Catching up with a (British) friend (1 of 2): Observation.

So, I went back up to the city that I used to live in this past week to catch up with my one (half British) (half Sudanese) friend (the brother of the brother-sister pair), when he was back in town for the first time since the pandemic started, visiting his sister and her family.

He says that he's shocked at how filthy the subway has become, and that stations and some train cars smell like piss.

He also said that his sister said that the city was just different with crime and the overall vibes and whatnot, and he thought that it was maybe just her, until he heard my one lawyer friend from (Missouri) saying the same thing.

Now, he thinks it's really true.

Children's book gift.

So, on my one recent trip to the one city that I used to live in, I also stopped by to see my one (half British) (half Sudanese) friend and her family, especially so I could drop off this one very cool used book that I had gotten for like two bucks at the local library, about animals and how big they are, with illustrations conveying their size.

My one friend later texted me that her daughter had her read it to her 3 times that night, and that she did games with her, like laying the book out on the bed with the pages open to the illustration of a gigantic frog and asking her, "Can you imagine if this frog was here right now, it's so big and slimy?!", and her daughter would say that she didn't want a big slimy frog there in her bed etc.

She also said that her daughter pretend-scooped up the miniature lemur in her hands to give to her and thought the fish the size of her fingernail was ridiculous, but most of all she just laughed when she put her foot on the page and realized that her entire foot was the size of an elephant's toe.

I also had gotten this old state swimming medal with a (yellow) ribbon and included it along with the present as an addition for her dress-up box, and her mom said she wore it all day until bedtime.

Isn't that the cutest?!

Such a fun age.

Inappropriate joke to a server.

Back when I was in the city that I used to live in so I could go to the one consulate and submit my dual citizenship application, I got together for dinner and drinks with my one art school colleague who wears (women's) clothes and my one language coordinator friend who always dates musicians.

After our bitch-fest, we started talking with the one (young) (white) (college age-ish) (female) server who was coming to our table, and it turns out that she's a dual citizen and her family is moving back there, so they can get more affordable college for her younger sister.

She also was getting into arts production jobs, and I actually gave her the number of a friend of mine who got into that, so she could talk to him about careers and barriers to advancement and whatnot.

And, as we were getting up to leave and starting to head out, she said that she liked production, but she wanted to make more of the art herself, and she didn't want to get trapped in production.

"That's great," my one language coordinator friend was like, "We need more women making films."

"Shhhh," I then told her, throwing my hand up like a barrier to her, "We don't know how she identifies!"

And, the server gave me a confused but dirty look.

. . .

You can't really say shit like that to young people, I don't think.

Dual citizenship submission.

So, I finally submitted my one dual citizenship application, to the one small country where I have ancestral ties and qualify for restoration of citizenship through part of my family.

It was definitely interesting.

While I was waiting, there comes in this one (shorter) guy with a (stylish) (dark) beard and a long ponytail and tattoos all up and down his right arm covering every single inch of his flesh there, and he has on a tight light-colored t-shirt and tight very light-colored stone-washed jeans, and from what I gathered of the language, he got married over there but divorced over here, and now he needs them to send documents back over there, and he kept talking very loudly distinctly, probably so they could hear him on the other side of the thick bullet-proof glass counter divide, and he kept saying, "No problem, no problem."

And, meanwhile, I'm like, "What the fuck is this country?"

Later, when I submitted the documents and signed all the forms, I apologized to the consul in their language for not speaking the language better, and then he spoke at length in their language and I caught like none of it, and so he translated it into English for me, and was like, "When you get the passport, you can go to [the ethnic minority region where your family comes from], get married, and learn to speak better [the ethnic minority language] *and* [the national language]."

Isn't that just a generous response?

Also, when he was looking through my new criminal background check that he had requested I get like a month-and-a-half ago, too, he stuck his finger on the paper and was like, "Oh oh oh, it says here, you smoke marijuana."

And I was like, "Oh no, I don't smoke marijuana!", and he was like, "It's a joke."

I also noticed that the chairs in their waiting room were two of the three colors of their flag, so I texted a few friends from that country, that I was wondering why they didn't have the third color represented in their chairs.

Campus stroll.

One of the things that I like about this campus here is how they have all of these historic plaques marking the discoveries of STEM faculty, and some of them are really obscure and almost surreal, where you wonder if it's like a surrealist joke installation by some local artist.

The other weekend evening when I was taking "my constitutional," I passed by one and sent a picture to my one professor friend who studies (modern) (Czech) literature, telling her this very thought.

And, she wanted to know if that particular discovery was made right at that very spot.

Later, I happened to pass by a bike pumping station with this like motorized gas injector and all of these cords and clamps hanging off of it, so on the spur of the moment, I decided to take a picture of it and I sent it to her, with the accompanying text -

This is where ROTC scholars discovered torture techniques employed at Abu Gharaib.

- and after that like ten minutes later I took a picture by a non-descript dirty corner of a building of a hedge and a bunch of scuffled woodchips, and I sent it to her with the accompanying text -

This is where the drunken Sigma Sigma Alpha sister was dragged in the event that started the Great Title IX Lawsuit of '94.

- and then I wrote -

It's astonishing; everywhere you walk here, there's history.

- and then -

It's like Europe.

. . .

Response of my Greek reading group partner...

 ...this one (taller) (white) (blocky-built) (late-stage undergrad) who knows Greek but isn't a Classics person and who seems (vaguely evangelical), to this one dialogue of Lucian which we read where a couple gods are talking about Hephaestus planning to catch Ares with a net when he's f*cking Aphrodite, and the one god is like, "I don't know, I wouldn't mind being the one who's getting caught with her" (implying how great it would be to f*ck her):

"What goofballs," he was like, after saying how much he enjoyed the humor in that one.

Me gusta el espanol un poquito mas.

So, I found out the other week that the way that you tease a person named "Simon" in Spanish is to call them "Simon Ptolemy," since "Simon Tolomeo" sounds like "Si monto, lo meo" ('if I mount him, I p*ss on him').

That really make me like Spanish better, as a language.

It's like some shit out of Rabelais, only it's now, and people still find it funny. It's totally like vestigial obscene wordplay from the early modern era.