Romance Languages drinking night (1 of 3): Hispanic name games...

So, the other week I got really hammered at the (student) bar with some Romance Languages people I know.

One of them is this (gay) (Mexican-American) guy I've met a few times, and when I met him again, I couldn't remember his name right away.

"I know your name is something with a 'juh'," I said, trying to bring his name to mind.

"That's right," he was like.  "The most common Spanish name."

"Jorge!", I was like.

"No," he was like, "The other most common name."

"Okay..." I was like, "Maria!".

Fortunately, he found that funny.

My environmental neuroticism, manifest in tupperware usage:

So, with this cheap soup container Tupperware that I got at a Christmas gift swap years ago and use to pack pasta in for lunches at school, the outer layer got cracked and the styrofoam beneath began showing through.

First, I wondered if I could still use it that way, but I decided against it, since that would be unfeasible and ridiculous.

Then, I tore off the outer layer, and realized that the inner layer was still intact, no cracks.

So, now I use that still for my pasta, since it's not like I have to keep it warm or anything.

Still Another Dream of Things Decaying: Venetian Blinds.

The other week I dreamt that I was pulling the one Venetian blind in my house, where the left half of it already won't go up right, and the string covering on the other half had come off, and the thin string left on the pull cord just suddenly snapped, and the Venetian blind wouldn't work anymore.

Brand Associations.

My new external hard-drive is called "Cruzer Glide", and that name pops up on the computer every time I insert it and go to open it.

It makes me think of lube.

Subway platform interaction w/a(n old) Pakistani.

The other week I was on the subway platform and as I was walking up to the bench area to go wait, ahead of me was this older (white bearded) (Pakistani) guy, and this mouse ran right in front of him and he turned to look at it along with me, and it ran right up into this crevice between two closely set metal columns.

I walked up around the columns and looked between the crevice, and there was the mouse just sitting at the bottom eating something, and then the Pakistani guy walked up to the other side to look too.

After that, we talked a bit, though I could barely understand him because of his accent.

He said something about how the mouse just found its food and lived outside, and it sounded like he was saying that animals have a better, simpler life than us, but then he said that humans were the most blessed of all the animals.

I'm not sure if I misunderstood him because of his accent, or if his thoughts were inconsistent.

As I was attempting to clarify, the train came up and he said bye and be well and got into the car just ahead of me, so now I'll never know.

Musically, I'm Getting Old.

I really just don't understand these Demi Lovato lyrics! -

don't tell your mother/
kiss one another/
die for each other/
we're cool for the summer

- since how does dying for one another mean being cool for the summer?

I just don't get it.

Is this like some overdramatic teen thing, or maybe irony about some overdramatic teen thing?

Road trip memories of a local artist.

So, there's this one (older) (black) (gay) (dreadlocked) artist that I know through friends, and who I sometimes run into at the university gym.

When I ran into him last, it had been a while, and it turned out that he had just gotten back from a roadtrip with his band that included Quebec.

"It's like France, but without the asshole," he was like.

He also said that when he was in France, someone told him not to speak French if he couldn't speak it perfectly.

"'Kiss the crack of my black ass,' do you speak that?", he told them.

Flashback to Thanksgiving Eve...

I had been in touch with a Spanish professor friend about hanging out and grabbing drinks earlier the week of Thanksgiving, but he was tired, so I mentioned maybe coming out on Thanksgiving Eve and joining me and a friend to club, and surprisingly enough it turns out that not only did he have friends in town, but that he was also game for all of them to meet up with us.

I don't have the text right in front of me right now, but he suggested meeting up after dinner, around 10:30pm.

Later, when we met up around 10:30pm, I was like, "Spain would be proud of you, a late dinner then clubbing."

"A late dinner?", he was like.  "We just say 'dinner'."

Anyhow, his one (also Spanish) professor friend got really hammered, and when we ended up at that one trashy club that I like, she was in awe of this giant painted up (white) trans*woman with a homemade thin paper light up wolfshead on top of her head.

She even insisted that she get a picture with her.

Beautiful neighborhood detail: Stickers.

The other week on a day when I was working from home, I popped into the local library branch on a late afternoon to pick up a new novel so I'd have something to read at home, since I had just finished my last novel the previous weekend.

Right when I was walking up, a line formed, including in head of me a thin (young) (Chinese) mom with two twin (Chinese) toddlers who were both quietly insisting on walking outside of the large stroller that she was pushing.

I started looking at the "New Books" rack nearby while I waited, then all of a sudden the deskworker asked me if I needed help, though the mom and the kids hadn't moved from being right in front of me in front of the circulation desk.

"They need stickers," the mom told the deskworker.

At that, the deskworker ducked down to a space behind the computer, pulled out a small blue plastic basket, then held it out to the 2 boys so they could pick out stickers of Winnie the Pooh and the like, which they did very slowly and intently.

After the mom and the kids left, I told the deskworker that I didn't realize that they gave out stickers to kids.

"Yes," she was like, "We do that, we buy them at the dollar store on sale and keep them here for the children."

I found that very sweet and admirable, that they spent spare money out of their own pocket to improve the library like that.

My (Asian-Canadian) friend's Thanksgiving Eve.

This past Thanksgiving Eve, my one (Asian-Canadian) friend worked very late in the lab, and since his lab is located in one of the university's hospitals, there was a free Thanksgiving meal starting at midnight for all of the overnight workers.

The whole place was just deserted, he said, but then you got to the cafeteria, and it was just busy with a ton of people and even a ton of people getting multiple meals take-out style for their coworkers who were tied up for some reason and couldn't make it down for the meal.

One woman had a metal rolly cart, he said, with 11 plates of pie slices piled on it.

(He counted.)

He also said that on holidays he likes not being with family, since you have a chance to be in other parts of the world at times that no-one ever sees.

A dream of everyday objects being off... but in a positive way!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The other week I had another dream about things from my daily life being off, but this time they were off in a positive way!

That night, I dreamt that I needed a strainer larger than the largest one I had, and I opened a drawer for some random reason, and then right there there were two larger strainers from the same set as the two I currently use, but I had put them at the back of the drawer since they're so large I thought I'd never use them, and I had forgotten about them, and then there they all were, all shiny and new and unused and just what I needed.

. . .

(In real life the night of that dream I had made vegetable broth with scraps and set out the scraps in a strainer to let the remaining broth drain off into a bowl so I could get it all, but I had so many scraps, I had to pile them quite high in the strainer, and I was afraid they'd roll off and into the bowl.)

Conversation with my 2nd floor neighbor.

So, I had borrowed a hairdryer from the other 2nd floor tenant in order to put that plastic shrinkwrap up on my windows to save heat during the winter, and since she was home when I went to go return the hairdryer, I ended up asking to see her apt. layout and hanging out standing in her apt. kitchen just standing there and chit-chatting a bit.

Oddly, her bathroom is divided into two, with each half directly to either side of her apt.'s main entrance door, the toilet and sink through a door immediately to the left and the shower/tub through a door immediately to the right.

(You have to go up a little step, too, when you enter each of her bathrooms.)

"This building is so old and all the apartments are so weird," she was like.  "I mean, seriously, what's up with that?".

She's like (mid-30s) (white) (a bit round) and has long (brown) hair and works retail in a bookstore and has for years, and is originally from New Orleans and originally came up here post-Katrina, she said.

She also had all this take-out food all out all over her counter, and she said she just loves to come home after work and eat take-out food and sit around.

"Look at this," she was like, poking a plastic tray of Chinese with a chicken wing sitting out on top.  "I can get four meals out of this."

She also said that she partied so much growing up in New Orleans, that she's really just a Grandma already.

We also talked about the couple with the kids who live above me.

"I can hear them screaming a lot," she was like.  "It's like 'Please, I can't even.'"

She also said that she thinks that they let the kids run around and scream on the landing sometimes, and that the little boy likes to stomp up and down the stairs yelling "Fire, fire!".

She also also said that a while ago, the dad of the couple stopped through to say that they had cigarette smoke in their apartment and were wondering if it was her because it was bothering their kids.

"I was like, 'Hell yes it's me, it was too damn cold out and I don't feel like freezing my ass off to go have a cigarette, so I had one f*cking cigarette in my own f*cking kitchen, what are you going to do, sue me?'".

I then told her how they didn't lift a finger to fight bedbugs, even though their young son was getting bit up with itchy welts.

"They're weird," she was like.

"They're evangelical," I was like.

"Ok, I can see that," she was like.  "That explains a lot."

Because she seems fun and did mention that she goes out every now and then, I decided to mention hanging out in the neighborhood or ideally going clubbing some banging bar night so she could just let it all hang out.

"I'm going out [name of the Eve of the next major holiday], you know the club [name of my favorite trashy club]...", I was like - and immediately she interrupted me.

"Oh yeah, I used to live in that neighborhood and go there all the time!  Whenever I'd go, bad stuff would happen, a friend would throw up, you'd wake up in somebody else's bed...", she was like.

Odd dream of redundancy.

I dream that I'm taking off one pair of jeans, and then I notice another pair of jeans underneath them.

. . .

(In winter I often wear a t-shirt or 2 beneath a sweatshirt when I wake up in the morning or lounge around after I've already turned the heat down but before I've gone to bed, so I suppose my mind translated those multiple layers of shirts to jeans in my dream.)

Aftereffects of Bedbugs...

The hardwood floor of my bedroom in my apartment now looks like a salt flat, only very light blue.

The sprinkled diatomaceous earth got covered by repeated dousings of rubbing alcohol and then one-part-Dawn-four-parts-water, which led to a crusting when all the liquid evaporated, and a bit of a blue color from the dish soap.

I'm really, really dreading all the cleaning that I'll have to do when it's been 3 weeks since my last bedbug bite, since I suppose I'll have to scrub the floors intensively to get all that shit off.

Generosity and Impulsivity and its Effects.

I really like how at this one coffee shop near my house, they walk around to everyone a half hour or so before closing time asking people if they want a free bowl of soup, since they'd just be throwing out the remainder anyway.

I've gotten lentil soup a lot like that, and the last time broccoli-cheddar soup, for a change.

When the staff give that to me, I always make sure to point out that I'd already tipped them when I got my coffee, and that I appreciate it.

I do wonder about the wisdom of taking extra food like that, though.

It's amazing how getting a bacon bun here or a donut there quickly leads me to pack on the pounds.

Within 2-3 weeks, I went from jeans falling off to a little ridge of fat around my waist when I sit down, which I don't like.

I should be less impulsive.

Flashback to Barhopping w/my one Modern Czech Lit Prof friend.

A few months ago, I was having drinks with my one modern Czech lit professor friend downtown, then I had to take off for a meeting for a bit, before coming back to meeting her.

When I finally got back, she was decently hammered, but I managed to drag her to a burger place and get some fries and water in her before she sobered up enough to hang out some more.

We then ended up strolling 20 minutes to this new bar/restaurant that was just opened up, that was East Coast / nautical themed (including in the establishment's name) and that had a whitewashed interior with random ropes and expensive antique-y nautical bullshit draped here and there.

"No one in New York city names anything the Midwestern, I don't know, Lodge!", she was like.  "That just goes to show you how much cooler the East Coast is."

(She's originally from a major East Coast metropolis, as she likes to point out now and then.)

Next to us, too, was this (white) woman filling out an employment form.

"Put down 'Transgender'," my one modern Czech lit professor friend leaned over and said.  "They'll be forced to hire you and you can do anything, you'll be golden."

"But I'm not 'Transgender'", she was like, which led to me and my one professor friend suggesting to her that she should maybe just put down "Gender non-conforming" instead.

"And it's true," my one professor friend was like.  "Everyone's gender non-conforming somehow."

"Hey, I suppose I'm gender non-conforming, too!", said the one hipper-than-thou, bearded, man-bunned, tight-bodied (white) (brunette) (early 30s) bartender who sidled up just then.

"Of course you are," I was like, "You have a man-bun."

At that, he got really quiet, and I immediately thought to myself, "Oh fuck, I shouldn't have said that," since it turns out that it was just a little too much and took the joke a bit too far.

Cravings are so odd.

I thought of cooking up a big pot of black beans for black-beans-and-rice the other day, but I simply didn't feel like it.

Instead, I bought ingredients for lentil soup, which I was making for the 3rd week in a row, it's been hitting me so good.

Cravings are so odd.

I love autocorrect! - suggestion for "radish".

The other Sunday at one of the coffee shops near me, I gave in to temptation and bought a "pickled radish and carrot" croissant since I'm a sucker for savory pastries and that just seemed good to me.

Because the sister of the pair of my (half British) (half Sudanese) sibling friends has been pickling things lately and on her encouragement I even refrigerator pickled some beets this past month, I went to text her about the croissant filling combination to see about what she thought about it.

(An added motivation was that the croissant came from a local bakery in my neighborhood that we had popped into when she and one of her friends visited me in my neighborhood at the end of the summer.)

Anyhow, when I went to go type in "radish" on my smartphone, autocorrect suggested "radfem".

Good news: All is well with hardware store owner's wife.

The other day on the way into work I took 15 minutes to pop into the hardware store to check in on the health of the hardware store owner's wife.

Fortunately, everything was clear, no cancer, and there was some pain for her after the surgery but it was manageable.

In fact, the wife was puttering around the store working, and I was able to say hi to her.

As it turns out, I had picked out a (cheap) (pharmacy) "Get Well" card with a dog on it b/c I thought the pic might make her smile, and the wife told me that she thought the picture of the dog on it was cute.

Isn't it nice that that turned out like that?

Another dream of decay (how many of these do I have?).

A tooth midway down the bottom right side of my mouth is loose, and I inadvertently wiggle it and it comes out.

I'm with people who recommend leaving it at home, and I do, just out somewhere like on the counter or something

Later, someone tells me that I should see the dentist right away to get the tooth put back in, but I can't go home right then and I get nervous and realize that I should have placed it in milk in order for that to happen.

Then, I can feel the gap where the tooth is, and I'm filled with this sad feeling that it will be there forever, but it wouldn't have been if I had handled everything properly from the start when I lost it.

Monastery tour a few Saturdays ago.

After the political campaigning and before grocery shopping, I went for dinner and the divine office at a local monastery near my house through a tour arranged by the conservative-leaning Catholic academic group on campus.

They’ve had these tours for several years and I’ve always wanted to go, but this was the first time that I was finally able to make it.

About eight undergrads and two early-stage grad students came, and most of the undergrads looked drawn and nervous, and the early-stage grad students were bearded (white) male converts in philosophic and historical fields where Roman Catholicism was important.

Also, one of the undergrads wore a long navy blue skirt and had big glasses and a large black lace mantilla wrapped around her head, and she knelt and kissed the floor of the church before a picture of the Virgin Mary right when we all walked in.

(She also later dropped that she had been in a monastery for a year, but now wasn’t.)

Oddly enough, during dinner, the prior mentioned a former newspaper religion writer who wrote a great spiritual article reflecting on workaholism, and then he mentioned the name of the guy who was a communications director who I had to deal with in reporting and who I mentioned by name in a couple of my articles as a representative example of a holder of a job position that should be eliminated due to its perverse duties.

“I don’t know what happened to him,” the prior was like, and at that I began smiling and laughing just a bit, which he noticed.

“Oh, do you know?”, he was like.

“Well,” I was like, “I do investigative reporting into higher education, and he ended up in that sector, and I’ve actually had to deal with him quite a bit when I was doing work on a couple of articles.”

Then, I paused for just the briefest of beats and was like, “I think he got into it because he needed more money for his family, but from what I can tell, he’s been engaging in a lot of unethical behavior and has fallen deeply into sin.”

At that, all of the undergrads’ eyes just got wide and they all just looked at me like “Who is this?”, but the prior seemed pained and right away was like, “I’ll remember to pray for him.”

He really meant that, too.  I had mixed feelings about the prior since he seemed like a virile aesthetic (white) (male) convert in his late 40s, but he had the right reaction when confronted with a very odd situation, which makes me predisposed to like him now.

He also mentioned he was originally from northwoods Wisconsin, which doesn’t hurt.

Old person a few Saturdays ago.

Earlier that day I had been doing get-out-the-vote work with a local progressive political campaign, and one of the people on the phonebank was this 73-year old (African-American) woman with a walker who introduced herself as “Mrs. [LAST NAME]” to me and was called that by everyone.

At one point, she put her hand over the receiver and called out to the candidate, who was standing across the room, “[CANDIDATE’S FIRST NAME], when is the election again?”, and the candidate called back and told her.

Later, I told both of them that that cracked me the shit up, because you could tell we were running a grassroots campaign.

“[CANDIDATE’S FIRST NAME], when is the election again?”, I said, repeating the words and mimicking covering the phone mouthpiece, and both of them really laughed at that.

It turns out that the 73-year old (African-American) woman with the walker had also just been arrested for the first time in her life the previous week, as part of an action against closure of recent community resources.

“Mrs. [HER OWN LAST NAME],” she told me, telling me what the cops told her, “It’s two-thirty in the morning and you have a walker, we’ll let you go.”

Then, she continued, “But I told them, ‘I came here as part of a group, and I’m not leaving until everyone else is!’”.

I then asked her if she stayed long enough in jail to try out the food.

She said no, but someone brought her a sub.

Odd person down the street from me a few Saturday nights ago.

A few Saturday nights ago I was coming back from the grocery store and was crossing the street, when I see a guy hunched on the sidewalk beneath a brightly white painted granny bike, and he’s moaning.

As I'm walking up from a bit of a distance, he gets up like he’s sore, stops moaning, gets back on the bike, and begins to pedal it across the street away from me, only very slowly and with great difficulty, since he didn’t seem all right and the front fender seemed to be scraping against the frame and the tire and making the bike turn a bit left.

He then stopped across the street, and he just stood there staring towards some garbage cans in an alley.

I reached where he had been and continued walking on the opposite side of the street, but I seriously wondered if he had been hit by a car and was disoriented or whatever.

So, I stopped and stood there with my groceries and looked across the street at him.

“ARE YOU ALL RIGHT?” I called out.

There was no reply, and he just stood there looking at the garbage cans in the alley, and then he just arched his back and threw his head back and gave a wordless howl.

I quickened my pace and hurried home up the block, and every once in a while I heard a howl, and I glanced back to make sure he was still standing there and not following me, though it now seemed like he had turned himself in my general direction, though he was still standing in the same spot.

When I got in, I closed all the blinds, turned on my lights, and called the cops to come check that guy out.

I wonder if he stole the bike, and I’m almost certain he was on some really effed-up mind-altering drug like PCP or something.

There’s a lot of kids and a decent amount of older people in the neighborhood, and I’d hate someone to bump into him or come out onto their porch or stoop and find him there.

The woman on the phone said they’d alert the cops to come check him out.

I specified his appearance as a white man in his late 20s or early 30s with dreadlocked brown hair, and on a bright white bike.

Conversation with a (Swiss) (Italian) colleague on how we’ve been.

The other week I ran into a (Swiss) (Italian) colleague who I hadn’t seen in ages.

It turned out that he’s been buried away studying for exams, and he began telling me that they were coming up in a month, how stressed he was, etc.

Then he paused.

“But I’m not sure if you care,” he was like.

“To tell you the truth, not really,” I was like, at which he laughed, as I explained that such stress was normal and I’ve seen it a ton, and as long as he checked in with his examiners to make sure that they thought he was ready to take exams, he’d be fine no matter what, pretty much.

Then, when he asked me what I’d been up to, I told him how I’d been an extra on a primetime soap, which I stated by name.

“What is that?”, he was like.  “I would know the show if it was Walking Dead, or porn.”

He then asked if we had the word “cameo” in English, which he pronounced “cah-meo”.

Conversation with my mother on activism exposes.

The other week I was talking with my mom and telling her about my plans for an upcoming activist expose, and she was like, “I tell you, [my first name], one of these days you’re going to end up in a shallow grave.”

Later I was speaking of the horrible academic job market, and how I’d like to continue on and prioritize writing projects like my activist exposes no matter what.

“With all your energy and talent, I’m sure there’ll be a path for you,” she was like.

“Yes,” I was like.  “Straight to a shallow grave.”

Odd dream of things decaying, with variations.

I pick up an old pair of comfortable (black) tennis shoe and see that they're falling open down the soles, they’ve worn so thin.

And when I pick them up, the shoes' soles falls outward, and it almost seems like they split apart into two pairs of two separate shoes with full-size soles, but joined together up at the top.

As I lower them, they merge back more into one pair, but as I raise them again, they seem to spread out more into almost two.

I do that several times and am confused, and am unable to decide if I was wearing very fashionable avant-garde black tennis shoes that looked as if they were two pairs the entire time I’ve had those shoes, but for some reason I only just realized that fact now.

Interesting coffee cup.

At the coffee shop east of my house, they have new coffee mugs that have a glaze and a lip resembling old-time metal camping mugs, but are actually really ceramic.

Neighborhood Developments.

The other week at the coffee shop down the street from me, I ran into my stoner neighbor from downstairs, who told me that the Latin Kings had tagged the front of our building the previous night.

When I got home later, I looked, and though it wasn’t on my staircase door, there was this big crown in white paint on the black door of my stoner neighbor’s apartment, which also opens up onto the front of the building and the sidewalk.

He said his roommate had texted the landlord to get it cleaned off, and that ours was the only apartment building to get tagged, since the doors to other apartment buildings are behind fences.

I’ve heard that the north-south street just west of my house is a boundary in gang territory and that five-ten years ago the neighborhood used to be a lot worse, but this is really the first major sign I’ve seen of that, compared to other places that I’ve lived.

I’m so careless with Home Improvements.

I’m very impressed by how good my two (half British) (half Sudanese) sibling friends are at home improvements.

Though their tiling is a bit off here and there, perhaps due to old crooked walls, their drywalling and painting is simply immaculate.

In comparison, my own attempts at caulking are so sloppy.

Last winter I caulked a bit around where the wainscoting separated from the walls in order to cut down on heat leakage, and I just smeared caulk everywhere when I tried to smooth it out with a wet cloth like you're supposed to.

Too, a few weeks ago, I was wiping down windows in preparation for putting up plastic on them for winter, and I noticed a couple glass panes had wood flaking away that opened up gaps where cold could come in.

So, I took out my unused caulk and went to seal that up, and the next thing you know, when I wiped it, caulk was all smearing up onto the glass.

Two old women walking, the other week:

1) As I bike past the parking garage of the police station near me, a(n old) (Asian) woman in sunglasses and a bright red coat with a bright red backpack is singing something operatic very loudly as she strolls along by herself, but when I look over at her and she catches my inadvertent smile, she grows solemn and stops.

2) As I stop to rack my bikeshare bicycle halfway through my ride, this (older) (black) woman on the sidewalk a bit down the block uses a white cane to hobble along in short skirts, high boots, a thin black jacket, and a leopard-print scarf, and every once in a while she pauses and hocks a loud spit.

Cute (Asian-American) children.

The other day midweek I was biking to school in late morning and there were 2 women leading this giant group of (Asian-American) 4-5 year olds in a line to a park building, probably for a class or something.

A car alarm was going off in the background, and somehow as I waited for all of them to cross the street, one kid started going "BEEP BEEP, BEEP BEEP" in rhythm to the alarm, and pretty soon the entire group of children was chanting it, and pretty in tune with the alarm, too.

Flashback to clubbing after the last Madonna concert:

Two dumpy (young) (hispanic) guys in white shirts and dark suspenders and pants and odd sloppy makeup had on these elaborate plastic bull horns like from the "Living for Love" video and related concert performances.

They said they had bought them online from the actual designer for like a thousand dollars.

My mother's evaluation of me...

The other day she said that I was an "overachiever".

I don't think I've ever been called that before, but it does seem to match up with my conscientiousness and efforts to always improve.

It makes a lot of sense, actually.

Odd telephone set-up at my parents.

Somehow with my parents' new cable package, caller ID flashes on TV if you've got the TV on and someone calls.

The other day my mom was in the kitchen and the phone was ringing from my call, so she called out to my dad, "Who is that on the TV?".

"Indiana and the Dolphins," he was like.

She told me this right when she picked up the phone right after he said it, she was still laughing.

Comment of my Latina trans*friend from clubbing.

The other night I went clubbing late and saw my one Latina trans* friend leaning up against the side bar at that one trashy late night club that I like going to.

"Hey," I was like as I came up to her, "Where is my Brazilian husband?".

At that, she held out her hand and gave a haughty backhanded point out to the club.

"Find him and share," she was like.

The Previous Unavailability of Music.

The other day I heard Mahler's "Te Deum" on the radio and was incredibly absorbed by it, and that brought me back to a handful of other times in my life that I'd heard something on the radio in the car, and actually lingered in a parking lot to hear a song through to the end...

With classical, Percy Grainger's "Warriors" and Cesar Franck's Symphony in D, and with pop, Brian Wilson's "Heroes and Villains", in the original arrangement before he had his Smile-associated breakdown.

Because music is so easily available online, moments like those don't really happen anymore, where you make yourself listen to something b/c you're not sure when you'll be able to hear it again.

I remember that even through the early 2000s, Smile was this legendary thing that was on bootlegs and passed around, it wasn't like you could just go out and find it somewhere.

That difficulty of access really made stuff worth more, somehow.

I also find it interesting that Brian Wilson's music lined up with classical music, in its overwhelmingness.

I think that says something about his orchestrations or musical complexity or something.

Unsure about Going for Academic Careers.

You know, between that awful waste of time at the art school and how long it's been taking to get my doctorate, and also the incredible amount of stress and time it takes to get tenure or even to a tenure-track job, none of which is a given, I'm not even sure how seriously I'll pursue an academic career once I graduate.

I once had thought more seriously about it and have lined myself up pretty nicely with credentials, but dissertation completion is still a ways away and I just feel burnt out sometimes, and can't stand the thought of a crazy long application process, and I don't particularly even want to leave the city.

I don't particularly put myself through more periods of economic instability, either; I want a regular, predictable paycheck, and someplace that I'm decently respected.

It really is silly to expect people without any money from somewhere else in their life to pursue a chance at this career.

It really grates me how lottery-like chances at dissertation completion fellowships or the like numbs the consciences of tenured professors because they can be like, "Be sure to apply for that," and then if nothing pops they did their duty, in their opinion, and if someone falls out during the process, that somehow reflects on them and their stick-to-it-tiveness.

And what do they have to offer at the end of this?  A chance to work with people like them?

Eff that.

I like researching and writing, but I don't need a professorship for that, and teaching can be nice, but it's not the be-all and end-all.

I wish that I hadn't sunk so much time into credentialling, with these couple half-finished academic articles prepped to finish post-diss. and a dissertation that's set to be a good academic book but may not necessarily be worth turning into one, depending on what direction I go in.

The doctorate has been good to develop thinking, but as my plans have changed, a lot of things that I've done for the sake of professionalization would have been better spent on other projects.

I almost feel like a demographic casualty of the academy, b/c someone with my economic profile needs luck nowadays in order to make it, the instability so militates against their success.

Really, it's kind of sad for them, and shameful, that someone as dedicated as I am can't make it.

Incredible bar statistics.

I counted up across the open page of my notebook, and of the 31 bars, like 29 were bars that were either new or flipped from previous establishments.

So, I've now delved so deeply into the city's bars, I'm mostly turning up places that got re-established since the last times I was in those neighborhoods.

That one mall was crazy too, where 2 of the bars had only been open for 2 days by the time that I got to them.

A friend who I did my Masters with and who checks in on my bar project every once in a while located 2 online liquor license resources and emailed them to me, and I think I'm now going to have to search those extensively by zipcode in order to locate places that I haven't been to, perhaps involving secondary address searches or checks onto Google maps.

I think my barquest has now entered the "tedious" phase.

Noise from Upstairs: New Varieties.

So, besides the kids running around upstairs, the dad of the couple hurt his leg or ankle or foot or something somehow, and now walks around with one crutch.

The other morning beginning at like 7am and going on for over an hour, it was like a pegleg walking around upstairs, with enough time between thumps for him to move his normal foot and reposition before making a step with his crutch again.

That stuff drives me nuts...

One burst of noise and I can usually get back to sleep, but if it goes on for a while, I'm up and it's difficult to sleep back in till my alarm goes off.

Tales from a former bartender at a T.G.I. Friday's downtown.

I'm really outrunning bars...

The other Tues. I went a new mall complex that's been opening up, and of the 6 bars there, all had opened up within the past month, and 2 within the past 2 days.

I can feel the horizon of bar completion approaching!

Anyhow, the bartender at the front bar of a newly-opened restaurant was quite chatty, and at one point he dropped that he had most recently worked at a T.G.I. Friday's downtown, which was "crazy".

When the conversation allowed, then, I brought back the conversation around to that and asked him what exactly was crazy about it.

"Stuff like you wouldn't believe," he was like.

"Like what?", I was like.

"A man walking in with a purple masquerade mask hanging off of one eye, a broken cigarette in his mouth, and saying he wants us to call the cops," he was like.  "And he says to call the cops because he's feeling homicidal."

"No shit," I was like.  "So what'd you do?".

"I told him we'd call the cops," he was like, "And in the meanwhile, I'm flagging the security guard, 'Come over here, come over here!'".

He then said that the cops came, talked the guy into a van, and took him off somewhere for mental evaluation.

He also said that once two huge 6- and 7-tops were filled with teenage girls who were in there somehow though the restaurant became "19 and up" at a certain time, and they got in an argument and started throwing napkins and straws at each other.

And then glasses, too, which hit other patrons and were shattering everywhere.

He also said that once they found a gun in a holster just sitting in a chair; some guy had gotten up and it had just slipped off him, somehow.

A bit later, the guy even came back looking for his gun and claimed it.

An odd dream of radical feminists...

The other week, I dreamt -

I was back in my hometown, and was looking for updates on the one radfem blog that I read regularly, but nothing was there.

Then, the day after Halloween, I discover that there had been a major radfem conference in the area, and the major blogger and some commenters were all there, which is why there were no recent blog updates, but somehow I didn't know of it b/c I'm not entirely tapped into those circles and so I missed it.

Somehow, there was some sort of local group related to herpes prevention, and it had become the center of this crazy radfem energy and broadened its mission, and was beginning to be even legendary.

I began to discuss these developments tentatively with some people I knew, but they all came out strongly against the radfem group, and said that it should just "stick to herpes".

So, I shut up.

What I don't get about Cubans.

Why are so many of the Cuban men I see kind of pasty with round faces and upturned noses and big ears and usually a paunch, too?

It's not just Marco Rubio, but the random ones I meet in the city.

They also have this disgusting thin hair that sticks around their forehead all weirdly and stringily when they're sweaty.

My apartment's spatial demarcations with reading:

I sit at my kitchen table to read newspapers and periodicals , but I use my chair in the living room or my time lying in bed to read novels.

Nonfiction books and smartphone crap can be read anywhere, and I also do crossword puzzle magazines anywhere.

I've been this way for a couple of years now, but I just realized it in retrospect when I was thinking to myself why I wasn't reading some classic fiction at the kitchen table.

Going on 5 year of barhopping, and the patterns I see:

1) Upstairs tucked-away bars are death to business (been in a couple in the city that have now flipped twice and are on their 3rd iteration, within not quite 5 years).

2) Bars used to be named by address numbers (e.g. "Lounge 503"), but are now being named after the streets they're on (e.g. the "Lauderdale Pub", if it's on Lauderdale Ave.).

Art school vindictiveness and retaliation.

After that one "tenured tyrant" cut 2 of my classes and got another prof to cut my 3rd, my future at the art school got massively reoriented.

If I could teach a handful of classes for a few years, I could petition into a higher paygrade with more stability, but that was effectively taken away from me, because I'd have to beg courses from the one remaining coordinator and find time to write the syllabi and then teach them repeatedly before I could even get back to that state where I was at.

So, I had nothing to lose by asking questions about working conditions that allowed such stuff to happen, because I was on solid ground due to similar experiences had by other colleagues.

The fact that I was on solid ground was borne out by the fact that once they tried to retaliate against my last class, I could invoke the NLRA and their internal investigation restored my last class (though they claim it wasn't retaliation).

I'm not sure how much they understand the situation, though.

From what they're saying, they think that that attempted retaliation was in the past, and that everything's "back to normal".

Except, other people are alarmed and concerned from what they've heard, and this is more a matter of working conditions than ever - for example, how that decision could have been made, or if the purported neutral internal parties (deans, special faculty positions) are actually covering up retaliation, from what can be determined.

I'll have to check with the union to make sure that these inquiries aren't counterproductive, but it seems like it should be determined as much as possible what went on, so that people can more fully think through what it means to have a union at a place where such behavior occurs and internal fora don't seem adequate as advertised, as now seems to be the case.

Catching up with my one (half British) (half Sudanese) friend.

A few weeks ago I popped in to visit my one (half British) (half Sudanese) friend to see how apartment renovations were going and have a late dinner and catch up.

When I explained at length how the art school was retaliating against me organizing over working conditions, he was like, "These people, they think that they can just throw you away like an empty chip packet."

He also told me about one anthropology class he's teaching, where to make a point about culture he gave the students an assortment of candies from gum to taffies to chocolates and asked students to categorize and rank them.

A surprising amount of students looked at the calories listing, and arranged them from most to least fattening.

Dream of a late-stage GOP presidential hopeful.

The other week I dreamt that I was watching a TV cable newsshow with the inset headshot and the blue around-the-frame and the scrolling banner at the bottom, and the guy being interview was an aging (white) (male) veteran-turned businessman from a really hardcore sector of the armed services, like maybe elite forces or something like that.

He kept saying that he was confident that he could win the GOP nomination for president, which is why he was throwing his hat in the ring, and then he began naming all the charities that he had started.

He kept going on and on, and about the tenth one that he named - and they all sounded so jack-off and ineffectual and resume-fluffing! - I started thinking, "Really?", and then he started talking about some organization that would send hot pizzas to vets who were now in college and up late studying.

The screen then shot to a picture of a pizza box being opened up, and the toppings were arranged in the shape of simple sums and multiplications.

Part of the charity's idea was to help vets study their math that way.

Economic instability // Tenured folk.

My economic instability really gets me some time.

I have to do so much work just to find a consistent income, and even then it's not enough.

Then, the insurance through the Affordable Care Act has been nice, but it's been a ton of work to renew and find out who's in network (and to get after insurance companies when their info is out-of-date), and now I find that they just cancelled my plan and I have to do everything all over again, including maybe finding different primary care physicians etc. if they're not under the cheapest plan that I can find.

Then, I have preventative dental work that would basically wipe out my savings, but I have to go for ASAP, otherwise the costs will be much worse.

Then on top of all of that, it's unclear how quickly once I'm finally able to graduate that I'll be able to find an academic job, and that's an "if" too.

Plus plus plus, I still am going to come out with multi-tens of thousands of dollars in debt in my late 30s, which I'll have to pay off at the same time that I should be saving for retirement (or so people tell me).

Economically, I'm kind of fucked.

G-dd-ss knows what will happen if either of my parents are incapacitated, and care falls on me.

I honestly don't think I'd be able to manage that.

Because of all this, so many tenured professors just make me want to vomit.

They're so cozy in their salaries, and study their little things and masturbate all day, and spout platitudes if you raise problems, and don't even fulfill their basic professional or social responsibilities to take care of students or work to ensure a vibrant academy...

As a (Belgian) friend observed, "They got their piece of the pie, then watched as the ladder got kicked out after them."

They really are just this disgusting aristocracy, self-obsessed and decadent.

The worst are the ones who cook up little vendettas to wage against vulnerable staff and students, creating problems to fill their time and fulfill whatever twisted little personality disorders that they have.

As far as I know, tenure is the best academic system out there, but that doesn't mean that everyone with tenure is palatable as a human being, so many are so far from it.

Aging, and sitting home.

The other weekend I had an invitation to go to a fall party down in the neighborhood near campus, but when it got time to go, it was a bit cold and windy out, and all I wanted to do was sit home.

So, I sat home in my chair and read and did crosswords and listened to a radio program on Saturday night.

I felt so old.

Mexicans, the Italians of Today.

So lately I've been reading the memoir of a nun of Italian heritage, whose family immigrated to an industrial Midwest city in the early 20th century.

That got me to thinking about how Mexican immigrants are like the same today, with people often in low- and entry-level jobs and speaking their own language at home and some non-immigrants occasionally marrying them in moves that some neighbors look down on.

Only, these immigrants are from the same continent, and not across the ocean.

My Czech literature professor friend on freshmen.

A few weeks ago when we were downtown hanging out at that one cozy bar that we both like, she told this one guy from Kansas City who we were talking with that the funny part about teaching freshmen is that they always stay the same age, but you get older.

How Freshmen Age.

The other weekend, I went to go help out a local progressive political campaign and gather signatures to get a candidate onto the ballot.

I showed up at the office at the same time as a couple of (older) (white) dudes, and I ended up hopping into the car of the skinny one with uneven shaving who smelt like must, shit, and a bit of tobacco, and together we went to the western end of the neighborhood near the campus where I teach.

At like the eighth door of the evening, I'm sitting in front of it checking the listed names against the labels by the buzzer, and all of a sudden through the glass door I see an apartment door fly open and as the person whips down the stairs from behind the door and across the small vestibule and goes to open the front door where I'm standing, she draws up short, and it's a writing student I had taught the previous year.

She was surprised, and so was I, it was such a coincidence.

The next time I was on campus, too, I passed by at a bit of a distance someone I had had 2 years ago, and her face was no longer fresh, and had something hard and cautious in the eyes.

Freshmen sure change.

Odd vegan dishes.

The other week, I popped over to visit my one (half Sudanese) (half British) friend for dinner as he finished up a long evening of refinishing the apartment him and his siblings bought together and are re-doing in order to rent out, and as soon as he finished up, he went to go make a meal.

Previous to that, I had offered to bring something over, but he had insisted that he'd do everything, and then that night when I asked if I could help, he was like, "No, it's just a salad, I'll make it."

We then got to talking, and after a while, I notice that he's still making the salad, and I suddenly register that he's mincing red cabbage.

Then, after a bit, he stops, walks over to his fridge, and pulls off the top of it a big box of off-brand Grape Nuts, and then walks back to the preparation area and pours it into the salad.

As it turns out, the salad was minced red cabbage, off-brand Grape Nuts, and a dash of balsamic vinegar.

Vegan dishes can be so odd.

Things you don't think about: Some classic authors.

The other day, a crossword clue referenced Tess of the D'Urbervilles (sp.?), and I started thinking to myself, "When was the last time that I thought of Thomas Hardy?".

It'd been absolutely years upon years, but I honestly couldn't remember exactly beyond that, it'd been so long.

An impression of an impression of someone from L.A.:

At a previous new bar that week, a downstairs speakeasy, a first-time visitor to the city from L.A. said that she was impressed by all the landscaping from the airport when they landed and where taxiing in all the way through parks downtown, since there isn't anything like that much anymore in L.A. b/c of the drought.

Her face was so open and honest and non-sensationalistic when she said that, that as she was saying that, all I could think was,"Global warming is here."

It felt like a cinematic moment, as part of a prologue to something much more awful that forms the heart of the movie.

An Interesting Late Afternoon-to-Evening Drinking (2 of 2): Second Bar.

After that, I still had one more new bar to go to that week, so I popped into a newly opened Buffalo Wild Wings on the way home.

Because an important sports game was on, I ended up going upstairs and having a drink.

People weren't social, and the (late 40s) (hardbitten) (white) woman with medium length blackish-brown hair next to me looked at her phone a lot.

Later, we struck up a conversation, and it turns out that she's Irish and has lived in the State for more than 2 decades.

"That was positively amazing about the gay marriage vote," I was like.

"I know," she was like.  "I was so excited and proud of my country that day."

Then, she turned away.  "Oh fook," she was like, "I'm going to start crying again."

Later, it turns out that she had gotten unfairly dismissed from her hotel job and filed a grievance with her union, and two years later it came through and she got her job back.

Because of that, she gave me some advice with retaliation, including about the difference between money and principle, since at one point they offered her six thousand dollars, "which is a lot of money to people in the bar business."

She also said when I discussed particulars of my case, that as far as she could see, that I "have them by the balls."

When we left, we left as friends, and may hang out again.

An Interesting Late Afternoon-to-Evening Drinking (1 of 2): First Bar.

So, the other weekend after a matinee of animation shorts downtown, I popped through the one cozy but touristy bar that I like b/c you meet interesting random people a lot, where I had my 35th birthday evening.

I had texted my one Czech literature professor friend to see if she wanted to join me, since she likes that bar too, but she was busy with a one-day weekend conference.

Then, it turned out that the guy next to me was this older (white) (gay) dude from L.A. who had been coming to that bar several times a year for 17 years, and he had randomly met her there the previous night and was drinking till at least 8:30pm, the last time he looked up at the clock.

"When I woke up this morning," he was like, "The bed was covered in melted ice cream and Jimmy Johns wrappers."

Then, he was since back at the drinking, as of 11:30am.

One thing led to another, and it turns out that the guy had owned a lot of major gay clubs, including in L.A., and he used to date a cocktail waiter at Studio 54 and would go there a lot.

"We had a bicoastal relationship," he was like.  "Every time I went in there, Steve Rubell hated me."

He then said that years later, he walked out of his California apartment building in Palm Springs, and walking out of the apartment building across the street was Steve Rubell, who had moved there without either one of them knowing.

"It was like, 'Bitch, what are you doing here?!'", he was like.

"Wait," I was like.  "You said that or he said that?".

"I did," he was like.  "He said, 'You know that I came here just to torment you.'".

Later, at the guy's request, I texted my one Czech literature professor friend to find out what time they had left the bar previous evening, to which she replied -

 Hmm.  I'm not sure.  I ended up at McDonalds where I took pictures of everyone else sitting around me.  So sad.

. . .

She also wanted to know if the bar had her knit black hat, with kitten ears.

The older gay dude club owner went to the lost-and-found and looked for it, but couldn't find it.

"It wasn't there, and I do remember it," he was like.

He said at one point she put it on him, but he turned it sideways so it looked kind of like a Stegosaurus spine.

. . .

The old gay club dude also to used to have Madonna come into his club sometimes, back in late 80s or early 90s when it was the hottest club in L.A.

He said that she was always very nice when he greeted her when she came in.

She'd come in late at night, maybe for the last hour of the evening, when everyone had already started to clear out and go home.

She'd be enjoying the clubs again, as much as she could.

Cooking mistake: Paprika - Chile Powder Proportions.

So, the paprika I get in bulk for Hungarian recipes is sweet, not hot.

(Paprika comes in two kinds, sweet and hot.)

So, since both paprika and chile powder are made by grinding dried peppers, for years I've added in a dash of chile powder with sweet paprika in Hungarian recipes, to give the food some kick.

When I made my first big Hungarian stew of fall, however, I added in a bit too much chile powder.

My first shit of the morning the next morning was just like loose shards of reddish-tan that made a soupy mist, and so was my second, too, which came on strong about two hours later when my coffee kicked in.

Hardware store guy is going through some problems.

The other week on a Saturday afternoon I stopped through the hardware store in my neighborhood to pick up some plastic wraps to put up on my windows for the winter.

The one (older) (white) (ex-cop) guy who runs the place was there and his friend who he was talking with helped me find them on the shelves, and then when I was checking out, his friend mosied off and we got to talking.

It turns out that his (Chinese immigrant) wife had pain in her left breast like a week earlier, and they got referrals and she's already going in for surgery that Monday.

"She had stuff when she was nineteen," he was like, "But she just never goes to the doctor, she says it's too much money and it won't do anything anyhow."

He then said that she's been down, and hasn't wanted to tell anyone.

I asked around, and he said a "Thinking of You" card wouldn't be good for her, but a "Get Well Soon" card post-surgery would be something that she would like.

He then said that he had a horrible father and grew up in a foster home, and has lived his life trying to be nice to people, so he hopes he has some favors in with "the Big Guy Up There".

He also said that he saw a lot as a cop, and he shot people and got shot, and he still wakes up sometimes in the middle of the night, and he goes back to sleep by thinking of everyone in his life who he's thankful for.

Then, he moved some pads off the calendar to reveal a blank swath of paper and he took up a pencil and was like, "Have I ever showed you this?".

"No," I was like.

He then drew two short lines about three inches apart.

"This is when you're born," he said, pointing to the first line, "And this is when you're going to die," he then said, pointing to the second.

"Where do you think you are?".

"Ooh!", I was like.  "That's tough, you can die at any time."

So, I put myself as two-thirds done.

(I really don't like questions like that; I find myself stupefied when people say they'll live a long time or say something about long-term planning that assumes that they think that, b/c you really just don't know, at all.)

"Okay," he was like.  "Wherever you think you are, let's just think about that.  Remember," he was like, pointing to everything to one side of the mark, "That's in the past, and all this over here is the only thing in front of you."

He said that's how he tries to live his life.

Conversation with my trans*stylist: Malfunctioning blowdryer.

So the Latin@-American trans*stylist who does my hair got chatty towards the end of my haircut session the other week.

First, when the new masseuse got on shift, he was like "Hi," to her, and then was like, "Good morning, Sir," to me.

"Sir?", she was like, as soon as he went away.

"What?", I was like.  "You know, I'm old enough to be a 'Sir'."

"I know that," she was like, "But I don't think of you as 'sir', I think of you as [my first name]!"

Later, after a long pause in the conversation, she confessed that she had been thinking about her blowdryer, which malfunctioned the other week and started to spark off the handle while she was using it during the middle of an appointment.

"Luckily the person was turned the other way," she was like.

She then said that she had been procrastinating on contacting the company since it had a lifetime warranty, and that it also had brought back horrible memories from when she was a kid, how she once got electrocuted by biting into an extension cord while trying to unplug a fan.

"Really?", I was like.

"Yeah," she was like, "They say if I wasn't chewing gum, I wouldn't have made it.  Chewing gum saved my life, it took some of the current and melted in my mouth."

I then asked her why she was biting into a fan's extension cord anyway.

"To unplug it," she was like.

I then asked her why she chose to bite into the fan's extension cord in order to unplug it.

"Because the cord wouldn't come out," she was like.

"And how old were you?", I was like.

"Six or seven," she was like, to which I said I was happy, b/c for a second there I thought she was going to say thirteen or fourteen or something.

"My sister was sick and needed some air, and my mom was yelling at me to unplug the fan for her," she then explained.

"Oh," I was like.

She then said that she remembers seeing a lot of colors and saying her sister's name a lot, but everyone else said that she did nothing but yell one solid scream until they unplugged it.

At that point, she said she felt fine, but the ambulance was already called, and they were all saying that she should go.

At the hospital, she finally looked in a mirror, and there was a big black circle on her mouth.

"No shit," I was like.

Then, after some explaining, it turns out that it wasn't her entire mouth charred all around, but rather just a black circle at the edge.

"That's why I have a scar right here," she said, pointing to the edge of her mouth at the lips, where a little black circle used to be, presumably.

"I used to be so embarrassed back in school," she was like, "And the other kids would try to be nice to me, and be like, 'Oh, I get those sometimes in the winter too,' and I'd have to say it wasn't like that at all!"

She then also said that when her blowdryer started sparking the other day, she insisted that the (female) (Japanese) owner unplug it for her.

"And did you tell her it was malfunctioning?", I was like.

"No," she was like.

Flashback to rest-stop break in August...

My bustrip back from my 1st vacation of the summer got majorly delayed, since first there was a tire slightly leaking air that took 4-5 hours to get replaced before we even headed off, and then there was road construction causing a detour and adding another 45min. on when we were several hours out from arrival.

At one point after the road construction, we were all so late, that the (black) (female) replacement driver just pulled off the road to a roadside reststop, and as we were deboarding and she was saying that the stop was just ten minutes, she was all out loud like, "I'm sorry, but I just have to stop..."

Then, as a group of us were walking up to the rest stop, me and her struck up a conversation, and b/c I brought up the initial tire delay, we got on the subject of bus emergencies.

She said a number of trips ago, these semi drivers were blasting past her, and they were flicking a lighter on in the window and pointing back.

At first, she thought that they were just fucking with her, but then she realized that a back tire was on fire.

"Oh," I was like.  "For a second there, I thought you were going to say that they were holding up signs saying 'SHOW YOUR TITS!'".

"You crazy," she was like.  "And then the next be one, he like, 'NO, COVER 'EM UP, COVER 'EM UP!'".

Facebook shock.

Since getting on Facebook like a month ago, I’ve really experienced a lot of shock.

First off, it’s amazing to me how many people just have lives with their kids and watch TV and football games and play video games and shit.

I feel all weird and intense, since I mostly post political shit, and otherwise go to cultural events (about which I’d never brag), or party (about which I’d never post).

It’s like I’m just way more into shit than people, to a degree that I don’t even notice and definitely can turn people off, since they’re just not on that wavelength.

I texted my one friend from high school who runs an integrated homelessness / domestic violence shelter, and she said that Facebook can f*ck with a person in many ways, but it’s important to remember that people show what they want to show, and that some of them are either going to perverted bars, or are wanting to and just not telling.

I still wonder, though, what would happen if I posted a radical feminist post about lady penis or something like that.

It’s like I’m in conversations that other people don’t know exist, and I’m off in ways that I don't realize.

That post-Madonna Monday night clubbing.

So, to pick up that last post, the club was fucking packed by the time I got up there – popped by a swanky club that had no cover on Mondays for industry night, to get in a new bar, before I realized my favorite trashy club had opened special that night for the Madonna after-party – and I honestly think it was over capacity.

One guy had on this jagged crown of gold shards at least 2-3 feet high on his head, and every inch of his showing skin was painted this very pale white and perhaps even blue, and he was sitting on the bar to the left of the entrance, every once in a while darting forward to lean forward and talk with some friend standing somewhere at the bar.

Right off the bat, I saw my one (Latina) tr*nny friend, who I had bumped into at the stadium venue before the concert started, and I asked her what she thought.

“It was great!”, she was like, and she said that she didn’t know what to expect, since she wasn’t “raised with her music” and she doesn’t “know it very well.”

Though the concert was long, she also said that she felt it was short, and that she wanted another 30 minutes.

 “You know,” I was like, “It’s two-and-half hours,” and as soon as I got to “…hours,” she started laughing and batting my chest.

“I thought you said two-and-a-half inches!”, she was like.

Later, when I was at the back bar in this interminable drink line, I was talking with this like (late 40s / early 50s) (short) (built like a brick) (short-haired) (Latina) lesbian, and it turns out that not only was she there with her girlfriend, but that she was a Madonna fan from like way back originally.

I asked her what she thought about Madonna’s world music breakdown, and she was like, “I didn’t mind it, but honestly, that’s stuff that my grandma wears!”.

Later, when I bumped into her in the drinkline at the front bar, where the freaky king guy was sitting, I told her that I loved how Madonna got eaten out twice in the concert, the second time to that spoken line from Hard Candy “my sugar is RAW / my sugar is RAW”.

She agreed, that she liked it, and by that time I was ordering 2-3 beers at a time, so I could chug one, move on to the next one, and keep one in my back pocket for when I needed it, so I didn’t have to wait in those lines for so f*cking long.

Later later, I was speaking with some (middle-aged) (white) people from the suburbs who were also Madonna fans from way back when, and it turns out that the one guy from the pair (a gay dude and his woman friend) had been to every single Madonna tour ever.

“Best since Blonde Ambition,” he was like, about the Rebel Heart tour.

I then asked him about the concert’s odd ending, where Madonna relatively explicitly threw it on the audience, that “I gave you a party, but at what cost?”.

“I don’t know,” he was like, and he knit his jaw, which could tell you that he was still thinking about it.

Overall, I found that a better response than some (drunk) woman’s response earlier in the night, “I LOVE IT, SHE CAN DO WHATEVER SHE WANTS, I LOVE HER SO MUCH.”

Later later, I was talking with a shiny young (Venezuelan), whose first Madonna concert it was, and who had been deeply moved by the choreography.

Fortunately we didn’t talk long enough for me to say how much I love Chavez and for him to get all reactionary like the Young Republican of Latin America that like all young Venezuelans in the U.S. tend to be if you talk with them for long enough, but then his young (dark-skinned) (trim-bearded) friend kept trying to catch my eye, so I sidled up to him and spoke Spanish to him, unsuccessfully, twice.

Turns out he’s Brazilian.

After two words of formality, he was like, “Look at you, you could have any man in the place."

Then, after I said something – hopefully, something like, “Why would I want that?” – we began talking about what we do etc., and then he segued into that he didn’t know what he wanted.

“I don’t know either,” I was like.

At that, he drew up, “But I’m only looking for a boyfriend!”, he was like.

It was some kind of inadequate jealousy trap, from what I can tell.

I’ve heard Brazilians are jealous, or at least some of them.

Outside afterwards was when my one Latina friend suggested a threesome, and said she likes a hairy ass.

I do believe she also said that she doesn’t get many gayboys since she’s a woman, which almost makes me wonder if she ends up f*cking the straight guys that pick her up.

Great Mondays.

Often, the next day when I’m home from that one trashy club and am getting up at like 1 or 2pm in the afternoon, I think to myself how I can’t believe that that reality was real, it’s almost like this world that only exists in the nighttime and you need your sleep to separate yourself from it and it can’t actually intrude into your daytime life like a segueing into it that way.

Lately, or at least a time or two, I’ve thought about that kind of clubbing, when I’m staring off into space during the class I kind of TA for for the 3^rd year in a row and the professor is talking, and I see all these bright-eyed overwhelmed 19 year-olds, and I think how they have no idea how this (Latina) tr*nny I’m friends with tried to talk me into a threesome after the club shut down and everyone is smoking outside, and she’s eyeing a guy and telling me she likes a hairy ass.

(At which point I realized that she still had her manjunk down there.)

I really have no idea what the kids would think, if they knew I lived shit like that, or at least lived shit around shit like that.

Really, my first 3 Mondays of this term have been something else, and all on the days that I teach these bright-eyed nineteen year olds (if they’re even that old):

1)      At night a Madonna concert, followed by clubbing till 4am and that proposition, and not even in bed asleep till 5:05am (on a Monday!).

2)      Testifying before a city council committee, before class.

3)      Before class, going to go see the touring bones of this really-fucked up Catholic chastity saint, followed by a racism protest with a Donald Trump piñata, followed by the workshops that I have to lead.

So far from what I can see, life does get better as you age, and the young really have no idea.

Odd Mexican drinking ways.

I’ve noticed that Mexicans have a disproportionately smaller share of bars than non-Mexican Americans, and at least some of their drinking energy is skimmed off into this drinking-at-restaurants arrangement that non-Mexican Americans don’t quite have in the same way.

I remember years ago, for this one World Cup soccer match, me and a (Mexican) friend and my one lawyer friend from Missouri were at a restaurant on the business strip in a super (Mexican) part of town, and he ordered the cheesy dip thing with tortillas, and we all got beers to watch the game.

It was almost like everyone wanted to drink, but you had to go somewhere and order food too, to sit around in the restaurant and watch the game.

I was thinking of this the other Friday night when I was in the taqueria near my house, and there was this group of four (Mexican) guys who BYOBed and had an empty 12-pack cardboard case of Dos Equis or some shit like that on the floor and a bucket of the beer chilling on the table, who were getting hammered and eating before going out to go do something else.

It almost felt to me like they just wanted to go get hammered, but had been socialized into eating food at the same time.

A pleasant dream (not one of decay):

I open my mailbox, and there’s the envelope with a National Catholic Reporter, and a new issue of Rolling Stone, and this kind of a bit dirty and a bit thumbed thick book, that I pull out and realize is a Rolling Stone special edition about Madonna’s career, that a friend had read about and sent to me as a surprise gift.

. . .

(There actually is such a special edition that Rolling Stone recently published, but it’s magazine size, and I don’t particularly want it, though I guess my subconscious does?).

Scary shit with Intergenerational Wealth.

The other week, my mom told me not to worry about my recommended preventative periodontal surgeries, and asked me how much they would cost (answer; $1800 a year, for 2 years in a row, I think, from what I can make out of the insurance).

She said that she hoped that that would help me, since I then wouldn’t have to worry about that.

I told her that it was nice, but on the other hand it was disturbing to see our family cannibalizing its wealth like that.

“I mean honestly,” I was like, “For all the years that I’ve worked, I still have to worry about a few thousand a year?”

I then added that student loans hadn’t kicked in yet, and that other people I know had noticed this, that their parents or others of their parents’ generation had to keep anteing up money for stuff that they should be secure for by now, but simply aren’t, and won’t be for a while, and not only that, but probably won’t be able to do anything like that for their children when they get the same age.

“Though I know that you don’t want to hear that,” I was like.

My mom then confessed that she had noticed that, that her parents’ generation was able to save up a little, and her generation a lot, and now that process just isn’t happening any more.

She said her generation was a "peak".

RESOLUTION – Must – Show – More – Discipline.

I really need to show more discipline.

Since I got a smartphone and got me on Facebook and Twitter, I have a small compulsion to check news if I’m feeling even a bit of out-of-it, which really cuts down on my productivity.

For years and years I had self-limited so I wouldn’t have those distractions when I worked from home, but now I do.

On top of that, I really got like 3 levels of sh*t to deal with:

1)      How I make ends meet.

2)      Fun middle-term stuff (cute articles, unionization).

3)      Big projects (ideas behind diss., books).

Of the 3, I need to focus on the shit that gets me to #3 the most, b/c you’ll never know when you die.

I often think of Ernestine Rose, such a brilliant person and feminist, but she shot her (female) wad on letters-to-the-newspapers and lectures and essays in periodicals, and so for lack of a book has not gone down as the landmark feminist that she was.

Overall, it seems like it’s important to fight daily battles in the bubbling churning here-today-and-gone-tomorrow media, but you also got to make sure that shit gets in books, otherwise there’s no real real lasting effect of your thought, since it has no staying power.

From what I’ve read of Madonna interviews, she really prizes discipline, and credits it for what she’s been able to accomplish.

Similarly, when I read about someone like Cesar Franck, even though much of his shit was uncredited in his lifetime, he composed every morning, and it all worked out in the end.

It’s tough, though, b/c I work so much and am split between so many different jobs, to find time to concentrate and really *work*.

Plus, like Pope Francis said in his one Christmas-time address to the Curia, something that everyone should think about, is whether they become self-important and don’t allow themselves to rest.

I kind of recognize myself in those words.

On the one hand, I see that I don’t rest enough.

On the other hand, I look at my CV or resume and whatever-the-fuck-have-you, and I just don’t see enough.

Interesting supermarket happenings…

The other evening, I was at the supermarket on a Sunday to get my groceries as usual.

When I was doubling back in the produce section to get some carrots, a young (Asian) woman backed her cart from sticking out of the aisle.

“Sorry!”, she was like, flashing braces.

“No problem,” I was like.

The store was very busy, and there was an exceptional amount of kids doing cute things.

One (hispanic) family I passed had the older daughter walking beside the cart, and the mom trailing behind, and the dad pushing the cart, with this tired young 5 year-old sitting cross-legged in the cart.

Later, by the eggs, when I passed them again, the kid had a plastic vegetable bag out, inflated full up and he was waving it back and forth from side to side in the cart, though not bouncing it off the sides.

When I went down the coffee – tea – spices aisle to go get some vacuum-packed coffee, this little (African-American) toddler was coming up the aisle being like “Bye bye! Bye bye!”, I think because that one N-SYNC song “Bye Bye Bye” was playing over the loudspeakers, though I’m not sure that the toddler’s family was aware of it, or even paying attention.

Glumness over class cutting...

So, though I had anticipated the possibility of getting my last class cut in retaliation for unionization activity and seeking improvements in workplace conditions, the email came a bit out of the blue (I had expected it earlier and had thought that that time had passed), and it left me in a funk.

Going into one meeting with a faculty admin person the day after that retaliation happened, it felt odd even to be on campus.

Fortunately, right after that meeting I saw the one (black) (female) security guard I know who writes urban romance novels, and she was so genuinely happy to see me, that it was just wonderful, to know that the cool people I like like me...

Funnily, the same thing had happened with another (black) (female) security guard in the other building, when I had been in there a month earlier for another meeting around these issues, and when she said she hadn't seen me and asked me how I'd been, and when I said my classes had been cut, all right away her face got all stony and she was like, "I don't like that."

(Funny enough, a [white] [female] artist colleague said like those exact same words later that afternoon, when I bumped into her on the stairwell and also told her of my situation.)

My one lawyer friend from Missouri says that all relationships ending cause distress, especially when it's on bad terms, even when a person's okay with the situation.

Too, I really appreciated this text from my one (Asian-Canadian) friend, who I had gone out for drinks with the night I received the news of the cutting, and who I had texted to tell him that I was feeling oddly blue and ashamed:

I don't think you have anything to new [sic] ashamed of.  I'm sure of [sic] the strategies of power in an institution is to belittle.  Just keep doing what you think is right.

. . .