I'm of the opinion that regardless of your job, you should at least put forth some modicum of effort in fulfilling your duties. Every job is important... from being a janitor to a CEO of a Fortune 500 company; obviously certain jobs are more glamorous and desirable... but that's beside the point.

The thing is, there's no excuse for doing your job poorly... but especially if you have an easy ass job. For instance:

The movie ticket-taker person: An exhaustingly simple job, free from any real stress save standing around for hours at a time. Take the tickets, tear the stub, and say "left" or "right" to direct the movie-going patrons to their respective theaters. Can't really mess that up right? Wrong. The other day, I went to go see Wanted with Anita... and our ticket taker SUCKED. Not only did he not greet us (kindly or otherwise), he struggled to tear the tickets (slowly)... and then left it to our own deductive abilities to determine which side of the theater to go to. It was rough.

Another popular variant is the fast-food cashier that not only rings your order up incorrectly, but then seems upset when they have to get the manager's authorization to rectify their mistake. The best is when you ask for extra ranch sauce and they act like it's the most arduous task ever... sauntering over two feet to the "sauce rack" (or whatever) and laboriously selecting the requested flavor packets before disdainfully slamming them down on your tray.

"Will that be all?" they ask. Yes. That is all. THANKS.

Reading over this post... it sure seems like a bitter bitch fest... so sorry about that. It's also my first post in over two weeks (whoops). But happy Independence Day for us Americans! Woohoo!

I guess you could say I'm a fan of an entropy-driven life.

The concept of entropy for anybody not familiar with it, is that everything in the universe will tend to a disordered state over time, and that any system with a high amount of order is more than likely going to turn into chaos soon. Basically-- order is fragile and unlikely.

An example is a pyramid stack of crystal wine glasses. The system is highly ordered... it takes only a small amount of energy input before the system reaches a state of high entropy (in the form of shattered glass on the floor). Also, we would never expect broken glass to fall into the shape of stacked wine glasses; entropy is a one way street.

In fact, on of the bleakest potential fates of the universe what's known as the "heat death", in which the universe enters state of maximum entry... basically perfectly distributed heat in all space. With no perturbations, there is no potential for information or information processing, so no life of any form. But you'd have to wait around for another 10⁴⁰ years... when all protons will have decayed and all that's left in the universe is black holes.

Anyway-- I say I'm a fan because... order is boring. I also have the 10-year-old-kid tendency of doing my best to help the universe out by adding my own entropy to things. For instance:

I like to knock over, spill, break, destroy, and generally mess up lots of things. I never really grew out of that I guess?

But also-- order is boring in regards to people. I like to stir up people's ideas and long-held ideals by challenging them to think about why they think certain things. I don't like to persuade people to change their minds as much as I like to just poke around their brains a bit.

I also enjoy saying things in conversations purposefully to get people rilled up. All in good fun though... nothing that will deeply offend anybody (usually), but just enough to set about a chain of events that will lead to a slightly more interesting outcome than if I had stuck to the norm.

Why? Because order is boring. So do your part in helping the universe along its destined path and add some entropy to your life!

I was walking down the street the other day and noticed an old pickup truck with a single bumper sticker on it:

I'm not even remotely sure why this guy has that sticker, but I like where he's goin with it.

Gotta love those Austinites!

It seems like the airport harbors a more widely distributed demographic than any other place. No where else does it seem like there is a completely random distribution of all ages, colors, and wealth all around you.

It makes sense because everyone needs to fly (almost), it's not that expensive (sorta), and since there's not an airport every 50 feet, location bias doesn't really come into account.

It's just... refreshing and interesting... considering I live in west campus in Austin TX, so the average age is 21... with a standard distribution of like... three. And in the 2006-2007 year, 55% of the population was white, and only 4.2% were black¹.

It's fascinating (to me, at least) to think that every person that you just happen to pass by, all the hundreds of people you just see for a fleeting moment, have full lives of their own; All with their own crazy dreams, friends, family, drama... everything. Everyone's life is just as complex and extensive as yours. And to them, you're entire life and experiences are just a fleeting moment to them. Perspective!

Some of those fleeting moments are more interesting than others. I sat across from a man on the plane, whom I will dub Physics Fun Man. I first took notice of the awkward, choppy conversation he was having on the phone with somebody. A dead give away that this guy was going to be interesting.

Anyway, Physics Fun Man was so called because he was holding in his lap a book entitled 'Quantum Phase Transitions', and another one about percolation theory, which I've never even heard of.

So this guy was obviously pretty rock'n... but the image was complete when, as he got up at the end of the flight to get his bag, I noticed that in his shirt pocket (that was stuffed with misc. notes and random shit) also held a TI-83 graphing calculator.

You know, just in case you need to solve a system of linear equations or bust out a few trigonometric graphs at a moment's notice.

My life sucked just a little bit more however when I told my roommate this story, and the first thing he said was,

"Dude that is totally going to be you someday... that is your future."

Really?!

Do you ever catch yourself making a terribly awkward face? For example... maybe it's that funny movie you've seen 30 times with your friends, and the lead character just made (yet another) humorous reference to breasts... so you laugh. "LoL!"

Approximately 1.3 seconds later the joyous smile has faded from your face... but with your eyes glued to the set unaware of everything but the flashing phosphorus in front of you, there remains a shitty "mouth halfway open semi smile" awkward face. Who gives a damn right? Well then you catch a slight movement out of the corner of your eye. Your animal instincts kick in! You look over to see what it was... but it was just your friend moving in his seat.

Too bad y'all made eye contact and he got a full-on view of your shitty awkward ass face. Whoops!

It happens. A corollary to this phenomenon is the "look over to the car next to you at a stop light" accidental eye contact. Do you look away quickly hoping they didn't notice you? Do you wave? Give them the finger?

Of course a cute girl definitely deserves a wink or at least a smile... and a douche bag looking back at you deserves a mug... but what about less obvious cases? Contextual sensitive and situational evaluation is necessary.

So stop yourself from time to time... and look at your face. Does it convey the feelings of your soul? Or is it just shitty looking? Think about it.

-B. S. Valosek, awkward face avoider