Projection of K-pop fanhood onto me.

It’s interesting how my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker views my occasional interest in this one mainstream pop artist.

Like twice now, it’s come up, and each time she’s discussed it like I’m in some type of K-pop fandom mode about that star.

Like, the first time this came up, she tried to bond with me and she was like, “Did you hear her music the first time, and know?”.

And, the second time, she made some reference to me being that artist’s “biggest fan.”

It’s like there’s this whole self-realization-through-fandom thing that especially happens in K-pop, and she can’t conceive of liking a popstar in a different and lesser way, where it’s less connected to your sense of self.

An occurrence when I return home…

…after being away for a while to go to a wedding:

My little stove-top espresso maker has some mild mold spots growing on the thick caked-on coffee bits lining the inside of its top, in the top chamber where the espresso gathers so you can pour it out, whenever you make some coffee.

. . .

(I guess that use-wise, making coffee everyday does something with the boiling water or the reintroduction of acid or whatever to kill off any mold spores that might grow in there, but leaving it like that unused for almost two weeks somehow gives mold an opportunity to grow in there, unhindered.)

Rural dating.

My one high school friend who is now a (divorced) (high school math) teacher has been doing the online dating thing, he said, and he was saying how weird a lot of the profiles were.

Like, there’s a ton of stuff on there like “If you don’t support the Second Amendment, swipe left.”

“You should put on yours, ‘If you don’t support the Fourteenth Amendment, swipe left,’” I was like.

He agreed, and he also said that the normal people do seem to end up finding each other, after screening everyone else out.

Also, he began dating this one (half Asian) (half white) woman from a few towns to the south, and when his ten year-old son found out, the first thing he said was, “I didn’t know you liked Asians.”

“Like, where did he get that?!”, my friend asked. “Like, what?”

All of this conversation happened at this one brew-pub that he brought me to, too, where he has a special mug that they brought out for him.

“I hope this isn’t like an Amway thing,” I was like, “Like you get a dollar off every beer I order.”

Wedding crack.

Like a month or two ago when I was at that one wedding where my one (childhood) (white) (bisexual?) friend married her long-term (white) girlfriend, the outdoor ceremony had to be moved into the reception space, because of rain coming through.

“Good thing there’s Plan B,” someone commented.

“WHAT?!,” their one cousin said very loudly. “They don’t need Plan B!”

Addendum.

I really do wonder if that lady and maybe that guy are on the sociopath spectrum.

Like, generally her affect can be off, and sociopaths can have addiction problems due to self-destructive prioritization of short-term pleasure, and the whole “lying to get free stuff” thing with small restaurant items and maybe drinks just seems off, like maybe the alcohol loosened her inhibition and led her dark behavior to come out in ways that she tries to keep in check, usually, for the sake of functioning in society.

I really do wonder... Statistically, I’m bound to come across some sociopaths as customers, while I'm waiting tables.

Two customers who I’ll never serve again…

…at the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now:

A (moved-from-LA) (plumper) (white) nurse who got back into town like a year ago and who used to live here years and years ago and who told me all this when she moved back, in addition to straight-up informing me of the fact that she’ll put in very specific orders, and some (scruffy) (tall) (skinny) (white) guy who I wouldn’t be surprised was into hard drugs, who my (Thai) coworkers said is just the latest in some series of men who she brings by the restaurant, and they come in and they’re a little tipsy, and she says she wants lemon in her water (we don’t have that, and she should know that), and then she says that she wants one thing removed from her curry and then both green beans and peapods added in and they never charge her for both it’s always free, she’s been coming in here for ten years (we don’t carry peapods), and then her and the man are debating drinks and they’re debating whether to buy the bottle or a glass of this one sake and they say some name of what might have been another type of sake, and I bring out the only sake that we sell by both the glass and the bottle, and they drink like a third of that and then the woman asks to see the menu and she opens it up and runs her finger down it and looks at it and then when I’m over later she says that we brought them the wrong bottle, and then she sends the rest back and we bring out something else, and as I find out later from my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker who overhears them, the man keeps calling it wine and she keeps being like, “No, it’s sake,” and then later when it’s time for the bill, I ask my one (older) (Thai) coworker what I should do with that bottle of wine that they drank a lot of and then said was wrong, and she said charge seven dollars (the price of one glass, and actually proportionally decently less than the maybe ten or more dollars that they gladly drank all of and that they should have paid for), and then when I bring the bill over and point that fact out very deferentially, and that we cut the price for them, they both just get this horrible look in their face and the guy jumps up a bit and starts yelling at me and the woman starts saying it’s my mistake, I brought that out, they shouldn’t have to pay for that, even though they had drunk a lot and kept their glasses of that “mistake” sake at the table and polished them off even after they sent the rest of the bottle back, and they were so out-of-control and so angry that I told my (Thai) coworkers I was disappearing, and I just stood in the kitchen dicking around on my phone until they were gone, as my one (older) (Thai) coworker took that sake off the bill and they finished their meal and paid and left.

. . .

(I told both my [Thai] coworkers that although I’d waited on her like two or three times before and everything was fine those times, I will never wait on that table again – they said that’s fine, just let them know if they don’t see her come in if she comes in when I’m working – and I told them that I’m not exactly sure what happened with the one sake they ordered, there *might* have been a mistake on my end, in response to their discussion of ordering the one sake by the glass or by the bottle, but the lady was also blatantly lying earlier that same night to try to get free stuff and I didn’t like it, and so she also might have been pulling something to try to get free alcohol, or maybe she had decided to switch alcohol because she got bored with the one bottle that they had ordered and she wanted to do that for free, all stuff that I wouldn’t put past her now, now that “the mask is off” and she’s shown herself to be a very conniving and manipulative human being.)

. . .

(Probably because of some unrelated matter, the restaurant owners around that time sent out a clarification, that if there’s a mistake and the customer keeps it, they pay for it, but if they send it back, we don’t charge and we replace it, but no keeping it and eating it and then asking for money back or for free stuff.)

A dream from like half a year ago:

Like half a year ago I dreamnt –

I’m in the one (Thai) restaurant where I work now, and I’m up by the front windows and there’s a big round table of customers like right there where other tables usually are, and I’m trying to get all of them who are there seated, and another group of customers is coming in the door and I have to go break off and help them, and it’s getting towards closing time and I’m just trying to get everyone organized and get their orders in, and as I pause while doing something, I look out towards the street in front of the restaurant, and it’s like a darkened streetscape with pedestrian gate-barriers just visible up the street, and draped lighting at the edge of some vague stage-backs towards the other end of the street, and it’s like dusk and like some festival is closing, and I can see like eight or ten people scattered around on the otherwise empty street outside, and their paths are all converging on the restaurant as they amble towards us, since they’re all coming in late for a meal, and like every single one of those customers is (South Asian), as are many of the people already inside…

And then, I wake up.

. . .

(I later told my [Thai] coworkers about that dream and how it was effectively a nightmare where it was just large groups of [South Asian] people all coming in for food right before the restaurant closed, and they all laughed at my how subconscious kicked up that horror-story, and from everything I could tell, they thought it was understandable, though they didn’t explicitly say so.)