Surrounded by Food Tubes.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

You ever notice that people around you seem like they're only half there?  That they don't make the same mental connections that you make?  Not because they're mentally deficient, but because they've never been trained to think. 

For example, let's assume you have a small town that only has two hairdressers.  One has really good hair, and one has terrible hair.  Most people will say that you should go to the one with good hair, when any thinking person realizes that they have to do each others' hair (there are only two of them, remember), so you want the one with the terrible hair.  Explain this to people, though, and you'll either get a blank look, or a moment where you can see them light up...but they won't make similar connections on their own.

Critical thinking is a skill, and it is a skill that is actively beaten out of us every day at work and at school.  The results are obvious...walking food tubes that look at you like you're insane when you point out the blatantly obvious.  No, they are much happier when you give them two choices, and they can pick the one they like, even if there's no real difference between the two options.

This is why hanging out with humans is a bad idea.  It will break your spirit, if you let it.

I spent some time talking to bartenders this week, and they are constantly amused by the people to whom they serve alcohol.    It never ceases to amaze them that people feel a need to impress them with how much they make, or who they screwed over, or who they know, or how many people they're fucking.  The bartenders couldn't care less, but part of their pay involves listening to fuckwits jabber like that, droning on and on about how Pink they are, and about how much more Pink they'll soon be.  Everyone is a bigshot when they're drunk, apparently.

Bartenders hate people almost as much as I do.  They absolutely loathe their customers.  Consider that...especially given that one of the bartenders I spoke to was wearing what appeared to be the flayed head of a dog as a hat (if it wasn't real, it was one fuck of a good imitation, but I wasn't asking).  They spend all night putting up with people they want to choke.  I can sympathyze with that.

They also know people, because the lies and boasts wear thin after an hour or so, and they get a look at what the rubes really are.  They become excellent students of humanity at its rawest, with all of the bullshit stripped away.

What kind of civilization relies on its bartenders to be its Stoic philosophers?  I ask you.

Or Kill me.

[East Coast Hustle]

that's exactly what prompted me to make the move from bouncing & bartending to cooking. I just couldn't stand it anymore.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

that's exactly what prompted me to make the move from bouncing & bartending to cooking. I just couldn't stand it anymore.

I couldn't do that job.  Tried it once, a couple of years back.  Even running a card game was intolerable.

[Richter]

So without critical reasoning, how does a food tube work?
Instinct, reaction, conditioning?  There may not even be a nascent person in there, it could just be a walking talking Id with a sense of patience.  Whatever responses get the most positive response for a given situation are retained, the rest are discarded.  A walking stack of fleshy hardware that could run a biped, instead running Lab Rat 3.5.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

So without critical reasoning, how does a food tube work?
Instinct, reaction, conditioning?  There may not even be a nascent person in there, it could just be a walking talking Id with a sense of patience.  Whatever responses get the most positive response for a given situation are retained, the rest are discarded.  A walking stack of fleshy hardware that could run a biped, instead running Lab Rat 3.5.

I swear to God, some days I think that the city around me is nothing but stage props.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Sjaantze does bartending occasionally... She hates people and considers the job to be perfect... she gets paid to give stupid people poison and they drink it.

[Reginald Ret]

I never wanted to be a bartender because that would involve pretending to like people.
But the way you are making it sound is a start towards convincing me that it is a job i can do.
I am already a horrible misanthrope(or miserable atrocianthrope).

So without critical reasoning, how does a food tube work?
Instinct, reaction, conditioning?  There may not even be a nascent person in there, it could just be a walking talking Id with a sense of patience.  Whatever responses get the most positive response for a given situation are retained, the rest are discarded.  A walking stack of fleshy hardware that could run a biped, instead running Lab Rat 3.5.

Id? It's even worse.
With these people the Id is as controlled by the Ego and Superego as we are, its just that the Ego and Superego have been trained to supress all urges that might run counter to Every other FoodTube's Id.
In effect:  Id minus the fun bits.

[Cainad (dec.)]

So without critical reasoning, how does a food tube work?
Instinct, reaction, conditioning?  There may not even be a nascent person in there, it could just be a walking talking Id with a sense of patience.  Whatever responses get the most positive response for a given situation are retained, the rest are discarded.  A walking stack of fleshy hardware that could run a biped, instead running Lab Rat 3.5.

I don't think the critical reasoning ever gets fully or completely beaten out of them, just kicked and abused until it huddles in a corner to piss itself and whimper. Even the grayest, most thoroughly conditioned people I've ever seen still got some enjoyment out of at least pretending to think, even if they have to be led by the fucking nose. We're still pattern-seekers and connection makers at our core, but that skill has to be beaten and whipped into a dumb, weak little imp that cries out for its thin gruel and occasional bone to gnaw on. Otherwise it can't be led along through those Lab Rat mazes.

The abuse has made it nigh impossible for it to stomach the greater challenges, but it is still greedy for the morsels it has been trained to subsist on. The occasional sudoku puzzle, crossword, an episode of House MD, or by-the-numbers "conversation" about whichever of the Big Issues they feel like "discussing" (and by discussing, I mean re-enact the stage play put on for them by the teevee talking heads); these things keep a very necessary part of the brain alive, but starved and weak, and kept at that stage of infancy in which repetition is the divine ambrosia and true novelty is anathema. Just enough to keep the rest of the meat twitching in all the right ways.

[Richter]

So without critical reasoning, how does a food tube work?
Instinct, reaction, conditioning?  There may not even be a nascent person in there, it could just be a walking talking Id with a sense of patience.  Whatever responses get the most positive response for a given situation are retained, the rest are discarded.  A walking stack of fleshy hardware that could run a biped, instead running Lab Rat 3.5.

Id? It's even worse.
With these people the Id is as controlled by the Ego and Superego as we are, its just that the Ego and Superego have been trained to supress all urges that might run counter to Every other FoodTube's Id.
In effect:  Id minus the fun bits.

Like I said, there's only wants and avoidance of ways of satisfying wants that's gotten them hurt before.

So without critical reasoning, how does a food tube work?
Instinct, reaction, conditioning?  There may not even be a nascent person in there, it could just be a walking talking Id with a sense of patience.  Whatever responses get the most positive response for a given situation are retained, the rest are discarded.  A walking stack of fleshy hardware that could run a biped, instead running Lab Rat 3.5.

I swear to God, some days I think that the city around me is nothing but stage props.

You said it yourself, stuff to keep them busy until they die.  Still bread and circuses, even if they've swapped the swords in for balls, and gotten weirder chariots.

[Richter]

So without critical reasoning, how does a food tube work?
Instinct, reaction, conditioning?  There may not even be a nascent person in there, it could just be a walking talking Id with a sense of patience.  Whatever responses get the most positive response for a given situation are retained, the rest are discarded.  A walking stack of fleshy hardware that could run a biped, instead running Lab Rat 3.5.

I don't think the critical reasoning ever gets fully or completely beaten out of them, just kicked and abused until it huddles in a corner to piss itself and whimper. Even the grayest, most thoroughly conditioned people I've ever seen still got some enjoyment out of at least pretending to think, even if they have to be led by the fucking nose. We're still pattern-seekers and connection makers at our core, but that skill has to be beaten and whipped into a dumb, weak little imp that cries out for its thin gruel and occasional bone to gnaw on. Otherwise it can't be led along through those Lab Rat mazes.

The abuse has made it nigh impossible for it to stomach the greater challenges, but it is still greedy for the morsels it has been trained to subsist on. The occasional sudoku puzzle, crossword, an episode of House MD, or by-the-numbers "conversation" about whichever of the Big Issues they feel like "discussing" (and by discussing, I mean re-enact the stage play put on for them by the teevee talking heads); these things keep a very necessary part of the brain alive, but starved and weak, and kept at that stage of infancy in which repetition is the divine ambrosia and true novelty is anathema. Just enough to keep the rest of the meat twitching in all the right ways.

Even in the best of us, our heads are buckets of contact cement with the top off.  As soon as we're out in the air, we start to dry and harden.  Less sticky, not picking up quite as eagerly or readily as before, not as plastic.  The quick amusement, the brain candy, the daytime TV, enough of that crap, you might as well be adding chemical hardener to your own bucket.  Sure you can get some plasticity back with work and solvents, but some folks are just too set up.

[Dysfunctional Cunt]

I've worked as a bartender a lot.  It's one of the best ways to earn money with a really flexible schedule.  I really don't hate the people anymore.  I did once, but then I realized that they just couldn't help it.  Stoopid breeds stoopid and just gets more so each generation.  So I view bartending more as an outlet to fuck with people than anything these days.  But if it were my main or only source of income, I would poison people.  No doubt about it!

But as a second job it does provide entertainment.....

Between the guys who really want their life to be the one from the Penthouse letters, to the women who would give just about anything for some attention, to the ones who just come to watch the monkeys fling their poop, the poop flingers, to the people who are there on a death mission in the making and try to drink themselves to death...

[Kai]

I find it the opposite, Roger, I really like bars for that very reason. Alcohol is such a wonderful liquid, try telling someone it's the metabolic waste product of a microorganism sometime, YEAST SHIT. Of course they'll stare blankly.

The wonders of alcohol in all forms is to tear open the second circuit and let loose the monkey. As the liquor sinks down, deeeep down, all these /things/ come bubbling up, like sulfur and methane from a marsh in the spring. Insecurities, fear, boastfulness, exstatic joy, sexual hungers, and all manner of base monkey nature. You've heard of Buddhanature, well, this is the OTHER side, like knurd is to drunk, except this is far more fun to watch.

All these things come bubbling up, wonderful and nasty, a veritable 2C fart. And you start to see the inner natures of these dezines. You can tell the really happy ones, the ones who are so stuck in the good in their lives that it's created an iron curtain from the horrors outside. You can tell the ones who pretend they're happy all day long but secretly hate themselves, they sit there drinking, complaining to the bartender and silently weeping. You can even tell the repressed homosexuals, the ones who go stomping around knocking guys down and flexing their muscles, trying to prove their manliness. These aren't the ones to really watch out for though.

Once in a while you'll see the one I mean, he'll stomp in and saunter over to the bar, raging, and talking about how the spiders are everywhere, and there is no escape. And then he'll down a whole bottle of whiskey, and laugh, the sort that only /sounds/ like screaming. That one, he gets it. That one, he knows your doom.

[Bishop Baqarah Flame]

You know, growing up I wondered why everyone seemed so detached, and just... Dull.  Dumb.  Not on the same level.  The wheel is turning but the hamster is dead sort of thing.  And as I got older and started to try thinking from other people's perspective, I wondered if everyone thought they were surrounded by idiots.  Many of them do. Yes, I see stupid people, everywhere.  And they don't know they're stupid.  It's sad really how people can go through life thinking they're the peak of mankind, without having the tiniest spec of logic, creativity, or sometimes even personality.

[Cain]

I suspect it is the sort of people bars attract.  For instance, if you're trying to impress someone who doesn't know you (ie; me) about your wonderful property deal in Turkey which is suspciously vague on the details but will really, really be a luxury resort and hotel one day, honest, then I am going to conclude your life sucks and you feel the need to boast to strangers to make up for the deficiencies in your life, and to use alcohol to close the gap between fantasy and reality.

When I go to a bar, it's to catch up with friends.  I don't need to talk to the bartender, except to order drinks.  Anyone who either goes out of their way to talk to me about subjects which aren't the drink they want, or talks loud enough to make sure everyone is listening, is automatically suspect.  Vocal people in bars are bullshitters until proven innocent.

Of course, I spend half my shift working in the kitchen, so I don't have the highly developed loathing of customers that, say, one of the barmaids I work with does.  She really cannot stand most customers, and she is out on the bar every day.  Coincidence?  Maybe.  Then again, when you have customers who think working here means you are a personal servant, that you should wait on their every whim and instantly know their irregular and unspoken wants and needs...well, you can see why someone would take a dislike to them.  If you order a table, and we give you a particular time, that is because we are booked up at more popular times.  Turning up at the time you wanted but couldn't have will only mean your meal is late, another person's meal is late and we'll have to stay another 15 minutes to deal with the desserts and washing up.  Yet people do it constantly, while boasting about how loyal a customer they are.  They're not, really.  They just like to eat here a lot, and the management doesn't have the balls to tell them to stop with their crap, which ultimately is a lot of the problems with the service industry nowadays, the dogma of the customer is always right, even when they are a massive prick.  Such liberties only spur people on to abuse not only the services provided, but also the common sense and critical thinking skills of everyone around them,

Something else occurs.  With pubs, and restaurants, part of the appeal is being able to treat the staff like servants.  Have them do what you want, serve you dinner, bring you drinks and so on.  It's a hired version of every day like for the very wealthy.  However, reality intrudes.  Cash must change hands.  You cannot necessarily have the meal you want, only the meals that are available.  They don't do your drink quite right.  So instead of adjusting expectations, it is easier to blame the staff.

[P3nT4gR4m]

I'm with Kai on this one. The only time I can tolerate the presence of these things is when both of us are drunk. There's a point where the social programming crashes and all that's left is something reptilian but at least it's real