Two Observations from Labor Activists.

Like last week I went to a discussion group run by a local affiliate of this relatively new group melding academics and practitioners involved in labor activism.

Two thought-provoking points raised at the group (though who knows if they’re true):

1) Supposedly, at the time of the Great Depression, lack of jobs led to an “arms race” of credentials where overqualified people were in what they perceived as low-level, low-paying jobs – which led to mass unionization and labor unrest after WWII.  One big-player union guy sees parallels now, to the extent that kids graduating with a lot of student debt see no way to pay it off but they do see people high up at their places of employment making bank.

2) The economy’s in a low-growth state from here on out, since people with too much money and power and influence have found ways to keep their profits rising exponentially while everyone else’s situation declines.

The day after, I spoke with my mom, and before I even got through the first point, she was like, “Sounds like now,” and when I told her the second point, she was like, “I’ve been thinking that for a while too, no-one has any money to spend, so how can the economy improve?”, to which I said, “And you’re not even thinking about the massive amounts of student debt people are graduating with.”

At that point, she thanked me for cheering up her day.  “I can always count on you for that,” she was like.

“What did you expect?”, I was like.  “I’ve always been your red son.  The color may be leaving my hair, but it has bled into my very soul.”

Then, I was like, “And always look on the bright side, the revolution is coming!”

Student reactions to a gift.

(SPOILER ALERT - MURAKAMI'S SPUTNIK SWEETHEART.)

For class, the last novel we read was a Murakami novel where 1 of the 3 main characters finally relates a horrific life event that turned her hair white, and it turns out to be a ferris wheel ride dream experience where at the top of a stopped ferris wheel where she was left overnight she looked back into her apartment and saw a threatening love interest sexually degrade her in every imaginable way with his grotesquely large penis, while her other self she was observing seemed not only acquiescent, but also to be enjoying herself.

(Isn't that very Japanese, somehow, by the way?).

Anyhow, the day before 5 end-of-term student meetings, I was looking through the new issue of my puzzle magazines, and there was a logic problem about a stopped ferris wheel (with all the clues being who was where in relation to who, etc.).

So, I copied the puzzle as a surreal gift to give to students, and it was interesting to see their reactions:

- One thoughtful, quirky (female) (white) student from Baltimore thought it was cool and asked me if I was going to be her TA the next term, when I gave the logic problem to her at the end of the lesson.

- One (female) (white) (jock) student seemed distracted from her end-of-term stress for a second, though she seemed offput when I told her that she and the other kids in her dorm should do it to celebrate the end-of-classes, and take study drugs and stay up all Sat. night to do it.

- One (very straight) (white) (jock) guy took it and fired it under his laptop and then proceeded to nervously ask tons of questions on his upcoming paper, which he wants to do better on.

- One (international) (male) (Asian) student just looked straight at me like he didn't just understand me.

- One (male) (Korean) student just kind of shrugged, "Whatever" (though not in a mean or dismissive way) and said he'd do it on his plane ride over break, and then began talking about his paper.

In a way, I feel like the gift helps sort out who the cool kids are who are okay with quirkiness and can roll with the punches.

It also shows who only deals with me to get something from me, I think.

Interesting Grammar: My One Latin Student.

I'm interested in how English is getting more regular in odd verb stems.

For example, both me and my one friend from home who runs an integrated homeless/domestic violence shelter say both "drunken" and "boughten" (in parallel to gotten).

A few days ago at a Latin lesson when my student was reading Latin and then translating into English, was like, "After the reason was tolden," and then he corrected himself to "told".

I think what's happening is that people are taking one syllable past participles and adding an "-en" to them for rhythm.

A bar the weekend before that: John Updike.

The weekend before that, I was at another bar inside a vegan restaurant in a hipster neighborhood, and sat there and had a beer and was reading that same novel, by Japanese writer Haruki Murakami.

"You read Murakami?", the tall, skinny, (white), mustachioed, heavily fore-arm haired (hipster) bartender asked me.

"Yeah, for class," I was like.  "You?".

"Yeah, I read like three of his, but not that one," he was like.

I then asked him what he was reading now, and he said John Updike.

"No way," I was like.  "He was my favorite author back in high school.  I really remember 'Rabbit, Run', which was the 2nd novel by him that I ever read.  There's this time where Rabbit wakes up and is sitting on the bed and looks down at his legs and realizes that the quality of his leghair has changed, and he suddenly realizes that he's old.  At the time, I was like, 'What the fuck is that?', and then, years later, it happened to me."

Then, after a pause, I was like, "And he always has some really perverted sex scenes."

"Yeah," the guy was like.  "He starts writing on that, and it's suddenly just like Screw magazine or something, nothing literary at all.  Like I was reading 'On the Farm', about a city couple going to take over a farm from the guy's mom, and as soon as they get there and the old lady steps out, the guy turns to the woman and is like, 'Let's fuck.'  I don't remember much, but that stuck with me."

"That's nothing," I was like.  "In 'Rabbit, Run', he has pages of dick envy about some other guy who's a douche but has a nice piece, and then the morning after Rabbit's honeymoon night, his wife is cooking, and Rabbit walks up to the pan where she's standing and making scrambled eggs and jerks off into it and then they sit down and they have a breakfast of eggs and his jizz."

And at that point, this older (white) male grandfatherly-looking customer walked up to the counter, just as I was saying "...and they have a breakfast of eggs and his jizz," and the bartender kind of bolted upright when he realized another customer was there, and I started and looked over at the older guy, and he kind of looked at me and raised both his eyebrows in mock shock, almost a bit lasciviously.

He had on a polo shirt and white pants and had a bit of a pot belly and was tanned a bit, as if he just had gotten back from Florida.

Two townies talking next to me at a bar...

So the other week I was in the hipster-ish bar near my house having a drink and reading a novel for the writing class that I'm teaching, when 2 younger (white) guys came in and sat at some stools just down to me to my right, and both turned out to be townies from the neighborhood.

As it turns out, everyone had moved away. 

As one said, "Yeah, [some guy's name]'s in Thailand for some spiritual bullshit or something."

Also, they were both EMTs, and swapped some stories.

The one guy talked about how he hadn't seen his grandmother in ten years "because she got hijacked by my aunt," then he got a call to go down to a hospital out in the southwest part of the city out by the airport, and while his partner's filling out some paperwork, he realizes that the patient in the room is his grandmother, "She was in there, sick with Alzheimer's."

"What do you mean 'sick with Alzheimer's'?", the other guy was like.  "It's not like you die from that shit, it's not an embolism."

"Whatever," the guy was like, "That's why she was in there.  And she remembered me, even after all those years."

Later they talked about unsuccessful dates, like how the other guy had had a date with a chick "who looks like a model and just wants a guy to beat her up."

At that, the first guy laughed, "So did you try it?", and he raised a fist and did a darting overhand punch motion, as if towards a woman's face.

Filing mania!!!

I *never* feel like filing anything, though I have heaps of papers all around my kitchen table and a bit sitting out on unpacked boxes in my living room.

I discovered a good method for cleaning, though -

- I took out my boxes and file folders and left them in the living room.
- I try to go through some little bit of a paper pile everyday, even if it's just to throw something out and file one other thing.

This has really helped me overcome the barrier of taking on this big unwanted task, and it's really surprising how much a little bit of work everyday can accomplish.

Odd smell, nasty dream.

Last Sunday night I made a pot of black beans at home, and they were a bit pungent between the vinegar, poblano peppers, all the jalapenos, and the salt and the cumin.

I left the pot out to cool over night, and when I got up from reading in bed to take a piss, I stirred the pot further to let the heat distribute out more evenly, and even ate a big wooden spoonful of beans.

Monday morning, like an hour before my alarm went off, I kept getting this sense that someone was rubbing their sweaty armpit all up in my face, and it kept getting more and more intense, and I was rolling around in bed from side-to-side.

Then, when I work up with a shock, I realized it was just the aftertaste of beans in my mouth, the taste of which I had re-interpreted as smell.