Proctored a standardized test this morning.

So, this morning I proctored a standardized test for high school students. This one perky blonde mom was there because her middle-school age daughter was taking it, and she talked way too much to me and the other person checking people in, and when I was nice and suggested she go to a bakery down the road and have a coffee and croissant while she wait for her daughter, she was like, no, i can't, i have to be here for my daughter in case she decides to stop the test, i told her not to be worried if she sees something she doesn't know, because a lot of older kids are taking the test, and then when we were like, oh, the woman smiled and was like, "Oh, she'll do just fine, I know it."

Later, I saw her waiting at a table right outside her daughter's test room. She had a little designer shopping bag with cord handles, and was making Christmas cards with scissors that cut decorative edges, and was hole-punching them so she could put ribbons in.

Also, after seeing an experimental opera last night with a couple friends - a friend of one friend was in it, the first musical piece which was a lot of voices and clinking plates and stuff was good, but the rest didn't hold my attention - I decided to pop in on this battle of the bands contest the one karaoke host here does every year, and the bar turned out to be the most awful hipster thing ever, so I left without even paying to go in to see the bands. The place was in a wearhouse and dark and cavernous and overpriced, and the staff was rude, and they charged me too much on my bill when I got some beer and chili, and then it turns out they were out of chili, so I got some chicken soup, but they brought me a cup when I wanted a bowl, and no one was cool anyhow, and when I could see into the back room where the bands were, it was cavernous and no one was there and they still wanted me to pay $10 to go in for like 40minutes.

"That's not cool," I was like, to the rude hipster girl who was manning the door to the back room.

"I don't care, it's my job to collect money," she was like.

"That's funny," I was like, "Apathetic cool people usually don't care about stuff like that and love money that much."

She didn't find that funny, so I left.

Honestly, hipsters are the least cool people on earth.

A happy or interesting thing: airport grace.

Since I can't stand people who bitch, rather than ask someone I meet how they're doing and risk them bitching, recently I've been asking people instead to tell me something happy or interesting that had happened to them this past week, so that way I don't get a response I don't want to hear.

(Though, twice I've gotten some doozy of an answers - one girl was like, "My mother got her shunt out," and one guy was like, "A friend of mine survived his suicide attempt," and when I asked if he was better now, he added, "He just came out of a coma and is still confused," and when I asked if at least it seems like the underlying issues were getting addressed, he was like, "No.")

So, when I was out with friends like a week ago, I asked this to this one girl, and she told me that when she was coming back through the Denver airport after Thanksgiving, she was in the airport T.G.I. Friday's and heard some people at a table behind her saying this really long, elaborate grace -- she then broke off and made clear that she likes things like this, that when people bring their culture and religion unobtrusively into public spaces -- and then, suddenly the people were like, "Lord, thank you for these bountiful nachos," and she turned around to see this middle-aged couple holding hands elevated across the table and with their heads bowed and eyes closed, and between them was this huge heaping plate of T.G.I. Friday's nachos, more than two people could ever eat.

"It struck me funny," she was like, "Because the nachos truly were bountiful."

Black neighborhood bar / Mexicans.

So, last night I went for a drink at the black neighborhood bar with a friend. They had a shitload of very nice Christmas decorations up - a tree, lights, garlands - and the day bartender who had put them up and does the Sunday afternoon football buffets was there, so I went up and hugged her and was like, "The place looks great!", and though she didn't seem to be able to place me at first she was like, "Did you like the tree!?!?!"

When I was getting a table with my friend - the bar was packed because of the football game on - we were just sitting down, and this black dude who was also just going to sit down was like, "Mind if I take this seat?", and took the seat my friend was going to sit in just before she was going to sit in it, and the (black) people next to us were looking like what was up with that, so I mugged a shrug to them and the one (black) woman ("Mickey") with a knit cap on then stood up, came over to me, gave me a hug and a kiss near my neck, and whispered in my ear, "I wanted you to know that that look you gave was so cute," and she touched my arm, when she was finishing saying that.

Later, she came over to our table and was talking with me and my friend, and at one point she turned to me and was like, "You know who you look like? Carson Kressley!"

"What is it, the shirt and sweater or something?", I was like.

"No," she was like, "It just looks like you could decorate or something," and then she was like, "I'm not saying you're gay or anything."

A little later, somehow we were talking about how she used to live in Seattle -- "It's a really tolerant place," she said as an aside, looking at me -- and then she began talking about Alaska and how she had some native friend from there who didn't want to go back - the story was kind of confused, it sounded like her friend was a lesbian or something, which made me wonder if she was too, it was kind of odd - and then she was like, "You guys ever been in Alaska?", and when I said my brother had lived there and I had visited him, she was like, "Did he ever meet Sarah Palin?", and then added, "Did you?"

"Meet her?", I was like, "I nailed her daughter!", and the woman laughed at that, though then she leaned forward and touched my arm again and was like, "You do know that's wrong, don't you."

Much later, at another bar, my friend admitted to me that she doesn't like Mexicans, and was saying that though she has Mexican friends, all the Mexicans at the restaurant where she manages are just a pain in the ass since they are all stuck in this machismo thing, "Which I don't get," she was like, "Because they're short, and from the sounds of it they're all fucking each other."

She then added that she does think Mexicans are lazy, and she hates it when people point out the long hours they work, since though that's true, they don't do shit most of the time.

Went to the gyros lounge last night.

So, last night after catching a movie downtown with my one Dutch friend, we went to the gyros lounge for a couple drinks. Like no one was there, except some regulars watching a show on the History Channel where they try to track down the Chupacabra and never find anything. Me and my friend were joking about it, and this one rough-looking older blonde woman with a santa hat on laughed and was like, "That's right, they look and look and never find anything, ha!", and then went back to scratching her lotto ticket.

Later, she and the guy she was in there with started talking some to us, and it turns out that they're Amtrak workers and they're put up in the city at this hotel like a block away like three times a week, so they come into the gyros lounge a lot for a beer or two after diddling around the city all day after they're off work.

The chicken pot pie I had was good, and the French fries had a pleasant meat taste to them from the oil they were fried in.

Addendum.

What with that one Dutch prof said, it was almost like, "Of course he's Serbian, that explains everything."

My one Dutch prof on Blagojevich.

Forgot --

Today at the holiday breakfast a bunch of people were talking about the Illinois governor scandal, and my one Dutch prof who is always very calm and well-spoken was like, "What I find hard to believe is his brazenness, his attitude that he could not get caught. That is very Serbian, and very dangerous. One can see how if a gun was placed in his hands there would be another Balkan war."

Holiday breakfast.

So, I just went to a holiday breakfast that school always puts on this time of year. I got there like a half-hour after it started, and ended up staying for like two-and-a-half hours, table-hopping with all the other people who wouldn't leave, and I ended up shutting the thing down with a bunch of black administrators from school, another white doctoral student, and a white professor, though she flaked and left before the rest of us.

One black administrator was talking about getting American Girl dolls for her grandkids for Christmas and how they liked them so much but they kind of broke the bank for her, and then when I asked her what she thought of them, she said they were a little consumerist like everything is nowadays for kids, and I was like, "But, at least aren't they better than Barbie?", and she was like, "Or Bratz, I am sorry, but those dolls are slutty."

Later, me and the white prof kept going up to get more biscuits from the breakfast buffet, and we kept saying how good the biscuits were. Finally, when the one prof was gone and the caterers who were tending the buffet were nowhere to be found, the same black administrator looked around to see who was listening, and then was like, "I am sorry, but those are not biscuits."

From that point on people started talking about cooking, and the one white grad student who was across the table from us was saying how growing up he did the cleaning and his brother did the cooking for chores, but now things are switched since his wife doesn't like cooking, and she does all the cleaning and he does all the cooking, including Thanksgiving dinner, when he did everything including homemade stuffing.

Some other black administrators down the table took up the theme, and were talking about oyster stuffing, and then the black FedEx guy who everyone knows came and sat down and had some breakfast since he was ahead of schedule, and he mentioned that he always added sausage to his stuffing.

Somehow, then, the white grad student across from me mentioned that he made his own pasta, and then the black FedEx guy mentioned that he had just bought a "Kwiz-a-nart" for three payments of $69.99 and that it did everything, and this one black administrator cracked, "Does it make pasta?"

Like I always do in these conversations, I bring up celebrity recipes and say how when you look at them a lot of them suck, like Ben Affleck's Chicken Piccata, but the one celebrity I've always wanted to make since it looks so good is Patti LaBelle's macaroni and cheese, which uses like three pounds of cheddar cheese and a gallon of half-and-half, which immediately everyone wanted to talk about.

"I add some sugar in my mac and cheese," the FedEx guy was like, "Because it's not like you taste the sugar in there, but if the cheese is bitter, it evens the taste out."

"What kind of cheese you use?", a black administrator was like.

"Once I used some sharp Vermont cheddar," the guy was like, "I thought I was all gourmet, but it was too bitter, and I said to myself, 'Boy, why don't you stick to what you know?'"

"Mmmmm-hmmm, that's why," the administrator was like.

"But why is she eating all that mac and cheese anyways?", another administrator was like, going back to Patti LaBelle, "That woman is a diabetic."

"She's got a recipe book out now," a third administrator was like, "She has a lot of recipes in there, including mac and cheese, and sometime she has one recipe for diabetics, and another for normal people. She shouldn't be eating that mac and cheese, though."

"No?", the FedEx guy was like, "That's right, she shouldn't be eating that, 'cause that's just an appetizer for her."

Abortion / Race.

So the other week I was talking with this scholar associated with the department, and he was saying that he's writing a chapter for a friend's book on denominational schisms and what causes, and then mentioned that abortion, though a controversial issue, has never caused a denominational schism. He said that it's definitely caused people to leave or switch congregations when the issue has been politicized one way or another, but he thinks that it's not as constantly in your face as something like having a gay pastor is; if a pastor had an abortion or had someone have an abortion, who would know, he said.

At the same meal, I was talking with the one black dean who I get along with. At some point I mentioned Angela Davis, and she gave a power fist, only half in jest, and mentioned that her dad who was a black studies professor in the 70s used to get in terrible arguments with her grandparents about how Christianity was the white man's religion.

Later, she said that since her husband and son are so musical, people sometimes call them the Von Trapps, and that once when he was little she took her son to the play and he sat spell-bound through the entire thing, he likes music so much, and that people at intermission complimented her on his behavior, and said that when they had first sat down they dreaded having a kid behind them.

On another note, last week I went to a talk on campus about prisoner's rights, in honor of a black panther assassination that happened almost forty years ago in the city. Since it was a bunch of radicals during the presentation, the talk went long, and though I had sat down on the aisle to make sure I could leave if need be, a bunch of current black radicals came in late and they set out chairs between me and the entrance, so because I had to meet a friend at 8pm, little old white me had to get up with my schoolbags and overcoats and go through a crowd of young black men in leather coats and sunglasses who had been giving the power-fist all night and then during the Q&A part were saying how Obama is part of the capitalist superstructure and stops real change from happening.

It was awful, though I did get two plates of free Thai food out of the night.

2 Addendums.

I got the actual concluding prayer from "Medjugorje Up Close":

Mary, the Mother of Jesus. We thank you, Mary, here now, at the end of this book that we wanted to write for you. Thank you, our Mother, for the graces you have helped us to receive and to have from your Son, Jesus. Thank you for the book, so much more your gift to us than ours to you. Pray for us and for those who read this bookk, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.

Lucy Rooney, S.N.D.
Robert Faricy, S.J.
May 1986

Also, in thinking back to my calling my landlord to tell her about that girl at the end of the hall who had loud people over at 4:30am, I had all sorts of self-conscious editing on race stuff since she 's black... I made sure to identify her by apartment number rather than say shit like "that one black girl who lives at the end of the hallway", and I just said her friends were loud, rather than say they were "hooting and hollering" or something racially-tinged like that.

Though, I am proud to say that when I've called the cops a couple times about that one weird guy who parks his van outside my window with the radio on so loud that I can hear it throw my closed windows and his closed van windows, that I can say it's "an old white dude" - to think that I live in an urban community and that it's the white people's radios I'm complaining about!

Medjugorje / police / grapefruit.

Last night I finished this book "Medjugorje Up Close" I had gotten for a buck at a garage sale, about the apparitions of the Virgin Mary in a small Croatian town in the 1980s that are incredibly popular despite no official approval of the Roman Catholic church.

The book was on the pro-Medjugorje side and was written by a Franciscan priest and a nun who had visited there a lot, but what really hit home for me was that the book concluded with a devotional prayer of the both of them to their mother, Mary, that hoped their book would work for good in the world. Somehow it hadn't hit home for me before how devoted to Mary many people are, and the importance such apparitions would have for them, where they would read every message that comes through since it is from Mary, and Mary is the exalted queen of heaven who is the conduit of all graces. Usually you just think of people coming there to get healed or something, and don't think of the grave importance of the vision for them, because Mary herself is appearing on earth.

On another note, last night at 4:30am the one girl who used to throw parties all last year had friends over who were loud in the hallway, and a girl in my building called the police on them, and there were 3 police cars outside.

Last night, too, I was thinking of how like last week I ate a grapefruit right before going to buy something at the dollar store below my apartment, and the counter clerk asked me what cologne I was wearing, he liked it so much, since he thought the smell of the grapefruit on my hands from peeling it was a cologne or something.

The only time my father has gotten viscerally mad at me.

Like my freshman or sophomore year of college, I went home for spring break and used my parents' car to pick up one friend at her college, and then go to another college to see another friend and spend a couple nights there and hang out.

When I got back home, my dad was like, "So did you end up seeing anyone else?", since a lot of kids from my high school ended up at that college.

"Yeah," I was like, "I saw [some kid]," and when my dad asked what he had to say, I said I just saw him, I didn't talk to him, and then I went on to say how I always thought he was weird.

Now, I had already told my mom that I had seen this kid when me and my friend were at a stoplight in our car, and he was like a block up crossing the street, but I hadn't told my dad this, so he just assumed I had passed him on the street or something and ignored him.

So, then, this incredibly, visceral pissed look just crossed my dad's face, then, and he raised his voice and asked me what was I doing, that you never treat a person like that and no matter what you think of someone, you always stop and ask them how they're doing, and in any case you never know how someone is, people change all the time, but in any case you ask them how they're doing and acknowledge them.