boo fay go away?

i gotta admit, i will really miss brunch…

…and both kramer and i will miss the one at valentino’s in san marcos.

but i have a feeling buffets might be a thing of the past for quite some time, if not for good. it’s already hit lockhart. the closest thing we’ve got at this point is the chisolm trail bar-b-que salad bar and one of the chinese joints.

(at least since the sirloin stockade closed – although how nobody has stolen that giant fucking cow is beyond me!)

the chinese place is doing take out only (even though restaurants can now open in texas with limited seating) and even though they haven’t walled up the ol’ hot food and salad bars at chisolm trail bar-b-que they have signs all over it indicating you’re supposed to pretend that it is untouchable – think of it like the pie case at an old road side diner. sure, you can SEE mac ‘n cheese and coleslaw and such but don’t you FUCKING TOUCH IT! leave that to the staff of ten, five of whom were wearing masks when we went in, five of whom were NOT. and the five that were had them all (five for five) hovering below their noses…so they’re not doing shit for good anyway.

and that brings me to the point that really needs to be brought up – of all the personal protection bullshit efforts that are out there the one that was really lacking was education. you can tell people to wear a mask, but unless it comes with instructions, it doesn’t do shit worth of good.

it seems like it shouldn’t be necessary, but…

…one of the biggest problems with this world in general is people assuming a level of general knowledge in the populace that simply doesn’t exist, and this isn’t new. i remember having to explain to folks i’d train to do star tickets tech support (2000-2003 on the resume) to never assume people knew shit about shit because the step you skip assuming people “just know” will be the missing brick that causes the wall to crumble. likewise with tattoo folk currently. i remember asking an artist if she had, up front, let the lady know that lettering that small on the side of her finger would heal like shit and i got back, “c’mon, sean, EVERYBODY knows that!”. but they don’t. they saw a two day old one on pinterest and it looked fucking fantastic. and as tattoos are “forever”, that means what they saw on pinterest is FORVER…that’s just logical thinking in the eyes of the public, ya know? you saw a tattoo, and tattoos are forever, hence it looks like that FORVER.

but…not so much. so never assume what you think “everybody know”, because pal o’ mine, they don’t know shit.

“what the american people don’t know is what makes them the american people” – dan akroyd, tommy boy (1995)

so people assuming the average joe knows how to wear a surgical mask doesn’t mean they do. just like how they know they should wear gloves before they go in the grocery store, but don’t know they shouldn’t keep them on to reach for their wallet, keys, or phone. i know when you do you just basically smeared the store across those items because i work in the tattoo industry and am well versed in cross contamination – but the public doesn’t know that shit, and assuming they do doesn’t shows both the public’s ignorance AND the ignorance of the person making the assumption.

at the end of this day, this thing is gonna run it’s course. folks are gonna get sick. folks are gonna die. all we can do is keep that last number as low as we can and get back to living life…go see the stones after you’ve dropped almost $400 for it. go enjoy migas and french toast on the same plate. and go get tattooed. i think we’ve done what we can here.