Idea, if I was more technologically sophisticated.

If I was more technologically sophisticated, every time I wrote a post that included a black woman saying something, I would record myself saying what she said like she said it and link the files to the post, so the dialogue would appear highlighted and all you would have to do is click it to hear me being them being sassy over and over and over again.

More on canvassing - two more stories I forgot.

Those four older black women I was talking with - the ones who were talking about the Clintons showing their true colors, and who were like, "Hello" -- started talking about how Obama's campaign was ordained by God and nothing could stop it.

Also, one of the four black women, when she was asking me and my neighbor who I went canvassing with about where our building was back in the neighborhood she was born in, made a face when we said it was on the block with all the Thai restaurants.

"Thai food," she was like, "Ugh," and when we asked her for more details, all she would say is that she's tried all sorts of different food because she's in real estate and she goes to dinner at different restaurants because of clients, but she likes nothing more than some meat and mac and cheese and some greens.

"How about sushi?", I was like, and she made a face, and when I asked her about Vietnamese soups, she made a face, and then finally, after mentioning several more foods, I was like, "Well, it's still all better than that one Spanish dish, creadillas."

"Quesadillas?", she was like, "I've had those!"

"No no no," I was like, "Creadillas, they're roasted cow's testicles, not quesadillas," and when I said that, she made the biggest face of all.

Classics condescension.

What a Classics prof said at a departmental party to a student who does Early Christianity through an interdisciplinary program run out of Classics --

"You're here? That's funny, I thought you would be over in a corner somewhere reading koine."

Shit times two.

Today, the smell of coffee made me want to shit, and I did.

Also, once I had half a cup of coffee, I needed to shit again, and I did. It was brown and just squirted the fuck out of me, and you could hear it like a small high pressure hose hitting the toilet water, though there was minimal splashback, as I could see from the fairly clean inner rim afterwards.

Some drunks.

So, on Saturday night I ran into my one friend and her one Belgian friend at the local student bar, and already when I was arrived they were both pretty wasted, and after my one friend left, her one Belgian friend ordered another beer, and somehow we started talking about abortion and he mentioned how he hated people and said to prove him wrong that people are worth something, so I asked him if he watched Buffy - there's this great character arc in the 7th season where an inhuman character realizes she loves humanity after all towards the end of the season -- and all of a sudden he started challenging me to give him a line from any of the songs of the Buffy musical and he would complete the lyric.

"Fine, I was like," and I started to sing kind of quietly,

"'night after the night/
the same arrangement/
i go out and fight the fight...'"

to which he immediately responded by singing much more loudly,

"still I always feel the same estrangement/
nothing here is real/
nothing here is right..."

After this we tried for forever to remember lyrics from other songs, and he confessed that his wife loves it when he sings "Rest in Peace" to her since he's this foreign export with an accent when he speaks English, and that after he does that, they usually sing that one song with a mini Buffy-Spike duet and then have lots of sex.

Saturday/Sunday canvassing.

I went canvassing for Obama on Saturday and Sunday too. I worked a lot, and it was relatively uneventful except for --

There was this one dignified-looking older black woman who would man the volunteer center at this one canvassing staging area - she was retired from some professional job and lived a couple blocks over, so would stroll over and work every day all day - and the second day I was canvassing, she was sitting there in a black pantsuit and wearing gold earrings and with carefully-coiffed hair, and in her tasteful black purse on the table, her cell phone went off, and her ringtone was "What's Going On".

When I was in this one black neighborhood in Gary, there was this young high school kid working out in the yard, and when I walked up to him and introduced myself and he was about to go get his parents, the ice cream truck started going by, so I first asked him to wait till I ran and got some ice cream, and then I had a second thought and took him along to get ice cream, and we were standing there eating sandwiches when his parents dashed out of the house to buy ice cream too. After that, we all stood around talking about Gary and about Obama, and they were telling me that the other week when Obama was in Gary to speak, this woman robbed a bank and got away with it, since she had planned to do it when all the police and everyone were tied up at guarding the convention center.

Everyone I met, too, was incredibly pissed at Jeremiah Wright:

1) This one black church organist I canvassed with was a very nice person - he was hoping these two old ladies on the list he knew weren't home, since he hadn't seen them in years and he knew they'd talk his ear off - but he said something to the effect that though Wright was right about shady U.S. involvement in foreign governments, he should have kept quiet after Obama started getting flack.

2) This group of black kids from a local high school who volunteered at the local office to make visibility signs for election day - "Barack the Vote!" - "Mama's for Obama!" - were talking about Wright while we were all coloring and painting, and the one girl was like, "And he even came in to talk to the Clintons after that one scandal, you know, who's that hoochie?, and now they won't even talk to him."

3) This one old asthmatic black lady who was out watering her flowers said that give her a thousand dollars, and she'd go up to Chicago and wring Wright's neck.

Addendum on canvassing last time.

Forgot from last time -

Me and the one girl from my apartment building met this 80-some year old black woman who was originally born in our neighborhood but was down in Indiana volunteering, and when we found that out and asked her where she lived, she asked me where I lived, and I told her the intersection, and then when she turned to the one girl from my apartment building, she said the same, and it was only later when someone asked us how long we had been together that we realized that people thought that we were married.

Also, after one stretch of canvassing, it had just started to rain, so we ducked into a McDonald's to call people to tell them to pick us up, and while the one girl from my apartment building was doing that, I went to go get a hamburger and frieds.

"You want a double cheesburger for a dollar more?", this really fat and really black black woman at the counter asked.

"No," I was like, "I'm trying to lose this for summer," and I grabbed this hunk of fat around my belly and shook it at her.

"Aren't we all, aren't we all," she said, grabbing this huge hunk of fat around her belly and shaking it at me, and then she was like, "Only, you had to pull to show, and I didn't, so don't you be saying nothing to me."