Buffy and the Hebrew Bible.

Today in my Hebrew Bible class the prof was talking about Leviticus 17:11 and I couldn't help thinking about Season Five of Buffy.

Hungarian thanks.

This Hungarian I know on campus e-mailed me for advice on bike locks (he knows I bike a lot and we had talked before when he told me he was thinking of getting a bike), and after I wrote him back with my recommendations on bike locks, he wrote back, "Szenksz veri macs," which is transliterating "Thanks very much" into Hungarian, substituting a few sounds along the way.

This is funny if you can sound out Hungarian.

Karaoke ambivalence...

I'm trying to pump people up for karaoke this Friday, but the response so far isn't great. Mostly, when I ask people what they're doing on Friday and they're like "Nothing" or "I don't know," I've been responding, "No, the right answer is, 'karaoke'!", they've mostly been making faces, which hurts me inside.

Two stock sayings: white, balls.

When I read Freakonomics a few months ago, I was struck by how the statistically whitest name in the U.S. is "Dov" (a typically Jewish name, it's Hebrew for 'bear'; I think what happens is that Hebrew proper names from the Bible like "Isaiah" and "David" get mixed in enough with the black population that they don't appear on the list of hte whitest names, but Hebrew non-proper names are typically Jewish and thus rocket those names among the white population). So, now whenever I see a guy in my doctoral program by that name, I'm always like, "Dude, you are so white." I don't think he thinks it's funny, though when I told him about the Freakonomics name-list thing, he found it mildly interesting.

My new phrase as of a year ago, too, if it's hot out, is, "Man, I'm sweating my balls off in here."

Question.

Remember when the Spanish were bad-ass, and not just the comic relief of the European Union?

Idioms/The cha-cha/Bugs.

I saw my building's janitor yesterday and he was saying about his sister, who's landlord, that she doesn't have any hair on her tongue. (This was in relation to her telling young people when they move in to be quiet and not have any parties.) I think that idiom is Spanish, too, only my building's janitor and my landlord are not Spanish, but Croatian!

This upcoming week is my last dance classes for tango and samba. People are pissed that intermediate tango isn't going to be coming up for another few months, since everyone's really hyped for it, but instead they're having waltz and cha-cha. I was pissed too, since waltz and cha-cha really don't intereste me, until I remembered that in the original Hairspray movie they dance the cha-cha to "Duke of Earl", which is really sweet, and now makes me want to take the class. I wonder if I convince the instructors to bring in an MP3 of "Duke of Earl" so everyone can dance to it.

On Friday night when I came home I went to open up the blinds so I could open up the windows and air my apartment before bed, only when I opened up the first blind, a 2.5-inch silverfish fell out of the blindwork and onto the floor, and I was able to crush it, fortunately, though it was moving fast because I think it was startled. Last night when I woke up and went to take a piss, a small silverfish (1/2-inch long) was ambling along by the threshold to the bathroom, I noticed mid-piss, so I just gingerly stepped over and crushed it.

Two black women: inside the pharmacy, outside a salon.

On Friday night on my way home after dinner I stopped by the pharmacy to pick up some stuff, and the place was hopping. When I was coming back up front from the cold/flu section, this older guy with a gray goatee and earring who works for the local paper and his wife, who was also older and had short short hair and a leather jacket, were walking a few steps in front of me, and somehow the woman rather forcefully bumped this young black pharmacy worker who was going the opposite way, only she never turned around and apologized, even though the pharmacy worker just turned back to look at her and was like, "Excuse me?" Finally, after a few moments, when she got no response from the woman and she saw that the woman was just keeping on walking, she just said loudly, "Ignorant," and turned and went back on her way.

On Saturday afternoon when I was coming back home with my groceries and was walking in front of a black hair salon on the main business strip between the grocery store and my house, this grizzled, thin old black woman practically fled out the door and leaned back against the wall and lit up her cigarette like she really needed it, and after one deep inhale, she stared out into space and shook her head a little and said to no one in particular, "Free at last."