbclid=IwAR0FlAGsRgq6ZpqK8MDu3yD2aMdj-mJUM7BlMB-efe1QWhj6-HW8hZHxJ2E [fto trio autumn leaves]

https://soundcorset.com/r/8ag85zyfBx?fbclid=IwAR2k7I5_Ps5i6WHw4DcySuFgvXDgCzlA3kJbwlIUmKdYABfOApiLd6Yy9NQ [fto trio blue monk]

https://soundcorset.com/r/82j2b4mJRp?fbclid=IwAR1bMo9lp2VPPyMAjuWl29KtbzLb2pVUPfqBF9OUHw7dpAtrdZ0h0GkwqVQ [fto trio schlaf gut]

https://soundcorset.com/r/CFSBQa8QrM?fbclid=IwAR1LB3ilFAtkYma1p81PJrWA5fYhjhv3h0-rU1AaL39uJhu7AdzjhWite7A [Drum Solo No.13]

image ai generated 

zombie apocalypse virus christmas 2021

Happy holidays, 

The holidays are here again in what I would call Covid 2.0. But I specifically was inspired to write this blog this early afternoon to describe what the working conditions have been like working grocery retail during the holidays at this current point in the pandemic. The pandemic has been going on for two years but for a lot of us, especially those of us working in retail, it seems a lot longer, stretching us workers to the point of exhaustion. Some things have gotten better for retail workers but many things have also gone south as well. Let me explain. 

The main problem we face as retail workers right now is that upper management, lower management, and customers have been giving us a lot of problems with hardly any solutions. For starters, upper management and lower management still have the same high expectations of all the employees as they have always had. The problem? It's just not feasible anymore. 

We can't keep providing the same consistent high performance or level of service because we don't have the personnel to do it or even the time during the shift. We simply don't have enough workers. There you go, if you're reading this management, know that I am right, and that you are wrong, and that your quality of service will never go back to what it once was, say three or more years ago. We simply don't have the staff to provide excellent customer service anymore. There I said it. The truth. 

Second, the customers have become much more unruly, irate, and refuse to wear masks for whatever reasons they want to yell out. Most of them are Trump types, science deniers, vaccine haters, republicans, or just simply think they're too good to wear a mask when they come into our stores. It's become a serious issue because a lot of times management won't confront these people outright. Instead, what we get is a message on the intercom throughout the store, "Please respect the people around you, please wear a mask...please." Most of the time that strategy doesn't pan out. Go figure. 

Hours are good if you're available and have seniority at the company or store that you work at. So in terms of hours and getting paid, we're doing okay, but not great. For a while, in the beginning of the pandemic we were all getting $20 per hour but it only lasted for about five months before pay resumed as normal. Honestly, we're still putting ourselves in harms way in terms of the pandemic, with this new Omicron variant, and our union has been unable to secure more hazard pay. Unfortunately. 

Which puts things in perspective because now we see many new jobs, mostly old jobs that need more workers, and they're paying their new employees $20 per hour plus great benefits. So it goes. 

The great irony about all of this is that my company is a multi million dollar company and my store is a million dollar store. They can afford to pay their employees $20 per hour, have on site security enforcing the mask mandate, to hire more employees so we aren't forced constantly to work with a skeletal crew everyday, and we can afford to give more hours to employees that need them. It isn't all bad, however, some of our customers are great people and have even helped me out in various ways. 

For example, this one customer who owns a guitar store has fixed two of my guitars for free. [hear the guitar here-https://www.facebook.com/orlando.figueroa.3150/videos/607302963652309] How about that? 

All this being said, life is what you make it. Although the job has become more stressful during this holiday season, it's still great to know that life is moving forward as normal as possible, even with the pandemic still raging inside and outside of the store every single day. 

the world keeps spinning round and round 

Thanksgiving Covid 2.0

Whew! Wow! We made it past Thanksgiving! 

Retail work at the grocery job during Thanksgiving Covid 2.0 was intense. Out of all my years at the company since 2013, this was the hardest Thanksgiving that I've ever worked since I started working retail back in 2009 back home. What made it so different from every other year? Not enough staff, not enough baggers, management constantly mismanaging employee breaks, no social distancing, no limit or cap on number of customers or any of the items they buy. In short, it was a circus show. But that's okay, that's life, that's work. But is it though? Is it something we, as workers have to become accustomed to? 

Covid has unquestionably made an eternal impact upon the world of retail grocery. It cannot go back to the way it was before-albeit still poorly mismanaged by upper and lower management, but Covid has unveiled something much more menacing-the dark heart of human nature in the workplace. I can always take time to look at what's truly there but hidden, the dark side of human nature.  

As bad as Covid in the workplace has been for us at my store, what has arguably become much worse is the attitude and mentality of customers, and lower and upper management. I've increasingly seen over these some ten years that they are the ones hurting the employees the most. 

Now that Covid has been raging for two years, the customers at my store have become more unruly than ever. This might be the height of American retail ignorance, the worst I've ever seen. They aren't willing to listen or take other considerations, instead their go to is to become aggressive and/or start yelling like a child when they don't get what they want. 

On the opposite spectrum lower and upper management have become so cold to employees to the point where it's become obvious that they don't give a shit about what's going on, what's really going on behind the scenes. They aren't ignorant, rather they're negligent, unforgiving, and just generally don't care. 

I work for the Local Union 770 and I can tell you this much, our union doesn't do much to help the morale of the average UFCW worker. These employees are left to fend for themselves, fighting for scraps of whatever little hours they can get per week. The sad irony is that in the past these jobs used to count for something because they were reliable and were supported by a much stronger more influential union. What we have today is a shell of that stable job and strong influential union. However, I must admit that I'm pro labor union and pro employees despite what may be written here. 

Going back to this Thanksgiving week. This has been one of the most brutal holiday work experiences in my lifetime. During the first year of Covid it wasn't this bad. Which goes to our original question, how did things deteriorate to this level? The easy quick answer is antipathy, utter lack of care from management, which begs the question, will work become a lesser entity within our lives as Covid progresses through its many stages and mutations? Will work not even matter at some point? Will money become a much more valuable commodity because less people will be working and/or quit working these types of jobs? In the end if everybody stops caring about work, will the quality of work and jobs in the different fields naturally deteriorate to a low base level? 

The value of work and labor is up for grabs. When you see the working conditions at my store you will very easily be able to understand why most of the staff have quit, why they can't get people to stay at the store and continue to work for very long, in essence why they can't pay someone enough to even care about anything that goes on there. They can't pay them enough to even care. 

Which makes it very easy to see why record numbers of Americans quit their jobs in October. In addition, even office workers are getting fed up because under Covid conditions they're expected to be on the clock 24/7, even installing apps on their phones so that their upper management can keep tabs on them and force them to keep undergoing training modules. 

Is this the future of labor in America? If so, America has ultimately failed its citizens and my entire generation. It's no wonder that Americans have become fools, getting wasted on alcohol, drugs, wild parties, hazing, fast cars and fast women, growing fat off the bourgeois comforts of America, not caring about their jobs or quality of work, only to realize that the abyss is staring at them in the morning as they head off to work or clock in at home. 

Live Music Session 11/11/21!

https://www.facebook.com/orlando.figueroa.3150/videos/1062070257878268

This was recorded on November 11, 2021, on my phone. Featuring myself, Orlando Figueroa on guitar and Jason Tomas on alto saxophone. 

We've been practicing together for about a year during the pandemic. We've done a few open mics but mostly we jam and record everything like a jam band. We play standards but also just do jams based on jazz chord changes in a straight ahead context. 

When performing today, I was thinking a lot about filling up the space with lots of strums, and give Jason complete melodic control with his horn. Like a drums/singer sort of combination. 

During a lot of this session I was thinking about playing in terms of a modal sort of style. The straight ahead jazz sound signature. 

I used my Jackson Dinky 6-string with a floyd rose whammy. The tone selector allows a plethora of sound options from thick full bodied tone sound, more typical of a jazz box sound, as well as allowing the other option for more clean bright chord sounds, typical of blues, funk, and rnb. Although I initially bought the guitar to be a heavy rock and roll machine, it's also come to be one of my best guitars for jazz improvisation. 

Gracias por escuchar! 

On the 17th day of Christmas

It's the 17th day of Christmas! Here's a general update. 

The grocery store gig has been good. I'm getting somewhat consistent hours, but could use more. Hours are still mostly cut across the board, so most of my co-workers aren't doing so great financially. One little hiccup from the company, they started sending out checks via mail rather than having the employees [that pick up their checks at the store] pick them up at the store. Naturally, this has sowed discord amongst the employees and a sore blow to their morale, as they aren't getting their checks on time when they want and need them. Companies need to better by their employees. This is such a small change but it's done a lot of damage to the employees.  

In terms of covid, there has been none or not very many cases at the job. In terms of covid safety, surprisingly, we have been very safe. I can't quite explain it other than the fact that the store is so empty when I work [late shifts] that there's hardly any people coming in, making my chances of catching covid from a customer very low. Eso es muy bien! 

This is a super harsh winter in California this year. Surprisingly, flu and influenza is very low this time of year [due to mask wearing, and not breathing in as much cold air, and because people aren't going out as much], but you never know when you can catch a cold or worse, the corona virus. The weather is amazing during the day, about 60 degrees, but at night it goes to about 50. Desert weather.

In terms of gifts, I've already finished all my shopping. This year, because I knew that work hours were low, I made sure to do all my shopping in the first week of December. Cool things I look forward to getting for Christmas: A Japanese dictionary from my friend, a German dictionary from my brother, a steampunk novel from my father, and candy, oh! How I love candy! Ich liebe Süßigkeiten! I am so looking forward to eating candy on Christmas! 

I've been playing a lot of computer games online: Heroes of the Storm, Overwatch, and Team Fortress 2. Mi dia fue maravilosa porque jugue los video juegos en la computadora con mis amigos todos los dias. 

I've become a much better player at all the games. I have three different Heroes of the Storm teams that I play with at different times and on different days depending on who's available at any given time. The main thing I've learned from all this online gaming with voice and headsets is that its not always about winning or playing well, you have to learn how to speak well with your team, and how to boost their morale when their morale is very low, you have to learn how to speak as a leader, and then they will follow your lead. Naturally as the medic in every game, I'm the playmaker. Ich bin der Doktor, Art und Fürsorge.

Lastly, I've been learning languages on the Google Translate app and YouTube, Sugoi kūru! [to learn the accents better through voice actors], going out on long walks, reading lots of books [I just finished Ovid's Metamorphosis, and a book on Buddhism, called The Things Buddha taught], and playing acoustic guitar and electronic keyboard, el teclado y la guitarra, me encanta. 

This Christmas is a real blow to the morale of the American people. Just be happy for what you have, but more importantly than being happy about what you have, make sure that you have deep in your heart, the capacity for happiness. Many a time has gone by when a friend, family member, or casual acquaintance is very upset about whatever is going on in their life, only for me to realize that even if things were going good for this said person, they still would have negative things to say. You must learn to not say negative things around the people you care about. It's not always about being happy, rather, sometimes its the capacity for happiness that must be restored. 

Felicem natalem Christi

On the 9th day of Christmas

The holidays are here. And the time is right to start shopping for Christmas gifts for your friends, family, loved ones, and acquaintances. It goes without saying that this Christmas is going to be a lot different. Hell, even Thanksgiving this year seemed to lose some of its intrinsic holiday value. However, I am firm believer in Christmas and the holidays. It's a happy time, so be happy! Some people have it rough this time of year so remember to be extra kind to everybody you come across. You must never underestimate the power you have in your word with others.  

Work has been slow. Hours have been cut across the board but my hours have been consistent. It's like a ghost town over there at night now. Nights used to be as busy at the day time shifts but now that quarantine and curfew is in effect, there's hardly anybody that comes by at night now. The work has become a lot easier simply because there's nothing to do, because there's no customers to help. This is why management cut hours.

I've been in deep quarantine mode. I play guitar, I play piano, I practice languages, I work, I play pc games, I write, and I read books. It's almost like [gasp!] being an artist/content creator is a full time vocation! [It really is.]  

I've been listening to a lot of the Italian Mozart operas; Cosi Fan Tutte, Don Giovanni, The Marriage of Figaro. I was inspired by this book called Music in the Classical Period, of which I wrote a blog about, which you can read here.

I've been livestreaming my jazz jam sessions with my friend Jason Tomas, a terrific alto saxophone player. Check out our last performance here.

Although it's super difficult to meet new people during covid I've been talking to a lot of new people online, and I've met a very nice girl that I play Heroes of the Storm with. She's a web developer Cali girl, and she also knows Spanish and German. 

I've been teaching myself Spanish and bits of Italian, French, and German through the Google Translate app [to learn the spellings of the words] and YouTube [for the pronunciations and accents]. So far I've been learning for a month and it's unbelievable how much I've learned in such a short amount of time. It's almost like I've become a mini-polyglot already, but of course, to go from beginner to intermediate in Spanish is a lot harder than it seems so I'll stay humble and respect all cultures across the globe. 

Lastly, there's an overreliance on technology especially now in quarantine. I wrote my ideas on the subject. Check out this post entitled Luddites and Technocrats here.

The quarantine makes life simplistic because there's not much to do. Well, that doesn't mean you should sit down and watch Netflix/Hulu all night, or play video games every day of your life, or watch the news 24/7, or watch YouTube all day long, or movies all the time. Too much reliance of these things is bad, and the virtuous man/woman is a moderate man/woman. Remember to rely on the beauty of nature at least a little bit everyday. My closing statement is something similar, realize that the beauty of women is infinite. 

La vie est belle. Pace e benedizioni. Schöne Ferien. Feliz Navidad.  

Retail Versus Corona Holiday Edition 2020

Good evening, 

This is written to all those who may be concerned or simply curious. Since the beginning of the pandemic I've written and recorded on what my life is like, how its changed, and more importantly, I've written about what its like to work retail during the pandemic, at a grocery store. You can find the history written here. This is an updated post to give details about the current state of affairs that is covid versus retail. 

For starters, in the beginning of the pandemic we had employees who singlehandedly cleaned all the carts for customers. As of 11/19, we are no longer doing that. We provide customers with the cleaner spray bottle and paper towels that sit outside at the door, but the idea of every customer touching the spray bottle might turn some people off and altogether disregard cleaning their carts. 

Second, the most important item on detail, is the fact that our store director/manager is no longer providing free masks for the employees and especially not for customers who come into the store without a mask for unknown reasons. The fact that they stopped giving out free masks was a deep low blow to the community of workers who have worked so hard during these tumultuous times.

Third, the company has provided bonus relief/holiday bonus of $100 to every employee. Yeah, that's not a bad idea. It really boosts the morale of your workforce with a such a good play like this. However, the fact that hours have been consistently cut means that the workers are losing so much money that a $100 bonus might not be that much of a boost. 

Fourth, the online ordering department has been a success. The workers know the job well and have improved a lot. Online ordering has become a big part of the store and it's only going to get stronger. 

Lastly, I want to talk about the retail worker, his or her spirit, his or her morale, his or her fears, anger, resentment, and downright sheer recklessness of working in a place where you could catch the virus around big crowded people huddled in tiny checkout aisles. 

The average grocery store worker is shell-shocked right now. We don't know what's going to happen and every day that we go to work is another day where it's easier to catch the virus. Their hours have been cut but they're still expected to perform excellent customer service skills, despite management doing things like no longer offering daily free masks for employees. The morale has never been lower. Ever. Keep in mind that the young people who work at grocery stores already have low morale because they're typically not happy at or on the job, and display that sort of attitude often with coworkers. This has been the hardest year at the company for them, and things will only get worse as the winter progresses. 

It's easier said than done to just relax and be happy. Go do zen meditation. Well, these people can't relax because they're working their ass off to pay rent, bills, food for their kids, gas in their cars, medical insurance and billing, and they need extra hours to pay for it all but aren't getting it, because business is slow, and they're not needed, and upper management wants to save money on hours. 

The next time you buy your food at the market really thank your cashier, look them in the eyes and really mean it. It goes a long way. It isn't just doctors and nurses who are essential workers, its regular people like us too.  

el trabajador minorista se niega a morir