Preface to a link sent by my one (half British) (half Sudanese) friend.

He forwarded me a link with ten facts about vaginas, introduced by this message:

thought you would appreciate this by the way. ten facts about your gateway into this world

. . .

Scab in my nose.

The other week the edge of my nose hurt, in my left nostril up towards the inside edge.

I looked in the mirror, and beneath a booger crusted in my stubbly nose hairs, there was this small long ugly yellow blister that must have been forming and been getting more and more infected.

So, I took the edge of my nail and popped it, and wiped it off as best I could, and I do believe I must have accidentally peeled away most of the infected skin.

Later, a scab formed, and I had this little brownish red cap right there up in the inside of the edge of my left nostril.

3 great public transportation people:

1) I see the train coming up and so I'm running up the steps and I call out "Hold the train!" as I near the top, and when I arrive, the conductor is leaning out the window, nods at me, and smiles as I walk on the train all out of breath.

2) At that same station, late one night I arrive, and as I'm about to walk out through the turnstiles, the (early 40s) (black) (goateed) man looks up and sees me, and as I say hi, he just smiles and flashes me a peace sign.

3) As I'm on my bikeshare bike down near the university I attend, I'm paused at an intersection, and a van coming from the street to my right makes a lefthand turn and honks and I see the (older) (fatter) (black) (male) driver smile and wave - and I suddenly notice it's the service van for the same bikeshare company, and I realize the guy must have been giving me a shoutout for being a bikeshare member.

Macho Mexicans who fuck guys: Details.

This one anthropologist I know did some fieldwork in the south of Mexico and was telling me about how there's a culture where a macho guy can fuck other guys and it's all good, as long as they're the top.

He said the key thing is that they have to act aggressively towards the other guy and be in charge, e.g., when he would walk past this one construction site near where he lived, guys would yell out, "Hey, you want a piece of this?" or something like that, almost as if they were wanting to beat him up, when really they were wanting something else entirely.

He said another key thing, too, is, the more it's like they get something off the passive guy, the more okay it is.

So, guys try to get $ off of guys who want to suck their dick or take it from them, and it's like they're fucking those guys on multiple levels.

He said that happened quite a bit, where gay guys would pay macho guys in order to suck their dicks.

A silly Spanish word: "universidadamente".

I saw that in an article, it's about how the Jesuits think about changing the world, "university-ly".

Honestly, I could shit Spanish.

And I do!

Parking lot wordgames.

The other week when I was biking through the empty parking lot of the city's major league sports team arena near me, I noticed that I was going through "B LOT", and I suddenly recognized that it was almost as if the sign was spelling the word "blot".

Then, I suddently realized that "A LOT" would look like the phrase "a lot", and "C LOT" would look like the word "clot", though "D LOT", "E LOT", etc., don't much look like anything.

Last major holiday...

i.e. Thanksgiving, turns out that my art school curriculum on cults had a unit on Satanism planned for the Monday afterward.

So, my students had to read about Satanism over Thanksgiving weekend!

I thought that was funny, and I wondered what their parents thought.

I asked them, and one said that the woman on the plane asked her what she was reading.

One more thing about these kids nowadays...

...at the main university where I'm getting my current degree:

A good amount (like 15%) have logoware for the school.

It's like they've arrived.

When did kids get to love the system so much, and how long will it last?

I do wonder if their attitude changes the longer they're in school, and the longer they're out and they see how student loan debt affects their lives.

My father in retirement: Perspective.

When that really disturbing Rolling Stone article on the alleged UVA gangrape came out, I was talking with my dad about my having just read it, and I said I'd send him a copy if he wanted, though I found it really disturbing.

"Please do," he was like.

"Are you sure?", I was like.   "It's not that pleasant to think about, and I really don't want to force this on you."

"Oh no," he was like, "I'm retired, I bitch about whatever the hell I want."

Stories of Brits (2 of 2): Fomenting revolution, vocab.

The other week I went out for drinks with the (half British) (half Sudanese) sister of my one (half British) (half Sudanese) friend, who is now also my friend.

We hadn't seen each other since the one night we went barhopping and I was trying to convince her to take other people's food since they bought it with *her* money, and she brought that up, and was like, "You know, I was totally with you, until you said all that about Christmas."

I had forgot -

After that one bar, we went to see if a restaurant bar was open (it wasn't), and on our stroll back, she saw a Christmas tree in the window of a store, and was like, "Oh look, Christmas, how lovely!".

"Christmas?", I was like.  "Christmas is a bourgeois luxury."

Then, I started going off on how many children the world over suffer making the toys that the children of the rich unwrap, look at once, and throw in a corner, and how it's a reactionary holiday, etc.

On a completely different note, she mentioned that for her new job she has to field filable cases and so feels like an "agony aunt", since people just go off and complain and complain to her, even when there's nothing filable.

I was confused by that phrase, and she said it's British for a major newspaper columnist who listens to your problems (like a Dear Abby, I took it).

Stories of Brits (1 of 2): Email banter.

So my one (half British) (half Sudanese) friend is a vegan, so when the ISIS pancake recipe came out, I immediately emailed him the link with this message -

Non-vegan!  How barbaric!

- to which he replied (after a smiley emoticon):

thank goodness they are not vegan, they would give us vegans a bad name!

. . .

A friend's Thanksgiving.

My one friend from Pittsburgh comes from a really fucked up family where he and his sister pretty much took care of themselves in a falling-apart house on the wrong side of the tracks in which a tree once grew through the floor.

Then, when we were texting over Thanksgiving weekend about family shit and the holidays, he texted me this -

I had cashews and sardines and jerked off all day on Thanksgiving.  Well, I did a little work also.

. . .

2 art student comments: So wonderful.

1)  One of my art students said she got so excited when she was home over Thanksgiving weekend and was watching the dog show with her parents, and up on TV came an exhibited bulldog owned by Patty Hearst.

2)  In class discussion, one of my students said she was very struck by some violent aspect of deprogramming in a cult deprogrammer memoir.

"In what way?", I was like.  "Was it shocking?"

"No," she was like, "Not especially, not after everything else we've read for this class."

Odd smell in my bedroom.

Because I put up plastic on the windows and my bedroom is poorly ventilated, it often smells musty in the morning.

Lately, however, it's started to get the mild smell of horseradish.

Oh, to have known Katy Perry.

From Katy Perry's concert film, it seems like she moved to L.A. with dreams of stardom and to get more freedom from her Pentecostal upbringing, and for a long while she had no money and would just go clubbing in blue wigs and whatnot as she started to break free and discover the world.

I bet it would have been super fun to party with her in those days.

She's super real, has a good heart, and seems upbeat and fun.  My kind of person.

Thoughts on teaching controversial sex issues.

When I re-teach my sex class, I think I'll do optional attendance units on campus rape and radical feminist criticism of transgender women.

What's the point of a university, if not the vibrancy of ideas?

Campus rape is a hugely important issue, and the radical feminist criticism is both influential and in some respects substantive, as well as representative of historical trajectories of which students should be aware.

The latter is often accused of being transphobic, but engagement should always precede and inform criticism, I think, and I'll make clear from my coverage of pronouns and discussion of my work that I try my best to be a transgender ally.

I'll def. make both units optional attendance, though, so students who might have visceral and disabling reactions can choose to absent themselves from discussion.

A weekday morning text...

...from my one friend who runs an integrated homelessness / domestic violence shelter:

[Her toddler daughter's first name] just dropped her doll and i swear she said, aw fuck!

I texted her back -

Blame the daddy.

My friend thought that was funny.  She likes it when I poke gentle fun at her husband (they both have the same sense of humor that way).

Student compliment...

One student in my art school class on cults said she recommended the class to her roommate, to take next semester!

I told her that that was better than warning her against it.

Overall, I'm glad that at least one person has liked the class!

Moldy peanut sauce.

Since my roommate's on vacation, I've been going through the fridge to get rid of spoiled stuff.

A few weeks ago, I dumped out moldy apple sauce.

A week ago, I opened up the Trader Joe's peanut sauce, only to discover a few big mold patches, one near the rim and one on the sauce (odd, since she only opened it up like 6-8 weeks ago, I'd have suspected there were more preservatives in it than that).

As with the apple sauce, I dumped it in the sink and ran water to flush it down the drain, but the peanut sauce was a bit tougher, and I had to stir it around in the drain for much of the sauce to flush down and go away.

Even then, there were two oddly large circular clumps left, one larger and one smaller

I realized that they were like pats of mold, since they were the mold clumps I had seen in the jar.

The mold was resistant enough to stick together in the force of the water dumped on it from the faucet, even when the peanut sauce it fed on was not.

At first it grossed me out, then I thought about how it was just an organism that people study like any other.

Neighborhood Stories: Produce Limits.

Later that same day at the grocery store, I saw there was a sale on cauliflower (limit 5 lbs. maximum), so I got 3 heads for myself since whenever I make curry, I like a lot of cauliflower in it.

I used the metal scale hanging from the ceiling and it indicated just a tad over 5 lbs., but I didn't know what to think, since the last time when I was over by the other end of the produce area weighing oranges that were on sale, the scale said I was exactly at the limit, but the scale built into register in the check-out area actually indicated I had 4.75 lbs, like a quarter pound under what I thought I had.

Nevertheless, when I was in the checkout, I told the cashier I had just around 5lbs and maybe a bit more, but I wasn't sure because of the scale.

"That's okay," she was like.  "Let's see."

As it turns out, I had 5.23 lbs.

"So what happens now?", I was like.  "Do I pay a higher price for everything over five pounds?".

"No, you're fine," she was like, and then she hit some button on the register, and it showed on the computer screen that I got everything for the sale price.

"Thanks," I was like.  "I wouldn't normally do that, but I do use three heads of cauliflower for a recipe I like, and these were the best ones, and as close to five pounds as I could get."

"We worry more about people taking twenty," she was like, and then explained that they instituted the rule to keep local (Chinese) people from buying vast quantities of sale produce for use in their restaurants.

Neighborhood Stories: Pharmacy.

The other day I popped into the pharmacy for floss and cash back, and the line was held up a bit since a (middle-aged) (Hispanic) woman and her (young) son were ahead of us and having problems using a gift card.

When it finally went through, the receipt kept printing out forever and forever and forever, until it was like 5 feet long, and as the (early 30s) (black) (female) cashier called out to her coworker, "Hey, look at this!", she turned and the receipts twisted so everyone in line could see it was mostly made up of "99 cents off" coupons, just one after another after another.

"Man, that makes me jealous," this (late 40s) (white) woman just in front of me said, turning around towards me and laughing.

Odd dream: A friend in need.

The other week I had this dream:

I hadn't seen my one friend from Buffalo in a while, and when I was up in a neighborhood on the north side of the city going to a new bar, my one lawyer friend from Missouri texted me that she was with her at a hospital and then going home, since she had a new place just a little bit closer to the hospital to make it easier on herself.

After lazily biking past some taller brick apartment buildings all up against each other and towards the front of the road during the grey afternoon weather, I next thing found myself on a dirt road in the country, a road that wound around with a bit of space after the road edge and a mild-looking forest beyond, and every once in a while a house or a driveway here or there.

Then, I was at a light blue house with a trailer put on it for an addition, towards its right side, in the middle of a dumpy clearing with tall grass towards its edges.

My one lawyer friend from Missouri and another friend I know through her, a businessperson from Missouri, come out to meet me, and I express my surprise that a house like this is so close to the city, that it's just tucked away like that.

I then say that I had seen these streets laid out on voter precinct maps that I was looking at, but I had no idea the neighborhood was like that, and somehow I know that at a certain time in their lives certain people choose to live in this neighborhood, since they're at a different stage with everything and like the quietness.

Our conversation feels like small talk, and we move into the house, which is sort of empty with dingy white walls and has dirty-looking, very light grey carpeting, and what furniture there is seems beat up and cheap like it was bought at a Wal*Mart or an office supply store, though here and there are swaths of blue-and-turquoise cloth hanging in S-curves from the ceiling, as if someone with taste had tried to do their best at an impossible project.

Then, they say my friend from Buffalo's doing all right, considering, just as she steps out from the hall to the bedroom, looking wan.

I ask if it's okay to look around - as if I don't know what's going on and I'm just visiting the house - and she says a quick look's okay, and I walk through the dirty and bare tiled kitchen with cheap light wood cabinets, and into the bedroom, which is dirty and resembles the living room, and has a few half-hearted swathes of blue-and-turquoise cloth in it.

Somehow, then, I'm sitting on the bed, and my friend is crying and she puts her head on my shoulder and says she never expected it, it happened so fast, but she's pregnant, then somehow from her phrasing here and there it becomes apparent to me that it's twins.

"It's all right, isn't it?", she asks me, as she just cries, and I know that she's not okay with her decision.

Then, we're out by the edge of a cornfield, all 4 of us, and it's dusk.

We're walking down some path that's on the slope of a small hill, with a dirt road on our left and to our right the cornfield and its hacked-off stalks at the edge and bare field beyond, and it's all growing darker.

Further up is a concrete bridge going over the road, and towards us comes this thin figure, a drawn (black) woman with crazy wide eyes where you can just see the whites of them from pretty far away.

My two friends from Missouri are walking much up ahead and she somehow passes them, and then she's by my friend from Buffalo, grabbing her wrist and saying sharp whispered things into her ear that scare her, and I know she's warning against the abortion.

Then, a small (black) girl comes in from the fields, and the drawn woman turns to her and says "Speak!", and I know that the woman has the expectation of prophecy from the young girl.

Then, the young girl says, "That is evil."

My friend from Buffalo immediately turns to me in horror with a deflated expression on her face, and as she does so, I see the drawn woman break character, and I know that she had actually prearranged the appearance of the little girl in order to extort money somehow from my friend.

Then, I wake up.

Mavis Staples concert (2 of 2): Mavis shined with the younger stars!.

The most surprising part of the concert was how Mavis Staples shined most performing with the younger stars:

Win Butler and Regine Chassagne from Arcade Fire on some disco-ish song that she really got into, and the song "You Are Not Alone", which she did with Jeff Tweedy from Wilco and held the entire house in the palm of her hand.

"The best producer in the world!", she shouted out several times during the concert, referring to him.

Interestingly, after the concert I watched to see who of the many celebrities Mavis Staples gravitated towards after the big closing number where the 20+ guest stars were all on stage together, and it turned out to be those same young folks, and not people like random bluesmen, Bonnie Raitt, Greg Allman, and others who were more her age.

I wonder if it's because the younger folks are making new music with her in fresher-inflected genres, and the rest of the people seem to be locking her into her older repertoire rather than allowing her to grow as an artist.

Mavis Staples concert (1 of 2): Ticket strategizing.

The other week I headed up to the Mavis Staples 75th birthday concert to see if I could get a cheap ticket; I would have just gone ahead and gotten a ticket, but the cheapest one was $75 (tax not included), which was too much for me, so I thought I'd risk trying to get one for cheaper out front.

So, I made sure I had like $50 in my wallet, then waited outside.

Fortunately, it was cold, and after talking to a couple scalpers and a guy with 2 $250 tickets from his friends to sell, I talked with a younger (white) (very straight) (rocker) guy with a longer wavy brown hair and a black leather jacket who had 1 $150 ticket because his girlfriend couldn't make it.

He said $50 wasn't enough, then went inside.

Later, he re-emerged and said he'd sell it to me for $60, and I pulled out my wallet and looked through my bills and said I had $57, and I could give him that and all the change I had in my pocket.

"That's fine," he was like, and took the bills I was handing out and handed me the ticket.

Then, I slipped right in behind him as we went through line, so I could call him out if the ticket was fraudulent, though it wasn't.

He and his friends were in the same row way up in nosebleed seats in the upper-middle part of the upper balcony, and every time he passed by me to go get a beer he called me "Slim".

"Excuse me, Slim," he'd be like.

His other friend had the seat right by me, and asked me if I smoked pot.

I said I didn't, and he was like, "Well, I hope you don't mind when we do."

Before the concert, he also asked me what book I was reading.

"A radical feminist analysis of transsexualism," I was like.  "She says that men who get sex change surgery are fetishists who cause women harm on many, many levels."

"Really?, he was like, "Tell me about it between songs."

"Okay," I was like, "If you want."

"I was kidding," he was like.

Later, after I scoped out empty seats during intermission, I moved down into the middle part of the lower balcony and got pretty damn sweet seats; the people there had moved down further to empty seats next to their friends, the people nearby said.

Not bad for $57!

My mother's prophetic dream.

For some reason I thought of this the other week -

My mom for a while has told the story of how back in August 2001, out of nowhere, she sat up in bed one morning full of fear and said, "Osama bin Laden!"

She's said for over a decade now that that was one of the freakiest experiences in her life.

Stepping back and looking at my life: The economics of it all.

When I step back and look at my life, I see:

1) My low-paying job takes up an inordinate amount of hours.

2) I don't have hope or the means for a vacation any time soon.

3) Timewise, relationships have been sacrificed.

Really, I think I'm patterning as someone on the wrong side of the economy.

A lot of people I know are feeling that...

A(n Italian) guy I know who's an adjunct instructor has been a bit disturbed by how much he works and yet doesn't have hope for a vacation, and so I told him that maybe the problem wasn't vacations, but that with the way life is right now, maybe it's our expectations, and maybe we should start recognizing that vacations aren't for people like us.

He just grimaced, and the look in his eyes made it seem like he agreed.

Really, everywhere you look, the social classes are realigning.

Mutual roommate confessions: Stealing food.

The other week I was eating some beans and rice, and since my roommate was in the living room, I offered to her that she could grab some if she wanted.

"You know," she was like, "I actually had some this morning."

Then, I confessed that when I woke up, I saw the takeout box from her in the fridge, and opened it up and had some of the ham in there.

Debate at student bar with local musician / music teacher: Music producers.

The other week when I was at the student bar I ran into a (late 40s) (black) (female) musician/music teacher who I know, and like always, we started talking.

Somehow, we got on the subject of musicianship and producers, and she said she didn't consider producers nowadays producers, since to her a producer was someone like Quincy Jones, who could really pick up and play every instrument.

Though, she did recognize that producers nowadays do have talent, but she wouldn't group them with people like Quincy Jones or say their talent was music in the same way.

Midway through, when she got a new drink, I bought it for her, telling her that I appreciated so much what she did as a music educator, since I had also had talented, conscientious music educators in my life, and they just don't get enough thanks.

Later in the conversation, I needed to run to the bathroom, and she was like, "Okay, tinkle, baby!".

Satisfying pimple: Popped it!.

The other week I was clipping ear hair - actually, using a razor to snag off some stray hairs just inside the little gristly tab that covers up the auditory canal - and when I pulled the skin tight to get a better shaving angle at the hair, I could feel a dull ache from the fleshy part just above the tab.

I got all close to the mirror and pulled the skin taut to see if I could see what it was, but I couldn't from the angle, though by feeling it I could tell that some pimple of rather large proportions had formed towards the inside of the ear, just out of sight tucked in among the cartilage folds...

I felt it and there wasn't a head, but I pulled the skin taut more and squeeze towards the base, and the next thing I knew there was a sudden, forceful, sizable burst and like 3 pinheads worth of crap just flew out and formed a streak across the nail on my finger.

I pushed harder, and a little liquidy blood came out, and though the pimple area was still bulky, it seemed like that that was from swollen flesh, and not from any more gunk being left inside.

So, I washed off my nail and put some rubbing alcohol on the area to clean it and draw whatever little else was inside out.

Later, a thin, brittle, mildly moist scab formed, and it easily fell off the wound as soon as I touched it.

Am I giving too much time and effort to teaching?.

I'm wondering if I'm giving too much time and effort to teaching.

I make up new handouts if problems arise, though I feel bad if my lesson plan doesn't come off as good as I hoped the first time.

Oftentimes, though, I wish I had more time to spend on preparation, although I would if I was better paid (since that way I wouldn't have to work so many jobs, and I could devote more time to each job that I do work).

On the other hand, I look at student effort, and it's only really like one-sixth of the art kids that are giving consistent effort where I'm constantly impressed by how they respond, and maybe like one-twentieth of the kids at the university where I teach.

From that perspective, if kids aren't responding or giving full effort anyways, I shouldn't be so hard on myself.

Too, the one guy I work for who's a just finishing or recently finished grad student, he was surprised when a problem that I thought I had dealt with cropped up in like 40% of student papers, and I responded by saying that I should make up a handout to head off this problem in future papers.

He said that I could do that, but from the sound of his voice, it almost seemed like that was something extra that he himself wouldn't do, and he was kind of surprised that I'd put that much effort in.

The difference between Ireland and America...

...according to Bono, in the Nov. 6th 2014 Rolling Stone cover article about U2:

"I've said this many times," Bono says, "but, you know, in America, you look up at the mansion on the hill and you say, 'One day, if I work really hard, I might get to live there.'  In Ireland, particularly in Dublin, you look at the mansion and you say, 'One day, I'm going to get that bastard.'"

That's almost enough to make me like Irish culture, though the drunkenness, duplicity, and rampant misogyny are clear downsides.

My favorite thing about Chicago's new archbishop...

..as a kid his parents made him take Croatian folkdancing lessons!:

AC:

And do you see a mirror-- or a window-- between seeing that impact on others and the impact that God had on your own parents and your own family?

BC:

Oh, I think so. You know, we were very tied to that church. We were about four or five blocks away. I mean, we went to school there. We served Mass. We each had our hour of adoration where we'd go up and my mother was up early, like 5:00 in the morning on Tuesday or I don't know what her hour was. And so was my dad. And then we would sing in the choir on Sunday. We would be a part of most everything on Wednesdays, because it was a Croatian parish, we would go up there and learn folk dances, Croatian folk dances.

AC:

Are you good?

BC:

No, well, I probably still could remember a few steps but we would rather be on the baseball field, the guys would. But nonetheless, we had to go up there and do that. And we performed for various groups in these various costumes. So that was all part of the church experience. It was kind of the pool we swam in.

. . .

Neighborhood oddness: Supermarket line.

The other Sunday I was in the checkout line at the grocery store in my neighborhood and pulled out a twenty and a ten to pay for my $25 bill, when this (short) (40ish) (dirty-looking) (brown-skinned) guy behind me who had just a big plastic carton of punch on the conveyor belt stuck out a plastic card at me and was like, "Hey, can I pay for that with WIC and you can give me the cash?  I got twenty-five dollars on here, I need gas for my truck."

I shook my head no as the (Mexican-American) cashier subtly looked up at me from the sides of her eyes in a "what the hell is this" kind of expression.

Then, the (dirty-looking) guy went off to the store to get something else as he left the carton of punch on the conveyor belt.

"You get that a lot?", I was like, but she just said she didn't get why he was doing that.

"He was probably short on cash and didn't have any of that, but had WIC money and wanted to trade that for actual hard money so he could fill up his truck," I was like.

"Oh," she was like.

More laff riots with students.

I forgot -

I was telling my writing students about how effective short punchy sentences can be if used in moderation, when some (white) girl at a nearby table in the campus cafe where I was holding this meeting shouted out in my direction as part of her conversation at her table, "You have got to be kidding!".

So, without missing a beat, I turned my head to speak to her as if she was addressing me, and was like, "No, I'm *not* kidding, short, punchy sentences can be highly effective in writing, when used judiciously!".

A lot of the kids laughed at that.

Fomenting revolutionary discontent among friends.

The other Friday I met the (half British) (half Sudanese) sister of my one (half British) (half Sudanese) friend for drinks, and we ended up at this new wine bar near the apartment where she's living with her boyfriend.

She only recently got a job and at first she didn't want to go the wine bar since it was pricey, but since she recently passed a professional qualification exam and I'm doing okay with money and on top of all of that it was a new bar that I'd need to go to at some point, I insisted that we go and I'd buy, so we went.

We sat up at the cheese-carving area, since the place was packed with complacent (young) (mostly white) professionals and those were the only two seats open.

"Look at how complacent they all are," I whispered to her, looking around conspiratorily over my shoulder and eyeing the crowd behind us.

('Complacent' is my new favorite word.)

She agreed.

"What this place really needs is a brick through the window," I was like.

"I don't think that'd happen much around here," she was like.  "No one to throw them."

"Oh, but there's a lot of people who work here who are probably discontent," I was like.  "All it takes is a ski mask and a spark to set it off, then they march down the street chucking bricks through windows."

"Perhaps," she was like.

"Perhaps?", I was like.  "That day will come."

We split some designer cheese, and the board came out with this pretty small piece of cheese, but a big nice freshly-baked baguette.

"That's pretty small," she was like, looking at the cheese.

Then, a few minutes later, she commented on how good the olives looked that the people next to us ordered.

"Take them," I was like.  "Those are our olives."

Then, nodding toward the complacent olive-eating (white) women, I was like, "Just look at them, they're people who live off the backs of others, of people like you and me.  Our money bought those olives, so take them, they're ours."

Every once in a while, then, for the rest of the time we had drinks there, whenever waiters brought out something tasty-looking, I'd encourage her just to up and take the food.

When we left and were heading to another bar, I was telling her about how I'd been reading about the Symbionese Liberation Army and how much sense their slogan made, "Death to the fascist insect that preys upon the life of the people!".

"You know," I was like, "It's a little much, but it's kind of true."

"I'm not sure I like the 'fascist' part," she was like.  "It vilifies people too much and descends too easily into violence."

"Then what would you have instead as a slogan?", I was like.

"Oh, something like, 'confiscation of property'," she was like, quite seriously.

"Our Founders".

Something else on my mind recently:

From scattered references that I've read (I have nothing at hand), the founding generation of the U.S. thought that no good could come of secret societies.

If I'm not mistaken, that same ethos carried through the anti-Masonic debates of the 19th c., since why would citizens be okay with politicians all belonging to the same secret club?

Yet, we're in that place now, with the manipulating money that's funding political campaigns, and all the top-secret shindigs where politicians go to give speeches to the likes of the Koch Bros.

When did America lose that sense that secret societies are never any good?

From what I gather, the default common sense now is that "they can do what they want, it's a free country", which is some bullshit that can be used to excuse anything.

Really, our country suffers from an impoverishment of recognition of the basic values and behavior appropriate to citizens.

On the complacency of the young.

I think what most surprises me about nowadays is how complacent the young are.

Overall, it seems like kids nowadays are so trained to love authority that they look around everywhere for a pat on the head from daddy, and don't realize how much they're getting fucked.

You think with a rainbow of faces in a college classroom that there'd be some diversity on that front, but there really isn't, as far as I can see.

Instead, it seems like most of the kids have been trained in ass-kissing and so can't snap out of that mindset enough to wake up, or perhaps they come from that section of the nation where the economy is doing quite well for them, as my one (half British) (half Sudanese) friend loves to say.

Unfortunately, as a society, it seems that the only values we have around are the "lowest common denominator" values of the dollar, so that's the only thing that kids seem to aspire to.

How refreshing it must have been in the late 60s and 70s, when the default attitude was questioning "the system"!

I'm wondering if these kids are ever going to wage intergenerational warfare and think contemptuously of their parents and their values.

You can always hope...

The other day at the art school as I was setting up for class I heard the students talking among themselves, and one was saying how she had a medication reaction and her RA had to call the ambulance, and now she has a $1000 bill for that and $5000 for the ER b/c the school's insurance doesn't cover it.

"What does all this money go for?", one student asked. "You think with what we'd pay, we'd be covered."

Then they began batting around how fucked up the system was with money being taken out of their pockets for education, something I never hear at the other university I work for.

That said, I still get the sense that the art school kids aren't in the "overthrow the system" mindset, but rather are kind of mildly bewildered that the system isn't working out for them.

Cumulative reflections on the midterm elections...

My biggest lasting impression of the midterm elections is that something's profoundly changed in our political system b/c of the influx of $, and an uneasy thought is circulating that we're not as much of a democracy as we used to be.

In Iowa and Wisconsin and Illinois, everyone is shocked at and sick of the amount of TV ads, and at least the guest housing host who I had in Iowa said that she'd not only heard that same response from a lot of people, but also that people were wondering where that money was coming from and why we don't have better things to spend it on as a society.

In Wisconsin, the same hardcore old union activists who I know were comforting themselves by saying "we fought the good fight", but seemed uncertain whether their "knock doors" tactics could really stand up as much as was needed to the influx of money.

In other words, individual people really can't unite against billionaires as much as we'd like to think.  Life isn't some Disney movie where it's easy for underdogs to win.

A few years ago, my one (Mexican) (naturalized U.S. citizen) friend said that every year the U.S. is becoming more and more like Mexico, where politicians make a show of being connected to people but are actually being bought and paid for by millionaires, and where everyone knows it but no-one does anything.

I think he's right, and I can only wonder when and how we can pull out of it.

Amendment to the Constitution?  Replacement on the Supreme Court that allows reversals of key rulings?

What's worst of all is that so many people don't even know what's happening; Citizens United is going to be in history books as a key point of American democratic demise, and yet so many people I know don't even know that it exists.

Just sickening.

Text re: Iowa GOTV from my friend.

Text from my one friend who's a prof of modern Czech literature when I texted her about the half-naked fratboys answering their doors when I did GOTV work in Iowa:

I'm imagining half shirts and hairy navels.

. . .

More memories of get-out-the-vote in Iowa:

1) A guy on the bus had a hat saying: "Commes des F*ckdown".

2) As I was leaving the campaign office to stop at a legendary diner before catching my bus back to the city, one volunteer woman came up and tried giving me a $20 bill to treat me to dinner there.

"Please," she was like.

I refused, but she kept insisting, and she was like, "No, you have to, my brother-in-law owns the place, the money stays in the family."

I finally took it, but told her I'd use the leftover money to give the server a nice tip.

"Or buy yourself some junk food for the bus," she was like, "I don't care."

3) At that diner, late on a Sunday night, David Bowie's greatest hits kept playing on repeat.

The guy doing the seating said the cook liked that, and it was always that, or Prince.

4) That same diner had t-shirts for sale for $10; usually they were $20, but there was a fire and the t-shirts suffered minor burns, so they added a commemorative 2014 fire sticker to all the t-shirts and reduced the price to get rid of the stock faster.

5) The rental houses for students were astounding: piles of wet and moldy paper on front porches, beer bottles everywhere in screened-in porches, even one house where all the address numbers were broken off except for a very small bit of the top part of a "2", that was just dangling there by a screw.

6) One house advertised music lessons and guitar repair.  A woman answered the door in a black turtleneck and black beret, with heavy eye makeup like an Egyptian pharaoh.

Memories of get-out-the-vote in Iowa:

1) After I mention that I don't like to start canvassing until 10am, a local Iowa woman said that she's found that esp. true w/fraternity houses.  "It's like, 'Hell-ooooo, are you home yet?'".

2) At one of the 1st apartment complexes I hit, I had to step over vomit on the sidewalk to the door, then the door to the building unlocked...  First door I knocked, one guy answers the door but it's not the guy on the list, then a (short) (built) (hispanic) frat guy in a college t-shirt and tight-whities comes to the door and promises to vote Democratic...

When I tell this to the people back at the canvassing site, the one local Iowa woman is like, "Nice impression of Iowa, huh?".

3) The next day, a (tall) (lanky) (white) frat guy in a colored, patterned long underwear-style shirt answers the door in that and boxers, and also promises to vote Democratic.

4) Another woman at the canvassing site tells of the time that she knocked on a door with the sign "naturalist" taped in the window, and she's thinking to herself, "Nice, this person is in the Audobon Society and Sierra Club", then the door opens and a guy is standing behind it peeking out, and it's clear that he's naked.

She registers him to vote, and gets him to request an absentee ballot.

5) That same woman also said her daughter was canvassing on a college campus in Dubuque at like 11am in the morning, and a frat guy answered the door and propositioned her.

She was like, "No!", then left and walked down the middle of the road, it freaked her out so much.

6) Yet another woman at the canvassing site had a family that was a poster child for the Affordable Care Act:  she lost her job and lost her health care, her son had long-term problems that were considered pre-existing conditions, and her daughter turned out to have an undiscovered long-term health problem going back to a never-recognized birth defect.

All are now covered with manageable insurance and bills.

For a while when she was unemployed and having cash flow problems, though, one of her friends in suburban Chicago was like, "Sell your house."

7) The local Dem office holder who gave me supporter housing said she feels like the college kids she sees nowadays are like throwbacks to the Reagan years.

"Everything was just great, then the 80s came," she was like.  "And it's like we're back then again."

She then added that she was invited in to speak to student govt. leaders on the local college campus, and all of them were wearing business suits at the meeting.

"What's up with that?", she asked someone her age after she left.

"They all do that now," they told her.

Memories of get-out-the-vote in Wisconsin:

1) One old man at the door, after he told me that he had already voted and I thanked him:  "I hope that we can get that son of a bitch out of office."

2) Another old man, after saying he's a Democrat despite his stance against abortion, and decrying how much young people today sleep around:  "Back in my day, it was special.  I tried to get in my wife's pants for the entire 5 years that we dated, but it didn't happen until our wedding night.  And that made a difference."

3) Bartender at the union hall election results-watching party, talking about visiting her parents in the northern part of the state:  "Everywhere you went, there was just Walker signs and only Walker signs, I didn't see a single Burke sign at all.  So I brought some up!".

4) That same bartender said a lot of people supported the governor since their taxes went down - not realizing that the change in their tax bill was because the county had devalued their houses and lowered their property taxes.

5) Another guy at the union hall election results-watching party, talking about the western, rural part of the county:  "There's just no Democratic signs, you think there would be at least one disgruntled farmer somewhere!"

6) At the get-out-the-vote site, I meet a teacher named "Dream".

"My parents were hippies," she was like, after she introduced herself and said her name.

Then, she spoke of how health care reform mattered so much to her, she organized as many as 3 phonebanks a week out of her home to get people to call and rally people to support its passage, and when Obama was speaking at a rally in Green Bay, she and a handful of others were invited to meet him as a big 'thank you' to them for their efforts.

"I'm Dream," she told Obama.

"Yes, I recognize your name," he was like (since he had been informed of her volunteer efforts?).

"My parents were hippies," she shrugged.

"That's cool," Obama was like.  "Mine were too."

Comments made to my undergrad writing class:

1) As I leave them for 5 minutes to complete a short exercise:  "After you try your best on your own, feel free to talk with each other, or take out your cell phone and call your helicopter parents."

2) After a student mentions how arbitrary Greek gods are and is searching for words to describe them:  "Yes, they're kind of a-holes.  Or, since they are Greek, I should say, 'alpha-holes'."

3) In trying to relate to students, I drop Harry Potter references, then later say about a particular writing technique, "It's small but extremely mighty... like a house elf."

4) When that falls somewhat flat with the majority of students, I elaborate, "No, really, we may be from different generations, but I can relate, really I can.  When I was younger, you have no idea how much I was bullied on social media.  The other kids used to send me the nastiest letters by Pony Express."

5) When I pause over the plural of the word "thesaurus", someone says "thesauri", but then I'm like, "No, it's thesauroi," and I write it on the board in Greek.

Later, when someone uses the word "chiasmus", I'm like, "Want me to write that on the board in Greek too?", and someone says yes, so I do.

Still later, after I use the word "appreciation", I'm like, "Should I write that on the board in Greek?", and when someone says yes, I'm like, "But that's not a Greek word, come on, people!".

6) As part of my standard guessing game, I ask students to guess how old I was when I read a particular book, so this time, I asked them how old I was when I read The Thorn Birds (answer: twelve!).

No-one knew what that book was, so I had to explain to them that it was a 1980s trash sensation whose plot was essentially "a woman f*cks a priest in the outback" (substituting "makes love" for "f*cks"), and that it was also a legendary TV movie with Richard Chamberlain as the priest.

"It was the Fifty Shades of Grey of its time," I was like.  "Scandalous."

Then, I was like, "Name some other twentieth century pop trash sensations."

"Twentieth century?", one student was like.  "That's hard."

I then wrote "Peyton Place" and "Valley of the Dolls" on the board, and explained that those were pop trash sensations of the 1950s and 1960s that they should know about.

None of the students had heard of them.

First, I pointed at "Peyton Place".

"Written by Grace Metalious," I was like.  "She was a housewife."

Then, I pointed at "Valley of the Dolls".

"The 'dolls' of the title are the pills that the three main women characters pop constantly as their lives decay and become increasingly empty," I was like.  "It was also made into a legendary movie with its theme song sung by Dionne Warwick."

Then, I added, "This is the world you live in, you should know it.  These really are major cultural touchstones, really they are."

Then, again I was like, "Honestly, go ask your parents about The Thorn Birds," I was like.  "See what they say."

Insight: African-American politics with Illinois governor's race.

A (middle-aged) (black) woman who works the library security guard desk who I talk with gave me her perspective on the Illinois governor's race:

1) Gov. Quinn announced he'd try to live 30 days on minimum wage (an announcement he quickly revoked), and she thinks that pissed a lot of (black) voters off.

"It's like, who are you to do that, when I *live* this," she was like.

2) Rauner tried to split the black vote by:

- meeting with (black) voters in highly-publicized meetings.
- getting endorsements from a handful of (black) pastors.
- running late campaign ads w/video footage of legendary (black) mayor Harold Washington shitting on Pat Quinn.

All together, this sowed enough confusion where some (black) people may have voted GOP, but more likely just got a few doubts planted in the heads of enough people and those people decided to just stay home.

. . .

Later I told her that those (black) pastors disgusted me, because they sounded like true whores.

"Not all pastors," I was like, "I mean, just the ones that sell themselves for money.  That's the new line in politics that's dividing constituencies, people who do shit for money and the people who don't."

"I know," she was like, "And I agree.  But I always remembers, God is watching and sees everything.  They may get what they want now, but they won't down the road."

Addendum.

I forgot -

The (older) (ethnically Hungarian) (South American) woman had also been complaining about how conservative the Catholic speakers on campus are, and when I told her how that one speaker had shut me down when I asked about lesbian nuns, she was like, "At the next lecture, you come sit next to me."

I also forgot -

2 times ago in the lecture series, the (hispanic) boyfriend of my one (Asian-Canadian) friend came too, and at the reception afterwards I could see a staff photographer positioning himself to snap a picture of all 3 of us talking.

"More to the right, more to the right, get the epicanthal fold," I said as if I was the photographer voicing his thoughts, as he went to get more of my one (Asian-Canadian) friend in the shot.

"But my skin is brown from every angle," his (hispanic) boyfriend said, a bit uncomfortably and seeming like he was not all cool with the joke, which my one (Asian-Canadian) friend nevertheless found very funny.

Email from a hispanic Hungarian.

The other week at a lecture me and my one (Asian-Canadian) friend ended up sitting next to this older (white) woman from South America who we began chatting with forever, and when we finally traded emails, she asked me how my last name was pronounced, and when she seemed unduly interested, I asked her if she too was Hungarian, and she said yes, and then explained that her parents were Hungarian Jews who came over in the 30s because there weren't restrictions on higher education in the country that they emigrated to.

Then, when she then said her last name, I spelled it correctly out loud, which impressed her even more.

She later sent an email saying hello, and asking me if I spoke any Hungarian; when we talked in person, I had asked her and she said she had spoken some but not in years, but she had never asked me in return.

Interestingly, she closed off her email -

Szérbusz!

- which is the standard greeting "szervusz", but with the v-b confusion that a lot of Spanish-speakers make!

LOL.

My one hippie friend from Michigan's got a lover.

So my one hippie friend from Michigan has been hooking up with a manager from a local restaurant for over a month now.

The other day, she came to campus to give me a check with some $ I loaned her, and she walked me up to the building of the one class I'm TAing, both to chit-chat since we hadn't seen each other in a while, and also so she could go downstairs and use the restroom there since she really needed to pee.

At the building as I was heading up the stairs, she was going down the stairs to go use the restroom in the basement level, and we still kept talking a bit, and finally, right before I had to go, she was like, "Honestly, this is the best cock I've been getting in my life, but how do I tell a middle-aged black man from Mississippi that America is by no means a 'bootstrap nation'?".

Then, as I turned to go upstairs, I see a freshman in my class who had just come in, and I had to wonder how much of what my friend said he overheard.

Then, I had to wonder, if he *did* overhear it, what does that make him think about who I am.

Anyhow, me and my one hippie friend from Michigan actually ended up hanging out that night too, and she told me that she and the restaurant manager got really drunk and had a threesome, and though she doesn't remember this, he told her the next day that as he had her bent over and was f*cking her up the ass from behind and she was eating pussy, she kept saying, "I taste life! I taste creation!" over and over again in between eating pussy.

She laughed as she told me what she had been saying.

Bonding with Spanish speakers.

Two times ago when I was heading out of town for a trip, I hopped the bus near my house to get a ride up to the subway w/my luggage.

For whatever reason, the driver drove fast and laid on the horn and blazed through yellow lights and got us to the station in record time.

A(n older) (Mexican) woman who had made room for me to sit down with my luggage seemed bemused by the driver's driving, and she and another woman she was with made eyes at each other as the driver laid on the horn right before we got to the station.

"Wow," I said to the (older) (Mexican) woman right after the driver laid on the horn that last time.  "Que aggressivo" ("How aggressive").

And then, when she nodded in agreement, I raised one eyebrow mischievously and said dramatically, "Me gusta" ("I like it"), and at that she and the other woman laughed.

Two great texts...

After I confirmed to my one hippie friend from Michigan that I'd pick up whiskey and ginger ale before heading to her apartment, she texted back a text beginning, "Groovy tooties."

Also, the other day I noticed that my roommate had 3 (!) jars of pickles in the fridge, and since she lets me use pickle juice for soups, I put the pickles from 2 jars into one single one, told her about that when she came home from work, and then texted her the next day -

Thanks again for letting me consolidate your pickles last night, if you know what I mean.  ;)

- to which she replied -

:D Oh anytime...  Lol.

. . .

A truly memorably shit.

I took a normal shit before breakfast, then as I was lingering over coffee, I felt shit start to urge out my anus, to the point where it must have been almost easing out and I had to leap off and hustle to the toilet.

I sat down, and right away it was like a giant water gush, and after that one giant bowel movement - and truly it was a dump, it was like my entire intestines just dumped down at once! - I looked down and it was like thick consistency yellowish-tan baby food across the surface of the entire toilet bowl, just floating on the water, probably at least a half inch deep, by my estimation.

Making a woman laugh at the bank.

The other day I had some minor stuff to take care of at the local banking branch near the university campus, and the (black) woman who greets customers when they walk in ended up helping me.

She looked familiar - she said I looked familiar too - and so we ended up reintroducing ourselves.

Then, as she helped me with some stuff on my account, I kept helping myself to Halloween candy from this little bowl in front of me.

"I hope you don't mind how much candy I'm eating," I was like.

"No, that's what it's there for," she was like.

"Cool," I was like, "And plus you're probably like, 'Get that away from me!'".

Then, she was like, "He said, I say, 'Get that away from me!'," and at that she laughed.

Then, I told her how a long time ago I was talking with a friend-of-a-friend who was working as a frycook, and he put on ten pounds through "tot dipping", where he'd pop a few tater tots in his mouth with every order he plated, and next thing he knew, he gained ten pounds.

At that, she just cracked up.  "He said, 'Tot dipping'!", she was like.

After she got done helping me, we tried to remember how we knew each other, and we both agreed it must have been from her helping me with something at the bank before.

"Did you have a questionable charge?", she was like.

I didn't, so she ended up looking me up in the system, and it turns out that I had had her get my checks mailed to that branch for me, since my mail was undependable and I didn't want them getting stolen.

City terrors: Raids on busses.

The other day in the university library I ran into this one (middle-aged) (neighborhood) (black) woman I know who frequents the library for its fast internet connection, since she can do that since has a degree from the university.

"Hey sugar," she called out when she saw me (she always calls me "sugar" and gives me a hug whenever she sees me), and then she called me over, since we had caught sight of each other across the first floor foyer from quite some ways away.

Then, when I got up to her, straightaway without any formalities she was like, "Remember to be careful on the bus," and she told me about how she and her friend the other day like 8pm on a weekday got off the subway and had just missed a bus, then on the next bus they ended up passing the first bus, and it was pulled over with police cars all around it.

She said gangs of kids have been invading busses and stealing from passengers; someone stops the bus to get on as a passenger, then a big group enters through the back door and they walk through the aisles demanding stuff from people.

At first it was iPhones, but now it's wallets, and on that one bus she was almost on, they ended up beating up some little (white) university student and giving him a black eye, though he never went to the emergency room.

"Damn," I was like.  "That's insane.  I bet it's the bad economy, people are getting desperate since things have been so bad for so long."

"I know," she was like, "That's what I think too."

Snakes and Dreams of Snakes.

The other day when it was dusk I went to unlock my bike from a pipe in front of my house, and this garter snake slid out from behind the pipe and skirted the front of the house before it disappeared down some concrete steps and into some leaves blown up against them.

Several days later, I dreamt I was walking along a sidewalk, and two times I came across and scared a big garter snake that was just sitting out on it.

Huge ethical choice: Do I sacrifice time, or a metal fork?

The other week I needed to pop into a government office downtown, so I decided to go there before my one night class I teach, since the week was hectic and stopping through then would be easiest for me.

After they scanned my backpack, though, the security guard called attention to my dinner and was like, "Please leave your fork with the guard at the front desk."

Then, he was like, "Be aware that we cannot return your fork to you when you exit the building, so if you want to keep your fork, you can go outside and leave it in your car.  Otherwise, if you choose to enter the building, we are required to confiscate it."

So, what do you think I did - prioritize my schedule, or the environment?

Really, I was put in a position where I was forced to choose between wasting time or wasting a metal fork, both of them pet peeves.

(Leave answers on comments section below and I'll eventually respond with what I chose.)

Attentive Chinese students change their visages.

In the gen ed curriculum where I teach writing, the current book we're reading is a classic of Chinese literature.

The prof says it's okay for me to contribute a few times per class period once students get their thoughts out, so the other day at 2 points during the discussion I added in a point about virtue and then another about Buddhism, and both times the 2 (female) (Chinese) students in the room seemed engaged and their eyes lit up and one even expanded on the 2nd point with another observation of hers.

Previously, the other (female) (Chinese) student had made a statement about the role of virtue in Chinese society and its relation to bureaucratic corruption, and upon her saying that, it seemed to me like she didn't seem like she was taking the class discussion seriously at all... Most people who had been speaking were unaware of that cultural context and the book that we're reading can be pretty elliptical and opaque and even more so without a major context like that, which led to a lot of bullshit, which I was sensing too, especially right around the time she decided to speak up.

After my comments later in that same discussion, however, both their appearances visibly changed towards me, both gained some kind of immediacy and lost a kind of guardedness, and though I had been taken seriously before as an authority figure, they both seemed now to look at me sympathetically and like someone they could relate to (since they assume I know something of Chinese culture?).

Really, both their faces were oddly engaged after I spoke and suddenly just became somehow unguarded and more open towards me, and the difference from how they'd looked at me previously was very striking.

In many ways, I don't respect my university students.

The other day I was thinking that I don't respect my university students in many ways - or, perhaps I should say, I don't disrespect them, but I don't automatically respect them somehow either (though I think that *they* think people respect them for their CVs of endless accomplishments, which is another topic altogether).

Overall, their experience in early ed and higher ed militates against them attaining the fullest forms of human realization as I see it, a deep and visceral concern with social issues and the body politic.

For one, their high schools train them to do charity and show on their resumes that they "get it", and many of them seem actually seem to believe the hype.  That feeds into the biggest threat to true sympathy, thinking you're sympathetic, even when you're not....  This generation loves to say they accept everyone, so they don't seem to see the many ways in which they don't (mostly on the basis of class).

For another thing, their college experience doesn't seem to challenge their complacency.  If anything, it just deepens it, by giving them an appearance of diversity and collision of viewpoints so they can say they've been challenged and improved though it's not clear how much actual challenge to who they are is going on.

I don't want to generalize, there are many nice students out there, but I doubt many of them will thrive in the ways that I think are important.

I'm talking of the kids at the university where I study, of course, not the art school kids.

Angering Oral Historians of Contemplative Nuns.

So I've been reading this new oral history of cloistered nuns and was pretty stoked at first, but then realized a lot of it was just sticking with their self-presentation without digging down into deeper issues, of which there are many since all the nuns interviewed so far as I've read seem to be kind of odd fringe conservative Catholics.

Nevertheless, I'd seen that the author had been making a documentary at the same time that she did the oral histories, which I found interesting, and I idly wondered whether I'd ever see it one day.

Then, out of nowhere, there were posters on campus about how she'd be screening documentary cuts that very night as part of a series put on by this Catholic institute on campus that trends very conservative, so I decided to go anyways, though I'd be having a long day.

I had another function, but I came as soon as I could, and got there in time to see like 15min. of footage and hear Q&A....

In the early Q&A, people were mentioning "The Nun's Story" fondly, so after I poked my neighbor and asked if the doc covered young nuns and student loan debt and he said no, I raised my hand and said 2 things.

First, as a point of fact, I said that "The Nun's Story" is a very odd part of the history of American Catholicism since it romanticizes nuns and is so mainstream culturally, yet it's the thinly fictionalized memories of the author's Belgian ex-nun lover and the author herself was into Gurdjieffian mysticism, so in so many words the beloved book-and-film's viewpoints are mediated by a reticent lesbian with fringe esoteric leanings, all of which is not taken into consideration not nearly enough.

At that, I could see people in the audience shift in their seats nervously or in discomfort.

Then, I asked the question to what degree did the community exclude young candidates w/student loan debt or older women w/healthcare costs.

Straight away, the documentarian said she's an oral historian, so she represents what people *say* about "The Nun's Story", not anything about its history.

Then, she said that student loans of a young postulant and healthcare costs of an older candidate were mentioned briefly in 2 sections of film footage, and mentioned a foundation to alleviate young postulants of debt.

Overall, she seemed a little prickly, though I wondered if it was b/c my question was repetitive despite my best attempts to make sure it wasn't.

Later, at a lull in questioning, then, I raised my hand, and she called on me again, and I asked her to what degree did she signs of lesbianism in the community during the time that she was there?

At that, she got visibly *pissed*, so I was like, "No, this is a very serious question" - and at that I heard a derisive snicker - "and there's quite a bit of social history out there on the topic, so I'm wondering what you came across in your time there."

At that, she was like, "Pardon me, but I would like to answer questions from members of the audience who have been here for the entire presentation."

Afterwards, I went up to the speaker and apologized for not being present the entire time due to another function and for perhaps asking a repetitive question, though I had asked my neighbor about it to try to head off that inconsiderate possibility.

Then, I self-identified as a historian who's taught on monasticism and celibacy and had been reading through the university library's copy of her book here and there for several weeks and was like 40 pages in, and was honestly wondering to what degree she came across signs of lesbianism in the community.

Then, I clarified that sources indicate that during the mid-20th c., the 2 major social roles available to Catholic women were motherhood or "a community of strong women", and that women who later identified as lesbians chose the 2nd option.

Then, I stated that my impression was that despite changes in the larger culture, this pattern of roles still clung to certain conservative corners of American Catholicism, so I'd guess that the same phenomena were more likely to surface in the community that she studied than in other communities of women religious.

Again, she was snippy, and was like, "I really focused on telling the stories that the women wanted to tell."

"Interesting."  I was like.  "So did anything surface anywhere, or did you get the sense of anything from talking with any of the women?"

"I wasn't looking for that," she was like, and then cut me off to talk to someone else as she abruptly turned her shoulder to me.

. . .

Overall, the oral history has really been shit, as far as I can tell - it sticks too close to its subjects' point-of-view, rather than recognizing it and moving questions to larger issues, etc.

Furthermore, the problems seem to go back to the author's decisions.

Her prizing the subjects' words means she cedes all point-of-view and larger questions to them, and even her response on larger questions of student debt and healthcare means that she only knows of the issues as they surfaced in interviews and so did not recognize leads and follow them up in further talks.

Her whole "I'm an oral historian, and so go with what people say" schtick too means that she is trying to put a quick end to any conversation with someone who knows greater contexts of which she is unaware...  I later saw that her credentials were an MFA, so that might explain her discomfort with historical and ethnographic questions.

Also, I wonder how many people in that room will think of "The Nun's Story" the same way again.

Confirmation of Shocking Bar Revelation about the Observation of Employees.

The next bar I was at was an upscale hotel bar, and I talked with the (young) (white) male bartender and told him about the camera system thing I had just learned about.

I said it sounded like bullshit and I didn't know if it was true, but he was like, "No, it's standard," then he tipped his head backwards just slightly to gesture to some camera up behind him on the ceiling towards the end of the bar.

"I'm being watched right now, the entire time I'm at work," he was like.  "They have a room full of screens in the hotel and the guards monitor us too."

He also said it was to keep employees from stealing, and that he and other employees were not allowed to patronize the bar when they were off work.

"It's kind of weird," he was like, "But whatever."

I then broached the subject of this downtown club/restaurant where I heard that people did coke in a back room to see if guards didn't watch the customers - that is, to see if the working class was watched for deference but the richer customers could do whatever they hell they wanted - but our conversation was cut short...

He had just wheedled the name of the downtown club/restaurant out of me and confirmed that he wasn't surprised (and added in the names of a couple other places where a lot of coke was done too!), but before I could move the convo in the direction I was interested in, this kind of drunk (older) (blonde) business traveller in a tight blue dress that pushed her tits up wandered over to the bar and kept trying to hit on him.

For one, he had never been to New York, so she said he could stay with her if he came.

For another, she said that being a business traveller could be lonely, and though you see a lot of the same people in the same hotels, you can be with other people and still be by yourself.

Shocking bar revelation: Observation of employees.

My latest bar discovery?

Upscale restaurants and hotel bars downtown not only have elaborate camera systems throughout, but use them to monitor employees - INCLUDING FOR DEFERENCE TO RICH CUSTOMERS.

After I got a drink one night at the bar of a newly opened steakhouse, I went to go take a piss and had to go up this ramp by the side of the restaurant, and as I started up, a uniformed (younger) (white) (male) waiter started to come down the other side, then saw me, backed up, stood aside, and made a beckoning notion for me to proceed.

"No no no," I was like.  "You go."

"No, please," he was like.

"No," I was like.  "You have know idea how much I hate hierarchy.  It makes me vomit in my mouth to do that to you."

"I understand, sir," he was like, "But no, I insist, you're a customer."

"If I'm the customer," I was like, "Then tell your manager that you came down the ramp because the customer insisted that would make him happy."

"You have no idea how much I appreciate that," the guy was like, "But cameras don't catch words, and I'd get in trouble."

He then told me about the camera system...

Everyday Signs of Our Stratifying Society:

1) Here in the city, an upscale hotel bar bartender told me that bottle service, which had been imported from NYC not too long ago, has gone bonkers over the past 5 years.

(What's bottle service?  Essentially, a group, usu. of men, buy a table at a club and get a bottle of liquor for hundreds or even thousands of dollars, and then the club supplies free mixers...  These men then use the booze and the allure of $ to try to "make it" with women.)

2) In the neighborhood of the university where I go, the kinda upscale restaurant that opened has $30+ entrees. so bills can get up to a few hundred bucks for two people.  Yet, that restaurant is most frequented by *juniors* and *seniors* in college out on dates and whatnot, says my one hippie friend from Michigan, who recently started working there!

. . .

Remember, for some people, the economy is doing very well, as my one (half British) (half Sudanese) friend has said.

Yuckity-yucks from the freshman writing class (3 of 3): Hierarchy.

After I made a point about how we sideline our political beliefs, concerns w/self-realization, etc., in class in order to talk about lit, I added that that didn't mean that students shouldn't not read without asking those questions, since they were better, fuller, more interesting people for having those other concerns (=a point that gets expressed by the one prof on my committee who was recently an asshole to me w/my diss, which is some sign that she isn't all bad, I try to make myself remember).

Then, to give an example of how people who think more broadly about a text might restrict themselves in class, I noted that how although I pointed out aspects of stereotypical courtier behavior in the Arabian Nights in a recent class discussion, I didn't make any other observations about it.

"And let me tell you," I was like.  "I *hate* hierarchy.  Sure, Scheherazade did the best she could by trying to be entertaining to the king with her stories in order to keep him from killing all the women of the kingdom, and in that environment she had to plead and plead and plead just to get the person with power to simply be human, but aren't we much better off in a country where people make laws and the king would be arrested for that kind of thing?  And where the riches that he made off the backs of the people would be taxed in order to provide social services for abused women?  I was thinking that all that time that we were discussing that section, but *I* never mentioned it."

Then, I added, "Because that would be counterproductive.  People have different values and class is just not the right forum for that.  Heck, you might think, 'Who loves hierarchy?', but some people *love* hierarchy.  It's like, 'Hey, I took the SAT IIs, I got a pat on the head, I ended up at the #5-ranked college in U.S. News & World Reports, hierarchy worked for me!'  You know?", I was like.

Dead silence from the kiddos.

Yuckity-yucks from the freshman writing class (2 of 3): Time pressures.

After I sidelined a student question by saying it'd be covered in a future meeting, I said, "You know, I apologize if our meetings seem rushed, but we have so much material to cover, and there's just never enough time.  I know I say 'There's not enough time a lot,' but it's really true, I hope you believe me."

Then, I was like, "I feel like that one rabbit from Alice in Wonderland.  You know, the one who's always running around everywhere.  Doesn't he say something like that?".

"I think he says 'I'm late, I'm late,'" a (female) student meekly said.

"Oh," I was like.  "In any case, the concept's the same, there's just never enough time, honestly.  And, let me tell you, that's life."

Then, I caught myself and began laughing. 

"Actually," I was like, "That's death."

At that, the nineteen year olds just looked horrified.

Yuckity-yucks from the freshman writing class (1 of 3): Pun.

I had a student named May, and she was last to present her paper thesis.

So, I said, "May, you go."

Garbled text from a friend...

...after I got a pleasant acknowledgement by email from a famous French econ prof after I wrote him w/#s from my latest expose:

That's extremely cool

- and then:

My phone wanted to type, 'that's excrement cook.'

. . .

The more I know about Mexican culture...

...the more I admire it, esp. the revolutionary strand, which seems much much closer to the surface than in American culture.

I was thinking about this a few weekends ago when I was looking at an exhibition of mid-20th c. Mexican prints that had such sharp anti-capitalist social criticisms aimed at successfully educating the masses.

On the one hand, that was only a few decades out from their revolution, and ours was so much longer ago.

On the other hand, it seems like that revolutionary spirit is an active resource in their culture, and can be meaningfully invoked a lot of times, like has recently happened with the self-defense forces in Michoacan, where people got fed up with drug traffickers and the corrupt local police and took up arms:

I find it very telling that people are calling such women "adelitas", after the women who nursed soldiers over a century ago.

That print exhibition also got me thinking, where are all the socially concerned American artists today depicting the struggles of the people like the mid-20th c. Mexican printmakers were doing?

There's more than enough subject matter with fast food and service industry workers, but to my knowledge, I see no-one doing that, the most people do is something about gender issues, apart from a handful of rockers like Springsteen who get into class issues through songs.

After the exhibition, I texted several friends my thoughts on this, and my one (Mexican) (naturalized American citizen) engineer friend from the city texted back:

Yes, you're right...  the American is a selfish society; we rarely think about other people's problems, even artists...

Interestingly, he told me once that he knew Mexico had no hope when his teacher asked his class in Mexico in high school, how many were willing to stand up to guns and die if they saw their rights being taken away, and no-one said that they would, and so she spat at them, "See, our country has no hope."

I can see where his perspective comes from - he agreed with her - but you sure as hell don't get that question in American high schools!

The only place that sort of idea every surfaces is with 2nd amendment issues by weird paranoid rightwing splinter groups...

Everyone's so laid back in my neighborhood I'm living in!

I really love it:

1) At the laundromat when I accidentally locked the keys in the restroom, the (Mexican) woman on duty just shrugged and didn't spaz out like I would have and just went about trying to jimmy the door open.

2) At the now-dead-since-it's-fall ice cream store staffed by a disaffected (skinny) (pale white) teenage girl in a black t-shirt with bleached blonde hair over purposefully dark roots, the restroom smells like pot, so you just know she was bored and was smoking up at work.

3) As I wait to make a left turn on my bike on my morning commute into work, I see this big red SUV coming the opposite direction slow down in front of me, and a (fatter) (older) (blonde) (white) woman with black sunglasses and pockmarked skin lean out the window and waggle her fingers in a "rock out!" V-sign to some passersby on the sidewalk behind me, as she yells out, "Hey, you!".

Then, she laughs pleasantly and drives off.

Bleariness from a cold results in clumsy actions:

1) In the morning as I get an egg out of the carton before going to put it in a pot to boil it, I hold it in my palm as I use that same hand's fingers to flip the carton lid down - but my fingers shift as I go to close the lid and so the egg rolls out and fall and splatters on the floor.

2) Later that same day at the laundromat, right before I leave I use the restroom, but set the key on a bathroom ledge and as I go to leave the door automatically locks behind me.

3) Right after the laundromat, as I pour boiling water into a thermos with teabags, I space out, and the water brims over and down the sides of the thermos.

Odd dream: A watch.

My dream the other week:

I look at my left wrist, and I have a sleek new hip new Rolex on, made of high quality rubber or plastic, with bright yellow around the dial and then mixed into a light gray that goes extends throughout the wristband.

I'm satisfied, since I know that bright yellow is a daring color choice for me, and yet I can pull it off.

I need to detach from material possessions!: Whiskey, nice-looking polyester slacks.

When I was in the lobby having a beer before the BDSMer wedding as my friend was getting his ushering duties straight, my one hippie friend from Michigan texted me from my apartment saying that she was hanging out with my roommate and that she hoped it was okay that she was drinking my whiskey, which she had found under the sink.

I texted back that that was fine – she’s had some before when we’ve done crosswords together at my place – and I joked that it went well with the leftover Hamburger Helper in the fridge (=stuff of my roommate’s).

Anyways, the next morning, I go to get some cleaning stuff out from under the sink, and the entire bottle of whiskey is *gone*.  Then, when I texted my one hippie friend from Michigan, she apologized profusely and said she honestly didn’t know what happened to it, and she said she’d get me some more since she accidentally went on a bender the previous night.

I was a bit ticked since I got that liquor for a third of retail price thanks to a fire sale at the art school (they changed caterers and had to sell off their old stock for rock-bottom prices!), but what can you do, and I said a couple of cheap bottles of wine would be fine since it'd cost her more than I spent if she went to replace the whiskey.

There was probably $20 worth of booze left in the bottle, and that’d be equivalent, I thought; I wouldn’t want my to make my friend pay $60 for a new bottle when what she drank didn’t cost me nearly that much.

Also, I had been upset at the wedding since right before I got out the door I accidentally burned a line on the right knee of my nice-looking polyester slacks, since I accidentally had the iron on too hot.

The recommended solution of vinegar didn’t work, though I’m trying sandpaper now and that seems to do the trick since the fabric underneath the glossy part is intact, you just need to get the burned glossy part off.

In any case, I should be less attached to material possessions and not care if anything happens to them, which is irrational.

It’s like, do I really expect a piece of cloth to last forever?

Wedding for some BDSMers!

So the other weekend my one (straight) BDSM friend came back into town for a wedding and was scheduling all his friends in to hang out, and since we were going to hang out the day of the wedding, he asked me to me to be his Platonic date for it, which I of course did.

There, my schtick was, when the other guests asked me how I knew the bride and groom, I’d be like, “I don’t, I’m just [my (straight) BDSM friend’s first and last name]’s arm candy.”

Even before that, in the lead-up to the wedding once I knew I was going, I just couldn’t stop thinking about jokes.

Like, they cut the cake, and then they cut the bride.

Or wedding party favors are engraved handcuffs.

Or, as my one friend texted, they use the garter to tie people up – to which I replied that whichever guy catches it, the maid-of-honor uses it on him for cock-and-ball-torture!

(“That’d be perfect for that,” my one [straight] BDSM friend actually was like, when I told him that when we met up to take the subway out to the hotel where the wedding was at.)

Overall, I was hoping too that people would ask me how the BDSM wedding was, so I could just say, “Oddly restrained.”

Anyhow, before the ceremony started, I ran into the one BDSM guy who was guest speaker at my sex class and his wife.

He totally had a fun time speaking to my class and would do it again, and his wife had recently started a feminism group at the dungeon where they have chats and guest speakers and read books and stuff.

“No shit,” I was like

“That’s right,” she was like, “It is a no-shitting event.”

The ceremony was cute, and since the bride and groom were both nerds, at the pre-dinner cocktails then dinner they had lots of “props” set out like you’d see at a Fantasy Fan Convention.

The Captain America mask was oddly comfortable, and it was pretty easy to have the shield on your arm and still hold a drink at the same time, unlike the Sonic Screwdriver, which looked nice, but you always had to hold on to.

They also had a gigantic very distinctive looking sword, and when I asked someone which character’s it was, they were like, “It’s Cloud’s.”

“Isn’t that Final Fantasy?”, I was like.

“Yes,” the woman replied.  “Seven.”

Each table had a fantasy or sci-fi theme too with magnets as take-home favors for guests, and so I made sure to try to get a few Dr. Who magnets for a friend who’s a big fan.  Only, since I don’t know Dr. Who all that well and neither did the people at the table, I selected a few magnets with people who the wedding guests at that table thought were Dr. Who and then had to go find people in the know who could verify.

“Hey, is this Dr. Who?”, I asked the one BDSM guy who spoke at my class.

“Yes,” he was like.  “Number Four.”

He then verified that the other magnet was Dr. Who Number Eleven.

Interestingly, some of the people you could pick out as kinksters from them having dyed hair and from them being body non-normative and whatnot, but others weren’t so clear, and then there were a lot of relatives too.

Because of that, pretty much every time you asked a somewhat (young) person how they knew the bride or groom, you’d get bland and somewhat evasively vanilla answers like I heard my one (straight) BDSM friend give, like, “We met through mutual friends and stayed in touch since we’re both in the same line of work.”

Later, as I was chit-chatting with someone by the dance floor and my one (straight) BDSM friend kept drinking and drinking, he stumbled up and joined the convo.  

Shortly after the woman I was talking to left, he was like, “See [guy’s first name] over there,” and tipped his head across the room at this short lawyer guy in his early 40s, who was laughing and chatting with his slightly younger wife, a thin (white) thing in a pseudo-Victorian black dress with a little too much lace around the collar

“It’s just great to see a submissive male end up in a long-term relationship like that, that almost never happens.”

Then, after a pause, he was like, “You know, it gives you hope!”.

Later, he dropped that of the bride and groom, the groom was dominant, and he also clarified that the BDSM guy who spoke in my class wasn’t *really* a submissive even though he has led a support group for submissive males, since he would top his wife on occasion and “they really switch it up a lot.”

Later, I chatted with his wife out in the hallway.

She has been to a legendary women-only festival a few states over, and though she found it very powerful to get into the wilderness and menstruate with thousands upon thousands of women at once, she felt very strongly that trans*women should be allowed in, and that people can work around issues like seeing an occasional penis in the group showers.

She also thought that people at the women’s only festival were “soft” on women’s violent behavior directed towards men.

She then told the story of how since there weren’t enough women workers available to pump the portapotties, the festival organizers arranged to have male workers come in in the middle of the night to do that.  Although a cadre of women surrounded them and shouted “Men on the grounds!  Men on the grounds!” to warn away any women who might not want to see them, even then a lot of people threw wet toilet paper at them, and sometimes even bottles.

“And they were just there to help them and pump out their shit from the ground,” she was like.  “That is just an awful way to treat someone.  I'm sorry if that makes me less of a feminist somehow, but I see that as just wrong.”