Top Ten Signs you might be my customer

10: This dude right here is one of the normal ones.

9. You arrived by bus, not because you are an urban commuter or a high school student at a local stop. But because you own the bus.

8. Because you also live in said bus, the store is literally right outside your front door.

7. You remove your shoes prior to entering the premises.

6. Nobody notices when your "therapy dog" takes items of the shelves with it's mouth.

5. The cashier believes that your filthy dog is actually some how therapeutic.

4. There is a man outside who thinks you're stealing his thoughts.

3. I say the phrase "uptight hippy customer" and you totally know what I'm talking about.

2. You, or somebody nearby desperately needs a "bucha fix"

1. You chat with the cashier about the dangers of vast monolithic government influence and control while purchasing your organic,natural, vegan dark chocolate peanut butter cups with food stamps.

What's That Outside my Window?

What did I see passing by my deli window today. Why, nothing but a regular pick-up truck...A regular pick-up bearing a piano with a STUFFED COYOTE ON TOP OF IT!

Anybody wanna try and top that?

A "Quiet" Week

It's weird, nothing crazy unusual has occurred in the store's vicinity this week. Or, perhaps it has and I just simply don't notice anymore. Maybe I'm becoming like that frog in the pot of water; as the temperature increases I fail to notice the subtle shifts of heat that will eventually destroy me.

I'm not surprised that it has been a bit on the quieter side because it was the end of the month, and since a lot of our customers are on Food Stamps they seem to mysteriously disappear as the month ends. So I tend to wander around the store a bit, I joke with J-Dunks about the latest drama in the deli while he tries to convince me that the wheat grass really is greener on his side of the store (a point with which I cannot disagree), and that I should come over and work with him in produce. I'd like that. But he doesn't have as many fun conversation as I do.

Therein lies what I love about where I work. There is a real, and vital exchange across these vast social expanses whenever I talk with my co-workers or customers, it's awesome. I can't tell you that I have successfully converted all, or even any hippies over to my religiously traditional, and socially conservative lifestyle, but thanks to me....they might hate the rest of you a little bit less. It's a great privilege. I also love how the opposition of ideas has had a tendency to challenge areas of biased or untruth in my perspective. But really, I kind of enjoy the sort of mild shock that washes over people when they find out that:

A. I did in fact vote for Mitt Romney over Obama. (mind you, I don't like either of them....I just dislike Romney less, and while it maddens me that politics has come to that...c'est la vie)

and
B. I'm a Biblically-conservative traditional Protestant. One that listens to a lot of the same music that many of them all do, and occasionally crosses the  "work-place appropriate joke" line....to my embarrassment that actually means that every once in a while a joke I make is appropriate. I've seen a lot of movies that they have enjoyed, and can articulate my background somewhat well.

I can tell with some, that it's been unnerving to discover these things about me. Unnerving for two reasons I think. The first is that people are terrified of offending each other, so they worry that their demeanor or language has been offensive. Sometimes it has, but I don't take myself so seriously that I cannot talk with person who uses bad language. The second, and I think this is subtly more common, I stand for a lot of things that the people around me disagree with, sometimes with great vitriol, and yet they seem to enjoy my company and outlook.

It's a pretty cool thing to be able to "humanize" the enemy for people. There seems to be more credence seen in my beliefs now that I am able to chill out and let relationships happen before I point to the line drawn in the sand, and while I have actually had to point at it most people haven't treated me any differently for doing so. I know that, in conservative circles, we are being made to belief that the social sky is falling in on us. We will soon be crushed under a black miasma of liberal ethics, government entitlement programs, and the Oprah Winfrey channel, but I don't get the feeling that it's as bad as all that. Perhaps, and this might be shocking so make sure you are comfortably seated, some of their social agendas are good and helpful.

Still in your chair?

Perhaps we've been wrong in how we go about our perspective.

Perhaps some of them are also Godly, and reverent.

So, what's all this about? It's about disagreement, wonderful, lively, humorous, good-natured, and humble disagreement. Life is so hard if you always have to be right, so find somebody who disagrees with you, and become their friend.

Culinary Racism!

Everybody stop eating everything! Right now, seriously...get up from your computer go to your refrigerator and throw away anything that isn't corn, meat, beans, or potatoes. We are all in grave social danger of CULTURAL APPROPRIATION!! That process whereby one culture adopts the practice of another for aesthetic purposes. Never mind the fact that America is a wonderful hodge-podge of Northern European culture. Never mind the fact that we have a cultural open Nation state. I think back on the past month and a half with terror as I recall the St. Patrick's day feast my American-Dutch-Jewish Nuclear family consumed on that fateful day of March. Even more inappropriate is the religious appropriation committed as my Reformed Protestant family consumed a meal that venerates and Irish Catholic priest. We should have minded our own business, eating matzo soup with schnitzel, and challah bread on the side. Dutch cookery is out because cultural appropriation is kind of a general expression of Dutch culture. If you need convincing of this, try to take coffee out of an old Dutch man's hand in the morning.

Okay Matticus, what are you on about with this whole cultural appropriation thing? I'm bring it up in jest because we now have a "PC" term for what most folks would call sociology, and thank God it's another thing white people everywhere can feel bad about! Here's a definition of appropriation from a wikipedia article:
 Cultural Appropriation is the adoption of certain cultural practices by a different cultural group

I recently made an awesome soup at the deli. It had a ton of veggies from our awesome produce selection, and was seasoned with a combination of eastern European, Spanish, and French flavors. What else could one title such a dish except "Gypsy Stew" (which was apparently racist). I could have called the soup "Migrant European stew"...but aside from taking up too much room on our board, that name just seems kind of worse. So...I'm apparently a food racist somehow. 

I wonder if I can still make French Onion Soup?
 Do I have to stop eating at Mexican places, because I don't think life without sopes con lengua is worth it. 

Oatmeal.....oatmeal is now the only politically correct food anybody can eat without being racist. Oatmeal, without sugar....or raisins...or any spices. No, put the salt shaker down. That brown sugar is a south Atlantic island thing....how dare you!

I make fun because thoughts have major consequences in politcal policy, and social circles. The only rational approach to reverse a diverse culture like America would essentially result in us putting a bunch of people (including ourselves) onto a boat to send us all back from whence we came. My wife would go to Israel, I to southern Holland...my buddy Andy would return to Ireland, and you would have to go back to wherever it was you came from. Or perhaps we can grid the US out according to ethnic groups and original settlements. Sucks for you New York, the Dutch are taking it back! We can call them Racial Zoning Districts, and prevent districts from marrying outside of their zones to rule out the risk of culturally appropriated children. Ridiculous you say? I agree. It is ridiculous to think that two cultures could possibly come into contact with each other without learning something, more than ridiculous it's actually more of a racist thing to do than appropriated what one can. I can't help but wonder, if a suit is filed by a minority group regarding cultural appropriation in English....does it get thrown out by the courts because of the ironic hypocrisy?

Joe to the Rescue

Every so often our wonderful pirate neighborhood experiences an influx of new folks just passing through to somewhere else. I kind of want to set up some sort of focused time-lapse photography project because I honestly don't know where these people come from.

  Anywho, most of these new-comers wind up in our neighborhood because the train tracks run straight through the middle of it. I'm assuming that it's a weather thing, you know; people train hopping more when the weather is a little more amicable to being outside, or riding in a drafty boxcar. I'm getting off track though. The biggest problem with this is that said newcomers don't understand some of the unsaid codes of the neighborhood. I wouldn't go so far to say that we welcome transients, but more that we tolerate their existence with a sort of mild disregard. Thus we meet "Beanie Lady".

I actually wasn't present for this episode, but heard eye witness testimony from my buddy "Goggles". Beanie Lady had been in the store, and asked to leave once or twice before, but the third time is the charm as the saying goes.
 
 It was a normal sleepy Sunday, Goggles was chilling out working (no doubt listening to some sort of weird robotic electronic computer funk that I can't stand.....or Shakira....maybe Brittany Spears). Joe, one of our warmly welcomed regular "house-less" fixtures, was sitting next to the window sipping on a cup of coffee as he looked out at the sun shining through the branches of an old growth oak tree in our parking lot. This beautiful, peaceful, kind of pastoral scene was, however, abruptly interrupted when Beanie Lady came rambling through the store. It's easy to spot when somebody is taking some sort of harder drug, and because of her jittery nervous movements I'm kind of guessing she's cranking through some cheap meth, or really low grade cocaine most of the time. Anywho, she was ruckus enough to be asked to leave by our gentle front end cashier. (which, let me tell you, is really hard to do in our store...so once that line is crossed there's really no going back). Now, let it be said....we all have defense mechanisms. Most of us keep them tightly under wrap, which we're able to do because they aren't pushed very hard. But for folks on the road, that button is pushed so hard that it has kind of sunk down into the fixture....it's on a hair trigger so to speak. Not to justify Beanie Lady's response, but to explain it.

Suffice to say, Beanie Lady freaked out and started cussing up a blue streak. Not that abnormal of an occurrence but I can't say it's something that I've ever gotten used to. The problem with yelling while angry is how it tends to make one more angry. So, having worked herself up, Beanie Lady managed to take a swing at the cashier. Let's picture this with some "Matrix style slow motion".

Her knobbed and knuckley fist sailed through the air between her and her intended target.
 The force sending ripples of tiny winds up her arm, blowing her tangled hair gently backwards with displaced momentum.

 The cashier, eyes wide, leans back from the intended strike reeling back onto her heels while her arms move in front of her face to shield herself.

The sun is still shining brightly through the window where Joe was recently seated. But instead of a grizzly man sipping on coffee we see the chair being thrown backwards as Joe bravely jumps in between the attacker and victim. His arms up above his head, Joe gesticulates wildly to successfully ward off the assailant. And....end scene.

What Joe did next is what makes this episode so amusing (no, I'm not tickled by the thought of my co-worker being punched by local junkies)....Having warded off Beanie Lady's attack Joe then turns to Goggles and our cashier and proceed to lecture them on the finer points of discernment regarding the various transients of the neighborhood.
"You can just let anybody in from off the street here" Joe exclaimed as he launched into a history of encounters with Beanie Lady.

 There are, in fact, some instances in which it is helpful to appeal to a pot to identify the varying shades of blackness that a kettle may or may not have. In this case, Joe knows more about his world than I do, so I defer to his experience. There's just something hilarious about one homeless guy lecturing us about letting bums in from off the street. In Joe's defense, he's no bum. Not at all! He takes care of the landscaping around the store, has a great sense of humor, and apparently makes a pretty decent bouncer when he has to. It just goes to show that the existence of "Bad eggs" sometimes highlights the "good eggs" at the same time. Keep that dude in mind the next time you want to apply the same treatment to a broad demographic of society, nothing is uniform when it comes to people.


Thanks Joe, your coffee is on me!

How Organic is your Turkey....or, "A Tale of Three Matts"

So, before I fully begin this sordid tale let me first say that there are occasional sublime moments wherein life and art truly do imitate each other. This story is true, regardless of how closely it resembles an episode of IFC's Portlandia, to be honest it's the earnest resemblance to that show that made the episode so amusing to me.

Like many people in the world, the last several minutes on the clock at my job can yield unexpected craziness. Between clearing out dishes, making last minute sandwiches or coffee drinks, telling the closing crew what to do, and counting out the register I tend to get a little distracted. Occasionally the universe likes to throw me a curve ball during those distracted, hurried and harried moments. This was one such occasion. I had actually finished things in a relatively timely manner, and somehow managed to jot down a list of tasks for my closer to accomplish earlier that day, and as the clock waned from 3 to 3:30 I was optimistically looking forward to actually clocking out on time.

3:25 PM

 Then I saw him.

He sauntered up to the counter slowly, not making eye contact with me or offering any greeting whatsoever but gazing solely at our sandwich menu with a slow but deliberate attentiveness. I make a concerted effort to not rush our customers into ordering something but I saw in his facial expression a certain confusion that gave me cause to ask how I could help him.

3:28 PM

Do you remember the last scene of "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" When the brick wall is knocked down, and we finally see "Toon Town" All of nature in Toon Town sings, the Sun bounces around in the sky while birds flit about swaying elm and oak trees...that's what it looked like outside the store as He casually rested his elbow on the counter and leaned in to ask me a serious question.

"How organic is your turkey, and how can you proof it?"

I don't know how I caught on to this, maybe it was something in his eyes, but I somehow knew this question wasn't designed to receive information....but rather as a pretense under which I could be informed by his superior knowledge. It was at this point that I knew I was in trouble, so I calmly replied that our 100% organic Turkey came from a small farm in Iowa and bore the requisite stamp from the USDA certifying it's "organic-ocity". I had made a terrible mistake!

 He rolled his eyes, smirked, rocked back on his heels, and chuckling to himself said:
"Well, almost anything can be called organic when all you have to do is pay to get it certified....what else can you tell me about it? Do you have any information about the farm?"

 I was suddenly, existentially, transcendentally, and inconveniently divided into three complete persona's bearing different replies. Customer service Matt just wanted this poor guy to go home happy, whether he ordered something or not...and he really wanted to clock out and ride his bike home in the cartoon-esque amazing sunshine.

Sarcastic Matt really wanted to enjoy these few moment of being stuck back in the deli by parading the euphoric lifestyle of Big Tom the turkey in his Utopian Organic farm in Iowa: Big Tom has satellite TV piped into his yurt so he can chill out and watch independent movies, and CSPAN to his massive turkey heart's content. The food upon which he thrives is hand prepared for him by a rotation of different international Chefs skilled in all the culinary traditions of the world. Come mating season, the most supple beautiful female turkeys are paraded in front of him. At the zenith of this opulence he is led into a warm room playing Beethoven where he is decapitated, plucked...gutted, stamped, frozen and shrink wrapped for convenient storage. Sarcastic Matt tends to make my life worse, so while I smiled at his input I decided that it wasn't in my best interest.Then "Rhetorical Matt" stepped into the ring.
"Well Sir....what he have here is actually a conflict of epistemology. Since knowledge can only be revealed from a capable source, not generated from a vacuum, we actually have absolutely no way of guaranteeing that anything is what it says it is unless it is inspected, and then certified by some sort of objective (or third) party committed to serving public good. After all, who is to say that the information you have is reliable? If the certification is faulty, how could possibly turn then to the farm itself for comfort when after all, they are selling the turkey in the first place. You see, that's called a biased perspective, because the farm would ultimately be motivated financially to boast about their product, they could say anything they wanted to to get you to buy it."

It was a humbling moment for me, either wanting ignore this guy, make fun of his beliefs and values, or destroy him in a debate. I honestly found myself wondering what was wrong with both of us. His self-righteousness in regards to food had stirred the beast of my self-righteousness regarding everything. I can't say that there weren't any hidden barbs in my comments, because there certainly were, but I do have to say that people get a little weird, and kind of annoying when they take the "you are what you eat" thing too seriously. I mean....this guy, he talked at me for about 10 minutes (which is a long time in food service) and left without buying anything at all! I guess the upside for him was that he was sticking it to the man somehow....perhaps we should charge a minimal consultation fee when people only want to talk about what we cook rather than eat it, because it seems to happen a lot.

The USDA guarantees that no Hippies, or turkeys were harmed in the making of this post....because that's what he paid us to say.

First things first

I've spent a good amount of time thinking about what exactly I hope to accomplish with this whole blog, and the truth is that I'm honestly not all that sure. I do know this, the natural grocery store I work for is a fascinating place. It can be, at times hilarious, and at times tragic. There isn't much of a real way to know what I'm going to get each day that I walk in through that front door but most of the time I can rest assured that it will be interesting, and more often than not I find myself wishing I could just sit back, bourbon in hand,                     and enjoy the various humorous goings on that I experience in an 8 hour time period. I guess that just about says what you need to know, this blog is a look at the environment where I work. Before I launch into the description of my store, please understand that I'm not some sort of "shock jock"blogger looking to making everybody who disagrees with me out to be some sort of cosmic idiot. But, rather that I've noticed people tend to take themselves a little too seriously most of the time, and some of the behaviors and notions that come out of that self-righteousness...well, funny. 

Alright...on to it. I work in a store that sits in the midst of neighborhood with it's own flag. I'm not kidding, I've seen people sporting sweatshirts, tee-shirts, bumper stickers, I'm pretty sure that somewhere there is an abundance of shot glasses, and bongs sporting the cherished neighborhood logo. It's odd enough that the 'hood has a logo, but the flag really and paraphernalia really take it to that next level of cool. So, on this flag there is a skull that is framed in by three bones (kind of like a house of sorts). Flags, being symbolic by nature, of course have their underlying meanings. What are we to determine from this flag......that the humble store in which I work is located in a neighborhood that houses pirates. If you think that's a little over the top....we've got a dude with a hook. Yup....not a prosthetic hand....a large, sharp hook. We affectionately call him "Lefty". He's a pretty chill, matter of fact dude that, for the most part just wants to go about his business and drink PBR from time to time. Oddly enough, Lefty...the dude with the hook mind you, in my mind stands out as one of more normal fixtures of the neighborhood. It's not uncommon to see people strolling down the street in knickers with top-hats, dressed up as animals, or other sundry mystical creatures.... fairy wings don't even stand out to me anymore honestly, oh, and let's not forget the random naked people on bikes experience.  In the midst of the more colorful neighborhood expressions are your average work-a-day (or do-something-a-day) hippies. But, you'll have plenty of time to hear about the neighborhood, let's talk about the store itself.

Right, smack dab in the middle of all this free-wheeling, co-op living, fairy wing wearin, naked bike riding, glass blowing neighborhood sits our little natural grocery store. It's a pretty cool place to be honest, were you to go the first thing you'd see would be a sizable table with oranges, pineapples, mangoes, tomatoes, and some crazy freakin fruit that nobody apart from our awesome produce dudes know about. Seriously, I can even look at vegetable in other stores anymore....it's awesome. We've got a solid beer, and wine selection, a deli case with handmade sandwiches, fresh pressed raw juices, tuna salad, and weird spreads that I make in the deli with my minions. Everything we sell is either crazy eco-conscious recycled stuff (to think that the kleenex your wiping your nose with was once a tire, magazine...or worst case scenario a diaper), super organic-weknowthefarmers-produces. Alternative coconut based ice cream, and freakin tofu to your hearts desire if non-meat protein is your thing. I manage the deli in this smorgusboard of earth friendly, organic, fair-trade, shade grown, shrink wrapped abundance, and honestly I'm proud of what we can do back there: Coffee, sandwiches, raw bottled fruit and veggie juices, we make our own soups, and sandwich specials, we bake scones and cookies, and package a plethora of awesome dried fruit and what have you. Every once in awhile when we get the hankerin to make something extra awesome I''ll try to post some pictures for ya. 

So in the midst of these two environments is me.....a traditional Protestant campus minister. I grew up mostly on a small ranch  in rural Northern California with two parents who both worked 40+ hours a week. Our landlord was a WWII veteran from the Marine Corps, and my grandfather was a retired Navy Commander. All that to say, my upcoming was pretty traditionally American, and perhaps slightly like a Steinbeck novel. If I wasn't playing Super Mario Bros, I was probably fishing in the pond, or walking the back 40 in search of a stupid lamb that wandered off to get caught in a fence. I've been described by a good friend as "radically traditional", I dig the Bible, and the Westminster Confession of Faith. I think the Constitution is pretty cool as it is right now, I still listen to tired old 90's music, and will argue with anybody who has a bad word to say about CCR, the Smashing Pumpkins, or The Guess Who. So really, it's pretty hilarious that I work where I do, but we seem to all get along for the most part. So, there it is....the background for some hilariously poignant anecdotal bloggage. Stay tuned for the first installment: "How Organic is your Turkey?"