Horrific dream.

I was walking past some drunk (black) homeless people by a bus shelter, and this poorly-shaven (black) drunk guy starts walking along beside me, and as I look back, this older (black) woman shakes her head like I shouldn't be walking there, and I'm in trouble.

The next thing I know the guy is crazy and pulls out a knife to cut me, but I grab his hand, and he almost gets his knife with his other hand and is about to dig it into my wrist, but I'm able to smack it away and tackle him into the ground, and I'm able to pin him with my knees, and I'm bawling and bawling because I'm so upset at being attacked and I'm asking the (white) people and (black and white) pedestrians to call the police, but no one will, and so to make sure the (black) homeless guy doesn't move, I keep twisting him in my hands, till he's like a wrung-out towel like 2.5 feet long that I'm pinning down with my knees, but it's writhing, and I can't let it go, but the police aren't coming, and I'm just bawling and bawling, "Somebody help me!"

And then I woke up.

...I think the elements of this dream were the (usually black) panhandlers I see when I walk to the store in my new neighborhood, and how when I'm down in my old neighborhood and I take my bathing suit along so I can go swimming at the beach I like down there, I always wring out my bathing suit afterwards before I put it in my backpack, and the navy blue swimsuit almost gets to be black when it's wet, and it was the size of the man when he was wrung out in my dream...

Lessons from my half-English half-African friend.

The other weekend me and my half-English half-African friend hung out downtown, and he jaywalked an appalling amount and kept almost getting hit by cars, and I kept warning him that he should look out and be careful.

"People always tell me that," he was like, "But last time someone told me, they used a quite different argument, that I shouldn't jaywalk because there could be children watching. And you know what I said?

"First, I said that children should learn at an early age that rules can and quite frequently should be broken.

"Second, I said that children should learn that they shouldn't go around imitating every fool thing they see.

"Lastly, I said that children should learn that they can learn just as much from observing people doing bad things as doing good things, and that the sooner they learn that the better..."

Forgotten story - lyrics discussion with the classicists.

I forgot -

During the Latin program, a well-liked person had to leave early, so the people in my room hosted a farewell get-together with brats and a lot of beer and wine, and by the end of the night everyone was standing around pretty drunk while people played popular music on YouTube, which the classicists would then sneer at...

For example, one was like, "Oh, he wrote all the crappy songs from the past 10 years," when I listed off Max Martin songs as a Max Martin song was playing, and I had to tell them to try to write a chart-topper that everyone knows.

Then, when I put on "Wasted" by Gucci Mane, everyone made fun of that too.

"Come on," I was like, "These lyrics are golden", and I then recited along with the song the lyrics:

party party party/

let's all get wasted...

"I'd like you to write lyrics as good as that," I was like. "Go ahead and try, you think it's easy and the words are so simple, but it's not, it's not at all."

And at that, one guy realized I was making fun of everyone and nodded was like, "It's like the Latin of Cicero."

Supernatural story from my one friend with the cat.

My one friend with the cat told me about the most supernatural thing that ever happened to her...

When she was in her 20s, she was house-sitting for her sister one winter back in her hometown, and she was getting bored, and then she suddenly remembered that right nearby was the cemetary where her dad was buried, though she hadn't been there since she was 5 and at his funeral.

So, she goes there on impulse, and she knows the way to his grave somehow, she makes 2 turns and she's there, and the next thing she knows she's standing in front of his grave in light shoes and clothes that are totally inappropriate for the weather, and she's telling him everything that's happened to her in the years since he died, and when she has nothing left to say, she goes home, and there's a message on the answering machine -

which, she said, sounded like something really unearthly and sweet singing until the entire tape was used up, and she could only describe it as choirs of angels.

"What did your sister think of it?", I was like.

"Oh, nothing," she was like, "I think I erased it before she got home."

Pretentious observation.

So for the past several summers I've gone to the free summer concert series downtown

-AND-

The biggest crowd pleaser is not the pieces everyone knows - and I'm not talking in terms of applause, but absolute audience attentiveness where you can hear a pin drop because everyone is listening so intently - is anything by Shostakovich!

The two times they've played something by him (his violin concerto, a symphony) everyone listens crazy intensely. I wonder if that's why he got branded as a subversive under Stalin and couldn't write music... Everyone seems like they couldn't help but listen and seems noticeably disconcerted afterwards for no apparent reason.

Back in the (Black) Neighborhood Bar.

So, the other day when I was down at the university, I stopped through the (black) neighborhood bar.

Like my one hippie friend from Michigan requested - she moved home a few months ago - I gave my love to the bartender and hi to people I knew she knew.

I ran into this one older (black) woman ("Cecille"), and we started talking music, and I asked her for her opinion on the best song of the past decade, and after saying that that was a hard question and asking which genre and deliberating a while, she said it was Michael Jackson's "Don't Stop Till You Get Enough", because -

1) People from every culture everywhere know it.

2) No one can listen to it without dancing.

For her, I think the song is so alive that it seems like it's from this decade.

She also ran into her friend, and after talking a bit, the (black) woman friend ("Karen") was like, "I know you, we played that one gamebook of yours at [the student bar] a few months ago!", and I realized it was this woman who had joined me and my professor friend and ended up solving this really difficult puzzle we couldn't get where corporate logos were taken and had one letter removed and then rearranged to spell a new word, and she realized that the distinctive writing of "TRAITOR" could be rearranged to spell "MARRIOTT", which we hadn't realized since the most distinctive letter, the M, had been removed.

I then said that I actually had a new issue of that very same puzzle magazine with me because later that night I was going to the student bar to play Solitaire Hangman with my one professor friend, so I ended up pulling it out to show them that puzzle and we did the first word...

Karen finally got it, it was "HEXAGONAL", which she said as "hex-uh-gohn-uhl", which I found very cool - I say words wrong all the time that I've only ever read (worst was probably "synecdoche," which I said as "sin-eck-dosh"), and I find it very cute in others.

Got my haircut again...

...by Tennille.

Like I told her, "Summer hasn't started till Tennille gives me a summer haircut."

Things are going good with her. This past year she got engaged with a Mexican guy she's known from church for like forever and is friends with, and they went to a Chinese circus the other day.

"You should go," she was like, and she started telling me about how it was just human performers, not animals, and how young everyone was.

"Probably because old people couldn't do that," I was like, "That must take a huge toll on your body."

"Oh," she was like, "That makes a lot of sense. And here I was thinking that they get the young people up there because they can pay them less."

Then, she was like, "Me and my brain, we have a lot of fun there in my head sometimes," and laughed.

I also was telling her about how my friend was dating a Mexican and he took his shirt off and whirled it around his head at the local soccer match, and she said her fiance probably wouldn't do that, but he'd definitely yell at the team in Spanish; he's very much a sports person and always has to be outside, whereas she's fine to sit inside all day and turn on the radio and pour a glass of wine and read a book.