An Eventful Evening (II of II): Subway Ride Home.

That night when I went home around 9pm, the subway ride was mostly peaceful, except for this one (black) guy who was just a little too old for high school walking between cars and selling candy for a dollar for some cause, and saying “God bless you” to everyone who bought some. I was super-hungry, so I bought a pack of peanut M&Ms, and I wanted to ask him if he was for real, and that I didn’t really care if he wasn’t, but I didn’t, and so after he sold to me he walked through the rest of the car and was like, “Have a blessed night everyone, bless you all!” before opening the door between cars that only the conductor is supposed to open and going on to the next car.

After that, it was just me and some (Asian-American) (female) student sitting behind me reading a book, and this really peaceful looking 20-something (black) girl in a gray hoodie and a leather jacket and some tight jeans and big winter boots, who was just kind of spacing out and staring out the window and was looking like she was relaxing after a long day.

Then, at the Chinatown stop, like 12 (white) early 20s girl who were all done up and in short skirts poured into the car giggling and screaming, and with them came in this huge wafting smell of liquor. The sat all throughout the car and were calling each other’s names and shrieking, and both me and the (black) girl both kind of took deep breaths, and you could tell that we were both thinking “Fuck”... Like 2 minutes later, a (white) girl down at the end of the car was waving around a digital camera and calling out to the people sitting in front of me, “[those 2 girls's names, I can’t remember what they were], WANT TO TAKE A PICTURE, LET’S TAKE A PICTURE!!!!”, and as she held out the camera and was zooming to take a picture of them, I was inspired, and held up my middle finger right between the two girls so it would show up in the picture. At that I could all of a sudden see the (black) girl just burst out into this big happy smile, and I heard a satisfied laugh from the (Asian-American) student-girl behind me.

And, I think some of the other girls noticed, since they started talking quieter after that and I think the whole group caught on that they were being obnoxious.

An Eventful Evening (I of II): Catching Up.

The other night I visited my one (black) friend who works at the main library on Sunday nights, though at the science library, since I’m never on campus on Sundays anymore.

I told her about the Dutch tradition of having a guy in blackface accompany their version of Santa Claus, and she just shook her head and was like, “What message does that send to the children?”, and she repeated those same words again after I told her that my one Dutch friend had said that he remembers the guy who was in blackface pretending to be stupid and talking Dutch all wrong.

Also, when I google-image searched “zwarte piet” and we scrolled through page after page of happy Dutch people of all ages dressed in blackface, she just pursed her lips all seriously and kept going “mmmm-mmmmm-mmmm”.

After that, we caught up some, and she told me about one time her friend dreamt of rats and called her to ask what it meant, and she was like, “It means you play 929 in the lotto tonight” (her friend’s birthday was September 29^th). Her friend didn’t, but she did, and she won $300.

“I told you you should have played those numbers,” she told her friend afterwards.

I then brought up the dream book of Artemidorus from the 2^nd c. and how he had this whole book of how you interpret dreams, and she seemed interested, so I googled him and searched the hits till I found excerpts of his writings in English.

“This is all very interesting,” she was like, glancing over the excerpts, “but I don’t see any numbers!”

...later she also was saying the bathroom had stuff on the toilet seat that she had to wipe off with some toilet paper, and when I asked her if she meant piss or shit, she was like, "The latter," and proceeded to ask me if the men's room in the library was usually dirty like that... I told her it wasn't, and then regaled her about this shit I took a couple weeks ago where it was really really voluminous and watery, and sprayed down so hard that it splashed back up all over my ass, and when I got up shit-smelling brown water was running down onto my lower buttocks and legs... "[my name], you crazy," she was like, laughing...

Some friends's responses to that one Dutch Christmas custom.

I texted a ton of people about the Dutch-Santa’s-helper-in-blackface thing, and these were the responses I got back --

This one Mexican-American undergrad I know from campus who graduated last year and is living at his parents in the suburbs (and who had actually known about this from some tv show he saw a while ago):

Yup, that’s the racist Dutch for ya.

My one (white) friend from Mississippi:

Unbelievable!

My one lawyer friend from Missouri:

I know!! U should read the David Sedaris piece about that. It’s hilarious! I bet u can find it online. I laughed so hard I cried when I read it.

My one friend from Buffalo who’s very petite and stylish and studies Hinduism:

What?! That sounds crazy!

My one friend with the cat:

I think I knew that. Black Peter? Or something like that? The Dutch did not invent pc...

I was surprised that a couple people knew about it, but had never told me, which you think someone would have, considering how much I trash the Dutch.

2 Dutch customs.

1) During middle school a doctor goes around with some kind of instrument to check every one's foreskins, just to make sure they're not too tight when people get erections.

"I actually don't know who that person was," my one Dutch friend was like, "And I don't remember that ever occurring. Perhaps it was a priest in disguise?"

2) DUTCH CHRISTMAS CUSTOMS FOR KIDS INVOLVE PEOPLE IN BLACKFACE!!!

Does anyone know about it? That should set Twitter astorm. I might try to create a forward with my one (black) friend who works at the main library desk on Sunday nights.

my one dutch friend's dog...

is this white dog that's 14 years old and has this long tail, and is from Israel (his wife couldn't give it to anyone, so she brought it with her).

"Look at him!", he would be like, pointing out the dog's sad eyes. "He is such a Jewish dog, trying to give you a guilt trip all the time!"

...you know...

the older i get, the more i realize that i'd never give money to the catholic church, whether at a mass, or to a school, even one i supported at the time (you'd never know how the church would swing in the future, and to what use they'd put your money).

midnight mass in the city where my one dutch friend lives was pretty shocking - i'd never been to a mass like that in my life.

first of all, they started it off with this corpse-fucking traditionalism where they read a section out of the roman marthorology corelating the year of the birth of christ to all the other shit that happened before that in the world, and they had during the creed this part where they said 'kneel!' in the visitors guide book though no one attending seemed to know what was up with that (people were confused; several attempted to kneel, half-heartedly), and during communion they had this spooked-looking altar boy hold a gold plate on a stick out underneath where the priest was holding out the host, and following the host to your mouth, I guess in case you dropped any.

plus, there were like 3 masters-of-ceremony listed in the program, above and beyond the bishop and other priests listed.

then, the petition was all about abortion, and one prayer was about the power of evil (e.g. the devil), and 3 times (including during the very 1st petition) the bishop had himself prayer for by name (including once he said it himself!), and they always made sure to name all the ranks of the clerical hierarchy, and like 8-9 saints, but no mention of relevant things, like they poor, or abuse victims (in past masses i've been to, the clerical hierarchy is always prayed for, but in very general terms except for the pope).

i left feeling very disgusted, and realizing that the catholic church has become very nutty.

i also realized i hadn't been to mass for 4-5 years - and then i remembered that i had been to a few masses in that time said by very liberal priests, only somehow in my head i hadn't counted those as masses.

...oddity...

With some of the Greek texts I read for fun - I copied some, and read them when I feel like reading Greek in my recreational time; people in my summer Latin program had done that, and I realized that I was artificially limiting my foreign-language reading to "work time" - the text appears in two columns, and the Greek is supplemented by a Latin translation - for help!

If other people see me reading that, they must think that I'm a jackass.