A few times now, I've noticed that the one (gay) (Brazilian) (STEM) (post-doc) says "easy peasy."
Like, I was telling him that I would like to learn (Portuguese) and he encouraged me, saying that I should do it and that for me it would be "easy peasy."
He must have come across that slang in (English) once and chosen to adopt it for some reason, not realizing how rarely it's used.
A few weeks ago, I ran into this one (squat) (gay) (STEM) (Brazilian) who once tried the dangly earring look, and I said hello, and then when we talked briefly about how we were doing, I was like, "I miss [first name of the one (gay) (STEM) (post-doc) (Brazilian)]."
"Yeeeessss," he was like, and then, "Did you hear she's a professor now?".
(Gay) (male) (Brazilians) do that a lot with each other in (English), I have noticed, probably carrying over slang in (Portuguese).
As my one former (art school) colleague who wears (women's) clothes once noted to me, it's a lot like how some (gay) (native English speakers) say "girlfriend" to each other a lot.
...when I'm not infectious anymore but am still recovering from a sinus infection and come in since my energy is rebounding and also since it's a Friday and it'd be bad to skip:
1) I ask people if I look like shit, and 1 out of 5 says yes, and they say that my eyes are sunken, but the (redheaded) (big personality) owner of the one (Irish-y) burger joint on the first floor of a historic hotel where I now work says I look fine, when I check in with her before I clock in, after my saying that there's nothing grosser than a sick waiter
With a lot of tables, too, I apologize in advance if I'm spacy, and I tell them that my fall allergies have been hitting me hard, with one table even agreeing, and the guy saying that his have been flaring up the past week because of all the ragweed.
2) Fortunately like two-and-a-half hours in right as my allergy meds start wearing off and my post-nasal drip starts acting up and I begin to cough occasionally, the dinner shift slows down and I get cut, and after tidying up a few loose ends in my section, I get sent to polish silverware in the back with my one (young) (white) (Southern-ish) (gay-ish) coworker with the (80s style), and when we begin talking of allergies, he says that he had strong allergies in his youth, to the point where his lips would get hard.
3) At night I wake up and I think that my coughdrop is gone and I go to the bathroom, but then when I get back in bed and readjust my pillow, I put my hand kind of under it and it brushes across these sticky patches on the sheets there and I move it again and it like kind of bumps into the small hard remnant of my cough drop, like the size of half a pea, just sitting out there on my bed kind of beneath where my pillow was.
1) I buy like 4 pounds of large and well-shaped but not yet ripe tomatoes at a good price ($3 a pound!), but then after paying I stand there and think more and I go and buy 5 pounds more, since they're the type that keeps well on the counter as they ripen and rarely go bad unexpectedly, so why not, when they're right there in front of me.
The (darker-skinned) (moustachioed) (Mexican) grandfather guy who's there selling them with his family tells me that they're good for salsa, too, as I say that I mostly keep them for use raw in salads, but I could also use them in soups.
He also says even if they get a little spot on them, you just cut it off and use the rest, adding that some people throw those out, with a disbelieving shake of his head.
2) The specialty tomato stand has no more watermelons for that day or for the rest of the season, and the (soft-spoken) (taller) (older) (black) man there says that one guy came in early that day and bought up all of their last 6 watermelons, and that was that for the year.
1) The one (tatted) (young) (white) (hipster) hairstylist at the hipster haircut place that I tried out for a haircut was saying that a lot of students have been telling her that they've been having a hard time finding jobs, and then someone in town who did financials or financial work or something for a local consulting firm was telling her that his bosses went all-in on so-called "AI," laid off half their staff, discovered that they actually couldn't do without them, and then couldn't recover and had to shut down entirely, putting like 40 people out of work.
"Forty people lost their jobs because of that," she was like.
"We live in the stupidest reality," I was like.
2) My one (professor) friend who studies (modern) (Czech) literature has been postponing retirement, and on top of that she was recently telling me by text that "I am sick of teaching and getting pretty bad at it."
I pressed on why -- she's always been known as a top-tier teacher -- and she noted as one factor that "people are getting stupider," then specifying when pressed that it's "[o]ver reliance [sic] on technology to think for them" and "AI to answer everything, even basic questions."
She then clarified that "they don't even question" the factuality problem with LLMs, which are like automated bullshitters that spew out common, plausible language patterns without regard for or ability to comprehend any underlying facts.
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!!!
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I would like to note that this is at a supposedly top university.
These kids are f*cked.
...in the one college town that I now live in, as I take the bus into work one late afternoon and pass by various successive stations that I always go by:
1) A (black) guy is lying on the bench with his head on some travel bag in one bus shelter by me, when you get up towards the gas station by a main road.
2) By a main campus bar as we stop there, another (black) guy is just lying shirtless on his back on the busy sidewalk there about ten feet in from the corner, on a stretch of pavement that no-one is walking on since everyone is giving him wide berth and walking quite a ways around him.
3) Farther up by a (late night) (Chinese) restaurant that's just opening up for the day, a (dirty) (dreaded) (sunburnt) (white) (white) guy is drinking out of a paper bag, as he sits on a big planter there.
...at the one (Irish-y) burger joint in the first floor of a historic hotel, where I work now:
1) I'm stuffed up with grass pollen, but I go to take out some buffalo wings and WHOA, the smell coming off them just clears me up.
2) The whiteboard in the "server alley" where section assignments are written as well as notes and lists of stuff that we need to buy has a mention that we're out of HAND PAPER TOWELS, only the way it's written, it looks like HAND PAPI TOWELS, so I take various people over to it and point to it and am like, "Who's papi?"
"That's [first name of the one (young) (taller) (macho) (Guatemalan) cook]," says the one (younger) (plumpish) (hair streak-dyed) (mid-Southern) waitress, and "Here, papi," she's like, making a gesture like she's handing him towels.
3) At drinks after work for the birthday of the one (younger) (plumpish) (hair streak-dyed) (mid-Southern) waitress, our one (younger) (bearded) (vaguely Jewish) (local) coworker has to get going soon because he has to go see his girlfriend, who just got back from study abroad in (Italy), and we ask about that, and it turns out that as part of her graphic design curriculum she was even making advertising for this one surgical history museum there, which she actually found quite stomach-churning, since she had to look at all these old anatomical models and specimens and stuff.
"And that's why why they call it graphic design," I'm like.
